by C. X. Moreau
“You’re damn right you haven’t,” snapped Griffin. “Let ’em come along and check weapons for themselves if they’re worried about the fucking Rules of Engagement. I’m not going out there unloaded. It’s stupid, and you know it.”
Whitney rose from his cot and edged past Griffin in the narrow bunker. “Grab a seat, and try to calm down a little. It’s too early in the morning to get so pissed off,” he said. He went to his olive drab Val pack and rummaged around inside it. With his back to Griffin he tried to think of something to say. He had come to the platoon some thirteen months before, and since that time Griffin had never spoken to him in this manner. Griffin was an old school Marine. Keep your mouth shut, follow orders, accomplish the mission. For him to speak like this meant there were serious morale problems. Not just with Griffin’s squad, but with Griffin himself, and probably the other squad leaders. Griffin was liked and respected by the platoon. He would have to be careful what he said. Whatever tone Griffin set would be adopted by most of the others, and Griffin’s attitude would be affected by what he was about to say.
“Ah, there it is now,” he said to Griffin, extracting a half-empty bottle of bourbon from the depths of his Val pack. “All of us southern boys damned near cried when they started issuing those plastic canteens. Fucking plastic melts, or holds the smell of the goods. Damn risky carrying a bottle, too. Glass breaks, and you’re shit out of luck. It’s enough to break a man’s heart, seeing good bourbon go to waste. Well, war is hell they say.” He turned in time to see a faint smile from Griffin, and his apprehension eased a bit. He poured a couple of shots into two canteen cups and passed one to Griffin who grimaced as he swallowed a mouthful of the warm liquid. The staff sergeant studied Griffin over the lip of his canteen cup before speaking.
Fourteen years in the Corps, he thought, and this part of it never gets any easier. He had asked the same questions of an older Marine a decade before. The frustrations and anger were the same, only the battlefield was different. And he was different this time around. He had changed in the dozen or so years since he had left Vietnam for the last time. He was less emotional now, less caring about some things, more understanding toward others. He had come away from Vietnam with scars, on his body and in his mind. Those scars had marked the boy and shaped the man. His concept of duty had been altered, and he had lost any semblance of innocence. Now he had begun to realize what mattered in life. It was nothing he could put into words, it was less tangible than even an idea. The Marine Corps mattered to him. The whole of it, with its myriad of regulations and its crushing weight of conformity. But what really mattered were the traditions, and the thought of the others who had gone before him. The ones who had made the legends at places whose names were now an inseparable part of the lore of the Corps. Tripoli, Belleau Wood, Tarawa.
He had known it would come to this since he was a boy. He had readied himself his entire life for the physical challenges, the long marches, the endless cycles of training. He had endured it all, the abuse, the harassment, the discipline. He had naively clung to the belief that somehow the system could really prepare a man for the shock of combat.
Those first few seconds in a nameless firefight in Vietnam had served to erase those beliefs forever. Now he realized that nothing readies a man for war. The overwhelming terror that seizes a boy during his first battle. Or the stark, haunting realization that you aren’t any different from the others and that when your turn comes you will die. It didn’t matter that he had run the mile faster than any boy in the county his junior year in high school, or that a girl back home loved him. One moment in an otherwise ordinary day and his life would be reduced to the memories of a few people who had known him and a name carved into a piece of stone.
He had decided to remain because of some inner calling, an indefinable desire to be a part of something bigger than himself, and to share the company of others with that same sense of duty to the Corps. He had spent his entire adult life in service to the Corps. He had never really known anything else.
It hadn’t come without its price. Two daughters that he barely knew who were now back home with their mother in Kentucky. And a letter in his pocket from a lawyer telling him that his wife wanted a divorce.
Ten years ago he would have thrown the letter away and gotten drunk. He would have had more emotion for her then, more to give, and more to lose. Now she mattered less somehow, and both of them knew it. It was less of a surprise than he might have once imagined. He couldn’t even blame her really. He had been a real bastard, first with the drinking, then with the other women, and now with the months-long deployments.
He had stayed in the Corps even after her father had offered him a job back home. A job with a decent salary. Enough to buy a piece of the mountains they both loved. A chance to raise their girls with family, put down roots in a place they both knew as home. She had tolerated it all. She had done what she could while he destroyed their marriage, first by drinking, then by his silence. He had never been able to tell her about Vietnam, or about the boys he had lost there.
One boy really. One young lieutenant who had died on a nameless battlefield on an otherwise unremarkable day. A battlefield without any particular distinction or glory, except perhaps the distinction of being the place where one more Marine died.
Even now he was unsure why this one death had affected him so deeply. He only knew that it had, and afterward he had known he could never leave the Marine Corps. He had thought about that lieutenant often in the years since Vietnam. He had been a sergeant then, on his second tour. He was acting platoon sergeant and the lieutenant had become his friend over the months spent in the bush. He had shaped the boy, even though he was little more than a boy himself. He had taken a great deal of pride in the fact that he was acting in the tradition of Marine NCOs by helping to form the character of one of the Corps’ young officers.
When they had put him on the medevac bird the lieutenant had pulled him close and said over the noise of the helicopter that he should write his family, and that he hoped he had earned the respect of his Marines. And he had said “Thank you.” He could have forgotten the boy had it not been for the thank you. Not forgotten exactly, just pushed him back into the crevices of his memory where you put the things that are too painful to think of very often.
Griffin reminded him of that lieutenant in an odd sort of way. Maybe it was because he had done what he could to shape both of them. Or maybe it was because they were both so determined to be good Marines. There was some quality they both shared that he could never put a name to. Something fierce and unyielding in their character that had destined them both to be Marines. Good Marines.
And now, a decade later, it was happening all over again. Soon enough the dying would start. He recognized all the signs that he had been too young to know the first time. He glanced at Griffin and wondered if he was getting old, becoming maudlin. Trying to sound as much like a father as he could he plunged ahead, “Look, Sergeant Griffin, we’re Marines. Nobody in Washington, D.C., gives one single flying fuck about us. The only thing that matters back there is votes. Dead Marines, at least lots of dead Marines, means less votes for the guy in office at election time and shitty stories in all the newspapers. Other than that, they’re not real worried about us. So don’t waste a lot of your time worrying about crap like ’creating a presence.’ That’s just a line of bullshit for them to feed to the press. Your mission, and mine, is to get back home with this platoon in one piece. If we’re lucky we’ll pull it off. So let’s concentrate on that for now.”
He shook his head and continued, “As far as the first sergeant, well, fuck me if I know what kind of rock got stuck in his shorts. If it will make you feel any better, I’ll have a talk with the company gunny and see what he thinks.”
The staff sergeant paused and looked at Griffin for a moment, wondering if he was striking the right chord. “But you remember this. We’re Marines, you and me. Neither of us is some wet behind the ears private on his first pump
. Both of us have been around. So when you’re out there in Indian country, you run your squad the way you see fit, boy. And you let the politicians in Washington worry about counting votes. Now it’s time for formation, so let’s go out there and get our collective ass chewed like the true professionals we are.” The staff sergeant smiled and slapped Griffin on the shoulder as he left the bunker.
CHAPTER
5
Griffin’s low whistle broke the morning stillness as the squad rose like long dead specters from the waist-high grass. A torn gray mist hung over the ground as the Marines stood and began walking out of the grass toward the village. The only sound was the creaking of their equipment as they moved past the first few houses. Downs, walking point, noted that the village dogs had not even bothered to bark at them, and he was conscious of the gritty sound of his own footsteps as he moved along a stretch of dirty pavement between a row of houses. Downs glanced at Mac on the opposite side of the road. Mac was looking toward Downs and said in a whisper, “Something ain’t right, Steve.”
Downs nodded and kept moving forward. Rounding a corner he locked eyes with an old woman wearing a cheap cotton print dress and thin scarf. She was washing clothes under a faucet and did not look up again as the patrol moved quietly past.
Downs’s eyes swept each door and window ahead of him as the patrol moved cautiously down the narrow street. His stomach tightened as he walked past a stone wall, and he fought the instinct to walk faster and clear the blinding obstacle. He quickly glanced over his right shoulder to check Mac’s position. Mac’s eyes locked with his and he gave a slight nod forward, indicating the direction of the squad’s movement. Downs glanced toward the center of the squad and saw Griffin, Samson, and Tiger striding along on opposite sides of the road. Tiger caught his eye and patted his machine gun with a smile.
Downs rounded another corner as the village gave way to open fields planted with a dark green vine. His eyes searched the fields, but detected nothing. He looked up the road and saw the mosque, its minaret scarred from past battles and the morning mist clinging to its dome. Two men stood on the steps of the mosque, and Downs knew instinctively that they had seen him first and were studying him. They continued to stare at him as they unhurriedly descended the steps and drove away. He shot a glance at Mac and asked, “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know. Morning prayers maybe,” Mac shrugged.
Downs forced himself to continue searching the fields as each step brought him closer to the mosque. His eyes strained to see detail, but the gray walls of the mosque melted into the ground in the uncertain light. Twice Downs held up a fist to halt the patrol, his instinct telling him that somehow this morning was different from the others.
He again moved toward the mosque as his eyes locked on the fuzzy shapes at the base of the steps. He fought the urge to run, knowing that the squad would immediately mimic any action he made. Already he could feel their tension pushing him forward. “Do you see it, Mac?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I can’t tell what it is,” shrugged Mac.
Downs inadvertently slowed his pace. “Keep your eyes on it.” He and Mac advanced toward the mosque with the squad strung out behind them. Downs froze in mid-stride as his eye detected movement in the shapeless brown mass. Without waiting Mac yelled “Cover!” and the squad threw itself into the shallow drainage ditches on either side of the road.
“Ambush front! Ambush front!” screamed Downs. “At the base of the steps!”
From his position Griffin gave a series of commands that moved the squad on a new line perpendicular to the road. Marines crawled over the low rows of vegetation, forming a skirmish line with Tiger’s machine gun roughly in the center of the squad. All eyes strained to pick out a target as each man struggled to press himself into the damp soil. Griffin scrambled up the ditch, stopping about one yard behind Downs. “What you got, Corporal Downs?” he asked.
“Movement to the front. Something at the base of the steps, but I can’t make it out,” said Downs.
Griffin rolled onto his side and pulled the binoculars over his head, his helmet hitting the dirt with a dull thud. He grunted, “Jesus! It looks like two or three men. But it ain’t no ambush, Downs. Those guys look pretty fucked-up.” Griffin tossed the binoculars to Downs, who caught them by the strap and brought them quickly to his eyes.
“Jesus, Sergeant Griffin, they look like they’re covered in blood. What the fuck is going on?”
“I don’t know. But we’re going to have to check it out. What the fuck were those rag-heads in the van doing before they drove off, Downs?”
“Nothing,” said Downs shaking his head, “watching us.”
Griffin peered again at the mosque, squinting his eyes into the binoculars. “We just get all the fucking breaks lately,” he muttered. He rolled onto his side and looked at the squad, noting the position of each man. He turned to the radioman and said, “Inform company we got three locals down in front of the mosque. Give ’em the grid and tell ’em to stand by while we check it out. You got that?”
“Yeah, Sergeant Griffin. We’re up,” replied the radioman.
“Good, do it. Doc!” Griffin looked at the corpsman, obviously making a decision. “Doc, you fucking stand by to treat these guys, but don’t waste a lot of our shit on them. You understand?”
The corpsman nodded and Griffin again turned impatiently to Downs, “You see any movement in that mosque?”
Downs swept the mosque with the binoculars, trying to peer into the darkness of the arched doorways. The right side of the mosque was in ruins, the roof and sections of the wall having collapsed during some forgotten shelling. The minaret rose on the left side, its walls pierced by long windows all the way to the narrow circular walk at the top. Downs was unable to detect any movement. “I don’t see anything, but it’s too dark.” Downs paused. “It’s gotta be time for morning prayers, Sergeant Griffin. Somebody has to be in the fucking place now, or it just isn’t right. These fuckers might be setting us up.”
Griffin nodded absently, not really listening to Downs. He hesitated, then came to a decision. “Okay, Downs, check it out. Take your fireteam forward and do it. The squad will stay here and provide a base of fire. Take your team into the mosque and watch your ass. We’re not in any hurry. I’ll move the squad up on your command. Got it?”
Downs nodded his assent and turned to his fireteam. “Mac, are you, Smith, and Ferris ready?” Mac looked at the other two, both of whom checked their rifles and nodded their heads.
“Yeah, we’re ready,” said Smith. Ferris muttered a low, incredulous “shit” and looked at Smith who just shrugged.
Downs rose to one knee as the other three got to their feet and looked down the line of Marines. The squad adjusted themselves on their weapons and sighted in on what they thought would be likely places of concealment for an enemy squad. Samson caught Downs’s eye and smiled tightly, giving the thumbs up signal. Downs tried to return his smile, but his mouth was dry as he gained his feet and moved forward in a low crouch. The fireteam advanced a few steps before Downs raised his fist and dropped to one knee, putting the binoculars to his eyes. As the other three lay on the ground, Downs scanned the mosque for signs of movement. Seeing nothing he again moved toward the mosque.
The four cautiously approached the building as the groans of the wounded men reached them. Downs glanced briefly at them, forcing himself to continue searching the mosque for any movement or sign of an ambush. His quick look at the men had erased any doubt he had that their wounds might not be legitimate. One man lay on his back, a knee cocked in the air, his clothing torn and his hair matted with blood. Flies buzzed around all three of them, and as Downs stole another glance at them he had to fight the urge to vomit. Each of them had been mutilated in some way, and Downs was immediately certain it had been from some form of torture. The thought occurred to him that none of the men were soldiers. He could see gray in their hair, and each one appeared overweight and middle-aged. The one ma
n laying on his back looked at Downs and began to sob, muttering something unintelligible in Arabic. His shirt was ripped and his stomach lay exposed and obscene, streaked with blood. As he watched Downs with one eye he began to make a high-pitched whine.
Downs peered into the inner court of the mosque. He became aware of the sound of water bubbling from a fountain, and waved the fireteam forward. The Marines moved past the wounded men, unconsciously walking around them as the man’s whining intensified. Downs mounted the steps of the mosque and flattened himself against one of the arched doorways. Inside he could see the center court, with its fountain and small garden. He signaled Smith and Ferris to stay and watch the flanks as he and Mac moved forward.
Easing through the arches Downs was unable to observe any movement. The mosque appeared deserted and gray in the early morning light. As he and Mac moved slowly around the inner arches Downs became aware of someone in the far end of the courtyard. The two Marines froze at the same moment, bringing their rifles to their shoulders. Downs didn’t bother to sight his rifle, knowing at this range he could instinctively put the rounds into any target.
Across the court he saw movement behind another column. The pair moved to the right, weapons fixed to their shoulders, angling their steps to have a clear field of fire when the target emerged from the other side of the column.
The seconds passed as both men tensed, knowing the man should have reappeared. Downs felt his stomach muscles tighten, anticipating a burst of fire from across the courtyard. He stepped back behind the covering column, his eye darting to the base of the enemy column, looking for the small black eye of an enemy rifle. Downs and Mac stood transfixed, staring across the courtyard, willing the man to show himself.
To their rear the crying of the wounded man had grown faint. Downs suddenly became aware of a low humming from across the courtyard. Someone was humming a tune in the low, heavy tones of a man, but the tune was broken, as though the man were drunk. Downs looked at Mac, who caught Downs’s glance in his peripheral vision, shot a glance at him and made a puzzled expression that Downs knew meant “what the fuck?” He nodded for Mac to follow, and quickly moved to the next column as Mac covered. They moved around the court in this fashion, leapfrogging their movements until Downs had reached the corner column.