Chasing the Dragon by Christopher R. Cox

Author:Christopher R. Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466871441
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

11

Hidden Fortress

In the morning I reset my watch. Although Shan State was in revolt against Rangoon, the region still observed official Burmese time that, due to some unfathomable quirk, was one-half hour earlier than Thai time. But I could have spun my watch’s hands counterclockwise nearly forever; Ho Mong appeared out of a world several centuries earlier than Bangkok. We had awakened to a Dalí dreamscape, a feudal city-state nonetheless equipped with Toyota trucks and automatic weapons. Pickups droned by carrying armed, uniformed Mong Tai Army soldiers. In their dusty wake, Lisu hilltribe women walked toward the market bearing stacks of broad, ovate thanat leaves and bouquets of maroon-tinged eugenia gathered in the jungle and sold as cheroot wrappers and temple offerings. Shan girls strolled along in ruby-red sarongs, hummingbird-blue jackets, and indigo turbans, swinging tassled shoulder bags in which to carry the day’s shopping. We followed, our trail-sore muscles gradually loosening during the early morning walk. On our first full day in Burma, we would get a thorough tour of Ho Mong from Flynn and one of his closest Shan friends, Sengjoe.

Sengjoe’s dirt-floored house stood on the south side of the market, a profitable location for the noodle restaurant and small dry-goods store his wife ran out of the large, open front room. Still sleepy, presumably from carousing the previous night away with Flynn, Sengjoe extended a long, tattooed arm to shake hands, then bade us to sit. His wife brought clouded drinking glasses and a Chinese thermos brimming with weak, scalding-hot Shan tea to our table.

“How was your sleep, gentlemen?” he asked. His English was courtly and British accented, the product of a childhood spent in a Keng Tung missionary school run by Italian priests.

“Never better,” I replied. The jet lag, the pent-up anxiety, and the mule ride had knocked me into flat-line sleep for ten hours.

“It is the Shan mountain air.”

Sengjoe popped a fifth-generation bootleg cassette by country singer George Strait into a tape deck powered by dying batteries. The sound was pure Nashville on Quaaludes. Fifty years old, his India-ink hair combed straight back, and standing a rangy six feet tall, Sengjoe carried himself with a patrician grace and a wistful touch of the poet. He settled onto a bench and fumbled absently with a pack of Krong Thips. I made his morning with a fresh box of Marlboros.

“Some breakfast, sirs,” he said, lighting the first of what would be many cigarettes that day. “Then we begin.”

While his wife fed us sticky rice, Sengjoe regaled us with tales of his CIA mercenary past. As a young man he had enlisted as a rifleman in the force of Khun Myint, a rebel commander with the Keng Tung–based Shan National Army. To get arms and ammunition, he explained, Khun Myint contracted the company to a CIA subsidiary. His mission: fight Communist-backed guerrillas in northwestern Laos.

“We were hired as machineries,” he recalled, although he meant “mercenaries.”

“We fought on behalf of the CIA. The company was called Scope. The pay was very poor but we have a lot of things.

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