by Adam Hamdy
Tawfik and Riaz had stopped hitting him and were watching in horror as their friend fell to the floor, clutching the bloody hilt sticking out of his neck. Ziad took advantage of their horror, put the mask to his face and pulled the trigger on the canister.
The device popped like a loud firework and filled the air with a cloud of white powder that spread throughout the cafeteria. Guards and inmates stopped struggling, and watched in puzzlement as the powder eddied and swirled its way through the room. For a moment, all violence stopped and the place fell silent.
Then Tawfik started choking. His eyes went wide and he clutched at his throat, gasping as he emitted coarse, guttural cries. It was a short, painful death, and it brought Ziad nothing but pleasure to see one of his tormentors suffer. Riaz joined him and soon almost every man in the cafeteria was choking to death. Only Ziad and Elroy were unaffected – Ziad felt nothing but warmth. All these cruel men deserved the horror and fear that blighted their final moments. In less than twenty seconds, the room was completely still.
Elroy wiped his bloody hands on his tunic as he joined Ziad. ‘You’ve shown me what I needed to see,’ he said, ‘that there’s still strength in there.’ He tapped Ziad’s chest. ‘You’re going to need it.’
Ziad surveyed the carnage. He’d never killed anyone before, but he felt no remorse at crossing that line in this hateful place. The sound of the alarm startled Ziad and he looked at Elroy questioningly.
‘It’s time for us to leave,’ the American said, heading for the door that led to the main block.
Still stunned by his change in fortune, Ziad followed Elroy. As he picked his way past the fallen bodies and saw the pained rictus faces, a dark thought flashed through his mind.
You’re a murderer now. Hell has spawned a new devil.
Chapter 3
Nothing about the building opposite gave the slightest hint the men inside peddled death. Passers-by saw only the gaudy red and white sign that proclaimed ‘Top Racing’. It was fixed atop a low warehouse beside Jalan Sakeh, one of the principal north to south routes that cut through Muar, one of Malaysia’s oldest towns. Scott Pearce shifted on the hard office chair that had been his perch for eight days. He’d broken into an unoccupied office block opposite the motorcycle repair shop the previous week and discovered the perfect location for a long stakeout. The three-storey block was separated from Jalan Sakeh by a small car park which served the surrounding businesses. The ground floor was divided into four units – a cafe, clothes shop, convenience store, and accounting firm. In the offices above them were an import–export business, a financial adviser, a general trader and a food and beverage supplier. Pearce was in the general trader’s premises, surrounded by abandoned desks, broken old computers, mouldy files and musty carpet which had been chewed by rodents. It was a miserable place, but perfect for his needs. It had a functioning toilet, which he was careful to only flush at night, and the occasional, carefully planned visit to the convenience store kept him well supplied with food and drink.
He’d come to Muar on the trail of a gang of smugglers. After taking down the Black Thirteen group, he’d refused Huxley Blaine Carter’s offer of a job and had returned to the mission that had consumed him for the past two years: proving there were other, as yet unidentified conspirators involved in the terror attack he’d thwarted in Islamabad. Pearce’s conviction that some of the perpetrators had escaped justice had led to his dismissal from MI6, but he hadn’t allowed that to affect his determination, and had used his own money to finance his investigation.
Once the global travel restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic had been lifted, Pearce had returned to Thailand, but hadn’t gone back to Railay, the tropical paradise where he’d spent months posing as a climbing guide while investigating potential smuggling sites in the region. The last time he’d seen the golden sands of Railay beach, a cadre of Thai police officers and their criminal associates had been on his tail. He was too well known and his departure had been far too noisy to risk returning to the dreamy tourist retreat. Instead, Pearce had gone to Krabi, the main regional town, and bought an old fisherman’s boat that was just about seaworthy. The hull was almost rotten, but the fifty horsepower Yamaha engine had been well maintained. He’d taken the leaky, flaking boat to Kok Arai, a tiny uninhabited island that lay off the Thai coast. Concealing the boat in a crag on the north of the island, Pearce had slung his small waterproof backpack on his shoulders and swum round the 300-metre-wide weathered mushroom of jungle-capped rock, until he’d reached the start of the limestone scar that he’d last tried to climb a little over four months earlier.
The wounds on his forearms had long since healed, but the scars were a permanent reminder of his encounter with Lancelot Oxnard-Clarke and his far-right associates. The ugly, newborn flesh had no impact on Pearce’s climbing ability, and after pulling on his climbing shoes, he had started up the arduous route he’d failed to ascend months before. This time, he’d cleared the brutal overhang, pulled himself onto the vertical face and quickly picked his way through a sequence of pinches and crimps until he hauled himself onto the summit, a small plateau covered in lush grass. Further from the edge was thick jungle, and, as he’d suspected, Pearce had discovered a well-camouflaged hollow that contained a portable hoist and a cache of four crates. He’d prised open one of the crates to find two dozen Kalashnikovs. He’d opened the others and secreted tiny tracking devices in each of them. The bugs, which he’d carried with him in his waterproof backpack, were powered by tiny lithium batteries and contained locator beacons similar to a cell sim card, to enable satellite tracking.
Pearce’s backpack had held enough supplies to last a week, so he’d found a suitable hiding place in the surrounding undergrowth and had settled in to wait. He was looking for a group of smugglers he believed were linked to a Thai man he’d killed during the terror attack he’d foiled in Islamabad. The other terrorists he’d killed were local Pakistani recruits, but the Thai man was interesting. According to Thai Intelligence, his name was Chao Fah Jan, and they had a file on him that linked him to smuggling operations between Thailand and Malaysia. Pearce had been drummed out of Six because of his obsession with possible conspirators, and he’d followed the dead man’s trail from Islamabad to Bangkok, to track down the smuggling gang.
He’d sat atop Kok Arai for three days and nights, waiting to see who came for the cache of weapons. Each morning when the sun rose, he could hear the distant sputter of engines far below as little boats shipped tourists out to the island to climb its myriad routes. There didn’t seem to be as many climbers as there’d been before the pandemic, but there were enough to keep the local skippers in business. Pearce wondered whether his friend Ananada and his son Lek were down there. He couldn’t risk sneaking a look to satisfy his curiosity. As long as he stayed on the small plateau, he wasn’t worried about anyone finding him. The route he’d climbed was graded 8B and was the only way to his little patch of jungle – a deep ravine split the landmass, his column of stone cleaved from the rest of the mushroom-shaped island by a long-forgotten earthquake or tidal erosion. He watched tanned tourists summit the easier routes on the main island. Some of them would spend a while exploring, but most of them would simply pose for selfies before stashing their phones in waterproof pouches and making the nerve-racking jump from the edge to the sea far below. He’d hear their cries of delight as they surfaced.
Finally, on the fourth night, when the moon had been little more than a tiny cuticle, Pearce had heard the rhythmic sputter of an outboard motor. Thirty minutes later he’d sensed movement, and peering through the thick jungle, he’d seen a shirtless, lithe Thai man of no more than thirty crest the summit and pad through the jungle to the smuggler’s cache. The man wore 5.10 shoes and his pumped forearms spoke of considerable climbing experience. He’d used a system of ropes to secure the portable hoist and had then lowered the four crates of Kalashnikovs. Pearce had heard multiple voices calling instructions from below, perhaps four or five men. Af
ter about forty-five minutes, when the Thai climber had finished, he’d stowed the hoist and made the dive into the sea below.
Pearce had emerged from his hiding place and watched a thirty-foot fishing vessel head south-east. He’d been able to see three men lashing canvas over the crates of weapons. The climber and another two men sat near the pilot at the tiller. Pearce had gone to the other side of the small plateau and jumped into the warm water a hundred or so feet below. He’d swum to the crag where his small boat was hidden, ferreted in a larger rucksack for a satellite-enabled tablet computer, and, after booting it up, found two clear tracking signals moving south-east. Staying just out of visual range, Pearce had trailed the fishing vessel 200 miles south to Kuala Perlis, a Malaysian town located on the border with Thailand. There, he’d come ashore to discover the smugglers loading the crates into a small truck.
The bugs had made life easy, and after recovering his belongings from his little boat, Pearce had been able to track the shipment from a distance. First thing the following day, he’d bought a twenty-year-old Honda CR250 dirt bike for $300 and had followed the van south, stopping every so often to check progress on his tablet. His pursuit had led him through Malaysia and had finally brought him to the large motorcycle garage on Jalan Sakeh.
He’d parked his bike a block away and had scouted the neighbourhood before identifying the office that was to become his home. Breaking in had been a simple affair and he’d settled into a rhythm, watching the warehouse for sixteen hours a day, before setting up a camera that would cover the building while he slept. Each morning, he’d scrub through the footage to see what he’d missed, but so far there had been very little activity. No large vehicles came or went, and apart from a couple of motorcyclists who went into the building just long enough to be told their business wasn’t welcome, Pearce only saw the same gang of six men. They turned up daily, riding in on a variety of high-powered sports bikes, and stayed in the building for a few hours before dispersing. On the second night, Pearce had broken into the warehouse and installed a camera and tiny listening device in the main space. The Kalashnikovs were still in the building, concealed behind crates full of old motorcycle parts. The tiny office computer was broken and the keyboard was covered in a thick layer of dust. The filing cabinets were empty and the shelves held nothing but a couple of old motorbike maintenance manuals. There was a latent smell of grease, but no other sign that the place had been used as a working garage for years. It was nothing but a thin cover for this criminal gang.
The camera and bug had yielded little. Each day, the men came into the warehouse, played cards, traded stories of sexual conquests and financial triumphs before going their separate ways. It was as though they were waiting for something.
On the ninth night, Pearce discovered what that something was. Two men in a blue Nissan Urvan approached the building slowly. The motorcycle men hadn’t dispersed that day, and even though it was past midnight, they were still inside the warehouse. The surrounding businesses were shut, and the low houses that spread either side of the warehouse were dark. The delicious scent of the locals’ late-night meals still hung in the warm tropical air, but kitchens had long since fallen quiet and the inhabitants were in bed.
Two of the motorcycle men opened the corrugated steel doors and allowed the Urvan to drive into the warehouse. Pearce switched to the interior camera and saw the Nissan roll to a halt in the centre of the large space. The motorcycle men were gathered in a semi-circle, standing in front of the four crates of Kalashnikovs.
The two men in the van climbed out, nodded greetings at the larger group and swaggered round the vehicle. Pearce got the impression these men had seniority over the others. They opened the van’s rear doors, and Pearce was dismayed to see faces inside. Four women, bound and gagged and wearing nothing but their underwear, were huddled together on one side of the flatbed. Their tear-streaked faces and fearful eyes said it all.
They were to be traded for the guns.
Chapter 4
Pearce sat back and shook his head. On screen, the motorcycle men were pawing at the four women, sizing them up. They were all white. Maybe they were relief workers whose drinks had been spiked in a bar, or students who’d been lured to Malaysia with the promise of well-paid work. Whatever method had been used to trap them in that van, the women all now faced the same ugly future. They trembled, their eyes downcast. One of them had wet herself. The leader of the motorcycle men, a paunchy man with a thick mop of black hair, indicated his satisfaction with the women and signalled two subordinates to load the crates into the vehicle.
Working alone was challenging. It demanded ingenuity and dedication, but Pearce preferred the hard hours and mental pressure to the politics of MI6. There was also no risk of betrayal. The Black Thirteen investigation had unmasked his former superior, Dominic McClusky, as a traitor, and Pearce suspected the man had orchestrated his dismissal from the service in order to prevent questions being asked about his own loyalties. Running solo, Pearce didn’t need to have faith in anyone but himself, but there were disadvantages, and this dark moment in the deepest hours of the night was one of them. He had to make a choice. Go with the guns, which were likely to lead him higher up the food chain, or stay with the women, who were almost certainly destined for sex work in a Muar brothel. With a Six team behind him, Pearce could have tracked the guns and left the human traffickers to be picked up by his colleagues, but he was on his own, and immediate human misery trumped his investigation. He had trackers in the crates and decided to risk losing the guns in order to follow the women. Once he’d identified the women’s final destination, he’d inform local police and make sure they were rescued safely, before using the signal from the tracking devices to return to the trail of the guns.
Pearce’s plan was thrown into disarray when he saw a couple of the motorcycle men frogmarch two of the women towards the small office at the back of the warehouse. The women knew what was coming, and pleaded with the cruel men, while the others jeered and egged them on. When he’d been serving in the forces or working for Six, Pearce had watched horrors unfold and resisted his urge to intervene in order to protect the broader mission, but he wasn’t about to do the same now. Working alone, he only had himself to answer to, and he couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
Pearce went to his sleeping area in the corner of the room and picked up the battered ZEV Core Elite assault rifle he’d bought in Krabi. He slipped three magazines into the pockets of his lightweight bomber jacket and hurried from the room. He ran down the dank stairs at the rear of the building and unbolted the back door. He checked the alley and, finding it deserted, sprinted north to the nearest corner. High palms provided the cover of shadow as he ran the width of the office block and raced through the empty car park. The humid night was still, the air undisturbed by wind or noise until he crossed the street and heard the faintest sounds coming from inside the motorcycle garage. The noises grew louder as he got closer and he made out high-pitched shrieks and approving grunts and cheers. As he neared the corrugated steel double doors, Pearce glanced around to check the neighbouring bungalows. Their windows were dark, their inhabitants doubtless sleeping, unaware of the horrors being perpetrated yards away.
Pearce flipped the ZEV’s safety. It wouldn’t have been his first choice. The distinctive bronze barrel was far too visible for covert operations, but it had been the most reliable gun on offer from the low-rent Krabi gun dealer. The warehouse doors had been left ajar and Pearce crept to the narrow gap. The men were more or less where he’d last seen them. The men who’d brought the women were helping two of the motorcycle men load the crates into the van, while the leader of the biker crew and one of the others forced the remaining two women into a corner and pushed them to the floor. Pearce couldn’t see what was happening in the office, but faint moonlight shone from the interior windows and he could see shadows cast against the east wall, two shapes, each an indistinct mass broken by the occasional distinguishable limb, as the two women s
truggled to resist their assailants. Pearce had no doubt the men would be armed, but they could only be carrying pistols or knives beneath their clothes, and he had the element of surprise.
He edged one of the doors open with his foot and crept inside. One of the men near the van sensed movement and cried out when he saw the intruder. Pearce shot him in the chest and the cry turned to a wet scream of pain. The two new arrivals ran for cover round the front of their van, while the three other men produced pistols. Two opened fire as Pearce ducked behind a steel column. He sprayed bullets at the two motorcycle men who hadn’t had the sense to take cover. He caught the dark-haired leader of the gang in the legs and the man went down with a wail. The other was hit in the abdomen and collapsed with a pained cry. As Pearce concealed himself behind the metal support, the third grabbed one of the terrified women and put the muzzle of his gun to her head.
‘Drop your weapon!’ he yelled in Thai.
A deafening volley of automatic gunfire hit the steel column, enveloping Pearce in a shower of sparks. When the bullets stopped, he peered out to see one of the men duck back behind the van. The vehicle’s lights flared and the exhaust rattled as the engine rumbled to life. The van was thrown into reverse and accelerated towards the doors, both men in the cab. Pearce opened fire on the nearside rear tyre and it burst with a satisfying pop. The sudden puncture sent the van veering out of control and it missed the doorway and collided with the adjacent wall.