Free-Fire Zone Read online

  We’re brute force in a can.

  But it’s like Squid isn’t on the same wavelength. He’s sitting across from me, looking down as Lt. Jupp fills us in some.

  “Right, men, here’s the story. There is a nest of trouble about thirty miles west of us, a village that’s been rumbled twice already by the ARVN, only to have the whole thing restaffed in less than a week both times. It’s a depot for VC arms and guerillas and communications and the works. Not a sprawling operation, but a serious nuisance. And since the local army has been unable — or unwilling — to stamp out this little nest properly, the brass have called in the professionals, with explicit instructions to wipe this threat out by any means necessary.” As he says this phrase Jupp makes a sweeping gesture, like he is a museum tour guide showing us the Implements of Death exhibit.

  The crowd goes mental again.

  But Squid keeps looking down at the floor. I motion across to Gillespie, who’s sitting next to him, and get him to switch seats with me.

  “You okay?” I ask Squid, staring down at the same spot between his feet.

  “Fine,” he says.

  “Sorry,” I say. “About smacking you and all. It’s just that —”

  “You did the right thing. Shut up.”

  “Thanks for saying that.”

  “No sweat. Here’s another one for ya: Shut up.”

  I laugh, and he makes a noise that I think might qualify as laughing along.

  “Are you scared?” I ask, as we hit a bump that could well have been a buffalo and throws us all up and down across the floor and each other.

  “Of course I’m scared,” he says as we re-take our seats. “Been scared every single day since I got here. But it got better, got routine. Then it got quiet. The quiet, Rudi …”

  The odd occasion when I hear my name makes me, just a tiny bit and just for a half second, choke up. Stupid.

  “… the quiet, it went and did something to my head. I’d gotten used to things, but then once we got to the quiet part, it was like I could hear, almost, a ticking in my head. I became so aware of the clock and the calendar and my DERUS, and I thought about being a short-timer and almost home, and instead of making me feel good, it made me petrified I wasn’t gonna get home. I need to see my dad. That’s all I can think about. He’s alone. I just gotta get home. And everything was going okay, looked like we were out of the game, and I loved that. And then …”

  “And then this,” I say, understanding a little better.

  “And then this,” he says, moving his hands from his lap, revealing a pretty good stain of wet.

  “Pffftt!” I sputter, laughing without meaning to.

  He quickly covers up again, with his helmet this time, and crosses his legs. His sad squid head is exposed now, and it’s gone all red. “Thanks, jerk,” he says. “I was hoping you would understand.” He turns his head away.

  “I do,” I say, still laughing a little as I lean right up to his red ear and tell him how I oh-so-courageously peed myself at my induction letter.

  “Really?” he says, laughing now along with everybody else. It is a strange thing, no question about it: Every man on board is laughing at something or other that’s been said by another man, and if you stopped the vehicle and climbed in you would think this was the tightest team of fighting men ever assembled. Like we all get along and work together in well-oiled and smelly government-issue harmony.

  That’s the power of search and destroy, I guess.

  “Stick close to me,” I say, suddenly feeling like the big brother for once. “I will make sure nothing stands between you and seeing your dad, okay?”

  He turns and, grinning like a monkey, gets his face right up close to mine. He puts his pee-essence helmet back on and, jeez, he looks for a flash so much like an ol’ Rudy-Judy that I want to shove him right off this armored transport and leave him for dead, leave him for the Vietcong and for the rats and fire ants and leeches that rule this awful jungle.

  I can tell by the incline that we are making our way up a steepish hill, which means we are nearing our destination. There is an NZ, that’s a landing zone, on a rise overlooking this village we will be clobbering. So if we need to call in support even that will be available to us. But Lt. Jupp sounds so confident about everything, I almost feel embarrassed we didn’t leave a couple guys behind.

  “There is nowhere for these people to run to the west of here because the ARVN troops have them all pinned in on that side. And we have everything cleared between here and the rise overlooking the village. All there is for us to do is to bring down the heavy rain on them, then when the deed is done follow on down and see that the site is secured. But we need to make visual contact first, confirm the intelligence, so that when we begin free-fire, we know what we are going after. That is why this has to be a ground operation. Understood?”

  “Yessir,” we say, one after another. “Yessir yes —”

  Bu-hoom!

  “Holy smokes!” Gillespie shouts.

  The whole vehicle has jumped up and come bouncing down again. Some kind of medium artillery has gone off close enough to raise the whole twelve tons of us right up off the earth.

  Bu-hoom!

  It happens again. The ARVN driver is shouting to his gunner up top in Vietnamese, and the gunner starts blasting off round after round into the surrounding area while we keep hurtling on. Somebody out there returns equal fire, machine-gun rounds pinging off the aluminum armor with enough frequency that they could be right outside smacking us with golf irons.

  The big door is getting drummed with thousands of shots.

  They’re behind us.

  “I thought you said this was all clear?” Cpl. Cherry shouts at Lt. Jupp.

  “It was!” Jupp shouts back.

  Ping-ping-ping-ping-ping. It’s like an arcade game at Paragon Park.

  “They don’t agree!” Marquette screams.

  The driver is yelling in Vietnamese and a bit of English at Lt. Jupp, who shouts back at him. “Drive, Lieutenant Bien! Just go. Just keep going!”

  He’s not just a driver. He’s a lieutenant in the ARVN, with a name and everything. Why should this be news?

  You don’t have to understand Vietnamese to know that Lt. Bien is livid. He goes up a couple of octaves as he screams himself mental at the other lieutenant. Up top, the gunner — who I now imagine also has a name we don’t know — is a hero, blasting away in his one-man war against however many of whoever is out there.

  Lt. Bien maneuvers this way and that, throwing us around like GI Joe dolls, finally swooping down into a ditch and stopping. He screams some more at Jupp.

  “Who is in charge here?” Cpl. McClean shouts at Jupp.

  “I am,” Jupp says.

  The words are meaningless. Because he says them with such a complete lack of enthusiasm that I get an instant chill of terror. The bullets continue to riddle the right side of our M-113.

  But the return fire above abruptly stops.

  Lt. Bien shouts horrors straight up into the air, then pulls a lever that throws open the tailgate.

  And we US Marines, hollering like madmen, pile out with our M-16s firing in all directions.

  We hit the ground, crawling up to the lip of the crater we’d ditched into. All of the enemy fire appears to be coming from the same general direction.

  “Can’t be more than a squad, no bigger than ours,” Gillespie says. He is actually coordinating, pointing out individual spots along the ridge for guys to spread out to. Nobody questions it. Nobody balks.

  It is a plain, old-fashioned firefight, the kind I had come to this country expecting to face pretty much every day. My heart is hitting me so hard that I’m convinced it’ll punch away any bullet that hits my chest. You can see the muzzle flash from the Russian AK-47s the VC fighters use. They’re no more than a couple hundred yards away.

  The closest guy to me is Squid, and he’s going completely psycho-squid, like if John Wayne was a sea creature with mental problems and a grud
ge.

  “Arrgh, arrrrgh, arrrgh,” he says, spraying bullets like mad into the jungle.

  It seems like they’re already out of RPGs — the rocket-propelled grenades I assume they were firing at our vehicle before — because we’re taking nothing but machine-gun fire at this point.

  Then there’s a sound.

  Sshshshshshshsuuuuuuuuf … bu-hooom.

  Okay, so I was wrong about the RPGs. That one must have sailed no more than three feet over me, ’cause I felt the back draft of the thing tug at my clothes before it bu-hoomed way back behind us. ARVN Lt. Bien knows his stuff — ditching in this crater probably just saved us our ride. And everything that comes with it.

  Like the artillery.

  Lt. Bien is right up behind me, patting me on the back. First I jump, scared nutty, then I turn to see him positioning a rocket launcher on my shoulder. It’s an M-67 and is called a recoilless rifle, but nobody’s fooled by that. You could rightly call it a bazooka, or a rocket launcher, but I wouldn’t call it any kind of rifle.

  The lieutenant has another M-67 under his free arm and quickly heads down the line where he gives it to Cpl. Cherry. Cpl. McClean follows right behind with the ammo.

  I look to my left to find my assistant, Squid, staring at the bundle of three buzz rockets in his shaking arms.

  “Well, you gonna marry ’em, or what?” I say.

  “Oh,” he says.

  “Load!” I snap at him.

  He drops behind me, where I’ve taken up a half-kneeling position another foot or so down from the lip of the crater. I can see out of the corner of my eye as Hunter loads for Cherry, and, zzzzziiiiiip, shoom the rocket goes off, like a rocket. One second later, boooom! There’s a massive blast right near the muzzle flashes of the enemy nest. Fire burns right up into the sky.

  “Come on, man!” I say, and he slaps my shoulder and I fire: zzziiiip, shoooom … booom!

  I watch the trees in the distance explode with the rocket’s impact, and my heart does things that make it seem like it’s been switched off my whole life until right now.

  “Come on, man, come on!” I say when I hear Squid fumbling around back there. He shakes and jostles me around, then I hear him snap the breach closed before slapping my shoulder again.

  Snap-slap-trigger-schooooom … bu-hooom!

  Man, we can feel the heat of the flames from here as the trees all around Charlie go right up. The rest of the guys keep the pressure on, peppering the scorching air with machine-gun fire until somebody, I think it’s Cherry, calls for a halt.

  There are still shots coming at us. It seems to be one guy. We can pinpoint the pops of his gun.

  “Fire-fire-fire!” Cherry shouts, and Lord have mercy, all our guns pour in on that spot like the greatest threat to the free world is located in that one guy and Cherry fires his rocket once more and so, jeez, I won’t be left out so schooooom … bu-hoom I pile on in there and stick a fork in ’em because that nest of birds is cooked and done.

  I love the M-67 rocket launcher more than a person should love a nonperson.

  Cpl. Cherry calls time-out again and everybody stops. I can hear the crackle of fire, the fall of a tree as it crashes to the ground, and nothing else but our own heavy, excited breathing.

  That’s how the scene remains, for one and two and six minutes, the squad just breathing our total victory in deep until the voice at the far end of our line says, cool but sharp, “Well executed, Marines. Fine work. Now pack up and let’s move out.”

  Every helmeted head on the line turns at once in that direction, toward Lt. Jupp.

  “Where were you?” Gillespie asks without hiding his disgust even a little.

  “I,” says Jupp slowly, jungle-low but somehow managing to do his usual shout in there as well, “was right here, where a commander is supposed to be, overseeing operations. And, private, I can assure you that is the last time I will be answering to you or anyone else under my command. And I can likewise assure you that if I hear anything like that tone again you will be cited for insubordination. Do I make myself clear?”

  This, now, is a stare-off. Not just between Jupp and Gillespie. But between Jupp and all the eyes of the squad. How could you look away even if you wanted to?

  “I said, do I —”

  “I heard what you said,” says Gillespie, and one by one the starers stop staring. I can’t. I want to stop. Cherry and Hunter and McClean take their M-67 and their shells and selves back to the truck, and Marquette stands and stretches and walks away, and I feel Squid tugging at my sleeve, but I just shrug him off. I want to go. I can’t move. I’m stuck to this confrontation.

  Until Jupp, looking shiftier and more uncomfortable by the second, looks in my direction. We lock eyes.

  He’s right, of course. It’s not for an enlisted man to question his superior officer — not any time, but especially not out in the field. So I agree with him. No matter what, I have to agree with him, and I do.

  Another thing. I don’t hate him the way everybody else seems to. I just don’t. Sure, he shouts at me all the time. He prefers to stay back instead of going out on patrols. He gives me assignments I’m sometimes not ready for. But so what? I like being shouted at. I like responsibility. I like to be pushed. And if Lt. Jupp isn’t the greatest leader in the corps, well, that may be, but judging him isn’t my job. My job is to be a good soldier. I am a good soldier.

  And right now I don’t like what I’m feeling and I don’t like the look in my boss’s eyes that fails to give me confidence when confidence is pretty darn important.

  “Gillespie,” I say firmly, and grab him by the back of the shirt. I pull him up lightly from where he has stubbornly remained on the ground. I haul him back in the direction of the armored transport, even though he’s bigger than me and stronger than me and smarter than me and — in some way, in some other world — right about what he’s doing. I drag him back where he belongs.

  And he lets me.

  This is such a weird and remarkable day already.

  The rest of the run toward our destination is mostly quiet, though quiet somehow seems like the wrong word. Nobody’s saying much, but you can feel it, the charge in the air, and boy can you smell that stink more than ever. I’m sitting diagonally across from Gillespie, who’s looking like he could just jump out of the vehicle unarmed and start biting the heads off all the VC in the area. Lt. Jupp is on the same bench, in the spot up closest to the driver. On Jupp’s left is Hunter, who doesn’t seem to know him. On his right, curled up on the floor next to the driver, is our dead ARVN gunner, who doesn’t know anybody anymore. Cpl. Cherry, who is turning out to be a far more ferocious warrior than I had figured, has taken up the gun post on the roof.

  “How you feeling?” I say low to Squid.

  “Pretty great, man. I mean, really great. Better than I’ve felt in a long time. Can’t wait now, can’t wait.”

  “I know it,” I say. “Let’s go, let’s go.”

  Our surviving ARVN comrade is shouting again, as we are apparently approaching our destination. Guys are up and out of their seats, loading up and growling and howling even though the vehicle’s still bouncing crazy and we don’t even have the head room to stand all the way up so we’re a bunch of hunchback gun-toting sweaty smelly lunatics. In a can.

  The vehicle jams to a halt, and we all pile out the open rear ramp. Us privates squat right down, followed by the corporals, guns ready, scanning the periphery from our hilltop clearing down over the pretty green countryside below.

  Lt. Jupp steps out of the truck but stays in his hunchback crouch like he isn’t quite sure where he is as he studies a map and we all wait. It might be something else or it might be that he was shaken up by Sunshine’s mini revolt, but the man doesn’t look at all sure of what he’s doing.

  “Lieutenant,” Cpl. McClean snaps. “Have you got coordinates? Have you got a target for us?”

  “Yes,” Jupp snaps back in that old familiar growl of authority. But he continues studying.
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  Lt. Bien comes striding out of the M-113, not bothering with the crouching or ducking, and stomps up to the lieutenant as if he has dinner reservations in an hour. He jabs at a point on the map and, not even trying with the English anymore, barks short, stabbing Vietnamese syllables before firmly grasping the lieutenant and turning him in the direction of a barely visible trail of blue smoke coming up out of a dense thicket of canopy about a quarter mile away. As he is pointing, we hear a sound that’s becoming pretty familiar.

  SSSSSSissssss …

  And the show’s on as a surface-to-air missile comes whizzing right through our party and everybody scrambles. The corporals go for the heavy hardware in the vehicle while we spray mostly ineffective rounds in the direction of the target. I’m half-proud that we’re being treated with the same respect as aircraft, but get over that pretty quick when a second SAM comes within five feet of my head.

  Soon as it’s gone past, though, I start laughing. I know it’s truly mental, but I can’t help it. It’s like the roller coaster at Paragon Park, except without the puking. What I mean is, the anticipation will drive you crazy, but when you survive it, it’s a complete thrill. I have adrenaline pumping right out my pores now, and I am chafing for some of that heavy hardware.

  I get my wish when McClean comes rushing over and sets me and Squid up with an 81-mm mortar, and it’s like basic-training time trials as we get the thing assembled and aimed, packed and loaded in record time. Squid takes a step back and boom that shell shoots out and up and higher and higher, arcing over our own Air Force flight patterns and I’ll be grilled if I’m not flashing back to Paragon and Nantasket Beach and the Fourth of July fireworks all over again, amazing, until:

  Phwooooom! Man, when that shell lands crashing and burning through that canopy I can’t believe there’s anything in or out of armor that could withstand it.

  So we do it again.

  And again.

  We’re absolutely pounding this site, with mortar and heavy cannon fire and RPGs, and I wish they let us have flamethrowers because that’s really all that’s missing from this celebration. We hit ’em and hit ’em and hit ’em again until the referee would surely stop the fight if this was boxing, but it ain’t and so we hit ’em again. Because we are the United States Marine Corps and we are doing, finally, what we were sent here to do. And no offense to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam, who seem like decent soldiers and swell guys and who have been a lot of help to us today, but there ain’t no way in heaven or on earth we’re gonna let these guys up off the mat the way they did. Twice. We’re gonna make ’em dead and make ’em stay dead regardless of the Vietcong Charlie reputation for coming back like magic. No more magic. None.