Collision

“You know why they hide?” the Dragon said to the prisoner. “They hide because they don’t want to be witnesses. A nice sedan does not come here after nightfall to dump a ton of garbage. Nice sedans only come here to dump bodies.”

The prisoner made a soft, wet noise in his throat.

“We should take him back to CIA,” Choate said again. “They can interrogate him.”

“I don’t do interrogations on CIA property. I’m all about deniability.” He jerked the prisoner by the shirt. “How did you know about our meeting?”

The prisoner stared at the waste.

“Worst case isn’t killing you and dumping your body out there. Worst case is hurting you really badly and leaving you out there. To have all the flesh on your bones picked off by the birds. The scavengers won’t help you. No one will help you. Now. In an hour you can be free, with a doctor to tend your wound and a nice hot bowl of soup to eat. Your choice.”

The prisoner said nothing for thirty long seconds and Choate thought: Just tell him, answer his question.

“Gumalar knows that you are targeting him,” the prisoner said.

“Who is Gumalar?” Choate said.

“Financier. Got Allah in a big way and he’s the one funneling the money to terrorists,” the Dragon said. “His brother’s a big deal in the Indonesian government, so that’s why taking him down is such a quiet job.”

The prisoner said, “I require a doctor.”

“How does Gumalar know this?” the Dragon said. “Where’s the leak?”

“We found people working for you,” the prisoner said. “Over the past few days. Five of them. They gave us enough information to know about your meeting, to know where to watch for you.”

“Where are my people?” The Dragon’s voice went low and cold.

The prisoner shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You have a staff?” Choate asked.

The Dragon didn’t look at him, stare locked on the prisoner. “I have informants. Who feed me info I sell to CIA.”

“You had informants,” the prisoner said.

The Dragon gave the prisoner a jaw-snapping slap. “Where do I find Gumalar?”

“You can’t touch him.” The prisoner finally spoke with defiance in his voice.

On the radio, a news report began to play. Two men identified as agents of Badan Intelijen Negara, the Indonesian government’s intelligence service, had been found shot to death in a park.

“Oh, shit,” Choate said. “You killed good guys.”

“Good is relative,” the Dragon said. “Our target has the good guys on his payroll.”

“You can’t touch Gumalar and I don’t know where he is,” the prisoner said.

“Then what use are you?” the Dragon said. He fired once, the bullet making a hard, percussive noise in the tight confines of the car.

“Jesus, he could have told us more!” Choate yelled.

“Hardly,” Choate said. “Pop the trunk.”

Choate, hands shaking slightly, obeyed. The Dragon got out of the sedan, went to the back. Froze.

Choate hurried out of the car. In the truck was a large plastic bag. Inside of it, smeared with gore, were a bunch of severed hands. Big, calloused ones; smooth feminine ones; ones wearing rings; others bare of jewelry.

Choate leaned away from the car and fought down the urge to vomit.

“Ten,” the Dragon said after a moment. “There are ten. My five informants.”

“So… what do we do now?” They sat in the dark throat of a Jakarta bar, miles from the park, miles from the dump.

“Gumalar’s leak is because he has someone big inside BIN in his pocket. So this stays an off-the-books job for the Agency.”

“I was told to follow your orders,” Choate said. He wasn’t comfortable with this, but orders were orders.

“Then we stick with our original plan. We need to find the money trail this Gumalar fucker is using to finance terrorism. We find the money, we tie him to it, and we kill him along with his terror cell contact. We make it look like the terrorist turned on him. Keep CIA’s nose out of it.”

“And you need me to find the money trail.”

“Gumalar owns a large bank here. It’s going to undergo a cyber attack in twelve hours. You’ll be called in as a representative of the IT support company to repair and inspect the databases. You’ll need to run a query against the five aliases that Gumalar’s terror cell contact has been using. We’ll use that information to find him, so we can get him and Gumalar together for a meeting and take them both out.”

“Running a query will leave an electronic trace. Gumalar may have those accounts tagged to take note of a query.”

“You’re supposed to be smart. Deal with it.”

Choate said nothing.

“I’m not big on coddling, kid,” the Dragon said.

“Not expected or wanted.”

“You won’t have long to do the trace. Get the account information and then get out. I don’t want you stuck inside his bank all day; you’d be a target if they know your face.”

“How did you get these aliases?”

“My contacts.”

“Did your contacts know about our targeting his bank?”

“No,” the Dragon said after a moment.

“I really dislike the hesitation you just showed.”

“They didn’t know.”

Choate tapped fingers on the table. The adrenaline rush faded. “We need to report back to the Agency.”

“Of course. But the mission goes on.”

“That’s for the Agency to decide.”