Air Thermae - Chapter 1 (part 2)

This expedition took all of ten minutes and within fifteen more, he'd decided to get a big AX-1. The good-sized motorbike was chosen over the usual Honda Dream because after talking with a Thai last night, Harwich thought today's activities would consist of riding out of Mae Hong Son and up to Mae Aw.

Mae Aw was a steep, mountainous hill not too far outside of the town with a spectacular view of the valleys beneath it. From speaking to the Thai man and his own memories, Harwich knew that the village had been a home for elements of the Kuomintang who had sought sanctuary there after being outnumbered in Burma by either the Burmese Army or the opium warlords.

The Mae Aw area was also a spot where the Royal Thai Army and the Border Patrol Police had engaged in conflicts with Khun Sa and his Shan United Army, these days called Mong Tai.

For Harwich, it just seemed like a decent place to go for a challenging but not too difficult motorbike ride and view some picturesque scenery. He could go by sorngthaew but the voyage would be much more sanuk by motorcycle.

He went into the rental shop, dealt with a Thai-Chinese woman who seemed to have the charm of a bored cobra and got himself a Honda AX-1. After a few minutes of semi-bargaining, paying the baht both parties agreed on and leaving his passport in her office, Harwich left on the AX-1. Her tank gauge read Full and a few feet up the road, he stopped and looked into the tank to confirm that the gauge was correct. It was.

"Good," he murmured, kick starting it again and heading for Mae Aw.

Harwich enjoyed the ride out of Mae Hong Son, passing by the rice paddies, the streams and the smaller hills. The temperatures were perfect and the breeze he got from the bike's speed put a smile on his face. He got about a quarter of the way up the mountain road and saw signs letting him know in advance that there was a waterfall area upcoming. He decided to check it out, pulling into the parking lot and shutting down the AX-1.

A few minutes were spent checking out the thundering water as it flowed downwards and Harwich went back to the AX-1. He fired it up again, noticing a couple of locals starting their bikes up as well. Seems to be a popular spot, he thought and put the bike into 1st gear, going out.

It was at this point that the other two men sped up their own bikes and rushed at him in the parking lot.

"What the fuck?" he yelled, dropping into 2nd and going for 3rd as he raced for the pavement.

He made it but not successfully.

His speed was enough that when he reached the point where the dirt of the parking lot reached the paved road, his bike slipped and fell over on its side, dumping Harwich on the ground.

Even as he hit the ground and put a healthy cut in his right leg, Harwich thought about the stories he'd been hearing at the bars in Bangkok and Chiang Mai: no matter how much time you spent on a motorcycle, no matter how skilled you were at operating one, sooner or later you'd have a crash with one in Southeast Asia.
Harwich was adding that thought to the more pressing concept that the two guys on their own bikes had caused this accident but before he could give it anymore perusal, he grunted and passed out.

The two men on the bikes were pleased. This wasn't what they had wanted but it was still much better than having to chase the farang down the twisty roads beneath Mae Aw. Dealing with the farang that way could get any of them killed.
For them to be killed would be horrible enough in its own way but each man knew it would be millions upon millions times worse for them if the farang was killed.
Their leader was most anxious to speak with this American and if he was killed in a stupid manner, their leader would once again show his people what the punishment could be were one to distemper him.

Instead, he'd crashed into the parking area at a relatively slow speed and appeared to be merely cut up a little. This was superior to death. Plus, no one had seen the crash and no one else was there visiting the waterfalls. Perfect.

"How is he?" the man straddling his bike asked his partner who had gone over to the farang.

"Unconscious, cut his right leg a bit but other than that, he seems okay."

"Good. You pull him over to the toilet. I'll get his bike."

They were quick and they were good: one man moved Harwich in a couple minutes to the part of the toilet stall facing the waterfall--and not facing the parking area. The other took Harwich's AX-1 and shut it down, parking it in a normal position next to their own machines.

This man hurriedly pulled out a cell-phone and called their closest back-up unit.
Tense conversation was conducted on the cell-phone before the man grunted, shut it off and put it back on his belt. He went to the toilet stall and found his partner standing over Harwich who was lying up against the building. The farang was still unconscious.

"How long?" asked the man watching over him.

"Not very. You know how the boss is about his requests."

No reply was made; it would have been a waste of time and breath to even agree with the obvious, never mind argue it.

Within three minutes, the back-up unit had arrived in the parking area. It was an
Isuzu pickup with a cap over the bed and this is where Harwich was gently placed by the motorcycle men while the two men with the pickup watched both this activity and the parking area.

Their luck held; no one came nor did any other vehicles go by.

"What about the farang's bike?" asked the driver of the pickup. He seemed anxious to depart and more than a little angry with the motorcyclists, as though they'd caused this problem on purpose.

The man who had wheeled Harwich's AX-1 away scowled at the driver. "The other back-up group can pick it up and take it to our place in Mae Hong Son. If our leader is pleased with the farang, the AX-1 will go back to the farang. If not, we'll either get some extra baht selling it or the organization will have another decent motorcycle to work with..."

The pickup driver watched this man, expecting him to operate his cell-phone and call the other back-up unit but instead, the man took his time getting out a pack of Krung Theps and lighting one up with a Bic. This too was part of the game.
The pickup driver frowned and headed for the Isuzu's cab. He opened the door and got in.

"We'll be on our way. I hope the farang will be okay. Our leader would be most displeased if he can't have the discussion with the farang that he so badly wants..."

He got a shrug but both knew this reaction was bullshit; none of these men wanted their leader displeased. When he was displeased, heavy prices were paid and protests, denials and shrieking wails for mercy were often met with scathing laughter--and unpleasant death terms.

The Isuzu was started up and left the parking lot, turning right and going up the mountain.

The motorcycles followed it, saw the other back-up unit and waved a brief acknowledgement at it.

All the members of the organization were relieved that Harwich was taken up to the old Kuomintang village of Mae Aw with no one noticing. No Thai civilians, no hill tribes, no Border Patrol Police, no Royal Thai Army. These were all desirable avoidances.

In the village of the Jeen haw--or "galloping Chinese" as the Thai had called them because of their long acquaintance with hoofed transport--the Isuzu pulled in behind a local mom-and-pop store. Soon the farang would be removed from here but in the meantime, he had to be watched.

For one thing, so one of the above mentioned people might see him and realize he wasn't voluntarily in Mae Aw.

For another, so he wouldn't wake up and try escaping.

The farang's military background was known to this organization and his recent activities in Laos with the H'mong against Gen. Xiang were why their leader wished to speak with him. These men knew there were better than fair odds that the farang would do his best to get away if he regained consciousness and realized what his current circumstances were. That just couldn't be allowed. No.

When he was checked upon, Harwich was still out of it but from the way his body was twisting around in the bed of the Isuzu, he'd be coming to soon. Some of them decided this wasn't the best option so they watched as the owner of the store—an older man with fond memories of China under Chiang Kai-shek's rule--prepared some opium that he was all-too-happy to smoke in the bed of the truck.

The heavy cloud of opium wafted across Harwich's body as it was blown there by the old man, entered his nostrils and did its usual job of relaxing the body it got into. Harwich stopped fighting and drifted back into a world where dreams or thoughts could make you smile with closed eyes.

This smile brought a similar reaction to the men guarding them. Unless they had some truly shitty luck, getting the farang out of Mae Aw and into Burma shouldn't be a big deal.

With sunset a mere stone's flicker away, Harwich was taken from the Isuzu and carried to the left side of the store. Over here, the bandage on his leg was changed and replaced with a fresh one. Medically speaking, they considered the
farang to be in fine condition. The cut leg was messy but to men like these who lived, worked and fought in the hills on the Thai/Burmese border, it was not much more than a shaving scrape with a dull razor. Harwich would be okay. His more then adequate amount of opium helped this process, too.

When it was determined that the farang was as all right as he could be for the present time and circumstances, his arms were pulled behind his back and roped together in a loop that kept them there. The same roping procedure was applied to his legs not far above his ankles.

As soon as this job was done, Harwich was put inside a fiber bag with more than enough holes for his proper breathing but if one observed this bag from the exterior, there was nothing about it to make it look any different from the other fiber bags already lying in a pile behind the store and awaiting transport into
Burma. Except for those in the know, there was nothing for anyone to look at that would indicate a living human being was in Harwich's bag. All they had to do was get him out of here.

It was that time now.

Two men picked him up and carried him to a small group of elephants grazing nearby. He was slung over the back of one of the elephants and joined by other fiber bags.

Harwich's bag looked no different from the others aboard the elephant. This was exactly what his captors desired and they were happy to see it happen.

The first elephant was loaded and when his mahout climbed aboard and uttered some words, he began clomping away for the hills and Burma. Harwich's elephant, minus a mahout, was the second elephant in a convoy of five and when the first elephant began walking away, Harwich's followed it.

The convoy got safely out of Mae Aw without being spotted by the "wrong" people and this pleased the men in the convoy who either rode the elephants or walked beside them carrying assault rifles, handguns and one RPG-7.
It wasn't long at all before they were working their way through the trails of Burma, getting closer and closer to their leader. By this time, dusk was upon them.

What took only a bit longer was Harwich waking up inside the bag. His first thoughts were fear and confusion as he remembered crashing his AX-1 but these emotions were doubled at light-speed when he found himself inside some kind of container with his arms and legs bound. He could see nothing at all even with his eyes open but he had no doubt whatsoever that he was moving.

"What the hell..?" he muttered. It took some serious effort but Harwich was able to calm himself down after a few minutes if utter panic and pay attention to his environment.

From what his face and hands told him, he was lying against some kind of fiber.
Without doing anything physical himself, he knew he was moving but how? By what means?

He heard no engines so he knew it wasn't a car or a truck or a train. Nor did he hear the blatting exhaust sounds of a motorbike or a tuk-tuk. He felt no pressure in his ears so he concluded he wasn't aboard some kind of aircraft.

The noise he was hearing--plus his shifting movements on whatever he was riding--gave Harwich the best answer considering what he had written off already and where in the world he was.

He kept rolling like he was on a ship but Harwich was a Cape Codder who'd grown up on the Atlantic and nothing here had the feel, smell or sound of water transport.
A very recent memory helped him to make his conclusion. He had no idea who had done this to him or why or where near Mae Aw they might be but the shifting movements and the sound of foliage being crunched did it for Harwich—for whatever reason, he was aboard an elephant.

Why am I here? he wondered. Those two guys on their own motorcycles seemed quite interested in coming after me but why? Who were they?

He could every so often hear voices speaking in a language that sounded a bit like Thai but whomever was speaking spoke neither long enough or loud enough for Harwich to come up with more than that possibility.

Once he heard a grunting sound and realized it was the elephant eating something on the trail they were on.

His leg still hurt a bit from the crash and the ropes tying his legs and arms ached as well. He was hot, sweaty, a little tired and very thirsty. When he couldn't hold it any longer, he ended up pissing in his pants and cursing his captors even more.
Not like when Glenn and I rode the elephants in Laos, he thought in a mixture of envy and disgust. At that time, one of the many forms of travel that he and Glenn had used to get to Gen. Xiang's camp was going by elephants that the H'mong had supplied as part of the deal. That journey had been much better, however. They were riding the elephants normally, their arms and legs weren't tied up, they could see where they were going and both men knew why they were there.

We were free then, he bitterly recalled. True, a king cobra snake had attacked
Harwich's elephant and nearly killed the elephant, the mahout and Harwich but the snake was taken care of by H'mong with outstanding crossbow skills.

Harwich felt around his wrists and sighed with frustration when he realized his arms were as tightly bound as they'd been when he'd woken up. Not much chance of getting out of them. His legs were in the same condition. He tried using his whole body to roll off the elephant's back but like the ropes, he got nothing effective done. The elephant kept right on moving, the captors kept speaking once in a while.
Shit! he raged. It reminded him all-too-much of the time he was captured, beaten and forced into a tiger cage for continued beatings by the Pathet Lao. He'd been a lot younger then, in better shape, a member of the 5th Special Forces Group.
It had been his friend Dee Mahk who'd rescued him then, showing up at the camp with a platoon of Royal Lao troopies more than happy to blow the Pathet Lao to pieces.

If only Dee were here now, Harwich thought, but he's probably holding court in The Hot LZ. Not that Harwich blamed him; after all, even he hadn't expected something like this to happen on a day when he was just biking around tourist-style. But here I am...

The elephant moved along, maintaining its speed. Harwich wondered when the trip would end but also told himself there was nothing he could do until they got there. Whoever had put him in the bag on the elephant knew what they were doing, no doubt about that part.

He thought about the trail, too. They were off the paved road so people on motorcycles or in cars wouldn't see them but Harwich's ever-reliable gut-feeling was telling him that this trail most likely wasn't a trekking trail for farang backpackers.
He suspected this was part of the smuggling trails for moving opium, jade and antiquities out of Burma and into Thailand. He likewise suspected that, for whatever reason, he was being taken into Burma.

What later saddened him was that he was absolutely correct on that theory.

End of Chapter 1
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Copyright Sean Bunzik 2005. All rights reserved by the author.

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Harwich, Massachusetts, resident Sean Bunzick has spent a good number of his adult years living in Southeast Asia and has turned his love for the region into a successful series of thrillers. The first two were 'Missing in Asia' and 'Air Thermae'. Sean Bunzick is an American who divides his time between Cape Cod and Chiang Mai. Sean has two novels available online and in some Thailand bookshops (like Bookazine). Next time you are browsing for books set in this region, have a look for 'Missing in Asia', 'Air Thermae', 'Dangerous Junk for Sail', and Sean's new novel coming soon to your favorite bookstores 'Zero Trust in Zamboanga'. 

If you liked this second chapter of Sean's 'Air Thermae' it can be purchased easily here at Amazon.com:  http://astore.amazon.com/thailandstori-20/detail/1420862499/102-4812334-5132943

And also here from Asia Books online: 

http://www.asiabooks.com/browse/bookinfo.aspx?ProID=9781420862492

Here's a link to Thai Oasis where they have a great review of Sean and his books: http://www.thaioasis.com/literature/bkkbangkokfiction_bunzick.php