Free-Fire Zone (11 page)

I stumble, tumbling into a shallow pool of stagnant water. I don't know what this is for, but it is part of the design because a few yards up I find another, then another. Something to do with preserving the air-chemical mix, I'm guessing, so that life is possible down here. Or possibly basic toilets.

I retch, just a little, thinking I might have just been elbow-deep in VC sewage.

But I push on, and find my first side room. I turn my torso to shine my light in and all around, and see nothing but walls, so I take the turn and explore.

It's about a six-foot side trip into a room the size of a pantry, with rough shelving going up and down the walls. The shelves are piled with cans, empty cans, which, I find when I get up close, are hundreds and hundreds of US C-rations: chili and peaches, corn and creamed beef, and the lot. Either this hotel had American clientele, or we were supplying the enemy without even knowing it.

I keep going. But with every foot of trail I blaze here, I become more convinced this network is as abandoned as the village above it. I do find interesting bits here and there. There is a level down below that was used for trash, and another side room that was used as a bike repair shop. There must be the spare parts to a hundred bikes in here — sprockets, pedals, handlebars, tires, and tubes and bells. The frames of three of them still lean there against the wall, but from the look of it the operation tanked from a critical lack of lubrication. I pick up one chain and it is fused up like a petrified bird skeleton.

In some places I can crouch and shuffle forward instead of crawling on hands and knees, but that's no help and in fact just makes it more frustrating. It makes you want to stand up all the more. Twice, I let the urge get to me and find myself crashing into the rounded dirt ceiling above me. And every time I come to another new
dead end of an opening, the entryway is just that much smaller and so I am right back on my knees again.

I smell something different just as I am about to call it quits. Something munitions related. Phosphorus, gunpowder, something.

The opening to this space is slightly larger, and up a bit of a rise. I crawl up a ramp, like to a mini underground parking garage. I flash my light in through the opening and catch a glimpse of a substantial-size storeroom, chock full of the same crates of United States standard ammunition I've been seeing and using since I got here. Our stuff. They got their hands somehow on
our
bullets. They are pumping US personnel full of
our
ammo. Everything from M-60 machine guns to Howitzers to full-metal jacket rounds for this very handgun I am at this very minute —

I get a thump at the base of my neck that feels like a tree falling on me.

I cry out in pain and surprise. I have been clubbed by something like a baseball bat, though it could well be a choice chunk of rock, and my face is being ground into the turf hard enough to make my nose cartilage sound like a bowl of just-wet Rice Krispies amplified inside my head.

There is only one guy, it seems, but one is enough in here. He is on my back and already my light is gone,
driven into the dirt. He is grabbing for the knife, smashing my hand against the rocky base of the doorway until the weapon falls out of my grip.

I scramble onto my side, feeling around for the blade while he claws and punches at me, and suddenly, I can tell he's got the bayonet, and we are just smashing and thrashing at each other in pitch blackness, until he grabs me by the neck and we go tumbling down that ramp and away from the underground ammo depot.

We roll backward and crash into what feels like a fork in the tunnel road. I try to wheel on him with the pistol, but it is frankly all guesswork and I'm just flailing around and catching nothing. I stop for a second, listening for his breathing, which is made all but pointless by my own frantic hyperventilating, and I am feeling really in trouble.

Because he knows the terrain.

Whack!

The whole side of my skull feels cracked as he pits the base and blade of my weapon right across my eye socket.

I crash backward again, rolling down to another level, where I bump to a halt against a tunnel wall.

We are both filling the space with breath, and sweat, and fear. He is up above me, I can hear, but I would have to go blindly to go after him at all.

What would the other option be? Waiting?

I crawl up toward his breathing.

He knows every curve down here, for sure. He is up and I am down.

“I'm gonna kill you,” I say, dropping my voice as low as I can get it. It's not very low, but I'm just thankful it doesn't crack. “I'm gonna blow your head off, man.” Why should I expect him to understand English? Is there any chance in a million scenarios I would be likely to get one word of Vietnamese? I hope my tough John Wayne voice will be enough to defeat him based on tone alone. “Drop that blade, Chucky, or I'm going to shoot you right in the face. I mean it.”

“Don't shoot face,” he says, from about five feet away and a tick to the left.

“Good,” I say, walking forward on my knees. “Good. English. Good. I want to hear the blade hit the ground. I want you to flash that light on the blade where I can see it.”

“No light,” he says. “You light. No me light.”

“You have my light, pal. Don't mess around.”

I've stopped. I'm standing, on my knees, with the pistol leveled straight from my shoulder like some kind of dwarf cop busting an invisible drug dealer on the street.

There are three directions he could take, if he wanted to dodge. I haven't the slightest clue.

“I will shoot you,” I say.

“Shoot!” he says, and I think I know the spot, so I oblige.

Boom!
The sound is deafening in this small space, and as the muzzle flash goes I see the space where I was sure the guy had been. But there is nothing there but ghost.

“I will find you.”

He is here, yes, just like a ghost, but I feel his presence like I could feel the rats. I sense him just before he makes his move. He comes through some other side entrance, lunging at me, slicing through my shirt, nicking my shoulder and making me scream at the very same moment I turn on him and pull the trigger.

The gun muzzle bumps right into his head as I shoot him. The flash illuminates his face at the very instant the blast tears it right off his skull.

I sit. In the darkest darkness there is.

That face. It was with me, for a fragment of a fragment of a second that face was here in the world with my face and now they are in very different places.

How old was he? Who can tell with these guys? As far as I can tell they are ageless, and probably
won't ever die if you don't blow them away at some point.

Might have been a kid. Might have been younger than me. Why was he here by himself? Was he abandoned, or punished, or rewarded for his bravery and independence? Was he here by accident? I used to think I was here by accident. Now I know I was all the way wrong about that.

Who was he?

Why should I care?

Point-blank. I can only imagine what this scene looks like right here. A bloody mess.

Or no mess at all. Beck used to drive me demented with that thing about if a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear it. Teased me like when you feed a crazy dog his own tail so he'll chase it 'til he drills himself into the ground.

Maybe that tree doesn't make a noise, though. And maybe if you blow a kid's face off in the dark under the ground then it makes no mess.

I have to get back.

It's also probably a good thing I won't be reading any kind of map to get myself back, because then I'd never get there. As it is, I think I know the way. Like I know the rats are here and like the rats know where they're going, I think I'll be fine without any eyes.

“I have to go, man,” I say to him. After you kill somebody, I am finding, you have a sort of warm feeling about them. I suppose it would be different if it was somebody you killed because you hated them. But I haven't had that. I've only killed the people I'm supposed to kill.

“You keep the bayonet,” I say, even though it strictly didn't belong to me. It strictly does belong to him now.

I don't know how long the whole trip has been, time-wise, by the time I grab the rope and the guys pull me up into the light. Like a lot of these missions and these moments here in Vietnam, I think it probably felt like a lot longer than it actually took in real time.

“Oh,
man
,” Hunter says, coming right up to me as soon as I'm out of the ground. “Are you all right?”

“All the way all right,” I say brightly.

Lt. Silva is staring at me, his look both intense and distant.

“Here's your gun, boss,” I say. As I hand it over, I see it's absolutely laminated in shiny red blood. As is my hand.

“Sorry, Sunshine,” I say, “but I don't have your bayonet. I seem to have lost a couple of things down there.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, looking at me just a tiny bit less dominating than before. “Kill anybody while you were at it?”

I look down at my hands, all glistening in that hot, wicked sun. Then I look back up at him.

“It was so dark down there, man, who could tell?”

That's what I say. I'm just a bit surprised to hear myself say it. But it beats what I want to say.

What I want to tell them all is: Yeah, I killed somebody. I killed Rudi.

Old Rudi, or maybe Young Rudi.

No. Rudy-Judy is who he was. But he's not anymore. Killed him and left him right down in that hole.

That's what I want to say. But I know how weird that would sound, so I keep it to myself.

I
have a
what
?”

The corporal, who I have never seen before, laughs at my shock.

“You heard me right, private,” he says. “You have a call. Follow me, please.”

I follow him — at a trot, because apparently these things are time sensitive. He leads me to a tent that's got all kinds of wires running in and out of it, then inside to a squeezed-up desk in the corner among a lot of other squeezed-up desks and guys with headphones on. I grab a phone receiver.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Well, it is about time.”

“Morris?” I say. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. “Morris, man, is that you?”

“It's me, Rudi, man. So good to hear your voice.”

“Same here, Morris.”

“I was starting to think I'd never get a hold of you. How are you doing?”

“Great, Morris, I'm doing great. What about you?”

“Well, I wouldn't say great, but all right. I'm surviving, getting by, you know. That's the best we can do over here, isn't it?”

I'm surprised at how much like a corporal he sounds. “What? No. Actually, no. You can do a lot better than that.”

“Oh. You can? Oh, so I guess when you said you were fitting in with the Marines, you meant you really were —”

“What else could I have meant?”

“All right, all right,” he says. “You're awful edgy all of a sudden.”

“And you're awfully sensitive all of a sudden. All I was saying, Morris, was that if more of our guys over here wanted to get something accomplished, instead of just wanting to get by and then get out, maybe we'd have won this thing already. We talk about it here all the time, that Charlie's like the thing that wouldn't die. No matter how many days we blast him away we come back the next day and there he is. I don't see him quitting like I see a lot of our guys doing. The VC, man, those guys ain't messing around, and they ain't just waiting to go home, either.”

“That's 'cause they
are
home.”

“Hnnn. Maybe. Anyway, have you seen this book thing the Defense Department produces? It's called
Know Your Enemy: The Vietcong
.”

“Ah, gee, Rude, not yet…. I think it's in the stack on my nightstand.”

“Hey, be a wiseguy if you want, but if you read it you would know just how prepared and committed these guys are. They got these lists, their oath, their twelve rules of discipline, their rules of attention — rules of
attention
, man! If they weren't the enemy, I might have to start hanging around with them instead of some of the people we got here.”

There is a silence on the other end of the line, which, combined with his silence while I was talking, is a lot of nothing coming from the guy who actually made the call.

“What's the matter with you?” I say, and I hear more impatience in my voice than I intend, but, oh well.

“I was just going to ask you the same question. You don't sound like yourself, Rudi, to be honest.”

“Good,” I say loudly. “Thank you. Because you know what? I'm not that guy. The Marines have remade me, Morris. I've remade myself. The Rudi you knew was a loser, man, and good riddance to him.”

“No, no, no,” he says, matching my intensity for the first time in the conversation. “The Rudi I knew was an excellent guy. He was kind of a goof, but he was somebody loveable. And I know I speak for the other guys, too, when I say I would rather you came home a good guy and a bad soldier than the other way around.”

The radio coordinator guy comes over to me and starts tapping his watch already. I turn away from him.

“Morris, are you not paying attention? Are you even bothering to read my letters? I'm not going home. Understand? I mean, you guys are still the best guys in the world, and we will always be us no matter what, but … I'm not going back home. I
hate
home. The Marines is my home, where I fit and where I belong. If they keep fighting in Vietnam then that's where I'll be. If they fight on into China, look for me there. If the Russians want a piece, bring it on 'cause I'll be there. Boston can just take a hike. If I never see that place again that's just fine with me. In fact, I would really like it if the USMC declared war on Massachusetts. That would thrill me all over.”

He's gone all silent again. But because he is Morris I know the silence doesn't stand a chance.

“How 'bout your mom, Rudi? Don't you want to go home to your mom?”

I should show more respect here but, you know, this just isn't the time.

“Mom?
My
mom? Okay, right, I missed her when I left. And I was thinking about her at first, before I started getting experienced, y'know, started turning into a man and into a Marine. Then, I got reality, Morris.”

“You got reality.”

“Reality, right. And reality is this. I needed my mom because I was nobody, with nothing, understand? Then I got to be somebody and I found myself needing less and less of Mom, or anybody, really. And I realized, a big part of why I was Mr. Nobody with Nothing, was 'cause of her.”

“Ah, Rudi, man, she did her best —”

“Know how many letters I've gotten from my mother? None. But I'm not surprised. She told me that was how it would be. The day I left, man, my mother — my own mother — said that because I was me it was so sure that I was gonna get killed that she was considering me dead as soon as she shut the door. That way she could protect herself from all the worrying, and if I came back someday it would just be a pleasant surprise. Huh? How's that for a pat on the back, a confidence booster on the way to war? Well, what she doesn't know is that that Rudi, Rudy-Judy, is dead already,
and this Rudi that has replaced him is invincible. So there.”

There is another silence out there, this one longer. And again, because I know Morris like I do, I can just about see him.

“You're shaking your head now, right? And holding your hand flat up against your forehead.”

This, at least, brings a chuckle out of him.

“I see you've invented the picture phone,” he says.

And now I chuckle, and now that has to be good enough to end on.

“Anyway, you may be a privileged radioman with all the time in the world, Morris, but I have a guy here waiting to unplug me.”

“Remember who and what you are, Rudi. Remember most of all what you are
not
. And then go and be everything else.”

“Morris, if you start talking to me like Beck then I will pull the plug here myself.”

He sighs loudly. “I know you've killed people, Rude. Maybe a lot —”

“A lot.” No sense in tiptoeing.

“But you don't have to become one of them. That doesn't have to be who you are. You're not —”

“I am.”

“You also never used to —”

“Interrupt you?” I laugh, and he does, too.

It feels really, really, really good to be laughing, blending laughs with one of the guys. I'm shocked at the feeling it gives me. Frightened by it, even.

It's a feeling connected to old stuff, and that feeling has to go.

“I have to go,” I say.

“No, don't.”

“I have to, Morris, because they're gonna disconnect me.”

And I also have to because I have to. Before Morris disconnects me. Disconnects
me
. I start talking very fast, so that I can get my words in, and so that he can't.

“There is order here, Morris, and I understand it. I am good at this, and I am making a difference. I control stuff like I never could, and like I never will, outside of this thing. There will be no twelve-months-and-out for me. I'm in, all the way in, forever. I hope you understand, and I hope Beck understands, but I
know
that Ivan understands. And he's proud of me, and by the time I'm done he's gonna be even prouder, wait and see.”

“I can promise you that Ivan is in no way —”

I pull the receiver away from my ear when I see the radioman walking briskly toward me and waving his hands in front of his face like he's disallowing a touchdown.

“Rudi!” I hear little-voice Morris bellowing at me desperately.

“Yeah, Morris,” I say, buying one more moment from the radioman with one finger in the air.

“You don't have to like what you have to do here. You're not
supposed
to like it.”

“Well, there ya go,” I say. “When did I ever do anything the way I was supposed to?”

“Wait, we're all very —”

Morris is still talking at me when I hand the phone over voluntarily and get back to business.