8
October 28th.
Gray Man:
4:30am local.
Most of the city is not yet awake at this dark hour, so no one takes any notice of you as you pass through the old-world maze of narrow streets.
It’s doubtful that you would be awake either at this hour, if your window of approach wasn’t a scheduled pre-dawn delivery. Not that you’ve really slept—the stress of anticipation kept you at least semi-awake all night, hallucinating countless variations of what you imagine will play out when you get there, your brain rehearsing a fight you can’t possibly predict.
You know better. Pretending you could anticipate what will happen is what killed Sarah. The future will never be as we envision it—and that, as one of your wiser teachers pointed out, is what makes disappointment: what happens is never exactly what we expected.
Of course, just knowing that doesn’t keep your brain from doing it. The habit is too long ingrained, despite everything else about you that’s changed, every part of yourself that you’ve killed choosing this path.
(So, on some level, you still are human.)
At least the low-level rage that the repeated rehearsals generated has kept you fresh and energized. You can still feel it now, undiminished, inexhaustible: pushing behind every breath, every step, weaving you at a brisk pace through the dark urban labyrinth. Erasing fear. Eliminating doubt. Sharpening your senses and charging every neuron to respond in the moment—to do, not to plan.
(Just breathe. Let go. Let it happen.)
The air is brisk, but not uncomfortably cold, as the dawn threatens to color the sky, but it’s cool enough to justify your costume. You parked the borrowed Lexus enough blocks away to draw no special attention to your arrival, but close enough to return to quickly—and by a reasonably discreet route—assuming that the morning does proceed roughly in the ways you’ve anticipated.
(And there is one benefit of rehearsal, you must admit: it helps you plan your contingencies, consider what may go wrong—something you’ve spent more time mulling since you had to shoot a child in the head.)
There’s still enough of a walk ahead of you for your mind to run through flashes of a dozen possible futures one more time, your imagination given a far greater degree of reality by your recent experiences. Most fundamentally: You now know what it’s like to kill, something completely unimaginable to the person you were only a week ago.
You can’t even imagine that person anymore. Who you were is dead. Given up. Let go. The line was crossed. It was remarkably (disturbingly) easy. Walking in this body now is a killer, a predator. A predator of predators. You smile—and are grateful for the lack of witnesses to see you do so.
You catch the quickening of your steps. Too fast, too urgent, too hungry. You must pace yourself: it can’t appear that you approach too boldly, too aggressively. You have a role to play—the anxious delivery boy with the expensive package—and you must be convincing, no matter how easy it was to establish that role. (But then, they have made it so in their arrogance, conveniently providing you everything you need to kill them.)
You palm the flashkey that you’ve loaded with what you need for this day’s objective, and check the GPS imaging it projects into your interface glasses one more time to be sure you’re on course. Seen through the map-graphic, the pre-dawn gray and shadow of the real world conforms fairly well to what the flashkey predicts.
The condemned tenement that they’ve converted into their discreet base of operations would be nearly impossible to find without this convenient little guide. While the more modern parts of this old port town are laid out in neat grids of almost Spanish-looking stucco, the old core is a warped honeycomb of two and three story walkups packed together and right up on the alley-narrow streets. There isn’t a single straight block, and once you’re in, the tight, high buildings blot out the modern world just a few streets away. Even the sky overhead is just a narrow ribbon of indigo.
You’ve seen few street signs. The road you’re on now doesn’t seem to even have a name on any available map. You’d wondered why they had been so foolish as to upload the location of such a significant safe-house into their darknet, where anyone with access could find it. But now it makes sense: no one who didn’t know the place could hope to find it without GPS (and they needed to arrange for this delivery). They had no reason to believe their data could be so thoroughly compromised, at least not without alarms going off throughout their loose-but-integrated infrastructure.
Thanks to Klemp, you have the GPS coordinates, the package, even the ID of the expected delivery man (conveniently one of the monsters you killed in Wiesbaden).
And here it is: The building itself is unremarkably invisible, just another three story walkup, only sealed with plywood and plastered with warnings in Italian to keep out—no trespassing. Apparently long-abandoned and slowly succumbing to time and neglect. They’ve left no outward sign of habitation, careful even to make sure no light is visible through the boarded windows, and there are no vehicles parked around it.
You assume they are watching your approach. You hope that there have been no alarms raised by your activities up until this point to give them more than routine caution. You have moved quickly and left few coherent witnesses. There has been no public press regarding your neo-natal tantrum in Germany (so no one should know that the man you’re pretending to be today is dead). Then Milan and Rome were presented with no mention of you, easily explained away as random crimes or old blood-debts paid. As was Klemp: according to the news, he was killed during a simple home invasion.
This idea has been taunting your imagination all night: Someone—for whatever reason—appears to be covering up for you. Who exactly it is, and whether it’s for your benefit or for their own, remains to be seen. And you’ll know within moments if your cover is still intact. (If not, you’ve rehearsed those scenarios as well.)
You approach the battered and weathered entrance with somewhat exaggerated wariness, getting into your role like a Method actor: You are a nervous courier making a dangerous delivery to very scary people he has never met before. You are afraid of getting intercepted—you are prepared to die fighting if you are—but you are also afraid that you might be killed by the men you are delivering to. Yet you believe the cause you serve is more important than life, and that service will bring you reward after this life. You are a man of faith. You serve the will of your God. But your God may choose not to save you today.
But then an image from childhood stories threatens to break through and ruin your performance: a cartoon wolf dressed (badly) as a sheep to better approach the flock. It nudges your grin back, and you hope again that no one sees. Wipe it away: you must show them fear, not hunger. You must be the person they expect.
You know not to knock. The flashkey announces you silently, already loaded with the appropriate codes. All you have to do is stand out here like a junky waiting for his dealer, and wait for a response from inside.
It comes within seconds—apparently they were watching your approach—in the sounds of weapons being chambered through the aging brick and plaster. But before the locks disengage, the flashkey wants to know who you are.
It sends their question directly to your ear-cell. It’s not in English, of course. But conveniently—because the scattered Qaeda remnants and their global bedfellows speak so many tongues—their flashware includes translators that read across your glasses. Even more conveniently, it provides you with the correct answers.
“I am Shibli Al-Naba.” Your “surname” means that you bring news. It should also be the recognition code they’re expecting. “I bring gifts from Al-Baqara.” Klemp’s codename. They called him “The Cow”.
You hold up the case to where you assume they can better see it.
Locks snap quickly open and the old door creaks.
“Ahlan wa sahlan,” a hurried voice chants from the darkness within.
“Ahlan bik,” you give the traditional response, and step like a crimin
al into the darkness.
As expected, they are quick to search you once they snatch the case from your hands. There are three slight men surrounding you in the foyer, all in random mixes of fatigues and civilian clothes, head-scarves concealing most of their faces, all armed with antique but well maintained AKs. Their guns do not stray from you as your eyes adjust to their dimly-lit world. A fourth—the one who took possession of the case—doesn’t bother to conceal himself: he’s a big round sweaty middle-aged thug, shaved head above a ratty dark beard, t-shirt with suspenders and dark slacks (he looks like a fusion of biker and Mafia soldier), a 1911 .45 hanging lazily in his free hand. He barely even looks at you.
The building was a small cluster of tiny apartments before the government shut it down. There are narrow corridors lined with doors, branching out like a small maze, lit only sparsely with the weakest of bulbs. You can smell sweat and herbs, dust and mildew.
“Al-Baqara is dead,” a voice accuses from the shadows down one of the corridors, the speaker remaining cautiously out of sight.
“A robbery,” you confirm with regret. “Someone may have suspected what he was keeping in his home.”
The voice from down the hall solidifies as a fifth man-shape appears from a side-branch and steps under one of the lights. He’s an older man: balding, graying beard trimmed neat, white shirt and tan trousers like a businessman getting ready for work, casually brandishing an expensive H&K, gesturing with the short barrel as he talks.
“You?” he asks, idly menacing.
“Someone who suspected he was keeping his treasures close,” you repeat, allowing some of your impatience to sound like barely-reined fear. “Our police contacts say his safe was emptied. The case—and our other assets—were still secure in our safe deposit boxes, but some cash and diamonds left to his care are unaccounted for. The thief will be known if he is one of us, as soon as he is foolish enough to try to spend what he took.” You point a shaky finger at the case. “Would I bring you that, if I were tempted to steal?”
He considers you all the while his masked gunmen search you for weapons. They do a professionally thorough job, and take your hat and your coat—commenting positively on the quality of the latest HAMAS’ product—but leave you the glasses and flashkey for continued translation. Then he introduces himself:
“I am Yunis Al-Ra’d. I do not know you, but if Al-Baqara entrusted your cell with such a valuable errand, and—as you say—you did not simply take the case for yourself, that is saying something. Would you like some tea?”
You accept, though it doesn’t sound completely like an offer of hospitality. He is older than this technology. Perhaps he is wise enough not to trust it so completely. Or experienced enough to know that even the devout can be broken into betrayal, given the proper conditions. You attempt to appear faithfully innocent, even as the fresh memories of taking the lives of men just like this flash behind your eyes. You are grateful for the glasses for yet another reason.
They prod you to an open and well-lit apartment several doors back from the entrance. The kitchen and small living area are well kept and relatively clean, despite the overall lack of furnishings. Cushions in various fabric patterns line the bare floor.
Al-Ra’d points you out a cushion to sit on, pours the tea himself. The fat man sets the case on the floor in the middle of the room between you, and produces his own flashkey to unseal the locks. He seems pleased at the crisp response: flashware compatibility further confirms your veracity. But he waits for Al-Ra’d to pass you tea and take his own cushion before actually opening the case.
“Fletchers,” you tell them as Al-R’ad and his men eye the small, neatly-packed weapons. “This model was produced in Germany for the US Intelligence contract before it was cancelled. Plastic and carbon-fiber. Ceramic barrels. Caseless flechette ammunition, one hundred rounds per pre-loaded magazine. No metal in the gun or in the darts except for a hearing aid battery to spark ignition. The new HNC propellant is sealed to defeat explosive and gunpowder sniffers. The darts are nano-built carbon: they can slip through common soft-armor, and will pass cleanly through flesh if they don’t hit bone. If they do, they will ricochet within the body and tear it randomly. Select-fire: it can empty itself in ten seconds of sustained cycling, or default to three-dart bursts. They bring one hundred thousand US apiece on the European markets…”
“And absolutely banned in all Coalition countries,” Al-Ra’d savors, palming one of the thick but compact pistols. “Light…” He adds one of the long magazines to the equation. You can feel his men grinning even though they have not yet shown their faces.
Carefully, respectfully, you show them how to arm and operate the weapon over hot tea and warm bread. You also make a point of showing them several ways to conceal the pistols and magazines in your clothing, modeling for them as they grin and laugh with satisfaction. This gives you an excuse to get your coat back on that no one will consider suspicious.
You find yourself sliding comfortably into your role now, even to the point of enjoying the company. The gunmen warm enough to risk lowering their scarves so that you may see their appreciation, their passion. Smiling. Grateful. Welcoming. They treat you like absent family. And you find yourself lost, or losing yourself: melting into what they think you are. And it’s so easy. You almost forget why you need to be here.
Catching yourself but not losing your smile, you make a point of checking the time.
“It is coming up on your upload window,” you remind politely. “Would you allow me to be a witness to it?”
Al-Ra’d nods his assent, and you praise God as he expects you to. Then he gestures for the group to rise.
They smile and embrace you like family as they collect themselves and show you back down the hall. Taken by your warmth and earnestness, they don’t notice that you failed to put all of the guns away. Your little demonstration of weapons-concealment allowed for some primitive sleight-of-hand. You test the strength of your deception:
“Is it all right to leave the case?” you play, looking back. “Perhaps you would like to pose with the new guns?”
Al-Ra’d does seem to consider this before he dismisses it, not breaking stride a pace ahead of you. “No. The element of surprise is worth more than the fear we could instill, especially with Athens approaching. We will use the guns they know we have…”
You nod thoughtfully and go with them. Needless to say, no one checks the case.
And they lead you exactly where you want to go.
As you follow them through the dim corridors, you can feel yourself shift, changing into something else. The dull persistent rage feels like it’s running electricity through your blood. You can feel it rushing from the core of you out to your fingertips. Your face flushes, then you feel it go pale, almost numb, like a mask. And every muscle and nerve in your body charges itself, just like it happened in Wiesbaden and Frankfurt and Kusnacht and Bohn and Milan and yesterday in Rome with that sick child-murdering fuck De Paolo. Ready to kill. Because killing is the only thing that will ensure the world doesn’t have to suffer these “people” anymore.
It comes back to you quickly, almost too quickly, filling you almost to the point of losing yourself to it, even before you are fully through the door of their “studio”. You hope that it’s not a visible thing, that they cannot see you change. Not yet, at least.
But even the smell in here is the same as Wiesbaden.
Musty little cell, barren except for a large banner—the handmade flag of their cell-network—covering the largest wall. There are two more gunmen in full costume, ready for their performance, and there is a third—hoodless, he is smooth-faced and probably less than seventeen—his AK slung over his shoulder so that he can handle the webcam.
The gunmen almost fill the makeshift studio. Al-Ra’d and the fat man pause to put on their own hoods, and the fat man produces a sword—you’re amused to see that it is not an Arab weapon, but a fairly high-quality modern katana—that Al Ra’d draws with al
most impressive reverence, and test-cuts in the air. This tells you that he has had some limited training, but nothing beyond what he might receive in a public dojo.
He takes up a position centered before his flag, so that the camera can best capture him in all of his terrible glory: the proud holy warrior, ready to do God’s work.
It is very, very difficult not to kill him right now.
He’s still brandishing the blade (now more like a posturing amateur) when two of them bring in the “star” of the pending performance, dragged by the armpits from a small back room (which is the origin of those familiar odors of terror and hopelessness). From the grunts and curses his handler’s make, you can tell that at least one of the hooded thugs is female, something that’s no longer surprising these days, despite how much the conservative traditions are enforced.
Their victim is bound wrist-and-ankle with the familiar nylon zip-strips, wearing a worn and tattered orange overall, barefoot. His head and face are concealed by a black hood. They plant him at Al-Ra’d’s feet, making him kneel, ordering him not to move. The youth is already filming, even before they arrange themselves: he wanted the shot of Al Ra’d, of the hostage coming in, and of the hood being pulled off in time to see the sword hovering inches in front of his throat. Their victim is trembling visibly even in the little thumbnail viewscreen of the webcam. You watch over the boy’s shoulder as he zooms in.
The face revealed is battered, with old blood around the eyes and mouth. The lips are cracked, and there is several days of beard-growth. The short dark hair is a greasy disarray, and the sour smell of him attests to how long he’s gone without bathing. One of the guards forces the face so that the camera can see better. The swollen eyes blink, unaccustomed to light. The smell of stale sweat gets stronger. The abused face glistens with it, though he makes an impressive attempt at resigned stoicism. He’s probably thinking of those that he does not want to see him break down. Still, you can see the lips flutter, the eyes tear up, the arms struggle reflexively against their bonds.
He looks at you for a moment, the only other face in the room—besides the boy with the camera—that isn’t covered. You manage to give him nothing back. It isn’t as difficult as you had thought—the change is already fully underway, filling you with heat and hate and hunger while it strips away your humanity. You must look no different than these chanting fanatics who would murder him for effect. And when the animal-grin comes unbidden, you can see him almost break, assuming it’s for him.
But then the show has begun.
They all take their places around their victim, before their flag, brandishing their AKs like a bad parody of product-placement. Hooded and anonymous yet proudly armed, surrounding cowering wreckage in an orange prison jumpsuit. There are seven gunmen, with Al-Ra’d and the fat man—who is holding his pistol to their sacrifice’s head—centered before their flag and behind their victim in a practiced symmetry. The group of them are packed close together, taking up all of the flag wall so that they have no room to move sideways.
It is, in fact, better than you had imagined.
“This is everyone?” you whisper innocently to the youth. He nods and gestures for you to be silent. Then Al-Ra’d’s voice booms and introduces his sacrifice for the camera:
“This is the traitor Hassim who has betrayed the Faithful in service to the infidel crusader. God’s scourge upon he who turns his back on his faith! The flames of hell shall be his reward!”
Al-Ra’d—whose name means “thunder”—leads his masked band in a chanting of the worn old dichotomies: the praises to merciful God and threats to the unbelievers so sadly corrupted from their precious scripture. And if he wonders why you are suddenly closing your coat and putting your hat back on, he doesn’t break his stride to inquire.
You wait until he is at the highest fervor of his God-invoking rant, raising his blade as the fat one yanks their captive’s hair to better expose his neck, when you slide right up behind the camera man. They are so focused on their bloodlust that no one notices you have one of the Fletchers in your right hand.
“God is great! God is…!!”
The sickening chant makes it very easy for you: your left hand suddenly grabs the youth’s long hair at the back of his head and you yank sharp from your root back and down and crack his neck. The power is flowing so easily this time: no hesitation, no fear, just need. So you show them what the new gun can do.
With their victim safely down on the floor, you can spray them freely with the storm of synthetic needles that slice so neatly through flesh and cloth and body armor. There is little recoil, and the weapon cycles with a liquid rushing: it almost feels like you’re spraying them with a strong garden nozzle. Planning only to pose and not to fire, not one of them gets off a shot, despite the seven assault weapons in the room with you. Their flag splatters red as they scream, forgetting their weapons to raise their hands to try to stop the darts, like they’re being attacked by a swarm of bees or a hurricane wind. The darts go right through their hands and arms. Their patterned face-scarves bleed.
The Fletcher, despite its volume of fire, lacks actual take-down power, so Al-Ra’d and his soldiers are still mostly on their feet when the weapon finally clicks empty. You’ve held the youth on his feet to this point in case you needed a human shield, and it would be a simple thing to take his weapon and finish what you’ve started. But as no one is shooting back at you yet, you feel obligated to make your point in more dramatic and satisfying fashion. You pull the boy backwards so that his fall will not disturb the camera, then you glide into shot, closing the distance between you and your enemies in less than a second.
There are still eight men (seven men and one woman, but you have lost track of which one she is under the scarves) with guns in a very small room with you, all mortally wounded but not quite dead. They are gagging on their own blood and screaming in their blindness and trying to make their mangled limbs work their weapons and falling over each other because they are packed so close together. One of them actually manages to open fire, aiming roughly where you had been, apparently unconcerned that he could shoot his young comrade as well. Another one accidentally unloads his weapon into the back and legs of the men nearest him, throwing them into their thrashing comrades. In the midst of this bleeding madness, their would-be victim has retreated into a tight fetal ball underfoot, screaming even louder than they are, the sword still flailing over his back as his executioner tries to stabilize himself, fallen back against his precious flag, his weight beginning to tear it from the wall.
Al-Ra’d’s shirt and arms are soaked with blood, and his scarf has fallen away, rage and horror twisting up through him as he roars at you and finds his grip on his divine sword. And Al-Ra’d—whose name means “thunder”—almost manages to raise it against you before you show him how quickly and easily you can take it away from him.
You shear the weapon out of his hands and flip it into yours with the speed of a whip, your impact with him stunning him and taking what’s left of his balance. Then you show him how well you can use the blade.
The katana is well-balanced and immediately feels good in your hands. You have spent a lifetime with a weapon like this in your hands. It’s so very much like going back home. It roots you in this hell-world of swirling blood and guns and madness, drawing you back into yourself, at least enough to feel the slide of steel through flesh and sharp shock of chopping bone (you can hear the bones “click” as the blade shears through them).
The fat one: he tries to raise his gun with arms that barely obey him. You turn and chop most of the way through his forearm (click-click), then dance the blade up and down and see how well it will penetrate his skull.
New sensations to add to the many other new sensations you have catalogued in the past week: despite so many years of obsessive sword training, you have never used one on a living body before. You find yourself almost awkward, embarrassed, and your initial cuts are sloppy. You jerk the blade out of the skull it has ha
lf-split and spin and cut another one. The sword makes it through an arm and slides through ribs. You twist it free and keep cutting because you do not want any of them to fall before you can get to them, like this is a contest. But you have to take your time because you realize you are hacking, butchering, with no art or grace, more like wild ape with a club. You have to slow down, breathe, flow. You plant your stance and parry one of the AK’s away before it can fire, then you send a rising cut up under a jaw through a throat, aiming your return cut back down through the neck before he falls.
Better. Better with each cut. Your skills are true, still intact from your old life, and just like all the other skills, so much more powerful now that you have let that life go. There are no limits, no safeties. But you must not lose yourself.
You turn back on Al-Ra’d—now the only one of them left standing, the only one who has not served to test your blade work—who is holding himself up by what is left of his bloody flag with one ruined hand while the other reaches desperately for any weapon it can find, his half-blinded eyes locked on you all the while. You give him all the time he needs, grinning down on him like the devil as you feed on his rage and terror.
You let him get hold of the slippery grip of an AK, then you make his arm disappear above the elbow. He wails something at you that even your glasses cannot translate. His head is back against the wall—an awkward angle, and you want at least this last one to be good—so you stab him in the gut, doubling him forward under your raised blade.
“God is great,” you tell him flatly. Then you take your time and cut clean and do to him what he was going to do to his own prey.
You step back and watch the blood pulse out in thin but surprisingly intense jets where his head was, his body folding over the still-curled form of his intended victim. You don’t bother to look after where his head went.
You kick the headless body off of the prisoner (who has at least stopped screaming), then use the sword to snip through the zips holding him. He flinches from the touch of steel, and will not look at you or get up even after you have freed him. His body convulses in sobs, soaked with blood that is not his own. He sounds like he’s trying to find the words to pray. Something about that makes you angry with him.
You turn from him and see that the camera appears intact and still running on its tripod. Which is when you also notice that the smooth-faced youth who’d manned it isn’t quite dead yet: he’s slumped limp—paralyzed and apparently suffocating—half-sitting against the opposite wall, head cocked brokenly backwards, eyes wide, turning cyanotic, mouth trying to beg. You idly wonder if he is conscious enough to know what has happened.
You have to step over bodies to get to him, including the crying praying orange-suited still-fetal ball that is your should-be-grateful-but-you-just-dowsed-him-in-the-blood-of-seven-men rescued hostage (this would be your second rescue, by the way, if keeping such a score was really what motivates you). You stand in front of the webcam and take a full second to plant and set up a full rolling cut that splits him down through his collarbone and several ribs to the heart. His blood gushes everywhere like you’ve split a keg of the stuff, and his face finally goes slack, eyes dead.
Then you step back far enough to look square into the lens, your coat hosed in gore, and you expect that your spattered face looks like a pale snarling animal no matter how much you try to rein it in before you say your closing line:
“Ana al-haq.”
You can already feel the beginnings of the bad shakes that come once you’re all finished and it’s time to come down. This, so far, has not faded so much with repetition. You would much rather be far from here before the worst of it catches up with you.
You make your fingers continue to obey you long enough to key the webcam’s preset upload. It’s done in an instant, and the popup confirms it with dispassionate efficiency.
There will be no going back now.
Grayman Book One: Acts of War Page 7