The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (69 page)

“I did not hear you drive up,” said Tsao quietly.

“I walked,” said Tyler.

“I see,” said Tsao, as if he was talking to himself.

Tyler began to walk towards Tsao, his rubber-soled shoes making no sound on the concrete floor.

Tsao nodded, almost imperceptibly, at the pictures pinned up on the wall. “It will not work, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” agreed Tyler, still walking.

“Ah,” said Tsao. “I see.”

“You did an excellent job of work, Mr Tsao,” said Tyler. “You are a true craftsman.”

“Thank you,” said Tsao. He turned his back on Tyler and studied the wall. If he heard the sound of Tyler’s gun being cocked he showed no sign of it. The bullet exploded through the back of his skull, throwing blood, bone and brain matter across the maps and pictures of Hong Kong.

Tyler went over to the barrels of fuel and oil and took an incendiary device out of the carrier bag. The device consisted of a cheap alarm clock, a detonator and a small amount of explosive, and it was similar to those which had been used at the Shatin racetrack. It had been designed and built by the man who had made the Shatin bombs. Tyler checked that the time was set for ten minutes, placed it by the side of the barrels, and walked away, out into the searing sunshine.

Michael Wong stood in the depository’s receiving area and watched his men load up the fifth Mercedes. As each car arrived it brought with it a driver and two Red Poles, and there were now ten men helping to transfer the gold from the main vault.

The guards had been amazed to find that the keys opened the vault doors and that the timing mechanisms had operated twenty-four hours earlier than expected. The two men had looked at each other, surprise written all over their faces, and Wong knew it wouldn’t be long before they reached the conclusion that Woo must have set them incorrectly. It didn’t matter, Woo was no longer a problem. Wong had opened the main vault first and his Red Poles had begun loading the gold bullion on to metal trolleys and then into the lift up to the ground floor and along to the loading area. He’d then taken the two guards, their hands bound behind their backs, to the safety-deposit box vault. It had opened and Wong had asked them where the keys were.

One of the guards, the one in just his shorts and socks, had protested that the bank’s clients had the only keys and that without them they couldn’t get into the boxes. Wong had shot him in the foot and asked the other guard. He had shown Wong where the replacement keys were kept. Wong knew that the bank kept duplicate keys in case of loss, though it tended not to broadcast the information. They had brought electric drills with them as a precautionary measure, but there had been no need. Two of the Red Poles were methodically working their way through the boxes, starting with the large ones. Two more triad soldiers were emptying the boxes and dividing the contents into four piles: gold; cash; valuables; and rubbish – legal papers and the like. The two guards had been bound and gagged and left in the safety-deposit box reception area. Chung had been put on the sofa, his arms still tied.

The men finished loading the Mercedes and one of them operated the gate, allowing the driver to ease the car out into the street. As it left, another Mercedes arrived and drove straight in. Two Red Poles climbed out and helped unload the next trolley.

Wong looked at his watch. It was all going to plan, five cars loaded up and on their way: a total of thirty-five million American dollars. Two were being loaded up, another three would arrive within the next half hour. Tyler was due within the next fifteen minutes so Wong went to check the men in the safety-deposit-box vault. As part of his pay-off, Tyler was picking up five million dollars in gold and currency. Wong caught the elevator and went up one floor. He walked by the two bound guards and nodded at Chung.

More than half the boxes were open and the pile of cash was now almost waist-high. There was a large canvas bag at the entrance, the sort used by sailors to stash their gear, and Wong took it over to the banknotes. He knelt down and began putting bundles of hundred and thousand American dollar notes into the bag. It didn’t take him long before he had four million dollars and he hefted it on to his shoulder and took it back to the elevator.

When he arrived back at the receiving area another Mercedes was arriving. He dropped the canvas bag on the floor and told one of his Red Poles to put aside one million dollars in gold bullion.

The air traffic controller looked at his radar screen and blinked his eyes, twice. A small blip had appeared from nowhere on the screen, showing that something was in the air about five miles north of the airport. Whatever it was it was not using a transponder. It moved like a small plane or a helicopter but no one had filed a flight plan from that direction and there were no airfields nearby. He flicked his microphone on. “Unidentified aircraft flying five miles north of Hong Kong International, this is Hong Kong Approach, please respond on 119.1.” There was no reply. He flicked over to the tower frequency, 118.7 MHz, and tried again. Still no response. He flicked back to 119.1 MHz.

“Unidentified aircraft flying four miles north of Hong Kong International, this is Hong Kong Approach. If you can hear me turn left and enter a holding pattern. If you can receive but not transmit, squawk 7600.”

He studied the blip on his screen. It was moving inexorably south. He repeated the message on the tower frequency. No effect.

The controller called his supervisor over and explained what was happening.

“Are you sure it isn’t a student pilot from one of the flight schools?” asked the supervisor.

The controller shook his head. “It appeared from nowhere. And there are no Cessnas out at the moment.”

“No radio contact?”

“No, and no transponder signal. I’ve asked him to squawk 7600 if his radio is out but his transponder is still inactive. If he was one.”

“Where did it come from?”

The controller shrugged. “Heading south, but it appeared from nowhere. Near Shatin, I guess.”

The supervisor nodded. “Try him on the Guangzhou Control frequencies, 132.4 and 123.9, just in case he’s reading his charts wrong.”

He called across the room to a controller who was about to take a break and asked him to phone through to Guangzhou to see if they had any information on the rogue aircraft. He turned back to the controller tracking the blip and put his hand on his shoulder. “You concentrate on the unidentified aircraft,” he said calmly once the man had tried the Guangzhou frequencies unsuccessfully. “Hand over your aircraft to Danny and Eric.” He shouted over to a controller sitting at the far left of the tower. “Danny, we’ve got an unidentified aircraft three miles north. Have you anyone there who can give us a visual?”

“I’ve a 747 inbound for landing at 1,500 feet, due west.”

“Try them,” said the supervisor. “Put it on the speaker.”

A uniformed police sergeant sitting at the side of the radar room stood up and walked over to the supervisor. “This could be it,” the supervisor said in anticipation of the man’s unspoken question. The wall speaker crackled into life and the whole room listened as Danny Tse hailed the 747. “Five-Eight-Two, this is Hong Kong Tower. Report if you see traffic at ten o’clock at three hundred feet.”

“Hong Kong Tower, please confirm three hundred feet, Five-Eight-Two.”

“Five-Eight-Two, that’s affirmative, traffic at three hundred feet, ten o’clock your position.”

There was a pause then the pilot of the 747 came back on the air. “Hong Kong Tower, traffic in sight, Five-Eight-Two.”

“Five-Eight-Two, please identify traffic.”

“Hong Kong Tower, it’s a helicopter, flying low. It looks like a green Huey. And you’re not going to believe this, but I can see men in uniforms carrying rifles. Five-Eight-Two.”

Tse looked over at the supervisor and raised his eyebrows.

“Warn all traffic that we have an unidentified helicopter in the area,” said the supervisor. “Give it lots of room. God knows what the lunatics are up to.”

The sergeant switched on his own radio and began speaking to the airport police station while the controller continued trying to contact the helicopter.

Coleman had counted nine Mercedes in, and eight had left. With the tinted windows it was impossible to tell who was driving, or how many passengers there were. For all he knew Fielding or Chung could have left in one of them. After he’d waited for ten minutes, he’d taken a walk by the front of the building, but everything had seemed in order. A uniformed guard was sitting behind the desk in the small reception area and he’d looked up as Coleman went past.

He’d gone back to the Jeep and tuned his radio to the Happy Valley frequency, 449.625 MHz. He heard nothing about the supposed robbery so he flicked to the emergency unit frequencies, 449.525 MHz for the east of the island, and 449.250 MHz for the west. Still nothing, not that he could understand, anyway. His Cantonese was really abysmal, he knew, but, as he had no long-term plans to stay in the force, it didn’t worry him overmuch.

He was toying with the idea of calling up one of the Kowloon stations and getting them to run a check with the Kowloon and Canton Bank when a uniformed police officer drove up in an unmarked car, a white Toyota. Coleman got a side view of the guy as he drove past, but didn’t recognise him: he had a prominent hooked nose and cold, blue eyes. He had short grey hair, cut in a military fashion and he looked to be in his fifties. Coleman thought he knew most of the expatriate officers so he racked his brains for who it might be.

The man beeped his horn and the metal gate rattled up. A Mercedes drove out and the man slowly guided the Toyota inside. Coleman frowned. The fact that a Royal Hong Kong Police officer was involved made him feel a little easier, but he was still in a state of total confusion.

Lewis moved his head in the airstream, enjoying the feel of the cold air rippling across his face and through his hair. He closed his eyes and his mind spun back to Vietnam, to the countless missions he’d flown as crew chief, back in the days before he’d had a son to worry about and a cancer eating away at his insides. A burst of gunfire jolted him out of his reverie. He opened his eyes to see Carmody firing into the sea below, a satisfied grin on his face. He turned and gave a thumbs-up to Lewis. “Just checking,” he mouthed.

They’d avoided the tower blocks of Kowloon by flying to the west, over the container terminals of Kwai Chung and the countless freighters moored around Stonecutters Island. They were so low they could see the looks of surprise on the faces of the Asian sailors below. Several even waved, and Carmody had waved back, then pointed his M16 at them and laughed when they’d ducked.

Once they’d reached the sea Lehman had taken the Huey even lower as they flew east over Victoria Harbour, the bustling shops of Tsim Sha Tsui on the left, the office blocks of Central on their right. They flashed over a wooden Chinese junk bobbing in the water, where three fishermen in coolie hats looked up open-mouthed and then were gone, and they banked steeply to avoid a Star Ferry which was ploughing towards Hong Kong Island, packed to the gills with housewives, schoolchildren and tourists. Lewis saw a man in a T-shirt and shorts aim his camcorder at the Huey but doubted that he managed to get a shot. In Nam there were two safe ways to fly over the jungle: so high that the VC fire couldn’t reach them, or low and fast so that they didn’t have time to react.

Lewis looked over the island, at the glittering glass towers, shiny bright against the green peaks behind them. The sun sparkled off the tallest tower in the island, a twisted knife of glass and steel which stood head and shoulders above the rest, made even taller by a twin-pronged structure on top that looked like a massive television antenna. To its right was the futuristic grey steel headquarters of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, and behind it a building shaped like an elongated wedding cake which was topped by the logo of the Kowloon and Canton Bank. Lehman put the Huey into a steep bank to the right so that Lewis felt as if he were suspended over the water and they flew between the towers, their reflection speckling off a dozen different surfaces, metal, glass and marble, as if they were flying in formation, while the throbbing thud of the rotors echoed back from the buildings. Lewis reached for the cardboard box which contained the smoke and gas canisters and he began removing the small wire clips which stopped them going off accidentally. When he had prepared twenty of the canisters he repeated the process with the box of stun grenades.

He looked up to see Carmody grinning at him. “Yeah!” yelled Carmody above the beat of the rotors. “Rock and roll! Rock and fucking roll!”

Phil Donaldson watched the horses being coaxed into the starting gate for the last race. He was starting to wonder if perhaps somebody really had been pulling Tommy Lai’s chain. None of the anti-triad men posing as tellers had reported anything unusual and in another half an hour the grandstand would be empty and the Jockey Club’s millions would be safely locked away in the underground vault. Donaldson looked across at Paul Penycate and realised that exactly the same thought was going through the superintendent’s mind.

The damp patches under Donaldson’s armpits had grown steadily larger throughout the afternoon and he could feel sweat trickling down his back and soaking into his boxer shorts.

Tommy Lai had disappeared during the fifth race, saying that he wanted to try to contact his informer. Donaldson reckoned he was just keeping out of the way in case the whole thing fell apart. Penycate now had more than 300 men at various points around the track and was growing more nervous by the minute. Donaldson was considering making his own excuses and leaving.