Lethal Redemption

by Richter Watkins

  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 worki
ng 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.

  But then the elephant turned towards him.

  What the hell!

  Then when the elephant crashed through the undergrowth Cole panicked and broke into an all-out sprint.

  He cut through the trees, tripping, regaining footing, moving this way, then that.

  But no matter what he did, how he changed course, that damn elephant stayed on his ass and seemed to have targeted him.

  Cole made moves through the trees he hadn’t made since he’d played football in high school.

  There was a moment he thought he’d lost the bastard.

  He eased to a jog and headed now for what looked like the open ground where the chopper was. He heard the chopper come to life, getting geared up for liftoff.

  Cole broke into a final run for safety.

  When he was just about to break out into the open boulder field he heard the damn elephant crashing through the jungle right behind him.

  He looked back and couldn’t believe what he saw.

  The elephant carried a man on its neck and a rider in the basket with a rifle and he thought it was a woman.

  He thought it must be Hunter’s granddaughter…decked out in gold like the elephant she rode.

  A nightmare. Impossible. This just couldn’t be.

  The jungle thinned near the rock field, and Cole headed into the open, dodging through the rock field.

  Besson, fifty yards ahead of Cole, reached the chopper with his security detail and they scrambled aboard as chopper rotors spun up to full takeoff speed.

  ***

  Kiera yelled at the Hmong guiding Bo to slow down.

  She’d chosen him because he spoke English better than the others and turned out to be an excellent steward of the elephant.

  She had him keep Bo on the edge of the trees. Kiera didn’t want to be out in the open where the gunners on the chopper could direct fire at them.

  Leading the war party of elephants from the caves around and up the mountains, Kiera had been in a kind of exhilarated delirium. All the while, she had been in the grips of the dream, of something strange and powerful, as if she’d been completely taken over and transformed.

  Coming across those ridges and up the long swell of the mountain through the driving monsoon rain, she’d just grown stronger and stronger in the creation of this persona that drove her, that led this small group of men.

  She couldn’t remember what she’d said to them. Only that it had inspired them, as it had her.

  She didn’t know what would happen when she reached the field of battle. Maybe she would somehow snap out of it, collapse and run.

  But the closer they’d come, the elephants moving slowly and steadily through the heavy morning mist, she knew the metamorphosis was not shallow. It was not foreign. It was fully within her to be now what she was.

  She saw the American Cole stumble, regain his footing. She waited for an opportunity to get a clear shot at him.

  I got you now.

  ***

  Cole regained his footing and made a desperate, adrenaline driven, last-ditch run for the chopper, dodging the bigger rocks, flying over the smaller ones.

  But his lungs and legs weren’t what they used to be and the adrenaline from fear could only take him so fast, so far.

  He stopped and glanced back and didn’t see the elephant. Where are you?

  She’s tracking me. He had to get to the chopper.

  Besson provided cover fire for him and he knew this was his chance.

  Most of the fighting seemed to be going on in the jungle across from him.

  He ran for the chopper through the clusters of rock and boulders, confident Besson and his security team would suppress gunfire from Hunter if she tried to take him down.

  In a part of his mind he congratulated Kiera Hunter, for he knew now that it was her on that gold-cloaked elephant.

  Brilliant. The vision of a girl on a golden elephant had sent panic through the idiot poachers and drug runners. That was a feat worthy of the granddaughter of Neil Hunter.

  Cole was fifty feet from the chopper when it lifted off.

  “Hey! Hey!” he screamed.

  He couldn’t believe what appeared to be happening.

  Besson was leaving without him!

  Besson was in the door with his rifle. Gunfire from the jungle seemed to have his attention and he ignored Cole as the chopper rose.

  “Get back here, goddamn you!” Cole screamed, waving his arm.

  The chopper showed no sign of coming back down to pick up Cole, and instead it kept rising and began to lean away from him.

  “You bastard!” Cole yelled bringing his weapon up. “Come back here!”

  As the chopper rose toward the tree line Cole fired a burst at it in anger. Than another and another.

  The weapon had tracers every four rounds. He was making direct hits.

  For a moment the chopper seemed to have escaped Cole’s wrath. It slanted to clear the trees, leaving Cole abandoned in the rock field.

  But then it began swerving violently. It seemed to waver, suspended in space, before turning into a wobbly spin and heading back into the rock field. The twists and turns became a death spiral straight into the rocks.

  It impacted on a massive boulder and exploded in flames, debris spreading in all directions.

  Cole ducked behind the rocks closest to him to avoid getting hit.

  Then, when the last of it fell, he rose and turned as Kiera Hunter, on foot now, moved out into the field toward him.

  Like she was hunting him.

  Alone.

  This crazy woman.

  Cole didn’t expect this. He looked for others with her but saw no one. Just Kiera Hunter, alone, weapon in hand, coming toward him across the field of rock.

  She’s fucking nuts.

  All that he’d done to keep this woman alive, and now he was going to be the one to have to kill her.

  But then he thought he couldn’t kill her. He had to take her alive. She was his ticket. His only chance to negotiate with Porter Vale and find a way out was with Kiera Hunter. He could grab her, he could win this yet. Nothing had changed.

  54

  Kiera, now off Bo and standing at the edge of the jungle, had watched with astonishment when the chopper left Cole behind. He had been close enough to pick up.

  Then he brought the chopper down and it lay in smoldering ruins. Even more shocking.

  And Cole stood alone in the field of rock boulders.

  She could wait for some of the other fighters, for Porter and Phommasanh or Tang, but she didn’t want to wait. Cole might reach the jungle and force them to hunt him down.

  She wasn’t willing to do that and chance others getting killed. This was over and she had to finish it here and now.

  Her mind set, she moved out into the open field of rock with a mind of lightness and clarity.

  Kiera slowed down. She stayed with as much cover in the rocks as she could, but she had
to move forward to cut off any chance of Cole making it to the jungle. He’d disappeared.

  No challenge could equal the strange mix of feelings and absolute concentration. The feelings were connected to the reality that they had won, the enemy was defeated and fleeing. But all of it now receded. Nothing existed but the moment, the visual field, the feel of the weapon, the tracking and hunting for the target.

  She saw him now as he moved across her field of fire for a brief few seconds to get behind a massive spread of rock and boulders and again vanished.

  She held her fire as she shifted quickly to her left and moved faster, her eyes searching for a route he would try and take to make his exit from the field. She wanted an open lane of fire if and when he made his run.

  She continued forward into the larger of the rock clusters, some rising to twice her height.

  She stopped. She’d seen some movement but lost it and wasn’t sure. The silence of the field was deafening, the smell of burning fuel acrid in her nose.

  Somewhere off in the jungle on the far side, more sporadic gunfire.

  He was about twenty yards from her now if he was still where she’d fired at him from the edge of the trees.

  She slid again to her left behind a line of boulders, closing down the distance.

  Kiera stopped and waited, listening and wondering when he’d make his move. He couldn’t reach the jungle without crossing her line of vision. It was all small rock and brush to the edge of the trees. He had to break soon. The fights in the jungles were coming to an end. Men would be coming out into the open and Cole would have no chance.

  She stared at the twisting run of rocks. Well, you going to make a break or not?

  She was so close now, and the field of rocks so thick, she decided the Glock was the better of the weapons.

  She put down the M1-Carbine the Hmong have given her and took out the Glock. She then wondered what Cole was thinking. He’d waited a long time to make a break. Had she hit him? Was he lying wounded?

  It was her first moment of doubt as to what was going on.

  ***

  Cole had reversed his movement. He was crawling on all fours now, going back toward the wreckage of the chopper, then cut around her right flank.