Black Market (14 page)

“Read the after-action report.” Kirkpatrick’s voice remained cautious.

Shaw pointed at the young soldier using the wet end of his cigar. “You’d better start fucking listening, boy! If I could get
my hands on that damn report, I would! It’s classified Top Secret, and it has a special need-to-know seal on it.”

“
Smart
men cooperate with their friends, Bro…” Simpson grinned. “I let you out of my operation because there’s no problem finding
people willing to make a lot of money over here, but
anybody
can get their ass fragged in Vietnam.”

Kirkpatrick smiled with his lips pressed tightly together. He didn’t need to say anything. Simpson understood.

“Enough bullshit! What happened at Due Co?” Shaw hiked up his pants over his ample gut.

“We killed a lot of gooks and blew up an NVA supply truck that was carrying some medical supplies and a new scope of some
kind.”

“Medical supplies?” Shaw was curious.

“Yeah,
American
medical supplies.” Kirkpatrick couldn’t help but see the guilty look flash across Shaw’s face. “That’s why the after-action
report is classified … Why, do you know something about it?”

Shaw swallowed. He couldn’t hide the guilt. Simpson had introduced him to the South Vietnamese he bought his drugs from, and
they had asked him about getting them a shipment of meat. He had made a large profit and from there it had just developed
into filling a shopping list for them. The medical supplies were supposed to have been for a civilian hospital in Pleiku.
He had no idea where the starlight scopes had come from; it hadn’t been him.

Simpson saw the look on the sergeant’s face and realized that he was giving them away. “You can get your ass out of here,
Kirk. Keep your mouth shut!”

Kirkpatrick shrugged his shoulders. “About what?”

“Smart boy!” Simpson winked.

Shaw waited until Kirkpatrick had left the tent. “They were motherfucking Vietcong!”

A light coating of sweat broke out over Simpson’s forehead. He was a drug dealer and a damn good one, but he wasn’t a fucking
traitor! The black soldier from Detroit slipped off the bundle of blankets and snapped his head to one side to remove the
sweat. A lot of questions were answered about his two friends, especially their willingness to always come down in price on
the dope rather than lose him as a customer, and their pressure for him to push heroin to the newly arriving troops. They
wanted him to get as many American soldiers addicted to the hard drugs as he could; in fact, they would give him a bonus every
time he had increased his shipments.

“Those fucking South Vietnamese businessmen are working for the Vietcong! Man, this is bad shit … bad shit.” Shaw knew that
if they got caught selling black-market items to Vietcong agents, they would be put in a federal prison for life, maybe even
get the death sentence.

“It looks that way, but they might just be businessmen like they said they were. We can find out easy enough!” Simpson hated
being taken for a sucker by anyone.

“How?” Shaw was visibly .worried. Even his black-marketing friends would turn against him if they suspected he was supplying
food and equipment to the enemy.

“Do you still have those silenced .22s?”

“I issued Arnason four of them. There should be two or three left.”

“Good. Tomorrow when we visit my friends during your supply run, you carry one of the pistols and so will I. The shack city
is too small a place to use an M-16 without having it known all over the fucking base, and there are too many eyes.” Simpson
twisted his lips nervously and added, “Get me one now.”

Shaw left the hot supply storage area and went over to the large military safe where he kept his records and special supply
items. There were three of the small cardboard boxes inside and ten boxes of .22-caliber long shells. He removed one of the
pistols and four extra clips. Sweat left pie-plate-sized circles under his arms. He knew they would have to do something about
the captain too. A case of white phosphorus grenades was stacked on top of three crates of M-16 ammunition near the entrance
to die supply room. Shaw tore open the case and removed one of the cardboard tubes. He returned to where Simpson was waiting
and handed him the High Standard .22 caliber pistol with the factory-attached silencer.

“It’s very accurate and quiet.” Shaw went over to where he kept his tools and removed a roll of black plastic electrician’s
tape.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Simpson watched Shaw tear open the tube and remove the gray can, similar in size to a tall
can of beer, and wrap the black tape around the safety handle eight or nine times. Then the sergeant pulled the safety pin.

“Here.” He handed the grenade to Simpson. “Go over to the mess hall when it gets dark and get one of those large tin cans
that dehydrated food comes in. You won’t be bothered because a lot of the men use the cans for cigarette butts.” Shaw ground
his teeth and then continued. “Fill it three-quarters of the way full of gasoline and slip it under Youngbloode’s hooch, right
under his bunk, and then put the grenade in the gas.”

“Why in the fuck don’t
you
do it!” Simpson didn’t like taking risks like that but worse yet, he didn’t like the idea of fragging a black officer.

“If they see me
anywhere
near that orderly room they’ll nail my ass!” Shaw hissed the words.

“Bullshit! You’re an NCO, and a sergeant has a better reason to hang around the back of the orderly room than a soldier!”
Simpson had a point. “Besides, I’m taking care of the VC businessmen!”

“You gutless motherfucker!” Shaw knew that he was stuck with the task of fragging the captain. “You had
better
take care of them tomorrow!”

“You get the captain and I’ll handle those motherfucking commies.”

Shaw had waited until it was close to midnight before he went over to the mess hall. The trash had been thrown in a burn pit
behind the building, and the white sheets of butcher paper and bags of used paper plates guided him to the hole. The tin cans
were difficult to locate and Shaw was getting nervous. The pit drew large numbers of rats and the rats attracted
large
snakes. The last thing he wanted to do was reach into the pile of trash. The toe of his jungle boot tapped an olive drab
can lying on its side and he reached down and picked it up. The GI coffee can had been painted on the outside but the inside
of the can reflected in the moonlight. Shaw nodded his head; it would serve his purpose. He hurried over to the five-gallon
cans of diesel and gasoline stored near the mess hall shitters and filled the can halfway to the top; he didn’t want any of
the gas sloshing out when he walked back to the recon company area.

Voices filtered out around the closed plywood flaps that surrounded the orderly room. Shaw had seen the setup for the company
commander before when he had gone to visit the first sergeant, who lived across the hall from the captain. It was too bad,
but the senior NCO would probably die along with the officer.

Shaw wondered who the captain was talking to in his room so late at night. He could hear the two men talking as he crawled
under the hooch and placed the can of gasoline directly under the captain’s cot. Shaw turned his head and smiled up through
the plywood floor as he slipped the white phosphorus grenade into the can of gas. He figured it would take an hour for the
gasoline to dissolve the electrician’s tape and the safety handle to break free. Captain Youngbloode would be dead before
morning.

The two officers sat facing each other in the small room, sipping from their glasses of Johnny Walker Black.

“I’m glad to hear that you’ve got a good assignment with the First Marine Regiment, even though I don’t like the idea that
you’ll be out on the Khe Sanh Plain.”

“Always playing the big brother, Yakub!” Fire took a small sip from the glass. They had been drinking for a couple of hours
and he was beginning to feel a buzz. “I’ll be at the Rock Pile and Vandergrift Combat Base most of the time.”

“I don’t want to lose you now after so many years of having to wipe your nose…” Yakub stopped talking and frowned.

Fire sensed his brother’s uneasiness. “Is something wrong?”

“No … I thought I heard something under the hooch, but it’s probably just a rat.”

“So! Tell me Yakub!” Fire leaned back on the cot and rested his back against the wall. “Are you still communicating with that
back-to-Africa group?”

Yakub poured himself a little more of the good booze and reached in the mess hall pot for the few remaining chips of ice the
first sergeant had scrounged up for them. “Yes, in fact I’m looking at some land right now in Liberia.”

“Liberia? I thought you said that of all the African nations, Liberia would be the
last
one you’d go to.”

“That was a high school boy talking! Since then I’ve learned that there aren’t that many black African countries that will
allow a
black
American to immigrate. I was surprised when I started to really research the topic. Amin in Uganda wants me to come to Kampala
and be his Army Commander.”

“Uganda?” Fire was impressed.

“I turned him down after reading an intelligence report on what he’s doing to his own people. It seems as soon as a black
leader attains power, he goes back to his tribal loyalties and the minority tribes get slaughtered.” Yakub grinned a sad smile.
“Minorities everywhere seem to get their asses kicked!”

“What about Nigeria?” Fire finished his drink and set his glass upside-down. He was finished drinking for the night. “I hear
they’ve got a big oil boom started.”

“I have a letter pending with them, but there’s very little hope of being allowed to gain citizenship. They’re afraid of educated
American blacks … probably because they think the only reason we’re coming over there is to take away their power.” Yakub
smiled sheepishly. He was recalling a conversation he had had with his younger brother when he had been in high school. That
was exactly the reason he wanted to go back to an African nation: to develop a political base and gain power.

“I was hoping that you would have given up those ideas. You know it’s breaking Mom’s heart.” Fire yawned.

“I know, but it’s just something I feel I have to do.” Captain Youngbloode became very serious. “I don’t have nothing against
whites anymore. I would just rather live in an all-black community.”

Lieutenant Fire Youngbloode didn’t agree with his older brother, and they had argued for years over his desire to go back
to Africa. His father had worked very hard to ensure that his children got good educations, and the rest of the family had
suffered when Yakub had been selected for West Point over white candidates. Mississippi was not a friendly place to advancing
blacks, but the family thought that Yakub should invest his money in land in Mississippi and show them that a black man could
win.

“Hey little brother, this has been a good night. Let’s not end it in an old argument.” Yakub stood and stretched. “I’ve got
to check the guards. Do you want to come along?”

“Naw … I think I’ll just lie down and get some sleep.” Fire stretched out on the cot.

“You sure?”

Fire opened his eyes a little and smiled. “Are you afraid of the dark, big brother?”

“Only when you’re not around. Come on!” Yakub slapped Fire’s boot.

“Shit! You’d better make this a quick one.” Fire strapped on his pistol belt and followed his brother out of the hooch.

“I want you to meet some of the members of RT Bad News.” Yakub caught the screen door so that it wouldn’t slam. “That was
the team I told you about.”

“This late at night?”

“A couple of them should be on guard. They live in one of the fighting bunkers.”

“I’m already impressed.”

“You should be!” Yakub smiled. “My people don’t fuck around!”

Woods splashed the lukewarm water from the basin over his face and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He stood behind the bunker
with a dark green towel over his shoulder. The rest of the team were still sleeping, except for Kirkpat-rick who was still
up top on guard. He had volunteered to pull the last shift so that they could get ready and leave with Shaw at first light
for Qui Nhon.

“Don’t use up all the water.” Kirkpatrick leaned over the edge of the bunker.

“Since when do you wash up in the morning?” Woods dried his face and neck with the mildew-smelling towel.

“Since I’ve decided that I’ll be riding in a hot fucking truck all day and will be eating three pounds of Vietnam before we
get back.”

“Wake up the team.” Woods slipped on his shirt and buttoned the front.

Shaw kept looking out of his tent over at the orderly room. He had been up all night waiting for the explosion and nothing
had happened.

“Are you fucking sure you removed the safety pin?” Simpson was pissed because he had to get up so early in the morning, and
hearing that the grenade hadn’t gone off was making his day begin poorly.

“Yes, dammit!” He pointed over at his desk. “It’s right where I left it last night!”

“That’s bright, Shaw! Real fucking bright, leaving the safety pin on your desk! How fucking dumb do you think these people
are?” Simpson looked over and saw the small cotter-type pin lying out in the open. “If that damn thing had exploded, they
would have looked at least a little for the person who had set it off.” Simpson saw the opened case of white phosphorus grenades
with one of the cardboard shipping tubes missing. “You dumb ass!”

Shaw spun around and glared at Simpson. “Who in the fuck are you calling a dumb ass!” The look of hate was well defined on
his face.

Simpson pointed at the safety pin. “Exhibit A.” He started laughing. “Exhibit B.” He pointed at the open case of grenades.
“And if they find that unexploded white phosphorus grenade, Exhibit C!”

Shaw knew Simpson was right. He carried the case of grenades to the back of the tent and covered it with a tarp until he could
get rid of it. He picked up the safety pin, went over to the edge of the tent, and dropped it between the dunnage. “There.
Are you fucking happy now!”