Big engines.
Slowly he shifted the monocular in his eye, directing his focus all the way out to the road far to his left. Some two hundred yards distant over the open ground of a flooded rice paddy, he saw the two vehicles parked at the checkpoint. As he watched them, the sedans rolled off to the side of the muddy road, just as they were bathed in the white lights of headlamps. Turning his monocular to the right to view the road farther to the south, he saw big heat registers. Quickly he reversed polarity to black hot and recognized the outline of two big canvas-covered military vehicles tearing up the dirt track as they neared the checkpoint.
The trucks rolled past the sedans without stopping, and the fact that the checkpoint let them pass indicated to Court that these big vehicles were on the same side as the Wild Tigers. This was bad news, because it probably indicated more security was about to show up here at the villa. It also almost certainly meant the trucks would be parking next to the other vehicles, which was to say, just twenty or thirty yards from where Court now lay, half under and half next to the diesel generator.
He thought about rising to his feet and running around the corner on his right towards the western side of the property, but the sniper with a perfect line of sight on his position caused him to remain still, to lie there and hope nobody who climbed out of those trucks decided to take a leak on the concrete slab holding the diesel generator at the corner of the villa.
The pair of olive drab, canvas-covered trucks rolled into view and stopped in the muddy grass. Court ID’d them immediately as old ZIL-131s, Soviet-era Russian trucks that had been used in the armed forces of most every nation that either bought or was gifted military equipment from Moscow.
Tailgates slammed down on both vehicles and armed men began leaping out of the back, down onto the wet grass. Court saw that these were regular army troops, all wearing the green camo uniforms of the People’s Army of Vietnam.
As the trucks emptied, Court counted twenty-four men in all, each carrying an assault rifle, a backpack, and extra ammo on their chests. Most of the men then ran off around to the east, but a few ran to the west side of the building, passing Court’s location on their way towards the back porch.
Court began to think he’d be stuck here until daylight, at which point his position would be obvious to anyone and everyone around him.
For an instant he thought about the burner phones stowed in his waterproof pack. One call to Colonel Dai and Chinese operators would descend on this location, although it might take them a couple of hours to make their move if they were still in Saigon.
But Court knew he couldn’t grab his phone and make that call, and he didn’t think even Colonel Dai would order an attack on front-line Vietnamese army troops.
No, the frenetic Chinese officer would likely just order Court to continue on his mission alone, to stage a one-man raid on this place to kill Fan, and use the life of Sir Donald Fitzroy as a bargaining chip to get him to do so.
Court closed his eyes in frustration. He found himself flat on his stomach, likely just feet away from his objective, with absolutely no idea what the hell he was supposed to do.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN
Zoya Zakharova was on mission at the moment, but she couldn’t help but harbor a quick fantasy.
In her imagination she was somewhere dry and sunbaked, with a drink in her hand and the smell of cut flowers close by, filling her with happiness and tranquility.
The dream faded as a blade of saw grass sliced her forearm just aft of her glove, bringing her back to the reality that she was wading through a god-awful-smelling canal full of snakes, leeches, and vermin. She’d spent almost an hour up to her neck in the slimy ditch, pushing a large clump of water hyacinth along with her to break up the outline of a human head. Her body felt like it would never dry out once she climbed out of this dank water, and even if it did, she was convinced she’d never be able to wash the smell of rotten vegetation off her skin.
Still, at least the op was going nominally. The Zaslon operators were in front of her, and she’d had no contact with them at all, but she’d listened in minutes earlier as Mikhail gave the all clear to the team to move on to the objective waypoint of tonight’s action. The target location looked as it had on the satellite photos, the task force was on schedule, and the prospects of locating Fan were good.
But now, as she rubbed the pain on her forearm from the saw grass and just before the first members of the task force ahead of her approached the last gentle turn in the canal before arriving at the compound, she heard a new transmission from Mikhail. While his voice remained professional, this time she detected unmistakable urgency. “All call signs: hold, hold, hold.”
Ahead of her Vasily raised his right arm into a fist, and the team stopped instantly in the shoulder-high water. The men tucked deep into the grasses alongside the canal, and Zoya did the same.
Vasily came over the net now. “Report when able, Seven.”
Mikhail responded ten seconds later. “Anna Seven to all call signs. I have two PAVN trucks on scene. I count two-four uniformed dismounts, twenty-four, all armed with rifles. They are dispersing in squad-sized elements around the eastern side of the compound, a pair have remained at the trucks, and two more went around the western side, but I can’t see around the vehicles there so I’m not sure if they went inside a back door or are still on the grounds.”
It took Vasily a moment to respond to all this information; it was a surprising change in the equation, to say the least. “Is your position secure?”
“My position is secure, for now. I can’t see the eastern entrance of the main house itself, but I think some of them might have headed inside. Most are moving on foot back over towards the road and the front of the property. None of them have come over here near the canal. It looks like they don’t expect anyone to attack from the flooded fields, but they are setting up a defensive cordon close to the dirt road.”
Vasily just said, “Roger that.”
Zoya had listened to all of this, and she fully expected to next hear Vasily ordering his unit to stand down, to back out of the area without continuing the mission. They didn’t know how many Wild Tigers were inside the villa, but now the fact that there were at least three times more armed opposition on the property than the total Zaslon force, in the form of regular army troops, no less — she knew it would be madness to continue on.
Vasily’s next call left her momentarily dumbstruck. “Seven, this is One. We are approaching from the west now; notify us of any changes in the force distribution.”
Zoya shook her head there in the darkness, then triggered her own radio. Whispering, she said, “Sirena for One. We need to retrograde out of the target area and reassess.”
Vasily responded to this over the radio, not even bothering with the standard protocol of identifying himself. “Negative. We are at Omega. We proceed.”
Zoya just stood there in the tall grasses. “We are not at the objective, One. We can exfiltrate. We need to exfiltrate.”
“I’m assault commander, Koshka. We continue.”
“Nyet, I am canceling the assault. I have authority to—”
Vasily came over the radio now, blocking Zoya’s radio traffic with his whispering, angry voice. “We came for this target, we are taking this target. The PAVN infantry is a third-rate force. They do not have heavy weapons. We will not relinquish the advantage we have now. Stealth will get us close to the target, and our CQB tactics will get us the rest of the way. I will put Anna Eight on the far side of the canal along with Mikhail, and together the two of them can provide overwatch, engage and occupy the infantry on the east side of the compound if we lose the initiative while we hit the house.” To all this Vasily added a warning. “We are going forward. Get off the net, Koshka.”