Agent in Place Read online

  TITLES BY MARK GREANEY

  THE GRAY MAN

  ON TARGET

  BALLISTIC

  DEAD EYE

  BACK BLAST

  GUNMETAL GRAY

  AGENT IN PLACE

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Mark Strode Greaney

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Greaney, Mark, author.

  Title: Agent in place / Mark Greaney.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017039256| ISBN 9780451488909 (hardback) | ISBN 9780451488923 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Assassins—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Espionage. | FICTION /

  Action & Adventure. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Spy stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3607.R4285 A72 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039256

  First Edition: February 2018

  Cover photographs: Syrian city © Mohamad Abazeed / Getty Images; Man © Sebastian Stock / Getty Images; Narrow street © Nik Keevil / Arcangel Images; Abstract city map © Tchka33353; Abstract orange background © Natalia K; Vector elements © WindVector; Black background © jessicahyde

  Cover design by Steve Meditz, based on an original design by Richard Hasselberger

  Book design by Kelly Lipovich

  Interior art: Black-and-white Paris map by Nicola Renna / Shutterstock Images

  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.

  Version_1

  To you, the reader

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Lt. Col Rip Rawlings (USMC); Amanda Schulter; Scott Swanson; Mike Cowan; Mystery Mike Bursaw; Jon Harvey; Jon Griffin; Joshua Hood; John Busby; Nick Ciubotariu; Dan Newberry and the staff at Bangsteel in Wytheville, VA; James Yeager; Jay Gibson and everyone at Tactical Response in Camden, TN; Chris Clarke; Devon Greaney; Devin Greaney; the Tulsa Greaneys; and Dorothy Greaney.

  Thanks to my agent, Scott Miller, and the team at Trident Media; my editor, Tom Colgan; Loren Jaggers; Jin Yu; Grace House; and the rest of the team at Penguin Random House. Also thanks to Jon Cassir and the team at CAA.

  CONTENTS

  Titles by Mark Greaney

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Experience, that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn.

  —C. S. LEWIS

  You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

  —LEON TROTSKY

  CHARACTERS

  AHMED AL-AZZAM: President of Syria

  Jamal al-Azzam: Late father of Ahmed al-Azzam, former president of Syria

  Shakira al-Azzam: First lady of Syria

  Bianca Medina: Spanish fashion model, mistress of Ahmed al-Azzam

  Dr. Tarek Halaby: Cardiac surgeon, co-director of the Free Syria Exile Union, husband of Rima Halaby

  Dr. Rima Halaby: Cardiac surgeon, co-director of the Free Syria Exile Union, wife of Tarek Halaby

  Vincent Voland: Former intelligence officer, DGSE, Directorate-General for External Security (French Foreign Intelligence Service), and DGSI, Directorate-General for Internal Security (French Domestic Intelligence Service)

  Sebastian Drexler: (Code name: Eric) Swiss intelligence officer, employee of Meier Privatbank

  Henri Sauvage: Captain, Police Judiciaire, French National Police

  Foss: Lieutenant Intern, Police Judiciaire, French National Police

  Allard: Lieutenant, Police Judiciaire, French National Police

  Clement: Lieutenant, Police Judiciaire, French National Police

  Malik: Foreign intelligence operative of GIS, General Intelligence Service, Syrian External Security Division

  Lars Klossner: Owner of Klossner Welt Ausbildungs GMBH, security and private military contractor

  Van Wyk: KWA, private military contractor/team leader


  Saunders: KWA, private military contractor

  Broz: KWA, private military contractor

  Walid: Major in Desert Hawks Brigade (pro-regime Syrian militia)

  Paul Boyer: Former French Foreign Legionnaire, private security officer

  Robert “Robby” Anderson: Captain, U.S. Army 10th Special Forces Group

  Stefan Meier: Vice president, Meier Privatbank

  Jamal Medina: Infant son of Bianca Medina

  Yasmin Samara: Nanny to Jamal Medina

  Dr. Shawkat Saddiqi: Trauma surgeon, Syrian resistance sympathizer

  Abdul Basset Rahal: Syrian resistance fighter with the Free Syrian Army

  Matthew Hanley: Director, National Clandestine Service, Central Intelligence Agency

  PROLOGUE

  The prisoners were slaughtered one by one, with efficiency as true as a ticking clock. Two dozen dead now, and the executioner was just hitting his stride.

  The scene of the massacre was one of abject horror: the stench of fresh blood, the cloying smell of bodies floating in the brown lake, the viscous brain matter splattered and thickening on the sun-blanched pier.

  Above the slaughter the rocky hillside sparkled in the midday heat, the reflection of broken glass and twisted metal jutting out of the wreckage of a battle fought months ago. Many had died, and the few vanquished who survived had run for their lives and left the ruined land to the victors.

  The black flags of ISIS hung in the town square now, and they waved from the rooftops of the wrecked buildings and whipped in the back of most every pickup truck that rolled through the broken streets: certainly every vehicle that was filled to capacity with young bearded men wearing cheap tactical gear and brandishing weapons, eyes wild with the fervency of their sickening death cult.

  Here by the lake, between the broken hillside and the water, ran a narrow shoreline of salt flat and brown brush. Forty-three condemned men in orange jumpsuits knelt, the remainder of the sixty-seven who had been trucked here just twenty minutes earlier.

  The captives were surrounded by masked fighters holding rifles at the ready; the prisoners’ wrists were tied with rough cord in front of their bodies, and they were all lashed together by a long rope. This removed the chance that any one of them would get up and leg it, though it hardly mattered. Nobody was going to run. It was nearly a hundred kilometers across the dead ground of war-torn Syria to the Turkish border, so what chance would they have if they ran?

  No one entwined and kneeling here would resist the fate that awaited him. There was no use to it, and virtually all these men understood that their last few moments left on this foul Earth would be better spent praying.

  The executioner wore a pair of daggers in his belt, but these were just for show. The real tool of choice for the slaughter wasn’t the blades; it was the Avtomat Kalashnikova, model 74U, held in the arms of the hooded executioner standing at the end of the pier.

  As had been the routine for the past twenty minutes, two guards shoved a prisoner to his knees next to the executioner, the masked man pointed the muzzle of his weapon behind the condemned man’s right ear, and then, without a pause or a comment or a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

  Sanguine spray erupted from the captive’s head, and the body snapped forward, the mangled face leading the way down to the water. It crashed into the surface of the lake, just like so many before it, and just like so many more, waiting on the shore for their turn to die.

  And a videographer on the shoreline recorded it all for posterity.

  The shrinking row of prisoners remained passive, kneeling on the lakeside, over a dozen armed men at the ready standing on all sides of them. Some flinched with the rifle’s report; others flinched with the sound of the splash, knowing their ruined dead bodies would follow suit in moments; and soon two armed ISIS fighters walked down the fifteen-meter-long wooden pier, stepped onto the rocky shoreline, and took the closest man in orange by his shoulders. Two more captors had just cut him from the rope tied around his waist, so the walking crew hefted the condemned from his knees to his feet and guided him back down the pier, shoving him onward if he slowed for an instant. The doomed man prayed softly in Arabic as he walked with his hands secured in front of him, his eyes on the wooden planks at his feet, not on the water, not on the dozens of bodies floating just off the end of the pier . . . not on his dead friends and comrades.

  The walk was thirty seconds in duration, and then the prisoner’s sandaled feet stopped in the pool of blood at the end of the wooden planks. Here the lead executioner waited, his Kalashnikov hanging low from the sling around his neck.

  The executioner said nothing. The prisoner in orange knelt; he showed no emotion but only continued to pray, his eyes closed now.

  The two men who had delivered him here took a step back; their own boots and pants and even the ammunition racks on their chests were covered in blood splatter, and they kept their weapons raised, barrels just behind their prisoner’s ears, but they did not fire. They looked on while the executioner raised his Kalashnikov, glanced towards the cameraman back at the edge of the pier to make certain he was getting all this, and then shot the young man in his right temple.

  Half of the man’s head exploded, spewing outwards three meters above the water; the body spun and tipped forward and dropped into the bloodred lake face-first with a splash that was identical to the twenty-five other splashes that preceded it.

  The escort team had already turned away to take the next man in the rapidly shrinking row of prisoners.

  Forty-two now.

  There were Iraqis and Syrians and Turks in the row left to be killed this morning on the banks of al-Azzam Lake, and soon the escorts had their hands on the shoulders of a twenty-eight-year-old with matted hair curled in an afro, blood smeared on his face, and a black eye, and they pulled him up and along, beginning his short stroll to his death.

  That left forty-one in the row of tied and kneeling men in orange jumpsuits, and the next man to wait his turn looked much the same as the others. Filthy tangled dark hair in his eyes, flecked with bits of rubble and glass. His head down in supplication, his gaze averted from the impossibly horrific scene going on before him. Blood was caked on his bearded face from the beating he had taken in the makeshift prison the night before, and his nose was swollen; a punch to his jaw had left it scraped and bruised, and he was unable to open it fully. He also had a savage cut above his right ear and a bloody gash over his left eye.

  Still, he was not much worse off from the rest of the prisoners still alive.

  The main difference between him and the others was a small distinction and would serve as no comfort to them. He’d die first, and they’d die after.

  * * *

  • • •

  The prisoner to the left of the man with the beaten face raised his head now, defying the orders of the captors, and he looked at the horror around him. His name was Abdul Basset Rahal, and he was Syrian, a rebel soldier in the Free Syrian Army; he had been captured late the afternoon before along with the prisoner with the beaten face who was next in line to die. Rahal was a brave twenty-four-year-old, but he was scared now; he was human, after all. Still, he took solace in the fact that he would be martyred by his death, like all of the others save for the man on his right. Rahal felt sadness for the beaten man at his shoulder, because he had done so much to help; he had been a lion in battle, a true hero in their righteous cause, and now he would die without achieving martyrdom.

  Because he was no Muslim.

  Abdul Basset Rahal had only met the man the day before yesterday, but already the Syrian thought of the American as a fellow warrior, a kindred spirit, and yes . . . even as a friend.

  The Syrian found some peace in the fact that he would share his last few breaths with this great soldier, and peace in the fact that the ISIS captors had not learned that this man was a Westerner, because th
ey certainly would have made a bigger show of his death for the camera, and whatever manner they would have chosen, it would have been so much more horrible than a simple rifle shot to the temple.

  The American was lucky; he’d get a bullet to the brain and then it would be over.

  Rahal looked back down at the salty shore between his knees as the two escorts returned.

  The American was cut away from the others; there was a scuffle of boots on the rocks, and then the American was grabbed by both shoulders, yanked to a standing position, and pushed away, hauled off along the waterline and towards the pier.

  Rahal called out to him, careful to speak in Arabic, because although he spoke English fluently, doing so would tip off the ISIS monsters of the American’s true origins.

  “Habibi!” Friend! “I swear it has been my great honor to fight and die alongside you.”

  For his words Rahal received a rifle butt to the back of his head, knocking him onto his face and pulling other prisoners down with him by the rope tied around their waists.

  But the American either had not heard him or did not understand, or perhaps his jaw was just swollen shut, because he made no reply.

  * * *

  • • •

  Courtland Gentry’s bare feet slapped along the wooden pier; the coarse twine wrapped around his wrists in front of him bit into his skin. The AK barrels held by the men at his sides jabbed against his low back, and he felt the eyes of the other fourteen ISIS gunmen behind him. He’d counted them when they got out of the trucks, and he counted them again as he was brought to the water’s edge with the others.

  He passed the unarmed cameraman and kept going, glanced up now, and focused his eyes on the blood-drenched far edge of the pier. The masked man with the wired-stock AK and the daggers in his belt beckoned him with a bored wave of his rifle; he was a thick man, but even so, Gentry could see that the executioner had his chest puffed out, no doubt for the video and the attention paid to him by all on the hillside, confederate and enemy alike.

  The American prisoner continued forward; his fate lay at the end of this pier.