One to Count Cadence (21 page)

He shook his pack at me, scattering several across the roof. “Have some,” he said. I could see the light gleaming off his cheeks and knew they were clenched in a grin.

“Thanks.”

“You got a bug up your ass tonight?” he asked as we searched for the lost cigarettes. “Heard you holler all the way up here.”

“Maybe I’m going Asiatic like the rest of you bastards. Who knows?”

“Told you this place wasn’t home.”

“You did, didn’t you? Pete thinks it is.”

“Huh.”

“Pete’s fallen in love with a new broad at the Skyview. Do you know who she is? He said she had blond hair.”

“Yeah,” he snorted, “she’s got blond hair, but she ain’t got pink nipples. She’s okay in the dark, but in the daylight she’s bad news.” We stood up and leaned over the wall.

“He says he may steady shack with it,” I said, flipping my cigarette among the pile of rice bugs on the sidewalk below. “Hope he doesn’t bite off…”

An explosion and a clatter of automatic fire at the Main Gate interrupted me. We could see bouncing headlights and splashing bursts of automatic fire followed by their rattle.

“Jesus. What’s happening?” Novotny asked quietly, grabbing my arm.

“I don’t know, but load your weapon, anyway,” I answered on my way to the trap door.

Later I learned that six jeeps of Huk bandits had hit the Main Gate with everything from a 20mm cannon stolen from a jet to a .25 caliber Nambu light machine left by the Japanese, and lots of swivel-mounted .50s and .30s. And they knew how to use them. They came through the gate without changing gears, knocked down six Air Policemen, two Filipino guards and a KP coming to work early; blew up the guard shack, a jeep and a three-quarter, and kept on moving. But we did not know any of this until later.

I hit the floor shouting, “Shut her down! Shut her down! Levenson! get on the phone to PMO and find out what’s happening at the Main Gate!” I fielded seventy questions by not answering, then caught seventy more when I unlocked the weapons rack and the ammo locker. “Everybody get a weapon and ammo and get on the roof!” They stared at me with a single question furrowing every face: War? Then the same sadness touched every pair of eyes when the next thought followed, as had been promised since they were born: The Bomb?
Oh, my God,
the faces said,
Oh my God! Nobody told us. We’re not ready. There’s too much left undone.
We all stood very still for a long, long second, very quiet in the metallic hum and beep of our useless equipment, as if wondering why it hadn’t warned us, listening again for a clue from the silent, glowing and smug tubes. I thought they would be all right. They were just stunned by the opening of the ammunition locker. None of them had ever seen the green footlocker opened. The weapons’ rack was okay, even familiar, an ordinary thing of day to day inspections or alerts, but live ammunition was only for the range or standing roof guard and being very careful not to accidently fire a round because old Johnson had caught a Special Court for firing one round. But this was different. Frightening, exciting, but mainly different, and it grabbed them and held them silent and still. But like all captured moments, this one was as short as it was long, and it ended as I shoved several bandoleers of M-1 clips into Morning’s stomach, and shouted, “On the roof! Move! Move! Move! Cagle, get the outside lights. Move!”

They moved.

I grabbed a rifle, some ammo and swung up the ladder, shouting once more for Levenson to call PMO. “Busy! Busy! Busy!” he screamed back, his voice as high and irritated as the signal he was getting.

On the roof madness was unleashed as everyone tried to load, look, and run around knocking each other off the roof. A line of headlights had already turned off the main highway on the side road coming toward us. I could barely keep my mind on the men: the rifle in my hands kept begging to be fired. Another jeep followed the line at a distance which I later judged to be the effective range plus one hundred of a .50 caliber at night from the back of a speeding vehicle. Two sets of headlights were coming across the grass from the runways behind us, and more along the fence next to the Exchange. It looked as if we were being attacked from all sides, and since I had forgotten about the money in the Exchange half a mile east of us, this attacking fear did more than I could with all my pushing and shouting to make the men stay in one place. Peterson still stood in the center of the roof, lost, holding an M-l in one hand, a carbine in the other, and he looked doubly helpless because it was obvious he was not about to turn loose of either rifle long enough to get both hands on one. Novotny led him to the wall, and sat him down behind it. Collins, Quinn and Morning were kneeling behind the wall and at least had their weapons pointed in the general direction of the lights stringing swiftly closer. Levenson popped through the trap door and screamed, “A holdup! A holdup! A Huk holdup!” He giggled and ran to the wall loading a carbine. One of the jeeps from the runaway patrol swept through our lights, an AP hanging out of either side, shouting and shooting, one with a .38 revolver, the other with a shotgun, at the jeeps over a thousand yards away. They were having a grand time. Once more my rifle pleaded to be fired.

Suddenly the floodlights went out, fading quickly away, and the headlights and muzzle flashes leapt closer out of the blinking darkness. “Where was Moses when the lights went out?” Morning said. I could not see him now, but I remembered how he looked a moment before, cold in his poise and readiness. “Down in the cellar with his shirttail out,” he answered himself. He sounded drunk, but I knew he wasn’t. Until I saw him at the wall, a faint question had been tickling the back of my neck. But now I knew he would fight as the lights and firing came on us like a squall line:

Cagle came up, shut away the last bit of light, and said, “Hey, Slag-baby, you boys didn’t leave me a gun.”

“Little fart don’t need one,” Novotny said beside me.

“Pete’s got two.”

Cagle shuffled to the wall. “Gimme one, you stingy bastard.”

“What now?” everyone asked in one way or another — except Morning.

What could I answer? Me with my trembling fingers knocking on the hard wood stock and me with a fine quiver in my guts and the blood in my ears like thunder…

“Shit. Shoot the bastards.”

No one cheered, but they listened quietly as I did all that Hollywood crap about firing on my signal and short bursts, and made a Jimmy Cagney joke about not shooting any AP dirty rats by mistake. I didn’t get any laughs either. A snort from Quinn, a few nervous shuffles, a slap or two at bugs, a muffled cough or prayer, then everyone was quiet, watching the racing lights.

I waited until the line was what seemed close enough, and slid my rifle over the wall. Then I wondered how Pete had climbed the ladder with two weapons, then I worried about not mentioning setting battle sights at three hundred yards. The lights of the first jeep were fuzzy in my peep sight, and I waited, and then I screamed.

The crash of my shot seemed like an explosion in my hands, loud, too loud, and the recoil knocked me back like an unexpected blow. The whole complexion of the night changed. The walled roof, secure and safe as it had seemed earlier, became a naked, frightened place, as if some unnamed part of me had been launched into the distant battle, leaping across the border between a safe here and an unbelievably dangerous there. It wasn’t like I thought it would be. It wasn’t easy to shoot at men, or a grinding noise and light which betrays where men are. I had never thought that it would be otherwise — but it was so frightening, as if I had to cross that time and space and stand stupid and scared and shooting at myself. I was numb, but all the nerves of my body were on fire, fire.

The others must have felt the shock too. Novotny and Quinn had fired only one or two rounds, Collins a couple more, and Cagle had split the night with a clip-long burst which had jammed his carbine. But Morning fired steadily, rocking with the recoil, then back into firing position, his rhythm broken only by the ping of his clip as the last round ejected and the click and snap as he loaded another.

I whipped back to the jeeps, sorry they must be gone, and found they had barely moved. I fired again, and again, and the more times I pulled the trigger, the easier it was, the more numb my nerves became. Quickly the rifle was as light as a wand and magically waved, cleanly leading the first jeep, the recoil gone, and I knew, knew, knew I was hitting the jeep, and fired again. Then we were firing and screaming and laughing and lost.

The beams of many vehicles now splashed everywhere, up and down and around, swinging and bouncing over the grass as if hundreds of hunting giants were running with flashlights. But some jeeps had stopped, and burned like jubilant bonfires. As the Huks passed the gravel road which led to Ops, the first jeep skidded and the second hit it, turning it over in the road, and it rode its passengers for awhile. The third clipped the left rear of the second, trying to swing around it, so both stalled in opposite ditches near where the first burned. The remaining three whipped off the road in a tight, dusty circle, then came back going in the other direction. They caught an AP three-quarter which was following with its lights out, and knocked it off the road. Other vehicles behind it scattered like frightened quail, flying faster the further away they got from the hunters.

One down, two stopped, three away, and our side stood up to cheer, to shout and fire off-hand at the cluster of wrecked jeeps. We had drawn only a casual answering fire: once or twice a bass string had been plucked over our heads but who knew where it had been aimed, or even come from. The Huks were busy with the Air Police who now had eight or ten jeeps and three-quarters and two small armored riot cars, but they still had a moment for my bunch. Just a moment, but they hit the front of the building with six .50 caliber rounds. The building rocked as the slugs snipped through the cinder blocks as if they were gingerbread. A brick chip or a ricochet kicked Quinn’s M-l out of his hands, but nothing else was hit on the roof. Quinn cursed and crawled after the weapon. There was noticeably less cheering and absolutely no standing any more. A grunt and gurgle came from the other side of Novotny, followed by Cagle’s surprised voice, “I didn’t know I was scared. I didn’t know.”

Fewer bursts seared away from the two fallen jeeps, then they stopped completely after the two riot cars fired tear gas grenades with their cannon. Gradually all the firing stopped as three men ran out of the gas cloud. Two had their hands in their faces, but one held a rifle. Single rounds and short, concise bursts rattled again until the one with the rifle and one without did flip-flop dances across the road into the ditches. Morning still rocked and fired until he finished the clip. The ping, as his last round ejected, seemed too small a punctuation to end so much noise.

But of course the night was not over yet. A grinding crash came from the fence behind us. I ran to the back wall. A jeep had hit the corner of the fence and now sat with its right rear wheel hanging three feet up in the wire like a little dog cocking its leg to pee.

“Who is it?” I shouted down.

“Why don’t ya’ll turn your goddamn lights on?” a tired voice drawled.

“Didn’t want any you dumb-ass airmen shooting us,” Cagle sneered.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s all over now.”

“She-it,” the voice said from behind the tilted headlights, “She-it.” Two APs climbed out the driver’s side, then walked toward the road. “Fuckin’ ground-pounders hidin’ in the dark like a bunch a fuckin’ niggers.”

“Might jes be a might careful callin’ a man that when he got a gun pointed right at ya’ll’s lily white ass,” Morning sang out. “‘Member ya’ll can’t see my ass in th’ dark.” The airmen hurried on.

I stopped the laughter and chatter before it could start. “Cagle, downstairs and turn on the floodlights. Novotny, Quinn, stay up here. You spot anyone in the grass, don’t fire, but sing out so I’ll know. Collins, Levenson, Haddad, take the inside of the compound, one by the jeep, one at the gate, and one walking.” The lights came on; most of the fires around the wrecks were being extinguished, and headlights were bounding down our road. Things were trying to reach normal, when the jeep slid up behind our three-quarter, and Lt. Dottlinger leaped out and ran for the gate and shouted, “Open up!” as if he were under fire.

“Of all the bastards in the world…” Morning mused.

“You didn’t show your badge, sir,” I answered, agreeing with Morning. I had forgotten that Dottlinger was the OD, but I should have known.

“I haven’t got it. Is that you Krummel? What are you doing on the roof? Sightseeing?”

“No sir. The Trick is up here.” Jesus, I thought, here we go again, around the chickenshitberry bush.

“What for?” He peered harder into the lights, a muddled, myopic chicken. “Are those weapons loaded, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you fire? Did you? I want to know. I’ll have to report this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who authorized you to open the ammunition locker? Who ordered you to open fire? Just who, Sgt. Krummel?”

“Good question,” I muttered. Levenson giggled.

“What’s that, sergeant? Damn those lights, anyway,” he said, shielding his eyes.

“He must really be pissed,” Morning whispered. “He cursed.”

“We were fired upon, sir. I assumed in an emergency that I was authorized to answer. I couldn’t reach the major, Capt. Saunders, or you, so I assumed responsibility myself.”

“Oh,” he said, tugging at his ear to let us know he was thinking. “All right,” he said, obviously disappointed. “I suppose we can find a regulation to cover the situation for our report. Open the gate.”

“Sir, I can’t unlock the gate from here unless you put your badge in the key-box.”

“I told you, I didn’t have it. I didn’t have time to get it.”

“Then I’ll have to come down to let you in.” It curdled my blood to lie to the bastard about being fired upon first, changed me from a man to a kid with his fly open. And I didn’t really have to. I had said that I was not worrying about my stripes any more. There must have been guilt on that Apple Tree instead of knowledge — or maybe they are the same. Take two men, stick them in uniforms, tack bars on one, and the other one will find himself guilty. To hell with this man’s army, I thought, Just to hell with it.