That side of the border. At this distance, he could see no markings.
Were they That helicopters intruding over Burmese airspace as they
searched for him, or did they belong in Burma’s air force? They looked
like UH-1 Hueys, and he remembered hearing somewhere that the Socialist
Union of Burma had a few Slicks left over from Vietnam days. Now that
he thought about it, those two were moving too fast to be part of a
search pattern.
Hell, at this point it didn’t matter who they were. “Mayday! Mayday!”
He was shouting now. “Calling two military helicopters approximately
two miles north of my position! Please respond!”
He kept at it until the helos were out of sight. They hadn’t even
slowed down.
Batman raised the SAR radio to his ear and gave it a shake. If the
helos weren’t part of a search, they wouldn’t be listening on the SAR
channel.
Still, he was beginning to wonder if the damned thing had been damaged
by his collision with the riverbank. That would explain …
He froze, aware–without knowing how–of movement directly behind him.
He’d heard nothing, but something, a movement of air or shadows, had
alerted him. Very, very slowly, keeping his hands in view, he turned
around.
The girl was standing ten feet away at the edge of the jungle. She was
young, no more than twenty, with dark skin and eyes as black as her
hair.
Batman thought she looked Filipino or even Latino; she didn’t have the
obviously Oriental features of most of the Thais Batman had met so far.
She wore a green bush hat and ragged camo fatigues with a tiger-stripe
pattern. A red triangular badge with a gold star was pinned to the
hat’s front, and she carried an AK-47 with the muzzle leveled at
Batman’s chest.
“Yah kiihyun vahi!”
Batman didn’t know what the girl was saying, but the tone was
unmistakable. The language sounded like That, but he couldn’t tell if
she was Burmese, That, or a hill bandit. It seemed best not to
antagonize her, however. Making no sudden movements, he dropped the SAR
radio and raised his hands. “I don’t understand you,” he said.
The girl’s eyes widened. “American?”
There was no point in denying it. “That’s right.” The AK’s muzzle
didn’t waver. “You come. Reeb kao! Hurry!”
At gunpoint, Batman was led back into the jungle.
CHAPTER 13
1110 hours, 18 January
Near the That-Burmese border
The girl with the AK led Batman north along a jungle trail which
followed the ridge for almost a mile, then descended the east face of
the slope in a series of sharp switchbacks which left the American
completely disoriented.
In a steep-walled pocket of a valley shrouded by towering, murk-shadowed
trees they reached the camp.
Batman saw only twenty or thirty people in the encampment, though he
suspected there were many more. Most were young men, wearing army
fatigues or camouflage uniforms, but he saw other women like his captor,
and there were children as well, most carrying weapons. One boy who
could not have been older than eleven watched him with solemn, black
eyes, his grubby hands clutching a folding-stock M2 carbine which must
have been left over from World War II.
It was a strange mix of old and new. The hootches were constructed of
bamboo and leaves, but a Toyota pickup truck was parked just off the
dirt road which wound up to the pocket valley from the deeper valley
below. The youngest children were naked, riding slings on their
mothers’ hips; everyone else wore military uniforms, though many were
ragged or mismatched items from several different armies. The weapons
in view included U.S. M-16s, M-79 grenade launchers, the ubiquitous
AK-47, and an RPG-2 with its bulbous snout.
One ancient, toothless man, however, carried what looked like a
muzzle-loading cap-and-ball rifle from another age. Batman’s escort led
him past a silent row of armed children and gestured, indicating that he
should wait beside a tree. “You stay here,” she said in her accented,
singsong voice. “Wait.”
“Fine by me, love,” Batman replied easily.
She turned her back on him and walked off toward one of the hootches.
Batman was not sure how to read the situation. Was he a prisoner or