Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Con Ho Hoang Da wasn’t the biggest criminal organization in Vietnam, or even in Saigon. Their actual strength in terms of active members numbered less than 350, but their real might was not in their membership; it was in their influence.

The group had originated a decade earlier, when five former officers of the People’s Army of Vietnam, members of an elite infantry jungle reconnaissance unit called the Tigers, were recruited to be high-profile bodyguards for a Saigon street gangster. For two years the five intelligent and capable ex-officers watched their uneducated boss oversee a stable of bandits who conducted nothing more than petty theft and pickpocketing. There was no real bodyguarding to do, but the gangster enjoyed the image of the team of polished ex — army officers shadowing him wherever he went. After a year of this work the five ex-Tigers decided their boss was small-time, and the only thing they had to protect him from was getting hit by a scooter as he staggered drunk out of a bar at night, so together the men devised a plan to have their employer arrested so they could take over his organization. They saw the potential for earning real money working in the underworld, but they couldn’t do it with him.

They made deals with corrupt Saigon officials, and soon their leader was in Chi Hoa Prison, serving sixteen years for his crimes.

The five former bodyguards immediately expanded the organization from overseeing pickpocketing and snatch-and-grab petty theft to extortion, counterfeiting, and drug distribution.

The former Tigers infantry officers became the head of the Wild Tigers, Con Ho Hoang Da, and they trafficked heroin from the nearby Golden Triangle of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand into Hong Kong and Singapore, produced and smuggled fake designer goods internationally, and illegally transported workers and immigrants across the border of Cambodia and into Thailand from Vietnam.

From the beginning they received protection from members of the local government, due to payoffs to police and party officials, and their ranks swelled as they sucked in other poorly organized and less disciplined gangs. As they grew from a few dozen to a few hundred members, the national government in Hanoi learned of their activity, and at first they reacted forcefully. But larger and larger payoffs, as well as the national government’s realization that this was a criminal organization that would play ball with Hanoi on illegal international projects that helped the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, only strengthened the organization.

Chinese Triad groups operating in Vietnam were larger and more powerful on the streets, but when it came to raw influence, the Wild Tigers had become real players in the Southeast Asian underworld.

But all of this was in flux now. New leadership in the Ministry of Public Security in Hanoi had cracked down on all criminal organizations in the nation, including the Wild Tigers, and now of the original five leaders, one had been killed in a shoot-out with Triads in a restaurant in Saigon, a second was imprisoned in Cambodia, and two more had been detained in Hanoi.

One original member retained control of the organization. Tu Van Duc, a former army captain, now ran the Wild Tigers. The business hub of the organization was a medium-sized building on Nguyen Van Dau, in Saigon’s Binh Thanh District, less than a mile from Tan Son Nhat International Airport. The building was lightly guarded by a few men with pistols under their shirts and AKs, shotguns, and a single RPK light automatic machine gun all stowed in lockers and under desks near the entrance. A pair of hired and armed uniformed security, off-duty local cops, manned the guardhouse in the front of the building, and another pair operated the gatehouse at the parking garage entrance in the back.

The reason for the relatively lax security of the Wild Tigers was that they depended on the local government ties that still kept them operating more or less in the clear, despite Hanoi’s pressure. They knew the police here wouldn’t raid them, and even though there were larger Chinese gangs in the city, those gangs held on to their niches in the underworld — gun running, prostitution, meth — and they left the Wild Tigers alone, lest they be wiped off the playing field here in Vietnam.

But the Wild Tigers had other facilities and safe houses in the country, and none was more secure than a French Colonial villa on a farm ninety minutes west of the city, near the Cambodian border. The actual security setup at the villa there was just a few armed guards with dogs, but despite the perfunctory security measures, the Wild Tigers had a working relationship with the commander of the nearby military garrison, and it would only take one call by Tu Van Duc or any of his senior membership to bring out uniformed military troops to protect the compound.

Tu Van Duc was only forty-three, but he’d become a millionaire many times over. Since he’d received word about the attack on his ship by the three unknown Westerners, “Captain Tu” had lived in the French Colonial villa outside of town and beefed up his bodyguard force, but he still worked at the Wild Tigers building near the airport, so each day began with an early-morning commute to Saigon. This morning he arrived at the building in the back of his BMW 7 Series sedan, along with two armed bodyguards and a pair of police motorcycle “courtesy escorts” from the Ho Chi Minh City police department.

The sedan slowed in front of the steel barrier gates at the entrance to the underground parking garage at the rear of the facility, but only for an instant, because a uniformed guard in the rear gatehouse pressed a button and the cantilevered gate arm rose to let the vehicle pass.

Just minutes later Tu Van Duc marched down a third-floor hallway, flanked by two of his bodyguards. Perspiration hung on Tu’s face; his head was tilted forward with intensity, and his footsteps matched the urgent look in his eyes.

A middle-aged man sat in a chair at the end of the hall, just outside a closed door. A snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster hung under his arm. As soon as he saw Captain Tu, he rose.

“Chao buoi sang.” Good morning.

Tu passed him by with only a distracted nod as he opened the door himself.

On the other side of the door, Chinese dissident Fan Jiang sat at a desk against a wall, his fingers tapping on a computer keyboard in a blur. The room around him had been a small office, but now it was set up like a bedroom in a college dorm. In front of him was a cup of tea and a bag of hard candy. He wore headphones and a white warm-up jacket with blue jeans, and he looked much more like a bored young college student working on a term paper than an escaped dissident on the run from the military and intelligence arms of a world power.

The only other person in the room was a young female interpreter, brought in to help him with translations on the Vietnamese government computer networks. When she saw Tu Van Duc, however, she stood, bowed, and left.

Fan himself bowed, but he did not get up.

Tu said, “I need to talk to you.”

Fan clearly recognized the expression of concern on the man’s face. “You were not happy with the progress I made last night? Those were the latest files from the Interior Ministry. I thought you would like the news that there are no imminent police operations in the works against your businesses in Hue.”

“Your work product has been impressive. There is no problem there.”

“Good,” Fan replied with another subservient bow.

Tu said, “There has been a second attack on the ship that brought you here. Near the same place as before in Hong Kong.”

Fan looked down to his hands. “I see. Is everyone okay?”

“No, they are not. Not at all. The ship was boarded and there was a battle on land, as well. Seven of my employees and all the ship’s crew are dead. Fourteen men! Several Triads are dead, as well.”

Fan spoke softly. A true sadness in his voice. “The attackers… they were from the mainland?”

“We do not know. A Westerner fought against my men at a bar at the same time of the attack, so we are assuming the attackers on the ship were Western, as well.”

Fan slumped over and put his head in his hands. It took him a while to speak. “I don’t know what is happening. I knew the PLA would hunt for me, but I didn’t know they would come into Hong Kong in force. I thought they’d just order the Hong Kong police to look for me.” He raised his head quickly. “This is terrible. I am so sorry.”

Tu stepped over to Fan. “Everyone wants to know what you know. Everyone wants to get their hands on your skills.” He patted the younger man on the back. “You are not safe here. It is no secret to many that this building is where the Wild Tigers operate. We are going to move you to a secret location out of town. The Internet works fine there, but the accommodations won’t be as comfortable as living in the middle of Saigon.”

“I will do whatever you ask. As I told you, I work for you for the next month, and then I will move on.”

Tu Van Duc did not reply. Fan waited for some agreement to what he said, but instead the Vietnamese man turned and left the room without another word.

The interpreter returned and took her seat again next to Fan Jiang.

Fan stared at the screen in front of him. At first he was thinking about the loss of life that he had caused. Soon, however, his mind shifted to a new topic. He tried to figure out how he was going to get to Taiwan, because he was pretty sure the Wild Tigers weren’t going to let him leave Vietnam for a very long time.

Court Gentry had begun his long day in Hong Kong at his overnight hotel in the Central District, waking at eight thirty in the morning after getting less than four hours of sleep. He called Dai as he left the building and walked to a bus stop, and argued with the Chinese colonel while on a bus heading north to his room in Mongkok. Dai’s original plan had been to fly Court along with his own force of men into Vietnam on a private aircraft, but the American refused to travel with the Chinese, citing his need to operate alone to reduce chances for compromise. When Court told Dai he would just have to find his own way into the country, Dai balked, saying he didn’t have time for Court to stow away on a container ship.

He told Court he’d come up with another plan, and to call him back in an hour.

Two hours after their first call, one of Dai’s men met Court on a double-decker bus in Hong Kong’s Wong Tai Sin District, and he passed him a small leather folio. Inside, Court found a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Residency Identity smart card and an SAR passport to match, along with other ID, plus a thick wad of Vietnamese dong currency with a note telling him the total value was 1,439 U.S. dollars.

The name on the documents was Robert James, which sounded a bit lazy to Court, but the docs looked authentic enough. When Court looked at the picture used for both, however, he felt an icy chill run up his spine.

The photo was five years old, and it was authentic. This was the same picture the CIA had passed around the world in their hunt for him. A hunt now still officially in effect but unofficially suspended.

In the picture he wore wire-framed glasses and a blue blazer over a button-down shirt. He’d needed the shot for some Agency assignment when he’d had to fly commercial, unaware this would be the most recent shot of him available on the day he was burned by CIA and a termination order went out on him.

Court imagined all of the intelligence agencies of the world — from Sweden to Burkina Faso — had this picture, so it was no great surprise to see it in the hands of the Chinese. Still, the concept of using this same photo on a form of identification for an international flight almost made his head explode.

He called Dai angrily, demanding to know why they were setting him up for arrest in Vietnam, but Dai insisted the Vietnamese did not have the picture. Court had no idea for sure, and not a clue how Dai could know this, and he sure didn’t like the tradecraft of walking around with this well-known and long-burned photo.

Still furious, he went himself to a pharmacy in Hong Kong and had his own passport photos shot. He was still the same person as in his official CIA photo, though five years older, but he knew the Vietnamese did not use sophisticated software in their customs process that would identify him, and this would decrease the chance his passport would raise any flags.

Dai’s document people had to redo the papers, and the snafu with the photo added two and a half hours to his delay getting to Vietnam, but he used the time wisely. He picked up luggage and clothing for his cover, along with another remote camera, a new flashlight, and several other electronic gadgets, all of which he left in their original packaging. He then made his own way to Hong Kong International Airport, arriving just after two thirty.

His flight was so smooth that he slept through most of it, and he arrived at Tan Son Nhat International Airport at six thirty p.m. He deplaned with the rest of the passengers and then breezed through customs.

Traveling into Vietnam under dirty docs from the Chinese intelligence services might have been harder for Court if he looked in any way Chinese, but there were tens of thousands of white Westerners who had stayed in Hong Kong and accepted official SAR residency after the British officially relinquished governance, and Vietnam had no reason to believe any of them were working for the Chinese mainland intelligence services. No, they were bankers, businessmen, salesmen, and the like, and Court saw from his papers that he was entering Vietnam under the cover of a small-business services company.

With him in his bag he brought all of his surveillance equipment purchased in Hong Kong, which was something of a calculated risk, but even though his bag was opened and his electronics were poked at for a moment by a customs official, his several cameras, phones, binoculars, a tactical flashlight, and a monocular didn’t raise any eyebrows, especially considering they were being carried by a well-dressed and well-to-do-looking person traveling from the electronics mecca of Hong Kong.

The fact that they were in their original boxes helped, too, Court imagined, because it didn’t seem like a spook would smuggle in spy gear still in its shrink-wrapped packaging from the retailer.

On his taxi ride to the hotel, Court took in the city around him. Saigon was an amazingly vibrant and colorful place, with one-fifteenth the vertical sprawl of Hong Kong, and less than a fifth of the traffic on the roads and sidewalks, but to Court it somehow appeared every bit as lively. Court already knew he’d see twenty-five times the number of scooters and motorcycles here as compared to HK, but still the sea of two-wheeled traffic was an amazing sight to behold.

It was impossible for Court Gentry to be here without thinking of his father, who, Court knew, had spent a lot of time in Saigon long before Court was born. His dad had been a Marine Scout Sniper, and he’d fought combat missions north of here around Da Nang and in operations somewhere in the Mekong Delta to the west of Saigon. That was the extent of what Court knew about his dad’s service, because although their small Florida home had been nearly covered in both Vietnamese and Marine Corps memorabilia, James Gentry didn’t talk much about his service there.

By seven thirty p.m. Court had checked into his room at the Sheraton Saigon and, after just a few minutes to change into dark cotton slacks, a dark gray short-sleeve shirt, and black tennis shoes, he turned around and walked back out the door carrying everything he’d walked in with. He left the hotel and headed five blocks to a motorcycle rental shop, arriving shortly before closing time. Here he picked up a black 2009 Suzuki TU250X, a simple bike with enough power for city driving and a profile that wouldn’t draw attention.

Court affixed a GPS unit onto his handlebars so he could type in his destination and then set out towards the Saigon HQ of the Wild Tigers.

The Russians arrived in Ho Chi Minh City at six p.m. after sailing in their sixty-eight-foot yacht directly from Hong Kong. They managed to bypass customs and immigration controls subjected to other ships and boats entering the nation by dropping the yacht’s twenty-foot speedboat a few miles out of the shipping lane but inside Vietnamese international waters, filling it with Zoya and the Zaslon operators, and then linking up with a local cabin cruiser rented and crewed by Russian intelligence officers working at the SVR Residency in Ho Chi Minh City. The forty-footer then merged with the heavy maritime traffic heading up the Saigon River. The cabin cruiser offloaded its new passengers and their personal gear just outside the city, and the yacht simply went through the legal customs and visa process minus the passengers it had taken on from the speedboat.

Zoya Zakharova and the Zaslon force were picked up by the riverside in vans driven by Russian SVR non-official cover operatives working in HCMC, and then they were driven to a safe house in District One. Here Zoya and Vasily sat for a briefing on the Wild Tigers organization given by an SVR in-country analyst from the local SVR Residency, and then a second briefing about the local police and government counterintelligence structure. Zoya took information from both briefings — names, addresses, affiliations — and by late evening she felt like she knew enough about the organization to make her opening move.

At ten p.m. she leaned into the large upstairs bedroom where Vasily and Yevgeni were just climbing into their bunks. To Vasily she said, “I need two of your men.”

Zoya was dressed in blue jeans and a dark cotton pullover, with a zippered raincoat because the air outside smelled of an approaching storm. She wore a large messenger bag cross-body, and she held a black scooter helmet under her arm.

“For what?” Vasily asked.

“For about an hour. Maybe more.”

Vasily frowned. “Why don’t you call up those non-official cover guys who brought us here? My guys don’t know Vietnamese. They don’t know the area. Maybe you forgot, but we’re the ones you send in when you already have a target fixed.”

The good-looking brunette said, “I have a target.”

Vasily cocked his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Zoya explained, and twenty minutes later she stood with Ruslan and Sasha out in the garage, picking through plastic containers full of used local clothing kept at the safe house for operations in the city.

She dressed both men herself, telling them they would need cell phones and headsets, but no sidearms or other equipment. When they were ready, she had both men dial into the same secure conference call number. She did the same, which put all three of them on an open conference on a secure network. The two paramilitaries climbed into a dark gray Toyota Innova minivan parked in the garage, and Zoya chose a black Honda Air Blade from the row of five scooters available. She put on her helmet and then hit the button on the wall for the garage door.

At five minutes before eleven, the two vehicles carrying the three Russians rolled out onto the tree-lined residential street and into the night.