Baptism

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Woods relaxed and laid his CAR-15 down across his legs when they reached the outskirts of the coastal city. A pair of MPs waved them through the barbed-wire barricade that signaled their official entry into the secured city complex. A danger still existed from 122-mm rocket attacks and an occasional Vietcong assassination, but for the most part the VC used the city as a free port and bought their supplies through it and had their families live there safe from American artillery fire.

  Simpson hopped off the back of the truck as soon as they reached the shanty city that bordered the military supply complex. Shaw ignored the black soldier’s exit. The cluster of plywood shacks housed the laborers who worked as maids and sandbag fillers for the base area. Prostitutes had built their small one-room shacks in the shanty city and made their livings off the soldiers who worked the ships, unloading their cargo, and off the field soldiers who came to the small port city to draw supplies. The presence of the prostitutes was always given away by the Eurasian children playing in the dirt streets of the shantytown.

  Simpson darted down one of the narrow dirt streets and disappeared into one of the shacks. Two Vietnamese men were sitting inside; both of them wore tropical suits that were expensive. It was obvious that they didn’t live there.

  “Well, hello, my friend!” the smaller of the two Vietnamese said to Simpson in perfect English. “I was wondering if you were still in business.”

  “You can bet your yellow ass that this nigger is always going to be in business!” Simpson beckoned for the woman sitting in a corner of the dark shack to bring him a beer, and he missed the hateful look on the face of the second Vietnamese.

  “Why do you call yourself nigger?” The Vietnamese frowned. “I thought that word was offensive to Negros.”

  “Negro is offensive to black people… and I can call myself a nigger, but no one else can.” Simpson took a long drink from the cold beer the woman had taken out of the Styrofoam cooler. The block of ice had cost her more money than the beer had, but it was important that she was a good hostess to the drug dealers. She had survived the French occupation, and she knew how to play both sides of the fence. The two Vietnamese in her humble shanty were both members of the local Vietcong battalion and sold drugs to the Americans. The black soldier had been there before to buy cheap marijuana and heroin.

  “What’s the price for weed this week?” Simpson thought he knew the game. He had been a member of the Detroit drug gang called Young Boys Incorporated and had been given the choice of joining the Army or going to jail when he had gotten busted in a small raid. He had chosen the Army and had almost immediately started a drug operation. Simpson had just turned seventeen when the judge sent him into the military, and he had already accumulated over six hundred thousand dollars, which was deposited in the Detroit Manufacturer’s Bank.

  “For you, my friend, we always give a discount.” The small Vietnamese grinned while his partner glared at Simpson. The larger man would enjoy killing the insulting black man.

  “And the heroin?” Simpson pushed his luck as he always did with the pair of Vietnamese. “I want a twenty-percent discount. I give you a lot of business and I should have preferred-customer status!”

  “Ten percent. We must make a profit too!”

  “Fifteen!”

  “Fine. You are too good of a customer to lose!” The smaller Vietnamese shook his head as if he were being cheated but had no control over it.

  “Good! Twenty pounds of weed and a kilo of heroin…”

  The smaller Vietnamese nodded at his partner, and the large man left the shack. The three remaining people in the building sat quietly waiting for the man to return. Simpson drank his second beer and smoked a cigarette. He wanted to laugh at the Vietnamese drug dealer but bit his lip instead; he was buying drugs from him at less than fifty percent of the cost back in the States, and the fool had just lowered the price another fifteen percent!

  The Vietnamese sat waiting for his partner to return with the drugs, but his thoughts were on the orders he had received from his division commander earlier. He had been ordered to increase his drug sales to the American dealers working the units of the 1st Cavalry Division. There were many new replacements going to that division after the Battle of the Ia Drang, and the NVA wanted the new men drug-dependent. The fifteen percent reduction in price meant that he was selling to Simpson for less than it cost to produce and ship the drugs from Cambodia, but he wasn’t a capitalist.

  The large Vietnamese entered the shanty carrying a new U.S. Army duffel bag in one hand. Simpson took the olive-drab canvas bag, unsnapped the hook from the end, and looked inside. He saw the kilo of heroin on top of the one-pound clear plastic bags of marijuana.

  “Looks good.” Simpson reached into the side pocket of his jungle fatigues and removed a flat brown envelope. He opened it and counted out the price of the drugs with new American hundred-dollar bills. “Count it.”

  The small Vietnamese grinned. “I trust you, my friend.” He stood and tucked the money away in his suit. “And when shall we see you again?”

  “I’ll try to make it on the next supply run.” Simpson took the duffel bag and left the shack.

  The large Vietnamese spoke in his native language. “I would enjoy killing that pig slowly!”

  “Someday, my loyal friend, someday….” The smaller Vietnamese patted his pocket. The green dollars would buy much-needed supplies for his battalion.

  Simpson threw the duffel bag over his shoulder and walked through the gates of the American supply compound without being stopped. The MPs assumed that Simpson had gone to one of the shanty laundries and was bringing his clothes back to his hootch.

  Shaw left the building as soon as he saw Simpson approach the truck. “Hey, buddy! We’ve got some business to attend to.”

  Simpson glared at the supply sergeant. He knew the man was taking him for a ride, but for the present he had to put up with him. “Yeah, business… is that what you call it?”

  Shaw held his hands out, palms up, and shrugged his shoulders. “We all can get rich, partner.”

  “We ain’t fuckin’ partners!” Simpson increased the intensity of his glare.

  “Come on….” Shaw led the way back to the storage shed he used for an office when he was in Qui Nhon. The senior NCO who ran the warehouse complex was an old friend of his from their days together teaching at the Quartermaster School in Fort Lee, Virginia.

  Shaw took a seat on a bale of jungle boots. “How much are you bringing back?”

  Simpson looked at his duffel bag. “Fifteen pounds of weed and a half-kilo of monkey.”

  “Really?” Shaw grinned. “Now let me see…” He opened the duffel bag and could see the kilo. “Simpson! This is a half K?”

  “I meant a kilo.”

  “You’re not trying to cheat a friend, are you?”

  “I made a fuckin’ mistake!”

  “Let’s tally your transportation costs. Twenty dollars a pound for the grass and a hundred dollars a kilo… that’ll come to four hundred dollars.”

  Simpson reached into his side pocket, the opposite pocket from where he had paid off the Vietnamese, and removed a bundle of MPC ten-dollar notes. He counted out forty of them and handed the money to the sergeant. He had taken just about enough of the greedy NCO and was planning on paying James to give the white bastard a visit.

  “No, no, my friend…green money, or make that twelve hundred dollars in MPC.” Shaw hooded his eyes.

  Simpson replaced the MPC and paid the sergeant in green money.

  “Where do you get all of your real money from, Simpson?” Shaw tried pumping the black.

  “That is none of your motherfucking business!” Simpson let the hate show on his face.

  Shaw threw his head back and laughed. He didn’t care where the money came from, just as long as it came to him.

  Simpson picked up his cargo and left the building. He knew that in order to stay on Shaw’s supply detail, he would have to continue paying the bastard off
. Shaw was getting greedy, but without him Simpson would end up back on a recon team and risking his ass in the field. He was too rich for that kind of shit. Simpson smiled as he thought of the answer to Shaw’s question. He had a perfect system of converting MPC to green dollars. He had started out by transferring a hundred thousand dollars from his Detroit account to a bank in Hawaii, and then he took an R and R to the islands and drew his money out in hundred-dollar bills. It was an easy matter of smuggling the money back into Vietnam from an R and R flight. He was making more money from converting MPC into green at a rate of three to one than he was selling drugs, but drugs was his business, and he would never give up his business. He was making so much money that his problem now was converting MPC. He had partially solved that problem through his addicts. He gave them free hits of heroin for personal checks made out to his accounts in Detroit and Hawaii. He would smuggle the checks out or have a brother take them back and deposit them in the accounts. The system was better than exchanging the money in Vietnam.

  During the two years he had spent in Vietnam, Private Tousaint Simpson had become one of the richest men in the division.

  Sergeant Shaw was up at first light. It was important to reach the docks before the supply of frozen meat ran out for the day. Large oceangoing refrigeration ships would lie off the beach out of mortar range and unload their cargo onto smaller LSDs that shuttled the food and equipment to shore. Shaw had already insured that his paperwork was in order for the brigade’s order of frozen meat and for his special order that he had bought through his old school buddy for the black market at An Khe.

  The detail waited on the truck for Shaw to clear the vehicle for entry on the docks. Woods noticed that Simpson had brought a duffel bag with him and had shoved it under the tarp, near the far corner of the steel truck bed. Woods knew that Simpson was a drug dealer and assumed that he had picked up his supply. It was none of his business, but staying alive was. Simpson could get a dozen addicts to frag him during the night or during the day, for a single free hit of the cheap drug.

  Shaw left the security shack and waved the truck over to the loading dock. Four pallets of frozen meat waited for them under one of the roofed refrigerator areas. The meat had just come off one of the large ships and hadn’t even been placed in cold storage yet.

  “You guys are lucky!” Shaw yelled up to the detail. “I’ve found a forklift to load the pallets with.”

  Woods hopped off the truck and took a seat on the ground next to one of the large white portable freezers. He was joined by the rest of the detail as they waited for the truck to be loaded. Woods noticed that a convoy of trucks with Korean markings on their bumpers was parked in the line of freezers behind them. He was curious and walked over to where the yardmaster controlled the operation from his raised shack. The yardmaster could see all of the rows of freezers and the unloading operation from his ten-foot-high perch. The structure reminded Woods of a California lifeguard tower on the beach. Woods looked back and noticed that Masters had followed him.

  “What’s going on?” Masters caught up to Woods.

  “There’s a lot of Korean trucks in here. I was just curious…”

  “Here comes Shaw. We’d better hide, or he’ll chew our asses for coming over here!” Masters slipped behind a fence the yardmaster had built to keep the wind from blowing the sand away from the legs of his tower. Woods joined him.

  Shaw climbed the ladder and entered the air-conditioned office. Woods and Masters could hear them talking through the cracks in the floor above them.

  “Shaw! Good to see you again!”

  “Yeah! Here’s your money.” There was a pause in the conversation while the yardmaster counted the stack of MPC.

  “The price is going up ten dollars a case next week.” The voice of the yardmaster sounded like gravel in a tin can.

  “Again!” Shaw’s voice filtered down between the planks. Woods was nervous; they were obviously hearing a conversation that wasn’t meant for them to hear.

  “It’s not my fucking fault! The veterinarian has hiked up his fee to twenty grand a ship. He told the last captain that he wouldn’t declare the meat unfit for human consumption unless he doubled his cut.”

  Shaw’s voice leveled out. “Greedy! Every fucking body is getting greedy!”

  “I know what you mean. We can all leave here million-aires if we share, but there’s always the few that are going to fuck it up for all of us.”

  Woods smelled the acidic odor of a strong cigar and knew then why the yardmaster’s voice sounded so bad.

  “I’ve got to get my cargo back to An Khe before it thaws!” Shaw laughed. “No one wants to buy meat that’s unfit for human consumption.”

  Woods elbowed Masters in his side and left the shelter of the fence. He ran bent over until they had cleared the row of freezers and were protected from being seen from the tower by staying close to the white containers that housed tons of meat and frozen vegetables intended for the American troops in II Corps.

  When they were far enough away from the sergeants, Masters spoke. “Those black-marketing motherfuckers! Now I know why we don’t have fresh meat in our mess halls and end up eating canned tuna three times a week!”

  Woods remained silent.

  “I’m going to turn those bastards in to the CID!” Masters was angry.

  “Stay out of it, Masters. It ain’t worth the trouble, and it’s a bunch of sergeants and officers involved! You heard them talking about the veterinarian! Well, he’s an officer!”

  “Fuck them! I’m sick of eating shit while they’re getting fucking rich!” Masters shook Woods’s hand off his shoulder. “There’s a CID office by the main supply complex. Tell that fucking Shaw to pick me up over there!”

  “You’re fucking up, Masters!” Woods tried again to talk the soldier out of reporting the incident. Low-ranking enlisted men never won when they went up against senior NCOs and officers.

  “You stay the fuck out of this! I may be a fucking druggie, but I’m no fucking black marketeer!” Masters left Woods alone by the reefers and ran across the storage area toward the Criminal Investigation Division’s office.

  Woods yelled after him. “Don’t get me fucking involved!”

  Masters stopped running and called back. “Fine with me, you fucking coward!”

  Sinclair and Simpson were just pulling the last heavy trap over the pallets of frozen meat when Woods rejoined them.

  “You timed it right, Woods!” Sinclair called down jokingly to his recon teammate. “We’re done!”

  “I’ll unload.” Woods pulled himself up on the truck.

  “You bet your white ass you’ll unload!” Simpson was mad. Simpson was always mad. “Where did you go?”

  “To find a shitter.” Woods made up the believable lie.

  “Where’s it at?” Sinclair asked. “I’d better go before we get out on the road.”

  “I couldn’t find one back here, but I saw one behind the main office complex when we came in. Ask Shaw to stop when we leave.”

  “Stop where?” Shaw yelled up from the ground.

  “Stop at the main gate so we can take a shit before heading on back.” Sinclair took a seat against the cool stack of meat.

  “I hope you strapped those pallets down good. If that meat shifts back there, it’ll crush you.” Shaw pulled himself up on the running board and slid over the passenger seat. “Fuck! This seat is hot!”

  “Here.” Woods threw him a piece of cardboard that had been used to make the pallets slide better on the bed of the truck during the loading. “Use this to sit on until the seat cools off.”

  “Where in the fuck is Masters?”

  Woods dreaded the question.

  “Probably hiding somewhere smoking a bowl.” Sinclair leaned over the railing and honked the horn.

  Shaw waited a few seconds and then told Sinclair to drive the truck to the main gate complex and they’d wait there while they used the latrine.

  Masters had entered the CID o
ffice madder than when he had left Woods. He had taken only a few minutes to tell the CID sergeant who was on duty about the black marketing operation that was going on back in the refrigeration yard.

  “Are you the only one who saw the two sergeants?” The voice of the CID man was soft.

  Masters looked over at the sergeant, and was about to mention Woods, then remembered that he didn’t want to get involved. “Yeah… just me.”

  “Well, fill out this report form and I’ll personally investigate the incident. I agree with you, we can’t have black marketing going on here!” The sergeant handed Masters a preprinted form to fill out.

  “Look, Sergeant Shaw is going to have to pass by here on his way out. Just check his paperwork and you’ll see the difference in the amounts….” Masters pointed back to where the truck had been parked.

  “Thanks for your advice.” The sergeant smiled politely. “But let me handle this… our way.”

  “Fine with me!” Masters shrugged his shoulders.

  The screen door flew open, and Shaw strode into the office. “What the fuck are you doing in here?”

  Masters looked up from the paper he was filling out. “Burning your ass, Sergeant!”

  “What!” Shaw took an aggressive step toward the soldier.

  “Stop!” The CID sergeant stepped between them. “I think you’d better be on your way, Sergeant!” The CID man shoved Shaw back toward the door. “Your man will be staying here with us for a couple of days, and we’ll have him flown back to An Khe when we’ve finished with him.”

  “You motherfucker!” Shaw glared at the man. “Be careful what you say! You’ve got to come back to An Khe!”

  “Fuck you!” Masters gave the departing sergeant the finger.

  Shaw and Simpson were both worried over what Masters was telling the CID agent back at the supply compound as they drove through the city; neither one of them wanted to be investigated by the Army’s special criminal unit, but most of all, they didn’t want to lose their businesses.