Back Blast

29

Denny Carmichael sat at his desk, his head in his hands. He was back in his suit and tie now, though as soon as he got the energy he would again dress for bed. Two and a half hours ago he was moments from flipping off the lights and lying down on the couch, but then came the suspected sighting of Violator at the Babbitt home in Chevy Chase, so he stood by in his office. When the police were dispatched to the scene he’d received a call from Suzanne Brewer in the Violator tactical operations center on the fourth floor, telling him something he already knew, but he sold his surprise as genuine. He hurriedly dressed and rushed down to the TOC, and here he sat while Brewer and Mayes furiously worked their team of targeting officers. They sent the JSOC special mission unit into the area, but by then Gentry was long gone.

And then, an hour and a half after the assassination, Brewer and Mayes departed for the scene of a carjacking of a taxi a mile and a half north of Babbitt’s house, thinking it possible Gentry was involved in this, as well.

Denny Carmichael had not heard a word from Kaz since sending the text ordering the Saudi kill team to the scene of Babbitt’s killing shortly after eleven, and he had no idea if Kaz’s men had gotten anywhere near Gentry, so he just sat here at his desk waiting, trying to get the energy to climb back to his feet.

His mobile chirped with the sound it made when an encrypted call was waiting. He glanced down at it and saw it was Kaz, and as he snatched the phone off the desk he found the energy reserves he was looking for.

“Talk.”

Kaz said, “My men made contact with the target.”

“When and where?”

“Forty minutes ago, about two kilometers north of the original event.” Carmichael knew this would be the carjacking Mayes and Brewer were en route to inspect.

He asked, “How did you find him?”

“Process of elimination. We saw where the police were focusing their attention. It was mostly to the west, because that was the direction he was last seen moving. But from the radio reports we determined Gentry originally tried to go south, but that was when he knew he was being pursued, so we felt he was leading forces away from his planned exfiltration route. That led us north. I positioned men in five choke point locations, and simply waited, thinking he might still be on foot.”

“What happened?” Carmichael caught himself squeezing the phone so hard he ran the risk of breaking it.

“Two of my men saw a lone man fitting the general description. They stepped out to follow him. When my other assets arrived, the man began to run. We engaged and, I am told, there was blood at the scene. We are confident that we wounded him.”

Carmichael snapped back, “But you didn’t put him down, did you?”

“He managed to escape in a hijacked vehicle. Understand, Denny, this operation my men conducted was completely in extremis. If we’d known something about the person the Gray Man was targeting, this Leland Babbitt, we could have been in a much better tactical position.”

Carmichael growled now. “We didn’t know Gentry was after Lee Babbitt, either.”

Kaz clearly did not believe this. “You contacted me within moments of the first shots being fired in Chevy Chase. The only way you could be so on top of the situation like this is if you had some sort of advance warning.”

Carmichael could not tell Kaz the truth: that they had no advance warning, but had instead been targeting the same man and just stumbled onto Gentry in the commission of their assassination. Instead he changed the subject. “How badly was he injured?”

“My assets had to leave the scene before the police arrived. All I know is Violator has been shot.”

“Very well. I’ll try to do better next time with the quality of the intelligence. It would be helpful if your men do better next time with the quality of their marksmanship.”

Kaz took his time before replying. “We remain at the ready.”

Carmichael said, “Don’t remain anywhere. Keep shaking the trees. He’s out there, and he’s hurt. He’ll be easier to hunt.”

Court lay in a shallow ditch on his left side, his ears tuned to the sounds around him so he could make sure there was no traffic on the residential road above. After a full minute like this he felt secure enough to proceed.

He used a small penlight to illuminate the right side of his rib cage. Slowly and gingerly he pushed his torn gray parka out of the way, pulled up his blood-soaked gray thermal shirt, and held the light a little closer.

He lifted his head to get a better look, then he dropped it again.

Court closed his eyes for a moment, willing away the sight.

He knew he’d taken a bullet, but he was hoping it was nothing more than a slight graze. He’d seen enough gunshot wounds in his life to know sometimes rounds could just barely break the skin if they traveled along at the right angle, and these types of superficial wounds could nevertheless be incredibly painful.

But now that he’d seen the result of his latest near-death experience Court realized that even though he would not die from this wound, it was no mere superficial scrape. The bullet had failed to penetrate his rib cage, but it had definitely ripped skin, muscle, and other tissue away, all the way to the bone.

It burned and throbbed and stung and ached all at once, and now that he knew what it looked like, it hurt even more.

Court made himself look again. A smear of blood covered the right side of his torso all the way down to his waistband, and with help from the flashlight he could see plainly the dull gray white of bone in the wound — one of his lower ribs was exposed in the seeping hole.

He spoke slowly and softly. “Fu-uck.”

He couldn’t stitch this up. A half-inch-wide and one-and-a-half-inch-long swath of skin and muscle was gone, so there was nothing for the sutures to hang on to. Instead all he could do was clean the wound and cover it with a sterile compress, and tape that down nice and hard so the bleeding would stop. The compress would foul with the coagulating blood and he’d have to peel it away a couple times a day to clean the wound, an excruciating process he’d have to keep repeating for at least a week.

He’d hurt from this, to be sure, but he’d survive, and he told himself this wouldn’t slow him down. He’d compartmentalize the pain and keep going.

Court pushed it out of his mind now and thought about his situation. He had dumped the stolen taxi deep in the woods in Bethesda, near the Grosvenor metro station. It would be daylight before it was found; he was certain of this. Now he just had to get himself out of this ditch and make his way to an all-night bus stop, then use the mass transit system to get back to his Ford Escort.

His mind went back to the second shoot-out of the evening. He found himself astonished that a half dozen D.C. Metro police officers opened fire on him like that when he had no weapon in his hands, and without saying anything to him before the shooting began.

Cops don’t do that, do they?

For a brief moment he wondered if those men might have been SAD Ground Branch paramilitary officers disguised as police. No, that didn’t make sense to him. On occasion the Agency could be bold as hell when operating in other countries, but if they were chasing him here in the nation’s capital, there was no way they’d be playing by a rule book that allowed them to impersonate police in the course of an extrajudicial assassination.

That was just too ridiculous to contemplate.

Court lowered his shirt, closed his jacket, and looked at his watch.

It was nearly three a.m.

He had to move, he had to get someplace to get the supplies he needed to treat his injury, and he had to get home before first light.

“Move your ass, Gentry.” He said it to himself, and it worked. He pulled himself up into a sitting position and then, with one hand pressing on his right rib cage, he struggled to stand.

As a shock wave of pain jolted him with the movement, he managed to stifle a scream, but he could not manage to suppress a long low groan.

Once up, Court adjusted the position of the Smith and Wesson pistol in his waistband, slipped his backpack over his shoulder, and slowly climbed out of the ditch.