Lethal Redemption

by Richter Watkins

  As the rope fell away she opened her eyes to a smiling face with two missing teeth on the left side of his mouth. Her rescuer had a wide nose and intelligent eyes.

  “Yes, okay good. Granddaughter, Captain Hard Rice. I Tang, son Phommasanh. Very happy meet you.”

  She couldn’t react to the new reality. He’d just helped his men kill the entire group of bandits. And here he was looking happy and triumphant, thrilled to see her.

  Kiera, felt lightheaded, disoriented.

  “They are Hmong,” Porter said.

  Tang cut the rope from her wrists then helped her up. He looked almost sheepish.

  He bowed. “Yes, okay,” he said, nodding vigorously like this was a very great moment in his life.

  “Hmong,” she said, still in shock.

  “Very good. Very good. Yes, Captain Hard Rice granddaughter.” Tang articulated the words slowly, as if he was proud of his English, but careful with it as well.

  She remembered that Charles McKean was in contact with these people and so was Narith. She just hadn’t expected to make their acquaintance this soon, or in this fashion. But she was very happy now to have been saved by them, brutal as it was.

  Tang and Narith spoke in what she assumed was Hmong, or some common mountain language. They shook hands, like men with some kind of bond, two soldiers making an arrangement.

  Porter said, “Phommasanh, Tang’s father, and leader of the Hmong, will be very happy to meet you. He is coming back with some Vietnamese monks and should be at the caves where they live.”

  Tang, who was probably in his fifties, bowed slightly to Kiera, before turning, shoulders stiff, and marched back to the fire pit, giving orders as he went.

  She stared at the man and his comrades as they went about their business of stripping the dead, acting like they were in a mall at Old Navy, picking and choosing shirts, pants, boots, discussing their choices, holding things up, trading in what little light the dying fire still gave off.

  Porter’s gun and their backpacks were retrieved and given back to them. The rebel soldiers graciously bowed, sometimes staring at her with wonder, like she’d dropped out of a space ship.

  In spite of all the carnage, bodies lying around, she felt no remorse for the dead.

  Tang came back to them and said, “Bad men. Kill many tiger, elephant. Sell to China. No good.”

  “Yes,” Kiera said. “Kill tiger and elephant no good.”

  He smiled. “We go.”

  “I’m happy to meet your father,” Kiera said.

  This hardened, tough man nodded vigorously, glancing at Porter, “Very good.” Then he went back to instructing his men.

  “Crazy, is it not?” Porter said, as if reading her thoughts. “They probably could have gone to the states or Thailand or Burma, but they chose to stay in their ancestral lands.”

  Kiera put a hand on Porter’s arm and they exchanged looks. There was nothing else that could be said.

  34

  Former captives, now honored guests, Kiera, Porter and Narith joined the exodus from the camp this time without ropes around their wrists and necks.

  The fire had been put out and the bodies, left where they had fallen, had been stripped of anything useful.

  After some steady climbing in the dark up through a tight channel of rock and brush, and then up along a narrow terrace just below the sandstone ridges, they eventually came to where they were met in the predawn by men with four elephants.

  The elephant handler—Porter called him a mahout—had the huge female in his charge. She and Porter were directed to her.

  After speaking with the Burmese handler, Porter said, “This female is the lead elephant. Her name is Bo. That’s an honorific name for a commander and you are given the honor of riding her.”

  The handler had the elephant bend a knee for Kiera. She stepped up and grabbed the flap of the animal’s ear and hoisted herself up on the neck. Then she moved back to the bamboo chair. Porter followed.

  Narith rode on a tusker. Porter informed her that male elephants were rare and not used for leading the group.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they seem to know they are the hunted ones. Poachers kill the tuskers. So they are skittish and very difficult to handle. Asian elephants aren’t as big as African elephants, but they are considered to be smarter and on par with dolphins, whales and chimpanzees. And once any elephant knows you, it never forgets. So be nice.”

  Kiera reached over the side of the basket and gave Bo a pat and maybe it was an illusion, but she felt a nod of the big animal’s head as if to acknowledge and accept her.

  With their elephant mahout straddling the neck of Bo, they headed up the mountain through the heavy rainforest.

  Finally, after hours of climbing, early morning light blossomed over the mountain range across the twisting ravines and deep-cut valleys.

  Those mountains had some of the oddest shapes Kiera had ever seen. Several were flat tops, others were like jagged fangs. There was an atavistic beauty to the place and it gave her the feeling of what it must have been like to be the first humans to come to a place like this.

  Porter spoke to the mahout from time to time, and then told her the mahout was from a sister Hmong tribe in Burma.

  “The Hmong are spread all over—they’re diaspora. He says he’s here to train elephants and to look for a wife. He wants to know if you’re available?”

  “I might just well be,” Kiera said with a smile.

  Porter said, “You mean I have competition?”

  “Guy’s like you always need competition to keep you in line.” His return of playful bantering served to soothe her even more than the rocking of the giant animal beneath her. For the first time in what felt like days, she felt herself relax.

  When they arrived at their destination it took a moment for her to see where the caves were. They were well hidden, virtually invisible until you were close to them.

  Their arrival caused a lot of excitement. They were soon surrounded by a swarm of children, women and men.

  “Are they all Hmong?”

  Porter shook his head. “The majority. There are over thirty mountain tribes living along the mountain chain in Laos. These people are what the French called Montagnards. They used to be mostly further north around the Plain of Jars, but were forced to seek refuge here.”

  The gathering that she could see numbered about a hundred, including the children. The men all appeared to be armed.

  When she dismounted from the elephant she was immediately surrounded by curious children.

  Tang spoke with one of a group of armed men, then disappeared into one of the cave mouths.

  “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 f
ace, 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.