“So your version is that you’re on the side of God and right, and you stole the diamonds to shut down an illegal CIA-run trafficking enterprise?”
“Exactly. I may have some moral confusion — what they call ‘elasticity’ in the biz — but I know that being involved in heroin trafficking is about as despicable as it gets. There’s no gray area in there. Once I knew what was going on, I had two choices — I could either continue as before, or I could do something about it.”
“And wind up two hundred million richer.”
“Yes. As you can see by the lavish lifestyle I crafted for myself in the Myanmar mountains, money is supremely important to me. It’s just a bitch finding somewhere to park the Bentley and land the Citation in the middle of the jungle. Especially when you’re living in a shack and pooping in a hole.”
Jet had grown uneasy as she listened to Matt’s version, which sounded far more plausible than Arthur’s. But if he was telling the truth, what could she do about it?
As if reading her mind, Matt started in again. “What did they pay you to do this?”
“Pay me? You think I’m doing this for money?” she spat, and then she told him the whole thing. All of it. Her child, the Mossad, Arthur’s ultimatum.
Matt studied her face as she recounted the story, saying nothing until she was done. He looked off into the distance, his focus a million miles away, then fixed her with an intense gaze.
“You know you’re never going to get your daughter back. There’s no way he’ll let you live.”
She nodded. “I’m starting to get that feeling.”
“He’s one of the heads of a multi-generational drug trafficking ring. This is not a man who will think twice about having you executed the second he has the diamonds.”
“If you’re not lying.”
He shook his head and snorted. “Hey, I know: how about we wait until you see that there are two hundred million dollars in diamonds in my safe deposit box, not fifty. Will that go far in convincing you?”
“What are you doing with a monster like Pu?”
“He was a means to an end. And you saw how much love there ultimately was between us. He was just a few seconds away from plugging me. Come on. Think this through. You know I’m telling you the truth. I couldn’t invent this shit.”
She stood and moved out of the shelter of the rocks, the rain having eased over the last few minutes, and paced in front of him.
“I don’t see a lot of options here.”
“Funny you should say that. Because I see nothing but possibilities. But only if we work together.”
“Work together?”
“Let me tell you what I’m thinking…”
Chapter 26
Jet didn’t trust Matt enough to take the cuffs off, but she had agreed to think over his proposition, which was an interesting one. Part of what had been gnawing at her was what she would do once the mission was successful. That had been rolling around in her head for days — she didn’t have any confidence that Arthur would return Hannah to her, no matter what she did, and Matt’s assertion that he would have her killed, or at least do his best to try, rang true.
She hadn’t come up with a satisfactory plan for dealing with Arthur, and she didn’t know whether Edgar was part of the drug ring, or was just following orders and believed the same bullshit she had been fed. She didn’t get the feeling from him that he was bent, but then again, he could have just been a good liar. There was no shortage of those in the agency.
Perhaps most troubling to her was that David had relied on Arthur for dealing with Hannah. She wanted to believe that he’d had no idea about Arthur’s extracurricular activities, but she couldn’t be sure. David’s memory was becoming increasingly tarnished the more she knew. She suspected that wouldn’t end any time soon.
The gray of dusk transitioned into the black of night, and the rain eased to infrequent cloudbursts. But the trails were still treacherous, and even with the night vision goggles, she had a difficult time spotting all the hazards.
They rounded a bend, and she stopped dead, her senses prickling. She’d heard something up ahead. Matt almost walked into her in the dark, but he sensed her alarm and also froze.
Voices floated through the jungle, ephemeral and directionless — one of the sensory tricks that the creeping night fog played on their perception. She tried to see any movement up ahead, but nothing registered, even as she slid the P90 strap down her shoulder and gripped it, ready for battle.
When the shooting started, it narrowly missed them, shredding through the leaves, the bullets zipping past with their distinctive sough of death. Matt dropped into the mud and whispered to her as she fired three bursts into the jungle.
“The key. Un-cuff me, and get me a gun. Please.”
The moment of truth had arrived. She saw a skulking figure a hundred yards away dodging towards them in a crouch and, sighting carefully, blew his head off. The shooting stopped for a few seconds, and she groped in her pocket for the key.
“Can you crawl a few feet closer?” she whispered.
He did, and without taking her eyes off the trail, she felt for his wrists and unlocked one of the cuffs, placing the key in his newly-freed hand.
Matt wasted no time unlocking the other cuff, then tapped her arm.
“Gun?”
She un-holstered the Beretta and handed it to him, then fired another burst at a fleeting movement near the edge of a thicket. “Take the silencer off for better range. You’ve got sixteen shots. Already one in the hole.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have another night vision scope, would you?”
“Sorry. And I’m not giving this one up.”
“Fair enough.”
“Don’t use up all the bullets. I’ve only got one more clip, and we’re a long way from the border.”
“Maybe we can find a nice AK-47.”
She thought about it for a second and then smiled to herself. “How about you give me the pistol back and I trade you for the P90? Then lay down some cover fire so I can flank them.”
“Okay, but I can’t really see anything.”
“That’s the point. Neither can they. I doubt they have night vision gear, although you would know better than I would.”
“No chance. There’s no way to recharge the batteries out here. That’s why I didn’t have any. Even with the solar to run the computer and charge the sat phone, it couldn’t sufficiently pow-”
He was interrupted by more shooting. They were drawing a bead on his voice, soft as it was.
She fired another burst down the trail, then slid him the P90, along with the last two clips. Matt took them then peered at the gun before handing her the silenced Beretta. More shots rang out, and he instinctively ducked, then rolled to the side of the trail where a thick tree trunk provided better cover. He wiped the perspiration from his eyes and squinted into the gloom, hoping to make something out.
“I’m guessing I should wish you good hunting…” he whispered to Jet, but when he turned to her, she was gone.
The smugglers were agitated. Whoever the intruders were, they were putting up more of a fight than anticipated. And they had some sort of stealth weapon. There was no muzzle flash for them to shoot at, and it made a snapping crack instead of the much louder explosion of a rifle, like their Kalashnikovs. But whatever it was, it was just as deadly, as three of them had already discovered.
The law of this jungle was shoot first and ask questions later. The Myanmar army steered well clear of the region, and much of the hill country was a no man’s land under drug-runner control. For decades, the infamous warlord and drug trafficker Khun Sa had ruled with an iron fist, and even after his death, the old habits died hard as his territory was divided up by squabbling rivals who roamed the hills armed to the teeth.