“Must have been tempting to just give Jack one more body to stash.”
“If there was time for a proper disposal, yes. But we’d be pissing away a chance to retire in style.”
“You really think he’ll go for it?”
“A man of his wealth, power and ego?” Wallis shrugged. “I don’t think he’s capable of saying no to what we’re going to propose.”
“But aren’t we rushing things a bit?”
“The timing’s bad. Another big cat hunt first would have been better. I’m going to see if Draganov can push things along a bit.”
“What about Hateley’s Cloud?”
“We still need to get it out to keep him focused on the big prize.”
“But not through Yak, I take it?”
Wallis shook his head firmly. “No, it wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together and rat us out. We’re better off going south.”
“You mean cross down into Malaysia?”
“It shouldn’t be a problem. Our visas are still good, and we've got Kai to grease the proper palms.”
“Fucking Kai.”
“He’ll help. He has no choice.”
“Still, it’s a long way to drive with contraband in the boot and Kai being Kai. What about the boat?”
“The Avatar? In the open seas? This time of the year?” Wallis cocked his head, a slight smile forming in his grizzled face.
“Not our favorite way to travel,” Lanyard acknowledged with a grimace, “but there’s a nice dive spot at Ko Tanga where we can sort things out with Kai.”
“Fine by me.” Wallis shrugged. “I’ll set up the meet. Let’s get this done.”
After locking up the Land Rover, the two men shouldered the loads, and headed into the trees behind the shed.
Twenty yards into the dense forest, Quince pulled a remote device out of his jacket pocket and pressed a button. Instantly, deep in the trees, a periodically-flashing firefly became faintly visible.
Using the flickering light as a guide, the two men slowly and methodically worked their way through the trees and brush, using the walking sticks to push tangled vines and large leaf fronds aside, and to warn any lurking creatures of their direction of travel.
The occasional whisper of a long snake tail disappearing into the thick underbrush spoke to the value of their precautions.
Finally, the two men stepped into a small, machete-cut, ten-foot-square clearing, two-thirds of which was taken up with a deep hole surrounded by piles of recently cut brush and vines, a stack of six-foot boards, a folded black plastic tarp, chunks of sod, a pair of shovels, and a much larger pile of rope-entangled and machete-chopped lengths of bamboo that — earlier in the evening — had formed a secure shooting platform for Michael Hateley.
Wallis stepped up to the edge of the six-by-six-by-eight-foot-deep hole that he and Lanyard and Gavin had dug several months earlier for just such a contingency, glanced down at the pair of machetes lying across the two twisted bodies at the bottom, and turned to Lanyard.
“Any problems I should know about?”
“Not really. They were busy cutting the bamboo up into smaller pieces when the older one started getting pushy about being paid extra for difficult work. I terminated their contracts early and finished cutting the bamboo myself.”
“Good,” Wallis grunted.
Working quickly now, using the intermittent flashes of the Fire-Fly™ for illumination, the two men tore open the two plastic bags, dumped the shredded remains of their office correspondence into the hole, and then tossed in the splintered lengths of bamboo, burying the bodies under a cross-laced fibrous mat almost a foot thick.
Then they opened up the tarp, spread it out as a much-too-big liner for the remaining portion of the hole, and worked as a team — Lanyard handing the rifles and back-packs down to Wallis who carefully arranged them in the hole, covered them with the tarp flaps, and then used a roll of duct tape to seal the bundle from the corrosive Thai soil.
A few minutes later, the two men finished arranging the sod squares over the crossed support boards covering the duct-taped cache, tossed an assortment of shredded brush and leaves over the sod, and stood up.
“I don’t think we have to worry about anyone finding this lot,” Wallis said, nodding in satisfaction as he looked around at the clearing that he knew, from experience, would be overgrown again with a few days.
“Not bloody likely,” Quince Lanyard chuckled as he looked up at the still-pulsing Fire-Fly™ hanging from an overhead tree limb, used the remote device to shut it off, and then dropped the remote back into his pocket. “If it wasn’t for GPS, and that little flasher, I wouldn’t have found it either.”
Fifteen minutes later, using the IR-glow of the shed light as a guide, the two men were back at their Land Rovers.
Reaching into the back of his vehicle, Wallis pulled out a pair of armored vests with filled magazine pouches, two assault rifles, a pair of military ammo boxes, and a case labeled ‘electronics.’ As Lanyard transferred the armaments to Lanyard’s Land Rover, Wallis pulled out the five-foot-long Pelican™ case and the blue-striped military ammo can.
“Take this along too,” Wallis said.
Lanyard took the fifty-pound case and equally heavy blue-striped ammo box, and juggled both in his muscular hands. “You really think Jack and I’ll need something like this to deal with Kai and his boys?”
“If Yak’s the one who informed on us, no, you shouldn’t,” Wallis said. “If not — ” He shrugged. “Do what you have to do, and then dump it with the rest of the gear.”
“Bloody expensive toy to be tossing out with the trash after one use, don’t you think?” Lanyard suggested in a voice that was fully respectful. Wallis had always encouraged Lanyard and Gavin to offer their opinions; but there was no question as to who was the leader of their illicit team.
“It’s just a tool that’s easily replaced. Don’t hesitate to use it if you have to,” Wallis replied firmly.
Lanyard acknowledged the order with a quick nod of his head. “Any word on Choon’s whereabouts?”
“He was at a brokers meeting in Surat yesterday. Explains why we weren‘t told about the new patrol.”
“Is that a normal assignment for a police captain?”
Wallis shook his head. “I doubt it. Probably got sent there by Bangkok HQ.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Doesn’t mean they’re on to us. Could have been a routine check, and they moved him out of the way because they don’t trust him.”
“But if they think he’s helping hunters, we’ll have that damned Colonel Kulawnit on our ass.”
“Kulawnit’s scheduled to be at the Wildlife Interpol meeting in Tokyo all week,” Wallis replied evenly. “By the time he returns, we should be out of Thailand.”
“Damned good thing. What about Yak?”
“We’re having an early breakfast at his house tomorrow morning.”
“How did he sound?”
“Sleepy, confused, and upset that I know where his mistress lives. Not like a man waiting nervously to hear if we were dead or in custody.”
“So where does that put Kai?”
“In a bloody bad light.”
CHAPTER 3
The Draganov Research Center, Cascade Mountains, Washington
