Dead Eye cg-4 Page 38

  “Do it. We’re all going to disembark, but I’m going on alone.”

  “What are you doing?” One of the targeting officers was listening in on the transmission from the rear of the cabin.

  “I can’t risk having a dozen men enter that building without knowing what the hell is going on. Especially with the Townsend gunmen hitting it at the same time. I’ll go in alone, stay low profile and assess the situation. I’ll call in the team once I have Ettinger.”

  After another minute of prodding, Court still had gotten nowhere with Ozgur, but he wasn’t ready to give up. “If you direct me to someone who can get me what I need, I’ll happily pay you a finder’s fee.”

  Ozgur said, “You don’t listen, man. I’m out of that. I went to prison, got out, and just want to live a normal life. Not have to deal with crazy bastards like you showing up at my door, scaring my kid and my wife. I want no part in you anymore. Just leave—”

  The Turk stopped talking and looked up. The thumping of the helicopter outside the building increased.

  Court could tell it was hovering just above the roof. “Is that normal?” he asked.

  Ozgur looked back at the man in the dark hallway. “You see? You just bring trouble! I don’t want no trouble!”

  Court grabbed Ozgur by the collar of his T-shirt and shoved him up against the wall. “I need a fucking gun!”

  “I don’t have no gun! None! Zero! Let go of me and get out of here, you crazy American fuck!”

  Gentry slammed the Turk once more against the wall in frustration, turned, and sprinted toward the stairwell.

  The Sikorsky landed next to light eleven P.M. bridge traffic, and the twelve-man team climbed off, along with Yanis Alvey. The Metsada operators wore their handguns only, as their rifles would not go unnoticed in the thick urban neighborhood. As the helo turned and skimmed the water of the lake, departing to the north, Alvey instructed the younger men to disperse themselves quietly throughout the St. George neighborhood around the target building, and to keep comms open between themselves. Alvey had his mobile phone and would contact the Metsada assault team leaders if he had a target for them.

  Gentry made it down two flights of stairs before he heard a noise far below him at the ground floor. Men had entered the stairwell; he thought he heard at least two, but he could not be certain, because above him now he heard more men, coming into the stairwell from the seventh floor.

  Court left the stairs on the third floor, opening the door to find the space totally involved with construction. It was dark, a warren of half-formed rooms and open ceilings exposing metal girders and insulation. Building material and equipment were positioned all around.

  The door behind him shut with a loud click.

  Court stopped and looked around. There were good places to hide, but Court knew time was against him. He had to get out of the building before his opposition had a chance to seal off the exits and begin a comprehensive search.

  He moved forward, into the dark, wishing like hell he had a fucking gun.

  Yanis Alvey headed south through St. George. For the first minute or two he received a few open stares from passersby and shopkeepers who’d seen him climb out of a huge helicopter, a novel enough occurrence around here, but soon he was blocks away and he’d melted into the foot traffic in the seedy district. Drug dealers openly offered to sell him their wares, prostitutes bundled against the cold stood in stoops and called out to him as he passed, and Middle Eastern thugs eyed him as a potential mugging victim as he made his way confidently and unafraid, causing them to look elsewhere for easy prey.

  His thoughts were focused on Ruth Ettinger. He had no idea if she was here or not, but he was operating under that assumption. Clearly Townsend suspected Gentry was here, and Yanis worried that Ruth would not extricate herself safely from an altercation between a crew of gunmen and the most infamous freelance assassin on the planet. He was not sure he would be able to rectify the situation with merely his presence, but coming alone had been an easy decision for him.

  He was certain he did not want to add one more ingredient to the dangerous concoction by calling in a dozen more gunmen just yet.

  Jumpers Seven and Eight had been set as a blocking force on the ground floor of the building, and originally they had planned to stay in the lobby, but the noise of the door clicking shut came from the stairwell near the lobby, and this sent them in search of their target. After peering into the first– and second-floor hallways and finding them to be quiet, they entered the third floor of the apartment building and found it to be an unlit construction area.

  “Jumper Seven to Jumper Actual.”

  “Go.”

  “We’re going to clear the third floor. It’s open construction. No locked doors. We’ll keep the stairwell under observation.”

  “Roger that. Seventh floor is clear and the helo is watching street level. I’ll send two more your way via the southeast stairwell.”

  Seven turned back to Eight and whispered, “I don’t think he had time to get too deep back there. Cover me from here, but keep a lookout on the stairs in case he’s not here.”

  Eight nodded, and Seven shined his light on the end of his pistol and began searching the area.

  He saw a complicated framework of metal beams, plumbing pipes, and heating ducts. The entire floor was a large skeleton, free of wallboard and full of dark recesses. He sniffed the air for a hint of another human’s presence, but his nostrils only filled with the scent of plaster and dust. He moved slowly in a firing stance, listening closely for noise, but heard nothing but the sound of his own heart.

  Eight called over the interteam radio. “I can’t see you. Come on back and wait for the rest of the team.”

  Seven did not reply; he just moved deeper into the darkness. He stepped quickly around a pallet of building materials, shining his light on the empty space behind. Where the fuck is he? He jacked his pistol away from the floor and back up the hallway. He took one more step forward and concentrated his attention on the far reaches of his light, an unfinished flat at the end of the hall.

  With neither sound nor warning a black form swept in front of his face. Close, not two feet from the tip of his nose. His pupils all but spun to change focus from lighted distance to darkened closeness, but before he could identify what had fallen from the ceiling he felt an impact on his hands. He lost his grip on the pistol as something slammed against his wrists. The dark figure had swept through the air from above, swinging from his left to his right. The pistol flew across the room and out of sight, the tactical light going dark as his forefinger came off the pressure switch.

  The dark movement whipped back in front of his eyes again, this time from right to left. He heard a whoosh and felt another impact, just a soft tugging below his chin. He lurched back, away from the moving shadow, and reached up to put his hand to his throat.

  Jumper Seven felt the spray of his own blood before his fingertips were within a foot of his neck. The figure appeared again, and he saw it was a man, hanging upside down by the knees from a crossbeam. He righted himself nimbly and silently, and he dropped to the ground.

  Seven wanted to call out to Eight behind him, but he could not make a sound. He took one more step back, away from the target, but slipped in his blood and fell on his back. Then the target disappeared in the dark. Seven looked to the ceiling and tried to understand what was happening to him; soon he realized he had not taken a breath in several seconds, tried to, and choked on a mouthful of blood.

  His brain did not want to accept the fact that the Gray Man had just slit his throat and walked away.

  After five minutes walking through the darkened streets, Yanis Alvey made his way to the downstairs entrance to the Bremer Haus Apartments. He found the door open, and it led into a dark and dirty ground-floor lobby that smelled like rotten food. To Alvey the feel of the place was more Tunisian ghetto than German, and he suspected the majority of the inhabitants of the building were indeed Middle Eastern or North African.
For a Jew, especially a Jew who worked for Mossad, it was not a terribly inviting atmosphere.

  He bypassed the bank of dodgy-looking elevators and found a stairwell on the southeastern corner of the building. Once inside, he looked up. Each landing had a small bare bulb high on the wall above it, but the stairs themselves were unlit. The stairs were also metal, so Alvey slipped off his shoes and carried them in his hands so as not to make noise as he began ascending. He kept his pistol in his shoulder holster, as he knew there was a good chance he would run into Townsend men or civilians, and he needed to remain low profile.

  “Jumper Eight to Jumper Seven? How copy?”

  Eight stood in the stairwell with his boot propping open the door and his tactical light under the barrel of his gun illuminating the area in front of him.

  He took his support hand off his pistol to switch his radio to broadcast to all elements, but as he looked down to find the right channel he heard a noise directly ahead. He looked up just in time to see a figure appear from the dark just to the right of his flashlight’s beam. He jerked his weapon toward the threat but staggered back, dropped his gun to the metal landing, and brought his hands to his neck.

  A knife had embedded in his throat. He tried to scream, but quickly his scream was squelched by a hand over his mouth.

  The Gray Man held the man down and he drew the knife from him, and then buried the blade once again in the side of Jumper Eight’s neck, silencing him completely and permanently.

  Court hefted the man’s SIG Sauer pistol from the metal landing, slipped it into his waistband, and then dragged the body back into the construction area, hiding it perfunctorily. He returned to the stairwell and listened for any noise. He heard a door open high above him, and men began descending; he kicked off his boots quickly, picked them up, and began running down the stairs as fast as he could, certain all remaining threats were above him.

  Alvey climbed up the stairs in his stocking feet, ascending slowly, listening for any sound of activity on the floors as he passed them.

  The lightbulb above the second-floor stairwell exit was burned out and the landing was dark. Alvey paused at the door, listened to it, and decided there was no team of Townsend men running around in the hallway on the other side.

  He turned away and began climbing again, but a man spun around the landing between floors two and three, taking the stairs down three at a time, and the two men collided violently in the low light.

  Both men slammed into the wall of the stairwell and tumbled down half a flight of stairs before crashing down on the second-floor landing.

  Court landed on his side and rolled onto his back. As he did so he scanned the hands of the man in the dark with him, trying to determine in a fraction of a second whether he was a threat or just some poor schlub on his way up the stairs after a long day at work. He saw empty hands, which relieved him, but as soon as the other man pushed himself back up to a seated position across from him, Court saw his right hand move under his jacket.

  Court checked the man’s eyes; they were locked on his own and widening with excitement.

  Court’s right hand instinctively shot to his waist.

  “No!” he shouted, but he saw the matte black butt of a pistol coming from under the jacket. Court drew the gun he’d just taken from the dead Townsend man from his waistband and angled the barrel up toward the threat, taking no time to raise the weapon to eye level or extend it toward his target.

  The man in the suit swung his black pistol out toward Court as he himself began to shout.

  Court fired twice from the hip, no hesitation between shots, and a pair of quick crashing reports echoed in the stairwell. Both nine-millimeter rounds hit their target, and the other man slammed against the wall and dropped to his back on the landing.

  Court kept his gun on his target while he rose to his feet. He crossed the landing, kicked the pistol away from the wounded man’s outstretched hand, and then trained his weapon high up the stairs, searching for any other threats.

  The men who had been in the stairwell above him had apparently left the stairwell to check another floor.

  Court holstered the SIG Sauer pistol, pulled a flashlight from his pack, and shined it on the man.

  “You don’t look like Townsend. Christ. You’re Mossad, aren’t you?”

  The man just blinked; he did not answer.

  Court knelt down and opened the man’s coat and then ripped open his shirt and found a Kevlar vest. One of the rounds had hit him in the chest, and the vest caught it perfectly.

  The second round struck below the ballistic protection, however, in the lower abdomen. Blood flowed with the rising and falling of the wounded man’s breath.

  Court shined his light on the man’s face and asked again, “Mossad?”

  This time the man nodded. His face was covered with sweat, his skin tone was ashen, and his pupils were unfixed.

  “Oh shit,” Court said softly.

  He pulled on the wounded man’s down coat and the man fought weakly, not sure what was happening. Court got it off in seconds, however, and he wrapped it into a tight ball and pushed it into the wound. He placed the man’s hands over the ersatz bandaging. “Press down. I’m going to check your back for an exit wound.”

  Court rolled him on his side; the wounded man groaned in agony. Court felt around at his low back at first, then expanded his search, feeling the shirt for any sign of blood or torn fabric.

  “Okay, no exit,” Court said. “If your men get you into surgery fast, they just might be able to save your life. If they spend the rest of the night chasing me around”—Court shrugged—“then you’re pretty much fucked.”

  Court stood back up. The ashen-faced Israeli just stared up at him.

  Court saw the astonishment in his face.

  This was the remorseless assassin known as the Gray Man?

  Court heard shouting coming from the third floor now. Obviously the Townsend men had found their dead colleagues. Court drew his gun again and held it at his side. He looked back down to the injured man and said softly, “You should have listened to Ruth. You are making a mistake. You are chasing the wrong man.” He shrugged. “If it were me, I wouldn’t want to die in the middle of a mistake like that.”

  Without another word he picked up his boots from the landing, then turned and descended the staircase, his pistol in front of him scanning for threats.

  Yanis Alvey kept the pressure on his stomach up with one hand while reaching into his pants pocket with the other. He pulled out his phone, pushed a button with a bloody thumb, and brought it to his ear.

  Weakly he said, “It’s Alvey. I’m hit. I’m in the stairwell.” He took a slow breath. “Approach with caution.”

  He dropped his phone so he could use both hands now to keep the rest of his blood inside him.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Russ Whitlock spent the night at an abandoned Townsend safe house in an old apartment building on Rue Kelle in the southern Brussels neighborhood of Saint Pieter Woluwe. Townsend had leases on dozens of locations in the area, and he knew they would not be able to check them all in the short time he would be here, so he was unconcerned about the potential for compromise. He awoke early, ate breakfast at a nearby patisserie, and then returned to his flat to redress his wounded hip.

  He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and winced as he took off yesterday’s bandages. They were yellow with pus and black with blood; his injury had become infected and swollen from a week of lackadaisical treatment and constant travel and movement. As he cleaned and bandaged it again, he told himself that after today he could take as much time as he needed to take it easy and let it heal.

  He returned to his bedroom and pulled a black trunk out of the closet, laid it on the floor, and opened it.

  Inside was an Accuracy International L115A3 rifle in caliber .338. He’d retrieved the weapon the evening before from a locked trailer on a farm owned by Townsend just outside the city. This safe house was abandoned at the moment, bu
t Russ knew a stockpile of weapons was cached there, so he dropped by, picked the lock of a storage trailer, and removed a rifle and a Glock 19 pistol, along with ammunition for both weapons.

  Now he slipped the sniper rifle into a bag used to hold cross-country skis, and he tossed several loaded magazines in with it. He would not look in the least bit out of place heading to his destination with his rifle in the backseat of his rented BMW 5 Series, seeing how the suburbs of Brussels were thick with snow-covered tracks perfect for an afternoon of cross-country skiing.

  The Townsend Government Services Gulfstream touched down at Brussels National Airport at five A.M. A dozen men climbed off the aircraft and into a heavy predawn snow shower. Lee Babbitt and Jeff Parks, along with the ten men of Team Dagger and another two-man UAV team, quickly climbed out of the weather and into two minivans and a Mercedes, and they headed east through a moonless predawn.

  By six thirty A.M. they had set up their base of operations at the farmhouse in the town of Overijse, and here they linked up with the six surviving members of Team Jumper. Beaumont and his men looked tired and worn after losing two operators in Hamburg and then driving through the night, but Babbitt assigned two of the Dagger men to Jumper so Beaumont’s team would be at full strength.

  Babbitt and Parks checked in with the Townsend House signal room, and Lucas and Carl worked with the second UAV team to set up two mobile ground control stations in the back of the minivans. At the same time, the direct action operators went through the weapons cache located in a horse trailer next to the barn outside. They distributed pistols and submachine guns to the Dagger men and inventoried their other options.