Betrayal

Chapter 23

A cruel wind blew sheets of rain across the clearing, lashing the treetops with a sullen fury. The brooding clouds denied the twilight glow of the hunter’s moon to the huddle of guards, on alert after their compatriots failed to check in or return from their ambush at the abandoned temple high on the distant mountain.

“Take two men and do a patrol. Come on. I have a bad feeling about this,” Thet, the leader of the tribesmen, ordered the guard sitting by the struggling flames of the fire, which had a piece of sheet metal suspended over it to deflect the rain.

“Come on. It’s pouring. Don’t make me go out in this,” the younger man whined, clutching a tarp over his head in an effort to stay dry, as he eyed the older man with cautious fear mixed with annoyance.

“It’s not a request. Do it. Now. Take Maung and Htet and check the perimeter.” Thet’s voice had an edge. He wasn’t used to having his instructions questioned.

“Fine. I’ll go get them. But everything’s probably okay. What do you want to bet that their radio got soaked in this, and that’s why they didn’t check in? It’s happened before…”

“Thanks for the theories. I’ll have to remember that when I’m getting ready to retire to Bangkok with a harem of bar girls. You’re a deep thinker, wasted on this kind of duty.” Thet cuffed him gruffly. “Now get your ass on patrol. I don’t want to say it again.”

The young man stood and tried to take the tarp, but Thet shook his head. “Grab slickers. That’s why the boss brought them for us.”

The guards had yet to become accustomed to some of the technological advances that the crazy farang had introduced into their simple lives. Rain gear, flashlights, solar panels, all unimaginable luxuries that had been foreign to them until he’d arrived and assembled a small private army. Every man had grown up in the surrounding hill villages and had earned their livings in the harsh environment, either farming or working for the drug syndicates that effectively ruled the region.

They had all learned to field strip a Kalashnikov before they’d hit puberty, and had killed before their voices had changed. It was a brutal life in Myanmar: a poor country with a totalitarian military dictatorship that treated its population like subjects, and in which meager hierarchy the Shan hill tribes comprised the bottom rung — lower than human. There were no schools, no hospitals, no power plants or telephone lines. Only the hills and whatever they could coax from the ground — usually opium or food crops.

Before the white devil had arrived, Thet had made thirty dollars a month working as protection for a drug trafficking group. Now he made a hundred and fifty. The prospect of a wild increase in fortune made it easy to recruit the most aggressive and deadly of his brethren, who had literally fought over the right to work the security detail for a hundred dollars a month. He’d limited the group to twenty hardened fellow Shan fighters, and whenever they lost one to disease or a skirmish with one of the roaming groups of traffickers, he had ten begging to take the fallen man’s place.

The seven men he had sent to Bangkok to help the sex slaver with his problem had been his best, and he would miss them. Pu had brought news of their passing along with a warning to expect another attack — the third in the last month and a half. Thet had lost a total of twelve fighters since he had started working for the farang, but didn’t question it. Life was uncertain at the best of times, and a big payday carried with it certain risks. The average male lived sixty-seven years in Myanmar, but in the Shan region it dropped to fifty-five, and that didn’t take into account the far lower expectancy of those working for the drug runners. But as a farmer, he might make fifteen dollars a month, twenty if he was lucky, and the syndicates paid thirty for a much easier day’s work. When he’d been offered the princely sum by the round eye, he’d thought the man insane, but he had come to appreciate that he was not only shrewd, but also skilled in the ways of the world.

Thet watched as the bedraggled patrol trudged to the edge of the clearing and entered the jungle, a flashlight illuminating their way. This was only one of the white man’s camps, and they moved every two weeks, melting into the jungle only to reappear elsewhere the next day. Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia…the geography made no difference to him. It was all jungle and hills. But he was becoming a rich man as the farang’s security chief, so he was fiercely loyal to him, lest his meal ticket disappear, forcing him to go back to risking his life every day with a drug network, or have to be a protection worker for the slavers that routinely bought the more attractive children from the impoverished locals.

Whatever his benefactor had done to require this level of protection didn’t matter to Thet, nor to his men. Nobody knew, although there were constant rumors and speculation — that he had murdered his family, or was running from a rival criminal syndicate, or had deserted from some army and was a wanted man. Whatever the case, he was Pu’s friend, and Pu had been doing business in the region forever. That was good enough for Thet.

He hugged his rifle closer as he eyed the rain distrustfully.

There was evil afoot in the night. He could feel it.

The men swept the jungle in front of them with their weapons, the bravado they had displayed back in the camp now faded into a dull acceptance of getting soaked while their peers slept. But they weren’t paid to be comfortable. They collected their money to keep the white man safe, and that is what they would do, even in the middle of a torrential downpour. The rain pelted their unfamiliar rain gear with wet thwacks as they edged along the trail that ran in a rough oval around the clearing.

“Ack-”

The man bringing up the rear pitched forward face-first into the mud, a bloody shaft protruding from his chest. By the time the other two had registered that he hadn’t tripped, the guard in front of him had been similarly impaled and dropped his rifle, clawing at the razor-sharp point that had appeared as if by magic from his sternum. The third man was raising his rifle defensively when an arrow skewered him through his left eye, and he collapsed without getting a single shot off, having never seen his killer or heard anything besides the briefest of whistling as the arrow sliced the air on its trajectory to his brain.

Jet stepped cautiously towards the corpses, another arrow notched, and kicked the flashlight into the underbrush before melting back into the brush, her night vision goggles and black face paint lending her the appearance of a nightmare demon with attitude.

Three down. That left seven or so to go.

She had considered letting the rest of the gunmen come to her and picking them off in the jungle, but didn’t want to alert the target that he was under attack. If he disappeared, she might never find him again. This was her only chance, so she had decided to bring the battle into the camp before the remainder of his entourage knew what hit them.

She adjusted the black leather quiver, still full of arrows, so that it wouldn’t impair her ability to get the P90 into play and then turned towards the camp, the sleeping men’s fates all but sealed.

Thet was restless. The men had been gone for too long. The buzz of anxiety that roiled in his gut was growing, and his survival instinct was warning him to wake the men.

He was preparing to rise and walk to the first hut when a blinding shriek of pain shot through his right lung, and he found himself gasping for breath as he fumbled with his rifle. A second silver shaft caught a stray bit of light from the flickering fire before slicing through his throat. Thet keeled backwards off the rock he was seated on, dead before he hit the ground.

Jet crept towards the dark buildings, their outlines glowing in her goggles, and then froze when she heard the tarp draped across one of the doorways crackle and an arm emerged. She pulled the bowstring back to her ear and waited for the man to show himself, and watched as a guard exited, scratching himself, and then darted through the rain for the latrine.

The arrow caught him mid-stride ten feet from the building, and he gurgled as he fell, then moaned before laying still. She hoped that nobody had heard him, but then saw the tarp pull back again, and another figure exited, holding a rifle.

In a fluid motion she pulled another arrow from the quiver, notched it, and sent it whistling towards his head. The arrow caught him in the jaw and stabbed through his mouth, protruding through the back of his head and imbedding itself in the wooden wall behind him. He screamed, a jarring, raw sound, prompting Jet to launch another shaft at him, this one piercing his heart.

But the damage had been done. The scream had alerted the other fighters. After a brief pause, two more came barreling through the door, and the tarp on the building next to it flew aside, and a rifle barrel poked out. Instantly weighing her options, she retreated, gliding into the shadows at the jungle’s edge. The smudge of the fire provided dim illumination, but it was a scant flicker within the heart of the downpour and not enough to give her away.

Jet watched as four remaining guards moved out of the buildings in a huddle that bristled with gun barrels. She notched another arrow. They were really making it almost too easy.

By the time any of the men could react, two were dead or dying. The remaining two fired blindly in a panic, desperately sweeping the jungle around them with their weapons, but Jet was already on the move and was sliding behind their huts even as they emptied their guns in vain.

The smaller of the pair realized his mistake as his weapon clicked empty — in their haste to take on their attackers they hadn’t thought to bring spare clips.

When an arrow severed his spinal cord, he tumbled into the second man, whose life, in turn, was extinguished by the shaft’s companion two seconds later.

A figure tore out of the doorway of one of the remaining buildings, running as hard as he could for the stream. Jet followed his progress, with the softness of the arrow’s flight next to her cheek, and then, adjusting for his speed and the distance, released the bowstring with a twang.

She watched as the man dropped, having almost made it to the jungle’s edge.

Jet waited, ears alert for any threats, but heard nothing. She could make out the outlines of the buildings as clear as day through the goggles and saw no one.

Then the tarp of a hut drew open, and Hawker stepped out, hands in the air.

“I’m unarmed,” he called in English, and then in Thai.

She studied him, waiting for any trick.

He took another step forward, rain streaming down his face. “I repeat. I’m unarmed.”

Jet scanned the surrounding structures warily but saw nothing. With a fluid motion, she dropped the bow and shrugged the quiver off, placing it and the P90 on the ground beside her, then un-holstered the silenced Beretta and moved to the first building, ignoring Hawker for the moment. She peered through the back window and confirmed that it was empty, then repeated the process on the next two.

“Move towards the fire,” she called and saw the surprise play across his face upon hearing her voice. It never ceased to amaze her how many men believed that their violent world was only inhabited by males.

He took cautious, plodding steps, his bare feet squishing on the muddy ground, before stopping ten feet from the subdued flames.

Hawker studied Thet’s corpse with interest. “Arrows? You used arrows?”

Jet could have sworn she saw the beginnings of a smile. Just a trace, fleeting, then gone.

She moved towards him, gun trained on his head, and watched as he registered her on the periphery of his vision.

“Keep your hands above your head.”

“I will.”

She reached to the small of her back and withdrew a pair of black anodized handcuffs, then tossed them at his feet, her pistol unwavering.

“Put those on.”

“Hands in front or behind?”

“Do you think I’m an idiot? Behind. Turn so I can see you putting them on. Don’t try anything or I’ll blow a kneecap off, and then it’s going to be really painful for you to ride out of here.”

“Is that what you’re thinking we’ll do? Ride out of here? That’ll be kind of hard with no horses, won’t it?”

“The cuffs,” she said.

“Okay. Here we go.”

“Nice and slow.”

“The only way I know.” He lowered his arms, knelt to scoop up the cuffs, and stood, holding them out so she could see them.

“Night vision. Of course. Should have known,” he muttered to himself, then slid a cuff open and secured it around his wrist.

“Now the other one.”

“I hope I get points for courtesy and cooperation.” He locked the cuff in place, then waggled his fingers. “There. I’m no longer a menace to society.”

She inched closer to him. “Now turn around.”

He complied, peering through the gloom at her. “Holy shit. Is it just you? You did all this?”

“How many did you think it would take?”

He shook his head. “Unbelievable. You want a job?”

“Very funny. Now we’re going to head over to the horses. Think you can manage that?”

“Sure. But why? Am I going to give them a eulogy?”

She looked past him to the creek. Both animals were down. The wild shots from the two frantic guards had hit them.

“Damn. Looks like we’re walking out, then.”

His eyes moved, and he looked over her shoulder, past her. She didn’t fall for it.

“Don’t bother. That’s the oldest trick in the world,” she said, her gun pointing steadily at him.

“I think you should reconsider your perspective of old dogs and their tricks,” he said, and this time he did smile.

“Not a chance. Now before we go any further, where are the diamonds?”

“You think I’d have them in a hut in the middle of nowhere?”

“Where are they?”

“Well, two of them are right behind you,” he said.

“I told you. Stop screwing around, wasting my time. It won’t work.”

“Oh, I think this time it will. Don’t you, Matt?” Lap Pu’s voice purred softly from behind her.