Free Vietnam II: A War Novel Episode 1 (V2) by C.R. Ryder Page B

program and this was the smoking gun.  A lot of developing nations were trying for the bomb.  Pakistan and India had robust programs that were quietly developing under the radar.  Iran and Iraq were still trying.  It would not have been a surprise that Vietnam was putting their efforts toward a program especially just coming off their war with nuclear armed China.
    We made it to the airport without incident.  I overpaid the driver, ran inside, bought the first ticket to Bangkok and headed for the gate.
    I only stopped on the way to the plane to make two phone calls.  One to the embassy and one to my wife to let her know I loved her and that I would be home at the embassy that night. 
    The flight, like the cab ride, was uneventful.  The box rode in front of me in my seat in coach.  I didn’t drink and I didn’t eat anything on the flight.  All I wanted was to get where I was going.  When I reached Bangkok International there were two agents who met me at the airport.  From there it went to the embassy.
    I only saw the box one more time before it got on the plane for the states.
    That was my whole part in the affair.  It was the highlight of my performance report that year and I got a decoration.  Beyond that I spent the second Vietnam War trying to track down Vietnamese agents in Thailand or processing defectors.  There were a lot of those later on when the shooting started.
    Did I open the box?
    Of course I opened it.  It could have been a contraband or a bomb.  If it was heroin I could be looking at the death penalty in Thailand and the last thing I needed was for the airplane to explode in midair and have the bomb traced to the seat of an American intelligence officer.  The Lockerby incident was still fresh in everyone’s minds after all.  For all I knew Cat’s killers could have left the box as some kind of trap or another. 
    When I opened the box in the terminal and peeked in I was alarmed.  Using sheer force of will I kept my composure.  Inside were stacks of pictures of what could only be American POWs, lists of names, blood and hair samples, medical records from the 1970s to present and a human skull wrapped in plastic.  Skin and hair was still attached to it and by my estimation less than a year since death.  I would later find out, as would the world that based on dental records and DNA, something then I only vaguely understood, that it belonged to one Gunnery Sergeant assigned to MACV.  Last seen July 7, 1968 in the Quang Tri Province.
     
     

Diplomatic Courier Cody
    Department of State
    Bangkok, Thailand
     
    Being a courier for the government is akin to being a bagman for the mob.  I carried embassy and military correspondents back and forth from the edge of the empire so to speak back to the states.  All the packages I transported were close hold and most of the information inside was classified. 
    I was the one who carried the package from Bangkok to Washington. 
    A far east assignment had been my goal when I first joined the CIA after my stint in the Navy.  I had spent my time in the Navy on a Nuke boat out of Norfolk and toured the Atlantic.  My father had been in the Navy as well.  He was a lifer who spent the bulk of his career aboard the USS Turner Joy.  He had been there at the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 where the Turner Joy was one of the first ships to come to the aid of the Maddox after the North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked her.  He was there nine years later when the Turner Joy fired the last American shot of the war at forces advancing south in January 1973.  My dad was pretty fond of telling people he had been there at the beginning of the Vietnam War and at the end.
    He had spent his entire time in the Pacific and he loved Indochina.  I did too.  I spent the late eighties working my way to around the area escorting paperwork for embassies and military bases.  I knew I was more of a glorified postman than a secret agent, but it was fun work.
    We kept an