The Phantom Blooper by Gustav Hasford Read Free Book Online

communicating?"
    When the Beaver whimpers and his eyes beg, I say, " Sin Loi , Beaver--tough shit. Be advised, mercy is not what I do best." I pull the razor and the blue blade slices smoothly through the Beaver's tongue an inch deep, splitting the tip. Blood squirts out with such force that it shoots all the way across the bunker and splatters in a shiny wet pattern across the gray wall of sandbags.
    Black John Wayne releases his grip on the Beaver and the Beaver drops to his knees. Blood pours out over the Beaver's lower lip and drips down his chin like drool. The Beaver makes a horrible nonsound, with his hands in front of his face, afraid to touch.
    Someone says, "Charlie got a bloop gun!"
    Eddie Haskell moans, rubs his head, tries to get up.
    Outside the bunker, small-arms fire pops up urgently a hundred yards down the perimeter and incoming mortar shells start falling.
    I step outside in time to see Private Owens, the New Guy, waddling past the bunker at a double-time, squealing in his high-pitched voice: "SAPPERS IN THE WIRE! SAPPERS IN THE WIRE!"

    As the scattered small-arms fire is picked up all along the perimeter, Black John Wayne's people double-time out of the bunker and we all haul ass into the shit.
    Howitzer shells arc out over our heads. Recoilless rifles belch flechette darts in murderous prickly clouds. Claymores explode, raining deadly steel balls. Blips of red light blink across the fields of fire and interlace into wavering hypnotic patterns.
    Ignoring the fact that our supporting arms are slaughtering them, crack assault troops from the 304th NVA Division, the heroes of Dien Bien Phu, men harder than grenades, pour into attack lanes blown in our wire by the Dac Cong , elite sappers teams, crawling naked and greased through our wire under fire.
    The sappers shove bangalore torpedoes--bamboo packed with TNT--into the concertina, tanglefoot, and mine fields. The sappers detonate the bangalores by hand, blowing themselves into bloody chunks of meat so their friends can get at us.
    As I double-time along the perimeter I check the slit trenches for non-hackers, juice freaks, and heads. I drag out the sleepy, the confused, and the angry. Every Marine at Khe Sanh is bone tired, fed up, and wasted. But they are United States Marines. So they get their heads and asses wired together, grab their pieces, and double-time toward the sound of the guns.
    I ignore the Beaver's junkies. The junkies don't even carry weapons anymore. Three heroin addicts have climbed up onto the black metal carcass of a burned truck. With faces like empty rooms and eyes like slivers of egg white, they watch the battle.
    Bullets bounce off the deck.
    I dive into the guard bunker in the First Platoon area, twisting my ankle in the process and knocking a chunk of skin off of my damned knee.
    Thunder and Daddy D.A. are already on deck. Daddy D.A., honcho of Second Platoon, is manning the field radio, calling in close air support. He says to me, "The birds are in the air. Phantoms and B-52s."
    Thunder stands on a firing parapet of dirt-filled rope-handled artillery shell crates, calmly sighting in with the Redfield sniper's scope on his Remington 700 high-powered hunting rifle.
    On quiet days when NVA grunts with a piece of slack sit swapping scuttlebutt and scarfing up a few bennies, a thousand yards downrange, sometimes bang , their commanding officer's brains come out, leaving the NVA snuffies squatting in the treeline with mouths open because they never even heard a shot.
    "Thunder," I say. "Want some, get some."
    Thunder looks back at me, grins, gives me a thumbs-up.
    I should remind Thunder that this is not the time to be an artist, and that he should bust caps. But I know that Thunder has his own style. Thunder has said many times, "I am the aristocrat of snipers--I only shoot officers."
    Thunder's Remington kicks, crack-ka , and somewhere in beautiful downtown Hanoi there's a gook mama-san who does not know that she no longer has a