These weren’t combatants. These were lambs at the slaughterhouse, he was the butcher, and there was no game in that.

Still he drove in the front passenger seat of the Mercedes G-Wagen as it motored north away from Los Angeles, through Calabasas, west of the hills of the San Fernando Valley, checking his phone idly and thinking about the old days, back in the nation of his birth, back in his time in South Africa’s military and intelligence services.

Those had been interesting times.

So unlike tonight.

Tonight he would put bullets into the heads of two young women, dump their bodies in a ditch, and then turn around to head to Van Nuys airport for a flight to Europe.

The girls were all but unconscious in the backseat of the Mercedes. They’d been injected with heroin, not for the first time, and then they’d been helped out of the large property where they had been kept, folded into the SUV, and joined by Jaco Verdoorn and two of his men.

Their heads lolled in the back with the bouncing on the roads, and Verdoorn showed his boredom with a wide yawn.

This was just another day at the office.

The driver stopped beside a ravine that ran along Big Pines Highway. This wasn’t a particularly out-of-the-way location, but it was the middle of the night now and there were no cars in sight and, anyway, this would just take a moment.

The young women—one was a nineteen-year-old brunette from Belarus, and the other a seventeen-year-old Indonesian—were barely aware of their surroundings as they were let out onto the street, over to the shoulder, and up to a low metal railing.

The two young women faced the ravine, both only now feeling a hint of confusion, because during their months of captivity, they’d never been out of the compound they were kept in, they’d never been in a car, and none of this felt exactly right.

The Belarusian muttered through a tongue slurred with the drug injected into her, “What is happening?”

The South African climbed out of the front passenger seat, pocketed his phone with a sigh, and then drew the SIG Sauer P220 pistol from the waistband of his khakis under his too-tight white polo shirt. As he leveled it at the back of the brunette’s head he said, “The Director grew tired of you, like he always does. Time to make way for the next shipment.”

A gunshot rang out on the quiet hillside, and the young woman pitched forward, disappearing from view before the echo of the pistol’s report made its way back from the other side of the ravine.

The Indonesian, even in her drug-induced stupor, recoiled from the loud noise, and she started to turn around, but Jaco Verdoorn fired again, striking her in the left temple, and she, too, tumbled over the metal railing and down into the thick brush.

One of the other South Africans shined his tactical flashlight down the ravine. A cloud of dust rose, indicating the women had come to rest on the earthen floor.

Verdoorn had already holstered his pistol and sat back down in the SUV by the time the light clicked off and the two other men returned to the vehicle. This wasn’t the first time Jaco had done this—this wasn’t even the tenth time—and he expected in a couple of months, certainly no more than four or five, he’d be back, either here or on some other little lonely mountain road, and he’d be doing it all over again.

It was the job.

It wasn’t the action he’d wanted, but the pay was good and, every once in a while, something interesting came up.

As the vehicle rolled off to the west to begin its journey back towards Van Nuys, the South African’s phone rang and he answered it.

“Verdoorn.”

He listened a moment, cocked his head, then said, “Kostas, that is, indeed, distressing news. I’m gonna have to go to the Director with it, and he will be bladdy well displeased.”

The Greek spoke a moment more, but Jaco interrupted him.

“I don’t give a fuck who did it, I just know that—”

The bald-headed man in the polo shirt hesitated suddenly. This story about an entire way station shot up, seven killed, a targeted assassination. Something about this triggered his brain. He changed his tune suddenly. “Who did it?”

Seconds later, it was plain to the other two in the Mercedes that Jaco Verdoorn very clearly did give a fuck who did it. “You’re kidding me. How sure are they?” A pause. “Of course I bladdy well know who that is!”

He listened now as the Greek talked about a Bosnian police chief who he felt should be killed for allowing the hit to happen, and Jaco agreed, but he wasn’t thinking about a police chief.

No, he was thinking about the Gray Man.

Courtland Gentry.

Finally he hung up, called a contact in the Serbian government in Banja Luka for confirmation, and then hung up from that call and looked down at his phone.

He thought about calling the Director immediately; the man did not like to be bothered during the night, but Jaco knew he’d have to get approval for the hit on the Bosnian cop. Still, as the wheels in the South African’s mind turned, he realized he would need more information about the American assassin before going to his boss.

And he knew where to get it.

With a pounding heart that only came from the prospect of hunting the most dangerous prey in the world, the South African smiled now.

“What’s up, boss?” asked the driver.

Verdoorn said, “Tryin’ to not get my hopes up too high, Samuel, but we might have ourselves a spot of fun on the horizon.”

The man in the back spoke with sarcasm. “What, more exciting than this?”

Verdoorn ignored him.

The driver saw the look in his boss’s eye. “New target, sir?” Samuel knew there was only one thing that his boss considered fun.

Verdoorn brought the phone to his ear as he placed the call. To his driver he said, still through a smile, “New target.”

SEVEN

   I dream about the women in the cellar. I can’t make out any faces clearly, but I see eyes shining red: desolate, fearful, despairing orbs that track me wherever I move. I am enveloped by the sights and sounds of their prison; I sense the inevitable bleakness of their futures and, more disheartening, I see that they sense that bleakness, as well.

And then, just before I wake up, I remember that this is all my motherfucking fault.

Opening my eyes now, I realize that I am not in the red room, but I don’t know where I am. I wake up in a different hotel or apartment or flophouse or bunk bed with staggering regularity, so I’m used to the sensation. My left hand hurts, and the muscles all over my body feel strained and knotted: also nothing out of the ordinary for me.

I’ve seen action, that much is clear by my aches and pains.