Back Blast

36

Come 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.”

Court’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.

“I’m sorry, boss, but shit. Why is your door open? And why are you dressed?”

“I needed some air. It’s fine.”

“You took a walk? With Violator out there?”

“Relax. Snipers are on every rooftop around here, anyway. Hell, they probably just watched me take a dump through my bathroom window.”

The men kept talking, but their voices receded. Court waited another moment, then he left the bedroom, moved up the second-floor hallway past the stairs, and entered a dark guest room full of storage boxes. He felt his way to the window and raised the blinds. This was the southwest side of the house, the only portion Court knew was clear of surveillance.

Seconds later he was outside, using a copper drainpipe to make it down to ground level, struggling with dull pain in his right forearm and sharp pain in his ribs. In the backyard he moved low, placing the .45 pistol in an old wheelbarrow with a flat tire next to the back fence. He climbed the fence into another yard, and within minutes he was two blocks away on Cathedral Street making his way back to his car.

The JSOC watchers had no idea they’d missed him.