“That’s as far as you go, miss,” said Captain Alvin Z. Dupuy, the prosecuting attorney.
“What do you mean?” asked Captain Morriss.
“No press. No farther,” said Captain Dupuy.
“This is bull . . .”
“This is orders from MACV,” said Captain Dupuy. “This is as far as she goes. This is as far as anybody goes. You ought to consider yourself lucky to be getting an audience with your so-called client, Morriss.”
“Will you wait for me here?” asked Captain Morriss. “This shouldn’t take long.”
“Sure,” said Cathy Joice.
A half-hour later, he returned, looking grim.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“They’re railroading this kid,” said Captain Morriss.
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, but what I do know is this: a court-martial procedure that normally takes six to eight weeks has been screwed down to seven days. They want to get this kid in front of a court-martial and out of here. That’s why you’re not welcome. They don’t want press. They don’t want anybody to know what’s going on. It’s scary.”
Captain Morriss looked across the barren grounds of the Long Binh Jail and shook his head.
“I think they’re trying to kill this kid, and I don’t know why,” he said. “I just hope I can figure this whole thing out before it’s too late.”
“Hasn’t Lieutenant Blue told you what you need to know?” asked Cathy Joice.
“No. He just sits there staring. That’s what’s really scary. He doesn’t seem to care what happens to him. He just sits there, looking at the wall. I hope I can get through to him before it’s too late.”
FOUR
* * *
* * *
A Slit in His Face Called a Smile
Firebase Zulu-Foxtrot Day Four
* * *
* * *
Night came fast. The Lieutenant was glad the brigade had stopped its sweep and had dug in early. He had been in more hospitable spots than the little knoll identified on the map as Hill 448 which by his reckoning was ten kliks inside the nation of Laos. The ops order he’d received that morning had said nothing about Laos. The alleged purpose of the sweep was to stir up some action with an estimated NVA Battalion, reinforced, which division intelligence said was active in the AO, or area of operations.
What area, you dufus base-camp hooch-rat G-2 motherfuckers? The area known to the rest of the world as goddamned Laos? Who in hell dreamed up this chickenshit operation, anyway? Halleck? Testor, the goddamned brigade CO? Maybe it was General Cardozo, who to his great surprise wakes up every morning and looks in the mirror of his air-conditioned trailer back there in the big base camp and sees a division commander. S-u-u-u-re, Gen- Gen. Two stars and a clap on the back and a brand new guidon and you think your shit doesn’t stink anymore, old God himself reached down and bopped you on the head and made you the military equivalent of bishop. Yeah? Tactical genius by divine ordination? That what you think your gig is, General, sir, er . . . ah . . . Bishop, sir? Well, General, sir, Bishop, sir, haul your starched ass out here and see if you can’t figure out what the hell we’re doing in Laos, dug in on a little hump in the ground no bigger than a baseball field, sitting here in the dark waiting for something to happen. C’mon, chopper on out here to us, General, sir, Bishop, sir. Award yourself another Air Medal while you’re at it. We’ve got a spot for heavily decorated heroes like you. In a hole next to Whoopie Cushion Ridgely who figures he’s got a pipeline to the same dude upstairs who stuck stars on your cap. Cushion sees stars, too, sir. Only problem being, Cushion sees them when they aren’t really there. You’ll love him, General, sir, Bishop, sir. Cushion’s one of those American Fighting Men who makes guys like congressmen and generals and bishops get all teary-eyed every time they give a speech about the selfless sacrifices he makes, his dedication to his duty and to the ideals of Democracy . . . Why, they’re so proud of the idea of Whoopie Cushion they just plain forgot ol’ Cushion himself. Hell’s bells, General, sir, Bishop, sir. Drop what you’re doing, sir, hop a Huey and visit us here on Hill 448. We’ll put you in a hole with Cushion and I personally guarantee you’ll spend a night you won’t soon forget. Any justice left in the world, you’ll qualify for another Air Medal . . . an Air Head Medal for Bravery in the Face of Lunacy . . .
The Lieutenant stood in the commander’s cupola of his track, his back pressed up against the foam-edged rim of the cupola, gazing out at the perimeter. Concertina wire, vicious stuff with razor-sharp barbs laid around the hill like a gigantic Slinky, had been uncoiled and bounced around until the little hill had a three-deep barbed wire necklace. Concertina was SOP stuff—standard operating procedure—intended to discourage VC sappers from coming inside the perimeter to wreak havoc with grenades, explosive charges, whatever was this week’s flavor at the VC Sapper Shop. Thing was, it hardly even slowed them down. The concertina probably just pissed them off a little, made ’em want to kill even more round-eyes.
Outside the wire were Claymore mines, neat little jobs that looked like an olive-drab paperback book open to the middle. Detonated by remote control or trip-wire, Claymores spewed a fan of thousands of tiny flechettes, steel arrowheads with sharp points, in front of them. Claymores were nice to have out there protecting you, if you could find enough of them that were operable. The problem with Claymores was coffee. Guys were always unscrewing the backing plates from the mines and digging out and lighting up the C-4 explosive, with which they would heat canteen cups of coffee.
The Lieutenant had often marveled at the essential ingenuity of the average troop.
He had also often marveled at the essential stupidity of the average troop, whose priorities ran to hot coffee in the morning rather than live Claymores at night around the perimeter.
Aaah, well . . .
What are you going to do, Lieutenant?
Or, as Dirtball put it:
“Whatchew gonna dew, Eltee?”
It was an organic thing, a living creature, a platoon. You woke it up in the morning and you fed it and you told it to come on and do this thing, whatever thing, anything, then you fed it again, and you took it somewhere and did another thing, then you dug it in and you fed it again and you slept with it and you did the same thing all over again. In return, the platoon would keep you safe and dry (sometimes) and warm with its embrace.
A platoon was not a pet and it was not a possession and it was not a career position and it was not positive and it was not negative. A platoon was what you made it and what it made you. It was men banded together to do the work of war and the glue that bonded them was not political or legal or practical or mental; it was love that held a platoon together in sun and storm and pits and glory.
And to command a platoon in combat was like playing the game of Three Wishes for keeps. Every kid, at least once, tried the most obvious first wish of all, that all your other wishes would come true. And that was the thing about commanding a platoon in combat. You had to take the chance that your first wish would not come true, that you might lose the game, or it was all for nothing.
Combat was different from the real world. It was somewhere out there in the zone where the normal rules didn’t apply anymore. It was like a game, and you began with these men and these weapons and these tracks; you started with no rules, with all of the pieces on the board. The game was combat, and you really got to use them. Stateside, all you could do was take them out in a big field somewhere on the military reservation and drive around and shoot blanks.
In combat, everything counted. The guns fired real bullets. The 4.2s lofted real rounds. The M-79s fired real grenades. And when you hit somebody out there in the bush, he bled real blood. Few would talk about it, and if they talked, nobody would admit it, but the thing about commanding a platoon in combat was that it was fun. It was like a game.
But out there in the woods in the dark, you left the gameboard.
Out there, everything depended on
how good you really were, how much you really meant it, how much courage you really had.
Out there beyond the wire in the woods in the dark, running that platoon was frightening beyond all your poor powers of imagining how it would be.
Out there, you had to make your first wish come true, or they died.
Sometimes you’d lose track of what a platoon was and what it was not and what it was doing to you and what you were doing to it, and the guilt would settle in back there behind your eyes where memory lived, reminding you of who you were and what you meant to the platoon and what it meant to you. You’d stand there alone at night and watch it out there on the perimeter playing the game for you for real, and you’d love it all over again and swear you wouldn’t forget this time . . . this time you’d always remember that a platoon was a gift from God, a blessing bought wholesale that really was just like Grandpa’s Battalion . . . a platoon was the most perfect thing in the world, and don’t you ever forget it, boy, don’t you ever forget what those men do for you . . .
Okay . . . okay. I won’t, Grandpa. And yeah, I’ll remember, Dad. Just stop hammering me with your rules and reminding me of the wonderfulness of it all. It’s only a platoon. We’re only men trying to fight a war. Weirder more wonderful stuff has happened to lesser collections of people. Like families.
The Lieutenant’s track was dug in defilade, down between two bumps in the ground that protected it from direct fire from its flanks. But standing in the cupola, he could see all the way around the perimeter and beyond it to the treeline looming like a wall in the distance. He could see them out there in their holes doing their thing for him in the dark.
What in the hell was going on? They were in Laos, to be sure, yeah, but what were they doing there? And why wasn’t Laos on the ops order menu this morning? And why wasn’t there any acknowledgment by Battalion of their position inside the Laotian border? And where in hell was this so-called NVA Battalion, reinforced? And what in hell were they supposed to do with a NVA Battalion, reinforced, if it happened along the goddamned pike? Shake fucking hands with it?
Questions flew through the Lieutenant’s mind like fireflies, each one briefly illuminated without shedding any real light on the situation.
He felt something tugging on his pants leg and looked down. It was Dirtball.
“Hey, Eltee. It’s the CO on the horn for ya, sir.”
The Lieutenant stooped down through the cupola and sat down on his air mattress up against the firewall. He took the mike from Dirtball.
“Rattail Six, this is Rattail Two, over.”
“This is Six,” crackled Goose Gardner, the company commander, over the radio.
“I just got a mission for you from Saltlick Six,” said Gardner, referring to the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Halleck. “You are to send out an ambush patrol at a distance of two thousand meters from your perimeter on azimuth two-niner-zero. Radio your coordinates when you’re set up, over.”
“Roger,” said the Lieutenant, “that is ambush patrol at two thousand meters, azimuth two-niner-zero, come again.”
“Roger that,” said Gardner.
“Rattail Six, this is Two. Back to you with those coordinates when we get out there in a short-short. Out.”
The Lieutenant handed the mike to Dirtball.
“Rattail Six says we’ve got to put an ambush patrol outside the wire, two thousand meters northwest of here.”
“Whatchew gonna dew, Eltee?”
“Put the damn patrol out there, that’s what,” said the Lieutenant. “Where’s Davis?”
“He’s out behind his track, over there,” said Dirtball, pointing out the back of the track to a bump in the ground.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” said the Lieutenant.
He found Platoon Sergeant Elroy Davis behind his track, as advertised. He was picking at something gray and soupy at the bottom of his canteen cup.
“Want some, Eltee?” he asked thickly, holding up the cup, his mouth full of gray soupy stuff.
“No thanks,” said the Lieutenant.
“What’s up, Eltee?” asked Davis.
“I just heard from Captain Gardner that we’ve got to put an ambush patrol out there, two thousand meters from the perimeter. I think I’m going to take it out myself, Davis. I don’t like the looks of this shit around here. There’s no telling what we’re going to run into, or what’s going to run into us. I want to make sure we’re set up and we know right where we are, so fucking Battalion doesn’t put a patrol out there that runs into us.”
“I can dig it,” said Sergeant Davis.
“You run things back here while we’re out there,” said the Lieutenant. “I want that perimeter so fucking tight I’ll be able to hear their assholes puckering at two thousand meters, you got me?”
“Gotchew, Eltee. I’ll keep ’em awake. Don’tchew go worryin’ yo’self ’bout that.”
“They better be, Sarge. There’s no telling what manner of hell might be raised by that fucking NVA Battalion that’s supposed to be out there.”
“Who you gonna take, Eltee?”
“Dirtball, Repatch, Woodley, Cushion, Moonface, and Strosher.”
“I’d keep an eye on Cushion, sir,” said Sergeant Davis. “He been seein’ things again, sir, talkin’ t’ God and weird shit.”
“I know,” said the Lieutenant. “I’m going to have to live with it, Sarge. Cushion’s the only one who knows where Repatch is when he’s on point. It’s like they’ve got some kind of radar between them.”
“I hear that,” said Sergeant Davis. “Spooky mo’fo’s, you ask me, sir.”
“Maybe having those two spooky mo’fo’s with us will scare the shit out of the NVA, they’ll check out Cushion and Repatch and just cash their check and keep their distance.”
“I hear that.”
“Stay by your radio. I’ll buzz you, let you know where we are when we get settled out there.”
“Rodge, Eltee. Me an’ the platoon gonna keep our shit together. Nobody gonna fuck with our shit. No, sir.”
The Lieutenant walked the perimeter, rounding up the troops. Each of them grabbed his M-16, a pouch of ammunition clips, a half-dozen grenades, and as many Claymores as he could stuff in the pockets of his rucksack. They tucked ponchos and poncho liners into web gear and waited at the wire in a file, pissing and moaning and swearing off dope and cigarettes and booze and chicks, if only they can make it through this fucking patrol in one piece, promise you, God, every one of our sorry asses promises we’ll be good forever, yes indeed, God, sir, just get us through this one fucking patrol alive.
Repatch, picking his teeth with a skinny nail he carried around, humming a James Brown tune, rolling his shoulders, swiveling sideways, doing an eerie soft-shoe in the dark . . .
Dirtball, shouldering the prick-25 and an M-79 and a bandolier of ’79 grenade shells and a homemade sack carrying his stash of C’s, scratching his ass, spitting tobacco juice toward the wire . . .
***
Woodley, the medic, skinny as a twig, silent and brooding and hawk-faced under the camouflage-stick he’d rubbed all over his face like an Indian . . .
Whoopie Cushion, hugging himself, rocking back and forth, back and forth, talking to God, listening to the devil, goosing Moonface, scratching his nose and farting and rubbing his weapon like it was a girl . . .
Moonface, M-60 slung over his shoulder like a smoked ham, chest crisscrossed with belts of linked ammo, twitching every time Cushion ribbed him, grinning that toothy grin, laughing, jiving nervously . . .
Strosher, blond and jolly, claimed to be eighteen, looked fourteen, eager, loaded down with his M-16 and six M-72 LAWs—light antitank weapons, folding bazookas you fired once and threw away—Strosher’s favorite, called them his roman candles . . .
The Lieutenant, traveling light, M-79 and a load of shotgun shells, binoculars for better night vision, face rubbed with camouflage, spitting anxiety through the gap in his teeth, trying to go steely and cold and
knowing it wouldn’t work, he was sweating and shuffling at the edge of the night with the rest of them . . .
Mallick lifted the wire and pointed out the Claymores and their trip-wires, and they moved out silently from the perimeter, heading across the high grass for the trees. It was black-dark, no moon, light cloud cover, no stars, nothing, a good night for a patrol, if there could be said to be any time of the day or night, bright or dark or rainy or shiny, that was truly good for shit like crawling around out there in a place not of your choosing, spoiling for a fight with persons painted green and black and scared and alone . . .
***
. . . and, like you, strangers once they were beyond the wire.
They moved softly through the tall grass and disappeared into the black hole of Laotian woods.
Repatch on point, gliding silently up ahead somewhere, Cushion following, finding the way behind him through signals only the two of them understood . . . crushed grass . . . bent twigs . . . little clicks and clacks they did back and forth with their tongues . . .
The Lieutenant behind Cushion with his compass and his map, counting paces, counting, counting, estimating distance from the wire, gauging his position by terrain and just plain old instinct . . .
Dirtball on the Lieutenant’s tail, ticking his back with the prick-25’s antenna, mike/receiver glued to his head like a new ear . . .
The rest of them trailing behind, picking their way carefully through a forest of sweating trees and midnight brambles, cursing to themselves in a velvety chorus of dull fear and black hatred . . .
They had moved fifteen hundred meters by the Lieutenant’s estimation, and they were cresting a low hill, when the signal came back that Repatch was frozen, pointing into the dark.
Army Blue Page 18