When the blood rose and dripped down his collar, his wife finally broke through the crowd. “Take it,” she cried and pulled down her pants. Beneath the roll of the old woman’s pale belly and above her pubic mound, she had wrapped seven gold necklaces in a handkerchief, and duct-taped the couple’s life savings on her pelvis.

Only two men and two knives and yet Viet knew why his friends didn’t fight. They were boat people, half dead, no fight left, and so they dropped their gold and any fragments of hope into the dirty burlap sacks. The pirates moved through the crowd with ease. These families were already trained to lie down, close their eyes, take it, and wait for the abuse to pass.

When the men reached Huong, she took off her jacket and held it out by the collar. Viet thought, good girl, give them what they want. But the pirate stopped. He took his knife and pointed it at her chin. She covered her throat with her hand. He used his knife to wave her hand away. She dodged the blade but immediately slapped her hand back. Huong was covering the jade Buddha at the hollow of her throat.

The other passengers pleaded with her. “Forget it!” “Give it to him!” “Hand it over!”

Viet could hardly breathe. His fear tasted like a fist full of coins jammed in his mouth. He knew his wife wouldn’t give him up the family heirloom without a fight. Instead she pushed her jacket into the bulldog’s chest. With her hands she showed him the hard nuggets of gold and jewelry she had hand sewn into the quilted lining of the fabric.

The bulldog screamed at her until a wad of spit landed on her chin. Huong would later say he had horrible decaying breath and because she found this so foul she couldn’t stop her tongue. “You are animals, dogs.” She sneered in his face, “You rape the raped.”

He didn’t understand her, but he knew she’d cursed him. He grabbed her hair and shoved her face into the deck. The other passengers flinched. They all of course recognized Huong from the commercials of her modeling days. One man later recounted, “The thought of damaging that face was criminal.”

From below, Viet watched as the bulldog yanked her pants and panties down to her knees. Huong struggled and kicked beneath him, but he had her pinned. When he pulled his pants down, his zipper got caught. The bulldog tried to free himself with just one hand so he could hold on to his blade.

Viet knew this moment was all he had. He found the spot to aim for, the jugular. He counted the man about eleven paces away but he was nervous because his eyesight was poor, his glasses were foggy, and his lenses were scratched from wedging his face against the rusted hole of the sheet metal door.

From the closet, his daughter whined, “Papa, I don’t want to play anymore.”