Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [44]
“Sucker pin,” Sonny said, pointing to a bulge on the green. “You’re luring them in.”
Maung grinned maniacally. “Bogey theah, unless you veddy veddy lucky.”
“For this course?”
Maung nodded.
“Lots of water out there?”
Maung shrugged and tapped the end of his pencil. “Good erasah.”
The headset muffled the engine to a hurricane roar. The sky was cloudless, suffused with a dull, milky film like an eye obscured by cataracts. They made landfall over Kyaikkami and tracked the peninsula due south, following the coastline with its ragged trailing edge of islands. To their right the sea unspooled in fine-grained sheets of blue; to their left the highlands rose in an abrupt green wall, the ridgelines overlapping in sinuous folds.
“What do you think?” Hayden asked, twisting to catch Sonny’s eye.
“Real nice!”
“It’s paradise,” Hayden corrected. “And we’re going to be the first.”
Sonny drank a Coke. Maung kept sketching fantasy holes. Staring out the window put Sonny in a mild trance, a low-level fugue in which blocks of minutes passed without solid content. Presently the Unocal pipeline scrolled into view, a jigsaw puzzle of tanks and pumping stations and industrial outbuildings. A ruler-straight gash marked its route into the highlands.
“Almost there,” Hayden said, checking his watch. “We’re making good time.”
They turned inland and crossed a series of brilliant green hills, the foliage breathing out light in a phosphorous haze. A small flash caught Sonny’s eye, then another, yellow pinpricks winking amid the green. He watched fondly, brain simmering with sleepy fascination.
Hayden’s voice fizzed through the intercom, laconic, mildly amused: “Don’t look now, gentlemen, but I think we’re under fire.”
Without warning the helicopter pitched hard left, then seemed to freefall a couple of hundred feet. Dr. Maung started babbling in frenzied blips and chortles as if his internal circuits were shorting out. Puffs of smoke rose off the hills like dandelion heads; one of the pilots was shouting at Hayden, who’d swiveled his headset off one ear. After a minute he nodded and swung the headset into place.
“Looks like we’ve flown into a little jungle rumble up here,” he told Sonny and Maung. “The army’s flushed out some rebels from their rabbit hole. Anyway,” Hayden tapped his window, “there’s our golf course. We ought to be good to land in a couple of minutes.”
Sonny heard himself laughing. “We’re going to land down there?”
Hayden was brisk. “That’s what we came for.”
Minutes later they were clambering from the helicopter onto a broad, grassy hilltop with a view of the sea. The area was pocked with craters and chuckholes from a recent bombardment, the grass scorched in jagged starburst patterns. One of the military helicopters had already set down; General Myint, General Tun, and their entourage were gathered at the crest of the hill, surveying the jungle to the east with binoculars. The other two helicopters were skimming a distant ridge, engines keening with a high-pitched weed-eater whine.
BOOM.
“Jesus Christ!” Sonny cried, ducking.
“Mortars,” said Hayden, unfolding a topographic map and orienting himself. Dr. Maung was at his side with sketchpad in hand, busily scanning the terrain with binoculars. Machine-gun fire began rattling in the middle distance.
BOOM BOOM, two explosions in quick succession. “What the fuck!” Sonny cried, ducking again. The impact was just amazing, like trash-can lids banging down on his ears.
“It’s farther away than it sounds,” Hayden said, giving Sonny a casual glance. Small-arms fire clattered in catchy snare-drum rolls, and after the next mortar rounds the only thing that Sonny really wanted to do was lie down in the grass and twitch for a while. The battle seemed to be happening on the next hill over.
“All right, Sonny,” Hayden said, “here’s the deal. We’re acquiring everything