The Gray Man Read online

  Slowly, when it all was over, the Frenchwoman slid down the bumper of the car to the ground. She laid the rifle in front of her, and her empty hands shook as she covered her face and cried.

  Court fought hyperventilation as he cleared the four bodies from the road. He heard a helicopter above in the lightening morning. With the hedgerows on both sides and the high wall surrounding Château Laurent, the chopper would have to fly directly above to spot his position, but Gentry knew every second he stayed exposed on the dusty road was a gamble.

  Quickly he checked the trunk of the car for any equipment he could put to use. Immediately he found four sets of level 3A body armor. All but worthless against a rifle-caliber bullet, but damn effective stopping pistol fire. Quickly he pushed his head through a vest and Velcroed the side panels tightly around his waist. Also in the back were hard-shell tactical knee and elbow pads. He put these on as well, figured a scuffed elbow would be the absolute least of his many worries in the next few minutes, but there was no sense leaving an ounce of protective gear behind.

  Then he sat down in the driver’s seat of the little Citroën, shoved it in gear to drive into the thick hedgerow in an attempt to conceal it from the air. Looking down, he realized he’d popped some if not all of the sutures Justine had used to tie his stomach back together. His knife wound bled and wet his bandages and his shirt under the bulletproof vest. Blood trickled out of his stomach, down his pants, and onto the car seat. “Shit,” he said aloud. Once again he was operating on borrowed time.

  After hiding the bodies and the car and tossing the AKs into the bushes, he went to Justine, who was still kneeling by the car. She wiped tears and strands of tousled hair from her eyes. Slowly she rose to her feet.

  She looked towards the bodies poorly concealed in the bushes. Discarded. Arms and legs splayed unnaturally. “They were bad men, yes?”

  “Very bad. I had to do it, and now I have to go over that wall and do it some more.”

  Justine did not respond.

  Court began opening the aluminum cases, cinching a utility belt tightly around his waist, hooking the drop-leg pistol holster on his right thigh and the sub-load magazine carrier on his left. “I’m out of time. I have to go.” He slung the M4 assault rifle over his neck and left arm and fastened the small HK MP5 submachine gun, muzzle down, to the vest on the chest rig he’d taken from the blue Citroën. He slid the Glock 19 pistol into the thigh holster and Velcroed the two fragmentation grenades into place on the vest. From the front seat of the car he took the satellite phone and jammed it into his hip pocket.

  In just under three minutes he was ready. He turned back to Justine, who stood silently behind him, still looking at the exposed legs of the four shattered corpses. “I’ll need to use the hood of the car to climb over the fence. Once I clear the top, I want you to back up, turn around, drive back up the coast. Go west, not east. Park this car at the next train station you see, get on the first morning train to Paris, and go home. Thank you again for everything you’ve done for me.”

  Justine’s eyes were distant. Gentry knew killing the four men in hand-to-hand combat right in front of her had shaken her badly. It would upset anyone, he thought, at least any normal person who did not live his life.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked gently.

  “Are you a bad man, Jim?” she asked, her pupils still wide from the fight.

  He put his hand on her arm, held it gently if uncomfortably. “I don’t think so. I’ve been taught some bad things. I do some . . . some bad things. But only to bad people.”

  “Yes,” she said. She seemed to clear a little. “Yes.” She looked up at him. “I wish you luck.”

  “Maybe, when I’m done with this, we can talk—”

  “No,” she interrupted. Looked away. “No. It’s better I try to forget.”

  “I understand.”

  She hugged him briefly, but to Gentry she felt distracted, as if she took him as some sort of animal now after his brutal display of violence. She clearly just wanted to get away from him and all this madness. Without another word, she climbed into the driver’s seat of the car, and he got up onto the hood. The painkillers she’d given him while he slept provided some relief. Even so, climbing the wall was pure agony for a man with such a savage wound in his abdomen, to say nothing of his wrist, leg, and rib cage.

  Gentry slid over the top of the stone wall, hung his feet down, dropped into soft grass, and heard the little four-door back away and turn around in the road. Court looked down at his watch. It was seven forty a.m.

  The heavy fog totally obscured the château. All he could see was the beginning of an apple orchard in front of him. Bright red fruit lay on the ground under row after row of small trees with narrow trunks.

  Court checked his gear one last time, took a deep breath to control his aches and pains, and began running through the orchard and into the deep gray mist.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “Shut it down,” Riegel said.

  The two Frenchmen who’d been staring at the bank of monitors in the library for twelve hours straight did as they were told. They began flipping switches from left to right, turning off the images from the infrared cameras around the property.

  Lloyd appeared behind them all in the library’s doorway and asked, “What are you doing?”

  Riegel answered, “Infrared cameras are for the night, Lloyd. It is no longer night.”

  “You said he’d come at night.”

  “I did, yes.”

  “But he’s still coming, right?”

  “It does not appear so,” answered Riegel the hunter, his voice tinged with both confusion and dejection.

  “We’ve got fifteen minutes to get a body for Felix. What the fuck are we going to do?”

  Riegel turned to the younger American. “We have a helicopter overhead and over one hundred men and women looking for him. We have thirty guns right here at the château, waiting on him. We’ve shot him. We’ve stabbed him. We’ve sent him down a mountain, off a bridge. We’ve killed his friends, we’ve bled him dry. What else can we do?”

  Just then the Tech’s voice chirped over the walkie-talkie feature of both men’s phones. “We have a couple of problems.”

  “What is it?” asked Riegel.

  “The Bolivians have left the contest. They just called from Paris to tell us they quit.”

  “Good riddance,” snapped Lloyd.

  “And the Kazakhs are not checking in.”

  Riegel lifted his phone from his belt. “They never check in.”

  “The Saudis’ chopper can’t find them on the road.”

  Lloyd spoke into his phone now. “We would have heard gunshots if they were in battle with the Gray Man. Don’t worry about it. The bastards probably ran off like the Bolivians.”

  Lloyd and Riegel walked back up the two flights of stairs to the third floor. Both men were dead tired, but neither would allow the other to see any sign of weakness. Instead they argued over what could have been done differently and what last-minute actions could still be taken.

  They entered the control room and immediately noticed Felix standing by the window, his mobile to his ear. After a few seconds, the thin black man in the suit disconnected his call and turned to face the room. He had not spoken a word in hours. “Gentlemen, I am sorry to say your time is up.”

  Lloyd stormed up to him, wild-eyed. “No! We’ve got ten minutes. You’ve got to give us a little more time. You saw him fall into the water. We’ve fucking killed him. We just need time to find whatever ditch he crawled into to die. Tell Abubaker you saw him fall—”

  “Your instructions were to produce a body. You have failed in this undertaking. I have reported this to my president. I am sorry. It is my duty. You understand.”

  Riegel’s broad shoulders dropped, and he looked away. He could not believe the Gray Man, if alive, had not come to save the kids.

  Lloyd said, “Any second he’ll turn up. Abubaker doesn’t have to sign over the co
ntract until he leaves office in another hour.”

  “It is now a moot point. I notified the president of your progress . . . or should I say, lack of progress. He signed your competitor’s contract while we were on the phone together. I’ve been instructed to return to Paris to await further instruction.”

  Riegel nodded slowly. He said to Felix, “You can fly back with the French engineers. They will be leaving for Paris within the hour.”

  Felix nodded in polite appreciation. “I am sorry this endeavor did not work out for you. I appreciate your professionalism and hope our interests will coincide again someday.” The German and the Nigerian bowed to one another. Ignoring the American, Felix left the room to ready himself for departure.

  Riegel looked to the Tech. “Notify the teams. It’s over. They have failed. Let them know I will contact their agency heads this afternoon to discuss some sort of . . . consolation.”

  The Tech did as he was told. Then he flipped off the monitors in front of him. He pulled off his headphones and laid them on the table slowly. He ran his hands through his long hair.

  The three men remaining in the control room each sat alone with their own thoughts for a few minutes. The morning light shone through the window, seemed to crawl across the floor towards them, taunting them with their failure. They were to have their man by sunrise, and sunrise now mocked them.

  Lloyd looked down to his watch. “It’s five till eight. No sense in putting it off any longer.”

  Kurt Riegel was looking into the bottom of his coffee cup. He was exhausted. Distractedly he asked, “Putting what off?”

  “The obligations on the second floor.”

  “Sir Donald, you mean?” Riegel straightened. “I’ll handle it. You’d take all day.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “Not just Don. All of them. All four.”

  Riegel looked up from his chair. “What are you talking about? You want to kill the woman? The children?”

  “I told Gentry if he didn’t show, they would die. He didn’t show. Don’t look so goddamn surprised.”

  “He didn’t show. That means he’s dead. Why punish a dead man, you idiot?”

  “He should have tried harder.” Lloyd pulled the silver automatic from his hip and let it hang in his hand by his side. “Get out of the way, Riegel. This is still my operation.”

  “Not for much longer.” There was menace in the big German’s voice.

  “Be that as it may,” Lloyd said, “I still have a job to do, and I don’t see you stopping me. You can act all sanctimonious about that family, but you know they could identify us. Identify this place. They’ve got to die.” He pushed past Riegel and stepped into the hallway.

  On the Tech’s desk, Sir Donald Fitzroy’s phone rang. Lloyd reappeared in the doorway instantly. The young technician quickly sat back down and slipped his headphones back over his ears. Felix stepped back into the room, curious, his attaché in his hand and a camel-colored raincoat over his arm.

  The Tech put the call through the overhead speakers. Lloyd said, “Yes?”

  “Good morning, Lloyd. How are things?”

  “You are too late, Court. We lost the contract, which means you have failed. I don’t need the leverage of the Fitzroys anymore. I was just heading downstairs to put some bullets into them. Want to listen in?”

  “You need them alive more than ever now.”

  Lloyd smiled. “Oh really, and why is that?”

  “Life insurance.”

  “Yeah, Court? I watched you fall off that bridge last night. I don’t know where the hell you are, but you are in no position to—”

  “Forget about the contract with Abubaker. Don’t worry about your boss firing you. Put out of your mind Riegel’s henchmen showing up at your door some cold night. Ignore all your future troubles. Right now, the only danger in your world is me.”

  “How are you a danger to—”

  “Because I’m heavily armed, I’m royally pissed, and I’m right outside.”

  In the control room there was a silent flurry of activity. Riegel moved to the window quickly, pushed the lace curtains aside with a fingertip. He scanned the heavy mist over the back lawn. The Tech lurched across the desk to his handheld radio and frantically began whispering the news to the guards on the property. Felix pulled out his mobile and charged into the hallway, thumbing buttons as he moved.

  Only Lloyd did not flinch. He stood as if his feet were stuck to the floor. “You’re bluffing. You just expect me to let the Fitzroys go because you say you are outside? What kind of an idiot do you take me for?”

  “An idiot with an expiration date. And I assume LaurentGroup’s grim reaper is listening in. Riegel, the same goes for you. You brush a hair on the heads of those kids or Mrs. Fitzroy, and you will die in that house.”

  Riegel spoke up. “Good morning, Mr. Gentry. If you are outside, why don’t you come to the front door? The Lagos contract is lost; our incentive to kill you has vanished. We’ve just called off the wet squads. The game is over. If you are really here, why not drop in for coffee?”

  “If you doubt that I’m in the neighborhood, maybe you should try checking in with the four smelly guys in the blue Citroën.”

  That sank in a moment. Riegel did not know what car the Kazakhs drove, but the Tech anxiously began trying to raise them again. As he did so, receiving no reply, he looked up to his two superiors with eyes of terror.

  Finally Riegel said, “Most impressive. A man in your condition still able to dispatch four tier-one operators without a shot fired. As I said, we have no quarrel with you any longer. Please come in and we’ll—”

  “You free the Fitzroys and hand over the SAD files, or I swear to God I will murder every last living thing in that house!”

  Lloyd had been quiet, his hands on his hips and his sweat-stained shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. But now he moved. Storming across the room to the Tech’s desk, he leaned into the mobile phone’s microphone. “Fucking bring it, you gimpy piece of shit! In the meantime, I’m going to take a straight razor to those two stupid little bitches downstairs—”

  Riegel pulled the American lawyer away from the phone, shoved him hard against the stone wall. He leaned in himself, cleared his throat. “Yes, Court? Could you allow us a few moments to discuss your proposal? You know how corporations are; we must call a meeting for everything.”

  “Sure, Riegel. I’ll check back in a bit. Take your time, no rush.” The phone went dead.

  Lloyd screamed to the Tech, “Get all the teams here, now!”

  Riegel held up his hand to stay the Tech. When he spoke, his voice was more reasoned. “For what purpose, Lloyd? The contract is not at stake anymore. The game is over.”

  “But the Gray Man is still out there!”

  “That’s our problem, not LauentGroup’s. Marc Laurent will not spend a dime for the foreign kill squads to protect us. There is no more twenty-million-dollar bounty to be paid out.”

  Clearly, Lloyd had not thought of that. He shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t have to tell the hitters that.”

  Riegel shook his head. “So instead of fighting one wounded man now, you want to piss off Marc Laurent and a half dozen nations’ security services, fight our corporation and six countries later? I know you are insane, Lloyd; that’s been established. But are you suicidal, too?”

  The Tech was looking back at his two bosses, waiting for instruction. Then he cocked his head to the side, put his hand to his headset. “Wait! All the teams are coming here anyway!”

  “Good,” Lloyd said, glad the matter was settled.

  “Why?” asked Riegel.

  “Felix contacted them. He’s offering twenty million dollars cash from Abubaker to the team that kills Gray Man.”

  “Perfect!” shouted Lloyd. “How soon till they—”

  “Not perfect!” said the Tech. “He’s told them to kill anyone who gets in their way. Including the other teams! Including us. They are going to fight each other for Gentry’s head right her
e at the château!”

  Kurt Riegel did not hesitate. “Pull all the Minsk guards inside the building! Alert Serge and Alain, and the three UK guards. We must defend these walls against all threats! The Gray Man or the kill squads.”

  The Tech looked up at Riegel. “The Libyans will be here in moments! The Saudis are overhead now!”

  Riegel looked out the window a final time. “Call LaurentGroup Paris. Have an evacuation chopper scrambled to get us out of here! Then raise the kill teams, tell them we can still work together. Tell them Court is outside. Tell them we won’t let anyone in the castle. They need to kill him before he gets in.”

  The Tech spun in his chair and placed the call to the home office.

  Gentry had no intention of calling Riegel back. Every second he delayed his attack on the château was another second the defenders could ready themselves, search the grounds for him, bring in more reinforcements. And it was more time they could use to kill the girls.

  No, he had to move now. The grounds were awash in the morning’s light as he lay in the apple orchard at the back of the property. Through the gray mist he could just make out a faint outline of a large, looming structure on a rise ahead of him. He’d covered a quarter mile since he’d dropped over the wall, and he was still easily two hundred yards from Château Laurent.