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And Court had to do all this with forty pounds of gear on his back.

He moved out of the tower stairwell and onto the winding staircase around the main hall. The light was good here, which wasn’t good news for Court, but he was happy to find no CIA security officers on the stairs or on the higher floors.

He began moving down the stairs. Below him at least a half dozen armed guards stood at ground level, congregated at the main entrance to the building. They all appeared to still be looking outside at the five SUVs way down the driveway.

This ruse worked for a while, but finally Court saw one of the men turn away from the front door, idly look up, and see a man head to toe in black, his face darkened with greasepaint, and a massive black backpack on his back.

As much as he hated it, Court was impressed with the speed at which the man reacted.

“Contact!” The guard below raised his weapon, and Court picked up the pace, rushing towards the hallway doors half a floor down and twenty yards away.

With the first echoing cracks of rifle fire in the huge room, Court knew the security officer positioned behind a desk just inside the south wing would be reaching for the button that would close that part of the building off from the rest of the property. This would slam the door shut, drop steel over the windows, and lock steel doors to the attic above. Court would have zero access to Carmichael and al-Kazaz once the door—now fifteen yards away—slammed shut.

Masonry on the open stairway exploded just in front of Court but he ran into the dust and bits of debris. He didn’t bother with fighting back; even firing a couple of rounds in hopes it would force his adversaries to take cover would cost him more time than he could afford to lose.

He just kept running down the stairs, taking them three at a time. The backpack strap bit into the ragged wound on the right side of his rib cage.

All the M4s in the entryway were firing now; the noise was insane in the three-story-high room, and Court felt the jolt of a round slamming into his backpack behind him. It pushed him against the wall but his momentum kept him moving onward, and his balance was good enough to keep him from stumbling and falling down the stairs.

A light above the south wing door began flashing when Court was just ten yards away. He saw the double doors closing quickly in front of him. A squawking alarm that kept time with the flashes rang out but it was drowned out by another half dozen rounds. Court felt the overpressure and heard the zing of a bullet passing a foot from his face, but he ignored the desire to duck and instead he dove forward, arms outstretched, and he landed on his chest on the marble floor, and then tumbled right past the closing steel doors.

As soon as he was through he tucked his feet to his body and the doors slammed shut right behind him.

But his problems had just begun. There were two men at the far end of the south wing hall, one hundred feet away and looking in his direction. The security desk was just on his right by the double doors, so he rolled out
of his backpack, then rushed behind the desk. Here a lone security officer drew his pistol to fire at the man in the black greasepaint but Court slid under the man’s aim and took him out at the legs.

The security officer fell on top of Court, but as he dropped down, Court fired a straight right jab up. The crack of bone on bone echoed in the hall, and the guard was unconscious before he landed face-first on the floor next to his attacker.

Court leapt to his feet, then started running to a room just off the hall. While he did this he heard shouts from the approaching security officers. Court opened fire as he ran, aiming low. One man took a pair of .22 caliber rounds in the shins, the other a single bullet through the top of his boot and into his foot.

Both men tumbled down in pain.

Court scooped his pack off the floor by a strap as he ran, then he dragged it along next to him. He made it into the room across the hall as pounding gunfire chased him, and crashed into an armed CIA security officer rushing out. Both men fell to the ground, and with the impact both men fired their weapons. The sound of Court’s .22 was drowned out by the report of the other man’s HK MP7 Personal Defense Weapon discharging a round, but both bullets struck a bookcase filled with dusty old books.

Court’s ground-fighting skills were superior to those of the other man, so he managed to get on top of him quickly, delivering a punch to the man’s jaw, and then lifting his head up and knocking it back into the hardwood floor. The security officer went limp under him.

Court dove off the man and back towards the open door behind him, slammed it shut, and then crawled to his knees and bolted it.

He stood up, then doubled over in pain, holding the right side of his rib cage as he did so. The gunshot wound bled a little, but mostly it just hurt. He fought the incredible desire to just slide back down to the floor and lie in the fetal position. Instead he used the locked door to steady himself, then he turned around slowly to survey the room behind him.

There, much to his surprise, fifteen men and women sat silently around a massive conference table. They all stared up at him, eyes wide. A blond in her thirties put her hand over her mouth. An African American male in his forties stood slowly and balled his fists, but he did not approach. Others raised their hands in surrender, and the rest did not move a muscle.

Court lifted the guard’s MP7 and trained it on the group, then he reached down into a pouch of the big pack on the floor. He dug around inside for a moment, then he pulled out a device no larger than a deck of cards. He held it up to the men and women at the table.

“Wireless detonator.” He motioned with his head to the backpack. “C4 antipersonnel charge with an anti-tamper switch and a motion detector. Enough demo to level this wing. Anybody moves, we all go on a moon shot together. Any questions?”

An attractive redhead began to cry.

Court said, “Sit tight a second, I’ll be right back.” He moved past the table and entered a narrow hallway off the conference room. He knew from the blueprints and the security plan Hanley had sent him that this hall had a narrow staircase to the attic off to the left. At the top of this was a steel-reinforced door to the attic. Beyond the staircase sat Denny’s office and private quarters.

As Court passed the stairs to the attic he raised his weapon out in front of him, and as he neared the door to Denny’s office, it opened in his direction.

D
eRenzi had made it to Carmichael and his Middle Eastern guest within seconds of the alarm sounding, with the plan to barricade them in place. He locked the door to the conference room—the Violator Working Group members were guarded by a security officer named Suarez—then he bolted the other door from the office to the main hall. After a few seconds he heard gunfire right outside in the hall, which likely meant the attacker had made it past the doors into the south wing before they closed. DeRenzi rushed now to the conference room entrance. He listened at the door a moment, then opened it, intending on calling out to Suarez, to order him to fall back to DeRenzi’s position to help cover Carmichael. Two men could protect the two entrances better than one, DeRenzi reasoned. This would leave the Violator Working Group on their own, but DeRenzi knew the Gray Man was in the building, and he also knew Denny Carmichael was the target.

The employees of the Violator Working Group weren’t his problem.

Slowly the veteran CIA shooter opened the door to the conference room hall, got his gun up, and saw a man head to toe in black, just a foot away.

DeRenzi fired his M4 but the Gray Man used his MP7 to strike the weapon just as it fired, sending a burst of 5.56 rounds into the wall of the hallway by the bathroom door. The Gray Man took hold of the handguard of the weapon, then raised his MP7. At point-blank range he fired directly into the steel chest plate of DeRenzi’s body armor, knocking the CIA security officer back on his heels. A second shot from Gentry’s gun, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth sent DeRenzi stumbling backwards the length of the office. Court ripped the M4 from the security officer’s hand as he fell back.

DeRenzi lay on his back on the parquet floor. He wore a pistol on his hip, but just as he thought about going for it, Court said, “You try it and the
next six rounds won’t go in the middle of your chest plate. I’ll put them in your face.”

DeRenzi raised his hands in surrender.

Court had him remove his drop leg holster and slide the entire unit across the floor, then he ordered him onto his stomach with his legs crossed and his hands behind his head. Once DeRenzi complied, Court turned to Carmichael, who stood in front of a shuttered window.

With him was Murquin al-Kazaz.

Court showed no emotion as he approached both men. He planned on checking them for weapons quickly, but as soon as he reached for the Saudi, he realized there was no way this man would have been allowed in the building with a firearm or a blade. He turned to Denny. “You wearing a gun, Denny?”

Carmichael shook his head. “I put it on the desk, son. I’m not pointing a gun at the world-famous Gray Man.”

There was sarcasm in the comment, but at least Carmichael was telling the truth. Court saw a semiautomatic lying on the desk fifteen feet away. He searched Denny anyway, and he found nothing on his person save for a mobile phone, and a curious item on his left wrist. Just larger than a watch, it had a small glass screen and a function button. Court touched the button, and the screen lit up. He realized the device was a master security panic button. By scrolling left or right on the screen, he could then give the wrist computer different commands. He could alert his security force of an emergency, close and lock his living quarters, or close and lock down the entire south wing. He also had the option of opening and closing any door in the wing, and even overriding commands from the south wing security desk.

Court was pleased to see that the big double doors were still closed and locked, then he pressed the icon that would keep them that way until he signaled that he wanted them open. He put the device on his own wrist, then led the three men back down the hall and into the conference room without a word. He had Denny and al-Kazaz both take a seat at the table, then he pushed DeRenzi against the wall at the back of the room, flipped them on their stomachs, and tied them expertly with pieces of Kevlar rope.

The conference room was a full house now.

A middle-aged man at the table said, “There was no motion detector on that bomb, was there?”

Court said, “Are you kidding? That would be dangerous.” He checked the locks on the conference room doors and decided they were solid. Confident he had a semi-secure perimeter, he finally took a breath, then looked around the room at the crowd. “Who are all you people?”

No one answered.

He turned to the youngest, most junior-looking person in the room, a scrawny kid with Coke-bottle glasses who sat at the far end of the table by the wall monitors, a laptop computer and a few peripherals on the table in front of him. The man was terrified, clearly, and to Court he looked like he couldn’t have been twenty-five years old. Pointing the HK rifle at him, Court said, “Who are you?”

A meek cough. “William, sir.”

“And what’s your function here, William?”

“I’m in charge of the video-conferencing suite. That’s all I know, sir.”

“Who are you conferencing with?”

The young man glanced over to Carmichael. Court said, “Denny can fire you tomorrow. I can shoot you now. Pay attention to
me
.”

“I am connecting the Violator Working Group here with the Violator tactical operations center at Langley.”

Court nodded. “The Violator Working Group?” He looked around at the men and women at the table. “All these years I pictured the faces of the people who were after me. Not the shooters on the ground, but the suits pulling the strings. And here you are.”

After a slow pan of the room, he looked back to the young man. “William, are we connected with the TOC right now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“These assholes at the table needed the TOC to locate me, but I’m here, so they don’t really need it anymore. I want you to pull the plug on everything. Shut it all down for me.”

William slowly moved his hands up to the laptop and began shutting down the connection.

Court turned back to the group. “Toss your phones in the middle of the table.” Everyone did so. “Guns, knives, Tasers, pepper spray?” No one moved.
“Anything?”

Nothing but shakes of the head.

“None of you have any way of protecting yourselves from me? I was just
some name on a sanction list, some vague personality that needed to die. I wasn’t a real person, so you didn’t see me as a threat to you. Now here I am, and you don’t have a clue what to do about it.”

Denny Carmichael said, “Court, this is—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Court screamed, his outburst of rage in stark contrast to the calm demeanor he’d used to address William seconds before. He raised his PDW and stormed around the table, aiming the weapon’s laser pointer on Denny’s forehead the entire time.

More women sobbed now, and some of the men trembled with terror.

—

N
o one in the Alexandria Police Department was aware that the twelfth largest building in their city was, in truth, a Cold War–era CIA secure facility that was now being used as a safe house by America’s senior operations officer, so when the first call came through about a hostage situation at the property on North Quaker Lane, they did what they would do for any other similar event; they dispatched squad cars, tactical units, supervisors, and detectives.

The Agency employees at the facility had been ordered to keep a low profile, which meant they couldn’t very well tell the cops that rolled onto the grounds to get off their lawn. They did confirm there were government employees inside, which caused the local police to inform the FBI, but as far as the Alexandria cops were concerned, this was their town, so this was their scene.

Within minutes a massive cordon was set up around the building, helicopters were flying overhead, and police filled the main hall. Above them, on the second-floor landing, two dozen armed men screamed down at the cops, refusing to come down or turn over their guns, claiming that they were responsible for what went on here, and they would take care of it.

The police were disinclined to just pack up and call it a night, however, so a tense standoff developed.

—

T
he FBI arrived ten minutes later, in the form of six Special Agents. They called in their vaunted Hostage Rescue Team, but it would take HRT a half hour to deploy from Quantico. In the meantime the FBI men pushed their way through the cops, made it to the bottom of the stairs, pulled their
credentials, and began walking up into the cordon of armed plainclothesmen on the landing. Nobody shot anybody, which was something, but the shouting and the yelling only got worse with the arrival of the FBI.

—

S
uzanne Brewer had been sleeping—the dark hospital room along with the painkillers they gave her every six hours made it hard to stay awake—but her eyes opened when she heard the door squeak. A shaft of light raced across the room to her. Her guards outside were ordered to keep everyone out but hospital personnel, and her nurse had told her she would not be disturbed for the rest of the night. As she turned her head to look, for one brief, heart-stopping moment she thought of Violator, but this vision drifted away instantly and, in a second moment—this one lasting twice as long because to her the threat was twice as real—she thought of Carmichael.

Could he have changed his mind about their arrangement? Could this be one of the Saudi hitters roaming the District?

But the man in the doorway was not the Gray Man, and he was no one doing the bidding of Denny Carmichael. On the contrary, Matthew Hanley stood big and broad, a thin smile on his face and a large bouquet of flowers in his hand.

For some reason Suzanne could not put her finger on, the sight of Hanley with flowers felt to her more menacing than seeing a Saudi assassin at her door.

“Hi, Suzanne, how are you feeling?”

She pressed a button on the railing of her bed, turning on a light on the wall behind her. She pushed a second button, and this raised her up into a sitting position.

“Matt, so nice to see you.” This had yet to be determined in Suzanne’s mind, but she said it anyway. “Flowers personally delivered by a division director? I must say I’m surprised you took the time to come all the way over here.”

Hanley said, “They tell me you are going to be fine. A broken leg, a concussion, lots of cuts and bruises, but it could have been worse.”

“Yes,” she said. “Much worse.” After a moment she added, “Poor, poor Jordan.”

Hanley said nothing.

Suzanne could not stand the silence of the moment. “Sorry, Matt, I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but is there some reason you are here, other than the flowers?”

“You don’t know what’s happened, do you?”

Suzanne Brewer shook her head slowly. “I know nothing. I’ve been lying here in the dark since mid-afternoon.”

Hanley sat down in the chair next to her bed. “At this moment Denny Carmichael is being held hostage by Court Gentry in a safe house in Alexandria.”

She closed her eyes. Her mind raced. “Oh my God. What are we doing to get Denny out of there?”

“Everything we can, I’m sure, but Gentry holds all the cards at the moment.”

Suzanne’s head began to spin. She tried to sit up. “I’m going to Langley. I can manage this better from the TOC.”

Hanley shook his head. “You are going to stay right here.” He picked a dead petal off of one of the chrysanthemums. Dropped it on the floor. “Suzanne, you are a winner. You can still come out of this ahead, but the walls are closing all around you, and there is not much time.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“You’ve chosen sides. That’s all right, we all need an allegiance. But your side is losing. Even if Denny walks out of that safe house with his life, he won’t hold the power he held when he walked in. His operations have been compromised. His connection to Gentry and the origins of the shoot on sight will be scrutinized.

“I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, I’m sure. You are a lot more politically astute than I am, so you know when you are standing on a sinking ship.”

The metaphors were piling one on top of the other, but she certainly understood the message.

She fought for the right words. “I’m not sure I understand you, Matt. I’m sorry. My involvement in this matter is limited to the work I did in the Working Group, and my presence at the scene of one of Violator’s assassinations. I am not aligned with Director Carmichael any more than anyone else in the Clandestine Service.”

Hanley stood. “Well, if that’s the case, then you can turn on CNN right
now and watch the action in Alexandria with only a passing curiosity. With no stake in the outcome. If there is something else, some other string that tethers you to Carmichael, then you should consider cutting it before he goes down. Denny’s descent won’t be pretty, and he will take a great number of people with him. That is unfortunate for them, but it will create a power vacuum that the Agency will need to fill.”

Hanley continued, “The NCS is going to need good people in its ranks when this is over. Winners.”

He headed for the door, but Suzanne called out to him.

“Matt, I’d say you are a lot more politically aware than you make yourself out to be.”

Hanley turned. “Me? No, I’m just an old straight-legged army guy who’s learned how to roll with the punches.” He smiled a little. “That’s all. Hope you feel better.” He left the room, leaving Suzanne Brewer alone with a terror that began welling up inside her.

Within twenty seconds, she reached for the telephone.