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five-foot-long black plastic Pelican™ case and a blue-striped military ammo can from the back of the Land Rover, but Wallis shook his head.
    “Leave it there for now,” he said.
    “Are we still in the clear?” Lanyard asked.
    “So far, but the shit will definitely hit the bloody fan when those Rangers are found.   We need to be gone before then.”
    “With our assets secured and all loose ends tied, I assume?”
    Wallis nodded.   “Exactly.”
    “What about Pauley?”
    “He won’t walk away from his business, and I can’t see him lasting long under Thai interrogation.”
    “Same with our client, I’d wager.” Lanyard nodded his head knowingly. “He’d give us up in a heartbeat.”
    “We’ll have to see to it that he never steps foot in Thailand again,” Wallis acknowledged.
    “Must have been tempting to just give Jack one more body to stash.”
    “If there was time for a proper disposal, yes.   But we’d be pissing away a chance to retire in style.”
    “You really think he’ll go for it?”
    “A man of his wealth, power and ego?” Wallis shrugged.   “I don’t think he’s capable of saying no to what we’re going to propose.”
    “But aren’t we rushing things a bit?”
    “The timing’s bad.   Another big cat hunt first would have been better.   I’m going to see if Draganov can push things along a bit.”
    “What about Hateley’s Cloud?”
    “We still need to get it out to keep him focused on the big prize.”
    “But not through Yak, I take it?”
    Wallis shook his head firmly. “No, it wouldn’t take him long to put two and two together and rat us out.   We’re better off going south.”
    “You mean cross down into Malaysia?”
    “It shouldn’t be a problem.   Our visas are still good, and we've got Kai to grease the proper palms.”
    “Fucking Kai.”
    “He’ll help.   He has no choice.”
    “Still, it’s a long way to drive with contraband in the boot and Kai being Kai.   What about the boat?”
    “The Avatar?   In the open seas? This time of the year?” Wallis cocked his head, a slight smile forming in his grizzled face.
    “Not our favorite way to travel,” Lanyard acknowledged with a grimace, “but there’s a nice dive spot at Ko Tanga where we can sort things out with Kai.”
    “Fine by me.” Wallis shrugged. “I’ll set up the meet.   Let’s get this done.”
     
    *     *     *
     
    After locking up the Land Rover, the two men shouldered the loads, and headed into the trees behind the shed.
    Twenty yards into the dense forest, Quince pulled a remote device out of his jacket pocket and pressed a button.   Instantly, deep in the trees, a periodically-flashing firefly became faintly visible.
    Using the flickering light as a guide, the two men slowly and methodically worked their way through the trees and brush, using the walking sticks to push tangled vines and large leaf fronds aside, and to warn any lurking creatures of their direction of travel.
    The occasional whisper of a long snake tail disappearing into the thick underbrush spoke to the value of their precautions.
    Finally, the two men stepped into a small, machete-cut, ten-foot-square clearing, two-thirds of which was taken up with a deep hole surrounded by piles of recently cut brush and vines, a stack of six-foot boards, a folded black plastic tarp, chunks of sod, a pair of shovels, and a much larger pile of rope-entangled and machete-chopped lengths of bamboo that — earlier in the evening — had formed a secure shooting platform for Michael Hateley.
    Wallis stepped up to the edge of the six-by-six-by-eight-foot-deep hole that he and Lanyard and Gavin had dug several months earlier for just such a contingency, glanced down at the pair of machetes lying across the two twisted bodies at the bottom, and turned to Lanyard.
    “Any problems I should know about?”
    “Not really.   They were busy cutting the bamboo up into smaller pieces when the older one started getting pushy about