Jungle Rules
Page 20
“Apparently this character is the main distributor for most of the dope sold along the flight line,” Pride continued, climbing in the driver’s side of the general-use vehicle parked next to Lieutenant Colonel Prunella’s jeep. When he pressed the starter, the engine lay quiet, and only a clicking noise came from under the hood.
“Doggone it. I think maybe the starter’s gone bad or the battery’s dead, sir,” the staff sergeant groaned. “We can maybe push it and get it going, or I can run inside and call the base taxi to pick us up.”
“Forget that,” O’Connor said, tossing his briefcase in the backseat of the colonel’s jeep.
“Sir! Major Dickinson will write us up for violating his written order!” Pride said, his face quickly draining of color. “Look what he did with Lieutenant McKay for going off with his friend on that disastrous patrol at Con Thien.”
“His fucking do’s on the wall of his office do not constitute a written order,” O’Connor said, honking the horn. “Besides, nearly four months and McKay’s charge sheet’s growing mold at the bottom of the colonel’s in-box. Dicky Doo wants to burn me, I will supply him the matches. Besides, I am the one taking the colonel’s jeep and driver, not you. So sit your ass in the backseat and let me worry about Major Dickinson and the colonel.”
Then the unblushing lawyer cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted toward the hooch where he knew that Lance Corporal James Dean most likely lay with his hand in his pants and his eyes on the latest Penthouse centerfold.
“Movie Star! Get your ass out here now!” O’Connor bellowed, his voice echoing among the buildings.
In a moment the blond-headed lance corporal came dashing from his quarters, buckling his trousers as he ran. In the doorway of the staff judge advocate’s office, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Prunella stood and casually waved at O’Connor.
“Battery’s dead on the office jeep, and I’ve got to get to CID right now, so I’m taking yours,” O’Connor called to the colonel.
“By all means, Captain,” the colonel answered. “I have an appointment at seventeen hundred, so please make sure that Lance Corporal Dean has it back to me before then.”
“Not a problem at all, sir. I’ll make sure he gets back well ahead of that time,” O’Connor shouted, sitting in the passenger seat while James Dean climbed behind the steering wheel. Then he looked over his shoulder at Staff Sergeant Pride. “See Derek, no problem at all. The colonel’s a reasonable man.”
“Sir, Colonel Prunella never says no to anything reasonable,” Pride said, and then sighed. “It’s Major Dickinson. He will still rip you and me both for whatever he can dream up. Now he’ll be doubly pissed off because we went around him and got permission from the boss.”
“Fuck him and his dinky-dao Dicky Doo don’ts,” O’Connor snarled, resting his right foot in the door well and motioning for James Dean to hit the gas.
“Right on, sir,” Movie Star said, happily tromping the throttle and sending gravel flying from under his rear wheels.
“Keep your opinions to yourself, Dean,” Pride said, crossing his arms. “Sir, looks to me like after the past few months that you’ve been here you’d know by now that Major Dickinson will stick the knife in you any way that he can. Sir, I know that you’re not staying in the Marine Corps, so you don’t care what he writes on your fitness report, but I care what he does to mine. You’ve got a career waiting for you back in New York. My career is right here, sir. Dicky Doo has my future on the tip of his ink pen.”
“You think Colonel Prunella would ever let him get away with slamming you with the velvet hammer?” O’Connor said, looking over his shoulder at the staff sergeant. “You know he has to review anything that Major Dickinson writes on the fitness reports. You’re A-J-squared-away, Johnny on the spot. I bet you even iron your boxer shorts. You think the colonel would let him write anything less than outstanding on you?”
“We’ll have to see, won’t we,” Derek Pride said, sighing again as he tipped his hat back and stretched his arm across the back of the seat.
“Speaking of wait and see, any news on that notorious charge sheet that Dicky Doo wrote on Lieutenant McKay?” O’Connor said, again looking over his shoulder at the staff sergeant.
“Sir, you know I am not supposed to discuss personal matters like that with anyone except authorized personnel,” Pride said.
“Bet you talk to Major Dickinson about it,” O’Connor said, and let out a sarcastic chuckle.
“I only talk about it to Captain Carter, the defense attorney in fact, or Lieutenant McKay himself,” the staff sergeant countered.
“Well, I heard some scuttlebutt,” O’Connor said, smiling at Derek Pride. “I thought you might be smiling about it, too.”
“Sir, nothing has changed yet,” Pride said. “You know that the charge sheet went to Colonel Prunella the day after Lieutenant McKay refused nonjudicial punishment, three months ago. That’s as far as it has ever gone, at the moment.”
“I heard the colonel tell General Cushman that he was damned proud of Lieutenant McKay, and that he had commended him for his heroism,” Lance Corporal Dean said as he wheeled the jeep to a stop in front of the military police headquarters. “He said he’d like to see more of his staff out with the fleet Marines, sharing their meals and seeing how they live. I also heard tell that Lieutenant McKay has got the Bronze Star with Combat V awarded to him for what he did up there by Con Thien, back when his buddy got killed on that patrol he went on. First sergeant told the guys at formation this morning that we’re going to have a MAF ceremony and General Cushman will pin it on him Friday afternoon during the wing parade.”
O’Connor looked at Pride in the backseat.
“I heard exactly the same news, and that Lieutenant Colonel Prunella has the Officers’ Club locked on for a luau in McKay’s honor, day after tomorrow, right after the ceremonies,” the lawyer beamed, taking his briefcase and stepping out of the jeep. “Bet Dicky Doo is choking on that charge sheet about now. Like to see how the motherfucker two-faces his way with Colonel Prunella on this one.”
“Sir,” Pride said, climbing out of the jeep, “I suspect that Major Dickinson has choked on the charge sheet ever since he got the telephone call from the squadron office last week that Lieutenant McKay would get the Bronze Star with Combat V. I think he choked on it for several days before he finally addressed the colonel with it. Probably choked even worse when the colonel told him he already knew all about it days ago from General Cushman.”
“Like I told you,” Movie Star said, smiling as he slouched back in the driver’s seat, relaxing for the wait, “the colonel’s cool with things. So don’t sweat the small shit, man. He knows what’s happening.”
“Even still,” Pride sighed, walking toward the building at the left of the captain, “it doesn’t stop the major from exacting his revenge in other ways. The major may well drop his disciplinary action against Lieutenant McKay, but nothing else has changed. Except maybe, after today, after this stunt, you moving to the top of Major Dickinson’s shit list.”
“Hey, Derek,” O’Connor said cheerily, swinging open the door to the provost marshal’s office, “think about it this way: We’re on top now. Number one, man. Number one!”
“WE GOTTA KEEP driving, Snowman, don’t even want to fucking slow down,” James Harris groaned to Brian Pitts as they sped down the narrow street that ran behind their villa in Dogpatch in the early afternoon two days following their suspicious meeting with James Elmore, and a day after the seedy lance corporal had picked up his shipment of dope at the laundry. He had missed their noontime appointment today, when he was supposed to make good on the cash he owed. When Pitts noticed the Marine who had gotten the light off Harris on Wednesday, watching them from down the street, they left fast.
“Fucking rat Elmore, I knew it,” Pitts said, looking over his shoulder and seeing a shaggy-haired white man standing casually on the corner wearing brown slacks and a yellow, square-tailed sport shirt untucked over his b
elt with a poorly hidden pistol under it.
“That’s the dude that busted me on the flight line,” Harris said, making a sharp right turn and speeding out of Dogpatch.
“They’ve got the ranch covered, too, then,” Pitts said, slinking down in his seat. “Can’t go back. I got a stash of money down south of town, we can go there. I’ll give you half. Then we split up. What we got in this bag won’t last long, so we need the stash. Couple two, maybe three hundred grand. It’ll get us out of the country. Set us up. You like Bangkok?”
“Yeah, man,” Harris said, cracking a nervous smile as he drove. “Good pussy there.”
“Like there was ever any bad? Easy to get lost in Bangkok, too,” Pitts added. “Benny Lam and Major Toan, they’ll fuck us over soon as they know we’re running, so we can’t depend on anyone outside you, me, and my cowboys. Come to think of it, that fat son of a bitch Major Toan acted awfully sweet when I paid him his cut Wednesday. Guaranteed he and his cops helped CID stake us out. Benny Lam’s probably backing him, too. Both those assholes would love to see me gone.”
“Let’s go kill the motherfuckers then,” Harris said, steering the jeep through the back streets of Da Nang, weaving his way south to Pitts’s emergency stash.
“Tell you what, I’ll give you your split, and you stick around here and kill the motherfuckers,” Pitts said, lighting a cigarette. “While you’re at it, you can kill that waste of skin Elmore, too. Shit, kill him first, the fucking rat.”
“He a dead man now,” Harris said, biting his lip and steering the jeep along the winding, narrow roads. “I ain’t going no place till I drop the cocksucker to his knees, make him beg, and then I put a round from my .45 through the top of his head.”
“We get down here, you keep your cool,” Pitts said, watching the homes along the roadsides change from block buildings to shacks and huts. “Got this stash with some Viet Cong. They’ll take two hundred grand as commission. That leaves us with about three hundred thousand. One-fifty each.”
“They ain’t spent it all and not tole you?” Harris said, wondering at Pitt’s trust in the VC.
“It’s there, believe me,” Pitts said. “These are Huong’s family.”
“Fucker slapped me with his gun first time he see me,” Harris said, and rubbed the side of his head. “He never tole me sorry or shit after it, either.”
“You pissed about it? I’ll let you settle it with Huong if you are,” Pitts said and laughed. “He’d probably kill you, but you’d have your chance at satisfaction.”
“Naw, I ain’t pissed,” Harris said, turning the jeep onto a dirt road that led along an irrigation canal toward a small village of thatched huts. “Huong did his job. All the time serious. He think your shit don’t stink, too. He’s okay.”
“I treated him and all the others fair and square, just like you,” Pitts said, lighting another smoke. “Give what’s right, do what’s right, loyalty automatically goes with it if you pick right guys.”
“You sure you picked right guys?” Harris asked, slowing the jeep to a crawl as he entered the village that looked deserted of life.
“Yes, I am,” Pitts said, relaxed in the passenger seat, smoking his cigarette. “Loyalty goes two ways, my friend. Those not right, we killed. Huong saw to it. He believes in loyalty and trust. Just like I do.”
“So he got your six covered in case the bust came down,” Harris said.
“Exactly,” Pitts said, looking at the end hut, where he saw a familiar-looking dog. “We knew this day would come, so we prepared. Every few weeks Huong took cash to hide here, in case of emergency. In case we have to run. Huong and all the others scattered their stashes down in this ville, too. Our money is here, don’t worry. So is Huong.”
“How you know he here, man?” Harris said, pulling the jeep to a halt behind a large wooden house with a thatched roof and a wide porch.
“Look at that mutt coming to greet you,” Pitts said, laughing.
“Turd!” Harris said, and jumped from the jeep and wrapped his arms around his ugly brown dog. “I figured CID done shot my boy, Turd, cause he not about to leave the ranch for nothing. I had heartache the whole time driving down here, my dog getting left back. Huong got you out with him, didn’t he, boy.”
In the edge of the trees, Huong stood and nodded at Harris, and cracked a fleeting smile.
“TOMMY! HEY, BOY, you about dressed? Hell, they’ve got a photographer from the Associated Press and another one from Time magazine out there, wanting to take your picture. General Cushman’s already cooling his heels in General Anderson’s office, and they want you front and center before the two of them come outside. Tommy? Yo, T. D. McKay!” Terry O’Connor shouted as he stormed into the barracks with three enlisted Marines from Third Reconnaissance Battalion striding at his heels.
“Leave me the fuck alone,” McKay slurred from behind his cubicle. Still wearing his skivvy shorts and T-shirt, he lay on his bunk, swigging a canteen filled with Wayne Ebberhardt’s old North Carolina family recipe.
“Oh, fuck, Tommy,” O’Connor said, seeing the lieutenant lying on his bed and stinking of the homemade booze. “I’m sorry, you guys, Lieutenant McKay isn’t quite ready. You want to wait outside until he gets dressed?”
“Sir, if you don’t mind,” Staff Sergeant Paul Rhodes told Terry O’Connor, and stepped past the captain, along with Sergeant Lionel McCoy and Hospital Corpsman First Class Ted Hamilton. The three quickly swarmed the drunk lieutenant, flung open his wall locker, and began rummaging for materials to make some hasty repairs on the officer.
“Captain,” Rhodes said, looking over his shoulder, “we’ll have him outside, squared away in ten minutes. You need to go let Colonel Blanchard know what we’re doing. He’s an old salt and has walked many a snake-infested trail. He’ll make sure we’re covered.”
Terry O’Connor shrugged, smiled, and then headed out the door to intercept Doc Blanchard, the Third Reconnaissance Battalion commanding officer, and pass the message that today’s recipient of the Bronze Star Medal with Combat V device for valor, had gotten himself drunk early: A full two hours ahead of the Hawaiian-style party and pig roast that Lieutenant Colonel Prunella had arranged to celebrate the occasion with the commanding general of Third Marine Amphibious Force.
With no witnesses now present, the wiry staff sergeant threw the 225-pound lieutenant across his shoulders and route-stepped to the showers.
“Sir,” Rhodes said as he walked with Doc Hamilton and Lionel McCoy, carrying soap and a towel, “I don’t know what got into you to get yourself all fucked up today, but you’ll not embarrass me and my entire platoon in front of my commanding officer, all of whom flew down here today from Dong Ha to see you get decorated.”
“Hey, Doc,” McCoy said half joking, looking at the corpsman, “you think the dispensary down the block might have some vitamin B-twelve or something you can inject in McKay’s ass that will straighten him out?”
“From what I’m told, that’s mostly a myth,” Doc Hamilton said, watching the staff sergeant strip off the lieutenant and push him under a shower of cold water. “Time and metabolism are mostly what remove the alcohol. I might have a pick-me-upper in my kit, though. Could help to perk him a little bit so that he at least stands still while he gets the medal.”
“We’ll douche him in cologne to hide the booze stink,” Rhodes said, now stripped off, too, neatly laying his solid green, jungle utility uniform on a dry bench. He helped the lieutenant soap off his body and then rinsed him, and pushed him into the arms of Hamilton and McCoy, who dried and dressed the officer.
“What the fuck got into you in the first place?” the staff sergeant said, putting on his clothes. “You having some kind of pity party because your buddy didn’t get out alive and you did? Shit, sir, I’ve seen a dozen pity parties just like yours. I know what I’m looking at. We’ve all had our turns.”
“You don’t understand, Staff Sergeant Rhodes,” Tommy McKay wept as he snugged his field scarf around the t
ight-fitting eighteen-inch collar on his khaki uniform shirt. “Jimmy Sanchez was my best friend. My college roommate. And he’s dead because I fucked up. I had to be the hero, and run across that open field, trying to save thirty minutes, and cost us three hours, because I dumped off the platoon doc and the radioman. He could have made it to Dong Ha had I not done that stunt.”
“The man died on his own, Lieutenant,” Rhodes said, buffing off his boots with McKay’s towel. “Nothing you did caused him to die.”
“Sir,” Doc Hamilton then interjected, “do you know anything about how damaged Lieutenant Sanchez’s lungs were? The bullets clipped through the tops of both organs, destroyed most of the branches of his bronchial tubes. He never had a chance.”
“Doc, he’d of had at least a shot at a chance if I had gotten him to the rally point with you and Sneed aboard,” McKay said. “I cannot accept a medal when I am responsible for my best friend dying. Responsible for your platoon commander, your friend, too, dying!”
“Fuck it, man,” Sergeant McCoy finally said, and looked at the lieutenant. “We love old Jimmy Sanchez like he’s one of our snuffies. Don’t you know that if any of us believed you had anything to do with him dying, we’d be someplace else than right here going to watch your lily ass get a medal.”
McKay stood still for a few seconds, still feeling the glow of the moonshine, and then put his hands out to the black sergeant, who gave him a strong hug.
“Sir,” McCoy said, holding on to the officer as Doc Hamilton shot a syringe filled with a yellow liquid into the man’s arm, “you don’t know it, but you saved at least three lives with what you did that night, running across that minefield like you done.”
“That’s right,” Paul Rhodes said, pulling a pipe from his pocket and putting it in his mouth, and then finding a paper towel and wiping the fog off his black-framed glasses, still fixed with the green tape over the bridge of the nose. “You have to take the word of our experience. You, Doc Hamilton here, and Bobby Sneed, who’s waiting outside with the rest of Lieutenant Sanchez’s platoon, all made it out alive because you drew the enemy’s focus.