Change Agent

  She absorbed Thet’s translated words and paced. Her men were hanging on her every movement. Win stopped. “Why should I trust you, shape-changer?”

  Durand slowly reached into his pocket as a dozen weapons snapped alert. He held up his other hand and produced the photo of his old self, posing next to Mia and Miyuki. Durand held it up for Win to see.

  “This is the real me. And this is my wife and child.”

  Win stopped cold. Her hand reached out. Durand only reluctantly let the photo go. She studied Durand’s real face in the photo and clearly tried to connect it to the one in front of her.

  “I need to get back to myself. I cannot exist like this, and I need to make sure this never happens to anyone else. The Huli jing made the mistake of transforming me into the image of their leader—to take the blame for his crimes. I intend to use that to destroy them.”

  Win still studied the photo.

  Durand perceived a softening of her hard eyes.

  Thet spoke to Durand. “My sister . . . she had a boy . . . and a husband. Tatmadaw drones killed them.”

  Durand lowered his head. “I cannot imagine her pain.”

  Win steeled herself and passed the photo back to Durand, who eagerly took it. She then spoke to her brother.

  Thet turned to Durand. “My sister says you have a lovely family. You should be very proud.”

  Durand felt himself on the verge of tears, momentarily undermining his menacing appearance. “Thank you. I exist for them.”

  She studied him and removed the interrogation cap from his head—noticing the tattoos underneath that also traced across his scalp. Win then spoke.

  Thet relayed her words. “She says . . . the decision to help you is far above her authority, but she will consult our leaders once we are inside Shan territory. She can promise nothing, but if what you say is true, all things are possible.”

  Durand nodded. “Thank your sister for me, Thet.”

  In answer Win wai’d again, which Durand returned with sincerity, touching his nose to his peaked fingers.

  With that Win circled her hand and whistled.

  The squad of men rushed to get moving.

  Chapter 34

  They moved single file along jungle trails that crisscrossed the hills. Monsoon rain started toward late afternoon, with large drops cascading down broad tropical leaves in sizable rivulets.

  Kenneth Durand walked in wet, baggy, pale blue pants and a tunic of homespun cloth, as well as the traditional kup hat and sandals. The clothing had been supplied by the Shan, and was thankfully loose-fitting enough to fit even Durand’s muscular frame. The sandals did surprisingly well on the muddy track, draining out water instantly.

  Durand glanced back at Bryan Frey, who trudged along with surprising aplomb. The Shan had adjusted tunic and pants to fit him in short order as well—though the kup hat looked outsized on him. He’d found a short walking stick of fallen hardwood, and kept up with the Shan resistance fighters, laden as they were with heavy packs.

  Minutes after they left the jet landing site, Durand watched as Bo Win coordinated with her outlying teams by burst radio. He was surprised how far sophisticated military equipment had spread. Back when he was in the service, these encrypted handsets were expensive and difficult to maintain. But now they were available all over the Internet—could, in fact, be 3D-printed from Deep Web designs, along with their firmware.

  An hour after they began, they linked up with a dozen more Shan resistance fighters, who led donkeys laden with what appeared to be boxes of ammunition or weapons. Durand had a general knowledge of the conflicts in the region, and he knew that Thailand was sympathetic to the cause of the indigenous people in Myanmar—not least because of their friction with the Burmese military, going back centuries.

  Another side effect of the ongoing conflict in Myanmar was the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing over the border. As the group crested a ridge, through the rain Durand made out the lights and campfires of a shockingly massive refugee camp in a valley to their east. Kilometers away, it was still readily visible.

  Thet nodded toward it as he noticed Durand’s gaze. “UN refugee camp. Seven hundred thousand people. Shan, Hmong, Karen. Many more.”

  “The Thai authorities host it?”

  Thet gestured dismissively. “Once you enter there, very difficult to leave. Camp is twenty years old. Keeps growing.”

  Durand gave it one more look and compared it to what he knew about the monster refugee camps in Kenya, Malaysia, Turkey, and on and on. There were a hundred million people in official camps—with no good plan for what to do with them. He’d always been daunted by the magnitude of the problem, but he’d never actually laid eyes on one of the camps. It cast a dark cloud over his mood to add to the monsoon rain.

  The group camped behind a hill before nightfall. The men used dehydrated food with enclosed heating units for rations. One of these was passed to Durand, along with a water filtration straw. He sat on a log next to Frey and across from Thet, who’d taken a keen interest in them. Frey and Thet had been talking for much of the afternoon.

  Durand asked, “How far to the border, Thet?”

  Thet smiled. “Just a couple kilometers.”

  “Will we cross in the night?”

  “Oh, no. Darkness has no advantage. Machines see better than we at night. We like day. Rain like this during the day, perfect weather against fighting machines. Worse for them. You should rest.” He mimed sleep. “We leave just before dawn.”

  Soldiers strung up thick, black netting between the trees around the camp.

  Frey noticed them working and turned to Thet. “If those are mosquito nets, I’d hate to see the mosquitoes.”

  Thet laughed good-naturedly. “Anti-drone netting. Snares surveillance units. Sets off alarm.”

  Men behind him laid out bamboo mats, and soon the group huddled in several different spots under camouflaged tarpaulins in the rain, while others kept watch. Durand recognized the tarp material as a thermal insulator. It would conceal their heat signature from the air. Likewise, he’d seen motion and acoustic sensors set up on their perimeter, scanning the jungle around them for threats, interpreting movement and myriad sounds.

  Even here, out on the Thai-Burmese border, algorithms ran the show. He considered this as he watched a stream of rainwater rush a foot past his head in the semidarkness. Durand drifted off to sleep.

  • • •

  They crossed the border near dawn in a mild drizzle and scattered fog. Durand thought the border would be marked in some way or cleared of trees—maybe even fenced, mined, and drone patrolled. Instead, he only heard about their crossing after it was over. He passed by Thet standing next to a tree.

  The amiable translator smiled. “Welcome to Myanmar, Mr. Durand.”

  Durand looked up at the sky. The fog was thick, but he knew they weren’t far inside the border. “Aren’t you concerned about military drones guarding the border?”

  “Tatmadaw seeks to avoid incident with Thai military. Their machines are not so precise in determining enemies. They stay clear of the border. We will face them further in-country—once we reach the Daen Lao Range tomorrow. Rough country there.”

  Durand looked back at a line of men and donkeys moving up a steep, muddy trail flowing with rainwater.

  Frey approached, clinging to the back of a small gray donkey. “You hear that, Ken? We’ll be getting to the rough country tomorrow, he says.”

  Durand said nothing, instead looking down at the tattoos half visible on his wet skin. With some effort, he willed them to go away.

  • • •

  Around midday the rain let up, and a humid heat enveloped them. Monkeys and birds began calling again, and a deafening chorus of insect life returned.

  As Durand passed Thet and Frey on the trail, Thet pointed at a phablet map that showed roughly wh
ere they were—about eight kilometers into Myanmar after nine hours of heavy slogging. Durand was easily able to keep up with the toughest of the soldiers—but also felt guilt for admiring his new body’s strength and endurance.

  Late in the afternoon, the column stopped, and men readied their weapons. Looking down into a ravine, Durand could see a reddish dirt road, muddy from the rain. They were apparently crossing it in bounding groups, while the others kept watch. Durand could see Thet sitting with his back against a tree, manipulating the remote controller for his quadcopter drone—which was nowhere in sight. Thet wore LFP glasses, which Durand knew would provide a full-immersion VR effect. Apparently he was scouting the road.

  Before long, Durand’s group was waved onward, along with a line of pack donkeys. As they crossed, recent large truck tracks were visible in the mud. The treads looked deep, suggesting either military or logging vehicles.

  From the road Durand could see a line of steep jungle mountains ahead. The beginning of the eastern Burmese highlands—the Daen Lao Range. Durand knew the highest peak there rose roughly 2,500 meters, and they were only in the foothills.

  They moved upslope into the steaming jungle, Shan soldiers cutting a path with machetes fifty meters in from the road.

  In the late afternoon and a thousand meters uphill, Frey collapsed next to Durand as soldiers prepared camp around them. Durand felt almost unaffected by the march.

  Frey groaned. “I finally understand what saddle sore means. These are muscles I don’t use much. I’m constantly having to counteract whatever Tuk is doing just to stay on his back.”

  “Tuk is the donkey?”

  “Yes, the donkey, and I’ve come to realize Tuk can make my life miserable for me if he wants.”

  Durand noticed Bo Win moving through the camp, issuing terse orders to soldiers. As she came up on Durand and Frey, she coldly appraised Frey’s obvious exhaustion.

  Frey perked up. “Thank you for the donkey, Bo Win. Most appreciated.”

  She moved past without responding, issuing more orders to men stringing up anti-drone nets.

  Durand accepted a self-heating food packet from a soldier passing them out. “I think she’s starting to like you.”

  • • •

  The next day dawned with monsoon rain. Durand and Frey sat huddled under giant taro leaves among the Shan soldiers, sipping chemically heated tea and scooping sticky rice into their mouths.

  Thet sat next to them. “Your tattoos intrigue the men, Mr. Durand.”

  Durand glanced at his own arms and was relieved to see the tattoos weren’t visible.

  “You say they are part of your genetic code?”

  “Part of Marcus Wyckes’s genetic code. Not mine.”

  Thet nodded.

  Frey interjected, “Mr. Durand’s skin is biologically like that of a chameleon, Thet.”

  “Ah. Then you can make your tattoos appear and disappear at will? May I see them again?”

  Durand cast a wary look Thet’s way.

  Frey waved Thet off. “They usually appear only when Mr. Durand is agitated.”

  “I see. Curious.” Thet chewed for several moments, deep in thought. “Tattoos are very important in Shan culture.” He pulled up the sleeve of his own tunic to show dragons and other inscrutable symbols lining his arm.

  Other Shan fighters around them did the same—displaying their ink. Every one of them was tattooed in several places—one even stuck out his tongue to show a dark swirling pattern on it.

  “Tattoos are a rite of passage into adulthood for us—for men and women. A sayah uses a brass-tipped stick to inject ‘magical’ ingredients beneath our skin. To give us power over illness, or evildoers, or weapons.”

  Frey cast a skeptical eye in Thet’s direction. “And do you believe your tattoos are magical, Thet?”

  Thet laughed. “No, Dr. Frey. But some do believe this.” He paused. “In fact, some of the men think Mr. Durand’s tattoos carry powerful magic.”

  Durand and Frey exchanged concerned looks.

  A whistle went up, and the men started breaking camp.

  • • •

  Monkeys screeched in the distance. By midday the rain had stopped, replaced by shimmering heat and humidity. Nothing about or on Durand was dry. Bugs were everywhere.

  A soldier gave a slight whistle to Durand, snapping him alert. The man pointed at his eyes, then directed his fingers ahead. Durand followed them, and as they came around the towering roots of a dipterocarp tree, Durand saw the tangled wreckage of a large military drone, its wings sheared off and scattered in the brush. The gray laminated fuselage was split open like a wasp’s thorax—the nose driven into the ground. Vines were already growing around its Russian language markings. A faded Burmese military insignia was visible on its tail fin.

  As he walked past, Durand and the others stared at the robotic carcass with foreboding. He had expected the Shan fighters to walk jubilantly past the wreckage, but it looked as though they realized there would always be more drones.

  He kept moving downslope and didn’t look back.

  By midmorning the sound of rushing water was unmistakable. Soon they reached the bottom of a narrow valley, down which a small, fast-moving river flowed. Its brown water was cluttered with logs and leafy debris. The Shan column followed it west.

  Durand looked ahead to see Bo Win standing on a rock, looking skyward with some sort of optics. She keyed a radio and then listened.

  They had eyes on the sky, then. Good.

  Durand fell in next to Frey’s donkey as they moved along the river’s edge on a freshly hacked trail.

  They traveled for several hours in a somnolent state, Durand listening to Tuk’s hooves scramble over rocks and squish into the red mud. They trudged one step at a time, torpid in the heat, bathed in sweat.

  Then suddenly a shout went up from ahead. Durand saw men rushing for cover. Fifty meters downriver, Shan fighters fell back from the forest toward the riverbank, unslinging their rifles.

  More shouting. Then the crackling of automatic gunfire.

  Durand moved behind a tree. He peered out to see a metallic, spiderlike object the size of a dog scrambling with remarkable swiftness over rocks and among a group of Shan fighters.

  Then it exploded, sending an echoing boom across the valley. The detonation hit Durand like a physical object, and he dropped to the mud as a piece of shrapnel whined past in the trees.

  Frey’s donkey brayed and bolted, tossing him into the mud.

  Screams came from downriver. Someone was in great pain. Smoke billowed from a crater. More shouting in the Shan dialect.

  Durand looked up from the mud to see soldiers scanning the trees upslope as medics moved toward the injured. He turned to see Frey concealing himself behind a river rock.

  “What the hell was that?”

  The screaming continued.

  Durand moved alongside him. “Spider mine.”

  “That’s a thing now?”

  “Used in anti-insurgency operations. They usually program them to listen for enemy dialects. It lays out a web of microphones, and it’ll hone in, aiming to detonate itself in the middle of the enemy.”

  “Fuck me. I thought I never wanted to go to a war, and now I’m certain I don’t.”

  Durand noticed that his own tattoos were on full display on his forearms and no doubt elsewhere. Not surprising, given how fast his heart was beating.

  The screaming had ceased—either due to painkillers or worse.

  Frey rolled onto his back. “I hate this evil shit.”

  Thet came running toward them, his M4 out and ready. “Mr. Durand. Dr. Frey.” Thet seemed to ignore the reappearance of Durand’s tattoos. “We cannot remain here. The mine will have sent a coded signal prior to exploding. Drones will be coming. We must go. Quickly.”

  Durand got to
his feet and grabbed Frey, picking him up entirely.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Not the time, Bryan.” Durand leaped over rocks as he carried Frey past a scene of blood-smeared rocks and human intestines, while medics worked furiously on a wounded soldier who appeared unconscious. The coppery smell of blood, sulfur, and butyric acid filled his nostrils for a moment as he rushed past with a column of other Shan fighters.

  He saw Bo Win studying the skies again and shouting at them. He didn’t need to understand her language to know she was telling them to move. They crashed through the underbrush, heading upslope.

  His body felt strong, despite the heat and Frey’s considerable weight in his arms. Due to Frey’s foreshortened legs and arms, he couldn’t put the dwarf on his back, but instead held him to his chest like a child.

  “I’m not comfortable with this, Ken.”

  “Shut up.” Durand surged uphill, using what trail was made by those ahead of him. They soon turned westward, higher up the valley wall and moved double-time along the slope. A few kilometers later, exhausted, the men took refuge beneath a thick stand of bamboo.

  Durand still felt strong. He put Frey down and stood with a group of panting fighters. They stared at his sharply defined array of tattoos—whispering among themselves.

  Frey straightened his tunic.

  Fifteen minutes later Durand’s tattoos had faded, but they hadn’t disappeared entirely. By then the rest of the group had arrived, first the donkey train, followed by Thet and two stretchers, one containing a wounded man, the other with a green biofilm, vacuum body bag strapped to it.

  Bo Win brought up the rear with her radio team. She listened to earphones and hissed orders. Men rushed to deploy thermal tarps.

  But after a half hour of tense sky watching and listening to radio reports, she eventually ordered the column to move out again.

  The rest of the day was spent moving along the valley wall, parallel to the river. They could still hear the water below them. At some point Durand passed Win watching her men walk by, clearly inspecting each one of them, voicing encouragement.