Jake Fonko M.I.A. (21 page)

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s real logical. The CIA sent you in to find me, that’s in your orders. Okay, you found me being held captive in a secret Commie prison camp. They’d captured the Sea Sprite crew too, but they’d all died. You set me free, fought off the guards, and we took off in the Sea Sprite. The chopper crashed at sea, mebbe ground fire crippled it on the way out, and I was the only survivor, rescued by some fishermen passing by. I saved out your Philco passport and your orders to prove the story. How could they prove it didn’t happen that way?”

“What about the girl?”

“She’s a problem. Poon’s nobody to get on the bad side of, but I can’t very well let her loose, knowing what she knows. I’ve got another two hours to figure out what happened to her.”

Past tense, I noticed. Well, at least it didn’t sound like he intended to rape her. The guy wasn’t all bad.

“You might as well go back in the cabin and make yourselves comfortable,” he said amiably. “No need to warn you not to try anything cute, unless you happen to know how to fly one of these things.”

I hate it when people say things like that, when they’re so obviously right. I went back with Soh Soon. I relayed the essentials of what Driffter told me—that he intended to bump us off, and that there wasn’t much we could do about it for the time being. The irony of it was, a loaded assault rifle sat right there on the floor in front of us. So what do we do, grease him at 8,000 feet, then hope like hell there was a copy of “Flying a Sea Sprite in Three E-Z Steps” somewhere on board?

Regardless of the tropical climate, at 8,000 feet the air gets chilly. We huddled together to keep warm. Time passed. The chopper whop-whop-whopped its way along. We were well beyond the overcast by now, the ground visible below and the thunderstorm far behind us. It had had no effect beyond sending a few stray gusts of wind to shake us up every now and then. We’d been following the Mekong River toward the southwest. Then Driffter adjusted course due west, and now it was nowhere in sight. I could see a range of low mountains coming up in the distance. Those were the Elephant Range: we’d hit the coast just below the Thai border in an hour or so.

Meantime, I’d come up with only one hope for us, and it was a slim one. I knew which control was the throttle. I couldn’t guide the craft with any precision, but at least maybe I could slow it down. I checked the Heckler and Koch, making sure it was ready to fire—it still held four rounds. So, IF I could kill him before he got us, and IF a stray shot didn’t hit some piece of ordnance and blow us all away in a big mushroom cloud, and IF I was right about the throttle control, and IF I could then manage to crash-land it somewhere soft at a low rate of speed, without setting something off… I wouldn’t have bet my own money on our chances of making it, but what other hope did we have with a guy like Driffter?

Driffter leaned around and shouted to us: “Everybody okay back there?”

Soh Soon screamed back in a shrill voice, “Hey, Driffer, you pansy-boy baby lover! Jake say you want die us. Think you tough enough? Hah! You only tough against little girls! “

I sort of wished she hadn’t done that—better to keep Driffter calm, I thought. Driffter’s head disappeared for a moment, then he rolled around out of his seat and appeared at the cabin entrance, a big automatic pistol in his hand. He looked annoyed. I grabbed the assault rifle. We both hesitated, each trying to figure out how to get a shot off without hitting something explosive.

Soh Soon shouted: “Hey!” She went on, just loudly enough to be heard over the engine noise, “Before you guys start shooting, here something for you.” She tossed a small object to Driffter. Never letting his gaze drift from me for even an instant, he let it bounce off his belly and fall to the cabin floor, then stooped down and fished for it.

He came up with a little metal item. “It’s the pin from a hand grenade. Where’d this come from?” he asked.

“Right here, in my hand,” she said. 
That
 got our attention. She’d pulled the pin from one of those grenades and was holding it, fuse lever clutched tightly in her little fist, over the stack of anti-tank rockets. If that grenade went off, we’d all float to earth as dust particles. “You really want shoot me?” she asked sweetly.

Driffter stared at her in amazement. Then he let out a big horse laugh. “Haw, that’s one ballsy little lady you got there, Fonko! Give me a moment to think on this. Meanwhile, don’t do anything to upset her, you hear?” He lowered his gun and gently tossed the pin back by her feet. “In case you want this back, I sure want you to find it,” he told her with a grin. He returned to the controls. I detected the smell of urine in the cabin, where it hadn’t been before. The next half hour was as uneventful as it could be, considering that at any time Soh Soon could accidentally blow us all away in a blast that would light up the sky: every time she switched hands on the grenade, my stomach did an about face. I’ve never enjoyed a smoother helicopter ride in my life. Soh Soon and I worked out our bargaining position. What actually happened would, of course, depend on Driffter. I felt hopeful. He may have been a crazy, cold-blooded killer, but he didn’t appear to be suicidal.

We were over the sea now, following the coastline north and flying lower. Driffter appeared in the cabin entrance. No pistol this time. “We’re getting low on fuel, not much more than enough to get to Bangkok. I think it’s time we got down to business. Okay, folks, what is it that you want me to do?” he asked.

“We were thinking of going to the beach,” I said. 

We had a
classic Mexican standoff. If Driffter pulled anything, that grenade went off amongst the rockets, and we all went to glory. On the other hand, we daren’t try anything in the air, and on the ground if we did anything to genuinely threaten Driffter, he might as well shoot Soh Soon and take us with him. The deal we worked out was this: leaving the copter motor turning, Driffter first would put our stuff, plus his unloaded pistol, ammo nearby, off on the beach, then resume his position in the pilot’s seat. Then we’d climb out, leaving the cabin door wide open. Then he’d take off without us. That way, if he tried anything cute while getting airborne, Soh Soon could lob that grenade into the cabin. By the time he got out of range, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to us either. We’d considered trying something while he was outside the chopper, but dealing with somebody as ruthless as Driffter, it was too risky. Too many ways things could go wrong, and then where would we be?

Luckily, we were all into self-preservation that day. Driffter set the chopper down on a deserted stretch of shoreline on the west side of a small Thai island, Ko Kut. He balked at taking us any further than that, as he wanted to make sure we wouldn’t arrive in Bangkok too soon. We could settle for it, as we saw that the east side of the island was inhabited. Offloading went smoothly, strictly according to the settled terms. He put our duffels out, away from the chopper. He unloaded the pistol and left it and the ammo in plain sight on top. We sat in the cabin, Soh Soon still dangling that grenade over the crate of rockets.

Driffter climbed back into the cockpit, settled in his seat, then leaned around to the cabin door and said, “Damn if you two aren’t something else! Listen, Fonko, no hard feelings? I couldn’t have got out of there without you. I owed you for that, and like I told you, when you have my word, I trade honest. As long as I get to Bangkok a couple days before you do, I’ll be okay. I’ve figured out a plan I can live with. You two can take care of yourselves. One word of warning, in case you’re fixing to say something about me, once you get back. Think long and hard on it. I’ve got friends in high places that would surprise the hell out of you. You can’t do well in my line of work without ‘em. Might be of benefit to you to hold your peace. Say, luck to you both. Little lady, be careful climbing down, you hear?”

“See you in hell, Driffter,” I said. He gave me a thumb up from the pilot seat. We got out and stepped back ten yards. He lifted off. When he was twenty feet in the air we dashed through the swirl of downdrafted sand for the tree line and dove into the brush, just in case he wanted to be cute. He didn’t. The Sea Sprite kept right on rising, then tilted forward and whap-whapped off up the coast. Should I have grabbed that grenade out of her hand and pegged it in there as he took off? Just our luck the ensuing fireball of exploding crates of rockets would have taken us out too. Either that or I’d miss the door and get the grenade bouncing back in my face. Better to leave well enough alone. We’d gotten what we wanted. Out. Intact.

We came out of the brush and got our bearings. We were standing on a long, white sand beach, fringed with coconut palms. There wasn’t another soul in sight. Soh Soon still gripped her grenade. “Get rid of that thing, will you?” I asked her. She obliged, giving it a roundhouse toss out into the surf. Four seconds later a geyser jumped out of the water with a bang. Several good sized fish floated on the surface. It reminded me that we hadn’t yet eaten lunch. I splashed down into the shallows and grabbed them. What the heck! Let’s have a beach party!

I built a fire, cleaned the fish and skewered them up on some bamboos. Fresh barbecued fish sure beat LURP meals. After lunch I surveyed the surf situation more carefully. Wiamea Bay it wasn’t, but the monsoon winds had stirred up some decent rollers. Far below kamikaze grade, but I figured ten or so yards worth of ride if I caught them right. “Hey,” I yelled back to Soh Soon, “get out of your clothes and we’ll do some body surfing.”

“Ayiaah, Jake,” she said reprovingly, “always thinking of spring.”

It was one of those gradually-sloping Asian beaches. We’d have to wade out a ways to reach worthwhile waves, but the water was clean and refreshing. Should be fun. “Hey, Jake,” I heard from behind me. “I thought you say you want bodysurf me. You all talking, no doing, or what? ‘Bodysurfing’,” she mused. “American one crazy language, you bet!” I turned. She’d spread her clothes out in the shade of an overhanging palm tree. She was laying there on her back, propped up on her elbows, knees demurely together, smiling at me from under her bangs, and twiddling her toes in the sand. Looking like that, she’d have every guy at Malibu hanging around her blanket, even if she were wearing a bikini, which she wasn’t.

“No, that’s not what…” Never mind. Some points just aren’t worth arguing. 

The surfing was
in fact okay. Soh Soon swam well, and she picked up the idea quickly, catching several good rides. We let the warm breeze dry us off, then got our stuff together and trudged off to find a trail across the island. We’d thought keeping the pistol was a good precaution, just in case the situation in Cambodia had unsettled things along the boarder. Driffter knew his ordnance—the Israeli Desert Eagle.357 magnum automatic is a nasty piece of work. Turned out we didn’t need it, and grateful for that. Rarely do people have occasion to shoot other people, even during combat. But after what we’d come through, it would have been a shame to be stopped now simply for lack of firepower.

We followed a trail through the trees and brush that took us over the ridge and down to the fishing village we’d spotted from the air—actually, just a few huts up on stilts. No sign of Khmer Rouge, or any other kind of trouble. There were longtail boats in the village—long, narrow, open wood canoes with propellers hanging out behind on ten-foot shafts driven by car engines. The natives were friendly. One of Sarge’s five gram pieces bought us a ride over to the mainland coast of Thailand. The boatman’s family fixed us a nice seafood dinner, included in the fare. The monsoon had temporarily quieted down, so we slept out by the beach. The next morning we piled our gear in the boat and set out.

You’d never use a longtail boat for a sneak attack. They throw out an ear-splitting racket, but putting a muffler on the engine would spoil the fun, I suppose. The sea still carried a little chop from the monsoon, so we took some spray and got tossed around. The driver landed us up on the beach, the nose of the boat high and dry. Nobody in sight had any interest in immigration formalities. He offered to stand us for lunch, no charge, included in the service. Afterwards big smiles all around, and then he headed over to finish off his fee at the nearest bar. He’d have some ride back home.

From there it was a matter of getting ferried from one point to the next. Expensive, when the smallest change you’re carrying is five grams of gold. We sure did leave some smiling faces in our wake. The next day we reached the town of Trat, where a Chinese shop owner was happy to swap us a fistful of bhat for a twenty gram gold piece. I gathered from him that we weren’t the first folks passing through from Cambodia. As daylight faded, we climbed aboard the overnight bus for the 200 mile ride to Bangkok.

It was only after the bus pulled out of Trat that I finally could relax and put Cambodia and its dangers safely behind me. Lovely, tragic, poor little country—on that overcast May evening, while my troubles had ended, theirs were only beginning. As bad as I’d seen it, it was doomed to get worse. Saloth Sar, after changing his name to Pol Pot, emerged from a power struggle as the undisputed leader of the Khmer Rouge. They re-named the country Democratic Kampuchea, suggesting a sense of humor I hadn’t noticed they had. Pol Pot claimed it was a Marxist government, which must have had old Karl spinning in his grave. Or maybe he had the Brothers in mind.

The bad blood between Vietnam and Cambodia soon erupted into war, as Mr. Poon had predicted. But once in power, the Khmer Rouge proved to be paper tigers. Hopelessly corrupt and incompetent, they were capable only of defeating Lon Nol’s even worse regime, and of terrorizing a nation of starving, docile peasants. On Christmas Day, 1978, the Vietnamese launched a dry season blitzkrieg. With all their captured American hardware, it was a pushover. They brushed right by the government’s defenses and rolled into Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. Their arrival almost certainly saved the Cambodian people from wholesale genocide.

Pol Pot and his claque fled the mess they’d created, taking refuge in their beloved jungles with a guerilla army. How many of their own people died at their hands through starvation, disease or outright execution on their hideous killing fields? To this day, nobody knows for sure. Estimates range between 500,000 and 2,000,000 (the latter a quarter of Cambodia’s pre-takeover population). Either figure, relative to the number of people under his control, would qualify Pol Pot as one of the bloodiest tyrants of all time. Something like 20,000 Cambodians ultimately were tortured and/or executed at Tuol Sleng school, where I first made the acquaintance of Soh Soon.