“Much more than that. I became their conduit. They would have me hold onto ten million’s worth of diamonds and convert them into dollars. That’s where Pu came in. I’d developed him as a snitch over ten years ago, and he had all the contacts to make the diamonds disappear — at a slight discount, of course.” He shifted uncomfortably and continued. “I wanted to know what I was really involved in. Once I saw the lie and figured out that something was going on that had nothing to do with legitimate company business, I started nosing around, and the more I dug, the uglier it got. These guys don’t just take the supply from here. They also have the market cornered for heroin from Afghanistan. Which currently produces two times the world total demand for heroin. So they have a price problem. They either need a much larger market of addicts — which they’re working hard to create in Europe and Russia — or they need to have total control over the supply, so they can maintain margins.
“Anyway, when I figured out that I’d devoted the last decade of my life to operating the largest illegal drug operation on the planet, I had what you might call a crisis of confidence. It wasn’t what I had signed up for…let’s just say it wasn’t how I saw myself.”
She nodded, a twist of anxiety budding in her gut.
“I decided to put a stop to it. Single-handedly. When I had a particularly large diamond run to make — four months’ payment — I simply took the money and ran. The drug lords were furious. I told them that the Americans hadn’t sent the diamonds because they wanted a twenty-five percent price reduction, which threw the entire scheme into disarray. The drug lords went nuts and immediately went out and started talking to competitive criminal syndicates — most notably, the Russian and Chinese. So now the CIA had a real problem. They’d lost two hundred million in stones, which they’d gotten from trading weapons to Africa in return for the diamonds. Have you ever heard of blood diamonds?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know they come from countries nobody is supposed to trade with because they are generally exchanged for guns and bombs and tanks and planes that are used for genocide. The diamonds are typically mined by slave laborers who live in starvation conditions. Starting to see the similarities? You have these slaves on one side who are producing the diamonds, which are traded for arms the CIA sourced using drug-trafficking proceeds, and then the diamonds are exchanged for the drugs that are then sold worldwide, generating more cash with which to buy weapons to trade for diamonds. It’s a perfect rinsing machine. But then I stuck my nose in it and spoiled everything. Needless to say, losing two hundred million threw a hitch in the group’s cash flow — that was probably a month’s worth of profit, but it’s not like you can just snap your fingers and easily turn the cash into diamonds — it takes some time to source that many stones. I knew that when I did it. But most importantly, their losing control of the drug supply threatens their whole ugly empire. It could shut them down.”
“So your version is that you’re on the side of God and right, and you stole the diamonds to shut down an illegal CIA-run trafficking enterprise?”
“Exactly. I may have some moral confusion — what they call ‘elasticity’ in the biz — but I know that being involved in heroin trafficking is about as despicable as it gets. There’s no gray area in there. Once I knew what was going on, I had two choices — I could either continue as before, or I could do something about it.”
“And wind up two hundred million richer.”
“Yes. As you can see by the lavish lifestyle I crafted for myself in the Myanmar mountains, money is supremely important to me. It’s just a bitch finding somewhere to park the Bentley and land the Citation in the middle of the jungle. Especially when you’re living in a shack and pooping in a hole.”
Jet had grown uneasy as she listened to Matt’s version, which sounded far more plausible than Arthur’s. But if he was telling the truth, what could she do about it?
As if reading her mind, Matt started in again. “What did they pay you to do this?”
“Pay me? You think I’m doing this for money?” she spat, and then she told him the whole thing. All of it. Her child, the Mossad, Arthur’s ultimatum.
Matt studied her face as she recounted the story, saying nothing until she was done. He looked off into the distance, his focus a million miles away, then fixed her with an intense gaze.
“You know you’re never going to get your daughter back. There’s no way he’ll let you live.”
She nodded. “I’m starting to get that feeling.”
“He’s one of the heads of a multi-generational drug trafficking ring. This is not a man who will think twice about having you executed the second he has the diamonds.”
“If you’re not lying.”
He shook his head and snorted. “Hey, I know: how about we wait until you see that there are two hundred million dollars in diamonds in my safe deposit box, not fifty. Will that go far in convincing you?”
“What are you doing with a monster like Pu?”
“He was a means to an end. And you saw how much love there ultimately was between us. He was just a few seconds away from plugging me. Come on. Think this through. You know I’m telling you the truth. I couldn’t invent this shit.”
She stood and moved out of the shelter of the rocks, the rain having eased over the last few minutes, and paced in front of him.
“I don’t see a lot of options here.”
“Funny you should say that. Because I see nothing but possibilities. But only if we work together.”
“Work together?”
“Let me tell you what I’m thinking…”
Chapter 26
Jet didn’t trust Matt enough to take the cuffs off, but she had agreed to think over his proposition, which was an interesting one. Part of what had been gnawing at her was what she would do once the mission was successful. That had been rolling around in her head for days — she didn’t have any confidence that Arthur would return Hannah to her, no matter what she did, and Matt’s assertion that he would have her killed, or at least do his best to try, rang true.
She hadn’t come up with a satisfactory plan for dealing with Arthur, and she didn’t know whether Edgar was part of the drug ring, or was just following orders and believed the same bullshit she had been fed. She didn’t get the feeling from him that he was bent, but then again, he could have just been a good liar. There was no shortage of those in the agency.
Perhaps most troubling to her was that David had relied on Arthur for dealing with Hannah. She wanted to believe that he’d had no idea about Arthur’s extracurricular activities, but she couldn’t be sure. David’s memory was becoming increasingly tarnished the more she knew. She suspected that wouldn’t end any time soon.
The gray of dusk transitioned into the black of night, and the rain eased to infrequent cloudbursts. But the trails were still treacherous, and even with the night vision goggles, she had a difficult time spotting all the hazards.
They rounded a bend, and she stopped dead, her senses prickling. She’d heard something up ahead. Matt almost walked into her in the dark, but he sensed her alarm and also froze.
Voices floated through the jungle, ephemeral and directionless — one of the sensory tricks that the creeping night fog played on their perception. She tried to see any movement up ahead, but nothing registered, even as she slid the P90 strap down her shoulder and gripped it, ready for battle.
When the shooting started, it narrowly missed them, shredding through the leaves, the bullets zipping past with their distinctive sough of death. Matt dropped into the mud and whispered to her as she fired three bursts into the jungle.
“The key. Un-cuff me, and get me a gun. Please.”
The moment of truth had arrived. She saw a skulking figure a hundred yards away dodging towards them in a crouch and, sighting carefully, blew his head off. The shooting stopped for a few seconds, and she groped in her pocket for the key.
“Can you crawl a few feet closer?” she whispered.
&n
bsp; He did, and without taking her eyes off the trail, she felt for his wrists and unlocked one of the cuffs, placing the key in his newly-freed hand.
Matt wasted no time unlocking the other cuff, then tapped her arm.
“Gun?”
She un-holstered the Beretta and handed it to him, then fired another burst at a fleeting movement near the edge of a thicket. “Take the silencer off for better range. You’ve got sixteen shots. Already one in the hole.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have another night vision scope, would you?”
“Sorry. And I’m not giving this one up.”
“Fair enough.”
“Don’t use up all the bullets. I’ve only got one more clip, and we’re a long way from the border.”
“Maybe we can find a nice AK-47.”
She thought about it for a second and then smiled to herself. “How about you give me the pistol back and I trade you for the P90? Then lay down some cover fire so I can flank them.”
“Okay, but I can’t really see anything.”
“That’s the point. Neither can they. I doubt they have night vision gear, although you would know better than I would.”
“No chance. There’s no way to recharge the batteries out here. That’s why I didn’t have any. Even with the solar to run the computer and charge the sat phone, it couldn’t sufficiently pow-”
He was interrupted by more shooting. They were drawing a bead on his voice, soft as it was.
She fired another burst down the trail, then slid him the P90, along with the last two clips. Matt took them then peered at the gun before handing her the silenced Beretta. More shots rang out, and he instinctively ducked, then rolled to the side of the trail where a thick tree trunk provided better cover. He wiped the perspiration from his eyes and squinted into the gloom, hoping to make something out.
“I’m guessing I should wish you good hunting…” he whispered to Jet, but when he turned to her, she was gone.
The smugglers were agitated. Whoever the intruders were, they were putting up more of a fight than anticipated. And they had some sort of stealth weapon. There was no muzzle flash for them to shoot at, and it made a snapping crack instead of the much louder explosion of a rifle, like their Kalashnikovs. But whatever it was, it was just as deadly, as three of them had already discovered.
The law of this jungle was shoot first and ask questions later. The Myanmar army steered well clear of the region, and much of the hill country was a no man’s land under drug-runner control. For decades, the infamous warlord and drug trafficker Khun Sa had ruled with an iron fist, and even after his death, the old habits died hard as his territory was divided up by squabbling rivals who roamed the hills armed to the teeth.
This group was a ten-man enforcement squad that one of the larger drug production networks used to keep the locals in line, attacking anything and everything they came across to discourage insurgents from cutting into their turf. In a country where poverty was rampant, it was always a temptation for enterprising upstarts to try their hand at opening a channel to Thailand for their opium instead of selling it at a low price to the cartels. Bodies were routinely found in the jungle as these factions battled it out — a necessary part of the trade and one of the risks that kept most out of it.
The wiry Shan tribesman’s eyes darted to where his fallen men had been shot. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He, Kyaw, was the fist of vengeance for fifty miles. That three of his men had been cut down in seconds was intolerable.
The looming clouds and fog made a difficult situation worse, the moon’s glow cut to near nothing by the overcast. Even his practiced eyes couldn’t make out anything down the trail, and the muffled murmur of voices had fallen silent.
He whispered to two of his men to move up the trail. They rose from their positions and edged towards the unknown enemy, their sandaled feet silent on the wet grass.
The first arrow took the lead gunman by surprise as it penetrated his stomach. He screamed, a tortured yowl, trailing off into a keening as he clutched the protruding shaft with shaking hands, his rifle forgotten on the bloody grass in front of him.
His partner fired into the brush, where he estimated the projectile had come from, and was mid-burst when the next arrow tore his throat out, causing him to flip around and drop into the muddy trail face-first.
Kyaw’s men fired wildly, no obvious target in sight, but determined to pepper the jungle with deadly lead. Kyaw gestured at them to stop after a half minute, in an effort to conserve ammunition.
The weapon down the trail popped and stuttered, cutting down two of the gunmen, stitching them with smoking wounds. Kyaw gritted his teeth. This was a bloodbath, and he had now lost most of his force to a ghostlike enemy that prowled the night in silence, delivering death at its whim. He wasn’t a superstitious man — far from it, he’d killed so many that he’d long ago lost count. But this was unlike anything he’d experienced, and for the first time in decades, he knew fear.
The fighter next to him was turning to whisper something when the arrow skewered his skull. He fell silently against Kyaw, the razor tip of the arrow imbedded in his brain. Kyaw had seen enough. He gestured to his remaining man to follow, and ran along the edge of the path back in the direction he’d come.
When the arrow skewered him through the back of his neck, he collapsed, his body lifeless before he dropped, his spinal cord severed by the arrowhead. The lone remaining gunman emptied his clip at the dark jungle and was reloading when his life was snuffed out by the nearby pop of a single silenced pistol.
Jet surveyed the carnage and waited for any more assailants to show themselves. After a few minutes of silence, she shifted from her position in a tree forty yards away and dropped to the ground, leaving her now empty quiver at the base of the trunk, along with the bow. Perhaps it would be of some use to an impoverished Shan hill person who was willing to reclaim the arrows and find a few that were serviceable. She had neither the time nor the desire to do so.
She ran to the dead men and emptied their pockets of spare clips, then selected two of the newest rifles and made her way back to where Matt was hopefully still waiting.
~ ~ ~
“Did you miss me?”
Matt started at the sound of her whispered voice and exhaled noisily before turning to where she stood with two AK-47s.
“What took you so long?”
“There were more of them than I thought.”
She could see his jaw clench, the muscles in his face tensing, and then he relaxed.
“You were hoping for some new weapons?” she said. “These are slightly used, but I think they’ll do the trick.”
She threw one to him, forcing him to drop the P90 to catch it.
“Nice. What is this, about a thirty-year-old AK?” he asked, hefting it and then sighting down the barrel into the distance.
“A classic.” She tossed two magazines at his feet. “Nice shooting, by the way. For a guy who can’t see anything, you took two out.”
“I didn’t want to hit you, but I figured you wouldn’t be between me and the muzzle flashes.”
“Good guess. Now, hand me the P90, and let’s get going. I don’t want to have to take on any others who might have been drawn by the gunfire. They might not have been the only bad guys roaming around here tonight.”
Matt stood and handed her the little weapon. “That’s a neat gun. I like the dual-stage trigger, although it could use a three-round burst mode. It felt like I was getting off five rounds with each pull.”
“You get used to it. Holds fifty rounds, so if you’re careful, you can get off fifteen pops before you’re out of ammo. An acquired taste. I prefer the MTAR.” She took it from him and checked the magazine quickly. “Feels like it’s still at least a quarter full.”
“You trust me with a gun now?” he asked, only partially joking.
“Let’s just say that I think you’re probably better served being able to protect yourself out here. Besides, as you�
��ve probably guessed, I can take care of myself.”
“I’ll say.”
They began trudging along the trail, Jet in the lead again, alert and ready for anything the jungle cared to throw at them.
Chapter 27
“You’re going to have to kill him.” Matt had taken the lead at first light, dawn having broken an hour earlier. “Got to cut the head off the snake or it will always be trying to bite you.”
“I know.”
“But we need a plan to get your daughter back. I can predict he’ll screw you. That’s what he does. The challenge is to allow him to think he’s doing so, and in the process figure out what he did with her. I may be able to help with that. In fact, I’m sure of it. It’ll take some time and money, but fortunately I have plenty of the latter. It’s the time element that will be the problem.”
“What are you thinking?”
“He’s predictable in some ways. And most importantly, he believes that he’s insulated from most things you or I might be concerned with. But I have my own assets, and one in particular can probably do enough research to catch anyplace he’s been sloppy. Whenever you catch a spy, it’s because they screwed up. Arthur isn’t infallible. He’s very smart, but remember that this is an under-the-table deal he has going, so he can’t use company resources to do things like find a home for Hannah. Which means that there will be a trail of some sort. We just need to find it and follow it before he realizes we’re onto him.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy. I said it would be expensive and time-consuming. But frankly, I can’t think of a better way to use some of his own money. I’ve been trying to figure out how to bring him down, and this may present an opportunity. What I’m proposing is that you take him out, along with anyone else we can identify as ringleaders in this scheme, so you, and I, are safe. In exchange for that, I’ll spend whatever it takes to find your daughter. This is actually sort of the same deal he made with you, only in reverse. And I didn’t have to kidnap anyone to get you to go along.”
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