Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The helicopter was nothing but a tiny insect when he first noticed it: a speck of black hanging just over the endless green delta to the south. It seemed to flicker in the morning haze, still miles away.

It grew quickly, though, and Court caught himself hoping it would develop into the shape of a Huey. He had an affinity for the old helicopters; his dad had flown around in them in Vietnam, and Court himself trained in them almost exclusively with the CIA’s Autonomous Asset Development Program, simply because they were smaller and cheaper to operate than the Black Hawks that all but replaced them, and since he trained alone and the U.S. government still had lots of old Hueys at their disposal, that had been his principal ride.

And now that he was here in Southeast Asia, looking to the sky for a savior, he thought it would be appropriate to have a Huey sweep in and pick him up.

He got his wish. Court recognized the UH-1Y, called the Yankee, though everyone in the U.S. military referred to it as a Skid if it carried a weapon or a Slick if it was unarmed.

He’d expected the aircraft to be unmarked; back when he was in the CIA as a paramilitary operations officer he sometimes worked with members of the military, but they were always black-side types: Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, special operations communications and electronic intelligence personnel, or deep-cover spooks from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He never flew on marked military aircraft.

But as the Huey got closer, Court saw the unmistakable markings of the United States Marine Corps. And as the aircraft hovered over the LZ he saw it was a Skid; a crew chief sat in the open door with a big .50 caliber machine gun poking out of the side.

It occurred to him that this meant the U.S. Marine Corps was conducting an armed invasion into Cambodia on his behalf.

Awkward, Court thought. How did Brewer manage this?

The Huey touched down on the grass of the clearing next to the sweet potato field; by now a few locals stood on a nearby levee and looked on. Court hoped these farmers didn’t have a cell phone on them, but he had bigger things to worry about.

He ran under the spinning rotors and climbed aboard. The crew chief directed him to a bench along the bulkhead, strapped him in as if Court had never ridden in a helicopter in his life, and then put a headset microphone on Court’s head.

The crew chief wore the rank of corporal on his flight suit. Under the big flight helmet and the blacked-out visor and the microphone covering his face, Court figured the Marine was no more than twenty-one years old. Still, Court let the kid run the show; this was his aircraft, and the filthy unshaved American hanging out in the flatlands of Cambodia was just a passenger.

The young man spoke into his mic, and it came through Court’s earphones. He could hear the excitement in the Marine’s voice about conducting such an odd operation. “Sir, can I have your name, please?”

Court followed the instructions given to him by Brewer just three hours earlier. “I’m Tom.”

“Then we’re your chariot, sir. We’ll get you out of here and take you wherever you want to go.” He added, “As long as we have the fuel.”

The crew chief clearly knew nothing about what was going on other than his aircraft’s orders to get to a particular grid and pick up a man named Tom, then to follow the man’s subsequent orders.

“What are my options?” Court asked.

The aircraft took off immediately, rising straight up into the sky. “We’ve got fuel to get you to Phnom Penh or Saigon. Which do you prefer?”

“How did you work that out with the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam?”

The crew chief stared back at Court; he looked like a big insect with his black visor covering his eyes. “No idea, sir. I think something is arranged; we were told we could go wherever, but that’s a little bit above my pay grade.”

Court just nodded. He wondered if CIA had asked permission for this flight, or if they were going to just ask forgiveness after the fact. He decided it was above his pay grade, as well, so he didn’t stress about it.

Court asked, “Did you guys come off a ship?”

A nod of the big helmet. “Yes, sir. We’re on the Boxer. It’s an LHD. Uh… that’s an assault ship. We’re just leaving exercises in the South China Sea.”

“And where are you heading?”

The kid couldn’t hide a little grin. “Bangkok. Forty-eight hours liberty.”

Court nodded thoughtfully, looking down at the sweet potato farm rolling away below. “You think the navy would mind giving me a ride?”

“Don’t see why not, sir. They give us Marines a ride, and we can be a handful. I doubt you’d be much trouble at all.”

Court nodded. “Bangkok works for me.”

“Roger that, sir.” The crew chief switched channels on his radio and told the pilot to return to the ship. Back on Court’s channel, he said, “About fifty mikes flying time. Make yourself comfortable. You look like you could do with some chow.”

“You buying?”

“Sure am.” The corporal handed Court a huge bottle of water and an MRE. Court drank half the bottle without stopping, then looked at the bag holding the prepackaged meal. Chicken stew. Court smiled, took a knife from the crew chief, cut the package open, and began wolfing it down cold.

The crew chief split his time between looking out the open door — close enough to the fifty cal to where he could slide over and operate it if trouble arose — and trying to steal glances at the man sitting across from him. Court let it go for a minute, then looked up at the young man and shook his head once.

The crew chief turned away and focused his attention completely on the river and jungle racing by below.

Court’s mind went back to his mission. He’d been forced to leave Fan with the Thai river pirates because there was no way he was getting the young man off that boat without both of them getting killed. It had been a hard choice to make, but Fan himself had given him a lead as to what group had kidnapped him.

A Thai criminal organization had Fan now, and it was up to Brewer and Colonel Dai, each working alone, to figure out exactly where they would take Fan Jiang.

Court had gone nearly twenty-four hours without checking in with Dai. He’d have to call him after he got settled on the Boxer, so for now he just rode in the back of the Skid and tried to work on some story that Dai would believe.

He knew he’d have to spin one hell of an epic tale of bullshit to keep Dai from putting a bullet in Don Fitzroy’s head.

And, speaking of tales of epic bullshit, there was Suzanne Brewer. He would call her first, and he would find out what the fuck was really going on. There was more to this mission than he understood, and he worried he wasn’t going to like what he found out about it.

Suzanne Brewer had spent the evening hours moving mountains to arrange for an agent to be picked up in the wilds of Southeast Asia and ferried out to a passing U.S. Navy vessel. When everything was settled she’d lain down on the sofa in her office, elevated her leg to reduce the lingering pain in the weeks-old injury, and fallen quickly asleep.

The trilling of the phone on her desk woke her at four a.m., sending her rocking up slowly, where she grabbed her crutches, not bothering with her knee scooter to get across the room.

Ten minutes later she was halfway through Violator’s after-action report of the events near the Cambodian border the evening before. He was on the USS Boxer in a secluded area and able to talk unrestricted over the secure line. He told his story chronologically; he seemed to include all the important details, and Brewer took notes on a pad while he spoke. She wanted him to jump ahead to tell her what the hell happened to Fan Jiang, but she knew better than to interrupt his train of thought as long as he was providing relevant information.

But when he said, matter-of-factly, “I feel sure the attacking paramilitary force was Russian,” she interrupted, because this was an especially important development.

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen Russian special operations forces in the field before. GRU Spetsnaz, FSB Spetsnaz, and SVR Zaslon. This looked like the way they did things. I can’t really say why, but I’m sure they were Russian. It wouldn’t make sense for GRU to be involved because this isn’t a military operation, and the FSB mostly works closer to Russia’s borders. I’m guessing this was a Zaslon team.”

“That’s pretty thin,” Brewer chastised.

“Yes,” Gentry admitted. “Unless you put some credence in the intuition of a guy who’s been working in this field for twenty years.”

“Fair enough.”

“Oh, and there was a woman with them.”

“A woman?”

“In an operational role. She wasn’t stacking up with the Zaslon guys, but she breached the target location alone at the same time they did.”

Brewer spoke with authority. “Zaslon doesn’t have females. None of the Spetsnaz groups do.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw. My guess is she was not on the team even though she was jocked up like the boys. She might have had operational command on the scene.”

“Could she have been an SVR case officer?”

“Maybe,” admitted Court. “But she didn’t come out of an embassy. She had a definite edge to her. A non-official cover operative of some sort, but one with a lot more direct-action training than they normally give Russian NOCs.”

“Could you identify her from images we have of Russian female SVR operatives?”

“No. No way. Saw just part of her face for less than a second through NVGs.”

Brewer changed course. “Okay, enough about the attackers. Tell me about Fan Jiang.”

Court relayed everything Fan had told him about why he ran, the family collateral he lost, and his strong desire to be done with all this.

When he stopped talking, she said, “Okay… well, as I told you several times, your job was not to make contact with Fan. It was to get positive ID and then notify me so I could send in others.”

Court said, “And now I know why you didn’t want me in contact with Fan myself.”

“Meaning?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

“Meaning I’ve been lied to from the beginning. I was not told that Major Song Julong, the man watching Fan’s parents, was an agent for the West. I wasn’t told that Fan only got out of the mainland with the help of a service friendly and intimate with the CIA. Why is that?”

Brewer said, “I did not have authorization to tell you. That’s really all you need to know.”

Court asked, “Was this a Taiwanese op that we jumped in to save, or was this a joint op, where we were involved with the fuckup from the start?”

Brewer remained silent.

“You have to tell me.”

Now she spoke. “Yes… Major Song contacted someone at Taiwanese intelligence and told him Fan Jiang would try to cross the border with no papers. They threw something together, didn’t reach out to us for help. Didn’t reach out to anyone. They got him over the border, but Fan was followed over by some of Colonel Dai’s men. The Taiwanese intelligence agents waiting for him had to call off the pickup, leaving Fan all alone. He panicked and left, and the Taiwanese weren’t able to reconnect with him. They came to us, finally, and when Fitzroy was pulled into the operation on the Chinese side, we saw an opportunity to help find Fan Jiang by having you make contact with Fitzroy.”

“And why wasn’t I told all this from the beginning?”

“It wasn’t relevant.”

“Usually when someone withholds information from me, it’s because they are hiding something bigger. What am I missing?”

“You aren’t missing anything. We couldn’t expose Taiwanese intelligence if you were captured when you went in to see Fitzroy. The knowledge that Taiwan helped with the defection could have started a shooting war between the two Chinas.”

Court sighed, but he seemed to let the matter drop. “Look, Fan definitely does not want to go to the USA. He wants to go to Taiwan.”

Brewer sniffed now. “You sound like you give a shit. It’s not your job to give a shit. It was your job to find him so SAD can pick him up.”

“It makes things tougher that he is unwilling. If this is a joint operation, he needs to go to Taipei. It shouldn’t be that big a deal.”

“No promises,” Brewer said, and then she began railing at Violator about losing his means of communication during the op. “We could have picked Fan up hours before he was kidnapped by the Thais if you’d had your phone.”

“I know that. Shit happens in the field, Brewer.”

“That is what people say when they screw up. It becomes an excuse for their incompetence.”

Court let it go. She was his handler and she was right. He’d fucked up, and he’d let her criticize him about it even though she was probably sitting there in a nice office with a cranberry muffin and a cup of coffee in front of her.

He said, “I’m going to Bangkok; I’ll talk to Colonel Dai and get help from the Chinese. If you’ve got somebody better than me to nab Fan Jiang, you go ahead and get them on it.”

“How can you go to Bangkok? The Thai gangsters who took Fan Jiang have seen you.”

“The guys who saw me in Cambodia were smugglers. River rats. Fan will be handed over three more times before he makes it into Bangkok. Fan will be in Bangkok with senior management. I’m not worried about being compromised.”

Brewer blew out a long sigh. “Violator, you probably don’t need me telling you this, but this operation is not going well. I’m talking to Hanley as soon as he gets to the office.”

“To tell him what?”

Brewer did not respond.

“To tell him what?”

“To tell him that we need to rethink our next steps.”

“You can sit there and think about whatever the hell you want. I’m going after Fan Jiang.”

“If you are told to stand down, you will stand down.”

“Matt won’t pull me off this. The stakes are too high.”

“Exactly. They are too high to have one operator, one who is possibly exposed to the opposition, running around on a solo mission to grab this high-value target. Your initial job was to find out what the Chinese and Fitzroy knew about the location of Fan Jiang. That intel is a week old and half a continent removed from where you are now. At this point, I consider your continued pursuit of the target an unnecessary compromise.”

“I got damn close, Brewer. Hell, I had my hands on that kid’s neck.”

“And yet here we are.” She let the comment hang in the air, the crackling phone line the only noise in Court’s ear for a moment. Then she said, “Do you think it is a simple thing to order a Marine Corps helicopter to fly an in extremis exfiltration op into a nation like Cambodia? You think that was what I and the rest of the Agency needed to be focusing on last night?”

And with that, Violator hung up the phone.

Brewer looked across her desk at a sheet of paper lying there. On it was the direct line to the XO of the USS Boxer. With one call to him she could have a dozen Marines with M16s pull Violator off his bunk and throw him in the brig till the ship docked. The CIA SAD team in the area could then bring him back to the States and watch over him till the operation was concluded.

But she did not make the call. To do that she’d need the backing of Director Hanley, and she was not going to disturb him at home. It would make her appear weak and indecisive.

She grabbed her crutches and headed back to her sofa. She’d allow herself a few hours of sleep before she got back up, and as soon as Hanley came to work she’d talk to him and shut this entire operation down. With a little luck she’d be permanently free of Violator by midmorning, and her career would be back on track.