The crack drew a few smirks, and Dickinson faked a good chuckle.
“I have the paperwork in my office,” the assistant staff judge advocate and military justice officer said. “Both of these ass wipes are in custody, locked tight in the Chu Lai cage. Not a real brig. A couple of steel container boxes with windows cut in the sides and bars welded across the openings. A tad bit hot at midday.”
“Sounds a little on the harsh side, Major,” Kirkwood said. “These cages conform to code?”
“Code?” Dickinson laughed. “What code? We’re just fine with how we handle these dirt bags we clear out of here. You two gentlemen need to focus more on getting these two knuckleheads processed and in the brig, and quit worrying about where they cool their heels tonight.”
“Processed, sir?” Kirkwood said, raising his eyebrows.
“Adjudicated. How’s that, Captain?” Dickinson said, and sucked down a gulp of beer.
“How about tried, sir?” O’Connor said, clenching his teeth. “We adjudicate a property settlement. People are brought to trial by courts-martial, last time I checked. Innocent until proven guilty, and treated as such.”
“Get off your fucking soapbox, Captain. You sound like Missus Carter there, pleading for the huddled masses,” Dickinson snarled, locking his eyes on O’Connor’s. “Most of these lamebrains we process through our system joined the Marine Corps to avoid jail in the first place. It’s just a matter of time before they fuck up here, too, and we toss them in the brig, where they belonged from the get-go. Don’t be such a bleeding heart. It doesn’t become you.”
Terry O’Connor held his rapidly heating stare at the major’s eyes, started to speak, but then said nothing.
“What time, sir?” Kirkwood said, seizing the opportunity to head off his best friend from finally letting his temper boil past his quickly eroding self-control and saying something regrettable.
“Time?” Dickinson said, slurping his beer.
“Yes, sir,” Kirkwood replied. “You said you had the paperwork on our two clients, and I just wanted to know what time to be in your office to formally get assigned the cases and receive the paperwork from you. We do have to plan a defense.”
“Tomorrow morning. Zero seven hundred, sharp, Captains,” Dickinson said, finishing his beer. “Captain Carter, why don’t you get me a refill when you freshen up that Shirley Temple you’re nursing.”
Carter nodded to the Mojo, took his empty can, and headed to the bar, thankful for the excuse to depart his presence.
“You two better get this straight on these cases, and all others, for that matter,” Dickinson said, pressing his thin lips back, showing his tightly clenched teeth. “Don’t fuck around with me. I want this shit off our docket and these people processed and in the brig without any holdups. If they’ll plead guilty, let them do it. Go straight to sentencing. The cocksucker is easy, anyway. The ax murderer may take a few more steps, given the mandatory procedures, but I want them both out of my hair, fast.”
“We’ll do our best, sir,” Kirkwood said, and flashed a hard look at O’Connor to keep his mouth shut. “Terry and I will excuse ourselves now. No sleep for a couple of days, and we’re both a little edgy and not clear-headed.”
“Understood, Captain,” Dickinson said, and offered his best disingenuous smile at O’Connor. “Get some rest, boys. I’ll see you in the morning at seven sharp. The daily logistics chopper to Chu Lai launches at nine, should you want to see your clients and perhaps get them moved to the Freedom Hill brig for pretrial confinement.”
Kirkwood and O’Connor quickly turned on their heels and hurried toward their quarters, following the gravel path that led past the tennis courts where Lieutenant Colonel Prunella had volleyed his ball off the plywood backstop earlier that day. The batteries of mercury vapor lamps posted at each corner of the concrete square created an island of light in the surrounding darkness. Ahead they could see the single yellow bulb hanging in the receptacle beneath the white and green metal reflector suspended above the squad bay door on the old two-story French barracks where they now lived.
“Hey, before you guys disappear, can I get a favor?” T. D. McKay said, running to Kirkwood and O’Connor after they had walked well outside earshot of Major Dickinson and the others.
“Depends,” O’Connor said, both captains stopping in the light from the tennis court. “If I don’t catch the clap or go to jail for it, I might consider it.”
McKay laughed.
“No, just cover for me if Dicky Doo goes snooping this weekend,” McKay said. “Just because its Saturday doesn’t stop him when he wants something.”
“We just learned that lesson,” Kirkwood said. “I wanted to lay in the rack and read tomorrow morning. Now Terry and I have to stand tall for Dicky Doo at zero-seven, and then catch a chopper to Chu Lai at nine.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” McKay said. “Sorry, guys. I can hit up Mike Carter. He’s usually good for a cover story.”
“What’s going on tomorrow that you’ve got to have the alibi?” O’Connor said, his curiosity hard at work.
“I’ve got a pal in the grunts, First Lieutenant Jimmy Sanchez,” McKay said, hanging his thumbs in his belt. “The two of us graduated Texas together. We both got our B.A.’s in history. He wants to teach; I went into law school. To make a long story short, Sanchez has a platoon with Third Reconnaissance Battalion, based up by Dong Ha. They run regular patrols along the length of Highway Nine, clear out past the Rock Pile, snooping and pooping, calling in air and arty, that sort of thing. Lots of fun and games. He lets me tag along with his guys.”
“Sounds a little risky to me,” Kirkwood said. “You get into the shit, and Dicky Doo will want your head. Patrolling with the grunts is one of the Don’ts near the top of his list.”
“What the fuck is he going to do about it?” McKay asked. “Shave my head and send me to the grunts in Vietnam? I’m sick of his shit anyway. In a way, I hope he does nail my ass, and fire me off to the grunts. That’s where I want to go anyway.”
“That or hunting VC with Lobo, I hear,” O’Connor said with a smile.
McKay laughed and shook his head.
“You guys know all my dirty little secrets,” he said. “Wayne Ebberhardt is nearly as bad as I am, but I think a ton smarter. He doesn’t get caught playing hooky with Archie. But if Lobo offers to drag you hunting with him, then take him up on it. What a trip! He’s flying that plane, tossing grenades out the windows, you’re in the back with a rifle, or that M60 chopping away. Treetops whipping under your feet. Many times we land and he’s got branches stuck in the landing gear. Lobo loves to fly that plane with one hand and shoot the blooper out his window with the other. That’s his big kick. Blowing up shit.”
“So you’re headed to Dong Ha in the morning?” Kirkwood said.
“Before daylight,” McKay answered, walking away from the duo. “Archie’s flying me up there, so I am crashing at his shack tonight. I’ll be back sometime Monday or Tuesday.”
“Stay safe, my friend,” O’Connor said.
McKay trotted from the island of light where O’Connor and Kirkwood stood, and headed up the road to the line of hooches where Archie Gunn and the other animals of the observation squadron dwelled. The two exhausted and now half drunk Marine lawyers crunched their way along the gravel path that led to the double doorway of their barracks, and the two racks awaiting them inside for a few hours’ sleep before they started work in the morning.
“Fuck it, Jon,” O’Connor said, stripping down to his T-shirt and skivvy shorts. “I am a whipped puppy. You know, the only sleep we’ve had is the couple of hours shut-eye we caught on the Freedom Bird.”
“That seems days ago, but you know, it was only this morning,” Kirkwood said, draping his uniform over his wall locker door and tossing his socks inside a white laundry bag that he now tied back to the rail on the foot of his rack. “I dread tomorrow. Right off the top of the deck we’re dealt a cocksucker and a murderer.”
“Accused cocksucker and murderer, Jon,” O’Connor muttered, throwing his blanket to one side and pulling the bunk’s white cotton sheet across his lower legs.
“ONE OF THOSE poor bastards swallowed a chainsaw,” First Lieutenant Michael Schuller whispered to Buck Taylor, who stood nearest to him. Wayne Ebberhardt, Michael Carter, Stanley Tufts, Charlie Heyster, and the Brothers B clustered close behind as the gaggle of late drinkers stood in the yellow light outside the defense section’s barracks door.
Schuller, a newly assigned III MAF brig officer, had come to the party late, and missed meeting Kirkwood and O’Connor, so the officers who had remained until after midnight to close down the shindig decided to take care of that social oversight, and at the same time have a laugh at the two new lawyers’ expense.
During some of their excursions with the infantry, playing hooky from legal duties, Wayne Ebberhardt and T. D. McKay had gotten to know Mike Schuller when he led a platoon of grunts from the Seventh Marine Regiment assigned to Fire Support Base Ross, west of Chu Lai. Schuller had devoted himself to his Marines. Any time one of them took a bullet or died in action, it devastated the lieutenant.
At the University of Vermont, where Schuller had initially entered the Marine Corps Platoon Leader Course, he had come to question the validity of the political reasons for American involvement in the Vietnam War. He had started to drop out of the course, and not enter the Marine Corps, but his adviser had appealed to him to reconsider.
Despite his misgivings about the war, Schuller showed himself as a vibrant and promising leader, intelligent, dogged, and fearless. He held fast to a strong set of principles and valued honor and integrity above all else, traits the Marine Corps reveres.
“My father, back home in Vermont, taught me that mankind can strip you of all that you may have, except for this one thing,” Schuller had told T. D. McKay one night at Fire Base Ross, relaxing in his hooch after a day-long patrol that had netted them little but sore feet and salt rings on their uniforms. “Men can take all that you own, or ever will own. They can take your wealth, your family, your freedom, and even your life. Nearly everything that is yours in this world, men can rob from you, save for one thing. One thing in this stinking life. In this whole world, for that matter. And it’s the most precious thing you have, too. My friend, that’s your honor. No one can take that away. To lose it, you have to give it up yourself.”
Schuller had then told McKay how, as a matter of honor, he had decided to drop out of the Platoon Leader Course and not join the Marine Corps. He felt wrong about the war, and could not support the political decisions that put America in South Vietnam and still maintain his integrity.
“I hated the idea of killing in a conflict I regarded unjustified,” Schuller admitted to McKay that night in the hooch at Fire Base Ross, lying on their bunks in the dark. “I hate the killing. I hate seeing these boys, kids mostly, getting wounded and killed for something that I think is wrong. Yet, this PLC adviser was right when he told me that I needed to serve anyway, because these Marines need good leaders: an officer that cares so much for his men that he will lay his life on the line for any of them. Thinking about the war that way, I couldn’t stay home. These Marines needed me, because I am an officer who cares that much. I will walk through fire for these guys. They know it, too. At the same time, they’ll do anything I ask of them.”
Because he cared so much for his Marines’ lives, Mike Schuller sometimes found himself nose to nose with his company commander, arguing against what he regarded a bad tactic that could cost lives. His combative nature with his senior officers came to a head when three of his men died in action and five others suffered serious wounds in what he had called a boneheaded patrol for no good reason except to satisfy the battalion commander’s itch. He had used those very words, and then spit tobacco juice on the battalion commander’s right boot toe.
The lieutenant colonel rippled at the insult, but did not write insubordination or misconduct charges on the passionate young officer either. The battalion commander understood the pain of losing men, despite Schuller’s opinion of him at the moment. The colonel wiped off his boot toe on the back of his pants leg and walked away. As he departed the platoon area, he whispered something to the captain who commanded the lieutenant’s company. Two days later, First Lieutenant Mike Schuller found himself reassigned—temporary additional duty—to the Third Military Police Battalion, and sent to work at the III MAF brig on Freedom Hill.
“Charlie, you do it,” Stanley Tufts whispered to Captain Heyster as the cluster of drunken officers did their best to keep quiet outside the screen doors.
“No, they wouldn’t believe me, they’d know it’s a prank,” Heyster said, whispering in a strained voice. Then he looked at Michael Carter, who tottered on the barracks’ concrete slab porch with a six-pack of beer under his arm and a bacchic yellow smile slashed sideways across his narrow face. “They’ll believe Carter, though. He lives here, too.”
Michael Carter blinked his half-shut, sleepy eyes at Charley Heyster and said, “Believe what?”
“The rocket attack, you nitwit,” Heyster said.
“Right, right,” Carter said, rocking on his unsteady feet and laughing out loud.
“Shush!” Buck Taylor said. “You’ll wake them up.”
“Oh, sorry,” Carter said, and handed the major the package of beer from under his arm and gave Mike Schuller the half-full can that he had drank, and had spilled much of it down his shirt.
“Just run through the doors and yell ‘Incoming!’ ” Taylor instructed. “Now go!”
While the audience found their places on each side of the walkway and the small slab of concrete that served as the porch in front of the barracks entrance, Michael Carter crashed open the two screens, letting them swing shut with a bang behind him. As the slamming doors echoed inside the barracks, the captain began to shout his alarm.