Chapter 26

  Thirty minutes later, at 1700 hours, the big tandem rotor Piasecki H-21 Shawnee that would take him back to Saigon lifted off the airfield. From the air, Shawn looked down at the doomed city with the long line of refugees that crowded the road to Saigon, and his heart ached for its people. The war was over for him, but not for the people of Xuan Loc and Vietnam. A lot more people were going to die before it was over.

  The sky had turned dark, and thunder boomed through the hills just north of the city as Sydney pulled her Jeep onto the airfield. She spotted Jeffery and Seth sitting in a Jeep together and pulled alongside them.

  “Hello, boys; it looks like the approaching storm is a harbinger of things to come.”

  “Yeah…but this one won’t kill you unless you’re unlucky enough to get hit by lightning,” Seth said.

  “By the way, where’s the Shawnee?”

  “It hasn’t returned from Saigon yet. I guess we’ll just have to wait,” Jeffery said.

  While waiting for the chopper to return, the three of them made idle chit-chat about the political aspects of the war and its eventual outcome when Seth spotted an ARVN captain he wanted to say goodbye to. He excused himself and was gone a few seconds later. With Seth gone, the conversation soon faded. It was mainly between Sydney and Seth, and Jeffery hadn’t contributed much.

  His conversation with Shawn was still on his mind. Finally, after a long silence, Jeffery said, “I ran into Corporal Harris a couple of hours ago, and he asked me some very strange questions about Peter Jensen.”

  Sydney had been looking out at the field, but at the mention of Jensen’s name, her head quickly turned to look at Jeffery. She tried to remain calm, but every nerve in her body was inwardly shaken.

  “Oh yeah; what kind of questions?” she asked.

  "Well, he asked me if Sanders mentioned anything about finding a letter in his room the same day that he was killed. I said that he didn't. Then he asked me if I knew of any friend or girlfriend Peter was writing to. I told him I didn't and said I only knew he wrote to his parents a lot. In fact, he gave me a letter to put in our outgoing box the night that he was killed."

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  There was no hiding the look on Sydney's face, and Jeffery immediately picked up on it. Now, he regretted saying anything to her.

  Sydney's voice seemed to change, and she asked, "Do you know who it was addressed to?"

  Jeffery shook his head and lied, "No, I just glanced at it and dropped it in the outgoing box."

  Alarm bells were going off in Sydney's head. She sat up straight and asked, "Did he ask you anything else?"

  "Yes… he asked me if I knew anything about encryption, and of course I said I did."

  Jeffery deliberately left out the part about who packed up Sanders's belongings.

  "Anything else?"

  Jeffery shook his head and said, "No, because Major Wilcox came up to us and told Harris that Bennett wanted to see him.

  "And you never spoke with him again after that?"

  Jeffery's mouth became dry, so he simply nodded his head.

  For the next few minutes, Sydney sat and inwardly fumed. Jeffery could tell she was upset despite her best attempt to hide it. Now, he wondered what the letter was all about and if Sydney could have had anything to do with Peter’s death.

  Seth returned about the same time the Piasecki H-21 touched down. Eight people piled into the chopper, and a short time later. It was headed for Saigon.

  Sydney sat in the back of the chopper alone with her thoughts. She wondered if somehow Shawn had gotten his hands on Jensen’s encrypted letter, the same one the Sanders had. She doubted that. Otherwise, he would not have asked Jeffery all those questions, especially when he asked Jeffery if he knew anything about encryption. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that Shawn had the encryption letter or a copy of it. How he got his hands on it, she had no idea. And who the hell did Peter send a letter to on the night he was killed?

  Thinking back to the morning that Sanders was killed, she remembered that Sanders was talking with Jessie when she pulled up with Jeffery. Sanders must have found the letter the night before or early that morning. That may have been the reason Sanders hadn’t picked him up that morning. Now she wondered if Sanders said anything to Shawn about the letter and, if so if he possibly shared at least some of its contents with him as the two were sitting in his Jeep. Jesse could have then shared this information with Shawn Harris. Was the “I’ll see you later, princess” all a ploy by Jessie? Now, as she looked out the small round window at the long column of refugees desperately trying to escape the city, she wondered what information Shawn had and what he planned to do with it. As they headed for Saigon, she wondered if she would be arrested when she got off the chopper. In any event, she hated loose ends.