Slash and Burn

Siri. He left his table, abandoning a group of Hmong women who were trying to sell him a gold tooth. He stood beside the litter and was soon joined by all the other team members. Someone let out a low whistle. The tailplane had apparently been torn from the helicopter by an explosion. The metal at its base was jagged and black. The rest was dark green and had no military insignias but the figures H32 in white were clearly visible.
    “That’s it,” said Dtui. “That’s the one in the photographs. H32.”
    Major Potter had shown them the embassy pictures on the first day and now he was holding up the tailplane photo to compare with this new arrival. His excitement confirmed it was a match. He didn’t know who to hug first. He barked something to Peach who, in turn, asked the pallbearers in Lao where they’d found this wreckage. They smiled and nodded, but nobody answered. They attempted the same question in Hmong, Kang and Lu before Phosy finally hit the jackpot with his Phuan. The Phuan had once had their own kingdom in the region. But as hostility and violence weren’t their strong points they were eventually decimated by the warlords around them, finally to be forced into slavery by the Siamese. According to the ethnicity poll of 1977, there were barely ten thousand left in Laos. But this had to be a very isolated group if they had no other major languages between them. Phosy led the group to a chicken’s earrings tree, arranged for water, and as they drank they recalled their two-week journey with the dragon’s tail. The inspector showed them a map and although the group had no concept of how a vast wilderness could be shrunk and flattened onto a square of paper, they were able to guide Phosy’s finger via the setting and rising suns and the mountains and valleys and rivers, to their home.
    After twenty minutes, Phosy joined the others. All interest had turned to the new arrivals. Phosy showed them a spot on the map, Ban Hoong to the east, where the group had apparently begun their journey. It was a mere forty-minute helicopter trip from where they now stood.
    “They’re closer to Phonsavan than to here,” Dtui remarked.
    “Their sorceress told them to come,” Phosy translated. “Said she’d seen a sign in a dream.”
    “I take it there isn’t the slightest possibility she caught the government announcement on the radio?” Civilai asked.
    “I doubt it,” said Phosy. “She’s been dead for seven years. It was her final request that they deliver the dragon’s tail to the wealthy overlords at Spook City.”
    Peach was translating for the Americans.
    “I guess that would be us,” said the major. “Did they tell you anything about how the dragon’s tail came into their possession?”
    Phosy continued the story.
    “There was an explosion one night and they woke up the next day to find this thing had fallen through the roof of their meeting hut. The sorceress told them that she’d been sitting in a tree—I get the feeling she wasn’t really in control of her senses—and she saw a dragon collide with the moon. The moon broke into a million pieces. They couldn’t convince her otherwise because she’d gone blind that night. Given the evidence, the head man in the group’s more inclined to believe it was a helicopter.”
    “Was this the only part of the chopper they found?” Lit asked.
    “Apparently.”
    “How come only their sorceress saw the explosion?”
    “There was always a lot of air activity in the region: bombings, anti-aircraft fire, crashes, the dumping of undelivered ordnance. They’d been visited and threatened by both sides during the war. All their young men had been forcibly recruited to fight. They were afraid. They weren’t about to go rushing out in the middle of the night to investigate an explosion. Just pulled the blanket up and hoped it would all go away.”
    When word of this made it around the Americans, Sergeant John Johnson stepped forward.
    “Did anybody hear anything before the explosion?” he asked.
    “One woman seemed quite animated about the topic. She was awake that night,” Phosy said. “She was afraid of the helicopters and this one had circled overhead a number of times. She was sure he was looking for their village. Then, she says, the aircraft just went quiet, as if it was hiding in the silence of the sky. Then there was the bang.”
    Johnson asked how long the gap was between the engine cutting out and the explosion.
    “She says about ten