Firebase (2017) Movie Script
You're not who I'm looking for.
You Sergeant Hines, yeah?
Jacob Palmer,
Central Intelligence Agency.
I'm the guy you've been
communicating with.
This is Sergeant Carr
of the Studies
and Observation Group.
You're far from your friends,
Sergeant Hines.
When you wandered off,
your unit
thought you had deserted,
wanted you court-martialed.
You're still drawn to it?
You have to kill it, yeah?
Too late, though.
The river god did this
three days ago.
We'll get some men up here
to clean this up.
Come on, let's head out.
I have something to show you.
Have you ever heard
of Firebase Quatro?
Outside of Tay Ninh,
on the border of Cambodia.
We set up Quatro as a base
for tracking the river god.
You know who he is?
I need you to do
something for me, Hines.
I give you info,
you do what I ask.
Understand?
Now, the river god
was a Vietnamese farmer.
We keep the survivors
of his attacks at Quatro,
in the field hospital.
There's someone there
I want you to meet--
a kid named Bracken.
He's the only survivor
of the river god
who can still talk.
-Jacob Palmer?
-Yeah.
Major Brickerson.
JSOC told me
you might be able to shed
some light on things for us.
We got our asses whupped
by a VC ambush.
We waited for reinforcements,
but when those soldiers came,
they were...
they were monsters
in the shape of men...
They wouldn't die,
not by shooting them.
So we retreated
to Firebase Tarheel--
or we tried to--
but...
Tarheel was gone.
Just fucking gone.
That's when I called in
the air strike.
We lit that jungle on fire...
and we burnt everything.
And there he was,
just standing there...
not running,
no pain,
invisible...
except for the napalm
just sticking to him.
Something I'll never be able
to explain.
It just doesn't make sense.
Look, I'm not here
to connect the dots for you.
The events at Tarheel
are classified.
I got men in this unit I trust,
men I know,
men I've shed blood with,
and they're saying
things happened to them
that they can't explain.
My boys are saying
they saw the devil...
the devil.
Yes...
I want your men
to help us kill the devil.
I think the CIA
better start to explain
what the fuck is going on here,
or you're going to have
a mutiny on your hands.
Please state your name.
Bracken.
Corporal Richard Bracken. Sir.
All right.
Please recount the events
at Firebase Tarheel.
How did you get burned?
What happened?
The day started weird.
There was some...
something along the riverbank.
Seals had found it,
and a call came down for us
to get Intel on it.
The camera guys in air cav
were sent with us,
and we saw it.
It was...
I don't know what it was.
What happened
at Firebase Tarheel, Corporal?
We were shooting everywhere.
They had us pinned down.
All my buddies got fucked up.
I mean, bad.
And I just seen him there
looking at me.
The river god.
He was looking right at me.
And I never felt
anything like that.
One minute, I'm in the jungle,
looking at that...
thing.
The next, I'm in South Carolina,
back on the day
we were gonna deploy.
I don't mean
like a dream or nothing.
I mean, I was in America.
And?
The planes...
they were all destroyed.
And we were under attack.
There was Russian aircraft,
but not like migs, or nothin'...
It was this blue napalm.
Like a propane flame napalm.
And everyone was burning.
They were burning us.
Soldiers burning.
Like hell.
Did that happen?
Did that happen
at Charleston Air Base?
Are they all dead?
Charleston's safe.
But it did happen.
It did.
Because then, uh...
Freddy and the boys,
they pulled me out of the ditch.
-I was still on fire.
-Here?
Yeah. Here.
In the jungle.
I was like...
here again but on fire.
Like they pulled me
out of South Carolina
into Vietnam.
A lot of my buddies
were along the river bank.
Bracken, let's go!
Come on!
He's raising the dead up.
Like ghosts.
He's making their...
their insides...
like, hard...
like a cockroach.
They look like spiders
or something.
I asked if anyone else
had seen their...
the god.
No one else had.
Thank you, Sergeant Bracken.
Corporal Bracken
will be flown
back to the States,
enrolled in MKSEARCH,
and his name will be stricken
off the rolls here.
He'll officially be MIA,
along with the 318
other Americans lost at Tarheel.
As of this moment...
Firebase Tarheel never existed.
Get some rest.
We head out
in a few hours.
I don't sleep anymore.
Try.
All these men...
they're gonna die tonight,
you know that, right?
I'm not sure you care
if these soldiers live or die,
You don't even care
if you live or die.
Maybe that's
how it works.
Who are you?
What are you becoming?
These details are slipping away
from you, aren't they?
I can help.
I have...
these dreams.
More like visions.
Trying to tell me something...
I can't understand
what it's saying.
It just sounds like noise.
I spoke to soldiers
in your previous unit.
I've heard all the accounts
about you.
"Hines isn't meant to die."
"Hines is protected
by a divine hand."
Objects were put in your path
to shield you,
put there to protect you
at exactly the right moment.
To shield you from
the right piece of shrapnel.
It's almost as if life itself
knew you were coming.
The universe keeping you alive,
saving you,
as though it has a plan for you.
And the river god?
That man you're
compelled to hunt?
He is an error.
A mistake.
Plain and simple.
Life wants him gone.
But what is he?
A simple villager.
He had no connection
to the Vietcong.
He had a wife.
He had children.
He was pushed by grief
to the point where...
that the very fabric
tore around him.
The local villagers
who knew him,
they began calling him
"The River God."
He wandered the Mekong,
leaving a wake of destruction.
I don't even think he knows
he's doing these things...
these horrors.
Manifesting reality through
his subconscious thoughts.
Changing matter inside the dead,
reanimating them
as visions of his own hell.
Eventually,
he wandered into an NVA Base,
begging for help...
but by that point,
his flesh
had entirely burned off.
Invisibility...
telepathy...
As a god walking the earth...
his mind is set free.
We will set the jungle on fire.
Burn everything
until flaming gel
splatters across him,
lighting him up for us to track.
We will find him.
This is
the electromagnetic coil gun.
It's firing projectiles
about l/20th the speed of light.
Now, this...
this is the real jewel.
It creates a magnetosphere,
positive and negative polarity.
Everything about this
is designed
to keep reality unbroken,
so you can function.
You will be protected from
the breakdown in space-time.
We call it a relativity capsule.
It amplifies
the gift you already have.
Put on
the whole armor of god,
that you may be able to stand...
against the schemes...
of the devil.
You Sergeant Hines, yeah?
Jacob Palmer,
Central Intelligence Agency.
I'm the guy you've been
communicating with.
This is Sergeant Carr
of the Studies
and Observation Group.
You're far from your friends,
Sergeant Hines.
When you wandered off,
your unit
thought you had deserted,
wanted you court-martialed.
You're still drawn to it?
You have to kill it, yeah?
Too late, though.
The river god did this
three days ago.
We'll get some men up here
to clean this up.
Come on, let's head out.
I have something to show you.
Have you ever heard
of Firebase Quatro?
Outside of Tay Ninh,
on the border of Cambodia.
We set up Quatro as a base
for tracking the river god.
You know who he is?
I need you to do
something for me, Hines.
I give you info,
you do what I ask.
Understand?
Now, the river god
was a Vietnamese farmer.
We keep the survivors
of his attacks at Quatro,
in the field hospital.
There's someone there
I want you to meet--
a kid named Bracken.
He's the only survivor
of the river god
who can still talk.
-Jacob Palmer?
-Yeah.
Major Brickerson.
JSOC told me
you might be able to shed
some light on things for us.
We got our asses whupped
by a VC ambush.
We waited for reinforcements,
but when those soldiers came,
they were...
they were monsters
in the shape of men...
They wouldn't die,
not by shooting them.
So we retreated
to Firebase Tarheel--
or we tried to--
but...
Tarheel was gone.
Just fucking gone.
That's when I called in
the air strike.
We lit that jungle on fire...
and we burnt everything.
And there he was,
just standing there...
not running,
no pain,
invisible...
except for the napalm
just sticking to him.
Something I'll never be able
to explain.
It just doesn't make sense.
Look, I'm not here
to connect the dots for you.
The events at Tarheel
are classified.
I got men in this unit I trust,
men I know,
men I've shed blood with,
and they're saying
things happened to them
that they can't explain.
My boys are saying
they saw the devil...
the devil.
Yes...
I want your men
to help us kill the devil.
I think the CIA
better start to explain
what the fuck is going on here,
or you're going to have
a mutiny on your hands.
Please state your name.
Bracken.
Corporal Richard Bracken. Sir.
All right.
Please recount the events
at Firebase Tarheel.
How did you get burned?
What happened?
The day started weird.
There was some...
something along the riverbank.
Seals had found it,
and a call came down for us
to get Intel on it.
The camera guys in air cav
were sent with us,
and we saw it.
It was...
I don't know what it was.
What happened
at Firebase Tarheel, Corporal?
We were shooting everywhere.
They had us pinned down.
All my buddies got fucked up.
I mean, bad.
And I just seen him there
looking at me.
The river god.
He was looking right at me.
And I never felt
anything like that.
One minute, I'm in the jungle,
looking at that...
thing.
The next, I'm in South Carolina,
back on the day
we were gonna deploy.
I don't mean
like a dream or nothing.
I mean, I was in America.
And?
The planes...
they were all destroyed.
And we were under attack.
There was Russian aircraft,
but not like migs, or nothin'...
It was this blue napalm.
Like a propane flame napalm.
And everyone was burning.
They were burning us.
Soldiers burning.
Like hell.
Did that happen?
Did that happen
at Charleston Air Base?
Are they all dead?
Charleston's safe.
But it did happen.
It did.
Because then, uh...
Freddy and the boys,
they pulled me out of the ditch.
-I was still on fire.
-Here?
Yeah. Here.
In the jungle.
I was like...
here again but on fire.
Like they pulled me
out of South Carolina
into Vietnam.
A lot of my buddies
were along the river bank.
Bracken, let's go!
Come on!
He's raising the dead up.
Like ghosts.
He's making their...
their insides...
like, hard...
like a cockroach.
They look like spiders
or something.
I asked if anyone else
had seen their...
the god.
No one else had.
Thank you, Sergeant Bracken.
Corporal Bracken
will be flown
back to the States,
enrolled in MKSEARCH,
and his name will be stricken
off the rolls here.
He'll officially be MIA,
along with the 318
other Americans lost at Tarheel.
As of this moment...
Firebase Tarheel never existed.
Get some rest.
We head out
in a few hours.
I don't sleep anymore.
Try.
All these men...
they're gonna die tonight,
you know that, right?
I'm not sure you care
if these soldiers live or die,
You don't even care
if you live or die.
Maybe that's
how it works.
Who are you?
What are you becoming?
These details are slipping away
from you, aren't they?
I can help.
I have...
these dreams.
More like visions.
Trying to tell me something...
I can't understand
what it's saying.
It just sounds like noise.
I spoke to soldiers
in your previous unit.
I've heard all the accounts
about you.
"Hines isn't meant to die."
"Hines is protected
by a divine hand."
Objects were put in your path
to shield you,
put there to protect you
at exactly the right moment.
To shield you from
the right piece of shrapnel.
It's almost as if life itself
knew you were coming.
The universe keeping you alive,
saving you,
as though it has a plan for you.
And the river god?
That man you're
compelled to hunt?
He is an error.
A mistake.
Plain and simple.
Life wants him gone.
But what is he?
A simple villager.
He had no connection
to the Vietcong.
He had a wife.
He had children.
He was pushed by grief
to the point where...
that the very fabric
tore around him.
The local villagers
who knew him,
they began calling him
"The River God."
He wandered the Mekong,
leaving a wake of destruction.
I don't even think he knows
he's doing these things...
these horrors.
Manifesting reality through
his subconscious thoughts.
Changing matter inside the dead,
reanimating them
as visions of his own hell.
Eventually,
he wandered into an NVA Base,
begging for help...
but by that point,
his flesh
had entirely burned off.
Invisibility...
telepathy...
As a god walking the earth...
his mind is set free.
We will set the jungle on fire.
Burn everything
until flaming gel
splatters across him,
lighting him up for us to track.
We will find him.
This is
the electromagnetic coil gun.
It's firing projectiles
about l/20th the speed of light.
Now, this...
this is the real jewel.
It creates a magnetosphere,
positive and negative polarity.
Everything about this
is designed
to keep reality unbroken,
so you can function.
You will be protected from
the breakdown in space-time.
We call it a relativity capsule.
It amplifies
the gift you already have.
Put on
the whole armor of god,
that you may be able to stand...
against the schemes...
of the devil.