For a week rumors had crisscrossed the village of a new NVA armored unit encamped in the jungle to the north. Then Heng and Khieng had come in on pass, had strutted about flashing their new rifles at the younger boys and bragging about the tank crews whom they supported. The crews were all young women from North Viet Nam, they said. Women trained at the Soviet armor school in Odessa on the north shore of the Black Sea. With them, though not loggered together, were two batteries of 130mm self-propelled long-range artillery guns. An image flickered behind Chhuon’s eyes, a fantasy of the bombs destroying the tanks. The thought scared him. Anything which could so shake the ground, which could so quake mother earth as the bombers, had to be evil.
Chhuon whispered a prayer, then quietly he vowe
