“Yes sir.” Sano grabbed his cap, slung his assault rifle over his shoulder and pushed the door open. The door led to a catwalk that extended the length of the building and provided access to the rooms and offices on the second floor. At each end of the catwalk were stairs leading down the ground floor.
He turned left and headed down the catwalk to the stairs that would take him down to the rear entrance. Poor Michai, he thought, all he has to do on this job is stay awake and he cannot even do that. Now he will be out of a job and will have the Cambodian to contend with as well. The Cambodian will smack the crap out of him. I would hate to be in his shoes.
Sano reached the double doors and called through them in a hushed voice. “Hey, Michai, open up. It’s me, Sano.” There was no response. He called again, louder this time, and tried opening the door. The door opened a few inches and bumped up against something. “Wake up Michai.” He put his shoulder to the door and pushed harder, forcing the door open a few more inches.
Then he saw the blood and the body; he knew his friend was dead.
Sano pulled the door shut and called out. “Anon, Anon. Michai is dead. Hurry up. Someone killed Michai.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Moments earlier, Santos whispered into his lapel mic. “Don’t you dare knock on that door. Look, there are rooms on the second floor on your side of the building, but I don’t think there is a second floor on my side. No windows at all. So come over here and we’ll shoot the lock out of this door and enter from this side.”
“I was just screwing with you,” said Mac. “Sounds like a good plan to me. I’m on my way.”
Mac joined Culler on his side of the warehouse. He leaned close and whispered, “It’s going to be dark inside, so let’s go back to night vision and lasers.”
They changed the settings on their rifles and flipped down their night vision gear over their left eyes. “We’ve got plenty of ammo. At least we don’t have to worry about that.”
“One more thing,” Mac whispered. “Let’s not forget why we’re here. Once we get inside, you concentrate on injecting the ricin into as many of those heroin bricks as you can, and I’ll take care of the rest of the guards. And if we have to skedaddle, make sure we get a couple of those bricks to make it look like we’re thieves. That’ll give us at least a bit of a fig leaf for why we were here.”
“Okay, okay. I got it. We’re thieves. Now stand back while I blast the door.”
Santos brought the POF up to his hip, put the green line above the bolt of the lock and hit the trigger. As five silent 5.56mm rounds leaped out of the muzzle and splintered the wood around the lock and door jam, the door opened with a gentle tug.
Santos slipped into the warehouse and turned right toward the side of the building. He saw two pallets of heroin bricks sitting in front of bales of stacked marijuana. MacMurphy followed, pulling the door closed behind him and flattening himself against the wall on the other side of the door.
His eyes quickly surveyed the interior of the dark warehouse and caught the sight of one of the guards at the other end of the building pushing at the double doors and calling softly to someone on the other side. He saw the guard push the door open wide enough for him to see his dead colleague laying on the ground, and all hell broke loose.
The guard turned and started yelling up to the second floor. Mac already had the green line on him, and he touched the trigger, slamming the guy back into the doors and down in a heap.
Mac glanced over at Santos who was standing with his back to a pallet of heroin bricks looking up toward the second floor. A heavy- set security guard came running out of one of the rooms yelling something in Thai to others behind him.
Culler was already aiming in that direction, and when the guard hit the catwalk he brought the green line to bear on the running man and hit the trigger, sending him sprawling to the floor, his AK-47 assault rifle flying out of his hands, over the ledge and clattering onto the concrete floor below.
An alarm blared, echoing through the warehouse in a cacophony of noise. Other doors flew open on the second floor level, and men ran out onto the catwalk in their boxer shorts.
Mac fired at the guards in short bursts, alternating back and forth as they came out onto the catwalk. Two went down immediately, but one of them returned fire with his AK-47, adding to the noise, before Mac cut him down in a hail of 5.56mm rounds.
Other guards came out of the rooms on their bellies and started to return fire from over the edge of the catwalk. The noise of the AK-47s joined the mind-numbing yells, shouts and the incessant wailing alarm.
Mac continued to rake the catwalk with his assault rifle, but the odds were not looking good for them. “We’re fucked,” he shouted. “Get the shit and let’s get the hell out of here.” Glancing over at Culler, he saw the big man stuffing a heroin brick into the sack carrying the ricin.
They both concentrated their fire along the second floor catwalk, keeping the guards at bay as best they could, but the guards continued to return blind fire over the edge in the general direction of Culler and Mac. Bullets pinged into the corrugated steel wall behind them as they dove for the door and darted out into the relative safety of the night.
“Are you okay?” asked Mac.
“Where did those fuckers come from all of a sudden?” Culler replied with wide eyes. “So much for stealth and clandestinity. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
They were at the far corner of the building heading toward the rear when Mac stopped abruptly. “Wait a minute,” he said into his lapel mic. “You go ahead and watch the back door. I’ll slow them down from this end. Let’s try to keep them inside for as long as we can, or they’re gonna be on our asses all the way to town.”
Running to the edge of the parking lot, Mac set up behind a black pickup truck. The area was well lit, so he switched off his laser sight, flipped up the night vision monocular over his left eye and sighted his rifle on the front entrance. The door nearest to him flew open, and two men dressed only in their undershorts came running out only to be met with a hail of fire from Mac’s assault rifle. Three of them went down in the doorway and none followed.
The far door opened a second later. Mac sighted the assault rifle; two more men were met with another hail of silent 5.56mm bullets.
Figuring that would stop them for the time being, Mac left his position behind the truck and took off running down the side of the warehouse to join Culler at the far end. “I’m on my way. Don’t shoot me,” he called into his mic as he ran.
He met up with Culler, who was standing with his back to the ravine with his rifle leveled at the back doors of the warehouse, and shouted: “Rake the doors and let’s bug out of here.”
Culler stitched the doors back and forth at waist high and then joined Mac over the ledge, sliding down on their butts through the mud and foliage toward the bottom.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chaos reigned in the warehouse. Anon hit the alarm to warn the others of the intrusion, and sleeping guards baled out of their racks.
He hit the speed-dial of his cell phone to call the Cambodian. The call was answered on the second ring by an angry, groggy voice.
Anon sputtered into the phone: “Boss, we have…an intrusion…at the warehouse. We need…help immediately.”
The Cambodian leaped out of bed and struggled to pull his pants on while holding his cell phone up to his good ear with his shoulder. “How many? What is going on?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t know. We have at least one guard, Michai, dead at the rear of the building. That’s all I know. I’m going out to see what is going on now, but you better get over here.”
“I’m on my way.” The Cambodian cut the connection.
Anon grabbed his AK-47 and charged out of the door directly into a hail of gunfire from below.
Chapter Fifty
Culler and Mac were half-sliding, half-running down the steep slope of the ravine, holding their weapons high out in front of them to keep t
hem clean. They reached the base of the huge banyan tree where they had rested on the way up and stopped for a moment to retrieve their backpacks and listen.
“I don’t think anyone followed us. Do you?” said Mac.
“I can’t hear a damn thing with that siren blaring up there, but I’ll bet the little fuckers won’t come out of there too soon.”
“But eventually they will, so let’s haul ass out of here before they realize we’re gone and start sending out search parties.”
“Yeah, let’s go back to night vision. We’ll move faster that way,” said Culler, knocking mud from the back of his Ghillie-suit.
“We already covered more ground in one minute than we did in thirty going up. At this rate we’ll be down at the bottom and out of range in no time.”
“Sure, but once we get done sliding on our asses we’ll be at the bottom and the long march begins. And they’re definitely going to be looking for us.”
Mac saddled up and glanced back up towards the top of the ridge. The siren was still blaring but there didn’t appear to be any other movement at the ridge’s edge. “Okay, let’s move out as fast as we can. I’ll lead the way so try not to tumble into me.”
“Yeah, make a nice smooth trough in the mud with your ass, and I’ll slide down behind you nice and easy.”
They slipped and slid their way toward the bottom of the ravine. The sound of the incessant wailing siren became dimmer and dimmer. Occasional bursts of AK-47 fire and shouts could be heard, an indication that the trigger-happy guards were now outside of the building and searching the perimeter.
By the time they reached the flat bottom, their Ghillie-suits and boots were covered in mud. They paused for a few minutes to catch their breath and scrape off as much of the gunk as they could. They rinsed off their hands, took long drinks of water from their Camelbaks and munched granola bars for energy. Then they were on their way again, moving at a fast walk with Mac in the lead.
They moved rapidly and silently through the triple canopy jungle, pausing only to glance at the GPS occasionally to establish their position. Twenty-six minutes had passed since they went over the ledge. Going down was a hell of a lot faster than going up.
Suddenly they heard the sound of a helicopter landing in the distance behind them, and then the wailing siren went silent.
Chapter Fifty-One
Ung Chea and a dozen of his men began jumping out of the Vietnam vintage Huey helicopter before it settled onto the tarmac of the parking lot. All but the Cambodian were dressed in boots and security uniforms. They all carried AK-47 assault rifles.
The Cambodian wore blue jeans, tennis shoes and an untucked, short-sleeved orange shirt. He held a 9mm pistol.
The men spread out in front of him and advanced toward the warehouse. Ung Chea followed closely behind, spewing out a steady stream of orders to the leader of the group.
The Cambodian surveyed the damage. Three men lay dead in a tangled heap amid bullet ridden cars at the edge of the parking lot, and more men lay dead in both open doorways to the warehouse.
Approaching one of the guards standing at the front of the building, he asked, “Where is Anan? What happened here?”
The quivering guard responded in a squeaky voice, bowing deeply with his fingertips touching his forehead in a deep wei, and almost dropping his AK-47 in the process. “I, I do not know, sir. It happened so very fast. So many dead. Anan dead. Michai dead. Sano dead. Many dead.”
The Cambodian’s scarred face burned red and his eyes spit hatred. “How many were there? Where did they come from?”
The guard continued to wei repeatedly and cringe in fear. “I do not know, sir. Everything happened so fast. I think they were many. They killed so many.”
The Cambodian brushed the slobbering guard aside and yelled, “Does anyone know what happened here?” Stepping over three bloody bodies, he entered the warehouse. He glanced around the interior and, without emotion, took in the sight of the still bodies of several guards lying sprawled on the catwalk and on the floor of the building.
A tall, young security guard with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder stepped forward and addressed the Cambodian in a soft voice. “Sir, my name is Phao. I was with Anan and the others when we were first alerted that something was wrong. I was the one who set off the alarm.”
He related the story of how Sano found Michai dead at his post, and two men with silenced automatic weapons broke into the building through one of the front doors and started shooting everyone in sight. “And then, when the alarm went off and we began to return fire, they left through the same door they entered.”
Ung Chea stared up at the young guard and then motioned around the room with his 9mm pistol. “Two men? You said two men did all this? What about the guys outside? Who killed them?”
Phao dropped his head respectfully and answered quietly. “I only saw two men, Ung Chea, only two. And, oh yes, they were both farangs.”
The remaining security guards focused their attention on the Cambodian standing just inside the door amid three of their dead colleagues.
Ung Chea could only remember one other time in his life when he had experienced as much anger, fear and trepidation as he was feeling at the moment.
He was six years old living in the northeast Cambodian border town of Anlong Veng when the Khmer Rouge seized power and changed the country’s name to Democratic Kampuchea. Ta Mok, the most brutal Khmer Rouge general, nicknamed “The Butcher,” arrived to take charge of the army in the northern zone.
The killing of intellectuals and the wealthy class began immediately after Ta Mok’s arrival. Ung Chea’s father, a wealthy merchant engaged in trade across the border with Thailand, was one of the first to be hacked to death with hoes by Ta Mok’s vicious Khmer Rouge.
His mother, an educated nurse, pretended to be a simple peasant to escape certain death, but her family and friends knew that that it would be only a matter of time before her secret would get out and Ta Moc’s thugs would see to it that she would meet the same fate as her husband.
The fear of losing his mother after witnessing the horrible death of his father was unbearable for the young Ung Chea. Several days went by and he couldn’t keep anything in his stomach. He spent his days and nights quivering in his bed, unable to eat or sleep, paralyzed by fear and foreboding.
Ung Chea felt the same squeamish pangs in his stomach today. He felt like he was going to retch.
Fortunately, Ung Chea’s luck changed abruptly on the day Ta Mok was carried back home on a stretcher following a skirmish with Vietnamese forces in the surrounding Dangrek mountains. His right leg had been blown off below the knee by a land mine, and he was near death from loss of blood and shock.
The call went out for anyone with medical experience to help their beloved leader, and Ung Chea’s mother, despite her fears, stepped forward.
Ung Chea and his mother were moved into Ta Moc’s huge three-story villa where she nursed Ta Moc back to health with hidden medical supplies and precious antibiotics.
By the time Ta Mok had recovered enough to screw on a peg leg and get back to fighting the Vietnamese, he had fallen in love with his nurse.
Needing the security and support Ta Moc provided, she became his mistress and the six-year-old Ung Chea was adopted and trained to be a guerilla fighter alongside his legendary adoptive father.
Ung Chea shook out of his reverie and began shouting orders to his troops. “Everyone outside,” he commanded.
When the men had assembled at the front of the building, he addressed them. “I know exactly who is responsible for this. They are farangs and we have their names and descriptions. They appear to be American CIA agents. We have been searching for them for days. Now everyone fan out and search the woods around us. They are on the run and we must find them. Now get moving and shoot them on sight.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
Khun Ut was soundly sleeping beside his favorite mistress when he received the call from the Cambodian. At first he was
annoyed at being awakened in the middle of the night, but as soon as he heard what the Cambodian had to report, he was wide awake, furious and ready to take action.
He shouted into the phone. “Get everyone on it. You have got to find the bastards. They must be on foot so it should not be too difficult. Get more men if you need them. Just find them and kill them. Get another helicopter if you need it. Dogs. Get some dogs if you want. Scour the jungle and the woods. They are out there somewhere.”
He was out of bed pacing with the phone to his ear. His mistress was wide awake now, sitting up and looking at him with frightened eyes, the sheet pulled up to her chin.
In a calmer voice he continued. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. The last report from the police is that they still have not found the RAV4 they are now driving. I’ve got everyone, including the police who want them for questioning about the bombing of their car, scouring the area between here and Chiang Mai for it.”
He paused a moment, thinking about what he had just said and putting things together in his head. “Oh my God,” he said, thinking out loud. “The car is there. It’s got to be somewhere fairly close to the warehouse. You have got to find the car, Ung Chea. That is where they are headed. Use the Hueys to find the car. They must have dropped it off someplace on the edge of the jungle and walked in. Find the car and you will find them.”
His next call was to his police contact.
Chapter Fifty-Three
The five-mile trek back down to the car was going considerably faster than the long, cautious walk in. Santos and MacMurphy were humping it as fast as they could, moving at slightly less than a jogger’s pace through the jungle back to where they had left their vehicle.
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