Flight Path: A Wright & Tran Novel (29 page)

Kara raised her middle finger, “Don’t start your normal bullshit about how imagery analysts are the Jedi mind warriors of the Intel world. I’m not in the mood. Just tell me what you meant about the prison, Obi One Ball” she said, giving Sammi a wink.

Chaz pouted, then said, “Fair enough. You see this whole area on the screen? It has a double wall running around it. Clear area between the walls. A guard tower at every corner and in the mid-section of each outer wall, except the wall that sits to the north. That one faces a car parking area and the main road. It has a larger, probable administration reception centre sitting amidst it. There’s only one entrance into the whole place. Inside the walls there’s a distinct divide. The place is split into two. That makes it likely to be a joint male and female facility, or a semi-secure and real bad-ass prisoner split. The low-level accommodation blocks surround a central compound, probably accessible to all, with a couple of areas for fitness and recreation including a tennis court and a prominent Mosque, perfectly aligned to Mecca. Aside from the Mosque, which would be a church or a synagogue depending on what country you’re in, to anyone trained in imagery the rest of this place shouts prison like, oh I don’t know what like… Sammi?”

“Like a bear coming out of the woods with an Andrex puppy under its arm,” she said.

Kara laughed and took the cup of tea that Tien handed to her. “Thanks, Tien. Anyway, I missed the beginning of this conversation, why are you looking at a prison?”

“Because Dan didn’t know what it was. They’d driven past it last night. He said it had tall railings on top of the outer wall, razor mesh and barbed wire but that the outer wall was minging. All peeling paint and mouldy. He thought it might have been an army camp but for that.”

“So what is it? I assume you’ve run a check.” Kara asked.

“Course I have. Oh thanks,” Chaz said taking the offered tea. “It’s Kerobokan Prison, described by some as a hellhole and by others as a cesspit. There’s not much in the way of good PR for the place. It’s where the Bali bombers went and a whole bunch of hi-profile Aussies.”

“Do you remember Schapelle Corby?” Tien asked.

Kara thought for a moment, “The surf board full of drugs?”

“Yeah. She went there. It’s not a fun place.”

“It’s where that British woman is too,” Sammi added. “You know the one that’s been sentenced to death for drug smuggling. Made the news a couple of years ago because she was expected to get a term sentence but got death by firing squad instead.”

Chaz shrugged, “The court said she had taken the piss out of their anti-drug stance.”

“I doubt they said that Chaz,” Tien said, handing Sammi her tea.

“Yeah, they may have worded it a bit more upmarket, but that’s what they meant.”

“So what you’re saying is that if you get done with drugs over here you either do hard time, or you get killed?” Kara asked the three of them.

“Basically, yep and sometimes you do the hard time and then get killed,” Chaz said. Sammi and Tien nodded.

“And yet we have a bunch of the worst scum on the planet, with a full rundown of their activities and how they spirit people away from justice, but not one shred of real evidence so they’ll likely walk scot-free?”

“Yeah,” Chaz said, a lot more downbeat.

The four of them drank their tea and Chaz started the search that he had intended before the conversation had turned to the prison.

Tien stood and walked to the far side of the room. She looked out the hotel window to the gently shimmering water of the Indian Ocean. “Kara?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you reckon the police in Britain have got any spare drugs?”

Victoria Oxford wa
s
still serving in the British military but had left her Royal Navy beginnings far in the past. As Kara and Tien’s boss on the deployment to Basra, and later in subsequent operations, she was trusted by Kara above everyone else, bar Tien. The only issue was that being still active, getting in touch could be problematic. So it was that four hours went past between Kara ringing an emergency contact number and her own mobile beginning to vibrate on the table.

The incoming call merely said ‘Overseas’.

“Hello?”

“You rang my dear?”

“I did. Can we talk?”

“Do you mean can we talk securely?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Victoria said. “If you need to do that we shall have to be cleverer. Have you got Internet access?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll text you a link. Ciao.”

The line went dead. Kara waited and a few minutes later a text arrived.

Tien copied the web address and posted it into a browser. A secure padlock appeared on the screen and under it a terminal server interface with two boxes asking for username and password.

Another text arrived on Kara’s phone giving not a username and password but two questions.

“She wants the first name of the Police liaison officer we worked with in Northern Ireland,” Kara said.

Tien typed in Demi.

“And the name of the puppy we sponsored in 2009 down in Hereford.”

Tien typed in Rasputin and pressed enter.

The screen blanked, then refreshed. A sharp feedback tone with treble echo sounded in the speaker before Victoria’s voice came through clearly.

“Hi, can you hear me?”

“Oh, wasn’t expecting that. I need to activate the laptop’s built-in mic,” Tien said, clicking on a settings screen and rapidly accessing menus. Kara waited patiently.

Victoria repeated herself twice more before Tien said, “Yeah, sorry, didn’t know we were doing comms. Can you hear us?”

“Loud and clear Tien. So, Kara my dear, you rang?”

“Yeah. You back in London?”

“No. Actually I’m in the same place I was when last we spoke. Well, not true. I’m a little further into no-man’s-land but near enough.”

“Ah, that’s a shame.”

“Why, what do you need?”

“Access to a diplomatic pouch.”

“Where’s it going to?”

“Bali.”

“Indonesia?”

“Yeah, but I’ve checked, we have a consulate here in a place called Denpasar,” Kara said.

“I might be able to help you out. I’m not in London but I can probably call a few chaps and arrange it from here if we’re quick. I have to head out in a few hours. Do I want to ask what we’re transporting?”

“Not really,” Kara said.

“Okay. I’ll text you ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ in an hour or so. If it is a go then get whatever it is to Box. Ask for Jamie Birch. Got it?”

“Yeah. That’s great, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Only issue will be if Jamie’s not around. No one else I trust to do it. Right, got to dash. Love to all.”

“Bye,” both Tien and Kara said to the laptop screen before Victoria disconnected.

ɸ

Franklyn answered his phone on the fifth ring.

“Yes, who is it?” he asked, the sleep still evident in his voice.

“Me. I need you to call a number but not from your normal phone please.”

His voice was instantly alert, “Certainly. Send it through.”

Kara disconnected and texted the number of an unregistered Indonesian mobile she had bought from a 7-11 across the road from the hotel. It rang a few minutes later.

“Good morning. I’m sorry to have woken you at this early hour,” she said, knowing it had just gone 04:00 in the UK. She put the phone on speaker mode.

“That is alright. I assume it is urgent. What do you need?”

“I want the official side of your contacts to misappropriate some evidence.”

“Go on.”

“I need a quantity of drugs. The harder the better.”

Franklyn didn’t even pause, “Okay, how much of it?”

Kara looked over to Tien, Sammi and Chaz. They looked as surprised as she felt at the way the man had just accepted this strangest of requests.

“One or two kilos would be good. Ten would be better but that might be noticed if it walked out the door.”

“Where do you need it to be?”

Kara told him the details that Victoria had confirmed by her ‘Go’ text message, sent through minutes earlier.

“Fine. Leave it with me. I cannot see it presenting too much of a problem. Do you need confirmation?”

“No. The courier will provide that for us. Keep things simple.”

“Well, I could think of simpler things than what you are suggesting, but yes I concur,” he said and chuckled.

“My, aren’t you in a good mood at such an early hour?”

“I am. Surprisingly. Is there anything else?”

“Yes. Tien will send you a link to a file soon. It contains notes on everything we’ve found out to date. You may want to pass it through to the appropriate people.”

“I shall look forward to reading it. Any word as yet on Swift?”

“None, but if we’re likely to find him, then we’re currently in the right place.”

“I do not doubt it. Anything else?”

“Not for now.”

“Excellent. Stay safe.”

“You too,”

The call disconnected.

“We need to hire another car,” Sammi said.

ɸ

Chaz took over from Toby, who in turn took over from Dinger, while Dan and Eugene were replaced by Tien and Sammi. The kit that Dinger had picked up in London and brought to Paris was now proving invaluable. The jungle pattern combat clothing allowed them to blend in with their surroundings, the long range surveillance glasses meant they had an up-close view of everything going on in the majority of the villa complex and the soft-skinned water bladders they wore on their backs, kept them hydrated in an afternoon sun that was pumping oppressive heat into the day. Soft shimmers of localised mirages rose in the air, but they didn’t prevent a clear view of Jacob, swimming in the pool.

Sammi whispered, “Oh my, he is a well-built boy, isn’t he?” She looked sideways to Tien and could see a flush of colour rising in her face.

“Sammi!” Tien said in a forced whisper.

“Ah admit it. You like him.”

There was quiet for some time before Tien turned her head slowly, “Yes I do. I can’t explain it, but I was horrified at first by what he did in Amsterdam. Then, I, well… I suppose I realised that for such a sweet, shy guy, he must have cared for me to have gotten so mad.”

“Cared for you?” Sammi said with a gentle play to her voice. “The guy is besotted with you. Can’t you see that?”

“No. Well, I mean… I know he… aww stop it Sammi.”

“No Tien, I’m not teasing you. He seriously is. It was written all over his face when I first got to Amsterdam.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. Anyway, he’s a nice guy. Good for you.”

“Well it’s not like we’ve gone out or anything. We just talked, that’s all.”

“I wouldn’t have thought anything different of you Tien,” Sammi said.

“Aww, now you are teasing.”

“Maybe I a- Oh for fuck’s sake!”

“Sammi!” Tien said, surprised at the sudden, although still quiet, expletive.

“Well… that’s just not funny, is it?” Sammi said and pointed with a slow nod of her head, to her own left hand.

The women, lying side by side on their stomachs in the hide, had both of their arms out in front of them. It allowed use of the long-range binoculars while ensuring they stayed as flat as possible. The key to successful and therefore unnoticed observation, was minimal movement. Certainly no fast movements. Everything needed to be done with a calmness that allowed the surrounding environment to envelope the observers. That way, those being observed would be completely unaware. It called for a lot of self-discipline.

Tien looked to where Sammi was indicating. A fat, almost thumb-width-fat, black millipede was crawling across the back of Sammi’s hand. Its front legs were rippling over her thumb nail and the last of its back legs hadn’t even reached her little finger.

“Oh!” Tien said. “Mmm, I can see what you meant now. No, not all that funny. But quite a size, isn’t it?”

“Yeah and it tickles, but I don’t think I’ll laugh.”

The women watched the insect traverse over the peaks of Sammi’s knuckles before it bumped its back legs on to the ground. It hunted around with a head section that possessed impressively large pincers and then headed for her right wrist. Sammi raised her hand slowly to allow the wanderer to pass underneath. After a few minutes it left their little clearing and disappeared into the undergrowth.

“See, that’s why I should have filled up my water bladder with vodka. How come we’re doing this and Kara’s swanning around in the city?”

“We’re just lucky, I guess,” Tien said and returned to watching the villa complex. And Jacob.

ɸ

“I’m just lucky, I guess,” Noel Stewart said.

“I agree. Surely it’s not a bad posting though, is it? Beats some other places you could be in,” Tien said, sitting next to the British consular official on the grass in front of the Bajra Sandhi Monument in Denpasar.

“Oh yeah. Although, I have done my time in some right holes. So yeah, it’s nice to do it easy’ish.”

“Speaking of easy, how easy is what I want?” Kara asked.

“Very. The pouch comes in direct to Jakarta on a British Airways flight. Then it and whatever the Jakarta Embassy need to send me gets put on a Foreign Office charter and flown here. Picked up by our in-house security and ferried directly to my office. Full diplomatic status throughout.”

“Timings?”

“Flight leaves Heathrow at midday every day. With the stop in Jakarta and the transfer to the charter, it arrives about seventeen hours later. So, normally around 13:00 local.”

“Great.”

“Except, as soon as I hand it to you, whatever it is, and no, I don’t need or want to know, but as soon as I hand it over, you lose the diplomatic protection of the pouch. If what you have is illegal, then you’re on your own.”

“Yep. Understood.” She began to push herself up from the grass. “Eh, Noel?”

“Yes,” he said and gave her a quizzical look, squinting up at her and shielding his eyes from the sun.

“If you drove it to a spot on the island and I took it from you there, that would limit the time it was outside diplomatic protection, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes Kara. It would… Is that what you’re asking me to do?”

“Yeah. What’d ya reckon?”

“Shall I assume this is going to benefit Her Majesty’s Government?”

“It certainly won’t damage it and I think she’d be pleased at the outcome.”

Noel stood up, “Fine. Tell me where and when.”