The Widow's Strike (7 page)

M
alik fidgeted outside
the pastry
shop, feeling exposed by all of the CCTV cameras around the mall, waiting on the target to arrive. Thinking again that this plan was borderline idiotic. Wondering if he wasn’t about to be part of the second set of Iranians that did some buffoonery on Thai soil.

Their initial attempt had been Friday night—last night—when they’d tried to take him at the nightclubs off of Royal City Avenue but had failed due to the crowds around. The perfect opportunity just hadn’t presented itself, even as the Foursquare intelligence had proven very accurate.

Missing the objective on Friday had caused Malik considerable concern. He didn’t want to wait another week for the boarding school to release the son again. Sanjar, the computer expert, had recommended using a downtown mall called Terminal 21 the following day, Saturday.

Malik said, “A daylight kidnapping? In a mall? No. If it comes down to that, we wait a week.”

“But I’ve studied the mall. Kavi always checks in to a place that sells desserts and coffee on the fourth level. Like clockwork.”

Malik told him to bring up Terminal 21 on his computer and saw the thing was a monstrosity, with every floor named after a different section of the world, from the Caribbean to London. What was worse, it was connected directly to the Asok Skytrain stop, which would be the way Kavi entered and left.

Malik said, “And how do you propose to get him from the fourth level to the street? Perhaps I could come in with a large Persian carpet, try to sell it, and when that fails, you could knock him out. I’ll simply roll him up in it, in full view of everyone. Then we’ll carry him out right to the Skytrain. Is that what you’re thinking?” Malik turned away, saying, “We wait until next Friday and try again.”

“Sir!” Sanjar said. “Please listen. The dessert bar is right next to a hallway leading to a stairwell. That stairwell connects to a parking garage on the third level. This will work.”

“You cannot attack him in the café!” Malik snapped. “I don’t care how close the stairs are! Three feet is too far.”

Roshan, the engineer, spoke up. “Sir, I don’t think we’ll need to attack him. Kavi is completely ignorant of personal safety. I think we could engage him in conversation and have him follow us to our car.”

Eventually, Malik had broken down and agreed to try, which left him sitting nervously across the way at another café, wanting to bolt from the overt risk he had been talked into taking.

He saw the target enter and begin talking to other Thai teenagers. He watched the doctor’s son fiddle with his phone and knew he was logging in his location. Malik shook his head, still befuddled by the social networking site. The time slipped by and he thought about aborting.

Abruptly, the other Thais left, taking him by surprise, and Malik called his men forward. Roshan and Sanjar entered the café and ordered something, but he couldn’t tell what.

He watched Sanjar sit near Kavi and begin working his own smartphone. Logging in his Foursquare location and letting Kavi watch. Shortly, the two were engaged in conversation, with Roshan joining.

Malik had given them twenty minutes and no more. If Kavi wasn’t leaving with them by then, they were to abort.

Twenty-five minutes in, Malik got angry. He texted Sanjar, punching the keys on his phone.

Get OUT.

Sanjar glanced his way, then began working his thumbs over the phone. Malik felt his cell vibrate and read,
2 min.

He was about to respond when the group stood up. Laughing, with his arm around Sanjar’s shoulders, Kavi walked out of the café and entered the hallway. Never suspecting the danger he was in. Never realizing that there were different types of predators in the world.

They went down the hallway and turned into a stairwell. Malik followed discreetly behind, watching them act like the best of friends. Malik took note of the cameras in the hallway and knew they had taken a great risk. If he couldn’t convince the father to call the school and prevent a search, it wouldn’t take much to have their faces all over the country.

They went down one flight, Malik hanging back until he heard the door to the parking deck open, then rushing forward. He entered the garage in time to see Roshan open the back door to their car, then Sanjar wrap his arms around the doctor’s son, causing a look of bewilderment on Kavi’s face.

A look that changed to fear when Roshan brought out the hood.

S
itting across Highway
107 in
Chiang Mai, I felt the first trickle of adrenaline when I caught sight of Jennifer walking out of the prison entrance with Piggy holding her arm. I watched her say something to him, then walk briskly to her car, retrieving her purse from the front seat. I knew why. She couldn’t very well have taken that into the prison, because I’d given her a little hush puppy for protection. A Ruger Mark III .22 with an XCaliber Genesis suppressor.

Designed mainly for removing guard dogs, it would do the job up close on a man. And if Jennifer had to use it on Piggy, it would definitely be up close.

She walked back to him and followed to an old Toyota, getting in the front seat. I waited until they’d cleared the parking lot, headed north on Highway 107, before I triggered.

“Koko’s on the move. Target’s with her.”

Decoy said, “Roger.”

All I could do now was wait for phase two of the mission, either getting married up with the cloned PDA or getting a Prairie Fire alert from Jennifer requesting backup. I prayed mightily that it would be the former.

It had been forty-eight hours since my meeting with Izzy, and we’d used every bit of that time conducting reconnaissance, from developing a pattern of life on Piggy to finding out the procedures for vehicle transfers of prisoners. I’d visited Knuckles twice during that span, ostensibly to make sure he was well, but in reality to glean as much information as I could. On the last visit, I’d seen someone had played drums with his face again and was convinced I was doing the right thing. Unfortunately, the prison didn’t agree with my assessment. Getting him out had turned into a long string of dominoes, with every one a potential single point of failure.

The prison was fairly new, in the northern section of Chiang Mai outside the city proper. Built to relieve overcrowding at the old prison downtown, it was now overcrowded as well, housing both people serving time and people awaiting sentencing and subsequent transfer to a permanent facility. That was the only good thing, as prisoners were moved out daily, thus making it routine.

My stroke of genius was to use this routine and convince them that Knuckles was being transferred to Bangkok, the theory being that Chiang Mai would forget him once he was out the doors, and Bangkok wouldn’t check on him until prodded by the State Department—which would never happen. With the bureaucratic chaos that was Thailand, he wouldn’t be missed for weeks—if not years.

Unfortunately, because of Knuckles’s little fight, Piggy had moved him into the newest section under his personal command. This made his transfer no longer routine, as Piggy himself had to approve the release, and we’d never pull off this charade against anyone with a reason to stop it. A single phone call would be the domino that fell flat.

I had to get Piggy out of the prison, and I was using Jennifer to do so. Remembering his comment on our first visit, I knew he’d run at the chance to hop in the sack with her. All she had to do was pretend like she was reluctantly doing it for a quid pro quo for Knuckles. The naïve American about to learn a hard lesson in life.

When I’d given her the mission she’d balked, saying, “Why do I always have to play some sort of floozy? Surely there’s something else I can do to get him out.”

I’d said, “Jennifer, we need him out of the prison for an hour. A coffee break won’t cut it. Given the drive time to his house and back, that means only thirty minutes of stalling. Thirty minutes and you can flee the house like you misunderstood.”

“Come on. Did you see that guy? You’re putting me in a house by myself with someone who wants to attack me.”

Like an ass, Decoy had blurted, “Yeah, but you’re good at that shit. I remember what you looked like in Prague dressed like a hooker.”

I saw her eyes water, and she left the room. Too late, I realized she was reliving the attack on her just months ago, and now, callously, I was throwing her directly into what she feared the most.

Decoy said, “What did I do? What was that about?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Besides Jennifer, there were just two people on earth who knew what had happened to her: me and the guy who’d done it. Since I’d slaughtered him with my bare hands, that left only me, and Jennifer wanted to keep it that way. Nobody else on the team had a clue, and now they were potentially about to misjudge Jennifer’s reaction as her not being able to handle the stress of mission profiles because I’d been blind to her specific fear. I couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t have them questioning her capabilities for the wrong reasons, because it might prove catastrophic under fire.

I stood and said, “Wait here a second.”

Before I could leave, Jennifer reentered, eyes clear and voice firm.

“Okay. I’ll do it. Who’s my backup?”

Decoy, looking a little ashamed, said, “I’m your backup. I got your back.”

He always pretended to be a chauvinistic man-whore, hooking up with anyone willing in any town he entered, but in Prague I’d seen what he was really like underneath the bravado. No way was Jennifer going to be in any danger with him on the prowl.

Now, watching her drive away with that sadistic pig, I hoped she didn’t lose it on her own. Hoped she could keep it together long enough to play the part.

J
ennifer, her purse
clutched tightly
in her lap, said, “You said maybe we could come to an accommodation about my employee. Maybe we could get some coffee, discuss how exactly I can help you.”

Continuing north on Highway 107, Piggy put his hand on her thigh. “Yes, that’s just what I want to do. But why pay for coffee? I have free coffee, tea, beer, whatever you want at my house. It’s only a short drive.”

She brushed his hand away, saying nervously, “Where is your house? Where are we going?”

She ignored his answer, because she knew the entire route already. Instead, she focused on the Symbol handheld computer he’d thrown into the backseat. One more string in the domino chain, as Pike had told her.

Originally, her mission had simply been to keep him occupied, but after the team’s repeated attempts at cracking the Wi-Fi network in the prison, they’d given her another mission.

The hackers had failed, which meant they needed to access Piggy’s actual PDA. The encryption in the prison was simply too strong, even with the fifty-pound tech help from Taskforce geeks in DC, leaving them unable to open Knuckles’s special cell door. They’d decided on a shortcut, which had been thrown into her rucksack to carry after she’d agreed to become the diversion.

Piggy placed his hand on her thigh again and said, “You can help your friend out very much. Food, medicine, maybe even release. It depends on how much you care for him. How long are you planning on staying in Chiang Mai?”

She gave a tepid smile and left the hand on her thigh, feeling sick to her stomach, knowing what he was asking. Knowing he was intimating that there’d be more than one “meeting.” She gave him the truth.

“Hopefully, I’m flying back to Bangkok today.”

This brought a scowl, making him look like a petulant child. “Then we should make the most of this, shouldn’t we?”

She didn’t answer, seeing the intersection for the road leading to the Mae Ping River a hundred meters ahead. And the pickup truck idling next to it. She felt time begin to slow.

Piggy said something else, turning the wheel and exiting the highway. Looking out the window, Jennifer saw Brett sitting impassively in the cab of a beat-up Nissan truck, the front end aimed toward them. Waiting.

Just as her door passed, she saw the pickup jump, and she braced for impact, shouting for effect. The vehicle hit them solidly in the right rear quarter panel, causing Piggy’s car to skip lightly. The impact was hard, but not as bad as she expected. They came to a stop after a few feet, the Toyota skewed sideways, with Piggy yelling in Thai.

He cursed and shut off the car. As soon as he exited, she grabbed the Symbol PDA and ripped a clone device out of her purse. Nothing more than a thumb drive with a cable attached, it had the necessary software to duplicate his PDA in a couple of minutes. She plugged it into the mini-USB port and watched the Symbol screen go blank. Now all she could do was wait until it came back on. Supposedly in two minutes.

She glanced to the rear and saw Brett waving his hands in the air, with Piggy pointing a finger in his face. She went back to the PDA and did a double take, returning to the window. Sitting on the dingy outside patio of a homemade roadside café was Decoy, a small grin on his face, his eyes hidden by sunglasses, watching her work.

A minute and forty seconds gone, and the PDA was still blank. Two minutes, and she began to sweat, looking to the rear again. Brett was holding his hands out, still talking. Piggy had calmed down.

Running out of time.

Three minutes. Blank screen. She saw Brett putting his wallet back in his pocket and knew only seconds remained.

She stared at the screen, willing something to appear.
Come on. Come on!

To her surprise, it flickered, then scrolled Thai letters.

Yes
.

She ripped out the clone device, tossed the PDA into the back, and threw the thumb drive out the passenger window, then whirled around when she heard the driver’s-side door open, praying Piggy hadn’t seen.

He sat down, saying, “All you Americans think you can buy your way out of anything.” Smirking, he placed his hand on her knee again. “Luckily for both of you that’s true in my case.”

Relief flooded through her, the hand a small price to pay for success. She gazed out the window as they pulled away, seeing Decoy mount a beat-up Honda motorcycle.

* * *

I couldn’t help
but smile when the call came in, both because it meant phase one had succeeded and because I knew it irked Brett.

“Pike, this is Blood. Inbound with clone.”

Brett was new on the team, having been there barely a year. He’d come over from the Special Activities Division at the CIA and, as such, didn’t come with a call sign attached. On our last mission—his first with me—he’d made an absolutely asinine comment about the old mother’s remedy Mercurochrome, calling it Monkey’s Blood. I had anointed him with the call sign Blood at the start of this mission.

Being an African-American, he’d immediately bitched, saying there was no way he was going with that call sign, moaning about stereotypes, Crips and Bloods, gang members and everything else. Unfortunately for him, you don’t get to pick your call sign. If you did, every commando in the Taskforce would be called Thundercock. The call sign picks you, like it had here.

In the end, he’d gone with it. After all, the only ones who would hear it would be the team. He knew we were color-blind and that we understood where it had come from. Even still, like Jennifer with her call sign of Koko, it irked him. And made the rest of the team laugh.

I alerted Retro, who was waiting in the prison transfer van, bringing him forward. Before it arrived, Blood pulled up in his mangled Nissan.

“Any issues?”

He handed me the thumb drive. “Not getting that, but Piggy’s an asshole.”

“Let’s hope this clone worked, or we’re dead in the water. Clock’s ticking now.”

All I was asking from Jennifer was thirty minutes. She’d be out whether we were done or not.

He said, “Free to go?”

“Yeah. Give me a shout when you link up with Buckshot. I’d like the warm fuzzy that we have an exfil vehicle in case we’re coming out hot.”

A van with no windows in the back pulled up, official Thai emblems on the side. In the driver’s seat was a Thai man in a police uniform. Izzy’s guy, and the one who’d be going in with me. He was the same one who’d shown me into Izzy’s bar, standing behind me while we talked. He was called Nung, “number one” in Thai, because he didn’t want to give out his real name.

I went to the rear of the van and opened it, seeing another Thai man in uniform in the back, called, imaginatively enough, Song—or “number two.” Sitting across from him was Retro, now dressed in prison garb and “shackled” to the floor.

I passed Retro the thumb drive and he immediately began working our own PDA. It wasn’t a Motorola Symbol, but Retro was convinced it would suffice. He’d said all he needed was a processor, Wi-Fi, and VOIP capability, and that the specific model didn’t matter. He was a little bit of a computer geek, so if he said it would work, I went with it. After all, I didn’t have a whole lot of choices.

While he finished the download, I gave final instructions. “Okay, Nung, you’re leading the way. Remember we have three posts to get through. You handle the Thai, only turning to me if we get any push-back. I’ll play the State Department mean guy. You got the cell phone jammer?”

Nung, looking completely calm, simply nodded his head, making me wonder what the hell he’d done in the past.

How can you not be nervous with this weak-ass plan?

The tactical side of the house was a microcosm of the operational plan—namely that we were going to convince one post in the prison that the other one had said it was okay to proceed, hoping that neither found out.

“Song, you have any questions about your script?”

He shook his head no.

“Remember, you’re the critical piece. They
must
think you’re Piggy.”

He said, “No problem, no problem,” in that singsong Thai way.

I said, “How we looking, Retro?”

He punched a couple of buttons, read off something on the screen, then grinned.

“We’re golden. Knuckles’s cell door is no object.”