JET V - Legacy (25 page)

“Open the side door and get in. Toss your bags next to you. Sorry I’m late,” he said in Arabic. Jet gave him a black look and then slid into the passenger seat behind him. The others piled into the back, and soon they were rolling down the road, leaving the airport.

“What was so important that you left us waiting?” Jet asked.

The driver peered up at the rearview mirror and caught her glance. “The police had a checkpoint over by the port. They said there was a shooting. Didn’t really seem to know what they were looking for, but it clearly wasn’t one humble local on his way to work,” he explained, his tone calm and reasonable. Jet immediately felt remorse for her attitude and quiet cursing of the man. “I’m Isaac, by the way. We’ll be at the house in fifteen minutes, and then you can stretch out and check your gear. I wasn’t able to round up a lot on such short notice – pistols and a Kalashnikov.”

“What about ID?”

“As requested, I doctored up a few official identification cards making you members of the police force. They’ll get you in and out of situations where there isn’t a lot of scrutiny, but you’re dead in the water if someone radios it in.” Isaac glanced at the frowning faces of the group in the mirror. “How long will you be needing me?”

“All day,” Jet said, not wanting to share anything more with him. If the bomb went off, the less he knew, the better. Which at this point was a very real possibility.

“I got a couple of cars for you to use, too. The communiqué indicated I should give you every courtesy, and specified you would require weapons, identification and vehicles. Do you think you’ll need anything else?”

“How are you set for computer gear?” Aaron asked.

“Got a laptop and a workstation with two thirty-two inch monitors. State of the art.”

They saw the flashing lights of the roadblock in the distance, off to their right, and Isaac gave it a wide berth, choosing secondary streets until they arrived at the house – a modest affair in a working-class neighborhood on the southern end of town. He reached up and pressed a garage door remote, and the heavy iron plate gates swung open, enabling him to pull the van into the walled compound and then close them behind him, effectively sheltering the house from any view from the street.

It was five in the morning by the time they got settled, and Jet was anxious to get going. When her phone vibrated she almost jumped. She hurried to answer it, stepping into the kitchen for some privacy as the men joined Isaac at the computer.

“The bomb entered the country by cargo ship. The container was removed from the ship the day before yesterday. At least we now know how they got it in,” the director said, without preamble.

“Are they going to detonate it there?” she asked.

“Negative. Apparently, that came up during a cursory discussion of the planning. It’s too far away from the brunch location.”

“Well that narrows it down, doesn’t it? To something close to the target?”

“Not necessarily. They could be planning to detonate it in a plane, a drone, a nearby car…”

“Then we’re really no closer than we were.”

“Correct.”

“Is it possible it’s still in the container?”

“Almost certainly not. The captive was sure that they were going in to get it either last night or the night before.”

“Shit.” Something tugged at Jet’s awareness. “On the way from the airport, the local contact said there was some sort of a roadblock by the port. A shooting. What do you want to bet that was related?”

“I’m not feeling much like betting at the moment. I’ll have the techs see what they can pull from the police servers. Now that we’re in the immigration system, should be a piece of cake. Oh, and we have a photo of the tech man – Joseph. He entered on a work visa three weeks ago. Sponsored by a company affiliated with one of The Council’s members, as was the shipping company that brought in the container. No doubt the address on the application is a fake, but it’s something you need to follow up on.”

“Send the photo and the address to the operational email account. We have good access here.”

“There’s one more thing. The facial recognition software also flagged a new arrival. Came into the country day before yesterday on a tourist visa. Traveling on an Egyptian passport. I’ll be sending his photo over as well.”

“Who is it?” Jet asked.

“Solomon. The older of the two brothers. My guess is that you killed the younger one in Libya during the attack.”

Her mind churned as she digested the news. “Where did he fly in from?”

“Cairo.”

“Which would be one of the hubs if he had been at the house during the attack. He would travel from either Tripoli or Benghazi…”

“That occurred to us. We’re already tracing the passenger manifests, but I’m not sure how much good it will do. Still, we now have two of the targets in Qatar. As if we needed any further confirmation this was going to happen.”

“How’s the questioning going?”

“I’m not hopeful. One of the three already succumbed to a bad heart. I’ve given instructions to push the other two to the limit. We’re down to only a few hours now. Believe me, if we hear anything, you’ll be the first person I call.”

The phone went dead. The director, as was his custom, simply hung up when he finished imparting whatever info he had. Jet considered this latest wrinkle – two ex-Mossad operatives to track down, rather than one.

She moved back into the living room, where the computers were set up, and instructed Isaac to go to the encrypted e-mail box and pull up and print out the photos. As she watched the images spill from the high-resolution printer, she had a sinking feeling in her gut – there was no time to find the bomb if all they had were some immigration photos.

Which meant that in just a little while, the fate of the world was going to change, forever, unless they got very, very lucky. And of the many things she’d been feeling since taking on this assignment, lucky wasn’t one of them.

Chapter 31

Phuket, Thailand

The roar of the local bus outside the bar sounded like a runaway locomotive to Matt, who had ultimately decided to spend the night awake, moving among dozens of watering holes, never remaining in one spot for very long. Twice he had spotted possible watchers, and both times had evaded them by sneaking out the rear exits, knowing even as he did that he was probably being paranoid.

Whatever the case, the week of relaxation on the beach in Phuket had gone from an idyllic reward to a tense game of cat and mouse as he was pursued by unknown adversaries. The most likely explanation for the thief was that Niran had sold him out to a gang that would split any profits – or perhaps it was a well-equipped opportunist, but Matt doubted it. The most remote likelihood, but by far the most worrying, was that his old nemesis, the CIA’s drug-running cabal, had gotten a whiff of him, either from Niran or from someone at the bank, and put a team on him.

But Matt hadn’t stayed alive as long as he had by being careless or hoping for the best, and now he was in a state of high alert, watching for real or imagined threats behind every tree and vending machine. Fortunately for him, the nightlife in Phuket was non-stop and the carousing continued until dawn, catering to swarms of drunken Australians and Americans out for an adventure with one of the friendly natives.

At the final bar of the evening, he’d grown tired of his unrelenting counter-surveillance. After buying several beers for a tiny little thing in a plaid schoolgirl’s skirt and a white silk blouse tied just under her breasts to better show off her flat brown belly, he agreed to accompany her to a nearby hotel that asked no questions and rented rooms in three-hour intervals.

Matt pretended not to speak the language and inwardly smiled when his new date told the bar Mama-san that she’d hooked a live one, and he cheerfully handed over the bar fine – compensation to the club for the money it ostensibly would have made if the girl had remained there instead of going off with him. She took his hand and led him into the night, walking confidently on a trip she’d undoubtedly made countless times before, in spite of her apparent teen age – also an illusion, but a carefully crafted one. He knew that she had probably been in the business for several years, and being as attractive as she was, serviced two to three patrons a night on a busy weekend. But her placid face and feigned naïveté were convincing, and he was quite sure that many an inebriated young man had fallen for her act.

She led him to a seedy single-story motel with a sporadically blinking neon sign promising ‘Paradise Palms,’ and he obligingly paid for the room, nodding as the old man behind the counter warned in broken English that he needed to be out no later than eight a.m., as though there was going to be a rush of post-breakfast patrons eager to use the facilities.

The room itself was everything he had imagined from the exterior – relatively new due to the reconstruction following the tsunami that had nearly wiped the resort from the map, but already sliding into disrepair, as was so much in Thailand. He set his bag down on the only chair, a scarred wooden job that looked like it had taken more abuse than the rusting fishing scows off the beach, and turned to his escort, who was humming to herself as she slipped off her blouse, revealing pert girlish breasts, one with a small tattoo of a scorpion on it that was probably her nod to truth in advertising. She gave him a beaming smile and then darted into the bathroom before he could say anything, and Matt relaxed when he heard the shower start – she was a conscientious one, his new schoolgirl friend.

He peered out the front curtains at the darkened courtyard and caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, off to the left. He struggled to get a better glimpse of whoever was out there, but it was too dark and he couldn’t make anything out. A part of him argued that, given the business model the motel had, it wasn’t unexpected that there would be constant traffic on the grounds; but another urged caution and was clamoring a warning. It could be danger – someone who had followed from the bar, even if that seemed impossible to him.

Matt erred on the side of caution, and extinguished the lights before taking another glance outside.
There.
A man off to the side, maybe fifteen yards away – standing, watching Matt’s room door, and on a cell phone. Perhaps it was all innocent, another satisfied motel customer phoning home, or someone working security at the late hour, but Matt wasn’t interested in finding out the hard way that he was wrong.

The bathroom door opened and his new friend strutted from the bathroom wearing only high heels and a smile, and then hesitated, seeing the lights off and Matt still fully dressed.

“Come on, sexy man, I so hohney, don’t make me wait…,” she purred in a velvet sing-song, the words delivered with a kind of bored professionalism, and then she stopped when she saw Matt shake his head and remove a wad of baht from his pocket, peel off several large denomination bills, and hand them to her.

“What’s wrong, lovah man? I need you, baby,” she tried again, uncertain what was happening.

“No thanks, young sister. I’m afraid I don’t feel well all of a sudden,” Matt replied, this time in Thai, and her eyes narrowed at his unaccented command of the language.

“You don’t want a girl? Maybe I can make you feel better, huh?” she said, sidling up to him, but then something about his expression stopped her.

“No, I think this was a bad idea. I’m sorry. It’s not you. It’s me. Too much beer and too many years. Get dressed – I want to get out of here. This place stinks,” Matt said, his speech plodding and slightly slurred.

The girl did a quick assessment of the amount of currency in her hand versus what she stood to make if she was able to coax her suddenly agitated paramour into an entanglement, and decided that she was getting the better end of the deal if she just walked away. Keeping to her pidgin English act, she offered a professional smile.

“Okay, sexy man, maybe you come back tonight and I show you paradise, yes?” she offered, hoping to hold onto the business – especially in light of his generosity without her having had to do anything. He nodded and offered a tired smile, and she went back into the bathroom and was dressed in thirty seconds.

Matt walked her to the door, and she offered him a chaste peck on the cheek before he opened it – a surprisingly tender small intimacy from little more than a girl, who had been parading around in her birthday suit like a seasoned stripper only moments before. Matt watched her slip out the door, and then he closed it, cursing the cheap lock, and stepped to the other side of the sagging bed to check the back window. He pulled the curtain aside and found himself staring at iron bars, the dim light of an alley struggling to shine through the caked grime obscuring the glass. That wasn’t going to be a way out. He next padded into the small bathroom to gauge his chances, but his heart sank when he saw that there was only a tiny ventilation window, also barred, and also facing the alley.

Returning to the room, he surveyed the meager furniture – an ancient chest of drawers, the bed, a bedside lamp, a chair. Not much to work with, but maybe, just maybe, enough from which to fashion a weapon – presuming he was right, and that they, whoever they were, would be coming for him before first light.

He didn’t have long to wait. Half an hour after bidding the bar girl goodbye, the flimsy lock jiggled a few times and then released with a soft click. An unseen hand turned the knob, and then the door inched open, the room black as pitch, the form on the bed unmoving.

A slight figure slipped in, the distinctive outline of a pistol leading, and Matt waited another second to see whether there was more than one assailant before slamming the chair leg down on the intruder’s head. The pistol tumbled onto the tiled floor, and Matt delivered another devastating blow. The figure collapsed, unconscious.

Matt remained where he was, anticipating another attacker, but after a few moments of silence he scooped up the pistol and studied it. He knew the weapon – an Ed Brown Custom Classic .45 caliber 1911, popular among the wealthy and the prosperous criminal element in Thailand. After checking to ensure that the magazine was full, he cleared the chamber, seated the bullet back into the magazine, then slapped it home before loading a round. The gun cost at least four thousand dollars, which ruled out any chance that this was an opportunistic robbery – petty thieves weren’t in the habit of toting around Ed Browns to roll tourists in dives.