Up Country

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The taxi from the hotel dropped Susan off at the train station first, then me at the bus terminal.

I went into the terminal, then back outside and took a taxi to the Thong Nhat Hotel on the beach. I left my luggage with the bell captain, and went to the terrace and got a table. Within five minutes, Susan joined me.

We had some hours to kill before we needed to be at Slicky Boy Tours, and this was as good a place as any and wouldn’t attract attention. The clientele was all Western, and no one from the Ministry of Public Security was dining there.

Susan and I had lunch.

I asked her, “Why are you taking this trip with me?”

“I don’t want to go back to Saigon.”

“Why not?”

“I’d rather be with you.”

“Why?”

“Well… you might think it’s because I’m supposed to keep an eye on you, or you might think it’s because I’m bored and I want some excitement, or you might think it’s because I’m crazy about you.”

“I had all three thoughts.”

She smiled and said, “Pick the ones that suit you best. But no more than two.”

I thought about that and said, “The ones that suit me best are the first two because if something happened to you because of the last one, I’d never forgive myself.”

She lit a cigarette and stared out at the fishing boats coming out of the river into the sea. She said, “I don’t want you to feel responsible for my safety. I can take care of myself.”

“Okay. But even in the infantry, we had the buddy system. Two guys who looked out for each other.”

“Did you ever lose a buddy?”

“Two of them.”

She didn’t reply for a long time, then asked, “Did you ever save a buddy’s life?”

“A few times.”

“Anyone ever save your life?”

“A few times.”

She said, “So, we’ll look out for each other, and we’ll do the best we can.”

I didn’t reply.

She said, “But if you’re going into the interior after you leave Hue, a male Caucasian traveling alone attracts attention.”

“I understand that. And I will be traveling alone.”

She continued, “As I said in the Q-Bar, you should try to pass yourself off as a naturalist, or an amateur biologist. If you were being watched here in Nha Trang, you’ve already shown some interest in biology at the Oceanographic Institute.”

I looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

“And you’ll really need an interpreter. It’s very difficult without an interpreter once you get away from the coast.”

I said, “I didn’t have an interpreter the last two times I was here. I’m good at making myself understood.”

“I’m sure you were when you had a rifle.”

“Point made. I’ll get an interpreter. They may have someone for me in Hue.”

She didn’t reply for a while, then said, “They haven’t given you much backup so far.”

“That’s because they have complete trust and confidence in me. I’m very resourceful.”

“I see that. But you can’t be sleeping with bilingual women all the way up country.”

I smiled and said, “You’re not coming with me past Hue.”

At 5:30, I left the hotel terrace and walked to Slicky Boy Tours on Van Hoa Street, a few blocks away. Susan stayed to settle the bill and was to follow within ten minutes.

Slicky Boy was still wearing his wraparound shades, and a phony smile. His front teeth were rimmed in gold, and he had a diamond stud in his ear. The only thing missing was a T-shirt that said Con Artist.

Susan had informed me that his real name was Mr. Thuc, and I greeted him by this name. He spoke a little English and asked me, “Where you lady?”

I replied, “Not my lady. Maybe she come. Maybe not.”

He said, “Same price.”

“Where’s my car?”

“Come. I show you.”

We went outside. Parked in his little mini-bus lot was a dark blue Nissan rice burner with four-wheel drive and four doors. I didn’t recognize the model, but Mr. Thuc assured me, “Good car.”

I examined good car and saw that it had no seat belts, but the tires looked okay, and there was a spare.

It was almost six hundred kilometers to Hue, according to Susan. This should take less than six hours on a decent road, but if the estimated drive time was seven or eight hours on Highway One, then Highway One was in much worse shape then I remembered it in 1968, when the Army Corps of Engineers was in charge of the roadwork.

There were no keys in the ignition, so I asked Slicky for the keys, and he gave them to me reluctantly. I sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine, which sounded all right, but there was only a quarter tank of fuel. That may not mean anything, but might mean that Slicky Boy had a shorter trip planned for us.

I popped the hood, got out, and checked the engine, which was a small four-cylinder, but seemed okay. I asked Slicky, “Where’s the driver?”

“He come.”

I shut off the engine and kept the keys. I looked at my watch and saw that fifteen minutes had already passed since I left Susan. Just as I was starting to worry about her, she showed up in a cyclo. She was wearing her backpack and carrying her new tote.

She exchanged greetings with Slicky Boy, and shook my hand as if we were recent acquaintances who had arranged to share a ride. This had been my idea, and even I was impressed by my tradecraft. James Bond would be proud of me.

Susan asked, “Is that our car?”

“That’s it.” I took her aside and said, “Quarter tank of gas. And check the radio antenna.”

She glanced at the antenna, where an orange plastic strip had been tied. “Sort of makes it stand out from all the other dark blue Nissan four-wheels.”

She looked into the rear compartment and said to me, “No gas cans, which are standard for a long drive, and no ice chest, which is a common courtesy in ’Nam.”

Slicky Boy was looking our way, but with the wraparound shades, I couldn’t tell if he was getting as suspicious of us as we were of him. This was not Hertz.

The driver showed up, on foot, a guy of about forty. He wore black cotton pants and a white short-sleeve shirt, like half the men in this country. He also wore sandals and needed a pedicure. He was a little hefty for a Viet, and seemed to me a bit nervous.

Mr. Thuc introduced us to Mr. Cam, and we all shook hands. Mr. Thuc said to us, “Mr. Cam speak no English, and I tell him lady speak good Vietnamese.” Mr. Thuc checked his watch and said, “Okay? You pay now.”

I counted out a hundred and fifty dollars and said to Slicky Boy, “Half now, half to Mr. Cam when we arrive in Hue.” I put the money in his shirt pocket.

“No, no. All now.”

“Am I in Hue? Is this Hue?” I opened the rear hatch of the Nissan and threw my bags inside. Susan put her backpack in, and I closed the hatch.

Slicky Boy was pissed, but he calmed himself down. He said, conversationally, “So, where Mr. Cam take you in Hue?”

I replied, “I think we told you. Hue”Phu Bai Airport.”

“Yes? Where you go?”

“Hanoi.”

“Ah.” He looked around, the way people do in a police state, and informed me, “Too many Communists in Hanoi.”

“Too many capitalists here.”

“Yes?” He said to Susan and me, “Need you passport and visa. I make copies.”

Well, we really didn’t want Slicky Boy to know our names, so I said to him, “No.”

Slicky started complaining about us not showing identification, and not paying in full, and not trusting him.

I said to him, “You want to make three hundred bucks, or do you want to be an asshole?”

“Please?”

Susan translated, and I wondered what the word was for asshole. She said to me, “Calm down.”

I said to Susan, “Let’s go. We’ll find another car and driver.” I plucked the cash out of Slicky’s pocket and opened the rear hatch.

He looked shocked, and his mouth dropped open. He said, “Okay. Okay. No passport. No visa.”

I put the money back in his pocket.

He said something to the driver, and they went inside the office.

Susan and I made eye contact. She said, “Mr. Cam is not dressed for a night drive up north.”

“The car has a heater.”

“They rarely use the heater because they think it wastes gas. Same with headlights, if you can believe that. Also, if the car breaks down, they’d freeze to death.”

“How cold is it up north?”

“Probably in the fifties at night. That’s very cold for someone from Nha Trang.”

I nodded and said, “We must look stupid.”

“Speak for yourself. Also, Mr. Cam may speak some English. So watch what you say.”

“I know that.”

She looked at me and said, “Are you sure you don’t want to take the mini-bus tomorrow?”

I replied, “I can handle Mr. Cam.”

“Can you handle getting robbed on the road?”

“I’m driving.”

“Paul, you aren’t allowed to drive.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

She informed me, “Sometimes they’re in cahoots with the police. They’ll pull over the chauffeured car and fine the Westerners in the car big bucks. If you’re driving, you’ll get arrested.”

“If they catch me.”

She looked at me and said, “I guess the R&R is over.”

“You bet.”

She forced a smile and said, “So we outrun the police or speed through the ambush.”

“Right. Mr. Cam wouldn’t be so accommodating.” I asked, “Is there an alternate route?”

“No. At night, it’s Highway One, or stay home. The other roads aren’t drivable at night, unless you want to go about ten miles an hour.”

“Okay. This is a challenge. I like challenges.”

She didn’t reply.

I realized that Susan might not share my enthusiasm for irrational behavior. I said, “Look, I’m the one who needs to make a rendezvous. I’ll go, and you follow with the Frenchmen tomorrow.”

“Oh, so I have to ride with a busload of Frenchmen, and all you have to do is stay awake eight hours and watch out for highway robbers. I thought you were a gentleman.”

“Be serious.”

“Look, Paul, chances are nothing is going to happen. And if it does, the nice thing about this country is that they don’t kill you. And the women aren’t raped. It’s only about money. You just hand over everything you own, and they’re gone.” She added, “We can hitchhike the rest of the way in the morning.”

“I’m not getting a good image of us standing in our underwear on Highway One, trying to flag down an ox cart.”

She handed me her tote bag, which was heavy.

I said, “What do you have in here?”

She replied, “Some American companies keep a little protection locked in the safe.”

I didn’t say anything.

She continued, “In the Binh Tay Market in Cholan, you can buy pieces of American military hardware under the counter. You put the pieces together, and voilà, you have something. In this case, a Colt .45 automatic, American military issue. You’re familiar with this weapon.”

I looked at her and reminded her, “You said this was a capital offense.”

“Only if you get caught.”

“Susan… where did you hide this?”

She replied, “In the hot water tank. There’s always an access panel.”

My mind was reeling, and I started to say something, but Mr. Thuc and Mr. Cam had come out of the office.

I looked at them and had the impression that they’d gone over the final details of their plan, as Susan and I had gone over the details of our plan to screw up their plan.

Mr. Thuc was smiling again, and he said, “Mr. Cam ready. You ready. Have good journey to Hue.” He added, “Chuc Mung Nam Moi,” then reminded us, “Pay Mr. Cam when you get to Hue.”

Not wanting to seem as jumpy as Mr. Cam, we shook hands with Slicky Boy and wished him a Happy New Year. Mr. Thuc and Mr. Cam each opened a rear door for us, and we both got in the back.

We pulled out of the lot and halfway down Van Hoa Street, Susan said something to Mr. Cam. He replied, and she got a little sharp with him. I put my hand on his shoulder and said in English, “Do what lady say.”

He realized we weren’t going to be that easy. Within a few minutes, he pulled into a gas station.

He filled the tank, and I stood near him. Susan went into the service station office, and came out a few minutes later with a guy who was carrying two ten-liter cans of gasoline. Susan had a plastic bag that contained two liters of bottled water, a lot of cellophane bags filled with snacks, and a road map.

I made Mr. Cam pay for the gas, and as he did, I took my Nha Trang map and guidebook out of my overnight bag. We all got in the car, me in the front this time, and off we went.

We headed north, and on the map I could see we were going in the right direction, toward the Xam Bong Bridge.

The long bridge passed over a few small islands where the Nha Trang River widened and emptied into the South China Sea. The sea had turned from blue to gold as the sun began to set above the hills to our west. It would be dark within half an hour.

We continued north on a fairly decent road that cut through the high hills north of Nha Trang.

I recognized this road and looked to my right. I said to Susan, “That’s where the giant fairy fell down drunk and put his handprint in the rock.”

“Glad you were paying attention. And up there, on the next mountain, is where his lover turned to stone.” Susan said, “This is sad. Leaving Nha Trang. I had the best week I’ve had since I’ve been here.”

I looked back at her, and we made eye contact. I said, “Thanks for a great R&R.”

Within fifteen minutes, the road intersected Highway One, which ran straight to Hue, about six hundred kilometers due north.

The so-called highway had one lane in each direction, but widened now and then to three lanes for passing. Motor traffic was moderate, but there were still a lot of ox carts and bicycles on the road. Mr. Cam’s driving would not get him a Highway Safety Award, but he was no worse than anyone else on the road.

Highway One ran along the coast, and up ahead I could see another mountainous promontory jutting into the sea. To our left, rice paddies and villages stretched along the highway, and beyond them were more mountains which now blocked the sun. It was getting to that time of day that in the military we called EENT, the end of evening nautical twilight, with enough light left to dig in for the night.

This was going to be the first time since 1972 that I was in the Vietnamese countryside after dark, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. The night belonged to Charlie, and to Charlie’s son, Mr. Cam.

But unbeknownst to Mr. Cam, Susan Weber had an old, but I hoped, well-oiled Colt .45 ready to point at his head.

In fact, as the sun set, I was less angry at her for bringing the gun, and I hoped it was assembled and loaded. I could assemble and disassemble a Colt .45 literally blindfolded, and do it in under fifteen seconds, including slapping in the magazine, chambering a round, and taking it off safety. But I didn’t want to try to break my record.

It was dark now, and the traffic had all but disappeared, except for a few trucks wasting gasoline with their lights on. We passed through a small town, which my map said was called Ninh Hoa. A mountainous headland blocked the view of the sea to the right, and up ahead was a stretch of desolate road. I could see a few peasants’ huts with lights in the windows, and water buffalo being led in from the fields. It was dinner time, and perhaps ambush time.

I said to Mr. Cam in English, “I need to pee. Biet? Take a leak. Make nuoc.”

He looked at me. “Nuoc?”

Susan translated, and Mr. Cam pulled over to the side of the road.

I reached over, shut off the ignition, and took the keys. I got out of the car and closed my door.

I came around to the driver’s side and took the orange streamer off the antenna. I opened the driver’s door, gave Mr. Cam a little push, and said, “Move.”

He was not happy, but he slid across the seat. I’m sure he had thoughts about making a break, but before he considered this option, I was behind the wheel, and the car was moving. I shifted through the gears and cruised along Highway One at about a hundred kilometers an hour. The Nissan drove well, but with two Caucasians and one Viet, and a full tank, it was a bit underpowered.

I didn’t really want Mr. Cam along, but neither did I want him going to a police station. So, I kidnapped him. I said to Susan, “Tell him he looked tired, and I’ll drive. He can go to sleep.”

She translated.

Mr. Cam looked anything but tired. He looked agitated. He said something, which Susan translated as, “He says you will be in big trouble if the police see you driving.”

“So will he. Tell him.” She told him.

I got the Nissan up to 120 KPH, and without traffic, it wasn’t too bad. But now and then we hit a pothole, and I almost lost control. The springs and shocks weren’t the greatest, and I was relying on the spare if I had a blowout. I certainly wasn’t relying on my membership in the AAA.

About ten minutes later, I noticed in my rearview mirror the headlights of a car, and as it got closer, I saw that it was a small open jeep. I said, “We have company.”

Susan looked out the back window and said, “It could be a police jeep. I think there’re two people in it.”

I floored the Nissan.

The road was straight and flat as it passed through the rice paddies, and I eased the Nissan to the center of the road where I hoped the blacktop was better. The vehicle behind me was keeping up, but not gaining.

Mr. Cam was looking in his sideview mirror, but said nothing.

I asked Susan, “Do the police have radios?”

She said, “Sometimes.”

Mr. Cam said something to Susan, and she said to me, “Mr. Cam believes there’s a police car behind us, and he suggests we pull over.”

I replied, “If it was a police car, he’d have his lights and siren on.”

She said to me, “They don’t have lights and sirens here.”

“I know. Just being funny.”

“This isn’t funny. Can we outrun them?”

“I’m trying.”

I was maxed out at 160 KPH, and I knew if I hit a major pothole at this speed, I’d have a blowout, or I’d lose control, or both. The police knew the same would happen to them, but they seemed uncommonly dedicated to the chase, and I figured they had more in mind than a two-dollar ticket. In fact, if Mr. Thuc had set us up, the cops had also figured out by now that Mr. Cam wasn’t driving.

The Nissan held the speed, but this was a total crap shoot regarding who was going to hit the first big pothole.

There was a big truck in front of me, and I came up behind it like it was standing still. I swung onto the oncoming lane and saw another truck coming head-on. I passed the truck, then at about two seconds before I would have collided with the oncoming one I swung back into the right lane. A minute later, I saw the headlights of the jeep behind me, and he’d lost some ground.

Mr. Cam was getting increasingly agitated, and he kept trying to reason with Susan, who kept telling him, “Im lang,” which I recalled meant be quiet or shut up.

The vehicle behind us was about a hundred meters away, and maybe a little closer than last time I looked. I asked Susan, “Do the cops carry rifles or just pistols?”

“Both.”

“Do they shoot at speeding cars?”

“Why don’t we assume that they do?”

“Let’s assume they want to rob the stagecoach, and they don’t want everything incinerated in a ball of fire.”

“Sounds right.”

I said to Susan, “Get ready to toss that thing in your tote. We don’t want to face a firing squad.”

She said, “I’ve got it in my hand. Tell me when.”

“How about now? Before I flip this car, and they find it on us.”

She didn’t reply.

“Susan?”

“Let’s wait.”

“Okay, we’ll wait.”

I tried to remember the map, and if I recalled correctly, there was another small town a few minutes ahead. If there was another cop in the area, that’s where he’d be.

Mr. Cam was quiet, the way people are when they have accepted their fate. In fact, I thought I saw his lips moving in prayer. I didn’t expect him to do anything stupid at this speed, like grab the wheel or try to jump out, but I said to Susan, “Tell Mr. Cam that I’ll stop at the next town and let him out.”

She told him, and he seemed to buy this. Why, I don’t know, but he bought it.

Meanwhile, I was hitting potholes, and we were all bouncing wildly.

Up ahead was a small car, stopped right in the middle of the road. I could see a woman in my headlights waving for assistance. This, I figured, was the ambush where we’d be relieved of what the cops hadn’t gotten in fines. But the law hadn’t caught me yet, and Mr. Cam was not behind the wheel. He said, however, in rehearsed English, “I stop. Car need help. I stop.”

“You’re not driving. I no stop.”

I swung into the oncoming lane where I could better judge the distance to the drainage ditch on my left, and shot past the lady in distress and her car.

I tried to divide my attention between the road outside my windshield, and the headlights behind me. I saw the lights swing around the stopped car in the road, and the jeep almost veered off into the ditch, but then it got back on the road.

Susan was watching out the back window.

I said to her, “Sorry about this.”

“Don’t worry about it. Drive.”

“Right. That guy’s not a bad driver.”

She asked me, “Do you know how to blind a Vietnamese driver?”

“No. How?”

“Put a windshield in front of his face.”

I smiled.

What wasn’t so funny is what happened next. I heard what sounded like a muffled backfire, and it took me about half a second to recognize the hollow popping sound of an AK-47. My blood froze for a moment. I took a deep breath and said, “Did you hear that?”

She replied, “I saw the muzzle flash.”

I had my foot all the way down to the floor, plus some, but the Nissan was maxed. I said, “Okay, ditch the gun. We’re going to stop.”

“No! Keep going. It’s too late to stop now.”

I kept going and again I heard a gunshot. But was he firing at us? Or just trying to get our attention? In any case, if his four-wheel drive was bouncing as badly as mine, the guy with the rifle couldn’t get a good shot at this distance, which was about two hundred meters now. I swung the Nissan into the oncoming lane so that the shooter would have to stand and fire over his windshield, but the police jeep also swung into the oncoming lane behind us. So, I swung back into the right lane.

I heard another shot, but this time, his bullet was a tracer round, and I saw the green streak off to my right and high. My God. I hadn’t seen a green tracer round since 1972, and it made my heart stop for a second. We used red, they used green, and I started seeing these green and red streaks in front of my eyes.

I brought myself back from that nightmare to this one.

Mr. Cam was sobbing now, which was fine, except he started beating his fists on the dashboard. Next it would be my head. I recognized the little signs of hysteria. I let go of the wheel with my right hand, and gave him a backhand slap across the face. This seemed to work, and he put his face in his hands and wept.

I had this crazy idea that all of this had been a misunderstanding and a coincidence — the police car just wanted to check our registration, the car in the middle of the road really was broken down, and Mr. Cam was pure of heart. Boy, wouldn’t he have a story to tell around the Tet dinner table?

We’d whizzed through a few small villages that straddled Highway One, and I saw within the villages people on bicycles and kids on the road. This was dangerous, and so were the potholes and the guys shooting at us. It all came down to luck — one of us was going to make a fatal mistake.

I threw my map and guidebook back to Susan and said, “Can you tell how far the next town is?”

She used her lighter to see the page and said, “I see a place called Van Gia. Is that the one?”

“Yeah. That’s it. How far?”

“I don’t know. Where are we now?”

“We’re about thirty kilometers from Ninh Hoa.”

“Well… then Van Gia is right here.”

And sure enough, I could see the lights of a town ahead.

Susan said, “You can’t go through that town at this speed, Paul. There will be trucks, cars, and people on the road.”

“I know.” I needed to do something fast.

A truck was right in front of us now, and his brake lights were going on and off as he slowed down for the town. I swung out into the oncoming lane, passed him, and got back into my lane. I slammed on my brakes and discovered they were not antilock. The Nissan fishtailed, and I fought to keep it under control. The truck was right on my tail now, and I killed my lights. I kept about five meters in front of the truck, hidden from the police car.

I had no idea how close the police car was, but he should be alongside me in a few seconds. I waited and saw his headlights on the road to my left, then the yellow jeep was right beside me. In a split second, the guy in the passenger seat with the AK-47 saw me, and our eyes met. He looked surprised, then aimed his rifle as I accelerated and sideswiped the jeep. I didn’t have to hit him hard because the driver, who was looking for me up ahead, wasn’t expecting it, and the yellow jeep went off the road and skidded on the soft shoulder. In my sideview mirror, I saw the jeep hit the drainage ditch and flip over. I heard a muffled crash and saw flames, then an explosion.

I had the accelerator to the floor, and I was still in the oncoming lane. I pulled back into my lane and saw in my mirror that the truck had come to a stop on the road. I put my headlights back on.

I pumped the brakes and got the speed down to sixty KPH as we entered the town of Van Gia.

It was very quiet in the car, and I could hear my breathing. Mr. Cam was actually on the floor, curled into a fetal position. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw Susan staring straight ahead.

I was doing about forty KPH now down the main street, which was Highway One.

There weren’t any streetlights, but most of the one-story stucco buildings were lit, and this illuminated the road. I saw a karaoke parlor to my left, and dozens of kids were hanging out in front of it. Bicycles and motor scooters were parked everywhere, and people were crossing the street. I said to Susan, “You should get down.”

Susan slumped down in the rear.

Up ahead on the right, a yellow police jeep was parked in front of the police station, and a few men in uniform were outside. If the cops back there had radioed ahead, then this was the end of the road, and we’d be lucky if we got a firing squad.

I literally held my breath as I approached the police station. There was not a single car moving on the road because at night there weren’t many places you’d want to go, and the town was small enough to walk or bicycle. So, the dark blue Nissan stood out. I slumped down in the seat to try to look like I was five feet tall, and I put my right hand over my face as though I was scratching lice or something. Mr. Cam made a movement, and I took my hand away from my face, grabbed his hair, and pushed him down. “Im lang!” I said, even though he wasn’t talking, but I couldn’t remember how to say, “Don’t move!”

We were abreast of the police station now, and I was trying to keep my head turned to the side, and my eyeballs on the cops, while holding Mr. Cam by his hair. I know you’re not supposed to touch a Vietnamese’s head, but he was in the fetal position, and I couldn’t get my hand on his balls.

The policemen glanced at the dark blue Nissan, and I realized I was about to pull Mr. Cam’s hair out. I slid my hand down to his neck and held it.

We were past the police station now, and I looked in the right sideview mirror. The cops were looking at the car, but I could tell they weren’t looking for me. Still, the car held their interest. I kept moving in first gear up the main street.

A kid on a bicycle passed right in front of me, and we made eye contact. He yelled out, “Lien Xo! Lien Xo!” which I recently learned meant Soviet, or sometimes foreigner, meaning me.

It was time to go. I accelerated and soon we had passed through the town of Van Gia and were back on the dark highway.

I shifted through the gears and in a few minutes we were sailing along at a hundred KPH. I kept looking in the rearview mirror to see if the kid tipped off the cops to the Lien Xo, but I saw no headlights.

I breathed for the first time in about ten minutes. I said to Susan, “How about some nuoc?”

She already had the bottle open and passed it to me. I took a long swig and offered the bottle to Mr. Cam on the floor by tapping it on his head. I figured he was dehydrated by now, but he didn’t want any water, so I passed the bottle back to Susan, who took a long drink.

She drew a deep breath and said, “I’m still shaking, and I have to take a pee.”

I pulled off to the side of the road, and all three of us took a well-deserved pee. Mr. Cam tried to make a break for it, but it was a halfhearted attempt, and I pushed him back in the car.

I checked the tires, then I examined the car for bullet holes, but I couldn’t find any. They either weren’t shooting at us, or their aim was off because of the bouncing. It really didn’t matter.

I looked at the driver’s side and saw that it was scraped, and the left front fender was bent, but basically I just kissed the jeep, which is all it took.

Back in the car, I accelerated to a hundred and maintained that speed. I said to Susan, “I really am sorry about that.”

“Nothing to apologize for. We were running from bandits. You did a great job.” She asked, “Do you drive like that at home?”

“I actually took an FBI course in offensive driving. I passed the course.”

She didn’t reply, but she did light a cigarette. She offered one to Mr. Cam, who was sitting in his seat now, and he took it. She lit it for him, and between her shaking hand and his trembling lips, I’m surprised it got lit.

The sea was on our right again, and the last sliver of the moon reflected just enough light off the water to make it not totally black. I passed a truck heading north, but there were no vehicles heading south. This was a totally desolate road at night, which was good for making time, but not good for much else. Now and then I could see a pothole, and I swerved to avoid it. Sometimes I didn’t see the pothole and hit it, putting the Nissan into a jarring bounce.

Susan asked, “Do you think anyone is looking for us?”

“The only people looking for us are dead.”

She didn’t reply.

I said to her, “Mr. Thuc, however, may be looking for Mr. Cam by now.”

She thought about that and said, “Mr. Thuc will have heard from his lady-in-distress by now that we were running from the cops, so he’s thinking we’re either dead or continuing on to Hue.”

“Why won’t he call the cops?”

“Because the cops would want about a thousand dollars just to look for the car, and thousands more if they found it.” She added, “Mr. Thuc is just hoping for the best by now. He’ll worry about it tomorrow if he hasn’t heard from Mr. Cam. When you think of cops here, don’t think of helpful boys in blue who call you sir when you ask for help. They’re the biggest thieves in the country.”

“I understand.”

Susan spoke with Mr. Cam, who seemed a little better after his cigarette. Susan said to me, “He denies that we were being set up to be robbed. He says we are very untrusting. He wants to get out.”

“Tell him he has to drive the car back from Hue”Phu Bai Airport, or Mr. Thuc will kill him.”

Susan told him, and I recognized the word giet, which means murder or kill. Funny how I remembered some unpleasant words. I said to Susan, “Tell him he’ll be home with his family tomorrow, if he behaves.”

She told him, he said something, and Susan said to me, “I doubt very much if he’ll go to the police. There’s nothing in that for him but trouble.”

“Good. Because I really don’t want to have to kill him.”

She didn’t reply for a long time, then asked me, “Are you serious?”

“Very.”

She sat back in her seat and lit another cigarette. “I see why they sent you.”

“They didn’t send me. I volunteered.”

Mr. Cam seemed to be trying to follow the conversation, probably wondering if we were talking about killing him. To cool him down, I patted his shoulder and said, “Xin loi,” which sort of means “Sorry about that.”

Susan asked me, “Is your Vietnamese coming back?”

“I think so. Xin loi. When we wasted somebody, we’d say, ‘Xin loi, Charlie.’ Like, sorry about that, Charlie. Get it?”

She stayed quiet for a while, wondering, I’m sure, if she was with a psychopath. I wondered about that, too. I said to her, “My adrenaline is pumped. I’ll be all right.”

Again, she said nothing. I think she was a little frightened of me, and to be honest, so was I.

I said to Susan, “You wanted to come along.”

“I know. I’m not saying anything.”

I put my hand over my shoulder, and she took it and squeezed.

I went back to my driving. The flatland narrowed here to a strip between the mountains on our left, and the sea on our right. Traffic had totally disappeared, and I was making a steady hundred KPH.

Susan asked, “Do you want me to drive?”

“No.”

She began massaging my neck and shoulders. “How you doing?”

“Fine. There’s a place a few hundred klicks up ahead called Bong Son where I served for a few months. Look for the Chamber of Commerce sign.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the map. Why don’t you tell me how you got your R&R in Nha Trang.”

“Tell you what. We’ll go to the A Shau Valley outside Hue, and I’ll tell it to you where it happened.”

“All right.” She massaged my temples and said, “I told you at the Rex that it’s good to talk about these things.”

“Tell me that after you hear this story.”

She stayed silent awhile, then said, “Maybe when you leave here this time, you’ll leave the war here, too.”

I didn’t reply, then said, “I think that’s why I’m here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

We continued north, up Highway One, through Vung Ro, a beach resort with a few guesthouses and a small hotel with an outdoor café. If Mr. Cam hadn’t been along, we’d have stopped for a coffee or a drink, which I needed.

After Vung Ro, the road swung away from the coast and became desolate again, a dark expanse of rice paddies and dikes, and an occasional peasant’s hut.

Mr. Cam was sitting silently. He’d realized, I guess, that if we were going to kill him, we’d have done so already. This realization makes some captives relax and go along peacefully; others get the idea that it might be safe to make a break.

I kept glancing in my rearview mirror, looking for headlights. Headlights meant trouble. I said to Susan, “There is not one single vehicle on the main national highway.”

“People really don’t travel in the countryside at night, except for the occasional bus. During the day, Highway One is so crowded, you barely make thirty miles an hour.” She added, “I’m told that the police stop patrolling the highways about an hour after dark.”

“That’s a break.”

“Not really. The army patrols the highways until dawn. The cops stay in the towns.” She added, “The army patrols will stop anyone on the highway.”

“What’s the next major town?”

She looked at the map and said, “A place called Qui Nhon. But Highway One passes to the west of it, so we don’t have to go through the town.”

I said, “That was a big American hospital town.”

“You remember it?”

“Yes. Qui Nhon got the cases that the hospital ships didn’t get. We also did a lot of Vietnamese military and civilian cases there. Plus, there was a big leper hospital outside town.”

“Oh… I’ve heard of that place. There’s still a leper hospital there.”

“We had a combat medic who got so burned out in the field, he volunteered to work in the leper hospital. We made a joke of it. You know? Whenever things got really bad, we’d all volunteer for the leper hospital at Qui Nhon.” Susan didn’t laugh. I said, “I guess you had to be there.” I asked her, “How far?”

“I think just up ahead a few kilometers.”

“Can you read a map, or are you faking it?”

“That’s a sexist remark.”

“Xin loi.”

She gave me a punch in the shoulder, which surprised Mr. Cam. I said, “Mr. Cam’s wife never punches him. I’m going to marry a Vietnamese woman.”

“They’re so docile, you’d be bored out of your mind.”

“Sounds good.”

She said, “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

I said to her, “I’m a little concerned about the truck driver.”

She thought about that, then said, “Well… the truck driver didn’t know we were foreigners. He assumed we were Vietnamese, who were being chased by the cops. He didn’t see a thing.”

“Good point.”

We passed the Qui Nhon road that intersected Highway One, and there were a scattering of buildings at the intersection, including a gas station, but it was closed. I asked Susan, “Do you think any gas stations are open?”

“Why would they be?”

“Right. I don’t think we’re going to make it to Hue on one tank of gas, even with the spare gas cans.”

“Turn off your headlights. Saves gas. Ask Mr. Cam.”

I looked at the gas gauge and did a little arithmetic in my head. I figured we could go another two hundred to two hundred and fifty kilometers, depending obviously on the size of the tank and our gas mileage. The extra ten liters in the cans would add maybe another fifty or sixty Ks to our range. I said to Susan, “Ask Mr. Cam where he would get gasoline at night.”

She asked him, he replied, and she said to me, “He doesn’t know. He’s never driven this far north, and rarely drives at night.”

I laughed. “Well, where was he going to refuel?”

Susan replied, “Obviously, he had no intention of driving us to Hue.”

“I know that. Tell him that.”

She told him, and Mr. Cam looked a little sheepish.

Susan said, “I remember some late night gas stations in Da Nang.”

“How far is Da Nang?”

She looked down at her map and said, “About three hundred kilometers.”

I looked at my fuel gauge again and said, “I hope it’s downhill, or we’re not going to make it. Maybe we should get chubby here out of the car.”

“We need him to pump gas. Paul? What were we thinking?”

“I thought we’d have a bigger gas tank or get better mileage. If worse comes to worse, we’ll pull over, wait until light, and get to an open gas station.”

I looked up ahead, and on the flat horizon, I could see the glow of lights. I asked Susan, “Is that Bong Son?”

“It should be.”

I began decelerating and looked around at the sparse landscape, which seemed familiar. I said, more to myself than to Susan, “This is where I saw the elephant.”

“What elephant?”

I didn’t reply for a few seconds, then I said, “It’s an expression. Men who have seen combat for the first time say, ‘I have seen the elephant.’ ” I looked at the road and the terrain on either side where I’d had my first firefight, on an early morning in November 1967, the day after Thanksgiving.

Susan asked, “What’s it mean?”

“Don’t know. But I know it’s old — not ’Nam related. Maybe it goes back to Roman times when Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants.” I repeated, “I have seen the elephant.”

Susan remarked, “It sounds almost mystical.”

I nodded. “There is no one on this earth more mystical, superstitious, and ultimately religious than a combat soldier. I’ve seen men kiss their crucifix and make the sign of the cross before battle… then they’d put an AK-47 round in their helmet band, which represented the enemy bullet that had been meant for them. And they’d stick an ace of spades in their helmet because the Vietnamese regarded it as a symbol of death. And there were all sorts of other talismans, and rituals that men would go through before battle… bottom line, you pray.”

Susan stayed quiet awhile, then said, “And this is where you saw the elephant?”

“This is where I saw the elephant.”

She thought awhile, then said, “When we were being shot at back there… I think I caught a glimpse of the elephant.”

“Did you go ice cold with fear and feel your mouth go dry and your heart trying to burst through your chest?”

“I did.”

“Then you caught a glimpse of the elephant.”

Up ahead, I could see a bridge that I recalled, and which passed over the An Lao River, on the other side of which was the town of Bong Son.

Susan put on her sunglasses and asked, “Do I look like a co-dep?”

I looked at her in the rearview mirror. With her long, straight hair parted down the middle, and with the shades, she could pass for a Vietnamese woman in a dark moving car. I looked at Mr. Cam. He could pass for a Vietnamese, too, because he was Vietnamese. The problem was me.

I looked at Mr. Cam again, and I had the impression he was going to make a break for it when we hit the town.

I pulled onto the shoulder and said to Susan, “Get the shoelace from one of my docksiders in my suitcase.”

She got out of the car, opened the rear hatch, and took a few things out of the luggage. She called out to me, “It’s getting cold out here.”

I lowered my window, and it seemed to me that it was still warm, but I hadn’t lived here for three years. I remembered the smell of the wet night earth and the river.

Susan closed the hatch and got back into the car. She handed me a leather lace from one of my deck shoes. She also had one of her high-necked silk blouses, which she put on over her polo shirt.

I took the strip of leather and motioned for Mr. Cam to lean forward and put his hands behind his back. He seemed happier about being tied up than being strangled, and he cooperated fully.

I tied his thumbs together, then tied the loose ends of the leather lace to his belt.

Susan handed me my sunglasses and said, “Slicky boys wear these day and night. You won’t look too weird.”

I put the glasses on, but as far as I was concerned, I still looked like a six-foot Caucasian with wavy hair and a prominent nose.

I put the Nissan into gear, and we drove toward the bridge. I said to Susan, “See those concrete bunkers on the corners of the bridge? They were built by the French. American platoons took turns manning the bunkers. It was good duty — better than out in the boondocks. There used to be barbed wire all over and minefields. Every few weeks, Charlie would come around to see if we were awake. They really wanted to blow that bridge, but they never got past the barbed wire and the minefields. The minefields were laid by the French, and we didn’t have a map of the mines, so when Charles blew himself up out there, we couldn’t go in to retrieve the bodies. They’d lay out there and feed the buzzards and maggots for weeks. This place used to stink a lot. Smells okay now.” I raised my window.

Susan had no comment.

We drove onto the bridge across the An Lao, which flowed into the South China Sea. I put the Nissan into second gear and slid down in my seat.

We came off the bridge into the main street of the town of Bong Son. The town seemed to be as I remembered it. The stucco buildings were fairly nice, and there were palm trees planted here and there. Bong Son had apparently not been hit hard by the war.

There were a few restaurants on the street, and I remembered that a lot of ethnic Indians and Chinese once lived here, who owned most of the shops and restaurants, but I saw no evidence of them now. The GI bars, massage parlors, and whorehouses had been on a side street, away from the good citizens.

Back to the present, I saw that there were a lot of motor scooters and bicycles on the street, and more important, there were a few cars moving around, so we didn’t look too out of place.

I said, “Up ahead, at the end of town, used to be the headquarters of the National Police. They were mostly guys from well-connected families, and police service kept them out of the army. They were also sadistic. See that stone wall over on the right? And those big wrought iron gates?”

“Yes.”

“Inside the wall is a French colonial building. I think it was the town hall or something. One night, a bunch of VC infiltrated the town and attacked the building. The National Police killed and captured about a dozen of them. A few days later, I came into town with a bunch of guys in a Jeep to see what we could buy or barter on the black market. The National Police had hanged a dozen VC bodies from those gates. Most of them were full of holes, but some had been hanged alive, and not by the neck — but by their thumbs. The bodies were rotting in the sun.” I added, “The ARVN would just shoot captured VC in the head. The National Police were not so nice.”

I looked at Susan in the rearview mirror. She was not looking at the gates, but I looked at them as we passed by, and I could see those bodies hanging there. “I still remember the stench.”

She had no comment.

“We reported it to our company commander, and he passed it up the line. The National Police were pissed at us for interfering in their object lesson. Don’t get me wrong — we were no angels, either, but you have to draw the line somewhere. War is one thing, but this wasn’t war. On the other hand, the Vietnamese had been at it so long, and they’d lost so many friends and family, that they’d gone around the bend long before we got here.”

I continued, “The First Cavalry was moved out of Bong Son after the new year, and we went up to Quang Tri, which turned out to be a lot worse than this place.”

Again, I looked in my rearview mirror and saw that Susan was sitting very still. I said, “I was eighteen years old.”

The National Police headquarters came up on our left, and I saw a red flag with a yellow star hanging from the building. There were four yellow jeeps parked out front, and about six policemen, smoking and chatting. I turned my head away as we passed close by and kept going.

I said, “After the Communist victory, the big bloodbath that everyone had predicted turned out to be not too bad. The executions were selective, and most enemies of the state wound up in re-education camps. But the National Police, who were hated by just about everyone, were systematically hunted down and executed by the new National Police.” I added, “What you sow, you reap.”

Susan, I saw, had a pack of cigarettes in one hand, a lighter in the other, but she just sat there. Finally, she said, “I never understood any of this in Saigon.”

“It was a very dirty war in the countryside. But it’s history. Memories fade, and life goes on. The next generation might be okay.” I looked at Mr. Cam and wondered about his own history. Maybe I’d ask him later.

The town of Bong Son stretched on along Highway One for a hundred more meters, then we were out in the countryside again. I said, “The big American camp, called Landing Zone English, was a few kilometers from here to the left. There’s a valley there called An Lao, where the river starts in the hills. We cleared out all the population of the valley, and resettled the people in strategic hamlets so that they couldn’t aid the local VC or North Vietnamese army with food or labor. The An Lao Valley became a free-fire zone, and anything in the valley that moved was shot — including farm animals left behind and wildlife. We even went bird hunting with Browning automatic shotguns. We burned every structure, killed every fruit-bearing tree, oiled the rice paddies, and leveled the forest with these things called Rome Plows. Then we air-dropped cardboard barrels filled with crystals that produced noxious, choking gas. We renamed the An Lao Valley the Valley of Death.” I paused. “I wonder if anyone lives there now.”

Susan said nothing.

I got the Nissan up to a hundred KPH as we continued north.

Highway One swung east toward the sea again, and there were white sand beaches along the coast, and white sand hills to our left, covered with scrub brush. I said to Susan, “This is where I spent Christmas 1967. The white sands of Bong Son. We made believe it was snow.” I added, “There was a forty-eight-hour truce. We got a lot of Christmas packages from the Red Cross, and from private organizations and individuals. At that time, before Tet, people still supported the troops, if not the war itself.”

I recalled that Christmas was a particularly hot day, and the white sands had no shade trees. Christmas dinner had been delivered by helicopter, and we were sitting in the sand, eating turkey with all the trimmings, trying to keep the sand flies away, and the sand out of the food.

A kid from Brooklyn named Savino saw a long bamboo pole in the sand and decided to use it to make a shelter with his rubber poncho to keep the sun off him. He reached for the pole, someone shouted for him to stop, he pulled the pole, which was attached by a wire to a very large explosive device, and he blew himself back to Brooklyn in a body bag.

A bunch of other guys got hurt, half the platoon was deaf, and pieces of the kid were everywhere, including everyone’s mess tins and canteen cups. Merry Christmas.

I said, “A guy in my platoon was killed by a booby trap on Christmas day.”

“Was he a friend?”

“He… he wasn’t here long enough.” I added, “It was sort of a waste of time to make friends with the new guys. They had a bad survival rate, and they got people around them killed. If they were still alive after thirty days, then you’d shake their hand or something.”

We left my old area of operations, and I didn’t recognize this terrain.

Mr. Cam appeared to be getting uncomfortable with his arms behind his back. Susan noticed and asked me, “Should we untie him?”

“No.”

“He can’t get away when we’re moving this fast.”

“No.”

Susan finally lit her cigarette. I actually wanted a cigarette myself, probably because my head was still back in the Bong Son area of operations, where I used to do a pack a day. I said, “Let’s hear from Mr. Cam. Ask him if he remembers the war.”

She asked him, and he didn’t seem to want to answer. Finally, he spoke, and Susan translated. She said, “He was thirteen when the war ended. He lived in a village west of Nha Trang, and he remembers when the Communists arrived. He says that thousands of South Vietnamese troops had been passing through his village as they retreated from the highlands, and everyone knew the war was ending. Many people fled to Nha Trang, but he stayed in his village with his mother and his two sisters.”

“And what happened?”

She prodded him a little, he spoke in a quiet tone, and Susan translated. “He says everyone was very frightened, but when the North Vietnamese troops came, they behaved well. There were only women and children left in the village, and the women were not molested. But the Communists found a young army officer who had a leg amputated, and they took him away. Later, political cadres came and questioned everyone. They found two government officials disguised as peasants, and they were taken away. But no one was shot in the village.”

I nodded. “And his father? Brothers?”

Susan asked him, and he replied. She said to me, “His father had been killed in battle many years before. He had an older brother serving with the ARVN in the highlands, but he never returned home. He says his mother still waits for her son to return.”

I looked at Mr. Cam and saw he was upset. Susan, too, seemed disturbed by Mr. Cam’s story. My own memories of that time were starting to fill my head.

When you begin a journey like this, you have to expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed.

We continued on along the black highway, through the night, and back in time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

We had come about three hundred kilometers from Nha Trang, and it was close to 10 P.M. I was keeping the speed down to conserve fuel, and we weren’t in any particular hurry, anyway. I looked at the fuel gauge, and the needle was hovering around a quarter full.

I asked her, “How far to Da Nang?”

She’d already figured it out and said, “About a hundred fifty kilometers. How’s the fuel?”

“We burned some fuel back there running the fuzz. We may be able to reach Da Nang with the extra ten liters. Or maybe we’ll see an all-night station on the way.”

“In the last three hundred kilometers, we’ve passed only four gas stations, all closed.”

“Don’t we pass through Quang Ngai?”

“Yes. It’s right on Highway One. Provincial capital. It’s about seventy-five kilometers from here.”

“Take out my guidebook and see if they mention a gas station.”

She opened the guidebook and said, “Well, there’s a small map of the town… there’s a hotel, a pagoda, a church, a post office, a place called Rice Restaurant Thirty-four, a bus station—”

“These cars can run on rice.”

“I hope so. This map doesn’t show a gas station. But there has to be a few in a town that size. Maybe one is open. If not,” she added, “there’s one more town after Quang Ngai and before Da Nang that we may be able to make. It’s called Hoi An, an old Chinese seaport. Very touristy and charming. I took a trip there the time I was in Hue. There are a lot of accommodations in Hoi An, and maybe a gas station that will be open late. We may be able to make it that far. There’s nothing between Hoi An and Da Nang.”

“Okay. Let’s see how it goes.”

Mr. Cam figured out that we were discussing fuel, and he said something to Susan.

She said to me, “Mr. Cam, who is now our friend, said that we can sometimes buy gasoline from private vendors. He says they sell it in stalls along the road. We should look for a painted sign that says et-xang, which means gasoline.”

“And they’re open all night?”

“Sort of. You go to the house near the sign, and they’ll sell you gasoline. I’ve done that on my motorcycle. The gasoline is usually sold in soft drink bottles, and it’s expensive.”

“How many Coke bottles do we need to fill a tank?”

“I don’t have my calculator. Look for a sign that says et-xang.”

I said to Susan, “Tell me again why Mr. Cam won’t do his civic duty and go to the police. Make believe Mr. Cam’s life depends on your answer.”

She stayed silent for some time, then replied, “I couldn’t even translate the concept of civic duty. If he gets his car back and about a hundred bucks for himself, two for Mr. Thuc, and a few hundred to fix the damage, he is not going to the police. When there’s an accident in Saigon, the last thing they want is for the police to show up.”

“Good. Case closed.”

Mr. Cam wanted a cigarette, and he deserved it. Susan lit it for him and held it while he puffed away.

We came to a place called Sa Huynh, a picturesque village on the coast surrounded by salt marshes. Before you could say “quaint,” we were out in the country again.

We continued on, and the highway swung inland through an area of small villages and rice paddies.

I glanced at my fuel gauge and saw that it was below a quarter of a tank. The road was flat, and I was keeping the speed down to eighty KPH, so I figured I’d be able to squeeze out enough fuel to reach Quang Ngai. If not, we had twenty liters in the gas cans.

I had not seen a single sign that showed distances between cities, or even a sign that showed the name of a city. We were doing this all by map. The road itself was alternately good and terrible, mostly terrible. This place had a long way to go, but in fairness, after thirty years of war, they’d come a long way.

Susan said, “We should be approaching Quang Ngai. It’s on this side of the Tra Khuc River, and Highway One becomes the main street. Maybe we shouldn’t try to get through the town at this hour. And even if we found an open station, you’d have to change places with Mr. Cam.”

“So, what’s your suggestion?”

“I suggest we pull the car into some trees and wait until dawn. We can go into Quang Ngai in the morning and fill up.”

“All right. Look for a place to pull over.”

I slowed down, and we looked for a place where the car would be out of sight.

We were only a few kilometers from Quang Ngai, and I could see the lights of the town on the horizon. It was amazing, I thought, how distinct the towns were from the surrounding countryside, with no urban or suburban sprawl, no shopping malls, and obviously no gas stations. On the plus side, I hadn’t seen a cop on the highway since we started, except the two I ran into a ditch. But according to Susan, the military patrolled the highway after dark, and if there was one single military vehicle on the road, and one civilian car — this one — we’d be pulled over for no reason. The ace in the hole, of course, was the Colt .45. They wouldn’t expect that.

Quang Ngai was right up the road, about a kilometer, but I didn’t see any place to pull over. It was mostly rice paddies and villages, and the land was open, except for small stands of palm trees which didn’t offer any concealment.

I spotted a rise of land in the middle of a rice paddy that was connected to the highway by a dirt causeway or dike. I knew what this was, but it took a few seconds before it came to me. I said, “That’s a burial mound over there. We can park on the far side of it, and no one will see us.”

I slowed down and cut the wheels onto the dirt causeway that ran through the flooded rice paddies.

All of a sudden, Mr. Cam started going nuts. “What’s his problem?”

“He says that’s a burial mound.”

“I know what it is. We used to dig our night positions into burial mounds. Soft earth, good elevation, fields of fire—”

“He wants to know why you’re driving to the burial mound. You should stop.”

I stopped halfway to the big mound, and Mr. Cam calmed down. “What’s he saying?”

Susan spoke to him, and he got agitated again. She said to me, “I told him we were going to spend the night there. He’s not too thrilled about that.”

“Come on. They’re all dead. Tell him we’ll be very respectful, and we’ll pray all night.”

“Paul, he won’t spend the night on a burial mound. You’d have to hogtie him. They’re very superstitious, and it’s also disrespectful.”

“I’m not superstitious or culturally sensitive.”

“Paul.”

“Okay.” I threw the Nissan into reverse and backed it down the narrow dirt dike. I got on the highway, threw the car into gear, and we continued on. As soon as you do something nice, your luck runs out.

And sure enough, coming up the highway toward us was a pair of headlights, about a kilometer away. I killed my headlights and slowed down. The oncoming lights were too low to the ground to be a truck or bus, so it had to be something smaller, like a four-wheel drive, probably a military patrol.

Susan said, “Paul, pull off the road.”

“I know.” I put the Nissan in four-wheel drive and drove down the raised road embankment. There was no drainage ditch because the rice paddy was right at the bottom of the embankment. I drove parallel to the road with my right wheels in the rice paddy muck, and my left wheels on the side of the embankment. We were at a forty-five degree angle, maybe more, and I was concerned that the Nissan might flip. My rear wheels were starting to slip and sink into the muck. I stopped.

I looked up at the road and saw that I wasn’t really out of sight. But it was dark enough to hope for the best, while preparing for the worst. I said to Susan, “Give me the tote bag.”

I could hear the vehicle approaching now and saw the head beams coming closer.

She passed the bag to me, and I put my hand inside and found the pistol grip. I didn’t want Mr. Cam to see the gun because that could be the thing that sent him to the police.

I could feel the end of the magazine seated in the pistol grip. I clicked off the safety. I asked Susan, “Magazine fully loaded?”

“Yes.”

“Is there a round chambered?”

“No.”

“Extra magazines?”

“Two.” She added, “I’m frightened.”

I looked at Mr. Cam, who seemed apprehensive. I had the impression he was rehearsing his story for the authorities, and was glad he was tied up.

Within a few seconds, I could see the top of the vehicle as it approached. It was a big enclosed jeep-like vehicle, painted dark, not yellow, and I recognized it as military. I saw the driver, who was concentrating on the road, and a man in the rear.

The Nissan’s roof was about level with the raised highway, it was painted dark blue, it was a dark night, and the gods were with us. The military vehicle kept going.

We sat there for what seemed like a long time, then I put the Nissan into reverse, the rear wheels caught, and the Nissan backed up the embankment.

I sat on the road for a few seconds with the headlights still off and looked around. It was so dark I could barely see ten yards in any direction.

I began moving forward again without lights toward Quang Ngai. The glow from the town silhouetted some buildings on both sides of the road, and I saw something that looked promising. I pointed the Nissan toward the silhouette, stopped, and snapped on the headlights.

There on the right, at the end of a dirt trail, was a ruined structure without a roof. I hoped it wasn’t a Buddhist temple or we’d have another problem with Mr. Cam.

I drove slowly onto the dirt path that cut through the rice paddies, and I pulled up to the front of the white stucco structure. On the front peak, I could see the remains of what had been a church belfry. I said to Susan, “Catholic church. I hope this guy isn’t also Catholic.”

She said something to Mr. Cam, and he nodded.

I drove through the wide doorway and into the church, then cut the wheels and backed the Nissan into the front corner of the church so it couldn’t be seen from the road.

The headlights illuminated what was basically just a shell of a building with vegetation growing through the rubble-strewn concrete floor.

I killed the lights and the engine, and said, “Well, this is it for the night.”

We all got out and stretched, except that Mr. Cam couldn’t stretch his arms very well, so I untied him.

Susan got the water and the snacks out of the car, and we had a terrible dinner. I asked her, “Didn’t they have Ring Dings or cheese crackers in that gas station? What is this stuff?”

“I don’t know. Candy. Stop complaining. In fact, you should say grace.”

Mr. Cam ate more than his share of the stuff in the cellophane bags, and he drank a whole liter of water by himself.

I had no choice but to tie him up again, so I bound his thumbs behind his back, took his sandals, and put him in the rear of the Nissan, where he lay down on the seat.

Susan and I sat cross-legged in the corner opposite the Nissan. The only illumination came from the starlight into the roofless building. She observed, “It must have been a nice country church once.”

“These were all over when I was here — ruined churches and pagodas. They were the only substantial buildings around, and civilians and military used to take cover in them. You’d be safe from small arms fire, but not rockets or mortars.”

She said, “It’s hard to imagine a war raging around you every day. I’m glad you were able to talk about it back there in Bong Son.”

I didn’t reply.

She took out her cigarettes and very expertly cupped the lighter and lit up quickly, just like an old combat soldier. She shielded the cigarette in her hands as she smoked. She said, “I’m cold. Can I borrow something from your suitcase?”

“Sure. I’ll get it.”

“Bring my backpack, too.” I stood and went to the Nissan. I opened the hatch door and got my blue blazer out of my suitcase, and took her backpack. I put my blazer over her shoulders.

She said, “Thank you. Aren’t you cold?”

“It’s about seventy degrees.”

Susan had a travel alarm clock in her backpack, and she set it to go off at midnight. She said, “We’ll set it every hour, so if we both drift off, this should wake us up.”

“Okay. I’ll take the first watch. Try to get some sleep.”

She lay down on the concrete floor with her backpack for a pillow.

We talked awhile, then I realized she’d drifted off.

I took the Colt .45 out of her tote and chambered a round. I put the pistol in my lap.

The alarm rang at midnight, and I shut it off before it woke her. I set it again for one A.M., in case I drifted. But, oddly, I had no trouble staying awake, and I let her sleep until 4 A.M.

We switched places, and I gave her the pistol.

I lay my head on her backpack and remembered when my own backpack had been my pillow for a year, and my rifle had been my sleeping partner. We always slept fully clothed, with our boots on, swatting mosquitoes all night, worrying about snakes and about Charlie. We were dirty, miserable, sometimes wet, sometimes cold, sometimes hot, and always frightened.

This wasn’t the worst night I’d ever spent in Vietnam; far from it. But I couldn’t blame this one on anyone but myself.

The sky lightened, bringing a false dawn, which was common to the tropics, then an hour later, the real dawn broke, and a rooster crowed. A stream of sunlight came in through a small arched window to the right of where the altar had once been. A shard of blue glass, still stuck in the window frame, cast a streak of blue light across the floor and up the opposite wall.

I sat up, and Susan and I watched the dawn unfold.

The interior of the small church was clearly visible now, and I could see the whitewashed walls and the crumbling stucco, and the places where the bullets had hit, and where exploding shrapnel had scarred a faded fresco of the Virgin Mary.

There wasn’t a single scrap of wood left in the structure, except the charred remains of a fire that someone had lit on the floor where the altar once sat.

The rice paddies don’t attract many birds, but I heard a lone bird singing somewhere. Then I heard the first vehicle on the road.

Susan said, “Today is Lunar New Year’s Eve.” She took my hand. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see a sunrise in my life.”

I could hear a truck on the road and a motor scooter. I glanced out through the open doorway and saw a farm cart and two girls on bicycles.

I remembered when the first vehicles on the road were minesweepers, tanks that could safely set off explosive devices buried in the potholes during the night. Then would come the Jeeps and trucks filled with American and Vietnamese soldiers, rifles and machine guns ready to take on any ambush that had been set in place during the night.

Then came the civilians, on foot, in ox carts, on bicycles, off to the fields, or to school, or wherever.

Within an hour of sunrise, Highway One would be open, piece by piece, from the Mekong Delta to the DMZ, and life would go on until the sun set.

I said to Susan, “Highway One is open to Hue.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

In the daylight, I could see that the driver’s side of the Nissan had picked up some yellow paint from my contact with the police jeep. Susan and I each had Swiss army knives, and we scraped the paint off, while Mr. Cam, who I’d untied, used a shard of glass to help.

I cut our plastic water bottles in half and collected some rice paddy muck outside, which we smeared along the scrapes.

In the muck, we found a few bloodsucking leeches. Susan was repulsed by the leeches, Mr. Cam didn’t seem to care, and I had some unpleasant memories.

She looked at a big, fat leech in the muck of the plastic water bottle. “Do they bite?”

“They attach themselves to your skin somewhere. They have a natural anesthetic in their saliva, so you don’t know you’ve gotten bitten. Also in the saliva is a blood thinner, so your blood just keeps flowing into these things while they suck. You can have them on you all day and not know it, unless you do periodic checks. I had one under my armpit once that got so fat and bloated with my blood that I accidentally squashed it when I lay down on my side to take a break.”

Susan made a face.

After I’d returned from Vietnam, I’d probably told more leech stories than combat stories. These stories never failed to gross out people, and I got really good at it.

We used one of my polo shirts to wipe our hands.

I let Mr. Cam drive, and this made him happier than having his thumbs tied together. I sat in the front and Susan in the rear. We pulled out of the church and onto Highway One. A few people on bicycles and motor scooters looked at us, but by all appearances, we were two Western tourists with a Vietnamese driver, who had pulled over to check out a war ruin or make a pit stop.

Within a few minutes, we were in the provincial capital of Quang Ngai. I kept a close eye on Mr. Cam, and Susan was engaging him in conversation. He seemed okay, but Susan said, “He wants something to eat, and he wants to telephone his family.”

“He can do whatever he wants after he drops us off at Hue”Phu Bai Airport.”

Susan relayed this to him, and he seemed quietly unhappy.

Quang Ngai was nothing to write home about. It was, in fact, an ugly town, but I spotted a beautiful gas station.

We pulled over, and I said to Susan, “You pump. I’ll keep Mr. Cam company.”

Susan got out and pumped gasoline. A few people hanging around the gas station watched her pumping while Mr. Cam and I sat in the front. They probably concluded that Western men had their women better trained than the Vietnamese men did. They should only know.

Susan paid the guy, who had been standing near her, and the guy seemed very curious about us and the Nissan. He even drew Susan’s attention to the scrape marks and the dent. Susan pretended she spoke no Vietnamese.

I looked at Mr. Cam. If he was going to make a break for it, this was his best shot.

The pump attendant said something to Mr. Cam, who replied, and they exchanged another few words.

Susan got in the car and said to Mr. Cam, “Cu di.”

Mr. Cam started the engine and threw the car into gear.

I asked Susan, “What did he and the guy say?”

Susan replied, “The guy noticed the Nha Trang license plates and asked if we’d driven through the night. Mr. Cam said no, then the guy asked him where we’d stayed last night, and Mr. Cam didn’t have an answer. It was just polite conversation, but it didn’t go well.”

I said, “Well, no one calls the police about anything here. Right?”

Susan didn’t reply.

We passed through the rest of the ugly town and crossed the Tra Khuc River via a bridge that looked like it had been the prize in a game between Viet Cong sappers and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In the end, it looked as though the engineers had narrowly won.

We were in the open country again, and Highway One was now crowded with motor vehicles, ox carts, bicycles, scooters, and pedestrians. We were barely making fifty KPH, and I could see how the drive from Nha Trang to Hue could take eleven or twelve hours during the day.

I looked at the map and saw an asterisk north of Quang Ngai, which meant a point of interest. The point of interest, which was only a few kilometers from here, was described in Vietnamese and in English. It said: My Lai Massacre. It went on to say: War crime occurred here, March 16, 1968, when three U.S. infantry companies killed several hundred unarmed villagers. A memorial commemorates the dead and reminds one of the insanity and tragedy of war.

I said to myself, “Amen.”

We approached a small road that had a hand-painted sign with an arrow that read in English My Lai Massacre.

As I said, I hadn’t seen any helpful road signs so far, so I had to wonder who put up that one and why. I wondered, too, if any of the surviving three hundred American soldiers who had been there had ever come back.

I looked at the terrain. There were long stretches of rice paddies and small villages clustered on pieces of high ground, shaded with palm trees, and surrounded by growths of towering bamboo. This was typical of what I recalled when I thought of Vietnam, though I’d also operated in much more rugged terrain, away from the coastal populations, which I preferred.

When the war was in the jungles and the highlands, it had a better feel to it, a sort of boys’ adventure, the ultimate rite of passage. In the hills and the jungles, you didn’t kill civilians by mistake or on purpose, as at My Lai, and there were no villages to burn, or water buffalo to shoot. The boys seemed more focused and intent in the quiet presence of the primeval jungle and the highland forests; it was just us and them in the greatest game of survival ever conceived or carried out. The war had clarity, and the kills were clean, and there were no women or children dying around you, and no My Lais.

We passed into the province of Quang Nam, and approached the once huge American air force base at Chu Lai. This, I recalled, was where some of my air force friends from Apocalypse Now had been stationed.

I saw strands of rusted barbed wire from the old base, then abandoned concrete buildings. I saw a few hangars and dozens of concrete aircraft revetments built in the white sands that stretched to the east down to the sea. I could also make out a runway, covered with white objects that I couldn’t identify.

Susan saw me looking and said, “The farmers use the old runways to dry manioc root.”

“Really? You mean that millions of U.S. tax dollars were spent to build jet fighter runways that are now used to dry manioc roots?”

“Looks that way. Swords into ploughshares. Runways into—”

“What the hell is manioc?”

“You know. Like cassava. You make tapioca pudding out of it.”

“I hate tapioca. My mother force-fed it to me. Call an air strike on that runway.”

Susan laughed, and Mr. Cam smiled. He liked happy passengers.

I said, “I’d love to be here when those jet jockeys from Apocalypse Now get up to Chu Lai. They’ll have a fit.”

The Chu Lai base was big and sprawling, and we kept passing pieces of it. I saw kids pulling wagons through the area, and I asked Susan, “What are they doing?”

“They’re scrap metal scavengers. It used to be a huge business in Vietnam, but most of the easy stuff has been found.” She added, “A lot of the stuff blew up in their faces. There were hundreds of scavengers killed and maimed every year, according to what I’ve heard. Now, the pickings are slimmer, but safer.”

I watched the kids digging in the sand. After thirty years of war, and nearly thirty years of peace and recovery, this nation still had scars and unhealed wounds that continued to bleed. Maybe that’s what we had in common with them.

Susan said, “When or if you go into the interior, be advised that a lot of the unexploded stuff is still lying around.”

“Thank you.” In truth, even during the war, there was so much unexploded stuff around that you had just as much chance of being blown up by your own duds as by their booby traps.

I looked at Mr. Cam, who had obviously not had a good night’s sleep. He was starting to nod a bit, and I shook his shoulder. I asked him, “Do you know that twenty-five percent of U.S. auto fatalities are caused by fatigued drivers?”

“Eh?”

Susan translated something, but not quite what I said. She said to me, “He wants some coffee.”

“Next Burger King, we’ll stop.”

She said something to Mr. Cam, and I didn’t hear the words Burger King.

The coast curved inland now, and the highway passed over several small bridges that spanned creeks and streams, which ran down from the hills into the sea. It really was a beautiful country, and I appreciated it more now than I did when I had to walk it seven days a week.

Susan said, “This area was the center of the Champa civilization. Did you see Cham Towers when you were here?”

“Actually, I did, though I didn’t know what they were. We used them as watchtowers or artillery spotting towers. I saw everything through the eyes of a soldier. I’m glad I came back. I’m glad you’re with me.”

“That’s very sweet. Don’t forget you said that.”

We drove awhile, and I looked at the map. I said, “According to the map, Highway One runs far to the west of Da Nang, so we don’t have to go through the city.”

“Didn’t you say you left Vietnam from Da Nang?”

“Yes. November 3, 1968. Caught a helicopter from Quang Tri to my base camp at An Khe and collected the stuff in my trunk, which I hadn’t seen since my R&R, got all my paperwork in order, saw the pecker checker about VD, said good-bye to a few people, and di di mau’ed the hell out of there. Caught a big Chinook chopper to Da Nang. We drew fire someplace over the highlands. I mean, I had less than seventy-two hours left in-country, and these bastards are trying to kill me on the way to Da Nang. But aside from a few holes in the chopper, we made it. Then, while I’m in the transit barracks waiting for my flight home, the next day, at about three in the morning, Charles lobs in a few mortar rounds on the going-home barracks.” I added, “He did it on purpose.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“The empty mess hall next door got blown up, and some shrapnel flew through the barracks. I got knocked out of my upper bunk bed and sustained yet another head injury. But no one noticed, and I caught my flight to San Francisco.”

“I’ll bet you were happy to be going home.”

I didn’t reply for a while, then said, “I was… but… I thought about staying with my company… everyone who left had mixed feelings about leaving their friends… it was weird, and it stayed with me for months… it wasn’t a death wish, it was a mixture of emotions, including the thought that I wasn’t going to fit in among normal people. It’s hard to explain, but nearly everyone who’s been to war will tell you the same thing.”

She didn’t reply.

We continued in silence awhile, then we crossed a bridge that spanned the Cam Le River, and I said to Susan, “Ask Mr. Cam if the Cam Le River is named after him.”

She said to me, “There aren’t that many words in Vietnamese, Paul, and fewer proper names, so you’ll see a lot of names and words appearing with great frequency. Try not to be confused, and no, the river was not named after Mr. Cam.”

Mr. Cam knew we were talking about him, and kept looking over his shoulder at Susan. Susan put her hand on his shoulder and said something. He laughed.

I guess he got over being kidnapped, almost killed in a high-speed chase, being tied up, sleeping out in the cold, and being threatened with death. Or, maybe he was smiling because he was thinking about his tip. Or maybe his revenge. The unhappy truth is, if Susan hadn’t been with me, I’d have had no choice but to kill Mr. Cam. Well, of course I had a choice, but the right choice was to get rid of him. And yet, deep inside of me, I knew I’d killed too many Vietnamese, including the two cops, and the thought of killing yet another made my stomach knot up. But if I believed that what I was doing here was important and right, then just like in 1968, when I believed the same bullshit, I’d do what I had to do for God, for country, and for Paul Brenner.

The Da Nang airport was off in the distance to our right, and beyond the airport, I could see the low skyline of the big city.

The airport, I recalled, was bigger and better than Tan Son Nhat because the Americans had built it from scratch. Now, according to my map, it was designated as an international airport. I said to Susan, “You could dry a lot of manioc on those runways.”

“It’s a major civilian and military field. In a few years, you’ll be able to fly to the States from there.”

“How about right now?”

“There are already American cargo planes making the run once in a while.”

Actually, I knew this. This was escape Plan C, according to Mr. Conway. Paul Brenner in an air shipment container labeled bananas or something. Might work. Might not.

She got her camera out and took a picture of the airport in the distance. She said, “A souvenir for you. And no one is trying to kill you this… well… you know what I mean.”

“Right.”

“I fly up here once in a while on business. Did you say you never got to China Beach?”

“Nope.”

“Monkey Mountain?”

“Hate monkeys.”

“I guess you weren’t here too long.”

“I was here for exactly seventy-one hours and ten minutes. And I never stepped foot out of the airbase.”

“Right. You wanted to go home.”

“In a passenger seat, not the cargo hold.”

I recalled another television show from the last days of South Vietnam and said to Susan, “In about late March of 1975, as the end drew near, World Airways sent two 727s on a mercy mission to rescue civilian refugees at Da Nang Airbase. When the first plane landed, about a thousand hysterical men, women, and children mobbed the aircraft. But the South Vietnamese military decided that they deserved to be saved instead of the civilians, and they began firing at the refugees, and two hundred soldiers from the South Vietnamese Black Panther regiment threw everyone off the aircraft but themselves.”

“That’s awful.”

“The pilot of the second 727 had the good sense not to land, but television cameras in that aircraft captured the sight of refugees hanging in the wheel wells of the first aircraft as it flew over the South China Sea. One by one, the people in the wheel wells fell off.”

“My God…”

I tried to imagine the panic and desperation of those last days before the final surrender. Millions of refugees, entire military units falling apart instead of fighting, paralysis in Saigon and in Washington, and the mesmerizing images of chaos and disintegration flashing across television screens around the world. A total humiliation for us, a complete disaster for them.

As it turned out, the bad guys weren’t that bad, and the good guys weren’t that good. It’s all perception, public relations, and propaganda anyway. Both sides had been dehumanizing each other for so long, they’d forgotten they were all Vietnamese, and all human.

Susan said, “I never knew any of this… no one talks about it.”

“Probably just as well.”

Highway One came to a T-intersection, and I looked at my map and pointed to the left. Mr. Cam made the turn, and we continued on. The highway around Da Nang was heavy with trucks, cars, and buses, and Mr. Cam played chicken with oncoming traffic every minute or so.

Susan told him to cool it, and he stayed behind a truck, which made him unhappy. It was Tet Eve, and he wanted to be back with his family in Nha Trang. He’d come very close to being there in spirit only.

The land started to rise, and I could see huge mountains up ahead, with spurs running right down into the South China Sea. The map showed that the highway went through these mountains, but I didn’t see how. As we continued to climb, I said to Susan, “Have you taken this road?”

“Yes. I told you, I took the torture bus, Saigon to Hue. It was a nightmare. Almost as bad as this trip.”

“Right. Is this mountain road dangerous?”

“It’s breathtaking. There’s a single pass through the mountains called Hai Van Pass. In French it’s called Col des Nuages.”

“Cloudy Pass.”

“Oui.” She continued, “These mountains used to separate what was then all of Vietnam to the north from the kingdom of Champa that we just drove through. There’s a distinct weather difference on either side of the pass, especially now in the winter.”

“Is it snowing in Hue?”

“No, Paul. But it will be much colder on the other side of Cloudy Pass, and possibly raining. This is the northern boundary of the tropics.” She added, “I hope you brought something warm to wear.”

In fact, I did not. But I shouldn’t blame Karl or anyone for that. I’d been on the other side of the pass in January and February of ’68, and I recalled the rainy days and the cold nights. I said to Susan, “Do you have something to wear in that bottomless backpack?”

“No. I’ll shop.”

“Of course.”

We kept climbing up the mountain. To the left of the road was a steep wall of rock and to the right, not far from the wheels of the car, was a sheer dropoff into the South China Sea.

Susan said, “This is spectacular.”

Mr. Cam was not sightseeing, thank goodness, and I saw that his knuckles were white. I said to Susan, “Tell him to pull over. I’ll drive.”

“No. There are police at the top of the pass.”

We climbed to about five hundred meters elevation, judging by the water below. The mountain towering over us to the left was at least another thousand meters. If I had driven this last night in the dark, it would not have been fun.

After what seemed like a long time, we approached the top of Cloudy Pass. The terrain flattened out, and I could see old concrete bunkers and stone fortifications on both sides of the road.

We reached the summit of the pass, and there were more fortifications scattered around. There was also a tour bus, a few cars with Vietnamese drivers and Western tourists, dozens of kids selling souvenirs, and a police outpost with two yellow jeeps parked out front.

Mr. Cam said something, and Susan said to me, “He wants to know if you want to stop and take pictures.”

“Next time.”

“Everyone stops. We should stop. It will look less suspicious.”

“Tell him to pull over.”

He pulled over close to the precipice, which dropped down to a small peninsula that was the end of the mountain spur. I said to Susan, “Take a picture, and let’s get out of here.” I kept my eyes on the cops hanging around near their jeeps on the other side of the road. They were glancing at all the cars and the tourists, but seemed too lazy to cross the road. Then again, you never know.

About twenty kids descended on the Nissan, pushing useless and stupid souvenirs at the windows.

A few of the kids had these aluminum can origamis of Huey helicopters, and I was amazed that these things had been faithfully reproduced for almost thirty years since the Americans had left.

One kid was banging the window with this tin Huey, and I saw that on the side of the helicopter was a perfectly painted black and yellow First Cavalry insignia. I said, “I have to have that.”

I lowered the window a crack, and the kid and I argued price. We each held on to the helicopter until I released a buck, just like a drug deal going down.

I cranked up the window and said to Mr. Cam, “Cu di.”

He threw the Nissan into gear, and we continued across the pass, then down the other side.

Susan asked, “Do you like your toy?”

“You don’t see these all over.” I hand-flew the tin helicopter around, then made a whooshing noise like rockets firing, followed by the chatter of a Gatling gun.

Mr. Cam laughed, but it was a nervous laugh.

Susan asked, “Are you all right?”

“Coming in for a landing.” I hovered the chopper and landed it on the dashboard.

Mr. Cam and Ms. Susan were quiet. I love acting nuts.

By now, we were on the downslope side of Cloudy Pass, and sure enough, there were clouds obscuring the road and a wind came up, then rain started to splatter against the windshield. Mr. Cam turned on his wipers and headlights.

We continued down, and the rain got heavier, and the wind rocked the Nissan. I glanced at Mr. Cam, and he looked a little concerned. When a Vietnamese driver is concerned, his round-eye passengers should be terrified.

Traffic was light both ways, but there was enough of it to make the descent more treacherous.

Within fifteen minutes, we’d gotten to a lower elevation where the clouds thinned out, and the wind and rain eased off a little.

Susan said, “Those winds come from the northeast and are called the Chinese winds. It’s winter here, and not a good time to travel cross-country.”

We got down to near sea level, and within a few minutes, I could see a large expanse of flat land spreading from the sea to the mountains farther west.

Susan said, “We have left the ancient kingdom of Champa, and are now in the province of Hue. The people here are a little more reserved, and not nearly as easygoing as where we just came from.”

“So, Cloudy Pass is sort of like the Mason-Dixon line.”

“I guess.”

I looked at the sky, which was heavy with a solid, low, gray cloud, as far as the eye could see. The terrain, too, looked gray and wet, and the vegetation seemed colorless and stunted.

I remembered this winter landscape very clearly, and in fact I remembered the sodden smell that I smelled now, and the burning charcoal in every hut, a little heat against the cold, damp wind.

We were down in the flatlands now, and off to the right was a squalid bamboo hut, and out front, a peasant stood in his doorway, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the rain. In the brief moment that I saw his emotionless face as we passed by him, I understood just a little the lives of these rice farmers; work from sunup to sundown, home to a meal cooked over an open fire, then to bed.

And then there were the leeches, and the foot rot, and the vermin inside the huts and the lice in their hair.

And when the wars came, as they always did in this country, the peasants were the first to be recruited and the first to die — millions of them, wearing their first decent clothes, and carrying a weapon that would cost them two years of earnings made in the rice paddies.

I’d seen all of these things long ago, although I only now understood it. I understood, too, why so many of them joined the Viet Cong in hopes of a better life after the victory. But, as my French friend at Tan Son Nhat said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The sky was gray, the rain fell in the fallow black paddies, the countryside seemed dead and deserted.

It was Tet Eve, and I recalled the Tet Eve of many years ago, huddled in a hastily constructed bunker in the foothills west of Quang Tri, not far from here. It was raining, and I was smoking a cigarette, looking out at the rain and the dripping vegetation, not unlike that peasant back there. The gray dampness seeped into the muddy bunkers, and into our souls.

We didn’t know it then, but within a few hours, a battle would begin that would last a long, bloody month. And at the end of that month, Hue and Quang Tri would lie in ruins, the body bags would run out before the ammunition, and nothing would be the same again here, or at home.

Susan said, “Hue, fifty kilometers ahead.”

I thought of my close calls getting out of here in ’68, and my more recent close calls here. This place had colored my life, and changed the course of my personal history, not once, or twice, but three times now. I should ask myself what kept drawing me back.