Missing Louise

by Nicholas Frankcom

  Twenty One

  From this angle the building looked virtually intact. Evidence of the violent attack was more apparent from the south facing side. By climbing into an adjacent car park you got a good view of twisted chairs, sculpted into hideous shapes, flattened by burnt roof struts blocking the way to a darkened corner of the room gauged by a large fireball. The precision grenade launcher picked out the target exactly as planned. A total of five bodies were labelled and pieced together from the round table closest to the bar. In most cases they were barely recognisable or complete, missed limbs and charred fingers meticulously collected and added to body bags Even the sex could be questioned in a couple of the cases. Dental records were currently being tracked down with the café reservations book being carefully analysed in case correct names were ever given. Detectives were despatched throughout the capital to pass on the gospel of bad news and make checks on known contacts for people missing breakfast that day. One person that could be accounted for was that of a slim but muscularly built Thai in his early thirties. After a whole day of dusting down personal effects and pulling together the ashen remains from the floor it was clear that Kae was not included in the recently deceased. If Captain Vaenkeo were able to show any emotion over the botched hit he would have thrown the nearest rookie into a wall and demanded that they burn their balls searching all day and night for the retched Thai. Instead he bit down on his lip and felt the fire deep down inside.

  “Sir! I think we’ve found the fragments from a grenade. Looks like a professional job, perhaps political. I’ve seen similar attacks in the past. They’re often initiated by our Hmong comrades. Few other groups could pull such a stunt. What do you think?” The investigator was still young enough to care about pleasing his superior. All the while he remained prone upright, uncertain about moving until he received a reply.

  “It might be Hmong,” the captain pondered the question. “If it were gangland we would know about it don’t you think. We employ enough agents to keep checks on them. No, it’s probably Hmong. The more these gits get to kill each other the fewer gunned henchmen we have interfering with our job. Get forensics to bag all of the fragments up and have it sent direct to my office. I’ll have a close look tomorrow.”

  “As you say sir. I’ll let you know what else they come up with. Do you want me to go through my report again sir?”

  “No, you can sod off now. I have the mother of all headaches churning over in my brain. It’s not helped by all of these questions.” The captain briskly broke off, moving back into the blackened crime scene.

  It was the only truth that Captain Vaenkeo had spoken. That cock sucker Kae was giving him a terminal headache. The colonel had warned him that the Thai would be no easy target to flick back into the gutter. He should be fried chicken by now. They should all be smugly sat at some press conference beating on about how brutal the Hmong were in targeting bystanders in a bar. The grenade attack was launched at exactly the agreed time. Accuracy was good, no doubting that. As directed, the grenade was fired towards the corner of the bar. The ass licking Thai usually spent his afternoons perched on up there with pallid friends sipping imported beer. Of all the days to change his fucking routine it would have to be on the day of his assigned death. The death cheating geek was beginning to cause a big problem. His concern was finding him and putting a bullet through the greedy Thai’s mouth to stop him talking on a permanent basis. He could ill afford for any loose tongues to rant on about PC38 involvement in things they really should have no interest in. The public wouldn’t listen, how could they dare oppose the secret police without the risk of being added to the long list of missing, but a few figures from offices around the government district might. The colonel was getting very concerned that his more recent transactions with the Thai could be very bad for his long awaited retirement. Much trust was being placed with the young captain to clear matters up. It was known that some officials held more power than a warlord and wielded it like a vicious whip. It was the best reason for him to knock this murder investigation on the head and bury the evidence deep within the bowels of PC38 HQ, quietly referred to as “Devil’s Gatehouse”. They held enough evidence to wrongly point the finger of doom at the Hmong without curious technicians uncovering any possible grains of true identity. It would be more than enough to unload a few trucks of troops and go after what he really had in mind.

  The hijacked bus episode annoyed the shit out of him. Carefully prepared plans were apt to go up in flames when the first of those bullets were fired. No one was saying as much, but he was dam sure the attack was sanctioned from colleagues within PC38. The delivery of such a high profile attack bore all the hallmarks. Who else would be stupid enough to take out a bus on a public highway! It was an inside job for sure. Trouble was working out which idiot had sanctioned the bloody fiasco and why? Without a doubt they were putting it down to the Hmong. Why they were always so single minded in their pathological desire to hound them out was beyond him. His own little theatre at the bar would have been enough to tick that little box, without causing a fucking international incident. Luckily the ambush did not roller coaster the carefully prepared scheme. He already knew of Kae’s man on the bus, mindfully keeping a check on the inquisitive farang. So far the black body bags brought back did not contain any bullet ridden pink bodies. If anything, the hijack pushed things forward for it flushed everything out. People would now have to start considering their moves. The backpackers were obviously being helped out by someone, probably the Hmong. Perhaps they might have stumbled across this Louise. His primary concern was to keep a lid on the world’s media. They were already psyched up by the brutality of the attack. If they got wind that photogenic farang were possible victims they would be topping up the ink for a new front-page run. It was essential that they were decoyed into believing that the story was now dead.

  Raised voices from within alerted the captain to a further find. Part of a torso was being bagged up and dispatched to the city morgue. The pathologist would have to match it up with the assortment of other burnt body pieces he was collecting. Yet more evidence for the captain to contaminate and bury somewhere. He would need to instruct the pathologist not to be too methodical in his investigation.

  As Captain Vaenkeo paced back towards his black sedan the first in a series of large raindrops fell on his lapels. Usually a keen observer of government weather reports, these past few days were taken up with the Kae question, causing him to miss them. Normally if rain caught him unawares he would curse his misfortune. The wet season was still a good two months away. Today though he smiled. A solid downpour would piss all over the forensics, pushing many investigators into calling it a day. He now needed a spot of luck in tracing where Kae was currently holed up.

  There was only one other errand to run. Once he got back to the office he was going to place a long distance call to England. If his fellow idiots couldn’t run the show he was more than happy to continue this one alone.

  Twenty Two

  The leathery man beckoned them to follow him. He sat up on a crude log table, clasped his hands and looked to address them. Shadows from the late afternoon encouraged the mosquitoes to weave about their gathering.

  “Where do I start, just where can I begin? It’s a tricky one, as you’ll see, things get a little complex.” Again the Canadian accent came across, this time much stronger.

  “Whichever way I throw this at you, you’re going to find it hard to swallow.” Large hands briefly pushed loose strands of hair from his forehead, forcing his fringe from fusing together with sweat.

  Mike figured that this guy could now tell him anything and he would treat it as the gospel truth. The man looked to have walked straight out of the Vietnam War, scars included. You didn’t show up as a VIP guest in the centre of an illicit jungle camp; not without one hell of a story to go with it. This was no geek vying for an audience at the local pub looking at an excuse for exaggeration. Whatever t
his guy was going to say was likely to be peppered with deep grains of raw personal experience. With a quick sideways glance he could tell that Rusty was equally intrigued. The Australian was leaning back against a tree, eyes fixed on the scarred stranger.

  “I’m living here with Pin and his people; have been for quite a while now I guess. In case you’re wondering, yes that is my plane out there, but no, I’m not that fucking old! I wasn’t a crazy pilot flying the Steve Canyon Program for the loons in Air America. This is no old Vietnam vet you’re looking at.” The Canadian smiled at Louise as he said this, humour sparkling behind his mirrored grey eyes.

  “From the accent you can probably tell I’m a Toronto man. I loved planes and joined the Canadian air-force just as soon as I could get out of college. That would have been around 1978. Linking how I got from being a pilot in the Canadian air-force to ending up here required quite a bit of explanation, but there’s something which I probably need to tell you first.” Again he looked over at Louise, this time without the humour. Mike was startled to see her give a nod, very slight, as if granting approval for the leathery man before them.

  “After a few years supporting the coast guard and spearheading the odd exercise, I got my first overseas posting, to RAF Hulaverton in the south west of England.”

  Mike could already sense the direction this was taking; leading him to become further mesmerised.

  “I quickly hooked up with a local girl, Caroline, and we spent a whole lot of time together. Her folks never truly liked me, guess they had designs on her meeting a stockbroker or Scottish Lord for all I know. We tended to take-off, be out of their way so to speak. We were both pretty young; Caroline was only seventeen, when she got pregnant. Pure naivety I guess. You know, I was going to do the right thing, but Caroline’s parents were hell bent on seeing me dead. I mean, they just hit the roof. So with me off the scene, along came Alan Pemberton, who married Louise’s mother.”

  The guy stopped at this point, allowing the story so far to sink in. There was a lot to digest. Mike remembered that he earlier had introduced himself as Dan. He wondered what his surname could be - what Louise’s name so easily could have been. He found it hard to grasp that he was standing in a tropical rainforest listening to a man claiming to be Louise’s father.

  “It cut me down a bit. I went back to Toronto but just couldn’t settle. In the end I let the air-force post drop, bought myself out early. I then did what many young men do when they need to get away. I went backpacking, hoping to broaden my mind. Well, it certainly did that! I headed out for Thailand. Back then it was much quieter, more straw thatched shacks and the like bordering small towns, thronged with bicycles and street bazaars. I loved it!”

  “Trouble is what do you do when the money runs out?” Dan continued. “Well, it hadn’t run out but funds were getting lower. I suppose when you have an air force-trained pilot hanging around, word gets through to certain circles. When I took a trip back to Bangkok I was approached by a smooth talking impressionable American. He put it on the table that I could do a few jobs for them whilst still based in Thailand doing what I loved best, flying.”

  “This was the mid-eighties. All that Vietnam stuff was long gone, only the Hollywood flicks by then, but they wanted to keep an eye on things, particularly up in the North around the Laos border. The Thais themselves were taking a few issues over where the border should be and each side was taking a few shots at the other. It was all relatively low-key. The Americans wanted to keep a check on it all, photos and the like, maybe the odd delivery. The Thais were happy with the deal as they got to see most of the pictures and could arrange for drops. It all seemed pretty clear cut to me, I would be asked to fly over remote areas where there was little by way of anti-aircraft defences. It would be just me and the clear blue sky. Well, at least that’s what I thought. I’d not counted on the jungle.”

  He looked up at his audience, swatting a fly as he did. The congregated assembly seemed ready for as much as he could give them. Many years were spent without western company and he was pleased to note that his ability to take the stage in a social setting had not deserted him.

  “So there I was, flying twin engines out of obsolete military airstrips in Northern Thailand. The trips themselves were rarely long, an hour or two at best. This left me a bundle of cash and stacks of free time. I figured I was living the life.” He paused for breath, though it added a sense of dramatic effect.

  “Then it all went. I was given another routine mission. I firstly needed to pick up a small package from an airfield just short of the border. This was to be dropped at some co-ordinate or another that I have long since forgotten. There were then a few photographs to take the other side of some hills they needed mapping. Like all of my flights, I was going solo. I remember being in a bloody good mood. The skies were clear and wind speed practically zero - ideal flying weather. Things went well and I took a few happy snaps. Just needed to drop off the cylinder flask with some documents in, a parachute job, watch it float to the ground so no sweat there. Didn’t make it though. My mind was on other things. There was a poker game going down that night and I was itching to get back. Then came the sound of a spluttered drone. I knew immediately that it was one of the engines going into a coughing fit. I had experienced incidents like this before, so I hung on tight and waited for it to kick in again. Trouble was it didn’t. All the while I was losing power and height. Then as the second started to go I realised I was in big trouble. I figured a fuel line must have ruptured for that to happen. By now I was too low to bail out. There was no ejector seat in those old things. My only option was to stick with the plane and glide her down, crash land. When you have the jungle below you it’s hard to rate your chances. As I lost altitude I spotted a half-chance, an area with little tree cover. I simply held the controls and prayed. That was pretty much my last memory.”

  Dan saw that Pin was walking over, in his determined way, so waited until he arrived. The next piece of the story would involve the Hmong leader, so it was good he was going to be joining them. As much as anything he could shed light on the second chapter of Dan’s story.

  “So how come here? Why didn’t you get back to Thailand and re-join your pilot friends, the dudes you played poker with?” Mike asked. His curiosity was rising quickly to melting point.

  “For starters I was out cold. Took quite a knock bringing the plane down out there. Turned out the clearings I was spotting were areas earmarked for the Hmong’s grass plantations. At first they thought I might be there to spy on them, hovering around to spill the beans on their illicit plans. When I came around after my knock they were none too happy to allow me to go wandering off, just in case I was snitching on them. If you like I was a house prisoner, only it wasn’t then my house.”

  “After a few weeks we started to slowly build up a mutual trust. My knocks were well on the mend and I was free to walk around. I had no idea where I was exactly, so figured that any escape attempt would be fraught with more danger than it was worth. I was a man used to mechanics and flying, not rain forests. As far as the ground crew housed at the Thailand base were concerned, I was now rating highly on the missing person’s list. There would be little they could do regarding any full-scale search, given the secretive nature of the operation, so I suspect that they gave me up quite quickly. I think that after a while they hoped I would not turn up at all. Would be kind of embarrassing if they needed to explain a crashed light aircraft with no registration certificate. With little else on my agenda, I got talking to your man here.”

  He was indicating Pin, who now sat comfortably next to him. The fact that he carried a Kalashnikov bothered neither of them. It was becoming clear that the two had forged a close bond during their time in the jungle together. Mike wondered whether the isolated rural living encouraged his calmness, or whether this was borne out of trust for the man they called their leader. Mike waited to see where this talk was going. His ini
tial impression that they were in the company of heavily armed drug-lords was diminishing with each instalment he received. They were tooled up and undoubtedly dangerous with several prime acres of cannabis plantation, but were missing that callous edge he recently witnessed back at the bus hijack. The cold hearted gunmen out on the road were a different animal, killing not just for necessity but for effect. The Hmong’s reasons for an armed presence out in the jungle were looking to be far different. Having dangerous maniacs willing to kill sharing the same shaded jungle would more than validate extreme security measures.

  “At first,” Dan continued, “I simply watched everyday camp activity. I was surprised that a few spoke pretty good English, including Pin here, but soon learnt that they worked closely with their American advisors in the Vietnam War a decade before. This made it a lot easier for me to pick up a bit of Hmong and start interacting with most of the tribe.”

  “It didn’t take too long for me to convince everyone that I was no government spy honing in on their crop plantations. By that stage I was settling in to the routine very well. Where was there to go? I decided to stick it out. No way I expected to stay this long though. I guess that part of it was the sense I felt from belonging. Just the everyday things began mattering to me. I empathised with the Hmong’s way of life. I shared with them their resentment about their treatment since the ’73 revolution. I came to understand their survival needs. Those crops out there are about the one thing that keeps food on the table. These people aren’t combat junky cartel barons. They need the export industry. During all of this time though I still kept missing Louise. I didn’t know her name of course, but I knew of her.”