Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

* * * * *

  The Airnorth flight from Darwin was the last leg of an exhausting journey. I’m too old and important for this crap, thought Coulter. It was only an hour’s flight, but the cramped seats, howling turbo-props and oversized fellow passengers made him feel like a bottled fetus in a carnival back alley. At least the Kununurra Country Club sent a car. After a shower in his air-conditioned prefabricated room, he felt a little better. He had time to check his email before dinner with Tomás de Torquemada’s reincarnation.

  Teller had been offline for almost thirty-six hours. While not a good sign, it wasn’t necessarily a disaster. The money and high-value targets were already in Australia, and Coulter would be spending quality time with both tomorrow. The operation’s success depended more on the usefulness of the information extracted from the Iranian than anything that happened to the old Ranger.

  He wondered if there was time to raise Wollam on the satphone. Maybe they’d made some progress today while he’d been in transit from Sydney to this desert truck stop.

  * * * * *

  One of the first rules of the Unit is that you are better off with a few men who know what they’re doing than a dozen you can’t rely on. Gerard handed police officer Sai a Glock 17 with two spare magazines and gave a three-minute tutorial on how to load and fire. He directed the unusual-looking cop to stay with the pilot and copilot, and shoot anyone who approached. Sai said he understood and gave a big grin. The kid looked so relaxed, he could have been learning how to flip a burger. Gerard asked him where he learned to speak English so well.

  “At refugee camp. I come from North Wa State on China border. My father was killed fighting Shan Army and my sisters, mother and me moved to UN camp. I went to UN school five years and learned well English. Major Zaw took me to police when I was eighteen.”

  Meanwhile, Michaels walked Lazum through the steps of feeding the two-hundred-round 7.62mm ammunition belt into the M60 bipod-mounted machine gun they’d brought along for the now-absent Marines. He demonstrated how to troubleshoot the most common malfunctions, cautioned against holding the trigger down for more than a few seconds at a time, and mimed the lead he’d need for vehicular targets three to four hundred yards away. Lazum nodded vigorously as Michaels ordered him to shoot anyone coming up on their flank or attacking the plane. Michaels’s last act was to wave him up the runway two hundred fifty or so yards from the parked Pilatus Porter. Lazum had to eliminate threats before anyone could shoot up their flight home. The little man staggered under the weight of the gun, bipod and ammo belts. In pity, Michaels took the third belt off Lazum’s shoulders and laid it on the ground.

  The Pilatus Porter now sat in the middle of the runway. They’d positioned it there for two reasons. First, no traditional fixed-wing aircraft could take off or land with the PC-6 blocking the airstrip. Second, the Porter needed so little runway it could take off in either direction.

  Gerard and Michaels each slung a SCAR CQC. They split their eight grenades and stuffed a half-dozen spare mags each into their web belts. The plan was simple: engage sufficiently far to the southwest that their foes wouldn’t be able to damage or destroy the PC-6 or the landing strip.

  They double-timed it six hundred fifty yards down the runway, across the broken chain-link fence that surrounded the airfield, and onto a dirt road that ended where the airport gate used to be. They found two points of concealment staggered fifty yards apart. The goal was to disable the first and last vehicles of any convoy that approached, then use the grenades supplemented by the SCARs. Short of an armored personnel carrier, they would be able to handle anything on wheels the Army sent.

  * * * * *

  The Land Rover made its way slowly, aided by shovel and axe work to render their path passable. Bourey excitedly signaled that the track veered north just ahead, and they’d soon be able to rejoin the airport road: they’d outflanked their potential ambushers.

  Teller ordered a stop. Bourey used his walkie-talkie to raise the driver of the Toyota Crown. Bourey spoke in a short urgent phrases, and heard back something he didn’t like. He repeated himself with even greater intensity and clicked off.

  Mullen was dozing in the front passenger seat when the walkie-talkie sounded off. Whatever was said, the driver defied his boss and received an earful in return. The engine started and Mullen barely had time to jump out before the Crown lurched forward. The driver jammed on the brakes and the passenger door slammed shut. In reply to the driver’s unspoken question, Mullen motioned “no” with vigorous slit throat signs. The Toyota roared away while the old pilot tried to figure out what in tarnation he was going to do alone, unarmed and standing by the side of a dirt road in Southern Wa district. He wished he had insect repellant. The mosquitoes were thick and every one of them probably carried malaria.

  There was an explosion ahead. He started walking toward the noise when a heavy machine gun opened up even farther away. He kept walking: any company was better than no company.

  * * * * *

  This was Corporal Lazum of the Irrawaddy District police force’s first time behind a machine gun. With a vehicle veering down the runway at high speed, his initial shots were high and the noise deafening. The next shots went wide, and then low as evidenced by the tracers, but the Land Rover kept coming. It was less than three hundred yards away now. He started low, working the tracers toward the target as it approached. The Land Rover braked hard, spun, flipped onto its side and skidded toward his position, belly first and trailing sparks. He gave the trigger a long squeeze and tracers found the undercarriage. The vehicle stopped, smoking. His ears rang. A door opened upward like a flicked ear on a white rabbit. The M60 went off in his hand, but the belt finished after only a few more seconds. Without any sound that his deaf ears could discern, two figures danced clear and began to return fire. He sensed rather than heard the incoming bullets whipping over his head. It seemed to take forever to load the second ammo belt. When he looked up, there were two ants in camouflage pulling a limp body out of the top of the wrecked SUV, and three other ants lying down on the tarmac with weapons pointed his way. Lazum opened up and saw the standing bodies fall, and the prone bodies writhe and then lie still. He kept firing until the Land Rover caught fire. The second belt was finished and he grabbed for the third, only to remember it was two hundred fifty yards away by the side of the runway.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  TAILS, I WIN

  THURSDAY MARCH 13, SHAN STATE, BURMA; SINGAPORE; KUNUNURRA, WESTERN AUSTRALIA; RANGOON

  Gerard’s fragmentation grenade had starred the Crown’s windshield before detonating inside, killing the driver and Dr. Wang. The vehicle smoldered. With the M60 sputtering and then roaring to life, he and Michaels realized they’d been duped. Wordlessly, they spun and started running up the road toward the runway. Lazum was giving someone hell.

  * * * * *

  There were no signs of life with four bodies visible on the runway. The M60 was empty. Lazum decided he would walk down to the burning wreck and see if anyone was left alive. After all, he had a 9mm pistol and a spare magazine. If someone moved, he’d run back for that last ammo belt, return to the M60 and shoot them all again for good measure. He stood up and broke through the elephant grass to the edge of the tarmac.

  Bourey chose that moment to stagger to his feet, step out from behind the burning Land Rover and shoulder the RPG launcher. The explosion sent the M60 spinning end over end in a macabre duet with Lazum’s severed legs.

  Teller implored, “Did you get him? Did you get that bastard?”

  “I got him, but he killed me, too,” Bourey said as he fell over, intestines bulging out where 7.62mm bullets had ripped his abdomen open.

  Teller crawled over to Bourey, who, good as his word, now lay dead next to the launcher. Without another RPG, the launcher was fucking useless. He needed to get his ass somewhere else before the fire set off the unexploded ordnance. No one else had survived that M60 hammering. Back in the day, Teller had given the VC more than their fair sh
are of beatings with the same weapon. It was ironic that at sixty-seven he had almost died at the hands of his old friend, the Pig. But he hadn’t, because he was tougher than all of them. Always had been and always would be. Stooping to pick up an AK-47 with a shattered stock, he spat out more phlegm. Damn Dr. Wang. He was dead, along with Mullen. Now he’d have to find another radiation treatment specialist. But first he had to get on that prop job five hundred yards away and commandeer a flight to Bangkok, or maybe just move the plane the fuck off the runway so the old addict could land his Piper.

  It wasn’t until he went to switch the AK from his left to his right hand that he noticed blood flowing from a missing thumb and index finger. He decided to sit down for a while and bandage his hand.

  As Teller contemplated his missing digits, the evacuation flight from Mae Sot came in two hundred feet above the runway. Charlie Meursault knew more about the music of hot landing zones than anyone still alive in this theater. The Pilatus Porter parked in the middle of the runway sang a melancholy song, the billowing smoke off the runway to the southwest added a plaintive second verse, while the upended burning vehicle and scattered bodies on the runway shouted the chorus.

  Meursault pulled up on the stick, banked hard and headed back up the airstrip for another pass, this time tilting the wings to take a photo of the burning Land Rover. Matthews had promised him full payment so long as he flew over the airport at least once. He’d ticked that box, and now it was time to go home and smoke a bowl of opium. In his French-Vietnamese accented English, Meursault shouted into the wind, “Farewell, Robin Teller! I never liked you!” He waggled his wings and dipped low to evade any ground fire. Teller sat numbly as his putative rescuer flew off and disappeared into a low cloud to the northeast.

  * * * * *

  Michaels and Gerard arrived at the runway in time to see Meursault’s Piper Cherokee sail back toward Thailand. Michaels headed to the Portis to get it moving. Gerard worked his way to the Land Rover, using his field glasses to look for survivors other than the old white man seated in the runway. Lazum and the M60 had been taken out in one shot from two hundred fifty yards and change. The old man hadn’t moved other than to wrap a rag around his right hand. But Gerard also saw the AK by his side and the way in which Teller—it had to be Teller—was pretending he didn’t see him on the periphery. There was also an RPG launcher on the deck.

  A grenade exploded in the car fire, showering the runway with smoking automotive debris. Gerard threw himself down at the flash of the blast, shock wave and shrapnel passing overhead. He picked himself up and used his binoculars to confirm that Teller wasn’t moving. Circling around to the prone figure from the rear, he kicked the AK away before nudging the blood-spattered torso with his boot. Teller didn’t make a sound, but the frothy blood bubbles on his lips moved. Hot damn! Next to Teller lay a satphone with a jagged piece of metal embedded in the screen. Time to pull out the medical kit and go to work.

  * * * * *

  Constantine braced for Burns’s reaction now that he’d informed him of Agent Patrick Long’s murder outside Nolan’s bungalow.

  “Goddamnit! I gave a direct order that Nolan was not to be interfered with in any fashion. Any fashion! Not only did you go behind my back and tell Doyle to bug his hotel room, you managed to get one of our men killed!”

  “I’m sorry, sir. My resignation letter is in your inbox.” Constantine’s two priorities in life were the Lord Jesus Christ and the Agency. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth in silent prayer.

  “After this fucking fiasco is over will be the time to speak of resignations. Right now, I need to know where Nolan is!”

  “We’ve tracked him to the Colombo Racquets Club. He seems to have taken up with a China passport holder we’re still unable to identify. They’re staying in adjacent rooms overlooking the ocean.” Constantine was rambling.

  “I have news on that front. We’ve just learned that the MSS director and his protégé, the deputy head of Counter Intel lost their jobs on Tuesday. The newest Politburo Standing Committee member, Yi Xiubao, was keen to show that he was in charge. Director Liu is under house arrest, while his number two was demoted and packed off to Singapore. We’ve not laid eyes on her. It just occurred to my team that maybe this MSS officer Yu Kaili paired up with Nolan.”

  “Nolan’s latest girlfriend is senior in the MSS?”

  “Could be. Fly up to Tokyo tomorrow morning. Matthews is coming from Rangoon, as is this DEA character Hecker and his by-amateurs, for-amateurs boss. I want you to sit in on the meeting. Maybe if we finally start working together, we can figure out what in the hell’s going on.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, Director Burns.”

  “And here’s one other thing. Pass along to Doyle directly that she should have a team ready at the embassy from 08:00 hours onward tomorrow to wait for Watermen and Nolan. It seems the CIA is cooperating with another intelligence service, and they’ve offered to produce those two in return for other considerations. DCI Perkins gave me that news not forty-five minutes ago. That’s why we have to leave Nolan alone. It’s not your play to bring him in.” Burns hung up without awaiting a reply.

  Constantine sat stoically in his office. He’d been on the verge of canceling the Internal Affairs investigation into Nolan’s MH370 allegations, but now Burns had dropped the bombshell that Watermen and Nolan were to be handed to the CIA by another intelligence organization. Presumably it was the FSB, who already had Watermen and were likely to grab Nolan when he came to trade. So the Russians were giftwrapping Watermen and Nolan in return for . . . what, exactly?

  This didn’t smell right. He needed more facts on MH370 before he was satisfied that Nolan was wrong. He already had National Intelligence Director Morris’s sign-off, so at least on this count his backside was covered.

  * * * * *

  They agreed that, if reinforcements showed up, Gerard would finish off Teller and head to the plane while Michaels covered him. Michaels was jogging toward the PC-6 when he noticed the figure approaching from the southwestern end of the runway. He put the SCAR’s scope to his eye and saw an elderly Caucasian alternatively walking and jogging. He appeared to be unarmed. Gerard needed to stop the old man’s progress before he could get close enough to damage the plane.

  Mullen knew his chances of dying of old age rather than on this airstrip depended on Teller having lost the last gunfight. The fellow holding the weapon on him and walking down the runway was from the other side. His desert camouflage and size marked him as a foreigner, probably an American soldier. But if he and Teller were the good guys, why weren’t the other in-country troops on their side? This was all very muddled. Mullen was tired, thirsty and had gashed his shin climbing over the knocked-down fence surrounding the airfield. He stopped walking to ensure he had enough wind to talk once the soldier came into earshot. It also seemed like a good time to put his hands on his head.

  * * * * *

  Coulter had no problem picking out Tony Johnson in the sparsely populated dining room. He was the only 6’2”, deeply tanned, crew-cut, lantern-jawed man wearing dark mirrored wraparounds. As Coulter walked up, Johnson stood up, removed his shades and extended a hand in greeting.

  Johnson couldn’t help but think that Frank Coulter should be bigger. Age hadn’t stooped him. He had been a runt his whole life. Ramrod-straight despite being in his mid-seventies, Johnson wasn’t fooled by that “ah, shucks” down-home demeanor. In his seventeen years in the military and affiliates, Johnson had bounced back and forth between the Army and the Spooks. Coulter was one of those types everyone had a story about, from his early days serving as a SEAL Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin, to fighting against Che’ Guevara on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the Congo, to graduating from Harvard Business School before resuming his Agency career. And here he was, all 5’7” with a Huckleberry Hound look. In short order they both opted for the barramundi and chips. Johnson had another beer while Coulter ordered black coffee.

  Coulter a
sked about Johnson’s family (divorced, no kids and no current attachments), and activities when he wasn’t training Afghan Special Forces and conducting the odd interrogation (not much). Johnson, for his part, didn’t get much out of Coulter other than he was frustrated in retirement, lived on a mountaintop sixty miles outside Redding, California, and from a second marriage had a young son whom he idolized. After the dining room cleared out, their conversation turned to work.

  “What do you have for me?” Johnson asked.

  “A sixty-something-year-old Iranian nuclear weapons research scientist. Western educated and good English. He has been well trained in resistance techniques, so our ex-ASIS hosts haven’t been able to get anything out of him since Monday afternoon. I told them to limit him to three hours sleep out of every twenty-four. To date he’s on a hunger strike. I just finished a short call with the fellow running the operation. He has log books and interrogators’ notes, plus video of the sessions so far.”

  “Have they tried any enhanced techniques?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Wilbur’s men aren’t very scientific. They were pleased to learn that you were available. I understand you didn’t come from Afghanistan, but from Burma. What happened up there?”

  “I was in Rangoon. That was some crazy shit yesterday, with a gunship lighting up a residential neighborhood. Friends of the bastards I was interrogating tried to break them out. We erased that bunch, but the big boss was still on the loose as of yesterday morning when I flew out.”

  “Sounds like a story for another day. What do you need to encourage the scientist to cooperate?”

  “How presentable does he have to be when we’re done with him?”

  “Tomorrow morning we’re flying two hours to the Mitchell Plateau and landing on an abandoned WWII runway. From there, a jet helicopter flies us another ten minutes to the world’s most remote fishing camp. It’s still the wet season, so there aren’t any fishermen around. The nearest town is over two hundred miles away. There aren’t even any Aboriginals wandering around out there. As the scientist is presumed dead, it doesn’t really matter how he looks when you’re finished. He’s crab bait either way, but the information he possesses is extremely time-sensitive.”