by Tom Clancy
“MFIC? I don’t know that acronym. Is that from the Chinese military or something?”
Chavez said, “Just work on the pic and send it back to us.”
“You got it.”
* * *
Five minutes later the three Americans were back in the Mitsubishi Grandis, following the white SUV carrying Zha “FastByte22” Shu Hai and his six 14K minders as it left the gritty streets of Mong Kok and headed south through late-rush-hour Kowloon into Tsim Sha Tsui.
The SUV stopped at a corner in a chic retail area. Five of Zha’s security men climbed out, and then Zha himself appeared. He wore black jeans with silver studs running up the side, a bright pink tank top, and a black studded leather jacket. His detail, on the other hand, all wore the same blue jeans and drab T-shirts under denim jackets.
Zha and his entourage entered a clothing store as a group.
A steady rain had begun to fall; this did nothing for the oppressive heat but only added uncomfortable moisture to the mix. Adam pulled his car over to the side of the road two blocks past the store, then produced four collapsible umbrellas and passed one black and one red umbrella to each man. Ding and Jack slipped the red one in the small of their backs under their shirts and went with the black. This would virtually double their chances of remaining covert, as they could switch out umbrellas to reduce the risk that someone who spotted them earlier would notice them a second time.
As the two Hendley Associates men climbed out of the Mitsubishi, Adam called to them, “Remember, for some reason Zha’s security has been alerted that he’s under surveillance. You’ll have to watch yourselves. Don’t push it, stay back, if we lose them tonight we’ll pick them up tomorrow night.”
Jack and Ding split up immediately and took turns passing the shop every few minutes. The darkness, the heavy crowds on the sidewalks, and the large glass windows of the clothing store made keeping an eye on the young hacker easy work, even when one of the 14K men stood outside the shop to smoke and scan the pedestrians passing by.
Zha and the others left without making a purchase a few minutes later, but they did not climb back into the SUV. Instead the five guards popped umbrellas, one covered Zha with his, and they headed south, stepping into and out of several stores along the way.
Zha spent half the time window-shopping or looking at clothes and electronics inside the various shops, and the other half of the time either talking on his phone or using a tiny handheld computer as the man on his arm led him through the busy streets.
He bought some cables and a new laptop battery in a small store on Kowloon Park Drive, and then he and his goons ducked into an Internet café on Salisbury Road, near the entrance to the Star Ferry port.
Ryan had the eye at the time. He transmitted to Yao. “Should I go in?”
“Negative,” said Yao. “I’ve been in that place. It’s a small, narrow space. He might be meeting someone, but we can’t risk compromise by sending you in.”
Ryan understood. “I’ll hang back at the Star Ferry entrance with visual on the front.”
Yao said, “Ding, that place has a back door. If he takes it he’ll end up on Canton Road. Hustle over there in case they are trying to shake a tail.”
“Copy that.” Ding had been two blocks behind Ryan, but he picked up the pace and made a right on Canton. He put himself on the far side of the street and stood in the rain, his umbrella shielding his face from the streetlamps above.
Just as Yao suspected, Zha and his entourage appeared on Canton road a few minutes later. “Chavez has the eye. Headed south on Canton.”
Adam had noticed that the Triads had been doing SDRs, surveillance detection runs, more and more in the last few days. The American CIA operative still had no idea how he had been burned, but whatever he’d done to expose himself, he was damn glad to have the help from Chavez and Junior.
Just minutes after Ding announced he had the eye, Jack saw Zha and the others, moving under a tight pack of umbrellas, approaching his position near the ferry entrance.
Jack said, “Looks like they are getting on the ferry.”
“Excellent,” said Yao. “He’s probably going to Wan Chai. That’s where the bars are. He’s done that several times in the last week, hitting the girlie bars around Lockhart Road. I don’t think he gives a shit about naked girls, but the Fourteen-K run most of those clubs, so it’s probably where his guards feel comfortable taking him.”
“Can we go in without being compromised?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, you’ll just have to watch yourselves. There will be other Triads in the crowd. They may not be working on the Zha detail, but they are a rough bunch when they are drinking.”
Jack said, “Don’t they all know martial arts?”
Yao chuckled. “It’s not one long Jackie Chan movie over here. Not everybody is a kung fu master.”
“Well, that’s comforting.”
“It shouldn’t be. They all carry pistols or knives. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather take a donkey kick to the chest than a nine-millimeter round to the chest.”
“You got a point there, Yao.”
“Jack, you go ahead and get in line for the next ferry across. They shouldn’t suspect you if you are in front of them, but be careful where you position yourself.”
“Roger.”
“Ding, I’m en route to pick you up. We’ll take the tunnel to the other side and be there waiting when they get off the boat.”
* * *
The old Star Ferry boat bobbed and swayed in the choppy Victoria Harbour as it crossed between thick harbor traffic on its eight-minute journey to Hong Kong Island. Jack sat well behind the 14K men and the computer hacker as they rode at the front of the covered deck.
He was confident he had not been spotted by the opposition, and he was also confident they were not meeting anyone on the boat, as no one had approached.
But something else caught Jack’s eye about midway through the crossing.
Two men entered the passenger cabin and walked right past Jack’s position. They sat down several rows behind Zha. They were fit men in their late twenties or early thirties; one had a red polo and jeans, and on his right forearm was a tattoo that said “Cowboy Up.” The other wore an untucked button-down and cargo shorts.
They looked — to Jack, anyway — like Americans, and both men had their eyes trained on the back of Zha’s head.
“We may have a problem,” Ryan said softly as he looked out the window in the opposite direction of the Triad group.
“What’s up?” asked Chavez.
“I think there are two more guys, two American guys, who are watching the target.”
“Shit,” said Yao.
“Who are they, Adam?” asked Chavez.
“I don’t know. They could be U.S. marshals. Zha is a wanted man in the USA. If so, they won’t know their way around HK. They won’t know how to blend. They won’t know that Zha and the Fourteen-K are watching for a tail. They will get burned.”
Ryan said, “They are a little too close, but otherwise they aren’t being obvious just yet.”
Yao countered, “Yeah, but if there are two on him now, there will be a half-dozen on him soon enough. There’s only so many wide-eyed Americans you can stick in one place over here without the Triads figuring out their protectee has grown a tail.”
The ferry docked on Hong Kong Island a few minutes later, and Ryan was the first off, well ahead of Zha and his crew. He walked down a long ramp into the Central neighborhood, then disappeared down an elevator to the MTR without ever regarding his targets.
He did not need to. Chavez was positioned at the exit to the ferry, and he followed Zha and company as they climbed into a taxi van. They headed off to the south.
Adam had seen this from the Mitsubishi minivan. He announced over the conference call, “I’ll tail them. Ding, get down in the MTR with Jack and take a train to Wan Chai Station. I’d bet money that’s where they are going. You can be there ahead of them if you hustle,
and I’ll guide you to wherever they are.”
“En route,” said Ding, and he disconnected from the conference call and ran down to the MTR entrance to meet Jack.
* * *
As Chavez and Ryan rode in the long subway car, Jack disconnected his phone from Adam and leaned into his superior’s ear. “If the marshals get too close, Zha’s going to bolt. If he does that, then we’ll never know about Center and the Istanbul Drive.”
Chavez had been thinking the same thing. “Yep.”
But he had not been thinking anything along the lines of what Ryan said next: “We need to grab him.”
“How, Jack? He’s got a significant security detail.”
“Manageable,” declared Ryan. “We can orchestrate something quick and nasty. Look how big the stakes are. If FastByte Twenty-two did the UAV hack, then he’s got blood on his hands. I’m not going to lose sleep over wasting a couple of his henchmen.”
“Then what, kid? We’re going to take FastByte back to the Peninsula and interrogate him over room service?”
“Of course not. We slip him out on the Gulfstream.”
Ding shook his head. “We stick with Adam Yao for now. If an opportunity arises that looks good, we consider taking him, but right now the best thing we can do is support the Agency guy who knows his way around.”
Jack sighed. He understood but worried they would miss their opportunity to bag FastByte and learn who he was working for.
THIRTY-NINE
The two Campus operatives exited the MTR at Wan Chai Station, and by then Adam had tracked the taxi carrying the five men to a strip club called Club Stylish on Jaffe Road, just a few blocks away. Yao warned the two Hendley Associates men that the girlie bar was a known 14K hangout, and there would be, among the crowds of lonely businessmen and Filipino waitresses and strippers, some presence of heavily armed and heavily drinking 14K mobsters.
Jack and Ding suspected they had a different definition for “heavily armed” than did Adam Yao, but neither Jack nor Ding was carrying any weapons whatsoever, so they told themselves they would keep their heads on a swivel and do nothing to raise the ire of the locals in the establishment.
Jack and Ding found the entrance to Club Stylish to be just a narrow dark doorway at the street level of a high-rise ramshackle apartment building on a two-lane street one block over from Lockhart Road, the nicer and more touristy section of Wan Chai. Ryan pulled off his paper mask and entered first, passing a bored-looking bouncer, then descended a little staircase lit only by Christmas lights strung along the ceiling. The staircase seemed to go down at least two stories, and at the bottom he found a large basement nightclub with a high ceiling. On his right was a long bar along the wall, in front of him was the floor of the establishment, full of tables and lit by candles, and on the far wall was a raised stage made out of see-through plastic tiles over garish amber lighting that gave the entire room an odd golden glow. Above it, a large spinning disco ball created thousands of swirling white lights that painted the crowd.
Four stripper poles stood near the corners of the raised dance floor.
The establishment seemed to be running at about twenty percent capacity, and a strictly male audience sat around at the tables, in booths along the walls, and at the bar. Some talked to the bored-looking dancing girls who milled between them. Jack saw Zha and his group of four Triads sitting in a large booth in the corner of the far wall, to the right of the stage on the other side of the entrance to a darkened hallway that led out the back of the club. Jack assumed there would be restrooms back there, but he did not want to pass so close to Zha to get a better lay of the land. Instead, he saw a spiral staircase off to his left, and he climbed to find a little mezzanine over the back bar area. Here a few businessmen sat in groups and looked out over the paltry action. Ryan liked it up here — he could watch Zha while keeping a low profile with the dark and deep booths. He sat alone, and he ordered a beer from a passing cocktail waitress a few minutes later.
Within moments two young Filipino exotic dancers took the stage and went through the well-practiced motions of dancing seductively to loud, thumping Asian-influenced techno music.
Zha and his security detail remained in their booth stage left of the strippers. Jack saw that the young man remained more interested in his handheld computer than he was in the semi-naked women twenty feet away from him, and he barely glanced up at them as he typed furiously with his thumbs.
Jack thought about how much he’d love to get his hands on that handheld device. Not that he’d know what the hell to do with it, but Gavin Biery would likely have a field day cracking its secrets.
Domingo Chavez entered the club a few minutes later, and he sat back by the downstairs bar near the entrance. He had a good view of the stairwell up to street level and a decent view of the 14K entourage, but mostly his job was to back up Jack, the eye in the surveillance.
They communicated with Adam through their tiny earpieces. Yao was sitting out in the borrowed Mitsubishi, positioned in a back alley that ran between the rear of the high-rises on Jaffe and the high-rises on Gloucester, just blocks from the northern shore of Hong Kong Island. Here he parked in a small lot and had a view of the back exit of Club Stylish, which was good, but he was parked next to dozens of full garbage bins outside a seafood restaurant, meaning a foul rotten stench and the scuffling feet of rats were all he had to keep him company back there.
Adam informed the Hendley Associates men how lucky they were, via the conference call. Chavez sipped his first beer of the evening and regarded the women working for tips on the stage and the other dancers milling about the crowd.
He assured young Adam that he was not missing much.
The two mysterious Americans who had been on the ferry entered the club a few minutes later, confirming Jack’s suspicions that they were, in fact, tailing Zha. Ding reported this to Ryan, and Jack saw them from his overwatch on the mezzanine when the men sat down in plush chairs in a dark corner, far from the stage. They bought Budweisers from a cocktail waitress and sipped them while rejecting advances from the strolling bar girls.
As Chavez turned and scanned the stairwell, two more Western men, both in blue blazers and ties, entered together.
There were a dozen other Westerners in the bar, Ding and Jack and the two younger guys from the ferry included, but these guys stood out to Ding. They looked like Feds, and Chavez could ID Feds easily, which wasn’t saying much, because they had a way of standing out. The two men sat down just a few tables from the Triad entourage, positioning themselves awkwardly so that they had a better view of FastByte22 than they did of the stage.
“Looks like a damn weatherman convention in here,” Chavez said softly, hiding his moving lips behind his beer bottle before taking a swig.
Adam Yao’s voice came over the headset. “More Americans?”
“Two suits. Could be DOJ guys from the consulate, here trying to confirm Zha’s presence.”
Yao said, “Okay, maybe we should think about backing off. By my count there are now six gweilos in there with eyes on Zha. That’s too many.”
Chavez said, “I hear you, Adam, but I’ve got another idea. Wait one.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out his mobile phone, then opened a video camera feature. He put the conference call with Ryan and Adam on hold and called Gavin Biery at the Peninsula.
Gavin answered on the first ring. “Biery.”
“Hey, Gavin. I’m sending you video transmission from my phone. Will you get on your laptop and check that you are receiving?”
“I’m already on. I’m picking it up.” A few seconds later he said, “How ’bout you zoom in on that stage for me?”
Ding placed the phone on the table, propped it against a small glass candleholder, and turned it toward Zha’s table.
Ding said, “I need you to focus on the target, not the dancing girls.”
“Oh, all right. Zoom in a bit.”
Chavez did so, and then recentered the image.
; “Got it. What am I looking for?”
“Just keep tabs on them. You’ve got the eye. I’m pulling Ryan out, and I’m turning away from them. There is too much surveillance in this room already.”
“Got it.” He laughed. “I’m on a mission. Well… a virtual mission anyway. Hey, by the way, I’m sending you that cleaned-up image of the guy you photographed back at the Mong Kok Computer Centre. You should be able to see the man in the dark now with no problems.”
Domingo brought Gavin into the conference call with the other two and then explained to Jack and Adam what he’d done. Jack left the club and went out front, crossed Jaffe and sat at a tiny noodle bar open to the street. From here he could see the stairway entrance to Club Stylish.
Yao, Chavez, and Ryan simultaneously received e-mails on their phones. They opened them to see a good picture of a quarter-shot of Zha’s face and three-quarters of the back of his head, as he spoke to an older Chinese man in a white shirt and a light blue or gray tie. The older man’s face was clear enough, but none of the three recognized him.
Chavez knew Biery had special facial-recognition software on his computer, and he would be trying to get a match right now.
Yao said, “He’s not familiar to me, but you think he looked important, Ding?”
“Yes. I’d say you might be looking at the MFIC there.”
Yao responded, “The what?”
“The Motherfucker in Charge.”
Ryan and Yao just chuckled.
Gavin Biery’s voice came back over the headsets of the team a minute later. “Domingo, pan the camera to your left.” Chavez reached out and did so as he kept his eyes in the opposite direction, toward the bartenders.
“What do you see?”
“I noticed that the tough guys around Zha were all looking at something or somebody. I think it’s those two white guys in blue blazers. One of the Triads just pulled out his phone and made a call.”
“Shit,” said Ding. “I’d be willing to wager that the consulate guys made it obvious they aren’t here to watch the dancers. Adam, what do you think Fourteen-K is going to do?”