Jungle Rules (47 page)

“Do you dislike white people?” O’Connor asked, walking toward the witness stand.

“No, sir,” Carter said and smiled. “I know lots of white guys that’s real decent. I don’t dislike nobody unless they give me a reason.”

“What did you think of Private Harold Rein and Private Leonard Cross?” O’Connor asked, crossing his arms.

“I didn’t think much of those boys at all,” Carter said, frowning.

“You did know them before the incident,” O’Connor said, still holding his arms crossed, the yellow legal pad dangling from his hand.

“We seen them around, and heard plenty from them,” Carter said, still frowning.

“Care to explain that?” O’Connor asked, and walked back toward the jury.

“They always making trouble around black Marines,” Carter said and shook his head. “They see black Marines talking, dapping, or what have you, and they always looking to start some trouble.”

“Dapping?” O’Connor asked, looking back at the jury. “Please explain dapping.”

“That’s just a greeting, like when white people shake hands,” Carter said and looked at the jury. “It symbolizes friendship and unity among black brothers.”

“So it is not a symbolism of black power, meant to degrade white people, as the prosecution has asserted with its witnesses yesterday,” O’Connor said, smiling at Charlie Heyster and then at Wendell Carter.

“If it meant to degrade anybody, I wouldn’t do it,” Carter answered.

“So you would dap with a white Marine, too?” O’Connor asked, and walked to the witness stand.

“If he want to dap with me, sure I do it,” Carter said and smiled. “It’s a symbol of friendship, like I said.”

“Would you show the court by dapping with me?” the captain then said, putting out his fist for the witness.

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, and then put his closed hand above the lawyer’s. “My knuckles up here means that you’re not above me. Then when I put my fist under yours, it means that I’m not above you either. Then we rap on this side and that side, like this, and that means we are equal. We bang our knuckles like this, says we brothers. Then we put our fists across our hearts, pledging our friendship to each other.”

“What about when you put your fists in the air?” O’Connor said, raising his clenched hand above his head.

“We are brothers, united,” Carter said, raising his fist, too.

“Would you recommend that all Marines dap?” O’Connor asked, lowering his hand and walking back toward the jury.

Wendell Carter smiled.

“Yes, sir, I certainly would recommend it,” the witness said, and looked at the jury. “Marines are warriors. Great warriors. This salute come from the Masai, who are great warriors, too, in Africa. They kill a lion with a spear. This how they greet each other. I think it be a good thing for Marines to have something like that to use, too.”

“Thank you, Lance Corporal Carter,” O’Connor said, and walked back to the defense table.

“Do you have any questions for this witness, Captain Heyster?” Judge Swanson said, looking at the prosecutor flipping through several pages of notes he had taken during the defense examination.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Heyster said, and walked to the tabletop lectern, where he leaned across it and stared coldly at the witness.

“ ‘Chuck,’ ‘honky,’ ‘white bread,’ ‘cracker,’ ” Heyster began, “these terms mean anything?”

“I hear some guys say them, yes, sir,” Carter said, gripping the rail around the witness stand.

“What would you say if I told you I had witnesses who heard you and Private Anderson saying some of these very words,” Heyster said, still gripping the lectern and leaning over it.

“I don’t use those words, sir,” Carter answered, and then looked down. “They bad as saying ‘nigger.’ ”

“Yes, they are,” Heyster said, and stepped from behind the lectern. “Equally offensive. Now, will you categorically state for the record that you have never uttered these offensive racial slurs?”

“No, sir, because I have said some of them a time or two,” Carter said, still looking down. “Maybe when I got mad.”

“So what makes you different than Private Rein, when he called you a nigger?” the prosecutor asked, walking toward the witness.

“When I call him a Chuck, I guess nothing, sir,” Carter shrugged and shook his head.

“Did you see Private Celestine Anderson kill Private Harold Rein?” Heyster said, folding his arms. “Just a yes or no answer please.”

“Yes, sir,” Carter said, squinting his eyes closed.

“No more questions,” Heyster said, and walked back to the prosecution table and sat down behind it.

 
MIDMORNING SUN COOKED the ground brick hard where James Harris jogged, raising a cloud of dust around his feet. He had drank the last of his water, tossing the canteen in the weeds just before he crossed through the layers of fencing, tanglefoot, German tape and razor wire that ran along the perimeter of the American military compound and air facility at Chu Lai. Now he wished that he had refilled the can when he had the chance as he jogged past a well at a farm he crossed. However, the stop might have cost him his life had Huong caught up with him there. So he ran on, and made it clean through the fence at Chu Lai, but he was still very thirsty.

While Harris had fretted much of his journey, worrying about how he could sneak through the wire at Chu Lai, the task proved almost too easy for him. Spring rains had washed a low place along the ground, just deep enough so he slid on his belly beneath much of the barrier, out of sight of the bunkers and guard stations keeping watch. While Mau Mau crawled through the fencing, Turd sat in the weeds, watching him. Then when his master stood, and dusted off his clothes, the dog bounded under the barrier, carefree and his tail wagging happily.

Ahead, through the dancing mirage, the deserter could see the white hangar at the far end of the flight line where he felt certain that James Elmore now secretly worked, fabricating metal parts for airplanes. He knew this hangar well. Late last summer, while a newbee in Da Nang, Mau Mau’s gunny had sent him and three other airframe mechanics to Chu Lai to work for three weeks, helping out a shorthanded friend. Harris knew from that brief stint that this was the only maintenance hangar outside the main stream of traffic where CID could keep James Elmore working secretly. He smiled confidently, looking at the red and white checkerboard roof on the building, knowing well that the traitor worked inside.

As he ran, Mau Mau saw a familiar black Mercedes-Benz pull through an opening in the trees less than five hundred yards away, drive along a dirt road outside the fence line, and then park, hidden behind some tall bushes. Turd saw the car, too, and stopped to look at it. As the driver stepped out and walked to the front of the automobile, wading through the underbrush, the dog wagged his tail. He thought nothing of the rifle that Huong carried in his hands.

Behind and ahead of where Mau Mau Harris ran along the perimeter road, skirting the far end of the base’s runways and taxiways, red signs eight feet tall stood at the edge of the dirt track that ran parallel to the airfield’s boundary and read in great white letters,
Restricted Area—Keep Out
, in both English and Vietnamese. Maybe Huong would think twice before opening fire, the deserter hoped. Surely his old comrade knew that the shooting would draw attention from the guard posts overseeing this remote part of the compound. At the sound of rifle fire, they would come rolling like gangbusters, their guns blazing.

Then Harris considered that Huong could easily shoot him anyway and still make a run for it. Whether or not the reaction force that would doubtless pursue the pair ever caught Huong and Bao, he would still suffer the brunt of the bullets that the cowboy managed to launch at him. With no place to take cover, Harris leaned forward and ran hard.

From the corner of his right eye, Mau Mau saw Huong raise the rifle to his shoulder and aim at him. He clenched his jaws as he pumped his legs, waiting for the first bullet to strike. Then he noticed that the cowboy had taken the rifle out of his shoulder and now hurried back behind the weeds and bushes where he had hidden the car. A second later, he heard the whine of a GMC pickup truck’s engine and the clanking and banging of its body against its frame as it bounced across the ends of the runways and open terrain between them.

The deserter smiled as he saw the dirty green M880 truck with a three-foot-wide orange and white checkered flag flapping on a stick mounted to the rear corner of its cargo bed, an M2 .50-caliber machine gun stationed above its cab and a Marine wearing goggles holding on for dear life behind the gun. When the truck bounced onto the well-traveled dirt trail that ran along the airfield’s fence, it slid sideways and raised a cloud of calcium-rich dust from the crushed oyster shells packed onto the road’s surface.

At first sight of the pickup truck speeding cross-country toward them, Turd wheeled on his tail and made a mad scramble for the place in the fence where he and his master had crossed a few moments ago.

As the truck slid to a stop ten feet from where Mau Mau Harris stood, the Marine behind the big machine gun opened fire at the fleeing dog, sending geysers of dirt twenty feet in the air all around the mutt but nowhere near him.

“Cease fire, motherfucker!” a staff sergeant dressed in a jungle utility uniform screamed as he leaped from the passenger side of the M880 truck.

“Why you want to waste a fucking dog anyway, you stupid son of a bitch?! Besides, you shoot like Little Stevie Wonder. You ain’t ever hit Jack shit!”

“Now, I like Little Stevie Wonder,” Mau Mau Harris said, smiling and wiping sweat off his face with a blue bandana that he pulled from his pocket and then tied around his head like a sweatband. “Don’t be insulting my favorite singer just cause he blind and your man can’t shoot worth shit, Sergeant.”

“What the fuck do you think you are doing out here?” the staff sergeant said to Harris, who kept smiling at him. “What part of
Restricted Area—Keep Out
do you not understand?”

“Hey, chill out, man,” Harris said, walking to the truck and pushing his thumb on the silver button at the base of a green water canister strapped to the side of the pickup bed, sending out a stream into his mouth and over his face. “I thought that meant people outside the base. Military is cool, isn’t it?”

“You’re lucky those guys over in that bunker between the parallel runways didn’t blow you away,” the staff sergeant said, walking to the water can and squirting out a drink, too. “Let’s see some identification.”

“Hey, man, I’m new here, I didn’t know,” Harris said, smiling and shrugging his best act, pulling his fake identification card from his wallet and handing it to the staff sergeant while the staff NCO examined his dog tags. “My name’s Sergeant Rufus Potter. I just got transferred down here from Da Nang Air Base. I’m over at Group Seventeen, working up yonder in that hangar in the fabrication shop. I came out for a little morning run, keep myself fit for the commandant, you know, and this looked like a pretty good spot for PT, so I went jogging up here. I didn’t mean nothing. Sorry to get anybody upset.”

“We can maybe let you slide, Sergeant Potter, since you’re new,” the staff sergeant said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Just let me hold on to your pistol and that knife you got in your belt while we haul your ass up to that hangar and check you out. I want you to introduce me to your gunny, and let me talk to him.”

“That’s cool, man,” Mau Mau said, handing the weapons to the staff sergeant and then climbing in the back of the pickup next to the errant machine gunner.

“That your dog?” the Marine asked Harris as he saddled up next to him.

“Shit no, man,” Harris lied. “He probably belong to some gooners living outside the wire, and he just wanted to come run along with me, I guess.”

Suddenly Mau Mau slammed his hands on the roof of the truck’s cab just as the driver had pulled forward.

“Stop! We got Viet Cong over there!” Harris screamed, and began pushing the barrel of the machine gun toward the bushes where Huong and Bao had hidden in their black car.

“How you know they VC?!” the Marine lance corporal behind the machine gun screamed back, pulling Harris’s hands off the weapon’s barrel. “We can’t just go shooting at people outside the wire.”

“The dude got a rifle, man! You didn’t see it?” Harris said, looking down at the staff sergeant, who jumped out of the truck with an M16 rifle, raised it to his shoulder, and took aim at the bushes where Huong and Bao hid.

“I ain’t seen shit, Sergeant Potter!” the staff sergeant shouted, looking for the enemy.

“Two dudes over there!” Harris screamed, pointing at the bushes. “I seen one of them with a rifle. They VC, man. Open fire with this machine gun. We find that rifle when you kill the motherfuckers!”

Mau Mau then tried to push the lance corporal from behind the machine gun and open fire with it. The young Marine, with his goggles now askew, fought back, trying to hold control of the heavy weapon.

“Back the fuck off, ass wipe!” the staff sergeant screamed, climbing in the back of the truck and pulling Harris’s hands off the tailpiece of the machine gun before he could release a burst of fire.

“Look, motherfucker, now they getting away!” Harris whined in a loud voice as he watched Huong tromp the gas on the Mercedes and speed down the dirt road.

“Radio the reaction squad, Corporal O’Brien!” the staff sergeant shouted, leaning over the truck cab and looking inside the driver’s window.

“Shit, man, they be long gone now,” Harris said, shaking his head and seeing the black car disappear.

 
HUONG AND BAO had lain in the bushes, watching the guard vehicle stop Mau Mau Harris. In a few seconds Turd had jumped in the brush with them. When the two cowboys saw their former cohort swing the machine gun their way, Bao leaped inside the car as Huong threw Turd in the backseat and then jumped behind the steering wheel, stomping the accelerator pedal to the floorboard, and punctuating their departure from the scene with a rooster tail of dirt flying through the air.