“Xerox!” he called out a second later, his voice cracking with lack of rest. “Xerox!” he said again. A short, bald kid in round glasses bolted from the radio room, tucking his T-shirt in. He looked suspiciously recent of sleep.
“Sir,” he said, smiling at Tory as he went by, reaching his hand out to take the papers from the second mate.
“Take this shit down to Skipper’s office and Xerox it. Bring the originals back to me.”
Xerox grabbed the papers and hustled down below. The ship’s assigned radioman, he’d been volunteered into double duty as detachment clerk. Hence the nickname.
Tory walked over to the big chair. “I’m thinking of applying for warrant officer candidate,” she said, looking out the flat black of the bridge windows. “Maybe I could get some sleep then.”
“Thanks for the insubordination, Sergeant Harris,” the officer said. He was wearing a red 24th Battalion ball cap. He pulled it down further over his eyes, stuck up his middle finger at her, then pushed his short, muscular body a little lower in the chair. “You’re first in line to walk the plank, New Jersey. As soon as I wake up.”
Tory leaned forward, peering through the window. Her eyes were adjusting. It took twenty minutes to fully gain night vision, but you were 50 percent there in less than five.
From down on the ship’s main deck the view was just the port; warehouses, vehicles, gray vessels tied, not much moving after midnight, even on night one of a so-called invasion. The view from high on the bridge, though, was Port-au-Prince. Hard to see so late at night in a city with the power off. But you could sense the sweep of the basin, feel it breathing there like a lumbering beast in a stand of grass. Shadows of buildings, neighborhoods. Lights on the mountainsides shifted and twinkled as only fire does. The doors to the bridge wings were propped open and the night air was heavy on a slight breeze, smoky and sweet.
Tory went to the log book on the chart table and signed in to the start of her watch then made coffee, bringing a black cup of it out the open door and onto the port bridge wing. The deck lights were out, but she could see Voodoo Lounge up on the bow. Sixteen hours ago she’d been in that nest up there, lying on the gray deckplates with the grease smears thrown from the ramp and anchor winches, sweat running from face to rifle stock.
She’d been more scared up there, coming in, than at any moment in the city yesterday. When they’d faced off against the FADH at the park and it seemed certain someone was going to get shot, that was scary but in a very controlled and mechanical way. She couldn’t even really remember it. She hadn’t made any decisions, just reacted—doing what training told her to do, endless, repetitive training. It was a task, just a task:What to do when under fire. Bladders and bowels and other unimportant things might completely fall apart, but arms and hands and fingers and eyes moved as if machined. But on the bow, up in Voodoo Lounge, with an hour or more watching the city grow, smelling it come slow, there was no task. Just watch and sit and hope you had a chance to shoot first. That was a fear that pulled at the belly, and she’d felt it before but never so acutely.
She took in a big breath, trying to blink sleep from her eyes. She sipped her coffee. Footsteps came from the stairs that ran aft of the house on the outside; Xerox, coming back up. He stood with her a minute. Xerox looked all of twelve years old.
“Nice night,” she said.
“Yeah.” He rubbed his head. “Good to be in port. Steady under the feet.”
Of the non-Waterborne soldiers in the crew—Xerox the radioman, Doc Brewer the medic, the Steward and his two kitchen privates—only the Steward didn’t mind the sailing, falling naturally into the rhythm of moving and the rhythm of sea sleep. Xerox was brand new to the ship and brand new to the Army and nothing from high school in Goshen, Indiana, or basic combat training in Fort Knox, Kentucky, had given him a head-start to living on the water.
“You been around port tonight?” she asked.
“A little bit. You gotta put all your gear on to leave the ship, though. Not worth it.”
“Everything?”
“Everything. Rifle, helmet, flak jacket.”
“Where’s 7th Group sleeping?” she asked.
He pointed to a massive warehouse across the water on the other side of the horseshoe. “That’s them,” he said. He turned and hooked a thumb behind to a small island a few hundred feet off the pier. It was connected to land by a long causeway and bridge. “That’s headquarters, though. The colonel and sergeant-major. And the radios.”
“Nice digs,” she said.
“Nice place.”
From what she could see, the island had two low buildings surrounded by a breezy stand of palm trees.
Her cigarettes were in the bridge so she bummed one from Xerox.
“What’s the plan tomorrow?” she asked him. As clerk, he was first to know everything.
“Skip says we’re sailing.”
“That was quick.”
“Yeah. Taking on a load of something and going south, I think.”
“Where?”
He shrugged. “Begins with a J.”
“Jérémie or Jacmel,” she said. She’d studied the charts for weeks and had memorized all the major and minor ports of Haiti and alternative routes of entry for each.
“Jacmel, I think.” Xerox shrugged again. “Not sure.” He yawned, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “I’m going back to sleep for an hour,” he said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead.”
She ditched her smoke off the side and followed him into the bridge. He went into the radio room and closed the door.
The handheld radio on the chart table crackled.
“Bridge to ramp. Over.” Snaggletooth. He was on ramp-guard duty. The forward ramp was down for the night, resting on the pier ahead of them. Tory picked up the handheld.
“This is the bridge,” she said.
“Uh, bridge,” he said. “Small problem. Over.”
“We’re listening.”
“There’s a small, uh, rat problem.”
Victor Charlie pushed himself up in the skipper’s chair a little at that, looking over to where she stood near the throttles. “What the fuck? Over,” he mumbled, then stood, both of them going to the windows to look down.
“Ramp, bridge. Mister Charlie would like you to clarify. What kind of problem?”
“Rat problem,” Snaggletooth said again, then the radio clicked off. Tory squinted. It was too dark to see anything but a shadow of the soldier on the bow ramp.
“What’s that joker doing?” Victor Charlie said.
“Should we throw on the deck lights?” Tory said.
The radio crackled: “Sorry, over.”
“Go ahead.”
“I was chasing it.”
“Chasing what, ramp?”
“Big fucker, bridge,” Snaggletooth said, and Victor Charlie pushed his ball cap up and smacked palm to forehead, striding across the bridge toward Tory. “Big thing with only one eye, size of a dog. I keep swinging this stick at it, but it ain’t too afraid. He’s half up the ramp now.” The radio clicked off then on again and Snaggletooth added a winded “Over.”
“Raise the ramp, Sir?” Tory said.
“Can’t raise the ramp,” Victor Charlie said. “We’re only half tied off—need it for stability.” He took the handheld from her and put it to his mouth. “Hey PFC, you still there?”
“Yes, Sir. Over.”
“How big a stick you got?”
“Ax handle, Sir.”
“Hit the fucking thing, Private.”
“It’s too fast, Sir. I already tried. Runs right past me. I—” The radio clicked off. In the dark, it looked like Snaggletooth was doing a dance down on the ramp. He came back a few seconds later: “Sorry. I gotta keep moving or it’ll get past me.”
“We could—” Tory started but the second mate cut her off.
“Listen up, Private,” he said to the radio. “How good a shot are you?”
Tory almost laughed out l
oud, her hand going to her mouth.What the fuck? Over.
“Uh, pretty good, Sir.”
“Shoot the fucking thing, then.” The officer reached for his cigarettes with his left hand, the right hitting the transmit key again. “How do you copy that? O-ver.”
There was a pause, then, “You want I should shoot the rat, Sir?”
Victor Charlie, cigarette lit, hissed through a puff of smoke into the radio. “Shoot the rat, PFC, before I shoot the rat for you and put it in your goddamn rack to sleep with!” He inhaled once then clicked the radio again. “O-ver.”
“Roger that,” Snaggletooth said.
Victor Charlie walked over to where Tory stood, looking down on the dark well-deck. He opened his mouth to say something to her, and that’s when Snaggletooth opened up, both of them ducking instinctively below the windows as the ramp blazed alive in light for one brief second, not one blast but three quick ones.
“Bitch put it on auto,” Victor Charlie yelled, then grabbed the radio. “I said shoot it, PFC, not blow it up!”
There was a pause, then the radio crackled. Snaggletooth, who hadn’t heard that last transmission, said simply, “Mission accomplished. Over.”
“Oh shit,” the officer said. Tory took three quick steps and used both hands to push up all six switches for the deck lights. Down on the bow ramp, Snaggletooth stood with his M-16 loose in one hand, a small furry mass at his feet.
“It’s smoking,” Tory said.
“What is?”
“The body.”
Victor Charlie squinted. Sure enough, even from the height of the bridge you could see a few tendrils of smoke rising from the thing. He contemplated that, then said, “Impressive.”
Xerox came from the radio room, crouching.
“Who’s shooting, us or them?” he said.
“Neither, really,” Tory said. She glanced over at him, and by the time she looked back the ramp was crowded with ten or more 10th Mountain MPs from the port’s main gate, looking for something to shoot.
“Those boys are going to be awfully disappointed,” she said.
Victor Charlie looked nervous. “Probably wasn’t a good idea,” he said. Tory didn’t say anything. He tugged on his earlobe, then reached up and switched off all the deck lights again, throwing the ramp and well-deck back into darkness. He pulled his ball cap off and threw it on the skipper’s chair, buttoning his BDU top.
“I better go down there.”
“What should I say if anyone calls?” She was pointing to the marine-band radio.
“Tell ’em it was a fumigating accident,” he said, grabbing his helmet. “We were protecting U.S. government property.”
Victor Charlie made for the inside stairs—“Mister Welsh laying below,” he yelled. “Sergeant Harris has the bridge.” He mumbled to himself all the way out. “Pinhead MPs should be happy for the excitement.”
He was back an hour later, having made the incident officially not happen. “The beauty of being an officer,” he said, much more relaxed now, “even a warrant officer. I wave my wand and sign the log and it never happened.”
“As long as you get there before a higher-ranking officer,” Tory said.
“Pecking order,” he said. “It’s all about pecking order.” He lit a cigarette and poured himself a cup of coffee. He brought all this, and the log book, to the skipper’s chair and settled in again. “They got bigger fish to fry out there tonight.”
There were other shots fired overnight, but fainter, scattered. Eyes would look up from the log momentarily, or head turned from fiddling with the marine-band radio. Every shot in the distance was like the beginning of a race never run; legs tensed, ready to drop body to ground.Fight or flight, Tory thought. But just for a second. Then on with the nervous night.
“They should’ve let us go to anchor,” Victor Charlie said.
Five of the six Army LCUs and the one other LSV were all floating on their hooks, a good mile out in Port-au-Prince harbor. They’d dropped their loads and scattered to anchorage. No one here envied the other LSV, though, sitting out there. The CW4 who skippered it was a mean old bastard with Admiral syndrome; even at anchor the crew remained on underway watches, and after watch you were expected to do an hour of cleaning. Tory had called out there on the marine band around 0330, and talked to the bosun.
“Everyone’s up,” he said. “Scrubbing floors.” The man sounded tired.
“The makings of friendly fire,” Victor Charlie said. A shot rang out, closer than any they’d heard so far, and after she started breathing again Tory decided she’d still rather be under fire than safe at anchor, scrubbing floors.
The night crept forward.
“Are we sailing tomorrow?” she said.
“Tomorrow night, I think.”
Tomorrow was already today, but in the warped world of sea shifts there was clear delineation. In conversation, tomorrow didn’t start at midnight. Tomorrow started at sunrise.
“Big storm, last week,” Victor Charlie said. “Half of Jacmel slid right off the mountain, into the sea.”
“Jesus.”
“Same tropical storm we hit before Cuba.”
She nodded. The worst weather they’d hit on the sail down, one of the worst nights she’d ever been through on the boat; you couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move. After her bridge watch she didn’t even try to sleep, went instead with Dick Wags down to the engine room because the lowest place was the steadiest place on a vessel.
“That’s the one. But we caught just a corner of it. She hit southern Haiti head on.”
Tory twirled the FM receiver. There was music, faint, here and there. Not from Haiti, she suspected. Words in Spanish; definitely not Haitian.
“So we’re gonna load up like twenty of these boukie trucks filled with Red Cross shit and bring ’em down there.”
“Why don’t they drive down?”
Victor Charlie smiled and opened the log book in his lap. “Oh, New Jersey, you been in the Army a long time. Why let them drive their own trucks when we could spend time and money carrying them and make it look like we’re doing good for the fine people of Haiti.”
“True,” she said.
“That,” he said, “and actually I think the overland highway was washed out in the same storm.”
It didn’t matter, she knew. Both stories were likely to be true. There was never just one truth in the Army. There were layers, all of them legitimate, all of them deniable.
Victor Charlie lit a cigarette. “We’re bringing a real soldier with us. From 10th Mountain.” He exhaled, putting his Camel in the skipper’s ashtray. “That captain, the one who led your lost convoy today.”
“Captain Hall.”
“Yeah. Him.”
Tory looked at the floor then her hands then realized she was doing it and looked back up. Victor Charlie saw none of it. It was dark, and he had the ship’s log in his lap, writing as he talked.
“Yeah,” he said again, turning a page. “He’s sailing with us.”
“To Jacmel?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t answer for a minute, then said, “Doesn’t he have a company? Are they all coming?”
“No and no.” The second mate wet his fingertip and turned another page. “He’s a battalion S2. Or something. I don’t know. Or care.” He picked up his smoke. “Skipper says he’s like one of three soldiers in-country who speak Creole. He’s supposed to keep our guests in line.”
“A captain?”
Victor Charlie looked up then. “Yeah.” He looked back down at the log, then looked back up. “Must have pissed someone off.”
“I think I was there for that,” Tory said.
“I think you’re right, New Jersey,” he said. “I think you were.”
4:30 in the morning. The sky began to smudge purple, the sweetness of the warm breeze sharpened by charcoal smoke wafting from the city. Mannino was on the bridge now. He kicked Victor Charlie out of his chair and consumed the day’s first black
coffee and cigarette in grunty silence. Out on the bridge wing, Tory stood alone a moment, listening, watching. Port-au-Prince hovered on the misty predawn, white cathedral on the hill suspended in the air, floating. She looked over the rail to the pier below. A group of soldiers was standing around the pilot door. Female, all of them. They began stepping onto the vessel then, and she strained to see who was letting them on. Snaggletooth, it was. As the last female passed onto the vessel he glanced up toward the bridge. Seeing Tory, he waved once.
Rat killer,she thought, then looked back up at the cathedral.
Chapter
11
You’d think they’d been here a month; five rows of five cots, even spaced and dress-right-dress, perfect mosquito-net cubes over each. One of the smaller hangars at Port-au-Prince International Airport, now officers’ quarters, Marc Hall returned well after midnight to find the place like this, a cot already assigned him. Second one in, two rows down, said the PFC with the clipboard outside the door.
Who knew there’d be a cot for someone just relieved of command? But then he’d not really been relieved; he’d never really had the command. It was all just shuffling and there was a new job for him tomorrow and on paper it would all look fine. He supposed he should feel grateful. It was difficult to feel grateful, though, he thought, as he unrolled his sleeping bag under the netting. It was hard to feel grateful when he’d been relieved of command.
Boots and uniform off, in shorts and T-shirt he stretched the length of the cot, staring up at the netting six inches from his face. The netting smelled of dust and desert—some 10th Mountain staff officer’s legacy from Mogadishu or Baidoa, he guessed—and smelled of mildew, too, legacy of the Fort Drum quartermaster warehouse. He’d been there to in-process the post two years ago, to draw his TA-50, and the whole building smelled of it.
It was hard to feel grateful drowning in mildew. It was hard to feel anything, really. Some of it was being overwhelmed, from the day—he didn’t know what to feel. Some was medication residue. It kept you midline, center; for the best, probably.
But then someone midline, center, wouldn’t have saved those three men this afternoon, the three destined to join their friend in the tree. The Army was midline, center, and Marc Hall had broken out of that with his squad, into the real world, and done a real thing. He couldn’t have done it from midline.
Voodoo Lounge Page 11
