Dead Eye cg-4 Page 39

  And in minutes they realized they had a problem.

  Beaumont called Babbitt and Parks outside, and the men stood in the snow by the horse trailer. “We’re missing a sniper rifle,” Beaumont said.

  “Missing?”

  “Yep. An AI .338. And a Glock 19. Ammo for both.”

  “Dead Eye,” Parks said.

  Beaumont spit tobacco juice into the snow. “That crazy son of a bitch is gunning for the damn PM of Israel.”

  Babbitt shook his head. “We’re going to get out there and end this.”

  He called everyone in to the kitchen of the farmhouse. “I want Dagger near the Dieweg Cemetery. Kalb won’t be there till one P.M., but if that’s where Whitlock plans on hitting Kalb I want you guys in the area, determining the possible locations he could take the shot from. Figure out the best options and then go to ground. Make yourselves invisible.”

  Dagger quickly began gearing up.

  Babbitt now looked at Beaumont and his team. “You will stay with me. We’re going to support the UAV teams. They are going to have to go mobile to cover the city, and if they get a ping on the Gray Man, then we want to be mobile and after him instantly.”

  Babbitt turned to the two UAV teams, who had just returned from setting up the UAV ground control station in the van. “I want full-time drone coverage today. I want Joe and Keith searching for Whitlock, and I want Lucas and Carl searching for the Gray Man.”

  Lucas half raised a hand. “What about Ettinger?”

  “What about her?”

  “If she’s with Gentry, maybe we can find her quicker than we can find him.”

  “How so?”

  “When we were in Stockholm I had the computer record Ettinger’s gait pattern so we could find her in a crowd.” Anxiously he said, “I wasn’t running surveillance on her. I did it just so I could keep tabs on her to make it easier to vector her in to any Gentry sightings.”

  Beaumont said, “You mean to tell me you can track the Mossad chick, same as you can Gentry?”

  “Yeah, even better really because, unlike Gentry, she doesn’t know we’re using the UAVs to hunt for her.”

  Babbitt nodded and spoke like the idea had been his all along. “Yes. Find me Ettinger. I can use her.”

  Whitlock drove south out of the city center, through the morning rush hour; his rented silver 5 Series blended nicely into the traffic in the upscale neighborhoods.

  As he drove his cell phone buzzed in the center console cup holder, and he slipped the earpiece into place. “Go.”

  “Hello, asshole.” It was Court Gentry, and Whitlock found this as fortuitous as he found it surprising. He’d lost comms with the Gray Man the day before, and he wasn’t even certain he’d survived the night.

  Russ smiled. “Nice to know you are still alive.”

  “The day is young.”

  “True.”

  Court said, “Bad news. Your little plan is dead in the water.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you need me to make it work. You want to kill Kalb, then kill me at the scene so I can take the fall.”

  Russ said, “In a perfect world that would have been ideal. I wanted you to follow me along on the Kalb hit. I knew you would never agree to the killing of the Israeli PM. You like to pretend your version of unsanctioned mass murder is cloaked in some sort of righteous and universal order, and Kalb wouldn’t fit the bill. So I was going to tell you I was after another target in London. There are a multitude of despots and shitheads attending that conference that I could have chosen from. I hoped to have you close by when it came time for the op, at which point I knew you would figure out I was gunning for Kalb, and you would try to stop me, but I also knew I could put you in the dirt. So Kalb would be dead, you would be dead, and what would I be? I would be the sanctioned American operative who had been hunting the Gray Man, and I would be standing there over your bullet-riddled body as Mossad surrounded me, and I would have tears in my eyes as I confessed I got there just an instant too late to save Kalb, and we would all cry together and they would thank me for doing my best and for killing the vicious assassin of their great leader.”

  Court said, “But your plan went tits up when Ruth Ettinger told Mossad all about you. They might not believe you are the man after Kalb now, but when you turn up at the scene of his murder they are going to realize Ruth had been right all along. Your little fantasy is never going to happen.”

  “It was too much to hope for,” Russ admitted. “But I’ll still do the hit. I’ll still get paid.” And then he paused. “And you’ll still get killed.”

  “Hate to break it to you, but I’m clear. I’m gone.”

  “I don’t believe that. You are here. I can feel your presence.” Whitlock thought it over, gazing now at a forested hill in the foggy morning distance, his destination. “This was inevitable. You and me, Court. Two locomotives, opposite directions, same track.”

  “I want you to stop this. Just walk away from Kalb.”

  Russ’s only response was laughter.

  Court said, “You say this is inevitable. But it’s not inevitable. You control this situation.”

  “That’s right,” Russ said, ominously. “I do. You are the one who isn’t in control. You can’t run away, you have to come after me, just like I planned. Good-bye, Court. I’ll see you next when I kill you.”

  Whitlock hung up the phone with a smile on his face. He heard it in Gentry’s voice. The Gray Man was committed to the cause, and he would play his part to the very end.

  Fifteen minutes later Whitlock parked his car on Verrewinkelstraat, pulled the ski bag out of the backseat, and began walking up the street. In moments he’d entered a forested stretch of private property midway up a steep hillside, and he trudged across frozen ground under a canopy of bare trees. Crows flew above him as he ventured deeper into the woods, heading west now, and after a hundred yards he took a narrow path that passed on a hill above a frozen pond full of trash runoff from the neighborhood higher on the hill behind him. He continued for a minute more, and then he ended up at the tree line, overlooking the expansive backyard of a farmhouse. Beyond the yard the landscape dropped off down the hill into a shallow valley, at the bottom of which were train tracks and then a residential neighborhood. Beyond this was another hill, sparsely populated by the residential Brussels neighborhood of Uccle, and then, some twelve hundred yards distant, near the crest of this hill, the ancient Dieweg Cemetery lay, in perfect view of Russ’s position here at the edge of the trees.

  A small greenhouse sat in the backyard of the farmhouse at the edge of the trees, and Russ entered the tiny building and stowed the ski bag containing his Accuracy International rifle.

  Twenty minutes later he was back in his BMW and heading north, toward the city.

  The midmorning sun shone bright on the blanket of snow that covered Brussels. Ruth stepped out of a small side entrance to the Gare du Nord with her oversized sunglasses protecting her from the glare, and a new hat on her head further shielded her eyes from the sun.

  As soon as she’d arrived at the station she stepped into a boutique and bought new clothes from head to toe, and then made a beeline to a bathroom where she began working on her disguise. She put her blond wig on, fixed her makeup, and changed into her new clothes. She wore her hair down, bangs low just over her eyes, and a pair of chic eyeglasses completed the look.

  When she left the station she was certain she had not been followed, and she was equally certain she was completely unrecognizable.

  She caught a taxi to La Maison Degande, an exclusive men’s suit maker on Avenue Louise, and here she crossed the street to a café and ordered coffee and a croissant. She sat in the window and kept her eyes on the street while she ate her breakfast.

  Ehud Kalb usually dropped in to Degande for fittings when he was in Brussels. This was known to Mossad, but she did not know if it was known to CIA. If it was, she thought it possible Whitlock would use this known point of access as the locati
on for his assassination attempt.

  That said, Ruth knew Dieweg cemetery was the more likely place for the hit. It was the most open and therefore the most vulnerable site, and while Kalb did not always go to Degande, his entire reason for coming to Brussels was to go to the cemetery to pay his respects at the grave of Piet De Schepper.

  Still, while she waited for Gentry to make it into the city to become her own personal action arm, she knew she needed to keep an eye out for the other American assassin.

  FIFTY-TWO

  After a half hour in the café with sightings of neither Whitlock nor Kalb, Ruth decided to walk Avenue Louise to increase her coverage area around the suit maker. She’d made it only a few blocks when a black Mercedes-Benz four-door pulled up to the curb in front of her.

  The door opened, and Lee Babbitt climbed out alone.

  Ruth stopped in her tracks, turned in the opposite direction, and began casually walking away. She heard the car drive off, and then, from behind, she heard, “Ms. Ettinger. I’m alone. I just want to talk. I’ve sent the rest of my men away.”

  She turned back to him, and he put up his hands in apology. “I tried to call you, but apparently you misplaced your phone.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “One of my guys saw you in the café in front of Degande.”

  Ruth did not believe him. She knew her disguise was complete, and she was an expert at covert surveillance. She’d seen no one suspicious in the area, certainly not one of the Townsend cowboys she’d run into in Sweden and Germany.

  But she did not let on that she found his explanation for her compromise suspect. Instead she said, “So, Mr. Babbitt. Why are you here? Are you here to help me stop your employee from killing my prime minister, or are you here to kill an innocent man?”

  “I won’t get into Gentry’s guilt or innocence. Your bias is stronger than my need or my will to convince you, but I do think we can work together.”

  “In what way?”

  “You want Dead Eye, we want Gentry.”

  “Do you believe Dead Eye has gone rogue?”

  “I feel certain he has,” he said, adopting a grave tone that she really did not trust. “We tracked him here last night but he . . . he got away. I think he is the real threat to your PM. I see that now. Our mutual friends in Langley, Virginia, are, unfortunately, not convinced. I am afraid their threat matrix only has room for one rogue ex-singleton operator. Occam’s razor, Ms. Ettinger. The simple solution is usually the correct one.”

  “They need to expand their horizons.”

  Babbitt shifted from one foot to the other in the cold. “As for Gentry. I realize you feel like he is being treated unjustly.” Babbitt paused. “The question you have to ask yourself is this. Is Gentry’s life worth more than that of your prime minister?”

  Ruth said, “Go on.”

  “I can lead you to Russell Whitlock. Today, before Ehud Kalb arrives.”

  “And the price for this prize, I assume, is me leading you to Court Gentry.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You are playing a very dangerous game, Mr. Babbitt. If I tell Tel Aviv you are using the leader of our nation as a bargaining chip—”

  “I have more contact with Tel Aviv than you do. They aren’t listening to you right now, and that surely won’t change before something very bad happens to your PM. I am just suggesting you tell Gentry where Whitlock is. He will go there, and we will stand back and let nature take its course.”

  She looked away. Thinking over what was being offered.

  Babbitt said, “I know the trouble you are in. You could go to prison.”

  “I don’t care about that. I only care about saving Kalb.”

  “That is my objective, as well.” He smiled a little. “My secondary objective, admittedly. But still, I want to avoid any harm to your PM. He is a good man.”

  Ruth hesitated a moment longer, then she nodded slowly. “I can deliver Gentry to you.”

  “Call him now. You can use my phone.”

  “He doesn’t trust phones. I have to meet with him, face-to-face.”

  “Where and when?”

  “I tell you that and my leverage is gone, Mr. Babbitt.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  She gave Babbitt the number to the phone she’d purchased the previous day in Sweden, and she promised to call him by noon.

  Babbitt said, “I will warn you now, my dear. If you attempt any sort of a double cross, we won’t be able to save your PM from Russ Whitlock. He was trained in the same program that created Gentry, you know. They are two very dangerous individuals.”

  “I will call you. You need to be ready to produce Whitlock when I do.”

  “That’s not going to be a problem,” he said.

  Ruth left Babbitt there on the street corner, waiting for his Mercedes to come pick him up. She continued up the Avenue Louise on foot.

  Ruth walked a couple of blocks and then placed a call to Court Gentry through her wireless headset.

  After a moment she heard his voice. “Yeah?”

  “Are you in town?”

  “Pulling into the station right now.”

  “Listen very carefully. Townsend is here. And they have their drones in the sky.”

  “I’m low pro. I should be able to—”

  “Court, they have a recording of your walking pattern. The drone can pick you out of a crowd of hundreds, thousands even. If you are near a train station you can bet they will be covering that. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Ruth kept walking up the street. “I’m sure. They are following me right now. The only way they could have done this is with my gait. Trust me.”

  While Court talked to Ruth through his headset he looked out the front of the Gare du Midi train station in the Brussels city center. He thought about all the clear sky above him, and the prospect that a nearly invisible drone could be programmed to pick him out of a crowd and send killers to his position.

  He quickly came up with an idea. “Okay. Thanks for the intel, I’ve got it covered.” He changed the subject. “What did Babbitt say?”

  “They know you and I are working together. He wants me to trade you for Whitlock. He wants me to send you to a location where Whitlock will be, and then, I assume, he and his men will sweep in and kill you both.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because it’s a trap.”

  Court snorted. “Of course it’s a trap. That’s pretty much the definition of the word trap.”

  “No, I mean we can use it to trap them.”

  “How so?”

  Ruth said, “Get a set of binoculars, good ones, and call me back. The UAVs they are using are new, and they only have enough electricity to run for a half hour, and their range is just a few miles. I’ll let them follow me to some remote place outside the city center where they’ll have to get in a vehicle to stay up with me. You get in a building and get eyes on the UAV, then follow it back to its base when it goes back to recharge.”

  Court nodded. “Where I will find the Townsend guys.”

  “Exactly. They can lead you to Whitlock.”

  “I like it,” Court admitted. “You’re pretty sneaky.”

  “I am indeed,” Ruth admitted.

  Court descended to the parking garage below the Gare du Midi and walked the length of vehicles until he found a motorcycle he liked. It was a BMW R1200 all-terrain bike, and he picked the lock with his picks, and then he hot-wired it just as he had the bike in northern Germany the evening before. He paid the parking fare and drove out of the lot, heading north, out of the city center, with his head fully covered.

  He drove until he found a sporting goods store in a suburb some ten kilometers from town. Here he bought a high-end pair of Nikon binoculars and a two-piece leather motorcycle suit and a helmet, both black. He also purchased a new backpack, a different size and style from his existing bag, and he transferred
his clothes, his money, his gear, and his trauma kit into it.

  He called Ruth back to find her position, then climbed back on his stolen bike and began racing through the streets of Brussels.

  Ruth headed out of town on the streetcar, hoping like hell the Townsend Sky Shark that she was certain was following her would be able to keep up. She climbed out at multiple stops and then boarded other trains, each time waiting at the stop and looking around, trying to make it appear like she was on a standard SDR and unaware of any eyes in the sky. In truth she was giving the UAV mobile team all the time they would need to find her, and to switch out drones as one ran low on power.

  She purposefully did not look for the drone. The last thing she needed was to tip her hand, to let Townsend know she was on to them.

  When Court called her back they both looked at satellite maps on their mobile phones and decided on a location that would suit their needs.

  Ruth entered a freestanding department store in Etterbeek a few minutes later, a five-story structure surrounded on all sides by smaller buildings. She rushed through the store to the escalators, then ascended to the third floor. Here she raced through the linens department, then through the furniture department, and made her way to the windows.

  Quickly but carefully she picked her way closer to get a view of the street, shielding herself with furniture and shoppers in case the Townsend UAV happened to be looking in the window even now.

  Lucas and Carl had told her in Stockholm that in crowded daytime situations they normally operated their drone close to the walls of buildings, doing their best to make it blend in to the urban landscape. As Ruth arrived at the window she began checking the buildings across the street, but she saw nothing with her naked eyes.

  She called Court and spoke to him through her headset. “I’m in position. Where are you?”

  “Street level, about three blocks east of you. I’m scanning the area with my binos, but I can’t see anything.”

  “Keep looking, it’s got to be here somewhere. He should be about three stories up.”