Sand in the Wind (66 page)

Trippitt realized the inspection had proved an even greater mistake than he had feared. Hatred from his men was something he felt he could deal with, but their laughter had left him unnerved and frustrated. He’d have to ease up on them. But doing so now would merely eliminate the small amount of control he still retained. Wanting to reduce the number of that night’s ambushes from four to two, he finally decided to put this off for one more day, instead making all the ambushes somewhat shorter than those he had been assigning. Trippitt called his platoon commanders together to give them the coordinates, hoping that tonight there would be no trouble and he would have time to think.

As the men of Alpha Squad talked about the inspection, it became even more of a joke, especially when Hamilton returned from the CP with his lifer’s haircut. Some of the men from the other squads had followed him, and now most of Second Platoon was sitting together in the rain joking about the inspection and Hamilton’s haircut. Their morale was better than at any time since the rainy season had started, and it remained that way until an hour before dusk. It was then that they found out there would again be four ambushes that night. Tomorrow night it would be Alpha’s turn, and Childs said with disgust, “That sonofabitch doesn’t care how many of us he kills.”

“I can’t understand it,” Chalice commented. “We lose twice as many men on ambushes than we get.”

Hamilton flipped a grenade from hand to hand while saying, “It wouldn’t be so bad if he’d make them shorter and cut them to two a night like he did for a while.”

“What does he care?” Childs said gruffly. “He only counts the Gooks he kills, not the Marines.”

“That’s what they put on his record,” Tony 5 commented as he sat down next to Hamilton.

“I wish somebody’d put KIA on his record,” Childs replied, and then added, “I’d pay fifty dollars to see that.”

“So would I,” Appleton agreed.

“That makes a hundred. Are there any more donations from the house?” Hemrick asked jokingly.

Hamilton’s tone was more serious as he said, “Yeah
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
I’ll put twenty-five on Trippitt and fifty on Martin.”

It was no longer a joke or idle talk. Somebody would call out a name and all faces would turn towards that person as they waited to hear whether the bounty would be increased. Other members of the platoon were called over and told what was going on. Within minutes there was seven hundred dollars on Trippitt’s head, and six hundred and twenty-five on Martin’s.

Tony 5 had watched silently, but he now said, “I’ve seen too many men die because of Trippitt and Martin. Add twenty-five dollars on both their heads.”

“That’s seven hundred and twenty-five on Trippitt and six hundred and fifty on Martin,” Childs said with satisfaction.

“No it ain’t,” Tony spoke out, and all faces turned towards him. “I was talking to Moretti, the sergeant of first platoon. They’ve got five on Forest, four on Martin, and three on Trippitt.”

Sugar Bear, who hadn’t spoken except to add twenty-five dollars on both the bounties, now said, “I heard Grear and somebody else from Fourth Platoon talking. They’ve got a price out on Trippitt. I don’t know about Martin.”

“Can you find out?” Childs asked.

Sugar Bear rose to his feet as Hamilton asked, “Anybody got a good friend in Third Platoon?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Hemrick answered.

Within twenty minutes the perimeter was alive with nervous excitement. Not all, but most of the men knew that every platoon except Third had pledged money toward the bounties. There was $1,900 on Trippitt’s head and $1,575 on Martin’s.

The sun had just set, and Chalice and Forsythe were in their foxhole when Chalice said, “I don’t know about this.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Forsythe assured him.

“I just don’t like it.”

“Nobody’s gonna get caught.”

Surprised and disturbed by Forsythe’s callous attitude, Chalice said, “I don’t mean that!”

“What
do
you mean?”

“Do we have to kill them?”

“No, just pay the dude that does,” Forsythe replied casually, then added in a more reflective tone, “Look, I don’t like this too much either. But they’ve gotten too many of my friends killed. It’s either us or them.
  
.
 
.
 
. You’re in for fifty apiece, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but do you think somebody’ll do it?”

“It’s a lot of money. I think so.”

“Did it ever happen before?”

“Hell yeah, twice since I’ve been here
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
but not so out in the open. Somebody did a job on a platoon commander for three hundred dollars. There was two hundred out on a chickenshit corpsman, but he just got wounded and nobody had to pay.”

“Do you think they’ll pay this time?”

“Most of them. If a dude’s got enough guts to blow away a lifer, he’s got enough guts to do a job on a welcher.
  
.
 
.
 
. Whoever does it has to have one witness with him. The witness’ll help him collect.”

“What if he gets caught?”

“How they gonna catch him; and if they do, who’ll testify?”

“They can check the bullet with everyone’s rifle.”

“They could, but they won’t. Most of the time an M-16 slug is too much of a mess when they get it dug out. You’ve seen what those things can do to a Gook, hit him in the finger and it ends up in his lung. Even if they do match it, they have to prove it was intentional. Besides, if the dude’s smart, he’ll use a frag. They don’t leave no fingerprints.”

Chalice had first watch that night. At nine o’clock Forsythe left him alone in their foxhole. The ambushes had all made it safely to their sites, and the perimeter was quiet. As he searched the darkness in front of him, Chalice was more fearful of a blooker barrage than of a ground attack. A few minutes before his watch was to end, the night’s stillness was shattered by an explosion within the perimeter. Forsythe came diving into the hole with him, and they heard Roads and Rabbitt scrambling into their foxhole a few yards away. “Here we go again,” Chalice whispered to Forsythe.

“I don’t think so. It was too loud, sounded more like a frag.”

It was then that they first heard Martin’s voice. In a loud, delirious tone he shouted, “Did they get him?”

“Somebody might have hit the jackpot,” Forsythe whispered without emotion.

“Already?”

“Go on over and find out what happened.”

The perimeter was a luminescent black, but all Chalice had to do was to follow the sound of Martin’s voice. Suddenly he heard Trippitt ask nervously, “Is the medivac coming?”

“I called for it, sir. But it hasn’t made contact yet.”

Chalice drew closer to the red glow of a corpsman’s flashlight. Martin lay on his stomach, the back of his shirt drenched with blood.

“He’s paralyzed,” one of the corpsmen said.

Chalice stepped closer and saw that only Martin’s head moved as he cried, “Did they get him? Did they get the sonofabitch?” Someone told Chalice to return to his position, but he merely backed up a few feet. Martin continued to shout as the sound of a descending helicopter began to drown out his words. In the darkness, Chalice could barely make out what was happening. The limp body was placed on a poncho. Just before it was carried to the medivac chopper, the red light flashed on Martin’s face. It was grotesquely distorted as his mouth vainly tried to yell over the noise of the helicopter, “Did they get the sonofabitch?”

Soon every man in the company was aware of what had happened. All over the perimeter, voices could be heard in the darkness, often repeating, “One down and one to go.”

Trippitt leaned against a tree a few yards away from his hootch. The light drizzle continued, and he had his poncho wrapped around him. Beneath it, he squeezed tightly on his .45, the safety off and ready to be used. His confused mind nervously tried to figure out what he had done wrong and exactly when he had lost control. He remembered the grotesque movements of Martin’s head as it seemingly tried to free itself from the inert and useless remainder of his body. Though Trippitt had feared something like this, he never really believed his men were capable of it. Again the thought came to him, ‘It ain’t their guts.’ He tried to make himself believe that his platoon commanders had turned the men against him. Kramer stood out in his thoughts, but he also suspected Howell, and even Forest. The cold rain seeped under his poncho, and as he stood shivering in the darkness, Trippitt realized there wasn’t one man in the company he could trust. Death didn’t scare him, only in rare moments had he ever been afraid of dying. It was the ignoble idea of being killed by his own men that unnerved him. Not even worried about his career anymore, he repeatedly asked himself, ‘Didn’t they know that some of them would die? Didn’t they know that’s what war is? It’s nothing without death. Don’t they know that?’ Never once did he question the fact that he had used fear to drive his men on. Even now this accusation would have seemed absurd to him. He would have denied it, insisting that it was merely discipline that he had used; and he would not have been lying. For if he had been asked the difference between fear and discipline, he would have been incapable of answering.

Dawn broke upon a cloudless sky. The men knew this wouldn’t last more than a few hours. They took off their clothing and hung it on bushes, doing so not really to dry their clothing, but more to dry themselves for the first time in four days. 'Ihey also removed their boots, though they knew an hour’s sun would do little to heal their feet. Trippitt was in no hurry to move the camp. He had other things to think about, but finally chose a new site only a few kilometers away. This enabled the men to stay dry for an extra hour before moving out. They reached their new site by eleven o’clock. The afternoon patrols were short, and everyone returned to the perimeter by four o’clock.

Despite the condition of their feet, it had been a relatively easy day. The men’s mood did not reflect this. There was no regret about what had happened to Martin, but little gloating over it either. Today they’d had time to think, and the things they thought about couldn’t help but depress them. In a week, or two, or three, they would be pulled out of the Arizona. Many of their friends had left before them — in plastic sacks or on blood-soaked stretchers. All the dead had not been Marines, far less than half of them and they knew it. Yet they would leave this place the same as they had found it —hostile, dangerous, and still a mystery.

Again they began to think about odds, knowing that now these odds were with them. Yet they also knew a booby trap, a distant shot from an invisible sniper, or a blindly fired blooker round would make these odds meaningless. They had found themselves fighting for a people they loathed, some of whom hated Americans far more than the Viet Cong. Many of the Marines hated the Viet Cong, but did so with a grudging respect. Yet the thing they feared most was something they could neither respect nor understand. It made them question everything they’d ever been told and everyone they’d ever trusted. It seemed impossible that one of them, a Marine, would turn his back on those he had fought with, the country they dreamed of returning to, and everything they valued. To many of the men he was something, perhaps a part of their experience and therefore a part of them, that had to be not only destroyed, but so irrevocably erased that afterwards his existence might be denied.

Except for Roads who was off to the side feeding his puppy, the men of Alpha Squad sat in a circle either eating or heating their food. Tony 5 decided to join his former squad, and as he approached, Forsythe called out, “How’s it going short-timer?”

“Slow,” Tony replied as he sat down with them.

“Do you know how many days you have left?” Chalice asked.

Before Tony 5 could answer, Childs said, “You’re damn
right
he does.”

“Three days counting tomorrow.”

“And just think, you’ll get to spend them in the Arizona.”

Hamilton slapped Tony 5 on the back as he said, “You’re gonna miss this place, ain’tcha Tony? Admit it.”

“And the Crotch too,” Childs added.

Tony 5 shook his head while answering, “No. I ain’t gonna miss the Crotch.”

“Sure you are, Tony,” Hamilton insisted.

“I ain’t gonna have no reason to. I’m re-upping.” As soon as these words were out of Tony’s mouth, the men around him burst out laughing. Hamilton kept slapping him on the back while a few of the other men threw their empty C-ration cans. Tony 5 shoved Hamilton to the ground and the laughter died away.

“Are you shitting us, Tony?” Chalice asked.

“
Hell no,
I ain’t!” Tony replied angrily, precipitating a new round of laughter.

After repeatedly hearing comments such as, “No shit, Tony’s gonna be a fucking lifer,” and, “I had you pegged for a decent motherfucker.
Shit
was I wrong!” Tony 5 lost his temper, and his angry words silenced all the joking.

“
Fuck
you guys! Let me tell you something, motherfuckers: The Crotch has done all right by me. I’m not sorry I joined. There ain’t one motherfucker here, that if he knew he was gonna have to fight, would do it as anything else but a Marine.” Tony paused, but none of those around him cared to break the silence. “
Is there?
” They still remained silent, because as much as they griped about the Marine Corps, there wasn’t one of them who could conceive of himself in combat as anything other than a Marine. “Sure there’s a lot of fucked-up things about the Crotch, but I ain’t ashamed of being in it. I used to think I was the toughest dude that ever stood on a street corner; but when I got in the Crotch, I found out there were a lot of dudes just as tough, and they were guys you could depend on. When it was me, Sugar Bear, Pablo, Kovacs, and Lieutenant S, I just knew that whatever came up, we could handle it. And there were other guys too, that none of you ever saw.” The men remained silent, remembering the times they’d had the feeling Tony described.