Russell Blake - Betrayal

“Didn’t say I don’t have any shells, did I? Got a carton out in my truck.”

“Want to meet me out there in fifteen minutes? In the meantime, I’ll go see if I can find another clip.”

“Sure thing, little lady. I’ll see if one of these trailer trash will watch my gear for a few minutes. Hey, Marty!” he bellowed, and an old man wearing a battered Hooters baseball cap looked over at him. “Gotta hit the can in a few. You watch my stuff?”

“Lemme know when. Won’t be hardly any stealing going on while you’re gone.”

Both men had a good laugh, and then she handed him the money.

“I’m supposed to check your driver’s license, but for another fifty I could sorta skip that part.”

“You drive a hard bargain. How about fifty including the bullets?”

“You got it.”

“I’ll give you the money when you give me the shells.”

“Seems the right way to do it,” he agreed. “I’ll meet up with you out by the bathrooms in fifteen, okay?”

“I’ll be looking for you.”

Clovis had one extra clip as well as a shoulder holster for the Beretta, and a quick turn around the booths located one more — more than sufficient for her purposes. She slipped everything into her purse and then went out to meet her new admirer.

He was waiting by the bathrooms, as promised, and she proffered a smile as she approached him. He had a plastic bag with a box in it in one hand and a beer in the other. She took the bag from him and peered inside, then slipped him the fifty and moved off, his eyes burning holes through the back of her jeans as she walked to her car. She fished her cell out of her pocket as she unlocked the door and dialed Matt’s number again, and was surprised when he picked up. He sounded exhausted and got straight to the point.

“My contact couldn’t find anything obvious on likely sites for your daughter, but was able to discover Arthur’s home address. You got a pen?”

“I’ll remember it.”

He rattled off the address, and she repeated it back to him.

“If my contact doesn’t find out anything more in the next twenty-four hours, you should plan to do this the hard way. And she’s working on the other two who run the show with him. Hopefully, she’ll have those soon as well. Oh, and before I forget, she was able to arrange to get you the chemical breakdown of the drugs you asked for. She’ll leave it at a dead drop we arranged.” He recited the location and details of the drop.

“Okay. Got it. I’ll swing by now. I’ll call you again at this time tomorrow, okay?”

“Fine. We made it to one of my camps okay. No drama. Lawan says she misses you. I’m hiring a woman to help out with her and recruiting some new guards from the local warlord. Everything fine on your end?”

“Never better.”

“Good luck with the drug manufacturing.”

“Thanks. Talk tomorrow.” The line went dead.

Now she knew where Arthur lived.

Which was probably his worst nightmare come true. If not, it soon would be.

Her next stop was at a hardware store, where she bought a vise, a padlock and some welding gear, and then a machine shop supply store where she paid cash for several pieces of specialized machinery and sundry odds and ends that she loaded into the trunk, along with a collapsible work bench. When she was within an hour of Washington, she pulled over at a monthly storage facility and rented their biggest stall for six months, and then unloaded her gear into the unit and locked it. She would be back tomorrow to start her project — it would take a day, two on the outside.

Jet drove to the drop — an office supply superstore — and retrieved the single page document that had been left for Elyse. On it were two strings of chemical sequences only a chemist would be able to make sense out of, and a name and address. Twenty minutes later, she was sitting with the director of R amp;D for the company — a pharmaceutical manufacturer. She passed the slip of paper to him and waited for a price.

He seemed agitated, but after a number of admonitions about how difficult it would be to synthesize the drug, he named a number. Six figures. She agreed to it without hesitation, and he assured her that he could have it ready within two days. They shook hands, and when she promised to have him half the money within the hour, his demeanor relaxed. He would probably blend the cocktail himself that night, she figured, and wake up tomorrow a hundred grand richer.

She hummed along with the radio as she drove back to the city, tapping her fingers with the beat, and realized that her spirits were better than they had been for some time. She was finally doing something, preparing for the encounter that would get her daughter back and rid the world of a dangerous parasite.

Now it was just a matter of time.

Jet lifted the welding mask from her head and studied the result of her efforts with approval, then loosed the vise and moved to the grinder to create a smooth seam. The internal baffles had been the most difficult part, but she’d studied the physics and understood the concept of attenuation, and had dismantled enough similar devices to understand how they worked.

Once she was finished, she screwed the tube onto the barrel of the Beretta and checked it for fit. Satisfied, she turned and fired a shot at a pile of sandbags she’d placed in a corner of the workspace. The pop was loud, but no worse than any of the professionally-crafted silencers she’d used. It would do.

She had already reloaded the fifty shells so that they would be subsonic with the silencer, further reducing the sound, and she fired one more round to make sure. It would take a little adjustment for a miniscule drop in the bullet’s trajectory at greater range, but for her purposes, it was more than suitable.

After dusting the silencer with a coat of flat black primer, she checked the time and picked up her cell phone. Matt answered on the first ring.

“Bad news is nothing more on Hannah. Good news is my contact’s gotten the address of two of the other top dogs. The operational side of this is Arthur and his counterpart at the DOD, and the associate director of the CIA. If you eliminate Arthur, his DOD buddy and the associate director, you’ve hopelessly crippled their operation. By the time the underlings are able to regroup, the natural competitive pressure in the market will have flattened them, and the Russians or whoever else will have taken over the supply side. We can’t eliminate the drug trade, but we can make it so the CIA is no longer the largest trafficker.”

“Give me the info. I’ll add them to my shopping list.”

“The DOD man’s name is Briggs.” Matt gave her the details. “And here’s the director’s information.”

She scribbled a note on the back of a reloading materials brochure.

“Okay. Got it. How are you holding up?”

“Good. I’ve now got thirty men from one of the largest opium warlords in the Shan. All seasoned fighters, or at least so he claims. They look tougher than the last bunch, so that’s a positive. Lawan is doing well, settling in. I hired two women, one to cook and keep the camp presentable and the other to tutor her. Although I don’t think she’s had more than an eighth grade education herself. But it’s better than nothing.”

“I take it you’re able to recharge your phone.”

“The miracle of solar power. Even in the jungle.”

“All right. I’m about ready to move.”

“Wait another day or two. Let’s give my contact more time to see if she can dig up anything more. She’s working on blueprints and security diagrams for all three of the targets’ houses. That will come in handy, I’d imagine.”

“It will. You think I’ll have it within forty-eight hours?”