My effort to get off the gurney was less than dignified; my head swam and legs wobbled, and if the wall hadn't been handy, I would have gone naked b.u.t.t-first onto the floor. I took a deep breath, and with one hand on my hospital gown and another on the wall, made my way back to the room where my clothes were. Two or three staff members tried to stop me after I got dressed, but by then I had enough momentum to find the door and escape. A taxi was just pulling up with another potential victim; I took it as a good sign and returned to my hotel.

Lo Po was waiting for me. I told him I'd had some bad duck or something the night before; he snorted, putting my distress down to alcohol. He drove me straight away to an old section of the city; I waited in the car, still drained of energy, while he went into a small shop down a back alley. He returned with a small envelope containing some sort of powder, which I had to mix with warm water. Lo Po claimed it was a hangover cure. By this point I was up for anything that would make me feel better, and so I tried it. Within thirty minutes the rumbling in my stomach stopped and I could walk without swaying. A short nap restored a bit of my energy, but it wasn't until a prescription from Dr. Bombay at the hotel bar that I felt close to normal.

I'd planned on trailing a courier team through China today, but by now it was too late. Besides, I already knew the holes in the operation well enough for a scathing report; anything else would be just piling on. I decided to skip straight to Thailand.

A light workout in the hotel gym after I arrived restored some of my appet.i.te. There's nothing like the strain of the last rep on the bench press to get the blood flowing. I managed to score a fruit drink at the hotel bar after a good shower, and so I was in good shape by the time I met Si at his airport office around seven that evening.

Si had seen no sign that the transponder that I had left on the flight two days before had been detected. There was no question that it was still aboard the plane: he presented me with a photo of it sitting exactly where I had left it in the c.o.c.kpit.

We took a ride over to the building that BetaGo used, observing it from another building across the wide parking area. The building was guarded around the clock by at least two employees. Security was boosted about an hour before the aircraft's arrival, and the people providing it weren't fooling around-M16s were issued and obvious. A van with the courier team arrived a half hour before the plane from China. The men appeared to be known by the guards and didn't have to present any identification. Customs officials arrived shortly afterward, and were there to meet the plane. Doc.u.ments were checked inside the building; if they had opened the suitcases Si hadn't seen.

Once unloaded, the plane from China went to a different part of the airport to be refueled. It flew back north a few hours later after taking on some light cargo.

In the meantime, another set of BetaGo couriers was completing a run in the city. On the night Si had watched, they had arrived several hours after the plane from China. They brought their load to the hangar and then contacted a small freight line to complete the next leg. They made the contact in person, with two employees going over and making sure the plane was secure before allowing it to proceed. On the flight the other night, the aircraft had carried several other loads; Si guessed this was not uncommon.

The operation here was arguably more secure and certainly more complicated than in China. Si had decided that there were three or four different ways to penetrate it. He favored impersonating a Customs official-and had found an ID in case I wanted to try it when the plane landed in a few hours.

"Why not?" I said. "But I don't look particularly Asian."

"Not so much problem, Mr. d.i.c.k. You Australian, investigate smuggling. Move quickly, act strong, no one question. Inspect nearby plane first, then go there."

The real Customs official was not a problem. Si knew the officer and explained what he was doing, promising not to interfere with his job. Had we been up to more nefarious purposes, we could have either paid him off or disposed of him with little trouble; the Customs officials worked alone during most of their inspections.

We were inspecting a 707 parked near the BetaGo building when the BetaGo plane rolled up. Acting displeased by the failure to find any smuggled wombats, I had just handed back the manifest when the Chinese aircraft powered down. The truck that had come to meet them was maybe fifty feet from me as it backed toward the plane and the rear doors opened.

Which meant I had a front-row seat as six armed men came out of the back, machine guns blazing.

10.

There's nothing like the sound of gunfire to cure what ails you. A few minutes before the van rolled up, my stomach had begun rumbling, hinting that maybe the ailment I had survived in Shanghai had not been completely vanquished. Once the bullets started flying, gastric distress became a distant memory.

Si had lent me a Smith & Wesson. I unholstered as I hit the cement. By that time, grenades were going off and men were swarming over the BetaGo plane.

My contract with BetaGo did not call for armed intervention with bandits, but some reactions are genetic. I fired at the nearest gunmen, putting down two before their friends realized I was a threat and peppered the area around me with lead. Most of their ammo went into the airplane above me, but enough splashed around the pavement and the landing gear to keep me down until the vehicle sped off.

Si reached my rental car two steps ahead of me and jumped behind the wheel. He barely waited for me to get in the pa.s.senger's side before slapping it in gear. The van was already out of sight, but there was only one way out from this end of the airport so it wasn't much of a guess which way they had gone. I pulled my phone out while headed toward the exit and called BetaGo's Tokyo office, figuring they'd appreciate a heads-up. But my satellite phone had no service-the company's satellites didn't cover Thailand or Malaysia. Doom on me: I hadn't bothered to check earlier, a.s.suming that worldwide meant worldwide.

("When we a.s.sume, d.i.c.khead," grumbles the grizzled old chief I keep hearing in my head, "we make an a.s.s of you and me.") I grabbed Si's cell phone from his belt and dialed BetaGo's main number. Instead of a person I got an automated phone system. There was no option for reporting armed robberies, so I tried the operator. She either didn't understand me or thought I was some sort of prankster and hung up. I redialed and punched in the extension of the vice president who'd been my contact, Yosiro f.u.ki. All I got was his voice mail.

"Hey, f.u.ki-san. This is d.i.c.k Marcinko. Five or six crazy f.u.c.ks with automatic rifles and submachine guns just held up your plane when it landed in Bangkok and stole your truck. Thought you'd like to know."

By now Si had the little Toyota knocking on the door of the sound barrier. We careened in the direction of the city, through the expressway traffic. As I clicked off the phone I heard him curse, and looked up just in time to see the back end of a large tractor trailer looming in front of us. We didn't hit it-a Mercedes limo jerked in front of us at the last minute, and we hit that. For the second time in a week, I tasted airbag; it's not something that grows on you.

By the time I got myself disentangled and out of the car, two or three other vehicles had jammed into what was now a good-sized pileup at the rear of a logjam that stretched at least a mile ahead. I started running, hoping the van was stuck somewhere ahead.

March is the beginning of the hot season in Thailand. The day would have been considered downright "balmy" by local standards, but believe me, the heat coming off the roadway would have fried an egg in about three seconds flat. I've swum in oceans with less humidity.

In just about every other traffic jam I've ever been stuck in, a joker or two will blow by on a motorbike, gunning through narrow holes in the traffic. Usually I curse the SOBs-out of jealousy. This time though I prayed for one: I'd've traded my American Express card for it on the spot.

But no motorcycle materialized. I must have run, or maybe swam, a mile and a half before I finally saw the gray van ahead. When I got about twenty yards from it, I realized it was blocking nearly two full lanes of traffic, and the other vehicles were squeezing past-it was what had jammed up the traffic.

Si caught up with me a few seconds later. Ordinarily you have to work with someone for quite a while before you can start reading his mind; it usually takes a couple of firefights or maybe just one slugfest in a bar before you begin working as a true team. But Si picked up what was going on right away. We warily approached the vehicle from opposite sides, though it was pretty obvious what we would find.

The driver was still in the van, slumped back against the seat and staring toward the windshield. The back of his head and neck were covered with blood, which oozed from a large hole at the side of his skull. Flies were already buzzing in the cab.

The gunmen were gone. The boxes they'd stolen weren't.

Some of them, anyway. I'd been too busy ducking bullets to count how many they'd gotten. I took my phone camera out and took pictures. Then I suggested to Si that it was time to find alternate transportation.

"Mr. d.i.c.k-what is going on?" he asked.

"d.a.m.ned if I know. But telling the police that is going to take a h.e.l.l of a long time."

Si didn't hang around to argue, leading the way off the expressway toward the local roads nearby.

As I was kissing the ground beneath the airplane back at the airport, I'd realized that this was the shipment that the people who had hired me thought I would be following. So it had occurred to me, as it's probably occurred to you, that this might be some sort of elaborate setup for an inside job.

Call me paranoid. But as a working theory it had a lot more to recommend itself than spending the next forty or fifty years in a Thai prison, or even a few weeks in an interrogation center repeating the words "mai ro"-roughly: "I don't have a f.u.c.king clue what you're talking about."

A few hours later, we reached an office Si kept in Bangkok's Chinatown. After getting something to eat, Si headed back out to work some police contacts. I sat at an antique eighteenth-century English desk going through every number on my mental Rolodex to see what other information I could get about the robbery. I called friends and friends of friends connected with the emba.s.sy and the military mission, hitting up the favor bank for any information they could come up with. At the moment, I knew a h.e.l.l of a lot more than they did.

After spreading my number around town, I checked in with Danny in Afghanistan. There had been no attacks on our people since Ali Goatf.u.c.k's demise. There were rumors in the south that big money would be available for anyone who took up the crusade against "the imperialist Red Cell foreigners," and equally strong rumors that several jihadists had heard of what happened to Ali Goatf.u.c.k and realized there were easier ways to get money. He planned on spending a few more days in Afghanistan before heading back to the States.

Doc and Trace were available only via voice mail; I left messages telling them I was in Thailand and would check in later. Three p.m. in Bangkok is too-d.a.m.n-early in Virginia (three a.m.), so although I could have used a long-distance kiss from Karen, I decided to put off calling for a few hours. Instead, I went out for a breath of what pa.s.ses for fresh air in Bangkok, walking toward Sanchao Dtai Hong Kong. This is a temple where the locals believe you can "buy" good luck from the dead by making an offering. In my experience, luck is the one thing that can't be bought; Mr. Murphy is the single most incorruptible person on the planet. I kicked in a few baht anyway, considering it a cheap investment.

On the way back, I stopped at a street vendor and bought a kluay ping-a charcoal grilled banana, a local specialty. I took a wrong turn and had a little trouble finding the office, which proved to be a good thing: two police cars, lights flashing, pulled up in front of the building when I was a half-block away.

Crossing the street quickly, I developed a sudden interest in steel pans, mixing with the locals and tourists at the small street-side stall while watching the police. After a while they emerged empty-handed from the building. All but one drove away; the plainclothesman who stayed behind sat in a car about half a block away, strategically placed so he could see the entrance to the building.

I found a phone down the street and called Si. He didn't answer; instead of leaving a voice message, I punched in the number of the booth. Five minutes later, Si called back. We were now officially "people of interest" in the BetaGo case. The officials at the company had already spoken to the police, telling them that I had called in.

f.u.c.k you very much. Or should I say, f.u.c.k me very much.

"Do they think I robbed them, or am I just a witness?" I asked Si.

"The police are thinking witness. They found the rental car, too. At the moment, anything goes."

"What's the theory on the fact that the boxes were all left in the truck?"

"One's missing."

"Did they mention that it had a radio tag?"

"I don't believe so. I take it you haven't changed your mind."

"No."

"So you're still driving to Chiang Mai?"

"Probably." Chiang Mai is in northwest Thailand, and I was even less likely to go there than to turn myself in. Si was obviously calling from the police station, tipping me off under the guise of trying to convince me to come in and speak to them. "What's your situation?"

"Complicated."

"You think someone's trying to frame me?"

"Hard to know. Could be."

"I guess I'll see you around, then."

"I guess."

In the event of just this sort of contingency, Si and I had arranged to meet outside the National Museum in Bangkok's Old City, figuring it would be easy for me to blend with the tourists there. I left right away, casing the place carefully to make sure it wasn't being staked out. He arrived about an hour later and went straight to the ticket booth. I waited long enough to make sure he wasn't being followed, then bought a ticket and met him inside.

"Interesting art," he muttered, staring at a sculpture that looked like a mangled bronze bagel. "A statement on the futility of modern life."

"I got that myself."

We went out a side entrance and found a place nearby where we could rent a pair of motorbikes. Threading through some of the world's worst traffic, we headed in the direction of Min Buri, where he had some friends I could stay with. By the time we got there it was dark, and I remembered that I had meant to call Karen. After we parked the bikes in the alley, I told him I'd be in as soon as I used the phone booth I'd spotted down the street.

"Not a good time for the phone, d.i.c.kie," said Si.

I looked up. He was holding his pistol on me. Two men came out of the house with AK-47s.

"Si? What the f.u.c.k?"

I shifted my weight subtly so I could spring at him. I thought I had a fifty-fifty shot if I sprang-a fifty percent chance of getting shot in the head, and a fifty percent chance of getting it in the heart. But I never tested the odds-someone slammed a rifle b.u.t.t into my head from behind, and the world went dark.

Some kinds of unconscious are good. The unconscious that comes from drinking a bottle of Bombay at the end of a long day for example. Some are bad. This was one of them.

I have a vague memory of being bundled up in ropes and chains, tossed in the back of a truck, and driven for several hours. How long we drove for, and which direction, I had no idea. I do know what woke me up, though: the purring of a kitten. Three of them, in fact. I've never considered myself much of a cat person, but these certainly got my attention.

Then again, four-hundred-pound p.u.s.s.ies have a way of doing that.

I'd been deposited in a clearing that sat like a bowl at the foot of a steep rocky gorge. It was now early morning, and enough sun poked through the clouds overhead for me to see two Indochinese tigers sitting on boulders about thirty feet apart across from me, watching as another tiger sniffed the air maybe ten feet from my face. Indochinese tigers once roamed all through Thailand and the surrounding areas. Estimates of how many are left vary, but official counts have found less than six hundred. So just think: I had a good portion of the population all to myself. I can't tell you how honored I felt.

I got up to my haunches, moving slowly. One of the very few things you don't learn in SEAL school is how to deal with tigers. As a matter of fact, the only ones I'd seen until now had been in zoos or circuses. None were anywhere near as close as this one. If I'd turned and tried to run, he'd've been on my back for a piggyback ride in a flash.

Whoever had put me here had made sure I couldn't do anything foolish: An eight-foot chain held my leg to a nearby pin, embedded in a cement anchor. I got up slowly, sidling toward the eyebolt that held me in place.

The tiger coiled its head back, rocking ever so slightly as I moved. I hoped this meant that it was considering how to retreat without losing face in front of its friends. If so, his buddies weren't buying it. One gave a guttural growl. The other stood up, opened his mouth wide, and roared.

I'm no expert, but I'd guess the roar meant something along the lines of, "Kill the motherf.u.c.ker now." Because just then the tiger in front of me sprung forward, mouth wide. I pushed to my left, trying to duck him. That didn't work all that well, though at least I managed to avoid his teeth. In my reaction I'd forgotten the chain; my leg caught and I snapped to the ground.

The tiger flew over my body, claws ripping my shirt. I flailed with my arms and free leg, basically trying to convince him that I was not going to be an inexpensive meal. The big cat twisted back and growled, then retreated a few steps, haunch up and shoulders down, looking to spring again.

I moved back to the pin. This time when he jumped at me I was ready-I grabbed the chain with two hands and jerked it up across his chin and neck, smacking him as hard as I could. I wanted to get the d.a.m.n thing into his mouth, and use it to break his jaw or teeth, but he didn't cooperate, snarling and snapping and finally ducking under, swiping at my side with his left paw. I slammed a short length of the chain onto the side of his head, stabbing his eye; he let out a G.o.d-awful yelp and spun away, hulking on the ground a few feet from my reach.

Let me say this about tigers-they have really bad breath.

When I turned my head to check where his companions were, he sprang again. He got me off guard this time, and all I was able to do was poke him with my elbow as I went down. He snapped at me, and I launched my fingers at the eye I had hit earlier, trying to gouge it out. He yelped, twisted, and started to roll away over my feet. I scrambled back, just steady enough to plant my boot in his underbelly. He gave out a loud yelp, and clawed me with his back paw so hard I fell. The pain felt like a bullet had pierced the skin; I struggled to ignore it, grabbing desperately for the chain.

Fortunately for me, the tiger had had enough. It limped sideways, growling menacingly, but clearly defeated. His left eye hung down by goo and sinews across the side of its snout.

His two friends were on their feet. According to the reference books, tigers aren't cooperative hunters, but they apparently can't read either. The pair pranced down together with the precision of a synchronized swim team. I gripped the chain in my hands, trying to catch as much breath as I could. I was in pure reaction mode, waiting for whatever was going to happen to happen. Suddenly they sprung-but not at me. Apparently they believed in doing their bit for the survival of the fittest, and since their companion had proven he was the weakest one in the clearing, he had to go. The cats pounced on him from opposite ends; he growled weakly, ducking his head as if expecting the inevitable. A brawl ensued, with the two healthy cats nosing against each other and then squaring off over the prize. The cat on the left was bigger, with longer paws, but the one on the right fought more aggressively, pushing his face forward like a bulldozer studded with Ka-Bar knife blades. Their prize lay on the ground nearby as they locked jaws and rolled in the dirt. He rolled his good eye toward me but you'll have to excuse me for not feeling much sympathy.

The scrum ended with the cat that had been on the left backing off, growling but submitting. The smaller one-small being a relative term-stuck his nose in the air and shook his head, probably telling him to f.u.c.k himself. Then he went over to the fallen tiger, clamped his jaws on its neck, and put it out of its misery. With a last glare at the other tiger, he began dragging it backward.

To the victor go the spoils. And to the loser-me. The other tiger growled at his former companion, then turned and squared his head between his shoulders.

"Come on, you son of a b.i.t.c.h," I told him, swinging the chain between my hands. "Come get what your friend got."

Just a note in case you find yourself in a similar situation: Trash talk doesn't impress tigers.

My heart started pounding in my chest like an out-of-control drum box as the tiger began stalking me. Blood had been draining from my wounds and I was starting to feel a little lightheaded. My right knee creaked; I shifted a little more of my weight to the left.

Then I had one of those inspirations that spring from pure desperation-I growled like the tiger that had won the battle.

This got immediate results: The d.a.m.n thing roared back and sprung, teeth first.

My roar morphed into a wild man's screech as I swung the chain up between my hands, aiming for the beast's mouth. I got only air-the tiger flew off to the side, rolling in the dirt and yelping.

Something cracked behind me-the smooth, clean whistle of a Remington rifle-and the tiger stopped struggling.

"Don't you know tigers are an endangered species?" yelled Trace Dahlgren, scrambling down the rocks behind me. Toshiro Okinaga, rifle in hand, was right behind her.

Friends have heaved my b.u.t.t out of the frying pan so many times I probably shouldn't have been surprised that Trace and Tosho showed up when they did. Despite her Native American ancestry, Trace has a special affection for playing the cavalry, and Tosho has a knack for being where the s.h.i.t hits the fan that's almost Zen-like. Still, I was shocked to see them in Thailand.

Happy, glad as h.e.l.l, but shocked.

"The BetaGo vice president who hired you to check the operation was found dead in his summer house on the Italian Riviera two days ago," said Trace. She'd brought a medic bag with her and began cleaning some of my wounds. The antiseptic she used hurt like h.e.l.l. s.a.d.i.s.tic girl that she is, Trace used an ointment instead of gin. "He was stuffed in a duffel bag in the crawl s.p.a.ce under the house. The police think he'd been dead for a month."

"A month? Who hired me then? A ghost?"

"You tell us."

I had called the executive vice president, Jean Capon, at home and left a message before reaching him on the cell phone. The police knew who I was because of the publicity following my tour of St. Peter's, and managed to get in touch with Trace in Sicily.

Capon had been murdered, and the police were looking for theories about why. Maybe, they told Trace, whatever I was investigating had caused his death.

"A good theory, if he was alive when you were hired," she said.