“Is there a girl waiting for you in Bangkok?”
“There are a thousand girls waiting for everybody in Bangkok. They have one really great trait.”
“Which is?”
“They don’t ask a lot of questions.”
She emitted a soft chuckle. She had no doubt he had women wherever he went and they probably
didn’t
ask a lot of questions. She wondered if there was anyone particular, but kept that to herself.
Then she said, “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
“Don’t apologize for succeeding in getting exactly what you came for.”
“You pretty much hate me, don’t you?” The words slipped out before she could stop them.
“I reserve hate for evil people. If you get me killed I might change my mind. Until then you’re just a real pain in the ass.”
She smiled.
***
Porter glanced at Kiera Hunter in the frail moonlight. It would be a hell of a lot better if she was ugly or fat and at least just unattractive in some way. She wasn’t.
And it didn’t improve things that she appeared to be a pretty tough, highly motivated lady. All in all, she was one of those females with all the characteristics he found attractive and dangerous. The kind that usually got him in trouble.
They rolled along steadily up the bored, swollen Sweet Serpent. The banks were as submerged as much as Porter could remember in the last few years. Some trees were underwater with only their tops showing.
But the possibility of finding that missing plane was too enticing to ignore. In the dark world it had a special allure, rumored to carry secrets, millions of dollars, and the most important icon of them all.
Porter knew he was now hooked into this girl’s mission. It was bad enough where they were going, but having attracted attention from a powerful and nasty couple of carpet-bagging former Intel agents didn’t help matters. Burma was going to have to wait.
13
Cole sat in the backseat of the Mercedes as they sped through Phnom Penh. He was in a high state of agitation. He hated incompetence, yet seemed perpetually surrounded by it.
That the police hadn’t picked up the Hunter woman put Cole in the worst of his foul moods. He ran into this bullshit all the time. Even when you owned these bastards, paid their goddamn gambling and whoring expenses, you still couldn’t expect a reasonable level of competence.
In the front seat next to his security chief/driver, Besson yapped away constantly on his phone as the driver negotiated rain swamped roads and barely moving traffic.
A police car, bar lights flashing, led the way.
“Don’t worry,” Besson said, putting his phone away and turning to Cole. “We will have them soon.”
“I’ll believe it when I’m holding hands with her,” Cole said.
Cole saw the future of Southeast Asia and he wanted to be a big player in that future. He and Besson were well positioned.
No centerpiece in his planned massive casino/hotel complex outside Angkor Wat would be able to touch the ultimate icon, the Golden Elephant. The tens of millions that might be on that plane were attractive as well. But the real interesting coup would be finding the documents and the connections of some global banks. That plane was potentially the mother lode of them all.
The driver pulled up to a small, innocuous building and they piled out and went inside and into a room where five men hovered around a single chair.
In the chair sat a frightened and bloodied Khmer who looked about half dead.
“Miloon,” Besson said with contempt.
“He the one drove her around?”
Besson nodded. He spoke with two of the interrogators.
“He says he dropped her at Chenla Theater and maintains he doesn’t know anything other than she was robbed when she arrived this morning.”
They weren’t there five minutes when Besson got a call.
They left the bloodied driver with his interrogators and drove to the quay on the eastern edge of the city where dozens of houseboats were moored.
At the quay they learned from Besson’s men that a fisherman saw a tall westerner and a tall white woman leave by boat. Maybe an hour or so ago.
Besson turned to Cole. “My guess is they’re headed up river to the village where Michael Vale’s former partner lives. Charles McKean.”
“McKean is still alive? The Special Forces guy?”
Besson nodded as he lit a cigarette. “Lives up river with his Khmer wife.” Besson made another call. Took awhile to get an answer.
“My pilot’s about half an hour away at a girlfriend’s,” Besson finally shared.
Cole said, “Get the fastest boat on this river over here and let’s go. We need to stop this now. Can’t let them get out of Cambodia with somebody like McKean. We lose her out in the boonies it’s going to be a real problem.”
Cole stared into the darkness. He was very unhappy to hear that an old Special Forces hand like McKean, one of SOG’s best, was possibly involved. That would just potentially make things different. They absolutely had to stop them before they got into Laos.
“I’m not losing her,” he said. “You make sure everybody understands. I’m not losing her.”
Ten minutes later they were aboard a speedboat with Besson’s security team heading up the Mekong at high speed.
Cole had a strange sense of déjà vu.
He was once again chasing ghosts. But this time he was going to catch them.
14
“Look at all the fireflies,” Kiera said. “Must be a thousand of them.”
As they closed on the shore, Porter said, “You came here ten years ago the place was lit by millions of fireflies to guide you in. Like stardust, an explosion of sparks, fantastic. What you see is nothing compared to what was.”
“What happened to them?”
“
Us
.” He said it with a bit of resignation.
They slowed. A village on stilts appeared in the darkness perched precariously above the floodwater, like a colony of fat cranes standing among huge water lilies that turned out to be a tangle of fishing boats.
An apparition emerged from the gloom on the bank of the river.
“That should be Charlie,” Porter said. “One of a kind.” The boat slipped in among the village fishing boats.
“How much does he know?”
“I told him pretty much everything. He’s the guy will know how to get us up there. The area is where the Hmong are at the moment, so that’s a very good thing. He has contact with a Hmong group hiding in the area. They might be of help to us when we get up there.”
It was very dark under the monsoon sky and she didn’t see McKean until the flare of an inhaled cigarette pierced the darkness on the bank, revealing for a moment an aged, creviced face.
As they drew closer Kiera saw that McKean wore shorts, sandals and a loose shirt and had a shock of corn silk hair, a wispy white beard and was every bit a scarecrow. Right out of Rudyard Kipling
.
She followed Porter off the boat, sidehilling up the muddy bank.
“Charlie,” Porter said, “this is the woman I told you about. Neil Hunter’s granddaughter, Kiera Hunter.”
McKean said, “So this is the lady stirred up the snakes.”
“In the flesh,” Porter said.
“Pleased to meet you,” McKean said, thrusting out his hand. He had a firm handshake and feisty, somewhat drunken eyes and whiskey breath. Then, before releasing her hand, he kissed it.
“My pleasure,” Kiera said, retrieving her hand and thinking,
This is who I’m flying into the jungles of Laos with?
“You are even more beautiful than Porter said you were,” Charles McKean said. “Wait, come to think about it, he forgot to mention that.” McKean chuckled at his own sense of humor.
Kiera gave Porter a wry glance. He shrugged.
“Follow me,” McKean said. “I’m putting my gear together. We need to get moving. I want to see those pictures.”
He talked fast, walked a little unsteady and led them to one of the thatched houses hidden in the palms.
As he opened the door and ushered then into the wood slat house lit by oil lamps, he said, “Your grandfather, by the way, was a legend among the Hard Rice boys.”
“Hard rice?”
“Hard rice drops are what they called guns, ammo and supplies dropped into Laos to the insurgent force we created there. He was working with the crème de la crème.”
A Khmer woman entered from a back room and greeted them with unbridled hostility. Either she didn’t like Porter, or knew he was bringing trouble into her world. She said something in Khmer to McKean, before retreating through the curtain. He followed her and there was a sharp argument.
“She’s upset,” McKean said, “but that’s normal. Getting worse, actually. Her family was killed by the Khmer Rouge. She got raised by some farmers and nearly starved to death and she’s always believed the Khmer Rouge are gonna come back and get her and everybody around her.”
Ah, Jesus, Kiera thought. I’m taking this man away from a woman who’d gone through hell and was still traumatized.
McKean returned, looking grim. He went to the cabinet and poured himself a stiff refill.
“I’m almost ready. You folks like a drink?”
They both declined.
“You have some extra stuff?” Porter asked. “I have nothing. All my worldly goods have already shipped off to Bangkok.”
“I can outfit a battalion. I got a couple extra backpacks and too much gear as it is.”
The two men went off into a back room. Kiera sat at the small table and took out the pictures for McKean.
She looked around at the room.
His woman brought her tea and small, tasty treats and retreated, never making eye contact with Kiera.
McKean and Porter returned with three backpacks. Porter had a lot of gear in his arms and started packing while McKean studied the photos and looked at entries in the diary Kiera had taken from her backpack.
McKean tapped the photo on the table, glancing at it from time to time as he scanned the entries in the diary.
The old soldier’s hands were veined, weathered and rough, his fingers gnarled and yellowed like they been broken many times. They had the slightest tremble at times. McKean’s lined face had skin like a cracked leather veneer.
While he examined the diary he talked about her grandfather. How he’d been shot down maybe four times re-supplying Montagnards and Special Forces. How he and the others had to fly with unreliable radio beacons for navigation, rotten weather, overloads. “Good soldiers in a messed up war,” he said. “Kinda getting to be a habit with us. Porter tells me you are a war reporter. Been to Afghanistan, Syria.”
“Yes.”
McKean lit a cigarette. He looked more animated now. “I don’t know if you realize what the purpose of that plane was,” he said. “All that money, the golden elephant, it was going to be the means to launch a counter-insurgency that never got launched.
Domini Canes
.”
“I’m not familiar with it,” Kiera said.
“Few are,” McKean said. He shook his head and tapped the picture of the statue. “There was another woman, different place, different time. A woman who had a dream. In the dream a dog with a torch in its mouth leaps from her womb.”
“Sounds like a very uncomfortable birth.”
McKean smiled. “I’m sure. That torch then sets the world on fire. It so happens, that woman was the mother of the man who became known as Saint Dominic.”
“
The
Saint Dominic?”
“Yes. He of the Dominicans. He got the name, because of that dream—
Domini Canis
, God’s Dog. Appropriate, as he was the guy who set about cleaning up the heretics all over the place. He famously said it was better to be the hammer than the anvil.”
“And that’s relevant how?” Kiera asked.
“Your grandfather’s associates. They liked to call their operatives
Domini Canes
, the hunting dogs of God. Gonna start the counter-revolution against the communists from Thailand. That was the plan. That plane carried the bank account that would set it up. It carried more than just the crown jewel that everyone has hunted for a long time. Porter says you got a map of the location. I’d love to see it.”
Kiera took out a piece of paper, opened it and handed it to McKean. It was the hand drawn map with the coordinates and landmarks.
“Well now…” McKean said with a shake of his head and another pull on his drink. He glanced at Porter. “Couldn’t be in a worse place, or a better place. Hard to get to, but the Hmong are living up there in caves and they can be of real help. Hell, all those former CIA-sponsored Hmong knew your grandfather. You’ll be some sort of time-travelling homecoming queen.” McKean laughed. “I’ll contact them by SAT phone. They may be isolated, but they stay in touch with people who can warn them if the government gets worked up and decides to drop in some troops.”
Kiera said, “Would it be hard to find a landing strip up there?”
“They can help with that.”
“Porter said you know who’s chasing us.”
“People I talked to while you were on your way tell me it’s a couple very active players. Frenchman named Besson who owns half the country. The other one is a former CIA operative named Cole. He’s from back in the day. Ran various hardcore programs. No doubt knew your grandfather.”
McKean’s woman came out and said something. He went with her into the back room and a nasty argument ensued.
Kiera put the map away and glanced at Porter. He shrugged. Apparently he was happy to let McKean do all the talking.
When McKean walked back in the room he was talking on his satellite phone. He went out onto the small porch of the house, and then came back in.
“That call came from friends of mine. We got company coming up the river. Not welcome company. Let’s
dede.
”
They grabbed their packs. Kiera put the diary and pictures back in plastic and into her backpack, then stuffed it inside the larger backpack McKean provided, and headed out a back door.
McKean said, “We need to get the bird the hell up in the air fast.”
As they left, McKean’s woman gave him a lot of grief, the sound of her bitter tirade continuing as they fled to the trees away from the river.
Kiera followed the two men, wondering where an airfield could be out here, what kind of plane the man had, and if he was sober enough to fly. With every step her excitement was replaced by a healthy skepticism as the man she followed stumbled through the palm trees.