One Minute Out
Page 1
TITLES BY MARK GREANEY
THE GRAY MAN
ON TARGET
BALLISTIC
DEAD EYE
BACK BLAST
GUNMETAL GRAY
AGENT IN PLACE
MISSION CRITICAL
ONE MINUTE OUT
RED METAL
(with LtCol H. Ripley Rawlings IV, USMC)
BERKLEY
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Greaney, Mark, author.
Title: One minute out / Mark Greaney.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley, 2020. | Series: The Gray Man
Identifiers: LCCN 2019045859 (print) | LCCN 2019045860 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593098912 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593098929 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Spy stories
Classification: LCC PS3607.R4285 O54 2020 (print) | LCC PS3607.R4285 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045859
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045860
First Edition: February 2020
Cover design by Steve Meditz
Cover images: California © IM_photo / Shutterstock; bottom right: Running Man © Magdalena Russocka / Trevillion Images; upper right: Croatia © Vulture Labs / GettyImages; Helicopter © guvendemir /GettyImages; Croatia © Pixelchrome Inc / GettyImages
Interior art: Black-and-white Paris map © Nicola Renna / Shutterstock.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
Dedicated to the men and women who fight human trafficking around the globe.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Joshua Hood (JoshuaHoodBooks.com), Rip Rawlings (RipRawlings.com), J.T. Patten (JTPattenBooks.com), Allison Wilson, Kristin Greaney, Larry Rice, Mystery Mike Bursaw, Simon Gervais (SimonGervaisBooks.com), Jon Harvey, James Yeager, Jay Gibson, the staff at Tactical Response, and the men and women on the Aqua Cat.
Also special thanks to my agent, Scott Miller, and everyone at Trident Media Group, and my editor, Tom Colgan, along with everyone at Berkley, especially Sareer Khader, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Jin Yu, Loren Jaggers, Bridget O’Toole, Christine Ball, and Ivan Held.
CONTENTS
Titles by Mark Greaney
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Characters
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
About the Author
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, THE TEMPEST
CHARACTERS
COURTLAND GENTRY: Freelance assassin. Former CIA Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer
LILIANA BRINZA: Moldovan citizen
RATKO BABIC: Former general, Bosnian Serb army
CAPTAIN NIKO VUKOVIC: Chief of police, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
TALYSSA CORBU: Europol criminal analyst
GIANCARLO RICCI: Security director of Alfonsi crime family, Italy
ROXANA VADUVA: Romanian university student
DR. CLAUDIA RIESLING: American psychologist
KOSTAS KOSTOPOULOS: Greek sex trafficker
KENNETH CAGE: Hollywood-based investment fund manager
SEAN HALL: Bodyguard to Ken Cage
JACO VERDOORN: Director of White Lion Security and Risk
ZACK HIGHTOWER: CIA contract employee. Former CIA Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer
MATTHEW HANLEY: Deputy director for operations, CIA
SUZANNE BREWER: CIA officer
CHRIS TRAVERS: CIA Special Activities Center (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer
SHEP “PAPA” DUVALL: Former CIA, former JSOC (Delta Force) operative
RODNEY: U.S. Army veteran
KAREEM: U.S. Marine Corps veteran
A.J.: U.S. Army veteran
CARL: U.S. Army veteran
ONE
GORNJI CRNAČ, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
The grandfather of six stood on his front porch, a cup of tea in hand as he looked out across the valley at the green hills, thinking of the old days.
They didn’t seem so long ago, but still he often wondered where they had gone.
The warm afternoon tired him, and he considered a nap before dinner. It was something an old man would think to do, and this bothered him a little, because he didn’t really consider himself old.
At seventy-five he was in rob
ust health for his age, but back when he was young he had been truly strong and able physically, as well as a man of great power in his community.
But those days were long past. These days he lived here on this farm, never ever ventured off it, and he questioned if his labors in life had amounted to much of anything at all.
Money was no problem—he had more than he could ever spend—but he often pondered his purpose here on Earth. He’d most definitely had a purpose once, a cause he believed in, but now life amounted to little more than his easy work, his occasional pleasures, and the strict rules he’d adopted to live out his days in quiet and in peace.
Another day here, he told himself, reflecting on both the years and the decisions he’d made in life. Good decisions all, of this he was certain. He was not a man to harbor doubts about his actions.
But he was painfully aware that the decisions he’d made had come with a high cost.
The wet heat hanging in the still air tired him even more. He drank down the dregs of his tea, looking out over the lush green hills, contemplating his existence, and he made the final and resolute decision to go back inside the farmhouse to bed.
The old man’s eyesight was not good, but even if he’d had the vision he’d enjoyed in his prime, he would not have been able to see the sniper across the valley, dressed in a green foliage ghillie suit and lying in thick brush 470 meters away, holding the illuminated reticle of his rifle’s optic steady on the old man’s chest.
The grandfather turned away from the vista before him, oblivious to the danger, and started back for the door to his large farmhouse. He put his hand on the latch, opened it, and stepped inside.
There was no gunshot; only the single crow of a rooster broke the quiet of the valley.
* * *
• • •
Dammit, Gentry, take the fucking shot already.
My finger comes off the trigger. My eye blinks and retracts from the scope. I thumb the safety, then lower my forehead down into the warm grass next to my weapon’s buttstock.
Dude, you suck.
I get like this. Negative self-talk echoes through my brain when I don’t do what I should do, what I’ve told myself I must do.
The voice is annoying, but the voice is right.
Why didn’t I shoot that asshole when I had the chance? I’ve been lying in this sweltering, bug-infested overwatch for two days, my neck and upper back are killing me, and my mouth tastes like something crawled in there and died—a possibility I can’t really rule out.
I’ve had my target in my twelve-power scope six times so far, and I could have taken him the first time, which would put me in Zagreb or Ljubljana or even Budapest by now. Shaved and fed and showered and safe.
Instead I am right here, caked in thick layers of grime and sweat, lying in the itchy grass, and bitching at myself.
I should be gone, and he should be dead.
Retired Serbian general Ratko Babic may look innocent enough now, living quietly on this farm in Bosnia and Herzegovina, just northwest of the town of Mostar. But I know who he is.
And I know what he did.
The old goat may be up to nothing more nefarious these days than harassing his chickens to lay more eggs, but twenty-five years ago, Ratko Babic was a household name, known the world over as one of the worst human beings on planet Earth.
And for the past quarter century he has paid exactly no price for his actions.
I don’t like that shit.
He’s a war criminal, the perpetrator of acts of genocide, and personally responsible for orchestrating the mass execution of eight thousand men and boys over three days in the summer of 1995.
I don’t like that shit, either.
The UN wants him, NATO wants him, the International Criminal Court wants him, the families of his victims want him—and he’s slipped by them all.
But now I want him, and that pretty much means Ratko’s fucked.
Or else I’m fucked, because I can’t make myself shoot him at standoff distance.
No, my dumb ass has to do this the hard way.
I’m not holding fire because of any second thoughts; no, this bastard richly needs to die—but if I pop him from here with a .300 Winchester Magnum round at 477 meters, then he’s going to drop like a sack of wet sand and die quickly and unaware, and the thought of that has been driving me crazy since the moment I first saw him.
Eight thousand lives, plus. Torture. Rape. All because of that asshole on the other side of the valley.
Me simply flipping his lights off, sight unseen, from a quarter mile away . . . that’s too good for him.
So instead I’m going in.
I’ll penetrate his property after nightfall, breach his wires, and sneak past those protecting him. I’ll make my way to wherever he sleeps, and then I’ll appear out of the darkness and let him feel my hot breath on his face while I end him. Up close, personal, and so slow he will lose his head before I stop his heart.
That’s the plan, anyway.
I’ve been doing this long enough to know that sometimes plans go sideways, and it’s given me a healthy fear.
But not enough, clearly. There’s still the voice in me that says, You’ve got this, Gentry. Don’t do what’s easy. Do what’s right. What’s righteous.
And that voice is in charge today, not the one that keeps telling me I’m an idiot.
I’ve been studying the sentries. They’re pros, which actually surprises me. Six static, six mobile, with a second team that lives somewhere off property and rotates in every twenty-four hours. It’s a lot more guns than I thought he’d have. Most other Balkan war criminals busted over the years were found to be lying low, with no more than two or three guys watching their backs, so I had figured on a lower profile for Babic, as well.
But Ratko’s out here in the sticks with two dozen gun monkeys, and that seems strange to me.
They seem to be well trained, but my time in this overwatch has uncovered a serious compromise. The mobile guys are the toughest to anticipate, but at dinner they go static, same as the rest. A couple of sentries stay down on the road that leads into the property, another hangs out in the main house with the protectee, but the rest sit at tables in front of the bunkhouse a hundred meters away from Babic’s farmhouse while three women bring dinner out to them.
Babic himself doesn’t eat with the detail. He takes his meals inside the house.
So that’s where I’m headed.
Tonight’s going to be a bitch, if experience is any guide.
Whatever, I tell myself. I’ll adapt and overcome.
Hopefully.
My principal trainer in the CIA’s singleton operator school, the Autonomous Asset Development Program, was an old Agency shooter and Vietnam vet named Maurice. And Maurice had a saying that has stuck with me over the years, possibly because he screamed it into my ear something like half a million times.
“Hope is not a strategy.”
Nearly two decades living downrange has me convinced that Maurice was right, yet still I plan on scooting down this hillside, climbing up the opposite hillside, and hoping like hell I can get in my target’s face.
One last time that angry voice in my head implores me to stand down. C’mon, Gentry. Just lie here and wait for Babic to walk his fat ass back in front of your optic again. Then you can smoke him and be gone: quick, clean, and safe.
But no. I’m going in, and I know it.
I look up at the sky, see the sun lowering over the hills on the other side of the valley, and begin slowly stretching my tight and sore muscles, getting ready for the action to come.
I’ve got to load up the Jeep and position it for a fast getaway, and then I have to change into black, pull on a ski mask, and head out through the foliage towards my target.
This is a bad idea and I know it, but that bent and broken mora
l compass of mine is in the driver’s seat, it’s more powerful than the angry voice of reason, and it’s telling me that a quick and painless end for Ratko Babic would be no justice at all.
TWO
The general woke in time for dinner, made his way down to the dining room in his large but simple farmhouse, and sat at the table alone. Often old friends dropped in, fellow officers from the war, men who had served their sentences and then returned to the area or who had somehow avoided being charged with crimes in the first place. Only once had he met with another Serbian wanted by the authorities for his actions, but this man had soon after been killed in a shootout in Sarajevo.
This evening Babic had no guests; it was just him, the hollow ticking of the grandfather clock in the main entryway, and the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen as the cook and her two assistants prepared dinner.
One hundred meters away, most of his security boys from Belgrade would themselves be sitting down to dinner in front of the bunkhouse.
Ratko ate the same food as the men, a habit he’d picked up as a young officer in the Yugoslav army. The Hungarian wine he drank was better than the Žilavka, a Bosnian wine provided to the security team, but that was a small personal allowance to his wealth and his seniority, and none of the boys from Belgrade who watched over him judged him for saving the good stuff for himself.
He’d earned some perks for his lifelong dedication to the cause, and the men from Belgrade all knew it.
Babic put a napkin in his shirt as his chief protection agent leaned into the dining room. “You okay, boss?”
“Fine, Milanko. When I’m finished, I want to go spend time with the boys.”
“Sounds good, sir.” Milanko stepped back into the living room to return to the TV he’d been watching.
Tanja served the old man a steaming bowl of podvarak: sauerkraut casserole filled with bacon and bits of beef.
“Hvala,” he said. Thank you.
Tanja bowed a little and left the dining room.
She didn’t like him; it was obvious to the general that she didn’t approve of what he had done or what he did now, but she’d been sent from Belgrade along with the others and she did what she was told, and that was all an old officer like Babic expected out of anyone.