Brown Water Patrol

Heat hits Kenny Jackson the second he steps off the truck at Cat Lo. It is not the Gulf Coast heat he grew up with. This is wet, heavy, and it sits on his chest like a soaked flak jacket. The riverfront stinks of diesel, rotting mud, and something sweet that might be fuel or vegetation cooking in the sun. Fiberglass hulls thrum against the pier. Engines idle. Men shout over the racket. Kenny’s seabag cuts into his shoulder. Sweat already soaks the collar of his utilities.

He finds the boat basin by following the noise. Gray-green patrol craft sit tied in a ragged line, thirty-one feet of fiberglass and guns, each one scarred and dirty. A Chief Petty Officer waits on the planks with his sleeves rolled and a bandolier across his chest. Broad shoulders. Leathered face. Steel-gray eyes that do not blink much. A shrapnel scar runs across his left collarbone like a white zipper.

“Jackson,” the man says. It is not a question. “I’m Chief Thomas. You the new coxswain for one-oh-five?”

“Yes, Chief.”

Thomas looks him over the way a man looks at a tool he did not ask for. “Gulf boats, they told me. Commercial fishing. You ever run anything this light in water this dirty?”

“Not like this.”

“That’s honest. Keep it that way.” Thomas turns and walks. Kenny follows. “You volunteered for brown water. Nobody dragged you. You understand what that means, or you just wanted a story?”

Kenny’s mouth is dry. “I wanted boats, Chief. Real ones.”

“You’ll get them. You’ll also get ambushes, mines, and kids with RPGs who don’t give a shit about your seamanship scores.” Thomas stops at a craft with faded numerals on the bow: PBR 105. The hull is chalky. Bullet holes have been patched with resin that does not quite match. Twin .50s sit in the forward tub, black and ugly. Aft gun mount. Radar. Radio. The whole boat looks like it has already been through something Kenny has not.

“This is home,” Thomas says. “You wreck her, you swim. You freeze, they die. Clear?”

“Clear.”

A lanky kid in an oversized helmet is in the forward tub, wiping oil off the twin fifties with a rag that used to be white. Nineteen, maybe. Dark curls plastered to his forehead. Gun oil on his cheekbones. He looks up and grins too fast, like he practiced it.

“Davis,” Thomas says. “Forward guns. Jackson’s your new coxswain.”

Richard Davis wipes his palm on his trousers and sticks it out. The handshake is damp and nervous. “Philadephia,” he says. “Don’t hold it against me. You ever fire these?”

“Not these.”

“They kick like a mule and they cook. I keep ‘em clean. Superstition, maybe. I oil ‘em before we shove, after we come back, sometimes in the middle of the night if I can’t sleep.” He laughs once, short. “You do that with the helm? Talk to it?”

Kenny almost smiles. “I talk to engines. Used to, on the Gulf. If they started rattling, I listened.”

“Good. Listen to this pig. She talks.” Davis glances at Thomas, then lowers his voice. “You hear about the last guy?”

Before Kenny can answer, a voice comes up from the engine well, dry and Midwestern. “If you’re going to gossip, at least hand me a wrench that isn’t stripped.”

Charles Anderson is waist-deep in the compartment, spectacles fogged, dungarees black with grease. Compact, sandy hair, medical pouch taped to his belt. He does not climb out. He just looks up, blue eyes sharp behind the glass.

“Anderson. Engines and whatever else breaks,” Thomas says. “Show him.”

Anderson taps a fuel line with a knuckle. “Twin Detroit Diesels. Waterjets. She’ll plane if you don’t abuse her. There’s a vibration in the starboard jet. I haven’t killed it. Feels like a bad impeller or a bent shaft, I don’t know yet. You shove the throttles to the stops in a canal and she might throw a fit. Don’t do that unless you’re already being shot at.”

Kenny leans over the coaming. Heat rolls out of the well like a furnace. “How long’s it been doing that?”

“Since before I got her. Previous coxswain didn’t write it up. Or he died before he could.” Anderson says it without drama. “I can keep her running. I can’t promise she’ll like high RPM in a tight turn. You feel it in the deck. You’ll know.”

Thomas cuts in. “Briefing. Now. Shade, if you can call it that.”

They gather under a corrugated awning that does nothing. Charts go down on a crate. Thomas’s finger traces black lines that look like veins. Canals. Mangroves. The Mekong Basin spreading inland until it stops meaning anything on paper.

“You do not read this river like a textbook,” Thomas says. “Current lies. Banks lie. A sampan is a sampan until it isn’t. You see a tree line that looks empty, you treat it like it’s loaded. Instant reaction. You wait for confirmation, you’re already hit. Coxswain calls the helm. Guns don’t wait for pretty orders. Anderson, if we take damage you stay in that hole until the fire stops or the boat’s sinking. Prefer the first.”

Kenny studies the route marked for tomorrow. A narrow cut. Sharp bends. “That’s the patrol.”

“That’s the patrol.” Thomas’s voice stays flat. “Your predecessor ran it last week. RPG from the left bank, second bend after the fish traps. Took him in the chest. Boat made it back. He didn’t. You’re on the same track at first light. I am not telling you that to scare you. I am telling you so you don’t act surprised when the bank lights up.”

Davis swallows. His hands find the rag again, twisting it. “Jesus.”

“Jesus is not on the watch bill,” Thomas says. “You are. Jackson, you freeze at that bend, we all eat it. Davis, you keep those fifties talking. Anderson, if the jet starts shaking, you tell the coxswain before it grenades. Questions?”

Kenny has plenty. He asks one. “Rules of engagement in the cut?”

“If it shoots, you shoot. If it looks like it’s about to, you still shoot. Higher command can write letters later. I want you alive to read them.”

The sun drops. The delta does not cool. It just changes color. Mangroves go black. Water holds a last strip of dirty gold. Somewhere inland, artillery rumbles. Not close enough to duck. Close enough to count. The sound rolls over the swamps and dies in the humidity. Kenny feels it in his teeth.

Davis lights a cigarette with hands that shake a little and offers the pack. Kenny takes one even though he does not want it. They stand by the bow, not talking much, going through the small stupid rituals men invent before they do something that can kill them. Davis checks the ammo belts again. Kenny traces the wheel with two fingers, learning the play. Anderson stays below until the last light, muttering to the diesels like they might answer.

Thomas comes back with a clipboard and a look that says he has given this speech too many times. “Chow if you can keep it down. Sleep if you can find it. We shove before dawn. Jackson, you have the helm. You don’t like the vibration, you still run the route. We don’t cancel because a boat complains. We cancel when we’re dead.”

“Aye, Chief.”

Thomas studies him one more time. “You scared?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Fear keeps your head on a swivel. Panic gets you killed. Know the difference by morning.” He walks off toward the radio shack. His boots leave wet prints on the planks.

Kenny stays on the pier. PBR 105 bumps against the fenders, restless. Diesel tick. River slap. Artillery again, farther now, or maybe closer; the swamp lies about distance. He thinks about the man who sat where he will sit tomorrow, chest opened on a bend he has never seen. He thinks about a waterjet that might fail when he needs it most. Davis is still talking to the guns under his breath. Anderson’s flashlight moves in the well like a trapped insect.

Kenny spits into the water. It disappears without a ripple that lasts. He is twenty-something and in command of a thirty-one-foot target, and the enemy is already on every shoreline, waiting for the same route, the same bend, the same green coxswain who thinks listening to engines will be enough.

He goes aboard. The deck is tacky with old fuel. He sits at the helm in the dark and puts his hands on the wheel. It is still hot from the day. Out in the mangroves, something pops. Small-arms, maybe. Or just the delta settling. Davis looks up from the tub.

“You good?” Davis asks.

“Ask me tomorrow,” Kenny says.

Anderson’s voice floats up, calm as a shop floor. “If tomorrow’s jet lets go, I’ll be the first to know. You’ll be the second. Don’t stall her. She hates that more than Charlie does.”

Kenny almost laughs. It comes out as air. Night thickens. The base generators grind. He stays at the wheel until his legs go numb, learning the smell of this particular boat, this particular river, this particular fear. Tomorrow they run the cut. Tonight the artillery keeps talking, and PBR 105 waits with a dead man’s route and a shake in her guts, and Kenny Jackson, new coxswain, does not sleep.