Chimera

by Ken Goddard

  They had almost completed covered the western edge of the Preserve with four successive passes when Narusan suddenly yelled out and then pointed at a distant burst of light — a flash that quickly steadied out into a rhythmic pulsing.

  As Narusan carefully read out coordinates from a map into his helmet mike, transmitting the information to their ground team, Achara turned the helicopter toward the flashing light.

  At a landing site in the Khlong Preserve

  Ten minutes later, Achara landed the surveillance helicopter in a clearing near a pair of jeeps that were lighting the landing site with their crossed headlights. She and Narusan hopped out of the chopper and ran to one of the jeeps.

  After a brief discussion about who was in charge of the operation that left no doubt in anyone’s mind, Achara jumped into the driver’s seat, yelled at everyone — specifically including Chief Narusan — to hold on, then accelerated out of the landing area, leaving the former jeep driver guard the helicopter.

  In a jeep in the Khlong Preserve

  Captain Achara Kulawnit continued to accelerate the four-wheel-drive Cherokee jeep through the deep muddy ruts of a tree-lined dirt road leading into the western section of the Khlong Saeng Wildlife Preserve, pushing her battered Thai Forestry Police patrol vehicle — and the two others following closely behind — to their limits of their engines and headlights because she sensed they were finally on to something that might give her access to the killers who had dared to strike at her brother and father and fellow Rangers.

  Next to her in the front passenger seat, Chief Narusan — seemingly oblivious to the police captain’s manic driving — read a map with a flashlight and monitored an electronic tracking device mounted on the jeep’s dash while Colonel Kulawnit’s two re-assigned bodyguards held onto the overhead safety straps with one hand and their M4 carbines with the other.

  In the second jeep, the Ranger lieutenant — who had started out in charge of this raid team — in the front passenger seat and the senior sergeant behind the steering wheel chuckled approvingly at the driving skills of Colonel Kulawnit’s famously aggressive daughter, while the three constables stuffed into the back seat simply held on.

  In the trailing jeep, the junior sergeant in the front passenger seat chided his corporal — a lesser-skilled driver — to go faster while the second trio of constables in the back seat rolled their eyes and prayed.

  Every few seconds, Captain Achara Kulawnit briefly took her eyes off the road to check her odometer.

  At the 5.8 kilometer mark, she slowed down, made a sharp left turn onto a very narrow mud trail just barely wide enough for the jeep to slip through, and followed a crossed-over set of old tire tracks for another thirty seconds until she came to a small, chain-sawed clearing in front of an old maintenance storage shed.

  Achara brought the jeep to a sliding stop in front of the shed, shut off the engine, and then turned to Narusan; only vaguely aware that the driver of the trailing jeep had taken up a blocking position on the road, and that her newly assigned bodyguards and all of the uniformed Rangers were rapidly taking up protective positions around her jeep, carbines and assault rifles aimed outward and at the ready.

  Major Preithat had made one thing very clear to the assault team members: anyone who allowed Captain Achara Kulawnit to be injured in her search for the killers of their fellow Rangers would answer to the Colonel personally; an unthinkable possibility that the Colonel’s two hardened, chastened, re-assigned and now coldly furious bodyguards informed the other uniformed Rangers would simply not happen. They would all die first; an admonition firmly echoed by the assault team’s senior sergeant who had been a close friend of Sergeant Tongproh.

  “Where do we go now?” Achara asked, the controlled anger in her voice matching the fierce expression in her dark eyes.

  The Chief Petty Officer consulted his electronic device and map once more, and pointed with his open left hand at a distant point in the trees off to their left. Then, having done so, he set the map and electronic device aside, pulled an IR-filtered flashlight out from under the seat, and then reached up and snapped the night-vision goggles over his eyes. Achara did the same.

  Outside, one at a time, the two uniformed sergeants directed the highly-trained members of their assault team to put on and activate their own night-vision gear.

  On foot in the Khlong Preserve

  They went in a single file, Chief Narusan and the senior sergeant in the lead, closely followed by Achara and her two mothering bodyguards, and backed up by the corporal and two constables. The junior sergeant and the other four constables maintained a rear-guard position around the shed and jeeps.

  Twenty yards into the dense forest, everyone paused while Narusan pulled a small transmitter out of his jacket pocket and pressed the center button. Instantly, off to their right and deep in the trees, a periodically-flashing firefly became faintly visible.

  “Ha, good CSI!” the chief exclaimed to the senior sergeant, smiling broadly.

  Using the flickering light as a guide — the senior sergeant, Achara and her two bodyguards probing their way with long sticks to scare off lurking snakes and predators while Narusan kept the distant flasher in sight, and the three trailing Rangers monitored their flanks with forefingers softly brushing against the trigger guards of their rifles — the assault team slowly and methodically worked their way through the trees, brush, fronds and clinging vines until, finally, they came to a small, machete-cut, ten-foot-square clearing that was already starting to be covered over and filled with new plant growth.

  Above their heads, the newly-awakened flasher originally attached to the extended tree limb by Quince Lanyard pulsed cheerfully; the intermittent bursts of light clearly revealing the irregular squares of sod beneath the new forest growth that hadn’t quite grown back together yet.

  Moments later, roles reversed, Achara, the senior sergeant and the two bodyguards maintained a watchful vigilance while Chief Narusan and the three uniformed Rangers got down on their hands and knees to dig up chunks of sod, tear away lengths of board, and cut away sections of black plastic tarp under the blinding greenish glare of eight IR-filtered flashlights that had been secured to surrounding tree limbs and branches.

  Fifteen minutes later, Captain Achara Kulawnit stood at the edge of the six-by-six-by-eight-foot-deep hole and stared silently down at the pair of twisted bodies at the bottom partially covered by machete-chopped lengths of bamboo.

  Beside her, Chief Narusan was carefully arranging a pair of machetes, three back-packs, three scoped hunting rifles in waterproof cases, two tied plastic bags filled with shredded paper, several cut-up handfuls of thin nylon cord, and three separate piles of chopped bamboo sections — divided into the piles by length — on a clean tarp that he’d brought along for just this purpose.

  As Achara Kulawnit continued to stare down at the twisted bodies, the anger in her heart growing, Narusan paused in his inventorying to pick up and examine the four sections of thick bamboo that had been sharpened at one end and visibly hammered on at the other end. All four of the sharpened ends had clearly been driven into soft soil to a depth of about six inches.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, forcing herself to look away from the bodies.

  “Thinking CSI,” the chief explained as he continued to examine the cut ends of the bamboo. “Khun Ged said a good crime scene investigator should always think about what he sees; not just collect, package and tag evidence like a robot.”

  “Do those pieces of bamboo tell you something?”

  “Maybe… yes, I think so,” the chief nodded firmly.

  “That’s good,” she said as she reached into her jacket pocket for her satellite phone, “we definitely need to know more than we do right now.” Sighing, she selected a rarely-used number from the phone’s menu, thumbed the TALK button, and then waited patiently for the satellite relays to make the connection.

  Finally, a familiar voice answered. Major Preithat’s wife, sounding very sleepy
.

  “This is Captain Achara Kulawnit,” she spoke into the phone. “I apologize for calling so late, but may I speak to Major Preithat?” A pause. “Yes, I’m sure he’s very tired, but please wake him anyway. Tell him it’s very important.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Redmond, WA

  The Hood Electronics building was located in an older industrial section of Redmond, Washington, just west of the Sammamish River and about three miles north of the far more spectacular Microsoft facilities. According to King County records, the one-story cement block structure had been built thirty-six years ago, and had five previous owners — all electronic manufacturing operations that had quickly gone out of business.

  But from Special Agent Gedimin Bulatt’s perspective, the grey and purple paint on the building looked new; the surrounding parking lot for employees and visitors had recently been resurfaced and striped; there were forty-two cars in the lot — almost all relatively new and well-cared-for — taking up almost half the parking spaces; and the Plexiglas sign high over the main entrance looked modern and intriguing.

  Must have found yourself an interesting and profitable niche in the electronics manufacturing business, Mr. Rightmore, Bulatt thought as he put down his telephoto-lens-equipped digital camera. Can’t wait to find out what that might be.

  Bulatt figured he had every right to be suspicious and skeptical of what appeared, on the surface, to be a perfectly normal light manufacturing company.

  In the past hour, a total of eight supposed customers had driven into the Hood Electronics parking lot, entered the building, and then departed ten-to-fifteen minutes later. The two individuals who had left with small packages in their hands displayed all the outward signs of being biologists or naturalists. The remaining six — actually three separate pairs, all of whom had left empty-handed — looked and acted, as far as Bulatt was concerned, like federal agents or cops.

  Especially the last two — the ones he’d just photographed — who gave the distinct impression of being off-duty members of a SWAT team; as well as men who put a lot of emphasis on their weight training, aggressive demeanors, and constant sweep-checks of their surroundings.

  Surprised you guys aren’t wearing bright red SWAT t-shirts with eight-inch-letters on the front; which actually wouldn’t be a bad idea, Bulatt thought as he made a few more notations in his field notebook, not liking what he was seeing at all.

  The federal, state and local law enforcement academy lectures were routinely filled with horror-story examples of how things could go terribly wrong when undercover investigators from completely different or isolated agencies suddenly found themselves converged on a single suspect or location; having no idea that anyone else was in the immediate area.

  It was a relevant concern to Bulatt because he was reasonably sure there were at least two identifiable federal agencies among those three sets of supposed customers; both of whom were known for keeping their shooting review boards very busy.

  Wonderful, just wonderful, Bulatt muttered to himself as he tapped his fingers contemplatively against his field notebook, checked his watch again, and then stared out across the parking lot. Now what?

  The ideal solution would have been to maintain his position for another hour or so, observing and photographing the apparently steady stream of clients who did business with Hood Electronics; and thereby, ideally, gain some sense of what was going on before he inadvertently stepped into some kind of cops-and crooks crossfire.

  But it was one-fifty-five in the afternoon, he was still recovering from jet-lag, and his appointment with the owner of Hood Electronics was for 2:00 PM. It was also starting to rain steadily now, which would make viewing and photographing through the windows of his rented van increasingly difficult. And if the temperature dropped another couple of degrees — as it likely would — the rain would turn to snow, which would make covert photo surveillance in an open parking lot virtually impossible anyway.

  And just to make things more interesting, the two likely SWAT team guys were still sitting in their dark blue van, about half-way between his position and the building… and there was at least one other van with dark-tinted windows in the parking lot that seemed to be occupied

  … and a new green truck rigged with an over-the-cab camper unit in the warehouse was parked across the street, about a hundred yards away, at an odd angle, and generally looking out-of-place among a half-dozen much-older cars and trucks.

  All of which told Bulatt that he’d probably been under surveillance from the moment he’d driven into the Hood Electronics parking lot.

  The question was: by whom?

  He was tempted to pick up his cell phone, call Mr. Rightmore’s secretary, and ask to change his appointment; but he knew that might make things even worse.

  If he was right about the general occupations of the supposed Hood Electronics customers, it was likely that one or more of the interested parties would follow him back to his hotel room — probably using a team and vehicle he hadn’t seen yet — and monitor his activities until they finally figured out he was a covert federal wildlife agent working a Clouded Leopard case with other Interpol officers.

  Which wouldn’t be all that big of a deal, all things considered, as long as one of those interested parties isn’t a group of extremely dangerous international hunting guides who probably have special ops training and weapons; and may be looking to replenish the flashers they’d lost at Tanga Island a few days ago, Bulatt thought morosely.

  Shit.

  Sighing to himself, Bulatt placed his wallet, camera, field notebook, 40-caliber Sig Sauer pistol, extra magazines, badge and credentials into an extremely sturdy titanium camera case that couldn’t be opened easily without either the combination or some serious metal-working tools; took out his covert wallet; locked the case; slid it behind his seat; picked up a small zipped black nylon satchel; then got out of the van, locked the door, ducked his head away from the wind-driven rain, and began walking toward the brightly-painted building.

  In doing so, he was able to ignore the seemingly empty dark blue van parked about ten spaces ahead and to his right.

  At the building entrance, he paused to take a final look around the parking lot, acting as if he’d been waiting impatiently all this time for someone else to arrive. Then he pulled the door open and walked inside.

  The receptionist at the front counter looked up expectantly with a pleasant smile. “Yes, may I help you?”

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Drew Pratt.” Bulatt handed her one of his covert business cards that listed him as a research biologist for the state of Idaho. “I have an appointment to see Mr. Rightmore this morning.”

  The receptionist checked her schedule.

  “Yes, here you are; Dr. Pratt, nine A.M. Just a moment please.” She picked up a phone, punched in a two-digit number, waited a moment, then said “Mr. Rightmore, I have a Dr. Pratt here to see you. Yes, sir, I’ll send him right in.”

  The receptionist looked back up at Bulatt. “If you’ll go inside that door, and walk down the hallway,” she said, pointing to the doorway on her left, “Mr. Rightmore will meet you there.”

  At the end of the hallway, as promised, Bulatt was met by a non-descript man in his mid-fifties — wearing casual deck shoes, khakis, and a buttoned-down collared shirt — who could have been, believably, anything and anyone from a grown-up electronics nerd to a covert operative nearing mandatory retirement.

  “Dr. Pratt,” the man said, offering a firm but welcoming hand-shake, and then gesturing for Bulatt to follow him inside a large room that looked like a rarely-cleaned electronics research lab. “I’m Bill Rightmore. Welcome to my playground. I understand you’re interested in some of our tracking devices. How can I help you?”

  “Well, I was hoping you could tell me if these flashers were made by your company; and, if so, anything at all about the people who might have purchased them,” Bulatt said as he unzipped the black nylon satchel, pulled out one of the flashers from Tanga Island,
and one of the collars that had been cut off the two Clouded Leopards found by the Thailand wildlife authorities.

  He handed the two items to Rightmore, and then zipped the satchel closed and placed it on a nearby layout table top.

  Rightmore set the collar aside on a stainless-steel-topped workbench, placed the flasher under the lens of a dissecting microscope, and began to examine it closely.

  “Yes, this is definitely one of our flasher units,” Rightmore confirmed, looking up from the microscope, “a WB-7E, our latest and most expensive model. We’re actually quite proud of these new units. They’re quite small, as you can see; but still capable of sending out a pulsed signal in the IR, UV and visual bands of the spectrum in addition to the standard UHF and VHF frequencies. They’re also self-charging by solar cell; and can be adjusted as to signal output, duration and start/stop time by a remote transmitter. And this — ” he picked up the severed and still-blood-stained collar with attached flasher, “- appears to be an interesting modification of a WB-7E.”

  Rightmore examined the collar unit more closely for a few seconds. “Yes, definitely a WB-7E, with a larger solar cell re-charger and battery mounted on the collar.” Then he looked up at Bulatt. “May I ask where you obtained it?”

  “One of our maintenance workers found it on a big cat that had been shot in one of our state parks,” Bulatt said. “Apparently, someone had been tracking it for some purpose; but it definitely wasn’t one of our biologists or wardens. That’s why we’re hoping you’d be able to link us to whoever’s using your devices in our area.”

  Rightmore seemed to consider the idea for a few seconds.

  “We may be able to give you some leads; but — as you probably noticed — we don’t put serial numbers on these particular devices, so tracking them back to a specific individual really isn’t possible. However, this collar modification might give us something to go on. There aren’t many people working in this specific field of research, and most of us know do each other. Would, uh, these people be in some sort of trouble?”