by C. X. Moreau
The first sergeant opened his palms and displayed a large roll of bills. “It’s just business boys. We don’t have to like one another to do business, do we? Besides, what Marine likes his first shirt? Come on, guys, you must know they pay me to be a prick. That’s part of running the company. It’s the system, it’s the way things work in the Corps. You guys been Marines long enough to know that.”
Downs looked at the first sergeant in disgust. “So how are we going to split Sergeant Griffin’s money, First Shirt?” he asked. Before the man could answer Downs said, “Do the motherfucker, Samson.”
Samson smiled and slowly brought the M-16 to his shoulder as the first sergeant attempted to back away from the rifle muzzle. Before the weapon could complete its travel to his shoulder Staff Sergeant Whitney entered and said, “Put that rifle down, Samson. I’ve heard enough of this shit to make me sick for the rest of my life.”
Without taking his eyes from the first sergeant Samson said, “No way, Staff Sergeant Whitney, I’m gonna waste this motherfucker. I can’t stand the sight of him any longer. If I don’t do it he’ll just beat the rap.”
The staff sergeant took in the look on the big Marine’s face and his grip on the rifle. He noted that neither Samson nor Downs had shifted their gaze from the first sergeant when he had entered and spoken. “It’s over Samson. If you shoot him now it’s just murder, plain and simple. He’s no Marine, son. He’ll go to the brig, then they’ll drum him out short of his retirement like they never knew him. Don’t ruin the rest of your life over this. He’s not worth it, boy.”
The staff sergeant continued to study Samson, looking for some sign on the boy’s face that he was making a decision. As he watched him the staff sergeant knew that Samson’s decision was made. He intended to kill the first sergeant. “Don’t do it, Samson. Don’t, son. Nothing is worth this. Do you think any of those men on the deck there would expect you to go to the brig for the next ten years to set this right?” The staff sergeant waited for an answer, but the big Marine gave no indication that he had heard.
The staff sergeant glanced at Downs who continued to glare at the First Sergeant with his arms folded across his chest like a judge. “Help me out, Corporal Downs,” he said.
Downs shook his head slowly from side to side, his eyes never leaving the first sergeant. “I can’t, Staff Sergeant,” he said. “This is beyond me.”
The staff sergeant again turned to Samson. “It won’t do any good, son. If you shoot him he’ll die but you’ll end up in the brig. Samson, nothing is worth ten years in Portsmouth Naval Prison. It won’t bring them back to life,” said the staff sergeant, gesturing to indicate the dead men. “And worst of all a year from now your sacrifice will be forgotten by a battalion that’s made up of new men from other units.”
The staff sergeant took a hesitant step toward Samson. “Come on, son. Give me the rifle and we’ll walk away from this. I’ll make sure the bastard gets what he deserves. Nobody is going to doubt all three of us.”
Samson tightened his grip on the rifle and edged away from the staff sergeant. “Get back, Staff Sergeant. I know what you’re thinking. It ain’t over yet.” Samson shifted his attention to the first sergeant. “Drop that forty-five, First Shirt. And I’d really like it if you try something smart after you clear that holster. It’d give me an excuse.” The three Marines stood as the first sergeant gingerly pulled the pistol from its leather holster and lowered it to the floor of the big tent. “Now step away from it,” said Samson.
After the first sergeant had backed away from the weapon the staff sergeant again asked, “Give me the rifle, Samson. It’s over, son. It has to end here.”
“It ain’t over till Corporal Downs says it’s over,” answered the big Marine, the rifle leveled at the first sergeant’s chest.
“Corporal Downs?” asked the staff sergeant.
Downs hesitated, then said, “Let’s go, Samson.”
CHAPTER
31
The Syrian casually glanced at his watch and noted that he had ten minutes before the final call for his flight. He rose, left some bills on the table to pay for the coffee and paper, then picked up his small overnight bag and attaché and walked toward the boarding gate. Within minutes he had boarded the MEA airliner for Athens, taken his seat in the business class section, and begun reading his paper.
He glanced out the small window as the pilot guided the aircraft toward the runway. He noted, without emotion, that after two weeks the American Marines had almost completely cleared away the rubble left after the bombing of their headquarters. What was left had been pushed into huge conical mounds lining the western runway, and trucks similar to the one used in the bombing were waiting in line to haul these away.
He had spent the past two weeks observing the Marines as they went about the task of conducting rescue operations and sorting through the rubble for clues as to the identity of the bomber. He had become a faithful reader of the daily papers, and noted with satisfaction that every editor left in the city after ten years of civil war had righteously concluded that the bombing was the work of an Islamic fundamentalist sent to Lebanon from Iran.
The single call he had placed from the lobby of a hotel in west Beirut to a Muslim editor had sufficed to lend sufficient credibility to his contact so that the man was widely copied in the other Lebanese papers. It had been only a matter of hours before the Western wire services, all of which depended on local reporters for their information, published their own version of his claims. As was his experience with previous actions, he found that all the papers were willing to publish the version of events being promoted by their competitors in lieu of credible versions of their own. Once the story had taken root it had assumed an energy of its own, and through repetition gained greater credibility. As was often the case, it was totally irrelevant to the wire service correspondents that they had absolutely no way to verify either the information provided by their own sources, or those of their competitors. Very often, he knew, the sources were actually the same.
It had been almost too easy. He had worried for some days if he had not been tricked in some fashion. He waited for the Marines to conduct foot patrols into the Muslim villages surrounding their lines, to flush out any of the militiamen who had fired on them as they conducted their rescue operations. Instead he had been puzzled as they continued to wait behind their barbed wire and sandbags. He had observed, through his binoculars, the movements of the American warships in the Mediterranean. On occasion they would maneuver closer to shore, but they did not fire into the city as he had expected.
He had been so alarmed by the lack of a response that he surmised that the Marines had gotten intelligence from the Israelis indicating that a lone agent was to blame. For several days he moved continuously, never sleeping in the same place and spending his time in various public places searching the crowds for faces he had seen behind him the day before. After a week of such activity he had come to two conclusions. The first was that the Americans were caught off balance by the attack and were not going to mount an effective response to it. The second was that his own nerves were wearing thin and that he had to leave Beirut before he began to make mistakes that even a junior field agent did not make if he wished to survive.
He had concluded that the safest way out of Beirut would be the most brazen. As soon as the local papers reported that the Marines had again opened the airport to international travel he booked a flight to Athens. As he had expected, his stolen Lebanese passport saw him safely through official checkpoints. A few French francs got him past all the militia barricades between his hotel and the airport. He had been careful to travel with only a few thousand francs so as not to make too tempting a target to some militia hoodlum. The bulk of his funds he had wire transferred to various European accounts prior to the action.
He leaned forward in his chair as the airliner accelerated toward takeoff. As the airplane gained speed he noted the condition of the Marine positions lining the western peri
meter of the airport. They were dug in along the small natural rise in the ground and their armored vehicles were in defilade. They were good soldiers, but they had learned too late. They had paid a price for their negligence, just as Ahmud had paid a price for his foolishness. The next time it would not be so easy for him. The Israelis were proof of that.
When he arrived in Athens he immediately booked a flight for Geneva, where he planned to relax for a time. He would give the bureaucrats and administrators in Damascus time to write their reports and make their evaluations.
He waited in the crowded boarding area of the terminal until his flight had been called twice. When the attendants were boarding the final passengers he crossed the terminal to a public telephone and dialed, from memory, the number for the Syrian Embassy in Athens.
The phone rang twice before a clerk in the security section of the embassy picked it up and answered with a simple “Hello.” Without hesitation the Syrian spoke, “Listen very carefully. My name is Samir, I am a businessman from Aleppo. You are to telephone Youssef, in Damascus, on my behalf. You will tell him that I have been delayed, but that I expect to return to Damascus before the feast days in my village. He can expect to see me then.” The Syrian paused, listening to the movement of the clerk’s pencil over his notepad. “You have made notes, very good. You must be precise when you deliver my message.”
The Syrian watched the second hand move around the face of his watch as the clerk read back the message. Once he was satisfied the man had it right, and before the call had gone into its second minute, he placed the receiver back in its cradle. He crossed the terminal and boarded the flight, already planning his first meeting in Geneva with his bankers regarding the recent deposits made to his accounts there.
CHAPTER
32
Downs lowered himself farther in his hole as the three helicopters swung over the landing zone and beat the morning air with their rotors. He turned and watched briefly as the machines hovered some fifty feet off the ground and lowered their slings. Marines dashed out and attached hooks to the netting and the pilots coaxed the loads off the ground and headed for the ships offshore.
The morning had been a steady progression of men and equipment toward the beach some four kilometers to the rear. Now the men of first platoon stood in a thin semicircle between the village to their east and the airport to their rear. Two hundred yards away, across an empty field of brown grass, Downs could see a few dozen Lebanese civilians who had come out of their homes on the cold February morning to watch the departure of the Marines.
Three more helicopters landed in the big field as another platoon from Bravo Company dashed out and climbed aboard. Downs turned his back to the machines as the rotor wash blew over him in a cloud of dust and debris. He watched the Lebanese through slit eyes as some of the children waved at the departing helicopters with their loads of Marines. Most of them stood impassively as the pilots smoothly lifted their machines into the air, then lowered the noses of the helicopters and fought to gain altitude.
As the last of the Bravo Company Marines was lifted out Downs looked in the direction of the staff sergeant who pumped his fist twice. The platoon struggled to its feet, clumsy under the weight of their packs. The squads formed up and began to withdraw toward their next position, leapfrogging backward so as to maintain at least one squad in place with its front toward the village.
After they had gone one hundred yards past second squad Downs set them into an extended skirmish line along an abandoned railroad track, the Marines automatically arranging themselves behind the remains of the elevated roadway. He watched as another squad leader and his Marines ambled past with their gear. Few of the Marines spoke, although they had all been anxious to leave Lebanon in the months after the bombing.
He glanced along the track, noting the position of each man, satisfied that they were properly set in. To his right a radio crackled constantly with traffic from the other units already at the beach. “Anything for Alpha Company, Staff Sergeant Whitney?” he asked.
The staff sergeant shook his head. “Nope, not really. All the usual fuckups. We’ll probably be delayed gettin’ to the beach from the way it sounds.” Whitney paused for a moment, gazing in the direction of the Lebanese village, then said, “It sure doesn’t get any easier the second time around.”
“What’s that?” asked Downs.
“Leavin’ like this. I did it once before. From Vietnam. You might have heard of that one somewhere in the past,” smiled the older man.
Downs turned and faced Whitney. He noticed for the first time that the staff sergeant seemed older. Downs realized that he liked the man. “Yeah, Staff Sergeant,” he said with a low laugh, “I’ve heard it mentioned someplace.”
“I figured as much.” The two stood in silence again for another few minutes as the squad continued to hold its position, the other squads moving past it in the direction of the beach. “I don’t much care for retreats, Corporal Downs. They’re bad for morale, among other things.”
“Is that what this is?” asked Downs, cutting off the staff sergeant. “A fucking retreat?”
“No, but I almost wish it was,” said Whitney. “Sometimes you gotta retreat. To save yourself or something. This is a hell of a lot more like just plain quitting, and I like that even less. I generally finish what I start, and I always keep my word. Seems to me we’re a little short in both instances here.”
Neither man spoke for a minute, then Downs said, “I never thought we’d quit, that’s for sure. But Jesus, just look at us. It looks to the whole world like we’re running. What do you make of that?”
“Well, I could see how others might come away with that impression. But I guess what you and I have to decide is what really took place here. I mean, really, what did happen here? Do you know?”
Downs shrugged. “I think I understand all the political maneuvering, Staff Sergeant. I just don’t care for it at my expense. They’re making us look like we weren’t good to our word. As Marines, I mean. We came here to do something and now we’re leaving before we’ve been allowed to accomplish the mission.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up,” agreed Whitney. “I felt like shit for any number of years because of the way we abandoned the Vietnamese.” The staff sergeant caught Downs’s look of disbelief. “That surprise you, Corporal Downs?”
Downs shrugged again. “Yeah, maybe. I just didn’t figure there was any love lost between you and the Vietnamese. You know?”
Whitney smiled and nodded his head. “Let me ask you something, Corporal Downs. And take a minute to think about it before you answer. Do you hate anybody over there?” he asked, nodding to indicate the Lebanese village.
Downs thought for a few moments then answered, “I don’t think so. Shit, Staff Sergeant, I don’t even know anybody there.”
“Yep,” agreed the older man, “that’s the way it is for me too. I did two tours in Vietnam, Corporal Downs. Finished both of ’em, too. I saw my share of action all right. You name it and we did it in those days. It was getting that way here, too.”
The staff sergeant paused, obviously choosing his words. “I guess the point is that once the shooting stops a man has time to think. And among all the things you think about is the fact that you killed somebody who really hadn’t done anything to you.” He stopped again and laughed, “Well, maybe nothin’ other than being in his own country and carrying a rifle and tryin’ to kill you or your friends, who are trying to kill him in the first place.”
Whitney shook his head and winked at Downs. “You’ll be doing some thinking in the future, Corporal Downs. About what went on here, and the things you did and the things you didn’t do. That’s natural. It’s gonna happen, and when it does there will be days when you feel real shitty about all of this and everybody connected with it.”
Downs nodded without answering and continued to stare at the Lebanese village. “Sometimes I think about Vietnam and all that went on there. Even now.” Whitney let out a long brea
th and continued, “I’m not real good at stuff like this, Corporal Downs. But I know what it’s like to come back home and stew about these things. Doesn’t seem to bother some men, and others don’t ever forget.”
“Yeah, I see where you’re going with this, Staff Sergeant,” said Downs.
“Maybe you do, Corporal Downs. But there is another matter I wanted to talk to you about.” Downs looked at the older man expectantly and the staff sergeant continued, “The Captain and I are aware of what you did the day the BLT went down. He put you, Smith, and Ferris in for awards.”
Downs shrugged. “I’d heard that from a guy in the company admin section, Staff Sergeant. It doesn’t really matter a whole lot to me right now. But thanks anyway, I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, son, I can understand how you might feel that way.” Whitney hesitated, rubbing his chin with a hand he continued, “Unfortunately for you and me we live in funny times, Corporal Downs. I’m ashamed to say it, son, but those awards are going to be denied. Something about higher headquarters not wanting to admit it’s a war over here by handing out medals back home.”
Downs laughed and looked at the staff sergeant. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” he asked.
“Well, God knows it shouldn’t,” said the older man. “But I know what took place up there, Corporal Downs. It took courage. Real courage.”
Downs scraped a boot into the red clay of the embankment, and stood in awkward silence for a moment, saying quietly, “I don’t think so, Staff Sergeant. I’m not being modest either. It wasn’t courage, it was apathy. There’s a difference, but maybe they look alike from a distance.”