The sound of muted and otherwise unintelligible conversation back and forth could be heard through the sensitive conference phone speaker for a few seconds. Then Achara voice came back on the air.
“Chief Narusan has asked me to inform you that — in addition to his temporary assignment as my primary crime scene examiner — he was recently designated the official CSI officer for his ship, the Sawaeke Pinsinchai. And as such, the Chief wants me to assure you that he will find these items if he has to search the entire southern peninsula of Thailand on his hands and knees, meter by meter. And with that, gentlemen, we wish you well in your endeavors, and bid you goodbye; the Chief and I have work to do.”
CHAPTER 27
In a helicopter over the Khlong Preserve
As Captain Achara Kulawnit smoothly piloted the blacked-out military surveillance helicopter fifty feet over the treetops of the massive Khlong Preserve with her night-vision goggles, a similarly equipped Chief Narusan monitored the bright-green lit forest from his copilot seat. Underneath the helicopter, mounted to its landing skid, Narusan’s jury-rigged — but extremely powerful — flasher-activating transmitter pulsed steadily.
They had almost completed covered the western edge of the Preserve with four successive passes when Narusan suddenly yelled out and then pointed at a distant burst of light — a flash that quickly steadied out into a rhythmic pulsing.
As Narusan carefully read out coordinates from a map into his helmet mike, transmitting the information to their ground team, Achara turned the helicopter toward the flashing light.
At a landing site in the Khlong Preserve
Ten minutes later, Achara landed the surveillance helicopter in a clearing near a pair of jeeps that were lighting the landing site with their crossed headlights. She and Narusan hopped out of the chopper and ran to one of the jeeps.
After a brief discussion about who was in charge of the operation that left no doubt in anyone’s mind, Achara jumped into the driver’s seat, yelled at everyone — specifically including Chief Narusan — to hold on, then accelerated out of the landing area, leaving the former jeep driver guard the helicopter.
In a jeep in the Khlong Preserve
Captain Achara Kulawnit continued to accelerate the four-wheel-drive Cherokee jeep through the deep muddy ruts of a tree-lined dirt road leading into the western section of the Khlong Saeng Wildlife Preserve, pushing her battered Thai Forestry Police patrol vehicle — and the two others following closely behind — to their limits of their engines and headlights because she sensed they were finally on to something that might give her access to the killers who had dared to strike at her brother and father and fellow Rangers.
Next to her in the front passenger seat, Chief Narusan — seemingly oblivious to the police captain’s manic driving — read a map with a flashlight and monitored an electronic tracking device mounted on the jeep’s dash while Colonel Kulawnit’s two re-assigned bodyguards held onto the overhead safety straps with one hand and their M4 carbines with the other.
In the second jeep, the Ranger lieutenant — who had started out in charge of this raid team — in the front passenger seat and the senior sergeant behind the steering wheel chuckled approvingly at the driving skills of Colonel Kulawnit’s famously aggressive daughter, while the three constables stuffed into the back seat simply held on.
In the trailing jeep, the junior sergeant in the front passenger seat chided his corporal — a lesser-skilled driver — to go faster while the second trio of constables in the back seat rolled their eyes and prayed.
Every few seconds, Captain Achara Kulawnit briefly took her eyes off the road to check her odometer.
At the 5.8 kilometer mark, she slowed down, made a sharp left turn onto a very narrow mud trail just barely wide enough for the jeep to slip through, and followed a crossed-over set of old tire tracks for another thirty seconds until she came to a small, chain-sawed clearing in front of an old maintenance storage shed.
Achara brought the jeep to a sliding stop in front of the shed, shut off the engine, and then turned to Narusan; only vaguely aware that the driver of the trailing jeep had taken up a blocking position on the road, and that her newly assigned bodyguards and all of the uniformed Rangers were rapidly taking up protective positions around her jeep, carbines and assault rifles aimed outward and at the ready.
Major Preithat had made one thing very clear to the assault team members: anyone who allowed Captain Achara Kulawnit to be injured in her search for the killers of their fellow Rangers would answer to the Colonel personally; an unthinkable possibility that the Colonel’s two hardened, chastened, re-assigned and now coldly furious bodyguards informed the other uniformed Rangers would simply not happen. They would all die first; an admonition firmly echoed by the assault team’s senior sergeant who had been a close friend of Sergeant Tongproh.
“Where do we go now?” Achara asked, the controlled anger in her voice matching the fierce expression in her dark eyes.
The Chief Petty Officer consulted his electronic device and map once more, and pointed with his open left hand at a distant point in the trees off to their left. Then, having done so, he set the map and electronic device aside, pulled an IR-filtered flashlight out from under the seat, and then reached up and snapped the night-vision goggles over his eyes. Achara did the same.
Outside, one at a time, the two uniformed sergeants directed the highly-trained members of their assault team to put on and activate their own night-vision gear.
On foot in the Khlong Preserve
They went in a single file, Chief Narusan and the senior sergeant in the lead, closely followed by Achara and her two mothering bodyguards, and backed up by the corporal and two constables. The junior sergeant and the other four constables maintained a rear-guard position around the shed and jeeps.
Twenty yards into the dense forest, everyone paused while Narusan pulled a small transmitter out of his jacket pocket and pressed the center button. Instantly, off to their right and deep in the trees, a periodically-flashing firefly became faintly visible.
“Ha, good CSI!” the chief exclaimed to the senior sergeant, smiling broadly.
Using the flickering light as a guide — the senior sergeant, Achara and her two bodyguards probing their way with long sticks to scare off lurking snakes and predators while Narusan kept the distant flasher in sight, and the three trailing Rangers monitored their flanks with forefingers softly brushing against the trigger guards of their rifles — the assault team slowly and methodically worked their way through the trees, brush, fronds and clinging vines until, finally, they came to a small, machete-cut, ten-foot-square clearing that was already starting to be covered over and filled with new plant growth.
Above their heads, the newly-awakened flasher originally attached to the extended tree limb by Quince Lanyard pulsed cheerfully; the intermittent bursts of light clearly revealing the irregular squares of sod beneath the new forest growth that hadn’t quite grown back together yet.
Moments later, roles reversed, Achara, the senior sergeant and the two bodyguards maintained a watchful vigilance while Chief Narusan and the three uniformed Rangers got down on their hands and knees to dig up chunks of sod, tear away lengths of board, and cut away sections of black plastic tarp under the blinding greenish glare of eight IR-filtered flashlights that had been secured to surrounding tree limbs and branches.
Fifteen minutes later, Captain Achara Kulawnit stood at the edge of the six-by-six-by-eight-foot-deep hole and stared silently down at the pair of twisted bodies at the bottom partially covered by machete-chopped lengths of bamboo.