Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

Donny found himself hard against not an enemy lineman or a Visigoth but a girl of about fourteen, with freckles and red, frizzy hair and braces, headband, tie-dyed T-shirt, breastless and innocent. But she had more hate on her face than any Visigoth ever, and she whacked him hard on the helmet with her placard, which, he read as it descended, stated MAKE WAR NO MORE!

The placard smacked him, its thin wood broke and it slipped away. He felt his body ramming the girl’s and then she was gone, either knocked back or pushed down and stepped over. He hoped she wasn’t hurt; why hadn’t she just fled?

More tear gas drifted in. Screams arose. Melees had broken out everywhere as demonstrators leaned against Marines, who leaned back. One could feel strain as the two leaned and leaned and tried to press the other into panic.

It only lasted a second, really; then the demonstrators broke and fled and Donny watched as they emptied the bridge, leaving behind port-a-pots and sandals and squashed Tab cans and water buckets, the battlefield detritus of a vanquished enemy. There seemed no point in pursuing.

“Marines, stand easy,” the sergeant major yelled. “Masks off.”

The masks came off and the boys sucked hard at the air.

“Good job, good job. Anybody hurt?” yelled the colonel.

But before anybody could answer, a considerable ruckus arose to the left. Policemen were clustered around the railing of the bridge and the word soon reached the Marines that someone had panicked as they had approached, and jumped off. A police helicopter hovered low, an ambulance arrived and paramedics got out urgently. Police boats were called, but it took only a few minutes to make it clear that someone was dead.

The scandal played out pretty much as expected, depending on the perspective of the account. GIRL, 17, KILLED IN DEMONSTRATION, the Post headlined. The more conservative Star said, DEMONSTRATOR DIES IN BRIDGE MIX-UP. MARINES MURDER GIRL, 17, argued the Washington City Paper .

No matter; for the Marine Corps the news was very bad indeed. Seven liberal House members demanded an investigation into the matter of Amy Rosenzweig, seventeen, of Glencoe, Illinois, who had evidently panicked in the tear gas and the approach of the Marines and climbed over the railing. Before anybody could reach her, though several young Marines tried, she was gone. Walter Cronkite appeared to generate a small tear in his left eye. Gordon Petersen, of WTOP, developed a catch in his voice as he discussed the incident with his co-anchor, Max Robinson.

WHY MARINES? wondered the Post two days later on its editorial page.

U.S. Marines are among the world’s most feared fighting forces, an elite who have honored their country and their service in hostile environments since 1776. But what were they doing on the 14th Street Bridge May 1?

Surely, with their esprit de corps and constant immersion in the theory and practice of land warfare at its most savage, they were a poor choice for the Justice Department to deploy against peaceful demonstrators who had taken up a harmless “occupation” of the bridge as an expression of the long-precious tradition of civil disobedience. The D.C. police force, the Park Police, or even Guardsmen from the District’s own unit, all riot-trained and all experienced in dealing with demonstrations, would have been preferable to combat infantrymen, who tend to perceive all confrontations as us against them.

The place for the Marines is on the battlefields of the world, and the parade ground of the Eighth and I barracks, not on American streets. If the tragedy of Amy Rosenzweig teaches us anything, it teaches us that.

As for the Eighth and I Marines, in the immediate aftermath they were trucked back to the barracks, where they remained on alert and in isolation for two days. Teams from the FBI and the District Police and the U.S. Park Police worked over the members of Alpha Company, Second Platoon, Second Squad, who’d been on the extreme left wing of the crowd control formation, and who had seen the girl hanging on for dear life. Three of them had actually dropped their rifles, thrown away their masks and helmets and rushed to her, but in the instant before they reached her, she closed her eyes and gave her soul to God, relaxing backward into space. They got to the railing in time to see her hit the water thirty-five feet below; they got DC Police there within seconds, and within minutes a DC rescue boat was on the scene. If they’d had a rope, they would have rappelled down to the water themselves, but a quickly arriving platoon sergeant had forbidden any of them to jump off the bridge in attempts to rescue. It was just too high. And it wouldn’t have mattered. When she was located thirteen minutes later, it became quickly apparent that Amy’s neck had been broken by the impact of striking the water at an extreme angle. A report later exonerated the Marines and made it clear that no actual force had been applied to Amy. The Marines said she chose to martyr herself; the media said the Marines killed her. Who knew the truth?

On the third day, they arrested Crowe.

Rather, under small arms and under the supervision of two officers from the Naval Investigation Service, Lieutenant Commander Bonson and Ensign Weber, four Marine military policemen marched into the barracks where he and the rest of B company were relaxing while maintaining ready-alert status, and put him in handcuffs. Captain Dogwood and the battalion colonel watched it happen.

Then Lieutenant Commander Bonson came up to Donny and said in a loud voice, “Good job, Corporal Fenn. Damn fine work.”

“Good work, Fenn,” said Weber. “You got our man.”

In the aftermath, a space seemed to spread around Donny. He felt it open up, as if oceans of atmosphere had been vacuumed out of the area between himself and his squad and others in the platoon. Nobody would meet his eyes. Some looked at him in horror. Others merely left the vicinity, went into other squad bays or outside to lounge near the trucks.

“What the hell did he mean?” asked Platoon Sergeant Case.

“Uh, I don’t know, Sergeant,” Donny said. “Uh, I don’t know what the hell they were talking about.”

“You had contact with NIS?”

“They talked to me.”

“About what?”

“Ah. Well,” and Donny swallowed, “they had some security concerns and somehow I got—”

“Let me tell you something, goddammit, Fenn. If it happens in my platoon, you come tell me about it! You got that? This ain’t a one-man goddamn motherfucking operation. You come tell me, Fenn, or by God I will make your young sorry ass sorry you didn’t!”

The man’s blazing spit flew into Donny’s face and his eyes lit up like flares. A vein throbbed on his forehead.

“Sergeant, they told me—”

“I don’t give a monkey’s fuck what they told you, Fenn. If it happens in my platoon, I have to know about it, or you ain’t worth pig shit to me. Copy that, Corporal?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“You and me, boy, we got some serious talk ahead.”

Donny swallowed.

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Now, get these men off their asses. I’m not going to have them sitting around all goddamn day like they just won the fucking war all by themselves. Get ’em on work detail, drill ‘em, do something with them.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“And you and I will talk later.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Donny turned in the wake of Sergeant Case’s departure, which was more like an ejection from a jet fighter than a normal retrograde adjustment.

“Okay,” he said to the squad. “Okay, let’s get outside and run through some riot control drills. There’s no point just sitting in here.”