“You are one stupid waste of skin, you know that, Harris?” Pitts finally said, still sitting on his bunk.
“What I do, man?” Mau Mau called back, his feelings hurt.
“Just don’t fucking talk. Okay?” Pitts said, and then laid back on his hard bed, resting his wounded shoulder by laying his arm across his chest.
No matter how hard he tried, Brian Pitts could not shake the vivid flashback of seeing Tommy Joyner suddenly looking up with surprise at his buddy Robert Matthews after a .30-caliber sniper round knocked him to the floor, flat on his back, where he died after a few blinks and a gasp for air that never came. That’s when Huong’s younger brother, Chung, blindly opened fire out the front door of the white stucco plantation house with the red tile roof. A second sniper shot put the middle Nguyen brother on the floor, too, dead with a pencil-size hole in his forehead and a fist-size cavity out the back where the round emptied his pulverized brains.
Horrified at seeing their brother die, Huong and Bao lay in the front windows with Chinese SKS rifles sold to Pitts by the Viet Cong and began to shoot at movement in the tree line. This brought a volley of machine gun fire that swept across the front porch, and wounded Bao in the calf when a .30-caliber bullet slashed through the muscle, laying it open two inches deep.
“We go, now!” Huong said, and made a run for the back door with his brother’s arm over his shoulders, not waiting to see if Pitts and Matthews followed him. When the two Vietnamese cowboys ran toward the trees, only twenty yards away, the machine guns from the Tenth Division company turned after them. Huong and Bao didn’t go down, but there was no way that Brian Pitts could tell if they had survived the gunfire and made it to the series of trenches, rabbit holes, and tunnels that led away from the house and opened near others that networked for miles. He didn’t know for sure that his friends had made it until he overheard the comments of the captain who commanded the company of soldiers that the two gooks had gotten away.
At least Huong and Bao had evaded capture. Turd, the lucky beast, must have sensed it coming. He disappeared from the plantation early that morning, and would likely sit hidden in a tunnel until his troubled feelings passed. He had begun doing that stunt quite often during the past week or so, and it gave Huong fits of anxiety. When the top-hand cowboy couldn’t find the mutt this particular morning, he became more worried than ever, and suggested that everyone should go to the tunnels. At least until these uneasy feelings passed, and Turd returned to his regular spot, resting on the red tile porch by the front door. Then, just before noon, when the three American outlaws talked about grilling some steaks that Brian had purchased in Saigon two evenings earlier, the sniper round caught Tommy Joyner square in the chest.
Seeing Huong and Bao abandon their stand, Robert Matthews gave up, too. He threw his hands in the air and stepped out on the porch. Then, realizing the attackers had the house now fully surrounded, Brian Pitts put his arms above his head and walked outside.
He saw someone stand up, waving his hands and blowing a whistle, but that did not stop Bruce Olsen from letting one go at the Snowman. The only thing that saved Brian Pitts was the movement that he saw, and he turned just as the Phoenix sniper dropped the hammer on him.
“I should have killed you in the hotel bar,” Olsen hissed at Pitts as he stood over the wounded Snowman, who lay on the porch while a Tenth Division medical corpsman did his best to patch the wound. The shot broke both the deserter’s shoulder joint and his collarbone.
“It’ll never heal right,” the doc said as he worked to stop the bleeding and felt the shattered bones crunching under the pressure of his bandage.
“Small price, the fucking traitor!” Olsen snapped, and stomped off the porch.
After ten days under guard in the army hospital in Saigon, two Marine Corps chasers from the Freedom Hill brig watched Brian Pitts get dressed in a fluff-dried green utility uniform with black canvas, high-top Bata Bullet tennis shoes on his feet. They handed him a white laundry bag with another uniform inside it, along with three sets of white skivvies and three pairs of olive-drab woolen socks. Then they hauled him to Da Nang in the belly of a C-130 airplane.
Robert Matthews came to Freedom Hill two weeks ago, and now enjoyed life in the yard with the general population. He caused no trouble, and kept his mouth shut, so First Lieutenant Michael Schuller released him from the block of holding cells and let the kid breathe outdoors. It freed up the space that he needed to keep Brian Pitts locked up.
Given Matthews’ Saigon history with the Snowman, Schuller had wisely decided to not allow the new prisoner contact with any of Pitts’s Da Nang associates, namely Harris and Elmore. So the two men had no clue who the new man was.
“Tell me, Mau Mau, how you making it?” the Snowman finally asked, sitting up on the hard bunk, finally breaking his hour-long silence, and now wishing that he had a cigarette.
AUGUST HEAT PUSHED Terry O’Connor’s temper to the edge, so it took very little to cause the Philadelphia Irishman to blow his top. After a short meeting with Major Dickinson, the lawyer walked into his office and kicked his swivel chair across the room.
“Now sit down and spill it,” Jon Kirkwood said, taking the angry captain by the shoulder and pushing him into his seat. “You’ve been stomping around this office for the past two weeks like a cat with a fish bone stuck in his throat. You need to tell me what has got you so pissed off.”
“This morning, it just takes the cake,” O’Connor said, and let out a deep breath in disgust. “First Charlie Heyster cuts a sweet pretrial deal for this character, Sergeant Randal Carnegie, a sack of shit that our troops here in this office call the Chu Lai Hippie, because even they know he’s the biggest doper around I Corps. Then yesterday, Charlie the shyster, with the blessings of Dicky Doo, lets four of this bum’s dope-dealing cohorts walk free.”
Jon Kirkwood shook his head and squinted his eyes shut. Then he looked at his partner with an expression of amazement. He walked to the office door, looked at the crimson placard with yellow lettering on it, and then went back to his desk and sat down.
“The sign on this office’s door says Defense Section,” Kirkwood said, raising both hands in an exaggerated shrug. “You’ll find people down the hall, in the office labeled Prosecution Section, who will readily sympathize with your frustration of defendants finally getting a break.”
“Jon, these guys are guilty as sin,” O’Connor exclaimed, standing up and kicking his chair again. “CID busted these four bums, people from the same unit as Carnegie, his buddies, when the drug dogs alerted on the uniforms that these characters wore. They had Buddha sewn in the sleeves of their shirts and inside the legs of their trousers. Big lumps of reefer!
“So Charlie gets a message from this piece of shit Carnegie that says he sold these four-star citizens his old utility uniforms, because he is getting out of the Marine Corps in a month, when he exits the brig. He claims that he sewed the dope in his clothes and that these guys knew nothing about it being in their sleeves and trouser legs when they bought the used uniforms.
“Tell me how anyone can put on a shirt and pants and not feel pillow-size lumps of dope sewn in them?”
“Hey, it worked and the guys got free,” Kirkwood said and smiled. “Chalk four pluses on the defense section’s tote board.”
“Jon, they’re guilty,” O’Connor said, throwing his head back. “There is something patently wrong when we let guilty people slide. This character Carnegie got only thirty days and no bad time. Thirty days! And it doesn’t even count! None of it will appear in his service record, so he gets out of the Marine Corps with a clean discharge. He had a five-pound loaf of Buddha, and he only got a month in the brig for it, none of it bad time, and he kept his rank! Now, in this latest turn of events, he even gets his buddies off, scot-free!”
“That’s why we have a prosecution section, my friend,” Kirkwood said and walked to the door. “I can see something else boiling under that red Irish head of yours, and I’m going t
o leave you alone, in peace, until you decide to let me in on what’s really bothering you.”
Terry O’Connor shook his head and slouched in his chair as he watched his buddy walk away. He wanted to tell him about the photographs. That’s what really bothered him. However, he still felt uncomfortable with the idea of showing anyone the pictures. Not even his best friend. Besides, would Kirkwood or anyone else even believe what the images showed?
O’Connor felt certain that Heyster must have a fail-safe plan, just in case Carnegie got busted and sang. Would the pictures showing the exchange of dope, coupled with the later arrest of the Chu Lai Hippie, and Charlie the shyster cutting him a sweet deal, would that be enough to slam shut an iron door on the interim mojo?
“Not yet. I need a better smoking gun than some photographs taken from an unauthorized surveillance,” O’Connor said to himself as he leaned over and twisted the power and volume control knob on his leather-clad, portable AM-FM-shortwave radio that rested against the wall on the side of his desk and had its silver stick antenna extended all the way out. American Forces Vietnam broadcast network played his favorite song, a hit from 1967 written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and performed by Jagger and the Rolling Stones. As the mellow tune drifted from the small speaker, the captain closed his eyes and tried to let his troubled soul take a ride with the sweet melody.
She would never say where she came from. Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone. While the sun is bright. Or in the darkest night. No one knows. She comes and goes.
Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday. Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day. Still I’m gonna miss you.
Don’t question why she needs to be so free. She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be. She just can’t be chained. To a life where nothing’s gained. And nothing’s lost. At such a cost.
Good-bye, Ruby Tuesday. Who could hang a name on you? When you change with every new day. Still I’m gonna miss you.
“Still I’m gonna miss you!” the lawyer captain sang in a loud voice that carried down the hallway to the administration office where Staff Sergeant Pride raised his head from a page full of budget numbers he was studying.
“GOOD-BYE, RUBY TUESDAY. Who could hang a name on you?” Corporal Nathan L. Todd sang as he walked out of the control center at the Freedom Hill brig, singing with the music that played on the radio in the glass-walled room that ran the switches that locked or released all doors into and out of the central cell block that housed all the high-risk prisoners.
“Why you singing that fag song, butthead?” Sergeant Mike Turner said, heckling the corporal while leaning back in a swivel chair with his feet propped on a desk secured behind a row of bars that overlooked the cells where Celestine Anderson, Brian Pitts, James Harris, Michael Fryer, and James Elmore counted time by the day.
Turner had earned the nickname Iron Balls from both the prisoners and his fellow guards. Seated on a stool at the other end of the hall of cells, Lance Corporal Kenny Brookman sat with his heels hooked over the wooden spindles connected between the legs that braced his seat and held it rigid while he slapped the palm of his hand with a truncheon that he and Iron Balls had drilled down the center and filled with lead. Usually, when a person saw Iron Balls, the sadistic Lance Corporal Brookman, who had picked up the nickname Bad John, wasn’t far behind.
“What makes ‘Ruby Tuesday’ a fag song, Sergeant Turner?” Corporal Todd asked as he stepped through the barred door when Gunnery Sergeant Ted MacMillan released the latch from the control center. “The Rolling Stones fags? Is that it?”
“Yeah,” Iron Balls said and laughed. “They’re from England, and that makes them queer. The whole fucking country’s full of fruitcakes. The men all wear lace, and the women smoke cigars.”
Todd said nothing back, but kept humming the song as he walked down the rows of cells, checking each inmate and making a corresponding note on a clipboard he carried. Then he walked back to the port where Iron Balls now stood, his nightstick withdrawn from the silver ring on his Sam Browne belt, and spinning it like a yo-yo with the leather thong on its handle. The corporal gave the gunny a thumbs-up signal, and he pulled a handle that released all cell doors and slid them open.
“Stand up and step out!” Corporal Todd ordered. “Put your toes on the red line and come to the position of attention. Prisoner Elmore, you will remain in your cell.”
All fourteen prisoners on the row stepped to the red line except for James Elmore, who stood in the back of his small space, glad to remain behind.
“Right face!” Todd shouted at the two lines of inmates from the center of the hallway. “Forward march!”
Iron Balls used to herd the prisoners to their meals and the recreation yard until two days ago, when he and Bad John got relieved for cause by Chief Warrant Officer Frank Holden, the deputy brig officer under First Lieutenant Schuller. While in the recreation yard, Mau Mau Harris and Ax Man Anderson, along with several other members of the secretly organized Freedom Hill chapter of the Black Stone Rangers, had cornered Iron Balls and Bad John and laid hands on the two guards, triggering a full lockdown of the entire brig.
When Holden questioned Harris and his yahoo buddies, they lied and said that Turner and Brookman had gotten into a card game with the inmates, and when they lost they refused to pay up. In retaliation, the wronged prisoners turned on the two Marines.
While Nathan Todd and Gunny MacMillan both stood up for their two fellow guards, claiming that the prisoners flat-out lied, and that in no way had Turner and Brookman played cards or in any other way fraternized with the inmates, the deputy brig officer relieved the pair anyway. It staved off trouble.
Seeing the two men relieved of their principal duties of handling prisoners and reduced to watching the hallways put Mau Mau Harris and his right-hand man, Ax Man Anderson, at the top of the food chain in the hierarchy of who’s who inside Freedom Hill.
“So they let us out every day like this?” Brian Pitts asked James Harris as the two men set their meal trays on a long bench table and sat down. Mau Mau had faithfully carried his wounded friend’s drink with his own and helped the one-handed Snowman get seated without spilling anything. Celestine Anderson glared at the white man from the other side of the seating arrangement until Harris frowned at him.
“Yeah, man. We get lunch and then three, four hours rec time in the yard,” Harris said, and then gave Anderson a hard look. “Yo, Ax Man, this my blue-eyed soul brother. Call the dude Snowman. He cool, so lighten up. He one of us, bro. A ranger.”
“Ain’t no white dude no Black Stone Ranger,” Anderson grumbled, digging his spoon in a pile of mashed potatoes.
“I say what go and what don’t go,” Harris barked back at the insolent gang brother. “In Chicago, we got white dudes not in just the rangers, but Black Panthers, too. Pitts and me, we go way back. He one smart motherfucker. You hang with him, life get good. I know. We have it good, right, brother?”
James Harris put his arm around Brian Pitts’s neck and gave him a good squeeze.
“We play it cool and smart, my men, and we can have it good once again, too,” Brian Pitts said with a smile, looking cold at Celestine Anderson, and with his good arm giving James Harris a hug back.
“So, my man the Snowman, he one of us,” Harris said, spooning meat-loaf and potatoes in his mouth. “I got two more white dudes we need in our brotherhood. Word come around that this Chu Lai Hippie he have people on the outside that can get shit done. So he’s in.”
“Fucking Randy Carnegie? You talking about him? He’s in here?” Brian Pitts said, surprised and smiling.
“You know the dude?” Harris said, smiling at Pitts.
“I know of him,” the Snowman answered and shrugged. “He bought shit from me, but I could never get him into my regular program. He was always sort of a maverick. Independent. He’s okay, though. If he’s got somebody hooked up outside, he’s worthwhile having in the club.”
“Glad you approve, ’cause I already sen
t word to tell him he’s a ranger,” Harris said, stuffing his mouth while talking.
“Who this other cracker motherfucker you want with us?” Anderson said, wiping up gravy with a slice of bread.
“Dude named Watts, Kevin Watts,” Harris said, drinking red Kool-Aid from a paper cup. “He got three years for trying to hijack a plane to fly him out of ’Nam.”
All three prisoners laughed.
“I ain’t totally sure about the dude, but I say okay when Jones and Martin tell me about him,” Harris said and shrugged. “Only thing I don’t like about this turd, he ain’t never told the truth in his life. He always trying to say shit just happen, and he fall in it.”
The three prisoners laughed again.
“We need a fall guy, then he’s our man,” Pitts said, and smiled at Anderson, who simply glared back at him. Then he looked around and watched the guards talking with each other, relaxing.
“So tell me, Mau Mau,” Pitts said in a low voice, looking at his food as he spoke, “when we go in the yard, after we eat, we can just mingle?”
“We ain’t supposed to, but we do,” Harris said, looking back at Pitts. “Guards is cool for the most part except for Iron Balls and Bad John. They two genuine pieces of shit. When me and the Ax Man do the job on that rat-shit motherfucker Elmore, we figure we take down Turner and Brookman, too. We go down, we gonna do it all. They write about our black struggle back home when we do it.”
“Do what?” Pitts asked, frowning.
“Bust up this place, man,” Harris said with a smile, eating his black-eyed peas and the last of his bread.
“We gonna take it down, man,” Celestine Anderson offered and then smiled, thinking about the day he could lash out in open rebellion.
“Whoa,” Brian Pitts said and raised his eyebrows. “Taking the place down might work for the short term, but in the end we got to have an objective. Not just a bunch of newspaper headlines, but something that will pay us a few dividends, for our old age.”
Jungle Rules Page 47