UNSEEN FORCES: SKY WILDER (BOOK ONE)

by Ed Kovacs

  “What exactly is it that you import from Myanmar?” Diana inquired pointedly, her face a hard mask of intransigence. “Black market gems, or black market antiquities? How about black market hardwoods? Or do you import ten year-old girls and sell them to Thai brothels? How much do their families charge for them, fifty dollars apiece? Of course what I haven’t mentioned is the elephant in the room—heroin. Opium being the number one cash crop around here. I wonder how much the peasants you’re so concerned for are making from the exploitation and pillaging of their land.” Diana's eyes flashed and she kept them lasered on the creamy-complected Thai.

  Tasnee calmly tied off her stitching with a double knot, then used a small pair of scissors to carefully cut the thread. “You know so little about me or my culture, it sounds as though you have read a magazine article or two. I deeply resent your suggestion that my family ever engaged in the flesh trade. And I can assure you that, unlike your CIA, my family never smuggled drugs of any kind.

  “Did you study history in college, or did they stop teaching that in America, where many college students can't even write a grammatically correct paragraph and now struggle to read an entire book because of their short attention spans? You may not have heard of the Opium Wars, where the British and to an extent the American government used the strength of your armies to force millions of Asians to become dope addicts. All to finance the British navy and fatten the bank accounts of Western elitists. Perhaps your harsh judgment of me is misplaced. But I understand your resentment. I have everything I want, except one thing.” Tasnee stroked Sky’s vest. “My father was very disappointed I fell in love with a western man. But after he met Sky he dropped his objections and he would like us to marry. My family will do anything for him. I will even be polite to you.”

  Diana bristled, but stayed silent.

  Tasnee stood up and took a step, then, “Don’t fall asleep too early. Listen to the sounds of the night.”

  ###

  That night, Diana Hunt lay in bed in one of the guest rooms, troubled by an RV session she’d just finished. It had been a dark, incomplete glimpse of what lay ahead in Myanmar. But she’d clearly seen a vision of herself restrained in some jungle hellhole, fighting raging all around, then an ominous figure appeared amidst the fire. Not Forte, but Dang.

  She tried to put the image out of her mind and shifted onto her side trying to find the sweet spot of sleep, sounds floating to her as Tasnee had predicted: high-pitched moans of delight accented by mid-range box spring accompaniment and counterpointed with occasional staccato thumps of bedposts bucking on a wood floor; an improvised sexual duet that she knew Tasnee to be dedicating to her. What a catty thing, but then why was she so confrontational with her today? The woman showed substance. Diana knew her own behavior was uncalled for and stupid.

  What’s my real connection to Wilder? Am I acting out feelings somehow related to the old ghosts of my past traumas in the field? Haven’t I worked through this already? Tears welled in her eyes. There were big surprises, not all pleasant, in store, she felt sure of it. Completely apart from the assignment, she was on a journey to wholeness, and she drifted off to sleep sobbing quietly to the strains of a music she hadn’t improvised in years.

  CHAPTER 16

  Diana woke early, feeling jet-lagged, and tried to join Ping for the short walk to the talaat, the daily market, the largest in Mae Hong Son Province.

  “Please Miss, better we walk alone.”

  Ping didn't want any part of the woman who had cold-cocked him, so she waited five minutes on the stairs, then descended to the streets. The mists had mysteriously returned to the region and the overcast didn’t dress up the dirty concrete buildings that looked to be crumbling from poor construction. Diana detected the smell of sewage as she walked; at first faint, then powerful, then faint again, all the time blended with the sweet sharp fragrance of incense and acrid whiffs of smoked opium emanating from the opening storefronts.

  The collection of individual stalls comprising the market delivered an assault on Diana’s every sense. Northern-style Thai “country music” blared from a cheap blaster as the less than hygienic-looking merchants hawked every consumable known to Southeast Asia: red and green chilies of all sizes and shapes neatly sorted and stacked; cut sugar cane; purple and white orchids, heaven-scent creamy white frangipani blossoms and pink lilies; ten different types of bananas and almost as many of coconuts; special northern-style sausages hanging from poles; countless bins of strongly pungent Chinese medicinal herbs; row after row of homebrew liquors either packed with herbs or boiled down in vats of frogs or snakes; large and small jars of beans, nuts, seeds, powders, spices, oils, and just-grated bamboo shoots.

  Smells of sweet ripe fruit, rotting garbage, piquant fish sauces and fermenting bean curd, cigarette smoke, dog excrement, fresh and rotting fish, and rancid meat seeped into her lungs, a cacophony of odors that somehow tainted her tongue with its jumbled flavor and propelled her onward into a dank, open-sided, grubby, tin-roofed building full of dry goods, designer knock-offs, and tables full of unrefrigerated freshly dressed beef, pork, chicken and game, the meats lorded over by butchers’ wives who leisurely shooed flies from the exposed victuals using sticks with plastic bags tied to the end as swatters. A butcher, cheroot firmly in mouth, offered to cut a chicken in half to show Diana the quality of the innards.

  She’d lost her bearings in the crush. Sweet-smiling children darted past her giggling, faces streaked with sanapka, a bone-colored powder made from the bark of a jasmine bush and believed to protect from the sun and promote a good complexion. She followed their laughter onto the street, and oriented herself to the mountaintop wat. As she turned to reenter the talaat...

  “Why lover, there you are. Ready for breakfast on the lake?”

  The man wore green Bermuda shorts and knee socks, a military-style shirt with epaulets, oiled-canvas Australian bush hat, day pack, and held a Thailand travel guide and a camcorder. The very cliche of a western middle-class tourist ready for the jungle. He peered at her over his neatly trimmed mustache and through heavy black plastic-framed eyeglasses, then shot her a 5000 watt smile.

  “Just smile,” said Wilder. “Mae Hong Son, like other border towns, is crawling with Burmese intelligence agents, undercover Thai Border Police, the occasional DEA operator, displaced ethnic rebels, smugglers of every stripe, adrenaline-junkie thrill-seekers, loose-lipped hookers, and trekkers looking to score some dope. You were noted when you first showed up the other night, but I’ve been under wraps. Anyway, you know I can’t stand to be cooped-up indoors, so let’s go have a power breakfast.”

  ###

  Within ten minutes Wilder and Hunt sat on the banks of Jong Kham Lake, although the appellation “lake” seemed generous, as it occupied an area only about two blocks square. A number of guesthouses, the most inexpensive kind of lodging in Thailand, circled the placid water. Two Burmese-style wats, stood sentinel side-by-side on the south end of the lake, morning sunlight igniting their gold gilt stupas. He produced a breakfast of honey cakes and two cans of Birdy coffee.

  “It would be great to take another two weeks to plan our little sojourn, but aside from the fact that we don’t know what Forte is up to, the long-range weather forecast suggests the rainy season might arrive early. Traveling in the dry season where we’re going is tough enough. Rain makes it virtually impossible.”

  “I’ve got two main concerns: Ping and Dang,” she said, sipping the tinny-tasting coffee.

  “I’ve got about thirty more than that, but, what can I say? Ping used to be a hill tribe trek guide and he married a Lisu girl from Shan State. He speaks dialects of Lisu, Akha, Lahu and pretty good Tai Yai.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Shan dialect. So he knows his way around. As for Dang, he speaks Chinese and has been on a few cross-border trading mule caravans into areas close to where we’re going. He’s got a nose for what stinks and I’d want him on my side in an alley fight.”

  �
��But we haven’t vetted them. And Dang worked in Thai intelligence.”

  “Mister Lampang, Tasnee’s dad, vouches for them. We can’t go in alone. Too chancy.”

  “Well...” Diana had something in mind. “We could helicopter in right to the site, fast rope down, gear following. Since travel is so tough we should have at least forty-eight hours before any bad guys show up. We grab the tablet, leave the gear and fast rope out.”

  “So you want the chopper pilot and the load master to know the exact location of the site? Think they’ll be more trustworthy than Dang or Ping?”

  “Okay, bad idea,” she said, nodding. “But don't you fly rotary craft?”

  “Sure, I could fly us in, but we'd need a pretty large bird for four people plus all the gear. And Google Earth hasn't been very helpful in checking out the site. But even if we had access to a spy satellite, it would be hard to know with certainty what's under the jungle canopy. We could be landing onto a heroin refinery or a methamphetamine lab. Or a Burmese army platoon. Any idea what they’d do to a couple of big-nosed white foreign devils carrying guns and commo gear? And a chopper landing would alert anyone for miles around.”

  “But going in by mule, we run the risk we don’t even make it to the site.”

  “You’re right. And I’m right. I don’t want to walk in with Ping and Dang and pack-mules. A squad of Delta Force commandos and a Blackhawk spec-ops chopper would be nice. But we got what we got.”

  She nodded, then her eyes focused on someone approaching. As Sky picked up the camcorder and swept the lake vista to look more touristy, an old man, no doubt a former hill tribe dweller, walked past aimlessly, eyes glazed over with the emptiness of opium addiction. No attempt is made to rehabilitate older addicts; the official and unofficial policy is that withdrawal would do them more harm than good, so let them have their peace.

  When the old addict walked out of earshot, Diana said quietly, “Look, I only said Ping and Dang were my main concerns. I wanted to talk to you about the helicopter insertion again because I have a strong feeling we’re heading into trouble.”

  He shrugged. “That’s an understatement to say the least. Aside from the snakes, we’ll be crossing through areas with all kinds of parasites, leeches, wild boar, bears, jungle cats, even tiger.”

  “Tiger?!”

  “Absolutely. And Shan State has over fifty different strains of malaria, most of which have become chloroquine- and Fansidar-resistant. There’s rampant typhoid, cholera, meningitis, hepatitis, dengue fever, yellow fever, amoebic dysentery, Japanese encephalitis... even polio and leprosy. A real litany of incapacitating virus and disease. There are few good roads and the terrain is rugged. We can only take in so much medicine. So if you or I get sick—” He shook his head as a motorcycle taxi chugged past with two smiling young passengers squeezed behind the red-vested driver. “Anyway, so much for the problems nature has to offer. They’re a walk in the park compared to the danger of the human factor.”

  “I’ve operated in war zones before.”

  “Not like Burma. Even with the military dictatorship's recent opening up to the outside world and the blossoming of democracy, Shan State is the least known, least explored, most fiercely independent province of what has been one of the most xenophobic countries on the planet. When the British colonized Burma, they set up a protectorate for Shan State, but they were smart enough to leave them alone. After gaining independence in nineteen-forty-eight, the Burmese generals set up their dictatorship. They decided to ‘unify’ the country. The Burmese army, the tatmadaw, fought rebels all over the country: the Mon, Karens, Naga, Karenni, Pa-O, Kachins, the Palaung, as well as a number of groups in the Shan State, where politics are more complex because we’re talking about the Golden Triangle.

  “Look, we’re going to be skirting areas controlled by different factions, but here’s what we’re facing: militant hill tribes, ethnic Shan rebels, local militia, narco-insurgents like the remnants of Khun Sa’s forty-thousand man army, bandits, Karen or Karenni guerrilla fighters, Chinese drug barons, exiled KMT anti-communist forces, your garden variety armed-to-the-teeth freelance hit men, and the Wa army—former commies who run guns, some of whom used to be headhunters, although the ‘used to be’ is in question.”

  “So there is still fighting in Burma?”

  “Nothing like it was ten years ago, but yes, in some areas the fighting has been going on for seventy years now, thanks to the tatmadaw, one of the most brutally oppressive armies in the world. And like everybody else, and I mean everybody else in Shan State, they deal dope to make money to buy weapons. There’s heavily armed security for every poppy field, heroin refinery, meth lab and mule caravan. All of these groups, all these organizations, sometimes fight each other, sometimes they team up in short-lived alliances that are almost impossible to keep track of. It’s the ambush de jour mentality. Who are we killing today? It’s feudalism, it’s anarchy. Shan State is one of the most beautiful places on Earth and one of the most insanely dangerous.”

  ###

  “Go ahead,” she said into her encrypted cell phone, in soft, accented English as she sat cross-legged on her massive bed, a spread of tarot cards in front of her. The snow-covered Swiss Alps seemed to glow through the window behind her as moonlight reflected off the icy mountain frosting. Lavender-hued, shiny silk pajamas clung to her bony frame. The steaming caramel macchiato on the bedside table suggested she was in for a long night.

  “Were you sleeping?” General Klaymen stood next to the gas pumps as he filled his rented car outside Seattle. Heavy rain pelted the metal awning above, a percussive counterpoint to his soft tone as he spoke into an encrypted satellite phone provided to him by a close friend at NSA.

  “Darling, it’s too dangerous to call right now, even on this phone.” Two other cell phones lay on Nina Sprague’s bed in her opulent Lucerne flat. Slender and refined, with hazel eyes and stylishly short brown hair, she looked to be in her forties.

  “I couldn't help it. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “How are you holding up?” she said, as she overturned another card—the Tower—and added it to the spread.

  “I’ll get through it,” said Klaymen.

  “I’m so, so sorry about Todd. I want you here with me. I want us to be together. Especially now. It would be better.”

  “Soon,” he said, “very soon. The wheels are in motion. And soon we won’t have to keep our relationship a secret. There’s no reason for that anymore.”

  “I love you, darling. Please be careful, the cards say there are... dangers ahead.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. And I love you, too.”

  ###

  Ping and Dang departed at noon in a small truck convoy, a hastily arranged shipment of foodstuffs and dry goods for Mong Ta, Burma, where Tasnee’s family’s company had traded previously. Hidden away amongst sacks of salt, rice, spices, bolts of cloth, boxes of shoes and cases of Mekhong Whiskey was the equipment for the expedition. Tea money insured that the Thai Border Police stayed in their huts as the trucks roared past. “Taxes” were paid at the various guerrilla choke points along the rutted, jarring dirt road heading north and staying east of the Salween River.

  The truckers passed through teak and pine forested slopes, innumerable stands of bamboo and forded several small streams as the switchbacks led them over sharply steep ridges, blind curves at every turn, then dropped into verdant valleys of the Dor Larng Range. Freshly blackened splotches from swidden agriculture scarred the lush slopes like scabs on a beauty queen. The trucks slowed as they skirted a jungle timber camp reeking with the smell of old leather, signaling freshly cut teak. Shan loggers milled the coveted wood which would be loaded onto waiting Thai logging trucks for the illegal journey back to civilization and conspicuous consumption.

  After nearly eight hours of continuous driving, they were merely sixty miles into Burma, and rolled stop in the hamlet of Nam Tot at dusk where the ruse began in earnest. Feigning engine trouble w
ith one of the trucks, Dang dealt for the rental of four pack animals, mule / horse cross breeds, the most adept at traversing the difficult terrain ahead. He would leave the “disabled” truck as collateral, minus the distributor cap.

  In the darkness, Dang and Ping loaded the expedition gear, along with some merchandise as cover, onto the A-frame wooden pack saddles of the mules and covered it all with burlap. The other trucks waited for them and they left the village together, the trucks following slowly, until a mile out of the village, at the crossroads of a lesser-used dirt track, Dang waved them onward and the trucks lumbered off toward the next ridge line, leaving Ping and himself to lead the pack animals into the ebony night.

  They turned onto the dirt track and walked quickly and silently for two more hours, dousing themselves with DEET to ward off mosquitoes, until they came to a broken-down bamboo and thatch hunter’s lean-to near a small pond. Dang found a narrow trail, almost overgrown and invisible from the road, and he and Ping led the mules single-file into the black.

  ###

  A logging truck rolled slowly to a stop before flashing its lights three times, rumbling impatiently on a pitch black dirt trail in Thailand just off Highway 108.

  “There’s the signal.”

  Shouldering day packs, Wilder and Hunt darted from a thicket and climbed into the truck cab. The specially designed, slightly extended cab housed a false compartment only two feet wide immediately behind the driver. The extension wasn’t great enough to call much attention, and functioned as a handy contraband stash. The driver was another of Tasnee’s people. A specially rigged bench seat folded forward, and a panel popped open. Daypacks went first, then the two of them wiggled in. Within minutes the truck lumbered onto the paved highway and joined up with a convoy headed for the border.