Paying Back Jack (12 page)

Neither Jarrett nor Tracer liked the idea of the camera. “What the fuck are you doing with the camera?” asked Jarrett.

“I'm working.”

“Are you a photographer?” asked Jarrett.

“An investigator.” When a man slipped his leash in Bangkok, it never took long to pick up his trail; it was like tracking a furtive, not-too-smart burglar who dropped his driver's license at the scene of the heist. Catching such a creature was almost guaranteed. It was a crappy, mind-numbing, soul-destroying way to make a living.

“A private investigator.” Tracer pursed his lips, looking over at the farang and the Thai woman at the table.

Calvino nodded.

“We're outta here,” said Jarrett. “The man's got his work. We've got ours.”

“I'll call my insurance company,” said Calvino, pulling out his cell phone. “The company will send someone around.”

Tracer shook head and held up his hand. “I'll take a pass. But thanks.”

“It's no problem. I hit your car.”

“You're right, it's no problem. So let's leave it at that,” said Tracer.

“What my friend is saying is just let it ride,” said Jarrett.

There wasn't any humor about either man. Young and fit, quiet, arriving in a Benz, huddling over orange juice, wanting to forget the damage to the car, the elements added up to a couple of men with something important on their minds and wanting to avoid anyone getting in their way. Calvino turned, walked over to the door, and held it open. “At least have a look at your car.”

Jarrett and Tracer took a leisurely walk around the Benz. The impact of the collision had broken a taillight and left a dent as if a giant had punched his fist against the rear end. Calvino's car, an old Honda City, was parked beside the Benz. It had enough body damage to make it unclear exactly what part of the car had hit the Benz.

“It was an accident,” said Calvino, handing a business card to Tracer.

“Looks like it wasn't your first accident,” said Jarrett looking over Calvino's car.

Tracer read the card, twisting his neck to the right and then the left, a neck-cracking exercise that was one of those defining mannerisms as individual as a fingerprint. When he felt a little too much stress, the kinks built up in his neck muscles, tightening them like a vice, making them bulge and throb, until the only way to get rid of the pressure was the quick left-right move. “You're a good citizen to have reported what happened. A lesser man would have hit and run. If there is any problem, we have your card and will be in touch”—he looked down at the card—“Mr. Calvino.”

Calvino leaned against his Honda and watched as the two men got into the Mercedes. Jarrett climbed behind the wheel and Tracer slid into the passenger's seat and put on his seat-belt harness. Jarrett backed the Benz out in one sleek movement, changed gears, and headed toward the Soi 22 exit. Calvino stepped in the road and watched as Jarrett turned left, heading in the direction of Rama IV Road. He made a mental note of the license plate.

Calvino climbed into his Honda and started the engine. Waiting until the air-conditioning came on and the temperature was bearable, he twisted around and looked both ways before pulling out of the parking place. He pegged the slender green-eyed guy as someone who looked vaguely Middle Eastern. The Honda was a wreck, not a car, more like the debris left from a terrorist attack. But it had a bonus. His car was theft-proof. He drove slowly and braked when he passed the couple from the restaurant as they walked, holding hands. Calvino held the camera against the window and clicked off a couple more shots of the lovebirds. He gave a final look, shaking his head. He couldn't help thinking that some guys knew they were being followed, that they wanted to get caught, have it over.

Reaching the exit, he turned right onto Soi 22, heading toward Sukhumvit Road and his office. Some husbands leave a trail to the den of soiled sheets that's so obvious a bloodhound with a head cold could follow. He glanced at them in his rearview mirror. As they were on foot, clearly they had no intention to head for Rama IV; more likely they were on an automatic glide path to the nearby Hotel
27, a sanctuary creating the illusion of privacy that came with a short time room.

At the traffic light at Sukhumvit Road, he waited, thinking about the last twenty-four hours. It already seemed like a much longer stretch of time. He'd come back to the city to get lost in his work. But all he had for his efforts was an early-morning raging headache. It hadn't mattered to his temperament that he got the pictures of the husband on the make. He should have felt better. He told himself that he had every right to feel like part of the world had collapsed on him, and he was still digging himself out of the debris of a busted vacation, a ying falling out the sky, an evening with Mao and Noriega. He shuddered, feeling a sudden chill, as if the slipstream of evil had followed him out of the rubble.

The light changed and Calvino turned right onto Sukhumvit Road. As he drove, he glanced at Washington Square on his right—the shabby entrance, broken pavement, rats scurrying over the garbage. It was quiet on the street. Like Bangkok, the Square was never just one kind of place; its character depended on the time of day. The Square attracted a different crowd in the morning. People pretending to be diplomats; people pretending to be in relationships that had some meaning other than sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. It was a place of randomness, of accidents, of inexplicable encounters. A place for rats and rogues and people with pasts that cast shadows long enough to touch their futures.

TRACER LOOKED OUT the car window and watched the street vendors setting up stalls to sell noodles, socks, shirts, and pirated DVDs. Early bird office workers, eager to return to the corporate hatchery, hurried along the pavement, breaking formation as they stepped into the canyon of high-rise buildings. Motorcycles threaded through the narrow passages between cars. A light at the intersection turned red. Three or four more cars shot through like explosive rounds. No one ever moved forward for the first couple of seconds of a green light.

When Jarrett's car had stopped as the light turned red, he'd nearly been rear-ended. The driver behind him hit the horn. In the rearview mirror he saw that the man had a murderous, hateful look. Everyone was on their way to work. Some had more important deadlines than others, but the default was speed, as if life and death depended on getting through the intersection.

“Let's run through the operation,” said Jarrett.

It was one of their rituals, something Jarrett and Tracer had put to good use as they rotated between Kabul and Baghdad with stopovers in Fallujah. As a team, they went through the checklist until every angle, element and sequence became automatic. The procedure made them effective, tough, and reliable. They never cut corners in doing their homework. Tracer brushed his fingers against his mojo bag. He kept it low, out of sight, so Jarrett couldn't see him stroking the soft leather. Despite all the preparation, a team still needed luck.

They had checked out the condo two days before. Getting a feel for the location, locking it inside his head, kept Jarrett focused.

“I made the distance three hundred and fifty meters.”

“No obstructions. That's what I like,” said Jarrett.

The target would emerge from another high-rise as he stepped out onto the balcony sometime between 10:30 a.m. and noon.

“After we finish the job, I'm going for a workout,” said Tracer.

“I thought we'd planned on going for a massage. Get someone to work out those kinks in your neck.”

“I can always go for a workout tomorrow.” Tracer gave a thumbs-up sign as he caught Jarrett's eye. Tracer had a way of calming the situation, making Jarrett feel like everything was under control and it was just another mission. They'd been through the drill before, always coming out the other side, thinking, “Glad that's over and done.”

Jarrett slipped the Benz back into the sluggish stream of traffic. By the time they turned into Soi Thong Lo, Tracer had folded the newspaper and placed it on the seat. The car stereo played a bluesy rendition of “Summertime,” and neither man spoke.

One day in Fallujah, Jarrett had killed an insurgent who'd been sitting with a rifle in a car. The insurgent had pointed it at a passing US military convoy. They'd been listening to “Summertime” then, too. Jarrett had three confirmed kills that day. “Ain't nothing gonna harm you.” The world just had a whole lot of harm standing by, ready, canned, and waiting to be opened. Bangkok was an urban nightmare jammed with cars and swarming with people fighting for space to move. Like doomed salmon swimming upstream to breed and die. But compared with Baghdad or Fallujah, it looked more like a pond in a fish farm.

Soi Thong Lo was an upscale farang ghetto in Sukhumvit, with enough high-rent Japanese residents to make a quorum at a Honda stockholders' meeting. Soi Thong Lo had once been a sleepy out-of-the-way soi in Sukhumvit with middle-class Thai family compounds, but it had become a trendy area, drawing in the rich and powerful foreigners who bought the high-end condos, joined the members-only clubs, dined at the hundreds of restaurants, and cut away from the office to one of the massage parlors.

Casey had done the advance legwork, renting a unit two months earlier under “Melvin Taylor,” the name of a blues singer—a nod to
Tracer, who liked Taylor's music. He'd prepaid the rent and security deposit in cash and said it was for a wealthy investor from abroad who would use it infrequently. No one had asked him for an ID. Cash was the only ID required on Soi Thong Lo. Jarrett, whose Turkish-born mother had passed along the permanent tan look, and Tracer, a light-skinned black, could have been from Cairo or Damascus.

Jarrett eased the Benz into the entrance of a twenty-five-story luxury condo building whose parking garage had all the personality of a high-security prison. He used a plastic card to activate the traffic-gate arm. As it slowly rose, on the opposite side a security guard took down their license registration number. The tinted windows prevented the guard from seeing who was inside. No guard making two hundred dollars a month with a family upcountry taking 30 percent of his take-home was going to ask someone in a Benz to roll down the window and show ID. He made do with a quick glance at Jarrett just as he powered up the window. Jarrett drove up the ramp to the fifth floor and parked next to the exit door and the elevators.

Tracer got out of the car, hands stuffed deep in his pockets, whistling Peeping Tom's “Mojo” as he stood beside the trunk. Jarrett sprang the trunk lock from inside the Benz and stepped out of the car to watch the perimeter as Tracer removed a large rectangular Pelican case. Slamming the truck lid shut, Jarrett lifted the case and walked toward the exit door. It was better to use the stairs. On the ninth floor, Jarrett pushed open the emergency exit door and Tracer stepped out first, checking the corridor. It was empty. Tracer signaled to Jarrett, who stepped into the corridor with the case. He walked quickly, the case growing heavy, and stopped at one of the units. Tracer unlocked the door and held it open. Jarrett went inside and Tracer, after glancing once again up and down the corridor, followed him inside. Once in the condo, Jarrett swallowed his breath, closed his eyes, and eased the Pelican case to the floor.

Jarrett leaned against the wall in the entryway for a couple of seconds, catching his breath. Carrying the case up the stairs was heavy lifting. It was over thirty pounds. But it wasn't just the lugging of the dead weight. They were both on high alert; there was the possibility of a tenant coming up or down the stairs, but it was unlikely; rich people rode elevators. Guards patrolled the lobby and grounds, but inside the building they left people alone. That was one reason Casey
had chosen the building. It had the right elements of lax security and very rich people who were rarely seen.

Tracer walked across the large sitting room. His heart hadn't stopped racing from the final stretch, taking two steps at a time on the staircase. Except for the brush with the private eye in Washington Square, it had been a flawless operation. Getting to this point was the result of a concerted effort of planning and coordination. Like any operation in the field, the battle was won or lost before the first shot was fired.

Jarrett lifted the case onto the dining room table and sprung open the side locks. Mounted inside the case was an M24 sniper weapon system—the bolt-action rifle, day-and-night telescopes, a silencer, a bipod, and two boxes of ammo. Like a woman, a sniper rifle was nothing without the right accessories. He pulled the rifle out, running fingers down the graphite and fiberglass stock. A hint of epoxy resin filled his nostrils. The rifle had the same Remington 700 action as the Marine M40A3 Jarrett had been using in Kabul and Baghdad. The company had made certain they had the best weapons taxpayers' money could buy, manually operated, air-cooled, and magazine-fed. Jarrett opened the box of ammo and pulled out one of the rounds, feeling the cold, hard casing against the palm of his hand. He squeezed the 175-gram round, slowly opened his hand, said a prayer, and began to fill the magazine.

“Everything's here,” he said. “She's got all the right parts in the right places, and she's ready to go.”

“Mooney said the scopes alone cost over two grand each,” said Tracer.

“A good woman has her costs,” said Jarrett.

“Mooney sent M118s.”

“We don't want to be punching holes through walls,” said Tracer.

Jarrett shrugged. The round would go through the opening they'd cut in the glass with enough forward velocity to keep on going through the target, fragmenting into slivers, and coming out the other side in a spray of red mist.

“It's good for city work,” said Jarrett. He fixed the bipod to the base of the rifle and set it up on the table in front of the balcony window. The hole they'd cut in the glass brought in a stream of warm,
moist air. A couple of days earlier, they'd done the measurements and prepared the area for the weapons.