Read Online The Shadow of Arms by Hwang Sok-Yong - Free Book Online

done by Korean civilians, we only watch and keep records. When we uncover a big transaction, we allow it to run its course to the last stage of the delivery before we move in on them. Don’t ever take a bite of theirs yourself. If we show any weakness to them, we’ll be scarecrows before long, so drag them straight to the headquarters.
    â€œAs for deals by Americans, if the economic team is involved, make a list of the exact content of commodities, the names of the dealers and the date of the transaction and report it to headquarters. That’s where your duty ends. Those are matters to be negotiated between our captain and Krapensky. We can, however, ambush the petty deals by American soldiers and feel free to take a cut of their profit. Sometimes we even snatch the whole thing out of their hands. The goods confiscated from third-country nationals, we split fifty-fifty.”
    â€œThird countries?”
    â€œI mean civilians from the Philippines, Malaysia, or India. Once in a while you also run into the Japanese.”
    â€œWhat about the Vietnamese?”
    â€œThat’s the most important and delicate part of our duty. It took me two months just to begin to understand that side. Roughly, you can divide goods into three groups: luxury goods, daily necessities, and war materiel. The luxury goods and the daily necessities are the two categories we are allowed to interfere with. The war materiel gets covered by the Vietnamese army and the National Liberation Front. As for our records of the Vietnamese, we share nothing with the Americans. We may be comrades-in-arms, but in this one matter we’re all tight-lipped. This is crucial, because as long as we’re on the inside of Vietnamese affairs, we can get in on any black market deals. It’s as fundamental for the American army as for the Vietnamese army. Understand?”
    Blue Jacket Kang was sweating. Hands on the wheel, he kept wiping the sweat from his forehead on his shoulder. A sweltering heat was rising from the asphalt. The Jeep turned up a road with high wire fencing on both sides. Scooters and Honda motorcycles performed acrobatic tricks, weaving from side to side. Keeping his speed, Kang was forced to do some fancy maneuvering himself.
    â€œI asked if you understand . . .”
    â€œI’m not sure I do.”
    Kang heaved a long sigh. “No way you could. You’re lucky, though, to have run into somebody with my experience. I wasted three months riding the circuit and drinking Cokes out in front of the PXs. There’s no integrity or camaraderie among short-time duty personnel. Everybody is trying to be tactful so as not to come off as an idiot. Once you become an “advisor” you’ll be chased to the main body. You know what duty you’ll pull when you get assigned to the main body, don’t you?”
    Yong Kyu nodded. It meant standing guard at the prison camp, if lucky, or acting as an orderly for a superior officer or in the mess hall. He had seen a few of them wandering about in markets or in refugee camps in operations zones, trying to communicate with their bad Vietnamese and sign language under the contemptuous gaze of the infantrymen.
    â€œNine times out of ten you’re dead meat. An infantryman at least has some peace of mind. That bastard, Sergeant Shin, he’s going to be kicked out. You heard what the captain said a little while ago, didn’t you? Once you’re marked as unreliable, they’ll pack you up and send you back down to brigade. Even then you’ll be lucky to be sent back to your old unit. Otherwise you get pushed all the way down to platoon.”
    Yong Kyu still had a vivid memory of the waterlogged trenches and the swarms of mosquitoes back in his old defense emplacement. And of the cooking that involved indiscriminate butchering of chickens, pigs, even dogs. And the migration of the flies with the movement of the sun . . .
    He did not want to think of it