not?
The militarization of the camp suggested that these people were rebels
or, possibly, the private army of some local drug lord. As the girl
walked away he realized that he could make a run for it. But those kids
watching him might be more Proficient with their motley collection of
weapons than they looked. Besides, the girl had let him keep his
survival knife, which was riding in plain view in its scabbard clipped
to his life vest.
It would be better to wait, he decided. Things might not be as grim as
they seemed.
Looking around curiously, he noticed a strange decoration in the tree
trunk, a backwards C and what looked like the letter J, picked out in
spent brass cartridges hammered into the bark. Some sort of memorial
perhaps? A grave marker? He assumed that the letter C had been
reversed out of ignorance, as in a child’s attempts at writing.
“Batman, you son of a bitch! You’re alive!”
He turned at the yell and saw Malibu leaning on a forked-branch crutch
and making his way out of a hootch. Except for a bandaged left ankle,
the RIO appeared fit and well. “Malibu! Here I thought you were
wandering around lost in that jungle! I might’ve known you’d be the
one to find civilization first.”
“Hey, dude, wasn’t me! Civilization, like, found me!”
Quickly, his RIO explained that he’d come down near the top of the
ridge, and even managed to steer for a relatively open spot and avoid
the bigger trees. His landing had been less than textbook, however.
He’d hit hard, spraining his ankle and smashing his SAR radio against a
rock with a blow that might have cracked a rib or two. He’d lain there
Stunned for Several hours.
Then the Karens had found him.
“Karens?” Batman asked.
“Yeah, compadre,” Malibu said. “And they’re the good guys. Seems like
you and me, old buddy, are way inside the Socialist Union of Burma. They
say they’ve been fighting the Burmese since 1949. From the sound of
things it’s lucky they found us, and not the other guys.”
Batman grinned. “I was wondering there for a while. The one who found
me doesn’t seem to care much for Americans!”
“Americans are something of an unknown here, Lieutenant,” a new voice
said at his back. “Trust does not come easily to some of us.”
Turning, Batman saw a black-haired man of perhaps fifty, wearing
American combat web gear and holding an AK-47. An unfamiliar rank
device of some kind was pinned to his fatigue cap. The young woman
stood behind him, her face an unreadable mask.
“Batman, this is Colonel Htai of the 12th Brigade, Karen National
Liberation Army.”
“Welcome, Lieutenant Wayne,” the colonel said in perfect English. “We
have been looking for you since we found your comrade yesterday.”
“Thank you, Colonel. I’m real glad to be here.”
“Come to my headquarters, and we will talk.”
Htai’s headquarters was a hootch raised on stilts, with a single sentry
outside. Malibu, unable to navigate the spindly ladder up to the
entrance on his bad foot, remained outside.
Inside there was no furniture but a kind of low, foot-tall desk on the
split bamboo floor. Tacked to one wall was a British Army topological
map dated 1952. A number of weapons leaned against another wall–M-16s,
AK-47s, and several RPGs–beneath a faded color print of Jesus.
Htai seemed to note Batman’s surprise at the picture. “Most Karens are
Christian, Lieutenant,” he said. “Does that surprise you?”
Batman admitted that it did.
“We are also anti-Communist, and we forbid our people to deal in opium.
We fight to have our own nation … one where … what is it you say?
There is liberty and justice for all.” He squatted cross-legged on the
floor behind the desk and gave Batman a hard look. “You Americans do
not seem to know much about our struggle here.”
Batman remembered having heard something about the Karens in a briefing
about the That-Burmese border, but beyond the fact of their existence,
he knew nothing. He accepted the man’s wordless invitation and sat
down. “I’m afraid not, sir.”
Htai shook his head slowly. “We do not understand the American