won’t sign just because we
“Then we have less than an hour to get killers to Szabo’s location and do the job before the agency boys get there.”
Gentry’s neck was sore from staring up at the plastic ceiling above him. He heard noises near the opening, so he yelled out, “How are you going to get me out of here before the agency assets come to kill us both?”
Szabo’s wrinkled face appeared above. “Once I have Sir Donald’s money, the only one leaving here will be me.”
“Fitzroy will kill you for double-crossing him.”
“Ha. I still have friends in the East. I have been looking for a way out. A half-million euros will be just about enough for a new start.”
“Look,” Court implored, “there’s more at stake here than you know. A family has been kidnapped. Two little girls have been taken, eight-year-old twins. They will be murdered if I don’t get to France in time to stop it. You let me out of here, and I swear you’ll get your money. You’ll get whatever you—”
“Two little girls?”
“Yes.”
“Murdered?”
“Not if I can get—”
Laszlo laughed cruelly. “You’ve obviously mistaken me for a man with a soul. The Russians had it surgically removed thirty-five years ago. I really could not possibly care less.” He disappeared from Gentry’s view.
Lloyd called Riegel, reached him in his teak-paneled Paris office. The German answered before the first ring ended. The American asked, “Do you have assets in Budapest?”
“I have assets everywhere.”
“Tier-one assassins?”
“No. Just a few pavement artists. I could arrange some low-class triggermen, I suppose, but why? Haven’t I provided you with enough alpha killers in the past twelve hours? Surely the Gray Man hasn’t chewed through them all yet!” His tone mocked the young lawyer.
“We sent the teams to the west. Gentry went south, to Hungary, apparently to get a passport to use to flee Europe after he’s finished in Normandy.”
“Prudent. Optimistic, but prudent.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t work out so well for him. The forger in Budapest double-crossed him. Locked him up. He just called Sir Donald to demand ransom.”
“Let me guess. Laszlo Szabo?”
“How did you know?”
“Let’s just say you can’t mention ‘Budapest’ and ‘double-cross’ in the same sentence without Szabo’s name coming up.”
“Can you get some men to his address in Pest?”
“Of course. Is it just Laszlo or does he have security?”
“It’s more complicated than that. Szabo also turned Court in to the CIA. They have a team racing to the location now. Supposedly they are an hour out.”
Riegel sighed, resignation now in his voice. “He falls into CIA hands, and the Lagos contract is history. If they take him, we won’t be able to prove to Abubaker if he’s dead or alive by Sunday.”
“Then we can’t let that happen. Right?”
“You want to send a team to shoot it out with American intelligence? Are you insane?”
“The CIA will think they’re men working for Gentry or working for the kidnapper. If your guys are any good, they won’t hang around to explain their motivation.”
Riegel thought a moment. When he finally spoke, it sounded to Lloyd as if the German was formulating the plan as the words left his mouth. “The Indonesian hit team is in the air at this moment. They are heading to Frankfurt, but they should be over south Central Europe right about now. Maybe we can divert them, get them on the ground and into the city in the next hour. We’ll be cutting it razor close, but it’s our only chance.”
“Are they any good?”
“Yes. They are Kopassus, Group Four. The best shooters Jakarta has to offer. Let me get to work.”
Captain Bernard Kilzer checked the altitude on the radio altimeter. It was a Wolfsburg model he was not entirely familiar with, as this plane was rented and not his normal craft. He was flying west-northwest at 37,000 feet. The Bombardier Challenger 605 was state-of-the-art, fly-by-wire technology. His duties and responsibilities as a pilot were great, but at this point, seven hours into his nine-hour flight from New Delhi to Frankfurt, there was little for him and his copilot to do other than stay awake, monitor the onboard systems, and scan the afternoon skies.
The two pilots had been flying, nearly nonstop, for sixteen hours. Their route had originated in Jakarta, Indonesia, at two a.m. local time. They’d flown west, stopped for fuel in New Delhi, and then immediately returned to the sky.
Normally, Captain Kilzer and his copilot, First Officer Lee, flew corporate heads around Southeast Asia. They also transported LaurentGroup scientists, critical IT personnel, anyone who was needed in any one of fifteen corporate facilities from the southern tip of Japan to the eastern edge of India.
In addition to these work-related trips, Kilzer and Lee also ferried executives and their wives on island- hopping vacations or to lavish parties in Brunei with the sultan himself. He’d once even shuttled company clients and Philippine call girls to a secluded tropical isle populated by French chefs and Swedish masseuses for a week of indolent debauchery.
Kilzer had flown all manner of LaurentGroup employees, but he’d never transported a group like the one he was hauling now.
Behind him in the cabin were six men. Indonesians, they looked to be young military types, but they wore civilian clothing. The cargo hold of the Challenger was full of green canvas rucksacks. The men kept quiet for the most part. On Kilzer’s trips out of the cockpit to the lavatory he’d glanced into the twenty-eight-foot cabin and had seen darkness perforated by penlights, some men poring over maps while others slept.
They seemed a disciplined group, heading out on some important mission, and Kilzer did not have a clue why he’d been tasked with ferrying them.
The bald-headed thirty-eight-year-old German pilot reached behind himself to retrieve his lunch box. The multifunction display flashed. His copilot said, “Ground-to-air call coming through for you from the home office on the secure link.”
“Roger.” Kilzer turned away from his meal and flipped a switch on the center console to send the impending transmission into his ears alone.
“November Delta Three Zero Whiskey, over?”
“This is Riegel speaking, do you read me?”
Kilzer knew Riegel was the VP of security operations for the entire corporation. The German was known as an incredibly tough bastard. Suddenly Kilzer had a better idea about the mission of the fit young men in the cabin behind him. “Loud and clear, Mr. Riegel. How can I help you, sir?”
“How close are you to Budapest?”
“Just a moment.” Kilzer looked to the copilot, an Asian with a British accent. “It’s Riegel. Wants to know how far we are from Budapest.”
First Officer Lee checked his flight’s location on the navigation management system. He typed into the keypad
