The Jungle

8

SORRY ABOUT THE ACCOMMODATIONS,” CABRILLO SAID, swinging open the door to one of the cabins in the Oregon’s superstructure. “But with Smith aboard we have to keep up the appearance that this is all the old girl has to offer.”

MacD Lawless sniffed, made a face, then shrugged. “Y’all said my bein’ here was probational. I guess this is the price I pay.”

“When things quiet down, I’ll personally give you a tour of the parts of the ship we can’t let Smith know about. Oh, and he has the cabin next to yours. Keep your ears open. I’m sure he’ll be in touch with Croissard, and these walls are paper-thin.” There were microphones in every room and cabin in this part of the ship, but Juan wanted MacD to feel like he was already doing something to earn his pay.

Lawless threw his duffel bag onto the cabin’s single cot, where it sagged a good six inches into the near-springless mattress. The porthole was grimy, so the room was cast in shades of shadow and murk. The deck was covered in a mouse-brown carpet with such a thin nap that it could be mopped, and the walls were bare metal painted battleship gray. There was an adjoined private head with stainless steel fixtures like those seen in prisons and a medicine cabinet without a door.

“This place has the charm of an old Route 66 trailer court a decade after they closed the road,” Lawless said, “but I’ve slept in worse.”

He and John Smith had just been heloed to the ship from Chittagong Airport, and the Oregon was already steaming east at sixteen knots, heading for the northern coastline of Myanmar.

“I noticed you’re not limping,” Cabrillo said.

MacD slapped his leg and intentionally thickened the Big Easy lilt in his voice. “Feelin’ fine. A couple days’ R and R, and Ah heal good. My chest still looks like a Rorschach test, but it doesn’t hurt. You let Doc Hux check me out, and Ah’m sure—Can Ah ask you somethin’?”

“Fire away,” Juan invited.

“Why me? Ah mean, well, you know what Ah mean. You just know me one day and offer me a job.”

Cabrillo didn’t need to think of a response. “Two reasons. One was the way you handled yourself when we were in Pakistan. I know how you think and fight when the bullets start flying. That’s something I can’t get from just reading a résumé. The second is just a gut feeling. I was a NOC for the CIA. Do you know what that is?”

“Non-official cover. You went into foreign countries and spied on ’em without any embassy help.”

“Exactly. I recruited locals. It’s one of those jobs where you learn to get a feel for people quickly or you end up dead. As you can plainly see I’m not dead, so I must have a pretty good sense about who I can and can’t trust.”

Lawless held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said simply, but the words were loaded with meaning.

“Thank you. We’re holding a briefing after chow in the mess hall, one deck down on the starboard side. Follow your nose. Dinner’s at six.”

“Black tie,” MacD quipped.

“Optional,” Cabrillo called over his shoulder.

THE KITCHEN OFF the mess hall was still filthy, but it didn’t matter since the food was being prepared in the main galley and delivered via a dumbwaiter. Juan had reminded the chefs not to display too much of their culinary skill so that John Smith wouldn’t suspect any of his surroundings. It wouldn’t do for a five-star meal to come out of a two-roach kitchen.

Crew members, dressed like engineers, deckhands, and a couple of officers filled the spartan room but gave Cabrillo a table for himself, Lawless, Smith, Max Hanley, and Linda Ross. Linda was going to be the fourth on this mission. She was more than capable of handling herself, and she spoke some Thai, which might come in handy.

Smith was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with matte-black combat boots on his feet. His disposition was little improved from the first meeting in Singapore. His dark eyes remained hooded and were in constant motion, scanning each face at the table and occasionally sweeping the room. When they’d entered prior to a meal of baked lasagna and richly buttered garlic toast, Cabrillo had allowed Smith to choose his own seat at the round table. Not surprisingly, he took one so his back was to a wall.

When he was told that Linda Ross would be joining the team searching for Soleil Croissard, a small, contemptuous sneer played at the corners of his mouth before his expression returned to a blank mask.

“As you wish, Mr. Cabrillo.”

“Juan will be fine.”

“Tell me, Mr. Smith,” Linda said, “your name is English, but your accent is something else.”

“It is the name I chose when I joined the Legion. As I recall, there were about eight of us in my basic training class.”

“And where are you from?” she persisted.

“That is a question you never ask a Legionnaire. In fact, you never ask about his past at all.” He sipped from his glass of ice water.

Max asked, “You’re sure that Soleil hasn’t tried to contact her father since that last communication just before we met?”

“Correct. He’s tried her phone numerous times, but there is no answer.”

“So our starting point,” Juan said, “will be the GPS coordinates we got off that last call.”

“I noticed there is something next to the helicopter, covered with a tarp. A boat, I assume?”

“Yes,” Cabrillo replied to Smith’s question. “Even stripped as she is, our chopper doesn’t have the range to reach Soleil’s last known location. We’ll use it to airlift a boat into the country and track her from the water.”

“A good plan, I think,” Smith admitted. “By boat is about the only way one can travel in the jungle. I recall my training days in French Guiana. The Legion guards the European Space Agency’s launching facility there. They would drop us into the jungle with a canteen and a machete and then time how long it took us to get back to base. It was so thick, the best of us averaged a mile a day.”

“We’ve all been there,” MacD Lawless said. “I’d match the Georgia swamps to any jungle in South America.”

“Ranger?” Smith asked, recognizing that the Ranger training school was at Fort Benning, Georgia.

“Yup.”

“And you, Miss Ross, what is your background?”

Linda threw him a cocky grin that told him she could give as well as take. “You never ask a lady about her past.”

Smith actually smiled. “Touché.”

Juan unrolled a map he’d brought to the mess and anchored the corners with a coffee cup and a plate laden with what remained of a blueberry cobbler that he was relieved Smith hadn’t tried because it was about the best he’d ever tasted.

“Okay, we’re going to bring the Tyson Hondo in here.” He pointed to a spot just off Bangladesh’s southern coast. Tyson Hondo was the name currently painted across the Oregon’s fantail, and it was what they’d been calling her since Smith came aboard. “There’s nothing much out there. Just a few fishing villages and nomadic clans who live aboard their boats. I wish we could fly at night, but lowering the boat onto this river here”—he pointed to a spot about a hundred miles inland, well across the border with Myanmar—“is just too dangerous in the dark. There are no military bases that far north, so we don’t really need to worry about being spotted, but we’ll fly nap-of-the-earth the whole way in.”

“Is your pilot qualified?”

“We grabbed him away from the 160th SOAR,” Juan replied, referring to the U.S. Army’s elite special operations aviation regiment.

“So he’s qualified.”

“More than. From there, we’ll motor upstream. These maps are terrible, but as near as we can tell the river will take us to within a couple of miles from where Soleil and her companion were last heard from. Now, as you can see from these two plotted positions, she hadn’t wandered too far from when she’d made her last scheduled check-in with her father.”

“Is that significant?” Smith asked.

“Don’t know,” Cabrillo replied. “Maybe. It all depends on what’s in that particular patch of jungle. In her last call, she said she was close to something but that someone else was even closer.”

“If I may venture a guess,” Linda said, and continued when the men were looking at her. “From what I’ve read about her, Soleil Croissard is a daredevil, but she really doesn’t publicize her adventures. She’s not into seeing her name splashed across the tabloids. She just sets herself insane goals and then checks them off her list when she’s done. Car racing, check. World’s tallest mountains, check. Scuba dive with great whites, check. My guess is that whatever she’s looking for isn’t something she’s going to tell the world about. She’s after something for herself.”

“It would be a hell of a feat to cross Burma on foot,” Max said. “It’s not just the terrain, but you’ve got opium smugglers, and one of the most repressive governments in the world that would like nothing more than to capture her for a show trial.”

“Could it be that simple?” Juan asked Smith.

“I do not know. She never told Monsieur Croissard why she was doing this.”

“If that were the case,” MacD said, “why hasn’t she moved more than ten miles in almost two weeks?” To that, there was no answer. “What if she sees herself as a real-life Lara Croft? Are there any ancient temples or anything in that jungle?”

“Possibly,” Juan said. “The Khmer empire stretched pretty far. There might have been other significant civilizations before or since. I really don’t know this history as well as I should.”

“I do not see what it matters why she is there,” Smith interjected. “Getting her out should be our only interest.”

Cabrillo could see that Smith had a follower’s mind-set. He took orders, executed them, and moved on without giving them the slightest thought. It showed that he lacked imagination, unlike MacD Lawless, who could see the benefits of understanding Soleil Croissard’s motivations. Why she was there was an important factor in how they would get her out.

What if she’d gone in to make a major opium buy? Cabrillo doubted that was the case, but if it were true, it would alter how he would want to approach the situation. Dope peddlers don’t like being interrupted in the middle of a deal. What if she’d gone to meet some escaped human rights activist who had an entire army chasing after him? Speculating about her presence there now might save lives later.

He didn’t expect someone like Smith to understand that. He recalled his first impression at the Sands resort in Singapore. The guy was just hired muscle, a thug who Croissard had polished up a little so he fit into decent society and could do the financier’s dirty work.

“Since time is of the essence,” Juan said with a nod in Smith’s direction, “we’ll let that rest for now. Since none of us could pass as a native, there’s no sense trying to blend in in terms of the weapons we bring. John, what’s your preference?”

“MP5 and a Glock 19.”

“Okay. Tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred, I’ll meet you at the fantail with one of each. You can test them as much as you’d like. MacD, do you want the Barrett REC7 like we had in Afghanistan?” Cabrillo asked it in such a way as to make Smith think Lawless had been with the Corporation for a while.

“Saved our butts quite well, as I recall. And a Beretta 92, just like the one Uncle Sam gave me.”

“Linda?” Juan asked to make this sound like normal operating procedure. “So I can tell the armorer.”

“REC7, and I’ll take a Beretta too. Uncle Sam showed me how to use one, but he never gave it to me.”

“Truth be told,” MacD said mischievously, “Ah kinda stol’d mine.”

Smith must have sensed the meeting was winding down. He cleared his throat. “I myself am not a parent,” he said, “so I do not know the anguish Monsieur Croissard must be suffering right now. Young Lawless here told me on the chopper ride out to the ship that he has a daughter back in the States. Perhaps he can imagine what my boss is suffering.”

He looked pointedly at MacD. Lawless nodded. “If anything were to happen to my little girl, Ah would hunt down and butcher the person who did it.” The mere thought of his daughter being hurt brought a flush to his face and real anger into his voice.

“I can see that. And that is exactly what Monsieur Croissard expects of us. If, God forbid, something has befallen Soleil, we must be prepared to exact his revenge.”

“That isn’t exactly what we signed up for,” Cabrillo said, not liking the direction the conversation was going.

Smith reached into his back pocket for his wallet and withdrew a piece of paper. He unfolded it and laid it on the table. It was a bank draft for five million dollars. “He has given me sole discretion to give this to you if I feel it warranted. Fair enough?”

Cabrillo met his steady gaze. For a moment electricity seemed to arc between the two. All the others at the table could feel it. Ten seconds went by, fifteen. If this had been the Old West, the room would have cleared in anticipation of a gunfight. Twenty seconds.

The ex-Legionnaire glanced down and picked up the bank check. He’d blinked.

“Let us hope it doesn’t come down to that, eh?”

“Let’s,” Juan replied, and leaned back to throw an arm over the back of his chair in a studied relaxed pose.

The following morning Smith met Cabrillo at the fantail as they had arranged. This morning both men wore camouflage fatigue pants and plain khaki T-shirts. A folding card table had been set up next to the rust-caked railing and on it were the weapons Smith had requested and extra magazines as well as several boxes of 9mm ammunition, since both pistol and submachine gun used the same. There were also two sets of earphones and several blocks of yellow-dyed ice in a cooler under the table.

The big MD 520N helicopter sat squarely on the rearmost hatch cover, its blades folded flat and covers installed over its jet intake and exhaust. Usually the chopper was lowered into the hull on a hydraulic lift, but, as with everything else Juan had done since Smith came aboard, he didn’t want to tip his hand about his ship and her true capabilities.

The gray tarp had been removed from over the RHIB that was resting on the second aft-deck cargo hatch. Two crew members were giving the lightened craft a final inspection.

“Sleep well?” Juan greeted. He thrust out a hand to show there were no hard feelings over last night’s little staring contest.

“Yes, fine. Thank you. I must say, your galley produces delicious coffee.”

“That’s the one thing this outfit doesn’t skimp on. I’d have a mutiny on my hands if we served anything other than Kona.” There was no sense in being petty and feeding Smith swill.

“Yes, I’ve noticed other places where you are not so, ah, generous.” He wiped a finger along the rail, and the tip came back stained red.

“She may not be much to look at, but the old Tyson Hondo gets us where we need to go.”

“Odd name. Is there a story behind it?”

“That’s what she was called when we bought her, and no one felt any great urge to change it.”

Smith nodded to the pristine weapons. “I see another area where you do not pinch pennies.”

Cabrillo played up the mercenary bit a little. “A carpenter’s judged by how he treats his tools. These are what we use to ply our trade, so I insist on nothing but the best.”

Smith picked up the Glock, hefted it for a moment, and then checked that the chamber was empty. He stripped it down, eyeing each component critically before putting it all back together. He did the same with the Heckler & Koch MP5. “These seem adequate.”

Juan handed Smith a pair of ear protectors while he slipped on his own set. He then reached under the table for one of the yellow ice chunks and heaved it as far over the rail as he could. It hit with a splash and vanished for a second before bobbing back to the surface.

Smith jammed home a magazine in the H&K and cocked the stubby little weapon. He flicked off the safety, selected single-shot, and brought it to his shoulder. He fired, paused, and fired three more times in rapid succession. All four shots hit the ice, which at the speed the ship was carving though the water was nearly a hundred yards off the port quarter by the time the last bullet struck. Smith waited for the ice to drift a little farther astern, letting it get right to the machine pistol’s maximum effective range, and fired twice more. The first bullet missed and kicked up a tiny fountain of water. The second hit the chewed-up ice dead center and split it into two pieces.

“Nice shooting,” Juan called. “Another?”

“Please.”

Cabrillo threw a second chunk of ice overboard. This time, Smith fired three-round bursts that sent ice particles flying. The block literally disintegrated. They repeated the drill with the pistol. Smith fired off the entire clip with the precision pacing of a metronome. Every shot was a hit.

“Satisfied, or do you want to keep going?” Cabrillo had to acknowledge that Smith knew his business.

“I have to confess I haven’t had much practice lately on automatic weapons. The Swiss authorities frown on their ownership. So I would like to continue firing the MP5.”

“No problem.”

They kept at it for another twenty minutes. Juan would load magazines while Smith destroyed chunks of ice. By the end he was hitting with every pull of the trigger no matter how far his target had floated away.

Max’s voice suddenly blared over the loudspeaker mounted under the second-level catwalk that ringed the superstructure. “Cease fire, cease fire. Radar has a contact five miles out.”

“Wouldn’t do for them to hear us,” Juan said, and took the machine pistol from Smith’s hands. He pulled out the magazine and ejected the cartridge that was already in the chamber. “The ammo stays with me, the guns go with you. Security precaution. No offense intended. I’ll have someone drop off a cleaning kit at your cabin. We eat lunch at noon and take off at one. Is there anything else you need?”

“I have my satellite phone, but what about tactical communications?”

“You’ll be issued a radio.”

“Then I’m good.”

“Yeah,” Juan said, “I think you are.”

Smith took the compliment with a little nod of the head.