Jake Fonko M.I.A. (11 page)

So far, so good, but I had a problem. Fort Benning Ranger School trained me in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, and I’d graduated with honors; but that was for out in the field—jungles, swamps, deserts and mountains. They taught us nothing about operating in a deserted city held by hostiles, probably because nobody dreamed we’d ever face that situation. What the Khmer Rouge had done today—herd everybody in Phnom Penh straightaway out into the countryside—had no precedent in modern warfare.

I had to assume the Khmer Rouge knew jungle fighting at least as well as I did—they’d been at it non-stop for years, and more to the point, they’d won. On the other hand, few of them had ever seen a city before, so I’d have at least that edge on them. Phnom Penh was big—no shortage of places to hole up. In my roamings over the past three weeks, I’d gathered some idea what was where. Though had I foreseen the situation I’d be facing, I’d have scouted it with different eyes.

I’d have to lay low in the daytime and move around at night. It’s easier in the jungle to stay hidden than it is in a city, where you eventually have to cross streets. City blocks afford little enough cover, and daylight movement from one to another across the broad avenues of Phnom Penh without being seen would be impossible. I now better appreciated why anti-Nazi resistance fighters in European cities hung out in sewers during World War II. Just my luck to be stuck in a town whose drainage system would have me crawling at street level through knee-deep toilet flushings.

Night movement in a city was difficult and dangerous enough, even for an ex-LRRP. I worked my way around the international district, slowly and silently, keeping to cover and shadows, and avoiding tripping over the bodies and other debris littering the street. I picked up lights and noise coming from the French embassy grounds, the only sign of life in the area. I slipped across to the other side of Monivong Boulevard where a group of abandoned cars afforded some concealment. From there I made it to the park behind the compound, where I could lurk among the trees. The compound, a rectangle about 200 yards on a side, looked overbooked. The KRs must have rounded up all the foreigners in the city and herded them in there. No point trying to get a closer look, as they’d have a heavy guard around the place. It was risky just being in the vicinity, so I carefully retreated to safer ground.

Such desolation in the middle of a city unnerved me. You can drive though most Los Angeles suburbs at night without seeing anybody on the street, but at least you sense that people live there. Save for a couple foot patrols, occasional military vehicles careering through, and random groans, sobs and cries in the darkness, Phnom Penh was a cemetery. I couldn’t hole up at Hotel Phnom, I concluded; some unit would commandeer it for an HQ. And if not that, it would be stripped by looters at first opportunity. I needed more discreet digs. Reconnoitering in the Chinese district on the river side of Norodom Boulevard turned up a stationery and art goods shop with family quarters above. Sketching pictures would be the last thing on the minds of a conquering army of peasant jungle fighters. Three provision stores on the same block held out a chance of extra food. It would have to do. I made my way back to the Phnom, retrieved my gear, moved into my new digs and hit the rack, a hard straw mat designed for people a foot shorter than I.

An exploding rocket awoke me late the next morning. Standing back from the window opening, I peeked outside through the shutters. A clutch of cadres had taken the direct approach to unlocking the steel shutters of a jewelry store down the street. Other teams of looters were busy nearby. Just like any other conquering army—the Khmer Rouge went about it more quietly and methodically, was the only difference. I stood there, still, for ten minutes, carefully monitoring activity on the street. I didn’t dare step from that shophouse. Even moving around inside it posed danger, as any sound or motion might catch the attention of combat-sharpened ears or eyes outside.

All in all, the outlook wasn’t exactly promising. I’d thought I’d be able operate for a while in Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge took over by getting local clothes and haircut and melting into the crowd. The KRs scotched Plan A by rousting the crowd out of town. A lot of good those assets of Sonarr’s did me now. Plan B? The simplest option was to walk up to the French embassy waving a white flag. Another possibility was hooking up with Grotesqcu, assuming he was on the loose. But how would I contact him? And what good would that do anyhow?

The day passed slowly. I’d never before been inside an actual family dwelling in any country besides the U.S.. I noiselessly rummaged through it out of curiosity. Until yesterday it had been home to six people: husband and wife; a younger daughter; two sons, the older boy about high-school age; and an elderly woman, grandma, I guessed. They’d apparently been moderately prosperous by local standards, which meant a piss-poor living for an American. Just about everything had been left behind—clothing, utensils, school books, toys, trinkets and bric-a-brac; but little among it would do me any good just then. Too bad for them, too bad for me.

Throughout the day I weighed and re-weighed my options. Surrender? Try to make a run for it overland, with the nearest friendly territory a hundred miles away, every road clogged with terrified evacuees, and the place crawling with murderous Commies? Paddle sixty miles down the Mekong River, dodging shore observers and patrol boats? Winning ideas temporarily eluded me, it seemed.

After night came I went foraging in the nearby provision shops for something to eat. I wanted to keep my lurp meals going as long as possible, and most of the food left in the shophouse—rice, noodles, dried vegetables—required cooking, which I wasn’t going to risk. I found slim pickings—famished cadres had already made a sweep. As I gathered some cans from the shelves in the rear of a darkened shop I heard noises. A party of KRs was coming, shining a flashlight into the shops along the block. I eased to the floor and slid under a desk. They raked the spot of light through the shop, jabbered among themselves, then came in and gathered up as much of what still remained as they could carry. One seemed to be looking for something on the shelves where I’d just been. He jabbered at the others, and they at him, and then they all left.

Clearly, I couldn’t play cat-and-mouse with the Khmer Rouge forever. It was their town, I was trapped in it, and it was only a matter of time before I made some fatal slip. I’d nearly done it just then. No way 
they
 could lose that game. I stayed curled up under that desk for well over an hour, until I was sure they’d left for good. Then I slunk back to my lair and sat down to eat my booty. Foraging in the dark, I had no idea what I’d picked up—not Ex-Lax, I hoped. It was edible but vile-tasting, even by Asian standards: no mystery why it was still in the shop. I chowed it down, with gratitude. First rule of guerilla warfare: eat any food available, when available. Nothing came out of the tap over the sink. The tank above the toilet held some water, and it didn’t smell too bad. I dipped it out, purified it and drank it. I climbed up and cracked the intake valve: nothing came. The city water system was kaput. I’d have to hunt up a fresh toilet tank soon—more risk. I hid all my gear but the combat knife downstairs in the shop, so that they wouldn’t catch me and it together. I rigged a trip wire to make a little noise upstairs if somebody came nosing around. I cleared an escape route out the back window, to give me a chance of slipping down to the alley before intruders could make it up the stairs.

I held out for four more days as a one-man forlorn hope. During daylight hours I lay low in the shuttered-up flat, catching what sleep I could in the stale, still heat. I emerged after dark to scour the deserted district in widening circles, scrounging increasingly hard-to-find food from abandoned flats and provisioner’s shops and filling my water bottle from increasingly fetid toilet tanks, aquariums and dragon urns. I was using so many iodine tablets that I was beginning to get used to the taste. I skulked in the shadows of empty buildings and burnt-out ruins, crept through rubble-strewn garden plots and crawled along monsoon drains, scattering rats and roaches before me. I lurked behind pillars and posts and trash piles and bushes. I dodged Khmer Rouge fighters through arcades and alleyways. I burgled into shops and homes with silent stealth. I could feel my destiny taking shape. When I got back to the army, I would devote myself to organizing the Urban Reconnaissance Patrols: Yes, General Jake Fonko, URP Commander! Hell, it might be a good idea. From what I’d heard about the way Third World cities were filling up with desperate fugitives from poverty, our military would have to deal with that kind of action soon or later.

I began seriously to consider hanging it up. Given the state of things in Phnom Penh, I saw no way to continue looking for Driffter, if it was even a serious assignment in the first place. I’d never received further instructions, and those assets Sonarr promised had never shown up. I hate to be a quitter, but how long do you back a losing proposition? Plus, with no water for flushing the toilet, my pad was getting pretty disgusting. It would be easy enough. All I had to do was ditch everything but my passport and papers, rig up a white flag and amble over to the French Embassy bright and early the next morning with my hands in the air. I was just a harmless rice advisor attached to the AID mission, after all—my papers proved that. I’d explain to the Khmer Rouge that I’d been out of town on a rice paddy inspection or something. Hey, where is everybody? They had to ship the westerners out eventually. It might be my last ticket to civilization. The Embassy compound, a mire of filth and squalor by now, began to take on a certain appeal. But first, I just wanted to hit the rack. I was fatigued from heat, tension, bad food and boredom. Sarge’s water tablets notwithstanding, diarrhea had caught up with me. I’d think about it tomorrow.

I never had to make a decision on the matter, because during the night I had visitors. As I lay tossing on my straw mat all the cute little Vietnamese file clerks and typists at the Saigon Embassy trooped in. They had decided that I must choose one of them to take back home with me. They stripped off all their clothes and sinuously danced around me, chirping away in those little sing-songy voices. Then Dana Wehrli arrived in her black string bikini, her lustrous blonde ponytail caressing her back between those creamy, tanned shoulder blades. A lusty smile lighting her face, she pushed her way through the others and, ignoring their scolding, started planting hard kisses on my cheeks. Then I woke up. Morning sun was filtering in through the window shutters. Four teen-aged Khmer Rouge punks in black pajamas and Chinese caps stood beside my bed, animatedly discussing my case while one of them tentatively prodded at my face with the muzzle of his assault rifle. He had two gold watches strapped on each wrist.

5

What can you
do in a case like that, but smile? Flashing those guys the most obsequious, shit-eating grin I could muster, I slowly and deliberately rolled over flat on my back. I lifted my hands up from the mat, rotating them this way and that to show they were absolutely empty, nothing up my sleeves (no sleeves—I slept in my skivvies). My combat knife nestled under the straw mat, useless in the circumstances, and best left to be retrieved later. So far, so good. At least they didn’t grease me right then and there.

I felt mortified. How could they get in like that? Had five days of hunger, thirst, isolation, uncertainty and tension taken that much out of me? My trip-wire alarm should have given me plenty of time to slip out the window into the back alleyway, not that it necessarily would have done any good. If they knew their stuff at all, they’d have the rear of the building covered.

They spoke no English, but we had no problems communicating. Hand signs, jabbering and gun-barrel gestures amply conveyed that I should put some clothes on. I carefully donned my pants and shirt—no false moves, see, guys?—but as I reached for my shoes and socks, one of the boys snatched them away. Very impolite to affect running shoes, I suppose, when my guests sported battered Ho Chi Minh sandals—cut from worn truck tire tread, held to the feet by dusty leather thongs. One of them bound my arms behind my back with his checkered scarf, then pushed me toward the stairs. Two went ahead and two followed, one dangling my shoes by the laces. So far they’d been fairly respectful, almost polite. Probably, I was the first white man they’d ever seen up so close. Even with my average American build, I came close to outweighing any two of them. Maybe they weren’t sure what to make of the night-black still covering my face and hands.

As we passed through the downstairs shop front I saw they’d disconnected my tripwire and laid it aside. That explained why I slept on as I did, and I felt a little better. They’d rigged up their share of tripwires out in the jungle, no doubt, probably cleverer ones than mine. Out of the corner of my eye I noted that the spot where I’d hid my gear hadn’t been disturbed. Good—I’d know where to find it, should I get out of this. With any luck it would still be there then.

I hoped maybe they’d take me to the French Embassy with all the foreigners, but they had other orders. They shouted up some other cadres from out back, clumsily climbed aboard the bicycles they’d recently liberated, rifles slung over their shoulders, and proceeded to march me barefooted through the streets. Only a couple of them had yet mastered the art of bicycle-riding, so I witnessed a lot of wobbling and near-collisions. Several times an errant front wheel or handlebar grazed me, the riders always making polite, wide-smile apologies. They met some buddies coming the other way and stopped to compare notes. The others had been out looting a radio shop that morning and were eager to deal for gold watches, which my guys had in quantity. Watches, radios and bicycles—they’d reached the peasant pinnacle of success already, and they hadn’t been in town even a week.

The bonds on my arms weren’t really very tight. I figured that, if I could just get the lot of them to fall asleep for about ten minutes next to an American chopper all warmed up for take off, why, I’d be outta there. As it was, tightly tied or not, I saw no chance of escape. The sun was up and burning, making the dirt/gravel roadway as hot for walking barefooted as August beach sand. They escorted me on a leisurely march of a mile or so through town, several trying out their new radios as we went but finding only silence—batteries not included. The stink of rotting dead people perfumed the city air, not surprising, considering the number of corpses lying around in the tropical heat. Trash and discarded belongings were strewn everywhere, the sorry wake of the exodus, and nobody left in town to clean up after.

We arrived at a cluster of concrete buildings, some kind of school, it looked like. Several bunches of cadres stood around guarding prisoners they’d brought in. I was the only westerner, and they hustled me straight to the front of the queue in the smallest building of the four. Check-in procedures were efficient. A black-pajama’d clerk took down into a ledger their version of my capture. He didn’t bother to ask mine. Then he picked up a camera, stood me against a blank wall and solemnly snapped a mug shot, looking doubtful about my blackface appearance. Like my captors, he sported multiple gold watches. Judging from the number of ledger pages filled with entries already made, I was among their first customers. Formalities out of the way, they took me to an empty room in one of the three-story buildings, tied my arms a little more securely, bound my ankles, shoved me in and locked the door.

The room was small, windowless and unventilated, with a cement floor. It smelled like mildewed floor mops. Had been some kind of storage closet, I guessed. The only light was what snuck under the door. I’d had nothing to eat nor drink since around midnight. I was still working my way through that bout of diarrhea, which the pills from Sarge’s first aid kit hadn’t quite quelled. Not what you’d call the right way to start the day.

Evasion hadn’t worked. Escape was untenable—even if I succeeded in busting out of this place, where would I go then? Resistance? I’d do my best, but for the time being, Survival was the immediate objective. I caught what Z’s I could, tried my hand at meditation, did isometric exercises, thought good thoughts and strove to maintain a positive mental outlook. Hey, was my situation really so bad? I could think of lots of ways things could be worse, and two of them weren’t even totally implausible.

I started off trying to keep count of the periods of light and darkness. But it wasn’t long before I lost track of time—was it two days or three, and was I counting the first one or not? Had I slept between two periods of daylight, or was it still the same one? Did they leave lights on for part of the night? And what difference anyhow? You can only get so hungry, so thirsty, so rank and so numb, before it all seems the same. Day and night I could hear groans, sobs and screaming. I was beginning to worry. You can subsist with no food for quite a while, but several days without water means certain death, and diarrhea dehydrates you quickly.

After two days, at least, they decided I’d been sufficiently tenderized. The door was flung open suddenly. My cell must have become aromatic, judging from the way the first man in took a giant step back out. They left the door open wide so the air could circulate for a couple minutes, then put a dish of water down on the floor for me. I was supposed to lap up it like a dog. Gladly. They put a little ball of rice on the floor beside the dish. Yum.

It was the same squad that picked me up. Two kept me covered with their AK-47s while another deftly untied my ankles, steadfastly holding his breath so as to avoid confronting the evidence of my diarrhea. The other three stood by in the hallway. The cord they’d used hadn’t been tourniquet tight: even so, agony hit as my blood resumed normal circulation. They hoisted me to my feet and hobbled me to another building. Did it feel great to breathe fresh air—even the rank, humid, evil-smelling air of Phnom Penh. They led me to a room considerably larger than my holding cell, well-lit, with an old, cheap desk and a chair sitting center stage. School desks had been shoved over and stacked neatly against a wall, partially barricading a well-used chalkboard. They steered me to the far wall from the door and rebound my ankles. One tossed a line over a ceiling pipe, anchored an end on a ring screwed into the baseboard and hitched my arms up behind me with the other. Then they squatted down along the wall near the door, jabbering and exchanging expectant looks, their rifles laid out on the floor before them. They politely returned my hopefully-ingratiating smiles, although I don’t think any of them approved of the way I smelled.

The Khmer Rouge had put a former classroom to a different use, and I wasn’t looking forward to the day’s lessons. A slender but muscular-looking teenaged girl strode regally into the room. She must have been waiting until I was properly prepared for her entrance. She looked Chinese, not Cambodian. Her face was a little broader and flatter, with slightly less pronounced cheekbones, than the locals. She had skin like Bailey’s Irish Cream and dark, almond-shaped eyes with slight folds. Her black hair was drawn straight back into a tight bun, wrapped in a red cloth. Her black pajamas were less tattered than the boys’. Their deference indicated she was their leader. She clutched a two-foot length of black rubber hose in her delicate little hand.

She walked directly to me and slowly and deliberately looked me over with contemptuous disgust. She neither smiled nor blinked, and her expression gave nothing away. Whack! Without warning, that hose flicked upside my face. “Who you?” she demanded. “Tell truth! Don’t lie!”

It caught me by surprise. The boys, I could see, were greatly amused, grinning at one another and leaning forward to catch the fun. I didn’t know what to say, except that “covert CIA agent” was definitely not it. Spwank! I didn’t speak up fast enough and got the hose on the other side of my face. “Where from? Why hands and face all black? Tell truth!” Thwock! She gave me a roundhouse kick in the neck, rocking me nearly off balance. “Why hiding in shophouse? Lie and you die!!”

We stared at one another, she with steely contempt and me with what I hoped was an expression combining dignity and courageous determination with a heart-melting plea for mercy. “No talk, eh?” she said. “No want live? Okay okay.” She motioned one of the boys over and had him aim his AK-47 at my right eye. Staring up that gun muzzle from so close, it struck me as amazing how instant death could come roaring out of a hole that tiny. My fear-sharpened eyes took in dark-brownish spots, streaks and patches on the floor and the walls. Yes, I could see how the room might have collected a bloodstain or two.

No doubt about it, it was Grovel Time! Talk fast or forever rest in peace. But stay close to the truth. I couldn’t be American, so I must be…Yugoslavian! Just another Commie brother, they could dig it. Right. Why in Cambodia? As a rice advisor, of course… okay, it’ll have to do… now get into the part, Jake, what’s my motivation?

Jesus Christ, get real—live one minute longer, 
that’s
 my motivation! “Pliz, pliz, no hit, no hit,” I burst out with a sob. “Am innocent! No hit! Am friend of the pipples! No more hit!”

Smack! The hose again. “Don’t lie! Ha, friend of people! Ha! Who you? Who?”

“Yugoslavian!” I cried. “I am Yugoslavian. Advisor. Rice. I come from Yugoslavia to advise the pipples about rice!” Were tears streaming down my face? Damn, I wished I’d learned that trick back in my acting days.

“Ha! Yugoslavian! What Yugoslavians know about rice? You lie!”

“Much rice in Yugoslavia. Beautiful rice in Yugoslavia. River delta all rice paddies. I come to help Cambodian pipples grow rice. Got lost. Comrades cannot find. Hungry. Nowhere go. Hide in little shop. Thank goodness boys find me! Thank you, thank you! Pliz, no more hit! I can help Cambodian pipples!”

“What river? What capital city in Yugoslavia?”

Oh oh. What had I gotten myself into? But hesitating would be worse than being wrong. “Yugo River!” I declared. “Beautiful river! Like Mekong! Lots boats! Very lovely! Capital city is Smirnoff! Smirnoff, Yugoslavia! Beautiful city! Like Phnom Penh! Great city! Lovely pipples! I can help pipples!”

Whap! The hose again, this time a crisp backhand on the upswing. “Why black on hands and face? Don’t lie!”

“From field inspection. Black from test soil. No time to wash. Water no come. No water for wash soil off. Testing for rice! Lovely soil! Good for rice! Grow much rice crop! I am innocent! Pliz, no hit!” What a performance. If Eddie Lipschitz’s uncle could have seen it, he’d have advanced me a pay grade and hired me out for speaking parts. The girl kept up the barrage of questions, and the tattoo of kicks and blows, for it seemed like an hour. I gave her answers as fast as I could dream them up, trying to stay consistent. Finally she got tired, or more likely bored, and had them haul me back to my cell. Apparently I’d passed the entrance exam, because they gave me another dish of water and another little rice ball. Except for my hands and feet being bound, it was almost the lap of luxury.

The next two days saw the same routine—periodic interrogations by the girl, with rubber hose and roundhouse kicks to motivate me. Every now and then she’d have them haul my arms up higher behind me for a while. For variety she’d go after my kidneys or the soles of my bare feet with her hose. She’d grab me by the hair, hold my head back and make mocking speeches to the cadres. For laughs she’d tweak my nose or tug my ears out, Dumbo-like. Humiliate the foreign devil—more fun than WrestleMania. The cadres ate it up. The water and rice balls were keeping me alive, barely. We didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Same hose. Same kicks. Same questions. Same answers. I was going to have to visit Yugoslavia some day, to see what it was really like. Apparently what had saved me so far was, she didn’t know either.

The fourth day opened with a different format. Instead of the hose, she made her entrance carrying a combat knife, similar to the one I’d packed along, mean-and-ugly looking. The boys had strung me up, as usual, and now squatted with their assault rifles in their customary row along the wall. When they saw that knife, their eyes widened. She eyeballed me carefully, then smirked. Turning to the boys, she jabbered something. They got up, looking disappointed, and reluctantly hoisted their rifles and filed out, closing the door behind them. So there I was, on my knees, hands and feet tied, arms hitched hell high up behind me, at the mercy of a knife-toting jungle fighter in a Khmer Rouge torture chamber—what a tale to tell my grandchildren. My Ranger training instructors had told us there’d be days like this. I wondered what slip I’d made the day before. Things had been going so well. I thought I’d even seen a smile or two flicker across that stone face. Well, who knows what to make of Asian smiles?

She crouched down close, that evil knife clutched in her little fist, a few inches from my eye. Or my ear? Or some private appendage I’d always held in high esteem? It was closer than comfortable to every precious anatomical item I could think of. “Pliz, pliz!” I implored her, a pitiful sob coming genuinely from the heart. “I am innocent! Only want help the pipples!” I started bidding my favorite body parts a fond farewell.