by H. L. Valdez
“We’re talking about the Stevens model 77E Riot-type shotgun with a short stock; the Winchester Model 12 riot-shotgun, the XM21 sniper rifle with range-finder scope, a few British Sten Mark-25 submachine guns with silencers, a few 5.56mm submachine guns with short barrels, and some head mounted SU50 night vision goggles,” she requested confidently, then paused to give him time to ponder the request. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Tran closed his eyes, downing his drink in one steady swallow. Gina stepped back plucking a box of wooden matches from her bag and lit a tightly rolled Thai stick sprinkled with opium. Inhaling deeply, she held her breath for twenty seconds, and then exhaled slowly. Wandering through the rooms, she took another deep drag from the Thai stick, holding her breath for as long as she could, then gradually exhaled the smoke, relieving her senses of all psychological responsibility and bringing her into an altered state of consciousness and other dimensions of realities, insights, and feelings.
“Interesting. That’s interesting,” Tran replied, wiping heroin and cocaine particles from his lips with his forefinger. Licking his fingertip, he looked toward Gina, while placing the empty glass on the night table as she began unlacing her boots. Closing his eyes, Tran lay back on the bed, drifting into a dreamy trance as dopamine molecules in his brain stimulated neurons into a state of indifference. He began thinking of Gina’s request and South Vietnam’s 900-mile rugged international boundary. His thoughts raced in reaction to the drugs, remembering surveillance operations, small unit raids, intense heat, dense foliage, dirt, loneliness, and the fear of death. Pressing his fingers against his temple, he massaged himself, recalling the remarkable bravery of his men along the narrow beaten footpaths of the Ho Chi Minh trail. Then, the horrible memory of American Special Forces Units positioned at various border surveillance camps in the Mekong Delta, riddling his men with automatic weapons fire.
"There's no other sound in the world like a bullet tearing through a man’s body," Tran thought, out loud, sullen faced. "Slap, slap, slap," he repeated mimicking the sound, bristling with emotion in reaction to the narcotics battering his neurons, releasing his inhibitions. "Then there are the leeches dropping from moist leaves and tree branches and landing on my neck when I brush against the foliage," he said, suddenly sitting up with his body racing with mixed sensations of euphoria and alertness. Repeatedly breathing deep, he inhaled the strong aromatic fragrance of a fresh bouquet of Carnations on the nightstand, becoming more relaxed.
"You sound weary," she said, taking another deep drag of the narcotic-mix in an inhale-walk-exhale practiced ritual.
"I need a change," he claimed, rubbing his eyes, lying back on the bed, his mind racing in reaction to excessive dopamine being produced in the receptor sites of his brain.
“You need a rest,” she said taking another drag then removed her bra while holding her breath, and walking in a circle.
"I've had it with battling thick undergrowth from a triple canopy jungle and walking over mountain trails and bamboo forests," he mumbled, looking up at the white floral patterns on the ceiling. Closing his eyes, he recalled leading his men up steep paths built with bamboo steps and hand railings. Then he began remembering the faces of armed liaison agents who knew only their section of the trail.
“My men were set up for that ambush. And I agree, there is a leak,” he stated with clarity, sitting up again as the cocaine boosted his state of alertness, energizing his enervated body.
"Assassination teams are causing terrorism everywhere. We just need a good strategy to deal with it," Gina suggested, while exhaling excessive smoke from her lungs, setting the Thai stick in a crystal ashtray. "The Vietnam war is just beginning," she advised, moving toward the luxurious bed.
"Everyone gets real keyed up when the shooting starts," Tran said, lying back, feeling physically relaxed and mentally massaged. The psychological horrors from his patrols were slowly easing into his subconscious as the heroin created a sense of well-being and euphoria, as the cocaine heightened his state of alertness.
“Let me help you,” Gina said, standing in front of him, as he removed her black laced trimmed panties.
“Who’s working with you?” Tran asked, as she unzipped his trousers.
“I’ll tell you later,” she replied, removing his khaki pants.
“How many people are chasing you?” he asked, his eyes fixed on her protruding breasts.
“I don’t know. I’ll get that information to you,” she answered, preoccupied with hidden thoughts of emotionally separating from Tran while returning to the table.
“Where are they?” he questioned, sitting down and scratching his tattoo.
“Tokyo, California, Vietnam, Mexico, the Triangle. Who knows where else? They’re everywhere. Just help me out a little. Tran, let me show you something,” she replied, dragging the canvass duffel bag to the center of the room. "Your job is to have a well armed security force in place to protect me and my father’s business. Have your people ready to move out and have the weapons ready when I call, and that’s it. Very simple,” Gina said firmly, while opening the dirty bag. “But you’re the man, Tran,” Gina said smiling, being careful not to aggravate his senses by over-feminizing the balance between male and female roles. Gina stared at him thinking he was an honest and simple man. However, he was high on structure and low on flexibility. Unwilling to change, he did not want to move beyond his comfort zone. He was stuck in the archaic male trenches of yesteryear.
“What’s in the bag?” he asked curiously, pointing.
“Tran, my love, I’ve got ten kilos of heroin in this bag just for you. It’s yours to give away, sell, or use,” she stated, opening the large canvass bag. “Quid pro quo,” she said smiling, exposing ten small compressed kilo bricks of pure white, highly refined Southeast Asian heroin worth over $3,000,000.
“Wow! That’s a nice payment,” Tran responded, grinning.
“It’s a bonus, not a payment. A cash payment completes our deal,” she added, pulling small bundles of money from the bag and holding them in the air.
“That’s a lot of money,” he replied, trying to calculate the bundled stacks of $1,000-dollar bills.
“Don’t worry; it’s enough to get the job started," she said with an icy tone.
“Thank you,” he replied wearily, still trying to fathom the emerging scenario.
"There's more to come, but it’s the final payment,” Gina stated in an impersonal manner, staring deep into his brown eyes.
“The final payment? I don’t understand?" He countered, innocent faced and confused.
“After tonight, things change,” she replied with a hard edge.
“I don’t get it? What changes?” He asked with mild force.
“Listen, we’re friends, but the nature of our friendship is changing. We won't have this type of friendship again.”
“You mean we won’t be lovers?” He asked, angrily.
“That’s right,” she quipped seriously. “My internal reality is changing.”
“It’s not fair,” he replied sadly. "That choice is not necessary. It doesn't make sense," he countered, bitterly.
"Love is not always fair," she said softly, tossing the money into the duffel bag.
"I gave my heart to you. I thought our love was true love," he admitted with deep sorrow. “I even bought an engagement ring.”
“Tran darling, everyone pays a love tax in romance," she informed, approaching him, as he sat on the bed, stunned. "We give our hearts and a little piece of it is pierced," she said softly, rubbing his thigh.
“I see,” he answered, bewildered.
"It’s the price we pay for love," she said rising, and returning to her opium laced Thai stick and lighting it. Tran watched her breathe deep and hold the smoke in her lungs without coughing.
“The price we pay for love?” He repeated, confused.
"Tran, our experience should expand the heart, not contract it," she replied, carefully exhaling the smoke into small rings. "Love makes us more in
tune with the dance of life as well as our own inner emotional rhythm,” she said gently, smiling, surrounded in a haze of smoke.
“So our love is over?” He asked quietly, as she approached.
“Love is never over. We never really stop loving the other person," she said with an optimistic tone, turning on the radio. “Come on, enough for now,” she encouraged, switching off the lights. Turning up the volume, I'm on the Outside Looking In by Little Anthony and the Imperials was playing.
The white-laced curtains filtered the morning sun as Gina knelt between Tran's legs; he was wearing a blue bathing suit, typical of elite North Vietnamese soldiers. Sensing the Colonel’s anticipation, she gripped and slowly squeezed the length of his hard, curved erection. Squeezing his expanding penis in her right hand, she eased it out of his bathing suit and into her warm moist mouth and felt it growing firm inside her. Stroking and orally squeezing his bulging muscle into a firm erection, she massaged cocaine around the tip of his moist throbbing penis, then into her mouth and then methodically sucked, and squeezed the length of his masculine ego into a dripping erection. Easing his bathing suit off, she orally nurtured his penis in a steady motion as he firmly remained inside her mouth. Releasing her warm oral grip, she patiently rubbed her vagina repeatedly with cocaine then sprinkled her mouth and his wet penis with more cocaine and massaged him into a dripping frenzy. Gently gripping his pulsating penis, Gina pulled him into the center of the bed with a series of steady yanks and tugs.
“I feel like a real woman when you're inside of me, Tran,” she whispered into his ear as his well-muscled body moved on top of her.
“I feel so special when I’m with you, Gina. You drive me crazy. I want to marry you,” he confessed, rubbing his rock hard penis against her personal queendom of fertility.
“No commitments, just let it happen," she said, lying underneath him, squeezing his posterior. "Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. Give me pleasure. Show me your appreciation,” she whispered into his ear as she wrapped her strong legs around his muscular thin waist as he rhythmically rubbed his torso against hers.
“Gina, I want you for my own” he whispered, kissing her passionately. “I’ve had enough practice sleeping alone. Be mine. Let me love you,” he said, kissing her neck while stroking his erection against her in an ancient pre-mating foreplay ritual.
“My love, we have the right bodies, but the wrong souls,” she replied, her labia tingling in moist readiness. Pressing her lips against his eager mouth, she French kissed him into the next level of passion.
“If only our souls could meet,” he wished, as she pressed her tongue into his mouth. “A kiss is something you can’t give without taking and cannot take without giving,” he whispered, breaking the kiss, inserting the tip of his penis into her warm moist orifice. Slowly he inserted himself then retracted, then eased himself totally into her private domain. Tran refrained from ejaculating; he was adept at nurturing and controlling his own physical function.
“You are with me in more ways than you know,” she whispered in his ear, squeezing her legs tightly around his waist, clutching his frame.
“I want you forever,” he gushed. “Please marry me.”
“You’re always with me,” she revealed, kissing him, elevating him into the next level of passion as he eased himself into her moist cavity, repeatedly inserting himself, and then retracting, back-and-forth. In between his penetrations, she contracted her strong vaginal muscles, gripping his penis in a squeeze-release rhythm, squeezing him tighter as he penetrated deep inside her. Meeting each other’s intense emotional belonging needs was the key to their deep sexual intimacy; it was a sexual narcotic for both of them.
“We are one. We are one,” he reminisced looking down at her, symbiotically attached, moving in sexual synergistic motion.
“Hard and deep, hard and deep. That’s what I like,” she groaned, as she folded her arms around his neck, holding him close. Overwhelmed with delirious sexual euphoria, he tried to balance the truth that only in the arms of a woman could he feel like a complete man.
“Faster, harder, deeper,” she whispered as her body tensed with orgasmic anticipation and desire as Tran, overflowing with hungry erotic passion, plunged his male symbol of life with all his phallic strength and power inside of her.
“I need you Gina. I’m so emotionally spent over you,” he sighed. “I love you,” he murmured, with the awareness that he had been sexually deprived for months and didn’t know if it was love or lust that was driving him.
“You’re so good. You’re so good,” Gina moaned, her body rippling with pre-orgasmic pleasure. “This is your time. Give me your love,” she whispered, rubbing her hands over his body as his narcotic-induced stupor kept him sexually obedient to her opium-fed desires as their sensory channels magnified the physicality of their love making into a mild frenzy.
“I need you so much. I’m crazy about you,” he moaned in a delirious mumble. “I don’t know if it’s love or lust.”
“Don’t worry. It’s a little of both,” she replied with a shyness and a keen sense of modesty. Gina was so erotic, provocative, and sensual, that her sexual knowledge and carnal desire had a profound psychological effect on Tran. He was naively hoping that good sex would take a bad relationship a long way and save his failing romance. In his heart he believed that he should give Gina complete emotional and sexual satisfaction every time they engaged in an intimate encounter. Gina and Tran believed that sexual happiness was a basic human right and a prerequisite for mental hygiene. In her soul, Gina knew her business would not allow risking emotional attachments. Detached from her feelings, she thought that the best-endowed and most potent male was no match for the sexual potential of women. Tran was her sexual prey, a stepping-stone on her path of sexual episodes. For Gina, it was a business doing pleasure with you. It wasn’t a friendship; it was a fuck-ship. It had to be her way.
Changes
30 August 1964. Tokyo, Japan. At the downtown Metropolitan Police Department, or Keishicho, Detective Butch Moriguchi walked through the immense communications command center past a noisy array of radio and wire communications control desks, a central operations desk, patrol car monitoring systems, wireless alarm systems, and an emergency police deployment display map. Butch glanced at the jurisdiction of the map covering 834 square miles and affecting over 40-million people. He was returning to a meeting on the 18th floor to discuss strategic interventions into narcotics organizations. For the past eight hours, Police Superintendent Ito and the Crisis Response Team had been reviewing short-term goals and objectives. The morning had been tedious, the afternoon tiring, and the early evening was proving to be wearisome.
“Who has the information I need?” Marco asked as Butch entered the room, with the meeting drawing to a close.
“That’s difficult to answer,” Velvet replied, as Butch closed the door. “Especially since we have people dead. We’re dealing with people whose every word has to be checked and cross-checked,” she added, watching Butch walk toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the wooded grounds of the Imperial Palace and central Tokyo.
“Everyone we talk to has a personal motive for telling you anything they think you might want to hear,” Butch answered, turning to the group.
“One thing for sure. The major drug traffickers always touch the money,” Rita said, in a blasé manner.
“The money,” Primo repeated, casually.
“Yes, the money. The money!” Justin repeated.
“What about the money?” Velvet asked.
“Go to the banks and look at suspicious accounts,” Justin suggested.
“You can’t do that. Japan has a secretive banking system,” the grumpy, overweight Superintendent Ito told the attentive group. “Currency controls are lax, so laundering illicit money through this immense system is difficult to trace.”
“We need a financial action task force,” Justin suggested.
“That won’t happen,” Ito replied, dismayed.
"Why not?" Justin asked, impatiently, tapping his forehead.
“Japan has a secretive banking system. Like Mr. Ito just said.” Butch stated, returning to the table.
"There aren’t any laws against money laundering in Japan. It’s legal,” Ito responded with a sense of frustration.
“Not only that, but Japan is convinced that it’s immune from a drug problem," Butch said pouring himself green tea.
"That’s why Japan is a prime target for trafficking," Velvet added, wrinkling her brow.
"You must understand, Japan has no treaty against laundering drug profits,” Ito told the group forcefully, shaking his head agitated.
“You mean bank authorities can’t confiscate bank deposits of money launderers and drug traffickers?” Rita asked skeptically, aware that her lover, Dr. Messner, had used Japanese banks for transferring his money to the States.
“That's right. Japan doesn’t have such a legal framework. Bankers don’t even bother to check the identification of customers when opening new accounts,” Ito answered, as Primo listened attentively.
“And that’s why we’re here,” Velvet said, snapping her finger at Justin. “We have to get a grip on drug activity in this region. Yet we can’t conduct wiretaps, chase funds, issue search warrants, or legally use hidden microphones. It’s all illegal in Japan,” Velvet told the group.
“Japan is a criminal’s paradise,” Justin said discouraged, looking at the group. “We’re supposed to conduct covert activities and our hands are administratively tied."
“And, Japan has no drug enforcement agency. Drug laws are under the control of the Ministry of Health and Welfare,” Superintendent Ito told the group. “Keep in mind, the Ministries of Justice, Finance, and Foreign Affairs, and the National Police Agency are also involved.”
“The problem is building a consensus among all these bureaucracies. This is a tough task, especially if officials are not convinced that there is a serious problem,” Butch concluded, blowing into his hot tea.