Divided We Fall (4 page)

“All right!” Meyers yelled. “If any of you ladies are afraid or missing your little girlfriends, get that shit out of your head right now and focus.”

“‘Ladies’? Oh, come on,” said Specialist Sparrow under her breath.

Meyers heard her. “Hey, Specialist, it’s just part of being in a combat unit, so don’t make this into some kind of feminist thing. If you want to roll with the men, you gotta toughen up!”

“I passed all events on
my
PT test,” Sparrow said quietly.

Some of the guys laughed. Meyers was kind of fat. If he heard her, he ignored her. “Lock and load!” Meyers shouted.

A couple guys slammed magazines up into the wells of their M4s, then yanked back and released the charging handles above the stocks of their rifles to chamber a round.

“As you were! Do not lock and load!” Kemp shouted. That was a gutsy move for him. He was a sergeant, a rank below Staff Sergeant Meyers, so he was outranked and out of line. “We don’t need to chamber rounds. This isn’t a war.”

Meyers turned to Kemp. “I gave you and everybody else in my squad an order,
Sergeant
Kemp. Lock and load.”

I had my hand on my weapon’s charging handle, but hadn’t pulled it yet. A bunch of the guys exchanged glances like,
What are we supposed to do?

“Maybe the lieutenant should decide,” Kemp said. “Sir, we don’t need to go into this with rounds chambered. I can’t believe we were even issued live ammunition in the first place.”

Meyers pulled the binoculars from the lieutenant’s face. “LT, if this shit goes bad, we won’t have time to be worrying about our weapons. How are you going to feel if one of your men gets hurt because he was still chambering a round when trouble hit?”

“There won’t be any trouble,” said Kemp. “It’s only a checkpoint. A traffic stop.”

“Make the call, sir,” Meyers said.

The lieutenant looked from one NCO to the other with wide eyes. I knew how he felt. I basically wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. Still, McFee was supposed to be in charge. Some loud shouts and the sound of breaking glass came from somewhere not too far away.

Lieutenant McFee pulled his CamelBak hose around and took a long drink. “Lock and load.”

“Good call, sir,” said Sergeant Meyers. Kemp shook his head. Meyers smiled. “You heard the lieutenant. Lock and load,” he called out to all of us. Then he stepped close to Sergeant Kemp and spoke quietly, but still loud enough for me and the guys to hear. “Sergeant Kemp, if you can’t follow orders in my squad, I will find a new alpha team leader.”

Rifles clicked all around me. I pulled back and released my own weapon’s charging handle.

Lieutenant McFee stood up straight at attention. “Fall in!”

Everybody jumped up and rushed to stand shoulder to shoulder, grouped into their four-man fire teams, facing the officer in formation. Sergeant Meyers was at the far right of the rank. Sergeant Kemp stood next to him in the A team leader spot. I was the last guy in our team, with Specialist Sparrow and PFC Luchen between me and Sergeant Kemp. To my left was the B team leader, Sergeant Ribbon. Next to him was Specialist Stein, PFC Nelson, and finally Specialist Danning.

“Port
arms
!” the lieutenant shouted. I executed the movements I had been taught, bringing my rifle up at an angle across my chest. My right hand moved down low, holding the top of the stock with my left hand high under the end of the barrel. The other guys did the same, but some were pretty sloppy.

“Right
face
!” McFee ordered. Everyone made a one-quarter facing movement to the right.

“Forward
march
!” said McFee. We all started forward. “Your left. Your left. Your left-right.” He called out the cadence quietly, better than the loud, stupid, cheery singsong cadences like I’d had to do during drill and ceremony at basic all summer. D&C sucked, and it was worse on a Friday night when I was supposed to be partying with the guys and JoBell.

Even though the sun was going down, the late August heat cooked us in our uniforms. On that hot cement, we were like burgers frying on the griddle. I tried to ignore the sweat running from under my helmet and dripping down my back. Couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

We marched around the corner in the park. Across the street ahead, some kids pointed at us as they came out of the Gas & Sip. A little girl’s ice cream sloshed out of her cone as she stared. People in the McDonald’s watched us through the window. A bunch of people took pictures with their comms. Others clapped and cheered.

I held back my grin. Even though I mostly wanted to go home, I also felt kind of cool. There I was, wearing a real Army uniform, a trained soldier with a rifle. At basic, I’d been a real good shot too. Earned an expert rifle marksman badge.
That’s right
, I wanted to call out to the crowds,
the Idaho Army National Guard is here
. The trouble would be over soon.

When we reached South Capitol Boulevard, the situation was different. A couple dozen people stood around the far side of the street. A lot of them were dressed almost as if they were going to the beach, with the guys in ragged, faded T-shirts or shirtless, and bikini-topped women. Could they be from the college? A bunch of them tipped back beers. Some held up signs complaining about police brutality or the wars in Iran or Pakistan. I reminded myself to focus on my duty.

“Group,
halt
!” McFee ordered.

With a final “left-right,” we stopped marching. I sneaked a look to my left. McFee had a map up on his comm. He ran his finger along it, then looked up at the street sign before checking the map. He sighed and then came to the position of attention. “Left
face
!” We all quarter turned to the left to face him. “On the command of ‘fall out,’ you will fall out and take a knee in a security perimeter around me. Fall out!”

“Move it!” Sergeant Meyers positioned his guys in a circle. I took a knee facing the street. Sergeant Kemp nodded at each of us in his team as if checking we were okay. Then Meyers joined the lieutenant in the middle of the circle. After a moment, Meyers called for Specialist Sparrow, our Radio-Telephone Operator, to stick with the lieutenant so he’d be able to use the radio that she carried in her pack.

“Go home, pigs!” a hot redheaded girl in a tank top and tiny, tight jean shorts shouted.

“Get out of here! We don’t need no Army here!” someone called from the middle of the group.

“Hey hey! Ho ho! All these soldiers got to go!” They took up the chant.

What was their problem? We were just coming to fix things downtown. A guy with a beard and those nasty, white-boy, wannabe dreadlocks stepped away from the crowd, halfway out in the street. “What’s the matter? You lost? Go home!” he shouted at us. The crowd cheered and started moving to join him. Dreadlocks Guy locked eyes with me. I tightened my squeeze on the pistol grip of my rifle. He pointed at me. “This isn’t the war in Iran. If we didn’t waste so much money on you military people, maybe the university would be funded better and tuition wouldn’t be so high!”

“Bring it in close, men!” McFee called. I was glad to get away from the crowd as I went to join the others. “Okay, listen up.”

“That’s right! Run away!” Dreadlocks shouted.

“Pussies! I’ll kick their asses!” Luchen elbowed me as we came up near the lieutenant.

“They never lifted a finger to defend this country,” said Specialist Sparrow. “We fight to protect their freedom of speech, and they wanna give us trouble?”

“I said listen up!” McFee shouted. His eyes flicked from us to the protestors in the street.

“At ease on that tough-guy stuff,” Kemp said to us. “We’re professionals. We have a job to do.”

Sergeant Meyers glared at the crowd. Lieutenant McFee wiped his hand down over his face. “Okay. Um.” He pointed toward the street. “So our mission is to secure this road right out here. We’re going to move out to the middle of South Capitol Boulevard and move in an, um, kind of diamond formation north above University Drive. We’ll stop all traffic and, ah, people who are trying to get to the riot downtown that way.”

“Remember your military bearing,” Kemp said. “Do not say one word to those protestors.”

“And stay alert!” Sergeant Meyers said. “They may start getting violent. Watch to see if they have weapons. It’s called situational awareness.”

Sergeant Kemp shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, but try to calm down. Keep under control. These people out here are just mad about a lot of different things. They’re probably harmless.”

“But don’t be complacent,” Meyers said.

Watch for weapons? What did these guys think was going to happen? I hoped the other Guard units around the city were having a better time than us. From the shouting and sirens coming from downtown, I was glad I wasn’t one of the police officers assigned to break up whatever was happening down by the capitol building.

We formed up into two tight wedges. Alpha team was in the forward wedge. Sergeant Kemp had point. Me and Luchen were staggered back at an angle to his left and right. Bravo team marched behind us, forming a diamond with Staff Sergeant Meyers, Lieutenant McFee, and Specialist Sparrow in the center.

“Group,
halt
!” Lieutenant McFee ordered when we approached the crowd. He stepped up until he stood right behind Sergeant Kemp at the front of the diamond. “Okay, listen,” he shouted to the crowd. “Our orders are to secure this road out here. I’m going to have to ask you to please step back.”

“What if we don’t want to?” the hot girl said.

McFee tried again. “Okay, folks, you’re going to have to move.”

“He didn’t say please this time!” Dreadlocks called out.

Sergeant Meyers stepped up next to the lieutenant and shouted at the long-haired guy, “Get the hell out of the way, you hippie piece of shit! You will move voluntarily or we will move your sorry asses for you!”

“Come on, Meyers,” Kemp hissed.

The crowd wailed. Instead of moving away from our formation, they came closer. “This is bullshit,” Dreadlocks yelled. “We have rights! We got every right to be here.”

“Hell yeah!” Another college guy held up his can of beer. He chugged the rest of it and threw it at us. The empty can landed about six feet away. The drinker cracked open another beer and clinked it against his friend’s can. “Hell no! We won’t go!” he shouted.

Others joined him in the chant. What was their problem? This wasn’t a party. Why wouldn’t they move?

“Sir, we can’t afford to lose control here,” Kemp said. “Let’s go around them. We have to move up the street to block the road off at our assigned point.”

The lieutenant nodded. “Sergeant Kemp, guide the formation around the crowd to the left. We’ll move around them. Everybody stay tight. Forward,
march
!” We walked forward, sweeping toward the side of the crowd, but the protestors shifted over in front of us again. “Okay, Sergeant. Straight through the crowd then,” said McFee.

“Hold your weapons tight,” Sergeant Kemp called out.

There were so many protestors. Some were staggering drunk. Some looked mad. Others laughed. It was chaos, and we weren’t even downtown to the real disturbance yet. The tip of the diamond formation reached the crowd. The group parted around us, but they were standing close.

Too close. One of the guys grabbed the end of my M4’s barrel. I tried to pull the weapon back, but he had a good grip. “Let go,” I said through gritted teeth. What the hell did this guy think he was doing? I wanted to punch him, but I couldn’t let go of the rifle.

One of my guys came flying past me in a blur. His butt stock nailed the gun grabber in the face. The crack was so loud, at first I thought the rifle’s stock had broken.

The protestor fell flat on his back, both hands to his face as thick red blood gushed out from between his fingers. “You broke my nose, man!” he said.

A couple people crouched down around him. Sergeant Meyers wiped the guy’s blood from his weapon. “Never lose control of your weapon, Private. Never,” he said to me.

People in the crowd screamed with anger. They had been backing up a little, but now they moved forward.

“Fix bayonets!” Lieutenant McFee called out.

Oh shit. Bayonets? I had never used a real bayonet. In basic training we’d practiced just with fake rifles with little metal rods welded to the end. The drill sergeants had made us shout stuff like “red blood makes the grass grow green.” Broken Nose Guy’s blood wasn’t growing anything. I absolutely did not want to mess with the bayonet.

My hand shook as I reached for the pouch on my vest, but I unsnapped it and pulled the knife out. Then I pushed its little housing onto the catch under the barrel of my M4. Now my rifle was kind of like a sword too.

We moved forward again, holding the ends of our weapons a little higher so the crowd could see the blades. They seemed to get the message this time. They parted and moved out of our way a lot faster. Finally, we stepped out into the middle of South Capitol Boulevard and marched in diamond formation up the street to where it split into two one-way streets.

One of the distant sirens got louder as a police car sped toward us. Half of its lights on top were smashed, and the windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks on the passenger side. They were driving fast, so I didn’t get too good a look, but the face of the cop riding shotgun was bright, bloody red. He must have been cut up pretty bad.

The crowd followed us. A rock flew from somewhere behind us and hit the ground a few feet to my left. We turned to face them and spread out at the point where the street split, with no more than a few yards between each of us. We had blocked the road.

The protestors settled down about twenty yards away, still chanting and shouting, cussing us out, and daring us to put down our guns to give them a fair fight. Someone set off what must have been fireworks — little black cats, probably. At the first crack I jumped and tensed up on my weapon. Good thing I wasn’t on the firing range. I was shaking way too much to hit any of the pop-up plastic targets.

Specialist Sparrow stepped over to me. “I’ve been hearing some crazy stuff over the radio,” she said. “The police are having trouble keeping the mob from breaking through the barricade around the capitol. Some cops have been injured. I think that last ambulance that went through might have had a cop who was stabbed. There must be four or five platoons in the area, all on this frequency. All bad news.”