it as quick as we can.”
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of fucking rum, Neiderhauser, that’s the first intelligent thing you’ve said all day. We’re gonna do it as fast as we can, but we can’t take the chance of leaving someone behind.”
There was some splashing and a few muted giggles. Strickland and Chernick came out the door and down the steps, laughing about the fact that they’d found some floating fuckbooks and a bright red dildo that Chernick had originally taken to be some kind exotic flashlight.
“Where’s Jones?” Oates wanted to know.
“He’s taking a piss, sir,” Strickland said.
“In the house? Well, goodness gracious great balls of fire! Jones! Jones!” Oates called out. “You zip that inchworm up and get your ass out here! I told you knuckleheads not to separate! Get out here!”
Jones showed.
Oates sang, “Well along came Jones, slow-walking Jones.”
“Just taking a leak, Sarge.”
“In somebody’s house?”
“Well, you heard the captain. Sewers are all backed-up, you got sewage everywhere.”
“I don’t give a shit, Jones. You don’t pull that Wee Willy Winkie of yours unless I say so. Got it?”
Jones nodded. “My girlfriend don’t think it’s so wee, Sarge.”
“I don’t care what your sister says. She’s not here. Out here, I’m your fucking daddy and I call the shots. You got that? Do you all read me on this?” Oates said, his eyes surveying the sorry lot under him. “You boys get on my wrong side here and I swear you’re all gonna come out of this with sore assholes and that not-so-fresh feeling! Just because we ain’t got the Vietnamese Boy’s Choir popping out of the bush with AKs and ugly attitudes, don’t mean there’s not danger here, comprende? You boys do what I say and nobody’s gonna get hurt, you don’t and you’ll be chewing my shit fresh from the oven and liking the taste! Any questions? Good, now let’s move out, you fucking assholes.”
Jones untied the boat and they moved back out into the streets.
Oates didn’t respect these boys, but he sure as hell didn’t want anything to happen to them. They were just ordinary kids for the most part playing soldier. They meant well and he knew it. And even if he wouldn’t admit it, he liked them. Not as soldiers, but as the kids they were. No, he did not respect them. But just because you didn’t respect a puppy that shit on your new carpet didn’t mean you didn’t love that leg-humping little sonofabitch.
And Oates was thinking this because he was starting to worry.
He’d been in Desert Storm and Panama, pulled a tour in El Salvador and another in the meat-grinder of Beirut back in the ‘80’s. So he understood danger, he understood threat. And right then he was feeling like the squad was not alone out in those inundated streets, that there were others out there. Others not showing themselves and he did not like it. It was the same sort of feeling, he knew, that you could get out in the jungle knowing there were unfriendlies out there and that one of them was sighting you in his crosshairs. It was not something your brain told you, but something you felt down in the bottom of your guts like an especially cold finger had been shoved up your ass and was wiggling around down there.
Oates could not explain what he felt. It was instinctive, intuitive, and he had learned to trust such things.
When they got to a submerged ballfield?the tops of the dugouts just barely visible, Port-a-potties floating around like empty coffins and bumping up against the wire-mesh behind the catcher’s cage?Oates brought them to a stop in that slimy water.
“Okay, boys,” he said. “I want you all to lock and load. I want magazines in all weapons and I want all safeties engaged until I say different.”
Most of them were ecstatic over the idea, but Hinks said, “You want us to load up? With bullets?”
Oates just shook is head. “Sometimes, Hinks, it’s hard to be your woman. Yes, with bullets.”
“But why?”
“Because those are the regulations according to Henry T. Oates, your resident daddy. Now do what I tell you.”
Dammit, see what you got me into, Angela?
Oates blamed Angela for most things, but never to her face. Because Angela Oates might have weighed a 110 pounds soaking wet and been pretty as a prom queen, but she was the hardest bullbuster a man was likely to meet. And maybe that’s why Oates had married her. Weren’t many that could put him in his place. He loved her and would happily admit as such. But after ten years as an Army wife, she wanted to come back home and Oates was forced to finish his career in the Guard in order to get his retirement. Something he wasn’t crazy about, but did for Angela strictly out of love. And love was a hard master. Because when Oates’ dick had met Angela it had been happy and that’s how Oates knew the rest of him never would be again. Such was love…and hormones.
The soldiers busied themselves inserting magazines and about the time they’d finished and were scanning the grainy darkness with the barrels of their rifles like kids sighting in hostile Indians with tree branches, Liss in the rear boat cried out and fired his rifle. He got off one three-round burst into the night that got everyone agitated and ready to start capping.
But Oates was on top of it. “Who fired that weapon? Who fired that motherfucking weapon and by whose goddamn orders! I said, WHO FIRED
THAT MOTHERFUCKING WEAPON?”
If anyone else was thinking of following suit, their trigger fingers went limp as noodles. The sound of the M- 16 spitting slugs had been loud in the stillness, hell yes, but it was a whisper compared to the booming of the first sergeant’s mouth as the profanities echoed off into the darkness of River Town like cluster bombs striking a target.
“It was Liss,” Torrio said.
“Liss?” Oates turned in the direction of him. He was sitting in the stern of the rear boat with his 16 cradled in his arms. In the glow of the running lights his face looked pinched-up like somebody trying to hold back a scream. “Was that you, Liss? Liss? You answer me, you little cocksucker!”
“Sir…yes sir,” Liss breathed. “I saw someone…I just…I just shot at them.”
“Get those searchlights out there,” Oates said.
Using paddles, the boats were brought around, searchlights panned in the direction Liss had shot. There was nothing out there, just wet leaves and floating garbage, a Styrofoam cooler and a sheet of old plywood.
“What in the hell were you thinking, you fucking moron?” Oates wanted to know. “We’re here to save people not kill them. Jesus H. Christ. Anything out there? Anything at all?”
“Not unless they sank,” Neiderhauser said.
Oates knew more than he was saying. He hadn’t been in the soldiering business as long as he had without being able to sense things. And the vibes blowing off Liss were bad. If he had seen someone, then it would have taken a particular set of circumstances to make him fire. Oates had seen guys his age in Saudi who couldn’t even pull the trigger when some fanatic was charging their APC with a belt full of explosives. So, unless his guess was wrong, Liss had seen something that had truly disturbed him.
They made a grid search of the area using just the oars to swing the boats around. They didn’t find a thing. Oates had pushed aside a mass of leaves to see the water beneath, but it was simply black as the run-off from a transmission. A few bubbles broke the surface, nothing more.
“All right, Liss, I’m guessing you imagined things,” Oates said, trying to remain calm. “But you don’t have the nerve for this, so eject that magazine from your weapon.”
He didn’t seem able, so Hopper did it for him.
Liss just sat there shaking with a pained look on his face like he needed to take a good shit and some monkey had sewn up his rectum as a joke. Whatever was laying down low and simmering in his bowels, it was creeping right up now and filling him. And it was not good. Not good at all.
“I saw someone,” he maintained. “Someone…someone funny.”
Oates spat over the side of the boat. “Funny? Funny like Bozo or Clarabelle? Or Wiggles the Pants-less Clown
