by Cole Alpaugh
“It is the oppressive Thai regime that has forced our hand.” Lima replaced his glasses, an unimposing jihadist leader, with thick jowls and a complexion ruined by too many hours in the sun.
“And when will you be releasing the bats?”
Lima smiled. “In two days time, Mr. Allen, on the fifth of May.”
“Coronation Day,” Chase added. The papers had been filled with stories and photos of the upcoming anniversary of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s coronation.
“I’ve been told that American journalists would sell their souls for an exclusive story. Would that be a fair assessment, Mr. Allen?”
Yeah, well, of course it was true, Chase thought. “Yes, Mr. Lima, that’s a fair statement. So how are you getting the bats to Bangkok?”
“Shortly before daybreak on the morning of the coronation, twelve helicopters carrying seven freezers each will be dispatched to their targets,” Lima gleefully explained. “Each of your very well constructed American appliances holds roughly six thousand explosive devises. Allahu Akbar!”
Chase did the quick math in his head.
“Here is my offer to you.” Lima paused for effect, again removing and wiping his glasses on his dusty uniform. “Would you like a ride on our thirteenth helicopter?”
Chase smiled and reached across to shake his hand, saying, “I would rather not refer to it as selling my soul.”
“Terrific news. Allahu Akbar!” Lima rose, still clenching Chase’s hand, pumping away. “I knew you would be interested in bringing news of this great victory to the world.”
“My job as a journalist is to reflect events as they happen. The teacher and three girls will be set free?”
“Of course, of course they will.” His face split into a wide jowly smile. “They’ll receive their freedom at the conclusion of our successful mission, Allahu Akbar!” He lowered his voice. “Our mission is perfect. It is a mission of Allah and there can be no flaws in His will. You will join me and my generals for dinner tomorrow tonight when they arrive from Patani. I’m sure you have many more questions.”
And Chase did. Like, how to blow up this mountain in the next day or two, while rescuing Beth and her kids, and still get his own ass out alive.
“I’ll hold you to your word to set them free. I’ll write this story and see that the entire world understands your views, but not at the expense of innocent children or the teacher.”
“You think Muslim children are not innocent? This entire operation is to ensure the future of my children and my people against the repression and suffering inflicted by this country’s illegal regime.”
“I’m a journalist here in this country doing a story about a peace mission. I’m just asking that Beth and her kids survive your successful mission and are set free.”
“Our mission is one of peace as well.” Lima signaled his men to take Chase away. “It is in the hands of God.”
The soldier with the AK-47 pushed Chase into the hall. Lima’s radio crackled and the hanging clump of bats screeched a response.
It was all hands on deck for Lima’s four hundred men to arm the remaining bats with their small packs of explosives in order to be ready for Friday’s coronation. Each passing hour brought more shouting and running soldiers, hurrying to respond to various orders of more wire, more detonators, and more straw to tuck between the bats.
Beth played tea party with the captive girls, sipping pretend cups and telling them stories about her family back in Massachusetts. They laughed to tears when she explained the name of her dog, Flea Bag. They sat in silent awe when she described Christmas at the Flanagan house, and how a fat jolly elf flew a reindeer-driven sleigh across the sky to bring presents down the chimney. The girls fingered the small pieces of loose gravel on the floor as she described packing icy-cold snowballs and they laughed again as she told how she’d scored a direct hit, right between her older brother’s eyes. The little girls tried hard to picture a tree inside a house, strung with electric lights and colored glass balls. They asked question after question about the presents and where they came from, and how Santa Clause knew what to get each child. A list? This magic man knew when children were bad and when they were good?
“Why doesn’t Santa Claus come to Thailand?” asked the youngest.
Orders were barked just outside their cave-like room. The hurried pace of the footsteps became more frenetic, as Chase’s watch ticked past midnight.
Probably because no soldier could be spared, the three children were left in Beth’s care, and there was no reason to return her to Bua Yai. Let them send a message of the missing American girl to Peace Corps headquarters in Bangkok; it was far too late for them to cause any trouble. Just after one in the morning, two soldiers banged open their door with another army cot and a filthy, twin-size mattress, returning a few minutes later with bowls and pots of soup and rice.
When the soldiers were gone and the girls were asleep again, Chase asked Beth to draw a diagram in the dust on the floor of every detail she could remember of the mountain compound. Each detail she could recall about the other four freezer chambers, the bunkrooms housing the soldiers, and the generator room. And what passageway connected to the room where the helicopters were fueled and ready to go.
“It’s getting close, isn’t it?” Beth asked, working on her dirt diagram.
He checked his watch again. “Yeah, it’s Wednesday morning, now. They lift off with the bats before daybreak on Friday.”
“For Bangkok? For the ceremonies?”
“Yes, the anniversary of the coronation.”
“There will be a million people. The morning ceremony is at the Royal Grand Palace and the King arrives in a long procession from his home at Chitralada Palace. It’s a sea of people.” Beth shook her head and held her face in her hands.
“This is the only exit you know of?” Chase pointed toward her diagram to where a main passage emptied at the base of the mountain. She’d marked off spaces to show the helicopter landing pads.
“Yes. It slopes down from here maybe forty feet, but it’s hard to say for sure.”
“No other exits? Nothing here to the left of us?”
“Not that I know of. The deepest part of the cave goes directly in from the base of the mountain. That’s where we collected at least half of the bats. I’ve never been to the end of the cave, but it has to be a dead end. Even with the helicopter blades spinning and all the noise right at the mouth of the cave, the bats always exit through this opening.
“It’s not passable anyway,” she continued. “The deeper you get into the cave, the deeper the guano is. It starts out shin deep; then it’s like walking through a waist-high snow drift. Twenty feet later and we had to bring in ladders and wood planks, or you’d sink in over your head. That far into the cave it always sounds like it’s sleeting from the defecating bats.”
“What’s this room?” Chase pointed to a circle she’d indicated off one of the passageways.
“It’s the latrine. It’s out our door to the right, then a cut out on the right side. It’s fairly large, maybe twenty feet square.”
“Where does the waste go?”
When Beth said she didn’t know, Chase decided to see for himself. Plus, he had to take a leak. Their door wasn’t locked, but when he stepped into the hallway he was immediately bowled over by a soldier jogging blindly behind a box of plastique explosives. The soldier fell over Chase, the unarmed explosives tumbling out and spilling everywhere.
The soldier cursed in Arabic, but was more relieved not to have blown up than angry. He was grateful for Chase’s help finding every last piece. He thanked him then, praising Allah before rushing onward.
Chase followed and then turned into the alcove housing a series of eight traditional squat toilets. Instead of porcelain bowls, these had simple wooden platforms, with holes in the middle for the user to squat over. They were like good old American outhouse stations, but directly on the floor. The fifty-gallon drum half-filled with water and smaller bucket
meant they didn’t work like an outhouse, though. An outhouse would require lime, or something else to kill the smell. The smell in here was no worse than an airport bathroom. The water bucket meant the waste was being flushed to somewhere.
After taking a long, relieving piss down the hole, he carefully pried up one of the two-foot by two-foot wood platforms. The hole was pitch black, but was definitely bored out with a drill at about a fifty-degree angle outward, away from the hallway. He poured half a bucket of water and carefully listened, but there was no splash-down, just fast moving water, which disappeared in the dark as the sound trailed off. The direction of the angle was encouraging, away from the center of the mountain.
He replaced the platform, trying to come up with an idea for a better test, but a group of sweating, harried soldiers burst into the latrine, noisily griping about some stupid-ass order or the lousy food. It was always the same, no matter what army you hung out with.
The soldiers ignored Chase as they started dropping trousers. He headed back to Beth and the sleeping girls.
If Beth was right and they were forty feet above ground level, where would the latrine holes lead? At a fifty-degree angle, the usual angle of a stepladder, the hole would be a little over sixty feet long, which meant a forty-foot drop. Math gave Chase headaches in school. What if he got this wrong? What if instead of climbing into the toilet holes and sliding safely out of the mountain, they slid into a large natural pool chamber, somewhere in the dark guts of the mountain? There would be no way to climb back up, for sure. And how deep had four hundred soldiers made the cesspool over the last six months?
“What did you find out?” Beth whispered over the sleeping girls.
“That I’d sure like to find a better way out of here. Have you seen the generators?”
“Yes, a while ago.” She was gently rubbing the backs of the sleeping girls.
“What do they look like? How big and do they have wheels?”
Beth closed her eyes to picture them. “Most of them are the same brand, or at least look alike. I’d guess there are eight, maybe ten at most. They’re red, with a bar that runs around them like a bumper. They have two wheels in back, away from where the wires plug in. That’s pretty much it.” She opened her eyes.
“Okay, so these are small, portable generators, probably four-stroke engines,” he said. “Fifty-five hundred watts each would be enough to keep all the freezers running on their lowest setting and still power the lights.”
“But if you manage to shut them down, the top layers of bats will be awake within a few hours. They’ll start blowing up.”
“How long for the bats to wake up if the freezers are open an inch or so?”
“Thirty minutes, maybe? But I’ve seen the bats wake up and just crawl deeper into the freezer to hide. They end up back to sleep in a cold pocket.”
“We just need to knock out one generator. Portable generators run on fuel, like unleaded gas or diesel. They probably top off the tanks every five or six hours. They might not notice one that’s stalled. At least long enough for us get out. It’s gotta be noisy as hell in there. Did you see where or how they vented the exhaust?”
“No, they weren’t even turned on when Lima showed them to me. How are we going to knock out a generator?”
“Wake the girls quietly,” he told her. “We’re going to have to make a game out of this. The opening they cut for the power cords that run from the freezers to the generators is the best bet. But we won’t fit.” He motioned to the girls with his head. “What do you think?”
“Sugar in the gas tank?”
“Something like that. More like dust in the oil intake. It’ll score the pistons and chambers, and the engine should seize without a lot of smoke. Anything in the gas tank might hit the filter and not work for us.”
Beth cooed and snuggled the girls slowly awake, then led them down to the toilet, where she stood guard at the door. Soldiers continued their march up and down the passageway, bringing more loads of explosives and detonators to the freezer chambers. The mountain continued to hum with energy, as Beth quietly returned with the girls and closed the door behind.
“Tell them they have to listen to everything we tell them,” he began, and Beth translated. The girls huddled on the mattress around her as Chase knelt on the floor facing them. The youngest was five and the other two were eight. “It’s almost time for you to go home, but we have to do something that may seem really hard when I explain it.”
Beth again translated and the girls stared at her and nodded.
“My name is Chase. Can you say that?” After Beth’s translation, they all gave it a whispered try. “And your names are?”
Beth helped the shy girls. “Sunee, Kama, and Mali.”
“I know that you miss your friends at school and I know that you are very brave girls. And I am trying to guess which of you is the bravest. Is it you?” Chase asked, motioning to the smallest, but she shrank into Beth.
One of the older girls, Mali, sat up tall and told Beth that she was the bravest. She had been regularly stealing food for the hungry trio, late at night.
“Do you know the sound of the motors, Mali?” Chase asked, and they all nodded. “The motors make electricity for the lights and for other things. If I can teach Mali how to make the motor of one stop, then we’ll be able to run away from here and go back to your friends.”
Mali protested to Beth that she didn’t know anything about motors except that they were noisy, and the only one she’d ever seen was attached to the bicycle Beth sometimes drove back home.
“Mali, you don’t have to know about motors.” He reached down to scoop a handful of dust. “You just have to know what makes motors stop working.”
Chase shrugged his shoulders and held out the scoop of dirt for all to see.
“This is it,” he explained. “A brave girl who turned a small screw on the side of a motor and fed it a handful of sand would be a hero, wouldn’t she?”
All three girls sat staring at him, sizing him up. In the dust Chase drew a cartoonish picture of the generator, showing the round cap to be removed when adding oil or, in this case, dirt. He made a twisting motion to the left with his wrist, then mimicked pouring the dirt in. Since they couldn’t know how much dirt would be available in that room, Mali would have to bring her own. And they’d just have to be sure to have her follow the freezer cords that matched up to the generator she was disabling.
“And there’s another job that two girls who are also very brave can do. Do you want to know what that is?”
The girls looked at each other then nodded their heads while he reached for a few small rocks that had been swept to the edges of the room.
“Do you know the refrigerator in the kitchen at school? There are things just like the refrigerator at school, only they are lying down. They make things cold, right?”
The girls nodded.
“Well, we want to let some of the cold air out. So Sunee and Kama will open the refrigerators and put a few stones in the doors so they won’t close back up. And Miss Beth and I will help you do this, okay? Easy?”
The girls again sat quietly staring, thinking.
“It’s almost time to go home, Mali,” Chase said to the bravest girl, and she nodded her head before saying something to the others in Thai.
All three girls climbed off the mattress and began scooping thin handfuls of fine dirt and collecting the small stones from the perimeter of the room, gathering the treasure in their shirts. Mali had the idea to remove their socks and use them to store and carry the dirt and stones.
“They’ll have wired this place to blow up,” Chase told Beth, while the girls worked. “You and the girls aren’t needed. The longer we wait, the better the chance they’ll walk in here and kill you. You’re still alive because Lima wants me to do the story. But nothing’s stopping him from taking you all out of my sight and just being done with you.”
“How do we get out?”
“Easy,” Chase said. �
�Right down the crapper, just like Alice down the rabbit hole.”
“What are we waiting for?” she asked with a smile.
When Mali had enough dirt and the other two had collected all the loose stones from the room, Chase had them huddle with Beth while casually opening the door. Every few minutes, one or two soldiers hustled by, oblivious to their cave room or anything going on inside.
“Come,” Chase hissed, a finger pressed to his lips for silence. They snuck into the corridor, Chase in the lead and Beth taking up the rear. The cavern holding the freezers stocked with armed bats was about forty feet dead ahead. The noise from the large appliances seemed louder than ever. They stepped down into this room and Chase led Mali along the skinny pathway to the mess of wires and the small hole in the wall, while Beth and the other two went to work propping the freezer doors open with pebbles. Sunee, the other eight-year-old, had no problem breaking the cold suction, but the youngest struggled against the weight of the door.
Chase picked out a particular heavy-gauge wire and indicated to Mali that this was the one to follow. She crawled into the low archway and disappeared without a word into the darkness, dragging her sock full of fine dirt along with her.
Beth and the girls plucked a few more stones from the floor of this room and finished with the last freezer doors before crawling over to where Chase waited for Mali to reappear.
Minutes passed and there was no change in the drone of the engines somewhere at the other end of the dark hole. Chase checked his watch and tried to decide on a time limit for her return. Even if she was caught, he might still be able to get the others out. They’d have a limited number of soldiers to waste on a hunt.
When four minutes had passed, Chase motioned for Beth to stay put. He stood, lifted the lid of the nearest chest enough to reach inside and carefully remove one of the armed bats, then knelt back down. Beth replaced most of the stones he’d knocked free. Kama’s eyes grew large at the terrifying creature and Sunee put her hand over the little girl’s mouth to stifle a scream.