“Oh No” the gasp came from several of the women. Phong and the men rolled their eyes. Phong knew this was the bit where the evil Japanese businessman had poisoned the wife's wedding meal and she had eaten it. After a dramatic pause, she would carry on eating as if nothing was wrong and the evil businessman would give himself away by his reaction. Then, it would transpire the old lady who lived in the next apartment to the bride had seen him hanging around her room and called for help from her son who was an Army officer. He'd come to investigate and saved the day. He'd found the poisoned food and thrown it away, then tasted the replacement meal for the bride himself to make sure it was safe. Then his men placed the villain under arrest and dragged him away to face justice. End of story until the next visit.
“Khun Chom, does everybody in Chiang Rai have television?” It was the Headman asking.
“No, Honored Sir only a few. But it is the custom that those who have sets invite all their neighbors in to watch the programs. That has a great advantage.” Phong leaned forward confidentially. “For one hour every night the women watch their dramas and we can drink beer undisturbed.” His audience laughed again. That was an arrangement they could approve of. “But we watch the news together of course. So much is happening in the world.”
The headman looked solemn. “Here too. Did you hear of the great battle on the border?” Phong shook his head. “It was at the village of Ban Rom Phuoc. The Shan soldiers tried to take some village women but the villagers would not let them and drove them out.”
Phong sat back and listened to the Headman tell the story of how a vast Shan force had attacked the village, wave after wave of the enemy had charged the wire fence surrounding the huts but every charge was forced back by the brave villagers. Even the village spirits had joined in the battle, throwing balls of magic light into the sky, exposing the enemy to the defenders. When the ammunition started to run short, the village children ran through the hail of fire to bring fresh magazines to the villagers on the defense lines.
He heard how the great hero Phong Nguyen had stood on top of a pile of dead enemy soldiers and shouted defiant insults at the enemy as he hosed them down with his AK-47 rifle and when two cowardly enemies tried to shoot the great hero in the back, his wife Lin had protected her husband by killing them with her carving knife.
The battle had gone on for three days and three nights the headman said and when the enemy finally retreated, they left so many dead on the field that a man could walk five times around the village without stepping on the ground or on the same enemy body twice. But the villagers had defended their homes so successfully and so bravely that people came from all over the world to honor them. Why one man had even come all the way from Australia, a place far over the mountains, to give them his own water buffalo, so respectful was he of their brave fight.
Interesting thought Phong. They 're proud of that firefight and they call the Shan States Army “the enemy”. More importantly, he had the opening he needed to ask the one question that this whole visit was intended to allow.
“Do you see much of the Shan States Army these days?” he asked. “Do they have good teak to sell?”
The headman shook his head. “They only sell what they take from others. But they are gone now. They all left for the west.”
Next day, Phong and Lin Nguyen were back in Ban Rom Phuoc. Lin confirmed the women had said the same things to her. The Shan States Army units had pulled out of the area and headed west. One of the soldiers had boasted to the village women that there was a big battle going on up there, that troops from far away were surrounded at a place called Myitkyina and that every soldier the Shan States Army had was concentrating to overrun them. That was the information the people in Bangkok had asked them to get and the message would be going down max priority. It was also the last time he and Lin would be going over the border. She was expecting her first baby now, and it was time for her to take it easy.
Phong stretched out happily. A fine wife, a baby on the way and a comfortable home in a prosperous village full of good friends who were armed with automatic weapons. What more could a man possibly want?
Main Runway, U-Thapao Airfield, Thailand
“Marisol awaiting take-off clearance. Tower be advised our tires will blow if we stay too long here.”
“Understood, Marisol we are just awaiting foreign object clearance report on the runway. Wait one, thank you. Marisol runway is clear. For your information obstruction was a baby elephant. He's been returned to his momma who was last seen whaling on him with her trunk. You are clear to go.”
Major Mike Kozlowski eased Marisol forward. Then, he spooled the engines up to maximum power, and cut in the afterburners on all four engines. Slowly Marisol picked up speed and started accelerating down the runway. Her normal take-off run was 8,000 feet before the aircraft started to rotate but the heat here extended that. It didn't matter though, the runway here was a stunning 36,000 feet long and wide enough for all four B-58s to take off side-by-side.
Nobody had been able to explain why this huge airfield had been built out here. Rumor had it that the field had been designed by engineers who had specified the dimensions in feet and the Thai engineering company had read them as being in meters. Whatever the reason, the SAC crews appreciated it and were getting into bad habits. Barely a quarter of the way down the massive runway, Marisol's nose began to lift. Then she climbed, up and away from the concrete, already going over 200 miles per hour at lift-off and gathering speed every second.
Mission profile was to climb to 62,000 feet and head for Myitkyina in Northern Burma. The Australians had bitten off more than they could chew up there and a detached brigade was surrounded by a large and still-growing enemy force. The weather had closed down on them and, just to make life truly difficult, it turned out the maps of the area were inaccurate. Before the weather stopped them altogether, the Thais had lost two F-l05s flying close support for the besieged garrison. Not from antiaircraft fire but from flying into cloud-covered mountains that weren't where they were supposed to be. So this mission was to get the information for accurate charts of the area.
Marisol and Tiger Lily, the two RB-58C-30s in the formation were cover for the mission. They were fully loaded, two Sparrow Us on the forward shoulder pylons, two conventional anti-radar missiles on the aft ones. Their belly pods contained eight nuclear-tipped GAR-9s and the usual four Sidewinders. As always, SAC policy was that its bombers flew where they wanted, when they wanted and they were armed to enforce that policy. If they didn't fly over somebody's territory, that was a courtesy from SAC, not a requirement of the airspace owner.
The other two aircraft were different. For this mission, the two dash-twenties, Sweet Caroline and Coral Queen, were designated ERB-58Cs for this mission and carried a new pod, fitted with a system called Monticello. As far as Kozlowski could put together it was some sort of sideways looking radar that produced a picture-like map of the ground, even through the black clouds of the monsoon. It was combined with a battery of cameras and a very precise emitter location system that could track radio messages as well as radar emissions.