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PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley trade paperback edition / October 2011
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Karen Mayer, James Rollins, Marcie Silva, Marleni Gonzalez, Devin Greaney, Mireya Ledezma, Svetlana Ganea, James Yeager, Jay Gibson, Paul Gomez, Tactical Response, GetofftheX.com, Mystery Mike Bursaw, CovertoCoverBookstore.com, Devon Gilliland, Bob Hetherington, Patrick O’Daniel, the Andersons, the Leslies, Alex Slater at Trident, Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski and Amanda Ng at Penguin, and Jon Cassir and Matthew Snyder at Creative Artists Agency.
Special thanks to my agent, Scott Miller at Trident Media, and my editor, Tom Colgan at Penguin.
MarkGreaneyBooks.com
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
In Mexico, if you have a problem and turn to the police, then you have two problems.
PROLOGUE
The manhunter knelt at the front of the canoe, scanned the far bank as it appeared around the river’s bend. Thick green rain forest morphed slowly into a rustic brown village, a settlement of hardpacked dirt and wood and corrugated rust built along the water’s edge.
“This is it?” he called back to the Indian steering with the outboard motor. Only by necessity had his Portuguese improved in the past months.
“
The manhunter nodded, reached for the radio tucked between his knees.
But he stayed himself. He needed to be certain.
Seven months. Seven months since the call came for him in Amsterdam. A rushed consultation with his employer, a flight across the Atlantic to Caracas, a mad dash to Lima, and then south.
Ever south. Until he and his prey came to the end of the world, and then the chase wound back to the north.
Ever north.
He’d been on the target’s heels, to one degree or another, for all this time. The longest hunt of his storied career.
And it would end here. One way or another, the hunt for Courtland Gentry would end right here.
ONE
Outside Quito, the manhunter had come close. He’d even called in a kill team, but they’d gone wanting for a target. Foolish of him, a false start could dull their fervor the next time; he would not cry wolf again. He’d caught fresh wind of the target in northern Chile and a hint of him farther down the Pacific coast, but then he’d lost the scent in Punta Arenas.
Until Rio and a lucky break. A visiting jujitsu student from Denmark had seen an Interpol Wanted poster while in his embassy filing for a lost passport. He’d run into another white student at a dojo in the favelas. Nothing to that, but the Dane knew his art, and the white man’s fighting style showed hints of other disciplines: hard, brutal, warrior tendencies that he tried to hide from those around him. The Dane recalled the Wanted poster. It was no obvious match, but he felt compelled to contact the authorities. Something about the man in the dojo had uneased him. A look, an edge, the hint of suspicion on the part of the white student, as if he knew that the Dane was sizing him up for some reason.
The manhunter got word of the sighting, arrived on a private jet mere hours later. The suspect did not show for class that day, or the next. The manhunter brought in local reinforcements for the legwork; dozens of men combed the favelas with photos and cash. Many of the crew were roughed up or threatened on the mean streets of the lawless slums, one man even relieved of his wallet and knifed in the arm. But the canvass paid off: someone talked; someone pointed a finger; someone whispered an address.
The manhunter went to have a look. He was not a shooter himself, he hadn’t fired a weapon since his days in the Royal Netherlands Army, fighting the Angolans in the 1970s. But he did not want to spin up his gunmen-in- waiting on another wild-goose chase, so he left eight armed men up the street as he went on with only two. A horrid, run-down neighborhood, a shit-stained building, a piss-scented thirdfloor hall with a darkened doorway at the end of it. The manhunter’s hands shook as he used another border’s key and crept inside, his gunners just behind him.
A human form moved in a blur off a top bunk bed; the manhunter’s life flashed before his eyes. Then a backpack heaved upon the blur’s shoulder, and the blur was out a window, a full two stories down. The manhunter rushed behind him; the gunmen fired their weapons, tearing up the bed and the wall and the window frame in the blur’s wake. The men reloaded as the manhunter reached the window, watched the target land and roll onto another rooftop, float across an alleyway to another building like a flying squirrel, and then leap and roll down to ground level, the explosions of small-caliber rounds chasing after him down the street as the two gunmen belatedly returned to the fight.
The target was gone. The bunk he vacated left no clues but the warmth on his tattered blanket.
That was ten weeks ago.
