One of the motorbikes revved in the distance, returning. The CIA officer held on to the thief until he was sure that it was Boston on the bike, then threw the man down and told him, in English, to run. The man blinked at him.
Finally the kid began crawling backward toward the jungle.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Stoner told Boston, climbing on the back of the bike.
“He a guerrilla?”
“I don’t know. Probably just a thief. Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“You done inside?”
“For now. Go. Go!”
Historically, Thailand sat at the crossroads of southeast Asia. The land had played host to various migrations for many thousands of years. This history had left a rich culture, but it had also greatly complicated the language situation. Thai was spoken by more than half of the country’s population, but its various dialects and local accents made it difficult for a foreigner to understand, even when that foreigner was communicating with the help of a language expert who could listen in with the help of a small but powerful mike setup.
“I think what he’s telling you is it’s dangerous,” said the Thai-Kadai language expert back in Dreamland as he tried to decipher the words Dog was repeating through his sat phone.
“Well, I kind of figured that,” said Dog.
The man had arrived on bicycle after they’d been on the ground a half hour. He seemed to be a maintenance worker or caretaker; he had explained in heavily accented Thai that the administrator and staff had left some time before — though whether “some time” meant earlier in the day or weeks ago wasn’t entirely clear.
“Why don’t I let you talk to him directly?” Dog asked his translator.
“Sounds okay to me,” said the man.
Dog had to coax the Thai worker into taking the phone. But he was soon chattering away, and Colonel Bastian thought he’d have a hard time getting the phone back.
“He says he hasn’t been around too long,” the translator told Dog. “He comes every day. The only other aircraft have been army helicopters. The Cambodian guerrillas hide when they come, but there are at least a few dozen armed insurgents nearby, and it sounds like they control the area. Most of the people who live in the jungle there are refugees, or were refugees and have just kind of squatted.”
“Did he say anything about the factory?” Dog asked.
“Didn’t know anything about it. Hard to tell how sincere he’s being, Colonel. He may be scared of you and be telling you what he thinks you want to hear. Or he might be a guerrilla and be lying outright. Or he might just be telling the truth.”
Dog looked at the middle-aged man. It seemed to him unlikely that the man was a guerrilla, but of course there was no way of knowing. The Thai government did not actively condone the guerrilla movement against the Cambodian government, but it didn’t entirely discourage it either. The guerrillas were occasionally harassed, but the Thai government did not consider them a big enough threat to kick them out of the country. Historically, there had been plenty of animosity between Thailand and Cambodia, and if it weren’t for the refugees who crowded their borders, the official line toward the guerrillas might have been openly encouraging.
“He offered to take you to his house for something to eat,” added the Dreamland translator. “Pretty high honor.”
“How do I say thanks but no thanks?” asked Dog. “We have to hit the road soon. Stoner should be just about wrapping up.”
As they passed the point where the thief had turned off, Boston saw something flash in the jungle on the opposite side of the road. He hunkered toward the handlebars, pushing the throttle for more speed though he already had the engine red-lined.
Stoner shifted on the bike behind him. Boston yelled at him to stop moving; he was afraid of losing his balance. But the CIA officer was oblivious, and Boston nearly lost the bike as the trail clambered across the side of a ravine before flattening out.
Someone was shooting at them.
Bullets flew on both sides of the road, dirt exploding in small wavelets.
And then there was a loud boom behind him.
Somehow, Boston managed to keep the bike upright. The small village near the airstrip lay just ahead.
Stoner thumbed the tape off another flash-bang as they sped down the hill toward the village. The grenade he’d tossed off had temporarily slowed their pursuers, but he knew that it was just a matter of time before they closed in again. They had a jeep or something like a jeep as well as the other motorbike.
A group of children playing in the road ahead scattered as the bike approached. Stoner saw someone crouching near a building and realized he had a gun. Before he could do anything, he found himself flying through the air.
He realized he’d lost the M-84 stun grenade a half second before it exploded.
Boston hit the dirt so hard his teeth slammed into his tongue. The pain made him scream; he jumped to his feet, head spinning in the dust. Someone grabbed him from behind, and he shoved his elbow hard into his side, fishing for his ruck and the submachine gun.
“Come on, come on,” yelled the man who’d grabbed him. “The airport. Come on.”
As Boston started to run, the bark of a heavy machine gun resonated off the nearby walls.
As soon as Dog heard the gunfire and explosions in the distance, he turned and ran back toward the airplane and Bison, who was standing guard near the wing.
“I’ll get the engines going and turn around so we can take off,” said Dog. “Get them aboard.”
He didn’t wait to hear an answer. He clambered into the cockpit, just barely patient enough to bring both engines on line before spinning the aircraft around. As he did, he caught sight of two figures running across the open field behind the blockhouse. Bison ran toward them, firing at something in the distance.
“Come on, damn it,” Dog yelled.
The plane stuttered, its brakes barely holding it down.
“Move! Move!”
Boston turned and saw a jeep bouncing across the edge of the road behind him. A machine gun had been mounted in the rear.
He leveled his MP-5 in the bastard’s direction and emptied the clip. The front of the truck exploded and the vehicle flipped over, the gunner jumping out.
“In! Go!” Stoner yelled, pulling him toward the borrowed King Air.
Bison jumped up into the open rear doorway. Stoner yelled something, then threw himself inside the plane.
Boston took a look back. Two men were moving at the far end of the runway.
One was dragging a small sewer pipe with him.
No — he had a shoulder-launched missile.
The Whiplash trooper stopped, slapping a new magazine into his gun. By the time he had it ready to fire — no more than a few seconds later — the two men had disappeared.
There was a block building near the end of the runway.
The plane began moving behind him, but Boston couldn’t worry about it now — he couldn’t let the bastards shoot his people down. He heard the engines revving as he started toward the building.
Where’d the bastards go?
Ordinarily, he would have taken the corner slowly — ordinarily, he would have had a squad with him, flanked the SOBs, maybe used grenades and machine guns and every piece of ordnance known to modern man.
