Exposure (Jackson Chase Novella Book 1)

by Connor Black

  “The map shows the street is a dead end. He’s on the corner of a rectangular loop at the end. Means he has to come out where we just crossed,” she said.

  “You’re right.” I looked up. Was a rooftop view an option? More likely that would have some residents shouting, “Look at the crazy farangs up there!”

  “Ideas?” I asked.

  “No sit and stay type places on this side of the street,” she said.

  She was right. All we’d passed near Slater’s street was a car park, a bank, and a few retail shops. Large, more commercial places where one couldn't just linger for a few hours.

  “I saw an open air restaurant across the street behind some planter boxes,” she continued. “Might be our best place.”

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  The counter service restaurant had four tables out front shaded by some small trees growing out of planters. We had visibility to the outlet for Slater’s street, yet were reasonably camouflaged behind the planters.

  Chen went inside to the counter. I found a table outside where we would have a view of Slater’s street.

  She returned shortly thereafter, setting a mango smoothie and a Thai coffee on the table. She took a seat opposite me, her back to Slater’s street. Her hands gestured towards the drinks, indicating it was my choice.

  “After all of those energy drinks, I’m cutting you off,” I said, taking the coffee.

  She smiled, and we clinked glasses.

  “You’ve made quite an impression on Landon,” I said.

  She shrugged, and looked down at the table. I decided to push on. After all, we were likely going to be waiting a while.

  “He was surprised that you didn’t go to the NSA or get swept up by one of the big tech companies.”

  She shrugged again.

  “Why’d you choose the Navy?”

  “You first,” she deflected. “How does a New Zealander end up in the US Navy?”

  “Dual citizen-by-birth,” I said, smiling. “Gives a little flexibility.”

  “I didn’t think countries allowed that, since you’re born in only one place.”

  “International waters,” I said. “Your turn.”

  “Let’s just say I needed the structure.”

  “How so?”

  “In college, I was on the fast track. Rolled from undergrad to grad work, preparing myself to conquer the world.”

  “But?”

  She chuckled, “But I was proceeding to do it in a very naughty way. I had taken what Stanford was teaching me to the dark side, and I became quite a destructive hacker.”

  “I thought NSA liked that.”

  “They do, to some extent. Tech companies do, too.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I had just finished my Master’s, and had fantastic offers from a few prestigious companies in the valley. I celebrated by shutting down power on the Peninsula for 1,729 seconds.”

  “Seventeen hundred and twenty nine?”

  “Ah, it’s a math thing.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Nothing. As usual. A few headlines, but it was never traced back to me.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I think a part of me wanted to be caught that last time. The power was intoxicating, but I began to worry that I would soon fall off the deep end. I decided I needed limits. NSA and the big tech companies would have let me run wild. But the Navy, with all of its rules and regulations, would keep me straight. I’d have the ability to play with mathematics, but within highly defined parameters. Seemed the safest way to rehabilitate myself.”

  “I’m impressed, Commander.”

  “Call me Haley. Seems a little more appropriate sitting here confessing my sins.”

  She smiled. It was a nice smile, showing we had gained some degree of comfort with one another.

  “Jackson, then. Not fond of your rank?”

  “I still think of ‘rank’ as relating to how deep you can hack into a system. Tough thing to get over. Plus, the oak leaves are new. I was just bumped to Lieutenant Commander and it hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

  “Well, that bump is a selection, not based on time. So you’ve impressed your command somewhere along the way.”

  She gave a sheepish smile and another shrug.

  “Why don’t you take the watch for a minute, Haley,” I said, pulling out my phone. “I’m going to see what Joe and Landon are up to.”

  26

  Sterba answered the phone with a short, “We’re en route to relieve you and Dilbert.”

  “Dilbert?”

  “Best I’ve come up with so far, Hillary.” While I couldn’t see it, I knew the big man was smiling as he twisted the knife a bit.

  “Enough with the ‘Hillary’. We’re on Thanon Silom opposite his street, waiting. What do you have?”

  “Nothing new. But Langley’s told Clark we have to bring Slater in alive.”

  “What’s Clark say about that?”

  “Well, considering he’s just geared us up with handguns, I don’t think he’s too worried about the specifics. ‘We’ll see what the tactical situation dictates’ was his response to the office. Love this guy.”

  I heard Landon chuckle in the background.

  “We’ll see you soon.”

  “Fifteen minutes. Out,” he said, and closed the line.

  “They’re 15 minutes out. Just to warn you, Joe’s christened you ‘Dilbert’,” I reported as I sat back down. The sun was near setting, and she was squinting in the glare despite her sunglasses.

  Her body suddenly stiffened.

  “Slater,” she said tersely. “Just came out. Coming across the street right towards us.”

  Shit. I was worried about this. But it was an unavoidable risk. We were less recognizable in civvies, and he’d met us only once. But still, the Agency trains people to remember faces.

  My back was to him, but Haley was straight in his path.

  “Relax. Slowly look away. Over here.” I pointed down the sidewalk, and pretended to remark on something down the street.

  “Look where I'm pointing, and use your peripheral vision,” I cued.

  “Is that an Asian joke?” she asked. I liked that. Showed she was cool under pressure.

  “Distance?” I asked.

  “Ten meters,” she said. This time a little quieter.

  I kept up the hand antics, pantomiming the shape of something. But at the same time I was trying to assess our tactical situation.

  No weapons. Possibly armed target. Multiple escape routes for him. This was not looking good.

  “Wo xihuan ta,” she said. I like it.

  Mandarin. He must be close, and not knowing Thai, she’s laying the best decoy she can.

  I don’t know a lot of Mandarin, but traveling around the world as a kid gave me enough of a base that I can fake it in a decent number of places.

  “Ta shg meile de,” I replied in Mandarin as well. It is beautiful.

  I could hear his shoes tapping the bricks behind me.

  “Shì,” she replied, still looking the direction I was pointing.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Uh oh. How do you say “we’re fucked” in Mandarin?

  And just as quickly as they stopped, they started again. A couple of quick scuffing sounds let me know he had taken off in a sprint.

  “He made us!” Haley said.

  Both of us flew out of our chairs and hurtled over the planters in pursuit.

  It was clear that Slater was no ordinary fifty-something. He had a good lead on us, and we weren't closing it down nearly fast enough for my taste.

  A tuk-tuk passed us, filled with piles of orchids and leaving us in a cloud of blue smoke. I saw Slater look over his right shoulder, then change course ever so slightly towards the street.

  Uh oh.

  As soon as it came abreast of him, he leapt into a cab. Given the tight constraints in the front of a tuk-tuk, he must have landed more on top of the driver than
next to him.

  I could hear him screaming at the poor man, and then an increase in engine noise as one of them laid a solid twist on the throttle.

  I kept running because, as I learned in training, you never know what could happen. Plus, it was a tuk-tuk. What are they, two horsepower?

  Enough to pull away from us, it seemed.

  But there was traffic ahead, causing him to slow and navigate around the other vehicles. Suddenly, a man fell out the right side. The driver.

  Shedding some weight, apparently.

  Chen and I were having our own problems now, navigating through people on the wide sidewalk.

  “Jackson!” Haley said, pointing ahead.

  At the foot of some steps into a building ahead was one of the red motorbike taxis locals use to get around. Just like a yellow cab, but you can beat the traffic and enjoy exhaust fumes.

  The driver had just dismounted, and was flipping up his visor to go and buzz the door of his fare.

  I didn't hesitate, and hoped he’d left it running.

  I jumped on to the saddle, shouting to Haley to call Joe and help us cut him off.

  I could tell the bike was running as soon as I was on the saddle. I engaged the clutch, popped the gear pedal down into first and let it rip.

  And stalled.

  It is important to remember that motorbike taxis in Thailand are not 1200CC BMWs. They’re more like tuk-tuks minus one wheel and the cab. Meaning a full juke of throttle and popping the clutch might have been a bit too much.

  But hey, any port in a storm.

  I flipped the kick starter down and gave it a hearty push. It came back to life instantly.

  By then, the driver was fast approaching, screaming bloody murder.

  I released the clutch just escaping a fiery punch and a torrent of Thai expletives.

  The good news was that being on a dual carriageway, I had a clear view of Slater’s tuk-tuk. I laid on as much throttle as I thought the little bike could handle, and closed the distance.

  As I reduced the gap to about 15 meters, he must have seen me in his mirror. His movements between cars became more violent.

  Each time he shot for a gap, gobs of orchids flew off the back. But each move forced him to slow, and I was able to come nearly even with him.

  It wasn't easy. Every bit of my concentration was focused on not plastering myself on to the back of a lorry or smearing across the pavement.

  We shot through another traffic signal. This one red, meaning we had clear road for a couple hundred meters. I gave the bike a little throttle to pull along his right side when I saw the barrel of a handgun poke out the side. Right hand on his throttle, he was reaching across his body with what looked to be a small automatic.

  He stole a quick look, and let off two rounds just as I tapped the brakes. I saw the shots go low, just in front of and to the right of my front tire.

  This wasn't proving to be much fun. I really don't like being shot.

  I gave the bike some more gas and popped up on the other side of the tuk-tuk. Two more rounds came my way, but they were well off target.

  I quickly fell behind him and popped up again on the right. This time I wasn’t trying to just draw fire.

  I gave a hearty twist of the throttle and aimed right for the right side opening to the driver’s cabin. As soon as my body passed the opening, I gave a push with my right foot and dove onto the cab. The red bike wobbled, and then fell skidding across the pavement.

  In hindsight, it’s not something I’d recommend trying.

  On the upside, I was in the cab, and had managed to slam a fist into his face and knock his gun away in the follow through.

  On the downside, his right hand came off the throttle at the same time our combined weight hit the other side of the handlebar.

  Tuk-tuks, with only three wheels, aren’t terribly stable to begin with. So a violent maneuver like this, at speed, pitched the little vehicle over almost instantly.

  As we crashed down on the left side, I pulled my hand up to avoid the asphalt whizzing by the opening on that side of the cab. But in doing so, I exerted most of my body weight into Slater.

  The pressure drove his head straight for the asphalt. It hit the moving asphalt with a hollow smack and then slammed into the back of the cab.

  The edge of the roof must have caught a piece of the pavement, because it suddenly crumbled in and began to come apart. Shards were flying about, smacking into my shoulder and Slater’s chest.

  We flipped, and the vehicle made a full revolution before finally coming to a stop.

  I ended up on top of Slater. And despite aching from head to toe, my first reaction was to throw a haymaker at his mangled face.

  I raised my fist as best I could in the confined space, only to have it grabbed by a meaty hand.

  “Easy, partner,” came the booming voice of Sterba.

  I looked up through the opening that once was the windscreen to see Sterba standing with Haley.

  “I don’t think he needs anymore,” continued Sterba, moving his eyes to Slater.

  The left side of Slater’s face was covered in threads of bloody tissue. A mangled piece of the cab’s frame was protruding from his stomach, covered in blood.

  His left eye fluttered open.

  “Found me, didn’t you,” he said with a cackle. Bloody bubbles of saliva sputtered out with each word. “Too late.”

  “Too late for what, asshole?” I demanded, wrapping a hand around his neck.

  “Enough, Jackson,” continued Sterba. “Let’s get him out of here.”

  Slater and I were jammed against each other face-to-face, tangled in the remains of the cab. The smell of gasoline and oil mixed with the coppery scent of his blood.

  I felt his bloody spittle hit my face as he tried to laugh.

  “Too late for what?” I said again.

  “Kkkhhh,” he started to say.

  His eye rolled back followed by a last wheezing, bloody exhale.

  27

  “We need to get you out of here, Jackson,” Sterba said with more than a hint of urgency.

  He and Haley both went about removing or bending various pieces of the cab to get me out. A police siren wailed in the distance.

  As they pulled me out of the wreckage, Landon appeared by their side.

  “DS has some agents on the way to deal with the police. Best if we’re gone by then,” he said. DS was Diplomatic Security. Among their many tasks in the State Department, one of them was serving as a liaison with local authorities.

  “Working on it,” Sterba replied tersely.

  He was able to get me out, and I steadied myself on his and Chen’s shoulders. My head was pounding, and I was feeling a bit dizzy. And by the amount of blood running down my arm, it seemed that the tuk-tuk had really done a number on me.

  “How many times am I going to have to save your sorry ass?” asked Sterba, charming as always.

  Clark was in no mood to fuss about. “Come on. Car’s just over here.”

  A crowd had gathered, and they were not terribly pleased as we hopped in the car and simply drove off.

  “What was he on about, saying it was too late?” I asked.

  “Too late for Boone, Monkey, and the Angels?” Sterba said.

  “I don’t think so. Too obvious for that,” said Clark.

  Chen nodded her agreement, and then turned to look through the back window at the scene we’d left behind.

  Seeing no one following, she turned back and leaned towards Joe in the front seat.

  “‘Dilbert’? Really? Do I honestly look like a ‘Dilbert’?”

  In the Embassy clinic, the doctor cleaned me up. A few stitches, some bandages, and a tetanus booster to defeat dirty tuk-tuk penetration syndrome and I was declared ready for action.

  One of the nurses was kind enough to take me through the maze of halls to meet Sterba, Chen, and Clark. Down one corridor I was able to catch a glimpse out of one of the large, square windows and saw that the sun h
ad set long ago.

  He brought me to a solitary door at the end of a long corridor. As I looked through the doorway, I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  He smiled. “Yes, sir. This is saved for visiting bigwigs. You must be on your way to the top.”

  I gave him a laugh as he left, and walked into a large, very well-appointed apartment.

  The team was seated in the living room. Clark in a rather ornate wing chair and Chen and Sterba seated side by side on one of the couches.

  During the course of my little visit to the doc, they had apparently moved in and cleaned up. Chen was the first one up, and she came to my side to inspect the bandage on my shoulder. Her nose wrinkled slightly.

  “This place ours?” I asked.

  Clark nodded. “The Ambassador has kindly given us the residence for as long as we need it.”

  “Not bad, huh?” said Sterba.

  “It comes with beautiful showers,” Chen said with a smile.

  To be honest, I was a bit ripe.

  Joe raised his finger, and pointed down a hall. “Last one on the left.”

  I gave a jaunty salute and made my way to the back. Someone had placed my bag on a luggage stand at the foot of the bed.

  I dropped my torn and tattered clothes in the bin, and headed for the shower.

  I returned shortly thereafter, feeling substantially better, and took a seat on the couch opposite Sterba and Chen.

  It was so luxuriously filled with down that it positively enveloped me. The trauma of the tuk-tuk crash and the jet lag hit, and my eyelids felt heavy.

  I noticed that Chen had a glass of wine, and both Clark and Sterba had half-full tumblers in their hands.

  “What’s a piece of road kill have to do to get a drink around here?” I asked.

  “Not sure he’s earned it,” Sterba said looking at Clark.

  “I’d say leaping from a moving motorcycle earned him at least one,” Landon replied. He got up and went to the wet bar. “Vodka and soda work for you, Jackson?” he asked.

  “Sounds fantastic,” I replied. “Thank you.”