Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller (60 page)

*  *  *  *  *

The sniper finished packing the dismantled components into the foam cut-outs nestled in the custom case. He clicked the latches down and picked up his Colt .45. Once again he was on the balcony, intending to exit into the corridor from Kaili’s room where he was less likely to be surprised. The last FSB man was waiting on an adjacent balcony. Fernando took the first two shots to the torso and staggered, gun case crashing to the tiles. He brought the Colt up on target, but his assailant shot him between the eyes before he could fire.

Hearing the blasts, Balendra ran across the hall, stepped over the dead FSB agent he’d gunned down minutes before and kicked down the door to room 109. Fernando was dead on the balcony, the drapes flowing in the breeze. He turned to leave when he saw the giant’s raised gun in the entryway. “Holy hell!” Balendra dropped his weapon and was raising his hands when the man shot him twice through the heart.

The gunman turned and ran downstairs, across the veranda, past the pool, and up the seawall steps to the beach beyond.

*  *  *  *  *

The train was stationary, shots had been fired, and there had been an explosion. Bodies were strewn outside the passenger cars and on the beach, but Doyle didn’t have a single Agency asset within the Racquets Club. The front gate was blocked, forcing them to run across the beach. Chumakov didn’t answer the local number he’d provided the night before. A Zodiac had streaked past the embassy headed south only ten minutes previously. Five minutes ago, the shooting had stopped.

Her phone rang. It was Peter Allen, the first Company man on the scene. “Chief, there’s one gunshot Lankan on the beach, a dead Navy commando, at least a dozen civilians suffering shrapnel injuries, and four bodies between the train and the seawall.”

“Can you ID the victims? Bob Nolan? Mark Watermen? Anyone Asian?”

“I’m standing next to the seawall. The first body is dressed in blue-green surgical wear, and his face is completely missing along with one side of his head. All I can tell you is that he was a white male with short brown hair. Probably shot with a high-caliber hollow-point sniper round. The other three are in business attire. I have a man next to the blue body wearing a white shirt and shot through the back of the neck. That’s the work of a pro shooter, for certain. Two other bodies are mangled at the foot of the seawall. Looks like a grenade, both males from their clothes.”

“So you don’t know if Nolan and Watermen are dead or alive?”

“No, no, I don’t.”

“You’ll have to get your hands dirty. Nolan had a USB drive, SD card or disk drive on him with a copy of Watermen’s NSA files. He was trading the files to the Russians for Watermen. We need those files back. It could be on any of the victims, except for the locals and the commando. If you have time, email me a photo of what’s left of the face of the dead man in scrubs.”

This was news to Allen. He didn’t fancy being elbow-deep in gore robbing the dead while the train tracks were covered in wounded, wailing civilians and the police were on the way. An arthritic retired defensive end type lumbered up and over the seawall. He had to be 6’6” tall and over two hundred fifty pounds. “Wait a second, Chief. There’s another man coming down from the Racquets Club. Huge and Caucasian, probably East European. Damn, he’s packing!” Allen hung up.

Doyle didn’t have a chance to process that last bit as her phone rang. The Agency men at the building site were standing over two dead Asians, sniped from the CRC below. The man clutching the rifle lacked a throat. The spotter was shot on the left side with an ugly exit wound through his right ribcage. What did Doyle want them to do?

“Get the hell out of there and don’t leave anything behind that puts you at the scene. Take nothing. Assume you’ll be searched or arrested as you leave. You went looking for snipers and saw nothing, did nothing.”

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

DEATH RACE RATMALANA

FRIDAY MARCH 14, COLOMBO; EINME, BURMA

Kaili and Nolan exited the inflatable as it glided ashore. With Nolan’s arm useless, Kaili stripped off his surgical garb. Their civilian clothes were soaked, but they didn’t stand out as much as in the turquoise scrubs. Nolan’s left forearm bled steadily, and his shirtfront looked like he’d done a belly slide down a gravel road. He could breathe and didn’t have any bloody foam in his mouth or seeping out of his chest, so he ruled out a perforated lung. His ears were back to normal, but his head hurt like hell. All in all, he considered himself fortunate to be upright and ambulatory.

Nolan handed a plastic-wrapped stack of hundreds to the SBC corporal. “Here’s the balance. I’m sorry about your friend. He died trying to save us. Please pass his share to his family.”

The commando fixed him with an iron stare. “Who shot him?”

Nolan didn’t have time for a rational assessment of the probabilities, but it wasn’t the Russians. It seemed likely to have been the Chinese, but the moment called for creativity. “Almost certainly the US killed your friend,” he said as he shook the man’s hand. “Do you want to help avenge his death? I know a way, but you’ll have to come with us.”

“Let’s go.”

Balendra’s driver waited in the boss’s SUV. “Only the three of you, sir?” he inquired respectfully, ignoring Nolan’s wounds.

“Yes. We’ll need only two decoys.”

The driver dialed and spoke in Sinhalese. As soon as the SUV was out of sight of the beach, the vehicle ducked into an underground car park as planned. Nolan, the commando and Kaili jumped into an Audi A6. A man and a woman, dressed in wet surgical scrubs identical to the ones they’d just discarded, took their places in the SUV. Two other men stood to the side and started taking off their own sodden clothes before disappearing into the pedestrian foot traffic of Galle Road. The decoy team was ready to head for the international airport.

Nolan’s parting words were, “Drive fast, but not too fast. When they stop you, don’t resist. And thanks.”

Their new driver was a Chatty Cathy of the first order. Whether it was due to a meth addiction, sugar high or brain damage, the fellow wouldn’t shut up. He was as thin as an anorexic and had the wild eyes of a Jonestown missionary to complement a maniacal grin. He drove like he spoke: fast and erratic.

“How long to Ratmalana Airport?” Nolan asked.

“It’s a thirty-minute drive this time of day. We’ll be there in twenty.” The driver introduced himself as Chanakya and said he was taking a day off work where he was a junior analyst at a capital markets outsourcing company. Balendra recruited him ostensibly for his superior driving skills. With all the weaving in and out of traffic, Nolan thought they were owed a refund. That they didn’t suffer a scratch was due more to blind luck than skill. As the adrenaline wore off, his arm hurt more and he felt lightheaded. Nolan leaned back and closed his eyes. Kaili pulled bits of cloth and shrapnel out of his arm and chest, sprinkling the medicated powder the commando had passed to her. The deep six-inch gash on his left forearm bled constantly, and the SBS man handed back a length of latex tubing for her to cinch just below his elbow to curb the bleeding.

Nolan’s head had been lolling around while she worked on his superficial chest wounds. He jolted awake. “Does your embassy cell still work? If so, I need to call Nishimoto and tell him to take off.”

“I think it does,” she said. At least the text function was working. She was staring at a message in Chinese characters:
kill Nolan now.

*  *  *  *  *

The CIA officer watched the big Russian race over to one of those bloody bodies by the seawall, check for a pulse and cry out, “Alive! Alive! Ambulance!
Ambulance!”

Peter Allen kept his gun drawn and gestured as he spoke. “United States embassy security. Take out your weapon with two fingers of your left hand and throw it toward me.”

Boris Vladimirovich Ustinov didn’t understand all the words, but surmised the meaning. He looked up and determined that he could draw and shoot faster than the American could aim and pull the trigger. However, with his boss alive and grievously wounded, he needed help, not confrontation. He flicked his gun away, looked at the American and said in his best TV cop show voice, “Help! Ambulance!
Medic!
”

Allen phoned the embassy and requested the Marines to double-time a stretcher down the beach. As it was only five hundred yards distant, it was quicker on foot than by car. Allen told them to ready the embassy ambulance and alert Nawaloka Hospital to prep for emergency surgery. He would stay with the giant Russian and his unconscious compatriot; the locals were too distracted by the number of wounded outside and on the train to pay the Westerners any attention. The first Sri Lanka regular police were now on the scene, along with paramedics. Two helicopters emblazoned with red crosses hovered overhead.

Allen kept his gun trained on the giant. He picked two weapons off the beach of the same Soviet-era make and model. A red ball with a yellow patch sitting on the ground drew his attention. Squatting down, he saw a thumb drive in a baggie taped to the ball. As Allen put the ball in his shirt pocket, he looked up just in time to see an enormous fist. He fell over without a sound. Ustinov freed the two 9mm pistols by tearing them out of Allen’s pants pockets. He looked at the downed American. He was on his back and breathing regularly. Good: no need to kill anyone who didn’t deserve it.

*  *  *  *  *

“That was easier than expected,” said Jenkins as they eased the wheels up on the Gulfstream, Bandaranaike International Airport receding below. The Gulfstream headed out to sea and swung to the south.

“The rules of engagement must have been tightly drawn. If Nolan’s not with us, don’t interfere.” Jack Nishimoto was all business. “It’s time,” he said to Jenkins, and the first officer throttled back on both engines and dropped the flaps to simulate dual engine failures. The nose pitched down from the loss of power, and Jenkins trimmed the plane for the best glide.

Nishimoto picked up the handset and channeled his inner Gregory Peck, a portrait of baritone calm
.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. Gulfstream five fifty November one six eight tango tango. Request emergency landing Ratmalana. Total engine and intermittent hydraulics failure. November one six eight tango tango.”

“November six—er—tango tango mayday acknowledged,” the tower replied after a pause. “November tango tango is radar-identified. Cleared direct Ratmalana. Note wind two four zero at five. QNH one zero zero eight. No conflicting traffic. Emergency services on standby. Clear to land runway two two and hold, wind two four zero at five. Do you have airport in sight?”

“Clear to land and hold, have visual. November tango tango.” Nishimoto went off mike and said, “All yours, John.”

Jenkins took the controls with an “All mine” in acknowledgement.

To prevent the fire department from coating the plane in fire retardant that would render it inoperable, in addition to adding a million-dollar cleaning bill to his expense account, Nishimoto said, “Ratmalana tower, managed to restart engines, but maintaining mayday. November tango tango.” Jenkins throttled up and trimmed the plane.

“November tango tango, roger, visual contact. Clear to land and hold.” Jenkins clicked the radio twice, a nonverbal signal that he was too busy to talk. Despite fire trucks veering down the runway and nearly colliding with one another, the copilot landed the G550 with a perfect squeaker and rolled all the way to the far end, where he turned the jet around and idled the engines.

Nishimoto turned to Jenkins. “Nice job. Sure hope Adam Birch and Mimi Chan are here soon, otherwise we’ll end up covered in foam and airport security.”

The two pilots worked on their post-flight checklist, knowing they might be minutes away from taking off again, with or without permission. 

*  *  *  *  *

Nolan had to shut his eyes. He was carsick from Chanakya’s weaving in and out, the feeling exacerbated by anguish and his wounds. He couldn’t get out of his mind the image of half of Mark’s head vaporizing. He’d killed his godson just as certain as if he’d held the gun to Mark’s temple and pulled the trigger. He’d lost a son. And the deaths didn’t stop at Mark. Pit-stain, the Navy commando, Yuri, the locomotive driver, Pathmarajah—who probably bled out on the beach—Chumakov . . . damn, maybe Chumakov was still alive. They were still shooting when they’d evacuated that fatal shore. He hoped Balendra and Fernando were unscathed and not in custody.

He downed in one long gulp a bottle of water handed back from the front seat.

“I never did get your name,” he said to the SBS man.

“Corporal Naveen Kulatunga, Special Boat Service, sir.” From the tone, Nolan knew he was dealing with someone wondering why he was sitting in the front seat of a getaway car driven by a teenage madman.

“Are you certain you can get us onto the runway at Ratmalana Air Base? We need to board a private jet to go after the people who shot your friend, and tried to kill us as well.”

“His name was Corporal Sanjay De Soysa. He wasn’t my friend; he was my brother.
The blood of the brethren is thicker than the water of the womb.
I will make certain you board that plane.”

Nolan shifted focus. “How far are we from the base?” he asked their driver. With his too-long arms and hunched posture, Chanakya looked like a mutant praying mantis, shaved head swinging to and fro to assess traffic threats.

“Under ten minutes,” he said, and blasted the horn for emphasis as he jerked the steering wheel to miss a tuk-tuk.

One of Nolan’s phones had survived the turmoil and buzzed twice in its Ziploc bag. He read the text and noted the 11:31 a.m. time stamp. “My wife and daughter have landed in Singapore,” he said. Turning to Kaili, he said, “Now’s the time to make your call.”

“I don’t have the authority to have your family released. What do you expect me to do, call President Gao?”

“No, I want you to call the Singapore Internal Security Department. I’m sure they’ll be able to help.”