dozen airports along the route we expect Gentry to take across Europe in the next forty-eight hours. I will oversee and coordinate the activities from here, and I will pass on any intelligence I may be able to obtain. Each team that takes part in the hunt and survives will be paid one million dollars plus any expenses incurred. The team that kills Gentry will be paid a bonus of twenty million dollars.”
“What’s America going to do if we kill him?” asked a man with a booming African voice.
Lloyd turned to the Liberian feed, but he was not certain. “This has been addressed by the leaders of your organizations. This man is already marked for death by the U.S. government. There is shoot-on-sight sanction at the CIA. He has no friends, no close family. No one on this earth will cry for him when he dies.”
Next someone spoke in an Asian language. When he finished, a translator asked, “Where is he now?”
“He flew to Prague last night. I have our agents asking around at hotels for him, but there is no way to know if he is still there.”
“Which team is being sent to Prague?” someone asked.
“The Albanians. They are closest.”
“That’s hardly fair!” shouted a South African.
Lloyd, in silhouette, took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No offense to the Albanians, but I don’t think the first team he encounters will be the one that gets him.”
There was grumbling on the Albanian feed, but it was quickly extinguished with hisses.
“We will kill Gentry in the next two days, yes. But we will likely do it through attrition. Many of you may die.” He paused a beat, a halfhearted attempt to act like he gave a shit. “That said, we don’t know that the Albanians will get the first crack at him. He may well have moved west by the time your plane lands. If that is the case, if we do pick up his trail past Prague, we will put you back on your plane, and you will take up a new ambush point closer to the final destination. There is no clear advantage to being farthest east, I assure everyone.”
Lloyd sat up straighter in his chair. His silhouette appeared thin but athletic. “Let me finish by saying this. Do what it takes to get the job done. I could not possibly care less about collateral damage. If you can’t stomach a few dead kids or dead pensioners or dead puppy dogs, then don’t get on my goddamn airplane. Your job is to kill Court Gentry. Do that, and you will make millions for your organization and garner the thanks of the Central Intelligence Agency. Fail, and you will most likely die by his hand. You would be well served to avoid worrying about anything else.
“Any questions?”
There were none.
“Then, gentlemen . . . game on.”
At four fifteen in the morning a LaurentGroup security officer from the firm’s massive truck farm in Brno, Czech Republic, showed Gentry’s photo to a sleepy hotel desk clerk at a narrow four-story inn in the Stare Mesto, the old town of Prague. The old man behind the hotel counter looked at the photo for a long time, said he could not be sure, but upon taking payment of five hundred crowns from the beady-eyed stranger, he changed his tone. He was certain the clean-shaven man in the picture and the bearded tourist in his attic room were one in the same.
The surveillance agent called Lloyd immediately. He was an employee of LaurentGroup, and Lloyd was under strict orders to keep company people away from any direct action, so Lloyd instructed him to go home.
“A team is on the way,” Lloyd said.
“If you need him dead, I’ll do it for one hundred thousand crowns.”
Lloyd chuckled into the phone. “No, you won’t.”
“Are you saying I can’t handle—”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Fucking Americky prick.”
“I’m the fucking Americky prick who just saved your worthless Czech life. Go home. Forget. You will receive a bonus for your good work.”
“I hate Americans.”
Lloyd laughed out loud as the line went dead.
TEN
Gentry awoke at five in the morning. The bullet wound in his thigh stung and throbbed; it had been anything but a good night’s rest. He sat up slowly and painfully, leaned forward to stretch his lower back and ham-strings, stood, and tilted hard to each side. He wanted to spend the day moving. He had not yet decided on a destination, but he knew the sooner he left the hotel, the better.
After a quick trip to the bathroom to relieve himself and check the dressing on his leg, he dressed in the same clothing as the night before. He then looked out the window for signs of surveillance. Finding nothing amiss, he descended the stairs and left the building at twenty-five minutes past the hour.
He had created a mental to-do list for the day. One, go to his local cache here in Prague and retrieve a small handgun. He would not be doing any more flying; the plane trips of the last twenty-four hours were an anomaly in his life, because Court hated to be unarmed. He only boarded commercial aircraft as a last resort, had flown no more than a dozen times in the past four years. Now, as he walked unarmed through the darkened and deserted cobblestone streets of Prague, he felt naked. The only consolation to his martial needs was a small Spyderco folding knife in his waistband that he’d bought off a Kurdish policeman. It was better than nothing but inferior to any sort of firearm.
After hitting his cache he’d need to get out of town: pay cash for a cheap motorcycle and just buzz on out of Prague. Maybe spend a week or so moving from village to village in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. He hoped this would keep him safe until the Nigerian president left office and, hopefully, left him in peace.
No one could disappear more quickly or cleanly than the thirty-six-year-old American.
As Court walked towards the subway, he decided to place one more important item at the front of his to-do list. He smelled fresh coffee wafting from a little cafe just opening. And at that moment he felt he needed coffee as much as he needed a gun.
He was wrong.
A dense fog filled the dark street in front of the cafe, and it began to rain just as Court climbed up a pair of steps and entered the tiny eatery. It was just five thirty; he had the impression he was the first customer of the day. Court knew enough Czech to extend a greeting to the young girl behind the counter. He pointed to a steaming urn of coffee and a large pastry, watched the pale-skinned girl pour a foam cup full of rich black brew and place his breakfast in a bag.
Just then the doorbell dinged behind him. He glanced back to see three men enter, close umbrellas, and shake fresh rain from their coats. They looked local, but Court could not be sure. The first man glanced up at him as Gentry took his purchases over to a tiny stand with milk and sugar to dress his coffee.
Court looked at a glass-covered flyer promoting a poetry reading that hung on the wall, gazed idly at the window at his right, towards the dark and rainy street.
A few seconds later, he was out in the elements, ignoring the cold morning shower and walking towards the metro station at Mustek. There were no other pedestrians around; the cold and the rain and the early hour saw to that. Court did not mind the frigid air; he appreciated its ability to inject life into his tired muscles and still-fatigued brain. A few delivery trucks were about, and Gentry looked into the wet windshields of each as they passed. He found the entrance to the metro and descended the steep stairs. His still-tired eyes adjusted slowly to the harsh electric lighting around him, the cold, white tile reflecting the illumination from above.
He followed signs down a winding tunnel towards the trains. Another escalator took him deeper below the sleepy city, and another turn took him even farther into the brightly lit bowels of the metro station.
Shortly before a right turn in the passage, he passed a garbage can. In it he dropped his untouched coffee and his bag of pastry. Then he made the right turn, took two more steps, and stopped.
He flexed his muscles quickly. His arms, back, legs, neck, even his jaw tensed.
