I crawled into the cab and pulled off the NVGs. “Let’s go.” Carl nodded and put the 6x6 into gear. I kept my pistol in my lap, and I knew that Train was ready to fire a belt-fed machine gun through the fabric back of the truck, just in case the alarm was raised before we made it out.
The rain comes hard in Burma. The gate guards barely even paid us mind as the truck approached. I watched them through the windshield wipers as they sullenly left the security of their overhang to move the barricade. The man with the finger-necklace glanced back toward the command post and shrugged as he noticed that the lights were out again. We rolled through the gate uncontested, the muddy jungle road stretched out before us. We were home free. I activated my radio. “Reaper, we’re out. Meet us at the bridge.”
“On the way,” was the distorted reply.
“We did it,” I sighed. The spirit gum pulled at my cheeks as I yanked the fake beard off and tossed it on the floorboards. The glasses and idiotic blue beret followed. “There had to be close to a mil in the vault.”
“That was too easy,” Carl said, always the pessimist.
“No. We’re just that good.”
There was a sudden clang of metal from the back, then a burst of automatic weapons fire. I glanced at Carl, and he was already giving the truck more gas. Somebody had raised the alarm. “Told you so.”
“Lorenzo, taking fire,” Train shouted into the radio. Then there was a terrible racket as he opened up with the SAW. Bullets quit hitting our truck, which was a relief, since it just happened to be filled to the brim with high explosives.
I checked the rear-view mirror. Through the raindrops I could see headlights igniting. They were coming after us, and they were going to be really pissed off. Train had just popped the men who would normally be moving the barricade, so that would buy us a minute, but our stolen truck would never outrun all of those jeeps on this kind of road.
It could never be simple. “Go to Plan B,” I said into the radio.
We reached the bridge over the Salawin River nearly a minute ahead of our pursuers. A hundred yards long, it was the only crossing for miles and had been built by captives of the Japanese army in the waning of World War Two. The wood creaked ominously as our heavy truck rumbled over it. We stopped halfway across and bailed out. Headlights winked through the rain three times from the other end of the bridge, confirming that Reaper was waiting for us. Train tossed a bag of money to Carl and the detonator to me. He shouldered the other two bags with one hand and carried the SAW like a suitcase.
The three of us walked to the waiting Land Rover. I could hear the approaching rebel vehicles. “Bummer about the ordnance,” Train said. “That would’ve been worth some serious dough back in Thailand.”
“Beats having our fingers end up on a necklace,” Carl muttered.
We reached the waiting vehicle and piled in. Reaper scooted over as Carl got behind the driver’s seat. Carl always drove. He spun us around through the mud so we could head toward the border. I glanced back at the bridge, noting the swarm of flashlights swinging around the UN truck. I waited until we were several hundred yards down the road before pressing the button.
The C4 that Train had stuck to the crates of munitions detonated. The truck was destroyed in a spreading concussion that blew the pursuing rebels into clouds of meat and turned the Say-Loo River bridge into splinters.
My crew gasped at the intensity of the display. “Impressive,” I agreed before turning my attention to counting the money.
LORENZO
Bangkok, Thailand
September 7
My group had the private back room of the restaurant to ourselves. The food had arrived, the mood was happy, and the piped-in music was loud and had lots of cymbals in it. The crew was in high spirits. The job was a success. Some Burmese scumbags were a lot poorer, and we were a whole lot richer.
Reaper, our techie, was proceeding to get drunk. He was young, skinny, and it didn’t take a whole lot of alcohol. Carl, our wheelman and my second-in-command, was slightly less sullen than usual, beady rat eyes darting back and forth while he chain-smoked cheap unfiltered cigarettes. Train, the muscle, was his usual good-natured self, laughing at every stupid comment. I was enjoying some nuclear-hot curry death mushroom dish and basking in the glow of another excellent score.
The beads leading into the private room parted, allowing a giant whale of a man in a three-piece suit to enter the room. He was taller than Train and probably weighed more than my entire team put together. He was freakishly large. My crew was instantly quiet. There was a slight motion to my right as Carl drew his CZ-75 and held it under the table.
“Lorenzo, I presume.” The fat man pulled up a chair and sat. The chair creaked ominously under his mass. “Is that supposed to be your first name or your last?”
I finished chewing, savoring the eye-watering pain. “Neither. Who the hell are you?”
“My name is not important. I am the man that provided the information for your latest job. I take it that the warlord’s vault was full, as promised.”
I had never met the informant in person. The job had been arranged through intermediaries. That was normal in my line of work. The fewer people who knew me, the better, yet the fat man had found me, and I did not like being found. “We had an agreement. Your share will be left at the drop tomorrow.”
Bald and sweaty, the giant shrugged. He was obese, but there was something about the way that he moved that suggested there was a lot of dense muscle under all that blubber. “Do not be alarmed. This is not a trap. Keep the money. Consider it a tip. You see, I work for Big Eddie.” He trailed off as he spoke, smiling with that strange quality of the slightly schizophrenic. He must have noticed my unconscious flinch at the name. “Big Eddie has an assignment for you.”
My crew exchanged nervous glances. Oh hell no. Everyone here knew what working for Eddie entailed. They all looked to me for confirmation. I slowly put my chopsticks down. “I retired from his organization. Me and your boss are square.”
“I am afraid you are mistaken,” the fat man stated. “Our employer does not believe in retirement, merely extended leaves of absence, and then only at his convenience. You have been away from the fold so long. He merely arranged this last assignment as a test to see if you had maintained your previous skill sets.”
I had always known that some sort of reckoning would come. Standing to leave, I pulled some Thai baht from my wallet and threw them on the table. I had no interest in anything related to Big Eddie, one of the most brutal crime lords in history and an all-around bad dude. Prior jobs performed for the man had left me independently wealthy, but with a lot of scars and a trail of bodies from here to Moscow. “Come on, guys; let’s go.”
“Our employer insists that you are the only person who can complete this assignment. Your knowledge of languages, of disguises, your ability to blend in with any culture, to infiltrate any group, and your gift for violence are legendary. He spoke very highly of you, that there is no place safe from you, no item you cannot steal, no target you cannot eliminate. You, sir, are the best of the best, and he is prepared to compensate you generously for your valuable services.”
It didn’t matter how much money he was talking about, because it just wasn’t worth it. “Tell him to find somebody else.”
The fat man laughed, but it never reached his eyes. “Our employer said you would say that.” He placed a manila folder on the table and shoved it toward me. He passed other folders to Carl, Train, and Reaper. “He said you should look at this before you make any rash decisions, Mr—” And then he called me by my real last name.