Free-Fire Zone Read online

  “Sure, kid. Anyway, the corporals have a fun job today. They get to play with our prisoner.”

  We actually captured a guy a few days earlier. Though it’s hard to even really call it capture since he more or less staggered into camp and found our hooch at random. He was delirious, unarmed, and just took an empty bunk for himself.

  “What’re they doing with him?” I ask.

  “Questioning him,” Gillespie says. “This is the first day he’s been able to speak. He’s gotta be a nobody, though, or the real interrogation boys would keep him for themselves.”

  I’d like to interrogate somebody, no matter how much of a nobody he is. Any job they let me do I’m gonna do, because I want to learn everything about this profession, do everything it’s possible to do within it.

  Right now, what there is to do is march. It’s a well-worn southerly road we travel, with the two kinds of Vietnam War basically split fore and aft of us. Behind us, beyond Chu Lai, then past Da Nang and the city of Hue, lies North Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army and the kind of straight-up war America’s been fighting for a long time. There are tanks and planes and lots and lots of grunts in open firefights.

  In front of us, and all the way down through the whole of South Vietnam, is the other thing. Or other things. It starts out simple enough: We’re fighting alongside the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN, against the communists.

  That’s the only thing I can tell you for sure about the war in the South. And honestly, I can’t even tell you that for sure.

  Because it’s nothing like any movie war I’ve ever seen, where one side fights the other side from their own side trying to take the other side. Here, if there was a traffic cop, say, directing war traffic, that cop would be like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz when he was nailed up on that pole at the crossroads. Well, if you want to fight the North Vietnamese Army, you’ll want to go this way, he would say, one arm pointing up in the general direction of Hanoi. Or, if you want to fight the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam — the Vietcong — try this way, and then about seventeen million arms would shoot out from his other side and point every single which way all over the place. They’d be pointing at the trees, the rice paddies, the villages, the little sampan boats, into tunnels, or into the city at the young local man sitting right next to a Marine sipping tea in a café.

  For one thing, that kind of fighting is very different, scattered and secret and sly and scary.

  For another thing, “Liberation of South Vietnam?” I thought that’s what we were doing? Liberate them from who?

  The march is without incident — but then, it seems like the most disastrous ones always start that way. All the horror stories I hear from guys who come and go — and they come and go from our base every day — are ones where it’s creepy quiet and then some horror happens. The bang-bang-shoot-’em-up stories play out a lot simpler.

  I have about fifty pounds of candy on my back, and that is a story I never figured I’d bring back from this place. By the time we make it all the way down the road, the march has eaten up over two hours and the guys behind me have eaten up probably eight pounds of candy from my pack. The trail, predictably and thankfully, was quiet. Nobody shot at us, we didn’t shoot at anybody else, and as we sweep into Co Co Village, the candy is safe and sweet, and we are popular.

  “Gentlemen,” says the CAP unit leader, Sergeant Culverhouse. He’s been expecting us, and as always we’re a welcome sight. It’s a kind of perfect relationship we have with these guys. Like Santa Claus we sweep in, drop off treats, then sweep out again without ever asking for anything in return.

  The kids of the village have caught on to this as well, and they rush up and surround us as we begin to empty our packs of the goodies.

  There are so many kids under the age of five in this village, I sometimes wonder if it’s a tiny little society of their own. Of the half dozen or so times I’ve been here, I’ve seen up close maybe twenty-five adults, and three or four times that many little ones. Of the adults, none seem to be fighting-age males. Instead, the place is populated with women and old guys. There’s a whole company of Marines stationed here, but really, if the locals decided to revolt, all but about three of our guys could just stay in bed for it.

  Being popular, by the way, is nice.

  When the kids figure out which bags have treats, the best kind of mayhem breaks loose. The sergeant backs away, like his post is being overrun and he’s surrendering. Three little boys, barefoot and shirtless, lead a pack of maybe a dozen kids. They swamp Marquette, topple him, and tear open his bag while he laughs away on all fours. They make short work of him, realize he’s carrying nothing but seeds and powdered plant food, and drop him like yesterday’s news. One by one, our little detail of five gets the same rough treatment until the jig is finally up and the two of us carrying the mother lode, me and Private Hunter, get the full ransack.

  I can’t help laughing my head off as I get completely brutalized by these little guys and gals. I’m watching Hunter surrender to both the rough stuff and the laughter and it just makes me laugh more. The other guys stand around over us, like the old days in the school yard when a fight was on, and cheer the little ruffians into more and more of a frenzy.

  “And wait ’til the little beasties get some of that sugar into them,” Culverhouse says.

  “It won’t make them fat, that’s for sure,” Hunter says.

  That’s the truth. There’s not one ounce of extra meat on any of these kids, but I swear I couldn’t get up now if they didn’t want me to. There’s strength in these hard little bodies that I don’t think I ever knew when I was that small. They’re tough and determined, and despite the Christmas-ness of what’s going on, there’s not a whole lot of laughs on their side. This is a serious operation, I realize as the last of the kids clear out the last of the goodies, and serious is how they’re taking it.

  I find myself sitting upright on the ground as the invading army disperses with the spoils of war. Sgt. Culverhouse takes inventory of all the rest of the stuff — the comics, the seeds, and playing cards and yo-yos and soaps and all the assorted items of donation from whatever source sent it. Nothing in our delivery is too hugely necessary for sustaining life, but all of it’s designed to improve it just a little bit.

  “This’ll go a long way,” Culverhouse says as he assigns several villagers the task of moving it all wherever it needs to go. The sergeant speaks in what sounds to me like pretty confident Vietnamese — though it could just as well be a made-up language for all I know. I watch these folks, one older man and three women, interacting with the sergeant in a way that seems warm and polite and grateful and familiar but still, I don’t know … foreign? Foreign is the word I would use. It’s one of the more amazing bits of the war to me, the CAP program, and I can see here how and why it might work. It’s practical. It seems like it has good intentions. And with the right people at the helm, people like Sgt. Culverhouse, I could see where it could do our most critical job — what they call “winning hearts and minds” — better than any other approach.

  And then. And then, as I look at the interaction again, I think: I could never do this. I could never understand such foreign people the way we need to understand them.

  I guess that’s why I’m not a CAP guy.

  Suddenly, the calm and nice gets smacked right off the board by angry shouting, in both English and Vietnamese and possibly in French, coming from a hut about thirty feet away. I get up and run a few steps behind the sergeant as he chases after it. I look back over my shoulder and notice none of my guys are as curious about this as I am.

  They’ve all been in-country longer than me.

  “What, what, what?” Culverhouse shouts as he steps into the hut.

  “He knows something, sarge,” the Marine inside snaps. In front of him, kneeling down, is an old Vietnamese man, who looks to me to be snarling up at the Marine. Though he also has his hands folded, like he’s praying, or like he’s plead
ing.

  The sergeant stands there, taking it in, not appearing overly concerned. I take a step past him, farther into the small circular hut, where I have an equal view of everybody. The man on the ground says something — it sounds French — and the Marine growls furiously before punching the old guy right in the forehead, knocking him over backward.

  “He knows what?” I blurt, shocked into butting in where I bet I’m not welcome.

  The Marine turns to me, twists his face into a look of total shock at my ignorance. “Well, I don’t know yet, do I? That’s why I’m smacking him, stupid.”

  I turn to the sergeant again. He looks impassive. I turn back to the others in time to see the Marine pulling the man back up into kneeling position. He looks at the sergeant while he does it.

  “Who’s the melon, anyway, sarge?” Meaning, me.

  “Delivery boy from Chu Lai,” he says flatly.

  So that’s what I am.

  The Marine smacks the man again, the man goes down again, and when he pulls him back up this time he presses the tip of a small local-type spear into that little cutout between the man’s collarbones.

  I’ve seen a few of these spears — Punji sticks — that guys have taken off of VC. Smelled them, too. The VC dip them in some kind of animal waste to give a guy the extra treat of infection along with the puncture.

  “Krug,” Sergeant says, “that’s probably enough for now.” Then, to me, “Old guy’s VC.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  I realize there’s a way you can ask a question like that — How do you know that? — that can sound punky, really get up a guy’s nose. But that is not how I ask. It is a genuine attempt by one Marine to learn something from another.

  Sarge clearly doesn’t hear it that way.

  “We are professionals,” he says in a way that gives me the first chill I’ve had since I arrived in this part of the world. “And you are dismissed, private.”

  And just like that, dismissed I am.

  Because of how slow things’ve been, I’d hoped to spend a little more time in Co Co. It would be good to learn about the local population, both from the people themselves and from the professionals who are putting so much into figuring them out. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded stretching out that moment of welcome and appreciation that we got from bringing goodies. For a minute it felt like those old news reels I used to watch of World War II Marines getting all the love from the world wherever they went. That hasn’t happened here in this world and in this war as much as I’d hoped.

  But the welcome mat is not out. It’s a lesson I’m learning quick and hard, that moods change around here without the normal-world kind of warnings. You’re a friend — you’re a foe on account of a look — a word — a gesture that somehow questions something you shouldn’t be questioning and that puts you on the other side of a line you didn’t even know was drawn.

  “Thank the lieutenant for me,” Sgt. Culverhouse says in a thankless way. I’m walking past my guys, who look confused, then catch on, falling in behind me.

  Nobody had really planned on starting another eight-mile hike so soon after the previous eight-mile hike, but after about two seconds nobody looks entirely shocked about it, either. Like I said, they’ve all been here longer than me.

  “Hearts and minds,” Squid says, as we start single-filing back northward.

  “We win the hearts while we lose our minds,” Marquette adds. It’s the first time I’ve heard it, but it is obviously not the first time they’ve said it.

  We’re maybe getting a little soft, a little casual due to all the lack of activity we’ve been enduring. Lacktivity is the term the guys have been using. But it may very well be an enemy ploy, and if it is it’s an effective one because about three miles into the drudge of our march back, we are one hundred percent surprised when we walk practically right into two of our guys.

  “Boo,” says Corporal Cherry, catching us so off guard he’s already laughing loudly by the time we draw weapons. A normally functioning Marine squad would have shredded him with M-16 fire before he could’ve stopped us, but we’re clearly far from our sharpest selves. And he knows that. He wasn’t even worried.

  “Jeez,” Gillespie says, panting. “Cherry, man, you could have gotten yourself killed, and maybe us, too, acting the fool like that.”

  Cherry just shakes his head at our lameness. He’s sitting in plain view, on a boulder the size of a Volkswagen.

  “Boo,” says Corporal McClean, from against a tree on the opposite side of the road.

  “Jeez again,” says Gillespie.

  “Man,” McClean says, “I knew it was bad, but this is beyond bad. You guys could be taken out by a troop of Girl Scouts throwing cookies.”

  He is so right.

  This is humiliating, even if these two seem to think it’s just a laugh.

  The mood. The thing I noticed, about the quick shift of moods in this strange and unusual place, is happening to me now. I feel it, am completely aware of it as it comes over me. I’m embarrassed and furious and petrified and enraged over what just happened, didn’t happen, might have happened.

  The guys are all laughing. Big joke, right?

  But it’s no joke. No joke at all. We’re trained fighting men. We were prepared for a purpose, by the most lethal fighting force the world has ever known, and when the moment came we were pathetic.

  I am pathetic.

  I march. There are two corporals here now and so there is no way I am actually in charge anymore, but so what. Who cares? If we can’t keep our heads up, our wits about us, our weapons at the ready, then really, what are we and what matters at all?

  “Cabbage,” Cpl. McClean says, catching up to me. I hear the soft pat-pat of boots falling in line behind us.

  I keep marching, just like I was taught. Crisp, strong, focused.

  “What’s the problem, Cabbage?”

  “I should be dead,” I say. “We should all be dead. You’re right. Girl Scouts could take us.”

  “Aw,” he says, slapping my back too hard, “don’t be so tough on yourself. Lesson learned, right? Guys lose their edge pretty quick when the action falls off. And really, what’s the point of staying on alert and all gung ho all the time, anyway? Look around, son. Nobody in all of I Corps is taking this seriously anymore. Just keep your head down and get your year in-country over with. If you kill some Vietnamese, that’s a bonus, but what you’re really here to kill is time.”

  There’s so much that’s wrong with this. What is he saying? Why is he saying it? Why is he saying it to me? There are a lot of quirky personalities in the Marines, in Chu Lai, in I Corps, and in all of Vietnam, but none of them are quirkier than our corporals. This is the longest conversation I’ve had with either of these guys, and the first time I’ve seen them smile. They don’t get along with the superior officers, and they could just about spit on us privates, but now I’m suddenly getting the benefit of McClean’s vast wisdom and insight. Something ain’t right.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we actually were ambushed back there and killed. Maybe this is death.

  “Well,” I tell him, “I guess I’m doing it righter than I thought, because so far I’m killing nothing but time here. But I’m really slaughtering that.”

  “Ha,” he says. “Don’t you worry about that part. Enemy kills practically throw themselves in your path sooner or later around here. Then once you’ve got that out of the way, you can relax and enjoy yourself.”

  Somehow, that doesn’t sound at all like the way it should go.

  “Thanks, corporal,” I say. “I’ll look forward to that.”

  “That’s the spirit,” he says.

  We march in mostly silence for another mile, then another mile. Not sure about the rest of them, but I know I’m now in a state of total readiness. I’d even dare to say no Girl Scouts will be killing me today. I’d even dare to say that if they tried I might be man enough to wipe out a whole troop of them.

  “H
old up,” Cpl. McClean says in a hard whisper. He pushes me down into a crouch, goes down himself, and gestures for all the men behind us to get down as well. We have our eyes and ears and weapons trained on the jungle, thick on our right. He taps me on the shoulder and tugs at me to accompany him into the bush. He signals for the rest to stay in position, covering us.

  I’m shaking, suddenly sweating sheets of perspiration as we step lightly, silently along what is almost a path but not quite. We’re about thirty yards in, and it’s getting really thick, and the bugs are eating the flesh right off me. McClean signals a point just ahead where he and I are to split in two directions.

  Now, I’m really moisturized. I feel worse than when I was drafted and peed my pants, because at least then there wasn’t an immediate threat to my life in addition to the soggy pants.

  But I go. I am a soldier. I am a United States Marine and I follow orders and I am here to terrorize the enemy and not to be terrorized by him and if I turned away from this now my pal Ivan would shoot me dead and I’d thank him for it.

  “There! There!” McClean screams, and for a second I don’t see a thing, other than the whole landscape shaking from my own fear. But then, there he is. I just about step on him before he jumps up, this VC guy, practically right into my face, practically smashing into my face with his own when he jumps up out of the leaf cover and I have to react, just like I’ve been trained to.

  I stick my bayonet right into the guy’s gut. He is staring at me, right there, his eyes so wide and his mouth so open. He’s holding a rifle, but holding it really weird like his hands are glued together in the middle of the gun, like nobody ever bothered to even tell him the right way to hold it. Poor guy.

  But too bad, poor guy. I pull the blade out of him and stick it right back in. Then again and again and again and again. It’s something like a sawing motion, very close to a sawing motion, only the blade comes all the way out and back in again, so maybe the action is more like a sewing machine like my mom’s, only giant and lethal.