Sharpshooter

by Chris Lynch

  He shakes his head and smiles. “I see. I’ve got one of them on my hands,” he says.

  “You do, indeed,” I say. “Whatever them are, I am one of them.”

  “That’s great. I always say, if I had more fighters like that … I’d have less fighters like that. You boys are all great. Until you get yourselves shot to pieces.”

  “I won’t be getting shot, sir.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know,” I say.

  Shakes his head again. Smiles again.

  “Listen. I love the gung ho, I really do. But I need to know now if you’re a listener. A lot of guys here, they’re ready to fight but not ready to listen. Really, it works best if you’re both ready to fight and ready to listen, because I could have some things to tell you that will help you to fight longer.”

  “I am a military man, lieutenant. As is my father, as was his father. I was bred to listen.”

  “That is what I wanted to hear,” he says, and as our boat motors away, he leads me over to the rest of our small team. We sit and get better acquainted as we ease along the brown Mekong River.

  Our gang of six includes the lieutenant; two corporals, Parrish and Lightfoot; and two more privates like me, Arguello and Kuns.

  “Welcome aboard the Ship o’ Fools,” Lt. Systrom says, and the guys all laugh. “By the way, that title is ironic. My guys are famously smart, cool under pressure, brave but not stupid. Does that describe you, Private Bucyk?”

  “It does,” I answer.

  “Does that describe you, Private Kuns?”

  “It does,” says Kuns.

  “Good, glad to hear it. Now that we have established that the two new guys are not idiots, let’s get down to it.”

  Lt. Systrom shoves an M-79 grenade launcher in my direction. I did receive some instruction with the M-79 but not a great deal. I am in fact a little surprised it’s still in use, as I had heard it was phasing out. At any rate, this is not the weapon of a sharpshooter.

  “Oh, lieutenant,” I say helpfully, “I should tell you, I am a graduate of the Army Marksman Unit.”

  The Ship o’ Fools erupts with laughter, and it is clear who the fool is.

  “And I should tell you, Private Bucyk, that every butt in this boat is a graduate of that same fine institution. I don’t work with anything but. Now, every soldier in my group does time with every weapon in our box. I like versatility. Any problem with that?”

  “No, sir, lieutenant.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he says.

  “Ship o’ Sharpshooters is more like it,” Arguello says. “Maybe we get a prize at the end for wasting the fewest bullets and the mostest VC.”

  The jolliest tub in the Army laughs a little more. Me, I can’t help hearing my dad’s words saying almost the same thing with no humor at all: Bring the maximum of death to the minimum of people.

  I take the heavy, stumpy weapon and hand over my standard Army-issue M-16. The 40-mm grenade launcher is in its own way a pretty impressive thing, and it is immediately clear why it’s known as The Thumper. It looks and feels like a single-barrel, large-bore, sawed-off shotgun. With this, and my pistol and my knife, I may not be a sharpshooter, but I don’t feel defenseless, either.

  My eyes go wide as Lt. Systrom makes another trade. The other new guy, Kuns, hands over his M-16 and in return gets the beast that has mostly replaced the launcher I am holding. The M-203 is a leaner, meaner version of the M-79 grenade launcher combined with the M-16A1 automatic rifle. When I was a kid lying in bed, thinking about wars and seeing myself in them — which I did a lot — this is the very type of beautiful piece of kit I saw myself marching into battle with. An involuntary small, hungry grunt comes out of me as it passes by.

  “You’ll get your shot,” Lt. Systrom says.

  Corporal Lightfoot gets an M-60 machine gun, while the other guys remain with their faithful M-16s.

  But the boss has something special.

  The lieutenant looks off in the distance, toward where we are headed, as he absently stands his gun up in front of him.

  I know this gun. I have studied this gun. I have had many impure thoughts about this gun.

  It is the M-21 Sniper Weapon System, and it is as beautiful as an Army weapon gets. It is long and sleek, with a high polish and a starlight scope perched on top for day and night hunting.

  It’s a hunting rifle. ’Cause that’s just what it’s for.

  “Are you ogling my M-21?” Lt. Systrom says with a sly side glance.

  I pull back, like I’ve been caught at something forbidden. I do tell the truth, though.

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  Again I provoke laughter, but it is a more familiar thing now. This population agrees with me completely on this.

  “Get in line, boy,” Corporal Parrish says to me. “There ain’t a man here who wouldn’t shoot everybody else for a day with that beauty.”

  “Guess I should be worried, huh?” says the lieutenant.

  “Sir,” I say tentatively, “could I just handle the weapon for a minute?”

  “Private Bucyk, you most certainly may —”

  Pop! Pop-pop-popopopopopopopop!

  The early morning air is cut up with rifle shots coming at us from maybe two hundred yards inland. Every man hits the deck. Cpl. Lightfoot fairly lights up the entire jungle with machine-gun fire. The other guys pepper the area blindly with rifle shots. It is a bright and sunny morning and there isn’t much hope of seeing where the shots are coming from. Muzzle flashes are faint, and these guys are good with the foliage, because there doesn’t seem to be any movement out there anywhere.

  “Private Bucyk!” Parrish screams at me. “Do you know what you are supposed to be doing with that thing, or does somebody need to help you?”

  “Oh,” I say like a simpleton. “Oh, yes, sir.” I had made the cardinal error, already, of letting myself get overwhelmed and watching the action. My father would slap me stupid right now.

  “Private Kuns!” Parrish yells, louder. “Grenades! We have enough shooters. Grenades!”

  And, as if it has all been perfectly coordinated for Kuns and me to be arriving in-country and making our mark on it at the same exact time, we both let off our big mother grenades simultaneously, listen to them whistle across the sky, and watch them land in the same spot.

  Bu-boo-oom!

  There is an instant decrease in incoming fire, but not enough to feel safe. A round tears right through the side of the fiberglass boat, goes right between me and Kuns, and exits the other side. I can feel the rush as it passes.

  I can feel that rush, and every other rush. I am pumping enough adrenaline to power the whole Benewah all by myself.

  “More! Again!” Parrish screams, and I begin to wonder if he is actually the man in charge here. Then I look over to where Lt. Systrom is knuckled down, set up like a sniper as best he can over the lip of the boat. He is coiled, frozen, not firing — not breathing as far as I can tell.

  The Navy boy piloting the boat begins a wide sweep away from the shore, which tears the lieutenant right out of his trance.

  “What are you doing?” he shouts.

  “Avoiding fire, what does it look like?”

  “No, no, no!” Systrom screams. He points to the shore. “Your job is to get us in there so that we can do our jobs. We are Army, mister, not Navy, so you just get us onto land to do our jobs — then you can run wherever you like.”

  The Nav begins a swing back, and Lt. Systrom keeps pointing.

  “Into the fire?” our pilot calls dubiously.

  “Straight into it,” our commander commands.

  We go in, as all-guns-a-blazin’ as it is possible to get, straight into the enemy fire, which is now clearly coming at us from two nests up the hillside. I aim a grenade at one nest. Kuns follows up, and the explosions sound to me like the “1812 Overture” the Boston Pops plays outside on the Charles River every July Fourth. We are all crouching, squatting, ducking as we try to fight
the invisible when, finally, Systrom joins in.

  Craaack.

  His gun sounds nothing like anybody else’s. It is subtle, crisp, sure. It is the gunshot equivalent of an Olympic diver hitting the water without a ripple.

  The return fire is now reduced to almost nothing.

  Looks like our head shot off their head.

  We hit the bank going a little bit too hard, and everybody tumbles around for a few seconds. Then we compose, focus, and hop out of the boat one at a time and all out.

  The Navy guy scoots off quick and says he will come back when we radio him and not before.

  Lt. Systrom squats down under a short palm tree. He coolly goes over his map with Cpls. Parrish and Lightfoot while the rest of us continue to pound the remaining nest that only now is lights-out.

  “Here is what we know,” Systrom says. “Last night’s recon indicates action here and here and here along this trail. That means you’re probably gonna find drums.”

  The “drums” are the fifty-five-gallon metal oil drums that the enemy fills with arms and ammunition for the insurgents, then seals and buries in the bush. They are a big problem for us.

  Systrom continues. “I’ll take Kuns with me and find a perch right around here, high enough to oversee your whole area. Stay within these parameters and try to cover the whole length of the trail by dusk. Right?”

  “Right,” I say, all chirpy even though nobody asked me directly. I have never been as buzzy as I feel right now. This trail ahead of us is the very definition of the scary unknown. It is a mad, insane, helter-skelter thrill, and I feel at this moment like I want to run up that trail and personally flush out every sneaky Vietcong murderer, pull him out of his hole like a rabbit. I feel like these guys are holding me back.

  At this moment it occurs to me that it is easy to be brave.

  “Are you listening?” Cpl. Lightfoot says, nose to nose with me right now.

  “Sorry, corporal,” I say.

  “You just calm those red eyes of yours right down now, brave. Understand me? It would be a shame to waste all of this on your first and last day out, right?”

  “Right, corporal.”

  What I had, in fact, missed there was that we were going up the trail in twos, and I was to be paired with Lightfoot, while Parrish and Arguello would head up about ninety seconds in front of us.

  We stand there, guns raised, eyes left-right-left, like marching, as the first two begin the slow, sweeping walk up the trail.

  “Okay,” Lightfoot says, “on we go.”

  The trail itself looks like it is built for a couple of bikes riding side by side, or maybe a little Japanese car. As Lightfoot and I walk, we can’t quite reach out our hands and touch, but we can do it with our guns. We won’t try it, though.

  But it is close enough for whispering.

  “So, what are you?” he says to me. I stare at him, wondering if he just has nothing real to say or if he is slowly rolling out the longest conversational time filler he can think of.

  “I’m an American,” I say.

  “Great,” he says, “but I mean more specifically. Like, you’re a Catholic, obviously, from the doohickey around your neck….”

  “Scapular,” I whisper-snap. “It’s called a scapular, and I got it from my mother as I was headed off to here.”

  “That’s nice. Most of The People, though, they don’t go with the Catholic thing.”

  “What people?”

  Up ahead, Parrish whirls around like a big, angry, armed ballet dancer. He mimes shush, then points at me with a bit of aggression.

  “The People, man,” Lightfoot says with a knowing smile. “What’s your tribe?”

  Now I really go goggle-eyed at him. I even crane my neck in his direction. He mimes eyes front by pointing two fingers at his own eyes, then pointing them up the road.

  “Wow,” I say. “I mean, that’s pretty impressive. I don’t even know how much Indian blood I’ve —”

  “One quarter.”

  I open my mouth wide to give him a double wow, but he cuts me off.

  “I was just kidding that time. But I see you got something in you somewhere. Tribe?”

  I sigh, thinking about my dad’s scattershot enthusiasm for the whole deal.

  “My dad says Sioux, but —”

  “Pfshht” is the noise that comes out of Lightfoot. It is not a noise of agreement.

  “You are East Coast. I would guess Iroquois, but I could be wrong. Not as wrong as your father, of course … no offense.”

  “No offense. Somewhere right now my mom is laughing over this.”

  Both Parrish and Arguello stop suddenly and turn toward us, their guns raised. They stand facing into bushes as we catch up.

  When we get there, we can see what has caught their attention. About twelve feet off to the left of the small path, at the end of an even smaller path, is a mound. It is only slightly raised, but it seems different from the surrounding ground and a bit too carefully arranged. Lightfoot and I stand guard as the two of them advance. I draw my pistol and watch the road behind us while Lightfoot watches ahead.

  There is about five minutes of digging before they indicate they have something. They dig faster now, a little less cautiously, until they get to the big metal drum and open it …

  … to find it empty. Parrish curses, and we come in to have a look.

  The side of the drum has been pried open and emptied, the remaining shell lying there opened like it is laughing at us. We waste about another two minutes staring before we trudge back out to the trail to start all over again.

  The day goes mostly like that — a slow, methodical creeping through a hostile jungle where we do not encounter one other human being. As the hours pass and we edge farther out into the nothing, a strange combination of boredom and increasing fear creeps up into me. This, I find, I do not like.

  We are at the perimeter of the area we are supposed to cover, having uncovered one other empty barrel and one empty hole where a barrel surely once was. I am weary in a way none of the basic-training stunts ever got me weary. This jungle is the hottest thing I have ever encountered, and it is heavy with a humidity that would keep me glistening with sweat even if I had a tap on my side for running it off of me. We’re sitting, taking small sips of water, resting a bit for the return, when Lightfoot sees a configuration of fallen tree trunks that doesn’t agree with him.

  “Cover my back,” he says, and I follow him to the trees about twenty feet away.

  Once there, he starts making hmmm noises and clicks with his tongue a sound that says he is on to something that he does not want to be on to. The other two catch up, and Arguello starts immediately helping pull the trees apart. I make a move to go in with them, and Parrish grabs my arm. I look, and he just shakes his head no. Parrish and I watch each direction of the road and I, for some reason, have both my grenade launcher and my pistol trained on the trail.

  “Oh, no,” Lightfoot says. “No, no.”

  “Jeez,” Arguello says.

  “Again,” Parrish says, disgusted. “How are they doing this? They are beating us to it every time, man, and I don’t know how —”

  He shuts himself right up as he reaches the site. I hear him breathing deeply, four, five, six times, and then I step up next to him.

  And for a few moments I don’t hear anything at all. It is, literally, like my hearing has been punctured dead.

  Dead. There are three — and you can just about make it out because of the partial views of three heads — three dead men in this fifty-five-gallon drum.

  Arguello puts his hand over his mouth, stands there as long as he can through one or two partial retches until vomit is bleeding out between his fingers, and heads for a tree to be properly sick.

  “Keep it quiet,” Parrish snarls as Arguello moans, low and chunky.

  They are local people, or at any rate not US military personnel. They are dressed, as I have seen countless indigenous Vietnamese, in simple cotton togs. They are — we
re — small men, but not small enough to fit in there together. Not unless someone broke them badly.

  Lightfoot is kneeling, like a priest, aside the drum. He touches, briefly and lightly, two fingers on each bloody skull. Then he looks up at me and Parrish.

  “I’m guessing we just met our informants for all these munitions dumps.”

  He looks back and stares at them good long minutes more. Arguello is back with us but mostly looking away. Parrish is silent now, silent beyond being quiet.

  “What do we do?” I ask finally.

  Lightfoot looks up to Parrish, who has one hand covering the whole lower half of his face.

  “Radio Lieutenant?” Arguello says into the void.

  Parrish just shakes his head.

  “You know Systrom,” Lightfoot says. “If you radio him when he’s locked in, it better be a life-or-death scenario.”

  “Or it’ll be a life-or-death scenario,” Parrish says through his hand.

  “So?” I ask.

  “I think we gotta leave ’em,” Parrish says.

  Lightfoot shakes his head.

  “It’s hard enough not being detected out here without also dragging a barrel full of —”

  “Hey,” Lightfoot interrupts.

  Parrish just nods and holds a hand up. “But … I don’t know, man.”

  “We don’t take no barrel. We remove these men, individually, as individuals. And we carry them. We’ve already seen this whole trail. There should be no great trick to getting back okay.”

  Parrish ponders.

  “Your call, corporal?” Parrish asks.

  “My call, corporal.”

  All agreed, Lightfoot turns back to the men in the drum. “Sorry,” he says down low as he begins delicately unpicking limbs from limbs, feet from mouths, noses from eyes.

  “Corporal Lightfoot,” I say as we near the end, the meeting point with the lieutenant.

  “Yes, Private Bucyk?”

  We are talking as softly as the puffing, dead Vietnamese summer air now. We are doing it without even trying because we couldn’t possibly do anything more strenuous.

  “My guy is starting to smell really bad.”