Page 79 of Cry Havoc

“You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, stepping from behind cover, “but the safe house ended up being not so safe.”

“I got here as soon as I could. What happened?” Serrano asked.

“Six assholes decided to pay us a visit,” Quinn said. “We were targeted, again.”

“I’m beginning to think it’s safer in Laos,” Tom added.

“That may be. We’ll figure this out,” Serrano said. “In the meantime, there are large-scale attacks going down across the country. Looks like NVA and VC. The embassy is under attack.”

“Well, let’s go,” Quinn said, moving toward the CIA man’s car.

“Reinforcements are headed there now. We have another issue.”

“What’s that?” Tom asked.

“I need your help.”

“With what?”

“Gaston and Ella DuBois. You met them today. He’s important to our work here. They were hosting a Lunar New Year’s party at the Majestic Hotel. They called me before the phones went dead. Hotel was under attack.”

“They might already be dead,” Quinn said.

“They might,” Serrano acknowledged. “What do you say?”

“I say we should stop by the annex and get some additional firepower,” Tom said, indicating the SKS in his grip.

“I’m way ahead of you,” Serrano said, opening the rear passenger door of his Ford Zephyr.

On the back seat were the Harrington & Richardson T223 rifle that Tom had noticed on the wall of the annex arms room along with a Beretta M12 submachine gun. He spotted a Thompson submachine gun in the front passenger seat.

Tom looked at Quinn.

“Let’s load up.”

CHAPTER 25

ELLA DUBOIS WAS CERTAINshe was going to die.

They first heard automatic weapons barrages just after midnight, which they had all initially mistaken for fireworks. Tet was a festive time in Vietnam; a time for forgiveness, for reunions, for settling debts and of new beginnings. Then came the explosions and tracer fire. They had looked out over Saigon from the Hotel Majestic rooftop bar as the city became a war zone.

Her father held her close. She knew he was weighing their options. He had immediately placed a call to Nick Serrano of the American economic commission, but, after letting him know what was happening, the phones had gone dead. Their plantation was about a forty-five-minute drive outside the city. Was it safer to stay where they were? He had secured the two top-floor corner units of the hotel for Tet, one for him and one for Ella. Even though they had other properties and holdings in the city, staying at the Majestic where they were hosting their company gathering was the most convenient.

Gaston had rented the bar for his thirty-five employees and their families in honor of the Lunar New Year, much to the chagrin of the war correspondents who enjoyed drinking and watching the conflict from their rooftop perch, with the occasional breeze from the Saigon River to keep them cool. The previous year had been good to Gaston DuBois andhis business. Now, a new year was upon them, and he wanted to celebrate with those who had made it possible.

The four-story hotel had been a landmark since opening its doors in 1925. It had once hosted a future president of the United States when, in 1951, a young congressman from Massachusetts named John Kennedy had met confidant Edmund Gullion on the roof for dinner. The wise diplomat had counseled Kennedy that the French were going to lose Indochina to the communists and that, if we stepped in, the same would happen to the United States.

Ella had studied Kennedy’s trip to Vietnam in a course on international relations while at university in Paris. Her class had listened to a radio interview he gave at the time. She could recite his comments on combating communism almost word for word. He had said that it was “not the export of arms or the show of armed might but the export of ideas, of techniques, and the rebirth of our traditional sympathy for and understanding of the desires of men to be free.” She could picture Kennedy on this very rooftop listening to Viet Minh artillery exploding in the distance, having just been lectured earlier in the day by French General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, who had told the visiting dignitaries that in his estimation it was impossible for the French to lose the war.

Ella disliked spending time at the Majestic. The pretentious journalists drinking and carousing until the early hours of the morning while a war raged in the distance only made her despise them, regardless of how they reported on the conflict. She only relented tonight because her father was so adamant about celebrating their Vietnamese heritage with Tet.

Tiki flames and dim bulbs had illuminated the rooftop while young women in finely cut silk dresses served refreshments. Gaston ensured that Moët & Chandon Imperial Brut was plentifully available for toasting along with exclusive French cocktails, while a quartet on the stage dressed in black tie played Debussy.

They opted to stay put under the assumption that they were in oneof the safest places in the city. The Majestic, along with a few other nearby hotels, were known to house foreign news correspondents; the rules of war forbade the targeting of journalists as long as they were not active participants in military operations.

Any other options evaporated as the rooftop was flooded by men with guns.