by Mark Greaney
The second man leapt upon the Gray Man from behind, but a right elbow knocked him off balance, and then a high roundhouse kick to the face crumpled the man in the snow in a heap.
“My God!” someone yelled.
All three guards were down now. Motionless. The Gray Man had landed on his back after his roundhouse kick, but he sprang to his feet, pulling a Kalashnikov up with him from the snow as he stood.
He seemed to look up, back at the activity near the house, and then he turned away, slinging the rifle on his back and heading out through the gates.
Babbitt, Parks, and the others in the Townsend signal room watched the glowing silhouette cross a road and enter the forest; his signature was intermittent now as he passed under the trees, but within seconds it was clear that he was moving faster.
Much faster.
The UAV tightened up on the movement; arms and legs pumping from the body were evident at this magnification.
“He’s running.”
Lee Babbitt walked forward to the front of the room and stood in front of the plasma screen facing his surveillance personnel. “And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, he is clear of his target. Sidorenko is dead; we won’t need to wait to hear that from official sources.”
There were claps of amazement in the room. This team had been tracking Gentry for months with no joy, and now they had a fix on his position.
Court had lost his night vision monocle during his jump in the atrium, and there was little illumination here under the snow-covered larch branches to guide him, but the low light and dense canopy was more help than hindrance.
While still in the building he’d pulled the top article of clothing from his backpack, a thin camouflaged pullover. He’d ripped off his ski mask and donned the green and black garment, and out here in the dark he looked much like everyone else running around in the snow. He made it past the guard shack and out through the front gate just as the frantic men came outside, looking desperately for the assassin.
At that point the men with radios shouted and screamed into them, and the men without radios shouted and screamed even louder, and the hunt for the killer in their midst turned into a shambles and young men full on testosterone, booze, and coke ran all over the property pointing guns at one another in the dark.
The chase did lead out past the walls, finally, but most of the goons headed out to the south, following the noise and lights from the fireworks there, and several men opened fire on parked trucks, the silhouette of a garbage can, and even a patrol of two men in the forest that had become separated from the rest of the group. By then Court had taken out the three guards at the north gate and entered the forest. Once under cover of the trees he reached under his camo pullover, pulled out a white nylon hooded windbreaker, and zipped that over his other layers.
After this he knew his only job was to move and to keep moving. He wanted to put space between himself and the dacha, and he needed the heat generated by the activity to keep him alive.
Sid’s skinheads had dogs, but they were untrained, and Court wore a silver-lined base layer that shielded 90 percent of his body’s natural odors, cloaking him to a scent tracker. He pulled a freezer bag from his backpack and out of it he took six hunks of raw, putrefying bear meat, and as he ran he flung the steaks in all directions. The dogs would focus on the meat, not for long, but hopefully it would screw with their hunt long enough to get him some distance off the X, and render what little bit of his smell did emanate from him faint and untraceable.
Gentry met his extraction an hour before dawn, after nearly three hours of trudging, running, tripping, and falling in the snow. He’d heard vehicles on the road and he’d heard the shouts of men and he’d heard the barking of dogs, but the only direct threat to him had been frostbite. He’d kept moving, kept his body temperature up, and he knew he’d thaw out once he got to where he was going.
The truck that came to pick him up was driven by a local who’d been hired by the Moscow Bratva. The man only knew that his job entailed collecting an individual in the forest just before nine A.M., when the skies were still pitch-black, and then driving him twenty kilometers to an inlet where a speedboat would be waiting. This part of Gentry’s exfil went off without a hitch. There were no words between the two men; the driver had, on his own initiative, brought Court a thermos of tea. Court held it in his hands to warm them, and he held it to his face so that the heat would thaw his nose, but he did not drink even a sip.
Court appreciated the gesture, but he didn’t know this bastard. For all he knew the tea was pure poison.
Gentry was not the trusting type.
As the sun grayed the low clouds over the Gulf of Finland, Gentry found himself on his extraction boat. The term speedboat didn’t really fit. It was a fourteen-foot tender with an underpowered engine and a captain who looked like he might have been all of seventeen years old. But they cut through the glassy water of the gulf easily enough, and shortly before noon he was brought alongside the Helsinki Polaris, a Russian-flagged dry-store cargo hauler on its way to Finland.
As he left the tender the captain reached under a seat and handed Gentry a backpack and a small knapsack. Court took them without a word. The backpack was his; he’d packed it himself in Moscow, filling it with things he would need to go on the run after the Sidorenko operation. A new pistol, a trauma kit, clothes, and a few other odds and ends. And the knapsack contained two hundred fifty thousand euros in bundles of one hundred euro notes. This was operating money he’d been promised for his getaway, and he imagined he would need much or all of it to adequately disappear.
By noon he stood in his small quarters in the rear of the ship; he’d consolidated the money into the backpack and the pockets of his heavy coat and now he stood naked in front of a grimy mirror, examining his bruises and scrapes from the activity of the morning. He was beat-up to be sure, but in better condition than he expected to find himself at the end of this ride. More importantly, he’d done it. He’d ended Sid Sidorenko and removed the most passionate and headstrong of those hunting him. It was a good day’s work, and now he was looking forward to melting away for a while, living off grid and biding his time until he figured out where he would go from here.
The Townsend Government Services ScanEagle drone had remained overhead throughout Gentry’s extraction. Babbitt decided to stand down his strike team within minutes of Gentry’s entering the forest. Sid had too many goons out and about; the eight members of Trestle could have handled themselves against any three dozen Russian skinheads, but their objective was to kill Gentry, and Gentry was safely under surveillance. Trestle could easily wait for him to get clear of the Russians and then hit him later when he was alone.
The ScanEagle tracked its target to the truck, and then the first UAV switched out with a second, which followed the truck to the fourteen-foot boat and remained high overhead as the tender came along a ship sailing west in the Gulf of Finland. The camera onboard the drone picked up the name of the ship—Helsinki Polaris. The Townsend investigators ran the name of the boat through Vesseltracker, a database of the world’s ships, and this showed the Helsinki Polaris’s details and scheduled course, and from this they learned the ship was an 1,800-ton dry-goods cargo hauler and though Helsinki was its home port, it was Russian owned and Antigua and Barbuda flagged. It was on its way to deliver a shipment to Finland and would be calling in Mariehamn at eight A.M. the following morning.
“We’ve got him,” Babbitt said to Parks when everything was confirmed. “We’ll take him right there on the ship. Alert Trestle, let him know they will be doing an underway.”
“Yes, sir. We have the fast boats and all the equipment necessary for a marine assault in the port of St. Petersburg. We’ll fly them to Helsinki and get ahead of the Polaris.”
“Good.”
Parks asked, “What about Dead Eye? Should I stand him down?”
“Negative. Have him
proceed to Mariehamn. I want him waiting at the port in case something goes wrong.”
The phone on Jeff Parks’s hip rang; he put it on speaker and took the call from one of his signal room’s communications staff.
“Go for Jeff.”
“Jeff, the pilot of the Beechcraft assigned to Dead Eye just called. The asset’s a no-show. He was supposed to be at the airport two hours ago. The pilot wants to know how long he should wait for him.”
Parks turned to Babbitt, who was already looking up at the ceiling in a show of frustration.
“I hate singletons,” Babbitt groaned. “Call him. He won’t answer, but do it anyway. I want everyone in the signal room to keep pushing data about the operation to Dead Eye’s phone. Even if he won’t talk to us, I want him to know what’s happening with the hunt.”
“And then?” asked Parks.
“And then we wait for Dead Eye to turn up in the AO. He wants Gentry as bad as we do. He’ll be there. He just won’t follow our game plan.”
Parks shook his head as he disconnected the call. “Prick.”
Babbitt said, “Part of managing individualists like Whitlock is knowing when to back off. Let him think he’s the brains of this operation; I don’t give a shit. The only thing I care about is getting a picture of Court Gentry’s ugly mug in a pine box when this is all said and done.”
EIGHT
The woman was pretty, although she looked a little sad. She sat there, alone, deep in the shadows of a potted orange tree at a table in the outdoor café, ignoring the patrons sitting in the sun as all but a few of the men there ignored her. Her face was half-hidden behind her huge designer sunglasses, and her head hung over the demitasse of espresso nested in her hands on the bistro table. Occasionally she appeared to gaze out across the street in front of her, past four lanes of moderate traffic and toward an alley that ran behind a four-story apartment building and a parking garage.
It was a perfect December afternoon in Faro, Portugal, with sunny skies and temperatures in the midfifties. And although this was certainly not an intersection with a scenic view, nor did this urban neighborhood possess any tourist value whatsoever, the tables that poured onto the sidewalk from the café were more than half occupied, mostly by afternoon shoppers and locals from the nearby middle-class apartment building and the alley behind it.
But the woman under the orange tree just sat by herself, far away from the rest of the patrons, nursing her espresso. She flicked her midlength brown hair out of her face and glanced again to the apartment building.
A text appeared on the iPhone lying next to her purse on the table. She picked up the phone and glanced at it.
Where are you?
She tapped back a response with her thumb.
Watching TV on the sofa. Why?
She put the phone back on the table and resumed her languid gaze across the street, but seconds later she heard the screech of metal chair legs dragging across the sidewalk next to her. An attractive middle-aged man in a gray suit sat down, putting his phone on the table alongside hers. She saw the text she had just sent displayed on the screen of his phone.
He spoke softly as he settled in. “It hurts my feelings when you lie to me.” His accent was thick, but his English flawless.
The woman smiled a little now, but she did not turn to look at the man. “You know me too well, Yanis.”
Yanis had already bought a cup of tea from the counter inside, and he stirred sugar into it while he talked. He, unlike the woman, did not smile.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” he said.
“I know.”
“You did the same thing in Buenos Aires, and you did the same thing in Tangiers.”
“And in Manila. But you didn’t catch me in Manila.” She turned to him; her smile was no longer sheepish. It had turned sexy. Coquettish. “What can I say? I like to watch.”
Yanis was not as playful. “It’s not the protocol. You know that. This could be dangerous.”
She turned back to the building across the street. “Were you so concerned for my safety at any time during the past six weeks? I don’t recall you once asking me if I was keeping a safe distance from those two bastards in that apartment over there. As a matter of fact, weren’t you pressing me to get even closer?”
Yanis Alvey softened his tone. “The investigation is over, Ruth. Your role is complete. Let’s get out of here and let the bad boys do their part.”
“I’m not in the way. And I am not going anywhere.”
Yanis sighed. He’d fought these battles with Ruth Ettinger before, and he’d always lost. He was senior to her in their organization, but she was both so damned obstinate and so damned good at her job that he let her get away with little things like this.
Yanis knew he would lose now unless he claimed victory. “All right. You can stay. I guess you deserve it.” Yanis gazed up and down the street, then spoke into his phone. “Clear.” He put the phone down and turned his attention back to the pretty brunette. “It feels odd executing in daylight.”
“That was my suggestion. The targets stayed up all night, worked till past noon. Right now is the best time to hit them.”
“I hope you are right.” He cleared his throat. “You aren’t armed, are you?”
“I’ve got Mace in my purse.”
“That must be of great comfort to you.” His sarcasm was clear. “I am armed, of course. If there is any trouble, stay with me.”
“Thank you, Yanis.” She said it like she meant it. And then, “How are they going to play it?”
Yanis sipped his tea and, over the top of the cup, he cast his eyes to the apartment building next to the parking garage. “In a moment two sedans will arrive, each carrying three men and a driver. A third van will provide a blocking force at the top of the exit to the garage. The six will go upstairs and effect the action.”
Ruth nodded. “You wish you were on the team going in, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” He said it without equivocation. “I enjoyed that part of my life very much. But now I am the man who sits across the street to watch instead of one of the men who swoops in to carry out justice.”
“You could still do it, I’m sure,” she said.
He waved the comment away. “Someone has to evaluate the surroundings to give the all clear. Plus, none of those boys get to enjoy the afternoon at a café with a beautiful woman. They are probably all jealous of me.”
Ruth just smiled softly.
He looked at her a long moment. “You feel okay about this one, yes?”
“Yes. Of course I do.”
“Good. I know it has been difficult for you since—”
“Shhh.” She hushed him, then gestured with a subtle tip of her head toward the building across the street. Two gray cars turned into the alley and disappeared. A van pulled in behind them, turned into the mouth of the alley, and then stopped, blocking anyone trying to leave from the alley or the parking garage exit on the right.
Yanis said softly, “Fifty euros says it goes wet.”
Ruth shook her head. “Sucker’s bet. It will go wet. Somebody is about to die on the third floor of that building over there.”
They sat silently for a moment; Yanis drummed his fingers on the tabletop. He was thinking about how damn much he missed it, the action going on across the street. Ruth reached out and put her hand over his hand and the drumming stopped, and then she rewrapped her thin fingers around the espresso.
Across the street a Toyota hatchback pulled out of the parking garage adjacent to the building but was blocked from leaving by the van. The Toyota honked, but the van did not move.
Ruth knew this, very likely, was the only excitement she would see of the operation across the street. It wasn’t much, but she did not care.
As she’d told Yanis Alvey, she liked to watch.
Ruth Ett
inger was thirty-seven years old, and though she had a clean and bureaucratic-sounding official title, her job description was really quite simple: She was a targeting officer for Mossad, Israeli intelligence.
Ruth ran a team of operatives on one of several task forces under Mossad’s Collections Department, all given the mandate of protecting Israeli government officials from assassination and kidnapping. In actuality, virtually all of her cases involved threats against the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Kalb, the sixty-seven-year-old ex-IDF Special Forces officer who led her nation.
Ettinger had never met Kalb, had never even been in the same room as her prime minister, but she had taken it as her life’s work, her one overbearing responsibility, to find those suspected of harming him, assess the credibility of the threat, and then, if that threat was determined to be real, to call in Mossad’s action arm, Metsada, to finish the job.
Yanis was Metsada, in control of the operators and her link to the Operations Department, and she was his link to the Collections Department.
Together they had chased terrorists, hit men, and nut jobs all over the globe. For more than five years Ruth had been serving on this task force, first as a support officer, and then as a targeting team leader. Ruth had become the best targeter in the Collections Department at locating, tracking, and assessing threats, and Ruth damn well knew it.
And then, the previous spring, Rome happened.
An incident in Rome had turned into a debacle for her agency, but she had not been blamed; a Mossad psychologist had cleared her to return to the field just days later, and soon Ruth was back short-circuiting the nefarious schemes of her nation’s enemies.
