Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (51 page)

*  *  *  *  *

Teller ordered Bourey, “Get a chopper here, preferably a gunship. Or fly in troops and land them alongside us.”

Bourey replied, “My walkie-talkie has three-mile range. Give me satellite phone.”

Teller turned on his unit and frowned. “The battery’s almost dead. Be quick.”

Bourey dialed Rangoon, spoke rapidly and hung up. “We wait five minutes,” was his cryptic comment. The satphone rang soon after, and Bourey answered with a series of grunts and nods. He hung up and handed the phone back. “No helicopters. Low ceiling and poor mechanicals in Southern Wa. Most helicopters in Rangoon or in northern Shan, closer to poppies.”

Teller said, “We’re staying here until our plane from Thailand lands. We’ll adopt a defensive posture and make them come to us. No fucking way we’re driving up that road into an ambush.” Teller’s already foul mood darkened visibly. He punched a phone number, waited for Matthews’s voice and began shouting, “You cocksucker! You don’t think I know you set me up? I’m coming back to Rangoon to gut you! I’ll choke you to death on your own tongue! You fucking traitor!” A coughing spasm shook him for a good ten seconds.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but we’re both in deep trouble here. The plane from Thailand is inbound and landing in thirty minutes. Charlie Meursault is piloting as a personal favor. I strongly suggest you get to Meursault’s Piper and fly out with him.”

 “Any idea what firepower we’re up against?”

“It’s the DEA and the Marines. One can’t shoot straight, and the other can’t think straight. Do the unexpected and you’ll be fine.”

“You say they flew in ahead? They have a plane on the runway?”

“Yes, that’s my under—” The satphone’s battery died with a beep. Teller flung the phone down in frustration, cracking the screen. He pocketed the device while Bourey and the troops watched uneasily.

They turned as one in response to commotion from the first vehicle. Doctor Wang awoke and called out. Teller told Bourey something in Burmese, and Bourey barked at his soldiers. Two attended to the physician while the rest regrouped.

“Is there any other way to the airfield other than this road? Can we get to the runway from the northeast rather than the southwest?” Teller asked.

Bourey creased his brow in concentration. “Yes! A two-wheeled track. Very rough. Need four-wheel drive, not this.” He gestured dismissively at the Toyota Crown.

Teller had the solution. “Pull the doctor out of the Land Rover and put him in the Toyota. We’ll leave the driver and Colonel Mullen here. When the fight’s over, we’ll come back for them. Mullen, you OK with this?”

Better than two bullets in the back of the head. “Sure, Rob. If there’s no room in the other vehicle, I’ll stay here.”

In heavily accented, atonal Burmese, Teller said, “We don’t have much time. Let’s move out, people!”

Bourey started shouting and his troops double-timed it, shifting weapons and ammo from the Crown to the battered Land Rover before they placed a semiconscious and groaning Dr. Wang into the back seat of the Crown. His feet hung out the open door as he moaned in pain. A soldier roughly forced his legs inside and slammed the door.

Throughout this quick-change operation, Mullen had kept his eye on his carry-on bag with the Sig to ensure it remained on the floor of the back seat. Teller, Bourey and their men reversed course and headed back to look for the turnoff into the jungle.

*  *  *  *  *

The flight from Abu Dhabi to Colombo departed on time. Watermen was exhausted from both the stress of the first leg and having to second-guess Godpa as to which files he’d leave in, which ones he’d delete and which ones he’d doctor before handing anything to their enemy. It was like playing telepathic bridge. That Herculean ordeal over, he steeled himself for Chumakov’s next torment. Disconcertingly, Chumakov didn’t do anything untoward save reclaim the laptop. The FSB director made a big show of pulling out an English language paperback, one of those pulp spy novels with exploding airplanes on the cover,
Ocean of Deceit
. Watermen figured it for trash, but Chumakov was reading keenly to the point of underlining certain passages.

With four hours to kill before landing, Watermen’s first-class flatbed hummed a siren’s song he couldn’t ignore and he was soon fast asleep.

Chumakov stumbled on a Chinese word denoting a computer infected with malware. According to his espionage page-turner, PLA Unit #61398 dubbed these compromised machines
rouji
, “meat chickens.” That’s what the slumbering Watermen was right now: a big, juicy
rouji.

*  *  *  *  *

Doyle called Constantine. “Your hunch was right. Nolan’s using one of his Agency hackers, Vishnu Balendra, age twenty-six, unemployed rich kid. Bit of a jack-of-all-trades. No overt intelligence ties, but he practices anti-surveillance routines that suggest some instruction, probably from Nolan. In any event, we’ve traced Nolan to the Colombo Racquets Club. Talk about hiding in plain sight—it’s practically next door to our embassy. What do you want me to do?”

“Absolutely nothing. Do not touch Nolan, his hotel or his companions. Nothing that might tip them off. Tail Balendra and that’s it. Try to pick up all the phone calls in and out of the building, but otherwise leave things alone. I can now call Burns and tell him about Pat Long’s death.”

“What about the G550 at the airport? I have three-man shifts there around the clock.”

“Leave that in place, though I’d wager Nolan never sees that plane again as a free man. If he surprises us by showing up, make certain the plane doesn’t move and detain everyone on board.”

*  *  *  *  *

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

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

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

*  *  *  *  *

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

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

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

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

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

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

*  *  *  *  *

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

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

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

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

*  *  *  *  *

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

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

TAILS, I WIN

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

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

*  *  *  *  *

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

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

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

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

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