Free-Fire Zone Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part Two

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Book #4 Teaser

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Everything counts.

  That’s the difference, here. That’s the difference between life now and here and life before and everywhere else. Nothing really counted before.

  There were two kinds of results back there back then, meaning my previous, pre-Marines life. There were two kinds of results, and those were failure and that didn’t count. Usually, failure. But if I actually passed a quiz, the quiz was too easy so that didn’t count. If I got a base hit, the sun was in somebody’s eyes so that didn’t count. If I pitched a penny closer to the wall than anybody else, then I must have stepped over the line or the wall moved or whatever so that didn’t count and so just do it over again, Rudy-Judy. Course, nobody called me Rudy-Judy if my buddy Ivan was around, except sometimes Ivan, but the rest was always the same:

  We weren’t ready, Rudi, so it don’t count. Do it over. You gotta do it over.

  Now? I never need to do it over. And you have to be ready. ’Cause it counts, brother. It all counts now.

  “Can you count, private?!”

  “Yes, forty-three, sir, I, forty-four, can.”

  I can’t believe how happy I am in this situation. There’s a big beast of a baldy-man drill instructor spitting in my face while I do push-ups in the strongest sun I’ve ever dealt with. There could even be two suns working on me from two angles, because that’s how the summer sun feels here in the South. The DI, who is a sergeant, is doing the push-ups with me, which is kind of decent of him in the suns and everything, and the spitting is not at all intentional. At least I don’t think so.

  See, I was doing my push-ups like he told me to and something got him riled, like lots of things do, and he hit the dirt with me, stretching out in the opposite direction. His feet are down that way and mine are back behind me like they usually are, and our faces are together, going up and down at the same time while he screams and spits at me, which he calls chatting. We’ve had a lot of chats, me and him. Guys are standing lined up beside me in both directions and laughing, which usually isn’t allowed, but Sarge made a special Rudi Rule after the first two weeks of camp that it was okay to laugh at me. Because recruits could not afford to be expending the considerable energy it would take to not laugh at me while that energy was going to be needed elsewhere.

  I’m kind of a legend here in the South.

  And by “here in the South,” I don’t mean someplace like Marshfield or Woods Hole, either. I mean Parris Island, South Carolina, where guys say the Devil himself goes for his summer vacation.

  “I don’t believe that you can count, private!”

  Sarge is in great shape, to be doing the push-ups in the suns and still screaming like he is.

  “I can, fifty-two, sir. Just not, fifty-four, real great.”

  The guys are busting out laughing now and who even knows why. But it’s fun. Sarge even goes way out of line and lets himself fall chest-flat on the ground while I keep pumping and the guys keep laughing.

  “Are you for real, private?”

  He’s got me with that one. I keep on pushing up, trying to keep count in my head, trying to come up with an answer to his question, trying to keep the guys laughing at the same time because I like that and the sergeant surely likes that and when he’s happy everybody’s happy.

  I’ve never felt so powerful in all my life, I swear. My head is swimming with it.

  Until my arms buckle under me and my face bounces off the baked dirt of the ground.

  Some time passes. That’s not a big deal of course, since time does that kind of thing all the time. But the difference now is, this time passes without me. Because when I open my eyes, without remembering ever closing them to begin with, I am indoors, sitting in a chair. Everything’s all changed from the last moment I remember — except for Sarge being right in my face.

  “I do have to ask you again,” he says, a lot less screamy and tough than usual, “are you for real, recruit?”

  “No, sir,” I say, “I’m only drafted.”

  Behind Sarge, somebody chuckles. That somebody turns out to be the medic, who brushes past Sarge and leans close to me. He’s checking out my eyes, feeling my skull and my nose.

  “Where you from, kid?” he asks. He has a strong accent, like he’s a local around here, even though nobody seems to actually be from Parris Island, South Carolina. The only guys who say they’re from Parris Island are the Marine recruits, and they’re all actually from someplace else. Like me, for instance.

  “I’m from Boston, sir.”

  Sarge cuts in. “And we thought it was all clever college boys up in Boston.”

  “It is,” I say. “The smart ones are all still there.”

  They both laugh now, and Sarge reaches in to slap my leg. “Well, that’s good. I’m glad they off-loaded you on us, then. You gonna be all right?”

  I look to the medic, since it seems to me he’s the one making that decision. But his answer is way too long. At some point he says something like “heat frustration,” which sounds too much like something I would say, so I won’t be saying it.

  I definitely hear the last part, because he’s looking at me when he says it. “If he learns to keep hydrated — and learns to count — he should be just fine,” he says.

  Turns out Sarge only asked me for thirty push-ups. I really must pay closer attention.

  “Anyway,” I say, “it’s not like I’m ever gonna run into any hotter sun than South Carolina sun, that’s for sure.”

  They both go quiet, staring at me, though I don’t know what I’ve done wrong this time. Then they turn to each other.

  “Is he for real?” the medic asks Sarge.

  Sarge has a big smile on his face, though he’s also shaking his head as he asks me:

  “Recruit, have you ever heard of a place called Vietnam?”

  Fire.

  The place is on fire.

  I apologize to both countries, but they shouldn’t be called North Vietnam and South Vietnam. They should be called North Fire and South Fire.

  Here’s a joke. It was told to me by a guy on the troop ship that brought us here from Oakland, California. He was coming back this way after serving one tour of duty, getting discharged, going home, then signing up again when he got bored with life outside the war because it had very little shooting and stuff like that.

  The joke is: What’s the difference between an oven on full blast and summer in Vietnam?

  And anyway, I forgot the answer, so the answer is: nothing. There is no difference, okay?

  Fire. The feel of fire is everywhere, heat rising up off the ground and pouring down from the sky, and it seems like half of everything is actually on fire half the time, from the bombs and the napalm, and I swear the temperature goes down when you get close to real, flamey-type fire instead of standing in the regular open air of Vietnam.

  Fire!

  You hear the word all the time, too. They really encourage a lot of shooting. I find myself constantly comparing what I do here with what I might’ve been doing back in Boston, and I can never see anybody letting me shoot at anything over there. I have to say, right off the bat that makes it Marines 1, regular life 0.

  ’Cause it’s hot in combat terms, too. Has been from the day I arrived in I Corps Tactical Zo
ne — that’s the north part of South Vietnam, just to be extra confusing. Getting to camp was like a tour of every kind of destruction you could imagine. And then I didn’t even make it to lunchtime on day one before I was sent out with a patrol and orders to shoot at everything that moved.

  Nothing moved. We shot anyway. At trees and hills and clouds and abandoned burned-out vehicles.

  I have to say, I like the shooting.

  I like the war.

  I shouldn’t say that. Even I know I shouldn’t say that. Nobody should like a war, even if they are great at it, like General Patton or Snoopy or somebody. But this is so different from life the way it was. And those are the only two ways of life I have to compare.

  I was all wrong back home, and that’s the truth.

  I’m all right here.

  I haven’t killed anybody yet — not for sure, but I’ve tried. And almost as good as a confirmed kill is when you fire your M-16 in the direction of the enemy and you actually see them run away, run like rabbits, this way and that because they are afraid. Just a week ago, some fighters from the other side ran away screaming in another language when my company took over this village full of Vietcong and their sympathizers and, man, there’s nothing, like nothing, that compares with that anywhere in my experience. I was heavy breathing for about an hour after that excursion, and I wasn’t even tired. Getting kind of breathy right now just remembering. If they’d shot back instead of retreating, I think my lungs might have broken my ribs.

  I’m scared, too, so it’s not like I’m saying I’m not. But that’s a whole other thing. I’m scared, but a little bit less than yesterday and a little bit less than the day before and a good lot less than at the start of my eight weeks of basic training. So the direction I’m going seems to be the right one.

  And I was scared a whole bunch of the time in Boston, too. Difference is that when something scares me here, I shoot at it. You know what those fleeing, screaming, scaredy VC looked like to me? A bunch of ol’ Rudi-Judies, is what they looked like. Made me want to shoot ’em all the more.

  I haven’t killed any just yet — not confirmed. But it’s only a matter of time.

  Shooting solves a lot of stuff, it really does.

  Lieutenant Jupp is our squad leader and for the most part he is not popular, though I like him okay.

  “Boiled Cabbage, get over here, now!” he yells at me from across the camp. He speaks the opposite way most people do, in that he screams all his words unless he’s very angry. Or unless he has a good reason not to, I guess, like if we’re on patrol and screaming gets us noticed and located and dead. He started calling me Boiled Cabbage — or just Cabbage, or BC — practically as soon as he saw me. Never told me why, but I figure it’s due to the fact I wear green and I have my helmet on almost every minute because I like the way it makes me feel. And also apparently my face is a kind of boiled red all the time since I arrived in-country.

  My mom used to sing this song sometimes, when she was cooking. “Oh, I’m a savage / for bacon and cabbage …” Made me laugh. I miss her bacon and cabbage more than most of the rest of life at home.

  “Yes, sir, lieutenant,” I say, as I always say. I’m up off my bunk and out of the hooch as I say it. A hooch is a sort of structure with the frame of a house and the everything else of a tent. Lt. Jupp is across the yard in his own quarters, but I never miss a call. Like a dog to a whistle, the other guys say, but I say it’s like a Marine to an order.

  I like orders. Good Marines are great at following them.

  “Can I give you a job, Cabbage?” he barks as I stand just inside his hooch and he hunches over a small writing table covered in maps.

  “Yes, you can, sir,” I say.

  “Of course I can. But can I give you a job and be sure it gets done and gets done right and nobody gets accidentally killed or maimed including yourself?”

  He’s shouting all these words, so all the camp is listening and there are laughs here and there and a few comments, some guys shouting stupid answers pretending to be me.

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  “Good!” He barks that one real loud, because when he has only one syllable to get out he likes to get it way out. “Private, I would like you to lead the squad out to this spot here on the map….”

  Urrrr.

  As much as I love following orders, my head gets a lot swimmy at this part. I can’t stand reading maps. I mean, every little colored line on a map might just as well be one more thread of choke wire and all of them wrapping around my brain and pulling tight. And so I panic, privately to myself.

  “Are you listening to me, private?” he bellows. So maybe possibly the panic’s not completely private to myself.

  “Yes, sir, I’m listening.” I’m listening with all my might.

  We’re supposed to go and visit a village about eight miles down the road from Chu Lai, where we’re stationed. We’ve been to the village before, even, a few times. The assignment is simple as simple can be, kind of like my mom sending me to the store for sugar and tea and margarine like she was doing by the time I was five. Lt. Jupp wants us to march down to what we call Co Co Village and hook up with the CAP unit we have living up there. CAP is for Combined Action Program, where whole units of Marines live full-time with real Vietnamese in their own villages. The idea is to keep the Vietcong out, and to kinda keep us in. Even though we’re on their side, it’s not always sure how much the South Vietnamese love us being here, so it pays to stay on top of it.

  “Candy!” Lt. Jupp says.

  “Candy, sir,” I say, because a Marine does not have to understand a thing to repeat it.

  “We have come into possession of a shipment of candy. And some flower seeds. And vegetable seeds. And some Captain America comic books and assorted whatnot that we do not particularly need but that will undoubtedly help out the CAP effort down at Co Co. I want you men to deliver these goods, moving along this trail here mostly by the river. Get you some badly needed activity, as well as maintaining that road clean and safe for us between here and there.”

  Things have been very quiet in the area lately. Nothing too exciting going on, so we’ve done a lot more lying around and listening to the war in the far distance than we have soldiering. It won’t last, of course, and we’re supposed to remain battle-ready and fit, not lazy.

  “You won’t be coming with us then, sir?”

  “No, Cabbage, I thought this is just the kind of beginner operation I would like to see you leading for yourself. Then someday, who knows, we might be able to take your training wheels off.”

  It’s stupid how excited that statement makes me. I should be embarrassed, is what I should be, but I’m not. Of the twelve of us in the squad, I would be the dead twelfth in a map-reading competition. If you split the next stupidest guy in two, I would come in thirteenth. Heck, our squad is divided into two fire teams and we almost never even see those guys but I am sure every last one of them beats me at map reading. If I went to look for them to find out, I’d just get lost.

  But everybody already knows the way to Co Co. Even I know the way. Once the map became part of the deal, my senses went inside-up and outside-down, but I’d be fine out on the road and mapless.

  Candy delivery.

  At least I’m smart enough to know I should be a little embarrassed. But I’m dumb enough to be proud and excited as well.

  He likes me. More than he likes any of the other guys. He favors me and has done right by me from the start, like he wants to try and make some small something out of me while we’re here.

  I won’t let him down.

  The sounds when I walk back into the hooch could just as easily be coming all the way from seventh grade. I’m getting bombarded with oooohhhs and hooooos and loud, smacking kissing noises. It’s enough to make me freeze there in the door frame and flame red all over, just like grade school was six seconds ago and not six years.

  “What?” I say to the guys, with my hands held out and my face probably screwed in f
our different expressions. I love to be part of the squad, love it, and if that means taking some grief, then I love grief. But my faces are surely also telling how confused and a little nervous I am, because some of this is fun and some of it is nasty and, like with everything around here, it’s at least a little threatening.

  Private Marquette hops up off his bunk and comes right up to me, getting in my face with all that fun and scary all at once as he says loud, “The candy run? Cabbage, man, you’re leading us on the candy run?”

  “I guess you heard,” I say.

  “King Candy — that should be your new nickname, Cabbage. You far too sweet to be any ol’ cabbage. And don’t the boss know it.”

  “Teacher’s pet right there,” Gillespie says, sitting on the side of his bunk with his shirt off and his new Marine Corps Semper Fidelis tattoo still glowing sore red on his left pectoral muscle.

  Teacher’s pet. Me.

  “First time I’ve ever been called that, I can tell ya,” I say, as truthful a thing as I’ll say all day.

  Since being stationed in Chu Lai, I’d have to say my experience of the war hasn’t been quite what I pictured in terms of the personnel and command structure.

  People sort of do what they feel like, much more of the time than I would have guessed.

  “Do you think the corporals might have wanted to join us?” I ask as we start down the road — the mighty five of us who decided to march.

  Right behind me, the guy we call Squid gives me a shove in the back with what feels like the nose of his gun. His head is squid shaped, but he’s still one of the better guys.

  “Since you’ve been here, Cabbage, have the corporals wanted to do anything?”

  “Well,” I say, “no. But delivering candy is a pretty decent job, and the weather’s okay, and it’s been really boring lately…. Hey, Squid, stop with the poking. You’re gonna wind up shooting me.”