by Steven Gore
“That’s the bad news,” Cobra said.
“And the . . .”
But Gage didn’t need to finish his question and Cobra didn’t need to answer it. The only reason Sunny Glory used a smuggling boat was because they had something to smuggle.
They’d found and lost the chips in the same instant.
CHAPTER 46
After collecting a change of clothes, a driver, and a bodyguard, Kai and Cobra had headed toward the Thai-Burmese border, aiming for Mae Sai, east of the lab Eight Iron had described. They’d swung by a branch of Siri Construction at the north end of Bangkok and picked up shortwave radios as backups to their cell phones. Assuming they could locate and follow the heroin, there was no way to guarantee the entire route would have cell service. They might even end up on the open sea. They’d slept on and off during the ten-hour drive and arrived midmorning at an empty roadside café on the outskirts of Mae Sai where Kasa was waiting.
As Kai introduced Cobra to Kasa, they squared their shoulders as men who knew each other by reputation, then sat down and leaned over the worn teak table.
“We followed the heroin all night,” Kasa told them, in Thai. “The mule train is no more than two hours from town. At this point, we don’t know which warehouse they’ll take it to or where it will go from there.”
“How will we follow it?” Cobra asked.
“A truck of our own. Drivers on the highway treat each other like comrades. We’ll fit in.”
Cobra cast a glance toward Kai. The reason to use a truck was so that Eight Iron could transport the heroin back once he grabbed it.
“And if ours breaks down?” Kai asked.
“That’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
“Why not carry motorcycles in the bed?” Cobra said.
“I’ll call Eight Iron.” Kasa rose to his feet. “It’s up to him.”
He returned a few minutes later.
“Eight Iron says you can send one motorcycle rider and we’ll send one.”
“I’ll do it myself,” Cobra said, “and Kai will ride with the driver in the cab.”
Kasa shook his head. “Eight Iron won’t allow it.” He looked at Kai, but spoke to Cobra. “Her husband will blame Eight Iron if something happens to you and he doesn’t need that kind of trouble.”
Cobra and Kai knew they couldn’t force the issue, so they let it go.
Kasa directed them to his Land Cruiser parked in front of the café and got in behind the wheel. After Cobra took the front passenger seat, Kai signaled her driver and bodyguard to follow in her car, then climbed in behind Cobra. As Kasa drove them toward the outskirts of Mae Sai, Kai called Gage, speaking in English, knowing Kasa couldn’t understand.
“I have two things for you,” Kai said. “First, Cobra’s people are working their sources in Taiwan. The only thing they’re certain of is that the boat turned north instead of south. They’re trying to find out exactly where it’s headed, but for security reasons sometimes the captains of these boats don’t even know where they’re supposed to land until they’re already way out on the water.”
“Ah Tien’s address books suggests he had connections all along the coast,” Gage said, “from Bangkok all the way up to Shanghai.”
“That means we have less than three days to find the boat in a hundred thousand square miles of ocean.”
“More if it the storm my yacht guy in Hong Kong warned Cobra about forces them to take a wide route.”
“And second, Eight Iron won’t let me go along.”
“Then we’ll have to come up with a way to protect ourselves that he will accept.” Gage thought for a moment, and an idea to apply an old method to a new situation came to him. “Do you have people who can hold Kasa for a few days?”
“My driver and bodyguard. They won’t like it, but they’ll do it. They can hide him in the Siri Construction warehouse near Chiang Rai.”
“Then pull over. Give Cobra your phone and Eight Iron’s number. Tell him to walk far enough away so that Kasa can’t overhear. He can call Eight Iron on his own phone and translate for me.”
Once Cobra had walked twenty yards from the cars, he put both his own and Kai’s cell phones to his ears.
“I’ve got Eight Iron on the other line,” Cobra told Gage.
“Tell him we have some security concerns and we need to be businesslike about it.”
Cobra translated for Eight Iron.
“He understands.”
“Tell him that you’ll be riding in the surveillance truck and that Kasa refused to allow Kai to go along.”
“Okay . . . He says he doesn’t want to take the risk.”
“I’m not going to argue with him. I want Kai with me anyway. Tell him we need a guarantee he won’t steal the heroin.”
“Okay . . . he understands.”
“Now tell him we want to hold Kasa as security, but we’ll release him when we’re satisfied that the heroin is out of his reach.”
Cobra translated. “He agrees.”
“Why’d he give in so easily? He must know how much the deal is for and that the load will be worth at least sixty million dollars wholesale when it arrives in the U.S.”
Gage heard Cobra speak a few words in the background.
“He says he trusts you when you say you’ll bring down Ah Ming.”
“That’s not a very good reason to pass on that much money. Tell him we want Kasa to surrender to us before the heroin leaves Mae Sai.”
“He says okay and wants me to put Kasa on the phone.”
“Listen in and then take Kasa’s phone away from him.”
A few minutes later, Kai called Gage with the news that everything was settled.
“Eight Iron was way too agreeable,” Kai said.
“Which only means we don’t understand what he’s up to. Make sure your people take seriously the kind of guy they’re dealing with. Regardless of how Kasa is acting now, he can strike any time. Remember what happened when Ah Ming ripped off Eight Iron. There was lots of blood in Bangkok and most of it was on Kasa’s hands.”
“What about the fishing boat?”
“I’m working on an angle. Have Cobra call his people in Taiwan and get the names and hull numbers of all the boats that sailed out of that port around the same time as the one carrying the chips.”
“That’s assuming that they don’t repaint or renumber the one with the chips while it’s on the water.”
“If they do, then I guess we’ll be looking for the one with fresh paint.”
CHAPTER 47
Cobra looked over at Kasa, who was driving with what seemed to him to be the casual anticipation of a man leaving on a vacation, not on a journey that would leave him jailed in a makeshift cell in the industrial district of Chiang Rai. He skirted a valley carpeted with paddies and furnished with thatched-roof shelters for those who tended the rice, and then came to a stop at the base of a hill. He led them on a climb of a humid, sweaty six hundred feet, then pointed out one of his men sitting on a bicycle at the west end of the valley and another reclining, pretending to be asleep in the bed of a pickup truck parked at the east end. Forty-five minutes later, they spotted a twenty-mule train walking a path along the opposite hill, appearing and disappearing as it wound through the low rain forest.
Cobra scanned the sky looking for Thai police air surveillance. The most vulnerable time was when the heroin emerged from the jungle. But nothing marked the blue above them except some high clouds and birds in flight.
They watched the drivers transfer heavy burlap packs from the backs of the mules into the beds of two pickup trucks, then watched them roll east.
As soon as they returned to the Land Cruiser, Shan voices emerged from the staticky background of Kasa’s CB radio.
“My people are both behind and in front of the pickups,” Kasa told Kai and Cobra. “They’re moving slowly and checking for surveillance.”
Cobra knew the Wa wouldn’t take a direct route to get where they were going. They might tr
avel a complicated thirty kilometers to reach a destination a short ten kilometers away.
“They’ll signal us when the heroin gets to its destination.” Kasa smiled and patted his stomach. “It may be a while before we have a chance to eat again. We’ll stop on the way.”
Kai cast Cobra a watch-out-for-an-ambush glance.
Kasa drove to a shacklike café next to a four-story guest house fronting the river. As they walked to a table near the window facing the street, Kai telephoned her driver and bodyguard to tell them their location, then ordered food to be taken to them in the parking lot when they arrived.
Over bowls of spicy Thai rice noodles and Lao sausages, Cobra asked Kasa about his seeming lack of concern about his coming imprisonment.
“I have been through this before, except usually I’m the one doing the guarding. In a few days all this will seem foolish. Eight Iron doesn’t want your heroin. He has his own way of making money.”
Kai noticed two men enter the restaurant and then take a table at the opposite side. They had hill tribe features, but their slacks and shirts and neat haircuts put them a generation away from their home village.
“It’s really interesting,” Kasa said. “This is the first time anyone has been held hostage to guarantee a load owned by neither party.”
“Unusual circumstances,” Kai said, keeping her eyes on the men, “require unusual methods.”
She looked back at Kasa. He shook his head.
“Those two aren’t mine.” Kasa smiled. “I thought they were yours.”
They ate in silence until Kasa’s cell phone rang. He listened for a moment, then disconnected.
“The truck and the motorcycles are ready.”
Kasa drove to an auto repair shop where a wood-railed flatbed truck was waiting, its back covered with a green canvas. Two dark-skinned men rode up on battered Honda motorcycles. They looked over at Kai, then dusted off their worn T-shirts and khaki shorts and walked over.
Cobra felt an edge of unease as Kasa introduced them as Moby and Luck. Their names told him they were Kasa’s tribesmen and would be loyal to him over Eight Iron.
As if to emphasize that point, Moby spoke in Shan and Kasa translated.
“The pickups are at a warehouse on the east side of the town.”
“I’ll stand by with the truck,” Cobra said to Kasa. “You and Kai go take a look.”
Cobra walked with Kai to her car to retrieve the shortwave gear, then whispered, “Make sure your people are ready to grab Kasa if he tries to make a run for it.”
Kai nodded, and then reached under a rear passenger seat and slipped him a small 9mm.
They returned to the truck, agreed on frequencies, tested the equipment, and then Cobra, Moby, and Luck climbed into the cab.
Kai directed Kasa to get into the front passenger seat of the Land Cruiser and gestured for her bodyguard to sit behind him. She sat behind the driver.
Kasa guided them through the dirt backstreets of Mae Sai, past itinerant laborers and the food carts where they ate, flophouse hotels where they slept, and warehouses where they worked loading and unloading trucks.
After the third turn, Kasa glanced back at Kai’s bodyguard.
“What have you got pointed between my shoulders?” Kasa asked. “A Beretta, a Glock, maybe something Chinese?”
“Nothing you need to be concerned about,” Kai said. “We’re all friends, and we’ll stay friends as long as you cooperate.”
Cobra called to say he was stationed on a side street a hundred meters west of the warehouse.
Kasa signaled the driver to pull over just before an intersection. An old man squatting by the side of the road rose, approached his window, and whispered in Shan.
Kasa gestured toward the corner, making a curving motion with his hand. “He says the trucks they’re using are parked behind the warehouse.”
Kai pointed at the old man, “Koon poot passa Thai dai mai?” Do you speak Thai?
He nodded.
“Then we’ll go together to take a look.”
Kai glanced sideways at her bodyguard, then nodded toward Kasa. The bodyguard tilted the barrel upward, pointing it at the base of Kasa’s skull. She then walked with the old man around the corner and down an alleyway. He stopped at the back of a dried fish store, then led her inside. From a rear window they watched laborers loading two trucks with sacks of Swatow (Thailand) Fifth Flavor Brand cassava powder that bore the name printed in both English and Chinese.
She called Cobra. “They’re two older, dark green, heavy-duty Isuzu cargo carriers. Wood-framed beds. Blue canvas. The sides of the trucks say Thailand Transport, painted in yellow. The license plates are O5782 with the truck code 71 and S7231 with a truck code of 78. I’ll send you a photo. Looks like they’re hiding the heroin in cassava powder.”
Kai raised her phone toward the trucks, snapped the picture, and sent it.
The old man then led her to the corner of the alleyway where they waited to see whether the trucks would head south toward the Bangkok port, east toward Cambodia, Laos, or Vietnam, or north toward Burma.
The trucks crept to the end of the alley and turned north.
Kai called Cobra as she walked back to the Land Cruiser. The driver looped around the block and cut in ahead of the trucks, slowing them down long enough for Cobra to reach the border before they did.
After a drive of three kilometers, Kai spotted the crossing. Her cell phone rang. It was Cobra calling from the other side.
“I can see you. Look up toward the first turn in the road. I’m just past the temple.”
“We’ll lead the trucks through,” Kai said, “then drop off.”
Kai took the semiautomatic from her bodyguard’s hand, racked back the slide to chamber a round, and then said to Kasa: “Let’s try to stay friends just a little bit longer.”
CHAPTER 48
Gage spotted Kai walking toward him where he stood at the China Eastern Airlines check-in counter at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. It was four hours after she’d chained Kasa to a lathe in the Siri Construction warehouse in Chiang Rai. And five hours after that they were approaching a passport control booth at the Hongqiao Airport on the western outskirts of Shanghai.
Zhang Xianzi, a Chinese People’s Liberation Army general, stood waiting on the other side. Gage knew no one who understood the coast of the East China Sea better than Zhang and how to exploit that knowledge for personal gain. With the frame of a middleweight boxer, Zhang was dressed in a business suit and accompanied by a uniformed soldier. Gage noticed that his face had softened over the years, but he didn’t doubt that concealed behind it remained the calculating and mercenary mind that not only had advanced his career and made him wealthy, but had now drawn Gage back to him.
Zhang glanced at Gage, then fixed his eyes on Kai as the two of them retrieved their passports and approached him.
“And who is this lovely person?” Zhang said, smiling at Kai.
Gage introduced Kai by her Chinese name, Chen Mei-li, then added, “But everyone calls her Kai.”
“Kai,” Zhang said. “I don’t know the name Kai. Where’s your home village?”
“A few miles outside Jieyang in Guangdong Province,” Kai said, “but I was born in Isaan, in northern Thailand.”
Zhang raised a forefinger and said in Mandarin:
So bright a gleam at the foot of my bed,
Could there have been a frost already?
Lifting myself to look, I see that it is moonlight.
Lowering my head, I dream that I am home.
Gage knew that if he hadn’t already been feeling queasy, Zhang’s histrionic performance would have brought it on. He felt Kai stiffen next to him, but knew she’d play along. He also knew that Zhang would drop the act once he understood that Kai wouldn’t be sleeping with him.
“Li Po,” Kai said, giving Zhang a soft smile, and then translated the poem into English. “My father read that poem to me and my sister at bedtime. I haven’t heard it since
she recited it at his funeral.”
“Then let me welcome you to your homeland.” Zhang turned to Gage. “Where are you staying?”
“The Cypress Hotel,” Gage said. “It’s close to one of the companies . . .”
Gage paused and looked at the soldier.
“It’s okay,” Zhang said. “This is Technical Officer Shiu. He can be trusted. You can call him Ferrari.” Zhang smiled. “You’ll soon find out why.”
Gage nodded to Ferrari, then looked back at Zhang.
“The hotel is close to a company whose name came up in connection with the smuggling operation.”
Ferrari took their bags and led them toward a Yukon with the boxy license frame of the type used in the States, rather than long narrow frame made to fit Chinese plates. Gage had no doubt that it had been stolen in the United States and smuggled into China, and he suspected Zhang had intercepted it and kept it for himself. It was a natural conclusion. Gage had first met Zhang in connection with an auto smuggling case. Car carriers bearing Mercedes SUVs had been hijacked on their way from the factory to the Port of Bremerhaven in Germany. The vehicles were then loaded into containers and shipped to Shanghai. Gage suspected Zhang had appropriated a few for himself and other officers as a kind of tax imposed on the conspiracy by the PLA.
While Ferrari loaded their luggage into the back, Kai and Gage settled into the rear passenger seats and Zhang climbed into the front.
The Hongqiao Special Economic Zone came into view as they left the airport. Gage spotted a sign for ChinaCom among dozens of other high-tech companies along the highway just before they turned into the grass-covered and tree-bordered hotel grounds. Gage had decided not to tell Zhang that ChinaCom might be the ultimate recipient of the microchips. It wasn’t worth the risk that Zhang might make a preemptive move. Gage had always known Zhang to be in a hot rage for profit and figured it would be wise to take his temperature first.
After they checked in and Zhang went to make dinner arrangements, Kai came to Gage’s suite to wait to hear from Cobra. They didn’t know whether he was in an area where he had cell service or would have to use the shortwave. Gage examined the scratched and battered radio as she got it ready on the desk in the bedroom. He suspected that years earlier she’d used it to contact mother ships anchored off the coast of Vietnam, waiting to on-load bales of Thai marijuana for the voyage to the western United States, Canada, and Europe.
