Escape from Saigon Read online

  “We haven’t talked in a while, my friend,” Carwood said. “I hope you are well.”

  “As well as can be expected in these difficult times,” the man answered. “More difficult for you than for me, I think. Yes?”

  “Business as usual,” Carwood replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “Nothing has changed.”

  “Ah, but everything has changed. Soon you will leave Saigon, I think. Leave Vietnam.” He paused to let his words sink in. “If the North Vietnamese allow you to leave.”

  “If that time ever comes, the embassy will decide whether to stay or to leave. We don’t see it happening anytime soon.”

  “A pity you do not play chess, Mr. Carwood. You do not see the danger ahead because you do not look to the future. Unlike you, Hanoi is playing the long game, and what is happening today is the result of actions initiated some time ago.”

  “And what would that be?” Although the night was warm, Carwood felt a sudden chill. His man was rarely this chatty. Huan Dinh had something important to reveal. “What actions are you talking about?”

  “Do you know what anniversary is coming soon—two anniversaries, actually? The first of May is the international communist workers’ holiday, of course. This is an important date for North Vietnam. But May nineteen is even more special.”

  “Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, right?”

  “Very good! You know this date! But what you do not know is that Hanoi has decided that Saigon will be the most fitting present it can give to its people to honor their dear Uncle Ho’s memory. My sources tell me that General Giap has ordered the North’s army to take Saigon at any cost, with the invasion to be completed by May the first, in order to celebrate a great communist victory on that date.”

  Carwood took his time replying, lighting another cigarette for himself and one for his informant. If what Huan Dinh said was accurate, they really were in deep shit, despite what the ambassador kept insisting.

  “South Vietnam is not about to give up,” he said, finally, “and the U.S. is still ready to step in if push comes to shove. North Vietnam—”

  Huan Dinh didn’t let him finish. “North Vietnam has taken every city and province in the country by force and the United States has not even attempted to stop them. Hanoi has been testing you, watching these events carefully. Do you not see? Now their army has surrounded Saigon. There are no South Vietnamese forces left to stop them from invading the city and taking it, too.”

  “Then why haven’t they? What’s preventing them—other than knowing our military still has the capability to kill another million of them, if need be, or resume bombing every rice paddy and factory north of the DMZ until Hanoi crawls back to the table in Paris.”

  Huan Dinh’s cigarette glowed as he took a long drag. “Hanoi doesn’t want this, of course. They want you to leave. Just leave. The war is over, Mr. Carwood. If you go now it will end quietly, without unnecessary bloodshed. Hanoi does not care that many Vietnamese want to leave with you—they can go, with your help. Hanoi knows you are already evacuating people. But this will not go on indefinitely. There is a time when it must stop.”

  “May first—if what you say is true.”

  “You may choose to believe what you want to believe, Mr. Carwood,” Huan Dinh said as he stood and turned toward the door. “The future is always right in front of us. It is up to you to recognize it and act accordingly. I wish you good luck, my friend. Perhaps we will meet again—before you and your people depart.”

  Tuesday, April 8

  SAM JAMMED ANOTHER BLANK SHEET INTO his Olivetti and started typing. He’d get two or three lines into it and then tear out the paper, ball it up, and toss it into the wastebasket behind the bar.

  “Sam, if this is where you do your best work, I’d like to see where you do your worst,” Jean Paul joked as he slid a coffee cup toward Sam and added, “Maybe some caffeine will help.”

  “I guess I could use a break,” Sam responded while Jean Paul picked through the discarded paper in the basket, straightening out one of the sheets that seemed to have the most copy and started reading it.

  Vietnamizing Vietnam

  By Samuel Esposito

  Saigon Tuesday April 8—Captain Nguyen Thanh Trung is the poster boy for the Vietnamization of the war—yes, Vietnamization, the U.S. strategy of turning the war over to the people who should be fighting it instead of the Americans. The process began in the late 1960s and was declared a success by 1973—the year U.S. forces returned home. That was two years ago. Today, one would be hard-pressed to find an embassy official willing to even utter the word Vietnamization, as the South Vietnamese Army collapses in the face of advancing North Vietnamese armed forces.

  One small part of the Vietnamization program was for the U.S. Air Force to send Captain Trung to Texas for a year for advanced fighter training on the F-5—the warbird version of the Air Force’s supersonic trainer, the T-38 Talon, fitted out with bomb racks and rocket launchers.

  Trung was perfect. He was a natural aviator with tremendous good looks and charm. He was on the fast track for a command position in the South Vietnam Air Force, and was expected to rise to General of the South Vietnamese Air Force while still in his forties. When anyone described Trung, the word most often used was “dashing.” He even wore a white silk scarf to enhance the image.

  As part of the U.S. propaganda effort, the previous ambassador to South Vietnam, Ellsworth Bunker, loved to show off Trung at embassy parties, including his Yale alumni events, to which this reporter was often invited. He called those parties Bulldog Bashes, and Bunker ran his bashes like frat house beer brawls. Bunker would gather his fellow alumni ’round the piano to sing, “From the tables down and Mory’s to the place where Louie dwells, to the …”

  Trung could be expected to sing his heart out for “the dear old Temple Bar,” the venerable Yale College watering hole that he had never seen. Trung would join in with even more gusto to sing the Bulldog’s fight song: “Boolah, boolah, boolah, boolah, boolah boolah, and do it again …”

  Bunker once put his arm around Trung’s shoulder and toasted him in front of a half-dozen Navy fighter jocks, calling Trung “one of us.”

  Today, that all changed. It is now safe to report that Trung was my “not for attribution” source for years. He seemed to have unusual access to North Vietnam’s plans and strategies. He had enough information to be believable, but there were plenty of times his information was slightly off, so as to not arouse suspicion.

  Trung was in fact a …

  * * *

  Jean Paul looked up from the crumpled sheet that had ended so abruptly. “Sam, I’m a bartender, not a famous journalist like you, but I see your problem.”

  “Yeah, this coffee could use a shot of bourbon. That’s my problem.”

  “Coming right up,” Jean Paul said and, while pouring a shot of Jim Beam into Sam’s cup, he added, “Look, you’re the great journalist. The Pulitzer Prize winner. The guy who was going to change the war with the words your little red Olivetti vomits. But this story? You cannot write it because you got fooled. Trung, how do you Americans say it, ‘pulled the wool over your eyes.’ He lied to you and you fell for it. And you are angry.”

  “Somehow you are not making me feel better,” Sam acknowledged adding, “That sonofabitch! How fucking stupid was I? Trung fed me enough information to keep me on the hook, and readers back home convinced that South Vietnam’s Air Force was failing.” Sam was fuming.

  “Why don’t you tell the truth, Sam. Tell the truth. After all, four, maybe five of your presidents have been fooled by Vietnam’s leaders. You will be in very good company. So tell the truth. Write it from here,” Jean Paul added, pointing to his heart.

  * * *

  That morning, the same Captain Nguyen Thanh Trung had lined up on the runway with three other F-5s from his South Vietnamese Air Force squadron. Carrying their full load of five-hundred-pound bombs, the jets prepared to take off on a mission against the North Vietnamese troops advan
cing on Saigon.

  During the engine run-up—the last check to make sure the single engine F-5s were “all systems go”—in the crucial moments before takeoff, the squadron maintained radio silence. Everything seemed routine until the last seconds when Trung, using hand signals, indicated to his squadron leader that his plane was experiencing a malfunction. The other pilot acknowledged, then he and the others taxied toward takeoff. If Trung had to abort and could not catch up at the predetermined rendezvous point, they would proceed toward their target without him, as planned.

  But after his comrades had flown out of sight, Trung throttled up his no-longer “malfunctioning” engine and took off alone. Once airborne, instead of racing to catch up with his squadron, he made a steep turn low to the ground and headed off on a course in the opposite direction.

  * * *

  Tuesday, April 8, marked the fifth year of Steve Carwood’s Far East assignment with the CIA and his third year in Saigon. Despite the latest bad news about the North Vietnamese advance up in Phan Rang, and despite what his snitch, Huan Dinh, had told him, the anniversary reminded him of how much he had accomplished in those years. It made him feel good for a change, almost buoyant, and the cool morning air prompted him to walk the few blocks to his meeting at the Presidential Palace.

  He felt even better when he recalled that President Thieu wouldn’t be at the meeting. They could do without him—Thieu was a mess, more hindrance than help these days. “A slight illness,” his aide had said on the phone late last night. More like a case of nerves, Carwood decided.

  When he reached the corner of the palace grounds, he stopped at a kiosk for the morning paper. Beyond the fence, surrounded by lawn at the end of a long circular drive, the palace sat serenely in its park-like surroundings. The gleaming white marble structure was impressive, but to Carwood it looked more like a postmodern mausoleum than a palace. However, he liked its airy, mahogany-lined corridors and high-ceilinged meeting rooms, and he didn’t mind seeing Thieu’s ministers here instead of in his cramped office at the embassy. Besides, the lunch they served was always better than anything dished out at the embassy mess.

  As Carwood stepped from the curb, he heard a deafening roar from above and behind. Suddenly, a fighter jet appeared directly overhead, no more than forty feet over the treetops lining Nguyen Du Boulevard. It was an American-made F-5 with South Vietnamese Air Force markings, and it had two fat, black, five-hundred-pound bombs slung beneath its wings—so close Carwood could see the serial numbers stenciled on them. The jet flew straight for the palace.

  With Carwood watching in disbelief, the jet released the bombs as its pilot simultaneously hit the afterburners and pitched the aircraft into a steep climb. Like a rocket, it screamed upward on a column of purple-white flame, and a sound louder than Carwood had ever heard made him recoil into the street. Tailfins snapped out from the rear of each bomb, slowing their flight. To Carwood they looked like a pair of enormous metal insects that slowly wobbled and floated on a graceful downward arc toward their destination.

  Both bombs struck the roof of the palace. Flames and smoke and debris erupted with a tremendous blast, followed by a shock wave that slammed Carwood backward and whipped the leaves off the trees around him.

  In the street, chaos erupted. Pedestrians screamed and ran. Cars and pedicabs collided. Carwood, thrown to the gutter by the blasts, got to his feet just as the jet reappeared from high above, now shrieking downward at a steep angle, its 20-millimeter wing cannons snarling like a chain saw. The high-explosive rounds showered the burning building with small explosions and tore into a limousine parked in the drive. The vehicle blew itself apart, adding to the flaming debris scattered across the lawn and drive.

  Then, as quickly as the attack began, the jet was gone, roaring away beyond the rooftops, leaving a trail of flaming wreckage on the ground below.

  Carwood could only stare, stupefied and numb, at the smoking palace. Slowly, the sounds of his surroundings increased as his hearing returned. His legs still shaking, he began to run toward the palace.

  Only one thought occupied his mind: What the FUCK just happened here!?

  * * *

  Trung’s F-5 made one more low-level turn, allowing him to survey the damage before he blasted north toward the landing strip that had been prearranged by his new North Vietnamese allies. Alone in the cockpit, he smiled as he considered what he had done.

  Trung, the pride of the South Vietnam Air Force, the guy who sang the Yale fight song with gusto during Ambassador Bunker’s annual picnic aboard the embassy yacht, had just defected in a twenty-five million dollar made-in-America fighter jet. And—while he was at it—had bombed South Vietnam’s Presidential Palace.

  * * *

  After Jean Paul’s pep talk and a couple of swigs of his bourbon-laced coffee, Sam inserted another sheet of copy paper into his typewriter and continued writing.

  Vietnamizing Vietnam

  -page 2- S. Esposito

  Trung was a turncoat. He had fooled everyone in both the U.S. and South Vietnamese Air Force. To make matters worse, after his deceptions, he rubbed salt into the wounds of those who had trusted him.

  He called a press conference in Hanoi that was covered by the BBC and heard around the world. “The scheme to steal an American fighter went off without a hitch because I have been planning this since I was eight. My father,” Trung explained over the radio, “was Viet Cong and in the year he was killed by the American puppet President Diem’s forces, I vowed revenge.”

  He continued, “I practiced and practiced, how I would steal the F-5 and plotted my course over the palace. My only regret is that I did not kill Thieu when I released my bombs over the building.”

  In a later interview, General George Brown, the 7th Air Force commander, who oversaw Vietnamization of the air war, could not contain his anger. “We flew that bastard all the way to Texas, taught him how to fly our F-5s in combat. He went up with our best aces. He learned every tactic and every command and control strategy we used to maintained air supremacy throughout the Vietnam War. Then he steals the aircraft right out from under our noses.

  “Vietnamization my ass. I’ll shoot him myself if I ever find him.”

  S.ESPOSITO—EVERGREEN

  Wednesday, April 9

  GENERAL BROWN NEVER MANAGED TO FIND Trung, but Sam did.

  After filing his story about Trung’s deception, Sam cooled off. But he began pushing Jean Paul for a connection to Trung because he knew Jean Paul kept a Rolodex of North Vietnamese contacts in his brain.

  “C’mon, Jean Paul, put out the word. I heard the BBC, I saw the Russian papers. Trung’s picture is on the front page. He’s a big hero in Moscow and in the ARVN for trying to assassinate Thieu. Jean Paul, I want to talk to him. It still pisses me off that he gave the story to the BBC and Isvestia and not me. So much for loyal sources.”

  “Face it, Sam. He used everyone.” Jean Paul poured another Hennessy into the glass in front of him and casually remarked, “Now that you have your typewriter here, you don’t have to spend much time at the Legend office.”

  “The publisher’s called everyone in the bureau home. All that’s left there are a bunch of steel desks and a Telex. So I go over there only to file my stories. That’s it,” Sam answered.

  After his second Hennessey, Sam asked, almost as casually as if he were asking for directions to the washroom, “Jean Paul, you will get a message to Trung for me, won’t you? Whenever I want a source up North, you always seem to have a way to get through.”

  “It’s late in the game, Sam. Don’t you get what’s happening here?”

  “He wasn’t just a source. Trung and I were friends, I think that still counts. I have to get hold of the guy. I know you can do it.”

  “For what?” Jean Paul demanded. “Why now? No one in America cares anymore. Your Legend doesn’t care.” He threw a week-old copy of the Legend on the bar. “Look. Do you see Sam Esposito on page one? Do you see Sam Esposito on page two? How about
page twelve?” He turned to a page filled with lingerie ads. “Oh, what a surprise, you are not there either. All the news you see about Vietnam is from reporters in Washington. People would rather hear about what is happening at home, and you should too.”

  Jean Paul kept flipping through the pages, “There, page twenty. I see a story about Saigon by Sam Esposito. One more story isn’t going to make a difference. When I left the North with my family, when they closed the border in 1954, journalists like you wrote stories for their papers, too. No one cared. Not in France. Not in the States. Not anywhere. It’s been twenty years, the same thing is happening here now. Get out while you can, Sam. Go!”

  Sam wasn’t about to give up. He needed Jean Paul’s help. “If I can score an interview with Trung and that’s the last story I file from Vietnam, then so be it,” he told his friend. “I want the story. I know you can help me if you want to.”

  * * *

  The minute Sam sat down at his usual seat next to the house phone, Jean Paul said in a low voice, “I had nothing to do with this. Nothing, you hear me. But … someone called and said Captain Trung has a message for you. He said Trung cannot say anything over the phone. He wants to talk to you. It was about an hour ago. He said it’s important. Here is his number.” Jean Paul handed Sam the receiver and the phone number written on a bar slip.

  “No shit? Trung!” Sam said, grabbing the receiver from Jean Paul. If Trung has a message for me it’s really big, Sam thought as he picked up the receiver and started dialing.