Dead Eye (40 page)

“Jumper Eight to Jumper Seven? How copy?”

Eight stood in the stairwell with his boot propping open the door and his tactical light under the barrel of his gun illuminating the area in front of him.

He took his support hand off his pistol to switch his radio to broadcast to all elements, but as he looked down to find the right channel he heard a noise directly ahead. He looked up just in time to see a figure appear from the dark just to the right of his flashlight’s beam. He jerked his weapon toward the threat but staggered back, dropped his gun to the metal landing, and brought his hands to his neck.

A knife had embedded in his throat. He tried to scream, but quickly his scream was squelched by a hand over his mouth.

The Gray Man held the man down and he drew the knife from him, and then buried the blade once again in the side of Jumper Eight’s neck, silencing him completely and permanently.

Court hefted the man’s SIG Sauer pistol from the metal landing, slipped it into his waistband, and then dragged the body back into the construction area, hiding it perfunctorily. He returned to the stairwell and listened for any noise. He heard a door open high above him, and men began descending; he kicked off his boots quickly, picked them up, and began running down the stairs as fast as he could, certain all remaining threats were above him.

Alvey climbed up the stairs in his stocking feet, ascending slowly, listening for any sound of activity on the floors as he passed them.

The lightbulb above the second-floor stairwell exit was burned out and the landing was dark. Alvey paused at the door, listened to it, and decided there was no team of Townsend men running around in the hallway on the other side.

He turned away and began climbing again, but a man spun around the landing between floors two and three, taking the stairs down three at a time, and the two men collided violently in the low light.

Both men slammed into the wall of the stairwell and tumbled down half a flight of stairs before crashing down on the second-floor landing.

Court landed on his side and rolled onto his back. As he did so he scanned the hands of the man in the dark with him, trying to determine in a fraction of a second whether he was a threat or just some poor schlub on his way up the stairs after a long day at work. He saw empty hands, which relieved him, but as soon as the other man pushed himself back up to a seated position across from him, Court saw his right hand move under his jacket.

Court checked the man’s eyes; they were locked on his own and widening with excitement.

Court’s right hand instinctively shot to his waist.

“No!” he shouted, but he saw the matte black butt of a pistol coming from under the jacket. Court drew the gun he’d just taken from the dead Townsend man from his waistband and angled the barrel up toward the threat, taking no time to raise the weapon to eye level or extend it toward his target.

The man in the suit swung his black pistol out toward Court as he himself began to shout.

Court fired twice from the hip, no hesitation between shots, and a pair of quick crashing reports echoed in the stairwell. Both nine-millimeter rounds hit their target, and the other man slammed against the wall and dropped to his back on the landing.

Court kept his gun on his target while he rose to his feet. He crossed the landing, kicked the pistol away from the wounded man’s outstretched hand, and then trained his weapon high up the stairs, searching for any other threats.

The men who had been in the stairwell above him had apparently left the stairwell to check another floor.

Court holstered the SIG Sauer pistol, pulled a flashlight from his pack, and shined it on the man.

“You don’t look like Townsend.
Christ.
You’re Mossad, aren’t you?”

The man just blinked; he did not answer.

Court knelt down and opened the man’s coat and then ripped open his shirt and found a Kevlar vest. One of the rounds had hit him in the chest, and the vest caught it perfectly.

The second round struck below the ballistic protection, however, in the lower abdomen. Blood flowed with the rising and falling of the wounded man’s breath.

Court shined his light on the man’s face and asked again, “Mossad?”

This time the man nodded. His face was covered with sweat, his skin tone was ashen, and his pupils were unfixed.

“Oh shit,” Court said softly.

He pulled on the wounded man’s down coat and the man fought weakly, not sure what was happening. Court got it off in seconds, however, and he wrapped it into a tight ball and pushed it into the wound. He placed the man’s hands over the ersatz bandaging. “Press down. I’m going to check your back for an exit wound.”

Court rolled him on his side; the wounded man groaned in agony. Court felt around at his low back at first, then expanded his search, feeling the shirt for any sign of blood or torn fabric.

“Okay, no exit,” Court said. “If your men get you into surgery fast, they just might be able to save your life. If they spend the rest of the night chasing me around”—Court shrugged—“then you’re pretty much fucked.”

Court stood back up. The ashen-faced Israeli just stared up at him.

Court saw the astonishment in his face.

This
was the remorseless assassin known as the Gray Man?

Court heard shouting coming from the third floor now. Obviously the Townsend men had found their dead colleagues. Court drew his gun again and held it at his side. He looked back down to the injured man and said softly, “You should have listened to Ruth. You are making a mistake. You are chasing the wrong man.” He shrugged. “If it were me, I wouldn’t want to die in the middle of a mistake like that.”

Without another word he picked up his boots from the landing, then turned and descended the staircase, his pistol in front of him scanning for threats.

Yanis Alvey kept the pressure on his stomach up with one hand while reaching into his pants pocket with the other. He pulled out his phone, pushed a button with a bloody thumb, and brought it to his ear.

Weakly he said, “It’s Alvey. I’m hit. I’m in the stairwell.” He took a slow breath. “Approach with caution.”

He dropped his phone so he could use both hands now to keep the rest of his blood inside him.

FIFTY-ONE

Russ Whitlock spent the night at an abandoned Townsend safe house in an old apartment building on Rue Kelle in the southern Brussels neighborhood of Saint Pieter Woluwe. Townsend had leases on dozens of locations in the area, and he knew they would not be able to check them all in the short time he would be here, so he was unconcerned about the potential for compromise. He awoke early, ate breakfast at a nearby patisserie, and then returned to his flat to redress his wounded hip.

He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and winced as he took off yesterday’s bandages. They were yellow with pus and black with blood; his injury had become infected and swollen from a week of lackadaisical treatment and constant travel and movement. As he cleaned and bandaged it again, he told himself that after today he could take as much time as he needed to take it easy and let it heal.

He returned to his bedroom and pulled a black trunk out of the closet, laid it on the floor, and opened it.

Inside was an Accuracy International L115A3 rifle in caliber .338. He’d retrieved the weapon the evening before from a locked trailer on a farm owned by Townsend just outside the city. This safe house was abandoned at the moment, but Russ knew a stockpile of weapons was cached there, so he dropped by, picked the lock of a storage trailer, and removed a rifle and a Glock 19 pistol, along with ammunition for both weapons.

Now he slipped the sniper rifle into a bag used to hold cross-country skis, and he tossed several loaded magazines in with it. He would not look in the least bit out of place heading to his destination with his rifle in the backseat of his rented BMW 5 Series, seeing how the suburbs of Brussels were thick with snow-covered tracks perfect for an afternoon of cross-country skiing.

The Townsend Government Services Gulfstream touched down at Brussels National Airport at five
A.M.
A dozen men climbed off the aircraft and into a heavy predawn snow shower. Lee Babbitt and Jeff Parks, along with the ten men of Team Dagger and another two-man UAV team, quickly climbed out of the weather and into two minivans and a Mercedes, and they headed east through a moonless predawn.

By six thirty
A.M.
they had set up their base of operations at the farmhouse in the town of Overijse, and here they linked up with the six surviving members of Team Jumper. Beaumont and his men looked tired and worn after losing two operators in Hamburg and then driving through the night, but Babbitt assigned two of the Dagger men to Jumper so Beaumont’s team would be at full strength.

Babbitt and Parks checked in with the Townsend House signal room, and Lucas and Carl worked with the second UAV team to set up two mobile ground control stations in the back of the minivans. At the same time, the direct action operators went through the weapons cache located in a horse trailer next to the barn outside. They distributed pistols and submachine guns to the Dagger men and inventoried their other options.

And in minutes they realized they had a problem.

Beaumont called Babbitt and Parks outside, and the men stood in the snow by the horse trailer. “We’re missing a sniper rifle,” Beaumont said.

“Missing?”

“Yep. An AI .338. And a Glock 19. Ammo for both.”

“Dead Eye,” Parks said.

Beaumont spit tobacco juice into the snow. “That crazy son of a bitch is gunning for the damn PM of Israel.”

Babbitt shook his head. “We’re going to get out there and end this.”

He called everyone in to the kitchen of the farmhouse. “I want Dagger near the Dieweg Cemetery. Kalb won’t be there till one
P.M.
, but if that’s where Whitlock plans on hitting Kalb I want you guys in the area, determining the possible locations he could take the shot from. Figure out the best options and then go to ground. Make yourselves invisible.”

Dagger quickly began gearing up.

Babbitt now looked at Beaumont and his team. “You will stay with me. We’re going to support the UAV teams. They are going to have to go mobile to cover the city, and if they get a ping on the Gray Man, then we want to be mobile and after him instantly.”

Babbitt turned to the two UAV teams, who had just returned from setting up the UAV ground control station in the van. “I want full-time drone coverage today. I want Joe and Keith searching for Whitlock, and I want Lucas and Carl searching for the Gray Man.”

Lucas half raised a hand. “What about Ettinger?”

“What about her?”

“If she’s with Gentry, maybe we can find her quicker than we can find him.”

“How so?”

“When we were in Stockholm I had the computer record Ettinger’s gait pattern so we could find her in a crowd.” Anxiously he said, “I wasn’t running surveillance on her. I did it just so I could keep tabs on her to make it easier to vector her in to any Gentry sightings.”

Beaumont said, “You mean to tell me you can track the Mossad chick, same as you can Gentry?”

“Yeah, even better really because, unlike Gentry, she doesn’t know we’re using the UAVs to hunt for her.”

Babbitt nodded and spoke like the idea had been his all along. “Yes. Find me Ettinger. I can use her.”

Whitlock drove south out of the city center, through the morning rush hour; his rented silver 5 Series blended nicely into the traffic in the upscale neighborhoods.

As he drove his cell phone buzzed in the center console cup holder, and he slipped the earpiece into place. “Go.”

“Hello, asshole.” It was Court Gentry, and Whitlock found this as fortuitous as he found it surprising. He’d lost comms with the Gray Man the day before, and he wasn’t even certain he’d survived the night.

Russ smiled. “Nice to know you are still alive.”

“The day is young.”

“True.”

Court said, “Bad news. Your little plan is dead in the water.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you need me to make it work. You want to kill Kalb, then kill me at the scene so I can take the fall.”

Russ said, “In a perfect world that would have been ideal. I wanted you to follow me along on the Kalb hit. I knew you would never agree to the killing of the Israeli PM. You like to pretend your version of unsanctioned mass murder is cloaked in some sort of righteous and universal order, and Kalb wouldn’t fit the bill. So I was going to tell you I was after another target in London. There are a multitude of despots and shitheads attending that conference that I could have chosen from. I hoped to have you close by when it came time for the op, at which point I knew you would figure out I was gunning for Kalb, and you would try to stop me, but I also knew I could put you in the dirt. So Kalb would be dead, you would be dead, and what would I be? I would be the sanctioned American operative who had been hunting the Gray Man, and I would be standing there over your bullet-riddled body as Mossad surrounded me, and I would have tears in my eyes as I confessed I got there just an instant too late to save Kalb, and we would all cry together and they would thank me for doing my best and for killing the vicious assassin of their great leader.”

Court said, “But your plan went tits up when Ruth Ettinger told Mossad all about you. They might not believe you are the man after Kalb now, but when you turn up at the scene of his murder they are going to realize Ruth had been right all along. Your little fantasy is never going to happen.”

“It was too much to hope for,” Russ admitted. “But I’ll still do the hit. I’ll still get paid.” And then he paused. “And you’ll still get killed.”

“Hate to break it to you, but I’m clear. I’m gone.”

“I don’t believe that. You are here. I can feel your presence.” Whitlock thought it over, gazing now at a forested hill in the foggy morning distance, his destination. “This was inevitable. You and me, Court. Two locomotives, opposite directions, same track.”

“I want you to stop this. Just walk away from Kalb.”

Russ’s only response was laughter.

Court said, “You say this is inevitable. But it’s not inevitable. You control this situation.”

“That’s right,” Russ said, ominously. “I do. You are the one who isn’t in control. You can’t run away, you have to come after me, just like I planned. Good-bye, Court. I’ll see you next when I kill you.”

Whitlock hung up the phone with a smile on his face. He heard it in Gentry’s voice. The Gray Man was committed to the cause, and he would play his part to the very end.

Fifteen minutes later Whitlock parked his car on Verrewinkelstraat, pulled the ski bag out of the backseat, and began walking up the street. In moments he’d entered a forested stretch of private property midway up a steep hillside, and he trudged across frozen ground under a canopy of bare trees. Crows flew above him as he ventured deeper into the woods, heading west now, and after a hundred yards he took a narrow path that passed on a hill above a frozen pond full of trash runoff from the neighborhood higher on the hill behind him. He continued for a minute more, and then he ended up at the tree line, overlooking the expansive backyard of a farmhouse. Beyond the yard the landscape dropped off down the hill into a shallow valley, at the bottom of which were train tracks and then a residential neighborhood. Beyond this was another hill, sparsely populated by the residential Brussels neighborhood of Uccle, and then, some twelve hundred yards distant, near the crest of this hill, the ancient Dieweg Cemetery lay, in perfect view of Russ’s position here at the edge of the trees.

A small greenhouse sat in the backyard of the farmhouse at the edge of the trees, and Russ entered the tiny building and stowed the ski bag containing his Accuracy International rifle.

Twenty minutes later he was back in his BMW and heading north, toward the city.

The midmorning sun shone bright on the blanket of snow that covered Brussels. Ruth stepped out of a small side entrance to the Gare du Nord with her oversized sunglasses protecting her from the glare, and a new hat on her head further shielded her eyes from the sun.

As soon as she’d arrived at the station she stepped into a boutique and bought new clothes from head to toe, and then made a beeline to a bathroom where she began working on her disguise. She put her blond wig on, fixed her makeup, and changed into her new clothes. She wore her hair down, bangs low just over her eyes, and a pair of chic eyeglasses completed the look.

When she left the station she was certain she had not been followed, and she was equally certain she was completely unrecognizable.

She caught a taxi to La Maison Degande, an exclusive men’s suit maker on Avenue Louise, and here she crossed the street to a café and ordered coffee and a croissant. She sat in the window and kept her eyes on the street while she ate her breakfast.

Ehud Kalb usually dropped in to Degande for fittings when he was in Brussels. This was known to Mossad, but she did not know if it was known to CIA. If it was, she thought it possible Whitlock would use this known point of access as the location for his assassination attempt.

That said, Ruth knew Dieweg cemetery was the more likely place for the hit. It was the most open and therefore the most vulnerable site, and while Kalb did not always go to Degande, his entire reason for coming to Brussels was to go to the cemetery to pay his respects at the grave of Piet De Schepper.

Still, while she waited for Gentry to make it into the city to become her own personal action arm, she knew she needed to keep an eye out for the other American assassin.