His name is Chief Sergeant Class Three Fan Jiang. Unit 61398. Detachment Red Cell.
Unit 61398 is the hacking battalion of the People's Liberation Army, China. And the Red Cell Detachment is the most secretive group in Unit 61398. They answer to their director who answers only to the President. The hackers of Red Cell represent the absolute cream of the computer geeks in China. There is no network they can't penetrate. Their prime task is to try and break into secretive Chinese databases to find security holes that need to be corrected. At this, Fan is the best.
To keep these hackers in line, all their loved ones and families are brought to a housing unit nearby and given a pretty good life as Chinese peasant life goes. The families don't need much and they want for nothing. They think it's their family member's reward for doing a good job. Having family close by.
They are actually hostages. If a hacker screws up, a family member disappears. Simple as that. If a hacker no longer has any family to be held hostage, the hacker is no longer under any threat so said hacker also disappears. China has thousands wanting to fill the opening. Manpower was never one of China's limitations.
The only family Fan has are his parents. When they disappear under shady circumstances, Fan is sure he is soon to be targeted. He makes a clandestine request for help from Taiwan for help crossing the border to Hong Kong. When the help doesn't show, nerdy Fan - a far cry from being a rifle-carrying soldier - has to go dark.
As you might guess, there are any number of countries that would love to get their hands on Fan and debrief him about China's cyber defenses. The primaries are, of course, Russia and the US.
The CIA sends in a lone agent to track Fan and identify his location. Once verified, a ground unit will swoop in and pick up Fan. Simple enough.
The agent isn't a CIA employee. At least not now. He was once. Cortland Gentry is in his 40s. Twenty-some years ago, he was a CIA clandestine operative. One of their best, mostly because of his instincts and ability to act in silence or in extreme violence. Sort of went afoul of his bosses and found himself on the wrong end of a hunt so he joined Cheltenham Security Services, a Brit firm run by his former CIA handler, Sir Donald Fitzroy.
China can't just send in a search and capture/kill squad into Hong Kong, so the head of the Unit hires Cheltenham to do the dirty work and Gentry gets the job. But Gentry has also been contracted by the CIA also to find Jiang. Despite his falling out with The Company, they still know he is very good. And this is just a manhunt for a nerd. Gentry surely can't run afoul of such a simple assignment.
Fan Jiang isn't all that good at tradecraft and he thinks his only way to safety is to stay low and do some digital deeds for a Hong Kong Triad gang. Once done, he expects to be taken to the border and released. Naive guy.
Gentry tracks Jiang to the particular Triad gang. When he tries to move in, a Russian black ops squad interferes. Jiang gets dumped on a freighter run by a Vietnamese gang. When Gentry finally tracks down Jiang again, the same Russian squad appears and messes up Gentry's plans. Jiang fumbles and escape only to be grabbed by a river gang of Cambodians who turn him over the the uber SE Asia crime force in Thailand. And guess who shows up again? Yep, the Russians, but the first extraction attempt goes pretty badly. The Chinese are getting impatient with Gentry and send in their own death squad.
Gentry (CIA codename: Violator; Interpol tag: the Gray Man) seems to be one step behind in the hunt for Jiang, but still manages to stay in the game as Fan stumbles and trips over his own feet in a feeble attempt at escape and evasion. Plus there are other issues at play that are way, way, way above Gentry's pay grade.
This is the 2nd by Mark Greaney reviewed here at MRB, the first being #5 in the series, Back Blast reviewed by West Coast Don about a year ago. Gunmetal Gray is the 6th Gray Man book. Highly entertaining, very readable, a character in Gentry that we can root for, and far too many plot twists to reveal. Greaney gives we newbies enough glimpses into Gray's past to entice us to go back to the 1st book (The Gray Man) and work through the series. Recent reviews here at MRB have, rightly or wrongly, entered into a series well past the first book, forcing us to decide to stay on this path of almost randomly selected new releases or go back to the beginning. I really think this is one I'll try to find #1 and start moving forward. Both WCD and I liked Gentry. Fun stuff. See you soon, Violator.
ECD
No comments:
Post a Comment