Mark Greaney
Gunmetal Gray
For Major (Ret.) Thomas H. Greer
aka Dalton Fury
A good man
(1964–2016)
TITLES BY MARK GREANEY
The Gray Man
On Target
Ballistic
Dead Eye
Back Blast
Gunmetal Gray
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank David Leslie, Scott Swanson, Sean Fontaine, Nick Ciubotariu, Igor Veksler, Darrin Ingram, Mike Cowan, Chris Clarke, Patrick O’Daniel, Lt. Col Hunter Rawlings (USMC), Devon Greaney, Devin Greaney, Dorothy Greaney, Jack Murphy at SOFREP.com, Benedetta Argentieri, Jon Harvey, Nichole Geer Roberts, Dalton Fury, Jeff Belanger, Jay Chase of Houston PD, Chris and David Arrington, Gino and Natalie Debouvry, Mystery Mike Bursaw, James Yeager at tacticalresponse.com, and James Fleming at warfighterconcepts.com.
Special thanks to my agent, Scott Miller, and his great team at Trident Media Group, and my editor, Tom Colgan. Also special thanks to my publicist Loren Jaggers and all the talented people at Penguin Random House.
Stay low, go fast, kill first, die last, one shot, one kill, no luck, all skill.
There is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
CHARACTERS
Courtland “Court” Gentry: The Gray Man, code name Violator — freelance assassin/contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency
Matthew Hanley: Director of the National Clandestine Service, Central Intelligence Agency
Suzanne Brewer: Officer, National Clandestine Service, Central Intelligence Agency
Fan Jiang: Chief Sergeant Class 3, cyber intrusion specialist, People’s Liberation Army, Unit 61398 (Red Cell Detachment), 2nd Bureau, General Staff Department (3rd Department)
Dai Longhai: Colonel, department director of security and counterintelligence, People’s Liberation Army, 2nd Bureau, General Staff Department (3rd Department)
Xi: Major, counterintelligence officer, People’s Liberation Army, 2nd Bureau, General Staff Department (3rd Department)
Sir Donald Fitzroy: Director and CEO of Cheltenham Security Services; former handler of Court Gentry
Zoya Feodorovich Zakharova: Code name Banshee — officer, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)
Oleg Utkin: Code name Fantom — officer, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)
Vasily: “Anna One” — paramilitary officer and team leader, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Zaslon (Shield) Unit
Tu Van Duc: Leader of Con Ho Hoang Da (the Wild Tigers), Vietnam-based criminal organization
Bui Ton Tan: Officer, Vietnam People’s Police and employee of Con Ho Hoang Da
Kulap Chamroon: Co-leader of the Chamroon Syndicate, Thailand-based transnational criminal syndicate
Nattapong Chamroon: Brother of Kulap, co-leader of the Chamroon Syndicate, Thailand-based transnational criminal syndicate
Song Julong: Major and security officer, People’s Liberation Army, People’s Republic of China
PROLOGUE
The two bodyguards lay unconscious on the floor, arms and legs splayed, an empty bottle of imported whiskey on the table between them. They’d both lost consciousness within seconds of each other, and then they slid out of their chairs and down to the carpet, wholly unaware they’d been drugged, utterly clueless to the fact that the man they were paid to watch over had spiked their booze with a week’s supply of nighttime cold medicine.
And now the culprit sat on the couch across from them in the darkened hotel room, and he stared at the big men on the floor. His hands trembled as he rubbed his knees; bile from his stomach churned up and scorched his esophagus. He forced himself to swallow it back down so he could breathe.
Twenty-six-year-old Fan Jiang made no noise, but his brain screamed, Go, Fan! Get up and run, now!
But he could not make himself stand.
When the two men on the floor finally woke, it would take them some time to come to their senses and realize their protectee had fled. Fan Jiang knew they would be slow to comprehend the situation, because it was clear to him Sergeant Liu and Sergeant Chen didn’t think that a little shit like him had the balls to make a break for it.
The jury was still out on whether they were right or wrong, because fifteen minutes after the two men dropped, Fan still sat there paralyzed in the dark.
The two Chinese army sergeants were close-protection security officers — bodyguards in the parlance of the trade. But the term had a double meaning when applied to these men watching Fan Jiang. True, it was the job of Sergeants Liu and Chen to protect Fan with their lives, throwing their own bodies between any threat and their protectee, if necessary.
But it was also their job to bring back Fan Jiang’s dead body if he ever tried to run.
And now it was time for him to run… but he just could not fucking get up and go.
It was a rare occurrence when Fan Jiang was allowed to leave the military compound in Shanghai where he worked, but he’d been flown over here to Shenzhen along with his minders so he could attend the annual China Information Technology Expo. Fan was a sergeant in the People’s Liberation Army, a computer programmer, and one of the most highly placed cyber intrusion specialists in the nation. From time to time he or others in his unit were sent to see advances in computer tech from international vendors, to ask questions of foreign engineers, and to get a feel for how strong private industry’s encryption advances would be three, five, ten years out.
So when he needed to travel, Chief Sergeant Class 3 Fan Jiang traded his uniform for civilian clothes and flew on Air China, with Senior Sergeant Chen and Chief Sergeant Class 4 Liu flanking him at all times, themselves in business suits.
On the flight over, the security protocol called for the two security officers to take the window and aisle seats while Fan got the middle, and one of the protectors even followed Fan to the bathroom, standing just outside the door to make certain he had no unauthorized contacts.
The three men stayed in a suite together at the Sheraton Shenzhen Futian Hotel, a few blocks from the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, which meant that keeping tabs on Fan was a breeze for Liu and Chen in the off-hours. Each night when the trade show ended they all just went back up to the suite and ordered room service; Fan sat on his bed and ate while his two bodyguards dined on their rollaway beds between Fan and the door, their pistols on or next to their bodies at all times.
But during the exhibition itself, it was all work for the bodyguards; the event lasted three days and for eight to ten hours each of these days Fan walked the huge exhibition center floor, posing as an engineer for a Chinese computer firm. Liu and Chen acted as Fan’s colleagues, but they said nothing while Fan did all the talking, taking business cards and promotional material and asking techie questions of techie types from all over the world. The two quiet men with him were well trained to keep him safe and to keep him in line, competing roles that could both be best managed only by close physical proximity and constant vigilance.