Devil's Due: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 0) (11 page)

"The missing girls are someone's daughters, too."

Anna's expression hardened.
 
"Do you have children?"

Caine shook his head.
 
"No.
 
I don't."

Anna reached out and stroked the doll's hair.
 
“A thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth.
 
I don't have to worry about that with Tia.
 
She is a blessing.
 
She brings me luck.
 
Perhaps she will bring you luck, too.
 
You'll need it, Mr. Waters."

Without responding, Caine walked back into the house.
 
Behind him, Anna remained, sitting with her blessed doll while the waves lapped at the beach in the darkness.

Caine caught a taxi back to the walking street area of Pattaya.
 
He walked through the crowds of pleasure-seeking tourists amid the flickering neon lights until the streets turned darker and the crowds thinned out.
 
The gleaming clubs and go-go bars were replaced with rickety tenements and rotting apartment buildings.

This was Satra's neighborhood.
 
Glancing around the street to make sure he was alone, Caine pulled out his cell phone and dialed the detective's number.

The phone rang twice, and Satra picked up.
 
"Hey, where you been?"

"I got some information on the Russians.
 
I believe they're up north, somewhere along the Myanmar border."

"Who tell you that?"

"I met with someone high up in the chao pho.
 
It's a long story, but according to my contact, the chao pho aren't the ones behind the website.
 
It's the Red Wa, and they're working with the Russian mafia."

"You believe them?"

Caine paused.
 
"Not sure.
 
But they could have killed me.
 
Instead, they let me go.
 
Either way, it's the best lead we have right now."

Satra sighed.
 
"Well, it match what I find.
 
Finally got line on Russians.
 
Witness saw them charter private plane.
 
They fly to Chang Mai, up north.
 
They rent vehicle there, four by four, truck.
 
Good for dirt roads.
 
Maybe they going into jungle?"

"That must be it," Caine said.
 
"My contact said Alexi is working with a man known as Pisac.
 
His camp is up north.
 
They're sending me coordinates soon."

Satra whistled.
 
"I have heard of this man.
 
I thought he was just myth, fairy tale.
 
If we can get evidence, link Pisac to this case, Chief Battang will have to investigate. He have no--"

Caine heard Satra gasp, and then there was a loud crash.

"Satra?
 
Satra, are you there?"

The line went dead.

Caine jogged down the street faster and hit redial on the phone.

The phone rang.
 
No one picked up.

Caine jammed the phone in his pocket and broke into a sprint.
 
He felt the blood roaring in his ears as he drove his legs faster across the pavement.
 
It might have been a bad connection, or it might have been a dead battery....

In his heart, Caine knew it was neither of those things.
 
The people they were investigating had set off a bomb in a public market and killed dozens of people, simply to discourage the police from investigating them.
 
They were ruthless and willing to act.
 
Satra had been turning over rocks, questioning anyone he could find about them.
 
If word had gotten back, if just one of his contacts had squealed...

Satra was in terrible danger.

Caine was panting as he raced around the corner onto Satra's block.
 
His apartment building was just ahead, on the left side of the street.
 
Caine ducked behind a battered red pickup truck that was parked on the side of the road.
 
As he caught his breath, he peered around the rear corner of the truck.
 
The street was dark and quiet.
 
A couple of streetlights pierced the sweltering darkness with their hazy glow, but there was still more shadow than light.

Caine moved out again, walking at a normal pace.
 
He jammed his hands in his pockets, trying to like a lost tourist.
 
His eyes glanced left and right, but he saw no signs of movement.

He made his way to the front of Satra's building.
 
A few squares of light were shining from apartments that faced the street, but most of the building was dark.
 
Either it was empty, or the majority of the tenants were early sleepers.
 
Caine scanned the premises one last time, but still saw no signs of a disturbance.
 
No movement of any kind.
 
Walking up to the outside gate, he slipped a small lock pick from a pouch under his belt.

He had picked the lock before, the first time he had visited the detective.
 
It did not take him long to pick it again.
 
A few minutes later, the door creaked open on its rusty hinges.

Caine took a step forward.

The air around him ignited in a blast of heat and fire.

BOOM!

The explosion was deafening.
 
Caine felt the hot air scald his skin, as the force of the blast threw him backwards.

He closed his eyes and forced his body to go limp.
 
He hit the ground ten feet back and tumbled away from the burning building.
 
As he rolled, he raised his hands and covered his head.
 
Shards of wood and glass pelted the ground around him like shrapnel.

A huge chunk of burning timber slammed into the ground less than a foot from his head.
 
The pavement crumbled beneath it as it rolled to a stop.
 
Caine leapt up from the ground and sprinted as far from the burning rain of debris as he could.

The telltale patter of objects striking the ground subsided.
 
Caine stopped, and turned around.

Satra's building was gone.
 
A skeletal framework still stood, but the center of the apartment complex had collapsed into crumbling rubble.
 
Wreckage was strewn about the ground, as if the entire structure had been thrown into the air and slammed back to earth upside down.

What little remained was engulfed in fire.
 
Thick, gray clouds of smoke rose up from the flames and blotted out the stars in the night sky.

There was no way anyone inside the building could have survived.
 
Caine had seen enough explosions to be certain of that.
 
Whoever had planted the charges had done their work well.

Pisac's death toll had just increased.

The moaning wail of sirens rose in the distance.
 
Caine stared at the flames.
 
For a moment, he wondered if Satra had been dead or alive, conscious or mercifully numb when the burning, hungry flames had consumed him and everyone else around him.
 
Was he forced to listen to the screams of the other tenants, over the loud crackling of burning wood and super-heated metal?

The sirens grew louder.
 
Closer.

Caine could barely hear them over the turmoil of thoughts that raced through his head.
 
What if he had agreed to help Satra sooner?
 
What if he could have stopped these people before they had taken Naiyana, before they got wind of Satra's investigation?

The sirens were just around the corner now.
 
Caine took a few steps backwards, then turned and walked into the thick darkness that surrounded the burning building.
 
Within a few seconds, he was gone, lost in the shadows.

Caine rolled the heavy wood door of the boathouse open and looked inside.
 
Behind the door, darkness stared back at him.
 
The pier had no lights of any kind, and only the moon illuminated the grounds after the sun set.
 
At the moment, the moon was hidden behind a thick bank of clouds, leaving the boathouse shrouded in darkness.

He had rented the boathouse under an assumed name, and he had used a cut out from one of the local street gangs to pay the owner in cash for the year.
 
There was nothing to tie the property back to him.
 
Still, he clicked on a small Maglite and swung the brilliant, tiny beam through the interior, checking every shadowed nook and cranny for intruders.

The dark, musty wood shack was empty.
 
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
 
Taking a length of chain that hung from the inner wall, he looped it around the door handle and slid a heavy duty combination lock through the chain links.
 
He was confident no one would be able to enter without making enough noise to warn him first.

An old fishing boat sat in the center of the boathouse, upright and perched on a single-unit dry rack.
 
It was about twenty feet long and looked to be in terrible shape.
 
A lumpy crust of barnacles coated its hull, and years of salt corrosion and neglect had stripped away the paint. It would have cost a small fortune to refit the vessel and make her sea-worthy again.
 
But Caine didn't care about that.

He had no intention of ever putting this rotting carcass of a boat in the water.

Caine grabbed a small utility ladder and dragged it over to the edge of the boat.
 
He climbed up the ladder and hopped onto the main deck.
 
The floorboards flexed and groaned under his feet, but they supported his weight.

He stepped into the small cabin at the stern of the boat.
 
The beam from his flashlight filled the cabin with a soft, warm glow.
 
Kneeling, he felt along the floorboards until he located the tiny pressure plate he had installed between two of the boards.
 
He pressed the catch, until he heard it click, and felt one of the floorboards lift a fraction of an inch.

Using his fingernails, he was able to pry it up, revealing a metal door, hidden beneath the floor.
 
He removed several more floorboards, each one exposing more of the metal hatch.
 
Finally, he removed the last board, and a small numeric keypad came into view, mounted next to a thick metal handle.
 
The object was a safe.
 
Its door faced up towards him.

Caine typed a series of letters and numbers into the keypad.
 
A small light next to the safe's handle turned green.
 
Caine grabbed the handle and pulled.

The heavy metal door lifted up, revealing its contents.
 
The glow of the halogen bulb glinted off the metal stocks and barrels of a small arsenal of modern weaponry.
 
A variety of pistols, rifles, submachine guns, and knives were neatly arranged in the safe, along with several other bags of supplies and an assortment of ammunition.

Caine had stashed the equipment here in case his old friends at the CIA ever came looking for him.
 
Now, he would put it to use for another purpose.

He began to select weapons and lift them from the safe, laying them out on a small workbench that ran along one side of the cabin.
 
After a few minutes, he stood back, and surveyed the gear on the bench.

First up were a pair of SIG P226 pistols chambered in 9mm.
 
Next to them sat an H&K MP7 submachine gun with folding forward grip and retractable shoulder stock.
 
Several extended capacity magazines were stacked next to the weapon.
 
Finally, he set a Spyderco Paramilitary 2 folding knife with a blackened steel blade down on the bench, along with a sharpening stone.

He spent the next couple hours loading magazines and field stripping the weapons.
 
Then he cleaned and oiled their firing mechanisms and reassembled them.
 
The work was tedious, but that didn't bother him.
 
It kept his mind off other things.
 
The glow from the flashlight was dim, but he had trained to perform these actions blindfolded if need be.
 
He knew every spring and switch, every curve of metal. He knew each weapon as intimately as a lover.

He had just begun grinding the knife's blade across the sharpening stone, when a beep from his phone interrupted his concentration.
 
He put the knife down to check the phone's screen.
 
He had a text.

He opened it, finding coordinates and a file attachment for a map.
 
There was also a message:
 
"My contact says the girls will be loaded onto a cargo ship in 24 hours."

True to her word, Anna had sent him the location of Pisac's camp.
 
Caine opened the map file, and checked the coordinates.
 
They were north of Chang Mai, just inside the Thai border with Myanmar.
 
That matched with the intel from Satra.
 
Alexi Rudov was heading north.
 
Pisac would be there to meet him.

Naiyana and the other girls would be there as well.
 
For twenty-four hours, at least.
 
After that...

Caine tapped the edge of the knife's blade with his thumb and felt it bite his skin.
 
A tiny droplet of blood swelled from the cut.
 
Caine licked his thumb clean before folding the knife closed.