Sharpshooter

by Chris Lynch

  I have to try this much. “What about civilians?”

  His look, sincerely, goes into a deeper puzzlement. “There are none. Where have you been?”

  He holds me with that look, that stare, for several penetrating seconds, waiting to see me through this, to escort me to my senses. I find myself, weirdly, running my fingers up and down my bandolier of ammunition, like I am playing some sort of explosive accordion.

  He slaps my leg. “Confirmed kills?”

  “Three,” I say quickly. “Possibly four.”

  “Three, then. Oh, you’re gonna have to work on that, my man. We have to make our numbers. Don’t want to get fired or nothin’. What are you gonna do way out here without a job?”

  It is all but impossible to tell whether Makita is joking, enjoying himself, what? And his gallery of mirthless rogues don’t give me a clue which way to go, either.

  Which makes it extra welcome when we make our descent into a grassy field on the edge of thick forest. All the LRRPs silently move into gear, and I follow the fifth man to the exit.

  The chopper barely touches down, as if it is a game of tag rather than a personnel transport. Only two men actually disembark before the skis are back off the ground and headed the other way.

  The third man jumps, lands on his feet. Fourth does the same, fifth jumps from a height of eight feet, bounces, rolls smoothly.

  I get to the lip when we are about twelve feet up. I hesitate, costing myself another two.

  Makita gives me a push, and I see the tall grass waving me in as it rushes right up.

  I land just barely on my feet, but falling forward, and hit the ground hard with my chest.

  I lie there for a few seconds before Makita grabs me roughly by the back of my shirt, stands me upright on my feet, and shoves me a lot harder this time toward the trees at the tail of the running chain of LRRPs.

  We gather once we are somewhat safely inside the tree line. It is so dense here, with triple canopy above and hardly any bare trail in any direction, it is easy to imagine we are the only humans to have been in this spot for five hundred years. If ever.

  “Makita,” comes a voice from the blackness no more than twenty feet in.

  “Yo, Ben,” Makita says, opening up a map.

  My theory of a primeval forest untouched by man would seem to be flawed.

  One LRRP pulls out a machete that looks like it could bring down a sequoia. He begins sharpening it.

  There are many things I have learned about men, about combat, and about myself during this portion of my life, and I am learning more daily, probably at a faster rate than I learned things as a toddler. One of the things I am pleased to discover is that fear and uncertainty have the effect of making me more, and not less, bold.

  “Do I have a need to know yet?” I ask.

  Makita turns from the map he is studying with two other men under a very low flashlight. He shines the light in my face so that I am probably the only thing illuminated for five miles.

  “Not sure you have a need yet, strictly. But fair enough, you probably have a right. Maybe. How ’bout we just say we are not in Cambodia. How’s that? Because, what with Cambodia being a neutral nation, it would be incorrect for us to be there, no matter how rotten with Vietcong it is.

  “That narrow things down for you enough?”

  I deep-breathe, in, out, then steady. “That will suffice,” I say.

  It was made clear to me that I may or may not have a chance to shoot, but that otherwise I would be falling in line and not taking on any of the LRRP responsibilities. I am a hired gun, not a part of this team and not to be in the way.

  “If this was 1964, they’d be calling you a military adviser,” was how Makita put it.

  So now, as the men converge on their evening plans, I stare into the blackness, toward the voice, and stare at the mystery.

  Eventually, when the LRRPs break from their huddle like an eerily silent NFL offense ready to play, there comes the smallest sound of padding footsteps from out of the forest.

  Two men, welterweights in Army green, come straight up to me. They wear sidearms, rifles over their backs, machetes at their waists — armed to the teeth like most of us. They are dark-skinned but not ethnic Vietnamese, that is for sure.

  Something bubbles up in me and I feel like a kid again at Fenway or Boston Garden hanging by the gate for autographs.

  “Montagnards?” I say.

  “Montagnard is a French term,” the first man says. “But yes. There are many mountain tribes. We are Degar.” He extends a hand. “And your tribe?”

  “Wow,” I say, “this is amazing stuff. How did you know I had American Indian blood?”

  “I didn’t know that. I was just … making introductions.”

  I already feel pretty stupid. But I get over it quickly, like you do with things here. I actually look over my shoulder to see if there are a bunch of LRRPs laughing at me.

  Stupid me. LRRPs don’t laugh. They are still deep in planning, going over maps, gesturing silently toward the distance, checking and rechecking weapons that seem to be appearing like mushrooms all over their bodies.

  “I’m Ivan,” I say. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, your English is amazing. Better than about ninety-five percent of the GIs I know.”

  “Thank you. Most of your people call me Ben. You can call me Ben.”

  “Thanks, Ben, it’s an honor. All I hear about you guys is that you are incredible soldiers, scouts, trackers, and trustworthy allies.” I look past him to his partner.

  Ben turns to the man and starts speaking to him quickly.

  “French?” I say.

  “Oui,” Ben says to me. “You understand French, yes?”

  “Aw, man, naw. Just, you know, Pepe Le Pew stuff, le mew, le pant, le sigh, that kind of thing.”

  Frenchie gives me a quick bow, which I return. When I bow, my bloodied scapular spills out of my shirt. Frenchie is drawn right in. He comes up to me and, blood or no, kisses the Christ image gently before making the sign of the cross. Ben then makes a sign of the cross, and I try not to be in a constant state of surprise here.

  “English and French, Chinese, every Montagnard dialect, am I right, Ben?” Makita says over my shoulder.

  “More or less,” Ben says modestly.

  “Don’t be shy, man. You are the backbone of our entire Army. Without you we’d all be dead meat.”

  Ben refuses to even acknowledge that one. “Shall we walk now?” he says.

  “We shall,” Makita says, and we walk.

  And walk.

  And machete-slash pathways.

  And walk. In single file. For four hours.

  When we finally come to an extended stop, we are in a slightly less dense version of the same bush we entered. We are in a semi-open patch that is circular and about twenty feet in diameter. This is where we settle in to sleep for two hours, with half-hour guard duties divided up evenly.

  “What happens then?” I ask Makita, not really expecting much but hoping to possibly catch him groggy and less guarded.

  He is lying on his back, resting, yes, but staring straight up like a guy who possibly never does truly sleep.

  “What does the second R in LRRP stand for, Moxie?”

  “Recon.”

  “Correct. So when we get to our destination, we are gonna recon. We are gonna con, and recon, and rerecon if necessary until the task is complete and it is time to return to base with some priceless intelligence we can pass on up to our good friends at Special Ops.”

  Special Ops usually follow, where LRRPs blaze a trail.

  I stare at him. “Right.”

  “Does that clarify things for you nicely, then?”

  Of course not. “Yes.”

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  When I wake up, Ben and Makita are about twenty yards deeper into the woods and a whole lot deeper into planning. They are both making gestures, right, left, and skyward. Ben makes a lot of c
hopping motions in the air, while Makita favors punching.

  And we are off again. This time, though, the walk has a greater intensity, a feel more of marching than trekking. I have seen several if not all of the LRRPs popping their medication out of their shirt pockets. Makita even offered me a few pills. Army medics routinely dispense pills to the nighttime operations guys to keep them awake, sharp, and responsive. Taken in enough quantity, they say it also makes you fearless and furious.

  I figured my nap was enough to get me through.

  This walk only lasts an hour anyway, before we all find ourselves stationed in a fan formation just before the forest opens up onto a small hilltop village. There are about eight or nine small huts on stilts and nobody visible outside them just now.

  Makita has me up a tree, about thirty feet off the ground, where a dividing branch makes a perfect nest. When I set up and lie forward, I can see every hut’s front door through my powerful scope.

  And as they wake to the new day, I can see the people.

  They remind me more of early American Indian tribes than anything. The first activity I see is a number of women, ten, maybe, and twice that many children gathering in the middle of the common area between huts. They carry big jugs and pots, and head for the stream that is visible about a quarter mile to the east of their hilltop. When they have gone, I see the first man, standing in his doorway, making some kind of gesture, prayerlike and rhythmic with bowing toward the sun. He says things to the sun as he does this. He is wearing what is not much more than a loincloth.

  If you forgot everything else, you could think you were looking at the high Great Plains of America in 1840.

  Makita scurries up the tree to me like a big spider monkey.

  “Turns out we do have a use for you after all,” he says.

  “Who are they?” I ask.

  “Them? They are Khmer Loeu. They are kind of like the Cambodian Hill People version of our guys, the Montagnards. Only a lot more primitive, frankly. More to the point, they are the Vietcong’s version of our Montagnards.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, they are partly responsible for a lot of the inexplicable nastiness that’s been trickling all the way down the Mekong and into Saigon. They work as scouts and suppliers and gunrunners and quiet assassins for the enemy, and up ’til now we haven’t been able to see the sneaky invisible devils, never mind get a hold of ’em. Thanks to our man Ben, we got something big here, Moxie. And here’s where you come in. Now that the women and children are out of the way, the LRRPs are heading in. You are to stay right here and scan, eagle eye, the whole site there. And I don’t believe it’ll be necessary, but as soon — and, Moxie, I mean as soon — as you see a single weapon appear on any one of them guys, you do your well-trained assassin thing and put his lights out. You understand me?”

  I can see, in the redness of his eyes and the insistent tone of his voice, that his amphetamine and his gung ho are both kicking in and kicking up.

  “I understand.”

  He is perhaps picking up something in my own voice and my own eyes.

  “Moxie,” he says, hard. “If one of my men gets a hole in him because the overseer wasn’t quick on the trigger … let’s just say it’s a long way from home for somebody who officially isn’t even here, you get what I’m saying?”

  This. This is the moment I am most scared in the whole war. And it is from one of our guys.

  “I understand completely,” I say.

  I train my sight on the village again, going from one hut to another like the world’s most seriously unwanted door-to-door salesman. Then I see the Montagnards walking out of the woods, up the side of the hill to the village. The first man out of his house, the sun worshipper, stiffens up and puffs out at the sight of them. But he doesn’t move, and he doesn’t seem too alarmed.

  Ben and Frenchie walk up to the man and begin what looks like a very friendly chat, exchanging the latest mountain talk, as everyone says the various mountain peoples have related better to each other for centuries than they have to the wider culture. I see the man relax his posture a bit, then both Ben and the man gesture a little ways up the hill to the central structure in the middle of the little village.

  The three of them walk that way, and the Khmer Loeu man makes some sort of hooting call, bringing other men out and headed to that same structure.

  Eventually, the Montagnards and all the men disappear into the communal hut, which must be the central meeting place for the villagers. All the men are dressed much the same, some in the loincloth style, some with army pants or the black pajamas you see on a lot of VC.

  But none of them are armed. I relax. A little.

  As the last of them disappear into the structure, the amped-up LRRPs spring into action. Single file, they attack that hill with stealth and speed and directness that would make my father and thousands of fighters from the old-time wars cheer with recognition.

  In minutes, the LRRPs have all poured into that building and, like a miracle, without a shot and with little collateral fuss, a cell of what I have to assume are dangerous insurgents has been captured.

  I haven’t done a thing. But a surge of pride takes over me, and I look to the sky, aiming my rifle at a defenseless cloud for a second before bringing it back down.

  On two young villagers. Younger than me. They have just stepped out of that first house and are creeping tiptoe toward the big meeting place.

  Each one is carrying an American M-16 rifle.

  God.

  God, no.

  There is no no. There can be no no, Ivan. There can be no no.

  I bring my M-21 sniper rifle, manhunter, boyhunter, down, get the rear kid straight in the crosshairs, and squeeze. I shoot him right in the back of the head. He falls forward, the gun flying, his face bouncing off the ground.

  The second lead boy turns in the direction of the shot. He looks toward me without even properly raising the weapon.

  “Raise your weapon, son,” I say, hearing a voice say it, then hearing my voice say it. “Raise your weapon, son.”

  And he had more than enough time to raise his weapon, not that it would have done him one tiny bit of good anyway.

  I pull the trigger and watch the spray of blood as the round penetrates his young, stupid forehead, and he falls forward, his damaged skull bouncing off his friend’s. His brother’s? His somebody’s?

  They were smart boys, too, I’m thinking to myself as I continue to scope them there on the ground. They knew. They knew something was not right. More than the men, who trusted their fellow mountain people so easily. Smart boys. Knew enough to get out of both the meeting and the water fetching. Because they were clever enough to get out of all that, and they were boy enough to want to.

  And because they were right in the middle, not the kids anymore, and not the men yet.

  The procession starts. The Montagnards come stepping with a sense of grim, unflustered purpose, walking right past the bodies, on the way to here, to me, to the trail we cut and will now retrace. Right behind them and even more intense, the six LRRPs come marching in line, each one of them shoving a mountain man who has his elbows tied painfully sharp behind his back and a bruised and bloodied mess on his face.

  Two-thirds of the men who went in that structure are not now coming out of it.

  Off to my right, in the distance, I see the women and children carrying the water back up the hillside for all the folks of the village.

  The parade marches beneath my tree perch and past.

  “Thanks,” Makita says as he passes, bringing up the rear. His tone is as if this is just another day at the office, another job adequately executed. “You’re up to five now.”

  Confirmed kills. Five now.

  “Do they even add up to a whole one together?” I say as he walks on.

  That’s what I say, to have something to say, but I’m not thinking that.

  They add up to about a million, is what I’m thinking.

  Nobody sa
ys anything about my still being up the tree. Nobody tells me to get a move on or to catch up or indicates that it matters at all whether I make the trip back or not.

  By the time I eventually reach my bunk again, twenty-seven of my free seventy-two hours have elapsed. By the time I wake up after falling into that bunk, the figure has reached forty-three.

  “You stink, corporal,” Lt. Systrom says, standing over me.

  I can’t dispute it. I am lying here in my tiger stripes, in my face paint, my pillow looking like it’s about to go out on its own dirty recon op. I reek of a lot of things.

  “So this is what you do for fun,” he says.

  “I suppose so.”

  “Well, if it’s any satisfaction to you, there seems to be a lot of good information coming out of those prisoners who were brought in that you had nothing to do with.”

  “Information,” I say flatly. “Like fashion tips or who’s gonna win the big elephant race on Saturday?”

  “Ah, don’t know about any of that. But we do know how a lot of the American weapons and artillery we have been supplying to our ARVN allies seems to be turning up on the other side. There’s nothing we like better than getting killed with our own stuff, Moxie, and there’s gonna be a few knocks on a few of our allies’ doors the next several days.”

  I sit up on the bed, put my feet on the floor.

  “Could get exciting,” Systrom says. “You sure you don’t maybe want to stick around a bit longer to join in? Could be very satisfying work.” He is waving an envelope by his ear.

  “No, thanks,” I say, taking the envelope from him.

  “Well, you are due out tomorrow, but there is a chopper you can be on this evening if you like.”

  I nod and get up. I go to my footlocker, open it up.

  “You’d better get to work cleaning yourself up. I wouldn’t let you on my chopper like that, and it looks like it could be an all-day cleanup and pack-up job.”

  “True,” I say, rooting around in the locker. I put the envelope in there and dig for the other one.

  He gestures at my orders rolling around now with my socks and shoe polish and whatnot. “Don’t you even care where you’re going to?” he asks.