Blood on the Moon Read Free Page B

platoon is hanging in at four men over strength? Fifty-four men?”
    Campion cleared his throat. “Yes…uh…yes, Sergeant, I do.”
    â€œSir, do you also know that we got three men who got special M.O.S.s? Three men who ain’t regular grunts?”
    â€œYou mean…”
    â€œI mean, sir , that myself, Hopkins, and Jensen are infantry scouts, and I’m sure you’ll agree we could be of more value to this operation by running far point ahead of the armor. Right, sir ?”
    Lloyd saw the Lieutenant start to waver, and suddenly realized that he wanted it as bad as Beller did. Raising his hand, he said, “Sir, Sergeant Beller is right; we can walk far point and protect the platoon better and make it more autonomous. The platoon is over strength, and…”
    The Lieutenant capitulated. “All right then,” he said, “Beller, Hopkins and Jensen, you walk point two hundred yards ahead of the convoy. Be careful–stay sharp. No more questions? Platoon dismissed.”
    Lloyd and Beller found each other just as the tanks and half-tracks were starting their engines, flooding the twilight air with the sound of volatile combustion. Beller smiled; Lloyd smiled back in silent complicity.
    â€œ Far point, Sergeant?”
    â€œ Far, far point, Hoppy.”
    â€œWhat about Jensen?”
    â€œHe’s just a kid. I’ll tell him to hang back with the armor. We’re covered. We’ve got carte blanche; that’s the important thing.”
    â€œOpposite sides of the street?”
    â€œSounds right to me. Whistle twice if it gets hairy. Why do they call you ‘The Brain’?”
    â€œBecause I’m very intelligent.”
    â€œIntelligent enough to know that the niggers are destroying the whole fucking country?”
    â€œNo, too intelligent for that shit. Anyone with half a brain knows that this is just a temporary blow-out and that when it’s over it’ll be business as usual. I’m here to see about saving innocent lives.”
    Beller said scornfully, “That’s a crock. It just proves brains are over-rated. Guts are what counts.”
    â€œBrains rule the world.”
    â€œBut the world’s all fucked up.”
    â€œI don’t know. Let’s see what it’s like out there.”
    â€œYeah, let’s do that.” Beller began to worry about his ass. Hoppy was starting to sound like a nigger lover.
    They ditched the division completely, walking south towards where the flames rose the highest and the gunfire sounded its loudest echoes.
    Lloyd took the north side of 93rd Street and Beller the south, rifles at high port with bayonets fixed and sharpened, eyes scanning row after row of cheap white clapboard houses where Negro families peered from lighted windows and sat on porches, drinking, smoking, chattering and waiting for something to happen.
    They hit Central. Lloyd gulped and felt a trickle of sweat run down into his skivvies, which hung below his hipbones, weighted down by the two specially constructed automatics jammed into his waistband.
    Beller whistled from across the street and pointed forward. Lloyd nodded as he felt a whiff of smoke hit his nostrils. They walked south, and it took long moments for Lloyd’s head to click into place and assimilate the epiphanies, the perfect logic of the self-destruction he was viewing:
    Liquor stores, night clubs, process parlors and storefront churches interspersed with vacant lots covered with abandoned cars burned out from the inside. Gutted storefront after gutted storefront spilling profusions of broken liquor bottles; broken glass everywhere; the gutters filled with cheap electric ware–non-hockable items obviously looted in haste and discarded when the looters realized they were valueless.
    Lloyd poked his M-14 into smashed-in windows, squinting into the darkness, cocking his ears the way he had seen dogs do it, listening for the slightest sound or