Mary Cary broke in: “Well, the only man whose life was risked in this case—”
“Being in a far fat’s—”
“—was a man who wasn’t trying to—”
“Lemme finish, Merry Kerry. Being in a far fat’s—”
“All right,” said Mary Cary, “if you’re so hipped on your
firefights,
let’s
talk
about your firefights.”
Good girl,
thought Irv,
you figured out “far” and “fat.”
“When were you ever in a firefight? Not a training excercise—a
real
one? Or—”
“I was—”
“Or is this some grand military theory of yours?”
“I been in a far fat.”
“
Really?
How interesting. When exactly? In Korea? In
Vietnam
?
—
which happened to have ended before you were born probably? You’ve never actually
been
in a firefight, have you?”
“Deed, I
have
, too.”
“Oh?—exactly
when
? Exactly
where
?”
“In Somalia.”
“
Somalia
,” said Mary Cary, pouring on the derision. “A UN mission to provide food to starving people. And you were in a firefight?”
“Jewer hear a Bloody Sunday?”
On the monitor in the rear compartment, Irv saw the consternation on Mary Cary’s face immediately. A sixth sense told her not to say no, because “Bloody Sunday” rang some kind of bell, but she didn’t know what the bell was tolling. Her expression went blank. The wheels spun—and she came up with nothing. Mary Cary might occasionally bone up on a subject for a
Day & Night
segment, but she was no daily devourer of current events, not via newspapers, not even via the nightly TV news; not the way he, Irv, was. Like a lot of people in television news today, Mary Cary had come into the business not from journalism school but from drama school; at the University of Virginia, in her case. The
star
in television news was not the newshound but the on-camera performer. When people like Mary Cary—and she was far from being the only one—were starting out as correspondents, they prided themselves on being able to go anywhere in the world, arrive with information zero, get briefed for ten or fifteen minutes by whatever researcher was on the scene, and then go on camera and regurgitate the stuff with an air of profound, fathomless, even smug, authority. That was …
performing.
Mary Cary’s ascent from the lower ranks had begun one evening in 1979. Her producer, a lovable but carbuncled gnome
named Murray Lewis, had sent her from New York to Teheran on the spur of the moment to cover the Iran hostage crisis. She raced from the Teheran airport, reached the American Embassy just in time for the evening news in the United States, stood in front of hordes of screaming, placard-waving, flag-burning, effigy-stomping Iranian demonstrators, looked into the camera, and, with information zero, with not so much as thirty seconds of briefing from the network’s local researchers, flawlessly rephrased the Associated Press copy concerning the event as Lewis, who was in New York, read it to her over a satellite hookup and into a corded plug stuck in her ear and concealed by her luxuriant blond hair. Made it all roll out of those big lips of hers, she did, with an air of foreign-affairs profundity that would have made a Bismarck’s or a Kissinger’s jaw drop.
But at this moment she didn’t have Murray Lewis or even Irv Durtscher to whisper in her ear, and so she fell back on her standard device for those rare moments when she was stymied or nonplussed.
“Go on,” she said with a tone that always insinuated that the poor devil could only dig his own grave deeper.
Irv braced. Irv knew exactly what Bloody Sunday was.
“H‘it was Sunday, October the thud, nanteen-nanny-three,” said Ziggefoos. Suddenly he was giving Mary Cary a stern, unblinking look of rectitude. “Our unit, we was over east a the Bakhura Market, and our CO, Major Lunsford, he says—wale, the thang was, some informer or sump’m, he’s tipped us off that this Mohammed Aidid?—some of his top lieutenants, they’re having a secret meeting up’eh at the—”
Mary Cary broke in: “That’s very interesting, I’m sure, but let’s get back to the point, and the point is the murder of Randy Valentine.”
Ziggefoos was having none of it. The look in his eyes became even sterner, more accusatory. The boy
did not blink
, not even once. He just sawed away with his story in his rasping redneck twang.
“They was having a secret meeting up‘eh at the Olympic Hotel,
Ai
did’s people was, and so the CO, he puts forty uv’us into a buncha MH-60s. They’s helicopters. They call’em Black Hawks. It’s abaout three-thuddy inny afternoon, inny brat sunlat, and they’d already sent
another unit a Rangers fum the HQ, and them and some Delta Commandos—”
“I’m not interested in—”
But Ziggefoos’s new voice ripped right through her. “—and in a couple minutes, all uv‘us, and the units fum the airport, we’re rat over the Olympic Hotel, and if you ever hud prakly twenty MH-60 helicopters up inny air at oncet—I mean, you talk abaout
thun
der—ever’buddy in‘at whole goddayum moth-eaten town’at had a gun, they strapped h’it on, because they knowed sump’m
big
was coming down.”
Mary Cary seemed stunned by the onslaught of his words and the damning stare.
Goddamn it
, thought Irv,
you got to cut him off!
He was aware that his heart was beating much too fast.
“Our unit,” said Ziggefoos, “we come
rap
pelling down abaout fifty feet a rope to the
ho
tel roof fum the helicopters, and the units fum the airport, they’d already broke in’at
ho
tel and they’d got holt those summitches,
Ai
did’s people, and them and us, all the units, we jes waitin’eh for the Humvees to come transport the pris’ners when all hell broke loose.”
“You know about all hell breaking loose, don’t you?” said Mary Cary.
That’s it! That’s it! But she doesn’t have her usual air of command.
“Hell broke loose for Randy—”
“Them dayum Somali militiamen,” said Ziggefoos, “they figured later mussa been four or five hunnert
uv
’em. They didn’t have no uniforms, Aidid’s militiamen didn’t. They wasn’t quartered in no billets, either. They was all over town, looking just like ever‘buddy else, living in all’em dayum shacks or jes out on the dayum street. They was a goddayum
perm
’nen’ly
ins
talled living ambush ready to come daown on any uv‘us soon’s we exposed ourself. They was up in
trees,
they was hiding behind them goddayum
hootches
they got all over Mogadishu—look lack humps a dirt, one aft’other—they was lots
uv
’em men dressed lack women with AK-47s and grenades and I don’t know whatall hidden under their skirts. They got rocket-propelled grenades and ‘em Glock automatics an’evvy other dayum thang, them summitches did, and the next thang we knowed, one a the MH-60s, h‘it’s
daown,
h’it’s
crashed, h‘it’s daown in the street, and now we got to go out fum the hotel inny goddayum street in the broad daylat’n form a p’rim‘ter’round the MH-60, ‘cause the pilot, he’s trapped inny wreckage, and he’s still alive. We can hear him yelling: ‘I got a man dead! I got a man dead in here!’ And all of a sudden, I’m seeing guys all around me, buddies a mine, guys I’ve knowed ever since I was in the Rangers, they’s getting blowed away, falling daown dead inny streets a Mogadishu. I move out abaout twenty feet to get a bead on a bunch
uv
’em’at’s farring at us fum a treetop and—
blam!
—I’m daown on my goddayum face inny dirt. Goddayum grenade shrapnel’s hit me alla way daown my left arm, my left leg, and the left side a my bayack.”
With that, he lifted his left arm until his elbow was up beside his ear, and Irv could see clear as day on the monitor a huge scar on the back of Ziggefoos’s upper arm that ran all the way down inside his T-shirt sleeve.
“That’s jes one uv‘em,” said Ziggefoos. “I got scars lack at’air all overt the left side a my body. We was caught in a ambush, Merry Kerry, a
ambush
! The ambush a all
ambushes
! By the time we come out the hotel with them pris‘ners, they was waiting. We didn’t know it, but we was in a
ambush
! Them Somalis?—and all’at spear farpower?—they‘d—wale, it was lack they’d jes growed up out a the graound and sprouted like leaves on the trees, and they was jes raining that sheeut’scuse me, Merry Kerry—jes pouring it on us from evvy which way.”
On the monitor fed by the camera fixed on Mary Cary’s face, Irv could see that her lips were parted and her eyes were wide. She looked as if she’d had her breath knocked out.
“Me, I couldn’t
move,”
said Ziggefoos. “My check was lying in the blood that was gushing out my own arm. Jimmy”—he motioned toward Jimmy Lowe, and on the monitors Irv could see Jimmy Lowe and Flory blinking away at a furious rate—“Jimmy come out to git me, come out inny street to git me ‘thout no cover’t‘all, and—
blam!
—Jimmy’s daown, too. AK-47 bullet tore rat thoo his shoulder and come out his bayack, and another’n went rat thoo his thigh, and the two uv’us, we’s both uv’us lane out inny middle a the street bleeding like stuck pigs, and the
air’s full a shrapnel and the wust shitchoo ever saw—’scuse me, Merry Kerry—and I swear fo’ God in heaven I could see AK-47 bullets coming at us and going overhaid. You can see’ em at a certain angle. Look lack bees coming atchoo, bees fum hell. And you wanna know how we got out a that bloody street?”
“Not particularly,” said Mary Cary, “and I don’t—”
But Ziggefoos, his narrow-set eyes ablaze, talked right over her: “This little piece a steel ratcheer—” He reached over and put his hand on Flory’s shoulder. On the monitor fixed on Flory, Irv could see the runt’s eyes blinking away. “Hunnert’n forty-five pounds soaking wet, maybe, but he’s a piece a steel, Merry Kerry, and what h’it takes, he got it ratcheer.” He tapped his chest, right over the heart, with his fist. “Flory, he awready seen two uv’us cut daown, and he come out’air inny street running and crouching and weaving, and he grabbed both
uv
’us by our boots—our
boots
—and he starts dragging us back to the p’rim’ter. Shrapnel hits him in his left fo’arm and his rat calf and his neck—his
neck
!—and a bullet goes thoo’is ribs and breaks two uv’em, and this little piece a steel ratcheer”—he shook Flory’s shoulder with his hand—“he don’t even stop. He keeps draggin’ us till he got us bayack inside the p’rim’ter—and you wanna know if I ever been in
far fat.
Jesus Christ, Merry Kerry!”
“No,” said Mary Cary, “what I want to know is—”
But no mere words in the world were going to stop the righteous Ziggy Ziggefoos now.
“We was pinned down in’at ambush fer nigh onto
fo’teen
hours, Merry Kerry, and we didn’t have no medics, no morphine, no nothing. By and by it’s nattime, and it’s dark, and the muzzle flashes, I mean, you can see’em flashing out of the trees, fum behind the hootches, fum evvy goddayum place you look. And the grenades—it was a ambush that wouldn’t stop. Charlie Company, they send the QRF—the Quick Reaction Force?—they send the QRF out from the airport to give us some cover, and
they
git ambushed, daown at the K-4 Circle. And lack you was talking abaout the
Yew
N? What a goddayum joke! They’s trying to git the Pakistanis and the Malaysians to move in with some armored
vehicles, and come to find out they’s so yellow, them worthless bastards, they wouldn’t move out till after midnight, and the onliest reason they moved out then was’at one of our officers put the muzzle of a .357 Magnum upside the haid a one a their colonels, and he says to him, he says, ‘You’re haidin’ for the Olympic
H
ostel with your armored vehicles or you’re one goddayum stone-daid gook motherfucker—’scuse me, Merry Kerry.”
“Okay,” said Mary Cary, “suppose we assume, for the sake of argument, that you
were—
”
Not a word of it reached Ziggefoos, who kept on paralyzing her and the very camera and the very monitor in the hidden compartment with his glittering eyes. “Lack I was telling you, forty uv’us fum our unit? And twenty-eight
uv’
us was wounded, and seven
uv
’us got blowed away, got
killed
. One a our guys got blowed away out inny street, and he didn’t have no Jimmy Lowe, he didn’t have no Flory, to come out’air’n’risk their lafs to drag’im back inside any p’rim’ter, and the Somalis, they got to’im fo’ we could git to’im, and them fucking animals—’scuse me, Merry Kerry—they pulled the uniform rat off his body, and they drug him through the streets of Mogadishu by ropes tied to his wrists, laughing and hooting like hyenas, flat out grinning like hyenas with their teeth dripping blood after the kill because they’d slaughtered a’Merican.
“And you stand’eh, and you ax me if I ever been in a far fat.’Scuse me, Merry Kerry, but you’re fulla shit.”
“Spoken like a true credit to the military,” said Mary Cary with an icy sarcasm. The insult had roused her to anger, renewed her sharp edge. Irv’s heart was hammering away as he watched it all on the monitors. “So now that you’ve got all that out of your system, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to tell me what any of it has to do with the murder of Randy Valentine.”