Tiger the Lurp Dog: A Novel (26 page)

“Two-Four, this here is Redleg. Y’all got any more traffic for me? Over …”

Marvel winced and twisted around to turn down the volume, but something caught his eye and he froze, his stomach tight, his thumb paralyzed on the safety switch of his rifle. He didn’t know what he’d seen, but he knew he’d seen something moving in the gloom to his right. Forgetting about the radio, he forced his thumb to ease his selector switch from safe to full automatic, then, just as the shadows broke around a muzzle flash, he dropped and rolled, and emptied a magazine into the shadows. He swung up the grenade launcher and blasted the bushes, then dropped the M-79, slapped a fresh magazine into his rifle, squeezed off a three-round burst, rolled into Wolverine, and kept firing.

Wolverine was dead. Marvel knew it immediately, knew it even as he got off his last burst with the new magazine and saw Mopar join in with a line of tracers. Wolverine was dead. Marvel could feel the warm, sticky blood and something horrible and pulpy up against his forearm, but he reloaded and kept firing, squeezing off three-round bursts, aiming at darkness and leaves, hoping he was hitting something other than plant life. He popped another antipersonnel round into his grenade launcher and blasted the bushes again, then drained another magazine, reloaded, and got off one more short burst before remembering the drill and forcing himself to look at Wolverine.

Wolverine was lying on his back, his knees drawn up to his stomach and his weapon clutched at port-arms across his chest. His Lurp hat was gone, and the top of his head was dark and misshapen. Marvel gagged and shook a clump of sticky hair off his hands, then crawled closer. He tried to peel Wolverine’s fingers away from the trigger guard, but the fingers wouldn’t move. Cursing and sobbing, he yanked the rifle’s front handguard, but he couldn’t break Wolverine’s death grip. Marvel knew he had to get the weapon. He had to get the weapon out of the way so he could get to the radio. He had to get the radio, and he had to get to the codebook and morphine in Wolverine’s breast pocket. But it was no use. He yanked again, but Wolverine would not let go.

“Gonzales!” Mopar shouted. “Time-fuse Claymore! Down-slope—to the right! Quick! Just toss the fucker and yell! We got to bust out!”

“I’m hit,” sobbed Schultz as he fired sporadic bursts into the trees to the right. “Goddamn them! Don’t they know I’m hit?”

But nobody knew, and nobody cared until Gonzales darted forward with his time-fuse Claymore and tripped over him on his return. “Up!” Gonzales scrambled to his feet, even though bullets crackled around him and clipped the branches overhead. “Get up!” He grabbed Schultz by the rucksack strap and jerked him to his feet. “Run, man! You can still run!”

Schultz stumbled, got his footing, and staggered after Mopar, his twisted ankle forgotten, the pain in his side sharp and alarming.

“Leave him, Marvel! Break contact! Run!” Gonzales cried as he sprinted past Wolverine’s body. The Claymore would be blowing any second.

Marvel hesitated, wiped a smear of blood from Wolverine’s lips, tried to pull the radio out from under him, then gave up, lobbed a grenade into the bushes, and shot to his feet just as Gonzales’s Claymore boomed and swept through the trees. The backblast almost flattened him, but he managed to keep his feet and run, firing blindly to his right, sobbing angry tears for Wolverine.

He was the only one firing now, and as soon as he realized that he stopped. A strange, unnatural quiet came over the ridge. The birds were silent in the treetops. The artillery was no longer falling in the valley. The gooks were no longer calling to each other and beating the bush. The only sounds were the rustle of vegetation, the heavy breathing and muffled sobs of the fleeing Lurps, and the cries of the wounded on the slope and in the valley.

Mopar slowed to a walk, but this was still too fast for Schultz. He stopped and stood still for a second, then swayed, and collapsed. Cursing softly in Spanish, Gonzales lifted him by the armpits and dragged him on.

“I can walk,” Schultz protested feebly. “Please, man, let me go!” He was still sobbing, still breathing in short, shallow gasps because of the pain in his side, but he was determined to walk, determined to get out of RZ Zulme alive. His head was swimming, his mouth was very dry, and his side hurt more with each step, but he didn’t want to stay, he didn’t want to die.

The trees were tall and straight, and Schultz tried to imagine them zipping past like roadside telephone poles. But instead, they seemed to crowd in around him. There was a flash behind them, and in a panic he broke free from Gonzales and lurched forward, trying to get away from the sudden noise and confusion and fear. The air buzzed and cracked. Everyone was shooting now—everyone everywhere. Schultz didn’t know where to run. He slipped and fell and lay there on his stomach, trying to remember whether or not he’d changed magazines. His side hurt something awful. Nothing had ever hurt this awful before. It hurt too much to breathe.

Schultz was tempted to close his eyes, but he knew there were gooks all over the ridge, and he didn’t want to die. He wanted to go home. But his side hurt something awful, and he probably would have just stayed there, with his nose in the rotting leaves, if Mopar hadn’t come sliding in next to him with his arms full of weapons.

“Take one!” Mopar threw an M-16 down next to Schultz and made him take it in hand. “Now listen up, you cocksucker! Gonzales is dead. There’s only three of us now, so grab onto my rucksack and don’t let go. Now, ready—all right now—
go!”

The two of them came up together, Mopar in the lead and Schultz hanging on to his rucksack, crying and gasping, swearing that he’d kill Mopar when they got back to the compound. “I’m hit, Mopar! I’ll kill you, Mopar!” he babbled, but Mopar paid no attention.

Somehow Marvel had reeled a Claymore out next to Gonzales’s body. As soon as Mopar and Schultz ran past, he squeezed the charging handle and was out of the bushes, running, before the dirt and twigs could reach him. The enemy was getting altogether too close. Marvel wondered what in the hell was taking the gunships so long. They should have been coming on station by now. He cursed the gunships, he cursed the relay team, and he cursed Pappy Stagg. But then he remembered Wolverine lying dead on his radio, and he cursed himself for not having been able to recover it. All of the firing had stopped when the Claymore blew, but now Marvel had a new and terrible worry. If the gooks had Wolverine’s radio and codebook, maybe they could get control of the gunships.

Marvel had to do something. He paused and slung his rucksack around to the front long enough to change to the command net, then slung it back and worked his free arm back into the strap. Whispering frantically into the headset, he tried to get the gunships on the line, tried to get Pappy Stagg, but he couldn’t even raise the relay team on Firebase Culculine. He hooked the headset onto his rucksack strap and stepped up his pace to close in on Mopar and Schultz. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about having his own helicopters called in on him: If he couldn’t raise the relay, then neither could the gooks. He touched the haft of his dagger and tried to put Wolverine and Gonzales out of his mind.

It wasn’t hard to catch up with Mopar and Schultz. Schultz was just about done. He clung to Mopar’s rucksack, trying to move his own feet, but stumbling and barely managing to keep from going down and pulling Mopar with him. The whole side of his tiger suit was dark and sticky with blood, and he couldn’t hold up his head. Marvel could hear Mopar panting and cursing with soft venom as he tried to keep Schultz from giving up.

“Why don’t you die, motherfucker? You sumpthin’ better than Gonzales and Wolverine, asshole? Candyass! I ain’t dying for you, and neither is Marvel. Keep up, candyass! Keep up, or I’ll leave you, and I won’t even shoot you first! Sumpthin’ better’n Wolverine and Gonzales? Shit! Drive on, candyass! Hold on and run, motherfucker!”

Schultz tried to keep up. He hated Mopar more than he’d ever hated anyone, and he was determined to show him he could make it. He was trying to keep up, trying not to drag the team down, but his side hurt worse than something awful now, and his ankle wouldn’t support him. It was just so goddamn unfair! Everything was just so damn unfair! Didn’t they know that he was hit? Schultz was sure he could hear the gooks pulsing in the trees, pulsing like some sort of fever music. He let go of Mopar’s rucksack, stumbled a few drunken steps to the side, and sank down on his knees. His cheeks bulged, and he swallowed hard, then toppled sideway, and was still.

Mopar dragged his body into the deep bushes where the gooks wouldn’t find it right off. Hurriedly, he stripped Schultz of his dogtags, his ammo, grenades, map, and canteens. There was no way he and Marvel could carry any more weapons, so he broke open the two that Schultz had been carrying, stuffed the bolts in his rucksack, and left the rest of them with the body. There wasn’t time to go through Schultz’s pockets for morphine, or to unlace the strobe light from his web gear suspender. Since the gooks already had Wolverine’s codebook, that no longer made any difference.

The gooks weren’t firing or tossing grenades anymore, but they were still out there, still making noise, and still getting closer. They were making noise on purpose now, trying to scare whoever was left into firing and giving his position away, but neither Mopar nor Marvel was dumb enough to take the bait. If the gooks were smart they would have been silent, they would have been listening, and moving slowly and cautiously. But they were angry. They had the scent of blood and revenge in their noses, and they didn’t think that the racket they were making in the bush would work to their prey’s advantage.

Mopar crawled out of the bushes and sat on his haunches next to Marvel. He was breathing hard, too scared to keep a catch out of his whisper. “Wh-what now, Marvel? If … if it comes to that, I won’t leave you, man. I promise—if it comes to that, I’ll stay. Wh-what do you think? We getting any gunships?”

Marvel frowned and held up his hand. While Mopar was hiding Schultz, he’d slung up a wire antenna, and now the gooks were making so much noise he figured it was safe to transmit. He could hear Pappy Stagg and the relay team, and even the drawling loudmouth from the Fire Direction Center, cutting in on each other, trying to find out if anybody knew what was going on in Recon Zone Zulme. The gooks were coming closer now, making even more noise than before, so Marvel broke in with a last report.

“This is Tacky Blinker Two-Four. Everybody’s dead but me and the pointman.” Suddenly Marvel couldn’t remember the simplest CAR code, but it didn’t matter anymore. “About to commence E&E. Be advised: This net is compromised. Say again: This net is compromised—they even got an SOI. This is it. We’re going off the air to commence E&E.” Marvel realized he was talking too much, talking too loudly. “Wish us luck, and get them gunships up. This is Two-Four. Out.”

He turned off his radio, yanked out the wire antenna and let it hang. He knew he’d been too dramatic with that final “Two-Four. Out,” but the chances were he wouldn’t live long enough for the embarrassment to set in. The gooks were firing again, fifty meters or so to the rear. Marvel hoped they’d shoot each other, but he knew there were more of them on the slope and still more in the valley. It was their country, they were everywhere. He forced himself to smile his sappiest smile.

“Well, Mopar,” he whispered, “you’re a good pointman. Can you get us out of this mess?”

Mopar swallowed hard and unsnapped the flaps of his grenade pouch. “No sweat, Marvel. The two of us can slip past anybody.” He sighed and straightened a grenade pin. This was no time for sentimental, defeatist, peacecreep bullshit and Mopar knew it. “We’ll make it, Marvel,” he whispered, trying his Airborne best to sound like he believed what he was saying. “It’ll be a piece of cake!” There was nothing to it but to do it, to give it their all now, just for the cameras—just in case …

The gooks kept moving in.

T
IGER THE LURP DOG
chose a drizzly evening when there were no teams out for his return to the compound. He paused to sign in with a jet of urine against the compound gate, then trotted down the muddy drive and up to the operations bunker, his left ear hanging in shreds, his right eye swollen shut, his ribs showing, and his coat patchy with mange and mud and grease. Any other dog would have looked terrible, but not Tiger. He looked splendid and proud. His head was high and his tail waved behind him like a flag.

Within minutes, almost the whole platoon had crowded into the bunker to celebrate his return. They slapped each other’s hands and laughed and carried on, trying to pat him or scratch his good ear, but Tiger just moved on from one man to the next, sniffing their boots, wagging his tail, and after he had exchanged greetings with everyone he crawled off under the commo desk to get away from all the hands.

“Run get a chili Lurp ration,” someone suggested. “He looks hungry, and that’s his favorite.”

Sure enough, someone immediately ran off for a ration. But even when it was mixed with hot water and put in front of his nose, Tiger wasn’t interested. He far preferred beef stew rations or beef and rice, and since he could still taste his last meal of carrion rat, he turned up his nose at the bland packet of freeze-dried chili.

Even without Marvel Kim around to spell it out for them, everyone agreed that it would be lucky to pat a sneaky little dude like Tiger. It was also agreed that no real Lurp would let a little mange, a little mud, or a little grease stay his hand. But no matter how they tried to coax him, Tiger wouldn’t come out from under the commo desk. There were just too many boots out there, too many hands, and he felt much more comfortable and much safer looking out from behind Pappy Stagg’s protective knees.

Sergeant Johnson muttered something glum about Tiger missing his main man, Mopar. The lieutenant didn’t want to hear such talk. He decided to lighten the mood, and at the same time let the troops know he was still one of the guys, even though the major didn’t let him go out in the field with the teams anymore.