Ken Goddard - Chimera

As the pilot kept his engines running, maintaining the seaplane’s position heading into the wind, Lanyard brought the dinghy around behind the plane and up to the open main cabin door where Wallis was waiting with a grappling hook.

Then, as Gavin scrambled up and in through open doorway, Wallis held the dinghy tight against the plane while Lanyard leaned down with a combat knife, punched a few holes in the hull, and slashed the flotation tubes.

Finally, as Lanyard and Gavin pulled themselves into two of the four main cabin seats, and Wallis secured the door, the pilot made a final adjustment to his wind alignment, advised his passengers to hang on, and then firmly shoved the throttles forward to takeoff speed, sending the old seaplane crashing through the swells of the Malacca Strait one more time.

Moments later, they were airborne, the gallant old plane roaring into the darkness several miles south of the line where the Thai patrol boats were maintaining a determined grid search for the missing Avatar.

Across the Malacca Strait

To their surprise, given all of the unfortunate events of the past twenty-four hours, the subsequent two-hour, very-low-level flight across the Malacca Strait to Singapore proved to be a relatively quiet and uneventful affair for Lanyard and Gavin.

After listening to their stories, seeing to their medical and food needs, and congratulating them on their narrow escape, Wallis sat back in one of the two rear seats and proceeded to stare out the window, lost in thought, as the twin-engine seaplane surged and rumbled through the dark southeastern Asia sky.

Lanyard and Gavin would occasionally glance back to see if Wallis’ mood had changed; but they knew better than to disturb their fearsome and occasionally unpredictable leader when he was thinking about a new plan, or the failure of the previous one.

It was only when the pilot announced their pending arrival in Singapore Harbor, and suggested that everyone might want to strap in, that Wallis sat up, leaned forward, and slapped both men on their muscular shoulders.

“Okay, lads,” he said, “I think I’ve figured out a way we can keep Mr. Hateley and his friends happy, and make us moderately rich in the process.”

Tanga Island Cove — late the next afternoon

To the numerous tourists and residents who remained a careful distance off shore in their boats, watching the activities of Bulatt and the three Navy seamen with their binoculars, the four crime scene investigators must have appeared tired, sunburned, and otherwise thoroughly satisfied with their accomplishments over the past nine hours.

They were sitting on a series of tarps they’d laid out around a small, stone-lined cook fire on a grassy knoll just above the beach of Tanga Island Cove — Bulatt sitting bare-chested with his scraggly beard and his white hair hanging loose over his muscular and reddish-tanned shoulders, looking very much like a shipwrecked Viking at rest as he sipped cautiously at his bowl of hot soup, while Chief Petty Officer Narusan and his two seamen compared crime scene notes, lists and sketches against items of collected evidence neatly arranged on one of the tarps — and keeping a wary eye on the surrounding boat-crowd, when they all heard the sound of a distant aircraft.

Chief Narusan spotted it first.

“Helicopter,” he said to Bulatt, pointing at the northeastern horizon.

Setting his soup bowl aside, Bulatt shielded his eyes from the sun, and then finally spotted the incoming aircraft — a small surveillance helicopter with military markings and a pair of pontoons attached to the landing skids.

“About time they showed up,” Bulatt commented, generating a brief series of smiles and thumbs-up from the chief and his crew before they returned to their paperwork.

Two minutes later, the four men watched the helicopter pilot flare the rotors of the small aircraft above the cove, settle it down onto the water, and then use a series of brief engine revs to nudge the leading edges of the pontoons into the shoreline sand.

As they continued to watch with tired curiosity, a familiar figure opened the co-pilot’s door, stepped out onto the metal floats, hopped down to the sand, and strode up the beach to the grassy knoll with a grim look on his face.

“Welcome to the Tanga Cove crime scene, Khun Sat,” Bulatt said, forcing himself up to his feet along with the three Royal Navy seamen who were already at attention. “I hope you bring us good news from the search.”

Preithat shook his head. “I’m sorry to say there is no sign of the Avatar or the two suspects; they seem to have vanished.”

“’Retreated’ might be a better description for their actions,” Bulatt suggested. “I have reason to believe the men in the Avatar possess military backgrounds, and are not just simple hunting guides.”

“Military? How can you be sure of that?” Preithat demanded.

“I’m not,” Bulatt said. “It’s still a theory, but probably a good one. As best we can tell from the evidence we’ve found so far, these two men set up a sophisticated ambush and drew as many as fourteen Malaysian pirates in to their deaths before shooting down your military helicopter and escaping in the confusion. That sounds pretty military-like to me, and chief Narusan agrees.”

Still frowning, Preithat turned and motioned for the helicopter pilot — who was now kneeling beside the floats, securing a beach anchor — to come up and join the group. Then he turned back and stared down at the array of evidence items laid out on the tarps, which included a tree limb stuck in the sand with at least three dozen expended rifle casings stuck onto the ends of the small branches.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

“I think I’ll let Chief Narusan describe the evidence,” Bulatt said. “He and his men are the ones who did all of the work. I just watched and coached a little bit.”

Bulatt motioned to the chief petty officer who looked surprised, but then hurried over to stand beside Preithat with the scene notes in his hand and a broad smile on his deeply suntanned face.

“Good CSI, Major,” the chief said as he bowed respectfully to Preithat and the still-helmeted pilot who had come up beside him, and then fumbled with his notes to put them in the proper order.

“Yes, very good CSI,” Bulatt agreed, smiling as he watched the chief carefully reassemble the hand-written CSI report. “The chief and his gunner’s mates conducted the entire search, documented the scene, made a scene sketch, photographed the entire process, made an evidence list, and collected the evidence. They’ll be able to testify to all of that in Thai court if we can ever bring these people to justice. You won’t need to bring me back.”

“Very nice,” Preithat nodded approvingly.

“Yes, Major, we collect — ” the chief hesitated, seeming to struggle with the English words but determined to use them in Bulatt’s presence, “ten flashers, not broken, and many pieces of other flashers from up there.” He pointed to the rocky promontory, and then looked down at his list again.

“Flashers?” Preithat said.

“Devices very much like the infrared Fire-flies™ one of your biologists discovered on some Clouded Leopard carcasses that Colonel Kulawnit showed me yesterday afternoon in Bangkok,” Bulatt explained, “only these don’t seem to be infrared. They flash in certain distinct and visible colors at certain set intervals, both of which are adjustable on the flashers themselves. The floppy adhesive cups on the back seem to adhere to just about anything, which is why we have them stuck together in pairs. According to the chief, who seems to be a ship’s electrician in his spare time, the flashers can be turned on and off — or re-adjusted — by a remote device which we also found.” Bulatt pointed to a small transmitter lying next to the flashers.