CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Court Gentry lay under a narrow line of triple-canopy trees that divided one rice paddy from the next, and he listened to the massive engines of the big Russian helicopter as it neared his position. Under him was Fan Jiang; the small man just lay there limp, panting, in pain both because of the tight chest and leg cramps from the most intense cardiovascular workout of his life, and due to the fact that a man who weighed fifty pounds more than him was crushing him at the moment.
Court and Fan lay behind the rotting root ball of a felled broadleaf mahogany tree. Court’s plan was to keep their thermal signature broken up by both the trunk and the few inches of standing water here in the muddy hole left when the tree tipped over and ripped its roots from the ground during the last monsoon season.
Other than his head Fan Jiang was completely covered by the muddy water, but Court kept his torso and one arm out of the goo, because even though he didn’t want the helo to see any bit of him or his thermal signature, he wanted to keep his rifle pointed over the root ball in the general direction of the Mi-8.
Court lined the rifle up on the helicopter above using its engine and rotor noise to locate it, hoping he was aiming more or less at the cockpit. He didn’t really think he’d shoot it down, and he doubted he’d do much more than announce his exact location by opening fire, but if it became obvious the helo knew where he was, Court decided he’d rather go down with guns blazing.
Court’s mood had deteriorated dramatically in the past five minutes. On the helo’s first pass Fan had tried to race down the tree-covered levee and into the tall stalks of rice in the flooded field, thinking it could hide him better. Court understood the capabilities of thermal optics and knew Fan had made the wrong call, so he tackled Fan, but with more force than he’d intended, and the two of them rolled and slid down a muddy embankment. By the time Court righted himself and grabbed both his captive and his rifle, he realized his backpack had slipped off his shoulder in the tumble, and now it was somewhere either higher on the levee or down below the surface of the flooded rice paddy, and looking for it would put him in view of the approaching helicopter.
Now as Court lay here hiding in a little hole like an animal, he realized he had to come to terms with the fact that he no longer had a phone, money, papers, surveillance gear, food, or water.
He was so furious with himself he almost wanted to engage the big Russian helo with his stolen Galil rifle, if for no other reason than to expend some aggression.
But after some struggle, he kept his composure and did not fire, and the helicopter continued on to the east.
Minutes later he saw it pass back to the west, picking up speed and climbing away from the rice paddy as it did so, and Court felt sure it was flying away from the scene and back over the Cambodian border.
Court almost wished he could hitch a ride.
After a short while he stood back up, and then he yanked Fan Jiang roughly to his feet. He considered going back to look for his pack, but that would necessitate a climb up onto the high levee that would wear Fan out even more, and a fruitless search that would waste time they did not have.
He thought again about the Russians who’d hit the house, the woman on the team armed with only a pistol, and the Mi-8 that was now flying them back over the border.
After a moment he told himself it wasn’t all bad, because even though he had a long way to go before he’d be somewhere safe and dry, he figured he had one thing those assholes in the helicopter did not have.
He had Fan Jiang.
Fan spoke up just as they began moving again to the west. “I am not an athletic person. I am too tired to continue.” The last part was delivered in an unmistakable whine.
Court said, “Listen, Fan, if I have to sling you over my shoulder, I’m going to be even more pissed off.”
“I am trying, sir. I am trying.”
“Try harder.”
After a minute more Fan said, “Sir… what do I call you?”
“I don’t speak Chinese, and there is no one else here. If you say something in English, I will assume you are talking to me.”
Fan nodded as he walked. “Yes. Of course.”
As soon as the Mi-8 dropped the Russian task force off at the Phnom Penh warehouse used by the SVR, Zoya climbed out of the helo without saying a word to any of the operators. She carried her own equipment and barged straight through the metal door, ignoring the small guard force protecting the building. Several vehicles took up the main floor of the large, well-lit room, but in the back by a kitchen a row of green cots and boxes of equipment was set up next to a row of tables used as a gun-cleaning station. Zoya passed these by as she headed to an open metal staircase that led up to a small office above the warehouse floor. Here she shut the door, locked it, and walked over to her own private sleeping area.
Still covered in the mud, grime, and crystallized sweat from tonight’s operation, she pulled out her secure satellite phone and contacted her control officer in Moscow. She relayed the entire evening’s events. As she did this, she was certain Vasily was downstairs doing exactly the same thing to his Zaslon leadership, but Zoya didn’t give a damn.
She was in the right, not Anna One.
Yes, they’d lost a man tonight and they’d failed to secure their target, but Zoya had clearly ordered the team to stand down and egress before hitting the villa. It was Vasily who demanded they continue with the mission, and the results of that decision spoke for themselves.
As far as she was concerned Vasily was the one who was going to take the heat for this fuckup.
Zoya explained to her control that she didn’t know who had Fan Jiang now, but she didn’t think it was the CIA. She’d seen only a single person involved in the Chinese computer hacker’s capture, and that was most definitely not the way the CIA operated.
If the taking of Fan Jiang was, in fact, an American operation, it had been done by proxy. The kidnapper, Zoya maintained, was perhaps a foreign national who’d been watching the villa when the Russians arrived, and he’d then seen an opportunity to act when Fan, Tu, and the other armed Vietnamese gangster tried to flee the scene.
The “lone wolf who got lucky” scenario was the only one that made any sense to her.
She thought about the man she’d identified as a CIA officer several days earlier in Hong Kong. He’d been alone at the time, although that had been quite a different situation. He’d been drinking in a bar trying to get information about some men who disappeared, which was not exactly a tier-one commando raid on a building surrounded by fifty gunmen.
After she’d relayed all her intel to her control officer, she was told to wait by the phone for a return call. She hung up and went to the little bathroom off the office, and here she stripped out of her gear and clothing.
In the bathroom light she found leeches in her underarms and above where her belt had cinched her pants tight to her skin, and she sliced them away with a combat knife distractedly, with no great distress. After flushing the creatures down the toilet, she saw in the mirror that she’d picked up some bruising on her ribs, but she couldn’t even remember how it happened.
She turned on the little shower; the pressure was that of a garden hose and there was no hot water. Still, she took a small bar of soap out of the backpack pocket where she kept her toiletries and stepped under the flow.