“This is Jar Site One. Thong Hai Hin,” said Mabri. Buses and crowds of tourists were out, Seabury noticed. They chatted and snapped pictures with their cameras.
Mabri raced by. He said, “Still today, I try to understand the Americans and the Secret War that was fought here. But I am old and feeble, a Hmong man who lost family in the war. We loved the Americans. We fought side by side with them against North Vietnam and the Pathet Lao Communists. Then one day the war ended. The Lao Government surrendered and the Americans turned their backs on us and went home.”
Seabury said nothing. The jeep sped past Jar Site 1 and they continued on the road toward Sites 2 and 3. They roared across a flat grassy plain near the town of Lat Sen. Off the road stood an old abandoned French airbase—a remnant of the French military’s presence here decades ago.
On a narrow dirt runway half a kilometer off the road, smoke billowed up near a row of camouflaged huts. The huts sat at the end of the runway. Hunters lit fires and the smoke drove bugs high into the air. Swallows darted down, in and out of the smoke, after the bugs. The hunters released nets from inside the huts and trapped the birds.
“It’s big business,” Tory said, “selling the birds back at the local market in Phonsavan.”
Seabury checked his watch. “One hour left,” he called up to Mabri, pointing at his watch. “Can we make it there in time?”
“I hope so,” Mabri said and swung his eyes back on the road.
He jammed the gas pedal to the floor. The engine howled and tires squealed under them as the van roared off down the road. Not much time. Not much time. Seabury checked his watch again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
At a place called Lat Houang, the van swung off onto another road. It was past four-thirty. Rhaxi Road took them directly south for another six miles. They drove through a rural village with a tiny monastery until they reached a place where twin hills bordered the side of the road. Scattered across the hills were hundreds of stone jars, three or four feet high, some larger, Seabury noticed.
“This is Jar Site 2,” Mabri said. “We still have a way to go.”
“How long?” Seabury checked his watch again. “We have less than a half hour left.”
Tory held a hand up. “Please, Sam. He’s doing his best.”
“I know. But his best won’t be good enough…not this time…not if we don’t get there on time. This guy’s patience is stretched to the limit. I don’t know what he’ll do if we keep him waiting much longer.”
By now the van was whining through another gear change. People from nearby villages stopped along the road and, with curious expression on their faces, watched them speed by. Three miles down from Jar Site 2, the road forked. The main part went south into the rural town of Phaxai. The other part, which they took, angled to the left toward the village of Ban Xiang Di.
They raced across a hot, desolate landscape of brown fields, in the oppressive heat and the waning sunlight. Mabri slowed as they reached the edge of Ban Xiang Di and then drove in. Up ahead on the outskirts of the village low-pitched bamboo-framed houses, for the less wealthy, appeared.
Further in, sturdy teak and mahogany homes for the rich came into view. Old people stared down at them from the shadows of front porches. Children played in the hot, dusty street. Another half mile, they drove past a small wooden monastery, which Mabri informed them was Wat Xiang Di, the entrance to Jar Site 3. Seabury checked his watch. They had one minute left.
They pulled into a parking lot in back of the monastery. There was no one around. No vans, no tour buses, nothing. Just a bombed-damaged Buddha inside the trees.
Isolated. Clever, Seabury thought. I can see why he chose Jar Site 3.
Seabury swung the duffle bag onto his shoulders and stood outside in the lot. “This is a solo act, starting now,” he told Tory, who began to protest. He gave her a stern look. “It could be dangerous up there.”
“I’m a big girl, Sam….remember?”
“I don’t want you getting into it. Stay here with Mabri.”
She backed off and agreed to stay with the old man.
Mabri pointed to the back of the monastery. A wooden bridge crossed a clear stream and a path led uphill through a part of the forest and then onto a grassy plain.
Dressed in jeans, hiking boots and a white baseball cap, Seabury climbed the path until he reached a large clearing. Clusters of stone jars, shaped like the ends of large naval gun barrels, spread far and wide across the field. At his back now, the sun lowered inside the trees, casting long dark shadows across the ground. Seabury stared out across the field. The gun barrels stood in clusters in front of a line of rolling foothills. Further back was a sweeping vista of purple mountains.
The camera swung from a narrow leather strap around Seabury’s neck. To his right stood a massive stone jar. To his left, the open patch of ground lead out further into the field. Any moment Seabury expected his cell phone to ring.
Nothing.
He stood at the edge of the field in the shadows and the silence, watching, waiting.
Nothing.
Turning to the camera, he pretended to snap pictures of the stone jars, a pillar nearby, more pillars further out in the field. Through the lens he magnified the view. Objects shot up inside the viewing window, then faded as panned the camera back and forth, scanning the distance. Almost ready to accept that Greer had grown impatient and wasn’t going to keep his word, his heart skipped a beat as he caught sight of a dark figure walking across the field toward him.
He waited a few minutes, deciding what he should do with the duffle bag. He held it firmly by the strap in his right hand. Bending over, he let the bag drop down into a narrow opening inside a brush pile at the edge of one of the stone jars.
Seabury stood still until he heard the dull clump of the bag dropping down between the thick, knotted fingers of tangled brush and stood up. He gazed across the field, stood still and waited.
The man moved hurriedly now across the field. Seabury saw the hitch in his hips. His ass. He saw the uniform and the bright ribbons. Small arms and bony legs pumped hard now in a stiff, rigid gait. Seabury recognized the man immediately. Colonel Maran Tint.
Tint stopped a few feet in front of Seabury. He took off his military cap, wiped his brow and put the cap back on. Tint’s face fell partially in shadow under the visor, but Seabury noticed a malicious light flicker in his eyes. Tint’s chin jutted forward, his shoulders stiffened and his face was full of scorn.
“Enjoy taking pictures?” Tint’s mouth cracked open flashing the weasel’s grin.
Seabury said nothing.
“Well, are you going to stand there looking dumb?”
“I’m a tourist. Tourists take pictures,” Seabury said.
“I have a better word. Fugitive. That’s what the media’s been calling you since yesterday.”
He looked up at Seabury. The smile deepened across his thin mouth.
“Unfortunately, I’ll need to confiscate the camera and other personnel effects,” he said. “You won’t need them anyway, not where you’re going.”
“And where exactly is that?” Seabury said.
“To prison…or maybe executed, but that’s not up to me. It’s up to the courts to decide.”
“I’m sure you have some valid grounds on which to make the charges. Otherwise I might think that the liters of Lao whiskey that flushes through your gills everyday may have finally wrecked your train.”
“Funny.”
As Tint stepped closer, Seabury looked over his shoulder out across the field. A flash of late afternoon sunlight bounced off the windshield of a military chopper parked on the other side of a grassy knoll. Two soldiers stood next to the chopper, high-powered rifles at arm’s rest. Seabury imagined one was Arrow Nose, the other probably the pilot.
“I see you brought some muscle,” Seabury said. “I think you’re going to need it.”
“Do you know what I’ll most enjoy when all this is over?” Tint said. “Do
you have any idea?”
“Please, don’t keep me in suspense.”
“I’ll enjoy seeing all the nonsense—all the disrespect and stubbornness and insubordination—finally end. I’m really looking forward to it.”
“I’m sure you are,” Seabury said. “But, as for me, I’m not going anywhere. As for you and your sick little game—what did you call it? Oh, yeah, now I remember—the Running of the Bulls. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my escape must have set off a shit storm among your superiors which sabotaged your fledgling military career.”
Tint smiled. “I’d hardly call it fledgling.” He pointed to the medals on his chest. “As you can see, I’ve landed on my feet.”
“If that’s what you want to believe,” Seabury said. “But a rank of Colonel in the Pathet Lao Army is hardly an achievement. It’s the same rank you held years ago as a misguided paramilitary and later as a replacement for an aging alcoholic Cambodian prison warden whom you replaced at Black Swallow Detention Center. I don’t know how you managed to do that, but then I don’t really care. In my view you seem to be stuck in one gear.”
White blunted teeth clipped together inside Tint’s wide leering smile. Beneath the visor his eyes looked cold and sullen. Seabury realized that he’d just stepped beyond the hard, rigid line that exposed dark little secrets about Tint’s past. His history of violence always seemed to end the same way, in senseless acts of brutality and cold-blooded murder.
“I’m not here to discuss my military career—not with you, or anyone else.”
He went into his pocket and brought out an arrest warrant and handed it to Seabury. Seabury looked at the paper and handed it back.
“It’s bullshit, Tint. You know it is.”
“I know you’re not here as a tourist. Eco-tourism, don’t insult my intelligence. I asked you to show up in my office with an itinerary at 9:00 a.m. in Vientiane. You deliberately disobeyed my orders by showing up with one in the middle of the night. You led me to believe you were going to Xiasomboon and that I could expect to see another itinerary when you arrived there. Now it seems that Golden Travel knows nothing about an Eco-tour booked with them under your name.” Tint grinned. “Nice try. But you’re not fooling me.”
He took a step back and for the first time Seabury noticed the QSZ-92, a 5.8 mm, black, sleek looking pistol strapped to his side. The latest development in Chinese state arms. Tint’s hand rested on the handle of the powerful gun. “You traveled here by motorcycle and that in itself raises a few red flags when you could just as easily have taken a plane to Phonsavan. Yesterday morning a few of my men crashed into a ravine just outside the town of Kasi, near the 13/7 Junction. I suppose you don’t know anything about that.”
“No, can’t say I do.”
“Where’s the girl?”
“Back at the monastery.”
Tint’s eyes locked on Seabury. “I wonder why you’re up here alone,” he said, “and not with the girl. Shouldn’t she be here with you now, all lovey-dovey, taking pictures?”
Seabury made no reply.
“But I see she’s not,” said Tint, “and that raises a few more red flags. You see, I know her father and her family, and I can’t in my wildest imagination see what a girl like her would want with someone like you. I know the two of you shared a room last night in a guesthouse above the Big Dipper Bar in Vang Vieng. You’re lucky Ms. Kwan isn’t Lao. There are laws against having sex with Laotian women while here on holiday. They carry the type of jail sentence where a man engaged in these lewd, disgusting acts of passion may never see the light of day.”
“I know the law,” Seabury said.
He glanced out across the field. The last rays of sunlight had vanished into a grove of trees that ringed the perimeter of the field. Seabury noticed the two soldiers. They had moved back away from the chopper and stood along the crest of the grassy knoll, no more than thirty yards away, rifles pushed up to their shoulders, cocked and ready to fire.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” the colonel said, reaching for handcuffs. They were clipped to a wide leather belt around his thin waist. As he was about to unclipped them, two shots rang out and Seabury saw the two soldiers topple over head-first and slide down the front of the knoll, their dead bodies cutting a trail through the thick carpet of wild grass.
Seabury’s hand darted out like the head of a snake, grabbing Tint by the front of his shirt. Buttons popped open. Medals and ribbons flew off the shirt high into the air, falling onto the ground as Seabury pulled Tint down behind one of the stone jars. Bullets riddled the edge of the jar, sending loud pinging noises into the air.
Tint had his pistol drawn. Seabury batted his arm back and punched his face, tore out some teeth and watched his nose go. Blood splattered everywhere. Tint’s face turned into a bloody mask. A second blow left him unconscious. Seabury, wearing the white baseball cap, ripped it off his head and waved it above the rim of the stone jar. His cell phone started ringing.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Who’s the cop,” Greer asked.
“Long story.”
“I said no cops, didn’t I?”
“You think I invited him? I got the money. Now where’s the girl?”
No response.
“Hey, I’ve done my part,” said Seabury, his nerves frayed, his voice edgy now.
“The money’s here. Now where’s the girl?”
The voice crept eerily back over the line. “I’m behind you,” Greer said. “Your head’s in my cross-hairs. The scope never lies. One little squeeze on the trigger, you’re history. So I better see a change in attitude real quick, you got that, Cowboy?”
Seabury’s eyes darted all around. He raised the white cap, waving it back and forth above his head. A bolt of laughter came over the line.
“Better,” Greer said, continuing to laugh.
“Put the girl on. I want to hear that she’s okay. I hear her voice, you can have the money.”
“There you go again, giving orders. How many times do I have to tell you, I make the rules, I call the shots.”
“Okay,” said Seabury, his voice a little softer now. “How do you want to do this? I need to know, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Just move back away from the money,” Greer said. “I saw where you hid it in the brush behind the stone jar. The bag’s blue too, my favorite lucky color. Leave it there and go back to the monastery. I’ll send the girl once I see the money’s there.”
“I need to hear from her. Can you put her on…please?”
“You’re asking now?”
“I’m asking.”
“Maybe I’ve misjudged you. Maybe you’re not so dumb after all.” Greer snickered into the phone and Victoria Hong came on.
“I’m okay, Sam. Please…please do what he says.”
Greer came back on. “Satisfied now?”
“Okay,” Seabury said. “I’m heading back to the monastery. The cop will be out for a while. Let him stay there. I don’t care if he wakes up in the middle of the night. It’s a long story.”
“Anything else?” Greer said, in a mocking tone.
“No. I’m going now.”
Seabury clicked off and returned to the parking lot in front of the monastery. Mabri was dead. Shot in the head with a 9mm Glock. The suppressor was still fixed to the barrel and the gun was pushed into a hollow space under Tory’s jaw.
Tony Sun ordered Seabury into the car. A few minutes later Hyde Greer came down and got into the back seat next to Seabury. Victoria Hong was nowhere in sight.
* * * *
Tony Sun sat behind the wheel of a glossy black, SUV. Twilight turned to darkness now as he raced up the highway. Tory sat up front next to him, shackled to an O-ring on the dashboard. Seabury sat in the back seat in a corner next to Hyde Greer, shackled to another O-ring on the doorframe above his head. Tony Sun drove hard through the night. Hour after hour around sharp hair-pin curves; hour after hour across patches of dark wasteland. Up steep incl
ines and down the other side, then up again, racing on and on, deeper and deeper into mountainous jungle terrain. Darkness covered the road with a frightening sense of silence and foreboding. Headlights sliced through the night with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Dials and switches on the dashboard buzzed and flickered. In the digital glow, Seabury could see Tory cuffed to the dashboard. She sat up straight and looked out the window. She could barely turn her head. Seabury felt bad for her and sadder still for putting her life in danger.
Tony Sun drove on and on, his eyes pinned to the road, concentrating on cracks and potholes in the pavement and negotiating sharp, hair-pin curves. Seabury sat directly in line with the back of his head. He saw hair meticulously groomed in a dark, stylish razor cut. He saw smooth round knobs of bone poking out from beneath his straw-colored shirt. He was aware of Hyde Greer’s eyes watching him, studying him now as he sat in the seat on the passenger’s side next to him.
The Hyde Greer he remembered as a kid was tall, loose-limbed and gangling, with long arms and fast hands that drove blows one after another into his face that day after school when he’d fought hard, but came up short in the fistfight with Greer. This Hyde Greer was entirely different from the one he’d remembered from that fateful day after school long ago. The years hadn’t been kind. The man sitting next to him was tall and bloated, freakishly large, with a small, abnormally shaped head. It shot out of a thick pair of shoulders and was too small for the size of his big body. Seabury figured that maybe Greer was singled out to look harsh and ugly at birth by the wrong genetic code. Dark, thinning brown hair tore out of his scalp in tiny metal-like spikes. His almond eyes were large and dark, like an owl’s eyes, stuffed into a brown skeletal face with harsh Asian features. His mouth was thin-lipped and permanently cast in what looked to Seabury like a serpent’s sly, predatory smile.
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