Typhoon Fury (Oregon Files 12)

“Offense taken.”

Raven gestured at the people passing them. “You might have noticed there aren’t a lot of tall redheads in this country. He’d make you about ten seconds after we started after him. Then they could set an ambush without us even realizing it.”

“But I—”

“Let me do my job. Like you said, it’s just reconnaissance.”

Beth opened her mouth, then closed it again in a huff.

“I think you meant to say, ‘You’re right, Raven.’”

“Whatever,” Beth said with a smirk. “Hey, who’s that?”

A second man, this one dressed in a casual shirt and jeans, approached the man in the suit, who stood and shook hands with him. They both sat down, and the man who’d been waiting opened the case.

He withdrew the finial that Raven had seen in Bangkok, its gilt finish flashing in the lights. Beth held her breath when the second man took it and began an examination, turning it over in his hands and checking every surface.

He turned it over and looked intently into the base, where Beth had placed the tracker chip. Beth grabbed Raven’s arm.

“He’s going to find it!”

Beth’s fear came true when the man reached his fingers into the hole and drew something out that he held between his thumb and forefinger. It was too small to see from this distance, but it had to be the tracker.

The man stood and raged at the other man, jabbing the tiny object toward his face. The two of them argued so loudly that some of the other patrons began staring at the scene. After a few moments, the two of them suddenly stopped fighting and looked around the atrium as if they were about to be surrounded by unseen forces.

The man in the casual shirt flicked the tracker away like a used cigarette, jammed the finial into the suited man’s gut, and took off, sprinting for the main entrance. The man in the suit put the finial back in the case and walked quickly in the opposite direction.

“Stay by your phone,” Raven said, getting ready to make a break for the stairs, when Beth pulled on her arm.

“Oh, no,” Beth said. “He’s throwing it away!”

Sure enough, the man in the suit strode right to a trash can and stuffed the case inside as if he feared that there was another tracker somewhere in the case and didn’t want to risk being followed. He walked away without looking back.

Before Raven could stop her, Beth ran for the escalators. Raven called behind her to wait, but Beth had a head start, and with a runner’s physique and long legs, she was able to maintain a distance between them. Nobody else seemed to be running after them.

When they reached the main floor, Beth got to the trash receptacle a few steps before Raven.

“No, don’t!” Raven yelled. She couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this was wrong.

Despite her plea, Beth opened the case anyway, eager to make sure the finial was still intact. Raven couldn’t see what was inside, but when she saw the horrified expression on Beth’s face, she knew the whole thing had been a setup.

Beth turned the open case toward her, and Raven could now see a display that read ARMED and a small block of C-4 explosive next to the finial. There was also a small radio inside.

It crackled to life, and a voice said, “Do exactly what I say or the case will explode. If either of you tries to run away, you’ll die before you get two steps from it. Look toward the entrance.”

Beth looked past Raven’s shoulder, and her face went so white that Raven was afraid she might pass out, holding a bomb in her hands. Raven turned slowly, angry with herself about being duped but already running through ideas about how they were going to get out of this situation.

She already knew who she’d see, but

she still felt a deep chill when she spotted him standing by the main entrance with a wicked grin on his face. Flanked by four of his imposing soldiers, and crooking a finger for them to come toward him, was Salvador Locsin.

28

MANILA

Finding an isolated location in the bustle of the city would have been difficult, so Gerhard Brekker rented a yacht big enough for his team and docked it away from the main marina so that Alastair Lynch’s periodic screams for more Typhoon would go unheard. The 60-foot power cruiser with sleeping quarters for ten passengers reminded Brekker of the fishing charter his father owned in his home city of Cape Town.

After getting Lynch squared away on the boat, he and Van Der Waal had spent the day casing the Baylon Fire factory and warehouse, where Lynch claimed the smuggling operation was based. Lynch had divulged how the drugs were packed into fire trucks for shipment, and he knew one was supposed to be loaded by this evening and shipped out the next day. Brekker’s target was Locsin himself. It was easy enough to find the rebel leader’s photo on websites advertising the bounty put on his head by the Filipino government.