Page 58 of Mastermind

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

WETWORK

Jessica and I kept a lookout on the building, guns drawn, in case any of the chimpanzees tried to make an escape. We debated whether it would be best to let them run and let Thai animal control deal with them, but we decided that an escaped chimp in an unfamiliar location is a dangerous chimpanzee. Never mind that we have no idea what’s been done to the chimps and if they carry any infectious diseases.

When the Royal Thai Armed Forces arrived, Jessica explained the situation to General Phathanothai and his aide, who then directed his unit to surround the building and enter through the front.

Although they had tranquilizer guns from the Thai wildlife agency, Phathanothai wasn’t taking any chances—his men were fully armed.

Jessica and I both stood outside at a safe distance waiting for gunfire. Other than a few warning shots, it never happened. They managed to tranquilize most of the chimps and get some of them into an armored truck. Afterward, General Phathanothai went in to inspect the facility before giving us the all clear to enter alongside the Royal Thai Police.

Captain Chuntakaro, a tall man who’s worked in Thai anticorruption for years, escorts us into the facility. “We’ve found twenty chimpanzees,” he explains to us in English with a slight Australian accent, revealing where he studied abroad.

We walk into the server room, where bodies of unconscious chimpanzees lie everywhere amid blood spatter across the floor. A few soldiers are holding the lifeless body of a chimp to take a photograph. Chuntakaro yells at them and they apologize, putting the chimp down and scurrying somewhere else.

“I apologize for their behavior,” Chuntakaro says to me. He then addresses Jessica: “If this is too traumatizing for you, we can move on.”

“Traumatizing for her?” I reply. “I’m the one who pissed myself. She took out the first chimp that attacked us.”

“My apologies,” says Chuntakaro.

Jessica gives him a polite smile, waving off the remark. How often does she have to deal with men assuming that because she’s a woman, and not one who hides it, she can’t roll with the best of them?

For a woman like Kieren, it’s probably different. She broadcasts military from a hundred miles away. And Jillian, her soldiering days behind her, seems almost relieved to have men assume she wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone take down a crazed serial killer at point-blank range. Which she did, but I got the credit for it.

Jessica has to navigate a world of chauvinism and presumably chooses her battles carefully. Every subtle insult she protests, every condescending remark she calls out, would only get in the way of her trying to solve the problem at hand. It’s a tremendous sacrifice of ego that I don’t think I could ever manage.

Perhaps she realizes that she wins by catching her suspects and closing her cases.

Results speak.

“Twenty chimpanzees?” asks Jessica. She turns to me. “We’re missing ten.”

I kneel down to inspect the body of one of the chimps I wounded. There’s a small metal band around his ankle. I put on my gloves and lift it for a closer look. I read a serial number and see a string of Chinese characters. Three other chimps have similar bands.

When I inspect the skin, I can see old scarring. They’ve had these bands for a long time.

Well before the chimps went missing from the zoo.

“What’s up?” asks Jessica.

“You want the bad news or the bad news?” I reply.

“Oh jeez. You choose.”

“Some of these chimps are from somewhere else. These aren’t the Monkey Village ones. I think those over there are.”

“Two groups of chimps?” she asks.

“At least. And, like you said, we’re still missing more than ten chimpanzees.”

Chuntakaro calls into his radio, ordering his men to spread out and look for escaped animals. I’m not sure if they’re anywhere near here or not, but it’s a smart precaution.

Jessica is taking photos with her camera to use for her report. She gets close-up shots of each chimp’s face and extra images of the wounded ones. From what I can tell, she’s treating them the same as she would victims in a human massacre.

Chuntakaro walks over to the section of the floor where I shot near the two chimps as they started to crawl inside. I can see the blood drops from where my bullet grazed one of them. Things got close.

“You were down there?” asks Chuntakaro.