The Gray Man (12 page)
“What’s America going to do if we kill him?” asked a man with a booming African voice.
Lloyd turned to the Liberian feed, but he was not certain. “This has been addressed by the leaders of your organizations. This man is already marked for death by the U.S. government. There is shoot-on-sight sanction at the CIA. He has no friends, no close family. No one on this earth will cry for him when he dies.”
Next someone spoke in an Asian language. When he finished, a translator asked, “Where is he now?”
“He flew to Prague last night. I have our agents asking around at hotels for him, but there is no way to know if he is still there.”
“Which team is being sent to Prague?” someone asked.
“The Albanians. They are closest.”
“That’s hardly fair!” shouted a South African.
Lloyd, in silhouette, took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No offense to the Albanians, but I don’t think the first team he encounters will be the one that gets him.”
There was grumbling on the Albanian feed, but it was quickly extinguished with hisses.
“We will kill Gentry in the next two days, yes. But we will likely do it through attrition. Many of you may die.” He paused a beat, a halfhearted attempt to act like he gave a shit. “That said, we don’t know that the Albanians will get the first crack at him. He may well have moved west by the time your plane lands. If that is the case, if we do pick up his trail past Prague, we will put you back on your plane, and you will take up a new ambush point closer to the final destination. There is no clear advantage to being farthest east, I assure everyone.”
Lloyd sat up straighter in his chair. His silhouette appeared thin but athletic. “Let me finish by saying this. Do what it takes to get the job done. I could not possibly care less about collateral damage. If you can’t stomach a few dead kids or dead pensioners or dead puppy dogs, then don’t get on my goddamn airplane. Your job is to kill Court Gentry. Do that, and you will make millions for your organization and garner the thanks of the Central Intelligence Agency. Fail, and you will most likely die by his hand. You would be well served to avoid worrying about anything else.
“Any questions?”
There were none.
“Then, gentlemen . . . game on.”
At four fifteen in the morning a LaurentGroup security officer from the firm’s massive truck farm in Brno, Czech Republic, showed Gentry’s photo to a sleepy hotel desk clerk at a narrow four-story inn in the Stare Mesto, the old town of Prague. The old man behind the hotel counter looked at the photo for a long time, said he could not be sure, but upon taking payment of five hundred crowns from the beady-eyed stranger, he changed his tone. He was certain the clean-shaven man in the picture and the bearded tourist in his attic room were one in the same.
The surveillance agent called Lloyd immediately. He was an employee of LaurentGroup, and Lloyd was under strict orders to keep company people away from any direct action, so Lloyd instructed him to go home.
“A team is on the way,” Lloyd said.
“If you need him dead, I’ll do it for one hundred thousand crowns.”
Lloyd chuckled into the phone. “No, you won’t.”
“Are you saying I can’t handle—”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Fucking Americky prick.”
“I’m the fucking Americky prick who just saved your worthless Czech life. Go home. Forget. You will receive a bonus for your good work.”
“I hate Americans.”
Lloyd laughed out loud as the line went dead.
TEN
Gentry awoke at five in the morning. The bullet wound in his thigh stung and throbbed; it had been anything but a good night’s rest. He sat up slowly and painfully, leaned forward to stretch his lower back and ham-strings, stood, and tilted hard to each side. He wanted to spend the day moving. He had not yet decided on a destination, but he knew the sooner he left the hotel, the better.
After a quick trip to the bathroom to relieve himself and check the dressing on his leg, he dressed in the same clothing as the night before. He then looked out the window for signs of surveillance. Finding nothing amiss, he descended the stairs and left the building at twenty-five minutes past the hour.
He had created a mental to-do list for the day. One, go to his local cache here in Prague and retrieve a small handgun. He would not be doing any more flying; the plane trips of the last twenty-four hours were an anomaly in his life, because Court hated to be unarmed. He only boarded commercial aircraft as a last resort, had flown no more than a dozen times in the past four years. Now, as he walked unarmed through the darkened and deserted cobblestone streets of Prague, he felt naked. The only consolation to his martial needs was a small Spyderco folding knife in his waistband that he’d bought off a Kurdish policeman. It was better than nothing but inferior to any sort of firearm.
After hitting his cache he’d need to get out of town: pay cash for a cheap motorcycle and just buzz on out of Prague. Maybe spend a week or so moving from village to village in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. He hoped this would keep him safe until the Nigerian president left office and, hopefully, left him in peace.
No one could disappear more quickly or cleanly than the thirty-six-year-old American.
As Court walked towards the subway, he decided to place one more important item at the front of his to-do list. He smelled fresh coffee wafting from a little café just opening. And at that moment he felt he needed coffee as much as he needed a gun.
He was wrong.
A dense fog filled the dark street in front of the café, and it began to rain just as Court climbed up a pair of steps and entered the tiny eatery. It was just five thirty; he had the impression he was the first customer of the day. Court knew enough Czech to extend a greeting to the young girl behind the counter. He pointed to a steaming urn of coffee and a large pastry, watched the pale-skinned girl pour a foam cup full of rich black brew and place his breakfast in a bag.
Just then the doorbell dinged behind him. He glanced back to see three men enter, close umbrellas, and shake fresh rain from their coats. They looked local, but Court could not be sure. The first man glanced up at him as Gentry took his purchases over to a tiny stand with milk and sugar to dress his coffee.
Court looked at a glass-covered flyer promoting a poetry reading that hung on the wall, gazed idly at the window at his right, towards the dark and rainy street.
A few seconds later, he was out in the elements, ignoring the cold morning shower and walking towards the metro station at Mustek. There were no other pedestrians around; the cold and the rain and the early hour saw to that. Court did not mind the frigid air; he appreciated its ability to inject life into his tired muscles and still-fatigued brain. A few delivery trucks were about, and Gentry looked into the wet windshields of each as they passed. He found the entrance to the metro and descended the steep stairs. His still-tired eyes adjusted slowly to the harsh electric lighting around him, the cold, white tile reflecting the illumination from above.
He followed signs down a winding tunnel towards the trains. Another escalator took him deeper below the sleepy city, and another turn took him even farther into the brightly lit bowels of the metro station.
Shortly before a right turn in the passage, he passed a garbage can. In it he dropped his untouched coffee and his bag of pastry. Then he made the right turn, took two more steps, and stopped.
He flexed his muscles quickly. His arms, back, legs, neck, even his jaw tensed.
Then he reached into his waistband for his folding knife. He retrieved it and flicked it open, the maneuver executed in an impossible blur of speed and proficiency.
He spun around, took a single step back the way he came, leapt into the air to cover as much ground as quickly as possible, and plunged the three-inch blade hilt-deep into the throat of the first man following him.
The man was thick and hard and tall and broad. His meaty right hand grasped a stainless steel automatic pistol. Gentry grabbed the wrist of the gun hand and held the muzzle down and away, lest the dying man’s spasms cause the weapon to fire.
Court took no time to look into the square-jawed man’s eyes; had he done so, he would have seen shock and confusion long before the onset of panic or pain. Instead, the Gray Man pushed the man backwards to the tunnel’s corner, slammed him into the second would-be assassin, and caught this man as he was rounding the turn and pulling his gun. Court held the knife’s grip with his right hand. It was still stuck in the first man’s throat, and he used it to push the first into the second, used his other hand now to fight for the handgun in the first’s dying grip. The gun would not come free. Court could now see the third man behind the second’s falling form, and the third’s gun was rising to fire.
Gentry ducked his head into the chest of the man with the knife sunk into his throat, pushed forward over the goon falling back to the floor, and advanced quickly towards the last in line.
An ear-splitting gunshot rocked the tiled tunnel, the cacophonous explosion amplified by the low ceiling and narrow corridor. Gentry felt the bullet slam into the back of the bloody man in his arms. A second round barked and punched into Court’s dance partner. Still the American pushed the man backwards, finally shoving him as hard as possible. As the operator’s bloody body was flung at the third man, Gentry pulled his knife out of the throat and made a final reach for the pistol in the beefy right hand. He managed to hold on to the knife, but the corpse slammed into the third operator with his dead hand still firmly clutching the gun.
Now Gentry stood between two living assassins, both armed, each less than ten feet from him. Behind Court was the armed man on the ground. Surely by now he was rolling around to get a shot off. And in front of Court was the standing man, now shoving his blood-spewing partner out of his way to resight his weapon on his target. Court flicked his knife so that he was holding the blade and quickly threw it overhand at the standing gunman. The blade struck perfectly, buried itself in the man’s left eye socket. Blood erupted, and the operator dropped his gun to bring both hands to the knife. He fell to his knees.
Gentry did not look to the threat behind him. Instead, he dove forward, both arms outstretched, desperate to get his hands on a firearm. Just before he hit the ground, another gunshot cracked through the passage. He did not feel an impact, assumed the operator behind had aimed at his back but missed due to his leap to the ground.
Court slammed into the cold tile floor, slid forward, and lifted the third gunman’s pistol. The man with the knife in his eye was on his knees now, dying but not yet dead, screaming bloody murder. Gentry rolled onto his back next to him and turned to fire back at the last enemy still in the fight. This man had a half chance to shoot but hesitated; Court was alongside his partner.
The Gray Man, however, did not hesitate. From his prone position he poured round after round between his splayed legs into the armed man and watched him spin and die.
When Court was certain the only man alive was the hit man next to him with the knife in his eye, he placed the barrel of the gun to the wounded man’s temple and pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The American stood over the bodies of three men sprawled in the bright, white corridor. Blood splatters stained the wall, and pools grew from the corpses at his feet. His ears rang, and his thigh wound stung and throbbed.
They had compromised themselves back at the coffee shop. He’d pegged them as operators in just over one second as they came through the door and he noticed the unmistakable flicker of recognition in the first man’s face as he met Gentry’s glance.
After identifying the threat these three men posed, Court had watched them in the reflection of the handbill of the poetry reading, in the reflection of the café’s windows, out on the street in the windshields of the few passing vehicles. In the stairway down to the metro, he sensed them closing. They closed further in the tunnel, and by the last turn before the trains, he knew the time had come to act.
Court had been faster, better-trained, colder-hearted, but as he stood over the three bodies, he knew good and goddamn well there was only one reason they were now slaughtered meat and his racing pulse continued to pump blood through him.
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