by Peter Colt
“What are you interested in, Mr. Roark?” I knew Good Cop when I met him. I didn’t much fancy the Vietnamese version of Bad Cop. One of the two older Vietnamese had been a high-ranking officer in the Vietnamese secret police. I recognized him from a trip to Headquarters in Saigon. Colonel Tran had worked for him. I needed to play for time. I definitely did not want a guy like that asking me questions. The methods, the ones that I had seen in Vietnam, were the stuff of nightmares.
“I was looking for gold. Mr. . . . ?”
“You can call me Keller.”
“I was looking for gold, Mr. Keller. Through a series of unlikely events, I developed a theory that the gold from the Republic of Vietnam’s treasury had been smuggled out of Vietnam on this ship.” I was moving toward the railing, away from the gangway. Keller laughed, a high sound that didn’t suit him well.
“Well, Mr. Roark, you are a funny one, I will say that. How did you come to that conclusion?” I was now leaning against the rail near a large cleat for a mooring line. Keller didn’t have much to worry about; there were at least four submachine guns loosely pointed in my direction. The older Vietnamese had pistols in their waistbands. I explained to Keller, telling him how I had arrived at the conclusion about the gold, my own version of The Arabian Nights.
“I have to say, Sergeant Roark, you are very astute. They shouldn’t have underestimated you. They told me that you were reckless and not very bright.” He smiled. He had perfect capped teeth like a daytime TV stars.
“Was there gold?” If I was going to die, I wanted to die knowing I had been right.
“Yes, there was. Bars of it in the cargo hold. Each day, each port the pile got a little smaller, but it was still substantial by the time it got here.”
“What did you do with it? Is it financing the Committee and its counterrevolution? Do you mind if I smoke?” I held my hand up, pantomiming holding a cigarette.
“Please do. No, it didn’t get used that way exactly. You have friends in the Company.” A statement not a question. I nodded; I had made some friends in civilian clothes in Vietnam. “Did you ever hear of Operation Franchise?”
“Nope.” I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and two matches later was sucking in a lungful of glorious cigarette smoke. I was thankful for having kept my smokes and matches in a baggie. I hoped that Keller hadn’t seen my hands shaking slightly.
“Operation Franchise is a means to help all of our brothers in the fight against global communism. Initially, the Company conceived of it under Nixon. Operation Franchise is a way to lower our expenses and yet still be able to counter the communist threat on a global scale. Under Carter, the funding went away. Then there was a great deal of congressional oversight. Ha, imagine having a bunch of amateurs tell you how to run Recon patrols.... These men had no idea about what it takes to fight the communists. None.
“Fortunately, I did. I also knew where there was a source of gold, gold that no one was using and wasn’t collecting interest. There was a lot of it. It was conveniently secured, near a navy base, an air force base, a naval aviation air station, and one of the busiest commercial ports in the world. I could have goods brought in and shipped out, and no one would notice.”
“You used the Vietnamese gold?” Keller was audacious, to say the least.
“I surely did. It paid for assets and networks and bought weapons in South and Central America.”
“You stole their gold? You must have cut them in on it if they aren’t pissed at you. I can’t believe the Vietnamese, the Committee, they were just all right with you taking their gold?” I was resting my foot on a large cleat, the type for mooring lines. It was mushroom shaped, a foot in diameter, and eighteen inches high, Frankenstein bolts on the sides of the stem. My right foot was on it, toes flexing and slowly finding the right purchase.
“No, of course not. I didn’t just take it. I found a way that they could finance their counterrevolution, a way that they could finance their goals, their dream of a Vietnam that wasn’t a people’s republic but just a republic.”
“Heroin.” What else could it be.
“Yes, we had assets in Thailand, Burma, some still in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, all of whom wanted to be rich and had access to a product that was wanted around the world. To include here at home. We sold the Committee a franchise. They would provide people in Asia and here. They would provide security, transportation to shipping and manage the domestic distribution. We gave them the parent franchise and they licensed individual franchises. We would ship and secure it until they were ready to move it to their distributors. Then they would sell it on this end. It was a means to guarantee them a sustainable revenue stream and provide them with arms and equipment, the means to sabotage the People’s Republic of Vietnam and to strike a blow to global communism.
“The gold was finite; drug profits grow exponentially. In the end, the gold was a down payment. Those profits from heroin allowed them to buy arms, equip their counterrevolutionary strike force and their propaganda arm. That money finances operations in Southeast Asia, it pays for Vietnamese newspapers here in the U.S., and it funds recruitment of agents and assets in their fight. Our share of the profits allows us to grow and expand, to take the fight to the communists who threaten our very border.
“You see, Sergeant Roark, no one is really interested in Asia anymore. The dominoes didn’t fall. Maybe all your collective sacrifice prevented that. However, South America, Central America are close. Imagine a domino effect that involved those nations. Cuba and Nicaragua are bad enough, but imagine a communist Mexico or Guatemala? Imagine if the communists controlled the Panama Canal or the communists in control of all that Venezuelan oil? That would impact us strategically, but it would also impact global trade. Money for my part of the fight has been diverted to a country that most people can’t find on a map. We want to show the Ruskies what it is like to have their own Vietnam. That came at the cost of other operations, my operations.
“I had to get creative. I had to find a way to fund a war that no one wants to fight, that no one wants to hear Dan Rather talk about on the CBS Evening News. There I was at a McDonald’s in Virginia one day. I was eating a cheeseburger, nestled in its Styrofoam clamshell. I was eating French fries and drinking a Coke. What could be more American?
“Then it hit me. McDonald’s had a product that everyone wanted, but they could never have expanded to be what they were if it was just two brothers overseeing everything, expanding as much as they could get loans for. But then came Ray Kroc, and he figured out that if they made people pay them to open their own McDonald’s he could have one on every main street in America. Then he sold them the product that they would sell. The process, the procedure, the franchise was revolutionary, as revolutionary as Henry Ford’s factories. Why couldn’t I use the same model to fund our operations?
“Initially, I thought it would be guns. I would sell guns to revolutionaries to fight the revolution. That was impractical. I was talking to a colleague whom I had worked with in Thailand, and he mentioned the vast amount of heroin being moved. He had run a small operation during the Vietnam War and used the profits from heroin to run his operation. It was brilliant, but I needed it to be done on a global scale.
“So, there I was eating my cheeseburger that tasted just like every other McDonald’s cheeseburger anywhere in America when I remembered a memo about the gold and the cost to secure it. I saw my version of McDonald’s. I would borrow the Vietnamese gold and then use it to fund the weapons they needed and I needed. I would sell them the right to sell the drugs that I need to sell to finance my operations. It was simple. I arranged to take over the responsibility for the gold on board, and the costs came from the head office. I called those men over there and laid out a plan to create a franchise system using their gold as the startup capital. It allows us to bring the fight to our nation’s enemies. A nation that you once honorably served. “
“So, you sell drugs to Americans to buy guns to arm warlords who deal drugs so
that you can buy more drugs to sell to more Americans to buy more arms?” I had known guys from the Company. Most were decent hardworking men and women who loved their country. Anonymous, invisible soldiers, spies, and analysts, none of which was the James Bond type. They were just quiet, hardworking people who were deeply patriotic. I knew men like Keller, too, men who had gone so far down the operational rabbit hole that right and wrong became increasingly smaller and smaller concepts. Soon everything, even their meals, was seen through the lens of operational security. After a while, their reality was unreal.
“It isn’t that simple. Don’t be naïve. You have fought the communists; you know how relentless they are. They are much more ruthless than we are. We have to be willing to fight them any way we can, and, Sergeant Roark, you know that your hands are far from clean.
“We created a self-sustaining operation. It is secure and efficient and actually saves the American taxpayer money while keeping them safe. It doesn’t matter who is in office or whatever cause du jour Congress falls victim to. We will be able to continue to function whether or not a subcommittee said so. We can take the fight to the commies. We can spend more than they can.”
“Well, Keller, I will say this: you are passionate about franchising. So, what happens now?”
“I don’t suppose you would be interested in coming to work for me? I could use a man like you.” He smiled, and I understood how the fish felt looking at the shark.
“Keller, I don’t think you know me as well as you think you do.” It was the best I could come up with.
“I don’t suppose you could keep quiet about this for the sake of your country?” He didn’t even say it with a trace of sincerity. If I believed that then I would believe that he would still respect me in the morning.
“I don’t know who would believe me if I told them. The issue is that you can’t trust me not to.” Keller smiled, and it was completely without warmth.
“True. I can’t. I appreciate your candor, Sergeant.” His left hand was snaking around the perforated barrel of the Smith & Wesson 76.
I took a drag on my cigarette and then threw it left handed across the men with guns. Their eyes unconsciously tracked the glowing red ember. I pushed off with my right foot, up and over the rail. I heard automatic weapons fire and 9mm bullets snapped at me, tugged at my clothes, angry hornets buzzing by me. I exhaled smoke and tried to refill my lungs before I hit the water.
Chapter 21
I turned end over end and hit the cold, dark water with a splash. My landing was awkward, knocking the air out of my lungs and bruising my already sore, battered body. Water hurts when you hit it from a height even when you aren’t a walking contusion like I was. I hurt in lots of different places and ways. In the last week I had been beaten up and blown up, found out my lover was a spy, watched her get blown up in my car, and now I had fallen forty feet into Suisun Bay.
Darkness washed over me, pulling me down lower and lower into its inky, cold embrace. Part of my mind reminded me that I could just let the water claim me, that it could offer me peace. I could close my eyes and it would all go away. Except that I am stubborn. I still had work to put in, and I couldn’t do that if I gave up.
I opened my eyes. I chose to live. I could see my bubbles going up, heading toward flashlights shining on the water. I could hear rounds zipping into the cold water. I kicked hard with my feet and pulled with my working arm. For some reason, my left arm didn’t want to obey commands from my brain. I fought the water with a fierceness like any I had brought to battle.
I swam underwater toward the dock that the gangway was lowered to. My lungs were on fire, and my vision was darkening. I bumped my head on something, another lump for the collection. I felt my way along the bottom of the dock. Between the two rows of plastic fifty-five-gallon drums that kept the dock afloat, there was a bit of space out of the water.
I put my face up to it. I was able to get my nostrils and mouth out of the water in the rounded area between the drums. My feet and legs floated up and I was pinned against the dock by my own buoyancy. But I could breathe. There was just enough air space. I gulped air. It would take them a few minutes after firing on full auto to hear me. After a few breaths, I forced myself to calm down and breathe through my nose. I was trying to breathe shallowly, stay quiet. In my mind, I was like a submarine in silent running. I was alive. My left arm ached, but I was alive. Alive was nice.
By rights they should have killed me. They were overconfident because they had submachine guns and I was unarmed. They should have riddled me with bullets, but they had held their guns casually instead of actually training them on me. I had acted and they had to react. Action is always faster than reaction, and the split second I gained from it saved my life . . . for now.
I had to focus. My motor skills would start to diminish, as well as my ability to think. I had a wool sweater on, but I needed a wet suit or, better yet, to be in Arizona. If I stayed calm, if I kept breathing, I could survive this. Survival was 90 percent staying calm, working the problem, and 10 percent luck. Slow, quiet breaths, I had been breathing my whole life. Now, I had to focus on the process of breathing to save my life.
Even though we were inland in the bay, I couldn’t stay in the water forever. I had to outwait, outlast Keller and the Committee. To surface before they left was certain death. The problem was that I could not stay indefinitely without going hypothermic, and hypothermia would kill me as certainly as a hail of bullets.
I was safe for now. Well, safe wasn’t the right word. Safe-ish? I was hoping they didn’t have hand grenades or didn’t want to use them if they did. I wasn’t worried about the fragments, but the concussion would probably kill me. I had seen too many thrown into rivers as a means to catch fish. It was a much faster method than a pole or a net. The concussion kills the fish, and they float up to the surface. I hoped they weren’t fans of hand grenade fishing.
It felt like I was under there forever. It was probably only a few minutes, but I had no sense of time between the adrenaline rush, the fear, and the cold. I started to count to sixty in my head, slowly. Then each time I got to sixty I would add a number in order to keep track of the minutes. I could keep track of how long I was underwater. I had to keep starting over because I couldn’t keep track. I was having trouble keeping focusing on the individual numbers in succession.
Once in Phase I of Special Forces training, we were out patrolling, relearning, polishing our land navigation skills, our patrolling skills, too. It was a cold winter day by North Carolina standards: raw, damp weather just under forty degrees. The wind was blowing, and the tall pine trees were swaying and straining above us. We were on a field problem, and moving through the woods, we came to a river. It was still the phase of training when we were accompanied by an instructor/evaluator. We stopped and debated what to do when the instructor said, “Not sure what you ladies are waiting for, but that little bitty river isn’t going to cross itself.” We only had the uniforms we were wearing and our jungle boots. We decided to strip naked and put our clothes in the waterproof bag in our rucksacks. We still had on our jungle boots and wool socks. We made rafts by wrapping our ponchos around are rucksacks and tying them off. It wasn’t perfect waterproofing, but it kept them dry and trapped enough air that they would act as floats for a short time.
We were confident that this was a test to see if we would do it. We figured that once we showed we were willing to go into the water the instructor would stop us. No one wants to lose trainees in training. I was up to my chin when it occurred to me that no one was going to stop us. We were blue and shivering when we emerged on the opposite bank. We did jumping jacks to warm up and shed as much water as we could. We dressed and, still bitterly cold, started moving out. That water was like bathwater compared to the stuff I was in now.
I was shivering badly, and my hands were losing feeling when I heard voices, then steps down the gangway and an engine started. I heard Keller say, “Break up the kayak. Throw his gear into the
water with the pieces of the kayak. If anyone finds it, they will think he was hit by a fishing boat or something. Throw that Saturday night special in the water, too. If that turns up in his gear, someone might start asking questions.” I heard the sounds of them smashing the elegant Klepper kayak into pieces, then the splashing of my gear into the water.
Then the sound of an outboard motor starting and they moved off in their boat. I took a breath and pulled myself along the bottom of the dock until my head and then torso was out from under the dock. I got a hand on a cleat and pulled with all of my waning strength. I lay on my back on the raft for what seemed a lifetime, but it was probably a minute, the outboard engine sound growing dimmer in the night. I flexed my fingers trying to get some feeling back in them. I wanted to get on board before anyone started watching the gangway or the ship through a Starlight scope again.
It took me two tries to grab the hawser and lock it between my feet. What had been easily done an hour or two before was now nearly impossible. I pulled myself agonizingly upward. My left arm wasn’t working right, and it hurt. Somehow, I made it the ten feet up to the gangway. I crawled up it. I told myself it was so I wouldn’t be seen, but, in reality, I was too cold and too exhausted to walk. I pulled myself along the steel deck to the hatch. I crouched next to it and undogged it, then slipped inside, quietly closed the hatch behind me. I was shaking, and it was as much from the cold as it was from coming down from almost being killed.
I walked on unsteady feet down the companionway to the stairwell up. It was pitch black in the companionway, and I had to move by feel. It was slow going, and I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. I was leaving a trail of water behind me like some sort of sea monster that had dragged itself from the deep up on shore. Andy Roark, the creature from Suisun Bay. I laughed to myself at my own joke as my Converses squelched on the deck. I went into the first cabin I found and stripped off all of my clothes. I wrung out the pants and my German undershirt as best as I could. I wrung out my socks, my watch cap, and my Converses. I spun the sweater over my head a few times and wrung out the long john shirt. The wet wool undershirt, watch cap, and wrung-out skivvies went back on. The sweater, the pants, socks and shoes I hung over an old bunk to dry.