SNAKEHEADS

SNAKEHEADS

A novel

By Kirk Bullough and Kevin Bullough

One
Hong Kong, China

Andy Heckert was not happy. Just before midnight, mildly hung-over and
hating the humid early morning air, he'd left his air-conditioned
apartment to go to work. The heat made his headache worse, he felt
certain of that. Ten minutes later he had signed in at the front desk
of the U.S. Embassy, hoping to hideout in his cubicle for most of his
shift. Three cups of bad coffee, five cigarettes, and the endless
"swish" of the air conditioning had made his headache unusually
severe.
The phone rang, shattering his silent suffering. Soon the ringing of
the phone began boring a hole into his head. If he had to endure one
more ring he'd probably throw up. He felt certain of that, too.
With his right hand he punched the flashing line on his phone. With his
left he reached into the desk for a bottle of Tylenol.
Pressing the phone line had activated a bank of electronics built into
a cabinet at the left of his desk. Andy noted the reels of the voice
recorder beginning to turn as he popped three tablets into his mouth,
washing them down with the last of his coffee. He looked at the clock:
4:11 A.M. Halfway through his shift.
"Good morning, United States Embassy," he said in his best
put-on-smoothly delivery. "How can I help you?"
A silence followed. He considered hanging up, but then he heard a short
breath being drawn in. The other person was still there, but saying
nothing. The unnatural silence made him feel nervous. He found it hard
to concentrate. Concentrating was what was required, Andy knew, but it
seemed to make his headache worse.
"May I help you?" Andy began again.
"Listen very carefully" said the voice, in accented but clear English.
"My name is Wu Tsing-Mah. I am a Colonel in the Chinese Intelligence
Service. I'm sure you have a file on me. I feel that now I must defect
to the United States."
Andy straightened immediately in his chair. He hit the Emergency button
on his computer keyboard, signalling the duty intelligence officer to
come at once.
"Spooks. I hate spooks," he thought, using the colourful term for
intelligence officers that everyone at the Embassy who wasn't an
intelligence officer used. "They only lead to trouble." He did not, of
course, pass his opinions on to the caller. Rather, he said, "Sir, I
understand. Do you want to come in to the Embassy?"
There was a short, humourless laugh. "Hardly. My belief is that there
is a mole in your organisation and if I came to you I would soon be
dead! If I wished to be dead I assure you I could do it without the
help of America. I have extraordinary information for you that you will
find astonishing. If I had not been involved from the beginning I might
not believe it myself. I will find my own way to a safe location from
where I can contact your people. I expect ten million American dollars
to be deposited into a Swiss Bank account, the number of which I will
give you later. That is a great deal of money but when you hear my
information you will be glad to pay. Very glad indeed. By now, your
machines have my voice print and you can confirm my identity. This was
just a - what is the American saying? A heads-up? Please pass all this
on to your commanders, I know they will be very interested."
"Sir, one of my superiors will be here in a moment and you can speak
with him yourself?" Andy began, but the click on the line followed by a
dial tone told him what he'd known already. The caller was gone.
The duty intelligence officer was going to arrive any minute. Soon they
would both have a headache.

Two
Vancouver, Canada

There were five of them on the team. It was all they could muster on
short notice. Two men were already stationed inside the airport
terminal, watching. The other three were waiting in a car outside in
the parking lot, checking their weapons.
Two of the men had attached silencers to their guns. Hsieng-Gah Son was
one of the two. He was the team leader, and had devised the plan.
Because the Vancouver International Airport International Arrivals
Terminal was such a public place he wanted to use the silencers so as
to draw as little attention as possible. But silencers threw off the
aim of the weapon, so they could only be used in very close quarters.
If the two primary shooters could not get close enough to the target
the three remaining men would have to complete the kill using
unsilenced weapons. Beijing had made it abundantly clear that the team
must kill the target, or die in the attempt. Hsieng was hoping to avoid
the latter option.
He finished preparing his weapon, clicked the safety to "on" and
replaced the gun in the outside pocket of his overcoat. Reaching into a
bag, he pulled out a jar of cream, a dark makeup, really. The airport
was full of security cameras, and there was no way to avoid being
caught on tape. He hoped the makeup might help throw the investigators
off the trail. If not permanently, then long enough to effect an
escape. At any rate, Beijing had made it clear that escape was of
secondary consideration. Hsieng had followed his orders to the letter,
with one small exception.
All members of the team wore two-way communicators: an earpiece, a
microphone clipped to either their sleeve or their lapel, and a battery
pack on the back of their belts, inside their jackets. Unlike the
others, however, Hsieng also wore a second earpiece, working on a
different frequency. The rest of the team didn't know he had an extra
pair of eyes in the terminal, someone who knew the target very well
indeed, and could confirm identification, even if the target were
disguised. At least that's what Hsieng hoped.
Each member of the team was assigned a number from ONE to FIVE. During
the mission, they would refer to each other only by these numbers, and
never by name. Hseing, as team leader, was ONE.

"He's coming down now," a voice said softly into his earpiece. It was
FIVE, the watcher who was to follow the target down from customs to the
baggage carousel. Hsieng's second earpiece remained silent.
Hsieng and his two accomplices swung out of the car and walked through
the parkade and across the access road to the terminal. "One. Entering
now," he said quietly into his microphone as they came through the
sliding doors.

Fernando Jose Gascoine turned up Metallica's new album up in his
headphones as he emptied the garbage can into his big rolling cart.
He'd been pushing a broom and shovel around the terminal for over
twelve years and he hated his job. Mostly, it was the odours. He just
couldn't get used to some of the smells he discovered. Horrible things,
made him wonder what went on inside some people's bodies.
Still, a good toke outside every hour or so made him forget his
troubles and he was happy. And some of the women in the food kiosks
would flirt with him and slip him snacks when their bosses weren't
looking. Bad odours or not, he had to admit that free food from the
shops, unlimited opportunities to get high, and union wages made even
the worst days seem not so bad. Plus, it kept him out of the house and
away from his screaming kids at home.
He saw the Asian standing by the news-stand and thought it unusual. Not
that there was anything out of the ordinary in another Asian in the
terminal. "Hell, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting
twenty-five of them!" he thought. No, this guy just stood out. Maybe it
was his direct stare. Maybe the long coat this early in fall. Something
strange.

"He's going to carousel number four," said FIVE.
Their plan was quite simple. They hoped to catch their quarry just
after he picked up his luggage from the baggage carousel. The
surrounding area was packed with people picking up their bags. They
were going to wait until the target was walking out of the area towards
the entrance, a scant fifty feet away, then they would attack. It was
an added advantage that the target would have his hands full of luggage
and would not be easily able to defend himself.
"Target has arrived at the carousel," said FIVE, even quieter than
before. It made Hsieng smile. The odds of being overheard by the target
in the crowded terminal were very slim, but as the adrenaline began to
flow both excitement and fear tended to act on a man's training.

Hsieng had still heard nothing from his extra earpiece. Time was
running out, and he wanted confirmation. He decided to use the code
phrase they had agreed upon earlier. "Are you sure it's our boy?"
Naturally, to his main team, the question seemed designed for them and
FIVE answered. "Looks just like the picture, yes." But Hsieng was not
really listening to FIVE. He was waiting, straining to hear something
in his second earpiece.
Finally, the answer came. It was almost a whisper, but Hsieng heard it
clearly. "I would recognise my old friend anywhere."
"Good." Hsieng declared. "It is time."

"Hey!" Fernando thought. "There's another Asian dude, with the same
kind of coat as that other one. Where did he go?"
Scanning across the open area, Fernando searched through the mass of
people. A large, sweaty man in a Georgetown Hoya's sweatshirt
momentarily blocked his view. He still couldn't locate the first Asian.
He turned his gaze back to find the second man again. He was gone too.
Or wait! There he is! And now there was something in the Asian's hand,
something metallic. "What the fuck is that?"
For one or two seconds Fernando wished he hadn't just smoked a big fat
joint. It made him stoned and happy, to be sure, but also lazy and
unable to make snap decisions. Both things worked against him now. He
could see the gun, and it scared him. These guys weren't the cops, that
he knew. That scared him even more. He started to move towards the Air
Canada Cargo counter, off about forty feet to his left. There he'd find
a security guard, or a phone. Screaming out didn't even enter his mind.
"They could always point that gun at me!"

"Three, where are you?" Hsieng whispered. For a moment, he felt a sense
of panic. "Three!" he rasped, not daring to speak louder.
"I'm here," THREE replied. "Don't worry."
"Two, are you ready?"
TWO was the other agent equipped with a silencer. He would make the
second attempt if Hsieng failed.
"Ready." The target walked out of the carousel area and headed towards
the doors. Hsieng fell in behind him and reached into his pocket,
fingering the safety to "off" and sliding his forefinger inside the
trigger-guard. Just at that moment, THREE stepped directly in front of
their target, causing the man to stop.
"Excuse me sir, but do you speak Cantonese?" THREE asked politely, in
Cantonese.
Hsieng pulled his gun out and stepped directly behind Mah. With his
left hand, he grabbed him just under his left armpit and placed the
silencer against the back of his head, where the skull meets the neck.
He fired two shots in quick succession. Hsieng had decided on an upward
shot through the skull in the hopes that the bullets would end up in
the ceiling if they escaped Mah's head, limiting any possibility of
innocent bystanders also being hit. Even with a silencer the bullets
left the gun with a muzzle speed of 200 feet per second. Hsieng was
careful to vary his hand position slightly between shots so that each
bullet carved out its own path through the target's skull, doing far
more damage to the brain than if both bullets followed the same
line.
The target's eyes went wide for just a second and then the integrity of
his skull seemed to collapse. He lost his footing, his nervous system
shutting down instantly, and all of his weight came down on Hsieng's
left hand. Several drops of blood and even some bits of brain matter
hit both the agents at the same time, but they'd worn dark coats to
cover that sort of stain. THREE put a hand out and grabbed the falling
body by the other arm, helping Hsieng to turn the body towards one of
the formed dark plastic chairs lined up against a column. They folded
the body into a semi-sitting position on the seat. Hsieng pulled a
baseball cap out of his coat and put it on the targets' head, in an
attempt to mask the violence. THREE grabbed the big suitcase and Hsieng
took the strap of the carry-on bag, ripping it from the shoulders of
the dead man, and they began walking towards the exit. They both took
care not to hurry. People in a hurry stand out in a crowd, and the
agents were doing their best to stay inconspicuous.

Anything but inconspicuous, Fernando reached the counter and turned his
head away from the action to look for someone to report to, when he
heard the two rapid but faint thuds. No one else seemed to notice them
though. To someone who watched as much TV as Fernando, the sounds were
unmistakable?the soft "phut" of a silenced gun. Snapping his head back,
his reddened dope-smoking eyes wide with fear, he saw the two men turn
from the body they'd placed, each with a bag, and quickly head for the
doors. He couldn't even control himself. He had to scream, just as loud
as he could.
"HEY!!!!!"

FIVE was still trailing behind the other agents, and since he'd been
the farthest into the terminal he was closest to the grubby janitor. He
heard the yell, bringing attention from dozens of people who up until
then hadn't even noticed that a fellow human being's life had just been
rudely ended. But they were beginning to notice now. His initial
reaction was to reach for his gun, to silence the bastard.
"I can take him," FIVE said.
"No!" Hsieng replied immediately. "Finish your work and exit
now!"
Hsieng knew that the most dangerous part of the mission was still to
come, but there was no way to change the plan at this late time. They
would all just have to hope for continued luck.
Meanwhile, FOUR went to the target's lifeless body and spoke English in
a loud voice. "Oh my God, this man is hurt! Someone call an ambulance!"
And in a few well-practised movements he removed the target's wallet
and billfold as he pretended to check for a pulse. A crowd was
beginning to gather near the victim. FOUR turned to a woman in the
crowd and said, "I'm going to call 911!" He then got up and moved off
towards the bank of pay phones by the car rental booths. But as he
passed the exit he turned and calmly walked out into the night.
The hit team now had the target's bags, wallet, and billfold. Unless
the target had hidden information somewhere else on his person they had
in theory removed all evidence the target might have brought with him.
It would have been better, Hsieng knew, had they been able to bundle up
the target and kidnap him. Then they could have tortured him at their
leisure to ensure that they had not missed anything, and then killed
him. It would have been much more thorough, and more orderly, Hsieng
thought. But Beijing was very insistent. The target must be dead within
fifteen minutes of landing. These crude actions had been his only
option.

Fernando felt his legs begin to move as his lungs pushed out another
scream. Tourists were gazing at him as if he'd gone mad, but these two
guys had just shot someone and he had to do something!
He ran toward the body, yelling much more loudly. Two interested
concierges began to walk towards the carousel too, but not noticing the
shooters. All they could see was a wild-eyed, longhaired custodian
screaming and waving like a madman.
FIVE continued walking out of the terminal, but as he walked he flipped
his scarf over the bottom half of his face so that everything below the
eyes was covered. He came up on Fernando from behind, leaned in close
to the janitor and said in a low but clear voice that Fernando could
easily hear?
"Bang! Bang! Be quiet, or be dead!"
Fernando's eyes went wide, and his face grew very pale. He glanced at
FIVE as he walked away, seeing nothing but his malevolent eyes above
the scarf. Asian eyes, hard and cold. Fernando tried to swallow but his
mouth was too dry. He coughed instead.

The car was running by the time FIVE arrived. Once he had joined the
rest of the team they quickly headed for the parking lot exit. Having
already paid their parking fees at the automated machine they simply
drove up the exit, inserted their pre-paid stub, waited a second or two
for the control arm to swing up out of the way, and drove off towards
the Arthur Laing Bridge. The streetlights sparkled off the water of the
Fraser River.
"Well done," Hsieng said. "Very well done. Beijing will be
pleased."
The team settled back into their seats as the car turned off Granville
Street, and down Rand Avenue. A short ways down West 75th Avenue they
parked the car behind one of the warehouses and threw the keys out into
the river. The car had been stolen earlier just for use on this
mission. From a parking lot on the opposite side of the road a
limousine pulled out and drove up to them. Hsieng smiled, noting the
diplomatic plates from the Chinese Consulate. They all slid into the
limo and began the drive the remainder of the way down Granville to the
Consulate, and home.

Three
Vancouver, Canada

'Laughter, hope, and sex and dreams?'
"Todd!"
'?are still surviving on the streets?'
"TODD!"
'?and look at me, I'm in tatters! I'm shattered?'
Margaret picked up a slipper from the floor of her new townhouse
overlooking False Creek and threw it in frustration at the man
occupying her love seat, who was singing along with the Rolling Stones
as loudly as he could. The slipper fell three feet short, but slapped
on the hardwood when it landed, and Todd immediately opened his
eyes.
Todd slipped the headphones off his blond head and smiled brightly at
Margaret, but it failed to mollify her.
"This thing has been beeping like crazy for the last ten minutes," she
snapped, holding his personal security pager in her upturned palm. "If
it's not important, at least shut the damn thing off!"
He walked across the room, took the pager, and glanced at the front
display. "Oh, it's important honey. It's the boss. I'll probably be
fired for ignoring it, but I'm willing to take that risk?"
Reaching out he placed his hands on her hips, inside the
still-unbuttoned blouse she was wearing. He ran one hand quickly up her
side until he touched the skin near the bottom of her breast. He felt
the lace of her bra.
Margaret shook her head, spun out of his grasp, and headed back into
the bathroom, sliding in an earring as she went. "I've got to get ready
for work, Todd. Big day today, remember?"
He grinned and looked again at the number on his pager. He began to hum
to himself.
"You can't always get what you want?but if you try sometimes, you might
find, you get what you need."
Todd's eyes swept the room for the phone.

An hour later he was in an office in a section of the airport most
people never get to see. CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intelligence
Service, had completed the circle begun when the U.S.A. had received
the phone call from Wu Tsing-Mah, the potential Chinese defector. The
Central Intelligence Agency had issued an alert to the intelligence
services of all friendly governments to notify the agency if they came
across this "person of interest". The CIA had included a photo and copy
of the fingerprints of Mah, although they did not name him in the
alert. They'd merely asked to be notified if, for whatever reason, this
person or his fingerprints were found during the course of any
investigation.
The local intelligence agencies, in this case CSIS, passed along the
alert to most of the major metropolitan police forces and to Customs
&; Immigrations at the border crossings and the airports. When the
fingerprints of the dead man were taken at the airport, the alert flag
came out and CSIS was notified, as was CIA in due time.
And now Todd was responding. As the senior agent in Vancouver he was
the logical choice, although they could have sent someone up from
Seattle. Certainly Todd was less experienced than some, but for now he
would do.
In an office not really big enough for one person Todd sat with two
other men. He had asked to view the tapes alone, but that had been
denied. If the Americans were going to learn something then the
Canadians wanted to learn it, too, so CSIS insisted on its own man
watching as well.
He was Dan Fleming, a mid-thirties, tall, sandy-haired man with a quiet
confidence about him. Todd and Dan knew each other vaguely. So at this
meeting they were friendly enough, but they couldn't even talk to each
other about what they were seeing, as both countries had put a Top
Secret designation on the file. All they could do was watch the tape in
silence together, occasionally asking for a different angle or for a
particular shot to be replayed.
The third man was Mike, a Canadian Department of Immigration security
specialist. Since there were literally dozens of cameras positioned in
the airport terminal, Todd and his CSIS counterpart needed the techie's
eyes to wade through the system.
There was no sound. With all the background noise it would have proved
useless anyway, so they sat in silence as the images flashed on the
monitor.
For the rest of the day, Todd looked at the murder over and over. They
quickly spotted two of the team, the two that had actually performed
the assassination, finding the best frame for each of them and printing
a hardcopy for everyone's records. Todd knew one of the killers
immediately, but he couldn't say anything. It was a Top Secret.
A song ran through his head. "Listen," he heard, "Do you want to know a
secret? Do you promise not to tell?"
After several more hours they had added two more team members to their
list and duly printed their images. Todd had no idea who they were, and
suspected his CSIS friend didn't either. Seven hours later, after
watching the same scenes backwards and forwards, in fast motion and
slow, from five different angles, the three men emerged bleary-eyed
into the early evening twilight, each with a dossier of photos culled
from the tapes. Each man was mentally drained and only wanted to go
home and sleep. Todd headed for the U.S. Consulate. He was under
instructions to report in immediately upon finishing his assignment at
the airport. That was just fine with Todd. He needed to talk out what
he had seen anyway, and the Top Secret label meant he could only talk
with his bosses in Washington. Even the rest of the Vancouver staff
couldn't know. For all three agents the Top Secret designation meant
that they couldn't even tell their significant other's about anything
they'd seen either.
No one was allowed to know that all three had seen the death of Wu
Tsing-Mah over two hundred times.

Four
Langley, Virginia

Todd was on the telephone to CIA headquarters. On the other end of the
line was a speakerphone, and around a table three men listened to Todd
as he laid out the story.
Evan Stone was one of them. He was the man in charge of the Asian desk
of the CIA. He was the first to speak to Todd.
"Okay Todd. With me here are Kevin Conroyd, Assistant Director of
Intelligence, and Stuart Milton, from Hong Kong. Actually, Stuart and
Kevin are only here tonight by chance. Stuart is retiring from the
Agency, and as a thirty-five year veteran we brought him here for a
little retirement shindig. I couldn't resist asking him to join us when
we got your signal."
"It didn't sound much like a request when I heard it," Stuart mumbled
grumpily. "And I thought I was all through following orders."
Evan laughed. "We've been plying Stuart with drink all night in an
attempt to loosen his tongue and hear some of his great stories. But he
keeps winking and telling me it's a secret. So this is his punishment
for keeping us waiting."
"Speaking of waiting," Stuart broke in, "my wife is waiting, for me!
I'm kind of looking forward to the retirement gift I'm expecting her to
give me in bed tonight. Will this take long?"
Evan laughed again, even louder. "What kind of a retirement present
could you possibly mean, Stuart?"
"Sorry, Evan, that's a top secret," Stuart replied. "Now that I'm
retired, I don't have to tell you anything!"
"Too true, Stuart, too true. Okay, let's get to business. Todd, we have
the photographs you sent along. Do you know any of the men in these
photos?"
"Yes, I think so," Todd replied. "The main guy, actually, the shooter
himself. He's wearing a disguise, some makeup or something, but I'm
pretty certain it's Hsieng Gah-Son. Up until yesterday, he was the
junior Trade Attach? at the Chinese consulate here in Vancouver, which
is to say that he was also a senior intelligence officer of the PRC in
Vancouver."
"Wait a minute, Todd. You're telling me the Chinese government is
having their senior men carry out assassinations now?" Kevin Conroyd
asked. "Don't they have any junior men out there that they could better
afford to put into such situations?"
"Normally, yes. I have no explanation yet as to why someone so high up
in the Consulate would be involved, but I definitely recognise
him."
"Okay, then," Evan Stone said, "let's go with that. What's the next
step? Have you got somebody watching this guy?"
"No."
"Why?" Evan wanted to know.
"Because he is no longer here to watch. He was sent home this morning,
all of a sudden. The official Chinese explanation is that there was a
death in his family and he was about to be transferred anyway, so they
let him come home a little early."
"And what's your unofficial explanation?" Kevin prompted.
"He's the shooter and they wanted him long gone by the time we
discovered it."
"It does seem logical," Evan mused. "They must have really wanted Mah
dead, to be willing to lose an field agent like that. How long had this
so-called junior Trade Attach? been posted to Vancouver?"
"Longer than I have," replied Todd. "About three-and-a-half years, I
think. I'd have to look it up to know for sure."
"So," Evan began again, "to lose over three years experience with no
overlap time for training of a new man, just snatch the guy out. I
wouldn't be willing to lose one of my men like that unless it was a
goddamned emergency, and even then I'm not so sure." Evan briefly
rifled through the papers on the desk in front of him to find the
transcript from the Hong Kong Embassy. "Well, Mah said he had some
'astounding' information for us, and I guess he was right. It sure
looks like the Chinese thought so. Now, I'd still like to know what the
hell that information is, although I realise the likelihood of him
telling us is pretty remote, what with being dead and all."
"How did they know he was coming?" Stuart interrupted.
"What?" Todd asked.
"How did the Chinese know he was coming?" Stuart repeated. "To have a
hit team all set up indicates advance knowledge, unless you think that
they were just hanging around the airport in the hopes our man would
show?"
"No, of course not. You're definitely right, they must have known he
was coming and when. Or at least, approximately when."
"What flight did he come in on?" Evan wanted to know.
"I'm not sure yet, still working on that. Had to be either Air
Indonesia from Jakarta, or Lufthansa from Paris. Those are the only two
flights incoming in the half-hour previous to the killing from off the
continent."
"Why only from off the continent?" Kevin Conroyd queried. "What if he
came in from, say, Atlanta, after working his way to the U.S.?"
"I'll check everything. But if he'd already made it to the U.S., why
would he leave again? I mean, wasn't he defecting to us?"
"That makes sense," said Kevin, "but what about Mexico City, or Buenos
Aires?"
"Right, like I said, I'll check everything," Todd repeated.
"But put your first priority on the off-continent flights, Todd," Evan
Stone told him. "I think your first instincts were probably right. Have
you got the time and manpower to handle this properly?"
"It'll be a stretch, but I think so."
"Good," Evan said. "Now what about these other photos? Know any of
them?"
"No, not at first glance. I haven't had a chance yet to run it all
through the computer, but I'll do that right now." Todd replied.
"Don't do that!" Kevin told him. "Go home now and get some sleep, and
start first thing in the morning, fresh. We need your mind at it's
sharpest on this. No-one that's dead today will be alive
tomorrow."
"Yes, get some sleep. We need to get to bed too, especially Stuart,"
Evan smiled. "One last thing. Are you certain you got everything from
the tapes? Or could you have missed something there?"
"Well, there were three of us there. Me, a man from CSIS, and an
airport security guy. But sure, we could have missed something, I
guess. Although I don't know what, obviously."
"No offence, Todd," Evan went on, "but your area of expertise is not
Asia, is it?"
"No, Europe. I was assigned to Canada because I speak French. I spent
three years in Ottawa and then I was sent out here two summers
ago."
"Well, if it's alright with you I'd like to send Stuart out there to
help a little. I would especially like him to see the tapes. Can you
get the airport guys to show them to you again?"
"I don't think that will be a problem, but I'm sure that CSIS will
insist on having their guy there again as well."
"Hey!" Stuart interjected. "No offence Evan, but screw you. I'm retired
as of tonight. My wife would kill me if I even suggested it."
"It's not a suggestion, Stuart," Evan said. "It's an order. And you
know damn well that I can make it stick. No offence taken, by the
way."
"Well, I'm offended," Stuart responded. "This is bull. And now there's
no way in hell the wife will give me that little retirement present
tonight."
"Perhaps I can help, Stuart," Kevin Conroyd smiled. "Don't