Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  Talia moved away from him, returning to the path. “Come out, Boyd. You have nowhere to go.”

  “Don’t I? This is my domain. My kingdom, not yours.”

  The voice came from the jungle to Talia’s right. She pointed her Glock at the mass of green and walked the path, body coiled, ready to spring. She sensed Lionel behind her, mirroring her movements, and prayed the invisible fence along the stream would contain him.

  The play of light and shadow in the greenery toyed with her senses. Boyd could be anywhere, working his way toward an exit. She had to keep him talking. “Tell me about the product you’re moving tonight. How did you acquire your stock?”

  “What do you care? I thought you were here to take me down.”

  The voice came from behind her. He had doubled back toward the waterfall.

  “I am.” She reversed her course to follow. Lionel did the same. “I’m just making conversation. Keeping the mood light.”

  “No, this is something more. You hijacked Rudenko’s shipment. Now you’re asking about my stock. You came for the children as well as for me. Your priorities are divided. What will you do if you’re forced to choose?”

  “Won’t happen.” Talia zeroed in on a grove of short palms. A leaf quivered. She kept her aim low, seeking to wound rather than kill. But as she put weight on the trigger, something felt off. Boyd had to be watching her aim the Glock. Why didn’t he run?

  The hairs stood up on the back of Talia’s neck. She dove for the stream bank an instant before the rhythmic blasts of a 9mm semiautomatic erupted from the grove. Bullets whizzed past, splintering the glass walkway and thudding into the bank.

  Lionel pounced.

  All the gunfire. All the movement. All the hunger. The ultrasonic fence no longer held instinct at bay. Talia flipped over to see the huge cat airborne, claws extended. She rolled through water and scrambled up the other bank. With incredible agility, the white lion stayed close, swiping at her. Her blouse ripped at the shoulder. Her skin burned. She made for the spiral stair.

  Rounds ricocheted off the steps as Talia climbed. The sparks frightened Lionel enough to throw him off the pursuit. He veered away into the green.

  She had escaped the lion, but the catwalk left Talia exposed to Boyd’s fire. At the top, shoulder smarting, she panned her Glock across the foliage. A third volley hit the steel grate at her feet, and she ran, crouching. Boyd didn’t have a good angle, but that wouldn’t last long. She made for the concealment of the waterfall.

  “VAL,” EDDIE SAID, turning serious after the fun he’d been having with the drones. “Talia needs backup. Boyd got the drop on her.”

  “I’ll try the elevators.” Val stepped over Rudenko’s body on her way to the bridge. She resisted the urge to stomp on his head, but only just.

  “Also, I think his pet lion is loose.”

  “His pet what?” She didn’t press for an answer. Another familiar straggler had survived the drone attack. Atan. As Val crossed the sky bridge, he glanced over his shoulder, frantically punching the down button.

  He must have escaped his guards when the gun drones struck. When Val reached him, he clasped his hands in beggar’s gratitude. “I take it your drones spared me on purpose, correct? Of course they did. You and I are practically partners. The exploding coin gag, very good.” He seemed to think all this was another coup, like Milos. “I will make this worth your while. I promise. With the White Lion’s resources, we’ll be—”

  He blathered on, and Val frowned through the windows at the office across the plaza. “Eddie, Talia needs me. We don’t have time for this.”

  “Sorry. Here you go.”

  A drone rose from behind her and popped Atan with a single round. He collapsed.

  Val nudged his limp arms out of the way with her foot. “Thanks.” She tried the up button. Nothing happened. “The elevators are locked down. Can you hack in?”

  “Negative. They run on a local server.”

  “What about the stairs.”

  A pause. “I can’t find you a route to the Atrium from that location. For now, Talia’s on her own.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY-

  EIGHT

  GOLDEN TIGER PLAZA

  TWIN TIGERS COMPLEX

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  ONCE VAL CONFIRMED the guards and patrons at the Grand Bazaar were down, Tyler signaled his colonel friend and sent in the Thai Rangers. He, Mac, and Finn were jogging behind the platoon, heading for the western tower entrance, when he heard the exchange between Eddie and Val. The grifter couldn’t get to Talia.

  “We can’t leave her hanging up there, Eddie. Give me options.”

  “Already working on them. Option One—I can reroute a police chopper to your position, which will take time.”

  “Is there an Option Two?”

  “Look right.”

  Option Two sat on a stage at the base of the eastern tower, part of the technology exhibition.

  Tyler nodded. “I love the way your mind works, kid.” He caught the arm of a young officer in the rear echelon of rangers, slowing him down. “Hang on a sec, Lieutenant. You speak English?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. You’re with me.”

  Backed by six armed rangers, the thieves ran to the rope line surrounding the quadcopter. The salesman who met them wore a petrified smile.

  “Good evening . . . ah . . . gentlemen,” he said in broken English, wringing his hands. “You have interest in Thanfa Aerotech Falcon Medical Transport? Lightweight materials. Room for one pilot and two paramedics plus locking gurney for patients. Maximum altitude is—”

  Tyler held up a hand to stop the sales pitch. “Lieutenant, ask him if the batteries are charged. Tell him we need to borrow this thing.”

  The lieutenant relayed the first part, and the salesman gave a nodding reply in his native tongue. But at the second part, his words grew rapid and heated. He waved his arms in the universal sign for No way, Jose.

  They were burning precious time. Tyler frowned. “Tell him it’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant held up a fist and gave it one pump. With a series of rattling clicks, he and his five companions levelled their machine guns.

  The salesman raised his hands and stepped out of the way.

  “Right.” Finn stepped over the rope. “That’s not exactly what he meant, but—you know—whatever works. Cracking on.”

  “Can you fly this thing?” Tyler asked Mac on the way up the platform steps.

  “She’s a quadcopter. Any monkey can fly her.” The Scotsman squeezed his great form into the open cockpit. “I can make her dance.”

  MORE GUNFIRE FORCED TALIA BACK from the waterfall. She tried retreating, but a fragment from the final round nicked her calf. She fell to her wounded shoulder, twisting to aim a return shot, and saw her target.

  “Wait!” Boyd had reached a second staircase, half hidden by the falls. He held his gun ready. With the other hand, he held out a smartphone. On the screen were two simple buttons—CANCEL and EXECUTE. “Keep shooting and I’ll set them off.”

  She used the railing to pull herself up, never lowering the Glock. Down below, Lionel paced the synthetic grass, growling. “Set what off?”

  “Your cutthroat game is all an act.” Boyd walked up the steps. “Mine, however, is authentic. I’m always prepared to cut my losses and disappear.” He waggled the phone. “I had my people place incendiary devices in my warehouse—and in the office above us. They’ll burn away all trace of my involvement here, including all witnesses.”

  “The children.”

  “And my hosts and buyers—a hard but acceptable loss. The doors will lock. They’ll be trapped. Ceramic panels in the walls and ceiling will contain the flames.” Boyd made a face. “The effect is like an undertaker’s furnace. By the time emergency personnel detect the fire, there’ll be nothing left but unrecognizable cinders. Cutthroat, Miss Inger. The only way to play.”

  He walk
ed forward, slowly, holding his thumb over the button. “If you shoot me, if you so much as scratch me, those children die. Lay down your weapon”—he shrugged, tilting his head and gun—“and I’ll most likely kill you, but I promise the children will live.”

  Eddie and his drone were watching. Where was the team? Talia was leaning, trusting. Please, God, she prayed, bending to lay the Glock on the grate. This is in your hands.

  Talia straightened, palms open at her side, and Lionel roared, giving voice to her frustration. “Now what?”

  “Now nothing. You lose.” Boyd extended his gun. “Game over.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY-

  NINE

  GOLDEN TIGER PLAZA

  TWIN TIGERS COMPLEX

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  THE SHOT MADE TALIA CRINGE. But there was no pain apart from the shallow nicks on her shoulder and calf. And the sound was all wrong, a boom instead of a crack.

  Boyd lowered his gun, eyes wide. He pitched over the rail.

  Lionel pounced the moment his body hit the glass.

  The boom told Talia all she needed to know. Bazin had survived her first attack. She found him on the third level of the catwalk, bleeding from two wounds on the upper right of his torso. All the same, he had her well covered with the Desert Eagle.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why did you kill your boss?”

  “He is not boss.” The Russian let out a weary huff. “Also I want shoot him for some time. He was . . . liability.”

  “For whom? You?”

  “For real boss.”

  Talia did not have to ask for clarification.

  Archangel. Talia and Tyler had assumed Boyd was Ivanov’s connection to the CIA traitor. After all, Boyd had brokered the failed auction of Ivanov’s hypersonic weapons six months earlier, and Ivanov had told them the whole plan came from a CIA contact. But Boyd and Ivanov were both young. Neither could have worked with Archangel for long. Bazin, however, was a product of the spy world’s post–Cold War bedlam—just like Archangel. Talia should have seen it before.

  If Bazin was going to kill her, she wanted answers—the answers she’d been afraid to seek when Tyler first invited her to join the op. “So, Archangel helps you gain the confidence of her marks with the promise of a high-level intelligence contact. In exchange, Archangel gets a few tidbits of criminal intel, enough to make her a shining star at the Agency.”

  The Russian refused to play along. His stolid frown neither confirmed nor denied the name Archangel.

  Talia didn’t get the chance to press him further.

  Rays of blue, alien light washed over the monkeypod boughs. With a tremendous crash, a section of windows exploded. Glass flew everywhere. Lionel bounded for cover.

  Outside, a giant quadcopter hovered, with Tyler and Finn kneeling on its open platform, staring down the sights of their submachine guns. Bazin tried to swing the Desert Eagle to meet the new threat, but Tyler and Finn opened fire on full automatic. The big Russian went down under a hail of P3Q rounds, enough to put a horse to sleep for a week.

  Both men leaped from the quadcopter into the Atrium. Finn went straight for Talia, while Tyler swept for additional players.

  “Bazin was the last,” she shouted, running down the steps. “Except for Lionel.”

  Finn met her at the bottom. “Who?” He saw the blood on her shoulder and turned her by the arm. “You’re shot.”

  “It’s not a gun wound. It’s a lion scratch.” She nodded at Boyd’s body. “He fared far worse.”

  Finn grimaced. “Real lions don’t muck about, do they?” He let his machine gun hang and drew Matilda, aiming the blunderbuss at the trees. “Still out there, is he?”

  “Cover me. I need to find Boyd’s phone.”

  A search of the foliage near the body yielded no result, so Talia gutted her way through the gruesome task of rolling Boyd to one side. His phone lay beneath him, screen still active. A timer counted down.

  0:03

  0:02

  “No!” Talia couldn’t get a hand on the phone in time.

  0:01

  DETONATION

  Talia, Finn, and Tyler all ducked as fire erupted above. Through the glass ceiling of the Atrium, she saw Boyd’s office burning. And if the device in his office had gone off . . . “The children!” she shouted at Tyler. “Boyd set off an incendiary device in his warehouse and locked it down. They’ll be killed!”

  “Go!” Tyler pointed at Mac and the waiting copter. “Take Finn. I’ll get Bazin out of here and help the rangers clear the building.”

  The copter looked lower than before. Mac beckoned to them from the cockpit. “Get crackin’, you two! She’s runnin’ outta battery!”

  The gap between the shattered windows and the copter’s platform was bad enough, without it sinking as well. Finn seemed to read the fear in Talia’s eyes. “You’ve got this. We go together, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He caught her hand, interlocking her fingers with his, and swung her arm in a silent One, two, three!

  They jumped. Talia landed well inside and caught the medical gurney with her free hand. Finn had not jumped as far. His heels teetered over empty space. His free arm wheeled. She pulled him in, right into a hard embrace. She held him there as Mac descended, until she felt his chest shaking. Finn was laughing.

  Talia pushed him away. “You did that on purpose.” She should have known. Finn had an insane sense of balance.

  He bent over the gurney, holding his gut. “Your face. Priceless.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Really? ’Cause you were hugging me pretty tight, there.”

  After defending himself from a flurry of punches, Finn gave her a new earpiece. She put it in as Eddie was reporting on the warehouse.

  “. . . location is obvious on my drone’s infrared. I’ve dispatched emergency services. But remember, this is Bangkok. It’ll take them a while to reach the building.”

  “Then it’s up to us,” Talia said. “Boyd had guards in the building. We’ll need armed escort.”

  “No problem.”

  A half second later, she saw a yellow flash and an explosion of glass from the sky bridge on the Grand Bazaar level. Eddie’s swarm of TACRON drones poured into the night to follow the quadcopter—a mother and her babies.

  But the mother was running out of juice, descending the whole way. The narrow lanes and low buildings of the warehouse district came up fast.

  Mac held the copter off the asphalt as long as possible.

  Finn wrapped an arm around Talia’s waist, holding her against the gurney. “Hang on!”

  The copter’s skids slammed down and scraped along the road until a glancing blow from a corrugated aluminum building sent it into a turn. It hit a curb, teetered, and fell over with an underwhelming thump. Finn and Talia crawled out and found Mac climbing from the cockpit.

  “I forget,” Finn said to the Scotsman. “Did Tyler spring for the damage waiver?”

  “Funny.” Mac pointed up the road. “Our buildin’ is this way.”

  Eddie gave them updates over the comms. “My spider drones show no windows, but smoke is rising from the edges of the roof. There are guards out front.”

  Boyd had failed to mention any outside guards. “Can you take them?” Talia asked.

  “That’s what I’m here for . . . Or . . . virtually there. You know what I mean.”

  Talia and the others broke out from a cluster of smaller buildings and ran into the warehouse’s parking lot. In front of them, Eddie’s drones dropped to shoulder level.

  The guards turned.

  The drones opened fire.

  The runners ran past as if the guards had never existed in the first place.

  Talia jogged to a stop before a garage-style door and a smaller, normal entrance. “You’ll have to blow one, Eddie.”

  “It’s risky.”

  “Do it anyway.” Talia called upon her training for improvised breach devices. Special Forces operators in Iraq
and Afghanistan had learned a great deal on that front. She made a quick calculation. “Two rockets. Three meters from the smaller door. The double blast should blow it open without the risk of fragging anyone inside. Darcy, what do you think?”

  “I concur, yes? Two rockets at three meters will safely do the job.”

  Please, God, let us be right. She and the others moved well clear.

  Two rockets spiraled down from a sphere drone to blow a crater in the parking lot. When the dust cleared, the door hung from its hinges, blown inward. Smoke and flame billowed out.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTY

  WAREHOUSE SECTOR

  KHLONG TOEI DISTRICT

  BANGKOK, THAILAND

  THET YE’S BODY JERKED WITH FRIGHT. But he did not scream like the other boys. He had known the blast was coming.

  Fires came with explosions. His father had told him so. On many hot evenings, Thet Ye’s father had sat with him on the steps of their hut and retold the story of the fire on the night of his birth. Po would lift his hands high when he told of the moment the fire hit the camp’s main petrol tank—an explosion so big many refugees claimed aircraft had dropped firebombs from the sky. “And still, Brave Life,” he would say, “you were not afraid to enter this world.”

  Brave Life. Thet Ye did his best to control his shaking, lest he shame Po and his mother for giving him the name.

  The ceiling above had transformed into pure flame. Drops of fire fell like slow rain onto the boys huddled in the cages. There were far more now than at the sheep pens. After the guards took the girls away, the boys had been trucked to this warehouse to join others taken from several camps. Twenty boys per cell. Ten cells in all.

  Thet Ye did not know what had become of Hla Meh, but he was grateful God had spared her from this second fire. After what had happened to her father, one was enough.

  The guards were equally afraid of the fire, as were the four men and one woman in rich clothes who’d arrived only minutes before it began. They had banged on the door and shouted at the front wall, and the guards had shot it with their machine guns. All to no avail. The teenager had finally sat on the floor, hugging his knees.