Lethal Redemption by Richter Watkins Page B

hold. Kiera shined her penlight in.
    The monks then got on another boat.
    Narith urged them to hurry. Apparently the window of opportunity was short.
    “Jesus, we have to get in there?” she asked.
    Porter looked in. “We’re gonna have to play sardine until we’re past the checkpoint. Let me get in first.”
    He lowered himself into the tiny hold. It wasn’t quite long enough for him to stretch. He had to pull his knees up and get sideways.
    “Hurry, hurry,” Narith pleaded. “The border will come soon.”
    Porter said, “Trust me, I usually have a better mode of transportation on my dates.”
    “Somehow I’m beginning to doubt that.”
    They tried to shift, changed arm positions, leg positions to get as comfortable as possible.
    The heat and moisture build-up was immediate. She could feel the liquid in her body oozing out through her pores. Their body odors, accentuated by rice paddy mud, joined the dead fish smell of the hold to create an effluvium that wasn’t easy to stomach.
    “If you don’t shift that hip bone,” he said. “My voice is going to go up a few octaves.”
    She turned and pushed down to remove the offending hip. “How’s that?”
    “Okay.”
    Ten minutes into the ride the boat felt as if it was slowing to a stop. Whatever was going on out there, they couldn’t hear. After about five minutes the boat began to move again.
    Porter said quietly, “It’s all good. Welcome to Laos. Land of fornication and fun. Some of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet live here in some of the worst poverty you’ll ever find.”
    They were in the hold another ten minutes or so before Narith finally opened the hatch and said, “You can come out.”
    He reached down and grabbed her hand and helped her out into the fresh dawn air.
    She felt a little dizzy as she adjusted to fresh air and the light. No police. They’d made it.
    “Goddamn, this stinks worse than I’d hoped,” Porter said. “But it won’t be a long ride.”
    It did stink and it was hot and about as uncomfortable as it could get. But now, sitting on the tarp was like a king bed compared to the nearly coffin-sized bed they’d been in.
    Narith replaced the hold’s lid and the boat began to move up the river.
    She stared up the river wondering how she would feel when they found the plane, what she would find there in, as Porter had described it, the most bombed piece of real estate on earth.
    Remembering what else Porter had said, she commented, “I find it hard to believe that more bombs were dropped on the Ho Chi Minh Trial than were dropped on Germany and Japan added together. That just seems preposterous.”
    Porter said, “It is. But, mind-boggling as it is, it’s also true. Two million tons dropped between nineteen sixty-four and nineteen seventy-three. That averages to a ton per person. So far, if the stats are even remotely close, twenty thousand have died from the bombs that didn’t explode when they were dropped, but did when they were stepped on or messed with.”
    They were silent for a time. She tried to process the madness but there are things that are just too fantastic to process. It was a little like trying to imagine how big the universe might be.
    Porter said, “Your grandfather ever mention Arnold Cole?”
    “No. Not that I can remember.”
    “He’s a big player in this world. He and his business partner, a Frenchman named Luc Besson, who’s one of the wealthiest people in Cambodia. His family was once in the top echelon of colonial families. Estates in Saigon, Hue and Dalat. He could be a real problem. Man has contacts all over Indochina. He sat out the Pol Pot period in Bangkok and Paris, but then came back with a vengeance. I think he wants to reestablish his family’s power.”
    They moved out now onto the open deck. The river was otherwise empty here. No villages, nothing. The morning sky had darkened, storms playing out there somewhere.
    He handed her a water bottle. She took a long drink. Then