Back Blast (52 page)

T
hings inside the conference room had gotten testy. A few of the male CIA officials were preparing to make a move, and DeRenzi had tried to climb back to his feet. Court held up the detonator, and this quelled some of the enthusiasm from the agitators, but he knew he needed to thin this herd immediately.

He announced to the crowd that everyone would be leaving other than al-Kazaz and Carmichael. DeRenzi protested, Court threatened to shoot him, and then DeRenzi shut up.

Court then ordered everyone to stand and head to the door.

A square-jawed CIA NSA liaison officer sat straight in his chair. “I am not leaving Director Carmichael!”

Court just sighed. “Yeah, you are, asshole.”

“Fuck you! I’m staying.” The man showed no fear. He looked Court in the eye. “You’ll have to shoot me.”

Court turned to Carmichael. “Denny, you can either order this man to hit the bricks, which will make you look noble and benevolent, or I can shoot him in the head. He’ll be dead, and you’ll look just like the jackass you are. Your call.”

“Dale, it’s okay.”

“No, sir.”

“I order you to leave with the rest of the Working Group.”

“Sir, I—”

“Christ.
Fucking
go, Hamilton!”

Hamilton complied, but the entire time he walked around the table and towards the exit he gave Court a look of pure hatred. Court returned the evil eye, but said nothing.

When all seventeen men and women were lined up at the door, Court
taped Carmichael and al-Kazaz’s hands behind their backs and ordered them to stay seated at the table.

He then opened the door into the hallway and everyone filed forward, directly across to the heavy steel doors that led into the main hall. The three security officers out here Court had dealt with earlier were still out of the fight; two men were tending to their wounds and the third, the man from behind the security desk, was just coming out of his stupor. Court removed the weapons from the men and put them in the group with the others.

Court stepped to the side of the door and lifted his weapon, training it on the crowd. “Everybody hold your hands high. When those doors open you will have five seconds to get out, then I’m closing them again. If you see anybody trying to come in, you need to just run over them and keep going, because I will open up with automatic fire if I’m engaged.”

He heard spoken prayers and loud sobbing. “Here we go.”

He pushed the icon on his wrist controller to open the pneumatic doors, and they swung inward quickly. Outside on the second-floor mezzanine the dozen or more security officers in sight stood or knelt or lay prone, their guns trained on the movement. Several FBI agents just yards from the doors were caught in the open. They drew pistols and crouched low, ready to respond to an ambush by the attacker inside. Men down on the ground floor rushed to swing their weapons to bear on the threat.

All the men with guns held fire when they saw the large group of men and women, everyone with their hands up, moving through the doorway.

Court pressed the icon on his wrist controller to shut the doors just as fast as they opened, and he locked them down with another command.

He stepped back into the conference room and locked these doors, as well, then he stood in front of al-Kazaz and Carmichael. “It’s just us now, gents.” Court hefted his big pack and left the room, heading up to the attic.

Five minutes later he returned to find the phone in the center of the conference table ringing. Court looked at his watch, then stepped over and pushed the button to put the call on the speaker box.

“Must be a jurisdictional fight out there. It took you guys forever.”

“Who am I speaking with, please?”

Court didn’t answer.

“Is this Jeff Duncan?”

Court shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“Mr. Duncan, this is Allen Reynolds with the FBI. I need to make sure everyone in there is safe.”

“Buddy, there’s nobody in here that’s safe, and if you and your friends come in here you’ll be the least safe of all.”

“Is Director Carmichael with you?”

“Yes, he is. He is unhurt.”

“I’d really like to check in with him, if that’s okay.”

Denny sat silently at the table, his hands behind his back and sweat on his brow.

Court said, “Denny, meet Allen. Allen, this is Denny.”

“This is Carmichael. There is one gunman.” He looked at Court with malevolence. “Just one.”

The FBI negotiator said, “I also understand there is a Saudi diplomat present, is that correct?”

Now Court said, “Al-Kazaz, meet the guys.”

Murquin al-Kazaz spoke in a loud and authoritative voice. “Contact Jabar Almlhan at my embassy immediately. Inform him of the situation. Then, notify—”

Court pressed the MP7 to the Saudi man’s temple, and he stopped talking.

Court said, “See, he’s fine. A little bossy, but that’s not my fault.

“Let me tell you what’s what, Allen. Right now your HRT guys are looking at the blueprints of this building, and they are figuring that the attic above the south wing is the best avenue into my location. The roof isn’t steel like the windows and doors, and it’s not reinforced with iron like the walls and the floor. It’s a reasonable assumption to make, but it’s up to you to let your guys know they are wrong. I’ve rigged a rather large explosive to a motion detector, and it will detonate if anyone tries to enter the attic. I really don’t want to blow up a bunch of poor FBI working stiffs, but now that I’ve warned you guys what will happen if you try to come through the attic, my conscience is clear on that matter, so you guys decide what you want to do.”

“I understand, Jeff.”

“That’s all for now. I’m going to talk to Denny a bit, and then I’ll be back with you.”

He heard the negotiator say “Jeff?” right before he pushed the button to disconnect the call, but Court hung up anyway.

He sat down at the table in front of the two men and positioned the MP7 on the table in front of him, the barrel pointed at Carmichael’s chest, six feet away. He said, “So much trouble to get a meeting with you.”

Al-Kazaz said, “I have nothing to do with any of this. I have diplomatic immunity.”

Court smiled again. “I’m not so diplomatic, so you aren’t immune from me. In fact, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I can guarantee you I will be your proximate cause of death.”

Kaz clenched his neck muscles, but he did not speak.

“Now,” said Court, “I am going to sit here and pick your brains till I know what Saudi Arabian intelligence had to do with Operation BACK BLAST. You were clearly involved, because you were willing to risk your operation here in the States to silence me.”

Al-Kazaz shrugged his shoulders, an awkward gesture with his hands behind his back. He said, “I offered my agents in the hunt for you simply as a courtesy to Director Carmichael. We have a good relationship, and I wanted it to continue.”

“Bullshit,” Court said. “Denny was worried that if local PD got to me first they might accidentally take me alive. He wanted foreign hitters that would do his job for him. But for you to send a kill team into the streets here, he had some major leverage over you. What was it?”

“Our nations are simply partners against terrorism.” His eyes narrowed. “Denny told me you were a terrorist.”

Carmichael said, “Court, I initiated the shoot-on-sight order because you killed your team. Yes, I sent your team to pick you up for what happened in BACK BLAST. But you overreacted, you started shooting, they shot back, and then there were four dead SAD Ground Branch officers lying in the dirt.”

The gunfight had happened in Gentry’s Virginia Beach apartment; there was no dirt; but he did not correct Carmichael on this trifling point.

Court did, however, disagree with the larger premise. “That’s a lie, Denny, and I’ve shot men for lying to me. My team was ordered to term me.”

To Court’s surprise, Denny did not push back on this. He just said, “You know BACK BLAST was your doing. I had every right to term you after what happened in Trieste.”

“I know I shot Hawthorn, I must have screwed up the ID of the target,
but that’s not a reason to terminate me.” He looked back and forth between the two men. Suddenly his tough act softened. “Just tell me what I’m missing here.”

Denny said, “Why would I tell you a goddamned thing? You are going to kill us anyway.”

Court shook his head. “Wrong. I promised Hanley I wouldn’t kill you.” Court shrugged. “I’d love to back out on that promise, but I won’t.” He then turned to al-Kazaz. “I might shoot this fuck just because I don’t like him, though.” He leaned closer to the Saudi. “You better impress the hell out of me in the next couple of minutes.”

Carmichael said, “Courtland, you made a very serious mistake that hurt U.S. national interests gravely. You expected to see the assassin targeting Hawthorn. Instead you saw Hawthorn making his own move,
against
an AQ assassin. You didn’t bother to get proper PID.” Carmichael stared at the gun while he spoke. “You fucked up. You killed the best agent the West had in al Qaeda, crippled us in the War on Terror for years. Hell, a decade, perhaps. And to make matters even worse, you rescued an al Qaeda operator.”

The phone rang again. Court sighed, then he snatched it up. “Allen, I said I’d call you.”

“I want to help you, Jeff. Can I get you something to eat or drink? I just need to—”

Court interrupted. “Listen very carefully. This is bigger than you know. Sometime in the next few minutes a van is going to arrive and a bunch of men are going to pile out of it. Somebody with an ID that will confuse the hell out of you is going to walk up, and then a phone will ring, and someone far above your head will tell you to stand down and leave the premises. FBI and HRT will be sent packing with your tails between your legs.”

Allen Reynolds said, “Jeff, that’s what
we
did to the Alexandria police. Trust me, son,
nobody
does that to the FBI. You are stuck with me for the duration, so we should just open up a healthy dialogue here. I need to know what you need.”

“I need for you to wait for the other guys to get here. They’ll take over the scene. They’ll probably be assholes about it, they don’t hire these guys for their manners, but you won’t be able to stop them.”

The FBI man revealed a little swagger in his voice. “Who do you think is going to come for you?”

“The men that come will have orders to kill me, not to arrest me. They can’t let you guys try and hit this room, because you might take me alive.”

There was a pause.

Court said, “Allen? You there?”

“Uh . . . Jeff, I’m going to have to put you on hold for just one—”

Court gave a tired smile to Denny and al-Kazaz. He spoke into the speakerphone. “They’re here, aren’t they?”

“Uh . . . I’ll be right back.”

Court snorted out a chuckle. “No, you won’t. You’re done.” He hung up the phone.

—

O
n the second-floor landing outside the steel doors, many of the men of the FBI HRT team took their eyes out of their gun sights and looked to the stairs below them. Heading up the staircase was a large group of armed men wearing civilian attire covered in body armor and ammunition. Their rifles were newer than the FBI shooters’ own equipment, and the night vision equipment they wore on their helmets was a generation better, something the HRT boys had only seen in classified briefings about new technology.

One of the HRT snipers muttered, “Who the hell are these guys?”

FBI negotiator Allen Reynolds pocketed his phone and stepped in front of the approaching men. “Excuse me.” They kept walking. “Hey! FBI! What the hell do you think you are doing?”

A man in his early forties stepped up to Reynolds and stopped while his cohorts continued on. He wore a beard and held an assault rifle and a helmet adorned with state-of-the-art communications gear, cameras, and other gadgetry Reynolds could not identify. “Good evening, Special Agent Reynolds. Your phone will ring in five seconds. It will be the deputy director of the FBI. But don’t worry, it’s good news. You get the rest of the night off.”

The bearded man patted Reynolds on the shoulder and passed him by.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” The phone trilled in his hand. He looked down at it a moment, then answered. “Special Agent Reynolds.”

—

D
akota had already moved on. He and Harley walked up to the doors. Two other JSOC operators had begun looking for places to attach the breaching charges on them.

A minute later Reynolds stepped back up to Dakota. The JSOC commander was setting up a laptop and establishing communications with the CIA TOC.

The FBI negotiator stood next to him, waiting to be noticed. When he realized he was being purposefully ignored he said, “Okay, it’s your scene.”

Dakota didn’t look up. “Yep.”

“You guys must be—”

Dakota interrupted him. “Nope. That’s not us.”

“Right. Hey, look. No hard feelings. I was in myself. Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment. Did five years.”

Dakota turned dials on his interteam radio. “Is that right? Well, now you’re a cop, so go find yourself a donut shop and get off of my scene.”

The JSOC commander walked away, heading back over to the doors to check on the placement of the blast charges.

Special Agent Reynolds stood on the landing fuming for a moment, then he headed down the stairs towards his car.

T
he three men sat at the conference table, staring at one another in silence. Kaz shook perspiration out of his eyes, struggled against his bindings.

Carmichael sat motionless, looking even more drawn than usual.

Court looked tired himself, but his focus remained sharp.

To Carmichael, he asked, “Do you know the identity of the man I rescued?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him?”

Denny shrugged. “I took care of him.”

“Meaning?”

“I put a warhead on his forehead.”

“You drone-killed him?”

“That’s right. Peshawar. 2011. Once I knew his involvement in this, I took him out.” Carmichael went on, “You see why I had to term you, don’t you? If the Israelis knew my man killed Hawthorn, there would be hell to pay with them. And if AQ got wind of it they would use it to their advantage. A propaganda coup that would destroy the CIA.”

Court muttered, “So I had to die.” The strain and adrenaline of the last thirty minutes had drawn most all of his energy reserves.

Denny said, “Of course you did. Think about it, Gentry. Put yourself in my shoes. Why would I even care? Do you think I sit at home at night and ponder the fate of one damn trigger-puller? The work I have done in my career has created nations. It’s dissolved governments. A Ground Branch shooter thinks he got a raw deal? I’m sorry, but so
fucking
what?”

Court looked off into space.

So fucking what?

Softly, he said, “I can call Catherine King right now and fill in the pieces, tell her everything she doesn’t already know from the Mossad.”

Carmichael shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, and we both know why. That information would be damaging to the Agency, and the Agency protects the interests of the USA. You know how political winds blow, son. You can’t just damage a single element of the CIA by revealing this. If you try to destroy me for vengeance, you will destroy the entire core of U.S. intelligence.”

And Carmichael was right about that, Court knew. He wasn’t going to the media with this. Anything damning that Carmichael did would simply be used against the entire philosophy of human intelligence collections and operations. CIA scandals, as a rule, became political and ideological footballs, and the CIA never came out on the right side.

Court would not burn down the village to save it.

Denny looked coldly at Court. “Haven’t you done enough damage to the cause you devoted your life to protect?”

The speakerphone rang again. Court knew this would be the new team, and they wouldn’t be calling to offer pizza and soda. He found himself surprised they called at all.

Court checked his watch and he hit the button. “Who is this?”

A new voice said, “I have someone here who would like to speak with you, Violator.”

Court cocked his head. “Who is it?”

A woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello? This is Catherine King.”

Shit
, Court thought; this was turning into a fucking circus. “I don’t really have time for an interview right now, Catherine. We’ll have to reschedule.”

King said, “Six, I have information you need. I have to come in and tell you.”

“Come in
here
? That would be a really bad idea.”

King then turned her attention to Denny Carmichael. “Director Carmichael. Please listen. I have told the men out here that I think I can stop this from turning into a bloodbath. It’s not necessary for anyone to die.
Please
let me come in.”

“Ms. King, it might not surprise you to know certain classified
information is being discussed in here. Since you don’t have a Top Secret security clearance, I can’t allow you to come in.”

“Does Murquin al-Kazaz have a Top Secret U.S. security clearance?”

Denny did not reply.

Catherine said, “You
need
me in there, Denny. I can make this better.”

Carmichael said, “It’s not really up to me. I’m not the one holding the submachine gun.”

Court just smiled. Carmichael was warning the JSOC boys about the defensive setup.

Catherine said, “Six. I know you want to protect the Agency, even after everything that has happened to you. You have my word there will be large amounts of the information I know that will never make it to print if you let me in that room to talk.”

“What information?”

“Do we have a deal?”

Court sighed. “You do know this is life-or-death in here, don’t you?”

“I do. It is my intention to save lives.”

“Mine, or his?” Carmichael asked.

“I don’t want
anyone
in there to die today, Mr. Carmichael.”

Court didn’t know what to do. He wanted to hear any intel he could get on this, but he fully expected JSOC to breach at some point, and then it wouldn’t be safe for King to be here in the line of fire.

She pressed. “Open the door, Six. You need to hear what I have to say.”

“If this is some kind of a trap, Denny dies first.”

“It’s no trap.”

Court opened the door to the hallway, then he crossed to the security office by the pneumatic doors. He positioned himself out of the line of fire, but he used the reflection from a hall mirror to keep his eyes on the doorway.

He tapped a button on the security controller on his wrist, then he readied his weapon. The pneumatic doors opened. Catherine King entered the hall with her hands raised. She wore warm-ups and tennis shoes. It looked to Court like she’d been called out of a yoga class to come here. Her hands were empty.

Court reclosed the pneumatic doors, then he approached her in the hallway. He turned her to the wall and frisked her quickly, finding nothing on her.

Turning her around, he led her back into the conference room. “Anything for a story, right?”

King forced a little smile. She looked nervous, but steadfast. She sat at the table with the others, and Court sat back down himself.

“So,” Court said, turning to King, “you have brought some news? Some way to resolve this crisis?”

She nodded. “I hope the way I can resolve this crisis is by keeping those men outside from coming in here shooting. Maybe with me here, they will be afraid of the bad press it would cause if anything went wrong.”

Court shook his head. “They don’t care. Maybe you bought me ten minutes while they talk about how to account for you, but no more.”

“Look, Six, I know what you are planning on doing. I’ve been following all your actions for the last eight days. You are here to go out in a blaze of glory. You plan on punishing Carmichael for all he did to you, but you are also planning on punishing yourself for what you did to Hawthorn.”

Court did not reply.

“But I know the truth. I have a new source, deep in the CIA. She has filled in some important pieces in the puzzle. Things the Israelis didn’t know. What I told you the other day wasn’t the whole truth.”

With faint hope in his voice he said, “I didn’t kill Hawthorn?”

“You did kill him, I’m afraid. Neither you nor I can ever take that back.”

“Then nothing else really matters, does it?”

“Not true. You shot Hawthorn, the Israeli penetration agent,
not
because you made a mistake. You shot him because Denny Carmichael ordered you to.”

“What?”

Carmichael instantly shook his head. Al-Kazaz remained silent.

“Denny gave you the image of the man you rescued. Denny wasn’t trying to save Hawthorn. He didn’t even know about Hawthorn. He had no idea an Israeli asset was in that villa.

“He was trying to save the other man. And you did just what he asked you to do. You rescued the man you were ordered to.”

Carmichael protested, but Court just lifted his weapon off the table and pointed it at him till he shut up. Looking at Catherine he asked, “How do you know this?”

“Denny assassinated Jordan Mayes yesterday. He framed you for it, but
someone in the car with Mayes at the time he was killed confirmed it was not you. Before he died, Mayes told this source of mine that Denny had revealed the truth of Operation BACK BLAST. It was an attempt to rescue the other Arab, because
he
was the spy for the United States. Carmichael didn’t know Hawthorn was an Israeli asset. He thought he was just an AQ hit man out to kill
his
agent.”

Court leaned back heavily in his chair, his MP7 lowered into his lap, though it remained pointed in the general direction of the two hostages.

“Who was Denny’s agent?”

Catherine King looked to Murquin al-Kazaz. “He’s sitting right here, Six.”

Court turned to the man slowly. Looked at his face. He tried to add a beard, and to take off six years. He wasn’t sure.

Al-Kazaz yelled now. “This is an outrageous lie! I know nothing of this!” He turned to Carmichael. “Denny, tell them this is not true. Don’t join their lie to save yourself. You
need
me!”

Court lifted the HK assault weapon off the table and pointed it at al-Kazaz’s head. “Well, I sure as shit don’t need you.”

Kaz shut his eyes.

Catherine King screamed, “No, Six! Don’t do it!”

Court held the gun there, the laser sight painted on the man’s forehead. Finally he lowered it. With his eyes still on Kaz, he said, “Denny, your only chance at surviving the next fifteen minutes hinges on you coming clean on all this. Right
fucking
now.”

Catherine King did what she could to defuse the situation. “Denny, anything you say will be considered off the record. You have my word.”

Denny Carmichael spoke in a defeated voice now. “You have to understand the opportunity that I had. It was one of the most successful intelligence operations of the past half century, and it was all me. No one knew I had a highly placed man in al Qaeda,
and
a highly placed man in Saudi intelligence.”

He paused for a moment, then turned to Kaz. “It was the same man.

“It’s true. Kaz had been feeding me al Qaeda intel for two years, but he knew he was burned. AQ discovered he was a Saudi intelligence officer. He’d been tipped off that the trip to Italy was cover to get him out of Pakistan so he could be assassinated without causing a rift between al Qaeda
and their Saudi benefactors. He asked me to save him. I needed to keep Kaz secure, but I couldn’t pull him out by going through normal channels, because the relationship was not approved. I sent you, Six, gave you an old image of Kaz he’d taken in Tel Aviv, and told you he was an Israeli asset.”

Carmichael continued, “I swear to Christ, Court, I had no idea the
assassin
was an Israeli asset. Kaz didn’t know, either.

“I made a quick decision, the only rational decision I could have made. I
had
to save him.” Carmichael leaned forward, straining against his bindings. “And lo and behold, it worked.”

Court was still looking at Kaz, but he spoke to Carmichael. “The only problem was the man I killed was the best penetration agent any service had in the enemy’s command structure. Higher than Kaz. He was core AQ.”

Carmichael lowered his head. “A few days after BACK BLAST I got a call from Manny Aurbach at Mossad. He said he had a man go dark in Trieste. He told me he was undercover as AQ. Manny asked me if we’d heard any chatter. Immediately I suspected, but I asked for a picture. I sent it to Kaz and he confirmed it was the man you shot. I had to cover it up from the Israelis, not to protect you”—Carmichael shrugged when he said it—“but to protect Kaz. By this time he was back in Saudi Arabia, but if I told Manny the truth, that it was an honest mistake, he would know I’d been trading intel with the Saudis at an unapproved level, and he would have gone to others here in the U.S. to have me derailed.

“So I lied to Manny. That should have been that.”

“But?” Catherine asked.

Denny continued, “But a full year later a Serbian who was at the villa in Trieste gave the Mossad a picture of you standing over Hawthorn’s body.”

Court cocked his head. “How the hell did he happen to get a picture of that?”

“It was a covert camera set up in Kaz’s room. It’s a picture of you standing in front of a window, silenced pistol. Hawthorn is in the doorway falling to the floor after you shot him. God knows why the Serbian gangsters set the camera up, or why they sent it to the Mossad, but they did. At that point Manny knew his man had been assassinated, and he knew the only force that could pull it off was the Americans.” He paused. “I couldn’t deny. I told them you must have gone rogue, done the job for money. I had to terminate you so the Israelis couldn’t talk to you. If they did, they could
just show you a picture of Hawthorn and you would know that wasn’t the man you were sent to rescue. If you told the Israelis then they would know BACK BLAST was a lie.”

Court looked down at the floor for a minute, saying nothing.

Finally Catherine called out to him. “Six, are you okay?”

Softly he said, “The Serbians did not have a camera in that room.”

“They must have. How else did they get the image?”

“They didn’t.” Court turned to al-Kazaz. “You took the picture. I remember.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“The pen. The pen in your hand. I remember it now. All your other items in that room, papers, luggage, your computer. Everything else could stay, but you had to put that pen in your pocket. I thought it was strange at the time, but I had too much going on to worry about it.”

“What does a stupid pen have to do with any of this?”

Denny Carmichael’s face reddened with fury. “I gave you that pen. It contained a pinhole camera. You son of a bitch!”

Catherine connected the dots. “Al-Kazaz gave the image to the Israelis.” She looked at the Saudi in the chair across from her. “Which means you knew Hawthorn was a Mossad agent the entire time. The whole damn thing was a setup.”

Carmichael roared, “Goddammit, Kaz! No!”

Court said, “Denny, you were wrong before. Kaz wasn’t your man in al Qaeda. He wasn’t your man in Saudi intelligence. You were
his
man in the CIA. He ran you. He still does.”

Denny’s hands were bound behind the chair, but he looked like he might try to kill the man tied next to him with only his gnashing teeth.