Red rain 2.0 (12 page)

"Throughout history," he's rolling on, "the profession of arms has been an honorable and honored one. The professional soldier has sacrificied the ease and luxuries of civil life to protect and defend that very life, that very society."

Jesus, he's a preacher tonight, for sure.

"I speak only of the professional man of arms, naturally. I do not include irregulars, partisans, condition, mercenaries, all nothing more than assassins. Under pressure from the ruling national bodies, the professional military has frequently stooped, to its discredit, to make use of such bandits as auxiliaries. Or in cases such as the later Roman Empire

85

and the Venetian Republic, because the civil populace had grown too effete to look to their own defense and preferred to hire protection. Always, the results were disastrous. The brotherhood of arms ..."

Lecturing the fucking walls, fluency enhanced by that fifth of Black Jack. Discoursing on soldiering in ways he never could as a soldier. What jarhead marine would have a clue what he was saying? What officer would expect Gunny to be anything but a man whose basic job was to turn young men into "maggots"—that favorite DI word—and then, their humanity erased, re-create them as trained killers? And when the shit hits, lead them by personal example through the killing grounds?

I feel sorry for him as I go into the kitchen, where Mom is busy quizzing Annie and getting absolutely nowhere since Annie does know a thing or two about interrogation techniques. It goes on as I eat. Still, I can tell Momma is liking her and that Annie is amused by it all.

Gunny's voice is only an almost subsonic drone in the kitchen. When we've finished eating, Momma suggests we turn in early, face Gunny in the morning. She leads us upstairs. Awkward minute: She's only made up my old room. I put Annie in there and go down the end of the hall to a smaller room, where there's nothing but an unmade bed. Momma wants to fuss and fix it up. I convince her all I need is a light blanket and a pillow.

Lights out. Low vocal vibrations from Gunny's office go on, but pretty soon I'm not hearing them anymore. Pretty soon, klicks away from sleep, I'm watching surround-sound, high-definition eyelid movies.

Sarajevo. Winter. A new kind of cold for me, somehow
ancient,
malevolent, as if its source is somewhere far off in the Asian steppes of Attila, Genghis, Tamerlane. Buses flipped on their sides, end to end, in largely futile efforts to make safe passages through the fields of fire of the Serb snipers in the hills. Shattered buildings of reinforced concrete, the

86

rusty iron rebar twisted as tentacles. Low-intensity action: the high whistle of a howitzer round coming in, then the pressure wave in your ears from the explosion. Once in a while a sharp crack of a passing bullet, followed by a rifle report far away. Sometimes fifteen or twenty minutes of heavy small arms and mortar crashes, as Bosnian squads and platoons try to drive wedges into Serb positions high up the slopes. The sweet reek and disgusting, cough-syrupy taste of the local plum brandy, raffia or something. A lot of us drink a lot of it every night.

Us is several dozen Americans—ex-Special Forces, ex-Deltas, ex-Marine Recon, ex-Army Airborne, ex-Popeyes, as Navy SEALs are known because they all tend to be overpumped in the muscle category. Us is several dozen Brits—ex-SAS, ex-Special Boat Unit, ex-things so secret we've never heard about it. Us is a couple of dozen Russians, all ex-Spetsnaz, their version of Special Forces. Us is a dozen Germans, all former members of that elite an-titerrorist unit, the one that greased the Muslim fanatics who highjacked a Lufthansa plane to Mogadishu some years back. Us is two companies of the French Foreign Legion— who probably aren't ex- at all, but here secretly with French government approval and support.

We've all got our separate missions, we're all split up. Some marines and some Germans are training Bosnian assault infantry. Some SAS and some Germans are training and leading Bosnian infiltration units behind Serb lines. Most of the Spetsnaz guys aren't into training, but leading hit-and-run raids on Serb advance posts, then going in to take out an artillery emplacement if they can. The Foreign Legionnaires and SEALs get into this action too.

Maybe twenty of us, the best shots of the lot, are snipers and countersnipers, each working in a two-man team with a Bosnian shooter. My partner is a woman who won a bronze medal for the Yugoslav team in the '92 Olympics. She uses a Sako TRG-21 in NATO .308, and she's good out to 600 meters with it. I spot for her at those ranges, she puts the

87

lights out on any Serb who exposes his head. She calls herself Mikla, never talks much, and when she does it's always shop—ranges, windage, bullet-drop comp. Her little secret: Geneva rules call for full-metal-jacket bullets only, which usually go in clean and come out the other side. Supposed to be more humane, and unless it's a head or heart shot, whoever gets hit does have a chance of surviving the wound. Mikla uses hunting bullets, long hollowpoints designed to expand on impact and destroy as much tissue as possible to drop an elk or a moose or bear in its tracks. They greatly extend her kill zone on men.

I don't need that advantage. I use a Barrett 82A1, which fires .50 bullets, the same cartridge heavy machineguns use. Semi-auto, mil-spec Heinsoldt scope, 10-round magazine. Got my choice of loads—FMJ, incendiary, tracer, armor piercing. My effective range is 600 to 2,500 meters, with good luck and perfect conditions maybe 3,000 meters. I can blast through Serb bunkers, destroy Serb jeeps, kill every man inside an armored car, penetrate the steel shield of artillery pieces and kill whoever's behind it.

At first, when my main targets are Serb officers who think they're well out of range, I blow them in half with FMJ rounds. It's a grin. The guy's head explodes, everybody around him is dripping blood and gray brain matter, Mikla laughing as she watches through the spotting scope. Then they all duck a few seconds later when the boom of the Barrett reaches them! Mikla laughs harder. The bullets travel much faster than sound. Nobody hears the rifle fire until somebody's already dead.

I get off on it. I'm hurling thunderbolts like Zeus. Mikla has a little leather notebook, and she writes down date, place, time and, if possible, rank of each kill. She takes a slug of plum brandy from her canteen each time she or I take out a Serb, makes me take one too. I only do because it would insult her if I didn't.

Later, as I get more bitter about the little kids and old ladies lying in pools of blood on Sarajevo streets, I get more

Sf

inventive. I use state-of-the-art night-vision goggles, which won't reach out to the Barrett's full range but allow me to smack Serbs who've left their trenches for a safe and peaceful midnight piss at six hundred meters. I imagine this makes their buddies piss their pants. Or shit in them.

I do better, make it more brutal. My best—three Serbs way out, scanning down on the city with binoculars, presumably artillery officers, maybe even bigger brass. I'm tucked away in the rear of a blown-up apartment, Mikla's spotting with a 60-power scope, my Barrett's solid on a tripod nailed to the flooring. One of the Serbs takes a step, the angle's absolutely perfect, the crosshairs touch my point of aim. Juke 'em! An incendiary round tears through the bellies of all fuckin' three of the shits. Mikla's like a sports announcer. The Serbs are down, writhing, their clothes are on fire, their intestines are curled all over each other, roasting! Their flunkies are running this way and that like madmen, some are puking their guts out....

Best shot I ever made. Never told a soul. Only Mikla saw it, recorded it in her little book. She's dead.

Somebody—I suspect Vassily—sends me her little notebook in Lausanne. Brain still not clear, I think three or four pages have been stuck together with some cheap brown glue. Realize later it's dried blood. Mikla's blood.

Mornings I hang at Cafe de la Paix on Suileman Boulevard, drinking what passes for coffee. Sometimes Mikla joins me before we go out to set up for the day's work. A couple of times I see this big blond Spetsnaz guy come by, a squad behind him, just back from inflicting some all-night terror on Serb positions. We start nodding, next we're waving, next I'm calling him over for a drink. After that we start hanging pretty regularly. His English is good, my Russian's even better thanks to the Army Language School. Eventually I even go out with him and his team one night. He's a pro. We're into a Serb bunker complex without being seen and then we're frying their asses with white phosphorous grenades, hosing them down with AKs and my favorite HK

89

MP5. I reckon we do about twenty-five of the fucks in no more than three minutes, then scramble back down the mountain with Serb machinegun tracers flaming way over our heads.

Friends for life after that. He's Vassily; I'm Shooter. Nobody has a real name in this business.

Ten months or so. Vassily and me, we eat togther, we get drunk together, we laugh, we screw some women, sometimes we go out killing together. Then I don't see him for a couple of days. Mikla and I are set up in another ruined apartment building. She's the shooter, I'm the spotter. Just after Mikla headshots a Serb, some lucky fuck of a counter-sniper clips me in the head. Mikla thinks I'm gonna die. So do I. Tears on her face—first time I've seen an emotion from her except elation whenever we downed a Serb. But the organization that got me to Sarajevo surprises me by getting me out, via Italy, to a hospital in Switzerland. Ten more months. The dent in my head. The antiseizure drugs. The trip home on a false passport. A little help with resettlement, rehabilitation. Then the job in Baltimore County.

Way past dawn. I smell breakfast cooking. I hear Gunny rumbling at Mom downstairs. Annie, wearing jeans and an Orioles sweatshirt, pops my door without knocking, hands me a big cup of coffee light with cream. "Get your butt downstairs pronteaux, Ewing," she says with a laugh. "I've been libeling you to Gunny and the man wants to talk."

9

Slip into the jeans I wore last night, pull on a fresh T-shirt— bright red, Corps emblem on the chest in gold, below that the slogan "When it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight—U.S. Marines." Gunny will love it or hate it, no in-between. Nothing to lose, I figure, padding downstairs and back toward the kitchen.

Annie, at the table with Gunny, laughing about something he's just said, looking younger than she is, hair pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup at all. Pop drinking coffee from the personalized mug he's had for twenty years, Corps emblem, Gunnery Sergeant Thomas "One Way" Ewing, letters and crest beginning to fade though he always, always washes it by hand himself. Momma at the stove, in one of her favored flowered housedresses, looking over her shoulder at me and saying, "Eggs over easy, bacon not so crisp for my boy, n'est-ce pas?"

At that Gunny's eyes move from Annie's to mine. He puts his cup down on the table, places both hands palm down there too.

"Yo, maggot, you been making your momma awful sad, never coming around," he rumbles. He's in his jovial NCO mode, not his military philosopher one. No doubt Annie— and sleeping off the bourbon—put him there. He's wearing khakis—not GI, Wal-Mart—and a white T-shirt. Starched. He's always made Momma starch his fucking T-shirts.

91

"Haven't gotten too many invitations, sir," I reply.

"Shit for brains, I warned you," he says to Annie with a grin. "Maggots know better than to call a sergeant 'sir.' And since when does a son need an
in-VI-tation
to visit his momma? I'm damned, double goddamned and rammed up the butt if I ever heard such bullshit."

Back to me, eyes to eyes, me braced for more insane Corps virtuosity in insult and invective. Or a total freeze. Or dismissal, orders to get out. Instead, "With your permission, Lieutenant," eye flick to Annie, then back. "Luther, get your bird-boned ass over here and shake your poppa's hand."

When I do, he pins mine in his huge one, rises so fast his chair flies over backward, and slings on a chokehold that could strangle, or snap a neck. "Goddammit Luther." He laughs. 'How you survive in the world I don't know. You not only little, you slow. Now I want you to apologize to your momma this instant, and you do it knowing this morning she's happier than she's been since fuckin' '94. Now do it, Lubejob!"

Gunny tightens the choke. It's getting a little hard to breathe. "Sorry, Momma," I gasp.

Gunny lets go, spins me, claps me on both shoulders. "Lame, Lubejob, piss-poor. I've heard Jap geishas who sounded more sincere, and they only talkin' toys, not people. You go over and hug your momma right. But first you tell me how glad you are to see your poppa, 'cause your pop is shit-sure pleased to see his son, even if his son was also one of Uncle Sam's most mis-fuckin'-guided children."

"Ah Gunny, you numbah ten, Luther numbah one GI," Momma grins, deliberately dropping into Nam pidgin English. "Luther, you sit, numbah one chow for you. Gunny, you sit. Nothing for you. You too fat already."

"Fat?" Gunny laughs deeply. "You see my moves on this so-called trained warrior we got ourselves?"

"I see fat man play tricky-tricky, that all. Luther, you sit, I bring chow."

92

Then we're all at the table, I'm nuts wondering what Annie's making of this. Everybody's eaten but me, Momma's sipping her green tea and can't keep her eyes off me, can't keep the smile off her face, can't stop the tears leaking slowly from her black almond eyes. Gunny refills Annie's coffee from the big Thermos, then tops off his own cup. "Move it, Luther. Get that plate clean fast. We got things to do, crabs to catch, they ain't gonna wait all day," Gunny says. "Your lieutenant here's given me a fine fitness report on you, an outstanding evaluation. Ain't that so, LT?"