Flight Path: A Wright & Tran Novel

by Ian Andrew

  Now, dressed head to toe in black, equipped with night vision goggles and radio mics, they all climbed out of the cars and made their way silently along the edge of the road. A sky filled with heavily laden storm clouds had effectively switched off the earlier brightness of the moon and although those same clouds also threatened a massive downpour, they had, as yet, held off.

  When Chaz reached the point that Dan and Eugene had stopped at previously, he led the team through the first line of tightly packed bushes and trees. Much more detailed and up-to-date imagery, downloaded by Tien in the hotel room, had shown that what, on the older Google maps, had looked like twenty metres deep, almost impenetrable semi-jungle was in fact a narrow line of vegetation. On the other side it opened into lightly covered scrub. It also revealed that Dan and Eugene would have walked into a series of flooded Paddy fields had they gone in a straight line. Chaz, the imagery committed to memory, and his night vision goggles painting the landscape green, moved silently across the open terrain. He scouted around the Paddy fields and manoeuvred around a series of low walls, remnants of some long ago dwelling.

  He stopped and crouched when he came to the next outcrop of dense vegetation. The other seven spread out in a line to his left.

  “All set?” he asked.

  Kara, from her position on the end of the line, made her way up to Chaz, patting each person on the shoulder and getting a thumbs-up in return.

  Crouching next to him she said, “Okay. Let’s get this done.”

  All eight rose together and went through the tree line. The tightly packed leaves and close-knitted branches were a slight cause for concern noise-wise, but there was nothing to be done for it. Breaking through they crouched again and took in the view ahead. Perfectly manicured gardens, dotted with strange little temples that, from the imagery, Chaz and Sammi had assessed were likely to be light fixtures, now lay in complete darkness. As did a large, mostly rectangular, pool. The four surrounding villas also showed no lights. It was as they had expected it would be at this time of the morning.

  Kara clicked her mic and all eight set off again. She and Eugene skirted the side of the pool and approached the rear door of the second villa. Chaz and Toby moved to the one on her left, the biggest of the four. Sammi, with Dinger, approached the one on Kara’s right and Tien, accompanied by Toby moved to the villa farthest to the right.

  Kara tried the door handle and as she had mostly expected, found it locked. She bent and removed a set of skeleton keys from her pocket and laid out the black felt roll on her thigh. Selecting a small angular pick with a series of notched bumps, she pushed her goggles to the top of her head. The new binocular-goggles were a huge improvement on the old monocular ones she and Tien had mostly used in the past, but for close work they still made depth perception hard and hindered her judgement as to how close the pick was to the lock. The pitch blackness she now had to deal with wasn’t as much of a concern. Kara knew that picking locks was mostly done by feel and instinct. She also knew that frustration at not getting it first time was not a help. She breathed out and started again. After another minute she heard the satisfactory soft click as the tumblers aligned.

  Eugene followed her into a cool, marble-floored hallway and they both stood still. They remained like that for a good three minutes. Not to adjust their sight, as the building’s interior was as pitch black as outside, but to grow accustomed to the sounds and the feel of the house. Kara, her goggles back in place, sensed the place was occupied. She didn’t know by how many or by who, but she knew there was at least one person somewhere in the darkness.

  She moved down the hallway, slowly sweeping her vision left and right. Directly ahead of her was the main, front door. To her right she passed a closed door, then one that was ajar. Looking in she saw a bathroom. Further along from it was another closed door. Opposite the bathroom was an open entrance to a lounge room. She looked in and confirmed the spacious room was empty. With hand signals she told Eugene she was going to check the closed door to her left first, then the one to her right. Fully aware that these were likely to be occupied bedrooms, she moved excruciatingly slowly.

  The handle was a lever action and she took half a minute to depress it fully. Another half a minute went by before she put any pressure on the door in an attempt to move it inwards. It took a further three minutes for her to ease it open sufficiently to look inside. She withdrew her head back out of the room and clicked her radio three times. She didn’t expect, nor did she need, any confirmatory clicks. Eugene, less than two feet from her, but who had also heard the clicks in his earpiece turned and took up a blocking position between her and the closed door further down the corridor.

  Kara moved into the bedroom and as slowly as she had opened it, she eased the door closed. She walked silently across the tiled floor and moved into position to do the most dangerous part of her night so far. Bending low, she reached her hand out, tentatively, knowing that her depth perception was likely to be off and therefore she could well miss her target. A final steadying breath and she plunged her hand down onto Jacob’s mouth. She did miss and hit the bottom of his nose before flopping her palm over his lips.

  Leaning in close and pressing down as much as she could to stop him reacting and rearing up, she whispered in a voice so quiet it didn’t activate her mic system, “Jacob, It’s Kara. Be quiet. Tap my hand when you’re ready.”

  Kara was impressed when the tap came almost instantly. It wasn’t a usual thing to be assaulted in your bed at night and most people she’d done this to had struggled and fought for at least a few seconds. It was rare for someone’s brain to process the facts so quickly, while in that strange state between asleep and awake.

  She took her hand away and when Jacob had pushed himself up in the bed, she leant in sideways to have her mouth as close to his ear as possible, without hitting him in the head with her goggles.

  “You doing okay?” She asked.

  “Just about. We need to take these people down,” he whispered into her ear.

  “Is Derek Swift here?”

  “No. Just me and the boss man of the Balinese end of the operation. A Brit called Tommo. Huge guy, must be at least thirty stone. Plus three security. Only met one so far, but meant to be three on site.”

  “Well, get up and get ready, we’re extracting you now.”

  “No Kara. No way. They’ll go to ground if I disappear.”

  “But Swift’s not here so what’s the point in dragging it out?”

  “Tommo says I’ll get to meet the rest of what he called ‘the lads’ soon enough. If Swift is in Bali then he’s bound to be invited.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  “Then we still get to sweep up a whole host of bastards.”

  “So what’s your plan?”

  “I don’t have one. I wasn’t expecting you to drop in on me.”

  Kara, her cheek next to his, felt him grin.

  “But I might have an idea, now you’re here. It’s going to be tough. They have judges and lawyers sewn up and when they don’t do that, they have intimidation. I’m not sure, but there’s a chance none of them would go down for what they’ve been doing. But we’ve got to try.”

  “So what’s the idea?” Kara asked.

  “I wrote down, on Eugene’s phone, what I know so far. If you take it and talk to the authorities, then it might be enough for them to act on. I’ll stay here so they won’t be suspicious. I assume you’ll put an overwatch on me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then when the rest turn up, whether Swift is with them or not, I’ll signal you and you can have the cops come charging in.”

  “You’re sure?” Kara asked.

  “Absolutely. Now take the phone.”

  He slipped out of bed and raised the mattress. Kara retrieved the phone then waited until he’d climbed back into bed. She leant in close again, “You be careful Jacob. Tien will be upset if you’re not.”

  “Tell her I’m doing fine, will you?”


  “Course I will.” She went to get up, but stopped. “Jacob?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this a case of dark hearts?”

  “Toby told you about them then?”

  “Yeah. So is it?”

  “Never more so.”

  She made her way to the door and just as slowly as she had eased into the room, she eased back out into the hallway. Eugene was standing in exactly the position she had left him. Kara wasn’t surprised. Dan and Eugene were the most disciplined security team she had ever known, but her admiration and respect for the Harrop brothers was growing daily.

  By the time she and Eugene had made their way back to the edge of the lawns and the thick undergrowth of the tree line the rest were already there.

  “Where’s Jacob? You signalled you’d found him, where is he?” Tien asked.

  “We did, but he’s not coming out. He wants us to try something but now’s not the time or place to discuss it. We need to get the fuck out of here and let Chaz and Sammi find us decent surveillance positions before dawn. Then we’ll figure out a shift system.”

  No one, not even Tien, who Kara knew would be tearing herself apart at leaving him on his own, put up an objection. They all accepted that the decision had been made and it was time to sort out how to manage it, not moan about it.

  ɸ

  By ten in the morning, Dan and Eugene had been in their covert hide for four hours. Chaz and Sammi had used the available imagery to pick a position which was a compromise between the need for complete invisibility and the need to be close enough to provide security to Jacob. The result was situated within a dense stretch of what could have passed for a piece of rainforest someone had forgotten to chop down. It gave clear sightlines across a thirty metre gap to the swimming pool and three of the four villa’s lounges and was approached from the rear by crossing a section of dense scrub that itself was accessed from a small roadway that ran up the side of a deep ravine. Toby was in one of the Toyotas parked two hundred metres back along that road.

  Dinger was in a similar, if much smaller covert hide position, on the other side of the complex. He was only ten metres from the top of the driveway and the entrance to the biggest of the four villas.

  By half past ten, Sammi, Chaz, Tien and Kara, back at the hotel, had taken a break from discussing Jacob’s notes and what could be done with them. They weren’t the least bit hopeful there was enough to secure a conviction.

  Tien put the in-room kettle on and began to make cups of tea.

  Chaz opened up his laptop intending to search for the exact meaning of ‘circumstantial’.

  “What’s that?” Sammi asked, looking at the image on his screen.

  “It’s just the local prison,” he said going to shut the window down.

  “Oh let’s have a look,” Sammi said, sliding onto the seat next to him and almost pushing him off.

  “Geez Sammi, you’re so delicate,” he said and got an elbow in the side for his trouble.

  “Why are you looking at this anyway?” She asked.

  “Dan and Eugene asked me to. They’d driven past a place last night, didn’t know what it was so Dan had tried to figure it out from his iPad Google map, but with no success.”

  Sammi chuckled.

  “Yeah I know,” Chaz said, “how could you not know it’s a prison.”

  Kara wandered over, intrigued by his last comment. “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “Well of course you do not, my little non-imagery, dark-side intelligence sad-ling. You are not gifted in the mysterious ways of enlightenment.”

  Kara raised her middle finger, “Don’t start your normal bullshit about how imagery analysts are the Jedi mind warriors of the Intel world. I’m not in the mood. Just tell me what you meant about the prison, Obi One Ball” she said, giving Sammi a wink.

  Chaz pouted, then said, “Fair enough. You see this whole area on the screen? It has a double wall running around it. Clear area between the walls. A guard tower at every corner and in the mid-section of each outer wall, except the wall that sits to the north. That one faces a car parking area and the main road. It has a larger, probable administration reception centre sitting amidst it. There’s only one entrance into the whole place. Inside the walls there’s a distinct divide. The place is split into two. That makes it likely to be a joint male and female facility, or a semi-secure and real bad-ass prisoner split. The low-level accommodation blocks surround a central compound, probably accessible to all, with a couple of areas for fitness and recreation including a tennis court and a prominent Mosque, perfectly aligned to Mecca. Aside from the Mosque, which would be a church or a synagogue depending on what country you’re in, to anyone trained in imagery the rest of this place shouts prison like, oh I don’t know what like… Sammi?”

  “Like a bear coming out of the woods with an Andrex puppy under its arm,” she said.

  Kara laughed and took the cup of tea that Tien handed to her. “Thanks, Tien. Anyway, I missed the beginning of this conversation, why are you looking at a prison?”

  “Because Dan didn’t know what it was. They’d driven past it last night. He said it had tall railings on top of the outer wall, razor mesh and barbed wire but that the outer wall was minging. All peeling paint and mouldy. He thought it might have been an army camp but for that.”

  “So what is it? I assume you’ve run a check.” Kara asked.

  “Course I have. Oh thanks,” Chaz said taking the offered tea. “It’s Kerobokan Prison, described by some as a hellhole and by others as a cesspit. There’s not much in the way of good PR for the place. It’s where the Bali bombers went and a whole bunch of hi-profile Aussies.”

  “Do you remember Schapelle Corby?” Tien asked.

  Kara thought for a moment, “The surf board full of drugs?”

  “Yeah. She went there. It’s not a fun place.”

  “It’s where that British woman is too,” Sammi added. “You know the one that’s been sentenced to death for drug smuggling. Made the news a couple of years ago because she was expected to get a term sentence but got death by firing squad instead.”

  Chaz shrugged, “The court said she had taken the piss out of their anti-drug stance.”

  “I doubt they said that Chaz,” Tien said, handing Sammi her tea.

  “Yeah, they may have worded it a bit more upmarket, but that’s what they meant.”

  “So what you’re saying is that if you get done with drugs over here you either do hard time, or you get killed?” Kara asked the three of them.

  “Basically, yep and sometimes you do the hard time and then get killed,” Chaz said. Sammi and Tien nodded.

  “And yet we have a bunch of the worst scum on the planet, with a full rundown of their activities and how they spirit people away from justice, but not one shred of real evidence so they’ll likely walk scot-free?”

  “Yeah,” Chaz said, a lot more downbeat.

  The four of them drank their tea and Chaz started the search that he had intended before the conversation had turned to the prison.

  Tien stood and walked to the far side of the room. She looked out the hotel window to the gently shimmering water of the Indian Ocean. “Kara?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you reckon the police in Britain have got any spare drugs?”

  Chapter 32

  Victoria Oxford was still serving in the British military but had left her Royal Navy beginnings far in the past. As Kara and Tien’s boss on the deployment to Basra, and later in subsequent operations, she was trusted by Kara above everyone else, bar Tien. The only issue was that being still active, getting in touch could be problematic. So it was that four hours went past between Kara ringing an emergency contact number and her own mobile beginning to vibrate on the table.

  The incoming call merely said ‘Overseas’.

  “Hello?”

  “You rang my dear?”

  “I did. Can we talk?”

  “Do you mean can we talk securely?”

>   “Yes.”

  “No,” Victoria said. “If you need to do that we shall have to be cleverer. Have you got Internet access?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll text you a link. Ciao.”

  The line went dead. Kara waited and a few minutes later a text arrived.

  Tien copied the web address and posted it into a browser. A secure padlock appeared on the screen and under it a terminal server interface with two boxes asking for username and password.

  Another text arrived on Kara’s phone giving not a username and password but two questions.

  “She wants the first name of the Police liaison officer we worked with in Northern Ireland,” Kara said.

  Tien typed in Demi.

  “And the name of the puppy we sponsored in 2009 down in Hereford.”

  Tien typed in Rasputin and pressed enter.

  The screen blanked, then refreshed. A sharp feedback tone with treble echo sounded in the speaker before Victoria’s voice came through clearly.

  “Hi, can you hear me?”

  “Oh, wasn’t expecting that. I need to activate the laptop’s built-in mic,” Tien said, clicking on a settings screen and rapidly accessing menus. Kara waited patiently.

  Victoria repeated herself twice more before Tien said, “Yeah, sorry, didn’t know we were doing comms. Can you hear us?”

  “Loud and clear Tien. So, Kara my dear, you rang?”

  “Yeah. You back in London?”

  “No. Actually I’m in the same place I was when last we spoke. Well, not true. I’m a little further into no-man’s-land but near enough.”

  “Ah, that’s a shame.”

  “Why, what do you need?”

  “Access to a diplomatic pouch.”

  “Where’s it going to?”