A pair of bright headlights suddenly appeared in the road, nearly blinding Hateley and forcing Wallis to rip the now-useless night-vision goggles off his face.
“Who are they?” Hateley demanded, but he already knew the answer.
“Thai Rangers,” Wallis said calmly. “You stay in the vehicle, sir. Keep your goggles on and your head down. I’ll handle them.”
Wallis undid his safety belt, opened the door of the Land Rover, and calmly stepped out into the road, using one hand to shield his eyes from the glaring headlights.
“Stay where you are, and keep your hands up!” one of the Rangers — the driver — yelled as he stepped out of an old, mud-encrusted Jeep Cherokee and aimed a short-barreled submachine gun directly at Wallis, who quickly noted the sergeant stripes on the man’s uniform sleeves.
Two more uniformed Rangers — one with a pair of corporal stripes on his upper sleeve, and the other bearing a constable’s insignia — jumped out of the jeep’s rear doors with longer-barreled assault rifles up and ready. The fourth Ranger — younger than the sergeant, but clearly the leader of the four-man team, probably a lieutenant, Wallis guessed — stepped out of the front passenger seat with his right hand around the grip of his holstered pistol and a pack-set radio in his left hand.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Wallis demanded, keeping his hands open and high in the air as he continued to approach the vehicle. “We’re biologists on official assignment. We have a permit from your government that specifically allows us to work at night in this sector of the Preserve.”
“Why were you driving in the refuge without lights?” the team leader demanded.
“We use infrared-filtered lights and night-vision gear out here so the animals can’t track our movements,” Wallis said patiently as he came to a stop a few feet away from the senior Ranger, and just past the cone of the jeep’s glaring headlights.
Now he could see all four Rangers clearly, Wallis focused his attention on the shoulder patch on the team leader’s uniform, the sewn insignia clearly indicating a lieutenant in the Thai Forestry Police Division. The young commander had a suspicious expression on his face; the older sergeant looked tough and competent; and the corporal appeared ready to shoot the first thing that moved. Only the young constable looked uneasy. An unfortunate combination as far as Wallis was concerned.
“It’s a necessary collection technique when you’re using short-range dart guns to tranquilize these creatures,” Wallis went on calmly. “Your superiors are very much aware of our protocols, and we have already paid a great deal of money for the privilege of collecting the genetic samples in your Preserves.”
The mention of genetic samples — or it might have been the great deal of money, Wallis wasn’t sure — seemed to make the Ranger lieutenant hesitate.
“We heard a gunshot a few minutes ago.”
“That was probably us; sometimes we have to use a high-velocity dart to get at some of the more skittish animals,” Wallis explained. “The propane charges are extremely loud when they go off, and the sounds do echo considerably in these mountains, but — ”
“You’re not out here hunting?”
Wallis managed to look offended. “You mean actually killing things? No, absolutely not; we’re simply capturing animals and collecting small bits of tissue — ideally from every mammalian species in the Preserve — to work out the DNA sequences. Catch and release. All we need is a tiny clip of skin from one ear, which we immediately swab with iodine to counteract any infection. Once the drugs wear off, the animals are no worse for the wear. Have to do it at night because — ”
“What is your name?” the lieutenant interrupted.
“Emerson. Marcus Emerson,” Wallis replied.
“I am not familiar with that name.”
“We’re based out of Khao Sok. I’m surprised you don’t know about our project. We’ve been working here, on and off, for several months now. Are you new to the district?”
“We’re on a temporary detail to this area,” the lieutenant acknowledged and he brought the radio up to the side of his face. “I’ll contact my supervisor in Bangkok. They can confirm your collection permit. How do you spell your name?”
Bangkok? Bloody hell, Wallis thought, staring thoughtfully at the assault rifle aimed at his chest. “E-M-E-R- S-O-N.”
As the lieutenant brought the pack-set radio up to the side of his mouth, a voice out of the darkness said “Excuse me.”
The sergeant, corporal and constable all started to whirl around in the direction of the new voice, and then crumpled to the ground as a flurry of 9mm bullets from a silenced pistol ripped into their heads.
The lieutenant had dropped the pack-set radio and was starting to draw his pistol when Wallis swiftly drew a silenced pistol from his shoulder holster and shot the young team leader twice in the side of the head. As he crumbled to the ground, Jack Gavin stepped forward out of the darkness.
“Check the jeep. See if they’ve got anything in there that identifies us,” Wallis ordered as he knelt down and quickly began searching the jacket pockets of the four Rangers.
“Nothing here, just a map of Southern Thailand with the entire Reservoir area circled in red,” Gavin said as he came back from the jeep. “Nothing to indicate that they were focused on the Khlong Preserve, or on us.”
“Nothing on the bodies, either,” Wallis said as he stood up. The two men looked at each other.
“Sorry, but from where I was standing, and what I heard, I couldn’t see any other option,” Gavin said, shrugging his lean, muscular shoulders as he returned the silenced pistol to his shoulder holster.
“No, there wasn’t,” Wallis agreed. “Thai Forestry Lieutenants and Sergeants don’t go out on routine patrol in the middle of the night; and when was the last time you saw a Thai Ranger patrol wearing ceramic chest plates in their vests? They were definitely on the hunt for something, or someone.”
“What happened to Choon? Why didn’t he warn us?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Wallis shook his head in frustration, and then sighed. “It had to be done, no question; but these Rangers are going to cost us dear.” He stared grimly down at the four bodies for a moment, and then back up at Gavin. “How did you get here?”
“The motor-bike,” Gavin replied.
“Give me your pistol and holster.”
Gavin blinked in momentary confusion, as if he hadn’t heard Wallis correctly. But then he quickly obeyed, taking off his jacket, slipping out of the shoulder holster and handing the holstered weapon to Wallis.
“If you need a weapon, use one of theirs,” Wallis said, “but try to avoid any additional shooting if at all possible. We’re going to need a plausible diversion if we’re to get out of this with our arses intact.”
“Understood,” Gavin acknowledged.
“Take the jeep and the bodies back to where you left the bike, pick it up, slip into the best-looking uniform of the four — ideally the sergeant’s — and then head north. Try to get as close to Khuraburi as you can without being spotted, run the jeep off the road — into the brush or over a cliff, whatever you can do fast without being seen — and then motor-bike back down to Tauka Pa, dump the bike, and then wait for Quince. While you’re doing that, I’m going to take Hateley back to the helicopter and get him on his plane as quickly as I can. Shit is going to hit the bloody fan when these four fail to check in. If Hateley gets scooped up at a road-block, we’re bloody-well screwed. He wouldn’t last five minutes under Thai interrogation.”
“Are you going to fly out with him?”
“No, I need to shut down the office and sort things out around here first.” Wallis fingered his throat mike again. “Gecko-One to Gecko-Two.”
“Gecko-Two, go.”
“Change of plans. Bright Light. Repeat, Bright Light. Scrub the scene completely, and then relocate your team to rendezvous point Papa-John, double-time. Repeat, rendezvous point Papa-John. I’ll meet you there in about two hours with the office kit.”
“Gecko-Two, copy Bright Light, copy Papa-John,” Quince Lanyard replied with no trace of emotion in his voice.
Wallis nodded approvingly and fingered his throat-mike again; only this time activating a different frequency.
“Gecko-One to Alpha-Tango.”
