Thai Horse (5 page)

As they neared the pier they saw the chopper, a four-passenger job, sweep over the warehouses along the edge of the river and hover over the bank, churning up the water below it. Pratt stood up and waved to them. The captain guided the scow along the pier and bumped it gently. So he couldn’t speak English,
H
atcher thought. He sure knows how to run a boat.

‘You go now, good luck, señors,’ he yelled.

Pratt scrambled to get up on the railing, and as he did, a shell exploded a hundred yards away, tearing out the corner of a building. A naked woman ran down the street with her hair burning. A jeep squatted on flat tires, burning furiously, the charred body of the driver still sitting behind the wheel. Pratt stopped, his face bulging with horror.

‘Let’s go,’ Hatcher yelled, and p
u
shed him onto the dock. The boat roared back into the middle of the river.

‘My God, look at this, it’s horrible, horrible.
. . .‘
Pratt whined as the chopper swept over and settled down twenty feet away. Hatcher ran to open the hatchway. A young marine, who looked scared to death, helped him scramble aboard. Behind him, Pratt waddled across the dock towards the chopper. The pilot, a captain, looked at him in horror. ‘Christ, we can’t take him, we’re overloaded already,’ the pilot yelled. ‘Close the hatch, Corporal.’

‘Sir,’ the corporal yelled back and slid the door shut.

Stranded on the dock, Pratt screamed as he saw the hatch slide shut. ‘No, no, you can’t leave me here,’ he screamed, beating on the side of the helicopter. It shuddered and lifted off as he slammed his fist over and over against the side. Then the wind began to buffet him, he was showered with dust, stinging his eyes, and the chopper lifted off. Pratt fell to his knees, his hands covering his head, and began to sob uncontrollably.

Hatcher and the young marine stared down at the huge man and watched as he grew smaller and smaller. Another explosion erupted behind him and part of the dock disintegrated, but Pratt did not move. He knelt like a Buddha, cowering with fear, unable to move.

‘It’s madness,’ the young marine cried out and Hatcher began to laugh for the first time. He had been a companion to madness for so long it all seemed perfectly normal to him.

BANGKOK

SIX MONTHS LATER

MALAY CROSSING

From the air the dark blue Mercedes could be seen slowly moving through the crowded streets of Bangkok. It appeared to have no particular destination. It drove at a crawl, slowing down as it passed the mouth of each alley as it zigzagged the streets, until it finally stopped.

The alley was narrow and teeming with people. Although it was early in the day, music blared from a nightclub nearby adding to the cacophony of people talking and horns blowing and the din of the large, crowded city.

A bulky Chinese got out of the Mercedes and headed into the alley. He had a florid face seamed down one side by a long, thin scar. He threaded his way through the steady stream of people to a tiny, pitifully scrawny woman wearing a turban. She was huddled over a baby. She was barefoot, with dirt ingrained in her callused feet, and her sunken cheeks and hollow eyes told the whole story. A young woman, one of thousands of prostitutes, known as
e-san,
who was a Laotian from northeast Thailand whose father had sold her into prostitution at the age of twelve, had a child and now, unable to cope, was slowly starving to death. There were hundreds like her. Dozens of unwanted babies were born every week.

The driver of the Mercedes, a lean, short man in a gray business suit, leaned on the fender, smoking, and watched his partner talking to the small woman with the child. The big scar-faced man leaned over and spoke quietly with his hands folded in front of him. The woman shook her head. The man took out a thick wad of bills, held them close to his body, and counted out several, but the woman continued to shake her head. He counted out a few more, folded the bills and, holding them between his two middle fingers, pointed them toward her. She hesitated but still shook her head. The man with the scar slipped his hand into his suit pocket and took out a packet of white powder. He folded it among the bills that he put in her hand.

The car driver watched as the big man took the child and walked back up the alley. The driver held the door open for him.

The gleaming point of the needle dipped into the dab of rich, green paint. The client was a powerfully built Chinese in his mid- to late-thirties. When the tattoo needle pierced the skin of his arm, he did not flinch or blink. He was naked from the waist up and was sitting in an ornate antique chair. He stared straight ahead without emotion. His arm was outstretched with the forearm facing up. Kneeling on a ruby-red pillow, an elderly Chinese leaned over the young man’s arm, etching his work of art into the young man’s forearm. He did not use the newer, electric- type tattooing needle but instead
did
it the old way, tapping the drawing into the skin with deft, quick strokes. He worked quickly but with great care, ‘etching into the skin a thin green dagger with a purple snake entwining the blade, its yellow head peering around the handle.

When the old man finished the job, he leaned back and appraised his work. Satisfied, he nodded to his client and the younger man finally looked down at the dagger. It was a work of art, beautifully executed and conveying a sense of menace. A hint of a smile cracked the young man’s inscrutable expression. He stood and walked across the room to a large gilt-framed mirror and stood in front of it, glaring coldly at his reflection. There was only a hint of self-adulation on his face. He turned to the old artist.

‘Magnificent’, he said and bowed to the tattooist, who returned the honor. He put on a ceremonial robe of scarlet and yellow brocade and went into the adjoining room, which was stunningly decorated with Chinese antiques, objets d’art, and Oriental rugs. Beyond the room, through large windows, the city of Macao lay at the feet of the house.

An elderly man in his seventies was standing by a large tank of marine fish, crushing flakes and dropping them into the tank. He stopped as the young man entered the room, brushed his hands, and studied the tattoo for several moments before nodding his approval. ‘Another work of art,’ he said.

He bowed his thanks to the old tattooist, who responded in kind and left. The old man was head of a powerful Chinese clan known as the White Palms, which controlled the Chiu Chao triads, the fourteen most powerful underworld gangs in the world. But a stroke had left him lame and shaken his memory a bit, so he had decided to step down. The young man, whose name was Tollie Fong, would on that night become the new
san wong,
the hill chief, as the leader of the triad was known.

‘It is quite a day,’ the old man said, tending his fish. ‘Your father would be very proud of you, as I am. I can think of no one who deserves to become
san wong
of the White Palm Triad more than you.’

They were standing beside a saltwater aquarium, a big one, a hundred gallons. The old man crumbled brine shrimp in his fingers, and sprinkled it in the tank. ‘Now I can spend my time playing with my fish.’

Beautiful rainbow-colored fish drifted in and out of the coral on the bottom. The most dominant was a cobalt-blue angel, about the size of a dollar pancake, with a long snout.

‘For fifty years we have been the most feared of the triads. Now it is more important than ever to be undisputed,’ the old man went on.

As the shrimp pieces sank, the other fish swarmed around them. The blue angel attacked them, ramming and dispersing them and then swooping and darting about the tank, gobbling up the small bits as they sank toward the tank floor. The angel cleared the area and circled lazily, snapping up the bits of shrimp floating down through the tank,

‘Never show weakness to anyone
—,
The old man sprinkled some fish food in his hand and held it down into the tank. The angel circled cautiously for a moment and then darted in, grabbed a bit of food and backed off. Through the water, Tollie Fong could see the tattoo on the old
san wong’s
forearm. It was identical with his own, put there, in fact, by the same artist when they both were much younger men.

‘—
not to your family, your wife, your brother, not to me

—
but most of all, never to your enemies. Well, enough of that. While the old man was performing his magic on your arm, your man in Bangkok called. I took the liberty of accepting the message, since you could not be disturbed.’

‘Ah, good. What did he say?’ Fong said eagerly.

‘He said the garden is planted. The harvest will be tonight.’

Twenty miles east of Kangar near Padang Besar, the railroad crossing from Thailand into Malaysia, Father Kilhanney drove the pickup truck cautiously along the crumbling back road. He was only a mile or so from the border station and the rain had cone suddenly, as it always did in southern Thailand. Lightning streaked the sky, and palm fronds, urged by the wind, snatched at the windshield. Kilhanney felt sorry for the women in the back. There was no tarp covering the bed, and the eighteen laborers were huddled together against the storm. Ki
l
hanney wasn’t sure exactly what was going on and he didn’t want to know. His job was to meet a private plane at Songkhla and drive eighteen laborers to the Thai-Malaysia border.

The road wound down past the guard station, coursed back through the jungle for thirty miles to the main road, then north up the Thai peninsula to Bangkok. The border station was little more than a customs house with two guards.

Before dawn, eighteen women, twelve carrying their babies in slings on their back, would walk across the invisible line that divided Thailand and Malaysia. With their work permits they would earn ten dollars a day as laborers on the rubber plantations or as domestic help for the moneyed aristocracy. Across the isolated border another truck waited to transport them to their jobs. It was a daily occurrence, nothing out of the ordinary.

Except that these were not ordinary babies. They were all barely six months old. All had been bought on the streets of Bangkok a few hours earlier. All had been murdered just before the plane took off for Hao Yai airport.

Kilhanney did not know about the dead cargo he was carrying. The women had seemed uncommonly quiet when he picked them up, but he thought it was probably the weather.

He pulled the truck up at the border crossing and jumped out. The rain had slacked off for a few moments and was falling only in a light, steady drizzle, but lightning still ripped the sky and snapped at the thick jungle surrounding them.

Kilhanney got out, went to the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. He helped the women out, particularly the ones with their babies on their backs. The women scurried along a muddy path toward the guard station with their work permits ready.

Two guards huddled in the small outpost to keep out of the rain. Kilhanney got back in the truck and watched as the women approached the border guards. The rest was routine. The Malaysian guards were friendly and flirted with the women.

As one of the women started past the guard her child’s arm dropped out of the sling and dangled loosely. She hurried on, unaware that the child was slipping and its head had come out of the sling. As she passed the guard he stopped her and, smiling, reached out to put the baby back. But as he touched it he froze. The baby was ice-cold.

The woman panicked and ran, and the child toppled out of the sling into the guard’s arms.

The guard holding the baby in the rain screamed to the other guard, ‘This baby is dead! Stop her,’ as the woman ran back toward the pickup.

Then all the women with babies began to run. The second guard checked the child on another woman’s back. He stood in the rain holding another dead child. ‘This one is dead, also!’ he yelled back.

The women scrambled. They started to run back toward the pickup, and the guards fired several shots in the air to stop them. Kilhanney freaked out. He slammed the pickup in gear, and with tires digging into the mushy road, he drove off.

Kilhanney drove like a madman, the heavy pickup skittering along the slippery back road. The truck roared through the savage storm with Kilhanney frantically peering through the rain-swept windshield. Fear had turned his mouth to ashes.

‘Oh God,’ he kept repeating over and over again. Then suddenly the road in front of him exploded in white light, a bolt of lightning seared the sky in front of him and shattered one of the towering trees. The blaze of light temporarily blinded Kilhanney. He wiped his eyes and then the road seemed to vanish and there was only the jungle in front of him. He spun the wheel. The truck’s tires slithered in loose gravel and crumbling pavement and water. The truck plunged sideways into the jungle and snapped to a crunching stop against an embankment.

Kilhanney was dazed. The windshield was shattered. He groped for the door handle, pulled it up, and as the door swung open he toppled into a soggy ditch. The cold rain brought him around. He sat up for a moment, then scrambled up the slippery side of the gully and plunged headlong into the jungle.

He ran frantically through the jungle as tree branches and bamboo snapped at him, tore at his clothes, stung his face. Lightning turned the jungle into a strobed nightmare.

Vines the size of boa constrictors curled out of the ground and strangled the big mangrove trees. Another jagged bolt of lightning streaked overhead. In its eerie blue-white light, Ki
l
hanney saw a giant stone Buddha, eroded by time and weather, glowering through the ferns at him, its face and body shrouded by the relentless growth. Kilhanney fell back against a tree with a scream. Then with his heart smashing at his ribs, he raced on through the storm.

The place looked like the set of a Western movie, a big, sprawling room with tables and chairs scattered helter- skelter and splashes of sawdust on the floor. Green shaded lights hung from the ceiling like upside-down funnels. The room was low-ceilinged and darkness-cooled and smelled of old beer and onions. Slowly whirring ceiling fans kept the air moving. It was a place that seemed lost in time.

At the far end of the room an aged and battle-scarred oak bar stretched the width of the room. It was a magnificent bar with a brass
foot rail
and several spittoons scattered along its length. Above
it,
a beveled mirror also spread across the full width of the saloon, and at its center, engraved in arched, foot-high letters, was the name ‘Tom Skoohanie’ and under it, arched in the opposite direction to complete the circle, ‘The Galway Roost, 1877’.

Above the mirror, a mangy, moth-eaten bison’s head glared balefully through a single marble eye
—
the other was covered with a black patch. Near the center of the mirror there was a single large-caliber bullet hole.

One wall of the saloon was covered with old, yellowing daguerreotypes and drawings of famous cowboys, Indians and bandits: a family portrait of Jesse and Frank James in black bowlers and their Sunday
b
est; the Doolin boys shackled and lined up in front of a prison wagon but smiling as if they hadn’t a care in the world; Wild Bill Hickok stretched out dead on a poker table with the back-shooter Jack Dance standing behind the table holding Hickok’s last hand, aces and eights and a three of diamonds; Pat Garrett standing over a dead buffalo, his Sharp’s rifle cradled in his arms; Geronimo kneeling Indian fashion, his rifle across his knees; a defiantly staring Crazy Horse.

In a corner near the bar, a Wurlitzer juke box in mint condition was murmuring the Beach Boys’ ‘Surfin’.’ On the opposite side of the room and raised two steps above floor level was a smaller room shielded by a curtain of twinkling glass beads. Several people were playing cards at one of two tables in the alcove while at the other end two men were shooting pool on a table covered with red felt. At the end of this secluded room, in an overstuffed chair flanked by a floor lamp with a fringed shade, sat a portly gentleman in a white suit, his hair a wisp of white, his double chin bulging over a white shirt and black tie. There was a small table in front of him containing a large strongbox and a bottle of red wine. The man was reading. As he reached the end of the page he dipped a finger in a glass of wine he was holding in one hand, licked the wine off the finger, and turned the page with