Charles Taylor - Show of Force

"I'll tell you what," David Charles continued, "I'll cut some orders for you right now. We can go over together, be in the same squadron together. Think of the extra combat skins, the leaves in Bangkok, Taipei, Hong Kong, Sydney," he waved his arm toward the other. "You're just going to waste away here chasing secretaries and drinking too much and wishing you could have some excitement. You can't say no."

"No." It was emphatic.

"Okay. It's your choice. Right here," he pointed at some papers on his desk, "right here, I've picked out my billet. XO of a riverboat squadron. I know the CO from my last tour, and we had a great time there. As a matter of fact, that's who convinced me to go. Old Phil Mezey called me a few weeks ago, 'cause he remembered I'd gotten orders to Bupers, and asked if I could fix him up with a riverboat squadron. When I found one and called him back, that's when he asked me if I'd like to be his XO. Boy, was he happy to be going back over."

"Who the hell is this other crazy man?"

"He was one of the officers-in-charge with me during my last tour in the FT boat squadron. Nastys they were called. We bought them from the Norwegians. Phil and I used to race them up and down the "coast after these junks that used to smuggle weapons, people, anything they could get their hands on."

"And you really want to go back?" The other officer, Dan Mundy, leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, the same quizzical look of disbelief in his eyes. "You lifers are all the same. You don't know how to relax." Then he looked over at David more seriously. "You know, things are a hell of a lot different than when you first went over there. That was 1965 when everyone wanted to get there before the war was over. Remember, you had to go get a little combat under your belt if you were going to stay in. Now, you know, there's more people getting killed in a week than got killed in six months when you were there."

"That's the chance you got to take if you're going to make CNO in this man's navy," David grinned. "You would have loved it if you'd been on those Nastys. Damn," he emphasized, "we could wind those things up to forty-five knots. Just skip over the surface. Get up a little sea, and you could just about leap all eighty-five tons of them out of the water at full speed if you hit a swell right. We figured those little yellow people used to fill their pants seeing us coming in at them. Of course, that was part of the idea, according to our squadron commander. Psychological warfare, he called it. He said it would scare them enough so that we'd control those waters and cut off all the arms shipments from up north."

"And did it?"

"Nope. Not really." He folded his arms. "You know we caught an awful lot of them. But I think even more of them got through, 'cause we never heard of gooks running.out of ammunition. Those little mothers were always well armed, and they knew how to use those things. It makes me awful glad I'm not a marine," he finished.

"Jesus Christ. That's just what I'm saying, David. That's a real war over there. You seem to think it's just another firelight. Do you realize you'll have to go back through combat training again for six weeks, just like a goddamn marine. Because that's what you're going to get into. Didn't you see in that ALNAV the other day that they're going to name one of those new Knox- class frigates after some lieutenant who got himself killed in those riverboats? Do you want to have your mother break a bottle of champagne over the bow of the one they name after you?" As an afterthought, he said, "I'd much rather drink it if it's all the same to you."

David's face became more serious. "I know you're right, Dan. But I think I really belong there. And like you said, I'm a lifer. This is my career, and I don't want anything else. I'm still single. And I guess there's really a hell of a lot I've got to learn over there." He thought for a moment back to the days when he and Phil were racing their PT boats up and down the coast, burning diesel fuel like it was water. Christ, he thought, we figured we were just like the cavalry charging in there to break up all those Indians. And that's just the way it is, he said to himself. Not so long ago we were chasing the Indians, and now we're chasing the gooks out of their own country.

"I guess you're right, Dan. I wouldn't want you to go with us. You could get hurt, and there's probably no reason for you to take the chance." He stretched and smiled. "But I don't have much choice, even if I didn't want to go. Hell," he grinned again, "that's why I conned myself into this cushy detailing job — so I could write my own orders! Do you know what I mean?"

The other man was suddenly more serious too. "Yeah, I suppose so. That's why the hell I want to get out after this tour. I extended to get to D.C. And I want to make sure none of this rubs off on me before I get out. You guys are so serious sometimes, I feel like I ought to see a shrink and find out why I don't care to duck bullets. Then I remember. I went to a normal college, a civilian one — not the Baltimore Boat and Barge Company."

"Wrong town," David said, amused. "You mean Annapolis, not Baltimore."

"Like hell I do. I mean Baltimore. In my last wardroom we decided Baltimore was the shiftiest place any of us ever saw, and we decided anyone who went through four years of that shit you did must have thought they were in Baltimore. Hey, I shit you not. I was just over there to see a chick a couple of weeks ago, and it was so bad, I thought I'd taken a wrong turn into the Academy." He stopped. "Hey, David, what am I into this for? You are-writing those orders, aren't you?" He looked at the papers on the desk.

"Right here." David waved some papers at him. "But first I'm going to give myself a week back home, and then three weeks of sin in San Francisco. Followed by those six weeks with the marines, and then off to dear old Saigon in time to help them celebrate their New Year, and in sixteen months I'll be back here with a chest full of fruit salad. And by then, I will have gotten another stripe and be Lieutenant Commander Charles, and our esteemed boss, Captain Kehs, will have written me orders to go out to Monterey, and you take it from there, my friend."

"Okay, my friend. If that's the way you want it. I will look forward to the day when we can sip martinis and celebrate your still being alive." He paused and thought for a minute. "Did you say you're going to be there in time for their New Year — parties and all that stuff?"

"Yup. They call it Tet."

Mundy had been right. Thank God he's not here. I can just see that "I'm always right" look of his, thought David, looking at the water and mud. It wasn't a normal rain compared to what anyone back in the States would call normal. It was a cloudburst, with the exception that it had been raining just as hard since the previous night.

And Mundy had been even more right about another thing. He had received all that marine training because that's what they were doing — acting like marines! The main effort since they'd been there was to protect their added squadrons of Swift boats and river-patrol boats by building a fortress around the base. They laid minefields around the perimeter, dug trenches, built fortifications, went on patrols to cleanse the area, and on and on and on. And when they weren't doing that, they were cleaning weapons and practicing maneuvers in the river. But they were definitely not going out on missions, at least not the type that David had dreamed they would. Their weapons were rifles, grenades, 50-caliber machine guns, mortars — just like marines.

And the worst part was that they looked like marines, right down to the fatigues, flak jackets, and helmets. The sailors in the squadron looked like marines with hair, and he suspected some of them were even beginning to act that way.