The Burma Effect

by Michael E. Rose

  Dima was instantly on his feet again, professional, in charge again.

  “Bobby, secure that stairwell,” he said. He reached for his .45, which was on the kitchen table. The other men raced into the main room, shrugging into shirts, zipping combat pants. Clive and Sam carried AKs, passing them to colleagues.

  “Tom, secure that back doorway,” Dima said. “Clive and Sam, take the front balcony and pull down those shutters.”

  Delaney could hear shouts in Burmese and children’s voices coming from other apartments now, above them and from the adjacent buildings.

  Clive took a short look over the low concrete wall of the balcony before pulling a metal rollerblind almost all the way down.

  “Army van, one driver, at the wheel. Two men with AKs moving this way,” he shouted back inside. “And a Mercedes, tinted glass, can’t see who’s inside.”

  “I got the stairs,” Bobby said from the outside hallway. Delaney heard him shout, apparently up to the landing above. “Back, back, back, go back inside.” Burmese voices. A door slammed.

  Delaney moved into the living room area, keeping low.

  “Out of the way, Delaney, stay down,” Dima said. Delaney squatted to one side, back against the living-room wall.

  “Get the hell out of here, man,” Abbey said. “Back in that room.”

  “Leave it, leave it, leave it,” Stefan said. “Watch that window on the left side.”

  Abbey moved fast to the left-hand-side window. Stefan moved into the side covered balcony, to the right, looked briefly over the wall and pulled the rollerblind down most of the way as Clive had done.

  “Clear on this side,” Stefan said.

  “Back stairwell clear,” Tom shouted out.

  Dima and Sam put down their assault rifles and pulled the five bodies over to the corner of the living room between the two exterior balconies.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sam said, sweating heavily in the morning heat and humidity. He had a Glock tucked into his back waistband. He took the side arms from the dead Burmese soldiers and placed them on the kitchen table in the back corner of the living room. Then he gathered up the soldiers’ AKs, pushed plates and glasses to the floor, and laid them on the table as well.

  “What’s up?” Tom called out from the back stairwell after the crash of plates. “What’s up?” “OK, OK, we’re OK in here,” Sam shouted.

  “We’re going to have to get out of here and take that van,” Stefan called out from the side balcony.

  “And before anybody else comes,” Clive said from his lookout on the streetside balcony. He peered through the horizontal gap in the shutters. “Driver on radio, driver on radio,” he shouted suddenly.

  “Take him, Clive,” Dima said.

  Clive rolled the shutters up slightly and let go a burst of AK-47 fire into the street. Then another. He rolled the shutter almost all the way down again and crouched below the wall. “He’s out,” Clive said.

  Through the entrance doorway, Delaney heard shouting in Burmese. The other two soldiers had clearly seen the driver go down. They fired up into the stairs. Bullets ricocheted around in the concrete well on the first floor. Bobby took aim downward and fired off a long burst of his own.

  “Cocksuckers,” he shouted out. He let go another burst.

  “Easy, Bobby,” Dima shouted. “We’ve only got limited ammunition in here. Short bursts, short, short.”

  “We have to get out of here before any others come, Dima,” Stefan said.

  “We’ll go, we’ll go,” Dima said. “Sam, get what gear we’ll need, get it ready. Bobby and I will clear the stairs and then we’re out. Head for the van. Delaney, you stay with Stefan.”

  “We’re not bringing that piece of shit with us, no way,” Bobby said from the stairwell.

  “No time for this now, Bobby,” Dima said.

  “Leave him, fuck it,” Bobby said.

  The soldiers below fired blindly upstairs again. The ricochets pinged all around.

  “Christ,” Bobby said, firing downward again.

  “Sam. We’ll need a smoke grenade in that stairwell,” Dima said.

  Sam raced into a bedroom and came back with two smoke bombs. Dima tossed them to Bobby outside the main door.

  “Stand by, Bobby,” he said.

  “Vans, vans,” Clive called from the front balcony, peering through the shutters “Troops.” “Jesus Christ,” Dima said. “Bobby, hold back, hold back. Tom, you clear? Clear at the back?”

  “Clear,” Tom called out.

  “Van at the side,” Stefan called out from his balcony. “Troops out. Six, eight in the alley.”

  “Van this side, van this side,” Abbey called from his window.

  “Christ,” Dima said. “Stefan, what do you think?”

  “The back way,” Stefan said. “No choice.”

  “Blind here, no window,” Tom said.

  “It’s got to be the back, Dima,” Stefan said.

  Suddenly they heard a voice on a loud hailer from outside, shouting something in Burmese.

  “What are they saying for Christ’s sake?” Sam shouted.

  “They don’t know who’s here,” Clive called back.

  “They know, they must know,” Dima said.

  “They know five Burmese came in here and they haven’t come out yet, that’s all they know,” Stefan said. “They know someone’s killed a driver from the balcony up here and someone’s firing at their guys from the stairwell. That’s it so far. They don’t know what’s going on.”

  The amplified shouting continued. No shots were fired from the street.

  “They’ve got to figure some of their guys are still alive in here,” Bobby said. “Yeah,” Clive said.

  “If they are professionals and they think some of their men are still alive in here, they’ll go with tear gas,” Dima said. “That is how it is done.”

  “Right on,” Bobby called inside. “And I hate tear gas.”

  “We got no masks,” Abbey said.

  “No masks,” Dima said.

  “Back door,” Stefan said. “Has to be. Tom, you think there might be an alleyway back there for vans?”

  “Can’t tell, Stefan,” Tom said.

  “It’s got to be the back,” Dima said. “We’ll go out whatever door there is downstairs and take one of the vans from the alley on the right-hand side. The right side as we go out. OK?”

  “OK,” said Stefan. “Everybody got that? Down the back, we cover each other and take a van in the right-hand alleyway and we go.”

  “Bobby, we’ll need those smoke bombs for the back now,” Dima said.

  Bobby tossed them in to Sam, and Sam ran with them to the back of the apartment. There was more shouting in Burmese from the loud hailer outside. Clive pulled up the rollerblind on the front balcony to have a look and immediately there was heavy fire from the street. Bullets ricocheted inside the enclosed space.

  “Christ,” Clive shouted, pulling the blind all the way back down and slumping to the ground. Blood gushed from his face. “I’m hit,” he said.

  “Go Delaney, check him out,” Dima said. “Everyone else stay in position. Stay where you are.”

  Delaney moved quickly to the now-darkened balcony. Clive had been hit by bullet shrapnel and bits of concrete in several places in the face. Not a direct bullet wound but deep shrapnel cuts, all bleeding profusely. One eye socket was gushing blood, too.

  Clive was lying quietly, conserving energy, a professional soldier with a wound.

  “I don’t think it’s bad, Delaney,” he said.

  Delaney looked around for something to wipe Clive’s face.

  “Is it bad?” Dima called out.

  “Face,” Delaney said. “Shrapnel, I think. There’s a lot of blood.”

  “I’m OK,” Clive said, trying to sit up.

/>   “Can you move, Clive?” Stefan called out.

  “Yeah,” Clive called out. “Can’t see too good, though.”

  Everyone went silent for a moment. Then Stefan said, “We’ve got to go.”

  Suddenly there was a whoosh and a clattering from the front stairwell. Bobby cursed and fired downward. “Tear gas, tear gas,” he shouted.

  He grabbed a canister from where it hissed and whirled at his feet and hurled it back downstairs. Two more canisters rocketed up and landed nearby, pouring out stinging billows of fumes. Bobby kicked at them and tried to fire down the stairs. Bursts of AK fire ricocheted around him from the soldiers below. He raced coughing and gagging inside the flat and slammed the door.

  “I need a mask,” he shouted, falling to his knees and coughing.

  The stout entrance door did not appear to be letting fumes inside.

  “This getting hot now, brothers,” Abbey said from his vantage point at the left-hand window.

  The closed metal blind in the front balcony clanged like a big out-of-tune cymbal; once, twice, then again.

  “They’re firing tear gas canisters at the fucking blind,” Sam called out from the back. “Delaney, get Clive out of there.”

  “Everybody stay in position,” Dima said. “Delaney, get out of that area, get Clive out of there.”

  Now AK fire hammered at the front balcony rollerblind. Some bullets pierced the slats, letting in slim tracers of sunlight. They heard the sound of a helicopter hovering above.

  “Chopper,” Clive said as Delaney helped him into the centre of the living room. Blood still flowed from his cuts and his left eye was closed.

  “Tear gas, tear gas,” Tom shouted from the back doorway. There was another whoosh and clatter as canisters came up from below. Tom fired downstairs and then he too came gagging and coughing into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. “This is looking very bad, Dima,” Stefan said.

  “It’s bad,” Dima said. He looked over at Clive, who was lying quiet and still. He looked at Delaney, who was mopping Clive’s wounds with a dishtowel. He looked around at the rest of the men.

  “Delaney, you better make a run for it,” Dima said finally.

  “No way,” Bobby said.

  “He’s no good to us,” Dima said. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Suddenly you want him to stay. What’s the use?”

  “No way,” Bobby said, standing up and rubbing his streaming eyes with his left fist.

  “Where’s he going to go anyway?” Stefan said.

  “Upstairs,” Dima said. “We’ve only got a few minutes.”

  “So we go upstairs too,” Abbey said.

  “Abbey, you know they won’t let any of us get out that way,” Dima said. “They’re sure to have guys on the roof by now. You heard that chopper. We fight our way out down the stairs or we’re finished. Jail or dead.”

  “We’re finished, man,” Abbey said.

  “Delaney, you have one chance to get into an apartment above us. One chance, maybe a few minutes, that is all you’ve got. Go,” Dima said.

  “No way,” Bobby said. “We die, he dies too. We do jail, he does too.”

  Tom called out from the back. “What’s the point, Bobby? He’s not with us. He’s a reporter.”

  “Reporter man, I think you going to die,” Abbey said quietly from the window.

  “He goes,” Dima said. “We haven’t got time for games now. Bobby. Stand by on that front door.”

  “No way,” Bobby said, raising his .45 and pointing it at Dima.

  “Easy,” Sam said, levelling his AK at Bobby.

  “Relax.”

  “Delaney, come, come, come, hurry up man,” Tom called from the back. “Run.”

  Delaney left the standoff in the living room and raced to the back of the flat.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” Tom said. Delaney hesitated for a second at the back door.

  “You make us look good, you hear?” Tom said.

  “Front cover of Newsweek, right? Fucking heroic figures, right?”

  “Yeah,” Delaney said. “Front cover.” He looked briefly down the long hallway to the front. Dima raised his hand. Delaney raised his.

  Tom opened the door. The fumes had subsided but lingered still. Tom stepped out into the back stairwell and fired downward. “Go, go, go,” he shouted.

  Delaney covered his face with the bloody dishtowel and raced up to the next landing and then the next. His eyes stung and mucous ran from his nostrils as the tear gas did its work. He tried the door of an apartment on the third floor, rattled the handle, pounded, but it was locked and no one came. The door had a big panel of glass in its upper half, for light in the dim stairs. He rolled the dishtowel around a fist and smashed the glass. He reached inside and opened the flimsy handle lock with trembling fingers.

  Below, Tom stopped firing and slammed the door to the mercenaries’ refuge. Gunfire came from the ground level of the stairwell and Delaney could faintly hear more firing from the front of the building. In the distance, a helicopter beat the air and someone on a loud hailer shouted instructions, warnings, exhortations in a language none of them could understand.

  Delaney hurled himself into the neighbour’s apartment and hit the floor in the hallway, lying still and listening intently. His eyes and nose streamed from the tear gas and his heart was pounding ferociously in his chest.

  He thought he heard the sound of children crying somewhere in the flat. It was identical in layout to the flat two floors below he had just escaped from. He got cautiously to his feet and began to look around, not knowing what he wanted or needed to find. Slow, he said to himself. Go slow.

  All the bedroom doors were open except the one nearest the living room. He turned the handle on this one and immediately a woman’s voice began wailing, screeching, beseeching, in Burmese. He opened the door and a middle-aged woman cowered on the bed, with two toddlers, a boy and a girl, clinging to her and crying.

  She raised her right hand to him, imploring him in Burmese, drawing her children closer to her with her left arm.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” Delaney said to her. He stepped her way and she cowered even farther back. The children wailed louder. Delaney retreated, closing the door behind him. The apartment seemed otherwise empty.

  He half crawled onto the enclosed balcony, behind its low wall. The rollerblind on this one was up, all the way. From one corner of the opening he raised his forehead and eyes high enough to see out. On the street below, he saw clusters of vehicles; army vans, police cars, a troop carrier. Away in the distance, he saw a tank lumbering up, clearly about to be placed in position in front of the building.

  There was no firing now. The Burmese soldiers all seemed to be waiting for the arrival of the tank. An officer with the loud hailer kept shouting in Burmese. Whether he was shouting to the mercenaries or to the building’s residents was not clear.

  Delaney knew there was not much time now before the mercenaries were captured or killed. Then there would be a house-to-house search, if the Burmese soldiers were professional, and he would be taken, or possibly killed. But there was nothing to do but wait. Escape was impossible.

  He found a glass, took some water from the kitchen tap, drank. He rinsed his face. The children had stopped crying in the bedroom and all was quiet inside.

  On a small table near the entrance door was a telephone. Delaney went over and picked up the receiver.There was a dial tone. He decided he would try to call Rawson in Ottawa. He knew only a few other numbers in Canada by heart and Rawson was the only one in any position to help him in some way, even from afar.

  He had no idea whether the phone in the apart ment was set up for international calls and he did not know the international access code for the Burmese phone system. He tried 00 and Rawson’s mobile number in Canada. A recorded voice in Burmese came on the
line. He tried the 0011, as in Britain. He tried 011, the Canadian code. No connection. He tried zero. A Burmese operator came on. “Long distance, please. Long distance, international,” Delaney said. The operator replied in rapidfire Burmese. The helicopter swooped overhead, very low.

  “English, English, please,” Delaney said. “International call.”

  The operator carried on in Burmese. Then she paused. Delaney heard her speaking to someone else off the line, and then she came back on the line, speaking to him once again in Burmese. The line clicked, appeared to go dead. “Christ,” Delaney said.

  Then an operator speaking very basic English came on the line.

  “International, yes please,” she said.

  “I need to call Canada,” Delaney said. “Urgent call to Canada, please.”

  He was sweating, thinking that at any moment a 50-millimetre tank shell would crash into the building just two stories below. He had been in enough places where tank fire had gone astray to know how much danger he was still in “Number, sir, please. Number sir,” the operator said.

  Delaney gave Rawson’s mobile number, looking at his watch. It was 8:30 a.m. in Rangoon, 10:30 p.m. the night before in Ottawa. A Tuesday or a Wednesday night, if his calculations were correct. Rawson would surely be at home getting ready for bed.

  Rawson answered on the second ring. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Rawson here.”

  “Jonathan, it’s Delaney. It’s Delaney. Listen to me, OK, I’ve only got a few minutes. I’m in Burma and I’m in an awful jam.”

  “Delaney, for God’s sake,” Rawson said. “Where the hell have you been? Everyone is frantic over here.”

  “Jon, just listen to me, OK? I’m in serious danger here. I’m under fire from government troops in a building outside Rangoon. I’ve managed to get to a phone.”

  “For God’s sake, Francis. Rangoon . . .”

  “I’m somewhere in the northern suburbs. Kellner’s dead. He was in on some crazy scheme to kidnap Aung San Suu Kyi with some mercenaries and they were found out. The army is hammering away at the mercenaries two floors below me and there’s a tank coming into position as I speak.”