The slick came while the feast was winding down. The big fire was still going, and since the three Americans didn’t have a smoke grenade between them, they corralled as many villagers as they could into soaking leaves at the river and throwing them into the flames. The smoke cloud from that was sufficient to guide in the unmarked chopper. On the other side of the river, livestock had grazed a clearing big enough for it to land. Lincoln and his companions bade quick good-byes to their hosts, charged into the river, then, soaking wet and laughing like madmen, scrambled aboard.
Corbett recognized the pilot. “Tommy, it’s you! Was that you in the Baron last night, too?”
“You think I’d let someone else fly my bird?” the pilot asked. He was rail-thin, with a blond crew cut and aviator shades. He wore an olive drab jumpsuit with the requisite survival vest that Corbett had refused. “Somebody else might wreck it. Not that I’m pointing any fingers.”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault,” Corbett replied. “Man, some people never let you live anything down.”
“One of the five, I’m guessing?” Lincoln asked.
“Five?” Tommy echoed. “I knew it! You dumped another one. Did you lose all the cargo, too?”
“Oh, shut up,” Corbett said.
Tommy got the helicopter airborne. Flying over the valley, they drew some small-arms fire from below, though none of the rounds came close enough to worry about. The flight from mountaintop to mountaintop was a relatively short one, but Lincoln was glad they hadn’t had to make the trip over land. Tommy had brought AR-30s, grenades, ammunition, and survival vests for all of them, so Lincoln felt a little more equipped to face the Laotian countryside.
After about twenty minutes in the air, they dropped down toward a village much like the one they’d just left. This one looked like it had been there for longer. The houses were more substantial and bore the signs of having survived the elements for years. Again, they were raised up on stilts, and a creek trickled right through the village, bisecting it. Cleared areas outside the main collection of huts looked like cultivated fields, but they didn’t appear to be very productive. Beyond those was a rice paddy that looked like it had completely dried up.
Tommy Pinchot put down on one of those fields. Prop wash flattened the vegetation and fluttered the loose clothing of the villagers who had gathered to watch. They wore somber expressions, as if unsure of who would arrive in such a craft, or why.
But some of their faces brightened when Donovan climbed down and headed their way. Villagers started toward him, arms out in welcome.
Corbett moved from a rear seat up toward the copilot’s position. Lincoln eyed him with surprise. “You’re not coming?”
“You’re on your own, man,” Corbett said. “Well, you and Donovan. I’ll be back in a few days, to pick him up and bring you supplies.”
“Okay, cool,” Lincoln said. “Try not to crash this time.”
Corbett didn’t smile at the jab. Instead, he offered his hand. “You watch your back, Lincoln. You’re gonna be alone out here, and it could get hairy. If I can do anything to help, let me know. Donovan will tell you how to contact us. I mean, you know—soon as I bring you a radio. Until then, you’re on your own.”
Lincoln clasped the pilot’s hand, thanked him, and let him go. The chopper lifted off the ground before he was even out from under the propellers. Then it was gone, and he and Donovan were alone in Laos.
At the edge of the field, Lincoln met up with Donovan, who was standing with a lean but sturdy Hmong man who was wearing only a loincloth and a band around his left biceps. He had a thick shock of black hair and an open, friendly expression on his face. “This is Koob Muas,” Donovan said. “He’s an old pal. Speaks pretty good English, too, and some French. I call him Koob. Koob, this is my friend Lincoln Clay.”
Koob gave a short bow and clasped Lincoln’s hand. “Lincoln,” Koob said. “Welcome to Vang Khom.”
“Glad to be here,” Lincoln said. “Especially after all we went through to make it.”
“Koob’s father, Kaus, is the chief around here. He’s a great man. But Koob is the next generation, and he’ll be your main man.”
Koob beamed at the compliments; at least, what he could understand of them. “I look forward to working with you,” Lincoln said.
“I with you, also,” Koob said.
“It’s been a while since he’s had English speakers around,” Donovan said. “So you might want to take it slow at first. He’s spent time with American units in Vietnam, and he’s had some training with ARVN forces, for whatever that’s worth. But he wanted to come home, and we thought he’d be more useful here.” He turned to the Hmong man. “Koob, Lincoln is going to be with you for a long time. He’ll work with you, train your men to fight the Pathet Lao and VC, and he’ll bring guns and supplies.”
“We kill the Pathet?” Koob asked.
“Many Pathet,” Donovan said.
Koob clapped his hands together once. “We love killing those Pathet fucks!”
Lincoln grinned. Apparently Koob had spent a lot of time with Donovan. “Koob,” Lincoln said, “I think we’re gonna get along just fine.”
• • •
Donovan turned out to be well-known in Vang Khom; he had been to the village several times, and most of the people greeted him warmly. Lincoln’s reception was more muted. “You’re a stranger,” Donovan said after several cool responses to his introduction. “It takes them a while to get accustomed to anyone new, especially anyone who’s not Hmong. Plus that last woman said your skin’s a ‘funny’ color. Most of them have never seen a black man before. They’ll get used to you, but it’ll take some time.”
“How much time?” Lincoln wondered. “You’re only here for a few days; then I’ll be alone with them. I don’t want to have to be watchin’ my own people for assassins the whole time, on top of watchin’ for the VC and Pathet Lao.”
“Trust me,” Donovan said. He shook a cigarette loose and lit it, without offering Lincoln one. “We’ll work with them for a few days. Once they see you’re genuinely interested in helping them out, they’ll come around.”
“Helping them out, how?”
Cigarette between his fingers, Donovan indicated the village with a sweep of his hand. “Look around. What do you see as the biggest problem these people have? Besides the obvious fact that they’re living in the Stone Age.”
Lincoln wasn’t sure how to answer that. He was used to New Bordeaux. Even the poorest person there owned more than the richest in Vang Khom. This place didn’t have paved streets or buildings made of materials that could stand up to fire or flood. No fixed addresses meant no mail service. For that matter, he doubted that they had any government services at all. As far as they were concerned, Vientiane was like a place from a fantasy story, something they’d heard of but that didn’t really exist in their world.
They had no electricity, much less TVs and radios and refrigerators. They had some water buffalos and a handful of bicycles, but no farm equipment or motorized vehicles. The stream threading through the village had scant flow, but a man was pissing into it, and a little farther down, an old woman squatted over it. Toilets, he thought. They need toilets.
But before he spoke, he considered the broader implications of that. “They need a real water supply,” he said. “They can’t have plumbing if they can’t control their water, and that little creek doesn’t cut it.”
“That little creek will get a hell of a lot bigger in a few weeks, when the monsoon season hits,” Donovan said. “But you’re right: Even when that happens, it’s still untamed water. After a heavy rain, the creek might swell to the point that it’s fucking deadly. The village will flood, and some of the floodwater will reach the fields, and the crops will grow. But they still don’t have water on demand, at their houses. They don’t have irrigated fields. They need wells and an irrigation system. What else?”
“Money,” Lincoln said. “So they can buy stuff.”
“There’s not much to buy up here on the mountain,” Donovan replied. “But yeah, wealth would help. They don’t need much, but if they had some, they could build some infrastructure. They could buy goods so they didn’t have to spend every minute of every day fetching water or food or making the things they need for bare subsistence.”
“Right,” Lincoln said.
“On the other hand, there’s virtually no crime here. They die of natural causes, disease and so on, most of which we would treat in five minutes at a doctor’s office. Sometimes there’s a fight. Sometimes the Pathet Lao soldiers come in and kidnap their young women, or they get into a feud with another Hmong tribe, but among the villagers, things are generally peaceful. They have to work for their daily bread, but they don’t starve to death. They’re a little low on provisions at the moment, but when the rains come, their rice will come back, and they’ll be flush for a while. Ideally, they’ll set aside enough to get through the next dry season.”
“So you’re saying they don’t really have it that bad.”
Donovan sucked in smoke and blew it out in a long stream. “I’m saying they don’t have it good or bad. It is what it is. If I had to pick between being a Hmong or being Laotian or South Vietnamese, I’d pick Hmong in a heartbeat. At least these guys are warriors. They’re free, and they’ll fight anybody who tries to take that freedom away. But a few small improvements could make a world of difference to the village. Some wells, some pipes, and lessons in basic hygiene. The Hmong believe that bathing washes away a soul. And that they each have thirty-two souls, so losing even one is a problem. If they could get past that and just fucking bathe more, half of their medical issues would vanish. If they had any clue about how to care for their teeth, that would help, too. And if they could establish steady supply of food and clean water, that would fix most of what’s left, maybe more.”
“So I’m, what? Supposed to be their social worker or their drill sergeant?”
“What’s wrong with being both?” Donovan asked.
“I thought I was here to fight communists,” Lincoln said.
“Don’t get me wrong. I hate this social work, myself. But it’s what the Agency bureaucrats want. Hearts and minds and all that happy horseshit. Trust me, you’ll get to kill plenty of commies. But during the downtimes, you’re going to get bored out of your fucking mind. You’ll be glad for some projects.”
Before being sent to Vietnam, Lincoln had thought that serving in the Army might involve a lot of digging ditches and filling them up again, but that hadn’t been the case. Now it looked as if he might be digging ditches for real. Every day, the temperature seemed to grow hotter, the humidity more intense. It sapped a man’s energy and left him dying for cold water.
But in Vang Khom, there would be no cold water. No air conditioning, or even the omnipresent ceiling fans of Saigon and Danang. And he would not only have to turn villagers into warriors, he would have to function as a handyman. Probably confessor and cop, too, if Donovan had his way.
He had agreed to the mission, though. He could claim ignorance of its true nature, but he doubted that Donovan would let him off the hook. They were here now, and they’d almost died trying to make it.
The whole task seemed suddenly hopeless. Impossible. These people wouldn’t be dragged into the twentieth century; for the most part, they hadn’t even reached the nineteenth. Even if they could be, how could he do it alone?
It was a little late for second thoughts, he decided. He was here. He was stuck.
He was all they had.