Silent Arsenal

Myanmar

Colonel Ho Phan Lingpau feared the jungle, was borderline terrified of the dense pre-Jurassic rain forest encompassing the compound like a vined and walled fortress. These days there was plenty to fear, he thought, as he pondered murmured rumors he’d overheard among the rank and file. There was menace out there in the jungle. And beyond, ragtag bands of armed rebel savages.

He’d heard the terrible stories recently of man-eating crocodiles crawling up the banks of the Ayeyarwady River to chomp down on the leg of some unsuspecting villager, dragging him or her into the black waters, their bodies thrashing in the behemoth’s death roll the final sighting of the victim. Then there were rumors of tigers on the prowl, the beasts leaping from nowhere out of the brush, claiming human meals in a frenzy of disemboweling claws that left little to the imagination. And there were reported elephant stampedes throughout the Kachin and Shan states. Three days prior, he recalled as he shuddered over the images left dangling in his mind by the report, a herd of the beasts had gone berserk, crushing half of his thirty-pony caravan, trampling four of his soldiers to bloody pulp as they’d hauled refined product to the paddle wheeler on the river.

At first he had believed these wild tales to be mere fabricated excuses from the comrades of AWOL soldiers who held as much loathing and fear of the jungle as he did—only they had dredged up the nerve to defect his unit at the risk of a firing squad if caught traipsing back for the comfort and safety of Yangon. However, only after witnessing a rhino charging then knocking one of his transport trucks onto its side before the animal was shot down in a hail of bullets had he begun to allow silent credence to an ominous notion.

The jungle was alive with an animal evil. Wildlife had seemingly gone berserk, the creatures of the forest having evidently evolved to some vicious counterattack mode on humans, nature tired from fear of being the hunted. Mother Nature, he believed, was in revolt against man. No nature lover, no tree hugger—since he was the chief architect for the slash-and-burn of countless acres in the region to make room for more poppy fields—he entertained a fleeting wonder. How would he feel if he was destined for slaughter, his hide providing a coat or rug for some rich man’s mistress, perhaps his penis used, much like the tiger’s, as an aphrodisiac, maybe his head mounted on the wall for the hunter’s admiration? As if the grinding fear of animal attack wasn’t enough, there were the various and sundry rebel groups lurking the Kachin, all of them trigger-happy when it came to blowing away any uniform marched out there by Yangon. By day, the jungle frayed his nerves badly enough, rebel phantoms hidden in the lush vegetation, framing a uniform pasted to flesh drenched in sweat from steaming heat through the crosshairs of a high-powered scope. At night, with all the caws and chittering and howling in the dark, he found himself unable to sleep, unless his HQ was ringed by sentries and he drifted off with a brain floating on brandy.

As a top-ranking officer of the State Law and Order Restoration Council—SLORC—he knew there was no room, however, for any voicing of the slightest anxiety, much less complaint about one’s duty for the ruling military junta of Myanmar. Still, he was city-born and raised in Yangon, accustomed to the best food, clothing, housing that a man of his stature deserved. This stint, he thought, swatting at a mosquito the size of a mango, was little more than some supervisory outing better suited for a subordinate, some gung-ho underling eager to prove himself to the other twenty-one members of the SLORC. If he thought about his present assignment long enough, he knew protracted bitterness and resentment might distract him from meeting next week’s deadline.

Still, despite the encroaching deadline and possible reprimand from Yangon if the shipment fell short, he remained holed up for the most part in his bamboo-and-thatch-hut quarters, brooding in isolation instead of being out there in the refinery, barking orders or pacing among the peasants in the poppy fields, cracking the bullwhip over the backs of the workers if they didn’t meet the day’s quota: two burlap sacks of milky juice per head. And if he failed to ship out the requisite ten metric tons of heroin, divvied up between their wholesale distributors in Laos and Thailand, his gut warned him Yangon would make this foreboding stretch of impenetrable jungle in the Kachin State his indefinite HQ.

Or worse.

Lingpau eased back in his leopard-skin recliner, one of several creature comforts he had managed to smuggle out of the city in his personal French Aérospatiale helicopter. There was a fully stocked wet bar in one corner, with enough brandy and whiskey to get him through six months of this drudgery. He had three giant-screen TVs, and his attention was torn between the satellite piped-in news from al-Jazeera and CNN and the latest porn flick he’d just slipped into the VCR.

Perhaps life among the savages wasn’t that bad, after all. Naturally, with rank, certain perks and privileges were expected, even necessary since an unhappy commander could become apathetic, simply killing time, shirking duty if his own needs weren’t met. And he was in charge, no mistake, lord and master of this jungle domain, surrounded by tough, seasoned soldiers who could claim plenty of rebel blood on their hands. What was to fear?

Lingpau was pouring another brandy when he heard the sudden outburst of voices raised in panic outside his hut. He pivoted, heart lurching, brandy sloshing on his medallioned blouse. Then he froze, staring at the bright shimmer of light dancing over the bamboo shutters, certain they were under attack by rebels. The shouting of men, the pounding of feet beyond his quarters leaped in decibels, his mind swarming with fear-laden questions as he picked up his Chinese AK. How many attackers? Did he have enough soldiers, firepower to repulse even the largest army the Karens or Kachins could field?

As he burst into the living room, Lingpau found three of his soldiers piling onto the upraised porch beyond the front door, skidding to a halt as their stares fixed on their commander. The mere notion they could be under a full-scale assault by a guerrilla force sent another shiver down his spine. The Kachin State, he knew, was home to some of the most vicious and largest rebel armies in Myanmar. With a hundred-plus-strong army, with antiaircraft batteries, scads of rocket launchers, with tanks and helicopter gunships, he couldn’t imagine any rebel band, no matter how large or well-armed the force, would be brazen, or foolish enough, to attack a SLORC compound. But what rational mind could possibly fathom the desperate motives of a people on the verge of extinction? In his experience, the question of living or dying meant next to nothing to desperate men—and women—who knew they were just this side of the walking dead.

But there were stories, however, some of which he knew were based on truth. It boggled his mind, galled his ego, stung his soldier’s pride, just the same, that he might be under attack by the rebel leader the Karens called the Warrior Princess. If they were being attacked by guerrillas, though, where was the gunfire, the crunch of explosions that, he had been warned, signaled a rebel onslaught? What was this weird halo of light shining beyond the shadows of his men on the porch?

They were pointing skyward, their babble rife with fear and confusion.

“Stop yammering!” Lingpau shouted at the trio, searching the grounds for armed invaders but finding only his soldiers scurrying about the poppy fields with the night workforce, other gaggles of troops frozen near the transport trucks parked in front of the massive tent refinery.

“Rebels? Are we under attack?” Lingpau saw them shake their heads, mouths open, his sentries clearly left speechless over whatever they’d seen. “Then what? Answer me!”

“The sky, Colonel, it is falling!”

“The heavens are on fire!”

“It is going to crash right on top of us!”

Teeth gnashed, cursing the fool bleating something about a craft plunging in flames from outer space, Lingpau hit the ground, whirling, shouting orders, calling out the names of his captain and lieutenant. His voice sounding shrill in his ears, eyes darting everywhere, he ordered the perimeter sealed, the workforce detained in their tents, full alert and double the guard around the refinery. He was forced to repeat the orders, uncertain of his own voice, limbs hardening like drying concrete as he realized he was looking skyward.

“What…”

Lingpau’s first conclusion was that the descending fireball was the result of a rocket attack. Only the massive size of the unidentified object, the white sheen that seemed to spew tentacles of luminous blue fire for miles in all directions and, finally, the trajectory of its fall, told him it was something other than a missile. But what? he wondered, squinting against the harsh glare illuminating the heavens, hurtling night into day, the mushroom-capped jungle canopy rippling against the blinding light as if the inanimate threatened to come alive.

Yes, he had seen meteor showers, shooting stars, and what little he knew about comets no giant rock from outer space could slow its own descent, appear to hover, change directions. There were other stories he had heard, though, fantastic tales from the jungle he had dismissed without a second thought, told around campfires, no doubt, by bored peasants with too much time to waste and too much imagination perhaps inflamed by opium. Tales told of alien spacecraft that flew at impossible speeds over the countryside, blinding lights that fell over a man and saw him vanish into the sky. Was it possible? Could it be?

He watched for what felt like an hour, waiting, dreading the moment when the giant flaming orb would squash the entire compound, nothing but a smoking crater choked with pulped corpses, crushed poppy and strewed product testament to the calamity here. Then it seemed to float away, or suspend itself in midair, or retreat—he wasn’t sure. The halo above its slow-motion free fall appeared to spread mist next, rolling it out like a carpet. He saw it was destined to crash far to the north, figured five or seven miles away, and felt a moment’s relief. The shouting of men was muted by the rolling thunder of the distant explosion as the white fireball plunged from sight. There were numerous Karen and Kachin villages in that direction. Whatever had plummeted to the jungle, whatever it was, he knew it required an investigation, a follow-up report to his superiors in Yangon. If this was some new weapon being tested by the rebels, perhaps some high-tech rocket the American CIA or DEA supporters had given the insurgents, and he failed to inform Yangon of its existence…

He shuddered at the thought of the grim consequences he could suffer for any dereliction of duty.

Lingpau was barking out the next round of orders, rounding up his lieutenant and ordering three full squads to board the Russian HIP-E helicopters and the Aérospatiale when he spotted a pair of eyes shining back at him from the edge of the jungle. Lifting his assault rifle, barrel sweeping up before his eyes, he was prepared to empty the entire clip into the brush. But the big cat was gone.

Lingpau scoured the impenetrable blackness, willing his legs to carry him to his helicopter. It was a fleeting albeit dangerous thought, yearning to return to Yangon, even if that meant abandoning his duty. Whatever had just dropped from the sky, he was certain yet one more evil was about to claim the jungle.

KHISA AN-KHASUNG neither wanted nor felt she deserved the Nobel peace prize. It was true, though, she had become something of a legend throughout Burma—Myanmar—if not most of Southeast Asia, viewed as heroine by the poor and the oppressed, denounced by SLORC and Laotian and Thai warlords and narcotics traffickers as a radical and criminal to be shot on sight. She took honor that she was seen by friend and foe alike as something of a stalking lioness, prowling the jungle, even hunting down the hyenas in human skin who would devour her pride. Defending the weak and the innocent had called on her to do more than just remain a rabble-rousing activist in Yangon or Mandalay, or to chase whatever accolades bestowed her as a lauded poet and writer of short stories, all of which, naturally, were published in the West. Had she chosen this path in life, she wondered, or had the path chosen her?

Whichever, there was the blood of many slain enemies on her hands, and a trip to Stockholm to be honored for a virtue she had never contributed to was hypocrisy in her eyes. It was pretty much the grandiose chatter of foreign journalists, anyway, Europeans, even Americans, all of them as transparent as glass to her. They came to her country—often specifically seeking her out in search of a story or a hero—men of questionable principles and motives, leaving with no more understanding of the horrors and the cruelty of life under military rule than when they’d arrived. The only honor she sought was for her land to be free of terror and tyranny.

And these days there was more avenging than defending.

Ever since the Barking Dogs of the SLORC had expanded their heroin operation north from the Shan State, she had seen the rain forest nearly burned and chopped down to perhaps a few thousand remaining acres of hardwood and mangrove. But there was no comparison, she knew, between their slash-and-burn of the jungle to the toll in human suffering the Barking Dogs had inflicted on the peoples of the Kachin. Where they weren’t brutalized or outright murdered by the Barking Dogs, they were seized by soldiers for slave labor in the poppy fields.

When villages were raided, where they were not razed by fire and the inhabitants weren’t all executed on the spot, she knew young daughters were taken from their families to be used as sex slaves by the Barking Dogs. When deemed soiled goods, they were then sold by the SLORC to rich cronies in neighboring countries, their families—murdered, worked to death in the poppy fields or dispersed to die in the jungle—never to see them again.

It was another form of genocide, she supposed, killing the men, abducting young women, extinguishing all hope the bloodline of the minority groups would continue. She knew all about the indignities, the humiliation the SLORC could inflict on a captive female. And she bore the scars of torture and rape on her own soul, her thoughts right then threatening to wander back to the four years she’d languished in a Yangon prison…

No. Her enemies were in the present, and perhaps the salvation of the Kachin State rested square on her shoulders.

Swathed in thick vines and brush, her fighting force of sixty-two spread evenly to either side along the jungle edge, she scanned the compound through infrared field glasses. With the help and support of both DEA and CIA contract agents in the Kachin, the Karen National Liberation Army of the Karen National Union was better armed and equipped than their predecessors—including her father and three brothers—who had been captured and executed during a SLORC raid when she was—about eight years old. So long ago—another lifetime, it seemed—it often took strenuous thinking to even recall her own age of twenty-four.

Too young, she thought, to feel so old.

There was, she knew, no turning back.

Even though they wielded rocket launchers, the hard truth, she knew, was that they were still outnumbered and outgunned by the Barking Dogs. They could attack this compound, her strategy already laid out to her freedom fighters. They could encircle the refinery, toss around a few white-phosphorous grenades, burn up the poison, cut down a few dozen or so Barking Dogs with their assault rifles and machine guns, but there was another hard truth beyond what would amount to little more than a suicide strike. No matter how many SLORC thugs they killed, Yangon would swarm the jungle with two, even three times the numbers she found before her. The painful thought that perhaps death was just another word for freedom and peace flickered through her mind, but she quickly cast aside any pessimistic notions that would render her less than a leader.

She knew they needed outside help if they were to drive the Barking Dogs from the Kachin. With her contacts to the CIA and DEA, a plan as to how she could achieve such a victory had nearly solidified the next path.

She was lowering the night glasses, wondering how or if they should launch an attack on the soldiers and the refinery, when the sky flashed above the jungle. She winced at the brightness, her fighters edging closer to open ground where the jungle gave way to the closest poppy field to gain a better view of the sky. They were muttering, pointing, searching for the source of light in the heavens. She ordered silence, told them to fall back. She believed another rebel group in the area had preempted her own strike, then she saw the utter stillness of soldiers and workers alike as they gazed at whatever the source of light in the sky.

Assault rifle in hand, she waited for an attack that never came, then surveyed the entire compound for the next few minutes, taking in the commotion, the air of panic mounting among the workers and soldiers. Arms were flapping now, soldiers darting around the compound, shoving the field hands into tents, doubling the sentries around the refinery. She couldn’t see the source of light, but the soldiers were aiming fingers and weapons to the north. She heard the rumble of a distant explosion, then found a contingent of thirty or so soldiers boarding the gunships. Despite her order, she caught the whispering among her fighters, sensed the mounting fear around her in the dark. Gauging the impact point of the blast, the vector of the gunships, she knew the explosion had erupted to the north. That, she also knew, was where a large population of her own people had yet to be molested by the Barking Dogs.

Khisa An-Khasung rose, AKS sweeping, her thoughts locked on to the mystery of the light and the explosion. She melted into the dark and told her fighters to follow.

GENERAL MAW NUYAUNG had stalled the task as long as he dared. He had his own superiors to contend with, and they had become impatient over the past two and a half days for answers, even while he debated with his comrades how the catastrophe should be most efficiently handled. He had handed off a number of excuses why he shouldn’t personally undertake such a grisly chore best relegated to lower-ranking officers and medical experts already on the scene. But the supreme hierarchy of the SLORC had seen through his flimsy sales pitch, sent him packing with veiled threats on his way out the door about failure to fulfill his duty. Since the Kachin refinery had been built at his insistence—despite reservations about growing rebel armies and the distance to both Laotian and Thai borders from his colleagues in the SLORC—the generals with more stars, fatter bank accounts and political muscle had singled him out to investigate the mysterious explosion over the Kachin.

It was directive number two that found his bowels rumbling, heart racing, the sweat beads popping up on his bald dome and trickling down his craggy face from under the cap.

Determined but anxious to get this ghastly business over, he stared out the cabin window as the paddies swept several hundred feet below the custom-built VIP helicopter. The flight plan had already been mapped out before leaving Yangon, his pilots sticking to the arranged course, sailing east for the sluggish brown waters of the Ayeyarwady. They had just cut a wide berth around the quarantined area surrounding the refinery, en route now to the Buddhist temple, then a quick flyby of the Kachin and Karen villages being sanitized by arriving fresh battalions. A final search of the paddies and he felt relief stir at the sight of farmers and water buffalo still standing, man and animal toiling under the sun. Perhaps, he thought, the horror had been contained. If not he—all of the SLORC—was threatened with a crisis of proportions not even known in the worst of nightmares.

In fact, the calamity was already threatening to reach nationwide critical mass.

According to the weather report, a modest breeze of six to eight miles per hour had been blowing northeast since the explosion. But whatever the biological agent—presumably released before and during the blast—the wind had shifted due south, toward Yangon, and was gathering strength. If common citizens began dropping in the streets in a city teeming with four million…

General Nuyaung decided he was in no rush to hit the ground.

Exactly what had happened almost three nights ago remained a puzzle, but a mystery rife with horrifying implications for the entire country, he knew. Beyond the outbreak of plague, there was the matter of internal security, now threatened by foreign intelligence agents looking to capitalize on the supposed good will of a concerned global community.

Already there had been leaks about the disaster to the western media, CIA or DEA in-country operatives, most likely, pushing panic buttons around the globe, seeking only to infiltrate agents into what they branded a closed society, wishing to subvert and overthrow the ruling powers, disrupt or eradicate the production and flow of eighty percent of the world’s heroin. The hue and cry from the shadows was working.