In Every Clime and Place

by Patrick LeClerc

  “Immediate action drills,” said O’Rourke sagely. “You always attack into a near ambush.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to Sun Tzu here,” I cautioned. “He didn’t charge cause he’s a better born soldier than the Duke of Wellington. I asked him later what made him react so quick, he looked all offended and said, ‘I was hot and thirsty and those fuckers pissed me off, shooting at me like that.’ I swear, those were his exact words.”

  The squad broke into laughter.

  “Best part,” I continued, speaking over the squad’s mirth, “is they gave him a fucking Bronze Star for it. Courage and clear thinking under fire in the face of a hostile enemy, blah blah blah... Oh God, they made the guy a fucking war hero for clear thinking when he was reacting like somebody bumped him and spilled his pint watching the Celtics at the L Street Tavern in Southie.”

  “Hey, you followed me.”

  “I foolishly assumed you had a plan, you head case.”

  When we settled down, Johnson looked at me. “And they stuck me in the same team with you two crazy-ass motherfuckers?” He shook his head. “Damn.”

  “That’ll teach you to join the Marines instead of getting a real job,” Sabatini said.

  “You’re really screwed, brother.” Li smiled. “By the time these two harps get you killed, Five-Aces Sabatini here will have cheated you out of your life insurance.”

  It warmed my heart to see the Chinese Marine crack a joke. Lcpl Sabatini put on her most saintly expression, the picture of injured dignity.

  “Yeah, you won’t be able to support your wife and nine kids,” said Terry, joining Li in ribbing our newest brother.

  “I ain’t got no nine kids,” Johnson protested.

  “Well, two of ’em are mine, but I didn’t think she’d tell you,” O’Rourke kept on relentlessly.

  “Fuck you.”

  “That’s ‘fuck you, Lance Corporal!’”

  “How many shoot-outs have you been in, Lance Corporal, sir?” Bauer gave O’Rourke a mock salute, taking the heat off Johnson. “What’s normal?”

  “No such animal,” he replied.

  “The illustrious team of Collins and O’Rourke: Professional Homicidal Alcoholics, Inc. has been in twelve firefights in twelve years. From that first ambush to today. They don’t come spaced evenly though. We had nine in Africa—”

  “Ten if you count the Battle of the Nairobi Slop Chute,” Terry amended.

  “That was freelance destruction, not Marine Corps business.”

  “Cost us four stripes between us and got us transferred to Ski’s team.”

  “Fortunes of war. Anyway, counting everything from four-man ambushes we pulled with Pilsudski when we got sent to Recon, to the battalion-level assault on N’Gaba’s stronghold, there were nine firefights. The size of a battle don’t mean shit to the grunts. If your ass is being shot at, it’s a major action. All our fighting in Africa was in a period of about two and a half years. Then there was a long peaceful stretch with one hot insertion into the embassy in Srebrenica—”

  “Sebra-what?” asked Bauer.

  “It’s Serbian for ‘shithole,’” Terry explained. “Mick likes to show off by learning the names.”

  “Sabatini, you were with us on that one. That your first?” I asked. She had done damn well if it was.

  She shook her head. “I was in the 9th Marines before I transferred to this sorry outfit. We were running patrols on the India-Pakistan border after the bluehats got chased out. No big battles, just tracking bandits and poachers. Couple small firefights. After the USNE called for both governments to back troops out of the border zone, the local thugs and endangered species traders thought it was open season. Fucking USNE ‘monitors’ got their asses kicked and cried to the US. I guess we had a regiment in the Himalayas way back, so there was a relationship with the Marines.”

  I nodded. “First Battalion, 5thMarines. My dad was there. He got a tattoo of a snow leopard with the Marine emblem around it. Said a lot of his buddies got ’em.”

  “They’re still doing those,” Sabatini said, “just changed the battalion numbers.”

  “You get one?” I asked innocently.

  “Play your cards right and you might find out,” she purred.

  “Keep it in your pants and tell us about the embassy at Serbo-thingamajig, Corp,” Bauer insisted. I glanced at Li. He was listening intently, concentrating on our tales of adventure in the Old Corps. He had done a decent job cleaning his weapon. He was past the first stage, he was keeping his mind on his duty, not the buddy he lost. If I got him tired and drunk, he’d sleep and tomorrow he’d be on duty. I couldn’t lose him to grieving right now. We were three Marines short in this squad as it was. It may sound cruel, but we needed him to do his job now and work through his loss on his own time. Some distance would help him. It would be easier for him if I kept him busy for a few days and he couldn’t sink into depression. By the time he had leisure to mourn, the wound would have healed a bit.

  “Srebrenica was in part of a country called Yugoslavia like a hundred years ago,” I explained. “The borders were set after WWI, without a whole lot of concern as to who lived where. When Yugoslavia broke up in the nineties, all the various tribes and ethnic groups started fighting over the map. Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Albanians; it got real ugly. I guess they all wanted their traditional boundaries from when before Attila the Hun came through or something. The various factions spent the next decade or so slaughtering one another. Things settled down eventually, we built an embassy, all the usual shit. Then, five years back, some nutcase whose name I won’t try to pronounce ‘cause Terry will make fun of me won an election and declared ‘Serbia for the Serbs’, wanted to restore their ‘traditional boundaries.’ Well, the other groups refused to accept the election results and, rather than appeal to the USNE, they dusted off the old guns and hatreds. Everything went to hell in a hand basket again.

  “A bunch of minorities claimed asylum at our embassy. I don’t even remember which group they were. The ambassador wouldn’t turn ’em over to any of the warring factions, so the pricks besieged the embassy.”

  “That was a cluster fuck,” Terry pronounced.

  “An astute observation, Professor O’Rourke. The politicians back in Washington dragged their feet. We didn’t evacuate, because that would show weakness, and we didn’t reinforce early, when we could have done it easily, because we didn’t want to violate anybody’s sovereignty or some bullshit. When they attacked, General Lewis, the Commandant of the Corps, refused to order his Marines to surrender. Told the President he’d resign before he saw us haul down our flag and hand our arms over to some dickhead foreigners. The Prez finally gave the order and we dropped our company in under fire. We held out. After three days of getting the shit beat out of ’em, the enemy calmed down. I guess they realized that if we would send a company, we’d probably send a division, and they didn’t want to take on the whole US military, so they backed off. We lost some Marines because of indecision in Washington, though.”

  “So you think we shouldn’t have gone?” asked Bauer.

  “Not my call. I just think the Powers That Be should’ve made up their minds quicker. Whether we go or not isn’t up to us. When you’re on the spot, though, you don’t half-ass the job. Be decisive. If you decide to fight, you hit hard, hit quick and keep on hitting, or don’t go at all. If we passed on that fight, so be it. If we went in early, we’d have had a full company ready to defend that perimeter. They wouldn’t have thought they could take us. Indecision looks like weakness. The factions knew that the US balked at sending troops before, they thought we would again, so they pushed.”

  “So we lost Marines for nothing?” Li asked through his teeth.

  “No Marine dies for nothing,” I snapped. “I don’t know if the battle was good for Europe or America or human rights, but it was good for the Corps. Why the hell do you think we’re better than the Army? The Marines always have combat veterans among the officers and NCOs bec
ause of all the little fights. If and when a big war comes, we’ll be ready. They only dust off the Army after an act of Congress. That shows. In WWII the Army got the hell beat out of it the first time they fought the Germans and the Japanese, because the only vets they had were a few colonels left over from the trenches in France. We had sergeants and corporals and company officers who’d fought in Haiti, Nicaragua and China, so when we met the Japanese at Guadalcanal, we kicked their asses.

  “Srebrenica blooded a new generation of Marines. Africa blooded me and O’Rourke, this cruise has blooded you new guys. When you get promoted to squad leader, you’ll know you can handle the stress of combat. You don’t know how somebody will hold up until you see it. And even though we joke about how you poor bastards got stuck in our squad, don’t you feel a little better knowing that some of us have done this before?”

  “I guess,” Li replied. “But why are these little piddly-shit wars worth our lives?”

  “This is a volunteer outfit, kid,” Terry explained. “If you didn’t think getting shot at was part of the package, you should’ve picked a different service. And no war is piddly-shit to whoever’s in it.”

  There wasn’t much more to say to that.

  “What was Africa like?” Johnson asked.

  “Great,” said I.

  “Sucked,” said Terry at the same time.

  “Different,” Sabatini added a moment later, smiling.

  “I liked seeing the sun and breathing real air, not this shipboard recycled shit,” I said.

  “It was hot, dusty, humid, and miserable,” O’Rourke countered. “Bugs like you wouldn’t believe. And the cities were full of poverty, disease and filth. Half the damn native population was malnourished and the other half was shooting at us.”

  “That’s just because the warlords wrecked any attempt at agriculture or industry,” I argued. “Kenya was in good shape.”

  “’Cause it was full of Marines,” Terry rebutted. “I’ll grant things are getting better now, but two days after we pull out, the machetes will get dusted off and it’ll go straight back to hell.”

  I shrugged. I gave Africa more credit than that. It was in rough shape, but that was after a few centuries of abuse. The colonial powers used the continent like a two-dollar whore for three hundred years, and when they left they tried to nab everything decent in the joint before taking off. The twentieth century was the Cold War, where the Russians supported some vicious left-wing regimes and our government supported some vicious right-wing regimes and left the business of worrying about the populations to the Peace Corps and rock stars. I thought that, given a century of peace, the Africans could build a viable economy and realize that that was more rewarding than hacking up their neighbors. Hell, if my ancestors can be civilized, anybody can.

  In any case, I didn’t think we were leaving Africa any time soon. We still had bases in Europe more than a hundred years after WWII. I didn’t think the government wanted to give up airstrips near Asia and the Indian Ocean.

  “It was nice to see some real scenery,” Sabatini continued, “but on a ship, you know you get to sleep between clean sheets every night, you don’t have to dig a hole to shit in, you get a shower every day and you don’t march fifty miles a day over mountains in the sun, rain, mud and cold. Mosquitoes don’t drink half your blood and give you fucking malaria. Recycled water tastes bland, but it doesn’t give you dysentery. Duty on Earth is different. Better in some ways, worse in others.”

  She had a point. Terry did too, to be honest, but I missed seeing real sunsets. I missed the earthy smell of forest, or the clean cold air of the mountains. I didn’t miss the smell of a shot-up refugee camp, or the flies, but the sterile surroundings out here got to me.

  “It is easier to get drunk and laid on Earth,” Terry conceded.

  “And who needs ambitions beyond that?” asked Sabatini sarcastically.

  Terry shrugged and shook his head like he didn’t understand the question.

  At that moment, the hatch slid open and Gunny Taylor stepped into the room, preventing a blowup.

  “Come right in!” said Terry, still failing to grasp the fact that gunnery sergeants don’t have to knock.

  The Gunny stared at him one long moment. “O’Rourke, are you any fucking use at all outside of a firefight?”

  “What can we do for you, Gunny?” I interrupted.

  “NCOs to the chow hall for the post-op in twenty minutes. You and Sabatini.”

  “Why me, Gunny?” she asked.

  “Battlefield promotion, Marine. Consider yourself acting corporal. You got Bauer and Li. Merry fucking Christmas.”

  “Thanks, Gunny.”

  “Wait and see before you thank me.” His eyes flicked over the pile of empties and the remaining sixpack.

  “It’s just the squad’s beer ration, Gunny.”

  “I bet it’s the whole squad’s.”

  “The rest are with us in spirit, Gunny.”

  “Well, offer me one, dammit. Sgt McCray would want me to have one of his.”

  Chapter 20

  9 DEC 2075

  USS TRIPOLI

  “So, what’s this all about,” Sabatini asked as we made our way to the chow hall for the post-op.

  “After a deployment, the officers and NCOs have a meeting and discuss it,” I replied. “That way we can all get an idea of what went right, what went wrong and how to train for next time. We go over who should be written up for awards or reassigned, that kind of stuff.”

  “But I wasn’t a team leader this time out.”

  “You are now. This’ll be a good time to get used to the process.”

  Lt Mitchell was already at the chow hall when we arrived. He looked a little pale and his arm was bandaged and supported by a sling, but he was not going to let a mere wound make him miss a debriefing.

  “Morning, sir,” we said in unison as we entered.

  “Morning Corporal Collins, Corporal Sabatini,” he replied. “Congratulations, Sabatini.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You earned it. Thank me by doing a good job.”

  Typical Lt Mitchell response. I wondered if his mom watched too many old John Wayne movies when she was pregnant.

  “How’s the arm, sir?” I asked.

  “A damn nuisance.” His expression was one of annoyance rather than suffering. He shrugged self-consciously. “Stupid mistake. I broke cover too soon.”

  “Any word on the rest of the wounded?”

  “Rodriguez will be fine in a few days. The round just plowed a groove in the meat of his arm. Williams is going to need muscle tissue implanted into his thigh. At least the bone didn’t get hit. Sergeant McCray’s in rough shape. The round shattered his shoulderblade. Blew out a chunk of his lung, shredded the muscle around the shoulder and played hell with the nerves. The docs don’t have any idea how much function he may lose.”

  “Shit. He’s a good sergeant.” I didn’t like the idea of Sgt McCray being shifted to a desk job. That would be like taking a Rottweiler off guard duty and making him an old lady’s lapdog. He might wind up retired with disability pay, but that only goes so far. That’s a rotten end for a good Marine.

  “I’ll do everything I can to keep him in the platoon,” said the lieutenant, apparently reading my thoughts.

  Soon the rest of the platoon’s leaders filed in. They all had a handshake for Sabatini. Any uneasiness she may have felt at a new situation was softened by the camaraderie of the unit. Rank was seldom mentioned at these meetings, and every Marine present was expected to state opinions honestly. If you were here, you were at least a fire team leader, with the lives of three Marines depending on your skills and training. As we had so recently seen, lieutenants and sergeants get shot. A corporal could wind up leading the platoon. It had happened before. If you wanted to lead Marines in battle, you had to have the courage to speak your mind.

  We reviewed the footage from the rifle cameras. Everything went smoothly, with little to criticize until
we reached the point where our squad entered the cargo bay. When I took the point, Lt Mitchell politely expressed his desire to examine the decision in more detail.

  “Evers! Stop the damn feed!” He turned on me. “Collins, what the fuck was that about? You have a point man for that shit!”

  I took a deep breath and forced my voice to remain steady as I answered. “Sir, I had a bad feeling about that hatchway. I can’t explain it, but it’s the same intuition I learned to trust in Africa on recon patrols. I didn’t want to put one of my Marines in that position.”

  “The goddamn government already put my Marines in that position! What, you didn’t have faith in your point man?”

  I felt a surge of anger that he was questioning me like this, but he was right. That made it worse. Having no desire to lose a stripe again, I fought down my rage. My temper is every bit as bad as Terry’s, but I can usually apply the brakes in time.

  “Sir,” I said after a long pause to compose myself, “I have complete faith in every one of my Marines. I had a gut feeling. I went with it. I was right about the shit behind that hatch. It was a pretty damn good ambush. I made the decision on my instinct. The Corps taught me to rely on my judgment. I didn’t have time for a debate. I know it was the wrong decision by the damn book, but sometimes the book doesn’t apply.”

  Lt Evers’ eyes narrowed. The Guidebook for Marines was his Bible. In questioning it I offended his sense of decency. I expected an angry response, but Lt Mitchell beat him to it, turning his question to Sabatini.

  “Do you think this hatchway was too much for you to handle, Marine? Did you feel it was appropriate for Corporal Collins to take that on himself?”

  Sabatini was taken aback by the question. Her eyes flicked to me for guidance.

  “The lieutenant asked you a question, Corporal,” I said. “You should get used to speaking freely here.”

  “No, sir,” she told the boss. “I was surprised when Corporal Collins told me he was taking the lead.”

  “So you didn’t think it was a good idea?” he persisted.