Death in the Kingdom (34 page)

Jo was delegated the task of instructing Sami's men how to use the headsets. It was decided in the end that, because Alex's squad spoke no Thai, Sami's two English speakers alone would get the units and share the watch.

When it came time to turn in, I went outside into the cooling night for a last smoke and to empty my bladder. The moon was as bright as an ice-cold searchlight, sending its white light down to bathe the plateau. As I ground out my cigarette, two of The A Team left their hut and walked towards the point where the track crested the plateau. The pair were tooled up with M16 variants complete with all sorts of fancy optics, plus a 40 mm grenade launcher under the barrel. They also had night vision glasses on their foreheads and between them they carried a tripod-mounted device that looked like a cross between a video camera and a large pair of binoculars. I guessed it was an image enhancer of some sort. I hadn't been briefed on the technology the specialists had brought up there with them.

Karl came out of the HQ hut to where I was standing watching The A Team setting up their equipment by the head of the track.

‘That's X-ray,' he said. ‘Our eyes in the night!'

‘I'd love to play with some of their toys,' I said. ‘What's that stuff inside?'

‘You mean the stuff Alex won't let you, Sami or Jo near?' Karl said with a teasing hint to his voice.

‘Yeah, that stuff,' I replied.

‘Okay,' Karl hesitated. ‘One of the conditions put in place when they agreed to lend it to us was that there was no nosing around the equipment. However, I can give you an overview.' The CIA man paused a moment, either to get his thoughts in order or to engage his mental censor.

‘There are high resolution, low-light video cameras in the bush, not infrared which can be detected. There are listening devices, movement detectors, distraction pyrotechnics and remote Claymores, all controlled from in there,' he hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘The plan is to hear Chekhov's men, see them, distract them and hopefully hit them hard before they get to us. Then we go and hunt down the remnants,' he said.

‘Simple as that?' I replied.

Karl laughed. ‘Yeah. Simple as that,' he answered, clapping me on the shoulder before heading off towards the drug lab, probably to check that Jo's briefing had been successful. I took the communicator from my shirt pocket and fitted it on. Having all of us wired for sound made great sense. The cynic in me muttered, ‘Great, now we can all tune in to hear ourselves die.' I didn't really mean it. In fact I was beginning to feel a bit more confident about the way things were going, particularly when it came to Karl's team-mates. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing. They'd probably done shit like this a dozen times before. I was also relieved that, despite the fact we hadn't broadcast our location yet, they weren't taking any chances with sneak attacks.

I held my communicator to my ear and switched it from stand-by to listen mode in time to catch some of the chatter. ‘How's the picture down the valley?' The voice was that of Alex back in the HQ hut. He was obviously checking in with the guys on the imager.

‘I could count the hairs on a whore's pussy at five clicks,' came the operator's reply.

‘Leave the whores alone until R&R, then you're buying,' Alex replied with a snort. I guessed that somewhere under that stone-faced exterior lurked a sense of humour. I flicked the headset back to stand-by. It was time to sleep and hopefully not dream of headless friends and mad Russians. I stripped to my underwear and crawled under the mosquito net, laying my Walther and communicator beside me. Because I didn't have my old-faithful holdall to use as a pillow, I had to make do with my borrowed pack. Sleep found me very quickly that night.

34

After our breakfast of rice and pork soup, Karl, Sami and I moved to the wide porch of the big house. Karl and I lit up and had coffee while Sami went off towards his iron lab, which I figured wasn't a bad defensive position at all given that iron didn't burn like thatch and was probably capable of stopping a bit more bullet than bamboo. I'd noted the sandbags lining the inner walls when I'd got the grand tour of Chez Somsak the day before.

‘Half past nine,' Karl said glancing at his watch. ‘Want to start the ball rolling?'

‘Might as well,' I replied. The mobile phone was sitting beside my communications unit. I switched it on. There was a strong signal but that didn't surprise me because Sami had chosen this place. Probably the Vientiane mobile phone link was within range and ever-present communications satellites were floating around in the ether.

‘I presume there's a GPS bird up there?' I said to Karl.

‘Count on it,' he replied as he poured us both another coffee.

Bernard answered immediately, despite the fact it was a late winter's night where he was. I told him I was safely installed in my temporary lair. ‘Just a little village up by the border,' I explained. ‘Farmers, plantations. Right out of the way. I'll stay here until things quieten down.' For obvious reasons I didn't give him a hint that I wasn't alone. He didn't ask what the village was called. He was getting sloppy or excited. He was no longer playing the game of concerned Mr Need-to-Know-Everything.

‘My battery is low, Bernard,' I said. ‘There's no power to recharge it here. I'll need to save it so I'm switching it off. Will call you in a day or so.' I flicked off the phone before he could reply. It was hard being civil to the man who was orchestrating my death. Anyway, the deed was done. In a few minutes Chekhov would have the co-ordinates of my new home and he would assume I wasn't alone. Point was, if the spies he probably had in the village below didn't picked up the choppers, especially the one carrying The A Team, we might have a huge advantage. Time sure as hell was going to tell on that one.

‘Strategy meeting in two,' Karl was saying into his communicator. I looked around for The A Team as he spoke and couldn't see any of them in view. Then a couple of blinks later six of them were converging on us from all points of the compass, all heavily armed and looking very, very businesslike. No doubt the others were standing watch.

Karl had the chair given that he owned The A Team by association. If I heard something I didn't like, I would speak up, otherwise this was a CIA gig from here on in. Sami and I were just the sacrificial goats, although I hoped that by the end of the day, the sacrificial tag would be dropped, from my perspective at least.

The satellite image was back up on the wall and Karl ran through the situation. ‘It's absolutely vital that we don't provide any aerial hints that we are in occupation with some heavy hitters. He now knows we're here but he doesn't know our numbers or the make-up of our crew, even if the choppers are spotted. There will no doubt be a reconnaissance fly over,' Karl added. ‘Sami, have four of your men dress as women, men only with weapons in sight as is usual up here,' he gave Sami a tight grin. ‘Get them out in the gardens and walking about. Everyone else has to stay out of sight as much as possible.' Sami nodded. He turned to Jo who faded away to pass on the order, while Karl turned the show over to the Special Ops man.

Alex sent his crew off to do whatever it was they did and then proceeded to bring Sami and I up to speed. All the sophisticated gizmos were already positioned at strategic points in the jungle and on the track. They had a two-man ambush in place to take out any vehicles and personnel attempting a frontal raid up the track. The remainder of the team would concentrate on providing perimeter cover in Sami's earthworks. The village guys would be deployed amongst the buildings as a second defence with Jo as their main man. Sami, Karl and I would be the last line of defence along with the two guys working the high-tech gear in the big house. ‘We're just preparing the big stuff now,' said the Special Forces boss. ‘Getting ready for a siege,' he added with a hard smile that suggested he didn't mind a bit. Tough cookie!

‘The Siege of Bang Sai Deng,' I mused aloud. ‘Just like it must have been in Vietnam.'

‘Damn right!' Karl replied. ‘Only we haven't got the howitzers.'

I didn't do the maths. Karl was one of those guys of indeterminable age, but I guessed he could have been in Nam as a very young man. ‘No howitzers, but we've got the next best thing,' replied Alex, nodding towards two of The A Team members as they emerged from one of the huts carrying the unpacked Stingers. Another pair followed, one carrying a tripod, the other a squat multi-barrelled weapon.

‘Minigun,' Sami said.

‘We call it the mincer,' said Alex. I almost laughed, or applauded.

It figured that when Karl called in the cavalry they would come with the biggest and best hardware, but I hadn't figured on this. ‘Nine barrels, .223 calibre, electric-powered, 3,000 rounds a minute on low, 5,000 on maximum. We also brought some tank busters which we will position around the perimeter.' The A Team relay had laid six big fat green tubes on the ground beside the pair assembling the Minigun. ‘You've got good earthworks,' Alex told Sami. ‘I'll go and assign the ordinance.'

With that, the briefing was over.

‘Want to see where we'll be holing up if it all gets bent out of shape?' Sami asked, beckoning us into the big hut. Karl and I followed. The two men sitting at the monitoring equipment in a nest of freshly filled sandbags looked up momentarily, but Sami led us away from their end of the hut and their top-secret gear. He pulled a grass mat aside and exposed a trap door in the centre of the floor. ‘Gentlemen, follow me,' he said, opening the trap and dropping through it.

The bunker was huge. Light came through slits spaced regularly along all four walls. The slits were covered with loosely woven mats that allowed the muted light to penetrate into the gloom. ‘We dug this and then built the house above,' Sami explained. ‘We have a log roof with more than a metre of earth on top. The whole village can fit in here. If the building catches fire, we're okay. We've got air vents and a 360-degree arc of fire. Outside you can't see the firing slots.'

I had to admit I was impressed. I hadn't seen any evidence of the bunker from up above. ‘This is also my armoury,' he explained. Along one wall I could see a long bamboo gun rack full of hardware with boxes of ammunition. There were also RPGs stacked further along the wall. Rocket-propelled grenades were common anywhere in the world where there was a scrap going on, mainly because they were cheap, crude, easy to use and bloody effective. I noted that there was also an open crate containing conventional fragmentation grenades. Sami Somsak was set for war.

My eyes were now becoming accustomed to the low light and I could make out neatly rolled and stacked sleeping mats. Along another wall there were stacked cartons of what I presumed was food, along with water containers. There was even a toilet hole in one corner. Short ladders and exposed wooden panels set in the roof suggested that, if needed, the occupants could exit fast. ‘Home sweet home,' I said.

‘I fucking hope not,' replied Karl, his voice sounding more than a little ragged. ‘Let's get back up in the fresh air. I hate fucking earthworks. Saw too many in Nam.' He'd answered my question for me. We climbed up through the trap door and went back up top.

Outside I walked around the big hut and only then did I really notice that it was built on a small rise. Only up-close could I see the woven thatch panels that hid the deep firing slits. Clumps of grass, a tree stump, a water bucket and the remains of an old ox cart served as props to disguise the gun positions. ‘Pull a string and it all breaks apart,' said Sami. ‘You saw the emergency exits. We can get out quickly if we have to or come up to fire RPGs,' he added.

‘Impressive, Mr Somsak,' I said, meaning it.

‘You are expecting a war,' Karl said. It was a statement, not a question. ‘Always,' replied Sami. ‘There are as many bandits up here as there have ever been.' He gave a tight smile. ‘You pay the politicians for protection but that's just from the police and the army. There are plenty of other guys who want what you've got.'

‘Ain't that the truth,' Karl muttered, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. Both Sami and I took one and Karl lit them with a battered old Zippo he'd obviously resurrected from somewhere. His non-smoking campaign, like mine, was obviously over.

‘When do you think Chekhov will come?' I asked.

‘Tonight!' came the reply, ‘and it'll be a shitfest.' Karl coughed and cursed but took a deep drag on his cigarette. He was going to enjoy his smoke even if it killed him. ‘In the meantime let's get our fake women out and about and looking busy. Chekhov will have an aircraft over our heads in an hour.'

Ten minutes later there was grumbling, laughter and cheerful but very crude insults as four of Sami's guys made their appearance wearing broad hats and long women's skirts. They picked up hoes and rakes and, implements in hand, they went to the garden plots to make a pretence of working. The other pair strutted about with their AK47s on their shoulders as if they owned the joint. The fact there were no kids about worried me momentarily but I filed it at the back of my mind. We couldn't have everything.

I glanced at my watch. It was now 11:45.I would allow half an hour for Bernard to get back in touch with Chekhov then give him the co-ordinates. Then it would be another hour for Chekhov to organise an aircraft out of Udon Thani, Vientiane, Chiang Mai, Lampang or anywhere else he had people. The satellite image Sami had shown me of the Russian's jungle compound hadn't included any landing strip other than for a chopper, maybe. That didn't mean Chekhov didn't have an airfield elsewhere in the area. Was there one by the boat landing where his vehicles were parked?

I stood looking at the map of the north and did some basic maths. Flight time from Udon Thani was fifteen minutes max and probably less than ten from Vientiane. Chiang Mai was a long shot as it was maybe an hour in a single-engine fixed-wing plane with the hammer down. Bangkok was about an hour and a half to two hours away by small plane, I guessed. Our chopper had done it in two and a half but we hadn't been racing.