Plausible Denial

by Rustmann Jr. , F. W.

  He turned to face the Cambodian and gestured with his cheroot. “The filthy maggots sent a team in to get us. But the Thais will not help them this time, and they can not do anything without the consent of the Thai government. They must respect Thai sovereignty. Double up on the surveillance of Blackburn and the other suspected CIA officers at the consulate.” He pumped his cheroot at the Cambodian. “And get me a list of everyone registered at the Wangcome Hotel on the night of the incident. I will bet you a million Baht that if we concentrate on registrations of single, non-Thai farangs we will find our CIA team.”

  The Cambodian smiled broadly, which only made him look more grotesque. He dug into his pocket and unfolded two sheets of paper. “I anticipated your request. Eleven rooms are occupied by single male farangs. Five of them are Americans.”

  “Good work, Ung Chea. You know what to do next.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Santos and MacMurphy returned to their hotel to consider their next move. They showered and changed out of their sweaty clothes and spent the remainder of the afternoon going over the maps and casings of Khun Ut’s warehouse and headquarters.

  They discussed possible operational approaches and agreed that whatever approach they decided to take would, regrettably, have to exclude the use of Charly Blackburn and her Hmong asset, Vanquish.

  Using Vanquish would clearly be the easiest and best route to take, but it risked exposing Charly and the CIA hand. Since Edwin Rothmann had made it clear that he did not want any connection to the CIA, they would have to do it without her.

  Charly Blackburn could only be used as a conduit for information. No more personal meetings would be held, if they could be avoided. Their one face-to-face meeting had already demonstrated the risks involved in meeting with her.

  They were up against a ruthless adversary, but one that was also astute and professional.

  Efficiency gives way to security to some degree in clandestine tradecraft. It was like a child’s seesaw.When security was highest, efficiency was lowest and vice versa. They would err on the side of caution and security for the time being.

  By six o’clock their brains were saturated with studying maps and photos and casings. Mac decided he needed a drink, so they made their way down to the bar before heading out to dinner. Both men wore short-sleeved, untucked shirts to conceal the .45 caliber H&K weapons they carried in the small of their backs.

  Santos nursed a frosty Kloster beer while MacMurphy downed two vodka martinis on the rocks. Santos had decided he had had enough spicy Thai food for awhile and suggested they grab a steak someplace. He explained that he needed the fortification that only red meat would bring him for the day that lay ahead of them.

  They got directions from the bartender to an American-style steakhouse on the south end of the city and headed down to the garage to retrieve their car. Culler drove and Mac, feeling relaxed with the effects of the two martinis, did not object.

  On their way to the Texas Steakhouse, Culler asked Mac if tomorrow was too soon to launch their operation at the Mae Chan warehouse.

  Mac replied, “Everything we need is in the back of this car and there’s nothing more we can do in Chiang Rai, so I guess tomorrow’s as good a day as any, unless you want to sleep in.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m not the one who sleeps like a teenager.”

  MacMurphy leaned back in his seat and massaged his temples. He gazed out the window as they sped past bicycles, Honda 50cc motorbikes with whole families aboard, and thatched roof shacks on bamboo stilts lining the side of the road. “Sleep is good for the soul, my friend. Perhaps you should get more of it. Maybe then you wouldn’t be so cranky.”

  “There it is,” said Culler. “Up there on the right. The Texas Steakhouse. Finally we’re going to get some real sustenance.”

  Aside from the exterior surroundings, the interior of the Texas Steakhouse looked like something you would find anywhere from Tysons Corner to SoHo—dark paneled walls lined with burgundy banquets under racks of wine bottles. A stuffed Angus bull guarded the entrance.

  Culler Santos devoured a bloody, sixteen-ounce New York Strip steak and sipped on another bottle of the local Kloster beer while Mac picked on a six-ounce filet mignon with pepper sauce and quashed it down with most of a sixty dollar bottle of French Bordeaux wine.

  Both shunned the desert cart, but Mac selected a chunk of ripe Camembert cheese from the cheese cart to accompany the remainder of the Bordeaux. Then he ordered a cognac to settle everything down. Santos topped off his meal with a sweet cappuccino coffee.

  Mac was quite mellow by now, relaxed and talkative, while Culler mostly listened and observed his surroundings. When he responded to a question from Mac, he noticed that Mac seemed distracted, swirling the cognac in his glass.

  “I can see you’re sorry you sent Charly back,” Culler said.

  “That obvious?”

  “Finish the drink and let’s head back before you talk me into chasing women.”

  On the drive back to their hotel, they agreed to check out of the Wangcome in the morning, not too early so Mac could get his beauty sleep, and drive up Route One toward Ban Mae Chan and Khun Sa’s warehouse.

  They had selected a spot on the map where they could drive in, cache the car and enter the jungle. The spot was at the edge of the ravine along an old logging trail about four miles south of Ban Mae Chan. From there they planned to make their way north on foot until they hit the bottom edge of the ravine. Then they would make the steep climb up to the warehouse.

  After that they would have to wing it.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  MacMurphy slept like the dead. The martinis, wine and cognac put him out as soon as his head touched the pillow. Santos was a different story. He tossed and turned and listened to the street noises and planned the next day in his mind. When he finally did fall asleep, he slept fitfully.

  At one forty-seven in the morning, Santos heard loud pounding at the door of the room directly above him, then muffled voices, then louder voices and then the sounds of a struggle and then a thud. The thud brought him fully awake, and he reached for his pistol on the nightstand. The silencer was already attached.

  The muffled sounds of a struggle and shouted commands continued overhead. It sounded like someone had been rousted from his bed and was being interrogated. He could not hear what was being said, but it was clearly in English.

  Santos’s mind raced. He quietly slipped out of bed and padded across the room to the doors which separated his room from Mac’s. He opened the door on his side and knocked softly. He could hear Mac’s snoring coming from inside. He called to Mac in hushed tones through the door but the snoring continued.

  Cellphone, he thought, and darted back across the room to the nightstand. He picked up his phone and punched Mac’s number on the speed dial. He heard the door to the room above him slam shut and the noises stopped. He returned to the adjoining door and listened for ringing, but heard nothing but Mac’s continued snoring.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The Cambodian exited room 1150 with his two broad-shouldered cohorts, slamming the door in frustration behind him. The thugs were dressed alike in black slacks and tee-shirts with SECURITY written across the back. Both looked like weight lifters with bulging biceps, although one of them had gone to seed and wore his pot belly like a proud pregnancy.

  The Cambodian whispered into his lapel microphone. “This is base. It is not Levine either, but he put up a struggle. He thought we were busting him. He is just another long-haired, hippy pot-head here to smoke our gunsha. Definitely not a CIA operative.”

  He pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and read from it. “There are two more Americans in rooms 1048 and 1050 below. We are heading down there to check them out now. You check out room 922. That will be the lot of them. Over.”

  Ung Chea and his cohorts took the stairs down one flight to the tenth floor. The hall was quiet as they made their way down the carpeted hall. When they reached t
he rooms, the Cambodian stood back and motioned to the heavier of the two men with his 9mm pistol. “Udom, take the door on the right. Boon-Nam, you take the door on the left.”

  The two thugs, each holding a .357 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver at the ready, listened at the two doors. Udom spoke first. “Someone is inside 1048; I can hear snoring.”

  The smaller man, ear pinned to the other door, said, “I cannot hear anything here. No sound.”

  “Okay,” whispered Ung Chea, “Take the snorer first.”

  The Cambodian joined Udom and Boon-Nam at the door of room 1048 and quietly inserted a key card into the lock. He pushed it all the way in carefully and then withdrew it. The lights on the lock beeped and signaled green, and he pushed down on the door handle, opening the door a crack. With the door partially open, he stepped back into the hallway to let Udom at the door.

  Udom put his ear to the crack and, hearing the continued snoring, signaled okay to the others. He stuck his .357 in his ankle holster and inserted a wire tool into the opening, running it up the crack until it hit the security chain. He closed the door as far as it would go and manipulated the tool up against the security chain until the chain dropped free and clanged against the door.

  Ung Chea and Boon-Nam stepped back, pistols at the ready, and leveled at the door as Udom unholstered his revolver, held it up at the ready position and pushed the door open with the back of his arm and shoulder.

  At that instant the three of them heard the muffled phifft of a silenced bullet exiting the suppressor of Santos’s .45 caliber H&K handgun.

  The heavy round hit Udom under the right armpit, mushroomed through ribs and lungs, and exited through his chest on the other side, slamming him against the door. He fell dead halfway inside the room, but not before he reflexively fired off one booming .357 round into the floor.

  That awakened the sleeping man inside.

  Ung Chea and Boon-Nam stood frozen for a moment and then turned in shocked unison toward the direction of the shot. They saw with wide-eyed disbelief a huge farang dressed only in checkered boxer shorts in a crouched shooting position with a long pistol leveled at them.

  Another phifft and the huge gun jumped in the farang’s hand. The round crashed into Boon-Nam’s chest just above the solar plexis, picked him up and sent him flying backwards down the hall. He hit the floor dead, arms flung wide.

  The Cambodian brought his 9mm around and leveled it at the big farang.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The booming report of the .357 magnum handgun finally blasted MacMurphy out of his drunken reverie. He swiped his silenced H&K off of the nightstand and rolled out of bed onto the floor, coming up with the gun at the ready.

  The door to his room was wide open with a motionless man sprawled across the threshold halfway into the room. On the other side of the door in the hallway stood two more men holding pistols aimed down the hall.

  MacMurphy’s mind spun. What was happening? Someone obviously tried to break into his room, but he was dead on the threshold. The other two must be his cohorts. They must be aiming at the shooter. Culler!

  At that instant the closest gunman flew backwards, revealing the other man. Mac immediately recognized the scarred face and the nub of an ear of the Cambodian.

  Ung Chea turned tward Mac and their eyes locked for an instant. The Cambodian had a shocked, wide-eyed expression of fear as he reflexively brought his gun around to meet this new threat through the open door.

  Mac snapped off a quick shot from his rolling prone position on the floor, aiming for center mass, but pulling it low and to the right. Nevertheless, he saw his target spin from the impact of the heavy bullet, bounce off the wall behind him and take off running down the hall.

  And then Santos was filling his doorway, standing over the dead man and wearing boxer shorts, his long, silenced H&K hanging loosely in his hand at his side.

  “About time you woke up.”

  Mac got to his feet rubbing his eyes with his left hand and holding his own pistol in his right. He was naked and completely sober. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Later. Let’s get these goons out of sight before anyone sees them. Get this guy inside while I get the other one. The sound of that shot will wake up the hotel.”

  Mac, fully awake now, grabbed an arm of the thug in his doorway and pulled him all the way into the room. He grabbed his boxer shorts and pulled them on as he ran out into the hall to help Culler with the other one. Together they pulled him into Mac’s room, leaving a visible trail of blood, and laid him beside the other gunman.

  A door opened down the hall and then another and another. Heads popped out of the rooms into the hallway. Culler leaned out of the doorway to Mac’s room, still in his underwear, and motioned to the people that everything was okay and that they should go back to bed. The heads retreated into the rooms and the doors closed.

  Santos closed the door behind him, locked it and set the security chain. “Okay, we’ve bought some time, but we gotta get out of here fast. Grab your gear and bring it into my room. That blood trail will lead them right here.”

  They worked swiftly and silently, moving all of Mac’s belongings into Culler’s adjourning room and locking the doors between the rooms.

  While they were dressing and packing up their gear, a couple of the hotel’s security staff arrived and knocked loudly on the door of Mac’s room. When they got no response, they used the hotel master key card to open the door, but were denied entry by the privacy chain. They called into the room in Thai and English through the crack in the partially opened door. Finally, one of them was sent downstairs for a bolt cutter to cut the chain.

  Culler and Mac were dressed, packed and ready to leave, but they waited until the man with the bolt cutter returned and had snipped the chain. The group had entered the room, chattering loudly at what they found, before they darted out of the room, ran down the hallway and into the stairway.

  They hurried down the stairs all the way to the garage, tossed their bags into the back seat of the Toyota and drove rapidly out of Chiang Rai in the direction of Chiang Mai to the south.

  They breathed a combined sigh of relief when they determined no one was following them. They were out of danger for the moment, but things were definitely heating up.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Santos drove, maneuvering deftly through the dark city streets on the way to the four-lane highway that connected Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai. “Glad you finally woke up when you did. Do you always sleep like that? Like the dead? Which you almost were, I might add.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. Guess I drank a little too much.”

  “A little? Yeah, I guess you could say that. You were snoring like a banshee too. You always snore like that? Must be a bitch for your girlfriends.”

  “Yeah, I get that complaint a lot when I drink. Forces them right to the couch. It’s a bitch.”

  “Well, I don’t want to preach to you, but it almost cost you your life tonight. I couldn’t wake you by knocking and calling through the door, so I called your cell phone and the bloody thing didn’t ring. Why’d you turn it off?”

  “I didn’t…I…I had it on vibrate.”

  “Vibrate! Why’d you have the fucking thing on vibrate for, for God’s sake?”

  “I don’t like it ringing when I’m in public places, so I leave it on vibrate. I can feel it and hear it buzz when it’s in my pocket, and I can hear it vibrate against the wood of the nightstand when it’s next to my bed. Usually, that is.”

  Santos rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake turn the bloody ringer on and leave it on from now on. Okay?”

  MacMurphy took the phone out of his pocket and turned the ringer on. “Happy now?”

  “Yes, very. I’m very happy now. Thank you…”

  “So, how did you get behind them?”

  “I left the room and ran down the hall, away from the elevator and stairs, and ducked into the ice vending machine room. The three of them came out of t
he stairs and went directly to our rooms and listened at the doors. I could see they were armed, and when it was clear they were going to break into your room, I shot them—well, two of them anyway.”

  “Well, I’m damn glad you did. Sorry about the Cambodian getting away though.”

  “Yeah, it would’ve been better if we’d killed him. But I’ll tell you one thing, Mac, you sure scared the shit out of him. You must have hit him in the side the way he spun and hit that wall. I should’ve shot him as he was running down the hall, but everything happened so fast.”

  “So I’m not the only fuck-up on this team…”

  “Yeah, you could say that. Never could shoot at a running deer either.”

  They were quiet for several minutes when Mac straightened in his seat and turned to Santos. “Why are we heading to Chiang Mai?”

  “I don’t know. Where else could we go? I didn’t give it any thought. Just wanted to get out of Dodge. We’ve got to regroup, right?”

  MacMurphy was thoughful. “They know who we are by now. At least they know our aliases and what we look like. They must have been checking the rooms to find out who Charly was visiting. Now they know for certain.”

  The wheels spun in Mac’s head. Looking straight ahead through the windshield at the landscape rushing by, he said. “We’re burned. No doubt about it. Our covers are blown. And this car was rented in the Humphrey alias. We’re going to have to get rid of it right away. But we’re going to need wheels.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. Where are we going to get another car at this hour?”

  “We’ll have to steal one or buy one. Another rental is out. But first we’re going to have to ditch this one. So…let’s…let’s continue on to Chiang Mai. It’s a big city, easier to get lost in. Maybe we can get a couple hours of shut-eye, pick up another vehicle, and then head back north to Ban Mae Chan to do what we set out to do.”