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  “You mean cross down into Malaysia?”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem. Our visas are still good, and we've got Kai to grease the proper palms.”

  “Fucking Kai.”

  “He’ll help. He has no choice.”

  “Still, it’s a long way to drive with contraband in the boot and Kai being Kai. What about the boat?”

  “The Avatar? In the open seas? This time of the year?” Wallis cocked his head, a slight smile forming in his grizzled face.

  “Not our favorite way to travel,” Lanyard acknowledged with a grimace, “but there’s a nice dive spot at Ko Tanga where we can sort things out with Kai.”

  “Fine by me.” Wallis shrugged. “I’ll set up the meet. Let’s get this done.”

  After locking up the Land Rover, the two men shouldered the loads, and headed into the trees behind the shed.

  Twenty yards into the dense forest, Quince pulled a remote device out of his jacket pocket and pressed a button. Instantly, deep in the trees, a periodically-flashing firefly became faintly visible.

  Using the flickering light as a guide, the two men slowly and methodically worked their way through the trees and brush, using the walking sticks to push tangled vines and large leaf fronds aside, and to warn any lurking creatures of their direction of travel.

  The occasional whisper of a long snake tail disappearing into the thick underbrush spoke to the value of their precautions.

  Finally, the two men stepped into a small, machete-cut, ten-foot-square clearing, two-thirds of which was taken up with a deep hole surrounded by piles of recently cut brush and vines, a stack of six-foot boards, a folded black plastic tarp, chunks of sod, a pair of shovels, and a much larger pile of rope-entangled and machete-chopped lengths of bamboo that — earlier in the evening — had formed a secure shooting platform for Michael Hateley.

  Wallis stepped up to the edge of the six-by-six-by-eight-foot-deep hole that he and Lanyard and Gavin had dug several months earlier for just such a contingency, glanced down at the pair of machetes lying across the two twisted bodies at the bottom, and turned to Lanyard.

  “Any problems I should know about?”

  “Not really. They were busy cutting the bamboo up into smaller pieces when the older one started getting pushy about being paid extra for difficult work. I terminated their contracts early and finished cutting the bamboo myself.”

  “Good,” Wallis grunted.

  Working quickly now, using the intermittent flashes of the Fire-Fly™ for illumination, the two men tore open the two plastic bags, dumped the shredded remains of their office correspondence into the hole, and then tossed in the splintered lengths of bamboo, burying the bodies under a cross-laced fibrous mat almost a foot thick.

  Then they opened up the tarp, spread it out as a much-too-big liner for the remaining portion of the hole, and worked as a team — Lanyard handing the rifles and back-packs down to Wallis who carefully arranged them in the hole, covered them with the tarp flaps, and then used a roll of duct tape to seal the bundle from the corrosive Thai soil.

  A few minutes later, the two men finished arranging the sod squares over the crossed support boards covering the duct-taped cache, tossed an assortment of shredded brush and leaves over the sod, and stood up.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about anyone finding this lot,” Wallis said, nodding in satisfaction as he looked around at the clearing that he knew, from experience, would be overgrown again with a few days.

  “Not bloody likely,” Quince Lanyard chuckled as he looked up at the still-pulsing Fire-Fly™ hanging from an overhead tree limb, used the remote device to shut it off, and then dropped the remote back into his pocket. “If it wasn’t for GPS, and that little flasher, I wouldn’t have found it either.”

  Fifteen minutes later, using the IR-glow of the shed light as a guide, the two men were back at their Land Rovers.

  Reaching into the back of his vehicle, Wallis pulled out a pair of armored vests with filled magazine pouches, two assault rifles, a pair of military ammo boxes, and a case labeled ‘electronics.’ As Lanyard transferred the armaments to Lanyard’s Land Rover, Wallis pulled out the five-foot-long Pelican™ case and the blue-striped military ammo can.

  “Take this along too,” Wallis said.

  Lanyard took the fifty-pound case and equally heavy blue-striped ammo box, and juggled both in his muscular hands. “You really think Jack and I’ll need something like this to deal with Kai and his boys?”

  “If Yak’s the one who informed on us, no, you shouldn’t,” Wallis said. “If not — ” He shrugged. “Do what you have to do, and then dump it with the rest of the gear.”

  “Bloody expensive toy to be tossing out with the trash after one use, don’t you think?” Lanyard suggested in a voice that was fully respectful. Wallis had always encouraged Lanyard and Gavin to offer their opinions; but there was no question as to who was the leader of their illicit team.

  “It’s just a tool that’s easily replaced. Don’t hesitate to use it if you have to,” Wallis replied firmly.

  Lanyard acknowledged the order with a quick nod of his head. “Any word on Choon’s whereabouts?”

  “He was at a brokers meeting in Surat yesterday. Explains why we weren‘t told about the new patrol.”

  “Is that a normal assignment for a police captain?”

  Wallis shook his head. “I doubt it. Probably got sent there by Bangkok HQ.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re on to us. Could have been a routine check, and they moved him out of the way because they don’t trust him.”

  “But if they think he’s helping hunters, we’ll have that damned Colonel Kulawnit on our ass.”

  “Kulawnit’s scheduled to be at the Wildlife Interpol meeting in Tokyo all week,” Wallis replied evenly. “By the time he returns, we should be out of Thailand.”

  “Damned good thing. What about Yak?”

  “We’re having an early breakfast at his house tomorrow morning.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “Sleepy, confused, and upset that I know where his mistress lives. Not like a man waiting nervously to hear if we were dead or in custody.”

  “So where does that put Kai?”

  “In a bloody bad light.”

  CHAPTER 3

  The Draganov Research Center, Cascade Mountains, Washington

  The Cascade Mountain Range is a magnificent swath of hills, valleys and snow-capped mountains running north to south through the center of the state of Washington. Making up almost a third of the state, the Range has been formed and reformed over the ages by tectonic collisions and volcanic spewing; the violence of which invariably destroys all signs of life in the immediate vicinity.

  The plates and volcanoes are mostly quiet now. But even so, great stretches of the Cascade Range remain thinly populated; or, in the case of the twenty-five National Forests, Parks and Wilderness areas located within the central Washington Range — which specifically includes the Wenatchee National Forest — hardly populated at all.

  It is as if the residents of the surrounding communities possess a subliminal sense of yet another cycle of violence and upheaval to come.

  Accordingly, the Cascade Mountain Range was a perfect location for a dangerously innovative research center whose director — a loner by nature — was intent on cutting every legal and scientific corner possible to insure that he was the first to accomplish his world-altering goal.

  But now, deep into the Cascades, completely isolated, with a winter snowstorm raging outside, the power and phone lines down, the access road closed, and the wind-chill factor rising, Dr. Sergei Arturovich Draganov wished that he had chosen to locate the clinic a little closer to an airport, or at least a main road. The thankfully infrequent trips by Sno-Cat to pick up special FedEx and UPS packages and other supplies were grueling at best, and with the visibility now only a few feet beyond the front edge of the utility vehicle’s tracks, increasingly dange
rous. With luck, he wouldn’t have to make another run until the Spring thaw.

  Still covered with snow, and looking as haggard and exhausted as he felt, Draganov stopped in the enclosed entryway to stomp the icy slush off his boots and hang up his heavy coat. As he entered his clinic’s genetics lab, he looked around and — to his dismay — saw only the old Russian woman who functioned as the laboratory’s sole administrative aide, secretary and receptionist sitting at a cheap computer desk in the adjoining room.

  “Where is Aleksei?”

  “Asleep, I think.”

  “In the middle of his work shift?”

  The old woman shrugged indifferently.

  “What has he been doing, drinking with Borya again?”

  The old woman glared at Draganov defiantly. “He is unhappy and you push him too hard. What do you expect?”

  “We have much to do, and so little time. Why is he unhappy now?”

  The old woman made an exasperated gesture with her hand. “He is worried about Sasha. He says she gets worse every day.”

  “Sasha is lonely and misses her siblings. That was expected.”

  “She wouldn’t be lonely if you hadn’t sold all of her playmates to that — that evil man!” the old woman said accusingly.

  “You manage our accounts. You know there was no other way. We would have lost everything if I hadn’t — ”

  “Hadn’t what? Made a pact with the devil?”

  “Marcus is not the devil! He is our new benefactor! We need him!”

  “He is a dangerous man, Sergei Arturovich. Mark my words. He is just like your brother, god rest his soul.” The old woman crossed herself quickly. “A very dangerous man!”

  “We don’t know for sure that Gregor is — ” Draganov started to argue, then shook his head as he turned and walked through the door of a small containment vestibule labeled ACCESS TO CAGE ROOM. After waiting for the door behind him to shut and the air pressure in the vestibule to build up — one of the mechanisms he used to keep tiny airborne fragments of DNA from contaminating his experiments — he entered the darkened room, turned on a low light, and then knelt down in from of a large deep cage.

  A threatening came from the far back of the cage that would remain in almost complete darkness until Draganov’s eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  “It’s okay, little one. No need to be upset. I am here with you now.”

  Another growl, but this time less threatening.

  “There, that’s better. Don’t be angry with me, Sasha. You don’t think I made the devil’s pact, do you?”

  A third growl, this one sounding plaintive.

  “I know you are lonely, but soon you will have new brothers and sisters and everything will be fine again.”

  No response this time.

  Using the cage as a brace, Draganov pushed himself to a standing position with a tired grunt, walked over to the door, turned off the low light, and then stepped back into the isolating vestibule.

  As he did so, the cat’s eyes snapped open in the blackness of the cage, the pupils of her two narrowed eyes glowing a bright emerald green.

  CHAPTER 4

  Surat Thani, Thailand

  Yaktian-po Sanganaman — better known to his few friends and many enemies as Yak — entered his expensive Surat Thani home through the garage entrance, paused at the doorway of his kitchen to yell at his complaining chef, and then hurried down the central hall toward his lavishly furnished den, absorbed in the question as to why Marcus Emerson had insisted on this early-morning meeting.

  And worse, why he had sounded angry.

  Halfway there, he stopped, pulled the cell phone out of his jacket, tried once again to contact Captain Choonhavan, and cursed when he got the same ‘I am not available’ message.

  “How dare you not be available, you corrupt fool?” Yak snarled, feeling his stomach starting to churn as he hurried again toward his den.

  First things first.

  It occurred to Yak to hope that Boon-Nam had been true to his word, and would now, at this very moment, be patrolling the grounds of Yak’s walled and fenced-off estate, instead of walking away with his up-front fee. Boon-Nam was a highly-regarded assassin, and an expensive one at that. It had cost Yak a furiously-negotiated two million Bhat — ten of the near-flawless 1-carat diamonds from the leather pouch in his pocket that he was now in a hurry to return to his den safe — to engage his services.

  But the cost really wasn’t a serious issue to Yak; he hadn’t hesitated for a moment to contact Boon-Nam’s go-between after receiving Wallis’ unsettling call. Such was the nature of Marcus Emerson’s reputation among the Thai underworld.

  Yak knew there were several reasons why Emerson might be upset; not the least of which was his and Kai’s long-term plans to take over the Australian’s incredibly lucrative Thai safari business. But that couldn’t happen until he knew a great deal more about Emerson’s related operations in the United States, and worked out an appropriate — albeit temporary — distribution agreement with Kai and his Malaysian pirates.

  And that couldn’t happen until Yak gained the confidence of at least one of Emerson’s wealthy and free-spending clients; a project which he’d only just begun to work on with Choonhavan’s less-than-competent help. So unless the bastard Kai had -

  Yak gasped in surprise, coming to a sudden halt when he saw the frightening figure of Marcus Emerson sitting at his ornately carved desk; and behind him, in a second chair, the wide-eyed and purple-faced figure of Police Captain Choonhavan, securely bound to the chair and tightly gagged.

  “Khun Marcus,” Yak said, recovering quickly, “what are you doing here so early?” He glanced down at his wristwatch. “I thought you said — ?”

  “I said I wanted to meet with you, alone, to discuss our future business arrangements,” Wallis said. “’Alone’ meant you, your chef, and your normal retinue of body-guards. ‘Alone’ did not mean Boon-Nam lurking around in your garden with a silenced pistol in his hand.”

  Yak felt the air being sucked out of his lungs, making it almost impossible to speak.

  “Khun Marcus,” he rasped, forcing the words out. “I did not mean — ”

  “A Thai Ranger raid team showed up at the Khlong Saeng Preserve this evening. They seemed to know where we would be working. Did you inform on us?”

  The question struck Yak’s brain like a lightning bolt. His eyes flickered briefly to Choonhavan, and then back to Wallis.

  “Khun Marcus, you cannot possibly believe I would ever do such a thing,” Yak sputtered. “I would compete with you — if it was possible to do so — of course, as you would expect me to do; we are both businessmen, after all. But inform on you to the Thai Rangers? No, never! Even if I was so insane, you know they would never trust me. Not even Choonhavan, and you know he — ”

  The words were rushing from Yak’s brain to his tongue almost completely uncensored; a poor idea in the best of circumstances. But some deeper-seated survival instinct — not to mention the terrified and futilely struggling presence of Choonhavan, and the fact that neither of his full-time bodyguards had yet appeared — told Yak that his only chance to live through the next few minutes might lay in the complete truth. It was a new and unsettling concept to the irrevocably corrupt Thai.

  “What is Kai to you?”

  Yak had to force himself to stay on his feet, only vaguely aware that he had voided his bladder.

  “He’s nothing, just a — a potential partner… someday… not now… much later. After you have — ”

  “Departed?”

  “Yes, that is it, exactly — departed. Only then, when you are gone, no longer in the business, would Choonhavan and I ever even think to — ”

  The bound and purple-faced Forestry captain began struggling even more frantically now.

  “Don’t you think two-million Bhat is a bit steep for second-rate help?” Wallis asked as he allowed ten 1-carat diamonds to drop from his hand onto the polished desktop.

  Yak w
as still staring wide-eyed at the diamonds when the first bullet struck him in the solar plexus, the impact sending him staggering backwards. A tiny whimper escaped his lips as he stared, wide-eyed, down at the hole in his pajamas. He was still staring when the second bullet ripped through his forehead, flinging him backwards to the floor.

  Wallis remained where he was for a few seconds, listening to the distant and muted sounds of the still-complaining chef rattling pans in the kitchen.

  Then, satisfied, he scooping up the loose diamonds, dropped them into his jacket pocket, and then reached down by his chair, picked up the shoulder-holstered and silenced pistol that had once belonged to Jack Gavin.

  Humming to himself, Wallis stood up, glanced briefly at the now-frozen-in-horror Choonhavan, walked over to Yak’s sprawled body, knelt down, placed the silenced pistol in his right hand, used Yak’s limp index finger to fire a bullet through the screen door leading out into the garden, allowed the pistol and Yak’s limp hand to drop to the thick rug, and tossed the empty shoulder holster aside.

  Then he stood up and walked back over to the chair where Captain Choonhavan was staring at him with a hopeless expression in his still-widened eyes.

  “Alright, lad, it’s time you and I had a serious discussion about your future.”

  The Surat Thani Airport, Thailand

  Later that morning, a shaved, showered and neatly dressed Marcus Wallis walked up to the Thai Air ticket counter at the Surat Thani Airport, set his over-night bag down, reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his passport.

  “I have reservations for the morning flight to Bangkok,” he said as he took out his wallet and handed the clerk a credit card.

  The clerk called up the flight on her computer, glanced down at the open passport and the name on the credit card, and then took at least two seconds to examine Wallis’ facial features before smiling pleasantly.

  “Yes, Mr. Emerson, we have you confirmed in business class for that flight, window seat ten-A, boarding in approximately thirty minutes. Will that be satisfactory?”