The Gray Man (38 page)
After a beep indicating his call had been put through, he heard, “Tech, go ahead.”
The watcher was trained, was good, but he could not hide the excitement in his voice. This, even more than the money earned from the jobs, was what he lived for.
He said, “Tech, this is Sixty-three.” A very slight pause. “I have him. He’s moving east on foot.” He needn’t say more. The Tech would have his location on the GPS.
Moments like this fueled the watcher, kept him off the drink for long enough to see the mission through. He’d done well, he knew it, and now he would go home and celebrate with a jug of wine. And he would celebrate in the same manner in which he worked.
Alone.
The call was broadcast over a net that ensured all five kill teams in Paris would hear the news simultaneously. This was a mistake on the Tech’s part; it all but assured discord among the competitors, did not allow for fallback teams and coverage of escape routes. But the young Brit could not help himself; they’d been a half day without a positive sighting of the target, and it was only an educated guess that he would go to Paris at all, so when the ID came through, he just sent every man with a gun towards his location.
He would never admit it to Lloyd or Riegel, but since the target had disappeared in Geneva, the Tech had been fighting a growing wave of panic. He’d run operations, black operations, wet operations, had overseen logistics of hard assets, but never at any jeopardy to himself. This was the first time his superiors had purposefully set up a scenario where the hunted man, an überkiller, had known good and goddamn well where the operation’s control center was and how to get there. The bad guy had been given a golden-engraved invitation to come to the Tech’s physical location, and that was just fucking stupid. Still, the ponytailed man amid the huge table of technology had to admit, it did have the effect of focusing his skills acutely on the matter at hand.
The Tech had a personal incentive in getting this son of a bitch before he got to the château, and for that reason he’d just broadcast the target’s current coordinates as soon as the confirmation had come through.
Lloyd appeared behind him suddenly, just as he was admitting to himself he’d made a stupid move. His superior’s proximity made him jump a little. This entire operation made him jumpy.
“Riegel heard on the radio! We’ve got him?”
“A watcher on Boulevard Saint Germaine, a first-rate veteran, spotted him at a choke point. It was a low-probability sighting, to tell you the truth. Can’t tell from his known-associates list where the hell he’s going.”
“We aren’t going to lose him, are we?”
“I’m sending a couple more watchers into the area. Not too many. The Gray Man would surely spot anyone who isn’t topflight.”
“Understood. Which kill team are you sending to go after him?”
The Tech hesitated, cringed. Surely Lloyd would be furious when he learned they all were on their way. But before the Tech could answer, Lloyd said, “Fuck it. This ends now. Send every goddamned gun you have after this bastard. Who gives a shit if it gets messy? We’ve got to get his ass right there.”
The Tech breathed a sigh of relief that deflated his lungs. “Yes, sir.”
The Botswanans and the Kazakhs were closest; they ran from different ends of the Latin Quarter, arms down by their sides to keep their coats from flapping open as they jogged and revealing their weapons, their eyes fixed to the next obstacle in front of them and ears tuned to the radio headsets in their ears. The Tech relayed the last known whereabouts of the target. He was out of the initial watcher’s field of view now, but pavement artists were moving closer, and their intel would be relayed.
The Botswanans, five men, each carried sidearms, caliber .32, a relatively weak bullet, but they augmented their marginal firepower with their tactics. These men were trained to execute three-round strings of fire called a Mozambique Drill: a pair of rapid shots to the chest and then a third, coup de grâce, to the forehead. The term and the tactic came from fighting in Mozambique, when a Rhodesian soldier found his small-caliber handgun had trouble downing an African with shots only to the chest, so he added a headshot for added effect.
The four Kazakhs wore small Ingram machine pistols with folding wire stocks under their winter coats. Their running stood out to a policeman, and he called out to them as they sprinted across the street. He took them for foreigners up to no good and made a few hand motions to tell them to slow down.
One member of each kill squad also carried a digital video camera attached via Bluetooth connection to their mobile phones. This way they could prove to those at the command center that they were the unit responsible for the termination of the subject and the team who warranted the top prize.
This was, after all, still a contest.
Each team knew from their earpieces that the other was approaching the last known whereabouts of the target from the opposite direction; this rushed them as much as the need to close on the target before he disappeared. This was more than a hunt—it was a competition, and to these teams, professional pride meant as much to them as did winning the money.
“All elements, this is the Tech. We have two watchers three blocks east of the last target sighting. Neither watcher has reported any signs of the target. He may have stepped into a hotel or café on the street, turned south into the Latin Quarter, or north towards the Pont Neuf to cross the river.”
Both teams, closing from opposite directions, slowed and conferred after getting this last intel from the Tech. Then both teams continued on. The Botswanans ran east on the Saint Germaine, the Kazakhs west on the Saint Germaine. They spread out to cover both sides of the street in groups of two or three, each small team of hunters looking in doorways, alleyways, cafés, and hotels along the way.
Song Park Kim ran along the roofs of the buildings, got ahead of his quarry’s last sighting. His earpiece came to life. From the distinctive beeps, the Korean could tell the transmission was not open to the other teams and watchers. He was the only one receiving.
“Tech to Banshee 1, do you read?”
“I read.”
“Find a way down to street level, and I will guide you to him. He’ll ID the other teams and the watchers and try to get away. They will force him to flee, and he won’t be expecting a single assassin. I’ll put you in position to stop him.”
“Yes.”
Kim stepped over the edge of a six-story apartment building’s roof, fluidly found footing on a windowsill. lowered himself down, reached across to a drainpipe, and swung his legs over. The pipe was poorly attached to the wall, so he used it only to make his way to a fire escape, followed it down, and dropped the final few feet to the ground, six floors of descent in under a minute.
“Banshee 1 is on the street, Tech. Guide me to the target.”
“There are two teams closer than you, Banshee 1. We think he’s turned onto the Rue de Buci, sticking with the crowds for security. You can move two blocks north and be in position to cut him off if they don’t spot him.”
“Yes,” said Kim, but he had no intention of following this direction. The Korean felt he could read the Gray Man’s thoughts. Kim had been hunted many times, and from this experience, he felt he could divine this hunted man’s every move. If teams of foreign agents were following him through central Paris on a Saturday night, Kim would notice, and so would the Gray Man. If dozens of static watchers were placed in his path, Kim would be immediately aware of it, and so would the Gray Man. He might not identify every single adversary, but the Tech had thrown so many bodies into the operation, it would have to be obvious to an operator as skilled as the Gray Man that he was facing a full-on wet operation, that all the stops had been pulled and all normal rules of engagement and restraint were out the window. There would be no safety in a crowd. The gunmen that the Gray Man surely had spotted by now were going to take the first opportunity to destroy their target, and bright lights and passersby would be more hindrance than security blanket to the hunted man.
Yes, Kim could feel what the Gray Man was feeling just now, and he allowed this symbiosis to guide him, not the directives of the Tech. This melding of the minds between Kim the hunter and the Gray Man the hunted steered the Korean assassin through the misty night, three blocks to the east, to a darkened alleyway just a half block off the noise and lights and swarms of diners and revelers. He knew the river Seine was just a hundred meters to the north, meaning if the Gray Man detected the heavy surveillance, he would need to turn south to melt into the night; the north would afford him nothing but a bridge or two, natural choke points that he would avoid at all costs.
Song Park Kim found the darkest spot in the little alleyway, twenty-five meters north of the Boulevard Saint Germaine and twenty meters south of the Rue de Buci. He could move off in either direction in seconds if the watchers spotted the target nearby. But Kim had a feeling this little alley would be the site of his final confrontation with his adversary. There were restaurants and nightclubs brimming with patrons just yards from his darkened hiding space. Plus there were competing kill teams close by. He did not want to draw attention to his act by using a firearm, so he left the MP7 in the backpack on his shoulders. Instead, he pulled his folding knife from his front pocket, flicked open the matte black blade, and tucked his body deeper into the dark to await his prey.
Court Gentry felt his black suit moistening from the sweat running down his back as he walked east on the Rue de Buci. In his right hand his umbrella swung by his side with each step; he fought the urge to use it as a cane because his feet were hurting from the lacerations he’d picked up in Budapest the day before.
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