Free-Fire Zone (9 page)

There are a number of little things going on here that would look kind of nice to somebody just walking in but that I am finding not all that great. He's being
really nice, the lieutenant, in an odd way that seems to have him looking over his shoulder as if somebody might catch him at it. And a couple of times already he has patted me on the leg — the good one, not the one with the holes in it — while he's talking to me.

“You're a good kid, Rudi,” he says. “And you are a good soldier. Best in this outfit, that's for sure. Better than me, I can tell you that.”

“Oh, jeez, lieutenant …”

“No, no, it's the truth. The thing is, with this war being what it is, with this force being what it is, it can be dispiriting. The Marines, frankly, have had to drop their standards lower and lower as this thing has dragged on, to the point where you don't want to trust anybody with anything. I was different when I first joined up, different when I first came to Vietnam. This is my second tour, did you know that?”

“No, sir, I didn't. I heard some guys actually get out of here and then come back again of their own free will, but I don't expect I run into them too often.”

“Ha. Well, you're looking at one right here. But I'll tell you, kid, and this is important so listen close. I had just about bottomed out these past months, for all the good reasons. I've been just hanging on 'til I could be done with this whole insane thing and get back to the real world. In the meantime, I became a bad leader
and a lousy fighting man. But you know what? Something about you, Rudi, has made me think I could still do something while I'm here. A man has to have something to drive him on, and I've decided you're gonna be that something, or at least a big part of that something, during the remainder of my tour. I am going to make something of all this.”

“All this, sir?”

“All this. This situation. I am going to make something of it. I am going to get back to the fighting man I was. I am going to give it all I have. And before I go, I am going to give
you
all I have, to help you to become the best fighting man possible. Because I think you have a future in this, Marine. And because in all the time I've been here, you have given more of yourself to it than anyone I've seen.”

I can't do anything but stare at him. I can't believe what I have heard, and I am a little bit choked up about it. It is beyond the point of weirdness to feel optimistic about war, but he has kind of given me that.

He salutes me.

I salute back.

Then he offers me a firm handshake.

“Thank you,” he says, then backs away. “See you back on the line soon, soldier.”

“Yes, sir,” I say, still a little thrown. I watch him
walk away, all the way down between the lines of big baby beds.

“So how was that, dingbat?” Carolyn says, passing by and tweaking my big toe on her way to somebody else.

“It was good,” I say, my voice a little floaty as I dig into my box of sixty-four and open up my Superman book.

I
wanted to get back as soon as I could, and I wanted maybe to get back too soon.

Squid is walking with me as I make my way out of the hospital and across the big compound that is the Chu Lai base. I could have taken a ride to my quarters, but I am feeling so good, so ready, and so lacking in fitness I figure a good hike is the best thing. Squid, being Squid, decided to come meet me and escort me home.

Halfway there I am wondering how good an idea this really is.

“That looks like a lot more of a limp than it was a few minutes ago,” he says, looking down at my leg for answers.

“That's 'cause it hurts a lot more than it did a few minutes ago.”

“You sure you're all right?” he asks.

“Well, yes and no. I'm all right, meaning I should be out of the hospital. I'm not all right, meaning my leg is not as great as it was before the alligator bit it. It's just
gotta heal, man, and this is nothing but another stage in that process.”

Or possibly I pushed to get out of the hospital just a little bit too early. Anyway, there's no going back, so we go forward.

By the time we reach the hooch I am as exhausted as I would normally be after a ten-mile hike. There is nobody around, which makes it a perfect time to throw myself down for some rest.

“What do you think about getting something to eat?” Squid asks.

“I'm good, man. They gave me a sandwich before shoving me on my way.”

“Okay then. You want me to stick around? 'Cause if not I think I'll try and get some chow since lunch is almost over.”

“Go, man, go,” I say. “Thanks for the escort. I'll see you later.”

“Sure thing,” he says, and trots off to the mess.

It's funny, but my return here to the hooch, after not even that much time, feels important. Meaningful. Maybe it was the injury. The mission, the killings, becoming a real soldier and a real man. Maybe it was being separated from my squad for the first time, after being separated from my original squad of Ivan, Morris, and Beck. Maybe it was all of those things and
more. But I feel like I am needed here, with these men, and I feel like I need them, too.

I am thinking all this as I drift off, lying on my back, my arm over my eyes, smiling —

Booo-boooooooom!

The explosion doesn't knock me out of bed, but my reaction to it sure does. That blast was
close
, as in right-around-the-corner close, and I hit the floor and remain there on all fours like a dozy dog for several seconds. Then there is commotion and chaos outside, and I jump up and grab my helmet and rifle and run toward the action along with everybody else.

My leg is killing me when I get to the scene, but my leg killing me is nothing, man.

Nothing.

It's Lt. Jupp's quarters. Or it used to be. Now it is a smoldering hole in the ground.

 

It's called
fragging
.

It has been around in different forms for probably as long as there have been armies. It is what happens when you put men in battle and under pressure, and you put some men in charge and tell other men they have to do whatever they are told. And all those men are armed and trained and highly dangerous. And some of those men disagree seriously with their superiors and some of
those men hate their superiors and all of them have the opportunity to get away with something. Something like murder.

In Vietnam, it got to be called
fragging
because it is often accomplished by throwing a fragmentation grenade into somebody's space. That's what Lt. Jupp got.

Fragmented.

In a way, I feel like I got that, too.

But he's the one who's now in a zillion unpopular pieces, rather than just the one he was in before. He wasn't a bad guy. He wasn't. He wasn't he wasn't. He wasn't a coward or a bully or a monster or a traitor or a dope or a racist or a communist or a clown or an oaf or an ogre or a tool or a waster or a whiner or a diner or a diddler or a fiddler or any of the fifty hundred thousand million other names I've heard here, hung on guys who other guys think should be dead. He wasn't.

He was loud. And he was worn out. And he was coming back.

He was on the right side. He was on our side.

He was on my side.

 

“Do you realize,” asks the very tall and very blond and very slouched man in the chair on the other side of the makeshift desk that is really more of a card table, “how many members of the NIS, among the several hundred
thousand service personnel and several million indigenous individuals, are presently in the country of South Vietnam?”

He is referring to the Naval Investigative Service, which is responsible for looking into possible crimes involving United States Navy and Marine Corps personnel. He is squeezing his great bony temples with his long bony fingers as he asks me this.

“I would have no idea what the answer to that question is, sir.”

He squeezes his temples some more. Sweat drains from them, like he is squeezing fresh lemonade from a lemon. I am thirsty.

“Were you ever on a football team, son? Perhaps in high school or with a Pop Warner league?”

“No, sir.” I would have thought he could have worked that out for himself already. If the guy knows what a jock looks like he knows it doesn't look like me. But he does seem awfully tired.

“Know anybody else who was on a team?”

“Ivan,” I say. “Ivan was great. He played both ways. All-conference as both a linebacker and fullback.”

“Swell,” he says. “Good for Ivan. Well, if you look back at that team, those on the offense plus those on defense, that is about how many members, total, of the NIS are here in-country.”

Wow
, I'm thinking.

“Wow, sir.”

“‘Wow.' Yes. So, son, we need to be lean and hungry with our investigations. Right? You understand that, right?”

“Right.”

“So, did you kill Lt. Jupp?”

It makes me want to puke to even hear that question.

“No, sir.”

“You are aware that he was killed within the hour after you got back to your quarters?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Within the hour after your return from a hospital stay for a deeply serious and deeply unpleasant injury that happened while you were doing the business assigned to you in the field under Lt. Jupp.”

“Yes, sir, I am aware of all that.”

“And you were not with any of the other men at the time of the incident, is that correct, private?”

“Correct.”

“So, you know why I would be asking you such a question.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So then, I will ask you again. Did you kill Lt. Jupp?”

It doesn't get any less sickening to be asked a second time. I don't figure it will get any less sickening if he
asks me five million times. It will probably just get worse.

“No, sir, I did not.”

He continues, for a minute, to squeeze lemonade from his head. Then he looks up and right at me.

“I know that, sweetheart,” he says. “Now, can you tell me who did?”

Cripes. Where to even begin with this? Well, let's begin with how much I don't want to be here. Then move on to how much I don't want to be here.

Lt. Jupp is dead.

Somebody here probably killed him.

My brain is not big enough for this. Who would do this kind of thing? There are plenty of guys around here who seemed at one time or another angry enough at the lieutenant to say or do or
not
do something stupid, but to kill him? I can't fit that into my head. I just can't believe there is any single guy here who would be capable of that.

We kill, sure. But we're not
killers
. That's a whole 'nother thing, isn't it? Isn't it?

“I have no idea, sir. That's the truth.”

“Gillespie could do something like that, couldn't he, private.”

I would never say anyone was capable of doing that.
If I ever would say such a thing, though, I might say it about Gillespie.

“No, sir,” I say, “I could not imagine that.”

“Lt. Jupp was not a popular man, was he, private.”

“I couldn't say, sir.”

“Actually, you
could
say, son. And you had better say, or risk a charge of obstructing the investigation of a very tired and overworked man who has to cover one-twenty-fourth of a country of sixty-five thousand square miles in which fraggings are currently occurring at the rate of about one per week. Now … from what I can gather so far you were on a list of Lt. Jupp's favorite subordinates, a list that extended to approximately one. You. The other men mostly hated him and vice versa.”

“Squid doesn't hate anybody, sir.”

“You know, fair enough. Spoke to that Squid fellow and I believe that to be accurate. Am I to gather from this that you are now cooperating by process of elimination and that any of your other squad mates could have been responsible?”

Every time I say something I feel like I'm in deeper. Every time I say nothing I feel likewise.

“I don't think Hunter could have done it, either.”

“Now we're getting somewhere,” he says.

And I can't take it anymore.

“No, sir, we aren't getting somewhere. Because I don't believe any of the guys could have done this. Maybe it was just an accident. They do happen, don't they? There's a lot of dangerous stuff around here….”

Up 'til now, he's been taking notes. Now, he stops writing. Puts his pen in his pocket, closes his notebook.

“I'll give you credit, son,” he says, standing from the card table. “It took you longer to get to that than every other one of 'em. Truth is, unless somebody confesses or rats out somebody else, there is practically nothing we can do these days. This place is all but lawless now. I wish you luck, kid, I really do. Because once it gets to this point … well, good luck, is all. And watch your back.”

He shakes my hand and walks to the door.

I sit, alone again, not knowing what to do with myself next.

 

The new lieutenant wants to see me. It's not that I'm special, though — he's having sit-downs with everybody. One by one the guys go to see him in his hooch, and one by one they come back calling the next guy. There is little exchange of information during the changeover, just as there is little communication at all since Jupp's killing. It isn't that nobody trusts anybody.
It's that everybody doesn't trust somebody. And we are not even sure who that somebody is.

I have to change that statement. I sort of don't trust anybody.

I don't expect to get shot or blown up by one of our own guys. No, a person has to be important in some way for that to happen, and I am basic-level grunt all the way. What worries me is that, when it comes down to it, I'm beginning to think that the guys here are of a mind to look out for themselves instead of each other. That's what I'm feeling now, and for a fighting force that's about as poisonous as it can get.

“Trust me,” McClean says as he steps into the hooch and points that I'm up next, “this guy's gonna be an even bigger pain than Jupp.”

I get off my bunk and walk past him on the way to the door.

“Know who I trusted?” I say. “I trusted Lieutenant Jupp.”

I did. Despite it all, I did.

All those kissy-kissy noises follow me out the door and I don't know who's doing it and I don't even care to look.

Lieutenant Silva's hooch is like an indoor cloud. It's as if somebody has let off a white phosphorus flare in
there, except maybe more like a blue-gray phosphorus flare. He is lighting one cigarette off of another one when I enter, and he's sitting on one folding canvas chair, with his feet propped up on a second and his overflowing ashtray on a third. Looks like a fire hazard.

I remain standing.

“No beating around any bushes with me, kid, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

“I like you,” he says.

“Thank you, sir. I didn't even realize you knew me.”

“I know you by record and reputation, private. Mind if I call you Rudi?”

“Most guys around here call me Cabbage, lieutenant.”

“Uh-huh. Mind if I call you Rudi?”

“I don't mind at all, sir.”

“Good. Now here is the way I figure we're gonna understand each other. I will give out orders and assignments. And you will follow those orders and assignments. I will hold up my end of the bargain by not making any unreasonable demands of the soldiers under me as far as I can help it, and I will fight shoulder to shoulder with those soldiers like the partners in crime that we actually are. In exchange for this respect I offer you, you will agree not to kill me or to maim
me, nor to attempt to kill or maim me. How's that sound to you? Because it sounds eminently fair and reasonable to me.”

Lt. Silva has sucked down that cigarette in about the time it would take most people to suck down a Dixie cup of soda. He lights another one.

“Sounds fair and reasonable, lieutenant.”

“Good,” he says. “Good. Rudi, my man, here is what I understand about you. You are the prototype of a loyal and dedicated Marine. Would you say that is fair?”

“I like to think it is.” I'd also like to think I knew what a prototype is, but I'll settle for the other good words I recognize in there.

“Good. Fair is good. I am a fair man, and fairness is never far from my thoughts. I am guessing you feel likewise. Fair enough?”

I did not expect to smile in this meeting at all. I am pleasantly surprised.

“Fair enough,” I say.

“And while you have the aforementioned invaluable qualities and probably a whole lot more, I think it is equally fair to state that you are not the brightest booby in the trap.
Is
that true, and
does
that hurt your feelings, Rudi?”

“It certainly is, and it certainly does not, sir,” I say, and it's probably extra stupid now to be grinning like I am, but so what since I won't be fooling anybody here about my brightness or lack thereof, anyway.