Back Blast

23

Even though Leland Babbitt didn’t make it into his office till after noon, he still worked a full nine hours before knocking off for the day and returning to his five-bedroom house on Cedar Parkway in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

His four-man home security detail already sat parked out front as Babbitt’s Lexus rolled into his driveway; the men worked a seven-to-seven shift, giving Babbitt’s property coverage through the hours of darkness. The men alternated patrols, with two in the vehicle at all times and two standing on the drive, walking around to the back from time to time, and sitting on the patio furniture, periodically casting an eye out to the Chevy Chase golf course that bordered his backyard in case any threats approached his property from the first fairway.

Babbitt’s wife didn’t much care for the security and she felt they were only there because Babbitt thought it made him look tough to the neighbors, but she didn’t fight her husband on it anymore, especially since one of their neighbors had her Porsche SUV stolen right out of her driveway several weeks back.

As he pulled into the driveway Babbitt acknowledged the two patrolling security officers there with a distracted wave. He closed his garage door a moment later, then climbed out of his car and stepped into his kitchen to find his wife waiting for him there.

“It’s eleven, Lee. Eleven!”

“Sorry I didn’t return your calls. Long day at work.”

He passed straight into the living room, with his wife close on his tail.

“I made dinner, you know.”

“I ate at the office.” He said it without looking up, because he’d pulled a bottle of fifteen-year-old Macallan from his bar and was now concentrating on a two-finger pour into a leaded crystal rocks glass.

He turned towards the floor-to-ceiling windows in his living room, which gave him a terrific view of the golf course just beyond his ample backyard and a six-foot-high ironwork fence.

While Babbitt faced the window, drink in hand, his wife stood behind him near the stairs. She stared him down, waiting for him to answer for himself or to notice her. Neither of which he did.

Babbitt’s two kids were in college, so they had the place to themselves, but since the kids had left for school they’d done little to take advantage of the privacy. Babbitt had been obsessed with Gentry since well before Brussels, but after returning from Europe, minus a huge contingent of his men and the Top Secret clearance that gave his company the access they needed to function, Babbitt had barely acknowledged the existence of his wife.

His wife, who was still behind him and still hoping for some reaction from her husband, just sighed and headed for the stairs.

Court Gentry moved his binoculars back and forth between Babbitt and his wife. To himself he said, “She’s pissed, and he couldn’t care less.”

Neither could Gentry, actually; he was just trying to get an accurate accounting of who was inside the property.

By the time Babbitt arrived home Gentry had already been in place for hours. He’d climbed over the back fence just after eight p.m., after a one-hour reconnaissance spent up in an oak tree on the first fairway of the golf course, and now he lay flat on his cold and muddy belly in a thick corner flower garden that was not yet in full bloom, but nevertheless provided a fair amount of cover, as long as Court remained low.

He wore black Carhartt work pants, a black hoodie over a black thermal, and dark brown boots. His face was covered by his gaiter and his knit cap, and on his hands he wore black Mechanix gloves. His black backpack completed the theme to his ensemble. He wasn’t invisible, but he was damn close. It would take both a keen pair of eyes and a direct hit from a flashlight to notice him here.

Court had spent the last two hours carefully thinking over his ingress to the target location. He saw several motion sensor lights closer to Babbitt’s house, but he knew he could defeat them when he made his approach by simply moving slowly. All motion sensor equipment was calibrated to detect objects traveling above a certain speed, and Court had spent nearly twenty years of his life in work that, more often than one might imagine, required him to outsmart the little computer chip in a motion detecting light.

He also took care to identify the lines of sight from the different windows of the property so he could avoid advancing in view of anyone inside.

It seemed to Court like Babbitt put the majority of his trust for his family’s safety in the hands of his goons in the SUV out front, and the foot patrol. The Babbitts didn’t have a dog; this became clear when Court scanned the perfectly green back lawn. The only disruption in the grass was on either side of a paving stone walkway that circled the house, and from the foot patrol that began once Babbitt came home, it was obvious the two men walking abreast were the culprits.

The security officers looked competent to Gentry, but he knew they wouldn’t be members of Townsend’s A-team. No, these were static guards, well trained, but not to the level of the Townsend operators he’d squared off against in Belgium. And they were well equipped, but not as well equipped as the men he’d fought before.

That said, Court looked at their gear longingly. Each guard carried an HK MP5 nine-millimeter submachine gun hanging from a two-point sling around his neck, and wore a black Kevlar bulletproof vest under a light chest rig that carried three more thirty-round magazines for the sub gun, as well as two mags for the Smith and Wesson M&P nine-millimeter pistols that jutted out of the holsters on their utility belts.

Court thought about how much he’d like to take one of these guys down, drag him back into the bushes, and liberate him of all that good gear.

But that wasn’t going to happen in any sort of low-profile way, so he pushed the fantasy away.

Now Court observed Lee Babbitt himself standing right in front of his huge back window, exposed to the world, and he noticed the relaxed nature of the man, as well as that of his protection detail. While Gentry scanned through his binos he thought about the lackadaisical attitude of the guard force, and he found it odd that the CIA had not told Babbitt to beef up his security profile yet. It made no sense to him whatsoever the man had not been informed that the person he’d chased all over the world was now on the loose in his own area code.

Court worried this could have been some sort of a trap, so he took a moment to lift his head and begin a 360-degree scan of the area. Behind him was the dark golf course — he could see it through the bars of the iron fence — and just beyond the grounds of the country club, the silhouettes of darkened office buildings rose three or four stories into the sky. To Court’s left and right were other homes, and he’d neither seen nor heard humans nor dogs at either residence. And dead ahead was Lee Babbitt, his wife, and four armed dudes who didn’t have a clue this evening was about to become the most interesting night of their careers as security guards.

Now Court just needed to sit here till Babbitt and his wife went to bed. Once that happened, Court would wait for the guards to pass on their lazy patrol, then he would move to the window. He had purchased a high-end glass-cutting tool at the hardware store that could get him through the sliding doors without triggering the home alarm, although Court knew it would take at least ten minutes to cut through both panes. He’d have to work a couple of minutes, then secrete himself from the strolling Townsend men behind some raised flower beds before returning to work as soon as they moved around to the front. Eventually he’d remove an eighteen-inch circle of the double-paned window, and he’d slip inside the home. As long as he didn’t open the door or shatter any glass, the security alarm would not be triggered, and he’d be free to move around inside the home.

Just then, the two patrolling security men made an ambling pass through the backyard; a flashlight waved in front of them but didn’t reach into the corners of the property. Within a minute they disappeared around the side of the house on their way back out front.

Court looked through the back window again, and he noticed Babbitt’s wife had moved to the staircase and Babbitt himself had stepped over to his bar, facing the other direction. Court rose to his knees and began crawling through the garden, wanting to take the opportunity to cover as much ground as possible while no one was looking his way. This flower bed continued down the side of the backyard, almost to the back patio, so Court felt confident he could come close to within steps of the back door without risking compromise.

“Here we go,” he said softly, and he began his slow progression through the garden.

When are you coming to bed?” Babbitt’s wife asked. She stood at the top of the staircase, a halfhearted attempt at a come-hither look on her face, which was hard to generate, considering the person who generated it was tired and angry and the person it was directed to had shown not a shred of interest so far.

“Later,” Babbitt replied without looking up.

“What about now?” she asked again, hoping the cajoling would at least cause her husband to turn around.

“I’m on the scent of a new target, dear. Something big. You know it takes all my energy.”

“What energy?” She turned away. It was a rhetorical question. Before she disappeared on the landing to the second floor, she said, “This time, do try to go after someone you can handle.” There was a mocking tone to her voice, a small riposte to her husband’s rejection. “Not like that target in Belgium, I mean. All those funeral dresses I bought to wear last month went out of fashion on the first day of spring.”

Babbitt growled into his glass as he wet his lips with the Macallan. “Bitch.”

He turned on the stereo, flipped to a classical station, and began pacing back and forth across the living room, backed by Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony in C Minor. His mind tuned out his wife’s barbs, and it went back to spinning with ideas and planning, logistics and tactics.

“Where the hell are you, Gentry?” he said softly, standing at the floor-to-ceiling window now, looking out over his back lawn and garden and the dark golf course beyond it.

Babbitt paced. Struggled with the mind-set of an assassin.

Gentry would have fled Belgium, for certain. The CIA thought he was in central Europe, but Babbitt disagreed. Fleeing the continent was Gentry’s usual MO after a big operation.

But where would he go?

Latin America? No. That had been his last distant refuge. He wouldn’t go back, not yet.

Africa was out; he’d gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble there a couple of years ago. Of course, it was a big continent, but Babbitt just didn’t see Gentry returning to Africa now.

Asia? Yeah, maybe.

Babbitt finished the last swig of his scotch, stepped back to his little bar, and made himself a third drink.

Returning to the window, he thought about Asia again.

“Asia. Yes,” Babbitt said. He felt confident he was in Gentry’s brain now. He knew where he’d go.

Immediately Babbitt pulled out his phone and began thumbing through contacts, looking for the number of his Hong Kong — based agent. It would be mid-morning there — he could reach his man and get him started on building an infrastructure for the hunt to come.

Absently, while he scrolled through his phone, he lifted his rocks glass to down a swig of Macallan. Just as he brought it up to chest height the glass cracked, broke apart, and fell from his hand, dousing his shirt and trousers with the tepid scotch.

Babbitt looked down at the mess, an expression of mild surprise on his face. He took a half step back, concerned he’d cut his hand on the lead crystal.

Then he saw the blood, and it wasn’t on his hand.

A hole in the middle of his white shirt, just to the left of center, from which redness grew, expanding.

Leland Babbitt dropped his phone on the floor, brought both hands to his wound, realizing only now that he’d been shot. He was in the industry, so he recognized within another second that the shooter must have employed a suppressed weapon. He looked up to his sliding glass door, just five feet in front of him, and he saw the hole in the glass at chest height, and he looked beyond the glass and saw movement in his garden on the far edge of the patio. A dark silhouette appeared from his rosebushes, turned, and began running towards his back fence.

“Gentry?” It came out in a hoarse whisper, and then Leland Babbitt dropped dead in a heap on the floor.

Leland Babbitt was the first person, but certainly not the last person, to believe with absolute conviction that he had been assassinated by the Gray Man.

Court was on the move before Babbitt’s face slammed down on the living room tile. He’d heard no gunshot, but the screaming bullet had zinged through the night air from behind him on his right, crackling by at high speed thirty or forty feet off his right shoulder, and then snapping through the window glass.

Gentry gave up stealth for speed in his race to leave the scene, because he needed to get the hell out of here as fast as possible. He had a litany of immediate concerns, and none of them would go away as long as he remained hiding in the garden bed.

He was worried about the sniper, of course — there was a guy out here with a gun and eyes on the back of the property, but he was several orders of magnitude more concerned about the armed assholes on the property. Court had closed to within twenty feet of the back door, and as soon as Babbitt’s body was discovered the estate would be locked down tight, lights would turn on, and Gentry would be way too close to avoid detection.

Two members of Babbitt’s security detail were somewhere walking the grounds. They carried HK submachine guns, and Court only had a tiny .380 to fight them off.

Court knew if they saw him it was going to be a fucking mess.

He ran to the iron fence, but he hesitated climbing over it, because he had no idea if the sniper was still watching. It occurred to him that since Babbitt’s body had not yet been discovered it might be better if he stayed here, at least for a minute or two, to give the shooter time to break down his position and leave his sniper’s hide, thus giving Court a better opportunity to—

Babbitt’s wife screamed in the house, her cry loud enough to be heard easily here forty yards away, and certainly loud enough to alert the security officers.

Fuck, Gentry thought, and then he climbed the fence, careful to avoid using his injured right arm for weight-bearing duty.