Tiger the Lurp Dog: A Novel (5 page)

Wolverine smiled and nodded. “If it’s not on the map,” he said, “it ain’t out there. Water isn’t gonna flow uphill just to make a waterfall. Any fool knows that. What’s wrong with your buddy Marvel, anyway? All this talk about luck, and whatnot.”

Mopar shrugged. “Just his personality.”

“Personality? Shit!” Wolverine hollered over the noise of the engine and the rotors. “The Army won’t let you have one of those until you make E-7!”

The helicopter looped back off another pass over the RZ and then headed on back to the base camp. Wolverine rode all the way home with his eyes on his map and his right hand tight around the pistol grip of his CAR-15. There was a waterfall out there somewhere, but now that he wasn’t the only one who knew about it, he no longer wanted to find it.

M
OPAR COULD NEVER GET
to sleep the night before a mission. There was always too much to do, too many things to prepare, and too much to worry about. There were maps and codebooks to memorize, map overlays showing proposed and alternate routes of march, Escape and Evasion routes, and rally points to be prepared. Equipment had to be drawn from supply, and grenades, Claymore mines, and demolitions checked out of the ammo bunker. Weapons had to be test-fired, radios checked, morphine and pill kits signed for and distributed. A helicopter overflight of the Recon Zone had to be made, and then after working through late chow, a premission briefback had to be presented to the pilots and representatives of the Two Shop.

By the time all this was accomplished it was usually late at night, and the final hours before trooping down to the chopper pad to wait for first light were usually given over to the preparation of individual gear—spraying boots and pant legs with DDT to keep off the leeches, taping down anything that could rattle, filling canteens, selecting rations, and packing and unpacking rucksacks and moving things around until the weight rode easy on the straps, and everything that might have to be reached instantly fell easily to hand.

Mopar always had time to worry the night before a mission. Once he was on the ground in a Recon Zone he never had any trouble relaxing, but the night before insertion his stomach always ached so badly he was forced to make hourly trips to the shit-house, and no matter how warm the night air might be, he always felt a chill.

Tonight he was more nervous than usual. On the overflight he had argued with Wolverine about his choice of a primary insertion Landing Zone. There was a stream running through the valley in the northwest corner of the Recon Zone, and Mopar had wanted to go in there, on a sandbar where the stream bent to the southeast. But Wolverine had vetoed that suggestion with what Mopar felt was undue and arrogant haste. Wolverine had found an LZ in the south, a long swath of open ground halfway up a ridge. He wouldn’t even consider Mopar’s sandbar LZ as an alternate, although he had been willing to grant that it should go on the overlays as a possible emergency extraction LZ, in case the team had to get out in a hurry and couldn’t make it anyplace better.

“Jesus H. Christ, Mopar!” Wolverine had exploded when the subject came up for the last time, just before the briefback. “I don’t have time to argue with you about this. We already have an LZ—
my
LZ—marked down on the overlays. The pilot that flew that overflight is inserting us tomorrow, and he likes it. And, goddamn it, I’m sure I know more about LZ selection than any Spec Four in this man’s army! So why don’t you just shut the fuck up and act like a soldier?”

When Marvel tried to come to Mopar’s defense by pointing out that Sergeant Farley, the last team leader, used to insert on sandbars all the time, Wolverine cut him off with a fierce look and a disparaging comment about Farley being so stupid he got himself blown away on one of his wonderful low-ground LZs.

This was the first time any of them had seen Wolverine lose his temper, and Mopar—although still angry himself and convinced that his sandbar was an ideal insertion LZ—wisely decided to shut up about it. Marvel and Gonzales had not gone on the overflight and hadn’t seen any of the potential Landing Zones, but they were clearly on Wolverine’s side. Marvel had only been trying to explain why Mopar liked the sandbar, but he made it clear that he didn’t want to go in on it. So Mopar, realizing that he was completely outranked and outvoted, allowed as how he had nothing against a fast, high LZ like Wolverine had chosen and had only been playing the devil’s advocate with his sandbar LZ.

Later that night, however, as he sat on top of the operations bunker brushing burrs from Tiger’s coat, Mopar gave voice to his misgivings. “High ground …” he muttered, pinning Tiger down with his elbow so he wouldn’t be able to squirm away from the brush. “Every gook for three ridgelines is gonna be watching the high ground as soon as they hear the ships.” Tiger wiggled and squirmed and yipped when the brush caught a tangle of hair in his tail, but Mopar held him down and kept brushing.

“We could come in skimmin’ low over the river and unass over that sandbar without slowing down—but no. Wolverine’s got to have his fuckin’ high ground!”

Mopar knew that Special Forces reconnaissance teams usually inserted at last light, when most of the enemy troops were likely to be concentrated in the draws and valleys close to the water. But the Lurps went in after first light, usually long enough after first light for the fog to have lifted and the enemy to have moved away from the rivers and streams, back into the high ground. That, at least, was the rationale Sergeant Farley had used for going in along stream beds and on sandbars—that plus the fact that such insertions did not require any slow and highly visible descent of the insertion helicopter—and even if Farley had gotten himself killed on an LZ, it hadn’t been close to water, and it was an extraction, not an insertion LZ.

Wolverine’s chosen LZ was just too visible from the next ridge-line for Mopar’s peace of mind, and if nobody else was willing to listen to him, he could at least blow a little steam Tiger’s way without having to worry about sounding like some sort of malcontent pussy. Tiger had never ridden in a helicopter, and he had no opinion one way or the other regarding insertion LZs. All he cared about at the moment was escaping the brush, but Mopar held him tight and wouldn’t let him go. Marvel Kim had persuaded Mopar that it was good luck for him to groom Tiger the night before a mission, and while Mopar still had a few doubts, Marvel did know a lot about luck and rituals. He had been right about some strange things in the past, so Mopar always made a point of brushing Tiger before a mission—just in case.

“Someday,” Mopar said, putting down the brush and stroking Tiger’s back with his hand, “I’m gonna have to take you out with us and let you smell all those good nasty smells out there in the jungle.”

Now that Mopar had put away the brush, Tiger relaxed. He licked Mopar’s hand and rolled over on his back to have his belly rubbed.

“It’s a good thing you don’t bark much, but you’ll have to get over this fear of helicopters if you want to go with us.”

It was total fantasy. Mopar knew that he’d be worried to distraction having to keep track of Tiger in the field. But it was fun to think about, and Tiger seemed to enjoy hearing it, because he sighed, and closed his eyes, and stretched contentedly as Mopar talked.

“That whole place, the jungle is rotting and stinks to high heaven—you’ll love it! Maybe we can train you to sniff out trails and caches. You’d like it. I know you would.”

Tiger sneezed, then twisted and rolled and scrambled to his feet, his ears back, his ruff bristling, and his nose twitching nervously. He could smell cigar smoke and sweat, and he could hear someone coming up the ramp out of the bunker. It was J. D., Mopar’s first team leader and since Farley’s death one of the two soul brothers remaining in the Lurp platoon. Tiger, unredeemable bigot that he was, lowered his head and backed off suspiciously.

“Tiger, the Ku Klux Lurp Dog! What’s going on, Tiger? You and Mister Mopar here having a nice chat?”

J. D. laughed and stepped out of the darkness at the bunker entrance. He was wearing mirror sunglasses, even though it had been dark for hours. With the tip of his cigar glowing like the red boomlight of a helicopter, he gestured toward the gloomy sea of clouds rolling up on the stars to the west of the perimeter.

“Them’s muddy skies, Mister Mopar,” he said. “By the first light tomorrow, your whole Recon Zone gonna be sewed up tighter’n a dyke’s cunt,” he smiled. “But I be out there in
my
RZ, just kickin’ ass and takin’ names. I be pickin’ pockets and icing dinks while you Two-Four clowns be back here burning shit and filling sandbags.” He took a puff on his cigar and blew the smoke at Tiger. Tiger sneezed again, then snorted indignantly, and would have jumped off the bunker and disappeared into the shadows if Mopar hadn’t grabbed him and held him there.

“Mister Mopar … Mister Mopar …” J. D. sighed wistfully and shook his head. “You shouldn’t never have let that crazy dead nigger Farley talk you onto his team. Now let’s examine, what do you have? You have some kind of Wolverine be your team leader, and you find yourself much worse off than before. You’ll see in the morning. That fog be setting on your RZ, and you don’t be gettin’ in. But J. D.’s Rangers—we be out there sneakin’, and peekin’, and havin’ us a high old time.” He glanced up at the sky. “One look. That’s all it takes and I
know
what kind of weather we be having tomorrow!”

Mopar chuckled. “Where the fuck did you learn about the weather? Trenton? They don’t have any weather in Trenton! You’re outa your mind, J. D. That soup is movin’ in your direction, sure as shit. It might blow over, but it’s moving for your area, not ours.”

Mopar knew that J. D.’s Recon Zone was half a map-sheet to the north of his own, and judging from the Two Shop briefing they’d sat through together, the place was swarming with NVA.

“You might have to kick a little ass if you can’t keep your bums from stumblin’ around and snoring,” Mopar said. “But you won’t have time to stick around taking names.”

Mopar was a little jealous of J. D.’s Recon Zone because his own promised to be relatively tame—even if, as he feared, somebody on the next ridgeline was watching the LZ.

J. D. danced off a way and flipped his cigar into a puddle. “Now think on this, Mister Mopar: My Recon Zone be so far back in the NVA rear that they got an R&R center there. You think we’re the only ones be gettin’ R&R in this war, Mister Mopar? Shee-it! Them NVA got theirselves an R&R center put us to shame. They got them some Chinese bargirls and the best Russian vodka—and it all be waiting for me up there in RZ Zulme. You be stuck back here burning shit down to the shit-house and trying keep that no-pride Tiger from running off with the used toilet paper, while we be out there capturing some of them sweet Chicom bargirls. Think about the golden opportunity you let slip by! You shoulda stayed on my team, Mister Mopar. Did J. D. ever lie? Baby, you know when I be telling the truth! Chicom bargirls, and you didn’t want none!”

He’d thrown away his cigar, but now he lit a Kool, took a long drag, then opened his mouth to let the smoke tumble out, gray, and lazy, and uninhaled.

“Shee-it,” he said, all of his bravado gone. “Truth is, I ain’t gonna be fucking around doing something crazy this time. I aim to go in nice and quiet and sneakylike, find me the thickest bush I can, and lay dog for three days. We’ll be moving just enough to keep Pappy Stagg and the Two Shop happy, but we won’t be trying anything bold this time. I leave all that bold bullshit to you Two-Four chumps, on your four-man team. Who do you got for four men, Mister Mopar? You got a Special Forces madman for a TL. Have one crazy gook commo man walkin’ slack with an M-79, and a pointman who talks to dogs, then end it off with a Cuban tailgunner who don’t know how to talk at all. You be the ones havin’ an interesting mission, Mister Mopar. Not us.”

Mopar relaxed his grip on Tiger and watched him jump off the bunker and zip off around the back of the tent after a rat or a toad or something.

“That isn’t the way Marvel has it blocked out. He’s been charting everybody’s future, ever since Wolverine came into the platoon. I don’t know what’s in store for your team, but I do know that Marvel says Two-Four’s gonna have a very boring mission.”

“Marvel!” J. D. slapped the top of the bunker and cackled with delight. “That boy Marvel’s my favorite zip! That boy Marvel’s my favorite radioman and my favorite on an M-79. But that boy Marvel’s more full of shit than a cholera submarine. That boy Marvel’s more superstitious than an Alabama swamp witch. Always be assblowing about luck, and he ain’t even been on J. D.’s Rangers! Marvel? What the fuck does Marvel know about RZ Zulme? There ain’t no waterfall there!”

The pilots of the insertion and escort ships were down in the operations bunker huddled around the radio, sipping coffee, and waiting for a weather report, and the crew chiefs and doorgunners were pulling last-minute maintenance by flashlight, when Two-Four filed down to the chopper pad. It was still dark—darker in fact than it had been when Mopar and J. D. were watching the clouds roll in the night before—and it wasn’t until Gonzales passed around an unfiltered penlight so that the men could check their camouflage face-paint in their signal mirrors that Mopar noticed the gap where Wolverine’s front teeth had been. Wolverine caught his stare and grinned to show that he still had the rest of his teeth.

“Never wear my falsies in the field,” he explained. “Too shiny.” He nudged Marvel Kim to get his attention, then shone the light on his own face and grinned again. “How’s it look, Kim? You’re the expert on what’s lucky and what ain’t—you got anything against me leaving my teeth in my footlocker?”

Marvel knew no more about Wolverine’s false front teeth than Mopar did, but he didn’t seem the least surprised. He was, however, somewhat puzzled by Wolverine’s question.

“No, of course not. Nobody ever said false teeth aren’t lucky—but if you feel better without them, then fine. No teeth and false teeth have the same luck. Old men have gaps and false teeth, and that makes them lucky.”

Anything having to do with old men was lucky to Marvel Kim.