Slash and Burn

mind from other pilots back in the base at Udon in Thailand. They all seemed to like him. Said he was a good flier. For the first year he was one of the boys, joined in, friendly. But some commented that for the last three months he’d started to act strangely. Some said he’d become paranoid. He used to be a two-drink-a-night man. Said he didn’t like booze that much. But toward the end he was matching them drink for drink and all these odd rants started. He’d say how they shouldn’t be surprised if he found a deadly cobra in his bunk. Or if he was shot down by friendly fire some day. He said ‘they’ were after him.”
    “Did he say who ‘they’ were?” Siri asked.
    “No. The other pilots assumed it was … us, the enemy.”
    “All right,” said Phosy. “What’s—”
    He was interrupted by heavy coughing from behind the curtain. The conspirators lowered their voices.
    “What is it, hon?” Dtui asked.
    “I … I swallowed a bug,” said Mr. Geung. “Sorry.”
    When she’d stopped laughing, Dtui continued with her notes.
    “That brings us to the interviews,” she said. “We have incomplete transcripts for the interviews with Nino Sebastian, the Filipino flight mechanic, and David Leon, the senior flight person at Spook City. They were the last two to see Boyd alive, unless you count the bear. There were two interviews with Sebastian; one by the AA investigator shortly after the crash, and another sponsored by Congressman Bowry and conducted by a private detective in the Philippines. That interview ran out to forty sheets. The congressman released only twelve of those to the MIA committee. Six of those twelve are marked on the file as ‘On loan to Major Potter.’ As you might imagine, the six we’re left with don’t say very much. We learn that Boyd and Sebastian had flown together on around forty occasions. That afternoon they’d flown the chopper directly up from Udon in Thailand with cargo that was labeled ‘Refugee Supplies’ due for Ban Song. Then we cut sixteen pages to Sebastian stoned and drunk in a bear cage wondering where his pilot’s gone.”
    “But what that does tell us is that both the pilot and the mechanic were out of control,” said Phosy. “Hence the crash. Doesn’t sound like foul play to me.”
    “According to the regulations, AA flight crews weren’t allowed to drink or mess with intoxicants up-country,” Dtui told him. “Somebody there got our boy stoned. That could be construed as foul play.”
    “What about the AA interview?” Siri asked.
    “Six pages in total. All but one signed out to Major Potter. That one page suggests that Sebastian was cut up about not having done enough to save his young friend’s life. He didn’t say who supplied the LSD. He blamed himself for getting dragged into the drink session and for not saying no to the drugs. Plus the fact he’d left open the bear cage and next morning the hungover beast attacked four locals before they could subdue it.”
    “Nothing worse than a bear with a sore head,” Siri nodded.
    “AA agreed with Sebastian’s appraisal of himself and fired him. He scratched around Thailand doing odd mechanic work before heading back to the Philippines with his savings. He and his family opened a service station and café. He stayed there till his death.”
    “When did he die?” Phosy asked.
    “Three weeks ago,” said Dtui. “There was a sticker attached to the front of the interview sheet.”
    “Cause?”
    “He drowned. There was a storm drain at the bottom of his property. They found him face down in the water.”
    “You said there was another interview?” Siri asked.
    “David Leon. Senior flight mechanic at Long Cheng. He was one of the witnesses who heard the explosion. Talked about Mike Wolff, the pilot who’d been drinking with Boyd and Sebastian that night. Explained that Wolff was shot down a couple of weeks later. They’d recovered his body. Ten page interview. Four pages released to Major Potter. Leon had been a fighter pilot in Vietnam but lost his licence, and the reason for that isn’t anywhere in the files.”
    “But there was no interview organized by the congressman for this man?” Siri asked.
    “No. Leon had been hired directly by the embassy in Vientiane to work with the Ravens—the forward air command. The embassy conducted the interview. There was just the one. Why?”
    “I don’t know. Boyd’s father hires a private detective in the Philippines to interview one