Slash and Burn

the quilt as quickly as he was able.
    “What’s wrong?” Daeng asked.
    “Do we have a flashlight in the bags?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then we should turn it on. I think I may have just been unfaithful to you.”
    After a good deal of searching Daeng unearthed the lamp and shone the beam on a lump in the bed covers.
    “Who on earth…?” asked Daeng.
    “Well, I tell you it certainly isn’t one of the men.”
    He heaved off the quilt and there, sleeping like the dead, was Peach Short.
    “Siri?”
    “I didn’t know. Honestly.”
    “Couples have been divorced over less.”
    “I thought she was you.”
    “When exactly did you realize she wasn’t … no, perhaps you shouldn’t answer that. We should take her to her room. She has a big day tomorrow.”
    “She looks so peaceful. Perhaps we should let her….”
    “Siri!”
    “That was a joke, my dearest.”
    Despite all the lugging and manhandling and door opening and laying out, Peach didn’t awaken from her drunken slumber when they sent her home. But by the time they got back to their room, Siri and Daeng were completely tuckered out. The only sound as they held hands under the covers was of their chests rising and falling. A new adventure was about to begin. The only thing certain about tomorrow was that their young American interpreter was going to have a very serious hangover.

7
    THE ICE-BREAKER COMETH
    The knock on the door might as well have been directly on the inside of Siri’s head. Somebody was in his skull with a wrecking ball trying to get out. The groan from Daeng’s side of the bed told him that she wasn’t faring any better. If it was morning, the day was doing its damnedest not to show it. An early mist had oozed in through the open window and was swirling around the bed like dry ice. In the distance could be heard the thump of artillery fire as the joint Vietnamese/Lao forces began their daylight offensive against the last stubborn pocket of Hmong resistance at the Phu Bia mountain. While the Americans slept soundly in their beds, their discarded allies fought for their lives. The sound was the only sign that dawn had officially cracked. The knocking continued.
    “Go away,” said Siri, both to the hangover and the unwanted visitor.
    “That rice whiskey…?” said Daeng with a voice like a shovel through pebbles.
    “I forgot to mention the day after,” Siri confessed.
    “I feel like….”
    “Me too.”
    “Was that a knock at the door or my eyelids banging together?”
    Siri shuddered as he left the warmth of the quilt and quick-stepped across the cold floor to the door. Peach stood in the doorway with a massive smile on her face.
    “Morning, Doctor,” she said brightly and slid past Siri into the room. “I was gonna bring you doughnuts and coffee but the nearest deli’s nine hundred kilometers away.”
    Daeng peered over the quilt.
    “How on earth can you be this jolly?” she asked. “You were paralytic last night.”
    “I have a missionary’s constitution. We get back on our feet really fast.”
    “Do you … er, remember anything about last night?” Siri asked.
    “Absolutely,” she smiled.
    “Oh, really?”
    “Yes. I remember taking a quick nap on your bed then waking up in my own. I guess showing off with fuel-injected rice whiskey isn’t such a smart idea. Who…?”
    “Me and the doctor,” said Daeng, unburdening herself of the bedcover.
    “Well, I appreciate it.”
    “All part of the service. To what do we owe this wake-up call?”
    “Orientation. Remember?” I told you I’d warn you what to expect at the start of each day? She opened her notebook. “OK, today will begin with the ‘Getting to know you’ breakfast at seven thirty. Once we all know each other we fly off to Long Cheng.”
    “Because?” Daeng asked.
    “I guess because that was the last place anyone saw Boyd Bowry alive.”
    “And they think they might have misplaced him in a cupboard somewhere?”
    “I doubt there are any cupboards left,” Siri said. “I get the impression there isn’t much remaining of the original outpost. Lost to mother nature and pillaging once the place was overrun, so they tell me.”
    “Maybe so,” said Peach, “but, for whatever reason, that’s where the surrounding villagers have been told to assemble with their war booty. You’ve heard the heavy artillery? It means we have to take a very circuitous route to avoid the hostilities. It should take over an hour to get to good old Spook City.