by Mark Greaney
It seemed as if the thought had just come to him, but he realized after a moment of reflection he had been moving toward this line of thinking for some time.
What good had he done in the past five years? There were still evil multinationals, still despots in Africa, still thriving brotherhoods in Russia, still calamitous drug wars in Mexico.
Court got older, more beaten and battered and shell-shocked and defeated, but the world around him kept turning, unchanged and unimproved.
The only thing he’d managed to accomplish was stay alive, and if he kept up this lifestyle, he knew it was only a matter of time before he pissed away this tiny victory by getting his ass killed, dead in a jungle in Asia or a dirty back alley in Europe or a putrid ditch in South America or, just maybe, a soulless hotel room in the Baltic.
The end would be ignominious and sudden.
Don’t buy any green bananas, indeed.
As he lay there on the bed, he thought back to something Maurice, his principal trainer at AADP in Harvey Point, had said to him.
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” It was a Chesterton quote, and at the time Court was a nineteen-year-old kid, an aimless and troubled young man who just happened to be incredible with a weapon in his hand. He did not understand the quote, so Maurice explained it this way: “If you are going to fight, do it for something you love. Do it for your country.”
In the past five years Court had been a man without a country, and, for some reason he did not really understand, he seemed to keep seeking out new things to hate.
What am I doing? he asked himself. That was no long-term plan. He wasn’t making a difference, it had ceased to provide sufficient motivation, and Court just did not want to fucking do it anymore.
He made a decision then and there. He would lie low here in Tallinn for a couple of days, then push off, find a quiet place where he could do something productive other than kill, do something other than spin his wheels until the inevitable happened.
Court forced himself to focus on the snow blowing against the window, trying to put greater thoughts out of his mind and fall back asleep.
Whitlock sat at the desk in his little room, thinking about the man directly above him.
On the desk in front of him was a Glock 19 pistol and two extra fifteen-round magazines. Russ was not a Glock man himself, but he had reason to carry one tonight. Next to his pistol lay his smart phone and his backpack. And next to these, an open half-liter and half-consumed bottle of A. Le Coq beer dripped a ring of sweat on the desk.
He checked the time and saw that it was four A.M. He reached into a pocket of his bag, then pulled out a small white medicine bottle. From this he fished out two pills. They were Adderall, a psychostimulant, an amphetamine. He downed the pills with a long swig of the A. Le Coq.
The Bluetooth headset in his ear chirped. He touched a finger to it.
“Go.”
It was Trestle Actual, and he initiated the identity check. When this was complete he asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m in room 201. The target is still upstairs, directly above. He used the toilet at oh two hundred, then went back to bed. He hasn’t moved since.”
“Understood.”
“You sure I can’t help?”
“I’m not telling you again. You do not leave that room.”
Whitlock sighed. “Fine. I’m packed and ready to exfil as soon as you give me the all clear.”
“Good. I’ll be with the breach team. We hit in five mikes. I’ll notify you when it is over and safe for you to leave.”
“Roger that. Good luck.” Russ disconnected the call.
As soon as the conversation ended, Russ Whitlock began moving. He unzipped his backpack, and from it he pulled a tiny pinhole camera with a wireless radio attached to it. The entire device was no larger than a matchbook, and it had an adhesive puttylike backing. He stuck it on the wall by the desk to test its hold, then pulled it off again. He picked up his smart phone and opened an app on it. In seconds the screen on his phone was displaying the image from the pinhole camera. He then pocketed both devices.
Russ stood up from the desk, slipped his gun into a holster inside the waistband on the right side of his jeans, the two extra magazines into a mag carrier inside the waistband on the left, and then he put on his black coat. He slung his backpack over his shoulder, chugged the rest of the beer, then dropped the empty bottle into a pocket on the outside of the pack. Finally, he put his hand on the door latch and paused.
Russ would not be following Trestle’s instructions. He would not sit quietly in his room. His upcoming course of action had been decided by Russ himself, and he was not following the orders of his company. He had concocted his plan, labored over every detail, refined and revised it as time went on.
And then he put the plan on hold, waiting for the day Townsend Government Services would lead him to the most infamous assassin on the planet.
The Gray Man.
Russ was out for the biggest game on earth, the hardest target.
With a long breath and a determined mind-set helped on by the Adderall, he opened the door and exited his room, leaving not a trace behind.
Gentry had not fallen back to sleep; he lay fully clothed and faceup, still listening to the whipping snow on the window. But his head jolted from his pillow when the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside caught his attention. The footsteps weren’t tentative, but they slowed a little as they approached his door, and Court found their cadence unnatural and suspicious. His right hand shot out and wrapped around the cool plastic grip of his Glock 19 as he sat up.
The footfalls stopped. Court aimed his gun at the door, ready to open fire.
There was a knock, and Court started moving, low across the hardwood, moving close to the walls to minimize the creaking of the floorboards. As he passed the single window in the tiny room, he glanced out across the park. The snow was heavy and he couldn’t see past it to the ground.
Another knock. This time it was louder, faster.
Shit. Another phrase oft uttered by his trainer Maurice popped into his head. “Nothing good ever happens at three A.M.”
It was four now, but the concept was no less valid.
In German Court called out, “Wer ist da?” Who is there?
Russ Whitlock stood in front of the door to room 301, his hands empty and high over his head to show he posed no threat. He did not speak German, and he did not know Court Gentry’s voice. He faced the door in the dimly lit hall, wondering suddenly if he had made a mistake. He thought quickly back to all the intel on Court he’d studied over the past months. Language skill: Russian good, Spanish very good, French good, German fair.
Yep. Court spoke German.
Russ replied in English, “Court. I am a friend. And I am alone. I need to talk to you. It is extremely important.”
There was a pause. “Wer ist da?” the man on the other side of the door repeated.
Russ leaned close to the door, still keeping his hands up in case the door opened. “There is no time to fuck around, Violator. I’m on your side. You have to trust me.”
After a moment he heard the lock retracting, and he saw the latch turn. The door creaked open and Russ kept his hands raised, displaying his empty palms.
The chain caught the door when it opened three inches. It was dark inside. Russ peered in, could see faint light coming from the window, and he could tell that whoever had opened the door had stepped to the side.
“Who are you?” It was English now. The voice came from behind the wall on Whitlock’s right, not from behind the door.
Whitlock looked back over his shoulder quickly, then said, “Right now, I’m the guy holding your life in his hands.”
From the darkness came the response. “And right now, I’m the guy pointing
a gun at your dick.”
Whitlock cocked his head, then looked down. He saw it now, the square tip of a Glock pistol, low in the dark, held by a hand that disappeared around the side of the doorjamb. He looked into the room farther, searching for a mirror or some other reflective surface that Gentry could be using to target him while keeping himself out of the line of fire. He saw nothing, but he knew the lights of the hallway had him well silhouetted.
He said, “My name is Russ. It looks like you and me better make friends.”
“Or you could just back the fuck up and leave.”
Russ said, “You’re going to find this hard to believe, but I’m not your biggest problem.”
A figure stepped into the middle of the room from behind the wall. In his hand the gun was raised now, level with Russ’s chest. “I’m listening.”
Russ found himself face-to-face with the Gray Man. He’d thought of this moment for months. He knew his entire future depended on the success of this conversation. “Can I come in?”
“No.”
“I’ve got something you need to see. I’m reaching into my right coat pocket and pulling out my cell phone. I’ll move slowly.”
“Don’t move at all,” Court ordered, then took a step forward, unhooked the chain from the door and opened it, reached into Whitlock’s coat, and pulled out the phone. He took a single step back from the doorway.
“Look at the screen,” Russ instructed.
Court did as instructed, keeping his gun trained on the stranger’s chest.
It was an image from a camera; it looked like the stairwell here in the hotel. From the odd angle and the marginal quality of the picture, Court imagined the man in front of him must have set up his own mini surveillance cam high in the stairwell, and Court was now viewing a live feed. At first there was no movement, but then four men in black came into view, floating up the stairs, slowly and carefully in a tactical formation. They held their short-barreled weapons high, pointed higher in the stairwell. In under a second Gentry registered their guns, their body armor, their communications gear.
Court’s eyes flashed up, peering past his gun’s front sight and into the eyes of the man in the doorway. He did not speak.
Whitlock broke the stillness, quickly but softly. He was all business. “Eight in total. Four up, four down.” And then he added, his tone grave, “They’ve got skills, dude.”
“Fuck.”
Russ spoke in a whisper now. “Don’t worry, Violator. We’ll get through this together.”
FOURTEEN
Gentry scanned the face of the man in front of him. He was roughly the same age as Gentry himself, though his features appeared more chiseled and wind-worn than Court imagined his own to be. He wore a beard similar to Gentry’s; his brown hair was only a shade lighter than Court’s and Russ wore it a little shorter than Court wore his, but the two men appeared to be virtually the same height and build.
From the way he talked and an air about him Court picked up from years of experience, Court identified the man as a CIA asset, a tier-one spec ops operator, or some other brand of elite soldier or spook.
In short, to Gentry’s way of thinking, this Russ guy was trouble.
But not as much trouble as the assholes coming up the stairs.
Court backpedaled to his pack, keeping his gun on the man in the hall. Without taking his eyes off the stranger, he slung his backpack over a shoulder. His coat was threaded through a strap on the outside, but he didn’t stop to put it on. He glanced quickly outside the window overlooking the park, but again he could make out little save for the blowing snow and the darkness. He thought about his rope on the floor, considered using it to get to ground level, but if there were four men downstairs he thought it likely two of them would be at the back of the property, and he did not want to expose himself to them for the length of time it would take to climb down a rope.
No way. He was going to have to fight his way out of this with his new friend, whoever the hell he was.
“Okay,” Court said. “You got a piece?”
Russ whispered, “Waistband.”
“Don’t reach for it,” Court ordered, still weighing the dynamic situation. “Not yet. I need to think.”
“Do what you want, chief. But I’d say we’ve got less than fifteen sec—”
The window to Gentry’s left shattered. He turned to the sound and crouched at the same time, but he missed it; he did not see the small canister that penetrated the glass, banged against the far wall of the little room, and dropped, spinning to the floor in front of the bed, just behind him.
But Russ saw it. He turned his head away and shouted, “Nine-banger!” but it was too late to save Court.
It was a souped-up version of a flash-bang grenade, called a nine-banger, and in the space of three seconds nine two-hundred-decibel brain-hammering cracks battered the little room, along with nine brilliant flashes of light designed to disorient anyone in the vicinity. Court fell to his knees, dropped his pistol on the ground, and grabbed at his head. He’d shut his eyes before the first flash, but still the searing light had penetrated his eyelids and now he could barely see or hear.
Whitlock was fine, however; he had avoided the effects by turning away in the hallway. He drew his Glock from his hip and raised it at the stairwell. The first member of the Trestle team was just rounding the corner; only the suppressor of his HK was visible. Whitlock lined up his weapon and fired, striking the man between the eyes before he’d even fully turned into the hallway. He fell back, slamming into his three mates behind him, sending them all tumbling down the stairs.
Whitlock fired twice more up the hall to keep anyone in the stairwell from poking their head back out, and then he turned and grabbed Court by his black shirt, pulling him into a standing position and pushing him up against the wall. He retrieved Court’s Glock from the floor and stuck it into his own belt. He then grabbed Gentry again and led him along with him as he advanced toward the stairwell, his gun out in front. He shot out the two hall lights; both bulbs exploded in showers of sparks and the hallway turned dark.
As Gentry’s legs strengthened and he slowly regained his wits, Whitlock picked up the pace.
“Man down! Man down!” Trestle Actual shouted into his mic. He himself was on his back on the landing between the second and third floor. Trestle Three had been the first man into the hallway from the stairwell, but now he was on top of Nick; blood ran freely from his face and his goggles had a ragged hole in them, right between his eyes. Nick knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do for his man; all he could do was get himself and his two other teammates back in the fight.
He pushed Three to the side and started to climb back up to his feet.
Just then he saw movement at the top of the stairs. He lifted his weapon toward the movement but saw a quick series of muzzle flashes, moving left to right, as whoever was shooting crossed the stairwell in the hall.
He felt the slap of a handgun round on his Kevlar chest panel and sparks flew off his magazine stowed there. He dropped back to the floor of the landing. To his right and one step behind him, Trestle Six lurched backward with a grunt of surprise and stumbled back into the wall, ending up on the floor of the landing next to Three’s body.
Trestle Actual returned fire at the movement above, but the shooter was gone.
“I’ve got two men down! Get me two more in here!” Nick shouted as he returned to his feet. He scrambled back up the stairs with Trestle Five, leaving Trestle Three dead and Trestle Six wounded on the landing.
Court felt himself being pulled along, his shirt yanked by the right arm and his weak legs shuffling as fast as possible below his body. He slammed into the wall hard, only after he hit he realized he’d been pushed there, and he saw that the man named Russ had deposited him here so he could turn and shoot at something in the hallway behind them.
Court processed the
gunfire as distorted low thuds, more felt than heard, as his ears still rang from the effects of the nine-banger. His eyes were whited out in the center of his field of vision, so he had to turn his head to the side to see what the hell was happening.
With a quivering hand he reached down to his waistband to draw his gun, but it was not there.
“Hey!” he shouted at the stranger, but Russ grabbed him again, and again they started running up the hallway.
There was a T intersection in the hall, and the other man led Gentry to the right. Just as they turned the corner, jagged holes tore into the wall in the main hall, and through his ringing ears Court barely heard a gun behind them firing suppressed rounds.
Court was getting the feeling back in his body now, and his eyesight returned slowly. He arrived behind his new partner as Russ stopped at the end of the hall, then leapt up and grabbed hold of a chain attached to a door in the ceiling to the attic. He pulled down a folding staircase, then turned around and knelt in the hall, training his weapon back up the hallway.
“My gun!” Gentry shouted, louder than he had to, and Russ pulled Court’s pistol from his pants and handed it over to him.
Russ fired a pair of shots up the corridor, then turned and moved up the attic stairs. Court covered him; he kept his blurred eyes locked on the corner and his shaky gun raised as Russ ascended the rickety and narrow wooden steps.
As Russ disappeared into the hole in the ceiling behind him, down at the end of the hall a man in a black helmet and goggles peered around the corner. Court aimed at the man’s forehead and fired once, grazing him in the left shoulder and sending him scrambling back around to cover.
Whitlock was in the attic now, but he positioned himself over the hole. Facedown he hung out from the waist, hanging upside down from the corridor ceiling, directly above Gentry. His body faced the threat at the end of the hall, and he pointed his gun toward the T.
“Move!” he shouted, and Court turned and climbed the attic staircase now, covered by the man hanging upside down behind him.
