Plausible Denial

by Rustmann Jr. , F. W.

  “If he could bring the gear to the safehouse and leave the key someplace, maybe taped above the door jam, we’d be in business.”

  “Okay. Good idea. That way you guys will never have to meet. I’ll tell Garrett to deliver the gear to the safehouse and leave the key taped above the door jam. I’ll also tell our new acting chief of base to stay away from that safehouse until further notice. I’ll give him some excuse like it may be blown or something like that. That’ll give you some privacy.”

  “Okay, we’ll leave tomorrow. I think we’ll go back through Vientiane and cross into Thailand from there. That’s the way we got out. Colonel Sunthonwet can get us in and out without any problems.”

  “Sunthonwet’s a good guy. Corrupt as hell, but still a good guy. Hell, they’re all corrupt out there. Especially around Nong Khai. The cops pay a lot of money to get assigned to border crossing spots like Nong Khai. They make a fortune in graft from all of the commerce going back and forth across the border.

  “You can drop me off here. I can walk back to the station.”

  “Okay, boss.” Mac pulled off to the side of the road and the big man heaved his bulk out of the car.

  Rothmann leaned back through the car window and the two shook hands. “I’ll be in touch…and good luck, Mac. Sorry I can’t help you more. Keep your phone on and I’ll keep you updated on the situation. If there are any changes I’ll let you know. You’ve got to get Charly out of there…”

  “I know, boss. I know…”

  Chapter One Hundred-Six

  MacMurphy dropped off the rental car and drove back to the office to brief Maggie and Santos. It was after five when he got there and the staff had left for the day. Mac stopped in front of Santos’s office and poked his head inside. Santos was hunched over his computer screen answering emails.

  “Got a minute?” said Mac.

  Santos pecked a few more words and pushed back from his desk. “You bet. Can’t wait…”

  Culler followed Mac down the hall to Maggie’s office. They found her behind her desk, deep in thought editing an article for GSR’s CounterThreat publication. She wore reading glasses down low on her nose and was scratching her graying head with a pencil.

  Mac waited for Culler to enter and then closed the door behind him. They plopped into comfortable chairs in front of her desk. She removed her glasses, tossed them aside and put her elbows on her desk. “Shoot,” she said. “What did the boss have to say?”

  “Not good… Khun Ut has gone on another rampage. He’s feeling the pressure and wants to know what’s behind it. He grabbed Charly and Vanquish and is holding them in his mountain villa in Ban Hin Taek. The DDO’s got some intercepts to confirm that’s where they’re being held.”

  Maggie threw her head back and stared at him, mouth agape, wide eyed, unable to speak. Santos uttered: “Son…of…a…bitch...” Punctuating each word.

  “So he wants you back there,” said Maggie.

  “Yes, right away.”

  “You’re going to miss Christmas,” she groaned.

  “It’s not even December yet. We’ll be back in plenty of time for Christmas.”

  “Let me get this straight. He wants you to go out there and rescue them – just the two of you – without any help from the Company or the Thais or anyone else. How the hell are you going to do that?”

  Mac didn’t know how to respond. Finally he said, “This isn’t about Charly Blackburn or Vanquish. It’s about cutting the head off the snake. It’s about stopping Khun Ut. Ed Rothmann believes that if Khun Ut is gone the rest of his organization will dissolve – his men will desert him like rats deserting a sinking ship. And I agree with him...”

  “And how do you intend to ‘cut the head off the snake,’ as you so aptly put it? Do you have a plan?”

  Santos felt like he was watching a tennis match, his head turning from him to her.

  Mac took a deep breath, exhaled, and said, “Look, right now chaos reigns in Khun Ut’s dirty little empire. Pushers and buyers are at each others’ throats. People who have lost loved ones due to the tainted heroin are going after the local pushers, and the pushers are going after the local distributors, and they’re going after the regional distributors. This is happening all the way up the line to Khun Ut himself. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Buyers are shunning his product. His distribution networks are crumbling. This is what we intended to happen. The problem is he suspects the CIA is behind it and if he has any luck with his interrogations of Charly and Vanquish – and I don’t doubt that he will – he’ll know for sure. That’s what we’re dealing with.”

  Santos’s head turned to Maggie.

  She nervously finger-combed her hair back away from her face and leaned forward.

  “So now you are going to add assassination to your list of misdeeds. How many people are you going to kill before this is over? Mac, you’re a case officer. You’re both intelligence officers. Intelligence officers don’t do these kinds of things. Our country doesn’t do these kinds of things.”

  Santos’s head swung back to MacMurphy.

  Mac didn’t want to argue with her, but tensions were elevating and he felt himself getting sucked in.

  “Oh yeah, right. What about all of those Predator and Reaper drones in Afghanistan and Iraq? Tell me the difference between a bullet from a sniper rifle and a Hellfire missile from a drone. The answer is: there is no difference.”

  Santos’s head swung back to Maggie.

  “You know very well that political assassination was outlawed by the Agency way back in the seventies when everyone found out we tried to take out Castro with poison and an exploding cigar. The drones are different.” She sat back in her chair in a display of finality, as if to say, This argument is over.

  Santos stood up and excused himself.

  Mac stood up and started to leave with Culler, but he turned back to her and said, “The answer is yes. I would follow Edwin Rothmann to the gates of hell and back. We’re going to finish this. I don’t know how we are going to do it, but we’re not going to give up now and leave Charly swinging in the wind. We owe that to him. And her.”

  Santos turned to Maggie. “I’m sorry, Maggie. Mac’s right. We’ve got to try. We’ll be careful, but we have to try. It’s more than just the DDO now. Khun Ut has two of our people and we can’t abandon them. We’ve got to do something. I’m sorry…”

  She shook her head. “Go ahead, get yourselves killed. I can’t stop you. But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. A real bad feeling…”

  Chapter One Hundred-Seven

  Santos and MacMurphy met at the gym early the next morning. They both worked out in the weight room and then Santos spent the next forty-five minutes working out on the heavy bag while Mac went for a leisurely, five-mile run on the quay along the Intracoastal Waterway.

  After their workouts they indulged in a large breakfast of ham and eggs, hash brown potatoes, toast and coffee at the Denny’s across the street from the gym.

  Filled with trepidation about their impending trip back to Thailand, they did not talk much about what they planned to do once they got there. They knew how they were going to get into the country – with the help of Colonel Sunthonwet over the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge – but they didn’t really have a plan beyond that.

  This bothered Mac more than it did Santos. MacMurphy liked to plan everything down to the minutest detail before embarking on a mission. Although he possessed that special case officer trait of being able to “wing it” whenever necessary, he never went into an operation intending to just “wing it” or “play it by ear.”

  He believed that precise planning for every possible eventuality was the key to success in any operation. But in this case he had yet to figure out what he was going to do when he got to Thailand, and this concerned him a lot.

  What he did know is that they would fly to Vientiane via Hong Kong and cross into Thailand black, with the help of Colonel Sunthonwet. From there they would get a car
and drive back to the mountains surrounding Ban Hin Taek where they would find a place to observe Khun Ut’s mountain retreat.

  Long periods of observation had worked for him before, helping him to devise a plan in his head based on what he saw, but this time he knew he would not have time for any long-term observation.

  Once he got there he hoped a plan of some sort would begin to emerge in his mind. He knew that storming the place would be out of the question. The Thai army had tried that once before when Khun Sa was ruling the drug trade and the firefight that ensued lasted for several days and dozens of men lay dead at the conclusion of the fight. As with Khun Sa, Khun Ut had the total support of his mercenary army and the townspeople.

  This attack would have to be surgical in nature. And for that, he was happy that Bill Barker had urged him to bring along the Lapua sniper rifle. But taking out Khun Ut from a distance with the rifle was one thing; getting Charly Blackburn and Vanquish out of there safely was another matter. That was what he couldn’t get his head around.

  Chapter One Hundred-Eight

  Vientiane, Laos

  They booked seats in business class on a direct Cathy Pacific Airways flight from Miami International Airport to Hong Kong, with a connecting flight to Vientiane, Laos. The flight left Miami at seven in the evening.

  MacMurphy hated flying. Ever since the advent of the terrorist, flying had become increasingly distasteful: too much ridiculous, inefficient and ineffectual security, all in the name of political correctness.

  But once he boarded the aircraft and settled into his comfortable business class seat, it was a good as it could be for the fourteen hour hop to Hong Kong.

  He was dressed in his usual traveling garb: dark blue Hickey-Freeman blazer, blue button-down Brooks Brothers shirt, Levi 501 jeans and cordovan penny loafers.

  Santos was also dressed casually in a brown and tan checked sport jacket, jeans (relaxed fit to cover his muscular thighs), white sport shirt and loafers. Their carry-on luggage contained everything they would need to sustain them for a week. They did not check any luggage – one less hassle for international travel.

  After cocktails, a fair dinner consisting of small, four-ounce beef fillets with roasted potatoes and vegetables, washed down with glasses of an unknown but decent French Bordeaux wine, followed by an assortment of cheeses and more wine, they were ready to sleep. They each popped a couple of Melatonin pills to help them sleep and adjust to the jet lag, and settled in for the night.

  In Hong Kong they had a two hour and forty-five minute layover before connecting for the short hop across the South China Sea and Vietnam to Vientiane. They relaxed in the Cathy Pacific business lounge where they checked emails on their laptops and freshened up before boarding the flight to their final destination.

  In Vientiane they took a cab directly to the Settha Palace Hotel. For security reasons they had not made reservations, but the hotel was not full and the desk clerk remembered them from their previous visit in August.

  They had been traveling for more than eighteen hours and it was one o’clock in the morning in Vientiane. They checked in, took some more melatonin to help with the jet lag, and crashed for the evening.

  The next morning MacMurphy was up early and used the hotel lobby phone to call police Colonel Sunthonwet at his home in Nong Khai. Sunthonwet’s wife answered and promised to pass a message on to her husband that Mac and his friend were at the Settha Palace Hotel and would like to meet as soon as possible.

  Colonel Sunthonwet pulled up in front of the Settha Palace hotel in his police cruiser one hour and twenty minutes later. He left his car parked conspicuously in the driveway and strolled through the lobby of the hotel in full police uniform, eliciting glances from hotel patrons and staff along the way.

  He found Santos and MacMurphy lingering over breakfast in the hotel coffee shop and joined them at their table.

  “I did not expect to see you back so soon,” said Sunthonwet. “What a pleasure. How can I be of service to you?”

  After exchanging pleasantries, MacMurphy said, “We need to get back to Thailand but don’t want to get chopped in through Thai customs. Ummmm…we would rather not have our names appear on any Thai visitor list. You understand…and we will need transportation for a week or so…and, ummm…well, we would rather not rent a car through a rental agency. You understand...”

  He paused and exchanged glances with Santos. “And, if you still have those two H&K pistols, we would like to borrow them back as well. Can you arrange that for us?”

  There was never a question that Colonel Sunthonwet would be well rewarded for filling MacMurphy’s requests, and there was no doubt in MacMurphy’s mind that all of his requests were doable and would be fulfilled by Sunthonwet with the utmost discretion.

  “Certainly,” said Sunthonwet with a wave of the hand. “No problem. No problem at all.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You should know that there are outstanding warrants for the arrest of two renegade farangs named Humphrey and Callaway. I would not want anyone to confuse those two vicious murderers with you two upstanding representatives of your country.” He winked and settled back in his chair, knowing that his comment would most likely raise the amount of the stipend he would receive for his cooperation and assistance.

  Neither Santos nor MacMurphy reacted to the colonel’s statement. A deadpan stare was all he received. They did not take his remark as a threat, only that the colonel wanted to show that he knew the score and the risks involved in helping them, and that he expected to be generously rewarded for the risks he would be taking on their behalf. It was just business…

  “When can we leave?” said Santos.

  “As soon as you are ready.”

  Chapter One Hundred-Nine

  They returned to their rooms, grabbed their bags and checked out of the hotel at the front desk. Colonel Sunthonwet was waiting for them in the lobby, pacing back and forth in front of the teak trimmed revolving doors at the entrance.

  They followed him to his police cruiser and loaded the bags in the trunk. The drive to the Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge took a little over twenty minutes.

  The police cruiser was waved through the Lao customs check-point on the north side of the bridge and they crossed into Thailand. When they reached the Thai check-point on the south side of the bridge Colonel Sunthonwet rolled down his window and summoned one of the uniformed customs police officers to the car. They exchanged words and, after glancing into the car, the customs officer waved them past.

  Sunthonwet drove them back to his villa in Nong Khai, located high on the banks overlooking the Mekong. They stood chatting, looking down at the mighty river from a sunny day room thirty feet above the water. A maid brought them a frosty pitcher of lemonade and a plate of cookies and poured three glasses.

  The rainy season had ended in Thailand, but the river was still swollen from the earlier monsoon rains. Despite the swift currents at this time of year, children were happily swimming near the banks and diving into the muddy water from Sunthonwet’s boat dock below them.

  The weather had begun to cool and it was a sunny and pleasant day. November through February were indeed the best months to visit Thailand. It was far too hot from March through July, and the monsoon rains of August through October only brought added humidity to the region.

  Colonel Sunthonwet toasted them with his glass of lemonade and welcomed them back to Thailand. Then, remembering something, he raised a finger in the air, set his glass down and excused himself. Moments later he returned with the H&K pistols, suppressors, and two holsters – concealment and leg – for each gun.

  “These guns are a dream,” he said. “I fired them at the range and was the envy of my colleagues. They are clean, loaded and ready to go.”

  MacMurphy said, “I really appreciate this, Colonel. I assure you, you will get them back when we leave.”

  “And when might that be? I do not wish to pry into your affairs, but for planning purposes…”

 
“We shouldn’t be gone for more than a week or so… We just…have to tie up a few loose ends. I’ll call you here at your home to give you some warning before we arrive. Then you can have these two beautiful pistols back.”

  “Not a problem. Except for a day trip or two to Bangkok, I do not plan to go anywhere. I will be here for you. Is there anything else you need? You said you will need transportation...”

  “Yes, we need a car. Not the Land Cruiser we left with you, a different vehicle.”

  “Oh yes, I left your Land Cruiser parked in the middle of town on Sa Dei Road near the train station. After a few days one of my officers reported it abandoned and had it towed to the police lot. We did a registration check and contacted the owner in Bangkok who declared it had been stolen and came to retrieve it. So the Land Cruiser is out of the question anyway.”

  Mac exchanged glances with Santos. “Good, that’s one loose end we don’t have to worry about. Do you have something we could use? We would rather not rent one from an agency for obvious reasons.”

  “Not a problem. Not a problem. I will lend you one of my cars. It is a Range Rover. Only two years old. Very comfortable and will go anywhere you want. My wife drives it, so it is like new.”

  “That would be perfect, Colonel. We’ll take very good care of it.” Mac glanced over at Santos who rolled his eyes.

  “I am sure you will. It is my pleasure. Before I left the office I also prepared something special for you.” Beaming from ear to ear, he handed MacMurphy a red, pocked-sized folio with a police seal on the cover. MacMurphy unfolded it with Santos looking over his shoulder. It looked very official with stamps and a bold signature at the bottom, but Mac’s limited Thai did not permit him to read it.