Ballistic Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  TITLES BY MARK GREANEY

  Praise for Mark Greaney and the Gray Man novels

  ON TARGET

  “Court is endearing in his perseverance even as his schemes are undermined by sympathetic victims, misleading information, outright lies, poor planning, betrayal, conflicting agendas, and simple bad luck . . . An action-filled yet touching story of a man whose reason has long ago been subsumed by his work ethic.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Fine characterization, witty dialogue, breathtaking chase and battle scenes, and as many unforeseen twists and turns as your favorite Robert Ludlum or Vince Flynn novel—combined. Moreover, author Mark Greaney supplies verisimilitude as well as anyone in the writing business, along with singular attention to detail that doesn’t merely bring the exotic locales to life: You will feel the bullets whizzing past.”

  —Keith Thomson, bestselling author of Twice a Spy

  “Greaney writes smart, sharp, perfectly-paced thrillers. Intense, intelligent, and loads of fun. Pick one up and you won’t want to put it down until the last page.”

  —Steven James, bestselling author of The Bishop

  “Discovering The Gray Man was like falling in love for the first time. Reading On Target is like going on a second date and realizing this relationship might last for the long haul.”

  —Eric Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of

  Valley of Bones and One Step Away

  THE GRAY MAN

  “There’s probably a cheetah on the Serengeti who can get a gazelle moving faster than Mark Greaney gets The Gray Man into overdrive . . . Greaney keeps this vengeance story red-lined and blistering as a hired killer known as the Gray Man burns like det cord through a small army of trained killers in Prague, Zurich, Paris, and beyond as he zeroes in on the wealthy French aristocrat who betrayed him . . . Writing as smooth as stainless steel and a hero as mean as razor wire . . . The Gray Man glitters like a blade in an alley.”

  —David Stone, New York Times bestselling author of

  The Skorpion Directive

  “Hard, fast, and unflinching—exactly what a thriller should be.”

  —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Affair

  “A high-octane thriller that doesn’t pause for more than a second for all of its 464 pages . . . Greaney has a good understanding of weapons and tactics . . . and he uses that to enliven his storytelling, including lots of the kinds of details that action junkies love . . . For readers looking for a thriller where the action comes fast and furious, this is the ticket.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Here is a debut novel like a well-honed dagger: sharp, merciless, and deadly. Mark Greaney’s The Gray Man is Bourne for the new millennium . . . Never has an assassin been rendered so real yet so deadly. Strikes with the impact of a bullet to the chest . . . A debut not to be missed.”

  —James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of

  The Devil Colony

  “Take fictional spy Jason Bourne, pump him up with Red Bull and meth, shake vigorously—and you’ve got the recipe for Court Gentry, hero of The Gray Man . . . Gentry’s such a souped-up, efficient killing machine, Bourne’s a piker by comparison . . . Greaney’s writing is crisp.”

  —The Memphis Commercial Appeal

  “From the opening pages, the bullets fly and the bodies pile up. Through the carnage, Gentry remains an intriguing protagonist with his own moral code. The villain’s motives are fuzzy, though he is quite nasty. Comparisons will be made to Jason Bourne, but the Gray Man is his own character. The ending screams for a sequel, but it will be difficult to maintain the intensity level of this impressive debut.”

  —Booklist

  “[A] fast-paced, fun debut thriller . . . With unbelievable powers of survival, the Gray Man eludes teams of killers and deadly traps, while the reader begins to cheer for this unlikely hero. Cinematic battles and escapes fill out the simplistic but satisfying plot, and Greaney deftly provides small details to show Gentry’s human side, offset by the petty rivalries and greed of his enemies.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  TITLES BY MARK GREANEY

  The Gray Man

  On Target

  Ballistic

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  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. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Mark Strode Greaney.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purcha
se only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / October 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greaney, Mark.

  Ballistic / Mark Greaney.—Berkley trade paperback ed. p. cm.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54492-1

  1. Assassins—Fiction. 2. Drug traffic—Fiction. 3. Organized crime—Fiction. I. Title. PS3607.R4285B’.6—dc22

  2010054214

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For the men and women

  on both sides of the border

  who work every day to end the madness

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Karen Mayer, James Rollins, Marcie Silva, Marleni Gonzalez, Devin Greaney, Mireya Ledezma, Svetlana Ganea, James Yeager, Jay Gibson, Paul Gomez, Tactical Response, GetofftheX.com, Mystery Mike Bursaw, CovertoCoverBookstore.com, Devon Gilliland, Bob Hetherington, Patrick O’Daniel, the Andersons, the Leslies, Alex Slater at Trident, Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski and Amanda Ng at Penguin, and Jon Cassir and Matthew Snyder at Creative Artists Agency.

  Special thanks to my agent, Scott Miller at Trident Media, and my editor, Tom Colgan at Penguin.

  MarkGreaneyBooks.com

  Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

  FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE

  In Mexico, if you have a problem and turn to the police, then you have two problems.

  LORENZO MEYER, MEXICAN HISTORIAN

  PROLOGUE

  The manhunter knelt at the front of the canoe, scanned the far bank as it appeared around the river’s bend. Thick green rain forest morphed slowly into a rustic brown village, a settlement of hardpacked dirt and wood and corrugated rust built along the water’s edge.

  “This is it?” he called back to the Indian steering with the outboard motor. Only by necessity had his Portuguese improved in the past months.

  “Sim, senhor. This is it.”

  The manhunter nodded, reached for the radio tucked between his knees.

  But he stayed himself. He needed to be certain.

  Seven months. Seven months since the call came for him in Amsterdam. A rushed consultation with his employer, a flight across the Atlantic to Caracas, a mad dash to Lima, and then south.

  Ever south. Until he and his prey came to the end of the world, and then the chase wound back to the north.

  Ever north.

  He’d been on the target’s heels, to one degree or another, for all this time. The longest hunt of his storied career.

  And it would end here. One way or another, the hunt for Courtland Gentry would end right here.

  ONE

  Outside Quito, the manhunter had come close. He’d even called in a kill team, but they’d gone wanting for a target. Foolish of him, a false start could dull their fervor the next time; he would not cry wolf again. He’d caught fresh wind of the target in northern Chile and a hint of him farther down the Pacific coast, but then he’d lost the scent in Punta Arenas.

  Until Rio and a lucky break. A visiting jujitsu student from Denmark had seen an Interpol Wanted poster while in his embassy filing for a lost passport. He’d run into another white student at a dojo in the favelas. Nothing to that, but the Dane knew his art, and the white man’s fighting style showed hints of other disciplines: hard, brutal, warrior tendencies that he tried to hide from those around him. The Dane recalled the Wanted poster. It was no obvious match, but he felt compelled to contact the authorities. Something about the man in the dojo had uneased him. A look, an edge, the hint of suspicion on the part of the white student, as if he knew that the Dane was sizing him up for some reason.

  The manhunter got word of the sighting, arrived on a private jet mere hours later. The suspect did not show for class that day, or the next. The manhunter brought in local reinforcements for the legwork; dozens of men combed the favelas with photos and cash. Many of the crew were roughed up or threatened on the mean streets of the lawless slums, one man even relieved of his wallet and knifed in the arm. But the canvass paid off: someone talked; someone pointed a finger; someone whispered an address.

  The manhunter went to have a look. He was not a shooter himself, he hadn’t fired a weapon since his days in the Royal Netherlands Army, fighting the Angolans in the 1970s. But he did not want to spin up his gunmen-in-waiting on another wild-goose chase, so he left eight armed men up the street as he went on with only two. A horrid, run-down neighborhood, a shit-stained building, a piss-scented thirdfloor hall with a darkened doorway at the end of it. The manhunter’s hands shook as he used another border’s key and crept inside, his gunners just behind him.

  A human form moved in a blur off a top bunk bed; the manhunter’s life flashed before his eyes. Then a backpack heaved upon the blur’s shoulder, and the blur was out a window, a full two stories down. The manhunter rushed behind him; the gunmen fired their weapons, tearing up the bed and the wall and the window frame in the blur’s wake. The men reloaded as the manhunter reached the window, watched the target land and roll onto another rooftop, float across an alleyway to another building like a flying squirrel, and then leap and roll down to ground level, the explosions of small-caliber rounds chasing after him down the street as the two gunmen belatedly returned to the fight.

  The target was gone. The bunk he vacated left no clues but the warmth on his tattered blanket.

  That was ten weeks ago.

  Last Sunday a call came from Fonte Boa, hundreds of miles north on the Amazon River. The manhunter had made lists of possible professions in which the target might find work. There were hundreds, from sheet metal worker to legionnaire. Somewhere down the list marine salvage had been noted, due to his experience in diving and his raw courage. A small operation along a remote Amazonian tributary had employed a walk-up foreign white man, a queer occurrence in the Brazilian jungle to be sure. So the manhunter had flown to Fonte Boa and shown a photo to the boatman who delivered dry goods upriver to the settlements.

  And now the manhunter was here.

  He fingered the radio between his knees. One call and two fat helicopters full of gunmen would descend and fan out; they’d planned their attack with satellite photos and a grease board in the watcher’s hotel room in Fonte Boa. One call would turn the pristine jungle to fire and end the target the Dutch manhunter had been after for these seven long months.

  But first he must make certain.

  A howler monkey splashed from a tree into the water, scampered back onto the bank, and disappeared into the thick growth.

  Seconds later, the launch slowed and bumped against the rubber tires tied to the dockside. The canoe’s owner made to turn off the outboard.

  “No,” said the manhunter. “Leave it running. I will only be a moment.”

  “Wastes gas, sir,” said the local. Some sort of Indian savage. “I can start it again in five seconds.”

  “I said leave it running.” The white man climbed ashore, started up the dirt hill towards a man idling by a shack raised on narrow stilts. The Dutchman would get some verification that this was the place, and then he would not wait around for the fireworks. He carried an ancient Webley Top-Break Revolver in a shoulder holster, but that was really just for show out here amongst the savages of the jungle. Killing was not his job. He’d use his radio, and then his job would be done. He’d head back upriver to Fonte Boa to wait at the hotel.

  Mauro sat in the shade, waiting for his father to return with the morning’s catch. At ten years old Mauro normally went out with his father to collect the nets, but today he’d stayed behind to help his uncle with some chores and had only just arrived at the dock when the canoe with the white man appeared. He watched the old man make his way up the hill, stop in front of the drunkard, and engage the man in conversation. The white man pulled a white paper from his breast pocket
and showed it to the drunk, then handed him some cash.

  Mauro stood slowly. Hesitated.

  The white man nodded, headed back to the canoe, and pulled a radio up to his mouth.

  Young Mauro walked towards a narrow trail that led away from the docks, away from his village. Once inside the dark protection of the jungle canopy, the boy began to run as fast as his calloused bare feet would take him.

  TWO

  Court Gentry pulled on his umbilical cable for a bit more slack then turned back to the wreckage in front of him. He reached out with a gloved hand and felt his way forward to the hulking iron wheelhouse of the sunken steamboat. Visibility in the murky river was no more than twelve inches at this time of late morning, thirty feet below the ochre surface of the warm water. Finding his place, he adjusted the angle of the flashlight on his helmet, lifted his welding torch back up, and narrowed the flame to little more than a glowing spike. Then he slowly applied the white-hot fire to the iron to begin a new cut.

  A series of three strong tugs to his line pulled him off his mark.

  “Dammit,” he said aloud, his voice reverberated in his brass helmet. The dive helmet’s radio wasn’t working so the team communicated through tugs. Three short, hard pulls meant “surface immediately,” which meant it would take him, at a minimum, ten minutes to get back down here through the algae and oily film to find his spot again.