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  The rain had stopped and the dark surface of the Malacca Strait — or at least what little of it they could see through the fog — was relatively calm; which made the idea of taking a twelve-foot dinghy out on the open ocean in stormy weather, in the middle of the night, with a limited store of food and water, and an ocean full of patrol boats looking to blow them out of the water at the first opportunity, seem only foolish instead of suicidal.

  Ten minutes later, Lanyard was braced against the wallowing dinghy’s steering wheel, watching the Avatar slowly settle into the water, while Gavin hung over the tubular bow and vomited what little food and drink he’d managed to keep down over the past hour. Then, as the yacht’s torn bridge structure finally disappeared beneath the waves, Lanyard checked his compass heading and accelerated the small boat into the face of the low swells.

  Twenty long minutes later, Lanyard’s satellite cell phone finally rang.

  “Gecko-two,” he said, and then listened for a few seconds, a smile growing on his grizzled face. “Right, we’re probably the lads the whole bloody Thai Navy and Air Force are out looking for; but, fortunately for us, they‘re searching west and south instead of east. They won’t find the Avatar in any case. She’s resting on the bottom a couple miles back. We’re in the dinghy, keeping our heads down. Jack’s a little worse for the wear, took a nick alongside the head, but he’s still game. My navigation’s a bit rough, but I think we’re in Malaysian territory right now. Hold one.”

  Lanyard reached into his life jacket, pulled out a GPS unit, and read off the coordinates into the phone. “Aye, we’ll put an IR-flasher out. Water’s a bit of a chop down here; try not to run us over when you come in. Gecko-two, out.”

  Chuckling in satisfaction, Lanyard re-secured the cell phone to his belt, reached for the emergency infrared flasher attached to the transom, turned it on, and then turned to the dark figure of Gavin, who was sprawled on his back in the bottom of the dinghy muttering to himself.

  “See, what’d I tell you, laddie? Just because we sank the Avatar and let Hateley’s hundred-thousand-dollar trophy get blown to bits, that doesn’t mean Wallis would leave us out here to paddle all the way to Darwin.”

  “That may be true, but he doesn’t know we did all that just yet, does he?” Gavin said morosely.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Lanyard conceded. “Let’s just hope the plane ride put him in a good mood.”

  On the Malacca Strait, Malaysia

  Ten minutes later, the ex-RAF pilot of the completely blacked-out, fifty-year-old, high-winged, dual-engine seaplane came in low over the water, visually verified the dinghy’s position; and then came back around and touched down, landing into the face of the rolling swells with an ease that suggested a history of many such landings in far worse conditions.

  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.”

  CHAPTER 18

  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.

  “Yes, transmitter makes flashers work. I confirm,” Chief Narusan said, momentarily looking up from his list and nodding happily.

  “And, if I’m remembering all the details correctly,” Bulatt went on, “these flashers and the remote were probably manufactured by the same company that made the infrared ones. In any case, they shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “You think these men were involved with the tagged leopards found by our biologists; the ones that were killed by a cobra and a tiger? Why would that be?” Preithat blinked in disbelief.

  “I have no idea why, or how, even if it is true,” Bulatt admitted. “But what I think I know is our friend in the dinghy set himself up in the cliffs, in a sniper position, against two of the pirate boats, and then — based on all the bullet impact marks on the surrounding rocks — turned on these flashers with the remote to distract their fire while he picked them off one by one with the rifle. I’m guessing on the flashers and the transmitter, but they all fit the scene.

  “Based on the empty magazine,” Bulatt went on, “and the expended casings we found for the M-four carbine, and the rounds remaining in the weapon, he fired maybe forty shots, total, at night, and killed eight men; nine counting the air crew chief in your helicopter. That, from my perspective, is good shooting. The pirates, on the other hand, fired several hundred rounds in return; and, apparently, hit nothing but rocks and a few of the flashers. We put their AKs and the bags of expended casings we collected in the chief’s boat, along with the bodies.”

  “And this is the weapon he used?” Preithat pointed down at the weapon lying on the tarp.

  Bulatt shrugged. “We’ll see what your crime lab says.”

  “Yes, rifle, one, American M-Four Carbine,” the chief added, looking up from his list again, “from water.” He pointed to the cove. “Many brass casings, from there.” He pointed to a specific spot on the rocky promontory. “Kuhn Ged say if we careful to put casings on tree branches, fingerprints not get damaged.” He smiled as if particularly proud of this bit of make-do CSI. “And eight dead bodies, Malaysian pirates, from there.” He pointed to a rocky section of the beach below the cliff. “Start to smell, so we put in bags right away, then put in boat. All done. Good CSI,” the chief finished, handing the notes to Preithat and coming to attention.

  Preithat said something to Narusan that caused the chief petty officer to puff out his chest proudly and smile once more. Then he turned back to Bulatt.

  “Military, or perhaps ex-military,” he added thoughtfully. “That would explain the cannon — or whatever it was — that they used to shoot down our Army helicopter.”

  “Perhaps you’ll learn more about that when you recover the Blackhawk and examine the damage,” Bulatt suggested.

  Preithat briefly turned and said something in Thai to the helicopter pilot — who nodded in acknowledgment and made a notation in a notebook — and then returned his attention to Bulatt.

  “Did you find anything else?” he asked.

  “A few more things,” Bulatt said as he reached down and retrieved his soup bowl. “My boots, which the chief recovered; and pieces of the dorsal and ventral fins of one large tiger shark, also collected by the chief, which he made into an excellent soup. If I understood him correctly, this is going to help my investigative spirit as well as my general health.”

  Preithat smiled, nodded approvingly, and started to say something when the helicopter pilot standing beside him interrupted.

  “Excuse me, major, may I say something?” the pilot asked in a distinctly feminine voice as she took off her helmet, shook out her long black hair, and stared into Bulatt’s startled eyes.

  “Officer Achara?” Bulatt blinked in disbelief before he realized what he had said. “I mean — ”

  “Actually, it’s Captain,” the pilot replied evenly. “I was deceitful about my rank as well as my occupation yesterday, Khun Ged; my apologies.” She brought her palms together in the familiar wai.

  “Your brother… and your father,” Bulatt hesitated. “I’m so very sorry — ”

  “I am grateful for your caring words, but there is nothing you need say,” she replied softly. “My brother and my mother were both gentle Buddhists who understood and accepted the unpredictable nature of life. My father and I are Buddhists, also; but perhaps less gentle and less accepting.”

  “Ah.”

  “You saved my father life last night, and I am deeply grateful for that as well,” Achara Kulawnit went on. “And I am also grateful to Chief Narusan — ” she bowed and wai’d in Narusan’s direction also, causing the sunburned face of the chief petty officer to turn an even deeper red — “for preparing a traditional Thai dish for your physical and spiritual nourishment,” she added as she stepped forward and gently took the soup bowl out of Bulatt’s hands. “If you are to help us hunt down these dangerous men who killed my brother and shot my father, it’s proper and fitting that you possess within your soul the spirit of the shark you defeated.”

  As Bulatt watched, speechless, Achara brought the soup bowl up to her lips, sipped a portion of the liquid, and then handed the bowl to Preithat, who did the same.

  “And it is equally fitting that we share in the fearsome spirit you have brought to us, Khun Ged,” Achara added, staring deep into Bulatt’s eyes. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Before Bulatt could respond, Chief Petty Officer Narusan laughed heartily and said something to his two gunner’s mates that caused them to laugh — and Preithat and Achara to glance at each other and then smile in agreement.

  “Do I dar
e ask what he said?” Bulatt asked.

  “There is a Thai children’s story very much like your Beauty and the Beast, which the chief seems to think you and I vaguely resemble,” Captain Achara Kulawnit said, her cheeks flushing slightly. “But there may be some confusion as to which one of us is the fearsome beast.”

  “Ah,” Bulatt said, having no idea what else to say.

  “But the chief also suggested,” Achara went on, her eyes glistening with some additional emotions beyond her embarrassment, “that perhaps all of us — different as we are from each other but still working together easily — make a very good team. And if that is truly the case, as I believe it is, then the killers of my brother have much to fear.”

  The Graystone Fields Ranch, Jackson Hole, Wyoming

  Michael Hateley was sitting in one of the four over-stuffed leather chairs in the center of his hidden, luxurious, underground trophy room — all carefully positioned so that the occupants could easily view the coveted boar’s head, as well as Hateley’s entire endangered species collection — sipping at a glass of rich Merlot, and staring at the empty section of wall that he’d set aside for his world record Clouded Leopard trophy, when the intercom beeped.

  “Yes?”

  “A Mr. Emerson for you, sir, line one.”

  “Thank you,” Hateley said as he reached over to the receiver on the nearby lamp stand and punched the hands-free button. “Marcus? Is that you?”

  “It is, Mr. Hateley.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Singapore; I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”

  Hateley sat silently in his chair, staring at the blank space on the wall, the rich wine forgotten, as Wallis explained how his Clouded Leopard trophy had been lost in a gun battle with Malaysian pirates. When Wallis finished, Hateley continued to stare at the wall for a few moments, and then sighed heavily.