Excerpt from Stealth Patrol

THE RTO CAME BACK over the radio and asked me if they’d gotten any closer; I pressed the squelch button once for YES. I was holding the receiver up to my ear, and almost immediately after that, one of the chopper pilots came over the frequency, saying they were about six minutes away. I peeped back over the rock to see what was happening, and the NVA had moved to within ten or fifteen meters of us—this was getting too close for comfort….
     I looked up at Dave. He gave me a nod. This was it. With the NVA on top of us, it was either now or never.
     He was holding the detonators in his right hand, poised for the explosion—I reached over and tapped Sergeant Pao on the knee; he turned and signaled the others—Dave gave us one last look, and then in a quick fluid motion, he squeezed the detonators together.
     The explosion rocked the side of the mountain—dirt filled the air—and in an instant, we were off and running.
     The plan was for us to blow the claymores and to try to make it to the valley floor—the nearest LZ was about six or seven hundred meters away. But as soon as we started running, I knew it was gonna be tricky. For one thing, it was just really, really dark—and for another, those NVA back there were gonna be extremely pissed off.