Black Market (18 page)

Woods felt his body slump, drained of all its energy, and he lay back on his bunk and closed his eyes. Sleep was a tool the
body used to protect itself from an overload, either emotional or physical.

Nineteen-year-old Buck Sergeant David Woods slept.

The sound of muffled whispers filtered down through the open trap door. Warner and Koski were on the roof talking to Sergeant
Arnason, who had just returned from the headquarters staff meeting. Rumors were flying all around the base about the incident
in the village.

Woods sat up on the edge of his cot and looked out of the open gun port to see if it was still light outside. He had slept
so deeply that he felt dizzy.

“I’m glad you’re awake.” Arnason’s head filled the roof opening. “Captain Youngbloode needs to talk to you.”

Woods nodded and staggered to his feet. He braced himself against the four-by-four bedpost and wiped his face.

“Are you all right?” Arnason’s voice sounded worried.

Woods nodded again and went out the back door. He poured some water in the basin and washed the sleep from his face.

“Kirk’s dead.” Arnason leaned against the sandbags.

“I know.” Woods’s voice seemed unwilling to continue. “I was there.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Woods dried his face and blinked a couple of times between deep breaths. “Let’s get this shit over with … I’m tired.”

A half-dozen strange jeeps were parked in front of the orderly room and loud voices could be heard coming from Captain Youngbloode’s
office. Arnason paused outside the entrance and read the bumper identification numbers from one of the infantry battalions
on the far side of the base. The drivers had been standing together smoking. They stopped talking and glared at Woods, who
was still wearing his
BAD NEWS
cap.

“I wonder what this is all about?” Arnason adjusted his CAR-15 nervously and frowned.

The lieutenant colonel yelling in Captain Youngbloode’s face stopped and turned around when the two NCOs entered the building.
“Is he the one?”

Youngbloode shook his head and smiled a grin that said, “I don’t believe this shit.”

“Well!” The battalion commander glared at Woods and then at Arnason. He didn’t know which one of the NCOs was the one he was
looking for, but he knew the soldier was from the recon company.

“Let’s talk civil, Colonel, and then maybe we can get some answers—”

“Don’t you tell me to talk civil! Dammit!” The lieutenant colonel’s face was turning deep red. “I
am
civil! You can bet your bla—your ass that I wasn’t the one who ambushed and assaulted fellow Americans!”

“I don’t know if what you’re saying is true or not, but what I do know,
sir
, is that your
white
ass isn’t going to be standing in this black-assed captain’s orderly room unless you start acting like an officer.” Youngbloode’s
words were spaced perfectly and the tone of his voice enforced what he was saying.

The battalion commander looked around at the clerks and the company first sergeant and saw the looks of contempt written on
their faces. He nodded his head. “You’re right, and I apologize. Let’s go somewhere private and talk this out.”

“Good. My office will do.” Youngbloode pointed to the open door and nodded for Arnason and Woods to join them. The clerk nearest
to the office slipped in a couple of extra chairs and pulled the door shut behind him. He smiled over at his buddy and raised
his eyebrows. This was the most excitement they had had since the rocket attack.

The voices coming through the wall of the office were too low for the clerks and the first sergeant to hear, but they could
tell from the tone that the conversation was heated. The door to the orderly room opened and closed, drawing the senior NCO
away from his eavesdropping. A very distinguished South Vietnamese officer stood just inside the tin-roofed building holding
an ivory swagger stick in his gloved right hand. The first sergeant looked at the officer’s collar and saw the double stars
on each side.

“ATTENTION!”

The clerks struggled to their feet confused, until they saw the major general standing by the door. Captain Youngbloode stepped
out of his office expecting to see the brigade commander and was as surprised to see the general as his first sergeant had
been.

“Sir, Captain Youngbloode reporting!” Youngbloode stood at the position of attention and held his salute.

The major general took his time returning the salute and casually walked a little farther down the aisle before speaking in
a perfect American English dialect. “I am looking for a young American sergeant who was on Highway 19 outside of a small village
named Khu Pho. I was told that I could find him here.”

“A lot of people seem to be looking for him, sir.” Youngbloode could see that the general was not in any mood for levity and
added, “He’s in my office, General.”

Woods left the captain’s office followed by the battalion commander and Arnason. The general stared at the young sergeant
and slowly smiled. “Are you the soldier who
rescued
a woman and a young boy today?”

Woods looked over at Youngbloode and then at Arnason before answering the general. “There were nine people, sir.”

The major general tapped the starched leg of his trousers with his swagger stick and looked over at his aide, who nodded in
agreement with the number Woods had stated. “The old woman is my mother…” He paused so the words would sink in. “And the boy
who was beaten is my son.”

The battalion commander felt like fainting. He could see his military career falling apart. Arnason looked directly at the
lieutenant colonel and smiled.

“The village of Khu Pho is composed
entirely
of the families from my division and from the soldiers serving at the District Headquarters.” The major general moved his
swagger stick to his left hand and rested his right hand on his pistol holster. “I would like the name of the officer who
countered my District Chief’s orders not to sweep the village of Khu Pho, and I want the names of every officer involved in
that sweep.” The major general’s voice lowered. “Five people were executed and I will press charges for murder.”

“Sir…” The battalion commander spoke up. “I am the commander of the highway security battalion this month.”

“Then you are responsible?”

“I thought your District Chief was trying to hide something, that’s why I countered his orders—”

“He
was
trying to hide something!” The general’s voice rose to the verge of open anger. “He was trying to hide the fact that my family
was living in the village! The communists would have liked to know where they were too! That’s why they planted the mine in
the road just outside the village … To get the reaction they got from you Americans.”

“Sir, I
am
sorry!” The battalion commander was trying to make up for a very serious mistake in judgment on his part. He had only two
more weeks left of his six months of command and had almost made it without an incident. The highway security detail for his
battalion had been what he thought at the time a very lucky break. It was nearly impossible to screw up your career with that
kind of duty.

“Not yet, Colonel. You will be sorry, but not yet.” The major general returned his attention back to Woods. “Sergeant, I want
you to appear at my headquarters tomorrow to receive a very high Vietnamese award, but the reason why I personally came here
today was to thank you for saving my son’s life.”

“You’re welcome, General.” Woods stood at attention.

The major general smiled again and saluted Woods before leaving the office.

Arnason waited until the jeep pulled away from the building. The orderly room was so quiet that they could hear each other
breathing. “Well, Colonel … I guess that sort of answers your questions.”

Youngbloode couldn’t help smiling.

“Don’t be a smartass, Sergeant!” The battalion commander stormed out of the building. He had to get to the brigade commander
before the ARVN general did and give the colonel his version of the story. If he was lucky, he could blame one of his staff
officers and the infantry company commander, who was an OCS graduate and expendable.

“Woods!” Youngbloode was smiling. “Woods! What am I going to do with you!”

Woods shrugged his shoulders. “Let me go back to sleep?”

“You really earned your pay today, Sergeant … except I don’t know what I should do about you disobeying
my
orders.”

Arnason frowned.

Woods tried thinking what orders he had disobeyed. “Orders, sir?”

“Yes. I told you that those ‘Bad News’ caps could only be worn when you were on patrol, in your bunker, or on guard duty.”
Youngbloode grinned. “How do you expect me to keep discipline if my noncommissioned officers don’t obey the rules?”

“You got me, sir.” Woods shook his head and smiled.

Arnason snatched the black drive-on cap off Woods’s head and brushed his hand through his hair. “Damn kiddie NCOs!”

The CID sergeant dropped the telephone back down in its cradle and felt the sweat breaking out over his forehead in the air-conditioned
office. Master Sergeant LeMoine’s body had just been found by a couple of South Koreans from the Capitol Division, who had
gone up to his tower to get their paperwork signed. The depot commander wanted the Criminal Investigations Division to conduct
an investigation as to the cause of the murder.

The sergeant rubbed his fingers around the edge of his unauthorized handlebar mustache. He knew the real reason the Koreans
had gone to see Country in the tower and wondered if they were the ones who had killed him. He discarded the idea, because
even though they were upset over the rising prices of the black-market meat, they were still getting a very good volume discount
that placed the price of their meat at about half the cost of purchasing it from Vietnamese sources.

He needed to alert the ship’s captain and the veterinarian meat inspector before going over to the tower to start his investigation.

The telephone rang a half-dozen times before the Army switchboard operator came on the line. “Plug me into the
San Francisco Gull
’s captain’s quarters.”

A bored metallic voice answered, “Yes sir.”

The line went dead for a couple of seconds and then was filled with a loud static before clearing when the captain keyed his
telephone. “The
San Francisco Gull
, Captain Rankin speaking.”

“Rank?” The CID sergeant cleared his throat. “Cutter here. We’ve got some problems. LeMoine has just been found dead up in
his tower … shot twice.”

There was a long pause before the captain answered. “Are you the one investigating it?”

“Yes. I’m on my way over there now, but I thought that you should know about it right away.”

“Thanks. Have you told Doc?”

“He’s next.”

“Thanks. Tell Doc McPeters that we’ll have a meeting at seven o’clock tonight.”

“Roger.”

“Thanks again.” The line went dead.

The CID sergeant direct-dialed the veterinary clinic and waited, while the telephone rang a good dozen times. He knew that
there was always someone in the clinic during the day. Veterinary clinics in Vietnam rarely dealt with live animals and were
almost exclusively used to inspect food items and mess halls; with the one exception of inspecting live animals that were
shipped out to Special Forces camps for the CIDG strikers.

Doctor McPeters had a passion for genetics and volunteered a lot of his time to help the local Vietnamese farmers improve
the quality of their livestock through selective breeding. He was busy removing semen from a prize boar for artificial insemination
of a breeding sow in a village near Qui Nhon. He kept three champion boars in a pen behind the clinic for just that purpose.
When he had first decided on helping the Vietnamese improve their breeding stock, he had simply given them the imported boars
and bulls. Within a month, over half of the expensive prized studs had been butchered and sold to Vietnamese restaurants.

“Hello!”

“Doc?”

“Yes, dammit! What do you want, Cutter!”

“Were you busy.”

“What does it sound like?” The vet set the large glass vial down on the table near the telephone. “I was extracting some semen.”

“You were jacking off one of your pigs again?” Cutter couldn’t help taking a cheap shot at the doctor.

“If you called to make smart-assed remarks…” He started hanging up the telephone and heard Cutter’s voice.

“LeMoine has been murdered.”

“What!”

“Someone shot him twice … once between the eyes.”

“Oh shit! What does this mean?” Fear crept into the doctor’s voice. He had agreed to help the black marketeers by declaring
the frozen meat unfit for human consumption because they had offered him a great deal of money. The Army had sent him to a
civilian medical school after he had reenlisted as an NCO. He came from a very poor family, and the only way he was ever going
to get his own clinic when he got out of the service was on his own. He had already started the plans for an ultramodern clinic
back in Kentucky, outside of Lexington, that would cost a little over two million dollars and he already had almost all of
the money stashed away in an Australian bank.