It was almost nine o’clock when Charly returned to the apartment and gently rapped on the door. Mac, who was puttering around in the kitchen dressed only in boxer shorts, opened it.

She reached out her hand and placed it on his chest as if to say don’t come any closer, but then she moved her fingers gently through the hair and caressed him before slipping easily into his arms.

He pushed the door closed and succumbed to the smell and feel of her. They embraced and kissed deeply standing in the doorway, and he could feel the heat rising between them.

But it was she who pushed back this time. Then she leaned forward, nibbled his earlobe and whispered, “I’m crazy about you and want you more than anything, but I’m not going to fuck you in this apartment at nine o’clock in the morning with Culler Santos in the next room. Got it?”

“Got it,” he replied. They glanced down at his growing erection. “I’d better go get some pants on,” he said, hurrying into his bedroom.

When he returned in gym shorts and a tee-shirt, he found her in the kitchen making coffee. She was dressed in a pale green sundress which clung tightly to the curves of her hips. “Is Culler up?” she asked.

“I heard the water running in there. He should be out shortly.”

She turned toward him, hands on hips, serious. “I told you you couldn’t get into that warehouse.”

“I know, I know…don’t rub it in, we had to try. I don’t like having to involve you in this. The DDO wanted plausible denial, and with you we risk losing that.”

“Rothmann knew that I would have to be a part of this. That’s why he put us together in the first place. Otherwise, he would have sent you out here on your own with only General Sawat to support you.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I am right.”

Culler entered the kitchen, also dressed in gym shorts and a tee-shirt, but wearing one of the longish wigs, a drooping Fu Man Chu moustache and large eyeglasses. “How do I look?”

Charly grinned. “If it weren’t for your ripped physique, I wouldn’t recognize you.”

He plopped down in a chair at the table, removed the wig, moustache and glasses, and sniffed the air. “That coffee smells great, Charly.”

“And it’s ready.” She poured the coffee and served them orange juice, muffins and bagels.

Mac said, “It’s nice to have a galley slave to take care of us.”

“Don’t get used to it, sailor. Now listen up – the reason for my early morning visit…”

“You mean it’s not just to see that we get fed?” asked Culler.

“In your dreams. We need to do some planning. I got a message from Vanquish last night. He’s back in his village and wants to meet in the morning. I think you guys should come with me. You should meet him and chat about doing your thing without blowing his cover.”

“This is the Hmong who used to work with Bill Lair. Security guy for their donkey trains, right?” asked Culler.

“That’s him. He’s a highly compartmented agent. No other case officer has ever met him. He’s your best hope to get access to one of Khun Ut’s shipments. They bring the stuff down from Ban Hin Taek to the warehouse in Mae Chan, the one you guys shot up the other day.”

“Oh yeah, that one,” said Mac.

“His village is a couple kilometers east of Ban Hin Taek. It’s called Ban Rai, near where you guys were when you were on the run. I meet him on a trail in the woods near his village. He comes to the meetings on horseback.”

“What time’s the meet?” asked Mac.

“Oh seven hundred.”

 “How are we going to get there?” asked Culler.

“I’ll take you, but we should probably take your car. It’s the cleanest one we have in the base inventory.”

Mac calculated. “Then you’d better stay here tonight. What time will we have to leave? Around four AM, right?”

“That’s right. It’s close to a three-hour drive. Staying here probably wouldn’t be a bad idea. Tell you what, I’ll come back this evening with some steaks, and we can have dinner together. I can bunk right out there on that couch in the living room. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Mac. Culler nodded his approval.

“It’s set then. I’ll see you back here after work, around six or seven. Dress comfortably for the trip, and do something about your appearances. That disguise you had on looks great, Culler. Mac, use the hair color and change your appearance as well. If anything goes wrong…well, see you around seven. Okay?”

She was already at the door when they replied in unison. “Okay.”

 

 

Chapter Sixty-Nine

      

 

She returned at seven, carrying a bag of groceries. Mac surprised her at the door with a new head of freshly dyed, light brown hair.

The men had spent the day cleaning and reloading their weapons, watching cable TV, preparing their disguises, napping and generally hanging out.

Except for one trip down to the garage to retrieve the automatic weapons and ammo, they stayed out of sight in the apartment. They had already started cocktail hour and were sitting at the kitchen table drinking vodka tonics when she arrived.

Culler relieved her of the groceries and placed the bag on the counter. Mac greeted her with a hug and kisses on both sides of her face in the European style.

“You look ten years younger without that grey hair, but not quite as distinguished. And I see you’ve already started cocktail hour. Who’s the bartender tonight?”

“I am,” said Mac. “We have vodka and vodka. Which would you prefer?”

“I think I’d like a glass of red wine. There are two bottles of Bordeaux in the grocery bag.”

Mac opened the wine while Culler emptied the groceries and laid out the three steaks on a plate. “How are we going to cook these?” he asked.

Charly rolled her eyes. “I’ll take care of them. Have you ever heard of a broiler?”

“Nope, I only know how to use an outdoor barbeque grill.”

“Of course, I should have guessed.”

When they were finished eating, they sat around the table for another hour leisurely finishing off the wine and going over the planning for the meeting with Vanquish in the morning.

They studied a map of the region surrounding Ban Hin Taek and discussed the possible routes the caravans could take from there down to Mae Chan. Charly traced the routes with her index finger.

“The entire trip is made off the roads through the forests of the highlands here, and down through the jungle, here, to Mae Chan. And they rarely take the same route twice. Here’s where we’ll meet up with Vanquish. There’s a meadow right here off route 1234. It’s a dirt road at this point.”

It was almost nine o’clock and the wine was gone. Charly stood up. “Okay guys, time for beddy-bye. You guys hit the sack while I clean up this mess and do the same. Mac, would you grab a couple of sheets and a pillow out of the linen closet in the hall and drop them on the couch? Then I’ll see you all in the morning. Three-thirty will come early.”

The men said good night and  retired. Charly cleaned the kitchen and readied a pot of coffee so that all she would have to do was flip the switch in the morning. She brushed her teeth in the hall bathroom, undressed and crawled between the sheets on the couch.

She lay there quietly, eyes open looking up at the ceiling, thinking of the day ahead—and of Mac in the next room.

She glanced at her wrist watch. It was a little after ten. Except for the occasional car and street sounds, and the humming of the air conditioner, it was quiet. She wondered if they were asleep. She turned on her side and continued to think of Mac. Would he come out and join her on the couch? No, he wouldn’t do that. He was probably already asleep. Probably, but…but what if he was waiting for her? Probably not. They had to get up very early in the morning, in less than six hours. Mac was always so damn mission oriented. Damn him.

It was warm and she threw back the sheet. Her body glowed in the moonlight. She wore only bikini panties. She caressed her breasts and let her hand wander down lower and felt the heat and wetness. She stroked and pushed and…damn it!

She sat up and looked for several moments at Mac’s door. Then she stood up and walked quietly to the door. It was ajar. She pushed it gently. He did that on purpose, she thought. She pushed the door open just wide enough to slide in and gently pushed it closed behind her. She stood there, staring at the bed, letting her eyes become accustomed to the darkness.

“What took you so long?” he said.

 

Chapter Seventy

 

 

They were awakened by the beep, beep, beep of her wristwatch alarm. She bolted out of his bed, scooped up her panties from the floor, and hurried back to the couch where she grabbed a sheet, wrapped it around her and darted into the hall bathroom, thankful that Culler did not see her exit Mac’s bedroom.

The three of them were on the road, coffee mugs in hand, thirty minutes later. Mac had chosen a baseball cap and pair of sunglasses to go with his newly colored hair; Culler was wearing sunglasses, a longish wig and matching Fu Man Chu moustache.

Both men were dressed in tennis shoes, jeans and untucked polo shirts to cover the concealed H&K weapons. Charly was dressed similarly in jeans and tennis shoes and a white blouse. Her PPK was in an ankle holster.

Charly knew the streets of Chiang Mai well. She drove rapidly but cautiously. When she hit the intersection of Route 109, she turned onto the highway and headed toward Chiang Rai.

Culler lay dozing across the back seat, while Charly and Mac chatted quietly in the front.

They made good time on the highway. Traffic was light in the early morning hours, and the only hazards were the speeding trucks coming south, inevitably driving in the middle of the road, forcing oncoming traffic to take evasive action. Trucks ruled the highways and the drivers made their point every time they drove a smaller vehicle onto the shoulder of the road.

They passed quickly through Chiang Rai and headed due north on Route 110 toward Mae Chan. They passed the road Mac and Culler had taken to enter the jungle and begin their assault on Khun Ut’s warehouse. Mac pointed it out and said, “That’s the road we took in and out of there. Pretty hairy experience and I’ve got the wounds to prove it.”

“Are you still bitching about that little scratch on your butt?”

“A little sympathy would be in order.”

“And that’s all you’re going to get from me—a little sympathy, very little.”

“You are a cold-hearted wench.”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-One

                     

 

The day before, at a little before noon, Khun Ut, Ung Chea and Paiboon met at the Mae Chan warehouse to discuss what had happened there. They walked the perimeter of the building, and Paiboon briefed the other two on his analysis of what had transpired.

“Here is where the two farangs climbed up the side of the ridge and began their assault on our warehouse,” said Paiboon, indicating the edge of the ridge and the rear of the warehouse. “They began their assault by sneaking through the jungle from that direction, from where we found their car, and climbing up from there. Then they surprised Michai who was posted over by those doors.”

“Was he sleeping?” asked Khun Ut.

“We don’t know. Maybe…but they were wearing jungle camouflage and using silent weapons. Maybe he just didn’t see them. They shot him in the head? Very good marksmen.”

Ung Chea said, “They were very well equipped, boss. They used 5.56mm assault weapons equipped with suppressors, and we think night vision as well. They were very accurate and silent—like Ninjas.”

“Mai pen rai,” said Khun Ut. “The point is these farangs are definitely not amateurs. They are well trained and well equipped. We need to find out why they were here and, more importantly, who sent them.”

“They stole a brick of heroin, Khun Ut. We chased them away before they could steal more. Maybe they were just thieves,” said Paiboon.

“Maybe, maybe not. But I don’t think so. By the way, you said you recovered the brick.”

“Yes sir, they dropped it during their escape. We found it on the trail and recovered it. Kaset snorted some of it before he had a heart attack and died.”

“What an idiot. Kaset got what he deserved. Heroin and exertion do not mix well. That is what gave him the heart attack. Good work on getting it back, Paiboon. If they were thieves, they got away empty handed.”

The Cambodian was unconcerned about the demise of Kaset, but he was very concerned about the two farangs. “I don’t think they were thieves. I think they were CIA, boss. I have believed that from the start. I am certain they are the same guys we met in the Wancome Hotel. Only the CIA has the capability and motive to come after us like this.”

“Mai, mai. Absolutely not. The CIA is impotent. This is not the same CIA that chased my father across the border into Burma. I know the CIA very well. I have studied this enemy very hard. It used to be strong but is now just another weak bureaucracy in Washington. They have had their nuts cut off by their own Congress. They would never authorize an operation like this. With all that killing? Never.”

“But the CIA lady, Charly Blackburn, was at the Wangcome Hotel where the two farangs were staying. Remember? She must have been meeting with them. It could have been a coincidence that they were all there at the same time, but I really don’t believe this was a coincidence.”

The three of them walked leisurely toward the front of the warehouse. Khun Ut was reflective. He paused and blew a long stream of smoke from his cheroot. “You are right, of course, Ung Chea. I had forgotten about that. There must be some connection to the CIA, but still…maybe they are mercenaries. They must be mercenaries.”

“Maybe mercenaries hired by the CIA?”

“I cannot imagine that. I have studied the CIA. Someone would have to authorize an attack like this. And even if that happened, they would not hire mercenaries. They require strict command and control over their operations and would be too afraid of what the congress and the press would say if it got out.”

“Not even after what we did to their consulate?”

“You must understand, Ung Chea, the CIA is still very good at collecting information. That is true. They, along with the DEA, were hurting us very badly by exposing our operations and disrupting our distribution networks. It is for this reason that we attacked them at their heart, their Chiang Mai Base. Our attack has set back their operations against us for years. It instilled confidence in our allies that we are strong and fear in our potential competitors and enemies like the CIA, DEA, and the Thai government. We needed to strike and strike hard, and we did. The CIA’s only possible response is to back off and try to convince the Thais to take action against us. That will not happen in my lifetime.”

“Then who sent these mercenaries, Khun Ut? And why would they be meeting with Blackburn, a known CIA operative? We control all drug trafficking in this part of the world. We have no rivals, no competition.”

Khun Ut stopped at the front of the warehouse and turned to face the Cambodian and Paiboon. He took a deep drag on his cheroot and expelled a lungful of smoke. “There are three people here in Thailand who can answer that question, the two farangs and Charly Blackburn. We will just have to ask one of them.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Two

 

 

Charly turned the Land Cruiser off of Route 110 at the little village of Bap Basang and headed west up into the mountains on rural Route 1130 toward Doi Mae Salong.

All of the roads this far north were unpaved and full of potholes. Small villages were scattered among the hills along the route.

She shifted the Land Cruiser down into four-wheel-drive as they climbed higher up into the mountains. Soon she turned off onto a small dirt road heading due north toward the Burmese border.

“This will take us up all the way to Ban Hin Taek, but we aren’t going to go quite that far. About eight or ten kilometers up this road, there will be a logging trail heading off to the right. Keep your eyes peeled for it. Our meeting with Vanquish is in a small meadow about two clicks up that trail. A pretty deserted location.”

The Land Cruiser bounced and churned and whined its way along the rutted road up higher and higher into the mountains. Culler was awake now. He leaned forward and placed his folded arms on the front backrests. “Well, at least we know we don’t have any surveillance.”

“No, you’ve got that right…except for the stray villager or hunter, we’re not going to run into anyone up this far,” said Charly.

“And Vanquish is arriving at seven?” asked Mac.

“He’s never on time. I’ve waited for well over an hour at times, but he always shows up and—anyway—I can track him on my GPS.”

“Does he know that watch he’s wearing contains a GPS?”

“No, and don’t tell him either. He never takes the watch off. It was supposedly a gift from his son. I told you the story, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did. This is a great op you put together, Charly. A real professional job. You should get a medal for this one.”

“Speaking of medals, Harry MacMurphy, tell me how you got your Intelligence Star. I’ve heard lots of rumors, but no one seems to know the full story. No one I’ve talked to anyway.”

Mac and Culler looked at one another and laughed. “Yeah,” said Culler. “He got the medal, the same day he got fired.”

“Yeah, I heard that too. I also heard you followed him out the door, Culler.”

“Indeed I did.”

“Well, I want to hear the story, the whole story. I also heard you are richer than God. Is that true also?”

Mac laughed. “Now that last part, that’s real classified. Only a small handful of people know about that. Where did you hear that?”

“You know how it is in the clandestine service. We’re a small, incestuous group of professional intelligence officers. It’s our business to know stuff. Now, how can you do something important enough to deserve a medal, get fired for it, and end up with a bundle of money?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Don’t give me that crap. I’ve got plenty of time. Tell me what happened.”

“I will, but not now. I think you just drove past that trail you were looking for.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Three

 

 

Charly hit the brakes, cussed, and backed the Land Cruiser down the narrow road to the entrance of the trail. Once on the trail, she concentrated on her driving.

The trail was narrow and overgrown. Trees along the way scratched the bottom and sides of the vehicle. She drove cautiously until they reached a small meadow. The grass in the clearing was covered in dew, and a light morning mist rolled over it. She pulled out into the clearing, turned the heavy Land Cruiser around and headed it back into the trail. There she parked it for a quick and easy departure.

“Now we wait for Vanquish,” she said. “He’ll be coming from over there, on the other side of the meadow.” She indicated a spot about fifty meters ahead where the trail continued north. “His village is a couple of miles northeast of us.”

Culler glanced at his watch. “You timed this well, Charly. It’s exactly nine minutes to seven.”

“Well, I’ve done this a few times before. I keep trying to get him to vary our meeting locations and times, but he’s very stubborn. He feels safe here and it fits in with his morning routine. His morning rides are a passion for him, and he rarely misses a day.”

“Where is he now?” asked Mac.

She pulled her GPS out of her bag and turned it on. They looked over her shoulder as she zeroed in on their location and then expanded the map to show an area ten kilometers around them. The pulsating blip emanating from Vanquish’s stainless steel Rolex appeared about two kilometers away.

“There he is and here we are. He’s on his way. His village is over here, in this  clearing. Ban Hin Taek is in this direction about fifteen kilometers from us in this valley.”  She expanded the map further so they could see. “He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”

“You want me to get the assault rifles out of the back seat for some extra security?” asked Culler.

“Sure, if you like. But I can assure you, we’re safe here. We weren’t followed. The only way they could find us is if Vanquish is compromised, and I’d bet my life on him.”

Mac looked at her and then down the trail. “You already have, Charly.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Four

    

 

Vanquish rode out of the morning mist from the north end of the trail, sitting tall and stern in the saddle aboard a large palomino mare. He wore colorful native Hmong dress with bright blue Chinese style baggy trousers and a gray wool vest with silver buttons.

His only concession to modern civilization was the broad-brimmed, black cowboy hat he wore. The hat’s crown was decorated with a chain of native silver ornaments.  He wore it pushed back on his head away from his tanned face. His skin resembled overcooked meat, but his penetrating grey eyes, surrounded by deep wrinkles from years of squinting into the sun, showed wisdom. He was of indeterminate age—maybe sixty, maybe eighty. He rode like he was joined with the horse.

When he spotted the two farangs standing by the Land Cruiser next to Charly, he jerked the reigns as if considering whether to flee, charge or stand firm. Charly waved him over with broad gestures of her arm, indicating everything was alright.

Vanquish trotted across the clearing toward them but remained sitting erect in the saddle after he reigned in the mare.  As his aloof and penetrating stare fixed on the two farangs, Charly approached and reached her hand up to him. His pale eyes darted from one farang to the other in a suspicious, disapproving way.

“Don’t worry,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers, “these men are my friends and colleagues. I won’t introduce you because none of you need to know each other’s name. They have heard of your exploits with Bill Lair and Tony Po.”

Culler and Mac approached and reached up to shake hands with Vanquish, who remained on his horse. “You know Bill and Tony?” he asked. When he reached down to shake hands with them, the saddle squeaked and the scent of leather enveloped him.

Mac said, “I met Bill Lair once many years ago when I was in training, and I met Tony Po up in Udorn shortly before he died. It was in the mid-90’s. I was assigned there.”

Vanquish looked down and asked, “How many fingers did Tony Po have on his right hand?”

Mac smiled knowingly. “Three. His middle and ring fingers were blown off while he was screwing around with explosives. He used to order four beers with his two outside fingers sticking up in the air like this.” He held up his hand with pinky and index fingers extended.

Vanquish laughed, breaking the tension and showing yellow stained but straight teeth. “That is Tony.” He swung down from the saddle and stood facing Mac, who was surprised at his shortness. “He was a quite a character. Crazy, daring and indestructible. The Japanese on Iwo Jima tried to kill him, and the North Koreans tried at the Chosen Reservoir, and then the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong and Pathet Lao could not kill him in Southeast Asia, but all those beers and many gallons of Mekong whisky…that finally did him in.”

Mac shook his head and laughed. “You’re right, he was a legendary figure. He lived one hell of a life. And when he died he had a liver like a hockey puck.”

“So you guys are SKY?”

Mac considered his response carefully. He knew that SKY was the cryptonym used by the Lao Resistance, including the Hmong, to refer to the CIA. Rather than go into details of their present situation, he figured it was best just to agree with the man. “Yes, we are. We are all colleagues. We are all SKY.”

“Good, then we can get started.” He wrapped the horse’s reigns loosely over the rearview mirror of the Land Cruiser and turned to Charly. “Do you have the map?”

She unfolded a 1:50000 map of Northern Thailand and laid it out on the hood of the vehicle. Vanquish put on an old pair of yellowed reading glasses and set his gnarled index finger on the map.

“You know all of this Charly, but I will repeat it for the new guys. The opium is assembled in various movable refineries around here, here and here.” He indicated areas along the border north of Mae Sai at Wan Ping, Tachilek and Wan Lom in Burma, proud to display his knowledge to his newfound SKY compatriots.

“There it is cooked in large pots and filtered through burlap bags and turned into a thick, dark paste. The places where the cooking is done are moved around on an almost daily basis to avoid detection by the CIA’s surveillance planes. After the initial refining is done, the paste is dried in the sun and turned into something like putty. The places where the drying occurs are changed regularly as well.”

Mac asked, “Do you have anything to do with that part of the operation?”

“No, all of that takes place in the hills near where the opium is collected from the farmers. There are others who bring the opium putty by donkey down to the warehouse in Mae Sai. That is where the next stage of the refining is done. It is very close to Ban Hin Taek.

“They cook it again in large drums and add lime to the solution. That turns it into a brown sludge which is scooped out and reheated and then they add ammonium chloride. After that it is filtered again and dried into a coffee-colored powder morphine base.”

Culler said, “But the bricks we saw were white, not coffee colored.”

“Yes, you are right. There is another step in the process. It is a bit more complicated and done at the warehouse with more sophisticated equipment, not in the movable jungle refineries. I do not know exactly how it is done. But I know they dissolve the morphine base in acid and then add charcoal and heat it again before filtering it through fine cloth several times until they have a fine, white powder. The powder is then pressed into one kilogram bricks. That is what you saw.”

“And that’s the end of it? That’s pure heroin?” asked Culler.

Vanquish smiled. “No, not at all. The final refining process is much more complicated. It takes real chemists for that part.” 

Charly explained. “He takes over after the bricks are pressed at the Mae Sai warehouse. It’s his job to get the bricks from Mae Sai down to the Mae Chan warehouse. The bricks are loaded onto donkeys, and he guides them down by caravan through the jungle. That’s his job.”

“And we never use the exact same route twice. We stay off the trails and meander down through the jungle until we reach our destination.” He drew his ten fingers down the map from Mai Sai to Mai Chan to show the many possible routes he would take.

“Okay,” said Charly to Mac and Culler. “That’s your background briefing. Now let’s get down to new business. We can’t keep him here all day. It’s best to keep our meetings as short as possible.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Five

 

 

Charly spent the next ten minutes debriefing Vanquish on the route he had taken on his most recent trip and the number of heroin bricks he transported.

His caravan was made up of eight donkeys carrying forty kilograms each for a total of 320 kilograms of heroin. He had been accompanied by two other men on horseback, all carrying AK-47 assault rifles and sidearms. He had hugged the Burmese border all the way to Wan La-ba, then cut almost due south through the jungle to Salong Noi before turning southeast to Mae Chan.

The trip took almost five days down to Mae Chan and two days back to Mae Sai, direct and empty. It was uneventful, hot, mosquito-infested, boring work.

When Charly was finished, she asked, “What about your next trip down?”

“We have another load going down the day after tomorrow: eight donkeys with about forty bricks each, the same team of three on horseback.”

“Our colleagues would like to examine the shipment. Can that be arranged?”

He looked suspiciously at Culler and Mac. “How close?”

“Pretty close,” she replied quietly.

Mac said, “We need to get close enough to take samples of the heroin. Scrapings.”

The old man rubbed the stubble on his chin with a gnarled hand. “How much time will you need to take your…scrapings?” He emphasized the word scrapings.

Mac replied, “Ten, fifteen minutes at the most. Can you arrange that?”

Vanquish studied the map. “You will have to do it at night, when I am on guard duty and the other two are asleep. It will be risky. If you are detected we will have to kill you. Is this really necessary?”

Mac nodded his head. “It’s extremely important. We won’t take long and will do it silently. We’ll just have to work out some signals between us. Give us a time and an exact location, as well as some sort of signal, and we’ll be in and out without disturbing anyone.”

Vanquish looked over at Mac and then Culler and then Charly. Finally he spoke. “I can give you an exact location on our first night out. There is one spot by a stream where we like to camp. After that it is hard to tell where we will be.”

“Show me,” said Mac.

“Here,” he pointed to the map and tapped his finger on a location, “about two kilometers east of Wan Hsenta-na on the Burmese side of the border. This stream runs north and south. See where it bends like a horseshoe here? That is where we will camp on our first night out, on the inside of the bend of the stream—right here.”

Mac jotted down the coordinates. “How will we know everything is clear and the others are asleep?” Charly and Culler were silently attentive.

“We will have a small campfire on the bank of the stream here, on the south end of the clearing. That is where my two companions will be sleeping. We will corral the donkeys and horses on the north side of this horseshoe. The donkey packs with the heroin bricks will be stacked here, in the middle.”

“That’s awfully close,” said Charly.

“Yes, very close. The area in the horseshoe is not large. It is our job to guard each shipment with our lives. That is why it is never far from us. Whoever is on guard, in this case me, will be sitting on top of the packs while the others sleep. You must be very careful not to disturb the animals or the other two guards. If you do, you will wake everyone.”

Culler and Charly looked at Mac, who was deep in thought. “What’s the best route for us to take in?” he said.

“You can drive to Wan La-baon the Thai side of the border. Then you must walk north across the border for about one kilometer and then turn west for about four or five kilometers. The jungle is not too dense in that area, so you can make pretty good time on foot. I would suggest you circle around our campsite to the north and enter from the west. That way you will not come splashing across the stream right next to us.”

The three of them smiled. “Good advice,” said Mac. “What time?”

“I will volunteer for the midnight-to-four shift. No one wants that shift, so I will be sure to get it. I will also bring a bottle of Mekong whiskey with me for the boys. They should be out by the time you arrive.”

“What’s the best time for them to get there?” asked Charly.

“Between three and four, say three-thirty, after they have been asleep for awhile. They will sleep soundly, especially with their bellies full of Mekong. The horses and donkeys will be your biggest problem, but they know me, so when you get there I can try to comfort them while you do your…scraping.”

“Okay,” said Mac. “How will you signal us that all is clear?”

“I will be sitting on top of the packs with my rifle across my lap. As soon as I see you, I will take off my hat and wipe the inside of sweatband. Like this. Then, when I think it is okay for you to come in, I will put my hat back on, get up, sling my rifle, and walk over to the corral, leaving the packs unattended.

“If I do not move off of the packs, you must stay out of sight. If I go anywhere other than the corral, you must stay out of sight.”

“Understood,” said Mac. The others nodded in agreement. “We’ll see you in two days, at oh-three-thirty.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Six

 

 

Khun Ut climbed out of the pool at his mountain retreat in Ban Hin Taek and limped toward a row of lounges. Two bikini clad, darkly tanned Thai women met him with towels and patted him dry before he plopped himself awkwardly on one of the lounges and lifted his stiff, mangled leg onto the lounge using both hands.

He had just completed his regular morning swim and was feeling invigorated. Now he was ready to get down to business.

Reaching for his cell phone, he pressed the speed dial. “Come over to the lodge, Ung Chea, and bring Paiboon with you. Now that Paiboon has inherited the responsibility for security at the warehouse, we should include him in our discussions. I am by the pool. It is a beautiful day. We will have breakfast at poolside before it gets too hot.”

Pointing to a barefoot waiter dressed in starched white shorts and shirt, Khun Ut ordered him to set a table in the shade for breakfast for three. Thirty minutes later Paiboon and Ung Chea were escorted to the table by another servant. They bowed deeply and exchanged wais with Khun Ut before sitting at the table. The waiter shook open starched napkins and placed them on their laps.

Paiboon was decidedly uncomfortable in such opulent surroundings. It was his first visit to Khun Ut’s mountain villa.

Khun Ut, still dressed in a bathing suit with a towel tossed over his shoulders, toasted the two men with a tall glass of iced green tea.

“Welcome to my home, gentlemen, and congratulations to you, Paiboon, on your well deserved promotion. Ung Chea holds you in high esteem, and therefore I do as well. I am sure you will do very well in your new position.”

Paiboon blushed and gave Khun Ut a deep wai. “Thank you, sir, for your confidence. Khrap khun ma khrap.”

Ung Chea was amused at Paiboon’s discomfort.

When the waiter departed, Khun Ut asked, “What is the status of the surveillance on the CIA woman?”

Ung Chea pushed back from the table and turned to face Khun Ut.

“Well, um, let me start from the beginning. We, the police actually, found the police cruiser two days ago behind an abandoned charcoal factory in San Sai. That is a little town just east of Chiang Mai.

“I spoke with one of our police contacts from the district, and he told me that a villager had seen a large white SUV drive up and park behind the factory where the police cruiser was found. They suspect that the SUV picked up the two farangs there, where they left the cruiser, and took them away. The SUV headed in the direction of Chiang Mai.”

“Did the villager get the license plate number of the SUV or the make of the vehicle?”

“No. He just described it as a big, white SUV. That is all he knows.”

Paiboon, less intimidated now, volunteered, “I can go down there myself and talk to the villagers, sir. Maybe I can get a better description, or maybe the tire tracks will tell me something.”

Khun Ut shook his head. “Good idea, Paiboon, but your job is here. It is better if we let the police do their own police work. We certainly pay them enough.”

The Cambodian nodded. “I will speak directly with the constable responsible for that town. Perhaps he can get a better description for us. I will also suggest he look at the tire tracks to see if that helps. This country is full of white SUVs.”

“But it is helpful information just the same,” said Khun Ut. “At least it narrows our search. The farangs are probably holed up in Chiang Mai where it is easier for a farang to blend in, and they are probably driving a white SUV. That is something, anyway. Now tell me about the woman.”

The Cambodian absentmindedly stroked the scar on his cheek with his thumb. “Yes, the CIA woman. She is very difficult to follow, Khun Ut. We cannot stake out too close to the consulate because the police have tripled their security there. The same goes for her residence. Security is heavy all over the place.

“She is also very good at avoiding our surveillance. We think maybe she comes and goes from the consulate during the day in cars other than her own. I think she hides in other people’s cars going in and out. Then she may take taxis for her meetings. At least we never see her go anywhere during the day.”

“So you do not know what she does during the day, but you do know that she goes to work in the morning and returns home at night. Is that all you can tell me?”

“Basically, yes, that is correct. Except for last night. She did not return home last night, and her car remained parked at the consulate. The surveillance team does not know where she is.”

Khun Ut thought and massaged his knee. “I will bet you this magnificent mountain lodge that my father built that she is now with the two farangs in the white SUV. They are up to some sort of mischief, but they will be back. At least she will be back. You can count on that.”

He turned to the Cambodian and spoke forcefully. “And when she returns I want you to grab her and bring her here to me. Intercept her between her home and the consulate. That is one route we can be certain that she will take. Set up an ambush and bring her to me. I have questions to ask her.”

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Seven

 

 

Charly, Culler and Mac drove back to Chiang Mai, but on their way they made one slight detour. They drove southwest along the border to the village of Wan La-ba to case for a good place to drop off Culler and Mac.

They found a spot on the northern outskirts of the village behind an old abandoned petrol station and junk yard. The far end of the junk yard, filled with rusting cars and trucks, was at the edge of the jungle. It was a perfect place for Charly to drop them off and pick them up with a minimal chance of being observed.

They arrived back in Chiang Mai in the late afternoon. Charly dropped the two men off at the safehouse—where they showered, shaved and cleaned up—while she drove to a nearby grocery store to pick up more provisions.

The men were happy to remove their disguises and were relaxing in tee-shirts and shorts when Charly returned. They fixed cocktails and sat around the kitchen table chatting before beginning to prepare dinner.

When the topic turned to planning, Mac took a long pull from his vodka-tonic before speaking.

“This whole God-forsaken country is out looking for us: police, Khun Ut’s men, good guys, bad guys. It’s only a matter of time before somebody spots us, disguise or no disguise, or they figure out we’re driving that Land Cruiser.”

He turned to Charly and placed his hand on hers. “And I’m especially concerned about you, Charly. There’s no doubt they know who you are, and we have to believe that they have figured out that you’re a link to us.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, “but I agree we need to tighten up our tradecraft.”

“And that means staying as far away from you as possible, Charly,” said Culler. “We’re placing you in jeopardy just by being here. You did a great job setting everything us for us, with Vanquish and all, but we’ve got to cut the cord.”

“I know, I know. I understand. I really do.” She looked up at them with pleading eyes. She wanted to remain a part of the operation, and she wanted to remain close to Mac. “But you still need me to get you up there and back, and then you may need my help to get out of the country.”

“I agree with Culler. I think it’s becoming too risky. Why don’t we use General Sawat to get us up to Wan La-ba and back?”

“You can’t trust him, Mac. You know that. I told you. He’s one of the most corrupt police generals in the country.”

Culler said, “Everything’s a tradeoff. Like the proverbial security-efficiency teeter-totter. He’s been okay with us so far. Except for that yappy mutt and his ever present bimbo, that is.”

Mac laughed. “How about I give him a call and ask him what he can do. Maybe he’s got a driver or a taxi or something. Then we could leave the Land Cruiser here and keep this place secure. We’re going to need a place to come back to, and we certainly can’t pitch up in a hotel any longer.”

Charly stood up, downed the last of her white wine and set the empty glass down on the table.

“Well then, if you don’t need me for anything else, I’ll get dinner started. I picked up some pasta for us. Figured you would need a carb load before embarking on your adventure—without me.”

She reached down to her bag and dug out her GPS unit. “You’ll need this to keep track of Vanquish. Don’t lose it and don’t forget to return it when you get back. It’s the only one we have to track him.”

Starting to the kitchen, Charly turned back to the men.

“I just don’t want to go home tonight. I want to stay here, with both of you. I have a bad feeling about this.” 

 

Chapter Seventy-Eight

 

 

Charly cooked a delicious dinner of pasta and salad.  When they finished eating, Culler stood up, offered a fake yawn, excused himself and retired for the evening.

They all seemed to catch Charly’s feelings of foreboding—or perhaps it was just normal pre-operational jitters—but something hung heavy in the air.

Charly and Mac made love slowly and passionately, with an intensity and a feeling of apprehension they had never experienced before. Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms quietly for a long time, caressing one another. Neither wanted to sleep. Neither wanted the night to end.

Charly left early in the morning and took a taxi directly to the consulate where she had left her car. She had a full day at the office in front of her, having been away from her desk for the past few days; the cable traffic was piled high on her desk.

Mac called General Sawat who agreed to pick them up on the third level near the “D” elevators in the parking garage at Chiang Mai International Airport. The meeting was arranged for eight that evening, after dark and when the airport was still fairly busy with flight activity.

Mac planned to park the Land Cruiser somewhere near the pickup point and to haul whatever they needed in the two green duffel bags. They decided to dress casually in blue jeans, running shoes, short-sleeved shirts and, of course, their light disguises.

General Sawat was alerted that he may not recognize them at first, though that did not concern him in the least. He agreed to park his car, which he described as a black late-model Mercedes sedan, next to the elevator bank and wait for a knock on his window at exactly eight o’clock.

Culler urged Mac to ask the general to leave Noi and Ling Ling at home, but Mac demurred, citing the need for rapport with the general over Culler’s sensitivities. When Culler argued that it would be more secure if Noi and the dog did not come along, Mac replied, “It is what it is,” adding that the general might leave them at home anyway, since they would be driving half the night.

They spent their day organizing their gear, packing and re-cleaning and checking and reloading their weapons, and resting and watching the local news on TV. The police were still looking for the two Americans, Humphrey and Callaway, who had shot up the Wangcome Hotel in Chiang Rai and had rented the car that was blown up in Chiang Rai, although the reportage was far less frequent than before. There was still no mention of the shoot-out in the warehouse in Mae Chan.

 

 

Chapter Seventy-Nine

 

 

They fortified themselves with an early dinner, put on their light disguises, loaded the two duffle bags into the back of the Land Cruiser and headed for the airport.

They parked their vehicle on the second level of the main parking garage, close to the “D” elevators, waited until one minute before eight, grabbed their bags and took the elevator up to the third level. The black Mercedes was waiting for them at the curb.

“Sawatdee khrap,” said the General as Mac and Culler piled into the back seat with their bags. He giggled, “You look different than before.”

“Sawatdee khrap,” they replied. The car was filled with the strong scent of Noi, who was sitting in the front seat with Ling Ling at her breast.

“Sawatdee Ka. Sabai dee mai?”  Noi said with a wai. The dog barked when she saw Culler.

“Sabai dee,” said Mac.

“We’re fine,” said Culler, who barked back at the dog.

The doors slammed shut and the General hit the gas. “Where are we headed, gentlemen? The border maybe? You fellows are quite famous, you know.”

“Yes, we know,” said Mac. “But we’re not leaving quite yet. We have another small job to do. Head north toward Chiang Rai and I’ll direct you from there.” Mac passed him an envelope. “This is for a round trip up north. I hope it is satisfactory.”

The general drove with one hand while stuffing the envelope in his shirt pocket. “It feels very thick. I am sure it is quite generous. What do I have to do for this?”

“Just get us safely up north. I’ll direct as we go, and then we will need you to pick us up in a day or two and bring us back here,” said Mac.

“You are not going to Mae Chan by any chance, are you? Maybe shoot the place up again?”

Mac and Culler glanced at one another in the back seat. “What did you hear about Mae Chan?” asked Mac.

The General cackled. “Mai pen rai. I hear about everything, my friend. I knew it was you two guys the minute I heard about it. Khun Ut knows it was you as well. But trust me, I did not tell him. He figured it out for himself.”

“What else did he figure out?” asked Mac.

“From what I have heard—and I have very good sources, you know—he knows you two guys are out to get him, but he can not figure why. He thinks maybe you are CIA. Are you CIA?”

Leaning forward, Culler put his hand on Sawat’s shoulder. “Let’s just hold off on all the speculation. Let’s just say we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys and leave it at that. Okay?”

“Okay, okay…no problem. I was just asking.”

Culler spoke forcefully, but quietly. “That’s the point, General Sawat, don’t ask. You came recommended to us as a person of some integrity. Someone who would respect the privacy of his clients. Someone who would not play both sides at the same time. If that’s true, we will all get along just fine. You will make money and be safe. If not, well, let’s just say there will be severe consequences.”

Noi looked at him with wide eyes and squeezed the dog closer to her chest, making the mutt whine.

Sawat pulled out onto the highway and floored the Mercedes, as if to say, I’m getting the hell out of here before this guy loses it. “Do not worry about a thing,” he said. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Santos, leaning back into the soft leather cushions of the Mercedes.

Mac broke the tension. “Keep driving north through Chiang Rai and then head for the border town of Wan La Ba. Do you know it?”

“Yes, of course. I know it quite well. How fast do you want to get there? This car is equipped with blue police lights and a siren. We can go very fast if you want.”

“No, no,” Mac shook his head. “Just get us there safely and quietly, without drawing attention to ourselves. We’re not in any great hurry.”

 

 

Chapter Eighty

 

 

They pulled into Wan La-ba almost three hours later. Mac directed the general to the abandoned filling station. The bright half moon in the star-filled sky illuminated the area, showing it to be quiet and deserted.

The Mercedes pulled slowly to the rear of the gas station, its tires crunching on the gravel, and stopped out of sight of the road.

General Sawat cut the engine and lights. “Okay, what next?”

Noi whined, “I’m scared, Daddy, and so is Ling Ling. I do not want to stay here. It is too scary and dark. Mai sabai.”

“Mai pen rai. It is okay, baby, we will not be here long. We are just dropping off our friends.”

Mac and Culler grabbed their duffel bags and stepped out of the car. “We’re good,” said Mac. “We will be calling for a pickup in about thirty-six hours. Thanks for the lift. Please keep close to your cell phone, and be prepared to pick us up right here.”

“You call and I will be here. You can count on it,” said the general.

“We’ll count on it, that’s for sure,” said Culler with a menacing glare.

They slammed the doors shut and took off at a trot for the edge of the jungle, duffel bags slung over their shoulders. Sawat slammed the Mercedes in reverse and hit the gas. Then he reversed gears and spun out onto the road, spitting gravel behind him. He hit the switch for the blue police lights and was gone, zooming back to Chiang Mai.

Once inside of the tree line, Culler and Mac slowed to a walk and let their eyes adjust to the darkness. Mac checked his GPS while Culler looked over his shoulder.

“Let’s find a good spot about a kilometer from here to hide our bags and civvies and change into boots and Ghillie-suits. After we cache our gear, we should turn almost due west to this point here, by the bend in the stream. That’s where we’ll look for a good spot to wait for Vanquish and his caravan. We’ll have lots of time to reconnoiter the area.”

He set the way-points in on the GPS, hefted his duffle bag up on his shoulder, and headed down into the jungle. Culler followed close behind, stuffing his disguise moustache, wig and glasses into his shirt pocket.

After they found a spot to cache their bags near the base of a huge banyan tree, they changed, snacked on a couple of power bars, drank some water and checked their weapons one last time before heading west toward the rendezvous point with Vanquish.

They moved silently and slowly, using their night vision gear to pick their way through the heavy undergrowth. They figured it would take them about five hours to travel the five kilometers to reach the rendezvous point ahead of them. They were in no hurry. They would sleep when they got there around dawn.

 

 

Chapter Eighty-One

    

    

Paiboon was excited. It was the first time the Cambodian had trusted him enough to allow him to do anything other than routine guard duty. He was tired of being stuck doing boring security rounds at the warehouse or one of the other installations owned by Khun Ut.

The only time he had ever experienced any excitement in his job was during the attack on the warehouse by the two farangs. That attack had fortuitously resulted in his promotion to chief of security at the warehouse and, now this, his first stakeout: his first real operational job.

He was sorry about the unfortunate deaths of his colleagues, but he wouldn’t have gotten to his current position if the attack hadn’t happened.

He was now on the fast track in Khun Ut’s organization, and he was most certainly getting an adrenaline rush on this job, even though he had been sitting there at the side of the road with the motor running for more than an hour already.

He sat at the wheel of a long, black stretch limo, wearing a shirt and tie, dark suit and chauffeur’s cap. He had an important job—maybe the most important job of the entire mission.

The Cambodian had given him very specific instructions. He was to sit patiently at the side of the narrow, wooded road in the residential neighborhood, ostensibly waiting for someone, until signaled by the Cambodian to pull out onto the road and block it. The stretch limo would easily block both lanes of traffic.

Once the road was blocked, he would exit the vehicle, raise the hood and stand by the side of the road with his cell phone at his ear pretending to call for help. The Cambodian and the other guys would take care of the rest.

While sitting there alone in the limo in the early morning hours, he reflected on his conversation with the Cambodian at the warehouse earlier in the day. It was the conversation that had stimulated the Cambodian to invite him on this mission.

He had told the Cambodian about the birthday party he had attended with his family over the weekend. During the party his sister had told him that one of her girlfriends, the mistress of retired police General Sawat, was upset about the visit of two farangs to their villa. The girlfriend had complained bitterly about one of the farangs, a large muscular man, who had threatened her precious little dog.

The Cambodian had listened intently to Paiboon’s story, congratulating him on his ability to recognize the importance of such a seemingly innocuous story.

“So,” the Cambodian had said, nodding his head approvingly, “General Sawat is helping the two farangs. That is important information, Paiboon. I want you to find out more from your sister, and we will pay her generously for her cooperation. I will inform Khun Ut about this immediately.” He embraced Paiboon, the first time he had ever done that.

Paiboon’s earpiece squawked, jerking him out of his reverie. “She’s up. The lights just went on. Stand by.” It was the voice of the Cambodian.

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Two

 

 

The alarm didn’t startle Charly Blackburn. She had been watching the clock on and off all night. Her mind was spinning. She was worried about Mac and Culler, and she was concerned about her agent, Vanquish.

The fact that she had renewed her affair with Mac also troubled her. She was falling for him again, but when this operation was done he would probably move on again, like he had always done in the past. Damn, she thought, why can’t I ever get a break?  

Too much was going on in her head to sleep, so she was glad when it was finally six-thirty in the morning and time to get ready for work.

She pulled herself out of bed, turned on the lights and padded nude into the bathroom. She planned to get to the office a little early this morning. Her desk would be pilled high with stacks of cable traffic that had accumulated over the past few days while she was out of the office, and she wanted to plunge back into her normal routine. She needed to take her mind off all the stuff that was causing her stomach to churn and flutter. It was making her sick.

She showered, dressed in a cool, bright ensemble of print slacks and blouse and slipped into matching sandals. The last thing she did before heading downstairs for breakfast was to strap on her ankle holster.

Her maid had set the table with a healthy breakfast of juice, fresh fruit, mangos and sticky rice, yoghurt and coffee. She ate in silence on the veranda while reading the morning edition of the Bangkok Post. 

The sun was already warming the morning when she tucked her unfinished Bangkok Post under her arm, grabbed her bag and headed for the garage and her silver Toyota 4Runner.

A uniformed Thai security guard swung open the gate to her compound, and she pulled out onto the narrow residential street that would take her past the Galse Shopping Center to the busy Charoen Prathet Road and north along the Mae Ping River to the consulate.

It was cool in the early morning hours, and the air smelled fresh. Rolling her front windows down to take advantage of the morning air, she concentrated on all that she needed to do when she got to her office, but not so much that she didn’t notice the green pickup truck that pulled out of a neighboring driveway and dropped in a few car lengths behind her.

Something was not right. The road was practically deserted, which was not unusual for this time in the morning, but that pickup truck behind her was curious. She could see in her rear view mirrors two men in the front seat. Maybe they were workers coming from one of the homes in the neighborhood.

They had pulled out of one of the driveways beyond her villa, but what were workers doing there so early? And even if they were workers, why were they leaving at this hour? Shouldn’t they be arriving?

She sped up and the pickup did the same to stay directly behind her, a bit too closely. She slowed down to let the pickup pass, but it slowed as well, keeping the same distance between them. As a car passed coming from the other direction, she became nervous. Maybe she was getting paranoid, but she was a professional – she could not ignore the signs.

She should get off the narrow residential road. The Galse Shopping Center was about a kilometer up ahead. Even at this hour there would be people at the shopping center – shopkeepers opening up for the day and deliverymen. She decided to pull in there. Maybe the pickup would not follow her into the parking lot.

She dug into her bag, pulled out her cell phone and placed it between her legs, ready to call security at the consulate, if necessary. She also removed the PPK from her ankle holster and pushed it under her right thigh where it would be handy.

Near the entrance to the shopping center the road curved sharply to the right, she turned into the curve with the pickup close behind her. Then she saw it.

Approximately one hundred meters in front of the entrance to the shopping center was a stretch limousine with the hood up, completely blocking the road in front of her. The limo’s chauffeur was standing by the front of the vehicle, looking directly at her and talking into his cell phone.

Oh shit, she thought. This can’t be happening. Her mind spun and her defensive driving training kicked in. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She was calm now. She was in a bad situation, and she needed to get out of it.

She slowed down almost to a stop and dropped the 4Runner down into four wheel drive and low gear, then she lined up her left front fender with the left rear fender of the limo and floored it.

 The 4Runner crossed the median of the road, engine wailing, and crashed into the rear of the limo, spinning it sideways and knocking the chauffeur off of his feet and into the ditch. She held the accelerator to the floor and bulldozed the rear of the limo out of the way, its tires screeching along the pavement.

Her rear wheels spun in the dirt at the side of the road, and then she was through and free. She jammed the gearshift up into drive, sped through the wreckage and skidded back onto the road. She popped the gearshift out of four-wheel drive to gain speed and floored it again.

The pickup followed her through the wreckage, its rear wheels spinning in the dirt at the side of the road and almost sliding into the ditch.

Then the shooting began.

The traffic on the other side of the shopping center’s entrance was heavier due to the workers arriving from the more populated side of Chiang Mai. But she kept the accelerator to the floor. She passed one car after another, swerving to get back into her lane and to avoid cars coming from the other direction.

She could hear the bullets striking the rear of her vehicle, and she hunched low over the wheel to present as small a target as possible.

She wanted to reach the relative safety of Charoen Prathet Road, where rush hour traffic would already be moderately heavy.

She grabbed her cell phone and hit the speed dial for the Marine Security Guard Detachment at the consulate. The Marine on duty answered after two rings, and she screamed into the phone: “This is Charly Blackburn. I’ve been ambushed near the entrance to the Galse Shopping Center. I’m heading east toward Charoen Prathet Road and being pursued by a green pickup with two men who are shooting at me. Send help now! Please hurry. Now!”

She tossed the cell phone on the seat beside her without waiting for a response and pulled the PPK out from under her thigh.

Two bullets punctured her rear window and exited through the front windshield, making her wince and forcing her to drive faster. She sped through the light traffic, weaving in and out, with the pickup close behind.

She snapped off a couple of rounds out the window in the direction of the pickup behind her but held little hope of them hitting anything. Getting away was her main concern, but why not frighten them a bit, letting them know she was armed and dangerous?

She hit the entrance to Charoen Prathet Road, but it was backed up with traffic at the red light. She spun around the traffic on the shoulder of the entrance ramp, ran the red light and careened onto the main road. The pickup hesitated for a moment but then followed her around the stalled traffic, through the red light and up the ramp onto the road.

Blaring her horn to get people to move, she wove back and forth through the traffic with the pickup close behind her. Why won’t they drop off? Three more rounds punctured the window, one dangerously close to her head.

They were still five kilometers from the consulate when she saw the Marine Security Humvee speeding toward her from the other direction, lights flashing and siren blasting. It passed her in a blur and then, as the driver recognized her and the green pickup, spun off the side of the road and reversed direction. The pickup was now between Charly and the swiftly closing Marines.

She continued to weave through traffic as rapidly as possible, heading for the safety of the consulate, while the security vehicle was gaining on the pickup. She heard the distinct sound of automatic M-16 fire behind her and gleefully thought, Now the bastards will know what it feels like to be in the sights of U.S. Marines.

The men in the pickup evidently did not want to mess with the Marines. They broke off the chase and exited the highway heading west.

As soon as she saw the pickup exit the highway, she eased her foot off of the accelerator. The Marines caught up to her and pulled alongside. They gave her the thumbs up sign and signaled her to follow them. She blew them a kiss and pulled in behind.

 

Chapter Eighty-Three

 

 

She did what? You let her get away? This was supposed to be a simple operation.” Khun Ut was furious. He was standing behind his desk in the Ban Hin Taek mountain villa, dressed in a tailored, eggshell-colored safari suit, jamming his cheroot at the Cambodian.

Ung Chea was not intimidated by Khun Ut’s rant, but he was ashamed. “She is very good, sir. She drove through Paiboon’s limousine like it was a movie prop. I never saw anything like it.”

“Of course she is good. I told you that in the first place. She is CIA. You should have taken more men to do a proper ambush. The three of you were clearly not enough.”

Ung Chea was not used to being berated by anyone, including Khun Ut, whom he considered to be a friend as well as a boss.

“I am sorry, Khun Ut. If I were Japanese I would commit suicide right here and now, in front of your desk.”

“Okay, okay. Enough.” Khun Ut collapsed in his chair and swung his good leg up on his desk. “Let us not dwell on the past. We screwed up. All of us. We should have used more people. We underestimated her. Now what can we do to get things back on track?”

The Cambodian dropped heavily into one of the chairs in front of Khun Ut’s desk and massaged the nub of his missing ear, trying to get his mind around what had just happened.

“I think we are done with the girl. If she ever leaves the consulate again, we can be sure it will be with armed guards. If she does go back to her home, she will take plenty of protection with her. She will be out of reach for us, at least for the time being.”

Khun Ut took a long drag from his cheroot and exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “Maybe, maybe not. But…damn, she was key. She was the one with information on the two farangs, all the information. She was the only one who could tell us everything—what they are up to, who sent them and what their next move will be. Mai pen rai, we have to move on.” 

He thought, toying with his cheroot. “What about Paiboon’s source? You know who I mean, the one you told me about who is close to Sawat’s whore?”

“I was thinking the same thing, sir.”

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Four

 

 

Mac and Culler reached the rendezvous point before daybreak, with a whole day to kill before the arrival of Vanquish and his heroin-laden donkey caravan. They checked his progress on the GPS regularly, noting the wristwatch Charly had given him was working perfectly. They would not be surprised by his arrival.

They found a comfortable spot, ate a snack of granola bars and water, doused themselves with mosquito repellent, and made themselves comfortable. They slept or just rested for most of the day.

“Come on, Mac, let’s get moving. It’s almost four o’clock. We’ve only got another couple of hours of sunlight left.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I was having a great dream, though.” Mac sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“I never met a person older than a teenager who could sleep like you can. How do you do it?”

“Practice, my friend, practice.”

They scouted the area and found a good location about one hundred-fifty meters west of where Vanquish would set up his camp. An outcropping of rocks would give them good concealment from the camp, and there was a place where they could burrow into the undergrowth in case they needed to hide from anyone searching the area.

They stood side by side at the base of the boulders. Looking up, Mac said, “This is as good a place as any for us to wait for them. We can lay up there on the top of the rocks tonight and get a good view of their campsite. Now let’s reconnoiter the area around here and take another look at the layout of their campsite.”

They stood in the middle of the campsite area and looked around them, trying to reconstruct what Vanquish had told them during their meeting.

“The guy is really good,” said Mac. “See how the stream circles the place like a horseshoe? Over there to the south is where they will have their fire and sleep. See the remains of their last campfire? Surely that’s where they’ll camp tonight.”

“Yep, that’s what he said they would do.”

“And here, about where we’re standing now, is where the packs of heroin bricks will be stacked. That means the donkeys and horses will be tethered over there to the north.”

They walked to the spot and Mac pointed out signs of hoof prints and manure as indications the animals had been there before. “You know it’s actually a pretty nice campsite. It’s no wonder Vanquish didn’t think he’d have any problem convincing them to return here for their first night.”

“You’re pretty good at reading animal shit. You must be part Indian. Let’s find the spot where they crossed the stream the last time. I believe he said…I can’t remember. Did he mention it?”

“No, he didn’t, and we forgot to ask him. Damn. We don’t want them crossing anywhere near the spot we picked out to observe them. Let’s find it.”

It didn’t take them long to find the crossing spot. It was at the shallowest part of the stream, right in the middle of the bend of the horseshoe where the stream widened to make the curve.

“That’s perfect,” said Mac. “Now let’s go back and wait for them. We can get another couple hours of rest.”

“Is that all you can think about? Sleep? Getting your beauty rest?”

“No, it’s not all I think about.”

Culler rolled his eyes.

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Five

                

 

 If Vanquish was making an effort to move stealthily through the jungle, he certainly didn’t act like it. It was dusk and Culler and Mac were lying prone, side by side on the top of the boulders, when they heard the first sounds of Vanquish and his caravan moving toward them through the jungle.

“What’s that?” asked Mac.

“What? I can’t hear anything.”

“That’s because you’ve had far too many explosions going off too close to your head. You’re half deaf. Listen.”

“Sounds like animals. Do you think that’s them?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s a herd of elephants.”

Twenty minutes later the caravan reached the stream, and they could hear voices and splashing as the animals crossed over to the campsite. They still could not see them clearly through the thick underbrush.

“Stay here and keep me covered while I try to get closer,” said Mac. “We need to find out exactly what we’re up against while there’s still some light.”

Mac slid off the rocks, checked his rifle and ammunition drum, and moved stealthily through the underbrush toward the campsite. Culler watched the man in the Ghillie-suit blend into the undergrowth and become practically invisible.

Culler surveyed the area with binoculars, but, aside from the occasional rustling of bushes as Mac moved closer to the campsite, he couldn’t see anything.

The foliage thinned and the voices and the braying of the donkeys became clearer as Mac crept closer to the edge of the clearing. He dropped into a prone position and pushed himself deep into the underbrush. He lay motionless and surveyed the campsite through his binoculars.

Vanquish, clearly distinguishable with his broad-brimmed black cowboy hat, directed the activities. There were three men, including Vanquish. One wore a dirty white bandana on his head and looked to be about middle aged, and the other was much younger, maybe a teenager or early twenties. He wore a faded blue baseball cap. Both men deferred to Vanquish.

Vanquish and the older man busied themselves setting up a temporary rope corral for the three houses and eight donkeys, while the young man set up their sleeping area at the southern end of the campsite. The boy spread out a large tarp on the ground and strung a shelter sheet above it from surrounding trees, and then he went about collecting twigs and branches for a campfire.

Once the corral was complete at the north end, the two older men unsaddled the horses and unloaded the heavy packs from the donkeys.  Carrying the saddles and packs to the middle of the campsite, they stacked them in a neat pile.

At one point just before dark, the boy, in search of twigs and branches for the fire, came dangerously close to Mac’s hiding place.

Mac watched the boy approach and thought, I’ve set up too close to the campsite. God don’t let him spot me. But he didn’t, and Mac breathed a huge sigh of relief as the boy walked away from his position carrying an armful of branches back to the camp fire.

Mac lay motionless, as only a trained sniper can do, for the next four hours, observing every movement through his night vision binoculars.

Vanquish and the bandana guy ate their dinner and smoked by the fire while the boy took his dinner back to his post on the pile of packs.

After dinner the Hmong dug the bottle of Mekong whisky out of his saddle bag and presented it to the others, who were delighted at the unexpected treat.

They passed the bottle among them. The boy was on duty so he did not drink at all, and Vanquish drank very little, while bandana guy was happy to guzzle most of the bottle.

When the bottle was empty, bandana guy stood up on unsteady legs and stumbled to the bank of the stream where he took a long, wobbly pee. Then he wove his way back to the sleeping area, fell unto the tarp and passed out.

The Hmong flipped his cigarette into the fire, checked on the boy one last time and joined the bandana guy on the tarp to get a couple hours of rest before his midnight shift.

Mac remained where he was until he saw the boy climb off the packs, walk over to the Hmong and shake him awake. The boy and the Hmong exchanged places, the boy on the tarp and Vanquish on the pile of packs. The Hmong lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and settled in for the rest of the evening.

Mac gently backed out of his position and quietly returned to the boulders where Culler was waiting. “It’s about time you got back here,” said Culler. “You missed dinner.”

“What? You ate without me? Shows what kind of a friend you are.”

“Okay, tell me what happened out there while I was laying in the dark on this God forsaken rock protecting your sorry ass.”

Mac briefed him while munching on a granola bar and drinking from his Camelbac. He suggested they try to get some rest before heading for the campsite at zero three-thirty.

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Six

 

 

They dozed, but neither one of them could sleep. They were actually relieved when three-fifteen finally rolled around. They were anxious to get on with it.

They left everything behind with the exception of their weapons, night vision gear and the vials of ricin. The night was cloudy with a half-moon, and the only sounds were created by the light breeze rustling through the branches and the occasional scream of a monkey.

The night vision gear illuminated their way, and the “green line of death” of their assault rifles danced in front of them. They moved stealthily in the direction of the campsite with Mac in the lead.

When they reached a spot near where Mac had done his earlier observations, they dropped into the prone position, side by side and surveyed the campsite. Vanquish was sitting on the packs smoking a cigarette.

“There’s the campsite,” whispered Mac, indicating the area at the south end where a small campfire was burning and the tarps were strung. They could see the two guards sleeping and could clearly hear the drunken snores from the older man.

“Sounds like that bottle of Mekong was put to good use,” whispered Culler.

“I like Vanquish. He’s bold, resourceful…a terrific asset. Charly got herself a real good one this time. Let’s make sure we pull this of without a hitch. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”

Culler turned his attention to the makeshift corral where the horses and donkeys were tethered. “Things look pretty quiet on the other end as well. The animals make less noise than that drunk over there.”

They laid there quietly for a few more minutes, observing the campsite and waiting for their watches to slowly tick down to three-thirty.

Vanquish did the same and at exactly three-thirty he took one more long look in both directions and then removed his hat in a sweeping, theatrical motion and wiped the inside of the sweatband. He replaced the hat on his head in another sweeping motion and stood up stiffly by the side of the pile of packs.

They watched him for another few moments while he squinted in their direction, clearly not seeing anything.

Mac nudged Culler and they stood up quietly, advancing slowly toward Vanquish, weapons at the ready with green infrared laser lines, visible only to them, bouncing around the site.

They spread out and approached Vanquish from two sides. With the darkness of the trees behind them, he did not notice them until they were less than fifteen feet away from him.

When he finally saw the two shadows moving toward him, he jumped back and shouted a startled whisper at them: “Damn, where did you guys come from? Whew, you are like a couple of ghosts.”

Holding up a hand, Mac moved closer to him and whispered. “It’s okay. We got your signal. Everything looks great. The other guys are asleep, and it looks like one of them is going to have a huge hangover in the morning. Good work.”

Culler waved at him, gave him the ‘okay’ sign making a circle with his thumb and index finger, and moved silently to the pile of packs and dropped to his knees. Sliding the pack containing the boxes of vials from his shoulder, he looked up at Mac and Vanquish.

Mac put his arm around the Hmong’s shoulders and guided him back toward the corral area. “Let’s go over there so the animals can get used to us and let him do his work in private.”

“Scrapings, right?” said Vanquish with a smirk.

 “Right. Scrapings.”

Culler worked rapidly and methodically. The heroin bricks were individually sealed in a heavy plastic wrap. They were then wrapped, twenty bricks to a pack, in heavy burlap-like plastic material. Each donkey carried two packs, one on each side, in a heavy leather saddlebag-like sling which fit over the donkey’s back.

While Vanquish and Mac chatted quietly near the corral, Culler began sliding the packs up and out of the saddlebags one by one to prepare them for their injections.

Moving to the first pack of twenty kilos, he began injecting each of the ten bricks on the outer side with one cc each of the ricin. He plunged the needle through the outer plastic burlap wrap and through the heavy individual plastic wrap deep into the center of each chalky brick to allow the poison ample room to be absorbed without a trace.

He worked rapidly, emptying one ten-cc syringe in the outer ten bricks of the first pack and placing the empty syringe carefully back into its Styrofoam container.

He decided it would be quicker to do only the outer bricks; after all, the entire shipment of heroin would be sent to Hong Kong where the chemists would mix it in exacting proportions with acetic anhydride and ethyl alcohol in vats to turn it into pure heroin base. He slid the first pack back into its saddlebag pouch and reached for another, repeating the process with the next pack.

At first the needle slid easily through the heavy plastic burlap outer covering and through the plastic wrap deep into each brick, but while he was working on the third pack the needle almost broke off while he was trying to push it through the thick burlap-like outer packing.

He cursed under his breath. His greatest fear was to break off a needle and spew the highly toxic ricin on his hands. He remedied the situation by taking out his knife and poking a small hole in the outer wrapping with the point. The needle then slid easily into the center of the chalky heroin brick.

Santos continued to work silently and methodically, using his knife to open a tiny slit in the outer burlap-like wrapping before injecting the ricin into the bricks, while MacMurphy kept the Hmong occupied in light conversation while petting the horses at the edge of the corral.

No one noticed when the heavy snoring stopped.

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Seven

 

 

Khun Ut and the Cambodian listened intently while Paiboon briefed them in the dimly lit local restaurant. They were drinking cool Amarit beer served in frosted mugs and enjoying a light lunch of Tom-yan soup, sticky rice and Phat-Thai noodles with assorted curries.

Paiboon had hardly touched his food but Khun Ut and Ung Chea ate ravenously as they listened, shoveling the aromatic spicy food into their mouths by the spoonful and guzzling their beers.

Paiboon gestured with his spoon. “Noi hates the farangs, that is why she is so talkative. We can use that to our advantage.” He thought a moment. “Actually, to be more precise, she only hates one of them. She described him as a big brute with a scar on his lip that turns red when he snarls, which is often, she said.”

“She actually likes the other guy. She said he is polite and speaks some Thai and knows Thai customs very well. She said he is taller and slimmer than the other guy and handsome for a farang, with grey hair which makes him look older than he is. He is the one who is in charge. He acts like the boss.”

“What is General Sawat to them?” asked the Cambodian between loud slurps of his Tom-yan soup.

“He is like some kind of liaison. They picked up heavy boxes of guns and ammunition and other military type gear at Sawat’s villa in Chiang Mai. All that stuff was shipped ahead to General Sawat. That was the first time Noi met them.”

Khun Ut pushed back from the table and lit a cheroot. “So that is where they got their fancy weapons, through Sawat. Hmmm. What else?”

“The next day Sawat took them on a tour of the Golden Triangle in his plane. They flew over Ban Hin Taek and our warehouse in Mae Chan.”

“How does she know that?” asked Khun Ut.

“She was with them. The General takes her everywhere. She is always at his side, along with her Shih Tzu named Ling Ling. That is why she hates the big farang. He threatened to kill her dog.”

The Cambodian laughed. “I’ve seen that yappy mutt. I understand why he would want to wring its scrawny neck.”

Paiboon said, “She is very attached to her dog.”

The Cambodian nodded, “Yeah, she suckles it at her breast like an infant. Disgusting.”

“What else?” asked Khun Ut.

“This is the best part. The General and Noi met them at the airport last night and drove them up to a small village on the Burmese border named Wan La-ba. They dropped them off behind an old junkyard and they walked into the jungle carrying their gear in duffle bags.”

“That means they are up to something right now,” said the Cambodian. “What could they be doing up there?”

Khun Ut shook his head and blew out a long stream of smoke in exasperation. “I know Wan La-ba. I had an aunt who used to live up there. It is in the middle of nowhere. Not close to anything. What could they be doing way up there?”

Ung Chea massaged his scar in thought. “Could they be hunting? You are right, there is nothing up there.”

Khun Ut’s eyes widened. “Oh yes there is. They are hunting all right. They are hunting for one of our heroin shipments. They go right through that area on their way down to Mae Chan.”

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Eight

 

 

Phom sia jai, khrap. What you doing?” said bandana guy. He stood over Culler Santos, not ten feet away, with his assault rifle at his hip, leveled.

Culler looked up startled, straight into the muzzle of the AK-47. His own rifle was out of reach at the edge of the packs. He had the knife in his hand and instinctively pointed it toward his assailant in a defensive posture.

Bandana guy blinked his bleary eyes and shook his head. “You gonna get me scared with that little knife?”

Then Culler remembered the kind of knife he held. He brought his other hand up to the round metal handle of the Spetsnaz and removed the round safety pin with his thumb. He raised the knife out in front of him, holding it with both hands and pointing it directly at bandana guy.

The bandana guy looked at him quizzically. “That knife do you no good, asshole. Put down, stand up and get away from packs.”

Culler pressed the trigger button in the handle. The blade shot out and hit bandana guy square in the middle of his chest, piercing his breastbone, penetrating his heart and knocking him backward with the force of a karate punch. He let out a surprised grunt and hit the ground dead with a thud.

“Holy shit!” muttered MacMurphy, hurrying toward Santos, the Hmong close at his heals.

The trio huddled around the dead bandana guy, looking down at him in astonishment. “That is some knife you got there,” whispered Vanquish.

“Never bring a knife to a gunfight, unless its one of those…” whispered Mac to no one in particular. He turned to Vanquish, placed his hand gently on his shoulder and whispered, “Please go check on the kid while we try and figure out what to do next.”

The Hmong walked to the campfire and looked down at the boy. The kid was curled up in a fetal position hugging his pillow and breathing heavily, deep in sleep. When he returned he found Santos quickly finishing his job of injecting the remaining vials of ricin into as many heroin bricks as he could readily access. Santos did not try to hide his actions. He didn’t even look up.

MacMurphy walked over to the dead man, pulled the Spetsnaz blade out of the man’s chest and wiped it clean on the man’s shirt. He turned to Vanquish and asked, “What are we going to do now? How are we going to cover this up and protect you?”

 The Homng looked over at the body and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Seemingly in no hurry to respond, he shook a cigarette from the pack and lit it. He inhaled deeply and blew out the smoke in a long sigh.

“Well, I very happy you did not shoot him. That be very, very hard to explain. A knife wound is different. He was fighter and a drunk. Maybe I tell them he got out of control and we fought and I had to kill him, or maybe he fell on his own knife during our struggle, or something like that…”

“What about the boy?”

“Yes, the boy. He did not see nothing. He was sleeping. And, well, he is my nephew. He will say anything I tell him to say.”

Culler stood up and joined them. “That’s it. We’re done. Now what are we going to do about bandana guy over there?”

“We were just discussing that,” said Mac.

Vanquish took another deep drag on his cigarette. “I take care of this.” He walked over to the body and removed the man’s knife from its scabbard. He glanced back at the two farangs momentarily and bent over, plunging the knife deep into the man’s chest at the exact spot where Mac had removed the Spetznaz knife. Then he kicked the body over onto its stomach.

“That should do it. Now you guys better get out of here before my nephew wakes up. Seeing two farangs standing here would not be good thing. I will take care of everything here. Do not worry…”

 

 

Chapter Eighty-Nine

 

 

Santos and MacMurphy shook hands with Vanquish and vanished into the jungle undergrowth. They flipped down their night vision goggles and moved rapidly back to their staging area by the rocks, retrieved their packs, checked their GPS and headed off toward the place where they had cached their duffle bags and clothing

They stopped only long enough to bury the Styrofoam boxes of empty syringes. While they were scraping out a hole with their knives, Culler said, “I sure hope what we just did won’t harm any innocent people.”

Mac stopped digging and looked up at him. “I know. That would be too bad. But we’ve got to expect some collateral damage. It’s inevitable. We can’t control the results… But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Whoever touches this stuff – this heroin – is not innocent. There may be degrees of innocence or guilt, but no one using this shit is totally innocent. People who play with this kind of fire are bound to get burned.”

“That may be true, but still…”

“No buts about it, Culler, this operation has the potential to bring Khun Ut and his entire drug syndicate down. That’s a good thing. No doubt about it. And no one is going to die who doesn’t first shoot some of this shit into his veins. That’s also a good thing.”

“Yeah, I know you’re right. I just wish we could control the outcome a little better…”

“Can’t believe you of all people are going soft on me…”

They finished burying the boxes in silence and when they were done and satisfied that the spot was well camouflaged, Culler asked, “You got any of Barker’s anti-animal stuff with you? We don’t want anything digging up this stuff.”

“Right, good idea.” Mac sprinkled the area thoroughly and, satisfied that no one would ever find evidence of what they had done, they took off into the night, rapidly heading east in the direction of Wan La-ba.

 

 

Chapter Ninety

 

 

The next morning, the Cambodian was sitting across from General Sawat on the veranda of the general’s villa when Sawat’s cell phone rang. The questioning had not yet gotten nasty.

They were having breakfast. Noi was still upstairs in her bedroom, putting on makeup and dressing. Two of the Cambodian’s husky bodyguards stood with arms crossed, backs against the double entrance doors that led to the pool deck and veranda.

Sawat glanced at the number on the caller ID and repelled. He tried to regain his composure but knew the Cambodian had seen his reaction.

“Who was it?” the Cambodian asked.

“Um, no one,” replied Sawat, rejecting the call and putting the phone back into his pocket.

“Who was it?” the Cambodian repeated, more forcefully now, staring menacingly at Sawat.

The General stuttered, “It is nothing. Nothing. A client. It can wait. Would you like some more coffee?”

Ung Chea took advantage of the moment. “It is them, isn’t it? Those two farangs you have been helping. They want you to pick them up somewhere around Wan La-ba, where you dropped them off. Isn’t that right?”

The general’s eyes grew wide. He fidgeted, his palms were sweaty and his mind raced. How much does the bastard know? I must remain calm. I can talk myself out of this, but I must find out how much he knows. How could he know about the farangs?

“Yes, I dropped off two farangs near Wan La-ba the night before last. They paid me well for the lift. But I have no idea who they are or what they are up to. It is my business not to ask questions.”

The sudden backfist knocked Sawat off his chair. Coffee, croissants and dishes crashed across the pool deck.

The Cambodian jerked the old man to his feet by the front of his shirt, righted the toppled chair with his other hand and slammed him back into it.

“What about the guns you delivered to them? What about the plane ride to Ban Hin Taek and Mae Chan? Tell me you don’t know anything about these things.”

He crashed another fist into the old man’s solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs. He followed up with a left cross to the side of the head which sent the old man sprawling to the floor once again.

Noi came running and screaming down the stairs and out onto the veranda, the dog yapping in her arms. Ung Chea motioned the guards to stay where they were and stopped her before she could reach the General. He ripped the dog from her arms by the back of its neck and tossed it high across the veranda and into the pool. Then he hit her with an open handed slap that sent her sprawling as well.

Ung Chea was breathing heavily from the exertion, but pleased at the results. He took a deep, calming breath. “Now everyone sit down quietly and listen to what will happen to you if you do not tell me the whole story and cooperate fully with me from now on.”

 

 

Chapter Ninety-One

 

 

Santos and MacMurphy were relaxing out of sight at the edge of the jungle when the general returned Mac’s call. They had changed back into jeans and tee shirts, but kept their assault weapons close at hand.

“Hello. This is Sawat. I am sorry I missed your call. Is this Mr. Humphrey?”

“Yes,” said Mac. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine. Just fine. Are you ready to be picked up?”

“Yes, as soon as possible. Can you use the chopper? It’ll be faster.”

“The chopper? No problem. Are you in the same place?”

“Yes, at the old petrol station. You can take us back to the airport. Okay?”

“Okay, I will leave right away. I should be there a little before noon. Is that alright?”

“Sure, as early as possible. We’ll be waiting. See you then. Bye.”

“Good bye Mr. Humphrey.”

Santos watched Mac closely during the conversation. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

“I don’t know. He seemed… I don’t know…frightened…nervous maybe. He certainly wasn’t his jovial old self, and I don’t like the way he cut me off when I called the first time. That was strange…”

Culler thought for a moment. “What was it old Bert used to say while we were in training down on The Farm? ‘If it doesn’t taste good, spit it out.’  Something like that. Remember Bert?”

“Oh yeah, I remember him – huge guy who taught jungle survival. He’s the one who showed us how to catch monkeys, snakes and all that good stuff to eat.”

“That’s him. He was referring to plants when he made that remark. He said there were lots of good things to eat in the jungle, but you had to be careful because some things could poison you.”

Mac chuckled, “So he told us to taste first and if it tastes bitter or rotten to spit it out. He said your tongue was put in your mouth for a reason – to stop things that might kill you going past it down into your stomach.”

Culler pulled at his ear. “So what do you think? Should we spit this one out?”

“Yep, I do. I really do. Let’s not hang around here and wait to get ambushed by Khun Ut’s men. I don’t want another shootout. Let’s just get the hell out of Dodge on our own.”

    

 

Chapter Ninety-Two

 

 

Culler and Mac gathered up their gear, put their assault rifles and Ghillie-suits out of sight in their duffle bags and donned their hats and light disguises. They carried their handguns concealed under their shirts in the small of their backs.

They walked out of the jungle, across the junk yard and stopped at the abandoned filling station by the side of the road.

“What do you think?” asked MacMurphy. “Do we hitch a ride, steal a car, what?”

“I don’t see any cars around here to steal. We could walk back towards the town. There must be something we could grab in town.”

An old pickup truck rounded the curve and rattled toward them. Mac dropped his bag and hurried to the side of the road and put his thumb out. The driver, an elderly man with a woman sitting beside him, started to slow down but when he saw the two of them he sped up and made a wide circle around them.

“I think we look too threatening,” said Mac, watching the rear of the vehicle disappear down the road. “Why don’t you take the bags and get out of sight behind the garage. Maybe it’ll be easier to get someone to stop if there is only one of us.”

Two more cars passed without stopping. Mac glanced at his watch. Almost an hour had passed since they spoke with General Sawat. They were running out of time. They had to get out of there and on their way pretty soon or they were going to end up fighting Khun Ut’s men again.

Then he had an idea…

He ran back to where Culler was hiding with the bags and opened his duffle bag.

“What are you doing?” Culler asked.

“Getting some money,” Mac replied. He pulled a wad of $100 bills out of the bag and hurried back toward the road.

He waited and waited, sweating and pacing up and down the side of the road, glancing at his watch every few moments. They had to get moving.

He heard it before he saw it – a large truck growling and grinding gears was heading toward them from the north. He stepped out into the middle of the road and held out a fan of green $100 bills and waved them at the driver.

The truck, loaded with burlap bags full of charcoal, rounded the curve and the driver dropped it down a gear and hit the accelerator. Mac barred his way, waving both hands for him to stop and holding the money up high so the driver could see.

At first it appeared the truck was going to run him down, but then Mac could see the driver’s eyes widen when he saw the money.

The driver hit the brakes and brought the truck to a screeching halt in the middle of the road inches in front of Mac.

Mac walked around to the driver’s side, still holding the money in his hand in front of him and waving it at the driver. “Sawatdee khrap,” said Mac with a deep wai.

The puzzled driver, covered in charcoal dust, replied, “Sawatdee khrap,” and returned the wai hesitatingly.

In halting Thai and with gestures, Mac indicated he needed a lift south and handed the driver one of the hundred dollar bills. The driver took the bill with wide eyes and nodded while regarding the remaining bills in Mac’s hand quizzically.

Mac called to Culller who came running toward them carrying both duffle bags. When the driver flinched, he removed another one of the bills and handed it to the driver. The driver was catching on. He gave Mac a grateful wei and said, “Khrap khoon khrap.”

“Mai pen rai, khrap,” said Mac.

Culler and Mac climbed onto the dusty long wooden bench that served as a front seat for the old truck and slid in next to the driver. They stowed their duffle bags under their feet and the driver pulled out, gears grinding, heading south. They were glad to be on their way out of Wan La-ba.

The driver drove like a maniac, hogging the middle of the road and forcing oncoming traffic off onto the shoulders of the road to avoid him.

Like most Thai truck drivers, he chewed the mildly narcotic betel nut to help keep him awake and to relieve the boredom of driving. He spat the brown betel nut juice out his window like a cowboy.

The spray annoyed Culler but he said nothing, happy to have finally gotten a lift out of Wan La-ba.

Mac used his limited Thai vocabulary to engage the driver in polite conversation while they careened down the highway. The driver was surprised and happy to chat with a farang in Thai. He smiled broadly showing a mouthful of teeth blackened by years of betel nut.

Mac learned that the driver was headed for Krung Thep – Bangkok – with a load of charcoal collected from northern villages. That was good news. It meant he would be driving straight through Chiang Mai. The driver agreed to drop them off at the airport in Chiang Mai on his way.

Mac rewarded him with another $100 bill. The driver beamed and thanked him profusely. He was holding more money in his hand than he had seen in his entire life. He was deeply grateful for the luck he was experiencing today. The driver reached up and rubbed the belly of the jade Buddha which dangled from his rear view mirror.

 

 

Chapter Ninety-Three

 

 

It was close to noon when the charcoal truck reached the outskirts of Chiang Rai. Culler and Mac slouched down in the uncomfortable hardwood bench which doubled as a front seat, trying to keep out of sight. Soon they would be at the airport in Chiang Mai. They could not relax until they had retrieved their vehicle and were safely back at their safehouse apartment.

The driver was making good time, contentedly chewing his betel and keeping the accelerator of the old truck to the floor. They prayed they would get there safely without an accident. They didn’t want anything else going wrong.

Mac’s cell phone rang, jolting him out of his reverie. He glanced at the caller ID and recognized the Sawat’s number. He looked over at Culler, giving him a slight nod, and answered, “Hello.”

“Hello Mr. Humphrey. This is General Sawat. I am here at the petrol station but I do not see you.”

Mac could hear the sound of the helicopter’s prop churning and the nervousness in the general’s voice. “I’m very sorry, General Sawat. We’re on our way but we’ve had a slight mishap. Mr. Callaway has injured his ankle and it’s taking us longer than we expected to get out of here. Please wait for us. We should be there within the hour. I’m very sorry to keep you waiting.”

There was a long pause before the general answered, “Okay, okay, Mr. Humphrey. I will wait for you here.” Then another pause and, “You are in the jungle, correct? And will be coming out at the same spot…”

“Of course. Just stay there and wait for us. We’re moving slowly because, well, it looks like Mr. Callaway has broken his ankle. He’s in great pain and can’t move very fast. We’ll be there shortly. Please be patient and wait for us. We’re on our way. Okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Humphrey. I will wait for you right here. Goodbye.”

“Thank you General Sawat. See you soon. Goodbye.”

Mac glanced over at the driver for any indication he had understood anything that was said. There was none. The driver’s bleary eyes were fixed on the road ahead of him. All of his attention was focused on getting his truck to Bangkok as soon as possible so he could begin celebrating with his newfound wealth.

Mac leaned close to Culler and spoke in hushed tones. “That should buy us enough time to get to the airport, collect the Land Cruiser and get out of there before he realizes we’ve tricked him.”

“I certainly hope so, because if he’s betrayed us, he knows our ultimate destination. You told Sawat you wanted him to take us back to the airport and you can bet the farm he conveyed that information to Khun Ut.”

“You’re right. Shit. No doubt about it.”

The words were no sooner out of his mouth when the truck’s right front tire blew and the wide-eyed driver nursed the wobbling old wreck to the side of the road and rolled to a stop.  

 

 

Chapter Ninety-Four

 

 

Tell me exactly what he said.” The Cambodian, sat next to General Sawat in the front seat of the helicopter, rotor chomping the air above them. He emphasized the word “exactly.”

“He said they are running behind schedule. The big one broke his ankle and they are moving slowly but are on their way.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes, of course. Why should I not believe them? They know nothing about you. They will come out of the woods right here where they said they would. They will not get lost. This is where they went in, and this is where they will come out.”

The Cambodian stared at Sawat for a long time, looking for a sign of duplicity. But there was none.

Sawat was a beaten, humbled man. It hadn’t taken much to turn him. Only a few hard blows and the threat of a painful death – and that he would slice off Noi’s gorgeous breasts and feed them to him, fried with sticky rice and curry sauce, for his last meal.  

“Okay, turn this thing off and stay here where they can see you when they come out of the woods. And don’t do anything stupid, old man, my men have you and this whole area surrounded, and you will be the first to die if you betray us.”

The general cut the engine and sat back in his seat to wait. Ung Chea jumped down and slammed the door shut behind him. He pulled his walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it as he jogged out of sight around the front of the filling station.

“Okay, settle in and stay out of sight. They are running late. Keep your eyes open and do not fire until they are out in the open and you have a clear shot. And make sure you get both of them. They will exit from the north behind the junk yard and head toward the helicopter. You will have plenty of time so don’t rush things. Be patient and stay down and out of sight.”

One by one his men responded in acknowledgement.   

He sat down on the ground in a doorway and lit a cigarette. After collecting his thoughts, he called Khun Ut and relayed what had happened.

“…so I have eight men deployed around the area. They are well concealed around the edge of the woods and will cut the farangs down when they come out into the open. Sawat is in his helicopter in plain view as a decoy, but they will never get that far.”

“Are you sure they are still in the jungle?”

“Sir, um, I think so. I heard Sawat speaking to them. I mean, that is what they said. They are just delayed because the big one broke his ankle.”

“Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Do not believe everything people tell you, Ung Chea, especially those guys. They can be very tricky. Are you certain they do not suspect anything? Did Sawat act completely normal while he was talking to them?”

“I, I think so, sir. Maybe he was a little nervous and out of breath because I had to smack him around a bit, but nothing he said was out of the normal. I guess it’s possible they could be tipped off, but, I don’t know…”

“I hope you didn’t knock him around too much. General Sawat is a wily old fox and when he is cornered he will tell the truth – maybe not the whole truth, but the truth just the same. I owe him a lot.”

“No sir, I did not know. What could you possibly be in his debt for?”

“He saved my father’s life. Twice, actually.”

“Twice? Really? How did he do that?”

“The first time happened in the early eighties when the new Thai Prime Minister, General Prem, and the CIA got together to launch a secret bombing raid on my father’s headquarters in Ban Hin Taek. It was planned in such secrecy that even the pilots thought they were going on a routine live fire training mission. They had no idea what they were about to do. Not until they were in the air were they given the coordinates of my father’s house and told to destroy it.

“But Sawat – he was a police colonel in charge of the Northern Thailand District at the time – heard the order to divert the bombers and immediately informed Khun Sa, who managed to escape only moments before the bombs began to land.”

“Wow! Yes, I heard about that raid, but I did not know it was Sawat who tipped off Khun Sa. I am sorry I had to rough him up.”

“Yes, it was Sawat. He saved my father again two years later when another Thai Prime Minister, General Chavalit, tried a similar secret raid on my father’s headquarters. Sawat’s tip saved my father once again. Very few people know that it was Sawat who gave us those tips. So I owe the man a lot.”

“Yes, now I understand, Khun Ut.”

“But do not worry, Ung Chea, you did the right thing. Just do not overdo it with the old man. Loyalty is of great value to me and it works both ways. I do not consider that Sawat has been disloyal. Not yet anyway. He just works for those who pay him…but that said, you may be correct in thinking he has tipped them off. Inadvertently or on purpose. So…maybe we should alert the police to the possibility that they may have made their own way to the airport, if that is where they are headed.”

“Yes sir. Good idea. That is where Sawat picked them up and that is where they said they wanted to return. Maybe they are taking a flight out of there.”

“Or maybe they have a car parked there or maybe they have someone waiting to pick them up. Anyway, I’ll alert the police at Chiang Mai International Airport to be on the lookout for them. They are wanted criminals and the police will welcome the tip. I’ll also send a couple of our guys from Chiang Mai to look for them. It may be unnecessary, but better to be on the safe side.”

“Thanks, boss. I’ll keep you posted on what is going on here.”

 

 

Chapter Ninety-Five

 

 

Fuck!” said Santos, pounding his fist on the dashboard. “Fucking Murphy’s Law. if something can go wrong, it will. Let’s get the fucking tire changed. Quick. He’s got a spare, right? Please tell me he’s got a spare.”

Mac spoke with the driver, who shook his head, and then turned to Culler. “Sorry, no spare…”

“Got any other great ideas?”

“We need to hitch another ride.”

They were on the outskirts of Chiang Rai when the tire blew. The highway was lined with small, one story shops and noodle restaurants with corrugated steel roofs and flaking paint. It was lunchtime and a number of cars and trucks were parked in front of the businesses near the side of the road.

One restaurant near them had a large neon sign over the door spelling out the name “Pak Essan.” It appeared to be more upscale than the rest and several cars were parked directly in front of it.

They recognized the area immediately. The Orchid Lodge, where they had stayed and met the young American couple, was a few hundred meters down the road.

The three of them jumped out of the truck and stood looking disgustedly down at the flat tire. Mac said, “This place brings back bad memories.”      

“You got that right. Let’s get out of here tout de suite before someone recognizes us. I’m sure every last one of these people has heard about the car that blew up at the Orchid Lodge and the two farangs who were involved.”

Mac glanced around him and his eyes fell on the Pak Essan Restaurant. “I’ve got an idea.”

He turned to the driver, held out another one hundred dollar bill, and in halting Thai said, “Please go into that restaurant and ask if anyone would be interested in taking your two friends to Chiang Mai while you fix your truck. We will pay one hundred dollars for the ride, but we must leave immediately.”

The driver happily pocketed the one hundred dollar bill and took off at a trot for the restaurant.

“Those hundred dollar bills sure work magic, don’t they?” said Culler.

“Money is the best weapon there is – far better than guns and intimidation. But we’ll see in a minute just how magical those Ben Franklins are. Try to stay out of sight and keep your fingers crossed.”

A few moments later a middle-aged, thin man dressed neatly in dark slacks, a short sleeved white shirt and skinny dark tie came out of the restaurant with the driver. They walked to where Culler and Mac were standing by the truck.

The man put his hands together and bowed in greeting. “Hello,” he said in good English, “my name is Sophon. I understand you want to go to Chiang Mai.” They shook hands and exchanged respectful wais.

“Yes, Khun Sophon, and we are in a bit of a hurry because we do not want to miss our flight. We need to get to Chiang Mai International Airport. Can you help us? We can pay for the ride.” Mac held out a hundred dollar bill. “But we need to leave now or we will be late.”

Sophon eyed the bill suspiciously. “That is very generous. I just arrived from Chiang Mai and am heading north, I do not know if…”

Mac pulled another one hundred dollar bill from his pocket and held out two hundred dollars. “We need to leave right away or we will miss our flight. If you can not take us we will have to ask someone else.”

Sophon smiled and took the bills. “Okay, mai pen rai, I can be a little late today. Come with me.”

Culler and Mac grabbed their bags, thanked the truck driver and followed Sophon to a sixties vintage, but well maintained, black Chevy Impala sedan. They threw their duffel bags in the back seat and Mac climbed in after them. Culler, fidgeting with his wig and false moustache which was becoming uncomfortable and unstuck in the heat, climbed in next to the driver.

Santos asked, “How fast does this thing go? I used to have one just like it. Mine was a convertible. That V-8 engine under the hood used to push it pretty fast.”

Sophon smiled knowingly and gunned the old Impala up onto the highway and then south in the direction of Chiang Mai. “Then you appreciate the old American cars as I do, my friend. American cars ruled the roads all over the world in those days, now you can not find an American automobile outside of the United States. What happened?”

Culler said, “Corporate arrogance, greedy unions, high manufacturing costs and poor quality. That’s what killed the American automobile industry. But thankfully a few of these old beauties still remain to remind us of the way things were.”

Sophon laughed. “Yes, I admire all things American. I would like to visit some day. I have relatives in San José. They have invited me to visit, but I have to sell a lot of auto parts before I can afford the trip. And, well now I have a rather large family that depends upon me. So that is another problem.”

Mac chimed in from the back seat. “Save your money, Khun Sophon, and send one of your children to school in the U.S. Then you will build your own ties and the rest of you can follow later.”

“Yes, you are right. My oldest will be ready for university in two years. He hopes to get a scholarship and attend school in California near my relatives. That is his dream, and mine.”

“Get us to the airport in one piece and without being stopped and another one of these one hundred dollar bills will be your tip – think of it as a kind of advance on your son’s education,” said Mac.

“Can do,” said Sophon, pressing his foot on the gas.

 

 

Chapter Ninety-Six

 

 

Khun Ut had tipped off the the Chiang Mai airport police and municipal police to be on the lookout for the two Americans wanted for questioning in the car bombing at the Orchid Lodge and the shooting death of two men at the Wangcome Hotel in Chiang Rai.

The alert flashed their descriptions and spelled out their names – Callaway and Humphrey. Police all over Thailand, and especially in the north, were well familiar with the descriptions of the two, by now infamous, farangs.

Instructions were given to set up check points at the two main entrances of the airport. Cars were to be stopped and the passengers visually inspected. Those vehicles with farangs aboard were to be pulled over and detained. The papers of all adult males would be inspected, and all suspects matching the descriptions of the two suspects would be detained for further questioning.

Police were warned that the two farangs were armed and extremely dangerous.

Roving patrols of municipal police and airport security were instructed to cover the departure gates, both foreign and domestic, and the parking garages as well as all entrances and exits.

Seven of Khun Ut’s men were sent to the airport to do their own independent surveillance. They were in plain clothes, armed and led by Paiboon. They were instructed to remain on the periphery and not interfere with the police, but to monitor closely the police checks at the exits and entrances.  

The police were scrambling to set up checkpoints at the entrances to the airport when the old black four-door Impala carrying the two farang passengers drove past them and entered the airport unchallenged.

 

Chapter Ninety-Seven

 

 

Two police cars with sirens wailing and lights flashing came toward the black Chevy as it pulled into the main entrance of the airport.

“Whoa! What’s that all about?” said Santos. The two cars sped past and blocked the entrance behind them.

Sophon watched the two police cruisers in his rear view mirror while the two farangs reflexively slumped lower into their seats. “They are blocking the entrance to the airport. Setting up a checkpoint. They do that when there is a security alert of some kind.”

“Hmmm,” said Mac with a glance at Santos. “They’re probably looking for terrorists.”

He knew exactly what the commotion was all about, and said a silent prayer of thanks to God for getting them there when He did, before the roadblock was set up.

Santos responded with a wide-eyed look and a nod that conveyed he was in total agreement with his friend.

Mac said, “Take the entrance to the main garage over there, where it says long-term parking.”

Sophon pulled into the garage, stopped at the automatic gate and took a ticket. The bar raised and they entered. “Now continue driving up the ramp through the garage toward the upper levels until I tell you to stop.”

They passed the A, B, C, and D elevator banks on the lower level and then circled up to the second level where they repeated the process, passing the A, B, and C elevator banks.

They passed the Land Cruiser just beyond the C elevator bank. When they reached the end of the ramp near the D elevator bank they spotted two vacant spaces.

“Pull in there. In that space,” ordered Mac, pointing in the direction of the nearest space. Sophon did as he was told. Thus far they had not seen any security in the garage. “Now lock the car and come with us.” Mac pulled another one hundred dollar bill from his pocket and handed it to Sophon. “There is one more thing I need you to do for us.”

Culler looked quizzically at Mac, eyebrows raised, but said nothing. Mac gave him a reassuring glance with a slight nod in return.

They unloaded the car and walked together back toward the Land Cruiser. When they reached it Mac unlocked the doors with the remote and they threw their duffle bags in the back. Then he turned and handed Sophon the keys.

Mac said, “I want you to drive us out of here, Sophon. I don’t know who the police are looking for, but I have a hunch they are looking for a couple of farang drug dealers. Not us, but I heard something about it on the radio earlier today and I don’t want us to be stopped and questioned. Will you help us?”

“Of course,” said Sophon, clearly worried. “But I thought you were taking a flight out of here.”

“We’re too late.” Mac glanced at his watch. “Our flight leaves in ten minutes. We will have to come back tomorrow. We tried, but didn’t make it here on time.”

Sophon’s face showed disbelief, but all he said was: “Okay, but how will I get back to my car?”

“We’ll drop you at a taxi stand in town and you can take a cab back, Okay?”

Culler and Mac crawled into the back seat of the Land Cruiser. Mac slid his H&K pistol from the holster at the small of his back and indicated to Culler to do the same. The gesture was unnecessary, as Culler already had his pistol out and by his leg. They kept the weapons low and out of sight but at the ready.

“We’re going to slouch down on the floor so no one sees us,” said Mac. “The parking ticket is in the ashtray in front of you. Just get us out of here safely.”

Mac pulled a one thousand baht note out of his pocket and held it out over Sophon’s shoulder in the front seat. “Here, this should cover the parking charges. Keep the change.”

Sophon nervously stuffed the ticket and the one thousand baht note into his shirt pocket, backed out of the parking space and headed down toward the garage exit. When they reached the first floor of the garage they passed two airport police officers walking up on either side of the ramp. Sophon slowed and waved at them and they stepped aside and waved the Land Cruiser past after noting only a lone Thai driver in the car.

When they reached the garage exit one of the two toll booths was closed and the remaining one had two cars backed up in front of them waiting to pay. Sophon spoke softly over his shoulder to the men in the back. “There is only one attendant on duty. Only one booth open. Two police officers are inspecting the car that is paying at the booth.”

Culler and Mac were down low on the floor, pistols at the ready. Mac, who was directly behind the driver whispered to Sophon. “Keep all of the windows up until you reach the booth. The Land Cruiser is high, so they won’t be able to see us unless they get very close and look directly inside and down. Act natural and friendly and let us know if they decide to look into the back seat.”

All Santos could think of at the moment was that he wished he had taken the suppressors for the .45 caliber pistols out of the bags before they got into the backseat. If they had to shoot their way out of this mess they were going to make a hell of a lot of noise, and that wouldn’t help matters at all.

The first car finished paying and pulled away and the car immediately in front of the Land Cruiser pulled up to the booth.

 

 

Chapter Ninety-Eight

 

 

Paiboon was stationed at the side of the road about forty feet from the exit of the garage. Another one of his men was stationed directly across the street from him. Both were dressed casually in dark slacks and light, untucked short sleeved shirts. Their weapons were concealed under the shirts. They intently monitored the police checking the cars exiting the garage.

Paiboon felt a rush as the big white Land Cruiser pulled up to the booth. There appeared to be only one person in the vehicle – a Thai driver – but something spooked him. Something was not right.

He watched the driver pay the attendant through the open window and wait for his change while the two police officers casually walked the length of the Land Cruiser on either side from front to back, looking disinterestedly through the windows.   

What is it? His mind raced back in time. What is it about that vehicle?

The driver collected his change, rolled up the window and pulled out onto the airport exit road.

Then it dawned on him. The two farangs had used a large white SUV in their escape. This was the type of vehicle that the villagers in San Sai said had picked them up behind the abandoned charcoal factory on the outskirts of Chiang Mai.

Paiboon stepped off the curb out onto the street and started jogging toward the slowly moving vehicle, waving his hand and shouting for it to stop. His eyes locked on the driver’s and he saw pure, unadulterated wide-eyed fear.

Paiboon reached the side of the SUV just at the moment the driver swerved and gunned the engine, almost knocking Paiboon off of his feet.

The SUV sped down the exit ramp and headed out onto the highway.

Paiboon screamed at the two police officers. “That is their car. They are in that Land Cruiser. You did not check the inside. Alert the police to go after them.”

The nearest police officer glanced at his partner in disbelief and then turned toward Paiboon. “We did check. There was only one person in the vehicle. And if you continue shouting at us I will personally arrest you right here. Now shut up and let us do our job.”

Paiboon stood in the middle of the road, speechless, and watched the white Land Cruiser disappear from sight.

 

 

Chapter Ninety-Nine

 

 

Sophon pulled out onto the highway with his eyes fixed on the rear view mirror. He was relieved not to see anyone following him. He was still shaken by the crazy man who ran at him at the airport exit. “Phom sia jai, khrap. I am sorry. I almost run over that guy.”

Culler and Mac straightened up from their cramped positions on the floor and sat up in the back seat. “You did great,” said Mac. “Now continue heading into Chiang Mai until you spot a taxi stand and we’ll drop you off.”

Sophon wanted nothing more than to end this odyssey, collect his money and get as far away from those crazy farangs as he could. “Amarin Hotel is up on left. I could get taxi there. Is that okay?”

Mac said, “That would be perfect, Sophon. Pull in and we’ll drop you off at the entrance. Maybe you could grab a nice, leisurely lunch inside the hotel before heading back for your car as well. That would put even more distance between us.” Mac pulled the remaining three one hundred dollar bills out of his pocket and passed them up to Sophon. “Take this for your extra time and trouble – and please don’t say a word about this to anyone.”

Sophon stuffed the bills into his shirt pocket. “Please do not worry about me. I go back and collect my car and be on my way. I will not say nothing. You very generous and I thank Buddha you are safe.”

They pulled into the drive leading to the hotel and Santos said, “Don’t go all the way to the entrance. Pull over here where we can turn around and avoid the congestion at the front door.”

Sophon did as he was told and jumped down out of the vehicle, leaving the keys in the ignition and the motor running. He exchanged a deep, respectful wei with Mac as they exchanged places and Mac climbed behind the wheel.

“Khawp khoon ma khrap,” he said, “I wish you both good luck and good fortune. May Buddha smile on you.” And then he was gone, hurrying toward the front entrance of the hotel, glad to be out of there.

“Do you think he’ll really keep quiet about this?” asked Culler, heaving himself into the front passenger seat.

Mac pulled the Land Cruiser around and headed back onto the highway toward the center of Chiang Mai. “I think so, for awhile anyway. By the time he has to explain where he got all of his newfound wealth and figures out who we are we’ll be long gone.”

Culler pushed back in his seat and took a deep, cleansing breath. “Okay, we made it safely this far, but before we can declare mission accomplished we going to have to get out of this God forsaken country. How are we going to do that with every cop in Thailand on our trail?”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I think we should first go back to the safehouse to get cleaned up and rest a bit and get rid of all these alias docs, guns and military crap we’ve been lugging around. We can leave the excess gear behind and Charly can get the stuff out of the safehouse after we’re gone. Then, with our civilian gear and true-name passports, we’ll drive across the country to Nong Khai like a couple of tourists. Nong Khai is on the border with Laos. There’s a new bridge there, the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge. We can cross the Mekong over to Vientiane, and fly back home without having to go through Thai customs.”

Culler frowned skeptically. “Won’t we have to go through Thai customs in Nong Khai? It’s a border crossing point, right? Same as an airport?”

“Same, but not same-same, as the bar girls often say. They certainly do chop people in and out, but it’s a border town and not as sophisticated as say, Bangkok or Chiang Mai. They don’t have the on-line computer hook-ups like those major cities. And then…well, I have some good contacts there. They will be able to help us get across the river safely. Once we’re in Laos we’ll be home free.”

A police car sped toward them with lights flashing and siren wailing, causing them to stiffen, but it passed and disappeared in their rear view mirror, and they relaxed once again.

“Is that where you were posted way back when? Nong Khai?”

“No, but close. I was in Udorn, about fifty kilometers south of there. That was back in the late nineties. The base is in Udorn.”

Mac slowed the Land Cruiser and turned onto the tree lined street leading to the safehouse apartment.

 

 

Chapter One Hundred

 

 

Working silently, they unloaded the Land Cruiser in the garage and carried the duffel bags up to the apartment. There they sorted out their gear, showered, cleaned out the refrigerator of all of the leftovers, and took a long nap.

Mac made two brief calls on his throwaway cell phone. The first was to Charly Blackburn to tell her of their plan to leave the country via Nong Khai and to alert her that their gear and alias documents would be left behind in the safehouse; the second was to Maggie in Fort Lauderdale to tell her they had accomplished their mission and were on their way back home.

Maggie in turn informed Edwin Rothmann of their plans and mission success.

They waited until dark before leaving the apartment. They were refreshed, rested, cleaned up and well fed. They dressed casually in jeans and light, short sleeved shirts. They carried their true name passports and wallets and several hundred dollars in cash. The rest of the remaining cash, approximately twenty thousand dollars, was concealed in the lining of MacMurphy’s travel bag.

They discussed leaving their side-arms behind as well, but agreed that they would be better off with them during their approximate ten hour drive across the mostly deserted Thai countryside to Nong Khai.

MacMurphy suggested they could give the H&K pistols to his police contact in Nong Khai as a gift for helping them across the border. The police contact could also make secure arrangements for the return of the Land Cruiser.

Everything would be neatly wrapped up and all traces of Bob Humphrey and Ralph Callaway would be gone.

Santos climbed behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser and MacMurphy climbed in beside him with his GPS and a Thai roadmap spread out on his lap. “Let’s roll,” said Mac.

They reached Nong Khai early the following morning. After a huge breakfast at one of Mac’s favorite floating restaurants on the bank of the Mekong River, they drove to the home of Police Colonel Chatchai Sunthonwet to make arrangements to cross the border into Laos.

The Colonel was already at work when they arrived, but his wife remembered MacMurphy fondly and invited them in for tea while she called her husband.

After a brief meeting where Mac and the Colonel became reacquainted, Colonel Sunthonwet personally escorted Culler and Mac to the border, supervised their passage through Thai customs, and drove them in the Land Cruiser across the Friendship Bridge into Laos. He dropped them off at the beautiful French colonial Settha Palace Hotel in the center of Vientiane, and returned to Thailand in the Land Cruiser with two .45 caliber H&K pistols, suppressors and holsters, and $1000 in US currency in his pocket.

 

 

 

Chapter One Hundred-One

 

Ft. Lauderdale

 

 

Maggie met them at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale and drove them back to the offices of Global Strategic Reporting on Las Olas Boulevard. They briefed Maggie on what happened in Thailand – for security reasons, the rest of the GSR staff was kept entirely out of the loop. The briefing was complete with screw-ups, anecdotes, warts and accomplishments, but without, of course, any mention of Mac’s trysts with Charly Blackburn.

Maggie in turn briefed them on her conversations with Edwin Rothmann. The DDO was effusive in his praise for what they accomplished, but fearful of reprisals by Khun Ut, particularly regarding Charly Blackburn, who was laying low on his orders.

She informed them the front company was beginning to pay for itself and subscriptions to GSR’s “CounterThreat” publication were continuing to rise.

 

Back in Northern Thailand, Vanquish and the kid delivered the tainted shipment of heroin bricks to the warehouse in Mae Chan along with the body of bandana guy tied across the back of one of the donkeys.

Vanquish’s explanation of the cause of death was accepted by a simple shake of the head and a tongue clucking “tut-tut” by Ung Chea.

A few days later the three hundred and twenty kilogram shipment of tainted heroin was included in a five hundred kilogram shipment that moved by truck, secreted in the midst of a load of bagged charcoal, from the warehouse in Mae Chan to Samut Sakon, a small fishing port in the Gulf of Thailand, south of Bangkok. From there the heroin bricks were loaded onto a small coastal freighter where it made its way to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

In Ho Chi Minh City the shipment was secreted in a concealed compartment in the bilge of a Hong Kong registered nineteen hundred ton bulk grain carrier named the Ruaha. The ship was pumped full to the gunnels with rice from the Mekong Delta and sent on a three day voyage to the port of Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong the heroin bricks were transferred in a mini-bus to a state of the art refinery located in the basement of an old colonial mansion in the hills overlooking Tsim Sha Tsui and Hong Kong harbor.

There the ricin laced heroin bricks went through the most delicate forth and final refining process, turning the heroin base into heroin hydrochloride, a fine white powder, ready for packing and shipping to distributers in cities around the world. The process also had the affect of spreading the deadly ricin equally throughout the five hundred kilogram batch.

The bags of white powder were then secreted in a container load of rough cut teak lumber destined for The Decorator’s Furniture Warehouse in North Carolina. Several of the four inch by six inch solid teak planks had been carefully split, hollowed out and glued back together with the bags of pure heroin filling the void inside. The concealment was unnoticeable to all but the most trained eye.

A huge Mersk Line container ship carried the teak lumber to the Port of Miami, arriving on the third of September. From there the lumber container was shipped by rail to Fayetteville, North Carolina and unloaded at The Decorator’s Furniture Warehouse three weeks later. By that time the pure white heroin had a street value of $175 per gram.

The ricin laced heroin was cut further and repackaged at the furniture factory. It began hitting the streets in cities along the entire southeast coast of the United States by mid-October.

 

 

Chapter One Hundred-Two

 

 

Santos and MacMurphy slipped back into the routine of life in sunny Ft. Lauderdale.

They worked out in the mornings, Santos mostly in the weight room and MacMurphy with long runs along the Intracoastal and ocean. The rest of their days were spent in the GSR offices, working to turn the company into a profitable business to enhance its cover.

Mac, Culler and Maggie continued to debate the ethics of the operation in the Golden Triangle, but they tried not to let the disagreement affect their business relationship. As weeks turned to months, Khun Ut and Ung Chea and Charly Blackburn and Northern Thailand seemed very far away.

As part of their daily work, under the cover of doing research on the effects of drug overdose on heroin users for a large government “think-tank” customer, Maggie had put the whole GSR research team to work digging up statistics on the subject of heroin overdose.

They found that across the country drug overdoses killed about thirty-five thousand people a year, making it the second leading cause of accidental death, right behind motor vehicle accidents and ahead of deaths caused by firearms.

But some of the information they uncovered through confidential interviews with coroners gave them pause. It indicated deaths caused by poisoning might be masked, and falsely attributed to simple heroin overdose. Whenever a coroner’s autopsy detected any kind of illegal drugs in the body of a corpse, the autopsy was usually stopped right there, and the death was declared to be caused by an accidental overdose.

So their concern was, if people started dying from the ricin laced heroin, and their deaths were attributed to simple drug overdose, the results of their operation could be in jeopardy. If no one found out that the heroin was poisoned, then there would be no blow-back on Khun Ut and the trail of suppliers between him and the local street pushers.

They worried about this, and reported their fears back to Rothmann, who did not appear to be overly concerned. He just told them to wait and keep researching – something would happen.

But nothing did.

By early November their research began to show a definite rise in heroin related deaths in the southeastern United States, but no one outside of GSR seemed to notice, and not a word was written about ricin or any other related reason for the deaths.

All of the deaths appeared to be individual overdoses. Some were caused by inhalation (snorting), others by injection. And all of them were of known heroin addicts.

And then, finally, it happened.

On Thanksgiving Day, the Palm Beach Post ran a headline story about eight members of the violent Palm Beach County Haitian gang, Top 6, dying from an apparent heroin overdose in a run down smack-house on Sappodilla Avenue in West Palm Beach.

With so many deaths occurring at the same time, police suspected foul play and immediately jumped to the conclusion that the deaths were somehow related to reprisals by a rival gang. The Top 6 gang controlled a corridor of territory that ran roughly along the railroad tracks from Riviera Beach to Boynton Beach, but another Haitian gang called the Tru Haitian Boyz had recently been infringing on its territory. They became the main suspects.

The police collected syringes, spoons and heroin residue from the scene, and when the toxicology and autopsy reports came back they showed clear evidence that the heroin was tainted with ricin poison.

Two days after the press published the news of the ricin poisonings, two well-known drug dealers, twenty-three year old Berno Chalemond and twenty-five year old Tite Sufra, were shot execution style in the back of the head on Southwest Second Street in Boynton Beach.

Two suspects, identified by eyewitnesses as eighteen year old Jeriah “Plug” Woody and twenty-five year old Jesse Cesar, were arrested a day later. Under interrogation they admitted they had killed the two drug dealers because they had supplied the ricin-laced heroin that had killed their eight Top 6 brothers.

Aware now of the possibility of ricin tainted heroin, toxicologists began reporting an epidemic of apparent overdose deaths caused by ricin tainted heroin spreading throughout the gang controlled areas of Palm Beach County, Florida.

These deaths were followed by other assassinations of known drug suppliers in Folk Nation territory in Boca Raton, Latin Kings territory in Belle Glade, and Bloods and Crips territory in Jupiter and Palm Beach Gardens.

The epidemic of gangland killings and deaths by ricin-laced heroin caught the attention of the national media, which fueled the frenzied killing of heroin suppliers across the entire southeast coast of the United States.

 

 

 

Chapter One Hundred-Three

 

    

Culler Santos tossed the newspaper across the conference table to MacMurphy. “It couldn’t happen to a better bunch of lowlife. Talk about culling society of its undesirable elements! I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Maggie looked at him crossly across the table. “You did do it, Culler. Have you already forgotten?”

“No, I haven’t forgotten, but as much as I love you, Maggie, I can’t understand your stance on this issue. The world is a better place without those assholes…”

“The ends don’t justify the means, Culler. Never. And what about the collateral damage? What about the innocents who will die?”

“I haven’t seen any evidence of that. At least not yet I haven’t…”

Mac stood up and stretched. “Okay, okay. No more squabbling. What’s done is done. The moving hand, having writ, moves on…as the poet says. We can’t go on worrying about things we can’t control. These animals know nothing more than swift retribution. And that’s a good thing. Let’em keep on killing each other. Culler’s right about that. The world will be a better place without them.”

Maggie stood up and walked to the door. She pulled the door open and turned back to face them, legs apart and breathing heavily, chest rising and falling under her light blouse. “Until the first innocent kid, or father or mother dies. Will it be worth it then? I don’t think so…” She slammed the door behind her.

Mac sat back down at the table. “I don’t know, Culler. I don’t know.”

Culler said, “I’m sorry she feels that way, but this isn’t going to stop any time soon. It’ll travel all the way up the daisy chain to Khun Ut and his cohorts. Those who aren’t killed in the fury of mass retribution will go broke and be put out of business. Now that it’s in the press the entire heroin trade in the U.S. will suffer. Looks like our version of Operation Eldest Son has been a resounding success. It’s what we wanted to happen and it’s happening. And that’s a fact and I’m happy about it.”

Mac stood up. “You’re right of course. The operation worked.” He reached out his hand to Santos and they embraced, shoulder to shoulder. “But hell,” he snickered, “people will now probably just switch to cocaine. We may have just done the Colombian and Mexican cartels a huge favor.”

 

 

Chapter One Hundred-Four

 

 

Cindy and Mac were awakened early the next morning by the ringing of Mac’s throwaway cell phone.

“Sorry to bother you so early, Mac, but I managed to wrangle a trip down to Miami to meet with the station and I wondered if we could meet for a few minutes while I’m in the area.”

Mac recognized Rothmann’s deep, gravely voice immediately and sat up straight in bed. “Sure, just tell me when and where and I’ll be there.”

“I’m leaving for the airport now. Should be done with business by about three o’clock. Pick me up in front of the Borders Book Store on San Lorenzo Avenue in Coral Gables at exactly three forty-five. Ça va?”

“Okay, three forty-five, Borders, Coral Gables. Got it. I’ll be there.”

“Good…” The phone went dead.

They were both fully awake and sitting straight up in their bed. Cindy rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and regarded him with a wide questioning look. The sheet had dropped down to her lap revealing luscious breasts and capturing Mac’s gaze. “Who was that?” she asked.