Court wondered if the entire nation of Vietnam had been flooded by mainland Chinese government surveillance experts and hit men, all trying to find Fan Jiang.
By the time Court got back to the guesthouse, the clouds had rolled back over the city, and a warm rain had begun to fall. He knew if it got too dark and stormy his view from the roof would be severely limited.
He started to head for the bathroom to take a leak before climbing back out the window to retake his position, but the rumble of thunder made him rethink his plan. Instead, he used the bathroom, then went back to his room and sat on his little bed.
He plugged his phone in to charge it further, though he had two backup phone chargers in his backpack and one in his front pocket. He turned on his camera app and scrolled through the three views on the 4.7-inch screen.
The first view showed the southern side of the building; it was the same as ever, and there was nothing to see at the front gate, captured on the far left of the camera’s view. The camera showing the east side of the building revealed the same picture as it had all day long other than the rain and a blue minivan pulling up to the rear gate. Court eyed it for just a moment and determined it was the work truck of an Internet service provider, and unlikely to be carrying one of the most wanted men in Southeast Asia.
He checked the front of the building on camera three and immediately cocked his head. This view showed a better angle on the front gatehouse than the cam on the southern side, and where there had been no vehicle at the gate seconds before, now there was a blue minivan, identical to the one in back, just rolling to a stop.
It didn’t take him long to determine what was going on. “No,” he muttered softly. “No.”
Zooming in tight with the camera, he saw both guards in the gatehouse facing the driver’s window of the minivan, standing perfectly still. Then, one after the other, they lifted their hands into the air.
He couldn’t see inside of the van from the angle of his camera, but when one of the guards spun to the ground and a splatter of red covered the glass behind him, there was no doubt as to what was going on.
The other guard dropped right on top of the first.
“Shit!” Court stood, unplugged his phone, grabbed his motorcycle helmet, and slung his pack onto his back. He took just seconds to sanitize his little room, and then he shot out the door.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
As he began hurrying towards the stairs, Court called Colonel Dai. He could not know for certain whether these attackers were Dai’s men or part of the mystery force who hit the cargo ship in Po Toi the day before yesterday, but either way, Court knew he was screwed. There was no way he could make entry to the building himself with whatever was happening in there. The state of alert for the Vietnamese gangsters inside would obviously be through the roof; there would likely be local cops on the way, and, it went without saying, the two vanloads of new actors on the scene showed no compunction in killing threats in their way.
And Court was armed with nothing save for a small folding knife.
All he could do was hope Fan Jiang wasn’t in the building in the first place, or else that the Wild Tigers got him out of there before he was either killed by the Chinese or captured by the other unit after him.
He listened to his earpiece while Dai’s phone rang and rang. Court ran down the stairs, through the narrow hallways of the guesthouse towards a back door that opened to a stoop in the back alley. Dai’s phone still rang in his ear as he launched over the stoop and down into the alley, then sprinted to the gated lot on Le Quang Dinh where his motorcycle was parked.
Court gave up on the call before he got to the lot; he slipped the phone back in his pocket but left the earpiece in his ear as he put his helmet on his head. He climbed onto his Suzuki bike in the parking lot and fired it up, then waited for the attendant to raise the bar so he could pull out onto Le Quang Dinh.
He made a left into heavy scooter traffic, then another left onto a side street. This led him back in the direction of the Wild Tigers building, so Court slowed, then pulled his bike onto the sidewalk at the corner.
He quickly remounted his GPS unit on the handlebars of his bike, then stood there on the sidewalk, straddling the Suzuki, looking up the street through the steady rain. From his position here the Wild Tigers headquarters appeared to be as quiet as at any other time all day, so Court took the opportunity to pull his phone from his jacket pocket and check the camera feeds.
Just as he swiped to the rear camera, he saw movement on his screen. Two men leapt out of the front seats of the minivan as it sat parked in the back lot, facing the entrance to the underground parking garage. They dropped into combat crouches, pistols in their hands, both aiming at the dark entrance to the ramp down to the garage.
Court glanced around quickly at his own environment, then looked back at his phone.
As he watched, a black sedan launched out from the darkness of the underground ramp, so fast it appeared to Court to actually catch air for a moment before the vehicle bottomed out. It swerved hard to the right of the van, striking the shooter who’d jumped out of the driver’s seat, knocking him into the air and over the hood of a car parked next to the minivan. The black sedan raced on, making a hard right to fire out the back gate, and then it took a ninety-degree left to head north.
Here it sideswiped a man pulling a food cart, knocking both him and his cart into the air, sending them crashing off Court’s screen.
He watched it all on his phone, but he could hear tires screeching a hundred yards away on the far side of the building.
And then the sirens of approaching police vehicles began to wail.
Court couldn’t see into the black sedan, but whoever was inside had to be important. Maybe Fan himself, maybe not, but certainly at least a major player in the organization.
With nothing else to go on, no desire to sit around here and wait for the cops to arrive in force, and no confidence that anyone important to him would be left alive inside the building across the street when this was all over, Court decided he had to go after the black sedan.
He revved the throttle on his bike and launched out into the rain and the traffic, leaned to the left, and whipped through the scooters, cars, and pedestrians.
It took Court a minute, but he did catch up to the fleeing vehicle, and it wasn’t due to any high-speed daredevil feats on the street bike. Instead it was the lousy traffic that slowed the black sedan to a crawl just a few blocks north of the Wild Tigers building but nevertheless allowed a determined driver of a motorcycle to pick his way through.
Court found himself just a few car lengths behind the black sedan. From a quick look at the rear of the car through all the action on the street, he managed to ID it as a BMW 7 Series, and this convinced him even more that he was following someone who could help him with his mission. There were some luxury cars around Saigon, a significant number, in fact, but Court didn’t imagine anyone short of top brass for the Wild Tigers would be escaping from their HQ in a ninety-thousand-dollar ride.
The black BMW 7 Series pushed its way through the congestion. The driver laid on his horn in an effort to coax vehicles out of his way. Court did the same some seventy-five yards back. Several times he stood up on the footrests of the Suzuki to try to pick out the sedan ahead in the heavy traffic, then immediately dropped down as soon as he did so in order to focus on something in his way.