Porter had McKean under the arms and she got hold of the man’s belt and they pulled him out.
They dragged him, coughing and choking, up on the bank.
“Take care of him,” Kiera said, “I’ll get the packs.”
Kiera waded to the plane and went back under, feeling for the opening and then went in and retrieved the packs, pushing them out and following.
She squirreled out, grabbed the packs and made her way to the dike bank, grateful for her years of training in and out of water.
The plane lay upside down in a few feet of water in the flooded paddy like some giant dead bird, feet in the air.
How ridiculous to drown in a couple feet of water, she thought, yet she’d been that close twice. She decided if you’re going to have an accident, a rice paddy isn’t a bad place as long as you can get out of whatever vehicle you’re in.
McKean, looking stone cold sober now in the pale moonlight, sat on the paddy dike feeling his ribs with one hand and his knee with the other.
“I thought you rebuilt the engine?” Porter said, as he checked his gear, made sure his SAT phone was working.
“I did. Just didn’t get a chance to test it. “Damn knee. I shoulda got it replaced.”
McKean, hobbled around on his bad knee for a few steps, and then sat on the paddy dike surveying the wreckage.
He sighed with heavy lament and said, “This poor baby is gonna take some loving care. I guess plan ‘A’ is in the shitter.”
Kiera looked at him. “What’s ‘B’ look like?”
“For me it’s saving my baby here,” McKean said. “For you, it’s to get the hell out of here. Daylight comes, with it will come trouble.
He turned to Porter. “Well, you’re gonna have to hike to the village. I’ll call Narith, tell him you’re on your way. It’s not more’n an hour or two hike if you hustle. He can arrange a boat. I get this fixed up, get my knee wrapped up good, I might be able to extract you in a few days. But I won’t be taking you up there.”
Kiera looked around and saw some thatched houses in the distance along the tree line. Then she saw half a dozen men coming toward them a few hundred yards away. “We have company.”
“Just villagers,” McKean said. “Coming to see what damage we caused to their fields. They take meticulous care of the paddy beds and we screwed one up good.”
She noticed that, in spite of McKean’s confidence, Porter took a handgun from his cargo pants side pocket. The men were some distance away and coming slowly along the top of the dikes.
“You think they might be a problem?” she asked.
Porter glanced at her. “No, but I’m not willing to trust my judgment. In Asia a man’s greatest enemy is his assumption about the intentions of others.”
“That applies around the world,” McKean added. “But I’m betting on these just being local peasants lookin’ to see who’s ruining their paddies.”
Kiera watched the four men tread the dikes between the paddies. “I hope Laos is more fun than Cambodia has been so far.”
“You’re just getting your feet wet for what’s ahead,” Porter said.
He opened the breach of his weapon, blew water out, then removed and re-seated the clip. “It’s been a real pleasure so far. Has anyone survived your company for very long?”
“Not without bruises.”
“I can see you two gonna have a real nice trip,” McKean said. “Sorry I’m gonna miss most of it.”
17
The approaching villagers, like stick figures, tread carefully across the last of the dikes, all of the five men wearing only shorts.
As they drew closer they appeared wary, but friendly enough until they realized who was there. Then they became very happy.
McKean greeted them and shook hands all around. He then introduced Kiera. They bowed repeatedly and she bowed repeatedly right back at them.
McKean then waxed with great exuberance, gesticulating for dramatic impact as he explained what happened, how he brought the plane down, jumping the first paddy, then the nose hitting and sticking.
The men from the village appeared highly impressed as they checked out the plane. Then the men left, returning as they’d come along the narrow paddy banks toward the distant tree line and their village.
McKean hobbled painfully back to Kiera and Porter. “In the morning they’ll get more men out here and help me get the plane out. Without a crane it’ll take a lot of manpower. They can use a couple buffalo to help. You guys need to get out of here. Word travels faster than you might imagine.”
Porter was resistant to leaving his friend. “You can’t stay here. The district authorities will come here to check this out. Those men will report to the village leader and he’ll have to report to district.”
“I ain’t going anywhere on this bum leg and maybe cracked, ribs,” McKean said, as he squeezed water from his beard. “I’ll take care of my business. You need to get moving. I’m One-Zero. I make the call.”
Porter hesitated.
“You got no alternative,” McKean snapped. “Get the hell out of here and go fast. You don’t get into Laos by daybreak you’re dead meat. Narith’s in the next village. Just about two klicks. You can get to the village and he can get you across by daylight if you hustle. Go.”
“If you stay here you know damn well—”
“Porter. Go. Get the hell out of here before you piss me off. Kiera, get him moving. He’s always arguing with me. I’ve got plenty of friends out here. Don’t worry about me, dammit. I might have her up and running in a couple days. The fuselage and wings made it in pretty good shape. The propeller might need some pounding on. Be a lot of commotion around here, but nobody will bother me. It’s you two they’re after, not me.”
“Charlie,” Porter said, “these guys aren’t fooling around.”
“Fuck them. They don’t bother me none. I’ll handle it. I’ve dealt with a lot worse than those assholes.”
McKean turned to Kiera. “Girl, get this Cub Scout moving. You two need to find Narith. The monk can get over the border, no questions. He’ll take you up the Se Kong. He’s got the connections. That gold elephant means a lot to the Buddhists. They’ll protect you. Once you’re up in the high mountains the Hmong will find you. Your grandfather was a hero to them. Those that stayed behind and aren’t living in California have never surrendered to the government in Vientiane. Once you find them, you’re good to go. I can contact one group up there by SAT phone. They’re led by this guy named Phommasanh. One of the toughest men on the planet. He’s about my age. Great guy. I’ll contact you when I’ve got an idea if this bird is gonna fly or not. Now get the hell outta here. It’s been a pleasure, but you two done wore out your welcome. Leave me and my baby here alone.”
Kiera gave Charlie McKean a quick but light hug because of his ribs, thanked him and wished him luck in getting his plane back up in the air. She changed her mind about the man. He was soldier through and through.
He said, “I were younger…”
Kiera smiled. “You’d have been impossible to discourage, I’m sure.”
McKean gave her a wink.
Porter and Kiera shouldered their packs and left the banged-up vet in the rice paddy with his wrecked plane and headed for the tree line.
They trudged across the paddy dikes and toward the strip of jungle that stood between the paddies and the river.
“You think he’s going to be okay?” Kiera asked.
“I don’t know. The villagers will take care of him. I really hate leaving him there, but he’s not somebody you can argue with and we have to get out of Cambodia and fast. Old Charlie has always been a cantankerous bastard.”
“You know this monk we’re going to see very well?”
“I’ve met Narith a few times. He’s a flute-playing Buddhist monk but far from your ordinary monk. Or your ordinary flute player.”
“How so?”
She had to concentrate not to fall in the water. The dikes were narrow and wet.
“He’s like an old European minstrel type with an agenda. Man floats up and down the rivers playing his flute in villages and being the good traveling Buddhist. He learned at the feet of the greatest musician in modern Cambodia: Arn Chorn-Pond. Beneath the robes and flute, like many of the wandering minstrels of the Middle Ages, Narith’s a spy working for the saffron revolution, the Young Buddhist Democracy Movement.”
She remembered Miloon had said something about Porter’s involvement and now she had no doubt. “That what you’re getting involved in?”
“Just an observer.”
They stopped before heading into the trees and looked back. McKean, barely visible in the thin moonlight against the jungle background, stood in the paddy inspecting his plane, a solitary ex-soldier who never made it home. She thought it was like a painting of loneliness and tragic sorrow.
“McKean’s like so many of them who can’t let it go. My father being one,” Porter said. “Lost wars are never over.”
18
Arnold Cole glared with resignation at McKean’s woman. He turned as the colonel, Besson’s security chief, came in and reported the plane was gone.
Cole shook his head. He stood in the living room of the small thatched roof house. The utterly resistant woman stood with her back against the wall as Besson and the police commander questioned her between threats and slaps.
Besson’s assurances of a quick grab of Kiera Hunter had flown out the window. Cole knew if that plane landed at some strip in the Laotian highlands they were going to have a really hard time. It was becoming a nightmare. They’d have to hire every thief, poacher and bandit in the whole goddamn mountain range to have any chance of tracking down McKean.
The woman looked to Cole like every peasant woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Small, brown and full of disdain.
Abuse and threats meant nothing to this woman, that was obvious. She stared at the newcomers with blank-eyed disregard. She was in another world.
Cole had little sympathy, but he did have a begrudging respect. This woman had all the qualities Cole knew well. Especially that hollow, blank expression. He’d seen it a hundred times before and knew where it led. Nowhere.
“Can we get anything in the air to intercept?” Cole asked Besson, though he anticipated the answer.
“Not in this weather. My chopper will be here in a few minutes, but they’re in Laos by now and I obviously can’t ask for any air assist from Vientiane.”
“I thought you had a general who runs one of the provinces on your friend list.”
“Yes. But he won’t have any air assets we can use other than my chopper. He’ll allow us to use his outposts, but it’ll cost.”
Besson spoke with the woman. She said nothing, as if not hearing him.
One of Besson’s men put a gun to her forehead.
“Tell your man to back off,” Cole said. “It’s unlikely she’s knows anything we can use at this point, even if she did know anything. Which I doubt.”
The woman looked at Cole, and without warning, as if believing he was the one really in charge, she spoke. “He never tell me where he fly to. He think he bird. I think he fool. He go, maybe he come back. Maybe he not come back. He die, he die. I die, I die.”
Cole, surprised at her being so forthright, turned to Besson. “We’re done here.”
Outside on the porch, Cole said, “I don’t care what you have to do. How much it costs. You have strong contacts in Laos. Get them on this.”
They left the house and walked through the trees to the empty hangar where McKean had kept his plane to wait for Besson’s chopper to arrive.
“Finding Kiera Hunter has metastasized into a major goddamn problem,” Cole said angrily. He bummed a cigarette from the colonel. He never smoked much anymore except under extreme stress and he was definitely feeling the stress.
Besson got a cell call and Cole figured it was from his chopper pilot. But when he hung up without have said much of anything to whoever it was, he turned to Cole. “A small plane crashed in the rice paddies twenty kilometers north of here. A village leader is saying that everyone survived.”
Cole was stunned and elated. “He know if it’s them?”
“Looks that way.”
“Where the hell is that damn chopper?”
“He’s five minutes out.”
PART THREE
LAND OF A MILLION ELEPHANTS
19
Porter and Kiera walked along the river and into the fishing village where they were to meet the monk.
Ahead she saw a cluster of thatched houses tucked in a stretch of palms near the river.
They moved into the village.
“Will we be able to get far on the river?”
“Not too far. But once we leave the river it’ll be a long trek into the mountains. We’ll hook up with some of Narith’s associates up there in the lowlands. They’ll help us get into the higher mountains. They’ve been smuggling people around this world for a long time.”
“He has friends in all these countries?”
“Common cause. The Buddhist underground stretches from Burma, through Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.”
“The communist governments can’t stop them?”
They crossed a small foot bridge. A dog barked and then another.
“No,” he answered. They headed to the first thatched houses on the outskirts of the village. “When the Vietnamese authorities tried to stop members of the Viet Young Buddhist movement from making a pilgrimage from Vietnam to India to take part in the World Movement of Vietnamese Buddhist Youth a few years back, the man you’re going to meet was one of the people who helped smuggle dozens out of Vietnam so they could make the pilgrimage. The sect that’s most interested in getting that statue back is from Vietnam.”
Kiera was feeling more and more comfortable with Porter and his connections to the underground. She realized how naïve she’d been thinking she could just come over here, get a guide, take a little hike and find the plane.
As dawn threatened in the tree tops, Kiera and Porter pushed through a bamboo thicket to the outskirts of the village.
They came upon a line of saffron-robed Theravada monks carrying bowls.
“Early birds,” Kiera remarked.
Porter said, “They’re going to the village for their morning rice. The belief is—and it’s a good one in my opinion—if the monks are given their meals first thing it reduces the stress and egotism of the day for the entire village. It was an odd concept to me when I first came to Cambodia to live with my father. But in time I came to see the wisdom of it. And few people on this spinning ball of dirt and water need a stress releaser more than these folks, given the hell they’ve been through.”