Russell Blake - Betrayal

And now they were faced with an impossible choice. Keep searching the building and face certain arrest, or escape to fight another day but have to report back that they had failed in their mission.

The second gunman turned to look at his partner for guidance.

From downstairs, a door slammed, confirming their worst suspicions. They were now alone in the building, their quarry gone, leaving them to the police.

The lead man lifted a cell phone to his ear and murmured a few words into it, instructing the car to circle around and pick them up in the alley. Hopefully, they would be able to outrun the police. If not, they would have to fight it out. Capture was not an option.

They wound their way back to the fire escape and prepared to climb down the two stories to the street, shouldering their rifles, edging around the brittle glass shards on the linoleum floor.

The lead man’s eye disintegrated as the sharp crack of the.32 caliber round shattered the silence in the small room, and he dropped like a sack of wet mud, blood seeping down his face as he fell. His partner fumbled with his rifle and then gurgled as a stalk of bamboo plunged through his back, the sharp shaft exiting his chest. He looked down in puzzled surprise at the skewer that impaled him and managed a half turn of his head before his legs buckled and he sank to the floor.

Jet stood behind him, watching him shudder, and then reached down and lifted his rifle free. A Kalashnikov. She popped the magazine out and checked it — the weight told her it was half full. After slapping it back into the rifle, she pulled the strap onto her shoulder and looked out over the fire escape, where she had lain in wait after circling back around while the two men had been distracted by the Xerox machine.

Headlights illuminated the small alley as a car pulled to a stop a few feet past the fire escape. The driver’s gaze swept the dank service area in a panic — the police would be on top of them in only a few more moments. It would be a miracle if they were able to get out alive.

The roof collapsed on the driver, and the windshield shattered into a snowy starburst of safety glass as the lead man’s head struck it, seeming to stare sightlessly through one good eye at him before sliding off the roof and onto the hood. The driver screamed in shock, and then bullets tore the cabin apart, slugs ripping him to pieces as the deadly hail from above shredded the thin metal.

Jet watched as gas trickled from the car’s ruptured fuel tank before dropping to the ground next to it and jogging away from the clamor of the approaching police.

Two blocks from the scene of the gunfight, she slowed to a walk. The three squad cars that passed her didn’t give her a second glance. The officers were looking for armed hostiles, not a nice Thai woman walking home from a nearby nightspot.

She removed the battery from her cell phone and tossed the sim chip aside, having memorized the two numbers on it. However she had been tracked, she was now taking no chances. She had to assume the worst — that she was completely compromised. The question was how, and who had come after her.

A tuk tuk picked her up three minutes later. She dropped into the back with a sigh before giving the driver instructions to take her to the Nana mall. She would pick up some new clothes at the perennially open market stalls in the neighborhood, change in a bathroom, and then figure out whether her room was compromised. If so, she had a real problem. If not, she would be moving to a new hotel within minutes, and her whereabouts would become a mystery to everyone but her.

A rainstorm whipped the treetops near the large boulevard that fronted the mall Arthur liked to use as his getaway from Langley when things became too stressful, or he had to make some private calls and didn’t want to have them go through the CIA switchboard. He sat in a red vinyl booth at a retro-Fifties coffee shop, the waitresses dressed in sock hop garb in keeping with the theme. The soda fountain was already doing a good business even at ten a.m., a tribute to the quality of the shakes as well as the lack of concern over calorific intake that its patrons shared.

Arthur took a sip of his rich brew and glanced around the diner to confirm he was alone. The waitresses were used to him so nobody stared at the horror that was his face. A small thing, but one he appreciated, and he always tipped generously by way of thanks. He reached into his jacket and extracted a cell phone with a scrambler module incorporated in it.

The voice on the other end answered within moments. “So what’s the word?”

“The operative’s in place, and we’re waiting to follow the contact.”

“That’s great. Hopefully this will be over soon, and we’ll have our diamonds back.”

“Well, there’s also a wrinkle. I got a call a few hours ago that someone attacked them.”

“What do you mean, someone attacked them? Who? What was the result?”

Arthur took another sip, what passed for his lips drooling fluid onto the saucer — an eventuality he was prepared for with plentiful napkins. No matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get used to drinking hot coffee through a straw. It was just another of life’s plentiful challenges. “Information is coming in, but the good news is that the operative wasn’t harmed, so other than some logistical hurdles, we’re still all systems go.”

“And who mounted the attack?”

“Unknown at this time. One disturbing piece of information I’m thinking you can look into, though. I don’t want to use any agency assets — it appears we have a leak. It seems that the operative was tracked. That points to what we’ve long suspected — someone inside who has access to the positioning feed. It would also explain why our last two forays were unsuccessful. If they had the tracking data…”

“…they knew exactly where to find them. I got it. I’ll have my tech look into who has been accessing the feeds. That should be knowable.”

“When you find out…”

“I know. We’ll arrange for an accident.”

“Leave that to me,” Arthur said softly.

“Of course.”

“On the other front, we’re hearing that our customary suppliers are now in discussions with a Russian group about taking over distribution into the Eastern Seaboard and Europe. I won’t belabor how bad it will be for us if they get their hands on that much heroin. It would disrupt the entire pricing structure.”

“I don’t need to tell you how much product we are already committed to from Afghanistan. Any significant drop in the market price would be disastrous.”

“I have faith that this operative will solve the problem for us.”

“Let’s hope you’re right.”

Arthur sighed. “We may want to consider a backup approach if she fails.”

“There is no backup. She can’t fail. We don’t have any other options.”

“I’ll start thinking of some. While I believe she will be successful, I don’t want to bet the farm on it,” Arthur said.

“Do that.”

Arthur hung up. In addition to his formal role with the agency, he’d also been involved in the small circle of defense department and CIA personnel that controlled much of the worldwide narcotics trafficking for twenty-seven years and counting, eventually securing a central role in the scheme as his predecessors had retired or died. It had made him a very rich man, but also carried with it responsibilities. Like ensuring that no criminal syndicates stepped in and cut into the supply chain. Pricing on many drugs was as artificial as the value of most currencies, and if the Russians hit the street with heroin that was half the price of his, that would cause a disastrous downward spiral in profits as his network had to meet that pricing to move product.