there stood this one-eyed Chinaman grinning at me like a maniac with red-stained teeth, casually aiming an Uzi at me. I knew that a three-second burst from that gun could inscribe the Lord's Prayer on my forehead, so I didn't pull any monkey business. I just froze and stared him down.
To my utter amazement, he addressed me politely in Chinese, using my old Chinese name. "How are you, Mr. Luo?" he sputtered in lousy Mandarin. His accent told me that he was a southern Chinese and that he felt uncomfortable speaking the northern dialect. "The Boss has sent me to greet you and to accompany you back to his place for dinner. He is very eager to see you again." Immensely amused by his little soliloquy, he burst out cackling, spraying stinking red spittle all over the cockpit. He obviously knew who I was and that I speak Chinese, so I decided not to fake it.
"This is a bit sudden," I replied in Mandarin that put his own pronunciation to shame. "Unfortunately, I have a previous engagement in Saigon this evening. Please thank your boss for his kind invitation. Perhaps some other time."
That really cracked him up, and his eyes slit shut with laughter. If he'd been holding anything else but that damn Uzi, I would have tried to overpower him right then and there, but a cockpit struggle with that piece would have been the end of both of us.
"No way!" he replied in a nasty tone. "If I don't bring you back in time for dinner tomorrow evening, the Boss will tear out my other eye and make me eat it. Aye-yah, he has such a terrible temper!"
So that's how the whole thing started. "One-Eye," as I called him, would not tell me who the "Boss" was, nor where we were headed for "dinner." Instead, he eased himself comfortably into the copilot's seat and handed me a neatly folded piece of paper with a curt message scrawled in English:
Captain Jack, long time no see! I request the
honor of your company for dinner at Dragon
Mountain. My emissary Mr. Huang is an experienced
navigator, and he will direct you here. If you refuse
to cooperate, he will kill you.
Best Regards,
Your Old Friend
Tucked inside the note was a crude map with precise navigational directions inscribed on it. One-Eye jabbed a dirty finger at a point on the map and told me that it was our destination. I could see at a glance that the point was located on the Shan Plateau in northern Burma, on the western outskirts of the Golden Triangle.
With One-Eye riding shotgun and spraying betel juice the whole way, we cruised north across Laos, skirted along the Thai border, and entered Burmese airspace right smack over the Triangle. The radio squawked a few times, but whenever I reached for the receiver, One-Eye jabbed his Uzi in my ribs.
I checked my bearings and began to descend slowly near the point indicated on the map. Steep mountains and dense carpets of green jungle stretched all the way to the horizon without a trace of civilization anywhere. Was I supposed to land in the trees?
But as we got closer to the ground, One-Eye blinked in recognition at the terrain below. Clucking his approval, he craned his neck against the window and scanned the landscape. Suddenly, he pointed toward a huge craggy mountain that loomed like a dark tower against the northern skyline.
"There it is!" he slobbered. "Dragon Mountain!"
We veered around the northern face of the mountain, and signs of human habitation began to appear below: squat thatch huts, green patches of land under cultivation, terraced rice paddies, dogs and water buffalo, smoke from cooking fires-all the elements of a typical Asian village. One-Eye directed me ten miles further north, where a tattered wind sock flapped listlessly, indicating a landing strip. The coolies below looked like busy ants as they scurried across the strip to clear away the camouflage.
"Okay, Huang, fasten your seatbelt; we're going in!"
"Good, good!" he sprayed, watching the tricky landing with his single, well-practiced eye. "Your flying skills are excellent. The Boss will be very pleased!"
II
As soon as we'd landed, the barefoot coolies swarmed across the airstrip again, dragging shrubs and fallen limbs to conceal it. I taxied to a halt under a makeshift canopy among the trees that served as a hangar and disembarked, with One-Eye right behind me, prodding me in the ribs with his Uzi. Dented drums of gas and oil, broken boxes full of rusty old tools, and sundry aircraft parts were strewn about the ground. Amid this mess an old woman squatted before a charcoal fire, stirring a bubbling cauldron of what appeared to be food. One-Eye commandeered a fresh chew of betel from her, then nudged me up a jungle trail with his gun.
The hike up to Dragon Mountain took a day and a half. We spent the night in a filthy hovel along the trail, which One-Eye called an "inn." It was actually a guardhouse, and I spent a sleepless night chained to a post like a dog.
We finally reached the village I'd seen from the air late the following afternoon. A crude drawbridge fashioned of wooden planks and bamboo beams hung across a muddy, swift-flowing stream that separated us from the final stretch of trail into the village. One-Eye barked a sharp command at the guards on the other side, and immediately they lowered the bridge to let us cross. We trudged along another half mile or so of trail into the village, a dusty little hamlet perched on a plateau at the foot of that massive mountain.
It looked like a typical Shan village, with thatched huts built up on short bamboo stilts, each one set in a private yard enclosed within hedges of tough thornbush. A few Shan tribes-men eyed me curiously as we passed through the village, but they didn't show the least hint of surprise at my presence there. They all wore the towel-like turbans, baggy pants, and loose tunics favored by the Shan, who resemble Mongols and Tibetans more than Burmans. Their Chinese-Tibetan ancestry gives them features entirely different from Southeast Asian stock.
I stopped to light a cigarette, but One-Eye poked me rudely in the ribs and hurried me on. "No time to stop and rest now. Almost sunset. Boss waiting. Dinner soon." We passed through the village and headed up a steep path that led directly to the base of Dragon Mountain.
The dirt path gave way to smooth stone steps as we approached a huge, triple-arched Chinese gate, like the ones you see in old Chinese temples and imperial palaces. A fifteen-foot-high stone wall with cornices of glazed yellow tile snaked out into the jungle in both directions from this gaudy gate. For a moment it reminded me of a stage set for one of those corny Chinese kungfu movies they make in Hong Kong. Nothing seemed real.
One-Eye shouted the same command he'd used at the drawbridge, and one of the side gates slowly swung open. Only the "Boss" used the big central portal, One-Eye informed me, just like the Chinese emperors of yore. Armed guards, all of them Chinese, milled around within the compound, but they too barely took notice of me.
Have you ever seen the private imperial gardens located in the northern compound of the Forbidden City in Peking? That's what the scene that unfolded before my eyes behind that gate looked like. Not a trace of the wild jungle through which we'd trekked to get there was to be seen anywhere within those walls. Instead, everything was neatly landscaped and carefully manicured, with exotic trees and flowers from all over the world growing profusely in well-tended gardens. There were "mountains" of cleverly sculpted rocks, "rivers" formed by little rills that connected carp ponds abloom with lotus, miniature stone bridges, ornate pavilions, and other classical Chinese touches. In the soft pink light of dusk, the scene looked especially beautiful—and unreal.
We
