Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Court took the half-empty ferry back to Kowloon at twelve thirty p.m., positioning himself in the center of a large cluster of empty seats near the bow on the bridge deck. Court surfed the Internet on his mobile during the ride back to the city, hoping to find a shop somewhere in Hong Kong that sold a particular niche item. He expected to find two or three stores at the most selling the goods he was looking for, assuming there couldn’t have been that large a market for this type of equipment.

Instead his phone filled with listings, and at the bottom of the list was the option to go to the next page of results.

Hong Kong was a mecca for electronics, with no shortage of choices.

Court selected a store in Mongkok, not too far from his hotel, because the area was crowded and not so close to the Peninsula, which was damn important to the guy who’d killed two men there two nights earlier.

An hour and a half later he stepped into an electronics shop that specialized in high-end optical devices, surveillance equipment, and other wireless mobile security solutions of all kinds. He spent several minutes just reading tags and brochures, familiarizing himself with several items he’d never used before, and reacquainting himself with other items that were upgrades to equipment he’d known all his professional life.

First he bought a small handheld thermal monocular that would allow him to see heat registers in the dark, even from a great distance. He was very familiar with the technology, but the version he picked up here was a generation better than anything he’d used before.

Taking his time to look around at other items, he found something he’d never had access to during his time with the CIA. Clearly, technology for private users had moved beyond what a man in Court’s line of work could field just five or six years earlier. It was a tiny wireless camera that linked with a smartphone and gave the operator the ability to view remotely in regular, low-light, and infrared views, as well as pan and zoom the camera. For just under three hundred bucks each Court thought they were a steal — if they worked as advertised — and it was Dai’s money in his money belt, anyway. He bought three of the devices.

He also bought a radio scanner and another smartphone; Court told himself he’d pick up as many phones as he could reasonably carry around here in HK.

After leaving he took a cab to a scuba-diving shop on Sai Yeung Choi Street and bought a mask, fins, and a tank of “spare air”—a small pony bottle filled with oxygen, used as a supplemental emergency air source when diving. Court knew he might be swimming out to check over boats in the bay tonight, and if he had to do this in a low-profile manner, it would be nice to be able to swim under the surface. An entire scuba rig — a buoyancy control vest along with a full-sized tank, weights, and a regulator — would be ideal, but this would also mean carrying a bag back to the island the size of a full-sized suitcase and weighing over sixty pounds. Court much preferred cramming the fins, mask, and emergency air in a small backpack along with his other items, something he could drop and run away from if necessary.

At the dive shop he also purchased a small Kershaw fixed-blade knife with a sheath he could hang around his neck under his shirt. This was his only real weapon now, and it was strictly for defense, but Court had well-practiced edged-weapon skills, and he knew a small knife could be enough for him to “acquire” a firearm from an enemy along the way.

On his way back to his hotel room he slipped into a little tea shop attached to a grocery store, ordered a bottle of water, and jammed himself into an isolated corner, one of the more challenging things he’d pulled off all week considering the crowds here in the city. He popped an earbud into his ear and pulled out his smartphone. He downloaded a commercial app that let him make encrypted calls, then dialed Suzanne Brewer, all the while keeping his eye on the movements of those around him. He knew the ambient noise in the busy shop would work to his advantage, but if anyone decided they wanted to get close or linger too long, he’d have to go mobile.

The pedestrians on the sidewalk outside the window in front of him moved like cattle being pushed through a stockyard, so he really wasn’t in the mood to negotiate the logistics of a clandestine conversation while shoulder-to-shoulder with foreign nationals.

As always, Court’s handler was a pro. When he called, she answered, and quickly. “Brewer.”

“It’s me.”

“Identity challenge, Apollo.”

“Identity response, Anger.”

There was a slight hesitation, and then she said, “That’s a fail. You get one more chance.”

Damn, thought Court. He was out of practice with this shit. Checking in wasn’t really his bag. He thought back to his daily code changes. He’d memorized them on the plane over; he knew them all, but he’d forgotten the correct sequence. What was this, day three? What was yesterday’s code?

He tried again. “Identity response, Angry.”

“Identity confirmed.”

For crying out loud, Court thought, but did not say.

He did say, “I’m in play. I made contact with Colonel Dai yesterday. He is satisfied I had nothing to do with the MSS men killed at the Peninsula.”

“That’s a relief. And what about Fan Jiang? Did Dai hire you to terminate him?”

“Yes, I’m on the hunt, just as planned.”

While he spoke to Brewer his eyes scanned, back and forth, searching for any surveillance. But to any untrained eyes gazing his way, he just looked bored.

“What have you learned about Fan’s location?”

“Not enough. I have a lead to run down, but so far it hasn’t turned into much.”

“What’s the lead?”

“Nothing confirmed. We were wrong about Dai and Fitzroy being able to point us right to the objective. This is going to take some detective work.”

“Well… let me help you.”

“I will… as soon as I need help.”

Brewer adopted a more severe voice now. “I detect a certain sparseness with your intel, Violator. I understand your frustration with the compromise the other day, but I won’t allow you to jeopardize the mission by keeping details from me. This isn’t the way you are used to doing things, I understand, but you aren’t running the show alone anymore.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that when two jackasses followed me from the airport.”

Brewer’s voice stiffened even more now. “There was a mistake on our end, it’s been acknowledged, so you’ve heard all the contrition you are going to hear from me on that. You are an agent. My agent. You managed to get this op back on track, and for that I am thankful. But now you need to do your job, and that means keeping me in the loop.”

Court wanted to crush the phone with his hand. He told himself he didn’t need an angry nanny.

But, in actuality, he did.

“All right. I’m looking for a boat that was at the mouth of the bay near the public ferry dock at Po Toi Island on Sunday night.”

Court could hear typing in the background.

“What’s the name of the vessel?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Tonnage? Type? Registry?”

“Nope, nope, and nope.”

“How do you even know that—”

“Because a nervous bartender looked out to a spot in the water.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I told you what I had was thin.”

After a moment to get her bearings, Brewer told Court to wait while she checked the Automatic Identification System vessel-tracking website, Marinetraffic.com, looking for any vessel that moored in or around the bay at Po Toi Island the previous Sunday night.

When the screen came up she told Court there were a few small fishing boats, but nothing larger than that.

But Court already knew the search would be a long shot. Most ships were not required to squawk an identity code if their gross weight was less than three hundred tons. And in the case of whatever vessel Fitzroy’s men had boarded, it seemed clear it would be running black no matter the tonnage. If it was transporting Fan or providing the location of some sort of a meet for a group of Triads, he couldn’t imagine they would squawk their identity and location.

When Brewer seemed to draw a blank, Court said, “Look, I need to get back to work. When I have a lead I think you can help with, I’ll—”

Brewer interrupted him. “I’ve got it.”

“You’ve got what?”

“Satellite images. Not from Sunday night, we weren’t overhead then, but from thirteen hundred hours on Monday. There is a cargo ship in the mouth of the bay. Nothing else around the island even a fourth of the size. We have a shot from Tuesday, too. Yes, still there, in the same place.”

Court just muttered, “Wow.” He was impressed with the fast work of Brewer and CIA.

Brewer said, “I guess the Gray Man doesn’t have his own satellite.”

“It’s in the shop.”

She ignored the joke. “The ship was still there Wednesday, but after that it’s gone.”

“Can you see the name?”

“The angle is no good to read the bow. It’s the same shot each day, more or less. I guess it didn’t move around very much while it was there. I’ll be able to ID the make of the ship in a second, running it through a scan. There are no goods on the deck, but there is a crane for loading items into the cargo holds. I see a couple of men here and there showing up in different locations, but other than these deckhands, no activity.”

She then gave him the manufacturer information of the ship, and told him there were 343 known to be in operation around the world, and over ninety in Southeast Asia. “I can run down locations on all of these, but it will take a couple of hours. For those that aren’t squawking their codes I can dig into ownership information, try to find out where they are, as well.”

Court thanked her with a promise to check back later, then signed off. He bought some clothes and other items from nearby shops, went back to his hotel room for an hour and a half to open his new gadgets and test them out, then repacked them in his backpack. He dressed in a dark long-sleeve but breathable hemp shirt, dark brown linen drawstring pants, and black trail-running shoes. He would look like an adventure tourist inside an establishment or walking in the village, but he knew his earth-tone colors would allow him to move with some camouflage in the foliage of the island, if necessary.

Court returned to Po Toi on the ferry, arriving shortly after seven p.m. There were many more fishing boats out in the bay now as the sun began to set, but the bartender he’d caught looking out to the bay had been gazing out farther than any other vessel had moored or anchored, so Court didn’t suspect that anything bobbing in the water now was related to Fan Jiang and the missing Fitzroy assets. He walked off the public pier with the rest of the light load of ferry passengers, then continued through the little village. There were a few Westerners and other tourists walking around, taking pictures, and drinking beer in simple cafés a few blocks inland.

Court imagined Po Toi couldn’t have been on any travel publication’s list of the top one hundred things to do in Hong Kong; there wasn’t much to see here at all, but there was just enough tourist action around that he didn’t look completely out of place walking the streets.

After strolling through just a few blocks in the village, he found himself climbing a winding trail that led up a wooded hill, past a few tin shacks, and then quickly into a steeply graded path that wound through granite boulders and thick brush.

After a ten-minute walk, he found himself at the summit, which offered an excellent vantage point on the bay below. Here he sat on a flat boulder and surveyed the entire area, from the beat-up little bar he’d visited earlier in the day in the distance below him on his right to the village and public pier directly below him, and then, to his left, a rocky beach in front of a higher hill devoid of any man-made structures. In the water directly in front of him he saw nothing but fishing boats and other small craft. He spent the remaining moments of daylight scanning them carefully with his high-power binoculars, until the sun set fully and darkness enveloped the island.

He called Brewer back and found out that of all the ships of the type she’d seen on sat images at Po Toi earlier in the week, eighty-one of the ninety-one known to be operating in Southeast Asia were displaying their AIS identification information. She listed the names and registry information of the ten that were not transmitting, but Court only wrote down the ones that were truly off grid, as four of the ten were known to be in shipyards at the moment.

She had one other piece of interesting information, although he didn’t know exactly what to make of it. Checking older satellite images of the area, she determined that the cargo ship they were trying to identify had been showing up in Po Toi every five to ten days for the last several months. On all other occasions except for this week, it had remained only a few hours. Brewer had been trying to find it on other sat images to tell Court where it came from, but these were the most congested shipping lanes in the world, so this had proved tough going.

Court hung up with Brewer and then decided he’d spend the night right here, watching the area down below, trying to spot any evidence of interesting activity here in or around the bay. If one of the ships matching a name on his list showed up, he’d swim out to it if he felt he could do so in a low-profile manner; if not he’d just call it in to Brewer, have her look into the vessel if he could find anything for her to look into.

Other than this thin plan, he had no clear picture of what he was going to do here, but he knew what he was not going to do. He told himself he wasn’t going to try to Sherlock Holmes his way through this. Fan Jiang could be getting farther and farther away from him, which would mean his op for the CIA would fail, and it would put his old handler Fitzroy in mortal peril. He was here to find a clue, and if he had to rush headlong into the situation to get the information he needed, that was just what he was going to do. He’d strong-arm, he’d break teeth, he’d do whatever was necessary to get answers.

At eight fifty p.m., a paramilitary operator working for Russian foreign intelligence lay in the overwatch position to the southeast of the bay, his eye in the scope of his suppressed sniper rifle. Slowly he moved his arm off the butt stock, then triggered his interteam radio headset with the push-to-talk button on his chest. He spoke without taking his eyes out of the scope of his VSS rifle.

Softly, the Russian said, “Anna Seven for Sirena, over?”

It was quiet in the dark hide, other than a warm evening breeze rustling the dry scrub brush around the prostrate man, occasionally blowing enough to wave the wide brim of his dark green camo boonie hat. The hat, like the rest of his gear, had been purchased at a hunting supply store in HK, so there were no tags or brands that would associate him with Russia.

A reply came through Anna Seven’s earpiece, delivered in Zoya Zakharova’s unmistakable intelligent and sultry voice.

“Go for Sirena, Seven.”

Anna Seven was a thirty-one-year-old operator named Mikhail. “She’s right on time.”

Through his scope Mikhail watched the Tai Chin VI approaching the island up the sea lane from the southwest. It was already slowing, heading towards its normal anchoring position at the mouth of the bay.

“Ponial,” replied Zakharova. Understood. Then she said, “Alert me instantly if anyone leaves for shore.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Court finished a bag of crackers, swatted at a fly, then stood to loosen his tight back muscles. He couldn’t fully stretch out; his three-and-a-half-week-old gunshot graze to the right side of his rib cage, while fully closed and mostly healed, still stung like hell when he reached over his head with his right hand or did anything that involved twisting or rotating his torso. Still, Court Gentry was a man who had grown accustomed to dealing with pain in his life, to the point where it felt almost jarring for him to wake up in the morning without noticing an immediate ache somewhere on his body.

After he sat back down he reached for his binos to scan along the bayside, but before he brought the optics to his eyes he noticed something new. In the dark distance, the lights of a cargo ship moved slowly and silently around the southwestern tip of the island.

This vessel was certainly no massive tanker or dry-goods hauler, but it was much larger than anything else he’d seen around here.

It appeared to be the one from the image Brewer had sent him earlier.

Quickly he scanned the restaurant directly below him. It was closing down; the last of the patrons were leaving, and they began walking to the public pier to catch the last ferry of the night to Hong Kong proper.

Court then swept his binoculars to the right and pushed them up, where he found the derelict bar he’d dropped into before noon that day. It was nearly full now, with the opposite vibe he’d experienced when he’d sat at the bar.

He didn’t know where all these patrons had come from. Some were certainly locals, and others would be fishermen staying on their boats; he could see the dinghy dock floating in the water ten feet below the railing of the establishment’s deck. It was half-full with rubber dinghies and wooden tenders. But looking into the little open-air dive, he saw easily fifty people, all apparently men, sitting around at tables or at the bar. He didn’t think they could all be from the village and these boats. He wondered if other boats were docked offshore at other points on the island.

He watched while the cargo hauler came to a stop, then dropped anchor in the same general spot the bartender at the dive bar had kept eyeing earlier in the day.

Slowly, excitement began to grow in Court.

Conclusive evidence? Not hardly, but he had a feeling he was onto something.

The ship had closed enough to where Court could read the lighted bow with the help of his binoculars. It was the Tai Chin VI, which, he saw to his excitement, was on Brewer’s list of ships that had not run their transponders on Sunday. It was registered to a freight company out of Jakarta, and Brewer had noted that it never transmitted location information, even though its gross tonnage was 745, well over the 300-tons rule.

Interesting.

Court just sat there, watching through the night vision binoculars, occasionally switching to his infrared monocular to scan the deck of the vessel, then sweeping the device over different fishing boats in the area, before going back to his binos to look at the crowded bar at the southwestern end of the bay.

Less than thirty minutes after dropping anchor, one of two white tenders with outboard motors was lowered from the back of the Tai Chin VI. Several men climbed down a ladder and boarded. Court went back to his infrared device and used it to count the men on the tender. Five white-hot human forms, plus the heat from the little boat’s outboard engine. As they got closer to the shore, he could see that a couple of the men wore backpacks, but otherwise they weren’t carrying anything overtly on their bodies.

Their tender motored directly to the dinghy dock floating below the bar he’d visited earlier in the day, and they climbed up the narrow and steep stairs to the deck of the bar.

Court lowered his binos and drummed his fingers on them, trying to decide what to do.

It did not take him long.

He realized he’d accomplished as much as he could sitting on this hill. Now it was time to stir things up, to play the role of agitator.

He would go to the bar, where he would stand out like a sore thumb, but he would try to get close to someone from that boat, or any Wo Shing Wo Triads involved with Fan Jiang. He’d try to get bad actors to reveal themselves, using his own proximity as a lure. If they were tied to whatever happened to Fitzroy’s men, well, then Fitzroy’s new man would probably find some trouble, too.

And Court was looking for trouble tonight.

Before leaving his overwatch position, Court took a device out of his bag and turned it on. It was one of the wireless cameras he’d bought at the surveillance shop earlier in the day. Smaller than a deck of cards, it would run for eight hours on a single charge and send video directly to Court’s mobile phone. The camera had a motor to pan left and right on a small disc, but Court just tied it to a branch on a nearby tree with pipe cleaners bought for the task, rendering it stationary. The wire in the pipe cleaners allowed him to adjust the angle of the camera somewhat, so he maxed out the ten-power zoom with the app on his phone, then physically adjusted the camera till he had it centered on the cargo ship anchored five hundred yards away. It wasn’t the closest view of the ship, but with a single sweep of the mobile app, he could switch the low-light vision of the camera to infrared view, and using this he could see figures standing on the deck, represented as red hot spots.

With this camera he could keep an eye on the ship without yanking his binos or monocular out of his backpack in the middle of the bar, a tactic he couldn’t imagine he could pull off while remaining covert.

At nine forty p.m., Court flicked his pack over his shoulder and began moving down the hill.