But there was something else going on inside her. She felt strange. The guilt receded. The sense of hopelessness gave way to something she felt but didn’t yet understand.
Then panic!
Were the men of the Hmong relief force already gone? Had they gone to help, or just abandoned the men on the mountain and left the area?
How long had she slept?
Kiera felt besieged, on the verge of hysteria.
Then, inexplicably, almost without any warning, she drifted off again and into another violent bizarre dream similar to the first. And when she awakened this time she believed she was alone in the cave, had slept a very long time and it was too late to do anything.
The dream-state didn’t leave. It was there very strong and real to her.
She got up in her panic, grabbed her backpack, and hurried out into the main cavern, only to be surprised that the women and children and old men were still there huddled with their belongings as if waiting for a return of their men.
She rushed past them and went out through the main tunnel entrance. It was night? The same night? She felt like she’d been unconscious for days.
Outside she was surprised that the force of about thirty men with four elephants hadn’t yet left for the mountains, but appeared now ready to go.
Narith, supported on a crutch made from a limb, was talking to the men. The heavy darkness hid her from them for a time.
She stared at them and for a moment she felt a little dizzy, lightheaded.
A fifth elephant stood off to the side tended by a young Hmong boy. Past him, above the trees, storm clouds hung heavy over the mountains, the night oppressive, the coolness she’d felt earlier pushed out by the threatening monsoon rains.
One of the men, short and carrying an M1 Carbine over his shoulder, spotted her and said something and they all turned and saw her now.
Narith said, “Kiera, good. You need to go now.” He nodded to the waiting elephant and the young boy.
Go?
She struggled to understand, to grasp the reality.
Yes. I understand. I have to leave now.
She thought of the men trapped with Porter. She remembered everything, but it was off in a distance in her mind, oddly disconnected.
It was time for her to go home. Return the remains of her grandfather’s colleague to his family and bring closure for them. That was her mission.
All very clear.
Yet at the same time all very wrong. This can’t be. I can’t let this happen this way.
And she felt a little mad herself.
Kiera tried to move and couldn’t.
She stared at Narith almost as if he wasn’t really there, hadn’t spoken. No thoughts came to her mind for a long time. Nothing.
She just stared at all of them, at the elephants.
She took in the smells of the winds, felt the dampness. Elements of her dreams floated in and out of her mind.
Narith repeated himself, or at least his mouth moved. He approached her, hobbling on his makeshift crutch. “You must leave now. Cross the Mekong into Thailand. You must hurry.”
Kiera heard him, his insistence, but couldn’t make herself respond. She couldn’t focus on what he was saying to her or what was going on inside herself.
She saw the urgency in their faces. These Hmong were doing what they’d done all their lives, fighting and running from forces that wanted to destroy them.
But it was all over for them now. These people who lived in these mountains for thousands of years and now they were heading for extinction like some endangered species.
They’re the Irrawaddy dolphins of these mountains and I finished them off.
The rescue force looked pitiful. They were finished before they started. The life here in the mountains perpetually on the run was about to come to an end for these last holdouts from the war. And going up there on a rescue mission without a strong leader to replace Phommasanh and his son just wasn’t going to be good enough.
Once they were destroyed, along with the men still up there, what would happen to the women and children and the old men?
“I have to go,” she told Narith.
“Okay, please.”
“Yes.”
“You go home.”
“No.”
“You go to Thailand.”
“No.”
She wanted to explain but didn’t know what she was trying to say. The pressure in her mind had become so tight she couldn’t think. It felt like her brain was locked up.
She closed her eyes.
And then something inside her mind snapped and it was like a release.
And suddenly, like a flash of light, Kiera came to full consciousness of what had to be done. It came to her as the dream had, unbidden, full. She knew exactly. The right thought, the right action came to her without argument.
“No. I won’t ride that elephant,” she said. “That’s not my elephant.”
Narith didn’t seem to understand. She turned and pointed to Bo. “That is my elephant. That is the one I must ride.”
Narith, seemingly confused, said, “You have to go now. The elephant that takes you is not important. You must leave now.”
“That is my elephant,” she said adamantly. “That is the elephant I will ride.”
A powerful, aggressive sense of purpose had taken over her mind. She felt a calm that seemed unshakable. She knew that these people had very high regard for her—even higher now that she’d escaped the trap and brought out a wounded Narith and the body of the mahout.
And, maybe even more important, she was the granddaughter of the warrior they so admired. Trung Trac, the girl on the golden elephant, was the daughter of a military as well.
Narith, impatient now, said, “You must hurry. At the river a boat will take you to Thailand.”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not going anywhere but up on that mountain.”
“Go now,” he said again, more forcefully. It was the second time he’d argued with her and for the second time she knew he would lose.
Kiera stared at the black, odd-shaped primeval mountains, the valley below invisible, filled with a sea of wet fog.
“I must talk to the men,” she said fiercely. “I will talk and you will translate so they understand me clearly.”
Narith stared at her now.
“Tell them what I have to say,” she demanded.
Seeing he couldn’t dissuade her, Narith turned and said something to the men, then turned back to her. “You speak. I translate for you.”
What happened when she spoke felt like an out-of-body experience, a dream-state that refused to dissolve, but rather just grew until it dominated her mind,
became
her mind.
Kiera heard her own words as if by another. She spoke with certainty, conviction and power, as if she knew exactly what this tiny force of men must do.
They gathered in a tight half-circle. Narith translated. They showed rapt attention.
She told them there was a way up the mountain for the elephants. They would go in the rain and dark and reach the position before daylight.
“We must go fast. We will attack with much noise and panic the bandits,” she said. “We will drive them away, kill those who don’t run.”
She felt very clear and focused, yet there was a hallucinatory feel to it. And she realized as she was talking that she was playing with the strings that had been put around her wrist by the little girl in the village.
She saw the battle they would fight and she saw how they must fight it and she told them exactly as she saw it. And she told them that her elephant would be cloaked in gold cloth and would lead the battle.
As she spoke, as she unveiled her vision, she was filled with an absolute conviction and the certainty grew stronger and irresistible. It was beyond argument.
All questions were gone from her mind. She felt as if she’d been possessed by a more powerful voice, a voice being channeled through her, using her and she had no resistance to it.
And she saw in the faces of these leaderless men and boys, that they were also hearing that voice and that it captured them as it captured her…
52
Porter thought about Kiera, about the things he didn’t say to her and now could never say. He suffered intensely as the minutes bled slowly into night’s longest hours as he awaited the rains and the moment they would make their break.
Porter fought hard not to think about the fate of Kiera and Narith. He had to keep his concentration on the single purpose now and that was to get Phommasanh and the others out of here.
Later he’d figure out how to deal with the rest of it. He’d hunt down those two bastards if it was the last thing he did on this earth. He would kill them hard and ugly. But even that thought, pleasurable as it was, had to be put aside.
With all the men in the surrounding jungle, the usual night noises had muted. All the warning signals had long ago been given by the birds, monkeys and gibbons. Things had settled as the feel of the coming monsoon storm pressed on the mountain. This is what Cole and the others were waiting for.
Everyone was clear about the breakout strategy. The two monks who would carry out the golden elephant had the box with them and were ready to go. The handles at each end would make their job easier.
The point would head down with two men behind on the flanks. They were the key to getting them off the hill.
They scattered the contents of one of the money bags all over the place hoping that would cause problems if the escape was discovered early.
Then Phommasanh and Tang, Porter and the other Hmong fighters would trail, responsible for any attack coming from the sides or behind the escape.
The only question left was choosing the deepest hour of rain, fog and darkness, the final minute, and then giving the signal to go.
Even if they were discovered, the chaos in the fog would be to their advantage.
Finally the howling winds came, right on schedule and bringing a pounding monsoon rain.
It raged with siren-like screams in the tops of the trees. Soon hundreds of rivulets of water funneled down through the canopy to the ground. The water would create the mist that would hover above the ground and give the cover they were waiting for. Finally it was drawing to that moment.
Porter would be the last man out and he knew it would be hard not to lie in wait for Cole and his French buddy.
Phommasanh had the men positioned to leave and now he came over and hunkered down next to Porter behind the rocks.
“We now ready,” he said. “Very soon. I send Tang. He very good with knife.”
Porter stared at the heavy gossamer mist forming on the ground and fogging up into the trees.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” Porter said, checking his weapon. He and Phommasanh started to get up, but then stopped.
Phommasanh signaled for his men to hold their positions.
Porter couldn’t locate the disturbance, but there was definitely something happening out there. His first thought was that Cole and Besson had reinforcements coming in.
Then the silence was broken by the blare of horns and the eruption of gunfire, with elephants charging out of the mist, men screaming.
Phommasanh yelled for his men to hold fire.
The first elephant, draped in gold cloth, broke out of the mist as if from a mirage, a dream.
This is crazy. You kidding me?
Porter was astounded, disbelieving what he was seeing.
They came in a thunderous wave, five elephants, horns blaring, rifles firing. They crashed out into the open and Porter realized what Phommasanh and others already understood and were running to join their fellow Hmong into battle.
Porter was so dumbstruck by what he was looking at he didn’t move for a moment. A deep surge of joy came over him, along with stunned shock that Kiera was alive and leading the charge. He’d never seen anything so fantastic, yet so beautifully perfect.
The elephants passed the front of the grave area. Perched high on the lead elephant’s back, in the bamboo chair behind the Hmong up on the elephant’s neck, decked in gold cloth, holding a semi-auto aloft, magnificently crazy, alive and well was none other than the woman he’d thought was dead.
As splendid and bizarrely stunning a sight as he could have imagined or dreamed of.
No way…
With a powerful adrenaline surge he moved out into the field of battle.
53
Arnold Cole struggled to come out of a near sleep that felt like a coma.
Gunshots exploded in the jungle it seemed in all directions.
He fought to get out of the hammock, grab his weapon and get free of the mosquito net that had been rigged up between trees.
At first he thought that Besson had launched a pre-dawn attack without his okay and was immediately angry.
But then he saw two men race past him in the opposite direction of the group trapped with Porter Vale.
What the hell?
“Marcel, what’s going on?”
He got no answer as the chaos grew closer, men running, horns and guns blasting away.
It was at that moment when he realized the truth of the situation.
We’re under attack!
He realized it with a heart-stopping shock.
Then he heard Besson screaming at the men to hold ground and return fire. Cole saw no sign that was working out, as everyone anywhere around him had already left. He glimpsed some of them melting away into the jungle, getting out of town as fast as the miserable stinking bastards could.
Then, as Cole tried to find Besson and his security team to organize some kind of defense, what he saw was Besson, having now lost all control, taking off in the direction of the rock field and the chopper, along with the colonel and his security team.
Now abandoned, Cole had no choice but to follow.
These bastards aren’t soldiers, they’re cowards and thieves and drug runners, Cole thought angrily.
He searched for the cause of the chaos in the heavy mist as he moved off into the jungle trying to remember exactly how to get back to the chopper.
He paused for a moment, something stopping him in his tracks.
An elephant moved through the trees in the ground fog. A huge elephant wrapped in gold.
Jesus Christ!
Cole turned and fired, but the elephant and its riders had trees between them and him and he couldn’t tell if he hit anything.