Batman had nearly reached the top of the ridge when he heard the clatter of a helicopter in the distance. The sound brought new strength to legs aching from the long climb and he quickened his pace. He could see patches of sky just ahead. There might be a clearing at the top.
He emerged into full sunlight. The crest of the hill was strewn with house-sized limestone boulders rising from the clay and soft earth of the slope, and the rock was holding the surrounding forest at bay. Panting, holding his side where a painful stitch burned with each breath, Batman stumbled onto the flat surface of one of the rocks. He fumbled for his SAR radio. "Mayday! Mayday!" he called. "This is Batman! Does anybody read me?"
The view from the limestone cliff looked out across mile upon green mile of jungle to the north and west. He could see the helicopters now, two of them, flying side by side far to the north.
North? He checked the position of the sun at his back. Yes, north. And far enough away that they had to be over Burma even if he was on the That side of the border. At this distance, he could see no markings. Were they That helicopters intruding over Burmese airspace as they searched for him, or did they belong in Burma's air force? They looked like UH-1 Hueys, and he remembered hearing somewhere that the Socialist Union of Burma had a few Slicks left over from Vietnam days. Now that he thought about it, those two were moving too fast to be part of a search pattern.
Hell, at this point it didn't matter who they were. "Mayday! Mayday!"
He was shouting now. "Calling two military helicopters approximately two miles north of my position! Please respond!"
He kept at it until the helos were out of sight. They hadn't even slowed down.
Batman raised the SAR radio to his ear and gave it a shake. If the helos weren't part of a search, they wouldn't be listening on the SAR channel.
Still, he was beginning to wonder if the damned thing had been damaged by his collision with the riverbank. That would explain…
He froze, aware ― without knowing how ― of movement directly behind him.
He'd heard nothing, but something, a movement of air or shadows, had alerted him. Very, very slowly, keeping his hands in view, he turned around.
The girl was standing ten feet away at the edge of the jungle. She was young, no more than twenty, with dark skin and eyes as black as her hair.
Batman thought she looked Filipino or even Latino; she didn't have the obviously Oriental features of most of the Thais Batman had met so far. She wore a green bush hat and ragged camo fatigues with a tiger-stripe pattern. A red triangular badge with a gold star was pinned to the hat's front, and she carried an AK-47 with the muzzle leveled at Batman's chest.
"Yah kiihyun vahi!"
Batman didn't know what the girl was saying, but the tone was unmistakable. The language sounded like That, but he couldn't tell if she was Burmese, That, or a hill bandit. It seemed best not to antagonize her, however. Making no sudden movements, he dropped the SAR radio and raised his hands. "I don't understand you," he said.
The girl's eyes widened. "American?"
There was no point in denying it. "That's right." The AK's muzzle didn't waver. "You come. Reeb kao! Hurry!"
At gunpoint, Batman was led back into the jungle.
CHAPTER 13
The girl with the AK led Batman north along a jungle trail which followed the ridge for almost a mile, then descended the east face of the slope in a series of sharp switchbacks which left the American completely disoriented.
In a steep-walled pocket of a valley shrouded by towering, murk-shadowed trees they reached the camp.
Batman saw only twenty or thirty people in the encampment, though he suspected there were many more. Most were young men, wearing army fatigues or camouflage uniforms, but he saw other women like his captor, and there were children as well, most carrying weapons. One boy who could not have been older than eleven watched him with solemn, black eyes, his grubby hands clutching a folding-stock M2 carbine which must have been left over from World War II.
It was a strange mix of old and new. The hootches were constructed of bamboo and leaves, but a Toyota pickup truck was parked just off the dirt road which wound up to the pocket valley from the deeper valley below. The youngest children were naked, riding slings on their mothers' hips; everyone else wore military uniforms, though many were ragged or mismatched items from several different armies. The weapons in view included U.S. M-16s, M-79 grenade launchers, the ubiquitous AK-47, and an RPG-2 with its bulbous snout.
One ancient, toothless man, however, carried what looked like a muzzle-loading cap-and-ball rifle from another age. Batman's escort led him past a silent row of armed children and gestured, indicating that he should wait beside a tree. "You stay here," she said in her accented, singsong voice. "Wait."
"Fine by me, love," Batman replied easily.
She turned her back on him and walked off toward one of the hootches.
Batman was not sure how to read the situation. Was he a prisoner or not?
The militarization of the camp suggested that these people were rebels or, possibly, the private army of some local drug lord. As the girl walked away he realized that he could make a run for it. But those kids watching him might be more Proficient with their motley collection of weapons than they looked. Besides, the girl had let him keep his survival knife, which was riding in plain view in its scabbard clipped to his life vest.
It would be better to wait, he decided. Things might not be as grim as they seemed.
Looking around curiously, he noticed a strange decoration in the tree trunk, a backwards C and what looked like the letter J, picked out in spent brass cartridges hammered into the bark. Some sort of memorial perhaps? A grave marker? He assumed that the letter C had been reversed out of ignorance, as in a child's attempts at writing.
"Batman, you son of a bitch! You're alive!"
He turned at the yell and saw Malibu leaning on a forked-branch crutch and making his way out of a hootch. Except for a bandaged left ankle, the RIO appeared fit and well. "Malibu! Here I thought you were wandering around lost in that jungle! I might've known you'd be the one to find civilization first."
"Hey, dude, wasn't me! Civilization, like, found me!"
Quickly, his RIO explained that he'd come down near the top of the ridge, and even managed to steer for a relatively open spot and avoid the bigger trees. His landing had been less than textbook, however. He'd hit hard, spraining his ankle and smashing his SAR radio against a rock with a blow that might have cracked a rib or two. He'd lain there Stunned for Several hours.
Then the Karens had found him.
"Karens?" Batman asked.
"Yeah, compadre," Malibu said. "And they're the good guys. Seems like you and me, old buddy, are way inside the Socialist Union of Burma. They say they've been fighting the Burmese since 1949. From the sound of things it's lucky they found us, and not the other guys."
Batman grinned. "I was wondering there for a while. The one who found me doesn't seem to care much for Americans!"
"Americans are something of an unknown here, Lieutenant," a new voice said at his back. "Trust does not come easily to some of us."
Turning, Batman saw a black-haired man of perhaps fifty, wearing American combat web gear and holding an AK-47. An unfamiliar rank device of some kind was pinned to his fatigue cap. The young woman stood behind him, her face an unreadable mask.
"Batman, this is Colonel Htai of the 12th Brigade, Karen National Liberation Army."
"Welcome, Lieutenant Wayne," the colonel said in perfect English. "We have been looking for you since we found your comrade yesterday."