Slash and Burn

a clue what it was all about. But you get your own team together, don’t you? And you get nosy and you screw it all up. You’re a serious disappointment. I don’t usually like to get blood on my own hands but I’m really pissed at you. None of you other folks need to worry. I don’t want anyone to panic. I’ll just shoot the doctor here to make myself feel better then you can all go home.”
    No room was less likely to break out in a panic than the restaurant of the Friendship Hotel. Those who had a clue what was going on were watching it like a movie. They weren’t in it. But Vogal was right about Ethel Chin. She really didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.
    “Yeah? How stupid do you think they are?” she yelled. “They’re all dead. Tell them wh—”
    Like its predecessor, the bullet that silenced Ethel Chin sliced through the room and confused everyone. Toua and his wife had been sitting behind her and they were splattered with blood. They knew. But everyone else seemed mystified. Chin dropped onto her side, dead, and Emiliano put down his pistol, resisting the temptation to blow smoke out of the barrel. He looked proud, fulfilled.
    “Ah! Peace,” said Vogal. “You know? Murder is such a wonderful tool for discipline. I’m surprised high schools haven’t cottoned on to the concept. Shoot the smart ass in the back row and you’re guaranteed cooperation for the rest of the semester. It’s on my next budget recommendation to the senate.”
    With Vogal’s oratory and the henchman’s struggled translation in the background, Madame Daeng turned to her husband and smiled.
    “It’s that scene, isn’t it?” she said. “The one in your movies where all is lost, the assassins are about to massacre the innocent hostages—then, from nowhere, the hero swings in on a rope and rescues us.”
    “I think you were right up to the ‘all is lost’ part,” Siri laughed. “I knew I shouldn’t have fed Ugly this morning. If he was hungry there’s a possibility he’d fight to the death to save me. Failing that….”
    “I was thinking more of Captain Boyd making an unlikely return from the dead.”
    “If we had a wish for every noodle we’ve ever eaten, it still wouldn’t be enough to make that happen.”
    “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Us too.”
    “It’s starting to look that way. If we made a rush for them they might do us the favor of laughing themselves to death.”
    Daeng looked around and chuckled.
    “We are a ragged lot,” she said. “Most of us wouldn’t make it to our feet before the first bullets hit.”
    “When did we get too old for this, Daeng? What happened to those days when we were somersaulting through the air with a cutlass in each hand taking out the enemy twenty at a time?”
    “I don’t think that was us, love. That was Bruce Lee.”
    “You know, I think you’re right. I often confuse myself with him.”
    “I’d sooner have you.”
    “And I’d want nobody else but you.”
    Their grips tightened.
    “It’s been an exceptional eight months together,” she said.
    “I’d rather been hoping for several more.”
    “Me too.”
    Something had happened. The guards were all moving to the same side of the dining room. Siri knew it was the precursor to a firing squad. He wondered what options there were. Rushing the guards was better than sitting back and waiting, but he wondered how many of the stoned hostages were in any fit state to attack. The senator was pointing at him. A guard came wading through the bodies.
    “I get to do a solo,” Siri said and gave his wife’s hand a last squeeze before getting uncomfortably to his feet.
    “Give them the recitation,” Daeng said. “The really long one you bored everyone to death with at Dtui’s wedding.”
    “Madam, that was my own Lao translation of a Marot sonnet.”
    “Try that one. It might work again. Siri….”
    He stopped and looked back.
    “Yes?”
    “Did you put clean underwear on this morning?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, then, that’s something, I suppose.”
    He gave her a warm smile and followed the guard who hurried him along with the butt of his gun. From a far room came the sound of the generator starting up. The clattering of the loose washers and nuts was worse than ever. Auntie Bpoo sat erect and strained her ears. At the front of the room, Vogal, with a pistol in his hand, was attempting to force Siri to get to his knees. The doctor refused to do so. The sound of the