STORY TKCONTINUED FROM PAGE 113
THE ACCIDENTAL GETAWAY DRIVERneeded a second vehicle—and now, with their
photos everywhere, they also needed to mask
their appearance. They hauled Ma out into
the parking lot. He was again ordered into the
backseat, where Tieu steadied the gun on him.
He was afraid anew and unsure what would
happen next—it was a mix of dread and confu-
sion he hadn’t felt in 40 years.
Ma had been a lieutenant colonel in the
South Vietnamese Army during the war. At
night, he would venture with the Americans
in search of Vietcong guerrillas—the ones
who, by day, shelled his base, hard against the
Cambodian mountains. After the war, after
the Americans fled, Ma had endured a second
horror as a captive, held for seven long years
in a Communist forced-labor camp. “You are
an especially stubborn case!” one Communist
o∞cial would shout before clubbing him
with the butt of a rifle. All these decades later,
Ma could still trace with his finger the scar
just beneath his hairline. He had survived,
while others had not.
But time can weaken resolve, and as an
old man with a gun to his belly, too frail to
fight, too tired to resist, Ma thought he would
surely die. As they drove toward Los Angeles,
his captors said nothing, which frightened
him all the more.
Earlier that morning, the escapees had
found a van for sale on Craigslist. Duong
figured he could take the vehicle for a test spin
and then simply drive away. And so, on a quiet
backstreet in L.A., Nayeri slowed the Civic to
a stop, and Duong got out and disappeared
around the block. Before long, he reappeared
with a white van.
After the theft, the day took on a surreal
veneer of suburban normalcy: The fugitives
went shopping for clothes at Ross Dress for
Less; they visited a hair salon. The three
escapees each altered his appearance—none
more than Duong, who had his goatee shaved
and his hair dyed black and cut into an
army-issue high-and-tight.
When they left the salon, Nayeri and Tieu
took the van. Duong and Ma got into the Civic,
and here, alone in the car—away from Nayeri
and Tieu—Duong’s personality changed, just
as completely as he’d changed his appearance.
He became relaxed and even chatty with Ma,
driving back toward Rosemead, asking about
the cabbie’s life in their native Vietnamese. At
one point, he even called Ma “Uncle,” a term
of endearment that implied respect for the
old man. Ma, unable to shake his suspicions,
didn’t know what to make of this.
Duong steered the Civic toward the
Flamingo Inn, a motel where rooms are rented
by the week. Nayeri and Tieu were waiting in
the parking lot. They sent Ma to the front desk,
where he registered room 116 in his own name.
been protecting Ma? Or merely himself? Did
he care for Ma, or did he simply fear that the
blast of a gun and a dead body on the carpet
might hasten his capture?
Over the past couple of days, Duong had
seemed to take an interest in Ma’s well-being.
But Ma was leery, all too aware that it was
Duong who had been the first to point the gun
at him. For all Ma knew, Duong was playing an
angle the other inmates didn’t see. As always
in the States, the hardest people for Ma to read
were his fellow Vietnamese.
He had felt wronged by them so often in
his life. When Ma had landed in California in
1992, with a wife and four kids, he’d struggled.
The war and his time in the labor camp had
placed him nearly two decades behind the first
wave of immigrants who’d left Vietnam for the
U.S. after the war. For years he took menial
jobs, and he would later say that his siblings—
dentists and pharmacists and white-collar
success stories—who had arrived earlier, made
him feel ashamed of the life he had made.
Money had always been tight, which exac-
erbated the arguments between Ma and his
wife. He knew she was losing respect for him
and knew that everyone in the family noticed
it. Rather than su≠er the indignity, Ma moved
one day, without explanation, from their
home in San Diego. He found a little room in
the Garden Grove boarding house and began
a solitary existence as a driver—a choice that
seemed to have led to this: He was a hostage
in a squalid motel room, debating whether an
accused killer actually cared for him.
The escapees decided they needed to move
north, and on Tuesday morning, they drove
350 tense miles to San Jose, where they found
another motel. The journey exhausted Ma.
And that night he began snoring so loudly
that he woke Duong, lying beside him. But
Duong didn’t elbow him awake. Instead, he
slowly climbed out of bed, careful not to stir
Ma, and curled up on the floor, so Unclemight
rest more peacefully.- ••
THEY NEEDED CASH. On Wednesday
morning, they piled into the car and drove to
a Western Union. Nayeri walked inside, and
when he returned, he had $3,000 on him; his
mother, he said, had wired him the money. But
the group did not set out for Mexico or Canada.
They no longer harbored delusions about Iran,
either. Nayeri had another plan in mind. He
drove back to the motel, where he dropped
o≠ Duong and announced that he and Tieu
needed to take Ma out for a while in the van.
Out?Ma thought. Oh no.
By the time they parked near the ocean in
Santa Cruz, Ma’s imagination ran dark and
unbridled—and not without justification. The
day before, the Orange County Register had
published a story in which Heather Brown, a
deputy district attorney familiar with the tor-
ture charges against Nayeri, described hearing
about the jailbreak: “My first reaction was, ‘Oh,
my God, they let Hannibal Lecter out.’ ” Brown
added that Nayeri was “diabolical.”
Ma figured he’d been driven to the beach to
be executed. His stroll with Nayeri and Tieu
began aimlessly—and because of that, it felt
even more malevolent to Ma. Nayeri had them
pose for pictures. With the ocean, the beach,
and the pier as their backdrop, Nayeri acted
as if they were friends. What is he doing?Ma
From the liquor store across the street, the
escapees bought a case of Bud Light and a bot-
tle of Jack Daniel’s. Deep into the night, they
laughed and drank and smoked cigarettes,
while on television the anchors said that the
reward for information leading to their arrest
had increased from $20,000 to $50,000.- ••
SUNDAY DAWNED and something wasn’t
right. Nayeri seemed more distant than usual.
They drank and talked in urgent tones that
Ma, with his limited English, couldn’t always
understand. They seemed eager to go some-
place, but no one headed for the door.
At one point, Ma watched a discussion grow
heated. The gist of the debate eluded him, but
the truth was the men were already low on
cash. Worse, they’d only made it to Rosemead.
They realized that the media sensation of the
jailbreak, while gratifying—they were famous
now!—also served to confine them with each
passing hour. Outside it grew darker. Another
day was slipping away.
At 6 p.m., a local television station aired a
bombshell report, an interview with the mother
and sister of Jonathan Tieu. Lu Ann Nguyen,
Jonathan’s taut and tiny mother, stood near
a row of bushes in a public park and heaved
for air. “Jonathan, I miss you and I want”—she
shook her head from the pain, sobbing in bro-
ken English—“and I want you to be—I want my
son back. Jonathan, please!” His 18-year-old
sister, Ti≠any Tieu, at one point looked directly
into the camera. “Please,” she said, crying, “just
turn yourself in. Don’t let this drag on!”
In the motel room, there was a somber
silence as Tieu seemed to grasp the ramifica-
tions of his escape. He had always wanted to
be the good boy; he was a solid student before
he found trouble with the police. Now he had
caused his family new and searing pain. Tears
welled in his eyes and fell upon his cheeks.
Maybe it was the news report, or maybe it
was everything—too much booze, too little
cash—but Nayeri soon began yelling at Duong.
The room became loud and tense and small.
Ma sensed that the argument concerned him.
He’d begun to consider what the men must
have realized themselves: If they killed the
driver now, they could make a cleaner escape.
Nayeri had no more use for a hostage, and Ma
watched as Nayeri pointed in his direction and
shouted, “Boom boom, old man!”
At that, Duong stepped into Nayeri’s face
and then took him to the ground. They strug-
gled for a moment, and Nayeri, who had wres-
tled at his high school in Fresno, ended up on
top. With a punch to Duong’s face, he ended
the fight. As he climbed o≠, Nayeri stared
hard at the cabdriver. But for whatever rea-
son, he didn’t make for the gun. By night’s end,
it rested with Tieu, under the kid’s pillow by
the door. Its whereabouts consumed Ma as he
tried again to sleep. - ••
“UNCLE, GO TAKE A SHOWER.”Duong
motioned to the bathroom Monday morn-
ing, but Ma shook his head no. He still wore
his pajamas from Friday night and had not
bathed since picking up the escapees. I’m dead
already,he told himself.
Duong shot him a concerned look, and as
Ma stared blankly back, the old man wondered
what to make of him. Last night, had Duong
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