This was news to Crocker and all the guys in Black Cell. Nobody had ever heard Cal refer to a girlfriend before-Thai or otherwise.
“You lived with a chick?” Ritchie asked. “No shit.”
“Sarai Wattana.”
“Pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
Crocker was determined to shift everyone’s attention back to the mission. Directing his question to Cal, who was leaning against the wall, he asked, “You sure you have no problem claiming to be a local official?”
“Not at all.”
“And you speak enough Thai to pull it off?”
“I do. Yes.”
Daw drew a detailed map of the farm based on surveillance photos. Then Crocker spelled out a modified version of the patrol leader’s order, or PLO. First he covered points of engagement and firing positions. “Before Cal approaches the door, I want Akil and Davis positioned behind trees or bushes on the right side of the house. Akil, you’ll try to establish line of sight through the right window.”
“Got it.”
“Ritchie and Mancini will be stationed out front. We’ll try to get at least some of them to surrender. If that doesn’t work, I’ll give the order and we’ll fire from the right-front quadrant, then shift to cut down or capture anyone fleeing the rear of the house.”
Several of the men, who were seated on the desk and chairs, and leaning against the walls, nodded.
“Any targets we capture, we tie-tie or tape them, cover their mouths, and move on. Speed will be our friend.” Turning to Anderson, Crocker said, “Cal is going to need a mike on him. I want to be able to communicate with each team front and back via radio.”
“Handheld okay?” Anderson asked.
“Handheld is fine. We’ll use the standard hand signals.”
The men nodded.
“What about curious neighbors or other people arriving at the house while we’re there?” Mancini asked.
“Neighbors we try to scare away. Point a weapon at them and use hand signals to tell them to keep their mouths shut. Same with dogs. Throw a rock at them, anything. Incessant, angry barking will have to be handled with a silenced round.”
Several of the men were dog lovers, but they didn’t protest.
Crocker looked at Davis and said, “The element of surprise is paramount. Anyone arriving at the house while we’re at the farm will have to be subdued, or if they’re armed or you suspect they’re armed, taken out. Anything else?”
“Booby traps,” Davis offered.
“Booby traps are a real danger. Clear all windows and doors before entering. Don’t touch anything in the house or garage that you don’t have to. Deal with the occupants first. We will be looking for at least four foreign nationals, Middle Eastern-looking men. After we’ve neutralized them, we’ll do a quick sweep of the house and garage. Then we’re out of there. Understood?”
“Yeah.”
They decided that Cal would knock on the front door posing as a businessman from Bangkok who was lost and looking for a nearby property that was for sale. They dressed him in black pants and a long-sleeved blue oxford cloth shirt, and Anderson provided him with fake business cards and an actual real estate listing near the farm with an address and photo.
According to Plan A, Cal would lure the terrorists out to the front porch. On a signal from Crocker, the element in front would engage the enemy and try to arrest them. The element on the right side of the house would detain anyone escaping through the back. If for some reason Cal was asked or forced to enter the house, Plan B would go into effect on Crocker’s order, which meant the men in front would rush through the forward door, while the ones on the side of the house covered the windows and back.
Gear and weapons secured, both plans talked through and rehearsed, the members of Black Cell set out from Bangkok at 0545 the next morning dressed in civilian clothes with their Dragon Skin body armor underneath. Crocker noted that the sky was low loom, which meant a dark, moonless night.
He sat alone in the rear seat of the lead SUV going over everything in his head, checking to ensure that he hadn’t forgotten some contingency. Daw drove, Cal sat beside him, and Ritchie and Mancini occupied the middle seats. Anderson followed in the second vehicle with Davis and Akil.
Within an hour the sun started to rise and Crocker saw that they were passing through a peaceful grove of evergreen trees. The violence of what they were about to do struck him.
“That river we’re following on our left is the River Kwai,” Mancini remarked as though he was a tour guide.
“The River Kwai from the movie?” Cal asked.
“Yes. Kanchanaburi was the setting of the David Lean movie starring Alec Guinness, The Bridge on the River Kwai. But the movie was shot in Sri Lanka.”
“Whatever,” Ritchie groaned, checking the chamber of his Benelli M4 Super 90 twelve-gauge shotgun with a laser illuminator mounted on the rail interface system on the barrel.
“Kanchanaburi was the location of the real POW labor camps,” Mancini added.
“What camps?” Ritchie asked.
“You never saw the movie?”
“It was a long time ago. I forget.”
Crocker’d seen it. It was one of his favorites, along with The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, and Lawrence of Arabia.
“The Japanese moved 61,700 allied prisoners-Brits, Americans, Aussies, Dutch-from POW camps in Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia to build a railroad from Thailand to Burma,” Mancini explained. “The conditions they had to work under sucked, especially during the 1943 monsoon. And the Japs treated them like shit. Over sixteen thousand allied POWs died from sickness, malnutrition, and exhaustion.”
“Did they ever finish the railroad?” Cal asked.
“Even though the prisoners had few pulleys, derricks, or other equipment, they managed to complete what became known as the Death Railway in about a year.”
Daw pointed out that the town of Kanchanaburi became a popular tourist site after the movie came out in 1957. “Two museums were built,” he explained. “But what the tourists who came here really wanted to see was the bridge. The problem was that the actual bridge didn’t cross the River Khwae. It crossed a parallel river known as the Mae Klong. So what do you think Thai officials did to solve this problem?”
“You know the answer?” Ritchie asked Mancini.
“No, wiseguy.”
“They switched the names of the two rivers,” Daw said with a smile as he drove.
The road followed a limestone cliff covered with green foliage that ran along the river. Low tin-roofed buildings clung to the shore, indicating that they were entering the town. They passed temple caves, an elephant park, and even a tiger temple, where visitors could pet real Bengal tigers. But they hadn’t come for the attractions.
The farm they were looking for sat on lower land on the opposite side of the river, so they crossed a narrow bridge. Rain started to fall as they turned off an asphalt road onto a mustard-colored dirt trail pitted with water-filled holes. The sun was trying to fight its way through dark clouds.
Crocker imagined that a rainbow would appear soon as his heartbeat sped up. He felt the tension building around him and heard the guys doing last-minute checks of their comms and weapons.
“You sure we’re in the right place?” Ritchie asked as they bounced along.
“The entrance is over there, up ahead,” Daw said, pointing to the right as he braked the vehicle to a stop.
Crocker said, “I’ll hide on the floor. Manny, you, Daw, and Ritchie get out here.”
Cal took the wheel and maneuvered the vehicle around a bend to a fence overrun with vines and weeds. He turned in the entrance, which had no sign, drove another two hundred feet through a patch of mango trees, and stopped about 150 feet from the house. The springs under the chassis creaked. A bird screeched.
Crocker waited about a minute, until he heard Akil’s voice over the handheld radio telling him the men were in position. Then he slapped the back of the seat twice, which was the signal to go.