Point of Contact

He approached the automated gate and it swung open. No guard was in the shack, but he was certain the security cameras were logging license plates. With the brim of his hat pulled over his eyes and his head tilted down, he was confident that his face wouldn’t be seen by the cameras, allowing him the slimmest possibility of denial if it came to that.

Jack pulled out onto Changi North Crescent and headed for the PIE. It wasn’t the fastest route, but he’d done it enough times to feel comfortable taking it even if for some reason Google Maps or the onboard-vehicle GPS couldn’t pull up his route.

He passed a silver Toyota minivan parked at the curb, facing in the opposite direction. He saw the driver’s face when a bolt of lightning flashed across the Toyota’s windshield as the big wipers cleared away the rain. Dark, scowling eyes beneath a thick unibrow tracked him as he passed. A Turk? Maybe. Hardly worth noting, except the Turk tracking him sat next to a blond man in his mid-thirties who was shouting into a cell phone.

His eyes also caught the bright black-and-white license plate bolted to the front. Easy to read, at least part of it. SAM 00 was all he caught. It reminded of a dead friend, Sam Driscoll. It stuck in his brain.

But the mini movie scene in the front seat of the Toyota was over in a flash — literally — and Jack didn’t think any more about it as he turned left onto Upper Changi Road North.

* * *

The AYE was mostly clear of traffic at this hour, but especially so in this weather. There were a few semi trailers whizzing along, their big tires spraying plumes of water off the asphalt, but few cars. Jack couldn’t make out the make or model of the vehicle several hundred yards behind him, but the halogen headlights had tracked with him for twenty kilometers now. Hard to believe it was a Dalfan surveillance team. Lian made it clear to her team he was never to shake them again. If that was a Dalfan vehicle following him, they’d make themselves known to him and keep close. More likely it was just a commuter coming home late from work in a storm.

Jack’s high-profile van rocked violently as a sudden burst of gusting wind buffeted his vehicle. He wasn’t interested in slowing down. A few kilometers farther, his spine tingled when the tires hydroplaned; he could almost feel the Nissan lifting off the pavement and skimming along on a thin sheet of water. A moment later he regained control easily enough and backed off his speed just a bit, only to have a big rig roar past him, spraying his windshield with even more water than the storm was throwing at him.

But Jack noticed that when he slowed down, so did the car behind him. Isn’t that what a tail would do? he asked himself. Jack chuckled. But so would a cautious commuter if he saw the idiot in front of him nearly lose control.

Jack turned on the radio and hit the scan button. Most of the stations were in English. When he heard a melodious British voice announce “BBC World Service,” he locked in the number.

“News from Asia,” the female voice began. “More trouble in the South China Sea. Vietnam filed a formal protest earlier today with the United Nations after an incident involving the collision of a Chinese minesweeper and a Vietnamese fishing trawler near the disputed Spratly Islands. In an exclusive BBC Radio interview, the Vietnamese foreign minister complained of several recent encroachments by Chinese naval vessels in territorial waters claimed by Hanoi.”

Jack heard more news: a meeting of ASEAN defense ministers, declining agricultural exports from Thailand, and a new fifty-two-week high for both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock indexes. But it was the weather forecast that had caught Jack’s attention.

“The Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Perth is upgrading a tropical low in the Java Sea approximately one hundred and seventy-seven kilometers southeast of Singapore to a category-one tropical storm with gusting winds exceeding ninety kilometers per hour. Locally, expect strong gusting winds and heavy rainfall to continue for the next forty-eight hours with possible flood warnings for low-lying areas in Singapore, eastern Malaysia, Borneo, and Sumatra.”

“That can’t be good,” he said out loud, grateful it wasn’t hitting Singapore. He wondered how bad the storm would get. One hundred and sixty kilometers worked out to be about a hundred miles. Pretty far away. But fifty-five-mile-per-hour winds out there still meant a big-ass storm.

As if on cue, the car behind him flashed its turn signal and dove onto an exit ramp. Jack was practically alone on the road now. Fifteen minutes later he exited, turning onto Pioneer Road in the industrial district, heading for Tanjong Kling Road.

* * *