Run Between the Raindrops (15 page)

The Company Commander and his Gunny are standing slumped and bleary-eyed as one of the visitors shakes a finger under their noses. He’s backed by a gaggle of ARVN officers with badges and pins all over their starched uniforms. When the harangue ends, the Company Gunny nods at his boss and walks toward a platoon of grunts sprawled in the dusty playground.

“Those assholes…” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “…are up here from Saigon, Westmoreland’s staff. The ARVN are National Police. They say somebody ripped off a bunch of cash from the Treasury Building. We cleared the area, so they’re claiming it was us took the dough. Any of you hogs know anything about that?”

“Shit, Gunny…” A Staff Sergeant lifts off his helmet and wipes at the sweatband. “You searched all of us before we left the area. Maybe it was one of our KIAs…” The Gunny chews on that for a minute. “Nah. I’ve already been through all the medevac gear.” He sweeps the survivors with suspicious eyes, then nods and walks back toward the cluster of officers.

Steve looks at me with arched eyebrows and nods toward my tattered pack. The TEAC is gone but there are still three bundles of stolen cash in it. “Better cough it up.”

“Shut up, man! What do you want me to do? Walk over there and just hand it over? I’ll wind up in Portsmouth making little rocks out of big rocks for the rest of my life!”

The Gunny returns shaking his head and worrying a cigar butt. “They got a real case of the ass over this thing. Skipper says they’re threatening to put the whole company under arrest. So, here’s the deal. You got fifteen minutes. Anybody knows anything about the missing money, you come see me. I’ll see if I can keep your dumb ass out of jail.”

Grunts begin to get to their feet, talking and cursing among themselves about REMFs fucking with line dogs over a little stolen cash. Steve and I wander away until we’re out of sight and then squat to confer with my pack and the cash between us. “We gotta hand it over, my man. We been on the line with these dudes and they’ve never done us wrong. Hotel Company has been through too much to get fucked around by this thing. It just ain’t right.”

No question in my mind that the REMFs will put the entire outfit in jail looking for a culprit who can be singled out as an errant criminal and offered up to the Vietnamese Government for summary execution as an example of what happens to looters. I’m trying to decide how miserable I’ll be spending the rest of my life in prison when I spot the tattered ARVN pack lying crumpled in the corner of the schoolyard.

“Look, I maybe see a way out of this. You come along and back my play. Anything I say, you say its gospel and you’re an eyewitness.” Before Steve can ask any questions, I retrieve the ARVN pack and stuff the three banded bundles of cash inside it.

“Hey, Skipper…” The Company Commander recognizes us as we approach. “We’ve been looking for you.” I hold up the ARVN pack and give it a shake. “And it looks like we got here just in time.”

An Army full colonel seems to be leader of the inquisition. He eyes the pack and points at us. “Who are these men?”

“Division Combat Correspondents, sir…” The captain names us. “They’re often attached to us for operations.” He turns to me and points at the pack. “What’s that?”

“It’s an ARVN pack, Skipper. We took it off an ARVN during the fight for the Treasury Building.” The colonel makes a grab for the pack and I let him have it. He holds up a bundle of cash and squints at me like I’m an easy target—which I am if I don’t come up with something really credible in a hurry. “We’ve been looking around for someone to turn that stuff over to, sir. When we spotted the ARVN officers here, we figured they would know what to do with it.”

“They obviously stole this money, Captain. I want these men put under arrest.” He breaks out a notebook and GI pen. “Give me your full names, service number, and unit.”

“I’d like to hear what they have to say, Colonel.” The captain holds up a grimy hand and points at me. “I know these two and they are not thieves.”

“No, sir…” I thank God and Buddha for a good officer and paint a pained expression on my face. “We didn’t steal that money.”

“Then who did?” The colonel is angrily clicking his ballpoint, anxious to begin writing up charges.

“Don’t know his name, sir, but he was an ARVN soldier.” A spit-shined Army captain begins to translate what I’m saying for the Vietnamese officers. There is a spate of gabbling and gasping as I continue.

“Me and my partner were just coming out of the Treasury Building after Hotel Company drove the NVA out of it. So, anyway, we’re heading toward the CP when we see this ARVN soldier coming out of a rear entrance to the basement. He’s got that pack in his hands and running like a sonofabitch and he drops a bundle of cash. When he stops to pick it up, we were on him right away. See, we were warned about looting here in Hue City and it looked like this ARVN was committing a criminal act, so we knocked him on his ass. He got away but we retrieved that pack and the money. We’ve been looking around for someone to give it to ever since.”

The colonel turns beet-red and he’s making little scribbles in his notebook that can’t be legible. He’s stabbing the paper so hard pages are fluttering to the ground. “And why didn’t you turn it in immediately? Thought you might get away with keeping it?”

“No, sir…” Steve has picked up the drift and he’s got an answer to one that had me snowed. “See, we immediately got involved in another fight near Le Lai ARVN camp, and then there was the
Cercle Sportif
fight, and then the Hospital Complex and then we got side-tracked in the battle for the Provincial Headquarters. Truth is, we just couldn’t find the right time to turn this stuff over…”

“So—you’re telling me an ARVN soldier stole this money?”

“No, sir, I’m telling you that an ARVN soldier
tried
to steal the money. We recovered it and there it is.”

“I don't believe this bullshit for a moment.” The colonel points at the Company Gunny. “Sergeant, place this pair under arrest. We’ll interrogate them and take official statements at Phu Bai.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary, Colonel. And if you insist you’ll have to discuss the matter with my battalion and regimental commanders. They’re back at the MACV Compound, I believe.”

“I’ll damn well have you relieved, Captain!”

“You can try, sir. If my battalion commander says I’m relieved, then so be it, but I don’t take orders from officers who are not in my chain of command. This is a U.S. Marine Corps rifle company, Colonel, and we do things by the book. Seems to me you’ve got the money you were looking for and no harm done. If that’s not good enough, you can do as you please back in the rear. Meantime, we’ve got a war to fight right here.”

The Captain walks away from the parlay leaving the Army colonel gasping with rage and trying to decide on a course of action. When the ARVN cops start counting the money, we make our break and follow the company commander. The GVN national treasury might recover most of the missing cash, but there’s no doubt in my mind it will be minus a stiff finder’s fee.

Inside the schoolhouse, I find the Company Commander drinking coffee. He nods his thanks when I offer a slug of looted bourbon to give it a kick. He sniffs the brew and smiles. “You’ve got more balls than brains, you know that? Did you think you were gonna get away with taking that cash out of here?”

“I had my hopes, Skipper. But there’s no way I was gonna let that asshole roust Hotel Company over it. Your outfit’s always been good to us.”

He nods and winces at the bite of the laced coffee. “What was your plan if he pressed the issue? Or did you think that far in advance?”

“Well, Captain,
he
might not have bought that ARVN looting story, but I’ve got some buddies in the civilian press that would eat it up. “

He laughs and drains the canteen cup. “Don’t get the idea I approve of what you did, but I’ll be damned if that pompous Army shithead was going to walk into my outfit after what we've been through and arrest anyone for anything. You fought most of the way with us, so I guess you're included. Now, get out of here and let me get some sleep.”

One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor

“You better speak English, motherfuckers.”

We’re looking for a place to hole up near the Perfume River when the challenge freezes us in place. A guy from Charlie Company 1/5 sent us toward this two-story building that looked like it was some kind of factory but we couldn’t find it before dark.

“Christ, don't shoot. We're looking for Delta Company.”

A figure forms out of the shadows and we see a grunt with his rifle pointing at our bellies. “You the correspondents? Platoon Sergeant said a couple might show up tonight.”

“That’s us…” Steve names us but it doesn’t seem to mean anything to the sentry. He shrugs and points back into the gloom toward the building. “Company CP’s inside there. First platoon’s pulling security.”

We drift toward the dark and the sentry returns to his post behind a pile of leaking sandbags. “You guys gonna go with us tomorrow?” I can hear the nervous tremor in his voice.

“That’s the plan.”

“But you don’t have to right? You guys get to decide shit like that and go where you want to go? I got a buddy knows some correspondents and he said that’s the deal.”

“That’s the deal. Somebody’s got to make you famous when you do heroic shit under fire. Just do some heroic shit tomorrow and we’ll get your name in the papers.”

“Most heroic shit I’m gonna do is get my dumb ass out of here in one piece. Fuck them papers…”

It starts raining buckets while we stumble around in the dark looking for someone in Delta Company to inform that they have two strap-hangers for tomorrow’s river crossing. Inside the shot-up building, we find the Company Gunny and he writes our names and service numbers in his notebook. “You two can rack out with Corporal Martinez over there.” He points toward a dark corner of the building where we see someone moving around with a filtered flashlight. “I’ll assign you to a boat tomorrow when H&S Company is ready to move.”

Corporal Martinez is the guy with the flashlight. He’s in a good mood and even shakes our hands. “Glad to have you with us. I got the three-five rockets plus some spare radio operators and S-2 scouts—all kinds of cats and dogs. There’s plenty of room in here.” Martinez points at a pile of musty mattresses under one of the windows. “We even got mattresses. Just find yourself a flat spot and rack out.”

We pull a couple of damp mattresses off the pile and sit down to cook up a C-ration meal. Grunts on either side of us are doing the same. Martinez returns from checking his sentries and flops down near us. He’s got a wide smile on his leathery face. “We never had no correspondents with us before. How do you dudes operate?” Martinez pulls off his helmet and I note from a scrawl on the camouflage cover that he’s apparently from San Antonio. There’s an intricate and well-rendered portrait of a matador on the back of his flak jacket.

“We’re just glorified grunts, my man. We go where you go and watch what you do, maybe write a few stories, shit like that. When it gets messy, we add some firepower. No big thing.”

“So if you write a story about one of us, what happens to it?” Martinez pulls a bottle of Tabasco out of his pocket, pours a healthy dollop into his ration can and offers us a taste.

“Depends on what it is, you know? Sometimes it winds up in the
Sea Tiger
or
Stars and Stripes
here in country, other times they send it to the dude’s hometown and it gets in the local rag—just depends on what the Lifers do with it.”

Martinez nods and chews. It’s clear he’s wondering what it might be like to have some say over whether or not he has to risk his ass. We’ve seen the reaction before and it makes us uncomfortable. There’s no use trying to compare what we do with what they do. There’s an enigmatic bottom line to it all. We often see more combat than the average grunt does in a standard tour of bush duty but we can—and sometimes do—avoid the worst shit they face just by climbing on a chopper and heading to the rear. We can rationalize that as part of our duty but it doesn’t keep us from feeling a little inferior. There it is.

I’m awake an hour after collapsing on the mattress. My silent alarm is ringing. Steve is crapped out on my right. The grunts are crashed and sprawled all around us and I listen cautiously to the standard sounds of fidgety bodies, snores, farts, and ragged breathing. I’m hearing something else that I can’t identify but it sounds like its coming from above us. Maybe the Gunny put some people on watch up on the second floor. Maybe it’s rats scrambling and scratching inside the walls. Crawling off the mattress I step carefully over sleeping bodies toward the staircase leading to the second story of the building.

Passage from the ground floor has been completely blocked by rubble and layers of shot-up sandbags. It seems odd. Unless there’s an exterior stairway, there’s no way anyone is going to get up those stairs with all the crap blocking the way. I’m on my way back to the mattress when a burst of AK fire sends everyone on the ground floor scrambling for weapons and cover. There’s another ripping burst that echoes off the walls and everyone flattens on the damp floor.

“Who the fuck is shooting?” The Company Gunny is pointing a red-lens flashlight upward. In the dim beam of light we see concrete dust explode from the ceiling as another burst of fire erupts. Whoever it is, he’s up above us on the second floor and shooting down through his floor and our ceiling.

The Gunny snaps off his flashlight and screams for everyone to stay put. He heads for the blocked staircase as a stream of green-tinted tracers plunges downward in the dark. “Martinez, you got any people up on the second deck?”

“Fuck no, Gunny! You said leave it alone when we moved in here. There’s all that shit blocking the stairs.”

“It’s fucking gooks up there.” The Gunny flinches as another stream of green tracer plunges through the ceiling and ricochets off the concrete floor. Grunts are all hugging the walls, staying as far away from the beaten zone as they can get. A couple of them shoulder their rifles and fire bursts up toward the ceiling where the enemy fire is raining down on us.