Sharpshooter (12 page)

“You,” he says with mock shock, because I am certain he does not know the real kind, “want to be a LRRP?”

“No, sir,” I say. “But I have three days before transfer. Lieutenant says to do what I want. This is what I want.”

 

I feel already transformed as I prepare myself for the night. I am wearing my tiger stripes, which almost none of the other Army guys have. I have my face all painted up, the night-fighter cosmetic cream under my eyes to cut the glare from any incendiary action. I have my M-21 sniper rifle, my bandolier of ammo, my pistol, my knife at my side.

As I leave the
Benewah
for probably the last time before I leave it for good, I feel like I could win this thing by myself. I feel like I could take a small detour up the Mekong banks, and before Parrish and his new pals had to deal with any hostiles again I could go up there and see them dead and see that they stayed dead.

There is nothing worse than the feeling you have to kill the same enemy day after day after day.

Unless it is the feeling that you are not really killing him at all. I personally could not sleep with that.

But I don't take any detours, because frankly I can't wait to join up with these guys and get out there.

My man greets me once I cross the base and enter the almost segregated sub-compound of the LRRPs.

“All packed up?” he asks, a formality since he goes right to work pulling apart my knapsack, pockets, everything. “What's this?” he asks, pulling the dried, chipped, and scored disc from my breast pocket.

“That's my good luck VC head bone, sir.”

He nods and tucks it back in my pocket. “Everybody should have at least one of those. Listen, call me Makita, right?”

“Right,” I say.

He takes all my food and dumps it out right there on the ground. I brought the usual C rations: beans, something meatlike, fruit, peas, tuna.

“Nope,” he says, “nope, nope nope,” and with each
nope
tosses another can over his shoulder. “Here,” he says, handing me back a single can of peaches, “you can keep this.”

Though I'd been told that we would plan to be back by morning, you always make provision for an extra day at least. Now I have thoughts of being stranded out there with just my water and one can of peaches.

Makita reaches into his own backpack and starts shoveling compact packets of food into my bag. It's all going too quickly, but I know it is the freeze-dried stuff that takes up less room and weighs less, and is a sort of LRRP perk.

“Most important of all,” he says, “this stuff don't make any noise. You don't want to get scalped just because you had to pull the lid off your stew. Our food is quiet food. Except the chili. The beans are like ball bearings, so don't bother chewing or they will hear you in Laos.”

 

Twenty minutes later, we are up in the air. I am tagging after with a team of six grim-faced men covered in war paint and malice. We are chopping through the sky in a helicopter headed north. I see the Mekong running along below us, and it is still light enough that I can make out the traffic of our assault vessels chugging up and down and out to the edges.

Parrish is probably down there, cursing the whole thing.

Morris is probably down there. Morris could well be right
there
and trying to radio me, the big baby.

“What are you pointing at?” Makita asks me.

“Oh,” I say. “Didn't realize I was. Just identifying craft. I don't usually get this vantage point. Zippo right there.”

He nods, and we watch out the side as we pass over the countryside, and I think what a great carnival ride this could be, swooping low over the treetops where you can smell the green almost as much as the gunpowder and napalm. It's a thrill ride, but maybe not what the average carnivalgoer is looking for.

I am not told where we are going or what we are doing, but I have been told that I will not be told, so I'm okay with it. A need-to-know basis is how Makita sees it.

“And I will let you know if I think there is a point at which you need to know.”

Apparently, LRRPs like to remain under deep cover even when they are talking.

“It's a long country, Moxie,” he says, still scanning terrain off in the distance. It
is
long, top to bottom, and not all that wide. So while we are down here fighting away in the all-important Mekong Delta, and in all the areas surrounding Saigon and what's supposed to be the Government of all South Vietnam, well, we are a whole lot closer to other countries than we are to the country we are supposed to be here fighting in the first place.

I am wondering where he is headed with this, but something intuitive tells me not to question a LRRP unnecessarily.

“Folks back home, I think they think this is like the Korean War, you know, as if all these stupid wars in this part of the world are the same as long as one side's a North Something and the other side's a South Something and there are commies involved. Well, it ain't just North versus South here, is it?”

“No, it isn't.”

“No, it isn't. It is North versus South, sure. But it's also North versus South and South versus South and South versus everybody, and everybody versus
us
as in US. So the people criticizing what we are doing here haven't got the first clue what's going on. They think we're supposed to be like the Redcoats or something, just standing up in a straight line, walking right up to the other side's straight line, and settling things all neat and up front. Ain't possible. Ain't possible. So we have to do things otherwise. You understand.”

“I do, absolutely,” I say.

And I do, more or less.

“How's your body count coming along?” he asks matter-of-factly, like I'm building a go-cart in the garage or something.

“It's okay,” I say.

“'Cause it's all they care about at this point. That's not good, really. It's not good warfare. Means either the people at the top don't really know how to conduct a successful campaign or that they are giving up on actual progress.”

I don't know how far I want to go with this individual into this particular verbal incursion. I am no expert, that is for sure. I shoot people. That's it.

“Well,” I say, “I guess they figure as long as we have all these guns … and gear for blowing stuff up …”

“Ha,” he says, as much of a grunt as a laugh.

“I suppose free-fire zones are going to help with that body count thing, eh?” I say.

He turns an entirely quizzical look on me, like I couldn't be serious at this stage of the game.

“They are
all
free-fire zones, Moxie,” he says.

I have to try this much. “What about civilians?”

His look, sincerely, goes into a deeper puzzlement. “There are none. Where have you been?”

He holds me with that look, that stare, for several penetrating seconds, waiting to see me through this, to escort me to my senses. I find myself, weirdly, running my fingers up and down my bandolier of ammunition, like I am playing some sort of explosive accordion.

He slaps my leg. “Confirmed kills?”

“Three,” I say quickly. “Possibly four.”

“Three, then. Oh, you're gonna have to work on that, my man. We have to make our numbers. Don't want to get fired or nothin'. What are you gonna do way out here without a job?”

It is all but impossible to tell whether Makita is joking, enjoying himself, what? And his gallery of mirthless rogues don't give me a clue which way to go, either.

Which makes it extra welcome when we make our descent into a grassy field on the edge of thick forest. All the LRRPs silently move into gear, and I follow the fifth man to the exit.

The chopper barely touches down, as if it is a game of tag rather than a personnel transport. Only two men actually disembark before the skis are back off the ground and headed the other way.

The third man jumps, lands on his feet. Fourth does the same, fifth jumps from a height of eight feet, bounces, rolls smoothly.

I get to the lip when we are about twelve feet up. I hesitate, costing myself another two.

Makita gives me a push, and I see the tall grass waving me in as it rushes right up.

I land just barely on my feet, but falling forward, and hit the ground hard with my chest.

I lie there for a few seconds before Makita grabs me roughly by the back of my shirt, stands me upright on my feet, and shoves me a lot harder this time toward the trees at the tail of the running chain of LRRPs.

We gather once we are somewhat safely inside the tree line. It is so dense here, with triple canopy above and hardly any bare trail in any direction, it is easy to imagine we are the only humans to have been in this spot for five hundred years. If ever.

“Makita,” comes a voice from the blackness no more than twenty feet in.

“Yo, Ben,” Makita says, opening up a map.

My theory of a primeval forest untouched by man would seem to be flawed.

One LRRP pulls out a machete that looks like it could bring down a sequoia. He begins sharpening it.

There are many things I have learned about men, about combat, and about myself during this portion of my life, and I am learning more daily, probably at a faster rate than I learned things as a toddler. One of the things I am pleased to discover is that fear and uncertainty have the effect of making me more, and not less, bold.

“Do I have a need to know yet?” I ask.

Makita turns from the map he is studying with two other men under a very low flashlight. He shines the light in my face so that I am probably the only thing illuminated for five miles.

“Not sure you have a need yet, strictly. But fair enough, you probably have a right. Maybe. How 'bout we just say we are not in Cambodia. How's that? Because, what with Cambodia being a neutral nation, it would be incorrect for us to be there, no matter how rotten with Vietcong it is.

“That narrow things down for you enough?”

I deep-breathe, in, out, then steady. “That will suffice,” I say.

It was made clear to me that I may or may not have a chance to shoot, but that otherwise I would be falling in line and not taking on any of the LRRP responsibilities. I am a hired gun, not a part of this team and not to be in the way.

“If this was 1964, they'd be calling you a
military adviser
,” was how Makita put it.

So now, as the men converge on their evening plans, I stare into the blackness, toward the voice, and stare at the mystery.

Eventually, when the LRRPs break from their huddle like an eerily silent NFL offense ready to play, there comes the smallest sound of padding footsteps from out of the forest.

Two men, welterweights in Army green, come straight up to me. They wear sidearms, rifles over their backs, machetes at their waists — armed to the teeth like most of us. They are dark-skinned but not ethnic Vietnamese, that is for sure.

Something bubbles up in me and I feel like a kid again at Fenway or Boston Garden hanging by the gate for autographs.

“Montagnards?” I say.

“
Montagnard
is a French term,” the first man says. “But yes. There are many mountain tribes. We are Degar.” He extends a hand. “And your tribe?”

“Wow,” I say, “this is amazing stuff. How did you know I had American Indian blood?”

“I didn't know that. I was just … making introductions.”

I already feel pretty stupid. But I get over it quickly, like you do with things here. I actually look over my shoulder to see if there are a bunch of LRRPs laughing at me.

Stupid me. LRRPs don't laugh. They are still deep in planning, going over maps, gesturing silently toward the distance, checking and rechecking weapons that seem to be appearing like mushrooms all over their bodies.

“I'm Ivan,” I say. “And if you don't mind my saying so, your English is amazing. Better than about ninety-five percent of the GIs I know.”

“Thank you. Most of your people call me Ben. You can call me Ben.”

“Thanks, Ben, it's an honor. All I hear about you guys is that you are incredible soldiers, scouts, trackers, and trustworthy allies.” I look past him to his partner.

Ben turns to the man and starts speaking to him quickly.

“French?” I say.

“Oui,”
Ben says to me. “You understand French, yes?”

“Aw, man, naw. Just, you know, Pepe Le Pew stuff,
le mew, le pant, le sigh
, that kind of thing.”

Frenchie gives me a quick bow, which I return. When I bow, my bloodied scapular spills out of my shirt. Frenchie is drawn right in. He comes up to me and, blood or no, kisses the Christ image gently before making the sign of the cross. Ben then makes a sign of the cross, and I try not to be in a constant state of surprise here.

“English and French, Chinese, every Montagnard dialect, am I right, Ben?” Makita says over my shoulder.

“More or less,” Ben says modestly.

“Don't be shy, man. You are the backbone of our entire Army. Without you we'd all be dead meat.”

Ben refuses to even acknowledge that one. “Shall we walk now?” he says.

“We shall,” Makita says, and we walk.

And walk.

And machete-slash pathways.

And walk. In single file. For four hours.

When we finally come to an extended stop, we are in a slightly less dense version of the same bush we entered. We are in a semi-open patch that is circular and about twenty feet in diameter. This is where we settle in to sleep for two hours, with half-hour guard duties divided up evenly.

“What happens then?” I ask Makita, not really expecting much but hoping to possibly catch him groggy and less guarded.

He is lying on his back, resting, yes, but staring straight up like a guy who possibly never does truly sleep.

“What does the second R in LRRP stand for, Moxie?”