Slash and Burn by Colin Cotterill Page B

domestication here and there, suggesting that life might return to the place one day. The helicopters landed beside the old runway. A few dozen ponies were tethered to pipes and shrubs. Already, several hundred people were milling around the ruins of Spook City. They’d probably heard the erroneous rumors about the Americans paying a thousand dollars for old bones and wreckage. Some had traveled for days to this isolated outpost. The theory had been that only the really serious claimants would go to that much trouble. If they’d set up their camp in a town on a main road the searchers would have been inundated. And, as Commander Lit had rightly said, if the explosion of Bowry’s helicopter had been heard from Long Cheng, he really couldn’t have gone that far. The villagers approached the two helicopters and stood with their eyes closed as the rotors kicked up dust. The teams carried their equipment down a shallow dip and along a narrow path. For convenience, they would be working out of General Vang Pao’s old residence. It was a concrete, two-story outer-suburb motel of a place, as incongruous as the shirt-and-tie spooks who’d built it. Although the furniture had been removed, it wasn’t that much less comfortable than the Friendship Hotel. And, as most of the bombing in the region had originated from here, it was quite possible to stroll around without the fear of being blown up.
    Siri remained at Auntie Bpoo’s heels on the walk across the compound, looking for an opportunity to get her alone. When they passed the shell of a concrete hut, he grabbed her arm and dragged her through the open doorway.
    “I could scream, you know,” she told him.
    She made a move for the doorway but Siri blocked her path.
    “They’re used to screams up here,” he said. “Nobody would notice.”
    “Well, what if I smacked you one across the chops?”
    “Smacked me? Really, Bpoo. There are times when you aren’t feminine at all.”
    “Whatever makes you think I’d want to be feminine?”
    “You’re wearing a sarong and a brassiere.”
    “You forced me to dress in a hurry. I had a frock laid out for today.”
    “And that isn’t feminine?”
    “They’re merely garments. Outer coverings. Clothes do not a gender make. If you wore a saddle, would you be a donkey?”
    “If I had a wardrobe full of the things, I’d expect to be called an ass, yes.”
    “Honestly, Dr. Siri. Ancient as you are, you still care what other people think of you. You’re so vain.”
    “Why are you here?”
    “You threw me into a helicopter.”
    “I mean Xiang Khouang. What possessed you to stow away?”
    “I’m very fond of Americans.”
    Siri turned and headed out through the doorway. The word bpoo in Lao meant crab and anyone knew there was no blood to be had from a crab. Experience had taught him that you couldn’t get information from Bpoo if she wasn’t in the mood to share it. He’d just stepped into the sunlight when he heard, “You’re going to die, Siri.”
    He turned back and smiled.
    “Madame Daeng and I have already picked out the coffin. It has a battery controlled fan inside in case it gets stuffy. That’s an extra expense, of course, but I think I’m worth it.”
    “I mean in the next five days.”
    “And you’ve come to watch?”
    “I’ve come to stop it.”
    “Where were you all the other times I died?”
    “This isn’t an “almost died.” This is the real thing; dodo, doornail, dinosaur … that kind of dead.”
    “Real? But I thought you were a charlatan. You told me you make it all up.”
    “I am. I do.”
    “So?”
    Auntie Bpoo sighed, hitched up her sarong and sat untidily on a pile of breeze blocks.
    “Siri, you are so annoying. You and all those heebie-jeebie spirit characters you drag around with you. They know you’re too dense to talk to them but they’re stuck with you. How do you think they feel when their portal to the living is boarded over with a very thick plank and