Back Blast

69

Catherine King spoke in soft tones to convey her sympathy to the man on the other end of the phone. “The man you rescued was a spy, but he worked for a Middle Eastern intelligence agency. After all this time the Israelis still aren’t sure which one. He’d also infiltrated al Qaeda — the core AQ in Pakistan. The Mossad thinks his job was to discover the identity of the Israeli plant in al Qaeda. He’d done this somehow, and then he lured Hawthorn to Italy to murder him. You happened to show up when Hawthorn realized he’d been compromised. It was kill or be killed, so Hawthorn decided to act.”

The pain his Court’s stomach moved to his back, to his chest. He’d heaved early in Catherine’s story, as the details began to fit his reminiscence, but with everything turned upside down.

With Court as the villain.

Now his head hung between his knees. His lips were rimmed with vomit.

Catherine said, “Listen carefully to me. It was an honest mistake you made. You saw what you expected to see. Confirmation bias, they call it. An assassination attempt. You reasonably assumed the assassin was the man you came to stop, and the would-be victim was the man you came to rescue.”

Court spoke in a near whisper. “But… but I got PID.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Positive ID. I saw his picture. I identified him before I moved on the villa.”

“I’m sorry, Six. You must have been mistaken. It’s confirmed by the head of the Mossad. He told Alvey personally that Hawthorn was shot to death in Trieste six years ago while at a Serbian safe house for a meeting of senior al Qaeda operatives from Iraq and Pakistan.”

“No,” Court said, but his voice held no conviction.

“Why is it you can’t believe?”

“Because I don’t make mistakes.”

“Everybody makes mistakes.”

“Not when you face the consequences I face.”

Catherine said, “This was six years ago. You can’t blame yourself.”

Court shouted into the phone. “Of course I can! The man I rescued hugged me after I got him out of there. He must have known I was American. An infidel assassin. He must have known I’d fucked it all up. He hugged me anyway. He was so relieved that I’d failed so miserably.”

Catherine did not know what to say. After a time, though, she just said, “I am sorry, Six. But I have to catch my flight. Please tell me we can talk when I get back home. I won’t write about any of this, not until we talk. I promise you.”

“Okay.” Court’s voice was barely audible. “Catch you later.”

He hung up the phone and put it back in his pack.

Suddenly every last vestige of energy melted away from him. He had nothing left to give.

He no longer cared.

He could hear Maurice’s voice in this little room. Gravelly from chain-smoking and the wear of middle age, yet powerful and commanding.

What would Maurice say now, seeing his student broken and defeated, sitting on the floor?

Court knew. Maurice had said one line to him when Court found himself wallowing in his own misery and unable to complete his objective.

“Suck it up or you’ll fuck it up.”

Court didn’t know if he could suck it up this time. He didn’t think he could go on.

He didn’t hear the truck pull up, but he should have. He had been trained to remain in condition yellow, always on guard. The very idea he could be sitting in a dark and silent location and not hear a truck pull up a gravel drive to within twenty-five yards of his position was impossible to fathom. And yet it happened.

The trailer brightened with the beams of a vehicle’s headlights. He’d been compromised. He had failed again.

He only heard the sound of a car door shutting.

Court decided then and there that he had no more fight in him. He could shoot the men outside the trailer, but why? None of these static security guys who would be converging on him right now were responsible for the murder of the most successful deep-penetration agent ever to infiltrate al Qaeda.

These guys are blameless, Court thought. Unlike him.

He thought about standing, walking out the door, and pointing his gun at the armed guards — suicide by security goon — but he didn’t feel like getting up. No. He’d stay right here, here in the little room where it all started so many years ago.

Court decided this would be the perfect place to end the miserable saga that was his life.

He pulled the Glock from his bag, opened his mouth, and jammed the muzzle in, biting it with his teeth. Tears streamed down his face, wet his lips, and carried on down the barrel of his gun.

He had no fear of dying; he never had. His fear had always been failure.

And now he saw his failure in Trieste as the realization of his greatest fear.

He moved his thumb inside the trigger guard and placed it on the trigger. Took a short sharp breath and began to squeeze his hand.

“I sure hope you don’t expect me to mop up that mess you’re about to make.”

The voice came from the doorway. Court spun the pistol around quickly and pointed it there, a reaction to a surprise threat, an instinctive move, nothing more.

Zack Hightower stood in the doorway silhouetted by the headlights. His hands were empty. He grinned. “Make up your mind, bro. You gonna shoot you, or are you gonna shoot me?”

Court quickly wiped wetness from his face with his forearm. He lowered the gun. “What are you doing here?”

“Hanley sent me.”

“Who is with you?”

“All by my lonesome. Matt wants a word.”

Court shook his head. “No need. I know everything now. I killed the wrong man.”

Zack shrugged. “Yeah. I kinda told you that, didn’t I?” He moved into the trailer and sat down across from Court, placing his back against the wall. He looked around in the little room. The lights from the truck outside reflected off the walls, though it was still dim.

Court said, “I was so sure of my intel, Zack.”

Another shrug from the big man with the silvery blond hair. “Fuckin’ towelheads. They all look alike to me, too. Hey, Six, you really thinking about eating a bullet? That’s not your style.”

Court found himself embarrassed. “It wasn’t my first choice, but my masterful plan to prove I did nothing wrong went tits-up the moment I found out I did something wrong. I’m not going to be taken alive, and I don’t much feel like running anymore. Not sure where that leaves me.”

“Looks like it leaves you sitting on your ass in a moldy mobile home with puke on your face and a gun in your mouth.”

Court said, “Still telling it like it is, I see.”

“You want some advice?”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll want to angle that pistol up to about sixty-five degrees. Roof of the mouth. You’ll hit the brain stem that way. I won’t have to watch you flop around like an idiot for more than a second or two.”

Court closed his eyes. Despite himself, he chuckled. Gallows humor. “With friends like you, Zack.”

“On the other hand,” Hightower said, “I came a long ass way. Would it kill you to talk to Hanley on the sat phone for two minutes? If you do that for me, I promise I won’t get in the way of your little art project.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, amigo. I do know my orders are to put you two in touch, and I know Hanley will kick my dick if I don’t deliver.”

“I thought you were Denny’s bitch.”

“Hanley’s a smart guy. He’s a brasshole, everybody at Langley is, but he’s one of the better ones. Give him a couple of minutes.”

Court sighed and held his hand out.

Zack took an Iridium Extreme sat phone unit from the side pocket of his cargo pants, pulled out a pair of reading glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt, and put them on. He fumbled with his eyeglasses as he dialed the unit.

Court looked at him. “Need some help with that, Dad?”

“Fuck you, kid. Can’t see shit up close without these but I can still shoot the right nut off a gnat at fifty paces.” Zack said it without looking up from the phone, then his voice rose in both volume and sophistication. “Good evening, Director Hanley. I have Six in pocket. Passing you to him now, sir.”

Hightower tossed the phone across the width of the trailer.

Court caught the phone and brought it to his ear.

“How did you know I was here?”

Matt Hanley said, “You were fixated on AAP from the start. I had to dig around to see what the hell it was, but when I found out about the old building at Harvey Point, I sent Hightower to check it out. I’ve also got a guy shadowing Catherine King at Heathrow. She was in comms with you, which means I know that you know about BACK BLAST.”

“I do.”

“And at this point, I figure I know what you are thinking about doing.”

Court said nothing. He still held his Glock in his right hand.

Hanley continued, “Right now it feels like the ground underneath your feet isn’t solid anymore. Like everything you thought you were turned out to be a lie.”

Court closed his eyes.

Hanley said, “Give me a second, and I might be able to give you something to stand on. Something to believe in.”

“Is this a Scientology pitch?”

Hanley ignored the joke. “Court, about two hours ago Jordan Mayes was murdered on the George Washington Parkway.”

Court opened his eyes quickly, then leaned his head back against the trailer wall. “I didn’t fucking do it!”

“Relax, I know you didn’t. Carmichael had it done. But he’s already pinned it on you. You need to know that.”

“Whatever,” Court said, defeat obvious in his voice.

“I need your help. I can’t do anything within the confines of the Agency, because if this goes public it will burn the Agency to the ground.”

“And you think I give a shit?”

“Of course you do. You won’t let Denny beat you, and if you eat a damn bullet right now you are handing him a golden ticket to sweep the past week under the rug and move on. I don’t care about your motivation. Don’t do it because you like yourself. Blame yourself for your mistake in Italy, just like everybody else does. But do it because you hate Denny Carmichael.”

“Do what?”

“You and Zack, with me running you from distance. I’m talking about getting the band back together for one quick op.”

“Going after Denny?”

“Negative. We can’t touch Denny, unfortunately.” Hanley paused. “He’s sequestered away in a safe house somewhere, probably has fifty guys covering him in a blanket of guns. But we sure as hell can go after the foreign goons he’s using to fight his war against you. We take them down, we get some people at HQ asking questions about a bunch of dead foreign operators on the streets, and then, sooner or later, Denny’s crimes will be exposed to the right people in government. The ones who can force him out without any comebacks on the rest of the Agency.”

“Who are the foreign hitters?”

“We don’t know for sure, but Denny is tight with the intelligence chiefs of several Middle Eastern countries. Some say too tight. I never thought he would use back channels to run his own foreign hit team on the streets of the USA, but if that’s what he’s doing here, just think about the other shit he’s gotten away with.”

“You know where they are?”

“I put Jenner’s unit on the tail of the JSOC team looking for you. Had them stand off and keep their eyes open for these foreign assholes. They ID’d them, then tracked them back to a home in Arlington. We count about eight to ten fighting-age males inside.”

“And you can’t go after them because SAD can’t work in the U.S.”

Hanley finished the thought. “And I can’t just report them to local authorities, because the media would indict the entire CIA for crimes nobody but Denny had any part in.”

“Why don’t you tell the director of the CIA what you know? He has the juice to shut Denny down.”

Hanley replied, “He’s a pol, Court. He doesn’t give a damn about this Agency. He’ll run to the New York Times and say he is saving America by shuttering his own organization. He’ll destroy U.S. intelligence just so he looks good to the press.

“You and Zack, Court. Face it, you two outsiders are the only chance we have.”

Court thought it over for a moment. “I don’t know, Matt.”

“What don’t you know? This is your job, Six. We all have to make sacrifices for the good of the country.”

Gentry rubbed his eyes. He started to get up, the pain in his ribs still slowing him. He said, “What the hell have I been doing for the past twenty years?”

Hanley softened. “Make all that count for something. Save this Agency. Take away Denny’s proxy force.”

Court looked across the trailer to his former team leader. Zack couldn’t have heard Hanley’s side of the conversation, but he was obviously on board with the plan. He just gave Court a sly grin and a slow thumbs-up.

Court ignored Zack and addressed Hanley again. “There are two of us. We’ll need some equipment to do this right.”

“I gave Zack the authority he needs to gain access to a cache there at the Point. It’s got anything you could possibly need.”

“I don’t have credos to go anywhere on base.”

“Taken care of. Plus, I’m sending Travers down in a helo to pick you guys up and bring you back into this area.”

“Chris Travers? He’s a pilot?”

“Not much of one, but he’s learning.”

Court didn’t feel terribly comforted by this, but he had a feeling he’d just taken on an assignment where dying in a helicopter crash would be the least of his worries.