Slash and Burn

fit state to fight or resist a citizen’s arrest. The villains were outnumbered. Inspector Siri saves the day. Solves another one. Hooray for Dr. Siri. And, not for the first time, while he was busy patting himself on the back, basking in his overconfidence, he failed to notice fate creeping up with its teeth bared to bite him on the backside.

21
    ORE INSPIRING
    They’d been walking for an hour through the type of jungle that Hollywood did so well in papier mâché and polystyrene. The group was low on oxygen and conversation. The mission had begun with Phosy and Lit as reluctant comrades on a trek to Phu Kum mountain. But they’d needed to show the photographs to John Johnson for a third opinion. It would have been a long walk to visit some swidden farm project in the hills. In order to talk to Johnson, they’d had to bring in Dtui. Johnson was fascinated by the photos and pointed out that slash and burn and napalm left tree stumps, sometimes entire charred trees that nobody had the equipment to remove. The area in the photographs showed a bald landscape that no known defoliant could have created. In Johnson’s modest opinion, this area had been cleared by the same unknown juice that had cremated the dead man’s field. Naturally, he’d insisted on going along. There was no denying him. And this created a further annoyance for Phosy in that Dtui would have to accompany them. The journey would take twice as long if they walked at her pace.
    With the Phonsavan driver asleep in a hammock, they’d boarded his truck, released the handbrake, and sailed silently down the incline and through the front gate. The old musketeers saluted as they passed. They were a hundred meters away before they engaged the motor and set off in search of the nearest point to Phu Kum.
    “Are you quite sure this is the way?” Phosy asked, not for the first time. They’d parked the truck beside the dirt track and headed off into a dense jungle. Lit chose not to answer. The smoke seemed to be clearing a little and he had a vague outline of the sun to guide him. He had his map and his nose and no Vientiane policeman would distract him from his task. He did, however, allow himself to compliment Nurse Dtui on her stamina, her sense of humor in times of adversity, and her skill in a foreign language. All Phosy could offer to counter this was, “Are you quite sure this is the way?”
    When they arrived at the clearing, Phosy’s question was answered tenfold. It was as if a celestial hoe had been dragged across the jungle and removed all but a washed-out yellow topsoil. Thirty meters away on the far side the vegetation continued but to the north and the south of them was a barren scar where nothing grew. Dtui confessed that the hairs on the back of her neck were tingling. The men had the same feeling but none of them admitted it.
    “Why the hell…?” said Johnson.
    “The mountain’s off to the left,” said Lit. “Assuming it’s still there.”
    And so they headed north, their boots crunching on the dead undergrowth. Their hearts heavy in their chests. Here and there Phosy pointed out tire tracks in the dirt. They came across plastic bags and empty petrol containers. This dead channel through the jungle had been used. After twenty or thirty minutes a fuzzy dark shape appeared ahead of them.
    “That’s Phu Kum,” said Lit.
    Dtui patted him on the back and complimented him on his orientation skills. Phosy slapped him a little harder than necessary.
    “Yes, well done, comrade,” he said.
    They arrived at what could only be described as a quarry. Enormous rocks littered the bare landscape. Craters were all around. Ahead, the mountain had been opened up like a spoon through a blancmange.
    “Messy,” said Dtui.
    “We’re here,” said Phosy. “But I’m not sure what it is we’ve found.”
    “Somebody’s blown hell out of this mountain, is what we’ve found,” said Johnson. He climbed up onto a heap of rubble and looked back along the devastated trail. “How far are we from the Thai border, here?”
    Dtui asked Lit.
    “A little over forty kilometers,” she said. “Why?”
    “I don’t know. It just looks like a lot of trouble’s been taken here to set up some kind of quick transportation route south from this point. To clear the land this dramatically using conventional methods would take half a year at least. The spooks were always experimenting with different chemicals. I wonder if they really did come up with some