Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

Banging metal.

Screams.

Human screams.

2

Today, the lesson was on field-expedient weapons, a subject with which John Clark was intimately familiar. Two-by-fours, pointy mop handles, socks full of sand, a handy magazine rolled into a tight tube if it came down to that—all of them could be useful in a pinch when an operative found him- or herself without a gun or a suitable knife. Campus director of transportation Lisanne Robertson was proving herself to be an able student as they walked through the teeming Ben Thanh Market.

Clark registered the sweating European man with his peripheral vision. Open cotton shirt, juking this way and that as he made his way through the crowd. This guy was up to something, leading Clark to believe that some kind of a weapon might come in handy in the not-too-distant future.

Clark estimated the European to be in his mid-thirties. Lean, fit, with the kind of ropy muscles that were difficult to keep hold of in a fight. A workingman’s muscles, like he’d just come from hanging Sheetrock or swinging a hammer at a construction site. Dark hair hung in sweaty curls over the collar of his shirt. Glancing furtively, obviously searching for someone, the man attempted to move quickly, but was impeded by the mass of shoppers and sightseers who clogged the aisles between what, at first glance, appeared to be an endless line of T-shirt shops.

Clark had spent the morning braving the crowds of Ho Chi Minh City, wading through rivers of scooter traffic and pointing out the various items an operative might find useful if he or she had to suddenly go on the defensive. Lisanne was former law enforcement and no stranger to conflict, making her a quick learner. In point of fact, Clark was more interested in observing the way she handled herself on the street than he was in teaching any of the finer points of tradecraft. Operational teams like The Campus, an off-the-books intelligence agency set up by President Jack Ryan and Senator Gerry Hendley, needed a periodic inoculation of fresh perspective and talent. The backbone of the team had been around since the beginning. They’d lost a couple of dear friends along the way, and, considering the type of work they did, were bound to lose some more if they were not extremely careful … or even if they were. Hence, Clark’s desire to see how the young woman comported herself in a foreign land.

The greasy European had popped up on Clark’s radar when he’d stopped to talk to a woman at a stall selling chunks of bloody unidentifiable meat piled up beside baskets of live frogs.

Clark didn’t mention anything to Lisanne. So far, he had nothing more than a gut feeling, a hunch.

It wasn’t so much how the man moved as the way those around him reacted to his presence. The woman with the basket of frogs recoiled when he approached her stall, as if he smelled bad or was about to draw a knife.

The man didn’t look particularly dangerous, at least not to John Clark. In truth, Clark had no idea of the man’s nationality. But he carried himself like a European, legs together when he stood, furtive, catlike, instead of doggedly like an American—so Clark began to think of him that way as they walked.

Though the rest of The Campus was off doing “real work,” Lisanne Robertson embraced the training week, rattling off possible field-expedient weapons nearly as quickly as Clark while they walked. The nine million inhabitants of Ho Chi Minh City—formerly Saigon—provided all sorts of deadly detritus in the way of rakes, tire irons, and bamboo poles. The wet market, pungent and loud, made up a relatively small area off the diverse indoor Ben Thanh Market. What it lacked in size, it made up for with an original odor. To Clark, it was the smell of Asia, and it brought with it a flood of memories. It was a smorgasbord of meat cleavers and fillet knives, free for the snatching if the need arose.

A smallish man crossed in front of them as they walked. Clark paused a half-step when he caught the man’s eye. The small man bowed slightly and walked on, disappearing into the crowd. Clark pointed down the aisle, motioning for Robertson to take the lead.

“He looked Chinese,” Robertson noted as they walked, calling out her observations like a good student. “Do you know him?”

“Nah,” Clark said. “He just reminded me of someone. A Chinese colonel.”

“From back in the day?”

“Yep,” Clark said.

“Sorry,” Robertson said. “Must be tough.”

Clark stopped. The people behind him parted, passing on either side of him and Lisanne. “The particular guy was a colonel who’d come to Vietnam to teach the Vietcong how to better kill us. Though I have to say they were already doing a pretty damned good job of it. Anyway, I watched that colonel for three days, learning his habits, what kind of beer he liked to drink, his preference in women. Got to know his face very well.”

“You think that guy was him?”

Clark looked at her, shaking his head as if to clear it.

“What?”

“Do you think that guy was the colonel you met years ago?”

“Oh, no,” Clark said, picturing the reticle of his Bushnell scope settling over the colonel’s ear. “I’m not positive about much in this old world, but I can assure you this. That wasn’t him.”

“Ah,” Robertson said. “Gotcha.”

She was a former Marine, and no shrinking violet when it came to human conflict.

They kept walking, Robertson calling out weapons, and Clark kept an eye on the European.

Clark liked his people to be aware of everything around them, keeping their “quivers” full, so they could draw on what they needed when they needed it. Even if an operative had a gun, circumstances could make producing it take too much time.

Ingrained in Clark’s DNA, these were good points for even the most seasoned operative to review.

Vendors barked out to them as they walked, calling Lisanne “Madam,” looking stricken with grief when she didn’t stop and buy a pair of “Adodis” sweatpants or a “Nortfaze” jacket. Their faces magically brightened again as they barked at the next customer once Lisanne passed by.

Clark and his friends had frequented the market during his first trip to Saigon. U.S. Navy HQ had been only a few blocks away and Ben Thanh provided a good place to meet girls, grab a plate of shrimp dumplings, or maybe buy a couple of knockoff T-shirts to send to your kid brothers who were getting all their news about the war from Walter Cronkite or The Huntley–Brinkley Report . Saigon had been loud then, and crowded, too, though nothing like it was now.

Many of the old buildings were gone, gaudy new ones with higher rent having sprung up in their place. It was hard to say which were the flowers and which were the weeds—the old buildings or the new. Maybe it was a bit of both. The people seemed better off than they’d been when he was here before, but Clark supposed that was more a function of pushing the poorer folk to the outskirts of town.

Thousands of scooters, called motos in Vietnam, groaned and buzzed on the teeming street outside the market. Clark and Lisanne Robertson were merely two in tens of thousands of other bees moving en masse inside a hive. Clark was unarmed, and he’d long since moved his wallet into the front pocket of his loose chinos—not because Vietnamese people were inherently more likely to pick his pockets, but because they were people and the odds around so many people were that some of them were going to try and pick his pocket. And of all the species of animals on the planet, Clark mistrusted people the most.

The sizzle and smell of banh xeo , an especially delicious shrimp crepe, twined around Clark’s memory and pulled him sideways toward the stall. The crowd moved on behind him as he stepped out of the flow. Clark spoke quickly to the stooped mama behind a wooden board she’d set over two upturned crates. He paid for two cardboard baskets of yellow tacolike banh xeo , one for him, and another for his trainee, and then waited while the mama dished up his order. Clark couldn’t help but wonder what this woman cooking banh xeo had been up to when he was here the first time. Had she been cooking then, too? Had they passed on the street? In a club? Had she or one of her relatives shot at him, killed his friends? Had he killed any of hers? Whose side had she been on? Likely her own side, Clark thought, trying to stay alive when two unstoppable forces were bent on grinding everything between them into the greasy monsoon mud.