Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

“No.”

“She’ll love it.”

He pulled away.

“Are you c … crying?”

“It’s the smoke, honey. The smoke.”

It was four thirty on day three and they’d found nothing. Fourteen people had been scouring the earth for the best part of the day and they’d found not a shard of metal, not a bullet, not a tooth. Not a damned thing. They’d walked the grids with their machetes and grass hackers then covered them again on their knees. They’d had to trust the word of Ar the headman who swore that area had never been bombed and no villagers, buffalo or dogs within a twenty kilometer radius had ever been blown up. Even so, the teams were reluctant to dig too deeply into the hard earth. Auntie Bpoo, not a paid member of the team, had spent most of her time in a hammock watching Siri, waiting for his untimely death. She assured him that once his time came she’d know how to deal with it. He hoped it wouldn’t come during one of her snoozes.

At one stage, Siri had found himself foraging beside Second Secretary Gordon. The American had a working knowledge of the Thai language which was close enough to Lao to make a conversation possible. Siri had begun with personal questions because he knew the visitors liked to have their ice broken. Gordon was single, a career diplomat with sights on an ambassadorship some day.

He’d been posted in Ho Chi Minh City-then still called Saigon-for four years during the war. He was born in the year of the horse, a fact that seemed to be very important to him, as was learning that Siri was a dragon. At last, Siri got around to the point.

“Did you get a chance to read Captain Boyd’s service record?” he asked.

Gordon hesitated.

“Yes.”

“Were there other blips in the pilot’s past?” he asked. “Was he a habitual drug and alcohol user?”

“From what I could tell there was just that one occasion,” Gordon told him. “I’m not even sure he liked to drink that much.”

“And no other disciplinary problems?”

“He didn’t have one black mark on his record.”

“But the Air America people covered up the true events of his disappearance that night. They could very well have ignored other such lapses.”

“You know, Doctor? Despite its obvious CIA and government connections, Air America was a company. They had regulations and standards. If any of their pilots screwed up they had no problems about kicking them out. There was always a supply of young men in search of adventure to replace them.”

“So what happened? What happened that was so drastic that our perfect airman suddenly lost control?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you have access to the interview documents?”

“The people Air America interviewed after the crash?”

“Yes.”

“They have a copy at the embassy in Vientiane. I didn’t get to look at it in any detail. I do remember they spent a long time talking to the Filipino mechanic and one of the pilots, a Raven. That’s what they called the crazy forward air command guys. The pilots who flew in and guided the bombing raids. They were the three getting stoned together that night. The Raven got killed in action a few weeks after Boyd disappeared.”

“Is there any way of getting a copy of the interviews up here?”

“That looks less likely with every passing hour. They don’t have a fax at the post office and we can’t have it flown here, for obvious reasons.”

“Do you know if anyone on this mission has read the complete report?”

“Major Potter went through it in detail before we left. He could probably tell you what the witnesses said.”

Siri’s instincts were kicking in. Something told him the current search wouldn’t yield any clues to Boyd’s disappearance. But there was something odd going on. He could really use a little supernatural intervention on this one. Since his arrival in Xiang Khouang, Siri had become aware that there’d been very little contact from the spirit world. In many respects it was a blessing. Before his departure his dreams had been overcrowded with disgruntled Khmer souls stuck to his subconscious like moths on drying paint. They’d exhausted him to the point that his waking hours were more restful than sleep. Here in the north he’d slept nights and had no recollections of supernatural nocturnal encounters. He still wore his white stone talisman on a string of plaited hair around his neck but it was starting to feel more like an ornament than a force field against the malevolent phibob . Even his angel mother had missed the flight. For almost a year, the old lady with lips red with betel nut had followed him around, offering warnings and unfathomable advice. If Auntie Bpoo’s prediction was accurate, he really could use a little spiritual backup. Instead, he had to emulate his long-time hero, Inspector Maigret of the Paris Surete, and use his brain. There was never a useful ghost around when you most needed one.

He abandoned his search for relics he knew for certain they’d never find, and went in search of Inspector Phosy. After a brief consultation they walked together over the ridge to Ban Hoong where everyone seemed to be going about their business. Rice huskers husked, grain pounders pounded, and chicken pluckers plucked in their time-frozen warp. The headman’s son was still sitting in the middle of the central square with his collection of insects. He currently had three in active service buzzing around his hat at the end of their tethers. The peak of the cap provided a perfect landing platform. While Siri and Ugly stood watching him with the same fascinated expressions on their weathered faces, Phosy gathered together the village elders for an impromptu meeting.

“We’re working at the place you led us to,” Phosy told them. “We were wondering whether anyone in the village has ever come across wreckage from the crash there.”

The elders huddled and Phosy sat on the bench provided for them. The answer was no.

“Then, apart from the tailplane falling through your roof, you have no other physical evidence that the craft came down where your sorceress said it did,” Phosy continued.

The answer was no.

“How old was your sorceress?”

“Ninety-two,” came the reply.

“And she was in control of her faculties?”

“No, she was as mad as a loon,” came the reply.

“And what did this mad old woman say when everyone awoke in the morning?”

“Nothing,” came the reply. “She was unconscious after hitting her head on a branch. She didn’t wake up for three days.”

“And when she came round, what did she say then?”

“She said the sky dragon had crashed into the moon and sent it bursting into the jungle to the east.”

“And she was certain of the location?”

“Yes.”

“Did you notice the charred jungle and the smell of smoke when you passed in that direction?”

“No,” they said.

“And you didn’t think that was odd?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t question her word?”

“She’d been our sorceress for sixty years. She’d birthed many of us. It would have been disrespectful to doubt her word. She’d never once lied to us.”

Siri wandered into the meeting hut. He and Phosy consulted.

“Did she develop any peculiar conditions in her later life?” Phosy asked them. “Anything you noticed that was unlike her?”

They huddled again.

“There was one thing,” they said.

The teams were gathering their equipment and preparing for the hike back to the trucks when Siri and Phosy marched jauntily out of the jungle.

“Of course you can both afford to be smiling,” said Judge Haeng. “We’re all here digging and scratching like peasants while you two run off into the woods together. Don’t think we didn’t notice. If you don’t want your per diem docked you’d better have a good excuse.”