Hooligans Part 34

38.

FLASHBACK: NAM DIARY, THE FIRST SIX.

The twelfth day: Today I killed a man for the first time. I have a hard time talking about this. What happened, we're moving on this village, which was actually about a dozen hooches in this rice field seven or eight kliks downriver. This village was at the bottom of some foothills. There were rice paddies on both sides and a wide road lined with pepper trees and bamboo kind of deadending at it.

Before we start down, Doc Ziegler, our medic, hands me a couple of b.u.t.tons. "What are these for?" I ask. "Dex," he says. "Make you see better, hear better, move faster. Just do it." So I popped the speed. It took about twenty seconds to kick my a.s.s. I've never had speed before. I felt like taking on the village all by myself. I mean, I was ready!

We go down toward it, two squads on each side in the rice paddies, because they make good cover, and we have the Three Squad backing us up in reserve. We go in on the left and the One Squad on the right. They take the first hit. The VC opens up with mortars and machine-gun fire and starts just chewing them up. One guy, the whole top of his head went off. The noise was horrendous; I couldn't believe the racket.

The lieutenant runs straight toward the village with his head down just below the edge of the ditch and I'm right behind him. The radio man is having trouble calling up the reserve platoon because we're in this little valley and the deception is for s.h.i.+t, so the lieutenant sends back a runner and then he says, "f.u.c.kin' gooks are eating One Squad up, we got to take them," and he goes out of the paddy and runs for this stretch of bamboo which is maybe twenty yards from the gooks and me still right behind him.

That tips Charlie and they start cutting away at us. They're shooting the bamboo down all around us, just cutting it off. Then I see this VC in his black pajamas and he's got his head out just a little, checking it out, and I sight him in and, ping! he goes down, just throws his hands up in the air and goes over backward. Then another one comes running over and he's shooting as he comes, only he's aiming about ten meters to my left and I drop him. Then I see the machine gun, which is in the dirt out in front of the first hooch, and there's two of them and they're just cutting One Squad to s.h.i.+t, so I run up through the bamboo and get in position and blitz them both, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow!

Next thing I know, the lieutenant and the rest of the squad are running past me and the One Squad breaks loose and then it's all over. Five minutes, maybe. I was thinking, Jesus, I did more in the last five minutes than I ever did in my whole life. I mean, it was such a high. And to still be in one piece!

There wasn't anybody left. Women, kids, old people, VC. The entire village was blitzed. n.o.body seemed to pay any attention to that; it was just business as usual. Then they brought in a flamethrower and scorched the whole place. I didn't look at the civilians, I just looked the other way. I figure, this is the way it's done, but it doesn't change how I feel about it.

Otherwise we were all feeling pretty good because none of our guys was hurt.

"You okay?" the lieutenant says after he makes the body count, and I says, "Yeah, I feel good." And I did.

"You looked okay in there," he says.

I wasn't a virgin anymore and I was still alive. Jesus, I felt good.

It took me a long time to get used to it, that I had killed those people and it was okay, that it was what they expected me to do. For a while I kept dreaming they would come at night and arrest me.

The 38th day: Doc Ziegler doesn't even believe in all this. He's a medic, doesn't carry any weapons. He says he would have gone to Canada but his old man had a bad heart and Doc figured it would kill him if Doc jumped the border. So he said, "f.u.c.k it!" when he got his notice. "I can put up with anything for a year," he says. Among other things, Doc supplies the speed. He doesn't do it himself, says he doesn't need it since he doesn't carry a weapon. But he smokes pot a lot. Morning, noon, and night. h.e.l.l, I don't think I've ever seen Doc unstoned. But when there's trouble he can move with the best of them. What the h.e.l.l, if it makes it easier. He's been on the line a month longer than me and he acts like he was born here.

Carmody is the best officer I ever knew. All he thinks about is what's out there. He never talks about home, his wife, nothing. Just business and his men. He was a green shavetail when he got to Nam ten months ago. He has a funny sense of humor, like no matter what you ask him, he's got a one-liner for you. I asked him once where he was from.

"My old man had the poorest farm in Oklahoma," he says. "Our hog was so skinny, if you put a dime on its nose, its back feet would rise up off the ground."

Then there's Jesse Hatch, who used to drive a truck all over the country, one of those big semis; and Donny Flagler, who's like me, just out of college. Both of them are black guys. And there's Jim Jordan, who was in law school; his old man was a senator and still couldn't get him deferred. Jordan is one p.i.s.sed-off guy. He's a short-timer, has two months to go, a first-cla.s.s pain in the a.s.s. Hatch is the M-60 man; he can really handle that mother. Flagler is our radio. None of us are regulars, but after a month out here, I feel like one.

The 42nd day: We get orders to take this k.n.o.b for an LZ. Charlie is all over the place. He won't give it up. They have the high ground; they sit up there and lob mortars down on us all after-f.u.c.kin'-noon. Carmody gets on the radio and calls in the Hueys. He wants them to blitz the place so we can rush it, only it's raining and a little foggy, and they're giving him some standdown s.h.i.+t and he starts yelling: "I want some air in here, now! Don't gimme any of that fog s.h.i.+t. n.o.body's told us to go home because it's raining. Get me some G.o.dd.a.m.n air support fast!"

He slams the phone down.

"Listen, kid, if you can't get a chopper in when you f.u.c.kin' need one, forget it. That's the edge. You don't have the edge, you're in trouble. We can't beat these motherf.u.c.kers at this kind of game, for Christ sake, they been doing it for fifteen f.u.c.kin' years. When you need air, get nasty."

That's the way he was, always teaching me something.

About ten minutes later these two Hueys come over and really waste that k.n.o.b. Carmody doesn't wait for s.h.i.+t, we're off up the hill while the Hueys are still chewing it up. Six or eight 50-millimeter and 20-millimeter cannons working. Good G.o.d, there were VC's flying all over the place in bits and pieces. A boot with a foot in it hit me in the shoulder and splashed blood down my side. I was getting sick. Then the gooks broke and ran and we took the k.n.o.b and sat up there picking them off as they went down the other side. We must've shot ten, twelve of them in the back. After a while I stopped counting. It didn't seem right. Maybe I've seen too many cowboy movies, but shooting all those people in the back seemed to be pus.h.i.+ng it. But then, I've only been on the line two months. I'm still learning.

The 56th day: Last night a bunch of sappers jumped this airstrip eight or nine kliks north of here and pillaged two cargo planes. They got ahold of some of our own Bouncing Bettys. What you got there is a daisy cutter, a 60-millimeter mortar round, and it's rigged so it jumps up about waist high when you trip it, and it goes off there, at groin level, cuts you in half.

We're always real careful about mines, but the motherf.u.c.kers have these Bettys all over the f.u.c.king place. A couple of places they rigged phony trip lines so you'd see the line and move out of the way and they'd have another trip line next to it and you'd nick that and it was all over.

I hear it go off. n.o.body screams or anything, it just goes boomf! and shakes some leaves off the trees where I am. I run back. It's maybe a hundred meters. Flagler's laying there and he's blown in half. Two parts of him. I can't believe it. I start shaking. I sit down and shake all over. Then Doc comes up and gives me a downer.

Carmody is taking it the worst. He just keeps swearing over and over. Later in the day we catch up with a couple of VC. We don't know whether they rigged the Bouncing Bettys, but we tie the two of them to these two trees, side by side, and we set one of the mines between the trees and rig it and then we back off about a hundred feet and we keep shooting at the line and those two gooks are screaming b.l.o.o.d.y-f.u.c.king-murder. It was Jesse finally tripped it. We left them hanging in the trees.

Psychological warfare, that's what we call it.

39.

DEAD MAN'S FLOAT.

It took me twenty minutes to make the drive to Skidaway Island. Three blocks on the far side of the bridge I found Bayview, a deserted gravel lane, hardly two cars wide, that twisted through a living arch of oak trees with Spanish moss. Here and there, ruts led to cabins hidden away among trees, palmettos, and underbrush. I pa.s.sed a roadhouse called Benny's Barbecue, which looked closed except for a gray Olds parked at the side of the place that looked suspiciously like the car Harry Nesbitt was driving when he followed me the night before. After that there was nothing but foliage for almost a mile before I came to O'Brian's shack.

It wasn't much more than that, although it seemed a st.u.r.dy enough place. It was built on stilts about twenty yards off sh.o.r.e and was connected to land by a wooden bridge no more than three feet wide. The tide was in and the cabin, which looked about two rooms large with deck surrounding it and screened porch at one end, was perched barely three feet above the water. A small boat, tied to one end of the platform, rocked gently on the calm surface of the bay.

Nesbitt was right-there wasn't a blade of gra.s.s within twenty yards of the cabin.

The place was as still as a church at dawn.

A slate-gray Continental was parked under the trees near the water's edge. It had been there awhile; the hood was as cool as the rest of the car. I walked out to the edge of the clearing and held my hands out, prayer style, palms up.

"O'Brian? It's me, Kilmer."

A mockingbird cried back at me and darted off through the palmettos. Somewhere out near the shack a fish jumped in the water. Then, not a sound.

I waited a moment or two.

"It's Jake Kilmer," I yelled. "I'm coming on out."

Still nothing.

I tucked both sides of my jacket in the back of my belt to show him I wasn't wearing a gun and started walking out onto the platform, holding on to both railings so he could see my hands.

"O'Brian!"

A fish jumped underfoot and startled me. I could see why O'Brian had built his shack on this spot. He could drop a line out the window and fish without getting out of bed.

"O'Brian, it's Kilmer. You around?"

Still no answer.

I reached the cabin. The front door was locked, so I went around to the porch, held my face up against the screen, cupped my eyes, and peered inside. The place was as empty as a dead man's dream.

"O'Brian?"

Still no sounds, except the tie line of the boat, grinding against the wooden railing.

Worms began to nibble at my stomach.

"Hey, O'Brian, are you in there?" I yelled. I startled an old pelican setting on a corner of the deck and he lumbered away, squawking as he went. There was no answer.

I tried the screen door and it was open. The cabin was empty; n.o.body was under the bed or stuffed in the shower. But the radio was on with the volume turned all the way down, and the beginnings of a fis.h.i.+ng lure dangled from a vise on the porch table.

The worms stopped nibbling and started gnawing at my insides.

I went back outside and started around the deck. The boat was empty.

I might have missed the two bullet holes except for the blood. It was splattered around two small nicks in the rear wall of the cabin; crimson, baked almost brown in the hot sunlight, yet still sticky to the touch.

The worms in my stomach grew to coiled snakes.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t!" I heard myself whisper.

I knelt down on the deck and peered cautiously under the cabin. The first thing I saw was a foot in a red sweat sock jammed in the juncture of two support posts. The foot belonged to Jigs...o...b..ian. The rest of him was floating face down, hands straight out at his sides, as if he were trying to embrace the bay.

Fish were nibbling at the thin red strands that leaked from his head like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

I didn't need a medical degree to tell he was DOA.

40.

SKEELER'S JOINT.

Dutch almost swallowed the phone when I got him on the line. He was on his way before I hung up. The coroner reacted in much the same way.

Dutch arrived fifteen minutes later with Salvatore at the wheel, followed by an ambulance with the coroner and his forensics team close behind.

The big German lumbered out to the cabin with his hands in his pants pockets, an unlit Camel dangling from the corner of his mouth, and stared ruefully down at me through his thick gla.s.ses. Salvatore was behind him, glowering like a man looking for a fight.

"I take the full rap for this one," I said. "If you hadn't called Salvatore off, O'Brian might be alive now."

"I should have left Salvatore on his tail," Dutch said. "That was my mistake."

"You just did what I asked," I said. "I told O'Brian I'd be alone. Where are your pals from homicide?"

"On the way," he said with a roll of his eyes, adding, "What did it this time, a flamethrower?"

"Small caliber, very likely a submachine gun," I said.

"How do you figure that?"

"He's got a row of. 22's from his forehead to his chin so perfect the line could've been drawn with a straightedge. My guess is, the first couple of shots knocked his head back. The gun was firing so fast it just drew a line right down his face, zip, like that."

I drew an invisible line from my forehead to my chin with a forefinger.

"Some gun," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "There's only one weapon I can think of that fits the bill."

"Well, don't keep us in suspense," said Dutch. Salvatore began to show signs of interest. He stopped staring into s.p.a.ce long enough to give me the dead eye.

"The American 180. Fires thirty rounds a second. Sounds like a dentist's drill when it goes off."

"Like on the tape of the Tagliani job," Dutch said.

"Yeah, just like that. I figure whoever aced him came in by boat and whacked O'Brian when he came out of the cabin. Two of the slugs went through his head; they're in the back wall."

"So what does all that mean to us?" Dutch said.

While the coroner was studying the bloodstained holes in the back wall of the cabin, his men were shooting pictures of O'Brian's body from everywhere but underwater.

"Chevos owns boats," I said. "It's his thing. I've heard he lives at the Thunder Point Marina. Where would that be from here?"

Dutch pointed due east. Thunder Point was a mile away, a misty, low, white structure surrounded by miniature boats.

"You really want to pin this one on Nance, don't you?" Dutch asked.

"Maybe."

"Look, I got nothing against headhunting; sometimes it can get great results. You got something to settle with that sheiss kopf it's okay with me."

The coroner dug the two bullets out of the wall and went back across the bridge to sh.o.r.e.

"Maybe he's holed up on a boat," I said.

"That's a.s.suming he knows we're looking for him."

"Well, h.e.l.l, I make a lot of mistakes," I said.

Dutch put a paw on my shoulder. "Aw, don't we all," he said, putting that discussion to bed. He strolled up and down the deck of O'Brian's shack, berating himself, like an orator grading his own speech.

Salvatore stood in one place, staring back into s.p.a.ce and grinding fist into palm, like a bomb looking for someplace to go off.

"We should've brought 'em all in, the whole d.a.m.n bunch," Dutch said, "get it out in the open. I laid off because it's homicide's baby. Well, it's our baby too. The Red Sea'll turn kelly green before that bunch of pfutzlkers get their heads out far enough to see daylight. Ain't it just wonderful!" He stared off toward Thunder Point. "I'm gonna haul that bunch of ash lochers in and get some answers. If nothing else, maybe we can throw these killers off their stride."