The Tank Man's Son (32 page)

And we were headed upstream as fast as we could drive, desperate to reach the airport.

The stench from dozens of fires burned our nostrils. Occasionally we cringed as an armored personnel carrier or a tank rumbled past, driving toward Sihanoukville. Some looked ready for battle while others moved
slowly, piled high with loot. Televisions, motorcycles, refrigerators, sewing machines, and other stolen goods were stacked to overflowing on top of instruments of destruction, and a sudden memory flashed in my mind of Dad driving his tank away from the wrecked farmhouse, the tank’s deck and turret absolutely buried in bricks. Smoldering cars and tanks clogged the road, and we had to steer around them like a skier avoiding trees. Every few blocks we passed bodies sprawled on the pavement, gruesome reminders of what was taking place.

The roadside trees had been stripped of their foliage by tank and mortar blasts. Gas stations were in shambles, having long since been robbed and left in ruins. Even the pumps had been stolen. The main hospital had a hole in its side that looked as if a tank had simply driven through. If we passed a single intact window, I never saw it. Here was the real-life version of Dad’s war games, and it was anything but a game.

The international airport was just as bad. A hole the size of a Volkswagen Beetle had been blown in one terminal wall from a tank round, and many other walls had been reduced to rubble. A dozen Cambodian police officers stood guard in front of the entrance, brandishing batons and sporting machine guns slung over their shoulders. Locals were threatened or beaten if they dared approach the airport entrance.

Behind the police line, hundreds of foreigners milled about in the parking lot, since the inside of the terminal building was almost completely destroyed. The airport was inoperative, and the foreigners were stuck between their hope of flying away and the utter chaos surrounding them in the city. The tarmac was deserted. No parked planes. No takeoffs or landings. Just glass, rubble, and the acrid stink
 
—so familiar, so common from my childhood
 
—of smoke and gunpowder.

Now what?

A van full of Americans pulling up didn’t go unnoticed. The police lines parted, and we drove into what was left of the main terminal.

After the eerie approach through the city streets leading to the
airport, things began to happen quickly. The word was that someone had chartered a jet from Thailand, and it was landing in twenty minutes.

Bill emerged from the crowd. “Mark, you’re going to pay to get our personnel out of the country,” he said sternly. “Oh, and you’re paying to get a few other people out of here too. Hope you don’t mind.” Bill nodded toward a group of anxious Westerners, folks I’d never seen before. I tried to smile at them.

“Pay that official over there,” Bill commanded. “They aren’t taking credit cards, traveler’s checks, or even Cambodian money
 
—it’s American greenbacks or nothing, and you’ve got what they want, right?”

Surprisingly, I did. I had taken money out of the bank the previous week to pay for structural repairs at the orphanage, but Joan convinced me to hold on to the cash for a few days, since the repairs were not urgent. Now, in a desperate situation at the airport, I was glad for my wife’s foresight.

Sitting at a folding table on the side of the tarmac, in plastic lawn chairs, were two Cambodian airport officials. I approached and unfolded a thick wad of hundreds. The men smiled. Amazingly, the customs officer still demanded that I pay a seven-dollar “airport usage fee” for each person planning to leave. I glanced at the ruins all around me and thought,
What airport?

Thirty minutes later we heard the whine of a descending jet. The L-1011 dropped out of the sky, and the minute it taxied to a stop in a cloud of tire rubber, the crew dropped the door. The engines were still racing as we jogged across the runway. Joan led our boys, each by one hand, toward the plane. I was near the back of the pack, trying to count heads and make sure all the people I was responsible for were in front of me. Not that they’d be anywhere else.

The engines were deafening. Everyone tossed their bags into a pile below plane as they leaped up the stairs. I scanned the tarmac, found it clear, and sprinted up the stairs as well. No seat assignments, claim tickets, safety checks
 
—this was barely contained panic. The crew slammed
the door closed behind me, and minutes later the pilot goosed the throttles and we leaped down the runway. The moment the tires left the runway, the entire plane erupted in cheers. “Yes!” “We’re outta here!” “All right!” “Hallelujah!” We had made it. Against all odds, we had made it, and exuberant shouts filled the airplane.

But I felt sick. I stared out the window as we climbed into the sky. I could see columns of smoke rising from the capital. I couldn’t see Sihanoukville with my eyes, but I could picture it in my mind.
What have I done, God? I just left an entire orphanage full of children in a war zone. Kids I promised to take care of.

I closed my eyes.
What have I done?

A
FTER WE LANDED
safely in Thailand, everyone who was not a career missionary was sent home to the States on the next available flight.

The rest of us found a hotel in Bangkok, and our leadership team flew in from the States, along with several trauma counselors. I hoped the counselors were getting overtime pay.

Most of us wanted to get back into Cambodia right away, but that was impossible. No airline was willing to risk flying into Cambodia. The airlines honestly didn’t know if they would be able to refuel or take off again, and in any case no insurance company would insure a plane in a war zone. We could have taken a boat, but if the airlines weren’t going to risk landing, it probably wasn’t safe enough for us to return a different way either. Every day we tried to get news about what was happening in Cambodia, and every day we were frustrated. Thai television, international newspapers, people we chatted with at cafés
 
—no one seemed to know what was going on. CNN did little more than loop the same footage of fires burning throughout the city.

I second-guessed myself constantly. What would have happened if I had stayed? What was going on at the orphanage? Were the children safe? Phrases I had read about the Khmer Rouge kept surfacing in my mind. No foreigners had been allowed back into Cambodia for thirteen years after that regime had taken over. Nearly a quarter of the population had been starved or murdered.

The counselors sat us in a circle, and then one of them began.

“Who would like to share what happened to you?” he asked.

We waited for someone to start. And waited. Finally, one young woman raised her hand and began to tearfully recall what she had experienced. I listened halfheartedly. The only thing that haunted me was leaving the kids back in Cambodia, and that wasn’t anything the counselor could help me with.

My mind wandered. Was there anything I could have done differently? Our escape had been pure chaos
 
—nothing could have prepared me for it. I had done the best I could, but had it been enough?

The woman’s account was still unfolding. “And
then
I saw a man with a gun. Some kind of long gun. He was shooting as he was running down the road, right in front of me.”

“What were you thinking?” the counselor asked.

“I was so scared. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life! The gun would have terrified me anyway, but then there were tanks going by, and soldiers sitting on top of them, and more and more guns.” She brought her hands up to her face, her chin quivering, then buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “I just can’t go back there! I wasn’t made for this!”

The counselor thanked the woman for sharing, and two other women went over to the crying woman and placed their arms around her shaking shoulders.

I tried to be sympathetic, but it was difficult.
What’s so scary about a bunch of guys with guns? I’ve seen that since I was a kid. And tanks aren’t scar
y
 
—my dad had one.

As the next missionary shared, my mind cataloged my childhood.
Pistols, rifles, antitank guns, simulated knife fights, the tank, the ship, the dynamite
 
—all united by a near-constant sense of chaos and fear. I still had shrapnel in my ankle!

That’s when the blinders fell from my eyes. Maybe the other missionaries hadn’t been prepared for what happened to them, but God
had
prepared me. Specifically, for that time and that place. Words from the biblical story of Joseph sprang into my mind.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”

Suddenly I saw it. God had used the evil of my youth to prepare me for my time in Cambodia.

T
WO WEEKS LATER
I got a call from San, my right-hand man at the orphanage.

“Papa, soldiers came to the orphanage today. They spoke very rough to me. They told me they’re going to come back. They told me if there is a foreigner here taking care of this place, they will leave us alone, but if not, they will take away every valuable thing. Papa, can you please come back? Just to show your face and let them know you are still looking out for us? If you do, they will leave us alone. If you do not come back, they are going to take everything from us. I’m afraid something bad will happen.”

The pause stabbed my soul.

“Can you please come back?”

I
had
to get back. My friend was right. I wasn’t my father, but I was Papa, and the kids needed me.

I called our regional director, Ron, and explained the situation.
I couldn’t wait for things to “get better” inside Cambodia. “Ron, I have to go back. Now.”

“You can go back,” he relented, “but you have to go alone. It’s still too dangerous for anyone else to go with you.”

My earlier epiphany returned:
I have been prepared specifically for this time in Cambodia
.
This is going to work. Somehow it is going to work.

The next day I said good-bye to my family, then went to the airport in Bangkok. A few Thai airlines had reopened flights into Cambodia the day before. Foreign journalists lined up to fly there and report on what was happening, and they were willing to pay a premium.

When I arrived at the airport, I found myself caught in a small mob of people who were pleading with an airline attendant for a seat on the next available flight into Cambodia. I stood there for a minute, listening. Person after person asked, “When will a seat be available?” The attendant seemed flustered. She told them she was sorry, that no seats would be available until later. Without waiting to hear her finish, I wandered over to another desk that had no one waiting in front of it. I politely asked if there were any seats available on the next flight into Cambodia.

“Let me check,” the attendant said. After a couple of minutes she looked up at me. “Yes, there is a seat available. May I have your passport?”

I handed her my passport, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. I glanced back at the crowd still surrounding the adjacent counter, wondering by what miracle I got a seat while others were being turned away. As soon as I had my ticket in hand, I slipped past the mob.

Less than two hours later, the wheels of my plane smacked the tarmac at Phnom Penh.

The road south to the orphanage was nearly deserted. All that remained of the wrecked tanks and vehicles were charred spots on the pavement. Dark stains I knew to be blood were still visible. Gas stations were silent, and only the regularly spaced bolts testified to the pumps that had once
been mounted there. Whole blocks of factories in what used to be a thriving garment industry were empty. House after house was destroyed, with bricks strewn about from shattered walls, a testament to the errant tank rounds that had blown fragments in every direction. Shards of glass gleamed across the dirt. The houses looked exactly like my childhood house after the tornado leveled it.

One thought filled my mind.
Get to the orphanage before the soldiers do.
I repeated it at every mile, as if saying it enough times would make it come true.
Get there before the soldiers. Get there before the soldiers.

Three hours later I pulled up to the orphanage gate. Everything on the grounds seemed silent and deserted. A wave of fear swept over me. Normally the orphanage was bustling with life as kids ran across the grass or lined up to choose sides for soccer.

The gates were bolted. Something terrible must have happened. I climbed out and walked along the sidewalk that led to the main building. My mind was reeling.
Where is everyone? What happened? Am I too late?

I stood in the middle of the compound, motionless. There wasn’t a single sign of life.

A piercing scream set my spine tingling.

“Papa!”

Then longer. “Paaapaaa!”

Suddenly a great chorus of shouts rose up around me, coming from everywhere at once.

“Papa, Papa, Papa!”

The kids had been hiding inside the buildings, cowering in fear. Now their shouts of disbelief and relief announced them as they streamed out from all sides, streaking toward me across the grass like fireworks.

Boys and girls leaped and cavorted, shouting as they ran and spun in circles, as if words were insufficient and only their small bodies could express their overflowing happiness. Some ran so fast they slammed into me while trying to hug me, and soon they were in my arms, too many to count, surrounding me, and we clung to each other in a tangle of happiness.

A father to the fatherless, prepared to care for these children by the apathy and evil of my own childhood. I was my dad, but changed
 
—turned inside out by grace and granted a chance to redeem the past. I was Papa.

“You’re back! You came back!”

“Papa, you’re back, like you promised!”

“We didn’t think you’d come back, Papa, but you did!”

Joy was in flood, and I was drowning in it. Every word healed me. Every word left me wanting more.