Singapore Sling Shot (18 page)

“Yo.” I folded my phone and lay back against my pillows. Things were moving very, very fast. If Sami could find the money and convince the Mendez brothers that it was Lu and not him who killed Raymond, all very well and good. If not, I suspected that the Colombian drug wars would be moving out of the Americas and headed all the way to staid little Singapore, and that wouldn't be good. Real estate prices might take a hammering, given the Mendez brothers reputation for relocating large buildings in small fiery pieces.

21

“Police confirm that they have recovered the bodies of three men, all bearing evidence of having died from gunshot wounds according to the preliminary reports from the medical examiner's office. A police spokesman said it is too early to speculate, but it is thought that these latest killings may be related to the slaying of the Loh family and their staff and the gun battle that erupted on Sentosa last week. We will bring you further news as it comes to hand.”

I switched off the television and debated whether or not to call Sami. It was Tuesday morning and I had another day to kill. I wanted to see my old friend. Okay, the reasons for us not being seen together were more for my protection than his, but working by long-distance remote control has never been the way I've liked to work. I debated heading back to Pulau Ubin and burning off some more energy charging around in the bush. I debated phoning Simone and inviting her to play hooky from work, but I knew that wasn't an option. With Stanley gone, she was effectively Sami's man in Singapore, if you get my drift. At least she was with regard to the many legitimate business ventures Stanley and Sami had been involved in. Then my cellphone rang.

“You want to come and stir up Mr Lu?” Jo and not Sami was the caller.

“You bet,” I responded. It seemed I wasn't about to have a totally boring day after all.

“Go to Marina, same as before, 17:00.”

“Gottcha,” I responded as the connection was broken. Jo wasn't one for idle conversation. It was 09:45. I'd slept late. I went to the pool and did a few half-hearted laps to ease the stiffness from my shoulders and back. After a shower I went for breakfast, or rather brunch, downstairs.

At 12:30 I hit the street dressed as our man from Perth. I had my camera on my belt and a water bottle in my hand. Ed Davidson was on the loose in SIN City. (Well, actually Singapore isn't particularly sinful, but SIN is the airline designation.)

I cabbed it to Little India and then mooched around being a tourist.

I checked out the Tekka market, taking plenty of photographs as I went.

Eventually I worked my way through the area, street by street, until I found my way to the Thieves Market, as the locals call it. The short streets off Jalan Besar, Pitt Road and Weld Road, and the bisecting streets, were crammed with makeshift stalls, many selling junk: household appliances, watches, rings, shoes, near-porn DVDs, used clothing. It was all laid out for sale. The market isn't a tourist attraction, it's mostly for locals, so it doesn't feature in many guide books. Why was I there? Well, it's a great place to pass an hour or so and I thought I might, just might, find something I couldn't live without.

This day, apart from a pocket knife that cost me all of S$3,I didn't find anything I needed. After a late lunch at the food centre washed down with a couple of beers, I caught the Northeast Line back to Dhoby Ghaut. I didn't take the interchange but instead came straight out of the station. It was 15:30. I walked the five blocks back to the hotel in an effort to settle my stomach, which was churning as much from anticipation of what was to come as from the curry I'd eaten for lunch.

Back in my room, I showered away the grime of another sweaty Singapore day and prepared for the evening, dressing in a fresh set of Ed Davidson's typical clothes. The landline rang. It was Simone wanting to know if we could catch up for a meal later. I had to tell her no, something I think disappointed us both. We settled on a lunch on the morrow.

I emerged above ground at Marina right on time. The Mercedes had been traded for a large box-like transit with a windowless back. Jo was waiting by the open rear of the van when I got there. I climbed in and he followed, closing the double door after him. Three other men were in the back. There were no seats, so they were sitting on the floor. Along with the passenger and driver in front, we had a team of seven to create whatever mayhem Jo and Sami intended for Lu.

The van moved away as Jo and I sat. There was a glass partition between the front and the rear compartments so there was enough light for me to check over my fellow passengers.

One of them I recognised from Thailand. The name escaped me, but he had been one of Tuk Tuk's hardmen. He gave me a grin. I returned it. The others, I didn't know. They were all Thai as well. There were nods all round.

“This is Dan,” Jo said by way of introduction. “You have never seen him.” Jo reached for one of several cartons occupying the rear of the van along with us. From it, he pulled out a sport bag and passed it to me.

“Your new uniform,” he said with a grin.

Inside the bag was a one-piece black coverall. I knew it would be my size. Awkwardly, because I was sitting down and the van was swaying more than a little, I managed to strip off my long shorts and shirt and squirm into the overall. There were boots, a pair of canvas, quasi-military combat ones. I pulled them on, again a perfect fit. The final touches were a black full-faced hood with just eye and mouth holes and pair of flash gloves. I pulled on the gloves and jammed the balaclava into my breast pocket.

Jo dragged another box to him. This one was wooden and it was heavy. He reached inside and handed me the first of the goodies. It was, surprise, surprise, a Browning Hi-Power just like the one I'd dropped into the harbour, except this one had a long silencer threaded to its muzzle. As he doled weapons out to the rest of the crew, I checked mine. The automatic appeared to be new. I dropped out the full magazine. The packing grease was gone and the action cycled easily. I tested the trigger pull. The mechanism had been tuned. I reinserted the magazine, jacked a round into the breech and applied the safety.

Jo then handed each of us a pair of spare loaded magazines and a shoulder holster. Because of the silencers, the normally compact pistols were cumbersome. The oversize nylon holsters were designed to accommodate the automatics with the silencers fitted.

“Does Sami buy these by the dozen?” I asked, indicating the Browning as I shrugged my way into the harness and slipped the automatic into the holster. Under my right shoulder was a pouch that accepted the two spare magazines.

“Tonne, Dan, by the tonne,” Jo replied. “No shooting unless absolutely necessary,” he said to the others. “Understand?”

Everyone understood.

“May I presume that we know where Lu is keeping the money?”

“Yes, Dan. He moved it only maybe a kilometre to another warehouse he owns. Cunning, but not more cunning than the cameras and the computers.” Jo smiled at a thought. It was the sort of smile that would make most people very uneasy. “We will be on the same traffic cameras, of course, but in about”—he glanced at the Seiko dive watch on his wrist—“two minutes there will be a computer failure and all the cameras leading in and out of Jurong and covering the entire area will malfunction.”

“Clever Sami,” I muttered, wondering how much that little malfunction was going to cost.

“We are entering a warehouse compound next to our target.” Jo was speaking Thai for the sake of absolute clarity. He well knew my proficiency with the language. “There we will cut the link fence and enter the warehouse. When we have taken it, we will open the gate and a truck with a loader will enter. We will load the contents onto the truck. Daniel and I will go with the truck. The rest of you will return through the fence, get back onboard this van and follow us to another location. Understood?”

Everyone understood. As a Major, Jo had been one of Thailand's top Special Forces officers. He was an immaculate planner and a terribly efficient killing machine. He also had a reputation for getting his people home again, and that was a big thing when you were fighting a dirty war in deep jungle miles outside your own borders. Singapore was just a jungle with concrete trees this late afternoon. The driver turned on his windscreen wipers. It was raining and evening was drawing in. The worse the visibility, the better for us. While we were having a traffic camera outage, the fewer people on the ground who could see what we were up to, the better.

“I am flying in with some of my people.” The pronouncement, which was little more than a thinly veiled threat, didn't come as any surprise to Thomas Lu.

“I am sorry, Carlos. Somsak's men took us by total surprise.”

“Yet you survived and Raymond didn't?” The accusation in the elder Mendez's voice was not disguised.

“I was using my cellphone. I had to go to the rear of the warehouse because of the bad reception. Raymond and my men were opening the container at the front when the truck burst through the main door. There were at least eight gunmen. They shot Raymond and my men without warning. I hid and escaped from a rear door. I wasn't armed.”

Lu's words tumbled over themselves. It was all a lie, of course, but the delivery was all the more convincing because he was a man close to panic, desperate to be believed. His life depended on making Carlos Mendez believe him.

“Sami Somsak?”

“Yes. You have heard of him?”

“Oh yes. Mr Somsak is known to us. Our paths have never crossed until now. The money, of course, didn't burn?”

“No. The truck left before the fire.”

“Where were you by then?”

Thomas Lu hesitated.

“I was hiding in the compound,” he said, playing the coward to perfection. “I couldn't climb the fence, so I hid until they left. The fire was raging. I left before the police arrived. I called you immediately.”

“We will hunt Somsak. Do you know where to find him?”

“I know his offices and his apartment.”

“Good. We are flying in a charter jet. We will be landing tomorrow afternoon. I will contact you from the aircraft. Have transportation for five.”

“Yes.”

“And Thomas?”

“Yes?”

“A secure place to stay and weapons.”

“I will arrange it.”

“When the authorities release Raymond's body, please arrange for an undertaker to prepare him to be transported back to his home.”

The call was terminated before Thomas Lu could reply. Lu leaned back in his chair and sighed. It was done. He didn't care that Carlos Mendez thought him a total abject coward. That had helped Mendez believe him. Now he had placed Sami Somsak firmly in the Colombian's sights he was free, off the hook, and he had two billion dollars.

22

The van slowed and turned into an access way. I could see a heavy steel and mesh gate in front of us. The gate was sliding open as we approached. The driver didn't stop. We were in an industrial compound of some sort. I had glimpses of tall steel and concrete-sided buildings as we threaded our way through them. I could see several large trucks with concrete mixers mounted.

“Cement plant,” Jo was saying to me. “When Sami found out Lu owned the warehouse next door, he bought a major stake in this.”

“Today?” I blurted out. After all, until just hours ago we had no idea of the location of the money. I knew Sami moved quickly, but this was incredible.

“Today,” Jo confirmed, “as soon as we knew where the money was, Sami got on the phone. He knows everyone.”

“Yeah, he does,” I agreed. “It'll be a very good investment when Intella goes ahead.”

“Oh yes,” Jo replied with a chuckle.

The van stopped and then backed up. I heard the sound of a heavy door opening and then we were inside a warehouse. The door closed in front of us. Jo stood, then went and opened the transit's rear door. I followed him out.

The warehouse was three-quarters full of bags of what I took to be cement. It was about half the size of a football field and made of steel with corrugated metal cladding. The few lights hanging from the ceiling were huge and dulled by the dust that hung in the air.

Jo led the way down the narrow aisle that ran from the front to the rear of the stacks of cement bags. The door at the rear was just a pedestrian one. Jo signalled me to his side as he opened it. The rain was still falling and the gloom told me that night was coming early.

A few metres beyond the door was a tall mesh fence topped with razor wire. Beyond that was another industrial compound. Three large metal and concrete warehouses were spaced down the centre of the rectangular lot. Several lights on tall poles dotted around the compound fought the rain and the gathering dark.

Jo had a pair of compact binoculars to his eyes. The light-gathering properties of the lenses would turn the gloom back into day.

“Front warehouse is the target. There is a man doing a beat across the rear of that building. No sentry in front, the gatehouse covers that.” Jo handed the glasses to me. I waited for several seconds before a lone figure in a rain cape came to the corner of the second warehouse. He glanced down the length of the lot and then retreated back the way he had come. I held up my wrist and waited, counting down the seconds.

“Ninety seconds,” I said when the sentry reappeared. He repeated his actions and vanished again. “Dark and wet, he'll have trouble seeing anything.”

“Yes. We cut the wire and get into cover behind the second warehouse and make our way to the rear of the target building and take him out. There's a small doorway there, probably alarmed. We send three to the front and go in.”

“Why hasn't he got more men outside?” I wondered aloud. The lone sentry wasn't exactly heavy security.

“He's got cameras,” Jo replied. “On the four front light towers.” I focussed the glasses on the nearest of the four towers and then switched to the other one I could see from our position. He was right. The three light towers in the front third of the compound each had a camera mounted to one side of the light. No doubt the fourth in the far right of the compound was no different. Each of the cameras I could see had a small antenna protruding from its housing. No doubt power was supplied via the light cable. These cameras looked like permanent fixtures. They were small but they weren't as compact as the ones used on Sentosa. It was also obvious that they hadn't been hastily put up on the spur of the moment. The sophisticated mounts and the need to wire them into the light fixtures indicated they hadn't been a hasty duct tape installation just to protect Lu's sudden windfall. This one warehouse might very well be Thomas Lu's personal Fort Knox. I continued to use the glasses. There were no cameras on the remaining towers in the compound.