Gunmetal Gray Quotes

“She spoke into his ear. “You just mugged a guy. Stole his motorcycle.” “Not how I see it.” “How do you see it?” “Colonel Dai just bought a used dirt bike in Vietnam. I was kind of the middleman.” “Tell yourself whatever works, Violator.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Bollocks, Court. That’s not you. With you it’s about doing the right thing, come what may. You’ll do it with an ally, you’ll do it with an enemy, or you’ll do it alone. You’ll die before you go against what you believe in. It makes you the one good man in all this.” “It makes me exploitable, and expendable.” “Too true. No argument there, lad.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“I hope you can take some constructive criticism.” “Sure.” “It sounds like you are trying to make too many people happy.” Court looked to the carpet a moment. “Welcome to my world.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Being the Gray Man didn’t mean being in control at all times. Sometimes it meant relinquishing all control, playing the game, and dealing with fucking bullshit like some asshole standing on the back of your head.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“The only gold stars the CIA gives out are for death in the field, and then only to actual employees, not contracted assets. You get my appreciation.” She smiled. “You’ll get a gold star in a forgotten file when you die. It will have to wait for now, but I doubt it will wait for too long.” “With friends like you.” “All your friends fucked you over, Court. Face it, you are better off with a straight shooter like me managing you.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Zoya pulled the fitted sheet off the bed and began tying it with the others. While she worked, she said, “No offense, Mr. Wonderful, but that’s only a problem for you and Fitzroy. I don’t even know the guy.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“I am going to ask you another question. It may be a difficult one for you to answer, but I need to know. Do you promise you will tell me the truth?” Court leaned forward. “I swear it.” Her eyes remained locked on his. “Are you the Gray Man?”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“You sound like a Russian with a head injury and a speech impediment.” “Jesus. What if I said I wanted the truth?” “Then I would have said you sounded like an American with a head injury and a speech impediment speaking bad Russian.” Court knew his Russian was better than that. He couldn’t pass as a native speaker, but he could carry on conversations without too much trouble. Still, with her skill in languages it was no surprise she was a tough critic. “Why did I ever marry you, Whitney?” he joked. Zoya did not miss a beat. “Must have been the head injury, Chad.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Sirena Vozdushoy Trevogi. Your code name is Banshee.” She neither confirmed nor denied, but Court didn’t wait for her to do either. “That’s better than Sirena.” “What is your name?” she asked. “I’m Bob.” “Right. I’m Jane.” “I like Banshee,” Court said.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Court furrowed his eyebrows. “No. I came in a freighter.” Dai took this without comment. Court sighed now, feigning frustration. “You suspect me of being a CIA officer who stays in five-star hotels. If you knew as much about me as you pretend to, then you would know the CIA has done everything in its power to terminate me for the past five years. You’d also know I’m flat broke. I left the U.S. with the clothes on my back and no more than a thousand dollars. Is this a joke or are you really that incompetent?”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Court played his role to the hilt now, cocking his head as if he were wondering if the person asking the question might possibly be mentally deranged. “The CIA? You think I bought my way free of the Agency? I fucking shot my way out, pal.” He rolled his eyes. “Pay off the CIA? They don’t need me to pay them off. They are part of the U.S. federal government, the guys that print U.S. dollars, or didn’t you know?” Dai asked his next question in a flat, emotionless voice. “Did you arrive in a Dassault Falcon yesterday?”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“He was dealing with well-trained individuals. They were still goons, to be sure, but they’d clearly graduated with honors from a top-flight goon school”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“He believed in it, and he liked it better than any alternative; he sometimes just wished it would scrub itself up a little.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“You really had to experience a location to know it at an operational level.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Stay low, go fast, kill first, die last, one shot, one kill, no luck, all skill. —UNOFFICIAL NAVY SEAL SLOGAN There is only the trying. The rest is not our business. —T. S. ELIOT CHARACTERS”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“An hour later he stood in the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and scanned the massive board of destinations, a hundred or more cities there for his choosing. He could take a train north to Malmo or south to Athens. West to Dublin or east to Moscow.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“his job clearly had something to do with guns, because he held an HK416 rifle in his hand now, leveled at Court’s chest. He stood alone in the small doorway, but now the main hangar door slid open, ten feet off Court’s right, and an entire Special Activities Division Ground Branch field team walked out, each man carrying an automatic weapon.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“A simultaneous volley of four rocket-propelled grenades raced out of the jungle to the south and hit the area around the men at the back door, and, within a half second, four more RPGs struck the entrance to the building coming from the northeast, decimating Team Two just as they were stepping down from the large porch.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Up on the overwatch where Dai was positioned, the two sniper teams were preparing to engage with their bolt-action rifles, but Dai called out to them before they fired their first round. “No!” he said. “There must be fifty or more of them. We will just draw fire on ourselves, and we can do nothing for our comrades below.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Right, I’m saying that just because there is an allegation that an assassination was conducted by the Gray Man, that doesn’t necessarily—” “Yes or no?” Court hesitated. Then he said, “Yes.” Zoya’s mouth opened slightly, and it hung there a moment. Softly she said, “Wow.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“As far as Nattapong Chamroon was concerned, he ruled the world. Well… he and his brother did. He was twenty-eight years old and handsome; his father owned a transnational criminal enterprise that raked in over 240 million U.S. dollars a year, plenty of money to keep Nattapong and his older brother, Kulap, knee-deep in the best cars, clothes, houses, booze, and friends”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“In her imagination she was somewhere dry and sunbaked, with a drink in her hand and the smell of cut flowers close by, filling her with happiness and tranquility. The dream faded as a blade of saw grass sliced her forearm just aft of her glove, bringing her back to the reality that she was wading through a god-awful-smelling canal full of snakes, leeches, and vermin. She’d spent almost an hour up to her neck in the slimy ditch, pushing a large clump of water hyacinth along with her to break up the outline of a human head. Her body felt like it would never dry out once she climbed out of this dank water, and even if it did, she was convinced she’d never be able to wash the smell of rotten vegetation off her skin”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“The five former bodyguards immediately expanded the organization from overseeing pickpocketing and snatch-and-grab petty theft to extortion, counterfeiting, and drug distribution. The former Tigers infantry officers became the head of the Wild Tigers, Con Ho Hoang Da, and they trafficked heroin from the nearby Golden Triangle of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand into Hong Kong and Singapore, produced and smuggled fake designer goods internationally, and illegally transported workers and immigrants across the border of Cambodia and into Thailand from Vietnam.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“With her eye still in the scope, Zoya Zakharova pulled the charging handle back on the VSS rifle, chambering a 9-by-39-millimeter round. She hadn’t envisioned using the weapon this evening at all, and she hadn’t fired a VSS since her sniper training four years earlier, but she had a target downrange now, and she was committed to killing him. She followed the man’s head with the crosshairs of the rifle, holding just a touch high to account for the characteristics of this bullet at this distance”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“On the main foredeck, two more crewmen readied diving gear, while inside the main-deck saloon, seven men pulled on neoprene suits. The operators were crowded, but they were accustomed to living and working in close proximity to one another. As members of the elite and secretive Zaslon (Shield) Unit of SVR, this very team of paramilitaries had helicoptered across eastern Ukraine and Dagestan on direct-action missions. They’d killed terrorists and kidnapped local rebel leaders in Chechnya after sitting huddled together in the back of armored vehicles for hours on end, and they’d parachuted into Syria to assist with the escape of a Syrian Army general from a position being overrun by rebels”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Next to her a man appeared, head to toe in brown camouflage, his own binoculars in his hands. Zoya knew Ruslan had a suppressed sniper rifle, a VSS Vintorez, on a bipod somewhere back there in the brush. Through the high-powered optic on the rail of the weapon, and not through the binos in his hands, he’d been watching Zoya throughout her visit here to the island”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Bsiness Suit was just squeezing the pistol’s trigger as Court rolled off the bed at speed and onto his feet, grabbed the suppressor of the handgun, and pushed it down. A subsonic 9-millimeter round left the pistol at 980 feet per second and scorched the air between Court’s legs, puncturing the floor. Court swung a handcuff-encased right hook that slammed into Business Suit’s temple and waylaid him, knocking him into the wall between the bedroom and the bathroom”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“I’ve always wanted to kill a CIA officer. With my own hands. I’ve dreamed of the day, wrapping my fingers around his throat, squeezing the life from him, watching his eyes bug out and then go blank.” The comment was in Mandarin, and it came not from the man with the binoculars but from his partner, on his left. Both stood on the roof of an airport outbuilding, doing their best to ignore the stifling morning heat. The man with the binoculars also did his best to ignore his colleague, and he kept his focus on the approaching aircraft.”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“Some people think zoos are terrible places,” Brewer said”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray

“There is only the trying. The rest is not our business. —T. S. ELIOT”
― Mark Greaney, Gunmetal Gray