Chapter 2: Uprising of the Phoenix
[Author's note: The next two chapters are a mixture of direct quotes from extracts I found during research and my own fictional interpretation. I guess we have to bear in mind that there are two sides to every story ….
[Timeline: 1967 – South Vietnam]
Murdock had worked with the CIA for nearly six months.
His time with the Thunderbirds' demonstration team was now just a distant memory. It had had been a fantastic and mind-blowing experience for the young pilot. However, because the TBs were part of the United States Air Force, they were also deployed to help with the war effort in Vietnam.
Because of this, and perhaps unintentionally, he developed quite a reputation for being a hot-shot pilot. His knowledge of the South Asian terrain was second to none and it would seem that he had developed a talent for speaking Vietnamese – amongst other languages.
But he was soon to discover that this was a ruthless and politically run war. He didn't enjoy going into combat assault. Not because he was a coward, but because his conscious was telling him that this war wasn't his country's battle to fight.
So when an Agent from the CIA approached him about taking part in a special assignment, which had been sanctioned by the USA, his enquiring and intellectual mind was sufficiently intrigued.
Agent Cheney explained that he was involved in a pacification programme called Operation Phoenix. Murdock thought that this sounded very mysterious and even romantic. After all, it was a well-known fact that the Phoenix was a mythical bird that rose from the ashes to symbolise prosperity and good luck – right?
Wrong! There was nothing romantic or rewarding about Phoenix. The idea was to target civilians – not soldiers - in their rural surrounding, who were suspected of supporting the Viet Cong. The CIA were looking for Intelligence Officers, who could help gather information from informants in hamlets throughout South Vietnam. Murdock appeared to be the perfect candidate. With his excellence flight record and language skills, he could easily infiltrate the barriers to obtain the necessary information.
The names of suspected VC sympathisers and communists were collated into blacklists. These names had been supplied by Murdock and other INTEL operatives. They would go out to the Hamlets and speak to informants who could give them information about VC activity. They would then pass the information on to the Provincial Interrogation Centres who would send out the Hunter Teams to bring the suspects in for questioning.
But Murdock learned pretty quickly that most of the information was without any real foundation or credence. Some of the informants were even harbouring grudges against the suspects, which resulted in wrongful arrests and corruption of the system.
Murdock sighed as he crossed off another name on the list. The latest victim he had brought in had just been neutralised. It had been sickening to watch him being subjected to unimaginable torture. His presence there was purely to supervise the Special Branch Vietnamese Officials as they conducted their interrogation. But the sadistic smile that spread over the interrogator's face told Murdock that he was enjoying himself a little bit too much. He had also seen the same expression on Agent Cheney's face when he had been present at the interrogations.
He was now beginning to feel like some damn Lord High Executioner. It was very rare that a detainee would live through the interrogation process. Those who did survive died shortly afterwards in the prison cells, under very suspicious circumstances.
Even worse than the Interrogation Centres were the notorious tiger cages at Con Son Prison. He would always remember the first time he walked along the cat walk and peered down between the iron gates into one of the tiny cells. It was nothing short of a living hell.
He could see at least five men shackled to the floor. All had been beaten, some mutilated. Their legs were withered and weak and they scuttled like crabs across the floor. He could hear their hushed voices begging for food - begging for water and begging for mercy. The smell of death and disease hung heavy in the air.
The cells were supposedly reserved for hard-core VC cadre. But all Murdock could see were the faces of 16 year old students, repressed Buddhists and political writers and journalists. Their only crime had been to demonstrate their rights for freedom and democracy.
And there were lots of old men, women and children. As Agent Cheney had explained to him, the theory was that you don't kill the leader, you kill his children or family first. There seemed to be no discrimination as to who was taken prisoner. Everyone would be subject to the beatings, rapes and other excruciating torture that chilled Murdock to the bone.
He had to keep telling himself that none of this was his fault. I mean, it wasn't like he was the one going round terrorizing the villagers into submission. He wasn't part of the Killer Teams who would deal with VC suspects by throwing them out of helicopters or by murdering them in the middle of the night whilst they were sleeping in their hooches.
And he couldn't take the blame for the unfortunate American Seal who blew his own brains out, because he had murdered three innocent civilians by mistake.
Except Murdock was to blame. It had been information gathered by one of his informants that had led to the neutralisation. An informant who, as it transpired later, was a known enemy of the suspect. It was just another grudge killing.
The trigger that killed the Seal, and the other hundreds of men and women before him, was the blacklist. Murdock had indirectly sentenced them all to their deaths.
Hot tears of shame welled up in the pilot's eyes. But he didn't cry, because he didn't want to believe that he was to blame.
So he buried the guilt deep in the dark recess of his mind, next to the memory of his Grandparents. And with every day that went by he became more and more consumed by his own remorse and regret.
[Soz, I think I have lost direction a bit here. I hope this isn't coming across as some sort of history lesson! I don't wanna dwell too much on the torture side, as I think it might be a little bit distasteful, so I have tried to mix it up and make it a bit more personal to Murdock's mind set.
The "alleged" torture used by the CIA and Special Branch was truly horrific. For anyone who wants to know the gory details they included: rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock ('the Bell Telephone Hour') rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the 'water treatment'; the 'airplane' in which the prisoner's arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in mid air, after which he or she was beaten with rubber hoses and whips; and the use of police dogs to maul prisoners.]
