Read Free-Fire Zone for Free Online

shorts, we are a formation of nearly naked guys, with guns slung over our shoulders. It is a beach trip, after all.
    â€œJupp is worse than useless,” Gillespie pipes up. “I don’t know what he’s even doing here.”
    â€œKilling time, man,” Hunter says. “Just like everybody else.”
    â€œNo,” Gillespie says. “No, no, not like everybody else. Not like me. Not like ol’ Cabbage here. We keepgetting sent into that jungle and all them creepy little villages and killing everybody like they tell us to and getting shot at. But Jupp, man, he never goes nowhere. Never. He just orders and directs and shouts and assigns. Then he shrinks back into his hooch until it’s time for chow.”
    We have reached the beach, and we don’t break stride. Guns and all, the five of us march right down over the burning sand and straight into the surf, where we continue the discussion in waist-high water.
    â€œWho’s got the soap?” Squid asks. This is also a hygiene trip.
    Marquette whips the new bar of soap at Squid. It bounces off his chest and falls under the water. We don’t have the floaty kind of soap, so Squid has to dive right under after it.
    â€œGood thing he’s a sea creature,” Hunter says.
    â€œAnd how ’bout those corporals?” Marquette says, and now it’s pretty clearly become a game of how furious can we get Sunshine.
    Sunshine doesn’t let us down.
    â€œSlugs!” he shouts, punching the ocean hard enough to send Squid shooting up out of it like he’s performing at the aquarium or something. “Those guys … it’s like they aren’t even here as part of the Marines. Like they’re on some kind of separate contract working forsome other operation altogether. It’s like they’re self-employed.”
    â€œAt least they go out,” I say. “They go into the jungle and do stuff sometimes.”
    â€œYeah, when they feel like it,” Gillespie says.
    â€œYeah,” Hunter says, “but they do feel like it from time to time. Not like the lieutenant.”
    They won’t let Sunshine relax today. This seems kind of dangerous, and I take a plunge underwater when I see his head go all purple.
    â€œâ€” if they would let me!” he’s screaming when I come back up. The other guys are laughing, and the way the one bar of soap is being tossed around, this feels — really, really weirdly — like one of the more social gatherings I’ve been at here. Nobody even looks up as a helicopter from the base thup-thup s past above us, drowning out Gillespie’s rant. Well, almost drowning it out.
    One by one we all get cleaned up and cooled off and one by one we migrate out of the water and up to the beach. I see Hunter up there, making snow angels in the sand, which I suppose should be called sand angels.
    â€œAlmost over anyway,” Marquette says, catching up to me in the shallows.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œThis,” he says, gesturing at Vietnam. “There’s not much left of it. You can feel it. Nobody’s really eventrying anymore because everybody knows we’re wasting our time. These third-world peons are making us look stupid. If I was Jupp, I’d stay in my bed all the time, too. Not because I’m a lazy coward like him, but because I’m too smart to waste my time and maybe my life on a war that nobody but a moron thinks that we might win at this point.”
    I keep walking, splashing, then padding on the wet sand that goes from cool to hot in three steps.
    â€œ I’m trying,” I say, working in more ways than one to be cool. “I’m trying, like I’ve always been trying, like I’m gonna keep on trying until somebody tells me it’s over. And yeah, I believe we can win.”
    Funny enough, Private Marquette of the United States Marine Corps seems unimpressed by my statement of dedication to the cause. In fact, he