Back Blast (22 page)

M
atthew Hanley sat in the backseat of an armored Toyota Camry, gazing through the tempered glass at the heavy evening traffic on Rock Creek Parkway. A flash of lightning illuminated the high hill to the right of his vehicle, thick with trees and shrubs. The director of the Special Activities Division took the quarter second of illumination as an opportunity to scan the high ground, searching for signs of a man there with an antitank weapon.

The darkness returned, and Matt closed his eyes.

Calm the fuck down. He’s not after you.

Two Ground Branch paramilitary operations officers sat in front of him in the armored car, but they knew better than to disturb the silence. Jenner drove and watched the other cars on the road while Travers rode shotgun and watched everyone and everything that was not riding inside another vehicle. They kept their HK MP7s stowed below the dash and at the ready, and both men carried radios that would connect them with CIA security forces positioned in D.C.

Hanley did not usually carry a weapon himself, but an MP5 with a collapsible stock sat inside a briefcase on the floorboard by his leg.

Another flash of lightning gave him another chance for a quick scan of the road. This time a slight rumble of thunder worked its way through the bulletproof glass, letting him know the storm was moving closer.

This nine p.m. drive home from work felt to Matt like a movement in a hostile environment, and in a way it was, but Hanley was less certain of Gentry’s intentions than anyone else at Langley, because Hanley knew something no one else knew. A year ago he had run into Gentry in Mexico City. Hanley had been a station chief at the time in Port-au-Prince, but the CIA had tracked the Gray Man to Mexico, and Hanley flew in to assist with the hunt.

A drug lord captured Gentry before the CIA got to him, so Carmichael ordered Hanley to render a positive ID of their old asset and then let nature take its course, meaning Hanley was to let the drug lord’s henchmen kill his former CIA paramilitary operations officer.

Instead, Hanley saved Gentry’s life, not because he particularly liked the guy, but rather because he disagreed with the op on principle. Hanley found the events in Mexico were so much against everything he stood for he could not sit by and watch Gentry die at the hands of the cartel.

Now as he rode in the back of an armored sedan, Hanley wondered if he should have just let Gentry get smoked by the Mexicans. He didn’t know for sure. He did not for a moment think things were patched up or in any way simpatico between himself and Gentry, but he wasn’t so sure the world’s best assassin would put a bullet in his brain, either.

He put the chances somewhere around sixty-forty in his favor.

Still . . .
only
a forty percent chance that the world’s best assassin was gunning for him didn’t exactly fill Matt Hanley with serenity.

Hanley saw Gentry as a good man who’d been soiled and turned into something dangerous by his work. He was like so many others in CIA, but he was several cuts above the rest, because Court Gentry had just gotten so damn good at being so damn bad.

He looked at the two men in front of him in the car. Jenner was an SAD Ground Branch team leader, and Travers was his number two. Hanley had gotten an e-mail earlier in the evening from personnel requesting that Jenner’s entire team come in for a drug screening tomorrow, but Hanley hadn’t passed this information on just yet.

This happened from time to time, it was part of the work, but Hanley knew Carmichael had ordered the screen, because Carmichael was looking for an excuse to pull Travers. Some doctor working for personnel would do what Carmichael told him to, which meant Travers was twenty-four hours away from testing positive for some controlled substance, and this would derail his career.

Probably his life.

And Hanley didn’t think he could do a goddamned thing about it, because Carmichael was the king.

Matt Hanley lived on 28th Street NW in Woodley Park, a tree-lined hilly section in northwestern D.C. He was a bachelor after a divorce twenty
years earlier; both his kids were grown, living on the West Coast near his ex-wife.

Jenner navigated the Camry into Hanley’s garage while Travers continued scanning the neighborhood, then both officers climbed out of the vehicle. While Hanley remained locked in the armored car the men checked his entire two-thousand-square-foot home. It took them fifteen minutes; they put their eyes on any possible man-sized space they could find. Travers crawled the attic, and Jenner moved paint cans in the corner of the basement to shine a light over every square foot where Gentry could possibly hide.

While all this happened Hanley waited silently. He had calls to make and papers to read, but he wasn’t in the mood tonight. He just sat there in the armored car, thinking about nothing.

Finally Jenner opened Hanley’s door. “The place is secure, sir, and it’s locked down tight. Once we leave the garage, set your alarm. Nothing is getting in here.”

“Okay,” he said.

Travers asked, “You sure you don’t want us to bunk here tonight, boss?”

“I could use the company, for sure. But no. You guys run on.”

Jenner shifted his weight back and forth on his boots. “Violator is out there, sir. Got to say I find it a little odd you don’t want the extra security.”

“I’m fine.”

With obvious reluctance, his two men pulled out of the garage and back out onto 28th Street NW. Hanley set the alarm, and then closed his garage door.

Once he changed out of his suit and tie and into jeans and a flannel shirt, he headed down to his kitchen, reheated last night’s takeout from LiLLiES, an Italian bistro right up the street from him. Then he opened a bottle of Chianti, drinking it while scarfing down day-old penne alla vodka from a microwave-safe carryout bowl.

Matt ate a lot and he drank a lot, and when he wasn’t working he did most of his eating and drinking alone. He took his time with his meal, enjoying every bite, but each time a flash of lightning brightened the backyard he glanced out of his kitchen, past his living room, and through the French doors, halfway expecting to see a man standing there, gun in hand.

He finished the last gulp of wine in his glass, then he tried to pour more, but found the bottle empty.

Looking at the clock, he realized he’d been sitting in his kitchen for an hour.

His mobile rang in the front pocket of his jeans, startling him, showing him just how on edge he remained, even though he kept telling himself Gentry probably wouldn’t kill him. He chastised himself as he pulled out the phone and looked at the caller ID.

“Hello, Jenner.”

“Just checking on you, boss.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Seriously. Wanted to make sure you are okay. You watched the garage door till it closed?”

“I did.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Again, you change your mind, you just let me know. Travers lives ten minutes from you, but you know him, he’ll be there in five. I’m twenty out, but I’ll be there in ten if you need me.”

“I read you five-five, Jenner. See you tomorrow.”

Another pause. “You okay, boss?”

“Good night.” Hanley hung up the phone.

Matt Hanley then stood, walked to the French doors overlooking the back patio, and looked out at the approaching storm. The wind blew the trees wildly, and the waist-high ferns in stone planters on his patio whipped around like mad dancing children.

Matt put his hand on the door latch, hesitated almost a minute, and then opened the door.

His home alarm began beeping, but he ignored it.

The smell of rain was strong, blowing into his living room with the wind.

Hanley spoke to the trees. “Okay, Six. Let’s get this over with.”

He stepped out onto his patio and pulled one of the smaller stone planters inside, then used it as a doorstop to keep one of the French doors propped open a foot and a half. Then he turned away, walked over to the security box, and disarmed the alarm.

He headed for the stairs to his bedroom.

Matt Hanley had spent many years intimately aware of the abilities of the assassin known as Violator, Sierra Six, and the Gray Man. He wasn’t sure if Gentry wanted to kill him, but if he did, Gentry
would
get the job done.
Hanley knew, without any doubt, that if Gentry saw no way to walk right up to Hanley he could kill him from a mile away or even more if he wanted.

Hanley wasn’t going to hide under a rock for the rest of his life.

Court Gentry might kill him, Hanley had decided, but he wasn’t going to do it from distance. No thousand-meter shot through the heart.

No, if Hanley had to die, he would die deep in conversation with the Gray Man.

It was his only chance.

At the top of the stairs, Hanley felt a presence here in the house with him. His already pounding heart seemed to find another gear. He sniffed the air, thought he detected the odor of another body, the smell of the outdoors up here on the second floor.

But he could not be certain.

He looked behind him on the stairs, then he opened the door to a hallway bathroom. Another flash of light from outside revealed the room as if it were day.

There was nothing.

Hanley spoke loudly, almost in a shout. “If you’re here, Court, I only ask for a moment of your time before you do whatever it is you came to do. You owe me that much.”

No sounds anywhere in the home, only the pounding of the rain now, on the roof and on the windows.

Hanley turned and headed up the hall to his bedroom.

In his room he turned on the light by his bed, opened the drawer in his end table, and was comforted to see his old Wilson Combat 1911 .45 ACP pistol. He’d had the gun since he’d worn the Green Beret of U.S. Army Special Forces in the 1980s, and although it wasn’t his only firearm, it was the gun he kept by his bed for things that went bump in the night.

He turned off his phone and laid it on his side table, kicked off his shoes, then turned off the light and lay on his back on the bed. Fully clothed, fully expecting no sleep at all tonight.

—

M
att Hanley’s eyes opened and he sat up, unsure how long he’d been asleep, or even if he had dozed off at all. The thunder barked outside, the room was dark, but again, he felt someone close by.

He dropped his head back on the pillow.

“Jesus Christ, Court. If you are here, just fucking say something.”

A new flash of light outside, at the same time as a thunderclap.

A man stood at the foot of Hanley’s bed, head to toe in black, his face masked, his clothes dry.

“Jesus!” Hanley shouted, jerking back until his head slammed against the headboard. He grabbed at the stitch of pain in his heart.

C
ome on, Six! That’s not necessary! You scared the piss out of me!”

There was no reply in the darkness for several seconds, only the rumble of distant thunder. Then a soft voice came from the side of the bed, ten feet away from where Hanley had seen Gentry in the lightning’s flash.

“Which is it? Are you stupid, cocky, or suicidal?”

Hanley was still recovering from the fright, but he sat all the way up in bed now. “I left the door open because I wanted you to know I’m not trying to keep you away. I didn’t want you to blow my head off from five hundred meters. I’d much rather we talk.”

“And
then
I blow your head off?”

Hanley swallowed. “Hell, you almost scared me to death.” He rubbed the top of his head where it had hit the headboard. “I can’t stop whatever it is you are planning on doing, but killing me would serve nothing. Can we
please
talk?”

“I’m not here to kill you, Matt. I remember what you did in Mexico.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“But I’ll warn you right now . . . that fancy .45 that was in your bedside table is now on my hip.”

Hanley turned to look at the nightstand. He couldn’t imagine how Gentry had gotten all the way up to his bed, opened a drawer, and retrieved a weapon without making a sound.

He said, “
Christ
, Court. I wouldn’t have gone for my gun. I know you could kill me ten different ways before I got my hand on it.”

“Of course you know. But now I won’t have to.”

Hanley changed the subject. “Did you see the snipers?”

“Yes.”

Hanley said, “I don’t know where they are, just heard JSOC had me covered.”

Gentry replied, “One hundred forty yards east, rooftop of a four-story office building. Two guys. An AI .308 on the shooter, and an HK 416 with an ACOG on the spotter. And one hundred fifty-five yards northeast, two more, in a second-story apartment. Same sniper rifle, but the spotter has an M4 with an EOTech.”

Hanley turned his head slowly, trying to identify the location of the voice, because clearly Gentry had moved again. He gave up and said, “You managed to ID the caliber of the rifles and the brand of optics from one hundred fifty yards away?”

Court said, “I got a little closer.”

“You didn’t kill them, did you?”

Court pulled a chair into a corner, Hanley could hear the movement, and when he focused his eyes on the location, lightning struck outside, closer than ever. With the flash through the curtains Hanley could just make out the silhouette of a man. On the man’s right was the window that looked over the front yard. Even though it was covered with a curtain, Hanley saw Gentry had positioned himself so no one out there could get line of sight on him through the glass.

Court replied, “It’s
me
, Matt. When have I ever killed a Delta operator?”

“People change.”

“
Other
people change. Rules change. Loyalties change.
I
don’t.”

Hanley forced a smile. “You’ve been out of it for a while. They aren’t called Delta anymore.”

“No? What are they called now?”

“Can’t tell you. Classified.”

“That’s cute.” Lightning struck again and, along with it, a massive thunderclap. “So they’ve got you running SAD now.”

“Can you believe it?”

“When I shot you in Mexico I told you it would be a perfect opportunity for career enhancement.”

“Is this where I express my eternal gratitude for you filling me full of lead?”

Court did not respond.

Hanley said, “I am not going to have much information for you. I’ve got
nothing to do with the Violator Working Group. Denny asked for Ground Branch guys to help target you, and I told him to fuck off.”

“I’m not interested in who’s after me now. I’m here to find out what happened five years ago.”

“I know even less about that.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s Denny, man. He’s been the one orchestrating it all from the beginning.”

“I know that. I also know he told you
something
. He gave you a rationale for this. You may be Denny’s bitch at CIA, but you are your own man, Matt, you always have been. You proved that in Mexico. Even if Carmichael twisted your arm to get you to come after me, he had a story to go along with it.” Court leaned a little closer, but his face was still in darkness. “Tell me the story. That’s all I want. You do that and I move on.”

Hanley climbed off the bed and started over to a chair across from Court. He kept his hands away from his body, and he moved slowly. It was still nearly pitch-black in the room, other than the occasional lightning strikes that flashed through the curtained windows, and Hanley didn’t even know if Court was holding a weapon on him, but he had been in this line of work too long to advance on a killer without making it plain he posed no threat.

He sat down in the chair. “Court, this road you are traveling doesn’t lead where you want it to go.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, when all is said and done, you are going to wish you didn’t go poking around D.C. to find out why everyone is after you.”

“Why not?”

Hanley heaved a long sigh. He didn’t want to say more, but he knew Gentry wasn’t going anywhere unless he talked. “Because this whole thing is your fault.”

A long pause. “No.”

“Everything you think is just some terrible misunderstanding is
not
a misunderstanding. You are under lethal authorization because you
earned
lethal authorization. It sucks, and I’ve been against the sanction from the get-go . . . but it
is
a legit sanction.”

Court shook his head emphatically. “Not true. I know everything that
happened down at street level on my ops, and my conscience is clear. If something went tits-up on a mission it was strategic, not tactical, and I didn’t have a damn thing to do with strategy. I’d fall on my sword in an instant if I fucked up, but I’m not taking the fall for someone else’s mistake.”

Hanley winced, feeling the pain of having to deliver bad news, but also the pain of having to deliver bad news to someone who just might kill the messenger of the bad news.

He said, “Carmichael called me up one day five years ago, back when I was running the Goon Squad, back when you were on the team. He said he had a new termination order for us. I said, ‘Cool, we’ll meet and wade through the intel, then go see legal and the director to get it approved.’ He told me it was already approved by everybody. That wasn’t how we did things, so I told him I wanted to talk face-to-face.

“He met me at a restaurant in Reston, and he brought Max Ohlhauser, the Agency’s chief legal counsel. You know him?”

Court shook his head, Hanley could barely register the movement in the dark. “I don’t hang out with CIA lawyers.”

“Anyway, each time we got a term order, it had to be signed by Denny, Ohlhauser, and the CIA director, whoever was in the chair at the time.”

“Okay.”

“So Denny pulls out the order, all signed off on by the director and Ohlhauser, and then Denny signs it right in front of me. I looked down to see who we were terming. I figured it was some AQ guy, maybe Hezbollah, Al-Shabab. The usual suspects. But your name was on the order, Court.”

“Why?”

“Denny wouldn’t tell me specifics. It was a need-to-know thing. But Ohlhauser knew. And so did the director.”

“How do you know the director—”

“Because I went and asked him. Personally. He wouldn’t talk to me about it, he felt conflicted as hell, you could see it on his face. But he said if I had a term order with his signature on it, I needed to shut the fuck up and comply and to get the fuck out of his office.” Hanley chuckled in the dark. “I’m not paraphrasing, that’s verbatim.”

“So Carmichael and Ohlhauser told you nothing?”

“No. They told me
something
. They told me which op you fucked up that earned you the sanction.”

More thunder, the rain whipped in sheets on the window now.

“What op?”

Hanley did not reply.

“
What op?”

Nothing.

“You gonna
make
me shoot you, Matt?”

Hanley said, “Operation BACK BLAST.”

—

C
ourt’s eyes narrowed. The name meant nothing to him. He thought back several years, through so many operations.
Maybe.
He wasn’t sure. “That first thing we did in Jalalabad?”

“No, man. That was BACKBEAT.”

“That’s right . . . The thing in Ankara?”

“BRAINSTORM.”

“Sarajevo?”

Hanley looked at his former operator with bewilderment. “
Jesus
, that one was called AARDVARK SANDSTORM. Were you even paying attention during the briefings?”

Court shrugged. “I’ve had a pretty full plate recently. What the hell was BACK BLAST?”

“Trieste, Italy.”

Gentry looked away a moment, thinking back. “The thing in Trieste had a name?”

Hanley nodded in the dark. “In your defense, it was kind of thrown together, wasn’t it? But it
did
have a name. It’s possible Hightower never read you in on the name of the op.”

“But . . . what about it? That op was solid.”

“Denny says it wasn’t. He says you rogued it. Ohlhauser confirmed it, and the director seemed to agree.”

Court stood from the chair quickly, startling Hanley. “That’s a damn lie! I remember everything that happened in Trieste. A terminal sanction along with a personnel recovery. I wasted the bad guy and scooped up the good guy. Whatever Carmichael’s real reason for wanting me off the table, it sure as shit wasn’t anything that happened in BACK BLAST.”

Hanley remained seated, but he put his hands up in surrender. “I only
know what he told me, and he told me you were derelict on BACK BLAST. I fought him tooth and nail for more intel, and when he wouldn’t give it up I just begged him to cashier you, or have you charged with something and pulled off Golf Sierra and thrown out of the Agency. But the term order was the term order, and that was that.”

Court was barely listening now. He knew he’d done exactly as instructed on that mission, but there was one thing about Trieste that did stand out. He had been working with Zack Hightower’s Golf Sierra Task Force at the time, but on that particular operation he’d been sent in alone due to operational requirements. Nothing had gone wrong on BACK BLAST, he was sure of it, but if it had, it would have been a mission where he was the only one who would have been blamed. Not the rest of Golf Sierra.

Court turned back to Hanley. “Do you know more than what you are saying?”

“Listen carefully, Court. Denny calls the shots at the Agency. He has more power than the director of the CIA. More power than the Director of National Intelligence. Denny is the king, and the king is after you. Better you just declare victory on this little operation. You came to D.C. to get intel on what went down. You got intel. You got me to tell you this knot isn’t going to be unraveled. So now go, get out of the country, back into the Third World, and back to your life. You have one hell of a good business model. An assassin of assholes. You can be proud of that. Don’t throw it all away because you are so naive to think you can come home and fix the goddamned CIA.”

Court knelt down, right next to Hanley. It was the first time the director of the Special Activities Division had been able to clearly make out the face of his former asset.

Court said, “I’m not leaving till I clear my name. I’m dead otherwise, and you know it. Forget about BACK BLAST, this has to do with AAP, not some on-the-fly term and rescue I did in Italy.”

Hanley said, “What’s AAP?”

Court said, “It’s the program I was part of before I worked for you.”

Hanley gave Gentry a quizzical look. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Exactly! No one does but those involved, and they’re all dead. Carmichael wants me dead, too, before others find out.”

Hanley shook his head back and forth. “I think you’re wrong, buddy. I
think you digging any deeper is just going to go bad for you.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Six, I saved you in Mexico City . . . I can’t save you here.”

“I didn’t come here to get saved.”

“That’s what worries me. You came back to go out with one last big bang.”

Court said nothing.

Hanley put his hand on Court’s shoulder. “Just remember why we got into this work in the first place. To help this country. Not to hurt it.”

“Don’t lecture me about the mission.”

Hanley raised his hands in surrender. “You’re right. You’ve done your part. There should be more guys like you, Court.” He paused, gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. “Not many. Two. Three, tops. Doubt we could handle more than that.”

Just then there was a loud banging on the open back door downstairs. A male voice called out. “Hanley?”

Hanley’s own pistol appeared in Gentry’s hand in a heartbeat, and he jammed it under the SAD director’s thick chin.

“Who the
fuck
is that? You hit a panic button?”

Hanley answered back, his eyes shut tight because of the gun jabbed in his throat. “No. It’s just Jenner. He didn’t want me to stay here without security. He’s checking on me.”

Court said, “Say something to him,” but he pressed the barrel of the weapon harder into Hanley’s beefy neck.

Hanley shouted out of his bedroom and up his second-floor hall. “What the hell, Jenner?”

“You didn’t answer your phone, boss. Your back door is propped open down here. You okay?” As the man spoke, it was clear he was moving closer. From the den to the stairs.

Hanley shouted, “I’ll be fine when you get the fuck out of my house!”

“Just let me put eyes on you first. Make me feel better.”

Court stood, began moving to the door, pulling Hanley with him by the collar of his flannel shirt. Court whispered, “I’ll send you downstairs, but I swear if you say a fucking word I’ll kill you both.”

Hanley nodded, then said, “Six. The pistol. It was a gift from my dad.”

Court rolled his eyes. “I’ll toss it in a backyard flowerpot.”

Hanley held a hand out for Court to shake, then Jenner called out again.
Court ignored the extended hand, spun his former boss around, and pushed him out into the hall. Hanley did not look back. He continued towards the stairs. Quickly he wiped nervous perspiration from his face, and he disappeared from Court’s view. As he descended the stairs Court heard him speaking to Jenner, who sounded like he was halfway up the stairs himself.