JET V - Legacy

by Blake, Russell

“Almost certainly not. The captive was sure that they were going in to get it either last night or the night before.”

  “Shit.” Something tugged at Jet’s awareness. “On the way from the airport, the local contact said there was some sort of a roadblock by the port. A shooting. What do you want to bet that was related?”

  “I’m not feeling much like betting at the moment. I’ll have the techs see what they can pull from the police servers. Now that we’re in the immigration system, should be a piece of cake. Oh, and we have a photo of the tech man – Joseph. He entered on a work visa three weeks ago. Sponsored by a company affiliated with one of The Council’s members, as was the shipping company that brought in the container. No doubt the address on the application is a fake, but it’s something you need to follow up on.”

  “Send the photo and the address to the operational email account. We have good access here.”

  “There’s one more thing. The facial recognition software also flagged a new arrival. Came into the country day before yesterday on a tourist visa. Traveling on an Egyptian passport. I’ll be sending his photo over as well.”

  “Who is it?” Jet asked.

  “Solomon. The older of the two brothers. My guess is that you killed the younger one in Libya during the attack.”

  Her mind churned as she digested the news. “Where did he fly in from?”

  “Cairo.”

  “Which would be one of the hubs if he had been at the house during the attack. He would travel from either Tripoli or Benghazi…”

  “That occurred to us. We’re already tracing the passenger manifests, but I’m not sure how much good it will do. Still, we now have two of the targets in Qatar. As if we needed any further confirmation this was going to happen.”

  “How’s the questioning going?”

  “I’m not hopeful. One of the three already succumbed to a bad heart. I’ve given instructions to push the other two to the limit. We’re down to only a few hours now. Believe me, if we hear anything, you’ll be the first person I call.”

  The phone went dead. The director, as was his custom, simply hung up when he finished imparting whatever info he had. Jet considered this latest wrinkle – two ex-Mossad operatives to track down, rather than one.

  She moved back into the living room, where the computers were set up, and instructed Isaac to go to the encrypted e-mail box and pull up and print out the photos. As she watched the images spill from the high-resolution printer, she had a sinking feeling in her gut – there was no time to find the bomb if all they had were some immigration photos.

  Which meant that in just a little while, the fate of the world was going to change, forever, unless they got very, very lucky. And of the many things she’d been feeling since taking on this assignment, lucky wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter 31

  Phuket, Thailand

  The roar of the local bus outside the bar sounded like a runaway locomotive to Matt, who had ultimately decided to spend the night awake, moving among dozens of watering holes, never remaining in one spot for very long. Twice he had spotted possible watchers, and both times had evaded them by sneaking out the rear exits, knowing even as he did that he was probably being paranoid.

  Whatever the case, the week of relaxation on the beach in Phuket had gone from an idyllic reward to a tense game of cat and mouse as he was pursued by unknown adversaries. The most likely explanation for the thief was that Niran had sold him out to a gang that would split any profits – or perhaps it was a well-equipped opportunist, but Matt doubted it. The most remote likelihood, but by far the most worrying, was that his old nemesis, the CIA’s drug-running cabal, had gotten a whiff of him, either from Niran or from someone at the bank, and put a team on him.

  But Matt hadn’t stayed alive as long as he had by being careless or hoping for the best, and now he was in a state of high alert, watching for real or imagined threats behind every tree and vending machine. Fortunately for him, the nightlife in Phuket was non-stop and the carousing continued until dawn, catering to swarms of drunken Australians and Americans out for an adventure with one of the friendly natives.

  At the final bar of the evening, he’d grown tired of his unrelenting counter-surveillance. After buying several beers for a tiny little thing in a plaid schoolgirl’s skirt and a white silk blouse tied just under her breasts to better show off her flat brown belly, he agreed to accompany her to a nearby hotel that asked no questions and rented rooms in three-hour intervals.

  Matt pretended not to speak the language and inwardly smiled when his new date told the bar Mama-san that she’d hooked a live one, and he cheerfully handed over the bar fine – compensation to the club for the money it ostensibly would have made if the girl had remained there instead of going off with him. She took his hand and led him into the night, walking confidently on a trip she’d undoubtedly made countless times before, in spite of her apparent teen age – also an illusion, but a carefully crafted one. He knew that she had probably been in the business for several years, and being as attractive as she was, serviced two to three patrons a night on a busy weekend. But her placid face and feigned naïveté were convincing, and he was quite sure that many an inebriated young man had fallen for her act.

  She led him to a seedy single-story motel with a sporadically blinking neon sign promising ‘Paradise Palms,’ and he obligingly paid for the room, nodding as the old man behind the counter warned in broken English that he needed to be out no later than eight a.m., as though there was going to be a rush of post-breakfast patrons eager to use the facilities.

  The room itself was everything he had imagined from the exterior – relatively new due to the reconstruction following the tsunami that had nearly wiped the resort from the map, but already sliding into disrepair, as was so much in Thailand. He set his bag down on the only chair, a scarred wooden job that looked like it had taken more abuse than the rusting fishing scows off the beach, and turned to his escort, who was humming to herself as she slipped off her blouse, revealing pert girlish breasts, one with a small tattoo of a scorpion on it that was probably her nod to truth in advertising. She gave him a beaming smile and then darted into the bathroom before he could say anything, and Matt relaxed when he heard the shower start – she was a conscientious one, his new schoolgirl friend.

  He peered out the front curtains at the darkened courtyard and caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye, off to the left. He struggled to get a better glimpse of whoever was out there, but it was too dark and he couldn’t make anything out. A part of him argued that, given the business model the motel had, it wasn’t unexpected that there would be constant traffic on the grounds; but another urged caution and was clamoring a warning. It could be danger – someone who had followed from the bar, even if that seemed impossible to him.

  Matt erred on the side of caution, and extinguished the lights before taking another glance outside. There. A man off to the side, maybe fifteen yards away – standing, watching Matt’s room door, and on a cell phone. Perhaps it was all innocent, another satisfied motel customer phoning home, or someone working security at the late hour, but Matt wasn’t interested in finding out the hard way that he was wrong.

  The bathroom door opened and his new friend strutted from the bathroom wearing only high heels and a smile, and then hesitated, seeing the lights off and Matt still fully dressed.

  “Come on, sexy man, I so hohney, don’t make me wait…,” she purred in a velvet sing-song, the words delivered with a kind of bored professionalism, and then she stopped when she saw Matt shake his head and remove a wad of baht from his pocket, peel off several large denomination bills, and hand them to her.

  “What’s wrong, lovah man? I need you, baby,” she tried again, uncertain what was happening.

  “No thanks, young sister. I’m afraid I don’t feel well all of a sudden,” Matt replied, this time in Thai, and her eyes narrowed at his unaccented command of the language.

  “You don’t want a girl? Maybe
I can make you feel better, huh?” she said, sidling up to him, but then something about his expression stopped her.

  “No, I think this was a bad idea. I’m sorry. It’s not you. It’s me. Too much beer and too many years. Get dressed – I want to get out of here. This place stinks,” Matt said, his speech plodding and slightly slurred.

  The girl did a quick assessment of the amount of currency in her hand versus what she stood to make if she was able to coax her suddenly agitated paramour into an entanglement, and decided that she was getting the better end of the deal if she just walked away. Keeping to her pidgin English act, she offered a professional smile.

  “Okay, sexy man, maybe you come back tonight and I show you paradise, yes?” she offered, hoping to hold onto the business – especially in light of his generosity without her having had to do anything. He nodded and offered a tired smile, and she went back into the bathroom and was dressed in thirty seconds.

  Matt walked her to the door, and she offered him a chaste peck on the cheek before he opened it – a surprisingly tender small intimacy from little more than a girl, who had been parading around in her birthday suit like a seasoned stripper only moments before. Matt watched her slip out the door, and then he closed it, cursing the cheap lock, and stepped to the other side of the sagging bed to check the back window. He pulled the curtain aside and found himself staring at iron bars, the dim light of an alley struggling to shine through the caked grime obscuring the glass. That wasn’t going to be a way out. He next padded into the small bathroom to gauge his chances, but his heart sank when he saw that there was only a tiny ventilation window, also barred, and also facing the alley.

  Returning to the room, he surveyed the meager furniture – an ancient chest of drawers, the bed, a bedside lamp, a chair. Not much to work with, but maybe, just maybe, enough from which to fashion a weapon – presuming he was right, and that they, whoever they were, would be coming for him before first light.

  He didn’t have long to wait. Half an hour after bidding the bar girl goodbye, the flimsy lock jiggled a few times and then released with a soft click. An unseen hand turned the knob, and then the door inched open, the room black as pitch, the form on the bed unmoving.

  A slight figure slipped in, the distinctive outline of a pistol leading, and Matt waited another second to see whether there was more than one assailant before slamming the chair leg down on the intruder’s head. The pistol tumbled onto the tiled floor, and Matt delivered another devastating blow. The figure collapsed, unconscious.

  Matt remained where he was, anticipating another attacker, but after a few moments of silence he scooped up the pistol and studied it. He knew the weapon – an Ed Brown Custom Classic .45 caliber 1911, popular among the wealthy and the prosperous criminal element in Thailand. After checking to ensure that the magazine was full, he cleared the chamber, seated the bullet back into the magazine, then slapped it home before loading a round. The gun cost at least four thousand dollars, which ruled out any chance that this was an opportunistic robbery – petty thieves weren’t in the habit of toting around Ed Browns to roll tourists in dives.

  Pausing motionless, he listened for footsteps, but after thirty seconds the grounds were quiet. Confident now that nobody was going to follow the first attacker in, he knelt and squinted at the unconscious figure’s face – a young Asian man, probably local. Judging by the blood streaming from his hairline he wasn’t going to be doing much pursuing in the near future. Matt rose, and after expertly searching him, finding only a slim wad of local currency and a cheap cell phone, he hefted his bag and slipped the pistol into the waist of his shorts, hiding its bulk with his mini-duffle.

  He slipped through the doorway and glanced around, his darkness-accustomed eyes roving over the surroundings, and when he saw nothing, he made for the far end of the courtyard and the exit that led out onto the street. Matt had gotten across the expanse and was pulling the iron gate closed behind him when he sensed someone approaching from his right. He spun and then relaxed when he saw that it was only a local girl, walking from the main street. She smiled at him as she neared, and he almost missed the tell-tale glint of steel from the stiletto as she lunged, trying to eviscerate him with the razor-sharp blade. He stepped back and turned sideways, presenting as small a target as he could, and the knife slashed through his shirt as he brought his hand down against her wrist, simultaneously whipping the pistol from his shorts and slamming it against her temple.

  She stumbled and dropped the knife, but then surprised him by winging a kick at his head, even as blood trickled down her face from the gash he’d put in her skull with the weapon. The kick got him in the neck as he instinctively pulled away, and everything began to fade – she’d managed to get him near enough to the carotid that he was momentarily stunned. He shook off the daze as she dipped her left hand and retrieved the knife; she was about to make another run at skewering him when he rabbit-punched her in the face, breaking her nose. Her eyes welled with tears and fury, and then he spun and delivered a brutal kick to her chest, knocking her backwards. She lost her balance, stumbled, and went down hard, and he heard the crack of her head splitting as the back of her skull struck the sidewalk.

  She convulsed several times, jerking like a beached fish, and Matt didn’t stick around for the inevitable. The pair had been working as a team, and he had no way of knowing whether there were more, or if these two were the night shift after the safecracker had run off. The girl had been good – almost too good, he thought, as he moved down the sidewalk. Better than an amateur, with an adept command of Thai martial arts and unexpected tenacity.

  Whoever had sent them after him had paid top dollar, but they’d underestimated his abilities, as well as his field instincts. If the man survived his beating, he’d be out of the game for a long time, so he no longer presented a threat. The girl was history – he’d seen those kinds of convulsions before, and he knew what they meant.

  Matt slowed as he neared the corner and checked his watch – five-thirty, so maybe another forty minutes to go before dawn. The inevitable police would take their time at that hour, but it would still be wise to put some distance between himself and Phuket. There was a good chance that the motel clerk might give them a decent description, and even if every other person in town seemed to be a middle-aged Caucasian man on vacation, he didn’t want to press his luck any further than he already had.

  He glanced around the building’s edge and, seeing nobody on the larger street, hesitated for a moment and then opened his bag to retrieve another shirt – this one a light-green short-sleeved dress shirt he’d acquired in Bangkok. He pulled it on and stuffed his current one into the sack; then, with that flimsiest of disguises, made for the bars, where he was hopeful he could get a cab to the airport and from there another headed north. He knew the country well enough to know that trying to board a plane in Phuket was a bad idea, but if he could make it to the mainland – a town with an airport, like Krabi – he could get out of the area and go to ground someplace more remote.

  Which, at this point, as he rubbed his neck, sore from where the woman’s shoe had gotten him, sounded like a good strategy, given how badly his attempt at a beach holiday had gone.

  As he approached the nightclubs, the disco music still pumping from the tireless speakers, he smiled. Last time he’d decided a beach in Thailand was a good destination they’d burned down his house and killed everyone around him. This time had also rendered a poor result, although not as dramatic.

  Maybe, he thought, next time he’d stick to the jungle.

  So far that had proved the safest choice.

  And right now, safety sounded pretty good.

  Chapter 32

  Doha, Qatar

  The dingy walls of the safe house seemed to seep despair as dawn’s rays brought the tense group no closer to finding the bomb than they had been two hours earlier. Jet paced the rough tile floor, her usual calm marred by an anxiety that was palpable as the minutes ticked by with no furthe
r contact from headquarters.

  When the phone rang, Jet lunged for it on the dining room table, now the epicenter of their ad hoc situation room, and stabbed the call activation button.

  “I have news. A radiation sensor was triggered at the port at about the same time a guard was shot. So the bomb is hot – we have no idea how much radiation it’s leaking, but it is, which means that we may have a shot at locating it using our satellite. We have the ability to locate minute amounts of radiation if we know what we’re looking for. In this case, Ben, the technician, confirmed that the business end was uranium, so we’re calibrating the satellite to look for any traces in Doha. It’ll be in position in twenty minutes, and we should get several good hours before it’s orbited out of range again.”

  “How long until you have something?” Jet demanded, her words laced with impatience.

  “If there’s anything to be had, I would think within the hour. But this isn’t an exact science. This is all very new stuff, and it’s not a hundred percent. Usually we would be looking for something larger. I just wanted you to know that we’re on it,” the director said.

  “What about the local authorities? Aren’t they freaking out with the Arab League meeting happening today and a radiation sensor sounding the alarm?”

  “Apparently not, although it’s hard to tell for sure. The attack on the guard is being treated as a robbery issue. We only found out about the radiation sensor just now, and nobody’s made the connection. Remember that there are innocent things that could set one off – poorly shielded medical containers with radioactive sources being by far the most common. Qatar doesn’t have the same concerns that a port like New York does, so the sensors aren’t nearly as sophisticated. According to the report, the government will have a hazmat team going into the container area today, but it’s a big place with hundreds of possible suspects.”