Escape from Saigon Page 16

  Fletcher and Jean Paul nodded to each other, then rose up simultaneously, partially obscured by the smoke, weapons in hand. Jean Paul shouted, “The bar is closed for the night! No service.”

  One of the attackers shouted back, “Come out now or you will be killed.”

  Another added, “Come out! Now!”

  Jean Paul got the response he wanted. From the direction of their voices, he and Fletcher now knew approximately where to aim. In the shadows cast by the dim streetlights, they could see the distinctive silhouettes of North Vietnamese Army helmets. Without a word they both took aim and fired. The soldiers dropped to the ground, dead.

  “I knew you should have put out the ‘Closed’ sign,” said Fletcher.

  Jean Paul ordered everyone to stay low and follow him to Lisette’s Citroën, and shepherded them inside. He retrieved the keys from under the mat, started the car, and pulled away from the curb, heading for the highway.

  “I think we can leave for holiday now,” Jean Paul said to his passengers. “Our airplane is waiting.”

  * * *

  Matt Moran lay in the darkness listening to the artillery pound the airfield miles away. Sleep wasn’t happening. His week had come and gone in a rush—first the landing at TSN, then rounding up Pham’s family, the Quanhs, then the contentious wrangling with the bureaucrats at the airfield until he finally saw them all safe aboard the plane. All except Nuoc, Pham’s sister, who was somewhere out there in a Saigon gone haywire.

  Suddenly a whistling sound followed by a loud pop came from high above. A bright white mortar flare lit the sky. As the flare swung like a pendulum beneath its parachute, shadows on the ground around Matt’s makeshift bed on the Quanhs’ lanai leaped and swerved like crazed Halloween lantern effects. A moment ago, Saigon was empty, devoid of life. Now it seemed alive, crawling with dark figures in the surrounding undergrowth. The sounds, the smells, the eerie, menacing night shadows. It all seemed so familiar.

  His heart nearly stopped as he looked around and realized where he was. The DMZ. On patrol, night location, deep in the boonies.

  Is this a dream? he thought. The thatch roof overhead gave no clue. Is this real?

  He couldn’t tell. In the dark, alone, he was on his own, hunkered down in a listening post outside the perimeter.

  Outside the wire. Waiting for Charlie. First line of defense.

  Instinctively, he felt around his sleeping poncho for his M-16. Gone!

  What the hell is going on here?!

  A noise in the bushes caught his attention. Heart pounding, muscles tight as a coiled spring, he made no move, his long-forgotten jungle training reasserting itself. Only his eyeballs rotated toward the sound—slowly, no faster than the second hand on a watch. The bush rustled again. Still moving in slow motion, he felt his pockets for the folding knife he had absentmindedly bought on his way into town. Without a sound, he slipped the knife out of his back pocket and worked it open, his hands slippery with sweat. At least he had a weapon!

  Come on out, motherfucker! he whispered silently. I’m ready now! Come and get me!

  It took every ounce of strength to hold his position as the bush moved again. If he waited too long and was discovered, he was a dead man. If he acted too quickly he could find himself staring into a muzzle flash—the last thing he’d ever see. He tensed, ready to leap.

  A rat appeared, scurrying out from under the bush. Then a second rat joined it in the open and the two ran off into the darkness.

  For the first time in what seemed like minutes—hours?—Matt let out a long breath, and then inhaled slowly, still maintaining his frozen position in total silence. He willed himself to relax. After a few moments and a few more breaths he felt calm enough to look around. The house behind him, the lanai overhead, the courtyard bordered with shrubbery—it all took on a more familiar aspect, changed form before his eyes. He was no longer in the jungle. He was back in Saigon. Suddenly, he was overtaken by uncontrollable shaking.

  He lay back on the cot, his mind racing. He’d heard about guys who came back haunted from combat, but it had never happened to him. When he left the war he thought it was all behind him. With Pham he was okay. Now, here in Saigon, it all came back again, it was all too real.

  I’m okay, he said to himself. I’m okay.

  His calm restored, Matt ran through the events of the past week in his mind. So far it had been one hell of a roller-coaster ride, now capped off with a flashback that he never saw coming. Wondering what could happen next, he remembered that Nuoc had agreed to rendezvous with him here tomorrow. He worried that she might not show. He was still thinking about how he—they—would ever get out of Saigon when sleep finally came over him.

  * * *

  Jean Paul drove as fast as he dared with the headlights off—praying there were no obstacles or artillery craters in the road. When they pulled up to the factory, Fletcher led the group inside through a side entrance.

  Two sliding, floor-to-ceiling garage doors took up the entire end of the building. When the two men tried to open them, they found them jammed shut.

  “It looks like they’re rusted solid, mate,” said Fletcher. “They’ve been left too long like this, we’ll never pull them apart. We’ll have to find something to make them open.”

  He turned and disappeared into the recesses of the abandoned factory and returned with five bricks of American military C-4 plastic explosives and a spool of detonation cord.

  “Here, I think you know how to use these,” he told Jean Paul as he handed him the explosives. Jean Paul set to work, depositing a small amount of the pliable C-4 along the base of the massive doors. He pressed his thumb into each wad of explosives, knowing that would focus the blast outward, taking out the doors, without harming the people inside. All that remained was to link them together with the detonation cord, light it, and take cover.

  As Jean Paul set up the charges, Fletcher pushed away the pile of cartons that obscured the Helio from the view of anyone who might peer into the windows. He found a ladder, climbed up, opened the filler cap on top of each wing and peered inside.

  “Fueled and ready to go. Marvelous.”

  He then opened the side doors of the plane, unlatched the back seats, pulled them from their runners, and tossed them out onto the floor. Along with the seats he tossed out the life raft, life preservers, and fire extinguisher to lighten the plane as much as possible.

  “Okay mates, saddle up,” Fletcher ordered. “The adult men first, then the women and then the kids. Everyone find a place as close to the front seat as you can. I want you all to keep as much weight forward as possible.” As soon as the men boarded, he said, “Okay, Lei Hoa—your turn. I’ll help the girls up.”

  Fletcher kicked the chocks away and climbed into the left seat. He pulled out the choke, set the mixture to full rich, and hit the starter. The engine turned over and caught for a second before it coughed, expelled a cloud of oily blue smoke, sputtered, and died. “We need to clean out its lungs!” Fletcher shouted as he hit the starter again. This time the engine shuddered and sprang to life.

  Jean Paul lit the fuse to the C-4 then ran to the plane. As soon as he climbed into the right seat, the charges ignited, blowing out the entire west end of the building and revealing the grass runway.

  As Fletcher taxied out onto the open field he added full flaps. Once under the starlit sky, he pressed both brakes and held tight while he ran up the engine to the redline on the tachometer. As soon as he released the brakes, the turbo-charged engine gave the Helio the boost it needed. The tail wheel lifted off the ground and the plane lurched into the air, quickly gaining the altitude it needed to clear the trees and power lines at the far end of the field.

  “Okay, now what?” Jean Paul shouted as they climbed.

  “We are going to land on the Midway. It’s out there. All we have to do is find it.”

  “You can land this on an aircraft carrier?”

  “I’ll let you know. I’ve never tried.”

&nb
sp; * * *

  With its engine at cruising speed, Fletcher guided the Helio out over the South China Sea, hoping to find the American fleet before he ran out of fuel. Meanwhile, he told Jean Paul to try several frequencies on the radio that he thought would reach the carrier fleet. No luck. Jean Paul then switched to the standard emergency frequency. No help there. The channel was so cluttered with English and Vietnamese pilots looking for navigation assistance that communication was hopeless.

  As Fletcher pressed on, the sky began to brighten in the east. They could see an approaching line of clouds that reduced their ceiling to five hundred feet. It started to rain. Fletcher eased back on the throttle and trimmed the nose down before settling in at three hundred feet above the sea.

  Another thirty minutes passed. Finally, Jean Paul called out, “There’s a chopper heading in that direction, southeast!”

  “I guess we’ll follow. I hope he knows where he’s going.”

  “There, look! I saw a flash!” Through the light rain, the carrier appeared straight ahead, no more than five kilometers out.

  “How could something that big look so small from the air?” Fletcher said. “Jean Paul—let’s send them a message. There’s paper and pencil in the glove box. Write this down: ‘No radio, Req VFR Landing Immed. Low fuel. Ten souls on board.’ That should do it. Do you still have the .45?” Fletcher asked. Lei Hoa immediately handed the gun to Jean Paul. “Now stick the note in the barrel—make sure it is unloaded, please—then we are going to make a low pass and deliver our little message.”

  As Fletcher flew over the ship, he pulled full flaps and waggled his wings—a universal sign of surrender that let the deck crew know they were not a threat. Jean Paul shoved the pistol out of the window and let go. It hit the deck and bounced a couple of times as the sailors scrambled to retrieve it. Fletcher banked right. Jean Paul looked back and saw a crewmember reading the paper and giving a thumbs-up sign.

  “Look!” Jean Paul shouted. “They’re pushing a helicopter overboard! They’re clearing the runway for us.”

  Using the ship’s signal lamp a sailor flashed a message: “Cleared to land. VFR. Winds 5 Kts E.” With that Fletcher set up about one hundred yards alongside the carrier for the downwind leg of his landing, mentally calculating how rapidly the ship pitched. He wanted the deck to be at a slight uphill angle when he touched down.

  Fletcher turned to his final approach. His timing was perfect. The crew lined up along both sides of the runway, watching in anticipation and ready to help.

  Fletcher kept descending, flying close to stall speed, bleeding off airspeed—eighty, seventy, sixty, forty knots. With the stall warning horn blasting in their ears, Fletcher cut power and pushed the nose down slightly.

  “Just a few more feet and we’ll be over the runway, my friends,” he said under his breath. “That’s it, a little more—and … yes!”

  Less than three feet above the deck, Fletcher pulled back hard on the yoke. The Helio dropped instantly and rolled no more than a dozen feet forward before it stopped, then began rolling back.

  “I don’t think we want to go back, do you?” Fletcher said, as he tapped the brakes. He cut the engine and exclaimed, “Damn!”

  “Damn what?” Jean Paul asked.

  “This is a U.S. Navy ship. No booze allowed, mate! Unless one of you jokers back there brought something to drink, I’m refueling and heading for Melbourne straightaway!”

  Monday, April 28

  TO RIORDAN’S CONTINUING DISBELIEF, HIS RUSE had worked every time—nine times—with groups ranging from six to eleven. Incredibly, all were waved through onto waiting U.S. aircraft and whisked off to sanctuaries in Hong Kong, Guam, or the Philippines. He wasn’t concerned about where they went, only that they had escaped Saigon—and the North Vietnamese, their bitter enemies of more than twenty years at war.

  Mrs. Em Bah had insisted on staying with him to the end, helping him clear the way with not only the South Vietnamese authorities but also with the concerns and complaints that inevitably arose as each group took their turn confronting exile.

  “Only nine remain,” she said to Riordan as they prepared for their next, and hopefully last, trip to the airfield. “I think we all go now.”

  “With a group this size, we’ll need to take a bus to Tan Son Nhut. Have everyone ready here at 0900 hours.”

  “We all go—you too.”

  Riordan managed a smile. “This time I will. It looks like my work here is done. We’ll go together.”

  0 28 9181Z APR 28

  FM AMEMBASSY SAIGON

  TO SECRETARY OF STATE

  SENSITIVE EXCLUSIVELY EYES ONLY

  DELIVER AT OPENING OF BUSINESS VIA KISSINGER CHANNELS WH8644

  APRIL 29, 1975

  HK:

  DESPITE REPTS TO CONTRARY, CITY CALM, EMB IN CONTROL.

  AS EXPECTED, NV HOLDING BACK. SUGGEST WAITING ON FURTHER TALKS.

  I PREDICT WILL BE HERE STATUS QUO NEXT YR THIS TIME.

  ALL BEST,

  GMARTIN

  * * *

  By midmorning, Riordan grew concerned that the bus wouldn’t show at all. The chaos and fear in Saigon had increased with each day. Services like electricity and water were sporadic. Homes were shuttered and vehicles abandoned as people tried to find a way out of the city and through the ring of heavily armed NVA reported to be swarming the surrounding countryside. Sandbagged revetments now guarded the entrances to most public buildings. Police and military checkpoints were everywhere. Bus service seemed impossible, but somehow it continued with haphazard schedules while people queued on street corners to flag down anything that looked like it would stop to pick them up.

  When a vehicle finally appeared, it wasn’t the local bus he had anticipated. It was a U.S. Embassy bus, empty except for the driver, with a sign above the windshield that read Tan Son Nhut. Riordan ran into the road to force it to stop. If anyone questioned why he was escorting a group of SVN nationals to the airport, he wasn’t sure what he would say.

  “I can’t pick you up, mister,” said the driver, an American Marine who looked to be about fifteen. “You’re not from the embassy, and I’m not authorized to pick up anyone else—and besides, I’ve still got to make a run to the airport for the embassy people.”

  “I’m an official with Global Bank and I’m escorting these people who are manifested to fly out today on a MAC flight. If we don’t get there in time, they may not make it.”

  “Like I said …”

  “Tell you what—I’m leaving with them and you can have my moped when you get back here.” Riordan dug into his pocket. “Here are the keys. It’s a real nice bike—a red Yamaha. A new one. It’s yours.”

  * * *

  Riordan and his people rode in silence, clustered into a tight group at the back of the bus. The U.S. Embassy logo painted on the side and front enabled them to cruise past one checkpoint after another until they reached the main gates to the airport. An armored personnel carrier with a platoon of helmeted, white-spat wearing Quan Canh—the Vietnamese military police—blocked their way.

  A tough-looking QC sergeant entered the bus first. He took one look at Riordan and the civilians huddled together and warily backed off again, only to be replaced by the ranking officer, a captain.

  When Riordan stood to speak, the officer reached for his sidearm.

  “Chao ong, chao ong, Dai uy!” Riordan quickly said in as calm a voice as he could muster as he sat back down. “As you can see, this is the U.S. Embassy bus. We need to go to the departure tent for the MAC flight leaving today. I’m with the American Global Bank and these people are all in my charge.”

  “Who are these people?” the officer demanded. “Vietnamese not leaving Saigon! Americans only!”

  “This is my wife,” said Riordan, indicating Mrs. Em Bah, “and these are my sons and daughters.”

  “Why they not look like you? Where are passports?”

  “I have adoption papers for each of them … and embassy and State De
partment documents showing they are my legal dependents and are allowed to leave with me.”

  The officer looked unconvinced. “Give me papers. I will call embassy!”

  Riordan had no choice but to hand over the documents, hoping that no one—or no one of any consequence—was manning the security desk at the embassy. The officer motioned for him to remain seated and barked a similar order in Vietnamese to the people around him; then, like the sergeant, backed off the bus with his eyes on the group.

  They watched through the bus windows as the officer and the other soldiers looked through the papers, arguing loudly about how to proceed. Riordan began to sweat, but it wasn’t from the heat in the bus. Suddenly, Mrs. Em Bah stood and calmly walked toward the open side door. She stepped down and addressed the senior officer in Vietnamese, who stepped aside to speak with her. Riordan couldn’t hear what they said, but he noticed the woman was holding a small paper bag. With a smile, she handed it to the officer, who opened it and glanced at the contents. After a moment, he gave a curt bow and waved her back onto the bus, handing her their documents. Then he shouted an order to the driver of the personnel carrier. The armored vehicle roared to life and began backing away from the gate.

  The Marine in the bus driver’s seat didn’t wait for the signal to go. He put the bus in gear and as soon as the PC cleared the gate he drove straight through toward the departure tent and the airfield beyond. To Riordan’s relief, the cargo plane was still parked out there in the heat, waiting for the order to take off.

  “What did you say to that officer?” Riordan asked Mrs. Em Bah. “And what was in the bag?”

  “I have worked in a bank in Saigon for three years,” she replied. “We have resources, and I have learned a few things while I was there. Let me say this. A little sweetness makes even difficult situations better.”

  * * *

  As Riordan’s group boarded the plane, a commotion at the departure gate made him stop and turn. A well-dressed Vietnamese woman and three children were wailing loudly as they clutched at an ARVN soldier in full battle dress, who was tearfully saying what appeared to be his final good-byes to his family. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese guards were pulling the distraught officer back from the gate. They managed to separate the group and roughly pushed the woman and children out toward the waiting plane.