by J C Ryan
He apologized to Digger for his sojourn in the cargo hold of the plane, but it would be for only a little over an hour. Digger didn’t seem to mind, even when Rex ordered him into the wire cage he was required to travel in. Digger even looked a bit excited, as if he knew that some kind of new adventure awaited him.
The dog was more than glad to see him at the other end of the trip, though. He frolicked like a puppy when Rex let him out of the cage. Rex promised him a run in the first park they came to while he waited in line to get the keys to his rental car. They had the evening and night to kill before they picked up Sunstra at her parents’ house for breakfast the next morning. Rex kept his promise and let Digger play to his heart’s content in a park, then drove about twenty miles to Sunstra’s parent’s neighborhood on the west side of the island to be sure of his directions before checking into his hotel. He hoped she’d introduce him and maybe give him a tour of the grounds before they went out. The neighborhood was close to the beach, and he could catch tantalizing glimpses of the sea between the bungalows. Phuket was actually an island, with a narrow sound separating it from the mainland. Beyond the beaches, the Andaman Sea stretched toward the Indian Ocean.
Rex expected Sunstra to show him the sights, so rather than exploring on his own that night, he and Digger had a quiet evening, relying on room service for their dinner and turning in early to be up early the next morning.
So, it was that Rex was soundly sleeping when the sirens started.
Digger had heard them before Rex did, maybe a function of the high pitch as they started sounding with the eerie wee-wa, wee-wa Rex associated with European police sirens. Digger’s howl joined the sirens to startle Rex out of sleep, leaping out of bed before he was fully awake.
What the hell?
He couldn’t help but recall the sounds of the sirens on that fateful morning at Atocha Station, Madrid, Spain on March 11, 2004 after the al Qaeda bomb explosions killed his entire family.
He reached for the phone to call down to the front desk and ask what was going on, but before he found it in the dark, he heard a loudspeaker. Between the sirens and Digger’s mournful howling, he couldn’t understand the words.
“Digger, quiet.”
Digger gave him a reproachful look but stopped his infernal howling. Instead, he crept under the bed on his belly, shivering and whining quietly. Rex sympathised—the sirens were disturbing him, too. As whatever was carrying the loudspeaker came closer, he could barely make out the words, which were being repeated in Thai and English. He finally caught the most important word. Tsunami!
Rex listened more closely as he switched on the light and reached for his pants. The early-warning system had partially done its job. They were being warned. The problem was that the first high waves were expected in only an hour. Everyone was warned to get to high ground.
This is a disaster in the making. Rapid evacuation makes for careless driving. People are going to get hurt.
Even as he assessed the situation, Rex was pulling on his clothes and shoes, reassuring Digger that the sirens would soon stop, though he knew they wouldn’t, and calling to the front desk for his car to be brought around. He offered to ferry a couple of guests in the hotel without a car if they could be ready when the car got there.
He checked the room for anything he couldn’t afford to lose, stuffed his wallet and passport in his pockets, put Digger’s collar and leash on him, and left, less than two minutes after he’d been awakened.
Downstairs, he found half a dozen people waiting for him. He shook his head, dismayed. He only had room for two if he took Digger, and though he might later be criticized for it, there was no way on God’s earth that he was going to leave Digger behind. He pointed at two women, an American pleading in Southern-accented English and her teen-aged daughter.
“I can take you two. I’ll come back for the rest of you if I can.”
“But my husband! Leave your dog behind.”
“No can do. If you don’t want the seats, I’ll take two others.”
“Go on, honey,” a man standing by her said. “I’ll get another ride. Get Samantha to safety.”
It was only when he’d dropped them off, two miles away at the top of a rise where evacuees were gathering, and he was heading back to the hotel for more, that he realized he should be heading west, toward Sunstra. Her neighborhood was about to be hit!
He looked at his watch. The loudspeakers that woke him said there was only an hour to evacuate. That had been half an hour ago, and Sunstra and her parents were about half an hour to the west, in the direction of the tsunami. He could make it, if he didn’t return to the hotel. He made a sharp turn and headed for Sunstra’s at speeds the road was never meant for, dodging cars and bikes headed his way in the same manner.
Rex wasn’t worried about being stopped for speeding. He reckoned every cop in the city was engaged in the evacuation effort. However, he kept one hand on the horn as he sped along. Poor Digger was in agony with the sounds of the sirens and the horn. He lay on the floor below the back seat, whimpering and occasionally adding a thin howl to the mix, as if he were trying to whisper it.
Ten minutes later, Rex reached the outskirts of the city and stepped on the accelerator.
The traffic was lighter—alarmingly so.
Had the villages to the west not been notified of the tsunami? Or had they gotten even earlier warning and now everyone was already out? Without knowing which, Rex couldn’t take the chance it wasn’t the former. He had to get to Sunstra and her family.
He drove farther and rounded a curve a couple of minutes later and noticed that the road was wet—it distressed him.
Am I too late?
Ahead, he could see flashing lights. He slowed only a little, but when he got just a little closer, he could see there was a barrier across the road. He came to a stop, and a policeman quickly walked to his window.
“Turn around. Not safe,” the policeman ordered. He spoke English, apparently deciding Rex wasn’t Thai. Rex answered in Thai.
“My friend and her family live near the beach. Did they get notification? Are they out? I can beat the wave and get them to safety.”
“You cannot beat the wave. It is here.”
He leaned out the window and saw the road was awash, and the water rapidly getting deeper. As he watched, it crept up toward the car’s hubcaps.
If he didn’t turn around, his engine would soon be flooded.
“I’ll turn around. Can I give you a ride to safety?”
“It is safe here for a few more minutes but not farther down the road. I have a vehicle and will be leaving soon. I regret to tell you that the warning did not come in time for everyone. Maybe your friends evacuated. Maybe not. You must return to Phuket now.”
Rex turned the car around and headed back to the city, his chest tight and his stomach sour. The land sloped downward toward the beach where Sunstra’s family lived. Even right there at the road barrier, it was little more than a few feet above sea level. From what he knew of tsunamis, the first indication might have been a drawback, but because it was the middle of the night, who would have been there to see it? And how much time would they have had to respond before the full wave hit? Ten minutes, at most, and that was from the time the drawback started, if in fact there’d been one. There might have been no warning at all.
Rex knew the worst-hit area in the tsunami of 2004 was somewhere north of Phuket. 2004 had been a bad year for Rex, and he’d barely noticed the news of the tsunami then. He knew more about it from his recent research.
As he drove toward Phuket, Rex talked himself into believing that Sunstra and her family were just fine. The massive wave would have affected parts north more than her beach, and besides, those bungalows were up on stilts. He searched his memory for images of hers he’d seen the day before. All he could recall was the image of peeks of snow-white sands between the houses.
Despite the disturbing thoughts, he noticed the water keeping pace with him as he drove
back to the east. When a curve that had hidden the road barrier from him as he drove west came up, his steering wheel wasn’t as responsive. Turning was a chore. He rolled down the window and stuck his head outside. The water was now well over the hubcaps and still rising, and for the next few miles, his route was parallel to the sea!
Sparing a fleeting thought for the safety of the cop who’d turned him back, Rex pushed the gas pedal to the floor, hoping against hope he could reach the spot where the road curved back to the west before the car was washed off the road.
“Hang on, Digger. Let’s hope we don’t have to swim for safety.”
Driving forward as fast as the vehicle could go with a massive amount of water pushing him sideways took all Rex’s skill and concentration. At times, he wasn’t certain he was on the road or even that the wheels were in contact with solid ground, though they must have been. He overshot the curve and was thrown forward when the front wheels hit mud, but he was able to turn the wheels and regain the road. Now he had the momentum of the wave itself pushing him faster than he could have gone with just the car’s own power. It was looking like he’d made a grave error in trying to get to Sunstra.
He and Digger might lose their own lives.
Eight more excruciating minutes brought him to the city, where the wave was impeded and broken up by buildings. He breathed a sigh of relief and followed directions of the police, who were at every corner it seemed, directing traffic to higher ground. He found the rise where the other guests from his hotel were huddled. Unsure of his welcome, he parked the car where he was told and got out to stand beside it.
The sirens had stopped, thankfully. Rex coaxed Digger out of the car, clipped his leash on, and kept his hand on the shaggy back, reassuring the dog they were both okay and the danger had passed. Digger was a brave dog, Rex had no doubt of that. He’d charge a man with a gun to save his human partner, but he’d never encountered a situation like this before. There was no discernable enemy, only painful noises and shouting and Rex’s tension, which the dog would feel as if it were his own.
No wonder he’s terrified.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Rex said aloud. “We’re okay, and I can only pray Sunstra is, too.”
Digger lifted his ears at Sunstra’s name, but he didn’t stop shivering.
I’m unsure she’s okay, and he can feel it.
Chapter Fourteen
WHILE JOSH AND Marissa were gone for their R and R break, Brandt had returned to picking threads from information he’d received after Rex’s assumed death.
He always had plenty to do, between recruiting and supervising the training of new recruits and overseeing ongoing missions of his teams. More work came to them than they could take on, but he sometimes felt it necessary to go and schmooze with those of his clients who valued political BS. However, with two of his best agents on leave, there were holes in his day he was constitutionally unable to leave for mere relaxation. He spent them combing news and intelligence reports for any hint that someone like Rex was operating on his own, somewhere.
Call it intuition or call it being attuned to the best agent he’d ever had, the man he’d thought of as a true son. His thoughts kept turning to the odd story out of Saudi Arabia a few weeks after Rex’s presumed death. He’d always been sceptical about one man operating on his own with no support team behind him taking out a Saudi prince and his entire security team and still managing to escape.
Unreal as the whole story may have sounded, he’d never known anyone else but Rex Dalton who had the brains and guts capable of pulling off a stunt as audacious as that one. In the past, he’d reluctantly dismissed it as a clue, mainly because of the report of a big black dog being involved. Rex had no dog handler skills, but he couldn’t stop wondering.
With nothing but his strong feeling that Rex was alive and the lack of other clues behind it, he finally decided he had to settle the matter once and for all. Was the Saudi’s death at Rex’s hands, or not? However, he couldn’t just send Josh and Marissa to Saudi Arabia without something more to go on. So, before they returned, he’d need to get more.
But how? The answer was to dance delicately along the strings of international cooperation between secret agencies, some of which were usually reluctant to cooperate but occasionally did. His only entrance to that world was by twitching his strings to the CIA with the intention of eventually getting the truth, the whole truth, out of the Mabahith, the Saudi Secret police.
He made a call to a former colleague, someone he’d worked with during his CIA career and still working at the CIA, but who wasn’t interested in a political rise. It wouldn’t do to dissemble with this man. He’d smell a line of bullshit a mile away. So, Brandt laid his cards on the table. He appealed to his friend’s feelings for his own boy, recently recruited to the CIA over his father’s objections. The friend agreed to help.
A few days later, the friend called from a secure phone. “Okay, here’s the scoop. I have an asset in the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, okay? And if I ever hear that anyone else knows it, I’ll kill you, bury you in your beloved desert, and tell God you just died. Got it?”
Brandt laughed. “I think I have the picture. But you know that wasn’t necessary. I’d never…”
“Just a precaution. I’m a cautious man.” The friend lowered his voice. “Next caveat. You now owe me. If my boy gets into any kind of trouble, anywhere, you’ll send your best team, at no cost, to get him out.”
“Done.” Knowing his friend, Brandt had little expectation of having to pay up on that one. If the boy was as good as his father, there’d be no need.
“So, my asset leaned on an asset of his, in Mabahith. From here, the story gets really strange.”
“Go on, I’m all ears,” Brandt urged.
***
A WEEK LATER, two days after they returned from R and R, Brandt met with Josh and Marissa, looking tan and refreshed, at his DC office.
“Strange how?” Marissa prompted when he got to that part of the story.
“Well, only the part about the dog. It could have been a djinn,” he said, unsmiling.
“What?!” Josh and Marissa exclaimed in unison.
“Let me back up. So, this Mutaib, the Saudi prince, was a known illegal arms dealer, but his status as part of the royal family protected him, right? However, he was an embarrassment to the King, so the official investigation didn’t go far. It was the Mabahith that dug for details, and then buried them again.
“It seems the guy had an official and an unofficial harem. Apparently, that’s not unusual. What’s strange is that when this operative, whoever it was, raided the guy’s residence, he killed Mutaib, all his guards, and took some valuables, along with half his harem—the unofficial half. Well, not all of them, but most of them. Seven women and a little girl. And apparently the dog, or djinn, whatever it was, helped. Climbed a tree to get into the compound, if you can believe that.”
Marissa was shaking her head. “Why are you interested in this, John?”
“It could have been Rex. Do you know of anyone else, ours or internationally, that could have pulled that off?”
Marissa waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “No, I’ve never met Rex, I only know what you and Josh told me about him. Admittedly, by all accounts, Dalton seems to be a very capable man. But let’s be realistic, this is not Hollywood. Djinn? Are you serious? C’mon John, this is a fairy tale. It’s been exaggerated by the witnesses to absolve them of any blame.
“Why would Rex have been involved in something like that? If he’s alive, and you know that’s a big if, he’d be hiding. For what reason on earth would he get involved in a high-profile crime in a country where getting caught would mean a death sentence? Why would he abduct a bunch of civilians, and maybe get them killed too? It doesn’t make sense.”
Josh wasn’t so sure. “Well, look. Rex Dalton specialized in the impossible. Remember London? And come to think of it Naples and...”
Brandt held his hand up to stop
Josh and brought Marissa up to speed on the missions she hadn’t known of, when Rex was sent to terminate a problematic Russian expat, and not only did so, but in the process implicated a child pornographer that hadn’t even been on MI5’s radar. He also told her how Rex went to Naples and prevented a major arms deal between a terrorist group and the Camorra, the mafia group operating out of the Campania region in Italy with their headquarters in Naples.
Then, Josh speculated that if Rex had somehow hooked up with a well-trained military dog, the Saudi incident would be even more possible for him.
“You think it was a military dog, not a djinn?” Marissa asked, the scepticism clear in her tone.
Josh turned to stare at her in disbelief, then saw from her expression it was a rhetorical question. She was still talking.
“So, what do you want us to do, go hunting stories of evil spirits in the Saudi desert? If this was Rex, he’s long gone. It’s been months.”
“Of course not,” Brandt said, taking her question seriously, though she’d asked it with heavy sarcasm. “Look. Mutaib was a known arms smuggler and dealer. If it hadn’t been for what I learned of his family life, so to speak, I’d think the raid was carried out by some official agency. The CIA, MI6, the Mossad. He was high on the hit lists of all of them. It could also have been one of his rival arms dealers. However, whispers are that the bastard had a few more wives in his harem than the authorities had on record. Those on record are all alive and well, still in the country, and now being taken care of by the Saudi government as is their right.” He paused for breath, and Marissa jumped in.
“And?”
“And the ones not on record, but mentioned by the others, are the missing ones. And from what the Mabahith learned, all of them were foreigners who were there against their will. Naturally, the Saudi government doesn’t want to know anything about these women—it could cause an international incident if the world learned that a member of the royal family had been participating in human trafficking.”
