The Coffee Cantata

"Strange looking," Bao said. "Short take off, correct?"

"Needs about a hundred meters," Martin said, and Bao's eyes bugged a little, his neck rose and his chin tucked down on his chest. "Well, you want to come along, Colonel?"

Asher could see the indecision in Bao's eyes, then he watched as the Colonel jogged to the helicopter and said something to the pilot. Asher looked at Martin just then, saw the grin spreading on the old man's face, then Bao returned, carrying a little flight bag over his shoulder.

"Okay," Bao said, "we go."

The Garrett turbine spun up smoothly, and while Martin taxied out to the end of the runway the Vietnamese Mi-8 lifted into the air and turned to the northeast, for Điện Biên Phủ -- and Bao ignored it. Martin applied throttle and the aircraft jerked down the runway and vaulted into the air, climbing at a thirty degree angle.

"What's our airspeed?" Asher said nervously.

"Oh, 48 knots, why?"

"Fuck."

Martin laughed; Bao and Asher looked at one another, clearly not amused, then the old Englishman pushed the nose over and undid his seatbelt. "Colonel, 3-0-3 degrees. Your airplane," Martin said as he climbed out of his seat.

Bao grabbed the controls and found the heading, started trimming for level flight, instantly consumed with the realities of flight, while Martin plopped down in a seat and produced a deck of cards. "A little rummy, perhaps?"

"Yeah, sure. Uh, how fast can this crate go?"

"Oh, about 110, or thereabouts."

"Geez, we could walk faster."

"Not over these mountains," Martin said, pointing at the spires off to the right. "And not with all the snakes down there."

"I'm familiar with those goddamn things."

"Oh, have a run-in or two?"

"About once an hour, or so it seemed."

"There are more venomous snakes here than anywhere else in the world, and crocs in the rivers, too."

"I think a tiger was stalking me one night."

"Oh? Where? I mean, how close were you to my place?"

"The night before. Call it ten miles."

"Really? How interesting." Martin shuffled the deck then dealt. "So, you crossed the river?"

"Yeah. Leeches all over when I got out of the water."

"Lucky."

"Lucky? How so."

"More crocs in that river than any in Southeast Asia. People don't go near it anymore."

"Swell."

"Maybe someone's looking out for you, lieutenant. Ever considered that? A few hundred yards off course and you might have walked right past my place, fallen down in the night and passed from that infection. What are the odds, eh?"

"Meeting you, and Becky...well, that was something else."

"She seems quite taken with you. Odd, too, that she's from Los Angeles, don't you think?"

"Yes," Asher said, thinking about her. The way she came into his room, playfully at first, like a kid, then how she grew so serious, so quickly, when she slipped into his bed. How she played him like a fish, reeling him in, letting him go until all the months he'd spent on the Constellation seemed to drift away. How everything -- before -- seemed to slip from his grasp. He thought about her, and what she meant to him now, about the promises they made -- meaningless, he knew -- but promises nonetheless.

"Is it serious?" Martin asked.

"What?" Asher said, falling back into the present.

"This thing between you and Becky? Is it serious?"

He shook his head, frowned. "I don't know...suppose it could be."

"I'll get her to Los Angeles, then. You two can work it out there."

Bao called out just then. "Clive? Fuel getting low."

"Oh, bother. That's the problem with this bird...very short legs." He crawled forward and tuned into a beacon. "Okay, I've got it."

Asher watched as Martin circled a little clearing, then he saw an old C-47 and armed men come out of a line shack and realized the clearing was an airport -- of sorts. Martin landed and the men refueled the Pilatus, then it was time to leave -- again.

"Alright, Ben, your turn. Tune the ADF to 1490 and follow it in."

"Okay." Ben took off and trimmed for level flight, and he followed the ADF. Two hours later the needle started to swing and he looked down, saw another clearing, two C-47s tied up by another line shack, and he swung around, lined up for his final. Flaps down, throttle back, he settled into his approach, felt Martin over his shoulder.

"You've got it, I'd say. Hold about 53 over the numbers, then slip to idle."

"You're right. Feels like an old Cub. Docile."

"It's a wonderful airplane."

"Okay, trim a little nose up now, let her resettle."

"Yup," Asher said, and he pulled back on the stick, flared a little and he felt her settle onto the grass runway.

"Easy on the brakes," Martin added, "or you'll stand her on her nose."

"Got it." He pulled up to the line shack and cut the engine; men came out and fueled the bird -- and Martin went out and talked to his men for a moment, then he stuck his head in the main cargo door. "Mai Ling's here today, and she's cooking. Lunch time!"

They ambled over to the shack and went inside, had an impossibly good meal of soup and noodles, and some kind of sandwich Asher'd never heard of before, and Bao was deferential to the woman.

"She is legendary among the Pathet Lao," he said. "Her husband was a leader of some repute..."

"Well, a king," Martin said, "if you must know."

"Yes. Just so. Now she travels around, rallies the troops."

"She could rally me, with this chow," Asher said, but he noticed the Colonel studying the woman. Maybe forty or so, like him, and Asher had to smile, but a moment later Bao turned to Martin.

"We have traveled four hundred miles? Are we in China now?"

"Close, but you're correct. We'll cut over China now, then Burma and Assam. We'll get our last fuel there, and sleepover. We'll take off early, cross over into Bhutan around sunrise tomorrow morning. I won't be able to get you too close to the monastery, so you'll have a little walk, Benjamin."

"A lot of snakes there, too, I suppose?"

"A few, mainly cobra, but mainly at lower elevations, and nothing like my hills. It's just too cold there."

"Swell."

"More tigers, though," Bao said. "Many more in foothills of Himalaya."

"Yes," Martin added, "there are. Not sure a 45 would take one out, but it might scare the Dickens out of it."

"I don't suppose we could just keep on flying? Paris, maybe? I'll buy dinner?"

"I have been to Paris," Bao said, wistfully, "with my..." Then he stopped, turned away.

Martin looked at Asher, shook his head; Ben looked at the floor.

"It is not your fault, Lieutenant," Bao said, putting a hand on Asher's shoulder. "I understand, but the pain is just so," he said, touching his heart, "difficult to understand."

"It's still my fault, Colonel. Those missiles wouldn't have..."

"And those missiles wouldn't be in my country unless the Soviet Union wanted them there, and the Soviets wouldn't want them there unless there was a greater conflict between your two countries. We could go back infinitely, Lieutenant, and still never arrive at the real cause. It is karma, I think, but I do not understand this."

"There's no way, my friend," Martin added. "There's only acceptance." The old man looked around and clapped his hands. "Well, time to move, I think. Mai-Ling?"

The woman appeared out of a back room, came over to their table. "Yes, Clive?" she said in a perfect Cambridge accent.

"Going to Bhutan...feeling like joining us?"

She seemed to hesitate, then nodded her head. "Yes, I need some chiles. I would appreciate the opportunity."

"Well, we're off, if you want to grab anything first."

The woman walked back into her kitchen, then returned with a burlap shoulder bag and they walked out to the Porter.

"You take her," Martin said to Asher as they climbed in. "I'll need to look at a few charts now."

"Anything I need to know?"

"Oh, yes, 90 percent and pull back at 60 knots, climb around 800 feet per, come to 3-0-3 again."

Bao helped Mai Ling buckle in, then sat beside her, and Asher taxied out to the end of the runway and took off, turned to northwest.

"Take her on up to 12,000, settle in at 115 knots," Martin said while he opened up an Indian aeronautical chart of the region. He tuned in another ADF, then started working a few VORs. "Gets a little tricky here," he said. "The Chinese and Indians are squaring off over a border region up ahead, and everyone's staying away from East Pakistan right now, too."

"You say we're in China?"

"Yes, and our last fuel stop was technically in China, too."

"Technically?"

Martin shrugged. "I have an arrangement," he said, grinning, "with one of the local air force types. I've not been so lucky in Burma. There's an air base near Myitkyina, and we'll need to stay under their radar umbrella."

"You're pretty familiar with this area, aren't you?"

"Well, yes. I started flying Blenheims here in '41, but I'd been flying air cargo in the region for a few years when war broke out. I was born on a plantation near Rangoon, went to school back home, but came back after university -- then the war started up in earnest. Anyway, after all that I bought a bunch of C-47s on the cheap and started an air taxi service. One thing led to another and I started carrying produce of another sort. Within a few years I had partners and by that time there was no way out, really. So I've made the best I could out of a sorry situation."

"How did you get to Bhutan? Shot down -- then what?"

"Oh, I chased a Jap formation northwest, managed to get shot down over India. I managed to crawl over some mountains and wound up down into a valley one morning, found myself on a trail, dozens of prayer flags flapping away in the wind. That's what I remember most, those flags, in the wind. A boy found me, apparently, and I came to a few days later."

"In the monastery?"

"Yes."

"How long did you stay?"

"A few years."

"Years?"

Martin nodded. "Biggest mistake I made in this life was walking out that door. I should have stayed." He looked out the window, took a look around, then changed a frequency on the VOR. "Let's drop on down now, get right down in the weeds."

"Okay. Any kind of threat receiver?"

"No," Martin said, shaking his head.

Asher tuned the ADF into the 3K band, and the gauge rocked once -- to 340 degrees -- then settled back to null. Ten seconds later it rocked to 340, then settled back. "There he is," Asher said.

"The ADF is picking up radar?"

"Kind of, but not really. There's a sub-carrier band broadcast when the radar pulses; it's kind of a 'come home to momma' signal, and some newer ADFs can pick it up."

"I've never heard that one, before."

"You ever tried to pick apart Russian search radars, Clive?"

"Ah. Good point. So that's Myitkyina?"

"If that base is around 340 True, it is. Signal will get stronger the closer we get."

"Just an assumption here, but if we're picking up that signal are we not visible on their radar??"

"Maybe, depends on how powerful it is. Is it British stuff?"

"I don't know. Probably."

"Probably low power setting now, two hundred fifty mile range at high power." He looked at a mountain range ahead and began to fly like an Intruder pilot once again, looking for a way through the valleys that would help obscure their passage. "You fly through this area often?"

"Not much these days."

"What about these mountains? Any air defenses?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

Asher got down to a few hundred feet above the treetops and inched forward in his seat, looked over the long cowling and saw a road winding through the jungle, then low gray clouds ahead. Five minutes later they were in heavy rain, and visibility dropped to a few miles -- Martin grew nervous and Asher looked over at him.

"You do much instrument flying?" he asked.

"No," Martin said. "Never."

"Well, I have -- so relax."

"Easy for you to say," the old man said -- as lightning flashed outside his side of the aircraft.

Asher cut power a little, dropped airspeed down to about 80 knots and he added a notch of flaps, a little nose up trim. "I wanna be trimmed for a climb if we hit some wind-shear," he explained, and Martin nodded -- then he saw they were over a ridge, and sunshine lay ahead.

"You know, if you want a job I'd be most happy to..."

Asher laughed. "I have one, assuming I can get back to it."

"What will you do when you get back? After the war, I mean?"

"I was an engineering major, took a minor in accounting. I always thought I'd join my father's company. Make specialized high pressure pumps for hydraulic systems, mainly aircraft."

"So, aircraft are in your blood, I take it?"

"Kind of. I'd like to go to med school, though."

"What about Becky? Any room for her in your life back there?"

"I don't know. I have a girl, we're so close it's like she's a part of me, but there's something about Becky...?"

"Perhaps it's simply because you've been away so long."

"Yeah, maybe, but there's something in that girl's eyes. Magnetic, know what I mean?"

"Yes, I've still got a pulse too, Ben."

He chuckled. "How'd they land with you?"

"Long story. Something to do with smuggling and getting arrested, but my guess is they were framed, set up and framed."

"And you just happened along?"

"Like I said, Ben, it's a long story."

Asher saw reluctant anger in Martin's eyes and let it drop. "Okay, ADF now at 0-0-5 degrees, so I assume we're past Myitkyina now."

"Remarkable."

"Update all your ADFs to units that pick up the 4K bands and you'll get the capability, but if newer Soviet systems are installed this little trick won't work anymore. So, where to now?"

Martin dialed in an Indian VOR station and listened to the Morse identifier, then another on NAV2. "Come right to 3-3-0. When NAV two centers look for a clearing."

"Got it." Still flying just off the treetops, he saw a highway ahead, then a bridge -- then troops on the bridge, jumping out of trucks and lining up an anti-aircraft gun. He dove for the deck -- the Porter's wheels now just inches from the pavement...

"What are you doing?!" Martin asked casually.

"Guns like that can't deflect lower than 5 degrees," Asher said as he jinked right, then left, then up and back down -- and as they passed the troops he dropped down towards the river; the troops disappeared behind a bluff and were gone in an instant.

"Remarkable," Martin said again.

"What?"

"You. You seem to be a born warrior, yet more like an eagle. Like you were born to fly -- in war."

"Funny. That's what my girlfriend said, before I left."

+++++

Sophie Marsalis Hollister took the news of Ben Asher's resurrection with grace. She flew back to Los Angeles, went to his parent's house, went to face the music. He knew by then all about her flight to D.C., about her marriage to Prentice Hollister, and though everyone seemed to dread their coming together again, like people fear two air masses coming together, it turned into a gentle affair. She came to him and kissed him, he hugged her with all the passion his soul could muster, and they went to Venice walked along the beach, then to their bench.

She told him of her life with Prentice, that he was coming back to Los Angeles to work at the Times. She was going back to UCLA, to teach surgery, start a practice.

"What are you going to do, Ben?"

"I don't know yet. I always assumed I'd go to work for Dad, but now, well, I'm not so sure."

"What's changed?"

"Me, I guess."

"What do you want to do?"

"I've applied for medical school, next fall, but with a few airlines too."

"Oh? I think you'd be an excellent physician."

And that was pure Sophie. Love, understanding, acceptance -- 'whatever you choose to do, you'll be the best there is.'

"I suppose you know," he said, "I'll always love you."

"Yes," she said, "as I'll always love you. What happened over there?"

"You mean, getting shot down?"

"Yes. We read the part about the rescue operation, getting McMasters into the helicopter. What happened after that? Why were you gone so long? Did you walk all the way to Bhutan?"

"Not hardly," he laughed. "I ran into a drug runner about a week later. I was hurt, my leg infected, and he had a doc stitch me up, got me on penicillin. Then this North Vietnamese colonel shows up, chasing me, hot on my trail. We talked, then all of us hopped in one of the drug runners airplanes and we flew to Bhutan."

"We?"

"Yeah, the, well, Clive Martin and the Vietnamese colonel, Vo Nguyen Bao's his name. We picked up this woman along the way..."

"You what?"

"I know. It was like clown car lost on a road trip. Mai Ling. Widow, educated in London, studied economics, a real fire-breathing Marxist. She married a local warlord who wanted to turn Laos into a Marxist paradise, got himself killed and she was going around rallying the guerrillas. She and Martin were friends and we met up with her, by accident -- I think -- but I'm still not sure about that. We nearly got shot down in Burma but made it into India, then into Bhutan. We landed in a clearing in the middle of nowhere, and we tied up the airplane and started walking."

"All of you?"

"Yeah. Wasn't supposed to work out that way, but Bao..."

"Bao?"

"The Vietnamese colonel?"

"Oh."

"He wanted to see this monastery..."

"Monastery?"

"Yeah. Well, see, Martin had started talking about, well, he was a pilot in the war, got shot down and ended up in this monastery, and he's been helping them ever since..."

"A drug runner helping a bunch of Buddhist monks? This is surreal?"

"Oh, darlin' -- you got no idea."

She laughed, and he laughed with her.

"So, what happened next?"

"Well, see, it was like this..."

+++++

The Porter's wings tied-down securely, they gathered their stuff and followed Martin down the road. Asher fell-in behind them, watching new patterns form in the air. Martin, on the ground once again, was a natural leader, while Bao was, he saw, the patient observer -- his eyes moving everywhere, taking everything in. Mai Ling was, however, a lush symphony, in love with the natural world, stopping to look at flowers, pointing out trees and berries, and as he watched her that morning he grew captivated by her lust for life.

And so too did Colonel Bao.

They walked along the dirt road for hours, until the road stopped at a river. There was, perhaps, a ferry to carry people across in the rainy season, or after the snows melted, but that morning the river was almost dry, just a few meandering streams remained, the rest a jumble of dry, white rocks. Then Martin pointed to the far side of the valley, to a cliff above the pines, and to a trail that led up from the river.

"There it is," he said, and Asher had to look hard to see what it was Martin was pointing at.

"Where?" Mai Ling said, looking up at the cliff.

"There," Bao said, moving close to her side.

The cliff was at least a thousand feet tall, a sheer granite wall of light gray streaked black in places where, presumably, water ran down fissures in the monsoon, and about halfway up the face he pointed out a crack that ran, roughly, from one side of the face to the other.

"See," he said, pointing, "like a string of whitest pearls, just there. Those are the buildings..."

And she looked, she saw what he saw with his own senses, then she looked into Bao's eyes, and she discovered a truth.

"There's the trail," Martin added, "through the trees on the right side, over there. It leads up through the trees to the ledge, and from there we will make it out to the monastery."

"Will we be welcome up there?" Asher asked.

"No traveler is ever turned away from a monastery, lieutenant," Bao said. "Though he may stay a day, or a lifetime -- ."

"A lifetime?"

"To begin the journey, anew, lieutenant, or to resume one's journey along the path."