Devil's Due: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 0)

by Andrew Warren

  "That was the deal."

  Caine stood up to leave.

  "Say goodbye to Tia," Anna snapped, her voice hard as steel.

  "You know, these bar girls do what they do to feed their families. And you sit in this house wasting a fortune on food and tea for a doll."

  Anna looked up at him, and a ripple of anger flashed in her black eyes. "I told you, she's a luk thep. She was blessed by a priest. That means she has a soul. She is like a daughter to me."

  "The missing girls are someone's daughters, too."

  Anna's expression hardened. "Do you have children?"

  Caine shook his head. "No. I don't."

  Anna reached out and stroked the doll's hair. “A thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth. I don't have to worry about that with Tia. She is a blessing. She brings me luck. Perhaps she will bring you luck, too. You'll need it, Mr. Waters."

  Without responding, Caine walked back into the house. Behind him, Anna remained, sitting with her blessed doll while the waves lapped at the beach in the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Caine caught a taxi back to the walking street area of Pattaya. He walked through the crowds of pleasure-seeking tourists amid the flickering neon lights until the streets turned darker and the crowds thinned out. The gleaming clubs and go-go bars were replaced with rickety tenements and rotting apartment buildings.

  This was Satra's neighborhood. Glancing around the street to make sure he was alone, Caine pulled out his cell phone and dialed the detective's number.

  The phone rang twice, and Satra picked up. "Hey, where you been?"

  "I got some information on the Russians. I believe they're up north, somewhere along the Myanmar border."

  "Who tell you that?"

  "I met with someone high up in the chao pho. It's a long story, but according to my contact, the chao pho aren't the ones behind the website. It's the Red Wa, and they're working with the Russian mafia."

  "You believe them?"

  Caine paused. "Not sure. But they could have killed me. Instead, they let me go. Either way, it's the best lead we have right now."

  Satra sighed. "Well, it match what I find. Finally got line on Russians. Witness saw them charter private plane. They fly to Chang Mai, up north. They rent vehicle there, four by four, truck. Good for dirt roads. Maybe they going into jungle?"

  "That must be it," Caine said. "My contact said Alexi is working with a man known as Pisac. His camp is up north. They're sending me coordinates soon."

  Satra whistled. "I have heard of this man. I thought he was just myth, fairy tale. If we can get evidence, link Pisac to this case, Chief Battang will have to investigate. He have no--"

  Caine heard Satra gasp, and then there was a loud crash.

  "Satra? Satra, are you there?"

  The line went dead.

  Caine jogged down the street faster and hit redial on the phone.

  The phone rang. No one picked up.

  Caine jammed the phone in his pocket and broke into a sprint. He felt the blood roaring in his ears as he drove his legs faster across the pavement. It might have been a bad connection, or it might have been a dead battery....

  In his heart, Caine knew it was neither of those things. The people they were investigating had set off a bomb in a public market and killed dozens of people, simply to discourage the police from investigating them. They were ruthless and willing to act. Satra had been turning over rocks, questioning anyone he could find about them. If word had gotten back, if just one of his contacts had squealed...

  Satra was in terrible danger.

  Caine was panting as he raced around the corner onto Satra's block. His apartment building was just ahead, on the left side of the street. Caine ducked behind a battered red pickup truck that was parked on the side of the road. As he caught his breath, he peered around the rear corner of the truck. The street was dark and quiet. A couple of streetlights pierced the sweltering darkness with their hazy glow, but there was still more shadow than light.

  Caine moved out again, walking at a normal pace. He jammed his hands in his pockets, trying to like a lost tourist. His eyes glanced left and right, but he saw no signs of movement.

  He made his way to the front of Satra's building. A few squares of light were shining from apartments that faced the street, but most of the building was dark. Either it was empty, or the majority of the tenants were early sleepers. Caine scanned the premises one last time, but still saw no signs of a disturbance. No movement of any kind. Walking up to the outside gate, he slipped a small lock pick from a pouch under his belt.

  He had picked the lock before, the first time he had visited the detective. It did not take him long to pick it again. A few minutes later, the door creaked open on its rusty hinges.

  Caine took a step forward.

  The air around him ignited in a blast of heat and fire.

  BOOM!

  The explosion was deafening. Caine felt the hot air scald his skin, as the force of the blast threw him backwards.

  He closed his eyes and forced his body to go limp. He hit the ground ten feet back and tumbled away from the burning building. As he rolled, he raised his hands and covered his head. Shards of wood and glass pelted the ground around him like shrapnel.

  A huge chunk of burning timber slammed into the ground less than a foot from his head. The pavement crumbled beneath it as it rolled to a stop. Caine leapt up from the ground and sprinted as far from the burning rain of debris as he could.

  The telltale patter of objects striking the ground subsided. Caine stopped, and turned around.

  Satra's building was gone. A skeletal framework still stood, but the center of the apartment complex had collapsed into crumbling rubble. Wreckage was strewn about the ground, as if the entire structure had been thrown into the air and slammed back to earth upside down.

  What little remained was engulfed in fire. Thick, gray clouds of smoke rose up from the flames and blotted out the stars in the night sky.

  There was no way anyone inside the building could have survived. Caine had seen enough explosions to be certain of that. Whoever had planted the charges had done their work well.

  Pisac's death toll had just increased.

  The moaning wail of sirens rose in the distance. Caine stared at the flames. For a moment, he wondered if Satra had been dead or alive, conscious or mercifully numb when the burning, hungry flames had consumed him and everyone else around him. Was he forced to listen to the screams of the other tenants, over the loud crackling of burning wood and super-heated metal?

  The sirens grew louder. Closer.

  Caine could barely hear them over the turmoil of thoughts that raced through his head. What if he had agreed to help Satra sooner? What if he could have stopped these people before they had taken Naiyana, before they got wind of Satra's investigation?

  The sirens were just around the corner now. Caine took a few steps backwards, then turned and walked into the thick darkness that surrounded the burning building. Within a few seconds, he was gone, lost in the shadows.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Caine rolled the heavy wood door of the boathouse open and looked inside. Behind the door, darkness stared back at him. The pier had no lights of any kind, and only the moon illuminated the grounds after the sun set. At the moment, the moon was hidden behind a thick bank of clouds, leaving the boathouse shrouded in darkness.

  He had rented the boathouse under an assumed name, and he had used a cut out from one of the local street gangs to pay the owner in cash for the year. There was nothing to tie the property back to him. Still, he clicked on a small Maglite and swung the brilliant, tiny beam through the interior, checking every shadowed nook and cranny for intruders.

  The dark, musty wood shack was empty. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Taking a length of chain that hung from the inner wall, he looped it around the door handle and slid a heavy duty combination lock through the chain links. He was confident no one would be able
to enter without making enough noise to warn him first.

  An old fishing boat sat in the center of the boathouse, upright and perched on a single-unit dry rack. It was about twenty feet long and looked to be in terrible shape. A lumpy crust of barnacles coated its hull, and years of salt corrosion and neglect had stripped away the paint. It would have cost a small fortune to refit the vessel and make her sea-worthy again. But Caine didn't care about that.

  He had no intention of ever putting this rotting carcass of a boat in the water.

  Caine grabbed a small utility ladder and dragged it over to the edge of the boat. He climbed up the ladder and hopped onto the main deck. The floorboards flexed and groaned under his feet, but they supported his weight.

  He stepped into the small cabin at the stern of the boat. The beam from his flashlight filled the cabin with a soft, warm glow. Kneeling, he felt along the floorboards until he located the tiny pressure plate he had installed between two of the boards. He pressed the catch, until he heard it click, and felt one of the floorboards lift a fraction of an inch.

  Using his fingernails, he was able to pry it up, revealing a metal door, hidden beneath the floor. He removed several more floorboards, each one exposing more of the metal hatch. Finally, he removed the last board, and a small numeric keypad came into view, mounted next to a thick metal handle. The object was a safe. Its door faced up towards him.

  Caine typed a series of letters and numbers into the keypad. A small light next to the safe's handle turned green. Caine grabbed the handle and pulled.

  The heavy metal door lifted up, revealing its contents. The glow of the halogen bulb glinted off the metal stocks and barrels of a small arsenal of modern weaponry. A variety of pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and knives were neatly arranged in the safe, along with several other bags of supplies and an assortment of ammunition.

  Caine had stashed the equipment here in case his old friends at the CIA ever came looking for him. Now, he would put it to use for another purpose.

  He began to select weapons and lift them from the safe, laying them out on a small workbench that ran along one side of the cabin. After a few minutes, he stood back, and surveyed the gear on the bench.

  First up were a pair of SIG P226 pistols chambered in 9mm. Next to them sat an H&K MP7 submachine gun with folding forward grip and retractable shoulder stock. Several extended capacity magazines were stacked next to the weapon. Finally, he set a Spyderco Paramilitary 2 folding knife with a blackened steel blade down on the bench, along with a sharpening stone.

  He spent the next couple hours loading magazines and field stripping the weapons. Then he cleaned and oiled their firing mechanisms and reassembled them. The work was tedious, but that didn't bother him. It kept his mind off other things. The glow from the flashlight was dim, but he had trained to perform these actions blindfolded if need be. He knew every spring and switch, every curve of metal. He knew each weapon as intimately as a lover.

  He had just begun grinding the knife's blade across the sharpening stone, when a beep from his phone interrupted his concentration. He put the knife down to check the phone's screen. He had a text.

  He opened it, finding coordinates and a file attachment for a map. There was also a message: "My contact says the girls will be loaded onto a cargo ship in 24 hours."

  True to her word, Anna had sent him the location of Pisac's camp. Caine opened the map file, and checked the coordinates. They were north of Chang Mai, just inside the Thai border with Myanmar. That matched with the intel from Satra. Alexi Rudov was heading north. Pisac would be there to meet him.

  Naiyana and the other girls would be there as well. For twenty-four hours, at least. After that...

  Caine tapped the edge of the knife's blade with his thumb and felt it bite his skin. A tiny droplet of blood swelled from the cut. Caine licked his thumb clean before folding the knife closed.

  OK, he thought. Time to go to work.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Caine felt his muscles cramp and ache as he lay still in the underbrush of the jungle. An uncountable number of insects, birds, and other creatures of the night chirped, squawked, and growled, creating a strange, primal symphony. Despite this background of noise, the dark foliage he was concealed in felt still and unmoving.

  It had taken hours to drive from Pattaya to Chang Mai. Once there, he had purchased some necessary clothes and supplies. After wolfing down a bowl of kha soi noodles and minced pork served by a street vendor, he had rented a battered, old truck. Then he had loaded his heavy black duffel bag of weapons, and the newly purchased supplies, into the back. He'd driven the truck roughly sixty miles north, following the coordinates Anna had given him, to the Mae Ping river. A fishing barge had taken him across the river, for a few baht coins.

  Now, after countless hours of non-stop travel and movement, he lay deathly still, looking out over the dark valley. A small tributary of the larger river snaked its way west, cutting through the thick jungle canopy below. Caine had held this position for over an hour. A pair of compact night vision binoculars were pressed up against his eyes. He turned his head back and forth, scanning the dark green curve of the river.

  He had spotted a series of buildings on the northern bank. They looked like shacks, hastily constructed from scrap wood and sheets of corrugated metal. A few rust-covered trucks and jeeps were parked around the camp. A small campfire burned in a clearing between the buildings, a brilliant, white hot point of light in his googles. Glowing green figures crouched around the fire, cooking skewers of meat and boiling water in metal pots.

  Anna's coordinates were correct. This had to be the Red Wa camp. He adjusted his binoculars and peered deeper into the darkness, sweeping back and forth between the buildings. He counted at least twelve men outside. Three guards were clustered around a wooden, fence-like structure. Caine zoomed in closer. He could see several figures moving within the fenced-in area. A few more were lying on the ground. It was difficult to tell through the night vision lenses, but Caine was certain they were the missing girls. He was not too late. There was still time.

  Caine slipped the binoculars into a pouch that hung from his waist. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and cheap black jeans he had purchased in Chang Mai. His weapons were stored in a waterproof pack he carried on his back. He slid across the ground, making no sound as he moved. His muscles cramped, and bits of branches and rocks tore at his skin as he dragged his prone body over them. The river was his goal, and he had to move slowly to avoid detection. An inch at a time, closer and closer.

  By the time he made it to the riverbank, his body was covered in muck. Bits of grass and foliage clung to his face. He lay still, letting his weight sink into the mud. He observed the camp, listening for any noise that sounded out of place, any sign that he had been spotted. But the only sound was the rhythmic rise and fall of the jungle animals, chirping and squawking as before.

  He took a deep breath and shimmied forward into the cold water. A slight current stirred the river's murky surface. Caine allowed it to push him a few yards downstream, towards the western edge of the camp. Then he dove down and swam underwater. His long, powerful kicks propelled himself through the liquid darkness.

  An experienced diver, Caine could hold his breath for a long time. But here, in this dark jungle river, infested with snakes and even crocodiles, he found himself rushing to reach the opposite shore. Since leaving Pattaya, he had been running on adrenaline and luck. He knew it was only a matter of time before either ran out.

  When his grasping fingers scraped across mud and reeds, he knew he had reached the opposite riverbank. Caine lifted his head a fraction out of the water, just enough to take a slow, shallow breath. Then, once again, he crept forward inch by inch. He was careful to slide across the stiff reeds without snapping them as he emerged from the river.

  Keeping low, he made his way to a line of trees at the edge of the camp. He could see the flicking campfire now, and make out the shadowy forms of the men surrounding i
t. The fire would limit their vision to a few feet. So long as he stayed in the penumbra surrounding the light, he would be invisible to them.

  Circling around the trees, he stalked towards the fenced-in area. It sat near the northern edge of the camp, the point farthest away from the river. Caine paused behind another clump of trees and vines as he observed the area.

  The fence was constructed from sharpened bamboo poles, each placed a few feet apart in the ground. Lengths of barbed wire ran between each pole, and coiled razor wire ran along the top of the fence. There was a small gate at the front of the pen, and a thick padlock kept it locked shut. Two of the men stood guard at the front, while a third was circling the pen. Caine watched as the man passed a few feet away from him, completely oblivious to his presence.

  Caine let his arm drop to his side. His fingers curled around the Spyderco knife. He slid his thumb into the hole stamped into the closed blade. With a quick flick of his wrist, the knife snapped open.

  The guard was a few feet ahead of his position, staring into the pen, watching the girls. Caine accelerated, taking short, rapid steps to muffle the sound of his running. As he closed in, the guard spun around, and Caine saw him raise a battered automatic rifle. But he was too late.

  Caine knocked the barrel aside and drove the blade of the knife up and into the man's throat. The guard's eyes bulged, and blood spurted from his neck. Caine slid behind him and clamped a hand over the man's mouth, muffling his cries.

  Dropping low, he dragged the man back into the underbrush. As he moved, he twisted the knife, ripping open the wound more, allowing the blood to rush out faster. Caine waited until the man's struggles began to die down. After a few minutes, the guard stopped kicking and thrashing, and lay still. Caine grabbed the fallen man's rifle, removed the clip, and tossed them both into the jungle. Then he searched the corpse. He pocketed a Leatherman utility tool and a small metal key that hung around the man's neck on a frayed cord. Then he covered the body with vines and scraps of vegetation.