by Peter Nealen
Gao was worried about the backlash from this incident. Park knew it from talking to the man; though he had been careful to avoid too much personal rapport with a group and a militia that had been explicitly anti-Communist in the past, his mission required him to form some sort of bond with the Wa as well as the Kokang. The primary mission might be with the Communist, ethnic-Chinese Kokang in the north, but to use the pipelines into Thailand had required making liaison with the Wa narcotics traffickers.
“Come,” Park said. “I want to get a better look at the kill zone. I might have advice for the next time.”
Gao said nothing, but followed Park as the Chungwi started down the hill.
***
The road was a bloody mess of bodies and burning vehicles.
None of the Thai Rangers had been left alive. The UWSA soldiers had been thorough, though there was still the distant possibility that some of the Thais had escaped into the jungle to the southeast. Park was relatively unconcerned. By the time any possible survivors got word of the massacre back to their headquarters, the Wa and Kokang drug traffickers would be well on their way, and none of the Thais had seen him or his men.
The road was heavily cratered by the mortar strikes, and two of the three five-ton trucks were burning. The third was sitting on its rims, its tires shredded, its windows shattered, steam billowing from its ruptured radiator. The windows of the cab were spattered with blood; the driver had been shot dead while he sat behind the wheel.
“You see?” Park said to Gao. “You no longer have to give up any of the people’s resources to the Thai parasites. More of the money from the drugs can be put toward defending the United Wa State against the paramilitaries and the government troops.”
Gao looked at him, then nodded. While the Communist propaganda was likely falling on deaf ears, the money would be enough of an incentive for him to agree.
Looking down the slope, he could see the actual traffickers, the “mules” with their backpacks full of heroin and ya ba, trudging up the slope. The vegetation and the steepness of the ridge made it rough going, but they were mountain people, and they pushed on.
“Once they are across,” Park said as he turned to Gao. “We should disperse. There will be a response to this attack, and my men and I especially should not be in the vicinity when it gets here. Our continued support in the people’s struggle is greatly dependent on secrecy.”
“You will go back to Kokang?” Gao asked. There was a note of dissatisfaction in his voice, and well there might be. Park and the Kokang Army commander, Cao, had talked him into lending his support for the attack, making the case that it would both allow him to pocket the bribes that would otherwise have been meant for the Thai border guards, terrorize them into leaving the drug corridors alone for a while, and would get his men valuable combat experience with little risk. But now that the attack had gone off without a hitch, he was fully aware that his “allies” were going to disappear into the northern hills, near the Chinese border, leaving him and his United Wa State Army troops to face any retaliation from the Royal Thai Army alone.
“Yes,” Park replied. “It is safer that way. You have nothing to fear, commander,” he continued, trying to sound reassuring. “The Thais will be reticent to cross the border. They are even now trying to build better relations with the Burmese. They will try to coordinate the response with the Burmese government, which will gain you time to disperse your men. After all, do your own superiors in the UWSP know about this operation?”
Gao shook his head. The drug operation was entirely on the side, officially unknown by the United Wa State Party, which had come out to condemn the drug trade in the United Wa State. Of course, there were a few in the Party who knew; Gao knew that they did, since he paid them.
“Then, as long as your men are disciplined enough, or isolated enough, there will be no targets for the imperialists and their puppets to pursue,” Park said. “This is only the beginning, commander. In time, you will be able to make the United Wa State truly secure, despite the short-sighted panderers in the Party who would compromise with the Burmese who oppressed you for so long.”
Park didn’t think about the words. He’d learned many years ago not to. They were the Party Line, and the Party was always right.
Finally, Gao nodded, his gaze far away. After a moment, he nodded again, more surely this time. He was probably imagining what he could do with the money he hadn’t had to pay the Thais with.
Park stifled his disgust. Gao was a thug, despite his patriotic words about fighting for the Wa and the other ethnic Chinese in northern Burma. The UWSA got plenty of support from the Chinese, under the table. Gao was in the narcotics trade simply because he wanted more.
But that was often the price of doing the people’s work, Park mused. A true member of the Party couldn’t let outdated things like scruples interfere.
Turning his back on the devastation along the road, Park started back down the slope, to join up with Kim and the rest of the small contingent he’d brought south. It was time to get back to their base of operations.
CHAPTER 2
The unimaginatively-named “Road-House” lay just off the highway, about twenty miles from the nearest town. It didn’t get a lot of traffic, except for the occasional motorist stopping in to grab something to eat, either at the gas station attached to the “Road-House” or at the restaurant and bar itself.
John Brannigan nearly filled the doorway as he stepped inside. Six-foot-four, broad-shouldered, he retained the leanness and power of a man much younger than his nearly fifty years. His hair was going gray, as was the thick handlebar mustache he’d grown since he’d retired—not entirely willingly—from the Marine Corps, some years before. Deep lines surrounded his icy eyes as he swept the interior of the restaurant with a practiced, professional gaze. This was a man who had never stepped into a room without knowing the layout, who was in it, and how to get out.
It wasn’t that he was paranoid. It was simply a fact that twenty-three years as a Marine, both enlisted and commissioned, had hard-wired certain habits into him. And his most recent work hadn’t served to dull those habits any, either.
Hector Chavez was waiting by the bar, sitting on a stool with one elbow on the bar and the other hand on his knee, so that he needed only turn his head to see the door. He grinned a little as he hitched himself off the stool and stepped toward Brannigan, holding out his hand.
“Good to see you again, John.” Chavez was getting a little heavy, his gray hair thinning. He still moved well, for a man whose heart didn’t quite work right anymore.
Brannigan shook the other man’s hand. Chavez’ ticker might need a pacemaker, but his grip was still strong. “Did you let Mama Taft intimidate you last time, Hector?” he asked, with a half-smile.
Chavez chuckled. “No, though that is certainly an intimidating woman.” He sobered. “I just figured that establishing a pattern of life might not be the best idea. If we keep meeting in the same diner, with different clients, somebody might start to think that you’re working as some kind of consultant. And then they might start wondering what kind of consulting a man like you does.”
Brannigan nodded. The reasoning was sound. The last job that Chavez had brought him, his first as a mercenary, had been high-risk and highly illegal. That it had been the right thing to do wouldn’t matter if the wrong people got wind of it.
He looked around for his new client, but Chavez appeared to be alone. Noticing the look, Chavez inclined his head toward the back of the restaurant and said, “Come on. And John? Try to keep an open mind, all right?”
Brannigan frowned at that, but said nothing as he followed Chavez toward the back. It was the middle of the afternoon, so the restaurant was pretty empty. An older couple was sitting at one of the polished wooden tables against the front wall, and there was a single man sitting at the opposite end of the bar from where Chavez had been, but otherwise the rustic-looking place was deserted.
They passed through the
doorway leading to the back room, which was similarly empty except for more tables, a few booths, and a bussing area. There was a man sitting alone at a table in the center of the room, who looked up as Chavez and Brannigan walked in.
Brannigan’s mouth thinned as he recognized him. Aside from the fact that he was presently dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, instead of MARPAT camouflage utilities, General Mark Van Zandt didn’t appear to have changed a bit since Brannigan had last seen him.
He’d last seen Van Zandt via a VTC from the USS Boxer, as the General was informing him that, due to his disregard for the restrictive Rules of Engagement in East Africa, a disregard that had been necessitated by the situation he and his Marines had found on the ground, he would be “allowed” to retire, rather than be court-martialed for getting into a firefight with the local army’s soldiers. That those soldiers had been actively defending the terrorists that were holding the hostages Brannigan and his Marines had been tasked to rescue hadn’t mattered to the politicians or the Marine Corps. Needless to say, there was not a little bitterness there.
Van Zandt stood up as they approached, somewhat to Brannigan’s surprise. He’d long considered the man a typical careerist officer, by which he meant a politician, more than willing to lord his position over subordinates and step on anyone and everyone for the sake of his own advancement. He hadn’t expected even so much a mark of respect as standing from the man, especially after their last interaction.
“John,” Van Zandt said in greeting, holding out his hand.
Brannigan shot Chavez a brief look that promised words later, then shook the proffered hand. He might not like Van Zandt, but he’d be damned if he let himself sink to the level of answering discourtesy with discourtesy, and when the man was actually being courteous…
“Mark,” he replied evenly. “What are you doing here?”
“Please, have a seat,” Van Zandt said. He was clearly uncomfortable. Chavez pulled up a chair and sat down, and Brannigan warily followed suit.
“Mark came to me about two days ago,” Chavez said. “He was specifically looking for you.”
Brannigan hadn’t taken his eyes off Van Zandt. “And why might that be, Mark?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous. “I’m sure this isn’t a social call.”
“It isn’t,” Van Zandt replied, “though not for the reasons you might be thinking. For one thing, I’m retired now, just like you.” When Brannigan’s eyes narrowed, Van Zandt actually flushed, apparently realizing that it had been the wrong choice of words. Brannigan took some pride in being a fair man, but he hadn’t quite realized just how raw this particular wound still was.
“Look, I was just the messenger last time, John,” he said.
“Sure you were,” Brannigan rumbled, recognizing the play for what it was. Van Zandt wanted something. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been trying to play nice. “So, whose messenger boy are you this time?”
“Okay, look,” Van Zandt said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table, apparently deciding to go for broke and get his cards on the table, “I know that you led the operation on Khadarkh a few months ago. Some of my people interviewed the hostages, and some of them described you pretty accurately. Don’t worry,” he said, putting his hands up as Brannigan tensed, ever so much, “I’m not here to arrest you or press charges or anything like that. Once again, success is your best defense, and on top of the intel about the Saudi missiles that you passed to Hector, you’re golden. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—there are some very important people who would put the kibosh on any attempt to come down on you for that operation.”
“Okay,” Brannigan said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms, corded with muscle from living and working outside most of the last three years, “then what do you want?”
Van Zandt took a deep breath. “What do you know about a North Korean desk called ‘Bureau 39?’”
Brannigan frowned, searching his memory. “Don’t they have something to do with organized crime?” he asked.
Van Zandt and Chavez both nodded. “Though in their case,” Chavez put in, “’having something to do with’ means that they’re an official, state-sponsored criminal organization.”
“Their mandate appears to be to help fund the DPRK through the global criminal underworld,” Van Zandt elaborated. “Drugs, smuggling, weapons, shady real-estate deals, money laundering, human trafficking, illegal mining…you name it, Bureau 39 has a hand in it somewhere. They’ve been very active in Africa, right alongside the Chinese. It’s estimated that millions upon millions of dollars get funneled to Pyongyang every year by Bureau 39 activities.”
“Figures,” Brannigan said. “Never was a Communist born who wasn’t also a gangster.”
“As with any underworld operation,” Van Zandt continued as he nodded his agreement, “their precise activities are hard to track. It’s not like these people make quarterly earnings statements. But considering how deep in that criminal underworld they are, drugs are pretty high on their list of revenue streams, and being based in Asia, that means we’ve long suspected they have dealings in the Golden Triangle.”
Brannigan nodded. The Golden Triangle was in the highlands along the borders of Burma, Thailand, and Laos, and was one of the world’s foremost opium poppy producing regions, only possibly surpassed by southern Afghanistan. “Stands to reason,” he agreed.
“Well, we have reason to believe that their involvement has been stepped up a notch,” Van Zandt said, pulling a tablet out of the briefcase next to his chair. He tapped it, then swung it around and slid it across the table to Brannigan. “This happened six days ago, along the Thai/Burmese border, about six miles from Wiang Phang Kham.”
Brannigan took the tablet and studied the photo. It didn’t take an expert to recognize the aftermath of an ambush. Two five-ton trucks had been reduced to burned-out skeletons, a third was shot to hell, and there were bloody, motionless bodies strewn around what looked very much like the craters from mortar strikes. He looked up at Van Zandt. “What makes you think this was the Norks?” he asked. “As I recall, there have been all kinds of clashes along that border, between the Thais and the various drug lords and warlords in Burma.”
“There have been,” Van Zandt agreed, “though never quite this intense, not recently. And we would simply have assumed that it was some of the United Wa State Army having a bit of a dispute with the Thai Rangers over border crossing bribes, except for the next pictures. Keep scrolling.”
Brannigan did, as Van Zandt continued to explain. “The Thais had ISR up, but there was a fair bit of low cloud cover that day, so they didn’t see much of the actual ambush. But the clouds were starting to lift shortly after, and they managed to get those next photos.”
Brannigan zoomed in the image, though that just made the figures more blurred and pixelated. But whoever those three were, they weren’t wearing the same uniforms as the rest of the fighters around them. Details were blurry, but the unidentified figures’ clothes and equipment were a different shade of green, and appeared that they might have a camouflage pattern, as opposed to the surrounding Wa fighters’ plain olive drab.
He looked up again. “You think these are your North Koreans?”
Van Zandt nodded. “And we’ve got other reasons to think so,” he said. “Keep scrolling.”
The next images were obviously in a different area. They showed what looked very much like a forward operating base, though not one built according to the usual Western “Big Box FOB” model. It looked more like a Special Force camp from Vietnam. There were definitely bunkers among what looked like tents, and there might be camouflaged fighting positions surrounding the encampment. Again, the detail was not superb, but the rough outline was there.
There were also figures in the next image, apparently taken outside one of the tents, and zoomed in. Once again, the imagery was blurry and indistinct, showing little detail, but the color of the uniforms was identical to the figures in the photos taken leaving th
e ambush site on the Thai border.
“That camp is up north, deep in Shan State in Burma,” Van Zandt explained. “It’s actually in the Kokang region, a part of Shan State inhabited by the ethnic-Chinese Kokang. The Kokang Army, which is pretty staunchly Communist, has been fighting the Burmese government off and on for years. Can’t entirely blame them; the Burmese haven’t exactly been kind to the ethnic minorities in their country. The Karen are the obvious example. But the Kokangs are also hip-deep in the opium and heroin trades, sending shipments north into Yunnan Province in China, and, apparently, southeast to Thailand.
“Between that imagery and some of our SIGINT, we are fairly certain that there is a detachment of North Korean Light Infantry Guide Bureau troops in that camp, under the auspices of Bureau 39. We think that they’re advising the narco-militias in northern Burma on infantry tactics and training, in return for a cut of the drug profits.”
Brannigan sat back again and ran a broad hand over his mustache. “I think I see where this is going,” he said dryly.
“North Korea is getting to be of considerable concern,” Van Zandt forged ahead. “Their continued nuclear threats and ballistic missile tests have a lot of people very worried, and for good reason. Sanctions aren’t doing the trick. They’re supposed to be the Hermit Kingdom, completely cut off from the rest of the world, but they’ve got enough resources to continue pushing ahead with a nuclear program. And this kind of operation is why.” He took a deep breath. “We want to hire you and your team to go in and eliminate that North Korean contingent. I know what you’re going to say,” he continued, holding up a hand. “’Why not send Delta, or DEVGRU?’ I know. Under the circumstances, I’d agree, except for one thing. Nobody’s willing to risk the exposure of a US SOF team that deep inside Burma, that close to the Chinese border. The Chinese would throw a fit, and, like it or not, US SOF has a bigger footprint than we’d like to wish it did. The op to kill Bin Laden had a lot of greased palms and diplomatic groundwork behind it, and we’d never get the Chinese to sign off on an op that close to their territory.”