Free Free-Fire Zone by Chris Lynch Page A

two buildings that remain mostly intact, stepping right around or over bodies. When we come to the first building, Jupp gestures to Bien, who shouts into the place clearly demanding somebody show himself.
    We have a whole lot of firepower trained on this one doorway with a canvas drape hanging in it.
    Nothing.
    Bien shouts some more.
    I see my M-16 begin to shake a little as I wait. I am sure, suddenly and for no reason, that there is somebody armed and angry on the other side of that sheet.
    We are giving off lots of smells now, our merry band of fighting men. Stronger even than the burning human flesh all around us.
    Bien shouts again —
    Rat-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at!
    Without warning, Lt. Jupp unloads on the hut with the M-60, pounding the life out of it, the machine gun sucking in its ammo belt and spitting out bullets at a rate sufficient to kill thirty guys if they were unlucky or stupid enough to be inside. I’m shocked enough to recoil from the impact, and I’m not the only one.
    After several seconds and an insane number of rounds, he stops, and we listen while the smoke wafts over us.
    â€œFree-fire, gentlemen!” he says, and despite how supercharged that was, I see his gun muzzle vibrating more than mine. “I think you will find the building is secure.”
    There is no mistaking that the lieutenant is showing off now, trying to regain some of the top dogness that he lost so much of today.
    â€œMcClean, Hunter, Marquette, go in and check that out. The rest of you come with me.”
    â€œYou shot it all up,” Cherry says to him. “Maybe you want to go in and check it out yourself, lieutenant?”
    Jupp’s small smile slips sideways and right off his face.
    There is a game going on here. Even I have come to recognize what Lt. Jupp won’t be doing under anycircumstances — such as going blindly into an enemy hut no matter how many bullets he’s pumped into it. And if I know it …
    â€œDo as you’re told, soldiers,” Jupp says.
    The rest of us follow along, including Cherry, as Jupp swaggers up to the last building. I look back behind me to see the three who were told to go into that hut are very much not going in. They stand there observing what we are up to.
    What we are up to is:
    Rat-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at-at!
    The air is again filled with smoke and burn and Jupp’s once-again confident voice.
    â€œIn you go, Corporal Cherry,” he says.
    Cherry stands there. “You coming with me?”
    Jupp’s phony smile tells us all we need to know about what he thinks of this game.
    â€œI gave you an order, Cherry.”
    â€œDo you ever get your hands dirty, lieutenant?”
    I never thought before that lieutenant was a dirty word. But the way Cherry says it now, it is filthy.
    â€œNever mind,” Squid says, and he starts stomping toward the canvas door.
    â€œOh no you don’t,” I shout at my short-timer pal, grabbing him by the backpack and hauling him out of the way. “For crying out loud, I’ll do it.”
    And I do. Before anybody can stop me — not that I can sense anybody thinking of stopping me — I march right up and right through that entrance.
    And I scream.
    I scream because I fall. It’s as if the floor isn’t where it’s supposed to be. Like I’ve stepped into a trapdoor that opens onto hell itself.
    It is a trapdoor all right, but not quite to hell. Hell wouldn’t hurt this bad.
    â€œAh, ah, ah!” I scream, as the guys surround me. My leg has gone under the floor of the hut, disappearing all the way up to my thigh as the two-piece trapdoor fell away beneath me. All my weight, plus the extra weight of all my gear, has driven me down and right on top of a long metal shaft, like a pencil-thin spike, that has shot right through my boot, my foot, and my boot again. It feels like a lace of fire sizzling up through me.
    Cherry and Squid