Court looked around him. Young men were definitely filling the space between himself at the bar and the walkway along the bar towards the exit. No one had anything in their hands he could see, and they weren’t staring him down, but they were closing in and their bodies were showing cues that told Court they were squaring off for trouble.
Shit.
He was still convinced he could talk his way out of it, but the groupthink of fifty drinking buddies confronting one man certainly affected the attitudes around, and not in a way that encouraged polite discourse.
Court said, “I’ll check it out and call you back. Don’t worry… This could be nothing. If it’s something, I promise I’ll—”
“Just tell me where you are and—”
Court hung up the phone, checked the ship again through the infrared cam, and saw that the two men on the anchor chain were now disappearing over the gunwale near the bow. Two of the men at the stern climbed together, one on top of the other, while two more held it steady at the water line. Court thought it possible more men would be hitting the ship on the far side, as well.
Quickly he thought about calling Brewer to ask her if he was, in fact, watching CIA paramilitaries in action. He knew local Agency assets here were looking for Fan, and a Special Activities Division Ground Branch team had been moved close, ready to support him as soon as Court made contact with the target. Could this possibly be the Agency conducting an operation without his knowledge?
His gut told him this wasn’t SAD. He doubted Brewer would let a CIA hit take place without first making sure her asset in the area wasn’t in a compromised position. She might go ahead with a hit without giving him a warning, Court acknowledged, but he told himself she seemed too worried about her op getting out of hand as it was; leaving him somewhere out in the field during a direct action didn’t feel to him like the way she’d do business.
Plus, Court told himself, he didn’t have time to call Brewer and deal with the challenge-response code. A half dozen men, all Chinese, had moved to within striking distance, and they squared off against him now.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
Court told himself it was time to leave, but he knew the truth; the real time to leave had been five minutes earlier, which was about the time he walked into the bar. These guys didn’t want him around, and any hope he had of leaning on one guy in a corner to get intel about Fitzroy’s missing men went down the toilet the second he realized everybody in the room was on the same team.
Plus, although he wasn’t sure what was going on out in the water on the Tai Chin VI, he was certain he wasn’t going to sit here drinking while some other group hit the cargo ship that he had discovered. He would do his best to clear out of here with apologies and then steal a boat.
After that… well, one thing at a time.
He fanned out a few HK dollars onto the bar, pulled his pack over a shoulder, turned to walk around the bar to head to the exit, and made it exactly five steps before the group of men moved directly between him and the exit. Court smiled and nodded, gave a little courteous bow, and then tried to manage his way through.
They just stood there, blocking the narrow pathway between the bar stools and the tables. A voice barked angrily from the group. “Who are you? What you want here?”
A man in his thirties stepped forward through the scrum. His hair was styled in short spikes, and he had the look of Triad lower-tier management. He had a blue tank top tight on his fleshy frame, and he wore a black short-sleeve shirt with orange dragons on the chest. His right hand was jammed in his front pocket. Court knew he could be hiding a weapon there, but with the baggy shirt he could not be sure.
Court looked past this man, counting heads and gauging the eyes of the others around, trying to judge their fervency to this cause.
The entire establishment fell into complete silence now, all eyes on the Westerner.
“Why are you here?” The man in the dragon shirt shouted even louder now.
Court knew he needed to lay on the charm, and quick. In his British accent he said, “I’m a tourist, from the UK. Is there some sort of a problem?”
“You here earlier. Asking about other gweilo and black man.”
Court smiled a little. “Right. Well, as I explained to that fellow right there behind the bar, I am looking for some mates who came by on Sunday night.”
This appeared to be exactly the wrong answer, as more men stood up from tables and joined the half dozen. Several men behind Court formed into a group and stood close there.
He could make a run for the railing, twenty feet off his left shoulder, where he could then leap off the side, but he’d have to kick out far enough to miss the dinghies floating below, and he’d have to push his way around several men still sitting at tables to even get to the rail. He could also try his luck fighting his way forward or backwards, or he could move over the bar on his right, and then shoot out the back door that he assumed he’d find off the kitchen.
The man with the dragon shirt drew a knife now, flicked the blade open, and held it up in front of his face. “Show me identification. Hand over your backpack.”
“Look, mate. Is that necessary? How about I just leave you gentlemen to your evening, head out the door, and go on—”
“Give me your bag!”
Court was not going to let them look in his backpack. His swim fins, mask, and small air tank and regulator device, along with his cameras and his scanner, weren’t going to exactly get him off the hook with these guys.
Instead he decided his only reasonable course of action was to feign compliance, to start to hand over the bag… and then to bash this fucker on the head with it.
If there were fifty able-bodied guys here, he’d cut into that number with his opening move. Not by an appreciable amount, but this wasn’t simply a game of numbers. No, there was another important factor at play.
Court had learned the power of applied aggression. Studies and papers had been written that were pored over in military and law enforcement circles, but it all boiled down to the concept that someone acting half-crazy and completely sure of himself, initiating a fight with disproportionate violence, could seriously degrade an opponent’s will to fight. Even a much stronger or larger opposing force.
And if this guy was, as Court assumed, part of the organization’s leadership, it might have even more of an effect.
Of course, Court put this all together in under a second. He’d undergone years of training and he had years more of application in the field. Now he compared the situation at hand to his knowledge base in an instant, and he chose his action.
Yes, the gangsters here were going to make him fight his way out of this shit hole, and the only way to do so successfully was to use shock and awe to slow down their reactions to his moves.
He’d crank it up to eleven and fight like a fucking madman.
With his left hand he slipped the pack off his shoulder and began extending it out in front of him while his right hand swept under the front of his black cotton shirt. The knife he’d bought in the dive shop hung in its scabbard there.
More men closed in on Court and he realized he wasn’t going to win this fight if they all came at him, but he saw no choice but to hope he could winnow away attackers and pray that the others would decide they didn’t think he was worth the trouble.
But from his evaluation of the men’s will by the looks they gave him, this wasn’t going to go his way. They looked like they wanted him to resist.