Sweet Reason (22 page)

McTigue could make out dozens of children in the town and in the fields that surrounded the town. The ones in the fields stopped work to look up at the helicopter. Some started gesturing. Some started running. McTigue could see that there was panic in the way they ran.

“Jesus shit, the place is full of kids!” McTigue said on the intercom.

One of the door gunners laughed into the intercom. “Them clinks look like ants to me.”

“It’s the angle,” the pilot assured McTigue. “From up here everyone looks like kids.”

—— —— was sliced into two unequal parts by a paved
highway that ran from north to south. On the seaward side of the road the town was tents and thatched huts and small backyard vegetable gardens. On the landward side there were a few dozen one-story cement buildings, a two-story building alongside a soccer field, more cement buildings, then a tangle of thatched huts and then on the edge of town an old truck depot with three dilapidated trucks in it.

Except for children running in all directions and someone hastily hoisting a white flag with a faded red cross on a pole in front of the soccer field, —— —— looked peaceful enough.

“Looks peaceful enough, don’t it?” McTigue asked over the intercom.

“They always do,” Ruggieri said.

The radio-telephone crackled into life and McTigue heard a familiar voice in his earphones.

“Spotting round en route,” is what the voice said.

Suddenly it dawned on McTigue, “Jesus shit, that’s Mister Lustig!”

Ruggieri pulled the helicopter up, with its bubble nose angled down, for a grandstand view.

The first spotting round exploded in the tangle of thatched huts on the landward side of the town, about five hundred yards short of the truck depot. There was a burst of bright yellow, like a flashbulb going off, then a spreading blaze and a wisp of brown-black smoke spiraling into the sky.

“Jesus, they’re firing short!” McTigue told Ruggieri.

“Don’t tell me, tell them — that’s what you’re here for,” Ruggieri said, and he pointed to another button on the panel marked “external transmit.”

McTigue depressed it and shouted into his microphone: “Jesus shit, you’re short, you’re firing short, you’re in the thatch, d’you read me, you’re hitting the huts, I thought you guys were gonna overshoot and walk the stuff back down, over.”

“How short, damnit?” Lustig asked.

“Jesus shit, the fuckin’ huts are on fire, you’ve got to come up five hundred at least, do you read me, over.”

Another spotting round landed three hundred yards short of the truck depot.

“Jesus, you’re still in the fuckin’ huts,” McTigue shouted into the microphone. An area about the size of a football field in the middle of the tangle of huts was ablaze. People were scurrying in all directions. “The huts are burning like tinder,” McTigue yelled, “up three hundred.”

“Up what?” called Lustig. “Say again, up what?”

“Up three fuckin’ hundred, don’t you understand English, over.”

“You’re garbled,” radioed Lustig. “Say everything twice, over.”

One of the door gunners came on the intercom. “What the fuck they holding — a dink roast?”

The other door gunner laughed into the intercom: “Hey man, that’s good — a clink roast.”

Ruggieri tapped McTigue on the arm. “You’re cutting out because the angle of the antenna keeps changing. Just say every word twice, get it?”

McTigue nodded and punched the “external transmit” button with his fist. “Up up three three hundred hundred, d’you read me, d’you read me, over over.”

The next shot fell short of the depot again.

“Jesus shit, you guys still aren’t on target,” McTigue yelled.

A few seconds later, to McTigue’s astonishment, the
Ebersole
opened fire in salvo and the rounds of VT frag began to hail down on the already blazing tangle of thatched huts. An ancient fire engine with an army jeep in front of it and another behind came chugging into town from the north and pulled up on the fringe of the fire. Instantly dozens of children surrounded the jeeps and the fire engine. Those around the fire engine pointed to the flames; those around the jeeps pointed to the helicopter.

McTigue punched the transmit button again. “Jesus fuckin’ shit, you guys are shooting short, you’re shooting into the huts, the whole fuckin’ place is an inferno, what the fuck you think you’re doing, you got to raise your sights, you hear me, what are you, deaf or something, up, up, up,
UP, UP, UP.
” Now McTigue was screaming the word “up” into the microphone over and over.

One of the door gunners interrupted him. “Hey
Lou
-tenant, I think one of them there jeeps down there has a machine gun mounted —”

McTigue never heard the machine gun, only the cold metallic sound of steel shredding steel. Ruggieri’s eyes, bulging with terror, scanned the dials on the panel in front of him; the needles seemed calm enough. The rotors were still turning and the engine sounded as it did before. Ruggieri relaxed and pulled back on the stick to gain altitude.

The helicopter didn’t respond.

“Dear mother of God —” from Ruggieri, pulling back harder on the stick with his gloved hands.

A mild explosion shook the helicopter and McTigue looked back into the smoke and wiped his eyes and saw the two door gunners on the floor holding their stomachs as if they had cramps. Then the seat seemed to drop out from under McTigue. Like a bird heavy with buckshot the helicopter began to settle, rotor blades flapping, toward the earth.

“We’re going in,” Ruggieri shouted. “Jump as soon as we hit —”

“What about them?” McTigue gestured toward the door gunners.

“If they’re alive, they’ll fend for themselves,” Ruggieri said.

The static-decayed voice of Captain Jones bit into McTigue’s earphones. “McTigue, d’you hear me, we’ve been hit, we’ve taken a hit. Do you see any counterfire?”

McTigue punched the “external transmit” button. “Mayday,
Mayday, we’ve been hit in the rotors, Mayday, Mayday, we’re going in Captain, for God’s sake help, oh Jesus shit, help, help, help, heeeeeeeeelp.”

The helicopter jarred onto a flat stretch of ground some Boo yards beyond the truck depot, pitching McTigue forward into his shoulder harness. When the helicopter motor cut out, McTigue could hear the crackling of flames in the back section of the craft. He saw Ruggieri tugging wildly at his shoulder straps and he did the same. An instant later both Ruggieri and McTigue leapt from the helicopter, each on his own side, and raced for a small rise forty yards away.

“Dear mother of God,” panted Ruggieri.

“Jesus fuckin’ shit,” gasped McTigue.

Crouching on the rise, breathing heavily from exertion and fright, the two men looked back at the blazing helicopter. They could hear the roaring of the flames and the crackling explosion of firecrackers.

“Ammo’s — cooking — off,” Ruggieri said between gasps of air. He yanked off his gloves and his candy-striped helmet and threw them as far as he could and ran his fingers through his thick hair, which had been pasted down by the weight of the helmet. Through the film of smoke and heated, wavy air McTigue could see some movement at the edge of the town near the truck depot. He pointed at the movement and Ruggieri drew a blue-black .45 caliber pistol from his holster, threw a round into the chamber and flicked off the safety. “Come on,” he said, and tugging at McTigue’s sleeve, he pulled him along. Bogged down by flight suits and heavy boots, the two men lumbered across a brush field and sank out of sight into a clump of bushes.

While they were trying to regain their breath the first flight of jets came in from the sea at rooftop level, dropped some canisters on the town and soared into the sky like roller coasters. Great beautiful red-black balls of smoke and fire billowed up after them.

“What the fuck we gonna do?” McTigue asked after a while.

“We’re going to get rescued,” Ruggieri said.

“How we gonna do that?”

Ruggieri pointed to a small leather-covered box, about the size of a transistor radio, strapped to his belt. “Transmitter,” he explained. “It puts out a signal. Soon as they’ve taken care of the opposition” — Ruggieri motioned with his head toward the flaming town — “they’ll home in on the signal and pick us up. All we got to do is lay low.”

A flight of prop planes swept in from the north and strafed the truck depot. Another flight came from the east. The last plane peeled off toward a cluster of children scampering away from the depot. The plane seemed to pull up without dropping anything. For an instant McTigue thought the pilot must have seen that they were children. Then there was a ball of fire where the group had been.

“They’re sure putting on one hell of a show,” Ruggieri said.

But McTigue was thinking about something else. “What happens if there isn’t no rescue chopper?” he asked.

Ruggieri looked at him. “There will be.”

“But what if there isn’t?” McTigue insisted. “What if?”

“There will be.” Ruggieri turned back to watch the show.

Long after Ruggieri thought the town was neutralized the planes kept coming — from different directions, at different heights, with different armaments. Finally, halfway through the second hour, there was a pause.

“Maybe we should surrender?” McTigue said. “You think we should surrender?”

Ruggieri jerked himself around toward McTigue. “Surrender! Dear God, you must be out of your mind. You know what some choppers did around here a few days back? They lassooed this gook in a field and stripped him naked and put a rope around his neck and started out slowly with the gook running like crazy to keep up. After a while the gook can’t
keep up and his neck snaps. You get the picture, Chief?”

“What the fuck they do that for?” McTigue asked.

“What do they do anything for? Me, I live and let live, right, but these gooks here, how they going to know that, huh, how they going to know I live and let live?” Ruggieri fingered his pistol. “If they catch us, they’ll lynch us,” he said. “Go ahead and surrender if you want to; me, I’ll put my money on this.” And he hefted the pistol.

Another wave of jets came in from the sea, and then another, and still another. After a while it seemed to McTigue like an endless wave of planes and he lost all sense of time. Every now and then he peered out between the bushes at the town, but the town was disappearing before his eyes. The part of —— —— that had been cement buildings was nothing but dust and rubble now. The truck depot had ceased to exist. Beyond McTigue’s line of sight, where the thatched huts had been, there was a wall of flame.

As McTigue watched, two teenage boys carrying a baby carriage between them dashed from the rubble of the truck depot and headed into the field. A prop plane with teeth painted on the nose darted in and dropped a canister of napalm behind the running boys. The canister hit and the flame spread forward in a sweeping arc; the boys abandoned the baby carriage and ran faster but the flame caught up with them and passed them.

The grass and brush were burning now and the fire was moving across the fields, away from —— —— toward McTigue and Ruggieri. Just when it looked as if it had burned itself out, four more children popped up near the small rise between McTigue and the downed helicopter. A prop plane detached itself from a flight and dropped the canister too far behind them and they got away into a wooded area to the north. But the napalm rekindled the brush fire and it moved closer to the clump of underbrush that hid McTigue and Ruggieri.

“We’ll have to run for it,” Ruggieri said. He pulled a large piece of silk from a pocket on his calf and spread it on the ground. On one side was a map of the enemy’s country and a few dozen phonetic phrases such as “Don’t harm me — I was only following orders.” The other side was an American flag. “When we run, I’ll stream the flag, just in case one of those jet jockeys up there gets any bright ideas. Okay, you ready?”

McTigue glanced at the brush fire, which was only a few dozen yards off now, and nodded and heaved himself to his feet to follow Ruggieri, who trotted ahead streaming the flag. Suddenly Ruggieri stopped short and McTigue almost ran into him, and then he saw why Ruggieri had stopped; thirty yards dead ahead five teenage boys armed with long-handled axes waited for the two American airmen.

“Holy mother of Christ,” Ruggieri said, and he turned to his right and ran parallel to the fire, with McTigue trailing after him, but the boys trotted along on a parallel course waiting for the brush fire to bring the two Americans to them. McTigue noticed the fire had burned out ahead and to the right and he yelled to Ruggieri and the two Americans lumbered toward the hole in the wall of fire with the five boys in pursuit, the five gaining on the two Americans, closing the gap on the Americans, then McTigue saw that Ruggieri wasn’t running anymore, that Ruggieri had dropped to one knee the way he had been taught in survival school, had dropped to one knee and gasping for air had steadied his pistol with two hands and had started shooting, had hit one of the teenagers, had hit a second, then the boys were up to Ruggieri, were on top of Ruggieri, hacking at him, he covering his head with the silk flag the way a child crawls under a sheet, he screaming from beneath the sheet “Mother of God don’t harm me — I was only following orders” in English because he can’t remember the phonetic translation. Then one of the teenagers looks up and sees McTigue and
starts toward him, sure of catching him, McTigue too winded to move, McTigue mixed up, not sure what is happening, sure only that it is happening to him, thinking Jesus shit this is happening to me, the teenager in front of him swinging his ax in an arc, the ax just catching the side of McTigue’s head as he lunges sideways, then a burst of machine-gun fire that rips away the teenager’s chest and left arm and flings him back, flings him away from McTigue. Then a curious beating sound and the wind hammering against McTigue and something, he’s not sure what, thuds onto the ground directly in front of him and hands pull him roughly into a cave only it isn’t a cave it’s a helicopter and the helicopter rises a few feet and hovers while the door gunner furious about the American lying out there under the flag cuts down the other teenagers. Then the helicopter pendulums off toward the sea in a motion so comforting it brings tears to McTigue’s eyes.