Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

  “A confession,” Lee said. “I won’t sign it. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Tint straightened in the chair and heard the phone ring. He took the call from his cell phone. Listening carefully, he nodded his head several times, his face gradually changing into a contorted mass of wrinkles.

  “What? The Financial building?” He spat the words out. “It’s not real. It can’t be happening.”

  He listened some more, nodding his head with a grimace. When the call ended, he snapped the cell phone shut. Turning around, he glared down at Lee with a look of hatred for a moment and bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Five minutes later, a tall, skinny guy with a hawk nose and a face as thin as two folded hands, entered the room. Lee guessed he was a replacement for Colonel Tint. No doubt tint had gone straight to the bomb site. The guy sat down and stared across the desk, his long bony face and blue tinted skin reminded Lee of a Great Blue Heron.

  “You’re in serious trouble.” Heron looked angry. Lee looked the other way. “I need to know about the guns. Why are you carrying them?”

  “Protection. The city was bombed today.”

  “Nothing you know anything about, I imagine.”

  “I know nothing about the bombings. I came from Phonsavan on a business trip. I sell crystals, glassware, key chains, T-shirts and other trinkets in a curio shop up near Jar Site 2 at the Plain of Jars.”

  Heron smirked. “A likely story. The evidence proves otherwise.”

  “What evidence? You’ve got nothing.”

  Heron stared down at him with a look of contempt and went on. “Here’s what happened. A bomb went off this morning leveling the Telecom building. Another one, just minutes ago, brought down the Financial building. You and your men are involved. This we know.”

  The man waited for a reaction. Lee decided not to give him one. Instead, he sat in silence, staring down at the floor. A moment later the man’s cell phone rang. He snapped it open and pressed the receiver to his ear.

  Lee watched him. In the dim light of the room he saw the guy’s eyebrows arch, his mouth crack open, and disbelief cross his face.

  He nodded. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” he said. His blue, tinted skin paled and his hands shook as the call ended and he snapped the cell phone shut.

  Motioning to the guard posted at the door, he told him to release the prisoner. He stared down at Lee, with a seething look of contempt as Lee got up, rubbing the pain out of his wrist.

  “You are free to go,” said Heron, flinging a hand up in the air, disgusted, hard dark lines showing at the corners of his eyes.

  Outside in the hall, Lee joined his men. Heron led them down the corridor to the open window of a room in front of the main lobby. Heron stood back and watched them retrieve their possessions. Wallets, keys, cell phones—everything except their handguns only because carrying them without a license in Laos was a criminal offense.

  “I know you’re guilty of these offenses,” said Heron looking at Lee.

  No response.

  Heron sneered leading them through the lobby, out the door and back outside. “One phone call from the General’s office and you’re free. But I know the truth, yes?” In the parking lot the sneer on Heron’s face deepened to hatred and contempt. “I know you were responsible for the bombings,” he said. “It is fortunate for you to have men in very high places.”

  Lee stood in front of his men, facing the cop. “I don’t know what you’re talking.”

  “Don’t lie to me or I’ll run you back inside on a charge of vagrancy.” He bristled with anger. “My instincts are usually very good and my instincts say you were involved in the bombings. You were, weren’t you?”

  Lee stared at him but kept quiet, avoiding Heron’s trap. As if I’d admit to being involved, thought Lee.

  Heron turned around and waved the cruiser over. Two cops sat in the front seat, awaiting Heron’s orders. Lee and his men got into the car and sat down in the back seat, facing the metal grate. A lock clicked shut and they were locked inside. Heron nodded to the cop behind the wheel and he buzzed down the back window.

  “Don’t plan on hanging around town,” he said, leaning his head part way inside. “There are flights leaving the airport every hour. I better see you on one. Is that clear?”

  Lee nodded. He wasn’t going to give Heron the satisfaction of an answer.

  “Okay.” Heron straightened up and nodded to the cop behind the wheel. “Drive them back to the motel and make sure they leave town immediately.”

  The cop nodded and drove off out of the parking lot. Heron punched a number into his cell phone and spoke quickly into it. “Is it done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “En route to the airport.”

  “Good. I’ll talk to you when you get back.”

  Heron snapped the cell phone shut, smiling as he went back inside the building.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Big Dipper was hot and humid inside. A few fans near the front door scattered the waves of heat as they rolled back in off the street. Customers sat drinking at the circular bar. A row of empty tables stood at the back. A few patrons finished beers, left tips and waved good-bye to the two women.

  Seabury took a moment to study the two friends and business partners. The tall one with the wild, purple punk hairdo had a friendly smile that warmed her gaunt, angular face. The other woman—a petite, dark-skinned beauty with black lashes and large brown eyes—looked more Indian than Lao.

  “Tory, what a surprise,” said the woman with the purple hair. “How long can you stay?”

  Tory looked at Seabury then back at her friends. “Just overnight. We’re going up to Phonsavan on business tomorrow.”

  Sighs of disappointment filled the room. “Can’t you stay longer?” the petite woman said. “Change plans.”

  “Yes. Stay over—at least for a few days—we don’t get to see that much of you. How long has it been?” Purple Hair asked.

  “Two years.”

  “Well, then…”

  “We’ll see,” Tory said.

  Purple hair motioned Seabury to a seat at the bar, opened a beer and slid it across to him as Tory introduced him to the women.

  “This is Alani,” Tory said, nodding at Purple Hair. “Her Laotian name means Orange Tree. This is Kailea. Her name means Baby Doll.”

  Hmm. Orange Tree and Baby Doll—interesting, Seabury thought.

  “Enjoy,” Orange Tree said pointing to Seabury’s beer, and she, Tory and Baby Doll vanished into the shadows behind the bar.

  Warm hugs, beaming smiles, quick bursts of laughter broke out around the room. A pang of annoyance knifed through Seabury’s stomach.

  She set me up. She planned the whole thing.

  He turned his attention to the television on the wall above the bar. As Seabury looked up, he saw the man’s face—the man he’d seen at Cheeb’s boat shack last night. A name came up at the bottom of the screen below the picture. Kanoa Lee.

  The announcer’s voice reported, “This is the alleged terrorist accused of bombing the Telecom building in Vientiane just this morning.”

  Seabury jolted back, almost spilling the beer in his hand.

  Tory came over. “Why are you looking so serious? Come over and join us. My friends want to get to know you,” she said to Seabury.

  He didn’t respond. Hadn’t she seen the news? Perhaps not—she had her back to the television, chatting to her friends. Should he tell her? Before he could say a word, Tory took him by the arm and dragged him over to rejoin her friends.

  Seabury saw the speculative look in their eyes. Orange Tree and Baby Doll stared at him, smiling knowingly before and giving Tory looks of approval. In the seconds that followed, Seabury knew he had passed some sort of girlfriend endorsement test. Now he felt trapped in an awkward situation.

  “Can we stay over,” Tory asked him.

  He put down th
e beer and looked straight at her. Seabury hoped she could sense his annoyance and frustration.

  He looked a Tory and said, “We have a long way to go to Phonsavan. I’m afraid if we stay over, we won’t make it up there on time tomorrow.” He shrugged his shoulders in bewilderment. “You know the customer won’t wait that long for us.”

  “We can leave early tomorrow,” Tory said.

  “I’d rather we left now,” Seabury said.

  Disappointment filled Tory’s eyes as she stared back at her friends.

  “Look, I appreciate the offer,” Seabury said to them. “If it were any other time, I’d gladly accept. But we’re operating on a tight schedule. Tory, you know the consequences if we don’t make it to the rendezvous in time.”

  Orange Tree said, “I think we need to talk.” She led Tory and Seabury into a room off the bar.

  “I’m concerned about the pictures,” Orange Tree said once they were inside. “We saw them on television early this morning.”

  “Yes,” Baby Doll chimed in. “One of the pictures looks like you, Sam. The other looks like Tory. Your Hmong disguises won’t fool anyone much longer.”

  “According to the police, you are fugitives,” Orange Tree said. She cupped a hand on the chin of her long, narrow face and added. “There’s also an APB out on you. What’s going on?”

  Silence filled the room. Seabury heard a clock ticking on the wall above them.

  “I know Tory,” Orange Tree said finally. “She doesn’t break the law.”

  Seabury kept quiet.

  “What’s going on?” Baby Doll said. “Can you tell us? We’re worried about you.”

  “It’s a long story,” Tory said. “It begins with Colonel Maran Tint. He and Seabury have a feud going way back. Tint tried to kill him but failed and the story was picked up by the social networks and resulted in Tint being relieved of his command. I won’t go into the details, but Tint is a man who holds a grudge. He’d like nothing more than to see Seabury behind bars. But that’s only half of it.” She paused, dropped her eyes and then swung them back on her friends. “We’re on a mission to deliver a one million dollar ransom to a site on the Plain of Jars tomorrow afternoon. Victoria Hong, the daughter of one of Sam’s friends in Bangkok was kidnapped two days ago and we’ve agreed to deliver the money.”

  The bar owners exchanged glances, their mouths agape as they sat back in stunned silence.

  Tory went on, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. The cops are after us. The point is we don’t want to get you involved in any trouble. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’re only guilty of trying to help a friend, but we know how the police are…we know how they operate here.”

  Baby Doll woke from the shock of the news. “You haven’t done anything wrong,” she said, “We understand now why you can’t approach the police and explain what you’re doing.”

  Orange Tree chimed in. “Can’t you see we’re already involved? The moment you showed up here, we got involved. The police aren’t going to believe us if we tell them that you showed up here together out of the blue. They won’t buy it.”

  She and Baby Doll exchanged glances. Orange Tree turned back to Tory and Seabury. “I think it might be a good idea to stay off the road for a while,” she said. “What do you think, Sam?”

  Seabury went quiet for a while as he thought hard about it and the women kept their eyes on him, waiting for a response.

  “I’m thinking about the trip up to Phonsavan,” he said finally. “We need to arrive there by early afternoon tomorrow. If we stay over, it doesn’t give us much time.”

  “What about your photographs?” Orange Tree said. “They’re all over the television. Fortunately, most people here won’t bother with them for very long. The photos go up one day, the next day it doesn’t matter because they’ve completely forgotten about them. The same goes for the police. The further you get away from Vientiane, the better your chances are of not being recognized. News doesn’t travel as fast here in central Laos. It’s like two different worlds once you leave Vientiane.”

  She paused briefly, and went on. “That cop outside the bar, Officer Vanlao. I’ve known him a long time. I know his game. I know what he does. He’s corrupt but his salary is low and he works long hours. That’s how he justifies taking your money.” She looked at Seabury and her face grew serious. “The point is, he didn’t recognize you. If he had, you and Tory would be sitting inside a jail cell right now. Luckily, he didn’t make the connection. He looked at you, studied you, but he still wasn’t sure. Do you see my point?”

  “I do, Alani.”

  “Well?”

  He looked at the bar owners. “Okay. We’ll stay over,” he said, watching the girls erupt in joy, thinking: I know you planned the whole thing, Tory. Still, he had the right to be slightly peeved.

  A while later, he thought about his decision to stay over. It’s a bad decision, Seabury, he told himself. Bad, very, very bad. How are you going to reach the Plain of Jars on time tomorrow? As he finished his beer, he felt a dark cloud passing over him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Why?” Malak asked. “Why?”

  “Why?” The commander’s look was harsh, admonishing. “I can’t believe you’d ask. I can’t believe you’d stoop so low as to question me.”

  Behind them the television played a title track from an old, French movie. The sad, melancholy song Someone told me, by Italian-French singer Carla Bruni drifted across the room, carrying the depressing message that lives aren’t worth much. They pass in an instant like roses wilt. The sad song seemed to go on endlessly.

  “But the revolution…our cause,” Makan continued. “What you’re saying then, it’s over…finished.”

  “Not over, just put on hold for a while. Look, Malak, we’ve made our point. We’ve put a scare into them. How can we continue on with the revolution if all of us end up in jail or worse yet—”

  “Dead.” Malak finished the thought. “I would rather die than live this way under the Communists. The Hmong need to be free. It’s worth living or dying for.”

  Carla Bruni kept playing and Lee remembered the day Edena died.

  A wet, heavy mist hung over the forest outside their tribal village. Rain had come during the night and left the ground soaked with puddles. Edena and two of her friends had worked tirelessly in the stream down the hill below their home, washing clothes and loading them into straw baskets. Later they walked among the rows of wet, black earth in a long, rectangular garden. They worked with straw baskets perched on their slender hips, gathering in cabbage, rice corn, carrots and shoots of dark green lettuce for their next meal.

  Lee had entered the kitchen of the long house, a rough, timbered dwelling suspended off the ground on eight fool stilts. The walls made from strips of lumber joined together with bamboo poles, held up a long flat expanse of roof woven from reed. It arched over the decks on either side of the house. There were several bedrooms in back and a huge open porch out front.

  In the kitchen Lee moved past the silhouetted black metal pot strung up over a large pit of coals. His blue hand-woven silk Shaman’s robe flapped in the breeze as he moved out onto the front porch. He paused in the breeze as he moved out onto the front porch. He paused for a moment to take in the peacefulness before he traipsed down the steps into the yard below.

  Damp, black earth sloshed under his sandaled feet as he sauntered along. Some children played off in the far corner. Dogs barked and nipped at their heels as they kicked a ball around in the crisp morning air. The rain had stopped and he felt the warmth of the sun poking through the clouds. He walked out of the yard down along a dirt path leading toward the stream below.

  He removed the shaman’s robe and laid it down on a boulder and eased his naked body into the icy current, shivering as he went under. He let his body adjust to the chill, not wanting to rush his morning bath, and splashed around leisurely for a while. Finally, he emerged from the stream, dried himself on a small towel and pu
t his robe and sandals back on.

  He could hear Edena and the two other women as they worked in the clearing around a bend at the head of the stream. The life he remembered, from that rainy Monday morning almost ten years ago, was a life set in the bleak isolation of mountainous terrain—a life filled with the ever-present danger of eluding the Pathet Lao Army, whose orders came directly from the Politburo in Vientiane.

  What resulted was a dark, cryptic war that no one ever wanted to talk about. A war that existed, aimed at genocide, at the complete and utter annihilation of his people. The reason so many Hmong had fled south into Thailand—to escape persecution.

  Yet in spite of the danger of living a life in constant fear of army reprisals, there was a brighter side. It came to him in the form of a special gift—his wife, Edena. True, the life of Hmong women was hard, filled with the rigorous daily routine of washing clothes, gathering food and raising children. Edena, ever loyal, loving wife, with tall body and dark flowing hair, seemed satisfied with her life living in the wilds with him. She carried herself well, with a quiet, compromising spirit and a soft outer exterior reflected by a look of peace glowing in her dark brown eyes. They looked forward to the birth of their first child. Only two months pregnant, Edena hadn’t even started to show. She knew her baby was there inside her and she was looking forward to becoming a mother.

  Edena had finished filling her basket with vegetables when the soldiers came out of the thicket behind her. Startled, she turned around and saw three Pathet Lao infantrymen on the other side of the stream, rifles on their shoulders, pointing directly at her and her friends. A low, muffled sound of fear eased out of her lungs as the dark figures traversed the narrow part of the stream and came across. Edena froze in fear as her girlfriends crowded in behind her.

  The leader, a tall, lanky brute with dilated eyes and a smoker’s bad skin, came up and stood in front of her. A sly, sinister grin cracked open his mouth as his eyes wandered all over her body: on her breasts and hips and legs and down between them. The more he stared, the more his smile widened, until her ordered Edena to kneel down in front of him.