The Chaos Agent by Mark Greaney

Artificial intelligence is a societal buzzword. AI is the amalgamation of numerous technologies that, when successful, allow the AI agent to learn and modify its actions. The tech is so new and still scattered. Now if someone with a futurist’s vision could unify the tech . . .  

Let’s say someone has kind of figured out how to integrate the tech. That might be the savior or destroyer of the world, depending on what the AI learns and applies. Let’s say there are a couple dozen different ‘modules’ of tech needed to fully realize AI’s potential. To ensure one’s place at the top of the pyramid, the geniuses behind each module would need to be eliminated.

Over the span of about 1 week, billionaire tech geniuses are dying by accident, ‘natural causes’ or just plain murder.

Courtland Gentry (aka ‘the gray man’) and Zoya Zakharova are staying a couple steps ahead of the CIA and the SVR hiding out in Guatemala. One of Zoya’s former mentors reaches out for help in guarding a Russian AI genius in transit to Mexico City, but the genius is struck down. A day before and after finds others killed in Vegas and Canada. Each hit was carried out by a highly skilled shooter who has equally skilled oversight provided by an expert drone pilot.

The video captured at the Mexico hit is sent back to a control center in Malaysia where facial recognition identifies Zoya. She is traced back to Guatemala and the AI of the control center (‘Cyrus’) decides that she and her companion need to be eliminated. A cat and mouse game ensues with the Malaysia control center following Court and Zoya.

Meanwhile, in the UK a hit on a Kiwi AI genius fails. The Kiwi, Anton Hinton, flees the UK for one of his protected labs around the world, this on in Cuba. And you can guess what happens next: Court/Zoya and Hinton kind of butt heads in Cuba. At issues is the future of the tech. Will it be used for the betterment of humanity or does it have the potential to self-actualize and run amok like Cyberdyne in the Terminator movies.

I see that this is the 13^th Gray Man book produced by Greaney. We’ve reviewed a few of them here, all favorably. And this is no exception. A first rate action-thriller. The Chaos Agent is a wild ride of deception, murder, and some serious passages of action tying up multiple scenarios around just where and how AI will best be pursued. It had been a while since I last read a Greaney book so I streamed The Gray May (with Ryan Gosling). Not sure how much that helped but it did show the extent to which Greaney will go to portray action. Let’s just say, be prepared for a wild ride over the last 25% of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance reviewer copy of the book. Their website was offline for maintenance so I can’t say when in 2024 it’ll be available.

East Coast Don

 

Red Metal by Mark Greaney and H. Ripley Rawling

About 3 years ago – A platoon is overrun in Afghanistan. Heavy losses, but. Lt Col Dan Connolly’s charges are bailed out by a Warthog. He is realizing that being on patrol is a young man’s game.

About 3 years ago – The Russians are on the verge of taking control of a rare earth metals mine in Kenya. At the last minute, Moscow says withdraw. The commander, Colonel Yuri Borbikov, doesn’t agree, but complies. He perceives this as more of a personal failure and less a political decision. For the next three years, he devises a plan to retake what he feels rightfully belongs to Russia. He just needs the right circumstances.

Current day. The China-Taiwan thing continues to rankle Beijing. Elections are coming up in Taiwan and a hard-line candidate who is pro reconciliation is assassinated by Chinese commandoes in a raid set up to look like opposition extremists within Taiwan pulled the trigger. They want war so they can take the island by force. The Western Pacific goes on alert and the President sends an enormous naval presence to the area in an attempt to deter China who has said that an invasion is imminent depending on the outcome of the upcoming elections.

This may be just what Borbikov needs. Distraction. He has managed to get the ear of a couple higher ups who in turn sell the plan to the Russian President. The plan calls for a rapid strike on two fronts while the US is distracted in the Pacific. One strike is directed at NATO, specifically its AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart while the other is a Russian force headed for the Mrima Hill mine in Kenya. If the Russians can take out AFRICOM and focus the remaining US forces on Europe, the Kenyan strike should be met with minimal  resistance.

What follows is a HUGE story beginning with Russia’s plans, miscalculations by NATO and the Pentagon, and the integration of multiple information sources by two Pentagon analysts. The battles that are largely mechanized armor battles (tanks and other such vehicless) and mostly told from the viewpoints of  Lt Col Connolly (who, normally at his cushy Pentagon job, gets pulled out and plopped in Africa to help oversee that front. Cuz he put it all together), a US commander of a tank company in Europe, an A-10 Warthog pilot, a Polish partisan in the regional civilian guard (whose main goal was to become the manager of the coffee shop she works at), the two Russian generals in charge of each front (the  experienced Boris Lazar in Africa and the arrogant Eduard Sabaneyev in Europe), Colonel Castor, the Marine commander in Africa (charged with getting to the mine first and holding the ground until a re-tasked carrier group can arrive with help), and one bad-ass driver of a Virginia class sub off the eastern coast of Africa. Europe explodes on Christmas morning and this whole mess moves along at light speed for the next week.

Greaney is an established political/spy thriller writer who has joined up with Rawlings, a retired Marine Colonel. I’ve read my share of combat-based novels and the only ones that really ring true have been written by those who’ve been there. It’s obvious that Rawlings is that man. The battle plans. The execution. The counters. The hardware. The casualties and destruction. Other books without the intimate knowledge that goes far beyond literary research just don’t match up. The book is filled with that alphabet soup of acronyms and initialism of weaponry and combat. Greaney did some work with Clancy and it shows as this is on a par with other really big stories by Clancy. Did you like Red Storm Rising? You’ll like this (>600 page) beast.

Together they have put together what could potentially be WWIII. And over what? A strip mine. Make that the world’s largest mine of rare elements that just happen to be critical for hi-tech development. Whoever controls the mine will control that most important sector of the world’s economy as well as future military R&D. Whoever controls that hole in the ground will dictate the future.

Expected publication date is July 16, 2019. Place your orders. This one could be big.

ECD

The Gray Man

The Gray Man is the first in a 7-book series by Mark Greaney. I was given a copy of the book by Volleyball Matt. James Rollins referred to this series as “Bourne for the new millennium,” and that’s exactly what it is. Court Gentry is the Gray Man, the ultimate assassin. Highly trained, he was run out of the CIA for bogus reasons, and he then became an assassin for hire. However, he still has some ethics which means that he only kills guys who deserve to die, and he prided himself in being a murderer, not a thief. Despite his immense talents, Gentry took on tasks that no one else would touch and he quickly became a legend among his peers. This book was one intense chase scene from beginning to end in which Gentry survived assault after assault by a series of other assassins who had been hired to take him out. It’s a good story and a fast easy read.

Gunmetal Gray by Mark Greaney

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

Back Blast

Mark Greaney, a New York Times bestselling author, is best known for co-authoring Tom Clancy’s last three Jack Ryan novels and then writing two more Jack Ryan novels after Clancy’s death. Back Blast is the fifth novel in his Gray Man series, and it’s a classic CIA-espionage intrigue.  Considering that the action in Back Blast mostly takes place in and around Washington, D.C., this is a book that East Coast Don has been waiting for.

Court Gentry was the best of the CIA’s team of assassins, but for the last five years, the agency put out a kill-on-sight order against him. Gentry successfully avoided all the attempts on his life while working as an independent agent, but he finally decided he wanted to understand why he had become a target. He had never blown an assignment or made any mistakes while working for the CIA. Also, he wanted to go home, so he slipped back into the US and headed directly to D.C. with a plan to find out the basis of the plot against him.

It’s pretty clear early in the book that Gentry is really the good guy, and Denny Carmichael, the Director of the National Clandestine Service, was really the ultimate bad guy. Why was Carmichael using a team of assassins from Saudi Arabia to insure that Gentry was killed and not captured alive? Carmichael was the one with all the power and the assets against this one very talented killer. And of course, the reputation of the CIA was at stake, and Gentry did not want to totally sully the agency that had provided his identity and work for the last 20 years. Greaney provided a detailed plot with lots of believable characters who are either for Carmichael or for Gentry. Zach Hightower, who had once been Gentry’s boss was particularly interesting. There’s no love story in this book, and Greaney has avoided adding gratuitous sex. It’s just not stop action from the opening chapter. This one would definitely entertain you on a crosscountry flight.