The Gray Man

It was just after three in the morning in London, and on the sixth floor of a whitewashed office building on London’s Bayswater Road, an aging man in a wrinkled pinstripe suit drummed his fingers on his desk. His face white, perspiration ran down his fleshy neck and soaked his Egyptian broadcloth oxford. Donald Fitzroy tried to relax himself, to remove the obvious worry from his voice.

The satellite phone chirped again.

He looked again, for the twentieth time, to the framed photograph on his desk. His son, now forty, sitting on a hammock on a beach, his beautiful wife beside him. Twins, both girls, one in each parent’s lap. Smiles all around.

Fitzroy looked away from the framed photo and towards a sheaf of loose photographs in his thick hands. These shots he had also given twenty looks. It was the same four, the same family, though the twins were slightly older now.

It was typical surveillance quality: the family at a park, the twins at their school near Grosvenor Square, the daughter-in-law pushing a shopping cart through the market. Fitzroy detected from the angles and the proximity to their subjects that the photographer was sending a message that he could have easily walked up to the four and put a hand on each of them.

Lloyd’s implication was clear: Fitzroy’s family could be gotten to at any time.

The sat phone chirped a third time.

Fitzroy exhaled fully, threw the photos to the floor, and grabbed the nagging device.

“Standstill. How copy, Fullcourt?”

“Five by five, Standstill,” said Dulin. He pressed his ear tight into the earpiece of the satellite phone to drown out the engine’s roar. “How do you copy?”

“Loud and clear. Report your status.”

“Standstill, Fullcourt. We have the package and have exfiltrated the target location.”

“Understood. What’s the status of your package?”

“Looks like shit, sir, but he says he’s good to go.”

“Understood. Wait one,” Fitzroy said.

Dulin rubbed a gloved hand over his face and looked to the back of the cargo airplane at his four operators. His gaze then centered on the Gray Man, sitting at the end of the bench. Goggles, a beard, and greasepaint hid his face. Still, Dulin could tell the man was exhausted. His back rested against the wall of the fuselage, and both arms hung over his M4. His eyes stared into the distance. Dulin’s crew was on Gray’s right, all geared up in a nearly uniform manner but segregated from the package by a few feet of bench.

Thirty seconds later, Donald Fitzroy came back on the line. “Fullcourt, this is Standstill. There has been a change in the operation. You and your men will, of course, be remunerated accordingly.”

Dulin sat up straighter. His brow furrowed. “Roger that, Standstill. Go ahead with the update to the op specs.”

“I need the delivery of the package canceled.”

Dulin’s head cocked. “Negative, Standstill. We can’t return to the airfield. It’s crawling with opposition and —”

“That’s not what I mean, Fullcourt. I need you to . . . destroy the package.”

A pause. “Standstill, Fullcourt. Repeat your last?”

The tone of voice over the sat phone changed. It was less detached. More human. “I have a . . . a situation here, Fullcourt.”

Dulin said, his own voice losing the clipped cadence of radio protocol, “Yeah, I guess you do.”

“I want him terminated.”

Dulin’s head was propped in his gloved hand. His fingers began strumming on the side of his face. “You sure about this? He’s one of your guys.”

“I know that.”

“I’m one of your guys.”

“It’s complicated, lad. Not how I normally do business.”

“This isn’t right.”

“As I said, you all will be compensated for this deviance from the original operation.”

Dulin’s eyes stayed on the package as he asked, “How much?”

Five minutes later, Dulin looked towards his men while reaching for his radio’s selector switch on his chest rig. He turned the dial a few clicks.

“Don’t say anything. Just nod if you copy.” Barnes, McVee, Perini, and Markham all looked up and around. Their eyes found Dulin up at the bulkhead and they nodded as one. Unaware, the Gray Man stared blankly at the pallet of equipment in front of him.

“Listen up. Standstill has ordered us to waste the package.” Across the thirty feet of open space in the well- lit cabin Dulin saw the stunned reaction on his men’s faces. He shrugged, “Don’t ask me, boys. I just work here.”

The four men on the bench with the package looked to him, saw him to be closest to the ramp, strapped in, with his M4 rifle on his chest and his bearded face gaz ing at the floor of the cabin.

They looked back to their team leader and nodded slowly as one.

SIX

Court Gentry sat alone near the closed ramp of the aircraft, listened to the engines whine, and tried to catch his breath, to get control of his emotions. His ass was on a mesh bench in the back of an L-100-30, but his mind was back down below, in the dark, in the sand.

In the shit.

The operator closest on his right got up and moved around the pallet, sat down on the bench facing him. Idly Gentry glanced to his right, noticed the extraction team’s leader adjusting his gear. He began to look to the other guys, but his head returned to the man at the bulkhead.

Something wasn’t right.

The team leader’s back was ramrod straight, and he had an intense expression on his face, though he wasn’t looking at anything in particular. His MP5 was across his chest; he adjusted the glove on his right hand.

And his mouth was moving. He was transmitting into his close quarters radio, giving orders to his men.

Gentry looked down at his own Harris Falcon radio set. He had been on the same channel as the rest of the team, but now he could not hear the transmission.

Strange.

Court turned to the three men next to him on the bench. From their posture, from their facial expressions, Gentry determined that, just like their leader, they weren’t decompressing after the tension of the extraction from the hot zone. No, they moved and looked like they were about to go into action. Gentry had spent sixteen years in covert operations, studied faces and evaluated threats for a living. He knew what an operator looked like when the fight was over, and he knew what an operator looked like when the fight was about to begin.

Surreptitiously he unhooked the strap securing him to the bench and swiveled in his seat to face the men around him.

Dulin was up at the bulkhead; he was no longer transmitting. He just stared at Gentry.

“What’s up?” shouted Gentry above the engine’s roar.