Last Man Out (48 page)

We swayed at anchor. Seagulls squawked overhead, but there were no ships anywhere in sight.

Saigon evacuated. North Vietnamese troops entering Saigon. The best and brightest Americans in Saigon said it wouldn’t happen. In the delta we had believed Hai, and he was right, to the day.

The consulate in the delta was also certain to be evacuated. I thought about Loi and visualized him waiting at my apartment with his family. Loi would be quiet, trying to calm his family, and unsure if he should stay at the apartment any longer. He must be wanting desperately for me to show up.

Nearby in another part of Can Tho, the mother would be huddled with her two children as they waited for me. She would not
go out; I had made that clear. Don’t leave. Don’t go to the consulate. Wait for me. She would be crying. I could almost hear her across the ocean. And cussing me. Right now, I thought, she is inside her house looking at the door and pleading, “Where is he? I have been abandoned again by American men, this one leaving my children behind to die.”

All those people waiting for me, and I was trapped at sea, sitting at anchor, cut off from the world.

I sought out Sparky, who said he had only shortwave to the Philippines in addition to the tiny portable used to net with Tugboat Control.

“This big boat and that’s all you’ve got? Two dinky radios?”

I ate with Captain Flink at lunch. The evacuation from Saigon was continuing. I suggested that it was an exciting break in his normal routine.

“I ain’t set up for all this. I can’t take people,” he said. “I’ve got no food, no sanitation equipment. The people making all these decisions don’t know this. I’m supposed to carry cargo. That’s C-A-R-G-O. Your sixty-seven people are more than I can handle. I don’t like people. Especially people who don’t speak English. I don’t want this ship ever again considered as a people carrier. You appear to be a nice guy, all of you people are nice guys, but I don’t want you on this ship of mine. Or those Vietnamese Marines. I want boxes of things that don’t talk some foreign language, carry guns, eat, and shit.”

Throughout the afternoon we listened to the AM radio station and Tugboat Control. The Americans were on their way out of the country, and evidently thousands of Vietnamese as well.

My anxieties began to drain out of me. There was nothing I could do. The war was over for me. Thinking back over the past few days, I knew I had done all I could do. I wished that Loi and the woman and her children had not been traumatized, and I hoped they would be treated fairly by the North Vietnamese. I’m sorry, I said to myself a dozen times. I couldn’t help it that I wasn’t there.

There was a certain peace on the
Pioneer Contender
. I had been the subject of so much scorn recently—from the woman and from the 7th Division commander. It was all over.

As dusk began to fall that evening, the newsman on the AM radio station said that all of the Americans had left the country. For the first time in hundreds of years it was under the complete control of the Vietnamese. The Western devils were gone.

  TWENTY-THREE  

After supper I looked over the paperback books in the ship’s library, and wandered down to talk with the KIP. By then most of them were appreciative of our efforts to get them out of the country. Still, a few of the older women continued to cry. Some of the men said they would remember the day for the rest of their lives. Ros, as usual, was quiet. He was the only ethnic Cambodian in the group, but that made little difference. He had always been a loner.

I wondered how the evacuation had gone in Can Tho. We had been ready. Jim D. and Tom F. had proved themselves to be very capable. In the face of uncertainty, when the safest course would have been to do nothing—no one would have blamed them if the KIP didn’t get out—they had done what they thought was right. Everyone except the base officers and Air America yelled at them. Tough guys, they had probably gotten out without any problems, I thought.

In fact, I found out later that there had been some problems in Can Tho. Early on the morning of 29 April, both helicopters, which had remained in Can Tho overnight, were dispatched to pickup points to get the last of the remaining KIP and take them out to the Navy. Later, in the consulate, Tom was talking with one of the Marine guards downstairs when someone told him that MacNamara had just received a telephone call from the embassy ordering the evacuation of all Americans in the delta. When he got up to the base offices, Jim was reading a flash cable from Saigon with a parallel message ordering the evacuation of base personnel.

Tom said, “We were right. To the day.”

Jim didn’t comment. He told the support officer to bring his
money to the logistics compound to pay off the last of the base guards. Turning to Phyllis, he asked her to gather the few sensitive records that were left so he could destroy them and he also told her to advise everyone to move to Coconut Palms to stage for the evacuation. Tom was dispatched to the radio room, where he told the communications operator to shut down and either destroy the coding equipment or take it with him.

Within minutes the support officer was ready with a large pouch of money, Jim had destroyed the last of the sensitive records, and everyone hurried out the door. Phyllis was the last to leave. She calmly counted people off as they left, reached in and turned out the lights, shut the door, and walked out.

Jim, Tom, and the support officer went to the logistics compound and met up with the chief guard, who had his supervisors standing by. They all went upstairs in one of the buildings to make the final termination payment. That had been a major concern of Tom—that we maintain a cohesive guard force no matter what happened in the delta. He had had long talks with the chief guard, not unlike my conversations with Loi in Vi Thanh, to get assurances that the Americans would be protected to the end. Tom had told the Nhung that neither he nor his men were going to be evacuated. He had to understand that Tom would not make any provision to get them out, but he would provide adequately in the way of a termination bonus. The guard who, with an agency staffer had received the CIA’s highest award for bravery for their activities during the Tet offensive of 1968, agreed. This would probably mean that he and his family, in addition to his men and their families, would have to go into hiding after the Americans withdrew because they were incorruptible anti-Communists, supportive of the Americans to the end. But the guard didn’t question his role. Like so many other agency men, he accepted his last assignment by saying he would do good.

At the Coconut Palms, the guards let the base people inside and locked the gates. Phyllis accounted for everyone except the communications operator and radioed Tom.

While Jim and the support officer were paying off the senior guard people, Tom went down to the dock where several Boston Whalers (stout, flat-bottomed fishing boats) were tied up. The Air America choppers had not been seen since they had departed
early that morning with the last load of KIP going out to the U.S. Navy ships. Tom had heard that American officials in Saigon were being evacuated by helicopter. He felt sure that their Air America helicopters had been diverted to the capital. The CIA people in Can Tho would have to leave with MacNamara in his landing boats, which were tied up downriver from the logistics compound, at the State Department club.

After inspecting the Boston Whalers, Tom called MacNamara to tell him that the base people would be coming down the river in their small boats to join his group. MacNamara said he had already pushed off and would wait for them in the middle of the Bassac River. He said the CIA communicator was with him.

The group at the Coconut Palms overheard the radio conversation, and everyone moaned. Now their evacuation would involve moving by Jeeps from the Coconut Palms to the logistics compound and then down the small river in the Boston Whalers to the Bassac River for the beginning of what certainly would be a hazardous trip to the South China Sea.

Tom was squeezing his eyes shut in anticipation of what lay ahead. Around him in the logistics compound, workers were busy with the end-of-the-month inventory, mechanics were doing maintenance work on various vehicles, and other workers unloaded a truck that had recently arrived from Saigon with supplies. A voice broke in on Tom’s radio. George Taylor, copilot on one of the two Air America helicopters, was saying that both choppers were returning to Can Tho. Tom looked up and, way off to the east, could just barely see them.

He was almost giddy when he said, “Oh, you are so beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Taylor said, “we almost ain’t here. On the way back, air ops in Saigon ordered us north to help in the evacuation, but we said we had some good customers in Can Tho and had to return there for one last trip before we headed up. You did want us to come back, didn’t you?”

“I wish I had as much money as I’m glad to see you,” Tom said.

The pilots of the two helicopters, Hitchman and Weitz, said that they were low on fuel and needed to gas up before they did any more flying. Mac got on the radio at Coconut Palms and suggested that one helicopter land where they were and the other in
the logistics compound, and he would help direct the choppers to a fuel dump somewhere in town.

Tom ran upstairs to get Jim and the support man. When they left, the chief guard suddenly found himself in possession of all the U.S. and Vietnamese money left on the desk. Downstairs, the CIA men moved to a cleared area in the compound near the front gate, and Hitchman landed—blowing off the roofs of dozens of sheds in the community of lean-tos right outside the fence.

Weitz sat his helicopter down at Coconut Palms and picked up the base people there. Mac had on the customer headset. He had been working the helicopters over the past few days and suggested that they first try to get fuel at the airport. This idea was discounted out of hand by the pilots because no one answered the radio in the control tower there. There was no telling who was in control of the airport by now. The next suggestion was the Shell compound on the road to the airport. Although neither pilot had landed there recently, they knew it had a pump and a landing zone inside the compound large enough for two helicopters to be refueled at one time.

Weitz’s helicopter, with the people from the Coconut Palms, reached the Shell compound first and made a pass overhead. No one on the chopper saw any unusual activity below, so Weitz brought it around and landed near several rubber bladders of fuel. Within minutes, Hitchman’s helicopter containing Tom, Jim, and the support officer landed behind them.

Once both helicopters were on the ground, a group of armed Vietnamese soldiers came out from behind a building and lined up by the pumps.

“Goddammit,” Mac said, “we were so close to getting out of here.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Weitz, “they probably just want a ride out of the country.”

“They ain’t got no luggage,” Taylor said. “Plus, my bet is people who want out come running up to the helicopter. They don’t stand in front with guns in their hands.”

Both helicopters settled down, although the pilots kept up full power and the
battey-de-battey
of the blades continued loudly.

Weitz said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Two people go over there beside those Vietnamese and pick up the gas nozzles
and bring them back to the helicopters and give us a squirt. We don’t need to top off. Just enough to get us out of here.”

“I’ll go,” said the flight mechanic in the rear helicopter. “Who’s going up there?”

“Mac,” Weitz said.

“Mac?” Mac asked.

“Look, we have submachine guns. You go over there and get the gas nozzle and come back to the helicopter. If they try to grab you, drop down and we blast them with automatic fire.”

“There is no chance in hell we can get away if we start shooting. There must be a dozen of them. You going to kill them all or what? And how we going to get fuel if everyone starts shooting? This ain’t the movies, you know.”

“You got a better plan?” Weitz asked. “We have to have petrol. It’s right over there.”