“Hope you have a good flight.”
Li Mann Vu nodded his head and smiled as he picked up his brand new, carry-on luggage. In fact, he smiled for the first time in a week. Exactly a week ago he was shot and hunted like an animal. Running through the woods on all fours, swimming underwater like a fish, eating seaweed, sleeping under the stars. He had become an animal. That’s how he had survived, and he was right under their noses.
So far, so good. He had managed to evade the authorities. They didn’t call him “the General” for nothing. He sat on the deck of the frequent flyer lounge, staring up at the night sky. He felt at home watching the planes flying in and out. The lights from the radar control tower and the aircraft reminded him of flares and tracer bullets arcing across a night sky. It reminded him of another place and time.
In April 1966, the war machine was in full force and the Communist leaders had drafted him into the army to fight his South Vietnamese brothers. His entire high school class had been drafted and posted to the same reconnaissance unit. They were young and didn’t believe they could die. Until they saw the American death machines swooping down from the sky. He was seventeen then. They promoted him to unit commander and sent him on a mission to destroy the American Black Horse Division. The ambush came when they were crossing the Le Thuy River. Without any kind of warning the American Huey gunships descended. There had not been enough time to run for the cover of the forests. By some accident of fate he alone had survived. He was wounded, but his entire unit lay around him, dead or dying, including Phan, his sister’s husband, who was also his best friend. Young men he had known since childhood. He had had a responsibility to every one of them. They were his comrades, and he had failed them all. He had dug graves for them with his bare hands, but he knew he should have died with them.
He had bound up the wound in his leg with his best friend’s shirt, and forced himself to trek through the malaria-infested jungles. Days later, when he had reached his village, he found that it had been napalmed by the Americans. Nothing was left but charred ruins. He became a man defined by what he had lost, a man with nothing more to lose. He re-enlisted, volunteering only for the most dangerous missions. Life and death became one.
He had first made himself known to the Americans in 1969, in an attack on Phnom Khai, an Air America stronghold south of Phnom Penh. When the ten-hour barrage of rocket and artillery fire was over, nineteen Air America commandos were dead. For that, he had been promoted to the rank of general, and sent into Laos to find and destroy a U.S. Air Force radar installation. It took several months of tracking, but he managed to locate it at a mountain site at Phu Phai Thi. He would never forget the explosion of grenades and bombs going off all at once. It had reminded him of celebration fire-works. By the time the Americans had pulled out of Vietnam, he had shot down more than his fair share of the eight-thousand U.S. fighter jets. He was proud of that. The memory brought a smile to his lips.
The war had ended over twenty years ago, but for Li Mann Vu peace would never come. He hadn’t taken a life in a long time. The ability to kill without hesitation or remorse had merely lain dormant until the night he had shot that immigration officer. He had been shot, too, but the bullet penetrated only flesh and muscle. In spite of the pain, he had managed to swim a couple of miles downstream to the home of one of his mules, Sally Grandfeather. She had sheltered him in her house while law enforcement officials on two continents issued warrants for his arrest. She had paid for the doctor from Detroit, who had made the trip across the border to remove the bullet from his shoulder. On the fifth day when he was better, she had bought him a one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Toronto.
He gently touched his shoulder. It was still painful to the touch. It was too bad the smuggling operation had failed when they were caught at the border. Sally Grandfeather needed the money she had been expecting to receive for housing the migrants while they were in transit to New York City. He would speak to the boss about paying her anyway. After all, she had kids to feed. It wasn’t her fault the operation had gone wrong.
The General thought it was hate that kept him alive. The United States government had destroyed his country. A quarter century later, hate still ran deep in his veins. He hated the Americans for the suffering and pain his people had endured during and after the war. And he pitied his South Vietnamese brothers who had believed the lies and empty promises of the Americans. The marines had quickly fed his southern brothers to the dogs when he and his comrades surrounded the walls of Phnom Penh. Thousands tried to flee by boat, but had lived only to be lost at sea or interned in refugee camps around the world. Those who managed to get to the promised land often found themselves forcibly repatriated by Western governments.
Since he had started in the people smuggling business, he had assisted in over two thousand entries into the United States. It was a kind of revenge. Because the Americans had destroyed his country, he would move people into theirs. He brought them into the U.S. by ship, plane, cars, and trucks. He arranged transportation for them all — the dispossessed of his own and other countries. He was paid huge sums of money, but he didn’t do it for that.
His flight landed on time at JFK Airport. Li Mann took his place in the queue at customs and immigration. He handed the customs officer a Malaysian passport which he had reproduced himself, carried with his own photograph. He was nodded through without a problem.
Nick, Kappolis, and Dubois were seated at a corner table in a greasy spoon at Bloor and Bathurst. Kappolis was describing the raid his fugitive squad had staged the night before. “We got this informant, good at his work. Not everybody can do it, but this guy’s really cut out to be a snitch. He’s smart and he’s angry. You need nerves of steel to penetrate your own community, betray your people. This guy, Cam, has the nerves. Twenty-four years old, born in Laos, and already served three years for knifing a man to death.”
“Three years for murder, that’s all he served?” Nick found that hard to believe. “Obviously he had friends in high places.”
“Nah, nothing like that.” Kappolis paused a moment before going on. “Cam was used by the higher-ups to kill a member of a competing triad. After a year in prison awaiting trial, Cam decided he’d been stupid to maintain his silence, protecting his masters who had hung him out to dry.”
“So he plea bargained to serve only two years?” Nick whistled to himself as he pushed his chair back from the dining table.
“Sort of. He signed a contract to become our snitch. Released last year and already did a couple of assignments for us. Wears a wire. Looks like your average Asian guy in the street. So right after the drive-by we sent him to check out a grocery store in Chinatown II.”
“Oh, yeah. I saw a blurb on some surveillance job in that area that came across my desk,” said Dubois, raising the beer mug to his lips.
“No one told me or my department about this snitch or the surveillance job.” Nick assumed an indignant look.
“At that time Nick, it wasn’t an immigration matter.” Kappolis drained back the rest of his malt before continuing with his story.
“Nick, law enforcement isn’t required to tell Immigration everything,” said Dubois.
“That’s real comforting to know,” answered Nick, looking anything but.
Kappolis pushed a handful of French fries into his mouth. “So we had him under twenty-four-hour surveillance for a full day, the works — an inside inspection by Cam, checks on all movement in and out of the store, and a photographic record. We were across the street in a carpet cleaning van, with a telescopic lens. Every visitor was logged. Anybody who spoke to anybody was monitored were listed.”
“What did you get?” Nick asked impatiently.
“There were shopkeepers making their weekly protection drop offs. The old men, I’m guessing. Some Lo Chien gang members. No sign of the bosses. We waited till all the ducks were lined up. The raid was timed for midnight. We were gonna get them in their own backyard.”
Kappolis wolfed down the rest of his hamburger. “We got photographs taken earlier in the day by the surveillance team. The store was a front for the Lo Chien gang, which was a big player in the extortion