Rising Tiger (18 page)

Everything worked as planned until it didn’t.

When they got to the ground floor, the scene outside was chaotic, with a cluster of people going in all directions. The police had obviously lost all control of the scene. They were trying their best to check everyone who came out, but it looked like a man trying to drink from a fire hose. Finally, back in an outer perimeter, Jake caught a glimpse of the Asian woman. She was talking with a police officer, who seemed more interested in undressing her with his eyes than checking her for weapons. The problem was, she also saw Jake and Alexandra, cutting her chat with the policeman short and heading in their direction.

“This way,” Jake said, pulling on Alexandra’s arm.

He saw a way out of there. The ubiquitous tuk tuk machines, the modified motorcycles with the cart behind for two or three passengers, were already lined up on the street beyond the police cars. If the tuk tuk driver thought a fare was in the area, they would be there ready and waiting.

Jake found one that looked like the motorcycle was newer and might be fast. The two of them hopped aboard and told the driver to go.

“Where do we go?” the driver asked.

“Khmer Now Bar,” Jake said.

The driver smiled and said, “Same same but different. Nice place. Best lady boys in Siem Reap.” With that he drove off, the engine whining and sending smoke behind them.

Jake looked back and saw that the Asian woman had also gotten a tuk tuk. Great.

“Why are we going back there?” Alexandra asked in German.

“We aren’t. But it’s on the way to the airport. I didn’t want this guy saying he picked us up at the shooting hotel and drove us to the airport. But we have a problem. That Asian woman is on our tail.”

Alexandra looked behind them. “Outstanding.” She drew her gun and held it between the two of them aimed behind them.

The tuk tuk crossed the Siem Reap River and left the relatively remote area of the five-star hotel toward the downtown of Siem Reap. They were more than a mile from the hotel when the first gunfire broke the relative silence of the night.

Jake started to draw his gun, but he stopped when he saw where the bullet had struck—right in the back of their tuk tuk driver, which slumped the man over the gas tank of the motorcycle and brought them to a quick stop.

Without thinking, Jake jumped from the back and pulled the driver to the ground. As he jumped onto the motorcycle, Alexandra turned and shot behind them at the Asian woman.

Looking in the rearview mirror, Jake could see the other tuk tuk had also stopped. Why? Because the Asian woman had shoved her gun in her driver’s back and pistol-whipped the man, before getting behind the motorcycle on her own tuk tuk.

Jake gunned the throttle and the tuk tuk lurched forward as fast as it could go, the engine whining at the red line, knocking Alexandra into her seat. “Sorry,” Jake yelled.

He weaved his tuk tuk through traffic like a local as they entered Sivutha Boulevard, the main drive in the downtown area. But Jake and Alexandra had the advantage, since the Asian woman had to control the motorcycle with her right hand while she shot with her left. Alexandra could simply shoot while Jake drove. However, with the pot holes and weaving through traffic and avoiding pedestrians and bicyclists, Alexandra had not gotten many good shots in either. For a city in the hundreds of thousands, Siem Reap resembled an old town from America in the early twenties, with telephone lines and power cables running right over the top of the streets. And the law of this land on the highway was bigger went first, regardless of right-of-way.

Despite the traffic and the disorganized nature of the downtown region, nobody seemed to understand that a shoot
-
out was happening right now.

Jake felt something rubbing against his butt, so he looked back for a second and saw the structure that held the back cart to the motorcycle. He weaved around another tuk tuk and nearly hit an SUV. Then he looked back again and saw what he had to do.

“Get up here with me,” Jake yelled to Alexandra.

“What? Are you crazy?”

“Just do it,” he said.

She shot a couple more times and then climbed over the front end, straddled the bars that led to the motorcycle, and then nearly fell through to the street, catching her fall. Then with one swing of her legs, she thrust herself forward and landed on the back seat of the motorcycle.

Jake stood up on the pegs and said, “Get up here for a second and pull the pin, releasing the cart.”

She smiled and did as he said, getting herself scrunched behind Jake, her face right in his butt. Then she reached behind her and worked on the release pin.

“It won’t come,” Alexandra screamed.

There had to be too much tension on it. “Hang on. When I hit the brakes, you pull the pin.”

She nodded acknowledgement.

Jake let up on the gas and tapped the brakes. As the motorcycle and the trailing cart pulled closer together, Alexandra pulled the pin just at the right moment. The cart stopped behind them, and Jake immediately hit the gas. Without the cart, the motorcycle rushed forward much faster.

Alexandra pushed herself back over the bracket to the back seat and Jake sat down again.

By now they had gotten through the main downtown area, past Pub Street, and picked up more speed as they turned the corner to the road that led to the airport.

“Is she still following?” Jake asked over his shoulder.

She squeezed both arms around his waist. “No. We’re losing her. She almost ran into our cart. But there’s no way she can keep up with us now.”

They passed the Khmer Now Bar and Jake looked ahead on the highway. Damn it! There was a police road block ahead. They wouldn’t be leaving Siem Reap by air, he knew. Now what?

“You see that?” Jake said, as he slowed the motorcycle to find another way.

“That’s not good,” she said. “Now what?”

Jake turned the motorcycle down a side road, which was little more than a dirt trail. The road eventually ran along a narrow river, which seemed to seep out into massive rice patties. But with almost no lights out here, Jake had no real idea what lay ahead.

He pulled over and turned off the head light, but kept the engine at a sputtering idle.

Jake turned to Alexandra and said, “Have you ever taken a bus from Cambodia to Vietnam?”

“No way.”

“It’s the only thing that might not be checked by the police. But it would be better if we caught the bus in another town. We’ll have to take the motorcycle.”

She shook her head, but had to know he was right.

Jake pulled his gun from the small of his back and threw it into the river. Then he did the same with the extra magazines.

Alexandra reluctantly did the same thing.

Now that they were clean, with no weapons, Jake turned the motorcycle and headed back toward town. He would try to avoid the main street and then head south.

Saigon, Vietnam

Other than by air, there was no good way to get from Siem Reap, Cambodia, to Saigon, Vietnam. Jake refused to call the city by its official communist name, Ho Chi Minh City. Why bring any recognition to that brutal dictator?

Jake and Alexandra had driven into the night on the motorcycle, stopping once for gas, along the lonely road from Siem Reap to the capital of Phnom Penh. From there they had ditched the motorcycle, gotten something to eat and some new clothes, stuffed into duffle bags, and caught the noon bus to Saigon. It would have looked really bad crossing into Vietnam without some sort of baggage. They had switched from Austrian to Canadian citizens, just in case the authorities had linked them in the five-star Siem Reap hotel to the shooting that had taken place. After all, every time they checked into a hotel, they were required to hand over their passport, where a clerk invariably made a copy.

Now, closing in on 8 p.m., the Canadian couple checked into a nice hotel in a rough-looking neighborhood about a mile from the newer downtown area of Saigon. Neither of them had ever been to Vietnam, so this place was new to Jake and Alexandra.

After riding on the uncomfortable motorcycle for almost two hundred miles and then sitting among coughing strangers on the six-hour bus ride from the capital of Cambodia to Saigon, Jake had to admit he was beat. He sat on the hard bed and lay down, closing his eyes.

“No, no, no,” Alexandra said. “You should have slept on the bus.”

Jake sighed. “I tried. But I couldn’t get this case out of my mind.”

She sat on the bed next to him. “Maybe we should just catch a flight home.”

He opened his eyes and gazed at her. “And where would that be?”

Flipping open her most recent passport, she said, “Somewhere in Canada.”

“It’s too damn cold up there this time of year.”

“Innsbruck?”

“Same thing.”

“Munich?”

“Do you really want to go back there right now?”

She lowered her chin. “Not really. My Service probably thinks I’m dead. But I should let them know I’m alive so at least they will pay out my pension.”

“You won’t need that working with me,” he assured her.

“Why? Because I’ll be dead before I need money?” She smiled at him.

“You’re much funnier than the average German.”

Alexandra stroked her hand across his short hair. “You think I’m average?”

“Not in the least. Can we get back to this case?”

She shrugged. “All right. What did Jenkins say when you updated him?”

Jake had called the former CIA director during a short stop on the bus trip. “He told me that the case was over. I had done my job and found Bill Remington. The Agency would be eternally grateful. You know the company line. It used to be for God and Country. Now I’m not even sure if what the CIA is doing is for the good of the country, or just for the good of government.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” she wanted to know.

“Not really, Alexandra. Our government has become a bloated behemoth of what our founders intended. In fact, it has become the very thing they fought against. And I’m not talking about just the Liberals or the Conservatives or the Progressives. They have all become corrupted by power. And everything they do is to maintain that power.”

“You’re not a political guy.”

Jake laughed. “I’ve worked for both parties. And I would never associate myself with either side.”

“But you like God, guns and gold,” she said. “Isn’t that the Right wing in America?”

“Yes. But mostly I believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. I proudly raised my hand to defend that against all enemies foreign and domestic. Everything else that happens in America is political theater.”

She seemed to be contemplating his statement. Perhaps she didn’t truly understand his Americanism. Time to change the subject. “All right. What do you think of this case?” he asked.

Alexandra shrugged. “I don’t know. I know this General Wu Gang was involved with the Munich company, Kreuzwelt Industries, which is selling arms to China.”

“And he was using Bill Remington and perhaps others to gain information and influence over the American government.”

“Is that illegal?”

Jake wasn’t sure anymore. It was certainly illegal to pay for information from an American intelligence officer. But lobbyists paid for information and contracts all the time. That didn’t make it right, though. Murder was still illegal everywhere on the planet. “What General Wu Gang is doing is illegal. I know he was behind that whole Chinese and French satellite shoot down, as well as trying to set up my friend, Chad Hunter, for that crime. I have a feeling the general is about as corrupt as they come. In a country like China, which is still supposed to be communist, all creatures are not created equal like Marx wanted. While the worker bee toils for pennies, others like the general are striking it rich like the robber barons in America during the big build-up of the railroads, the mines and the mills, and the huge infrastructure projects building sky scrapers. China has become one big cesspool of corruption, with the generals and politicians trading power and influence to become billionaires.”

“You’ve given this some thought,” Alexandra said.

He laughed. “A six-hour bus ride will do that to you.”

“What do we do now?”

“General Wu Gang has a factory in Saigon,” Jake said.

“And?”

“What? We go have a talk with the man. Saigon has a lot of high-end hotels where the general could be staying. I have Jenkins checking to see if the Agency can find the guy. But if not, we’ll go catch him at his factory tomorrow.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “You let that security guard in Cambodia live. Don’t you think he will warn the general?”

“I’m counting on it,” Jake said. “I want the man to be constantly looking over his shoulder. By now he has to know who’s after him. I’m guessing Bill Remington already told him about me trying to find him.”

“What does China know about you?”

“Not much. But I did go up against them a while back, dealing with their theft of laser technology from an American company. The general might know about that. I did embarrass their military and intelligence agencies. And the Chinese are like the Russians when it comes to their memories. They forget nothing.”

“So?”

“Now that we no longer have to worry about Agency insiders protecting Remington, Jenkins said he can get us some guns by tonight.”

“That’s great. What say we get a beer or two down at the hotel bar?”

Jake smiled. “I was thinking the same thing.”

For all of her bravado with regards to the sleep she had gotten on the bus from Cambodia, Alexandra drank a total of three beers before Jake hauled her up to their room and tucked her into bed. Then he had locked her into their room and went out for his meeting with the local Agency officer. Jenkins had sent him a secure image of his contact—a snapshot of a young woman in her early twenties, probably right out of college, the Farm, and on her first overseas assignment.

Jake got to the meeting in the downtown region of Saigon after a convoluted route of taxis, buses and walking, ending up at Notre Dame Cathedral, a Catholic church near Diamond Plaza and a few long blocks from the Reunification Palace.