Mark Greaney: On target

He took a chug of his Guinness. Never had a pint looked so large. He thought he'd never drain down to the bottom of his glass so he could head out and get back to the dark street. Behind him he heard Slattery whisper something to the men with him. Court did not look up into the mirror. Slattery had seen him earlier at the Oliver St. John Gogarty; that was clear enough. Now he'd be letting his friends in on the situation. With good luck, Slattery would bug out, set up some sort of confrontation in the street. Send his men outside to hide in the dark and leave with them. With bad luck, it would go down here and now. Dougal would stand and proclaim to the room that the man who pitched the stranger through the front window would earn himself a year's supply of Guinness.

Son of a bitch, Court thought. Recuperating in France, he'd really wanted to get operational again, but this was much too fucking much.

Court began to stand. His pint was half-full, but he thought if he could leave this pub under his own power at any time, it would be right now, before Slattery got his plan together. But before Gentry could slide all the way off his stool, the bartender lowered his newspaper.

"Don't fancy yer pint, eh?"

The redheaded, barrel-chested sixty-year-old must have sensed the bad juju in the room between Slattery and the stranger.

Court didn't want to say too much. Instead he shifted on his stool, like he was just rearranging himself, and lifted his glass. Tipped it to the bartender and took another gulp. "It's just grand," he said. He thought he sounded Irish but wasn't sure.

To his left the two men in the booth with his target stood and left through the front door. Two more at a table behind him stood; Court tracked them through the mirror as they approached. They sat on either side of him menacingly.

The man on the left spoke first. His breath was hot with Irish whiskey and tobacco.

"Woar ye from?"

Court looked straight ahead. He dropped the attempt at an Irish accent. "Workin' a Maersk freighter. We docked this afternoon. Leave out in the morning."

"Woar are ye from?" The other man repeated his mate's question.

"I told you."

"You born on the freighter? 'Where you from' means where you come from?"

"Lads. Leave the man to enjoy his pint in peace." It was Dougal Slattery speaking. He had stood, strolled over to the bar with his limp, and made eye contact through the mirror. "Always good to see a new face here. Travelers included. Don't pay the lads any attention, friend."

Court wondered why it was that everyone was calling him "friend" today.

Five minutes later Gentry left the Padraic Pearse. Slattery had gone first, just after rescuing the stranger from the two locals, who had returned to their table without another word. The bartender had not looked up from his paper through it all.

Court walked east on Pearse Street, moving deftly in the shadows a hundred yards behind the limping man with the drum on his shoulder.

Everything had changed now; the entire operation had been accelerated by Court's decision to walk through the front door of the pub. He could not just do a soft recon as he'd originally planned. No, his target was spooked, and his target would run or build up his defenses. It did not take a brilliant tradecraft mind to thwart an imminent attack from one man. Run away or circle the wagons and pass out the guns. It was page one from the How to Avoid Assassination manual, and Gentry had no doubt Dougal had read it.

If the Gray Man was going to complete his contract, he knew he'd have to do it tonight. Slattery turned right into the open front gates of a drab block of flats and did not look back as he began climbing up a slanting car park towards a door. Court moved on through the darkness, closer to his prey, a prey that would be expecting him, yes, but hopefully not quite so soon.

A thick young man in a black rugby shirt stepped into the street from his hiding place behind a large waste bin twenty-five feet in front of Court. Gentry slowed, stopped, faced the man, his hands down at his sides. It was one of the young men who'd been with Slattery in the Padraic Pearse. The Irishman exposed a long length of chain from behind his leg, began swaying it slowly like a pendulum.

"What the fek ya' doin' followin me mate?" His brogue was almost incomprehensible, but it hardly mattered. Court was not listening. Instead, all his attention was focused on softer noises, tuned to hear the footsteps that would be approaching from behind any second. This rugby boy's buddy was out there somewhere, and he'd make his move from the rear, Court had no doubt. He might go for a headlock or, more likely, swing a chain or a piece of metal at his target's exposed back. Normally, as an elite contract killer, Court dealt with more determined foes with better training and equipment. But in cover working in dockyards or hanging in seedy bars in scummy parts of shitty towns, he'd seen beatings and batterings by thickheaded ruffians often enough to memorize the standard operating procedure.

It didn't matter where you were, really. There was something of a universal language to an ass-kicking.

The man in the black rugby shirt shouted something else, this time fully indecipherable, and then there it was: soft footsteps, getting louder and quicker behind him as they closed in. Court made himself look straight ahead at black-shirt rugby boy and pretended to have no idea he was about to be jumped from behind, until the last possible moment.

The steps were on him now, and Court moved like lightning, executing his first force-on-force encounter in months. In one motion he sank low and spun and moved to the side, saw a bald young man in an orange rugby shirt move in a blur and swing a length of bent rebar at the empty space where Gentry's back had been three-quarters of a second before. The weight of the iron and the swing itself as well as the Irishman's own momentum carried him through the space, and he kept moving forward long after his mind had registered that his target had avoided his strike. Court stood quickly as the man passed by him, used his left hand to guide the flying man past him, shot a clenched fist through the black night like a firing piston, connected perfectly with the area just under the man's right ear, cracking the jaw and snapping the head to the side and rendering the man unconscious even as his out-of-control energy propelled him onwards.

The rebar clanged in the street and the Irishman followed, fell chest-first and rolled, all arms and legs flapping, to a stop at the foot of his mate.

He did not move. Blood on his face from the road rash acquired when his skin met the asphalt glistened in the cobalt streetlamps.

Black rugby shirt swung his chain wildly now, his eyes dropping to check on his friend and then darting back up, with equal measures of fury and terror, to the bearded man in front of him. Court walked towards the man, arms low, eyes and shoulders relaxed.

A man in his element.

The chain whipped forward.

The Gray Man stepped into the path of the chain, caught it deftly with his left hand, and yanked hard, knocking the young man in the rugby shirt off balance, bringing him closer with a jolt.

A right-hand spear to the throat knocked the Irishman to his back. He rolled in the street, gagged and wheezed, choking on his bruised and swelling airway as he stared at the bearded man who now squatted above him. When he spoke, the American sounded calm, in complete control, as if he were the one who had planned this ambush in the dark.

"Slattery's flat number, please. I will only ask you once."

Four minutes later the tip of a handgun's silencer pushed open the unlatched door of flat sixty-six of the Queen's Court Condominiums. Behind the silencer was a Russian Baikal Makarov automatic pistol. Behind the Mak was the Gray Man. All senses were alert, more so because the door had been left open invitingly, and that was odd, considering the fact that the man who lived there was surely aware that someone was coming for him.