Thai Horse (25 page)

‘Your outfit was guarding him?’

‘Uh-huh. Plus half a dozen of his own men.’

‘Who was in charge over there?’ Hatcher asked incredulously.

Sloan hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Spears and Hedritch.’

‘Spears and Hedritch!’

Hatcher thought to himself,
What the hell was Joe Spears doing
body guarding
Hector Ca
m
pon?
He remembered Spears as a burned-out California surfer with rice for brains.

‘Spears, for God’s sake!’

‘That was our front, a personal security service.’

‘How the hell did you get involved in this?’

‘Because Campon was too hot for the Secret Service to handle. The taxpayers would have raised hell. So I got the job.’

‘But Spears? He fried his brains twenty years ago lying around Santa Monica beach.’

‘Yeah, well, he and Hedritch’
ll
be protecting mailbags in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, for the rest of their lives.’

‘If you put both their brains together you end up with a half-wit.’

‘Look,’ Sloan said, his face reddening. ‘First I inherit this deposed
presidente
with two brigades cooling their heels on the Madrango border, .waiting to go back in and chase the Commies out. He needs weapons, he needs ammo, he needs air, he needs military a.d.v.’s, he needs every fuckin’ thing but the urge, so he comes up to D.C. looking for help and our leader starts calling in favors all over the Hill. He’s looking for fifty million bucks for Campon and I’ve got to baby-sit the bastard while all this is going on. Three weeks in Fort Lauderdale, two weeks in St Louis, a month and a half in Chicago, two weeks in a houseboat fifty miles out of Atlanta. All of a sudden he’s history and we got big troubles.’

‘But Spears and Hedritch?’

Sloan slid open the door to the balcony of the bright, airy room and stood with his back to it, letting the breeze dry him off. He sipped his drink and stared at Hatcher. ‘I had six men on this, pal. This Campon was no Boy Scout. Skipped the country with five, six mill stashed in Switzerland. A monumental hell-raiser with the morals of an alley cat. Burning up my control teams left and right. Spears and Hedritch were all I had left. But’
—
he pointed a finger at Hatcher
—
‘that’s also what made him valuable. He was General Macho Man and his men idolized him,
idolized
him. And we need Madrango back, it’s key to everything we’ve got going in Central America.’

‘So how did you lose him?’

‘He wouldn’t stay put. He liked
the
night life, the ladies.’ Sloan shrugged. ‘It caught up with him.’

‘So what’s plan Baker?’ Hatcher whispered casually.

Sloan looked at Hatcher suspiciously. ‘Who says I’ve got a plan Baker?’

‘You’ve always got a plan Baker, Harry. First thing you taught me: Always locate the back door. And Madrango’s been your baby since the beginning.’

Sloan sighed. ‘The back door is General Cosomil. Not as flamboyant or popular as Campon, or as young, but he’s dedicated. A good tactical officer. What we’ve gotta do is martyrize Campon so his men’ll line up behind Cosomil. Right now he’s under wraps. Ferris and Joyner head that control team and they’re the best I got.’

He took another sip and wiped his lips with the back of a thumb.

‘You going back to Washington?’

Sloan shook his head. ‘I’ve g
o
t it under control for now. The State Department’ll step into it now. My job’s to keep Cosomil alive until he can get back in there.’

‘Well,’ Hatcher said, ‘
there’s
always the bright side. Congress’ll probably give them all the aid they need now.’

Sloan paced the room for several minutes. He stopped and did some deep-breathing exercises.

‘That’s not my problem,’ he said finally. ‘Or yours. Let’s get back to our business.’

‘Hell, I forgot what we were talking about,’ Hatcher said.

‘You were running my boys
a
ll over the lot,’ Sloan said dryly.

‘Just some exercises to get back in shape,’ Hatcher answered.

‘Turn up anything?’

‘Not much.’

‘You been awful busy,’ Sloan said with a cock of his head.

‘From the look of Buffalo 1ill, I don’t have a lot of time.’

‘Any idea why Cody might be in hiding?’

Now, that’s a strange question,
thought Hatcher.

‘You’re way ahead of me,’ h
e
said. ‘I’m still trying to find out if he’s alive or not.’

‘Well, what do you think?’

‘If you mean have I made any earthshaking conclusions in the last seventy-two hours, the answer is no. I’m not a DA, I don’t have to prove anything. At this point I’m waffling back and forth. Sometimes I think Cody’s alive, sometimes I think this Wol Pot is scamming us all. It depends on the equation.’

‘Well, why do you
think
he’s alive?’

‘I didn’t say he was. I’m just not as sure he’s dead as I once was.’

‘Why not?’

‘Little things. I’ve got a gunner that now admits one of the men in Cody’s plane probably got out. I got an ex-POW tells me he heard about this transient prison camp and one of the prisoners was a VIP who could have been Cody
—
could
have been. I got two wingmen
—
one thinks Cody was a crazy glory hunter, the other thinks he was the second coming. And that’s about all I got. Very hazy stuff.’

‘But you think there could be validity to Wol Pot’s story?’

‘I didn’t say that. It’s all part of the equation. When I figure out what X is, I’ll let you know the answer.’

Sloan chuckled. ‘Playing ‘em close to the vest, huh? Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you don’t trust me anymore,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Now, why wouldn’t I trust you, Harry? Your stock-in- trade is deceit. Murder and lying are y
o
ur profession. And you double-crossed me. What’s not to trust?’

Hatcher paused and took a swig of coffee. He had told Sloan only what he had to tell him. I{e had left out some things, like the note left at the Wall in Washington to Polo from Jaimie, whoever Jaimie was. And the reference to Thai Horse, which could mean only one thing to Hatcher

—
heroin. Ninety-nine pure China White from the Golden Triangle. But he wasn’t about to throw that out yet. Sloan was far too interested in why Cody ‘was hiding. It was setting off all kinds of danger signals in Hatcher’s head. Hatcher knew exactly what Sloan was thinking at that moment. He was thinking, If Cody is i
nt
o some really bad shit, it would be easy to eliminate the problem. To Sloan, termination was an easy solution for any problem. But he never said it out loud. He always left the dirty words unsaid.

Sloan threw off the towel and started getting dressed.

‘We’ll go into Bangkok and see what we can turn up,’
h
e said, slipping on olive drab boxer shorts and an undershirt.

But Porter’s death and the possib
le
disappearance of Wol Pot had put a new wrinkle on the mission. Now Hatcher’s mind was working in other directions, searching for options.

‘I’ll meet you there in a day or two,’ he told Sloan. ‘I’ve got some things I want to check out here.’

‘Such as?’

‘I’ll let you know that when I’m through.’

Sloan started to tie his tie. There was a knock on the door.

‘Christ, now what!’ Sloan said.

TRIADS

A tail man, arrow-straight, with a sculptured handlebar mustache was standing in the doorway. He wore a spotless white linen suit. Hong Kong cop, thought Hatcher. He had the air.

‘Colonel Sloan?’ he asked. His British accent was sharp enough to hone a knife on.

‘Yes?’

‘Sergeant Varney, sir, Hong Kong police.’ He showed his credentials.

‘A pleasure,’ Sloan said in his most diplomatic tone. ‘Come on in, what can I do for you?’

Varney entered the room as if he were reporting to the Queen, almost sniffing the air. He smiled stiffly at Hatcher. ‘And you must be Mr Hatcher,’ he said, offering his hand.

‘Uh-
h
uh,’ Hatcher said. They shook hands. Varney strode to the balcony door, checked the view, and turned around with his arms behind his back.

‘I’m with the Commonwealth Triad Squad,’ he said. When neither Sloan nor Hatcher responded, he went on. ‘Things’ve changed a lot in the last six, seven years. I thought I might offer a hand should you need it. I happened to recognize your names when they appeared on our computer yesterday.’

‘Computer?’ Hatcher asked.

‘We run a computer check against the airport list. Routine, y’know, try to keep tabs on who’s coming and going. I was going to give you a call and then Colonel Sloan showed up, so I decided to touch in with you both.’

Hatcher said. ‘That’s real thoughtful, Sergeant. But our business here has nothing to do with the triads.’

‘Yes, sir, but considering your past experience with the Silk Dragons and the White Palms, we just thought we might extend the courtesy of the force, so to speak.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be needing it,’ Hatcher said, staring at Sloan again. ‘The colonel’s leaving today and I plan to be out of here tomorrow or the next day.’

‘Yes, sir, that’s jolly good,’ Varney said. He paused for a moment as if to pick the right words, stretching his neck and ruffling his shoulders. The sergeant had more ticks than a south Georgia hound. ‘It’s just that
—
I think I should advise you, sir
—
while you are here, you could be in considerable danger. We’d like you to know we’ll extend the full courtesy of the department to you. Perhaps’
—
he paused another moment, pursing his lips before going on
—
‘you might like an escort.’

‘I know the town just fine,’ Hatcher’s whispery voice crackled.

‘Yes, yes, of course, but
—‘

Hatcher cut him off. ‘Look, Sergeant, I never had any dealings with the White Palms, and as far as I know, the Silk Dragons are history.’

Sloan jumped in. ‘That’s the point, Hatch, the Silk Dragons may be history, but the White Palms kind of.

uh
. . .‘
Sloan stalled for a moment.

‘Permit me,’ Varney said. ‘After White Powder Mama

was assassinated, the White Palms
—
uh, shall we say
—
absorbed many of the Silk Dragon
m
embers. Rather like a merger, if you will.’

‘Is that a fact,’ Hatcher said, still only vaguely interested. He knew most of the history and had been battling the Silk Dragons when this Varney guy was still diddy-bopping his way around the middle school cricket pitches.

‘You know ab
o
ut Tollie Fong?’ Varney asked airily.

‘Tollie Fong?’ Hatcher said, raising his eyebrows, playing dumb.

‘His father was Lee Fong.’

For an instant, Hatcher’s mind flashed to the Singapore airport. Dusk. 1975. Twelve years ago. Yeah, he knew Lee Fong, all right.

‘We thought you should know Tollie Fong is the
new
san wong of
the White Palms,’ Varney said with a bit of a flourish, leaning back and almost smirking. ‘And,’ he added with obvious satisfaction, ‘Joe Lung is his Number One here in Hong Kong. They still remember.
. .

So, thought Hatcher, tuning him out, it’s come full circle

Sweeping down from the hills on their long-haired horses, the Mongolians came. Their flowing black hair in ratty pigtails, their faces bearded and hungry, their eyes afire with opium. Cutting down or burning everything in their path: horses, cows, pigs, children, all but the women

—
the women were their prize of prizes. Looting and killing, the barbarians butchered the gentle Chinese in the flatlands by the sea, below the seven peaks where the seven dragons dwelt.

And the dragons, who in life had been the first seven emperors of China, angrily watching from their mountain aeries, summoned forth the leaders of the Chinese, describing to them how to fight b2ck, telling them the tactics to use, giving them the juice.

So the taipans banded together into three-family cells, forming triangles with their farms, erecting walls between them, and hitting back from each side when the Mongols struck, and the dragons were proved right. The Chinese, in what would eventually be Hong
K
ong, cut the savages to shreds and sent what few were left back to Mongolia to carry the message. The barbarians never returned.

Thus, in the twelfth century, the triads were born, growing stronger for the next eight hundred years; each triad taking on its own rituals, its own passwords and secret handshakes, its own poems legends and history, swearing allegiance to the clan, a b
lo
od oath known as the
hong mon,
growing in power until they were the ruling classes of Hong Kong and the Chinese business world. Businessmen, mostly, honored and respected.

The evil ones followed quickly, the maverick triads who grabbed the power. Calling themselves the Chiu Chao.

Growing in power also: the Silk Dragons, the White Palms, the 14K, the Thin Blade Gang, the House of Seven Hands and others, running it all, everything that was illicit and corrupt
—
gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, white slavery, drugs, smuggling, the black market—and running it with clear, relentless vision, so focused on cruelty and murder that they defied challenge. The
Mafiosi
of the Orient.

The triads were eight hundred years old. The Chiu Chao was seven hundred ninety years old. It took only ten years for the corruption to start.

The evil triads divided up the underworld, each taking its own segment, and the most lucrative of them all was the drug empire of the Silk Dragons, always looking to expand, seeing ahead with diabolical vision. In the late sixties a fat new market lay waiting in Vietnam, and they brought pure No. 3 China White heroin from the Golden Triangle of Thailand cross-country to Hong Kong and smuggled it into Saigon or shipped it down the Mekong River directly into Vietnam, where they sold it to American GI’s for two dollars a pop to get them hooked.

White Powder Mama became the GI’s soul mate, their savior, with his precious packages of dreams, their escape from misery. He created by insidious design a new market for China White in the United States, where Mexican or Turkish brown heroin had been. king: using hooked American soldiers as the base, the Silk Dragons stretched across the sea to America. White Powder Mama was in reality Ma Bing Sum,
the
san wong,
the
‘godfather,’ of the Silk Dragons. White Powder Mania and his Red Pole ‘executioner,’ Lee Fong, who was also his brother, were the most feared men in Hong Kong, so powerful they conscripted five members of the Hong Kong narcotics squad, who called themselves the Dragon’s Breath, to control the river passages, what they called the ‘long, white run.’

Spring, 1973. Enter Christian Hatcher.

They were in the back room of the officers’ club in Cam Ranh Bay, which had become t
h
e busiest port in the world, the honey pot from which flowed all the men and arms to the undeclared war in
Vietnam
. Compared with the rest of the country, Cam Ranh was Country Club City, except when the sappers came in the middle of the night and tore things up. For Hatcher, in those days, five minutes away from Indian country- was like a six-month vacation.

‘Got a job for you,’ Sloan said.

‘Uh-huh,’ Hatcher said. He hail heard the line many times before.

‘We’ve got us a big problem over here,’ Sloan said.

‘No kidding,’ Hatcher answered with a laugh.

‘I mean besides the war,’ Sloan s aid. ‘You know about the Silk Dragons?’

Hatcher nodded. ‘You mean White Powder Mama?’

Sloan nodded. ‘Ma Bing Sum and his bunch of dope traders.’

‘They’ve been around forever,’ replied Hatcher with a shrug. ‘They’re a Hong Kong police problem.’

‘Not anymore. They’re walking on our notes, pal,’ Sloan went on. ‘We have a serious narcotics problem in Nam and most of it is coming downriver from the Triangle. This White Powder Mama has become a major pain in the ass. He’s got five do-
m
ommies running the rivers from Thailand. Ex-Hong Kong cops, they call themselves the Dragon’s Breath. Strictly bad-ass, the bunch of them. The Buffalo
wants
t
o
kick
ass, teach ‘em a lesson.’

‘So?’

‘So, you know the river. Put together two or three squads, get yourself a couple of armored riverboats, I can get you anybody you need
—
C
RIPS
, Seals, Berets, name it. Any bad-ass in the service is yours. I want you to take ‘em all out. I want this Dragon’s Breath to be history, and fast.’

‘Okay,’ Hatcher said casually, ‘but I’ve got an alternative plan to suggest.’

‘Shoot.’

‘If we do it your way, my cover’s blown.’

‘Okay, how do you see it?’

‘I’ll take three good cutthroats, Molly McGuire, Chet Rodriguez’
—
he thought for a minute
—
‘and Bear Newton. The rest’ll be Orientals. Make it look like we’re just hijacking their shit. I’ll run the show but keep a low pro. Hell, we’ll wear masks, scare the scrotums off the do
-
mommies. Any other way we do it,
I’
m made and we
wash ten years.’

‘Where are you gonna get Orientals that are good enough to do that kind of work?’ Sloan asked skeptically.

‘That’s my problem.’

‘I need twenty-four men, the best cutthroats money can buy,’ Hatcher told China Cohen. ‘Able to take orders, no arguments. And quiet
—
they say a word about any of this, they lose their tongues.’

‘What’s the trick?’ China asked.

‘You don’t want to know.’

Duck hunting, roaming the backwaters at night with their twenty mike-mike cannons and thermite bombs, their Uzis and K-Bar knives, hitting the hooches where the druggers slept at night, waging open warfare on the rivers against the Dragon’s Breath bringing heroin down the Mekong River. In three months Hatcher’s small group ambushed two dozen heroin shipments. In three months four of the five members of the Dragon’s Breath felt the cold steel and hot sting of knives in their throats, died quickly and quietly, while their b
o
ats and deadly cargoes were stolen from under them, taken far upstream and burned. Only one member of the Dragon’s Breath escaped Hatcher’s renegades.

Two years later: Singapore airport. White Powder Mama’s Number Two, the Red Pole executioner, Lee Fong, had been unsuccessfully
lo
oking for Hatcher for almost two years. Finally he had him in sight, had been tailing him for days, waiting for the right moment to kill him in the classic manner, a stilett
o
placed carefully at the base of the neck, cutting the nervo
u
s system and jugular at the same time
—
an act to save face and prove to White Powder Mama that he was still
w
orthy to be the Silk Dragon’s Number Two.

Hatcher had been on to him from the start, knew that Fong had to prove himself. A contact killing was called for, so it was easy for Hatcher to lure hint on.

Hatcher went to the observation deck. It was getting dark and the platform was empty. He
w
atched a jet take off, heard the door open behind him and swish shut, heard the footsteps moving closer. He stooped down, as if to tie his shoe. The footsteps quickened. They were directly behind him.

Hatcher twisted and stood in one swift move, burying a seven-inch stiletto under the rib cage and jamming it up into Fong’s heart, staring straight in
t
o Fong’s face, so close he felt the rush of the Silk
Dragon
executioner’s dying breath on his face, and trapping Fo
n
g’s hand in a steel grip until he felt the life drop out of the assassin’s body.

‘Joi
-
gin,
Fong
,’ he said as he dropped him.

Two weeks later, White Powder
M
ama was dead on the streets of Wanchai, machine-gunned coming out of a nightclub. The reign of the Silk Dragons was ended. The White Palms took over and, to show their compassion, absorbed many of the Silk Dragons’ members.