Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Twenty minutes after opening the call with Brewer, Court was back behind the BMW and the three motorcycles. They were just three hundred yards ahead of him now, though Court strained to see them because of the light rain streaking across the visor of his helmet.

The good news was, for the moment anyway, there were few places for the motorcade to turn off and disappear. The terrain around this highway was predominantly fields and rice paddies, many of them flooded. Wide ponds covered in lily pads and canals filled with brown water were occasionally broken up by little villages and agricultural buildings. The traffic had decreased dramatically, and virtually all the roads leading away from the highway were unpaved.

As Court raced along through the rain he thought about calling Colonel Dai to find out what had happened in Saigon. Ultimately, however, he decided he’d wait. He didn’t want to reveal anything about where he was and what he was doing, because the last thing he needed was a mainland China paramilitary force whizzing by over his head in a helicopter, hitting the BMW, and fucking everything up for Court’s CIA operation.

No. Dai had hit the Wild Tigers HQ in Saigon against Court’s advice, so as far as he was concerned, Dai could sit and stew.

For an instant Court conceded that there was always a chance Fan was now dead back in the building on Nguyen Van Dau, and his entire one-man pursuit of the Wild Tigers motorcade was nothing but a fool’s errand.

But he told himself to trust his instincts, and he pressed on. Fan wasn’t in Saigon at the HQ; he was in the car ahead, or else he was wherever the car was going now.

Fan Jiang sat at a table with his interpreter in an otherwise bare room with high ceilings, peeling wallpaper, and mold growing down the walls. A laptop computer sat in front of him along with a wireless router, various computer peripherals, and several notepads, all of which were covered in Hanzi characters, written Mandarin, as well as English translations.

Yes, his work was in front of him now, but he wasn’t looking at it. Instead he looked at the door to the room.

He’d heard the vehicles pull up a few minutes earlier, and he’d gone to the third-floor window to look out, but he’d been surprised by a man walking by at ground level in the large field behind the villa. The man was armed with a submachine gun hanging from his shoulder, and when he saw Fan he motioned for him to step away from the window.

Fan did as he was told, but not before he saw the three motorcycles and the black BMW roll into view on his left and park on the grass near a canal that ran there. Tu Van Duc climbed out from the backseat of the black car, and he stormed towards the house, almost at a run.

Now Fan sat down and watched the door again because he could hear the banging footsteps up the staircase in the center of the house, and their speed and intensity matched those he’d seen from Captain Tu in the grass.

As he expected, the door to his room flew open and Tu Van Duc stood there in a brilliant white suit and tie, his hands on his hips. Two armed men stood with him, their rifles off their shoulders and in their hands, and for an instant Fan thought he was about to be taken out and shot.

But the leader of the Wild Tigers dispelled that notion immediately. “I made a good decision when I moved you here. We were attacked in Saigon. The building was raided by armed Chinese government agents.”

“Chinese,” Fan repeated. “Here in Vietnam.”

“Yes. Someone in Wo Shing Wo must have talked. When this is all over I’m going to go to Hong Kong and cut the throats of my business partners there, just so they know not to fuck around with Con Ho Hoang Da.”

Fan didn’t want Mr. Duc to do anything of the kind, but he was too intimidated to argue the point. Instead he just asked a question he was afraid to learn the answer to.

“The situation in Saigon? Were you able to repel the Chinese?”

Tu Van Duc just shrugged a little. “They killed some of our people. Took hostages. I just got off the phone with my secretary there. She said one of my lieutenants persuaded them you had been moved, and he didn’t know where. That turns out to be the truth, which is good for us, but bad for him. Your countrymen used a power drill on his feet and knees, and then, when they didn’t get anything from him, they shot him in the head. Killed four others.”

Tu Van Duc surprised Fan now with a toothy smile. “We killed one of the bastards. My driver ran him down with my car.”

Fan reached out to hold on to the desk. He thought he would either faint or vomit, and he did not know which would fill him with the most shame.

The Wild Tigers leader now said, “Don’t worry. Keep working. You are safe here. This villa was a regional headquarters for the Vietcong during the war here. An hour and a half from Saigon and neither the French nor the Americans ever discovered what was going on here. It’s built to keep the occupants safe, but if someone does come, I have a half dozen men here with guns and another half dozen at a checkpoint on the dirt road, and by tonight we will have a lot of new support coming to help us. Nobody can get to you here.”

Fan nodded, hesitated, then asked, “Will you let me leave when I am ready to go? I mean, I told you one month. When my month is up, will you honor your agreement?”

Tu Van Duc smiled. “I only want you to be safe. As soon as it is safe for you, you will be able to do whatever you want. You are my guest, and you will remain so, as long as there is danger.”

With that Mr. Duc turned on his heels, spoke roughly in Vietnamese with his bodyguards, and left the room.

Fan sat quietly alongside his equally silent translator, and together they listened to the stomping footsteps of angry and aggressive men that echoed through the old cavernous villa.

As Court reached the hour and a half mark of his pursuit, he began worrying about the rapidly diminishing fuel level on the dirt bike for the first time. He’d cut off the call with Brewer so she could work, but he called her back now to encourage her to work faster. As soon as she confirmed his identity, Brewer said, “Violator. I think I know where to vector you.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve had a team looking into digital satellite images of everything west of your position, all the way to the Cambodian border. We’ve found a farm about four miles west and one mile north of that highway you are on, east of the Vam Co Tay River.”

“What’s so special about this compound?”

“A satellite image from six days ago shows a BMW 7 Series driving up the unpaved road to the farm, with a pair of motorcycles trailing behind. Police motorcycles. On another image, this one from eleven days ago, the BMW is parked next to the main building on the property along with several other vehicles, including a pair of local police cars. We looked into the location with local contacts at Hanoi station, and they checked property records. It’s part of a small rice agricultural co-op, but the main building is a villa that was the center of a French rubber plantation back in the 1930s. Anyway, the current occupant of the compound did two years in prison in Saigon for smuggling heroin. We can’t get hard confirmation that he’s with the Wild Tigers, but we know they smuggle heroin via groups in Cambodia, and this place is less than a mile to the Cambodian border.”

Court thought it over as he drove. “That’s not all that solid, unless you consider the fact that I’m flying blind here. I sure as hell like it more than any intel I can create on my own.”

“I agree. It’s the only option I see.” Brewer read off the coordinates of the property, and Court pulled to the side of the two-lane highway. He typed the location into his GPS as an old lady walked slowly by, swatting an ox onward with a little switch. She didn’t even look up at the Tay on the motorcycle as she passed. To her Court was just one more Western tourist with nothing better to do than come to Vietnam to drive around on a bike and watch people work.

Looking at his GPS, he saw that his target location was just over one mile north-northeast from his position, and he started to feel relief, until he saw the ground he’d have to cover to get there. Into his mic he said, “Great. A mile on foot through flooded farmland.”

Brewer said, “Well, there is an unpaved road leading to this place, and it cuts through the paddies, canals, and woodlands. But I don’t recommend you take it. If this is a location where a senior member of the Wild Tigers fled after the Chinese attack, I’d say it’s a near certainty they’d post security on the one easy way to their front door.”

Court said, “I’m going to have to get wet for this one. There’s a copse of trees right off the road here by a flooded paddy. I’ll hide out there till dark, then I’ll move out.”

“Remember,” Brewer said, “you are looking for positive ID of Fan Jiang, nothing more. If you determine this is the location where Fan is being held, then I will send Ground Branch assets in to grab him.”

Court said, “If he’s not standing in front of a window, I’m going to have to infiltrate the buildings there on the farm.”

“Are you equipped to infiltrate a compound of armed gangsters?”

“I have a folding knife and some night vision and infrared equipment, and by the time I get to the compound, I’ll have a very foul attitude. That’s going to have to be enough.”

Brewer said nothing for a moment. Then, “Maybe I should just move Ground Branch in now.”

“No,” Court said. “Don’t worry about it. I can get in there.”

“All right. What else do you need from me?”

“Can you have a pizza delivered?”

Court knew little about Suzanne Brewer, but he’d already determined she didn’t have much of a sense of humor. After a few seconds she replied, “That would do nothing to help you maintain your cover.”

Court just rolled his eyes as he looked around to make sure no one was anywhere close. The woman guiding the ox along was fifty yards on, facing the other direction, and the road was empty.

“Signing off for now,” Court said.

“No unnecessary risks.”

“Right.”

Court walked the dirt bike off the shoulder and towards the trees near the edge of a rice paddy. He hid it there in tall grasses, not knowing if he might need it again later this evening.

A few minutes later he sat on a dry piece of ground in thick brush amid high trees lining the water of an irrigation canal and waited for darkness to fall. It was only five p.m.; he’d be here for a while, so he drank bottled water and pulled out two bags of snacks he’d bought the evening before. Looking over the bags, he realized he had a choice between prawn crackers and roasted cashews.

He slipped both bags back into his backpack. He decided he’d wait till just before setting out, and then use the nuts and crackers for the energy he’d need to make the arduous move to the compound.

But for now he’d just lie here, swat flies and mosquitoes, and check over his equipment.

He brought his night vision binoculars out of his backpack and pulled off his baseball cap. Looking both over, he got an idea.

It took him twenty minutes to get it right, but he used electric tape to affix the binos to the bottom of the bill of his cap. This gave him night vision goggles if he dialed back the zoom feature of the binos all the way. They were a little unwieldy like this, but it would be helpful to see in the dark with his hands free, and he found he could easily turn his cap around if he wanted to move the binos out of the way.

He made adjustments on other items in his bag, then secured all his zippers to ensure that everything inside would stay dry when he entered the rice fields. He knew the water would be chest deep or higher in some places, and it would be slow going with the mud and muck.

His dad had told him all about the paddies.

Court thought about his dad in the war now, over half a century ago. With a sly smile he wished more than anything in the world he had an M16 cradled in his arms, and an entire Marine rifle platoon sitting here with him now.

No luck. It was just Court, a knife, and a mission that could go bad a lot more ways than it could go right.

He made himself close his eyes and try to rest up, just as light rain began falling again.