Chapter 78: A Much Better Way

TL: LittlePeach

When I forced the door open and stepped inside, the man who'd been swaggering nonstop finally turned meek.

I slid the pin back into the grenade and went on, indifferent.

"I told you plainly that I have no interest in causing a scene here."

"F-fuck. You think I won't shoot?"

"...."

The moment I put the grenade away, he leveled the revolver at me again, his face ugly all over again.

Up, down, back and forth. Truly a scatterbrained bastard.

Without a word, I pulled the inside of my jacket wide open.

"...."

The pistol sitting black in its holster, and beneath it three or four grenades dangling in a cluster.

The instant he saw them, the man's face went white.

"I confirmed a while ago that there are no rounds in your revolver. Let's not waste each other's time."

"...."

"There's a limit to how cute I'm willing to find this."

Historically, guns and blades have always been the right answer for the kind who won't listen to words.

"So, uh, I think I'd better check the ledger.... Shall I pour you a cup of coffee, sir?"

The cocky bastard's whole manner went docile again.

When I strode inside, he shut the door politely behind me.

I dropped into whatever chair was nearest, and a hastily brewed coffee was set down in front of me.

"So, uh, could you tell me what the kidnapped gentleman looks like? The thing is, I only came on shift this morning...."

"Where's everybody else?"

"Well.... the others are usually out earning money at this hour. It's been so hot lately that traveling to Cambodia is off-season all by itself, so the tourists have dried right up. Kidnapping alone doesn't put food on the table.... So we do day labor at a construction site nearby during the day, and we only gather at night to do this sort of thing."

"So it's a second job."

"Yes, uh, second job...."

Hearing it laid out, it made sense.

Well, in a summer where simply breathing was enough to steam a man to death, not many people would go out of their way to travel to Southeast Asia, a place perfectly suited for roasting alive.

The kidnapping trade was a seasonal business too, in its way.

"Male, twenties. Shaggy hair, dark skin. Asian."

When I described Sparrow No. 10, the man started rummaging through a locker.

I watched in case he was digging out another gun, but what he came up with was an old notebook that looked like a ledger.

He skimmed it, then clicked his tongue with an awkward expression.

"So, according to the ledger, somebody matching that description was sold off to the Mango Farm early yesterday morning."

"Is the Mango Farm the only place around here that buys people?"

"These days, yes. It's the only place nearby that pays a premium for slaves. At some point the word got around that Sihanoukville is dangerous to travel in.... so there aren't many people getting kidnapped as easily as before, either."

That was true enough.

Unless it was a case like mine or Frank's, getting taken on purpose, who would meekly fall for a con that obvious?

"...."

As for our Sparrow No. 10, who appeared to have swallowed that obvious con whole, let's quietly file him as an exception for now.

*****

Now that we knew Sparrow No. 10's location, our plan naturally moved into its second phase.

While Crane No. 22 drove us into downtown Sihanoukville, I made a call on my cell phone.

Brrrrring.

Click.

-Sunny Kick?

"Yes. Frank. Have you been well?"

-Well? It hasn't even been a day.

He must have saved my number separately, because the response came back from Frank at once.

-What do you need?

"I wanted to ask you to squeeze me in, if there's a spare seat in that Mango Farm operation of yours."

-Hm? Welcome news, as far as I'm concerned. But didn't you say you were on vacation?

"Something came up."

-Hmm.

Frank seemed inwardly pleased that I wanted to cooperate with his operation.

He named the contact point right away.

-Good. There's a shopping mall on 810 Street in Sihanoukville called the New Star Store. We'll meet at the café on the second floor.

Before long the three of us drove up near the mall.

We parked in a back alley nearby and split up the roles between us.

"Let's share the situation by radio. Agent Crane, hold in the car. Agent Owl, stand by in the second-floor restroom."

"Understood, team leader."

"Good luck, sir."

My own personal read was that Frank was a man worth trusting.

But there's a line that has to be kept between official duty and personal feeling.

With a foreign intelligence service we suddenly had to coordinate with, starting off by exposing the faces of every NIS agent was out of the question.

To prepare for anything, I decided to go up to the second-floor café alone.

"Welcome, Sunny Kick. Sharp suit."

"Hello, Frank. You too."

When I reached the agreed table, he was in clean business casual, unlike the tourist getup of the day before.

Sitting across from him in a suit myself, I somehow felt like I'd come out for a business meeting.

Strictly speaking, it was a business meeting.

"Before we go any further, there's one thing I want to confirm. What change of heart made you call all of a sudden? Yesterday you didn't look like you had any intention of touching this."

"A reason came up for me to get inside the Mango Farm."

There was no need to dress up the situation we were in.

I gave him a brief rundown of the Cambodia dispatch squad apart from myself, then went straight to the part about one of our agents being seized as a laborer for the Mango Farm.

When I told him contact with the agent had been lost and we urgently needed to get into the farm, Frank's expression turned odd.

"So your man attempted an undercover infiltration of the farm with the same idea I had."

"...That's right. He's the sort of talent you'd trust with a job that heavy. He's our team ace."

"Hmm. Of course."

Frank nodded gravely at my answer.

The other agents were busy shaking their heads, but I had to protect the image of our youngest, Sparrow No. 10, somehow.

"Since we're sharing the same target now, I feel we need to direct traffic going forward. Would you share some intel on what kind of organization runs the Mango Farm?"

"Of course."

Frank nodded without hesitation.

He began by explaining the Mango Farm's armament, step by step.

"As I told you before, the men guarding the farm are Italian mafia. The organization is called the Carlo Family. The personnel stationed in Cambodia are there in the form of a dispatch squad, ten men in total. They rotate shifts, deployed every three months."

"Is it a separate business from the Mango Farm?"

"Correct. The Mango Farm itself is a local operation run by Malaysian overseas Chinese. When they process the mangoes in various ways and ship them out of the farm, the mafia mixes in drugs shipped over from their home country somewhere in that process and sends them out with the cargo. Think of it as a partnership."

"And where do they make the drugs?"

"They import product manufactured in Italy directly into Cambodia."

Cambodia apparently had no such thing as quarantine inspection, and a dry laugh escaped me before I knew it.

Long live Cambodia, land of opportunity for criminals.

"Three of the ten work rotating shifts, watching the laborers penned in the quarters so they can't run. The other seven patrol the farm on a wide circuit or take their rest, managing the property itself."

"What's their level of armament?"

"They have rifles and a good number of machine guns."

Listening to it, I had a rough estimate.

Ten men and firepower at that grade, well.

'No different from the Irobuchi-kai Coconut Warehouse I blew up a while back.'

There was no need to reach all the way back to the Coconut Warehouse, either.

Compared to the Shanyuan Society bastards holed up behind barricades in that apartment complex, this was simple enough to make me scoff.

Still, with Frank so puffed up about the whole thing, I couldn't very well treat it lightly.

"You said there were three dispatch squad agents including you? Thanks to that, a rather usable plan has just occurred to me."

"What kind?"

"Do you remember those van kidnappers from yesterday?"

"Of course."

"Last night I put them through the wringer and dug out every last detail of how they make contact with the Mango Farm and do business with it."

Frank produced a voice recorder and pushed it across to me.

"The whole transaction procedure is in there."

He seemed to have recorded everything the Korean-Chinese kidnappers knew.

"The three of you drive that van up to the farm and sell me off, as though you'd kidnapped me."

"Wouldn't they get suspicious if the faces are different from the people they usually deal with?"

"Westerners generally can't tell Asian faces apart."

"Ah. Fair enough."

The farm's men apparently didn't bother scrutinizing each supplier of bodies, as long as they got usable laborers out of it.

So he intended to carry out exactly what he'd originally planned the night before, an undercover infiltration of the farm in the guise of a kidnapping victim.

A textbook approach, worthy of an intelligence agent.

"I'll observe the situation inside for a few days, then take my chance and assassinate the three guards watching the laborers. After that I'll seize the minibus they use to transport the workers, load every last person into it, and drive straight out of the farm. You wait outside, and when you hear gunfire, cover me."

"You don't have other team members?"

"Most of my team is gathered in Malaysia. At the moment I'm the only one in Sihanoukville."

He was leading from the front more than I'd expected, exactly the way a team leader should, and I felt myself liking Frank more and more.

Only, that left one problem.

'Do I really have to sit around for days for one operation?'

I made a show of mulling it over, letting the pause stretch.

Apparently taking that for hesitation, Frank wet his lips with his tongue.

"The operational funds I've secured for this operation come to two hundred thousand US dollars. If the operation succeeds, I'll hand half of it over to your team."

"That much in operational funds?"

"That's the usual figure for one operation. The success bonus is separate."

Australia really did have money.

A country boasting steady economic growth on the back of natural resources that poured out like water, so of course the funds for a single operation ran that high.

'The NIS will barely cough up a bonus even after an operation succeeds.'

A hundred thousand dollars, a hundred million won.

I found myself licking my lips.

"Well? Will you accept my proposal?"

"Yes. I'll take it."

"Good. Take this recorder with you."

"But there's a much easier way than that plan."

"What is it?"

I'd heard him all the way out, so now it was my turn to put something on the table.

And I happened to have a fitting example to persuade him with.

"By the way, did you hear the news? Word is the Irobuchi-kai drug plant in Phnom Penh got blown clean off the map a few days ago."

"Hm?"

When I brought up the Irobuchi-kai out of nowhere, Frank went quiet for a moment.

Then he nodded slightly, as if to say he knew about it too.

"Are you talking about what happened at the Coconut Warehouse? Some madman rammed a pickup truck into it and blew it up."

"That's the one. You're well informed."

"I do know about it. Our Secret Intelligence Service tracks the movements of most of the drug organizations based in Southeast Asia."

"Ooh."

"But why bring that up?"

"Saves me having to explain, then. That was my work."

"...What?"

"The madman who rammed a pickup truck into that Coconut Warehouse is me."

"...."

For a moment Frank's expression went completely blank.

If he already knew the story, that made things simple.

I grinned at him, all confidence.

"Just hand over the van you took yesterday, and I'll make this Mango Farm look exactly like the Irobuchi-kai's place."

Right. Why go to all the trouble of an undercover infiltration and wait days for an opening?

With one van, the whole thing would be done in a single night.