Dragon Mountain by Daniel Reid

Author:Daniel Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781462912605
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

XV

I was playing poker with a few guys at the bar in Poong late one night, when a stranger approached our table and sat down, uninvited. "Cut me in," he demanded.

The others all seemed to recognize him, and no one raised an eyebrow at his rude intrusion. Nor did anyone bother to introduce me, so I did it myself. "Jack Robertson," I extended a hand, "chief pilot, Dragon Mountain Airways."

"So you're the new flyboy, eh?" he drawled, ignoring my hand. He stuffed a chew of betel into his mouth and said, "Name's Lopper. Your deal, flyboy."

I dealt a five-card stud, and he drew an ace on the first card up. He bet big without looking at the card in the hole. "Where'd the Chink pick you up?" he asked.

"Northern Laos. I was flying a routine mission for Air America out of Saigon when this goon with one eye pops out of the cargo bay like a jack-in-the-box and hijacks my plane." I drew a jack on my third card, which paired up nicely with the one I had in the hole. I bet the pot and he raised me double. The rest of the table folded, and I dealt out the last card.

Lopper drew a queen and calmly bet the limit. I was sure he had another queen or an ace in the hole, which would have beat my pair of jacks, but my last card turned up a deuce, giving me a pair of twos showing, backed by a hidden pair of jacks. I saw his bet, and he turned up a pair of queens, but it wasn't good enough to beat my twin jacks and double deuces.

"Pretty slick," Lopper said, tossing in his cards. "Guy named Jack gets hijacked by a jack-in-the-box and holds a pair of jacks behind double deuce." He spat a puddle of betel juice onto the floor and barked, "Deal!" He played carelessly all night, but his luck ran well, and he ended up breaking even. The game folded up a little past midnight.

"Split a bottle, flyboy?" he suggested. We moved over to the bar, and he ordered a bottle of Jack Daniels. That's when I noticed the pistol tucked in his belt and the knife strapped to his calf. I knew that the only white men allowed to carry weapons in Ching Wei's domain were the Lurps.

Despite his gruff demeanor, Lopper had a bright mind and a good sense of humor. He looked about twenty-five years old and said he came from Tennessee. He'd been in Vietnam eighteen months when his squad was captured in Laos, and he viewed the whole war as a sick joke. When I told him that I'd met Ching Wei in Chungking back in '43 and had him busted for smuggling opium, Lopper whistled in amazement. He was fascinated by my stories about flying supplies over the Hump between India and China, and he demanded all kinds of technical details, right down to the type of weaponry we used then.

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