“I’m surprised they still like Americans.”
“All the clans have tribal groups who now live in America,” Porter said. “For Hmong up here the war isn’t over. They believe, one way or another, we’ll change things and force the current government in Vientiane to stop persecuting them.”
Narith conferred with Tang and several other Hmong. He came over to Porter and Kiera. “They want us to go on inside. We can clean up and get some food.”
Kiera noticed a young woman breastfeeding a baby. The woman looked up at her. She had a very attractive face and the exchange of looks between them struck Kiera. They stared across an unimaginable cultural divide, yet they were just two women joined by the common bond of a disastrous war that, for her people—and for her, it now seemed—hadn’t yet ended.
“She’s the wife of Tang,” Porter said.
Kiera smiled at her and got a return smile. They were two women so far removed, yet bonded by the touch of their histories, histories forged before either of them had been born.
“You need to understand,” Porter told her, “the Hmong are very excited to have such a powerful guest as the granddaughter of the great warrior who helped them for so long. It’s a great honor and privilege.”
35
The winds sweeping across the mountains from the Indian Ocean blew warm into Cole’s face as he sat in the open chopper doorway above the unbroken jungle rolling beneath him. No roads or rivers. No towns or even villages. Just endless jungle and mountains.
He couldn’t wait to meet the woman he’d been chasing. Finally.
“I’ve been waiting for this day a long time,” Cole said to no one in particular. Now we’re going to have a little talk, my pretty.” He chuckled to himself. He thought about their first meeting, how it would go. He felt a little like a teenager about to meet the girl of his dreams.
Cole had become fascinated, even obsessed with her, imagining her in different circumstances, maybe finding common ground. If she was raised by her grandfather you couldn’t discount her acceptance, and appreciation, of older, powerful men.
The chopper slid across a narrow, high valley, then banked and circled down like a hunting raptor. The pilot, showing off his skills, ended the journey in a gut wrenching drop to a narrow ridge shouldering the side of the valley. The way he flew, Cole wondered if the bastard was on meth.
Besson tried again to make contact with the men who had Kiera, but got no answer. Cole wasn’t happy to hear that, but he assumed the bandits were just being cautious.
Besson’s three-man security team jumped to the ground and fanned out like it was a combat insertion. Cole and Besson followed, if less agile in the process.
“Welcome to the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Besson said as they moved away from the chopper swirl. “The downfall of both our country’s efforts.”
“We lost a war, you lost an empire,” Cole reminded him.
He paused and looked at the world they were in. All around them jagged, misshapen mountains.
“True,” Besson admitted. “But at the rate you’re going, it’s just a matter of time.”
The Frenchman again tried to radio the men who had captured Porter Vale and the Hunter woman.
Cole climbed the hill, avoiding the occasional pile of dung. He wasn’t sure what kind of creature had left it behind but assumed it was big, maybe elephant. “You sure this is the spot? Should somebody be out here to greet us? It’s not like we’re landing government troops. Why no answer?”
“I don’t know,” Besson said. He again attempted to make radio contact, but got nothing in return.
Cole stopped. “Something’s not right. Send scouts up there and find out what the hell’s the holdup.”
Besson waited a bit longer, but when no one appeared and they failed to make radio contact, the security team was sent in search of the camp that was supposed to be in the trees on the upper tier.
Cole, Besson and the pilot waited for a report.
Cole had never actually been to Laos before, not during the secret war or later when he’d orchestrated hunts for the lost plane. He knew it only from photos and reports, but seeing the topography of the terrain he understood how the NVA had been able to move whole divisions through here. Only atomic bombs would have done the trick.
“Goddamn red ants half a million strong hiding in here,” Cole said. “We should have just taken out Hanoi. You can’t fight a war in here. I don’t care how many nine-hundred-pound bombs you drop.”
He thought of McArthur’s admonition to never fight a ground war in Asia. No truer words were ever spoken.
Besson finally got a call from his security team. He listened on his cell radio, and then turned. He shook his head and when he turned to Cole he was pale.
Cole said, “What the hell’s going on?”
“Ambush,” Besson said. “They’re all dead but one. And he’s dying.”
Cole’s stomach tightened. He couldn’t believe this. “The Hunter woman, she’s dead?”
“No. They took her and Vale. Everyone in the gang we were dealing with was killed except this one guy.”
“Did the survivor know who the ambushers were?”
“Hmong rebels.”
Cole was stunned. He couldn’t believe this. Now the gangs were fighting over the booty like hyenas. “Find out what the trade is with them and let’s get this done. How do we make contact with these goddamn Hmong?”
Besson lit a cigarette, blew a stream of smoke. “The Hmong are like your Apache Indians back in the Indian war days. Tough and hard to track down. Their leader, an old warrior named Phommasanh, is something of a Geronimo.”
The colonel who was head of Besson’s team came down and led them to the camp.
By the time they reached the lone survivor, he was already dead. He’d been shot in the chest and head and it was amazing he’d lived at all, let alone able to talk.
Bodies had been stripped of boots, weapons and sometimes jackets and pants, and lay scattered around the smoldering campfire.
One of the Loa the general had sent along to act as liaison, or, as Cole figured, a spy, talked to his boss, and then had a discussion with Besson.
“What’s that all about?”
“He thinks maybe the Hmong won’t be so easy to deal with. They might have their own agenda. But it’s a big opportunity if we can kill two birds with one stone. Get what we want without interference from Vientiane if we help them find the Hmong hideout.”
Cole stared at the dead, then at the tiny tendrils of smoke leaking up out of the fire pit. “They can’t be far away on foot.
Besson said, “The Hmong can travel amazing distances over impossible terrain. And they have elephants.”
They headed back to the chopper. The little problem had escalated. But they were too close to lose it now. “Make a deal with this fucking Hmong Geronimo. He either deals with us or we’ll bring in every bandit, poacher, and gangster in the goddamn country to hunt this motherfucker down and kill him and his family and friends. He’s got to be made to understand that we know where they are. We have endless resources and we’re willing to use them.” Cole was so upset and angry he was close to hyperventilating.
36
Two willowy Hmong women in yellow sarongs appeared from one of the cave entrances. Narith told Kiera to go with them. “They will take good care of you.”
Kiera followed the women into the cave. The jungle above the entrances was so thick you wouldn’t know there were any caves until you stood in front of them.
The bowing, smiling women escorted Kiera through a tunnel and out into an opening between rock walls where there was a pool of crystal clear water fed from a mountain stream.
Within thirty minutes of being with these women, she found herself laughing with their laughter, enjoying their fascination with her tallness and hair color. They were fun.
They washed her clothes and then dried them in the sun, while two younger girls used frond fans to assist in the process. They even carefully cleaned her backpack on the outside.
Nearby, two older women watched and commented from time to time, cackling and giggling at their own jokes. They smoked giant pipes that were long, round fat tubes thick as baseball bats.
Kiera figured it was opium as the women seemed a little high. She declined their offer to give her a hit.
Kiera, still traumatized by the horror of the rescue, realized she hadn’t taken McKean seriously enough. He’d said it was good fortune that the mountain where her grandfather’s plane crashed was close to the new location of this particular Hmong tribe who’d fled south just in the past couple of years. Had they not been here it would have been all over.
Then the women led her back to a room in the cave where Porter waited. She joined him on a floor mat.
“They cleaned you up,” he said.
“They did. I like these women,” Kiera said. “I like them a lot.”
A young girl brought a warm bamboo container with food.
She and Porter ate everything put in front of them. A soup, some kind of leafy salad, a rice-like grain and meat that was
cooked
, much to Kiera’s delight.
When they were finished and the girl had taken everything away, Narith entered and said they would soon meet Phommasanh.
Then Tang’s wife, the young woman with the strikingly pretty face, her baby now strapped to her front with crisscrossed red cloth bands, led Kiera and Porter into a cavernous room lit with a small oil lamp.
Kiera was astonished at the workmanship of all the figurines and hand woven baskets. The walls were covered with finely woven rugs of exquisite craftsmanship.
“It always amazes me,” she said to Porter, “that in the most impoverished or wretched places, people living a virtual scavenger’s existence, who hunt—never sure of the next meal—still manage to hold onto what matters to them. African villages are like that.”
“The human spirit endures almost anything,” Porter said. “These people are living as people lived for thousands of years.”
They waited. There was much running in and out, the excitement building in anticipation of the arrival.
Narith came over to tell them that Phommasanh had just returned from the border with a couple Viet monks from the sect that had a major interest in the icon.
“He will meet with you soon.”
Narith left them. Kiera was excited. “I’m going to meet a man who knew my grandfather. That’s amazing.”
“Pretty incredible,” Porter said.
A young Hmong boy appeared a few minutes later.
He said, “You come me. Phommasanh for to see you now.”
They followed him down a tunnel and into a cavernous main room.
A dozen Hmong leaders, most in long black shirts, some in old fatigue pants, others in little but loincloths, sat with the monks who’d come from across the border. They were seated in a semi-circle on benches, smoking pipes.
She knew right away who Phommasanh was before he rose to greet her. Tall compared to the others, brilliant eyes in a sharp, weathered face with a wisp of white beard like corn silk on his chin.
Staring at the intense, angular face, the high cheek bones, she was shocked to realize she’d seen this face before—but as a much younger man in a photo with her grandfather.
He approached and bowed slightly and she returned the gesture. He studied her for a moment, then smiled and said with animation, patching English together as best he could, “Yes, very most beautiful. I am Phommasanh. You Kiera Hunter…welcome here very much.”
The skin on his face was the color of parchment and the heavy lines were sketched, she was sure, with many great stories.
“Thank you. I’m very happy to meet someone who knew my grandfather.”
“Yes. Brave man. Many times his plane shot down. Always he come back, bring us medicine, food, ammunition.”
He studied her with great intensity, smiled and said, “Same his eyes.”
Narith came over and the two men spoke, then Narith said, “He would like to see the photos and the map of the location.”
She took the folder out of her backpack and removed the picture and the map from the plastic bag.
Phommasanh offered her a seat on the bench beside him.
He took the photos and studied them. The monks who’d come with him gathered behind him to look.
Kiera then took out the hand-drawn map with the coordinates and the landmarks. Then she showed him the location of the crash site on her Garmin 450t GPS, using the touch screen that displayed the tri-axis compass with altimeter and barometer and the topo mapping.
He was intrigued by the technology, shaking his head and exclaiming to the people around him.
Then Phommasanh spoke with Narith and Porter and the other monks.
When the discussion was over, Porter said to Kiera, “That mountain is considered by some of the mountain tribes to be sacred ground, full of volatile spirits, and they need to do a ceremony as a propitiation of these
phi
—malignant and mystic spirits.”
“Whatever it takes,” Kiera said. “Man, I wish I could be an honorary Hmong.”
“Believe me, you are. They love you.”
Soon more men entered the room and stood now against the wall in the flickering light of the oil lamps.
Porter added that he thought it had something to do with the unusual formation of the mountain that gave it some special significance.
A shaman was summoned. He was an old, short man, as ascetic in appearance as he should be with sunken cheeks, huge dark eyes.
He’d picked the right profession for sure, she thought.
The ceremony began with rhythmic chants. The sound of brass gongs behind her, amplified by the cave walls, induced a powerful solemnity to the occasion.
Then long pipes and rice beer appeared and a chicken was brought in and sacrificed.
The shaman chanted the whole time as the long thin pipes went around the circle. She took a puff and passed it on, refraining from drawing it down into her lungs.
Porter let her know that for a woman to participate was an unusual and great honor. “The granddaughter of the man they considered their greatest ally, and who came all the way here, is obviously taken very seriously by them. As Charles put it, you are a kind of homecoming queen.”
When the ceremony was over, the shaman finished with his duties, the spirits propitiated, Phommasanh then rose to his feet, drawing the ceremony to a close.