The Gray Man

THIRTY-ONE

All ten Belarusian guards were on station around the property: six outside, two at ground-floor windows, and two in the tower above. Serge and Alain, the two electronic security engineers, sat in the ground-floor library, their bloodshot eyes scanning back and forth across the screens, watching the infrared images around the perimeter of the building. Every five minutes, they used walkie-talkies to communicate with the patrols.

The Libyans were the only hunter-killer squad still in the area. They fought exhaustion as their van patrolled Bayeux. They were certain by now they were out of the big money. The other teams who had been in the area had since been sent to Paris to search for the target, as had every pavement artist within 300 miles. The Libyans had been given a clear chance at the target back on the hillside in Switzerland, and they had failed, so now they were ordered to sit tight and wait, were facing a hundred-to-one odds at best they would get another crack at the Gray Man.

No one expected Gentry to make it to Bayeux now.

Riegel, Lloyd, the Tech, and Felix sat in the control room in low light, sipped coffee, and watched computer monitors displaying the rocking and bouncing images broadcast from digital video cameras held by the watchers and kill teams in Paris. The Tech was still organizing the search around the Seine. By now Riegel and Lloyd both conceded Gentry must have made it out of the water downstream and staggered off, so the net was widened and then widened again on both sides of the river.

By five thirty a.m., there was fresh news in Paris that generated a flurry of activity around the château. A watcher listening to police radio had learned about a break-in at a minor emergency clinic in the Fifth Ar rondissement. This was upstream from where the target went into the river, but the Tech had sent a watcher over to find out what he could. The owners of the clinic had arrived and announced the medicines and blood and equipment stolen were all items necessary for wound management.

Riegel stood behind the Tech. “We’ll have to split the search. Keep the Bolivians and the Sri Lankans in Paris. Tell the Botswanans to come here via the highway, see if they can spot him on the way. Send a helicopter up to pick up the Kazakhs. They are the most skilled gunners; I want them here. They can patrol the back roads around the property, checking anything that moves. And alert the Libyans in Bayeux! They need to stay there to watch the train station and the routes through town. If the Gray Man is somehow still in the fight, he’ll be here before daybreak.”

The Tech muttered to himself, “We bloody saw him. We bloody well saw him hurt. We bloody well saw him fall into the water.”

Lloyd slapped him on the back of the head as he stormed out of the room, heading downstairs to tell the men monitoring the infrared cameras that their target may be on the way.

“Please! Please, Jim! You must wake!”

Court Gentry opened his eyes. Above him, a figure loomed close in the dark. Instinctively, he reached out and took the figure’s neck and grabbed it tight and slammed it to the ground next to him as he tried to roll on top of it.

Court fell on Justine in the tall, wet grass.

“Sorry,” was all he could say as he climbed off of the French girl. He moved sluggishly, his body clearly impeded by drugs.

She was slow to get up as well. It was dark, and he could make out her wide eyes best of all. She sat up next to him finally, and he looked away uncomfortably. He took stock of his surroundings.

He was seated in wet grass, both of their backs leaned against the Mercedes. They were in a field, the black sedan four-fifths through a thicket. Gentry assumed the road was on the other side. The glow of the moon was diffused by the mist above him, but he could make out the lumbering movement of cows in the muddy field near the car.

The air was cold.

“What… what is… Where are we?”

“I could not wake you. We are west of Caen, still thirty minutes from Bayeux.”

“Shit. What time is it?” The American slowly remembered his mission, as if it appeared from out of the fog of his drug-addled brain.

“It is almost seven. The sun will be up in under an hour.”

“We crashed, didn’t we?”

“No, monsieur, we did not crash. You crashed.”

It was coming back to him, but slowly. He put his hand down to his injured belly, though it was barely hurting at the moment. He wore a clean brown shirt. Through it he could feel bandages cinched tight.

He looked down at his new pants. “You dressed me?”

Justine looked away, out to the dark field. “I found the clothes in a bag in the car. After the wreck.”

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Not bad. Some bruises. We were lucky. You ran off the road onto a cow path through the hedgerow. We crashed through these trees. The car is stuck. After the wreck I gave you a little medicine, bandaged you, and dressed you. We have been here ever since. A little while ago a helicopter flew over. It scared me. I thought maybe they are looking for us.”

Court’s head was clearing by the second; he was back with it now. “I’ll never make it in time.”

“You told me eight a.m. We can still make it before then.”

“I needed to be in position before the sun came up.” Gentry sighed, let it go. He stood slowly, found it less difficult than he expected. “What did you give me?”

I gave you some painkillers, and I put bandages very tight around your waist to lower the pain.”

Gentry was checking the wrappings through the shirt as she spoke. “Good. I don’t feel too bad.”

“It won’t last. The pain will return soon. I did not give you the other drug. Zee DextroStat. I read zee bottle. It is a very strong amphetamine. If you take one of those pills, your blood pressure will increase. If my stitches are not perfect, you will bleed very badly. You could bleed internally, as well. It would be crazy for you to swallow one of those pills.”

“I’m not going to swallow one of the pills. I am going to break open three of them, pour the contents into a cup of hot coffee. That will break down the time-release coating, so I will get all of the effect instantly.”

“That is suicide!” she said. “I am not a doctor, but I know what that will do to your body.”

“This will help me stay sharp for a half hour or so. If I bleed out after that, well, that’s okay. I just have to do my job first.”

She began to protest, but he interrupted her. “We need new transport. Something local, something that will not draw attention.”

Justine shook her head in frustration. “There is a farmhouse just over there. Maybe you can borrow their vehicle.”

Court looked around the side of the hedgerow to the farmhouse, seventy-five yards away. Already a light was on in the window. An old, white, four-door, splattered waist-high with mud and manure, sat outside glowing in the window’s light. “Yeah, I’ll go borrow their vehicle.” He reached slowly into the trunk of the Mercedes and retrieved the second Glock pistol. The first he had lost in the Paris passageway. Without looking, he pulled back the slide an inch and used a fingertip to make sure the gun was loaded. “I’ll be right back.”

In the last hour before dawn, Riegel had the entire force at the château at full battle stations, because he fully expected the Gray Man to come then, if he was to come at all. The ten gunmen from Minsk were divided into three groups of two, patrolling the garden and driveway to the main gate, their Kalashnikov battle rifles in hand. Two more manned AK-47s on the first floor of the château; one watched out a window to the drive and the other a window towards the garden in the back.

The final two Belarusians were in the château’s turret above: one sniper with a Dragunov scoped rifle, the same man and the same weapon used to end the life of Phillip Fitzroy, and one spotter who wore an AR-15 on his back and looked out in all directions into the night with binoculars.

In addition to the ten Belarusians there were Lloyd’s three men from London, the Northern Irishman and the two Scots. The other Northern Irishman now lay discarded in the basement next to Phillip’s body. Two were in the kitchen, radios in their ears and submachine guns in their laps, waiting in reserve to be sent by Riegel himself to wherever the Gray Man appeared. The third, McSpadden, was in the hall outside of the second-floor bedroom covering the Fitzroy family.

There were also the two French engineers in the first-floor library, watching over the monitors of the infrared cameras positioned around the yard. These were both ex-infantrymen in their forties; they wore pistols on their hips and knew how to use them.

Finally there was the Tech, Lloyd, Felix, and Riegel in the control room. Of the four, only Riegel could be considered a real gunfighter. He wore his pistol in a shoulder holster underneath his suede jacket. Dangerous to others or not, Lloyd was armed with his small automatic, and a charged Uzi had been placed on the Tech’s computer desk, though the ponytailed Brit had never before been so close to a loaded weapon.

This made the odds nineteen defenders versus one attacker, but this was merely the inner line of coverage around the château. The four Libyan Jamahiriya Security Organization operators were in constant radio contact with the Tech, ten kilometers away in Bayeux. They watched the road from town to the château and the soon-to-open train station, the only reasonable route from Paris. The sleek, black Eurocopter flew lazy eights at high altitude, carrying the five Saudis. The chopper watched the roads down from Caen to the east and even along the coast to the north in case the Gray Man magically appeared on a Normandy beach like a one-man replay of the D-day invasion.

And the four Kazakhs, just in from Paris, patrolled in a small blue Citroën, their Kalashnikovs in their laps with the stocks folded. They drove through the countryside, pulled up behind early-rising drivers and checked their plates, shone bright lights into cars to scan the vehicle’s occupants.

The Kazakhs did not use their radios. Yes, they listened in to the Tech’s communication with the other teams, but they never acknowledged or responded to the Tech’s calls for them to check in. They were there to kill the Gray Man and make the money and go home. They would communicate with the men in the château only when they dumped Gentry’s body at the front gate and demanded their money.

Riegel oversaw the entire operation from the third-floor control room. He’d be the first to admit it was no fair fight, more than thirty armed men against one horribly wounded adversary who was operating with limited resources and little sleep.

But Riegel was a hunter, and a fair fight was not his game.