JOHNNY GONE DOWN (5 page)

I saw a carnival-like atmosphere on the clear stretch of road outside the airport. Three big, green armoured battle tanks, each one about fifty feet wide and fifteen feet tall, stood half a mile ahead at the entrance to the airport. Twenty or thirty young boys sat atop the tanks. They were maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, and were dressed in black with red bandanas tied around their heads. Hundreds of short, thin men and women dressed in bright, colourful clothes - presumably the Cambodian junta - danced on the road, around the tanks. Periodically, the black-clad boys pumped their rifles into the air, firing impromptu shots which were greeted with jubilant cheers from the junta. Sure, it was an unlikely sight - the crowds milling around the tanks were mostly middle-aged men and women who were cheering unruly, teenage boys - but it didn’t seem sinister.

‘Everyone seems quite happy,’ said an American hippie with caked blonde hair and rings on her pierced cheeks. ‘It doesn’t seem all that bad. Why have they cancelled the flights?’

There was a general murmur of assent at this observation. Everyone began to crowd around the small window.

‘I think we should talk to them and find out when they plan to resume normal services,’ said a tall, muscular guy with a German accent.

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said the shaggy blonde guy. ‘These Khmer Rouge soldiers are illiterate village boys who’ve been taught to hate Americans all their lives. In effect, that means all foreigners, since they can’t tell the difference between a Pakistani and a Texan.’

‘How do you know that?’ someone asked.

‘I’ve been a PhD student at the University of Cambodia for a year,’ he said. ‘I saw this coming before even the government did, but I didn’t get out in time. Now, it’s over.’

‘What’s over?’ asked the German guy. ‘What did you see coming?’

The girl with the cheek piercings let out a sudden shriek and pointed outside. We followed her glance. The celebrations seemed to have gone silent all of a sudden. Everyone, except the hooting boys atop the tanks, seemed to be staring at something in front of one of the tanks. Although we were a few hundred metres away, we could make out the obviously dazed expressions on their faces.

‘He shot him,’ said the girl excitedly. ‘I saw it.’

‘Who? What?’ asked the hippies huddled by the window.

‘One of those guys in black,’ she said, pointing outside. ‘He just shot a man who bumped into
him, he shot him right between the eyes. There was blood.’

Everyone stood in silence, staring at each other as the tanks began to roll forward towards the airport. The swirling crowds followed the tanks, though they seemed a bit subdued now.

‘This
is what I meant,’ said the PhD guy. ‘The Khmer Rouge are animals.’

A chorus of panicked voices broke out in the airport as the cavalcade approached.

‘We need to run.’

‘And go where?’

‘We should reason with them.’

‘And get shot?’

‘Why would they shoot us?’

‘They shot someone who just
bumped
into them!’

‘Should we put up a white flag for peace? We don’t even know if they are looking for us.’

‘No use,’ said the PhD student. Everyone turned to look at him. ‘Do you know the motto of their revolution?
To keep you is no benefit; to destroy you is no loss.
They will gladly wrap you in your white flags if you give them half a chance,’ he said, sounding quite calm despite the death sentence he was pronouncing for everyone in the room.

All flights were cancelled, the tanks were fast approaching the airport, and we had nowhere to go.

A petite woman began to whimper, which triggered a crying fit in the room.

‘Can’t we fight them off?’ asked the muscular German. ‘They are just a handful of boys, and the crowd doesn’t seem to like them too much.’

He looked around the room for support. None of the hippies seemed enthusiastic about this course of action.

‘And then what, we take over the city? Perhaps fight off thousands of boy soldiers in the country?’ said a teenager with a French accent.

‘Do you have a better idea?’ asked the German.

‘Any idea would be better than that,’ said the Frenchman sarcastically.

The German moving threateningly towards him and caught him by the collar. ‘If you can’t help, don’t speak, you bastard.’

‘Okay, James Dean. Let’s go Hollywood on the soldiers instead,’ the Frenchman sneered.

The German struck him in the face. A babble of panicked voices broke out, although the Frenchman himself didn’t react.

Thus far, I had been watching in a state of mild disbelief as the events unfolded. This was a vacation, I thought, no one got killed on a vacation, damn it. Everything would take care of itself. But the sudden eruption of violence in front of me brought back memories of a lifetime spent on basketball courts and soccer fields. My father, a colonel in the Indian Army, had ensured that I cut my sporting teeth playing rough ball with the jawaans in the army fields.

‘Does anyone here have a map?’ I asked, startling myself a little. I had had a sudden inspiration, quite like the ones I sometimes had when we were a three-pointer away from winning in the basketball league matches where I captained for MIT. And most of the time they didn’t work, I reminded myself grimly.

Everyone stared at me.

‘A map of the area? Come on, quick, somebody must have one.’

A young, sharp-looking brunette handed me a crumpled map.

‘Sam, hand me the guidebook,’ I said hurriedly.

‘What?’ he asked, looking dazed.

‘Pull yourself together, will you?’ I snapped. ‘Get the Cambodian travel guide out of your backpack.’

He rummaged through his bag and handed me the guide with trembling hands. I thumbed through the pages quickly and found the address I was looking for. I tried to find it on the map, suddenly irritated with myself for refusing to go to the jungle reconnaissance training my father had wanted me to attend.

‘I’m not even joining the army,’ I had whined. ‘Do I need a map to find my way around the school cafeteria?’

Despite being a strict disciplinarian, he had relented that once, although now I wished he had forced me as he had for the Himalayan mountain survival course and the marathon training.

‘There is one way if we can figure it out, I think,’ I said as I struggled with the map.

I looked up to see thirty pairs of petrified eyes fixed on me. ‘We should head out to our respective embassies immediately. If we are lucky, there’s still a chance they will be safe zones.’

They continued to stare at me with the same dazed expression, until the German spoke.

‘That’s an idea,’ he said excitedly. ‘Are the embassies close to where we are?’

‘I can’t read this map,’ I said. I turned to Sam for help but one look at his white, petrified face, and I knew I would have to look elsewhere. ‘Is anybody good with maps?’

No one moved for a while until the PhD student stepped forward.

‘I can help,’ he said, kneeling down beside me to study the map. ‘I know Phnom Penh quite well.’

The German guy quickly broke away from the group. ‘Let’s divide into groups quickly, shall we?’ he said authoritatively. He took the guidebook from my hand. ‘I’m calling out the names of the countries that have embassies listed here. Just stand with your group, okay?’

Suddenly, I felt calm. We needed to treat this like a soccer match against a powerful opponent or like a tough mathematical regression problem. If we worked together and used our heads, we had a fighting chance to get out of this.

‘USA,’ the German called out.

Nearly three-fourths of the group raised their hands.

‘Collect there,’ he said, pointing to one corner of the airport. Folks huddled together, shivering despite the hot Cambodian summer, staring out the window at the rapidly advancing procession. They were barely a hundred metres away now, and the loud hoots of the boy soldiers outside could be heard as clearly as the subdued voices of the hippies inside the airport. The PhD student and I busied ourselves with the map as the German went through the list quickly.

‘Britain.’

‘France.’

‘Germany.’

‘Brazil.’

‘Thailand.’

‘Philippines.’

‘Malaysia.’

Within seconds, he had exhausted the entire list of embassies that appeared in the guidebook, even as we managed to figure the route out. I looked up to see just one person unassigned: Sam.

The German checked the list again. No Indian embassy. I was an American citizen thanks to NASA’s quick processing of my citizenship application, but General Electric hadn’t processed Sam’s application as yet. Sam turned a shade whiter, if that was at all possible.

‘We’ll go to the American embassy,’ I told him gently as I joined him. ‘We are students, so we should be good.’

He nodded, still looking dumbstruck as we walked over to the American group.

‘Where are you from?’ the German asked the PhD student.

‘I am Ishmael from Estonia,’ he said calmly.

The German looked at the list again. ‘No Estonian embassy.’

Ishmael, I thought, wasn’t that the narrator from
Moby Dick?
The name seemed eerily prophetic; and Estonia, well, I didn’t know much but I would be surprised if there was an Estonian embassy anywhere in the world.

‘You can pretty much choose any group to go with,’ the German said.

‘I will go with him,’ said Ishmael, pointing at me.

I looked at him for a second, trying to ignore the rumble of the tanks crashing through the gates of the airport.

Then, hurriedly, Ishmael and I showed the German the map. It was a relatively straight route with the American embassy located right next to the king’s palace, and all the other embassies clustered together on the other side of the diplomatic district bordering the airport.

‘Let’s move. The American group follows them,’
the German shouted, pointing at Ishmael and me. ‘Others follow me.’

We ran out from the rear end of the terminal, jumped over the crumbling fencing surrounding the runway and split in different directions.

Ishmael and I ran at the head of the twenty-odd American hippies, glancing in every direction to check for signs of the black-clad Khmer soldiers. We didn’t stand a chance if we ran into them. Despite knowing almost nothing about the Cambodian revolution, a lifetime spent playing rough sports had me convinced that any fifteen-year-old boy with a shiny black gun would pull the trigger, no matter how slight the provocation.

What a mess, I thought, as I ran faster to keep pace with Ishmael, and to think it started as a vacation.

The embassy was three miles away as per my estimation; a good thirty minute run, maybe longer. We would be very lucky if we didn’t encounter any soldiers en route. And what if the embassy had already been evacuated, I thought suddenly. If the coup had taken place the previous day, like the marines on the flight had said, the Americans wouldn’t be hanging around, would they? Where would we go then?

‘Have you been to Thailand?’ I puffed to Ishmael,
who was running calmly in front, not breaking into much of a sweat despite his shaggy, emaciated look.

He nodded. ‘It’s safe there,’ he said.

‘The map indicated that there is a forest bordering Cambodia and Thailand. Do you think we can get there if we manage to slip inside the forest?’ I asked.

‘The forest is strewn with land mines to keep out the Thai. Besides, the border is a hundred miles from here. How will we get there?’

‘What do we do if the embassy has already been evacuated?’

He shrugged. ‘Shit happens.’

Indeed, I thought. A five minute trip to the MIT international affairs department would have given us the latest on the crisis. Instead, we had taken a twenty-five hour journey to arrive in the middle of it. I had no one to blame but myself.

Two miles in and the road became less bumpy. Dirt tracks gave way to narrow, pebbled streets, and the deserted countryside was replaced with colonial buildings. There was still not a soul in sight, neither soldiers, nor the ordinary junta. I prayed Ishmael had read the map right.

‘What is the Khmer Rouge after?’ I asked him. ‘Why don’t they just take over the government and be done with it? Why the violence?’

‘They are extreme communists. By “they”, I mean the top lieutenants, not these boy-soldiers of course.
The soldiers are just village kids looking to kill for kicks. The leader of the Khmer Rouge is a crazed communist despot called Pol Pot, who hates the “bourgeoisie”, a word he uses for just about everyone who isn’t a farmer - teachers, doctors, industrialists, factory workers, city dwellers, foreigners, even the Red Cross. His personal ideology is less Marx, more Hitler on steroids. He wants to exterminate all bourgeoisie, partly to make this a nation of farmers, partly because he is a psycho.’

‘Would they attack the embassy?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? I don’t trust them one bit. They are all crazy motherfuckers.’ He laughed. ‘Believe me, it’s going to be brutal.’

‘And you don’t care because?’

‘Because I am a karma yogi,’ he said, mispronouncing and mangling the words. ‘I learnt it in
your
country, atop the Himalayas. All I have control over is my actions, my karma; the results are beyond my control. Que sera sera.’