Slash and Burn

by Colin Cotterill

  Peach and the sergeant went through the options together.

  “The two most common reasons for coming down are running out of fuel and a mechanical fault. But Boyd’s chopper would have been checked by his mechanic, Sebastian, and refueled the moment they arrived in Long Cheng that afternoon. That was standard practice.”

  “Any chance of sabotage?” Phosy asked. “A fight with the mechanic?”

  “Unlikely. First, the mechanic usually flies with the pilot so that would be more like a suicide mission. Second, they were pretty good friends. It was the mechanic he’d chosen to get drunk with that night. Third, all the aircraft were double-checked by the head flight mechanic, an ex-pilot called Leon. I knew him when he was still with the marines. He was a bit of a deadbeat socially. I heard he lost his flying license for inappropriate behaviour. I was surprised to hear he was in Laos. But he’d been a good flyer and he was serious at his job. He wouldn’t have let anything untoward go by. Once they were checked, the helicopters were guarded all night.”

  “And the guard let a drunk climb into a helicopter and fly it away?” asked Madame Daeng.

  “He would have known Boyd was the pilot of H32. There weren’t that many American pilots in Spook City at any one time. Most of the planes were flown by Hmong pilots. And most of the guards were around twelve years of age so he wasn’t about to stop a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle from getting into his own chopper.”

  “So, a mechanical fault?” Phosy asked.

  “A mechanical fault is more likely than sabotage. There are a million things that could go wrong in a war-battered chopper. They’ve been shot at, flown badly and overloaded. That’s why every helicopter pilot flies with his own mechanic.”

  “So if the pilot was up there by himself and something went wrong, he wouldn’t know what to do,” said Lit.

  “Some do. A lot of pilots are pretty good mechanics too.”

  “What about Boyd?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So, what happens when you’re dropping out of the sky in a big metal box?” Civilai asked. “I assume an ejector seat’s out of the question?”

  “The pilot might have a chance to operate the autorotate,” Johnson told Peach. “What that means is that you disengage the rotor from the engine and control the rate of descent by changing the pitch of the free-turning blades. It’s quite possible to land a craft on autorotate without any damage at all. A few of us back home have done it without causing any injuries. That’s why I was asking how long the gap was from when Boyd’s engine cut out to when the village woman heard the explosion. Depending on his altitude when the engine died, those extra few seconds could mean that the pilot controlled his dive rather than just drop.”

  Phosy asked, “What are the chances of him getting out alive in thick bush even if he did autorotate?”

  “You’d have to pick an open spot and aim for it. It was night. The jungle was dense. His chopper exploded so he probably collided with the trees.”

  “But how long would he have had before the crash?”

  “Judging from the woman’s description, I don’t know, about thirty seconds?”

  “Could he have bailed out before the chopper blew up?” Daeng asked.

  “You know, they used to put chutes in helicopters in the early days,” Johnson told her. “But they turned out to be more messy than helpful. A lot of guys got tangled up in the blades. Most fliers I know don’t even bother to bring one along.”

  “So, back to autorotate,” said Civilai. “Once you’ve disengaged the rotors you presumably know the trajectory of the fall. Am I right?”

  “You’d be traveling at about a forty-five degree angle. But, yes, you’d be kind of swaying down in a straight line. You’d be at a ground speed of about sixty to seventy knots.”

  “More control than say just letting go of the joy stick when you’re flying normally?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long does it take to release the steel cable from the spool?”

  “Pretty slow if it’s working through the pneumatics. But there’s a release catch you can use if that doesn’t work. The cogs disengage and the cable drops at its own pace.”

  “And how long would that take to be fully extended?”

  “No more than ten seconds.”

  “Civilai, what’s your point here?” Daeng asked.

  “Just playing the odds, Daeng, old girl,” he said. “I’m a young helicopter pilot. I’ve just engaged autorotate. I’m slicing toward the trees with a full gas tank. I have nowhere to land. I know in thirty seconds I’ll be blown to hell. As I’m quite fond of myself, I’d rather not let that happen so I climb down into the fuselage, release the cable, grab hold of the harness and jump.”

  “And what damned good would that do you?”

  “Push the odds more in my favor, comrade. I’m traveling forward at sixty knots at the end of my thirty-meter cable. That means I hit the trees a few seconds before the helicopter which, as that would be an isosceles triangle, is thirty meters away by the time it explodes. Due to the trajectory and speed the force of the explosion sends its whatever volatile substance ahead of it. Hence the crater being at the edge rather than the center of the crash site. A sixty–forty chance of the pilot not being blown up. Voilà. Mathematics was my favorite subject at school. What does our American think of that?”

  When Peach passed this fantasy on, Johnson laughed until his belly hurt.

  “You’d be flying into trees at eighty miles an hour,” he said. “You’ve dropped to the end of a steel cable in ten seconds. If the harness hasn’t crushed your ribs you break your head on a tree.”

  “Tree tops being basically soft leaves,” said Civilai, determined to rescue his hypothesis.

  Johnson asked for the old Politburo man’s telephone number. He told him he had friends in Hollywood who’d really be interested in a man with such a vivid imagination. To his surprise, Civilai took out a pencil and started to write it down. He was interrupted by Phosy who shot to his feet and looked around as if he’d scented an ambush.

  “Damn,” he said, and rushed off at full speed into the jungle.

  “See? Now you’ve upset Phosy,” said Daeng.

  “What do you suppose that was about?” Civilai asked.

  * * *

  By the time the search continued after lunch, the objectives had changed. More of them were hunting with the hope of not finding any human remains. Civilai’s fanciful theory that the pilot might have enacted a daring escape had secretly sparked more hope in the others. Madame Daeng knew nothing of the character or dreams of the young pilot but her sense of adventure left her willing him alive. Nobody knew what had happened to Inspector Phosy. Someone suggested he might have come down with diarrhea after eating too many NASA lunch modules. But when he returned at three, he looked none the worse for wear. He had headman Ar in tow. The old man called his son’s name and the boy emerged from his hiding place in the undergrowth. He walked over to his father and grinned at the policeman. Phosy called for everyone to gather around as he had an announcement to make. He asked Peach if she’d be so kind as to help with the translation. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. Bok shrugged him off.

  “As some of you already know,” Phosy said, “this is Bok. He’s headman Ar’s son. Bok cannot speak and he’s a little slow to understand. But he’s very talented. He hunts well and he knows all the secrets of the jungle. His speciality is catching insects, as you can see. I asked his father when he first developed this fascination with lassoing little creatures and it appears it was somewhere around the time the sorceress witnessed the dragon crash into the moon. She believed Bok’s sudden change was another manifestation of the disaster that happened that night. Apart from his insect fetish, Bok also started to draw pictures. In the beginning he drew them in the sand but his father bought him some paper and crayons and Bok became an artist. Another miracle. Before that the boy just used to sit in front of his hut day and night, staring of
f into the distance. Suddenly he could walk and the strength returned to his fingers. He was a different person. He couldn’t yet speak but his father believes it’s just a question of time. So what really happened to stimulate Bok’s mind?”

  Phosy pulled an old Thai Mekhong Whiskey calendar from his pack. On the front page was a colour photograph of a young girl in a bikini. The audience looked on in dismay. Was the boy’s mind turned by half-naked women holding glasses of whiskey? Fortunately not. The inspector turned over the calendar to show that the backs of the photographs were blank and someone had made sketches on the large white sheets. He flipped them over one by one. The illustrations, without exception, were of what looked like a large monster. It had big feet and hands like table tennis bats. All of this might have been attributed to an inability to draw. But attention had been given to small details like the flowers on the monster’s shirt and blood spurting from the mouth. And the main feature of each picture was a string leading from the monster’s hand. It reached up into the sky and at its end was a bizarre flying creature with one huge eye.

  “Very nice story of rehabilitation,” said Judge Haeng. “Very heart-warming. Now perhaps you’d like to rejoin the search. We’ve been covering for you for two hours.”

  “No, I feel a point coming on,” said Civilai.

  “The point is,” said Phosy, “there’s no ground in any of these pictures. The monster is flying. For ten years, Bok has been training insects so he can fly like the monster. Where did a boy with no schooling or life experience pick up a concept like that? Why would he ever believe he could be carried away by insects?”

  “By being at ground level and watching a man fly down at the end of a string,” said Daeng.

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Phosy. “From Bok’s point of view the helicopter was as small as an insect. There was a full moon so he could see it clearly. And to him, the man was a monster. Civilai was right. Boyd did come down at the end of the cable.”

  “Oh my goodness.” Judge Haeng laughed and looked around apologetically at the Americans. “What rubbish. Surely this isn’t what we pay you for: the psychological analysis of mental retards.”

  “It sounds plausible to me,” said Madame Daeng.

  “Of course it does, madam,” said Haeng. “And we all know that you studied for five years at law school. So … no wait, it was primary school, wasn’t it? I seem to recall you didn’t even make it to high school. And if you had, you’d know that such a farcical theory is inadmissible. It’s missing the two key ingredients known as empirical evidence and logic. Giants being transported by hornets won’t get you far in a court of law. Am I correct in assuming you don’t have any concrete evidence of this, Inspector?”

  “No … sir,” said Phosy.

  “Just as I thought. Now perhaps—”

  “No, I mean, no you aren’t correct. The evidence has been in front of us all the time but we didn’t look.”

  He turned to Bok and said something in Phuan. Bok looked at his father who nodded. Slowly and gently, Bok removed his cap. The exhausted beetles were both resting on the peak. Phosy took the once yellow cap and held it up to the audience.

  “I don’t know if you can read it from where you’re standing,” said Phosy, “but the lettering on the cap says UNC. At the orientation they told us that Boyd played college football for the University of North Carolina.”

  “The boy might very easily have found it at the secondhand market,” said Haeng.

  “Together with atomic submarines and Elvis Presley wigs,” mumbled Civilai.

  Phosy turned over the cap. Sewn inside the lining was a label.

  “Peach, could you read this for us?” Phosy asked.

  She took hold of the cap and smiled.

  “It’s printed with the name “BOYD BOWRY, 1960.” If Bok found this in the market, he got real lucky.”

  The discovery caused elation in all but the judge. He continued to argue that the hat, like the tailplane, could have been blown away in the explosion and found at a later date. He wasn’t able to explain how it escaped the flames. It didn’t irrevocably prove that the pilot had survived the crash but Sergeant Johnson apologized to Civilai for doubting his hypothesis. He promised to buy him a beer and the Hollywood deal was still on. As they walked back to the trucks, there was just the one remaining mystery to be solved.

  “Since when could you read English?” Civilai asked Phosy.

  The policeman smiled.

  “I may be an old dog,” he said, “but Dtui’s been teaching me some tricks. I can’t have a wife who’s smarter than me, can I now? English this year. Russian next. By the end of the seventies I’ll be a chief inspector at Interpol.”

  16

  THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE’S HAND FOR A NAPKIN

  Toua, the manager of the Friendship Hotel, greeted the returning trucks by running down the front steps and waving his arms frantically.

  “The senator. The senator,” he shouted.

  “What about him?” asked Lit, jumping down from the flatbed before the truck had come to a complete stop.

  “Somebody shot him,” called Siri, who was sitting at the rattan table on the veranda with what looked like a can of Budweiser beer in his hand. He was looking remarkably cool, considering. Ugly was looking even cooler in the chair opposite.

  “Is he dead?” called Phosy.

  “No. But he sustained an injury which might end his career.”

  “Where was he shot?” asked Lit. Everyone had climbed from the truck. One group surrounded Toua, who was acting out the shooting quite dramatically, and the other stood in front of Siri.

  “He lost the tip of the index finger of his right hand,” Siri told him. “He may never shake again.”

  “I don’t consider it fitting to take this so lightly, Doctor,” said Judge Haeng, who ran inside with the Americans.

  “Where is he?” asked Phosy.

  “Dining room, basking in sympathy. I dare say he could use some more.”

  “This is getting out of control.” Phosy shook his head.

  “And you haven’t heard the half of it,” Siri told him. “Go do your investigating and I’ll tell you the rest when you get back.”

  Civilai and Daeng opted to join Siri at his table. Ugly eyed them both and decided to let them sit there.

  “I didn’t do it,” Siri told them.

  “I didn’t think for a minute you did,” said Daeng patting his hand.

  “I wanted to,” he confessed. “I’ve had to put up with his whining all afternoon. There’s never a gun around when you need one.”

  “How’s his finger?”

  “He’ll live. He bled like a geyser though. Quite impressive.”

  “Do you think that was the plan?” Civilai asked. “Just to wing him?”

  Siri sipped his beer and Civilai looked around for service. He could barely see the inn door. The murky sky had brought on the dusk an hour early. The generator clunked and rattled and gurgled in the distance and a small pale bulb came to life above their heads.

  “I went to the Russian Circus once,” Siri said. “Saw a man shoot the tassel off a woman’s bra. She didn’t even flinch. But in the real world I can’t say I’ve ever seen a sniper good enough to pick off a joint.”

  “So they were…?”

  “Aiming at his heart? Quite possibly.”

  “He let you treat his wound?” Daeng asked.

  “Reluctantly. Yamaguchi argued that he was better at cutting them off than stitching them on.”

  “Where was the hit?” Civilai asked.

  “Just here,” said Siri, pointing to a scrubbed area beyond the table.

  “And I assume they didn’t catch the shooter.”

  “No.”

  They stared out at the dark shadows that lingered between the bushes.

  “So, it probably isn’t wise to be sitting here under a lamp,” said Civilai.

  “Buffalo dung never lands twice on the same mushroom,”
Daeng reminded him.

  “Of course.”

  Civilai called out for one of the hotel staff without much hope he’d be heard. But a small, rugby-ball-shaped girl in overalls ran out to the balcony. He ordered three beers.

  “Did you find the bullet?” Daeng asked.

  Siri leaned back and pointed to a hole in the stucco with decorative cracks.

  “It’s probably in there,” he said.

  “You didn’t have an urge to dig it out?” Daeng asked.

  “Phosy would only sulk and ask me who the policeman was in this outfit.”

  “And the senator’s finger?”

  “Probably in there with the bullet.”

  The evening meal, ever different, was this night a sort of grand jury with food. The tables had been pushed together and all those who hadn’t been killed or shot at and those not under the delusion that they’d be next, sat around it. On the menu was spam with local cabbage, and clam chowder out of cans with sticky rice. The liquid accompaniment was Johnny Red on the rocks and tepid Coca-Cola. Those opting for room service included the senator and Ethel Chin, General Suvan, Judge Haeng and his cousin. Also absent was Rhyme from Time who was using his bathroom as a darkroom and had to do his exposures while there was still electricity. Dr. Yamaguchi sat once more with Auntie Bpoo at a separate table. The astounded gossip about them was rampant.

  Once he’d skipped lightly and incompletely over the autopsy findings, Siri was happy to give details of the communication tower explosion in Phonsavan and his theories on the slash and burn. At the post office he’d met the regional governor. The man had no idea why there were so many fires lit around the town. Like Siri, he was certain it had nothing to do with agriculture. All the planes had left the airfield so there was no danger of an attack there, and as far as he knew all the rebels were focusing their resources on the defence of the base at Phu Bia. But with the felling of the post office tower, and now the attempt on the life of Senator Vogal, Siri had become more concerned that the target might just be the Friendship Hotel itself, and more specifically, the American contingent.