Book Review: The Chaos Agent by Mark Greaney

Be careful what you wish for. The Gray Man and his lover, Zoya Zakharova, are happily off the grid in Central America. They’ve taken on new identities. They’re no longer in the game. But staying on the permanent down-low may not be possible. Someone(s) or something is killing the world’s top artificial intelligence and robotics experts. The Gray Man’s help is needed. Why? Is it as simple as killers lethally taking out the competition or is it more sinister? Consider that, “the first nation to field weapons that can act at the speed of computer commands will rule the battlefield.” The Gray Man is the “world’s deadliest assassin,” and an all-out assault on the architects of change is war. Napoleon Bonaparte nailed what’s at stake: “The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.”

The reader is immediately drawn into the artificial intelligence-aided drone search for the couple who do not want to be found. The location is Lake Atitlán, a stunning, “fifty-square-mile body of water in an immense volcanic crater in the Guatemalan Highlands,” a “way-off-the-beaten-path tourist attraction.” Several drones, guided by a human pilot, are registering the faces of every inhabitant of Panajachel: eventually, with the use of angles and trajectories, no one’s face will remain hidden. 

Zoya Feodorovna Zakharova likes where she and her companion, Courtland “Court” Gentry, aka The Gray Man, live. Strike that, she loves living in Panajachel but she knows they can’t stay there indefinitely: “The plan was to keep moving. She didn’t like the plan, but the plan had kept her alive for four months, so she guessed she’d stick to it.” Courtland is sensing something—he has insomnia—and he pays attention to his psyche. That’s what he tells Zoya.

“I don’t know.  It’s just…everything’s great…”

 

“But?

 

“But…doesn’t it kind of feel like the clock is running out on all this?”

 

“All what?”

 

“Peace and quiet. The walls are closing in. I can feel it.”

 

While Court seemed unsure, Zoya was resolute. “Well, I can’t. We’ve been smart. We’ve kept mobile. We’ve stayed off the radar.”

Court’s reply is interesting—it’s not all about what they’ve done to stay under the radar, “The enemy gets a vote, too.” Zoya knows Court is keeping something from her. 

Richard Watt, the “director of the Defense Innovation Unit, a DOD initiative charged with obtaining and optimizing existing commercial technology for use by the military,” is killed while playing golf in Palo Alto. His bodyguards think that it was a sniper shot from a high building. “Jesus Christ,” the driver added. “A sniper? Here? In Palo Alto?” “That’s the Gray Man, dude.” Who’s the Gray Man? Answer: a stunningly effective assassin. 

The assassination of Richard Watt had not, in fact, been carried out by the Gray Man.

 

Seven hundred twelve meters away, forty-seven-year-old Scott Patrick Kincaid folded the stock on his Ruger Precision Rifle and slipped it into a white laundry bag half filled with towels that he shouldered as he ran in a low crouch back towards the door to the emergency stairwell of the hospital.

Kincaid goes by the name of Lancer: he’s “one of the most infamous killers for hire on the planet.” He’s supremely confident—quick drive to a private plane and on to the next assignment. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, when “he lowered his N95 again for another sip of Coke,” he was “wholly unaware that a traffic camera caught a reasonable image of his face in the process.”

Richard Watt is one of several AI experts who are assassinated within a 36-hour time frame. Their expertise is in the creation of a “lethal autonomous weapon, or LAW.” Such weapons can, “without any human interaction, search for, decide to engage, and then engage a target.” It’s just as terrifying as it sounds. Pace, an American DOD security guru, briefs his colleagues on the dangers.

Pace turned his attention to the assistant to the DOD. “Artificial intelligence can give the enemy weapon something we call ‘first mover advantage.’ Sun Tzu said it best: ‘Speed is the essence of war.’ If you take the human out of the equation and solely give artificial intelligence the power to control a weapon, then your speed will outmatch your enemy.”

 

“And you win,” Watkins said softly.

Back to the carnage: it made no difference whether the experts had heavy security or not. They were all ruthlessly annihilated, with horrifying collateral damage…with one exception. Anton Hinton: “entrepreneur, software developer, inventor, futurist, owner of Hinton Lab Group.” A fictional Elon Musk character? Hinton escapes the first attempt on his life, hires an out-to-pasture American security specialist, but even with heightened state-of-the-art protection and body armor, he barely escapes a second attempt to kill him. 

It’s time for the Gray Man and Zoya, his talented and lethal partner, to come out of the cold. They have barely escaped Lancer once but it’s time for the hunted to become the hunter once again. The tension and firepower are unrelenting: The Chaos Agent is a believable and well-told tale of what if, in which readers won’t easily forget the message it conveys.