He’d noticed the Privines lolling about on the crates in the shade — guys he would someday come to know as Duke, Reaper, Goat, and Destroyer — watching as he and his Navy boys muscled supplies up from the boats to the half-broken robot freight mover on the dock. Stupid robot couldn’t pick up anything itself anymore, you had to load it and tell it where to carry the shit.
Remembered thinking, What a bunch of lazy Privine pricks. They could help us and they just sit in the shade, weapons on their laps, chewing gum and spitting tobacco and grinning as we sweat this bullshit in the hot sun.
That’s when the attack came. Starting with an explosion.
No, that was wrong, he decided, as he revisited the memory. It really started with a noise, a shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh, and Reaper had popped up like a jack-in-the-box, the lolling Privine vanished, all fighting Marine now, on hearing that noise — shouting, “Get down, incoming!”
And that’d saved the Kid’s crew. They dived for cover, and the surface-to-surface missile struck the robot freight mover, the machine turning to screaming flak and hissing shrapnel, flames licking up, the massive device half-falling through the hole the explosion busted through the dock.
The Kid’s mouth had gone all cottony, and he had trouble being loud enough yelling at his men to move back to the boat, get under the dock, as the insurgents’ stolen truck came roaring toward them from the shore, a dark face at the wheel, a man with shades and white teeth bared, barreling it at them. That was the real attack, the missile was just a preliminary to shake them up, disorient them, kill a few. That’s the way the rebels liked to hit you.
The truck could be a suicide machine itself, totally wired — but Destroyer and Reaper were running toward it, when anybody in their right mind would be running away; their weapons blazed, tearing the truck’s engine apart, and the radiator was the only thing on it that exploded. Then it veered, out of control, smashed into a piling and overturned with a thump that shook the whole dock. The rebels got out of the back anyway, yelling their war-cry gabble, something about calling their God to give them strength to smite evil, charging with those cheap rebuilt assault rifles spitting rounds, bullets chewing up the pier, sending splinters and ricochets off metal bolts whipping past Reaper and Destroyer.
Duke and Goat had moved off to the other side of the dock and were doing what they could to flank the rebels in the narrow space, firing their weapons.
The Kid had finally managed to get the safety turned off on his own assault rifle, clicked a round into the chamber, fired at the rebels — running after the Privines as he fired past them at the enemy.
It’d been just thirty, maybe forty-five seconds of firefight, but it’d seemed a lot longer. The Kid watched in wonder as Duke ran at two rebels, screaming his own war cry. One of them was firing back — Duke staggering, but not falling, running through his clip, blowing the head off one of the guerillas and slamming into the other, knocking him flat, smashing down with his boot, crushing the guy’s throat. Another one was coming at him from the side and the Kid was trying to get a bead on that rebel — but there was Goat, jumping over a crate, coming down firing, hitting the guy between the eyes.
The Kid was awestruck by the squadron’s tautness in action, their unity, their sheer nerve: Duke turning to cover Goat’s six, shooting a rebel who was coming at him from behind; Destroyer getting Reaper’s back, Reaper turning to cover Destroyer, giving a hand signal the Kid didn’t know and suddenly they were running in a phalanx, all four of them, into the remaining six rebels, who were trying to aim but were too panicked to hit anything. Another second and the squadron was among them, cutting them to pieces. The squadron fired astonishingly fast, moving from target to target with split-second exactitude, as fast as a rock drummer pounding unerringly through his drum set.
The Kid was firing, too, when he could get a shot, but he didn’t think he had hit any of the enemy, and by the time he got close enough to do it for sure, the rebels were already dead. Shot to pieces.
Reaper had taken a couple of rounds in the chest, but he was still standing — his Kevlar had stopped them. Goat had lost a chunk of his hip, and Duke had taken a round in his right shoulder…
But the bodies of dead guerillas were lying about like a crashed load of mannequins strewn over the dock. The Privines had made every round count — and most of the enemy had died from head shots. Instead of panicking, the squadron had worked like a well-oiled machine.
That’s what the Privines were about. Readiness. Readiness in unity.
Afterward, the Kid had walked up to them. Watched as they patched one another up. Cleared his throat.
“What?” Destroyer had asked.
“Just wanted to say…”
“You’re welcome. Now fuck off.” He looked down at Duke’s wound.
Reaper glanced up at the Kid. “You call a med-chopper?” Reaper had asked.
“On their way.”
Destroyer had gone back to bandaging Duke, Reaper to taking care of Goat. Then Destroyer looked up, feeling the Kid watching.
“What?”
“You guys…did a great job.”
“So? We’re supposed to.”
“I guess — we were sort of bad-mouthing you…”
“You wanted to say sorry?” Duke had said. “We don’t need it. We only take sorry from people we respect.”
“Actually,” Destroyer pointed out, as he squeezed some pain-stopper into Duke, “I turned around, the Kid was coming up with us, firing at the enemy. The only one of that bunch that did. Shows…I don’t know. Shows something I guess.”
The Kid fairly glowed inside at that.
“So, Kid —” Duke said. “You want a medal? Go get us something to drink, if you want to be useful.”
“Sure,” the Kid said. “I mean — something to drink. Some water. I’ll get it…the water I mean.” The Kid turned away. Then turned back. “Uh…how do I…?”
Destroyer looked balefully at him. “How do you get water? You get a canteen and you shake it. If it goes gurgle, gurgle, there’s water in it. Then you bring it here to me first — not to these other jar-heads.”
“Hey fuck you, Destroyer,” Duke said, “who you calling a jarhead, jarhead? Kid, don’t listen to him. Bring me the water first.”
“But — how do I…”
“What?”
He finally just blurted it: “I want in.” He licked his lips. “Be…you know…one of you.”
Duke snorted. Destroyer shook his head. “Hard to jump from your service to ours. Special deals got to be made. Besides — the training alone’d kill you. Now, Big Balls, how about that water?”
“I’ll get you water. But…I want in.”
“What, we don’t get water unless we say you can join?”
“No, I’m not saying that…”
“Then fuck off.”
“Huh? Look — I want in.”
“Heard you before.”
Confused, the Kid opted for simplicity and ran for the canteen, ran puffing back, handed it over. But as they passed the water around, he said, insistently, “I want in. Or…uh…I don’t get you in to see Hotties in Orbit tonight.”
“Hotties in Orbit?” Duke had said, sitting up, suddenly interested. “You can get us in to that?”
“Come on, Duke…” Reaper muttered.
“Hey, I wanta see that thing. Yeah…and the kid was good. Boy howdy he was good. You see how good he was, backing us up like that, Reaper? I heard they got that blond with the tattoos on her ladyplaces in that thing, man…that genius actress with the humongous…”