Plausible Denial

by Rustmann Jr. , F. W.

  “Looks great, but what does it say?”

  “It is basically, hum…how do you say it, a get out of jail free card. It says you are under my personal protection and any policeman reading the card should give you aid and assistance. That is what it says. If you get into any kind of trouble you just show the folio to the police and they will help you. That is it.”

  “Very nice,” said Mac. Culler whistled softly.

  “Now, I am sure you are anxious to get on your way and I must get back to my office. Come, follow me, I will take you to your car.”

  Santos and MacMurphy followed Sunthonwet down through the entrance of the villa, where they retrieved their luggage, and out to the garage. The Range Rover looked brand new. It was black with black interior and had dark tinted windows.

  Mac said, “This is perfect, Colonel, you have been of great assistance and you are a valued friend.”

  They threw their bags in the back and before they climbed into the Range Rover Mac embraced Colonel Sunthonwet and they exchanged deep bows and weis. Mac slipped the Colonel an envelope containing eight thousand dollars which the colonel slid quickly onto his pocket without counting it.

  And then they were on their way…

  Chapter One Hundred-Ten

  They arrived back in Chiang Mai in the early evening and ate dinner at the Chokchai Steakhouse on Singharat Road, about a mile from the safehouse. MacMurphy would have preferred a lighter meal of traditional Thai food, but Santos claimed his body needed red meat, and plenty of it, in order to continue.

  After dinner and a bottle of California cabernet, they completed their journey to the safehouse. There they found the key taped over the door jam, and their gear and weapons safely stashed in one of the bedroom closets. They took a couple more melatonin to chase away the jet lag, and collapsed into bed.

  Early the next morning they dressed comfortably in boots, jeans and polo shirts, loaded their gear and weapons into the back of the Land Rover, and took off for Ban Hin Taek.

  Santos drove. Before they got too far out of Chiang Mai where cell phone reception was spotty, MacMurphy called Maggie for an update.

  It was early evening in Ft. Lauderdale and Maggie was at home preparing dinner when the call came through.

  “Mac, I’m glad you called. You arrived okay?” If she was still mad at him for returning to Thailand, it was not evident in her voice.

  “Hi Maggie. Everything went fine. We had a good night’s rest and now we’re on our way up north. Have you heard anything from the big man?”

  “Yep, he called yesterday. He confirmed that she’s still there at the villa with the other fellow. He’s got the place under twenty-four hour observation – satellite and he’s diverted the Base’s Porter to full time observation and photography over the villa. He’s also listening to their telephone communications.”

  “Great. Glad he’s on top of it. What about…”

  “He’ll let me know if anything changes. He is still working with liaison to get them out, but nothing has changed…”

  “Okay, tell him we’re on our way up there. We’ll be in position tonight. I’ll try to call you when we’re set up, but the reception is spotty up there. Just keep the phone close.”

  “I always do. Please be careful, and keep your phone on as well.”

  “Okay, Maggie. Let’s keep this short. I’ll call back later. Bye.”

  “Okay, be careful. Say hi to Culler. Bye.”

  Santos listened intently to Mac’s side of the conversation. When Mac hung up he asked, “So what’s the deal? Sounds like no change.”

  “Yep, no change. Rothmann confirmed they’re still in the villa. He’s pulled out all the stops as far as surveillance is concerned. Twenty-four hour satellite, phone intercepts and the Porter. Soon he’ll have us as well…”

  “What’s the Porter? Is that a plane?”

  “Yes. It’s assigned to the Chiang Mai base to do aerial reconnaissance of the poppy fields. It’s like a low and slow flying U-2. It takes very high resolution photos. They’re also listening to every word Khun Ut and his men are saying. At least as far as telephone and cell communications. Whatever the DDO can do, he’s doing. But it doesn’t look like he’s made any progress with the Thai government. They’re still dragging their feet despite all of his efforts through our liaison contacts in Bangkok.”

  “Yeah, you can bet Khun Ut has them all on the take all the way up to the Prime Minister’s office. Have you given any more thought about how we’re going to get them out of there?”

  “Haven’t stopped thinking about it. We’re just going to have to get up there and take a look. Maybe create a diversion. I don’t know. I haven’t got a clue what to do without outside help. Not a clue…”

  Chapter One Hundred-Eleven

  Khun Ut leaned back in his chair, his polished black Wellington boots crossed on his desk. As usual he was dressed impeccably in a light grey leisure suit, smoking a cheroot. Ung Chea sat across the desk, dressed in boots, bloused camouflage pants and a black security tee-shirt.

  “You’re being too kind to her, Ung Chea. I’ve never known you to be so soft in an interrogation. You’ve had her for almost a week now, and still nothing?”

  “But you told me not to get too physical with her, boss. If you let me get a little tough, slap her around a bit, maybe we would get better results. She has been trained to resist interrogation. Sleep deprivation, bright lights, noise, endless interrogations and all that usual stuff is not working on her. They teach that in the CIA. She is a professional…”

  “But still, she is a woman. There are special fears a woman has. You need to play on those special fears.”

  “Special fears, sir?”

  Khun Ut swung his good leg off of the desk, lifted his bum leg down and stood up. He limped over to the window, looked out over the town below and took a long drag from his cheroot. He turned to face the Cambodian and exhaled smoke as he spoke.

  “Yes, special fears. She is a beautiful woman. The fear of disfigurement would be very strong incentive for a woman like her, like having her nipples sliced off, or cutting off her nose or ears, or even rape, or being fucked in the ass…being humiliated…”

  Ung Chea’s eyes widened and he leaned forward on the edge of his chair, scooting it around to face Khun Ut directly. The scar running from his ear nub to his mouth reddened. “You want me to fuck her in the ass and cut her nipples off?”

  “No, damn it! I do not want you to do that. It would give you too much pleasure.” He chuckled, and then got serious. “I want you to threaten her with these things. And I want you to make her believe you will do these things if she does not cooperate. You did a good job with the Hmong, now get me something out of her.”

  Khun Ut leaned closer to Ung Chea and gestured with his cheroot, taking on a professorial air.

  “You see, Ung Chea, the Americans are stupid. They advertise to the world that they will no longer harm anyone during their interrogation sessions. They advertise to the world exactly what they can and cannot do during interrogation sessions, as noted in their famous Army Field Manual. That means no prisoner is afraid of them any longer. They would never reveal information to them. Why should they? Prisoners know they can hold out because they know they will not be physically harmed. So they remain silent, or just give bullshit answers.”

  He returned to his desk and sat down. “But we are not forced to operate under these foolish constraints. We are smarter than they are. We can do anything we please to our prisoners. And if our prisoners believe we will do these horrible things, really believe and fear us, they will sing like sopranos.”

  Ung Chea said, “But these threats did not work on the old Hmong guy, and we smacked him around pretty good, boss.”

  “He is a different case. Anyway, we already got what we want from him. He is not important now. You did very good work by tricking him into telling you that the two farangs killed his partner while they were doing something to our heroin shipment. Maybe h
e really does not know what the farangs were doing there, but the fact is they were there. That tells me the farangs did do something to our shipment. And that is part of the answer we were looking for. Somehow they poisoned the shipment and that is the reason for our troubles now.”

  Khun Ut was reflective. “Those two farangs are responsible, and the only question now is who is behind them. That is the information you need to get out of the woman. The Hmong would not know this information.”

  “I think it is the CIA, Khun Ut. It has to be them…”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. I agree it appears to be a CIA operation, even though it would be unusual for the CIA to do something like this. Very unusual. Not their modus operandi. Not their MO… But what if the farangs were hired by one of our competitors to make it look like a CIA operation? Or what if someone within our own ranks was behind it? Someone who wants to take over our territory. What then?”

  The high-pitched whine of a single turboprop aircraft engine screamed overhead. Khun Ut flinched and then hurried across the room to look up at the sky through the balcony window.

  “That fucking CIA Porter again. The sonofabitch is flying so low it’s going to knock the chimney off the roof.”

  The Cambodian joined him at the window. “They are getting very brazen, boss. They must be looking for the CIA woman. They are coming very close. That plane is usually only used to photograph the poppy fields around here from a couple thousand feet up. Now they have it circling your house. They have the house under constant surveillance. They must know we have the CIA woman here.”

  “How would they possibly know that?” Khun Ut limped slowly back to his desk. He appeared tired and confused. “No, you are right. They could know. We left two men dead back at the woman’s villa. Maybe they were not dead. Maybe one of them talked.”

  Ung Chea joined Khun Ut back at the desk. Softly he said, “There are many ways they could find out, boss. Many ways.”

  “How could they find out? No one followed us here when we brought the woman. We know that for a fact.”

  Ung Chea understood the frustration of his boss and spoke in soft, gentle tones. “The same way we found out about the return of the two farangs, Khun Ut, through informants.”

  “Yes, maybe, but we are still not sure about that. We are not certain these are the same two farangs.”

  Ung Chea dropped his head. He did not like to give his boss bad news, but he would never lie to him, and he would always give him his unvarnished opinion. “Boss,” he said softly, “they are the same guys.”

  Khun Ut shook his head slowly from side to side, but Ung Chea continued. “We know that two farangs matching the description of Humphrey and Callahan left Thailand over the Nong Khai bridge in late August, right after, well, after we were chasing them. And then, the following day, two identical looking farangs named Santos and MacMurphy flew out of Vientiane.”

  Khun Ut nodded. “Yes, I know, Colonel Chatchai Sonthonwet helped them. The ungrateful bastard, after all we have done for him and all we have paid him, he helped those two sons of bitches.”

  “Yes, he helped them, and I think he may have helped them again the day before yesterday.”

  Khun Ut looked surprised and frightened. He drew heavily on his cheroot. “What do you mean, Ung Chea? What happened? You said nothing to me about this.”

  “That is what I came here to tell you.” The Cambodian dropped his eyes and spoke softly. “I wanted to check things out first, boss. I did not want to alarm you until I checked all of my facts.”

  “Yes, go on,” said Khun Ut anxiously.

  The Cambodian took a deep breath and collected his thoughts. “Sunthonwet brought two farangs across the bridge from Vientiane into Nong Khai. One of our people saw them in Sonthonwet’s police cruiser and reported it to Paiboon. Paiboon thought it was suspicious and checked the flights coming into Vientiane over the previous couple of days and, guess what?”

  “Yes…what?”

  “MacMurphy and Santos…”

  “And who are they?” asked Khun Ut, suspecting the worst.

  “I do not know about Santos, but MacMurphy is well known to us. We have a dossier on him. He was stationed at the CIA base in Udorn a few years ago – in the late nineties. Colonel Sunthonwet was one of his principle liaison contacts back then. They know each other very well from those days.”

  Khun Ut looked tired. His usual swagger and confidence was gone. But he remained as defiant as ever. “So it is the CIA.”

  “It sure looks like it, boss. He was a CIA officer back then, so I think it is safe to assume he still is a CIA officer.”

  Deep in thought, Khun Ut watched the smoke rise from the end of his cheroot. Finally he said, “I think we must have a talk with Colonel Sunthonwet. Get over there right away.”

  The Porter returned and buzzed low over the villa once again. They ducked and looked up at the ceiling and waited until it had passed. Khun Ut’s eyes blazed with hatred.

  “And take out that CIA Porter, Ung Chea. Use one of the Stingers. Take the fucking thing out…”

  Chapter One Hundred-Twelve

  The bright sun was low in the western sky when they passed through the town of Ban Doi heading west on route 1098. They were just a few kilometers from the north/south route 110 that would take them on the final leg of their journey up through Mae Sai to Ban Hin Taek on the northern border.

  They hurried to get there before dark so MacMurphy could do a final reconnaissance of the town and Khun Ut’s mountainside villa before heading into the jungle on foot.

  MacMurphy tilted the sun visor down and a red, four inch by eight inch, card fell out and landed on his lap. He glanced at it and laughed. “Look what we have here, a free parking card compliments of the police.”

  “Cool,” said Santos. “We can save money at the parking meters, but I don’t think there will be many parking meters where we’re going.”

  Mac laughed. “Yeah, we can park anywhere we want and never get a ticket. But seriously, this might come in handy along with our ‘get out of jail free’ pass from the colonel. At the very least it will keep anyone from monkeying around with our car while we are up in the hills.”

  “Good point. I wonder if this Land Rover also has any neat police gadgets on it like Sawat’s car did, like lights and siren.”

  “I didn’t notice anything, but then I didn’t check behind the grill for lights.” He checked the dashboard for a light or button of some kind. “Here they are.” He flipped a toggle switch below the dash and the siren wailed. He hit the one next to it and a signal indicated the blue and red grill lights were flashing. “Whoops! I guess it does,” he exclaimed. “We’ll have to keep that in mind.”

  By the time they pulled into Ban Hin Taek it was almost dusk. The road dipped sharply down from the mountains into a long narrow finger valley lined with small homes, elegant villas and tin roofed commercial buildings. The massive Doi Tung Mountain loomed up to their right and smaller hills and mountains bordered the road to their left.

  They passed a large cracked boulder lying in the Mae Kham River which flowed through the middle of town beside the road.

  “Well I’ll be damned! See that big rock over there?” MacMurphy pointed at the huge rock. “That’s how the town got its name. Hin Taek means cracked rock in Thai.”

  “How do you know that? Your Thai isn’t that good.”

  “I know the words for rock and cracked, that’s enough.”

  “I’m surprised at how modern the town looks and some of those villas look very expensive.”

  “Yeah, it looks different on the ground than from the air. It really is pretty nice, actually. They get a lot of tourists here these days. Not like when Khun Sa ruled the place. Those villas were probably occupied by his lieutenants.”

  They drove slowly through the center of the town along the river. The surrounding hills, which under Khun Sa cultivated massive volumes of opium poppy, were now planted with tea and coffee – poppy was now grown in fiel
ds further from the towns and off the more beaten touristy paths.

  Near the far edge of the town, about mid-way up on a high hill on the left side of the road, they saw Khun Ut’s mountain villa. It was barely visible from the road, and the narrow drive leading up to it was blocked at the entrance with a gate manned by four sentries armed with AK-47 assault rifles.

  MacMurphy drove slowly past the entrance until he was out of sight of the guards. He then turned the Range Rover around and drove past one more time, studying the mountain directly across the valley from it.

  “See that tall mountain up there on the other side of the valley? That’s Doi Tung Mountain, one of the tallest in the area – almost fourteen hundred meters high. Near the top on the other side, you can’t see it from here, is the Doi Tung Royal Villa.”

  “My, you are a font of information. You must have done your homework.”

  “How did you guess? Never go into a situation without thoroughly researching it first, Mr. Santos.”

  MacMurphy pulled off the side of the road near the entrance of the Ting Ting Restaurant. It was a modern looking Thai restaurant with fresh varnish and paint and a rock garden with a gurgling carp filled stream in front of the entrance. The number of cars parked out front indicated it was a popular place to eat.

  “Are we going to eat here?” asked Santos.

  “Always thinking of something to eat when there’s work to be done. No, we’re going to stretch our legs a bit and take a longer look at this side of Doi Tung Mountain. The only thing you are going to get to eat tonight will be our usual granola bars and water.”

  “Great…”

  They stopped the car and got out. Culler joined Mac on the side of the car and they looked up at Doi Tung.

  Mac pointed at the top of the mountain. “See that big flag on the top? That’s how the mountain got its name. Doi Tung means flag mountain.”