Chapter 3

A Golden, Shining Path

I stopped the car in front of the village, so the river was still visible but the people looked like Lego figurines. Just looking at the body language, I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. I stepped out of the driver's seat and slung the rifle over my shoulder. My hand gripped the hilt of my khukri.

As I approached, I saw Amita from behind. She was surveying the village. In the background someone was weeping hysterically. It wasn't the kind of liberation I was expecting.

Amita spoke to a Golden Path soldier, "I want you to go into every home, and find every child. Every child. You bring them back here, to me. Go." She pointed off into the village and the blue-and-gold toady walked off with his AK.

"What's going on?" I asked, arm's length from Amita Peron.

"We need more soldiers to fight the holdouts from the Royal Army, and I need to start thinking about Kyrat's future. We have opium fields to protect, laws to enforce, workers to keep in line."

Weird how opium was so high on the list.

"So you're forcing the people to join the Golden Path?"

I was so used to the language of the Golden Path but what Amita was talking about was recruiting child soldiers, enforcing her perfect vision of prosperity in Kyrat, building a Drug Empire.

"I'm sacrificing our liberties for peace later." Where the fuck was the caring not if I burn out my best men woman I was on the phone with three hours ago? "You can either get in line or get out of the way." I think she was pissed I showed up here. Amita was anything but stupid. She knew I was raised in America, sheltered from the truth of third world dictatorships like this. Where freedom fighters convinced themselves they needed to oppress certain people to further the cause of liberty. Mao was just Chiang Kai-shek dressed in red. Amita was Pagan Min with a pretty face and a local accent.

The Golden Path soldiers – every bit of thug as the Royal Army – held the villagers at gun point. A man in a felt hat held his hands together begging Amita in Nepali, "Please, let my children go. They are all we have. Please." Amita looked tired of it. As if the cries of desperate peasants were the annoying ring of her morning alarm clock.

She walked over and slapped him on the shoulder. Not cruelly, but in a "get you shit together" way. Yeah, get your shit together, dude, and accept that we're going to turn your children into crypto-Fascist slave-drivers who will hold women at gunpoint as we harvest opium so I can buy an apartment in Vegas. She picked him up and stood him on his feet, "This is a good thing." she shouted in English, "Your children will help Kyrat become a better place." She held out her arms, as if to show all of the fucks she gave about their children's lives, or even the condition of Kyrat. It was hard for Pagan to see the poverty outside of his window when he lived in exquisite luxury on the top of a mountain. I'm sure Amita didn't see the irony, "If you love Kyrat, you will turn around, go into your homes. Or, I will have you shot."

She turned around as the father pulled his wife away from the scene towards the house. Maybe they would make it out, I suppose was the calculation they were making. Amita turned to me with a sitcom-y look as if to say Peasants, what can ya' do? The woman was crying. The father pulled her away as he muffled her sobs at the risk of bothering Amita more.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

She looked stupefied, as if I'd just asked her an SAT question, "I'm doing what's best for my country." She looked away and started walking back towards the bridge, over to the vehicles.

Fuck you. "And what about Bhadra?" Why did she come into my head now? Maybe it was because the first time I met Amita was with Bhadra? Or was it just because Amita was setting up this new forward-thinking dictatorship – just like Pagan's – and the one person to get lost in it all would be a young girl with a bright future who represented everything that Amita didn't want, "What does she have to say about this?"

Amita stopped walking and spoke without looking at me, "It doesn't matter what she has to say. I've sent her away." She turned to me with a smirk, "I don't need a Tarun Matara here for our enemies to rally behind."

"Sent her away? Really?" I wanted to strangle her. Her face turned down, she could sense my fury rising, "Where?"

"It's not your concern." She knew we were done, here. She knew I would never kill another person for her, "And don't bother trying to find her. Bhadra's not coming back." She walked over to the vehicles parked on the other side of the river.

I turned back to the village. Eight Golden Path thugs led ten boys to their vehicles. The oldest was maybe sixteen. The youngest was around twelve. Kids. My motherland, run by a pair of heroin-crazed insane dictators and a bunch of child soldiers. I wondered if there were Sudanese and Sierra Leonese guys like me who saw their brothers, and nephews, and younger cousins get recruited to do the murderous work of insane assholes like this.

I wanted to scream something at her. But she had nothing left to say to me. She wasn't going to ask I kill those Royal Guard fucks. I bet at that moment she was just hoping I'd cross back over to India and catch the next plane out.

When people say my country, usually the emphasis is on country. Like it's a thing that we inhabit and therefore care for. I like my house because I live there and I want to make it a better place to be. But some people, I've noticed this everywhere, emphasize the my. As if it was something they own. I wonder if I spoke to Kim, or Bibi, or Vlad if they'd say the same thing. Emphasize that statement the same way.

The jeeps drove away with their new "recruits." Amita and two of the Golden Path thugs were chatting in English. I could tell Amita was trying hard not to look at me. Her truck was still a little ways off. They decided to leave me in the village, apparently, and started walking, all three of them to the truck.

I'm not proud of what happened next. Hell, I wasn't proud of anything that happened before this, either. Save for that first heavy I took down with my khukri. But I guess, when you have a hammer…

I marched over and pulled out a throwing knife, hitting the thug on her left at the base of his neck. I was close enough that I could see the blade sink up to the hilt.

I swung the rifle up into my hand, holding it one handed and firing a shot essentially point-blank range into the chest of the thug on her right before he could even get his finger in the trigger.

Her two men dead before she could comprehend a thought, Amita turned, facing me, her eyes steeled. I bet she never expected her dog to bite her.

But I'd already dropped the rifle before blasting a hole through that Golden Path's heart. I took my khukri out and with one hand grabbed Amita's wrist before her arm could push me away. I sank the blade into her side, until it came out under her arm pit on the right side of her body. She didn't scream. Didn't have the diaphragm to scream. But I could see the look of betrayal in her eyes. She really was that fucking crazy.

I picked up her body and walked over to the creek, setting her down on the rocks. The shock of the water must have roused what was left of her consciousness. I thought she was dead.

She coughed, a thick red cough. She had far less than a minute to live. "Treason, then?"

"Fuck you." I said.

"You're just going to give the country over to those nut cases? The monks and sadhus? Really?" But it sounded like her throat was filling up with liquid.

"No. But now that you mention it, Sabal's alive."

Now she really looked up at me with betrayal. Far more than when I murdered her, "Sa… Sabal?"

"Yeah. I let him live." I could tell what she was thinking. I let him live and I killed her. Didn't seem fair. I guess nothing seems really fair when someone you thought was your friend literally stabs you, "He was right about you," I said, hoping it hurt.

"What?"

"You are no better than Pagan. You're Pagan with a pussy."

She laughed. Or gave a little heh given the circumstances, "Not quite." She looked up at me, not with pain or betrayal in her eyes, but with a desperate hope for cruelty, "I didn't fuck your mom."

I'm sure it took a lot of strength to say that clearly.

A lunatic would have mashed her body into a pulp or beaten her face until it was unrecognizable, "Amita, just so you know, I'm not doing this because I hate you. I do. I'm just… that's not the goal here. I'm doing it so they'll never find your body. The demon fish are gonna love you." I picked my foot up, and pushed her body into the river.

I hope those last few seconds were unpleasant.