The Greatest Lie Part 16

It had been sheer madness for me to have taken on Spartan and General Riap with nothing more than a handful of katoey comrades and an iBook. If I had only known, if only I had studied the situation more carefully, then I, Nancee and my beloved Tran would not have been placed in mortal danger. My boundless desire for fame and glory had led me to gamble for stakes I had never understood, much less considered. Under the pretext of providing for Alyssa, Marta and Li, I had ruined all of us utterly.

My bitter musings were interrupted quite abruptly: the truck stopped short, jerking Nancee awake, and I heard commands barked in a strange tongue. Nancee looked at me in startled fear: "Shit, I can't tell whether that's Burmese or Wa!"

"So good, we're across the border," I said complacently.

"Borders don't mean anything here. It depends on whose territory you land in," Nancee replied. "If that's the United Wa Army out there, we're screwed."

We waited under the tarp as our anxiety mounted. After what seemed hours, a glaring flashlight was shined under our tarp, followed by an incomprehensible, but obvious command. "It's them. Get out slowly with your hands up," Nancee advised.

Covering my eyes from the blinding light, I struggled out over the tail gate of the truck and was pushed at gunpoint towards a group of soldiers on a hillock by the track. Our Shan guides were already hog-tied there, their faces averted from our captors.

Suddenly, the commander uttered an order, and two fighters sprang forward and hacked the Shan across the backs of their necks with machetes. With a horrible thud, the guides' heads flopped over as their bodies hit the ground. Blood started to spray from their partly decapitated bodies.

Our guides were decapitated with second or third blows; their headless bodies twitched uncontrollably against their bonds as more and more of their blood poured downhill, staining the jungle scrub scarlet. The fetid jungle air was filled with the stench of urine and blood.