Death in the Jungle (15 page)

I set my cup and plate on the table and pulled out a chair.

“I’d invite you to sit your ass down,” continued Kats, “but it looks like you don’t need an invitation.”

I smiled and sat down.

Bucklew reached for one of my twelve pieces of bacon, but I stabbed my fork at his hand. He jerked away just in time.

“Come on, Smitty!” he complained. “You can’t eat all that! We’ve got PT in less than an hour!”

I shoved two pieces of bacon into my mouth at once. “No biggie,” I said while I chewed. “I’m not interested in a foot race against you two today. I’ve got other things on my mind.”

“Like what?” asked Katsma, plopping his fork down on his now-empty plate.

“Like going to Saigon and buying a radio,” I informed him, then I put a forkload of eggs in my mouth.

“Oh, yeah?” said Kats. “Who’s goin’ with you?”

I chewed some more, then swallowed before answering, “You are.”

“Me?”

“All of us are going,” I told him. “Foxtrot Platoon.”

The mess hall door opened and Funkhouser, wearing UDT swim trunks and a blue-and-gold T-shirt, entered. He immediately yelled, “It’s Gary Smith’s birthday today! Drinks are on him this afternoon!” He looked around, then saw me.

“There he is! The bastard himself!”

I gave Funky the finger. He gave me the same. Both of us were smiling, however, so I didn’t have to worry about losing my eggs due to a fist slamming into my stomach. I’d had the “fist-in-the-gut-upchuck experience” back in high school, where my girlfriend of a week hadn’t been charmed by the splatter on her dress. I had lost my hamburger and fries and her puppy love, even though I had won the fight.

Funkhouser served himself at the food counter and approached our table with a tray full of breakfast.

“After what you did to me, I shouldn’t be sittin’ with you, Smitty,” Funky grumbled, setting his tray on the table across from me. “But since it’s your birthday, I’ll make an exception.”

As he sat in a chair, I retorted, “Since it’s my birthday, do me a favor and sit someplace else.” He looked hard at me, not at all amused, so I smiled real wide. I still wanted to keep my eggs in my breadbasket.

“Smitty, tell me more about this trip to Saigon,” Katsma said.

Before I answered, QM2 Bohannon hurried to our table and called my name.

“Your snake is on the loose!”

“Where?” I asked, dropping my fork and preparing to rise.

“South side of the barracks,” Bohannon replied.

I pushed my chair away from the table and gave Funkhouser an accusatory look. He choked down the food in his mouth.

“Don’t look at me!” he spit. “I didn’t let him go!”

I started for the door.

“Why didn’t you grab the snake, Bo?” I barked while not looking back.

“I hate snakes!” Bo called after me.

I jogged to the south side of the barracks, keeping my eyes peeled for Bolivar’s slithering in the sparse grass.
Finding only pesky mosquitos, I searched the west side around the gun-cleaning table and diesel tub. Nothing there.

After inspecting the head and shower stalls, I covered the ground around the Seabees barracks, then the helo pad and Quonset hut. Then I started all over again.

Funkhouser, Bucklew, and Katsma spread out and helped me the second time around, but when we met fifteen minutes later at my cubicle in our barracks, none of us was holding a boa constrictor named Bolivar.

The snake’s cage was halfway beneath my bed with the mesh-wire top flopped open. I kicked at it in disgust.

“Man, I didn’t let him go,” Funkhouser said again.

Katsma patted me on the back. “Don’t worry, Hawk,” he said soothingly, “we’ll find him. He’ll be all right.”

“PT time!” someone yelled from outside the barracks.

Kats again slapped my back. “Let’s go. Your snake will prob’ly join us for sit-ups.”

All fourteen men of Foxtrot Platoon, along with a couple of other officers, gathered near the front gate at 0730 hours for PT. Katsma was told to lead us through the various exercises, and he did a good job out front. Contrary to my usual exuberance during PT, I just went through the motions; my mind was on Bolivar, and I was upset with myself for my apparent carelessness in properly securing the cage door.

After almost thirty minutes of sweating through the workout, Mr. Meston announced the Saigon trip would begin at 1000 hours, then called for us to jog twice around the perimeter of the ten-acre base. I was happy for the run, as someone might spot my snake.

With everyone breaking into a scamper, I loudly broadcast my predicament and asked my teammates to watch for my, pet.

“Holler if you see him!” I directed.

“I’ll scream with delight, like the house maid did last week when she saw my private stock!” McCollum blew from behind me.

“Knowin’ you, you were as limp as a snake!” Funkhouser teased him.

“You’ve never seen me coiled up and ready to strike!” McCollum retaliated. “That’s a sight to behold! The eighth wonder of the world!”

Katsma and I jogged a little faster, joining the others at the front of the pack.

“The ninth and tenth wonders are in my family, too!” Muck yelled after us.

“What are they?” Kats yelled back.

“My wife’s bazookas! They’re awesome! I call one Victor and the other Charlie, and I do love the way they torture me!”

Laughing, we ran away from the slower runners. McCollum was still getting guffaws behind us, but his words were now unintelligible.

Katsma soon made a move to take the lead over everyone, and even though breakfast was still heavy in my stomach, I couldn’t help but go with him. The lead was what I was used to. It was where runners like Kats and me just naturally ended up. Not that we were so great—we simply loved to run, to stride out, to make tracks.

That morning, the rush of wind and the feeling of strength was stimulating. I almost forgot about Bolivar’s being lost as Kats and I intermittently challenged one another with short bursts of speed as we circled the base. When we completed the run, however, Bolivar was all I thought about.

Sweating profusely, Kats and I made a beeline for the showers. As we approached them, Kats pointed toward the Seabees barracks.

“There’s a snake!” he exclaimed.

I looked and saw the snake, but it was easy for me to tell that it wasn’t mine. This snake was more than two feet long and had different colored stripes.

“That’s a viper,” I informed Katsma, who concurred. We watched as the venomous snake slid through the new door leading into the barracks.

“Should we go warn the Seabees?” Kats wondered aloud. We looked at each other. Smiles broke across our faces.

“Naw!” we sang in unison.

“Viper bites are rarely fatal,” I stated as we headed for the showers.

After a short shower, I walked back to my barracks wearing only my UDT swim trunks. Just outside the open door, I threw my wet towel on top of a scurrying, three-inch shrew and gathered it up. Bolivar would have breakfast awaiting him, should he come home.

I entered my cubicle and deposited the shrew in Bolivar’s cage, making sure to fasten the latch. I slid the cage under my bed, then dug a pair of Levi’s jeans and a sports shirt out of my footlocker. I’d wear those clothes to Saigon.

I checked my Rolex. It was only 0835 hours, so I decided to read. I draped the fresh clothes over the locker, then crawled under the mosquito netting with Louis L’Amour’s
The First Fast Draw
that I had received from my mother a few days earlier.

I should go look for Bolivar, I told myself. Yes, in a half hour, I would. Give him some time to surface. First, I thought I’d get lost myself in the story.

I was lost only twenty minutes when I was snapped back to reality by someone shouting curses from outside the barracks. I listened more intently and I realized it was Flynn yelling something about a snake.

Funkhouser rushed into the cubicle. “Flynn’s got Bolivar cornered in the john!”

I dropped my book on the bed and flew out from beneath the mosquito net. A few seconds’ sprint brought me into the lavatory, where I found Flynn in his under-shorts and wearing sandals, swearing and holding his right index finger in his left hand.

“Your damn snake bit me!” he informed me, showing me the wound. His finger had been punctured slightly.

“Where is he?” I asked, unconcerned about Flynn’s little bite.

“Look in that first stall,” Flynn directed, then he moaned. I entered the stall and spied Bolivar’s tail behind the toilet. Looking around the other side, I saw my pet’s head, placed my hand behind it, and then grabbed. I pulled Bolivar out of his hiding place.

Holding the snake with both hands, I started out of the latrine.

“Thanks for finding him, Flynn.”

“Next time I’ll kill that little gook!” my teammate called after me.

I chuckled. “You’ll have to stand in line!”

Several other SEALs, having heard the commotion, met me outside the john.

“Flynn got bit on his finger,” I announced, continuing toward the barracks.

Katsma walked beside me. “That’s what we get for not telling the Seabees about that viper. What goes around, comes around.”

I grinned. “At least it was Flynn who got the come-around, and not us.
Hoo-yah!
”

I put Bolivar in his cage with his new companion, whom I’d dubbed “Squeaky.”

I crawled back into my bed and read another thirty pages, then dressed for the Saigon trip.

At 0955 hours, thirteen SEALs from Foxtrot Platoon,
along with Lieutenant Salisbury and Mojica, our boat support buddy, assembled near the front gate and watched as Leading Petty Officer Pearson drove up in a late model Chevy pickup truck. A previous SEAL platoon had stolen the truck from the U.S. Army on a street in Saigon, where it had been parked, looking very olive drab, a few months earlier. Now it was very black, with the false license number 93-4127 painted on the doors.

There being nothing quite as audacious as thieves returning to the scene of their crime, the fifteen of us joined Pearson in the truck. Lieutenants Meston and Salisbury climbed into the cab with Pearson, and the rest of us climbed into the open box in the back. A few of the guys carried sidearms, which they weren’t supposed to do in Saigon, but they kept the weapons “hidden,” actually bulging, inside their shirts and belts. Smith and Wesson 9mms and .38 Specials were the weapons of concealment.

McCollum and Flynn jumped in the back of the truck after handing up a case of beer apiece.

“These are in celebration of Smitty’s birthday!” McCollum declared, flashing me a smile. I chuckled to myself, knowing the beer would have come along regardless. Any excuse for beer was a good excuse. As a matter of fact, on a previous trip to Saigon we had commemorated Mickey and Minnie Mouse’s anniversary, and God only knew if we had had the correct date or even if the two rodents had ever formally been married. But the beer had tasted particularly good that day.

With all on board, Pearson drove us through the base gate. Down the hard-packed gravel road past the hootches of Nha Be we went. A couple of Vietnamese children, naked at the side of the road, waved at us. I waved back.

A distinguished old man with a white goatee just stared as we went by. He was short and frail, and his clothes literally
hung on him. He looked despondent. Like most elderly Vietnamese men, I was sure he cared not for war but wanted only to live peaceably with his family.

As we left the old man and the village of Nha Be behind us, Pearson sped up. Since the road to Saigon was immediately west of the northern end of the Rung Sat Special Zone, and was, in fact, separated from the RSSZ initially only by the Long Tau River, the trip was potentially dangerous. The VC sometimes mined the road, using both pressure and command-detonated mines. The most effective mines were usually command-detonated. The VC, while hiding in the jungle, chose their target and detonated the mine, using the current from flashlight batteries, when the target moved into the kill zone. After blowing a vehicle off the road, they killed any survivors. Also, VC snipers occasionally sat in wait of a good target. Obviously, a rig carrying a bunch of beer-guzzling men from a U.S. naval base made an exceptionally enticing target.

As Pearson drove faster, we opted for our number one defense against the thought of a possible ambush, which was the cold beer. It took but a few more seconds before everyone in the box had a beer can in his hand.

“To Smitty!” Funkhouser called out, hoisting his can over his head. The others saluted me in the same fashion, then McCollum started singing “Happy Birthday.” All joined in, then gulped their beers when the last word was sung.

Halfway through the second round, I heard the blast of a rifle from the east side of the road. I looked into a rice paddy, but I didn’t see the shooter.

Another shot rang out, then a third.

“Sniper!” Mojica warned us.

Doc Mahner, standing just behind the cab, slapped the roof of the cab with his hand to get Pearson’s immediate attention from behind the wheel.

“Sniper!” he shouted. “Go faster!”

I heard the sonic pop of a fourth bullet fly by my head before I heard the report of the rifle. Out of reflex, I ducked. Of course, the bullet was already buried in a palm tree on the other side of the road by the time I had reacted.

Pearson was floorboarding the accelerator and I had to hold onto the side of the truck as we bounced all over the road.

“Pass me another beer!” cried Funkhouser, shrugging off the attack.

“Yeah!” shouted Flynn as another shot was fired. Flynn looked back down the road and flashed his middle finger at the sniper.

“You’ll never hit us, you stinkin’ gook!” Flynn yelled at the top of his lungs. “We’re too fast, you SOB.”

“Hoo-yah!” I concurred. The rest erupted into a shout, then we passed out some more beer.

The next few miles were uneventful, unless one called beer guzzling and profane jokes an event. As we got closer to Saigon, we passed a Lambretta motor scooter with an attached platform and five Vietnamese aboard. The roof of the scooter had a luggage rack which was loaded with chickens. The two adults ignored us, but three children stared blankly as we went by.