Back Blast

35

Matthew 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.

Matt 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.