Located across the Chao Phraya River from the capital, Thonburi was supposed to be Bangkok's sister city, but so far as Pamela could see, the area was simply a continuation of the buildings and shanties, Buddhist wats and tourist traps, dark-watered klongs and waterfront piers making up the low, oriental urban sprawl that was Bangkok.
The district's Kiong Dao Kanong carried a special reputation, however, a place where visitors to Thailand could glimpse a fragment of a largely vanished way of life, the floating markets of Thonburi.
She stole a sideways glance at her companion. During much of the interview the night before, Matthew Magruder had seemed reserved, even shy.
Now he displayed an animated, almost boyish exuberance as he studied a guide booklet and pointed out landmarks and sights along the waterway. Pamela was not a morning person, and she wondered if Tombstone's Navy hours were responsible for his break-of-day brightness.
Still, she had to admit she was enjoying herself… and enjoying his company. This expedition had been rather hastily planned, and she'd not been entirely certain at the time that it was a good idea.
It had been late enough the previous evening when Tombstone had decided to stay in the city overnight. Today was Saturday and the aviator had this weekend off, so there was no need for him to get back to the ship until Monday.
Almost… almost she'd suggested that he spend the night with her, but a final professional reserve within herself, the knowledge that mixing business and pleasure like that would only lead to trouble, had decided her against it.
He had arranged for a room for himself and not even suggested that they share her bed. Pamela felt a mild disappointment at that which bordered on regret.
It wasn't that she wanted the guy to make a pass at her… but she wasn't used to such gentlemanly discretion ― or patience ― and it left her wondering if the man even found her attractive.
She pushed the thought aside. What Tombstone had suggested instead had turned into a delightful excursion that left her feeling far closer to the man than a recreational romp in bed would have. They'd left requests for wake-up calls at the ungodly hour of five thirty A.m. ― zero-dark-thirty, as Tombstone had called it ― met in the hotel coffee shop for a thoroughly American breakfast of coffee and Danish, then made it to the Oriental Docks in time to catch a tour boat by six forty-five.
The boat had brought them to Thonburi, navigating through a klong crowded from shore to shore with native craft of all descriptions, heavily laden with tropical produce. Here, two pretty That girls in enormous lamp-shade hats, obviously sisters, jostled their skiff close to the shore to display a bountiful pile of dry fish; there an ancient man with white whiskers spread woven mats on the dockside piled high with fried bananas and noodles. Perhaps most surprising were the tourists. Farangs ― the That word for foreigners ― outnumbered the locals by a considerable margin, and most of the shops along the klong appeared to be selling souvenirs, cameras, and native crafts aimed at Western tourists. The air was thick with the sharp tang of That spices and foodstuffs. The crowd noise was loud enough that she had to lean close to Tombstone's shoulder and raise her voice to be heard.
"What are you so serious about?" she called. He'd grown quiet in the last few minutes, and she wondered what had triggered the change.
He flashed her a shy smile. "Just wondering if my dad ever came here.
He would've liked this place. He liked people."
Tombstone had told her about his father earlier that morning, about Sam Magruder's death while attacking a bridge in Hanoi. "Lots of servicemen came here for R&R back then, didn't they?" she asked.
"That's probably when Bangkok got its reputation as sin city." He stopped next to the spot where a black-eyed girl who couldn't have been more than twelve was selling custard-like sweets wrapped in banana leaves. "Here!
Let's try some of these."
Tombstone indicated he wanted two, and fished in his pocket for several baht to pay for them. "Kawpkun!" Tombstone said as she handed the bundles up from her boat.
The girl burst out laughing, though whether at Tombstone's pronunciation or in pleasure at the tall stranger's attempt at her language, Pamela couldn't tell. "You are welcome!" the That girl replied in perfect, somewhat stilted English.
"I didn't know you spoke That, Tombstone," Pamela said, trying one of the custards. It was at once sweet and tart, reminiscent of butterscotch. When had she started using his call sign? she wondered. Last night sometime. It seemed so… natural.
"Oh, was that That?" He feigned innocence, then sobered. "Actually, a wise man once said that you need to learn two words in any language in order to get along in another culture.
"Oh? And what are those?"
"Please and thank you."
"And who was the wise man?"
"My father." He shrugged. "It really helps a lot if you at least try a bit of their language. It is their country, after all."
"Matthew Magruder, the more I know you, the less likely you seem as a Navy aviator. You're supposed to be arrogant!"
"Sorry. You want to see my Tom Cruise Top Gun imitation?"
"No, the Navy has enough Tom Cruises. I kind of like you the way you are."
He shook his head. "What is it about the Navy? During the interview you were going after the Navy's carrier program like nobody's business."
She thought back to the questions she'd asked on camera, and saw what he meant. Much of the thrust for her series called into question the whole issue of the Navy, of the government spending tens of billions of dollars for a fifteen-carrier fleet it no longer needed. While drawing out Tombstone and getting him to talk about himself, Pamela had argued that carriers were too expensive and too vulnerable, useless high-tech toys in an age when nuclear confrontation with the Soviets was no longer a likely possibility, and when Third World banana republics no longer knuckled under to gunboat diplomacy.
Pamela knew she'd done a damned good job putting her message across, too.
Still, she'd liked the way Tombstone had kept the ball coming back into her court. He believed in carriers as an extension of Presidential foreign policy with an almost passionate conviction. He'd not convinced her of his side of the argument, not by a long shot, but she admired the way he stood up to her.
Maybe that was what she found most fascinating about the guy.
They finished the custards and disposed of the banana leaf wrappings in a street-side waste container.
"It's waste I don't like, Tombstone," she said after a long silence. "We don't need multibillion-dollar floating airfields anymore. Maybe back in the days when we were toe-to-toe with the Soviets, but…"
"The Russians aren't the only bad boys on the block," he said. "Besides, they're preoccupied with their own troubles right now… but there's nothing that says they might not come out of their hole sometime soon meaner and scrappier than ever."
"Nonsense." Her tone was harsher, more sarcastic than she'd intended.
"The Cold War is over, or hadn't you heard?"
He looked at her, his gray eyes like ice. "You know, Pamela, I've had the distinct impression all along that you had it in for us service pukes."
The accusation hit her in the pit of the stomach like a blow. She stopped in mid-stride, turning on Tombstone, unable to keep the fury out of her face and voice. "Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that!"
Tombstone's expression showed first confusion, then concern. "Pamela?
What's wrong?"
Slowly, she forced herself to relax, unclenching her fists, and looking away from the Navy officer to study the crowd surrounding them. As many people as there were, the surroundings felt strangely private.
Pamela took a deep breath. "Sorry, Commander," she said. "It's… what you said."
"What did I say?"
She was silent a long moment. "I'll tell you something. Something I…
don't like to talk about." She looked away, catching her lower lip between her teeth before she continued. "I had a brother once."
He gave her a hard look. "'Had'?"
Pamela nodded. The pain was still sharp. "His name was Bobby and he was three years younger than me. I was a journalism major at Pitt when he graduated from high school. Our… our family was all set to pack him off to college, but he wouldn't have any of it. You talk about conservatives! He figured the colleges were all liberal hotbeds ― this was the dawn of the Reagan Era, you understand ― and that there were better ways of getting an education without spending forty thousand dollars for a piece of paper to hang on a wall."
"What happened?"
"He joined the Marines." She sniffled once, surprised that the memory still brought tears. "He went to boot camp at Paris Island, then got assigned to a rifle platoon going overseas. Beirut."
"Oh, God."
"October, 1983. Some crazy drove a truck bomb into his barracks one floor below where he was sleeping. They never even found enough of him afterward to send home in a body bag."
"I'm… sorry."
"So, Commander, I do care for… for 'service pukes," as you call them.
And that's why. As a journalist, yes, damn it, as a liberal journalist, I take great pleasure in putting the spotlight on waste in the military, especially on fat, braid-heavy Washington S.O.B."s who ship young men like Bobby off into impossible situations, places where they aren't even allowed to defend themselves, places where they can get killed, killed just because…
because…"
Pamela wasn't sure just how she got into Tombstone's arms. It hadn't been her idea, but she made no move to break away.
"I'm sorry, Pamela," he said. "I had no idea…"
"How could you?" She took a step back and looked up into his face, searching. "Tombstone, I… I really was interested in you during the interview. Not as a hero. Not as some kind of target in a campaign against government waste. As a person. I can disagree with a national policy and still see you as a… as a person, can't I?" She'd almost said "friend," and wasn't sure why she'd changed the word at the last instant. Pamela had not felt this confused in a long time, and it embarrassed her.
"I wish you would," Tombstone said. He grinned. "Why do you think I went to all this trouble to be with you someplace where we didn't have a camera staring at us?"
She looked around and was suddenly aware that several Thais nearby were casting dark looks in their direction. "Speaking of staring…"
Tombstone followed her glance and smiled. "That custom," he said. "They disapprove of public displays of affection between the sexes. Even holding hands." He was still holding hers.
"Hey! I've seen guys holding hands in public here."
"That's different. Friends are a lot more demonstrative with each other in public here than back Stateside. But boys and girls have to watch their step."
She pulled her hand free. "Maybe we should watch ours, then." She looked at her watch. "I should get back," she said. Why did the words hurt so? "They'll think I got kidnapped or something."
"We can catch a water taxi over here." He pointed along the pier. There were fewer boats now, and the remaining waterside vendors were starting to pack up their wares. Western tourists continued to wander along the street, though, wandering in and out of the shops and store fronts facing the klong like brightly-colored ants on an anthill. "Come on."
She didn't want to go back to the hotel.
Batman sat back in his ejection seat, shaking his helmeted head sadly.
"C'mon, Malibu. Give me a break. You think I like being out here in the boonies? Playing tag with crawlies as long as my arm?" He shuddered. That tropical centipede he'd seen legging it across the floor in his barracks at U Feng the night before hadn't been quite that big, but…
"Hey, dude," his RIO said over the ICS. "All I know is I was enjoying liberty call in the big B, and then I find out there's been this here change in orders. If they want to punish you by sending you to Siberia, fine, but what did I do to deserve this?"
"Guilt by association, my man. You hang out with the wrong people."
"Next time I'll know better. Watch it. Coming up on the first TARPS run. Switch on… cameras running."
To Batman's eyes, the jungle canopy below remained unbroken, mysterious and secret. To the high-tech eyes of the camera pod slung beneath his aircraft, however, the trees were far more transparent.
The TARPS pod consisted of a flattened, streamlined canister attached to one of the F-14's weapons mounts and tied in with the aircraft's navigational computer. TARPS could be fitted to a Tomcat in a matter of hours and was used by the Navy to convert standard F-14 fighters to the reconnaissance role as necessary. The pod contained a KS-87 high-speed frame camera, a KA-99 panoramic camera, and perhaps most useful of all, an AAD-4 infrared line scanner.
Fitted with TARPS, an F-14 could overfly suspected enemy positions and take high-resolution recon photos which, more than once, had caught the surprised expressions of antiaircraft gun crews as the Tomcat flew overhead.
The lateral panoramic camera could photograph in telescopic detail broad stretches of terrain clear to the horizon in a format which allowed extreme enhancement and enlargement.
The AAD-5 created a line-by-line heat image of the terrain unfolding in a continuous strip with photographic clarity, revealing everything in the aircraft's path within a swath which ran very nearly from horizon to horizon.
Infrared photography was an especially valuable tool for intelligence work.
Batman had examined IR photos which showed the heat shadows of aircraft, identifiable traces marking where planes had been parked on an airfield, hours after they'd been moved; he'd seen infrared shots of oil storage tanks which revealed the level of oil inside as though the tanks themselves were transparent; he'd seen shots of hot vehicle engines gleaming like bonfires through layers of foliage or camouflage netting.
IR scans of the That jungle would reveal hidden trails just as clearly.
The cleared, hard-packed ground of foot trails or roads gave off different levels of heat than the loose humus around it, and the jungle could not entirely conceal the patterns of temperature differentials. Jungle roads were clearer still, and vehicles would show up like burning flares.
Batman glanced out the canopy. To starboard, toward the north, lay Burma. There was an air base off that way, fifty kilometers distant.
Mong-koi, it was called. He remembered the MiGs that had come across the line four days earlier. He could see nothing but jungle mountains, partly masked by clots of drifting cloud.
To the south, Price Taggart's Tomcat drifted lazily off the starboard wing. "Two-oh-three, this is Two-three-two," he said over the radio. "You with me, Price? We're starting our run."
"With you, Batman," Taggart's voice replied in his helmet. "Lead the way."
"We have signal lock," Malibu said, "Beginning run… now."
Images picked up by TARPS could be stored or beamed back to a base for immediate processing. This time around, the images would be held for analysis on board Jefferson.
"Smile down there," Batman said. "You're on Candid Camera."
The minutes dragged on. Though TARPS technology allowed the reconnaissance aircraft to move at a reasonably high speed ― Batman was cruising at nearly five hundred knots ― the need to stick to a particular course was irksome to any fighter pilot. It made him feel predictable, and therefore vulnerable. Not that there was evidence of anything more hostile in that green maze than cobras and malaria. Now if there'd been a SAM site or two down there…
Becky was supposed to be in town for a few more days. He wondered if CAG would relent and bring him back in time to enjoy another run into Bangkok.
"Hey, Batman? You see something there?"
Malibu's voice over the ICS snapped Batman's attention back to his VDI.
The camera feed from the TARPS pod showed the IR line scan on the screen, a shifting picture in black and white. Odd. There were dazzling points of light down there. Cooking fires?
"I think we have stumbled across one of those quaint and charming tribes of native hill people you've heard tell about," he said. It seemed strange, though. There were a lot of fires down there.
He held the Tomcat in straight, level flight, throttling back to less than four hundred knots at an altitude of three thousand feet. He dismissed the idea that he'd caught a band of smugglers. If that was a camp of some kind hidden beneath the jungle canopy, it had a population numbering in the thousands. He could see the engine flares of trucks now, too. It looked like he'd stumbled across some sort of army.
An army. Those weren't That troops down there, not that many, not in this area.
Batman's eyes strayed to the northern horizon, encountering unrelieved green. That whole region was a regular breeding ground for armies, most of them the personal guards of drug lords. No doubt some of them were operating on this side of the border as well.
Whatever it was down there, it was damned big. "I wonder what they're going to make of this back at U Feng," he said to Malibu.
"Damned if I know. Want me to call it in?"
"Let's finish the run first. Good God! There's no end to them! Just what the hell have we found anyway?"
"General Hsiao! Major Sai is calling! The Burmese radio operator pressed the telephone handset against his ear. Around him, other men in Burmese army uniforms sat at the radar consoles which filled the Mong-koi control tower. Through the large, inward-slanting windows of the tower, the Mong-koi runways could be seen, flat, straight-lined slashes through the jungle. "He reports two American aircraft over his position!"
"American aircraft? What kind?"
The radio operator spoke briefly into the radio before turning again.
"Sir! He doesn't know."
Peasants, Hsiao thought. Peasants who could scarcely tell the difference between a jet interceptor and a helicopter. Most of the soldiers in the People's Army now fighting in northern Thailand had been recruited from the ranks of militias formerly in the service of the various warlords of the Golden Triangle. Major Sai had, until recently, been working for the notorious Khun Sah, a Burmese drug lord widely known as the Prince of Death.
His United Shan Army still dominated much of eastern Burma.
That would not be the case for very much longer. Once Hsiao's agents controlled Thailand, he would be able to dictate his own terms to the likes of Khun Sah.
"American reconnaissance aircraft," Hsiao said. "From the carrier at Sattahip."
"Major Sai requests instructions, General," the operator said. "Shall he open fire?"
SA-7 missiles might down one of the planes, but killing two was unlikely.
More probably the planes would flee, bearing precise coordinates for the point at which they'd been fired upon. "Tell him to do nothing. Support will be there in a few minutes."
"Yes, sir."
Hsiao sensed the ponderous bulk of General Kol coming up beside him.
"General Hsiao?" The Burmese sounded worried. "What are you planning?"
Hsiao looked past the fat general, his eyes seeking the shadowed forms of several MiGs parked beneath the patchwork cover of layered camouflage netting.
Ignoring Kol, he snapped an order. "Colonel Wu!"
"Sir!"
"Do we have a patrol ready to go?"
"Yes, general. Four aircraft are fueled and standing by."
"Scramble them."
"At once, General!"
"General Hsiao" Kol began, but he stopped when the former Chinese intelligence officer turned a cold gaze on him. He swallowed, then made himself continue. "General Hsiao, perhaps it is not wise to antagonize the Americans. After all, a plan so broad, so complex. To shoot down American fighters here, now…"
"Your concern, General," Hsiao said quietly, "is this base and the Burmese forces we have in the field. The Americans are my concern."
"But if attention should be called to this air base-"
"It does not matter, Kol," he replied, omitting the formal use of the Burmese general's rank as a reminder of who was in charge. "After tonight it will not matter what the Americans know… or their That puppets!"
Kol lowered his gaze. "Of course, General."
The mournful wail of a siren could be heard faintly through the windows of the control tower. Across the tarmac, Chinese aircrews were wheeling the first of four J-7 fighters onto the runway. Hsiao could see four pilots, already wearing their green form-fitting pressure suits, dog-trotting toward their planes with their helmets under their arms.
"In any case," Hsiao continued, "there is nothing to worry about. So far as anyone else is concerned, this will simply be one more minor border incident."
The first Chinese pilot clambered up a ladder and slid into his cockpit.
Crewmen detached power lines and wheeled the starter cart out of the way as the engine coughed into life, the whine rising above the moan of the siren.
The canopy came down as the Chinese MiG started to roll.
Hsiao nodded to Wu, who was pressing a headset against one ear. "Have them stay at treetop level all the way to the target, Colonel. Perhaps we can surprise our American friends."
Moments later, the first two J-7s shrieked off the runway.
"How about one more run?" Batman asked. He pulled the Tomcat into a sharp, banking turn to port. They had turned to cross the greatest concentration of heat sources, crossing the area from south to north. This had taken them close to the Burmese border, though they were still south of that invisible line.
"Fine by me," Malibu replied. "I don't really fancy visiting Burma anyway."
"Two-three-two!" Taggart's voice exploded over Batman's headset. "Bogies incoming, bearing three-four-oh at one-four miles!"
That put the targets across the line, well into Burma. "Rog," he said.
"How many?"
"Two bogies," Taggart replied. "Repeat, two bogies. I think they're low. Keep losing them in the ground clutter."
"Stay on 'em, Malibu! You have them?"
"No joy, Batman… no! Got 'em! Two bogies, range now one-zero miles.
Shit, Batman. They're coming straight in!"
Batman hauled back on the stick, clawing for sky. Whatever was about to happen, he wanted some room to maneuver.
The bogies kept coming.