Free-Fire Zone (12 page)

C
o Co Village?” I say when Silva tells us the assignment. It's a special one — I can tell because he has come over to our hooch to fill it up with his smoke. That's a first. “But lieutenant, there's nothing to do there. The CAP guys have it all packed up tight and passive. What, did they run out of candy and flower seeds?”

“As a matter of fact I think they have run out of candy and flower seeds. But as it happens they are also running low on men.”

“Why's that, lieutenant?” Sunshine asks.

“That is because, I'm afraid things aren't going so well. Not in Co Co, and not with the CAP program in I Corps generally. They are getting hit more often, and more strategically. Locals are getting more distant, and the guys who aren't local — that would be Charlie — are getting less distant.”

“We're losing, is that what you're saying?” Sunshine, like Silva, is not one for beating around bushes. They speak the same language.

“I am not saying that, private. But I am coming close to saying it. In a couple of weeks, in fact, we're pulling the CAP program out of Co Co village.”

“For good?” Hunter asks.

“For good.”

Sunshine, Hunter, and myself are gathered around the lieutenant now like we're kids at story time, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Marquette remains on his bunk.

“You getting all this, Marquette?” Lt. Silva asks.

“Every word, lieutenant,” he answers as sleeplike as he can.

“Good. Then you, and all of us, can start packing up, because we are moving on down the road. They have lost three men, and we are providing them with seven to make up for it in these final weeks of the program. The five of us, along with Corporals Cherry and McClean, are going to be CAPs for a while. Whole new world, huh?”

Lt. Silva has finally managed to get all of Marquette's attention. He sits up, swings his feet to the floor.

“Lieutenant, how exactly does a CAP unit
lose
three men?”

Silva sticks his cigarette into his teeth, that skeleton-effect thing he does so well. He holds up a thumb. “One was shot with an AK-47 by an eleven-year-old.” He
keeps his thumb extended and adds the index finger. “One was blown up by a booby-trapped radio.” He adds another finger. “And one did the bamboo snake two-step.” It is called
the bamboo two-step
because the snake is so poisonous that you only get two steps before you fall down dead. “Although, that terminology may not be fitting in this case since the soldier was sitting down at the time of the biting and so he didn't take any steps at all. And since the viper in question came out of a bag of freshly, locally laundered uniforms, one might be inclined to move that one also into the booby-trap column. Needless to say, the CAP unit is no longer patronizing the local laundress. Nor any of the other small local businesses that had been heretofore benefiting from Uncle Sam's haphazard generosity. This state of affairs is consequently doing very little to sustain good relations on either side.”

“And
that's
where we're going?” Hunter asks. Fairly enough.

“Yes, it is.”

“Why?” Sunshine asks.

Lt. Silva shrugs. “I think the president referred to it as ‘an honorable end to the war.'”

“What does that mean?” Hunter asks.

“It means we ain't leaving 'til we say we're leaving,” I say.

Silva nods at me. “Yeah, something like that. The Marines have set their withdrawal date from the village, and we don't look good if we get pushed out early. With a little effort and luck we might be able to leave the place a little more pacified and friendly than it is at this moment.”

You can feel the energy wafting out of the place along with Silva's cloud as he leaves the hooch. This is a tough one, high on difficulty and low on potential for success. What would success even look like? But we are Marines. So, first thing in the morning, we will march.

“Good luck with that,” Marquette says, lying back on his bunk.

The three of us turn as one on him.

“What are you saying?” Hunter asks, befuddled.

“I'm saying shut up, Hunter, that's what I'm saying.”

Sunshine takes one slow, sure step in the direction of Marquette's bunk. Marquette smiles broad and slimy. “Go, on, big boy,” he says, “go right ahead. Do me the biggest favor of the whole war. Only this time put a little more effort into it so I can go home. Save me the trouble of doing it myself. 'Cause one way or another, you boys are definitely going to Co Co village without me.”

And in that moment, if I was going to build a thing in my mad-scientist laboratory that would bring out all
the hatred and hostility in my soul, that thing would come out looking and sounding and acting just like Marquette.

 

We're all lying in our bunks, and it's a quiet night in Chu Lai. When it's like this, the warm dark night sitting on top of us like blankets, frogs and insects making the loudest noises on the slightly stirring air, this place could be like a home almost. Or, anyway, like a summer-vacation camp where a guy could close his eyes and just be all right, trusting that his fellow campers all around him are having the same good time, sharing the same dreams tonight for the same outcomes tomorrow.

But I tip a glance over in the direction of Marquette's bunk and I know it just won't ever be that here. He is going to be a rat, and he's going to get away with it, though I don't know how. We hear stories about guys doing all kinds of crazy stuff to injure themselves out of fighting duty, and Marquette could easily be one of those guys. He's already snoring, so he's obviously not sweating it like I am.

I look over to Hunter, who is staring at the ceiling and worrying himself to sleep. I stare over at Sunshine, who looks to be sleeping and readying himself for what's to come tomorrow. Which should be plenty.

“Hey! Hey, hey!” Before I even know I am asleep, I wake up to almighty screaming coming from Marquette's bunk.

“Shut up, will ya?” Sunshine bellows back. It is just breaking dawn, and all of us are awake, just like that. “I wasn't done sleeping yet, Marquette, you jerk. Neither were these guys. Now, look, you got everybody up, and we all have a big day today.”

It is quite a scene. Sunshine's bed has at sometime during the night made its way across the floor to butt up against Marquette's. Marquette is swinging and flailing around, but not getting much accomplished, because Sunshine is shadowing his every move.

He has no choice but to shadow him, really, since they are shackled together, right ankle to left, right wrist to left.

Hunter starts falling all over the place laughing, and I join him. Sunshine deserves credit for keeping a completely straight face but Marquette deserves none because being deadly serious right now is no effort for him at all.

“What do you think you're doing?” Marquette barks.

“Being a good Marine, and a good buddy,” Sunshine says.

“Get these things off of me, Gillespie, I mean it.”

“Sure thing,” Sunshine says. “But we gotta go find my friend, who's an MP on patrol duty. You know, Military Police? He's got the key. And lucky for you he understands your sleepwalking problem. I explained the whole thing to him.”

“I don't sleepwalk,” Marquette says. The two of them are now standing in the middle of the hooch in their skivvies.

“Not with your buddy Sunshine looking out for you,” Sunshine says, smiling.

“Listen to me, Sunshine….”

All the humor falls away like a five-hundred-pound bomb off a B-52.

“Don't call me that. You hear me?”

I think at this point if Marquette called him Sir, Your Majesty, or Handsome, Gillespie would still threaten his life.

And no matter how badly Marquette would like to get himself injured and exempt himself from our mission, it is very clear he doesn't want it bad enough to let Gillespie do the honors now.

“Yeah. I hear ya.”

“Now, it's a lovely morning. Too late to go back to sleep now, what with the hike we gotta take and all. Let's you and me go find that key, huh?”

“Yeah,” Marquette says glumly. “I guess.”

Sunshine has a spring in his step as he exits the hooch. Marquette is stepping with a lot more care and caution.

“Don't you worry,” Sunshine says to him, “I did a little freelance night patrol out here, cleaned up any little hazards that were lurking around between here and, oh, say the latrine. Shocking, how dangerous a place this can be, don't ya think, Marquette?”

“Yeah,” he says, sounding more depressed every second.

“Good thing we're moving out of this neighborhood, huh? I can guarantee I'll keep you absolutely safe from harm between now and then.”

Hunter and I laugh and slap palms at the great morning floor show, then, as if we've heard a bell go off at the same time, we both settle right back down.

Sunshine said it. We're moving out.

 

“Is that what I think it is?” I ask Cpl. McClean, even though it's the kind of question that's really the opposite of a question.

He has a flamethrower strapped to his back. And so does Cpl. Cherry.

“Yup,” he says.

“Why?”

“Because it's been requested, that's why.”

Holy moly.

As it turns out, we're all loaded for bear. Everyone packs his own M-16, of course, but is also equipped with a variety of grenades and Claymore mines. In addition, each of us is weighed down with an extra weapon, either a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher or an M-60 machine gun, and all the extra ammo that goes with it. Because we're headed to a village and not a bivouac situation out in the field, we don't have to waste rucksack space on silly things like food or any more than one canteen of water each.

Good thing, too. As it is, this is the heaviest pack I have ever marched with.

“Are we taking over a country by ourselves?” McClean asks Silva as we start down the road.

“Just being cautious,” the lieutenant answers crisply. And with finality.

It is, as they mostly are and should be, a pretty quiet hike. The sun's beating madly, right down through the canopy as we walk single-file along the trail we know better than any other in our whole area of operations. I'm not quite sure how much talking we would do today even if we could. I, for one, don't feel like chatting.

Silva-McClean-Hunter-Cherry-Marquette-Sunshine-Me. That's our formation for the march, and I have to
believe Marquette is the most uncomfortable man in Vietnam at this moment. He did not want to be here, does not want to march, is just as nervous as anybody about the assignment.

And scariest of all, he's listening to Sunshine's thumping bootsteps right behind him.

I like my position. I once thought of rear guard as last place, but that's not right. Rear guard is important. Rear guard suits me. March along, looking straight and left and right like everybody else, then every so often do a complete scan of the terrain behind us. I don't get nervous about being the last line of defense with no backup. In fact, it revs me up, sharpens my senses, makes me smarter.

Thump-thump-thump-thump
, the rhythm of the day gives me strength. No words. I love no words. Eyes on the prize and shut up, that's what I like. I'm in such a groove after the first twenty minutes, I'm practically meditating.

And not thinking about something I should have been thinking about.

The spot. It comes up on us with no warning. Because why should there be any warning? It's a sweaty green dense patch of jungle just like a zillion other sweaty green dense patches of jungle, and while I don't
sense it as we approach, I surely sense it every which way when we pass close by it.

My deathplace birthplace.

It's where it happened. We all march on, nobody noticing but me. Because it's mine, and means nothing at all to anybody else despite the guys here who witnessed it and the guys here who set it up.

That, right there, in that small thicket, against that tree.

March, march, march, sweat, march …

I killed a man for the first time, right there, and I swear it could have happened six seconds ago. I am heart-racing like a jackrabbit as I turn my head to look, like he's right there, looking back at me, trying to hold his guts in, trying to pull away from the tree, from the wires cutting into his ankles and his wrists while I was cutting into his abdomen, and then his throat.

It could be happening
right this second
, with the way I am outsweating everybody by ten, outbreathing, outpulsating, outmarching —

“Hey, nutso,” Sunshine says to me in a whisper-growl.

I have walked right into him, stepped on the heel of his boot and found myself with my nose all but stuck in the muzzle of the M-60 he has slung over his back.

“Sorry,” I say, “sorry, sorry.”

We're a half mile farther down the road before I stop checking over my shoulder every three seconds. He would have every right. To come after me. Every right.

But if he did, I'd kill him all over again. That's just how it is.

 

Uneventful. Despite what was going on in my head part of the way, that's how our march to Co Co village turns out.

“And let's hope that's how the whole two weeks go,” Lt. Silva says as he shakes hands with our host, Sgt. Culverhouse.

“Two weeks?” Culverhouse says, surprised. “Lieutenant, I like your optimism, but at this point every time we go two
hours
without our head count dropping that's a cause for celebration.”

We are standing in the spot outside the sergeant's quarters where we have stood before, dropping off candy and comic books and other goodies to the locals and winning the hearts and minds of this village. But it feels like a different place. No kids have come running out to greet us, no old men or women pass by going about the business of just being folks. The village itself, the terrain, is not what it was but instead a dried and
stripped-down poor faded version of a place that's been gradually trampled into dust. It's dusty, is the big difference. And motionless.