by Eric Meyer
“Yeah, it was during their invasion. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t even one of our own aircraft. I guess he was just doing someone else a favor.”
I realized what a dismal story it was, so many deaths in this small part of the world, South East Asia. Yet we were still here and still fighting. I sometimes wondered what it was all for, what were we doing here. I never found the answers. Maybe it was something in the blood. Or was it a challenge, like asking a mountaineer why he risked his life to climb Everest? ‘Just because it was there,’ they’d reply. Were we all mad? I could still remember my mother trying to hide her bitterness when she told me about my father. It was the last time I’d seen her, two years ago, in Paris, where she now lived.
Rachel was silent for a time, and then she said, “You’ve had some rotten luck in your family, Max. And now the airline’s almost out of money. Is it really that serious, are we in trouble?”
We’d located to Afghanistan, to Kandahar, when work became scarce. It was a dangerous and hard business in Afghanistan, but if you lived, it should be possible to earn enough cash to pay back the bankers and finance companies and move on to a sane environment. But you also needed some luck, and lately that commodity had been in short supply. I smiled at her, trying to make light of it all.
“I’m lucky enough to have a fantastic co-pilot, Rachel, and God only know why you work for me.”
“It sure ain’t the money, buddy,” Rachel smiled back. “The way things are going I reckon I might even have to pay you to let me fly. I guess you ought to know, it’s the exact opposite of the way business is normally done.”
“Things will get better, Rachel. It won’t always be like this.”
She stared at me. Then she broke out in a gale of laughter. “In your dreams, buster. The only way we’ll see any money out of this outfit will be if you win the lottery.”
“I don’t do the lottery,” I protested.
She nodded. “Why had I guessed that? Maybe it’s time you did.”
“So why do you stay with me?” I asked her, knowing the answer already.
“Because you let me fly, Max. No one else will.” She looked at me closely and grinned. “The pilot is pretty handsome too.”
“Get out of here, Rachel.”
“No, I mean it,” she said earnestly. “You’re a nice looking guy.”
I looked back at the jungle to hide my embarrassment. I wanted to mumble, ‘The co-pilot isn’t so bad either’. But I kept silent.
We droned on for another hour, and I dozed, thinking about what it would have been like, fighting down in those steaming jungles, the heat, and the humidity. Snakes. Vietcong. Rachel touched my arm. “The starboard engine’s running a little rough, and we’re overdue for a service, Max. It’s not going to get any better. Can we get it looked at in Saigon?”
I shook my head. “I doubt it. We’re already overdue with our maintenance bills. And don’t mention the name Saigon while we’re there, you know how it upsets the locals.”
She looked grim. “I couldn’t give a shit about the locals.”
I glanced across at her, curious about the dislike in her voice.
“Was your father in Vietnam? He was a pilot, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was. I never saw him either. I’m told he was a red-hot pilot, but he died of cancer soon after I was born. What a waste!”
I wondered did she mean a waste that he’d died, or that it was from something as mundane as an illness? Then there was the other thing. She’d told me before that she found me attractive, but I had a business to run. I stared into her eyes, trying to make her understand why it couldn’t be. Except they were such beautiful eyes, and it wasn’t the first time I’d noticed, even though I knew that one of them was false. Which one?
“So we both know life can be crap, but we also know we have to move on.”
She nodded and looked out through the cockpit window. She was using extreme care to fly the aircraft, squinting ahead into the cloud and mists that hung over the Vietnamese jungle, like an old, wet army blanket. She had a slight squint because of the eye she’d lost in the accident that ended her Air Force career, the same accident that had damaged her leg. She had changed back into civilian clothes and turned her back on her military career, leaving with a slight limp, a small pension and a hefty compensation check.
“We really should get it checked out before it goes altogether.”
“I know, but it’ll have to wait. You know how things are.”
She didn’t reply, for the downpour came suddenly, as it often did in this country. Sheets of rain fell in furious torrents so that we were flying into an angry wall of swirling water. The wipers struggled to cope, and I rechecked our heading and distance to run. Our destination, Tan Son Nhat International Airport, lay only fifty miles in front of us, but in the worsening storm I had doubts we’d be able to make a safe landing. I began working out alternatives even though it would cause problems to our schedule, and may cost us the next cargo that was waiting for us in Ho Chi Minh City. There was nothing suitable, so I contacted Tan Son Nhat.
“This is Helene Air Twin Otter en route for Tan Son Nhat. We’re fifty miles out and caught in a rainstorm. Can you suggest an alternative?”
There was a brief silence. Then, “Rainstorm? What rainstorm?”
The voice was shrill, scathing. As if I was mad. Then again, maybe anyone who flew into this godforsaken country was mad.
“We are fifty miles west of Ho Chi Minh City, flying through a heavy rainstorm.”
“Rainstorm? There no rainstorm here, Mister. You blind?”
English is the universal language of air traffic control the world over, but the English that they spoke at Tan Son Nhat ATC was unlike any I’d heard before. Even so, it was obvious the storm hadn’t reached our destination, so we could stay on course. I touched the transmit key.
“Understood, Tan Son Nhat. We are approaching the airfield, ETA approximately ten minutes. Will call when we’re on final approach.”
“Sure, you do that, Mister. Rainstorm!” he snorted as he signed off.
We continued on through the heavy rain and sure enough, five miles out of the airport it eased, and we finished the journey in brilliant sunshine. We touched down and taxied to the freight terminal, where there were loaders from a local mineral exploitation company waiting outside the company hangar to unload our cargo of drilling equipment and tools. As the last of the wooden crates were hauled though the aircraft doors, they started to drag our return load, mineral samples, into the cargo bay. Rachel and I relaxed, munching our way through sandwiches and drinking cans of soda while we sat watching the process of loading from a couple of wooden boxes outside the hangar.
“It must have been something in its day,” she murmured. It was obvious she was reminiscing about her Air Force days. “I can imagine the F4s taking off, Hueys shuttling troops to the battlefields, and Cobra gunships setting out to give them fire support.”
“It would sure have been busier,” I replied. “But I doubt a few passenger jets and the occasional Boeing 747 annoy the locals like the constant military traffic used to.”
“We were fighting for their freedom. They should have been more grateful,” she snapped, a tinge of bitterness in her voice.
I looked at her, surprised at her vehemence, but before I could respond a Vietnamese official stalked up to us; he’d been out of sight, coming from round back of the hangar. A small squad of soldiers, a sergeant and four troopers followed him. All of them were armed with AK-47s, the iconic Soviet assault rifle. With their banana shaped magazine, they were the most recognizable weapons in the world, and their solid rate of fire and 7.62mm bullets made them both lethal and effective.
“Don’t move. Let’s see what they want,” I whispered to Rachel.
She nodded.
“Why you no show passport when arrive?” he snarled.
His face was pockmarked with childhood acne, and his teeth, like most Vietna
mese, were either crooked, black or non-existent. Afghanistan was little different, another poverty stricken flyspeck of a country, and another American foreign war. Some of the older Vietnamese had been fortunate enough to benefit from American medicine during the war, but not this one. He was bow legged, legacy of a poor diet, and a paunch betrayed the amount of time he spent behind a desk. I held out my hand.
“Hi, my name’s Max Hoffman. Pleased to meet you.”
He looked at my hand, surprised at the unusual courtesy. His expression deepened into a sneer as he ignored it. “Why you no show passport?”
I sighed. He was one of those. “You know we have an arrangement. When we land and don’t have to leave the airport, you don’t need to see our passports.”
“You show passport.”
“Very well. Rachel, would you pass down my briefcase from the cockpit.”
“Sure.”
She limped to the ladder, climbed up into the fuselage, and went forward to locate the case where I kept all of our papers. I didn’t want to let this awkward official out of my sight; something about him spelled ‘trouble’. The cargo handlers watched him carefully as they continued to unload, but I could see something more in their expressions. Fear, yes, but fear of what? She brought down the case, and I showed him our two passports, hers American and mine French. He scrutinized the documents, and then checked our licenses.
“You airline was in Vietnam?”
“That’s correct. Saigon.”
I could have bitten off my tongue as I said it, but that’s what it said on my passport. He looked up sharply.
“Ho Chi Minh City.”
“Of course,” I replied smoothly. “The city had a different name when the airline was here, that’s all. It says Saigon on the original licenses.”
He glared at me, then handed the passport and licenses back. He picked up Rachel’s passport and stared at it.
“American.”
It was a statement, and one word that dripped with contempt. For him, maybe, the war wasn’t over. Perhaps he’d lost relatives to the American bombing. It wasn’t unusual. Or maybe he was just an arrogant, ill-mannered pig, like many of these petty bureaucrats in communist dictatorships.
“Yeah, that’s right, buster, I’m American. Any problems with that?” Rachel’s voice was hard as flint, and he glared at her. Then he relaxed and smiled.
“No problems now. Americans we have problems, we kill.”
I could see Rachel start to limp towards him, so I took her in my arms, putting my lips close to her ear.
“Not now, Rachel. We’re not out of here yet. Just cool down and forget him.”
She tried to shake me off. “Motherfucking sonofabitch, these people couldn’t hold a candle to Americans. I hope they all rot in their pissant slave state.”
“What? What she say?”
I smiled at him. “Nothing, my fiancée is not feeling well, that’s all. Women!”
I raised my eyebrows and grinned. He gave me a suspicious frown. It was a moment when things could have gone either way, but at last he nodded. Like most Asian men, he was a raving macho misogynist, and women were of course weak. Then he lost interest in Rachel and swung back to the soldiers.
“Sergeant, order your men to search the aircraft, the cargo, everything!”
“Why do you want to search the aircraft?”
He swung back and stared at me. “You mind own business.”
I felt Rachel pulling at me and realized I was still holding on to her. I released her, and she gave me an angry glare. “Why did you do that, Max? I could have dealt with him.”
“I’m sure you could, Rachel, but his soldiers could have caused you a few problems.”
She grunted but made no reply, and we watched them pull wooden crates off the load waiting to be taken on board then jimmy open the lids. Two soldiers boarded the aircraft and started to hunt through the cabin and cockpit, but I knew there was nothing for them to find.
“What the hell are they looking for? They don’t do this normally, do they? Christ, I thought Afghanistan was bad, but at least they leave you alone there.”
I shook my head. “It’s the first time they’ve done this. I’ve no idea. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
She looked doubtful. “Maybe. And what’s this fiancée business all about?”
I gave her a weak grin. “Rachel, I was trying to defuse the situation. These people have a certain respect for couples, so it made a difference that he thought you were my fiancée. That gave me the right to explain things on your behalf. I just want to load up and get out of here.”
“I copy that, it’s a god-awful place.”
“It’s actually a wonderful place, so my grandmother told me. It’s just these people who made it into a living hell.”
She nodded. I was about to speak again when there was a sudden commotion. One of the soldiers had ripped the lid from a huge wooden crate to inspect the contents when a man jumped out of the box. The soldier froze in surprise, and the man took the opportunity to sprint away. The sergeant looked around and barked orders; his troopers ratcheted rounds into their rifles and lifted them to take aim. The man was running towards us. I started to shout at the troopers to hold their fire, but two shots cracked out in quick succession. A bullet whistled between us, and I dragged Rachel to the ground as the man rushed past us. More shots cracked out, and there was a cry of agony. I looked around and saw the runner was down. The Vietnamese soldiers ran across to him and looked down. I could see he was badly wounded, squirming in agony. To my horror, the sergeant took out his pistol, a Soviet Makarov automatic. He pointed it at the wounded man’s head and pulled the trigger. The explosion sounded loud. The airfield was in that second in the middle of a lull, nothing landed or took off. There was only the loud report from the pistol, the meaty ‘smack’ as the bullet hit him in the back of the head, and then he was still. We climbed to our feet, and I heard Rachel muttering some obscene insult to the sergeant, but she wisely kept well away from him, and he didn’t hear it. He barked an order, and two of his men dragged the body away. The customs officer stared at us and pointed at the pool of blood on the ground where the man had fallen.
“American.” He smiled. I shook my head. The victim wasn’t American, of course, but his meaning was clear. He grinned at us.
“Now you in Afghanistan. Like Vietnam. More Americans. All dead.” His smile became a belly laugh, and he almost choked. I found myself willing him to keel over, gasping for breath, but he recovered. I could hear Rachel murmuring, “Motherfucker.” We both turned to look as a truck drove around the corner and approached our aircraft. A man climbed out, and he was unmistakably American, and unmistakably Ivy League. He walked over to me and held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Ed Walker. This is my cargo you’re taking to Peshawar.”
I took his hand. “Max Jurgen. I’m the pilot and owner of Helene Air.”
He stared at me, and I stared back at him. He was tall. I was six feet, and he loomed over me, maybe three inches taller. Good looking too, ramrod erect, confident, as he would have been taught since prep school. Blonde hair and blue eyes, I could imagine the girls falling over themselves to catch his eye. I was dark haired and Mediterranean, Rachel told me I was a good-looking six-footer that women would find attractive, but I almost felt like a peasant against his patrician features. Almost. Unlike him, I wasn’t a slime ball.
He could have been an American corporate executive. The kind that worked on Wall Street, and the kind that almost singlehandedly destroyed the American economy. Masters of the Universe, I believe they were called; pale, WASP face, button down Ralph Lauren, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and polished leather Oxford brogues. This guy would have taken me for a bellhop if he’d seen me on the street. CIA, he had to be. They were still very much in evidence all over South East Asia, especially Afghanistan, but even here in Vietnam.
“What’s the cargo we’ll be carrying, Mr. Walker?”
“Cargo? Oh,
this and that, nothing special. One moment, there’s something I need to finalize.”
He strode over to the sergeant and spoke quietly to him in Vietnamese. I spoke some of the language, enough to get by, and enough to know that Ed Walker was fluent, and as one would expect of a CIA officer working in this neck of the woods. I watched the American hand the sergeant an envelope. There was an exchange of smiles, a warm handshake, and then the soldiers left. Walker came back to Rachel and me.
“Those guys won’t be back. They were looking for defectors.”
Rachel stared at him. “If I lived in this lousy place, I’d sure defect as fast as my legs would carry me.”
He nodded. “I hear you, and I couldn't agree more. It’s no pleasure park. Tell me, how soon can we leave? I have a connection to make, and I don’t want to be late.”
“Where are you headed?” I asked him.
He pulled a face. “After Peshawar? Afghanistan.”
“Right. You wouldn’t want to be late arriving in that Asian paradise,” I said deadpanned.
He chuckled. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Duty calls, so that’s where I have to go.”
“What line of business are you in, Mr. Walker?”
He glanced at me briefly. “Nothing special, this and that.”
I gave him a smile.
He went away to check the cargo, barking orders at the cargo handlers who had returned as soon as the soldiers disappeared. I showed him to the row of jump seats in the cabin, just behind the cockpit bulkhead, and made sure he knew to buckle in before take-off. Then I forgot about him. When I sat down in the left hand seat, Rachel started the engines, and I called the tower for clearance. I got the same wise guy as before.
“You clear to take-off, Helene Air. No rain, you safe.”
Before his microphone clicked off, I could hear him laughing. I was tempted to suggest a course in etiquette and manners for the bastard, but I left it at that. Maybe one day he’d be flying through a tropical rainstorm and be so scared he’d shit his pants. I hoped so. Rachel took control of the aircraft, and we took off, starting the long haul back to Peshawar, in Pakistan. Close to the border with Afghanistan, it had become a vital hub for drugs and arms trading. Even the Taliban had an office there, or so it was rumored. When I went aft to check the cargo, Ed Walker was in the middle of a call on what had to be a satellite phone. He was crouched near a window to get a signal, but when he saw me coming, he said a couple of words and hung up. I nodded a greeting.