CHP 1: Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em

by Lee Wm Sachs

CHAPTER ONE

It is the early testy morning in the Pentagon’s Army Modality Program centre.  Enlistees with Karen Carpenter complexions man computers and coffee machines while officers and noncoms bluster about in preparation for post-cold-war skirmishes with their old adversaries, the Russians.  Armageddon has come in the guise of conscripts from either side, vying against their mirror-images in a broken-bottle brawl to end all global brawls.  These alter-egos have much, and, little in common:

Russia still maintains a Draft, though its universal girth has shrunk much since the dissolution of the old Soviet Bloc.  But plumb the depths of depravity it has:  Ivan is down-and-out, off the fallow farms and Godless cities, with the kind of morning after reminder that cheap Vodka instills in aimless youth.  Ivan’s Yankee counterpart, Johnny, enticed by G.I. Bills and discounted travel, volunteers to the Army Induction Center with a bladder full of jaundiced urine and breath the size of a crack cloud.

But Johnny knows — compromised piss and tired lungs notwithstanding — that he’s a shoe-in for the strongest bullying force the cosmos has ever known.  He’s merely joined a bigger gang, and instead of a police liaison mentor, his recruitment officer has put the fix in:  The Quota must be met at all costs, and instead of the ubiquitous car thieves of old, the New Army has more high school grads and rehab reprobates than you can shake a billy club at…… a c-note a week, three hots and a flop, a medical-dental program a mere two-step away from cryogenics, and 30 day furloughs of eightballs and crank tune-ups, and Johnny Boy is on his way to a 20 year run that Ivan would die for.  Ivan, on the other hand and other side of the planet, was ready to die at birth.  He’s been called up and doesn’t have the ruble-quick smarts to shmise his confused way out of a system of national service that the Russian intelligencia can easily sidestep…… 

In fact, during Ivan’s first week in boot camp he prays that the Americans will capture him and gorge his pasty-white body with enough Whoppers to feed his entire worthless shletl.  Ivan, transfixed by this feasty phantasm of junk food, easy cheerleaders and borsch-red skies, doesn’t see the stock of the AK-47 smash into his boney face, doesn’t see the jeering whiskey-veined Communist drill sergeant, unlike Johnny, whose boot, or basic training is no more arduous than winning a Merit Badge in the Cub Scouts. 

So after they sound retreat, after he smokes a doobie, Johnny is off to the PX, oblivious to the poletarian plight of Ivan, supine in a Russian military hospital with a death mask of broken skull bones, missing teeth and a deeper fear and loathing for his fatherland.  So while Johnny is being as drunk and he can be, poor Ivan recuperates without the soothing palliation of pain meds, without the finesse of Demoral that Johnny takes for granite.  Yes, World War III will be a war of video games.  But it will also be a war of those that have drugs and those that are drugless.  And this brings us all full circle to the Pentagon’s Army Modality Pogrom.  AMP.

Those inside the windowless bunker have come unstuck in space and time.  There is no light outside, there is no dark.  Just the colorless faces, unsmiling and determined, as they stare trancelike into their Dell flat screen computers.  A Spec Five absently reaches out and points his finger into the false softness of his laptop screen.  It reminds him of the first time he ever got his curious fingers in his girlfriend’s panties.   In the adjacent work cubicle, a 2nd Lieutenant surfs the Internet for Russian brides.  His skin is an interruption of acne pustules and he reeks of an after shave long since passé.  Old Spice? And above the lieutenant’s closely cropped haircut a wall clock reads Washington, D.C.  08:00. Another reads Moscow, 16:00. The hands are dead black.  The sweep second hand jerks in death rattle syncopation. Those personnel that aren’t wearing headphones hear the irritating click of each wasted second in each of their wasted lives.  To the side of the wallclocks hangs an American flag that looks like it had been purchased from Sam’s Club.  
     
Johnny stumbles to his ergonomically correct computer station, spills coffee on his poplin shirt, and silently debates retreat to the latrine to do a few more lines of cocaine.  He’s been clinically incapacitated since his anxious arrival from AIT five redundant weeks ago.  Today, coincidentally marks five weeks since Johnny last evacuated his bowels, and would mark the first day of his new resolution:  No more codeine.

Johnny inhales his next-door neighbor’s cologne, the fumes entering his nose where coke crystals had recently reconnoitered.  Then he scoots into his seat, scratching his back on the coarse material.  He boots up his computer, next opens Yahoo.  Within a few blinking minutes Johnny has logged on to his Internet connection, a virtual pharmacy of off-shore drugs, a virtual equilibrium of everyday intoxication.  Within another few jerky wallclock minutes, Johnny has ordered several thousand milligrams of Oxycondin, Percodin, Amyl-Nitrate and some wholesome 10 mg. Valium to bring one down after a numbing day in 100 megabyte foxholes. Johnny muses that someday, some lazy hazy day in the not-so-distant windowless future he will win the Purple Heart for overdosing.  While he muses, Johnny’s battalion commander pins the love-shaped citation to greenish shmutz-stained fatigues.  While he muses, Johnny messages his Russian counterpart; just released from a commie field hospital after getting his kisser smashed in by an inebriated NCO. 

Johnny met Ivan in a cluttered chat room several days before.  Language was no barrier.  Babelfish and Free Translation provided the perestroika of friendship.  And after stealing a wallet from the enlisted men’s club, Ivan provided the much-needed capital in which to do his first drug deal in the West.  Exchange Control and a near-worthless currency provided no firewall to the consummation.  Ivan would submit a requisition through the Defense Ministry which would be fast tracked at the official conversion rate.  The drugs would be posted from an APO in San Francisco to Vladivostok.  Johnny would be compensated compliments Pay Pal (Co-Comrade to the Soviets).  The complete turnaround time would be less than a month.  Ivan would flog the drugs at a 1000% profit.  Johnny would triple his money.  There would be no heat.  Johnny had the CID in his khaki pockets.  The KGB had ceased to exist since the fall of the wall.  And anyway, Ivan had no pockets.  Only a burgeoning bank account.  And by the following summer, when Johnny and Ivan would finally have a sit-down in Geneva, each coasting on a one month furlough, Ivan would have taken care of the drill sergeant and bought a dacha.  Johnny would have swapped his subsistence and quarters for Michelin drawer brasseries and a Georgetown townhouse.  They would both toast Vodka and Champaign to the next war.  God is great!  Life is great.  And war ain’t Hell.

Johnny Punish and Ivan Voinovich (their user names) were on the gravy train.  In fact, there were no snafus except for the pesky shave tailed second looey in Johnny’s nextdoor booth.  He was a pimply R.O.T.C.man who reprimanded Johnny once, and that was once too-often.
Private, the lieutenant said one afternoon.  What the hell is that gunk on your blouse?
Coffee Johnny said, without a thought, without rising to his feet.  He would have stood up, even stood at attention if his low-quarters were to be found.  But Johnny had misplaced his shoes long ago.

Coffee, sir, the lieutenant reminded him.
Johnny considered the officer through the purple haze of morphine and a lunchtime Thai stick.  Why was this piece of shit hassling me?  What did I ever do to him?  And why repeat yourself?
Coffee, what.  The lieutenant raised his voice above the persistent click-clack of the wallclocks.  The spec 5 looked up from his laptop.  His index finger stayed stuck to the softness of the LCD panel.  A corpulent major strolled over in shirtsleeves and wrinkled class A trousers.
Sure, I’ll have a coffee, Johnny said lamely.  Straight black.
Make that two.  The major had placed his pale hand on the shoulder of Johnny’s soiled shirt. This was a bonding gesture that the major had acquired at Headquarters in Baghdad.
And where the hell are your shoes?  The lieutenant glanced from the floor to the major. 
The major considered Johnny’s mismatched socks.  His white toes poked out like sickly snails. The stench from his tattered socks overwhelmed both officers’ after shave lotions. The major wanted to say something, anything.  But he was never one for banal badinage.  The Baghdad tour had only taught him body language.

Johnny was now perched on the edge of his work desk.  He was trying to obscure the Cyrillic lettering that Ivan had cybered to him in the middle of the Russian night.  Johnny hoped that the lieutenant’s upbraiding would soon be over.  Then he could patter into the latrine and snort himself a few bumps.  That would get him through the last hour and over to the NCO club.
The major breathed deeply, sniffing the lieutenant’s Old Spice.  He puffed himself up in the pompous posture of an embattled field officer.  Johnny tried to quietly stretch towards the reboot button.  The spec 5 returned to his cyberchores and the lieutenant finally shuffled off to the coffee machine. 

So how long have you been with the program, soldier?  The major asked Johnny.
Is this a trick question?  Five weeks.  I mean, five months, sir.
The major wondered why the private was squinting in the pale glimmer of the overhead fluorescent panels. Johnny wondered how the major had gained so much weight.  Johnny worked in the world’s largest office building with the world’s largest assholes.  He wondered if the major ever got high.

Wellcarry on.., the major said, and then lumbered off to nowhere in particular.

A week later Johnny found his dress shoes.  A few days later he was promoted to PFC.  The lieutenant was reassigned to Ft. Hollabird, MD.  His computer had been audited by the I.G.   Someone had dropped a couple of quarters vis-à-vis the lieutenant’s Russian women.

Johnny engaged Ivan in their transatlantic conspiracy via VoIP.  Like anyone else would, Johnny imaged what his rushky client looked like behind the crackles and echoing of the Internet.  It would still be a few months until they would meet on the neutral grounds of Geneva.  Johnny would indeed have been surprised by their strange similarities.  Ivan’s teenage face was lopsided due to the gung-ho zealousness of his boot cadre.  Johnny’s countenance was also asymmetrical, though as a concomitant to chemical vissilumitudes of speed, downers and free-lance effects of outright illicit doses of ecstasy, meth and the Three Sisters of Clifton, New Jersey.

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