Escape from Saigon

by Michael Morris

  Shocked at what was happening in front of them, Tuan captured it all on film from his vantage point at the far end of the runway. By now the runway had been shredded as if by the claws of a giant eagle. As the attackers passed low overhead, Sam and Lisette were astounded to recognize Trung’s insignia on the lead Dragonfly and that he had waved to them. The Dragonflies that followed him climbed as they turned to rejoin his formation, putting them in position to fly over the airfield for a second bombing run. But instead of turning back to the air base, Trung shot skyward. He made a climbing turn and then, diving toward earth, leveled out no more than fifty feet off the ground. He bore down on Sam, Lisette, and Tuan crouching in the field.

  Sam, Lisette, and Tuan were at first mystified and then horrified as Trung fired a long burst from his guns in their direction. But he was not aiming at his friends. A sniper, hiding 500 yards from Sam, Lisette, and Tuan, had made a fatal mistake by leaving the cover off his scope a little too long. Long enough for Trung to catch a glint of the setting sun reflecting off the lens.

  When Lisette turned to see what Trung was aiming at, she saw a single muzzle-flash from the sniper’s rifle. Before anyone even heard the report of that one shot, Trung’s cannon fire ripped through the weeds, tearing the sniper into a thousand shards of flesh, bone, and blood. Trung then turned toward the setting sun and disappeared below the horizon.

  “I guess we got our story,” Sam said matter-of-factly, staring down at his jacket as he held the fabric away from his chest to keep the bloodstain from growing larger.

  Lisette looked at Sam, looked at the bloody jacket, then back at Sam as he looked up and into her eyes, a quizzical expression on his face.

  Tuan rushed to his side, “Sam, Sam you’re hit!” he cried. He gently eased Sam to the ground and pulled away the shirt to get a better look. Lisette leaned over and pressed her hands hard against the pulsing wound, hoping to stop it from oozing more blood.

  Sam lifted his hand and touched her hair, saying, “Lise, look, you’ve got some blood on you. Let’s wash that off when we get home.” Then, with Lisette silhouetted by the sun, he dropped his arm, smiled, and closed his eyes.

  “Sam … Sam! Oh my God, Sam. You can’t do this. Do not do this! Please don’t Sam. Sam! You can’t leave me. I need you, Sam!”

  After a moment, Tuan said softly, “We have to go,” Lisette barely felt his hand tugging on her shoulder as he pulled her to her feet.

  “I will bring Sam home,” he said, as he led her away. “I promise you. I will bring him home.”

  Tuesday, April 29

  SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN, CARWOOD WOKE TO a thunderous incoming artillery barrage. It was directed at the air base, four miles from where he was sleeping, but the opening salvo was so powerful it shook the building. In the darkness he was momentarily disoriented. He was still fully clothed and for a moment he didn’t know where he was. Then he recalled that he had opted to sleep on the couch in his office at the embassy.

  A strange orange glow at the window got him to his feet. In the distance, Tan Son Nhut was ablaze. The oily black smoke that rose above the flames meant the fuel dump must have been hit, he thought, just as another salvo landed, adding to the fire.

  He ran into the hall. All of the lights were on and people were rushing around. Most of his staff and other embassy workers hurriedly carted boxes of files out of their offices. Everything was in disarray. Papers littered the floor, boxes were piled one atop another. Carwood could see that the files were mostly documents and folders marked TOP SECRET. He stopped one of the younger staffers—the kid was new to the embassy, Carwood didn’t know his name—and looked into the box he was carrying. It was filled with film canisters and contact sheets, sensitive photos the CIA had collected over the years.

  “Where are you going with that?” Carwood demanded.

  “We were told to destroy everything,” the kid replied, a worried expression on his face.

  “Who gave the order?”

  “Mr. McWhorter, sir. He said we can’t take any of it with us when the choppers come to get us out.”

  Carwood turned away and stopped another of his men, Timson, as he backed a hand truck stacked with file boxes toward the elevator.

  “Did Ambassador Martin okay this?” Carwood asked.

  “I don’t know if he even knows about it,” Timson replied. “The ambassador learned about the evac airlift we’ve been running for our South Vietnamese workers and their families and canceled it about an hour ago—pissed as hell—but McWhorter told us to pack up and be ready to move. Mac also told the Navy guys to keep the choppers coming.”

  “Coming for who?”

  “We’ve got two thousand South Vietnamese personnel to evacuate or they’ll die here, for sure. North Vietnam’s not waiting any longer. They started shelling the air base overnight—destroyed both runways, we heard, and shut down all fixed-wing operations. No more flights in or out of Tan Son Nhut. We were busing embassy workers out there and evacuating them from the military compound until midnight, but it looks like we’ll have to airlift them from here now—if the ambassador ever changes his mind. We’ll be going too, we don’t know when, but soon.”

  Carwood did a quick mental calculation. Helicopters to airlift a couple of thousand evacuees? Plus the six or eight hundred Americans still left in Saigon? Maybe if they had a week. He remembered what Huan Dinh had said about Hanoi wanting to take Saigon before the first of May. That would make the deadline tomorrow, the last day of April. Time’s up. Ready or not.

  “I’ve got to talk to Martin … and McWhorter, see what’s really going on,” Carwood said. “You’re in charge up here, Timson. Most of these files have already been copied back to Washington, so destroy it all—papers, photos, everything.”

  “Sure, boss. But there’s a shitload to get rid of. We’re shredding and burning as fast as we can, but not sure how much time we’ve got left.”

  “You know the drill. Start with the classified docs and crypto gear. Leave the Sat-Comm equipment in place until we’re ready to fly out of here—we might need it. Take the rest up to the roof and torch it. We’ve got a dozen fifty-five-gallon drums up there and a stockpile of sodium nitrate that’ll turn it all into slag in no time. Whatever can’t burn or be dismantled, have your men smash in place. I’m sure one of the engineers has an ax or a sledgehammer you can use.”

  “You got it. My guys will make sure nothing’s left behind.”

  “Go to it,” Carwood said. “I’ll be back as soon as I find out what I can.”

  * * *

  The chaos upstairs was nothing compared to what Carwood found when he got down to street level. Overnight, the grounds around the embassy building had filled with South Vietnamese men, women, and children, and hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, were clamoring outside the fences, trying to gain entry. He made his way through the crowd to a space the Marine guards had cleared near the swimming pool. They were checking papers and frisking the men lined up behind them. In Saigon, everyone was armed, but the Marines weren’t about to let armed civilians onto their aircraft. As each man handed over his weapon, the Marines tossed it into the swimming pool. Carwood could see the bottom of the pool was already piled deep with handguns and automatic weapons of every sort.

  “Gunny, what’s going on here?” he asked a Marine sergeant he recognized.

  “Trying to process these people for extraction, Mr. Carwood. We were told the choppers would be coming here now because no one’s getting out through Tan Son Nhut. We’re moving everyone who’s cleared next door to the recreation center until the birds arrive.”

  They were interrupted by a deafening roar from above as a Navy CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, a smaller version of the big twin-blade Chinooks flown by the Army, appeared overhead and rapidly descended onto the embassy roof.

  “Right on time, sir!”

  Carwood left the Marines to their work and fought his way back through the crowd to the embassy’s main entrance. In the lobby he nearly c
ollided with McWhorter, who was hurrying toward the elevators.

  “Steve! I’m glad to see you!” McWhorter said, keeping his stride. As Carwood fell in beside him he lowered his voice. “Don’t know if you heard, but Kissinger has ordered all U.S. and allied personnel out. Now.”

  “What do you mean, out?”

  “Out of Saigon. Out of the country. They’re sending choppers to take us all offshore. We’ll regroup on the Okinawa. You’ve got to round up your people and get them to the roof for extraction.”

  “And the ambassador? Is he going with us?”

  “He’ll have to. SecState says go, we go.”

  “When I spoke to Martin yesterday, he was still insisting we could pull this out of the fire. Now I hear he’s called off the flights taking our SVN people out to Subic! We can’t leave them behind—they’ll be slaughtered, their families will be slaughtered, and the Navy doesn’t have enough choppers to get everyone out in whatever time we have left.”

  “We’re working on it. Kissinger’s orders said evacuate all embassy personnel, Vietnamese, and third-country nationals who worked for us. That includes American civilians and accredited correspondents—anyone the North might want to round up as potential hostages. Or spies. CINCPAC is already sending CH-46s on a constant rotation out to the ships and back, and they’ve promised us CH-53s if we can clear a landing zone here in the compound big enough for them to drop into. They’re too heavy to set down on the roof helipad.”

  Carwood looked dismayed. “I’ve flown in those CH-46s—they seat only a couple dozen passengers! They might be able to stuff in two or even three times that number of Vietnamese, but those people will have to leave behind everything they own, and any flight coming here and then straight back to the carriers will burn lots of fuel if they’ve got too much weight on the return trip. Hell, they might not even be able to make a round trip!”

  McWhorter stopped short of the elevator. “Our job is to get everyone onboard those helicopters as they come in, not count noses or worry about fuel!” he said, impatience in his voice. As he stepped into the elevator he turned back and held the door, fixing Carwood with a level gaze. “You take care of your section. We’ll take care of the SVNs. Just be sure you’ve got every one of your people accounted for and on those birds and out of here when your time comes. Now, like you, I’ve got things to take care of. The ambassador’s convening a meeting of all the department chiefs in one hour. I’ll see you there.”

  * * *

  At exactly 10:51 a.m., Chip Nolan, a contract employee for Armed Forces Radio Network and the last American disc jockey in Vietnam, shook out an envelope containing a prerecorded cartridge and popped it into the Gates Automatic Programmer at the AFRN studio at 9 Hong Thap Tu street, a few blocks from the embassy. When he pressed the play button the message, recorded as a continuous loop, began broadcasting on the station’s frequency at 90.1 FM.

  The message said, “The temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising,” followed by the song “White Christmas.” It played over and over and over again.

  Chip took one last look around what had been his home and office for the past two years, walked to the studio exit, flipped off the light switch, and closed the door behind him. Out of habit, he hung a dog-eared cardboard GONE FOR COFFEE sign on the doorknob—the sign that he used whenever he took a break, whether it was to take a quick piss or quit for the day.

  As he started to walk away, a thought occurred to him. He turned back and took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, then wrote on the sign: BACK IN 10 MINUTES. He smiled as he looked at his handiwork.

  “I guess we get the last laugh after all,” he said to no one.

  The sun was high and the tropical heat had already begun to build when he made his way out to the courtyard. He ripped open his evacuation package and glanced at the instructions, then began to whistle “White Christmas” as he headed off to his embarkation point—the football pitch near the university.

  * * *

  The sun was well up when Matt awoke. He was still bedded down on the cot outside on the Quanhs’ lanai. He remembered the night before and tried to recall details about what had happened, but it was already fading, like a bad dream. He got up and shrugged it off. Time to saddle up and move out.

  He felt relieved when Nuoc rode into the courtyard on her bicycle. She explained that she had spent the past two nights with family friends in Cholon, the ethnic-Chinese district at the western edge of Saigon. As immigrant shop keepers—neutrals in the conflict—they didn’t fear reprisals if the North Vietnamese were to take over.

  Nuoc looked at the cot where Matt had slept. “Why did you stay out here?” she said. “There are beds inside and there’s no one else here now.”

  “I figured I’d wait out here on the porch in case you showed up during the night.”

  “Ride around at night? No way, man!” she said, pointing beyond the courtyard. “It’s crazy out there! The streets are empty, like there’s nothing but ghosts walking around. Even the food vendors have disappeared. But I can make a meal for us here, there’s plenty of food in the house.”

  “I’ll go for that. Besides, I think we’d better wait until later before we try to move around the city. I heard a lot of small-arms fire in the middle of the night. The NVA are probing the city’s defenses, looking for weak points, and I was told the VC are everywhere in Saigon, acting like everyday citizens while they wait for their signal.”

  “What signal?”

  “Rock and roll, Nuoc. Rock and roll.”

  * * *

  McWhorter had to raise his voice to be heard over the clamor in the room.

  “Okay, keep it down! Keep it down back there! Can we get a little quiet, please?”

  The embassy’s conference room was jammed with people, all talking at once. Each section head was there, along with Marine officers and noncoms in civilian clothes from the Grounds Security Force and a group of Air Force officers who had come in from the recently shut-down TSN Operations Center. Carwood stood near the front with Timson, the CIA’s chief of Comms.

  There was no panic in the room, but the air was tense with concern. When everyone settled down, Ambassador Martin slowly rose from his chair at the end of the long table. Those who had not seen him in the previous days were shocked by his appearance. He looked like a very ill old man. His complexion was pallid and he repeatedly coughed into his handkerchief.

  “I want you all to know this is not—I repeat, not—the beginning of the end of our involvement in South Vietnam,” he said, his voice barely audible to those in the back of the room. “The North has not invaded the city and we at the State Department do not believe they will invade. As such, I have ordered these airlift evacuations to stop.”

  A tremor of disbelief ran through the room. One of the Marine security officers stepped forward from the crowd.

  “Mr. Ambassador … Sir … Two of my men were killed in this morning’s rocket attack. The shelling has closed Tan Son Nhut and NVA tanks and troops have already penetrated the city. They waited this long but they’re coming in now. If we don’t get these people out there’s going to be a bloodbath, and we won’t be able to stop it!”

  “Stand down, Colonel!” Martin said, calmly but firmly. “State is still running this show, not Defense. Your orders are to secure the embassy. Not to mount an unauthorized and uncalled-for humanitarian mission.”

  Carwood didn’t let the ambassador continue. “We now have a thousand or more people inside the embassy grounds,” he said. “They came here for asylum. The colonel is right—we won’t be able to protect them! And even if the North Vietnamese don’t set foot in the embassy—a big if, given the way they’ve ignored the peace agreement they signed with us—those people can’t hole up here forever. They were our people, our allies. We still have time to get them out—”

  “Mr. Carwood! You don’t give the orders in my embassy! The CIA, like the military, serves a support function—I suggest you remember that. The Vietna
mese who are in the compound now can stay while this sorts itself out, but until you and I receive orders to abandon this mission, civilian evacuations will cease. Meanwhile, we have been instructed to move all nonessential staff out to the Fleet. Continue to use the roof helipad so the people in the courtyard won’t see what you’re doing. We don’t want a panic on our hands!”

  * * *

  Outside the conference room, after the ambassador had returned to his office, Carwood huddled with the Marine officers. All agreed that they needed to continue the civilian airlift, despite what the ambassador said.

  “We will have a panic if those people in the courtyard think we’re not going to help them,” the colonel said. “I’ve got one hundred and thirty Marines, including those we’ve already detailed to the other evac points around the city, and we’re spread pretty thin here at the embassy. And there’s hundreds more people outside still trying to get in—those we have an obligation to, and those who are just scared shitless and hoping to hitch a ride out with the rest.”

  “Who are you letting in now?” asked Carwood.

  “Anyone with an ID issued by the embassy, along with their immediate family members.”

  “Okay, at least that will limit the flow somewhat. But we still need to increase the number of people we can fly out at a time. Those Phrogs, the CH-46s, can’t carry enough.”

  “We have Navy CH-53s on standby out at the fleet, and I got word before the meeting that the Midway will soon be on-station with a detachment of Air Force H-53s. Those big boys can take about a hundred Vietnamese at a load. Only problem is, they’re too heavy to touch down on the roof. We’d need to clear an LZ in the courtyard for them.”

  “So what’s preventing that?”

  The Marine colonel gave Carwood an exasperated look. “That damn tamarind tree is smack in the middle of the yard, it covers half the parking area, and the ambassador told me point-blank that if we cut it down he’d court-martial me and any man who put an ax to it. He said it’s been there since the embassy was built and it’s ‘a symbol of our presence here in Vietnam,’ as he put it.”