Voodoo Lounge

by Christian Bauman

  It was two-hundred-some feet up the portside catwalk from ship’s house to bow. Jersey stepped onto the steel walkway, then paused. Stopped. Pulse slowed. Breath restored. Scaboo’s spit-soaked insult forgotten, even mission momentarily set aside. The soldier gripped the rail and stopped in place, helmet tight and gear hanging, fingers closing around salty, sticky steel in the humid blackness. Stars overhead, the night was full—heavy and warm. Light would crack the horizon soon, but for now they could just as well be in space as at sea. Thirty-four soldiers, floating in the void. Three points forward the port beam five tiny red lights twinkled. Straight down, the sea was an ebony void cut by a pale line of wake rushing down the vessel’s side, sea wind pulled along with it; predawn oblivion.

  Okay okay okay,Jersey thought.Now we go for real.

  It had taken five days to sail from Newport News. A midnight departure from Skiff’s Creek, running lights blacked-out through the Dead Fleet and into the James River, past Norfolk and the Bay Bridge-Tunnel, ten miles to sea, then due south. Five days, marked by the slow fading and gaining and fading of TV signals from Virginia and the Carolinas and Florida, intercut with bad zombie movies and war novels, engine readings and bridge watches, midnight rations, and one halfhearted rain-soaked late-afternoon battlestations drill somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. Five days, and crossing the Windward Passage past Cuba they’d found five empty Haitian refugee rafts—bobbing silently between swells, plywood and plastic and two of them upright again, with makeshift canvas sails—the Catholics on the LSV crossing themselves as the big boat steamed between the ghost rafts, the soldiers as one scanning shadows in the whitecaps for bodies, shuddering at the deep-ocean fates of the desperate Haitians who’d stepped barefoot into midnight waters pushing these deathtraps past the waves and jumping on to huddle with their families below a matchstick mast, whispering unheard prayers for clear winds to Florida.

  Five days, this run. As a crew, they’d run longer—much longer—and harder, to accomplish nothing: celestial navigation training sails around Long Island to Nantucket and Portland, a stomach-wrenching North Atlantic crossing to the U.S. Army Waterborne depot at Hythe near Southampton, a midwinter sleeper run to the Azores to pick up rusty port equipment and bring it to Livorno. Only five days, this run—just a stone’s throw from their backyard—but to accomplish something real this time, sailing through death floating silent and apathetic at the gates of their arrival.

  “But here we go go go,” Jersey whispered to the black, sweet wind.Two and two. Friendly fire. Battlestations. Voodoo Lounge, baby.

  The Voodoo Lounge was Jersey’s destination, the machine-gun nest on the port bow. The vessel was an Army LSV, bow split in two, the center a raised mighty ramp, sixty-some feet up, thirty-some feet across, with a small line-and-anchor station on each side, each one now reinforced as a machine-gun nest. Jersey and Temple crewed the portside bow station, and Temple called it the Voodoo Lounge. Within a day or two the whole ship was the Voodoo Lounge, but it started with Temple painting the words on the steel plate lining their battlestation on the bow. They’d stocked it yesterday with bottles of water, a few MRE bags for chow, five apples, and an extra pack of cigarettes in a Zip-Loc bag. “No smoking until the sun comes up,” Mac had ordered the crew during the briefing, trying to speak infantry. “Keep five yards!” Riddle had yelled back, Mac’s eyebrows raising.

  Jersey inhaled deeply, pulling it all in. They were going, and they were trying their best to go for real. Dawn would break shortly. The sergeant wondered whether it was simply automatic you pissed your pants when someone shot at you, or only if you’d had to go anyway. Maybe you just shot back. Maybe nothing happened at all.

  Jersey looked forward to the bow, only gray shadows defining the ship’s width. It was time. Her knees hurt, her back hurt, and an ammo pouch was digging into her side, but all in all it all seemed as good as it was going to get. As ready as they could be. She tugged her rifle strap then hustled up the catwalk toward Temple and her place in the Voodoo Lounge.

  Part One

  Port-au-Prince

  Chapter

  1

  Dawn came with engines half, running the north side of Île de la Gonâve. The immense aircraft carrierEisenhower stood a mile off their port quarter. The white hospital shipComfort with the big red cross steamed closer and closing, a few points off the starboard quarter. It described an arc, the measure between the two bigger ships; a starting point and an ending.

  Through the purple of sunrise she could see mountains now, misty gray-green jungle, glowing orange points of fire and black-blue plumes of smoke and cloud rising over it all. When they cleared Île de la Gonâve it was laid out in front of them, the inside of a crescent, green and shimmering, wind thick with salt and overripe fruit again, shades of charcoal and diesel and dung. And now, faintly, noise—the sound of Haiti. A low thump with no steady rhythm, a deep-bass heartbeat working an invisible echo inside the bowl of the Port-au-Prince basin.

  The kitchen private Cain crept up the catwalk to the bow with coffee in a canteen right before all this, right before the dawn. “Y’all kill ’em dead now, hear?” the skinny cook whispered, then scurried back to the house. Temple stowed the warm canteen then rolled to his side and pissed down into the open well-deck, sprinkling the tops of the unmanned trucks and Humvees lined up twenty feet below; their cargo, the port-opening package for 10th Mountain Division. Jersey, having thought this through, scrambled behind a mound of sandbags and, in the last moment before daylight made them visible to the bridge, pushed her pants down clear of hips and squatted over a Styrofoam cup. In one motion her left hand drew her BDUs back up while her right tossed the overfilled cup over the side.

  “Nice,” Temple said, packing his smiling jaw with a chew. “Be all you can be.”

  They heard Riddle’s voice on the radio, asking the bridge if they were allowed to smoke yet.

  Temple and Jersey spent the last hour ducked down behind the plates of sheet metal that had been painted gray and welded on the bow handrails before they’d left Virginia, peering out through the gaps as Port-au-Prince grew in their vision. They could make out buildings now, dotted colorful carpets of neighborhoods spread across the basin and rising steep up the hill. A pink cathedral stood in the center of it, and a chalky domed building. As Jersey squinted through the forward gap the main harbor slowly took form, masts of a few small boats, curve of a cement pier, a small island in the middle with palm trees and a low building. This is where they were going. She’d thought the port was somewhat removed from the city, but even at this distance it was clear the port was completely in the city, surrounded, direct in the middle of it all.

  “What are the Coasties doing?” Temple asked, chewing.

  The only vessel forward of them was a Coast Guard cutter, a minesweeper. The cutter had stopped, about a half-mile up. Its wake went frosty, bow coming around.

  “I think they’re getting out,” Jersey said.

  The Coast Guard would only go so far; if there was a mine dockside it was the Army’s problem. The handheld radio clipped to Jersey’s flak jacket squawked.

  “Gentlemen, we’re clear. Thirty minutes. Stand by.”

  The first mate’s voice, from the bridge. Mac always talked like that:Gentlemen.

  Temple gave Jersey a light shove and she rolled and sat back, resting against the forward shield.

  “Hey, gentlemen, you think these things will stop a bullet?” he asked her, rapping his knuckles once against the steel plate.

  “They’re pretty thick, gentlemen,” she said, leaning to press her face to a gap in the metal. “A bullet—yeah.” Temple looked out his own gap, goggles pushed up on his helmet.

  Early morning and already hot—steamy. The steel plates blocked the sea breeze. It occurred to Jersey to be thankful they weren’t packing a hundred pounds and air-assaulting in today, like many were. But the hell with thankful. Sitting in direct sun, flak jacket, helmet—hot.

  Their mission—the job
of the boat—was straightforward: have the bow ramp down on the city’s main pier at the exact moment a company of 10th Mountain infantrymen dropped from their helicopters. Deliver the ship’s cargo of trucks and Humvees to the grunts. Pull back, let the other Army boats in, await further orders. Avoid getting shot.

  Jersey rapped her knuckles against the steel plate again, sticky with salt and grease.

  “Avoid getting shot, gentlemen,” she said.

  Temple looked over at her, eyebrows raised. She liked Temple. He was a surfer; stout, compact. California blond. He should have been pinned sergeant with her and Scaboo in July, but took out a stop sign near the Fort Eustis gate leaving Buck’s Grill one night. Instead of up to sergeant stripes he got knocked from specialist back down to PFC.

  “Scared?” he asked.

  “You?”

  He shook his head no, smiling.

  “Maybe,” he added.

  “Yeah, maybe,” she said.

  He slugged her on the shoulder and she slugged him back. She lit a smoke and he put his face back to the gap, keeping watch forward. Their M-16 rifles lay on the deck, the big M-60 machine gun on its two stubby legs between them. When the time came, Temple would aim one point off the port bow with the M-60 and Jersey would crouch dead ahead with her M-16. They’d already agreed, days ago, that if they took an RPG hit, or something worse, and survived, they would drop the thirty feet down into the well-deck, and if one of them was too fucked up to do it on their own, the other would roll the injured one over the side and down to the steel below. Pelton and Bear, manning the M-60 nest on the starboard bow, thirty feet across the well-deck from Voodoo Lounge, had a similar plan.

  Looking aft Jersey saw Snaggletooth stick his helmeted head up from behind the shield on the port bridge wing. He saw her looking up, waved once, and she lifted a hand in return.Fucker ought to put his head down, she thought. A few seconds later a hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. That made her smile.

  The handheld spoke, through static:

  “United States Army LSVGilman, this is Coast Guard CutterRichards. We’ve completed our sweep. Leaving the AO to your starboard, two whistles.”

  “Two whistles, Coast Guard. Thank you.”

  Not Mac, but Mannino answering, the skipper on the radio for the first time today. The old man didn’t like to talk on the radio.

  “Good luck, Army.”

  Across the great ramp on the bow, past Pelton and Bear on the starboard machine-gun nest, Jersey watched the Coast Guard cutter hauling ass.

  Static, twice, then Mannino again:

  “This is USAVGilman, LSV-16. We’re in position.”

  A voice came back:

  “Army LSVGilman, and all Army watercraft following LSV-16, the port is yours. Refer to updated rules of engagement, keep your eyes open. Proceed at best speed.”

  “Goddamn, Tory,” Temple said, backing off the gap, sitting down next to her. “Goddamn.”

  She nodded at him once. “Yep.”

  The handheld clicked with static as Mannino switched them out from the command frequencies and back to on-ship commo only.

  “You hear that?” his voice rang out. “Don’t do anything stupid. Let the grunts catch the bullets, that’s what God made them for.”

  He clicked off.

  And then, looking back, it seemed the deck ofEisenhower levitated off itself, a straight black line moving steadily up. It broke, twenty or more helicopters adjusting their course, taking position, waiting in the air. This was the second time they’d seen a flight lift this morning: 10th Mountain reported taking the Port-au-Prince airport an hour ago. The Marines had done the same up north in Cap-Haitien.

  “Who’s gonna get there first, us or them?” Temple asked, watching the choppers float fromEisenhower.

  “Hard to tell,” Jersey said. “Might be a tie. Hope so.” She could see the main port clearly now, clear enough to make out a fence beyond the docks and warehouses, surrounding the port, a mile or so long. The fence was dark, and Jersey blinked. It looked like it was moving.

  Sun glare?she thought.

  She pulled her goggles straight down so they hung around her neck. Looked again.

  The fence wasn’t moving: something behind it was. The fence was chain link, and what she saw solid and moving was a press of humanity. A thousand people? Five thousand? All of Port-au-Prince on the fence to see America come in. To see who shot first.

  “Jesus,” she said. “That’s a lot of people.”

  Temple pushed her out of the way again, glanced through the gap. He whistled through his teeth.

  “Avoid getting shot, gentlemen,” he said. “You think they’re friendly?”

  “I dunno. We’ll be the first to find out.”

  The main concrete pier was empty of vessels as the LSV nosed into the waters of the horseshoe-shaped city port. Windstorms of dirt and debris flew a quarter-mile north and south of the warehouses lining the pier—10th Mountain choppers dropping their chalks of troops and dangling Humvees to the far corners of the port perimeter. But those soldiers fanning out from the safety zones around the choppers hadn’t yet made it to the main pier where the LSV was going. The warehouses blocked the LSV’s view of the landing infantrymen, and blocked their view of the immediate neighborhood as well.

  The city’s right there, though,Jersey thought.Close enough to touch.

  For now, the LSV was alone.

  “Sixty seconds,” the radio blared. The deck plate beneath Jersey and Temple started rattling as the massive gray bow ramp slowly inched down, the chain holding the ramp feeding from the locker one level below them. The links on the chain were bigger than Jersey’s foot.

  “Port bow!” Mac called. “Faces in the window, warehouse, ten o’clock.” Temple, flat on his belly with M-60 trained through a side gap, raised his left hand in acknowledgment to the bridge and twisted the barrel down and right. Jersey, dead-ahead with M-16, couldn’t see the window on the warehouse Mac was talking about. She aimed forward, rifle shifting left and right and left and right in her small field of fire. As the LSV advanced—snail’s pace as they approached the pier—a section of the city fence became visible again. Whatever passed for Port-au-Prince police had cleared the port and locked the chain-link gate some time before. The press of bodies up against the fence, now less than two hundred yards from them, was huge. An immense, moving, breathing crowd, menacing and friendly at once, watching, yelling. A living thing, river of crowd, filling the boulevards and alleys from the port uphill through the city. Jersey could hear their singing and clapping, but only in waves.

  “Starboard bow!” Mac called from the bridge. “Movement in the alley between warehouses. Three o’clock.”

  Sweat ran down her face, into her goggles, blinking, stinging. She realized she was breathing too hard, almost panting, and took a lungful of air and held it as long as she could.

  Choppers dropping in and out beyond the warehouses roared like prehistoric war birds, the loudest thing Jersey had ever heard, but still there were no troops at the pier they were closing on.

  They heard Mannino’s growl on the radio: “Where’s the fucking cavalry?”

  The ramp was more than half down, the pier to portside fifteen feet and closing, the pier ahead they were setting their ramp on now less than thirty feet. She heard metal on metal in the well-deck below her, T.K. and those guys on Staff Sergeant Arnold’s bosun’s crew dropping the chains that held the trucks and Humvees in place, firing off their engines.

  But still no one to drive them off. There was supposed to be a company of troops on the pier to retrieve the vehicles, to drive them to the airport, but the LSV got there first. Across the pier and toward the city the chain-link fence bulged with the weight of the Haitians pressing on it, flags and banners waving, dirty colors floating through thick morning air. The murmur of thousands of voices drifted in between and around the screams and roars of the engines of an arriving army.

  “Twenty seconds!” Mac, on the radi
o. “Team One, on the ramp. Team Two, portside pilot door. Prepare to tie off. Forward gunners, keep an eye on that fence.” The radio clicked a few times, then: “Anything approaching us on the pier not wearing Army green right now is a target.”

  “Hoorah,” Temple whispered, two small syllables.

  Jersey leaned and looked over the bow. T.K. was on the ramp tip, pulling his leather deck gloves on, riding the ramp down, rifle slung across his back and nervous eye to the crowd on the other side of the chain-link fence. As the ship nestled in the pocket, portside-to and ramp resting on pier ahead, a Black Hawk chopper dropped like a lead ball from the sky, slamming to a stop twenty-some feet shy of the ground, then hovered, two lines down, ten full-gear soldiers dropping down the ropes to the concrete in front of the LSV, not making security, just down and immediately flat-out running for T.K. and the ramp of the boat. The dust wind of the rotors caught Jersey dead-on, her goggles saving her eyes but her lungs taking damage from the loose, heated dust, sending her into a coughing spasm. The chopper went nose down, tail up, and as fast as it was there it was gone.

  Jersey cleared her lungs best she could then leaned forward again.

  Staff Sergeant Arnold was down on the ramp now, face to face with a soldier from the chopper, a 10th Mountain captain. The captain looked up in Jersey’s direction, eyes locking—young, for a captain. The blackest man Jersey had ever seen, skin a deep, rich tone that seemed to pull in all the light around it. Sergeant Arnold was an older man, a much lighter shade of brown, with a thin mustache. He was the LSV’s new bosun, assigned days before they sailed. Arnold’s face was shining now, under the sweat pouring from him, his helmet unsnapped and pushed back.

  “You got to clear my deck, sir,” Arnold was saying to the young captain, whose eyes had remained on Jersey’s for a beat, and then another, before dropping down to the sergeant before him. Arnold was swinging his left arm toward the rows of Humvees and trucks filling the LSV’s well-deck. The chopper was gone but by instinct he was still yelling. “We got eight LCU boats stacked up behind us, waiting to come in.” The ten soldiers who had dropped from the chopper with the captain were moving into the well-deck, throwing rucks and gear into the lead Humvees.