Nothing about the building opposite gave the slightest hint the men inside peddled death. Passers-by saw only the gaudy red and white sign that proclaimed ‘Top Racing’. It was fixed atop a low warehouse beside Jalan Sakeh, one of the principal north to south routes that cut through Muar, one of Malaysia’s oldest towns. Scott Pearce shifted on the hard office chair that had been his perch for eight days. He’d broken into an unoccupied office block opposite the motorcycle repair shop the previous week and discovered the perfect location for a long stakeout. The three-storey block was separated from Jalan Sakeh by a small car park which served the surrounding businesses. The ground floor was divided into four units – a cafe, clothes shop, convenience store, and accounting firm. In the offices above them were an import–export business, a financial adviser, a general trader and a food and beverage supplier. Pearce was in the general trader’s premises, surrounded by abandoned desks, broken old computers, mouldy files and musty carpet which had been chewed by rodents. It was a miserable place, but perfect for his needs. It had a functioning toilet, which he was careful to only flush at night, and the occasional, carefully planned visit to the convenience store kept him well supplied with food and drink.
He’d come to Muar on the trail of a gang of smugglers. After taking down the Black Thirteen group, he’d refused Huxley Blaine Carter’s offer of a job and had returned to the mission that had consumed him for the past two years: proving there were other, as yet unidentified conspirators involved in the terror attack he’d thwarted in Islamabad. Pearce’s conviction that some of the perpetrators had escaped justice had led to his dismissal from MI6, but he hadn’t allowed that to affect his determination, and had used his own money to finance his investigation.
Once the global travel restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic had been lifted, Pearce had returned to Thailand, but hadn’t gone back to Railay, the tropical paradise where he’d spent months posing as a climbing guide while investigating potential smuggling sites in the region. The last time he’d seen the golden sands of Railay beach, a cadre of Thai police officers and their criminal associates had been on his tail. He was too well known and his departure had been far too noisy to risk returning to the dreamy tourist retreat. Instead, Pearce had gone to Krabi, the main regional town, and bought an old fisherman’s boat that was just about seaworthy. The hull was almost rotten, but the fifty horsepower Yamaha engine had been well maintained. He’d taken the leaky, flaking boat to Kok Arai, a tiny uninhabited island that lay off the Thai coast. Concealing the boat in a crag on the north of the island, Pearce had slung his small waterproof backpack on his shoulders and swum round the 300-metre-wide weathered mushroom of jungle-capped rock, until he’d reached the start of the limestone scar that he’d last tried to climb a little over four months earlier.
The wounds on his forearms had long since healed, but the scars were a permanent reminder of his encounter with Lancelot Oxnard-Clarke and his far-right associates. The ugly, newborn flesh had no impact on Pearce’s climbing ability, and after pulling on his climbing shoes, he had started up the arduous route he’d failed to ascend months before. This time, he’d cleared the brutal overhang, pulled himself onto the vertical face and quickly picked his way through a sequence of pinches and crimps until he hauled himself onto the summit, a small plateau covered in lush grass. Further from the edge was thick jungle, and, as he’d suspected, Pearce had discovered a well-camouflaged hollow that contained a portable hoist and a cache of four crates. He’d prised open one of the crates to find two dozen Kalashnikovs. He’d opened the others and secreted tiny tracking devices in each of them. The bugs, which he’d carried with him in his waterproof backpack, were powered by tiny lithium batteries and contained locator beacons similar to a cell sim card, to enable satellite tracking.
Pearce’s backpack had held enough supplies to last a week, so he’d found a suitable hiding place in the surrounding undergrowth and had settled in to wait. He was looking for a group of smugglers he believed were linked to a Thai man he’d killed during the terror attack he’d foiled in Islamabad. The other terrorists he’d killed were local Pakistani recruits, but the Thai man was interesting. According to Thai Intelligence, his name was Chao Fah Jan, and they had a file on him that linked him to smuggling operations between Thailand and Malaysia. Pearce had been drummed out of Six because of his obsession with possible conspirators, and he’d followed the dead man’s trail from Islamabad to Bangkok, to track down the smuggling gang.
He’d sat atop Kok Arai for three days and nights, waiting to see who came for the cache of weapons. Each morning when the sun rose, he could hear the distant sputter of engines far below as little boats shipped tourists out to the island to climb its myriad routes. There didn’t seem to be as many climbers as there’d been before the pandemic, but there were enough to keep the local skippers in business. Pearce wondered whether his friend Ananada and his son Lek were down there. He couldn’t risk sneaking a look to satisfy his curiosity. As long as he stayed on the small plateau, he wasn’t worried about anyone finding him. The route he’d climbed was graded 8B and was the only way to his little patch of jungle – a deep ravine split the landmass, his column of stone cleaved from the rest of the mushroom-shaped island by a long-forgotten earthquake or tidal erosion. He watched tanned tourists summit the easier routes on the main island. Some of them would spend a while exploring, but most of them would simply pose for selfies before stashing their phones in waterproof pouches and making the nerve-racking jump from the edge to the sea far below. He’d hear their cries of delight as they surfaced.
Finally, on the fourth night, when the moon had been little more than a tiny cuticle, Pearce had heard the rhythmic sputter of an outboard motor. Thirty minutes later he’d sensed movement, and peering through the thick jungle, he’d seen a shirtless, lithe Thai man of no more than thirty crest the summit and pad through the jungle to the smuggler’s cache. The man wore 5.10 shoes and his pumped forearms spoke of considerable climbing experience. He’d used a system of ropes to secure the portable hoist and had then lowered the four crates of Kalashnikovs. Pearce had heard multiple voices calling instructions from below, perhaps four or five men. After about forty-five minutes, when the Thai climber had finished, he’d stowed the hoist and made the dive into the sea below.
Pearce had emerged from his hiding place and watched a thirty-foot fishing vessel head south-east. He’d been able to see three men lashing canvas over the crates of weapons. The climber and another two men sat near the pilot at the tiller. Pearce had gone to the other side of the small plateau and jumped into the warm water a hundred or so feet below. He’d swum to the crag where his small boat was hidden, ferreted in a larger rucksack for a satellite-enabled tablet computer, and, after booting it up, found two clear tracking signals moving south-east. Staying just out of visual range, Pearce had trailed the fishing vessel 200 miles south to Kuala Perlis, a Malaysian town located on the border with Thailand. There, he’d come ashore to discover the smugglers loading the crates into a small truck.
The bugs had made life easy, and after recovering his belongings from his little boat, Pearce had been able to track the shipment from a distance. First thing the following day, he’d bought a twenty-year-old Honda CR250 dirt bike for $300 and had followed the van south, stopping every so often to check progress on his tablet. His pursuit had led him through Malaysia and had finally brought him to the large motorcycle garage on Jalan Sakeh.
He’d parked his bike a block away and had scouted the neighbourhood before identifying the office that was to become his home. Breaking in had been a simple affair and he’d settled into a rhythm, watching the warehouse for sixteen hours a day, before setting up a camera that would cover the building while he slept. Each morning, he’d scrub through the footage to see what he’d missed, but so far there had been very little activity. No large vehicles came or went, and apart from a couple of motorcyclists who went into the building just long enough to be told their business wasn’t welcome, Pearce only saw the same gang of six men. They turned up daily, riding in on a variety of high-powered sports bikes, and stayed in the building for a few hours before dispersing. On the second night, Pearce had broken into the warehouse and installed a camera and tiny listening device in the main space. The Kalashnikovs were still in the building, concealed behind crates full of old motorcycle parts. The tiny office computer was broken and the keyboard was covered in a thick layer of dust. The filing cabinets were empty and the shelves held nothing but a couple of old motorbike maintenance manuals. There was a latent smell of grease, but no other sign that the place had been used as a working garage for years. It was nothing but a thin cover for this criminal gang.
The camera and bug had yielded little. Each day, the men came into the warehouse, played cards, traded stories of sexual conquests and financial triumphs before going their separate ways. It was as though they were waiting for something.
On the ninth night, Pearce discovered what that something was. Two men in a blue Nissan Urvan approached the building slowly. The motorcycle men hadn’t dispersed that day, and even though it was past midnight, they were still inside the warehouse. The surrounding businesses were shut, and the low houses that spread either side of the warehouse were dark. The delicious scent of the locals’ late-night meals still hung in the warm tropical air, but kitchens had long since fallen quiet and the inhabitants were in bed.
Two of the motorcycle men opened the corrugated steel doors and allowed the Urvan to drive into the warehouse. Pearce switched to the interior camera and saw the Nissan roll to a halt in the centre of the large space. The motorcycle men were gathered in a semi-circle, standing in front of the four crates of Kalashnikovs.
The two men in the van climbed out, nodded greetings at the larger group and swaggered round the vehicle. Pearce got the impression these men had seniority over the others. They opened the van’s rear doors, and Pearce was dismayed to see faces inside. Four women, bound and gagged and wearing nothing but their underwear, were huddled together on one side of the flatbed. Their tear-streaked faces and fearful eyes said it all.
They were to be traded for the guns.