Threat Level

by William Christie

  Troy presented the documents at the immigration booth.

  “What is the purpose of your visit?” the agent asked him in the British-accented English befitting a member of the Commonwealth.

  “Tourism,” Troy replied. “We were driving through southern Thailand and thought we’d spend a few days in your country.”

  “And how will you leave the country?”

  “We’ll drive back to Thailand, probably through here.”

  The agent finished checking his computer and handed back the stamped passports and arrival cards. “Enjoy your stay, sir. You do not require a visa for stays of thirty days or less.”

  “Thank you,” said Troy.

  The next stop was the customs booth. Now it got dicey. Storey drove slowly, hoping for a pass, but the agent pulled them over.

  This one also spoke English, but less well. After he had the passports and eyed the occupants of the vehicle, there came the inevitable, “Anything to declare?”

  “No, sir,” said Storey, operating under his standard procedure for dealing with any kind of government official: neat dress and good manners equaled fewer hassles.

  “Step out,” came the command.

  “Yes, sir,” said Storey. He popped the rear hatch before complying.

  The agent took one look at the luggage in back before signaling one of his colleagues. “Luggage into building, please.”

  Storey turned to Troy. “You’re younger than I am.”

  “I knew it,” said Troy, for effect.

  Storey smiled at the agent, who let a slight grin crack through his professional demeanor.

  Troy humped the bags into the booth and, as directed, dumped them onto an X-ray carousel.

  The agent watched the screen intently. When the bags came through the other end he went right to one and opened it up. He fished around and came up with a toilet kit. A careful examination of everything, then a slight look of disappointment that the pill bottles only contained antimalaria medication. He zipped everything back up and motioned for Troy to take it away.

  As he dragged the bags across the sweltering asphalt, Troy saw the other agent’s legs sticking out the back of the CRV. There hadn’t been anything in the bags except clothes. But stashed throughout the body of the vehicle was enough weapons, ordnance, and assorted military equipment to guarantee both an unpleasant interrogation and a very, very long stretch in a Malaysian prison. Something the U.S. government would do absolutely nothing about.

  Storey was up near the front of the vehicle, slouching against the body. A good customs agent was like a good poker player. They didn’t play the cards, they played the people. Specifically, their body language.

  And Storey was the perfect picture of boredom and driving fatigue. But he must have seen something else as Troy set the bags down beside the Honda. Maybe he didn’t care for Troy’s body language. So he roused himself, reached in the open door, and plucked a map from the visor. He ostentatiously snapped it open and spread it out on the hood. “Hey, Leonard, come on over here.”

  Troy obeyed, giving him a little look for the “Leonard,” even though it was the name on his passport. Knowing that the identity he’d used to enter the country was compromised to Thai security, they’d switched to different passports. “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Storey, bending over the map. The agent was still in the back, and had pulled up the upholstery. They could stand a detailed search, but if he started yanking plastic off, it was all over. “We’ve only got a few days here. It might not be worth driving over to Perlis State. Let’s stay here in Kedah. We can drive around and check out the sights, go to Pedu resort and play some golf.” Even without looking, he knew the agent was listening to them.

  As did Troy. “Yeah, but I wanted to check out the royal palace at Arau. And maybe the caves at Gua Kelam.” There was a tapping of metal from the back. Troy was a bit relieved that his pistol was hidden in the frame—he might have been tempted to shoot someone.

  “You sure you wouldn’t rather play some golf?” Storey asked. “I would.”

  “That’s because you’re an old fart,” said Troy. “You get more exercise eating a sandwich than you do playing a round of golf.”

  “Look, I’m tired of driving,” Storey said reasonably. “Let’s hit the resort, maybe play a round or two, then see what we feel like.”

  “All right, all right,” said Troy. “You’ve got to humor the aged.” He knew Storey was doing this little theatrical piece for him, and it pissed him off to see the bastard so cool. At least he didn’t have to worry about sweating. Everyone was.

  The agent was now in the spare tire well.

  Troy wondered how it would go down. Probably nothing as dramatic as spotlights, sirens, and dogs. The Malaysians would just walk up, pull their pistols, and put them under arrest.

  The customs agent climbed out of the back of the CRV and walked over to the booth.

  Going to get some backup, Troy thought. Storey was still studying the map.

  The agent emerged from the booth and headed toward them. Troy hated feeling this helpless. He’d already checked out the area—running wouldn’t do any good. Fight? With what?

  Car horns in the background, the smell of exhaust. Voices chattering in several different languages. The tapping of leather soles approaching across the asphalt.

  The agent handed a sheaf of papers to Troy. “Enjoy your time in Malaysia.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Storey replied.

  Troy was still standing there holding the papers. Storey plucked them from his hand. “I’m leaving,” he said. “You do what you like.”

  He’d already started the engine when Troy decided that was a good idea.

  The final stop was the police checkpoint, a stand-alone booth with an aqua-blue pagoda roof. Storey, being Storey, had a letter from the rental agency giving them permission to take the car across the border. And he’d already purchased a Malaysian car insurance policy.

  As they pulled out Storey glanced at his watch. “Hour and a half. That wasn’t bad at all.”

  “You know, they only searched us because I’m black,” said Troy.

  “I suspected as much,” Storey replied.

  They were now in the northern Malaysian state of Kedah, though their destination was the neighboring Perlis state to the northwest. Which they could have reached directly through a different border crossing, but Storey insisted on an indirect route.

  They drove south on the North-South Expressway until they reached the town of Changlun, then west on the Changlun-Kuala Perlis Highway into Perlis. Near the town of Arau they turned north on single-lane roads. Their objective was a large sugar plantation near the Thai border. That was where their study of the captured maps and the computation of gasoline consumption from the fuel receipts had led them.

  Storey stopped for a leisurely dinner, timing the drive so they reached the outskirts of the plantation around dusk. He had his spot all picked out from the satellite photos they’d studied in Bangkok. A dirt trail off the road they were traveling on, which weaved through some jungle forest.

  A stop, and a check on foot to make sure the jungle wasn’t so swampy that the Honda would get stuck. Then a shift to four-wheel drive, off-road and backing right into the jungle. There was a machete in the tool kit. A few minutes working to push the flattened vegetation back up, cutting new vegetation to camouflage the tire tracks and the gap they’d made in the foliage, and the Honda disappeared into the forest. The black pearl color that Storey had so carefully chosen blended well into the green.

  Now they pried open the interior panels and removed their cargo from the frame. First what looked like padding, but were actually two sets of the black cotton pajamas Southeast Asian peasants still wore to work their fields. The pajamas had been spray-painted with streaks of brown to make an improvised camouflage pattern. Two pairs of running shoes, also spray-painted brown. Storey and Troy were still using their spandoflage mesh head coverings. It wouldn�
�t do to complete the mission, get stopped by a cop on the road, and have him notice camouflage paint in your ears that you’d missed washing off.

  Two load-bearing vests from the safe house cache in Bangkok, filled with the usual mix of ammo magazines and grenades. And two small day packs, purchased in Bangkok and camouflaged with spray paint.

  At first glance the two rifles looked like the usual M-4 carbines. But they were actually the Knight’s Armament Company SR-47, which had been developed secretly for the Tier-1 special operations units. An M-16 carbine chambered for the Russian 7.62X39mm short round of the AK-47. With a special cut-down magazine well that accepted the standard thirty-round AK-47 magazine.

  The cave complexes of Afghanistan were such an isolated and target-rich environment that the special operators fighting in them found that they literally couldn’t carry enough M-16 magazines to do the job. So they asked for a weapon capable of using magazines they could pick up on the battlefield—which meant the AK-47 magazines of the opponents they’d already dealt with.

  Why not just use AK-47s? The most important thing in weapons handling was the muscle memory—the operation of the weapon, the location of the safety, the grip, the sights. Plus, the AK series, while unbelievably rugged and reliable, was also notoriously inaccurate. And the sights were just terrible.

  So a contract went out and Knight’s virtually handmade six SR-47s. A few more were ordered later, but there weren’t very many in the inventory.

  Ironically, the SR-47 solved the number-one problem with the M-16 series of weapons, the lack of lethality of the U.S. 5.56mm bullet. The Russian 7.62mm short round was a man-stopper. An added benefit for covert operations was that there would be empty Russian casings and magazines left lying around after everything was over, not American ones.

  Both rifles had PEQ-2 infrared laser aiming devices mounted on them. These projected a laser dot that could be seen through night-vision equipment.

  Troy had an Aimpoint red-dot sight mounted on his weapon, and he was wearing a single-tube PVS-14 night-vision goggle over his right eye.

  Storey thought he moved better at night without night-vision goggles. So he mounted a PVS-17 mini starlight scope on his rifle, which could be used for both shooting and observation.

  Storey programmed waypoints into his civilian GPS unit and set the correct azimuth on his wrist compass.

  Troy said, “How’s my hair look?”

  “Perfect,” Storey replied.

  As darkness fell they headed off into the brush.

  There were villages on the outskirts of the plantation, but repeated calculations of the mileage and gas consumption seemed to indicate that their objective was inside it. That led to further study of satellite photos. Plantations used every spare bit of ground for cultivation. There were garages, of course, and workshops, but few dwellings—mostly for staff. Storey doubted that anything would come of it, but they had to be checked out. Satellites were powerful tools, but when you were hunting individuals only eyes on the ground could tell you what you really needed to know.

  The land had been scraped bare to plant the sugarcane. All except for the limestone hills that jutted up between the fields, occasional thin tree lines between the sections, and scattered ponds. It made movement easy but risky. The full-grown fields were almost impassible, but with any other level of cultivation there was plenty of space between the rows. Except the loose earth left footprints—Storey did not like that at all. It was enough to make him wish for rain.

  At least the night sounds gave them plenty of cover. A million insects buzzing and chirping, frogs croaking, and night birds screaming.

  It was past 10:00 when they reached the first dwelling, backs aching from moving hunched over through the immature cane. Storey brought his rifle to his shoulder and checked out the area through the 4.5-power lens of his starlight scope. No lights on. No vehicles of any kind in the area.

  Wanting to be sure before they went any closer, he tapped Troy and Troy removed the SOPHIE from Storey’s pack. SOPHIE was a 5.3-pound long-range thermal imager that looked like a large pair of binoculars. Storey turned it on and waited for the detector to cool to operating temperature.

  SOPHIE detected heat. The image it produced was the heat differential between every object in its field of view. When he looked through his rifle night sight, which magnified any ambient light from the stars and moon, Storey could see cane fields. Through the SOPHIE he could see the bright body heat of rats walking through the fields and birds perched in the trees for the night. A metal water tank in the distance glowed bright against the ground that had cooled off faster in the evening air. Nothing with any body heat was in the house.

  Now they crossed through the trees. Storey covered while Troy peeked through a window. Some kind of staff housing, but it was empty. No signs of any recent occupancy.

  The second house was over a mile away. It turned out to be equipment storage. This was why you couldn’t rely on satellites.

  Storey was concerned. They might have to spend a week reconning each village in the area, and still not be able to pick out someone who didn’t belong there. He could accept a fool’s errand, but not one so risky. It was looking like a wasted trip.

  But they still had to check out the third house. This one was nearly four miles away. Storey cupped both hands around one of Troy’s ears. “We’ll be a long way from the car by daylight. Do we go on now or move the car closer and come back tomorrow night?”

  Troy just pointed. Go on.

  Storey had saved the third for last because it was the hardest to approach. A cane field on one side, and another across a dirt road. A few surrounding trees for shade, but otherwise wide open all around. Only a thin tree line to make an approach, which was why Storey didn’t want to approach through it. But there was no other choice.

  He was on point, and moved even slower than before. A very careful step. Vision sweep. Listen. And only then another careful step. It was why he didn’t wear night-vision goggles. They made him feel less alert. It was like looking through a toilet paper tube—you could only see what you were looking directly at. They unbalanced your head, and made you concentrate on your feet. And he felt they killed the rest of his senses.

  After stepping forward and putting his weight down, Storey felt the pressure just below his knee. He eased back, sliding his hand down his leg until it was next to his knee. It felt like fishing line. Keeping a light finger pressure on the line, he took a step back and crouched down. His fingernail followed the line to the right until it touched metal. As lightly as a blind man reading Braille, he traced the outline of a tin can wired to a tree trunk. Simple and effective. The pin removed from a hand grenade, wedged into the can to keep the spoon under pressure. The fishing line tied to the grenade. Any pressure on the line pulls the grenade from the can, releasing the spoon. Tracing the line to the left found another can and another grenade. By the time you figured out that it wasn’t a vine wrapped around your legs you were dead and the noise had alerted everyone in the vicinity.

  The booby trap made Storey very happy. It meant they were on to something. He signaled Troy to turn around and take the point, and they backed away.

  Far enough away that they could converse in whispers. Storey told him what had happened. “You want to come back tomorrow night?”

  “No,” Troy whispered back. “We’re going to have to make a daylight recon eventually. Can’t do a positive ID any other way.”

  “You’re the sniper,” said Storey. “Take over.”

  For their observation post Troy picked the field directly across the dirt road from the house. The cane plants were slightly less than two feet high and the leaves spread out just enough to conceal the rows.

  Storey approved. The new plants were so low to the ground that it would be dismissed as a hiding place. The least likely spot was always preferable. Unless someone picked that day to spray the field with pesticides, or come through and weed.

  They crawled into the field
and down the rows, Troy leading and Storey brushing away any sign their passage had left in the dirt.

  The rows, as Murphy’s Law always arranged things, ran perpendicular to the house. So Troy used a pair of garden shears, the sniper’s best friend, to carve out an area for them to lie down side by side. He was careful not to cut away any of the leaves that would drape over them.

  For daylight observation Troy set up a Kowa spotting scope. A 20–60-power zoom telescope, 3.25 pounds and seventeen inches long. He attached a Canon digital camera body to the scope mounting.

  They knew what it was going to be like. Before the sun came up they made sure their trouser legs were tucked into their socks, and sleeves into their light cotton gloves. They donned beekeepers’ hats purchased in Bangkok and also spray-painted for camouflage.

  The dawn revealed a light mist over the fields that quickly burned off. The heat rose. The leaves draping over them provided shade but also shut off any air flow, sending the humidity up near 100 percent. There were thick clouds of small bugs the size of gnats. The fertilizer smell was strong. Probably cancer in about twenty years, Storey thought.

  They switched off every hour to stay sharp. The heat was too brutal for napping, but at least they could roll over, an inch at a time to keep from disturbing the foliage, to allow some blood back into the muscles they’d been lying on. They drank water from the Camelbak water bags in their packs, and munched energy bars. Urinating into plastic bags so more insects, and anything else, wouldn’t be attracted to the smell.

  Troy was in his element, and Storey was impressed. He just needed a rifle in his hand. Totally focused, utterly patient. The classic sniper.

  Storey knew they were well concealed when the wildlife began moving around them. Rats scampered down the rows, only skidding to a halt and fleeing after almost bumping into them. And before the ground got too warm a black-and-white-banded krait glided by, on the way home after a night hunting rodents. A southern upbringing gave you the instinct to kill every snake you laid eyes on, but Storey had learned that most species, even poisonous ones like the krait, didn’t bother you unless you bothered them.