Jake Fonko M.I.A. (18 page)

“You pay a lot of attention to security,” I observed. More than some of the field officers I’d known in Nam did, in fact.

“A man in my line of work can’t be too careful,” Driffter said. “There’s people who mean me harm, and I don’t aim to make things easy for them. Say, does the name Jack Philco ring a bell?”

Sure did. Sorry to have the matter brought up. “Where did you hear that name?” I asked, hoping for a clue as to what answer would cause me the least trouble.

“Well, you’re carrying his passport, for one thing,” said Driffter. “And some friends of mine down in Phnom Penh had told me a fellow name of Jack Philco was asking my whereabouts a few weeks ago. Interesting coincidence? I just thought you might be able to tell me a little more about him.”

“So your people searched our gear while we were out this afternoon?”

“Like I said, you can’t be too careful. That’s why I have friends here and there, a sort of DEWline, you might say—Distant Early Warning. Helps prepare me for eventualities. Don’t worry, my munchkins aren’t thieves. Just like to know who I’m hosting, that’s all. You aren’t carrying any weapons, except that knife, and I’ve never yet met a man who could beat me with a knife, so you’re no worry to me.”

“Your people were watching us on the way up here too?” Maybe that explained those feelings I was having?

“Naw, can’t cover everything. Anyhow, what trouble could you cause between Poon’s and here? So, what’s the story on Philco, friend? You Philco, or Fonko like you said?”

“Fonko. Philco was my cover.” No sense denying it. If he found the passport, he’d seen the rest of the stuff in that envelope. I should have destroyed all that worthless crap, but too late now. “I was on mission in Phnom Penh. The mission had something to do with you, though exactly what I never found out. Gracie was one of your people?”

“Gracie’s a good old gal. Kept me in touch with goin’s on down at the CIA. She radioed me you were nosin’ around. I’d been hopin’ maybe they’d of gave up on old DRAGONFLY by now. Guess not.”

“All I know about you is what’s on that briefing sheet. You were CIA, then?”

“Sure was, buddy. Company all the way. Flew for Air America up in Laos, with Ed Lansdale and Pop Buell and Dick Secord and “Mr. Tony” and all them, running the war that wasn’t. Had me flying arms in and drugs out. We had to finance that whole operation ourselves, and that was the easiest way—Congress sure as hell wouldn’t vote us no money for a secret war. They expect us to hold bake sales? Shit, man, next to the KMT boys we were the biggest drug dealers going. Had the ‘Circle Star’ trademark, copied the U.S. Air Force insignia right off the side of the plane. We hauled H out of the Golden Triangle by the ton. No other way to get close to the hill tribes up there. Wouldn’t throw in with us if we didn’t help ‘em sell their product.”

“Then they sent you into Cambodia?”

“Yeah, well, in Laos we was backing the Vietainne government, and they did a treaty with the Pathet Lao in February of 1973, and the shooting mostly stopped, so Laos seemed under control, and meantime, Cambodia was falling apart faster every day. My main job was riding herd on weapons shipments to Lon Nol’s boys. The CIA never trusted them to do it on their own. Tons of our top stuff just sort of disappeared, if we left it up to them. Man, our politicos sure do pick some winners for allies! Should have backed the Khmer Rouge—those guys know how to win these gooks’ hearts and minds.”

“Your main job?”

“I had another job, laying out sensors along Viet Cong supply routes in the jungles. Pick up truck exhaust fumes, or voices. We couldn’t never recruit no assets out in the field that were worth a goddamn, so that was our high-tech way of spotting targets for the B-52s. Problem was, those sensors had shit for brains, couldn’t tell Viet Cong from school kids, nor water buffalo piss from truck exhaust. Sent the B-52s in anyway, just in case. The SAC was just hell bent on bombing 
some
thing, didn’t much care what they hit.

“My 
other
 job was so deep down secret that nobody will ever know about it. Mouth orders only, wouldn’t even give me a co-pilot. Some strategic genius got the brilliant idea that we should enlist the hill people here in Cambodia as guerilla fighters against the Cong, like we’d been doing in Laos and Nam. I’d worked with hill people in Laos, so they put me onto that down here. Well, I flew up into the hills, made contact with a tribe or two, quiet, gentle people like my munchkins, just minding their own business. I bought off the head men, and gave ‘em some old M-2 automatic carbines and ammo and grenades and first aid kits and all that other crap. The Cong got wind of it and went in and shot the shit out of them, then burned down their villages. So much for counter-insurgency in the Cambodian hills. The strategy boys just shrugged it off, said they was only supposed to be a distraction, anyway. Never expected much from them in the first place.”

We’d been ambling along the stream and now stood out in the open field between the tree line and the mouth of the valley. It had been close to total darkness among the trees, and out in the open under the moonless sky wasn’t much brighter. “Then you left the CIA?” I asked.

“Yep, went into business for myself, doing the same thing I’d done before—arms and drugs, the two biggest money-makers in the world. The drug lords up in the Golden Triangle thought I was still working for the Company, and they wouldn’t have cared if I wasn’t. They knew I traded honest.”

“What kinds of arms business?”

“Selling American equipment to the Khmer Rouge and the Laos drug lords.”

“U.S. arms to the Khmer Rouge?”

“Why not? Everybody else did. The stuff was just sittin’ around, there for the takin’. Lon Nol’s commanders had their units padded up with ghost soldiers so they could pocket their pay, as well as what they stole from the troops they really did have. We allocated equipment according to claimed strength. By the time you factored those ghost troops in with our usual level of oversupply, they wound up with three times as much stuff as they knew what to do with. So, they sold their surplus off to the Khmer Rouge. Where the hell do you think those generals got the money to build those fancy villas down in Phnom Penh? Old Lon Non, if he put away a penny less than fifty million dollars, I’ll eat a elephant turd sandwich.”

“But the Khmer Rouge is a bunch of crazy terrorists. They must have known that.”

I couldn’t, in the darkness, see Driffter’s eyes glowing, but I could feel it. “Terrorists? Fonko, when you wake up at the bottom of a bomb crater the size of a swimming pool, with your pants full of shit, your ears ringing like a hundred telephone switchboards gone bonkers, and hugging a bleeding human leg which you only slowly realize actually used to belong to some rice-farmer, not you, then you come and give me a speech about terror. I was down in Neak Luong, it was back in August of ‘73, overseeing a delivery to a government army unit when a B-52 unloaded right on top of us. Never even saw or heard that plane, just all of a sudden the world was blowing up around me. Official death toll was 250, who knows what it really was? Terror? You don’t have the least idea. When it comes to sheer, scare the piss out of them, terror, the Khmer Rouge couldn’t even be a pimple on the ass of our own Strategic Air Command.” He paused, then asked quietly, “Fonko, has God ever spoken to you?”

“Can’t say that I’ve ever been so honored.”

“That was the day He put some words in my ear. While I was laying down there in that mud, all dazed and scared out of my mind, He told me, ‘Clyde Driffter, wake up, go forth, and mend your stupid ways. You’re too dumb to be allowed out on the streets. You’ve been risking your life for CIA salary, and all the while Lon Nol’s boys are taking these arms you’re giving them for free, turning around and selling them to the enemy, and raking in millions of U.S. dollars. And what does your own government do for you in return? They bomb your damned ass, that’s what!’ I asked God what I should do, and He said, ‘Go into business for yourself, you moron!’ So that’s what I did.”

The night sky was moonless, with a high haze. Muted stars twinkled overhead, but a thunderstorm was moving in from the west. A huge thunderhead cloud loomed skyward, jagged strokes of lightning flashing across its face from one lumpy clump to another. I thought I heard the faint drone of a propeller-driven plane far off to the north. Then it abruptly stopped. Driffter was rambling on about how he’d happened across this valley up on the plateau, and gathered up the remnants of the hill tribes he’d been working with and brought them here. A crackling lightning flash lit up the front of that vast cloud bank, and I saw the silhouette of a small plane glide across it, over the mouth of the valley. I could have sworn something floated down from it as it passed. A few moments later I heard the plane engine kick on again, far off to the south. A parachute drop? Who the hell would be trying to drop something by parachute into this kind of terrain on a pitch black night?

Driffter apparently hadn’t noticed anything. He was too intent on telling me how he’d brought in the materials to build this village, where the hill people could lead peaceful lives, unbothered by the horrors of war raging all around them. We started back down the path toward the village. Not a glimmer of light showed. The buildings were situated such that no windows opened out toward the mouth of the valley. I’d bet that the trees blocked off all traces of heat that infrared sensors might pick up, and that the generator was muffled beyond the point of detection. The buildings all had thatch, not metal, roofs, and the choppers were snugged up next to the cliff. Nothing would show up on a radar screen. Driffter knew his work, I had to give him that.

The American fellow was waiting in the shadows by Driffter’s bungalow when we returned from our walk. “Clyde, little trouble over in hut four,” he said quietly.

“Can you and Ben handle it?” Driffter asked.

“Probably so,” the American said. “It’s quite a squabble. Them Jarais again.”

“Go take care of it. Call in some munchkins if it turns out more than you think.” Driffter turned to me. “You know how it is. Always something. But we keep the place peaceful. Well, I’ve got a few things to do. Remember, keep that hat on if you want to go wandering around. G’night.”

The American hadn’t budged from his spot by the porch. He asked plaintively, “Clyde, how about if we take care of things first?”

“Hey, sorry, Al. Goddamn it, I been so busy with our guests here, I plumb forgot to get things ready. You go straighten out that trouble, then come on back with Ben, and I’ll fix you both up.” Al shot me a look of purest hatred, then turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Back in our bungalow, Soh Soon and I checked our stuff. Nothing was missing. Can’t blame Driffter for being cautious. I could see how a few people might bear him ill will. “This bad place,” Soh Soon whispered to me. “Woman sneak up in darkness, talk to me. Ask me bring soldiers here, save them.”

“Save them? From what?”

“That Driffer guy. These people no want be here. He capture them, force them come, work for him. He bring drug thugs down from Laos hill tribes for guarding, they kill anybody who complain. He take little girls, make them wives in houses for him and friends. Woman who tell me, she that Peggy Sue’s mother, very unhappy.”

“Not much we can do about it,” I told her. “He runs a tight ship. And,” I added, “he’s our only way out of here.”

“Get away quick as can,” she said with urgency. “Dangerous here.”

Roger that. Driffter’s hilltop hideaway oozed evil. Had there been some way to light out of there that very night, we’d have been long gone and no looking back. But we were stuck.

That fly-by drop I thought I saw still weighed on my mind. No doubt those munchkins with the sniper scopes could deal with any intruder. Still, it wouldn’t take long to check it out, and it was the kind of thing I liked to be sure of. Maybe I just felt restless and wanted to give my jungle skills a workout. Whatever, I slipped into night-prowling clothes, applied a little face blacking and dug out my combat knife. Good thing there was no moon, as I’d have to wear my bright yellow hat. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I told Soh Soon. “If you need to go outside for any reason, remember to put on that yellow hat—otherwise a guard will shoot you.”

She warned me to be careful. Good advice, but if I took it to heart, why would I be going out there in the first place? A few yards away from the bungalow I stopped and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark, then hurried down the path to the tree line. I was operating in near total blackness. The thunderhead put on a spectacular fireworks show, but the light didn’t reach the ground. Moving out toward the ravine, I prayed that Driffter hadn’t slipped me a defective hat.

I quickly covered the distance to the brush marking the end of the ravine. From there on, progress was careful and silent, as the heavy brush made for an easy ambush. Combat knife at ready, I moved inches at a time. More than once I reflected that what I was doing was sort of dumb—but out on recon missions it had usually paid off to check out hunches. The apron in front of the valley mouth was the only possible drop zone, if there had in fact been a drop. If no one was out there, no harm done—I’d enjoyed the pleasure of a little stroll in the cool of the evening.

I reached the mouth of the ravine without encountering anybody, which didn’t mean they weren’t still lurking back in there. I could have gone right by them. Night movement was one of my stronger skills: I’d have been rated tops in my training class, except that I snuck up, yelled “Gotcha!” and goosed the instructor, causing him to straighten up and bash his head on a branch of the tree he’d been lurking behind. He docked me a few points for that, and I suppose I can’t blame him.

I stuffed my yellow trucker’s hat deep into a pocket—didn’t want to take a chance on losing it—and cautiously crept out of the brush and onto the apron. Then I stopped and held my breath. Somebody was close by—I sensed him, but couldn’t make him out in the blackness. I eased slowly in the direction that the vibes indicated. Instinct told me to duck, and an arm ruffled my hair as it swept by my head.