by Mark Greaney
Russ knew that the entry and exit wounds in his left hip weren’t anything like the size of that from a nine-millimeter round. They were much smaller; Beaumont would take one look at them and know he’d been shot by Trestle Team, and then everything around here would turn to shit. He knew he could take any three of the men in this room simultaneously; he’d undergone extensive hand-to-hand training to turn his body into an effective defensive weapon, and even though these guys would all be wearing sidearms Russ knew he could overwhelm the first wave or two with speed, surprise, and violence of action.
But he wouldn’t take out all eight of them. Especially with the wound in his side still slowing him down.
When he did not move, did not unbutton his jeans, Beaumont said, “I’m going to take that as a no.”
A phone rang on the UAV desk; none of the Jumper men standing around looked at it, but Carl answered it, then quickly put it on speakerphone.
“We’re all here, Metronome. Go ahead.”
Parks’ voice came over the small speaker. “Gentry is somewhere near the central bus depot. He bought a ticket from a counter about five minutes ago, and his bus to Gothenburg leaves in just over a half hour.”
Carl said, “Roger that. I’m sending the Shark there now, but we will only have viz if he is standing around outside.”
“That’s fine,” said Parks. “Jumper, I need you en route immediately. Get over there and smoke him out.”
“What about Dead Eye? I can keep him here under guard.”
Parks muffled the phone for a few seconds. When he returned he said, “Babbitt wants your entire team after Gentry. He wants you to let Whitlock go, but before you do, disarm him and lock him out of the safe house so he can’t get to the weapons’ cache. We’ll deal with him after we deal with Gentry. Make sure the UAV team is armed.”
Beaumont ordered one of his men to frisk Russ, and he did so quickly but roughly, slapping his hand against the bandaged wound on Russ’s hip while doing so. Russ wasn’t carrying a gun, but a small knife was confiscated, and the operator stood back. “That’s it, boss.”
Beaumont loomed over Dead Eye a few seconds more, then said, “This ain’t over, dude.”
Russ stared back at him, bolstered now that the situation had changed so radically. “No shit. You owe me a pair of boots.”
Beaumont gave another few seconds of stink eye to the smaller man, then looked away from him and yelled to his men in the room.
“All right, everybody. Saddle up!”
Ruth woke at five twenty-five A.M. to the buzzing of her cell phone. She quickly rolled to a sitting position and put it to her ear.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Mike.”
“You got him?”
“I’ve got something. Two SUVs drove past the station and parked across the street at the City Terminalin.”
“The bus station?”
“That’s right. And guess who popped out of the trucks?”
“The Townsend shooters?”
“Right again. Can’t see any guns on them, but I don’t think they’re here to catch a bus to the coast.”
Mike asked, “You want me to move closer? I’m at the train station with visibility of the main hall and the street outside.”
“Negative. I want you to stay right there. We’ll check out the bus terminal.”
She hung up the phone, grabbed Laureen by the leg, and shook her. “Up! We’re out of here in sixty seconds.”
The younger officer, like Ruth herself, had slept in her clothes. Also like her boss, she had developed the skill of waking up quickly and moving instantly after years of surveillance work. She sat up now and shoved her feet into her boots even before she opened her eyes.
Ruth banged on the wall to the other room, and Aron banged back. He’d managed to catch only an hour’s sleep after returning from his watch at the train station, but he was moving in seconds.
The three operatives were outside in the parking lot in less than a minute.
Russ Whitlock left the Townsend safe house in his rented BMW at the same time the Jumper team’s van raced off toward the bus station, but although he and Jumper were after the same target, Whitlock did not follow the van.
He had a different destination in mind.
He parked his car in a lot of the main hall of the Stockholm central train station at five twenty-five.
Court had not told him how he planned on getting out of the city, but the decision to go here instead of across the street was an easy one for Whitlock to make. As soon as Parks announced that Gentry had been seen on cam purchasing a bus ticket, Whitlock ruled out a trip to the bus station. There was no way Court would have made that mistake. If he bought a bus ticket, he did it to deceive anyone watching him through security cameras.
Russ knew with certainty that Gentry would be heading out of the area some other way. The train station was close by, just to the south of the bus terminal; it was big and it possessed a cavernous underground area that made for good places to lie low and, more than for any other reason, it was where Russ himself would go if he were in Court’s shoes.
He entered the main hall of the train station and then headed downstairs, his eyes open to any Mossad watchers that might be here inside the building.
The Israeli embassy Skoda pulled into the parking lot on the west side of the bus terminal, and immediately the three Mossad officers climbed out and started walking between snow-covered cars toward the terminal building.
Ruth had an open channel to her team on her Bluetooth earpiece. “Mike, do you have eyes on us?”
Mike was across the street on an upper floor of the train station, looking out a massive window. “I’ve got you. The Townsend guys are outside, north of you, walking along the line of buses. Suggest you move into the terminal and find static survey locations.”
“Roger that.” Ruth looked at her watch. The bus was due to leave in less than fifteen minutes.
Even at this early hour there were quite a few people in the terminal, either purchasing tickets or waiting for their buses inside the warmth of the building instead of out in the lot. Ruth and her team split apart, moved wide along the walls, and did their best to scan everyone in the crowd as they moved.
As Ruth walked along the eastern wall she said, “This doesn’t feel right. He’s not going to be in here, just standing around. Laureen, you stay up here, find a window where you can keep an eye on Jumper. Aron and I will go downstairs. If he’s here, he’ll be someplace quiet.”
The two Israelis took the stairs down to the lower level of the bus depot, and instantly Ruth felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. It was a large, almost cavernous hallway, nearly empty at this hour, with a coffee shop just opening for the morning directly across from the stairwell. To the right of the two Mossad officers, the hall continued the length of the terminal building and connected to a passage that ran under the street to the underground area of the train station. A few people stood in front of some automated ticket kiosks and a single employee sat in a ticket booth in the middle of the space, but farther on, the east side of the hallway was shrouded in darkness. There was apparently some sort of construction project under way down here; a large portion of the hallway was closed off. Non-employees were kept out with caution tape and plastic sheeting.
Ruth said softly to Aron, “If he’s here . . . he’s in there.”
Aron nodded, and the two of them crossed the hallway to the coffee shop and sat down.
Court Gentry stood in the darkened construction area behind a metal scaffold stacked with wallboard, and from here he could see Ruth and her partner as they appeared from the stairwell. They were some forty yards from him now, and Ruth had removed the blond wig she’d worn the evening before. Court identified her only because he’d noticed the evening before that her black coat had a reversible gray interior, so he’d been on the lo
okout for women in gray coats since he’d left the bar.
He’d been standing here for a few minutes, keeping an eye out for any surveillance. He had intentionally drawn his pursuers here to the bus station, showing his face on camera and purchasing a ticket, and he knew they would come for him, but he had no way of knowing how long it would take for their operation to identify him and move people to the location.
He was impressed; it hadn’t taken much time at all. A few minutes earlier he’d been upstairs and he’d seen the group of men moving through the bus lot outside. They were about as low profile as a couple of Abrams tanks, but he could tell as soon as he began to track them that they weren’t here to move quietly like mist. They were a kill team, and although he had judged their covert abilities to be pretty lousy, he did not want to wait around to evaluate their skill at killing people.
And now the Mossad woman was here. Ruth had told him the night before she was no longer working with Townsend, but the guys upstairs did not look like Mossad Special Operations, so he assumed she had lied to him and Dead Eye had told him the truth. Mossad and Townsend were, in fact, coordinating their hunt.
When Ruth and her colleague moved to the right of his field of view, Gentry knew they had gone over to the little coffee shop. This he took as bad news. Unless they just happened to be really lazy intelligence officers, the only reason they would take a break down here shortly after their arrival was that they decided this darkened, plastic-sheeting covered construction area was a potential location for their quarry to use as a hiding place. They’d be watching this area now, which meant he could not cross the hallway back to the stairs to go up.
But this was of no great concern, because Court would not be returning to the bus station. No, the southern wall of this hall had access to a tunnel that went under the street to the train station, and Court knew he could move through the construction area until he was out of sight of the coffee shop, and then head that way.
The train station had been his destination all along.
Court looked at his watch, determined his timing to be just about right, and began moving through the dark.
Ruth and Aron had eyes on about 85 percent of the construction area from their chairs in the coffee shop; only the southern tip of the dark enclosed area was out of view. This portion ran all the way to the tunnel that led to the Stockholm central station across the street, so she knew her target could make his way over there without her seeing him.
It occurred to her this might have been his plan all along.
“Laureen, what’s happening up there?”
“The Americans are still outside in the lot. They searched the area and then split into teams; now they are standing around in the crowd trying to blend in.”
Ruth said, “They must have intel he is due to leave on a bus.” She looked back down the hallway. “I don’t buy it. They might have spotted him here at the terminal, but I bet he just came over here to throw us off.”
Mike came over the net now. “I’ve got eight trains over here all leaving between now and six A.M.”
Ruth said, “Okay, we need to shift part of our operation over to the train station. Mike, I want you to go downstairs, head over to the tunnel to the bus depot; he might be coming via underground. If he is, I want you ahead of him, in a static overwatch. Laureen, cross the street and take up watch in the main hall.”
Ruth now turned to Aron. “I want you back upstairs, watching Beaumont to see what he and his guys do.”
Ruth herself stood up and began walking alone slowly toward the tunnel to the train station, planning to fall in behind her target if, in fact, he’d gone that way.
Mike Dillman took the stairs in the main hall of the station down one level and then turned to head north, expecting to find the tunnel that led to the bus depot across the street. There was a significant crowd of early-morning travelers here, moving through the passages toward the exits to the platforms, many rushing from their commuter trains to catch their longer-haul trains for more far-flung destinations around the country and abroad.
He’d made it about fifty feet through the brightly lit area before coming across a map of the station, and here he saw he needed to descend one level farther. He went over to an employee-only access door, tried the handle, and found it unlocked. Inside was a dimly lit hall with a large service elevator. He quickly stepped inside the car and pressed the button that would take him down one floor.
The service elevator doors opened to a dimly lit area that was clearly under construction. Next to him, a Dumpster the size of a car was full of broken brick and discarded PVC piping, and a long band of tape kept this area separate from the lighted passage directly ahead. Mike saw an older couple passing in front of him, from his left to his right, pulling rolling luggage behind them. They would be coming from the bus terminal, heading to the escalators down the passage that led up to the main hallway.
Mike decided this location was perfect for a static watch. Unless Gentry passed here with night vision goggles, or he happened to shine a light on the construction, he would have no way of seeing someone standing by the Dumpster in the dark fifty feet away.
Dillman stepped out into the dimness and looked into the light in the distance. He saw movement, a lone figure approaching, but he was still too far away to be sure if it was his target or someone else.
Mike settled into a spot between the elevator and the Dumpster, then whispered into his Bluetooth headset, “I’m static at the service elevator, just south of the passage. I have a possible sighting down here. Wait one. I’ll confirm and transmit again after he passes.”
“Roger that,” said Ruth. “I’m two minutes from your position, coming from the downstairs passage.”
Mike did not confirm Ruth’s transmission. Right now he concentrated on the man approaching.
Just as he squinted his eyes for a better look, though, he sensed movement right in front of his face. Before he could get his hands up to protect himself he felt a sharp biting across his throat and an instant constriction of his airway; his hands flew to the area and tried to pull whatever had him by the neck free, but it was tight, too tight to pull it off.
His brain knew what was happening, but he did not want to believe it. Someone, it had to be Gentry, had approached from behind him in the dark and wrapped a cord around his neck.
He was being strangled by a garrote.
Mike fought with all his strength. His rubber boot heels grabbed on the polished tile flooring; he pushed back, simultaneously firing his head behind him, desperate to slam his skull into his attacker’s face, but his attacker defended against the obvious tactic by keeping his head out of contact range. Dillman’s earpiece flew out of his ear and clinked along the floor, disappearing in the darkness.
Mike pushed again with his legs, his hands again clawed at the thin cord over his throat, and he felt the wetness of blood. He had no sense of falling, but he felt the impact as his body hit the floor along with the man behind him. He felt his attacker dig harder with the garrote and simultaneously drive his own shoes down on the floor, pulling both himself and Mike deeper into the darkness, dragging him behind the metal Dumpster.
Mike’s flailing arms weakened, and they dropped down. He felt blood all over his leather coat now, and when his hands reached out to find some loose item in the dark he could use as a weapon his hands slapped in the warm slick wetness of his own blood on the floor.
In the distance he saw the man approaching up the lighted passage coming closer; he would pass within no more than fifty feet within moments.
Mike tried to scream, to shout for help, but he had no open airway with which to do so. His legs kicked out, left and right, frantically trying to make some noise, but his attacker swung him to the right and then the left, counteracting his attempts by rolling him onto one hip or the other.
The passerby walked in front of Mike, but he was comple
tely unaware of what was happening in the darkness of the hall by the service elevator.
Mike tried to call out again, but he could make no sound other than a single low wheeze of air, and when he did this the garrote cinched even tighter around his neck.
As his vision narrowed, as his mind dulled and hazed and as his panic-stricken heart went from a furious pounding beat to arrhythmia and then arrest, he saw now.
He did not understand, but he saw.
The man passing in front of him was Courtland Gentry.
FORTY-TWO
Russ held the garrote around the dead man’s neck for longer than necessary, but he was winded, and the pain in his hip was excruciating. He dreaded rolling back up, climbing to his knees, and then standing, so he just lay there, the dead man on top of him.
This one had been a fighter. Deceptively strong.
Still, he was dead, Court had passed by without knowing what was happening in the dark, and by now he would be on the escalator back up to the platform access level.
He’d told Gentry he wouldn’t lay a hand on the Mossad, but just like in Nice, Russ had decided the tactical situation required a small adjustment to his initial plans. He was out of the loop with Townsend now, he couldn’t obtain any intel from them about their own actions, much less the actions of the Mossad, so Whitlock decided to improvise to help Gentry get out of the city.
With any luck Court would be on a train and out of Stockholm in minutes, free of the surveillance that had been on him here, and Russ’s operation would be back on track.
Russ struggled to his feet; he slipped the bloody garrote back into his coat pocket, and then he wiped his hands on his pants.
That was when he felt the blood on his hip.
Dammit. It wasn’t the dead man’s blood; no, it was his own. His gunshot wound had ripped open again.
Russ was done, for now. He couldn’t provide any more help for Gentry without running the risk of being compromised, stumbling along through a crowd with a growing bloodstain running down his leg.