The Gray Man

FIVE

Two hours before dawn and already the abandoned airfield was sweltering hot. The hulking Lockheed L- 100 positioned at the end of the runway idled with its lights off so as not to be detected from a distance, but the flight crew sat in their seats and their hands twitched near the throttle. The propellers blew dry dust and sharp sand into the wind-worn faces and parched throats of the five men standing on the tarmac at the foot of the aircraft’s lowered ramp. All eyes were fixed to the south, out past the little shack of a terminal, out past the chain-link fence, and out into the infinite darkness of western Iraq.

The five men stood within feet of one another, but normal communication was impossible. Even at idle, the aircraft’s Allison four-blade engines filled the air with a steady hum that shook the earth. Without the Harris Falcon short-distance radios and the throat mikes, the men’s words would have been lost like the landscape beyond the reach of their night vision goggles.

Markham fingered the Heckler & Koch submachine gun hanging off his chest with his left hand and pressed the radio transmit button on his load-bearing vest with his right. “He’s late.”

Perini bit on the end of the tube hanging over his shoulder, sucked warm water from the half-empty bladder in his backpack. He spat most of it onto the sand-strewn airstrip in front of his boots. His Mossberg shotgun dangled unslung from his right hand. “If this mo-fo is supposed to be such hot shit, how come he can’t make his exfil on time?”

“He’s the shit all right. If the Gray Man is late, he has a good reason,” said Dulin, hands on his hips and his squat-barreled submachine gun horizontal on his chest. “Stay sharp; it’s just a short op. We pick him up, babysit him over the border, and then forget we ever saw the bastard.”

“The Gray Man,” McVee said with a degree of reverence. “He’s the guy who killed Milosevic. Snuck into a UN jail and poisoned the son of a bitch.” His MP5 submachine gun hung from a sling, the fat silencer pointing straight down at the tarmac. He propped his elbow on the butt of the squat weapon.

Perini said, “Nah, bro. You got it backwards. He killed the guy who killed Milosevic. Milosevic was going to name names. UN officials who helped him with the genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. The UN sent a hitter in to poison old Slobo, and the Gray Man killed the hitter, after the fact.” He swigged and spat another mouthful of warm water. “The Gray Man is one bad son of a bitch. He don’t care, he don’t scare.”

Markham reiterated his earlier decree. “He’s fucking late, is what he is.”

Dulin looked at his watch. “Fitzroy said we might have to wait, and we might have to fight. Every hajji for fifty klicks is hunting Gray Man’s ass.”

Barnes had been silent, but now he spoke up. “I heard he did that job in Kiev.” He paced, farthest from the ramp of the aircraft, sweeping the dark with the three-power night vision scope on his M4 assault rifle.

“Bullshit,” said Dulin, and two of the others immediately agreed.

But McVee sided with Barnes. “That’s what I heard. The Gray dude did that shit solo.”

Markham said, “No way. Kiev was not a one-man op. It was a twelve-man A-team at the very least.”

Barnes shook his head in the dark. “Heard it was one gunner. Heard it was the Gray Man.”

Markham replied, “I don’t believe in magic.”

Just then there was a simultaneous crackle in the earpieces of the five men. Dulin held a hand up to silence his team, pressed the talk button on his chest rig. “Repeat last transmission.”

Another crackle. Then another, finally disjointed words popped through the static. “Thirty seconds… move… pursuit!” The voice was unrecognizable, but clearly the message was urgent.

“Is that him?” asked Barnes.

No one could say.

Again a burst of life from the comms, clearer now. They looked towards the open gate at the front of the little airfield. “I’m coming hard! Hold your fire!”

Dulin replied into the comm. “Your signal is intermittent. Say again your location?”

A pop of static. “… Northwest.”

Just then they heard a crash to the north and a honking horn. Everyone had been looking to the south. They turned their heads and gun barrels north to the sound of the noise and saw a civilian pickup truck, one headlight dead and black, smash through the fence and bounce out of the sand and onto the tarmac. The truck was moving at an incredible clip, directly towards the L-100.

The voice came over the comms again. “I’ve got company!”

Just then, headlights appeared along a wide track behind the wildly bouncing vehicle. First two sets, then four, then more.

Dulin assessed the situation for one second. Then he called out to his crew over the engine’s whine, “Up the ramp!”

All five were aboard, and the L-100 was already rolling down the runway when an armed man in dirty gear and body armor sprinted up the back ramp. McVee grabbed the “package’s” gloved hand and pulled him up the steep incline, and Markham slammed his hand on the hydraulic lift lever to close the ramp. Dulin gave a command to the pilots on the cabin intercom, and the four turboprop engines gunned for takeoff.

With the ramp sealed shut, the package dropped onto his kneepads in the middle of the bare cabin. His M4 rifle was slung over a general issue chest harness missing most of its ammunition and a brown Nomex tunic torn in several places. The man’s face was covered with goggles, smeared greasepaint, and sweat. He pulled his helmet off, dropped it to the floor of the cabin, already inclining during its takeoff rotation. Steam poured from a sopping mat of thick brown hair, and his beard dripped perspiration like a leaky faucet.

Dulin lifted the Gray Man from the floor and put him on the bench along the cabin’s skin. He secured him to the bench with a belt and sat next to him.

“You hurt?” he asked.

The man shook his head.

“Let me help you get your gear off.” Dulin shouted over the engines.

“I’ll keep it on.”

“Suit yourself. Just a forty-minute flight. Once in Turkey, we’ll go to a safe house, and tomorrow night Fitzroy will have instructions for you. We’ll watch your back till then.”

“I appreciate it,” said the filthy man through labored breaths. His eyes stayed on the floor as he spoke. His arms draped over the top of the black rifle hanging from his neck.

The other four men had strapped themselves into the red mesh bench lining the side of the fuselage. They all stared at the package, trying without success to reconcile the average-looking operator next to them with his superhuman reputation.

The Gray Man and Dulin sat by a pallet of gear strapped with webbing to the middle of the deck.

Dulin said, “I’m going to call Fitzroy, let him know we’re wheels up. I’ll grab you some water and be back in a second.” He then turned and climbed the steeply ascending aircraft to the front of the cabin. He pulled out his satellite phone as he walked.

It was just after three in the morning in London, and on the sixth floor of a whitewashed office building on London’s Bayswater Road, an aging man in a wrinkled pinstripe suit drummed his fingers on his desk. His face white, perspiration ran down his fleshy neck and soaked his Egyptian broadcloth oxford. Donald Fitzroy tried to relax himself, to remove the obvious worry from his voice.

The satellite phone chirped again.

He looked again, for the twentieth time, to the framed photograph on his desk. His son, now forty, sitting on a hammock on a beach, his beautiful wife beside him. Twins, both girls, one in each parent’s lap. Smiles all around.

Fitzroy looked away from the framed photo and towards a sheaf of loose photographs in his thick hands. These shots he had also given twenty looks. It was the same four, the same family, though the twins were slightly older now.

It was typical surveillance quality: the family at a park, the twins at their school near Grosvenor Square, the daughter-in-law pushing a shopping cart through the market. Fitzroy detected from the angles and the proximity to their subjects that the photographer was sending a message that he could have easily walked up to the four and put a hand on each of them.

Lloyd’s implication was clear: Fitzroy’s family could be gotten to at any time.

The sat phone chirped a third time.

Fitzroy exhaled fully, threw the photos to the floor, and grabbed the nagging device.

“Standstill. How copy, Fullcourt?”

“Five by five, Standstill,” said Dulin. He pressed his ear tight into the earpiece of the satellite phone to drown out the engine’s roar. “How do you copy?”

“Loud and clear. Report your status.”

“Standstill, Fullcourt. We have the package and have exfiltrated the target location.”

“Understood. What’s the status of your package?”

“Looks like shit, sir, but he says he’s good to go.”

“Understood. Wait one,” Fitzroy said.

Dulin rubbed a gloved hand over his face and looked to the back of the cargo airplane at his four operators. His gaze then centered on the Gray Man, sitting at the end of the bench. Goggles, a beard, and greasepaint hid his face. Still, Dulin could tell the man was exhausted. His back rested against the wall of the fuselage, and both arms hung over his M4. His eyes stared into the distance. Dulin’s crew was on Gray’s right, all geared up in a nearly uniform manner but segregated from the package by a few feet of bench.

Thirty seconds later, Donald Fitzroy came back on the line. “Fullcourt, this is Standstill. There has been a change in the operation. You and your men will, of course, be remunerated accordingly.”

Dulin sat up straighter. His brow furrowed. “Roger that, Standstill. Go ahead with the update to the op specs.”

“I need the delivery of the package canceled.”

Dulin’s head cocked. “Negative, Standstill. We can’t return to the airfield. It’s crawling with opposition and—”

“That’s not what I mean, Fullcourt. I need you to… destroy the package.”

A pause. “Standstill, Fullcourt. Repeat your last?”

The tone of voice over the sat phone changed. It was less detached. More human. “I have a… a situation here, Fullcourt.”

Dulin said, his own voice losing the clipped cadence of radio protocol, “Yeah, I guess you do.”

“I want him terminated.”

Dulin’s head was propped in his gloved hand. His fingers began strumming on the side of his face. “You sure about this? He’s one of your guys.”

“I know that.”

“I’m one of your guys.”

“It’s complicated, lad. Not how I normally do business.”

“This isn’t right.”

“As I said, you all will be compensated for this deviance from the original operation.”

Dulin’s eyes stayed on the package as he asked, “How much?”

Five minutes later, Dulin looked towards his men while reaching for his radio’s selector switch on his chest rig. He turned the dial a few clicks.

“Don’t say anything. Just nod if you copy.” Barnes, McVee, Perini, and Markham all looked up and around. Their eyes found Dulin up at the bulkhead and they nodded as one. Unaware, the Gray Man stared blankly at the pallet of equipment in front of him.

“Listen up. Standstill has ordered us to waste the package.” Across the thirty feet of open space in the well-lit cabin Dulin saw the stunned reaction on his men’s faces. He shrugged, “Don’t ask me, boys. I just work here.”

The four men on the bench with the package looked to him, saw him to be closest to the ramp, strapped in, with his M4 rifle on his chest and his bearded face gaz ing at the floor of the cabin.

They looked back to their team leader and nodded slowly as one.