Learning the Smuggler's Blues

He even had me use the "team-standard" weapon until it was second nature. The strange metallic cough of the MP5SD echoed in my dreams for weeks.

I'd probably have gotten pretty cocky about my skills, but Kurt gave me a demonstration that cut that short. Even using a revolver, his shots sounded like a machine gun. He never hesitated, never seemed to have to aim, and never missed. I couldn't even say I'd really seen him draw, despite watching him every second.

I just stared at him after he called "clear."

He gave a self-deprecating smile. "Sorry. Look, you're doing pretty good for someone just picking it up, and you'll get better with more practice. But some of us are wired differently, our nerves fire faster, our situational awareness is a lot better. It's just the way we are."

I shrugged, trying to hide my disappointment. "So when are you going to put good guys in the shoot house?"

He shook his head. "If you get sucked into something, there are no good guys, just shoot anything remotely threatening until you run out of targets or ammo."

He pulled a locked case out of his truck and opened it.

"This is the gun Pogo wants you to use."

I stared at an odd little revolver with almost no barrel. "Where's the hammer?"

"Inside the shroud, this a Smith & Wesson Model 38 Airweight Bodyguard. It's made for concealed carry, the hammer is shrouded so it won't catch on clothes or anything else. It's tough and reliable. Not much good for shooting at any distance, but the Sergeant Major and Colonel are concerned with close in self-defense for you."

"Kind of small."

"It won't feel like it. Snub guns like this make a lot of noise, a lot of flame and they kick like hell. And you're going to use some special ammo that will make it worse. Opens up like a flower and does massive damage. You'll keep drawing from belly, back and ankle holster."

He was right, the damn thing kicked like a mule and roared like a dragon, even though he started me with low powered loads and worked me up slowly. My hands hurt, my wrists hurt, and my shoulders ached. I spent weeks and weeks listening to Kurt bark, "Draw, Fire," over and over until I was hearing it in my sleep. I swear I woke up trying to draw the pistol whenever there was a loud noise outside the hanger. At some point, I stopped really noticing the wrenching kick and the deafening blast, and the aches and pains disappeared. It wasn't long after that Kurt somewhat grudgingly declared me "trained."

After that, I settled into a dull existence for a while, with one very uncomfortable extra duty. I was appointed the "Spouse Liaison." I was supposed to work with the wives; give them support when they needed it, help them with other issues. Unfortunately, they hated me. At least it felt like it. The unit was stressful enough for wives; I never had the answers they wanted. I couldn't even help with normal administrative stuff, since I couldn't go on Main post. Neither the Colonel nor Sergeant Major were married, so Kurt's wife, Katie, was kind of in the lead of all the wives. I was always convinced she was just about half a heartbeat from just slapping me whenever I couldn't answer a question. I got the impression she wasn't really a bad person, just tired of bullshit, and I couldn't really give her anything but bullshit.

I hated going to the Spouse Support Group meetings, trying to help when I rarely could, and pretending I couldn't hear them refer to me as "The Wendy" in that condescending and disgusted tone.

The only one that gave me any slack was Amos' wife, Veronica - "Ronni." She was a pear-shaped blonde with dark brown roots and enough loud, obnoxious "Southern Redneck Girl" attitude for a hundred hours of beer commercials. She didn't give a "hot holy damn" what anybody thought of her except Amos. They flat out adored each other. I saw them out in town once at the mall; they were holding hands and watching their four kids pick out ice cream. If she wasn't holding his hand, his hand was on her ass - and if it wasn't she reached over and put it there. Unfortunately, she rarely bothered to put in an appearance at the Spouse Support Group so I usually only saw her at the monthly unit barbeques where everybody but her pretty much ignored me. I always felt like a tag-along little sister with the guys and the wives always managed to make it clear I wasn't welcome in their little circle. Except Ronni.

She always sat and talked to me for at least a few minutes; it was pretty much the only part of the barbeques I liked.

One time she saw me looking at the wives. "Don't worry about them none, Wendy. They don' mean anything by it." She stared at them for a moment, with a touch of sadness. "They're just all in the same lifeboat, clinging to each other 'cause they don't know what else to do."

She cocked her head a bit, studying them, then went on. "The guys... our guys... we know what's going on, probably a lot more than anyone wants us to know. Especially us. They're the best of the best, but that doesn't mean they're bulletproof. Sometimes there are 'training accidents' and they get hurt, end up in the hospital. Sometimes they don't come home at all. It happens. We pretend we don't know, they pretend we can't read their medal racks and count the purple hearts." She paused. "But the other wives, they got it wrong. They let their fear take over and steal their time with their man."

She suddenly focused on me. "You can't let that happen. You gotta hold on tight, take every moment. You gotta do whatever you can. Be what you should be." A sudden smile lit her face. Her voice shifted oddly, from the crackle of redneck bonfires and beer, to the sound of money, magnolias, and cotillions. "Maybe you change. Maybe you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and raised a debutante, but the only man for you is a swamp-born Cajun who'd never fit in your world. Maybe you change to fit in his."

She lifted her glass of beer in a toast to me, as refined as any Duchess ever could, took a gentle sip, winked at me and walked off with practiced grace and elegance.

I was still sitting open-mouth staring after her when she walked up behind Amos, gave him a brutal slap across his butt, took a slug of her beer and then offered the rest to him.

###

I'd probably have continued that way until I got out except for Senator Shirling. My divorce was proceeding as planned and I'd pretty much pushed Captain Brandi Shirling's husband-poaching ass into a dark corner of my memory. I'd seen her over and over on the television during the campaign. She wasn't allowed to be in uniform in her Daddy's campaign ads, but it was amazing how often Daddy's Little Angel with her giant silicone tits and collagen-filled lips ended up doing television interviews about patriotism, honor and integrity. Her arm spent the entire campaign season in a sling. That was total bullshit. I'd done it; I knew it wasn't that bad. Her arm had only been fractured, not shattered. I could feel steam coming out of my ears every time she gave her little self-deprecating smile and explained that her arm had been broken in training and that "The harder you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war."

She made me want to hurl. Disgusting bitch. It did make me smile to see her wince when she sat her fat ass down on a chair during one interview. She'd remember me for a long time.

Still, I decided to put it all behind me. She stayed on main Post, I stayed at my hanger. After meeting Amos, Rob mostly kept his head down and signed papers whenever they were sent to him. But the one person who didn't play along was Daddy Shirling. I'd stopped worrying about him because he'd made it clear he didn't want trouble. He had a campaign to win, after all.

I'd just finished reviewing cargo manifests on a Saturday afternoon, when Pogo, in civilian clothes, pulled up with Team Three.

"Pack up Wendy! Time to go."

The team brushed past me and began throwing my stuff into pelican cases with abandon. "Go where?"

Pogo flipped the contents of a drawer from my nightstand, including my battery-operated-boyfriend into a container without so much as blinking. "Anywhere you can oversee the cargo. Outside the United States. Where can you do that from?"

"Thailand. The majority of our stuff goes through there."

He nodded. "That will work. We have a safe house near U-Tapao" He suddenly glanced back at the container where he'd thrown my vibrator, then obviously decided not to say anything. "We need to get you out of here. You're going into exile on the next thing burning."

That didn't sound good at all. "Exile? What did I do?"

"Nothing new. Senator Shirling appears to have suddenly remembered you exist now that the campaign is over. He isn't a 'forgive and forget' kind of guy. The Senator informed General Faulkner that he wants to see you brought up on Courts Martial charges as quickly as possible."

"Oh shit." The words "dishonorable discharge" and "sentenced to confinement" suddenly loomed very large in my mind. I started helping stuff things into the cases as fast as I could.

"'Oh shit' is right. That asshole is talking 20 years, and he's on the damned Armed Services Committee. Colonel Howard told General Faulkner that you're on covert assignment and are currently out of contact, mission end date undetermined." He tossed me a passport. "Had the Documents guys make that up for you along with a dozen other ones. We'll get you the rest in Thailand."

I felt a wave of hopelessness. "I have to come back sooner or later."

"You've still got eighteen months, we can pretty much keep you out of his hands for that whole time. A lot can happen in eighteen months, the Senator could get distracted."

Less than forty hours later, I was sitting in a go-go bar in the red light district of Soi Cowboy in Bangkok, overly conscious of the weight of my .38 in the belly holster.

I was getting a drink before heading back to the hotel, with a schedule to head south to Pattaya the next day. Most of our cargo into Asia was initially in and out through U-Tapao, a civil-military airport near there. It usually got trucked up to Bangkok or other airports and cross loaded to smaller, civilian carriers. Pogo had told me the bar was popular with the pilots and owners of the small cargo carriers we usually used, and thought it was a good idea for me to get an idea of what kind of people we dealt with. I figured he was testing me to see if I could handle myself. Go-go bars aren't usually places single women hang out.

It was kind of a rush though. It was so unreal; I could feel the little revolver against my stomach every time I moved. I was going to have to get used to that. Pogo had made that clear when he'd given me an official Thai military license to carry it.

A scruffy looking guy wearing a loud-red-and-white tourist-style aloha shirt, with two buttons missing, over his slightly faded blue T-shirt sat on the next stool over. A crunched, used-to-be-white straw trilby hat with a frayed brim sat on the bar next to him. He'd probably shaved couple days ago and looked a little soft, like the Bangkok heat had melted him around the edges just a bit. I got a vague impression of a well-worn teddy bear.

He glanced me over, but it was pretty benign. "New here?" I'm sure someone with more experience would have some idea where he was from in Australia, but I couldn't. His accent had obviously been softened by years living outside Australia.

"First time. My boss thought it'd be a good idea for me to drop by here."

"Strange fella, your boss. This is the pilot's bar. Tourist bars are down that way..." he pointed up the street, "... and the military bars are down that way." He gestured the other way.

"I manage cargo, so I'm probably in the right place. Had to come out here to manage things a bit more directly."

He nodded slowly. "Makes sense then. I'm 'Chip' Woodley. My real name is Mel, but nobody calls me that. Except my mum."

"Wendy."

He reached across and shook my hand somberly, then called for a couple more drinks, and I was a bit surprised that his was just a Coca-Cola.

"I'm flying tomorrow. Woodley Air. I usually carry, uh, pharmaceuticals, I have a crate of my own, an old AN-24."

I smiled, but it was totally plastic. Less than six hours in country and I was drinking with a drug runner. I reflected that I'd actually, somehow, someway, gotten worse at picking guys.

He took my silence as a queue to keep talking. "At least it's interesting here. Jack over there..." he nodded towards a tall, good looking guy down the bar. "...flies a Squirrel helicopter for Lao Green Mountain Development. Good guy, but a bit of a root rat, so watch your knickers."

He glanced around, then nodded towards a central table where two tall slender Asian men in stylish suits sat with a half dozen mostly undressed women. "The Chopsticks over there who have decided to grace us with their presence are David and Jonathan Huang. They're not really regulars, they just show up here about every six months or so and throw a lot of money around. Both of them are right bastards. Hong Kong Chinese twins, illegitimate sons of a British Duke or Earl or something. Stay clear of them, they're an evil pair of budgies."

"Budgies?"

"They're smugglers. We've got a few of them around here. Jack and I call them budgies - it's a bit of an in-joke. Down in Oz we call men's Speedos swim trunks 'budgie smugglers' because it looks like..." he trailed off weakly and looked embarrassed.

"I got it." I fought to keep from smiling too wide. Maybe it was my rum and coke, but his embarrassment was kind of cute.

He fumbled on for a second before getting his rhythm back. "Bad characters, the both of them. They're pretty much royalty in the 'discreet transportation' business." He smiled. "They don't think anyone can tell them apart, but David has a scar under his left eye where he got cut a couple years ago in a car accident in Malaysia. The women are there for Jonathan, David has a taste for the kathoey."

"Kat-what?"

"kathoey. Lady boys. They're the prettier ones."

I stared. Seriously, I couldn't tell. "Wow."

He laughed. "It's kind of a thing here. The word kathoey is a little rude, they usually call themselves phuying, but everyone else uses kathoey. The surgeons do a pretty good job with the ti... boobs, breasts, I mean." He flushed red again; it really was awkwardly cute.

I eyed the brothers cautiously. We moved a number of shipments all over Asia through a company named Huang Brothers at fairly high prices.

"Smugglers?"

He shrugged. "Yes. They have an air freight business, but they also have contacts in every custom house in Asia. I heard them say they pay their 'cousins' about 2500 Hong Kong dollars per shipment to clear them through customs, then they charge the customers about four times that."

That certainly explained some surcharges I'd been seeing.

He moved on to other bar patrons; pilots, company owners, and some shiftless types. We talked for almost two more hours, eating skewers of grilled chicken with really tasty peanut sauce. At least I hoped it was chicken. It was good anyway. Even if it hadn't been, I learned more about what was actually going on with my cargo than I'd ever dreamed.

My "contact on receipt" shipments were nearly all being carried by shadowy people at best. Mercenaries, smugglers and worse. Their delivery points were a list of every unstable place in the region. Not that I hadn't expected something of the sort, but I'd been doing my job blindfolded.

He finally asked where I was going to be working.

"My... company maintains a suite in a hotel here because we have people pass through all the time, but apparently, I have an office between Pattaya and U-Tapao, so I head down to Pattaya tomorrow."

He looked a little puzzled, but shrugged. "Pattaya is a bit of zoo." He glanced around. "Kind of like this. But if you're in town for a few hours, hit Wee Andy's, at bottom of Soi 2, on the beach road end. His Missus makes great food."

I ended up heading back to my hotel a little later than I'd planned, and I really shocked myself when I told Chip it was nice meeting him and I'd had a good time. Shocked because I meant it. If he'd have been in a different line of work, I'd have tried to stay in touch with him somehow. A girl has to have some standards and not dating drug smugglers was probably a good start. He did tell the truth about Wee Andy's Missus and her cooking, though.

###

It was three weeks before Pogo and Howard passed through the safe house. Until they got there, I was the only one staying in the safe house, although a couple of local guards and a driver were permanently on call. I managed some shipments, using the equipment at the house. I also learned a lot. I traveled to the U-Tapao airfield and watched our shipments get re-palleted and relabeled. None of it stayed in Thailand.

I spent some evenings in Pattaya to get out of the safe house. I managed to learn a few words in Thai, mostly names of food. Much to my eternal regret, I learned that the insanity of the go-go clubs on the ground floor isn't even close to the insanity on the upper floors. After wandering upstairs at the Marilynn A-Go-Go, I mostly stuck to restaurants and the occasional beer bar. I also spent a considerable amount of time re-thinking how anatomy and physics worked and trying to figure out how to clean my brain with bleach and steel wool.

I was also pondering the meaning of what I'd learned from Chip, so when Howard and Pogo arrived, I simply sat down and brought it up.

"When am I going to be allowed to really do my job?"

Neither man looked particularly surprised by that. Howard fixed me with his ice-chip eyes. "Explain."

In for a penny, in for a pound. "I've been doing the simple stuff. Moving the shipments to where they really start going places. We're moving a helluva lot more than just small team stuff, and I knew that. Somebody else is managing the final leg of the shipments. It's damn slow and not being managed right. We're losing time and money, and probably shipments. I can fix that."

Pogo glanced over at Howard. "Told you she'd figure it out. Just a little quicker than I expected." Then back to me. "You sure you want involved in this?"

"I already am. I signed those manifests on the back end. If something goes wrong, my name is already on it."

Howard nodded slowly. "The military gear in CONEXes is mostly ours, it's all mission specific. When the op is fully sanctioned and overt, we use the Mil-Air. When it isn't..." He shrugged. "We use small carriers, using cover identities. That isn't that often. But since we already move stuff covertly, there are other agencies using us to move cargo, and to protect it if necessary."

"CIA?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes other organizations. There are more of them than you think. Most of them have very narrow mission sets, and they don't have our capabilities. It helps pay the bills, and we get a lot of favors in return."

"I'm not even sure how to ask this. I'm sure there isn't a book or anything, that'd be insanely stupid. But do we have some kind of directory with a listing of the smugglers and mercenary pilots?"

The two exchanged glances, Pogo grinned like a crocodile, then Howard gave a grimace. "Give her the damn book, Pogo."

It wasn't quite as stupid as it sounded, the book Pogo gave me was only part of a three part code; each part of the code was useless without the other two. We also had a program that allowed us to schedule flights, cargo, and passengers as if the schedules were coming from the Royal Thai National Intelligence Agency. I didn't know if it was a hacking program, or some kind of quid-pro-quo agreement with the Thai government. I really, really didn't want to know.