Slash and Burn (10 page)
“Goes with the job, I supp—”
The distant sound of chopper blades churned through the silence of the night. It seemed to bounce off the darkness all around, disorienting them. They didn’t know where to look.
“Sounds like Judge Haeng and the boys coming home after a night of raging at the post office,” Civilai said.
“It’s a dangerous night to be flying,” Siri decided. “Surely they could have parked the helicopter behind the bar and taken a donkey home. They could even have walked it in half an hour.”
The sound became deafening and the chopper loomed over the roof behind them, kicking off concrete slates and sending a shower of rubble onto the two drinkers. They covered their glasses with their hands. The pilot had obviously not seen the building until the last second. The craft’s spotlight was angled down at the ground and as it rocked it splashed white light clumsily all around like water from a bucket. At one stage, Siri and Civilai were highlighted cabaret performers. They waved. The chopper angled in to the dirt yard, kicking up dust and landing on one wheel. For a second they thought it might crash onto its side but instead it flipped onto the other wheel, rocked, then settled. The engine growled, the rotors began to slow, and the dust churned in the air in the bright light until the beam was extinguished. The only light now was from the lamp on the rattan table which had miraculously stayed lit.
“Do you suppose it’s friendly?” Civilai shouted.
One, then two, then three flashlight beams came to life inside the chopper. Heads appeared as the hatch slid open and the metal steps were unfolded to the dirt. Two figures stepped down, lit occasionally as they moved in front of the beams. Siri recognized the shapes of Sergeant Johnson and Second Secretary Gordon bowed against the downdraft. They reached their hands toward the hatch and an arm appeared. They both took hold of it and guided a man in white down the steps. All of the flashlights were now directed upon this character, the star of the spectacle. He was a physically irrelevant man in his late fifties with long but thinning blond hair combed over a round pate. He wore white shoes to complement the crisp white double-breasted suit, buttoned to hold back a rampant red tie. The trousers were flared. When he reached the ground, his long wispy hair rose and danced in the draft like deepsea anemones. With Johnson and Gordon propping him up on either side he was rushed toward the hotel entrance. Seeing Siri and Civilai seated there on the veranda, the new guest shrugged off his escorts, approached the two old men and said something with feeling. He then grabbed for their hands which he shook enthusiastically, turning slightly toward a short Chinese-looking woman. In the dim light all they could see of her was crimson lips inside a black pageboy frame. She had no eyes or nose that they could make out but she did possess a splendid-looking camera. There was a flash and before the dots had cleared from their eyes, the stranger had vanished inside the building. In his wake they saw Judge Haeng, Vinai, and Rhyme from
Time
. It was a colorful but very brief carnival which left Siri and Civilai breathless.
The helicopter engine huffed a last breath. Then all was calm again save the ticking of a tired old Mi8 and the slowing whirr of its blades.
“Who was that white-suited stranger?” Civilai asked.
“
L’Empereur est arrivé
,” Siri told him.
They walked over to the helicopter where the two young pilots were doing what had to be done to put the beast to bed. They held small penlights between their teeth as they fiddled with the engine.
“What happened here?” Siri asked.
The youngest one answered. To Siri he looked barely old enough to ride a two-wheeled bicycle.
“The senator was supposed to stay overnight in Vientiane, Comrade,” he said. “They were going to fly him up tomorrow. But the flight control people said, given the conditions, it might be better if he flew directly up here. The military met his flight at Wattai and transferred him up to the landing strip in Phonsavan. We picked him up there.”
“What conditions?” Civilai asked.
“The smoke, Comrade. There’s a blanket of smoke all across the Special Zone.”
“Slash and burn?”
“We lose two or three months a year of flying time to it up here. The smoke just hangs around the mountains. Combined with the mist it’s like flying through soup. You can’t even make out the landmarks and, to tell the truth, none of us are that good at instrument flying. Tonight you’ve got the smoke and the mist and no moon. All we had to do was hop over from town, a couple of minutes. Even so, we almost ran into the hotel. We didn’t want to take off at all but the judge insisted. It was hairy, I don’t mind telling you, Comrade. And they’ve only just started burning. In a day or two you won’t see a hand in front of your face. I doubt we’ll be flying anywhere else for a while.”
Siri and Civilai returned to their seats.
“Don’t you think that’s odd?” Siri asked.
“What?”
“It’s August.”
“And?”
“Who’s slashing and burning in August? The point of it is to wait for the dry season and burn off the top growth in time to plant. I know the wet season seems to have finished early this year but the vegetation’s still damp. All they’d get now is a lot of smoke.”
“And you believe…?”
“I just wonder whether it might not have anything to do with agriculture. We’re surrounded by territory still occupied by antigovernment guerrilla forces. They could be burning the land for any number of reasons.”
“Perhaps they were getting nervous about the PL air force with its new fighters. I heard a lot of air activity this evening. I’d wager they’ve evacuated the airfield so they wouldn’t be stranded here. That’s probably worth setting light to a few mountains for.”
“You’re right.”
“I’m always right. If we had television I’d be the one who wins all the quiz shows. I’d have a new washing machine every week.”
They drank for a while, considering.
“Where do you suppose they’ll put him?” Civilai asked.
“Who?
L’Empereur
? Wherever he goes it won’t take him long to realize he’s not at the Oriental any more. I hear the Thais have running water without streptococci.”
“Beds without crabs and creaks and odd smells? Sounds like heaven.”
“He’ll be miserable. He’ll stay awake all night, get his photo shoot done at dawn’s crack, and be out of here before the smoke gets so bad he’s trapped. We might not even get a chance to sit down with him over a few beers and have a laugh together about the domino theory.”
“Shame.”
Senator Ulysses Vogal the Third was up with the unseen sun, although “up” suggests it was preceded by a “down” and the gentleman hadn’t dared lay his precious body on a mattress with such an obvious history. He’d spent the night in a chair wrapped in a blanket he’d brought with him watching the minutes crawl by on his luminous watch face. His personal assistant was a Chinese-American called Ethel Chin who could trace her Chinese-American ancestry back four generations, long enough to have lost the Chinese language entirely. She’d ordered room service for the senator but he’d taken one look at it and decided he’d make do with a cup of coffee and a cookie. He had work to do. By seven he was out in the forecourt of the Friendship overseeing the digging of a pit deep enough to bury the Sikorsky tailplane. They were inside the safety zone but the senator stood well back from the hole. They lowered the wreckage into it and sprinkled a thin layer of dirt on top. And there, Ethel Chin and Rhyme from
Time
took several pictures of the senator on his knees unearthing the wreckage. This was followed by several more pictures of the senator standing beside the excavated tailplane beaming like a fisherman. Then came a series with Senator Vogal listening earnestly to a group of communist natives: a tribe consisting of Daeng, Dtui, Geung, Phosy, and Commander Lit. They sat around the great white-bell-bottomed leader listening to his words of wisdom in return for an appearance in
Time
magazine. Rhyme promised to send them each a copy. Perhaps the editor wouldn’t notice that all of the listeners had their feet pointing directly at the American elder, or even that he’d know how disrespectful it was considered.
And Siri had been right. It wasn’t even breakfast time and the senator was out of his sweat-stained khakis and back in his white suit sitting on the uncomfortable bench of the Mi8 with his overnight bag between his legs. He was a man eager to be anywhere else. His smile was all used up and he had nothing left on his face but anxiety. Everyone else stood in the morning mist waiting for the chopper to lift off. But the craft was silent. The rotors immobile. Vogal yelled at Ethel Chin who in turn yelled at Peach. The interpreter nodded and walked to a spot below the cockpit window where she called to the pilot.
“The senator couldn’t help noticing that you aren’t flying,” she said. “Any problem?”
The young captain had been on the radio.
“They won’t give us clearance to fly,” he said. “They say the smoke’s really heavy over the mountains today. It’s on both sides of us, north and south. They aren’t prepared to risk it. They say we should stay here till the air clears. Hope for a bit of wind. See what it’s like later.”
Peach nodded and walked casually to the hatch of the helicopter. She passed on the message with a Lao smile. The onlookers could see the senator’s reaction over her shoulder. It was loud and heated and certainly impolite. Peach stood her ground with her arms folded. But even before the tirade had run its course she turned her back and walked away from the helicopter. The senator yelled. She ignored him.
“Five dollars says she quits,” said Civilai.
“You haven’t got five dollars,” Siri reminded him.
The old pair were at the back of the crowd of onlookers with pre-breakfast coffees in their hands and post-whisky-night hangovers in their heads. They’d deliberately missed the photo session and planned to miss the take-off, but the helicopter remained. The senator seemed suddenly aware that he was being watched and climbed down the steps of the chopper. He performed what some later speculated might have been a polite Lao
nop
to the onlookers, although others suggested he’d merely been catching mosquitoes. He then walked to Peach who was leaning against a tree. He talked more quietly to her now. His head was bowed and his right hand rested upon his heart. Peach shrugged and the senator enveloped her in a hug the major would have been proud of.
“They’re doing it,” said Mr. Geung with a look of horror on his face. This unintentionally raised a laugh from the viewers.
“In a way,” Dtui told him. “It’s called a hug.”
“It’s love.”
“I very much doubt that,” Dtui smiled. “But don’t let that stop you hugging your friend Tukda.”
Geung turned the colour of a retired United States army major.
“I … I don’t. I….”
“It’s OK, hon. You don’t have to discuss it if you don’t want to. I won’t pry.” She lowered her voice. “But you know if you need to talk about anything—I mean anything at all—you can trust me.”
“Nnnnnothing to say.”
“Right. No problem.”
The crash site was due south of the Friendship Hotel but they would have to carve a large arc east or west to avoid the military assault. Either course would have flown them directly into the smog. PL air force regulations prohibited flying even short distances in smoky conditions so both helicopters were grounded. The pilots were billeted in the headman’s house in Phonsavan until further notice. But all was not lost. Toua, the friendly hotel manager, rode his pony into town and returned ahead of two trucks, each with its own driver and porter. There was a dirt road which would transport the teams to within a kilometer of Ban Hoong. From there they could trek across the hills. Toua trusted the Americans would be able to make a small donation for petrol and something for the hard-working porters and drivers who had very little work to feed their families. Potter assured them it wouldn’t be a problem.
The senator, already exhausted from the physical and emotional efforts of the morning, and wallowing in the trauma of being trapped in a disadvantaged area, opted not to travel to the search site with the MIA teams. He and Ethel Chin would, he said, wait at the Friendship until the smoke cleared. As there was no wind at all, the likelihood of such an event was remote. Out of what he called courtesy, General Suvan said he’d remain at the hotel also. Although Judge Haeng volunteered to stay behind to keep them company, the general insisted he’d be needed at the crash site.
The further the trucks drove into the hills, the more the teams began to taste the smoke in the air. Now and then black flakes fluttered past them like charred snow and Siri could feel a growl deep in his throat that he knew would soon turn into a cough. The twenty-minute helicopter ride translated to over an hour on the old trucks. As they climbed into the mountains, deep ruts left over from the heavy rains were gouged along the clay road but the wet season landslides had been cleared. Sawn logs from fallen giants lay to either side of them, awaiting collection. As none of the team members knew the terrain, they had to put their faith in the local knowledge of the truck drivers. When they pulled off the road in the middle of nowhere and announced that this was the starting point of the walk to Ban Hoong, the passengers weren’t in a position to argue.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Siri asked Daeng.
“I swear if you ask me that one more time, Siri, I’ll file for divorce,” she said. “Every day I walk a hundred kilometers from the noodle pot to the tables and back and you say nothing. What’s so different here?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Siri nodded, “unless you count the fast flowing rivers, cliffs, jagged rocks, poisonous spiders, tigers, enemy snipers and unexploded bombs, none of which I noticed last time I was in the noodle shop. And, Daeng, I tell you, I’ve seen it too many times in movies. The injured member of the group lags behind. ‘You go ahead,’ he cries. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’ But he knows he’s doomed so he uses three of his last four bullets to slow down the pursuing Indians and saves the last one for himself. But they overpower him and cut him to ribbons with hatchets before he has a chance to end his own misery.”
“And you see this happening to me?” Daeng asked, unloading the packs from the truck.
“If it can happen to John Wayne….”
“And he had rheumatism in this film of yours?”
“Rheumatism, arrow wound, it all amounts to the same thing.”
“Have you and Civilai ever calculated how many years of your lives you’ve wasted watching films?”
Siri reached for his broken heart.
“Civilai!” he called to his friend on the next truck. “Daeng thinks we’ve wasted our lives watching films. What should I do?”
“You’re in good shape for an old man,” Civilai shouted. “You’ll always be able to find a new wife.”
“Watch your back, comrade,” Daeng shouted. “We’ll be passing along narrow mountain ledges with sheer drops. I wouldn’t want you to have an accident.”
“Oh, did I hear a threat?” Civilai laughed. “You’ll have to get up very early in the morning to get the better of me, comrade noodle-seller.”
“We’ll see, old man.”
Despite Siri’s warnings and his unspoken concerns about his own health, the hike was comparatively easy. The path was well used and it wound over gentle hills, avoiding some of the higher peaks. Even so, Civilai maintained a safe distance from Madame Daeng. The teams walked in a long single conga line along the narrow trail. Ugly walked at heel beside Siri like a pedigree show dog. The porters carried the heavier bags and the pace was that of a nature hike for elderly ladies rather than a route march. The only sound, apart from the footfalls of heavy boots, came from Judge Haeng who had remembered his fictitious leg injury and now grunted and grumbled and leaned heavily on a tree branch. Siri pointed out to Daeng that a month earlier it had been the other leg causing so much grief. The whole expedition was tired of hearing the judge’s jungle survival story, even as translated by a very sarcastic Auntie Bpoo, today glamorous in a yellow pant suit.
“Can’t we shut him up somehow?” Siri asked.
They were walking through a narrow valley full of odd-looking trees with thick foliage.
“Judge Haeng,” Daeng called from the back of the procession. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt.”
The judge looked back over his shoulder.
“What is it, Madame Daeng?” he said. The voices echoed against the karst cliff walls on either side of them.
“You have a reputation of being a man with extensive knowledge of the jungles up here in the north.”
“There are those who would say that I am something of an expert,” he smiled. “A good communist is like a tree. He stands firm but knows how to bend in a strong wind. He is fertile but gladly gives up his nuts to less fortunate creatures. Why do you ask?”
“We were just wondering about these trees we’re passing under right now,” she said. “I haven’t spent much time in the north but I do believe we have something similar in the south. There we call them
ngoo dtok
.”
Siri noticed that as she spoke his wife was surreptitiously unbuckling her leather belt and sliding it from the lugs of her canvas army trousers. “Would you happen to know if these are the same?” she continued.
“I have heard them called that,” the judge lied. “I won’t bore you with their Latin names or the names attributed by local botanists, but, yes, I believe these are
ngoo dtok.
”
“Then it’s just as well we aren’t in the south,” said Daeng, who had just plucked the tree’s name from the air. “Because down in Champasak the
ngoo dtok
is the home of the infamous drop adder. I hope that isn’t the case here.”
“The what, comrade?”
“The drop adder, Judge. The trees are full of them. They’re deadly venomous snakes camouflaged the colour of branches.” The local porters began to look up at the overhanging foliage with trepidation. “There is no known antidote to their venom. One bite from a drop adder and it’s all over, a long, slow, excruciatingly painful death.”
She had her belt rolled in her hand and was taking aim at Civilai four bodies ahead of her.
“They wait for their prey to walk beneath the tree,” she continued, “and they focus on a vulnerable spot, a neck, a wrist … a bald head. They are remarkably accurate. You step beneath their branch and … hiss!”
She launched her belt into the air where it began to uncurl and came down square on Civilai’s left shoulder—writhing. He shouted his surprise and beat off the fake drop adder, but the porter directly behind him screamed the heavens down. He ran in a blind panic away from the trees and rid himself of the cumbersome packs by tossing them to one side.
The sound of the explosion was amplified in the gully and the force of it blew the escaping porter clean off his feet and into the rocks. Several of those nearest to the blast were knocked backward. Siri and Daeng felt a whoosh of air and, like the others, hung there in a void of shocked silence. Everyone looked around wondering what had happened. All they could see was a charred nest of a crater gouged out of the grass where one pack had hit the ground. The porter, bleeding from the forehead, rolled on to his back and coughed. Dr. Yamaguchi and Dtui went to attend to him. Siri turned to his wife.
“Well done, old girl,” he said.
“It’s never quite had that effect before,” she admitted.
“Will somebody tell me what the hell just happened?” Major Potter called out. Peach’s translation arrived a few seconds later.
“Any idea whose pack that was?” Siri asked.
The porters had merely grabbed all the heavier bags from the trucks to justify a wage so nobody had an immediate answer. The team members looked around for their own bags in order to eliminate whose was missing. It was the major himself who came up empty. He stood with his hands on his head.
“It looks like it was Potter’s bag,” Peach told them.
There was a crowd gathered now around the smoldering hole in the ground. Not a trace remained of whatever had exploded there.
“Does the major remember what was in his pack?” Phosy asked Peach.
The old soldier was standing in the shade of one of the drop-adder trees looking crestfallen. Peach walked over to join him. Civilai returned Daeng’s belt with an ironic smile.
“Victory to me, I’d say,” he told her.
Daeng wasn’t inclined to disagree, especially with Judge Haeng marching angrily in their direction, once more forgetting his limp.
“Do you see? Do you see?” he said. “More evidence that age does not necessarily equal maturity. Have I not told you on numerous occasions that these childish practical jokes will ultimately lead to disaster?”