DAY 3, MORNING
"We'll stay," Pierre answered. "I have a weapon in the truck."
"Good," Khunying answered as she helped her elderly relative down the stairs into the mansion's basement. "Will meet you out there. We have some guns down here too. You," she said, indicating Claude with a nod of her head, "follow me down."
Pierre left them alone as he made his way back out to the front. He passed the militia guard, who was taking cover in the archway and peering nervously around the surroundings. Another mortar went off and the boy jerked. Pierre just shook his head and passed by; the shells were landing further away in the outskirts of the village and were no immediate danger.
He had stowed his guitar case in the bed of the truck. He pulled it out, and kneeled behind the Hilux to get it open. Loading the automatic shotgun with a magazine was a comforting ritual. He was now armed. Men were coming to kill him, but like so many other times would be found wanting. He smiled briefly as he shoved the four extra magazines he had into his coat pocket.
Only a few minutes passed before Khunying and Claude walked out. The militia commander had a long rifle strapped around her back and a combat radio to her ear. Claude on the other hand was handling a pistol, an M1911, as though was afraid of being bitten by it. Laying it on thick, Pierre thought, but Claude probably knew what he was doing with the act.
"We're going to the post office," Khunying declared aloud for both him and whoever it was on the end of the radio. She adjusted a dial and brought it to her side. "You two follow me. Post Office is the strongest built building, central location, good line of sight. Enemy's just attacking road checkpoints so far. You made a good choice to stay."
Pierre stood up, hefting the USAS-12 in the crook of his right arm. Another mortar shell landed out toward the north. The time between explosions was getting longer, he noted.
The walk down to the Post Office was short, and Khunying set a brisk pace. They had passed it on the way end, and Pierre hadn't paid it much attention. But it was as she had said. It was another two story building, albeit smaller than the Chausiriporn mansion, built out of brick and mortar rather than wood. It was at the corner of the unpaved road back to Roanapur, roughly at the center of the village. He was no military officer but it seemed like it would make a good point for Khunying to command from.
He did have enough familiarity with snipers to recognize the upper story would make a good perch.
A woman stood outside the entrance, dressed in what Pierre assumed as some kind of Thai postal worker's uniform. Incongruously, she wielded a submachine gun in her hands. Khunying spoke to her sharply in Thai before being waved on.
Once inside Khunying's radio began crackling again. She issued a stream of orders into it while marching on past the wooden service barrier and into the employee station. More armed Thai postal workers watched as they passed by into a storage room full of burlap sacks flowing with envelopes. Khunying led them over and up a pair of corrugated iron stairs winding upwards from an alcove in the back.
The balcony they emerged into was small; it formed an outcropping along the roof of the building and was dominated by a large window wrapping around its corners. There was enough room for a wooden table and a few chairs, scattered around the table, which had a small pile of crumbled up wrappers tossed on it. An olive-painted box of ammunition stood open over by the corner. Khunying moved over confidently to open the window, then crouched down to put the radio aside before sticking her rifle outside and scanning the village with its scope.
"They are attacking first checkpoint. Mostly shooting from cover of the jungle," she said almost absently. She pulled the rifle back out, laid it against the wall, then pulled a small pair of binoculars out of a pocket. She tossed them to Pierre. "You will be spotter. Claude, you just sit tight here. Try not to shoot self with pistol."
Pierre chuckled, both in response to her presumption and Claude's likely reaction later on. While his partner did as requested and sat down he stepped around the table to join Khunying. Crouching down to keep a low profile he popped his head over the windowsill and looked outward.
Chana from above looked like a cluster of mostly arbitrarily placed huts clinging to the dirt road leading off into the jungle. The firefight Khunying referred to took the form of flashes of orange shooting out from the shadows formed by the jungle canopy at a squat wooden guard house on the road. Mortars continued to land haphazardly around, and as Pierre watched rounds started landing along the treeline.
"Our mortar's finally in action," Khunying announced with some satisfaction. "See asshole over there with the machinegun?" She wagged her rifle with scope out toward a patch of the jungle.
Pierre looked, finally seeing it once the machinegun opened fire. It was a blossom of orange fire compared to the sporadic shooting beforehand. "Yes, at about one o'clock?"
He winced from the report in his ears at such a close range as Khunying fired a round off from rifle, then another one. Pierre swung the binoculars back up to look at the scene. The machinegun had fallen silent and he could make up some figures draped on the ground around it.
They had to have been over a kilometer and a half distant. Pierre whistled in appreciation.
"Not too bad, huh?" Khunying boasted. "Now find me some more good targets."
Pierre swung the binoculars around to comply. Having the machinegun team struck down made the remaining guerrillas more cautious, and they pulled back into the jungle. A few uncomfortable moments passed as he peered at them, trying to distinguish men from shadow. Finally a bit of movement on the periphery of his binoculars caught his attention. He swung them over to focus on some rustling undergrowth as the outline of a man started taking shape.
"Ten o'clock," he called out, even as the figure rose to kneel. The figure was swinging something up off the ground, to a brace position over his shoulder… "He has an RPG!"
Khunying muttered something that sounded sharp and unpleasant as she swung her rifle fractionally to the left. Pierre waited to hear the report of the rifle as he watched the mark rise up and take aim. It was going to be clos
Crack! The target's head exploded in a shower of blood and gore.
The RPG slipped from the guerrilla's now lifeless grasp into the jungle below as he collapsed. Around the target there were other guerrillas scrambling in the underbrush in a chaotic rush to recover the weapon. Khunying was firing on them now as well, keeping up a steady rhythmic pattern of shooting, working the bolt, ejecting a casing, and then shooting again. By the time she paused to load another stripper clip the guerrillas had fallen back even further into cover and resorted to desultory potshots in the direction of the village.
Pierre continued his visual sweep but had nothing to designate. It seemed like the battle was over. After a few more minutes Khunying pulled back from the window and set her rifle aside in a crook of the corner. She took up the radio, dialing in and listening to a stream of what sounded like exulting voices. She barked a few more orders and then relaxed in a seat at the table, seemingly happy with the course of events.
As the firing died away, Claude broke the quiet in the room. "Was that it?"
"Probably," Khunying replied lazily. "Didn't even get into the village this time. It was just another probe trying to get lucky. They won't."
Pierre peered back out the window as he stood up. He saw nothing so he turned his back and joined the other two at the table. He handed over the binoculars back to Khunying. "Seems that way. When will it be safe to leave?"
"Another few minutes before our mortar crew gets the range right," Khunying said, biting her lip. "Maybe a half-hour, maybe longer. We'll pursue into the jungle after they break and they'll run away. The road to Roanapur should be safe afterward."
"It sounds like they've been attacking very regularly," Pierre observed.
"They have," Khunying nodded. "It's worse here than Government will admit. Some stupid assholes are selling PLO weapons for cheap. Chinese copies of Soviet garbage, mostly, but that mortar is pretty new. Didn't have enough RPGs to waste on trying their luck before the last three or so months. They've gotten a lot bolder since then."
"Surely they don't pose a threat to Roanapur?" Claude leaned in over the table, looking very much like a scared civilian. "There weren't any travel advisories to the district."
Khunying laughed sharply. "If staying in Roanapur you have bigger worries than PLO. Hive of scum, grandfather said, ever since the 1970s. Before my time. Probably from where PLO is getting weapons so they won't attack it. Why cut off nose to spite face? They have it out for Chana worse."
"Why?" Pierre broke in with professional curiosity, playing against the civilian's personal concern. "This whole district is Thai, or nearly so. Wouldn't they be concentrating on provinces with a Muslim majority?"
"That courier grandfather spoke of is one founder of PLO," Khunying said disdainfully. "Traitor knows we are going to come after him, so he goes after us. Unfinished business from the war. And they need a presence in Chana district for smuggling routes to Pattani. Money and drugs go there, weapons come out. Our Popular Militia can cut off that trade so they put pressure on us."
The radio crackled to life again with panicked-sounding shouts in Thai. Khunying drew it back up to the side of her head, listening in for a while before swearing again. She swung around from the table and raced over to the open window, radio still in hand, to peer out in the opposite direction from the road. Whatever she saw had her start up swearing again.
"Trouble?" Pierre inquired while still sitting down.
"Of course," she snapped. "Bastard PLO infiltrated through rice paddies while assholes up north drew our attention. Already in village, can't get a decent bead on them. My men are dying out there to assault troops."
Pierre shot Claude a look and the other man nodded. They had already committed to fighting, after all. He sighed and stood up, grabbing his automatic shotgun from the table and looping it back around his shoulder. "We'll go handle this."
"Handle squad of shock troops?" Khunying turned to eye him again and her mouth tugged up in a wry smile. "Maybe you are good enough for that." She glanced over at Claude more dubiously. "You, try not to get self killed. Enemy already under cover of village outskirts. Go west down road, toward beach. Is checkpoint there, report in. Will let them know you're coming."
Pierre almost chuckled as Claude nodded curtly to Khunying. As they made their way out of the post office he could see smoke rising from the outskirts to the northwest, presumably in the direction of the rice paddies. The road ahead was mostly deserted, with debris from mortar strikes and pieces of the odd dead body lying around. Pierre took point, simply relying on his reflexes and bulletproof coat to prevent threats, while Claude advanced from cover to coverFearful eyes followed them from the doorways of the huts he passed by.
He saw the checkpoint. It was an earthen embankment with a crude shed on the side of the road. A bar blocked the road. Several ragged-looking militia were standing around looking warily off toward the north. First one, then the rest turned around with guns pointed in their direction; the first one shouted something angrily in Thai. Claude shouted back in the same language. Pierre could pick out a few of the curses both of them threw around.
At length someone who looked like an officer emerged from the hut. He had a peaked cap on, unlike the bareheaded militia, and his surplus uniform looked in somewhat better shape. He started shouting in Thai at both the soldier and Claude. The soldiers turned back to face the barricade as Claude and the officer started talking in lower voices.
Eventually Claude turned aside and waved him on. "They don't want to go forward," he said, speaking in French with a significant helping of disgust in his voice. "To hear them speak the PLO has sent an entire regiment here. While they sit around the outskirts are being burned down. Probably some status issue at work there."
Pierre shrugged, and simply began walking away off the road in the direction of the fires on the horizon. Claude followed. The squalor of the village was increasing as they came closer to the edges and the rice paddies beyond. Huts were flimsier, less well-constructed, smaller. A steady stream of men, women, and children were running away. The sounds of gunfire were picking up as well. Claude motioned with his hand and broke off of the left while pulling out his Sig-Sauer.
Pierre instead raced on with his USAS-12 in hand. A row of burning huts was just ahead. Pockets of militia huddled behind the flimsy dwellings at his back, firing wildly across the way. He saw movement ahead, made out fatigues, a Kalashnikov at the side. He swung the shotgun around and fired. A solid twelve-gauge slug struck the guerrilla in mid-stride, blowing him backward and sprawling him out in the dirt of the ground. He laughed, and waved on the scattered militia to follow him in a counterattack.
A string of bullets stitched its way toward him across the way. He shifted his stance and threw his coat into the way. The impacts were felt, barely, and with a dramatic sweep of his arm he flung out the stopped rounds.
That made the militia a little more eager to follow as he raced into the flaming hellscape ahead.
A line of guerrillas was forming up to attack them. He sprinted and bound himself off the side of a flaming hut. It crumbled but he was already soaring in the air over the head of the nearest guerrilla. As he landed he swung his shotgun out behind him and fired into his stunned enemy. He hit the ground on his right heel and was already spinning as the others turned to face him.
Pierre fired again as he passed the next guerrilla in line, then at yet another as his momentum brought his shotgun into position. In bare seconds three of the PLO "shock troops" were sprawled out on the ground and two more paused in momentary horror. They opened fire, but too late; Pierre already had his arm and the precious Kevlar mesh cloth out in front of his face.
Even as he felt the impact of Kalashnikov rounds he had the shotgun swinging further to the right still. It bucked him twice as he shot into the space he'd memorized the position of his last enemies at. There were a couple of sharp cries and then the shooting ceased. Pierre lowered his arm and noted, to his satisfaction, both PLO guerrillas were down on the ground and dead or bleeding out. He spared a glance behind him and saw several militia soldiers now racing forward toward him.
There were only a few other rows of huts between them and the rice paddies. Pierre felt confident enough to stroll leisurely through. One guerrilla stepped out from a hut to shoot him the back, but his coat was more than sufficient protection. After his rounds glanced harmlessly off the trenchcoat he affected a yawn and swung his shotgun to his side to shoot down another guerrilla inching out from inside one of the huts. His original assailant threw down his rifle and started running.
Just perhaps the invincibility was beginning to go to his head.
Not too much, though, as he heard the sound of ripping canvass associated with real automatic weapons. He threw himself low to the ground and rolled over behind one of the burning huts as soon he processed it. A volley of machinegun fire slashed through the air about mid-height from where he had been standing. It was being fired as overwatch from the rice paddy, and cut down a handful of the militia soldiers who had been following him.
Exertion and being close to the blazing roof made him sweat. He panted for a bit as he gathered his breath and considered the situation further. He was helping out the militia, but he was not a soldier. The guerrillas had the kind of serious firepower that rendered his coat moot and this was a set-piece battle they could employ it freely. He'd done enough for the time being; there was no call for heroics.
And the guerrillas were falling back under the cover of the machinegun. They were silhouetted by the flames, dark figures in fatigues and face-masks crouching low as they raced out of the village, some dragging the bodies of their dead along with them. Pierre leaned out to fire but dodged back behind the hut's wall as the machinegun again turned on him. Bits of dirt and plaster showered him amid the narrow escape.
A whistling sound prompted him to throw himself into a crouch and cover his ears. Another explosion went off from ahead of him, then another and another. A muffled sound of water and mud being splashed out followed in the wake of the barrage. The machinegun no longer fired. Pierre risked a look back around the hut's wall; the guerrillas were no longer in sight, most of them having made it back to the paddy. But the paddy itself was torn up, with the tall stalks of rice trampled over or blown out.
"Hey, Pierre!" Claude shouted out to him. Pierre turned and saw his partner walking nonchalantly through the burning row of huts. He was framed by the sky tinged red-orange from the smoke and the glow of the flames. "It seems like the mortar took care of things."
Pierre rose up from his crouch and stepped away from the burning hut he had sheltered behind. He raised an eyebrow to Claude. "Trying to be cool showing up at the end here?"
"Merely trying?" Claude laughed. "No, but I found the other lieutenant in the militia. He lives somewhere back there," he continued with a lazy wave behind him. "It was easier to get him to take action than that other buffoon at the roadblock. Once you started the guerrillas running he could start observing for the militia artillery."
"I didn't join the Legion," Pierre groused. "This should be enough for one day."
Claude nodded. "Quite enough. Too much, perhaps. We aren't here to play at war. But Khunying and her grandfather owe us. Well, you."
They started walking back toward the post office. The militia was regrouping, and trying to put out the fires. That was their business. Pierre took the opportunity to broach something that had weighed on his mind since the interview had been terminated. "Was this worthwhile?"
"Probably," Claude said, shrugging. "The old man is lying about something. And I researched the Japanese archives well enough to know they had not removed the cache of manuscripts from the Roanapur mosque. They did nothing of that sort without a lengthy paper trail in China, Malaya, the Philippines, or elsewhere."
Pierre thought back to the study, seemingly filled with foreign books. "Could he have taken them?"
"Maybe." Claude smiled. "You always were lacking a sufficiently developed sense of paranoia. It's good to see that changing a bit. I didn't see any sign that he had them in his study but he wouldn't keep something like that there. And there is also this courier he mentioned. It's another angle, anyway."
"For some reason I doubt the PLO will want to talk to me," Pierre responded. They were passing the tangle of corpses that he had made earlier. He nodded over at them and then stepped by to look them over for anything useful. He crouched down to rifle through their pockets and search their bodies for weapons.
"If they are sourcing weapons through Roanapur they know how the freelancer game works," Claude commented. "You were caught up in an attack and defended yourself. Eh, very aggressively defended yourself. But from what I have seen that is how the top tier of mercenaries there react to such situations."
Pierre grunted in response. The men had been wielding AK-47s, with Chinese manufacturer stamps. He discarded those guns as mostly useless to him. One of the men had a photo of a family in his breast pocket. Pierre slid it back in. He stripped a machete and scabbard off one of the others. Sadly none of the men had pistols; presumably those were reserved for the officers, or urban terrorists. He palmed three Chinese fragmentation grenades into his coat from the first one he had killed, and that was more than enough to make up for that disappointment. He also picked up a bit of spare cash that added together to a couple hundred USD.
[+ Machete, + 3 Grenades, + $200.]
Finally, satisfied with his haul, Pierre stood back up. "So what do we do now?"
"We'll head back to Roanapur after following up with Khunying," Claude said. "I intend to continue my own efforts to trace the manuscript. I'll have to go through the PLO for the next phase. Fortunately they have a need for good press and I can pass myself off as a journalist readily enough. You can tag along, or go back to the tournament. Donovan will probably try to get in touch with you soon. Or," he grinned sadistically, "you can always go back to stalking your poor crush."
"I am not stalking her," Pierre said flatly.
Claude chuckled. "That said, she probably is linked in to some of the goings on in Roanapur. You heard Khunying, and you can see it yourself. There are too many weapons and drugs flowing through the city and the syndicates are not doing anything about it. That might also be a productive thread to follow and one I am certain is connected to our true prey. And Lucie happens to be on the arm of a major figure in one of the big four syndicates here…"
[ ] Stick with Claude and investigate the PLO.
[ ] Look around for Donovan.
[ ] Stalk Lucie.
[ ] Write-in?
OOC: Sorry it took so long. It was busy at work and I generally don't write this on the weekends. I should still be able to get another update by the weekend if we can come to a consensus by Thursday, though. It should be pretty clear what sort of path each option leads to, but of course write-in stunts can impact how successful the chosen route proves.
