Chapter Eighteen

“What the fuck are you doing here, Louise!” Mike exclaimed.

He couldn’t help himself. He wished he could have been more articulate. Just the sight of her was enough. How he would have loved to have come out with some speech, something even half-meaningful. A couple of mumbled words that meant nothing would have been better. Instead the sheer surprise of seeing her took over his mouth. Seeing her here of all places. He was taken completely aback, pushed into near speechless shock. Those grey eyes of hers pierced straight through him, questioning his motives and presence. Right now questioning his very being.

To his side, Rusty had been carefully edging around the old wrecked Cessna. He was warily watching the gun, not yet sure what to do. He was in total confusion, not knowing if this was bad or a shade above bad. When he heard Mike speak, he stopped, stunned by what he had just heard. Was this the girl? In the end she had ironically found them, the ever-mysterious Louise. He went to move forward, hoping to get a clear view of the girl they had been tracking for hundreds of miles. He could clearly make out the straw-blonde hair, longer than Mike had described, the ends tangled with the heat forming soft knots. It gave her a rustic beauty. A stern prod in his direction from the Kalashnikov was enough to return him to the plane.

For a few seconds nobody uttered a sound. Even the crickets seemed to silence their continuous vocal onslaught. The scene was set like a medieval battle before the armoured knights got to charge in, war-hammers at the ready. Each side was weighing the other up, not sure what to make of the freak encounter. It was Mike who broke the uneasy silence. In his head he had been constantly planning ways to track Louise down. Now she had found him. What was not in the reckoning of things was how he would open the conversation on their first encounter. It was difficult to know what to say to an ex-girlfriend in the Laotian jungle surrounded by possible terrorists. He didn’t even know if she was part of their wandering tribe or some kind of exotic hostage. There was no precedent for any of this at all.

“Are you OK there, Louise? I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here, although I could ask you the same question. I mean, we’re not exactly on a scout camp here are we?” Mike was unaware he was scratching his chest as he spoke, unable to disguise his sense of bewilderment.

“Do you know this man?” It was Pin who spoke, slightly turning as he did so.

“In another lifetime, yeah. But bloody hell, Mike, just what are you doing?” Louise replied, her eyes flickering with anger.

“Well, let’s just say that it’s not quite coincidence. I seem to have been temporarily reincarnated as a private investigator. The guy at my side goes by the name of Rusty. I was sent over here to look for you, just to make sure that you were all right. It was your parents who contacted me, in fact. They figured that I might have half a chance of finding you. You went off the radar you know, simply disappeared. People were worried!”

“So you came here to spy on me! Sent by my parents of all people. You never got on with them anyway. How could you interfere so much, Mike? You have no idea, no idea at all what is going on. And to be perfectly frank it’s none of your business.”

“I’m not snooping on you. Like I say, people got worried. I’m not even going to force you to contact them. All that I have to do is report back that you’re safe. They’re worried sick and needed to know where you were. Nothing more than that. I mean come on, Louise, like you say I don’t even get on with your folks. Why on earth would I be spying for them?”

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Mike, and it had better be believable.”

“From the look of things we all have a few stories to tell.”

It was Pin who stepped in. He decided to draw the conversation quickly to a close. He saw little point in any further bickering. He was already edgy about being here and his mind was racing, working out what was going on around him. His instinctual danger sensor was picking up a lot of unease, leaving his nerves jangling. If the smoke and gunfire weren’t enough he now had an old friend of Louise skulking around the jungle with his beach-bum mate. The story the man had given was open-ended and could have been thrown together on the hoof, but Louise knew the guy, leaving Pin little choice other than to trust him for now. It still didn’t change the small matter of some kind of war taking place on the highway. The sooner they got out, the better.

“We should not hang around here. It’s not safe. We’ll get going back. There’s something happening out on the main road.”

“Tell me about it!” Mike replied, a thread of exasperation in his voice. “We were caught right in the crossfire. Our bus was forced off the road by gunfire.”

Pin looked around uneasily as he beckoned them forward. “I already have men on their way,” he said. “Quick, we need to move now. You can tell me more as we walk.”

As they made their way along a rutted single-track route through the thick vegetation, Mike elaborated further on their near-death encounter earlier on the bus. Around him all fell silent. As they listened their only distraction was the chorus of unknown insects, a reminder of how deep they had penetrated beyond the treeline. Mike skipped few details as he told of their brief journey. There seemed little point in holding back on any darker pieces that might otherwise be omitted from a dinner-party discussion. He went so far as to describe the tobacco-chewing woman, who spent her last journey sharing the back seat with them, finishing with Rusty and his lucky escape and their fears for Jean. It was Pin who asked the questions, anxious to know the number and descriptions of their attackers. The picture that Mike was painting left them all absorbed in morbid reflection on how bad things must have been. When he had finished they remained silent. There was the unspoken knowledge that the highly dangerous hijackers were loose and possibly looking out for new victims. They would be hyped up and have the fresh taste for killing feeding them. These weren’t common-or-garden Laotian criminals strapped for a bit of cash who might be talked around or bribed with a gold watch. They were near to the lair of a gang of bloodletting maniacs, thugs who took pleasure in killing whatever their true purpose behind the attack was. Even if not permanent neighbours, it was likely the marauding gunmen were menacingly close. If they didn’t take great care, each of their lives would be on the line, despite the presence of a few hefty-looking partisans.

Pin had already sent a man to check on the aftermath of the hijacking. It was probable that he would return with nothing more than a body count and a visual update on how grim things were looking on the highway. The scout was eager to visit the sight and make a judgement call on who might be responsible. Although it would be obvious who Jean was, given the absence of farang in these parts, he was given a sound description in case she could be accounted for at the roadside amongst any survivors. Secretly Pin believed that if there were any stragglers left over from the hijack they would be pretty stupid to hang around and put themselves in the line of fire again. Most likely they would have run blind like frightened animals, getting as far away as possible. By now they were either dead or lost. A few might be picked up by the authorities, mopped down and paraded in front of cameras. Only a few though.

Pin placed his other men in front and to the rear of the remaining party, just in case any hostile visitors attempted to wipe them out on the narrow path. The humidity and dense vines of the jungle made their journey slow, though the thick vegetation masked them from any prying eyes. Pin remained unconcerned about the speed of their progress. The camp was close by. It would not take too long to reach comparative safety no matter how slowly they negotiated their way. There were checks in place to ensure the camp stayed safe. They wouldn’t be troubled there just yet. What worried him far more were the events up on the highway. Someone high and powerful either knew something or it was just a bunch of bandits on the loose willing to use maximum force to lift a few dollars from a beaten-up bus. Neither of these outcomes looked good for his close-knit group of Hmong. For starters they had a few renegades in the area running wild with guns. Their home environment was threatened. As if that wasn’t enough there would be the state response. He already knew that powerful elements in the Vientiane administration were watching for a wrong footing, itching for a piece of Hmong ass. His captive taken from the wreckage of the white pickup proved as much. Unfortunately the man had died on them before any serious information could be extracted. Doubtless they would get the blame, with accusations of brutality under interrogation, yet this simply wasn’t his style. The agent would have died even with a team of elite surgeons and his very own Florence Nightingale. Their methods were persistent yes, but always gentle.

Pin was all too aware of the possible outcomes now that a public bus was left burning. Before too long, hundreds if not thousands of the armed idiots could pour into their enclave. Even if this wasn’t staged as an excuse for shooting them, once a Hmong was in the sights of an army gun, most government fingers would be itching to pull the trigger. When they arrived safely back at camp he decided that he would prepare everyone for leaving. Their precious crop would doubtless be left to wither and ruin, their only source of income. But fortunes came and went. For now the fate of the fortune cookie looked to be on their side and with that the chance for a more lucrative way to make a living,, one which held a higher degree of legality than their secretive farming. They were still waiting on the final piece, the last segment to their puzzle. Their contact in the museum archive was looking for the missing link, for translated instructions; the final resting place for their prize. They would now have to move on without the exact co-ordinates. They knew the area to be searched. Clues had been in circulation for years, bits of gossip and witness accounts of clandestine activity. Until now the clues had been overlooked because they could have no way of knowing what they referred to. Now things were very different. Even when they found the sealed document within the wrecked plane, it told only part of the story. The astonishing text was typed in Russian and all significance had been lost on them for so long. Once they finally got down to translating the text they found that they needed the other piece. The museum archivists had had it under their noses in Vientiane all these years, the document slowly fading in a locked room, overlooked and forgotten. The two needed to go together, like an old merchant’s final testament having a leather case and a key. The resting-place needed two parts to the code. With the one half they knew where to go but not where to search. It would be a start. Lady Luck was due to play a hand. To aid her enthusiasm to help them along Pin decided to send his special envoy in Vientiane over to the museum where the archives were held. He might be able to find the very latest news, maybe walk away with what they sought. There was much risk involved. Hmong stood out in Vientiane. Authorities would be more than happy to take an interest. The plan was to leave it another week until they were stronger, then go in under cover of darkness, but with the clock against them the time for planned risks was upon them. His envoy was to get in, then get the hell away and join them down the road. With bridges being quickly burnt Pin’s task was to lead their way towards the mystical ‘Plain of Jars’, the natural heartland of the Hmong.