Tough Guys Die Hard

by Len Levinson

  Colonel Hutchins pointed and Pfc. Dunphy saw a man lying on a cot with a medic sitting beside him.

  “Do you know who’s on that cot?” Colonel Hutchins asked.

  “No sir.”

  “That’s Sergeant Snider.”

  Dunphy’s eyes widened. He’d heard that Sergeant Snider was on his way back to the States with his million-dollar wound.

  “Sergeant Snider’s been hurt bad,” Colonel Hutchins said, “but now and then he’s able to talk. He’s been talking real good for the past half hour. Do you remember that medicine he used to make for me?”

  “Yes sir,” replied Dunphy, knowing that Colonel Hutchins was talking about Sergeant Snider’s special Kentucky white lightning.

  “Well Dunphy,” Colonel Hutchins continued, “Sergeant Snider has kindly consented to return here to give you the recipe for his special medicine, so you can make it up for me and anybody else who might need it.” Colonel Hutchins winked. “Get my drift?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Good. Come on over here and say hello to Sergeant Snider.”

  Colonel Hutchins rose and staggered across the room toward where Sergeant Snider was lying. Pfc. Dunphy followed him and looked down at his old mess sergeant, bandaged and pale, his eyes shut.

  “He looks like he’s sleeping,” Pfc. Dunphy said.

  “Nah, he ain’t sleeping,” Colonel Hutchins said. “He’s just resting.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “The silly son of a bitch got shot in the ass.” Colonel Hutchins looked at Corporal Lamm. “Give him a nudge.”

  “I think we ought to let him sleep, sir.”

  “He can sleep later.” Colonel Hutchins bent over and shook Sergeant Snider’s shoulder. “Hey, wake up!”

  Sergeant Snider opened his eyes to half-mast and moaned.

  “How’re you feeling, Sergeant?” Colonel Hutchins asked.

  Sergeant Snider moaned.

  “Can you hear me all right?” Colonel Hutchins asked.

  Sergeant Snider nodded slowly.

  “Good. Listen. You remember Pfc. Dunphy here, don’t you?” Colonel Hutchins put his arm around Pfc. Dunphy’s shoulders.

  Sergeant Snider looked up at Dunphy and said in a low voice: “Yes.”

  “I want you to tell Pfc. Dunphy here your recipe for white lightning okay Sarge?”

  “Never,” Sergeant Snider said.

  Colonel Hutchins shrugged. “In that case, you’re never going back to the hospital, Snider. And you know that if you go back to the hospital, they’ll ship you back to the States because you got a million-dollar wound. But you’re not going anywhere until you spill the beans.”

  “Bastard,” said Sergeant Snider.

  “Ain’t the first time I’ve been called that, and won’t be the last time.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell you,” Sergeant Snider said.

  “Then you’re gonna stay here with me.”

  “I need a doctor.”

  “Tell Dunphy here how to make white lightning and you’ll get all the doctors you want.”

  “This is blackmail,” Sergeant Snider wheezed.

  “You’re fucking right it is.”

  “I guess I got no choice.”

  “You’re fucking right you ain’t.”

  “But this is a family secret and I never told it to anybody in my life.”

  “There’s always gotta be a first time for everything.”

  “I hope you fucking choke on it.”

  “Now now, Snider, don’t be bitter. Think of it as helping the war effort. And if I do choke on it, by the way, I’ll figure you gave Dunphy here a trick recipe, and I’ll just have to track you down and kill you.”

  Corporal Lamm couldn’t believe his ears. He’d never heard a colonel talk the way Colonel Hutchins was talking. Ever since he’d been with the Twenty-third Regiment, he’d been wondering if he was still in the same United States Army he was in before.

  “You drive a hard bargain,” Snider said in a whisper.

  “Start talking,” Colonel Hutchins replied.

  “Lemme think for a moment.”

  “Don’t take too long.”

  Pfc. Dunphy took out his notebook and pen, getting ready. Sweat prickled on Sergeant Snider’s forehead.

  “Okay,” Sergeant Snider said. “First of all you start with as much edible garbage as you can get, and do you remember that big old pot I used to use?”

  “Yes,” said Dunphy, writing furiously.

  “Well, you put it all in that, and then you mix in about two blocks of yeast.”

  Colonel Hutchins smiled with satisfaction, as Sergeant Snider recited the recipe for his famous white lightning. Colonel Hutchins intended to make numerous copies of the recipe, so it would never get lost. Then he’d never have to worry again about having enough medicine on hand to help him get through the rigors of war.

  NINE . . .

  It was night on New Guinea, and owls hooted in the trees. Monkeys chattered as they jumped from branch to branch, and millions of insects buzzed and chirped, drowning out sounds made by the footsteps of men trying to be quiet.

  Frankie La Barbara was one of the men trying to be quiet. He crawled on his belly, closing the distance between himself and the big walled tent where the nurses lived. It was just ahead, through the thick, tangled foliage. He could see the glow of kerosene lamps and hear the laughter of women. He licked his lips in anticipation of actually catching a glimpse of one naked.

  Frankie felt almost as though he were on patrol. Many times at night like this he’d snuck close to Japanese ammunition dumps or motor pools, and fear had been in his heart; but on this night lust was in his heart. His ultimate goal was to find a lonely horny nurse and entice her to come into the bushes with him.

  He was off limits, but didn’t care. Frankie didn’t live according to the ordinary boundaries of the world. Military rules and regulations didn’t mean shit to him. And he wasn’t concerned about the bandage on his nose, which made him look like a buffoon. Frankie believed he could bullshit his way into any woman’s pants no matter what the circumstances.

  Frankie ducked his head underneath a low-hanging branch and crawled through a puddle of brackish water. A cloud of mosquitoes arose from the surface of the water and swarmed all over him, biting and sucking blood. He crushed them gently, not wanting to smack them and make noise.

  On the other side of the puddle he thought he could smell perfume, and his heart raced like the engine of a Studebaker. He couldn’t be sure it was perfume—it might be tropical flowers in his vicinity—but he became excited anyway. He thought of silk stockings and brassieres. He wanted to press his lips against the smooth curve of a woman’s neck, while grabbing a handful of her ass.

  Twitching his nose, licking his chops, Frankie crept closer. He could see the tent clearly now, light glowing at its bottom. Women’s voices wafted to him on the hot, sultry night air. He moved toward those voices like a moth to a flame.

  Finally he came to within six feet of the rear of the tent. He lurked in the bushes, so near and yet so far away from the nurses inside. He thought of them in there, walking around in their underwear, and nearly had an orgasm on the spot.

  Something in the back of Frankie’s mind told him he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing. It said he was in grave danger, because the more excited he became, the more likely he’d do something he might regret later. But Frankie ignored the voice in the back of his mind. He was a lusty young man with more hormones than he could handle. He was a catastrophe getting ready to happen.

  Six feet from the nurses’ tent, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have any definite plan when he’d started out, and nothing had occurred to him since then. He looked at the nurses’ tent with longing. He wished he could go inside and fuck them all.

  A nurse inside the tent laughed uproariously, and Frankie was sure someone had told her a dirty joke. Then he flashed on a different fantasy, of nurses rolling around naked on the
floor, having a big lesbian sex orgy. The fantasy became more elaborate in his mind. He saw nurses going down on each other, sucking each other’s boobs, screwing each other with big rubber dicks.

  Frankie’s common sense told him that such a thing really wasn’t happening, but the nasty, horny billygoat part of his mind thought maybe it was. It would be an incredible sight, and he had to see it. He looked down at the bottom of the tent, where canvas loops were attached to nails used as tent pegs.

  1 bet 1 could look right under there, Frankie thought. All he had to do was creep forward, pull the canvas back, and look inside at the orgy. It would be easy. If sharp-eyed Jap guards never spotted him on his numerous patrols, how could a bunch of broads?

  Sniffing the air, looking to his left and right and up in the air in case somebody was sitting on the branch of a tree, Frankie slithered forward. He emerged from the bush and crawled forward until he had reached the tent. Feeling along the bottom of the wooden platform for one of the canvas loops, he heard the low murmur of women’s voices inside. He imagined hordes of beautiful young nurses frolicking naked inside the tent, although he knew that most of the nurses in the division medical headquarters were neither beautiful nor young.

  He found a loop. Deftly and silently he removed it from the nail. His heart pounding, he looked to his left and right and then up in the air again. A mosquito bit him on the leg but he didn’t care. He lowered his head and raised the bottom of the tent. The crack widened, and then he saw them.

  It wasn’t what he expected. There was no big orgy with scores of naked nurses going down on each other. One half of the tent was dark, and he could make out nurses sleeping on their cots, and some of them snored worse than men. On the other side of the tent, a group of nurses sat on their cots and chatted with each other. A kerosene lamp on a crate of C rations provided illumination. They were talking mostly in medical jargon, which Frankie couldn’t understand. Some of the nurses had their Army shirts unbuttoned, and he could see their brassieres, but that was all.

  Frankie was extremely disappointed. He’d expected so much, and got so little. His only hope was that one of the nurses would stand up and take off her clothes. He decided to wait awhile and see if that would happen.

  “What the hell are you doing there, soldier?”

  It was a woman’s voice, and it came from behind Frankie, who nearly shit a brick. He swung his head around and saw a nurse standing behind him in the darkness, her hands on her hips. She wore regular Army fatigues.

  “Huh?” said Frankie.

  “I said what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  A voice shouted inside the tent: “What’s going on out there?"

  “Another peeping Tom!” said the nurse behind Frankie.

  “Not another one!"

  Frankie scrambled to his feet and smiled, holding out his hands. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not true. I’m not a Peeping Tom. I thought I saw a Jap over here, and came to investigate.”

  “No kidding?” said the nurse.

  “I wouldn’t lie to you,” Frankie replied.

  The nurse had frizzy red hair tied into a ponytail. She wasn’t bad-looking at all, a big-boned woman with a decent shape. “You wouldn’t lie to me?” she asked.

  “Never,” Frankie said.

  “And you were looking inside the tent because you thought the Jap was in there?”

  “You got it,” Frankie said.

  “Well if there’s a Jap in there, maybe we’d better call the MPs.”

  “No no no,” said Frankie. “Don’t call the MPs.”

  Frankie heard footsteps and turned around. The nurses who were inside the tent talking approached in the darkness.

  “This him?” one of them asked.

  “Yup,” said the redheaded nurse.

  “Well, at least he’s better-looking than the last one.”

  “I think we should call the MPs,” another nurse said.

  “No, I think that’s a little extreme. They’ll probably put the poor son of a bitch in the stockade.”

  “Maybe if a few of these perverts get sent to the stockade, they’ll stop bothering us.”

  Frankie cleared his throat. “I’m not a pervert,” he said.

  “Then what are you doing sneaking around here?” asked a short, stout nurse with a terrible acne condition.

  “I thought I saw a Jap over here,” Frankie said.

  “Liar!” said the stout nurse.

  “Don’t call me a liar!” Frankie replied indignantly.

  “This one’s a wise guy,” the stout nurse said. “I think we should really teach him a lesson.”

  A new voice was heard. “I know this guy. He’s Frankie La Barbara.”

  A tall, slim nurse stepped forward, and she was Lieutenant Beverly McCaffrey.

  “Hi,” Frankie said to her.

  “I think you’d better get lost,” she said.

  Frankie didn’t know what to do. He thought he’d appear guilty if he just walked away, but on the other hand he didn’t want to hassle with MPs.

  “I’m not a pervert and I’m not a liar!” he said.

  “Of course you’re not,” Nurse McCaffrey replied. “You’re just a red-blooded American boy, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But you’re someplace you’re not supposed to be, so maybe you’d better get a move on, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Frankie grumbled and snarled to let the nurses know they couldn’t push him around, and then turned around and walked away swiftly. The night swallowed him up.

  The stout nurse with the acne was pissed off. “I still think he should’ve been put in the stockade,” she said.

  “Oh come off it,” Beverly McCaffrey said. “He’s just another lonely guy far away from home. Soldiers have a hard life, and we shouldn’t make it any harder. After you’re around here awhile longer, you’ll understand that, I hope.”

  The stout nurse shook her head. “I still think he’s a pervert,” she said.

  The jeep approached the Eighty-first Division command post. The top halves of the headlights were painted black, and the bottom halves shone through the night mists that arose from the jungle floor. Pfc. Nick Bombasino stopped the jeep in front of the tent beside the other jeeps already there. Colonel Hutchins climbed down from the front seat of the jeep and entered the big tent, slapping a long, thin branch against his leg. Major Cobb followed Colonel Hutchins into the tent.

  They made their way past the orderlies and clerks and entered the office of General Hawkins. The officers crowded around the map table, and Colonel Hutchins carried with him a cloud of bourbon fumes that made everybody turn around.

  “Sorry I’m late, gentlemen,” Colonel Hutchins said. “Had a little problem that needed my attention.”

  General Hawkins looked at his watch. “We can begin now,” he said coldly.

  The officers clustered around the map table. A kerosene lamp hung over it, bathing everybody’s face in an orange glow.

  “The events of the past few days have caused chaos throughout this area,” General Hawkins said. “We have no goddamned idea at all of what the Japs have got in front of us. We might’ve defeated them completely or they might have reserves we don’t even know about. On top of that, this division is badly disorganized right now. Units are still trying to disentangle themselves from other units. If the Japs attacked us right now, we’d be in a whole world of trouble.”

  General Hawkins paused and looked into the eyes of his officers, one by one. He wanted to make sure they understood the seriousness of the situation before he proceeded, and his words sank deeply into their minds. They knew how confused matters were, and the supply problems they’d been having. Many commanders had been unable to add up their number of combat-effectives, because men who’d been reported missing in action kept turning up all the time.

  General Hawkins drew his Ka-bar knife and traced a line along the Driniumor River. “All the fighting of the past few days has
n’t added up to any important gains for the Japs or for us. We’re still on the west bank of the Driniumor, and they’re on the east bank, except for a few little incursions we’ve made on their side. We’ve got to find out what they’ve got out there, and we’ve got to find out fast.” General Hawkins looked down at the map and ran his forefinger over his blond mustache. “There’s only one way to find out what they’ve got and that’s to conduct a reconnaissance in force. We can’t wait long: We’ve got to get it rolling right away.” General Hawkins pointed his Ka-bar knife at the center of his division’s line. “The Twenty-third Regiment is here,” he said, “and this will be the jump-off for the reconnaissance in force. Colonel Hutchins, is your regiment capable of this operation?”

  Colonel Hutchins sniffed, because his left nostril was full of snot. “Depends on how big the operation has to be. I figger I only got half the men I had three days ago.”

  “I think you should send a company across the Driniumor. That should be enough to draw out a Jap response, if there are any Japs there to make a response.”

  Colonel Hutchins leaned forward and pushed through other officers until he came to the edge of the map table. He looked down at the long squiggly line that represented the Driniumor River and saw the location of his regiment, holding the center of the line.

  “I can put together a company of good men to do the job,” he said, “and if they get in trouble I can follow up with another company, but I can’t keep doing that forever: My regiment took the brunt of the action during the past few days, and they’re plumb tuckered out.”

  “I understand,” General Hawkins replied, “and if there was time I’d pull you back and put you in reserve, but time is a luxury we don’t have right now. Can I depend on you?”

  “You can depend on me,” Colonel Hutchins said. “When do you want us to jump off?”

  “The crack of dawn.”

  “You got it,” Colonel Hutchins said, “but there’s just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Japs might be stronger than we think on the other side of the river. They might be echeloned in depth all the way back to Wewak. If my men get in trouble, I expect help. I don’t wanna let ‘em get cut off out there and destroyed. I don’t want ‘em to be pawns in anybody’s cute fucking strategy. Get the picture?”