Back Blast

52

Catherine King parked on the cobblestone street just steps from the front door of her O Street two-story Federalist home and climbed out of her bright blue Prius. She retrieved her purse, her briefcase, and her yoga mat from the backseat, then she headed inside without a glance at the street around her.

Zack Hightower watched her through the Leupold scope affixed to his collapsible sniper rifle. Once she was inside her front door, he scanned the length of O Street, looking for any idling vehicles in the area. Seeing nothing of interest, he began training his optic on the lighted windows in the nearby apartment buildings.

Zack had no trouble admitting to himself that the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was a shitty place to set up a sniper’s hide, but he was confident he’d found the absolute best location to secrete himself. He was on the roof of Gaston Hall, part of a massive neo-Gothic seven-story structure that served as the focal point of Georgetown University. From here he had a perfect vantage point for two hundred yards down the length of O Street, as well as many portions of various cross streets in a four-block area.

Eighty feet off his right shoulder was the clock tower of Healy Hall. The tower was several stories higher than his position here, and he could have made his way up there to set up his operation. It would have given him sight lines on more rooftops, street corners, and windows, and with any other target Zack would have plopped his ass right in that tower so he could have as many opportunities to see his target from distance as possible. But not today. No, right now he was hunting Sierra Six, and Six was the smartest prey Zack had ever tracked. The clock tower was an obvious place for a sniper to position himself, and Six would see it the second he arrived in the vicinity of Catherine King’s home. Six would spend as much time as he needed hiding out, using all sorts of gadgets and tactics to get a look up at the obvious hide site, and if Zack put himself in the clock tower Six would know it and Zack would be dead fucking meat.

Zack liked his chances here on the rooftop. This building was attached to Healy Hall to make an L-shaped structure the width and length of a city block. There were hundreds of square yards of territory up here, much of it steep, but there were also standing seams and walkways, far enough back from the building’s edge to allow him to avoid silhouetting himself, and there were dormers and crosses and antennae and satellite dishes and other bits of cover and concealment available to where Zack felt he was completely invisible from ground level.

Zack agreed with the assessment of Jordan Mayes: Gentry would come for Catherine King, looking to find out just who she’d spoken with and just what she knew. And at the speed Gentry’s operation had been progressing, Zack could well imagine he would make his move tonight. If that happened Zack put his chances at nearly one hundred percent that he’d see his target from this position. He knew how Gentry thought and how he moved, and he was damn certain he knew where Gentry would go, even to the point of which backyards around here he’d skulk through on his way towards his objective.

And Zack and his rifle would be ready.

He didn’t feel any better about taking out Court Gentry now than he did when he told Brewer that she was playing for the wrong team in all this, but that wouldn’t slow Zack down for an instant. If he saw his target he would put a bullet through it, just the same as he would if he were taking potshots at the practice range.

He had been using the streetlights to see around O Street, but now he decided to dig deeper with his optic, to look into the recesses of alleyways and shady door stoops, to check blackened buildings and dim rooftops. He reached into his big backpack and pulled out his universal night sight. Made by FLIR Systems, it attached just forward of his regular optic on the rail of his rifle. After turning it on he simply looked through his Leupold day scope, and a television image of the scene below him enhanced all the light in the area so he could see deep into the darkest shadows. He had to avoid pointing the night sight at the bright lights on the street, but for the areas away from lights, the device was ideal.

Zack scanned the rooftops of the neighborhood carefully. It was still early, probably way too early for Gentry to move, but he had wanted to arrive here in his position well before employing his weapon. He needed time to memorize the surroundings, to take a mental snapshot he could refer to at any point during his hunt.

He’d finished a narrow scan of O Street and had just begun to move away from the rooftops on 35th Street NW when he noticed a faint flash of light coming from a building on the southwest corner of 35th and O. Everything in the area, save for the streetlights and a few windows, was dark or close to it, so the flare had stood out, especially since it seemed to come from the roof of an otherwise blacked-out building. Zack angled his scope down to street level so he could see what type of structure he was looking at and saw the building housed a coffee shop, which was closed for the evening.

There. Another faint flash. He could tell it was definitely coming from the flat rooftop above the coffee shop. Like the last time, it was gone just as soon as it appeared.

With his nine-power scope he couldn’t see the exact source of the light, but in his pack next to him he carried a pair of one of the best binoculars on the planet. He reached in quickly, retrieved his Swarovski Optik SLC 56, and brought the long binos to his eyes. He steadied them by resting his elbows on the standing seam roof below him, and brought them into focus on the corner of O and 35th Street NW. Through the fifteen-power magnification he scanned the rooftop of the coffee shop where he’d noticed the light before.

Another flash, just to the right of his field of view. He shifted his binos to center them on the location.

What the hell?

He could just barely make out a smartphone, lying by itself, faceup, on top of the roof, slightly angled up towards Zack’s hide.

In seconds he saw another flash, and realized the intermittent lights were due to incoming text messages.

He sighed. He’d gotten his hopes up for nothing. It looked like some asshole had thrown the phone from the street up onto the roof, God knows why, and now someone else was texting the owner.

Zack started to put his binos up and return to the search, but he paused a moment. Inside his pack he put his hand around his spotter’s scope, already affixed to a tiny tripod. On a whim he pulled it out, set it up next to his rifle, and peered through it. It took him several seconds to line it up with the rooftop, and then zoom its variable 125-power magnification to the smartphone, but when he did, it was like he was looking at the screen from a distance of only one and a half yards. He realized he’d be able to read any more texts that came through.

Just then, the phone flashed. Hightower squinted into the eyecup of his spotter’s scope, straining to see the text message.

Slowly Zack Hightower pulled his eye out of the cup of the spotter’s scope, and he placed his forehead on the cold metal roof. “You’re right up here with me, aren’t you, Six?”

From ten yards behind him Hightower heard a voice he knew well. “Figured I’d find some asshole up here. Can’t say I expected you. Thought you were dead.”

Zack’s elbows were tight under his body, his forehead still lying flat on the roof. While keeping his arms perfectly still, he moved the fingers of his right hand under the collar of his black tunic. He took hold of a throwing knife attached to a necklace, but he did not pull it free from its sheath. Zack said, “Just up here hunting old ghosts, bro.”

“Me, too,” replied Court. “I’ve got a gun on you. In case you’ve forgotten, I don’t miss very often. Whatever you are thinking about doing, just know that.”

Zack nodded to himself, then he said, “I figure I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.”

“You give yourself too much credit.”

Zack shrugged, then he launched his body to the right by pressing his left arm and left knee into the roof with all his might. Court fired a single suppressed round, and the bullet slammed into the midsection of Zack’s Kevlar chest protection just as he rolled onto his back. Zack’s right arm shot down from his neck. In one motion he yanked the folding knife free of the scabbard, the scabbard itself opened the blade, and he hurled it across the dark roof in the direction of the flash of gunfire. Zack saw his target react, contorting his body to the left, and the spinning knife flew just past Court’s face, missing him by less than a foot.

Zack absorbed the baseball bat punch to the solar plexus from the round hitting his Kevlar, and he snatched his HK pistol out of the drop holster on his right hip. He brought it up to fire on his target, just in time to see the dark figure tumble backwards, down onto the tiles of the roof. He heard the pistol bounce along on its own, clanging down and then off of the seven-story building.

But he didn’t know if Gentry himself had fallen down the sloped roof.

Zack sprang to his knees, keeping his pistol trained on the last place he’d seen his target, and he moved laterally a few yards, careful to not appear over the roof’s edge exactly where Gentry would expect him. Slowly he moved to the end of the flat standing seam and looked down at the angled tile roof. It was dark below; he could make out little other than the trees in the courtyard at the back of the building. Right in front of him, just as the roof began to increase in pitch, was a small platform for a satellite dish, an old VHF antenna, and, alongside the VHF, Zack saw a curious-looking metal bar that came up from the platform with wires attached to it. The bar went up about one foot, then bowed down and angled out of site, down the side of the roof.

Zack took one more step forward to look on the other side of the platform, his gun up and ready, in case Gentry was hiding there.

He wasn’t. Zack then looked farther down the steeply angled roof. There, ten feet below him, he saw a figure lying against the tile. He held something in both hands.

At the exact same instant Hightower realized Gentry was holding on to the long radio antenna, bending it down at an impossible angle, Gentry let go, and the bent metal aerial torqued upwards at high speed. After a brief whipping sound the antenna smacked Zack Hightower right between his eyes, sending him flying backwards, end over end, tumbling along the flat part of the roof. His HK sailed from his hand as he continued back, until he landed flat on his face on the eastern angled portion of the roof.

Here he slid down several feet, then stopped when his boots arrested his fall.

He tried to get his arms and knees underneath him to push himself back up, but his arms and legs gave out. His eyes and nose stung, his mouth bled, he was stunned and disoriented, but he knew Gentry was still somewhere up here with him.

He told himself he had to shake off the hurt and find his fucking handgun. He had to get back into the fight before the Gray Man closed on him and shot him dead with his own weapon.

Letting go of the antenna that was keeping him from falling off the roof solved one problem immediately; it knocked the shit out of Zack Hightower and removed Court’s imminent threat of being hosed with lead. But letting go of the one thing keeping him from falling off the roof did create an obvious inconvenience. Now Court found himself sliding slowly but surely down the steep and slick tile to the precipice. The roof ended twenty feet from the tips of his shoes and, after that, it was a five-story drop straight down to the tree-filled Dahlgren Courtyard behind Healy Hall.

He flattened himself as he slid down, tried to get as much contact surface against the tile as he could to increase the friction, and while doing so he looked around in all directions, hoping for something to grab on to or even leap for.

There. At the very edge and eight feet to the right of where he was sliding, Court saw a decorative peaked dormer protruding out of the roof. He pushed himself up while he slid down, then fired off his feet, launching into the air to grab hold of the protrusion.

Court landed flat on the top of the peak of the dormer, nearly knocking the wind from him, but halting his downward slide.

He didn’t hang around here for long because he knew Zack would be regrouping above. He immediately began climbing the roof again, careful to keep his body low and his weight and momentum both pushing forward.

On the flat center of the roof he looked for Zack, and he found him, thirty feet away. Hightower had just made it back onto the flat roof and into a standing position himself.

Hightower’s nine-millimeter Heckler & Koch handgun lay between them, ten feet from Zack and twenty feet from Court. Right in the center of the flat portion of the roof.

Hightower did not move. His body leaned towards the pistol, his hand reached out for it, but his eyes were on Court Gentry. Gentry stood still himself, knowing his only play here was to beat Hightower to the gun. He prepared himself to dive for it if Hightower should move a muscle.

Zack said, “I know what you are thinking, Six.”

Court was nearly out of breath from his ordeal on the steep roof. Through gasps he said, “Is that a fact?”

“Affirmative. Right now you are thinking about how you always were just a little faster than me.”

Court kept his eyes on the gun. “You’re right.”

“But don’t forget one thing, bro. I was always a little smarter than you.”

Court glanced away from the pistol and up to Zack now. “You’re going to think that gun into your hand?”

“There are a lot of variables in this equation in front of you. I’m closer, you’ve just climbed up here, then you tumbled back, then climbed back up. You might not have the speed and strength you think you do.”

It was quiet on the roof a moment. Then Court said, “Anything else? Or is that all you’ve got?”

Zack shrugged, still leaning towards his HK. “That’s pretty much it, I guess.”

Court took two quick steps, flung his body forward, and dove with his arms outstretched. He landed on the metal roof and slid several feet. He snatched the weapon cleanly and brought it up towards his target.

Zack Hightower had not even tried for the gun. He barely moved, except to raise his hands. He said, “Damn, dude! It’s always fun to watch you work! Great to see you again! I’ve fuckin’ missed you!”

Court ignored the joviality, which seemed ridiculously incongruous to the present circumstance. “You were up here ready to blow my head off if you saw me. Why the hell wouldn’t I shoot you now?”

Zack shrugged. “I’ll be honest, bro. Can’t think of a single reason.”

Court climbed back up to his feet and leveled the pistol at Zack’s face. “Me, neither.”

“Unless…” Zack said, still holding his hands up in surrender, “you were interested in how I got here. Who’s benefiting from this. The list of everyone who is involved. That sort of thing. If any of that shit matters to you, then I guess I’m more useful to you alive than dead.”

Court kept the weapon pointed at Zack’s face for another fifteen seconds, thinking over the situation. Slowly he lowered the weapon. “Bastard.”

Zack grinned from ear to ear. “Good decision. We’ve got some catching up to do. How ’bout we go get a beer and some wings. I’m buying.”

“Shirt off, pants to your ankles,” Gentry ordered.

Hightower said, “Woah, Nellie! We’re movin’ this relationship in a new direction, aren’t we? Maybe you should buy me dinner.”

“Do it.”

Zack whined a little more, but he knew the protocol for taking any prisoner into custody. Court just wanted to see if he had any tricks up his sleeve, or down his pants.

By the time Hightower got his Kevlar vest, tunic, boots, and black dungarees off, another folding knife, a can of pepper spray, a leather sap, and a pair of brass knuckles were scattered around the roof. Court then ordered Zack to pack up his gear in the Osprey pack and step away. Court hefted the pack onto his own back, ordered Zack to put his clothes back on, and then, when both men were ready, Zack led the way to a fire escape running down to the courtyard at the back of the building.

Court kept the HK pistol trained on Zack the entire way down, and in the courtyard he found the suppressed Glock that had fallen off the roof. He scooped it up, removed the suppressor, shoved both items into the big backpack, then followed Zack back to his truck, parked in front of a late-night watering hole two blocks north of the university.

Zack again offered to buy beer and hot wings, but Court had something quite different in mind for the evening.