Ira Stone was a journalist in the U.S. Army until 1975, when the Vietnam War ended. He was also a friend of James "Sonny" Crockett and served with William Maynard (a.k.a. "Captain Real Estate"). During the closing stages of the war, Stone heard rumours of an officer in the US Army, known only as "The Sergeant", using bodybags containing KIA soldiers as a means to smuggle his stockpile of heroin out of Vietnam and back to the United States (one of the bodybags being used contained the body of a mutual friend of Crockett and Stone's, an infantryman named Shepard).