by Larry Bond
If Fleming was simply a day behind schedule, he’d expect to meet her at the restaurant tonight. In the meantime, she was going to go look for him—and see what was going on up near the Chinese border.
Assuming she could find a way to get up there. Driving would take too long. The distance itself wasn’t that far—roughly three hundred kilometers as the bird flew—but the roads were winding and notoriously bad; even with a skilled driver leaving at first light it could easily take all day just to go one way.
Flying was a much better option, but it was bound to be difficult. While Vietnam was no longer the strictly run authoritarian state it had once been, renting a plane or helicopter was still not an easy task. The first problem was language. Generally, this could be overcome by enough money, but while Mara practically cleared out an ATM inside the airport terminal, the thick wad of bills she flashed in front of the man inside the office of Pearl Air Surveying seemed only to confuse him.
“I’m looking for a scientific expedition,” she told him, speaking as slowly and as clearly as she could. “They may be in trouble. No one has heard from them. They’re west of Sapa.”
The man shook his head. “No fly.”
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged instead of answering. If he’d been ordered not to by the Vietnamese, this would be an important piece of information—a possible confirmation of the Chinese charges.
“Please,” said Mara, pressing. “They may in great trouble. I need to get there. Isn’t this enough money?”
The man shrugged.
“Do you speak French?” she asked. “Parlez-vous français?”
Her own French wasn’t that good, and she felt almost relieved when he didn’t react to the words.
“Maybe Chinese?” Mara suggested.
“The problem isn’t the language.”
Mara turned around. A short, dark-skinned man dressed in mechanic’s coveralls leaned against the wall near the door, arms folded. “What’s the problem then?” she asked.
“Too far for a helicopter. At least any of the helicopters you could get here.”
“It’s only three hundred kilometers.”
“You have to factor in the altitude. And the linger time.”
“Can’t it refuel?”
“Not out there. There’s also the red tape.”
He pushed off from the wall and started speaking in Vietnamese to the man behind the desk. The other man responded in a quick, almost nervous voice, speaking so quickly that Mara had no chance to decipher what he said. She watched the mechanic talk—clearly he had some sort of solution in mind.
But he wasn’t going to share it in front of the other man.
“No,” he told her finally. “It’s not possible with these helicopters. The range is too far.”
“Where can I go to find one that has the proper range?” she asked. “You can’t.”
“I need to find them,” she insisted.
“How badly?”
“Badly.”
Their eyes met.
“Twenty thousand, U.S.”
Mara laughed. “Not that badly.”
The mechanic folded his arms.
“Five hundred dollars,” she said.
“Five hundred won’t even pay for the fuel.”
“It will pay for the aircraft as well as the fuel.”
“In your dreams. All you Americans think we’re stupid. The Vietnamese are poor, so they must be stupid.” The man’s English had a slightly British accent. Mara guessed it originated in Hong Kong.
“I don’t think that. But not all Americans are rich, as many Vietnamese seem to think,” she told him. “I can pay you five hundred. Plus fuel. With a card.”
“A thousand in cash. With fuel. Plus the landing fee and lunch.”
“And lunch. If we’re back in time.”
“We buy it and eat in the plane.”
~ * ~
The man’s name was Ky Kieu, and though he was Vietnamese, his grandfather had been an American soldier who abandoned his child—or probably never even knew he had one—after the war. Kieu’s father had grown up on the streets, but had managed to save enough money— Kieu didn’t say how—to send his son to Hong Kong and Australia, where he learned to fix airplanes.
Most important as far as Mara was concerned, he was a pilot and owned an aircraft—though not the type Mara thought.
“That’s not a helicopter,” she said when he led her out to the parking area beyond the passenger hangars.
“I explained that a helicopter hasn’t the range.”
“It’s a biplane.”
“So?”
“A biplane?”
“It can do just about anything you would want a helicopter to do, except hover. The fact that it’s a biplane makes it maneuverable. I can land on a road if I want. If you want to pick up your party, they’ll fit. And you’re unlikely to find another private aircraft in Hanoi. Your CIA friends generally have to travel to Saigon to lease one.”
Mara’s expression must have remained doubtful, since he added that there was no other way to get where she wanted to go except by truck.
“It’s sturdier than it looks,” he said, pounding his fist against the side of the aircraft. “It’s been around.”
The plane was a Chinese-made Yunshuji-5, a license-made copy of the Russian PZL Mielec An-2 Colt older than its owner. A fat engine sat at its nose, fronting a two-level, fully enclosed cabin. A dozen people could crowd into the passenger space, and the plane could carry roughly five thousand pounds, not quite in the range of a small, two-engined, commercial turboprop, but close.
The cockpit looked as if it hadn’t been altered since the day it rolled off the line. The black paint on the metal control panel had been worn down to steel gray in all but a few spots.
“How old is this plane?” Mara asked as she sat in the copilot’s seat.
“Age isn’t important.”
“Do you even have radar?”
“Would it make a difference? Sit for a minute. We have to taxi over for fuel. There’s a food stall behind the fuel farm where you can buy our lunch.”
The Colt vibrated like an unbalanced washing machine. Its engine missed badly on the way over to the fueling area.
“You sure this thing is going to make it?” Mara asked Kieu.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s running rough.”
“It always does in the morning.”
The pilot didn’t seem to be making a joke. Mara climbed down off the wing, nearly losing her balance because of the wash from the prop. She found the food stall behind an abandoned aircraft tug on the other side of the tank area. An irregular circle of white plastic picnic chairs circled a woman squatting between two large baskets and a pair of hibachi charcoal grills. The woman spoke no English, but Mara’s Vietnamese and a little bit of pointing did the job. She fished noodles from a pot, and what looked like potatoes from one of the baskets, placing them in a pair of boxes. Then she added some fried fish and a tangle of greens.
“Cha ca,“ said Kieu when she returned to the plane, which was still being fueled. “Good choice. We eat now. Maybe later we don’t have a chance.”
“Listen, for real—is this airplane going to make it?”
“Do you think I’d go if it didn’t? We don’t have parachutes. If you die, I die.”
The engine settled down with the full tank of fuel. It roared as Kieu brought it up to takeoff power, pushing from the patchwork concrete at the edge of the ramp to the main runway as soon as he got clearance. It rose immediately, the doubled wings eager to get into the air.
Sapa was a little less than three hundred kilometers away; the Colt cruised around 185 kilometers an hour, or roughly a hundred knots— the speed some planes landed at.
It looked like a handful to fly. The plane was unpressurized, but they stayed relatively low, skimming over the city, rice paddies, and eventually the jungle at a few hundred feet.
“When we get c
loser, you’ll need to wear the mask,” the pilot told her after they’d been in the air for a while. Kieu hadn’t given her a headset. He had to shout to make himself heard over the engine. “In the mountains. I’ll tell you when.”
“Is it safe?”
“Plenty safe. Just high. Even in the valleys.”
“All right.”
“So, why is the CIA interested in scientists?”
She’d let the first reference go as if she hadn’t heard it, but now felt compelled to reply.
“I’m not a spy. I’m a journalist. I’m doing a story on the expedition.”
Kieu laughed. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe,” said Mara.
“All Americans in Vietnam are spies,” said Kieu.
“You don’t honestly believe that.”
“The government does. And maybe I am a spy myself.”
“Maybe you are.”
People were always accusing Americans in Asia of being spies. Mara knew from experience that if she offered a reasonable alternative, most people would accept it at face value, repeating it to the authorities if asked. What they truly believed was another story, of course. For some, thinking that they were working with a spy was attractive—they liked the idea of danger, even if it was far removed from reality.
“What are these scientists doing? Looking for more oil?” asked Kieu.
“They’re studying climate change.”
“Ha! They should cool the sun if they want to be useful.”
“I’m sure they would if they could.”
“It’s always been hot in Vietnam. My grandfather sweated the minute he got off the plane, and he landed in December.”
“You’re in touch with your grandfather?”
“We’ve met. It’s always hot in Vietnam,” he repeated, changing the subject. “Today is very much like last year, and the year before.”
“The average daily temperature in Hanoi was three degrees hotter last year than it was five years ago,” she said. Though no expert on climate change, Mara had heard the statistics so many times she knew them by heart.
“Three degrees. Nothing.”
“That’s for the entire year. A change like that is huge. The changes in the extremes have been even more dramatic. And Vietnam is one of the lucky ones. The changes here haven’t been catastrophic. They’ve helped your country, on the whole.”
Kieu waved his hand. “The heat means nothing. Weather, that’s all.”
“You don’t think the climate has changed?”
“Nah. Superstition. Like the old people’s warts, and burning incense to pray for rain. It doesn’t pay to worry about things we can’t control,” he added. “Time to put the oxygen on.”
There were two large canisters, each with its own separate hose and mask. The flow tickled her nose and upper lip. Kieu showed her how to adjust it, easing the gas until it was almost natural.
Mara had marked out the camp’s location on a printed map, having transposed it from the satellite data Lucas had given her before she left. Kieu took the map from his clipboard, examining it closely.
“Very close to the border,” he said.
“You told me that before.”
“Still, very close to the border.”
“Problem?”
“Not today.”
A few minutes after they began using the oxygen, Kieu banked the aircraft over a road that cut along the bottom of a valley, paralleling what looked like a narrow stream. Ten minutes later, he turned sharply west, climbing up the side of the hill. The aircraft hugged the treetops; from Mara’s vantage it looked as if they were barely clearing the upper branches.
They flew slower and slower as they climbed, until finally it seemed as if they were standing still. Finally, Kieu pitched the nose down and they picked up so much speed so quickly that Mara’s stomach seemed to shoot into her mouth. Kieu stared intently out the front of the plane, holding the yoke tightly as they pitched down into another valley. He consulted the map again, frowned, then turned northward.
“Almost there,” he grunted.
Mara looked at the road below. From the air, it seemed to twist violently; she wondered if what he’d promised about being able to land was true.
“We’re within four or five klicks,” said Kieu. He pointed ahead. “The border is there somewhere, eight, ten kilometers from us. The camp should be on the right side, about midway down the wing as we come over.”
Mara reached below the seat for Kieu’s binoculars. They flew northward very slowly, following the road. As they approached the border— the fence itself was hard to see because of the jungle—the glare of a reflection hit her eyes.
She pulled the glasses up to get a look at the car or truck the light had reflected off. But instead of seeing one vehicle, she saw an entire line of them—troop transports, old ZiLs, the Vietnamese equivalent of American two-and-a-half-ton trucks. There were a dozen lined up on the road within spitting distance of the border checkpoint.
“What’s going on down there?”
“I don’t know. That’s weird.”
The terrain was rising to meet them, taking them gradually toward the vehicles. The pilot angled the plane to the right, flying toward the camp.
“It looks like there was a fire,” said Mara, adjusting the glasses. She could see a campsite, or maybe the remains of one, black blotches in a haphazard circle.
The trucks straddled the border area, some in China, some in Vietnam. Several had crashed into the fence. All seemed to have been destroyed or disabled.
Kieu banked northward again. Smoke rose from beyond the fence. A long gray cloud furrowed in a long line.
Not smoke—dust.
The troop movements.
“Get closer to the border,” Mara told Kieu as he turned south again. “Something is going on.”
“Something is very strange,” said Kieu. Then he said something in Vietnamese, a loud curse word.
As Mara turned to him, something rattled through the floorboard. It sounded like bolts springing upward. Only as the plane pitched on its wing did she realize it was a spray of bullets. They were under fire.
Worse. They’d been hit.
~ * ~
~ * ~
More Indian Cities Abandoned
MUMBAI, INDIA (World News Service)—India reported today that a further two hundred square miles of countryside east of Jaipur would be abandoned due to the continuing water shortages there. The largest affected city in the region is Phulera.
As recently as 2009, Phulera boasted a population of roughly 25,000. Nearly a decade of drought, however, had provoked an exodus that left it a virtual shell of its former self. Like many towns in the Indian state of Rajasthan, it has been all but abandoned for the past two years.
Scientists warned that Jaipur will be next. Despite widespread emigration from the area, the city remains home to approximately eight hundred thousand people, many of whom fled homes in the countryside over the past four or five years. Jaipur once supported a population above 3.2 million.
“What we are seeing here is a continuing human crisis,” said Kumar Singh, chief scientist for the India Drought Project, a nonprofit scientific group that has monitored India’s water shortage and its effect on population since 2005. “Last year, an estimated two and a half million people died because of the water shortages and the famines they caused,” he added. “This year, the toll will be even worse.”
In the capital, meanwhile, opposition party leaders attempted to blame some of the country’s woes on the failure of the prime minister to provide adequate . . .
~ * ~
1
Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China
The machine-gun fire that woke Josh sounded like the steady tapping of a heavy rain against a metal drum. An aircraft passed overhead, its engine a loud rasp. Josh jumped to his feet, but before he took a step to run, he remembered that he’d been very close to the trucks
the night before. He lowered himself to his haunches, listening to the gun and airplane as he scanned the jungle around him.
The gun was behind him somewhere, to the north.
The airplane—he didn’t hear it anymore.
