Plausible Denial (14 page)

Ung
Chea and Boon-Nam stepped back, pistols at the ready, and leveled at the door
as Udom unholstered his revolver, held it up at the ready position and pushed
the door open
with the back of his arm and
shoulder.    

At
that instant the three of them heard the muffled
phifft
of a silenced
bullet exiting the suppressor of Santos’s .45 caliber H&K handgun.

The
heavy round hit Udom under the right armpit, mushroomed through ribs and lungs,
and exited through his chest on the other side, slamming him against the door.
He fell dead halfway inside the room, but not before he reflexively fired off
one booming .357 round into the floor.

That
awakened the sleeping man inside.

Ung
Chea and Boon-Nam stood frozen for a moment and then turned in shocked unison
toward the direction of the shot. They saw with wide-eyed disbelief a huge
farang
dressed only in checkered boxer shorts in a crouched shooting position with a
long pistol leveled at them.

Another
phifft
and the huge gun jumped in the
farang’s
hand. The round
crashed into Boon-Nam’s chest just above the solar plexis, picked him up and
sent him flying backwards down the hall. He hit the floor dead, arms flung
wide.

The
Cambodian brought his 9mm around and leveled it at the big
farang
.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

T
he
booming report of the .357 magnum handgun finally blasted MacMurphy out of his
drunken reverie. He swiped his silenced H&K off of the nightstand and
rolled out of bed onto the floor, coming up with the gun at the ready.

The
door to his room was wide open with a motionless man sprawled across the
threshold halfway into the room. On the other side of the door in the hallway
stood two more men holding pistols aimed down the hall.

MacMurphy’s
mind spun. What was happening? Someone obviously tried to break into his room,
but he was dead on the threshold. The other two must be his cohorts. They must
be aiming at the shooter. Culler!

At
that instant the closest gunman flew backwards, revealing the other man. Mac
immediately recognized the scarred face and the nub of an ear of the Cambodian.

Ung
Chea turned tward Mac and their eyes locked for an instant. The Cambodian had a
shocked, wide-eyed expression of fear as he reflexively brought his gun around
to meet this new threat through the open door.

Mac
snapped off a quick shot from his rolling prone position on the floor, aiming
for center mass, but pulling it low and to the right. Nevertheless, he saw his
target spin from the impact of the heavy bullet, bounce off the wall behind him
and take off running down the hall.

And
then Santos was filling his doorway, standing over the dead man and wearing
boxer shorts, his long, silenced H&K hanging loosely in his hand at his
side.

“About
time you woke up.” 

Mac
got to his feet rubbing his eyes with his left hand and holding his own pistol
in his right. He was naked and completely sober. “What the fuck is going on?”

 “Later.
Let’s get these goons out of sight before anyone sees them. Get this guy inside
while I get the other one. The sound of that shot will wake up the hotel.”

Mac,
fully awake now, grabbed an arm of the thug in his doorway and pulled him all
the way into the room. He grabbed his boxer shorts and pulled them on as he ran
out into the hall to help Culler with the other one. Together they pulled him
into Mac’s room, leaving a visible trail of blood, and laid him beside the
other gunman.

A
door opened down the hall and then another and another. Heads popped out of the
rooms into the hallway. Culler leaned out of the doorway to Mac’s room, still
in his underwear, and motioned to the people that everything was okay and that
they should go back to bed. The heads retreated into the rooms and the doors
closed.

Santos
closed the door behind him, locked it and set the security chain. “Okay, we’ve
bought some time, but we gotta get out of here fast. Grab your gear and bring
it into my room. That blood trail will lead them right here.”

They
worked swiftly and silently, moving all of Mac’s belongings into Culler’s
adjourning room and locking the doors between the rooms.

While
they were dressing and packing up their gear, a couple of the hotel’s security
staff arrived and knocked loudly on the door of Mac’s room. When they got no
response, they used the hotel master key card to open the door, but were denied
entry by the privacy chain. They called into the room in Thai and English
through the crack in the partially opened door. Finally, one of them was sent
downstairs for a bolt cutter to cut the chain.

Culler
and Mac were dressed, packed and ready to leave, but they waited until the man
with the bolt cutter returned and had snipped the chain. The group had entered the
room, chattering loudly at what they found, before they darted out of the room,
ran down the hallway and into the stairway.

They
hurried down the stairs all the way to the garage, tossed their bags into the
back seat of the Toyota and drove rapidly out of Chiang Rai in the direction of
Chiang Mai to the south.

They
breathed a combined sigh of relief when they determined no one was following
them. They were out of danger for the moment, but things were definitely
heating up.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

S
antos
drove, maneuvering deftly through the dark city streets on the way to the
four-lane highway that connected Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai. “Glad you finally
woke up when you did. Do you always sleep like that? Like the dead? Which you
almost were, I might add.”

“Yeah,
sorry about that. Guess I drank a little too much.”

“A
little? Yeah, I guess you could say that. You were snoring like a banshee too.
You always snore like that? Must be a bitch for your girlfriends.”

“Yeah,
I get that complaint a lot when I drink. Forces them right to the couch. It’s a
bitch.”

“Well,
I don’t want to preach to you, but it almost cost you your life tonight. I
couldn’t wake you by knocking and calling through the door, so I called your
cell phone and the bloody thing didn’t ring. Why’d you turn it off?”

“I
didn’t…I…I had it on vibrate.”

“Vibrate!
Why’d you have the fucking thing on vibrate for, for God’s sake?”

“I
don’t like it ringing when I’m in public places, so I leave it on vibrate. I
can feel it and hear it buzz when it’s in my pocket, and I can hear it vibrate
against the wood of the nightstand when it’s next to my bed. Usually, that is.”

Santos
rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake turn the bloody ringer on and leave it on from
now on. Okay?”

MacMurphy
took the phone out of his pocket and turned the ringer on. “Happy now?”

“Yes,
very. I’m very happy now. Thank you…”

“So,
how did you get behind them?”

“I
left the room and ran down the hall, away from the elevator and stairs, and
ducked into the ice vending machine room. The three of them came out of the
stairs and went directly to our rooms and listened at the doors. I could see
they were armed, and when it was clear they were going to break into your room,
I shot them—well, two of them anyway.”

“Well,
I’m damn glad you did. Sorry about the Cambodian getting away though.”

“Yeah,
it would’ve been better if we’d killed him. But I’ll tell you one thing, Mac,
you sure scared the shit out of him. You must have hit him in the side the way
he spun and hit that wall. I should’ve shot him as he was running down the
hall, but everything happened so fast.”

“So
I’m not the only fuck-up on this team…”

“Yeah,
you could say that. Never could shoot at a running deer either.”

They
were quiet for several minutes when Mac straightened in his seat and turned to
Santos. “Why are we heading to Chiang Mai?”

“I
don’t know. Where else could we go? I didn’t give it any thought. Just wanted
to get out of Dodge. We’ve got to regroup, right?”

MacMurphy
was thoughful. “They know who we are by now. At least they know our aliases and
what we look like. They must have been checking the rooms to find out who
Charly was visiting. Now they know for certain.”

The
wheels spun in Mac’s head. Looking straight ahead through the windshield at the
landscape rushing by, he said. “We’re burned. No doubt about it. Our covers are
blown. And this car was rented in the Humphrey alias. We’re going to have to
get rid of it right away. But we’re going to need wheels.”

“It’s
the middle of the night. Where are we going to get another car at this hour?”

“We’ll
have to steal one or buy one. Another rental is out. But first we’re going to
have to ditch this one. So…let’s…let’s continue on to Chiang Mai. It’s a big
city, easier to get lost in. Maybe we can get a couple hours of shut-eye, pick
up another vehicle, and then head back north to Ban Mae Chan to do what we set
out to do.”

Chapter Forty

T
he
Cambodian rendezvoused with the remaining two members of his team on the ninth
floor. His white Thai shirt was stained with blood. He held his left side and
was clearly in a great deal of pain. He spoke to them in excited, stuttering
tones.

“This
is bad. Very bad. Udom and Boon-Nam Are dead. Shot by those CIA guys. They
almost killed me too. We got to get out of here fast. Khun Ut is going to be
really pissed when he hears about this.”

He
raised his bloodied shirt and looked down at his side. There was a deep,
four-inch, ugly gash where the heavy slug had grazed him. The sight of it made
him ill and he began to feel faint from the loss of blood. He leaned on one of
his men, while the other called for the elevator, and the three of them rode
down to the lobby. They exited the elevator, scurried across the lobby and out
the front door, one black shirted security guard on each side of the Cambodian,
holding him up like a drunk.

Outside
they climbed into a white van and headed straight for Khun Ut’s warehouse in
Ban Mae Chan. In the backseat one of the men used a first aid kit to bandage
Ung Chea’s side, while the other drove and called ahead for medical assistance
to meet them at the warehouse. The Cambodian dozed during the twenty minute
drive and thought about what he was going to say to Khun Ut in the morning.

But
he didn’t have to wait until morning.

The
Cambodian and the two security guards were met by Khun Ut when they pulled into
the warehouse compound. Although it was the middle of the night, Khun Ut was
impeccably dressed in a dark blue safari suit and polished Wellington boots.
His longish black hair was slicked back, and he was smoking a long, thin cigar.
He smelled of liquor and was slurring his words, which indicated he had come
directly to the warehouse from one of the local nightspots. 

Khun
Ut took immediate command of the situation. “Get him upstairs to my office and
put him on the couch.” Motioning with his cigar to a man in a white lab coat
standing next to him, he added, “Dr. Vikorn, sew him up. He looks like he has
lost a lot of blood.”

While
the doctor was dressing his wound, Ung Chea nervously related the events of the
evening. “Just as we pushed the door open this big
farang
came out of
nowhere and started shooting. He blasted Udom and Boon-Nam before I could
react, and then the guy in the room shot me and I had to get the hell out of
there fast or I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it.

“Boss,
believe me, those guys were good. Really good. They had silencers too. They are
professionals. Definitely the guys we were looking for.”

Khun
Ut pushed back in his chair and put his polished boots up on his desk. He
thought for a moment and exhaled a long stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “So
now we have their names and descriptions. You can give me a description of
them, right?”

The
Cambodian grimaced as the doctor went about cleaning and stitching up his side.
It was clear that Khun Ut’s disapproval weighed heavier on him than the wound
in his side. The welling tears were not just from the physical pain. “Well, er,
I think so. I mean, it all happened very fast. They were
farangs
. One
was a big guy. Heavy. Muscular. He came out of nowhere, dressed in his
undershorts. He carried a long pistol—silenced, like the Japanese Yakuza use.
And, and, so did the other guy.

“I
didn’t get a good look at the other guy. He was lying on the floor in the room
with his long gun aimed right at me. He looked me right in the eye. He was
aiming right at me. Scared the shit out of me, boss. He is the one who shot me.
The big guy shot Udom and Boon-Nam. Bang, bang, both gone. Just like that. I
was lucky to get out of there alive. I did my best, boss, really I did…” 

“Calm
down Ung Chea, calm down.” Although Khun Ut hated that the operation had gone
terribly awry, he enjoyed being in charge—in control when everyone else was
panicking. “Let us figure out where we are and what we are going to do next. We
lost a battle but we did not lose the war. Those guys will pay for what they
did. We know who they are now. We will find them and kill them.”

Ung
Chea was reassured and the doctor was almost finished stitching him up. Soon he
could rest. He took a deep breath and said, “Their names are Robert Humphrey
and Ralph Callaway. I think Callaway is the big guy registered in room 1050,
and Humphrey is the guy that shot me from the room next door, 1048. But I am
sure we will not find them there any longer.”

“Yes
indeed,” said Khun Ut, thinking out loud. “You can bet they have beat it out of
there. Those are probably not their real names either. But they showed
passports when they registered so they have documentation in those aliases.
They are professionals all right. They must have rented a car in one of those
names as well.”