Saigon (75 page)

By chance Guy Sherman was standing at one of the windows in the CIA duty officer’s room on the fifth floor of the embassy, and although his view was restricted by the rocket screens, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the unlit vehicles as they cruised eastward along Mac Dinh Chi. A moment later the truck and the taxi passed out of sight beneath the level of the embassy’s ten-foot wall, but the fact that they showed no lights immediately aroused his suspicion. Snatching the duty officer’s Beretta submachine gun from its rack, he ran out to the bank of elevators on the fifth floor landing and pressed to go down to the ground. 

He was still inside the elevator on his way to the lobby when the four guerrillas in the little Renault poked their automatic rifles through its open windows and fired at the two American military policemen on sentry duty at the side entrance of the embassy in Mac Dinh Chi. They were not hit, but the shots drove them inside and they barred the tall steel gates. The truck and the taxi then swung into Thong Nhut Boulevard, which ran in front of the embassy’s shuttered main entrance. The four South Vietnamese policemen standing formal guard in little windowed kiosks built into the high wall fled for cover at the sound of the first shot, and seeing this, young Kiet jumped lightly to the ground clutching a fifteen-pound charge of C-4 plastic explosive against his belly. He had been chosen for the task of blowing the first vital breech in the embassy wall because of the quick-fingered skill he had demonstrated in bomb-making training; he was also light on his feet and a fast runner, and he sped to a pre-selected spot a few yards from the junction of Thong Nhut Boulevard and Mac Dinh Chi. Although his fingers trembled a little, he set the ten-second fuse at the foot of the wall without difficulty, then dashed back to take cover with the other guerrillas behind the Peugeot truck. 

The roar of the explosion shook the Chancery building, and Guy felt the blast rock his elevator in its shaft. Before the dust of the detonation had settled, the squat Vietnamese commanding the guerrilla platoon blew a loud blast on his whistle and led his force through the gaping hole in the wall at a run. Twenty-five yards away the two military policemen guarding the side gate were quick to recover from the shock of the explosion. Falling debris was still raining clown around them when they opened fire with their machine pistols on the Vietnamese pouring through the hole in the wall; they saw one or two stumble and fall, but the other guerrillas flung themselves to the ground and began laying down a barrage of withering fire in their direction. One of the MPs was killed instantly, but the other scrambled for the guard post radio and yelled over and over into the transmitter: 

“They’re coming in! They’re coming in! We need help!” 

But a few seconds later the radio went dead as a hail of gunfire riddled the guard post. The second MP was hit in the head and chest, and the C-to commandos began lugging their rockets and bazookas unmolested across the compound towards positions where they could attack the front door of the Chancery from close range. 

Inside the embassy, Guy stepped out of the elevator into the ground floor lobby in time t6 see a United States Marine sergeant dashing towards the open front entrance. It took him a second or two to swing the massive teak doors shut, and before he had finished shooting home the bolts, the glass of the barred windows beside the door was being shattered by repeated bursts of automatic rifle fire. The CIA man ran bent double to the sergeant’s side and fired a rapid burst from the Beretta through the broken window; then he ducked down beneath the sill. “Sergeant, go and grab some weapons from the armory,” he yelled above the rattle of the incoming fire. “We’ve got to make those bastards out on the lawn think there’s a whole army in here.” 

As the Marine dashed away towards the armory, Guy heard the Marine corporal manning the switchboard of the guard post telephoning frantically for help. Inside the beleaguered Chancery building at that moment, he knew there were fewer than a dozen Americans. In addition to the two Marines in the lobby, there was another Marine sergeant at a guard post on the roof, four code and communication clerks on upper floors and a duty Foreign Service officer — that night a junior diplomat new to Saigon — who had a room on the fourth floor. To defend themselves they possessed between them only a few .38 pistols, one or two 12-gauge shotguns and half-a-dozen Italian submachine guns. 

Outside on the lawn, young Kiet was helping to sight the first bazooka that had been maneuvered into position. The lights above the closed entrance were still on, and he and the two other gunners decided to aim their first missile at the eagle in the center of the Great Seal of the United States that was mounted in a thick slab of glazed granite beside the door. It was an easy target at close range, and they yelled delightedly as the rocket smashed through the center of the circular plaque. The other guerrillas had already taken up positions on the lawn behind big earth- filled concrete tubs ten or twelve feet in diameter that contained flowers; there they set up their rocket launchers and bazookas, and one by one began firing at the facade Of the Chancery. 

The first rocket that smashed the Great Seal passed through the wall behind it and detonated in the ceiling above the Marine guard post. The corporal trying to call for help was badly wounded by fragments of burning metal, and the blast wrecked his communications radios, cutting contact with other Marine units in Saigon and the sergeant on the roof. Guy, shocked by the deafening explosion, rose unsteadily from his crouched position by one of the front windows and backed away, hugging the wall, but before he’d got very far, a second rocket punched through the teak doors to detonate deafeningly against the rear wall of the Chancery. A few seconds later, a third burst through a wall high up, and Guy flung himself full length on the floor behind a pillar at the rear of the lobby. 

Behind the desk of the guard post, the Marine sergeant who had returned from the armory with an armful of weapons was trying to administer first-aid to the wounded corporal; when he saw this, Guy rose and ran to his side. Turning to face the splintered front doors, he leveled the Beretta in their direction and waited, certain that the rocket barrage would be followed by an attempt to storm into the Chancery. 

As the CIA officer crouched facing the doors, expecting the worst, the news that the Viet Cong had attacked and captured a vital acre of sovereign American territory in the heart of Saigon was shocking United States military commanders and diplomats from their beds all over the city. As they stumbled into their clothes, other reports began streaming in by telephone and radio indicating that coordinated surprise attacks were being launched against all major cities; in the middle of the night of January s, 1968, South Vietnam was suddenly ablaze from end to end. Stunned foreign correspondents of the international wire services, newspapers and television tumbled from their beds to find that the puzzling conflict which they had previously been forced to search for deep in the jungles and mountains had come right to their doorsteps. One by one they discovered that only a few blocks from their hotels and apartments, the most sensational engagement of the whole war was just beginning; as the minutes passed they began to realize that the battle would probably be the first one of the conflict which they could make comprehensible to Americans at home. 

They dashed to the scene to see for themselves, they telephoned and spoke to bewildered Americans on the upper floors of the besieged Chancery, and throughout the long night they cabled, telephoned and telexed their running stories in snatches to New York, London and Paris and thence to tens of thousands of radio and television stations and newspapers around the world; and the world watched, listened and read with fascination of this latest development in the unequal David-and-Goliath conflict in Vietnam; they could scarcely believe that a small band of Communist guerrillas had seized the symbolic headquarters of the strongest military nation on earth and was resisting all efforts to recapture it. 

But although Guy and the unwounded Marine guard waited anxiously minute by minute in the front lobby of the embassy for the final invasion assault, it didn’t come. Unknown to them, the guerrillas had lost their leader in the first seconds of the raid as they plunged through the wall; he had been killed in the initial exchange of fire by one of the two American MPs on gate duty, and as a result, the leaderless platoon remained dug in indecisively around the protective flower tubs, content to fire their rocket launchers and machine guns intermittently at the embassy and at any Americans who appeared on rooftops in the streets outside. A Military Police unit sent to raise the siege from outside found both gates locked and was driven back by fire from the guerrillas when it tried to break the side gate open. ‘Their commanding officer decided not to risk his men by attempting an attack over the wall in the darkness, and they failed to find the hole that the Viet Cong guerrillas had blown in the brickwork. So like the rest of the U.S. command, they spent the night wondering how the Viet Cong had got into the compound with their weapons and then locked two sets of gates behind them. 

As the night wore on, the battle became more confused, and when it was decided that no U.S. defense units would try to enter the compound until daylight, troops were deployed in strength on surrounding rooftops. By the light of flares they poured fire onto the guerrillas, pinning them down and preventing any outright invasion of the main building. helicopters were called in to try to land on the Chancery roof, but the Viet Cong were able to drive them off, firing from inside the protection of the concrete flower tubs which they had emptied of their earth. 

Because the first rocket smashed the Marine guard post’s communications equipment in the front lobby, even the Americans trapped on the upper floors of the building didn’t know what was going on below, and they spent the night waiting for their doors to burst open and admit Viet Cong commandos come to kill them. The duty foreign service officer retreated to the code room with a .38 pistol, where he was able to conduct direct telephone conversations with his State Department Superiors in Washington without knowing whether the next minute might be his last. 

After waiting for nearly an hour to repel an attack through the front door that never came, Guy Left the lobby and hurried back to his office on the fifth floor. He listened to the shortwave world news broadcasts from the BBC and the Voice of America and spent most of the next hour on the telephone trying to piece together an accurate assessment of the assault force’s strength. A senior military intelligence officer at “Pentagon East,” the Tan Son Nhut headquarters of General Westmoreland which was itself under attack by four Viet Cong battalions, told him that from the rooftops in Thong Nhut Boulevard, ten or a dozen bodies could be seen stretched out around the flower beds, apparently dead. A handful of guerrillas were still visible flitting among the concrete tubs returning fire, he told Guy. “The survivors seem determined to resist until the bitter end — but our guess is that no more than a platoon’s involved. It’s just a pip- squeak operation compared to what’s going on in Hue, Da Nang and every other goddamned place.” 

“Okay,” replied Guy impatiently, “so tell me why the hell you’re not sending anybody in to flush them out. The longer the VC hold on to our sovereign territory, the bigger splash they’ll make in the international press.” 

“Our commanders have decided not to risk their men until dawn,” said the intelligence officer flatly. “There shouldn’t be any problem mopping it up then.” 

“Jesus Christ, that’s not soon enough!” snapped Guy. “I’ve been listening to the shortwave newscasts — the world’s being told they’re running wild through the whole fucking embassy and we can’t get them out! Are we just going to sit back and let them score that kind of propaganda victory?” 

“I’ll try to get someone to correct that impression with the wire services,” said the intelligence officer coolly. “Believe me, we have a fuller picture out here than you do. Just sit tight. Everything will work out fine.” 

“Goddamnit, a few determined GIs could clean them out in a few minutes,” shouted Guy angrily, but the line had gone dead and he slammed down his receiver with a curse. When he went to look out of the window again lie found that desultory small arms fire was still being exchanged by the Americans on the rooftops and the guerrillas in the gardens below under the light from occasional flares. He watched with growing impatience fir half an hour, then hastened downstairs to the lobby again. He found there that the Marine sergeant had made his corporal comfortable on a stretcher and was trying to arrange by telephone to have him evacuated from the roof by helicopter as soon as a landing became possible. By his watch It was almost five AM., and coming to a sudden decision, Guy picked up one of the sergeant’s spare 12-gauge shotguns and filled his trouser pocket with a handful of shells. In his other hand he still carried his Beretta light machine gun, and bending double, he ran to the front door and peered out through the smashed window. He spent several minutes noting the positions of the remaining Viet Cong, then hurried towards one of the smaller exits at the back of the Chancery. 

“What are you intending to do, sir?” called the Marine sergeant in a concerned tone as he passed his desk. “Can I give you any help?” 

“No you stay put, sergeant,” said Guy, shaking his head. Then he grinned ruefully. “I just want to test out one of my father’s old theories about the will to win.” 

Guy inched slowly out from the protection of the Chancery block, his body pressed close to the ground, moving forward on his elbows. He held the shotgun and the Beretta in front of him and stopped every few yards to rest; he was making for one of the concrete flower tubs close to the corner of the building, where by the light of a flare he had seen two guerrillas stretched on the grass, seemingly dead. He had calculated that the survivors still holding out behind two tubs thirty yards away would least expect to be fired on from positions occupied by their comrades. 

Before leaving the Chancery he had made one last call to the intelligence officer at “Pentagon East,” asking him to order the American forces outside the embassy to stop using flares above the compound because he knew that if he were caught in the open he would be lost. As a result of his survey through the broken Chancery windows, he believed there were no more than four or five guerrillas left alive, and they seemed to be grouped around tubs on either side of the walkway leading to the front entrance of the Chancery. In the pre-dawn darkness he could no longer see them, but as he moved silently across the lawn, in the intervals of quiet between the bursts of firing he once or twice heard the low mutter of their voices. When he reached the protection of the concrete urn he had singled out, he found that one of the two guerrillas there was already dead; the other, who lay in a pool of blood, was still breathing but unconscious. 

For several minutes he remained motionless beside them, recovering from the exertion of his crawl; then he lifted his head and peered towards the next urn. From the embassy windows he had watched the men inside rise up above the concrete rim every few minutes to return fire towards a rooftop on the opposite side of Thong Nhut Boulevard, and anticipating that they would do so again, he raised the Beretta and took aim in their direction. 

A hush had fallen over the compound and several minutes passed without movement. Guy’s mouth was dry, and he recognized the same flutter of excitement stirring within him that he had experienced before in autumn dawns spent hunting in the mountains of West Virginia. As he crouched staring intently at the spot where he expected his quarry to raise their heads, he remembered suddenly that this feeling must have been inherited not from Senator Nathaniel Sherman but from art unknown French hunting guide who had stalked tiger and elephant in the colonial jungles of Vietnam. He remembered too in that same instant that his real father had been assassinated by Vietnamese nationalists, and he was seized then by an ecstatic conviction that hunting down the embassy invaders would be an historic act of personal vengeance for him. 

Inside the concrete urn thirty yards away at that moment, young Kiet slammed his last full magazine into the breech of his AK-47 assault rifle and passed it to the Vietnamese lying beside him. Empty brass cartridge cases lay scattered all around them, and the older guerrilla, who had already expended his last rounds of ammunition, looked questioningly at Kiet. 

“Take it, comrade,” he said softly. “You are a far better shot than I.” He rolled over onto his side and pointer! to the two fragmentation grenades attached to his belt. “I still have these. I’m better with things that blow up violently.” 

Kiet’s companion stared at him in alarm. The exhortation delivered by their commissar in the garage had suddenly returned to his mind with great vividness. “Act as heroes! Act with the spirit and pride of true combatants of the Liberation Army! Fight to your last drop of blood — and never surrender!” Was Kiet, he wondered, intending to use his grenades to blow them both to pieces now that the situation was hopeless and they were almost out of ammunition? 

Kiet, sensing the unspoken fear behind his comrade’s expression, shook his head. “Don’t worry — they’ll be used only to kill American imperialists who try to take us prisoner.” 

A long, speculative burst of fire from the opposite side of the street raked the line of flower tubs again, and Kiet felt his companion tense beside him; the guerrilla peered up through the gloom, trying to mark the rooftop position of the American rifleman in the darkness above them, and the moment the shooting died away, he raised himself on his elbows and loosed off three quick shots in reply. 

From his hiding place thirty yards away, Guy squeezed the Beretta’s trigger as soon as he saw the man’s head and shoulders appear above the parapet of the flower tub. The weapon trembled in his hands as he held the burst, and the hail of bullets took the Vietnamese in the head and chest, killing him instantly. The noise and the nearness of the shots stunned Kiet for a moment, but when he heard Guy running across the lawn towards him, he rolled over and unhooked one of the fragmentation grenades from his belt. He withdrew its pin but didn’t throw it; listening to the sound of Guy’s feet, he began counting off the seconds remaining before the grenade detonated. 

In the faint light of the coming dawn Guy saw Kiet twisting his body into position to lob the grenade and started to fire as he ran; the Vietnamese boy flattened himself desperately against the earth as the bullets thudded into the concrete above him, and when Guy was only a few feet away, he pushed the grenade over the low parapet with a Hick of his wrist. The CIA man opened his mouth to let out a shout of fury as he charged and he was leaping onto the rim of the tub when the grenade arced onto the lawn. Kiet recoiled in terror when the blurred figure of the American appeared suddenly above him and he was rolling on his back at the moment bullets from the Beretta slammed into his chest. At almost the same instant, the grenade exploded deafeningly, and lethal shards of hot, jagged metal ripped through Guy’s groin into his abdomen. For a moment he teetered on the parapet of the flower tub screaming in agony, then he pitched forward with outstretched arms on top of the Vietnamese and lay still. 

When dawn broke it became clear to the Americans outside the embassy that the Viet Cong platoon had become depleted. After the hole in the wall was found, a Military Police jeep rammed through the locked front entrance while troops of the 101st Airborne Division began landing by helicopter on the Chancery roof. The paratroopers raced through the six floors of the building wielding rifles, grenades and knives, expecting to find more Viet Cong inside the building — but to their surprise they found it was occupied only by the small band of Americans who emerged pale-faced and shaken from their hiding places. 

Some skirmishing continued in and around other buildings as the few Viet Cong survivors resisted bitterly to the end, but the embassy was finally secured again just before nine-thirty AM. when General Westmoreland arrived to inspect the scene. The Communists had held the compound for six and a half hours a relatively brief occupation but one that shocked America deeply. Two of the original platoon of twenty Viet Cong were captured alive, although wounded. Nineteen other bodies were found strewn around the compound amidst the rubble and shattered masonry from the front of the damaged Chancery. Among them were several embassy drivers who might or might not have been ‘Viet Cong, and even hardened journalists were appalled at the sight of the carnage and destruction when they were allowed in to question General Westmoreland about the embassy battle and the widespread Communist offensive then being pressed all over South Vietnam. 

Guy Sherman and the young Ngo Van Kiet were found dead together, their bodies tangled in the moment of death. When they were dragged apart, their clothing was soaked in each other’s blood and nobody noticed that the silk banderole beneath Kiet’s shirt had originally been striped with gold too. Like the dead men themselves, neither the watching journalists nor the grim-faced Marines who eventually had to part their bodies would ever know that, their deaths brought to an end a tangled skein of personal hatreds that had stretched back over forty long years to a colonial hunting camp that had once been pitched in the jungles of Cochin-China north of Saigon.