Betrayal

Chapter 13

Rob and Jet exited the club and wove their way drunkenly down the street, turning the corner on the alley that ran behind it. A gleaming black Mercedes sedan sat by the seedy emporium’s back door, the driver standing by the hood, smoking a cigarette. Jet laughed at some witticism Rob had uttered, and they stopped, she leaning against the brick wall as he moved close and kissed her.

Two men darted into the alley, one with a knife and the other with a chain, and before the couple could disengage, the shorter one slammed Rob in the back with the chain, screaming at him in Thai to give him his wallet. His companion repeated the demand in a guttural voice, and Jet backed away from them as Rob stood, aggressively facing the two.

They began circling him, the assailant with the chain swinging it over his head in a threatening manner as the one with the knife tried to flank him. Jet ran towards the Mercedes, eyes wide with fear.

“Help. Please. Help us,” she screamed in English, and then the two men attacked Rob in a flurry of motion.

The driver wanted no part of the scuffle, even when the woman begged him. He shook his head. Rob broke into a run and sprinted down the alley towards him. The driver shrugged away as Rob stumbled, falling to the ground, and Jet took cover behind the car. The men gave chase, and then seeing the driver, yelled at him.

“Move along, dog dick. Or you’ll be next,” the larger man growled at him from twenty feet away.

“That’s right, shitbird. This isn’t your fight. Get your candy-ass out of here or you’ll be sorry,” the smaller mugger snarled, with an ominous rattle of his chain.

The driver pulled a gun from his shoulder holster and held it aloft for the two men to see. A Nighthawk Custom chrome-plated.45. The two Thais stopped their advance and stood frozen before slowly backing away, then turned and broke for the alley mouth.

Jet removed the chewing gum from her mouth and stuck it below the back bumper and sank the tracking chip into it.

She stood and ran to Rob, who had paused near the wall of the building opposite the car, and threw her arms around him.

“Honey. Are you okay?”

“Oh, God. They almost killed us.” He turned to face the driver. “Thank you so much,” he said in English, and then repeated it in mangled Thai.

The driver waved him off, annoyed. Stupid farangs. What did they expect, drunk in this neighborhood? Idiots. He looked down in disgust at his half-smoked cigarette soaking in a puddle by his feet. Perfectly good smoke wasted.

“Thanks again,” Jet cooed, and then she and Rob continued down the alley away from the attackers and the club, the driver’s angry gaze following them until they reached the next street and turned the corner.

“The signal’s strong. We have a winner,” Jet said, holding the phone up so Rob could see the blinking red light.

“I’ll get a car. We’ll want to follow him, right?”

“Sure. Although I don’t want to get close enough to risk alerting him. We’ll have to be careful. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and screw this up.”

“Agreed. So what’s the plan once we have him at his house?”

“We’ll put it under twenty-four-hour watch. We have no idea how long it will be before Pu makes his next trip north, so this could take a while. You want me to contact Edgar about vehicles and a surveillance team, or will you?” Jet asked.

“I’ll take care of it. Give me a few minutes. I’ll go get my car so we’re ready to go.”

Rob walked off towards the hotel district, leaving Jet waiting in front of a section of stalls selling Coach purses and Prada sunglasses, all made on the Chinese/Cambodian border and a hundredth of the price of the real thing. There was plenty of foot traffic; the area buzzed with activity. Bangkok came alive at night, when the population emptied into the streets for the seemingly endless celebration that was its natural state.

Four drunk Australian men in their late twenties staggered down the sidewalk, laughing boisterously and holding a loud, off-color conversation about their prior night’s adventures. When one of them caught sight of Jet, he nudged his buddy and approached her.

“How much?” he asked with an inebriated smile.

She just shrugged, playing dumb. As good a time as any to try blending in as a local.

“Come on, honey. How much to give us a rub and tug? All four of us. You’ll like it. The lads and I are ‘me so hohny’.”

She pointed at her throat and shook her head, then turned away from them, returning her attention to the purses.

She felt his meaty hand grab her arm and try to swing her around.

“Don’t give me that-”

Jet pivoted and delivered a brutal strike to his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him with an oof. She supported him as he fell against her, his knees buckling, and then she pushed his dead weight into the arms of his mates.

The remaining three stood stunned, and then the largest, wearing an orange rugby shirt, rushed her.

“Try that kung fu shit on me, you bi-”

The kick to his groin was so fast, he had no time to register it before he went down with a gasp, knocking a bin of Luis Vuitton clutches onto the sidewalk as he fell. The shopkeeper came running at the sound to find two of the four men sprawled on the sidewalk. The final two didn’t seem to have any appetite for more Jet and backed away from her a few steps.

She executed a small wai with a smile, then turned and sashayed away, wary of any pursuit. There was none, the inebriated bullies now occupied with trying to get free of the shopkeeper, who was demanding payment for the wet purses. That would keep them busy for a while — Thai vendors were as tenacious as lampreys: if they thought you owed them something, they would tie you up for hours, screaming and threatening to call the police. Any time there was a disagreement between a Thai and a foreigner, the brown-clad cops would invariably side with the Thai, so they never hesitated to avail themselves of that option. The Aussies were screwed.

She could see why the locals both despised foreigners and courted them. They came with boatloads of money the population desperately needed, and exchanged it for the national product — easy, cheap sex with attractive, willing partners. But they were an ill-behaved bunch, arrogant, loud and unrefined, and so, behind the ever-present Thai courtesy lurked a simmering hatred bred of generations of being used as the westerners’ outhouse. The altercation with the four men had been a typical one. Drunk, loutish oafs assuming that any woman on the street was a sex worker, and thus theirs to do with as they liked — the only sticking point being an agreed-upon price. There was no way they would act like that at home.

It felt good to get rid of some of the anger that had been welling inside her since her time with Lawan. There had been a number of non-violent ways she could have extracted herself from the altercation with the four men, but the truth was that she wanted to hit someone, to hurt them. The little girl’s situation was beyond awful, and there was nothing she could do about it. Jet knew there were thousands of similar children being brutalized all around her that night, but for whatever reason, she’d been touched by Lawan and couldn’t shake her.

Rob had been prudent, but that didn’t mean that he was right. She understood the danger and recklessness of getting involved in trying to save the world. But the memory of Lawan’s innocent face and the look of helpless despair in her eyes stayed with her. Somebody had to do something. And the only one who seemed to care was Jet.

A Nissan pulled alongside her at the curb, and Rob’s voice called from the window.

“Hop in.”

She swung the door open and slid into the passenger seat, the tracking phone glowing in her hand.

“Did you talk to Edgar?”

“Yup. He’ll have two more vehicles at our disposal within an hour, and a surveillance team in place within two.”

“So now we wait. It might be a long night.”

“Most are.”