Matterhorn (43 page)

“I know,” Mellas said. “I’ve seen some of it.”

“Well, sir,” Henry said, “some of the brothers they’ve had it right up to where they can’t take no more. You know what I mean?
Right up to they fuckin’ throats.” Henry’s anger began to show slightly.

“So Walker and I was talkin’ last night,” China broke in, “that maybe we ought to do somethin’ about it, so’s we’d keep some
of the brothers …” He paused. “Well, so we could stop somethin’ like fraggin’ from happening.”

Mellas’s eyes darted from one face to the other, looking for a clue to help him. It had never happened to him before, but
he knew the protection racket when he saw it. He decided to play dumb. “You think someone’s going to get fragged?”

“Us?” Henry said. “Naw. Not us. But then again that
might
happen. You take a guy like Parker, you know, the one they humped to death and wouldn’t medevac. You remember him, Lieu
ten
ant?”

Mellas swallowed, wishing someone would return from chow to break up the situation. “Parker’s death was an accident. No one
knew what he had. We tried to get him out as soon as we could.”

“As soon as a
white
boy got sick,” China said. “And
white
boy, he gets out.”

“I don’t want to hear any more about it, China.” Mellas said. “Challand barely lived himself, and it had nothing to do with
his color. I don’t want to hear anything more about it. I had to watch Parker die.”

“What China mean, sir,” Walker said, “is we on the edge of things around here. And lots of these guys maybe ain’t so smart.
And if they get fucked with enough, they liable do somethin’ that gets themselves into trouble.”

China said, “I mean, if it’s OK to grease a fuckin’ gook that don’t fuck wit’chew at all, then why not waste some fuckin’
bigot that be fuckin’ wit’chew ever day of you life? That’s fuckin’ common sense.”

“That’s murder,” Mellas said.

“Murder,” China said. “Sheeit. We all a bunch of murderers. What difference it make if you kill a yellow man or a white bigot?
You explain it to me, Lieutenant. You went to college.”

“I don’t see what all this has to do with me,” Mellas said.

“We want to smooth things out before they get too tough,” Henry said with an easy smile. “Maybe we can stop somethin’ from
happenin’.”

“Go on,” Mellas said.

“China here was tellin’ me that some a the brothers have a thing out for Cassidy. Maybe some of them might lose they tempers
and do somethin’ that’d get ’em in trouble. We want to avoid trouble is all.”

Mellas glanced quickly at the tent opening and waited for Henry to continue. Neither Henry nor China said any more. “Well,
that’s part of my job,” Mellas finally said. “Avoiding trouble. How can I help out?”

“Nothin’ special,” China said. “Maybe just talk to Cassidy and tell him to ease up on harassin’ the brothers. And maybe you
ask him to apologize.”

“Apologize?” Mellas snorted in disgust. “What the fuck chance do you think I have of getting Cassidy to apologize? And for
what?”

“Try knockin’ a man’s teeth in with a machine-gun barrel,” China said.

Henry added, “And maybe you slip someone the word about none of the brothers havin’ to serve you dinner like fuckin’ slaves
tomorrow night.”

“Look, Walker, I have nothing to do with that. I disagree with it, and I don’t intend to go.”

“You the one wanted to know how to help out. Avoidin’ trouble. Sheeit.”

“Walker, I don’t have to take crap like that from you.”

“That’s right. You an officer and I a fuckin’ snuff nigger.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Sheeit.” Henry turned to China. “What shit you feedin’ me? He ain’t no different than the rest of them.”

Mellas’s ears were burning. He looked at China.

“Reason we come to you, Lieutenant Mellas,” China said, “was because we figured you’d be the only one we could talk to.”

“I appreciate that, China,” Mellas said. “I’ll try to help. Just don’t push me.”

“We ain’t pushin’ nobody,” China said. “We just trying to
explain
the situation is all.” China looked over at Henry, then back at Mellas. “We on the edge, sir,” he added.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Mellas said.

The two of them left. Mellas picked up his book but found it difficult to read. He stared at the cover, his body buzzing with
the electricity of the encounter and the talk of trouble. But at the same time he was also slightly pleased. The brothers
had come to him.

After chow Mellas wandered over to the sagging tent behind the combat operations center. It was already dark, and a soft drizzle
was falling. He felt oddly content. Perhaps it was the beef hash he’d eaten and the steaming coffee he’d chased it down with.
He tripped across several blown stumps and a couple of guy ropes before he stumbled into the tent. Hawke was alone, sitting
on a cot and shining his new boots by the light of a candle. Only three of the six cots had mattresses. Hawke’s old bleached
boots were neatly placed beneath his cot.

“What you polishing your boots for?” Mellas asked. “You just got ’em.”

“I’m getting a medal,” Hawke said without looking up.

“Hey, no shit. Fanfuckingtastic. What you getting?”

“Bronze Star.”

“Outfuckingstanding, Jayhawk.” Mellas gave the hawk power sign and grinned. The thought of Hawke getting a medal filled him
with pride.

“Yeah,” Hawke said, trying to repress a smile, “I’m sort of proud of it.”

“What’d you do?” Mellas asked.

“Oh, that fucking thing where I ran around in the open and called some arty in on some gook arty from Co Roc that was beating
shit out of us at Lang Vei.”

“I’d heard about that, actually,” Mellas said.

“Really?”

“First day I got assigned to Bravo Company back in Quang Tri. The clerks were talking about it.”

“No shit.” Hawke let himself smile. “You know, Mel, I used to think a medal was a bunch of bullshit and I’d never really care.
I was wrong. You get caught up in the little values of where you’re at, I guess. So I’m proud of it. And I’m embarrassed about
it. I know a lot of guys have done what I did and gotten nothing. Usually snuffs. Then there’s the field grade officer who
ran a mediocre supply dump in Da Nang and got the same thing.” He started polishing a boot furiously.

He finally put the shined boot down and reached under the cot for his old jungle boots. He put them on, smiling grimly, then
put his hands on his knees and looked at Mellas. “I’m tired of waiting for those two Irish assholes. I got six six-packs and
a bottle of Jack Black. Let’s get fucked up.”

“OK by me,” Mellas said.

“Mystery tour!” Hawke shouted at the top of his lungs and did the hawk dance. “Mystery tour!” He pulled the bottle of bourbon
from his pack and poured Mellas and himself drinks in two heavy white coffee mugs. He raised his mug to Mellas’s and at that
moment the flap of the tent parted and the door was filled by the huge bulk of Jack Murphy. Mellas had last seen Murphy in
exhausted sleep on the LZ that Bravo had flown to from Matterhorn. Behind him was McCarthy. Mellas tried to push away the
image of McCarthy, shaking and asking for a cigarette, his men stumbling to join him with the body swaying between them. Then
he saw Williams. Then Parker.

“Hey, hey, hey!” McCarthy pushed ahead of Murphy and he and Hawke started doing a noisy jig.

“You’ve both met Mellas,” Hawke said, stopping to pour whiskey into two more mugs. McCarthy produced a fifth of vodka. Murphy
had a half pint of Scotch and several small cans of sardines packed in olive oil, as well as a box of Ritz crackers.

An hour later they were giggling helplessly as Mellas stabbed at one of the sardine cans with Hawke’s K-bar . Finally, in
a rage, he started stabbing it randomly, squirting olive oil on his face and forehead.

“Fuck, Mellas, give up,” McCarthy said, laughing.

After some more furious stabbing Mellas grabbed the oily can and smashed it against his forehead. “Aaahhh,” he sighed as the
oil ran off his chin. He sat down on the tent floor, his back against Hawke’s rack, and shut his eyes.

“Goddamn it, Mellas,” Hawke shouted at him, “you can’t go to sleep now, we’re just fucking starting.” He began to slap Mellas
lightly on the cheek. Mellas opened his eyes and grinned slowly. Hawke poured beer over Mellas’s head. “We still got thirty-six
beers to get through.”

“Fuck you, Hawke. I was just resting my eyes.” He looked up at the three friends. He knew he’d been let into the group.

Wonderfully, mindlessly drunk two hours later, the four lieutenants were sneaking in brief rushes up to the regimental motor
pool, suppressing laughter. Hawke was leading them with hand signals learned at the Basic School, doing everything exactly
to form. Their target was a half-ton truck.

“Keep your fucking ass down, Murphy,” Hawke whispered.

Murphy giggled like a child.

“Fire team in the assault. Ready?” Hawke raised his arm. “Ho!” He pointed at the truck and the four of them rushed it. Mellas
and Murphy piled into the back while Hawke and McCarthy scrambled into the cab and kicked over the engine. They roared off
down the road toward the regimental officers’ club.

Half an hour later, the movie at the small officers’ club was interrupted by a wildly gesturing figure who tried to embrace
the woman on the screen. The screen came down with a crash. Trying to make his escape in the dark, Murphy tripped over a power
cord and pulled the projector off the table. Hawke shouted, “Retreat! Retreat! Abandon ship!” The mystery tour bolted for
the door they’d staggered through twenty minutes earlier. Murphy panicked, still tangled in the electric cord. In the darkness
and confusion he missed the door by two feet and took out approximately twelve square feet of fine wire insect screen.

As the four lieutenants piled into the truck, several officers shouted behind them, equally drunk. One of them pulled a pistol
out and fired it into the air. He and two other dark figures jumped into a jeep and took off in pursuit.

The man with the pistol was waving it over his head, laughing and shouting, “Saboteurs! Saboteurs! Rape and pillage in the
village!” He was about to fire two more rounds into the air just as the jeep bounced over a rut and the driver swerved violently
to the side. The force of the turn and gravity pulled the heavy .45 down as it went off.

McCarthy, in the bed of the truck with Mellas, groaned and slumped to the floor.

Mellas immediately got sober—and very frightened. He knew they were in big trouble. He kicked in the rear window of the truck’s
cab and screamed at Hawke, who was driving. “McCarthy’s fucking hit. We got to get him out of here.”

Hawke turned to look at Mellas. The whites of his eyes were prominent. He then looked back to the road.

“McCarthy’s fucking shot, I tell you.”

Hawke turned the truck off the road, bouncing up a hill through low shrubs. It smashed against a blown stump, sending Murphy
forward against the windshield and slamming Mellas up against the back of the cab. McCarthy came sliding forward, crumpling
against Mellas.

They piled out and dragged McCarthy into the bushes, struggling uphill. The jeep roared past them down the road.

“Why you guys carrying me?” McCarthy asked suddenly.

“You ain’t fucking shot?” Hawke asked.

“That fucker shot the half pint I was saving for the reentry. I got glass in my fucking ass.”

They threw him to the ground, disgusted. McCarthy giggled and pushed himself uncertainly to his feet. The four of them walked
through the bushes, eventually coming to a cleared piece of ground. A frightened voice shouted a challenge.

They hit the deck immediately.

“Don’t shoot,” Hawk called. “You’ll be doing our country and the Corps a great disservice.”

“I might, motherfucker,” the voice shouted back. “Only I won’t do my Corps fucking nothing. I’m in the Army. Come any closer
and I’ll blow your ass away.”

“Where in the hell are we?” Mellas hollered.

“You think I’d tell you, you gook bastard?”

“Me, a gook bastard?” Mellas said to the others quietly. They were all giggling.

“Hey, Mellican sojah,” Hawke called out, “me educated UCRA. You no shoot flendly countlyman. That numbah ten. You numbah one.”

“You really Americans?”

“What the fuck do you think, asshole?” Hawke shouted sharply. “Is the pope Catholic? Do dogs lick their own balls?”

A pop-up flare shot out, casting eerie flickering green shadows over the landscape. The four lieutenants hugged the ground.
Mellas caught a glimpse of the long barrels of an Army 175 battery that obviously ran its own security inside VCB’s main defensive
lines.

“Prove you’re Americans,” the voice called out.

“How the fuck we do that?” Hawke called back.

“Answer my questions.”

“OK, but don’t ask me nothing about fucking baseball. I hate fucking baseball.”

“All right, where you guys from?”

McCarthy giggled. “Let me,” he whispered. “East Padua,” he cried out. “You know where that is?”

“East Padua? No.”

Hawke cut in. “Hey, asshole, you’re supposed to be asking the questions.”

There was silence.

“All right, who’s the secretary of the army?”

“I don’t know,” McCarthy replied.

“OK, then, who’s the secretary of defense?”

Murphy answered, “Who the fuck cares?”

“I do,” the voice answered.

“I don’t know,” McCarthy said.

“Who’s the president then?”

“You got me beat,” McCarthy answered. “I’m a gook.”

“You must be fucking Marines. No one else could be so fucking stupid. Get your asses in here.”

An hour later the mystery tour was at rest. McCarthy and Murphy were passed out on the exposed springs of two empty cots.
McCarthy was naked from the waist down and his right buttock and thigh were swabbed red with Mercurochrome. The bullet had
taken out a small piece of flesh from the right cheek. Pieces of glass lay on the floor. Murphy had performed surgery by pouring
vodka on McCarthy’s rear and picking the glass out with his K-bar. Mellas was heating coffee over a piece of C-4; he had thrown
up and his face was pallid. The coffee was for Hawke, who needed to sober up enough to stand watch in an hour. Mellas’s first
mystery tour was over. It felt very good to be in.