Up Country (37 page)

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.