Chapter 36
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Suratan
The narrow rock channel of deadly rapids tried to kill Flint before he’d crossed ten feet of it.
With Drake and Gaspar watching from the satellite and connected on comms, he’d dropped alone into the river upstream. He’d made quick progress under the limited skyglow. Too quick.
He had only a moment to settle and engage his infrared night-vision rig clamped to his helmet for the run through the gorge. The beam illuminated the water in front of him well enough to navigate.
He came into the gorge with the current already running hard.
The kayak picked up speed that he couldn’t slow. Whitewater pounded loudly in his ears, making comms difficult to hear.
The rock walls closed in until they were uncomfortably close on either side of the inflatable packraft.
At this point, the gap was fifteen feet across, maybe less. The big river had nowhere else to go, so it stormed through the narrow channel fast and angry, creating churning white water where it broke over the rocks and cold black holes in the deeper pools.
“—member, your whole job now is to stay in the boat,” Drake’s voice said in his ear, breaking up under the roar. “Two to four minutes and you’ll be —” The rest washed out in the noise.
They’d covered this during the planning. The high, narrow walls threw the gorge into deep shadow.
If the packraft flipped or he came out of it, he would die. No question. The water was too rough and too cold. It was the middle of the night, and no one was coming to pull him out.
He had to ride it out and keep the boat under him until the gorge opened up downstream and the river had room to spread and slow down. That was the only way through.
“Copy that. Stay in the boat. Keep it upright. Let the water carry you down to where it calms,” he said, knowing Gaspar and Drake would hear him over comms if they could filter out the noise of the rapids.
“—say again? Flint, confirm—” Drake cut out and then came back. “Stay in the boat.”
Without warning the bottom disappeared from under him like stepping off a cliff, and he went with it.
The kayak’s bow tipped, the packraft dropped into a hole and buried its nose in the churn at the bottom. Cold water came over his head and filled the boat to his waist, then drained out through the self-bailing floor as fast as it had come in.
An instant later the river had the boat caught in its churn. The packraft spun and rolled. If he didn’t act, the river would flip it and dump him into the black water.
He drove the paddle deep into the water on the right and pried with as much strength as his leverage allowed until the bow came up again.
The current grabbed the kayak and hurled it toward the left wall.
He jammed the blade against the rock. The boat checked, swung off, and shot back into the channel.
The force jolted up his arm to the shoulder, rattling his bones all the way to his teeth.
Any closer and the speed would have dragged the hull along the rock face and ripped it open.
But he stopped the hull short of the wall.
“Nice work,” Drake said in his ear. “That was the easy part. No victory lap yet.”
“Copy that,” he replied to let them know he’d heard, just before the rapids grabbed him again.
He had no more time to talk. The raging roar filled the gorge wall to wall, so loud he felt it reverberate through his body.
The river never let up. Paddle right, brace left, lean into the wave, keep the bow downstream because the moment it turned sideways the river would fold the boat around a rock with him inside it.
Drake said something through the comms, but the whitewater buried his voice.
A standing wave reared up in front of him, taller than his head. He put the bow straight into it and dug. The kayak climbed, hung, and punched through the top, and for half a breath he was airborne.
He came down into the trough on the far side. The impact slammed up through his spine and the next wave was already there.
Finally, the walls of the gorge began to fall back. The water still ran fast but it stopped trying to stand on end. He let the current carry the inflatable boat the last stretch and got his breath, arms burning, water sloshing cold around his legs in the bottom of the kayak.
Then the gorge spat him out, and the river opened wide and slow in front of him, and the compound he’d come to breach was ahead. He turned off the infrared night vision.
This was the part that made Graves’s cliff dwelling totally defensible. Graves was betting no sane man would attack through that gorge and if he did, he’d be alone with no gear, no help, soaked, half drowned, and too exhausted to fight.
Flint figured no man before him had ever actually tried.
“Time for that victory lap,” he said into the comms. “Phase one complete.”
The river current here was slow and wide, the way Gaspar’s photos had promised, and after the gorge it felt like still water.
Flint kept low in the kayak and let it carry him. He dipped the paddle blade only to hold his line concealed by the cliff’s shadow along the bank.
“I’m through the gorge,” Flint said. “Heading for the compound.”
“We see you,” Drake said. “Take your time. Nobody down there knows you’re coming.”
The land side of the luxury compound wasn’t visible from the kayak. Gaspar’s satellite photos showed open ground to a gated fence with lighting around the grounds and along the driveway. Graves was prepared for unauthorized entry on the land side.
On the river side, Graves’s compound perched along the cliff ahead, four levels terraced up the rock face. Low lights illuminated the terrace steps, the deep eaves, and the quay where the stone would be slick.
The quay and the boathouse were at the bottom, where he was headed.
Above that the main house, with the security station and the household staff.
Above that the third level, lit and running around the clock, where the records were kept and the work was done.
The top was Graves’s private rooms, showing only the same low night lights as the rest.
Flint’s arms were still tense and shaking after the hard fight, and the cold of the spray had worked into his shoulders. He rolled them slowly to loosen up and waited for the muscles to come back.
“We’re assuming this thing operates as a private WITSEC which Graves, or whatever his name is, sells to those who can afford to pay for it.
” Gaspar recapped to keep everybody’s mind on the task at hand.
“We’re looking for three things when you get in there.
Two of them should be easy to find. The third might not be. ”
“We believe one business is doing two different things,” Drake said.
“On one side, people pay to disappear because they are under immediate threat. Often threat of prosecution, but we imagine it could be threats from others. Quinn paid. So did Sear, and the prince. Graves’s operation erased them in a way that seems preposterous and gave them whole new lives. ”
Flint dipped the paddle and pulled and then rested again. The boat moved easily. He kept the blade in the water, feathered against the current, holding his path along the river.
“On the other side are people who didn’t make the choice. Graves decides they need to disappear, and they do. That’s what happened to Kyle Patterson. We think it happened to Oakley too,” Flint said. “Why he didn’t simply kill them is a question we can’t answer yet.”
“And we still don’t know how the two halves connect,” Drake replied.
The quay was taking shape at the foot of the cliff. A stone dock worn smooth, a low boathouse, two boats riding the current on their lines. Flowering vines hung off the rock above it and trailed down into the black water at the edges.
“There’s a lot more we don’t know,” Flint said. “Why Kyle got caught up and where he is now. Where Oakley is now or who she really is. Those answers are up there.”
“In the records,” Drake said. “Because Graves must keep records. He can’t run this thing in his head. There’s a paper trail and we’ll find it.”
“And here’s the other thing. You can’t erase a person from every database in the world and give them a new identity that holds up,” Gaspar said.
“Even governments can’t do that. There’s just too many databases out there.
But Graves has found a method to erase all the ones that usually get checked.
Something no one else has figured out. That’s what we really need. ”
The boat carried him into the shadow of the cliff, where the low lights didn’t reach the water. The current eased. The quay was close now.
“Graves is the one I want most,” Flint said. “He’s the man who understands it. Get Graves and we’ll have what we came for.”
There was a catch.
The compound was completely on cameras, and security teams were awake watching the feeds around the clock. The moment he started up the cliff, he’d be visible on their screens.
The success of the whole climb came down to reaching those men before one of them happened to look at the right feed.
“Approaching the quay now,” Flint said.
The vines hung off the rock above the quay and trailed into the water, just as they had in the photos. Flint came in under them, into the shadow the cliff and the eaves threw even over a lit property, below the angle any camera on the levels above could reach.
The kayak slid out of the current and into the flat water along the stone.
He was inside the fortress before anyone inside knew the situation had changed. But the second he left this shadow the cameras would have him.
The two boats rode at the quay, dark shapes against the stone, rocking a little in the current.
One was a long-tail, narrow and long, the kind that worked this whole river.
The other sat lower and wider and meant for speed.
If the night went wrong and Graves ran for the water, that was the boat he’d run for.
Flint brought the kayak alongside the long-tail and tied off to its cleat, low, where the hull hid from view. He left the helmet and its rig in the kayak. Out of the gorge he didn’t need it.
He went up onto the quay on his hands and knees, water running off him onto the stone, the paddle left behind in the kayak.
He heard the river, the water dripping off his clothes, and somewhere along the quay, a boot scraped along the stone.
The sentry stood at the far end where the stone steps started up the cliff, his back to the water, looking up the stairs. A rifle hung off his shoulder on a strap.
Flint crossed the quay low and quiet, his wet feet making no sound on the smooth stone. The sentry started to turn at the last second. Too late.
Flint grabbed him around the throat, dragged him down, and held the choke. Then he taped his mouth, zip-tied his wrists and ankles, and eased him behind the low wall at the foot of the stairs, out of the camera angle. He took the rifle.
He crouched there a moment, listening. When no one showed, he disabled both boats.
The stone steps climbed the cliff, level over level, low lighting the whole way up. There was no dark stretch to hide in. The cameras would see him from the first step until he disabled them.
Flint started up.
The steps were cut into the cliff and worn smooth, slick with the damp that came up off the river.
Flint went up them on the outside edge, close to the drop, where the eave threw its shadow and his weight wouldn’t echo into the rock.
He kept the rifle across his back and his hands free for the climb, and he moved fast, because every second on these steps was a second on a screen in the room above.
The first landing opened onto the wide veranda of the main living quarters.
The long teak table was a black shape running down the veranda’s length.
The main house was behind it. Brighter light spilled out of one set of windows toward the back.
The security station where men watched cameras around the clock.
Flint stayed off the veranda and worked along the cliff side of the house, under the deep eave where the shadow was solid, until he reached the lit windows. He came up at the corner of one and looked in.
A bank of monitors lined the wall showing all the feeds laid out in a grid.
One man sat in front of them with his boots up and his chin on his chest, asleep or close to it.
The other stood at a counter on the far side with his back to the door, doing something with a kettle.
Neither one was looking at the wall of screens.
Which explained how Flint had made it all the way up the steps.
He found the quay feed and saw the corner of the long-tail and the flat water where the kayak sat, hidden under the angle exactly as he’d judged it. The unconscious guard at the foot of the stairs was out of sight.
Then he found the feed for the level above. He saw one man up there. Graves?
He had two choices. Go through the room, which meant two men and noise and the chance that one of them got a hand to a radio before he reached his target. Or go around it, up the next flight, and leave two armed men awake behind him, watching the screens.
He set the rifle against the wall where he could find it and slipped along the eave to the door.
Flint took the man at the kettle first and he went down quieter than the kettle would have.
The one in the chair came awake at the sound. His eyes opened wide when he saw Flint and his hand went for the radio on the desk.
Flint crossed the room and pinned the hand flat to the desk. He crushed the man’s throat until the body went slack. He held it longer than he needed to before he let go.
Three men down. How many more were there?
He glanced at the monitors. He checked the quay, the steps, the verandas, and the level above. No alarms so far.
He found the rifle where he’d left it and shouldered it again.
The next flight of steps climbed toward the third level where at least one man was working. Behind that glass was the private WITSEC operation control center. The records the business kept on everyone it had hidden and the method Graves used to deploy his identity theft operation.
Flint left the two guards on the floor and started up the steps toward the level above.
The steps narrowed where the cliff drew in. Flint went up slowly, listening, the rifle across his back.
The third level opened onto a terrace, narrower than the one below, open to the river and deep under the eave. The whole room was bright enough that Flint could see the server room, the operations center, the machines that ran the whole thing, and the Asian man working among them.
Flint had never seen him before. He wasn’t among Graves’s group in Bangkok. Compact and heavy through the chest, with short thick arms, moving about as if he owned the place. But definitely not Graves.
Still, he might know where the records and the method were kept and how to access them.