The voice came over the comms again. “I’ve got company!”
Just then, headlights appeared along a wide track behind the wildly bouncing vehicle. First two sets, then four, then more.
Dulin assessed the situation for one second. Then he called out to his crew over the engine’s whine, “Up the ramp!”
All five were aboard, and the L-100 was already rolling down the runway when an armed man in dirty gear and body armor sprinted up the back ramp. McVee grabbed the “package’s” gloved hand and pulled him up the steep incline, and Markham slammed his hand on the hydraulic lift lever to close the ramp. Dulin gave a command to the pilots on the cabin intercom, and the four turboprop engines gunned for takeoff.
With the ramp sealed shut, the package dropped onto his kneepads in the middle of the bare cabin. His M4 rifle was slung over a general issue chest harness missing most of its ammunition and a brown Nomex tunic torn in several places. The man’s face was covered with goggles, smeared greasepaint, and sweat. He pulled his helmet off, dropped it to the floor of the cabin, already inclining during its takeoff rotation. Steam poured from a sopping mat of thick brown hair, and his beard dripped perspiration like a leaky faucet.
Dulin lifted the Gray Man from the floor and put him on the bench along the cabin’s skin. He secured him to the bench with a belt and sat next to him.
“You hurt?” he asked.
The man shook his head.
“Let me help you get your gear off.” Dulin shouted over the engines.
“I’ll keep it on.”
“Suit yourself. Just a forty-minute flight. Once in Turkey, we’ll go to a safe house, and tomorrow night Fitzroy will have instructions for you. We’ll watch your back till then.”
“I appreciate it,” said the filthy man through labored breaths. His eyes stayed on the floor as he spoke. His arms draped over the top of the black rifle hanging from his neck.
The other four men had strapped themselves into the red mesh bench lining the side of the fuselage. They all stared at the package, trying without success to reconcile the average-looking operator next to them with his superhuman reputation.
The Gray Man and Dulin sat by a pallet of gear strapped with webbing to the middle of the deck.
Dulin said, “I’m going to call Fitzroy, let him know we’re wheels up. I’ll grab you some water and be back in a second.” He then turned and climbed the steeply ascending aircraft to the front of the cabin. He pulled out his satellite phone as he walked.
It was just after three in the morning in London, and on the sixth floor of a whitewashed office building on London’s Bayswater Road, an aging man in a wrinkled pinstripe suit drummed his fingers on his desk. His face white, perspiration ran down his fleshy neck and soaked his Egyptian broadcloth oxford. Donald Fitzroy tried to relax himself, to remove the obvious worry from his voice.
The satellite phone chirped again.
He looked again, for the twentieth time, to the framed photograph on his desk. His son, now forty, sitting on a hammock on a beach, his beautiful wife beside him. Twins, both girls, one in each parent’s lap. Smiles all around.
Fitzroy looked away from the framed photo and towards a sheaf of loose photographs in his thick hands. These shots he had also given twenty looks. It was the same four, the same family, though the twins were slightly older now.
It was typical surveillance quality: the family at a park, the twins at their school near Grosvenor Square, the daughter-in-law pushing a shopping cart through the market. Fitzroy detected from the angles and the proximity to their subjects that the photographer was sending a message that he could have easily walked up to the four and put a hand on each of them.
Lloyd’s implication was clear: Fitzroy’s family could be gotten to at any time.
The sat phone chirped a third time.
Fitzroy exhaled fully, threw the photos to the floor, and grabbed the nagging device.
“Standstill. How copy, Fullcourt?”
“Five by five, Standstill,” said Dulin. He pressed his ear tight into the earpiece of the satellite phone to drown out the engine’s roar. “How do you copy?”
“Loud and clear. Report your status.”
“Standstill, Fullcourt. We have the package and have exfiltrated the target location.”
“Understood. What’s the status of your package?”
“Looks like shit, sir, but he says he’s good to go.”
“Understood. Wait one,” Fitzroy said.
Dulin rubbed a gloved hand over his face and looked to the back of the cargo airplane at his four operators. His gaze then centered on the Gray Man, sitting at the end of the bench. Goggles, a beard, and greasepaint hid his face. Still, Dulin could tell the man was exhausted. His back rested against the wall of the fuselage, and both arms hung over his M4. His eyes stared into the distance. Dulin’s crew was on Gray’s right, all geared up in a nearly uniform manner but segregated from the package by a few feet of bench.
Thirty seconds later, Donald Fitzroy came back on the line. “Fullcourt, this is Standstill. There has been a change in the operation. You and your men will, of course, be remunerated accordingly.”
Dulin sat up straighter. His brow furrowed. “Roger that, Standstill. Go ahead with the update to the op specs.”
“I need the delivery of the package canceled.”
Dulin’s head cocked. “Negative, Standstill. We can’t return to the airfield. It’s crawling with opposition and—”
“That’s not what I mean, Fullcourt. I need you to… destroy the package.”
A pause. “Standstill, Fullcourt. Repeat your last?”
The tone of voice over the sat phone changed. It was less detached. More human. “I have a… a situation here, Fullcourt.”
Dulin said, his own voice losing the clipped cadence of radio protocol, “Yeah, I guess you do.”
“I want him terminated.”
Dulin’s head was propped in his gloved hand. His fingers began strumming on the side of his face. “You sure about this? He’s one of your guys.”
“I know that.”
“I’m one of your guys.”
“It’s complicated, lad. Not how I normally do business.”
“This isn’t right.”
“As I said, you all will be compensated for this deviance from the original operation.”
Dulin’s eyes stayed on the package as he asked, “How much?”
Five minutes later, Dulin looked towards his men while reaching for his radio’s selector switch on his chest rig. He turned the dial a few clicks.
“Don’t say anything. Just nod if you copy.” Barnes, McVee, Perini, and Markham all looked up and around. Their eyes found Dulin up at the bulkhead and they nodded as one. Unaware, the Gray Man stared blankly at the pallet of equipment in front of him.
“Listen up. Standstill has ordered us to waste the package.” Across the thirty feet of open space in the well-lit cabin Dulin saw the stunned reaction on his men’s faces. He shrugged, “Don’t ask me, boys. I just work here.”
The four men on the bench with the package looked to him, saw him to be closest to the ramp, strapped in, with his M4 rifle on his chest and his bearded face gaz ing at the floor of the cabin.
They looked back to their team leader and nodded slowly as one.
SIX
Court Gentry sat alone near the closed ramp of the aircraft, listened to the engines whine, and tried to catch his breath, to get control of his emotions. His ass was on a mesh bench in the back of an L-100-30, but his mind was back down below, in the dark, in the sand.