Stephen Hunter - Time to Hunt

“Yes, sir,” said Donny. “I remember.”

“Were you aware, Corporal, that radical elements anticipated the movements of only one military unit, Company B of Marine Barracks, and that just by the hairiest of coincidences did a Washington policeman discover a bomb that was set to take out the phone junction into the Treasury, thereby effectively cutting off B Company and leaving the White House and the president defenseless? Think of it, Corporal. Defenseless!”

He seemed to get a weird charge out of saying Defenseless! , his nostrils flaring, his eyes lit up.

Donny had no idea what to say. He hadn’t heard a thing about a bomb in a phone junction.

“How did they know you were there? How did they know that’s where you’d be?” demanded the lieutenant commander.

It occurred to Donny: There are two buildings next to the White House. One is the Executive Office Building, one is the Treasury. If you were going to move troops in, wouldn’t you move them into one of the two buildings? Where else could they be?

“I don’t—” he stammered and almost ended his career right there by blowing up in a big laugh.

“That’s when my team began to investigate. That’s when NIS got on the case!” proclaimed the lieutenant commander.

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve run exhaustive background checks on everyone in the three line companies at the Marine Barracks. And we think we’ve found our man.”

Donny was dumbfounded. Then he began to get pissed.

“Sir, I thought we were already investigated for clearances before we came into the unit.”

“Yes, but it’s a sloppy process. One investigator handles a hundred clearances a week. Things get through. Now, let me ask you something. What would you say if I told you one member of your company had an illegal off-base apartment and was known to room with members of a well-known peace initiative?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“This PFC Edgar M. Crowe.”

Crowe! Of course it would be Crowe.

Ensign Weber spoke up, reading from documents.

“Crowe maintains an apartment at 2311 C Street, Southwest. There he cohabits a room with one Jeffrey Goldenberg, a graduate student at the Northwestern University Medill Newsroom in Washington. Crowe is no ordinary grunt, you know, Fenn. He’s a Yale dropout who only came into the Corps because his uncle had connections to a congressman who could make certain he’d never go to Vietnam.”

“Think of that, Fenn,” said Commander Bonson. “You’re over there getting your butt shot off, and he’s back here marching in parades and giving up intelligence to the peace freaks.”

Crowe: of course. Perpetual fuck-up, smart guy, goof-off, his furious intelligence hidden behind a burning ambition to be just good enough not to get rotated out, but not really good in the larger sense.

Still, Crowe: he was a punk, an unformed boy, he seemed no different than any of them. He was a kid just out of his teens, mixed up by the temptations and confusions of a tempting, confusing age.

“We know you, Fenn,” said the lieutenant commander. “You’re the only man in the company who enjoys the universal respect of both the career-track Marines who’ve done Vietnam and the boys who are just here to avoid Vietnam. They all like you. So we have an assignment for you. If you bring it off, and I know in my military mind that there’s no possibility you won’t, you will finish your hitch in twelve days a full E-5 buck sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. That I guarantee you.”

Donny nodded. He didn’t like this a bit.

“I want you to become Crowe’s new best friend. You’re his buddy, his pal, his father confessor. Flatter him with the totality of your attentions. Hang out with him. Go to his peace creep parties, get to know his long-haired friends. Get drunk with him. He’ll tell you things, a little at first, then more as time goes on. He’ll give up all his secrets. He’s probably so proud of himself and his little game he’s dying to brag about it and show you what a smart boy he is. Get us enough material to move against him before he gives up the unit on May Day. We’ll send him to Portsmouth for a very long time. He’ll come out an old man.”

Bonson sat back.

There it was, before Donny. What was most palpable was what had not been said. Suppose he didn’t do it? What would happen to him? Where would they send him?

“I don’t really — sir, I’m not trained in intelligence work. I’m not sure I could bring this off.”

“Fenn is a very straightforward Marine,” said Captain Dogwood. “He’s a hardworking, gung-ho young man. He’s not a spy.”

Donny could see that the captain’s interjection deeply irritated Lieutenant Commander Bonson, but Bonson said nothing, just stared furiously at Donny in the dark office.

“You have two weeks,” he finally said. “We’ll be monitoring you and expect a sitrep every other day. There’s a lot at stake, a lot of people counting on you. There’s the honor of the service and duty to country to consider.”

Donny swallowed and hated himself for it.

“You know, you have it pretty good here yourself,” said Bonson, to Donny’s silence. “You have a room in the barracks, not in the squad bay, a very pleasant duty station, a very pleasant duty day. You’re in Washington, DC. It’s spring. You’re going back to college, a decorated hero with all those veteran’s benefits, plus a Bronze Star and a nice chunk of rank. I’d say few young men in America have it quite as made as you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Donny.

“What the commander is saying,” said Ensign Weber, “is that it can all go away. In a flash. Orders can be cut. You could be back slogging the paddies in Vietnam, the shit flying all around you. It’s been known to happen. A guy so short suddenly finds himself in extremely hazardous duty. Well, you know the stories. He had a day to go and he got zapped. Letters to his mother, stories in the paper, the horror of it all. The worst luck in the world, poor guy. But sometimes, that’s the way it goes.”

More silence in the room.

Donny did not want to go back to Vietnam. He had done his time there, he’d gotten hit. He remembered the fear he felt, the sheer immense, lung-crushing density of it, the first time incoming began exploding the world around him. He hated the squalor, the waste, the sheer murder of it. He hated having his real life so close and then taken from him. He hated the prospect of not seeing Julie ever, ever again. He thought of some peace nerd comforting her after he was gone, and knew how that one would play out.

Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

“Great,” said Bonson. “You’ve made the right decision.”

He stood outside, feeling idiotic. Rock music pumped out from inside. Inside it was loud, bright, crowded, festive. He felt so stupid.

He turned. There was Ensign Weber in the Ford, parked across the way on C Street. Weber nodded encouragingly, gave a little whisking motion with his head as if to say, Go on, get going, goddammit.

So now Donny stood outside the Hawk and Dove, a well-known Capitol Hill watering hole, where the young men and women who ran, opposed or chronicled the war tended to gather after six when official Washington closed down, except for the few old men in isolated offices waiting for the latest news on the air strikes or casualty figures.

It was a beautiful night, temperate and soothing. Donny was dressed in cutoffs, Jack Purcells, a madras shirt, just like half the kids who’d entered the place since he’d been standing there, except that unlike them, his ears stood out and his head wore only a little topside platter of hair. It said jarhead all the way.