The Orpheus Deception

by David Stone

  “All we see is some fat, ugly, greasy, hairy thugs drinking some clear liquid out of a vodka bottle, and then they all go swimming and die. How do we know what killed them was in the water and not in the vodka bottles? Or in the air, like a weaponized bacterial spray of some sort?”

  “Good. I like that.”

  “Next, how do we know they died in the first place?”

  “You mean the thing is faked? It isn’t. I wish it had been, but it wasn’t. We had every frame blown up and examined by our best forensic pathologists. I mean, super-high-density resolution. Image enhancement. They were even able to get in tight enough on the throats to analyze and time the blood flow in the carotids, got the heartbeats, got a real close look at the kinds of hemorrhaging in the retinas, the inflammation of the nasal areas, catastrophic drop in respiration . . . They went over everything, and they all agreed that what we were watching was real. Those people died, Nikki. And they died hard. You follow?”

  “I do.”

  “So, you get it that this is dangerous stuff ?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. You need to be ready for that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You ever in the field, Nikki?”

  “In the field? No, sir. I’m a Monitor. Isn’t fieldwork a CIA thing?”

  “Fuck the CIA. They’re leaking like a used . . . like a used diaper. They’re nothing but a fucking sedition mill for those goddam treasonous pinheads at the New York Times. Pardon my fucking language. I don’t trust any of them. If you go into the field, I can get you some off-the-books tactical support from the DIA. And I do think, Nikki, before you’re through, this file might take you outside.”

  “Yes. Sir. Understood. What do you need?”

  “I’m giving you complete access to our NIMA and NASA data banks. Including the military ones. We’re going to give you an image of what this villa would look like from straight up, then you can run it through the Balkan and Albanian databases. Look for a match. This is between you and me. No leaks anywhere. This is critical. I want you to put a set of crosshairs right over this stinking pink palazzo. You locate it, and, if we’re good, we find something that leads us to the . . . person who made this video.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we, very nicely, ask him why.”

  “What if he won’t tell us?”

  “We’ll hand him over to people who don’t do very nicely.”

  29

  Changi Village, Singapore

  Everybody in Changi Village heard the chopper as it came in from the north, heard it long before they saw it, heard that deep bass beat thrumming in the air itself. People in the streets looked up and over the tree line, straining to see what was coming, thinking Some celebrity flying in from Seletar Airfield. That’s where all the stars land. The thunder of the rotors filled the pool house and sent Fyke’s monitor up into the low hundreds again. Five hundred yards away, Lujac stopped what he was doing to Corporal Ahmed and went to take a look out across the canopy. Sure enough, there was a big olive-drab chopper coming in low over the tree line. It was heading straight for the rooftop deck of the Hendon Hills Golf and Country Club. He got the binoculars just as that Chinese guy who looked like a gazelle reappeared on the pool deck, staring into the north, shading his eyes against the sun. The chopper, an old Huey, had big white letters painted on the fuselage—USMC—and a red cross inside a white circle.

  “Christ,” said Lujac, while he tried to keep the roof deck in his view, speaking to no one particular, sure as hell not Corporal Ahmed, who was on the floor rolled into a naked, sweaty little skin ball and weeping soundlessly. Well, at least he was soundless, which was a definite improvement.

  “They’re gonna medevac the guy out.”

  Hadn’t planned on that. Now what?

  MISS LOPEZ OPENED the lanai screen and knocked gently on the wall. Fyke was trying to sit up in the bed, plucking at his covers. Dalton was standing now, looking at Miss Lopez and hearing the thudding shudder of the blades. The rotor wash was starting to kick up dust inside the pool house, and the lanai screens were rattling. Fyke somehow got himself sitting up straight. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and gave Dalton a hard look. “Well, lad, what’s the plan?”

  Miss Lopez glanced at Fyke and then back to Dalton.

  “What does he mean?”

  “He means I can’t let him go to Guam.”

  Miss Lopez looked at him, her expression hardening.

  “Why? What are they going to do to him in Guam?”

  “He has to be debriefed.”

  Miss Lopez, who had been around the covert world awhile, got it in one. Her pretty young face reddened, and her expression got even stonier.

  “Because he’s been in enemy hands, you mean?”

  “Yeah. Basically.”

  “He was AWOL, wasn’t he? Weren’t you?”

  Fyke’s face reddened, but he nodded. The chopper was right overhead, shaking the pool deck like a cyclone shakes a house.

  “Tell me,” she said, “will they hurt him?”

  Dalton raised his hands, shrugged, his face a mask.

  “Then you can’t let it happen. His heart isn’t strong. They’ll want to know what he told them. He’s had enough, Mr. Dalton. They’ll kill him.”

  “I do like this girl, Mikey,” said Fyke, grinning through his bruises.

  “What can I do, Miss Lopez? The chopper’s already here.”

  “You’re the CIA, Mr. Dalton. They’ll do what you tell them.”

  “No. To the Marines, the CIA’s a bunch of dickless college boys.”

  “Mikey,” said Fyke, his voice hardening. “You were a Special Forces soldier long before you were CIA. Remember that.”

  The chopper landed, rocking on its rails, the rotor noise subsiding. Within moments, there was a knock at the screen door and then it opened. Mandy Pownall was standing framed in the hard light, blinking into the darkness. She was wearing tailored tan slacks and a military-style tan shirt, perfectly creased, and dark brown cowboy boots. She had a small gray pistol tucked into her belt, from the angular butt some kind of Glock. All she was missing was a highly polished Sam Browne. She looked vaguely dangerous and splendidly theatrical, like Lawrence of Arabia doing lunch at the Savoy. Fyke was obviously delighted by her arrival. She swiveled her head as she took in the scene. It was like watching a gun muzzle track left eighty degrees. She settled on Dalton with an almost-audible click.

  “Micah Dalton, you miserable prick.”

  “Mandy Pownall, as I live and breathe.”

  “You could have fucking called to see how I was.”

  “A resourceful girl like you? It would have been insulting.”

  “Who’s this . . . medical person?”

  “Miss Lopez, meet Miss Pownall. My esteemed colleague.”

  Miss Lopez gave Mandy a scowl and a short nod. Mandy had that effect on women. Fyke had somehow gotten to his feet, with the sheet wrapped around him like a toga. He looked like Caesar Augustus after a three-day bender. Regal, mind you, but battered. He was weaving slightly, but he seemed to be really enjoying looking at Mandy. That was an HOV lane direct to Mandy’s heart. She softened visibly as she looked back at him.

  “You must be Mr. Fyke.”

  “I am. Delighted to meet you, Miss Pownall.”

  Mandy’s appraisal flicked around him like a butterfly, settled lightly on Fyke’s bruised face, his broad, predatory grin. She smiled.

  “You’ve been a great deal of trouble, Mr. Fyke.”

  “He’s likely to be more,” said Dalton. “It’s his MOS.”

  “We don’t have much time. Cather has the Chinese techs inbound from Guam right now. They’re about an hour out. We’re supposed to take Mr. Fyke to Seletar. We meet the plane there. The techs get off and we get on. We—”

  “I take it we’re not involved in the trade.”

  “No. Cather has a team handling that. Howell and Purdy, from—”

  “I know the
m,” said Dalton. They were Meat Hookers, from Peary. They’d drop the Chinese techs off and then jerk Fyke right out from under them. There was no way Deacon Cather was going to let Mandy Pownall and Micah Dalton stay on the Fyke case. Their part in this was over.

  Mission accomplished.

  Medals pending. Hugs all round.

  Or not.

  “You’re trading something for me?” asked Fyke.

  Dalton started to explain the trade to him, but two medics in Marine Corps uniforms, both wearing Berettas, were now standing in the door. They looked around the room, focused on Dalton.

  “Sir, are you Micah Dalton?”

  “No, Sergeant. I’m not,” he said, in a low growl. “I’m Captain Micah Dalton, A Team, Fifth Special Forces Group, Fort Campbell, Kentucky.”

  Both Marines stiffened and snapped off razor-edged salutes.

  Dalton, although capless, returned the salutes.

  “What’s your unit, Sergeant?” he asked, in a hard, flat voice. Mandy was staring at him. Dalton ignored her. He had just barked out a question he didn’t give a rat’s kidney about. The real point was to get these Marines thinking about him as anything but another goddam civilian pogue from the goddam CIA, one of the PUNTS, a person of utterly no tactical significance. Both Marines turned to rigid statues, staring into the middle distance, while the First Sergeant barked out their unit coordinates.

  “First Sergeant Ryan Hazlitt, sir. Senior Combat Evac Medic, Third of the Third Marines, Okinawa, temporarily assigned to the United States Embassy in Singapore. Captain Dalton, may I present Sergeant Butler Kuhn, Third of the Third, also seconded to Embassy duty.”

  “You’re here to take this injured soldier to Seletar Airfield?”

  “Yes. Sir.”

  “In what?” said Fyke, indignant. “The gooks took all my kit.”

  The First Sergeant took in Fyke’s Roman look, grinned at him, lifted a canvas bag he’d been carrying . . .

  “No problem, sir. We’ve got Marine Corps BDUs and boots. The whole combat field issue, including the plastic razor and the extra socks. We got your numbers from the Changi medics.”

  “Carry on, Sergeant. Treat him well. He’s SAS.”

  Both Marines stopped, gave Fyke a look. Fyke stood tall, gunned them both back. Miss Lopez stepped in and took his arm, speaking softly to him in Spanish. While they gently disconnected his IV and eased him into the combat fatigues, the Marines radiated the kind of respect bomb-disposal teams show around unexploded 105s. Mandy Pownall stepped in close to Dalton, spoke in a low murmur.

  “You’re not really going to give him up to Howell and Purdy?”

  “No,” said Dalton. “I’m not.”

  “But you can’t go with him either, because you need to see Cora.”

  “I know that, too, but thanks so much for stating the bloody obvious.”

  Mandy’s thin smile was not kindly meant.

  She wasn’t that kind of girl.

  “So, it’s Hobson’s choice for you, isn’t it? Either go flitting off to Florence like a lovesick nightingale and perch by Cora’s bed of pain, shredding tissues and weeping salt tears, or stay out here in the field like a real man and try to keep Ray Fyke away from the Meat Hookers.”

  “Yeah,” he said, a hard, cold glitter in his eyes. “It is.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  30

  Seletar Airfield, northern Singapore

  It took a while to get Ray Fyke squared away in the cramped interior of the medevac chopper, but they managed it, strapping him into a lashed-down wheelchair just behind the door gunner’s post. There was even some room—so cramped it was dangerously close to a sexual experience—for Dalton to ride on the metal equipment bench in between Mandy Pownall and Miss Lopez. The Marine medics— Hazlitt and Kuhn—stayed close to Fyke, radiating an almost-religious awe for an SAS sergeant, possibly the only military class in the world, other than an actual Frankish knight, for whom a Marine would feel that sort of awe, as the Huey stirred up another cyclone on the roof deck, rippling the silken clothes of Mr. Kwan and lashing the water in the pool into concentric rings of white lace, as they rose up into a high blue sky far above Changi Village.

  The pilot put the nose down, gained airspeed, and banked hard left—the crowded streets of Changi were filled with upturned brown faces, and the palms were whipping in the downdraft—Dalton looked to the southeast and saw huge white walls and, towering above the walls, he saw the white blockhouses of Changi Prison rising above an open flatland next to a series of hexagonal apartment blocks. He looked away and saw Fyke staring back at Changi Prison with cold murder in his eyes. Fyke felt his look and broke into one of those fierce berserker grins that Dalton had seen so often when they were in the field.

  “Payback, Mikey,” yelled Fyke, over the shuddering of the airframe and the lunatic howling of the engine, his grin fading. “Coming soon.”

  Dalton gave him back the grin and then looked to the northwest, past the flatlands and deltas of Pasir Ris, Punggol, and Ji Kayu that lined the Strait of Johor, the border waters between Singapore and Malaysia, northwest toward the open rolling meadow lands of the Seletar Golf Course. In the far north, he could just make out the hills and shores of Malaysia, clouded in blue haze. Deeper into Malaysia, a bank of blue-gray storm clouds was gathering over the mountains, the leading edge of an oncoming monsoon. Up here, at two thousand feet, with Singapore turning below like a game board filled with red-tiled roofs and towers and spires, and ringed by mud-green shoal water, Dalton felt the sea change coming.

  It was too loud to talk in the open bay of the Huey. Miss Lopez had gone inside herself, watching Fyke through half-closed brown eyes, her expression a mix of fear and anger and compassion. Mandy, on his left, was staring out at the glittering skyline of downtown Singapore, the wind rippling her military tans and her hair flying, her eyes clouded and cold.

  Across the aluminum floor, Fyke sat in the wheelchair, his eyes fixed on the middle distance, thinking about the boys from Langley who would be waiting for him on the field at Seletar and wishing he had a weapon. He had quietly peeled off the large bandages wrapping his hands and now he was flexing his injured fingers and working his wrists, ignoring the pain.

  He had stopped the morphine, too, because he needed to be clear. Yes, he was in a world of pain, but it was a world he was used to, and he felt a damn sight better in combat BDUs than he had in nothing but a pale green sheet. He felt like he was home again, in a soldier’s uniform, in a military chopper, surrounded by fighting men and pretty women. He was where he belonged. And he was still SAS, by God’s holy trousers.

  Now and then, he’d glance—briefly—at the little gray Glock in Mandy’s belt and then down at the Beretta strapped to Sergeant Hazlitt’s right thigh, and then back into the vague middle distance. He was willing to give Micah Dalton some room to work in because he had faith in the man, or, at least, the crocodile inside the man. But he’d do whatever he had to do to stay free. He had a ship to find and people to kill. He could fly a Huey, if it came to it. This Huey, for example. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The tone of the rotors changed, and Dalton heard the tinny crackle of the pilot’s voice in his own headset. His name was Goliad, a Warrant Officer.

  “There’s Seletar, Captain Dalton. Looks like the CIA is already here.”

  Dalton leaned to his right, crowding Miss Lopez a little. She shifted away, and he could see the landing strip of Seletar, the tower itself, a few planes scattered about the holding areas, and one highly polished navy blue, silver-trimmed Gulfstream jet parked far off in the celebrity corner, with three black cars and one long white van parked nearby, next to a military Humvee with Marine Corps markings on the engine hood. The Humvee had a big .50 caliber mounted on a swivel next to a roof hatch.

  Men in dark suits were standing by the Gulfstream, looking up, their white faces moving as one, h
ands shading their eyes from the midday sun, as they watched the Huey coming in for a landing.

  “Should I put it down by the jet, Captain?”

  Mandy was looking at him now. So was Fyke. Dalton could read Fyke’s mind, and he had also picked up Fyke’s hardening resolve. Fyke was getting ready to do something extreme. Once they hit the tarmac, the decision would be made. Fyke would be in leg-irons and on a Gulfstream headed for an interrogation cell at Anderson AFB in Guam that he would probably never leave alive and they’d be left standing on the Seletar runway with their dicks in their hands. Metaphorically, in Mandy’s case. There had been a question in the pilot’s voice, which at least meant that he considered Dalton the senior military presence in the chopper, and since, as a Marine Corps WO, he outranked the other three Marines, that put Dalton in command. Dalton gave Mandy a What the hell look. She gave it right back.

  Dalton pulled his mike in close and shouted over the engine.

  “Who’s in the Corps Humvee, Goliad?”

  “I think that’s Major Holliday’s ride, sir. He loves that .50.”

  “Who’s Major Holliday?”

  “Carson Holliday, sir. Everybody calls him Doc, you know, because of the Tombstone guy? He’s the Senior Military Attaché from the Embassy; runs the Embassy Protection Unit too. Force Recon, Third Marines. Combat trooper. Navy Cross. Silver Star. A real hard-ass. He’s here to cover the exchange. One of those limos will be from the Singapore Home Ministry, here to take custody of the . . . I don’t know what to call ’em, sir.”

  “The Chinese prisoners, is close enough.”

  “Yes, sir. They’re in the white van. Where do you want me to land?”

  “Holding pattern for now. Patch me through to Major Holliday.”

  Not a blink. No hesitation at all, as if he’d been half expecting it.

  “Aye, aye, sir. Just a minute.”

  A burst of chatter in his earpiece, then a hard, flat reply.

  “Okay, Captain. He’s on.”

  “Major Holliday?”

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  A scratchy voice, filled with static and something else.