Back Blast

38

Andy Shoal and Catherine King stood on the sidewalk in front of the Easy Market on Rhode Island Avenue, their umbrellas protecting them from a light rain. The lot and the market were blocked off with police tape Andy had not been able to charm his way through, but the two Washington Post reporters had managed to learn several things, even from distance.

Dawn was just breaking, but the lights on inside the convenience store made it easy to see two of the bodies on the floor, even from seventy-five feet away. Both men were faceup in front of the register; one man’s leg was draped over the torso of the other. The glass front door was shattered, bloodstains around the counter were obvious, and Andy, whose eyes were better than Catherine’s even though she wore her glasses, said he could make out the feet of another body halfway into the stockroom at the back of the store.

Detective Rauch was here and he confirmed three deaths, all young armed men, and all of whom, he said, were in the commission of a strong-armed robbery when a civilian shopper pulled his own gun and dropped them all. Rauch gave Andy the general description of the shooter.

Thirties, white, clean-shaven, nondescript.

Andy replied with a hopeful tone, “Sounds just like the perp on Brandywine street, and just like the Leland Babbitt assassin.”

But Rauch, a man who’d not only seen a lot of crime, but had also seen a lot of reporters who were too quick to create a narrative that made a story more dramatic, threw cold water on Andy’s supposition. “And it sounds just like tens of thousands of guys in the greater D.C. metro area. Should I start sending out paddy wagons to pick them all up?”

Andy put his hands up in surrender. “Fair enough. But what about the skill? Can tens of thousands of citizens do all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“On Brandywine Street you mentioned the shooter knew what he was doing. Any initial impressions about this scene?”

Rauch hesitated a moment. Finally he said, “I watched the security camera footage. It was beautiful.”

Andy’s eyes rose. “A guy uses a gun in your jurisdiction and you say it’s beautiful?”

“You put that in your paper and I’ll kick your ass, I’m not kidding. I don’t condone it. I’m just saying the shooter was fast, sure of himself, and clean. Between you and me… four armed assholes walk into a building and only one armed asshole walks out. Around here, that doesn’t sound like crime. That sounds like progress.”

“Any chance I can watch the video?”

“Evidence, Andy. You’ll have to wait for it.”

Catherine King had remained to the side of this conversation, allowing Andy to work his magic with the police. But when Rauch headed back into the Easy Market to check on the progress of the crime lab technicians, she stepped up next to the young reporter. She said, “What do you think? Same guy as the others?”

Andy nodded. “Sure seems like it could be. But what I don’t get is the fact that the CIA people aren’t here.”

Catherine had an answer for this. “I bet we scared them off. They won’t be investigating the crime scenes in person anymore.”

Andy nodded, and the two reporters started heading back to their cars. Andy said, “You know what’s bothering me?”

“What?”

“This highly trained killer knocks off a couple of Aryan Brotherhood drug dealers in a shoot-out, but lets the others live because they stopped fighting back. Then he encounters an armed robbery here, and kills these bad guys.”

Catherine knew where Andy was going with this. “Good against evil,” she said.

Andy said, “Right. But that Babbitt thing doesn’t seem to fit. Either Babbitt was a criminal and we don’t know it, or the guy who did this and Brandywine Street didn’t kill Babbitt.”

Catherine said, “You are good at this, Andy. I think you are on to something.”

“Enough to put into my article? I mean, I could just mention the difference in the victims.”

“No. I’d leave Babbitt out of it for now. Mention the killing in the Highlands along with this event, maybe draw some parallels, but I think there are enough questions about Babbitt still to where you should not speculate.”

Andy said, “You are working on your own piece about the CIA’s involvement, aren’t you?”

Catherine shook her head. “I’m not. We are. Trust me, when I get something ready I’m going to involve you, both in the work and in the glory.”

Andy said, “You keep promising me that, but when?”

They were back at her car now. She fumbled for her keys in her purse, then pulled them out. “How ’bout I buy you breakfast and we get to work?”

Zack Hightower sat in front of a computer terminal in the fourth-floor Violator tactical operations center, his eyes fogged both from the early hour and from the steam pouring out of the coffee cup under his nose. The coffee had been placed in his hand a minute earlier by a young CIA analyst, and Zack had been put here — in front of the monitor in the TOC, that was — by Suzanne Brewer.

A half hour ago Zack had been snoring away in his McLean hotel room when a call came from Brewer informing him of a possible Gentry sighting in the District. Before he’d even processed this information she told him she was sending a car, and to be ready in five minutes.

Hightower shook himself awake and asked to be vectored to the location of the potential sighting instead of the office. Brewer wasn’t using Hightower as a hard asset, however, so she didn’t understand the request. No, she’d countered, he needed to come in and look at some video, to make a positive ID, and to let her know what he thought of the analysis.

Zack grumbled to himself but agreed, and now he sat here in front of a black screen, with Brewer standing just behind him.

When nothing happened on the monitor for several seconds Hightower took a sip of hot coffee and made a joke. “Inconclusive.”

“It hasn’t started yet,” Brewer snapped back, and Zack realized his humor would fall flat on a bureaucratic automaton like Suzanne Brewer.

Soon the video began playing. It was security camera footage from a convenience store. Zack saw the time stamp and realized it took place less than three hours earlier.

“Where is this?”

“Rhode Island Avenue. East of Logan Circle.”

A man in a black baseball cap and a raincoat entered the store, but the camera did not have an unobstructed view of his face. It only showed the bottom of the man’s chin and the bill of his hat. He moved into the store, seemed to say something to the woman behind the counter, then headed to the back.

Another camera angle picked him up there, but it revealed even less than the first one. Only his back and a brief view of a portion of his chin.

Still, Hightower took another sip of his coffee and declared, “That’s him.”

“How can you be certain? His face is obscured.”

“Ma’am, I spent the majority of a decade looking at this dude’s ass as he ran point on my team. Most of the time his face was obscured then, too. Trust me, I know how he moves.”

Brewer wasn’t convinced. She remained silent so Zack could focus on the screen. The first Hispanic male entered the convenience store, wearing a gray hoodie. He was soon followed by an African American couple. The man in the ball cap stood at the counter, facing just slightly away from the camera above him on his right, while the cashier bagged his groceries.

A Monte Carlo parked out front in the rain. Two men climbed out.

Hightower watched all this quietly. Slowly a little smile curled on his lips. “Hot damn, there’s gonna be some kind of a fracas, isn’t there?”

“Just watch, please.”

Zack did so. He saw the positioning of the three young men, the movement around the market of the African American couple, and the man in the cap at the magazine rack who could have just turned and walked out the door next to him, but instead squared off to the room.

When the man in the gray hoodie pulled the shotgun and pointed it at Gentry, Hightower just mumbled, “Last mistake of your dumb, short life, ese.”

The next few seconds of video chronicled the shoot-out, beginning with the shotgun blast and ending when Gentry fired his sixth round from his handgun, the two men at the counter crumpled into their own blood splatter on the floor, and the gray hoodie with the shotgun disappeared, falling backwards under the camera’s view.

The screen froze just after Gentry left the convenience store, three dead bodies in his wake.

Brewer sat on the edge of the desk next to Hightower and faced him. “Impressions?”

Hightower shrugged. “Boarding house rules.”

“Boarding house rules? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the shot sequence. Everybody gets a first helping before anybody gets seconds. It’s textbook. Only a topflight close-quarters guy can cycle his weapon around a room like that, hit three guys center mass, back-stopping each one, and then recycle and shoot them all again before they hit the ground.”

Brewer frowned. “One of the Townsend operators reported that Gentry stole his handgun at the McDonald’s.” She looked through some notes on the iPad in her hand. “A Smith and Wesson model M&P. It’s hard to tell the weapon the man is using in the video due to the poor quality of the recording, but I had the analysts here look at the gun and they say it can’t be the same gun, because the Smith and Wesson has an external safety lever on the side, and Gentry doesn’t seem to take time to disengage a safety before he fires. What do you think of this analysis?”

“Ma’am, I think that analysis blows.”

Brewer reacted with obvious surprise, and an analyst in earshot looked back over his shoulder at the big man, a scowl on his face.

Brewer asked, “And why is that?”

“Gentry wouldn’t need to fan the safety off, because it would already be off.”

“You’re sure?”

Hightower snorted. “External safeties are for chickenshits and losers. I know that. Gentry knows that.” He nodded his head towards the video. “Can we watch the video again?”

The recording played through a second time. Hightower viewed it with an unmistakable smile on his face.

“Enjoying yourself?” asked Brewer coolly.

“Professional respect. Gentry’s still got the touch. It’s obviously not the most impressive thing I’ve seen out of him, considering the low quality of the opposition. But he still possesses the speed and the marksmanship he did when he was in the Goon Squad.”

“Why didn’t he just leave the store when he had the chance?”

Hightower took a moment to select his words, so Brewer helped him out. “Let me guess. Because he thinks he’s a good guy?”

Hightower countered, “He is a good guy. We’re targeting him because of orders. We aren’t vanquishing evil or any bullshit like that.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You and me? We’re the assholes in the mix. If we left Gentry to his own devices he’d be fine, and the world would be better off.”

“I wouldn’t let Denny hear you talk like this if I were you.”

Zack shrugged. “I’m here to do a job. I don’t have to like the job and I don’t have to hate Court Gentry. I have my orders. I’ll keep the Agency safe from him, I’ll help you find him, and, if you let me, I’ll kill him for you.”

He gave Suzanne Brewer a little wink and a smile. “I don’t mind being the bad guy. It’s more fun.”