Jungle Rules (74 page)

“I can’t do it, Sergeant Fryer,” Chief Warrant Officer Holden answered after thinking about what the sergeant said to him. “Ted, you take a run for it. I have to stay here. They’ll kill this man. I can’t let that happen.”

“Gunner, we’re better off sticking together, all four of us,” MacMillan said, looking out the sally port at the unruly mob. “Let’s fall back near the library door and wait. They may forget about us.”

“Not likely when they notice Elmore not hanging where they left him,” Holden said and smiled. “They’ll eventually come looking, but maybe whatever has their attention right now will buy enough time so that the guard company can storm these assholes. I don’t understand why they haven’t done it before now. Maybe because of the darkness, but now it’s starting to get light.”

“They’ve got two important hostages, sir,” Michael Fryer reminded the deputy warden. “If I’m the commander of the reaction force, I’m going to be reluctant to storm the place until I know where you and the gunny are, and that you’re okay. I think if you two will make a run for it, then the guard company may go ahead and shut down this riot. Just my opinion, sir.”

“Gunner,” Gunnery Sergeant MacMillan said, looking out the sally port and seeing the silhouettes of two men approaching and noticing glints of silver flashing off their collars, “here comes the distraction: Two officers approaching. I think it’s Lieutenant Schuller and a taller guy with him. Looks like they’ve finally come to powwow with Harris and his boys.”

Frank Holden looked out the door, too.

“That’s the lieutenant, all right,” he said, and if I’m not mistaken, the other guy’s Captain Jon Kirkwood. Just like Harris asked. Looks like our side decided to take advantage of the invitation so they can run recon before assaulting. If we can hold out a little while longer, until the good guys attack, we’ll have it made.”

 
NINE MEN CROWDED under the last of the picnic tables that Donald T. Wilson had to visit. While Lieutenant Schuller and Captain Kirkwood listened to Mau Mau Harris’s and his Black Stone Rangers’ demands, the pretrial confined sergeant had agreed to gather as many peaceable inmates he could find and lead them to the blockhouse while the two officers held their parley. Talking to this final group, in the poor light he did not recognize Kevin Watts and Randal Carnegie, who slouched with their heads down.

“Obviously you’re not part of the cause of this disaster, or you’d be over there with those fucked-up individuals,” Wilson said to the group. “If you want to get out of this mess, get some chow and a place to sleep, then follow those two officers when they start back to the blockhouse, unless they instruct you otherwise. That’s Lieutenant Schuller, and a lawyer named Captain Kirkwood. They’re arranging for Harris and his gang to allow you to leave with no trouble.”

“You think it’s cool?” Robert Matthews said, crouching close to Wilson. “The guards won’t open fire on us, will they? I mean, what if they think we’re going after the warden and that captain?”

“Don’t sweat it, we’re cool. I was with the lieutenant when he gave Staff Sergeant Abduleses the instructions. No shooting,” Wilson said, and put his hand on the smaller Marine’s shoulder. “Lots of guys out here, like you and me, want no part of this shit.”

“That’s me, Jack,” Bobby said and smiled. “I’m probably lookin’ at six-six and a kick for desertion, but that’s all. I can do six months standing on my head, but these guys rioting, they’re looking at a couple of years, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know, but I bet a couple of years is probably the minimum,” Wilson said, looking out from under the table and watching Mau Mau Harris waving his hands with excitement as he talked. He could hear the echo of his voice but couldn’t quite make out what he said.

“Look here, motherfucker! I’m the man, now. So listen the fuck up,” Harris ranted, and pointed at Mike Schuller as he spoke. “You goin’ to do what I say, or we start stringing up hostages. You dig?”

“Settle down, Mister Harris,” Kirkwood interrupted. “Things are not nearly as bad as you might believe. So far you and your men have killed no one, and that’s good. However, we do have three guards hospitalized, and that’s not so good. We’ll know more about their conditions later this morning, but they’re alive and we’re optimistic. Releasing them so that they could get medical attention put you in good stead with the powers that be. You’ve killed no inmates, have you?”

“Fuck no, man,” Harris snapped. “We all bros in here. We tight. We together. This a protest, man. We ain’t intendin’ to kill nobody. Not unless you make it happen. Anybody die, it’s your fault, not mine.”

“Some of the men out here in the recreation yard, they may want to go ahead and move out, get a little chow and some rest at the temporary quarters we’ve established across the road,” Schuller said. “It would look good for you if you at least allowed those prisoners who wish to leave, to do so.”

“Ain’t nobody but you keepin’ any man inside this brig,” Harris said, and looked over his shoulder at Brian Pitts, who nodded his approval of Mau Mau’s assertion. “I seen Wilson come out the door with you, and then jump off in the rec yard. He probably got all the chickenshits told what to do by now anyway. Like I said, they free to go, they want to.”

With that comment, Lieutenant Schuller turned toward the recreation yard and shouted, “Listen up! This is the warden! You men who wish to leave the yard, please get out from under the tables and form two lines at the blockhouse doors! You’re free to depart at this time!”

Bobby Matthews crawled from under the table first, and then stood and looked with a hint of a smile at Brian Pitts and James Harris, who stood twenty yards away from him. The Snowman watched as his and Mau Mau’s silent partner joined more than two hundred other inmates who formed double lines at the blockhouse back door. Then he looked back at the lieutenant and the captain, who continued to explain that even though the Black Stone Rangers had destroyed the brig, it was not as bad a situation as they might imagine. All could be put back in order if they began cooperating. The release of the nonviolent inmates represented a positive step.

 
AS THE SKY began to brighten with Saturday morning’s gray dawn, red coals still glowed in dark piles of debris that at one time stood as prisoner hooches but now lay as smoldering ashes. Overhead, fire roared and crackled from the burning roof of the cell block, and then with a sudden crash part of it fell to the floor of the chow hall. The massive collapse blew out a plume of red and orange sparks that drifted across the prison yard and showered the long, double line of inmates that moved past a gauntlet of guards outside the blockhouse back door.

Michael Carter watched from the window of the prison administration building, where he had kept a vigil, praying most of the night. Every now and then he wandered to the front porch and got a cup of coffee. Once, looking for Wayne Ebberhardt and Terry O’Connor, he climbed the interior stairs to the upper deck and the observation-post and machine-gun positions. The look of the prison from above scared him.

As the devout Catholic man gazed across the field of horror, seeing the men running for their lives, screaming from the ring of burning hooches and the out-of-control fire that engulfed the chow hall and spread farther and farther onto the cell block roof, he thought of how similar Hell must look to this place. It made him start to recall passages from the “Inferno,” written in
The Divine Comedy
by the thirteenth-century Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. With the lawyer’s fluence in Latin, and his equal understanding of French and Italian, Carter had read and studied the classic work in its unspoiled, original text.

Watching the turmoil below him, he recalled Dante’s cantos and imagined how he must have felt descending into the bowels of Satan’s kingdom, led by his unassuming guide, Virgil. The smoke, the rain of sparks, the smell of Hades at his feet sent the pale lawyer’s head to spinning, and he stumbled most of the way as he finally fled down the stairs and ran outside to throw up.

The gagging and coughing awakened Lance Corporal Dean, who had made himself a bed in the jeep by folding the passenger seat forward and stretching out on the back bench. He asked Captain Carter if he needed some help, but the tall, skinny man only looked at him and shuddered. So Movie Star lay back on his makeshift bed and shut his eyes.

After standing over the brink of Hell, virtually smelling the brimstone as he watched the anguished souls thrashing about, and then seeing Lance Corporal Dean, and having the vision of the man masturbating in the red light, surrounded by pictures of naked women, Michael Carter felt his body shake in disgust. It sent his stomach into another somersault, and he wretched several dry heaves.

Then he noticed a water trailer in the parking lot, hooked behind one of the six-by trucks, and the distraught Michael Carter ran to it and pulled open a valve. Cupping his hands under the flow, he splashed the cool liquid over his face, head, and on the back of his neck. Then, holding his hands under the faucet, he gulped a big drink of it.

Earlier, Carter had tried to listen to Major Hembee talk with Major Dickinson, the chief of staff, the provost marshal, Lieutenant Schuller, and the other three lawyers. He wanted to help, too, but all his mind could see was Dante’s Hell. He needed to pray, so while the officers planned their strategy, Michael Carter spoke to God about the disaster, begging His mercy for all the embroiled souls.

Now, as he watched out the window and saw the long double line of prisoners formed, and his friend Jon Kirkwood standing by his friend Michael Schuller, and the prisoner who led the riot had finally quit waving his hands in the air, appearing to have settled upon reason, Michael Carter felt better. Perhaps God had heard his frantic prayers and now finally delivered the men to safety.

 
“WE AIN’T SHUTTIN’ nothin’ down till we get news cameras in here, showin’ our protest,” Harris said, and then looked back at the crowd of sympathetic faces behind him. “People back home got to see the black man standin’ up for his cause. Discrimination got to stop.”

“Mister Harris,” Lieutenant Schuller said, “take a look up in the guard towers. Don’t you see the news cameras?”

Both Pitts and Harris shifted their eyes upward and noticed the long lenses set on tripods. At the distance they stood from the towers, all they could recognize were the big gray optics.

“How long they been up there?” Pitts asked, now trying to recall what all he had done in the open, just in case someone had snapped a picture of him.

“The news media got here just after this mess started,” Kirkwood lied. “Hell, you can see the fire from the city. We didn’t have to call them. They came running when they saw smoke.”

In reality, the III MAF commanding general had ordered his staff to keep all news media away from the brig. He knew that the incident would gather smaller headlines and fewer pictures and television coverage if all that the reporters saw were piles of rubble and no riot.

The command information officers told journalists that a faulty fuel storage device had caught fire, and burning kerosene spread through the brig. He assured the newsmen that the command had evacuated all prisoners to a makeshift compound they had established nearby, and cheerfully added that no one had suffered any injuries, and the damage was confined to the buildings inside the prison. Because of security concerns with the prisoners in the unusual circumstances, no one except authorized military personnel could enter the area at this time. He faithfully promised photographers and reporters that once the military police had relocated all the prisoners, the media could take pictures of the damage, sometime later in the day or surely by Sunday morning in the worst case.

Several news photographers and a television crew had tried to drive up Hill 327 despite the commanding general’s orders, but South Vietnamese authorities and U.S. military police turned them back well out of sight of the Freedom Hill brig. The information specialties officer at the roadblock dutifully promised the news crews full access to the story as soon as Marines on the scene gave him the green light. For now, however, because of prisoner security, concern for those men’s rights, as well as the safety of the journalists, the reporters had to keep away.

“Yo, Ax Man!” Harris yelled over his shoulder, beaming. “We got news cameras up in the towers all night, man. We goin’ to get on Walter Cronkite! Folks back home goin’ to know all about our protest!”

Then the forty-two disorderly Black Stone Rangers who remained defiant with James Harris began to wave and scream at the cameras.

“I will give the colonel your demands, and Captain Kirkwood is my witness,” Schuller said, trying to regain the distracted riot leader’s attention.

“Fuck that! The man got to see those demands,” Harris countered, focusing back on the two officers. “You ain’t got no rank to say what’s what, and that colonel, he just a go-between. General Cushman, he got to deal with this shit.”

“I assure you,” Kirkwood said, looking at both Pitts and Harris, “General Cushman will have a full appraisal of all that has happened, and will address each of your demands. However, I will tell you realistically that some of them we will not even consider. Such as releasing you, and just letting you disappear out of the country, even though you promise to never show your face in the United States or Vietnam again. That’s impossible.”

“Fuck, man, we got to ask,” Harris said and laughed. “Never know, the man might like to see all us shitbirds fly the coop and be shed of us.”

“I’m sure he’d love to be shed of you, Mister Harris,” Kirkwood said, smiling. “However, you know very well that will not fly. Neither will the demand of no punishment for anyone. You will have to face charges, and you will have to take responsibility for this damage. I guess on the good side, it’s mostly property damage, and a few minor injuries, except for the three guards. You and the others will face charges for assaulting those men.”