The Joe Brennan Spy Thrillers Read online

  SAM POWERS BOX SET #1

  BANGKOK DEADLY

  SHADOW AGENDA

  THE GHOSTS OF MAO

  By Sam Powers

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  This edition uses U.S spellings of common words.

  Copyright 2019 J.I. Loome. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the Kindle Store and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Book One: Bangkok Deadly

  Book Two: Shadow Agenda

  Book Three: The Ghosts of Mao

  BANGKOK DEADLY

  A Joe Brennan prequel novella

  By Sam Powers

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  PATTAYA CITY, Thailand

  June 18, 2003

  It was sweltering, the mercury tipping out at about a hundred Fahrenheit. The target hadn’t moved in some time. Joe Brennan kept his eyes firmly on the spot and remained perfectly still; one moment of inattention and the chance would be lost.

  A small bead of sweat traced its way down his sideburn, by his ear, but he ignored it. Then he moved one hand forward slowly, deliberately, so gently as to be almost unnoticeable. If he snatched at it, he knew, he’d lose a clean shot. He slowed his breathing and concentrated, then drew in a breath and held it.

  He flipped his hand over quickly, slapping it down on the wooden arm of the beach lounger. But the mosquito was quicker, flitting away on the humid afternoon breeze.

  Damn it. Mother Nature One, supposedly deadly warrior, zero. He tipped back the bottle of beer and smiled at the thought. His fighting days were over. A tour in Iraq; another in Afghanistan; a third as a specialist with DEVGRU, the navy’s special operations division.

  Done.

  He began to daydream, the ocean and sounds of tourists drifting into the background, images of those days flitting in front of him like a twisted slideshow. Of roadside IEDs exploding, of men he knew grabbing for limbs that were no longer there. Of the burned-out bodies of women and children, hit by heavy ordinance.

  He closed his eyes, tried to shake it off. The headshrinkers said he had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but Brennan knew that wasn’t the case. They saw what they wanted to see. He wasn’t stressed to the point of breakdown. He was angry, and he was tired, and he had begun to wonder what the Hell point there even was in taking sides.

  But stressed? No. That mosquito had been lucky, he told himself. No beer and sun to take the edge off and it’s bitten its last tourist.

  In the water, a girl screamed with horror and ran up onto the beach while teenaged boys laughed at her plight, one of them dangling the leech they’d just picked off her. Leeches in saltwater aren’t common, but Pattaya had a few different varieties. Given the small city’s reputation as one big red-light hooker stroll, it seemed appropriate.

  The trip had been a gift from Joint Special Forces Operational Command on his rostering out, a thank you of sorts for a handful of missions that didn’t officially happen. But Pattaya? They’ve must’ve figured a guy who has been in the SEALs for eight years needed immediate companionship.

  Why here? Why couldn’t they book me a vacation in Florida, or Italy or something? He looked back over his shoulder toward the street that sat behind the beach. At night the promenade came alive with neon lights for nightclubs and restaurants, while thousands of young women, many desperate and trapped by addiction or abuse, put on their shortest skirts and their widest smiles and tried to separate Johns from their five hundred baht.

  It was probably money. Most decisions with JSOC came down to either politics or money, or sometimes both. Iraq had been a shitstorm, and they’d had the newest loadouts, the best vehicles, even support in tight spots from civilian contractors, barely competent as some were. But Afghanistan was the exact opposite. There, commanders talked in hushed tones about how long they’d be stuck there, trying to protect the mostly decent, deeply conservative people from theocrats who wanted to cut their hands off. They were preparing for the long haul, and that meant scrimping and saving every last dollar appropriated. Well, in military terms, anyway. They’d still pay a million dollars for a hammer; you just weren’t allowed to use it.

  Even the JTF2 guys from Canada were being treated better, and their politicians were the cheapest in the military world.

  But none of that mattered now, because he was out. For good. That’s what he’d told himself, what he’d promised himself for nearly a year. That was when the nightmares and flashbacks had started. He didn’t believe the nonsense about trauma, because Brennan had long been accustomed to turning his emotions off, going into professional mode, seeing the target as the target, and everything else in the world fading away. He no longer thought about those caught in the crossfire. It didn’t help anything to dwell.

  They told him that, too. You were just following orders. You’re an outstanding asset to our country, and a fine American. We’re proud of you. Now here’s a ticket to the world’s largest brothel.

  He closed his eyes again and thought of home. Middleport, New York was about as far from Southeast Asia as a guy could get, a sleepy town of about eighteen hundred souls an hour from downtown Buffalo. When he was a kid, he’d hated it there; it was quiet, and pleasant, a place people liked to retire to, just to get away from it all. It was a place youthful exuberance went to die.

  That was how he’d seen it right up until his first deployment. The longer he’d been away, the more he missed it. Quiet and unassuming, with old bones, and red brick, and the farmer’s market. No urban chaos, no third-world traffic. No scorpions.

  No extremist psychopaths with rocket launchers.

  “Hey mister!”

  Brennan shielded his eyes from the overhead sun and checked three o’clock. The kid was maybe ten, in khaki shorts and flip flops. The American had been studying the Thai language and was already fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. But compared to even the Chinese’ myriad ways of expressing themselves, it was a minefield of mispronunciation hazards. He’d been sticking with English throughout the four days of his two-week trip; for the most part, he got his point across. “Beat it kid, okay? Not interested.”

  The kid held up a plastic bag the size of a small couch pillow. “You want marijuana? Mary Jane? The Chronic?”

  Apparently, his English is just fine. “I said beat it.”

  The kid looked depressed. “Okay,” he said, giving up easily. He started to turn and walk away, then stopped. “Hey mister!”

  Ah, Hell, kid, leave me alone, would you? “What?”

  “You American?”

  “Uh huh. Yeah, why?”

  ‘They got my sister, these guys. Kind of bad guys, right?”

  “What?!”

  “My sister. She’s a good girl, a nice girl. My parents, they make us work the beach, selling drugs. But these guys, they took her to work in a club…” He gestured behind them, toward the city skyline, “…against her will. On the Soi Bua Khao, there is a party house…’


  “A brothel?”

  “Private. They take her there. They make her have sex with them, then sell her.”

  “Call the cops, get them in there…”

  ‘They laugh if I call. They call me a stupid kid. I think the club pay them…”

  It was a sob story, which in southeast Asia was par for the course. There were always people with nothing to lose, including dignity; and there were always rich western tourists nearby who wouldn’t mind parting with some baht.

  “Let me guess: you need money to buy her freedom. No can do, kid. The bank of Brennan is closed.”

  “She only twelve,” the boy implored. “Just come see for yourself. They will not hurt a westerner. That might actually make the police angry with them, huh. You come see…”

  “Take it somewhere else, okay, kid?” Brennan said.

  “They rape her.” The boy was sobbing gently. “I don’t want them to rape my sister…”

  Brennan no longer had family. His parents had died when he was seventeen, in a head-on collision with a semi-trailer. His sister, Nancy, had passed two years later at twenty-two from leukemia.

  “You got a sister? A mom? Think if it were her…” the boy begged.

  The voice inside nagged at him. Well? This is what you do, right Joe? You save people. That’s the whole point.

  Shut up, morality. “Look, you must know someone local who can help you, or some guy who actually lives here. I see old white dudes all over the place…”

  “They don’t care. They are just here for sex trade. But I watch you all morning when you were out walking. You never flirt back or let them go with you. You a good man. So maybe you help her.”

  Even if he wanted to help the kid, Brennan told himself, it was against special operations regulations to…

  And then he caught himself. I’m retired from that. I don’t have to do a goddamn thing they say. If I still had a conscience, I could follow it.

  He frowned. The bleak self-assessment didn’t seem fair. None of it would be so difficult if he didn’t care, Brennan had to admit.

  The boy hung his head. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, just the right age to fade into Pattaya’s background, with no one looking out for him. He’d seen kids like that in Iraq, street urchins for whom daily existence was a survival nightmare. They always seemed to be somewhere nearby, no matter how dangerous and potentially bloody the course of events. The little children always suffered the most.

  “These guys… they have guns, that kind of thing?”

  The boy frowned. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see any. But I don’t know. They’re pretty big guys… Almost old, like you.’

  Twenty-nine and past my prime… Brennan sat up. “Okay kid, I’ll help you look. But you pull any stunts, I’ll drag you to the nearest police station myself. Got it?”

  The boy nodded enthusiastically.

  Brennan rose and collected his towel and white v-neck t-shirt from under the rented lounger. He slipped his aviator sunglasses on and looked down at the kid.

  “Lead the way. How far is this, anyway?” They walked back to Beach Road, the long, curved tourist boulevard, sandaled toes sifting the soft white sand.

  “Not far. Like, ten minutes. I know the short ways.”

  They crossed the busy street, waiting fully a minute before the ongoing parade of scooters, motorcycles and baht buses – semis converted to covered-wagon taxis – slowed enough to dart over to the sidewalk. It was crammed with pedestrians, western men young and old, mostly on their own, the small groups of ‘lady boys’ giggling, brushing their arms as they walked by. Some could barely pass for the other gender, but most wouldn’t have been kicked out of the average ladies’ room.

  “Hey!” a young sex worker said as they passed, “free buffet and you meet a nice lady, go have fun, yeah?”

  Brennan avoided the urge to ask if they could just have the free buffet. There were probably as many things crawling in the kitchen as in the mattresses upstairs. The kid turned right, down a side street. There was less foot traffic but it was still busy, the narrow street lined with storefronts advertising factory outlet sales. Identical lemon-colored condo buildings loomed over the street.

  The kid was moving quickly but fluidly, like the route was familiar. Every few moments, he’d glance back to make sure Brennan was still following him. Taxis and three-wheeled tuk-tuks honked and accelerated in the background din of the city at midday.

  The kid turned a corner and stopped, just ahead of another set of market stalls. “She is in the building at the end of this street. I-- I will stay here, make sure coast is clear.”

  “Don’t worry, kid, you’ll be fine. Whoever these guys are, we’re going to work it out like business, okay?” It was the percentage play to just pay the hoodlums off. Guys off the street knew not to turn down found money, and they could find a million other local girls to mess with, some even willingly. Besides, nothing in Thailand cost more than a parking ticket back home.

  “These guys, they’re not afraid of anyone,” the boy said.

  “Then they’re pretty stupid. Everyone has something they’re afraid of, or should.”

  The kid frowned and screwed up his expression. “How come?”

  “It keeps us on our toes.” But the kid looked terrified. “Fine, stay here. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Dealing with upset, paranoid locals was a daily reality in urban combat and Brennan was an old hand, even at just twenty-nine. But he didn’t speak the language, which could be an issue, and he didn’t know what the value of a hooker’s services would run. Plus, he was a westerner, and he’d learned Americans didn’t always have the best reputation overseas for humility or contrition.

  He rounded the corner. The street ran between two more rows of storefronts on either side, single story buildings set between the taller apartment blocks. At the end, it was closed off by the front door to a nightclub, a bouncer sitting on a stool even in the middle of the day, the kind of place that had enough trouble already to risk its license on western kids being served – or just averse to paying the necessary bribes.

  And the signs outside were all in Thai. That was a bad sign; that meant only locals went there, and in a town like Pattaya, which relied on tourist dollars, that meant they weren’t the friendliest locals, either.

  The guy at the front door was heavyset, with thick, wavy black hair and square sunglasses. He puffed on the cigarette like he needed the nicotine to live; then he noticed Brennan had stopped walking up the street and gestured his way. Then he nodded to the club behind him. “What you waiting for, farang? You lost on your way to kiddie park, or you want to come in have some real fun, like a real man?’

  “What do you have to offer?” Brennan said, resuming his slow, cautious approach, giving an ear to the pavement behind him, checking window reflections for anyone on his six. “What can a guy do to unwind in this establishment of yours?”

  “For just two hundred baht, you can come in and find out.”

  “Yeah?” Brennan approached the doors. He could hear disco thumping through them. “What do I get for that?”

  The man opened one of the doors, the music thundering out in bass-heavy rhythms. Inside, Brennan could see into a darkly lit larger room, down a short corridor. A performer was pole dancing behind the bartenders; it was dark, but she was lit from stage level, like a giant in a spotlight. Ahead of the bar, shadows in miniskirts that were barely there and thongs that covered next to nothing flitted in and out of one another’s way, their conversations inaudible over the thump of the DJ track.

  Brennan was about to pull out his wallet and pay when he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Something was wrong. Not just the immorality or sleaze of the place; something was off about the man’s pitch. The bouncer arched his fingertips together, like he’d forgotten for a moment what to do with his hands, rocking a little on his stool.

  Okay. I paused… and suddenly he’s nervous.

  The wallet. The bouncer
wants to see what I have in there because…

  There is no girl.

  They just want to know if I’m worth robbing.

  He resisted the natural urge to look back over his shoulder, to the corner where he’d left the kid. He was probably long gone anyway, the little con man.

  Brennan knew one option was to just turn and walk, but then they’d have probably set upon him, leery of any prey that negotiates its way out of a snare. Instead, he reached into his front pocket and took out the old active-wear, Velcro snap canvas wallet he’d been carrying for nearly a decade. Then he opened it up to show off the thick wad of baht – only about three hundred bucks in U.S. currency, but more than enough to get the hyenas circling.

  The doorman reached into his front pocket and took out a small ‘Blackberry’ flip phone, the type Brennan had seen cropping up everywhere recently, people hammering away at the tiny keys with their thumbs with surprising dexterity. The doorman started tapping something, then pushed a button.

  “What was that?” Brennan asked with a smile. “Let me guess: that was a message to the other guys that their free lunch has arrived?”

  The doorman’s expression turned deadly serious and he stared Brennan down. “You think you’re funny, farang? Just another arrogant westerner come to our town, not showing the proper respect…”

  Behind him, Brennan heard an engine rev, then tires screech to a halt as a car blocked the narrow street. Four men climbed out. The doors to the club swung open and two more men exited. The bouncer reached into his waistband and took out a pistol. “You think it’s funny now, American? Eh, farang meung?”

  Brennan turned ninety degrees and backed up toward the adjacent storefront. He glanced over his shoulder at its front door.

  “They are closed, hua kuay…” the man crowed. “But we’re going to give you a souvenir of your visit you never forget…”