JET II - Betrayal (JET #2)
Page 1
JET II
Betrayal
Russell Blake
Copyright 2012 by Russell Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Books@RussellBlake.com.
Table of Contents
About the Author
Excerpts from JET III and King of Swords
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
JET III ~ Vengeance excerpt
Prologue
Excerpt from King of Swords
Introduction
Prologue
About the Author
Russell Blake lives full time on the Pacific coast of Mexico. He is the acclaimed author of the thrillers: Fatal Exchange, The Geronimo Breach, Zero Sum, The Delphi Chronicle trilogy (The Manuscript, The Tortoise and the Hare, and Phoenix Rising), King of Swords, Night of the Assassin, The Voynich Cypher, Revenge of the Assassin, Return of the Assassin, Silver Justice, JET, JET II – Betrayal, JET III – Vengeance and JET IV – Reckoning.
Non-fiction novels include the international bestseller An Angel With Fur (animal biography) and How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks (while drunk, high or incarcerated) – a joyfully vicious parody of all things writing and self-publishing related.
“Capt.” Russell enjoys writing, fishing, playing with his dogs, collecting and sampling tequila, and waging an ongoing battle against world domination by clowns.
Visit Russell’s salient website for updates
Follow Russell on Twitter
Excerpts from JET III and King of Swords
JET III ~ Vengeance
Jet III - Vengeance finds Jet settled down, trying to return to a somewhat normal life of stability and safety. But fate has other plans for her when she becomes embroiled in a terrifying terrorism plot involving figures from her past, whose thirst for revenge forces her back into the kill-or-be-killed world she’d hoped to put behind her forever.
Go to JET III ~ Vengeance excerpt
King of Swords
By Russell Blake
King of Swords is an epic assassination thriller set in modern Mexico against a backdrop of cartel violence. Captain Romero Cruz discovers an assassination plot to kill the Mexican and U.S. presidents at the G-20 conference in Cabo San Lucas by “El Rey” – a super assassin responsible for some of the world’s most shocking killings.
Go to King of Swords excerpt
Purchase King of Swords via Russell’s Website
Foreword
JET ~ Betrayal is a work of fiction, and as such plays fast and loose with many aspects of the truth, not the least of which are the descriptions of Thailand and its sex industry. In fairness to the good Thai people, while ping pong clubs can be viewed on Youtube and Googled, they are not as prevalent near Nana as I pretend – one has to go to other districts to find them. Nor is pedophilia as common – I have been assured that most of that sort of thing takes place in Pattaya, not Bangkok, and that the police take a zero tolerance policy. Be that as it may, there is also conflicting data that argues that 40% of the prostitutes in Thailand are underage, so perhaps the truth is somewhere between the “I’m shocked to hear there is gambling going on in here” outrage of some, and the assuredly lurid and overblown claims of others. Whatever your opinion, in all underprivileged countries slavery and child prostitution are significant problems, and while my descriptions may seem like sensationalism, they are not fantasy – would that they were only my invention.
In order to maximize your enjoyment of the books, do not take my descriptions of anything as literal, remember that this is all fiction for your entertainment, park your outrage at the door, and we’ll get along fine. And above all, enjoy the ride – 100% accurate or not, it’s designed to move you along at warp speed, and I hope it does.
Chapter 1
Gordon nudged his sleeping companion. “Doug. Wake up.”
Doug’s chin was drooping onto his stained military green T-shirt, sweat-soaked in the muggy night heat.
Gordon elbowed him again.
Doug shuddered, raised his head, and cracked open a bleary eye.
“What?”
“Shhh. Keep it down,” Gordon hissed. “We don’t want to alert the guards.”
He shifted his camouflage-clad legs in the mud and rotting vegetation then glanced at his partner’s calf, where a filthy bandage was wrapped around a festering bullet wound, the pants cut off at the knee. The rusty stain of dried blood on the dressing was alive with ants exploring the once-white gauze.
Doug was pale, his body battling infection and fever. It hadn’t helped that neither of them had been fed for two days, or that they only got water every four hours. The jungle in the southern hills of Myanmar was brutal at the best of times – if their captors didn’t kill them, nature soon would.
“I got my hands almost free,” Gordon whispered. “Slide over here so I can work on yours.”
Both men were tied to a stake hammered into the ground at the edge of a clearing, their wrists bound behind them with rope. A crude-yet-effective form of imprisonment – and it wasn’t as if there were a lot of places to go. The Golden Triangle was a lawless area that ran from Myanmar to Vietnam, encompassing a swatch of Laos and northern Thailand. Other than occasional villages, where the natives lived in abject poverty, it was a sprawling patchwork of jungle and opium poppy fields.
“How?” Doug slurred, too loud for Gordon’s liking.
“Shut up. Just edge over a little. And stay quiet.”
Doug complied, inching his body to where Gordon could reach his wrists.
The night was dark, but a sliver of moon shining through the trees overhead provided enough light to reveal Doug’s haggard features. Glancing to the right, Gordon could make out the main encampment’s tents in the clearing and the few rough-hewn shacks near the tree line, close to one of the countless streams in the hills of the Shan state that bordered Laos and Thailand.
Gordon sawed at the rope with a sharp shard of bamboo he’d broken from the base of the stake. His hands were bleeding from where the jagged edge had sliced the skin – not that he cared. If they didn’t escape, they would die. It was that simple.
He guessed that it was around one in the morning. The sun had set at least five hours ago, although his sense of time had become warped, he knew, from the dehydration, hunger and exposure. They’d been left out through the inevitable periodic downpours, the mountain air drying the moisture from their skin over time, bringing with it the mosquitoes that swarmed around
them. He’d been bitten so often that every area of exposed skin was swollen and red, as was Doug’s.
He didn’t even want to think about the mosquito-borne diseases that were endemic to the area. Dengue fever, malaria, yellow fever, chikungunya…and there was typhoid, hepatitis, the plague, hemorrhagic fever and a host of other delights that could be had from drinking the water or coming into contact with the jungle denizens.
But they had bigger problems right now.
Gordon strained to hear anything from the camp. All was quiet, but that could be illusory because, day and night, random patrols of two or three men moved soundlessly into the jungle from the shelters, assault rifles slung over their shoulders. These were Shan: area tribesmen who knew the region like their own backyard – hired guns, paid to live like fugitives and act as security for the man who was a kind of God to them.
A white man.
A round eye – with incredible riches and a desire for extreme privacy, who ruled his domain like a warlord.
Gordon hadn’t spotted their elusive target: the farang that the natives were protecting, in whose camp they were now involuntary guests. From what he could make out of the guards’ hushed discussions, the man wasn’t there. So even if their mission had gone to plan and they’d been able to sneak up on the camp without being captured, it would have been in vain.
He felt Doug’s rope fraying from his efforts with the bamboo and kept sawing methodically. Doug slumped into unconsciousness again at some point over the next hour, and Gordon let him be. He’d need any energy he could muster soon enough.
A noise disrupted the gloom’s tranquility, branches snapping, as two armed men entered the clearing from the periphery, chatting in the local dialect – the night sentries had arrived. The camp seemed calm even during the day, the men lounging around lazily with nothing much to do but cook, patrol and gamble amongst themselves. With their patron absent, there was nothing to guard. Nobody would be interested in taking on a heavily-armed group in order to confiscate their tents or guns. This slice of the world had plenty of weapons – they were more common than shoes in the rural hills.
Gordon watched through shuttered eyes as the new arrivals headed to a small fire, where another man sat nursing a Kalashnikov rifle. They gestured in unison for him to pass his bottle. He protested half-heartedly, then laughed as he handed it over. Cigarettes came out, followed by the inevitable cards, which were shuffled in preparation for another late-night redistribution of wealth.
There would be none of this kind of sloppiness once their target was back. They’d both read his dossier. It was just lucky that Gordon had gotten the rope loose on a night when security was lax. That might be the edge that kept them alive.
Although Doug’s odds weren’t good.
The gunshot wound in his calf had missed the bone, but infection had set in and would hobble his ability to get far. Gordon had debated slipping off without him, but he didn’t have the heart. If he had been wounded, he knew Doug would have stayed with him. After all they’d been through together, Gordon owed Doug at least that much in return.
But that didn’t mean his chances were favorable.
If the guards kept drinking, Gordon hoped that in an hour they could make their move and disappear into the jungle. But then what? They were days from anything remotely resembling civilization. And this wasn’t the only armed group in the region. Drug smugglers, bandits, human traffickers, poachers: all flourished in the no man’s land that was the Triangle, and any one of them would kill without a second’s hesitation.
Not the greatest scenario, but one they wouldn’t have to worry about if Gordon couldn’t get their arms loose.
Twenty minutes later, he felt the final frayed edges of the bindings separate with a quiet snap and nudged Doug again.
“Hey. You’re free. Cut the rest of my rope the same way I cut yours.”
Doug jolted and looked at him with uncomprehending eyes.
Maybe it had been a mistake to wait after all. He was out of it. The delirium brought about by the infection had progressed too far.
“Doug. Grab this piece of bamboo. Keep your hands behind you. Don’t make any sudden movements. Saw until I’m free.”
Awareness flickered, and Gordon felt Doug’s fingers grasping for the shard.
When the bindings finally separated and his wrists pulled apart, circulation returned to his numb hands with a harsh rush of feeling. He peered through slits at the gunmen, who had finished the bottle and were slapping down cards, cheating each other with tired familiarity, their vigil punctuated by an occasional burp or hacking cough. The guards were seventy-five yards away, and Gordon’s hope was that if they crawled into the underbrush it could be hours before anyone noticed they were missing. It wasn’t as though anyone had checked on them since the sun had set, and he knew from his experience over the last two nights that nobody would be by to look at them until dawn, at the earliest.
“Doug. Listen,” Gordon murmured. “We’re going to slide over by that clump of plants and then run for it. Can you make it?”
Doug seemed more alert now that his hands were free and there was a chance of escape.
“I think so. How do we do this?”
“I’ll go first. There’s so little light, they won’t be able to make us out if we don’t do anything stupid. Once I’m out of sight, you crawl to me, and then we’ll head downhill. If we make it till daylight, we’ll be able to tell by the sun what direction we’re headed, and we can get to the Thai border.”
Doug nodded.
With a final glance at the guards, Gordon inched down and rolled onto his stomach, then dog-crawled to the trees. Nobody noticed – no shots were fired or alarms raised. Once he made it into the brush, he turned and watched for Doug. He hoped he wasn’t making a fatal mistake by taking him.
Two minutes later, Doug materialized next to him. Both of them stood, and Doug tentatively put weight on his leg. The severity of pain this caused reflected in his eyes, but he choked it down.
After a final glance at the camp, they slipped deeper into the brush, the sound of night creatures around them their accompaniment as they wordlessly wove through the thick vegetation, hoping to find a trail in the meager moonlight.
Gordon supported Doug as they plodded forward, an hour into their trek to freedom. Doug was already tiring from the ravaging his system had endured from the infection, but he trudged on without complaint. Gordon’s arm burned with inflammation from where the guards had crudely carved out the implanted tracking chip, leaving a gash of tortured flesh. He could only imagine what Doug was enduring.
They fought their way through deadwood and tangles of vines until they came to a stream that meandered downhill from the camp. A game trail ran along its banks, enabling them to pick up the pace.
“Gahh. Oh, God…” Doug exclaimed as his ankle twisted on a rut, tearing at his brutalized calf muscle and bringing tears to his eyes.
“Let’s take a break and rinse off that bandage. The water will make you feel better,” Gordon said as Doug sank to the ground grabbing at his leg.
As Gordon unwound the gauze, Doug gasped, his breath coming in hoarse bursts.
The stink was unbearable. Like rotting meat. Discoloration ran up the veins, and the wound seeped a bloody mixture of pus. Gordon rinsed it carefully, but didn’t comment on the insects that had taken up a home. The water washed them away, but Gordon wasn’t kidding himself. If Doug survived he’d probably lose the leg unless there was some miracle antibiotic they could get their hands on.
“How is it? Hurts like a b–”
Gordon cocked his head to the side and raised a finger to his lips.
“What?”
“Shhh,” Gordon whispered, listening. “Damn. We need to get moving. Now. Let’s get you wrapped up. We don’t have much time.”
Gordon wrung out the bandage and hastily wound it around the gash – the bullet had passed cleanly through the calf muscle, but the subsequent infection had caused i
mmeasurable damage.
Doug glanced at him with alarm. “What do you hear?”
“A dog.”
They struggled to their feet and stepped into the stream, hoping that would eliminate their trail – although Gordon suspected that Doug’s wound was emanating a strong scent.
He had no idea where his captors had gotten their hands on a dog. Probably one of the nearby villages. A few dollars would buy almost anything, even at three in the morning. Their luck had just run out.
Clouds drifted across the sky, and without warning, a downpour started, drenching the two men and further darkening their way. There was no place to take cover from the cloudburst, but getting wet was the least of their worries.
Doug stumbled several times and cried out. He’d pulled the ravaged muscle again, and this time looked like he wasn’t going to be able to continue any longer.
“Just leave me,” Doug hissed through clenched teeth.
“Not a chance. Come on. Pick up the pace.”
“I…I can’t do it. It’s too–”
A burst of rifle fire tore across Doug’s torso, bullets whizzing past Gordon as he instinctively threw himself to the ground. Doug spun and collapsed next to him, burbling his last breath, and then lay still. The crash of men and beast tearing through the jungle a few hundred yards away signaled that Gordon’s time had run out. He wondered whether they would drag him back or simply end his ordeal with a bullet to the skull.
The rain poured down with renewed vigor, large drops pelting him, and he used the temporary cover it offered to scramble forward and put distance between himself and his pursuers. His boots slammed onto the rocky riverbed, but the torrent falling all around him drowned the sound out. His only hope now was that nobody had night vision gear, or worse, an infrared scope. If they did, he was already dead.