by Ty Patterson
Since the police had made incorrect information public, only a witness would have the correct details.
There could be police officers who called, in which case An Khoi could check into their story.
The second ad offered no reward. It sought information on a former NVA soldier named Dang, who was also a narcotics smuggler.
The sisters expected the second advertisement to create unease in the underworld as well as amongst certain police ranks.
Turmoil was what they were after. Dang or his emissaries reaching out—that was what they hoped would happen.
Nothing much happened for three days, other than a high volume of incoming calls.
All turned out to be hoax, except one.
A farmer in a village on the banks of the river called.
Bui Khac Tuy correctly identified the location of the accident. However, he quickly dashed their hopes.
He had been working in his fields when he’d heard the rumble of the tunnel collapsing. He had come running to the site and seen the boy at the edge of the hole, heard him crying. He had seen the other farmer rushing in as well and had then retreated.
His paddy had to be harvested, and that was the more pressing concern for him.
The sisters called him back and questioned him at length, but they got no more out of him.
They went out for a run for the fourth day, burning their frustration, turning it into perspiration and panted breaths.
They took a longer route while returning, going through several small alleys, inhaling diesel fumes along with odors of Western and Vietnamese fast food.
It was when they were in the middle of an alley that seemed to be more garbage dump than street, that they spotted the four men.
They came out of a vehicle that blocked their route and waited.
Meghan flicked a rapid glance at her sister and got a waggle of Beth’s fingers.
They were armed, ready for anything.
‘That ad says you got reward money,’ one of the young men, heavyset and larger than the rest, called out in passable English. ‘We want that.’
His hand started reaching behind him.
When the numbers are against you, go for the biggest attackers. That’s what Zeb says. People have this thing about size. They think size wins the battle. Put down the big men and chances are, the odds will even.
Meghan launched herself into the air, left leg crossed, tucked tightly against her thigh, right leg outstretched and perfectly horizontal, upper body leaning back slightly to reduce drag, her green eyes focused only on the speaker.
Then she was on him, kicking him back against the vehicle’s hood. She felt one of his ribs break, a scream emerging from his throat. She landed on the windshield, rolling off the vehicle onto her feet, and used her momentum to grab another hood and smash his face against the car.
Two down in less than a minute. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Beth punching the third assailant.
Someone caught her hair and yanked her back savagely.
Off balance, she thrust her right leg against the vehicle and pushed back with all her strength.
Her attacker was expecting resistance. He wasn’t prepared for her full body weight flying back at him.
He gave a startled yelp and fell, with Meghan on top.
An elbow to his nose and a palm slamming into his throat took him out of the fight.
‘You alright?’ she gasped at her sister.
‘Never better.’ Beth rolled her shoulders like a boxer and cracked her knuckles. ‘That was a half-decent workout.’
She grabbed the large man’s hair and pounded his head on the hood, once, twice, and three times, until his face was covered in blood.
‘Who sent you?’
‘No…one,’ the man moaned pitifully. ‘Was… our…idea.’
‘How did you find us?’
‘Call…center…friend…told…us…about…you. Followed…you…in…car.’
Meghan and Beth searched the men quickly. They found wallets and knives. No guns. They broke the blades, flung them away, pocketed the rest of the belongings and resumed their run.
Just another day in the lives of the Petersen twins.
The large man lay moaning, watching them recede into the distance, and only when they turned a corner did he rise.
He swayed on his feet and was readying to yell at his companions when someone grabbed him and flung him against a wall.
He shrieked when a shoulder dislocated and bawled in agony when he slid to the ground.
Two pairs of boots came in his vision.
He lifted his eyes with difficulty and took in the large black man and the slightly shorter blond.
‘I’ll only ask you once,’ Bwana growled. ‘Who sent you? Lie, and I’ll break your neck.’
Kirilov watched them from the mouth of the alley. He had observed the twins take on the men, dispatch them and resume their run.
He watched the black man question them and dislocate another shoulder.
He approached the four hoods when Bwana and Roger left, and surveyed the broken men before him.
Kirilov too wanted to know who had sent the four thugs. If it was Dang, he would question them aggressively. If it wasn’t…well, it never hurt to practice his interrogation techniques.
‘Who are you?’ one man gasped.
The Russian’s brows drew together. Surely, they could see it in him, who he was.
‘Death,’ he replied.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The calls on Dang were flaky. They had to investigate each call because there was little by way of verification.
The agents asked the callers how they knew Dang and where they saw him.
Not one was able to offer much information; all seem to be after the reward money.
A few calls took them on trips outside HCMC to check out warehouses.
They went alone, expecting to be ambushed, but found rotting structures and dead rats.
They ran the ads for a second time, on the fourth day. This time they blanketed the Vietnamese newspapers. Each daily in the country carried the two advertisements.
The response was no different.
A full eleven days after the first run of the ads, they gave up.
Beth called their Gulfstream and made arrangements for their return.
They visited An Khoi and Phuong and thanked both of them. They called Colonel General Lanh, who brushed away their appreciation. It was nothing, he said. He would do anything for Zeb or his crew.
They made plans to visit Cham the next day and bid him farewell.
It was evening when the sisters returned to their hotel, after a day of seeing the sights in HCMC.
Beth followed Meghan into her room and tossed her bag onto the bed.
Some sixth sense made them whirl around.
There, coming out of the bathroom and from the closet, were three men.
All three were holding some kind of weapons in their hands.
No time to figure out how they had gotten in. No time even to call out.
Meghan shoved Beth to the floor with her left hand, flinging her to relative safety.
Her right hand flickered in a lightning draw.
Too late.
Blue and white ribbons arced out of the Tasers in the men’s hands and landed on their bodies, rendering them helpless.
One of the men plunged syringes into them, and they slipped into darkness.
Meghan kept her eyes closed when she came to, lying still, listening, feeling.
She sensed another body close by and opened her eyes a fraction.
Beth was a foot away, both of them on hard ground. Their legs and wrists were tied, their hands behind their backs. Their jackets removed, but they were still in their tees, jeans, and sneakers.
Their shoes had GPS transponders. But it’s not as if any of the crew are around to help us.
Meghan’s head was clear; whatever they had been drugged with hadn’t left any lingering ef
fects.
She breathed slowly, without giving away that she was awake.
She smelled earth. Air that didn’t seem to have much circulation. She sensed they were in a small room, just the two of them. She couldn’t detect the presence of another body. No small movements, no breathing other than Beth’s.
She cracked her eyes half-open.
Mud, baked earth stared back at her.
Mud!
Her eyes opened in shock and she jerked her head up.
Fluorescent light hanging from a cable off the ceiling. Bare walls and floor. No decoration, no furniture. Just earth, the smell of old air, and their perspiration.
We’re underground.
Beth sucked in her breath as she moved beside her.
‘You think we’re where I guess we are?’
‘Yeah. In one of the tunnels.’
She rolled upright and gave a shoulder to her sister to lean on and rise.
Beth looked pale, twin spots of color on her cheeks. Her hair mussed, her eyes fierce.
Angry. Furious just like she, at having allowed themselves to be taken so easily. They had walked right into a trap.
Before she could say anything, footsteps sounded.
A man stepped in, and she couldn’t control the gasp that escaped her.
‘We meet again,’ Nang Quy Dang greeted them. ‘I am Chieu Ton Dang.’
Six men came behind the Vietnamese man, all armed, all similar in build. Short, clean-shaven, alert, pointing AK-47s in their direction.
One man stepped forward at a nod from Dang and cut their bindings. The sisters were outnumbered, there was no risk of their escaping.
Meghan recognized three of the gunmen immediately. The same men who snatched us.
‘You—’
‘I am the same man you are hunting.’ Dang smiled superciliously, feeling pleased with himself.
‘All this time—’ Meghan struggled to get hold of herself, but the shock was too great.
‘I call it hiding in plain sight.’ Their captor clapped his hands together, chortling. ‘It gave me a lot of pleasure, seeing you flounder. I knew everything from the moment you contacted the police. And all along, I was right there. You even interviewed me.’
‘Colonel General Lanh?’ Beth guessed. ‘He’s your man?’
‘Not him.’ Dang waved dismissively. ‘Not any of the men you spoke to. There are others. How do you think the police never had a file on me? Never suspected me? You thought I had plastic surgery, didn’t you? There was no need. I changed my name, expanded my art business, put powerful politicians and police officers in my pocket. That was more than enough.’
‘But you said you were in the South Vietnamese Army. There are records. We checked you out.’
‘All manufactured. All fake!’
It was too much to take in. Meghan looked around them, processing it, trying to stay on top.
The room they were in was small. A couple of exits, one through which Dang and his men had entered, the other behind them.
She had a million questions for the Vietnamese and knew her twin had many too.
Most can wait. However, there are a few that need to be asked.
‘Why did you break cover now? If you knew all about us, you could see we weren’t making progress.’
‘Those ads,’ he replied. ‘I could control a lot. All those who knew me during the war, I either bought them or killed them. But those advertisements…they were a stroke of genius. They posed a risk. There could be someone out there who knew the real me. Someone I had forgotten about. A loose end.’
‘So, you are a criminal, a drug smuggler?’ Beth asked, trying to get a confession from him.
‘Baron. Drug baron,’ Dang corrected her. He was still wearing that superior expression. He was dressed in a white suit, polished shoes, as if he was holding court in a boardroom. ‘Yes, I am that, and more. I am the biggest criminal the Vietnamese do not know of,’ he boasted. ‘I am involved in every illegal activity in this country.’
That acknowledgment won’t do us any good. We aren’t recording it.
Meghan took in the armed men standing behind the suited men. There were three; the others had circled around and were behind the sisters.
The hoods looked competent. The way they held their weapons and stood loose, yet ready, spoke of experience. She could make out spare mags on their belts, knives on their bodies, and was that a grenade in a pouch?
Yeah, it was. All three carried one.
Patten. Her ears pricked when the name was mentioned.
Beth was speaking, asking the criminal about Billy Patten.
‘He betrayed me.’ Dang cursed at length in Vietnamese and then switched to English. ‘He posed as a friend initially. We became close, and then he turned out to be a snake. I trusted him. We built a big drug operation during the war. I even gave him money to buy that steel mine. And then he showed his true colors.’
‘How did you meet him? He was on the opposite side.’
‘Not far from here.’ The suited man pointed to a wall and smiled unpleasantly when Beth drew a breath. ‘Welcome to the undiscovered and unknown part of the Cu Chi tunnels. A passage away is where we met for the first time. He stole my money. That was our first encounter.’
He seemed to be in no hurry. He spread his feet wider, rubbed his hands together and launched into his story.
I wish we could have recorded this, Meghan thought dimly as she listened.
Dang’s tale was breathtaking. The way Billy and he had come together was audacious. In the middle of one of the most intense wars in American history, the two enemies had come together and collaborated on a criminal empire.
Dang was expansive, knowing he had a captive audience. He told them every detail. How he and Billy Patten had overcome their distrust. How they had built on the small operation he had started.
‘No one suspected?’ Beth asked in disbelief.
‘No. That was the smartest idea Billy came up with. Who would believe that an American soldier and a Charlie were business partners?’
‘And you pulled this off during the war? Surely someone could have seen you. Or you could have been killed. The Americans could have bombed your hideouts.’
‘They didn’t. Billy gave me advance information. And there was a witness I knew of. However, I found out about Cham only after the war. The police made sure he kept quiet.’
‘He didn’t,’ Beth retorted.
‘Yes, I know that now. But what good did it do you?’ he gloated.
‘You funded Chisholm?’ Meghan asked, still digesting his story.
‘We were still partners then. The steel mine was to be our first American investment. A clean business. And then I found out how good Billy was at lying,’ Dang replied bitterly. He gave them more details.
‘You know why we’re here?’
‘Yes. I read newspapers. I didn’t know English when I first came across Billy. But now’—he gestured at himself, taking pride in his appearance—‘I am an international businessman.’
‘A common criminal,’ Beth spat.
‘Not common at all,’ he countered. ‘You didn’t find me despite your investigation.’
Meghan shot a drop it look at her sister. ‘You know what happened in the tunnels? To Billy and Josh Patten?’
Chieu Ton Dang whirled on his feet instead of answering. ‘Follow me,’ he ordered over his shoulder.
He led them through a tunnel that had been widened and was well lit. Through another bare room, past an opening, and to a door.
He unlocked it with a security code and couldn’t help chuckling when Beth gasped.
‘Meth. My newest product.’ He gestured at the laboratory in front of them.
Beakers and plastic containers were strewn on metal tables. Cans of chemicals, red phosphorous and kerosene were on the floor. Rubber tubes, iodine bottles and several other containers were scattered around the room.
‘All this is underground?’ Beth shook her head as if s
he was in a dream.
‘Yes. We made the tunnels bigger, put in lighting, ventilation. This unknown part of the Cu Chi complex is the heart of my operation. Eight miles of secret passages. This is where my products are stored. Where my new meth lab will operate from. It’s a new business for us. We are still learning.’
‘How long has this been here?’
‘Always, during the war and ever since.’ He chortled. ‘The police took you to the opening of the collapsed tunnel?’
Beth nodded.
He went to a wall and slapped it with a hand.
‘That tunnel is next to this. We have several openings throughout the jungle for our business. We patrol it discreetly. We post it as government property. The police, politicians, they know nothing about what happens here. They think some obscure department owns the area. We know who enters the jungle, who leaves. We control everything.’
Meghan went to the wall, ignoring the menacing click of weapons from the guards.
‘That’s where Billy and Josh died? Behind that wall?’
‘Cole Patten.’ Dang’s spectacles glinted in the light.
‘Cole Patten died that day. Josh Patten is alive.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Vietnam, 1979
Billy Patten couldn’t resist the temptation.
He wrestled with it for months as his boys grew up. Rachel had died during their birth, and for months, life had become dark and bleak for him.
He had hired a nanny to help with raising them, resisting all approaches from her family. He had no time for them once he had repaid her father’s loan. He and they were never close, and once she died, there was no longer any reason to maintain contact.
Of course, his in-laws tried to maintain a relationship. Cole and Josh were their grandchildren, after all. They made overtures. They wanted to help in bringing them up. They invited Billy and his sons for Christmas, remembered birthdays. However, those invites and requests dwindled as he ignored them. Then they stopped.
The nanny became like a second mother to the boys, and when they were seven, he succumbed.