by Ed Kovacs
A few sallow cows, pigs and chickens roamed freely about underfoot, foraging for what they could. Bamboo-fenced garden plots grew plantings of corn, melons and yams. Giggling young girls picked wild flowers as they pretended to be Shan royalty, then tried to catch small fish using frayed baskets down at the stream; a boy sprinkled precious salt onto his finger and brushed his crooked teeth; older children worked with their mothers, washing clothes, sewing, weaving thatch.
At the main path into the village, the popping of gunshots rang out, and a twelve year-old village boy with an AK-47 fell dead. A platoon of elite Burmese troops, rare in the poorly trained and undisciplined tatmadaw, ran past the dead boy-sentry and entered the village. They were elements of the dreaded DDSI, Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence, sort of a Burmese version of the Gestapo and SS storm troopers.
These soldiers comprised an assassination unit that spent months tracking down a target on their hit list in the remote mountains of the Shan or the Wa. In the Golden Triangle, the economics and politics of the opium trade is a delicate matter with disputes usually settled at the end of gun barrel.
There was no indiscriminate firing. As per the plan, all of the livestock and animals were killed, the huts and crops torched. A second platoon infiltrated on secondary paths, killing another boy-sentry, and stopping fleeing women in crimson sarongs with dirty-faced children. Some villagers managed to escape through the thicket, but most of the women and kids were quickly rounded up on the dusty “square.”
Boys older than eight were separated off to the side, some of them crying. They would be used as porters, and wouldn’t really be an extra mouth to feed, since they would be given practically nothing to eat. If the DDSI suspected a minefield ahead, the boys would walk first. If they collapsed from malnutrition or disease, they would be left to die. Their only hope would be to someday escape and make it back to their village. Everyone knew this.
When a wailing mother ran forward to grab her ten year-old son, a chubby troop with an evil grin, Sgt. Tin Oo, slammed his rifle butt into her face, the buttstock hitting square on her nose, driving bone into her brain, killing her instantly. She dropped in a heap, a mere annoyance to the soldiers, like a pile of cow dung.
“Where is the woman Nang Saeng?!” Captain Moe, a tall and slender ethnic Burmese spoke excellent Tai-Yai. The women all understood him, but none spoke. He scanned the terrified group, then grabbed the prettiest girl, a sixteen year-old mother of two. Other women took the girl’s crying babies as the captain dragged her to the front and tore off her sarong. He smashed his fist into her face, knocking her to the ground. She spit blood and a tooth. Children fell silent and many of the village women hung their heads. Captain Moe bent down and rammed the barrel of his Israeli-made Galil assault rifle into the whimpering teen’s stomach.
“Once more, where is Nang Saeng?!”
As his finger found the trigger, a woman stepped forward.
“I am Nang Saeng.” Her broad, strong face, her posture, her voice and pronunciation spoke of a proud, educated woman in her forties. Like all the women and children, she wore a jade triangle pendant around her neck. The captain stood and smiled, flashing black-stained teeth, allowing the teenage girl to scramble back in line with the rest of the women.
“We’ve come to be entertained by your intelligence,” the captain mocked, as he removed two slices of betel nut from a small lacquer box. He wrapped them in lime- and cutch-soaked betel palm leaf, then casually inserted the wad into his mouth like a major-leaguer popping a chaw of tobacco from a pouch. At Captain Moe’s signal, Sgt. Tin Oo and other soldiers grabbed Nang Saeng, ripped off her rose pink sarong and pinned her on the ground. As the gang rape began, Tin Oo tore the pendant from around her neck and wickedly tied it around his own. “Anyone who doesn’t watch will be shot,” excoriated the captain, mad delight in his eyes.
The men took over two hours to have their way. She initially struggled, but a pistol butt slam to her temple shattered bone and her will to resist. Some men couldn’t wait and pulled women out of the line and raped them on the spot, or forced girls into oral copulation, including the pretty teen who thought she had escaped the cruel fate. Captain Moe didn’t join in, he simply enjoyed the betel, some Mekhong whiskey from his flask and the fresh mountain air, as blood ran down the thighs of Nang Saeng.
###
Lein Zou and his fighters froze in their tracks when they saw smoke rising from the other side of a karst ridge line. There was a panicked exchange, then Zou turned to Wilder and said, “Please, we must hurry.”
What had been a leisurely hike became a fast trot. Wilder, Diana, Ping and Dang had been disarmed, but not shackled. With adrenaline pumping into their veins they somehow kept up. Sky fell in next to Diana and kept his voice low as they ran.
“What do you make of that smoke?”
“Trouble. We’re running right into trouble.”
“The good news is we’re heading in the general direction of the site,” he said, panting.
“We’ve got weapons on the mules they haven’t found. We need to make a move, the sooner the better.”
“Get into a shootout with these guys and it won't end well. Let's see what's up ahead. If it looks dicey, I'll follow your lead. Fair enough?” he asked. He could tell she didn't like it and was glad she let the matter drop for now. His gut told him the medical ploy would take them farther than bullets would.
Before long they approached the edge of Zou's hamlet and found the dead boy-sentry. None of them were prepared for the visage that greeted them as they entered the village. Zou’s men broke ranks and ran to the smoldering remains of their homes. Animal corpses lay everywhere, the gardens torn asunder. Shrieking women and children found their husbands and fathers. They were the lucky ones.
Confusion and a mass wailing ensued as the horrors became known. A girl of about eight, just slightly too young for the Burmese soldiers to rape, stumbled into the village crying, holding two babies swaddled in muslin. She’d been hiding in the thicket all this time. One baby was crying, one ghostly silent. Wilder and his group stood at the edge of the burned-out village with their mules, ignored, invisible now.
“Mister Sky, this good time we leave. Bad trouble here. We go now, they no come get us, no sir. I tell you. We go now.” Dang moved to the mules, where Diana was already helping herself to a cache of hand grenades and a new nine-millimeter. Dang did the same.
“Wait.” Across the village Sky watched as Zou bent down over a prone woman lying in the dirt and lifted her up. It was Nang Saeng. Somehow, a couple of huts had not fully burned and Zou carried her into one of them. He turned to Diana. “What do you think?”
“I think this isn’t our fight,” she said, sounding like she was trying to justify walking away from the carnage. “These men took us prisoner at gunpoint less than an hour ago.”
“Maybe with good reason. I mean, there are obviously brutal butchers in the neighborhood.”
“Look, it’s a tough thing to get used to, but one thing I learned was to stay focused on the mission. Not to get distracted.”
“That’s what your head says, and your training. What does your heart say?” he asked.
The question surprised her. She’d never worked with any spooks who gave a rat’s ass about anyone else, especially peasants. “Obviously... these people could use our help.”
“Then let’s go kill them. With kindness.”
Dang looked on with alarm, squinting mightily and shaking his head in opposition as he waved the pistol. “No good idea. Better we go now!”
Sky put a calming arm on the man’s shoulder. “Khun Dang, let’s make some friends here, instead of enemies. Please put the gun away.”
His face screwed into a huge frown of disapproval, Dang reluctantly tucked the gun into his pants.
“Khob khoon mak khap, thank you very much,” Sky continued, with his friendly arm around the Thai. “Sometimes, Khun Dang, the fastest way to get somewhere is to slow down.”
>
###
They unloaded a large, well-stocked first-aid kit and a veritable pharmacopeia from the mules. Wilder had insisted on bulking up with medical supplies. Being able to treat injury and disease in the field, especially with a small unit where every person was needed, meant the difference between success and failure. He whispered to Diana, “Any first-aid training?”
“The basics.”
“I’ve had a little more than that. Out here that makes us master surgeons.”
They climbed a set of flimsy stairs and found Zou in one of the huts kneeling over Nang Saeng on the split-bamboo floor. He’d placed her on a thin rattan sleeping mat and covered her with a shabby blanket. He looked up when they entered. “Sir, we need help.”
“Can we set up in here?”
“Of course.”
Thick bamboo studs and cross-beams framed the hut. Part of the rice stalk thatch roof had burned, but the rest failed to ignite. The hut was partitioned into two rooms. Ping and Dang hauled in the large aid kit and a medical bag. Zou stood to join them.
“My wife was...” he stammered.
“I’ll look after her,” Diana said quickly and moved to Nang Saeng.
“Why don’t you bring any of your people who need help in here. And can you post a few sentries in case the bad guys decide to come back?”
“I’ll do it now.” Zou hurried down the stairs.
Diana treated Nang Saeng for shock, cleaned her up, and administered pain meds for the probable skull fracture. The hut soon filled with women and children. Most of the women were rape victims who’d been beaten and were in shock, some with broken bones. A couple of the kids had distended stomachs and stick-like legs, plus the usual: parasites, sores, abscesses, bad teeth, conjunctivitis. The general health of the village was poor. Zou explained that there was no shaman to administer herbs, the most basic kind of treatment in such villages. Every few months a traveling shaman would visit for a few days and treat the sick and wounded with magic that came from where the AMA feared to tread.
Ping and Dang were enlisted to help. Night soon fell and mosquitoes gathered near the oil lantern lighting the hut. At one point Sky noticed their weapons—the M-4s, pistols, and the shotgun—had been returned and leaned against a wall of thatch. They were offered tea, to which Diana added iodine tablets before they drank.
They'd worked ceaselessly for over an hour before Sky became aware of two babies, swaddled in cotton, still held by the eight year-old. The babies wore tiny amulets of cheap jade around their necks. One of the babies trembled; if the child had teeth, they would have clattered. The other baby lay still, with parched lips, as he tried to smile. “What’s the story with these babies?” Sky looked around the hut to Ping.
Ping asked a women in Tai-Yai about the babies, then turned to Sky.
“The babies are sick, they belong to—”
“They are my children.” Lien Zou appeared at the door. “A son and a daughter. Twins. They fell sick after a journey to Ho Mong. My son, the quiet one, will no longer suckle. His sister, I fear, has malaria. I confess it was for my children that I wanted to bring you here.”
When Sky and Diana took the babies, the eight year-old ran into Zou’s arms. She was his eldest daughter, and he thanked her in Tai-Yai for doing a good job of protecting her younger brother and sister. All the little girl could do was weep as she hugged her dad.
Sky turned to Ping. “There’s a microscope in my blue duffel.” Ping hurried out to the mules.
“Microscope?” Diana didn’t get it.
“Fifty strains of malaria in Shan State. If we can’t identify which strain, we won’t know which drug to treat it with.”
Malaria begins with tremors and aches. Thirst follows, and cold and hot shivers. The liver swells, the body shakes. Seizures, a coma, and death can follow. Without the right medicine, nothing can be done. And in the jagged, unforgiving hills of perilous Shan State, there is very little medicine.
Ping hurried in with the microscope, Diana obtained a prick of the baby’s blood and they amplified the malaria parasite 1000 times. The parasite resembled grains of sand bobbing in the blood cell. Sky scanned a reference pamphlet by flashlight and found the match, Plasmodium falciparum, one of the most brutal strains. But they had the right medicine. “I think this baby will live.” Sky looked directly at Zou. “God willing.”
The boy baby was more problematic. He tested negative for malaria. Wilder had more than a little experience dealing with tropical disease, but he had a doctorate in anthropology, not medicine. Dang and Ping had no clue, either. They wet the boy’s lips, but he wouldn’t swallow, wouldn’t eat. They administered precious antibiotics, but were at a loss.
“He’s very weak, Sky.” It was the first time she had called him by his given name.
He put an arm around her and spoke sotto voce into her ear. “I don’t know what to do. In field hospitals, I’ve seen them give transfusions to sickly babies. If we can match blood—”
“Let’s do it.”
In minutes they had a match: Diana. She nodded as if she knew it would be her. Sky hit her vein on the first try. It was a simple procedure to borrow a unit of her blood and gift it to the child. It was something, and something was better than nothing.
Near midnight now, Sky, Diana, Ping and Dang neared exhaustion. It had been a hellish first day. They ate rations to avoid dysentery from the village food. Nang Saeng slept soundly. One third of the village population lay huddled in the large hut. The stink of sweat mixed with antiseptic; desperation with hope. At this nadir of despair, the villagers felt safe together, as their men, Zou’s fighters, who occasionally crept in to check on a sister, wife, or child, alternated guard on the village perimeter.
Zou produced a half-pint of homebrew whiskey; he wanted to talk. Sky and Diana drank with him as Ping and Dang dozed. It wasn’t so much that Zou wanted to talk. This was a death watch for his son.
###
Lein Zou sat cross-legged on the floor, exposing his prosthetic foot. His left lower leg and foot were made of a beautifully carved teak. Zou smiled when he saw their reaction, and tapped on the wood. “I stepped on a mine eight years ago. Luckily, we had a saw, and my wife amputated before the gangrene got into my blood.”
He lifted his pants leg to reveal the rest of the device. A water buffalo-rawhide sleeve fitted to the upper part of the wooden leg with hand-beaten, carefully polished strips of scrap metal. A piece of tire tread wedded to the sole of the wooden foot. Altogether, it was a remarkably well-crafted unit. Wilder couldn’t remember seeing Zou limp, and during the fast march on the trail, he couldn’t keep up with the warlord.
“There is a man in a Karenni village, four days journey.” Zou tapped the teak leg. “A true craftsman.”
“I can tell your wife is a very strong woman. I think her physical recovery is... not in question.” Diana felt awkward, but she wanted to say something positive without sounding like Pollyanna. She knew that victims of brutal gang rapes often suffered damage to their female organs.
“Yes, she’s very strong. I met my Nang Saeng in Rangoon at University. Unusual for a Shan woman to be there. I was a graduate student in economics. We studied there in the late eighties. Perhaps you know the history of what happened. At that time we students held so much hope. Everyone thought the military government would accede to the will of the people. The rebel groups in the provinces were strong then. In the cities, the students, the monks, the workers... even the enlisted men in the army wanted change.
“ But the generals massacred us on the streets instead. By the thousands. Nang Saeng and I fled here to Shan State. And I took up arms to help her people fight the tatmadaw. “Like every rebel group, and there were almost twenty groups fighting then, we thought surely, help would come. The western governments would oppose the slaughter and help us. We fought for democracy, after all. For freedom, self-determination. The kinds of things the United States is supposed to champion. But no help came. We didn’t expect the A
merican army to show up, but why refuse us guns? Why no aid? Not even one dollar!
“Your country gave millions to Rangoon for anti-narcotics efforts, but that money was really used to strengthen the army, buy more helicopters, and destroy more villages. The Americans must have known this. Here in Shan State, to get money, to survive, to buy guns, you must grow opium. And so we do. We do not fight for democracy now. Some type of democracy seems to have come to Rangoon. I don't trust it, yet. Here, if we want to live, we have to fight.” Zou took a long hit of whiskey.
Wilder knew all too well of the sad history Zou had mentioned. “I don’t know the answer to why the West never helped, except with sanctions and diplomatic pressure,” he said, as he fished out a Partagas cigar from a hard traveling case. He found no takers, so he quickly cut and lit the stick for his own enjoyment. “Did the governments made some secret deal with China to stay out of their back yard? China certainly has designs on Burma and wouldn’t want to see a democracy on their border. Or is it because of the big-money influence of global corporations who were accused of using the tatmadaw to provide slave labor to cheaply build facilities?
“The other problem is there’s been little press coverage,” said Sky. “Until recently, Burma has been like North Korea. Few have understood what’s going on because the ruling government wanted it that way. And the press is lazy. They’ll cover a guerrilla war as long as they can be back at the hotel bar by nightfall for martinis. Can you imagine a CNN crew out here in the jungle with the snakes and diarrhea and malaria, no electricity or running water... with leeches crawling up their butt?”
“So we remain forgotten,” said Zou.
“Well, we are drinking here as friends, so let me speak bluntly. Why is it the responsibility of the West to bail you out? If all the rebel armies in Burma had united against the Rangoon junta, you would have easily beaten them. But the Wa fight the Shan, the Karen Buddhist fight the Karen Christians—”