Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Vietnamese captain lying on the deck on his bridge cried out maniacally as the spent shell case dug deeper into his stomach wound, and his hands reached out to push Zoya Zakharova off him, but she easily batted them away. He began to kick and writhe, but she spun around and sat down on his waist to hold him in place.

Sasha stepped over from his position by the wheel, sliding his short-barreled rifle behind his back on its sling. He knelt and pinned the captain’s arms down to the floor.

After nearly ten seconds of screaming and thrashing, Zoya pulled the casing out. The lower half of it was covered in blood.

The captain’s heavy breathing was the only sound on the bridge for several seconds.

Zoya spoke matter-of-factly. “We can stabilize you. Not because we’re nice, but because we want to take our time. I’ll get what I need out of you, even if I have to take you back to my boat and work on you for days.”

The man cried out in French, “I am just a ship’s captain!”

“And a very good one, I am sure. But the men with you. Who are… who were they?”

The captain gave it up before the crazy woman tortured him again. “They are Con Ho Hoang Da.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Les Tigres Sauvages.”

Zoya translated from French. “The Wild Tigers?” She looked around to the two other men with her. Both Vasily and Sasha shrugged. “It’s some sort of a criminal organization? A Vietnamese gang?”

The captain nodded.

“Very good,” Zoya said, and she rolled off the man’s legs, reached for her water bottle on the floor, and lifted his head once again. She poured water on his hairline and stroked his black hair back gently. “Please, Captain… tell me more.”

Court subjected his wounded prisoner to twenty seconds of agonizing torture, the pistol’s barrel jabbed into the broken collarbone now: twisting, pressing, digging.

Court yanked the gun away suddenly, then waited for the man to stop screaming before he pulled his hand off his mouth. Leaning close into his captive’s face, he watched him pant hysterically for almost a minute. Finally the wounded man recovered enough to look Court’s way.

Court spoke French. “Look at me, man. Do I look like I’m in a position to fuck around here? I’ll do whatever I have to do to get what I need. Trust me, we’re just getting started.”

The wounded man spoke out between sobs. “Saigon.”

Court rolled back onto his butt. “Saigon?”

“Oui. Je le jure.” Yes. I swear it.

“Who has him there?”

The injured Vietnamese man looked at Court now. A confused expression. “We have him.”

“Right. Who are you?”

The man seemed to puff his chest just a little, though it required considerable effort to do so. “Les Tigres Sauvages.”

Court translated the words from French. “The Wild Tigers.” He returned to French to speak to the young man on his back in front of him. “Cool.” Then, “What the fuck is that?”

When Zoya had everything of intelligence value from the injured cargo ship captain that he could possibly give her, she brushed his hair back one more time, gave him a last sip of water, and lowered his head back to the floor. She rose and turned away with a final “Merci beaucoup” and began walking to the door. She switched to Russian and addressed Vasily, who was still standing there, waiting for her to hurry up. “He’s terminal.”

Vasily replied, “No shit.”

“But he is not in pain now. Let’s leave him to die in peace.”

Vasily said nothing.

Zoya passed the Zaslon commander as she went through the open hatch and, as she stepped onto the ladder to descend down to the main deck, she heard a single suppressed gunshot from a rifle back on the bridge.

Vasily’s rifle.

Asshole, she said to herself.

A minute later she was on the main deck, deftly kicking a leg over the gunwale to begin her descent down to the speedboat.

The rest of the Zaslon unit boarded the boat as well and lashed their scuba equipment to cleats along the sides, and the boat began slowly moving back in the direction of the yacht halfway around the island.

As they motored off to the east, Zoya leaned over to Ruslan. He had his binos up to his eyes, and they were focused on the lights from the dive bar in the distance.

Zoya tapped him on the arm. “See anything?”

“Da. Chaos.” Still looking through the optics, he asked, “What do you suppose happened over there, Koshka?”

Zoya just shrugged. “Somebody didn’t want to pay his bar tab, I guess.”

When Court had extracted everything of intelligence value regarding the location of Fan Jiang from the injured Vietnamese gangster, he pressed him about the identity of the people who had attacked the ship. The young man knew nothing other than the fact that an attack was under way, and he just assumed the crazed man now torturing him was involved with that, as well. Court realized how confused he’d made the poor wounded guy by asking the question in the first place.

Court took the man’s cell phone and identification out of his wallet, then helped the man stand and led him off in the direction of the bay, his blood-soaked T-shirt now off his body and used to stanch the blood flow along with the microfiber towel. Court thought the guy might make it; he was young and fit, though a lot of it had to do with how fast he could get to a hospital.

Court found his way off the island at one thirty in the morning. He swam out to a boat moored in the bay when he saw an older man sitting alone on the deck of his live-aboard thirty-foot fishing boat watching the fireboats and police boats near the wrecked dive bar. Court appeared on the deck and simply asked the man in English for a ride to Hong Kong. Court waved the Hong Kong dollar equivalent of a thousand U.S. in front of the man, and this made the Chinese fisherman an instant and utterly compliant co-conspirator.

Together they piloted out of the bay, past the dark and still cargo ship, past more police boats. Court knelt in the companionway, his hand hovering over the pistol tucked in the small of his back, ready to switch from the new best friend of the boat captain to his worst enemy if the old man tried anything funny.

But this captain was only too happy to make the money, and he made no problems for the suspicious gweilo.

Once back in the city, Court called Colonel Dai and updated him on the events of the evening. Dai said he’d dispatch his forces to look into the Tai Chin VI, and he reprimanded Court for not notifying him sooner, but Court gave the reasonable rejoinder that he’d gotten a lot more information in just his second night on the job than Dai and all his men had gotten since they’d arrived.

Court promised the colonel he’d call him when he woke up, and by then Dai said he would have a way to get Court into Vietnam to continue the hunt.

Court checked into a fleabag hotel in Wan Chai just before four a.m. The rest of his gear was back at his room in Mongkok, but it would have taken him another hour to get there, and he knew there was a good chance that Dai’s men would have bugged the room.

With him here in his new digs, in addition to his backpack, he’d brought a plastic bag with four pony bottles of Jameson Irish Whiskey, some apples and pears, and a massive plastic container of cold rice pudding.

The combination was gross to think about, so Court didn’t think about it. He drank a shot, then dug a spoon into the rice pudding.

After he’d eaten a few bites of the sweet dessert, he bit into both a pear and an apple. When he was finished with his odd little meal, he dialed a number on the sat phone, plugging in the phone to charge it while he waited for the call to go through.

“Brewer.”

“It’s me,” Court said. He had more questions than information to give his handler right now, but she needed to know what the hell had happened. After they conducted their authentication sequence, he said, “Strap yourself in, because this op just got complicated.”

“Sorry, Violator, but that happened the other day at the Peninsula hotel.”

“As the SEALs say, the only easy day was yesterday.” For the next ten minutes he filled her in on everything. He had no hidden agenda with the CIA other than the fact that he feared he might have to come back to Hong Kong, alone, to try to rescue Fitzroy if the CIA’s master plan failed in any small detail along the way.

When he was finished, Brewer spoke softly, a hint of something in her voice Court couldn’t identify. Perhaps exhaustion, perhaps disbelief. “So you just fought fifty guys at the same time?”

Court replied, “No. I just fought fifty guys, one at a time.”

“Right. Are you somewhere you can get a drink? Because I’m pouring one now, having just heard all that shit, so I guess living it means you need one, too.”

Court sipped his second airplane bottle of Jameson as he lay there on the tiny bed. “Brewer, I’m a drink and a half ahead of you.”

“I’ll have to catch up, then.” Court heard the pouring of liquid, even over the satellite transmission. “You didn’t mention any injuries.”

“To me? No, surprisingly, I’m okay, although my back is starting to feel like it was attacked by a cheese grater.”

“What happened?”

“Don’t even remember. Just the typical knocks and rattles, I guess.”

“And no idea who the force was who took down the Tai Chin?”

Court sighed into the phone now. “Remember all those times in the past ten minutes when you heard me say I didn’t know who they were? That’s still the case.”

Brewer let the matter drop for now. “I guess we need to get you to Ho Chi Minh City.”

“No,” Court replied. “Dai needs to get me there. I called him already and reported. He’s making travel arrangements now. I needed to show him that I’m straight with him, reporting in like the good soldier, ready to take this to the next stage. I couldn’t be certain he didn’t know anything about Po Toi, and if I’m going to Vietnam anyway, the last thing Fitzroy needs is for it to look like I’m running from the Chinese. That would be signing his death warrant.”

“You’re right,” Suzanne Brewer said. And then she added, “Truthfully, I’ve never even heard of these Wild Tigers.”

“Me neither. Vietnam drug smuggling isn’t your regular beat, either, I guess.”

Brewer seemed so overwhelmed with it all she just coughed out a laugh. He thought he heard ice rattling in a glass. She must have gotten control of her momentary lapse of authority, because her voice switched back into business mode.

“That said, I’ll reach out to Director Hanley and have him pull in intel about this gang discreetly, from Southeast Asia assets and other sources. I’ll be up to speed, and you’ll be up to speed, well before you get there.”

Court added, “I’ll warn you now: if you blanket Saigon with CIA officers looking for Fan, or stir up any friendly assets at all there, these Wild Tigers might get word of it, or Dai might get word of it, and it will screw everything up. I just need you to get me all the intel on this group you can, and let me work the op.”

Brewer answered back forcefully. “Look, you knew the stakes on this op from the beginning. You were our best chance of getting intel on Fan, but you aren’t the only fish in the sea. That’s not going to change just because the geographic focus of the hunt has moved.” She paused a moment, and then her tone softened. “I know we need to keep all our activity low profile, not only to protect the activity itself but also to protect you and your mission. I will do my best to do just that.”

Court knew that wasn’t a promise. In fact, it was nothing he could hang his hat on at all.

He let it go. He had to. It depressed him a little to realize he was becoming a real team player.