Back Blast (11 page)

T
he three fraternity brothers were stone-cold sober, but that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that they were also wet, hungry, and pissed, and they hadn’t even killed anything yet.

They’d begun this weekend with such high hopes, and Friday had been a blast. It was Jay’s twenty-second birthday and his father had arranged a memorable time for him and his two best friends. They left the Sig Ep house at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve Friday afternoon and headed to the airport to climb aboard a Cessna Citation Mustang that was owned by Jay’s dad’s law firm. The three boys sipped rum and Cokes served to them by the jet’s leggy flight attendant while they flew to Greenbrier Valley Airport in Lewisburg, West Virginia. From the airport they were driven to the hunting lodge, and as soon as they checked in to their rooms they hit the bar and drank shots with a group of old-timers till late in the evening.

Saturday morning they rolled out of their bunks, groggy and hungover, but riding on adrenaline. Dressed in their new camo, they shouldered their rented rifles and heavy packs and sauntered down to breakfast.

The plan called for their guide to meet them in the lobby, and then they would discuss the strategy of their full-weekend wild boar hunting excursion over pancakes and bacon. The boys figured after that they would all climb onto four-wheelers, drive up into the mountains, and kill shit—maybe do a shot of Fireball or Jägermeister every time a hog went down.

But when they met the guide in the lobby by the entrance to the breakfast room, he turned them away from the food and walked them directly out into the rainy morning. When Jay asked the gruff-looking, middle-aged, bearded man what the rush to get out of the lodge was all about, he just said they would be doing less four-wheeling and more “humping” to get to their hide site.

The three boys got the impression humping meant something different to their guide than it did to them.

The man then went through each of the frat boys’ gear and began pulling things out and throwing them in a pile on the gravel drive without a word. Out came the 12-pack of Natural Light, the bottles of Fireball, Jägermeister, and Pappy Van Winkle, then the M&M’s, fried pies, and even two bags of Cheetos.

Jay’s dad was a high-profile attorney, Meat’s mom hosted a satellite radio show about Chicago politics, and Stuart’s dad had been deputy mayor of Cleveland, but all three boys were too intimidated by the rough-looking guide to protest. They’d been warned at the lodge by the old-timers that the man was surly and taciturn, but along with these cons, they’d been promised he was also the best hunting guide in the state, so they just rolled with his gruffness.

The bearded man all but pushed them into his huge pickup, although he did promise them food and coffee on the road. As soon as they left the lodge, however, it became clear their breakfast would consist of bagged military meals ready to eat and Folgers instant that they heated in a plastic bag with a chemical heater and then drank out of dirty tin cups.

They drove for two hours with the guide barely speaking, then they slung their packs and rifles and began walking into the mountains.

The guide led them off the trail after another hour and into impossibly dense forest.

They walked, climbed, and stumbled through the woods all day, and they failed to drop a single wild boar. Stuart had fired twice and missed twice, Jay blasted an anthill that sort of looked like a boar from distance, and, although he expended a lot of ammunition, the only thing Meat had killed was three pouches of marbled pound cake and two helpings of beef stew out of the MRE stash in his pack.

The guide was clearly disgusted with them all, but he had not even brought a rifle of his own, so as far as they were concerned he couldn’t prove he could have done any better.

They made camp before last light and ate more MREs, and by then the Sig Ep frat brothers had begun complaining loudly. When they did, the guide gave them the evil eye and a gruff retort about how they looked like they needed the exercise more than they needed pork chops, and then he promised them better results on Sunday.

But it was Sunday now, past two p.m., thirty hours after setting out, and the frat boys still hadn’t killed a damn thing. They sat in a hide on the side of a hill that looked down over broken ground divided by a winding creek. On the other side of the valley, some 250 yards away, sat another rocky hillside, thick with pines and brush that was lush and green in the wet spring.

All three boys had sat silently on the cold ground for the past hour, waiting for something to happen, but Jay ended the silence when he turned to the guide and cleared his throat. “Hey, man. This is bullshit. You promised us we’d shoot some hogs.”

The bearded man covered in camo didn’t even turn Jay’s way. He kept looking out over the valley, then he spit chewing tobacco on the grass between his knees. “We’re hunting, not chasing. Best when your prey comes to you.”

Stuart looked at his watch. “Any idea when that might be?”

“You just have to open your eyes, ladies. They are out there if you look.”

The boys all picked up their binoculars and searched the valley floor with their lenses. They’d missed most all their shots under two hundred yards, so they didn’t bother to scan any farther out than that.

Finally Meat said, “There’s nothing down there but squirrels.”

The guide said, “I thought you said you kids came from Case Western. Sure you don’t go to the School for the Blind?”

Jay took his eyes out of his binos and looked to the guide. “I don’t want to be a dick or anything, but you know I could make one call to my dad and get you fired. He’s friends with the old dude who owns the lodge, you know.”

The guide spit again in the grass in front of him.

Stuart finished scanning the valley floor, then he moved the glass up and searched the opposite hillside. He stopped the movement of his binoculars suddenly.

“Wait. You aren’t talking about those hogs up
there
, are you?”

It took a minute, but Stuart got his two fraternity brothers to see what he was looking at. Far on the other side and almost as high as the hunters’ hide site, eight wild boar rooted in the wet grass and pine needles.

Jay said, “You’re kidding, right? Those hogs have to be four hundred yards away.”

The guide looked across the valley with his naked eyes. “Not an inch more than three seventy. Actually, I’d say . . . three sixty-three.”

Jay pulled his brand-new laser range finder out of his brand-new backpack. After nearly a minute’s work with the device, he retracted his eye out of the eyecup and turned to the guide, a look of astonishment on his face. “That’s incredible. The closest hog is three sixty-one.”

The guide spit again. “That one in front is a little underdeveloped. I was talking about that big black fella about two meters behind him.”

Meat just muttered, “Holy shit.”

Stuart said, “But we aren’t shooting from here.” A pause. “Are we?”

“Why not?”

Jay got over his awe at the guide’s natural distance-calculating ability. “Look. It’s your job to get us within range, not just to within sight.”

The guide replied with annoyance, “I could hit him.”

Jay laughed now. “Well, you’re the fucking guide, so you’re supposed to be better than us. But since you didn’t even bother to bring a rifle, you can’t prove it, can you?”

Meat held his bolt action Winchester out. “You want to take a shot? I’d like to see you try it.”

The guide said, “Why not?” but he didn’t reach for the rifle. Instead he spit once more to the side, rolled forward from a seated position into a prone position, unzipped his camouflage jacket, and reached into the folds of his clothing. To the utter confusion of the three fraternity brothers in the grass next to him, he slowly drew a perfectly ordinary-looking black handgun.

Jay said, “You’re crazy.”

The guide did not speak. He just leveled the semiautomatic pistol out in front of him, holding it in his right hand and resting his right forearm on top of his left forearm, which he positioned perpendicular to his body on the ground.

Stuart said, “That’s an impossible shot with a handgun.”

The guide spoke now, but it sounded as if he was talking to himself. “Humidity’s got to be seventy percent. Four-point-five-inch barrel, forty-cal hollow point, it’s gonna be pretty draggy, but I’ve got a full-value five-mile wind to work with. I’d say I need about a twenty-four-foot holdover.”

Meat said, “Even if you
could
hit one of those hogs from here, you couldn’t possibly kill it. That bullet will go an inch into its hide and get stuck in the fat or the muscle.”

The guide nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off his pistol’s iron sights.
“You’re right. Let’s do a twenty-five-and-a-half-foot holdover, go for the brain pan.”

The three boys sat there agog, staring at the big bearded man lying in the grass next to them. They saw the barrel of the black pistol rise just slightly.

“You are fucking nuts,” muttered Jay, but then he quickly brought his binoculars up to his eyes. The other two did the same, and they focused on the target.

A single gunshot pounded the air next to them. Jay jerked his binos away from his eyes with a flinch, but he got them recentered on the dark brown hog on the far hill. The animal just stood there, his snout rooting idly in the pine needles.

“You missed,” Jay said.

And then the hog shuddered, its head twitched, and it dropped snout-first into the shallow hole it had been digging. It fell on its side, its legs kicked out, and then it stilled.

Only then did all the other wild boar on the hillside begin running off in different directions. And seconds after that, the echo of the pistol’s report made its way from the far hillside to the four men.

Jay, Meat, and Stuart all moved as one. Eyes slowly lifted out of their binoculars and turned to the man next to them.

Mouths opened slightly, but no one spoke.

—

Z
ack Hightower rolled back up to a sitting position, reholstered his Glock 22 on his hip under his coat, and spit in the grass. He looked over to the three sissy college boys next to him. In a tone not quite as snide as he intended he said, “I’ll kill him for you, but I sure as shit am not going to go get him for you.”

Meat was the first of the three boys to speak. “One of the old dudes in the lodge said you were in the SEALs. We thought he was full of shit.”

Hightower sighed. “You aren’t ‘in the SEALs.’ You are in the navy. You
are
a SEAL.”

Jay said, “So . . . you were a SEAL?”

Hightower did not answer. Instead he cocked his head to the left and looked up to the sky.

“What is it?” Meat asked.

Zack kept looking around, trying to find the source of the engine noise he was hearing. After several seconds, he said, “Helo.”

A black helicopter appeared over the ridge on the other side of the valley, flew past the downed wild boar, and approached the four men.

“EC-130,” Zack added.

Jay asked, “What’s it doing here?”

Zack smiled a little now—he couldn’t help it—then he stood, grabbed his pack, and slung it over a shoulder. He brushed some of the mud and wet leaves off his clothing. “I do believe he’s here for me.”

The aircraft hovered above a rolling pasture, the flattest area on the hillside, just one hundred feet away from the hunters. It lowered down onto its skids and Zack started towards it.

Jay shouted after him. “Hey! Where the hell are you going?”

Zack turned back around and snapped his fingers, like he’d forgotten about the three boys sitting in the grass. He reached into his pocket, removed the keys to his pickup, and threw them overhand to Jay.

He said, “The truck is seven point five klicks east-southeast.”

Meat asked, “Which way is that? And what’s a klick?”

Jay stood now. “Wait! You can’t just leave us!”

Hightower turned around and headed for the helo. Over the sound of the Eurocopter’s engine he shouted back to them. “Call your dad. I hear he knows the old dude who owns the lodge.”

Zack Hightower climbed aboard the helicopter with a nod to the crew, nonchalant, like he’d been expecting it all day, and the helo lifted back off into the gray sky while the boys watched from below.

C
atherine King didn’t always come in to the office on Sundays, but she was here today, preparing an investigative piece on a recent drone attack in Syria with a deadline of noon on Monday.

She had a corner cubicle area that wasn’t quite an office, but it was more than what most of the reporters at the
Post
got. A ten-by-ten space filled with books, magazines, newspapers, file folders, rolling duffels and backpacks, yoga mats and other fitness-related items, along with a few pictures pinned into the fabric of the wall of her cube.

Catherine had never married, never had children. She’d felt sure it would happen in her thirties, and when it hadn’t come to pass by her forties she felt sure she’d become too old and set in her ways to settle down. Now in her fifties, she threw herself into her only real loves: her work and her yoga practice.

This morning she’d come directly from her Sunday class at Georgetown Yoga, and she sat at her desk now in full loose-fitting exercise attire. She wasn’t concerned with her appearance, because the few people who worked in the office on Sunday afternoon had known her for years, and there was no one around she was out to impress.

Catherine focused on her article till a reflection in her computer monitor caused her to spin around in surprise. When she did she found a young man with thinning blond hair and a wispy mustache-goatee combo, a smile on his face and a backpack over his shoulder.

“Let me guess,” Catherine said as she stood and extended a hand. “You must be Andy Shoal.”

“A real pleasure to finally meet you.” He shook her hand eagerly. “I’ve followed your work since J-school. Before, even.”

“How nice.” Catherine forced a little smile at the comment, then she
scooped a stack of manila shipping pouches off of one of the two extra chairs in her cubicle area and offered the seat to Andy. He plopped down and dropped his backpack on the floor, and she sat back down in front of her monitor, holding the pouches in her lap because she didn’t want to foul up her filing system by placing them on any other surface in the messy cubicle.

“Hope you don’t mind me dropping in unannounced,” Andy said, looking around at the mess while he spoke.

“Not at all. Apparently you not only work nights, but you also work weekends. Is that it?”

By way of explanation, Andy said, “I’m a cops reporter.”

Catherine understood. “I guess criminals don’t work bankers’ hours.”

Andy smiled. “Only bank robbers.”

Catherine returned a polite smile at the joke. “Did you find out anything new about the Brandywine Street murders?”

“The victims are all still in the hospital—one is in ICU—but I doubt they will be talking to me or the cops.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They are all getting charged with possession with the intent to distribute. They will lawyer up, and their lawyers will tell them to button their lips.”

“Any more from the police?”

“No description of the killer other than male, white, thirties. There was one thing that was really weird, though.”

“What’s that?”

“The killer left a bunch of fingerprints.”

Catherine scrunched up her mouth. That didn’t seem weird to her at all.

“In a symbol,” Andy added.

“A
symbol
?”

“Well, a number. He used his right thumbprint to make a big number six on a nightstand in the room with the dead guys.”

“It sounds like a calling card of some sort. Have you seen that at any other crime? A gang sign or something?”

“I haven’t, and I checked a nationwide database on gang signs. A six by itself doesn’t seem to mean anything.”

“Could be a message.”

Andy said, “You mean, to the CIA?”

Catherine gazed out the window and down onto 15th Street. “I don’t know.”

Andy asked, “Did you find anything out about the spooks who toured the scene?”

“Jordan Mayes I told you about. The woman’s name is Suzanne Brewer. She’s CIA as well, in their Programs and Plans office. Her job is to identify threats against the Agency, terrorists and such, and then task assets to eliminate the threats.”

“What does she have to do with Mayes?”

“No idea,” said Catherine. “According to my contacts she served in Baghdad protecting facilities, and then she served in Kabul and Sana’a, Yemen. She came back to HQ three years ago with a lot of accolades and commendations for her work and a promotion to go with it. She has an excellent reputation in the Agency.”

Catherine sat quietly a moment, just thinking. Andy did not get in the way of the process. She said, “It makes me wonder if Mayes and Brewer had information about the perpetrator last night. That he was somehow related to a threat against CIA. It would have to be something substantial to bring out the AD of NCS and a senior program officer.”

“What do you want to do now?” Andy asked.

“I’d like to know more about the man they are after. I’ll stay away from Carmichael for now.”

Andy said, “If you want I can reach out to Mayes. Just play dumb and ask him what he was doing there.”

King shook her head. “He won’t talk. At this point the best we can hope for is an official CIA press officer comment, which would be worthless.”

Andy sighed. It was clear to Catherine that he wanted a story, and he wanted it now. He said, “In your world, you can’t get people to talk. When I go to a crime scene to get an interview, I usually can’t get people to shut up.”

Catherine laughed. “Do what I do long enough and you learn to read between the lines. Often I get more information by what the CIA
doesn’t
say.” She spun back around to her computer, indicating to Andy she was ready to get back to work. “Keep your nose to the ground, Andy. My interest is piqued about Mayes and Brewer.”

—

Z
ack Hightower had been handed a garment bag in the Eurocopter, and in it he found a suit and tie. The control officer on board asked him to change out of his hunting gear, not because CIA demanded formality, but rather so he did not draw attention to himself in the building dressed in camo and muddy boots. He stripped down to his boxers as they flew high over Northern Virginia, and as he did so he could immediately tell his new outfit had been borrowed off another man; it didn’t fit very well around his muscular arms, and there was a hint of both antiperspirant and BO.

Zack smelled like a goat, however, so he just shrugged and put on the suit. The control officer kicked off his own wing tips and Zack slipped them on, finding them just one size too small.

The helo descended over the rolling hills of Virginia and landed on CIA property at seven p.m., setting down in the nearly empty parking lot on the bubble side of the Old HQ building. Even before the rotors spooled down, Zack was led out and then through the side door. He followed his control officer through the security checks, then to the elevators, where he stepped inside.

The Langley headquarters was familiar to him, but only from visits for an occasional briefing, seminar, or retirement party for a senior coworker. He’d never had a desk here, and as far as Zack was concerned, that was okay with him.

He raised an eyebrow when he realized they were heading up to the seventh floor. Zack worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for eleven years before being dismissed, but this was his first trip all the way to the top. Seven wasn’t exactly a hangout for paramilitary operations officers, after all.

Zack had spent the majority of his stateside time with CIA in training, mostly in Virginia and North Carolina but also in the mountains of Montana and Colorado, firing ranges in Mississippi and Arizona, the deserts of Nevada and the streets of D.C., where he and other SAD men honed their surveillance skills.

Zack’s unit of Ground Branch officers did have its own headquarters, an unmarked building in Norfolk, Virginia, but Zack had spent several
years leading his six-man outfit of shooters to all points in the War on Terror, and in those years he and his team spent very little time stateside.

As he rode the elevator up with the other man, Zack did his best to act like this sort of shit happened to him every day, but in truth his mind was racing. Why were they pulling him in? Some old op needed a full accounting? Some new op needed the eyes of a veteran to straighten it out?

Was he being offered a way back in CIA?

Hightower didn’t dare hope for this.

A minute later Zack took a seat at a mahogany table in a dark-paneled conference room, and within moments of his sitting down, a side door opened and in walked Jordan Mayes, the second-in-command at NCS.

Zack was surprised to see such a highflier, but more surprised that Jordan Mayes looked like hell, as if he’d been up for forty-eight hours.

Hightower knew Mayes from both of their days in SAD, although Mayes had always been enough rungs higher on the management ladder to where he didn’t need to slum with labor much. From time to time Hightower would find himself face-to-face with Mayes, but he could count those occurrences on one hand.

Zack knew Mayes had always worked directly for Denny Carmichael. He hoped that was no longer the case. Carmichael had fired Zack a couple of years earlier, unceremoniously and cruelly. Hightower had been in intensive care at the time with a gunshot wound to his chest and a dangerous infection in his lungs, and Carmichael sent word down through a low-level flunky that his services would no longer be required. Zack had been devastated by this, but he was a good soldier. He filed no protest; he made no complaint. He just lay alone in the hospital till the doctors released him, then he went home from the hospital to his apartment in Virginia Beach, and did nothing but lay there and watch TV.

For a year.

He had no family other than an ex-wife who lived somewhere in Colorado with a daughter Zack had never met, so he basically sat at home and recuperated, watched the news and wished he was still part of it.

He’d only picked up the hunting guide gig in West Virginia when he ran out of money. He hated shepherding rich assholes through the woods just so they could shoot a fucking pig that wasn’t bothering anybody, but
the money was good, and all the hiking, climbing, and shooting had molded Zack into reasonably good shape within a short period of time.

He’d fantasized about getting back on, if not with CIA, at least with some private military company, but Carmichael had stripped Zack’s Top Secret clearance, so Zack knew no real PMC would touch him. He had no interest in doing stateside static security work, so he just kept hauling rich civvies out on wild boar hunts, hoping something interesting would happen in his life.

And now he was face-to-face with the number two spy at the Agency, on the seventh floor of the Old HQB.

This was, at the very least, interesting.

Zack Hightower stood smartly, not quite at attention, but certainly displaying a show of respect.

Mayes nodded and sat down after a quick handshake. Under his arm he carried a thick file, and Zack suspected that his operational life, and perhaps his post-operational life, would be in that file.

“Thanks for coming in,” Mayes said.

“Happy to help in any way I can.”

“Denny wants a word.”

Zack swallowed. “Can I ask what this is about?”

“Better if Denny gives it to you cold.”

Carmichael pushed open the side door and all but stormed up to the table. If he had pulled an all-nighter with Mayes the evening before, then he was clearly a vampire, because Zack thought he looked good to go now at seven p.m.

Zack stood. This time it was at full military attention.

Carmichael’s greeting was, to say the least, several degrees cooler than that of Jordan Mayes. “I don’t do apologies, Hightower, so if you are waiting for one, prepare to be disappointed.”

Zack followed Carmichael by sitting back down, and pulling himself up to the table. “Not expecting one, sir.”

“You aren’t pissed about what happened to you two years ago?”

Zack shook his head. “I failed on a mission. That was unacceptable to you, but it was also unacceptable to me. I would have been disappointed if you’d not released me after that.”

Carmichael took in the comment. Then asked, “Fitness-wise, where are you?”

“One hundred percent.” Zack realized his tone had sounded hopeful, and he told himself to keep it flat till he knew what the hell was going on.

Carmichael looked to Mayes now. Mayes shrugged.

Hightower clarified. “Took a handgun round center-mass two years ago, but I’ve recovered. Been shooting every day. Long-range I’m better than ever. Running some, too. I’m not twenty anymore, but that’s an asset, not a liability. I’ll get any job done you need me to do.”

Carmichael looked doubtful.

“I can run a PT course right now.”

“I’m questioning your mental state.”

“My head is right, sir. I could put my hand in a candle and show you, if that’s what you are looking for.”

“That’s
not
what I want, either. I need to see that there are no hard feelings about what happened two years ago.”

“None at all, sir.”

Carmichael drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then he seemed to let it go, and he went immediately to the subject at hand. “Courtland Gentry appeared in the D.C. area last night.”

Hightower had planned on keeping a cool stoic face, no matter what craziness Carmichael threw his way, but now he could not hide his surprise. “Oh,
shit
!”

“Killed two drug dealers in the slums, apparently to obtain money to finance his activities here.”

“Only two?” Zack quipped. The execs stared back at him, so he went on the defensive. “Look, if you think I knew about this, then you—”

Carmichael interrupted. “Any idea why he might have come here?”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

“This isn’t the fucking navy, Hightower.”

Zack shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “He’s come here to kill you.”

It was silent in the dark conference room for a moment, and Hightower worried he might have overstepped his bounds. Then Mayes said, “That’s our assessment, as well.”

Hightower nodded slowly and a smile grew. Suddenly it felt like all his
problems had just melted away. The past two years of his life, the depression born out of being ostracized by the Agency after failing a mission, disappeared. He had a job, a purpose. The old Zack was back.