Free-Fire Zone Read Online Free PDF Page A

McClean says kind of solemn-like.
    I look back at the faces around me and I think I’ve done something here, because these are not the faces I ever saw before. I did something. Scared people. Impressed people. Shocked and awed and somethinged people, but I changed them, that’s for sure, and while I never know anything, right this minute I sure know something, and that is that things have changed . Right now. Inside and out.
    I wish for all the world that Ivan was here now. That’s what I’m wishing most, right at this big, big-change minute of my life.
    â€œI’ll be right behind you, corporal,” I say quietly, through heavy, fast breath that I fight to control.
    He does a bit of a double-take, but just a bit. Then he nods. “Five minutes, private,” he says to me. “We can’t be leaving you behind. Not even you. So you catch up to us in five minutes. That’s an order.”
    I can take an order. Any order, any degree of difficulty, any time, I can take an order. I am a United States Marine.
    â€œYes, sir.”
    When the men are just far enough away, I sit. I sit right down, in the pond of blood, next to my defeated enemy soldier, my first confirmed kill that should probably count as more than one because I killed him so much.
    â€œSorry,” I say to him. “And thank you.”
    I make a joke to him, asking for my “you’re welcome.” And when I don’t get it I question his manners and ask him if he was raised in a barn, because that’s what my mother always said to rudeness. I say it because I guess I’m hoping a joke will make my hands stop shaking. It doesn’t.
    â€œWell, I’m gonna have to leave you, soldier,” I say, rolling forward onto my knees. “And sorry, but I’ll be taking this weapon.”
    It’s what you do. No disrespect, it’s just what you do.
    I go to remove the rifle, which is still, amazingly, in that awkward grip of his.
    And more amazingly, it won’t come. I tug again, and his slick purple-red hands move with it. That freaks me out a bit, so I pull my hand away. Then, slowly and gently, I reach in again and raise the gun up.
    And I see. His hands come up with the weapon, because they’re secured to the weapon. They’re tied, strapped with wire, to the gun. The kind of wire they use to bind prisoners’ hands. Then I look down to his bare feet. Which are also bound together with wire, and the wire connected to the tree five feet away.
    He wasn’t a real fighter. At least not by the time I met him. He was fodder. Like one of those poor sap goats that villagers will tie up to lure a rogue tiger.
    It was all set up.
    For me.
    Â 
    I do catch up, within the five minutes, just as ordered. I fall into line at the back, and I’m blowing air because I had to run to make it, so my arrival is not quite the stealthy silent Marine progress we like to make in the jungle. They must know I’m right behind them.
    But you’d think they didn’t. Not a single head turns, not a voice speaks. The guys just walk on as if theydon’t notice me or anything special at all about what happened.
    I notice. Drums are beating in my head. They beat-beat-beat just as sure as if we were marching with a military band escort, only the drums beating aren’t those crisp and strict ones like you hear at parades. They’re wild things, tribal things, and they’re making my head hurt and getting louder-louder. I notice it’s the feet. The feet, boots on the ground, the pounding and marching of the men in front of me is making the drums wail and my skull is cracking with it and it’s the heat, too. And I’m sweating now as if I’m a candy apple, I’m dipped in hot caramel, or whatever that red stuff is that they dip the candy apples in but I feel like I’m just exactly that, that apple at exactly that moment when it’s dipped. In the burning hot melted