The Gray Man (46 page)
The Tech spun in his chair and placed the call to the home office.
Gentry had no intention of calling Riegel back. Every second he delayed his attack on the château was another second the defenders could ready themselves, search the grounds for him, bring in more reinforcements. And it was more time they could use to kill the girls.
No, he had to move now. The grounds were awash in the morning’s light as he lay in the apple orchard at the back of the property. Through the gray mist he could just make out a faint outline of a large, looming structure on a rise ahead of him. He’d covered a quarter mile since he’d dropped over the wall, and he was still easily two hundred yards from Château Laurent.
The open ground in front of him was his biggest concern. Once he broke free from the coverage of the tree line and the thick fog hanging in the air, he would be completely exposed. Also, there was a helicopter flying circles high in the air. He could not see it, but its beating rotors announced its presence above the property.
This would be hard enough even without his multitude of injuries, but regardless of his poor personal circumstance, he knew there was no more time to waste. Court rose to his kneepads, then slowly up to a crouch. He felt blood on his left leg and knew it was again draining freely from the knife wound. The heavy dose of speed he’d introduced to his bloodstream would increase his blood loss significantly.
“Fuck it,” he said aloud. He unslung the M4 and hefted it in his arms.
He stood.
Then ran forward with every ounce of strength he possessed.
As soon as the Tech alerted the security cordon around the château that the Gray Man was outside, Serge rushed from the kitchen into the library and flipped the monitors back on. He knew the infrared cameras would pick up anyone hidden in the vapor. Intently he stared at one display and then the next. Back and forth he scanned. Soon his eyes locked on an image. His hand lunged for the radio on his desk. He broadcast to all elements in the château.
“Movement in zee back! Movement in zee back! One man, and he’s coming fast!”
Lloyd came over the radio. “Where? Where the fuck is he?”
“Coming through zee orchard.
Mon Dieu
, he can run!”
Mon Dieu
, he can run!”
“Where in the orchard?” screamed Lloyd over the radio.
“He’s running right up zee middle!”
The spotter in the tower broke in over the same channel. His thick Belarusian-accented voice was calm, the antithesis of Lloyd’s shriek. “I do not have a target. We do not see any . . . Wait. Yes. One man, coming fast! We’ll take him!”
Maurice had left Gentry an impressive array of equipment, but Maurice was decidedly old school, and the gear Court was forced to use was not ideal to his needs. The Colt rifle in his hands wore iron sights; there was no scope or holographic sight like the high-tech wizardry Gentry preferred on his weapons. As he broke through the mist, the château forming clearer in front of him with each labored footfall of his sprint, he made out the turret of the tower above. He knew this would be a sniper’s hide, and he knew this man would have the best skill and the best scope and the best rifle and the best chance to put a stop to Court’s ridiculous one-man assault.
So the Gray Man raised his rifle to his shoulder, still at a dead run. Targeted fire with the iron sights while running was impossible; his goal was to simply pour as much lead as he could at the tower to keep his enemies’ heads down until he could make it to the building’s wall. Court knew there was no one in the house with as much close quarters battle training or experience as he. He just had to survive long enough to make it to close quarters to have any sort of chance of success.
The sniper saw the target shoot out of the fog in front of him. Wisps of vapor swirled in a vortex behind him as he ran. The thirty-year-old Belarusian adjusted his aim and placed his crosshairs on the sprinting man’s chest. He brought his finger to the trigger for a quick center-mass shot. He noticed body armor under the tactical vest and lowered the buttstock of the big Dragunov a millimeter to move the crosshairs up to the sprinting man’s forehead. As his fingertip began to press on the tight trigger, he sensed more than saw his target’s primary weapon rise in front of him. Flashes from the muzzle of the weapon and the cracks of rifle fire. The sniper heard pops and explosions in the stone and wood of the turret and smoky dust filled the air around him as high-speed metal jacketed rounds collided with hundreds-year-old masonry. His spotter cried out to his left, but the sniper was disciplined. He did not remove his cheek from the rifle; he did not remove his eye from his scope.
Confidently he pulled the trigger at the man storming towards him.
THIRTY-FOUR
Gentry had fired almost an entire thirty-round magazine at the tower looming above him as he closed on it as fast as possible. He wanted to finish the magazine with a couple of more accurately placed shots towards the tower, so he brought the black rifle up to eye level in front of him to make an attempt to get some sort of a sight picture through the round ghost ring sight on the gun’s carry handle. Just as he did so, the rifle slammed back into his face, ripped out of his hands, and flipped up through the air.
Court ran on, empty-handed.
After no more than four or five steps across the wet lawn, his face burning from the blow of his buttstock below his eye, he realized his M4 must have been hit by a round from a high-powered rifle. Though he’d lost his primary weapon behind him, he understood the gun had saved his life, deflecting a sniper’s bullet to his head. Without a loss of stride, he reached down and pulled the squat MP5 submachine gun from its resting place on his chest. He fired again at the tower, now no more than one hundred yards away. The MP5 was about as effective as a fly swatter for a sprinting man covering open ground and engaging a tiny, distant window without a sight picture, but he hoped it would at least keep some heads down.
The sniper had seen the running man reel from the impact of his shot, and then he lifted his head away from the scope to attend to his partner. The spotter had taken a piece of stone masonry to his face. His glasses were broken, and he was bleeding from the forehead, but he was coherent and not badly hurt. Just then, more gunfire erupted from the back garden. With surprise, the Belarusian sniper looked back down and saw the man he was sure he’d just put a bullet through continue his charge. From the reports of the gun in his hand, the man in the tower knew the Gray Man had switched to a nine-millimeter submachine gun. Quickly he sat back at the table behind the Dragunov. Took up his position behind the scope in under two seconds. Suddenly new cracks of rifle fire erupted, this time from behind him on the other side of the château. For a moment he did not understand what was going on, until the voice of one of his countrymen below came over the radio on the table.
“It’s the Libyans! They’re at the front gate! Tower, take them out!”
Reluctantly the sniper lifted the big Dragunov from the table and took it to the front portal of the tower. The Gray Man was someone else’s problem now; he needed to engage the distant targets, the Libyans.
The Gray Man was no longer distant. He was close.
Just outside the sniper’s tower, the black Eurocopter hovered low above the roof’s walkway. Four heavily armed Saudi operators in tactical gear poured out and dropped the six feet to the flat eastern roof. They ignored the gunfight now raging at the front of the building. Instead, they all took up positions behind the decorative battlements overlooking the back garden and the lone man running towards them over open ground.
As Gentry closed on his objective, he redirected his fire from the tower above the château to a first-floor window where bright muzzle flashes flickered. Gentry emptied his first magazine at the window in front of him. The walls around the window pocked, granite snapped off in dusty chunks, glass shattered, and the lace draperies whipped left and right as a few lucky shots from Court’s rifle found their mark though the space. It was difficult firing at a full sprint, impossible to accurately aim. Court saw no more muzzle flashes from the window but instead noticed the sleek, black Eurocopter above and in front of him, and the men who leapt from it.
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