On Target (10 page)

“And I am guessing you have a way to make them think there is some sort of a threat?”

“Sudan Station does. They have a force of one hundred Sudanese Liberation Army rebels who can hit Suakin at six thirty-five a.m. on Sunday, ten April. Exactly when Abboud and his entourage hit the square. The president and some of his close protection detail will enter the bank, which of course will be empty.”

“But it won’t be empty.”

Zack smiled and nodded aggressively, “You got it. You’ll be in there, ready to disable the guard force and snatch Abboud, get him out of town while the SLA blows some shit up and jumps around for a few minutes, distracting the locals and the rest of Abboud’s team. Then you meet up with me for the handoff.” It was clear Hightower was excited by the operation; his hands and his body had not stopped moving since he’d begun his explanation.

Court sat there silently for a moment, then asked, “Is this where I start clapping?”

“This
is
a good plan, Six. Operation Nocturne Sapphire, we’re calling it.”

“A thrill just went up my leg,” said Court sarcastically, still unfazed by Zack’s vigor.

“But the best part is the deal I’ve been authorized to offer you.”

Gentry looked at his former team leader a long time before speaking. “The CIA has wanted me on a slab for four years. What kind of deal could you offer that would interest me?”

“No slab, for starters. We call off the dogs. Not just CIA, but Interpol, too.”

“Interpol doesn’t scare me.”

“I know they don’t. You don’t scare easy. Never did. But I know what
does
scare the Gray Man.”

“What scares me, Zack?”

“
We
scare you. Wouldn’t you like to be free of us? Free of the shoot-on-sight sanction? I know what your life is like, bro. People talk about the Gray Man like you’re some sort of flashy-assed James Bond, jet-setting around the world, partying at the best clubs, and drinking martinis with the beautiful people on the Côte d’Azur. But I know what it’s really like: living on the run, bouncing from one shit splat town to the next, no one loves you, no one likes you, no one fucking
knows
you. Always looking into the shadows for crazy motherfuckers like me hunting you down. Eating beans out of a can in a stairwell in a roach-infested flophouse while the real tuxedo crowd is around the corner dining on lobster tail at the Four Seasons.”

Truer words had never been spoken, but Court was not about to give Zack the satisfaction of admitting he was right.

“I like beans.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t like any of it, except the job. The job is you. The rest is just your fucked-up temporary predicament. I know the score, Sierra Six. Being the Gray Man sucks.”

“So let me guess. You’re here to take me away from all that?”

“Damn right. I can keep you on the job, but you won’t be hunted anymore, at least by us.”

“On the job? Working for who?”

“The CIA, of course.” Zack reached across and held Court’s face by the chin, turned it from side to side. “I thought we just covered that. What, did I hit you too hard?” He took the ice pack from Gentry and returned it to his hand.

Court said, “I do this gig in Sudan for you, but after that, you’re offering full-time work? Just like the last four years didn’t happen? Everything goes back to the way it was in the old days?”

“Negative. I’m offering
contract
work. Keeps Langley’s hands clean, and it pays a damn sight better than a real government salary.” He smiled. “We want you back.” Then he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, let me rephrase that. I’m not talking about a desk and a reserved parking space at Langley. That doesn’t happen to guys like you. CIA won’t acknowledge working with the Gray Man. But from time to time we run into situations where I hear people say, ‘Sure wish Sierra Six was still here, instead of out in bumble fuck, doin’ private hits for pimps and drug dealers.’ I swear, we miss you sometimes.”

He paused before saying, “You always were the best. We want you alive, Court. Doing the dirty jobs under a false flag.”

“How do I know you aren’t just going to kill me when the Sudan op is done?”

“Because we
need
you. We aren’t asking you to go raise daffodils in Iowa in the Witness Protection Program here. We want you to keep doing what you’re doing, living out here in the cold, and we’ll keep up the front that we’re still after your ass. Look, this shit is in your blood, and the agency can still use you, despite your fuckup in ’06. Washington won’t let the SAD get its hands dirty these days. But if we play this right, we can let
you
get the dirty hands, and we can support you. It’s fucking perfect, man. Like coke off a whore’s ass. Know what I’m saying?”

Court shook his head slowly. “Not really, no.”

“Look, you act all cynical, but I
know
you. You are a patriot, kiddo. You piss red, white, and blue. The White House has a need, I have a need, you have a need. We can all help each other.” He grinned. “Everybody wins.”

The discussion steered to the potential operation for several minutes. Zack had an answer ready for every question Gentry posed. When there were no other operational details left to go over, Court grabbed the ice pack back from Hightower and pressed it to the swollen flesh on his face. Zack looked at it longingly a moment but did not reach for it. Behind the ice pack Court said, “I need to hear this deal from somebody above you.”

“Like who?” asked Hightower with no appearance of surprise.

“I’d settle for Mathew Hanley. I figure our old supervisor is probably running SAD now, if not higher up than that.”

“Matt’s out of SAD. Riding a desk in South America last I heard. Paraguay, maybe?”

Court did not hide his puzzlement. “He used to be the wunderkind of black ops. What happened?”

“
You
happened, fucko. Having one of his door kickers go nuts and shoot up his own squad didn’t help his ascendancy to the top.”

“So I get blamed for that, too?”

“History is written by the victors. You may have survived, sorta, but the CIA is still around to write the official version of what you did and why.”

Court thought a moment. Finally he just repeated himself: “I need to hear this deal from someone above you.”

Hightower nodded. “That’s cool. Sit tight, and I’ll be back.”

Court was given his clothing back. He dressed, and then he waited.

Over an hour later two of Zack’s men returned to the room where Court was being held. He’d spent the time massaging ice into his face. He wondered how he was going to explain the obvious bruising to his Russian colleagues /captors. Two of Zack’s men, one big and black and the other older and white, led him down a narrow and low hallway, past water and steam pipes, up a narrow flight of stairs, and into a room on the upper deck. Zack’s men didn’t like Court, that much was plain by their
eat shit
looks and the way they bumped him with their muscular bodies to get him to turn into the new room. Gentry recognized that taking down one of their team with a cracking shot to the face wasn’t going to endear him to these hardy boys.

But he didn’t care. He wasn’t looking to make friends, even if they were all going to work together on the mission to come. These guys would be pros, just like him, and the op would take precedence.

They didn’t need to like each other to do their jobs.

Once Court was seated in the new room, he noticed a blue monitor on a desk in front of him. Zack entered a moment later, stowing a sat phone in a pouch on his hip as he did so.

“Okay. You are going to talk to somebody. He’s read in on this op, and he knows who you are, but for all intents and purposes, you are not a NOC, not a CIA employee, not a former CIA employee, not an American citizen. You are a foreign national agent and will be treated as such. Your code name will be your old Goon Squad call sign, Sierra Six.”

Court nodded.

“And the code name for President Abboud will be Oryx.”

“What’s an oryx?”

“I had to ask, myself. It’s some kind of an African antelope or something.”

Court shrugged. This type of code word protocol had been his life for many years. When he was in the Goon Squad he’d been Sierra Six, though he’d used literally dozens of cover names for his assignments. And before working for Zack, back when he was in the Autonomous Asset Program, his code name had been Violator. The code words were supposedly randomly selected by computer, but Violator seemed uncannily accurate. The CIA had pulled Gentry out of a south Florida penitentiary, where he was serving a life sentence for the triple second-degree murder of three Colombian drug runners, and presented him with a job offer he could not refuse.

He had never believed for a second that it was a computer who dubbed him Violator.

The screen in front of him flickered to life.

The image of a man in a gray suit and a Brooks Brothers tie in a full Windsor. He was over sixty, thin glasses low on his nose. The face and countenance of a soldier. After a short moment Gentry recognized the man.

Court was surprised. Shocked, even.

“Sierra Six. Do you recognize me?” His voice was clipped and curt. There was no smile nor emotion of any kind.

Gentry answered immediately. “Yes, sir.” He turned to look at Zack. Hightower smiled and raised his eyebrows, obviously proud of the juice he possessed to command a video link with this other man.

The man was Denny Carmichael, currently the director of U.S. National Clandestine Service, and recently the head of the Special Activities Division. He was a legend at the agency, a Far East specialist and a longtime station chief in Hong Kong.

Denny Carmichael was, in short, the top guy in CIA operations. Court knew this mission was big, but this kind of dirty work usually went on without the fingerprints of the top brass of the U.S. intelligence community.

“I understand Sierra One has laid out our proposal to you regarding the extraordinary rendition of Oryx. I am prepared to reaffirm the details of Nocturne Sapphire.”

“Yes, sir,” repeated Court. It was all he could think to say. He’d never spoken to anyone this high in the food chain. He found himself almost starstruck. It felt odd, doubly so since Carmichael would certainly have been a signatory to the shoot-on-sight directive against him that had been in place since 2006.

Carmichael laid out the general plan that Zack had discussed, though he spoke in more euphemistic terms. Court would “detain Abboud with force,” not “snatch him” as Hightower had instructed. He would “neutralize all threats from Abboud’s close protection detail,” as opposed to Zack’s suggestion that he “pop a hollow point or two into each bodyguard’s snot box.”

This dissimilarity in the vernacular was a common distinction between labor and management in this industry. Court was accustomed to hearing more from Zack’s ilk and less from men like Carmichael, but he knew the results would not differ depending on the political correctness of the vocabulary used. The operation would be the same, no matter how pleasantly or corrosively it was explained.

Men would die.

While Carmichael spoke, Hightower leaned against the wall of the ship, occasionally making an open and closed hand gesture to mock the verbosity of the man on the screen. But otherwise Sierra One minded his manners.

When Carmichael finished his explanation of the operation, he moved on to the part of the deal most important to the Gray Man. “You do this for us, Sierra Six, and our operation to eliminate you will simply go away. That means any existing sanctions or directives against you within the agency will be dropped. Existing warrants via Interpol will be rescinded. Existing communiqués from Central Intelligence liaisons to foreign intelligence agencies regarding you will cease. The CIA request for Echelon intel and other data mining regarding you from NSA will be allowed to expire. Other loose ends will be cleared up. FBI, Joint Special Operations Command, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Commerce Department . . . you will no longer be a person of interest to any United States federal department or agency.”

Court didn’t know JSOC had been involved in the hunt for him. JSOC meant Delta Force, the Unit, and the Unit meant some tough hombres. The Commerce Department, on the other hand, didn’t quite fill him with the same sense of dread.

Gentry said, “I understand.”

“Fine. So do we have an agreement?”

“Will you tell me what this is all about?”

Carmichael looked a little annoyed. Presumably he did not feel comfortable offering deals to outlaws. But he nodded and said, “President Abboud is wanted by the International Criminal—”

“Excuse me, sir. I meant . . . Can you tell me what the shoot on sight is all about? Why you went after me in the first place.”

There was a long pause. Denny Carmichael looked off camera to someone on his side, perhaps for guidance. Finally he replied with a grave tone, “Son. If you truly do not know what you did, it is probably better for everyone’s sake that I do not tell you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s move forward. Forget the SOS.
We’re
prepared to forget the SOS. Do we have a deal regarding President Abboud?”

Court looked at Zack. Zack looked back. Finally, Gentry said, “Yes, sir. I will do my best to uphold my end of the bargain. I will rely on you and Sierra One to uphold yours.”

Carmichael nodded but did not smile. “Very well. We will not speak again, Six. Sierra One will be the team leader and on-site commander for Operation Nocturne Sapphire, the rendition of President Bakri Ali Abboud from the Sudan to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Arrangements will be made for further operations, presuming all goes well in Africa, at the appropriate time, via the Special Activities Division Special Operations Group case officer assigned to you.”