Chapter Twenty-seven
“Contact!”
Confirmation from the bombardiers behind the rider’s position; just down the back…they floored their mount.
The rider took her right hand off the handlebar throttle and the switch snapped open. Down the highway the mine kicked, a hundred feet behind her. She and the trailing crew watched in the mirrors, a flash, a cloud and the syndicate were airborne a split-second. Inside the armored Mercedes the occupants got a shockwave, the limo lifted then a grinding sensation as the front touched down like an airplane minus its undercarriage wheels. It scraped and the chase car behind slammed into the back of the limo spinning it a full one-eighty around.
One of the wheels -- torn clean off the steering hub -- jettisoned away, striking the Toyota SUV with the mom and unrestrained child, that vehicle veered and struck the center barrier before coming to a halt sideways. Now other vehicles behind the scene were hitting their brakes in the southbound overpass, it looked like a parking-lot.
She squeezed down in the back seat and covered her face, and then it came…two shots from the Barrett, straight through the front side-window. The thick green material disintegrated, gave about the same protection as an umbrella. It killed the guard in front but the driver survived. He got out and slithered away. The custom vehicle from Europe had shielded them from the brunt of the explosion but the fifty-calibers came through and out the other side. Pakdee wrenched off the restraining belt, and flung herself across the Tamil’s lap and kicked Walker’s head, propelling herself out the door.
From the center barrier the land unit crew sent a wall of fire from their M4s into the chase vehicle that had not been fitted with armor. The chase driver was killed instantly and the guard next to him tumbled out the door facing away from the attack and crawled behind another car that had screeched to a halt. He had a weapon out; ready to return fire…he leaned back on a wheel hub and waited.
Ahead the two motorcycles u-turned, three of them laid the machines on the road and sprinted back, the rider leading and the others behind. The Barrett operators drilled the chase vehicle with three more shots. Fuel started dribbling out. The land unit spread along the center barrier, then vaulted the structure and fanned out through the banking traffic to the north, the entire lane at a standstill. The city-bound side was still moving to the west at a crawl.
In the chaos the Tamil had crawled around the side of the wreck, reaching the rear fender he scuttled into the pileup behind. Two guards were killed at the scene, leaving two henchmen alive; one of those was injured by small arms fire.
Pakdee paused and flicked her head. Her hair had traces of glass and ears were ringing from the blast and the BMG rounds, then she became aware of a shriek: not tinnitus, nor was it anything mechanical. Leaning on the western barrier above the river was the Ulsterman clutching a child in a bear hug, crushing her and yelling with the revolver in his other hand. He’d whipped the youngster up and held her as a human shield. The hysterical girl was the source of the din and the mother pleading with him to release her child. She was clutching a wound on her right arm from the collision.
Pakdee approached Walker from the left side and van de Meuwe to the right. They closed in.
“Drop her!” yelled the rider, frozen; to fire with the sidearm was risky. The girl squirmed, to no avail -- nowhere to go and the Ulsterman’s grip tightened.
Pakdee inched forward as Walker shifted his revolver in her direction. She motioned to the rider to get out, keep going, and find the Tamil.
“Mister Walker,” she whispered. “Put her down; she is a child. Let her go.”
The girl’s mother stood behind clutching the cut on her right arm, babbling frantically in Thai and the hostage wriggled again. The Ulsterman shifted the Colt back to the screaming girl and cocked the revolver before waving it at the rider who had her gun trained on him. Pakdee moved forward and stared, holding her breath this time; she was barely two yards away.
“I’ll kill her; get back. I’ll do it!” Walker yelled. The rider stayed put but dared not attempt the shot. “Get back, sweetheart. I’ll kill the kid.”
“Kill me then,” whispered Pakdee. Her lips barely moved. She moved closer. She was nearly upon the Ulsterman making him focus upon her. She stared, her black eyes piercing his, hypnotizing him; distracting. Mister Walker’s arm loosened slightly and the girl slumped forward; he raised the Colt, slowly; deliberately. He cursed. She inched sideways and glimpsed the muzzle brake of the anti-materiel rifle.
“Checkmate,” she whispered. “Shut up and die like a man.”
Then a tiny flash like a bulb to the side, it came out the side of the brake screwed on the end of the M82. A six hundred grain BMG slug moving half a mile per second struck Walker. Just above the screaming girl’s head and square below his neckline. Slammed into the barrier behind blowing a hole in it, showering concrete powder and other fragments all over the road surface. A ringing sound reverberated; metal upon metal when it blew the rebar out. The child wrenched free and fled to its frantic mother and Pakdee turned to the crew, nodding. Walker’s gun, next to the lower half of him…he wouldn’t need it anymore. Only his lower torso, below the waist -- she flipped what was left of him and tore at a back pocket. The letter…the account! She seized the revolver, yelling at the child’s mother to stay put and she followed the rider who was headed to an exchange of fire further back.
There was a jumble of banked up cars now. Crowd of commuters were fleeing. They went after the Tamil, Pakdee a short distance behind the rider who was taller and faster. As they crossed to the median of the bridge they were nearly caught in crossfire between the one of the guards and the specialists near the concrete divider.
“Duck!”
Pakdee screamed and the rider bobbed and thrust her gun upward catching the blade. The injured guard was swinging with a heavy dog-leg shaped machete, it crashed into the weapon with a flurry of sparks; cleaving in the breech and knocking it out of her hand but missed. The rider yelled out, the guard overbalanced and swung back, this time the rider ducked. Pakdee aimed the magnum and fired once at the Gurkha who spun. She fired more shots into the guard before he teetered and slumped to the ground, the huge knife clattering on the surface. She turned to the rider who had a cut on her shoulder. Crouching, shaken and pressed against the side of a car, the occupants still cowering inside. The rider rolled her eyes, her face ash-white, she looked down at the dead guard then back at Pakdee, nodding but saying nothing, her chest heaving.
Toward the northern end of the gantry was an exchange of fire where the others had the last of the henchman pinned down in a fight to the end. She searched for the last; surely the Tamil had not made it out. Pakdee wheeled around -- behind the rider was clutching the wound, pressing her hand on the cut. The hijacked chopper could be seen as it approached from the north east hugging the river. It flew under the bridge, out the other side and then it ascended sharply before putting down near the two wrecked vehicles. The specialist at the helm of the Jet Ranger tossed two flares out on the road; they belched thick smoke that flowed around with the updraft.
“The police are here already!” The rider pointed to the south and Pakdee vaulted the front of a sedan -- sure enough, a mile off they could see emergency vehicles on their side of the road. Headed their way. They had counted on the police being ineffective and secondly on the pile-up providing a barrier but nothing was further from the truth. Big mistake.
The response was fast. Emergency vehicles were now roaring up the empty left hand side from the tollgates, along the wrong side of the road but it had emptied out all the way south of the ambush.
“Get your crew out!” Pakdee yelled at the rider who was shouting into her intercom to the other specialists, trying to fix a location on the main one, the Tamil.
The specialists were closing in on the last henchman. Outnumbered, he kept fighting to the bitter end until caught by fire on
either side. Then they spotted something, not a local running, it was the Tamil zigzagging between vehicles, he was still on the bridge. Pakdee and the rider gave chase and cornered him quickly, he was no athlete.
He backed up on the barrier. Way below was the river, it was flowing gently. Pakdee faced the Tamil, the rider behind and one of the specialists attempted to cover them, too many stopped vehicles. She was less than ten feet away and had the revolver trained on the Tamil, he was now pressed hard up on the railing. He had a weapon, maybe a Mac-10 or Mini-Uzi, couldn’t tell, it was pointed at her.
She thought of Hatfield. She bent her knees slightly, aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger.
‘Click’. The hammer struck a spent cartridge. She had fired everything into the guard; may have saved the rider but cost her the main prize. Van de Meuwe was unarmed now after the encounter with the machete, instead she lunged at the Tamil.
The Tamil clutched his weapon close and looked to his left -- the others were closing in. Lifted his leg onto the fender of a vehicle and hoisted his frame onto the barrier; he took one last look before tumbling backward. He was over the side by the time Pakdee tried to snatch his foot, too late. He fell as they watched and about halfway down the Tamil managed to fire his weapon. Emptied the magazine out but not at them; instead into the water beneath just as he struck with a huge splash. The specialist hopped on the same vehicle, leaned over the barrier and emptied his clip into the water where a patch of white remained below in the river’s surface.
Three of them peered over the edge, amazed. The rider and specialist turned to Pakdee.
“No way, anyone could survive that,” said the specialist.
They hightailed toward the borrowed Jet Ranger; it had put down at the scene of the ambush and the smoke flares now pouring clouds of gray, tossed about by the spinning rotors. Pakdee leaned out over the rail searching the river where the Tamil had hit -- nothing except some bubbles rising to the surface. She ran to the chopper where the land unit had crammed themselves in the cabin. The vehicles were fitted with a fixed charge set to blow once the chopper had cleared the bridge; the last man grabbed the sliding door then the rider beside him.
“Next to me,” she yelled at Pakdee. “I can hold you.”
Pakdee stopped. Her hair was flailing in the blast from the chopper’s rotors. She screamed above the din and fumes. She turned to the clouds from the smoke flares where the Thai police were assembling, more vehicles, more officers…more guns.
“No!” she had to shout at the rider. “You go. Get your people out of here.”
The rider jumped from the chopper and seized her arm. “You’ll be cut to pieces if you stay.”
“You go! I can buy some time.” She wrenched free from the rider’s grip and looked back; behind her was the lady from the SUV crouched down hugging her daughter. The mother had been injured slightly and the child sobbing, she was bleeding from a glass cut and terrified after the ordeal. “I have to take them too.” She backed up and caught the pilot’s eye. Pakdee pointed to a high rise to the east. “Fly toward the apartment tower at two o’clock! Turn at the last minute. They won’t fire. Go!”
Pakdee turned to the mother and child, she stooped and helped them to their feet and slowly they hobbled toward the wall of smoke from the flares. The crammed chopper cleared the barrier. Van de Meuwe leaned up and over, taking in the view…the total chaos. And Suzy Wong the home wrecker, limping straight into a phalanx of Thai police; the mother and child in tow.
In the bungalow at Bang Saen Lowenstein stood up from the monitors, beaming. Checked his Breitling, the deed was done in twelve minutes and twenty seconds. Walked around behind C41 and whacked him on the back. The land unit had done it, out of there on a stolen chopper, home free.
“Switch off and pack up. We’re out of here.”
“Buying us all a drink tonight, Mister Gold?”
The running man stopped by the window and pulled the curtain back…a beautiful day out there.
“It’s got the best nightlife in the world, this place but sadly, no.” He turned back to C41. “How’s two days in the Greek Isles sound? We’ll be demobilizing there in a lovely little hotel on the cliff.”
The running man disappeared to wash and change. The last thing on the signaler shut down was his online game.
Thirty Thai cops, armed for battle, halted at the southern approach to the bridge. An arsenal trained on the figures limping in the distance, laser scopes fidgeting and bouncing around. The flare smoke billowed when the chopper gunned its turbine, and it cleared the barrier then dropped below to sea level before making a beeline for the riverside towers, swerving and disappearing out of view.
“Stop right where you are!” A loudspeaker on a maroon and white pickup emblazoned with the shield and sword insignia of the local gendarmes.
“Walk forward slowly. They will not fire upon a mother and child,” she whispered to the woman. Drew the empty Python and stood still, her hands high in the air. “Move away from me!” she hissed.
The mother crept ever so slowly toward the police, trembling, terrified, and clutching her daughter. About halfway across no-man’s-land two uniformed officers sprinted out and one on either side hustled the civilians away to safety as Pakdee remained perfectly still.
“Drop the gun and kick it away! Hands high above your head!”
The revolver hit the concrete and she kicked it.
“Walk ten paces then on your knees!”
As she was halfway across she stopped and lowered herself to her knees. Then she was being crushed and searched by several officers as others covered her with rifles. She was cuffed and dragged away into a waiting pickup. The magnetic charges, three in total, fired simultaneously. Lucky the cops hadn’t gone in, they hit the deck, Pakdee and the two officers flinched. The two black cars they’d come in that morning and the truck on the other side of the barrier…all evidence incinerated in a second.
In the foothills overlooking the Pakchong hinterland the two specialists -- the sniper and his spotter -- watched as a muscular stocky man jogged to the gate. Nearly lunch and the first activity since the two cars had left before sunrise. The white mastiffs trotted like horses as the guard turned onto the unsealed track and headed west, his frame in the crosshairs of the rifle scope as he ran and continued over a rise a few hundred yards away. The spotter jotted down some notes and a time in his field pocketbook.
The sniper-crew could not believe their eyes. The Gurkha paused on the crest and held his arms out. As if taunting the specialists; as if waiting for a bullet to come spinning out of the hills and drop him. Stayed there a few seconds like a scarecrow. He turned and commenced jogging, with the guard dogs in tow.
“See how long he’s gone for,” the spotter whispered to his colleague with the TRG. Soon the call would come through and they would enter the grounds, liquidate anybody remaining and demolish the estate with the charges stashed in the backpack.
But the guard with the Dogo Argentos would not return that day, nor would he ever. He could finish the twenty mile run without so much as raising a sweat. He continued to the outskirts of Pakchong where he stopped and banged on the gates of the first large house, then a second one and finally a third. A few words, he handed the leash to the householder and the two dogs now had a new and very delighted owner and a loving home. Bred to takedown the wild boar and the puma, it was rumored they were fine with children…
He turned back for one last look then he ran into the township where he entered a bank and changed some money before catching the air con coach to Bangkok where he could pick up an airline ticket; anywhere, just away.
He was fortunate; he had some medals, a UK passport and citizenship after a long career that had stretched from the Falklands in the 1980s to the present. His homeland in Nepal had changed so much there was nothing there for him anymore. He had always done everything he could to serve his bosses without h
esitation.
The bravest of the brave, he was also human; fed up with people everywhere fearing him, avoiding him and children crossing the street to get away from him as he stood guard outside this bank or that building. Drunks picking fights with him and his buddies every single time they entered a bar for a quiet drink. Killing enemies, not to mention the innocents. Now his only friends lay dead on the overpass. The syndicate was no more and his days in the region were finished.
A few hours later he sat alone in the departures area and watched the broadcasts showing the destruction on the bridge that day. It made headline news. Sources said a terror attack; others believed a new mafia war was erupting on the seaboard. He knew the real story, though. Soon his flight would be boarding. He watched with no emotion. Looking like a guest-worker in unfashionable trousers and a cheap linen jacket with a flag of some description on the sleeve.
She stood up and thanked the others in the cell for their hospitality: four girls arrested for prostitution the previous evening, two others caught gambling in a card-school and a middle-aged housewife who’d shot her husband. The cell was not crowded that afternoon but later on it would overflow.
A police officer, the station chief and General Kitti-Khorn stood outside the cage as the policeman struggled with the keys. The general was in full regalia, behind the ever present bodyguard. Scared the daylights out of the precinct cops. He spoke briefly with the precinct commander, nobody on their side hurt and other drivers on the bridge had escaped. Several bodies including half of what may have once may have been a Caucasian had been taken away. Tow-trucks were having a busy afternoon removing the auto wrecks. One bombed truck, two bombed vehicles and a dozen or more fender-benders leading back to the city-side.
“Do the police know anything, any ideas?” asked the general once they were alone.
“Just the official line,” replied Pakdee. “National security. I thought they would hit me.”
“Plods! It’d cost ‘em…” Kitti grinned. “Looks like you could do with a makeover. You’re a mess, Miss Anna.”
“I think I deserve to be punished…the Tamil…he got away.”
“No chance,” snapped Kitti dismissively. “All eyewitnesses as well as Arcana’s version of events suggests he’s gone. He fell from the bridge and would have been killed. We got them.”
“Not so,” she insisted. “The Tamil emptied a clip into the water as he fell. How he missed the lower deck is beyond me, but he did. Accident or purpose, no idea but I saw. The shots broke the river’s surface before he hit.”
Kitti paused; he was in the process of opening the rear door of his car.
“Impossible. You’ve wound up their finances, haven’t you?”
“My General, please listen to me. The Tamil is headed to the States. He is going after his money.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This isn’t over, by any means. When I was in the Philippines I convinced the gang to send their liquidated profits offshore. I set up accounts, three of them in a merchant bank headquartered in Panama. We printed the account ledgers out and mailed two of them to an address somewhere in America…our only records and I have the third one. Then we shredded the hard-drives.” Pakdee was emotional. “Oh My General, they got wind of this after they murdered the American boy in Manila. They killed him because he’d smelt a rat and gone to the embassy.”
The very thought of Hatfield made her want to collapse, to pound the car and yell like a child. She couldn’t. She kept her composure. “We had set up the last account and were attacked as we went to post it. The last one and the largest. The Tamil knows about the documents and he’s going to get the others.”
“How much?”
“Fifteen million, total.”
“That’s all? For a group like that?”
“Dollars sir, not our currency…I was planning on returning some to treasury and retaining the rest. We can make immediate arrangements to freeze the syndicate’s domestic float, now they’re gone. That can be turned over to our government or whomever you nominate.”
He thought for a moment. “We must get to this address you speak of. We must get to the FBI man, Tanaka-”
“I think he has alerted everybody about me; the borders I mean.”
Kitti-Khorn removed his Ray Bans and squinted. “Leave that with me. We’ll get you in there. Give me a week.”
On the other side of the globe, the north awaited more snow. A clear afternoon meant a very cold night. It was very late, the old guy still hadn’t eaten supper, just didn’t feel up to it these days. He’d been trying to get his old rig going. He heard a noise at the front; he turned and walked a few paces out into the dark.
“Sez…hey, Mister Hatfield.”
JJ Hatfield limped to the gate. Ice on the ground made a crunching noise under his sturdy Caterpillar boots. It was the neighbor, the MacDonald widow, outside his front fence.
“Why howdy, Missus. Burning the midnight oil. Been cold lately.” He turned to his old truck, hood up, the shack lit up by his trusty lamp. “Battery’s all washed up, worse luck,” he said. “Must’ve been the weather ‘n’ all…sittin’ there so long.”
“Mister Hatfield…you wuz abroad last week, that’s the one?”
“Yeah, Missuz…went lookin’ for something in Bangkok. Can’t say I found much.”
“Thought I’d check you’re okay ‘n’ all. Praise the Lord you got back in one piece. Looks like you got out in the nick of time.”
Hatfield thought this was odd. “Howzat?” he asked.
“We’z just watchin’ a news-flash. That’s why I came over…mighty big terror attack there, right about now. Whole buncha people were blown up and killed in the middle of a bridge there…dreadful; burning vehicles everywhere, dead folks all over the road, police ‘n’ soldiers…”
Hatfield opened the gate. Something jolted his memory. He straightened up. “Missus MacDonald, its Saturday ain’t it?”
“That’s right, Mister Hatfield. Saturday the thirteenth. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day.” She was reminiscing. “Always think about ol’ Everett ‘bout now…”
She dabbed at her eye. JJ Hatfield patted her. Turned and walked back inside his yard and the widow went on down to her shack. Would’ve liked to know more about it but the TV set was broke. Thought about what was said when they were driving to the airport. It’d happened. It was Sunday already over there…
Hatfield shivered. He slammed down the hood; the dead battery would still be there to bug him in the morning. He made a mental note to get a newspaper. Find out what happened. Anna mentioned it the car the day they were being deported from Thailand, not a threat, more like a prophecy. Stood on the porch and gazed out over the valley -- his valley -- before going inside and locking the door behind him. Usually never bothered with locks, nobody here did and old fleabag watched out over the place but something didn’t feel right.