Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Oh, Donny.” She blinked awake. Even out of sleep, with a slightly puffy face and her hair a rat’s nest, she seemed to him quite uniquely beautiful. He leaned over and kissed her.

“Don’t do anything stupid and noble,” she said. “They’ll kill you.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

He dressed and drove the mile or so through the section of city called SE, passing Union Station, then left up the hill until he was in the shadow of the great Capitol dome, turning down Pennsylvania, then down Eighth. He arrived, found parking on a street just off the shops across from the barracks, locked the car and headed to the main gate.

From across Eighth Street, the little outpost of Marine elegance seemed serene. The officers’ houses along the street were stately and magnificent; between them, Donny could see men on the parade deck in their modified blues, at parade practice, endlessly trying to master the arcane requirements of duty and ritual. The imprecations of the NCOs rose in the air, harsh, precise, demanding. The grass on which the young men toiled was deep green, intense and pure, like no other green in Washington in that hot, bleak spring.

Finally, he walked across the street to the main gate, where a PFC watched him come.

“Corporal Fenn, you’ve been reported UA,” the PFC said.

“I know. I’ll take care of it.”

“I’ve been ordered to notify your company commander of your arrival.”

“Do your duty, then, Private. Do you call Shore Patrol?”

“They didn’t say anything about that. But I have to call Captain Dogwood.”

“Go ahead, then. I’m changing into my duty uniform.”

“Yes, Corporal.”

Donny walked through the main gate, across the cobblestone parking lot and turned left down Troop Walk to the barracks.

As he went, he was aware of a strange phenomenon: the world seemed to stop, or at least the Marine Corps world. It seemed that whole marching platoons halted to follow his progress. He felt hundreds of eyes on him, and the air suddenly emptied of its usual fill of barked commands.

Donny went in, climbed the ladder well as he had done so many hundreds of times, turned left on the second deck landing and into the squad bay, at the end of which was his little room.

He unlocked his locker, stripped, slipped into flipflops and a towel and marched to the showers, where he scalded himself in water and disinfectant soap. He washed, dried, and headed back to his room, where he slipped on a new pair of boxers and pulled out his oxfords.

They could be better. For the next ten minutes he applied the full weight of his attention to the shoes, in regulation old Marine Corps fashion, until he had burnished the leather to a high gleam. As he finished the shoes, the tough professional figure of Platoon Sergeant Case came to hover in the door.

“I had to put you on UA, Fenn,” he said, in that old Corps voice that sounded like sandpaper on brass. “Do you want me to Article Fifteen your young ass?”

“I was late. I had personal business. I apologize.”

“You’re not on the duty roster. They say you’ve got some legal obligations at ten hundred.”

“Yes, Sergeant. In the Navy Yard.”

“Well, I’ll get you off report. You do the right thing today, Marine. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Case left him alone after that.

Though he hadn’t been so ordered, and in fact didn’t even know the uniform of the day, he decided to put on his blue dress A uniform. He pulled on socks and taped them to his shins so that they’d never fall, selected a pair of blue dress trousers from the hanger and pulled them on. He tied his shiny oxfords. He pulled on a T-shirt, and over it, finally, the blue dress tunic with its bright brass buttons and red piping. He pulled tight the immaculately tailored tunic, and buttoned up to that little cleric’s collar, where the eagle, globe and anchor stood out in brass bas-relief. He pulled on a white summer belt, drawing it tight, giving him the torso of a young Achilles on a stroll outside Troy. His white summer gloves and white summer cover completed the transformation into total Marine.

The medals, reduced to ribbons, stood out on his chest — nothing spectacular, for the Marines are a dour bunch, not into show: only a smear of red denoting the very hot day when he’d slithered through rice water and buffalo shit with half the world shooting at him to pull a wounded PFC back into the world, to life, to possibility. The blur of purple was for the bullet that had passed through his chest a few weeks later. The rest was basically crap: a National Defense Ribbon, the in-service RSVN award, the Presidential Unit Citation for the overall III Marine Amphibious Force presence in the Land of Bad Things, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and expert marksman in rifle and pistol with second awards. It was no chest of fruit salad, but it did say, This man is a Marine, who’s been in the field, who was shot at, who tried to do his duty.

He adjusted the white summer cover until it came low over his blue eyes, then turned and went to face Commander Bonson.

He left the barracks and headed toward the captain’s office, where he was to be picked up. The XO wandered by and he snapped off a quick salute.

“Fenn, is that the uniform of the day?”

“For what I have to do, sir, yes, sir.”

“Fenn— Never mind. Go ahead.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Two NCOs, including Case, watched him go. By the time he reached Troop Walk, by some strange vibration in the air, everyone knew he was in his full dress blues. The men, in their modifieds, watched him with suspicion, maybe a little hostility, but above all, curiosity. The uniform, of course, was not the uniform of the day, and for a Marine to strut out in so flagrant a gesture of rebellion was extremely odd; he could have been naked and caused less of a ruckus.

Donny strode down Troop Walk, aware of the growing number of eyes upon him. He had a fleeting impression of men running to catch a glimpse of him going; even, across the way, when he passed by Center House, the base’s BOQ, a couple of off-duty first lieutenants came out onto the porch in Bermudas and T’s to watch him pass by.

He turned into the parking lot, where a tan government Ford, with a squid driving, waited by the steps; he then turned left, climbed and walked across the porch and into the first sergeant’s office, which led to Captain Dogwood’s office. The first sergeant, holding a cup of coffee with Semper Fi emblazoned on the porcelain, nodded at him, as orderlies and clerks scurried to make way.

“They’re waiting on you, Fenn.”

“Yes, First Sergeant,” said Donny.

He stepped into the office.

Captain Dogwood sat behind his desk, and Bonson and Weber, in their summer khakis, sat across from him.

“Sir, Corporal Fenn, reporting as ordered, sir,” Donny said.

“Ah, very good, Fenn,” said Dogwood. “Did you misunderstand the uniform of the day? I—”

“Sir, no, sir!” Donny said. “Sir, permission to speak, sir?”

Another moment of silence.

“Fenn,” said the captain, “I’d consider carefully before—”

“Let him speak,” said Bonson, eyeing Donny without love.

Donny turned to face the man fully.

“Sir, the corporal wishes to state categorically that he will not testify against a fellow Marine on charges of which he has no personal knowledge. He will not perjure himself; he will not take part in any proceedings involving the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Sir!”

“Fenn, what are you pulling?” asked Weber. “We had an agreement.”

“Sir , we never had an agreement. You gave me orders to investigate, which I did, against my better instincts and in contravention to every moral belief I have. I did my duty. My investigation was negative. Sir, that is all I have to say, sir!”