Jungle Rules by Charles W. Henderson Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “Nothing in our profession requires that kind of urgency, Captain,” Dickinson snubbed. “If the staff jeep is out, then call the command taxi service or request a vehicle and driver from the motor pool. However, and another rule: Don’t request a vehicle without getting my authorization first.”
    “How about a do?” O’Connor said smartly. “You have any of those? A do this or a do that?”
    Yes, I have a do for you, Captain O’Connor,” Dickinson said wryly. “Do not piss me off!”
    “Sir, ah, that’s not a do,” Kirkwood said, gesturing with his index finger raised, trying to appear innocent but feeling good with adding his smart, two cents’ worth. “You see, don’t is simply a contraction of do not. That’s another don’t, sir.”
    “You just pissed me off!” Dickinson said, standing from his six-wheeled swivel chair and sending it banging into the government-gray steel credenza behind him. “Smart-ass behavior like that will only buy you beaucoup trouble around here, bub. Given your attitudes, you two clowns ought to fit in very nicely with the rest of the misfits in the defense section.”
    “No serious swimmers, then, I take it, sir, in the defense pool?” O’Connor said, smiling, seeing the major’s anger and reaching for a fresh nerve to grate raw.
    “Not a one, Captain,” Dickinson hissed through his clenched teeth. “Not a one.”
    THE AFTERNOON SUN blazed across the steel matting, concrete, and hard-packed dirt at the infantry base and air facility at Chu Lai. The bustling aviation and ground complex occupied by the U.S. Army’s Twenty-third Infantry “Americal” Division headquarters along with other elements of Task Force Oregon, and Marine Corps aviation and ground units of the First Wing and First Division sat smack in the middle of a stretch of nasty sand hills and hamlets that teamed with Viet Cong, just an hour’s drive south of Da Nang on Highway One. While the South China Sea washed its clear blue tide along Chu Lai’s east-side beaches, hostile rice paddies, canals, and thickly forested hedgerows, broken by a hillock here or a streambed there, stretched north, south, and west from the American forces’ compound. Farther west, the dangerous lands that the grunts had come to call Indian country, places such as Happy Valley, Dodge City, and Charlie Ridge, lay in the mountains and steep terrain that overlooked the Chu Lai rice flats. Closer by, equally enemy rich haunts such as the Riviera and Que Son Hills loomed just outside Chu Lai’s fences.
    Celestine Anderson had spent the past nine days pounding holes in his boots, walking patrol in those dangerous suburbs with catchy names. Now, as his chopper descended onto home turf, he couldn’t remember the last time he had closed his eyes and really slept. Slept with a good dream ending. Slept like a Saturday night cold beer and hot steak dinner.
    Chu Lai looked awfully good to him as his tired eyes gazed out the back hatchway of the long, green grasshopper-shaped twin-rotor CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter when it finally set down at the Marines’ base, letting off his bedraggled security platoon. He thought of how satisfying a real meal would taste as he bounded down the rear ramp. So instead of going straight to his hooch and crashing for a long and badly needed sleep, he ambled up the dusty jeep road that led to the headquarters complex’s dining facility.
    He had stood listening post duty the last night on patrol, so he hadn’t even gotten to shut his eyes in two days. As the afternoon sun baked his shaved head and bare arms, he kept his face turned down, following the tracks in the road, shielding his bloodshot, sandpaper-feeling eyes. Just something warm in his stomach. Something to make him sleep good. That’s all he needed now.
    “Yo, bro,” a familiar voice called from ahead. Celestine cupped his hands along his forehead, shading his eyes, and squinted to see which of his few friends shouted at