Air Thermae — Sean Bunzick

John Harwich, a Special Forces vet with multiple tours in Indochina, is now happily living life as an expatriate in Chiang Mai, Thailand. While taking a brief holiday trip to Mae Hong Son, he finds himself being captured and abducted by Shan hilltribe guerillas across the border into the Burmese side of the Golden Triangle. He is brought to meet up with one of the region''s notorious opium warlords, Khun Yim. Khun Yim''s obsession is his lust for jade which is why he''s had Harwich brought into Burma. After tracking Harwich down since his journey into Laos, Khun Yim takes advantage of Harwich being in Mae Hong Son to take the expat hostage. At one of his "temporary" camps in Burma, the warlord explains to Harwich that the reason he wants Harwich is because his people have found evidence of a priceless jade elephant with a mounted Khmer aspara--a warrior goddess--atop the elephant''s back. The statue has been found in an old Buddhist temple deep in the wilds of Cambodia and Khun Yim wants to become its owner immediately. Harwich must take his friend Rickshaw, a former Air America pilot now living in Chiang Mai, to Phnom Penh to fly a i123 Khun Yim is seeking to buy out to the temple where the statue can be loaded and flown to Mae Hong Son Province in Thailand. Harwich, his life and that his expat friends being threatened, reluctantly agrees to take on this assignment, going back to Chiang Mai before hitting Bangkok to link up with all his buddies who can help him in Cambodia. From Mae Hong Son to Bangkok, Phnom Penh and finally the long-forgotten temple, it is one hair-raising adventure after the other as Harwich and his friends deal with an opium army, Russian gangsters, a sleazyEnglish expat, a Khmer crime boss, firefights, tornadoes and Aom, Khun Yim''s minor wife, who may be the most dangerous element of them all.