Baptism

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Woods tried to keep a blank look on his face. He knew that either one of them—the drug dealer or the black marketer—could have him wasted. He couldn’t figure out what motivated Masters to pull something so dumb. There was no way that Masters could return to the An Khe area after reporting the sergeant for black-marketing government supplies. Woods lost the blank look on his face and smiled; Masters had been looking for a way to get out of the field and find himself a desk job, and if Woods was right in his reasoning, Masters had found a way.

  “Stop the truck!” Sinclair stood up behind Simpson, who had taken over driving back to An Khe. “Stop the fucking truck!”

  “What for?” Shaw looked around nervously for Vietcong Sappers.

  “Just stop the fucking truck for a second!” Sinclair grabbed his M16 and jumped over the railing to the sidewalk.

  Woods watched him run across the street and over to a group of Vietnamese kids who were beating up a small boy. Sinclair pushed his way through the crowd and grabbed one of the Vietnamese kids by the hair and pulled him off the smaller boy. A pair of Vietnamese used the opportunity to deliver a series of kicks against the boy’s body while he was still on the ground. A little girl, about seven years old, ran from the doorway in which her brother had shoved her for protection and tried punching one of the boys hitting her brother.

  “Di-di-mau!” Sinclair growled at the gang of street urchins, and continued swatting at the dodging kids.

  “Come on back here!” Shaw yelled from across the street. He was anxious to get back to An Khe and check with one of his buddies in the military police about Masters.

  Woods noticed from his seat in the truck that the boy Sinclair was helping had medium brown hair, not like the hair of the Vietnamese, which was always black.

  Sinclair helped the boy to his feet and tried dusting off the adolescent’s shirt. The ten-year-old twisted out of Sinclair’s grip and ran a couple of steps toward the retreating gang before stopping and yelling after them in broken French that all of their mothers ate the sex organs of male water buffalo.

  Sinclair caught the boy again and swung him around so that he could see him. “Do you speak English?”

  The boy tried breaking free.

  “Do you speak English?”

  The little girl answered for her brother. “A little.”

  “What’s going on?” Sinclair still spoke to the boy.

  The ten-year-old stared at him for a couple of seconds before answering. “You like me!” He beckoned to his sister and spoke to her rapidly in Vietnamese. She stared at Sinclair.

  “You part French… part Vietnamese?”

  Sinclair understood. The two children were Eurasians; half French and half Vietnamese. Their father was probably some French soldier from the colonial days. “Where’s your mother?” He looked around the street for the woman.

  “Mother dead… VC…” The boy made a knife motion over his throat and gagged.

  “Dead?” Sinclair had been around long enough to look out for a con job.

  “Yeah, GI!”

  “Where do you live?”

  The boy looked puzzled.

  “You sleep?” Sinclair pointed to the houses lining the street.

  The street urchin shook his head in the universal sign for no. “I too young to fuck.” The boy had mistaken Sinclair’s question for a proposition.

  “No!” Sinclair became angry, not at the boy but at the situation. “Hootch. Where’s your hootch?”

  “Here.” The boy pointed to the street.

  “Come!” Sinclair took the girl by the hand, then reached over and grabbed the ten-year-old. He had made a decision to take the children with them. If worse came to worst, the kids could live with one of the laborers who filled sandbags around the An Khe perimeter.

  “What in the fuck are you doing with those kids?” Shaw leaned over the back of the truck bed and watched Sinclair hand the children up to Woods.

  “I’m taking these kids with us back to An Khe, at least until next week’s supply run.” Sinclair wasn’t asking permission, he was telling the sergeant. “We can bring them back when things cool off a little.”

  Shaw looked over at Simpson, who shrugged his shoulders and stuck out his lower lip. He could care less about a couple half-breed Vietnamese kids.

  “All right! Fuck it!” Shaw slipped back down on his seat; he didn’t want to get in a fight with Sinclair now. He had his own problems with Masters, and he figured Sinclair might come in handy as a witness. “But you take care of them, and if you get caught smuggling them into the base camp, I don’t know a damn thing!”

  The children hid under the tarp, between the pallets of frozen meat. It was the closest either of them had ever come to air-conditioning, and they liked the cool air that tickled their throats when they took a deep breath. The little girl giggled.

  “You kids keep it quiet under there!” Sinclair said, hissing the words out between clenched teeth. They were passing through the base camp gates. The children didn’t understand what he was saying, but his tone of voice told them to be quiet.

  Woods waited until they were well past the MPs at the gate before asking Sinclair a question. “What are you going to do with them?”

  Sinclair looked out over the hood of the truck. “I don’t know… keep them here for a while. They can clean the hootches or polish boots—” A volley of artillery rounds being fired cut off his sentence.

  Woods nodded. He was thinking about the supply trip. Who would believe him back home?

  FIVE

  Murder

  Sergeant Arnason gave in and allowed the two Eurasian kids to stay in the fighting bunker with the team and Sinclair. The eight-man bunker had eight cots built into the sidewalls, and there were only four men on the team; besides, Sinclair wouldn’t let the kids stay anywhere else. The kids worked hard for their keep; no one could say that they were freeloading off the Americans. The seven-year-old girl helped the company mess sergeant in the kitchen, and the boy worked in the hootches, cleaning up and shining boots.

  A light knock echoed through the bunker. “Sergeant Arnason?” Lieutenant Reed stuck his head through the doorway.

  “Yes, sir.” Arnason continued cleaning the M-60 machine gun.

  Reed stepped all the way into the bunker. “We’ve got to talk about those Vietnamese kids.”

  “So talk… sir.” Arnason wiped down the tripod legs with a dry cloth and then set the M-60 back down on top of the stand.

  “I don’t think that it’s a good idea letting those kids have the run of the place.”

  “You think they might be VC?” Arnason stood behind the machine gun and placed his right cheek against the cool black metal stock and checked the weapon’s field of fire. He pushed the butt of the machine gun to the right, until he could see the white stake that marked his right-most final protective line, and then swung the weapon back to the left. The stake had been knocked down.

  “It’s not just that. It’s having a little girl running around with all of the men.” Reed started stuttering. “I—I mean, she just walks in the latrine without knocking…”

  “Sir, she’s seven years old.” Arnason looked up at his platoon leader.

  “But sometimes the men are naked.”

  “I’ll tell the guys to be more careful in the future, but I don’t think there’s a soldier in the company who hasn’t become attached to one of the kids.” Arnason locked the traversing device on the M-60 and hung his arm over the butt of the weapon. “I mean, I’ve even seen James smiling at the girl.”

  “Don’t you think someone might… ahhh…”

  Arnason’s voice dropped a dozen octaves. “That would be very dumb. If someone even tried messing with those kids, Sinclair would blow them away, and that goes for the rest of the company.” The sergeant pointed over to a home-made sandbag and two-by-four chair. “Have a seat, Lieutenant. You and I have to talk for a bit.”

  The lieutenant hesitated and then took the offered seat.
/>   “Let me tell you a little bit about Eurasian kids in Vietnam. First, they ain’t allowed to attend school with the normal Vietnamese kids. Second, they ain’t allowed to work in good jobs, like the rest of the Vietnamese kids. Third, they can’t inherit land. Of course, with their fathers being French or American, what land can they inherit? Fourth, they are harassed, beaten, laughed at, and ridiculed all of their lives because of their birth. Add to all of that the fact that their fathers were the defeated French, and the boys have no honor.”

  Lieutenant Reed nodded his head. He was beginning to understand why Sinclair wouldn’t give up the kids.

  “No, I don’t think you quite understand… yet!” Arnason had just begun. “The girl will end up as a whore, and if we stay here a few more years, she’ll be making a lot of money screwing American GIs for a Vietnamese pimp. The boy? God knows what’ll happen to him! Now you want me to tell Sinclair—who, if you haven’t noticed yet, is an Amerasian—you want me to tell Sinclair that he has to dump the kids back out on the street?”

  Reed shook his head from side to side. “I… I wasn’t thinking. I’ll talk to the captain about letting them stay here as long as we’re in An Khe.”

  Arnason smiled. “Why don’t you try giving the kids a break yourself, sir? They’re really just like kids back home.”

  Reed paused in the doorway and looked back inside. “I can’t promise anything.”

  “I know, sir. Just do your best.” Arnason slowly blinked his eyes.

  Lieutenant Reed hadn’t been gone from the bunker for more than a minute when Sinclair burst through the entrance. “What did he want, Sarge?” Reggie was out of breath from his run across the company area. He had seen the lieutenant enter their bunker and suspected trouble.

  “He wanted to talk about the kids.”

  “About what?”

  “That really doesn’t matter.” Arnason stacked two green ammo boxes on top of each other. “What matters is he’s going to talk to the captain about keeping the kids here as company mascots.”

  “Shit! That’s great!”

  “I thought you’d like it.” Arnason grinned. “Now find Woods and Barnett, then check the barbed wire in front of our bunker and check the claymores… the wires too!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Dammit! Don’t call me sir. I work for a fuckin’ living!”

  “Yes, Sergeant!”

  Simpson sat around the wooden spool they used for a table with Brown, Kirkpatrick, and James. The conversation was drugs.

  “I want to increase our sales to the artillery units.” Simpson pointed with his long fingernail in the direction of the artillery batteries. “They aren’t buying anywhere as much as they should be.”

  “Maybe we’ve got some competition springing up down there.” Kirkpatrick had been given the quadrant of the An Khe base area that housed two infantry battalions and the artillery battalion headquarters.

  “There ain’t no GI competition for us on this base!” Simpson rapped out the sentence. “We run it all! Now, there may be some nickel and dime shit coming in from the ho’s outside the gate, but that’s nothing! I told you before: Be reliable and they’ll buy from you. Why? ’Cause they’re scared shitless that the VC will spike their dope with poison!”

  “Enough!” James stood up. “Where’s the fuckin’ money you promised for our Panther chapter back home? I got a letter from them and they ain’t seen shit!”

  “Relax, bro! I said I’d mail them a check… and I will!” Simpson waved James back down in his seat.

  “You damn sure had better! I haven’t agreed to be your enforcer for fuckin’ nothing!” James shook his fist. “Send the check! Fifty thousand!”

  Simpson nodded in agreement and signaled that the meeting had ended. Kirkpatrick and Brown left the bunker together and headed over to the mess hall for supper.

  “I don’t know about that James guy, bro,” Brown said to his hometown buddy. “He’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think it was such a good idea getting involved in this drug-dealing shit.” Kirkpatrick knew his feet were getting cold. He enjoyed turning a buck like anyone would who came from New York, but he didn’t like the smell of things.

  “For once I agree with you.” Brown squeezed Kirkpatrick’s shoulder. “When we go back to the field, I’m telling Simpson that we’re out of it.”

  “Good! I’d rather hustle supplies. No one gets hurt doing that but Uncle Sam!” Kirkpatrick started strutting sideways down the path. “Sergeant Shaw… my main man!” He waved over at the sergeant, who had just left his tent.

  The Criminal Investigation Division agent looked out over the small bay that had seven ships waiting to unload their cargoes. The harbor was a busy little port, not as large as ports such as Cam Ranh Bay, Nha Trang, Da Nang, and the largest one of all, Saigon, but fifty or sixty ships a month unloaded there.

  “What are we waiting for?” Masters sat in the chair across from the CID agent and smoked a cigarette.

  “I’ve got help coming from downtown, and when he arrives, we’re going to go out to the refrigerator ship that unloaded this morning and check their paperwork. If what you’re saying is true, I want evidence before I approach the chief veterinarian with charges against his people.”

  Masters nodded his head in agreement; what the special agent said made sense. The screen door to the small office squeaked open and closed, and a voice called out to the CID man, who answered from his office to come in. Masters looked up and saw the middle-aged NCO, wearing master sergeant stripes, smiling from the doorway.

  “Are you ready?” The CID agent left his desk.

  The master sergeant smiled and nodded his head.

  “Good! Let’s get this over with. I’ve got to get over to the club tonight for a no-limit poker game with some Navy types!” The agent led the way out of the office over to the harbormaster’s speedboat. The master sergeant helped untie the boat from its moorings and pushed it away from the pier.

  Masters took a seat in the center of the speedboat and braced himself as the nose of the craft lifted up off the water and the boat gained speed. The agent made a wide arc in the bay and then headed out to the ship that was located farthest out to sea. After a couple of minutes he lowered the speed, and the nose of the craft dropped back down in the water. The boat was almost at an idle.

  “Are you sure you were alone this afternoon?” The agent smiled. “We sure could use another person to testify. You know, two are a lot better than one.”

  Masters became angry. He would like to bring Woods into it, but he had promised to leave him out of it. “Look when we get out there to the ship. You’ll see that I’m not bullshitting! If you would have stopped Sergeant Shaw’s truck, we wouldn’t even have had to come out here!”

  The agent kept smiling.

  “You should have minded your own business, boy.” The voice sounded like gravel in a tin can.

  Masters felt the arm wrap around him and grab his chin. He elbowed the master sergeant hard in the chest, but it was too late. The sharp knife cut through his throat and windpipe and hung up against his spinal column. Masters felt someone pushing him overboard, and then the salt water entered his cut throat, and he felt the burning sensation. Masters knew that he was dying, and he also realized that there was nothing he could do about it. He just hoped that he would be dead before the sharks came.

  The CID agent reversed the engine in order to dock the boat. He hadn’t spoken a word to the yardmaster since leaving Masters floating in the harbor. He knew that by morning there wouldn’t be anything left of the soldier. A resident population of sharks lived in the bay and fed off the spoiled meat that was thrown overboard from the ships. A cold shiver traversed the agent’s spine as he recalled the first time he had witnessed a feeding frenzy. He had gone out to one of the freezer ships with the veterinarian to observe the destruction of two hundred and fifty cases of meat that had spoiled during the transoceanic voyage. The medical officer had signed the paperwo
rk for five hundred cases of meat that was unfit for human consumption; he had discovered the minor error and had been invited into the business. The veterinarian had broken the seal on the freezer door, and the smell of rotting flesh rolled out over the deck. He had almost vomited then, but it wasn’t until they started throwing the rotting meat overboard and the hundreds of small sharks began tearing at the heavy cardboard cases that he lost his breakfast. He had a very good imagination for a CID agent.

  The yardmaster tied the boat to the mooring and started walking away from the dock.

  The CID agent called after the NCO. “You have a long talk with Shaw! He damn near fucked up this operation!”

  The yardmaster kept walking; he didn’t have anything to say.

  The agent tried avoiding the open water of the bay, but his eyes brushed over the calm water and locked in on the silhouette of the distant ship. He felt his hands start to shake and then his stomach roll. It was the thought of all of those small sharks tearing at the young soldier’s body, taking baseball-sized bites out of him. The agent threw up all over the dock. He had a good imagination.

  Corporal Barnett and Sinclair had the ten-to-two late-night watch on the perimeter. The graveyard shift was the most hated by the soldiers because it screwed up their whole night’s sleep. Barnett didn’t care about the shift back in the base area because the following day didn’t require humping in the jungle.

  A hand flare popped and floated down over the perimeter wire from a bunker farther down the line. Barnett used the soft light to check between the rows of barbed wire for Sappers. An Khe was a large enough base camp to be fairly secure from a major enemy attack, but Vietcong and NVA Sappers were very good at slipping into a base area and blowing up a couple of supply bunkers or ammunition dumps. The threat was a real one but wasn’t taken seriously by most of the rear-area troops. Barnett took everything seriously and was quickly becoming a replica of Arnason.

  “See anything?” Sinclair whispered softly, even though the perimeter bunkers were saturated with sound coming from inside the base camp.