“Porter, why?” Kiera yelled.
Porter continued to ignore her. She could not believe what he did next. He dug up the object and pulled it from the ground, then stood up with it in his hand, looked over, grinning triumphantly.
Christ, no wonder women outlive men.
He carried the object over to them, holding it up victoriously.
She backed away, as did Narith and the guide.
“When defoliants and herbicides weren’t doing the job the CIA got desperate,” Porter said. “They tried dishwasher detergent to make the trails slippery and that didn’t work either. So they went to the ultimate weapon.”
He held the metal object high. “This Bud’s for you.”
They just stared at him.
Porter emitted a short, rough chuckle. “Budweiser made some strong goddamn cans back then. Must have hit in water and mud or it would have exploded or at least look crushed. Hell, it feels full.”
She said angrily, “What are you doing? Maybe it’s full of explosives!”
“They didn’t try that. The CIA guys dropped cases of full Budweiser cans. They called it incapacitation through intoxication.”
“That’s a really bad joke.” She wasn’t amused.
“No,” Porter said. “It should be a joke, but, in fact it’s not. That’s how desperate they were to find something to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Sorry for yanking you down like that,” Porter said. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you took that chance.”
Her anger slipped away, replaced by a sense of the absurd. And an appreciation for Porter Vale’s dark sense of humor, if not his sanity, or the sanity of her grandfather’s war. Not that current wars were looking all that much better.
Finally she smiled and just shook her head. It was beyond her imagination how anyone in their right mind could think dropping cases of Budweiser…it was too bizarre. “Incapacitation through intoxication. Who the hell thought that up? He must have been drunk.”
“Like I said, they were desperate. A can or two might have hit somebody in the head,” Porter said, “and maybe a few got drunk. Didn’t change the outcome of the war, but it didn’t hurt Budweiser’s bottom line. Anything to get your product out there. The communists won the war, but they can’t beat Bud in the long run.”
He held the can up. “This Bud’s for history.”
He turned and threw the beer can off into the field.
They watched it fly and that’s when they saw, maybe two hundred yards away, a group of a half-dozen armed men emerge from the tree line. They weren’t dressed like soldiers. They looked like bandits.
One of the men yelled, then fired a burst and that sent them on a dead run for the jungle.
She prayed nobody stepped on something bad on the way. Porter was beside her, carrying both their packs. She grabbed hers.
“Go, go, go!” Porter yelled as another burst of fire hit jungle cover above them and they headed into the dark of its cover.
30
They slowed to a fast paced jog that soon was reduced to a slow slog as the foliage thickened on the hillock. Movement became increasingly difficult.
Only when they started to climb up the steep slopes on the mountainside did the undergrowth begin to thin out.
Above them the layers of canopy were blanketed so thick that the last of the day’s sunlight struggled to get even a few weak shafts of light to the ground. But that made moving easier as little heavy growth existed below the two-hundred-foot-tall trees. Twilight deepened into night.
Then, hours into the exhausting climb, the darkness made continuing difficult and slow. But the altitude did bring some cooler temperatures when they emerged into a steep, but more open climb.
When the nightly monsoon rains came they were caught out on a steep slope, but managed to reach shelter under a granite overhang. The blind drop-offs, fallen limbs and trees made movement all but impossible.
They decided it was as good as any place to wait out the rains. “I think we’ve left the boys with the AKs well behind,” Porter said.
She sat beside him under the limestone overhang and asked, “How can you tell what kind of rifles they had? From just the sound?”
“The sound and the glint from the barrels. It’s a signature of the AK, one of the few drawbacks of the world’s most popular assault rifle. It’s favored by armies, terrorists, revolutionaries, pirates and drug runners.”
“They’re that good?”
Porter took off his right hiking shoe and rubbed his foot. “They’re durable and cheap to manufacture. But that glint can be hazardous in the sunlight. Gives you away.”
He put the shoe back on. “The weapons were developed by the Russian Kalashnikov. If it had been his own corporation, he’d have made a billion from them. If he’d been allowed to issue stock, he’d be the world’s richest man.”
“He’s still alive?”
“Last I heard, a couple years ago, the guy was, like, ninety-some and still hanging around enjoying the fame of his labors, if not the fruits. If he’s still above ground he lives in the town where the guns are manufactured.”
“He must be very proud,” Kiera said sarcastically.
“You can’t fault him for providing a durable, high demand product to a world perpetually at war,” Porter said.
The four of them huddled and stayed quiet for a time under the overhang as the storm raged over the valley. Kiera dozed off and on.
Finally, after the pounding rain, the storm passed and the clouds opened up so they were able to see some sky.
Kiera stared across the valley at the jagged mountains that were like granite knuckles of a fist. “I think I didn’t take the rainy season seriously enough.”
Porter grunted, pinched her knee.
The guide and Narith talked quietly. Then the guide got up and left them.
“He’s going ahead to see the best way to go,” Narith said. “We need to get out of here before daylight. We’re too exposed here.”
When the storm passed, in the faint light from the moon and stars, Kiera saw something poking up from the weeds near them.
She pointed. “What’s that?”
Porter looked where she was pointing. He got up and investigated. “That’s an old Russian surface-to-air missile launch tube. I’m sure your grandfather saw a few coming up to meet him from time to time and probably brought down a few. Nice place for it. You have a commanding view of the valley. Most of the war scrap in the lower elevations has been taken or turned into war memorials, but up here you can still find stuff.”
He sat back down. Kiera leaned against Porter for some body heat. She ached in places she didn’t think she’d ever felt aches before.
She thought about the past, the war. So many had died here in these mountains and were never returned, and now she was here surrounded by the ghosts of the secret war.
After another light doze she opened her eyes and thought she was having hallucinations, actually seeing ghosts. But they weren’t ghosts.
The figures wore a mish mash of clothes. All of them had scarves around their heads. Boys really. Young boys and one older man. They carried their AK-47s at ready, ammo across their chests in Mexican bandito style. And they had the guide with them and for a moment she hoped they were friendly. Until she saw the guide’s face and knew that wasn’t the case.
“Just be cool,” Porter said. “We have a price on our heads. They wanted to kill us, we’d already be dead.”
That wasn’t comforting to her at all.
The one giving orders, the apparent leader, never took his eyes off Porter. He seemed to know where any problem would come from. The leader sent two men over to Porter and they stripped him of his weapon and pack.
Then they searched her. Thoroughly. One made some comments and elicited a few chuckles from his comrades.
Porter’s weapon was handed to the leader. He looked at it and then put it in his belt.
The leader picked up Narith’s flute, pulled it from its case and looked at it and seemed intrigued.
She thought he would break it, but instead he handled it carefully, acting like it was delicate and very important. He put it back in the case and handed it to one of his boys.
The leader then pushed the guide forward. The guide stumbled, his face tight with fear.
They’re going to kill him and he knows it, she thought. He was of no value to them.
The leader spoke in whatever his language was.
The leader fired questions at the guide and kept pushing him back with the rifle barrel. There was only so far the man could go before stepping off into space.
Kiera’s stomach knotted with a sinking, helpless feeling. She’d seen plenty of young killers before. She knew their thirst for violence.
The leader looked at her as if he sensed her fear for the guide and it pleased him. He struggled with words. “English…no good. Where learn. You…good teacher me. Yes?” He beamed.
“He’s valuable,” she said.
The leader’s eyes tightened as he looked at her, fixed on her and then he nodded and smiled, the vein in his neck pulsed like a trapped snake.
He turned, raised his gun to the young guide and shot him through the head and then, before the young man could fall, he gave him a short, hard front kick and sent him off the mountain.
So sudden, so fast, nobody could react.
Kiera’s breathing stopped for a moment; she felt sick.
The shooter said something and the others laughed. It was as if the guide was nothing more than a rodent to them.
Then the killer’s hard eyes focused on Porter and Narith. He said something and the men laughed again.
Kiera said angrily, desperately, “These men are worth a lot of money alive. You kill them, they are worth nothing.”
The leader shifted to her. She repeated what she had said and this time Narith translated.
The gang leader studied her for a long, intense moment. She gave no ground, staring back, hiding her fear. She had no intention of being cowed by this little sociopath, no matter the consequence.
He made another joke, then gave a sharp order and she thought they’d commence killing, but instead one of the men pulled what looked like nylon rope from his pack.
While his men tied their hands the leader walked off a ways and made a call on a SAT phone.
When he finished he came back and gave another order, and they began moving, she and Porter with their hands tied behind their backs and tethered together at their necks.
She glanced at Porter. He gave her a slight nod as if to say so far, so good. But maybe for the first time she sensed something different in him. He was tense and she sensed he was going to take any opportunity to do something.
Kiera whispered, “We’re what they have to trade. They won’t kill us.” She didn’t know if Porter was listening or not.
31
When the good news came Cole and Besson had been drinking, smoking and talking long into the night about the usual grim subjects: the disintegration of philosophy, politics, the end of American global power and the miserable state of the world.
And, as usual, he and Besson eventually went back to Vietnam, Dien Bien Phu, Tet, the collapse and then the loss of Hunter’s plane.
That’s when the outpost commander and Besson’s security chief came in out of the gloom looking excited.
“Monsieur Besson,” the colonel said, “Very good news.”
Besson ignored the colonel and spoke to the general in rapid fire Lao, which was a lot like Thai, but a language Cole had never had much interest in learning. The ax-faced man reminded Cole of a cartoon rat, one that seemed highly satisfied with himself.
Besson turned to Cole and said, “A poacher gang grabbed Hunter, Vale and the radical monk, Narith, in the mountains north of here.”
“About damn time some good news,” Cole said, feeling a powerful sense of relief. He rapped the table. “How far?” He couldn’t believe it. He was overjoyed. They were finally going to know where that plane went down.
Besson spoke with his security chief who took out and unfolded a topo map on the table.
“It’s about thirty klicks southeast of the outpost. Very heavy mountain jungle. The general here commands that area as well. It’s in his district.”
The commander stood watching and not saying anything. Then he had a conversation with Besson, then relayed it to Cole. It seemed the gang leader wanted a bigger reward. And he suggested that went for him as well.
Cole nodded. “Pay whatever they want. If it’s too much, we’ll settle with the bastards later.”
The commander, revealing his ability with butchered English, in what Cole thought of as a caricature of Asian speak, “
Errryone
wary
happy. We go morning.”
Cole, in spite of feeling an enormous sense of release, was sick of dealing with these people. And he wanted to shut it down fast. He’d been chasing this damn woman long enough.
“Why wait?” Cole asked. “We go now.”
Besson had a short conversation with the commander in Lao, before informing Cole, “Nothing much gets done at night. A few more hours isn’t much when you’ve been waiting decades. And the gang has to take them to a place where a chopper can land.”
Cole considered pushing the issue, but knew they weren’t going to budge and he needed this guy to give them clearance.
“The Hunter girl’s alive for certain?”
The commander assured them the girl was alive.
Cole tried to keep his excited anticipation under control. He knew the kind of people he was dealing with. But he couldn’t help feel a little bit of hope that this was finally going come to a very good end.
32
With her hands tied behind her and a neck rope linking her and Porter, Kiera moved carefully along the mountain, knowing even a stumble would be painful and disastrous as the rope wasn’t long enough—if either went down, they would yank the other’s neck hard. Both would be doomed if one went over the drop-off.
But when she slowed too much, the thug behind her would prod her with his rifle.
The bandit gang finally stopped.
This time it looked like they’d settled on a spot to spend the remainder of the night. There was a partial opening of flat ground just below them.
Kiera and Porter were tied to a tree at the edge of the encampment. Narith, for some reason, was not tied up. That worried her.