Operation Thunderhead (10 page)

ESCAPE

Back in his cell, Dramesi recovered from his ordeal with the ropes and considered what had happened. The situation was a bad one, and it would only get worse. The briefings on North Vietnam hadn't included the lengths the enemy would go to in order to extract information from any American servicemen who came into their hands. He knew he had made a serious mistake in telling them the real name of his wing commander back in Thailand. His captors could use even that little bit of information on the next pilot they captured. It would make evading their questions and lying in answer that much harder for the next guy. He silently vowed to himself that he would not break again. There would be people he would have to face in the future who hadn't broken, who had been strong. He would have to go through what was coming and worse so that he wouldn't have to explain his failure to them.

Even if the tortures cost him his arms, Dramesi would not talk again. He wasn't trying to fool himself. It was a lot easier to think such things to himself while in his cell. Following through when he was in the ropes would be much harder. And there would be more questions.

In the darkness, lying on the board in his cell, Dramesi slept.

Resolve did not go away with the rising of the sun the next day. Until the interrogators sent for him, Dramesi continued to work on untying bamboo wall fasteners. Escape was even more important to him now that he had faced the reality of what it meant to be a North Vietnamese prisoner. The old man was once more shelling peanuts on the other side of the wall. He passed some to Dramesi, who ate them while continuing with his work.

The morning passed without incident. The work of trying to loosen the bamboo wall kept Dramesi busy and his mind off what might happen during the next interrogation session. One of the younger men from the previous day's interrogation session showed up that afternoon. But this wasn't going to be another series of questions, at least not like it had been the day before. This was going to be a period of indoctrination in the right and wrong of the war—solely from the North Vietnamese viewpoint.

After setting up a table and chair, the young man ordered Dramesi out of his cell. Crawling to the table, Dramesi sat and looked at the pamphlets and documents that had been spread out in front of him. The North Vietnamese facing him was a political indoctrinator, and it was fairly obvious the man had a set speech memorized. He spoke for about thirty minutes, repeating over and over how the Americans were going to lose the war, that they were already in the process of losing the war, and that the North Vietnamese would win in the end.

This was the point where the actions that were taking place back in the United States were brought out and used against the prisoners in North Vietnam. The protests of young Americans were used as proof that the people of the United States didn't want to fight, that they were against the unjust war, and fighting the peace-loving people of Vietnam was obviously the wrong thing to do.

This line of logic didn't sit very well with a man who had just been tortured the day before. The “peace-loving people” of North Vietnam had attacked him not more than a few days earlier, throwing stones and hitting him with sticks and their bare fists. But while the young man was talking, Dramesi wasn't being beaten, tied up, or otherwise tortured. But when he was asked how much he must be afraid of the mighty anti-aircraft missile defenses of North Vietnam, Dramesi answered plainly that he wasn't afraid.

The young political indoctrinator was shocked at what he believed must be a blatant lie. Many of the pilots were afraid of the missiles that defended his country. Good-luck charms and tigers' teeth were worn by the hated Americans to try and ward off the terrible retribution of the North Vietnamese people for the violation of their air space.

Dramesi simply repeated that he wasn't afraid. He didn't mention that he had probably never even seen a loose tiger tooth in his life and that dog tags weren't good-luck charms. But the young man had his beliefs, and they were strong ones. Even when faced with the logic of Dramesi's explanation—that the antiaircraft missiles were only really found in upper North Vietnam, and the invincible MiG fighters the young man was so proud of couldn't fly as far as the southern part of North Vietnam—the young politico denied the truth of the words. But the young man wasn't stupid; he was shaken by what he had heard. He fought to regain control of the discussion.

The young man only had his own life experiences to use against the prisoner sitting in front of him. He railed against the president of the United States, stated that he was unpopular because of the taxes he forced the American people to pay in order to support the war they all hated. The people of the United States were tired of paying so much and they did not want to send any more of their rice or buffalo to President Johnson.

The “rice and buffalo” line was a bit odd to Dramesi. But it was mostly a prepared speech, an effort by the young man in trying to reassert his authority. The lecture continued and finally ended with Dramesi being given a number of the North Vietnamese and Communist propaganda booklets. He was ordered to read them.

It was then that Dramesi realized that he had made another mistake in his dealings with his captor. It was not as obvious an error as using his real wing commander's name the day before; instead it was a much more subtle and dangerous one. He had simply talked too much. He had engaged one of his captors in conversation, and enjoyed the young man's confusion. He couldn't talk—mustn't talk. It would be too easy to say the wrong thing, and it would come back to bite him. What he had to do was escape, and as soon as possible.

Back in his cell for the night, Dramesi continued his attack on the bamboo wall. Most of the bindings had been removed or loosened from the bamboo shafts. The wall appeared sound from the outside, but was anything but sturdy anymore. There was some fear on Dramesi's part that anyone leaning against the other side of the wall would bring the whole thing down, but that didn't happen.

The next day, the only thing that happened was that the guards came by to let Dramesi out to relieve himself. What he really wanted was a greater view of the area around the house and beyond. The guard gave him just what he wanted when he was led, crawling all the way, down a path away from the house.

As it led off into the distance, the path wound around several other houses in the village. Farther off, Dramesi could see a small road that went between the crop fields. It looked to be the way out, the path to freedom—if Dramesi could reach it.

Crawling along the path, Dramesi noticed a small pond. The guard stopped and directed his prisoner to a brick pedestal with a lid on it. The use of the open commode was an obvious one, and Dramesi did as he was directed. While making an affair of using the primitive sanitary facility, he looked closely at the surrounding area, memorizing all of what he could of the land's features. While approaching the prison house on the crawl back, Dramesi picked up a bamboo pole and used it to help him along. The guard allowed the prisoner to keep his stick, which gave Dramesi one more tool to use for his escape plans.

During the day's outing, Dramesi picked another very valuable piece of information. The dog that had been yapping so much a few days earlier was nowhere to be seen. The alarm the animal's yapping could have raised had been a concern, but with it being missing, that problem had gone away. There was a mild concern on the part of the prisoner as to just what dog meat in peanut soup, the staple of his meals so far, might taste like.

The burlap cloth that Dramesi had used as a pillow had been made into a rough jacket. That, his bamboo stick, and the bottle of wintergreen that he had saved were the sum total of his escape supplies. Though it was a meager amount and his knowledge of the area was slight at best, he had escaped from the prison camp back in Nevada with less. But that had been training; this was now a matter of life and death.

Darkness fell quickly in Southeast Asia. The fear of putting on lights that could attract attacking aircraft kept the village in the dark. Everyone went to sleep soon after the sun went down, including Dramesi's guards. They slept in the big bed he had seen only feet away from the weakened bamboo wall.

Just before sunset, rain had started to fall, which was just what Dramesi wanted in order to cover his escape. He had his bottle of wintergreen in the pocket of his shirt. Putting on his burlap jacket, he crouched down to work on the bamboo wall. The fastenings he had left in place to hold the wall were easy enough to remove. Now the bamboo poles that made up the wall were free to move away from the floor and the wall of the house. By pushing the bamboo only a few inches, he would be able to squeeze past the poles and the wall and get out of his cell.

As he gently pushed against the wall, Dramesi was careful not to make a sound. The bamboo started to move, though, and then the loose material of the wall started to fall in. The bamboo wall was going to collapse right on top of Dramesi. His hand shot up and pressed against the leaning material, stopping the fall and ending his escape attempt for the moment.

The only noise Dramesi could hear was the sound of his heart thudding in his ears. The guards hadn't wakened and there were no other sounds of alarm. For five long minutes, Dramesi sat on the dirt floor of his cell, holding the collapsing wall up with his hand. Stretching out, he managed to get a grip on the bamboo stick he had picked up earlier. Silently, slowly, he kept himself from gasping out loud as he pulled the length of bamboo up and braced it against the wall. With the end dug firmly into the dirt floor of his cell, the bamboo stick was enough to keep the wall from falling over.

There was now a hole between the bamboo and the rest of the building wall. It was large enough for Dramesi to crawl through if he was careful. One thing was certain: He wasn't going to take the chance on trying to make the hole any bigger.

Slipping through the opening on his hands and knees, Dramesi got out of his cell and into the area where the guards slept. The shoes they had taken from him were at the foot of the bed—a lucky break for him. Picking them up, he continued to crawl slowly from the room as the breathing of the guards in the bed remained slow and steady. Then he saw them: opposite of the bed were the guards' weapons, three automatic rifles that would allow him to fight rather than be recaptured. Weapons, arms—the tools of a fighting man—the guns were a temptation. Dramesi hesitated.

He remembered what his instructors had said back during training. He had shot his way out of that prison camp. But the bullets he had been firing then were blanks. The instructors had made a point of telling him that shooting his way out might look good during training and be a rush, but in the real world it was brains, not bullets, that would serve him best. He turned away from where the weapons beckoned him and continued to crawl toward the door.

Still on his hands and knees, Dramesi crawled from the house and into the courtyard outside. Bracing himself against a small tree, he pulled his shoes on and stood. Tropical rain was pouring down, the noise being more than enough to cover any slight sounds he might make walking down the muddy path. No dogs barked, and the bull didn't make a sound. So far, he was outside of his cell on his feet and undiscovered. He walked down the path, out of the village, and along the dikes of the rice paddies beyond. Frogs and crickets sounded out, but they were natural noises and it apparently didn't disturb anyone but the escaping prisoner. He headed east, toward the South China Sea. That was where the U.S. Seventh Fleet held station, and it was a hell of a lot closer than the Demilitarized Zone, which marked the border between North and South Vietnam. If he could get to the sea, he could steal a boat, gather up bamboo, find a log—anything that would float—and head out to sea and freedom.

The rain was slackening as Dramesi continued east. He had covered an unknown distance from the village when there was the clanging sound of a metal gong being beaten from the direction he had come. Looking back through the diminishing rain, he could see lights coming on as torches and lamps were being lit. Apparently, his little walkabout had been discovered and the troops were turning out to search for him. He still felt that he had a good chance to make something of his escape and continued on heading east. Before very long, he could see the headlights of vehicles coming down along the road that paralleled his course. Trucks and cars from the village were speeding out to try and cut off the escape of what they knew was a man on foot. They didn't know what direction he was traveling in, but there was only the one road that Dramesi knew of.

The area that Dramesi was walking through was mostly flooded rice paddies surrounded by raised earthen dikes. There were paths along the top of the dikes, which could make walking faster, as long as the escaping prisoner made sure that he wasn't outlined by anything in the background. If the clouds broke and he was moving across the top of a paddy dike, he would be silhouetted against the night sky.

Moving as long as he could in the darkness, Dramesi had to pull up as he saw lights approaching him. The searchers were shining flashlights around and that had given them away to Dramesi long before they could have spotted him. The lights kept moving in the distance as he searched for a hiding place. The water wasn't very deep in the rice paddies, but it was dark and anything but clear. Slipping farther out into the paddy, Dramesi watched as the weaving and bobbing handheld lights came closer. The searchers were looking along the paddy dikes, but not going much into the water itself.

Finally, they were too close and Dramesi had to make a move. Taking a deep breath, he ducked down into the muddy water between the stalks of rice. All he could do was hold his breath as long as he could while also forcing his body to be as still as possible. The lights skipped along the water but didn't stop. There were no splashes from the searchers coming for him in the dark water. Finally, the demands of his lungs were too much and he had to come up for air.