Free-Fire Zone (7 page)

“Gillespie,” I say firmly, and grab him by the back of the shirt. I pull him up lightly from where he has
stubbornly remained on the ground. I haul him back in the direction of the armored transport, even though he's bigger than me and stronger than me and smarter than me and — in some way, in some other world — right about what he's doing. I drag him back where he belongs.

And he lets me.

This is such a weird and remarkable day already.

 

The rest of the run toward our destination is mostly quiet, though
quiet
somehow seems like the wrong word. Nobody's saying much, but you can feel it, the charge in the air, and boy can you smell that stink more than ever. I'm sitting diagonally across from Gillespie, who's looking like he could just jump out of the vehicle unarmed and start biting the heads off all the VC in the area. Lt. Jupp is on the same bench, in the spot up closest to the driver. On Jupp's left is Hunter, who doesn't seem to know him. On his right, curled up on the floor next to the driver, is our dead ARVN gunner, who doesn't know anybody anymore. Cpl. Cherry, who is turning out to be a far more ferocious warrior than I had figured, has taken up the gun post on the roof.

“How you feeling?” I say low to Squid.

“Pretty great, man. I mean, really great. Better than I've felt in a long time. Can't wait now, can't wait.”

“I know it,” I say. “Let's go, let's go.”

Our surviving ARVN comrade is shouting again, as we are apparently approaching our destination. Guys are up and out of their seats, loading up and growling and howling even though the vehicle's still bouncing crazy and we don't even have the head room to stand all the way up so we're a bunch of hunchback gun-toting sweaty smelly lunatics. In a can.

The vehicle jams to a halt, and we all pile out the open rear ramp. Us privates squat right down, followed by the corporals, guns ready, scanning the periphery from our hilltop clearing down over the pretty green countryside below.

Lt. Jupp steps out of the truck but stays in his hunchback crouch like he isn't quite sure where he is as he studies a map and we all wait. It might be something else or it might be that he was shaken up by Sunshine's mini revolt, but the man doesn't look at all sure of what he's doing.

“Lieutenant,” Cpl. McClean snaps. “Have you got coordinates? Have you got a target for us?”

“Yes,” Jupp snaps back in that old familiar growl of authority. But he continues studying.

Lt. Bien comes striding out of the M-113, not bothering with the crouching or ducking, and stomps up to the lieutenant as if he has dinner reservations in an hour. He jabs at a point on the map and, not even trying with the English anymore, barks short, stabbing Vietnamese syllables before firmly grasping the lieutenant and turning him in the direction of a barely visible trail of blue smoke coming up out of a dense thicket of canopy about a quarter mile away. As he is pointing, we hear a sound that's becoming pretty familiar.

SSSSSSissssss …

And the show's on as a surface-to-air missile comes whizzing right through our party and everybody scrambles. The corporals go for the heavy hardware in the vehicle while we spray mostly ineffective rounds in the direction of the target. I'm half-proud that we're being treated with the same respect as aircraft, but get over that pretty quick when a second SAM comes within five feet of my head.

Soon as it's gone past, though, I start laughing. I know it's truly mental, but I can't help it. It's like the roller coaster at Paragon Park, except without the puking. What I mean is, the anticipation will drive you crazy, but when you survive it, it's a complete thrill. I have adrenaline pumping right out my pores now, and I am chafing for some of that heavy hardware.

I get my wish when McClean comes rushing over and sets me and Squid up with an 81-mm mortar, and it's like basic-training time trials as we get the thing assembled and aimed, packed and loaded in record time. Squid takes a step back and
boom
that shell shoots out and up and higher and higher, arcing over our own Air Force flight patterns and I'll be grilled if I'm not flashing back to Paragon and Nantasket Beach and the Fourth of July fireworks all over again, amazing, until:

Phwooooom!
Man, when that shell lands crashing and burning through that canopy I can't believe there's anything in or out of armor that could withstand it.

So we do it again.

And again.

We're absolutely pounding this site, with mortar and heavy cannon fire and RPGs, and I wish they let us have flamethrowers because that's really all that's missing from this celebration. We hit 'em and hit 'em and hit 'em again until the referee would surely stop the fight if this was boxing, but it ain't and so we hit 'em again. Because we are the United States Marine Corps and we are doing, finally, what we were sent here to do. And no offense to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam, who seem like decent soldiers and swell guys and who have been a lot of help to us today, but there ain't no way in heaven or on earth we're gonna let these guys
up off the mat the way they did. Twice. We're gonna make 'em dead and make 'em stay dead regardless of the Vietcong Charlie reputation for coming back like magic. No more magic. None.

And also with all due respect to our brave brothers of the United States Army, the Marines are not a defensive force like they are and we should not ever've been asked to hang around and
defend
any part of this country. We weren't trained for that. We are an offensive force.

“Hold fire! Hold fire!” Lt. Jupp calls out as loud as he can and nobody, but nobody, holds fire right away, not even me. I think he's been calling it out for a while before I even realize he's doing it, to be honest, because my ears are filled with the awesomeness of cannon fire and with my pounding, heaving heart, and truth is if the lieutenant wanted to be heard when he shouted he maybe should be a little more selective about all the shouting he does all the time.

But that's no excuse, really, and when I realize what's what I stop firing well before the other guys do.

I love the 81-mm mortar every bit as much as the M-67 rocket launcher and I hope I never have to choose between the two of them.

It's a little frightening, a little embarrassing to watch Jupp have to go up to one bloodthirsty Marine after
another and insist that he stop pummeling whatever is left of the enemy stronghold down there. It's even to the point where he comes scary close to Gillespie's line of fire as he cranes in to shout at him. Gillespie is chuckling like a movie villain and Jupp is leaning harder and harder into him, screaming. I'm pretty sure Gillespie's running out of ammo now is the only thing that saves the lieutenant's life, though not his dignity.

I know how the guys feel. Those enemy guys, whoever they are down there in whatever setup they have going there, have hardly done enough to shake us up too badly. But still, every cell in my body wants to use up every bit of ordnance in our tank to blow them to pieces and blow their pieces to pieces, and those pieces to pieces. They can't be dead enough.

But it's no excuse for ignoring a direct order.

When the men are all finally convinced to stop shooting, we listen.

There is no return fire. No rifle shots, no rockets' red glare. By far the most noticeable noise in this whole soggy, leafy, phospho-smelly patch of jungle is the heavy marathon breathing of Lt. Jupp.

It's hard to tell for sure which is making him hyper-ventilate like he's doing: the rush of the action or the effort of shouting every one of his men individually into the off position. At any rate, what
is
for sure is that this
was not the walk-in-the-park assignment he was expecting it to be.

I have never been more excited in my life.

But I have also never seen Lt. Jupp so tense. His eyes are bugging and bloodshot.

“Is everybody okay?” he says, snarly and shaky both.

There is much gruntage, no words, everybody pretty clearly being okay.

“Once again, superb fighting, men. Job extremely well done. Might have expected you to be rusty from inaction, but you were — to a man — ready, willing, and able, and far too much a match for whoever and whatever was down there. Now, I don't know about you all, but I am ready to get back and get some chow, huh?”

It starts with both corporals. I watch as they go all wide-eyed, their jaws tensing. Then the look makes its way down the chain of command, starting with the more disrespectful privates, Gillespie and Marquette, and passing to Hunter and Squid and, I realize, to me, too. There is genuine shock in these looks. Shock and fury.

“Lieutenant,” Cherry says, “we have to go down there.”

“We have to follow up,” McClean says. “We need to
verify, visually, what we had down there. What was, what is, what we accomplished.”

“What might
still
need to be accomplished,” Cherry adds.

Jupp, to my disappointment, gives them an unmistakable
are-you-stupid?
look.

“We know what is left to be accomplished, corporal. Nothing. Put your stupid corporal ear to the breeze and listen. We wiped them out. We knocked them into Cambodia and beyond. We did what we were assigned to do, and now our job is to get back. We are lucky to be in one piece, coming home with everybody we brought out with us —”

Gillespie clears his throat loudly as our ally, Lt. Bien, silently turns and walks back to the M-113.

“— and who knows what we are going to engage on the way back? Now, our success today is all well and good, but the very clear directive from all the way up top at this point is
we are not taking any more casualties
. As commanding officer, my number-one priority right now is to get the men under my command back safe, and no matter how cocky you all feel about yourselves right now that is precisely what I intend to do. Now, soldiers, pack up your gear and get yourselves back to that vehicle directly. That is an order.”

Lt. Jupp himself starts making a line for the vehicle like he's racing somebody, which isn't the case at all because nobody's moved. He's gone about twenty paces when he senses this is the case. He stops short and, without turning toward us, barks his command again.

“I
said
, that's an order, men.”

I don't disobey orders. That's a fact, and that fact isn't going to change as long as I'm a member of the USMC.

But we're supposed to go down and follow up. I know this. Everybody knows this.

We're all looking at the corporals now.

The corporals look at each other.

Cherry shakes his head in disbelief. McClean shrugs. They start heading in the direction of the ride home.

“No!” Gillespie shouts.

“You are sailing very close to the wind, Gillespie,” Jupp calls, about to step into the vehicle.

“Just let it go,” Cherry says. “It's not worth it.”

Despite two firefights, this might be the tensest moment of the day. So far.

We're all headed to the M-113 now, when suddenly our ARVN man hops down and stands nose-to-nose with Lt. Jupp. Jupp freezes, but we all continue to move closer. It's a cozy huddle when Lt. Bien speaks.

“We go down there,” he says to Jupp, gesturing in the direction of the bombardment.

We all wait. It's very much like a school yard fight waiting to happen.

But there isn't another word. It's an amazingly tense minute.

We all mount up and move out without another word said.

It is extra bumpy as we hurtle down through the rugged terrain to the site. Bien could well be doing it on purpose, the way he's hunched over the controls and growling lowly in Vietnamese. Lt. Jupp, no question, is a wounded soldier right now, not interacting or even making eye contact with anyone. We know who's in charge for the time being and I would guess mostly everybody on board is pleased about that state of affairs.

When we reach our destination and the back opens up again, we all make our way down the ramp, moving slowly but with purpose. We're traveling mostly light: M-16s, Claymore anti-personnel mines, and grenades all around.

Except for our commander. He's assigned himself an M-60 machine gun, with two bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossing his torso. Almost like he's expecting a different war from the rest of us.

We march in a careful formation into a village that looks just like a lot of villages we've seen in the past, only it's even smaller than most. Six basic-looking huts, four of which are in some state of burned out. Smoke rises all around us, bits of flame not worth putting out.

And there are bodies. In similarly varied states of charred. I count sixteen, all men, either outside on the ground or straddling doors and windows. Sixteen torsos, that is, with limbs distributed randomly all over the place. Very much an Old West–style shootout aftermath scene, but here in the even older East. We hold our formation and proceed toward the two buildings that remain mostly intact, stepping right around or over bodies. When we come to the first building, Jupp gestures to Bien, who shouts into the place clearly demanding somebody show himself.

We have a whole lot of firepower trained on this one doorway with a canvas drape hanging in it.

Nothing.

Bien shouts some more.

I see my M-16 begin to shake a little as I wait. I am sure, suddenly and for no reason, that there is somebody armed and angry on the other side of that sheet.

We are giving off lots of smells now, our merry band of fighting men. Stronger even than the burning human flesh all around us.

Bien shouts again —

Rat-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at!

Without warning, Lt. Jupp unloads on the hut with the M-60, pounding the life out of it, the machine gun sucking in its ammo belt and spitting out bullets at a rate sufficient to kill thirty guys if they were unlucky or stupid enough to be inside. I'm shocked enough to recoil from the impact, and I'm not the only one.