"Yeah," he snorted, "she's got blond hair, but she ain't got pink nipples. She's okay in the dark, but in the daylight she's bad news." We stood up and leaned over the wall.
"He says he may steady shack with it," I said, flipping my cigarette among the pile of rice bugs on the sidewalk below. "Hope he doesn't bite off…"
An explosion and a clatter of automatic fire at the Main Gate interrupted me. We could see bouncing headlights and splashing bursts of automatic fire followed by their rattle.
"Jesus. What's happening?" Novotny asked quietly, grabbing my arm.
"I don't know, but load your weapon, anyway," I answered on my way to the trap door.
Later I learned that six jeeps of Huk bandits had hit the Main Gate with everything from a 20mm cannon stolen from a jet to a.25 caliber Nambu light machine left by the Japanese, and lots of swivel-mounted.50s and.30s. And they knew how to use them. They came through the gate without changing gears, knocked down six Air Policemen, two Filipino guards and a KP coming to work early; blew up the guard shack, a jeep and a three-quarter, and kept on moving. But we did not know any of this until later.
I hit the floor shouting, "Shut her down! Shut her down! Levenson! get on the phone to PMO and find out what's happening at the Main Gate!" I fielded seventy questions by not answering, then caught seventy more when I unlocked the weapons rack and the ammo locker. "Everybody get a weapon and ammo and get on the roof!" They stared at me with a single question furrowing every face: War? Then the same sadness touched every pair of eyes when the next thought followed, as had been promised since they were born: The Bomb? Oh, my God, the faces said, Oh my God! Nobody told us. We're not ready. There's too much left undone. We all stood very still for a long, long second, very quiet in the metallic hum and beep of our useless equipment, as if wondering why it hadn't warned us, listening again for a clue from the silent, glowing and smug tubes. I thought they would be all right. They were just stunned by the opening of the ammunition locker. None of them had ever seen the green footlocker opened. The weapons' rack was okay, even familiar, an ordinary thing of day to day inspections or alerts, but live ammunition was only for the range or standing roof guard and being very careful not to accidently fire a round because old Johnson had caught a Special Court for firing one round. But this was different. Frightening, exciting, but mainly different, and it grabbed them and held them silent and still. But like all captured moments, this one was as short as it was long, and it ended as I shoved several bandoleers of M-1 clips into Morning's stomach, and shouted, "On the roof! Move! Move! Move! Cagle, get the outside lights. Move!"
They moved.
I grabbed a rifle, some ammo and swung up the ladder, shouting once more for Levenson to call PMO. "Busy! Busy! Busy!" he screamed back, his voice as high and irritated as the signal he was getting.
On the roof madness was unleashed as everyone tried to load, look, and run around knocking each other off the roof. A line of headlights had already turned off the main highway on the side road coming toward us. I could barely keep my mind on the men: the rifle in my hands kept begging to be fired. Another jeep followed the line at a distance which I later judged to be the effective range plus one hundred of a.50 caliber at night from the back of a speeding vehicle. Two sets of headlights were coming across the grass from the runways behind us, and more along the fence next to the Exchange. It looked as if we were being attacked from all sides, and since I had forgotten about the money in the Exchange half a mile east of us, this attacking fear did more than I could with all my pushing and shouting to make the men stay in one place. Peterson still stood in the center of the roof, lost, holding an M-l in one hand, a carbine in the other, and he looked doubly helpless because it was obvious he was not about to turn loose of either rifle long enough to get both hands on one. Novotny led him to the wall, and sat him down behind it. Collins, Quinn and Morning were kneeling behind the wall and at least had their weapons pointed in the general direction of the lights stringing swiftly closer. Levenson popped through the trap door and screamed, "A holdup! A holdup! A Huk holdup!" He giggled and ran to the wall loading a carbine. One of the jeeps from the runaway patrol swept through our lights, an AP hanging out of either side, shouting and shooting, one with a.38 revolver, the other with a shotgun, at the jeeps over a thousand yards away. They were having a grand time. Once more my rifle pleaded to be fired.
Suddenly the floodlights went out, fading quickly away, and the headlights and muzzle flashes leapt closer out of the blinking darkness. "Where was Moses when the lights went out?" Morning said. I could not see him now, but I remembered how he looked a moment before, cold in his poise and readiness. "Down in the cellar with his shirttail out," he answered himself. He sounded drunk, but I knew he wasn't. Until I saw him at the wall, a faint question had been tickling the back of my neck. But now I knew he would fight as the lights and firing came on us like a squall line:
Cagle came up, shut away the last bit of light, and said, "Hey, Slag-baby, you boys didn't leave me a gun."
"Little fart don't need one," Novotny said beside me.
"Pete's got two."
Cagle shuffled to the wall. "Gimme one, you stingy bastard."
"What now?" everyone asked in one way or another – except Morning.
What could I answer? Me with my trembling fingers knocking on the hard wood stock and me with a fine quiver in my guts and the blood in my ears like thunder…
"Shit. Shoot the bastards."
No one cheered, but they listened quietly as I did all that Hollywood crap about firing on my signal and short bursts, and made a Jimmy Cagney joke about not shooting any AP dirty rats by mistake. I didn't get any laughs either. A snort from Quinn, a few nervous shuffles, a slap or two at bugs, a muffled cough or prayer, then everyone was quiet, watching the racing lights.
I waited until the line was what seemed close enough, and slid my rifle over the wall. Then I wondered how Pete had climbed the ladder with two weapons, then I worried about not mentioning setting battle sights at three hundred yards. The lights of the first jeep were fuzzy in my peep sight, and I waited, and then I screamed.
The crash of my shot seemed like an explosion in my hands, loud, too loud, and the recoil knocked me back like an unexpected blow. The whole complexion of the night changed. The walled roof, secure and safe as it had seemed earlier, became a naked, frightened place, as if some unnamed part of me had been launched into the distant battle, leaping across the border between a safe here and an unbelievably dangerous there. It wasn't like I thought it would be. It wasn't easy to shoot at men, or a grinding noise and light which betrays where men are. I had never thought that it would be otherwise – but it was so frightening, as if I had to cross that time and space and stand stupid and scared and shooting at myself. I was numb, but all the nerves of my body were on fire, fire.
The others must have felt the shock too. Novotny and Quinn had fired only one or two rounds, Collins a couple more, and Cagle had split the night with a clip-long burst which had jammed his carbine. But Morning fired steadily, rocking with the recoil, then back into firing position, his rhythm broken only by the ping of his clip as the last round ejected and the click and snap as he loaded another.
I whipped back to the jeeps, sorry they must be gone, and found they had barely moved. I fired again, and again, and the more times I pulled the trigger, the easier it was, the more numb my nerves became. Quickly the rifle was as light as a wand and magically waved, cleanly leading the first jeep, the recoil gone, and I knew, knew, knew I was hitting the jeep, and fired again. Then we were firing and screaming and laughing and lost.