The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3

by B. Hesse Pflingger

  “Sounds like you know your choppers.”

  “Not to be braggin’, but you’ll find few better,” he said. “They didn’t codename me DRAGONFLY for nothing. I put a Huey through a 360 degree roll one time, just to see if I could do it. Scared the curds and whey out of my co-pilot. I swore him to secrecy, but he put in for a transfer and refused to fly with me ever again. Can’t blame him. It was a damn fool thing to do. Scared me too.”

  “According to my CIA rap sheet, you were downed twice. That how you came by those two extra Hueys?”

  “You guessed it, Fonko. I was pressing my luck, but I needed them for spares. I was afraid the CIA wouldn’t believe my story the second time around, but they swallowed it. Guess they had to. They couldn’t of replaced me, and they daren’t call attention to what I was up to out there. Wouldn’t want word to get back to the wrong folks in Washington, be sheer hell to pay if our Cambodia activities got leaked.”

  “So, how’d you come by the Sea Sprite?”

  “I was real lucky,” he said. “God delivered it right into my hands.”

  Here we go again, I thought. “That so?”

  “Yep. I was just starting to get things rolling up there, only been missing for a couple months. The Company sent a team out to search for me. I guess they really thought I needed rescuing, or mebbe they suspected something. They never would have found me, but when I saw this baby circlin’ around so pretty up in the sky, I just knew I had to have it. So I got ‘em on the radio and talked ‘em on in.”

  I was afraid to ask what happened next. Not to worry. He went on to tell me. “Well, it was a navy pilot and co-pilot, and two CIA men, Al and Ben, they’d flown over from a carrier off the Nam coast, top secret mission. We set down and popped a few beers, and we talked helicopters and old times and such, and pretty soon I’d sweet-talked the pilot and co-pilot into taking me up for a spin. Left Al and Ben on the ground with a couple of them cute little mountain gals to keep ‘em company, they was happy to see us leave. I guided the pilot about fifty miles south. I watched real careful, and before long I knew enough to fly it myself. Then I asked them how the navy went about radioing their position, wanted to see if they did it the same way as the CIA, I told them. So the co-pilot radioed into base, which he’d been on the verge of doing anyhow, and as soon as he’d given our position I shot him. Then I shot the pilot. Then I threw the bodies out, and I had me a Sea Sprite.”

  Recalling the map in my instructions, Todd Sonarr had indicated Driffter’s suspected location with a shaded area about fifty miles south of his actual hideout. It took every bit of self-control I had not to grab him by the throat and strangle him. Of course if I did that, Soh Soon and I were dead meat too. “What about Al and Ben?”

  “Well, they were sort of stuck there, neither of them being pilots. Plus my munchkins had the drop on them. I meant them no harm, just didn’t want them causing me any trouble. I had my munchkins tie them up, and then I fed them chow laced with heroin until they were pretty well hooked on it. After a time it was safe to let them go, because I controlled their supply. Loyalty enhancement, you might call it. I gave ‘em each a cute little mountain gal, to make them feel all right. Pretty soon they adjusted to it. You think I’d kill them? Hell, Fonko, they’re good men. I needed somebody to ride herd on my munchkins, white people to talk to. I’d a been crazy to let guys like that go to waste!”

  “You ever have any Russian visitors?”

  “Oh, you heard about those jerks? You get around, you do. Yeah, a couple KGB agents found their way up to my place, came in nosin’ around. Wanted to work up some kind of deal with me. I was doing okay by then, didn’t need any partners.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They kept pestering me, really obnoxious about it. No manners, just pushy bastards, you know what I mean? What could I do? Couldn’t let them go, they knew too much. Couldn’t keep them around, all they’d have been was trouble.”

  “So?”

  “So I had my munchkins shoot ‘em and throw the bodies over the cliff. Hell, what would you have done in my place?”

  It was a situation I doubted I’d ever be in. “So now you’ve got away scot free, and Al and Ben are stuck back there in the hills?”

  “I can see what you’re driving at, Fonko, but don’t judge me too harsh. I do as right by my people as I can. Take old Grace down there in Phnom Penh. She’s got enough stashed away in Switzerland to retire on, and all she did was, for about a year and a half, let me in on what equipment the CIA was shipping to where, and who was interested in my whereabouts. I couldn’t very well bring Al and Ben back with me. How would I explain them? Just having them there’d be evidence enough to put my neck in a noose. Up in that pretty little valley, they’ll do all right. I’ve set it up real secure. It’s self-supporting, and the climate’s as close to perfect as you’re going to find. They’ve got their mountain gals, with babies on the way. It’ll be rough on them for a couple months while they cold turkey off that heroin. But once they get things settled amongst themselves, they’ve got their own private little paradise up there, the kind of setup office workers back in the States spend their coffee breaks dreaming about. Shoot, I left enough gold back there to make ‘em all rich. I cut and run, I’m not denying that. I’m a businessman, not a social worker. But can you truthfully say that when the U.S. government cut and run, they left their folks in Cambodia and Nam in as good shape as I left mine?” There was a pregnant pause. “If a man were to take a broadminded view, he might even realize that there ain’t a single thing I did up there in my little valley, that I didn’t do previously as an employee of Uncle Sam. So, mebbe you can tell me what’s the difference?”

  “What about getting Al and Ben hooked on drugs?”

  “When Air America flew out of Laos with all that hill-tribe heroin, where do you suppose we took it? Straight down to airfields in Nam—Pleiku, Ban Me Thout. Sold it to the locals, and what do you suppose they did with it? You ‘member how so many of our troops was gettin’ hooked on H, around 1970 or so? Thousands of ‘em—bored, homesick, miserable, and their clean-up-ladies offerin’ it to ‘em so cheap, take their minds off their troubles the easy way. Hell, we sure created our fair share of drug addicts back in those days. Working for the CIA did have one big advantage, though. It spared me the pain of having to look ‘em in the eye every morning.”

  “The navy pilot and co-pilot, guys on your own side?”

  His eyes wandered, and his face softened for a moment. A painful memory passing through? .”..if you work in covert counter-insurgency long enough,” he said slowly and deliberately, “you’ll sooner or later find yourself in the kind of situation that… don’t bring out the best in a man. Anyhow,” he concluded, “those guys weren’t on my side when I did it.”

  It seemed like a good time to switch the discussion to a more immediate issue. “Soh Soon tells me you tried to leave me back there too.” No harm in asking. I mean, there we were, 8,000 feet in the air, at the mercy of a psychopath. How could it make our situation any worse?

  Driffter seemed amused. “I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, what with the Khmer Rouge and the Viet Cong taking over, and the US pulling out and so forth. I’ve done right well for myself, but the time’s come to call it quits out here. So, what next? I don’t want to go off and live like some kind of hermit, no matter how much money I have. How many years have I been crashing around in these rotten jungles? Too damned many. I want to be back among my own people, have some folks I can talk to. Course, if I just showed up, there’d naturally be a lot of questions. What you been up to these last eighteen months, Clyde Driffter? Where’d you come by that Sea Sprite? How’d you come by all that money you’re spending? You see my problem. Answers for those questions weren’t coming easy to me.

  “When Poon’s boys came by to see about flying you folks out, I figured there might be some advantage in it. You could be hostages, or
something. But that was a foolish idea—hostages get messy. No way to win that game. So I figured to stall around until a good idea came to me. Then my munchkins found that Jack Philco stuff in your duffel, and my problem was solved. No reason to stick around a minute longer.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s real logical. The CIA sent you in to find me, that’s in your orders. Okay, you found me being held captive in a secret Commie prison camp. They’d captured the Sea Sprite crew too, but they’d all died. You set me free, fought off the guards, and we took off in the Sea Sprite. The chopper crashed at sea, mebbe ground fire crippled it on the way out, and I was the only survivor, rescued by some fishermen passing by. I saved out your Philco passport and your orders to prove the story. How could they prove it didn’t happen that way?”

  “What about the girl?”

  “She’s a problem. Poon’s nobody to get on the bad side of, but I can’t very well let her loose, knowing what she knows. I’ve got another two hours to figure out what happened to her.”

  Past tense, I noticed. Well, at least it didn’t sound like he intended to rape her. The guy wasn’t all bad.

  “You might as well go back in the cabin and make yourselves comfortable,” he said amiably. “No need to warn you not to try anything cute, unless you happen to know how to fly one of these things.”

  I hate it when people say things like that, when they’re so obviously right. I went back with Soh Soon. I relayed the essentials of what Driffter told me—that he intended to bump us off, and that there wasn’t much we could do about it for the time being. The irony of it was, a loaded assault rifle sat right there on the floor in front of us. So what do we do, grease him at 8,000 feet, then hope like hell there was a copy of “Flying a Sea Sprite in Three E-Z Steps” somewhere on board?

  Regardless of the tropical climate, at 8,000 feet the air gets chilly. We huddled together to keep warm. Time passed. The chopper whop-whop-whopped its way along. We were well beyond the overcast by now, the ground visible below and the thunderstorm far behind us. It had had no effect beyond sending a few stray gusts of wind to shake us up every now and then. We’d been following the Mekong River toward the southwest. Then Driffter adjusted course due west, and now it was nowhere in sight. I could see a range of low mountains coming up in the distance. Those were the Elephant Range: we’d hit the coast just below the Thai border in an hour or so.

  Meantime, I’d come up with only one hope for us, and it was a slim one. I knew which control was the throttle. I couldn’t guide the craft with any precision, but at least maybe I could slow it down. I checked the Heckler and Koch, making sure it was ready to fire—it still held four rounds. So, IF I could kill him before he got us, and IF a stray shot didn’t hit some piece of ordnance and blow us all away in a big mushroom cloud, and IF I was right about the throttle control, and IF I could then manage to crash-land it somewhere soft at a low rate of speed, without setting something off… I wouldn’t have bet my own money on our chances of making it, but what other hope did we have with a guy like Driffter?

  Driffter leaned around and shouted to us: “Everybody okay back there?”

  Soh Soon screamed back in a shrill voice, “Hey, Driffer, you pansy-boy baby lover! Jake say you want die us. Think you tough enough? Hah! You only tough against little girls! “

  I sort of wished she hadn’t done that—better to keep Driffter calm, I thought. Driffter’s head disappeared for a moment, then he rolled around out of his seat and appeared at the cabin entrance, a big automatic pistol in his hand. He looked annoyed. I grabbed the assault rifle. We both hesitated, each trying to figure out how to get a shot off without hitting something explosive.

  Soh Soon shouted: “Hey!” She went on, just loudly enough to be heard over the engine noise, “Before you guys start shooting, here something for you.” She tossed a small object to Driffter. Never letting his gaze drift from me for even an instant, he let it bounce off his belly and fall to the cabin floor, then stooped down and fished for it.

  He came up with a little metal item. “It’s the pin from a hand grenade. Where’d this come from?” he asked.

  “Right here, in my hand,” she said. That got our attention. She’d pulled the pin from one of those grenades and was holding it, fuse lever clutched tightly in her little fist, over the stack of anti-tank rockets. If that grenade went off, we’d all float to earth as dust particles. “You really want shoot me?” she asked sweetly.

  Driffter stared at her in amazement. Then he let out a big horse laugh. “Haw, that’s one ballsy little lady you got there, Fonko! Give me a moment to think on this. Meanwhile, don’t do anything to upset her, you hear?” He lowered his gun and gently tossed the pin back by her feet. “In case you want this back, I sure want you to find it,” he told her with a grin. He returned to the controls. I detected the smell of urine in the cabin, where it hadn’t been before. The next half hour was as uneventful as it could be, considering that at any time Soh Soon could accidentally blow us all away in a blast that would light up the sky: every time she switched hands on the grenade, my stomach did an about face. I’ve never enjoyed a smoother helicopter ride in my life. Soh Soon and I worked out our bargaining position. What actually happened would, of course, depend on Driffter. I felt hopeful. He may have been a crazy, cold-blooded killer, but he didn’t appear to be suicidal.

  We were over the sea now, following the coastline north and flying lower. Driffter appeared in the cabin entrance. No pistol this time. “We’re getting low on fuel, not much more than enough to get to Bangkok. I think it’s time we got down to business. Okay, folks, what is it that you want me to do?” he asked.

  “We were thinking of going to the beach,” I said.

  We had a classic Mexican standoff. If Driffter pulled anything, that grenade went off amongst the rockets, and we all went to glory. On the other hand, we daren’t try anything in the air, and on the ground if we did anything to genuinely threaten Driffter, he might as well shoot Soh Soon and take us with him. The deal we worked out was this: leaving the copter motor turning, Driffter first would put our stuff, plus his unloaded pistol, ammo nearby, off on the beach, then resume his position in the pilot’s seat. Then we’d climb out, leaving the cabin door wide open. Then he’d take off without us. That way, if he tried anything cute while getting airborne, Soh Soon could lob that grenade into the cabin. By the time he got out of range, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to us either. We’d considered trying something while he was outside the chopper, but dealing with somebody as ruthless as Driffter, it was too risky. Too many ways things could go wrong, and then where would we be?

  Luckily, we were all into self-preservation that day. Driffter set the chopper down on a deserted stretch of shoreline on the west side of a small Thai island, Ko Kut. He balked at taking us any further than that, as he wanted to make sure we wouldn’t arrive in Bangkok too soon. We could settle for it, as we saw that the east side of the island was inhabited. Offloading went smoothly, strictly according to the settled terms. He put our duffels out, away from the chopper. He unloaded the pistol and left it and the ammo in plain sight on top. We sat in the cabin, Soh Soon still dangling that grenade over the crate of rockets.

  Driffter climbed back into the cockpit, settled in his seat, then leaned around to the cabin door and said, “Damn if you two aren’t something else! Listen, Fonko, no hard feelings? I couldn’t have got out of there without you. I owed you for that, and like I told you, when you have my word, I trade honest. As long as I get to Bangkok a couple days before you do, I’ll be okay. I’ve figured out a plan I can live with. You two can take care of yourselves. One word of warning, in case you’re fixing to say something about me, once you get back. Think long and hard on it. I’ve got friends in high places that would surprise the hell out of you. You can’t do well in my line of work without ‘em. Might be of benefit to you to hold your peace. Say, luck to you both. Little l
ady, be careful climbing down, you hear?”

  “See you in hell, Driffter,” I said. He gave me a thumb up from the pilot seat. We got out and stepped back ten yards. He lifted off. When he was twenty feet in the air we dashed through the swirl of downdrafted sand for the tree line and dove into the brush, just in case he wanted to be cute. He didn’t. The Sea Sprite kept right on rising, then tilted forward and whap-whapped off up the coast. Should I have grabbed that grenade out of her hand and pegged it in there as he took off? Just our luck the ensuing fireball of exploding crates of rockets would have taken us out too. Either that or I’d miss the door and get the grenade bouncing back in my face. Better to leave well enough alone. We’d gotten what we wanted. Out. Intact.

  We came out of the brush and got our bearings. We were standing on a long, white sand beach, fringed with coconut palms. There wasn’t another soul in sight. Soh Soon still gripped her grenade. “Get rid of that thing, will you?” I asked her. She obliged, giving it a roundhouse toss out into the surf. Four seconds later a geyser jumped out of the water with a bang. Several good sized fish floated on the surface. It reminded me that we hadn’t yet eaten lunch. I splashed down into the shallows and grabbed them. What the heck! Let’s have a beach party!

  I built a fire, cleaned the fish and skewered them up on some bamboos. Fresh barbecued fish sure beat LURP meals. After lunch I surveyed the surf situation more carefully. Wiamea Bay it wasn’t, but the monsoon winds had stirred up some decent rollers. Far below kamikaze grade, but I figured ten or so yards worth of ride if I caught them right. “Hey,” I yelled back to Soh Soon, “get out of your clothes and we’ll do some body surfing.”