Dangerous Junk For Sail

   The sun was setting on another near-perfect day over Chaweng Beach on   

Koh Samui, an island in the Gulf of Thailand.

   Sitting in a beach chair in the strip of sand owned by the Baan Samui Resort, John Harwich watched the sunset, contemplating it and enjoying its crimson beauty. He compared it mentally to the hundreds of sunsets he’d seen on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, his native home. It was different here in the Gulf of Thailand, not the same as the sunsets had been on Cape Cod Bay. Not more picturesque or less. Just…different. And he liked it. It made him mellow, put him at peace.

   It was a peace he’d been enjoying for a couple weeks now since he’d flown down to Thailand’s second largest island from Chiang Mai and Bangkok. A friend of his in Chiang Mai had recommended both the island and this hotel, Baan Samui Resort. Both had been a big hit with Harwich. Peace, quiet, no rushing around. He spent his days lazing around reading, swimming, getting a great tan and his nights nursing drinks in the bar. The breezes under the tropical stars were warm and relaxing. Harwich was under a spell of maximum bliss. And Koh Samui was fully responsible.

   Bliss was something that had been in short supply for Harwich of late. And that was a monumental understatement!

   Once upon a time, it had seemed so simple…

   Harwich had enlisted in the US Army towards the end of the Vietnam War, joined the Special Forces and was among the last of the men in green berets to serve in the clusterfuck known as Vietnam. Before his first tour was up with 5^th Group, Harwich was “hired” by the CIA to “work” in Laos and Cambodia. While serving there, he was made part of the 46^th Group based out of Lopburi, Thailand. He did two tours in Thailand and fell in love with the kingdom. The people, the country and Buddhism helped him to come to terms with what the “secret wars” in Indochina had turned him into--a killing machine. Thailand made him human again.

   When it was time to return to the World, he was ready and willing.

   He came back to the Cape and got on with his life.

   It was an unexciting but satisfying life that he was happy to have until the day, almost three months earlier, when his dog was hit by a cement mixer and had to be put down. Harwich, upset over this, punched out an obnoxious tourist from NYC at the restaurant where he was a day manager. He also punched out his patronizing, asshole boss and got himself fired. The day ended with him burying his beloved pet, getting totally plastered and having a Ragnarok-esque argument with his younger, beautiful girlfriend before        

throwing her out of his house.

   And then the real trouble began!
   It started with a phone call from an old friend, Glenn Lucas, an ex-Flying Tiger, calling him from the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok. It continued with Harwich returning to Thailand to set up a mission to go into Laos to rescue a former Nationalist Chinese general and his treasure that had been aboard an old C-47 flown by Glenn as