# Fortunate Snoot Chapter 5

Fortunate Snoot
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Chapter 5
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They'd been on base at Soc Trang for three days, mostly flying routine medical transport missions, and it was finally mail call day. The entire mess hall seethed with impatience.
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Fang’s tail tapped a nervous staccato rhythm against her seat. She alternated between talking to Stella, endlessly tuning her guitar, and scratching at her wings. Trish was practically vibrating as she tried to read a workshop manual, occasionally standing up and walking around aimlessly. Anon and Reed arm wrestled the marine assigned to be door gunner of Stella and Rosa’s gunship, a bulky t-rex with ludicrously tiny forearms and biceps. Every single dino and human in the mess hall glanced at the door whenever it opened.
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To understand the importance of mail call, you had to know just how little news from home troops could get while deployed. To make a radio call you had to either suck up to the operators of a very illegal pirate HAM radio station and beg for some precious minutes, or have the good luck to be stationed on a base with a legitimate MARS radio and the patience to queue for it. Telephones were practically non-existent outside civilian telegraph offices in the bigger cities. This made mail the sole reliable lifeline of communication with those back home, and mail call was the all-important handing out of those letters. The base was hours or maybe minutes away from receiving the only news they’d get all month.
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After 20 long minutes, Rosa burst in the door carrying a bulky sack of mail, followed by an officer. Every head in the mess turned to stare. “An-on! Help mi with las correspondencia.” The two of them spread bundles of letters and parcels over the table, and the officer began calling names.
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Back in the barracks with their mail, the gang sat down and began opening it.
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Trish squealed. “Mom sent cookies!” She rapidly tore into her package and put one in her mouth, chomping away happily. “Oa’mea’ n’ raishin,” she said with a full mouth.
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In response to the idea of oatmeal and raisin, Fang mimed gagging, but without looking up from her letter. She finished reading through it, then said “Dad says he’s got nobody to practice his golf swing with, now Anon’s gone. Moe’s hired Jerry again. Volcano High finally fixed the hole Spears kicked in that roof fence. Mr Ringo joined the navy. What did you get, Anon?”
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Anon groaned and held up the one letter he’d received. It said “Outstanding Unpaid Balance” in big red letters, followed by a forest of fine print.
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Reed was struggling with a large package. He finally ripped the tape off, revealing a box with “Patented Walton Belt Vibrator” written on it. The contraption advertised “years of pleasure and fitness.”
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Fang’s eyes went wide, and she gasped “No fucking way, Reed! What is THAT?”
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Reed winked at her and shook the box. It clinked as glassware hit glassware. “Fitness is important.”
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“Oh, it’s just another degenerate ‘business shipment’ of yours in a dumb box. Go ahead.”
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One of the peculiarities of dino military tradition was maintaining unisex barracks; another was allowing unmarried couples to share a bed outside estrus season. Anon and Fang lay in companionable silence, Anon reading a book on record cutting, Fang still going over her letters from home.
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Moe, Samantha, golf, Jerry, school, Nasser had apparently enlisted as a surgeon… not a word about his work. Had that dilophosaurus been right about him? Even if he was catching draft during dodgers, was her dad in the wrong? She'd been drafted herself, after all. She'd called the war colonialist French meddling, but she'd still gone through flight school and officer training. She hadn't dodged anything.
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"Do you ever look around at base, and wonder how many of them really want to be here?" she said suddenly.
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Anon put his book down then turned to her with raised eyebrows.
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Fang went on, "You're the only enlisted man in our crew, and you're only here because your dad threatened to send you back to Brazil or disinherit you. Reed, Trish, me, we're all from the draft."
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"Never really thought about our crew in particular," said Anon, "but you're right in general. Most people here hate the draft, even the ones who support the war."
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Fang was silent for a while. "Remember when you told me there were too many useless people in the world?"
"Hmmmm?"
"What if all those generals and senators and… and police commissioners, what if they think we're the useless people? What if this whole war is just thinning the herd to them?"
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"You're not useless. We're not useless. When we get back home, your first album is going to go platinum, and I'm going to be the one who recorded it for you." Anon kissed her on the cheek.
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She turned away for a moment, then sighed and snuggled down into the crook of his arm. She put her dad's letter aside and wrapped her arms around Anon.
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It was past midnight when the siren went off. The crew jogged out onto the tarmac. They all knew the drill by now; Fang and Anon in the cockpit going through the preflight checklist, Reed in the back sorting through the medical supplies, Trish checking her and Reed’s harnesses and loading a magazine into her rifle. She’d chamber a round when they got close.
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To the left, Stella, another pilot, Rosa, and the arm-wrestling t-rex from the mess got into their own heli.
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Fang listened intently to the radio, then said “Take us south-west, Anon. I’ll have the exact coordinates soon. There’s an M113 personnel carrier that’s rolled over on the road out of Cà Mau. A mechanised infantry platoon are out there trying to right it, and they've come under fire from Vietcong in a night raid and taken casualties.”
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The heli flew south into the night. Soon, they could see tracers and fire in the distance. Two jets roared past them towards the fight, then roared back in the other direction minutes later.
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"Gonna be a hot landing zone, ladies and gentlemen and enbies and attack helicopters," said Fang over UHF radio and their headsets.
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"Thank you for giving attack helicopters the recognition they deserve," replied Stella primly, but her heart wasn't in it.
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They all knew what a hot LZ meant. They'd be taking constant fire, potentially from more than one side, while trying to extract wounded troops. In an unarmored UH-1 hovering above the tree line, with visible running lights, landing or takeoff might well be a death sentence for one or more of them.