by David Archer
As planned, there was radio silence until Noah and Marco reached the boxes. Marco made a soft clucking sound when they saw that all of the boxes were open, this time, but Noah only glanced at him. He stood and looked at the boxes for a few seconds, then spoke into the microphone beside his cheek.
“This is Camelot,” he said. “Objective is at large. Report any sighting.”
He looked at Marco again, and used hand signals to direct him to start through the trees along the right side of the path, while he took the left side. The main compound was only 100 yards or so away, and they moved quietly through the wooded area until it came into view.
There were three men standing in the middle of the compound, each holding an assault rifle. Noah aimed his pistol carefully, and the silencer made a thwut sound that reminded him of a bare foot hitting mud. The first of the three men dropped, and the silencer sounded twice more. All three of them were down on the ground, a third eye suddenly centered in their foreheads.
While the silencer’s noise was not enough to rouse anyone else in the compound, the rattle of three assault rifles falling to the ground did. After a couple of seconds, a half-dozen men came stumbling sleepily out of two of the huts, while a male voice was heard demanding to know what was going on from a third.
More silencers sounded, but then there came the boom of Jenny’s own pistol, a nine millimeter Beretta she had produced from the hidden compartment in one of her bags. Immediately afterward, a man began screaming, but he was drowned out by Jenny’s voice.
“Oh, stop squalling,” she shouted. “You didn’t need that anymore, anyway.” The gun boomed again, and the screaming stopped.
The third hut, where the man in charge seemed to have been hiding as he demanded information, suddenly discharged a couple more men, followed by one more man who was holding a woman in front of himself as a shield. Noah recognized Sharon Ingersoll instantly, despite the fact that she was naked. He raised his pistol and fired once, and the man holding her developed third eye of his own.
Sharon began to scream as she was dragged to the ground, the dead man’s hand still gripping her neck as he fell. Marco took out the other two, as Noah ran to Sharon and yanked her free. He started to speak to her, but an assault rifle rattled, and he felt the touch of fire as one of its bullets passed between his left arm and his ribs, digging a three-inch gouge on the inside of his arm.
He spun and fired in a single movement, keeping the girl behind his body. The man who had fired at him fell, but there were more of them coming into view. A quick scan of the area showed him seven dead bodies, but that meant there were still more than a dozen armed men he couldn’t account for.
“I have the objective,” he said into the headset. “Be alert for any sign of the second objective and report immediately if found.”
“You’re Noah,” Sharon said suddenly, but other armed men were trying to take aim at them. Noah fired again in their direction, causing them to scatter for cover, while he dragged her away from the hut and toward the trees. Some of the men were trying to pursue, and he could hear the rattle of automatic fire punctuated by the loud thwack of bullets striking the trees around them.
“I’ve got you covered,” Marco’s voice said in his ear. An instant later, Noah heard the sound of Marco’s own silencer. At least one of the men pursuing him grunted and fell, but Noah wasn’t ready to turn around and look behind him. The mission objective was Sharon, and it was imperative that she survive and be evacuated as soon as possible. He kept running, dragging her along stumbling behind him, and listening to the sound of the gun battle going on behind them.
“I have located several women, but objective two is not present,” said Marino through the headsets.
“I concur, objective two does not seem to be present,” Lange echoed.
“Well, don’t give up,” Jenny said through the headsets. “I don’t want to take a chance on leaving the girl behind, so let’s look everywhere! Randy, you and Jim make sure you check all the huts, look anywhere she might be concealed!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Randy, and he was echoed a second later by Jim Marino.
TWENTY-FOUR
Noah pushed Sharon behind him again and fired twice more. The latest man who’d been shooting at them ducked down, and Noah could see him running away. He turned to the girl who was cowering and crying against his back.
“Where is Sarah?” He demanded, but she didn’t seem to hear him at first. He grabbed her chin and tilted her face up so that she was looking at him and repeated the question. Her eyebrows drew together and she looked confused. Noah instantly realized his mistake. “Kayla,” he said. “What happened to Kayla?”
“I—I don’t know,” she said shakily. “The men, they took her a few hours ago. There was this other man, and he gave the head guy here a bunch of money for her. I don’t think she’s here anymore.”
Noah stared at her for a couple of seconds, then took her by the hand and began moving back toward the trees. “First thing I’ve got to do is get you out of here,” he said. “After that, I’ll find out where they took her. Marco, did you catch that?”
The earpiece came alive in his ear. “Negative, what’s going on?”
“I’ve got Sharon, I’m getting her out. She says Sarah was taken away some time ago, apparently sold.”
“Well, crap,” Marco’s staticky voice said. “Sounds like we need some more intelligence, right?”
“Chill, Noah,” came Jenny’s voice. “Boys, keep a couple of the watchdogs alive and healthy for me. I’ll find out where she’s gone.”
“Copy that,” Noah said. “Neil, what’s the situation at the boat?”
The chatter of the little Uzi sounded briefly. Neil didn’t answer for a couple of seconds, but then Noah heard: “Only seen one man down here so far, and I think I just killed him. You gonna get here soon?”
“Ten minutes,” Noah said. “Hold it together for me till I get there.”
“I’m trying,” Neil said, “but it’s all I can do not to puke my guts out.”
Behind him, Noah could hear the sound of Glocks mingling with the rattle of Kalashnikovs. The assault rifles were excellent weapons, but close-quarter fighting like this was better done with handguns. He had no doubt that Marco, Jenny and her team were cutting down the ranks of the Nay Thas soldiers.
Suddenly, the island went silent just as Noah saw the boat come into view. “Neil,” he said into the headset. “I’m coming out of the woods to your left. Scan the beach, is it clear?”
“It’s clear,” the shaky voice replied. “Hurry up, will you? I really need to be sick.”
Still holding Sharon’s hand, Noah stepped out into the open and scanned around himself while making his way toward the boat. As he got close, he saw Neil lean over the far side and heard the sounds of retching. A dozen yards away, he saw the reason why.
One of the men from the compound had apparently tried to investigate the boat, but Neil had followed Noah’s orders perfectly. As soon as he could clearly see that he was dealing with an armed man, he had shouted a warning. When that man aimed his rifle toward the boat, Neil had sprayed him with the little submachine gun, dropping him where he stood.
Neil understood what the team did, and was always ready to do his job—but he was simply not a killer. Had he not been certain that the other man would have killed him, Noah doubted the boy would ever have been able to pull the trigger.
The silence on the island continued for several minutes, though he could hear the chatter of the others through the headset. Marco and Randy had captured a couple of the men, and were holding them for Jenny’s arrival. When she got there, all of them turned off their headsets.
It didn’t make much of a difference. The first of the men began screaming only a few seconds later, and that was followed by shouting from the second. Noah couldn’t make out the words, but he was quite sure they were being spoken in answer to the questions Jenny was asking.
Noah put Sharon into the boat
with Neil, then stood beside its bow keeping watch. No one else attempted to approach, and Noah was fairly sure there were no more of the slavers running loose on the island. He himself had killed several, and each of the others had claimed more than one life. In his initial reconnaissance, he had estimated that there were no more than two-dozen; since two of them were still alive, there probably weren’t many others left, if any.
His headset came to life. “Noah?” Jenny said. “We are coming out.”
“All right. Did you learn anything about Sarah?”
There was silence for a moment, and then he heard Jenny’s sigh. “They said she was sold, all right,” she said softly. “But, Noah—they said she put up a fight when her buyer tried to take her. Apparently they beat her pretty badly. The man who talked said—he said she didn’t seem to be breathing when they loaded her into the helicopter.”
Noah took a moment to digest what he had heard, then glanced around at Sharon Ingersoll. “We’ve got the mission objective,” he said. “Let’s get her to someplace we can clean her up and start coaching her on her new identity. I want to put her on a plane out of Pattaya sometime tomorrow. Once that’s done, I’ll start looking for Sarah.”
“You mean we’ll start looking for her,” Jenny said. “I just completed a mission, they won’t be sending me out for at least a couple of weeks. The boys and I will stick with you as long as we can.” She seemed to hesitate for a second. “I tried to get the name of the buyer, but these guys didn’t seem to know it. I had to settle for a couple of names they did know. Apparently, Nay Thas is run on an almost military-type structure. These guys said this camp was run by Captain Pak. According to them, we can find him and his lieutenant, a guy named Cho, right there in Pattaya. They run one of the Muay Thai arenas.”
“Good,” Noah said. “Then at least we know where to start.”
Everyone but Noah and Marco climbed into the boat, and the two of them pushed it off the beach and back into the water before jumping in themselves. Noah clambered back to the tiller and threw the electric motor into reverse, backing it away from the beach before turning it around and shifting it into forward motion. This time, he didn’t care how much noise the boat made and shoved the speed controller all the way to its stop.
Jenny settled herself next to Sharon, and put an arm around the girl. “Are you okay?”
Sharon, who had been barely able to hold herself together through the firefight, suddenly threw herself against Jenny as she dissolved into tears and hysterics. It took almost 15 minutes for her to get herself back under control, and then she slowly began to describe her ordeal.
“At first, there were just five of them,” she said. “I tried to ignore it, to just let it happen, but they—they raped me, one after the other, and when they got done they let more of them come in. Over and over, it was like—it was horrible. Oh, God, I’m so ashamed!”
Jenny hugged her close and stroked her hair. “Shh,” she said softly, “just let it go, let it out. It’s okay to cry, honey, but you have to remember that you didn’t do anything wrong. You were the one who got hurt, not the one who hurt someone else, and there’s nothing for you to be ashamed of. And, as for those men? Every one of them is dead, now, and at least a couple of them got their dicks cut off or shot off before they died. None of them will ever do this to anyone else, and none of them will ever touch you again.”
Sharon pulled back and looked up at her face, and then the tears began anew. Jenny hugged her tight once more, and gradually the girl’s sobbing slowed and stopped.
When they got back to the boathouse, they cleaned up every trace of their presence on the boat and in the facility, then Jenny, Sharon and Neil got into the car with Dave and drove away. Noah and the others got onto the motorcycles and followed, as they traveled back into Pattaya and to their hotel.
Jenny took Sharon into her room, grabbing the girl’s new carry-on bag with clean clothes and toiletries, while all of the men piled into Noah’s. Jim, Randy and Dave simply made themselves as comfortable as they could on the floor, and they all were asleep within minutes.
Next door, Sharon spent most of an hour in the shower, until it ran so cold she had to get out. She put on some of the new clothes from the bag—Jenny had thrown her slavery clothes into the trash—and then the two of them lay together and held each other until shortly before dawn.
Noah let himself sleep until ten, but then his internal alarm clock woke him. The rest were still asleep, but it was time to start the next phase. He picked up his phone and dialed a number as the rest of them were forcing themselves awake.
“Thank you for calling Brigadoon Investments,” came the same recorded voice, but Noah didn’t wait for the rest of the message. He punched in the code that got him direct access to the off-hours operator, reported that he had located and retrieved the mission objective, and would be putting her on a plane later that day.
“Hold one,” the operator said, and Noah listened to hold music for almost two minutes.
“Camelot? It’s Allison. Tell me about Sarah.”
“I have no concrete knowledge about Sarah,” Noah said. “After interrogation of some of the men at the slave camp, we were told that she had been sold, but that she had put up a fight and did not appear to be breathing when she was taken away by helicopter. We have a couple of leads to check out, will do as soon as our mission objective is safely on her way out of the country.”
Allison was silent for several seconds, and then Noah heard her curse softly. “Noah, don’t assume she’s dead. You find out exactly what happened, and if possible you bring her back alive. If not—if not, then I want you to kill every single one of the bastards responsible, you understand me?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I understand. Cinderella wants to stay and work with me on this for a while. Is that acceptable?”
“Hell, yes, it’s acceptable! You’re the best I’ve got, but Jenny’s probably number two. Between the two of you and your teams, I expect you to do whatever it takes to find that girl and bring her home if she’s alive.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Noah said, and then the line went dead.
Jenny brought Sharon over to his room a few minutes later, and Randy and Neil were sent out for lunch. They came back twenty minutes later with buckets of honest-to-goodness KFC chicken and side dishes of rice and curry. The eight of them sat down to eat, as Noah began to explain to Sharon that her old life was completely over, and she was about to begin a new one.
“The problem,” he explained, “is that Sharon Ingersoll now has an international criminal record and is listed worldwide as having escaped from prison in Thailand. The State Department doesn’t want to take any chances on this coming back to haunt you, or them, at any time in the future. Since you are so valuable to DARPA, and since you have no living family, it was decided that the best thing to do was to create an entirely new identity for you. The people you work with have enough security clearances to be aware of the situation, so I’m going to provide you with your new identification, passport, luggage and everything today.”
Sharon seemed surprised, but a part of her seemed to be relieved, as well. “So, Sharon is dead, then? Who am I now, can you tell me that?”
Noah nodded. “Yes,” he said, and he handed her the purse that had been intended for her. “Your new name is Alexis Stratton, and you’re from Bakersfield, California. There’s a letter in the purse that will tell you more about your new life history, and when you get home, you’ll be going through some intense training to make it come naturally to you. For now, you only need to memorize your name, date of birth and your new passport number. As soon as you’re ready, we can take you to the airport and put you on a plane back to the states.”
It took about two more hours for Sharon to accept the situation, but she finally looked at Jenny and smiled. “All that that happened last night,” she said, “that was when Sharon died. None of that ever happened to me. Not to Alexis, y’know?”
Noah cocked his head to on
e side and looked at her. “If you can hold onto that thought,” he said, “if you can cling to that and wrap your pain around it, then you’re already on the way to recovery. You’re still going to have some rough times, I’m sure, but if you can hang on tight to that way of thinking, then I believe you will get through it.”
At just after three that afternoon, Jenny, Neil and Marco took Alexis to the airport and put her on a flight that would take her back to Arlington, Virginia, where a new home awaited her. She thanked each of them before they left, and even kissed Neil and Marco and Jenny just before she boarded the plane that would take her to Switzerland for her first layover.
When Jenny and the two men returned, Noah finally told them about his phone conversation with Allison, and Jenny smiled. “Good thing she said it was okay,” she said, “cause I wasn’t leaving you. Let’s go find this Captain Pak and make him talk, shall we?”
TWENTY-FIVE
Neil looked at her, then glanced at Noah. “I, uh, I did a little research last night, while the rest of you were sleeping,” he said. “I found Pak, and he apparently owns the Pattaya Muay Thai Champions’ Arena, down off Walking Street.”
“Walking Street?” Noah asked.
“Yeah, that’s what it’s called. It’s sort of a long shopping and nightclub area, and it’s been blocked off to keep cars out. Champions’ Arena is really just a training gym on one of the alleys that lead off it. I guess there have been some pretty good fighters who have trained there.” He paused and looked meaningfully at Noah. “It’s also a place where some of the deadliest fighters in the world hang out, so I’d suggest we all go, and go armed, if you plan to ask this guy any questions he might object to.”
“What time does it close?” Noah asked.
Neil’s eyebrows went up a notch. “I don’t think it does,” he said. “From what I read, this Pak is there most of the time. I’m guessing we know where he is when he’s gone.”