Chasing the White Lion by James Hannibal (best free e book reader .TXT) 📗

Ewan made him wait for several seconds while he finished his prayer. As he stood, he eyed Finn’s trophy. “It’s . . . litter.”

“Not just any litter.” Finn pulled two more wrappers from his pocket. All three bore the same green and yellow logo on a silver background. “I collected these from the pens. One of our kidnappers is particular about his junk food. And since we know where they loaded up and where this was dropped, we can make a good bet which way they were headed.”

Instead of patting Finn on the back, Ewan lifted his eyes skyward and said, “Praise God.”

Po raised his hands to match the sentiment.

“God? I’m the one who searched the road. I found the wrapper.”

“Because Po and I prayed and asked for direction.”

“I . . . You . . .” Before Finn could muster up an argument, he heard the rumble of an approaching truck. His eyes narrowed. “Po says no one uses this road, right?”

Ewan and the refugee both nodded.

“Into the trees. Now.”

They ducked into the foliage and watched as a beat-up Toyota HiLux rolled to a stop a few feet away. The driver leaned his head out. “Come oot, come oot wherever ya are.”

“Mac.” Finn led the others into the open, waving. “’Bout time you showed up. Did you have trouble tracking my signal?”

“The mountains make it spotty at best.” The Scotsman slapped his door. “Borrowed this beauty from the airfield manager. Whaddaya think?”

The introductions went as well as Finn might have predicted, revisiting the whole Scottish-Thai thing. With that out of the way, Po hopped into the back, and Finn and Ewan crammed themselves into the cab. As they drove off, Ewan looked skyward again and offered up a thankful nod.

“What was that for?” Finn asked.

“I also asked God if he could find us a ride.”

CHAPTER

FIFTY-

SEVEN

BO SUPHAN

SUPHAN BURI PROVINCE, THAILAND

GOREVDESPISEDCENTRAL THAILAND, a sweaty alluvial plain covered in wet fields and little else. No cover. He let the Bentley roll to a stop more than a mile from the cinder-block structures where Panther Five One and his people waited. The two buildings were already visible in the light haze hanging over the rice fields. Five One had not reached his elevated status without some modicum of intelligence. He might be watching. Any closer, and Gorev would give his boss away. “I walk from here.”

“Yes, yes. Fine,” said Boyd, preoccupied with his phone.

“You drive, da?” They had not discussed that part of the plan before leaving the Twin Tigers. Boyd usually did not sully himself by participating in this end of things. Gorev had never seen him get behind the wheel of a car.

“Yes, I can drive. As long as it’s an automatic.”

Gorev just looked at him.

Boyd kept working his phone, bristling. “You have something to say about a well-to-do gentleman who can’t work a manual gearbox?”

“Nyet.”

“Then get out and let me do my thing.”

As Gorev opened the door, Boyd touched his bicep. “Wait. The Maltese Tiger is dead.”

“The Greek?”

“Guess who took him out.” Boyd turned the phone for him to see and played a video. Gaming tables and well-dressed partiers whirled and swung through chaotic footage until the camera settled on three distant figures, standing on a platform beneath an obsidian dome. A pair of women armed with pistols fired round after round into a gray-haired man. The partiers screamed and shouted.

Boyd stopped the playback. “Cobra One Eleven posted it this morning. And there were four others. All claim the shooters are the Macciano Sisters. One claims it was a full-on hostile takeover, involving the daughters of Marco Calafato, the retired crime boss.” He snapped his fingers. “Check on our new hawks. Now.”

Gorev lifted a tablet from his nylon rifle bag. “Affirmative. Hawk Four One Eight claims she and sister took out Maltese Tiger instead of field mouse. They send thirty-five-million-dollar apology for”—he squinted at the word—“im-prov-is-a-tion. Do you accept?”

“I think we can accept,” Boyd said after a time. “But the dead Greek leaves us an opening at the Frenzy.”

“Who shall I invite?”

“Who do you think? With Jafet gone, we can bring four new panthers to the party. Thirty-five million puts both sisters in the running. Send the new invitation.” He flicked his fingers. “Now get out. I have work to do. You have twenty minutes.”

As he walked beside the road, rifle slung at his shoulder, Gorev called up the videos of the shooting. None were stable, but one gave him a grainy profile view of the woman in the black dress. He held the screen close to his eyes, shielding it from the sun. “Intriguyushchiy.” Intriguing.

Twenty minutes later, Gorev lay prone among the low stalks of a rice paddy a hundred meters from the rendezvous, feeling what smelled like raw sewage soak into his clothes. The bipod of his FN Ballista rifle would not stay upright in such an environment. He had to support it with one hand, sinking his elbow into the muck.

He sighed. His services were worth more than this.

A thumping sounded in his ear. “Is this thing on? Gorev, you hear me?”

“Transmitter go only one way,” he said to the mud. “Idiot.”

Boyd’s car came into view across the road, pulling into a gravel lot between the pair of cinder-block structures. He climbed out of the Bentley and slammed the door. Another teeth-rattling noise in the Russian’s earpiece.

Gorev put his eye to his scope and set the crosshairs slightly ahead of his boss, adjusting for the quick pace of his gait. How easy it would be to cut the puppet from the strings. But the puppet master would not like this, so he refrained.

A man in fatigues stepped out of the western building to greet Boyd. Satisfied this was Panther Five One, Gorev panned around in a radial search pattern to identify additional targets. There were five—four grown men and a teenager, all armed with Kalashnikovs.

No problem.

“Mr. Boyd,” he heard Five One say through his boss’s hidden transmitter. “We were expecting your man