Pool_2

stop on the gravel shoulder. Armageddon was outside. He had never, in the Golf Course of the Ia Drang Valley, heard so much ordinance being discharged. Shannon's last complete sentence before being muffled by Frank's body was, "I always wondered what God looked like. Now ..." The pause was murderous and deafening. "BLACK," he yelled directly into her ear and that was barely loud enough above swirling gusts of continuing gun fire, "and stay down!" Maybe it was loss of circulation, that distance that comes with fainting. Maybe just acute deafness from the noise itself. But, with an occasional brief exception, gun fire seemed to draw away, further and further away. Explosions were distant. "Frank?!" "What?" "What about black?" "Black? Black is beautiful!" She peered out from under his body which was still draped over her as a protective mantle, and saw nothing that fit. What glass? What metal? What was exploding? It wasn't the Explorer. "Are we dead?" "Just stay down!" he screamed. "Who is it?" she hollered, now figuring that a battle was raging outside. "God. You called, He answered. I got news for you Irish, He sure as hell ain't green. He's black! God is black." As the tantrum of rockets and sustained explosion suddenly capped, Shannon wondered, "Hope He hasn't run out of bullets." It was quiet. It stayed that way for a few minutes until the sound of trucks. What had sounded like war now sounded like construction. "Shannon," Frank now whispered, "either we're about to die or we've