Back Blast (26 page)

Hightower boomed back at him. “
I’m
your fearless leader.”

“Hanley, I mean. He’s got a couple of other guys with him.”

“What other guys?” asked Hightower.

“Dunno.”

“Operators?”

Morgan shook his head. “Nah. Look like a couple of brassholes from Langley.”

Hightower headed to the door, surprised that his team’s control officer was dropping in unannounced, with guests in tow.

But not too surprised. Even though Hanley didn’t spend much time here, he occasionally stopped by after a successful mission, and Mogadishu had been nothing if not textbook.

Hightower said, “Unlock it,” and he headed towards the door, but while he walked he looked over his team sitting and lying around the room. As if only noticing his motley crew for the first time, he sighed. “Straighten yourselves up. This place looks like a motherfucking soup kitchen.”

A couple of men chuckled, but no one really moved but Redus, who stood at crisp attention and saluted, a sarcastic gesture that Hightower returned with a middle finger and an eat-shit look.

Morgan punched a button on a desk panel and the massive locks in the door released.

Dino Redus did a decent Matt Hanley impersonation, a little bombastic and just slightly patronizing. Before the door opened he called out to the room in Hanley’s voice, “Hell of a job in Mogadishu, Golf Sierra! Welcome home!”

Morgan and Phelps both snorted out a quick laugh.

Hightower himself pulled the door open and bade the men into the lair of Golf Sierra. Hanley was first through the door; he shook Hightower’s
hand and then called out to the others. “Well done in Mogadishu, Golf Sierra! Welcome back!”

“Thank you, sir,” said Hightower.

The two men with Hanley stood silently. One was in his forties with white hair, the other in his twenties, his hair black and slicked back. Both men wore heavy Burberry coats.

Hanley said, “Gentlemen, meet Jordan Mayes and David Lloyd. They’re from the office. SAD.”

The two suits raised hands to the men, and the men nodded back politely enough, but no one really tried to pretend like they gave a damn about a couple of suits.

Hanley, Hightower, and the two others stepped into the conference room, and the door closed behind them.

Keith Morgan mumbled to the others in the team room. “Son of a bitch. Hanley’s sending us back out, I can fucking feel it. I had tickets to see the Boss tomorrow night at RFK.”

“You mentioned that,” said Lynch. Then he added, “Fifty bucks says somebody ID’d another number three in al Qaeda and we’re heading back to Pakistan.”

Redus turned away from his video game and looked to Morgan now. “Hey, Five, maybe Springsteen will play a gig in Peshawar and you can catch him during our op.”

Morgan wasn’t laughing. “Paid two and a quarter for those tickets. This is bullshit!”

Ritchie Phelps said, “Whatever is brewing, it’s big enough for Hanley to come in person and bring suits along with him.”

Redus corrected him. “Hanley
is
a suit.”

“Yeah, now he is. He used to be SF.”

Morgan snorted. “That was twenty thousand Big Macs ago.”

The room erupted in laughter, and at the back workbench even Gentry cracked a half smile, but he didn’t look up from his gun. He worked diligently, perhaps excessively so, on his new Glock 19. He’d finished cleaning it, and now he got to work adding a large front sight loaded with a vial of radioactive tritium gas that would ensure it glowed in complete darkness, giving the user the ability to line his barrel up on a target despite poor lighting conditions.

Court’s last G19 had served him well, but he’d put seventy thousand rounds
through it, and it was time to upgrade to the newest generation. He’d planned on taking his new piece upstairs to the range to test-fire it as soon as the adhesive in the screw on his sight dried, but now he figured he should wait around the team room to see what the hell Hanley had planned for the task force.

—

A
fter Hightower and his visitors passed the one-hour mark in the conference with the suits, the speculation among the operators in the team room had transitioned from
if
they were about to get redeployed on a new op to
if
they would even have time to grab a burger and a beer before leaving the States again. They could imagine no other reason for the long meeting other than a mission, so amid the grumbles and bitching, the five men began packing deployment bags and double-checking weapons platforms.

A minute later the door opened and the four men reappeared. Hanley and Hightower came out first, then the other two CIA men. Gentry had already forgotten the young guy’s name, but Lynch and Phelps had been talking about Jordan Mayes for the past hour. According to what Gentry overheard, Mayes worked directly for the head of the SAD, Denny Carmichael. Court didn’t care much for office politics; hell, he’d only been to Langley once in his many years with the Agency. Most of his CIA career was spent in smelly barracks and team rooms like this, or else out in the field using a backstopped legend and pretending to be someone else.

After a wave to the six operators and Hanley’s repeated congratulations for the success of the Mog op, the visitors left.

As soon as the door shut behind them, Hightower turned around to the room to face his team. All five paramilitary operations officers stopped what they were doing and stared back at him, wondering where they were headed, and if they would even get the chance to pass by a drive-through for tacos to go on the way to the airport, since by now nobody figured they’d even have time for a sit-down burger meal.

Hightower said, “Sierra Six. Front and center.” Court Gentry stood and stepped forward. “Conference room,” Hightower ordered, then he surprised the rest of the team when he said, “You other four lucky fuckers have seventy-two hours R&R.”

Morgan pumped his fist in the air. “Hell, yes! The Boss is a go!”

Hightower opened the door to the conference room and held it for
Gentry, but he continued addressing everyone. “Don’t forget, Monday at oh six hundred we’re rolling in convoy down to the shoot houses in Moyock to run some CQB force-on-force evolutions.”

Gentry looked around the team room at the other men. Confused. “Just me, Zack?”

“Yep. Don’t you feel special?”

“My lucky day,” he mumbled, and he entered the conference room.

Hightower followed him in with a whistle. “Kid, you’ve been hanging around these degenerates too long. Slowly but surely you’re getting a fuckin’ mouth on you.”

“Sorry, boss.”

Inside the conference room, Hightower and Gentry sat down at the table. Sierra One immediately got down to business. “Something different this time. A solo op. Real James Bond shit. Free tuxedo included. You up for it?”

Court nodded slowly.

Hightower glanced down to a small notebook in front of him. “Just kidding about the tuxedo. Local civilian attire will do.” He coughed as he checked his notes. “Anyway, the Agency has liaison intel saying some Israeli deep penetration agent has worked his way into a cell of al Qaeda in Iraq. The cell is on a gun run in the Balkans, getting AKs and such from Serbian gangsters. They are meeting in a safe house in Trieste, just over the Italian border from Croatia.

“Unfortunately for this Mossad deep-pen agent, he’s been compromised, and he doesn’t have a clue. A group of Pakistan al Qaeda are meeting them in Italy, and shit’s about to get nasty.”

Court said, “
We
know the Israeli agent is compromised, but the Mossad doesn’t know?”

“Affirmative. Like I said, another partner nation gave us the heads-up. We can’t tell the Israelis, apparently, because we don’t want to tip them off that we have a liaison relationship with this other nation.”

Court asked, “Who is the other nation?”

Hightower made a face at Gentry. “If we were supposed to know that, Hanley would have told us.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, this entire thing in Italy is a setup to get this agent away from his area of operations, so he can be liquidated without it causing a rift
between the two AQ divisions. The plan is for one of the Pak AQ operatives on the trip to smoke him in Italy, then blame it on the Serbs.”

Court said, “And I need to stop that from happening.”

“You are so much smarter than you look. Anyway, you’ll be driven to Dulles within the hour. From there you’ll fly commercial to Milan. In Milan you will take a train to Trieste.”

Court wrote nothing down.

“You will ID the Iraqi guys when they arrive at the port, identify the Israeli asset among them, and follow them to their safe house. As soon as it’s prudent get him out of there. Tell him he is compromised and take him to the train station. After that, he is the Israelis’ problem. Remember, he must not know you are American. He speaks Hebrew and Arabic only, and you speak neither, so things shouldn’t get too chatty between you two.”

“Guess not.”

Court still wondered why CIA didn’t just pick up the phone and call Israel and tell them to rescue their own dumb agent. Seemed to him like the CIA could have just not revealed where they got their intel. But that was strategy, and that was above Court’s pay grade.

As usual, Court just figured the graybeards knew what they were doing.

Hightower asked, “Any questions?”

“Just the obvious. Why me? Why solo?”

“Hanley’s orders, but it looked to me it was Jordan Mayes’s order, which means it was Denny Carmichael’s idea. My guess is we’re afraid Mossad will find out we are in the area if we roll in with the whole task force. I imagine the Israelis will have support personnel monitoring their agent while he’s out of the Middle East. Hanley thinks you can get in and out low profile, stay fast and light if you don’t have the high drag of moving with the Goon Squad.”

Court just nodded. It wasn’t how they normally operated, but whatever.

“Got it.”

Hightower said, “No kit but what you’ll pick up in Trieste at a dead drop cache left by local Agency assets. They’ll leave you a suppressed pistol and the image of the Israeli asset you’ve got to recover. Remember, this is simple if you
make
it simple. Your job is to go save some asshole who can’t know who you work for. If anyone gets in your way, you are cleared hot to schwack them. We want you back in seventy-two hours, max.”

Court nodded with earnest. “Roger that, One. I’ll make it happen.”

Present Day

J
ordan Mayes stood in his superior’s office briefing the stone-faced director of National Clandestine Service on the early-morning convenience store shooting in the center of Washington, D.C. The killer had clearly been Gentry; no one had any doubts. From the description of events it seemed to Denny like Gentry had just happened to stumble upon an armed robbery and then do the only thing he knew how to do, which was shoot dead all the threats.

Carmichael didn’t need to see the video. He knew his ex-operator’s capabilities. A man of Gentry’s caliber against untrained bandits was as sure as a knife cutting through butter.

When Mayes finished with the play-by-play of the Easy Market shoot-out, Carmichael asked, “What do we know about his escape?”

Mayes said, “Analysts monitoring traffic cams tracked a Ford Escort away from the scene. Lost it when it passed a neighborhood where the cams were down for repairs, but they found the vehicle this morning in a lot at Howard University.”

“Did the cameras pick up anyone on foot leaving the area where they found the car?”

“Negative.”

“Dammit.” Once Denny realized the events of the previous evening would not lead to Gentry’s imminent capture, he switched to the fallout. “How is the media reporting it?”

“Local PD has done a good job locking it down. You can expect them to squelch any ‘good Samaritan with a gun’ narrative since it happened in D.C. All guns are equally bad to them and, by extension, all shooters are
equally bad. As long as the video doesn’t get out this will probably get reported as gang v gang violence.”

“Good,” Denny said.

“There is one problem. The reporter from the
Post
published a story about it.”

“Catherine King?”

“Not King. Andrew Shoal.”

Carmichael said, “Is he looking to connect this to the others?”

“He put an article online forty-five minutes ago. He ties this shooting to the Brandywine Street shooting, but he leaves out Babbitt. I think we might have dodged a bullet with that.”

“Not at all. Catherine King is cooking something up. She’s probably scrambling all over, interviewing former intel officials, trying to get some kind of a guess about who is here in town that has us so interested.”

Mayes said, “We can play it two ways. We can try to shut her down by saying all is well, or we can—”

Carmichael interrupted, “Or we can pitch her a story that has enough elements of truth to where Gentry knows she is getting intel about the hunt. If we do that I think there is a fair chance Gentry might try to make contact with her. We use her as bait, put a team on her, and then we terminate Gentry when he makes his play.”

Before they could go any further, Carmichael’s secretary came over the intercom, her voice agitated. “Sir, Director Hanley is here and he—”

Carmichael’s door flew open and the large frame of Matt Hanley entered the office like a running back charging to the end zone. He stepped past Mayes without a glance and stared Carmichael down as he approached.

Carmichael yawned. He looked down at the papers in front of him, not at the intrusion. “Unless you are here to offer up Ground Branch assets for the Violator operation, I really don’t have time for you today, Matt.”

Hanley dropped down in the chair in front of Carmichael’s desk. “You will never,
ever
guess who showed up at the foot of my bed last night.”

Carmichael took off his reading glasses and looked up.

From behind Hanley, Mayes said, “Bullshit! Not possible! You were monitored by multiple teams.”

“Gentry got past them. Even told me where they were and what kind of scopes they had on their rifles.”

Carmichael tossed the papers in his hand across the desk. Another opportunity lost. “What did he want?”

“Same as with Travers. He’s searching for answers. Court Gentry is a sad, lost guy, just looking for someone to tell him what he did wrong. CIA was his family, and he wants to know why his family doesn’t love him anymore.” Hanley added, “And he’s got the skills to kill a hundred people to exact revenge, if it comes to it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him you want him dead for fucking up BACK BLAST.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all I
fucking
know, isn’t it, Denny?”

“Did you tell him about Ohlhauser?”

Hanley didn’t hesitate. “Not a word.”

“Bullshit.”

Hanley said nothing.

Carmichael growled. “You’re lying. Goddammit, Matt! Whose side are you on?”

“When a trained killer is in my bedroom with a gun to my nuts, I am firmly on the side of my nuts.”

Carmichael stared him down. Slowly he turned to Mayes. “We have anyone watching Ohlhauser?”

“He’s a private citizen now.”

“I don’t give a damn. Put contracted security on him. Keep them back, but close enough to report contact if Violator turns up.” Carmichael looked back to Hanley. “Gentry is lying. He knows what he did.”

Hanley shook his head. A fierce look in his eyes. “Clearly he doesn’t. He just wants this to end.”

Carmichael sniffed. “He can end this by shooting himself in the fucking mouth.”

Hanley stood back up from the chair. “From our discussion last night I take it he would not be receptive to your terms of surrender.”

“Whatever, we’ll get him, sooner or later. He’s killed half a dozen people so far here in the U.S.”

Hanley looked Denny over a long moment. Then said, “And he’s just getting started.”

The director of the Special Activities Division turned his back on the
director of National Clandestine Service and headed out of the office, pushing by Jordan Mayes as he did so.

—

T
he sun pouring through the little window into Court’s basement room created a narrow shaft of bright light that shone on his black wound. Court looked at it for a moment, poked and prodded it with his finger, and finally decided that, although it looked nasty, it didn’t look any nastier than it had the day before.

It was shortly after ten a.m. Court had only been up for a few minutes but already he drank instant coffee while he worked on his dressings. Over his right shoulder as he sat on the bed the TV broadcast CNN’s mid-morning news hour. Court was using it mostly for audio; he’d only glanced around once or twice to watch the latest action in Syria between the Islamic State and the Syrian government. Court wasn’t much interested in politics or international diplomacy, and he was no fan of war in most instances, but this was a war he could get behind, because he fervently wanted both sides in the conflict—despotic regime and nihilistic Jihadi alike—to kill the other.

The news went to commercial. He was only halfway listening when the CNN anchor came back on air.

“Welcome back. From the ongoing violence in Syria we are going to shift to a shocking display of violence at home. Two nights ago, the brazen murder of a Washington, D.C., businessman tied to the intelligence community has many wondering if an assassin is on the loose in the nation’s capital.

“Joining us this morning from Miami is former FBI counterterrorism director and CNN contributor Greg Michelson, and from Washington, former CIA chief council and CNN contributor Maxwell Ohlhauser. Greg, I’ll start with you.”

Court spun to the TV and dropped his ACE bandage onto the floor. It rolled out across the little room.

A tan man with gray hair looked sternly into the camera on a split screen with the anchor. The anchor said, “Greg, two nights ago the killing of Washington private security executive Leland Babbitt has many inside the Beltway frightened. What are your sources telling you as far as who might be responsible?”

Court ignored his wound now. He just sat there and waited for the talking head, ex of the FBI, to finish pontificating about the all-points bulletin out for the vicious assassin and the probability that the hit man was either by now somewhere back home in the Middle East or hiding in a rat hole in the city waiting for the coast to clear.

Gentry drank his coffee and watched his television, wondering what made this ex-FBI guy such a shitty expert on the tradecraft of assassins.

The screen switched to a heavy man with a round face, dark hair, and a red bow tie. Under his image was the caption Maxwell R. Ohlhauser, Former Chief Legal Council, CIA.

“Now, Max, you were with the CIA, so you know what a dangerous job spy work is. But usually it isn’t so dangerous here at home, is it?”

“Don, you are right about that. What we saw in Maryland two nights ago was no random act of violence.”

“Son of a bitch,” Court said. The man on television had been part of the small group of men that had sanctioned his assassination. And now here he sat, big and proud and famous, as happy as a clam to talk to the world about the CIA.

Court saw from the text on the screen that Ohlhauser was now a former employee of the Agency. He reached for his laptop, which lay on the bed nearby, and typed the man’s name in Google. In seconds he discovered that Maxwell Reid Ohlhauser was now working as a private attorney here in D.C., with an office on K Street. There was a link to his Twitter account, and Court clicked on this. The most recent tweet from Ohlhauser announced he was due to appear on both Fox and CNN this morning in Washington, then he was looking forward to eating oysters for lunch at Old Ebbitt Grill with a good friend from college.

Well, that’s helpful,
Court thought.

He typed the restaurant into Google and pulled up a map to it. He found it just next to the White House, within walking distance to Ohlhauser’s office on K. Also, the lawyer had helpfully added a link to the Twitter account of his lunch date, so Court could look into this man and gauge his potential as a threat.

Ninety seconds after first seeing Max Ohlhauser on the news, Court knew more than enough to find and fix his prey. He looked up from his laptop, a bewildered expression on his face. In his career Court had often
hunted a single target for months before acquiring his location, and rarely had he discovered the exact place one of his targets would visit within days, or even weeks, of beginning the hunt. That Ohlhauser had been so accommodating to broadcast his day’s to-do list almost made Court wonder if he was being led into a trap. But after another ten minutes on Twitter he saw that the fifty-five-year-old attorney had a huge social media profile, and for as far back as Gentry checked, the man told those who followed him on Twitter many of his most mundane of daily activities.

Court checked the time on the television. It was just after ten a.m., so he knew he had to get moving if he was to have any chance to get eyes on his new target by one. The restaurant was only a few minutes away by Metro, but Court couldn’t go there directly.

First, he needed to go shopping.