The Gold Heist

The novel begins with Samantha, a clever ex model, policewoman and now private eye, cremating her brother in Cootamundra, NSW, Australia, after his suicide. She is devastated to find her only sibling had gambled away the long held family farm but is determined to buy it back from the bank somehow.
In Brisbane, Australia, bouncer Bret escapes jail but lands a hefty fine and legal fee for evicting and almost killing the drunk outside a nightclub. A troubled loner, born in Malaysia, he lands a well paid fly in and out job as a security guard at a gold mine in Indonesian Borneo. His Malaysian passport allows him residency in Johor Baharu, close to Singapore, during leave breaks.
Sam investigates missing files from a gold trading company on Sydney’s Mascot airport and an employee’s hit and run occurs. Then Sam's Bondi apartment is trashed and she is accused of murdering her brother by a jealous ex-lover hoping to `inherit’ the family farm. Sam, working on a sleuth job that night, has no good alibi.
Visiting Bangkok, Bret protects a young lady writer from an Aussie drunk but ends up in a Thai jail. Bailed out by an Asian Triad cartel, Bret becomes seriously compromised by them. His Malay girlfriend disappears. He is `forced’ to hijack a helicopter carrying a huge gold shipment or face an unknown future.
Meanwhile, Sam flees to Singapore on a borrowed passport, becoming `Janet’ and her compatriot, Garry, follows a lead in Malaysia. `Janet’ and Garry chase the millions of dollars reward for recovering the gold but he disappears. `Janet’ flies to Bangkok, is snatched by corrupt police from her hotel room, escapes, but is re-captured by the Triad gang, drugged and wakes beside Garry in a small bare cell, both wearing only underwear.
Days later, after a bizarre sex scene and fight, Garry dies by gunfire, a criminal boss is left for dead and `Janet’ avoids being shot and creeps out, now nude, bruised but unhurt, carrying the boss’s empty machine gun. Finding her suitcase in a storage room, she dresses, and carefully checking, finds herself in a now deserted underground complex with a moored powerboat adjacent, floating in a hidden cave. In an office she finds weapons, loads up, grabs cash, her, Garry’s, and other passports from an open safe, then downloads a computer’s memory onto flash drives she locates. Taking what she needs, Sam leaves in the gang’s powerboat and gains the open sea. She eventually makes it back to Singapore from Thailand by train, after cleverly changing her appearance and identity twice, using various passports found in the safe.
Bret helps to load the gold onto a yacht after landing on an isolated beach in a nearby country, the chopper pilot is killed and Bret is shot in the leg while trying to escape by swimming away. He is left for dead as darkness falls and the large gold laden yacht leaves after towing the chopper into the sea.
Found unconscious by local villagers, he is saved, pleads memory loss after collection by authorities, and is returned to Australia. There, he pays for forged documents to change his identity to avoid connection with the hi-jack, and to obtain a new passport. Seeking to avenge his near murderers and recover the gold, Bret finds Sam’s employer, Christine, in Sydney via various leads. They both end up joining Sam in Singapore where her love affair with a friend, previously transferred from Sydney, has gone sour.
Searching the gang’s records found on Sam’s pilfered flash card, they track down the yacht carrying the stolen gold to a nearby Yacht Club where it’s being repaired after a lightning strike and becalming in the South China Sea.
The novel ends after a fight on a powerboat towing the yacht drags it onto a reef, then the yacht is burnt to the waterline in the Malacca Strait. A final trouble takes place in Singapore before a wounded Bret falls into Sam's arms back in Australia.