The Burma Effect (26 page)

“Tear gas, tear gas,” Tom shouted from the back doorway. There was another whoosh and clatter as canisters came up from below. Tom fired downstairs and then he too came gagging and coughing into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. “This is looking very bad, Dima,” Stefan said.

“It's bad,” Dima said. He looked over at Clive, who was lying quiet and still. He looked at Delaney, who was mopping Clive's wounds with a dishtowel. He looked around at the rest of the men.

“Delaney, you better make a run for it,” Dima said finally.

“No way,” Bobby said.

“He's no good to us,” Dima said. “He doesn't know what he's doing. Suddenly you want him to stay. What's the use?”

“No way,” Bobby said, standing up and rubbing his streaming eyes with his left fist.

“Where's he going to go anyway?” Stefan said.

“Upstairs,” Dima said. “We've only got a few minutes.”

“So we go upstairs too,” Abbey said.

“Abbey, you know they won't let any of us get out that way,” Dima said. “They're sure to have guys on the roof by now. You heard that chopper. We fight our way out down the stairs or we're finished. Jail or dead.”

“We're finished, man,” Abbey said.

“Delaney, you have one chance to get into an apartment above us. One chance, maybe a few minutes, that is all you've got. Go,” Dima said.

“No way,” Bobby said. “We die, he dies too. We do jail, he does too.”

Tom called out from the back. “What's the point, Bobby? He's not with us. He's a reporter.”

“Reporter man, I think you going to die,” Abbey said quietly from the window.

“He goes,” Dima said. “We haven't got time for games now. Bobby. Stand by on that front door.”

“No way,” Bobby said, raising his .45 and pointing it at Dima.

“Easy,” Sam said, levelling his AK at Bobby.

“Relax.”

“Delaney, come, come, come, hurry up man,” Tom called from the back. “Run.”

Delaney left the standoff in the living room and raced to the back of the flat.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Tom said. Delaney hesitated for a second at the back door.

“You make us look good, you hear?” Tom said.

“Front cover of Newsweek, right? Fucking heroic figures, right?”

“Yeah,” Delaney said. “Front cover.” He looked briefly down the long hallway to the front. Dima raised his hand. Delaney raised his.

Tom opened the door. The fumes had subsided but lingered still. Tom stepped out into the back stairwell and fired downward. “Go, go, go,” he shouted.

Delaney covered his face with the bloody dishtowel and raced up to the next landing and then the next. His eyes stung and mucous ran from his nostrils as the tear gas did its work. He tried the door of an apartment on the third floor, rattled the handle, pounded, but it was locked and no one came. The door had a big panel of glass in its upper half, for light in the dim stairs. He rolled the dishtowel around a fist and smashed the glass. He reached inside and opened the flimsy handle lock with trembling fingers.

Below, Tom stopped firing and slammed the door to the mercenaries' refuge. Gunfire came from the ground level of the stairwell and Delaney could faintly hear more firing from the front of the building. In the distance, a helicopter beat the air and someone on a loud hailer shouted instructions, warnings, exhortations in a language none of them could understand.

Delaney hurled himself into the neighbour's apartment and hit the floor in the hallway, lying still and listening intently. His eyes and nose streamed from the tear gas and his heart was pounding ferociously in his chest.

He thought he heard the sound of children crying somewhere in the flat. It was identical in layout to the flat two floors below he had just escaped from. He got cautiously to his feet and began to look around, not knowing what he wanted or needed to find. Slow, he said to himself. Go slow.

All the bedroom doors were open except the one nearest the living room. He turned the handle on this one and immediately a woman's voice began wailing, screeching, beseeching, in Burmese. He opened the door and a middle-aged woman cowered on the bed, with two toddlers, a boy and a girl, clinging to her and crying.

She raised her right hand to him, imploring him in Burmese, drawing her children closer to her with her left arm.

“It's OK, it's OK, it's OK,” Delaney said to her. He stepped her way and she cowered even farther back. The children wailed louder. Delaney retreated, closing the door behind him. The apartment seemed otherwise empty.

He half crawled onto the enclosed balcony, behind its low wall. The rollerblind on this one was up, all the way. From one corner of the opening he raised his forehead and eyes high enough to see out. On the street below, he saw clusters of vehicles; army vans, police cars, a troop carrier. Away in the distance, he saw a tank lumbering up, clearly about to be placed in position in front of the building.

There was no firing now. The Burmese soldiers all seemed to be waiting for the arrival of the tank. An officer with the loud hailer kept shouting in Burmese. Whether he was shouting to the mercenaries or to the building's residents was not clear.

Delaney knew there was not much time now before the mercenaries were captured or killed. Then there would be a house-to-house search, if the Burmese soldiers were professional, and he would be taken, or possibly killed. But there was nothing to do but wait. Escape was impossible.

He found a glass, took some water from the kitchen tap, drank. He rinsed his face. The children had stopped crying in the bedroom and all was quiet inside.

On a small table near the entrance door was a telephone. Delaney went over and picked up the receiver.There was a dial tone. He decided he would try to call Rawson in Ottawa. He knew only a few other numbers in Canada by heart and Rawson was the only one in any position to help him in some way, even from afar.

He had no idea whether the phone in the apart ment was set up for international calls and he did not know the international access code for the Burmese phone system. He tried 00 and Rawson's mobile number in Canada. A recorded voice in Burmese came on the line. He tried the 0011, as in Britain. He tried 011, the Canadian code. No connection. He tried zero. A Burmese operator came on. “Long distance, please. Long distance, international,” Delaney said. The operator replied in rapidfire Burmese. The helicopter swooped overhead, very low.

“English, English, please,” Delaney said. “International call.”

The operator carried on in Burmese. Then she paused. Delaney heard her speaking to someone else off the line, and then she came back on the line, speaking to him once again in Burmese. The line clicked, appeared to go dead. “Christ,” Delaney said.

Then an operator speaking very basic English came on the line.

“International, yes please,” she said.

“I need to call Canada,” Delaney said. “Urgent call to Canada, please.”

He was sweating, thinking that at any moment a 50-millimetre tank shell would crash into the building just two stories below. He had been in enough places where tank fire had gone astray to know how much danger he was still in “Number, sir, please. Number sir,” the operator said.

Delaney gave Rawson's mobile number, looking at his watch. It was 8:30 a.m. in Rangoon, 10:30 p.m. the night before in Ottawa. A Tuesday or a Wednesday night, if his calculations were correct. Rawson would surely be at home getting ready for bed.

Rawson answered on the second ring. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Rawson here.”

“Jonathan, it's Delaney. It's Delaney. Listen to me, OK, I've only got a few minutes. I'm in Burma and I'm in an awful jam.”

“Delaney, for God's sake,” Rawson said. “Where the hell have you been? Everyone is frantic over here.”

“Jon, just listen to me, OK? I'm in serious danger here. I'm under fire from government troops in a building outside Rangoon. I've managed to get to a phone.”

“For God's sake, Francis. Rangoon . . .”

“I'm somewhere in the northern suburbs. Kellner's dead. He was in on some crazy scheme to kidnap Aung San Suu Kyi with some mercenaries and they were found out. The army is hammering away at the mercenaries two floors below me and there's a tank coming into position as I speak.”

“A tank, Francis, for God's sake. You get out of there,” Rawson said.

“I can't get out, Jon,” Delaney said.

“I'm in Ottawa, Francis, I can't get anyone to you in Burma fast, you know that. If at all. I'll make some calls, I'll make some calls . . .”

“Jon, I just want you to know I'm in Rangoon. Either I'm going to be killed right here, or they will arrest me after the fighting's over. I want someone to know I was in Rangoon.”

“Where are you exactly?” Rawson said. “What time of day is it?”

“It's after eight in the morning here. I'm in one of those workers' suburbs the government built after the election. North of the city by about 20 minutes.”

“Francis, you have to get out of there. Get out and go to the Australian embassy. We don't have an embassy in Burma anymore.The Australians handle things for us over there. Or go to the Brits. I'll alert them both.”

“Jon, I'm not getting out of here unless I'm arrested. Either I'll be killed in this firefight or arrested. That's all there is.”

Suddenly the helicopter swooped very low. The soldier in the loud hailer began shouting instructions again. AK-47 fire sounded from inside and outside the building.

“What the hell's that?” Rawson shouted down the phone line.

“It's heating up again here, Jon. It's getting very bad. I'm two floors above the mercenaries, flat, there's heavy fire again.” “Jesus Christ, Francis,” Rawson said.

There was a roar from the street outside and a whump and an aftershock and the building shuddered.

“Tank fire, Jon. They're going to take the apart ment now. I've got to get away from the window. I'm on the third floor.”

“Stay down, Francis, stay down,” Rawson said. Delaney hung up and hit the floor. From the main bedroom, the Burmese woman and her children wailed in utter panic.

Delaney lay prone on the floor in the living room, hands over the back of his head and neck. The tank fired three more rounds into the building, then there was heavy AK-47 fire from inside and out, on the front side. There was a lull, then more firing from front and back and then from the stairwells. The helicopter made periodic low passes.

Finally the firing stopped. Delaney heard yelling in Burmese, not from the loud hailer this time. The sound of vehicles roaring in and out of the area, soldiers' boots running on pavement and in gravel. The helicopter appeared to land somewhere close by.

Delaney rolled over, crawled out onto the balcony and lay still for a long time, not daring to get up yet or to peer over the wall. He knew, however, that for the mercenaries it was finished. Firing had stopped, the shouting outside had stopped. The Burmese soldiers, he knew, would be mopping up, starting a house-to-house search. He wondered if any of the mercenaries had survived.

Eventually, he crawled to the balcony and ever so slowly raised his head above the low wall. There were ambulances now and bodies and wounded being carried out of the building on stretchers.

Three bodies lay on the grass beside a van parked away from the other vehicles and marked in Burmese and English “Military Police.” One of the bodies had a shaved head; Bobby. A black man lay beside him; Abbey. Delaney couldn't see who the third man was.

Eventually he heard boots running on stairs, heavy pounding on doors in the hallway, shouts in Burmese. The soldiers were coming now.

After about ten minutes he heard boots outside the door to the apartment where he was hiding. He pulled out his international press card and sat with his back to the balcony wall, trying to control his heartbeat and his breathing.

Someone pounded on the door and shouted in Burmese. Delaney did not move to answer. The soldier pounded again, harder this time, and shouted again. Delaney did not move. Inside, the door to the main bedroom opened slightly and he saw the woman peer cautiously out. She did not want to go to the entrance door either. Then she spotted Delaney on the balcony and slammed the bedroom door shut again.

The soldier outside shouted again, then shouted what sounded like instructions to his comrades. Booted feet began to kick at the door. It heaved but did not immediately open. More kicks, the sound of wood cracking. Finally the door gave way.

A squad of six soldiers rushed inside, all carrying AK-47s, covering each other as they secured the apartment entrance. The lead soldier revolved expertly around with this weapon, checking all open areas, then pointed the AK at the balcony. Down the short barrel, he saw Delaney. He shouted to his comrades.

“Press, press, press,” Delaney shouted, holding up his red international pass. “Media, TV, TV.”