Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

But nobody moved.

“All right, come on, guys. I’m not shitting around here. You heard the man. We have an order.”

They just stared at him. Some looked hurt, the rest disgusted.

“I didn’t do anything,” Donny said. “I talked to some Navy lifers and that’s all.”

“Donny, if I flash the peace sign in a bar, will you turn me in to NIS?” someone asked.

“All right, fuck that shit!” Donny bellowed. “I don’t have to explain anything to anybody ! But if I did, I’d point out I didn’t rat anybody out. Now, get into your gear and let’s get the fuck outside or Case’ll have us on a barracks party until 0400 next Tuesday!”

The men got up, but their slow heaviness expressed their bitterness.

“Who’ll take Crowe’s place?” someone asked.

There was no answer.

Julie was released from the lockup at the Washington Coliseum at 4 P.M. that same day, after forty-eight hours of incarceration with several hundred of the more recalcitrant demonstrators. At least physically, it was almost pleasant being arrested; the cops were old hands by this time and as long as everybody cooperated, the process was all right. She spent two nights on a cot in a field where the Washington Redskins practiced when it was their season. The seats of the junky old place rose above like a Pentecostal cathedral from the twenties, and in the pen, all the kids had a good time and nobody watched them too carefully. Grass was abundant; the portable toilets were cleaner than the ones at Potomac Park. The showers were never crowded and she got a good wash for the first time since leaving Arizona in the Peace Caravan. Some of the boys caught fantasy touchdown passes in what had to have been an end zone.

But no word at all from Donny. Had he been there on the bridge? She didn’t know. She’d looked for him, but then it’d all dissolved in confusion and tears as more of the gas flooded in. She remembered crumpling, rubbing her eyes desperately as the gas drifted by, and then there was the shock of the Marines and she found herself looking into the eyes of a boy, a child, really, big and booming behind his lenses; she saw fear in them, or at least as much confusion as she herself felt, and then he was by her and the Marine line moved on, and as she watched, teams of policemen pounced on the demonstrators behind the lines and led them away to buses. It was handled very simply, no big deal at all to anybody concerned.

Only later, in the lockup, did the word come that a girl had somehow died. Julie tried to work it out but could make no sense of it; the Marines had seemed quite restrained, really; it wasn’t anything like Kent State. Still, it was an appalling weight. A girl was dead, and for what? Why was it necessary? In the lockup, they had a television, and Amy Rosenzweig’s young and tender face, freckled, under sprigs of reddish hair, was everywhere. She looked to Julie like a girl she’d grown up with, though she could not remember seeing Amy amid the crowd, but that wasn’t surprising, for there had been thousands, and much confusion on the ground.

They let her out and she went back to the campground in Potomac Park. It was like a Civil War encampment after Gettysburg: mostly empty now that the big week was over and the kids in their multitudes had returned to their campuses and the professional revolutionaries to their secret cabals to plot the next move in the war against the war. Litter was everywhere and the cops no longer bothered. A few tents still stood, but the sense of a new youth culture had vanished. There was no music and no campfires and the Peace Caravan had departed. All, that is, except for Peter.

“Oh, hi.”

“Hi, how are you?”

“Fine. I stayed behind. Jeff and Susie are driving the Micro back. Everybody is with them. They’ll be all right. I wanted to stay here, see if you needed anything.”

“I’m okay, Peter, really I am. Have you seen Donny at all?”

“Him? Jesus, you know what they did to that girl and you want to know where he is?”

“Donny didn’t do anything. Besides, I read the Marines tried to save her.”

“If there hadn’t been any Marines, Amy would still be here,” Peter said obstinately, and then the two just looked at each other. He drew her close and hugged her and she hugged back.

“Thanks for hanging around, Peter.”

“Ah, it’s okay. How was the Coliseum?”

“Okay. Not so bad. They finally reduced charges, parading without a permit. They let us all go today.”

“Well,” he said. “If you want me to drive you to the Marine Barracks or something, I will. Whatever you want. I have a VW from a guy. It’s no problem.”

“I’m supposed to get married this week.”

“That’s fine. That’s cool. Good luck and God bless. Let me see if I can help you in any way.”

“I think I ought to hang here until I hear from Donny. I don’t know what happened to him.”

“Sure,” said Peter. “That’s a good idea.”

The alert was finally cancelled at 1600 that afternoon, to the cheers and relief of the companies. It took an hour or so to actually stand down — that is, to return the rifles to the armory, to shed and repack the combat gear in its appropriate place in the lockers, to shed the utilities, bag them for the laundry, shower and shave. But by 1700, when the work was done, the captain at last released his men — the married to go home, the rest to relax in town or on base as they preferred, with only a few left on skeleton duty, such as duty NCO or armory watch.

That is, except for Donny.

He was done, and still in his cone of isolation, finally changing into civvies — jeans and a white Izod shirt — when a runner came from headquarters and said he was wanted ASAP. No, he didn’t have to dress in the uniform of the day.

Donny returned to Captain Dogwood’s office, where Bonson and Weber waited.

“Captain, we could take him to our offices. Or would you allow us to use yours?”

“Yes, sir, go ahead,” said Dogwood, who wanted to get home to see his own wife and kids too. “Stay here. Duty NCO will lock up when you’re finished.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said Bonson.

So Donny was alone with them at last. They were in civilian clothes this time, Weber looking like the Sigma Nu he’d undoubtedly been at Nebraska, and the dour Bonson in slacks and a black sport shirt, buttoned to the top. He looked almost like a priest of some sort.

“Coffee?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, sit down, Fenn. You don’t have to stand.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Donny sat.

“We want to go over your testimony with you. Tomorrow there’ll be an arraignment, at the Judge Advocate General’s Offices at the Navy Yard, nothing elaborate. It’s simply a preliminary to an indictment and trial. Ten hundred. We’ll send a car. Your undress blues will be fine; I’ve arranged with Captain Dogwood for you to be off the duty roster. Then I think we’ll give you a nice bit of leave. Two weeks? By that time, we should be able to cut orders for your new stripes. Sergeant Fenn. How does that sound?”

“Well, I—”

“Tomorrow won’t be hard, Fenn, I assure you. You’ll be sworn in and then you’ll recount how at my instruction you befriended Crowe and traveled with him into a number of peace movement functions. You’ll tell how you saw him in the presence of peace movement strategists such as Trig Carter. You saw them in serious conversation, intense conversation. You needn’t testify that you overheard him giving away deployment intelligence. Just tell what you saw, and let the JAG prosecutor do the rest. It’s enough for an indictment. He’ll have a lawyer, a JAG JG, who’ll ask you some rote questions. Then it’s over and done and off you go.”