by Dale A. Dye
He turned the map and studied it, but he couldn’t mask the smile on his face. He lived under a wondrous system now that he was out of his home country. Everywhere he looked there was something of value that he’d purchased for his family. Even a poor farmer could get rich if he had something to sell, something others wanted badly such as information about the American he’d left behind at Camp 413. He was hoping more people would show up to pay him money for this information as he drew a circle on the map and dropped the pencil on the table.
“The camp is right there at the spot I have marked,” he said eyeing the money. “Do you need anything more from me?”
The visitors exchanged looks and nods. Dinh knew which was one was the leader. It was the man in the nice clothing who was sweating in the heat much worse than the others. The other two were hard men and probably former soldiers who were used to the jungle’s torrid climate and high humidity. And they all looked at the man in the nice clothing for approval or instructions.
The man seated to the left of the leader folded the map, stuffed it in a pocket and stood. Dinh reached for the money, but before he could touch it, the man with the scarred face drew a pistol. Dinh raised his hands but he wasn’t quick enough. The pistol barked and his head flew back violently from the impact of two rounds in his right eye.
Justin Halley retrieved the money from the table and stuffed it into a new ostrich-skin briefcase that he’d had a local artisan make for him. He nodded at Breed Toliver and Freddy Carver who stood nearby wearing blank expressions. “Burn the house and the body.”
“When do we head up-country, Colonel?” Carver pulled out a lighter and expertly eyed the thatch roof over their heads.
“Soon…as soon as you’ve got all the equipment we need. Meanwhile, I have an appointment in Bangkok”
Halley took a last look at the dead Vietnamese refugee sprawled with half his head missing, blood and tissue draining through the bamboo floor, and stepped down off the porch of the hut. It was not the first casualty on this mission and it wouldn’t be the last.
j
Willy Pud sat on a sort of throne fashioned from artillery ammo crates in the center of Keo Kittiphan’s empire getting reacquainted with the slightly bitter taste of Bierre la Rue and trying to decide if the diminutive emperor of this jungle domain looked more like a scaled-down version of Pancho Villa or Ming the Merciless. He was certainly a leader with well-established priorities, and that meant business could wait.
He watched the camp residents, mostly former Royal Laotian Army soldiers, laughing, smoking, and swapping lies around a communal campfire and decided he could use a little distraction after the wild helicopter ride that brought him to this Laotian fiefdom in the jungle not far from the Vietnamese border. What Willy Pud remembered of the ride would have prompted an immediate wash-out at any self-respecting flight school.
When they were circling over the camp with his fans and supporters waving gaily on the ground, Keo hauled the old Huey, engine screaming in protest, into a shuddering climb then forced a turn to drop it like a big, flat rock through a small hole in the jungle canopy. As indicated by the splayed and battered skids on his helicopter, Keo had yet to develop a deft landing touch. Willy sat in the cargo compartment, amazed to be alive, while the old aircraft shuddered, wheezed, and settled.
He climbed out on shaky pins while the female crew chief easily shouldered his heavy ruck and hauled it toward a line of thatched huts. Keo’s LZ, sandbagged and well tended with a floor of metal matting, was on an edge of the clearing. Following the woman who was just barely bigger than the rucksack she was carrying, Willy Pud thought the camp looked like a bit like a forward firebase and a lot like a jungle slum. Swirling around the heavily armed, bandy-legged men was a noisy gaggle of women, kids, pigs, and poultry.
Keo climbed down from the cockpit, smiling and waving at the cheers from his minions. Apparently, any flight from which their leader returned intact was cause for celebration. The woman dumped his ruck near a tall banyan tree, grabbed his hand and led him toward the bonfire that seemed to be the central gathering spot in the camp. She pointed at the makeshift chair and handed him a beer that was surprisingly chilled. Keo swaggered over and offered his hand. The man spoke passable English with what sounded like a clipped version of a Jamaican accent.
“You are Willy Pud,” he said smiling around a set of long, strong teeth with gold accents. “Bob sent you to see me?” The names sounded like Wee-lee and Boob. Willy nodded and thanked the man for the ride, complimenting Keo’s piloting skills with what he hoped was a convincing smile.
“Hey, no sweat, GI…ash and trash…combat assault…all same to me. You were in the war?”
“I was,” Willy Pud confirmed. “Marine Corps in Vietnam…but I spent some time in this country too.”
Keo’s eyes lit up. He bashed Willy Pud on the shoulder and dropped into a combat crouch. “Marines bad-ass,” he said taking a couple of jabs at the air with both fists. “Many Marines working in this area before…many spooks…I know them all.”
A platoon of kids swept around the comer of a large thatched hut and headed for them, shouting and waving. Keo beamed and held his arms out as if he were waiting to hug the entire group. He patted a few behinds and wrestled with the kids for a while.
“Keo, can we talk about why I’m here?”
“We talk later…” he said digging in his pocket for hard candy that he tossed to the screaming kids. “…plenty of time.” He herded the kids toward his helicopter and began talking and pointing at various things while the children crawled all over the bird. It was apparently some sort of post-flight ritual. There was nothing Willy Pud could do but sip his beer and watch as Sky King entertained the crowd tossing his hands around like a fighter jock describing a dogfight.
The female crew chief brought him another beer. Willy Pud noticed the dirt and grease ground into her surprisingly delicate hands. Her plaid shirt gaped slightly at the buttons where full breasts strained for release. Scrubbed and stuffed into an ao dai or western clothing she’d be stunning by most standards. Her English was poor but passable on certain subjects. She fired off the nomenclature of Willy Pud’s pistol like a veteran range officer. When that conversation ended, he asked a few questions about her, but was only able to ascertain for sure that her name was Sarang and she thought she might be about 25 years old.
When she wasn’t running for beer or chasing away curious kids, she squatted nearby and ran her fingers through the hair on Willy Pud’s arms. She seemed fascinated with that and the light color of his eyes. She knew the word blue and said it every time she giggled and pointed at his face.
Over by the helicopter, Keo clapped his hands twice. The kids scattered and he walked over toward his guest. Sarang scampered to find a chair and returned with another ammo box and a beer. Keo sat and sipped at the beer. “Now we talk.” He pointed for Willy Pud to proceed.
“Let me get my pack,” he said. “I have some things for you.”
Keo gabbled in Lao and Sarang headed for the tree where she’d dropped his gear. Willy watched the smooth way she moved and the lithe muscle of her legs and butt. Keo chuckled and nodded. “Sarang is very beautiful…very pretty for mechanic.”
“How did she learn about helicopters?”
“Funny story…” Keo cackled. “Very funny story. I am trying to learn flying but is very difficult. I need school, you know? But there is no school here. So I go to Vientiane and look for teacher of flying. I pay much money and one day Sarang comes. She says she was sent to me, but she don’t know why. I find out she is clean-up girl at flying school. They try to cheat me at that place. Take my money but no lessons for Keo…only clean-up girl.” Keo cackled again and drank beer.
“So I am winning in the end. Sarang is much more than clean-up girl. While she is working at flying school, she is learning everything about Bell UH-1 helicopter. She is better than books. I learn about helicopter from her. All the rest is pr
actice, practice, practice.”
And a metric shit-pot full of luck, Willy Pud thought. “Where do you get fuel for the helicopter?”
“Steal it.” Keo laughed again and waved a hand westward. “Vietnam Army trucks carrying jet fuel go by and we raid them. Sometimes take whole truck full of gas. Not so hard,” he grabbed at his crotch, “if you have balls.”
Sarang returned to dump his heavy pack between them and squatted nearby. Willy Pud reached into the bulging ruck and hoped Terranova was right in recommending gifts. He pulled out the first offering, a nomex flight suit, size 36 short and a black baseball cap with “Keo” embroidered around the silver star of a brigadier general on the front.
Keo shook out the suit and admired it for a while, gabbling in Lao with Sarang and holding it up for a crowd that was gathering at a respectful distance. Then he dropped his trousers, stripped off his shirt and climbed into the flight suit, spinning like a model for all to admire. Thank God it fits, Willy Pud muttered under his breath as he watched Keo playing with multiple zippers and pockets. Then he clapped the hat on his head and a huge roar of approval rose from the crowd near the bonfire.
“Very good, very nice…” Keo retrieved his beer and sat. “This is a very good gift.”
“That’s not all a pilot needs,” Willy Pud said and pulled a set of U.S. Army Master Aviator wings from his pack. Keo’s eyes got wider and his smile threatened to reach his ears.
“This I have been wanting for a long time,” he said reverently. Willy Pud reached over and pinned the wings onto the left breast of the flight suit. “Now you are officially a pilot,” he said, hoping that the suit and wings might somehow improve Keo’s skills in the cockpit. He still needed a couple more survivable flights out of the man and his ratty old Huey.
“I am honored by these gifts,” he said at last. “What may I give you in return?”
“I need your help, Keo. I am going into Vietnam to find an American and bring him back to Thailand.”
The Lao bandit sat playing with the zippers on his new flight suit and thought for a while. Then he snapped his fingers at Sarang who produced her recently-acquired pack of Willy Pud’s Winstons. He took one from her and a light from Willy Pud and sat smoking and smiling at the American for a while.
“You are CIA?”
“No, sir,” Willy Pud shook his head, “I’m just a man who needs your help.”
“And this is not a thing you are doing for your government in Washington?”
“It’s something they don’t know about yet.”
Keo sat looking at him for quite a while as he smoked and thought. “I wish help America in any way. Big changes coming in Vientiane…friend of America is very good thing when that happens.”
“I think anyone who helps me with this mission will be a friend of America. If you will help me, I will be sure that everyone knows it was Keo Kittiphan that helped me.”
“And if you bring this man back, many people will listen to you?”
“I think so.”
“OK…good…we talk business.” Keo finished his beer and sent Sarang for a couple more. Then he leaned forward with elbows on his knees. “You wish me to fly you into Vietnam?”
“No. That would be too dangerous. I do not wish for anyone to know I am there until the last moments. Just get me as close to the border as you can. Then return for me when I have found my man and fly me back to where you picked me up.”
“There are many dangers,” Keo said. He seemed hesitant and Willy Pud upped the ante. From the pouch on his pack, he pulled out a small velveteen pouch and untied the drawstring. He showed Keo the gold bar he’d purchased in Thailand as his trump card. It was worth about $3,800 U.S. on the market. Guys like Keo didn’t have much use for greenbacks, but they could negotiate for any currency needed with gold.
Hefting the ingot in his hand, Keo reached for a rusty can-opener, and scraped enough of a gouge to reassure himself that the bar was what it appeared to be beneath the lustrous surface.
“We go to my house,” he said standing and dropping the gold into a pocket of his new flightsuit. “You have maps?”
Sarang picked up Willy Pud’s rucksack and followed them toward a long, low hut on stilts built on a small hill near the LZ. She dropped her burden near the steps leading inside and walked toward a nearby pad to fire up a Honda generator. The sun was beginning to sink toward the treetops and shadows were darkening the camp, but when she got the generator sputtering, a spray of lights went on inside the hut. Keo nodded and led the way. Inside, his house was festooned with Japanese electronic gadgets ranging from a noisy refrigerator to complex stereo components and four or five oscillating fans. All were humming, blinking and whirling with generator current.
No big surprise, Willy Pud thought as he got seated at a long table in the middle of the room. If they can steal fuel for a helicopter, they can steal gas to run a few generators. When they were seated at the table, Willy Pud pulled a copy of the Salt and Pepper photo out of a folder and laid it between them. Keo studied it carefully. “Which man is the man you wish to bring out of Vietnam?”
Willy Pud pointed out Cleveland Herbert Emory. Keo nodded and tapped a finger on the image of Pepper. “And what of this one?”
“I don’t know, Keo. We know nothing about him except who he was and that he once fought with the VC.”
“He is here.” Keo laughed and shook his head. “We see him all the time.”
“That man is here in Laos?” Willy Pud was staggered. He was struggling to believe Pepper might also be alive and close to where he was sitting in a jungle camp. “Are you sure it’s the same man?”
Keo picked up the photo and held it closer to a lamp. “I know he is not a native. There are no black men among my people. The man we see on patrols looks like this one…maybe a little different…” Keo made squishing motions around the sides of his head. “His head is different than the picture but all else looks the same to me. He is here.” Keo pointed at a spot on the map very close to the camp. “Maybe five kilometers from here. He lives with a Vietnamese woman. I am told she will have a baby soon.”
Willy Pud’s knees were trembling under the table. This was the very last thing he expected when he embarked on the mission. There might be a chance to return with both Salt and Pepper. “Could you take me to him?”
“Of course,” Keo smiled. “We can go there tomorrow if you wish.”
j
Dinner was delicious, egg-flower soup followed by spicy chicken and rice, but Willy Pud barely tasted any of the food Sarang ladled into his bowl. He sat stunned by the sudden realization that Pepper was also alive. It had to be Theron Clay. There was virtually no other explanation. He had a chance to get them both. He sat near the campfire for hours after dinner trying to sketch out a plan that would work in bringing both traitors to justice.
Around midnight he crawled onto a bamboo sleeping platform in a hut near Keo’s headquarters. He was sore and tired but sleep wouldn’t come. His mind was full of stimulating images that he couldn’t ignore. He rolled over onto his back with his eyes closed, listening to old familiar jungle sounds and wishing Spike was still alive to hear about this staggering revelation.
A dark form appeared in silhouette at the door of the hut. It lingered there for a few moments and then moved in his direction. Sarang whispered her name and bowed when she reached his cot. She dropped the sarong she was wearing and let it fall to the floor. Then she lifted the poncho liner that Willy Pud had draped over himself mostly to keep mosquitoes off his naked body. She slithered next to him in a series of slow, sensual undulations. She licked gently at his neck and then sank her teeth into his earlobe. Willy Pud rolled over onto her and breathed the petroleum scent in her hair. He counted that a good omen.
j
A small, fastidious man with badly cut hair and tinted glasses reached inside the jacket of a cheap suit and handed a card to the headwaiter. Justin Halley watched as the waiter poi
nted in his direction and then stood to shake hands with the bureaucrat from the Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. He pointed at seat across the table and accepted another card, printed on one side in Vietnamese and Thai, and on the other side in English.
His phone call had elicited the services of an attaché from the Ministry of Economics and Trade. As good as any, Halley thought as he waved for a waiter, they all sleep in the same bed. Mr. Le Phuoc Trinh neatly arranged a leatherette notebook and ballpoint pen next to his plate and ordered black coffee.
“I was very happy to hear that you called, Mr. Halley. My country has suffered under the American embargo and we welcome such overtures from private industry.”
“Well, you understand this meeting is just preliminary, Mr. Trinh. The feeling at Emory Technology is that we should put the war behind us, heal the wounds, so to speak, and get on with business.”
“If American politicians shared that attitude, we would all be better off and in a better position economically.” Trinh mopped at his nose with a napkin and then pulled a small round tin out of his pocket. Halley tried not to wince as Trinh dug a glob of pungent Tiger Balm salve with his little finger and then shoved it deep into a nostril. He’d have to get down to business with this guy or risk losing his appetite.
“Mr. Trinh, my government does a number of things that are not supported by private industry. There are, in fact, some things we oppose. I have reason to believe something like that is happening right now, up near the northwestern border of your country.”
Trinh paused with his finger halfway to the other nostril. “Are we not here to discuss business, Mr. Halley?”
“Of course we are. And you must know that the basis for all business dealings is honesty and respect. I am merely trying to open some doors here.”
Trinh took Halley’s meaning, wiped the clot of salve onto his napkin, and flipped open his notebook. “I am prepared to convey, any information you may have to my superiors in Hanoi.”