Speaking personally, Shepherd had a lousy history with Phuket. A couple of years back a former law partner from Washington had come to Shepherd and begged for his help. The fellow had been framed for embezzling tens of millions of dollars from a Philippine bank he thought he had been running but eventually discovered was merely a front for a worldwide network of crooks and criminals. He ended up hiding out in Phuket. Shepherd followed him there and found the missing money for the fellow easily enough. But it led to absolutely nothing good for either one of them.
Then, a year or so after that, an immensely wealthy and wildly infamous American who was on the lam from a variety of charges in the US also took refuge in Phuket. His name was Plato Karsarkis and the press dubbed him the world’s most famous fugitive. It was clear that Karsarkis had crossed the wrong people and the political smell from the charges against him was unmistakable. Plato wanted a presidential pardon and he thought Shepherd was just the man to get it for him. Reluctantly, Shepherd took on the case, but before it was resolved that one turned sour on him as well.
Two prominent clients in Phuket. Two prominent clients who, it has to be said, ended up somewhat less than fully satisfied with his services. Not a hell of a good track record for Jack Shepherd where Phuket was concerned.
***
KEUR STAYED SILENT until they were well outside the Bangkok Bank Building, but the minute they hit the sidewalk he blurted out the one question he wanted Shepherd to answer.
“Does that mean General Kitnarok is in Phuket, too?”
Shepherd thought about Sally and Charlie and how he had always admired the closeness of their partnership.
“If Sally’s there, Charlie is, too.”
“Any idea where?”
Shepherd wanted to tell Keur that Phuket was a big island and he had no idea at all where the Kitnaroks could be. But he did know. He knew exactly where they were.
Charlie had bought a house in Phuket about a year before. Of course, Charlie owned a lot of houses in a lot of places, some of which he had probably even forgotten he owned, which was why the significance of this particular house hadn’t occurred to Shepherd before. The legal owner of the Phuket house was a shell company in the British Virgin Islands. As far as Shepherd knew, nobody realized the house actually belonged to Charlie. Nobody, that is, except for him. He knew because he had handled the purchase for Charlie and he had set up the British Virgin Islands company that held the title.
It was an extraordinary house on a rise overlooking the Andaman Sea just south of Nai Thon Beach, a relatively isolated area on the northeast coast of the island only a few minutes from Phuket International Airport. Charlie had never spent a single night in the place as far as Shepherd knew, but there was a staff there that kept it ready for his use at a moment’s notice.
Shepherd knew a lot about that house because, as it happened, he also knew the seller. That had made the transaction easy for both sides, although it was not easy for him. He had hoped he would never have to think about that damned house again because it had belonged to his former client, Plato Karsarkis, the guy who wanted Shepherd to use his influence in Washington to score him a presidential pardon.
Now Charlie owned Plato’s former residence in Phuket.
And Shepherd had not the slightest doubt that Charlie was there right then.
Charlie was there. Sally was there. Six million dollars in cash converted into Thai baht was there. And within the next four hours, Shepherd would bet a white 737 would be unloading a cargo of arms and ammunition about ten minutes from there.
It all added up. He just didn’t like what it added up to.
“Come on, Jack,” Keur prompted. “We don’t have time for all this. Do you know where General Kitnarok is or don’t you?”
Shepherd took a deep breath and let it out again.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I know where he is.”
FIFTY-THREE
SHEPHERD DIALED THE number of the Nokia he had given Kate.
“The plane is going to Phuket,” Shepherd said when she answered. “That’s where they’re unloading the weapons.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me. I know. They’re going to Phuket.”
He hoped to Christ he was right.
“Okay,” Kate said. “We’ll let them land and then take the plane and whoever is meeting it there on the ground.”
Shepherd said nothing.
Kate read his silence correctly. “You think General Kitnarok is in Phuket, too, don’t you? You think he’ll be there to meet the plane.”
Shepherd hesitated. The whole idea had been to keep Charlie and Kate from destroying each other, not to feed Charlie to his enemies.
“I just want to talk to him, Jack. If General Kitnarok and I can talk, maybe we can stop all this from happening.”
“There are people on your side who probably have other ideas, Kate. I don’t feel good about setting Charlie up for them.”
“You have my word that nothing will happen to him.”
Shepherd trusted Kate, of course, but he wasn’t sure she was making a promise she could keep. He ought to be there with Charlie. Then he could be sure she kept it.
That was a problem, of course. By the time he made it out to the airport, got himself on a flight to Phuket, and landed at the airport there, everything would probably be over. Harvey would already be on the ground and Kate’s people would have the cargo under their control. If Charlie was there, too, they would have him as well.
But maybe Charlie wouldn’t be there. Maybe he would keep his distance from the shipment. If he did, what would he do when he found out Kate had seized the guns? According to Kate, there was a shipment of guns already in the country and nobody knew where it was. Did Charlie know? Would he decide that was all he was going to get, that the yellow shirts were getting too close, and push the button? Would Kate grabbing the new shipment cause him to turn the red shirts loose to do their worst?
Shepherd knew he had to get to Charlie before Kate’s people took Harvey down. He had to be there before Charlie even started thinking about pushing that button.
“Can you get me a helicopter?” he asked. “Something fast.”
When Plato Karsarkis built a pair of tennis courts alongside his house in Phuket, some people wondered why he needed two courts. But Shepherd knew. They had been re-enforced to double as a landing pad for helicopters. The tennis courts hadn’t actually been used for that purpose very often, almost certainly not at all since Charlie had owned the property, but surely they were still there. Charlie didn’t play tennis, but he would have had no reason to rip out the courts either.
By helicopter, he could get to Charlie’s house from Bangkok in about two hours. That was more time than a commercial jet would take to get to Phuket but, door-to-door, a hell of a lot less time than organizing ground transportation and shuffling in and out of two commercial airports. Of course, showing up in the middle of Charlie’s compound in a government helicopter might not be such a hot idea if his red shirts had automatic weapons, but what was life without a little risk?
“I’ll have the rotors turning on a Blackhawk at Don Mueang in thirty minutes,” Kate said. “Go to the military VIP terminal. I’ll leave word to let you in.”
“Make it twenty minutes.”
“Fine. I’ll see you there.”
“Wait a minute,” Shepherd said. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m coming to Phuket with you. I told you that I want to talk to Charlie.”
“No, you’re not coming with me. That’s stupid, Kate. Anything could happen when we get there. They might start shooting.”
“Don’t argue with me, Jack. It’s my goddamned helicopter.”
She had him there.
“Okay,” Shepherd said, “but just you.”
“I can’t leave Mutt and Jeff,” Kate said. “They wouldn’t let me go without them.”
“This is turning into a goddamned mob scene.”
“We’re
not negotiating here, Jack.”
Shepherd took a deep breath and let it out again.
“Okay,” he said. “You and Mutt and Jeff. That’s it?”
“Right. That’s it.”
“See you at Don Mueang. In twenty minutes.”
He clicked off the phone and shoved it in his pocket. Keur put a hand on his arm.
“I’m going, too,” he said.
Shepherd threw his hands in the air.
“Sure. Why the hell not? The more the merrier. Let’s take some cold chicken and a bottle of wine and make a flipping picnic out of it.”
***
THEY FOUND A taxi driver who led a secret life as a NASCAR driver, handed him a hundred dollar bill, and exactly twenty minutes later they completed the one hour drive by screeching up to the military’s VIP terminal on the east side of Don Mueang. One of the two guards at the door phoned somebody for instructions while the other watched them carefully, his finger twitching nervously around the trigger of the M-16 held across his chest.
Shepherd glanced over at the parking garage from which he and Kate had watched Harvey four days earlier. Had that really been only four days ago? It seemed to him like at least a couple of lifetimes. The guard hung up the telephone, snapped off a crisp salute, and slammed his boot heels together with a resounding bang. Then he opened the terminal door and held it for them.
Inside, Shepherd looked out through a glass wall onto the field where the rotors were turning very slowly on a helicopter painted mat black from nose to tail. Before he could ask anybody if that was the Blackhawk that Kate had promised, the door behind them burst open and Mutt and Jeff pushed into the terminal with Kate right behind them. She headed straight for Shepherd.
“If you’re wrong about where that plane is going to land, we’re not going to get another chance,” she said.
Shepherd said nothing.
“I just hope you’re right.”
Shepherd hoped so, too.
“Who is this?” Kate asked, pointing at Keur.
“This is the FBI agent I told you about. Special Agent Leonard Keur from Washington.”
Keur and Kate shook hands and sized each other up. Kate didn’t introduce Keur to Mutt and Jeff. They weren’t really the introduction types.
“What has the FBI got to do—” she started to ask Keur, but Shepherd interrupted.
“It’s not official,” he said. “Keur has been helping me for his own reasons. He wants to go and that seems only fair to me. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him.”
Kate thought that over for a moment, then nodded. “Where do I tell the pilots to go?”
“Tell them to fly to a point three miles south of the Phuket airport. I’ll direct them from there.”
Kate nodded again and without another word headed for the Blackhawk. Mutt and Jeff stuck close behind her.
Shepherd caught Keur’s eye, gave him a little shrug, and they followed.
FIFTY-FOUR
A LITTLE OVER an hour later the mangrove swamps beneath the Blackhawk gave way to the azure waters of Phangnga Bay. To the right, the twin spans of the Sarasin Bridge formed the only connection between the island of Phuket and the mainland. And dead ahead was Phuket Airport’s only runway.
Shepherd glanced at his watch. He figured they were probably an hour ahead of Harvey, maybe two. Unless of course he was completely full of shit and Harvey really was going to Don Mueang exactly as its flight plan said it was. In which case he guessed it didn’t really matter what time it was. They were screwed.
Unbuckling his shoulder harness, he moved forward and leaned into the cockpit. Getting the pilots’ attention, Shepherd pointed in the direction of Charlie’s house since it was too noisy to do anything else. The Blackhawk swayed slightly as the pilots adjusted their course to the south. Shepherd went back to his seat and buckled in again.
They rattled on across Phuket for another few minutes and Shepherd’s eyes searched for familiar landmarks. He scanned the island’s west coast, counting off the deep coves rimmed with sandy beaches that bit into the island from the Andaman Sea. Charlie’s house was above Nai Thon Beach, which was the second cove to the south. Or maybe it was the third. Now that he was looking at the island from the air, he wasn’t absolutely certain anymore.
That would really be a pisser, he thought, if after all this I can’t find the damned house.
Whichever cove it was on, he did remember clearly what the house looked like. It was a U-shaped structure of glass and steel with white-washed walls that hurt your eyes to look at in the tropical sun. The house was at the very peak of the headland just south of the beach, right at the center of a walled compound with a scattering of satellite buildings, a swimming pool, and the two tennis courts where they were going to land. The house stood out spectacularly from everything else, like a giant flying saucer that had landed at the edge of the jungle. Surely he couldn’t miss that, could he?
He missed it.
The Blackhawk passed over the west coast and headed out into the Andaman Sea. One of the pilots twisted around and looked at Shepherd. There was nothing ahead of them now but India and it was a thousand miles away over open water. The guy clearly wondered if Shepherd had any idea where they were going. Shepherd found that entirely understandable. He was wondering exactly the same thing.
Raising his forefinger and rolling it in a circling motion, since he had no idea what else to do, Shepherd felt the Blackhawk swing into a bank. He watched as the earth outside his window rotated and the beaches along the west coast came back into view. Then he unstrapped himself and moved forward again, leaning into the cockpit between the pilots. As soon as he looked east through the Blackhawk’s windshield, he saw the house. It was dead on their nose.
He pointed to it and the pilot nodded. Shepherd felt the Blackhawk begin to tilt down, but he put his hand on the pilot’s arm and shook his head. Pointing to the house again, he drew a rectangle in the air and made a lifting gesture with his open palm. He wanted the pilot to fly a pattern around the house at a high enough altitude not be conspicuous while he looked the place over. The pilot seemed to understand immediately.
The co-pilot obviously got the idea, too. Without a word, he bent down, produced a pair of field glasses from somewhere, and handed them to Shepherd. Shepherd nodded his thanks, took the glasses, and went back to his seat.
***
THE HOUSE WAS just as Shepherd remembered it. Huge, sprawling, and spectacular.
To the west, a sheer rock cliff plunged a hundred feet into the Andaman Sea, and to the east a thick jungle of banana, palm, and rubber trees closed in. Only a single narrow asphalt road twisted through the two or three miles from the highway up to the house. It passed a security gate and a guardhouse, then crested a rise and dead-ended in a gravel courtyard with a fountain in its center that was directly in front of the main house.
Shepherd scanned the property through the field glasses, but he couldn’t make out very much. The heat rising from the jungle was intense and it bounced the Blackhawk around. He struggled to hold the glasses steady. He needed some indication of how many people were in the compound.
There were a half dozen or so vehicles in the courtyard in front of the house. Most of them looked like pickup trucks, but most of the vehicles in Thailand were pickup trucks so that was hardly surprising. He saw people there, too, not in huge numbers, but a dozen or so in small groups scattered around the compound. Just at the edge of the jungle there was a clump of what looked like tents, but he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps they was just tarpaulins covering some kind of construction work. Of course, no matter how many people and vehicles he spotted from the air, there could easily be a lot more of both. Vehicles were often garaged, and it was so damned hot that he doubted many people would be crazy enough to be standing around outside either.
There were no obvious signs of heavy security. He could see no dogs or foot patrols around the compound’s fences. The two green-tinted tennis courts looked exactly a
s he remembered them.
Shepherd knew it was possible he had simply been wrong about the weapons being bound for Phuket and Charlie using his compound as a staging area. Maybe, right at that very moment, Harvey was on approach to Don Mueang and Charlie’s people were lining up there to collect their new weapons and march on the yellow shirts right in the middle of downtown Bangkok.
It was far late to worry about that now, of course. They had found Charlie’s compound and there were people and vehicles down there. But what were they doing there? Shepherd simply had no way of knowing for sure.
But he also knew his bet was already on the table and the big wheel was spinning around and around. It was time to find out whether he was a winner or a loser.
Shepherd moved up to the cockpit again. He leaned in between the pilots and handed the field glasses back to the co-pilot. The pilot twisted around and looked at Shepherd, his raised eyebrows posing the obvious question.
Shepherd nodded and pointed his index finger straight down.
FIFTY-FIVE
SHEPHERD HAD NO idea what to expect when they landed. But what actually happened wouldn’t have made it onto any list of possibilities he might have drawn up.
Nothing at all happened.
The moment the Blackhawk’s skids hit the tennis court the co-pilot jumped into the cabin and jerked open the big sliding door. It rolled back with a metallic grinding sound and slid along its tracks until it banged to a stop against the fuselage. Then the last of the noise from the Blackhawk’s engines died away and the silence that followed was almost total.
A half dozen local men dressed in shorts and T-shirts lounged on the grass about fifty yards away from where they had put down. If the men had weapons, Shepherd couldn’t see them.
World of Trouble (9786167611136) Page 30
