The lieutenant in charge of the 10th Mountain soldiers guarding the port had requisitioned himself an open-air brick hut, set back from the actual wire and—hopefully—out of grenade-throwing range. The lieutenant was the same one, Tory realized, who’d had trouble opening the port’s main gate yesterday. His name was Vine. Lieutenant Vine had been to the airport earlier this morning and carried somewhat harder news than port gossip.
“Biggest thing so far I guess was the Marines, up to Cap-Haitien.”
“Hit?” Tory said.
“No, or not bad anyhow. They all walked away. Killed like eight or nine FADH, though. Right at their own police station. Blew ’em away.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah, no shit.” He shook his head, then said again, “Killed ’em.” Like he was trying to get his head wrapped around it.
“What were they doing, Sir?” She was thinking of the FADH yesterday, in the park. The lynching.
He shrugged. “Don’t know.” Vine took a drag off his cigarette. He looked out beyond the brick wall as he smoked, watching the crowd—shifting and moving around the port fence in the thick heat. “FADH’s bad business, though, I think,” he said. “Not quite sure what the deal is there.”
Tory remembered her question about the FADH.
Good or bad?
Yes.
“They’re hanging people in the streets,” she said.
The lieutenant nodded and flicked his cigarette butt over the bricks. “All’s I know is someone needs to uncork head from ass on this issue. No one knows who it is we’re fighting.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Tory walked up to the wire to wait with Pelton and Riddle. The air smelled of burning rubber again; not as thick as yesterday, but there all the same, tendrils of odor heavy on a light breeze.
The little buses zooming around Port-au-Prince’s narrow streets were calledtap-taps. Some were actual buses, some ancient, modified VW and Volvo vans. The Haitians said it fast, two quick consonants—tap-tap.
“Stupid name,” Pelton said.
Riddle shook his head. “Nah, bro. Makes sense. It’s a definition.” He put his hands up, pantomiming. “Bus hits tourist—tap! Tourist hits ground—tap!”
Pelton laughed. Tory, deep behind combat goggles this afternoon, didn’t react. She hadn’t slept well and wasn’t talkative.
“Tap-tap,Sergeant Harris,” Riddle said. Tory heard, but didn’t answer. She kept stealing glances at Pelton, when she thought he wasn’t watching. It was disorienting, next to him; her dream of firing a shot into his head still vivid, his mute, pleading eyes and the spray of blood and tissue.
The three were waiting for atap-tap of ten men hired to accompany the Haitian lorries already driven up the LSV’s ramp and secured to deck. The trucks were filled with food, medicine, drums of water and fuel, blankets, light construction material—all from the Red Cross. For Jacmel, hit by the storm.
“Here it comes,” Tory said, ditching her cigarette. Over the heads of the crowd gathered outside the gate they could see an old van, painted bright stripes of blue and red and orange, dirty Red Cross flag flapping from a makeshift antenna. The vehicle was packed with a group of Haitian men in clean, white shirts, one in a Chicago Bulls ball cap. “That’s it,” she said to the corporal in charge of the gate detail. “The Red Cross guys.”
The corporal gave his helmet a push back. “We need to go ahead and get some kind of ID from them,” he drawled. He didn’t like this chick sergeant, standing at his gate.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb here, Corporal,” Tory said, “and guess that they left their library cards at home.”
The kid twitched his jaw but didn’t say anything.
Tory took the corporal through the gate with her to speak to the driver. Rifle in right hand, she ran her left quickly across her LBE suspenders and web belt as they walked out, making sure everything was tight, prepared to push through a crush of people. But the crowd parted with the gate opening, giving them room. Thetap-tap driver was an older man, crinkled around the eyes and mouth. He spoke perfect accented English and gave the corporal repeated assurances of their legitimacy, convincing him in the end. Tory stayed quiet, then pointed to where the LSV sat berthed, across port. They could see the lower radar turning lazily, and a group of soldiers on the bridge wing. Too far to see who they were.
“You drive there and wait, Sir,” she said through the window to the van driver. “We’ll follow on foot and meet you.”
“Oui,”he said, smiling large, and she smiled back and patted the man’s arm. All the men in the van waved as the vehicle rolled past, into the gate, and she raised an arm in return.
The crowd moved in on Tory and the corporal, pressing forward in a slow, warm wave of flesh. The kid looked nervous for a second. He tried talking as he backstepped away.
“Okay, then,” he said, and “Afternoon, ma’am,” and “All right, little fella,” and then the Haitians were shaking his hand and touching his arm—Bonjou!andWelcome, welcome! andYes America! —and Tory noticed he was trying to keep the muzzle of his rifle pointed to the ground and she wondered if he knew what a nice guy he’d suddenly turned into.
“Hey,” she called out, amused, but he didn’t hear and then she was doing the same talking, “Pleased to meet you, Sir,” and “Hey there, girl,” and stepping back and stepping back and then she stopped and stepped forward, one straight step forward, arm extended, and gripped the outstretched hand of a young woman, a girl with dark, duty-smooth skin. “Hello,” Tory said, and the young woman shook her hand vigorously and laughed and spoke so fast Tory caught none of it, even the parts in English, but both smiled and they shook hands and Tory just said, “Hello,” and then again, “Hello.”
Gate buttoned and everyone back in place, the corporal made it a point to shake hands with the chick sergeant before she turned and followed the van and her two guys back toward the boat they said wasn’t the Navy. The corporal’s name was Miller and he was smiling now—whistling, actually, when Lieutenant Vine came back—his head in a different place about all this.
“I dunno, Sir,” he said. “I guess they’re just like regular people.”
The officer looked out at the crowd. He was eating an apple. He swallowed, then said, “Women? Or Haitians?”
But Corporal Miller had turned and didn’t hear the lieutenant’s question.
The LSV’s cavern of an engine room gleamed with fresh coats of white and haze gray on the bulkheads and polished deckplating you could eat from. The bilge was wiped clean, by hand, weekly. Under bright fluorescent lights, Dick Wags and Scaboo went through the presails for the mains, spinning valves for water, fuel, oil. Both in coveralls, and Dick Wags had a sunburn from sitting out on the fantail most of the morning, smoking cigarettes and watching the Army settle in to the port. Scaboo gave a thumbs-up to Chief, sitting in the box, and the two massive locomotive engines whined then roared to life. Dick Wags tapped Scaboo on the shoulder, pointing forward, and the younger sergeant nodded then climbed the long stairs topside to go presail the bow-thruster engine. The ship was ready to move.
The deck crew was up, the whole platoon, regular shift or not, in coveralls and gloves on the well-deck or in uniform and sunglasses on the bridge. T.K. guided the Red Cross van into the slot they’d saved for it, right inside the ramp. Behind him, Arnold walked the two rows of lorries, checking tension on the chains locking the vehicles in place. He’d never seen such a load on an Army vessel; rusted-out old trucks painted twenty different ways, the drivers all sitting up in their cabs because they’d been told by Victor Charlie not to move—and I mean don’t even lift your leg to fart!—until someone briefed them on where exactly they were allowed to go on the vessel—and that’s probably fucking nowhere!“Don’t yell at the boukies, you fucking chink,” Skip had said to Victor Charlie, and Arnold just about lost it on that one, tears popping. “What are you laughing at, Staff Sergeant Arnold?” Victor Charlie had growled. “You’re as boukie as the Haitians.” Arnold rubbed his palm on the officer’s head, unable to stop laughing. “Yes, Sir,” he said, “but better boukie than chink, right?”
In the dry-goods storeroom off the galley the Steward checked on a plastic vat filled with fermenting juice and fruit. It smelled godawful—like a jar of kimchee set in the sun,he thought—but what it would eventually produce could be mixed with Coke andWhat the fuck, Roy decided,we run out of real booze this’ll start tasting better overnight. Dick Wags and New Jersey had the biggest stash onboard—of the enlisted anyway—jealously guarded and shared with few. But the two bottles of Jack and two bottles of tequila under the bottom drawer of their cabin desk was already a third gone, and they were less than two weeks out of home, one day in-country. The ship might hit Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico for fuel sometime in the next few weeks, but maybe not. That’s why Roy had started the brewing process. Just in case. When you go, you go for real.
There were ten soldiers at the gate. They’d been on it five hours, and the yawns were starting to go around.
A PFC named Wheeler stood next to Corporal Miller and said, “Who knew this would be boring?”
“There’s just no goddamn war here,” Miller said. “There’s no war.”
PFC Wheeler—who played bass in a Dead cover band at the Fort Drum USO’s talent nights—mimed grabbing a microphone and said, “Can I get a little more war in the monitors, please?”
The crowd on the other side of the fence was pushing less but no smaller. Lively and moving about, people talking to one another, letting newcomers and children up front for a good view of theblancs in their helmets and green camouflage. Every few minutes a great cheer would go up, the Americans catching shades:Aristide! Lavalas! was the hands-down winner, withClinton! (or just plainBeee-ill! ) in close second.
Drums showed up, drummers scattered through the crowd, the people moving and chanting in rhythm now. The air temperature pegged well beyond anything Corporal Miller had ever felt before, every move he made slow and heavy like he was under water. He pushed the goggles off his eyes and up on his helmet, splashed his face from a canteen. Out in the street they were stomping now, dancing, some of the women spinning like tops.
Boy, I’d like a nice iced tea,Miller thought, and stepped back away from the gate so he could smoke a cigarette.
On the ramp, Tory and Pelton stood under the burning sun, watching as T.K. and Arnold secured chain locks on the Red Cross van. The Haitians were all out of their vehicles now, gathered in the shade of the tunnel under the house at the aft end of the well-deck. Riddle had run up to his cabin to grab some money, and he came back now, trotting across the well-deck, Temple right behind. Some boys were selling wood carvings and other trinkety things through a gap in the fence a few hundred yards south, past a massive mound of rusted scrap metal and useless ship’s parts.
“Y’all set?” Riddle said, winded and puffing.
“You’re gonna be in Haiti a year,” Tory said.
“Early bird gets the worm, New Jersey.”
“Don’t miss the boat,” she said, and Riddle winked, him and Temple and Pelton jumping to the concrete and moving down the pier.
Tory turned to take a last look at the port before walking up the ramp and then there was Marc Hall, coming at the LSV from around the warehouses. He raised a hand when he saw it was her, and she waved back, taking a step toward him then stopping herself.
“Sergeant Harris,” he said, stepping on the ramp, a smile on his face. It was what she needed, that smile, and she gave it back to him.
“Sir,” she said, and the habit was ingrained to raise her right arm in a salute but this was a combat zone—down range—and you don’t salute down range and her arm went straight out instead and he grasped her hand with both hands and leaning in close he said, “It’s good to see you.”