Zoya nodded. “Saigon. Good. Who has him now?”
The captain’s eyes opened. He looked to the ceiling. “I… I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“Non,” he replied. “Je ne sais pas.”
Zoya smiled at the man a moment, still stroking his forehead gently. “It’s okay. Just tell me.”
He shook his head slowly.
Zoya sucked her lungs full of air, then blew out dramatically. Then she reached over onto the floor nearby and picked up an empty shell casing from one of the Vietnamese AK-47 rifles. She stopped petting the man, then calmly touched the steel shell against the open gunshot wound in the man’s gut.
She pressed in and twisted.
The screams made their way two decks down to the commandos scanning the sea through their gun sights.
Court swam between the shoreline rocks towards the tender, still not understanding why it was here and why it had apparently been left abandoned. Court closed on the boat, using his night vision binos to check it over from distance, and to look over the hillside nearby, searching for whoever had brought the boat here in the first place.
When he got to the boat he stepped onto the rocky shore and peered inside. To his surprise, two men lay on the deck, one facedown and the other faceup. Court leaned closer in the darkness, until he saw the bullet wound in the forehead of the man on his back. Suddenly Court realized there must be a sniper with eyes on the bay. He ducked back down into the low water alongside the boat.
But only for a moment; a groan from inside the tender caused him to move a few feet down the hull and chance a look over the gunwale, making sure to keep the little boat between him and the cargo ship, two hundred yards away.
The man lying facedown was clearly still breathing. He rolled slowly off his stomach and onto his right side, facing away from Court. Pushing himself up, the man now rose to his knees.
He grunted again with pain, and Court reached out and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, yanked him over the gunwale of the little boat, and splashed back down in the shallow water with him.
They were both out of the line of fire from the cargo ship, although Court was only assuming that was where the sniper had been positioned when he’d fired on the tender.
The wounded man was in his late twenties; he had longish hair and a scraggly beard and mustache. He wore a plain T-shirt and dark pants. The man put up little resistance; Court saw he was severely wounded, with blood covering the entire front of his shirt and a gaping wound near his left shoulder.
Court searched the man quickly by pulling him up onto the rocks, then rolling him onto his stomach and frisking him. He found a pistol tucked into the man’s belt and looked it over. It was a Type 54, an old Chinese knockoff of an older Russian model. In the dark here Court couldn’t see the caliber, but he checked and saw it had a full magazine and a round in the chamber. He stuck it into the small of his own back.
A flashlight’s wide, diffused beam from across the bay swept over Court’s position, and he ducked low, pushing his captive down with him. When it passed Court decided he needed to get away from this boat next to him. With all the violence necessary considering the urgency of his situation, Court pulled the man up into a crouch and led him up the rocks and off the beach, then into deep scrub brush just ten yards away. The man groaned in a rhythm, almost sobbing as he walked, and Court had no idea if the man was reacting to his pain or his predicament.
They walked together for another minute, and then Court pushed the man down into the dirt in a thick grove of trees and knelt over him.
From his backpack Court pulled a small microfiber towel. It had gotten damp because it was in an outside pouch with only a pull cord closure, but Court nevertheless put it on the man’s shoulder to stop the bleeding. The young man understood and held it there tightly himself.
He took the towel away after a moment and tried to look towards his ragged wound, but he could barely turn his head to see it on his collarbone. He applied hard pressure on his shoulder again to mute the pain and slow the blood loss, but Court still saw dark viscous blood oozing through the young man’s hand and the towel.
Court asked, “Do you speak English?”
The man shook his head.
Court switched to French. “Français?”
Another shake of the head.
Court said, “C’est des conneries!” That’s bullshit! And he pulled the Type 54 and pressed the barrel into the man’s hand that held his shoulder together. Blood ran down into the dirt below him.
“Arrêtez!” Stop! The man’s French improved dramatically. “Je parle un peu.”
Court relieved the pressure on the man’s wound by moving the barrel of the pistol from the hand over the shoulder to between the young man’s eyes. He asked, “Where did you take Fan Jiang?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Look. If you tell me, and I believe you, then I will let you live. You get up and walk away right now. You don’t tell me, or you lie, and you will die right here.”
“I don’t know anything. I am just a cook.”
Court looked this guy over. He shook his head. “Dommage, copain. Je ne te crois pas.” Sorry, pal. I don’t believe you.
The barrel of the pistol went straight to the man’s gunshot wound, digging deep into the hole.
Court used his other hand to stifle the man’s scream.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
The Vietnamese captain lying on the deck on his bridge cried out maniacally as the spent shell case dug deeper into his stomach wound, and his hands reached out to push Zoya Zakharova off him, but she easily batted them away. He began to kick and writhe, but she spun around and sat down on his waist to hold him in place.
Sasha stepped over from his position by the wheel, sliding his short-barreled rifle behind his back on its sling. He knelt and pinned the captain’s arms down to the floor.
After nearly ten seconds of screaming and thrashing, Zoya pulled the casing out. The lower half of it was covered in blood.
The captain’s heavy breathing was the only sound on the bridge for several seconds.
Zoya spoke matter-of-factly. “We can stabilize you. Not because we’re nice, but because we want to take our time. I’ll get what I need out of you, even if I have to take you back to my boat and work on you for days.”
The man cried out in French, “I am just a ship’s captain!”
“And a very good one, I am sure. But the men with you. Who are… who were they?”
The captain gave it up before the crazy woman tortured him again. “They are Con Ho Hoang Da.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Les Tigres Sauvages.”
Zoya translated from French. “The Wild Tigers?” She looked around to the two other men with her. Both Vasily and Sasha shrugged. “It’s some sort of a criminal organization? A Vietnamese gang?”
The captain nodded.
“Very good,” Zoya said, and she rolled off the man’s legs, reached for her water bottle on the floor, and lifted his head once again. She poured water on his hairline and stroked his black hair back gently. “Please, Captain… tell me more.”
Court subjected his wounded prisoner to twenty seconds of agonizing torture, the pistol’s barrel jabbed into the broken collarbone now: twisting, pressing, digging.
Court yanked the gun away suddenly, then waited for the man to stop screaming before he pulled his hand off his mouth. Leaning close into his captive’s face, he watched him pant hysterically for almost a minute. Finally the wounded man recovered enough to look Court’s way.