“You don’t have any real doubt, do you?”
He shrugged. “It’s a good guess, but there’s not much to gain from guessing.”
“There weren’t bullet holes anywhere in the plane?”
Porter shook his head. “No. Not that we could find.”
She unzipped the expanders and lengtheners to widen her backpack so they could get everything to fit.
Holding the skull carefully with both hands, Kiera put it in the top attached pocket of her pack. She covered it with a piece of silk cloth and a poncho given to her by Tang.
Porter said, “The crate behind his seat in the cabin broke free on impact. So he was crushed. Broke him up good. Most likely he was dying and in terrible pain. Under the circumstances, given the guy was in misery and had no hope of survival, what could your grandfather do?”
“I’ll look at it as a Sophie’s Choice situation,” Kiera said. “That explains a lot. What a decision to have to make.”
“Nothing could be worse and yet unavoidable. A mercy killing to avoid a worse fate. No way could he take a fatally injured man with him. You saw the breaks in the skeleton. Those happened in the crash. And he couldn’t leave him here to die slow and be eaten by animals while he was still alive. My guess is that’s exactly the scenario. He did the only humane thing he could do. And it would have taken incredible pain and courage to do it and would be something you never get over.”
“It makes sense but it’s really sad,” Kiera said. It was another one of those puzzles about her grandfather that now fell into place.
She studied the items left on the cloth of her grandfather’s colleague. A watch, a ring and the hat with the eagle wings on front and the rice stalks on the bill. And the remains of a leather wallet with no IDs, along with several ruined pictures. A life leaving behind fragments, but his family would be happy to get the mementoes and the bones.
“The morality of everyday life is not the morality of emergencies,” Porter said, maybe trying to ease her mind. “In crisis, you have to do what the circumstance demands of you.”
She appreciated his attempt, but she’d already reached a conclusion and it satisfied her as an explanation she could live with. “The trauma of having to kill a colleague to save him from a miserable, slow death had to be one of the ultimate horrors for sure.”
Porter asked, “What did he tell the family?”
“I don’t know what he told them. Or if he told them anything. He never really told me much of anything. He never really talked about his war at all. It was almost a taboo subject.”
The dreadfulness of what her grandfather had had to do to a man he was so close with filled her with sadness. She tried to envision the moment, how excruciating it must have been. It was beyond normal comprehension.
With the remains now secure in her backpack, Phommasanh directed the men to take out the large crate that was in the grave next to where the body had been. It wasn’t very big, maybe two feet long and nearly as high. After a nudge, and the subsequent effort it took to move it, it was obviously heavy.
She looked at Porter as the men struggled to get the box out and onto the ground next to the grave. “How is someone injured, as he apparently was, still able to move something this heavy even with that stretcher-thing he made?”
“People do amazing things under extreme duress,” Porter said.
The monks, led by Narith, were given the task and honor, of opening the crate.
Kiera watched, barely breathing as they removed the wood and metal outer box and then the heavy wrapping to reveal a stunning female warrior astride a golden elephant, identical to the photo.
The statue appeared to be solid gold festooned with jewels, mostly jade. The elephant’s trunk and tusks flared out, the mouth open in a trumpet yell at full charge. The workmanship had astounding detail. The woman warrior held a jade-tipped staff in her right hand. Her jade eyes were cut bold and defiant. The eyes of an angry lioness.
“My, oh my,” Porter said. “I have a feeling we might just be looking at the real deal.”
“The She-King,” Narith said, squatting next to the statue and shining a small flashlight to study the statue closer. Next to him the Vietnamese monks looked to be in a kind of rapture.
Kiera stared at the face of the girl on the golden elephant. She was magnificent. She leaned in closer and it was just unbelievable how alive the statue seemed. The workmanship superb.
The monks discussed with awe every detail of the five-hundred-year-old icon as if they’d found the Holy Grail.
Porter’s attention turned to a metal box the size of a small suitcase that had been buried next to the statue. One of the monks jumped back into the grave and retrieved it. The box looked to have been painted military green in its past. Porter removed the dirt with his hand and studied the lock and the latch.
He took a heavy K-bar knife from one of Phommasanh’s men and shoved it behind the corner of the latch. He was about to ram it down with his foot when a noise stopped them all.
Everyone turned toward the jungle to the east of where they were.
One of the Hmong who was out some distance away standing watch said something and everyone started to move for cover.
Moments later gunfire erupted.
45
Phommasanh yelled orders and his men scattered for cover.
Porter and Kiera dropped into the protective walls of the grave.
Porter pulled the backpacks down with them. “Help me get the elephant down.”
Filled with adrenaline, they grabbed the golden elephant and managed to wrestle it down into the safety of the grave, putting it back inside the box.
The grave wasn’t deep, only about three feet, but gave them the cover they needed.
For the second time Kiera found herself in the midst of a violent assault. But this one didn’t end quickly. It degenerated into a firefight.
Kiera, heart pounding, pressed her face against the wall of the grave, the dirt chalky on her lips and in her mouth.
Burst after burst of automatic weapon fire blew rocks and dirt in on top of them.
Porter rose and fired back with his Glock, and then he told her to stay down. He scrambled out, leaving her there.
She remained pressed against the side of the grave beside the golden elephant as the gunfire roared around her, then decided to cover the golden elephant as best she could, even if only from rock and dirt that might end up in the grave from the intense gunfire.
She heard Phommasanh and Tang shouting orders and the return fire growing more intense.
Almost at the same instant one of the Hmong men fell on the edge of the grave. He lay half-in and half-out, blood all over his face and neck.
Kiera reached to try to staunch the wound, but knew the man was beyond any hope when she saw the horrible wound on the side of his head and another in his neck. She pushed him up on the edge of the grave.
Moments later Porter crawled back in. “We have them pretty well pinned down.”
“Who are they?”
“Don’t know.”
He checked the clip in his Glock and handed it to her. “Get yourself ready to go. Get your pack on.”
“What? Where?”
He took the dead man’s AK and his ammo pouch.
“Just be ready.” Porter said. “I’ll be right back. Stay down.”
Before she could do or say anything he vanished, leaving her alone with the dead man and the statue.
The dead man above her jerked every time bullets struck him and that was enough to keep her from putting her head up.
She pulled on her pack and sat against the grave wall listening to the shouting and gunfire of combat. Then a stillness came over the jungle.
When Porter rolled back into the grave he said, “We won the first round. They retreated back into the big boulders to the east.”
“You still don’t know who they are?”
“Bandits of one kind or another. Probably just another hired gang and they don’t seem to have the desire to close the deal. They’re yelling in Chinese. Remnants of the old KMT defeated by Mao run a lot of the drug trade from Laos to Burma. You’re getting out of here with Narith. We need to get more Hmong up here. Phommasanh can’t get hold of his mahout. The man isn’t answering his radio.”
“Can’t Phommasanh reach the men left at the caves?”
“No luck with that. The radios they have are short range. No one back there has a SAT phone. They can’t really get reception from inside the caves anyway. Somebody has to break out and get back there and show them the way.”
“What about the Vietnamese monks?”
“Fortunately the Viet monks are from a sect that has always been fighters. Narith isn’t a gunfighter, so he’s an obvious choice to go. And you did what you came to do. They have their icon and you have answers and remains that need to go back to the family the man belongs to. And, maybe most important, you have the skills to go back down the way we came up. That’s the fastest way. Narith can’t do that by himself.”
She saw the logic even if she didn’t like having to make a run. “We aren’t completely surrounded?”
“No. They’re mostly around the east and north of us. They didn’t take the time to get us surrounded as far as we can tell. That might have been deliberate. Hoping we just run and leave what they want behind. The monks won’t leave the statue behind. So we’re going to have to fight this out. You have to go. It might be your only opportunity.”
She was far from thrilled about doing it but there seemed no other way. What if they ran into gunman? She’d never shot a gun at someone. “I’ll need the rope if we’re going to rappel down that rock.”
“Narith has it. Let’s do this.” He grabbed her arm and squeezed it. “Once back to the caves the Hmong will get you out of Laos, across the Mekong. You can get transportation to Bangkok.”
When she hesitated, he said, “That’s how it has to be.” He gave her one of the radios. “Let me know your progress.” Then he said, “Kiera, we need help up here fast. They bring in more of these gangs we’re never getting out of here. You need to do this and then you need to go.”
She nodded and tried to gather herself for what lay ahead. She tightened the belts on her pack.
Narith’s head appeared over the side of the grave. “We need to go.”
“Go,” Porter said. “We’ll cover you.” Then he stopped her. “Hey, we’ll meet again, I promise.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the mouth. “We better. We have a lot of unfinished business.”
“I’ll hold you to it, now get the hell out of here.”
Kiera climbed out. She was shaking and told herself to soldier-up and do what had to be done.
46
Cole couldn’t believe those idiots had launched an attack before he could get there to take charge. They’d kill her and destroy everything, the incompetent bastards. No wonder the Communists kicked their ass.
“Tell them to back off and wait for us,” Cole said with mounting anger.
Besson’s chopper curled down in search of a landing zone as twilight grayed the skies.
Cole listened intently, angrily, to the communication over his headset between Besson and the leader on the ground. This was always the chaos of battle, but these weren’t trained military. Not anymore.
“Let’s get the hell down,” Cole insisted.
They’d refueled at an outpost forty miles from the mountain, paid the commander handsomely, but it had taken time and now they were coming in after these idiots had started the fight.
The pilot searched for a landing zone like he had choices. There was only one open moraine of rock and boulders where it was possible.
“Get down, dammit,” Cole yelled at the pilot. Then he turned to Besson. “Tell those fools to keep her alive. I want her alive.”
“You can’t tell them anything right now,” Besson said, pulling his earpiece out.
The chopper circled and slid low over the field where the pilot finally seemed ready to settle on a landing zone.
Cole rose and grabbed a hand strap, the adrenaline cruising in aging blood, through hardening arteries. Still, he exalted. The prize was very close now and couldn’t escape him again. But if those thugs killed her they would pay.
A communist country that couldn’t control its bandits, poachers, drug runners and leftover Hmong was a joke, Cole thought. Suppression’s what these totalitarian regimes were noted for. Crushing and obliterating opposition whenever and wherever it reared its head.
But in this case, fortunately, Laos had no interest in stopping them and every interest in getting the last of the Hmong dug out and eliminated. Quid pro quo.
Cole glassed the jungle.
“Put down on the top of a rock if you have to. Just get it down.”
Cole hated the way Besson bickered with his pilot and his chief of security. He was sick of them all now.
“We have to get in there and settle this before it’s too dark,” Cole said. He felt another surge of adrenaline as the chopper settled. War zones were to him the incubators of civilization’s advances. War hardened, disciplined and honed men into soldiers.
Besson’s security team got out and moved into position. Cole and Besson followed, then the Frenchman with his ever present hunting rifle, a useless weapon in a jungle fight.
Already the twilight was deepening.
Cole couldn’t suppress the tight grin on his face. The high was tremendous. Every old soldier needs to jump into the fray from time to time, he thought. Especially if the prize is big enough.
“This should be a requirement,” he said to no one in particular. “Keeps the edge.”
He thought of Patton in the movie standing in front of the giant flag saying, “Americans love war.”
47
Kiera, Glock in hand, running as low to the ground as she could, followed Narith into the jungle. Behind them an explosion of gunfire seemed to come from all directions.
They darted into the dark embrace of the jungle, cutting around the trees, Narith moving cat-quick, forcing Kiera to push hard so she didn’t lose touch with him.
Once it seemed they were clear of the fighting, they slowed and moved in the direction of the cliff. But then suddenly Narith came to an abrupt stop, holding up his hand.
Had he heard something? Or was he deciding on what direction to go? Ahead lay a dense copse of bamboo. He motioned her to follow him there.