Hsiao Kuoping would rule this country before the month was out.
All that remained was to defeat the That military forces now closing on this remote and otherwise insignificant air base.
Hsiao picked up a briefcase containing maps and reports and left the office. He had some further surprises to discuss with Colonel Wu.
The Thais thought they had him in a trap. Soon he would show them that it was possible for the trappers themselves to be trapped.
CHAPTER 24
'Eagle Two, this is Homeplate,' CAG's voice said over Batman's headset.
'The brass has a question for you.'
'Uh… roger, Homeplate,' Batman replied. Now what in the world…?
'Do you know someone named Phya Nin?'
The question startled Batman. 'That's affirmative, Homeplate.' Hell, he'd told them all about her during his debriefing. What more did they want to know? And why?
'What do you know about her, Two-one-six?'
He thought a moment. 'Uh… I'm not sure I understand the question, Homeplate. She's a sergeant in the Karen National Army of Liberation. The 12th KNLA Brigade.' He'd told them that in his debriefing too.
'Roger that, Two-one-six. Can she be trusted? Over.'
Trusted? 'Absolutely, Homeplate. Are you in contact with her?'
'Two-one-six, stand by.'
He listened to static for a long moment. What the hell was going on?
Below his Tomcat, the land spread out flat and green, a patchwork quilt of rice paddies and farmland. The squadron was about halfway to its destination. It looked peaceful down there. Indeed the fighting which had torn at Thailand's social fabric for the past weeks had not touched this, the real Thailand, where the smoggy sprawl of Bangkok was as alien as the surface of Mars. From ten thousand feet, Batman could see the six-laned intrusion of Route 1 following the Chao Phraya north from the capital, but the countryside itself looked as it must have looked for centuries, remote and untouched.
It reminded him of the jungle in the north and of the girl who claimed that the Karens with God outnumbered their enemies.
'What was that all about, Batman?' Kingsly asked from the back seat, his soft Tennessee drawl pronounced over the ICS.
'Beats me, Ramrod.'
Kingsly laughed. 'Sounds to me like they want to know more about your gook girlfriend.'
'Can that 'gook' shit!' Batman snapped. His anger surprised him. He remembered his own references to gooks a few days before, and the memory burned.
'Well sure, man,' Ramrod said, startled at Batman's reaction. 'Anything you say.'
'Ninety-nine aircraft, ninety-nine aircraft,' another voice said over the radio. 'This is Victor Four Delta traffic control. Proceed to Point Lima and orbit. Squadron commanders acknowledge, over.'
There was a stunned silence, then Batman heard Tombstone responding for Eagle. Then the tactical channel crackled with questions and speculations by other men in the squadron.
'What's gotten into them back there, Nightmare?'
'Damfino, Shooter.'
'Another crap-out, guys. Didn't I tell you? Another fuckin' crap-out.'
'That's enough, people,' Tombstone's voice came over the chatter. 'Radio discipline. Keep the channel clear.'
Batman couldn't help connecting the questions about Phya with the sudden change in orders, but what did it mean? In the Navy, the gods of Higher Authority rarely told the guys in the trenches what was going on.
He looked out the cockpit again. He could just barely make out the specks of vehicles crawling along the highway. More distinct were the toy-shapes of several helicopters pacing their own shadows as they flew north, parallel to the Tomcats' course but rapidly falling behind. Those were probably troop transports, possibly some of the helos on loan from the Marines to the Thais for the ground attack on U Feng. Possibly, he decided, something had gone wrong with that end of the operation, and the alpha strike was being held up to coordinate with them better.
Batman just hoped that someone remembered that the alpha strike was going to be running a little lean on fuel by the time they reached the skies over U Feng, and the more time they spent circling Point Lima ? a marshaling area just north of Chiang Mai, thirty miles south of U Feng ? the less time they'd have over the target.
From what he knew of the way command decisions were often made, Batman was not reassured.
'Silence! Silence!' Kriangsak shouted in English. His throat was raw with gun smoke and screaming, his head still fuzzy from the blast which had stunned him almost two hours earlier. He pointed the M-16 he'd picked up somewhere at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The sudden, shocking burst of gunfire cut through the screams and cries of the hostages and brought a sudden, deathly silence to the lobby. 'Quiet, everyone!'
Plaster dust and smoke floated in the air of the hotel lobby. Nearly forty civilians, men, women, and a few children, knelt or lay on the expensive red and gold patterned carpet in front of the hotel's registration desk. A half dozen of Kriangsak's men kept their automatic weapons pointed at the crowd, patrolling the outer edge of the group like sheepdogs.
Two bodies lay on the floor nearby, a doorman in a military-looking white uniform and a That policeman in khaki, both killed when Kriangsak's men had stormed into the hotel. A third body, a hotel security guard, lay across the room near the front door.
It was a large, long room, lined with shops and opening into a ground-floor restaurant. After fleeing the disaster on New Phetchaburi Road over an hour earlier, Kriangsak's men had broken in and quickly secured the lobby and all of the ground-floor entrances.
Hotel guests in the foyer and the restaurant had been herded into the lobby. Most ? all of the Orientals except for the staff ? had been freed immediately. Under Kriangsak's orders, the hotel's employees had then begun moving through the hotel, ordering the guests to evacuate the hotel.
As the guests, many of them half-dressed or still wearing night clothes, had exited the elevators and stairwells, Kriangsak's men had sorted them.
Orientals had been allowed to leave by the front door, but Westerners had been roughly shoved into the growing crowd in front of the registration desk. One of Kriangsak's men had gone through the hotel's registration book, calling out names. One by one, the Americans in the group of hostages had been identified, the others released.
By now, all of the hotel's rooms had been emptied and checked by Kriangsak's men. Other rebel soldiers stood guard at each window and entrance. It wouldn't be very long before the authorities were forced to act.
'Colonel!' one of the soldiers yelled. He wore a bloodstained bandage around his head, covering a gash where he'd struck his head during the Americans' attack on the tank column. 'They're coming, Colonel! Front door!'
Kriangsak walked to the wide windows at the front of the lobby. Outside, the city looked peaceful, not like a city under siege at all. The only signs that anything was wrong were the absence of the usual early morning traffic on the street, and a smudge of smoke hanging above the buildings in the distance.
He saw movement, troops in camo uniforms, moving cautiously among the trees which filled the International's park-like grounds. Soon a white flag appeared above a low mound of earth two hundred meters away.
