World of Trouble (9786167611136) (40 page)

By helicopter, he could get to Charlie’s
house from Bangkok in about two hours. That was more time than a
commercial jet would take to get to Phuket but, door-to-door, a
hell of a lot less time than organizing ground transportation and
shuffling in and out of two commercial airports. Of course, showing
up in the middle of Charlie’s compound in a government helicopter
might not be such a hot idea if his red shirts had automatic
weapons, but what was life without a little risk?

“I’ll have the rotors turning on a Blackhawk
at Don Mueang in thirty minutes,” Kate said. “Go to the military
VIP terminal. I’ll leave word to let you in.”

“Make it twenty minutes.”

“Fine. I’ll see you there.”

“Wait a minute,” Shepherd said. “What are you
talking about?”

“I’m coming to Phuket with you. I told you
that I want to talk to Charlie.”

“No, you’re
not
coming with me. That’s
stupid, Kate. Anything could happen when we get there. They might
start shooting.”

“Don’t argue with me, Jack. It’s my goddamned
helicopter.”

She had him there.

“Okay,” Shepherd said, “but just you.”

“I can’t leave Mutt and Jeff,” Kate said.
“They wouldn’t let me go without them.”

“This is turning into a goddamned mob
scene.”

“We’re not negotiating here, Jack.”

Shepherd took a deep breath and let it out
again.

“Okay,” he said. “You and Mutt and Jeff.
That’s it?”

“Right. That’s it.”

“See you at Don Mueang. In twenty
minutes.”

He clicked off the phone and shoved it in his
pocket. Keur put a hand on his arm.

“I’m going, too,” he said.

Shepherd threw his hands in the air.

“Sure. Why the hell not? The more the
merrier. Let’s take some cold chicken and a bottle of wine and make
a flipping picnic out of it.”

***

THEY FOUND A taxi driver who led a secret life as a
NASCAR driver, handed him a hundred dollar bill, and exactly twenty
minutes later they completed the one hour drive by screeching up to
the military’s VIP terminal on the east side of Don Mueang. One of
the two guards at the door phoned somebody for instructions while
the other watched them carefully, his finger twitching nervously
around the trigger of the M-16 held across his chest.

Shepherd glanced over at the parking garage
from which he and Kate had watched Harvey four days earlier. Had
that really been only four days ago? It seemed to him like at least
a couple of lifetimes. The guard hung up the telephone, snapped off
a crisp salute, and slammed his boot heels together with a
resounding bang. Then he opened the terminal door and held it for
them.

Inside, Shepherd looked out through a glass
wall onto the field where the rotors were turning very slowly on a
helicopter painted mat black from nose to tail. Before he could ask
anybody if that was the Blackhawk that Kate had promised, the door
behind them burst open and Mutt and Jeff pushed into the terminal
with Kate right behind them. She headed straight for Shepherd.

“If you’re wrong about where that plane is
going to land, we’re not going to get another chance,” she
said.

Shepherd said nothing.

“I just hope you’re right.”

Shepherd hoped so, too.

“Who is this?” Kate asked, pointing at
Keur.

“This is the FBI agent I told you about.
Special Agent Leonard Keur from Washington.”

Keur and Kate shook hands and sized each
other up. Kate didn’t introduce Keur to Mutt and Jeff. They weren’t
really the introduction types.

“What has the FBI got to do—” she started to
ask Keur, but Shepherd interrupted.

“It’s not official,” he said. “Keur has been
helping me for his own reasons. He wants to go and that seems only
fair to me. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him.”

Kate thought that over for a moment, then
nodded. “Where do I tell the pilots to go?”

“Tell them to fly to a point three miles
south of the Phuket airport. I’ll direct them from there.”

Kate nodded again and without another word
headed for the Blackhawk. Mutt and Jeff stuck close behind her.

Shepherd caught Keur’s eye, gave him a little
shrug, and they followed.

A LITTLE OVER an hour later the mangrove swamps
beneath the Blackhawk gave way to the azure waters of Phangnga Bay.
To the right, the twin spans of the Sarasin Bridge formed the only
connection between the island of Phuket and the mainland. And dead
ahead was Phuket Airport’s only runway.

Shepherd glanced at his watch. He figured
they were probably an hour ahead of Harvey, maybe two. Unless of
course he was completely full of shit and Harvey really
was
going to Don Mueang exactly as its flight plan said it was. In
which case he guessed it didn’t really matter what time it was.
They were screwed.

Unbuckling his shoulder harness, he moved
forward and leaned into the cockpit. Getting the pilots’ attention,
Shepherd pointed in the direction of Charlie’s house since it was
too noisy to do anything else. The Blackhawk swayed slightly as the
pilots adjusted their course to the south. Shepherd went back to
his seat and buckled in again.

They rattled on across Phuket for another few
minutes and Shepherd’s eyes searched for familiar landmarks. He
scanned the island’s west coast, counting off the deep coves rimmed
with sandy beaches that bit into the island from the Andaman Sea.
Charlie’s house was above Nai Thon Beach, which was the second cove
to the south. Or maybe it was the third. Now that he was looking at
the island from the air, he wasn’t absolutely certain anymore.

That would really be a pisser,
he
thought,
if after all this I can’t find the damned
house.

Whichever cove it was on, he did remember
clearly what the house looked like. It was a U-shaped structure of
glass and steel with white-washed walls that hurt your eyes to look
at in the tropical sun. The house was at the very peak of the
headland just south of the beach, right at the center of a walled
compound with a scattering of satellite buildings, a swimming pool,
and the two tennis courts where they were going to land. The house
stood out spectacularly from everything else, like a giant flying
saucer that had landed at the edge of the jungle. Surely he
couldn’t miss
that
, could he?

He missed it.

The Blackhawk passed over the west coast and
headed out into the Andaman Sea. One of the pilots twisted around
and looked at Shepherd. There was nothing ahead of them now but
India and it was a thousand miles away over open water. The guy
clearly wondered if Shepherd had any idea where they were going.
Shepherd found that entirely understandable. He was wondering
exactly the same thing.

Raising his forefinger and rolling it in a
circling motion, since he had no idea what else to do, Shepherd
felt the Blackhawk swing into a bank. He watched as the earth
outside his window rotated and the beaches along the west coast
came back into view. Then he unstrapped himself and moved forward
again, leaning into the cockpit between the pilots. As soon as he
looked east through the Blackhawk’s windshield, he saw the house.
It was dead on their nose.

He pointed to it and the pilot nodded.
Shepherd felt the Blackhawk begin to tilt down, but he put his hand
on the pilot’s arm and shook his head. Pointing to the house again,
he drew a rectangle in the air and made a lifting gesture with his
open palm. He wanted the pilot to fly a pattern around the house at
a high enough altitude not be conspicuous while he looked the place
over. The pilot seemed to understand immediately.

The co-pilot obviously got the idea, too.
Without a word, he bent down, produced a pair of field glasses from
somewhere, and handed them to Shepherd. Shepherd nodded his thanks,
took the glasses, and went back to his seat.

***

THE HOUSE WAS just as Shepherd remembered it. Huge,
sprawling, and spectacular.

To the west, a sheer rock cliff plunged a
hundred feet into the Andaman Sea, and to the east a thick jungle
of banana, palm, and rubber trees closed in. Only a single narrow
asphalt road twisted through the two or three miles from the
highway up to the house. It passed a security gate and a
guardhouse, then crested a rise and dead-ended in a gravel
courtyard with a fountain in its center that was directly in front
of the main house.

Shepherd scanned the property through the
field glasses, but he couldn’t make out very much. The heat rising
from the jungle was intense and it bounced the Blackhawk around. He
struggled to hold the glasses steady. He needed some indication of
how many people were in the compound.

There were a half dozen or so vehicles in the
courtyard in front of the house. Most of them looked like pickup
trucks, but most of the vehicles in Thailand were pickup trucks so
that was hardly surprising. He saw people there, too, not in huge
numbers, but a dozen or so in small groups scattered around the
compound. Just at the edge of the jungle there was a clump of what
looked like tents, but he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps they was just
tarpaulins covering some kind of construction work. Of course, no
matter how many people and vehicles he spotted from the air, there
could easily be a lot more of both. Vehicles were often garaged,
and it was so damned hot that he doubted many people would be crazy
enough to be standing around outside either.

There were no obvious signs of heavy
security. He could see no dogs or foot patrols around the
compound’s fences. The two green-tinted tennis courts looked
exactly as he remembered them.

Shepherd knew it was possible he had simply
been wrong about the weapons being bound for Phuket and Charlie
using his compound as a staging area. Maybe, right at that very
moment, Harvey was on approach to Don Mueang and Charlie’s people
were lining up there to collect their new weapons and march on the
yellow shirts right in the middle of downtown Bangkok.

It was far late to worry about that now, of
course. They had found Charlie’s compound and there were people and
vehicles down there. But what were they doing there? Shepherd
simply had no way of knowing for sure.

But he also knew his bet was already on the
table and the big wheel was spinning around and around. It was time
to find out whether he was a winner or a loser.

Shepherd moved up to the cockpit again. He
leaned in between the pilots and handed the field glasses back to
the co-pilot. The pilot twisted around and looked at Shepherd, his
raised eyebrows posing the obvious question.

Shepherd nodded and pointed his index finger
straight down.

SHEPHERD HAD NO idea what to expect when they landed.
But what actually happened wouldn’t have made it onto any list of
possibilities he might have drawn up.

Nothing at all happened.

The moment the Blackhawk’s skids hit the
tennis court the co-pilot jumped into the cabin and jerked open the
big sliding door. It rolled back with a metallic grinding sound and
slid along its tracks until it banged to a stop against the
fuselage. Then the last of the noise from the Blackhawk’s engines
died away and the silence that followed was almost total.

A half dozen local men dressed in shorts and
T-shirts lounged on the grass about fifty yards away from where
they had put down. If the men had weapons, Shepherd couldn’t see
them.

“What do you think?” Kate asked.

Shepherd shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Some of the men glanced at them, but none
even bothered to stand up. They looked as if they saw helicopters
coming and going all the time and the arrival of yet another one
was only a mild distraction from the important business of the day:
napping, eating, and talking to their friends in the shade of a
grove of palm trees.

Mutt and Jeff unbuckled and jumped to the
ground. They split apart, moved about twenty feet away in different
directions, and took up defensive positions that allowed them to
cover the open ground between the Blackhawk and the main house.
Whatever weapons they had, they kept concealed. A few of the men
lying underneath the palm trees looked in their direction, but
didn’t really seem all that interested one way or the other.

“Either Charlie is here or he’s not,” Kate
said. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

Kate unsnapped her shoulder harness and swung
around until her feet dangled out the door. She gave the back of
the seat a push with her right hand and slid to the ground.

Shepherd looked at Keur and shrugged. Then he
opened his harness and jumped down right behind her. Keur
followed.

After all of them were outside the Blackhawk,
Shepherd saw they had the full attention of the men under the palm
trees. He wondered what it was that surprised those men more. To
see the prime minister of Thailand standing fifty feet away? Or to
see her accompanied by two white guys?

A young fellow with a white scarf wrapped
around his head and wearing dirty tan pants and a red golf shirt
immediately jumped up and trotted toward the main house. Shepherd
gathered they were about to be announced. The reactions of the
other men varied. While a couple looked less than thrilled to see
them, the overall response was anything other than hostile. Several
men jumped to their feet and offered
wais
, a graceful Thai
gesture of greeting in which the palms are pressed together in
front of the face in deference and respect. One man, a young fellow
wearing a New York Giants jersey and jeans, even stood at attention
with his arms at his side and bowed slightly.

Kate didn’t seem to notice how the men were
reacting, or perhaps she just didn’t care. Still, Shepherd was wary
no matter how benign everything seemed. They had dropped straight
into the red team’s clubhouse without an invitation. Somebody had
killed the last prime minister of Thailand, quite possibly some of
these very guys or some of their pals, and it wasn’t that much of a
stretch to assume at least a few of them would be happy to see Kate
follow Somchai off the planet. Shepherd was responsible for
bringing Kate here, and he was responsible for getting her out
again. It was just that simple. He had a soft spot for tough-minded
women, that was true enough, but only if they were alive.