Chapter Twenty Two

The leathery weathered man beckoned them to follow him. He sat up on a crude log table, clasped his hands and looked to address them. Shadows from the late afternoon encouraged the mosquitoes to weave about their gathering.

“Where do I start? Just where can I begin? It’s a tricky one - as you’ll see, things get a little complex.” Again the Canadian accent came across, this time much stronger.

“Whichever way I throw this at you, you’re going to find it hard to swallow.” Large hands briefly pushed loose strands of hair from his forehead, forcing his fringe from fusing together with sweat.

Mike figured that this guy could now tell him anything and he would treat it as the gospel truth. The man looked to have walked straight out of the Vietnam War, scars included. You didn’t show up as a VIP guest in the centre of an illicit jungle camp; not without one hell of a story to go with it. This was no geek vying for an audience at the local pub looking for an excuse for exaggeration. Whatever this guy was going to say was likely to be peppered with deep grains of raw personal experience. With a quick sideways glance he could tell that Rusty was equally intrigued. The Australian was leaning back against a tree, eyes fixed on the scarred stranger.

“I’m living here with Pin and his people; have been for quite a while now, I guess. In case you’re wondering, yes that is my plane out there, but no, I’m not that fucking old! I wasn’t some crazy pilot flying the Steve Canyon Program for the loons in Air America, back when the US were fighting here propping up that domino effect they feared, least it fall over. Take a look at these old hands! This is no old Vietnam vet you’re looking at, still fighting his war from the sixties.” The Canadian smiled at Louise as he said this, humour sparkling behind his inquisitive grey eyes, coming more alive as he told his well-trodden tale.

“From the accent you can probably tell I’m a Toronto man. I loved planes and joined the Canadian Air Force just as soon as I could get out of college. That would have been around 1978. Linking how I got from being a pilot in the Canadian Air Force to ending up here requires quite a bit of explanation, but there’s something which I probably need to tell you first.” Again he looked over at Louise, this time without the humour. Mike was startled to see her give a nod, very slight, as if granting approval to the leathery man before them.

“After a few years supporting the coastguard and spearheading the odd exercise, I got my first overseas posting, to RAF Hulaverton in the south west of England,” said Dan.

Mike could already sense the direction this was taking, leading him to become further mesmerised.

“I quickly hooked up with a local girl, Caroline, and we spent a whole lot of time together. Her folks never truly liked me, guess they had designs on her meeting a stockbroker or Scottish Lord for all I know. We tended to take off, be out of their way, so to speak. We were both pretty young; Caroline was only seventeen when she got pregnant. Pure naivety I guess. You know, I was going to do the right thing, but Caroline’s parents were hell bent on seeing me dead. I mean, they just hit the roof. So with me off the scene, along came Alan Pemberton, who married Louise’s mother.”

The guy stopped at this point, allowing the story so far to sink in. There was a lot to digest. Mike remembered that he earlier had introduced himself only as Dan. He wondered what his surname could be - what Louise’s name so easily could have been. He found it hard to grasp that he was standing in a tropical rainforest listening to a man who sounded like he was claiming to be Louise’s father.

“It cut me down a bit. I went back to Toronto but just couldn’t settle. In the end I let the Air Force post drop and bought myself out early. I then did what many young men do when they need to get away. I went backpacking, hoping to broaden my mind. Well, it certainly did that! I headed out for Thailand. Back then it was much quieter, more straw-thatched shacks and the like bordering small towns, thronged with bicycles and street bazaars. I loved it!

“Trouble is, what do you do when the money runs out?” Dan continued. “Well, it hadn’t run out, but funds were getting lower. I suppose when you have an Air Force-trained pilot hanging around, word gets through to certain circles. When I took a trip back to Bangkok I was approached by a smooth-talking impressive American. He put it on the table that I could do a few jobs for them whilst still based in Thailand doing what I loved best - flying.

“This was the mid-eighties. All that Vietnam stuff was long gone, only the Hollywood flicks by then, but they wanted to keep an eye on things, particularly up in the North around the Laos border. The Thais themselves had a few issues over where the border should be and each side was taking shots at the other. It was all relatively low-key. The Americans wanted to keep a check on it all, photos and the like, maybe the odd delivery. The Thais were happy with the deal as they got to see most of the pictures and could arrange for drops. It all seemed pretty clear-cut to me: I would be asked to fly over remote areas where there was little by way of anti-aircraft defences. It would be just me and the clear blue sky. Well, at least that’s what I thought. I’d not counted on the jungle.”

He looked up at his audience, swatting a fly as he did. The congregated assembly seemed ready for as much as he could give them. Many years had been spent without western company and he was pleased to note that his ability to take the stage in a social setting had not deserted him.

“So there I was, flying twin engines out of obsolete military airstrips in Northern Thailand. The trips themselves were rarely long, an hour or two at best. This left me a bundle of cash and stacks of free time. I figured I was living the life.” He paused for breath, though it added a sense of dramatic effect.

“Then it all went. I was given another routine mission. I firstly needed to pick up a small package from an airfield just short of the border. This was to be dropped at some co-ordinate or another that I have long since forgotten. There were then a few photographs to take the other side of some hills they needed mapping. Like all of my flights, I was going solo. I remember being in a bloody good mood. The skies were clear and wind-speed practically zero - ideal flying weather. Things went well and I took a few happy snaps. Just needed to drop off the cylinder flask with some documents in, a parachute job, watch it float to the ground - so no sweat there. Didn’t make it though. My mind was on other things. There was a poker game going down that night and I was itching to get back. Then came the sound of a spluttered drone. I knew immediately that it was one of the engines going into a coughing fit. I had experienced incidents like this before, so I hung on tight and waited for it to kick in again. Trouble was it didn’t. All the while I was losing power and height. Then as the second started to go I realised I was in big trouble. I figured a fuel line must have ruptured for that to happen. By now I was too low to bail out. There was no ejector seat in those old things. My only option was to stick with the plane and glide her down, crash land. When you have the jungle below you it’s hard to rate your chances. As I lost altitude I spotted a half-chance, an area with little tree cover. I simply held the controls and prayed. That was pretty much my last memory.”

Dan saw that Pin was walking over, in his determined way, so waited until he arrived. The next piece of the story would involve the Hmong leader, so it was good he was going to be joining them. As much as anything he could shed light on the second chapter of Dan’s story.

“So how come here? Why didn’t you get back to Thailand and re-join your pilot friends, the dudes you played poker with?” Mike asked. His curiosity was rising quickly to melting point.

“For starters I was out cold,” said Dan. “Took quite a knock bringing the plane down out there. Turned out the clearings I was spotting were areas earmarked for the Hmong’s grass plantations. At first they thought I might be there to spy on them, hovering around to spill the beans on their illicit plans. When I came around after my knock they were none-too-happy to allow me to go wandering off, just in case I was snitching on them. If you like I was a house prisoner, only it wasn’t then my house.

“After a few weeks we slowly started to build up a mutual trust. My knocks were well on the mend and I was free to walk around. I had no idea where I was exactly, so figured that any escape attempt would be fraught with more danger than it was worth. I was a man used to mechanics and flying, not rain forests. As far as the ground crew housed at the Thailand base were concerned, I was now rating highly on the missing person’s list. There would be little they could do regarding any full-scale search, given the secretive nature of the operation, so I suspect that they gave me up quite quickly. I think that after a while they hoped I would not turn up at all. Would be kind of embarrassing if they needed to explain a crashed light aircraft with no registration certificate. With little else on my agenda, I got talking to your man here.”

He was indicating Pin, who now sat comfortably next to him. The fact that he carried a Kalashnikov bothered neither of them. It was becoming clear that the two had forged a close bond during their time in the jungle together. Mike wondered whether the isolated rural living encouraged his calmness, or whether this was born out of trust for the man they called their leader. Mike waited to see where this talk was going. His initial impression that they were in the company of heavily armed drug-lords was diminishing with each instalment he received. They were tooled up and undoubtedly dangerous with several prime acres of cannabis plantation, but were missing that callous edge he had recently witnessed back at the bus hijack. The cold-hearted gunmen out on the road were a different animal, killing not just for necessity but for effect. The Hmong’s reasons for an armed presence out in the jungle were looking to be far different. Sharing the same shaded jungle with dangerous maniacs willing to kill would more than validate extreme security measures.

“At first,” Dan continued, “I simply watched everyday camp activity. I was surprised that a few spoke pretty good English, including Pin here, but soon learnt that they worked closely with their American advisors in the Vietnam War a decade before. This made it a lot easier for me to pick up a bit of Hmong and start interacting with most of the tribe.

“It didn’t take too long for me to convince everyone that I was no government spy honing in on their crop plantations. By that stage I was settling into the routine very well. Where was there to go? I decided to stick it out. No way I expected to stay this long though. I guess that part of it was the sense of belonging that I felt. Just the everyday things began mattering to me. I empathised with the Hmong’s way of life. I shared with them their resentment about their treatment since the ’73 revolution. I came to understand their survival needs. Those crops out there are about the one thing that keeps food on the table. These people aren’t combat junky cartel barons. They need the export industry. During all of this time, though, I still kept missing Louise. I didn’t know her name of course, but I knew of her.”

Mike could tell from the shift in Dan’s body language that he didn’t want to go too far with this one. Louise was a strong-minded woman and would not take lightly to having any relationship with her newly found father exposed for public consumption. Mike knew the full impact of any venom Louise chose to vent. Dan was still engaged in a trust-making exercise and would need to tread carefully so as not to undo any bond the two had developed. It reminded him that he still needed to contact Louise’s other family, the ones paying for this goose-chase. Explaining anything like the truth would be a tough ordeal: how could you open a conversation that would be harder to close? He tried picturing Pemberton’s face. The next long-distance phone call that they received was going to be one that they would remember for a long time. He was grateful that the prospect of currently finding a phone was hovering around zero.

“I suppose quite a few years went by,” Dan was saying. “But each year my curiosity grew. Then along came the Internet. Even out here we got to hear about these things. I got out to Vientiane once in a while, usually just for a change or environment. Louise was on Facebook and I eventually got in contact. I even took the risk of sending the occasional letter. It was never my idea for Louise to drop everything and come out here of course. She decided to come running over like an express train all on her own accord, especially once I mentioned Pha Bang.”

Pin was quick to get to his feet. There was a sudden change, from family chat to something of a higher magnitude. This was where the Hmong took the commanding role on centre stage.

“What in the hell is ‘Pha Bang’ all about?” Mike asked. It sounded like nothing he had heard before.

“With patience you are just about to find out,” Pin replied.