“I’ll roll with it.”
Joe and Spencer exchanged a resigned look, and Joe nodded. “Leave your magazines here for us.”
“No,” Allie protested. “There has to be another way.”
Spencer shook his head. “We’ll do the best we can.”
Allie’s face froze in horror at the finality of his words, and she followed Drake numbly into the temple. Joe moved to the door and pushed it closed as far as it would go with the rocks blocking it, and then settled down into his position by Spencer’s side.
“What’s that line from that old movie?” Joe whispered. “The Indian chief on the mountain, with Dustin Hoffman? ‘It’s a fine day to die’ or something?”
“Before my time,” Spencer said. “What happened to positive vibes?”
“That’s all the positive I have right now.”
They focused their attention on the cave opening, weapons at the ready, and waited with grim determination for the onslaught that would end their lives.
Chapter 56
Another explosion shook the cave floor, and Spencer eyed the opening. “That came from above us,” he said, and then automatic weapon fire rattled from outside the mouth of the cave.
Joe’s expression turned puzzled as he listened to the crescendo of chattering assault rifles from beyond the gap, and grew into astonished when a projectile whistled across the river and blasted into the rocks where the Red Moon gunmen were concentrated.
“Sounds like some help arrived,” Joe said. “Positive energy, dude.”
“Who called them?”
“The universe.”
Spencer shook his head, pushed himself through the gap, and moved back to the cave opening. Outside it sounded like a full-scale war was being waged, but now the object of the shooting wasn’t the cave. Joe crawled to where Spencer was peeking from the opening, and nodded as though he’d planned the entire thing.
The shooting and explosions lasted a good half an hour, and when the valley grew silent, Drake and Allie pushed from the temple and joined them at the cave entrance.
“What happened?” Drake asked.
“Somebody took out the bad guys,” Joe said.
“Who?” Allie asked.
“That’s a mystery; but whoever it is, I hope they’re friendlier than the others were.”
“Maybe the Shan?” Drake suggested.
“Could be.”
Their speculation was cut short by a guttural yell from outside. Joe listened intently and then called out in Thai. Another cry greeted his declaration, and he answered and then set his rifle down.
“We’re to come out with our hands up.”
“Can we trust them? Who is it?” Spencer demanded, obviously reluctant to drop his gun.
“Don’t think we have a choice,” Joe said and raised his hands over his head.
They filed out into the sun, blinking at the glare, and found themselves facing several hundred soldiers in the green camouflage uniforms of the Tatmadaw – the Myanmar Army. The river basin was littered with dead gunmen and a handful of soldiers. The fighters trained their weapons on the four of them until an older Asian man stepped from the group and approached.
The man’s uniform was adorned with the insignia of a general, and he looked like any sense of humor he’d once had was a distant memory. He glowered at them and demanded something in rusty Thai, and Joe offered a soft answer. The man’s expression changed from furious to something more like he’d just eaten a handful of scorpions, and he thrust his hand out in demand.
“He wants to see your permit,” Joe said to Allie.
“Really?” she said in relieved surprise, feeling in her pocket.
Two of the nearest soldiers stiffened and Spencer whispered to her, “Easy. No fast moves. They seem excitable.”
She pulled out the dog-eared, water-stained permit, unfolded it, and then stepped forward and presented it to the general like it was a holy relic. He snatched it from her and read the text, his eyes squinting as he came to the signature. He grunted and handed it back to her, and then rattled off some rapid-fire directions to his men before turning back to Joe. He said something more and then waved a hand in the direction of the cave. Joe’s face revealed nothing as he translated.
“He says that this area is now under the protection of the Myanmar Army and that he will take over the temple discovery.”
“What?” Spencer blurted. “I mean, that’s good, but what about our cut of the treasure? Never mind the historic value – how do we know it won’t just disappear?”
Joe shifted from foot to foot. “You really want me to ask that?”
“Maybe rephrase it so it’s softer.”
Joe spoke slowly, and when he was done, the general barked a harsh laugh and said something. Joe nodded respectfully and leaned toward Spencer. “He says you can apply to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar Archaeological Commission for any reward, but that we’re not to set foot back in the cave or he’ll shoot us.”
“Did you ask his name?” Allie said.
“I will. Is there anything else?”
“How about finding out how we’re supposed to get out of here? Can we at least get an escort to the Thai border? The area’s got to be crawling with Red Moon and Shan,” Drake said.
Joe nodded and spoke to the officer. He looked Allie over as Joe talked, and then nodded once and called out a curt order.
“What did he say?” Allie asked.
“He said he has a daughter about your age, so he’ll take pity and have some of the soldiers take us to the river. From there we’re on our own.”
“I need my backpack,” Allie said. “It’s in the cave. The phone’s in it.”
“I’ll ask, but he doesn’t seem like he’s in a good mood, does he?” Joe asked.
“Camera’s in my pocket,” Drake said. “Worst case we can always get a new phone.”
Nobody was surprised when the general denied the request. After a brief inspection of the temple while they remained outside, the general emerged and called out to his men. Ten soldiers approached and he gave them direction. The oldest, whose uniform bore sergeant’s stripes, saluted and snarled an order at Joe, who relayed it, although no translation was necessary.
“He says to move. He wants to be in town by evening. They have trucks a four-hour march from here, and it’ll take another three to get to Tachileik.” Joe nodded agreement and wiped his brow with the back of his arm. “Time for another hike.”
Drake tried a grin, but his face wouldn’t cooperate. “I never thought I’d be this happy to hear those words in my life.”
“Positive vibes, my man.”
“I’m a believer.”
Chapter 57
One week later, Washington, D.C.
Senator Whitfield strode through the crowded restaurant to his customary table, a lacquered wooden booth in the rear of the eatery, well away from prying eyes, where more matters of state had been decided than in the Oval Office. The skin on his face hung like that of a tired dog, although his two-thousand-dollar suit was crisp and his burgundy tie radiated quiet authority.
The last week had been brutal – easily the worst he’d seen in his long years on the Hill. Every day brought new revelations that threatened to topple the power structure of the Beltway, and his phone rang from dawn to well after midnight as an unending litany of atrocities appeared online, with no obvious rhyme or reason.
Whitfield had long ago parked his ethics at the door, and he wasn’t so much surprised at the level of criminality that was the norm in government work as he was that the idiots at the DOD would keep records. It was mind-numbingly stupid, an invitation to exposure, and not a minute went by that he didn’t curse the worldview that insisted that everything be documented – including the sins.
That morning had been another shocker for the fourth estate – the record of a domestic assassination of a liberal journalist with a Milwaukee newspaper who’d been digging around money that had gone missing in Iraq. Th
ere it was, in black and white, as the operation had been described in detail, and now the bastard’s family was calling for an exhumation so the suicide ruling could be reviewed in light of the new information. Even though the apparatus had a chokehold on the press, some things couldn’t be ignored, and even the most pliant editors had to approve articles breaking the news and calling for heads to roll.
Whitfield ignored the veiled stares of the other power brokers in the room and waited for his ex-wife to appear. She’d flown back from Thailand two days earlier and had demanded the meeting. Margaret was a wonderful woman, but she had no idea how the real world worked, and the naiveté that had been charming when they’d been students in the idealistic sixties had been her downfall when he’d taken up public service and bowed out of practicing law. She’d been unable to accept the compromises that were called for, and by the time Christine entered high school, their marriage had been a tense cease-fire rather than a partnership of any real sort.
They’d gone their separate ways and hadn’t spoken for months at a time; when they did, it was to sort out some aspect of their property, which had been distributed equitably. The divorce had lacked the typical acrimony and more resembled a negotiated surrender of two tired armies, where it was largely unclear even after the victory parade who had actually won the encounter.
Her voice had been terse on the call, and he’d had to park his impatience at her demand when she’d mentioned Christine offhandedly. Margaret might have been unsuited for the Machiavellian schemes of Washington, but she’d learned a trick or two while they’d been married, and Whitfield knew better than to underestimate her. So he’d agreed to a late lunch, and now found himself staring bleakly across the restaurant as he waited for another in a seemingly unending parade of unpleasant shoes to drop.
A server approached in a white vest and matching bow tie, and smiled a welcome with a nod of his head. “May I get you a drink?” he asked, and Whitfield nodded. “Gin and tonic. Light on the tonic. And the ice.”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. And how many are we expecting today?”
“Only one.”
“Very well. One gin and tonic on its way. I’ll bring water and bread in a moment.”
Whitfield waved him away, wondering for an instant whether bread and water was a crack at the rumors swirling around the town about investigations into his chairing of the defense department committee, but decided that it wasn’t. Not everything was about him, he reminded himself. His complicity in the crimes being aired on the web would be impossible to prove – at least, he hoped so. God help them all if his role had also been memorialized on the compromised servers. He’d be finished. But he’d take others down with him if he was disgraced; he’d see to that.
Whitfield had always believed that the lessons that had served the country well during the Cold War were valid in every walk of life. Mutually assured destruction kept everyone honest and reduced the tendency to view cogs in the machine like himself as expendable. Nobody was going to throw him to the wolves, he was certain – because if he began opening his mouth, the news on the web would seem like a trip to Disneyland compared to what he could recount.
Margaret entered the restaurant and made her way to the table, her expression as placid as a mountain lake – her ‘moon face,’ Whitfield had teasingly called it in the early years, before the term had taken on the aura of a ritual insult intended to demean. As so many things had. For an instant he wished he could take it all back, start over, and be the young firebrand who wasn’t afraid to tilt at windmills, Margaret at his side.
The server arrived with his drink and set it down in front of him, the glass carefully draped with a napkin to preserve its chill and conceal the amount of active ingredient the senator was having with his lunch. Whitfield waited until the man had left to unpeel his treat and take a healthy slurp, and wished it was reasonable to gulp it through a straw as he registered the look in Margaret’s eyes as she neared.
She slid in across from him and delivered a frosty smile. “Hello, Arthur. Oh, dear, you do look like you’ve been through the wringer, don’t you?”
“Nice to see you as well, Margaret.” He took another appreciative sip and set the glass down. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I wanted to let you know that our daughter is alive and well.”
Whitfield leaned forward. “You saw her?”
“No. I had an all too brief call while I was in Thailand. She was trying to explain why I’d probably never hear her voice again.” Margaret swallowed back a small sob.
“Why did she run?”
“You want to sit across from me and pretend that you don’t know? After all the news that’s broken, you’re as puzzled as I am?”
Whitfield’s expression hardened. “She’s in way over her head,” he warned. “I can protect her.”
“I tried to sell that. She wasn’t buying. She is, after all, our daughter, so she’s naturally suspicious.” Margaret studied him, and her gaze reminded him of a lab technician eyeing a specimen on a slide. “She doesn’t trust you. Which, based on the look on your face, makes two of us. You’ve never been able to hide your nature convincingly from me, you know. For years I told myself that it wasn’t you, but it is, and I accept that I made a mistake.”
“You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“No? What’s funny is that when she was telling me why she was going to see through Liu’s work and ensure that it saw the light of day, she reminded me just a little of you. Stubborn, committed and, above all, fearless.” Margaret paused. “What happened to you, Arthur?”
“Do you know where she is?”
“No. Not that I’d tell you if I did. But she asked me to deliver a message. So here I am.”
“Fine. What is it?”
“That when you keep company with demons, you become one yourself.”
“You must enjoy saying that very much,” Whitfield said softly.
“It gives me no pleasure.” Margaret checked something on her phone. “I’m afraid you’ll be eating alone, Arthur. I thought I could manage it, but I seem to have lost my appetite.” She slipped from the booth and stood. “I hope all this was worth it. Your daughter. Me.”
Whitfield clutched his glass as she made her way to the entrance and left, his mind racing. He struggled to rise, but his chest suddenly cramped, and the most incredible pain he’d ever experienced shrieked through his synapses as his heart seized. He fumbled for the edge of the white linen tablecloth and then sat back, his breathing so shallow it resembled that of a baby bird fallen from its nest.
The server returned and took the senator’s drink off the table and walked unhurriedly to the kitchen. He didn’t stop until he was out the rear service door, where a van waited with its engine idling. He climbed into the passenger seat and dropped the glass into a garbage bag, and then peeled off his latex gloves, taking care not to handle their exterior, and tossed them in as well. The neurotoxin he’d used wouldn’t show up on any autopsy report, and the good senator’s passing would be mourned for the loss of his moderate voice and Solomon-like judgment.
The server removed the mustache he’d affixed that morning and pulled the putty from his nose – just a small amount was sufficient to alter his appearance, he’d found through trial and error. He looked at the driver and nodded once.
“Drive.”
~ ~ ~
General Holt watched the Potomac rush by, the moon silvering its surface. A few late night joggers pushed themselves along the riverside path as the last balmy breeze of autumn stirred the trees around them. He’d spent the day in a series of panicked meetings with anonymous men whose deeds were now making headlines, and he was bone tired. Of everything. The subterfuge, the denials, the palpable fear in the rooms he drifted in and out of, unable to offer reassurance. The excrement had hit the fan good and well – with remarkable vigor, as one wag had said on television that morning.
And now he’d been summoned like a sch
oolboy for a clandestine conference with a man whom nobody said no to, presumably to have his ass chewed out and his future threatened. Holt would take it stoically, as was his custom, and assure him that damage control was being undertaken, and that they would all survive this, as they had so many other calamities. That Holt was expected to act as a lapdog to the most influential figures in the world didn’t strike him as odd at all – in his experience, the hubris that inflated them with grandiose importance was always the first to dissipate, leaving them demanding that he, little more than a foot servant, do something to protect them from the antiseptic of sunlight.
He glanced over to admire a young woman who was approaching on the path, obviously athletic even in a hoodie and shorts. Holt might have been in the twilight of his years, but he could still appreciate beauty for its visceral pleasure. In his mind he wished her nothing but well, as she aged, became a parent, wrinkled and stooped as the unforgiving years had their way, and ultimately, turned to dust.
The pop of her suppressed pistol could have been mistaken for a distant backfire. Holt stared at her through fading eyes as her expression never changed and she fired three more rounds into his skull, the second one extinguishing his life, the rest for grisly show.
Another robbery gone wrong in an area beset by crime would go unremarked. The woman’s long legs glided along the pavement, leaving the husk of Holt lying ruined by the water, his lifeless gaze staring accusingly into nothingness.
~ ~ ~
A week later, Daniels watched the CNN coverage of the unfolding train wreck in Washington with a bitter smile as steel drums pulsed from the beach veranda, the mild surf luminescent in the starlight. The bartender strode over and tilted his head at Daniels’ drink – a blood-red fruit punch concoction that had enough rum in it to lay an infantry platoon low.
“’Nother one, mon?” the islander asked in his musical accent.
“No, Cliff, I think I’ve had enough. See you tomorrow.”
Emerald Buddha (Drake Ramsey Book 2) Page 31