In Every Clime and Place (14 page)

“Bauer, make a recording of the cargo containers in here. Bust a few open and see if they are what they say they are. Take Li with you.” I’d noticed him eyeing the prisoners and wanted him as far from them as possible.

“Collins.” Lt Mitchell’s voice came over the headset.

“Go ahead, sir.”

“We have the ship secured. Get your Marines and the prisoners ready to move. We’re headed your way.”

“You want me to send you the corpsman?”

“Negative. We have one Marine WIA and he’s stable. We’ll be along shortly.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The hatch opened and the rest of the platoon appeared, marching four prisoners along, as well as a handful of women who looked like they might have been captives on this ship. Seeing the looks on their faces and the bruises they bore, I regretted not letting Li wade into the surviving pirates with his blade.

The wounded-in-action Marine was the boss himself. Lt Mitchell had a dressing wrapped around his left forearm. He held a 10mm pistol in his good hand, and carried on as if nothing had happened.

“Situation, Corporal?”

“All secure, sir. Five enemy KIA, twelve prisoners, seven WIA, five unhurt. One Marine KIA, three WIA. All weapons gathered here. Video taken of cargo containers and enemy weapons. Third squad is ready to move out, sir.”

“Outstanding. Saddle up, Marines!”

Bauer and Li carried Chan’s body, Sabatini and O’Rourke carried Sgt McCray. Two of Hernandez’s Marines brought Williams. Our two walking wounded made it to the shuttle without complaint.

I wondered what the fallout would be. We definitely kicked up something more than straight piracy here. I wondered what agency or corporation or government was behind it. For the sake of Sgt McCray and the memory of Cpl Chan, I had a burning urge to find out.

Marine blood was spilled. Somebody was pulling the strings, and we would find out who. And then...

And then heads would roll. I promised myself that. Heads would roll.

USS
TRIPOLI

The medical team was waiting when the shuttle docked with the Tripoli. They took charge of our four wounded Marines and the women we’d freed. They would get to the enemy wounded eventually.

Cpl Chan was brought to the morgue.

“Sgt Pilsudski,” ordered Lt Evers, in command while the Old Man was in sickbay, “escort the prisoners to the brig. Have your squad stand by in case of emergency. Sgt Hernandez, your squad is on duty in eight hours. Cpl Collins, take charge of third squad. Your Marines are off duty until 0700 tomorrow.”

“Aye aye, sir.” I turned to my squad. “Get cleaned up, then meet in my fire team’s squadbay. Bring your weapons and cleaning gear.”

A muttered chorus of assent greeted my order. My team filed back to our little piece of ship.

The crisis was over, but I didn’t want Li and Bauer sitting in a half-empty room dwelling on the loss. I also wanted to keep a careful eye on Li. He would probably bounce back, but I wasn’t sure about it. I was in command of those two now, it was my job to see how they were doing and what they needed. A two-man fire team was not viable, so at some point we would have to reorganize, but I would leave that to the Old Man. I wasn’t even sure I’d stay in command of the squad.

While the rest of us showered, I sent Sabatini to the galley to draw our squad’s beer ration. I didn’t trust O’Rourke. With my life, yes. With the squad’s liquor, no.

Soon we had all cleaned up and changed into fresh utilities. Bauer and Li arrived. I handed over a sixpack of the cheap brew. Bauer cracked a smile and said thanks, but Li remained stone-faced.

I didn’t have a concrete plan, I was just hoping that activity, companionship and a few beers would take their minds off their loss. I kept Li under close watch as he broke down his weapon and began to clean it.

For a while we worked in silence. Nobody wanted to bring up the fight, but it was on everyone’s mind. I finally decided to take the lead.

That’s why Uncle Sam pays me an extra thirty dollars a month.

“Guess they threw your ass in the deep end,” I remarked to Johnson. “Two combat deployments in your first month with the Fleet.”

“You mean this isn’t just an average cruise?” he asked sarcastically.

It’s gotta be pretty bad when the new guy knows something isn’tright. I noticed a change in him. This action, though it had been far more costly to the platoon, hadn’t shaken him up like the first. He held himself more confidently. It was as though he had matured years in the past few weeks.

“It’s usually ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent scared shitless,” Sabatini clarified. “This one has only been around ninety percent boredom.”

“We got our cherries busted kinda rough ourselves, Mick,” Terry said. “That first ambush in Africa came after we were in country what, an hour?”

“You got a point.” I swallowed half of my beer. “Shit, that was one hell of a welcome.”

“You two dinosaurs gonna tell the story,” asked Sabatini, switching to her Al Capone voice, “or do I got to beat it outta ya?”

I looked to Terry. He nodded. “Go ahead. You’re just gonna interrupt and screw it up anyway if I do it.”

I took a sip and began. “OK, me and O’Rourke are brand new Marines. Eighteen years old, right out of Infantry Training Regiment. We get posted to Africa with a whole platoon of replacements for the 7th Marines in Kenya. We haul our seabags off the transport in full body armor, rifles, helmets, the whole nine yards, and hike over to these ancient trucks that we’re using for transport. It’s like a million fucking degrees out, sun’s blazing, sweat’s pouring off us.

“We board the trucks. The beds are open, just a canvas cover over the top, rolled up so the air can circulate. There’s a machine gun mounted at the front of the bed on top of the cab. First thing we notice is the bullet holes. The sideboards of the truck are riddled. Terry nudges me and points to ’em. So now we think, ‘Oh man, this is serious shit.’”

“We were right,” added O’Rourke.

“Damn straight we were. We hadn’t been on the road ten minutes, when the shit hit the fan. We’re driving along this bumpy dirt road, eating dust by the kilo. One side is a
wadi,
a dry stream bed, the other is just scrubby, thorny little trees and brush. As the convoy slows down going around a bend, these rebels open up on us.

“Out of nowhere rounds are smacking into the wooden sideboards. I got splinters from a near miss. A round snaps past my ear. Missed me by centimeters. The machine gunner gives a yelp and grabs at his arm. I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to chamber a round, duck, and find a target all at once. I’m thinking, ‘Welcome to fucking Africa.’”

“So what happened?” The younger Marines leaned forward, intent on the story.

“I go to say something to O’Rourke and he’s not there. He’s over the side of the damn truck, charging into the bushes, screaming like a banshee and blazing away.”

Terry smiled in embarrassed acknowledgment.

“What did you do?” Sabatini asked.

I paused and took a sip for dramatic effect. “I followed him. Figured what the hell, it’s better than sitting here getting shot up. We tore into those bushes howling and shooting like mad. Half the frigging platoon followed us.”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” O’Rourke commented.

“A round creased my helmet, another one tore my sleeve. I guess when we rushed ’em they just fired blind and tried to abandon ship. I nearly plowed into one of the bastards. Shot him on instinct at about a meter. He was falling before I realized I’d made the decision to pull the trigger.

“Those poor bastards never knew what hit ’em. We killed a dozen of ’em, captured seven or eight more, drove the rest off. I don’t think they stopped until they reached the Mediterranean. In total we had three Marines hit, counting the gunner who got hit in the first volley, nobody killed.”

“They didn’t get more of you than that?” Bauer asked.

“Nope.” I took a swig. “I mean, those rebels can’t shoot anyway. I bet not more than one in ten actually put the damn rifle in his shoulder and looked through the rear sight. They just kinda held the weapon out from their body and burned clips full auto. I think they were as new as we were. A few senior rebels probably took a bunch of recruits out to blood ’em on an easy ambush.”

“Didn’t quite work out that way.” Terry smiled.

“Hardly. The thing is, old Blood-and-Guts O’Rourke made the right tactical decision. They expected us to take cover in the wadi, but when we looked at it later, it was filled with sharpened stakes set in the bank among the brush, and a couple trip-wire and grenade booby traps were in there for good measure. If we’d tried to take cover and shoot back, we would’ve taken some serious casualties. If the drivers just floored it and drove out of the kill zone, they would have run over a section of dirt road the bastards dug up and mined. When we were driving slow, we could spot the new holes, but tearing around that bend at high speed to avoid the ambush, we’d have been screwed. The enemy never expected a cherry platoon of replacements to react like we did.”

“Immediate action drills,” said O’Rourke sagely. “You always attack into a near ambush.”

“Don’t pay any attention to Sun Tzu here,” I cautioned. “He didn’t charge cause he’s a better born soldier than the Duke of Wellington. I asked him later what made him react so quick, he looked all offended and said, ‘I was hot and thirsty and those fuckers pissed me off, shooting at me like that.’ I swear, those were his exact words.”

The squad broke into laughter.

“Best part,” I continued, speaking over the squad’s mirth, “is they gave him a fucking Bronze Star for it. Courage and clear thinking under fire in the face of a hostile enemy, blah blah blah... Oh God, they made the guy a fucking war hero for clear thinking when he was reacting like somebody bumped him and spilled his pint watching the Celtics at the L Street Tavern in Southie.”

“Hey, you followed me.”

“I foolishly assumed you had a plan, you head case.”

When we settled down, Johnson looked at me. “And they stuck me in the same team with you two crazy-ass motherfuckers?” He shook his head. “Damn.”

“That’ll teach you to join the Marines instead of getting a real job,” Sabatini said.

“You’re really screwed, brother.” Li smiled. “By the time these two harps get you killed, Five-Aces Sabatini here will have cheated you out of your life insurance.”

It warmed my heart to see the Chinese Marine crack a joke. Lcpl Sabatini put on her most saintly expression, the picture of injured dignity.

“Yeah, you won’t be able to support your wife and nine kids,” said Terry, joining Li in ribbing our newest brother.

“I ain’t got no nine kids,” Johnson protested.

“Well, two of ’em are mine, but I didn’t think she’d tell you,” O’Rourke kept on relentlessly.

“Fuck you.”

“That’s ‘fuck you, Lance Corporal!’”

“How many shoot-outs have you been in, Lance Corporal, sir?” Bauer gave O’Rourke a mock salute, taking the heat off Johnson. “What’s normal?”

“No such animal,” he replied.

“The illustrious team of Collins and O’Rourke: Professional Homicidal Alcoholics, Inc. has been in twelve firefights in twelve years. From that first ambush to today. They don’t come spaced evenly though. We had nine in Africa—”

“Ten if you count the Battle of the Nairobi Slop Chute,” Terry amended.

“That was freelance destruction, not Marine Corps business.”

“Cost us four stripes between us and got us transferred to Ski’s team.”

“Fortunes of war. Anyway, counting everything from four-man ambushes we pulled with Pilsudski when we got sent to Recon, to the battalion-level assault on N’Gaba’s stronghold, there were nine firefights. The size of a battle don’t mean shit to the grunts. If your ass is being shot at, it’s a major action. All our fighting in Africa was in a period of about two and a half years. Then there was a long peaceful stretch with one hot insertion into the embassy in Srebrenica—”

“Sebra-what?” asked Bauer.

“It’s Serbian for ‘shithole,’” Terry explained. “Mick likes to show off by learning the names.”

“Sabatini, you were with us on that one. That your first?” I asked. She had done damn well if it was.

She shook her head. “I was in the 9th Marines before I transferred to this sorry outfit. We were running patrols on the India-Pakistan border after the bluehats got chased out. No big battles, just tracking bandits and poachers. Couple small firefights. After the USNE called for both governments to back troops out of the border zone, the local thugs and endangered species traders thought it was open season. Fucking USNE ‘monitors’ got their asses kicked and cried to the US. I guess we had a regiment in the Himalayas way back, so there was a relationship with the Marines.”

I nodded. “First Battalion, 5thMarines. My dad was there. He got a tattoo of a snow leopard with the Marine emblem around it. Said a lot of his buddies got ’em.”

“They’re still doing those,” Sabatini said, “just changed the battalion numbers.”

“You get one?” I asked innocently.

“Play your cards right and you might find out,” she purred.

“Keep it in your pants and tell us about the embassy at Serbo-thingamajig, Corp,” Bauer insisted. I glanced at Li. He was listening intently, concentrating on our tales of adventure in the Old Corps. He had done a decent job cleaning his weapon. He was past the first stage, he was keeping his mind on his duty, not the buddy he lost. If I got him tired and drunk, he’d sleep and tomorrow he’d be on duty. I couldn’t lose him to grieving right now. We were three Marines short in this squad as it was. It may sound cruel, but we needed him to do his job now and work through his loss on his own time. Some distance would help him. It would be easier for him if I kept him busy for a few days and he couldn’t sink into depression. By the time he had leisure to mourn, the wound would have healed a bit.

“Srebrenica was in part of a country called Yugoslavia like a hundred years ago,” I explained. “The borders were set after WWI, without a whole lot of concern as to who lived where. When Yugoslavia broke up in the nineties, all the various tribes and ethnic groups started fighting over the map. Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Albanians; it got real ugly. I guess they all wanted their traditional boundaries from when before Attila the Hun came through or something. The various factions spent the next decade or so slaughtering one another. Things settled down eventually, we built an embassy, all the usual shit. Then, five years back, some nutcase whose name I won’t try to pronounce ‘cause Terry will make fun of me won an election and declared ‘Serbia for the Serbs’, wanted to restore their ‘traditional boundaries.’ Well, the other groups refused to accept the election results and, rather than appeal to the USNE, they dusted off the old guns and hatreds. Everything went to hell in a hand basket again.

“A bunch of minorities claimed asylum at our embassy. I don’t even remember which group they were. The ambassador wouldn’t turn ’em over to any of the warring factions, so the pricks besieged the embassy.”

“That was a cluster fuck,” Terry pronounced.

“An astute observation, Professor O’Rourke. The politicians back in Washington dragged their feet. We didn’t evacuate, because that would show weakness, and we didn’t reinforce early, when we could have done it easily, because we didn’t want to violate anybody’s sovereignty or some bullshit. When they attacked, General Lewis, the Commandant of the Corps, refused to order his Marines to surrender. Told the President he’d resign before he saw us haul down our flag and hand our arms over to some dickhead foreigners. The Prez finally gave the order and we dropped our company in under fire. We held out. After three days of getting the shit beat out of ’em, the enemy calmed down. I guess they realized that if we would send a company, we’d probably send a division, and they didn’t want to take on the whole US military, so they backed off. We lost some Marines because of indecision in Washington, though.”

“So you think we shouldn’t have gone?” asked Bauer.

“Not my call. I just think the Powers That Be should’ve made up their minds quicker. Whether we go or not isn’t up to us. When you’re on the spot, though, you don’t half-ass the job. Be decisive. If you decide to fight, you hit hard, hit quick and keep on hitting, or don’t go at all. If we passed on that fight, so be it. If we went in early, we’d have had a full company ready to defend that perimeter. They wouldn’t have thought they could take us. Indecision looks like weakness. The factions knew that the US balked at sending troops before, they thought we would again, so they pushed.”