The Throat Read Online Free PDF

with the limp musty rag that hung between the sink and
the toilet.
    "Looking forward to the field?" Ratman asked.
    "The unit's name," I said, picking the tag out of the pink water at
the bottom of the sink, "is Andrew T. Majors."
    "That's right," said di Maestro. "Now tape it to the bag and help us
with the rest of them."
    "You knew his name?" I was too startled to be angry. Then I
remembered that he had the field officer's list, and Andrew T. Majors
was the only name on it not also found on a tag. "You'll get used to
it," di Maestro said, not unkindly.

    I had not even understood what the rest of the body squad had seen
at once, that Bobby Swett had been killed by an American explosive; and
that Captain Franklin Bachelor, the Green Beret with the briefcase and
the Rhade mistress, had scared Ratman's lieutenant right back to camp
because he was leading the "cadre" the lieutenant had spent two weeks
chasing.

    When I turned up at the shed the next day, Attica actually greeted
me. I jolted along in the back of the truck with Attica and Pirate and
felt a naive pride in myself and what I was doing.
    Five units tagged with the right names waited on the tarmac. All
five had died of concussion in a field. (Walking across anything that
resembles a field still makes me nervous.) Apart from killing them, the
shell did no damage at all. Three of them were eighteen-year-olds who
looked like wax dummies, one was a heavyset baby-faced lieutenant, and
the fifth man was a captain in his mid-thirties. It was all over in
about five minutes.
    "Shall we pop over to the country club, play a round a golf?" Attica
asked in a surprisingly passable British accent.
    "I fancy a fucking tea dance," Scoot said. His slow-moving drawl
made the sentence sound so odd that no one laughed.
    "Well, there is one thing we could do," said Pirate.
    Again I felt a comprehensive understanding from which I was excluded.
    "I guess there is," said di Maestro. He stood up. "How much money
you got on you, Underdog?"
    I was tempted to lie, but I took what I had out of my pocket and
showed it to him.
    "That'll do," he said. "You ever been in the village?" When I looked
blank he said, "Outside the gate. The other part of the camp."
    I shook my head. When I got to White Star, I had been still so
turned around that I had noticed only a transition from an Asian
turmoil to the more orderly disorder of an army base. I had the vague
impression of having gone through a small town.
    "Never?" He had trouble believing it. "Well, it's about time you got
wet."
    "Get wet time," Pirate said.
    "You walk through the gate. As long as you're on foot, they don't
bullshit you. They're supposed to keep the gooks out, not keep us in.
They know where you're going. You turn into the first lane and keep
going until the second turn—"
    "By the bubble," Attica said.
    "You see a sign says BUBBLE in big letters. Turn
right there and go
under the sign. Go six doors down. Knock on the green door that says LY ."
    "Lee?"
    He spelled it. "Li Ly. Say you want six one hundreds. It'll be about
thirty bucks. You get 'em in a plastic bag, which you put into your
shirt and forget you have. You don't want to look too fuckin' sneaky
coming back through."
    "Some Jack," Scoot said.
    "Why not? Across from bubble, go into this little shack, pick up two
fifths, Jack Daniels. Shouldn't cost more than ten bucks."
    "New guy buys a round," said Attica.
    Without confessing that I had no idea what one hundreds were, I
nodded and stood up.
    "Lock and load," said Scoot.
    I walked out of the shed into the amazing noontime heat. When I went
around the fence that isolated us, I saw soldiers lining up at the
distant mess hall, the dusty walkways and the rows of wooden buildings,
the two ballroom-sized tents, the flags. A jeep was rolling toward the
gate.
    By the time I reached the gate, I was sweating hard. There was no
guardhouse or checkpoint, only a lone soldier beside the dirt road.
    The road out of the main part of the camp