Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

His heart raced. He looked behind him at the figure sleeping there. A black shape, of course. Not Madame Daeng, of course. Not his own rightful place or dimension-of course. Why, in his own dimension, would he be sharing a bed with a dead major?

And there was another shadow almost as out-of-focus as himself. On its hands and knees it was, searching for something across the room. All Siri got was a grand view of its backside, or perhaps a front view of its headless shoulders. Black against black. How could he know for sure? His heart gently fluttered back to its rightful place as he recognized his role in another nightmare. It had been a while. He knew whatever happened here would not affect his physical being. Not unless his subconscious became so wracked in horror that it caused its live self to hold its breath. Not unless his heart burst in shock. He’d seen the results of both. So he sat calmly and waited.

The figure on the ground edged its way across the parquet. And the shadow slowly gathered into contours and the figure achieved a shape. It was an elderly man. Stocky. Well dressed. There was something familiar about him. He was moving away so there was no sight of his face. His fingers seemed to be clawing at the ground as if he were peeling old varnish from the wooden tiles. Siri called, “Do I know you?”

And just as the figure began to turn, to show its face, a cold hand grabbed Siri by the back of his neck. His heart felt like it had been kicked off a steep ledge. He let out a squeal so shrill he doubted it could have come from his own lips. He slapped away the hand and leapt to his feet. The figure on the ground melted into the shadows. The doctor couldn’t catch his breath. He paced back and forth looking for a rhythm that might start up his lungs.

The major said, “Siri?”

Then spoke again with a different voice.

“Siri?”

“Daeng?”

Madame Daeng climbed from the bed and felt for her husband in the darkness. When she found him she massaged his stalled lungs and calmed him with her words.

“Shh. Shh. It’s a dream, my love.”

He found a breath. He gulped it greedily. He could taste the soot. It was so thick in the air it was like waking up in a house fire-a bitterly cold house fire.

There was a good deal of throat clearing over breakfast. Officially, it was the day they were due to go home-the fifth day. The morning meal today was the last meal on the agenda. From here on the US pantry was bare. They still had no evidence that Boyd was dead or alive. With no team leader, a general who was confined to his bed to conserve oxygen, and a senator who had armed guards stationed at his front door and rear window and daren’t leave his room, nobody really knew who was in charge. Of course, Judge Haeng thought it was himself. He decided there was little point in going outside into the smoke. Instead, he announced that this would be a good day to bag and label all the souvenirs they’d brought back from the crash site. He also insisted the Lao team members begin work on their individual reports. They should be careful to comment on their American counterparts, including any personal knowledge that may have been gleaned during social moments. Siri and his team had about as much intention of writing spy reports as tying themselves by the bootlaces to the rockets at the fertility festival. But they did grab several sacks of wreckage and set up a “by appointment only” group in Siri’s room.

With the addition of Sergeant Johnson, Madame Daeng and Comrade Civilai, the insiders now outnumbered the outsiders at a ratio of five to four. The odds were getting a little ridiculous. The newcomers were briefed in their respective languages. The expanded group discussed matters sitting cross-legged on the floor, all but Secretary Gordon who had trouble getting and remaining in that position. He was allowed a chair. Mr. Geung was stationed behind the curtain. Sergeant Johnson was the star turn, accompanied by Auntie Bpoo on the translation. They wanted to know what circumstances might prompt gaps in a pilot’s flight record. Unnerved by the size of the group, Johnson was reluctant at first to give away what might be considered state secrets. It was only when Civilai assured him that everything the Americans believed to be secret was documented in great detail at the ministry of defence that he relented.

“I wasn’t ever with Air America,” he said. “But you hear things. There was a lot of crossover between different departments. A lot of people passing through town and the military aren’t renowned for keeping its collective mouth shut. Give a guy in uniform a couple of shots of bourbon and he’s your best pal. We heard about one base up at Tahkli in Thailand. It’s a fenced-off compound inside a regular military base. It’s where they parked the U2 spy plane. It’s also the home of a lot of clandestine ops. All the customers up there wear civilian clothes. Now, when I say clandestine, I don’t mean one small secret part of a big CIA master plan. I mean a hell of a lot of little secrets instigated by this ambassador or that general or one or other of the section heads-none of whom have the first idea what the guy in the next office is up to. Hell, I’ve heard about two identical operations set up by different departments run on the same day. Guys were tripping over each other.”

“Now, the reason this place comes to mind, is that some of the pilots I have in mind had that same odd thing going with their time records. They’d put in their sheets at the end of the month and there’d be four days unmarked here, a week there. But they never claimed holidays or sick days. None of the brass ever queried it. One of our fighter pilots called it the Tahkli lottery. If you got lucky and didn’t get yourself killed, you’d come back with a whole heap of money in your pocket.”

“And some didn’t come back?” asked Auntie Bpoo.

“You’d never know,” Johnson told her. “If anyone was MIA it was always swung around somehow to look like a regular mission gone wrong. You won’t find the name of any active US military personnel MIA in Laos unless they got lost. There was a lot of clumsy border misidentification, if you know what I mean. Guess you can’t always trust all that expensive cockpit equipment.”

“So, do you think Boyd might have been deployed on special ops by Air America?” Phosy asked.

“Why not? Air America was CIA.”

“But how would we ever be able to find out what he was involved in?” Dtui asked.

“Ask him,” said Civilai, ever hopeful.

“All right,” said Yamaguchi. “It’s the thing about the flight mechanic that worries me. Boyd returns quite unexpectedly from the grave and within a month his mechanic meets a mysterious end.”

“Not to mention the chief mechanic from Long Cheng,” Siri added. “He died within days of Sebastian. Then there was the pilot Wolff who’d drunk with them on their last night together. Odd that all the American witnesses to that last flight are now out of the reckoning.”

“Except for Boyd,” Civilai smiled.

“You think your pilot’s running around killing everyone, Civilai?” Siri asked.

“Why not? Revenge for getting him addicted to drugs. He’s probably been in an opium den for the last ten years.”

“See, this is something I’ve never really understood about the transfer of Leon from Saigon to Long Cheng,” said Johnson. “If he was involved in ‘inappropriate behavior’ serious enough to have his flying license pulled, what was he still doing in the service? I remember he was using drugs back then, he wasn’t the only one. He got a couple of warnings. So inappropriate behaviour could have been a euphemism for losing control of his habit, or dealing. But if you’re caught at either it’s a dishonorable discharge. You’re out. You don’t get transferred to an inactive post somewhere else in the war. Not even Air America would take you on.”