Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  By drop zone, he meant a twenty-meter clearing Finn and Mac had identified via satellite imagery before leaving Milos. Sixteen hours had passed since then, added to the hundred or more that had passed since the children first disappeared. Needles and haystacks came to mind.

  Rising to his knees, Finn peered out through the prop at the fog-lined ridges. A moonlight jump into a jungle forest. Timing and coordination were everything. “Ewan, do you have the flare gun?”

  An orange star, trailing flame, rose from the trees dead ahead, lighting up the wisps of cloud.

  “I asked if you had it,” Finn grumbled to himself. “I didn’t tell you to shoot it off.” He keyed the radio. “Load another round, and when I give you the signal, count to thirty and fire it off.”

  No answer.

  “Ewan, do you copy?”

  “Yes. I copy.”

  Amateurs. He tapped Mac’s shoulder and shouted over the engine. “Speed?”

  “Aboot eighty knots!”

  “Aboot?” The calculations Eddie and Darcy had made for them required a precise heading and speed. Finn would have time to make a few adjustments under canopy, but if he fell outside his margin for error, he might wind up with a tree branch in his gut. “Right now, I’m not too fond of aboot, mate. Exactly would be better.”

  “Ya get what ya get. Now quit yer whingin’ and get ready to jump.” The aircraft bucked and shimmied. Mac tightened his grip on the yoke. “Two thousand meters from the target.”

  “Ewan, this is Nightflyer. Start your count in three, two, one . . . now!” Finn didn’t wait for a reply. Headset off and goggles in place, he slid the door open to the roar of the slipstream and climbed out onto a one-meter-wide platform welded to the wing strut. Mac held three fingers in the air. In tick-tock rhythm, he lowered them to a balled fist and then pointed straight ahead.

  Finn let go and dropped.

  Two seconds into the free fall, a cloud the size of a house slapped him in the face. The thing had weight—and depth. His first jungle cloud and all Finn could think was, Ow, and Smells like fish. He flew out the other side with a soaked wingsuit and blurry goggles. He sacrificed altitude to keep stable while wiping the goggles clean, and when he spread his arms again, Ewan’s flare had already lit the sky ahead.

  Finn never saw where it came from.

  The first flare—the one he hadn’t asked for—had drifted left over the trees. This one drifted left as well. Finn traced an imaginary line down and to the right from the falling orange ball and thought he saw a break in the foliage. He shifted his track and hoped for the best. Talia would have told him to pray, but pride prevented him from starting now. The whole atheist-in-a-foxhole line seemed like a cowardly out. But maybe if she was praying for him, that would be enough.

  The behavior of the flares told Finn to line up right of his target, and the experience of more than two hundred night jumps told him when to pull his chute. Opening shock jerked him back. He checked his canopy and snapped both steering toggles free of their stowage. When his eyes returned to his mark, he saw a faint white spot flashing across the trees. An electric torch. Ewan.

  With renewed confidence, Finn set his aim. The air chop off the treetops whipped his chute, but he kept things under control. His man on the ground did not. The torch dropped to the ground and rolled. In its wash, he saw Ewan running into the jungle. Was he getting clear of the landing zone or fleeing a threat? Two flares and a swinging torch might easily have drawn the attention of the very kidnappers they were after.

  Finn scanned the tree line. He had one of Tyler’s modified machine guns strapped to his chest, but he only had two hands, and he needed those to manage his toggles for the landing, coming up fast. If armed men waited for him in the trees, he was at their mercy.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-

  EIGHT

  CLUB STYX

  MILOS, GREEK ISLES

  10:31 PM

  AS THE FERRYMAN PUNTED UP TO THE DOCK, Valkyrie saw Darcy slip a gray ball into the water. She had missed her teammate’s other drops. Good. Darcy’s sleight-of-hand skills were coming along. If she managed to dodge a fiery death at the hands of her own creations, she might make an excellent grifter. The French accent helped. Half the men in the world were suckers for a French accent. But for Club Styx, Val put on her Southern Belle.

  Emma Knight, TACRON’s negotiator, had graduated summa cum laude from Auburn. Emma Knight. Val liked the name. After this job was done, and with the real Emma locked away for weapons trafficking, Val might take on her persona for a while.

  The ferryman sailed off to collect more souls, and the girls got to work. They merged into the crowd at the periphery of the cavern, then split off one by one. Val went first. She glanced back to see Talia and Darcy, arm in arm, giggling as they walked. Their antics drew eyes, but Val doubted that any of the onlookers noticed them swap clutches. The two parted, fingers touching until the last moment. Darcy went left. Talia went right.

  “Drink, madame?” A waiter offered Val a tray of selections.

  She lifted a champagne glass with two fingers. “Thank you. How kind.” Val wasn’t drinking, not on this job. Tyler had made her promise. But she held the glass, a prop to complete the picture the Kongaran warlord’s buyer expected.

  She spotted the buyer on the fourth level, sitting alone at a table, and took an open lift to meet him. On the way, she searched the cavern for Marco but didn’t see him. Jafet’s private poker table, on a platform extending from the eighth-level balcony, remained empty.

  Val hated the monster Marco had become early in her youth, and despised him even more for pretending to reform after Tyler spared his life. Yet, try as she might suppress it, she cared what happened to him. If the team failed tonight, after dragging Marco out of hiding, she might never forgive herself. She’d certainly never forgive Tyler.

  Val sauntered up to the mark’s table, champagne held slightly above her navel, a smile—barely there—on her lips. “You must be Mr. Aku.”

  “Yes. Who is asking?” The warlord’s man had his nose buried in a smartphone, brand new and too large to fit in any reasonable pocket. His eyes came up first and widened. The rest of his head followed. “Oh.”

  “Emma Knight.” She pushed the accent. Alabaman. Not Texan or Georgia peach. Aku likely wouldn’t know the difference, but Val was a perfectionist.

  When he got up to take her hand, almost knocking over his chair, she made her assessment.

  Eager to please—a result of physical and psychological abuse in his present superior-subordinate relationship.

  Eyes flitting all over the place—doesn’t know where to look when talking to an attractive woman in an evening gown. Makes him distracted, nervous, vulnerable.

  New phone. Silk tailored suit, also new—Aku had laid down some cash since arriving in the Greek Isles, hopefully some of his abusive boss’s cash.

  Val broadened her Alabama smile. “I’m so pleased to make your acquaintance. Shall we sit?”

  The obsidian tables were etched with games designed for guests to enjoy and gamble among themselves. Aku’s table boasted a black felt dice tray and a board of squares with castles carved into the corners, a red dragon at the center. The dice, most of all, caught Val’s eye. There were five, one in the tray and the other four placed on the castle squares, but all were ten-sided gems—sapphire, ruby, amethyst, amber, and emerald, inlaid with gold and silver numbers. The jewels were lab-created, to be sure, but gorgeous nonetheless.

  “It is called Dragon’s Domain,” Aku said. “What shall we play for? Pride or greed?”

  “How about five million?”

  “US dollars?”

  “Is there really any other currency worth mentioning?”

  “Uh . . . I . . .” The warlord’s lieutenant pressed his lips together and swallowed.

  Val already knew he didn’t have that kind of cash. “If I win, your boss, Mr. Iwela, pays TACRON’s asking price for the three squadrons of drones. Fifty million.
That’s a respectable bulk discount off our original twenty-million-per-squadron ask.”

  “And if I win?”

  “If you win, darlin’, your boss still pays fifty, but I divert five million into the account of your choosing.”

  Aku’s eyes widened. “You mean—”

  Val lifted the amber die from the tray, rolled it between her thumb and forefinger, and winked. “What happens to the extra five million is entirely up to you.”

  She didn’t have to ask twice. Aku nodded. “This arrangement is acceptable. Quite acceptable.”

  “Excellent.” Val flicked the die into the tray, watching the yellow facets catch the torchlight. She set her champagne glass beside the board. “How do we play?”

  “You do not know?”

  “Darlin’, I’ve never seen this game in my life.”

  The Kongaran could hardly contain his grin. “I will teach you.”

  The game had something to do with moving Val’s ruby and sapphire pieces to reach the opposite castles or forcing Aku’s gems into the center, which he called the Dragon’s Domain. Aku was no genius, and despite Val’s best efforts at losing, his emerald and amethyst pieces were soon sitting at the clawed feet of the dragon.

  She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my. Did I win?” She wanted to smack him.

  The Kongaran stared at his pieces in disbelief. “Best two out of three?”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’m all about makin’ friends. So, let’s you and I pretend you won, and if you don’t tell your boss, neither will I.”

  “Really?”

  She ran a finger along the back of his hand. “Really. Now, shall we make this official so we can enjoy the rest of the evening?”

  His eyes were dazed, mesmerized. Five million dollars and a glittering red dress had that effect on a man like Aku.

  “I’ll take your silence as a yes.” Val sat back, taking his smartphone with her.

  “Hey!”

  “Oops, you left your screen unlocked. Not wise in a place like this.”

  “No, I—”

  She turned the phone around to show him.

  He smiled, embarrassed. “I suppose I did.”

  Val yawned, typed a number into his banking application, and returned the phone, letting her fingers linger. “Make the transfer, and our grunts at the dock will do the rest.”

  He started typing, then stopped. “Weapons first. You have been generous, but you will get paid only when I know the containers are on board my ship.”

  “Ooh. Aren’t we feisty?” Val could feel Aku grasping for some smidgeon of self-respect. Her mock charity had pushed him as far as his pride would allow. The clock in her head ticked on. She needed to close the deal. “All right, darlin’. You win. What choice do I have?”

  “Exactly my point.”

  With a demure smile and a slight turn in her seat, she dialed Eddie. “Matthew? Hand over the merchandise . . . No, I don’t have the money—not yet.” She glanced sidelong at Aku and winked. “Their position is strong. I’m authorizing you to move the containers.”

  Val set the phone on the game board beside his fallen pieces and switched to a video display, a wide view routed directly from the dock security cameras. “There they are, the three green shipping containers. We’ll watch the transfer from here.”

  Aku nodded his agreement, and Val drew a subtle breath. The rest was up to Eddie, who rarely left his computer during the team’s cons, and a crane operator who hadn’t run heavy equipment in years.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-

  NINE

  PORT ARANON CARGO DOCKS

  MILOS, GREEK ISLES

  10:48 PM

  EDDIE HUNG UP THE PHONE, looking up at a pair of big Kongarans. “My boss says the deal is on. The merchandise is yours. You want to see it?”

  Waiting around with these guys had almost been more than Eddie could take. The bigger of the two carried a machete slung at his back. Eddie figured the only thing keeping the man from slicing him into bits for sport was the occasional sniffle. The guy probably didn’t want virus-infested blood fouling up his blade.

  One of the men said something to the other in their native tongue that sounded like, “What did he say?” It might also have been, “Shall we crush this little Indian geek like the bug he is?”

  The other one shrugged. They looked at him and frowned.

  “The drones.” Eddie flattened his hand and flew it around like an aircraft, then pointed to his eyes. “Do you want to see them?”

  The bigger one thrust his chin at the container. “Yes. We see weapons now.”

  Communication lines established. Good. Eddie pressed a key fob, and the container’s electric lock disengaged with a hefty clank. He heaved open the door.

  The bigger Kongaran pulled a hard-shell case from the stacks inside and set it on the wet pavement. He lifted a gunship drone from the foam packing.

  “Careful, please.”

  The Kongaran glowered at him.

  Eddie shrank back, adding a preemptive sniffle to remind the man of his cold. “It’s just . . . the magazines come pre-loaded, okay?”

  After a long exchange in their own language, the Kongarans seemed satisfied.

  “All good?” Eddie gave the bigger one a thumbs-up.

  As Val predicted during her coaching earlier in the day, his mark answered with a matching thumbs-up, visible to Aku via the dock security camera.

  “Good.” Eddie shoved the case into the container and shut the door. “Tell your pilot to dock the boat at Berth E-Four and I’ll have my crane operator load you up.”

  Once again, they both frowned.

  Using his tablet, he showed them a map of the docks. “E-Four.” He pointed at the berth in the picture and then pointed at the actual berth across the yard. “Your boat. E-Four.”

  The big one shook his head. “No E-Four.” He dug a crumpled printout from the pocket of his cargo pants. “Look. Look here. Your message say G-Four.”

  Eddie slapped his forehead. “Sure enough. Autocorrect. Gets us every time.”

  “Move boat cost fuel.” The Kongaran shook the printout and poked Eddie in the chest. It hurt. “No move. You did this. You fix.”

  Eddie could see the guy’s blood beginning to boil. Val had told him to press the Kongarans to the limit, but she hadn’t seen the size of these guys. “Okay, okay.” He let them off the hook. “There’s another solution. The dock crane is on rails. I think my operator can work this out.” He raised a handheld radio to his lips and looked up at the crane cab. “Santini, you awake up there?”

  The answer came in garbled, staticky Greek.

  Eddie didn’t speak a lick of Greek. “Good. Good. Hey, can you run that baby down the dock—move these containers all the way to G-Four?”

  More garbled Greek, with a little annoyance thrown in.

  “Yeah. That’s right. G-Four. There was a mixup with the paperwork.”

  The final answer came in short and angry.

  Eddie clipped the radio to his belt and clapped his hands. “We’re good.”

  “You load containers now?”

  “One more thing.” Eddie unzipped a duffel and drew out two cans of red spray paint. “We can’t have containers with TACRON’s logo showing up in the Kongaran Republic.” He walked down the line, working the cans to cover each logo with a large, dripping blotch.

  The Kongarans didn’t interfere. The smaller one said something in Kongaran. The big one laughed. They seemed to understand.

  With his artwork complete, Eddie gave the crane operator an exaggerated wave. The machine swung into action, lifting the containers one by one over the stacks of cargo on the docks and setting them down out of sight on the other side.

  As the third container disappeared, the big Kongaran lost faith. “What you pull? Where your man take weapons?”

  “It’s all right. It’s all right.” Eddie took the significant risk of touching the man’s arm—another piece of Val’s coaching. “My opera
tor has to reposition the crane before he can move them all the way down to G-Four.”

  Milos was not exactly a bustling port. Eddie had to wonder how long it had been since the roving crane had moved down the rails. He cringed as a horrible ratchet and clank emanated from the machine’s massive base, as if the whole thing might topple over and crush them all. And then it began the slow crawl to the other end.

  Ten minutes later, the operator lifted the first container into view. Eddie pointed. “See the red blotch? Still dripping. There are your weapons. My operator will now load them onto your ship at G-Four.”

  Once all three containers were on the ship, Eddie sent his new friends off with a sniffle and a hardy handshake, making sure the dock cameras caught the whole pantomime. He activated his earpiece. “It’s done, boss. You think they bought it?”

  “I hope so.” Tyler had abandoned the garbled Greek of his Santini-the-Crane-Operator role. “Check the accounts.”

  Eddie unlocked his tablet in time to see the warlord’s funds coming in. Fifty million dollars to a fake TACRON Cayman fund Eddie had created, with five million immediately rerouted into a separate numbered account at a bank in Djibouti, all for Aku. “Yeah. They bought it.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY

  MAE SURIN JUNGLE

  MAE HONG SON PROVINCE, THAILAND

  FINN PLOWED HIS HEELS into the wet grass and let his rear end fall into the mud, the only way to stop in a clearing no wider than the height of the surrounding trees.

  No one shot him. Good deal.

  He jerked his quick-release rip cord and rose to a knee, leveling his gun. The TacLiTe torch fixed to the barrel illuminated the trees. He panned it along the perimeter.

  No one.

  Ninety degrees to his right, Finn heard a rustling in the underbrush. He swung the weapon and its light toward the sound. “Hands! Let me see them!”

  A pair of Thai men stepped out of the trees, hands high, squinting against the beam. One wore a blue T-shirt and tattered gray slacks. The other wore western jeans and a mud-stained button-down. They were unarmed. The man in jeans held a radio.