By mid-afternoon, it looked ready for them to pass under, and Anderson waved Trung to drive the lead truck forward. He passed under the trunk with three inches to spare and stopped. Blocked by the thick tangle of foliage, exhausted men went forward to start hacking it back. Directing Trung to push the truck slowly through the gap they’d created, shoving aside yet more vines and small trees. Squeezing the truck through, uprooting and pushing aside smaller trees and saplings. The last of the trucks followed, and behind them, Anderson swung a balk of wood at the structure he’d designed, and it collapsed like a pack of cards.

  They left the timbers they’d used to build the gantry lying on the ground. If the Communists found this place, they’d need their own expert to rebuild it. They had to stop, had to rest, and some of the men foraged the surrounding area, looking for anything edible. They turned up roots and berries, even some vegetables that vaguely resembled potatoes, and chopped them into an evil-looking but edible mess they placed in a blackened cooking pot discovered in one of the trucks. Heller and Ripley searched for game, and when they found them, they killed them with bayonets. Two tiny Vietnamese potbelly pigs, three birds, and even a fat snake they went after, trying to slither away. Ripley dived on top of the long, writhing body and gripped the head, holding it so it couldn’t strike with its fangs until Heller slashed through the neck to kill it.

  They carried the trophies back and chopped them into the pot. A fire could alert the enemy, so all they could do was try to chew on the raw food. It wasn’t much, but even those few calories returned some of their waning strength. There was no problem with water. Plenty of streams threaded around the area, and they even found a small river where they could find drinkable water. A short rest, and they resumed hacking at the path. Several more hours passed, and every man was beginning to weaken. Their progress slowed, and then they struck lucky.

  Trung drove the lead truck forward into the gap they’d created, shoving aside the remaining foliage, and suddenly he stamped on the gas pedal. They thought he’d gone crazy when the truck surged forward but almost stopped when it jammed into a clump of young trees. He knew he wasn’t going to make it. He eased off the gas, backed up a bit, trod on the gas, selected low gear and dropped the clutch. The truck lurched forward, smashed into the trees, and this time it pushed through. Out into the open.

  They were on the edge of a large area of elephant grass, gently waving in the breeze. Trung drove a few meters further into the high grass, and his truck disappeared. Perfect camouflage, they couldn’t be seen from the air or on the ground, unless the observer was very close. Heller jumped into the cab and told him to keep going. The field of elephant grass stretched almost a kilometer to the east, a big chunk of the journey to the coast. Men jumped on the trucks, and they drove on.

  When they reached the other side, a long line of tall trees blocked them, but they drove for a short distance to the north and found a gap. A way through, and on the other side, yet another vast field of elephant grass. They drove through to the other side where they found yet more open territory, but it was a no-go. They’d reached a highway, close to a direction sign. He asked Trung to translate.

  “It’s the main highway, south to Nam Dinh and north to Haiphong. We must be close to the coastline, no more than five klicks.” He pointed to the north, “Look, sure I can see the tops of all cranes, it must be Haiphong docks.”

  “Shit, I was hoping to come up further south. Do you have any idea where we may find a boat?”

  “A boat? Haiphong.”

  He grimaced. “No, you don’t get it. We need somewhere quiet, somewhere we can find a fishing boat to take us out to sea.”

  “There is nowhere other than Haiphong. Sergeant Heller, you need to understand. This is North Vietnam, where they control the movements of every citizen. Harbors would be closely monitored and guarded. It’s my understanding they moved all small craft into a central location in Haiphong to make sure they’re not used by their citizens to escape.”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  One of the pilots, Captain Dave Edwards, had overheard, and he joined them. “He’s right. I’ve overflown this area many times, and the only fishing boats I’ve seen come and go from Haiphong.”

  They paused and stared into the distance. A ground mist had come up hiding the cranes sited inside the distant dockyard.

  “How far would you guess?”

  “Four klicks. Not far.”

  He didn’t reply. Around five klicks to the coast and four klicks to Haiphong. Not far, unless you were heading into the most heavily defended city in North Vietnam, with the sole exception of Hanoi. He strolled away, his mind in turmoil. After everything they’d been through, it was a bitter blow to come to this. They had no way to contact their people, with the sole exception of the flares. White to mark the target, green to request exfil. It’d sounded like a good idea at the time, but this close to the main port city of North Vietnam, calling for helicopters to pick them up would be tantamount to suicide.

  The alternative was to head south, find a remote area of coastline, and send up white smoke. It looked like the only route open to them, and he called them together to discuss it. Most agreed it was a plan, but not all.

  “Not gonna happen,” Colonel Anderson grunted, “Not on that stretch of coastline. They have a big military installation on the northern outskirts of Nam Dinh, close to the sea. Most of us have overflown it at various times and tangled with surface-to-air missiles from batteries stationed close to the shore. That stretch of coastline is an important part of their air defenses, and there’s no way our guys could risk sending in choppers to pick us up. I’m sorry, I haven’t been thinking straight. I should have mentioned it before. It’s just I didn’t expect to end up this far north. I thought we’d be further south, where we probably would find a stretch of coast we could use.”

  Several aircrew nodded in agreement.

  “The fuck you say!” Heller groaned, “Are you telling me we’ve come this far and now we’re screwed?”

  “Not screwed,” Anderson murmured apologetically, “I guess it’s my fault, and all we can do is work out something different.”

  “Except there is nothing else. Shit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Heller strolled away, needing to be alone to think it through.

  Why the hell didn’t they say something before we got this far?

  Even as he had that thought, he dismissed it. It wasn’t fair to blame these men. They’d been through a hard time, harder than he could imagine. It was down to him. They’d acknowledged he was in charge, supposed to be a Recon specialist. He’d got them this far, and he wasn’t about to give up now. They had no practical means of communication, no remote stretch of coastline where helicopters could land to take them off, so the only option that remained was to steal a boat.

  He walked back. Looked at Anderson, who was chatting with some of the pilots. “Haiphong it is.”

  They fell into silence. Staring at him like he was a green man who’d just landed from Mars. Vien joined him “I agree. How do we reach the docks?”

  “I’ve no idea, we’ll have to figure it out.”

  Several men chuckled, and one shouted, “The lady agrees with you, so why don’t you ask her?”

  She gave him a poisonous look and moved closer to Heller. “He’s there.”

  “Who?”

  “Quan. He must be there, where else would he be? We know he was in the camp, and we know he made a deal with the Communists. When the battle finished, we didn’t find him, so it’s certain they took him to a safe place, somewhere heavily defended. Haiphong is nearest.”

  “He could’ve been killed in the fighting.”

  She shook her head. “I checked before we left and looked at every corpse. He wasn’t among them. He must be here, in Haiphong.”

  “Vien, you could be right, but getting away from North Vietnam will be almost impossible, and you can forget finding your husband.”

  “You don’t understand. I must find him. He’s a traitor, selling out his country, and I want him dead.”

  He agreed with her. He suspected the freed prisoners who’d survived appalling treatment at the hands of the North Vietnamese, would feel the same way about one of their own who’d turned traitor. Except this was neither the time nor the place.

  “I’m sorry, but the answer is no. First, if he is in Haiphong, and it’s just a guess, it’s a big city and he could be anywhere. Second, if we’re lucky, really lucky, we may just reach the harbor and steal a boat. But the most likely outcome is they’ll find us, come at us with all guns blazing, and all we can do is fight until we’re all dead.”

  “You don’t think we can make it?”

  “It’s doubtful.”

  She nodded. “I don’t plan to die in this shithole, so Quan can go on the back burner. But if we get away, I want you to promise me one thing. If you get the opportunity, you’ll put a bullet in him.” He hesitated, and she went on, “Do this for me, and I can help us reach the docks.”

  “How?”

  “First, I need your promise. Yes or no?”

  “You have something in mind?”

  “Yes.”

  He thought about it for a few seconds, but what did he have to lose? If she was on the level, he had no issues with putting a bullet in Quan. If she wasn’t on the level, they’d probably die anyway. “It’s a deal. So tell me.”

  “When I was young, I had an affair with a man who was an avowed Communist. He hated the Saigon regime, and when our relationship broke up, he traveled to the North. Since then, I’ve been able to communicate with him, exchanging messages through the British Embassy in Saigon and the British Consulate based in Haiphong.”

  “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought about him several times, but I didn’t expect to get so close to Haiphong, so there’d be no need to make contact with him. If you’re talking about getting into the city docks, he’d be the man to help us.”

  “Why? Because he happens to be the harbormaster.”

  “Jesus Christ! And you think he’ll help us?”

  “I know he will. Just before I married Quan, he got a message through to me and said he’d do anything if I agreed for us to get back together. Said he’d pass on information about the movement of ships and cargoes, information that would be useful to the Saigon government. I still have a copy of that letter at home. If I threatened to make it public, you can imagine what they’d do to him.”

  “I can imagine. Okay, where do we go from here?”

  “I will go into the city and talk with him. See what he can do to help us get away.”

  He was dubious about her chances of success. More likely this guy would slit her throat to silence her when he realized his life hung in the balance, but who knew how he would react? They rejoined the others, and he outlined what she’d said. The bit about contacting her former lover. Not the other bit, about the deal he’d made. He didn’t want to complicate anything by telling them he’d become a hitman.

  Dao said he’d go with her. He still wore ARVN uniform, but they’d discovered stained, ragged peasant clothing behind the driver’s seat of one of the trucks. It looked like they’d used the stuff to wipe down an oily engine. He stripped off and pulled on the duds. Instantly, he’d become a typical Vietnamese poverty-stricken peasant. And along with Vien’s native clothes, by now ragged and torn after what they’d been through, they looked more than convincing.

  Most of the men were uneasy about trusting the two Viets, but they didn’t have too many choices. They left at dawn, stepping out onto the highway. Before they’d gone more than a few meters, an overloaded bullock cart slowed, and an elderly man shouted down to them, offering them a ride. They jumped on top of the sacks of rice. It took an hour before the slow-moving cart was out of sight, but who would believe an enemy with fighter planes and tanks would infiltrate the city in such a way?

  Even after the cart had vanished, he continued watching, just in case something went wrong and they came sprinting back along the road, but they didn’t return. All they could do was wait. They pulled back into the adjacent field of elephant grass, made themselves comfortable, and settled down to wait. Not knowing how long they’d be there, but the wait was likely to be long.

  * * *

  Commissar General Khiem was desperate. If the escapers had headed for the coast, there was only one route they could’ve taken. Yet when they were within sight of Haiphong, there was no sign of them, and even worse, no tracks. Rain fell intermittently, and the path of the trucks should’ve been easy to follow. They found no tracks.

  He decided to head for Haiphong where he could take advantage of powerful communications equipment to alert every town, every People’s Army facility, and every missile battery along the coastline. It would mean his superiors learning of the escape before he had time to put forward a plausible explanation and offer Lieutenant Lam as a scapegoat. If he held back, and his failure to act allowed them to escape, the outcome would be terminal.

  * * *

  Night had fallen by the time they reached the city, and they had to find a place to sleep. Hanoi had passed a law making it a crime for people to spend the night other than in their registered place of residence. They had no registered place of residence, and with no alternative, they found a bombed-out warehouse, with sufficient of the roof remaining to shelter them from the worst of the elements.

  After spending a cold, damp night at the mercy of wind that brought rain seeping in from outside, they set out to find the man they’d come to see, Lin Van Tran. Vien went directly to his home, only to find he’d gone. When she knew him, he’d been single, orphaned by the bombing, and living in the single-story villa that belonged to his parents when they were alive. The villa hadn’t escaped the bombing, not entirely. One wall had disappeared, replaced with a temporary timber and tar paper construction. The rest of the dwelling was intact. The new occupants, a family with a gaggle of young children, were unfamiliar to her.

  “He’s an important man now,” the woman told her proudly, “The Party appointed him to manage the docks at Haiphong, and he has a big house near the harbor.”

  She gave directions to the house, and Vien walked away. Though not before the oldest child, a boy who looked around twelve-years-old, prevented her from leaving by standing in front of her with his rifle leveled. His face screwed up in a rictus of hatred, he told her his job was to round up enemy spies, and said he believed she was a spy. The rifle was roughly carved from a plank of timber that looked like it’d once been one of the roof supports of a damaged house. The mother called him back, and she left, rejoined Dao, and they started walking in the direction of the docks. It wasn’t difficult to follow the route, not with cranes dotting the skyline, and ten minutes later they reached their destination, a French colonial-style house overlooking the water.

  For the first time she felt doubt. She looked at her brother. “He may not be home.”

  “Why don’t you knock at the door and find out?”

  “Yes, yes, I will do that. You’d better stay out of sight until I know how things stand.”

  He walked away while she approached the imposing main entrance and knocked on the door. It opened after several seconds, and she was staring at a woman of similar age to herself.

  “Yes? What do you want?”

  “Lin Van Tran, I understand he lives here now.”

  “Yes. What do you want with him?”

  “I…uh… have a message for him. You’re the maid?”

  “I’m his wife. Give me the message, and I’ll see that he gets it.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll wait until he gets back. When would that be?”

  The woman looked like she was getting suspicious. “I don’t know that it’s any of your business, but I’m expecting him in about one hour.”

  She put on a bright smile. “I’ll call back later.” She started to leave.

  “Wait!”

  She looked back, “Who are you?”

  “Nguyen Anh Vien.” The moment she said it, she knew she’d regret it.

  She was right. “Nguyen Anh Vien. I remember you. Tran mentioned you once. Said he used to know you. Her expression darkened, the suspicion replaced by certainty and accusation, “You’re from Saigon. You’re a spy!”

  “No, no!”

  “I’m calling the security police.”

  Vien didn’t wait to hear more. She ran back onto the street, and Dao joined her. They fled until they were far enough away, and they looked for somewhere to hide out. Somewhere they could spend the night away from the searching gaze of the security police who would soon be trawling the streets, looking for them. They found what they wanted near the docks, the partly concealed entrance to the basement of a destroyed house. They descended into the dark space, and to their relief, found it was empty. Dao climbed back up the stairs and disguised the entrance with a splintered door.

  He rejoined his sister, and they did their best to make themselves comfortable, piling old, broken furniture, and cardboard boxes filled with discarded household items. Including a bundle of threadbare blankets. It was the best they could do, and as darkness descended, they settled down to try to rest. Sleep didn’t come easily. They were very cold and conscious that the security police could discover them at any moment. There were also loud explosions. Operation Linebacker meant high-flying B-52s were unloading their ordnance over the city docks and communications centers. The noise of exploding bombs was shattering, punctuated by the ‘whoosh’ of surface-to-air missiles soaring into the sky. The wail of air raid warnings, sirens of emergency vehicles, fire appliances and ambulances racing just a few meters past the building where they hid.

  In the early hours of the morning, Dao asked her if she could sleep. She told him no.