Betrayal j-2

by Russell Blake

  The sidewalks were filled with office workers going home for the evening as Edgar waited for Jet in his car in a parking lot near Nana. She’d called at five, as agreed, and they had arranged a meet for six-thirty, so she could get her kit. Street vendors held baskets of food aloft to the teeming multitudes, offering delicacies such as snake and fried, seasoned beetle — all for a nominal amount.

  Jet’s knock on the passenger-side window caused him to start. He unlocked the door.

  “Nice ride,” she said, surveying the nine-year-old Kia sedan’s fading interior as she slipped into the seat next to him. “Drive.”

  “Where?”

  “To the park. I’ll keep an eye out for any tail. I didn’t see any watchers on approach, but let’s be sure, shall we?”

  Edgar eased out of the stall and paid the attendant, then pulled into the gridlocked traffic, the little Kia’s motor threatening to stall as he mistimed the clutch. The taxi he cut off honked a short, percussive toot. Edgar waved and shrugged. Jet studied him with a doubtful smirk, then resumed her watch in the side mirror. If someone had them under surveillance, they would have had their work cut out, unless they were doing so on foot.

  Five minutes later, they’d advanced one block.

  “We could probably crawl faster than we’ll get there in the car,” Edgar complained.

  “Maybe so, but I have my reasons. Did you get everything?”

  “Yes. It’s all in a duffle in the trunk. I have to admit that two of the items raised eyebrows. We don’t see a lot of call for those. Anyway, we had to go with the P90. I couldn’t get my hands on the MTAR in time. But I have one coming, by tomorrow, if he’s still around.”

  “Big if.”

  “I know.”

  “Any more word on that?”

  “Nothing new. He’s still at the condo as of now.”

  “I’ll need a car when he bolts. And I might not have much time. Can you get me one that’s clean?”

  “I already have one waiting.”

  “No tracker on it — or in any of this gear, right?”

  “Correct. Sort of would defeat the purpose at this point.”

  She fiddled with the air-conditioning vent, pointing it at her face.

  “Arthur convinced me to give Rob a chance. Tell him I’ll be calling him within the next few hours on his cell. Did he get his chip removed?”

  “After we had our chat. He’s clean now. Although I think it’s more likely that they tracked one of your phones than the chip. By the way, I have Rob’s, along with yours. We had one of our assets on the police force go and collect it at the doctor’s. I presume you’ll want it in the car with Rob?”

  “Correct. That way anyone tracking us will think we’re following Pu, which I think they probably expect at this point if the attack came from them. I would bet money they’re tracking the chips. If my instinct’s right, the other teams were dead before they ever left Bangkok.”

  “I still don’t think they are, but this is your show.”

  “That’s right. It is,” she said and left it at that.

  They crawled along, tuk tuks and motorcycles roaring past them like swarms of metal locusts, vendors darting in and out of the endless rows of cars with every imaginable type of merchandise. The streets had converted into a giant moving market, which she found somehow fitting. She watched for any surveillance for another ten minutes and, finally satisfied that they were clean, patted Edgar’s leg.

  “Pop the trunk. I’m going to walk.”

  “What? Right here?”

  “Yes. Pop it now. I’ll get in touch soon.”

  With that, she opened the door and stepped out into traffic, quickly rounding the fender and pulling the black duffle bag out of the trunk. She slammed the lid closed and, without looking back, darted between a delivery truck and a taxi, then veered around a motor scooter, and was gone.

  Chapter 20

  “Happy to see me?” Rob asked.

  “Ecstatic.”

  He motioned to the duffle. “You have everything in that?”

  “Yup. Let’s roll.”

  It was two a.m., and they’d gotten word from the surveillance team that Pu had departed his club half an hour earlier, but instead of returning home, the car had headed north. Rob had picked her up near Nana and was haring up the expressway, trying to catch up. The signal had slowed near Don Muang airport, and they were closing the distance when Rob’s phone rang. Edgar told them that the car signal had returned to downtown, but the watch signal was now headed north again.

  “How long until you’re at the airport?” Edgar asked.

  “Five minutes,” Rob replied.

  “He’s on highway one headed north. I instructed the surveillance car to stick with him until he either stops or you catch up to them. If you’re five minutes from the airport, they’re still around fifteen miles ahead of you, so I’d put my foot into it,” Edgar advised. “They’ll hand off the tracker once you’re close to them. They’re in a white Jetta with a frog decal on the back bumper.” He gave them the license number.

  “All right. I’m signing off. I’ll call you once we’re in sight.”

  The speedometer climbed until they were doing ninety miles per hour, racing along the nearly deserted freeway into the hinterlands. After they had passed the airport, the lights of Bangkok faded in the rearview mirror, replaced by the haphazard illumination of the smaller towns and convenience stops along the freeway.

  An hour later, they saw the Jetta as they were approaching Ban It. Rob called Edgar, who instructed them to pull off at the next exit and do the swap.

  The handoff took seconds, and soon they were back on the road, the signal blinking bright on the handheld tracker Edgar had arranged for them.

  “Looks like he’s about a mile and a half ahead,” Jet said. “I’d get to within a mile of him then settle in for the duration.”

  “This is going to be a long night. The last team tailed him all the way to the Myanmar border before he crossed over and ditched the car. That’s many, many hours of driving.”

  “Want to bet he’s not driving himself?”

  “I think that’s a given.”

  “Why wouldn’t he fly?” Jet asked.

  “Good question. Best we could tell, he doesn’t want any record of his coming and going. Even a private plane would create a record, these days. It isn’t like it was ten years ago. Automation isn’t the smuggler’s friend.”

  “And yet he didn’t have any problems getting Lawan to Bangkok, so it can’t be that foolproof,” she said.

  “I didn’t say it was perfect. I said it was harder than it used to be. Anyway, that’s my guess. Or maybe he’s afraid of planes. Who knows?”

  “No point in speculating.”

  Rob nodded. “True. What do you think the chances are they try to hit us on the road?”

  “Nil. Why would they, when as far as they know, we’re coming right to them? Assuming it was this group that was after us, I’d wait until we were on their turf. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Sure, but what do you mean assuming it was them? Who else would it be?”

  “I don’t know. I just know something about all of this isn’t adding up,” she said, then sank into silence for a minute. “How rested are you?”

  “I’m fine. If he’s going to drive straight through, we should switch off in around six hours. I can easily make it till then,” Rob assured her.

  “Then you take the first shift.” Jet adjusted her seat into a fully reclined position and closed her eyes.

  When she awoke, they were at a fuel stop in Mueng Tak. The warm light of morning was beaming through the windshield. She looked at her watch.

  “Eight thirty?” Jet asked.

  “Yes. They stopped a quarter mile away. Probably grabbing something to eat.”

  “Sounds like a good idea.”

  “How about an energy bar and some fruit juice?”

  “You read my mind. I’ll take over driving now. How far are we f
rom the border?”

  “Eight hours. The roads will get more squirrely the farther north we go,” Rob warned.

  “So we’ll get there before dusk?”

  “We should.”

  “Sounds like someone is hoping to make a night crossing.”

  “How unexpected.”

  “What if he has an ATV waiting for him somewhere in the jungle? I think you need to call Edgar and arrange for something, just in case.”

  “Already ahead of you,” Rob said. “We’ve got two horses waiting for us at Mae Sai. They can have them wherever we need them if we give them enough lead time.”

  “Sounds like you’ve thought of everything. That scares me,” Jet muttered.

  Rob smiled. “Occasionally we can do something right, as hard as that is for you to believe.”

  “Yeah. Like bury your dead.”

  She walked around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel, then reached over and unwrapped an energy bar while Rob paid for the gas and got their drinks.

  The road became curvier as they proceeded north, and Rob had a hard time resting as they swung around the turns. The day ground on inexorably, and at three o’clock, they switched again.

  At six, the red dot slowed four miles south of Mae Sai, the border town that was the major crossing point into Myanmar, and then came to a stop.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Looks like he’s stopping.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably plans to cross into Myanmar over in the hills. There are temples and dirt roads up there, and the patrols are lackadaisical, to say the least. What do you want to bet some army troops are paid to be anywhere but there when he crosses?”

  “Makes sense. I guess we’ll find out soon enough whether he’s got an ATV or a horse, or if he’s going to do it on foot.”

  “From what I know about this area, it will be a horse. The mountains here are nearly impassible in large sections. Think very low tech. But what puzzles me is that this isn’t really very close to where we lost our teams. It was a lot further north, in the jungles surrounding the Me Kong river. This is still jungle, but more hill tribe country.”

  “Are there any roads?”

  “Not really.”

  “Maybe there’s your answer. Not a bad place to disappear, I’d guess.”

  Pu’s red dot stayed stationary until it got dark. Rob’s cell had no reception, so he called Edward using the satellite phone and gave him their position. Edward called them back five minutes later and told them that he would have the horses there within an hour.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a long one,” Rob observed.

  Jet ignored him, thinking through their next step. She didn’t like that he seemed chatty. That didn’t bode well. A talkative assassin was one with dim survival prospects. He apparently took the hint, got out of the car and busied himself with his gear, preparing for the night to come.

  An old farm truck arrived, towing an ancient trailer with a makeshift railing that had two medium-sized horses, already saddled, tethered to it. Rob handled the discussion with the tiny man, who jumped from behind the wheel to get the horses unloaded. Jet continued watching the glowing dot, two miles north of them. Pu was waiting for nightfall. She handed Rob the baggie containing the two GPS chips and murmured terse instructions, which he repeated to the old man in Thai. The man nodded and put the chips in his shirt pocket before climbing back into the truck and pulling away. He would toss them into the backs of two different trucks as he drove back through town, so anyone tracking them would think they had separated and were looking for Pu, having lost his trail. Anyone watching would be expecting visual surveillance, not a tracking device in Pu’s watch. All the better to lead them on a goose chase, at least for a little while.

  Fog rolled over the mountains as the sun sank into the hills, and before long they were enshrouded in an eerie netherworld, blanketed in white, unable to see more than fifty yards. At eight o’clock, the dot on their tracking device began moving.

  Jet leapt to her feet. “We’re on. He’s mobile.”

  “Let’s watch his speed. That will tell us everything we need to know,” Rob suggested.

  After a few minutes studying the screen, she looked up at him.

  “He’s walking.”

  “Then that’s what we do.”

  “Yes, but we’re bringing the horses. He might have one waiting across the border. We don’t know how far he’s traveling, so we should expect that he’ll have a guide on the Myanmar side.”

  Jet moved to the trunk and pulled her gear out. Rob pointed at a long, flat, black nylon case.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Depends on what you think it is.”

  “You know how to use it?”

  “Do I look like I’m in the mood to experiment?”

  She tossed him a smaller case. “This is for you. Idiot proof.”

  He opened it and peeked inside. “Very nice. Thanks.”

  They hastily packed their kits into the saddlebags and mounted up, then made for the northern summit of the mountain, taking care to have their night vision goggles ready. The thickening fog provided a cloak of muffled silence. After a mile of easing along a trail, Jet dismounted.

  “What?”

  “Shhh. I want to walk them from here on out. We’re only about a mile behind him. I don’t want to get any closer. One stray whinny or snort will give us away.”

  “Okay,” Rob whispered, aware that voices would carry once all the background noise of civilization faded. He dropped to the ground and reached into his bag for the goggles, but Jet shook her head.

  “Battery life is going to be an issue. Only one of us at a time with the night vision gear. I’ll go first.”

  “We have several spare batteries.”

  She spun to face him. “Rob. Don’t question me, or imagine that you have a better idea. You’re here to support me, against my will. Now, please, do as I say without a hint of anything but complete approval, or you’re out, right here, and won’t be going any further. Do you understand?”

  He balked, then nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “That’s better.”

  She flipped her goggles into place and switched them on, and the coalescing gloom suddenly illuminated in neon green. The fog still limited their visibility, but at least she could make out the trail.

  “Follow me,” she said, taking her horse by the bridle and leading it forward into the darkness.

  They would be over the first crest within half an hour at their current speed: in Myanmar, traveling through an area of the country where heroin traffickers and slavers prowled the jungles, and death was as sudden and common as the fog that enveloped them.

  Chapter 21

  Three hours into their surrealistic trek, Pu’s red dot began moving faster.

  “Looks like he’s got transportation of some sort,” Jet whispered.

  “I don’t hear any motors, so you were right. Has to be a horse. How far ahead of us is he now?”

  “About a mile and a half. But that’s fine. I don’t want to get right up on him. He can’t keep this pace up forever, so my guess is that he’ll be wherever he’s headed by morning. At his new rate of speed, that would take us…thirty-five to forty miles northwest. In the middle of nowhere.”

  A cloudburst interrupted their discussion, soaking them both and turning the trail into a muddy slog before it stopped raining as abruptly as it had started. Shortly afterwards, the mosquitoes came out. After spraying herself down with repellant, Jet tossed the plastic bottle to Rob.

  “You’ll want to douse yourself.”

  “I know. Nasty stuff roaming around here.”

  They waited until Pu was two miles ahead of them, then mounted up, urging the horses to a trot, which was all they could safely manage in the misty murk. An hour later, they were descending the summit, well inside Myanmar. There wasn’t a sign of another human, only the sound of creatures going about their nocturnal rou
nds.

  The red dot began to venture deeper into the treacherous hill country, the fog thickening as they proceeded. Another shower of warm rain arrived with a clap of thunder, but this time the downpour didn’t stop, adding to the discomfort of the trek.

  The first rays of dawn were cutting through the clouds when the dot stopped moving. Jet held up a hand and pulled her horse up short, then dropped out of the saddle, still holding the tracking device. She moved to Rob and whispered to him.

  “Bingo. He’s stopped. I think we’re there. This must be one of Hawker’s camps.”

  “I’ll call it in to Edgar. He’ll want to know the location.”

  She glared at him. “You’ll do no such thing. Everything about this has been sketchy since the start. I don’t want anyone knowing where we are or what progress we’ve made until we’ve secured the target and successfully concluded the mission. Are we clear on that?”

  “I have my orders.”

  “Your first order is not to argue or question mine. So help me, if you so much as look crosswise at me or do anything I haven’t given permission for, you’ll be my first kill out here. Look at me. Do I look like I’m joking? Do not under any circumstances call Edgar or anyone else. Give me the phone. Now.”

  Rob dismounted and retrieved the phone, then handed it to her. “I guess we’ve made it this far and we’re still alive. I’ll follow your lead. Seems like that’s better than the last two teams did.”

  “Exactly. Something stinks in all of this, but I don’t know where. If the target has a mole in CIA headquarters, we have no idea what information is being relayed to him. I’m taking no chances.”

  He looked up at the drizzling sky. “It would be nice if it stopped raining. This is pretty miserable.”

  “It could work to our advantage. The sound will mask any noise we make, within reason. Let’s get to within a mile of Pu and stake out a camp, and then I want to do some reconnaissance — see what we’re up against. If they have patrols, I doubt very much they’ll be straying beyond that range. There’s no point if they’re not looking for a specific target or expecting any unusual risk.” She glanced at him. “We’ll walk the horses from here.”