Betrayal

Chapter 26

Jet didn’t trust Matt enough to take the cuffs off, but she had agreed to think over his proposition, which was an interesting one. Part of what had been gnawing at her was what she would do once the mission was successful. That had been rolling around in her head for days — she didn’t have any confidence that Arthur would return Hannah to her, no matter what she did, and Matt’s assertion that he would have her killed, or at least do his best to try, rang true.

She hadn’t come up with a satisfactory plan for dealing with Arthur, and she didn’t know whether Edgar was part of the drug ring, or was just following orders and believed the same bullshit she had been fed. She didn’t get the feeling from him that he was bent, but then again, he could have just been a good liar. There was no shortage of those in the agency.

Perhaps most troubling to her was that David had relied on Arthur for dealing with Hannah. She wanted to believe that he’d had no idea about Arthur’s extracurricular activities, but she couldn’t be sure. David’s memory was becoming increasingly tarnished the more she knew. She suspected that wouldn’t end any time soon.

The gray of dusk transitioned into the black of night, and the rain eased to infrequent cloudbursts. But the trails were still treacherous, and even with the night vision goggles, she had a difficult time spotting all the hazards.

They rounded a bend, and she stopped dead, her senses prickling. She’d heard something up ahead. Matt almost walked into her in the dark, but he sensed her alarm and also froze.

Voices floated through the jungle, ephemeral and directionless — one of the sensory tricks that the creeping night fog played on their perception. She tried to see any movement up ahead, but nothing registered, even as she slid the P90 strap down her shoulder and gripped it, ready for battle.

When the shooting started, it narrowly missed them, shredding through the leaves, the bullets zipping past with their distinctive sough of death. Matt dropped into the mud and whispered to her as she fired three bursts into the jungle.

“The key. Un-cuff me, and get me a gun. Please.”

The moment of truth had arrived. She saw a skulking figure a hundred yards away dodging towards them in a crouch and, sighting carefully, blew his head off. The shooting stopped for a few seconds, and she groped in her pocket for the key.

“Can you crawl a few feet closer?” she whispered.

He did, and without taking her eyes off the trail, she felt for his wrists and unlocked one of the cuffs, placing the key in his newly-freed hand.

Matt wasted no time unlocking the other cuff, then tapped her arm.

“Gun?”

She un-holstered the Beretta and handed it to him, then fired another burst at a fleeting movement near the edge of a thicket. “Take the silencer off for better range. You’ve got sixteen shots. Already one in the hole.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have another night vision scope, would you?”

“Sorry. And I’m not giving this one up.”

“Fair enough.”

“Don’t use up all the bullets. I’ve only got one more clip, and we’re a long way from the border.”

“Maybe we can find a nice AK-47.”

She thought about it for a second and then smiled to herself. “How about you give me the pistol back and I trade you for the P90? Then lay down some cover fire so I can flank them.”

“Okay, but I can’t really see anything.”

“That’s the point. Neither can they. I doubt they have night vision gear, although you would know better than I would.”

“No chance. There’s no way to recharge the batteries out here. That’s why I didn’t have any. Even with the solar to run the computer and charge the sat phone, it couldn’t sufficiently pow-”

He was interrupted by more shooting. They were drawing a bead on his voice, soft as it was.

She fired another burst down the trail, then slid him the P90, along with the last two clips. Matt took them then peered at the gun before handing her the silenced Beretta. More shots rang out, and he instinctively ducked, then rolled to the side of the trail where a thick tree trunk provided better cover. He wiped the perspiration from his eyes and squinted into the gloom, hoping to make something out.

“I’m guessing I should wish you good hunting…” he whispered to Jet, but when he turned to her, she was gone.

The smugglers were agitated. Whoever the intruders were, they were putting up more of a fight than anticipated. And they had some sort of stealth weapon. There was no muzzle flash for them to shoot at, and it made a snapping crack instead of the much louder explosion of a rifle, like their Kalashnikovs. But whatever it was, it was just as deadly, as three of them had already discovered.

The law of this jungle was shoot first and ask questions later. The Myanmar army steered well clear of the region, and much of the hill country was a no man’s land under drug-runner control. For decades, the infamous warlord and drug trafficker Khun Sa had ruled with an iron fist, and even after his death, the old habits died hard as his territory was divided up by squabbling rivals who roamed the hills armed to the teeth.

This group was a ten-man enforcement squad that one of the larger drug production networks used to keep the locals in line, attacking anything and everything they came across to discourage insurgents from cutting into their turf. In a country where poverty was rampant, it was always a temptation for enterprising upstarts to try their hand at opening a channel to Thailand for their opium instead of selling it at a low price to the cartels. Bodies were routinely found in the jungle as these factions battled it out — a necessary part of the trade and one of the risks that kept most out of it.

The wiry Shan tribesman’s eyes darted to where his fallen men had been shot. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He, Kyaw, was the fist of vengeance for fifty miles. That three of his men had been cut down in seconds was intolerable.

The looming clouds and fog made a difficult situation worse, the moon’s glow cut to near nothing by the overcast. Even his practiced eyes couldn’t make out anything down the trail, and the muffled murmur of voices had fallen silent.

He whispered to two of his men to move up the trail. They rose from their positions and edged towards the unknown enemy, their sandaled feet silent on the wet grass.

The first arrow took the lead gunman by surprise as it penetrated his stomach. He screamed, a tortured yowl, trailing off into a keening as he clutched the protruding shaft with shaking hands, his rifle forgotten on the bloody grass in front of him.

His partner fired into the brush, where he estimated the projectile had come from, and was mid-burst when the next arrow tore his throat out, causing him to flip around and drop into the muddy trail face-first.

Kyaw’s men fired wildly, no obvious target in sight, but determined to pepper the jungle with deadly lead. Kyaw gestured at them to stop after a half minute, in an effort to conserve ammunition.

The weapon down the trail popped and stuttered, cutting down two of the gunmen, stitching them with smoking wounds. Kyaw gritted his teeth. This was a bloodbath, and he had now lost most of his force to a ghostlike enemy that prowled the night in silence, delivering death at its whim. He wasn’t a superstitious man — far from it, he’d killed so many that he’d long ago lost count. But this was unlike anything he’d experienced, and for the first time in decades, he knew fear.

The fighter next to him was turning to whisper something when the arrow skewered his skull. He fell silently against Kyaw, the razor tip of the arrow imbedded in his brain. Kyaw had seen enough. He gestured to his remaining man to follow, and ran along the edge of the path back in the direction he’d come.

When the arrow skewered him through the back of his neck, he collapsed, his body lifeless before he dropped, his spinal cord severed by the arrowhead. The lone remaining gunman emptied his clip at the dark jungle and was reloading when his life was snuffed out by the nearby pop of a single silenced pistol.

Jet surveyed the carnage and waited for any more assailants to show themselves. After a few minutes of silence, she shifted from her position in a tree forty yards away and dropped to the ground, leaving her now empty quiver at the base of the trunk, along with the bow. Perhaps it would be of some use to an impoverished Shan hill person who was willing to reclaim the arrows and find a few that were serviceable. She had neither the time nor the desire to do so.

She ran to the dead men and emptied their pockets of spare clips, then selected two of the newest rifles and made her way back to where Matt was hopefully still waiting.

~ ~ ~

“Did you miss me?”

Matt started at the sound of her whispered voice and exhaled noisily before turning to where she stood with two AK-47s.

“What took you so long?”

“There were more of them than I thought.”

She could see his jaw clench, the muscles in his face tensing, and then he relaxed.

“You were hoping for some new weapons?” she said. “These are slightly used, but I think they’ll do the trick.”

She threw one to him, forcing him to drop the P90 to catch it.

“Nice. What is this, about a thirty-year-old AK?” he asked, hefting it and then sighting down the barrel into the distance.

“A classic.” She tossed two magazines at his feet. “Nice shooting, by the way. For a guy who can’t see anything, you took two out.”

“I didn’t want to hit you, but I figured you wouldn’t be between me and the muzzle flashes.”

“Good guess. Now, hand me the P90, and let’s get going. I don’t want to have to take on any others who might have been drawn by the gunfire. They might not have been the only bad guys roaming around here tonight.”

Matt stood and handed her the little weapon. “That’s a neat gun. I like the dual-stage trigger, although it could use a three-round burst mode. It felt like I was getting off five rounds with each pull.”

“You get used to it. Holds fifty rounds, so if you’re careful, you can get off fifteen pops before you’re out of ammo. An acquired taste. I prefer the MTAR.” She took it from him and checked the magazine quickly. “Feels like it’s still at least a quarter full.”

“You trust me with a gun now?” he asked, only partially joking.

“Let’s just say that I think you’re probably better served being able to protect yourself out here. Besides, as you’ve probably guessed, I can take care of myself.”

“I’ll say.”

They began trudging along the trail, Jet in the lead again, alert and ready for anything the jungle cared to throw at them.