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The response came almost instantly. That is the intelligence I have received. Moderate confidence.
Moderate confidence, in the intelligence realm, meant the analysis was likely to be accurate. If Cyrus was right, then that meant the Gray Man was no myth, and it also meant that Lancer had faced off with him the night before.
“Incredible,” he muttered aloud as an icy chill went up his spine, and he couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder.
But why the hell would the Gray Man be in some sleepy Guatemalan hamlet with a former Russian spy?
When Cyrus wrote nothing more, he responded, We can avoid Gentry. Avoid Zakharova. We assume Genrich went to Guatemala to recruit them to help him get target Gama 8 out of Mexico City. They didn’t go back with him, and Lancer is already on the way up there to do the jobs tomorrow. I don’t think either of the targets we went after in Panajachel remain priorities to our mission.
The reply came quickly. I designate mission priorities. Not you.
The director sighed, then typed, Of course, but I am suggesting with our workload for the next three days we need to—
A bubble appeared on the screen, and then it was filled with text, as if Cyrus were writing at very high speed. Locate Zakharova and Gentry. They remain a high priority to the mission.
The director replied quickly. Acknowledged. We will use facial recognition on all cameras we can access in Central America. If the targets show up anywhere, we will know.
FOURTEEN
Zack Hightower tossed his bag in the back of his Ford F-150, waved goodbye to a couple of old-timers at the gun range, and then unslung the hunting rifle from his shoulder and slid behind the wheel with it. From the front passenger seat he picked up a softshell case for the bolt-action Nosler 21 in his hand and slid it in the lambswool interior of the case.
With the gun resting on the seat and the floorboard next to him, he opened a bottle of tepid water and looked out the dusty windshield of his truck at the flat, hardscrabble land in front of him.
This gun range was on five hundred acres of land just south of Hondo, Texas, which itself was just west of San Antonio. He’d spent the past three hours here shooting a variety of weapons at a variety of distances, but mostly defensive pistols and bolt-action hunting rifles.
Today had been a diversion. Zack worked as a hunting guide here at a ranch outside San Antonio, but he didn’t have any clients booked for the next three weeks, so he was spending his downtime honing skills he’d first learned as a young boy, hunting here in Texas with his dad.
These skills had been honed to a higher level when he became a Navy SEAL, even further when he was brought into the elite SEAL Team 6, and further still when he left the military and joined the CIA as a paramilitary operations officer.
He’d eventually left the Agency to become a hunting guide, though he’d been called back on a few ad hoc missions over the years.
But now, well into his fifties, he was pretty sure he’d spend the rest of his days helping rich men and women track and kill trophy whitetail, blackbuck, and wild boar.
As he fired the engine of his truck and turned the AC vents so that they’d blow cold air hard in his face, his phone began buzzing in his pocket.
He yanked it out while taking a sip of water. “Yeah?”
“Is that Zack Hightower?” It was a man with a gravelly voice and a British accent. Instantly Zack assumed the caller would be seeking a hunting guide.
“It is. Who’s asking?”
“It’s Gareth Wren. Ring any bells?”
Zack sat up straighter and his face lightened instantly. “Wren? Holy shit, man. That name’s a blast from the past.”
“Was hoping you’d remember.”
“All those joint ops in the sandbox? How could I forget?”
“Might try gin. Does the trick. For some, anyway. Not me.”
Zack sniffed out a laugh at the gallows humor. “How’d you get my number?”
“Mutual friends, from back in the day. Need I elaborate?”
“Negative.”
Wren had been SAS, and Hightower had worked with him multiple times in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, both when he was a Navy SEAL and then as a paramilitary for the CIA. He hadn’t thought about Gareth Wren, or any of the Brits he’d run with back then, in a very long time.
