Jungle Rules Read Online Free PDF Page B

clue that his cowboys and I had finally turned on his ass. Not until none of the house girls would suck his dick anymore. The fat sack of shit couldn’t get it up, so the girls had to blow him to get him off. Shit, they finally just told him no. Then, when none of the cowboys would enforce his law, he knew it was up. That’s the day I shot him.”
    Refilling the two Marines’ glasses with iced tea, playing the polite host, Pitts smiled casually at Harris, who sat staring blankly at his new boss, marveling at the coolness of this young man, so casually describing his bloody ascent to power.
    “He had good ties with both the Viet Cong and the Da Nang police, due to our dope business and hookers,” Pitts said, sipping tea and looking at the dog now flopped behind Harris’s chair. “I knew that once he had figured out that he had lost the boys’ and my loyalty, he would have had either the Cong or the cops take us down. They would have shot my ass in either case. So I popped the motherfucker first.”
    “Why wouldn’t you think I might take over like that?” Harris asked, and smiled as he said it.
    “Because Huong and his two brothers, along with about a dozen other cowboys that they supervise, adore my young ass,” Pitts said. “I gave them the same deal I offered to you. Work for me, and I pay you a share of the profits at year’s end, above all salaries and other benefits. I run it just like a business back in the States, and give the workers a respectable taste of the pie along with damned fine wages. These guys never had it so good, and they damned sure wouldn’t get it this good from anyone else around here in this business, especially not from the likes of Benny Lam and Major Toan. These cowboys know it, too. They would drop you in your tracks the second they smelled any crossways shit coming from you. I’m their golden goose.”
    “So what I gotta do?” Harris said.
    “First thing, you and that filthy mutt gotta go take a run through the rain closet,” Pitts said. “You’re pretty foul, and that dog, maybe a quart of motor oil after a lye-soap bath would kill that creeping crud on his back.
    “Next, you will get a haircut. High and tight, just like mine. I want you looking squared away, like a 5.0 jarhead. That’s a rule. No compromise. We go out in the ville. We’re in uniform. Nobody questions a squared-away Marine who looks like he’s taking care of official business. Come on and I’ll show you something.”
    The two men left the table in the villa’s shaded, courtyard patio, and walked back inside the house and into a large master bedroom. Pitts slid open a closet door to reveal a rack of starched and perfectly ironed Marine Corps utility uniforms. Silver first lieutenant bars gleamed on the collars. Then he slid a wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a green, Marine Corps identification card with his picture in the center of it and the name First Lieutenant Joseph A. Russell typed on it, along with Pitts’s appropriate physical description, blood type, and a phony service number.
    “Take a look here,” Pitts said, and pulled out a set of dog tags hanging on a chain around his neck. “As far as anyone who checks me is concerned, I am First Lieutenant Joe Russell. That’s really my Uncle Joe. He got the Silver Star on Iwo Jima.”
    Then Pitts looked at James Harris and said, “No offense, but we will have to make you a corporal or something. If I put lieutenant bars on your collar, people would notice. Dark green Marine officers are rare. Our objective is to go out in the ville, do our business, and not draw attention. We can maybe let you be a sergeant, but that is pushing it. If you’re with me, it’ll look righteous to anyone.”
    Harris smiled. “I wouldn’t even want to fucking pretend to be any candy-ass officer anyway. I got my pride. I like sergeant, though. Where you get all this shit, anyway?”
    “Fuck, man,” Pitts said, “this is Vietnam! Shit, they print ID