Read Online Free-Fire Zone by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online Page A

destination. Guys are up and out of their seats, loading up and growling and howling even though the vehicle’s still bouncing crazy and we don’t even have the head room to stand all the way up so we’re a bunch of hunchback gun-toting sweaty smelly lunatics. In a can.
    The vehicle jams to a halt, and we all pile out the open rear ramp. Us privates squat right down, followed by the corporals, guns ready, scanning the periphery from our hilltop clearing down over the pretty green countryside below.
    Lt. Jupp steps out of the truck but stays in his hunchback crouch like he isn’t quite sure where he is as he studies a map and we all wait. It might be something else or it might be that he was shaken up by Sunshine’s mini revolt, but the man doesn’t look at all sure of what he’s doing.
    â€œLieutenant,” Cpl. McClean snaps. “Have you got coordinates? Have you got a target for us?”
    â€œYes,” Jupp snaps back in that old familiar growl of authority. But he continues studying.
    Lt. Bien comes striding out of the M-113, not bothering with the crouching or ducking, and stomps up to the lieutenant as if he has dinner reservations in an hour. He jabs at a point on the map and, not even trying with the English anymore, barks short, stabbing Vietnamese syllables before firmly grasping the lieutenant and turning him in the direction of a barely visible trail of blue smoke coming up out of a dense thicket of canopy about a quarter mile away. As he is pointing, we hear a sound that’s becoming pretty familiar.
    SSSSSSissssss …
    And the show’s on as a surface-to-air missile comes whizzing right through our party and everybody scrambles. The corporals go for the heavy hardware in the vehicle while we spray mostly ineffective rounds in the direction of the target. I’m half-proud that we’re being treated with the same respect as aircraft, but get over that pretty quick when a second SAM comes within five feet of my head.
    Soon as it’s gone past, though, I start laughing. I know it’s truly mental, but I can’t help it. It’s like the roller coaster at Paragon Park, except without the puking. What I mean is, the anticipation will drive you crazy, but when you survive it, it’s a complete thrill. I have adrenaline pumping right out my pores now, and I am chafing for some of that heavy hardware.
    I get my wish when McClean comes rushing over and sets me and Squid up with an 81-mm mortar, and it’s like basic-training time trials as we get the thing assembled and aimed, packed and loaded in record time. Squid takes a step back and boom that shell shoots out and up and higher and higher, arcing over our own Air Force flight patterns and I’ll be grilled if I’m not flashing back to Paragon and Nantasket Beach and the Fourth of July fireworks all over again, amazing, until:
    Phwooooom! Man, when that shell lands crashing and burning through that canopy I can’t believe there’s anything in or out of armor that could withstand it.
    So we do it again.
    And again.
    We’re absolutely pounding this site, with mortar and heavy cannon fire and RPGs, and I wish they let us have flamethrowers because that’s really all that’s missing from this celebration. We hit ’em and hit ’em and hit ’em again until the referee would surely stop the fight if this was boxing, but it ain’t and so we hit ’em again. Because we are the United States Marine Corps and we are doing, finally, what we were sent here to do. And no offense to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam, who seem like decent soldiers and swell guys and who have been a lot of help to us today, but there ain’t no way in heaven or on earth we’re gonna let these guysup off the mat the way they did. Twice. We’re gonna make ’em dead and make ’em stay dead regardless of the Vietcong Charlie reputation for coming back like magic. No