At last the two men stood up and exchanged formal bows. Hong See bobbed once more in my direction, then stepped back. Bu Chen handed me my trouser belt with the zipped compartment. It must have weighed twenty pounds. I could feel the U.S. quarter-size gold coins running along the length of the belt. He passed a sash similar to the one he wore around the waist of his own rice farmer’s trousers to Willow. It too was heavy with coins stitched and hidden in the cloth. We had plenty of bribe money on hand if the occasion to use it arose.
The black embassy vehicle had been replaced with a Toyota pickup truck with a camper top. The back end was crammed with paraphernalia indistinguishable under the fire door’s single, dim light. Still, I made a hasty inspection to assure myself that a few essentials I’d asked for were there. Bu Chen had lived up to his reputation. Everything needed to carry out our audacious expedition was on hand.
The three of us climbed into the cab. Willow crowded against me comfortably and promptly fell asleep. It takes a certain kind of person to be able to relax in the face of imminent calamity. The hasty, lash-up plan forced upon us by lack of time had scant chance of assured success. It was a long shot at a very tiny target.
Bu Chen drove through back streets until he reached routes used principally by commercial vehicles. We then Blended in with trucks carrying merchandise into and out of the city. We eventually reached an outlying road lined with hovels backed by terraced rice paddies. Within a short time we were following a chain link fence bordering a large flat field. At one point, Bu Chen pulled off onto the shoulder of the road. We were apparently in the middle of nowhere. He shut off the engine and turned off the lights.
Then we sat.
A dog barked in the distance. Bu Chen rolled down his window. The scent of night soil wafted into the truck’s cab. Willow stirred. I kept alert for any sound alien to the normal night noises. Crickets chirped and frogs croaked. The distant dog exchanged barks with another then fell silent. We waited quietly on the empty road.
A flashlight snapped on and off ahead of us. Bu Chen answered with the Toyota’s headlights. The flashlight signalled again. Bu Chen cranked up the engine. A gate in the fence opened as we reached it. The Toyota’s headlights picked up the dark shape of a large aircraft. The headlights swung, illuminating the red, white and blue roundel of the Royal Thai Air Force on the side of the four-engine C-130E Hercules transport. Its rear ramp was down. Bu Chen drove directly inside. The loading door closed behind us like the hinged jaw of a Venus flytrap closing on an insect. The powerful turboprop engines whined into action immediately.
A brown-faced crewman wearing a headset and dragging its long communications cord from a jack behind him, came back through the cavernous fuselage to the truck. He grinned widely, showing strong, white teeth. “Welcome aboard, sirs and lady,” he said in classroom English. “You please will seat yourselves outside the vehicle for takeoff.” He gestured to the jump seats along the side of the fuselage. Two other flight-suited Thai airmen began lashing the little truck to convenient anchor rings.
We had donned USAF parachutes and buckled ourselves in the jumpseats by the time the big aircraft began taxiing. “Where?” I asked Bu Chen, jabbing a thumb toward the bulkhead in back of us. There were no windows in the immense cargo bay in which we were the only passengers.
“This is Utaphao,” was his answer. He had to raise his voice above the tremendous scream of propellers whirling at takeoff speed. The plane vibrated as it rolled. Its tires rumbled, then lift-off occurred. The aircraft settled into a fixed-pitch climbing altitude. A signal came back that we were free to move about.
When Bu Chen made a move to stand up, I held him back. “How is using this military aircraft going to be kept under wraps? I thought you’d charter some civilian aircraft. How can we hope to cover the use of a military transport?”
“No sweat. This will show up on tomorrow’s flight reports as a scheduled trigger mission. The crew thinks they’re on a periodic Black Maria run.”
“What’s a Black Maria flight?” I didn’t like the sound of it.
“A pass along the border to keep everyone on the other side on their toes by generating a reaction from ground defenses. We’ll be watched and tracked by radar, but no overt reaction is expected. That hardly ever happens. We’ll fly northeast and reach the border in just over an hour. Then we’ll parallel it for twenty minutes until we reach Pak Sane. Okay so far?”
“Yeah, it sounds all right,” I answered.
“At that point we’ll introduce a slight navigation error as an excuse for an incursion. We’ll run in until it’s about time for night fighters to be scrambled. That’s where we get off. Isn’t that what you had in mind?”
“Sounds dicey. You think the crew will do it?”
“Do it?” repeated Bu Chen. “We’re paying the pilot fifty dollars a mile for each mile he penetrates beyond the border!”
“I only hope he doesn’t get us killed trying to get rich. Let’s check over the gear in the truck.”
We’d been wearing breathing masks for an hour, plugged into the main oxygen supply. It was time to get ready.
An emergency bail out bottle was strapped to each leg. They fed into oxygen masks fitted to our faces and were further held in place by knitted ski masks slipped over our heads to give protection from the cold. Tight-fitting ski goggles completed the head gear. We would be exposed to severe, sub-zero temperatures for as long as forty minutes during our ground-covering, slanting descent. Thick, fur-lined batties were on our feet to keep them warm.
Covering the distance we had to travel was made possible by the airfoil-design, glide parachutes strapped to our backs. The glide ratio of the steerable, high-performance parachutes was such that many miles of horizontal travel were obtained for each mile of vertical descent. Since the pilot had taken the C-130 to an altitude of over seven miles, there was no question about having sufficient lateral range. The only things working against us were the extended time we would be moving through frigid temperatures and the approaching sunrise. According to the time charts — if all went well — we would reach the ground during darkness with less than twenty minutes to wait for the first glimmer of light on the horizon.
Each of us had a compass strapped to one wrist and a penlight tied with a leather thong to the other. I spent ten minutes in the navigator’s compartment studying his maps and figuring a compass course that would take us across the narrowest neck of Cambodia and deposit us in North Vietnam fairly close to Hanoi.
Under our loose-fitting farmer’s garb, each of us had a knapsack. Because the long-range glide parachutes were harnessed to our backs, it was impossible to sling the knapsacks in the customary way. Until we were back on the ground, our backpacks would be carried as chestpacks. The knapsacks contained items essential for survival. Among them were identity papers, local currency, spare ammunition, first-aid packets, authentic footwear, some underclothing, high-energy protein bars, and a supply of lastafylene capsules to retain stamina and ward off fatigue.
Willow and Bu Chen made a last minute check of each other’s parachute equipment, then joined together to go over mine. An icy draft swirled in around us as the rear ramp was lowered. The engines slowed as the pilot reduced air speed.
I disconnected from the aircraft oxygen supply and switched to my first bail-out bottle. I eased to the rear, gripping the safety rail until I stood looking out into unending darkness. A thin line of ground lights, dim in the distance and punctuated with a few, well-spaced pockets of illumination, marked the coastline bordering the Gulf of Tonkin. The largest glow, a hazy canopy of brightness on the horizon, marked the location of Hanoi.