Nightmare Range by Martin Limon Read Free Book Online Page B

comic book.
    “Oh, yeah. Heard you guys were coming. Hold on. The duty officer wants to talk to you.”
    After a few minutes, a little man with his chest stuck out and face like a yapping Chihuahua appeared. He seemed lost in his highly starched fatigues. Little gold butter bars flapped from his collar.
    “The commanding officer told me to give you guys a message.”
    We waited.
    The lieutenant tried to expand his chest. The starched green material barely moved.
    “Don’t mess with our people. We have a good MP company down here; any muggings that happen, we’ll take care of them; and we don’t need you two sending phony reports up to Seoul, trying to make us look bad.”
    His chest deflated slightly. He seemed exhausted and out of breath.
    “Is that it?”
    “Yeah.”
    Ernie walked around him and looked back up at the desk sergeant. “How many patrols are you going to have out at Texas Street tonight?”
    “Four. Three MPs per jeep.”
    “Three?”
    The desk sergeant shrugged. “We’d have four per jeep if we could. The advance party of the
Kitty Hawk
’s arriving tonight.”
    “All patrols roving?”
    “No. One in the center of the strip, two more on either end, and one patrol roving.”
    “You must put your studs in the center.”
    “You got that right.”
    “Who performs your liaison with the Shore Patrol?”
    The desk sergeant shrugged again. “The lieutenant here, such as it is. Mainly they run their own show, out of the port officer’s headquarters down by the docks.”
    “Thanks. If we find out anything—and there’s time—we’ll let your MPs make the arrest.”
    “Don’t do us any favors. Those squids can kill each other for all I care.”
    The lieutenant shot him a look. The desk sergeant glanced at the lieutenant and then back down at the comic book on his desk.
    We turned to walk out. Ernie winked at the lieutenant, who glared after us until we faded into the thickening fog of the Pusan night.
    Texas Street was long and bursting with music and brightly flashing neon. The colors and the songs changed as we walked down the street, and the scantily clad girls waved at us through beaded curtains, trying to draw us in. Young American sailorsin blue jeans and nylon jackets with embroidered dragons on the back bounced from bar to bar enjoying the embraces of the “business girls,” who still outnumbered them. The main force of their shipmates had not arrived yet, and the
Kitty Hawk
would not dock until dawn. But Texas Street was ready for them.
    We saw the MPs. The jeep in the center of Texas Street was parked unobtrusively next to a brick wall, its radio crackling. The three MPs smoked and talked, big brutes all. We stayed away from them and concentrated on blending into the crowd.
    Ernie was having no trouble at all. In bar after bar we toyed with the girls, bought drinks only for ourselves, and kept from answering their questions about which ship we were on by constantly changing the subject.
    One of the girls caught on that we were in the army by our unwillingness to spend too much money and by the few Korean words that we let slip out.
    “Don’t let the mama-san hear you speaking Korean,” she said. “If she does, she will know that you’re in the army, and she will not let me talk to you.”
    “What’s wrong with GIs?”
    I could answer that question with volumes, but I wanted to hear her version.
    “All GI Cheap Charlie. Sailors are here for only a short time. They spend a lot of money.”
    We filed the economics lesson, finished our beers, and staggered to the next bar.
    Periodically we hung around near one of the MP patrols, within earshot of their radio, waiting for a report of a fight or a mugging. So far it was a quiet night.
    Later, a group of white uniformed sailors on Shore Patrol duty ran past us, holding onto their revolvers and their hats, their nightsticks flapping at their sides. We followed, watched while they broke up a fight in one of the bars. A gray navy van