Jungle Rules (55 page)

Fryer knew that the major was making big points at regimental headquarters and at division. He knew because his men did not live in a vacuum. They heard the talk that filtered in with the couriers who made the run to LZ Ryder from Da Nang, where the commanding generals watched this battalion and bragged about Major Sidney Rich. His Second Battalion registered more kills and more enemy contact than any other battalion in either division, or in the entire American contingent of ground forces in Vietnam, for all he knew. The sergeant understood that could only mean big points for the major, and Fryer also knew that those points cost lives and the sanity of his men.

He felt like saying, “Fuck you, Major. Fuck this war and all the fucking brass and ribbons that go with it.”

However, Michael Fryer did not say a word. He briskly wished the major good day, followed with a “By your leave, sir,” a crisp about-face, and a rapid departure while the battalion sergeant major stood next to the tent flap, holding it open.

The frustrated sergeant had walked nearly all the way back to his platoon’s position when he stopped dead in his tracks. He could not go on. He could not see another day of the major’s hell. How could he face his men? How could he tell them that the major had points to make at division? How could he say, as the major had said, “We’re Marines. We’re tough. The mission, men. The mission! Suck it up. Be like the Spartans.”

“Cheap-ass talk. That’s all he is. Cheap-ass talk,” Fryer shouted as he wheeled about and unslung his M16 rifle. “Fuck the mission. Fuck the major.”

Reaching into a pouch that hung on his web belt, Michael Fryer pulled out a magazine loaded with eighteen 5.56-millimeter shells taped to another equally loaded magazine. He jammed it into the rifle and slammed its bolt home behind the first round.

“Major, oh, Major,” he began to say as he briskly marched across the compound to where the small command post tent stood, its flaps dropped shut.

“Major, oh, Major,” he chanted rhythmically with each step. “Major, oh, Major. Major, oh, Major.”

As the angry sergeant walked, he gained momentum. Each time his boot heel struck the dusty ground, he picked up speed in his march. Longer and longer strides. Louder and louder he called out, “Major, oh, Major!”

Several Marines down the hill from the battalion commander’s tent had worked most of the day digging a bunker. They stopped filling sandbags when they heard Fryer shouting, “Major, oh, Major!”

When they saw him raise his M16 to his shoulder, they wasted no time diving deep into the hole they had spent the better part of the day digging.

The first burst of gunfire sent Marines scrambling for cover at nearly every corner of the combat base. By the time anyone realized that the loud commotion came from Fryer shooting into the battalion commander’s tent, the angry Marine had emptied the first magazine and quickly turned it over, sent the bolt home on the next round, and began to fire again, flipping the rifle’s selector switch to full automatic.

“Major, oh, Major!” Fryer cried out, shouting and sobbing as he shot into the tent. “Why do you fuck with the troops like you do?”

Billowing dust shrouded Sidney Rich’s command post tent. The crash of breaking glass and flying metal accompanied the crack of Michael Fryer’s rifle report as he unloaded his weapon into the battalion commander’s dusty green shelter.

Before the angry sergeant could jam another full magazine into his rifle, First Sergeant Eddie Lyle tackled Michael Fryer and sent him tumbling headlong into the hard-packed earth outside the major’s tent. The first sergeant took Fryer’s rifle and left the sobbing Marine lying on the ground, flat on his back, completely broken.

“Boy!” Lyle said to Fryer, “you’re damned lucky that nobody was in that tent!”

An ashen pale battalion commander stepped through the crowd of Marines who now circled Sergeant Fryer, who still lay on the ground, crying in deep distress.

“I went to take a shit!” the major exclaimed. “That crazy bastard would have killed me!”

Major Rich looked at the sergeant major, the first sergeant, and then at Captain Jesse Holt, who had run back up the hill at the sound of the first rounds fired. The distraught battalion commander then shouted his orders at the dumbfounded captain.

“Get that black son of a bitch out of here tonight. I want him in the Da Nang brig immediately!” Rich bellowed.

 
WHEN GWEN EBBERHARDT stepped around the corner of the Officers’ Club and headed across the lawn toward Lieutenant Colonel Prunella’s and T. D. McKay’s hail-and-farewell party and First MAW Law’s Independence Day celebration luau, a hush rapidly spread through the all-ranks crowd of Marines. Movie Star Dean and Happy Pounds stood speechless as the fine-smelling woman brushed past them, turning heads with each sway of her hips and bounce of her breasts.

She had told Wayne to go ahead with the boys when they finished their drinks in the club. Gwen had to powder her nose while her husband, Terry O’Connor, Jon Kirkwood, and Michael Carter sauntered out back to join the festivities.

The six-foot-tall redhead loved to make an entrance. Wayne knew it, so he didn’t wait to escort her to the backyard, where the crowd of nearly two hundred hungry, thirsty, and horny Marines mingled and sipped booze while their luau pig roasted in a pall of thick white smoke inside the O Club’s barbeque grill, made of two fifty-five-gallon drums welded together.

“She ain’t wearing any bra, man!” Happy Pounds crowed as the woman swung past him and Movie Star. “Got them perky nips jumping right through that sweater! You see that grillwork? Like a ’57 Cadillac.”

“Shut up, Happy, she heard everything you just said,” Movie Star snapped, stamping his foot. “Now she’s gonna think we’re all fucked-up perverted and shit, like you. That’s Lieutenant Ebberhardt’s wife, you dip.”

Hearing both lance corporals’ words, Gwen looked over her shoulder and gave the two young jerks a big smile. Then she sashayed a beeline straight to the small circle of officers where Major Dudley L. Dickinson stood, holding court with Charlie Heyster, Stanley and Manley Tufts, and the Brothers B.

Special for the occasion, Gwen had slipped on a thin, white, tight-fitting, midthigh-length miniskirt, a bright yellow, lightweight cotton-knit tank top with a deep plunging back and strings for straps over her shoulders, and white sandals that had crisscrossed leather thongs that laced up her calves, well past her ankles. Gold-rimmed sunglasses covered her emerald eyes, but she took the sunglasses off when she said hello to Dicky Doo and the boys, whose speech she stopped cold as soon as they saw her.

“Major Dickinson, so good to see you!” Gwen said, flashing her smile at the portly Marine with his salt-and-pepper flattop hair. “Captain Tufts, so nice to see you again, too.”

“Why, Miss Crookshank,” the mojo said, putting out his hand for her to shake, “what a pleasure to see you. Which one of these animals persuaded you to come slumming in our little garden party?”

“Oh, my husband, of course,” Gwen said, and pointed to the group of men where Wayne Ebberhardt stood, smiling.

While Dicky Doo furrowed his brow and squinted to see which man had brought the beautiful woman to the legal office’s luau, Stanley Tufts slipped away from his group and found an obscure spot at the end of the bar where he could avoid the woman who had seen him shit his pants.

“You mean, one of those goons?” Dickinson said, pointing at the group and then looking back at the tall, shapely redhead.

“Yes, that good-looking goon right there in the middle, waving back at me,” Gwen said, smiling and waving her hand at Wayne.

“Why, you told me that Lieutenant Ebberhardt’s wife worked on another flight crew,” Dickinson said, frowning at the woman.

“Yes, and I am sorry for lying to you, Major,” Gwen said, hooking her arm in his and giving him a squeeze. “I hope you’ll understand that I had so many people to attend, and I just didn’t have the luxury to spend any time chatting with passengers. So I fibbed a white lie, and I am sorry. You’re such a nice man, too.”

“Oh, I understand how things can be,” Dickinson said with a smile, puffing his chest and holding in his round stomach.

“That poor captain, where did he go?” Gwen said, looking for Stanley, who now hid at the bar.

The shorter Tufts brother had no desire to speak to the woman. He felt too ashamed to endure the humiliation of talking to her while knowing she had seen him at the worst moment of his life. He downed two fast beers while he watched his brother bouncing on his toes and bobbing his head, talking to the flirtatious stewardess.

“I am so happy to meet you!” Gwen said to Manley Tufts, shaking his hand and holding on to it while she talked to him. “Why, I would never have guessed that Stanley is your brother. You sure you have the same mothers?”

Manley laughed, and Stanley fumed as he watched the embarrassing show. He knew they talked about him. He could see his name on his brother’s lips, and then the finger came up and pointed right at him.

“There you are! Come here!” Gwen shouted at Stanley, who now blushed beet red.

At first he tried to pretend he didn’t see her, but she kept shouting at him, so he had to look. Then he smiled and halfheartedly waved back at her.

“What’s the matter with your brother, Captain?” the redhead asked Manley Tufts and looked back at Stanley, who kept leaning against the bar and now fumbled with a napkin.

“Let me check,” the taller Tufts said, leaving Gwen with Dicky Doo and walking to the bar, where his brother lurked.

With the afternoon sun disappearing beyond the western mountains, and bright orange beginning to bleed across the sky, Yamaguchi Ritter and his Angeles City Cowboys mounted their plywood stage and opened their show with the Bob Wills classic, “A Maiden’s Prayer.” Gwen Ebberhardt smiled at Major Dickinson and took his hand.

“I love this song!” she said, and began dragging the mojo to the center of the lawn in front of the band, where wide slabs of Masonite covered the grass as a makeshift dance floor. “Surely you know how to waltz.”

“Oh, barely,” Dickinson said as he proudly took the breathtaking flight attendant in his arms and began to count one-two-three as he stepped the waltz with her. As they circled, Gwen flashed a glance and triumphant smile at Wayne and the boys.

“You know, I would make her take a bath tonight, Wayne,” Terry O’Connor said with a laugh while looking at Gwen dancing with Dicky Doo.

“She’s out there dancing with that ape because of you, Captain O’Connor,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, shaking his head at the sight of his wife with the mojo. “Keep that in mind. The last thing all of us need is for that bubble-butt tub of shit to guess that she might have something to do with his and Stanley’s little brown blowout on the freedom bird.”

Stanley Tufts edged his way over to the group of defense lawyers and moved close to Wayne Ebberhardt.

“So this is your wife?” Tufts said, pulling a beer from the six-pack he had carried under his arm from the bar and handing the six-pack to the lieutenant.

“Why, Stinky, how nice of you to join us,” Terry O’Connor said, taking a beer from the shorter captain, too.

“Fuck you, O’Connor,” Stanley hissed, and grabbed the can back from the Marine. “Get your own beer. You have no heart, you know that?”

“Lighten up, Stanley,” Jon Kirkwood said, handing a beer to Terry O’Connor from his own six-pack.

“Wayne, she told you all about my accident, didn’t she,” Tufts said, looking at the lieutenant.

“No, Stanley,” Ebberhardt lied, “Gwen’s not that kind of person. Buck Taylor had a friend on that flight, and he told me. If anything, she felt very sorry for you. But as far as your accident on her flight goes, she has never said a word about it to anyone.”

Stanley Tufts smiled.

“Thanks, Wayne,” he said, and walked back to where Charlie Heyster stood, sucking on his pipe next to Manley and the Brothers B, watching Dicky Doo dancing a second Bob Wills number, “Faded Love,” with Gwen.

“Well, if it isn’t the jailer himself, Michael Schuller,” Terry O’Connor said, seeing the lieutenant from the brig walking across the grass with a fresh six-pack of Budweiser in one hand and chugging a just-opened extra he had gotten at the bar in his other paw.

“Seven beers at once, plan on a little combat drinking tonight, Mikie?” Jon Kirkwood said, slapping the newly arrived lieutenant across the back.

“This three-two shit takes a lot more than I can carry to do the job,” Schuller said, laughing. “Sure does make a fellow piss good, though.”

“Kind of a late start. What happened?” Kirkwood said, tapping the crystal of his wristwatch to emphasize the Marine’s tardiness to the festivities. “Your boss is over there drinking beside our boss. Has been for the better part of an hour. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dewitt Webster, doesn’t that name just roll off your tongue like peanut butter fudge?”

“He’s not a bad sort,” Schuller said, looking at the provost marshal sipping mai tai cocktails with the staff judge advocate. “Got a late arrival and had to get him squared away. Scary tale with this one. A platoon sergeant, division Marine from down south, went over the edge, opened fire on his battalion commander’s tent.”

“I take it the tent was unoccupied at the time, since the word ‘murder’ didn’t creep into your commentary,” Kirkwood said, taking a sip from his beer.

“The CO had gone down to the privy, lucky for him,” Schuller said, crushing his empty beer can with his hand and opening a second one. “Still, they charged him with attempted murder, clapped him in irons, and fragged a helicopter to ferry him straight to Freedom Hill. The man’s first sergeant and captain came with him, and turned him over to our jailer. I say sad story because these guys all hugged like family when they said their good-byes.”

“Wow, that’s interesting,” O’Connor said, putting his arm around Mike Schuller’s shoulders and giving him a hug, too. “So a sergeant tries to murder the battalion commander and has his company CO and first shirt hugging him good-bye. Wonder if they would hug the guy their sergeant wanted to kill?”