The Tank Man's Son (31 page)

“M
ARK, WHAT ARE YOU
doing right now?” The voice on the phone was Bill, a missionary living in Phnom Penh. Joan and I and our two boys were hours away at the orphanage in Sihanoukville, by the Gulf of Thailand.

“Whatever you do, Mark, do
not
come to Phnom Penh.” Bill’s voice was shaky. “There’s scattered fighting here. We’ve got a curfew in place. Tanks are rolling in the streets, and the fighting is moving from the outskirts toward the city center. We think they’re heading for the airport. This might escalate into something big.”

“Something big” was code for civil war.

Bill’s warning didn’t worry me much, however. Joan and I had only been in charge at the orphanage for a year, but we had made it through plenty of tense situations already, and I didn’t think a few tanks up in the capital would be of any concern to us.

What
did
worry me were the kids and staff I was responsible for. No matter what happened, I needed to keep them safe. And the best way
to do that was to stay put. So it was easy to reassure Bill. “No problem, we’re not going
anywhere
.”

Bill’s call confirmed local gossip, but we’d heard similar things before. The Cambodian people had just endured twenty years of bloodshed and upheaval. Mistrust was a way of life, and violence was, for many, the natural response to conflict. Even in peaceful situations, like during the New Year celebration, we’d stand outside and watch tracer bullets light the sky from all directions. It seemed as if owning an automatic weapon
 
—indestructible AK-47s, mostly
 
—was a requirement for being a citizen.

Occupied as I was with the orphanage, I didn’t give Bill’s warning any more thought.

“Mark, this thing is escalating.” It was Bill again, less than a day later. “The airport was destroyed by the tank battle that took place here yesterday. The markets and banks are all shut down. Food is disappearing, and if you have any money in the bank, you can forget that
 
—whatever cash you’ve got, make sure you hang on to it. All commercial flights in and out of Cambodia have stopped. We’ve been declared a war zone. There are a few thousand foreigners trapped right now with no way to get out. I heard Thailand and other nearby countries are going to evacuate their embassy personnel tomorrow. They’re bringing in military transport aircraft to get them out.”

“What about our embassy?” I asked.

“They’re saying you have to find your own way out. They don’t want to make a big scene by evacuating all the Americans. The embassy rented the large ballroom at the Cambodiana hotel here in the city. We’ve sent some of our people to the evacuation center there
 
—might be safer. One of our missionaries got caught in a firefight. She couldn’t get out of her house, the fighting was so bad. She’s a wreck and wants to go home right now, but I don’t know how that’s going to happen. Most of the others
want to stay. You might want to look into some other means to get out of the country just in case. Do
not
try to drive to Phnom Penh. The road’s been cut, and soldiers are robbing people in broad daylight
 
—shooting drivers and stealing the cars. There’s looting everywhere.”

“Don’t worry! I have no intention of moving.”

“It’s crazy here, man
 
—fighting’s spreading around the city, and fires are burning from the artillery and even
tank
blasts. You should have heard the shells screaming overhead last night.”

I couldn’t help picturing the tanks
 
—probably Soviet-era T-55s. “We’ll stay here at the orphanage until this thing blows over,” I managed.

“Mark, this might blow
into
Sihanoukville before this is over.”

I hung up in disbelief and drove along my usual route to the orphanage.

I heard the news as soon as I pulled into the orphanage: troops were on their way from the capital. I fought the temptation to panic, gulping air through pursed lips. If the fighting came to us, no part of the country would be safe. Our only chance was to leave, or risk getting caught in the cross fire.

But how could I run at the first sign of trouble? And what was the best way to protect my family and staff?

This can’t be happening
, I thought over and over, as if on the thousandth repetition the chaos would magically resolve itself. A feeling of helplessness swept over me, something I had not experienced so powerfully since my youth. It was that all-too-familiar burst of hysteria I felt when I saw Dad bearing down on me, belt in hand. My mouth was cotton.

It was somewhere inside that terror that I found comfort. I had spent my entire childhood living with fear. Uncertainty was my air and water. And here I was, still alive. Even happy, at least most days.
I’ve been through this before
, I told myself. And it was that truth that removed the paralysis from my mind and muscles. I knew I was capable of doing
something
, even if I didn’t yet know what. Like Dad had done too many times to count, I’d find a way to make this work.

I received another phone call, this time from Ron, the regional director of our mission organization. We had some American college students helping at the orphanage for the summer, and Ron made it clear that we needed to get them out of Cambodia.

“Like,
yesterday
,” he emphasized.

I stood, frozen, in the quad between our buildings at the orphanage. I’d worked on all the structures surrounding me
 
—painting, plumbing, and wiring, not to mention counseling, praying, and crying
 
—from the chicken coop all the way to the dormitory. What was I about to do?

The children knew something was happening. They came outside quietly, looking at me and waiting. None of the older kids wanted to approach me to ask the question that was on all their minds, and none of the younger kids could form the question
 
—except one small girl, who approached me and tugged on the side of my pants. “Papa,” she asked, “are you leaving us?”

What could I say? I loved her
 
—truly, I did
 
—but would she have any reason to believe that when I fled?

“I have to take our helpers to Thailand,” I said, “but I’ll come back as soon as I drop them off.”

She walked away, and I couldn’t tell whether she believed me. Part of my heart went with her.

Just then Joan drove through the orphanage gates, braked to a stop, and waved me over to the driver’s window. “Mark, no American can stay behind.”

“I know; I’m working on it.”

“But Mark . . . we all have to leave
 
—and stay out. Even you.”

This news was devastating. Yet despite the rip in my heart, I had to focus on the task at hand: we Americans needed to leave
 
—immediately.

I collected the college students and my family. “Let’s go!” I yelled.

“But what are we going to
do
?” someone asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But we’re getting out of here. Now!”

It was just like Dad had often said: “There are leaders, and there are followers. Most people can’t think for themselves
 
—they’re just followers, waiting to be told what to do.”

What Dad hadn’t mentioned was that there was a good chance the leader everyone was following would be scared witless and have absolutely no idea what to do next.

We piled into the van, I floored it, and despite Bill’s warning, we took the road to the capital. An hour out of town we reached the first roadblock. About a dozen soldiers were covering the road, some standing directly on the asphalt and some in flanking positions along the shoulders. All were heavily armed and staring at our van as we approached. I slowed down and prepared to stop. I had no idea what was about to happen or what we should do.

The lead soldier stepped forward and pulled a pistol from his belt, which he cocked and pointed at me. The knots in my stomach suddenly became unsolvable tangles.

The van bounced to a stop. I rolled down the window. Everyone inside was quiet. I could see the soldier walking toward me, still pointing his pistol at my head. It was a cheap Chinese Type 54, but I knew it could still shoot me plenty dead.

A thought flew into my mind:
I’m going to act like a clueless tourist
. Crazy. Stupid. Maybe even suicidal. I can’t explain why I chose to do what I did. Maybe it had something to do with the chaos of my childhood
 
—with Dad’s modus operandi of
it doesn’t have to be pretty as long as it works.

I hoped against hope that
this
would work. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to break out of my chest. The soldier reached my window and stopped. I could see down the barrel of his pistol, and behind that I could see his eyes, hostile and stony.

I smiled a cheeky smile, waved, chirped out a singsong “Hello,” put the van in gear, and pulled away.

The other soldiers who had been on the road had already moved to the side, expecting their leader’s pistol would be a sufficient roadblock. The leader realized we were leaving, but he stood rooted in the road, immobile and still clutching his pistol. He had an expression on his face that seemed to say, “Wait! You haven’t paid me yet!”

In seconds we were clear. I looked back over my shoulder, and I could clearly see the soldier, still standing in the middle of the road, still holding his pistol extended.
He must be as confused as I am
, I thought. Neither of us knew what had just happened. All I knew was we were driving away, safe for the moment and closer to our goal.

That scene repeated itself twice more on the road to Phnom Penh. Both times I played the part of the clueless tourist, smiling, waving, and driving away despite the gun pointed at my head. Both times stunned soldiers simply watched us leave.

When we finally entered the capital, the scene was straight out of a disaster movie. Streams of people were becoming rivers, all flowing out of the city as fast as their legs could carry them. Women hugged children to their chests, and men carried baskets and satchels and pushed carts. Children lugged whatever their small arms could hold. Kitchen utensils, pots and pans, and bundles of food were balanced precariously atop heads. Bikes were loaded down with makeshift saddlebags. The river of humanity was flowing away from the fighting, away from the smoke and shelling, like water flowing downhill.