Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

“‘I escaped to Thailand,’” Gordon continued to recall the note. “‘I met a local girl and found work. It’s a comfortable life. I almost forgot all about you and your disloyalty, et cetera. But I see from the newspaper that you’re a bigwig now and you’ve got your finger in a money pie. So I’ve decided to claim my inheritance. I could use half a million dollars as soon as possible. Not a bad price when you consider everything I know. Everything I could tell them at your appropriations committee meetings.’ And then there were suggestions on how to get the money over here. That was the gist of it.”

“So that’s why Senator Bowry was so confident that it was his son in the photos,” Phosy said.

“Actually, no,” Gordon said. “He didn’t ever see the note.”

“You held it back?”

“For two reasons. One, it would have diverted the senator’s attention away from this MIA mission. We wouldn’t have had any control at all if he went off in search of his son in Thailand. And secondly, we knew it wasn’t Captain Bowry who sent the note.”

“What?” said Daeng. “Then who was it?”

“Leon. The head mechanic at Long Cheng. We knew about him from Potter’s files and embassy reports. We have quite a database of American expatriates living in Thailand, especially ex-servicemen. A lot of them find themselves a bar to run and don’t move very far from it. The note gave a PO box in Pattaya as a return address. It was registered in the name of a guy who has shares in the same bar as Leon. Seems the older he got, the stupider he got.”

“I know how that feels,” said Civilai.

“It didn’t take us long to get the connection to Leon. We went to see him, me and Major Potter. He was surprised we’d found him. It took us a while to convince him we were only interested in getting something on Vogal but if he didn’t cooperate we had enough evidence to put him away. We told him we’d try to keep the police out of it if he told us where we could find Boyd Bowry. He thought that was funny. Boyd was dead, he told us. Leon had set up the whole thing with the photographs. He’d met a guy in a bar who bore a passing resemblance to Captain Boyd and shot some pictures of him at the local ethnic culture park. He’d thrown in the briefcase for effect. We asked him how he could know Boyd didn’t survive the crash. He told us how the chopper was fitted with a tracer. Leon had a radar tracker. He knew exactly where the craft went down. He was working out of the same office as the flight control team. He was on duty late on the night of the crash. He was in a position to give false locations to the search and rescue teams. He hadn’t really heard the explosion. It was just another way to confuse the search.”

“As soon as Air America had given up on Boyd, Leon flew in there to take a look round. It appears Boyd almost made it. He’d somehow avoided the explosion. I guess we know how he did that now. Lowered himself down on the cable. Incredible that he should even try. Leon found his body mangled up in the trees. He dragged him down and buried him. Leon didn’t actually confess to being the one who sabotaged the chopper but I wouldn’t have put it past him. He did have a look about him. He undertook a discreet reconnoitre of the village nearby and that’s when he saw the tailplane. I guess the germ of an idea took root then but it wasn’t until the announcement of the MIA mission and Bowry’s newfound influence in DC that Leon sparked into action.”

“There were Lao girls working in Leon’s go-go bar. One of them had family in Xiang Khouang. A couple of brothers. She’d been in Thailand since the early sixties but, with the war over, she was keen on the idea of visiting her home village. It was just outside of old Xiang Khouang town, not that far from Ban Hoong. Not so hard to cross the border if you’ve got friends on the other side. Leon paid for her trip in exchange for a couple of small favors. A bonus if she came back with results.”

“The photograph and the rocks,” said Daeng.

“She was the dragon’s daughter,” Civilai laughed.

“So the rocks…?” Yamaguchi asked.

“Just another clue in case we were so dumb we missed the point,” said Gordon. “Backup in case the villagers died of a group heart attack carrying the tail up through the mountains. Leon needed Vogal and Bowry to believe Boyd had survived. Then they’d be more likely to hand over his half a million. Leon’s attempt to blackmail Bowry fitted right into our plans. We were certain someone would make a mistake and we’d be here watching.”

“You didn’t ask Leon what Boyd and the two senators were involved in?” John Johnson asked.

“Oh, we asked. But we’d gotten everything out of him we were likely to. He had a condominium with 180-degree vista of the ocean and a jet spa. He wasn’t living that kind of lifestyle on an air force pension. He’d made that money the same way the senators did. He wasn’t about to endanger his investment.”

“But it wasn’t enough for him,” Siri said.

“He saw the other guys were living at the top end and he wanted to be up there with them. He got greedy. Two weeks after we talked to him he was dead.”

“Do you think they found out he was orchestrating the blackmail?” Phosy asked.

“No, if they did they wouldn’t have gone through with the MIA mission. I think they were getting jumpy. It was time to clean up. They eliminated the last two mechanics who knew what had happened. That left Captain Boyd and Potter. Through the blackmail note, the young captain had taken on a life all his own. Leon had re animated him and we at the embassy decided to ride his luck. The major wanted to catch Vogal in the act of sabotaging the mission. But we underestimated him. By coming up here and shutting down all communications, Vogal was able to see off the major and make an alibi for himself. If things didn’t work out he could wipe out the lot of us and blame some renegade bandit gang. He had it all covered.”

“Actually, it’s brilliant,” said Civilai. “Splendid efficiency without a hint of conscience. No wonder they’re the leaders of the free world.”

“Vogal,” said Dr. Yamaguchi.

“That’s right,” said Gordon.

“No, I mean, Vogal’s gone.”

They looked to the fence to see that the evening mist had rolled in fast from the plane. The foggy figures of three of the guards sat featureless at the perimeter, but beside them two fence posts lay on the ground. Vogal and Emiliano were gone. The two musketeers started to give chase. One of them reached the fence line before Commander Lit called them back.

“Wait!” he shouted. “I think this recapture might take care of itself.”

Everyone stood silent, waiting for the inevitable explosions. Field mice weighing less than a hiccup had been known to detonate the temperamental ordnance on the plain. Even without clothes weighing them down, the runners would have to call on some ill-deserved karma to make it across. Everyone waited. Listened. Expectant … Nothing.

“Do you think we should call out, ‘Be careful,’ or something?” Daeng asked.

“I think they knew the dangers when they took off,” said Siri. “They think their chances out there are better than the alternative.”

The silence continued. Siri wanted to capture the moment somehow. The tension. The expectation. It would have made a remarkable cinematic image. He wondered whether it might be seen as inappropriate to discuss his screenplay concept with Civilai at such an occasion. He could see Kurosawa milking this scene. Two desperate men in their underwear lost in the mist on a landscape sown with explosives. Black and white. The only way to go. He looked around. Men and women holding their smoky breaths. Doubts fluttering. What if the endless blitz stories were all a myth composed by the propagandists? What if there were no-