For the Sake of All Living Things (59 page)

“Are there NVA units?”

“No. No.” Samkai’s mouth was so stretched in smile that Sullivan was sure it hurt. He wanted to tell him it was okay not to smile so, but there was no tactful way to broach the topic. “The people are Rumdoah. Good Khmers but”—the colonel tapped his forehead with a finger—“they do not possess right thought.”

For several hours the Cambodian officer entertained Sullivan and Huntley with tales of derring-do, hardships and deprivations.

“
Pourquoi
,
monsieur
?” Samkai lamented. He gazed through the open door. The late afternoon rains had subsided to a drizzle. “To the army in Viet Nam, American aid is without limit, but to Cambodia every gram is weighed.
Pourquoi
?”

At half light, 9 August 1971, Sullivan heard the slow vibration of a military vehicle convoy. “Come on, Ron. We better saddle up.”

“Yeah.”

As they emerged from the guest sleeping room they were immediately engaged by Colonel Chhan. Sullivan glanced about for APCs, jeeps or trucks. He listened. He could feel the low rumble but couldn’t locate the convoy. A barefoot FANK soldier in a tattered uniform without rank was intercepted by one of Chhan’s aides. Khmer words flew harshly back and forth. The men stopped, bowed. The soldier froze in an insolent posture as the aide approached the colonel. Again words flew. Then the aide returned to the soldier.

“Something about petroleum?” Sullivan smiled to Chhan.

“You have learned Khmer, eh?”

“I’m very sorry, only a word or two. But petroleum...”

“Yes. It’s a French word, eh?”

“
Oui
,” Sullivan said. Then he asked, “Do you receive enough petroleum for your vehicles?”

“As I told you last night,” Chhan said, “it’s always a problem.”

“There’s enough to go to Turn Nop, no?”

“He’s a poor soldier.” Chhan indicated the barefoot man. “If he were good, he would buy petrol. Perhaps he drains the tank and sells it. Now he wants more.”

Upon entering the small compound the previous day, Sullivan and Huntley had scanned the perimeter. The section facing town was impressively fortified with three rows of tightly anchored concertina and tanglefoot, with a punji-stake moat between the outer and second rings. Now, as Huntley maneuvered his jeep behind Chhan’s and they passed out the rear gate, Sullivan shuddered. The back of the compound facing the heavy vegetation of the swamp forest had not even a single strand of wire. He turned to Huntley, their eyes met. Huntley’s did a quick 90 to heaven. Neither spoke.

Below the headquarters compound and separated from it by a wooded field and four hundred meters of paddy lay a second compound, a fetid ramshackle quagmire looking more like a concentration camp than a friendly military complex. Inside its gate two old, filthy olive-drab Isuzu buses jammed with infantry troops billowed blue smoke. Behind them was a single three-quarter-ton truck with an M-60 machine gun mounted on the cab roof.

Sullivan stretched his back, rose up in the seat to look deeper into the compound. Hundreds of starved-looking civilians—women, children, elders—stood clumped, watching, waiting for the men to leave for the daily patrol. “That’s not it,” Sullivan mumbled.

“Not what? That looks worse en that Neak Luong camp.”

“Where’s the armor? They’re supposed to have five APCs. There’s gotta be...Feel em? I can feel the vibration.”

“Yeah. Why don’t we stop that Chhan mothafucker? How come he or one a them aides can’t ride with us?”

“Then we’d be advisors.”

“Augh, shee-it! Kiss it. I just wanta know where ta go.”

“Yeah, well...”

“Well fuck. I’m gettin’ somebody.” With that Huntley revved the jeep, slipped the clutch. It engaged with a lurch. They pulled up beside Colonel Chhan’s vehicle. “Hey.” Huntley stood, yelled. Sullivan grabbed his shirt, tugged him back into his seat. “Hey, sir!” Huntley jabbed a pointing finger at the buses then to the empty backseat of his jeep. “Hey, Colonel...” (lowly) “jerk-off...” (then loudly again) “I need
uno
aide. Need me talk-talk.”

Sullivan lowered his head, covered his eyes. “Cool it, Ron. Cool it.”

“Get somebody we ken talk ta,” Huntley demanded.

“Whoa.” Sullivan stopped Huntley cold. “Let me handle it.”

“Shit...,” Huntley mumbled. He slapped his leg to feel for his .45, then reached beside the seat to make sure his ammo box of grenades was secure.

The lead bus belched and backfired. Two young boys pushed open the flimsy wire-mesh gate. The bus rolled forward straining to climb from the compound up the slight incline to the raised graveled road. The second bus, its mufflers or exhaust manifolds shot, roared slowly into position behind the first, the noise masking the colonel’s words to Sullivan. The colonel’s jeep pulled in behind the truck. “Let you handle it.” Huntley groaned. “Fuck!”

“There’s still gotta be five...”A quarter kilometer farther down the road, five clean, camouflage-painted M-113 APCs clattered softly from a third compound. Whatever noise their engines and tracks made was lost in the roar of the unmuffled bus. “Yeah. See! I knew I could feel em.”

“Where in hell they come from?” The buses rolled forward, stopped, let the APCs lead. A sixth armored vehicle remained on the side road leading to the third compound. “Look down there,” Huntley said, pointing with his chin, his back to Sullivan. The Americans stared into the third camp, a neat fortress with, as best as they could see, well-developed defense berms. “How ya figure, J. L.”—Huntley turned to Sullivan—“that one place ain’t fit for grandma’s pigs, one place is some sorta piece a furniture, en one place is for real?”

Sullivan cocked his head, winked, hooked a tight fist in the air. “Training,” he said. The appearance of the APCs made him feel secure, not because of their power but because of what he knew of the unit. “This group’s got one battalion trained at Nha Trang. Look at it. That compound’s a replica of a Special Forces site. I shit you not.”

“You shit me not, ah-right. Now, let’s get some dinky-dau fucker that can tell us what’s goin on.”

The FANK 1st Brigade Group convoy took up final staging positions a half kilometer east of the hamlet of Turn Nop 3. Five APCs moved to equidistant points. Behind them bus-borne infantry troops dispersed, spread out on line. West of the hamlet lay the main village.

“I’m sorry, Sir Colonel Chhan...” Sullivan said apologetically. He, Huntley and Chhan Samkai stood atop the sixth APC watching the action develop. Midmorning sun seared their backs. “...But it seems some of your soldiers have forgotten to follow your orders.”

Chhan Samkai pretended to busy himself with a map, then with a set of field glasses. The APCs clattered forward closing the deserted kilometer-wide semicircle about the hamlet. Behind them soldiers clumped into lines. Chhan Samkai coughed.

“I’m learning so much from your able command presence,” Sullivan said in fluid French, “but they must have forgotten your orders about dispersing and sweeping. And, Sir Colonel...well, my eyes aren’t as good as they should be...I can’t see the anvil force.”

Chhan Samkai pretended to be totally immersed in the operation. He coughed again, then asked an aide for the radio handset. In Khmer he growled harsh orders into the transmitter. In the field before them one vehicle stopped. Behind it a file of troops stood still. Four columns continued to move in.

“Captain Military Equipment Team,” one of Chhan’s aides called to Sullivan in English, “you must leave now. When the yuons attack you must not be hurt.”

In April 1970 the U.S. 5th Special Forces had opened three sites in Viet Nam to train Lon Nol’s soldiers. By August 1971 twenty-four battalions had been through the training cycle. Headquartered in Nha Trang, the FANK Training Command was charged with the task of transforming the Khmer army—one battalion at a time. On 1 March 1971 the unit was redesignated the U.S. Army Individual Training Group. Chhan Samkai, like some FANK brigade-level officers, felt the schooling was beneath his station. His armored unit, men and command, had been trained in June.

The APCs stopped just short of the hamlet. Huntley watched closely. The village appeared to be without life. A cluster of foot soldiers, then a second pack, sprinted forward firing wildly. Almost immediately a home burst into flames.

“Thank you for your concern for our personal safety.” Sullivan’s speech was slow, metered. As he spoke he and Huntley scanned the battlefield. The remaining soldiers swarmed toward the hamlet. Villagers were pulled from their houses, wrangled to a makeshift pen about the central well. “I would prefer to remain.” Even from a distance it was obvious Chhan Samkai’s infantry troops were looting homes, carrying out baskets of rice, rolls of cloth, anything transportable of value. “If I’m to be able to inform General Mataxis of your needs...”

Suddenly a skirmish broke out between an APC and a squad of infantry. Across the paddies Sullivan could hear the armor commander screaming at the ground troops. Some scattered. Some dropped their booty and marched toward the track. Other tracks began backing away from the hamlet and the infantry soldiers. Bursts of automatic weapons fire cracked hot over the ragged ground force.

“Captain,” the aide ordered, “you and your driver must come right now. If you are killed by yuons it will be a diplomatic crisis. You cannot die here. Maybe go to Baray.”

It was after midnight. Met Sar turned on the lamp. His paranoia was great. Although the Movement maintained its central headquarters on Mount Aural, Sar no longer spent consecutive nights there, no longer consecutive nights anywhere. The encampment east of Baray was dark, the hidden bunker was musty, cool. Sar shivered. The morning had been extraordinarily hot and the afternoon rain had barely moderated the temperature. By contrast the night was cold. Sar removed the batch of papers from his case, set the case at one end of the small collapsible table. He stared at the words he’d written. Yet on his mind was Nang. Word had come: he was alive, he was organizing Kompong Thom. Sar hunched, bit down hard.

...since we took charge of the revolution, despite great hardships, the Movement’s progressive philosophy has never caused a setback. Our decision of 1967 to launch armed revolution put us in the most advantageous position when Norodom Sihanouk was ousted in March 1970. Even though that decision was berated and spurned by both the North Viet Namese political leadership and our Chinese allies, it proved to be an enlightened move.

Sar paused. He pulled his heavy shirt up about his shoulders, pulled the collar up about his neck. A chill skittered across his broad back. It’s not yet time, he thought. Met Nang, he thought. We must maintain the appearance of a united front. He scratched through the last sentence then dog-earred the page and flipped to the beginning. For months he had scribbled notes, sketched pages, recorded his thoughts. What lay before him lay before Kampuchea. The sheet before him was no longer loose notes but the rough draft of the Khmer Communist Party history. In its final form it would not be a compilation of dates, anecdotes and personalities but a master plan for the future based on the Party’s view of the past, complete with strategy on how to obtain defined ideals and the righteous justification for those plans and goals. It would be a manifesto, a religious scripture, the pure word. Politically, the Krahom had matured. For years Sar and the Kampuchean Movement had developed in the shadow of Viet Namese communism, in the shadow of its unsavory ideology of a fraternal Indochinese union masking Hanoi’s desire for regional hegemony. The time had come to firmly cast that idea, and with it the Chinese Maoist thought which had so badly bungled that nation’s socialist construction, to monsoon gales. It was time, too, to shun the Russian model which to Sar was a Western ideology clothed in internationalist jargon, an Occidental fascism bent on neo-imperial expansion. It is time, thought Sar. Met Nang, he thought, it is time for us to have a document of Khmer purity—of Khmer independence, national sovereignty, self-reliance and revolutionary violence.

Sar flipped through the pages of the first section, paused to read, to check his thoughts. He scanned the twelve commandments—rules based on the teachings he’d developed for the Pong Pay Mountain school—now refined, honed, designed to create, in this period of turmoil and unprecedented opportunity, instantaneous loyalty to the Movement.

(1) Thou shalt love, honor, and serve the people of laborers and peasants.

(2) Thou shalt serve the people wherever thou goest, with all thy heart and with all thy mind....

(6) Thou shalt do nothing improper respecting women....

(10) Thou shalt behave with great meekness toward the laboring people and peasants, and the entire population. Toward the enemy, however, thou shalt feed thy hatred with force and vigilance.

Sar paused. After the word “however” in the tenth commandment he inserted a caret and between lines penned, “the American imperialists and their lackeys.”

(12) Against any foe and against every obstacle thou shalt struggle...ready to make every sacrifice including thy life for the people...for the revolution and for the Movement, without hesitation and without respite.

Again Sar paused. The Khmer word for “movement” did not please him. For a year Krahom cadremen had been using the Khmer word for “organization.” He reflected upon it, weighed it. “Organization” pleased him. It sounded less Viet Namese. Sar scratched through the word “movement” and over it in bold letters wrote
Angkar.
From henceforth, we are
Angkor.

He sat back. The pleasure of changing the word was fleeting. He breathed heavily, the dampness in his lungs clinging like glutinous rice to the sides of a cooking pot. He coughed. Coughed again. Then a series of spasmatic hacks which broke loose slimy green grain-sized clots that flew to his throat and mouth, one onto the papers. He turned, hawkered on the dirt floor. Turned back and with a cocked finger snapped at the clot on the paper. The slime, instead of flying off the page, stuck to his fingernail and smeared against the sheet. Sar turned. Spit again on the floor. Wiped his finger on the far corner of the table. Then he sat there, puzzled. He looked about. With what could he clean the page? The bunker was bare except for the table, chair and lamp. He clenched his teeth, snarled, banged his fist, yet he did not call out. He banged his fist again. How could he possibly shame himself by calling his bodyguard, yet how could he clean the page? His suit was spotless—not the black cloth of the yotheas or even the green fatigues of the cadre, but a civilized light gray of the Gray Vulture of the eastern zone.