Tiger by the Tail (44 page)

“Can you remove those boards again, intact and undamaged?” Mike asked when he was through.

Khin nodded.

“Get to it.”

The best part was that Colonel Ohnmar had heard for himself how the leaders of the coup had considered him to be an expendable sacrifice. He would have been killed in the meltdown, along with the rest of the unprotected personnel at the nuclear facility, to help create the illusion of a real accident happening. He had been so surprised by the betrayal that he hadn’t even offered a token protest about the boards being removed. The range of emotions on his face, from surprise to shock to anger to resignation, said it all. Although Jace got the impression he could give a flying fuck about the others, the fact that his fellow officers thought so little of him had demolished the man’s self-esteem and
esprit de corps
.

Fortunately, this revelation also made it very easy for him to give up the rest of the details about the operation with only a little prodding from Mike and Jace. Unfortunately, that led to other complications.

He called Vanner immediately. “Patrick, what’s the word on David and that back-up team?”

“They just touched down about twenty minutes ago, and are ready to rock and roll. What’s going on?”

“The good news is that the potential reactor meltdown has been averted—”

“
What
—where?” Vanner’s question made Mike realize that he hadn’t had time to fill the intel chief in on what they had learned.

“No time to go into it, just know that the reactor’s safe. I’ll fill you in on the details later. Can you conference David in right now?”

“Sure, hang on.” Thirty seconds later. “You should have both of us now.”

“Good to hear your voice, Kildar,” Nielson greeted him.

Mike wasted no time. “It’s good to be heard, David. Get your team into Mandalay and over by the Kandawgyi Pat Road, on the east side of Tet Thay Pond. Look for a cluster of warehouses about a thousand feet south of the Gold Star Hotel, which is at the intersection where Kandawgyi intersects with itself. Google Maps will give you a good satellite view of it for quick reference. When you get there, do a light recon only. The arms convoy is supposed to be in holed up one of those buildings. The problem is that local units are supposed to be dropping by later today to be issued their weapons before they spread out to other cities up here. I’m coming down from the north, and will be driving a Cascavel armored car. It worked in a bluff earlier today, so I am hoping it will work again. What vehicles did you bring?”

“Two Explorers and a panel truck rented on short notice for an exorbitant price.”

“How did you get here so fast?”

“Your Uncle Sam pulled a few strings and got us a U.S.A.F. C-130J-30 Super Hercules from Turkey. When we’re through here, I’ll remind you to thank a certain gentleman who lives in an alabaster house. He instructed them to give any and all aid and assistance to us, which they have done admirably.”

“Excellent. Right now we have to stop these arms from falling into the wrong hands. If we don’t, the entire country is in danger of being taken over in a military coup.”

“We’re on it,” David said. “If you don’t need me at the moment, we’ll call in once we’ve located the warehouse facility.”

“Go. Vanner, stay on for one more question. Are you still tracking Cong’s yacht?”

“Like white on rice. He’s ten miles off the western coast of Myanmar, parallel to a port city called Sittwe, and seems to have dropped anchor, since he has not moved in the past twelve hours. Guess he needed a break after running guns and nuclear motherboards to crazy military officers who want to overthrow their government.”

“Stick with him. If the boat moves ten feet, I want to know. If he takes a swim around that yacht, I want to know what color Speedo he’s wearing.”

“You got it, although that is not a picture I want in my head,” Vanner replied.

“I will contact you once I’ve met up with Nielson at the arms cache. Hopefully we will all get there in time. Kildar out.”

Mike walked around the side of the truck to the group of former prisoners there. As he’d thought, at least half of the volunteers were those he thought might be Nepalese. “Jace?”

“Yes, Kildar?”

“Refresh my memory. Did you list Nepali as one of your languages?”

“Not so much. Visited the country a couple times, but never stayed long enough to pick it up.”

“All right, we go to plan B.” He faced the group and pointed at his suspects. “Any of you speak English?”

“I do,” said one with an odd mix of a British accent underlaid with that of his homeland. He was a general prisoner who hadn’t lost too much muscle tone from his time in the mines. His head was shaved, most likely to avoid lice. He had the prerequisite Indo-Tibetan-Mongolian appearance, with piercing black eyes that settled on nothing, but still took in everything around him.

“What’s your name, soldier?”

The man smiled and nodded. “That obvious?”

Mike nodded back. “We know our own.”

“Lance Corporal Himal Chanda, of the Shree Naya Gorakh Battalion. I did UN Peacekeeping operations in Africa—Somalia, to be precise—and the Balkans.”

“Gurkha military, right?”

Himal nodded.

“We just might be able to pull this off after all.” Mike raised his voice. “Okay, Himal, please translate this to the rest for me. This goes for anyone here with military experience. I am hiring freelance soldiers for one to two days. Payment is five hundred U.S. dollars a day, but you will be earning it, as we will probably be seeing action from this point forward. Are there any volunteers?”

Every prisoner except Khin and two others stepped forward. With Himal’s and Jace’s help, Mike got the particulars of each man’s experience and confirmed whether he was in or out. In the end, he had swelled the men under his command by a solid dozen. He turned back to Himal. “Do you know anyone else in Mandalay with that kind of training?”

The wiry man nodded again. “Since the abolishment of the Nepalese monarchy, many of the soldiers whose army term is up have gone into private security work. I’m sure I can scrounge up a few more in the city, and they probably know others I don’t.”

“Great. While we’re securing the weapons, I need you to contact as many as you can find. Same terms as you are getting, but they have to be available immediately—like within an hour after your call.”

“If you would lend me a phone, I can start contacting some of them on our way in,” Himal replied.

Mike handed his over. “Works.”

* * *

An hour later, Mike sat beside Nielson in the Explorer, which was parked on the street a block down from their target, watching the warehouse complex through binoculars. They’d stashed the Cascavel outside of the city, although Mike was aware of the minutes ticking away. Still, he’d be damned if he was going to go into an unfamiliar situation without doing at least some kind of recon.

“You sure you don’t need something to keep your focus up?” Nielson asked. “Got plenty of Modafinil—”

Mike had wolfed three energy bars and drunk two bottles of water. “See if any of the men want some. I’m good.”

“As your XO, I feel compelled to remind you that you haven’t slept in what, a day?” David said. “And you’ve been all go since early this morning. None of us are as young as we used to be. That includes you, you know.”

Mike kept scanning the cluster of buildings. “I will not rest until Oleg and I have killed that prick General Cong. Then I will sleep.”

“Yeah, Vanner filled me in. What the fuck’s up with that?”

“The man likes collecting trophies. Be interesting to see how he likes it when I cut his fucking nuts off and mount those on the wall. The good thing about that is that he will still be alive for Oleg to kill.”

“How’d he take it?”

“Like a Keldara. He has to kill the one who dishonored him and reclaim the trophy. I ordered him to give it to me so that Chinese fuckhead didn’t shoot him like a dog and take it anyway.”

“Jesus.”

Mike lowered the binoculars and looked through Neilson with a thousand-yard stare. “It’s probably a good thing he’s not around here either. He wouldn’t like what’s going to go down in the next hour.”

* * *

Himal’s calls had paid off. By the time he was through, Mike’s force had swelled to thirty-five Gurkha soldiers. All of them looked like they had seen the elephant, and each one carried his personal kukri on a ring sheath at his belt.

Mike was thrilled, since he considered them the equivalent of his Keldara. After arming as many as he could with the weapons he’d seized at the nuclear facility, he explained the current mission, finishing with, “If there are no questions, let’s take the warehouse.”

They got into the back of the troop truck again, and Nielson led them to the Cascavel, where he dropped Mike off to rejoin Adams and Jace in the armored car. With it leading, the truck wound its way back into town again, heading directly for the warehouses this time.

“Have you thought about how exactly you’re going to get inside? It’s not like we’ve radioed ahead or anything,” Adams said.

“From what I could tell, it didn’t look like the main door was locked. Himal can just jump out of the truck and open it. Since he’s dressed for the part, they’ll probably figure someone showed up early. We drive inside and point the big guns at everyone, and they give up.”

“Works. Let’s do it,” Adams said.

They arrived at the warehouse a few minutes later, and sure enough, Himal jumped out of the back of the truck and ran to the door, which was another one that slid open horizontally on a top-mounted rail. Grabbing the handle, he pulled with all his might, yanking the door aside. Again, as soon as the space was wide enough, Jace drove the armored car inside.

The five soldiers in the large room all whirled and raised their rifles when they heard the door open, but relaxed when they saw the Cascavel pull into the building. The trucks were packed in here like sardines, and there was barely enough room for Jace to pull in. The truck behind them pulled up tight to the entrance, blocking it from the street so no one could see what was about to happen.

Shouting and waving angrily, one of the soldiers put his rifle up on his shoulder and tried to wave the armored car back out of the building. He froze when Adams popped up on the 7.62mm machine gun and aimed it at him. By that time Himal had reached the man. Grabbing the MA-1 rifle from his unresisting hands, he covered the others. One of the soldiers, hidden from Adams’ view by one of the trucks, tried to unsling his rifle, and was immediately stitched with a short burst from Himal. Three more ducked for cover, with at least one trying to escape out the back of the warehouse.

“Surround the building! Make sure no one escapes!” Adams called out. Himal signaled the others, and a squad immediately peeled off and split up, with a group of three men going around each side of the warehouse.

Himal was reinforced by a second squad of Gurkha riflemen, who disarmed and searched the other soldiers before tying their hands and feet. One of the three-person groups that had circled the warehouse returned with a disheveled, limping soldier who had obviously been taken down hard. He was also searched and secured.

“Okay.” Mike and Jace jumped down from the car and walked up to the captured men. “We know what you are up to, and what you were supposed to do here. That is not going to happen today. Tell me who is behind this, and you guys can all walk. Don’t talk, or try to lie to me, and you won’t even crawl out of here.”

One of the men shouted something at Mike and spat on the floor at his feet, ignoring the other men’s demands that he be quiet.

“What did he say?” Mike asked.

“You can’t stop the movement. Nay Pyi Daw will be ours soon, and after that Yangon, and then the whole country!”

Mike pointed at the loudmouth. “Bring him over here. The rest of you, please come outside for a minute. Himal, with me, please.”

Once Mike was sure he was out of earshot of the Myanmar soldiers, he addressed the group through the Gurkha soldier. “I need two things from all of you right now. One, I need you to contact anyone else from the service that you know is available for this kind of work immediately. Two, I need ten volunteers to drive these trucks. Nine of you will go directly to the port city of Sittwe and find a spot as close to the harbor as possible. I will have someone meet you there. You will unload the trucks as they direct. Pay rate is the same, and you probably don’t run the risk of getting shot on that job.”

The group looked at one another, then one shrugged and said he would drive a truck. Once one said it, others followed suit, until Mike had his ten drivers. “Okay, the tenth guy—you,” he pointed at the last volunteer. “Grab one of the trucks that has rifles and ammo in it and get to the Mandalay Airport south of town. Find the C130 there and break out the weapons. I will call ahead and let them know you’re coming. Get moving, right now!”

The last man took off to the trucks, and Mike addressed the rest. “I’d suggest you get started out of town immediately. Soldiers are going to be here any minute looking for the weapons they’ve been promised. Make your calls on the way out, send anyone who is available to the Mandalay International Airport.
Do not
tell them any particulars of the mission over the phone. I don’t want the local army intercepting any of the calls. Tell them they should reference a family reunion if they need to speak about it. They have sixty minutes to get there, then we are wheels-up.”

When they heard that, the Gurkha drivers all ran to their trucks, all of them pulling out cell phones on the way. Mike turned to Himal and Adams. “Himal, get that truck out of the way. Adams, back the car up.”

While they were jockeying for position on the street, Mike walked back over to his selected soldier, cut his feet free, grabbed his shirt, and dragged him outside toward the pond.

A frown crossing his face, the soldier asked what Mike was doing. When Jace translated, Mike replied. “Tell him he’s going for a swim. Except that I’m lying about the swimming part.”

Jace dutifully translated, and the man frowned again. By then they were at the pond’s edge, and Mike kept going, marching out into the brown water. The man began to protest, but as soon as they were waist-deep Mike kicked his legs out from under him and plunged him under the surface. There was a bit of thrashing, and many bubbles, but with his hands tied, there wasn’t a lot he could do except eventually suck water. Mike held him under for a forty count, then brought him up, spluttering and gasping.