Gunmetal Gray

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

Court waited in a head by the kitchen while Zoya followed the woman down to the berth she shared with two other hostesses. Zoya changed into the dark slacks and dark blouse, and she quickly tied the black tie. All the while the woman stared at her, fighting back some but not all of her tears. Then Zoya tied the woman’s hands expertly around one of the bunk rails; as she did this, she leaned into her ear. “The prisoner. Where is he?”

The French crewmember looked to Zoya, blinked away more tears, and said, “I don’t know about a prisoner… but there is a stateroom on the upper deck. Last one at the end of the hall. We’ve been told to prepare meals but not to go in. The men from Thailand take the meals into the room. That’s all I know.”

Zoya said, “That’s all I need. You’ll be safe right here.”

Court and Zoya made it to the upper deck without encountering anyone else, but as soon as they climbed off the ladder they realized their luck would not last much longer. Here armed guards stood around a long table of at least a dozen men.

By turning away from the table at the stern and towards the salon, they avoided having anyone see that they were not, in fact, members of the crew, but as soon as they closed the door to the upper-deck hallway, finding themselves in an ornate area that looked like an Italian wine bar, they encountered two Italian men wearing polo shirts across broad chests. The men were in their thirties, and they definitely had the look of security.

One sat on a sofa with an HK MP5K machine pistol around his neck. The other stood leaning against the door out of the bar and closer to the bow of the yacht; he carried a pistol on his belt, and a pump-action shotgun rested on the little bar next to him. He looked at the two people who entered the room, identified them as crewmembers, and said something in Italian.

Zoya was in front, shielding the pistol she knew Court would be drawing from his coveralls. She answered back in Italian, but she needn’t have bothered, because as one the two men realized they didn’t recognize either of them.

They both began lifting their weapons.

When Zoya saw them go on the offense, she stepped to her left, and Court raised his weapon with one hand and held his finger over his lips with the other.

The two Italians lowered their guns and slowly raised their hands.

Court and Zoya left the two Italians in the room, facedown and hog-tied next to each other, hidden behind the wine bar, with copious amounts of tape over their mouths.

Now Zoya slung the MP5K over her shoulder and tucked it behind her arm, and the new pistol she dropped in a pocket of her little black apron. Court held the shotgun behind his back and rehid his pistol in the pocket of his blue coveralls, and together they entered the dark hallway leading to the five staterooms.

According to both the engineer below and the hostess, all of these rooms were in use by the Thais on board. It seemed as if the Thais were at the dinner party on the aft deck, but as soon as they entered the hall, Court and Zoya encountered a small Thai man leaning against the door at the far end of the hall.

He was clearly a guard, and he clearly was not suspicious of the new-comers. He waved a finger in front of his face and in broken English he said, “No. You no come in here.”

Zoya was in the lead again; she had earned her role as the least threatening of the pair, and she smiled at the forty-something Thai man. As she spoke and continued walking forward, she noticed the radio hooked on the man’s belt. “Sorry, there is a leak in the air conditioner. Can we just look?”

The Thai started to appear concerned and waved his finger again, while he reached for the radio on his hip. He looked down to unclamp it from his belt, and Zoya launched at him, covering twenty feet in less than two seconds. He cried out just before she went airborne, feetfirst, and she dropkicked the man in the chest, slamming him hard against the door behind.

The guard buckled and folded straight down to the floor.

Court was still twenty feet back up the hall. “Damn,” he muttered.

Zoya climbed to her feet and winced with pain as she rubbed her lower back, having landed on the machine pistol hanging from the sling there.

“You okay?” Court asked, but Zoya was already reaching for the door latch.

Court took her hand, pulled it away, and moved in front of her. The shotgun came out in front of him, and then he opened the door.

Fan Jiang sat on a tiny padded ledge and looked out a window into the night. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his hands were cuffed, up by his head, and shackled by a chain to a handrail protruding from the wall behind him. He could slide over to the bed and lie down with his hands over his head, or he could sit here by the ledge to the window, but that was it.

Zoya dragged the unconscious body out of the hall behind Court and got her first close look at Fan Jiang in the flesh. That accomplished, she turned around, took a knee, and held her machine pistol back up the hallway.

Court cleared the little head on his left, then dropped the shotgun on the bed and moved to Fan.

Softly he asked, “Is anyone else in the other rooms up here?”

Fan cocked his head. “How would I know? I have been chained here for two days.”

“Right,” Court said.

“You left me on the river in Cambodia.”

“No options, Jiang. Trust me, I didn’t want to do it.”

“Now what?”

“Now we get out of here.”

“I do not want to go to the United States.”

“You want to stay here?”

“No… but I wish to bargain.”

“Let’s bust out of here, then we can talk.”

“I could make noise. I could get you captured.”

Zoya looked over at the conversation going on behind her. She couldn’t hear much of it, but any talking and any delay right now bothered her.

She whispered loudly enough to be heard back in the room, “Hey. Can we go?”

Court said, “This shithead is threatening to scream.”

Zoya turned back to look up the hallway. “Does he want to die?”

“He thinks the Italians aren’t crazy enough to kill him. Just us.”

“Tell him about me. I’m crazy enough to kill him.”

Court looked back to Fan. He mouthed the words She is with an emphatic nod.

“Who is that?”

“Russian intelligence. Long story.”

“Working with you? With America?”

“Jiang, the whole wide world joined hands just to rescue you, so don’t fuck it up. We have to go. We can do this together or I can just knock you out and—”

Zoya couldn’t hear from the other side of the room, but she said, “Knock him out and let’s go.”

Court looked to Fan. “Look. You want to go to Taiwan. I get that. You have my word that I will do everything in my power to get you there.”

Fan wiped his face with his hands, restrained by the side of his head. “Really?”

Zoya said, “I’m going to knock you both out if you don’t—”

Court turned to Zoya and whispered back, “Hang on a sec.” He turned back to Jiang. “Really,” Court replied. “Once we get you out of here, you won’t be anybody’s prisoner anymore. America stands for something, and you’ll see that by our actions.”

Fan nodded slowly. “I am putting my trust in you, sir.”

Court felt like his list of obligations to people, institutions, nations, and ideas had just increased, but only by a little. He’d already planned on doing his best to help this man get what he wanted, because it was the right thing to do.

Court nodded, then looked at the cuffs. “Give me a minute and I’ll pick this lock.”

Fan replied, “The keys are in the desk drawer over there.”

“Even better.”

Not five feet from Fan’s reach Court pulled open the drawer, then retrieved a pair of keys. He unlocked Fan, and together they moved to Zoya.

“Finally,” Zoya muttered. And then she said, “Hold. One of the doors is opening.”

Zoya closed the door to Fan’s stateroom.

Court realized they had taken too long. He turned and gave Fan an annoyed look.

Kulap Chamroon headed into the Italian wine bar with one of his lieutenants and two of the ’Ndrangheta overbosses so they could sit in the air-conditioned room and talk business while they enjoyed the last of their wine. This had been a successful night for Kulap, to say the least, and now with the Chinese responsible for the Black Pearl attack dead, Kulap’s enemies would know that he had avenged his brother’s murder, and also that he had the balls to take on a world superpower.

Kulap dreamed big, and although he assumed he’d made an enemy of the Chinese, he knew he’d earned the respect of everyone here in his region, and that was more important.

As he sat down on the leather sofa, he noticed that his Italian friends looked at one another with concern as they stood in the middle of the room. When they exchanged animated words — even more animated than normal for these guys — Kulap sensed a real problem. “What is it?”

Piero, the fatter of the two, turned to the young Thai crime lord. “I don’t know where my boys went.”

Kulap realized that the two bodyguards who’d remained here in the bar all evening were gone now. Their job had been to keep an eye out to protect the wing of staterooms beyond the wine bar… the Chamroon Syndicate’s rooms while on the yacht.

Quickly Kulap stood, passed the ’Ndrangheta men, and opened the door to the hall, expecting to see a guard he called Ice standing at his post, just outside the door where the Chinese prisoner was being held.

But the hallway was empty. All the doors seemed to be closed, but Ice was gone, just like the two Italians. Kulap thought for an instant they might have all left their posts to go out to the deck to smoke, but just then one of the Italians shouted out behind him.

Kulap looked back and saw the problem. Two Italians in polo shirts were tied and taped, lying prostrate on the deck behind the little bar he’d just passed on the left.

The rules on the ’Ndrangheta yacht were straightforward. Only ’Ndrangheta men were allowed to carry weapons. His man in the hallway had been armed only with a radio. But he’d never called the other Thais, nor had he called the Italian bodyguards, of which there were easily a dozen on this big yacht.

Kulap closed the door to the hall, turned around, and followed the big Italians back out into the second-deck salon. The overbosses yelled at the four armed guards there, and all the men ran back into the wine bar as they pulled their pistols and submachine guns.

Zoya said, “Might have been a false alarm. The door opened, but now it’s closed.”

Court said, “No way we’re getting Fan out that way. We’ll have to get through the window here.” He checked to see how it was affixed to the wall. “This will take ten minutes with the tools we have.”

Now Zoya turned away from the door.

“Shotgun! Shoot it out!”

Court could hear it in her voice. They didn’t have twenty minutes. They didn’t have ten seconds.

Just then Zoya raised the Heckler & Koch machine pistol up the hall and shouted in Italian, “Buttalo! Buttalo!”

Court assumed from the tone that she was telling someone in the hall to drop their weapon. And he could tell by the gunfire that Zoya’s demand had been ignored. Rounds crashed through the partially open door, and Zoya fired several short bursts up the hall in the direction of the gunfire there. Two men fell into the hallway from the wine bar. One was dead; the other writhed in the narrow space, clutching his stomach. She dropped down to her knees, then onto her chest, scanning for more guards, and while she did so she shouted back to the American, “We need an exit, now!”