Tiger by the Tail (45 page)

“Tell me everything you know about what’s happening in Yangon.”

“Fuck . . . off!” Jace translated.

“Wrong answer.” Back he went, this time Mike kept him under for a full minute. When he brought the soldier up this time, he was much weaker, and a mixture of water and bile streamed from his nose and mouth. “Care to try again?”

“You cannot stop it. It is already in motion—” was all the man said before Mike dunked him again, letting another minute go by before bringing him back up. This time the man sagged in the Kildar’s arms, half-drowned.

“If I cannot stop it, then there is no reason not to tell me what is going to happen. If you do not tell me, however, the next time you go under, you will not come back up alive.”

As soon as Jace finished translating that, the soldier shook his head, gasping out words. “Bring him out, I can’t hear from here,” Jace said.

Mike dragged him to the bank, where Jace had him repeat what he’d said. When he was finished, the Marine glanced up at Mike. “We didn’t get all of the weapons. Part of the shipment was held back in Yangon for the forces there to take over the City Hall building to prepare it for the officers to set up their temporary headquarters there. It’s their secondary plan, in case the nuclear event doesn’t go off as planned. He says the timetable is already in motion, and supposedly cannot be stopped by anyone, not even the coup leaders.”

“Determined little fuckers, aren’t they? We have to get there ASAP.” Mike pulled out his radio. “Nielson, this is Kildar.”

“Nielson here.”

“Is the plane you rode in on still at the airport?”

“Yes, on the tarmac right now.”

“Great. Get in touch with them and tell them to have the plane ready to go in sixty minutes. We are coming down there right now.”

“Not a moment too soon either. My outlying scouts are saying military convoys are coming from the east. They are hitting the outskirts of town right now.”

“Son of a—” Mike ran up the embankment to see a truck rumble out of the warehouse. Running inside, he saw that all ten of them were on the road. “Okay, pull your men back and get to the airport. We will meet you there, and then it’s back to Yangon.”

“What, the weapons aren’t all of it?”

“Nope, I will fill you in when we get there. Also, if you see Gurkhas arriving at the airport, they’re with us. Collect them and bring them to the plane as quickly as possible. We will leave the vehicles here in exchange for personnel. From what I saw of Yangon, traffic would be a nightmare, and I have a feeling we’re going to need every trigger finger we can get.”

* * *

Fifty-six minutes later, Mike, Adams, Jace, and the rest of the men pulled onto the tarmac of the Mandalay International Airport. What he saw made him smile.

At least forty more Gurkhas stood in several rows in front of the plane, which had its turboprops already warmed up. Dressed in a mix of blue jeans, cargo shorts or pants, and T-shirts and short-sleeved button-down shirts, each one had an MA-1 rifle slung over his left shoulder and basic web gear on. All of them looked ready for action.

Mike brought Himal with him to address the group. “Have ’em all gather round.”

Instead of trying to bellow the order, the Gurkha waved the rest of the men in. When they were all clustered around him, Mike started talking.

“First, thanks for mustering out on such short notice. Before we go any further, you need to know the details of the mission, in case anybody wants to back out. We’re heading to Yangon to stop a rogue Myanmar army unit of unknown size from taking over the city’s capital building. We will most likely be outnumbered, probably heavily. All we have going for us is the element of surprise, and about seventy-five of the finest warriors on the planet. Are you with me?”

As one, every man in the group shouted,
“Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gurkhali!”

“What was that?” Mike shouted to Himal.

“The Gurkha battle cry. ‘Glory be to the Goddess Kali, here come the Gurkhas!’” Himal grinned. “We are all with you.”

“Then let’s move out!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Every day, Mya Soe stared with undisguised envy at the throngs of people hustling past her souvenir kiosk. Men, women, couples, families, all coming or going somewhere much more interesting than this stupid airport. Meanwhile, she was stuck here every day, hawking cheap candy, T-shirts, and duffel bags; forever grounded, while everyone else got to fly away.

Ever since she had been a little girl, Mya had dreamed of seeing the rest of the world outside Myanmar. But her family was poor, and life was expensive in Yangon. So, she had dropped out of school at thirteen, and been working to help her family ever since.

The seventeen-year-old had lucked into this job four months ago through one of her friends. She was supposed to work there, but preferred to roam the streets with her boyfriend instead. When she heard of the girl’s problem, Mya had offered to work in her place.

The next day, she had gone to the airport with her black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, wearing her best skirt and blouse. With her heart in her throat, she reported in at the beginning of her shift, waiting to be thrown out. But the manager’s face hadn’t even changed expression when she said she was the new girl. He had just given her an hour’s instruction on how to open and close the kiosk and use the register, and left her for the first of many eleven-hour shifts.

Mya had quickly mastered the process of selling the products. But once that obstacle had been conquered, she soon realized that this job was worse than hell for her. It wasn’t so much the long hours, boredom, or standing on her feet all day. It was having to watch people coming and going every single day. Knowing that each one was coming from or going to something, moving forward, living their lives. And every day, all she could do was watch them while she remained here, trapped.

What made her feel even worse was that the pittance she brought in was really helping her family. They had just managed to scrape together enough to move out of their leaking, rotting apartment deep in the slums to the edge of it. They had found a relatively clean, quiet place that welcomed families without asking too many questions. If she were to lose or quit her job, it would send her mother, father, and two younger brothers right back into the filthy, decaying neighborhood they had just escaped. So she worked and watched the people going by every day.

At first, the airport had been exciting and strange, with so many different kinds of people passing by. Mya had even hoped that some rich businessman might see her and sweep her off her feet, maybe even marry her and take her away to exotic lands. Or maybe a talent scout or modeling agent would spot her and offer to represent her while she became a model or a pop star. But after a few weeks on the job, she realized that to the thousands of travelers passing by her booth, she was only slightly more visible than the cleaning crew. It had gotten so bad that she barely acknowledged the customers anymore, just rang up their purchases, made change, handed them the bagged items, and watched as they walked off.

She also thought she had seen everything there was to see go by her in the airport. But when a young man carrying a double-armload of quadruple-large T-shirts in a variety of neon pink, green, and yellow, and at least thirty of their largest duffle bags staggered up to the desk, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “Can I—help you?”

The bearer of the majority of her stock dumped all of it on the counter and flashed her a bright smile. “Yes, I’ll take all of it, please. And I’m afraid I’m in a hurry, so I’ll just pack the shirts into the bags, if you don’t mind.”

Mya glanced up at him and saw a handsome Nepalese man, maybe around thirty years old, looking back at her. “All right.”

She began scanning the tags of the bags through the OCR reader on the cash register, hoping he wouldn’t notice the small price discrepancy between what was on the tag of each bag, and what each one was actually ringing up as. She had figured out how to short-change the register every few transactions, yet make it appear as though the sales were still being made properly. Of course, she was pocketing the difference. On the rare chance a customer complained, she would claim it was a pricing error and give them the lower amount.

While she rang up his purchases, Mya kept stealing glances at the man, who was efficiently packing the shirts into several of the duffels. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Why are you getting all of these? I mean, they’re not even in your size.”

Her customer looked up at her and smiled again. “I’m surprised you’d even care.”

“I’m just curious, that’s all. Will you resell them elsewhere?” Mya didn’t know why, but she wanted to keep talking to this man.

He shook his head. “No, these are actually going to be used to save your country from itself.”

She cocked her head as she finished ringing up the last of the shirts. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He waved a hand at her. “Never mind, it’s not important. Besides, you’ll probably find out later today anyway.”

“Oh. Okay.” She gave him the total, and he handed over a thick wad of kyat, much more than was necessary.

“Keep the change. I don’t imagine that you make a lot doing this.”

“You’d be right.” Mya put the correct total in the register and pocketed the rest. “Thank you, and good luck with whatever you are doing.”

He stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you. And please, do not take the gift your country is about to receive lightly. Freedom is always something to be prized.”

“Yes, but only if you know what it is,” she replied without thinking.

He nodded. “I hope someday that you do.” Gathering up the loaded duffel bags, he disappeared into the crowd.

Mya watched him go, her feeling that she somehow had to get out of this dead-end job suddenly reinforced, although she could not have said why.

* * *

“All right, everyone wrap your weapons!”

The flight from Mandalay to Yangon had taken about an hour, but getting into the city was proving much more difficult. First, they’d had to circle the much-busier Yangon Airport for a half-hour while waiting for a landing window to open up. Once they were finally on the ground, Mike had Jace dispatch several men into the terminal to buy concealing materials for their rifles, in order to prevent a panic in the streets. He figured there would be enough once the fighting started, no need to start it early.

Finally, everything had been prepared, and the men were moving out. Himal had suggested renting a couple of private buses to get the men into the heart of the city, and Mike had agreed. The buses had been fairly easy to procure, with large handfuls of kyat smoothing the way. Unfortunately, the congested traffic in the city proper had slowed them to a snail’s pace, even on the fifty-meter-wide streets, the cars, trucks, and buses all came together in an interminable snarl, miring them in a thick cloud of exhaust. After forty-five minutes of snail’s-pace progress, they were still almost a mile from the City Hall building. The only good thing was that everyone had had plenty of time to conceal their rifles in the duffel bags or wrap them in the colorful T-shirts.

“I thought you guys had a lot of street vendors here?” Jace asked as he looked out through the front window.

“We did, but the government has been cracking down on them more and more lately, restricting their hours of operation and limiting where they can sell things,” Himal replied.

“So much for one of our insertion ideas,” Mike said. They had discussed buying outright any carts or food stands to use as cover to get close to the City Hall, but that option was gone, since there was no one to buy the carts from.

“All right, we have to get there faster than this. Vanner, plot me the best route to the Hall by foot.” Mike said as he got on his radio. “All teams, this is the Kildar. We are going the rest of the way on foot. Unass from your bus and follow my lead.”

He turned to Oleg, who was sitting behind the driver, a pair of crutches resting beside him, and a dark glower on his face. “I wish we could have found a way to have you come with us, Oleg.”

The Keldara accepted his fate with a stolid nod. “I understand. Will remain here to make sure he—” he jerked his head at the driver, “—does not decide to leave early.”

“Affirmative.” Mike and Jace both stood to address the thirty men in his bus. “Everyone, we are getting off now and heading to the target on foot. Let’s move out!”

Leading the way, he pulled the door lever over the incensed protests of the driver. Stuffing another handful of kyat into the man’s hand, Mike hit the street, the men piling out behind him. “How far away are we, Patrick?”

“Okay, you’ve just hit Phone Gyee Street. Follow it south for 550 meters, then turn left onto Maha Bandoola Road. Follow that for 1.4 kilometers, take the first exit onto Sule Pagoda Road, and the City Hall will be on your right.”

“Got that, Himal?” At the Gurkha’s nod, Mike waved the group forward. “Let’s go!”

* * *

As they trotted through the crowds, Vanel looked around at the wide thoroughfare filled with traffic, cars, trucks, and buses, all teeming with innocents. While he knew the Kildar and team leaders planned their operations carefully to avoid civilian casualties, this time there might not be a choice once the bullets started flying.

They kept moving as best as they could through the mix of locals and tourists, clearing a path while trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible. In a few minutes, the
pyatthat
, or traditional tiered roofs of Yangon City Hall came into view.

The sandstone-colored building had been designed by Burmese architect U Tin and completed in 1936. At the time, it was considered an excellent example of blending traditional and modern architecture into a pleasing whole. The building had been the site of many political demonstrations throughout the last several decades. These included a rally by the People’s Peace Committee in 1964, which brought more than 200,000 people together before it was dispersed by the Socialist regime led by General Ne Win. Recently bombings had supplanted demonstrations, with the building coming under attack three times in the last ten years alone.