Jungle Rules (5 page)

“So what’s the story, if anybody asks while you’re in the ville impersonating an officer?” Harris said.

“Some days I am a public information officer out on a mission for the Da Nang press center,” Pitts said. “Other days I am a staff judge advocate, doing my lawyer thing for First MAW Law. Either way, some hard-charging grunt brass asks a question, he doesn’t go much farther when he thinks he’s talking to some kind of rear-echelon commando who he thinks doesn’t rate to kiss his royal ass.”

“So I take the identity of one of those pogge dudes, too?” Harris asked.

“You got it,” Pitts said. “These two types just seem to be able to roam anywhere they want, and nobody really cares. So it works for what we need to do. Just keep a low profile, avoid crowds, and don’t linger at any one place too long.”

“You sure I gotta cut my hair, though?” Harris said, rubbing his hand on his head, feeling his Afro’s thickness, and thinking about how much trouble he had endured from the officers and senior enlisted Marines who had always harassed him about it.

“No,” Pitts said. “You can leave it like it is, and keep wearing that shit you got on, but you can’t stay here if you do. And you won’t last two days out there if you leave. It’s up to you. If you stay, you play by my rules.”

“That’s cool,” Harris said.

“As for this ragged-ass dog,” Pitts said, “how did you latch on to him?”

“You got that part backward, bro. I never latched on to him. He just started following me and wouldn’t go away,” Harris said, looking at the ugly beast at his feet, wagging its scraggly tail at him.

“Maybe he deserves a break then, too,” Pitts said, considering how he liked most dogs, even ugly ones. “So, Mau Mau, you got a name for the mutt?”

“Yeah, man, I do,” Harris said, and grinned as he spoke. “I call him Turd.”

Chapter 2

DICKY DOO AND THE DON’TS

“QUESTION FOR YOU, Staff Sergeant Pride,” Jon Kirkwood said to the defense section’s administrative chief and senior legal clerk.

“What’s that, Skipper?” Derek Pride answered as he led the pair of newly arrived lawyers from the bachelor officers’ quarters, where they had dropped their baggage on two open bunks. The staff sergeant casually walked with Kirkwood and O’Connor toward the legal office headquarters and an impatiently waiting Major Dudley L. Dickinson, the military justice officer and the staff judge advocate’s second in command.

“Today some kind of holiday?” Kirkwood asked, looking at an attractive, middle-aged gentleman with dark hair and an exquisite tan, dressed in white shorts, shoes, and polo shirt. Violently swinging his racquet, alternating forehand and backhand strokes, the fellow relentlessly pounded a tennis ball off a large sheet of plywood wired against the court fence. With each loud whop of the racquet striking the ball, the man let out a deep grunt that echoed off the concrete and the nearby buildings.

Just outside the high chain-link enclosure where the tanned, middle-aged man in white toiled at trying to blast a hole in the plywood panel with his tennis ball, a much younger man relaxed quietly on a chaise lounge. He, too, sported white athletic shorts but wore no shirt. With black plastic sunglasses resting on the bridge of his deeply tanned nose, hiding his
eyes, the fellow intently studied the fold-out feature photograph of an issue of
Penthouse
magazine.

A few feet from the man lying on the web-mesh reclining chair, an immaculately cleaned and polished jeep sat with a portable radio on its hood, tuned to Da Nang’s American Forces, Vietnam, broadcast station. The comedic toot of a steam calliope playing Henry Mancini’s popular hit “Baby Elephant Walk” drifted from the speakers, adding a tranquil accent to the placid afternoon scene.

“Oh, that’s just the boss, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Prunella, there on the tennis court, and his driver, Lance Corporal Dean, adhering to their regular afternoon physical training schedule,” Staff Sergeant Pride said and cracked a wry smile.

“We should stop and introduce ourselves, then,” Terry O’Connor said, stepping toward where the man reclined on the lounge chair, soaking up sun and now turning the
Penthouse
centerfold in various directions, examining every detail of the photo.

“Sirs,” Pride said, and hastily stepped in front of the two captains, “we don’t have a lot of time right now. I can see Major Dickinson watching us from his window. He can get very contentious when you keep him waiting.”

“Contentious, eh? Guess that means pissed off in legal parlance. Don’t want to piss off the Mojo, Jon, do we?” O’Connor said, looking toward the complex housing the First MAW staff judge advocate’s offices, where he could clearly see the silhouette of the military justice officer standing in a side window. “At least not until he knows us better. Not in the first five minutes, anyway.”

“You get a good look at that jeep?” Kirkwood said, following behind his pal Terry O’Connor and Staff Sergeant Pride, zagging at an angle across the grass, back to the gravel path and resuming their trek from the BOQ to the legal offices.

“Yeah,” O’Connor said, “you could eat off the tires. Even the wheel nuts were shiny. Like chrome. Did you catch that?”

“Whole thing glistens like a diamond in a black goat’s ass. How about that red license plate on the front with the bolt-on chrome letters S-J-A mounted on it,” Kirkwood said. “At first I thought it was General Cushman’s jeep, and the metal letters were three silver stars.”

“From a distance, the colonel’s jeep can mislead a person, unless you’ve been around here for a while and know it’s just our boss,” Pride said.

“He play tennis like that every afternoon?” O’Connor said, glancing a last look over his shoulder.

“Every morning, too,” Pride said. “From about seven to nine he sharpens his game, then works in the office until noon, takes a jog with Lance Corporal Dean for lunch, then at three o’clock he has his afternoon P-T session. Almost daily, unless he has to preside over a trial or attend a staff meeting.”

“Must be pretty laid back here then,” Kirkwood said, cracking a hopeful smile at the apparent prospect of ample free time.

“Hardly that, sir,” Pride said. “We stay quite busy. The colonel just keeps out of our way, unless we need his advice or help with something. Major Dickinson makes sure that rarely happens.”

“So the major really runs the show at First MAW Law,” O’Connor said.

“Colonel Prunella runs the show,” Pride quickly spoke. “Don’t let his hands-off style mislead you. Lewis Prunella is nobody’s fool, and is quite the gifted defense counsel or prosecutor. Take your pick. He’s worked both sides of trials, and is as sharp as they come.”

“So, what’s this?” Kirkwood said. “Retirement on active duty?”

“Some people might say that, more or less, in some respects,” Pride said. “But everyone here likes him, especially at III MAF. The colonel expertly plays the political game, gentlemen, and as a result, he keeps us well fixed. For example, we have six people assigned to us from Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron-1 administrative section, just to do typing. Normally, any other SJA would only get a couple of regular oh-one-five-ones. In fact, during my six-year career I’ve seen JAG sections where we had just one clerk-typist. Talk about getting backed up!

“Here in Da Nang, though, the colonel gets just about anything he wants. Take his driver, for instance. On loan from Lieutenant General Robert E. Cushman Jr., personally. Pulled directly from the III Marine Amphibious Force command section’s pool of drivers normally reserved for the senior staff. Some of the MAF bird colonels don’t even have personal drivers assigned specifically to them, but Lieutenant Colonel Prunella does.”

“That’s good to know,” Jon Kirkwood said, appreciating the genuine respect and obvious loyalty that Pride held toward Colonel Prunella.

“Now, if you ask me, that driver has the choicest job of anyone I’ve seen so far,” O’Connor said, looking back at the tall, tan Marine who now bent over an ice chest and took out two cold sodas. He then turned and handed one of the canned pops to the SJA, who had just walked out the tennis court gate, mopping his face with a white towel and smiling at the man like they were best friends.

“Lance Corporal James Dean from Malibu, California,” Staff Sergeant Pride said. “The authentic beach boy. All he does is drive Colonel Prunella, and do whatever the boss needs him to get done. Otherwise, between runs, when he’s not polishing his jeep, he lifts weights, or works on his tan while improving his reading skills, as you may have observed.”

“Yeah, right,” Kirkwood snorted, picking up on the staff sergeant’s subtle sarcasm. “Think he ever gets much past the pictures?”

“No shit,” O’Connor said, and laughed. “James Dean. That fits, too. As soon as I laid eyes on him, he struck me as a regular Joe Hollywood sort—tall, good-looking, sporting that tan and those Foster Grants. Even has that Troy Donahue sun-bleached hair going for him. The name, James Dean, though, just seems a little too ironic. That’s for real?”

“Yes, sir, that’s one of the reasons why most people around here call him Movie Star,” Pride said, arching one eyebrow and cracking a wise smile. “That and his background. Supposedly his family has money. That’s why the Malibu address. His dad’s some kind of big-time Hollywood studio executive. So typical of those people, the boy went maverick on the old man and joined the Marine Corps. You know, just to piss off the parents.

“However, Lance Corporal James ‘Movie Star’ Dean is no great gift, and certainly no loss to Hollywood. I would say that he has the mentality of a plate of noodles and the personality of a department store mannequin. I think they invented the term ‘shallow-minded’ just for him. He will screw up anything more complicated than wiping mud off his jeep or picking up the colonel’s laundry. That’s why nobody hassles Movie Star to do anything except piddly stuff. And that’s not much. Big, good-looking and d-u-m-b, dumb. Colonel Prunella loves him, though. Mostly because he keeps that jeep absolutely spotless and is always right there, handy.”

“Movie Star, huh?” O’Connor said.

“Yes, sir, Movie Star,” Pride said, opening the front door to the headquarters and leading the two captains inside.

 
“I GET PAID to be the royal asshole here,” Major Dudley L. Dickinson said, casting a patronizing, fake smile at the pair of officers as he stepped from behind his desk while offering his hand for Captains O’Connor and Kirkwood to shake. “I like my work, too.”

“So I’ve heard, sir,” O’Connor said, giving the major a one-pump shake and then letting go.

“Jonathan C. Kirkwood, sir, UCLA Law School class of ’64,” Kirkwood said, giving the major a dutiful, multipump handshake.

“Very good, Captain,” Dickinson said, and then turned back to O’Connor, who stood staring up at the large, posterboard sign thumb-tacked on the wall adjacent to the major’s desk. On it someone had carefully handwritten in bold, inch-long, black-marker-ink letters a list of a dozen sentences, each beginning with the word “Don’t” written in red marker ink and underlined with black. “You’re Terence B. O’Connor, then.”

“Yes, sir,” O’Connor said, still reading the sign.

“The initial B in your name comes from Boyd, your mother’s maiden name,” Dickinson said.

“Correct again, sir,” O’Connor said, now looking at the major.

“Let’s see, Columbia University Law School, also class of 1964,” Dickinson said. “Editor of the
Columbia Law Review
. Very impressive. You passed the New York Bar, and did it on the first try. Not bad at all. Father, a Marine sergeant, World War II, awarded the Navy Cross for valor on Iwo Jima. Don’t be so modest, Captain O’Connor. I have read all about both of you, including the special note from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding a minor hiccup with your secret clearance background check, relating to the fact that your fiancée is a Communist.”

“Girlfriend, sir,” O’Connor said, now looking squarely at the major’s narrowed eyes. “Vibeke Ahlquist is my girlfriend. She’s a very strong-minded liberal, a Social Democrat from Sweden, and a journalism graduate student at Columbia University. She freelances articles and commentaries from time to time for the
Daily Worker
, a newspaper established by the American Communist Party in 1924, which they publish and distribute in the neighborhood just outside Columbia University. Not on campus. She’s just a stupid student with no real-world experience. Does that make me a Communist?”

“Apparently not,” Dickinson said, sitting behind his desk and opening O’Connor’s Officer Qualification Record. “They still gave you a secret clearance, in spite of this relationship.”

“My relationship with Miss Ahlquist is my business in the first place,” O’Connor said, now realizing that he had just allowed Major Dicky Doo to push his one easy button.

“It’s my business when you are fraternizing with an agent from a socialist country that is sympathetic to the enemy,” Dickinson retorted.

Jon Kirkwood stepped away from O’Connor and began reading the sign on the wall, knowing that any comment he might add would only muddy the situation.