The Ravens: The True Story of a Secret War by Christopher Robbins

the most secret spot on earth.
    Long Tieng had been built in a valley which lay in a perfect bowl. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, while a gently rolling hill fell away on a fourth. A runway had been built in the valley, which made it look as if an aircraft carrier had been beached more than three thousand feet up in the mountains after some cataclysmic flood. A traditional thatched village was dotted over the foothills, while on the other side of the runway the corrugated iron roofs of thousands of new buildings glittered in the sun.
    Once upon the ground the new Raven climbed from the plane, stood on the ramp, and looked around at his new home. The first impressions of arrival would never be forgotten. Certain images, so strange and new, entered the memory forever: a tiny child, barefoot and in black pajamas, smiling broadly as he skips across the runway, a high-explosive rocket perched on his shoulder; a native fighter pilot, slight as a jockey, pulling back the canopy of his cockpit; a burly American dressed as if for a game of golf in a yellow cap and polyester slacks, yawning in a doorway; two red sacks of strangers’ mail leaning against the side of a building.
    The town of Long Tieng itself took longer to assimilate. In the monsoon season it was thick with sticky red mud, and the craggy limestone rock known as karst was covered with moss and green slime. Everything was wet and shrouded in gray fog. Trees somehow grew from the cracks in the limestone, clinging to the mountainside like gnarled old hands. The landscape was primeval, a million years out of its time, the setting for a pterodactyl to come flapping out of the dripping rocks.
    After the monsoon the whole area blossomed. A thousand different kinds of wild flowers carpeted the valley. There were giant yellow daisies as tall as a man, and acre upon acre of white and red poppies. Whatever the season, Long Tieng resembled nowhere on earth as much as the mythical paradise of Shangri-La. [12]
    It was a curious city, a contradictory mixture of ancient and modern. Dirt streets lined with native huts, built in the style traditional since people had first inhabited these mountains, were hung across with a web of cables. Naked toddlers played outside of front doors and pigs rooted in the gutters, while in the background the antennae of sophisticated telecommunications equipment rose like stands of spruce. There were no paved streets of any kind, no sewers, no private cars, and yet planes and helicopters landed and took off without pause. Meo women in traditional dress - a black costume brightened with highly colored sashes and headdresses, and adorned with beautifully crafted silver jewelry - thronged the market. Military jeeps and trucks and small buses crammed with people criss-crossed the base.
    Walking from the runway to the Raven hootch, the newcomer had various landmarks pointed out to him. The great mountain which rose vertically at the end of the runway was known as the Vertical Speed Brake (for reasons which would become obvious); two moundlike hills beside it were known as Titty-karst; the range to the northwest was Skyline Ridge. The house on the slope that looked like a suburban bungalow - except it was surrounded with sandbags instead of hedges, and had the burned-out hulk of a T-28 fighter at the bottom of the garden - was the king’s palace (which he had used only once). The somewhat garish modern concrete construction with the captured enemy antiaircraft guns in front of it and the 12.7mm on the roof was the home of the warlord himself, Gen. Vang Pao. The compound which housed the CIA men was discreetly pointed out, together with the barracks they shared with pilots of their proprietary airline, Air America. (Nobody ever referred to the CIA by name, the preferred euphemism being CAS - Controlled American Source - a term the Agency used to apply to assets or agents.)
    In the field, operations were run by the CIA. Most of the war was