Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

“Would it help that we’ve found the real helicopter crash site?” Siri asked.

“Where?” said Madame Daeng.

“How?” asked Civilai.

Peach passed on the news to the Americans and they gathered around. Phosy told of the ninety-two-year-old sorceress who’d pointed to the crash site and the fact that in her twilight years she’d started to confuse words, particularly opposites. She would say no but mean yes. Say left but mean right.

“It’s a condition called Gerstmann syndrome,” Siri told them. “It’s particularly pronounced when talking about directions. The speaker isn’t confused. She honestly sees a mirror image of an event taking place in a different location. In this case it appears she saw the moon explode in the east. She’d watched the helicopter crash and seen the trees burst into flames. When she came out of her coma she was convinced the event took place right here but in fact it all happened to the west of the village. We went to look in the opposite direction and found the site just two kilometers away.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Haeng. “Two kilometers from the village and nobody there noticed it?”

“What the villagers found there was a large area burned to a crisp. They assumed it was set alight by one of the fleeing Hmong groups to prepare the land for planting. That wouldn’t have been at all surprising in this region, given the number of villages that have been forcibly re located. There are burnt out areas all through these hills. And this doesn’t look like a crash site. There was no obvious debris-just a black, treeless patch of earth. The villagers are afraid of the place. It’s been ten years since the crash but nothing grows there. They call it the dead man’s field.”

After the translation Sergeant Johnson spoke excitedly to the interpreter.

“That would suggest the explosion was fierce and the resulting fire gave off excessive heat,” said Peach. “If that was so, the helicopter must have been carrying something volatile, probably a high explosive. A normal helicopter crash wouldn’t have caused so much devastation. The sergeant wants to know if there was a crater.”

“There’s a pond,” said Siri. “A large pond with no pond life at all. We wondered whether it could have been a crater. The odd thing is that it’s right at the front edge of the clearing. You’d expect a crater to be at the center.”

“But how can you be so certain it was the helicopter crash site?” Judge Haeng asked.

“Something went down there,” said Siri, upending his cloth shoulder bag and emptying a small mound of objects onto the ground. Everyone gathered around. “We were only there for half an hour but we found these.”

In the pile they recognized a petrol cap, melted but in one piece, various bolts and screws all slightly deformed, and what could have once been the trigger of a pistol. The largest sliver of metal was no bigger than a thumb. There was nothing to identify helicopter H32 but the discovery certainly buoyed the mood of the searchers. Were it not for the thickening of the air and the murkiness of the late afternoon, they would gladly have headed to the dead man’s field right then. But as they walked back to the trucks they talked excitedly of plans for the following day.

The porter who had been caught in the morning blast was bruised but had made a remarkable recovery. He told them it wasn’t the first time he’d been blown up and probably wouldn’t be the last. Judge Haeng had insisted Madame Daeng apologize for her practical joke and assure all the porters that there was no such thing as a drop adder. Even so, they walked with their eyes pointed heavenward for the entire journey and were relieved to reach the trucks. The drivers were woken up and the convoy headed back to Phonsavan along the rough dirt tracks.

Siri and Phosy had arranged to sit on the flat bed of one of the vehicles with Major Potter. He had been uncharacteristically quiet for much of the day. Auntie Bpoo served as translator. To the major’s surprise, and subsequent delight, the transvestite not only translated his words using a fair impersonation of his voice, but also mimicked his mannerisms. The show obviously improved the old soldier’s mood. Siri and Phosy asked what exactly had caused the explosion that morning.

“I’ve been trying to work that out all day,” said Bpoo as Potter. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Is there any way you might have accidently armed the dynamite when you were … tired last night?” Siri asked.

“I’d have to be more than tired to do a damned fool thing like that,” the major said. “I could be knock-down drunk and still I’d have respect for the tools of my trade. Any of you guys work with dynamite before?”

Phosy had. He knew that unarmed dynamite was unlikely to explode from a small knock unless it was old and unstable. The type of explosives they used in the military had come a long way since Mr. Nobel blew up his family and friends while he was inventing the stuff.

“And did you recheck your bag before we left this morning?” Siri asked.

“No,” said the major. “I’d put the dynamite in a pocket of my pack the day before and I’d had no cause to use it. But it was under my bed all night and the chargers were in a different bag. None of them is missing. Look, I know what you guys are thinking,” he said. “I like a drink now and then. You’ve got it into your heads that I got shitfaced and did something stupid.”

Neither Phosy nor Siri indicated that they thought otherwise. Bpoo, as Potter, continued.

“But let me tell you this. I’ve been plenty drunk often enough. But it wouldn’t happen that I lost that instinct for personal survival. The dynamite was fresh and safe. That pack exploded ’cause someone wanted it to.”

“You think it was sabotage?” said Siri.

“I tell you, I’m real sorry this happened, but it had nothing to do with incompetence. In thirty years I never made a mistake. Not once. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to change the subject to weird sex.”

The Lao were shocked. They wondered whether they’d misheard the translation. Siri turned to Auntie Bpoo.

“What did he say?”

“I’m sorry, he said he wants to change the subject to, you know, sex,” she told him.

“He did not.”

“Yes, he … OK, but I bet he’d join in soon enough if we started,” Bpoo smiled. “He’s got some great stories.”

Siri laughed.

“Bpoo, you’re an interpreter. You can’t just make it up as you go along. Just tell us what he’s actually saying, will you?”

“You may recall I’m not an interpreter at all. I’m a fortuneteller, local celebrity and bon vivant. And I’m excruciatingly bored with all this dynamite talk. Get little miss teen dream over if you want a serious job done. Life’s too short for being morose.”

The major was feeling left out. He interrupted Bpoo and they locked into a serious discussion before she grabbed hold of his hand and started to read his palm. She was lost to the world of interpretation.

Had there been a sun visible, they would have seen it setting just as they arrived at the Friendship. The building was nestled in a thick mist like a blurry uncle in a soft gray armchair. The senator and his secretary were seated on the rattan chairs on the front veranda wearing borrowed mufflers. They were writing flip charts for their next dangerous mission. There were coffee cups in front of them and various files and folders. Siri climbed down from the truck and did an inventory of his aches by cracking all his bones. He marveled at the number of tunes his skeleton had learned to play over recent years. He and Civilai often discussed joining a traditional orchestra as the percussion section. He stood back and observed the teams as they entered the building. There was a lot to be learned from the way people interacted.