“Why didn’t I know everything about Aces High from the beginning?” Court demanded.
Hanley snapped at this. “Dammit, son. You aren’t still in your little private hit man job. You aren’t working for a drug dealer in Sinaloa trying to whack a drug dealer in Guadalajara. You’re back in the big leagues now. You don’t get to know the whole game anymore. You get what we give you, and you work for us, or you don’t. I told you, you were free to take this job or leave it.”
“And then you told me the life of a man I owe my own life to was on the line. You knew what I’d do. You used that against me. You never used to be so manipulative.”
Hanley blew out a sigh. “I agree. I’m an insufferable shit now; comes with the desk I sit at.” He shrugged. “If it makes a damn bit of difference to you, I don’t enjoy it. Not sure I’ve looked myself in the mirror since I took this job.”
“Give it a try. You might find you look exactly the same as you did before you took that job.”
Hanley let the comment hang, wash over him, and then he said, “What about Fan? Are you giving him to us, or are we going to have to take him?”
“He doesn’t know about the murder of his parents… and I’m not going to tell him. Still… he doesn’t want to work for you. He just wants to be free.”
“We’d take care of him.”
“By taking away his liberty? Look at what you’ve accomplished already. He’ll no longer work for China, and that’s a real body blow to them. Having him out in the wind will hurt them as they try to redo everything he touched, change up everything he knew. They won’t be able to trust their own systems. That’s a victory for America, Matt. In this particular case, it’s more than we deserve, and it’s going to have to be enough.”
“Look, just think about—”
“See ya around, Matt.”
“Court!” Hanley shouted, but the phone call ended.
As soon as Hanley hung up the phone, he looked up and saw Brewer standing up in front of him, off her crutches, tablet computer in her hand, and a wide, wild look on her face.
“What the hell is it?” Matt demanded.
“Violator! His phone! It was new, as always, and his encryption software was set up, as usual, but he’d not enabled the geolocation spoof correctly.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we have his exact location pinpointed. He’s at a hotel in Phang Nga City, a couple hours north of Phuket. He’s in a room there right now! We moved Ground Branch back to the airport at Phuket. Their helos could be there in less than thirty minutes.”
Hanley sniffed. “Well, that’s a motherfuckin’ trap if I’ve ever seen one.”
“A trap?” Brewer was stunned, almost furious. This was the most excited Hanley had ever seen her, and he’d just popped her bubble.
The director of the National Clandestine Service shook his head now. “Not a trap. He’s not going to hurt our guys. But there is something at that location he wants us to know about. Alert Jenner, get his team there, stat, and have them in full load-outs, ready to fight a war if they have to. Stress to them that they are going into a hot LZ.”
“You think Fan is there?”
Hanley heaved his big shoulders. “I hope so. I hope there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, too, but I sure as shit wouldn’t bet on it.”
The three-story-high Thaweesuk Hotel in Phang Nga had a flat roof, which made the CIA pilots of the two Russian helicopters streaking one hundred feet over Phetkasem Road very happy. Phetkasem Road was too narrow to land in, but even if it had been twice as wide, the thick traffic and the jumbled strands of cable, electric, and telephone wires hanging from poles on both sides of the street would have made touching down there a risky proposition.
But the roof of the Thaweesuk Hotel was relatively pristine, so the first CIA helo flared to cut speed right in front of the hotel, spun hard on its X axis, and then flew carefully but quickly towards the building.
It was eight p.m., dark outside, but the streets were full of cars and the sidewalks full of pedestrians. Everyone looked at the two new Russian-built Ka-62s as they flew in tandem, one hovering directly over the street while the other moved above the hotel.
The first Special Activities Division Air Branch pilot maneuvered his craft over the roof three stories above the road and, within two seconds, six armed men leapt off, dropped the three feet to the surface, and ran for the access stairs as a single unit.
The helo didn’t wait around. It shot forward, climbed up into the dark, and began circling, with a sniper strapped in on each side scanning the hotel’s windows with powerful optics.
Only five seconds after the lead helo left the roof, the second helo flew closer to the building, and three long tactical rappelling ropes dropped out, uncoiling all the way down to the street. Three men on board the Ka-62 attached their terminal descenders to the ropes, then stepped out of the helo and began rappelling down the side of the hotel, facedown, at speeds that made it look as if they were sprinting vertically.
They landed at the front door, freed themselves from their lines, and brought their weapons to bear on men and women fleeing. The operators scanned faces and let everyone pass by, shouting in English and Thai for everyone to get the fuck out of the way.
The helo above dropped the lines and flew just five feet over the roof, and then at the back wall of the hotel three more lines flew from the open hatch and spun down to the back door of the hotel, and three black-clad men rappelled down face-first. The CIA paramilitary officers landed on their boots simultaneously, unhooked their lines from the beastly flying machine overhead, and lifted their weapons, pointing them at several men running out the rear door.
The Ka-62 lifted into the night, pulling the three tactical ropes up with it.
Walt Jenner, team leader of the SAD Ground Branch team, was the first to recognize Sir Donald Fitzroy. The portly Englishman was rushing out of the hotel, being pulled along by four other men, Asians in business suits. Jenner had no idea Fitzroy would be here, but the dossier on his mission here in Southeast Asia had mentioned him as a kidnap victim of the Chinese malefactors in the op, and it was known that Court “Violator” Gentry had been attempting to secure Fitzroy’s release.
Jenner quickly deduced that if this man coming his way was Fitzroy, then the four Asian men in suits pulling and pushing him along must be Chinese PLA men.
“Freeze!” Jenner put his laser sight on one of the Chinese, and the two Ground Branch paramilitaries with him, Greer and Stapleton, each picked their own target.
The five men stopped. Fitzroy instantly doubled over in exhaustion; clearly they’d been running down the stairs.
Jenner said, “Everybody put your hands up!”
One of the four Chinese men reached quickly into his suit coat. Greer fired three suppressed rounds from his HK MP7 Personal Defense Weapon and struck the man in the chest and solar plexus, and he dropped down dead.
The others raised their hands.
Greer, Stapleton, and Jenner pushed the remaining four men to the ground, and Jenner scanned for more threats while the other two began zip-tying their prisoners, including the Englishman. While this was going on, the voice of CIA officer Chris Travers came through Jenner’s headset. “Delta One, this is Two. How copy?”
“Solid copy. Go for One. You got the target?”
Court Gentry’s phone was still broadcasting from a room inside the hotel. They’d been able to discern in the helo during their landing that his signal was coming from one of the rooms on the northwest corner. This meant the six-man team that descended from the roof had to search rooms 310, 210, and 110 in order to find Gentry himself.