The Gray Man by Mark Greaney Read Free Book Online

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.
    In the shit.
    The operator closest on his right got up and moved around the pallet, sat down on the bench facing him. Idly Gentry glanced to his right, noticed the extraction team’s leader adjusting his gear. He began to look to the other guys, but his head returned to the man at the bulkhead.
    Something wasn’t right.
    The team leader’s back was ramrod straight, and he had an intense expression on his face, though he wasn’t looking at anything in particular. His MP5 was across his chest; he adjusted the glove on his right hand.
    And his mouth was moving. He was transmitting into his close quarters radio, giving orders to his men.
    Gentry looked down at his own Harris Falcon radio set. He had been on the same channel as the rest of the team, but now he could not hear the transmission.
    Strange.
    Court turned to the three men next to him on the bench. From their posture, from their facial expressions, Gentry determined that, just like their leader, they weren’t decompressing after the tension of the extraction from the hot zone. No, they moved and looked like they were about to go into action. Gentry had spent sixteen years in covert operations, studied faces and evaluated threats for a living. He knew what an operator looked like when the fight was over, and he knew what an operator looked like when the fight was about to begin.
    Surreptitiously he unhooked the strap securing him to the bench and swiveled in his seat to face the men around him.
    Dulin was up at the bulkhead; he was no longer transmitting. He just stared at Gentry.
    “What’s up?” shouted Gentry above the engine’s roar.
    Dulin stood slowly.
    Court shouted again across the noisy cabin, “Whatever you’re thinking about doing, you need to just—”
    Markham turned quickly on the bench, spun towards the Gray Man, his pistol already rising in front of him. Gentry pushed off the wall under the bench with his sandy boots and launched himself across the cabin, tried to put his body behind the