Chasing the White Lion James Hannibal (essential reading TXT) 📖

fire went out. And still, the cinders burned his feet when he ran to the hill.”

“And the children?”

“Tell him.” Hsar placed her hands on Eh Taw’s shoulders.

Eh Taw’s face contorted with grief. “I should have listened. I should have trusted.”

She struggled to continue.

Ewan pressed her. “Trusted who?”

“My daughter. Hla Meh warned me of men near the camp. She claimed they were militiamen from across the border.” She began to sob. “I did not believe her. The militias are the reason we fled our homes—the reason my husband is dead. Fire is their favorite weapon.”

So Eh Taw’s husband was gone, but not Hsar’s, Thet Ye’s father. And according to Hsar, he had returned from the rice fields. Why wasn’t he here, with his wife? “Hsar, you said your husband burned his feet in the cinders. Is he at the medical tent?”

“No, Mr. Ferg-u-son. Po left an hour before you arrived.”

“To go where?”

“To track down the men who took our son.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-

TWO

MAE SURIN JUNGLE

MAE HONG SON PROVINCE, THAILAND

THET YEWORRIEDABOUTHISMOTHER.

His parents had survived the fire. He had no doubt. They had survived the previous fire at Ban Doi Henga and brought him into the world at the same time. They were survivors. But his mother had once told him, after he had run off into the camp without permission, her heart would break if she ever lost him.

He believed her. He did not want to picture her crying.

The red light of the rising sun filtered through the jungle canopy, casting scattered rays on the marching column of children.

Thet Ye’s third full day with his captors had started much like the first, with a lot of yelling and shoving in the dark as the soldiers herded the children into formation. There had been less crying that morning, except for Aung Thu. Thet Ye did not know how the older boy managed it. Thirst alone left Thet Ye’s heart too dry for tears.

After the fire, the soldiers had marched the children through the night to a jungle camp, where they slept like sheep in a pen of barbed wire. By noon, the children were on the march again, and the first and second full day progressed much the same, with shoving, shouting, and tears. The column plodded along at a crawl. Children tripped and fell. Soldiers hauled them to their feet. And on they marched to another barbed-wire pen.

At each stop, two soldiers checked the children for burns and cuts, and treated them with balm and bandages. Teacher Rocha begged them to help the pastor too. The soldiers ignored her.

With no balm or bandages of her own, she had torn pieces of her sleeves and pant legs into strips. The soldiers passed a canteen around the group once every few hours. She used her ration to wet the strips and bind Pastor Nakor’s burns. Three days in, after wetting and wrapping and re-wetting and re-wrapping, the strips looked like pieces of torn flesh clinging to his body.

Thet Ye worried about Pastor Nakor as much as he worried about his mother.

He worried about Hla Meh too. He could not get her to look at him. He’d tried to reach her during the nights in the pens, but the soldiers always forced him back to his place—once with a slap to the cheek. “Shut up, boy. Sit down!”

Now, in the growing heat of a new day, Hla Meh marched far ahead. The soldiers had put the girls up front to set the pace. Thet Ye plodded along at the back with Aung Thu, beside Pastor Nakor and Teacher Rocha. She needed the boys’ help to get him over trees and up steep hills.

As they struggled up the worst hill yet, Teacher Rocha mumbled prayers. Thet Ye heard her sob a little too.

At the top, Pastor Nakor whispered comfort. “We’re going to make it. We stay with the children, and we see them through this. God will make a way.”

The pastor’s right leg crumpled on his very next step. The boys and the teacher lost their holds on his wounded body, and he fell into a depression hidden by the undergrowth.

“What is this?” The teenage soldier from the day Hla Meh had chased the butterfly stomped through underbrush. “Get up, old man. March or I will shoot you!”

Teacher Rocha could not get the pastor up fast enough. The young soldier dragged him to his feet, and Pastor Nakor cried out in pain from the strain on his wounds.

The soldier hit him with the stock of his gun. “Quit moaning and walk.”

Thet Ye clenched his fists in anger. He wanted to rush the teen—not much bigger than himself—hit him, anything to punish him for hurting Pastor Nakor. Teacher Rocha must have felt the same way. When the teen stomped off, she took a step to follow.

The pastor caught her arm with a weak hand. “No. Don’t you see? He is a child, enslaved by these men like all the rest, and just as frightened. He knows no other way.”

Could Thet Ye have heard him correctly? The boy who yelled and hurt the pastor. The boy who carried a machine gun. Could he be as frightened as Thet Ye and Aung Thu? Thet Ye could not imagine such a thing. But Pastor Nakor had never spoken anything but truth.

The light on the underbrush grew brighter. The trees were thinning. Not far beyond the girls, Thet Ye saw a dirt road. Soe Htun, their leader with the burn scars on his hands, barked orders, and the forward soldiers ran to the edge and kneeled, weapons ready. The rest quieted the children with shouted threats.

In the silence, Thet Ye heard a rumble. Soe Htun spoke into a radio. A voice answered back, and he signaled the men at the road to lower their guns. Two covered trucks drove into view, dust billowing around them.

“Go!” Soe Htun yelled. “Get them loaded!”

The soldiers bellowed in earnest. Some picked up the smaller girls, one under each arm. The trucks’ tailgates dropped. Thet