Black Market
Page 22
Captain Youngbloode sat down behind his desk and picked up the white document. He started reading the numbers in the column and automatically adding them up in his head. His eyes stopped moving across the page when he came to the figure that represented the recon men killed in action during the river fight. It was much larger than the small number at the bottom of the page that stated how many men were ready for duty. The morning report started shaking in the captain’s hand. Youngbloode could not take his eyes off the number of dead. He felt the first tear roll down his cheek and then he started crying hard.
The clerk sitting behind his desk started typing to cover up the sound of his captain. He knew how the officer felt because he had cried too when he assembled the report. A lot of the names listed on the document had been smoking buddies of his. He had been thinking about giving up doing drugs ever since he had been detailed to pull guard duty in Arnason’s bunker, and after seeing the list of lives lost during the battle, he decided that he would stop drugs and make something out of his life. A little good had come out of the battle.
Arnason opened the plywood door to the fighting bunker and stepped inside. The firing port shutters had been closed since they had left it and the bunker smelled of damp earth. Warner propped open one of the gun ports and Koski opened the other one on the left side.
“Check the topside.” Arnason started unbuttoning the new fatigue jacket that had been issued to him at the hospital.
Warner unlatched the trap door and pulled himself out on the roof of the bunker. “It’s a fucking pig pen up here!”
Arnason slipped off his new trousers and nodded. He figured that the detail guards would have left the bunker a mess. He opened the ammo box he used for a clothes closet and removed a set of worn camouflaged fatigues. “Woods! Come back inside. We can clean up there later!” Arnason shook out the pants before slipping them on. They felt damp against his legs.
“I didn’t think that I’d ever say this, but it’s good to be back.” Sanchez kissed two of his ringers and reached over to touch the color picture of the Sacred Heart of Christ above his bunk.
Koski nodded in agreement and stared at Sanchez’s picture of Christ. The big Pole’s hand slipped under his open jacket and touched the new scar that went from his shoulder down to his belly button. He was glad to be back too.
Warner dropped down through the trap door onto the ammo cans covering the floor. “I still think you should have gone to Japan, Koski. You would have been home by now.”
“I told you, Sergeant”—Koski accented the rank—“I came to Vietnam to fight.”
“Yeah sure, war hero shit.” Warner chuckled over what he had said and then added his thoughts. “That’s it, Koski!”
“What?” Koski tried frowning at Warner. “You’d better not come up with one of your smartass comments!”
Warner chuckled. “You can become a war hero and then sell your canned shit back in Hamtramck. I can see it now”—Warner moved his hand out in front of him—“canned Koski Shit.”
“I’m going to pound out some Warner Shit, and that’s all they’ll find to send back home to your mommie!” Koski took a step toward Warner.
“Get the fuck away from me! Sergeant Arnason! Call this fucking Polack off me!”
Arnason glanced over at Warner and shrugged his shoulders. “You’re on your own, kid.”
“Fuck!” Warner scurried back against Woods’s bunk and reached down to grab something to throw at the huge Pole. His hand wrapped around a black bag under the edge of the cot that had been there since Shaw and Simpson had been killed by the VC drug dealers. Warner tried backing away from Koski. “Get the fuck away from me!” He threw the black bag at Koski, who casually brushed it away. The bag hit the edge of the plywood shutter and tore open.
“Koski … stop.” The tone of Arnason’s voice halted the man in his tracks.
“Holy … Mother of God!” Sanchez sat upright on his bunk and watched the bundles of ten-dollar MPC notes fall from the bag onto the worn lids of the green steel ammo cans.
Arnason pulled the black bag off the shutter and unzipped it to look inside. There was still a lot of money remaining along with a small red leather-bound book. Arnason sat down on the edge of his bunk and flipped through the pages of the address book that listed names, dates, units, and amounts paid and still owed.
“That’s Simpson’s. I’ve seen him pull it out of his pocket a couple of times up in the mess hall.” Sanchez had joined the rest of the team circled around Arnason.
“How did it get in here?” Arnason looked up at his team.
“I brought it with me.” Woods spoke up. “I pulled it out of the truck downtown and shoved it under my bunk, and forgot about it when we were alerted for the field.”
“Look at all this money!” Sanchez had policed up the bundles of MPC that had fallen to the floor. His voice lowered. “What are we going to do with it?” The Mexican’s tone implied that he hoped they weren’t going to do something stupid, like turn it in to the captain.
“I don’t know.” Arnason dumped out the contents of the bag on his bunk and started counting the bundles. “Warner, count how much money is in a bundle.”
“A thousand dollars.” Warner answered almost immediately.
Arnason gave him a quick questioning glance.
“Trust me. Money is something us Warners know a lot about.”
Koski raised his eyebrows. “Do we have to listen to this shit?”
“If you’re right, Warner, there’ll be a hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars here.”
The bunker became silent.
Sanchez was the one who broke the trance. “Sarge, you’re not going to turn that money in! Simpson was a drug dealer!”
Arnason looked at each of the men’s faces in the dimly lit bunker. The odds of Sanchez and Koski seeing that much money again in their lives were very slim. Woods might make it if he went to college, and Warner was the only one in the bunker to whom that kind of money wasn’t a big deal. Arnason knew he could use one-fifth of a hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars.
Warner was the one who provided the answer. “Don’t forget about Koski’s mother.”
Arnason handed Youngbloode the red leather drug dealer’s notebook. “Woods found that on Shaw’s truck. I think it belonged to Tousaint Simpson.”
Captain Youngbloode thumbed through the pages. “This is some good information.” He looked up at Arnason but didn’t ask the next question that popped into his mind. The first sergeant and one of the investigating officers had found over fifty thousand dollars in Simpson’s personal belongings. He laid the red book on his desk and looked up at the sergeant. “We’re going to be getting a bunch of replacements in from the RECONDO school tomorrow. Are you ready to start training some new men?”
Arnason smiled. “Yes sir.”
The company clerk saw Woods and Warner waiting for Arnason outside the orderly room and called out to Warner. “Hey, Bob! You’ve got a telegram!”
Woods gave Warner a funny frown and Warner shrugged his shoulders. The clerk opened the screen door and handed the yellow Red Cross telegram out to Warner. “I hope it’s not bad news.” The clerk knew that Red Cross telegrams from home usually meant somebody had died or was very ill.
Warner broke open the envelope and read the block letters.
Warner smiled to himself and folded the telegram so Woods couldn’t read it.
“Well? Bad news?” Woods looked at Warner’s face for any sign of grief.
Arnason stepped out of the door and hurried over to where Warner and Woods were standing. “I heard about the telegram.” His voice sounded worried. “Bad news?”
Warner grinned and crushed the Red Cross message in his hand. Arnason didn’t need to know that Koski’s problem had already been solved. “Naw, Dad just wanted to let me know that some of our stock split.”
“Shit!” Woods’s voice sounded relieved. “I thought it was something important!”
Warner
smiled and patted his sergeant’s shoulder, “It was, Sarge. It was!”
URGENT
RED CROSS TELEGRAM
FM: DETROIT, MICHIGAN
TO: ROBERT WARNER
AN KHE, VIETNAM
BOB:
SIS TOLD ME WHAT YOU WANTED HER TO DO WITH YOUR CAR STOP I THINK THAT WAS A NOBLE THING FOR YOU TO WANT TO DO STOP I THINK I CAN HANDLE THE COSTS FOR YOUR FRIENDS MOTHERS OPERATION STOP YOUR AC COBRA IS IN THE GARAGE WAITING FOR YOU TO COME HOME STOP YOUR MOTHER AND SISTER SEND THEIR LOVE STOP
I LOVE YOU SON STOP
DAD
ON LOYALTY
AND BETRAYAL…
Nam meant trust: putting your life in the hands of your buddies fighting beside you. Nam meant betrayal: watching the black marketeering that thrived at the dusty backwater basecamps, diverting critical supplies to enemy agents. Six months in country, David Woods knows these lessons all too well. For while Sergeant David Woods is trying to mold a new unit of fresh Recon recruits into a single combat force, the black market is turning bloody behind his back. Suddenly Woods will be caught up in the kind of battle he wasn’t trained for—and the real war is waiting at Khesanh…
From the heartland of America to the heart of war, they were the friends, the enemies, and the true heroes of the place called “NAM.”
SURVIVOR OF NAM #3 BLACK MARKET
AN AUTHENTIC NEW SERIES ON THE WAR
About the author: A former Green Beret, Donald E. Zlotnik fought with Command and Control North, a Special Operations Group, and saw combat action throughout Southeast Asia, including the battles of Dak-To, Khesanh, and the Plain of Reeds.