by Mike Maden
They didn’t know how right they were.
—
Jack tracked the semi’s journey out of that facility and back over to a rental yard across town. He snapped a photo of the image of the truck and the name and address of the rental yard with his phone, but he knew that neither would likely lead to anything of consequence. His target wasn’t the truck, it was the new warehouse and whatever the hell had just been loaded into it.
Jack shut the Steady Stare program down, thinking about what his next move would be. He couldn’t contact anyone by cell phone inside the building, including Gavin. He could call him on a Dalfan landline, but that call would be automatically logged and possibly recorded, and he didn’t want to draw that much attention to himself, Gavin, or even Hendley Associates at this point, especially since he was now engaged in an illegal activity—several, technically.
Right now he didn’t need Gavin, anyway. What he needed was a way to get over to that second warehouse. He couldn’t use his cell-phone app to connect with another Uber ride—and if he used the landlines to call for a cab, well, who knows what that might trigger? He guessed that Lian’s security team was probably still staking out his guesthouse, so using the company car Lian had loaned them wouldn’t work unless he engaged in some fancy driving and shook them off his tail—but at night with little traffic and in the rain, with Lian’s mandate to her team to never lose him again, he suspected that he wouldn’t be able to pull it off short of a Fast and Furious movie-trailer car chase. And even if he did, he’d only piss Lian off even more and sour his already strained relationship with her. His job overall was to smooth the merger transaction between two companies, not cause irreparable damage to that relationship. His suspicions about the contents of that warehouse were just that—suspicions. He didn’t want to embarrass Gerry Hendley or Hendley Associates by going off on a snipe hunt that might not result in anything except screwing the pooch and ruining the merger.
Still . . . his instincts told him that checking out the warehouse was worth at least some risk. Stepping over to the window confirmed the weather was still miserable, so walking or running the twenty-five miles or so to get there was out of the question. He needed a set of wheels. Fortunately, Feng had shown him where the keys were kept for the company delivery vans parked in the back. Technically, he would only be borrowing one of them, not stealing it.
Or at least that’s what he’d tell the police after they arrested him.
47
Yong sat at his desk, nude.
The storm blasted against the heavy plate glass of his twenty-fourth-story luxury condo, but his eyes were fixed on the same video images of the semi truck and warehouse that Jack was watching simultaneously.
“Ice?” Meili was nude, too, but in the kitchen, fixing drinks. She held a cube of ice aloft in a pair of silver tongs.
“No.”
She muttered a curse to herself as she tossed the ice cube into the stainless-steel sink, then poured a couple ounces of Casa Noble Anejo, a fine sipping tequila, into two tulip-shaped Glencairn whiskey glasses and carried them into the living room.
“That’s why you got out of bed? I was hoping you were looking for more porn, or maybe QVC.”
“The alarm triggered.” Yong lifted the glass to his lips and sipped, keeping his eyes on the screen. Unknown to Jack or Paul, wireless trackers were embedded in their Dalfan security cards, keyed to an alert system on Yong’s computers.
“I’m surprised you heard it. You were quite busy at the time.”
“I’m a great multitasker.” Yong threw back the rest of his tequila.
“More?”
“Of course.” His eyes fixed on the heart-shaped mole over her lip, stirring a memory. Blood rushed to his manhood.
“What’s Ryan up to?” She finished her glass.
Yong snorted; the blood retreated. “He’s a nosy bastard. I’ve never known an auditor to be so pushy.”
Meili stroked the back of Yong’s neck as she watched the screen over his shoulder. “He’s becoming quite a problem.”
“He’ll head to the warehouse tonight.”
“In this weather? No way.” Meili dragged her nails gently across his back.
“He’s persistent.”
“What do you intend to do about it?”
“Scare him off.”
Meili stopped rubbing him. “We need to kill him.”
Yong gazed at her. “Too risky. Besides, he won’t find what he’s looking for.”
“No, he won’t, but he’ll just keep looking. You said yourself he’s persistent. We need to get rid of him.”
“We can’t kill him. It will bring the cops in—or worse, the Americans.”
“It won’t be a problem if it looks like an accident. He’s not supposed to be sneaking around in that warehouse, right? A large crate could fall on him, or maybe he interrupts a burglary in progress.”
“It can’t be traced back to me—or Lian.”
“It won’t.”
“Let’s do it my way first.” Yong picked up a phone.
“There isn’t much time.” Meili picked up her phone. “You call your men, I’ll call the warehouse. If your plan fails, mine won’t. But one way or another, Jack Ryan will be dealt with tonight.”
—
The rain hammered on the metal roof of the garage as Jack climbed into the white Nissan NV200 compact cargo van plastered with a Dalfan-logo vehicle wrap. The automatic garage door opened and sheets of heavy silver raindrops poured in front of the van’s bright halogen headlights. The storm was definitely getting worse.
The van smelled showroom-new. The odometer read three hundred and forty-two kilometers. He logged in his destination on Google Maps even though his cell signal was still jammed in this location, but he knew it would pull up once he left the property.
He approached the automated gate and it swung open. No guard was in the shack, but he was certain the security cameras were logging license plates. With the brim of his hat pulled over his eyes and his head tilted down, he was confident that his face wouldn’t be seen by the cameras, allowing him the slimmest possibility of denial if it came to that.
Jack pulled out onto Changi North Crescent and headed for the PIE. It wasn’t the fastest route, but he’d done it enough times to feel comfortable taking it even if for some reason Google Maps or the onboard-vehicle GPS couldn’t pull up his route.
He passed a silver Toyota minivan parked at the curb, facing in the opposite direction. He saw the driver’s face when a bolt of lightning flashed across the Toyota’s windshield as the big wipers cleared away the rain. Dark, scowling eyes beneath a thick unibrow tracked him as he passed. A Turk? Maybe. Hardly worth noting, except the Turk tracking him sat next to a blond man in his mid-thirties who was shouting into a cell phone.
His eyes also caught the bright black-and-white license plate bolted to the front. Easy to read, at least part of it. SAM 00 was all he caught. It reminded of a dead friend, Sam Driscoll. It stuck in his brain.
But the mini movie scene in the front seat of the Toyota was over in a flash—literally—and Jack didn’t think any more about it as he turned left onto Upper Changi Road North.
—
The AYE was mostly clear of traffic at this hour, but especially so in this weather. There were a few semi trailers whizzing along, their big tires spraying plumes of water off the asphalt, but few cars. Jack couldn’t make out the make or model of the vehicle several hundred yards behind him, but the halogen headlights had tracked with him for twenty kilometers now. Hard to believe it was a Dalfan surveillance team. Lian made it clear to her team he was never to shake them again. If that was a Dalfan vehicle following him, they’d make themselves known to him and keep close. More likely it was just a commuter coming home late from work in a storm.
Jack’s high-profile van rocked violently as a sudden burst
of gusting wind buffeted his vehicle. He wasn’t interested in slowing down. A few kilometers farther, his spine tingled when the tires hydroplaned; he could almost feel the Nissan lifting off the pavement and skimming along on a thin sheet of water. A moment later he regained control easily enough and backed off his speed just a bit, only to have a big rig roar past him, spraying his windshield with even more water than the storm was throwing at him.
But Jack noticed that when he slowed down, so did the car behind him. Isn’t that what a tail would do? he asked himself. Jack chuckled. But so would a cautious commuter if he saw the idiot in front of him nearly lose control.
Jack turned on the radio and hit the scan button. Most of the stations were in English. When he heard a melodious British voice announce “BBC World Service,” he locked in the number.
“News from Asia,” the female voice began. “More trouble in the South China Sea. Vietnam filed a formal protest earlier today with the United Nations after an incident involving the collision of a Chinese minesweeper and a Vietnamese fishing trawler near the disputed Spratly Islands. In an exclusive BBC Radio interview, the Vietnamese foreign minister complained of several recent encroachments by Chinese naval vessels in territorial waters claimed by Hanoi.”
Jack heard more news: a meeting of ASEAN defense ministers, declining agricultural exports from Thailand, and a new fifty-two-week high for both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock indexes. But it was the weather forecast that had caught Jack’s attention.
“The Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Perth is upgrading a tropical low in the Java Sea approximately one hundred and seventy-seven kilometers southeast of Singapore to a category-one tropical storm with gusting winds exceeding ninety kilometers per hour. Locally, expect strong gusting winds and heavy rainfall to continue for the next forty-eight hours with possible flood warnings for low-lying areas in Singapore, eastern Malaysia, Borneo, and Sumatra.”
“That can’t be good,” he said out loud, grateful it wasn’t hitting Singapore. He wondered how bad the storm would get. One hundred and sixty kilometers worked out to be about a hundred miles. Pretty far away. But fifty-five-mile-per-hour winds out there still meant a big-ass storm.
As if on cue, the car behind him flashed its turn signal and dove onto an exit ramp. Jack was practically alone on the road now. Fifteen minutes later he exited, turning onto Pioneer Road in the industrial district, heading for Tanjong Kling Road.
—
Jack followed the track on his Google Maps app along the tree-lined boulevard, where warehouses and industrial buildings stood neatly crowded behind cyclone fences. He’d slowed down to a crawl on the nearly empty street. The Nissan’s furious windshield wipers slapped vainly against the sheets of rain pouring down, giving Jack just momentary glimpses of open road between swipes, like the van itself was blinking. He couldn’t read any of the street numbers on the buildings.
The warehouse location he was searching for should be just up ahead and on the right. He rolled down his window, hoping to be able to read the numbers on the next building coming up. The cool rain splashed over his face and neck as he held one hand above his eyes to shield them from the heavy drops pelting him. He needed to stop. He glanced back into his side-view mirror just to be sure there wasn’t anyone behind him as he tapped the brakes, and that’s when he saw—
Oh, shit!
The grille of an unlit semi tractor slammed into the rear of his van. Jack heard the sickening crunch of sheet metal and glass behind him and the shotgun blast of the airbag in front of him. The seat belt cinched across his chest like a hangman’s noose as the polyester fist of the exploding airbag slammed his face, snapping his head against the headrest and crushing his body back into his seat.
And then things got interesting.
His ass lifted slightly into the air as it followed his strapped body when the entire van careened forward several feet at an oblique angle. His face punched the half-deflated airbag again when the vehicle smashed to a stop as it plowed into something immovable up front. What, he couldn’t tell, because he was blinded by the airbag.
It all happened in about a second and a half, maybe less. It seemed like forever.
Dazed from the double blow to his head, he instinctively clawed at the deflating airbag to tear it away from his face, clearing his view just enough to see that his van was smashed against one of the majestic trees looming over the street. He turned in time to see the hulking, boxy shape of a big-rig tractor racing away. Its headlights were still off but, thankfully, not the light illuminating the license plate. His mind managed to capture the letters and numbers.
Just before he blacked out.
48
He woke to the sound of rain drumming on the roof, his eyes still tightly shut.
For a moment, Jack thought he was in a tin-roofed bungalow on a beach in Aruba, where he had once spent a week with a blonde who had laughing green eyes. He couldn’t remember her name. Maybe he’d never known it.
But the splitting headache throbbing inside of his skull killed the dream and opened his eyes. The spattering raindrops sparkled in the lamplight against the spiderweb of the cracked windshield.
He woke fully now, and cursed, remembering what happened.
What the hell time is it? He glanced at his watch. He’d been out for about ten minutes, maybe more. As his mind cleared, the pain intensified. Mostly his headache, but also his face and neck, and his chest, still strapped tightly against the seat. He twisted around as best he could, expecting to see an ambulance or a police car, or at least a concerned civilian racing to his aid. He hurt like hell, on the verge of serious. He had no idea if he’d sustained internal injuries. But his momentary lapse of self-pity melted away. He couldn’t be found here. Technically, he’d stolen the van. More important, he needed to stay out of the newspapers, and certainly the police blotters.
His first task was just to get out of the van. He was trapped by the belt, strapped so tightly he couldn’t move his arms to hit the belt release. He pushed his legs against the floor panel as hard as he could, pressing his body deeper into the seat to give the locking mechanism the opportunity to release and slacken the belt. When it did, he reached over and freed himself from the seat belt, then pushed away the deflated airbag, dusty and crumpled on his lap.
Jack reached for the door latch and pushed, but nothing happened. He twisted around and unlocked the door, then tried again, launching against it with his sore shoulder. Nothing. It was jammed.
Of course.
Jack glanced through the smashed windshield. Still no cars in sight. Good. But it wouldn’t be much longer until somebody came by and called it in. He grunted as he crawled out of his seat and over to the passenger side, finally managing to open the door and work his way out onto the street. He quickly hobbled over to the sidewalk and out of the light of the streetlamp. He surveyed the damage on himself first. No blood, no broken bones. He checked the van. The big truck struck the van in the rear quarter panel on the passenger side. It was perfectly aimed to damage the van but allow the tractor to keep going. A hit-and-run accident? Or intentional?
Running with its lights off. Jack assumed it was intentional.
And that made it personal.
Bastards.
His throbbing head suddenly turned dizzy. He laid a hand on the van to catch himself as his legs began to buckle, but he willed himself to remain standing. A moment later his vision returned. Must have stood up too quickly, he told himself. Or I’m in shock.
And shock would kill him. So would a brain bleed or a dozen other injuries he might have sustained.
Jack grabbed his phone and started to dial the emergency operator but stopped. If he went to the hospital now he’d be there for hours, and whatever was in that warehouse would be gone by the time he got back. The other problem was that Rhodes said to keep a low profile. If he called this in, there would be hospital records t
o deal with and, worse, hard questions, probably from the police.
More important, he had a job to do.
He knew he was pushing his luck, but he needed to get inside that warehouse. He’d figure out his injury status later. As far as he could tell, he had all of his fingers and toes, and he could still make a fist.
One of the van’s two rear doors was actually smashed open. Jack shoved it open further and checked the back. The cargo area was trashed, though still intact. Boxes of electrical components, spindles of colored wire, and thick paper-bound catalogs and technical manuals were heaped in a pile, having all been thrown from the metal shelving. He spotted a medical kit bolted to the wall and opened it, and found a box of Tylenol packets. He tore one open and tossed the pills in his mouth, chewing them into a bitter paste, his face souring as he swallowed. That would take the edge off, at least.
He crawled around in the pile further, searching for something else—exactly what, he wasn’t sure.
Until he found them.
One was a toolbox. He rooted around in it. Mostly electrical stuff—needle-nosed pliers, wire strippers, small screwdrivers. The heaviest tool he could find was a crescent wrench. Not exactly a weapon of choice, but it was a good hunk of cast steel. No telling who or what he might encounter. He pocketed it.
The other thing he grabbed was heavy but pliable. Probably a dumb idea, but his pounding headache wasn’t going to let him solve any quadratic equations tonight. He decided to trust his instincts.
He extricated himself from the pile of electrical supplies and exited the van with a grunt. When he stood up he saw the street number on the building in front of him. That meant the warehouse was two blocks farther up.
He arranged the items he’d pulled from the van on his person, then checked the street in both directions. He saw a pair of headlights a mile behind him, heading in his direction. Cop car? No flashing lights. But who knows? And if not this one, maybe the next.