“Someone needs to grab Mike Schuller and tell him his house is on fire!” Taylor shouted through the crowd at a table where Terry O’Connor and Jon Kirkwood had the brig officer cornered, talking shop.
“Fire?” Schuller said and stood up. Then he saw the infernal glow rising on the brig side of the mountain. He quickly shifted his eyes across the gathering, searching for Lieutenant Colonel Webster, who had given him a lift from the provost marshal’s office, but the PMO had already gone. Then he looked at Kirkwood and O’Connor. “Hey, guys, you’ve got to get me up to the brig. Colonel Webster must have gotten word and left already; he probably couldn’t find me because we were sitting back here, out of sight.”
“Grab your hat and let’s fly,” O’Connor said, looking to see Wayne Ebberhardt, who came running to them.
“Colonel Webster just left with the chief of staff,” the newly promoted captain said. “We’ll take the office jeep.”
“What about me?” Michael Carter asked, hurrying behind Ebberhardt, Kirkwood, O’Connor, and Schuller. “I don’t think we can fit five in the jeep.”
“Mikie,” Jon Kirkwood said, stopping and taking the captain by the shoulders, “you need to find Movie Star and have him take you and Major Dickinson up to the brig. They will need the staff judge advocate there, and you can ride with him.”
“What about Major-Select Heyster and the others?” Carter asked, looking at the group of prosecutors standing in their usual small circle, Charlie with his pipe clenched in this teeth.
“They don’t have any clients in the brig, so they would just become curious onlookers, and would most likely get in the way,” Kirkwood said, turning Carter back toward him. “Don’t worry about those guys. Go get Movie Star and the other jeep.”
“Well, where is Lance Corporal Dean, anyway?” Carter asked, wringing his hands and turning again to look in all directions. “I saw Lance Corporal Pounds with Sergeant Amos and Corporal Farmer all talking to Staff Sergeant Pride just a moment ago, but Dean disappeared right after he ate dinner. I haven’t seen him for quite a long time. Not in the past hour, anyway.”
“Use your head, Skipper,” O’Connor said, pointing at his temple and tapping it. “It’s Friday night. Bet our horny lance corporal has a date with Rosy Palm back in the barracks. Take a look there.”
“Well, he’ll just have to send her back to her quarters on her own then,” Carter said, putting his nose in the air. “We have an emergency, and no time to spare for running prom dates home. I am sure that Major Dickinson won’t even want to know about Movie Star’s date. Is she a nurse? The name doesn’t sound Vietnamese.”
“No, Mike, but she is an American,” O’Connor said, and then laughed. “You be nice to her.”
“Of course!” Captain Carter huffed, and then took off running toward the enlisted quarters, where Lance Corporal Dean lived in a cubicle wallpapered with centerfold pinups from the past dozen issues of Penthouse magazine.
“You asshole!” Wayne Ebberhardt said, laughing as he jogged alongside Terry O’Connor. “Only Michael Carter would not know the true identity of Rosy Palm and her five sisters who never say no. It’s almost worth going back to watch!”
Jon Kirkwood had already sat down behind the steering wheel, and Mike Schuller occupied the front passenger seat, leaving the back bench for Ebberhardt and O’Connor. When the two captains jumped aboard, Kirkwood popped the clutch and raced toward the air base main gate.
AN IRRITATING TAPPING sound outside his wall lockers stirred James Dean from his lust-driven daze. He had a red lightbulb screwed in his desk lamp, providing a certain sultry ambience to his cubicle, and a fifteen-watt reading light mounted on the pipe frame of his bunk, focused on the spread-open centerfold of the August issue of his favorite American publication.
“Don’t fuck with me right now, man, I’m almost there,” Movie Star called out, not taking his eyes off the pair of large breasts and nearly hairless pubic triangle in the centerfold photo that he held up with his left hand while his right worked frantically at his crotch and had his libido racing at ultrahigh speed. His blurring vision shifted continuously from the pinup’s muff to her breasts, to her bright-red lips, then back to her muff.
When he reached his slippery right hand toward the night table where he had a large plastic bottle of creamy-pink baby lotion with a handy pump top, trying to quickly reload his palm with the sweet-smelling lubricant and get his sloppy fist back into action, he heard a high-pitched scream that for an instant he thought came from a woman. The lance corporal sat up only to see Captain Michael Carter standing in the cubicle entrance, twittering with his hands over his eyes and vibrating on his toes.
“Oh, my God!” Carter cried, glancing down to see the naked, fully erect Marine. Then he covered his eyes and twittered again like a young, inexperienced girl getting her first look at pornography.
“Holy shit, sir, I’m almost there, can’t you give me just about thirty seconds?” Movie Star whined, and then went back to work on his masturbation with furious intensity.
“Oh, I’ve got to get some air!” Carter squealed, and staggered back into the center aisle of the barracks, holding his hands across his chest and gasping for breath. “Corporal, you have no shame! Oh, my God! Captain O’Connor said you had a girl here with you, a person named Rose something or other.”
“Yeah, sir, Rosy Palm, she’s right here,” Dean called back and began groaning. “Oh, that’s it, baby. Take it all. Yeah, ride it hard. Let your daddy come home. Oh, yeah, baby.”
“Oh, my God!” Carter gasped, stepping back into the lance corporal’s doorway, looking to see if a girl was there and considering that he might not have noticed her at his first glance. However, when he took his second look, he only saw the driver with his hand stroking away and a stream of semen suddenly gushing over the top of his fist.
“Damn, sir,” Movie Star said, catching his breath and wiping himself with a towel that he had lain by his side, “what’s so fucking important?”
“You’ve got to drive me and the colonel, or rather the major, to the brig,” Carter said in a rapid-fire staccato. “We think that the Viet Cong have attacked it and overrun the place. It’s on fire! You can see it burning from down here.”
“Why the fuck would Charlie want to rocket the brig?” Dean said, pulling on his utility trousers without putting on any underwear, and then slipping on his blouse without a T-shirt under it. Then he flopped on the side of his bunk, yanked up his socks, stabbed his feet down in his boots, and laced them before Michael Carter could think of a reason why anyone would want to rocket a jail.
“You know, I cannot imagine how I can explain what just happened in your cubicle when I go to confession to the chaplain tomorrow,” Carter said, completely flustered and walking with a hurried step alongside the driver as they headed toward the jeep where Major Dudley Dickinson sat in the passenger seat, waiting and trying to make a two-way radio work that Staff Sergeant Pride had given to him so he could communicate with the PMO if needed.
“What do you have to confess, sir?” Dean said, jumping in the driver’s seat while Carter climbed over the side and fell onto the back bench.
“Why, your masturbation, of course,” Carter replied, straightening himself up.
Dudley Dickinson looked at Lance Corporal Dean and then glanced over his shoulder at Carter.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dickinson growled at the captain.
“I saw the lance corporal, sir,” Carter stammered, and then blushed so badly that he could not wrestle his voice from his throat.
“What? You walked in on this shitbird jacking off?” Dickinson asked, and then laughed so hard he lost his breath.
“Yes, sir,” Carter answered, and took a hard swallow. “Some of the men told me that Movie Star had a date accompany him to his barracks, a girl named Rose or something. So I wandered in, and I did knock, by the way. I fully expected to see him having a nice conversation with a young woman, but what I encou
ntered! Well, sir! Like I tried to tell Lance Corporal Dean, I just have no idea how I will explain it to the chaplain when I go to confession tomorrow.”
“You fucking moron, Rosy Palm! Your damned hand! Haven’t you ever?” Dickinson shouted, and then laughed as the jeep rolled past the air base’s main gate and headed for the brig. “No, I take it back, you probably have never whacked your noodle, have you.”
“If you mean masturbation, sir,” Carter said, blushing uncontrollably, “I do not make that a practice in my life. I pray about it when I feel my loins aroused. I certainly do not discuss the matter with anyone.”
“Whoever left your cage door unlocked back there in Boston should get the death penalty,” Dickinson growled while Movie Star smiled as he drove, holding in his laughter.
Chapter 20
THE RAGE
AS JON KIRKWOOD steered his jeep around the final turn approaching the Freedom Hill brig, two CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters launched from the clearing across the road from the prisoner of war compound next door and downwind from the military prison. Several canvas-topped Marine Corps six-by trucks sat with their diesel engines idling in front of a cluster of hooches across the parking lot from the blockhouse.
Nearly ninety inmates who had earned base-parolee status lived in these quarters. A panel of officers who included the provost marshal and brig warden and three members of the general staff, assigned on a rotating basis, reviewed the case of each man proposed for the parolee program. Envisioned by the provost marshal and Lieutenant Schuller, it served as a halfway house for inmates who neared the end of their sentences and demonstrated potential to return to the operating forces, serving to transition them back to Marine Corps units rather than the men getting shit-canned out of the service with an administrative discharge under less than honorable conditions. It offered Marines a second chance to finish their military obligation and obtain a general discharge under honorable conditions, which also warranted them receiving the full package of veterans’ benefits they would have otherwise lost. Putting the men back in the operating units also helped the Marine
Amphibious Force with its manpower shortfalls, which had become an increasing concern.
Staff Sergeant Abduleses had organized the base parolees into working parties that now helped the guard staff erect floodlights all around the brig’s perimeter. They had used the trucks to transport the Marines and equipment around the fence line and to tow generator trailers in place.
One by one as the workers started the generators’ engines, the banks of floodlights came on and fully illuminated the brig’s surroundings as well as the recreation yard and burning hooches.
“My God!” Jon Kirkwood exclaimed as he pulled the jeep in front of the administration building and Mike Schuller leaped out before he had a chance to stop. “This wasn’t a rocket attack. It’s a riot.”
“You think they killed anybody?” O’Connor said, looking at the many fires and seeing the prisoners inside the fence running aimlessly or hiding under the several rows of picnic tables that flanked the basketball court and served as movie seating on Friday nights.
“I’m afraid to even consider it,” Kirkwood answered, pausing to take in the view and trying to absorb what had happened.
Michael Schuller had run ahead of the three lawyers and quickly found Staff Sergeant Abduleses talking to Lieutenant Colonel Webster, the MAF chief of staff, and several other officers standing in a group on the walkway between the parking lot and the blockhouse. As the trio of lawyers approached the group, they recognized the familiar face of an old friend.
“Major Danger!” Terry O’Connor called out, seeing Jack Hembee across from the chief of staff and the provost marshal. The former operations officer from Fire Support Base Ross turned his head and smiled, seeing the two defense lawyers with an unfamiliar third man accompanying them. He gave the men a quick wave, and returned his attention to the colonels who conferred with him.
“We’ve got the prisoners contained for the night,” Hembee said to the group as the three lawyers approached and listened. “With our reinforced reaction company covering every foot of that fence line, nobody’s going anywhere. I say let them fight among themselves, get good and tired, and we can start clearing them out sometime tomorrow. They’ll want to sleep by then.”
“I think Jack’s right,” Colonel Webster said, slapping the major across the shoulders. “I’ve come to the same conclusion. We start popping gas in the dark and no telling what kind of disaster we can stir up. Besides, we have all those prisoners of war right down the hill, and the smoke has them coughing up a storm as it is. Mix in a bunch of CS and we’ll have a riot over there, too.”
“Staff Sergeant Abduleses mentioned that we had some shooting from the towers when this thing started,” Lieutenant Schuller said, looking at the senior member of his guard staff present with the group.
“Right,” Colonel Webster said, and looked up at the towers. “First thing I did when I got here, after the staff sergeant told me what happened, and those jokers were still shooting, I had every man who pulled a trigger brought out of the towers and replaced. Those men are now supervising the working parties among the base parolees. Last thing we need is somebody getting shot. According to Abdul here, our illustrious Sergeant Turner had apparently told those men to start shooting over the prisoners’ heads if trouble broke out. Although they were just following Turner’s orders, I still replaced the men, just to make sure I don’t have any trigger-happy jocks remaining up topside.
“We did have a group of inmates that tried to cut through the fence, but ol’ Abdul the Butcher here, had one of the M60s walk a little machine-gun fire in front of them as an attention-getter. Needless to say, it turned them back in short order. So I left a standing order to do that again if anyone else attempts to escape. Major Hembee and the reaction force have orders to do the same. I just don’t want anyone opening up on people inside the wire.”
“What about our people, sir?” Schuller asked. “What’s the count?”
“Abdul says that they took hostage six of our men: Gunner Holden, Gunny MacMillan, Sergeant Turner, Corporal Todd, and Lance Corporals Brookman and Fletcher,” the colonel answered. “We have no idea of their status. Last word on Fletcher, he had escorted a prisoner up to control. Turner and Brookman got beaten, but the people in the tower said that they observed them moving inside the cell block with the others, walking on their own, apparently protected by a couple of pretrial prisoners, Fryer and Wilson, who fought back other inmates, keeping them off our guys. I’ve put people with cameras and long lenses up in the towers. If we shoot anything, let’s shoot pictures so we can learn who’s in charge down there and who’s helping our side. Apparently we have at least two good guys in the crowd.”
“Sergeant Donald T. Wilson, sir,” Kirkwood said, offering the name of his client after the colonel had finished. “He’s my client. A good Marine. Big guy. Tough as a boot. I don’t know about Fryer.”
“Fryer came to us from division,” Schuller said, looking at Captains Kirkwood, O’Connor, and Ebberhardt. “His unit charged him with attempted murder after he shot his battalion commander’s tent to ribbons. The major was in the crapper at the time. I talked to Fryer about it, and he volunteered to tell me what happened. He said he saw his major leave the tent, so he shot it all to hell to send the commander a message that the troops had reached the ends of their ropes with him. Apparently this major is a grade-A careerist asshole. I’ve had my share of dealing with the type. Not fun. While I don’t agree with Fryer’s methods, he certainly made his point clear. Remember me telling you about him? How his captain and first sergeant hugged him like family when they left him here?”
“Sure, now that you mention it,” Ebberhardt said, nodding.
“Yeah, right, I recall the tale,” O’Connor said, nodding as well.
“It’s right in character that Sergeant Fryer would try to help Sergeant Wilson protect the guards and get this riot settled down,” Schulle
r said, and looked at Colonel Webster and the chief of staff. “They may be able to help us segregate peaceful prisoners and our captive guards away from the troublemakers, so that if we go in there with force we can spare the men who aren’t part of the riot.”
“You really think we can trust those two?” Colonel Webster asked, and then looked past the blockhouse at the scene of chaos. “It would be nice if they got our guards and a few of the noncombative prisoners out.”
“Given what I know about those two men,” Schuller said, “and Captain Kirkwood can back me up at least on Wilson, I believe that if we give them the chance to bring people out, they will do it. In fact, sir, I’ll wager you that they are already trying to do something like it. Despite incarceration, they just don’t strike me as the kind of men to sit back and let things go to hell. I think them pulling Turner and Brookman out of the melee and protecting them demonstrates my point.”
“So if we see a group of inmates coming toward the blockhouse, and it looks like Wilson or Fryer have charge of the men, then we should open the doors and let them through?” Colonel Webster said, and looked at Staff Sergeant Abduleses and Lieutenant Schuller.
“Yes, sir, that’s my recommendation,” Schuller said, and took a deep breath.
“What about you, Abdul?” the colonel asked. “How do you size up this situation? You think those two men might work from the inside to help us?”
“I’m quite leery of just opening the gates for a gaggle of prisoners headed for the blockhouse,” the staff sergeant said, shaking his head. “I’d want guards to check the men through as they entered the building. However, the lieutenant is right about Fryer and Wilson. Despite their troubles, they seem like pretty solid Marines to me. I doubt very seriously if either of them had anything to do with this riot.
“My bet goes to that bunch of shitbirds that ganged around prisoners Harris, Pitts, and Anderson just before the movie was supposed to start. That’s where my people observed the whole thing starting. Pitts and Harris got in a shoving match, Fletcher took Harris upstairs, and then Anderson and two other inmates jumped Turner and Brookman. Then from right there in that same area, at that same moment, a whole mob of prisoners jumped up and went ballistic. It looked orchestrated. Planned.
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