The sun was balanced on the lip of a mountain range to the west when they heard the buzz of a distant airplane. The three men rose from the dirt but stayed in the shade, each of them shielding their eyes with one hand and scanning the sky. Lincoln saw it first. “There!” he said. It was a dot in the distance but growing progressively larger.
It was a twin-engine propeller job. As it came closer, Corbett gave a shout. “It’s a Beech Baron!” he cried. “It’s our guys!”
“Our guys?” Lincoln asked.
“Air America,” Donovan explained.
“Can it land here?”
“There’s nowhere to put down,” Corbett said. “Even my U-10 couldn’t land here.” He stepped out of the shade, waving his hands over his head. Donovan followed suit, so Lincoln joined them.
The airplane came closer, dipped down, and circled over the village three times. The third time, it wagged its wings in response.
“He saw us!” Corbett said. “My guess, that’s Tommy Pinchot in the cockpit. He loves his Baron.”
Lincoln watched the plane flying away, back in the direction from which it had come. “It’s leaving.”
“He can’t land,” Corbett said again. “Best he can do is send back a chopper.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“I think we can look forward to enjoying the hospitality of these fine folks overnight,” Donovan said. “Could be worse.”
“Damn straight,” Corbett agreed. “They could be cannibals.”
“I told you, the Hmong aren’t goddamn cannibals.”
“That you know of.”
“I’d know.”
“That’s what they always say about cannibals, until they find toothmarks on human bone. Then the story changes.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Brad—” Donovan began.
Corbett cut him off. “I’m just giving you a hard time, Donovan. Nobody’s been looking at me like they’re hungry, and I’m definitely the most appetizing one of us.” He glanced over at Lincoln, then added, “Unless they like the dark meat.”
• • •
After a dinner of roast pig, chased down by the tribespeople with plenty of the local liquor, the chieftain let his distinguished guests use his longhouse for the night. The thatched bamboo structure contained a functional bamboo table and a couple of chairs, a shelf jutting out from one wall containing his entire wardrobe, and a framed-in bed of fresh grasses and leaves. Donovan claimed the bed, so Lincoln and Corbett stretched out on the woven floor. It was more comfortable than Lincoln had expected, and he fell asleep quickly.
The sun had not yet cleared the horizon when he was awakened by horrific, anguished screams. He snatched up the knife that he’d kept close all night and dashed out the door, closely followed by Donovan and Corbett. The screams continued, from down by the river. “What the hell?” Corbett asked as they hurried toward the scene. “Sounds like someone’s being slaughtered.”
This high up on the mountain, once the sun broke above the eastern horizon, full light came on almost at once. When it did, Lincoln saw six of the tribeswomen, naked or nearly so, standing in the shallows at the edge of the water. Each held a machete, and they were all drenched in blood. Then he saw a water buffalo, down on its knees in the slow current, bleeding from a dozen spots. It was no longer screaming, but it let out pained bleats that grew weaker with every passing moment.
The old chieftain stood nearby, just far enough away to avoid being spattered with blood or river water. He said something to Donovan, who translated for the others.
“Apparently we’re to be the guests at a feast this morning. That buffalo gave its goddamn life for us.”
“They let the women do the killing?” Lincoln asked.
“Men do the hunting, but this is food preparation,” Donovan replied. “Women’s work, in their culture.”
Lincoln had never seen a woman acting so savage. He had known men—hardened gangsters—who would shy away from chopping up an animal that way, much less a human being. He didn’t have much patience for that. If you were going to live the life, with all the benefits that came along with it, you had to take the dirty jobs along with the clean ones. Sometimes you wanted a body to disappear forever, which meant a deep grave or incineration or maybe a long bath of lye. Other times you wanted to make a certain kind of statement, one that could best be made with the judicious placement of somebody’s head, or the timely delivery of a finger or a hand or some other recognizable body part. He didn’t enjoy that kind of work—though he’d met a couple of people who did—but he didn’t avoid it when it had to be done.
They stood and watched as the buffalo’s lifeblood drained away into the river, a long pinkish stream that caught the morning sunlight as it vanished around a bend. The women kept hacking at it, cutting it into manageable chunks and tossing them onto the shore. Others, clad in more traditional Hmong dresses and wraps, collected those pieces and carried them to the open space at the village center. A huge fire had been lit there, with flames licking eight to ten feet tall. Lincoln was reminded of the U-10’s fate.
Which reminded him of their own. A feast in their honor was nice enough, but all things considered, he would rather be rescued before he had to spend another night on the old man’s floor.
By nine o’clock, the sun was high and Lincoln was famished. The smell of buffalo roasting over open flame filled the village, and his mouth was watering. Most of the villagers had put on their best, brightest attire; the women wore sparkling silver jewelry adorned with gemstones, along with fine, colorful pantaloons and blouses or dresses. Many of the men wore loincloths, but others had put on fancy, bright shirts and some wore jewelry that outshone the women’s. Jugs of the tribe’s liquor—foul-tasting but strong—had been set out, along with drinking goblets. People chattered amiably, not seeming to mind that of the three Americans, only Donovan could understand a word they said, and then less than half of it.
Then the buffalo was ready. Big slabs of it were handed to the guests and the tribal elders, including the chieftain. He said something over his that Lincoln took to be some kind of blessing, then ripped into it with teeth that seemed plenty strong despite his age. Donovan shrugged and followed suit. When the crowd roared in appreciation, Lincoln and Corbett did the same. It tasted even better than it smelled.
An hour later, pleasantly full and more than a little drunk, Lincoln was sitting with Donovan, Corbett, and a group of young village men. They wanted to know what was going on with the war across the border and with the communist forces within Laos. Donovan was doing his best to translate between the two groups and had told them right off the bat that he couldn’t discuss the American presence in their country. It was dangerous enough to be there, in a village where he’d had no previous contact, where there might be communist sympathizers who would be happy to inform the Pathet Lao that Americans had visited. But thanks to the plane crash, it couldn’t be helped. Now they waited for a helicopter that would further confirm the American presence.
“After you’ve worked with the folks in Vang Khom for a while, see if they’ve got friendly relations with these people,” Donovan said to Lincoln. “They seem amenable to the cause. Maybe you could put together some volunteers.”
“Hold up,” Lincoln said. “I thought I was supposed to focus on the men in Vang Khom. Am I also supposed to be recruiting from other villages?”
“Can’t hurt. If you catch a break in Vang Khom, those people might have friends or relatives in other villages who want to join up. The bigger the force you can muster, the harder you can take it to those red bastards.”
Lincoln nodded. So far, Donovan had been fairly vague on just what he expected. He seemed to think Lincoln would understand what needed to be done and would just know how to do it. That, Lincoln remembered, had been part of what Captain Franklin had stressed—saying that Lincoln had an aptitude for it. But he was a mob kid from New Bordeaux, not a hardened intelligence agent.
“Sometimes it sounds like what you want is a Peace Corps volunteer who has also worked as a drill sergeant,” Lincoln said.
Donovan laughed. “That’s a pretty good summary, Lincoln. Except you forgot one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I need a man who knows how to kill. If you’re not afraid to die, that’s even better.”
“I’d rather not die,” Lincoln said. “I want to get back to New Bordeaux after this is all over.”
“You’ll be home before this fucking war is over. You’ll probably be an old man before it’s over, the way those Pentagon assholes are running it. If they’d let us turn northern Laos and North Vietnam into another Dresden—or Hiroshima—it’d be over in a goddamn blink. And if we still had Kennedy in Washington . . .” He paused, shaking his head sadly. “No point in going down that path, though.”
One of the younger men, barely out of his teens, interrupted to ask Donovan another question. The agent made him repeat it, slowly, until he understood what was being asked.
“He says he wants to kill communists. He says he doesn’t care if it’s with his bare hands, knives, arrows, or guns; he just wants to soak the earth with communist blood.”
“He’s enthusiastic, I’ll say that for him,” Corbett said with a chuckle.
“Remember this kid, Lincoln,” Donovan said. “When the time comes, this is a motherfucker you want on your team.”
Lincoln couldn’t quite imagine himself ever speaking the Hmong language well enough to recruit people from other villages. And this one was several days from Vang Khom on foot, across a valley that was reportedly a Pathet Lao hotbed.
Still, he didn’t want to sound like he wasn’t fully on board with this mission, whatever it would turn out to be. “I will,” he said. He studied the young man’s face, trying to commit it to memory.
He hadn’t even started yet, but he already felt like he was in over his head.