Slash and Burn

15

The trek to the new helicopter crash site had been uneventful for the MIA teams. Nothing exploded. No adders dropped. No time was wasted. They’d passed briefly through the Ban Hoong village then headed directly for the dead man’s field. Of the villagers, only headman Ar’s son Bok bothered to go with them. He followed from a safe distance with four or five jars and bottles in his arms. Two tethered beetles flew from his cap like the antenna of a nervous ant.

The teams reached the edge of a clearing that stretched before them like a lake of dark rust. It was true that very little had grown there. Plants had tried but they now poked brown and lifeless from the ground. Trees once tall and proud were now cigar butts. If the spirits of the land had really chosen this as their garden, they were truly awful gardeners. The teams crunched to the far edge of the clearing where they found the pond. It wasn’t the type of natural spring you’d dip into on a hot day. It looked polluted. There was something eerie about the whole place.

“This isn’t just a crash site,” Peach told them. She’d been talking to Sergeant Johnson. “He’s seen numerous crash sites. A lot of forest gets burned but the jungle’s a hungry place. Three months later and it’s reclaimed the burned land and hidden the evidence of the crash. By then you’d only find wreckage by accident. It’s been ten years since Boyd went down and still nothing’s been able to grow. He thinks there was something on that helicopter with the power to destroy nature completely. Not even Agent Orange would have this effect.”

The sergeant walked to the edge of the pond and spoke as if to the spirits.

“In all my years of active duty, I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s only one thing for certain. If the chopper really did come down here, whoever was flying it is in pieces so small we’ll need someone with a microscope.”

Everyone shared these feelings and nobody had a theory as to why the crater was at the edge rather than the center of the site. But there was still a strong urge to begin the search. There was a belief that they’d be able to find something to identify the helicopter. They laid out a plastic groundsheet beside the pond and by ten it was piled with shrapnel, shreds of PVC, petrol caps and wire from the surrounding jungle. There were no identifying marks but they were sure there was a workshop somewhere that would be able to recognize the materials and pinpoint the type of machine they’d come from. Technology had advanced to the stage that a single bolt might yield the make of a helicopter. They hoped. All they were missing was a pilot.

One unavoidable reality was that someone would have to get wet. The crater was the hub of the explosion and it was likely that debris had been blasted into the ground there. The pond was repulsive but, even so, Sergeant Johnson was the first to volunteer to go in. Commander Lit’s hand then shot up almost immediately. He wasn’t about to be out-volunteered by an American. And Inspector Phosy became the third member of the pond detail if only because he was bored with picking up screws. He was in a hurry to find something substantial so they could all go home. Something was niggling him about the major’s death and he wanted to take another look around at the hotel. A quick resolution to the pilot hunt would make that possible. A skull would be nice, preferably wearing a helmet with H32 written on it.

At its deepest, the pond went down four meters and was thirty across. Diving to its depths was like swimming through hair oil. The three brave divers, stripped down to their underwear, would take a breath, grovel through the mud below until their lungs hurt, then return to the surface with their spoils. Lit was by far the most competent. He could remain underwater so long, one of his dives equalled two of Phosy’s. At one point the two were resting on the bank together wrapped in blankets against the cold.

“You swim very well,” Phosy told him.

“Grew up on a river. I was the one they always sent out to catch lunch.”

“You’re from Huaphan?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m surprised we didn’t run into each other up there.”

“I spent most of my army life in Vietnam. I just returned to Xam Neua a year ago.”

“Why do you suppose Dr. Siri included your name on his list?”

“Hard to say. We’d worked together on a case up in Vieng Xai. I suppose something about me impressed him.”

“I dare say.”

They sat for a while and admired the fog bank rolling over the far ridge.

“My wife was in Vieng Xai with Dr. Siri,” Phosy said.

“I know. That’s where I met her.”

“Right. You know, I was just wondering…. She mentioned a security officer she’d met up there. Someone who’d made advances toward her.”

“She did?”

“Yes. You wouldn’t happen to know him?”

“Well, that depends.”

“It does? On what?”

“On your definition of “making advances.” If that includes a proposal of marriage, then the security officer in question would be me.”

“A proposal. Yes.”

“Then it was definitely me.”

“Good. Just wondered.”

“Right.”

Sergeant Johnson noticed a new enthusiasm in the diving after that point. Inspector Phosy seemed to have found a new lease on life and a new pair of lungs. He was spending far more time underwater and returning with much heavier chunks of wreckage. The sergeant was a good swimmer but he couldn’t match these two Lao. But at one point, neither returned to the surface. The water was far too murky to see the bottom of the pond so Johnson trod water and waited … and waited. He looked up at Rhyme who’d been taking photos of the dive. He too was concerned about the missing men. Not even river dolphins could stay under that length of time. Johnson duck-dived down to the mud. At first he found nobody but after a long frenzied search he bumped onto first one, then the other diver. They were hunched over and pulling at something large buried in the mud. He joined them. His hands found the edge of some sort of machinery, but not even his added strength was able to budge it. The three men burst to the surface gasping for air.

After a prolonged discussion over who had first laid hands on the object, the divers agreed that they should attach a rope to it and get everyone to join forces to pull it to the surface. Rhyme from Time loved it-the ultimate iconic peace photo. An Iwo Jima flag-raising for the seventies. Lao and Americans pulling together. Men and women, soldiers and laymen, young and old. Judge Haeng, inspired by the camera, was at the front of the rope with his shirt off. Rhyme snapped about sixty frames. This was his bread and butter. Sweat, mud and camaraderie in the jungles of Indochina. He already had his tie picked out for the Pulitzer dinner.

Centimeter by centimeter they heaved and their catch edged its way up the slimy embankment. At last it surfaced, a lump of machinery with no obvious markings. It soon became clear why it had been so hard to dislodge. It was held back by some sort of anchor. A steel cable was attached to the machine and seemed to pull from the other direction. The team won the first round. They had their catch on the ground in front of them but the cable still stretched back into the water. They abandoned the rope and pulled directly on the steel line which seemed to have no end. It curled around their feet as the pulling grew easier, and they issued a disappointed groan when all they found at the cable’s end was the cable’s end.

“I was rather hoping for a fish,” said Civilai.

Sergeant Johnson knelt beside the machine and explained what they’d found. He was obviously the helicopter expert in the American team.

“It’s a winch,” he told them. “It’s certainly from a helicopter. It’s normally attached just above the side hatch. It’s controlled by the flight mechanic. Originally, its main purpose was for sea rescues. They’d lower the cable with a harness on the end and pick up shipwreck survivors. But they found it worked pretty good on rescue missions in the jungle too. Picking up downed pilots in spots where there was too much vegetation to land.”

The depression of the early morning had been eased just a fraction. They had a significant souvenir, confirmation that a helicopter had come down here and, as a bonus, a registration stamp inside the equipment that could be tied to a specific craft. They decided that they needed no more wreckage and would spend the remainder of the day looking for human remains.

While the others were unwrapping their packed lunches, Phosy noticed Madame Daeng kneeling beside the winch. He put on his shirt as he walked over to her.

“See something?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said.

“Come on, get it off your chest.”

“I was just wondering how easily these things come unraveled.” She noticed his smile. “You were wondering the same thing, weren’t you?”

“And you weren’t alone,” came Peach’s voice from behind them.

The interpreter was standing with John Johnson.

“The sergeant was just telling me his thoughts on that same subject,” she said.

“If the whole thing was blown to smithereens,” Johnson said, “the cable might have been dislodged from the winch. But apart from a bit of charring, the unit looks in pretty good shape. The winch is hardly touched.”

“So does that mean what I think it means?” Daeng asked.

“The cable was down when the chopper exploded,” said Johnson.

“And how common is it for a helicopter to fly with its cable down?” Phosy asked.

“It doesn’t happen,” Peach translated. “It’s against regulations and just plain dangerous.”

They all exchanged knowing looks.

“Peach, do you think the sergeant might be persuaded to give us all a crash course in … well, crashes?” Daeng asked.

“I think he’d be delighted.”

They invited Civilai to join them and sat together eating their space lunches. Judge Haeng and his cousin slept under a tree. Sergeant Johnson was a very knowledgeable man. They’d covered the most obvious reason for a helicopter crashing in war time-being shot down. But because very few missions were flown at night, anti-aircraft batteries weren’t manned after dark. On the night Boyd crashed there was reportedly a full moon. It was possible an infantryman with insomnia might have shot him down with a lucky bullet but very unlikely.

If the pilot was drunk and stoned as reported, he could easily have passed out and lost control of his ship. Most of the professional advice garnered for the report pointed to this as the most likely cause. The only problem here was that the team was certain they’d found the crash site yet they hadn’t turned up so much as a toenail in evidence. It was obvious that the craft had exploded above the ground, probably at the tree line. This fact was dubiously corroborated by the sorceress eyewitness who claimed to have seen the explosion. There was one hell of a bang sending helicopter parts far and wide, but something other than a mere engine fire had destroyed the surrounding jungle. This brought them to the cable.

“Could he have been so out of his mind he let down the cable just for the hell of it?” Madame Daeng asked.

Johnson explained that the controls for the cable were in the cabin beside the hatch. The pilot would have to leave the cockpit and climb down to the body of the helicopter to operate the winch from there.

“Helicopters aren’t exactly gliders,” he said. “They’re very temperamental. You can’t just take your hands off the controls and float. You abandon the joy stick and the craft will likely toss you all over the place. You wouldn’t make it to the hatch.”

The Lao considered this news.

“OK, my turn,” said Civilai. He hadn’t spoken for a while and he would probably have asked a question just for the pleasure of hearing his own voice. But he had a serious query. “Let us imagine for a second that our young pilot had neither been shot nor overcome by drugs. Let’s imagine he was merely on a joy ride, enjoying the moonlight and the beautiful mountains of Xiang Khouang province. What un-extraordinary disasters might befall him?”

Peach and the sergeant went through the options together.

“The two most common reasons for coming down are running out of fuel and a mechanical fault. But Boyd’s chopper would have been checked by his mechanic, Sebastian, and refueled the moment they arrived in Long Cheng that afternoon. That was standard practice.”

“Any chance of sabotage?” Phosy asked. “A fight with the mechanic?”

“Unlikely. First, the mechanic usually flies with the pilot so that would be more like a suicide mission. Second, they were pretty good friends. It was the mechanic he’d chosen to get drunk with that night. Third, all the aircraft were double-checked by the head flight mechanic, an ex-pilot called Leon. I knew him when he was still with the marines. He was a bit of a deadbeat socially. I heard he lost his flying license for inappropriate behaviour. I was surprised to hear he was in Laos. But he’d been a good flyer and he was serious at his job. He wouldn’t have let anything untoward go by. Once they were checked, the helicopters were guarded all night.”

“And the guard let a drunk climb into a helicopter and fly it away?” asked Madame Daeng.

“He would have known Boyd was the pilot of H32. There weren’t that many American pilots in Spook City at any one time. Most of the planes were flown by Hmong pilots. And most of the guards were around twelve years of age so he wasn’t about to stop a hundred and ninety pounds of muscle from getting into his own chopper.”

“So, a mechanical fault?” Phosy asked.

“A mechanical fault is more likely than sabotage. There are a million things that could go wrong in a war-battered chopper. They’ve been shot at, flown badly and overloaded. That’s why every helicopter pilot flies with his own mechanic.”

“So if the pilot was up there by himself and something went wrong, he wouldn’t know what to do,” said Lit.

“Some do. A lot of pilots are pretty good mechanics too.”

“What about Boyd?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, what happens when you’re dropping out of the sky in a big metal box?” Civilai asked. “I assume an ejector seat’s out of the question?”

“The pilot might have a chance to operate the autorotate,” Johnson told Peach. “What that means is that you disengage the rotor from the engine and control the rate of descent by changing the pitch of the free-turning blades. It’s quite possible to land a craft on autorotate without any damage at all. A few of us back home have done it without causing any injuries. That’s why I was asking how long the gap was from when Boyd’s engine cut out to when the village woman heard the explosion. Depending on his altitude when the engine died, those extra few seconds could mean that the pilot controlled his dive rather than just drop.”

Phosy asked, “What are the chances of him getting out alive in thick bush even if he did autorotate?”

“You’d have to pick an open spot and aim for it. It was night. The jungle was dense. His chopper exploded so he probably collided with the trees.”

“But how long would he have had before the crash?”

“Judging from the woman’s description, I don’t know, about thirty seconds?”

“Could he have bailed out before the chopper blew up?” Daeng asked.

“You know, they used to put chutes in helicopters in the early days,” Johnson told her. “But they turned out to be more messy than helpful. A lot of guys got tangled up in the blades. Most fliers I know don’t even bother to bring one along.”

“So, back to autorotate,” said Civilai. “Once you’ve disengaged the rotors you presumably know the trajectory of the fall. Am I right?”

“You’d be traveling at about a forty-five degree angle. But, yes, you’d be kind of swaying down in a straight line. You’d be at a ground speed of about sixty to seventy knots.”

“More control than say just letting go of the joy stick when you’re flying normally?”

“Yes.”

“And how long does it take to release the steel cable from the spool?”

“Pretty slow if it’s working through the pneumatics. But there’s a release catch you can use if that doesn’t work. The cogs disengage and the cable drops at its own pace.”

“And how long would that take to be fully extended?”

“No more than ten seconds.”

“Civilai, what’s your point here?” Daeng asked.

“Just playing the odds, Daeng, old girl,” he said. “I’m a young helicopter pilot. I’ve just engaged autorotate. I’m slicing toward the trees with a full gas tank. I have nowhere to land. I know in thirty seconds I’ll be blown to hell. As I’m quite fond of myself, I’d rather not let that happen so I climb down into the fuselage, release the cable, grab hold of the harness and jump.”

“And what damned good would that do you?”

“Push the odds more in my favor, comrade. I’m traveling forward at sixty knots at the end of my thirty-meter cable. That means I hit the trees a few seconds before the helicopter which, as that would be an isosceles triangle, is thirty meters away by the time it explodes. Due to the trajectory and speed the force of the explosion sends its whatever volatile substance ahead of it. Hence the crater being at the edge rather than the center of the crash site. A sixty-forty chance of the pilot not being blown up. Voila. Mathematics was my favorite subject at school. What does our American think of that?”

When Peach passed this fantasy on, Johnson laughed until his belly hurt.

“You’d be flying into trees at eighty miles an hour,” he said. “You’ve dropped to the end of a steel cable in ten seconds. If the harness hasn’t crushed your ribs you break your head on a tree.”

“Tree tops being basically soft leaves,” said Civilai, determined to rescue his hypothesis.

Johnson asked for the old Politburo man’s telephone number. He told him he had friends in Hollywood who’d really be interested in a man with such a vivid imagination. To his surprise, Civilai took out a pencil and started to write it down. He was interrupted by Phosy who shot to his feet and looked around as if he’d scented an ambush.

“Damn,” he said, and rushed off at full speed into the jungle.

“See? Now you’ve upset Phosy,” said Daeng.

“What do you suppose that was about?” Civilai asked.

By the time the search continued after lunch, the objectives had changed. More of them were hunting with the hope of not finding any human remains. Civilai’s fanciful theory that the pilot might have enacted a daring escape had secretly sparked more hope in the others. Madame Daeng knew nothing of the character or dreams of the young pilot but her sense of adventure left her willing him alive. Nobody knew what had happened to Inspector Phosy. Someone suggested he might have come down with diarrhea after eating too many NASA lunch modules. But when he returned at three, he looked none the worse for wear. He had headman Ar in tow. The old man called his son’s name and the boy emerged from his hiding place in the undergrowth. He walked over to his father and grinned at the policeman. Phosy called for everyone to gather around as he had an announcement to make. He asked Peach if she’d be so kind as to help with the translation. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. Bok shrugged him off.

“As some of you already know,” Phosy said, “this is Bok. He’s headman Ar’s son. Bok cannot speak and he’s a little slow to understand. But he’s very talented. He hunts well and he knows all the secrets of the jungle. His speciality is catching insects, as you can see. I asked his father when he first developed this fascination with lassoing little creatures and it appears it was somewhere around the time the sorceress witnessed the dragon crash into the moon. She believed Bok’s sudden change was another manifestation of the disaster that happened that night. Apart from his insect fetish, Bok also started to draw pictures. In the beginning he drew them in the sand but his father bought him some paper and crayons and Bok became an artist. Another miracle. Before that the boy just used to sit in front of his hut day and night, staring off into the distance. Suddenly he could walk and the strength returned to his fingers. He was a different person. He couldn’t yet speak but his father believes it’s just a question of time. So what really happened to stimulate Bok’s mind?”

Phosy pulled an old Thai Mekhong Whiskey calendar from his pack. On the front page was a colour photograph of a young girl in a bikini. The audience looked on in dismay. Was the boy’s mind turned by half-naked women holding glasses of whiskey? Fortunately not. The inspector turned over the calendar to show that the backs of the photographs were blank and someone had made sketches on the large white sheets. He flipped them over one by one. The illustrations, without exception, were of what looked like a large monster. It had big feet and hands like table tennis bats. All of this might have been attributed to an inability to draw. But attention had been given to small details like the flowers on the monster’s shirt and blood spurting from the mouth. And the main feature of each picture was a string leading from the monster’s hand. It reached up into the sky and at its end was a bizarre flying creature with one huge eye.

“Very nice story of rehabilitation,” said Judge Haeng. “Very heart-warming. Now perhaps you’d like to rejoin the search. We’ve been covering for you for two hours.”

“No, I feel a point coming on,” said Civilai.

“The point is,” said Phosy, “there’s no ground in any of these pictures. The monster is flying. For ten years, Bok has been training insects so he can fly like the monster. Where did a boy with no schooling or life experience pick up a concept like that? Why would he ever believe he could be carried away by insects?”

“By being at ground level and watching a man fly down at the end of a string,” said Daeng.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” said Phosy. “From Bok’s point of view the helicopter was as small as an insect. There was a full moon so he could see it clearly. And to him, the man was a monster. Civilai was right. Boyd did come down at the end of the cable.”

“Oh my goodness.” Judge Haeng laughed and looked around apologetically at the Americans. “What rubbish. Surely this isn’t what we pay you for: the psychological analysis of mental retards.”

“It sounds plausible to me,” said Madame Daeng.

“Of course it does, madam,” said Haeng. “And we all know that you studied for five years at law school. So … no wait, it was primary school, wasn’t it? I seem to recall you didn’t even make it to high school. And if you had, you’d know that such a farcical theory is inadmissible. It’s missing the two key ingredients known as empirical evidence and logic. Giants being transported by hornets won’t get you far in a court of law. Am I correct in assuming you don’t have any concrete evidence of this, Inspector?”

“No … sir,” said Phosy.

“Just as I thought. Now perhaps-”

“No, I mean, no you aren’t correct. The evidence has been in front of us all the time but we didn’t look.”

He turned to Bok and said something in Phuan. Bok looked at his father who nodded. Slowly and gently, Bok removed his cap. The exhausted beetles were both resting on the peak. Phosy took the once yellow cap and held it up to the audience.

“I don’t know if you can read it from where you’re standing,” said Phosy, “but the lettering on the cap says UNC. At the orientation they told us that Boyd played college football for the University of North Carolina.”

“The boy might very easily have found it at the secondhand market,” said Haeng.

“Together with atomic submarines and Elvis Presley wigs,” mumbled Civilai.

Phosy turned over the cap. Sewn inside the lining was a label.

“Peach, could you read this for us?” Phosy asked.

She took hold of the cap and smiled.

“It’s printed with the name “BOYD BOWRY, 1960.” If Bok found this in the market, he got real lucky.”

The discovery caused elation in all but the judge. He continued to argue that the hat, like the tailplane, could have been blown away in the explosion and found at a later date. He wasn’t able to explain how it escaped the flames. It didn’t irrevocably prove that the pilot had survived the crash but Sergeant Johnson apologized to Civilai for doubting his hypothesis. He promised to buy him a beer and the Hollywood deal was still on. As they walked back to the trucks, there was just the one remaining mystery to be solved.

“Since when could you read English?” Civilai asked Phosy.

The policeman smiled.

“I may be an old dog,” he said, “but Dtui’s been teaching me some tricks. I can’t have a wife who’s smarter than me, can I now? English this year. Russian next. By the end of the seventies I’ll be a chief inspector at Interpol.”