The Jungle

“We’ve all been there,” MacD Lawless said. “I’d match the Georgia swamps to any jungle in South America.”

“Ranger?” Smith asked, recognizing that the Ranger training school was at Fort Be

“Yup.”

“And you, Miss Ross, what is your background?”

Linda threw him a cocky grin that told him she could give as well as take. “You never ask a lady about her past.”

Smith actually smiled. “Touché.”

Juan unrolled a map he’d brought to the mess and anchored the corners with a coffee cup and a plate laden with what remained of a blueberry cobbler that he was relieved Smith hadn’t tried because it was about the best he’d ever tasted.

“Okay, we’re going to bring the Tyson Hondo in here.” He pointed to a spot just off Bangladesh’s southern coast. Tyson Hondo was the name currently painted across the Oregon’s fantail, and it was what they’d been calling her since Smith came aboard. “There’s nothing much out there. Just a few fishing villages and nomadic clans who live aboard their boats. I wish we could fly at night, but lowering the boat onto this river here”—he pointed to a spot about a hundred miles inland, well across the border with Myanmar—“is just too dangerous in the dark. There are no military bases that far north, so we don’t really need to worry about being spotted, but we’ll fly nap-of-the-earth the whole way in.”

“Is your pilot qualified?”

“We grabbed him away from the 160th SOAR,” Juan replied, referring to the U.S. Army’s elite special operations aviation regiment.

“So he’s qualified.”

“More than. From there, we’ll motor upstream. These maps are terrible, but as near as we can tell the river will take us to within a couple of miles from where Soleil and her companion were last heard from. Now, as you can see from these two plotted positions, she hadn’t wandered too far from when she’d made her last scheduled check-in with her father.”

“Is that significant?” Smith asked.

“Don’t know,” Cabrillo replied. “Maybe. It all depends on what’s in that particular patch of jungle. In her last call, she said she was close to something but that someone else was even closer.”

“If I may venture a guess,” Linda said, and continued when the men were looking at her. “From what I’ve read about her, Soleil Croissard is a daredevil, but she really doesn’t publicize her adventures. She’s not into seeing her name splashed across the tabloids. She just sets herself insane goals and then checks them off her list when she’s done. Car racing, check. World’s tallest mountains, check. Scuba dive with great whites, check. My guess is that whatever she’s looking for isn’t something she’s going to tell the world about. She’s after something for herself.”

“It would be a hell of a feat to cross Burma on foot,” Max said. “It’s not just the terrain, but you’ve got opium smugglers, and one of the most repressive governments in the world that would like nothing more than to capture her for a show trial.”

“Could it be that simple?” Juan asked Smith.

“I do not know. She never told Monsieur Croissard why she was doing this.”

“If that were the case,” MacD said, “why hasn’t she moved more than ten miles in almost two weeks?” To that, there was no answer. “What if she sees herself as a real-life Lara Croft? Are there any ancient temples or anything in that jungle?”

“Possibly,” Juan said. “The Khmer empire stretched pretty far. There might have been other significant civilizations before or since. I really don’t know this history as well as I should.”

“I do not see what it matters why she is there,” Smith interjected. “Getting her out should be our only interest.”

Cabrillo could see that Smith had a follower’s mind-set. He took orders, executed them, and moved on without giving them the slightest thought. It showed that he lacked imagination, unlike MacD Lawless, who could see the benefits of understanding Soleil Croissard’s motivations. Why she was there was an important factor in how they would get her out.

What if she’d gone in to make a major opium buy? Cabrillo doubted that was the case, but if it were true, it would alter how he would want to approach the situation. Dope peddlers don’t like being interrupted in the middle of a deal. What if she’d gone to meet some escaped human rights activist who had an entire army chasing after him? Speculating about her presence there now might save lives later.

He didn’t expect someone like Smith to understand that. He recalled his first impression at the Sands resort in Singapore. The guy was just hired muscle, a thug who Croissard had polished up a little so he fit into decent society and could do the financier’s dirty work.

“Since time is of the essence,” Juan said with a nod in Smith’s direction, “we’ll let that rest for now. Since none of us could pass as a native, there’s no sense trying to blend in in terms of the weapons we bring. John, what’s your preference?”

“MP5 and a Glock 19.”

“Okay. Tomorrow morning at oh-eight-hundred, I’ll meet you at the fantail with one of each. You can test them as much as you’d like. MacD, do you want the Barrett REC7 like we had in Afghanistan?” Cabrillo asked it in such a way as to make Smith think Lawless had been with the Corporation for a while.

“Saved our butts quite well, as I recall. And a Beretta 92, just like the one Uncle Sam gave me.”

“Linda?” Juan asked to make this sound like normal operating procedure. “So I can tell the armorer.”

“REC7, and I’ll take a Beretta too. Uncle Sam showed me how to use one, but he never gave it to me.”

“Truth be told,” MacD said mischievously, “Ah kinda stol’d mine.”

Smith must have sensed the meeting was winding down. He cleared his throat. “I myself am not a parent,” he said, “so I do not know the anguish Monsieur Croissard must be suffering right now. Young Lawless here told me on the chopper ride out to the ship that he has a daughter back in the States. Perhaps he can imagine what my boss is suffering.”

He looked pointedly at MacD. Lawless nodded. “If anything were to happen to my little girl, Ah would hunt down and butcher the person who did it.” The mere thought of his daughter being hurt brought a flush to his face and real anger into his voice.

“I can see that. And that is exactly what Monsieur Croissard expects of us. If, God forbid, something has befallen Soleil, we must be prepared to exact his revenge.”

“That isn’t exactly what we signed up for,” Cabrillo said, not liking the direction the conversation was going.

Smith reached into his back pocket for his wallet and withdrew a piece of paper. He unfolded it and laid it on the table. It was a bank draft for five million dollars. “He has given me sole discretion to give this to you if I feel it warranted. Fair enough?”

Cabrillo met his steady gaze. For a moment electricity seemed to arc between the two. All the others at the table could feel it. Ten seconds went by, fifteen. If this had been the Old West, the room would have cleared in anticipation of a gunfight. Twenty seconds.

The ex-Legio

“Let us hope it doesn’t come down to that, eh?”

“Let’s,” Juan replied, and leaned back to throw an arm over the back of his chair in a studied relaxed pose.

The following morning Smith met Cabrillo at the fantail as they had arranged. This morning both men wore camouflage fatigue pants and plain khaki T-shirts. A folding card table had been set up next to the rust-caked railing and on it were the weapons Smith had requested and extra magazines as well as several boxes of 9mm ammunition, since both pistol and submachine gun used the same. There were also two sets of earphones and several blocks of yellow-dyed ice in a cooler under the table.

The big MD 520N helicopter sat squarely on the rearmost hatch cover, its blades folded flat and covers installed over its jet intake and exhaust. Usually the chopper was lowered into the hull on a hydraulic lift, but, as with everything else Juan had done since Smith came aboard, he didn’t want to tip his hand about his ship and her true capabilities.