Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 35

35

Rob and Bradley rented a crumbling two-bedroom suite in this street-corner hotel in a town a dozen miles outside Naypyidaw, dating back to the colonial days when they called this country Burma. The dour British architecture has a fresh coat of fifteen different bright colors, like they got a discount on every color of paint the store couldn’t sell. The whole country’s that way, though—gaudy colors and ridiculously over-armed soldiers. You have to look more closely to realize that the colors and the spectacle cover decayed infrastructure. All of Myanmar’s worn down to a prancing skeleton. Most of the building is trapped in the 1930s, with plumbing and electrical to match, but it’s far from the tourist sites and the suite commands a view of the crossroads. There’s no air conditioner, but a rickety ceiling fan stirs the sticky heat.

Bradley steers me to a thinly padded wicker chair built for a big Oriental guy. My hips barely squeeze between the chair’s arms, and the bamboo frame creaks with my weight. But Rob’s sitting on the bed, looking completely alien in touristy shorts and a T-shirt with yet another tablet on his lap, and Bradley’s perched on this tiny folding chair.

My stomach rumbles at the smell of frying fish and hot peppers and all sorts of stir-fry vegetables squeezing through the cracked window. Naypyidaw street food smells fantastic. I knew one American who tried it. He loved it, raved about it, and six hours later got flown to a Hong Kong hospital to be fitted with a whole new microbiome.

But after that flight, I’m so tired that for half a second I consider a skewer of unnamed seafood in questionable spicy sauce just for the vacation.

Both Bradley and Rob look tired but ready for action. Thanks to Emirates Air, they’ve been here for nine hours.

“Beaks,” Rob says. “Welcome to the party.”

I really must do something about those UAE death warrants. “Call me fashionably late.”

“Glad we could get everything ready for you,” Bradley says with only a hint of sharpness.

“I appreciate it,” I say. “What did I miss?”

Rob reaches over to a folding table by Bradley’s chair and lifts a steaming china pot. “Tea?”

“No thanks.” They say drinking hot tea cools you. I say they’re crazy.

Rob lowers the pot. “Feel free to change your mind, it truly is excellent. Noah’s spread a great deal of money around—by Myanmar standards, at least. My contacts have come up with the location of Noah’s compound. The most recent satellite photos I can access are from May, and they’re mediocre at best. Hopefully little has changed in two months.”

“I’ve worked with worse,” I say.

Bradley says nothing. I’ve missed their discussions, again. Voices in the back of my head mutter about secrets and fresh betrayals. But Rob and Bradley didn’t maneuver for time alone. They didn’t know about the UAE thing until I brought it up. Deke has ripped a hole in my soul, and it seems that everything everyone says and does wants to fit into the gap he tore.

They’re not betraying me, I keep telling myself.

“My initial assessment is that we need a penetration team of four to five people,” Rob says. “We should have a spotter and a sniper, plus a pilot for the extraction helicopter.”

“How long until they get here?” I say.

“Never,” Bradley says.

Surprised, I glance at her heavy face, then back at Rob.

“Another five freelancers have been killed since we left Portugal,” Rob says. “The assassins are clearly corporate mercenaries. Word travels quickly. Most of our peers have gone into hiding.”

“Deke didn’t leak everyone,” I say. “Surely people not on Deke’s list—”

“Nobody but us has that list,” Bradley says.

“So we tell them,” I say.

“You would soil Deke’s name on suspicions?” Rob says.

“Suspicions!” I fight to keep from shouting. “He turned. What is there to suspect?”

“We don’t know the details,” Rob says. “Noah might have leverage.”

“What leverage?” I say. I’m holding my voice quiet, but my wicker chair creaks when I speak.

“Everyone has family,” Bradley says. “What would you do if someone threatened your folks?”

Dad’s too drunk to notice, and Mom, well—who knows? “Still, we have to warn them.”

“I contacted everyone Deke exposed,” Rob says. “Everyone is in hiding or unreachable. People are planning to strike back against the threat.”

“Bring them here,” I say.

“We must assume everyone Deke exposed is being actively pursued,” Rob says. “If even one of Noah’s targets is caught or killed on the way to Myanmar, it will alert Noah that we’re moving against him.”

“So call the second tier,” I say. “Give, oh, Stabbity Joe a ring.”

Bradley huffs. “Stabinowitz? Even that nutjob’s in hiding.”

“We do have some help,” Rob says. “Myanmar is a delightfully corrupt country, even after the recent electoral changes. I’ve arranged transport to the village closest to the compound in a military transport. We leave early tomorrow morning. I have the name of a villager who speaks English and is willing to guide people to a lookout over the compound for a few dollars.”

“Good,” I say. “All we need now is a plan for three people.”

Rob says, “We’ve had time to talk while you made your way here. And we have a… workable outline. Not ideal, certainly, but a perhaps viable script.”

I feel a quick stab of jealousy at being left out of the planning—but what did I expect, that they’d sit here watching old movies? “Cool. Let’s have it.”

Rob says, “We want you to provide tactical support and sniper cover while Bradley and I go in to take Noah.”