by David Archer
“You going sightsee?” the man asked. “I take you see all tourist attractions, very special rate. All day, all day only 3000 baht, best deal in Bangkok.”
Sarah grinned at his enthusiasm, noting that he was a tiny little man. At her five foot two, she actually stood three inches taller. “Okay,” she said with a giggle. “You take me to the Grand Palace?”
“Oh, yes, yes, Grand Palace very important place. Over 200 years old, very beautiful place. We go now?”
“Yep,” she said, and he rushed to hold the door open for her, then did the same with the back door of his bright pink Toyota taxi. Sarah slid inside and let her eyes gaze around at the opulence of the ancient city as the driver slid in behind the wheel.
“My name Jack,” he said. “I take you all around city, show you everything you want to see. We go to Grand Palace now, okay?”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “Grand Palace now.”
“Okay, okay,” Jack said. “Grand Palace, then we go Wat Pho temple, very close. Oldest and most beautiful temple in all Bangkok! Temple of Reclining Buddha!”
He threw the Toyota into gear and they were off.
The Grand Palace was only a fifteen-minute drive from the hotel, mostly because of the number of other vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians on the road that hampered travel, but Sarah decided it was worth the wait. The massive white structure was decorated with orange and black roof tiles and gold trim on every edge, and was undoubtedly one of the most incredible buildings she had ever seen.
She was suddenly reminded of Noah’s interest in architecture, and wished he was with her. She could imagine his face as he studied the logical progression of every line of the palace, and silently promised herself she’d bring him to see it, if possible, before they left Thailand.
Going through the palace took several hours, and the temple just to the south of it occupied two more. By that time, Sarah decided it was time for dinner and asked Jack to take her to a restaurant. Twenty minutes of conversation later, he delivered her to one called the Old Town Café, where she waited another twenty minutes for a table. She insisted on having Jack eat with her, which made him grin from ear to ear, and subjected her to even more of his endless chatter.
It dawned on her that she was finding his company comforting. Being without Noah for the first time in more than a year and a half, she realized she was grasping at any companionship she could find. Jack, for all his strange ways compared to her own culture, was a gentleman and his presence helped to ease her loneliness.
After dinner, Jack suggested she might want to do a little shopping, and the idea appealed to her. He took her to the Terminal 21 Mall, an extremely unusual shopping center with each floor themed after a different city. When she entered on the main level, the design reflected Paris, and she spent half an hour browsing through the many shops. One level up took her to Tokyo, or at least it seemed so. Every store and bit of artwork carried the flair of the Japanese city. When she got to the third floor, the first thing she noted was the iconic red phone booths of London, and she spent an hour browsing for souvenirs that she knew she wouldn’t get to keep.
Staying in character as the carefree tourist was testing her acting ability to its limit, but she managed to keep a smile pasted on her face the whole time. When she finally declared that she was finished shopping, Jack took her to a nightclub where she actually danced with a few of the male patrons, kicking up her heels and putting on the show she knew was expected of her.
It was close to midnight by the time she got back to her hotel, and she was quite tired. She thanked Jack for a wonderful afternoon and evening, tipped him an extra 1000 baht and promised to look him up the next day if she decided to go sightseeing again. She got her room key from the desk and went up the elevator, barely concealing her disappointment at not finding any messages from Noah.
Of course, there wouldn’t be. Noah was on mission, and nothing was more important to him than the mission.
* * * * *
A knock on their hotel room door woke Noah and the guys at about eight PM, and Noah answered it to find two young men standing there. Each of them was holding a couple of boxes, and one of them looked up with a smile. “Mr. Allen?”
“That’s me,” Noah said. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, Sir, we’re with United News Services, Bangkok office. Apparently someone figured you needed some new cameras and recording equipment.”
Noah motioned for the men to step inside, and they set the boxes on the floor. The man who had spoken looked up at Noah again as he closed the door behind them. “I’m Darrell Knapp, E & E liaison office in Bangkok. This stuff was dropped off to us yesterday, and they told us to bring it to you here tonight.”
Marco produced a pocketknife packed with their camera gear and began opening the boxes. Inside one of them, they found the tracking units and the special guns they had trained with. Neil snatched up the monitor and put it with his laptop on the desk. Another held the tools they would need to cut their way through the roof over the storeroom, including two of the air-launched grappling hooks and the vibration detection cones. The other two boxes contained a carry-on bag for each of the two girls they were to take out of the prison, and new purses with identification, passports and other items relevant to their new identities.
“We appreciate it,” Noah said. “How do I contact you if I need anything else?”
“I’m just a phone call away,” Darrell said. He reached into his pocket and produced a business card that he handed to Noah. “Just call that number, it comes straight to my cell phone. We’ve been briefed on your mission, and we have the other special item all set up for you near the prison. When you’re ready for it, you call that number and I’ll be there to put it in the alley for you. We’re keeping it in a van on life support, so once we drop it in the alley, we’ll be gone.”
“Understood.” Noah thanked them again, and the two men left them to look through their new toys. “Looks like it’s time to go to work,” Noah said.
Noah and Neil used the evening to place their tracking units, concealing them carefully in bits of broken architecture on buildings surrounding the proper section of the prison. From the moment Sarah was brought to the facility, they would be able to track her every movement inside.
Fortunately, most of the sleeping areas for the women were in the same general vicinity as the one they had used in their practice runs with the mockup. No matter which one she ended up in, it would take only minor adjustments to their well-rehearsed routine to adapt to it. The only unpredictable factor was whether she would actually be able to stay close to Sharon Ingersoll once she found her. She would have to find a way to be in the same sleeping room with the girl before she used the panic button to signal them.
Marco, meanwhile, had been scouting their entry location. Just like the mockup, there were very few lights on that section of the prison structure, and he didn’t see any indication of security cameras or guards. Noah had cautioned him to do nothing but scout, so he hadn’t brought any tools along with him. If he had, Marco thought he could have climbed the wall and cut in the trap door on his own, without being spotted.
He had been trained to follow orders, so he had done as he was told. Had he known how easy it would be, though, he might have brought along a grapple and tools in spite of them. Marco had a habit of trying to score Brownie points with whoever was in charge, and while it had only caused minor problems in the past, he’d been written up on that issue a few times. Jefferson had cautioned him not to try it with Noah; Noah didn’t think like other people, and expected his team to do exactly, and only, what they were told to do.
The three of them got back to their hotel about an hour before Sarah got to hers. They settled in for the night to get some sleep, then rose at eight the next morning and chose three more inmates to visit.
Sarah got up at about nine, and since lying in bed would be boring, she decided to find Jack and have another day of sightseeing. When things finally began, sh
e figured it would only help her appear to be exactly what her cover claimed: a tourist who decided to be stupid and buy some drugs.
Jack had expected her, and was waiting in the lobby. When he saw her smile in his direction, he knew it was going to be another good day. Westerners, and especially the girls, tended to be generous with tips.
TEN
While Sarah was playing tourist, Noah, Neil and Marco got in a few more interviews and continue to make themselves familiar to the prison staff. Their day went smoothly, and when evening came they were ready to start preparing for the real mission.
When things happen, they tend to happen suddenly.
Sarah had stayed in her room throughout the day on Wednesday, ordering lunch and then dinner from room service. This was the day when everything would begin for her, and she wanted to be rested up before it all started. It was after seven by the time she finally decided to go down to the club, ready to begin the part of the mission that frightened her the most.
The nightclub was intense, with loud music that reminded her of some of the more extreme emo styles she had heard. She got a little table all by herself, but wasn’t surprised when various men asked her to dance. Deciding she needed to keep in character, she accepted a few times, keeping an eye on the time and wondering when she would be approached about buying drugs.
At around ten, a skinny young local man asked her to dance, and didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer. She finally agreed and let him lead her onto the dance floor. It was while they were dancing that he leaned close and said, “You want yaba?”
For a split second, Sarah was taken aback. She had somehow expected the dealer to be an American, probably an E & E operative. She quickly realized, however, that a local made more sense, and looked at him as if curious what he was referring to.
“Yaba,” he said. “You call meth, maybe? Give you lots energy, make you party hard.”
Sarah leaned her head to one side and gave him a grin. “Okay,” she said. “How much?”
His hand dipped into a pocket and produced a small glassine envelope containing about a dozen red pills. “Special deal for you, because you pretty girl. Only 2000 baht.”
With no way of knowing whether it was a good deal or not, Sarah made a show of thinking it over, then nodding her head. “Okay,” she said. She stopped dancing and led the way back to her table, where she reached into her own pocket and produced the money. She counted it out into his hand, and then he slipped the envelope to her under the table.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “You have good time, now.” With that, he got up and left the table and Sarah watched as he exited the bar.
Staying in character for a little longer, she continued to sit at the table and finish her latest drink. When it was gone, she rose and made her way out of the club and to the elevator. She went to her room, slipped the envelope into a pocket of her suitcase, and then showered before getting into bed.
She hadn’t expected to be able to sleep, knowing that a raid was imminent, but the combination of alcohol and heavy dancing had worn her out. She drifted off within minutes of lying down, and was awakened suddenly at two AM by the sound of pounding on her door.
Terrified, both by the knowledge of what was about to happen and the noise of someone pounding on the door while she was barely half awake, she climbed out of bed and pulled the door open. She was instantly grabbed and thrown back onto the bed, where she was held down by one man as two more begin ransacking the room.
It took them only a couple of minutes to dig through the dresser drawers, and then they started on her suitcases. Seconds later, one of the men shouted as he held up the envelope of drugs. The man holding Sarah down suddenly yanked her to her feet and began shouting in her face, but she didn’t understand anything he was saying.
The blank look on her face told him she didn’t understand, so he grabbed the envelope from the other man, shook it in front of her face and shouted, “Yaba!”
A few more shouted words, even though she didn’t understand them, surely telling her she was under arrest. Without even trying, she began to cry and protest, but she was spun around and handcuffed, then dragged out the door and to the elevator. A few people in the lobby stared as she was obviously led to a police car waiting just outside the front door.
At the local police station, Sarah was shoved into a holding cell with a dozen other people, both male and female. Several of them were intoxicated, and she had to fight off advances more than once, but she managed to hold her own. For the next seven hours, she sat in the cell and watched as one by one, the others were led out and seated at various desks in the room outside.
When her turn came, she was shoved into a seat beside the desk of a large, ugly-looking man. He typed into a computer for a few moments, then looked up at her.
“You American?”
Sarah swallowed and nodded. “Yes, I’m an American. I need to talk to somebody from our embassy, can you call them for me?”
“Maybe later,” the big man said. “Right now I tell you you under arrest for sell yaba. Why you think you come here and sell drug?”
“Selling? But I wasn’t selling anything,” she protested. “I just thought—somebody offered to sell me some, and I hadn’t ever tried it so I thought I’d see what it was like. I just bought a little bit for me, I wasn’t going to sell it to anyone.”
“You got twelve pills,” the man said. “Too many for you. Only reason you have so many is to sell. I charge you with possession for sale, very serious here in Thailand. You get five years, maybe ten, maybe more. We no like Americans come here to sell drugs. Very bad, very bad.”
“But I—”
The man waved a hand to shush her, and she fell silent. He typed on his computer keyboard for several minutes, then looked up at her again. “What you name?”
Sarah had used the intervening minutes to get herself under control and remind herself that this was all part of the mission. “Kayla,” she said. “Kayla Maguire.”
A dozen more questions demanded her home address and other information, all of which she provided from the manufactured mission identity. If anyone bothered to check, they would find that Kayla Maguire had lived at the provided address for almost a year, and actually worked where she claimed to. Such records are easy to manufacture for an organization like E & E, and Donald Jefferson had taken pains to make them as realistic as possible.
By the time the questioning was done, it was nearly noon. Sarah was pushed back into the holding cell and given a small bowl of rice and fish to eat. No sooner did she have it, however, than another prisoner snatched the bowl from her hands and began shoveling it into his own mouth. Sarah didn’t even bother to protest, knowing it would be futile.
Two hours later, she was taken out once more, handcuffed again and led through several hallways into a small courtroom. She was pushed into a chair at the table, and the man sitting beside her looked at her for only a second before standing up to address the judge.
Sarah couldn’t understand anything that was said, but she knew it wasn’t good. When the man beside her sat once more, he turned to her and said, “You guilty. Police find drugs, you all alone, you guilty. You plead guilty, you get smaller sentence, only three years. You no plead guilty, you get twenty-five years.”
Sarah stared at him in disbelief, which she didn’t have to fake. No wonder there were so many Americans in Thai prisons, she thought. Almost anyone would take a plea bargain like that, knowing there was no hope of any viable defense. She let the tears flow that were already hovering behind her eyelids, bit her bottom lip and nodded.
A man stood once more and spoke to the judge in rapid Thai, after which the judge nodded and replied. Something was scribbled on a piece of paper that was passed to the judge, who signed it. A clerk took the paper and left the room for a couple of minutes, then came back and handed a copy to the man that Sarah assumed was her attorney.
He looked at her again. “You smart girl,” he said. “Judge onl
y give you three years. Sentence start today, you go to prison tomorrow.”
“But,” Sarah protested, “just like that? I thought this was just like an arraignment or something.”
“This how we do things,” the man said. “You Westerns, judge don’t waste time. You plead guilty, he give you sentence right now.”
“But, can’t I talk to…”
“Someone from American Embassy come see you in prison,” the man said. “Maybe this week, maybe next week.”
A hand grasped her by her upper arm and she was pulled up out of the chair and whisked out the door. She thought she was being taken back to the holding cell, but the guard escorting her took another turn and she was led into a different section of the building. In this one, female prisoners sat in individual cells, and Sarah was pushed into the first empty one they came to.
The guard removed her handcuffs and pointed at the bunk, obviously telling her to sit. She did, and the door was slammed shut and locked. She leaned back against the steel wall behind the bunk and stared around herself.
She could see into the cells across from her, and noticed a couple of Caucasian women. “Hey,” she called out. “Are you Americans?”
One of them ignored her completely, but the other looked over at her and grinned. “Nah, mate,” she said. “We’re from Australia. They get you for yaba?”
Sarah nodded. “Yeah. I bought a little bit last night, just to try it, and the next thing I know I’ve got cops busting in my hotel room door.”
The woman laughed. “Yeah, it’s an old game,” she said. “Some of the dealers, they make double money by selling drugs to farangs and then takin’ the piss on us. They tell the cops they sell to, probably get twice as much money as they did off you. That’s how we got here, too. What hotel you staying in?”