Black Market (3 page)

“We’ll be ready.” The NCO saluted again.

The engineer private remembered the beach as he walked down the edge of the highway. He could see the manned Marine outpost
on top of the hill about a thousand meters away. The road had once been paved with asphalt, but after years of not being used
by the South Vietnamese, large holes and mounds of dirt defaced the winding stretch they were trying to clear of mines. The
young Marine could hear the sound of the AMTRACKs behind him every time the drivers would move forward and stop. The sound
was comforting as he led the column down the enemy-held road. He was the point man, walking fifty meters out in front of even
the infantry guards. No one wanted to be close to him in case he stepped on a mine. He felt as if he had to take a shit and
tried squeezing his buttocks to make the feeling go away. It would be too embarrassing to make the whole column stop and wait
for him to shit. He had only ten more minutes and then he would be relieved by his teammate; then he could take a long, long
shit.

The hum was constant as he swept the mine detector back and forth over the road. He stopped frequently to check thoroughly
any depressions, or what looked like disturbed spots on the highway.

He looked at his watch. His time was up; in fact he had spent an extra two minutes at the point. He turned down the volume
of his headset and turned around to wave his replacement forward. The breath caught in his throat and he almost yelled out.
His gunnery sergeant had been walking behind him carrying an M-60 light machine gun with a full belt of ammunition flipped
over his arm and then over his left shoulder. A piece of stiff wire stuck out of the corner of his mouth.

“Shit, Gunny! You scared me!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to.”

“Have you been right there all the time?”

“Every second.” The sergeant smiled. Do you think I’d let your skinny ass walk point alone?”

“No…” The young Marine nodded and then smiled back. “No, I didn’t think you would.” He waved for his replacement to join him.
“I’ve got to take a shit! You can bet your ass that I won’t do this again before I take my morning shit!”

“Go on … use the brush over there and check it for snakes before you drop your pants!”

“Great! I needed to hear that!” The Marine engineer didn’t like the idea of taking a shit in the bamboo and only went to the
edge of the road where there was a slight bend. The men in the column couldn’t see him but his sergeant could. He didn’t care;
he wasn’t that shy. He started unbuckling his belt and the gunny turned slightly away, looking up the side of the cliff that
bordered the right-hand side of the narrow asphalt highway. He thought about the possibilities of an ambush. The site was
perfect for as far as he could see down the road. French engineers had cut the highway out of the cliff side, and he could
see where they had filled in the gorges and leveled the area. The left side sloped down to a fast-running river and then the
terrain turned into rolling hills. This portion of Highway 9 would have been a beautiful Sunday drive, if there wasn’t a war
going on. A gunship passed over his head and the NCO looked up at it as it leveled off and flew slowly along the edge of the
cliff. A platoon of gunships had been assigned to patrol the cliffs just in case the NVA decided on risking an ambush.

“You about done?” He looked over at his Marine.

“Yeah!” The young engineer was replacing his battery belt and looked over at his sergeant.

The rifle cracked. The engineer threw his arms out and fell backward into the bamboo, while his mine detector swung out and
cut down a small stand of young plants.

The gunny reacted instantly. The first burst from his machine gun was high, about three feet above the tan pith helmet. He
lowered the barrel and fired again. The NVA sniper fell forward from his perch on the ledge. He had been a scout and had been
ordered not to open fire, but to observe and report back on the size of the American unit. The NVA soldier had allowed his
hate to take control when he saw the Americans and had disobeyed his orders.

The infantry sergeant riding in the lead AMTRACK called for the gunships over his radio. Within seconds the first gunship
made a pass at the cliff side, sending hunks of rock flying over the road. The gunnery sergeant stood over his Marine and
looked down. He saw the blood bubbling around the young man’s mouth and his lips moving open and shut. He was still alive.
The NCO checked the area once more for any more snipers and then laid his machine gun down next to the wounded engineer. He
tore open the front of the Marine’s jacket and saw where the bullet had entered the young man’s lung. There wasn’t a second
of hesitation as the experienced NCO covered the holes, both front and back, with small pieces of plastic from the large bandage
packages and secured them. He paused to wipe the blood from the Marine’s mouth and then he looked into the man’s eyes and
winked.

“You’ll be fine … real fine…” He patted the youth’s arm and waved for the AMTRACK to call for a medevac chopper. “Now don’t
you go passing out on me!”

The Marine engineer private smiled and shook his head from side to side. He was still struggling to breathe.

“Good … I’ll have a chopper here in a second to haul you back to the Navy hospital in Da Nang … a
direct
flight!”

Night fell quietly in the jungle bordering the river that separated South Vietnam from Laos. The contingent of Marine AMTRACKs
and infantry had formed a circular night lager site near a stand of mahogany trees where the underbrush was thin because the
large trees had blocked out the light for rapid growth. The Marine engineer lance corporal who had earlier stepped on the
mine walked around to the front of the command AMTRACK where the skull had been wired to the headlight. He paused and looked
at the bleached white symbol of death, and a shiver traversed his spine. In the short time since they had arrived in Vietnam,
things had changed. The skull had taken on a much more sinister meaning than it had when they had picked it up off a beach,
before his buddy had been shot.

He stared at the skull with the shiny white jaw gapped open and wondered who it had belonged to, what the person had felt,
even how old the owner of the skull had been before he died; or maybe she had died.

The Marine engineer could not take his eyes off the skull. He felt weird, as if the skull was trying to communicate something
to him. The Marine stared harder in the half-light and then noticed that there were fillings in the teeth and that one of
the front teeth had been capped. Very slowly it dawned on the young Marine that he was not looking at the skull of a Vietcong,
but the skull of an American.

“Fuck!” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Oh … fuck!” A shiver covered his body and he could feel the goose bumps pop
up over his arms and legs.

“What’s wrong?”

“Gunny … this is an
American’s
head.”

“What?” The gunnery sergeant slipped next to the young Marine. “Where did you come up with that shit!”

“Look at the teeth!”

The NCO tried lifting the skull so he could see the teeth, but the commo wire had been pulled tight. He went around to the
side so that the moonlight could shine directly on the exposed teeth and saw the front cap. It was enough. He knew that the
skull had to be an American’s. “You’re right…”

“What the fuck are we going to do with it?” The lance corporal’s voice was about to break. “I don’t want that there all night
staring at me!”

“We’ll cut it loose and wrap it up…” The NCO used the sharp blade of his K-Bar knife to cut through the commo wire. He carefully
removed the skull and looked around, then saw the crook at the base of the mahogany tree where the roots entered the ground.
He carried the skull over to the split roots and shoved it between two of them on the ground.

“Hand me that piece of cardboard over there.” He pointed to a piece of waxed cardboard and the lance corporal handed it to
him. The NCO folded a crease in the square pressed paper and shoved it in the damp earth in front of the skull. “There … now
you can’t see it. Is that better?”

The corporal nodded his head in agreement.

“We’ll take it with us in the morning. I want to have the mortician back at the morgue in Da Nang make some impressions from
its teeth and maybe we can locate an MIA soldier or Marine for a family back home.” The NCO frowned over the task. “Make sure
we don’t forget it in the morning!”

“Check, Gunny. I’ll remind you…” The Marine lance corporal felt another chill and laid his M-14 across his legs. It was going
to be a long night.

The skull looked blankly at the piece of waxed cardboard through its eye cavities. There used to be a functioning brain inside
the empty cranium. If the brain could have had a second chance, it probably would have advised Private First Class Daryl Masters
not to get into the speedboat with the Army Criminal Investigations Division’s sergeant and the NCO yardmaster. No, the brain
would have warned him that they were not to be trusted, but his survival instincts hadn’t yet been fine tuned enough to detect
that; he had been in Vietnam only a couple of weeks. His friend David Woods had sensed something was wrong and stayed out
of it. Woods had refused to go with him to the CID office and report the black marketeering operation going on at the docks,
and he was still alive.

The monsoon hit the Marine detachment with the fury of a hurricane. The rain blocked out everything a foot in front of the
guards, and hearing was totally prevented by the sound of the water. Millions of tons of water fell from the sky on the jungle
below. Anything that had not been placed inside the AMTRACKS was instantly soaked through. The guards huddled under the makeshift
poncho shelters that were ineffective against the storm and waited for it to pass.

As quickly as it had appeared, the monsoon was gone. Water still poured from the leaves of the trees, but the heavy rain was
over.

“Let’s get loaded up and out of here!” The infantry sergeant waved for the guards to break the perimeter. “That fucking water
is going to raise the levels of the streams and I want to get the fuck away from here before that happens! MOVE IT!”

The men rushed to obey; none of them had liked the idea of being so close to the border with only a few men. There had been
rumors that
battalions
of North Vietnamese soldiers patrolled the jungle next to the Laotian border, and every one of the Marines knew that they
had left the protective cover of their artillery.

“Come on!” The infantry sergeant passed the Marine engineer and slapped him on his rear. “MOVE YOUR ASS!”

The first RPG-7 impacted the side of the AMTRACK at exactly the same instant the NCO’s hand had touched the lance corporal’s
buttock.

A single M-14 started firing and then a light machine gun joined it. The air was filled with the sound of exploding RPGs—rifle-propelled
grenades—and AK-47s. The Marines fought hard and formed a small perimeter on the east side of the lager site. All of their
AMTRACKs were burning. One of the fighting vehicles on the edge of the perimeter exploded, sending up a column of fire. A
burning body that no one saw was thrown clear of the vehicle.

The gunnery sergeant fired his M-14 expertly, without any sign of panicking; he located a camouflaged target, aimed, and fired.
He was taking a large total of NVA soldiers. He reloaded a magazine, looked around the area for wounded Marines, and saw his
lance corporal attaching his bayonet to the stud on his weapon. The sergeant smiled; a battle Marine had been born.

Thirty-one Marines had escaped from the NVA assault and had formed up about five hundred meters to the east of the night lager
site. All of the AMTRACKs had been lost to RPGs. The infantry sergeant’s eyes reflected his shock at the quick battle. There
hadn’t even been enough time to remove one of the backpack radios from inside the command AMTRACK. They were without any means
of communication and the NVA were still very close.

“What do you think we should do?” The infantry Marine look over at the engineer gunny.

“E and E … escape and evade…” He smiled. “There still are enough Marines here to kick a lot of ass!” The gunny pointed to
the east. “We can make it back to Lang Vei and men get reenforced so we can come back and get our wounded and dead.”

The infantry sergeant hadn’t even thought of coming back to the site. “You’re right … let’s get the fuck out of here!”

The NVA commander stood smiling in the center of the burning AMTRACKs. He had won a complete victory. The monsoon arriving
when it had was a perfect cover for the last couple hundred meters of their assault on the American camp. He had struck with
two of his companies and the force had been overwhelming. Five Marine AMTRACKs were burning and his men were lining up the
Marine dead for him to view.

A lieutenant approached the NVA lieutenant colonel and reported that there were eleven American dead and no American wounded
or prisoners. He smiled and gave the lieutenant an order in rapid Vietnamese. The young officer nodded his head and obeyed.

The North Vietnamese left the burning vehicles behind after searching the area for anything they could use. The battalion
slipped back across the river into Laos as quietly as it had crossed the night before.

The skull’s hollow eyes looked out at the wreckage and saw nothing. Eleven naked Marines hung from the lower branches of the
trees by the commo wire wrapped around their ankles. A jungle breeze made the bodies sway lightly back and forth.

A tiny puddle of rain water that had accumulated in a dent on the top of the skull broke free and ran down the front of the
white face, where the water found a crevice next to the nose cavity and eye. The effect made the skull look as if it was crying.

The wasp flew down close to the various forms of thick vegetation that covered the jungle floor, instinctively knowing what
she was hunting for under the large dead leaves on the ground and under the loose bark of the fallen trees…