JOHNNY GONE DOWN Read Online Free PDF

Sam replied. ‘He could be laughing with his buddies abouthow he scared us into running away as soon as we arrived.’
    ‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘He was a marine, not a hick cab driver.’

    We reached the terminal - and realized immediately that something wasn’t right. The small airport, barely a tenth the size of the Boston airport, was teeming with chaotic activity. Groups of westerners, mostly American and European hippies with matted blonde hair, grubby faces and dirt-streaked backpacks, were huddled in corners, talking in loud, agitated voices to nervous-looking Cambodian airport officials.
    ‘This doesn’t look good,’ I muttered.
    There was no one at the immigration counter to check our passports. A big white board hanging over the counter proclaimed ‘All flights cancelled definitely’ in English. They may have meant ‘indefinitely’, but ‘definitely’ had an ominous ring to it which seemed fitting given the dark looks on the faces of the hippies. The marines who had been on the flight with us were nowhere to be seen.
    ‘How will we get out if all outgoing flights have been cancelled?’ Sam asked fearfully.
    ‘Why worry? Let’s just pick up some of these hippie chicks and have a vacation right here,’ I snapped, furious with myself for falling in with Sam’s plans without doing any research of my own.
    ‘Look, I’m sorry..’ he began.
    I cut him off. ‘No, no, it’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘Let’s try to find a way out of this mess, shall we?’
    We joined the thirty-odd hippies who were huddled together in the deserted baggage claim area.
    ‘What’s going on?’ I asked a tall lean guy with shaggy blonde hair and vacant blue eyes, who was standing alone and looked more relaxed than the others. He smiled.
    ‘We are fucked,’ he said sweetly. His accent was unrecognizable, neither American nor European, the two accents we were most used to hearing at MIT.
    ‘Why, what’s wrong?’ asked Sam in a rush.
    ‘The Khmer Rouge has cut off all air, road, train and river routes. Who knows how long it will be before things get back to normal? A day, a month, a year, a decade?’
    ‘We can’t afford to wait that long. I start with GE in three weeks,’ said Sam. He pointed at me. ‘And he starts with NASA.’
    The blonde guy just stared blankly at us.
    ‘There may be bigger problems to worry about than not joining work on time,’ I said. ‘Just relax a bit, will you?’
    I turned to the blonde guy. ‘Is the government going to arrange for us to stay somewhere safe until then?’
    He laughed, so incongruous a reaction in the circumstances that most ofthe hippies turned to stare at him. ‘Here, take a look at the new government,’ he said. He pulled us to a small window in one corner of the terminal.
    I saw a carnival-like atmosphere on the clear stretch of road outside the airport. Three big, green armoured battle tanks, each one about fifty feet wide and fifteen feet tall, stood half a mile ahead at the entrance to the airport. Twenty or thirty young boys sat atop the tanks. They were maybe fifteen or sixteen years old, and were dressed in black with red bandanas tied around their heads. Hundreds of short, thin men and women dressed in bright, colourful clothes - presumably the Cambodian junta - danced on the road, around the tanks. Periodically, the black-clad boys pumped their rifles into the air, firing impromptu shots which were greeted with jubilant cheers from the junta. Sure, it was an unlikely sight - the crowds milling around the tanks were mostly middle-aged men and women who were cheering unruly, teenage boys - but it didn’t seem sinister.
    ‘Everyone seems quite happy,’ said an American hippie with caked blonde hair and rings on her pierced cheeks. ‘It doesn’t seem all that bad. Why have they cancelled the flights?’
    There was a general murmur of assent at this observation. Everyone began to crowd around the small window.
    ‘I think we should talk to them and