Say Uncle

by Benjamin Laskin

  I said to Doreen in front of me. “It’s over. We’re going home, okay?”

  She stopped, turned to me, and smiled. Then I saw her smile vanish into a white cloud of fear.

  From behind me I heard, “No, you’re not.”

  I spun and saw Attila the Clownhead, a big bandage over his skull, waving an automatic and grinning. Behind him were three men with rifles. We turned to run, but four more gunmen stepped out of the jungle in front of us and blocked our path.

  “What do you want from us?” Doreen screamed. “We don’t know anything!”

  “That’s too bad,” Clownhead said, a scary glint in his eye. “Because what you don’t know is going to kill you.”

  One of the men standing behind Clownhead yelped and dropped to his knees. Clownhead whirled to look. Behind me came another painful cry. I didn’t have to look to know that a second man had an arrow in his chest. I grabbed Doreen’s hand and swung her in front of me. “Run!”

  We tore back up the path we had just descended, unstrapping and dropping our packs as we ran, not daring to glance back. Over the blasts of wild gunfire I heard Clownhead yell, “Get them!”

  We ran as fast as we could, madly, fiercely, without regard for where we were going or what was under our feet. Our feet knew. They flew over the choppy, gnarled, rock-strewn path by their own volition. Dodging, leaping, sprinting, we fled. Bullets ripped through the foliage around us. I didn’t know whether the bullets were meant for us or someone else. We just ran, arms and legs pumping. I felt like Jesse Owens. But if I was Jesse Owens, the two men after us were Terminators. I heard their panting between the gunfire. My chest burned, and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep going. I stayed on Doreen’s heels and prayed that she was in better shape than I was. “Go, go, go!” I yelled.

  I saw up ahead that the path forked. To the left it was clear and well worn, to the right overgrown and barely recognizable. Doreen went left. Hoping to draw both men away from her I chose the path less traveled. I glanced behind me. The two pursuers came to the fork, halted, and split up.

  I couldn’t turn around, and hoped desperately that the two paths were merely short detours and would meet up again. I quickly realized that wasn’t going to happen. I was running in the opposite direction.

  I was scared, but too worried about Doreen to care. I didn’t want to lose her again. I’d have stopped and confronted the hunter, but my trusty, shit-kicking boots were no match for a gun. I kept running along a path that became narrower and narrower until it was no path at all, and I was stomping and hacking my way through the jungle. And then I ran out of jungle. I slid to a halt at the top of a thirty-foot precipice. I peered down huffing. It was a sheer drop to a rocky bottom. There was nowhere to run. I turned and faced my attacker.

  “Nice try, punk,” he said, panting. The man, who was white, and by his accent, American, wore black and white camouflage pants, cargo vest, and a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt that clung to his very muscular and heaving chest. In his right hand was a big gun.

  “Come on,” he said, pointing the way with a wave of his gun.

  “No.”

  He traced my feet with bullets.

  “I missed?” He chuckled. “I never miss twice.”

  “You won’t shoot me. You need me alive.”

  “What, are you stupid? I can shoot you and not kill you.” He shook his head in disgust, like a teacher whose patience for dumb students ran out years ago. “Move it.”

  I noticed for the first time that the gunfire below had stopped, and now all I heard was the blood beating in my ears. What had gone on down there? Where did those arrows come from? Could it have been my Lahu friends? If it was, their arrows could have been no match for the gun power I had heard.

  The answers to my questions stepped out from behind a large teak tree.

  “Drop the gun and raise your hands.”

  It was Zeeva and the other girl I had seen back at Chaing Mai station. They stood side-by-side, arrows drawn tight. The soldier didn’t turn to look, but only squinted at me, like I owed him some kind of explanation. “A chick?” he said.

  I shrugged, a big fat grin on my face. “I’d do as the chick says if I were you.”

  He shook his head in disbelief and slowly raised his arms, gun still in hand. Then, “Fuck this—” He spun and dropped to one knee, firing.

  The girls dove headfirst into the dense undergrowth, one to each side. The soldier’s bullets ripped through the foliage. He released the clip from the gun and quickly shoved in another. His back to me, I charged at him and tackled him to the ground. He pushed himself up onto his knees and I clung to his back trying to get a chokehold. But he was way too strong. He twisted left then elbowed right, smacking me in the temple. I dropped from his back like a singed leach.

  A bolt of pain ricocheted against the walls of my cranium, and it was all I could do not to pass out. The two of him were on his feet in a flash, pointing guns in my face. I heard a high-pitched sound—a whistle. It was the girl.

  The soldier spun and opened fire. The girl dove away as Zeeva popped up on the opposite side and hurled a knife, slicing the man’s throat. I turned in horror as he staggered blindly, gagging and gurgling, spewing blood all over himself. He fell on top of me, pinning me under his convulsing body. I struggled out from under him and scrambled to my feet. I stared down at him, transfixed. He died, his eyes wide open, locked on mine, his blood draining into the springy forest floor.

  “…Guy…Guy!” Zeeva snatched my elbow and yanked me from my trance. “Doreen,” she said.

  We sprinted off, the other girl leading the way. I prayed as I ran. Dear God, let us find her. Let her be okay. Please, please, please…

  Back at the fork, we barreled up the path. Zeeva’s friend ran like a gazelle. How did she know we weren’t going to run right into a trap? If the soldiers had Doreen, they’d be ready for us. The girl flashed hand signs for Zeeva as we ran. I didn’t know what they meant but Zeeva understood. She seemed to trust the girl, as if she knew the girl possessed some extraordinary radar.

  The trail descended into a ravine and ran alongside a shallow river. We followed it for thirty yards until we came across another soldier. He floated belly up in a pool of water, an arrow in his chest, bobbing and spinning in the current like a compass needle. We scampered on. The girl signaled again to Zeeva and disappeared around a tree. Zeeva halted and ducked behind a boulder. I caught up and crouched beside her, gasping for air.

  “Shh. Don’t move,” she said.

  Shots rang out and I heard a scream. Doreen’s.

  I leaped up shouting out her name. Zeeva yanked me back down, a moment before a splash of bullets bounced off the boulder we were hiding behind. Zeeva reached around her back and pulled out a wicked-looking gun from her green fatigues. She was alert, but composed, holding the gun ready for action. Clearly, she was no stranger to firearms. I remembered our encounter back in Tucson with the two roughs and how expertly she had dispatched them. Zeeva was no ordinary foreign-exchange student.

  “How many did you see?” she asked.

  “One. Twenty yards up on the right, along the riverbank. He popped out from behind a tree.”

  “Okay. I’ve got to flush him out. You stay put, you hear me? No matter what you hear you don’t move until one of us calls you out. Got it?”

  “What are you—?”

  “Got it?” she repeated, her stern, steel-blue eyes nailing my mouth shut.

  I nodded.

  Zeeva puckered her lips and made some kind of bird call. She readied her gun, took a deep breath, and charged. Guns blasted, hers, his…

  I couldn’t stand it and peeked around the boulder. I saw Zeeva shouting as she hauled it across the swift, waist-deep river. Then she dropped out of sight, disappearing into the water among a shower of bullets. The soldier rushed out from behind the tree firing his automatic rifle at the spot where Zeeva had fallen. I heard whooping, turned, and saw Melody sliding down the opposite bluff on
her ass, blasting away, a gun in each hand. She blew the soldier off his feet, his rifle flying into the air. Melody bounded across the water, emptying both guns into the man until she was standing over him, satisfied he was a corpse. I was already halfway to Zeeva who hadn’t emerged yet.

  “Zeeva!” I yelled.

  Thirty yards downstream, Zeeva sprang out of the water like a seal. Startled, I slipped and fell on my ass. She waded over to me, and fists on hips and dripping wet, she stood over me and shook her head in disapproval.

  “No wonder you flunked all those classes. You don’t listen, do you?”

  Nose deep in water I laughed in relief, taking in a lung full of river. As I coughed and hacked I spotted Doreen and the other girl arrive at the top of the bank. Doreen skidded down towards me. I met her halfway and caught her up in my arms. She kissed me and squeezed me tight.

  Stiff Apology

  With dusk in the treetops, Melody suggested we make camp. Nearby we found a site to everyone’s liking and started setting up. No sooner had we begun when I saw Max Stormer and Noriko frog-marching Clownhead towards us. Clownhead’s hands were bound and Noriko held a gun to his back. Max shouldered Doreen’s and my packs. His right pant leg looked like someone had run a brown paintbrush down it. Blood.

  “Jesus, Max,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “Me and bullets have an understanding. They can hit me, but they’re not allowed to kill me.” He grimaced towards the new girl, who was pulling a first aid kit from her fanny pack. She smiled knowingly and shook her head. The girl walked over to him and led him by the hand to a fern covered spot under a tree and began to attend to his wounds.

  It hit me who she was. She wasn’t just the cutie I saw back at the station in Chaing Mai. She was the girl from Pinecrest whose pictures I saw on CNN and on the front page of the Arizona Republic. She was the girl who had supposedly committed suicide with Max Stormer after Pinecrest’s weeklong siege came to its electric conclusion—Aidos. Well I’ll be damned…

  I was in high school at the time of those events, and that was all any of us talked about for a month. Girls at school taped Max’s picture to the inside of their locker doors like he was some kind of pop idol, and every guy I knew had a crush on the enigmatic Aidos. Even Wilkinson and Fielding argued over which one of them she’d fall for. I remarked to them that a girl like her would never be interested in guys like you. For my chivalry, Fielding knocked me to the ground, gave me a painful noogie, and made me say uncle.

  And now here the three of us were, I thought. Wow. She was even more beautiful than I remembered. Of course, then she was a fifteen-year-old girl. Now she was a woman, curves and all. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She wore the same baggy green army pants as the other gals but with a black sleeveless T-shirt and a khaki cargo vest. Her skin was olive and smooth, and she had a mane of thick black hair that, like the other girls’, was tied back into a ponytail. They had obviously been expecting action.

  Most striking, however, was her countenance: an angelic smile, and an aura of, I didn’t know—grace? Noriko, Johanna, Zeeva, Melody, they all carried themselves well: confident, fearless, carriage erect, purpose in every step. But Aidos, though appearing as self-assured as they, seemed to hover in the air, weightless, as if the world’s gravity didn’t apply to her. Doreen stared at her too. I wondered if Aidos was the “love” that brought Max to Thailand. Or was it Noriko? Zeeva? Johanna? God knows they were each extraordinary.

  Or was it Melody, who had just slipped from the deep brush, her arms laden with firewood? She spotted Aidos attending to Max’s wound that, luckily, wasn’t serious. Melody frowned and dropped the wood into a pile. She picked out a single, straight branch and slapped it against her leg, as if to test its strength. She glanced over at Max and Aidos again, and then she shot Clownhead an angry look. He smirked.

  Melody strode up to him. “Apologize,” she said, looking him square in the eye.

  “What?”

  “Apologize, ya wanker.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You tried to kill my friends. Apologize.”

  “Fuck you, you crazy bitch.”

  Melody jammed the stick into the man’s crotch. He buckled and she smacked him across the head with the other end of the stick. “Apologize.”

  Clownhead tried to ram her to the ground, but Melody stepped gracefully aside and tripped him. He fell on his face and she hopped on top of him. Melody slid the stick under his chin and pulled up, choking him.

  “Apologize.”

  “Pol-gize,” he garbled. His legs twitched spastically. “Pol-gize!”

  She removed the stick and he gasped for air.

  “Now,” she said, “we have a few questions for you.” She and Noriko dragged him out of sight into the woods and began an hour-long interrogation.

  I wanted to listen to what he had to say, but it was nearly dark, and I felt obligated to help Johanna and the others set up camp and start dinner. All I heard from Clownhead were squeals of pain. I made a mental note: Do not piss off Melody.

  Doreen and I exchanged occasional uneasy glances. Even though these people had just risked their lives saving ours, we hardly felt any safer, and wondered if we were their prisoners. It was eerie how businesslike the women went about killing and maiming. I was flabbergasted by Melody’s sense of vengeance; at how she loaded the soldier with lead, and her zeal in torturing Clownhead. The other women, however, took Melody’s zealousness in stride, as if they were used to the way she operated.

  Doreen said little, obviously still in shock over the day’s events. Aidos led her aside and sat with her out of earshot. In the flickering firelight I saw that she was holding Doreen’s hand.

  When Melody and Noriko emerged from the darkness a dinner of fried rice and vegetables was almost ready. As Max, Johanna, Zeeva, and I sat around the campfire drinking Japanese green tea, I tried numerous times to learn what was going on, but I couldn’t get a single straight answer.

  “Where’s, um, whoever he is?” I asked Melody and Noriko as they took up a patch of ground around the fire. Johanna passed them both cups of tea and a pair of chopsticks.

  “He won’t be joining us for supper,” Melody said.

  “We could give the guy a little something to eat,” I said. “I know he’s an asshole and all, but—”

  “Believe me,” Melody said, “he’s not hungry.”

  Noriko said, “He’s dead, Guy.”

  “You killed him?!”

  Melody replied coolly, “He became an unmarked grave the minute he took up with—. He knew the risks.”

  “Took up with who? What is going on?”

  “Chow’s up,” Johanna sang.

  “Mmm, I’m famished,” Zeeva said. She got onto her knees and scooped the curried rice and veggies onto plastic plates and passed them around.

  “How can you eat?” I said. “How can you be so nonchalant?”

  Noriko said sweetly, “It’s the perfect time to eat, Guy. It’s evening. There’s delicious food in front of us…” She nodded to Johanna, “Arigato, Jo-chan. It’s been a long, hard day, and we’re hungry.” Then, seeing that we all had our plates she said, “Shizen no megumi o kansha-shimasu. Itadakimasu.”

  The others replied in chorus, “Itadakimasu.”

  I looked at Max for help, or an explanation, or sympathy—something or anything. He shrugged and said, “It means, thanks for the grub, let’s eat.”

  Johanna said, “We don’t talk shop when we eat. Bad for the digestion.”

  Doreen and Aidos returned to our circle and sat down, Doreen beside me. I saw that her eyes were puffy from crying. But she also looked much more relaxed, tranquil even. I arched a questioning eyebrow. She smiled and said, “Don’t let your food get cold.”

  Part Four

  Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.

  —George Santayana

  Millie’s Prayer

  Excerpts from Journal Six, contin
ued…

  …Anya and I returned to the ranch brushing pine needles from our hair and clothes. Everything was different now, and neither of us felt prepared for the changes that our passion had ignited. Anya did not know that I was only a few weeks away from disappearing into a meticulously planned anonymity, leaving her, the children, and the Organization far behind. We walked in silence, hand in hand.

  The way I saw it, I had three options. First, I could forget Anya and go through with my plan as scheduled. The thought of doing so, however, was accompanied by a profound loneliness. What, I wondered, would my freedom accomplish? Free for what? I loved Anya and the girls. Abandoning them now would haunt me the rest of my days.

  Second, I could give up my plan, reconcile myself to my fate, and live out the remainder of my life under the Organization’s shadow. That, I felt, would be a betrayal of my soul.

  Third, and most daunting of all, was to divulge my plan to Anya and take her and the girls with me. Would she consent? I knew that Anya’s ties to Sharc and the Organization were strong and that her loyalty had never been in question. One wrong word from her and my disappearance was assured, but not the one I was executing. If she scoffed at my offer, yet vowed to cover for me after I disappeared by feigning surprise, I felt certain that her play at innocence would be no match for Sharc’s deadly suspicious mind. And, finally, if she agreed to come with me, how would I manage it? Covering my own tracks was challenging enough, but another four sets of footprints?

  The following day Anya flew to Washington for a previously scheduled week of meetings and progress reports. When she returned we found ourselves pretending that nothing had ever happened between us. For me it was torture. Anya’s words and actions were indecipherable, and as much as I dared not believe it, she was forcing me to admit that neither I nor our remarkable afternoon had meant a damn to her.

  ···

  …My ‘troops’ and I always eagerly awaited suppertime, and this evening was no different. We worked up big appetites during our strenuous day, and the time spent in relaxation around the dinner table was very welcome. Anya insisted that we never “talk shop,” that it was “bad for the digestion.” Suppertime, she said, was to be spent in carefree conversation and the free mingling of ideas. Usually hers.