Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER TWELVE

The woman at the railing with her eyes on the man at the bar didn’t think he looked much like a CIA officer, but he was American, he was here shaking down the bartender for information, and the bartender was having none of it. She knew this place was a Wo Shing Wo hangout, so either Fan Jiang had been here at the bar, or one of the Triad men who’d been involved with moving Fan Jiang had talked. Either way, the American had to be Agency; the coincidences were too many for any other explanation.

The woman calling herself Lilly and pretending to be Scottish struggled to maintain a calm countenance. She smiled and nodded at something Katrin said, but on the inside her guts were turning into knots.

The last thing she needed on this op was for the fucking CIA to start snooping around the target area on the very day of her hit.

Just as Lilly wasn’t really Scottish, her name wasn’t really Lilly; it was Zoya. Zoya Feodorovich Zakharova was about as far from a hippie Scottish vagabond as she could be. She was an operative in the SVR — Russian foreign intelligence; she was in her early thirties but easily passed for ten years younger. She was here in HK operating with a clandestine SVR paramilitary unit. She and her task force had been ordered to bring Fan Jiang back alive to Moscow so that her intelligence service could learn everything possible about Unit 61398, including how to infiltrate both China’s and America’s most secure military and intelligence computer networks.

Zoya was the officer in charge of the task force, which meant in theory she shouldn’t be out here like this, running low-level surveillance. But she found herself doing most of the footwork on this op herself because the men working with her were ex-soldiers first and foremost, and while they could shoot and scoot with the best of them, they weren’t the slickest bunch when it came to blending into their surroundings. No, low profile was Zakharova’s specialty, along with language, intelligence collection, surveillance, and countersurveillance, so she was here, playing a role that allowed her to sit in one of only two bars with a view of the bay, to attempt to get a tactical picture of the area so her direct-action team of snakeeaters would be ready to board the ship when it returned this evening.

The Russians knew much of what was going on here in Hong Kong because of a highly placed source in the HK Triads. They’d even known that this particular hole-in-the-wall was frequented in the evenings by Wo Shing Wo men who smuggled heroin into the city from Vietnam, but Zoya had not known that the CIA was aware of Fan Jiang’s existence, much less his escape from mainland China.

This was decidedly bad news.

The blonde from Hanover kept talking; now it was a story about buying bad pills in Korea the previous month, so Zoya looked up at her and smiled with an understanding nod. She realized the German girl had no idea the American had even entered the bar, and it occurred to Zoya she hadn’t noticed the man enter herself, and this bothered her. She wondered how a man could have slipped into a nearly empty room without being picked up by someone with her skills of perception.

A few minutes ago she had been wondering if the time was right to slip away from the vapid blond German and probe the Chinese bartender for information. When she’d glanced up she’d seen the agitated, nervous look on the bartender’s face. Only then had she noticed the man sitting at the bar talking to him.

It was as if the white man had just materialized on the bar stool.

Zoya then stepped up quietly to the bar, under the ruse of ordering another round, in an attempt to listen in, but she’d only heard that the man was looking for some “mates”; his British accent, while extremely good, didn’t pass muster to a world-class linguist like herself.

She never really got a perfect look at the man. She thought about a little flirting, using her typical modus operandi and playing the female traveler engaging another tourist in idle conversation, but something held her back. She sensed a darkness there, a sense of danger to the man. She felt it without even looking into his eyes.

He was a serious player in this game; she knew this without a doubt.

She didn’t want to engage, to risk blowing her cover, so she’d grabbed her beers from the bartender and returned to her table to think things over.

And now as she looked at the American from behind, only seeing flashes of the side of his face as he glanced around, she realized she wasn’t certain she would recognize him if she saw him again.

This son of a bitch was that good.

Court Gentry decided the bartender was going to stand around in the back and fry noodles until the annoying customer at the bar left his establishment, so Court obliged. He threw a couple of bills on the bar top, leaving a tip for the asshole that he most assuredly did not deserve, because as bad as this man was as an intelligence source, he was even worse as a bartender.

Court then slipped off his stool and headed for the exit.

Zoya had not noticed the man when he entered, but she did watch him leave through the front door. She’d been careful to track him with her peripheral vision until the very last second he was in sight, and only when the door closed did she look back to her tablemate.

Katrin had noticed her new drinking partner looking towards the door, and she followed the gaze. Seeing nothing but a closing door, she turned back to the woman she knew only as Lilly.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Zoya Zakharova wouldn’t attempt to follow the man. She wasn’t here to tail CIA officers; she was here to nab Fan Jiang, and in this endeavor she would stay as far away from the Central Intelligence Agency as possible.

Katrin finished the last of her beer now, then spoke in her heavy accent. “Are you ready to visit the temple?”

Zoya sipped her own bottle. “You know, I think I’ve changed my mind. I like this island; I’m going to skip the temple and go find a hostel or a room for rent. I’ll spend the night here, and check out the temple later.”

Katrin took the comment with a look of shock on her face. “There is nothing going on here. I want to see the temple and then take the two p.m. ferry to get back to civilization. Discos, bars, the fun stuff. I thought you said you wanted to party.”

“I’ll catch up with you back in Kowloon tomorrow. I need a night of taking it easy to get ready.”

Katrin smiled, proud that she was more of a party animal than the cool chick from Scotland.

The two girls hefted their backpacks and left the little pub, exchanged e-mails, and shook hands at the front door — even young Europeans tend to be more formal than Americans with casual or newly formed acquaintances — then walked off in opposite directions.

Katrin thought the two of them might become good friends, perhaps even travel together here in Southeast Asia.

Zoya, in contrast, didn’t think anything about Katrin; her mind was on her mission, and it certainly didn’t include ever laying eyes on the hippie stoner from Germany again.

Forty-five minutes later Zoya Zakharova stood at the top of a hill overlooking the bay. Directly below her was a steep decline that led down to a boulder-strewn beach at the water’s edge; a hundred meters beyond that was the public pier, and two hundred meters farther was the far side of the bay and the little dive bar she’d just left.

She unslung her backpack and laid it on the dirt, sat on a flat granite rock next to her pack, and pulled out a water bottle. Two beers wasn’t anything for her, but she knew enough about her body to know that two beers, followed by a fifteen-minute walk and then a half-hour steep climb on a rocky trail in direct sunlight and high heat and humidity, would dehydrate her if she didn’t replenish soon.

As she took a few sips of the tepid water and looked off over the placid bay, she heard a voice behind her, close but muted, as if coming from deep in the waist-high foliage she’d passed before sitting down.

“You’ve got a fucking phone, Koshka.” The language was Russian, the voice was male, and the tone was derisive. “Koshka” meant “female cat,” and it wasn’t Zoya’s real code name, but the men she worked with had taken to calling her that a long time ago.

If there had ever been any real reason why, she’d forgotten it.

Zoya gulped more water down, ignoring the man a moment more. Then she said, “America is here. Just one man, but I think he’s Agency.”

After a significant pause, she heard another voice from the bushes. “Der’mo.” Shit.

“Da. Couldn’t get pictures or hear much conversation, but he’s asking around, something about three British men. Sounds like they might be missing.”

There was a rustling in the brush now; Zoya drank more water from her bottle and, after pulling her binos out of her bag, began scanning the buildings in sight around the bay, a futile attempt to see if she could get eyes on the American somewhere on one of the little roads down there.

Next to her a man appeared, head to toe in brown camouflage, his own binoculars in his hands. Zoya knew Ruslan had a suppressed sniper rifle, a VSS Vintorez, on a bipod somewhere back there in the brush. Through the high-powered optic on the rail of the weapon, and not through the binos in his hands, he’d been watching Zoya throughout her visit here to the island.

“I didn’t see you talking to anyone but the blond girl and the bartender.”

“I didn’t talk to him; I heard him talking to the bartender.”

“I never saw him.”

“He’s got skills.”

“Who do you think the three British men are?”

“How the hell should I know?” Zoya asked, then lowered her binoculars and put them on top of her pack. She unscrewed the lid on the water bottle and drank some more.

Another man appeared from the brush behind. He was filthy. He’d been up here all night, Zoya knew, and he smelled like it. He said, “Satellite shows the Tai Chin VI passing to the east of Hainan Island. At present speed it will arrive here at twenty-one hundred hours tonight.”

“And we’ll be ready for it when it arrives?” she asked.

The filthy man said, “Don’t know about you, Koshka, but me and the boys are ready for it now.”

She thought about admonishing him for the nickname. They were in the field, and she had a code name. Her complete code name was Sirena Vozdushoy Trevogi, which meant “Banshee,” but the task force operators were supposed to call her Sirena, not Koshka.

But she let it go, deciding to pick her battles. “We need survivors, Sasha,” she said flatly. “This is an intelligence mission, and if there is no one left alive on that ship to tell us where Fan Jiang was taken, then we’ve all wasted a trip.”

Sasha stood over her, blocking out the sun with his wide shoulders. “You will have your survivors to interrogate. We have done this before, you know.”

She spun around on the granite rock and looked straight up at the man. “Oh yes, I know. I was there, in Kizlar, trying to interrogate that one survivor. You know, the man holding his intestines in with his shattered hands. He was rather distracted, barely heard me. Fucking useless endeavor.”

Ruslan sighed audibly next to her. “You’re never going to let us forget that night in Kizlar, are you?”

Now Zoya turned to him. “I’ll make you a deal. You boys don’t fuck it up tonight, and I’ll try to forget the debacle in Dagestan.”

“That would be good for all of us, yourself included,” Ruslan said.

Zoya looked at her watch now. “It’s twelve hundred hours. You both can go; I’ll take watch on the hide. Have Vasily send another team up here by sixteen hundred so I can get back to the boat in time to prepare a brief for the task force before tonight’s raid.”

“Ponial,” Sasha replied. Understood.

Both men turned away from the woman sitting on the granite rock, and they headed back into the brown brush to collect their gear.

Zoya called back to them. “Leave the VSS.”

She heard a low chuckle from Ruslan. “You gonna shoot the American if you get a chance?”

“Of course not. I’d just rather use that mounted scope than hold these binos up for the next three hours.”

Ruslan said, “I’ll leave the rifle behind, but you need to remember two things. One, keep your finger off the trigger. And two, there is no round in the chamber now, and I want to find it that way when I get it back.”

Zoya was quick with her reply. “You need to remember two things yourself.”

Sasha mumbled in the brush, “Oh shit, here she goes.”

“One… I received advanced sniper instruction at Kavkazsky Dvorik, which, as you well know, is the premier FSB Spetsnaz training facility for long-distance shooting and sniper fieldcraft. And two… go fuck yourself.”

Sasha cinched his heavy pack on his shoulders, laughed, and started walking down the hill to the northeast and out of sight of the bay. Ruslan hefted his own gear, minus his rifle. He then returned to Zoya on the rock. “I totally forgot that you were one of the boys, ma’am. I bet you were very popular at Kavkazsky Dvorik with your tits poking out of your little tie-dyed T-shirt.”

He turned and followed Sasha down the trail without another word.

Softly Zoya said, “Mu’dak.” Asshole. She looked down at herself. She was in “costume” for her cover alias: wig, big sunglasses, ridiculous clothing, and woven bracelets on her arm. Of course she wouldn’t be taken seriously by the paramilitary unit working with her. They didn’t live in a world that accounted for much art or personal expression.

She shook off the hostility from her male colleagues — it was nothing she hadn’t heard ten thousand times before — lifted the binoculars back up to her eyes, and scanned out into the South China Sea. Tonight the cargo ship that had spirited Fan Jiang out of Hong Kong would appear from the southwest; it would be full of drug smugglers, but it would also contain answers to where Fan Jiang went and who was protecting him now. She and her black ops paramilitaries would board the boat not long after setting anchor; they would obtain those answers any way they could, and then they would go wherever in the world the intel directed them, so they could snatch Fan Jiang and take him to Moscow.

The men on the cargo ship would know where they delivered him and to whom, and they would talk; Zoya had no doubt in her mind.

It wasn’t long before her binos swept back to the shore, and they scanned the streets slowly. She was thinking about the American again. Her mission tonight was going to be tough enough without worrying about mixing it up with the CIA. She didn’t need this guy around here asking questions one damn bit.

She stood, grabbed her pack, and headed back into the brown brush. She’d climb behind the rifle and scan the bay with the scope for the next four hours, hoping like hell everything remained just as sleepy and peaceful as it appeared right now.