WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller

by J. T. Brannan

  Cole saw it all, and yet saw none of it. Nothing moved him now; he was an automaton, and could see no way out for himself, no way of recovering his humanity.

  Ever since his family had been killed in front of him, the brains of his wife, his son, his daughter, sprayed and splattered across his face as they were shot in the head at point-blank range.

  He had killed those responsible, of course; but it had done nothing to fill the void, that vast, horrific void which filled his soul and ate away at him piece by piece, until there was nothing much left at all; just the man stood in front of the Climax Club on Walking Street, waiting for the action to start.

  It didn’t take long.

  Only ten minutes into his shift, Cole was called inside, and he could see immediately what was happening – a crowd of men was trying to pull one of the dancers off the stage.

  Another bouncer called Steve, a huge Maori who packed a punch but moved too slowly, had already been knocked out cold by one of the party goers. Other customers backed away, others moved in to join the fun; barmen tried to help and the other girls started to jump onto the trouble-makers, clawing and biting.

  Cole wasted no time, and waded right into the melée.

  ‘Hey!’ he called out, instantly seeing the first man turn to him, fist cocked. A part of him instinctively wanted to react, to destroy the arm as it came towards him, but he ignored that side of him with a powerful force of will, taking the shot instead.

  It was a hard punch, connecting with Cole’s cheekbone, and left him momentarily dazed, his head swimming. His eyes refocused, and he saw another fist hurtling towards him.

  This one caught him on the ear, disrupting his balance even more, and then he felt another fist smack into his forehead and he was down on the floor.

  He covered up, but soon felt the impact of fists and feet on his bettered body as the gang set to work on him, targeting his face, his head, his back, his kidneys.

  Yes, Cole thought, go on!

  He felt booted feet stamping on his legs, fists hammering away at his head, a sandaled foot burying itself in his ribcage. He felt things starting to break, saw blood running into his eyes.

  Yes, he thought to himself through the glorious pain, that’s it! Do it! I deserve it!

  He deserved it because it was his fault that his family had died; if he had been less selfish, if he had never married, if he had never had children, it would never have happened. If he had given up his work after getting married, after having children, it would never have happened. But no – he was too arrogant, too confident in his own abilities, he never thought for one second his family could be hurt.

  But they had been.

  As the blows continued to rain down on him, he saw their faces.

  Sarah his wife, so beautiful, so confident, so happy.

  Ben, his six year old son, such a wonderful boy.

  Amy, his four year old daughter, a beautiful, wonderful little girl who had looked just like her mother.

  He saw their faces blown apart, blood exploding outwards. Blood everywhere, over everything.

  The blood that ran down Cole’s face now was their blood.

  Innocent blood.

  Yes, Cole knew as the pain wracked his beaten body, I deserve this.

  After travelling to the secretive mountains of Burma to find and kill the man responsible for ordering his family’s death – Charles Hansard, the Director of US National Intelligence and Cole’s own boss – Cole had escaped across the border to Thailand, where he’d stayed ever since.

  A part of him had known that it went against all operational protocol, that he was bound to be discovered so near the border; but the other part wanted to be caught, wanted to be punished. And yet he couldn’t simply turn himself in, just as he couldn’t simply end it all by putting a bullet through his own head. Such an act wasn’t in his nature, no matter how hard he wanted it to be.

  And so instead, he put himself into situations where he could receive his punishment. He had fought in Muay Thai rings throughout the north, battered from one side of the ropes to the other, the crowds amazed by the punishment he could take. He had even fought in bare-knuckle contests across the border in Cambodia and Laos, letting his opponents beat him half to death every time.

  But when he got tired of that, he started working as a bouncer in dozens of towns and villages, from Chiang Mai to Sukhothai. He never lasted long though, as his employers soon realized what he was trying to do – commit suicide with the assistance of their customers. And so he was forced to keep on moving, often staying in remote villages for weeks on end, but eventually heading for the big cities for his next dose of masochistic violence.

  And now, blood from his wounds leaking onto the dirt-stained, sticky floor of the Climax Club, his consciousness just about to black out entirely, he wondered if this was finally it.

  The end.

  It was the sound of the knife flicking open that caused Cole to finally react, his instincts too finely honed after his years of training, unable to override them anymore despite himself.

  His mind clear in an instant, he seized the wrist of the man with the knife as it plunged towards his chest, digging into a pressure point with his thumb. The attacker collapsed for a brief instant from the pain, and Cole sent the callused fingertips of his other hand straight into the man’s throat, killing him instantly.

  He tried to stop himself, but his body had already taken over; before he knew what was happening, he had lashed out with his foot from his position prone on the floor, shattering another man’s kneecap. And then he was on his feet, taking out another of the gang with a vicious uppercut that caught the man just under the jaw.

  In the next instant, Cole pivoted to his right and knocked someone else out cold with a left hook, and then turned again as someone tried to tackle him. He dropped his weight and smothered the attack, raising his knee up sharply into the man’s face – one, twice, three times, blood and teeth spraying across the floor just before the man’s unconscious body followed them.

  Another man grabbed him from behind, and Cole jerked his head backwards to break the man’s nose, arm slipping backwards around his waist and then hauling him over his hip in a powerful judo throw, driving him into the hard ground and following up with a stamp onto the man’s forehead.

  The customers, staff and dancers who hadn’t fled were now backing away, looking at him with a mix of disbelief and horror.

  Cole turned his head from side to side – targets down, scan, assess – as he surveyed the carnage.

  Six men were down and out, at least one of them dead.

  And it had all happened in under twelve seconds.

  Cole knew he should wait, knew he should accept his arrest by the police and his imprisonment, his punishment; and yet his sense of self-preservation, his natural survival instinct trained and nurtured over the years until it was as keen as a knife’s razor edge, simply wouldn’t let him.

  It never would.

  Cole turned on his heel and ran from the club into the bustling, humid, sweat-hot streets of Pattaya, his mind screaming at him to stop even as his legs spurred him on.

  Damn it! his mind screamed at him as he ran.

  Why can’t I die?

  2

  Cole slowly sipped at his ice cold beer as he surveyed the bar.

  He was in a tourist trap right off the Khao San Road in downtown Bangkok, a popular bar for foreigners; not yet packed at this hour but with enough people so that he wouldn’t stick out. The ceiling fans offered a cooling respite from the heat and humidity outside, but the smells of the street still wafted in. There were the wonderful aromas of street food – fried rice, grilled and stir-fried meats, spiced noodles and fish sauce – as well as the ever-present fumes of diesel and gasoline and the unavoidable stench of human sweat. Bland Euro pop blaring too loud through a poor-quality sound system completed the atmosphere.

  It was unlikely he would be tracked to Bangkok, Cole knew. Thai law enforcement wasn’t a
mongst the world’s best, and they would probably just sweep the incident at the Climax Club under the carpet as they generally did with crimes committed within the country’s money-generating sex industry. But even if they were being keener that usual, the Thai capital was so awash with foreigners of every description that he would never be found here.

  He knew the city well too, having spent many a weekend of R&R here when he’d been with the US Navy SEALs; it was a favorite haunt of American forces stationed in Asia, offering any number of opportunities for military pleasure seekers with some time on their hands.

  Even so, his professional instincts caused to him to continually scan his surroundings, even after his sixth beer of the afternoon. Was anyone paying him undue attention? Did any of the customers seem like they didn’t belong? Were there people out in the street beyond who passed the window more than once, or who paid a little bit too much attention to what was going on inside?

  But there was nothing, and so Cole was left alone with just his thoughts and a bottle of Chang.

  Was this how he was going to live for the rest of his days? He’d been torturing himself for well over a year now, and he started to wonder if it would ever end. Could he let it end?

  There was a television mounted on the wall above the bar, and something caught his attention; his head snapped round, bottle paused at his lips.

  It was CNN. A picture of a large container vessel; the caption read Chinese cargo ship hijacked!

  His years in the SEALS made a story like that unmissable; he had been trained to re-take hijacked ships, and it was still in his blood, even after all this time.

  ‘Could you turn it up please?’ Cole asked the barman in English. He’d picked up the Thai language over the past few months, but didn’t want to draw attention to himself; as a foreigner, it was safer to speak English like all the other tourists. ‘And another bottle of Chang.’

  The barman nodded, turned up the TV and slid another beer over to him. Cole slipped some coins onto the bar, his attention riveted to the screen. He’d been out of it for so long, this was the first time he’d seen the news in months.

  Cole looked around briefly, seeing only a handful of people interested in the news story; most were laughing and drinking, oblivious to anything else around them.

  Cole turned back to the CNN report.

  Even with the television volume turned up, it was a struggle to hear over the Euro pop which still blared out incessantly from the tinny speakers around the bar; but with concentration, he managed to make out most of what was being said.

  ‘The Fu Yu Shan was hijacked last night off the Sumatran coast while sailing down the notorious Strait of Malacca,’ the anchor spoke over the picture, which now turned into a satellite image of the area, charting the ship’s course from northern China, down the coast through the South China Sea, and around Singapore and the Malaysian peninsula.

  ‘This area has a reputation for piracy, and although recent efforts by the combined naval forces of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and India have helped to curb such attacks, they do still occur with alarming frequency. However, this is the first hijack of such a large vessel in a very long time. Anything over three hundred tons has to be fitted with a tracking device known as an Automatic Identification System, and this has deterred many pirate groups from targeting the bigger ships. It seems that somehow the AIS has been disabled on the Fu Yu Sham however, which experts believe mean that it was a professional attack, by an experienced criminal gang.

  ‘There haven’t been any ransom demands as yet, but the Chinese government is outraged by the incident, and has agreed to do everything in its power to help the Tsing Tao Shipping Line resolve the situation. It is believed that the ship alone is worth in excess of forty million dollars, and the cargo some thirty million more, and that is to say nothing of the human cost.

  ‘Our own government is taking a special interest in this also, as it transpires that three of the crew members are US citizens. President Abrams had this to say earlier today –’

  The satellite imagery of the Strait of Malacca faded away to be replaced by footage taken inside the White House Briefing Room. Cole’s blood turned cold at the sight of the place; it was there that he had saved Ellen Abrams, jumping across the backs of journalists as he shot the president’s personal bodyguard through the eyeball just as the man was about to empty his own pistol into the back of the president’s head.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago, but Abrams looked just the same, and the room was exactly as it was that fateful day; even the journalists crammed into the small space looked like the same ones who had been there during the incident.

  Cole swallowed a big gulp of Chang and concentrated on what Abrams was about to say.

  ‘First of all I would like to express how deeply shocked and angered I am – how the American people are – that such an outrageous act has taken place. Piracy is a despicable act of the worst sort of criminality, and we will not stand for it. I have already spoken to President Tsang Feng of the People’s Republic of China to express our solidarity in this matter – not only due to our Mutual Defense Treaty, but also as three of our own citizens have been taken hostage with the ship.

  ‘Acts of piracy are the same as acts of terrorism, and the stance of the government of the United States is to take the fight to the people who commit such acts. As such, I would like to give a warning to the people behind this attack – release the hostages and the ship now, and you will not be hurt. If you do not, then you will suffer the consequences.’

  Questions started to be fired out, but the camera cut back to the studio for analysis; Abrams’ statement must have been broadcast already, and this was just a replay.

  ‘We have with us in the studio Dan Baker,’ the news anchor said, gesturing with an open palm to a well-dressed man sitting opposite on a comfortable-looking couch, ‘former US intelligence agent and current head of Washington think-tank The Neptune Group.’ The anchor turned to the man, eyebrows raised. ‘So tell us, Dan. What sort of leads do we have? Do cases like this get cleared up quickly? How easy is it to find a pirate hideout?’

  ‘Well, you have to read between the lines, the information that’s been released so far is sketchy at best. There’ve been no names released, either Chinese or American, no details about what the ship was carrying. The fact is, there have been no demands, and we don’t even know if it has been hijacked. In a way, we hope it has.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All we know so far is that the ship has disappeared.’

  ‘You think it might have been sunk?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, but both governments are saying hijack, which makes me think that maybe there have been demands, we’re just not being told about them. So analyzing such a situation when nobody’s sharing any information can be really tricky. But to answer your question, the odds are not in our favor. It doesn’t seem that we have any leads, and in any case, it is notoriously hard to find a ship once it’s been taken in these waters.’

  ‘Really? A one hundred and fifty metre, twenty-thousand ton cargo ship is so easy to hide?’

  ‘You have to remember that there are literally thousands of little islands in this area, many uninhabited, most unexplored. Some of them have river access deep inland. And ships which travel the Strait are typically smaller than ocean-going vessels, perfectly capable of navigating such waterways. And once they’re hidden in a cove somewhere, camouflaged or sheltered, it’s not impossible to take one of these ships and make sure it’s never found, even with surveillance drones flying straight overhead.’

  ‘That sure doesn’t sound too positive.’

  Baker shook his head. ‘It’s not. Pirates in the Strait of Malacca have been doing this for seven hundred years, don’t forget.’

  ‘Any likely candidates?’

  ‘Well, from what we can tell, it would appear that the main pirate group in that area goes by the name of Liang Kebangkitan, which means something like the “revive
rs of Liang”, a reference to a famous pirate king of the fourteenth century. However, we don’t know where they’re based, or anything about the group’s leadership. It’s suspected it has some links to terrorist groups such as Jemaah Islamiyah, but we have nothing else on it.’

  The conversation continued, but Cole was no longer listening.

  Liang Kebangkitan.

  He’d heard the name before, when he’d been living in a village just north of Surin. He’d been staying at the home of a small-time arms dealer appropriately named Boom Suparat , who’d rented him a room and been willing to ask no questions.

  Boom had traded handguns and rifles from his house, and when customers had asked where he sourced his weapons, Cole remembered that the man had mentioned a place in Cambodia. He also remembered that Boom had been especially proud that his Cambodian dealer also provided weapons to several notorious criminal and terrorist groups.

  Liang Kebangkitan was one of them.

  Four hours later, Cole was sat overlooking the rail lines of the Bangkok Mass Transport System from a table at the Skytrain Jazz Club.

  He’d wanted some fresh air, but had also wanted to keep on drinking. It was better than psychotherapy; or cheaper, at any rate. He was onto whisky now, nursing a glass of Bell’s Special Reserve at his table for one.

  As rooftop bars went, this was decidedly low-key; the walls of the winding staircase were covered in graffiti, and the whole thing was like a Bohemian speakeasy. And contrary to its name, it seemed to offer no jazz whatsoever; instead, there was more Euro pop.

  Cole’s eyes took in one of the city’s Skytrains as it shot past on the elevated tracks in front of him; there was nothing like that in the northern towns and villages of Thailand, that was for sure. After spending so much time in the backwoods, the sight was like something from an alien world.

  And yet it was a familiar world, one that beckoned to him with a welcoming finger.