Typhoon Fury (Oregon Files 12)

Beth shoved the tube through her purse strap, hopped on behind Raven, and grabbed her waist.

Raven revved the throttle and laid down a skid mark as they accelerated away, leaving the owner shouting as he ran after them with a skewer of pork in his hand. Beth had a death grip, as she hung on.

She turned to see Tagaan sprinting toward them at full speed. It was obvious he wasn’t going to catch them, so he stopped abruptly and raised his pistol. Beth ducked as they swung around a corner. Two bullets ricocheted off a wall, and then Tagaan was out of sight.

Raven took three more quick turns and merged with traffic on a busy boulevard. They were now one of a hundred motorcycles cruising down the road.

“Nice work back there,” Raven said over her shoulder. “For a civilian, that is. I’m impressed you didn’t panic.”

“I didn’t?” The vibration of the motorcycle must have masked her shaking.

“You have your passport with you, right?”

“Always,” Beth replied. “Why?”

“Because we can’t go back to the hotel. We need to get out of Thailand as soon as we can.”

“That’s okay. Everything in my room is replaceable. But we’ll have to figure out what to do about the painting.”

“You want to turn that over to Interpol now? We just heard Tagaan say they had a mole.”

Raven had a point. If his gang still had the other Gardner paintings, a report to Interpol might make them too hot to handle. They could all be destroyed to wipe out the evidence.

There was still the microtransmitter Beth had attached to the finial. “Tagaan was holding the bronze eagle when we left. We can track it.”

“If they really have an informant at Interpol, they’ll know as soon as we start following it and deactivate the transmitter.”

“That’s why we’re not going to Interpol,” Beth said.

“Then how are we going to recover the other paintings? We can’t do it on our own.”

“The guy who gave me the transmitter can help us. I consult with him on art that he acquires for his firm. His name is Juan Cabrillo.”

14

THE PHILIPPINES

In his spartan private quarters, Salvador Locsin wolfed down a huge traditional Filipino breakfast as if he were an athlete training for the Olympics. Heaping plates of corned beef, garlic-fried rice, salted milkfish, and chocolate rice pudding took up nearly the entire teak table. In the week since he was shot by his own men escaping from the prison transport, every one of his meals was a feast. It was the fuel his body needed to recover from his bullet wounds, injuries that would normally have confined someone to a hospital for weeks. Not only did Locsin feel better than ever, his scars were barely visible and would be completely gone in a day or two.

Locsin had grown up the son of a local politician and a teacher. As avowed socialists, his parents had been at the forefront of the island’s agitation for better services for the people. Then an attempt by the police to break up a socialist rally went bad.

The police claimed they were there to arrest radical elements of the communist insurgency when someone in the crowd started firing. The police fired back, and Locsin’s parents were supposedly caught in the cross fire and killed. The subsequent investigation concluded that the radicals were at fault, but Locsin knew better. Witnesses told Locsin that his parents were deliberately shot by the police, but the final official report covered it up.

Locsin could see that there’d be no justice for his parents, so he didn’t return to his university. Fighting corruption by working through a rigged system was obviously a useless gesture. Joining the communist insurgency was his best chance to take down a government designed for the benefit of the rich and then rebuild it from scratch.

As he demonstrated his tactical abilities for inflicting maximum damage on government targets, he quickly gained a following in the insurgency. His methods became increasingly brutal because he adhered to Machiavelli’s maxim The ends justify the means. When financial support from the communist governments of China and North Korea wasn’t enough to fund his rebellion, he turned to smuggling drugs. The main consumers of his heroin and methamphetamine products were the rich capitalist countries, and he took satisfaction in knowing that the narcotic epidemic helped weaken those supposedly robust economies.

But, until now, nothing he had accomplished was revolutionary enough to make a real difference. It was another drug that would soon let him transform the world.

As he shoveled another spoonful of pudding into his mouth, Locsin glanced down at the round white pill sitting in a small dish next to his plate. It was etched with the symbol of a swirling cyclone and symbolized the wholesale destruction he was about to unleash.

Nikho Tagaan, a trusted comrade who had been with Locsin since the beginning, opened the door to his quarters and brought in a fresh pot of coffee. He poured mugs for both of them and took a seat on the opposite side of the table.

“Any progress from our laboratory on Luzon?” Locsin said, between bites of pudding.

“Nothing yet. Dr. Ocampo hasn’t been able to isolate the formula and he doesn’t have an estimate for when he will.”