Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

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.