Sweet Reason (9781590209011)

by Robert Littell

  The static-decayed voice of Captain Jones bit into McTigue’s earphones. “McTigue, d’you hear me, we’ve been hit, we’ve taken a hit. Do you see any counterfire?”

  McTigue punched the “external transmit” button. “Mayday, Mayday, we’ve been hit in the rotors, Mayday, Mayday, we’re going in Captain, for God’s sake help, oh Jesus shit, help, help, help, heeeeeeeeelp.”

  The helicopter jarred onto a flat stretch of ground some Boo yards beyond the truck depot, pitching McTigue forward into his shoulder harness. When the helicopter motor cut out, McTigue could hear the crackling of flames in the back section of the craft. He saw Ruggieri tugging wildly at his shoulder straps and he did the same. An instant later both Ruggieri and McTigue leapt from the helicopter, each on his own side, and raced for a small rise forty yards away.

  “Dear mother of God,” panted Ruggieri.

  “Jesus fuckin’ shit,” gasped McTigue.

  Crouching on the rise, breathing heavily from exertion and fright, the two men looked back at the blazing helicopter. They could hear the roaring of the flames and the crackling explosion of firecrackers.

  “Ammo’s — cooking — off,” Ruggieri said between gasps of air. He yanked off his gloves and his candy-striped helmet and threw them as far as he could and ran his fingers through his thick hair, which had been pasted down by the weight of the helmet. Through the film of smoke and heated, wavy air McTigue could see some movement at the edge of the town near the truck depot. He pointed at the movement and Ruggieri drew a blue-black .45 caliber pistol from his holster, threw a round into the chamber and flicked off the safety. “Come on,” he said, and tugging at McTigue’s sleeve, he pulled him along. Bogged down by flight suits and heavy boots, the two men lumbered across a brush field and sank out of sight into a clump of bushes.

  While they were trying to regain their breath the first flight of jets came in from the sea at rooftop level, dropped some canisters on the town and soared into the sky like roller coasters. Great beautiful red-black balls of smoke and fire billowed up after them.

  “What the fuck we gonna do?” McTigue asked after a while.

  “We’re going to get rescued,” Ruggieri said.

  “How we gonna do that?”

  Ruggieri pointed to a small leather-covered box, about the size of a transistor radio, strapped to his belt. “Transmitter,” he explained. “It puts out a signal. Soon as they’ve taken care of the opposition” — Ruggieri motioned with his head toward the flaming town — “they’ll home in on the signal and pick us up. All we got to do is lay low.”

  A flight of prop planes swept in from the north and strafed the truck depot. Another flight came from the east. The last plane peeled off toward a cluster of children scampering away from the depot. The plane seemed to pull up without dropping anything. For an instant McTigue thought the pilot must have seen that they were children. Then there was a ball of fire where the group had been.

  “They’re sure putting on one hell of a show,” Ruggieri said.

  But McTigue was thinking about something else. “What happens if there isn’t no rescue chopper?” he asked.

  Ruggieri looked at him. “There will be.”

  “But what if there isn’t?” McTigue insisted. “What if?”

  “There will be.” Ruggieri turned back to watch the show.

  Long after Ruggieri thought the town was neutralized the planes kept coming — from different directions, at different heights, with different armaments. Finally, halfway through the second hour, there was a pause.

  “Maybe we should surrender?” McTigue said. “You think we should surrender?”

  Ruggieri jerked himself around toward McTigue. “Surrender! Dear God, you must be out of your mind. You know what some choppers did around here a few days back? They lassooed this gook in a field and stripped him naked and put a rope around his neck and started out slowly with the gook running like crazy to keep up. After a while the gook can’t keep up and his neck snaps. You get the picture, Chief?”

  “What the fuck they do that for?” McTigue asked.

  “What do they do anything for? Me, I live and let live, right, but these gooks here, how they going to know that, huh, how they going to know I live and let live?” Ruggieri fingered his pistol. “If they catch us, they’ll lynch us,” he said. “Go ahead and surrender if you want to; me, I’ll put my money on this.” And he hefted the pistol.

  Another wave of jets came in from the sea, and then another, and still another. After a while it seemed to McTigue like an endless wave of planes and he lost all sense of time. Every now and then he peered out between the bushes at the town, but the town was disappearing before his eyes. The part of —— —— that had been cement buildings was nothing but dust and rubble now. The truck depot had ceased to exist. Beyond McTigue’s line of sight, where the thatched huts had been, there was a wall of flame.

  As McTigue watched, two teenage boys carrying a baby carriage between them dashed from the rubble of the truck depot and headed into the field. A prop plane with teeth painted on the nose darted in and dropped a canister of napalm behind the running boys. The canister hit and the flame spread forward in a sweeping arc; the boys abandoned the baby carriage and ran faster but the flame caught up with them and passed them.

  The grass and brush were burning now and the fire was moving across the fields, away from —— —— toward McTigue and Ruggieri. Just when it looked as if it had burned itself out, four more children popped up near the small rise between McTigue and the downed helicopter. A prop plane detached itself from a flight and dropped the canister too far behind them and they got away into a wooded area to the north. But the napalm rekindled the brush fire and it moved closer to the clump of underbrush that hid McTigue and Ruggieri.

  “We’ll have to run for it,” Ruggieri said. He pulled a large piece of silk from a pocket on his calf and spread it on the ground. On one side was a map of the enemy’s country and a few dozen phonetic phrases such as “Don’t harm me — I was only following orders.” The other side was an American flag. “When we run, I’ll stream the flag, just in case one of those jet jockeys up there gets any bright ideas. Okay, you ready?”

  McTigue glanced at the brush fire, which was only a few dozen yards off now, and nodded and heaved himself to his feet to follow Ruggieri, who trotted ahead streaming the flag. Suddenly Ruggieri stopped short and McTigue almost ran into him, and then he saw why Ruggieri had stopped; thirty yards dead ahead five teenage boys armed with long-handled axes waited for the two American airmen.

  “Holy mother of Christ,” Ruggieri said, and he turned to his right and ran parallel to the fire, with McTigue trailing after him, but the boys trotted along on a parallel course waiting for the brush fire to bring the two Americans to them. McTigue noticed the fire had burned out ahead and to the right and he yelled to Ruggieri and the two Americans lumbered toward the hole in the wall of fire with the five boys in pursuit, the five gaining on the two Americans, closing the gap on the Americans, then McTigue saw that Ruggieri wasn’t running anymore, that Ruggieri had dropped to one knee the way he had been taught in survival school, had dropped to one knee and gasping for air had steadied his pistol with two hands and had started shooting, had hit one of the teenagers, had hit a second, then the boys were up to Ruggieri, were on top of Ruggieri, hacking at him, he covering his head with the silk flag the way a child crawls under a sheet, he screaming from beneath the sheet “Mother of God don’t harm me — I was only following orders” in English because he can’t remember the phonetic translation. Then one of the teenagers looks up and sees McTigue and starts toward him, sure of catching him, McTigue too winded to move, McTigue mixed up, not sure what is happening, sure only that it is happening to him, thinking Jesus shit this is happening to me, the teenager in front of him swinging his ax in an arc, the ax just catching the side of McTigue’s head as he lunges sideways, then a burst of machine-gun fire that rips away the teenager’s chest and left arm and flings h
im back, flings him away from McTigue. Then a curious beating sound and the wind hammering against McTigue and something, he’s not sure what, thuds onto the ground directly in front of him and hands pull him roughly into a cave only it isn’t a cave it’s a helicopter and the helicopter rises a few feet and hovers while the door gunner furious about the American lying out there under the flag cuts down the other teenagers. Then the helicopter pendulums off toward the sea in a motion so comforting it brings tears to McTigue’s eyes.

  Lying face-down on the floor next to the open door, next to the booted feet of the door gunner, feeling the blood ooze from his matted hair, feeling the wind on his face, McTigue gasps for air and watches the ground roll out like a carpet underneath. First come the fields charred by the brush fire, then the smoke and dust and rubble where the cement buildings had been, then nothing but embers where the thatched huts had been, then the pockmarked road with the charred remains of the fire engine and the two jeeps, then bits and pieces of tents and burnt-out, bombed-out vegetable gardens, then the rolling meadow that looked naked and mown, then the ridge with the ruins of the blockhouse and a stump where the mangled tree had been, then the curve of coast and beyond, the whitecaps and the ground swells and the sea.

  “Jesus shit,” moans McTigue. “Je-sus fuckin’ shit.”

  McTigue Hears a Few Words of Wisdom

  Soaked in sweat, the figure in the lower bunk tossed and turned as if he were trying to throw off a shroud or a sheet that covered his head.

  Tevepaugh bent over the figure and whispered: “Mister Lustig says for you to start breaking out the ammo, Chief.”

  The figure stopped jerking and lay still, breathing heavily.

  “Jesus shit, what time is it?”

  “After five, Chief.”

  “Who says?”

  “What d’you mean ‘who says?’? It’s after five, Chief, I swear it is.”

  McTigue was lying on his back staring straight up. “After five,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, Chief, it’s after five.” Tevepaugh pointed to the bandage on McTigue’s head. “I’ll bet you didn’t have no picnic on shore, huh, Chief?”

  McTigue ignored the remark. “You’re sure it’s after five?” he asked again.

  Tevepaugh pulled up the sleeve of his foul-weather jacket and exposed his wristwatch. “Like I says, Chief, it’s after five. Mister Lustig says for you —”

  “I got it the first time around, kid. Now you haul your ass back up topside and you tell Mister Lustig —”

  The night light in the bunk over McTigue’s snapped on. Half a dozen men curled up in their bunks turned their faces to the bulkhead or buried them in blankets. Chief Duffy, a stocky man wearing skivvy shorts and a T-shirt and white sweat socks lay propped up on an elbow under the light. “Okay, Tevepaugh, you just mosey on back to the bridge and inform Mister Lieutenant junior grade Lustig that everything’s under control, you understand? Tell him the ammo is being broken out. Now you got that?” The man in the underwear spoke quietly but with unmistakable authority.

  “Sure thing, Chief, I got that.” Tevepaugh was still whispering. “Chief McTigue’s breaking out the ammo, right? I get the idea.”

  Tevepaugh flashed what he thought was an ingratiating smile and scampered out of the compartment.

  “Jesus shit, I’ve had it up to here, Duffy,” McTigue said hoarsely. His skin was drawn back tightly over his gums in a frozen half-grimace, an expression that revealed gaps between his teeth where the navy dentist had chiseled out the tartar. “You know what was in that fuckin’ town we hit yesterday?” McTigue swallowed hard. “I’ll tell you what was in that fuckin’ town. There was nothin’ but fuckin’ kids there, that’s what there fuckin’ was. Jesus fuckin’ shit.”

  Duffy slid his feet over the edge of his bunk, dropped heavily to the deck and sat down on the edge of McTigue’s bunk. “Forget what you seen,” he said earnestly. “You never seen it. If you pull something now you’ll wreck your career. You got three more years till your twenty is up. You got maybe one more year, a year and a half at most, sea duty. You got it made. Don’t blow it all, Tom. Don’t let it all go down the drain because you seen some dead slopes.”

  “You shoulda seen what they done, them jets,” McTigue said. “Jesus shit, the napalm —”

  “It wasn’t you that did it, Tom,” Duffy said. “Anyhow, you was only following orders.”

  “Yeah,” McTigue said. “Don’t harm me — I was only following orders.”

  McTigue Lets Quinn Down Gently

  His face still frozen in a grimace, his eyes looking as if they had been in — or seen — pain, McTigue made his way up to the galley where the night baker, a meaty black named Seldon Saler, was pulling the last batch of loaves out of the oven.

  “Good Lord, I never thought I’d see the likes of you again,” Saler said, as always breathlessly cheerful. “Here — let some of this melt in your mouth.” He handed McTigue a fistful of piping-hot bread. The sound of Nat King Cole filled the galley. Saler, who according to mess deck rumor, had once worked as a cook in an Uncle John’s Pancake House on the Santa Ana Freeway, boasted that he had all of Nat King Cole on cassettes, and he played them over and over during the night to prove the point.

  With the odor of freshly cooked dough and the sound of Nat King Cole trailing behind him, McTigue climbed down the ladder to the forward crew’s quarters under the mess deck. Munching the bread, he stood next to the ladder waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Then he walked over to Quinn’s bunk against the bulkhead.

  “Rise and shine, Quinn,” McTigue whispered, shaking the first class gunner’s mate by the shoulder.

  “Jesus, Chief, I never thought I’d see you again!” Quinn shook himself awake. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “After five, Quinn. Get some of the men up, will you, and start breaking out VT frag for Fifty-two and Fifty-three. Sixty-two rounds a mount. I’ll do Fifty-one myself. And get Boeth up to the handling room to stack for me.”

  “Sixty-two rounds of VT frag. All right.” Quinn sat up and McTigue turned to go.

  “Chief,” Quinn said.

  An angry voice called from a nearby bunk: “Knock it off, will you?”

  “Chief,” Quinn repeated in a whisper.

  “Yeah, Quinn.”

  “I don’t s’pose you got a chance to speak to the XO about my keys and my application?”

  “I spoke to him, yeah,” McTigue said. “Forget the keys, will you. As for the other thing, the XO says the Captain wants you off the ship. He thinks you need to broaden your horizons. You been on one ship too long, he says.” McTigue shrugged. “That’s what he says.”

  “Did the thing in the Captain’s cabin have anything to do with it?” Quinn asked. “I’ll apologize, I’ll be glad to apologize — in front of everybody. I’ll tell him I found the fuckin’ electro servo coupler. Only I got to stay on the Ebersole.”

  “Jesus shit, Quinn, you got it made and you don’t know it. You may even get one of those new cans with air conditioning and a real first-class lounge and fully automatic mounts you don’t have to lay a finger on. You got it made.” McTigue remembered that DufFy had said the same thing to him moments before. “We all got it made,” McTigue added.

  Before Quinn could say anything he turned and climbed down another ladder to the forward five-inch magazine under the crew’s quarters.

  McTigue Passes the Ammunition Without Bothering to Praise the Lord

  The magazine was one of the few spaces on the Ebersole that was always kept antiseptically clean, as if cleanliness were really next to godliness. Every handle or lever was painted bright red and marked for easy identification. A sign above the largest wheel, smack against the bulkhead next to the access ladder, said: “To flood magazine, turn wheel clockwise.” The wheel was locked shut with a bicycle chain and a red padlock. Next to the padlock was another sign that said: “The following named men have the key to this padlock.” McTigue’s name headed the list
, Quinn’s came next. Hand-stenciled signs saying “No Smoking” were painted on every bulkhead. In one corner was a large plaque entitled “The Ten Commandments of Damage Control” which began with “1. Keep the ship watertight” and ended with “10. Don’t give up the ship!” underlined in red.

  Under normal circumstances, with a full wartime complement of 345 officers and men aboard, five seamen would be stationed in each of the destroyer’s magazines during General Quarters to keep the projectiles and powder flowing to the handling rooms, two decks up, and eventually to the three five-inch mounts that were directly above the handling rooms. But the Ebersole had not had a full complement of officers and men on board since 1945, when the race began to demobilize. With only 255 officers and men assigned, the Ebersole didn’t have enough warm bodies on board to man all battle stations. So every time the destroyer had to shoot any of its guns someone climbed down into the magazines beforehand and counted out the projectiles and powder cases and sent them up the dredger hoist to the handling rooms.

  McTigue, who never asked the men under him to do anything he himself didn’t do, had climbed down into the magazine and passed the ammo up hundreds of times. But he had never felt odd about it until today. Suddenly it seemed to him as if he were spooning out death as casually as Saler measured out flour in the galley.

  “You there?” McTigue called up the dredger hoist to the handling room.

  The trap door in the overhead slipped open. “Come ahead, Chief,” called Boeth, the seaman who ran Main Plot. “How many cheeseburgers do you have coming?”

  “Cheeseburgers! Jesus shit!” McTigue muttered. Then he yelled back: “Sixty-two.”

  McTigue pushed the foot pedal that started the hoist and began to feed the five-inch projectiles into it, watching them disappear through the hole in the overhead like bottles on a dumbwaiter. He wondered who decided on the number sixty-two? McTigue had been in the navy seventeen years; he’d been on the Ebersole for seventeen months. But he didn’t know where the number originated. With Mister Lustig, the gunnery officer? With the XO? The Skipper? Rear Admiral Haydens, who was in command of the Task Force of which the Ebersole was but one small unit? Some unnamed and unidentifiable vice admiral in the basement of the Pentagon? Or even one of his junior aides who, scanning the Ebersole’s target assignment for the morning, turned to the first class petty officer pouring coffee into a playboy mug and said: “Sixty-two rounds of five-inch from each mount should be about right.” Who was responsible? And why not sixty-three or seventy or a hundred and seventy? Why not shoot the works — all 2000-plusrounds left on the ship? Why not ram the ship into the target? Why not —