There were more subtle ways to be certain — satellite analysis, drones, human intelligence operations — but Zoya had no time for these measures. If she could find Fan Jiang, she was certain the Chinese and the Americans could also find Fan Jiang, and they might not wait around for days building a target picture before they acted.
No. With what Fan Jiang knew about Chinese secure computer networks, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the Chinese fired a cruise missile into Vietnam to kill the poor son of a bitch the second they discovered his location.
She felt good enough about her intel to go forward this afternoon, and she felt even more sure she was making the right call now. She’d received word from the SVR Residency in Hanoi just an hour ago about a shoot-out at the Con Ho Hoang Da compound in Saigon, and reports from police there that the culprits looked like Han Chinese.
China’s Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Defense were getting closer to Fan, and they’d find this compound soon, so Zoya had to commit herself and her men tonight.
But while she wore a look of utter confidence in front of Vasily and the others, until she laid her eyes and her hands on the Chinese national she’d come all this way to snatch, she wouldn’t take a single easy breath.
The Russian foreign intelligence operative studied her maps again for a few minutes, but then she took a break to look across the open cabin at Vasily. He was geared up in civilian dress like the rest of his unit and Zoya herself, and there was nothing to distinguish him as the team leader, other than the fact that he was a few years older than some of the others on his team.
And for his nature. In a group full of alpha males, Vasily was the boss.
Zoya knew Vasily wouldn’t have allowed her along on the raid if he’d seen a way out of it, but the simple truth was he had no choice but to concede to her request to accompany the direct-action element on this mission. If she wasn’t there with the rest of the task force, she wouldn’t have the time she needed for the sensitive site exploration, the retrieval of intelligence there at the compound in the event Fan himself was not located.
But even though Zoya was on the mission to assault the compound, this did not mean she was on the team to hit the buildings themselves. Still, Zoya knew she’d be right there, just behind the action, and the only thing she would change by choice was that she’d rather be kicking in a door or two herself.
But while the Zaslon men had rifles, Zoya just carried a Glock pistol on her utility belt and some extra magazines in her cargo pants. She had a knife on her belt, as well, along with a second blade taped to the small of her back and a small Beretta Bobcat .22 caliber pistol in an ankle holster.
These were defensive weapons only, while Vasily and most of his men carried AKS-74U suppressed short-barreled variants of the AK-74, and Mikhail wielded the VSS sniper rifle.
Only twenty-five minutes after taking to the air, the pilot signaled they were approaching the landing zone. This wouldn’t be a hot LZ; they would be setting down in a sparsely populated portion of eastern Cambodia, landing two miles inside the border so that they could approach the Wild Tigers compound silently and by using a network of irrigation canals for both cover and concealment.
The Mi-8 touched down on a gravel road alongside a creek, the helo shut down upon landing, and the four-man crew grabbed Kalashnikovs and set up a simple security cordon while the task force began donning their packs and stowing their weapons under their jackets. If they were seen around here on one of the established trails through the jungle or between the farms, they would appear to be just a group of Western hikers heading to the southeast. It would seem strange, maybe — this wasn’t an area known for much tourism — but it wouldn’t cause alarm.
The Mi-8 would wait here by the creek and remain in radio contact with the task force and then, when the call came from Vasily, it would race over the border either to an LZ closer to the target or, if the machine guns or a hasty extract were required, directly over the target itself.
The nine-member task force walked on roads, through fields, and even along a knee-high creek for over ninety minutes before they passed the invisible border between the two nations by stepping up onto a levee at the southern end of one rice paddy and then back down into the northern end of another paddy. Only their GPS devices told them they were in a new nation, because there wasn’t a damn bit of difference to the mud squishing under their boots.
The Russians had timed their flight from the capital so they would cross the Cambodian border on foot right at the end of evening nautical twilight: the moment when the sun set twelve degrees below the western horizon, or the official beginning of nighttime.
Zoya checked her watch and was pleased to see they were right on schedule.
For the next half hour there was no conversation between the nine individuals moving single file, but just before eight p.m. Vasily spoke softly into his interteam radio and demanded full silence, because they were getting close enough to the compound to risk detection from any patrols out of the target location. No one really expected that the gangsters from Saigon would operate their rural safe house like a military installation, but Vasily hadn’t made it this long in his dangerous career by taking chances.
At eight forty-five p.m. the nine Russians had all taken a knee in deep trees and thick brush that ran along the canal to the west of the compound. The rain had stopped and they took their time drinking from water bladders and eating rations. Ideally they would arrive late enough in the evening to dull the senses of any sentries at the location, but again, Zoya didn’t want to wait for the middle of the night. They’d hit around ten p.m., use the darkness to their advantage, and use stealth as long as they could, and then they would just use surprise and violence to power their way to their target.
With a nod from Vasily, Mikhail pulled the second stage of a scuba regulator from his pack, adjusted the hose over his shoulder, and placed it in his mouth. He then climbed down into the canal. It was only five meters across and two meters deep in the center, but he’d use the air to stay under the brown water and remain undetected for much of his movement.
Zoya watched while the team’s sniper crossed to the other side of the canal. There, with only the top of his head sticking out of the water, he began moving slowly in the reeds and brush towards the east. The progression through the three hundred meters of muddy canals was scheduled to take an hour.
She, along with the rest of the men, had small oxygen tanks and swim masks, as well, and they’d follow Mikhail ten minutes behind. But they wouldn’t put their heads under the water until the last hundred meters or so, and from there they would each use their GPS wrist units to follow the canal. Mikhail would arrive minutes before the rest, set up on the far side of the canal, and use his VSS suppressed sniper rifle along with its infrared scope to identify any sentries outside the buildings.
A few minutes later, Zoya Zakharova and the rest of the task force slipped into the water, sank up to their necks, and dug their boots into the muddy surface below them. Together they began a slow, dreamlike push to the south.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Court Gentry lay flat in the thick foliage by an irrigation canal, staring ahead through the head-mounted night observation device he’d made with his binos and his ball cap. He was tired and gross, covered in the slime of rotting foliage and mud, and he had no illusions that he would dry out any time before sunrise, which was eight hours away.