“You never told me where they got you from,” he began, eyeing her as she chugged more water.
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’re not CIA, I know that. What are you then? Freelance?”
“In a manner of speaking,” she answered, uninterested in pursuing it.
“What did they offer you to do this?”
“None of your business.”
“Whatever it is, I can double it.”
She ignored him, preferring to strip her Beretta and clean it during their break.
“You know about the diamonds. What did they tell you?”
“Guess.”
“Ha. Let’s see. If I was them, I’d tell a story about how I’m the bad guy, and they’re out to set an example. Am I close?”
“You tell me.”
“Who recruited you?”
“Again, none of your business. I don’t want to discuss it.”
“Was it Scarface, the great man himself? Or did he use an intermediary? He’s a coward at heart, so I’ll bet he used a cutout. Unless he’s desperate by now. If so, you met him. Creepy bastard, isn’t he?”
She stared at him with dead eyes.
“So what was the story? How did he explain away two hundred million in diamonds being handled by the CIA in Thailand? That must have been quite a yarn.”
He smiled at her, and she noticed that his eye color shifted from brown to green in the light. Little flecks of gold in the irises created the illusion of them glinting, sparkling.
She relented. “Two hundred? They told me fifty. You stole the diamonds from the CIA, which was supporting insurgency in Myanmar. A formerly trustworthy career officer gone rogue out of greed. Sad story.”
“Not bad. Of course, nothing near the truth, but hey, why let that stop anyone? Why tell you anything even resembling it? Fifty, two hundred, whatever. The only problem being that it isn’t true.”
“Sure it isn’t.”
“You actually believe that tripe? Then I’ve got a bridge to sell you. How about this – tell me which sounds more realistic. That the CIA was funding Myanmar insurgents with diamonds, for unknown reasons. Or that a faction of entrepreneurial CIA scumbags decided to get into the drug business over forty years ago, and the diamonds were just another payment to heroin traffickers in the Golden Triangle.”
She didn’t show any emotion, but she didn’t like what she was hearing.
“During the Vietnam war, some of the power players in the CIA figured out that they had the means and the wherewithal to become the world’s largest drug trafficking entity. Back then, drugs in the United States were illegal, but not a huge problem. Because there wasn’t any consistent supply. These guys decided to solve that problem by opening up a shipping operation from Vietnam – heroin from the Triangle, in return for guns and cash. The traffickers in the Triangle could sell the guns to the Viet Cong, so it was a great scheme. Of course, the only ethical hiccup was that American soldiers were being killed with weapons the CIA was supplying, but hey, can’t have everything. That’s why the heroin supply in the United States boomed once Vietnam was under way. And they didn’t stop at getting an entire generation of hippies addicted. They also made sure that it was the drug of choice for many of the GIs who were fighting in a conflict they wouldn’t ever be allowed to win. It was perfect, and this little club in the CIA made a fortune.
“The pipeline was a simple one. Cash and weapons on army transport planes to Southeast Asia, then heroin on the return journey, concealed in the coffins of dead GIs. The CIA hooked up with the Italian mob for distribution in the States, and the rest is history. There were a few competitors that got involved as it went along – ex-GIs who knew what was going on because they’d been in on it while stationed in Vietnam, and who decided to set up their own railroads using the same technique, but the CIA squashed those once they got large enough to make headlines. It was all good business – they had other bad guys to point fingers at, and meanwhile the top echelon was getting rich.
“Occasionally a shipment would get intercepted as the traffic grew, but they could always blame it on one of these fall guys or claim it was an off-the-books op or a sting. They also got involved in the traffic to Europe – their problem was that once they were taking literally a hundred percent of the Triangle’s production, they needed addicts to sop up the supply. A classic supply/demand issue.”
“Are you trying to tell me that some faction of the CIA has been running heroin for forty years? Please. Try something more believable,” she sneered.
“More than forty, and not just heroin. Of course, as time marched on, the old hands retired or died, and then new blood took over. We are talking about billions of dollars per year, here. You could work for the CIA, and if you were part of the clique, retire a multi-millionaire, easily, all tax free. It was quite a racket.”
“And where do you come in?”
“I found out about it. I wasn’t one of the in-crowd. They kept everything very hush-hush, all need-to-know, but I figured it out when I was making regular runs into Myanmar and Laos with bags of diamonds and handing them to obvious drug lords. They fed me the same insurgents bullshit, but I soon discovered that there was no insurgency of any meaningful kind in Myanmar. Not over half a billion a year’s worth, anyway. And the CIA screwed up – I became trusted by the drug lords over time, and they began to rely on me to create a market for the diamonds – to create liquidity for them in Thailand. Of course, many of the diamonds made it to Europe for conversion, but a fair number stayed in the Far East.”
“I thought this was all recent.”
“Another lie. It’s been going on for decades.”
“So you were bringing them the diamonds. A courier.”
“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 t
raded 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.
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 Kalashn
ikovs. 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.
JET II - Betrayal (JET #2) Page 18