Two words in Thai and then their English translation:
ROMAN BATHS
Court had no idea if Chamroon had decided to take his ladies for a swim, but he decided he’d have better luck picking a door lock on the roof than trying to get through this window quickly and silently, so he continued ascending.
Seconds later he arrived at the dark roof, took a look around, and found it unguarded. He moved across the flat roof to the door, only now drawing the Glock pistol he’d removed from the bodyguard, because he was certain he wouldn’t be able to talk his way past anyone who found him skulking around up here.
As he arrived at the door to the stairwell, he saw a large form lying to the left of the closed door. He pointed his gun at it, thinking it to be roughly man-sized and man-shaped, but when he got close enough to get a good look he lowered the gun.
A young man, clearly one of the Chamroon bodyguards, lay facedown with glistening blood surrounding a hole in the back of his head.
In an instant Court realized the SVR man downstairs had not been alone. The paramilitaries he’d run into in Hong Kong and Vietnam were here, as well.
He stepped to the door, found it locked, then went back over to the guard. He checked the man over and found a set of keys, then slipped his pistol in his belt and started trying the keys in the door, rushing through the process and cussing under his breath each time he failed to get in.
The first four Chinese arrived fewer than five minutes after Colonel Dai hung up his call with Gentry, because they had been close by in the Royal City Avenue neighborhood, staking out a bar owned by another group of Thai gangsters.
Despite Gentry’s demand that the men stay outside the club, Dai ordered them to go straight in and perform recon for the larger force racing into the neighborhood, but when the four tried to get into the Black Pearl they were confronted by a bouncer who demanded to frisk them. The men turned away before causing a scene, not wanting to endanger their cover before they had the guns in play to make a real stand. Instead, they backed off and took up positions around the large building, each covering a side of the building.
Three of the men were armed with pistols, but one carried an HK UMP submachine gun under his suit coat. He stepped into a poorly lit narrow alley on the west side of the building, tucked himself between a row of garbage cans near a kitchen entrance to the club, and squatted down in the dark.
The fourteenth key on the chain of fifteen unlocked the door to the stairwell. Court turned the latch and held it there, pocketed the keychain, and drew his Glock 17 again, then knelt down on one knee. He pulled the door open slowly, his gun in front of him, but on the other side he found only a well-lit and empty stairwell.
He considered whether he should descend or call this entire thing off, knowing now he was moving towards a team of well-trained killers and a group of less well-trained but numerically impressive armed Thai gangsters. He wasn’t certain how far he was going to take this, but the fact that he knew of the existence of his opposition, while they had no idea he was even here, gave him the confidence to push on.
Nine additional plain-clothed employees of China’s Ministry of Defense arrived on the streets around the Black Pearl in four different vehicles from three different locations around the city. Like the first four men to show up, these were not special operations paramilitaries; they didn’t work as a tactical team and wear body armor and night vision equipment. Rather they were individual operators, accustomed to working with a small team on some missions, perhaps, although they didn’t fight as a unit.
Some of the men carried CZ pistols, others had Walthers, and three more of this group had fully automatic submachine guns with folding stocks hanging inside their jackets.
They saw the huge crowd milling around the entrances and exits of the club, the substantial size of the building itself, and the large number of security at the entrances. Immediately Major Xi, the lead operative of all Dai’s forces working on the Fan Jiang operation, put in a call to his control officer back in Hong Kong.
Colonel Dai Longhai stood on the balcony of his massive safe house in the Peak neighborhood of Hong Kong. He’d been up all night working with the Chinese embassy in Bangkok to try to find Fan Jiang, and when Gentry called minutes earlier he knew he would not retire to bed until he knew the status of the in extremis operation currently under way nearly a thousand miles to the west.
When his phone rang he snatched it up from a patio table where it rested next to his cigarettes, and he answered the call.
“Ni hao.”
“Colonel, this is Major Xi.”
“What is the situation?”
“We are outside the nightclub, but we won’t be able to get in covertly. There is a lot of security here.”
Dai growled. “Unacceptable.”
“We can enter into combat with the security if you wish, but the building is four stories and an entire city block in size. Without knowing where our target is, it will be difficult to clear the building before local police arrive in numbers.”
“Have you seen Gentry?”
“Negative, Colonel.”
Dai looked out at Victoria Harbor, the lights still twinkling even though it was just a couple of hours before dawn. He said, “The Russians are there. They managed to get inside.”
“Perhaps they are unarmed, sir.”
“I doubt that.” Dai thought a moment. “The building. Is it free-standing?”
“Yes.”
“Then force everyone out.”
A pause. “Fire alarm, sir?”
Dai did not hesitate. “No. A fire.”
“You want us to start a fire?”
“Correct. Something to get the building evacuated. Leave men to watch all the exits, and make entry yourself. If the Russians get information on Fan’s whereabouts first, then I will hold you personally responsible.”
“Xie de, lujon shangxiao.” Yes, Colonel.
“If Fan is sighted, kill him. If any member of Chamroon’s senior leadership tries to leave, take them. If no one important comes out… then you go in and find them.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Major Xi and four other men walked briskly up the alley towards the western employee entrance of the nightclub, passing by their colleague with the UMP hiding between the garbage cans without even seeing him. A few men and women, employees of the club, were standing around on smoke breaks, a young man rolled garbage down a ramp towards the large bins in the alley, and an unarmed bouncer of the club sat on a little bench and played with his phone.
The Chinese drew their weapons when the man slid off the bench to confront them, and Major Xi slammed him in the side of his head with the butt of his CZ pistol, administering a severe concussion to the bouncer and knocking him out cold. Xi kept walking as the man fell to the ground, but a subordinate pulled off the man’s headset while the others pointed their weapons at the other employees of the nightclub, all of whom just shriveled out of the path of the silent men in business suits waving guns.
Xi and his small team encountered their first armed security man in the kitchen. He worked for the club, but he was a Chamroon Syndicate henchman, so he carried a pistol in a shoulder holster. He leaned against a wall next to the door between the kitchen and the front of the house. He’d been hitting on a pretty cocktail waitress, but when he glanced away from her he found himself facing four armed men in dark suit coats. He reached into his own coat to pull his own gun, but he thought better of it when a silencer pressed hard against his left temple.