Ransom Drop

by Mike Sullivan

  That would anger Hyde Greer, probably send him flying into a rage, with shouts and curses and threats about killing the girl coming into play. Seabury, however, knew something about him that Greer probably wouldn’t expect Seabury to know. It was locked inside the file box of his memory and he hoped this bit of information would save the life of Victoria Hong.

  Bamboo huts and long wooden houses with thatched roofs bordered the road. People sat on front porches and stared out at them as Seabury gunned by in a dizzying gray blur. He noticed sad eyes and grim, doleful expression on faces lined with gloom and despair. Children played games along the road. Trees and shadows flashed by; further out thick, muscular pewter-colored buffalo grazed on a table of wild grass next to small herds of light brown cattle. Far off to the east, inside a breast of rolling foothills isolated Hmong villages appeared. They spread across the endless expanse of green fields and patches of wild grass and tropical flowers. The sky was blue and cloudless. The air was as hot as the heat emitted from the open door of a furnace.

  Tory wrestled a bottle of water from her pack and handed it up to Seabury. A ham sandwich followed. He ate the sandwich and drank the water in long, uninterrupted gulps. Just then the cell phone rang. It was Mae Mongkul calling in again with the information he’d requested. She must have heard the roar of the motorcycle engine. He pulled off the road into a grove of trees, stopped and got off the bike.

  “Is this a good time?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m late anyway. Go ahead.”

  He stepped further back into the grove off the road while Tory ate a sandwich and drank water.

  Mae said, “Howard H. Hatcher was U.S. Air Force Tactical Command during the Vietnam War. From his headquarters in Saigon he directed Operation Rolling Thunder, the aerial bombardment campaign conducted against North Vietnam and served his tour of duty from March2nd 1965 until November 1st 1968. But that’s only part of it, there’s a lot more,” she added, turning a page in her notebook.

  “Go on,” Seabury said.

  “Hatcher, like so many other top military brass of the era, was a proud, arrogant man. The loud, unyielding type who wants everyone to know he’s in charge. It wasn’t long before he clashed with members of the CIA and with William Sullivan, at that time the U.S. Ambassador to Laos. It seems the clash resulted from the use of aerial reconnaissance missions flown within the Raven Program conducted during the Laotian Secret War, which began in 1966 and probably ended officially in 1973, the year the U.S. finally pulled out of Laos.”

  “I remember reading something about the Ravens,” Seabury said. “Weren’t their missions targeted against Pathet Lao and Vietnam regulars operating on the ground? They’d used light aircraft for aerial surveillance and pre-select Hmong tribesmen to serve as spotters for American pilots?”

  “Yes. The cockpit area was the Plain of Jars. The Pathet Lao and Vietnam regulars were entrenched there. The fighting was fierce and brutal. But there’s more, and it concerns our boy, Hatcher.” Mae paused a minute checking her notes and came back on. “Hatcher made a lot of enemies during his time in Southeast Asia. But one rivalry was a clash made in Hell. Hatcher had fought heatedly with brash, bold, charismatic Air Force pilot named Biff Brannan, ace RAC, who was just as head-strong and intimidating as Hatcher. Since the Raven Program was a covert operation, conducted as part of a Secret War no one was supposed to know about, Hatcher had little control over Brannan, and over a period of time the two clashed like pit bulls. The Raven Program, which Brannan flew under, was very successful and Hatcher was jealous of Brannan’s success. The limelight shifted from Air Tactical Command in Saigon over to the Raven Program, with its Poster Boy Biff Brannan clearly basking in the glory.”

  A wave of static rocked the line. Seconds later Mae came back on. “To make a long story short,” she said, “Hatcher was in command of all air force operations in Southeast Asia. Only he could call off a search-and-rescue mission for a downed U.S. pilot. Hatcher had a reputation of not leaving combat center headquarters—often pacing the room through the entire night—until he was absolutely sure that a rescue mission for a downed U.S. pilot was hopeless. But this wasn’t true in the case of Biff Brannan. The day Brannan ditched his plane—we’re not sure where, some reports indicate near the Plain of Jars, others say further north—Hatcher immediately called off the search. Brannan and his spotter were reported MIA and never seen or heard from again.”

  “One last question.”

  “Yes.”

  “Joe Greer—the Army black market gun runner—did he by chance have any hobbies?”

  “Yes. He liked airplanes.”

  Seabury rang off, put the cell phone back in his pocket, and turned to Tory.

  “Five minutes, okay? I know you could use a break, but I’d like to keep going.”

  “I’m almost finished,” she said and capped the water bottle and put it into her pack.

  They started up again after five minutes. The delay had cost them almost twenty minutes, and by the time they’d gone through the town of Nong Tang, twenty-six miles east of Phonsavan, it was clear to Seabury that he wasn’t going to be on time for his rendezvous with Hyde Greer.

  Undeterred, he kept his eyes pinned to the road and roared off down the highway heading toward Phonsavan.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  During the decades since the Laotian Civil War, Phonsavan’s facelift was something to behold.

  “Like a picture post card,” Tory had told him.

  Intense, American aerial bombardment and fierce fighting during the war had practically bombed the town into extinction. However, what Seabury saw now was a small, completely rebuilt cattle town dominated by lush green foothills and forests of towering pine.

  The town was laid out in a convenient grid. Large, but mostly empty boulevards were lined with the gray buildings of government houses. There was a bank, a post office and a bus station that Seabury noticed. Two large markets—one for dry goods, the other offering poultry and sea food—could be seen teeming with commercial activity in the downtown area. But they weren’t going into town. They were going in the opposite direction.

  Turing off high 7, Seabury raced south down a back road, driving hard for another mile. Eventually, Tory pointed to a hillside resort hidden in a grove of white pine and said, “There it is, Pau Chan.”

  Seabury drove up a steep hill and then down the other side toward a hovel of twelve cabins built at the edge of a pine forest.

  The cabins faced a broad grassy plateau lined with trees and rolling foothills. Square green fields contained patches of yellow flowers and the lowering sun in the western sky cast long dark shadows across them.

  Seabury pulled into a space at the back of one of the cabins, and he and Tory got off the bike. A short, blocky Hmong with a shaved head and a crisp Fu Man Choo moustache scooted across the yard from a cabin at the end of the lot.

  “Hello. I’m Mabri.” He extended a hand and Seabury shook it. Then, in a brisk, authoritative tone, he said, “Let’s go. Too many eyes here. We need to move quickly.”

  He pointed to a space alongside a cabin at the end of the compound. “You can park the bike over there,” he said.

  Seabury drove the bike to the side of the cabin and locked it to a metal grate. He and Tory lifted their bags off the bike, while Mabri inserted a key in a door to one of the cabins and opened it. He switched on lights and they entered.

  The cabin was built with wooden logs honed and planed and varnished to a lustrous glow. It contained a king-sized bed, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. A desk and two wooden chairs stood off to the side of a mirrored closet. There was no television.

  Sparse, but clean, Seabury noted, as he tossed his bag down on the bed next to Tory’s. A moment later he carried the blue duffle bag containing the million dollars out to a brown, dented van that looked like it had been functional during the time of the Samurai. Mabri sat behind the wheel, waiting.

  By now the temperature had dropped considerably and Sea
bury shivered in the cool mountain air as he slipped into the back seat of the van. Across the lot a touring van was parked in front of a row of cabins. Tourists were removing shopping bags filled with knickknacks and souvenirs purchased at the Plain of Jars earlier during the day. Seabury heard sporadic bursts of laughter.

  “I have the tour permit.” Mabri turned around facing Seabury, holding up a slip of paper. “Just in case anyone checks. You can’t go out to the Jar Sites without a tour guide. It’s against regulations.”

  Seabury heard the accent. It was soft and high-pitched like birdsong. It sprang excitedly from his lungs and then seemed to vanish like smoke in the thin mountain air.

  Mabri put the paper into the glove box and eased out of the parking lot. Once he was far enough away from the resort, he jammed on the gas and roared off down the road. The van shook and rattled at the higher speed. They drove in silence back toward Phonsavan. Mabri exited highway 7 onto Maung Khoun Road and raced south toward the Plain of Jars.

  Seabury’s cell phone rang. He picked up immediately already aware of who was calling on the other end.

  “You’re late, asshole,” Greer said. “Up till now I’ve been patient. I gave you proof of life and the location of the ransom drop, didn’t I? Yeah, I did,” he said, answering his own question. “But see, asshole, here’s the deal. I don’t like dirt being rubbed in my face. I said don’t be a second late or the girl dies. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill her?”

  “I’ll give you two. One, you’re bluffing. Two, you need the money.”

  “Who says I need the money? I could buy and sell a low-life, idiot, bottom feeder like you any day of the week. So who says I need the money, huh? Who says?”

  Seabury swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure if he’d pushed Greer too far, gone too far over the edge. He had no idea if Victoria Hong was still alive, or anything about what might have happened to her. He was just winging it hour by hour.

  “I’m on my way to the Jar Sites with the money. I’ll need two hours to get there.”

  The line went dead in his ear. Seabury clipped the cell phone shut but kept it in his hand, choosing not to put it back in his pocket.

  “Think that was a good idea?” said Tory and turned around from the front seat, staring back at him with a puzzled look.

  Seabury kept quiet.

  “Well, here’s my opinion—for whatever its worth—and I’m not trying to second guess you, Sam. But if it were me dealing with this psycho, I’d be a lot more careful about what I said to him. Just saying.”

  Seabury sat staring calmly at the phone in his hand. A minute passed, then another. Mabri slowed the vehicle down.

  “Keep going,” Seabury snapped and the older man nodded, hunched shoulders, and increased his speed.

  Another minute passed. Then, seconds later, the phone buzzed and throbbed in Seabury’s hand. He snapped it open and heard the voice on the other end.

  “Okay, two hours. I don’t see you in two hours, the girl dies.”

  “I’ll be there,” Seabury said.

  The line went dead in his ear. In the front seat, Mabri shook his head and grinned ing from ear to ear. A look of amazement worked down the deep crevices of his tired old face.

  “You sure have a set of brass balls,” he said to Seabury.

  Exchanging glances, Tory and Seabury began to giggle, then burst out laughing over the driver’s choice of words. Mabri slapped the wheel and laughed out loud joining them, easing the tension of the last few minutes.

  As they raced across a vast green plateau bordered by distant mountains, Seabury glanced at his watch aware now that a half hour had gone by. Time, time, time, ticking away. Time we don’t have…time we can’t waste. Beneath his skin nerves were about to snap.

  I know you,” Tory said a few minutes later. “You’re inquisitive. A merchant seaman who wants to know everything. Unfortunately under the circumstances, we don’t have time for a guided tour of the area. I can, howeve,r offer some pertinent facts about the place, if you like?”

  “Okay,” Seabury said. “But please…keep it brief.”

  “FYI…the Jar Sites and the Plain of Jars are two different things. The Plain of Jars is a broad rolling expanse, ten or twelve miles across. The area’s part of the Xiang Khouang Plateau. It lies above the Mekong River and the Vietnam Plain.” She pointed out the window. “Look. You can see the high mountains surrounding it.”

  “What about the Jar Sites?”

  “They’re just that. Hundreds of huge stone jars thought to be over two thousand years old, scattered around the perimeter of the plain. They nest together with stone pillars and date back to the Iron Age where some sort of megalithic civilization built them. “Much later the area was named Plain de Jars by the French, and bombed to destruction by the U.S. Air Force during the Secret War. It was reported that Laos was hit by an average of one B-52 bomber pay-load every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, between 1964 and 1973. That’s more bombs than were dropped during the Second World War. Over two hundred and sixty million bombs. It’s a wonder this country wasn’t bombed back into the Stone Age.”

  Mabri kept his eyes pinned to the road. Occasionally he nodded his ancient head, amazed by her depth of knowledge and concurred with what she said.

  Tory continued. “Historically, the Xiang Khouang Plateau, with its wide flat spaces, was a transit route for ancient nomadic tribes. They wandered from the coast of Southern China down to the vast plains of Korat in north central Thailand. Eventually, they ended up migrating to Java in Indonesia. Archeological records have them going there, over a quarter of a million years ago.”

  The road narrowed and Mabri turned sharply. The undercarriage squeaked and moaned under them. The elderly man kept going.

  “What about the people living here?” Seabury asked Tory.

  “Mostly Phau and Hmong villagers,” she said. “They live quiet, ordinary, uneventful lives. They live for the moment, as most Laotian villagers do, never looking back, never thinking about the future; never thinking about what lies beyond the mountains that surround them. The land, as you can see, is wild and grassy. Some of the people raise cattle, others raise fruit and vegetable that they sell in the market in Phonsavan. At times I envy their simple life.”

  “Interesting,” Seabury said, his mind now racing back. “And the war,” he said. ”During the Secret War how many aerial reconnaissance missions were flown here by the U.S. Air Force.”

  “I don’t have the exact number. I don’t think anyone does because so much of the operation was covert. Hush, hush. Sworn to secrecy. But if I had to venture a guess, I’d say no less than five-hundred.” She paused briefly, then said. “I’m glad I studied the Lao language and the country’s history while in college. You ask a lot of good questions, but why do you need to know so much about the war?”

  “Curiosity mostly,” he said.

  “Oh…kay, “she said, drawing the word out. Her nose wrinkled and she turned back around.

  There was a lull in the conversation while she stared out the window gathering her thoughts.

  A moment later she turned around facing him and continued, “I can’t go into all of it now,” she said, “there just isn’t time. But in sum, here’s what happened. The Steven Canyon program, the original, highly classified Forward Air Controller operation covering U.S. military regions inside Laos, was faced with its greatest challenge. Loa Government forces needed help defending the country against the Pathet Lao and the North Vietnamese Army during the civil war here. So they allied secretly with the CIA. Together they devised a system where U.S. military personal could be mustered out of the military and return as civilians to perform covert operations against the Communists. The Raven Program grew out of this alliance. Raven was a tactical radio call-sign identifying pilots of the original Steve Canyon Program who were now operating secretly inside the country. I hope I’m not confusing you.”

  “No. Not at all,” Seabury said.

  Tory co
ntinued. “Anyway, the Ravens, all volunteers for the program, were the best of the best—rough, elite, free-spirited pilots. They had this get-the-hell-out-of-the-way-and-let— me-do-my— job attitude. They reported to an Air Attaché, who in turn reported to the U.S. Ambassador in Vientiane. Back then, the Air Force kept records on the Ravens, but had little control over them, if any at all. Needless to say, this created bitter feelings among Air Tactical Command back in Saigon.”

  “What else?” Seabury said.

  “Next, Lima Sites were built. They were air strips on peaks surrounding the Plain of Jars, for purposes of aerial surveillance. The Ravens flew O-1 Bird Dogs, Cessna’s, and T-28 Trojans. Most of it was unarmed, light aircraft. Pilots flew observation missions to locate PAVN and Pathlet Lao troops and equipment encamped on the ground. Once they spotted them they marked the sites with smoke rockets and directed U.S. air strikes on them. Anyway, only the T-28’s carried any sort of armament. They were armor-plated to protect the pilot and his spotter.”

  “And the spotter with the American pilot—was he usually Hmong?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any chance one of the spotter’s could have been American?”

  “I don’t think so. The casualty rate on these missions was unusually high. They flew at tree-top level and in most cases spotted the enemy by the muzzle flashes of guns being fired back at them. Only half of the Ravens ever came back alive.”

  They turned along another bend in the road. Mabri pointed up ahead toward a line of tour buses parked in a paved area at the side of the road. Off in the distance Seabury saw a line of purple foothills. Higher up on steep mountain ridges volcanic rock knifed through clusters of Banyan and forest pine.

  Lower, along the valley floor, a dilapidated collection of rust-stained Kwan sine huts shoved up against the backs of old, aging airplane hangars. A concrete path ran between the huts and the hangers. The dark stick figures of LPR military strolled back and forth between the buildings. Closer, inside a parade ground, a square of soldiers marched across the tarmac. The airbase was once the property of the American Air Force. Now it was occupied by the Lao PDR and a squadron of aging MIG fighters.