Abandoned: MIA in Vietnam

by Bill Yancey

  Rose’s eyes grew larger. “How did you know that, Addy? I don’t believe I told you about him.”

  “You didn’t,” Wolfe said, “but I learned quite a bit about him from the internet. His last name is Thien, first name Vu. A widower, he escaped from Vietnam in a sampan in 1985, along with his children. And grandchildren. Went to Thailand, then Canada, and immigrated to the US, after marrying you.”

  Stunned, Rose sat with her mouth open. She did not stand when the front door opened and Thien Vu stood in the doorway. Only slightly disappointed that Thien wasn’t six inches taller, Wolfe rose from his chair and walked to the door, right hand extended. “Good afternoon, Mr. Thien, I’m Dr. Wolfe, a friend of Jimmy Byrnes. I met your wife at his mother’s wake. Your wife and I were entertaining each other with some stories about him. I have reason to believe you knew him as well.”

  Thien looked at his wife, eyebrows raised. She shook her head. “I didn’t tell him anything. He figured it out by himself,” she said. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell him what happened to Jim when you left Vietnam.”

  Wolfe scanned both their faces, hoping to tell if they would be honest. He had never been able to interpret peoples’ body language or facial expressions, except for gross displays of anger or mirth. “Would you mind?” he asked Thien.

  “Please, have a seat,” Thien said. “I’ll be right back.” Thien left the room and returned with a large glass of what could have been sweet iced tea, but looked a little more like bourbon on the rocks. Limping slightly, he walked to his wife’s side and sat with her on the small loveseat, holding her hand.

  “Before you begin,” Wolfe said, “tell me how you two met.”

  Thien grinned. He squeezed his wife’s hand hard enough for her to make a face. “Con co gave me her name and address before we left on our journey.”

  “Con co?”

  “A nickname we gave him in Vietnam when he was a POW. It means stork. He was much taller than the rest of us,” Thien said.

  “You were a POW, too?”

  “No. I was in the North Vietnamese Army,” Thien said. He briefly outlined Byrnes’s capture, escape, and recapture, and how he and Binh vowed to rescue him. “He saved my life,” Thien explained, tapping on his prosthetic leg. “He could have taken Binh’s AK-47 and killed us both. Instead, he helped Binh find medical help for me. For that act of kindness to an enemy soldier he remained a prisoner for many years.

  “I was an administrator in Ho Chi Minh City. You know it as Saigon. After the storms and floods of 1979 almost destroyed our economy – made worse by attempts at collectivization – I made plans to leave Vietnam if the opportunity presented itself. You never knew who the communists would use as scapegoats for their failures. I also knew that helping Binh and Stork might be a death sentence.

  “The day before he, Kim-Ly, and Binh’s family arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, I had received the letter Binh had written about the investigation into Stork’s disappearance. I was expecting them, though, because the Party had put out an order for their arrests. I had a safe house I used in the city, so I put them up there.

  “I had gotten people out of Vietnam before. Some went across the Mekong River to Cambodia after our armed forces defeated the Khmer Rouge. Many were caught and turned back by Vietnamese patrols there, though. I heard that many Chinese, like the Hoa in the north, took junks and sailed to Hong Kong…but China eventually closed its other ports. If the junks didn’t make it all the way to Hong Kong, the Chinese turned them back to Vietnam. Many perished.

  “The only way out for us, in 1985, was to sail on the East Sea; Americans call it the South China Sea. We could sail to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, or Thailand. At that point, only about fifty percent of escapees actually left the country. My government caught many and placed them in re-education camps or the New Economic Zones, which proved death sentences for some. The courts executed a number of people who attempted to escape. Many returned home to find all they owned confiscated by the communists. The officials waited for these resourceful individuals to rebuild their wealth. Then those same dishonest officials received more gold and silver in bribes the next time the people tried to escape. Corruption was rampant.

  “Only about half of those people who actually made it to the East Sea survived. The lucky ones were picked up by larger ships. Many shipping companies ordered their sea-going vessels to ignore the refugees. Many expatriates died of starvation or thirst. Sailing south to Thailand exposed the escapees to the pirates in the Gulf of Thailand, who raped, killed, and kidnapped many women. They also brutally slaughtered children, and men. They stole food, water, and treasure from the escapees. They rammed and sank their boats. I have seen statistics that suggest there were two million Vietnamese refugees between 1975 and 1992. We think one-half to three-quarters of a million of them died trying to escape the communists.”

  “A national tragedy,” Wolfe said.

  “No. A world tragedy,” Thien said, shaking his head. “We were abandoned to die, either at the hands of our own government, at the hands of pirates, by starvation and thirst, from storms at sea, or from cruel twists of fate. It was not like Vietnam had not suffered enough already.”

  “Obviously, you made it out okay,” Wolfe said. “Are those just stories Vietnamese immigrants tell for sympathy?”

  “No!” Emily Rose said. “Tell him Vu. Tell him how Jim died.”

  Wolfe took in a deep breath through his nose, forcing himself to remain calm. He admired how Thien kept his emotions under control. “Please, go on,” Wolfe said.

  “My office received reports on the search for Vong Binh, his family, and Stork, so I knew how close the investigators were getting,” Thien said. “On the day they had narrowed their search to central Ho Chi Minh City, I left work early and went to the safe house. Altogether, we had a crowd of twenty or more, with my children and grandchildren and Binh’s family. I gave everyone instructions on how to take different routes to the Ham Tu wharf in Saigon. We split up into five or six groups and made our way to a taxi boat, arriving in a staggered fashion. The taxi made three trips in the canals to the village of Luong Hoa, southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. There is a boat yard in Long An Province, close to the village.

  “I had provisioned a boat over the previous month, in preparation for leaving Vietnam in case I had come under suspicion. It was a large sampan, previously owned by a smuggler. The marine patrol had confiscated it. As administrator, I took charge of it and used it for operations against black marketers. The crew was loyal to me. All were previous South Vietnamese sailors whom I had pardoned from re-education or NEZs.

  “My crew had loaded the boat with coconuts, fish, beans, rice, sausage, dried squid, cookies, water, and fuel, but no weapons. If the authorities caught us I didn’t want to face execution for treason. We took two days to meander through the canals and small tributaries to the Mekong River, traveling mainly at night to avoid detection. A coastal patrol boat stopped us in one of the smaller rivers. They fired a machinegun over our heads. We all assumed they would arrest us and send us to prison. Instead, the captain sent a man over to our boat. He held out his hat and said, ‘Give me your gold, and we will let you go.’

  “I collected some jewelry from the passengers, and threw in about one-fourth of my silver. We handed that to the sailor. He returned to his boat, but came back. ‘The captain says that’s not enough,’ he said.

  “We made another collection. I handed them half of my gold. The sailor returned to his boat. He waved at us from the patrol craft. ‘Have a nice voyage,’ he said, and snorted an evil laugh. Shortly after that we were alone on the river. Evidently, the additional jewelry and gold made the bribe acceptable.

  “The second night we hit a sandbar. It took us two hours to rock the boat off the shoal. Stork and the crew spent those two hours in the water. Fortunately the tide was coming in and we were close to the East Sea. It was enough to lift us off the shelf.

  “Patrol boats went past us in the dark
many times during those two hours, but did not see us since we were close to shore and in the dark. Once the crew had us into the ocean, the East Sea, we turned south toward Malaysia. The shortest distance to safety was also the most dangerous. We knew the pirates might find us. They did.

  “At one point we sailed through a cluster of drowned bodies, maybe thirty or forty children and men. Pirates had evidently kidnapped the women for the sex trade, and probably sunk the boat on which they traveled. We did not see their boat, only their bloated bodies. They were tied together at the wrists.

  “I woke up on the third or fourth morning to find a Thai pirate boat bearing down on us. They moved so much faster than our loaded sampan could. Thai pirates painted their fishing boats with dragon designs on their sides. I’ll never forget that evil-looking dragon. Once the fishing boat drew near us, a pirate climbed onto the bow and fired a pistol in the air. Our crew shut down our engine. The pirates drew along side and tied our boats together. Five or six pirates jumped onto our boat. Most had machetes. The one we thought was the captain had a pistol. Another man stood guard on the pirate boat with an AK-47 in his hands.

  “They lined everyone up on our boat, all twenty-six of us. Holding the pistol to cover us, the captain had his men search each of us for gold and jewels. They took great pleasure in checking the women, hands in intimate places. Then they explored the cabin and hold. When finished, they separated the men and children from the women, and began taking the women to their boat.

  “My son objected to seeing his wife stripped and mounted by one of the pirates. He ran toward the pirate boat screaming at the bandits. A pirate slashed at him with his machete, cutting his arm off, and then his head.” Thien took in a deep breath. He bowed his head, and then looked at Wolfe. Tears welled in his eyes. “My boy fell dead in the ocean.”

  “I am so sorry,” Wolfe said, unable to express his deep feelings of outrage adequately.

  “I need a minute to recover,” Thien said. He stood and walked into the kitchen with his empty glass.

  CHAPTER 48

  When Thien returned, he had refilled his glass, without ice cubes. He sat closer to Rose. She put an arm around his neck and kissed him lightly on the cheek, tears visible in her eyes. “You don’t have to continue, dear. I can tell him the rest.”

  Thien shook his head. He said, “No. My life. My story. I will tell him.”

  “Please,” Wolfe said softly.

  Thien nodded and continued. “Seeing the pirates’ brutality, Binh’s wife, Yen, screamed from the pirate boat at Binh, ‘Do something!’ A man hit her in the face with his fist, knocked her to the deck, and started to remove her clothing. Binh raised his fists at the pirates. Two men with machetes stepped toward him. The man with the pistol laughed. He put his arm out to stop his men, and then lowered the pistol to the deck. Pulling the trigger three times, he put holes in our water cans and the bottom of our sampan. He waved the pirates back to their boat, intent on leaving the men and children on the sinking vessel.

  “As he turned to jump to his boat, Stork stomped on his foot, breaking bones. I heard them snap. At the same time he grabbed the man’s pistol with both hands, pulling it downward and hitting the man in the face with the top of his head. Blood went everywhere and the two fell overboard. I hurried to the side of the boat to see what would happen. Stork pushed the pistol under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger. The bandit’s head exploded, blossoming like a red flower underwater. Then Stork disappeared under our boat.

  “The man with the AK-47 began shooting at the water, trying to hit Stork. More bullets hit our sampan, putting additional holes in it. The rest of us scattered. Women and children screamed. The water deflected the bullets from Stork. Swimming under the pirate boat, he surfaced on the far side. He shot the man with the AK-47 in the back as the pirate leaned over the side of the boat looking for him. When a second man with a machete tried to retrieve the AK-47, he shot him, too. After pulling himself onto the fishing boat, Stork picked up the AK-47. Before the remaining pirates could react, he had killed them all.”

  “So you were saved.” Wolfe said.

  “Almost,” Thien said. “Our sampan was sinking, and it was tied to the pirate boat. It could have pulled the Thai’s fishing boat under, too. Leaving the pirates’ bodies and the raped women where they lay, Stork grabbed a machete. He called to us to bring the children and jump to the pirate ship. To prevent the pirate boat from sinking with our boat, he hacked at the ropes holding the boats together, freeing the sampan.

  “When we climbed into the pirate boat, he jumped back onto our sampan. As it continued to sink, he threw water cans, and food to us. We stood on the side of the pirate ship, women crying and screaming, the men calling for him to jump clear of the sampan. After passing us the compass, Stork was waist deep in water on the deck. The boats drifted apart. Soon only the top of the cabin was visible. Suddenly, the boat rolled over, taking Stork under water. He never surfaced. We watched for an hour as the sampan drifted away. It took us three hours to start the engine on the fishing boat. By then our boat was gone.”

  “It sank?” Wolfe asked.

  “I assume so,” Thien said. “Either that or it drifted so far away that we couldn’t find it when we searched for it after the outboard engine started.”

  Wolfe felt nauseated by the descriptions of the rapes, murders, and fighting, but he needed to finish his inquisition of Thien. “Then you went to Malaysia?”

  “Malaysia turned us away. Two of my grandchildren died of thirst. In the Gulf of Thailand, a Thai destroyer gave us water and food. Then it turned us away also. Among the packages of food, I found a note with directions, ‘Go 250 degrees. Songkhla.’ One of the sailors must have put the instructions in the package. We steered 250 degrees on the compass. Two days later we arrived, nearly dead, on Songkhla Resort Island in Thailand. There was also a refugee camp there. Eighteen months later, I arrived in Canada. Once in Canada, I contacted Emily through the American Red Cross, as Stork had requested.”

  Wolfe turned his attention to Rose. “And a marriage of convenience followed?”

  “No,” she said. “I listened to his story and arranged for Mai Kim-Ly to come to the United States. My congressman sponsored a bill for her, since she was the wife of a dead American POW. Vu eventually followed me home, got a job here, and started studying at George Mason.”

  “Wow,” Wolfe said. “I’m exhausted just listening to your tale, Vu. May I call you Vu?” Thien nodded. “Good. Call me Addy. I’m certain it was difficult to re-live your journey and the death of your son.”

  “Yes,” Thien said. He seemed devastated and drained by the recounting of the ordeal. “It is difficult, even after thirty years. One never recovers from the death of one’s child.”

  Wolfe stood. “Well, I have to go,” he said. “I’m afraid I need a good, stiff drink.” He stepped closer to Rose and Thien. Holding his right hand out first to Rose and then to Thien, he shook their hands. He then turned and walked to the front door. He paused in front of the screen door and turned his head toward the two.

  “Good-bye,” Thien said, too emotionally drained to stand.

  “Will we see you at the funeral tomorrow?” Rose asked, also remaining seated, arm around Thien.

  “Definitely,” Wolfe said. “And by the way, I’m not buying it. Oh, I believe most of that yarn is true, Vu. But, I’ve heard too many times how Jimmy Byrnes has died, only to hear later of a miraculous escape and a later death. You can tell the CIA that I have proof he’s alive. Both his and a guy named Thien Sang’s fingerprints are on that high school yearbook Tammy lent me. In fact they are identical matches. They are the same person. One set is in the navy archives, the other is in Canada as an immigrant registered by the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees. And we found the prints on the page with the picture of you and your first husband, Emily. Unless the CIA can give me a believable explanation, I will tell the Washington Post to print the story I gave them last night. Good day.
” He opened the door, stepped into the bright sunlight, and strode to his car.

  CHAPTER 49

  The Welcome Center at Arlington National Cemetery throbbed with hundreds of visitors. Wolfe could see why there were plans to raze all of Fort Myer, which bordered the cemetery. Arlington needed space for more graves. Dying for one’s country was a booming business. Among the multiple groups waiting for funerals, he found Tammy Kimura and her sister talking quietly with friends and relatives. Wolfe edged closer to the group, but stayed at the periphery. He didn’t like funerals, or the coat and tie he wore – his last suit and last tie. Both were reserved for funerals, including his own, despite what his wife said. He rather liked the fact that his wife called him a beach bum. It fit his personal image of himself.

  Within the gathering, Wolfe spotted several people he had met over the previous weeks. In addition to the Byrnes sisters, he glimpsed Colonel Richard Rhodes, Thien Vu and Emily Rose, Pete Aikens the Ford dealer from Florida, and George Crouch the pilot. All had known Emiko Byrnes and had helped sustain her after her son’s reported suicide.

  The crowd of mourners almost filled the gray navy bus that took them to the gravesite. George Crouch fell into the long back seat next to Wolfe, when the bus lurched forward. He slapped Wolfe’s knee. “Glad you made the party, Doc,” he said. “She was a grand old girl. It’s a shame J.T. can’t be laid to rest with his parents. Unless you do go back to ‘Nam and find him or his body.”

  “Yeah,” Wolfe said, wondering if everyone in the bus was in on the conspiracy, or if they were all clueless. He remembered what Mrs. Byrnes had told him after her first stroke, ‘My Jimmy like you very much. You go see him. Okay?’ Had she known?

  “You seem a little distracted, Doc,” Crouch said. “Still worried about the CIA?”

  “No,” Wolfe said. “I don’t think they are going to be a problem in the future.”

  “Did you get permission to go to Southeast Asia?”