Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [95]
The terrified old women began wailing in Vietnamese.
The stouter, bespectacled seaman snarled sarcastically, shouting, “What’s wrong, Charlie, no speakee English? I bet you speakee Commie, don’tchee?”
“Bush, Cheney, stand down!” Kerry ordered.
“They’re hostiles, Skipper!” Bush shrieked. “I’ve seen this trick a thousand times. Look at those grenades!”
“Those are mangoes, sailor.” Kerry could tell that Bush was drunk again.
“What you got under that pig? Pick up the pig! PICK UP THE FUCKING PIG!” Cheney shouted, ignoring his commander.
As Gore watched helplessly, it almost seemed as if time stood still. He looked at the scene in front of him. The two panicked men with the M-16s. The lieutenant moving slowly toward them. And cowering behind some barrels, three other men, two white, one black, all scared out of their minds.
“Ashcroft, O’Reilly, Thomas! Get your asses out of there and give me a hand,” Kerry shouted.
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, we’ll stay right here,” said O’Reilly.
There’s always a few bad apples in every unit, Gore reflected, but this was the first time he’d encountered a unit composed entirely of bad apples.
Cheney’s trigger finger twitched. Shit was about to go very wrong.
Kerry edged closer to the pair of crazed sailors. He calmly held out his hand, speaking soothingly as if to a small child. “Gimme the gun, Cheney. C’mon, buddy. Gimme the gun.”
Cheney responded by closing his eyes and squeezing the trigger. The M-16 belched lead and fire. The pig erupted in a blur of blood and guts. Bush followed suit, blindly spraying bullets into the sky.
Kerry tackled Cheney, and both men splashed into the water below. When Kerry surfaced, he saw that the women, though splattered with pig blood, were unhurt. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Next to him Cheney was thrashing around in the water, clutching his chest. “Help!” he gurgled. “Heart attack!”
On the boat, Bush jumped around hysterically. “Those dink bitches! They gave Dick another heart attack! You’re not going to let them get away with it, are you, Skipper?” Bush pulled the pin from a hand grenade, dangled it above the sampan. Then lurching back drunkenly, he dropped it at his own feet. “Oh shit!”
As Ashcroft, O’Reilly, and Thomas dove off the far side of the boat, Gore rushed forward and scooped up the grenade. He threw it into the dense foliage lining the shore, where it rolled into a well-concealed machine-gun nest, killing three NVA regulars who were waiting in ambush.
“I just saved your lives,” Bush shouted jubilantly. “I’m gonna get me a medal!” Then turning to Gore, he added, “Hey, reporter guy, gimme a beer.”
“You see what I’m dealing with here?” Kerry asked, pulling on a dry shirt. “There’s your article. I’ve got a headline for you: ‘Commander Sent into Battle with Dangerous Morons.’ ”
“I don’t think Captain Ailes will be too pleased with that. How about I just emphasize my own heroics in wiping out that machine-gun nest?”
“Sure, sure, fine. As long as you don’t write about the mission. It’s Top Secret.” Kerry tossed an envelope marked “Operation Chicken Plucker” on the table in front of Gore. Kerry nodded, “Go ahead, take a look.”
As Gore thumbed through the dossier, Kerry began to explain. “Eight months ago, a squad composed of raw recruits was sent to interdict VC supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.”
“Slow down, slow down.” Gore had begun writing again.
Kerry slapped the pen from the journalist’s hand. “No! I told you, this is Top Secret.”
“Sorry. I thought you winked at me.”
Kerry continued. “The first time the squad was sent out, they came back two hours later without their lieutenant.”
“Stepped on a mine?”
“That’s what Gingrich and Limbaugh said. Private Buchanan said the officer was greased by a sniper.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Gore said, leafing through photos of the soldiers. Not a good-looking group. Private Phil Gramm, a sweaty, slack-jawed Southerner; Private Mortimer “Rush” Limbaugh,