Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  “What about thief-dohs?” Darcy said over the comms. “Or how about comman-ieves, yes?”

  Eddie chimed in with his own idea. “I’m going with Comanches.”

  Talia’s case officer instincts told her not to encourage mindless chatter on a tactical net, but she couldn’t help herself. “We can’t use Comanches. That’s cultural appropriation.”

  “Don’t be such a snowflake.”

  “You’re the snowflake.”

  Mac unleashed a heavy sigh into the comms. “Not to be a killjoy, but the kidnappers are likely linin’ us up in their sights as we speak.”

  No one said anything else until they crossed the gravel road into the compound.

  “The kidnappers should have challenged us by now,” Talia said. “Eddie, do you see anything in the scope?”

  “Negative.”

  Finn and Tyler split left to circle the north building. Mac and Darcy split right to circle the other. Talia and Val went up the middle.

  Val was the first to spot the dark stain. “Looks like blood.” She held her weapon ready and signaled for Talia to kneel and check.

  Talia pulled her fingers away with a grimace. “Guys, we have a big puddle of blood seeping into the dirt between the buildings. Still sticky. Skull fragments too. Someone was shot here.”

  “The term you’re looking for is executed,” Val said.

  “I don’t like this. We need to check inside.” Talia tried the doorknob on the north building. Locked. Naturally.

  The others cleared the perimeter, then Darcy set tiny charges on the main doors of each structure. They split into threes again and breached both at once.

  “Clear!” Tyler said, first through the door of Talia’s building.

  Talia passed to his right, into a large chamber, and made a wide turn into the first of two smaller rooms. The whole place smelled of filth and sickness. “Clear!”

  “This room’s clear as well.” Finn had taken the second room. “Our building’s empty.”

  “Ours is not,” Darcy said. “Come over here, and come quickly. Eddie, send Mr. Ferguson.”

  “Already done. He and Po are on the way.”

  The second building smelled the same as the first, a scent on the edge of death. Food containers and empty water bottles lay on the floor. Darcy led the team through a cramped hallway to a chamber guarded by a pink and yellow linen curtain. Mac and Val stood on either side, looking stricken. Mac held the curtain back to let the others through.

  A man, burned and unconscious, lay on a ragged cot, lit by rays of sunlight streaming in through a high rectangular window. A woman, barely conscious herself, cradled his head. Before Talia could fully process the sight, Ewan and Po rushed past. The woman seemed to recognize Po. She spoke to him in a voice raspy and withered, regretful.

  Po dropped to his knees, head hanging.

  The woman’s eyes broke Talia’s heart. “What is she saying, Ewan? Where are the children?”

  Ewan choked on his reply. “Gone, Miss Talia. The children are gone.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTY-

  TWO

  SEUX KHORNG HIGH RISE

  SATHON DISTRICT

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  TYLER PRESSED A SCOPE against the office glass to minimize the glare of the city lights. He focused the lens on the half city block of new white marble comprising Twin Tigers Plaza, nestled in a sharp bend of the Chao Phraya River.

  “Anything?” Eddie asked from the computer station behind him.

  “Negative. I don’t see our girls.”

  The mood had remained somber since the discovery of the pastor and teacher from the refugee camp. Ewan had taken them to a hospital to receive care, but Tyler had cautioned him against sharing too many details about their injuries. Fortunately, in Bangkok, doctors weren’t generally friendly with local police.

  The team had set up shop in an empty office with a view of the plaza, and Tyler had passed the day greasing the wheels he’d set in motion for the con—what wheels he could, with the limited information the White Lion had given his team.

  “My cameras are online,” Eddie said. “You can watch from over here.”

  “Copy.” Tyler didn’t move. When possible, he preferred his own eyes over a digital surrogate. But he did lower the scope a moment later when the elevator let out its telltale ding.

  “Pizza’s here,” Finn said, stepping off with Mac. “Seafood delight and bacon-bit special.”

  Pell crinkled his nose. “Didn’t they have a standard pepperoni?”

  “You said you wanted local flavor.”

  “I was talking about Thai food.”

  Finn set his boxes on a folding table. “There’s a pizza shop every fifty meters in this town. From what I’m seeing, this is Thai food.”

  Mac picked up a slice covered in white cheese and crab meat. “This and Burger King.”

  Eddie abandoned the computers long enough to grab a slice and a bottle of Mountain Dew. On the return trip, something down in the plaza seemed to catch his eye. He set his food beside the keyboard and played with a trackball. An automated tripod hummed, rotating and tilting its camera to focus on the plaza. The geek sat back, showing Tyler his find. “Did you see this?”

  On the screen, showing the base of the eastern tower, workers were busy setting up for a technology convention. The prototype on the center stage looked like a giant drone. “Is that some kind of helicopter?”

  “It’s a quadcopter Passenger Air Vehicle. The long-awaited PAV. Looks like a medevac version with that open platform underneath.” The geek held a hanky to his face, whether for his cold or the drooling, Tyler couldn’t tell. “Can we stop by later with your checkbook? I’ll take two.”

  “After the mission.” Tyler put his eye to the scope and snapped his fingers. “Look sharp. We’ve got our first customer. Southern entrance to the square. Black suit. Blue tie. I think it’s Atan.”

  The tripod whirred as Eddie shifted the camera again. “Found him. Locking on.” On-screen, the video tracked their target. Facial recognition boxes flashed all over his face, then turned green. “Yep. That’s our Albanian friend. Here at the Frenzy, he’s the Hyena.”

  “Why is Atan the Hyena?” Finn asked, mouth half full of seafood pizza. “All the other top positions are named for wildcats.”

  “A joke?” Tyler said. “Val told me narcissists often have odd senses of humor. Or maybe Boyd’s way of motivating his Jungle players to aim higher. Whatever the reason, the name suits Atan.”

  “Because he is ugly?” Darcy asked. “Or because he is a low-life scavenger?”

  “A little of both.”

  Five minutes later, at 7:40 p.m., another potential competitor appeared, shrouded in a hoodie. Val had predicted five-minute breaks between arrivals. The times given to her and Talia were a clue, plus her profile of Boyd indicated a need for minute levels of control.

  The narrow shoulders and hip motion of the new target walking across the plaza spoke of a female, but Tyler couldn’t be sure. “Eddie, get me a shot of this one’s face. I don’t have the angle.”

  “On it. If Atan was the first of the top-tier competitors, I’ll bet this is our Clouded Leopard.” Earlier in the day, Finn had set up a remote 10k camera on the roof of a building north of the towers, focused through the gap. Eddie used it to capture the target’s face with a nearly straight-on view. “And . . . I’m locked on.”

  Tyler glanced at the geek’s monitors. The mystery guest was definitely female, and Asian, but a good portion of her face remained in shadow beneath the hood, foiling his software. The facial recognition boxes flickered and gave up.

  “No way.” Eddie slapped the table. “That’s Bi Fan, the Hong Kong Hacker.”

  “How can you tell?” Finn asked. “Facial recognition timed out.”

  Eddie gave him an incredulous look as the woman passed out of the camera’s field of view. “Because she’s famous? I recognized the scar on her chin.” He called up an article on the ne
xt monitor over. The headline read MAJOR DATA BREACH. “Bi Fan orchestrated the 2015 hack of the US security clearance records. The Chinese government let her slide in exchange for all the info, but she wound up in Tai Lam Women’s Correctional anyway.”

  Pell, despite his complaints, had stacked several slices of bacon-bit pizza on a napkin. “On hacking charges?”

  “Nope. Stabbing. She killed a pickpocket on the bullet train.” Eddie pulled up a second article, all in Chinese. The photo showed a body bag being rolled from a train on a gurney. “Boy, did that guy choose the wrong mark. Bi Fan did the same to his convict sister, who came after her in prison with a shiv. That’s where she picked up the chin scar.”

  Finn read the article over his shoulder, pizza sagging from his hand. “Two murders. And the Chinese let her out for . . .”

  “I don’t know. Good behavior?”

  “Violent hacker.” Tyler went back to his scope. “Nice. A wonderful addition to the game.”

  The Snow Leopard came next, aptly named. Like Atan, he made no effort to hide his face as he approached the tower entrance, dressed in an overcoat and jeans. Eddie’s facial recognition software pinned him down as one Grygory Rudenko, confirmed by the Siberian prison tattoo on his neck—an eight-pointed star.

  Finn finished his pizza and licked his fingers. “This file is pretty thin. Says he’s Ukrainian. Deals in antiquities. Can you get any more?”

  Eddie tried, working the keyboard, but shook his head. “Nothing here screams diabolical. Other than smuggling stolen artifacts, Rudenko’s squeaky clean. I’m surprised he’s pulling down enough cash to earn a ranking in the Jungle syndicate.”

  “Strike two,” Tyler said. “Keep watching. Someone in this game is our kidnapper. I can feel it. Either way, get as many IDs as you can. I don’t like sending Talia and Val into this deal-making deathmatch without knowing all the players.”

  No one showed up for the next time slot, 7:50 p.m. And the 7:55 was an unknown panther wearing a hoodie, like Bi Fan. Eddie’s software failed to get a match, but the guy was tall, possibly Scandinavian from what Tyler could see via the secondary camera. He checked his watch. “It’s almost eight. Our girls are next on the list.”

  CHAPTER

  SIXTY-

  THREE

  TWIN TIGERS PLAZA

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  TALIA AND VAL CROSSED THE MARBLE PLAZA at a leisurely pace. No need to look stressed or hurried—not yet.

  Tyler had ordered them to arrive together, despite their separate time slots. He’d pitched the idea as a way to test the boundaries of Boyd’s little game from the start. He called it poking the lion with a feather. That was an excuse. Tyler was still hovering, using Val as a surrogate. But Talia didn’t mind. She had learned her lesson in the bowels of Jafet’s underworld. Leaning on her team—and God—was okay.

  She and Val both dragged rolling suitcases, and each wore a heavy duffel slung at her hip. Talia’s threatened to drag her in a lopsided circle.

  They were not alone. The restaurants surrounding the plaza were open. Several pedestrians crossed their path. None of them gave a pair of women in heels and business suits a second look. There was a train station nearby. Luggage was a common sight.

  “I wish we had comms right now,” Talia whispered to Val. “I hate going in there blind.”

  The comms were a big problem. First thing upon their arrival in the city center, Eddie had run an analysis of signals in the square and caught Boyd testing a localized frequency jammer on his upper floors. After consultation with Franklin, Eddie and Darcy had gone on a mad dash around the city, picking up parts and pieces for a work-around.

  Eddie had briefed Talia and Val when he handed them the finished products. “Boyd will leave the upper end of the RF spectrum free for his own internal security comms and Wi-Fi. Basically, the Bluetooth frequencies—extremely short range. I’ve modified your earpieces to send Bluetooth comms to a long-range directional relay Darcy and I cobbled together. The relay box will sit in your room and quite literally burn through Boyd’s jamming to reach my station.”

  “If the towers have Wi-Fi,” Val asked, “can’t we use the signal like we did at Club Styx?”

  “Negatory. At Club Styx we wanted to get caught. This time we don’t. And Boyd’s network security is top-notch. Keep in mind, earpieces are small, so I can make them work on one end of the frequency spectrum or the other, but not both. They won’t talk to our SATCOM net without the relay, which has to be plugged into a wall outlet.”

  Eddie had gone into a dissertation on jamming, VHF directional burn-through, and the resultant power requirements. The short answer was, Talia and Val couldn’t talk to the team until they reached the room and plugged in his device—a rather not-so-subtle oversize hockey puck.

  An intense Thai man waited under the tower’s curved platinum awning. He said nothing. Val went first. She typed her code into a number pad, and the door unlocked. Talia tried to follow her through, but the guard blocked her path until the door fell closed. He gestured at the pad.

  “I get it. No tailgating.” Talia used her own code to unlock the door and smiled at the guard on her way in. “You run a tight ship, buster.”

  She doubted he understood a word.

  Lobby wasn’t the best word for what greeted her on the other side. Mall would have been better. Three stories of luxury shopping space, supported by sweeping gold pillars, surrounded a cylindrical elevator shaft with four cars. Shifting neon lights colored the rippling waters of a pool-sized fountain.

  Next to the fountain, Boyd’s people had set up a security checkpoint, a backscatter X-ray machine, and a bag scanner. Two carbon copies of the doorman stood ready to funnel the Frenzy players through the checkpoint, wearing the same intense glower. Either Boyd had rigid physical and temperamental requirements for his security men, or he was growing them in a lab. Talia blinked. Maybe that explained the mutism.

  Clone One hefted the duffels onto the conveyor without the slightest grunt. Talia lifted her chin. “You two and your buddy outside must be triplets.” She handed her roller bag to Clone Two. “No? Then are the three of you a boy band or something?”

  With the roller bags on the move, Talia followed Val through the backscatter machine. No alarms. As expected. They’d hidden all their contraband in the bags.

  Clone One watched the X-ray monitor, while Clone Two moved to intercept the luggage on the other side. He unzipped the first duffel, eyeing the rows of Velcro pouches inside. He drew one out, poured a handful of gold coins into his palm, and looked at the girls in relative surprise—a slight change in his glower.

  Talia gave him a hands off the money frown.

  Val backed her up. “That’s not a bribe, friend, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Whether or not he spoke English, they got their point across. Clone Two let the coins slide into the pouch and lobbed it down the conveyer to land in the still-moving duffel.

  Talia did her best not to wince. Not everything in that bag was stable.

  “You done?” Val asked, yanking her rollerbag down and extending the handle. “So now where do we go?”

  Clone One, looking not unlike the Ghost of Christmas Future, extended an arm and a long finger. Talia looked, half expecting to see a gravestone with her name on it. Instead she saw a much more vibrant man waving from the elevators. “I guess we go with that guy.”

  The clones were mute, but the man at the elevators had a voice, high pitched with some Oxford British mixed into the accent. “Welcome, Panthers Eight One and Eight Two,” he said with an exaggerated bow. His silk suit reflected the neon lights of the fountain. “I am the Frenzy’s Master of Ceremonies. Let me show you to your rooms.”

  The MC helped them place their bags on a luggage cart in the elevator, and the three rode up countless levels while Thai music videos played on screens within the walls.

  Talia folded her hands in front of her. “You don’t seem surprised we arrived together.”


  “The White Lion suspected you might. You each may have a suite if you desire, or you may room together.”

  “Can we get adjoining suites?” Val asked.

  “Adjacent rooms are not possible.”

  “Well, yeah, they’re possible. You just have to—”

  His eyes flashed. “You will understand when we reach the game floors.”

  Room accommodations were a weakness of Val’s. She had a lot of rules, whether on or off the job. Talia nudged her elbow to keep her from arguing. “We’ll bunk together. It’s fine.”

  “Very good.” The car jolted to a stop, and the MC handed them each a paper-thin tablet, more of a slate—little more than a pane of glass with gold edges. “These will lead you to your room and open the doors. Be inside by a quarter to nine. From then on, your safety is no longer guaranteed.”

  Safety? Talia squinted at him. “What do—”

  “Please.” He pushed their luggage cart into a passage with a curving taupe wall and held the door open, indicating in no uncertain terms that they should get out.

  A green arrow pulsated at the center of Talia’s slate, holding its angle no matter which way she held the screen. These will lead you to your room. “Okay. I guess that’s it, then.”

  “Almost.” The MC coughed and held out an open palm.

  “Right. A tip.” Talia laid three one-thousand-Baht notes in his palm, the equivalent of a hundred US. Val added three of her own, and the MC stepped back into the elevator. “Very generous. The mark of competitors with class.” As the doors closed, he wheeled his arms, the bills fluttering in his hands. “Good luck, ladies. May you—”

  They didn’t hear the rest.

  Val watched numbers count down as he descended. “May you win? May you sleep well?”

  “May you live to tip me again,” Talia said. “I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.”

  The two pushed the cart along the tight curve of the passage until they reached an archway that opened into the main hallways. They both stopped in stunned disbelief.

  The upper floors were a combination of glass and clear acrylic, held together with steel beams and cables and crisscrossed with brass conduit. Bangkok’s lights shined in, captured and refracted in the twisting profile of the tower. Only the rooms—two or three per floor—and a few concrete supports were opaque.