CHAPTER THREEThe brotherhood of suffering is a bond, power is a drug.
—Theodore H. White,
China After The War
THE NIGHT WAS DARK. Samnang’s lips were cut. Dry. His throat rasped. He coughed dryly. The pain in his arms and shoulders would not subside, would not dull. His hands pulsed numb, tingled on the stretched surface. The soldiers had wired his elbows tightly together before the march from Plei Srepok. In the blackness he could hear voices, mostly Viet Namese, some Khmer. He tried to hear, to concentrate on the voices, to listen so as to forget his lips and throat and arms. He tried to force himself to lie on the ground without moving and listen but each moment he lay still his mind shot to his shoulders, elbows, to the pain, to the terror. He did not yet question why they had taken
