Prime (11 page)

FACTOR

TWELVE

Mandalay, Myanmar

Everyone noticed the blonde woman.

She wore a tight beige T-shirt that clung to
the firm contours of her breasts, exposing just enough of her décolletage to be
enticing without being obvious, and a pair of dark green cargo shorts that had
been rolled up a couple of times to reveal even more of her toned and tanned
legs. Her long hair was pulled back—though hardly restrained—in a pony tail
that conveyed that elusive girl-next-door allure; a seemingly effortless
beauty, all the more desirable in its apparent innocence.

She seemed oblivious to the attention, yet
there was something intentional about the way she leaned, almost seductively,
over the perfume counter at the duty free shop. Every few minutes, she would
ask the man behind the counter questions about price or request a tester
bottle, spritzing a small amount of aerosolized
eau de toilette
into the air. Occasionally, her eyes would dart to
the concourse outside the shop, often encountering a lascivious stare from a
male passerby, or less frequently, a jealous sneer from less appreciative
females. She would then, regardless of the expressions or gender of any
onlookers, arch her back like a cat stretching after a nap—an action that drew
even more attention to her breasts—and then return to perusing the perfume
selection.

Wherever she went, everyone noticed the
blonde woman, and a few of those who noticed took the added step of inquiring
about her. Those who did would be informed that the woman was a Canadian
humanitarian worker with the Red Cross…or maybe it was UNICEF… Her specific
affiliation remained the subject of some debate. She had been in country for
several months now, visiting clinics, dispensing vaccines and medical
supplies...generally getting noticed, but somehow never staying in one place
long enough to allow idle curiosity, or even a flush of arousal, to escalate
into something more overt.

Everyone noticed her, and that was exactly
what she wanted, not because she craved attention, but because while they were
busy looking at her, they hardly noticed that she was looking back.

The three Caucasian men who got off the plane
that had just arrived from Yangon certainly noticed her, even the one who had
his arm draped possessively over the shoulders of his female traveling
companion—a Eurasian woman who, for a change, paid the blonde woman no heed.

The blonde happened to look up at just that
moment and met the man’s stare. She smiled, stretched, and then turned back to
the counter. “This one,” she said, pointing to the fragrance she had most
recently sampled. She laid a 100
kyat
note—worth about fifteen US dollars—on the counter and took her purchase. “Keep
the change,” she said, flashing the man the same smile she’d shown the three
Westerners. She exited the store, joining the flow of disembarking passengers.

She moved casually, making no effort to hurry
and no effort to avoid being noticed, but always keeping the three men in
sight. It wasn’t difficult; like her, they stood out in the crowd of Asian
faces. She moved with the crowd to the exit and got in the taxi line, while the
Westerners climbed into a waiting sport utility vehicle. As their ride pulled
away from the terminal building, she took out her cell phone.

“Red Toyota Fortuner,” she said, getting
right to the point.
“Brand new.
Can’t
miss it.”

“New?”
came
the
response. New vehicles were a rare thing in Mandalay. The military rulers of
the country imposed strict limits on the number of cars that could be imported.
Only the very wealthy could afford to buy them, and in Myanmar, most of the
wealth came from illegal activities—primarily from the drug trade. “Do you
think our friends are involved?”

“As Lieutenant Ball would
say: ‘Signs point to yes.’”

The man on the other end gave an easy laugh.
“Any idea which flavor?”

“‘Reply hazy, try again.’”

“Well, at least this won’t be too much of a
distraction. Might even be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

“‘Cannot predict now.’
Just keep your distance. The sooner we can
hand this off to those Delta testosteroids, the sooner we can get back to our
own mission.”

There was a momentary pause on the line, and
then the man spoke again. “I’ve got them.”

“Then hang up and drive, pretty boy.”

“‘You may rely on it.’”

THIRTEEN

Shin Dae-jung kept a healthy interval between the red Toyota and his
own Honda Rebel 250, though once his quarry left the urban environs of
Mandalay,
it was more a matter of trying to keep up with the
Toyota rather than holding back. The other driver, evincing the kind of
confidence that can only come with familiarity, maintained an average speed of
about seventy miles per hour. Shin had to keep the speedometer on the
motorcycle pegged to keep a visual fix on the red vehicle, which barely slowed
through the series of hairpin turns that wound between the hills between Ongyaw
and Thon-daung-ywa-wa.

It had come as no little surprise when the
target vehicle had left Mandalay behind. Now, nearly sixty miles out and
nearing the border of the rural and mostly uninhabited Shan state, he wondered
if he had not been given a fool’s errand. He briefly lost sight of the red
Toyota when the road straightened as it approached Pyin Oo Lwin, gateway to one
of Myanmar’s very few—and thus far unsuccessful—tourist attractions, the
Kandawgyl Botanical Gardens. His assignment in the country that many still
called Burma had taken him to all of its major cities, but he rarely traveled
those long distances by road, and so he was unfamiliar with the highways. He
did know that the further out the target vehicle went, the less likely he would
be able to successfully track them to their destination.

It was a white-knuckle ride, even for someone
like himself, who routinely indulged in dangerous activities: combat in Iraq
and Afghanistan; covert insertions into Pakistan to kill or capture terrorist
leaders and North Korea, where he could pass as a native, to reconnoiter
suspected nuclear weapons facilities; recreational SCUBA diving, particularly
the exploration of sunken wrecks; and perhaps riskiest of all, maintaining his
hard-earned reputation as a Korean Casanova.

He had actually been
looking forward to just such an amorous encounter tonight at the Sunrise Hotel
Mandalay, where he was supposed to meet with Giselle, a beautiful but slightly
homesick Swiss Doctors-Without-Borders doctor.
When he’d gotten word of this little errand
for the Delta boys, he had expected that he would have to ask for a rain check,
but then again, if the red Toyota slipped away, he might make it back in time
for cocktail hour.

He spied the Fortuner, a red smudge that
appeared for just an instant on the black ribbon of highway heading out of
Pyin, and then it vanished over the horizon. With the throttle wide open, he
blasted through the town. He continued along the highway, scanning the road
ahead for another glimpse, but the Toyota was gone.

Damn
it, where did they go?

He felt a growing sense of apprehension. He
was a realist—sometimes, shit happened, and that was just the way it was—but he
was also a soldier, taught to live by the simple, if simplistic slogan:
“failure is not an option.”

His failure was not in his inability to match
pace with the Toyota, but rather in choosing the motorcycle for the pursuit. In
the urban environs of Mandalay, it was perfect for shadowing someone. How could
he have known that the target would go for a drive in the country?

He was scanning the highway ahead so intently
that he completely missed the narrow dirt road that veered off to the south. He
did notice a cloud of dust settling, but he was half a mile down the road
before it clicked.

Dust
cloud.

They
turned off.

He geared down, resisting the urge to squeeze
the brakes. At seventy miles per hour, that was a good way to lose control, and
he had no desire to end up smeared across a stretch of Burmese blacktop.
Instead, he waited until he was only doing about forty, and then leaned forward
and squeezed the front brake.

The front tire left a streak of rubber, but
the back end of the Rebel lifted off the ground, the drive wheel spinning free.
With a little wiggle of his hips, Shin swung the bike halfway around, pivoting
on the front wheel, and as the rear tire touched down, he twisted the
handlebars the opposite way and goosed the throttle again, accelerating out of
the turnaround.

He felt a surge of excitement that was partly
due to the realization that he hadn’t lost the Toyota after all, but mostly
because of having pulled off a near perfect “stoppie.”

Too bad there’d been no one around to see it.

He raced back down the highway, and this time
he had no difficulty spotting the dirt track. He also saw that the road was
blocked by a metal gate. An old Bamar man wearing what looked like military
fatigues,
stood at the gate and watched Shin approach with
unveiled distrust.

Shin weighed his options as he turned toward
the gated road and brought the motorcycle to a stop a few feet away from the
old man. He was a park ranger, Shin decided, or at least he was meant to look
like one.

Putting on his most sincere smile, he
addressed the man in Mandarin Chinese. “Is this the entrance to the botanical
gardens?”

The old man blinked at him and then tried his
best to reply in the same language. “No Chinese speak. Go away.”

Though conversationally fluent in the Burmese
language, Shin was trying to pass himself off as a misguided traveler. Chinese
visitors were about the only tourists who came to Burma, and some parts of the
country had as many Chinese inhabitants as Burmese. Shin was Korean, but he
doubted the Bamar man would be able to make the distinction.

“English?”
Burma had been a British colony until 1947;
the old guy might even remember the Colonial era.

The man nodded, but remained wary.

“I looking for gardens,” Shin continued in
his best attempt at broken English.

The man pointed back down the highway. His
own command of English was passably good. “The gardens are that way, five
kilometers.”

Shin knew he was reaching his limit of
questions, but he thought he could get away with one more. “What this place?”

“It is a wildlife refuge. No one is allowed
inside.”

“Wildlife?
What kind? Good for pictures?”

“
Buru
,”
the man answered.

“
Buru
?”

The man nodded as if the question somehow
signified Shin’s comprehension.
“
Nagas
.
Very dangerous.
No
pictures.”

Well
that clears it right up. First
buru
and now
nagas?

Shin knew of an ethnic group called the Naga
that lived in the northwestern region of the country, but he didn’t think the
old man was talking about them. Naga was also the name of a serpentine demon in
Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The term was also sometimes translated as
‘dragon,’ which didn’t make much sense either. Maybe it was a spooky story
concocted by the government or someone else with a desire to keep people off
this road. Regardless, it was time to be moving on.

He thanked the old man and pulled back onto
the highway. This time, he kept his speed to a nice safe forty mph, and as soon
as he was out of the gatekeeper’s line of sight, he let go of the throttle
altogether. He coasted the bike off the road and parked it in a stand of trees.

He shrugged out of his backpack and dug
inside to retrieve his Garmin GPS unit and a paper map of the country. Neither
showed the dirt road, much less indicated a wildlife refuge, but the map did
show both the curves of the highway and the course of several rivers and
streams that meandered through the valleys between the plateaus. He quickly
plotted a course into the GPS that would eventually cross the dirt road—well
away from the old man standing guard at the gate—and entered the waypoints into
the device.

In addition to the navigations aids, his
backpack contained what he had come to think of as essential equipment for any
mission. There was enough gear to set up
a hooch
—a
rainproof poncho and a quilted poncho liner, and some elastic bungee cords.
There was food—a couple of granola bars, two MREs, a liter bottle of water and
some iodine tablets for field-expedient purification if the need should arise,
and it was looking like it might. What he didn’t have was a weapon, at least
not in the backpack.

After checking to make sure no one was around
to observe him, he wiggled the motorcycle’s seat cushion until it came free,
revealing a hollow space underneath, which contained a few items of gear that
he preferred not to have to explain at a police checkpoint: a SIG-Sauer 9 mm
pistol, two fifteen-round magazines, a small set of binoculars and a PVS-14
night vision monocular. He loaded a magazine into the pistol and slipped it
into his waistband, at the small of his back. The spare magazines went into a
pocket and the PVS-14 went into the backpack.

The idea of the cross-country trek didn’t
bother him in the least. Though he didn’t know exactly how far he would have to
travel, he had a feeling he would catch up to the Toyota—and discover its
occupants’ final destination—before nightfall. Dirt roads were difficult to
travel, especially in this region, which was plagued by seasonal monsoon rains.
It might take hours to negotiate the crevices and craters created by erosion.
The vehicle might not be able to travel much faster than he could run.

But before he set forth, there was one last
thing he needed to do.

He took out his phone and dialed a number. It
rang once, and then he heard a familiar voice—her voice. “Hello?”

“Giselle,
mon
cheri
. I am so sorry…”