We lay there, motionless.
Finally, the vehicle passed, but I didn’t get a glimpse of it.
I gave it thirty seconds, then got up on one knee and looked south. I could see the lights climbing up toward the pass. I stood. “Okay. Let’s move.”
Susan stood, we got back on the road and continued on. We were soaked and cold, but as long as we were moving, we wouldn’t freeze to death.
There was not a single sign of habitation along the route, not even a Montagnard house. If the Viets and hill people thought Dien Bien Phu was cold, they definitely wouldn’t live up here.
Two hours after we crossed the pass, the fog lifted, and the air was warmer. We were almost dried off, and I removed my gloves, scarves, and leather hat and put them in my backpack. Susan kept hers on.
Within half an hour, we could see the lights of a town down in what appeared to be a deep valley that I guessed was the Red River Valley, though I couldn’t actually see the river.
We stopped and sat on a rock. Susan took out one of the tourist brochures, which was soggy, and read the brochure by the flame of her lighter. She said, “That must be Lao Cai, and on the northwest side of the river is China. It says Lao Cai was destroyed during the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979, but the border is open again, if we want to visit the People’s Republic of China.”
“Next time. What’s it say about transportation to Hanoi?”
She flicked on the lighter again and said, “Two trains run daily. First one is at 7:40 A.M., arrives in Hanoi at 6:30 P.M.”
I looked at my watch, but it wasn’t there. I asked Susan, “What time is it?”
She looked at her watch and said, “Almost one A.M. Where’s your watch?”
“I gave it to Mr. Vinh.”
“That was nice of you.”
“I’ll send him a new battery next year.”
She asked me, “What do you want to do for the next six hours?”
“Have my head examined.”
“I can do that. You want to hear it?”
“No. Let’s get down to a warmer elevation, closer to Lao Cai, then find a place to hide out until dawn.” I stood. “Ready?”
She stood and off we went, down the road.
The mountains became foothills, and we saw huts and small villages now, but no lights on. The road dropped steeply toward the valley, and I could now make out the Red River and the scattered lights of two towns on both sides of the river; this side was Lao Cai, and the town on the other side, up river about a kilometer, must be in China.
I only vaguely remembered the 1979 border war between China and Vietnam, but I clearly recalled that the Viets kicked some Red Chinese ass. These people were tough, and as I said to Mr. Loc on the way to the A Shau Valley, I wanted them on our side in the next war. And I guess, in a way, that was partly what this mission was about.
I mean, I didn’t want to be accused of upsetting the global balance of power; the military and political geniuses in Washington were obviously working hard to forge a new Viet-American alliance against Red China. Somehow, Vice President Blake was important to this alliance, and he needed to become president. All I had to do was forget what I’d seen and heard in Ban Hin, and with luck, we’d have Cam Ranh Bay again, and the sailors of the Seventh Fleet could get laid a lot in Vietnam, plus we’d have some new oil resources, and we’d have a big Vietnamese Army poised on that border right ahead of me, and we could all kick some Chinese butt— or at least threaten to if they didn’t stop acting like assholes. Sounded good.
Even better, I could blackmail President Blake into making me Secretary of the Army so I could fire Colonel Karl Hellmann, or bust him to PFC and put him on permanent latrine duty.
Obviously, lots of good things could happen if I just shut my mouth— or maybe I’d get it shut for me.
I didn’t know, nor would I ever know, if Susan Weber was supposed to terminate my career and turn my pension into a death benefit for Mom and Pop. The stakes were high enough for her to be motivated into such a course of action — I mean, if Washington had threatened to kill Mr. Anh’s whole family if he turned rat, then certainly the stakes were high enough to add Chief Warrant Officer Paul Brenner to the hit list.
During the war, the Phoenix Program had assassinated over 25,000 Vietnamese who were suspected of collaborating with the Viet Cong. Add to that number a few Americans in Vietnam who had VC sympathies, and some local Frenchmen who were outright VC collaborators, and other Europeans who lived in Vietnam and leaned too far left. It was an amazing number—25,000 men and women — the largest assassination and liquidation program ever carried out by the United States of America. And I could assume that some of those Americans, who had been involved with the program and who were my contemporaries, were ready, willing, and able to whack a few malcontents and troublemakers like me at the drop of a hat.
On a happier note, I had found the girl of my dreams. Right here in Vietnam. A guy shouldn’t be so lucky.
As we walked toward Lao Cai, I said to Susan, “You understand that I’m going to blow the whistle on Edward Blake.”
She didn’t reply for a while, then said, “Think about it.” She added, “Sometimes, Paul, truth and justice are not what anyone wants or needs.”
“Well, when that day comes — if it hasn’t already arrived — then I’ll move to someplace like Saigon or Hanoi, where at least no one pretends that truth and justice are important.”
She lit a cigarette and said, “Underneath it all, you’re a Boy Scout.”
I didn’t reply.
She said, “Whatever you decide to do, I’m with you.”
Again, I didn’t reply.
We found a thicket of bamboo and made our way into it, then unrolled our ponchos and lay on the ground. I’m not a big fan of bamboo vipers, and I hoped it was cold enough to keep them snoozing until the sun warmed them. That’s what it said in the escape and evasion manual.
Susan slept, but I couldn’t. The sky was clearing, and I could see stars through the broken cloud cover. Some hours later, the sky began to lighten, and I could hear birds that sounded like parrots or macaws squawking. I also heard the stupid chattering of monkeys somewhere in the distance.
We needed to get moving before the bamboo vipers did, and I shook Susan awake. She sat up, yawned and stood.
We got back on the road and continued on.
To our right was a wide stream, flowing swiftly out of the mountains to the Red River. There were clusters of huts near the road, but it was too early for people or vehicles to be out and moving.
The road flattened, and we were on the valley floor now. Within thirty minutes, we entered the incredibly ugly town of Lao Cai.
I could tell that all of these buildings were relatively new and that the entire town must have been destroyed in the 1979 war. At least this was one destroyed Vietnamese city that no one could blame on the United States Army, Marines, Navy, or Air Force.
There were a few people around, but no one took any note of us. I saw a group of about fifteen young backpackers sitting and lying in a group in the marketplace, as though they’d spent the night there.
I said to Susan, “With our backpacks, we can pass for college kids.”
“Me maybe.”
Susan stopped a Vietnamese lady and asked, “Ga xe lua?”
The woman pointed, pantomimed something, and spoke.
Susan thanked the woman in French and I thanked her in Spanish, and off we went.
Susan said, “We have to cross the river.”
We crossed the Red River on a new bridge, and I could see pylons of two destroyed bridges further upstream. Also up the river, where it split into two branches, I could see buildings with Chinese characters painted on them.