Plausible Denial

by Rustmann Jr. , F. W.

  The CIA base chief was a tall, athletic man with a shock of longish blond hair hanging over one eye. “It’s not back at the level it was when his step-father, Khun Sa, was running the operation back in the seventies and eighties, but it’s getting there.”

  He paused until the next chart appeared on the screen. “As you can see, the opium production from the region amounts to ten percent of the worldwide supply, with the rest—or most of it—coming from Afghanistan. At last count it was over 2,500 tons, but that ten percent accounts for almost half of the U.S. heroin supply. He sends most of his shit straight to us.”

  A frustrated Sadosky tossed his notes on the table. “And the worst part is that he’s becoming more and more aggressive, attacking Thai and Burmese police forces, eliminating his rivals, openly bribing officials—you name it. Chiang Rai is becoming Dodge City.”

  The DEA chief, a brash, balding former New York cop named Peter Wollner, was sitting at the foot of the long conference table. He raised his hand, got a nod from Sadosky, and said, “He rules his empire like Gengis Khan – far worse than Khun Sa ever did—taking out his enemies with a brutality never before seen in this part of the world.

  “And that’s accelerated ever since his new Cambodian security chief joined him a couple of years ago. Guy by the name of Ung Chea. He’s a vicious snake. You never see him around town because you would recognize him on sight. Story is he took some shrapnel from an RPG round when he was fighting the Vietnamese with that Khmer Rouge bastard Ta Mok in northern Cambodia. Took off one of his ears and left a gash in his face to the corner of his mouth. He’s an ugly sucker alright. Can’t smile—face just screws up in a menacing scowl when he tries.” Wollner screwed up his face in a mimicking snarl that drew snickers from the rest of the group.

  He continued with the briefing. “Okay, okay, I’m a bad actor, but no kidding, Ta Mok, the most brutal Khmer Rouge leader of them all, was his mentor – like a father to him. Story is Ung Chea’s mother was a nurse who saved Ta Mok’s life when a land mine blew off his leg at the knee. He’s known in these parts simply as ‘The Cambodian.’”

  “That’s right,” said Sadosky. “We’re going to have to deal with that bastard along with Khun Ut. We’ve got a pretty good dossier on him. Couple of good surveillance photos as well.”

  He turned to his deputy, an attractive thirty-ish Eurasian woman sitting at the back of the room, operating the projector. “Charly, would you do me a favor and go grab Ung Chea’s file off my desk? I want to show the group what a pretty bastard he is.”

  They exchanged smiles as she rose and he winked at her.

  “You bet.” Charly Blackburn pushed her shiny black hair back away from her face, and hurried across the room to the exit. Sadosky watched admiringly as her hips bounced under her light summer dress.

  The entire Country Team had the same thought as they turned their attention back to Sadosky. You are one lucky bastard, Marvin.

  She walked to the end of a long corridor, turned left to the CIA wing of the building, and punched in the three digit code on the cipher lock on the entrance door. She entered the office suite, turned into the COB’s office, located the file on his desk, and went back into the hall. Then, full of the morning’s coffee and anticipating another hour in the meeting, she made a lifesaving decision to make a brief bathroom break before returning.

  She was there when she heard the first sounds of gunfire and screams coming from the direction of the compound entrance. Almost immediately, she heard a deafening explosion and the building erupted, tossing her hard against the wall and showering her with plaster from the ceiling.

  Chapter Three

  The Cambodian slowed the ten-wheeler to allow more distance between him and Jimmy Steinhauser’s vehicle. “We are about one hundred meters from the entrance. He has right turn signal on,” he said into his lapel mic. “I will let another car pass. Do not want to get too close.”

  “Okay, Unit two,” said Khun Ut, “I see you. Wait until the rabbit is almost through the gate before you hit him.”

  “Yes, okay… Hold on, hold on, gate is opening. Turning in now. Hold on…there he goes…”

  The Cambodian hauled the wheel to the right, hitting the gas and horn at the same time. The case officer’s Toyota was mid-way through the gate when the dump truck slammed into his rear bumper and accelerated, pushing him through the entrance, the blaring horn adding to the shock and confusion of the moment.

  The Marine in the gate house stood, stunned, for a moment too long before he uttered, “Oh, fuck!” and hit the switch to raise the internal barrier. He screamed into his microphone: “May Day, May Day, May Day, intrusion alert, intrusion...”

  The pneumatic barrier began to rise and caught the back wheels of the truck, raising them off the ground. The truck slammed over it, hit the ground hard and screamed into the compound, engine revving, pushing the Toyota in front of it. Steinhauser spun the wheel of the Toyota in an attempt to pull away from the charging dump truck, but the truck’s bumper caught the left rear fender and flipped the car on its roof. The truck ran over the rear end of the up-righted vehicle, its rear wheels crushing the Toyota and rupturing its gas tank. The car burst into flames, leaving the young case officer trapped and screaming inside.

  The Cambodian yelled, “We’re in, we’re in. Bail out now. Go-go-go.” He pushed a heavy cement brick against the accelerator, set the wheel to continue the truck on its journey toward the main building, opened the door and rolled to the ground. He came up firing back towards the gatehouse with his AK-47 rifle, taking out two local guards before they could raise their pistols.

  There were better automatic weapons, but the AK-47 was the one he had used since joining Ta Mok’s Khmer Rouge army as a teenager. It was like an extension of his arm. What he aimed at, he hit.

  The passenger hit the door, rolled on the ground and came up shooting with his automatic weapon. Several more men leaped out of both sides of the bed of the truck, hitting the ground and firing their weapons at whatever moved inside the compound.

  The Cambodian screamed, “The guards, get the guards,” concentrating his fire on the area around the front gate. Two of the local guards returned fire with side-arms but were quickly cut down by the intense automatic weapons fire.

  The ten-wheeler reached the end of the driveway, crashed through the front entrance of the chancery building and exploded, bringing the second floor of the building and all that it contained, including the entire Country Team, down upon it.

  The Cambodian’s men directed their fire up at the windows of the office buildings that cirled the courtyard. People inside, foolishly drawn to the windows by the firing and explosion, were hit with bullets and flying glass.

  The Marine on duty returned fire with his M-16 from behind the bullet proof guard shack. He stepped out into the open to optimize his shooting and hit one of the Cambodian’s men before several rounds stitched across his chest, sending him flying backwards, killing him.

  Several of the insurgents directed their fire toward the fleeing visa applicants, who moments earlier were standing patiently in a line that wound like a snake in front of the consular section. People were screaming and crawling through bloody trails in their attempts to get away from the chaos.

  Three more Marines came out of their barracks firing M-16 automatic weapons. They took out another one of the Cambodian’s men in a fusillade of automatic weapons fire. Chaos reigned, and then the Cambodian screamed over the din and into his mic, “Out, out, out, out…”

  Khun Ut watched intently with great satisfaction through his binoculars. He heard the Cambodian’s signal to retreat and spoke into his microphone: “Vans up now. Move, move, move…”

  Two white vans were waiting about a half-block down the road from the entrance of the consulate. Upon receiving Khun Ut’s command, the drivers screeched away from the curb, rushed toward the consulate and skidded to a halt in front of the consulate gate.

  The gate was wide open with no guar
ds in sight. Smoke, fire, and screams accompanied the withdrawal of Khun Ut’s men as they backed out of the gate, firing their weapons at anything that moved within the compound.

  The men turned, ran, dove into the van’s open doors and were gone, tires screeching, down Wichatanon Road.

  Police sirens wailed in the distance, the sounds getting stronger and stronger, but Khun Ut’s men were gone.

  Khun Ut stood at the window of his observation post and watched the escape with the smile of a man proud of his work. He glanced down at his watch. The whole operation, from the time the truck crashed through the front entrance to the time his men jumped into the waiting mini-vans, had taken less than three and one-half minutes.

  Chapter Four

  Rising from the floor, a dazed Charly Blackburn pulled a pistol out of her handbag. She was bleeding from a scalp wound and had a splitting headache. Shaking cobwebs from her brain and trying to stop the ringing in her ears, she hurried downstairs and out into the courtyard in time to see the Cambodian’s men backing out of the front entrance, firing at anything that moved in front of them.

  She dropped to one knee, took careful aim holding the pistol with two hands, and emptied the .380 Walther PPK at the retreating terrorists. She slapped in a fresh magazine and prepared to fire off a few more shots, but they were gone, speeding off in identical white mini-vans.

  One of the CIA communicators, a lanky Texan, came out of the building behind her and laid a hand on her arm. “You won’t be doin’ any good with that little pea shooter, Charly. They’re all gone anyway,” he drawled.

  She spat back, “The hell I won’t. I hit what I aim at and I just hit one of those monkeys in the back as he was running for the van. I saw the sonofabitch hop.”

  Heart racing, she sat down heavily on the steps of the building and surveyed the courtyard around her. Blood matted her hair and stained her dress, and her shoulder ached. The terrorists were gone and all that remained was carnage. The communicator sat down beside her.

  They watched as the chancery building burned, timbers creaking and crashing to the floor. Dozens of dead and injured were strewn about the courtyard. Cries and moans from the injured replaced the cacophony of shooting and screaming.

  Police and militia forces began arriving, sirens blaring, pouring through the main gate. Charly thought about her colleagues and realized that no one could have survived. There was only a huge burning hole where the chancery building once stood. No human sounds came from the wreakage.

  She stood up slowly, glanced around the courtyard one more time and walked purposefully back to the CIA’s suite of offices on the second floor. “Come on, Gene,” she said to the communicator, choking back the emotion, “We’ve got to report this to Headquarters right away.”

  They hurried up the stairs, taking them two at a time. The communicator worked the dial of the combination lock on the vault door. He heaved the heavy door open and they entered the commo room lined with whirring communications gear.

  “Send a flash precedence cable back to Headquarters. Make it ‘eyes only’ to the DDO with an info copy to the COS in Bangkok.”

  The CIA communicator sat down at a console, typing the message as she dictated. “Say the following: ‘Consulate attacked by unknown terrorists at approximately 1100 hours. Truck bomb exploded under ConGen’s office during Country Team meeting. All presumed dead including ConGen and COB. Small arms fire in courtyard inflicted additional casualties among staff and locals. Details follow shortly.” She choked up again and paused briefly before regaining her composure, such as it was, and continued, “Sign it: ‘DCOB Blackburn Acting.’”

  “Got it,” he said.

  The message would be automatically encrypted and arrive in the CIA operations center within seconds. It was approximately 2330 hours–eleven thirty in the evening—in Langley. The Ops Center would call the DDO, Edwin Rothmann, at home on a secure STU phone, and he would head into the office. It would be a long night for him and several key case officers and analysts in the CIA’s East Asia Division.

  Charly Blackburn headed back down to the courtyard to help with the wounded and to assess the damage. Two of Khun Ut’s men lay dead. One had been shot in the face by the Cambodian as he lay wounded, crying for help—the Cambodian wanted no potential prisoners left behind for questioning.

  Directly in front of the entrance to the consular section, just north of the front gate, was the worst carnage. A dozen or more bleeding bodies of innocent Thai visa seekers were strewn about. Whole families mowed down as they waited in line for permission to visit America.

  A third severely wounded terrorist sat near the guard shack beside the gate. The dazed and dying man was being interrogated by one of the Marines who stood over him with an M-16 jammed in his face.

  The Marine screamed, “Who do you work for you fucking little maggot? Who sent you here?”

  Charly Blackburn got there in time to hear the terrorist wheeze; hands held out in front of his face, “Please, please, no, no shoot” he begged, “Khun Ut is boss. Please not shoot...”

  Charly put a hand on the Marine’s arm. “Don’t kill him Corporal. He’s more valuable to us alive.”

  The Marine lowered his rifle. “I understand what you’re saying Ms. Blackburn, but I’d really rather kill the dirty little sonofabitch right here and now. Anyway, probably don’t matter none anyway, the way the little shit’s wheezing and oozing blood like he is. He won’t last long from that chest wound anyway. Fuck the little maggot. Let him die, real slow and painful like.”

  Nothing in Charly Blackburn’s background had prepared her for this moment. She was now the thirty-five year old Acting Chief of a decimated CIA base amidst a ruined consulate general. It would be her job to pick up the pieces and bury the dead, including her lover, Marvin Sadosky.

  She would have to get on with the business of collecting intelligence on the narcotics business in the region and bringing down Khun Ut. She steeled herself; she could do it. She would get that sonofabitch.

  Chapter Five

  The Cambodian’s white mini-vans sped out of the area. One turned right on Thywang Road and headed west toward the outskirts of town. The other continued down Wichatanon Road before crossing the Mai Ping River heading east. When their drivers were certain they weren’t being followed, they slowed to the posted speed limit and took circuitous routes out of town before heading north toward Khun Ut’s main warehouse, in a forested area north of Chiang Rai.

  There were nine of them left, including the Cambodian. Two received minor gunshot injuries. One took a .380 round in the right buttocks as he was running toward the mini-van. Three were left behind in the courtyard and presumed dead. One had been shot by the Cambodian during their retreat because he didn’t have time to drag out the wounded man. The Cambodian was not aware that a third man was left alive in the courtyard.

  They joined up at Khun Ut’s heavily guarded warehouse. After driving their vans inside, they stood in the middle, surrounded by bales of marijuana and pallets of heroin and raw opium.

  Khun Ut, dressed handsomely in his signature uniform—a grey, short sleeved safari suit, starched and tailored to perfection—surveyed the remaining nine fighters, two of whom were on cots receiving medical first aid.

  The one who had been shot in the buttocks moaned loudly on a cot as a medic probed the wound and retrieved the .380 round from his right butt cheek. A dozen members of the security staff and warehouse workers surrounded the group, listening intently to Khun Ut’s words.

  “I am very proud of what you men accomplished today.” His voice echoed through the vast room and he liked the sound of it. “We have taught the Americans a well-deserved lesson. They will think twice before meddling in our affairs again.

  “You have struck a huge blow against the DEA and the CIA who have tried to disrupt our business. And they have no way to retaliate against us. They are impotent. The United States is tied down fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their erstwhile allies, the
Burmese and Laotians no longer fear them or support them.

  “And as for the Thais,” he paused for emphasis, “the Thais have been bought and paid for by us. We own them. There is nothing they can do, or will do, to stop us. They will ring their hands and cry foul. But they will stop meddling in our business.”

  He paced among his troops, chin up and limping on a stiff right leg, drawing strength from their presence. “Before my dear father died in that stinking Burmese prison, he had built an empire in these hills. Twenty years ago Khun Sa was responsible for seventy percent of the heroin consumed in the U.S. But pushed from behind by the stinking Americans, the Thai government went after my father with a vengeance and all but destroyed his empire.”

  His troops nodded and muttered in agreement. Many had heard this speech before but none of them dared let on.

  Khun Ut turned to face them and raised his voice. “In their assault on Ban Hin Taek they killed his natural son, my closest friend in the world, my brother, and destroyed my leg.” He reached down and rubbed his right knee with both hands for emphasis.

  “With your help we have regained much of that lost ground and are now well on our way to once again cornering the U.S. heroin market. Leave the cocaine to the Colombians. We are once again the kings of the heroin trade. Khun Sa would be proud of what we have accomplished in such a short time. He would be gratified, just as I am.”

  By now Khun Ut was sweating profusely. The air was still in the warehouse, despite dozens of whirling ceiling fans. “We left three fine men on the battlefield today and they will be remembered. Their families will be well taken care of. I will see to that personally. And the rest of you will be generously rewarded as well. We have struck a hard blow at the Americans. This has been a glorious day for which you should all be very proud.”