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.
