Slash and Burn (11 page)
“On this occasion it might just have saved a life,” Phosy interrupted. “If the porter hadn’t thrown off the pack he’d be headless by now. There was something in it that could have blown at any minute.”
Peach stood beside Potter who was unconsciously running his hand through his short white hair. There was an unmistakably guilty look on his face.
“Major,” she said. “What was that?”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “There’s no way. I made sure like I always do. Double checked.”
“Was there something explosive in your pack?”
“Technically, no.”
“But in reality?”
“It couldn’t have been the dynamite.”
“Major Potter. There was dynamite in your backpack?”
“Well, yeah. But it was completely harmless.”
It was morning break and the smoky air felt more unsociable with every hour that passed. They’d set up a tarpaulin shelter between the trees, more from habit than necessity. They hadn’t yet seen the sun that day. Patches of smog wafted past like wispy black hearses. In the distance the morning mist was trapped beneath one endless bank of clouds. The team felt like the filling in a dirty soufflé. The Lao contingent, minus Judge Haeng and Cousin Vinai, sat in a circle drinking coffee from a thermos and eating some version of NASA space rations wrapped in plastic. They were sure that whatever the snack lacked in taste would be more than made up for if they ever needed to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere in a hurry.
“So,” Civilai asked. “Have I got this straight? The major had five sticks of dynamite in his pack and was surprised that they blew up?”
“He swears they weren’t wearing their detonation caps,” Auntie Bpoo told him. “Says they were as safe as celery sticks.”
“Except celery doesn’t blow people’s heads off,” said Dtui.
“He was in the ordnance corps for the first five years of his career,” Phosy told her. “You’d think he’d know how to make a stick of dynamite safe.”
“He’s a drunk,” Daeng reminded him. “He knocks back half a bottle of whiskey at dinner then goes back to his room and swigs the other half. Then he sits on his bed and disarms explosives for half an hour before collapsing on the bed. Does that scenario make anyone else here feel nervous?”
“I don’t know.” Siri shook his head. “He’s a professional. Wouldn’t he have double-checked everything when he woke up this morning?”
“He’s a professional who was drummed out of the service before retirement age,” said Commander Lit.
“What?”
“It’s true,” Lit nodded. “We did a background check on him. He’s only fifty-seven. He had several years ahead of him. The Americans don’t exactly fire their ranking officers. They urge them to step away from the career. It appears his superiors were a little upset about his alcohol and sex addictions. He had the choice of leaving for undisclosed health reasons or facing a dishonorable discharge.”
“He’s only fifty-seven?” Dtui was shocked. “I was sure he was older than you, Dr. Siri.”
“Ah, but I’m not a slave to sex and alcohol,” Siri told her.
“That’s right,” Madame Daeng agreed. “The doctor could give up alcohol any time he wanted.” She noticed everyone staring at her. “What? He could.”
“Meanwhile, back to the major,” said Civilai with a timely intervention. “If the man’s such a liability, what’s he doing handling explosives?”
“And what’s he doing heading this mission?” Dtui added.
“Probably they have the same system as us,” Phosy suggested.
“A reward for thirty years’ faithful service. An all-expenses-paid trip. The name of a senior officer on the list of personnel?”
“Plus he’s had experience in the region,” Lit added. “He spent six years in Vietnam. They knew him at the US consulate here. I believe he’d worked with the chargé in Ho Chi Minh City.”
“Perhaps they didn’t expect him to be this hands-on,” Civilai suggested. “They imagined him and General Suvan stretched out on beach chairs together waiting for us to come back from the dig with parts.”
“I don’t believe that for one minute,” said Siri. “The consulate people have been stuck in Vientiane for three years. This is their first chance to get up-country and see what’s happening. I think they’d choose their personnel very carefully. There has to be a good reason for Potter being here.”
“To blow us all to hell, by the looks of it,” said Bpoo. And with no invitation, she launched into a poem.
The bomb on wheels
Congeals above the road, the street
His gases sweet
Rise up and rot the shield
A deadly leak
Bergs creak and roll
And never healed
Our houses drowned
Profound too late
“Interesting,” said Civilai.
Unable to comment further, everyone else washed out their mugs, collected their plastic wrappers and headed back to join the Americans. They’d spent the first hour marking out fifty-meter grids across the supposed crash site with pink nylon string. They only had the secondhand word from a sorceress that this was where the craft had crashed. Even though the villagers had led them confidently to this valley just to the east of the village, they’d encountered no debris. Still they persevered.
Mr. Geung was walking a little too close to Dtui as they reached their allotted square.
“What is it, pal?” she said, turning to him.
“I….”
“Yes?”
“I … wrote a letter. I wwwwant you to check it.”
Dtui was surprised, given the fact that just a month before, Mr. Geung couldn’t write. Or perhaps it was fairer to say he could write little more than his name, the names of Dtui and Siri, Daeng, Malee and Foremost ice cream which he was particularly fond of. Hardly enough material with which to compose a letter. Despite the fact that they’d been teaching him for three years, his reading was marginally better.
“Who’s it to?” she asked.
“A friend.”
“Anyone I know?”
“Yes.” He smiled, reached into his back pocket and produced a wad of lined pages rolled into a cone. He handed it to her with some hesitation. Dtui unrolled the cone. The pages were all full. On the first line of the first sheet was the word “Tukda.” He’d obviously been practicing. This was followed by what looked like line after line of suet balls. He’d filled every page with them, every space. On the very last page was his name, beautifully written.
“OK?” he asked.
“Do you think she’ll know what they are?”
“Th … th … they’re hearts.”
“Ah, of course. I knew that.”
Dtui turned back to the beginning and looked again. Sure enough, some of the dumplings did resemble hearts. She grabbed hold of her friend and pulled him to her.
“Hug,” said Geung, with his arms straight down at his sides. “Is it good?”
“Can your friend Tukda read?”
“No.”
“She’ll love it.”
He pulled away.
“Are you c … crying?”
“It’s the smoke, honey. The smoke.”
It was four thirty on day three and they’d found nothing. Fourteen people had been scouring the earth for the best part of the day and they’d found not a shard of metal, not a bullet, not a tooth. Not a damned thing. They’d walked the grids with their machetes and grass hackers then covered them again on their knees. They’d had to trust the word of Ar the headman who swore that area had never been bombed and no villagers, buffalo or dogs within a twenty kilometer radius had ever been blown up. Even so, the teams were reluctant to dig too deeply into the hard earth. Auntie Bpoo, not a paid member of the team, had spent most of her time in a hammock watching Siri, waiting for his untimely death. She assured him that once his time came she’d know how to deal with it. He hoped it wouldn’t come during one of her snoozes.
At one stage, Siri had found himself foraging beside Second Secretary Gordon. The American had a working knowledge of the Thai language which was close enough to Lao to make a conversation possible. Siri had begun with personal questions because he knew the visitors liked to have their ice broken. Gordon was single, a career diplomat with sights on an ambassadorship some day.
He’d been posted in Ho Chi Minh City—then still called Saigon—for four years during the war. He was born in the year of the horse, a fact that seemed to be very important to him, as was learning that Siri was a dragon. At last, Siri got around to the point.
“Did you get a chance to read Captain Boyd’s service record?” he asked.
Gordon hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Were there other blips in the pilot’s past?” he asked. “Was he a habitual drug and alcohol user?”
“From what I could tell there was just that one occasion,” Gordon told him. “I’m not even sure he liked to drink that much.”
“And no other disciplinary problems?”
“He didn’t have one black mark on his record.”
“But the Air America people covered up the true events of his disappearance that night. They could very well have ignored other such lapses.”
“You know, Doctor? Despite its obvious CIA and government connections, Air America was a company. They had regulations and standards. If any of their pilots screwed up they had no problems about kicking them out. There was always a supply of young men in search of adventure to replace them.”
“So what happened? What happened that was so drastic that our perfect airman suddenly lost control?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you have access to the interview documents?”
“The people Air America interviewed after the crash?”
“Yes.”
“They have a copy at the embassy in Vientiane. I didn’t get to look at it in any detail. I do remember they spent a long time talking to the Filipino mechanic and one of the pilots, a Raven. That’s what they called the crazy forward air command guys. The pilots who flew in and guided the bombing raids. They were the three getting stoned together that night. The Raven got killed in action a few weeks after Boyd disappeared.”
“Is there any way of getting a copy of the interviews up here?”
“That looks less likely with every passing hour. They don’t have a fax at the post office and we can’t have it flown here, for obvious reasons.”
“Do you know if anyone on this mission has read the complete report?”
“Major Potter went through it in detail before we left. He could probably tell you what the witnesses said.”
Siri’s instincts were kicking in. Something told him the current search wouldn’t yield any clues to Boyd’s disappearance. But there was something odd going on. He could really use a little supernatural intervention on this one. Since his arrival in Xiang Khouang, Siri had become aware that there’d been very little contact from the spirit world. In many respects it was a blessing. Before his departure his dreams had been overcrowded with disgruntled Khmer souls stuck to his subconscious like moths on drying paint. They’d exhausted him to the point that his waking hours were more restful than sleep. Here in the north he’d slept nights and had no recollections of supernatural nocturnal encounters. He still wore his white stone talisman on a string of plaited hair around his neck but it was starting to feel more like an ornament than a force field against the malevolent
phibob
. Even his angel mother had missed the flight. For almost a year, the old lady with lips red with betel nut had followed him around, offering warnings and unfathomable advice. If Auntie Bpoo’s prediction was accurate, he really could use a little spiritual backup. Instead, he had to emulate his long-time hero, Inspector Maigret of the Paris Sûreté, and use his brain. There was never a useful ghost around when you most needed one.
He abandoned his search for relics he knew for certain they’d never find, and went in search of Inspector Phosy. After a brief consultation they walked together over the ridge to Ban Hoong where everyone seemed to be going about their business. Rice huskers husked, grain pounders pounded, and chicken pluckers plucked in their time-frozen warp. The headman’s son was still sitting in the middle of the central square with his collection of insects. He currently had three in active service buzzing around his hat at the end of their tethers. The peak of the cap provided a perfect landing platform. While Siri and Ugly stood watching him with the same fascinated expressions on their weathered faces, Phosy gathered together the village elders for an impromptu meeting.
“We’re working at the place you led us to,” Phosy told them. “We were wondering whether anyone in the village has ever come across wreckage from the crash there.”
The elders huddled and Phosy sat on the bench provided for them. The answer was no.
“Then, apart from the tailplane falling through your roof, you have no other physical evidence that the craft came down where your sorceress said it did,” Phosy continued.
The answer was no.
“How old was your sorceress?”
“Ninety-two,” came the reply.
“And she was in control of her faculties?”
“No, she was as mad as a loon,” came the reply.
“And what did this mad old woman say when everyone awoke in the morning?”
“Nothing,” came the reply. “She was unconscious after hitting her head on a branch. She didn’t wake up for three days.”
“And when she came round, what did she say then?”
“She said the sky dragon had crashed into the moon and sent it bursting into the jungle to the east.”
“And she was certain of the location?”
“Yes.”
“Did you notice the charred jungle and the smell of smoke when you passed in that direction?”
“No,” they said.
“And you didn’t think that was odd?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t question her word?”
“She’d been our sorceress for sixty years. She’d birthed many of us. It would have been disrespectful to doubt her word. She’d never once lied to us.”
Siri wandered into the meeting hut. He and Phosy consulted.
“Did she develop any peculiar conditions in her later life?” Phosy asked them. “Anything you noticed that was unlike her?”
They huddled again.
“There was one thing,” they said.
The teams were gathering their equipment and preparing for the hike back to the trucks when Siri and Phosy marched jauntily out of the jungle.
“Of course you can both afford to be smiling,” said Judge Haeng. “We’re all here digging and scratching like peasants while you two run off into the woods together. Don’t think we didn’t notice. If you don’t want your per diem docked you’d better have a good excuse.”
“Would it help that we’ve found the real helicopter crash site?” Siri asked.
“Where?” said Madame Daeng.
“How?” asked Civilai.
Peach passed on the news to the Americans and they gathered around. Phosy told of the ninety-two-year-old sorceress who’d pointed to the crash site and the fact that in her twilight years she’d started to confuse words, particularly opposites. She would say no but mean yes. Say left but mean right.
“It’s a condition called Gerstmann syndrome,” Siri told them. “It’s particularly pronounced when talking about directions. The speaker isn’t confused. She honestly sees a mirror image of an event taking place in a different location. In this case it appears she saw the moon explode in the east. She’d watched the helicopter crash and seen the trees burst into flames. When she came out of her coma she was convinced the event took place right here but in fact it all happened to the west of the village. We went to look in the opposite direction and found the site just two kilometers away.”
“But that’s ridiculous,” said Haeng. “Two kilometers from the village and nobody there noticed it?”
“What the villagers found there was a large area burned to a crisp. They assumed it was set alight by one of the fleeing Hmong groups to prepare the land for planting. That wouldn’t have been at all surprising in this region, given the number of villages that have been forcibly re located. There are burnt out areas all through these hills. And this doesn’t look like a crash site. There was no obvious debris—just a black, treeless patch of earth. The villagers are afraid of the place. It’s been ten years since the crash but nothing grows there. They call it the dead man’s field.”
After the translation Sergeant Johnson spoke excitedly to the interpreter.
“That would suggest the explosion was fierce and the resulting fire gave off excessive heat,” said Peach. “If that was so, the helicopter must have been carrying something volatile, probably a high explosive. A normal helicopter crash wouldn’t have caused so much devastation. The sergeant wants to know if there was a crater.”
“There’s a pond,” said Siri. “A large pond with no pond life at all. We wondered whether it could have been a crater. The odd thing is that it’s right at the front edge of the clearing. You’d expect a crater to be at the center.”
“But how can you be so certain it was the helicopter crash site?” Judge Haeng asked.
“Something went down there,” said Siri, upending his cloth shoulder bag and emptying a small mound of objects onto the ground. Everyone gathered around. “We were only there for half an hour but we found these.”
In the pile they recognized a petrol cap, melted but in one piece, various bolts and screws all slightly deformed, and what could have once been the trigger of a pistol. The largest sliver of metal was no bigger than a thumb. There was nothing to identify helicopter H32 but the discovery certainly buoyed the mood of the searchers. Were it not for the thickening of the air and the murkiness of the late afternoon, they would gladly have headed to the dead man’s field right then. But as they walked back to the trucks they talked excitedly of plans for the following day.
The porter who had been caught in the morning blast was bruised but had made a remarkable recovery. He told them it wasn’t the first time he’d been blown up and probably wouldn’t be the last. Judge Haeng had insisted Madame Daeng apologize for her practical joke and assure all the porters that there was no such thing as a drop adder. Even so, they walked with their eyes pointed heavenward for the entire journey and were relieved to reach the trucks. The drivers were woken up and the convoy headed back to Phonsavan along the rough dirt tracks.
Siri and Phosy had arranged to sit on the flat bed of one of the vehicles with Major Potter. He had been uncharacteristically quiet for much of the day. Auntie Bpoo served as translator. To the major’s surprise, and subsequent delight, the transvestite not only translated his words using a fair impersonation of his voice, but also mimicked his mannerisms. The show obviously improved the old soldier’s mood. Siri and Phosy asked what exactly had caused the explosion that morning.
“I’ve been trying to work that out all day,” said Bpoo as Potter. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Is there any way you might have accidently armed the dynamite when you were … tired last night?” Siri asked.