But as he worked his way through aisles and corridors, Cochran dismissed the notion. Because in his mental universe, money and know-how outweighed charisma.
* * *
In his room that night, Duke Cochran slept restlessly, dreaming strange dreams that slipped away on wakening.
12
Edgar Yarnell looked up from his Mexican omelet at the man who’d stopped at his small table.
“Hi, Bar Stool,” the man said. “I’m Ben Shoreff. You picked up my family and me at Henrys Hat earlier this month. May I sit with you?”
“Sure. Sit.”
Ben still stood. “I had in mind asking some questions. You may not feel like questions at lunch.”
“Give ‘er a try.”
Ben put down his tray and sat. “You and Lor Lu talked as if you knew one another, forty years ago in Southeast Asia. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
Ben looked bemused. “I’d have guessed your age at fifty-five or sixty, and his at thirty.”
“I’m sixty-eight.”
“And still working!”
“Nope. About all I do is fly, maintain the aircraft and take naps.”
Bar Stool was not, Ben thought, a voluble man. “Ah,” he said, “but what about Lor Lu?”
Bar Stool surprised him; an unexpected smile wreathed his face. “Lor Lu. He’s something. Want to hear a story?”
Ben grinned. “I’d love to.”
“You got a while?”
“Sure.”
“This’d be confusing without some background. During the war I was a Forward Air Controller in northern Laos. On paper I’d been discharged from the Air Force, to fly for a company called ‘Air America,’ a CIA cover. There was a whole army of Hmong guerrillas, under their own general, Vang Pao. A hell of a lot better general than that chickenshit Westmoreland the Pentagon sent us. The Hmong were a stone-age tribe that’d been fighting the Pathet Lao, the communists, since about 1950. Armed first by the French. We—the U.S.A.—started supplying them in about ’65.
“Anyway I got sent to Long Tieng in ’69. After 20 years of fighting, the Hmong had lost so many men, a lot of their fighters were kids 13, 14 years old. And it’d get worse. Before I left, some were 11 or 12, looked more like 9 or 10.
“Mostly we were flying O-1 Bird Dogs, looked kind of like Piper Cubs. Top speed supposed to be 115 knots, but loaded, more like 60. We’d fly over the jungle looking for enemy, and when we’d find some—troops, a truck park, whatever—we’d radio in the location. Maybe fire marking rockets. Let the Air Force or Hmong take it from there. We got shot at a lot, of course, and the O-1s were as innocent of armor as a young girl’s heart. The gas tanks weren’t even self-sealing. So they were kind of dangerous, but great for finding enemy on the ground.”
Bar Stool took a bite of omelet, chewed and swallowed, then continued. “The O-1 was a fore-and-aft two-seater, and we’d take a Hmong with us, in back, to help spot the enemy. And while the Hmong weren’t short on guts, getting shot at in aircraft was a lot different to them than fighting in the jungle, where they felt at home. Some of them didn’t do too good up there, and when you got a really good backseater, you liked to keep him.
“That’s what happened with me and Yang, Lor Lu’s dad. His eyes never missed a thing. So whenever I went up, I tried to get Yang as my backseater. Sometimes he’d be out with someone else. Al Lewis used to grab him whenever he could, until Al got killed. Al seemed to attract ground fire more than most. Killed in ’72, but got shot down twice before that, once near Muong Soui. Which is when he got the nickname Muong Soui Louie. Lots of times he got back with bullet holes in the aircraft.”
Muong Soui Louie! Bar Stool had called Lor Lu that, driving out in the eight-pack! Ben was almost sure of it.
The flyer raised his coffee cup for a thoughtful drink, then put more hot sauce on his omelet and took another bite. “I got shot down right after Al got killed, and after I got out of the hospital, I got sent home. So I went to work for the Roth Brothers out of Lauenbruck, cowboying and mechanicking. Never heard how things were going with the Hmong. The newspapers and television never paid any attention to them, which was just as well. Over there they generally got things screwed up anyway.