Free See You in Saigon by Claude Bouchard Page A

bathed the immediate area
around him in a dim, yellow glow.
    “It’s time,
folks,” Leslie murmured. “Let’s hope he doesn’t jump for the gun.”
    “He’ll be dead
before he can point it at you,” came Washington’s reply who was in position in
the cornfield across the road from the barn.
    As they moved
closer, the guard did not notice them, more intent on lighting whatever he had
in his long pipe and taking a hit than minding the surroundings.
    From a distance of
twenty-five feet or so, Chen called out in flawless Vietnamese, “Hello, can you
help us?”
    Surprised, the
guard looked up and jumped to his feet but, upon seeing the couple, seemed to
relax and took a couple of steps toward them, leaving the shotgun in its place.
    “Who are you?” he
enquired, peering at them in the darkness. “What are you doing out here at this
time?”
    “We are tourists,”
Chen replied. “We took a walk after dinner and got lost.”
    “Come closer so I
can see you,” the guard requested, taking another step in their direction.
“What country are you from?”
    “Canada,” Chen
replied.
    “She looks like
she’s from Canada,” said the guard, pointing his pipe at Leslie, “But you look
Chinese.”
    Chen smiled and
said, “My father is Chinese and my mother, Vietnamese. She was born in Tây Ninh
which is why we came to visit.”
    “Where are you
staying?” asked the guard, his already low level of suspicion rapidly
dissipating.
    “At the Hoa Binh
Hotel,” Chen replied. “We have been trying to find our way back for an hour
without success.”
    The guard chuckled
as he moved past them toward the road. “You are going in the wrong direction.
You must go back the way you came until—”
    “Be quiet and turn
around,” Chen interrupted.
    The guard turned
back to find Leslie aiming a handgun at him.
    “What is going on
here?” he demanded, instinctively glancing at his shotgun now a dozen feet
away.
    “Don’t even think
about it,” Chen warned. “She will shoot you if she has to. Is there
anyone else inside?”
    “No,” the guard
replied sullenly, shaking his head. “I am alone here tonight.”
    “Okay, guys,” Chen
said into his collar mike. “He tells me the place is clear.”
    “We’re coming in,”
Jon replied from where he and Chris hid in the field behind the barn.
    Dave and
Washington appeared from the cornfield across the road and hurried toward them.
    As Chen zip tied
the guard’s wrists behind his back, he said, “My friends are about to go into
the barn. If anyone is in there, you are a dead man.”
    “There is nobody
here but me,” the guard repeated.
    “Are there any
traps?” asked Chen. “Any danger of my friends getting hurt in there.”
    The young man
shook his head. “There is no danger.”
    “Should all be
clean,” Chen announced to the others who now waited by the open barn door.
    Only seconds were
required to confirm the open space was indeed unoccupied. Along the wall on one
end were stacks of burlap-wrapped bundles of varying sizes, clearly inventory
of raw opium as well as bricks of finished product. A dozen covered steel drums
sat in the middle of the floor and a large stone fireplace was set in the rear
wall, the day’s embers still red and smoking. An array of pots, tubs and other
equipment filled crude wooden shelves along the front wall to one side of the
door and a handful of portable propane stoves sat on tables on the opposite
side, each connected to its own fuel tank below. At the far end of the barn was
an assortment of boxes, sealed buckets, canisters and the like, the stock of
chemicals required for the refinement process.
     “All good in
here,” Jonathan said into his mike. “We’re going to see what we have to work
with.”
    They moved to the
stock of chemicals where, as expected, they found several flammable products
including ethyl alcohol, ether and acetone.
    “Get some wood in
the fireplace,” directed Washington. “This stuff will vaporize