For two centuries France was master of Indochina.¹ French rule was not mild and there were uprisings, though none was fatal — until after WWII when Ho Chi Minh raised a rebel army in northern Vietnam.  Ho fought the French for nine years and won.  Not all of Vietnam, only the North. What today is Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

To keep Ho Chi Minh bottled up in the North, America replaced the French. First with money and advisors, and then with soldiers. At the start, most of the fighting was in Laos. Ho Chi Minh had invaded the country. He was building a road (the Ho Chi Minh Trail) across the Laotian panhandle into South Vietnam. The Trail would carry the troops and supplies for the final victory.

To disguise the invasion, Ho’s agents invented a Lao communist front, the Pathet Lao. They picked its leaders and trained its troops. The stage setting was to make the outside world believe the fighting was a civil war of Lao against Lao² instead of a North Vietnamese land grab.

America sent Special Forces to help Laos fight back. They trained Lao troops and led them into battle. After the first shot, the Lao soldiers tossed their weapons and ran. By mid 1961 President Kennedy was fed up. He decided to use the Marines, waiting in Thailand for his signal. But, at the last minute, Kennedy changed his mind and bargained a settlement. The terms were that all foreign troops had to go home.

America honored the treaty and sent its soldiers away. But the North Vietnamese hid in the jungle and stayed. Since America’s soldiers could not return, it fell to the CIA to create a secret army to fight Ho’s pirate divisions. Its troops weren’t Lao rice farmers, but tough Hmong mountain men. Their commander was a man of their own race, Vang Pao. The only Hmong officer in the Lao army, he would soon give Laos its first victories.

Though not until Der was born.

When the prophet Isaiah had a vision, God sent him a son as an omen of a great war that would destroy the Jews. And as a sign that a remnant would survive to repopulate the race.³

The great shaman, Yashao, also had a vision. It was so powerful it knocked him unconscious. In the vision he saw a birth. The child would be an omen of a great war that would destroy the Hmong. And a sign that a remnant would survive to replenish the race.

That child was Der.

We do not know the fate of Isaiah’s son. But Der survived the war, the prophecy fulfilled by hidden powers that reached into the White House to save a remnant who would renew the race. Der thought he was done, that his only job now was to endure the refugee camps of Thailand, and to make a new life in America. But the spirits demanded more. They sent Der to a far away university where an Arabian princess changed his life. Der became pure Hmong and lived just for his race. Only after his father died would Der find himself again. The little boy who’d rebelled against his destiny. Would not bend a knee. Not even to the spirits.

The spirits would kill Der if they could, but he alone is beyond their power. Yet, they have one trick left.