not perfect, you will bleed very badly. You could bleed internally, as well. It would be crazy for you to swallow one of those pills.”
“I’m not going to swallow one of the pills. I am going to break open three of them, pour the contents into a cup of hot coffee. That will break down the time-release coating, so I will get all of the effect instantly.”
“That is suicide!” she said. “I am not a doctor, but I know what that will do to your body.”
“This will help me stay sharp for a half hour or so. If I bleed out after that, well, that’s okay. I just have to do my job first.”
She began to protest, but he interrupted her. “We need new transport. Something local, something that will not draw attention.”
Justine shook her head in frustration. “There is a farmhouse just over there. Maybe you can borrow their vehicle.”
Court looked around the side of the hedgerow to the farmhouse, seventy-five yards away. Already a light was on in the window. An old, white, four-door, splattered waist-high with mud and manure, sat outside glowing in the window’s light. “Yeah, I’ll go
In the last hour before dawn, Riegel had the entire force at the chateau at full battle stations, because he fully expected the Gray Man to come then, if he was to come at all. The ten gunmen from Minsk were divided into three groups of two, patrolling the garden and driveway to the main gate, their Kalashnikov battle rifles in hand. Two more manned AK-47s on the first floor of the chateau; one watched out a window to the drive and the other a window towards the garden in the back.
The final two Belarusians were in the chateau’s turret above: one sniper with a Dragunov scoped rifle, the same man and the same weapon used to end the life of Phillip Fitzroy, and one spotter who wore an AR-15 on his back and looked out in all directions into the night with binoculars.
In addition to the ten Belarusians there were Lloyd’s three men from London, the Northern Irishman and the two Scots. The other Northern Irishman now lay discarded in the basement next to Phillip’s body. Two were in the kitchen, radios in their ears and submachine guns in their laps, waiting in reserve to be sent by Riegel himself to wherever the Gray Man appeared. The third, McSpadden, was in the hall outside of the second-floor bedroom covering the Fitzroy family.
There were also the two French engineers in the first-floor library, watching over the monitors of the infrared cameras positioned around the yard. These were both ex-infantrymen in their forties; they wore pistols on their hips and knew how to use them.
Finally there was the Tech, Lloyd, Felix, and Riegel in the control room. Of the four, only Riegel could be considered a real gunfighter. He wore his pistol in a shoulder holster underneath his suede jacket. Dangerous to others or not, Lloyd was armed with his small automatic, and a charged Uzi had been placed on the Tech’s computer desk, though the ponytailed Brit had never before been so close to a loaded weapon.
This made the odds nineteen defenders versus one attacker, but this was merely the inner line of coverage around the chateau. The four Libyan Jamahiriya Security Organization operators were in constant radio contact with the Tech, ten kilometers away in Bayeux. They watched the road from town to the chateau and the soon-to-open train station, the only reasonable route from Paris. The sleek, black Eurocopter flew lazy eights at high altitude, carrying the five Saudis. The chopper watched the roads down from Caen to the east and even along the coast to the north in case the Gray Man magically appeared on a Normandy beach like a one-man replay of the D-day invasion.
And the four Kazakhs, just in from Paris, patrolled in a small blue Citroen, their Kalashnikovs in their laps with the stocks folded. They drove through the countryside, pulled up behind early-rising drivers and checked their plates, shone bright lights into cars to scan the vehicle’s occupants.
The Kazakhs did not use their radios. Yes, they listened in to the Tech’s communication with the other teams, but they never acknowledged or responded to the Tech’s calls for them to check in. They were there to kill the Gray Man and make the money and go home. They would communicate with the men in the chateau only when they dumped Gentry’s body at the front gate and demanded their money.
Riegel oversaw the entire operation from the third-floor control room. He’d be the first to admit it was no fair fight, more than thirty armed men against one horribly wounded adversary who was operating with limited resources and little sleep.
But Riegel was a hunter, and a fair fight was not his game.
THIRTY-TWO
The early morning glow shone off the English Channel, and a hint of the morning’s first hues brushed the back of Justine’s shoulders as she drove the dirty white four-door west along the coastal road. She kept to the marked speed limit, read the signs carefully.
Her passenger seat and her backseat were empty except for several aluminum suitcases.
She motored alone, made a left in the coastal village of Longues-sur-Mer, did not speed up or slow down when a black helicopter swooped a couple hundred feet above her. It made a second pass and then a third before disappearing from her view, heading to the southwest.
She had the road all to herself for a while, but not long after the helicopter’s departure, a blue Citroen pulled behind her from a gravel lane to her left, dust and exhaust rising behind it. She chanced a glance into her rearview and saw nothing but bright headlights. They stayed close behind her for several hundred meters, and then the car pulled alongside. Justine gripped the thin steering column so hard she thought it would break off in her hands as a flashlight beam illuminated her, then scanned around behind her in the backseat. Then the light turned off, the Citroen pulled ahead of her, and she was certain she would see its brake lights come on, forcing her to stop. But the car sped away. Its taillights disappeared in the mist ahead after another minute.
After heading south for a few kilometers, she looked down at the map in her lap, noted the pencil marks Jim had put there for her. There was a left turn ahead, and she took it after flipping off her lights. The narrow road ran straight; thick hedgerows reached high on each side of her. After three minutes of driving through the darkness, the road turned to the south, but she slowed, bumped the little car off the pavement, and revved the engine just enough to send it into a deep thicket.
A large stone wall rose from the ground on the other side of the thicket, three meters high. From her view, it filled the windshield and seemed to reach up into the infinite sky. She bumped the sedan’s front bumper against it and turned off the engine.
It was nearly pitch-dark here with the high trees on either side of the narrow road. Quickly, she climbed from the driver’s seat. She was careful not to slam the door behind her. She knocked four times slowly on the trunk of the Fiat, a prearranged signal that all was well.
A moment later, the trunk lid lifted. Jim looked up at her from his tight squeeze inside, an empty paper coffee cup by his side and a black rifle in his arms.
“No problems?” he asked as he slowly climbed out. She could see the pain on his face that came with the movement’s effect on his injuries. He left the rifle in the trunk of the car, walked around to the side, stretching out after suffering the cramped confines of the trunk.
“There are men around. In a car and in a helicopter. I am sure there are more inside the property. They must think you are a very dangerous man to have so many people waiting for you,” Justine said as she stood behind the car in the road.
The American had pushed through the tall bushes on the passenger side to pull open the door to the backseat. “My reputation is exaggerated.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I want to thank you for all you’ve done. You’ve earned every cent of that money. I could not have done this without you.”
