Back Blast

75

The three men sat at the conference table, staring at one another in silence. Kaz shook perspiration out of his eyes, struggled against his bindings.

Carmichael sat motionless, looking even more drawn than usual.

Court looked tired himself, but his focus remained sharp.

To Carmichael, he asked, “Do you know the identity of the man I rescued?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to him?”

Denny shrugged. “I took care of him.”

“Meaning?”

“I put a warhead on his forehead.”

“You drone-killed him?”

“That’s right. Peshawar. 2011. Once I knew his involvement in this, I took him out.” Carmichael went on, “You see why I had to term you, don’t you? If the Israelis knew my man killed Hawthorn, there would be hell to pay with them. And if AQ got wind of it they would use it to their advantage. A propaganda coup that would destroy the CIA.”

Court muttered, “So I had to die.” The strain and adrenaline of the last thirty minutes had drawn most all of his energy reserves.

Denny said, “Of course you did. Think about it, Gentry. Put yourself in my shoes. Why would I even care? Do you think I sit at home at night and ponder the fate of one damn trigger-puller? The work I have done in my career has created nations. It’s dissolved governments. A Ground Branch shooter thinks he got a raw deal? I’m sorry, but so fucking what?”

Court looked off into space.

So fucking what?

Softly, he said, “I can call Catherine King right now and fill in the pieces, tell her everything she doesn’t already know from the Mossad.”

Carmichael shook his head. “That’s not going to happen, and we both know why. That information would be damaging to the Agency, and the Agency protects the interests of the USA. You know how political winds blow, son. You can’t just damage a single element of the CIA by revealing this. If you try to destroy me for vengeance, you will destroy the entire core of U.S. intelligence.”

And Carmichael was right about that, Court knew. He wasn’t going to the media with this. Anything damning that Carmichael did would simply be used against the entire philosophy of human intelligence collections and operations. CIA scandals, as a rule, became political and ideological footballs, and the CIA never came out on the right side.

Court would not burn down the village to save it.

Denny looked coldly at Court. “Haven’t you done enough damage to the cause you devoted your life to protect?”

The speakerphone rang again. Court knew this would be the new team, and they wouldn’t be calling to offer pizza and soda. He found himself surprised they called at all.

Court checked his watch and he hit the button. “Who is this?”

A new voice said, “I have someone here who would like to speak with you, Violator.”

Court cocked his head. “Who is it?”

A woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello? This is Catherine King.”

Shit, Court thought; this was turning into a fucking circus. “I don’t really have time for an interview right now, Catherine. We’ll have to reschedule.”

King said, “Six, I have information you need. I have to come in and tell you.”

“Come in here? That would be a really bad idea.”

King then turned her attention to Denny Carmichael. “Director Carmichael. Please listen. I have told the men out here that I think I can stop this from turning into a bloodbath. It’s not necessary for anyone to die. Please let me come in.”

“Ms. King, it might not surprise you to know certain classified information is being discussed in here. Since you don’t have a Top Secret security clearance, I can’t allow you to come in.”

“Does Murquin al-Kazaz have a Top Secret U.S. security clearance?”

Denny did not reply.

Catherine said, “You need me in there, Denny. I can make this better.”

Carmichael said, “It’s not really up to me. I’m not the one holding the submachine gun.”

Court just smiled. Carmichael was warning the JSOC boys about the defensive setup.

Catherine said, “Six. I know you want to protect the Agency, even after everything that has happened to you. You have my word there will be large amounts of the information I know that will never make it to print if you let me in that room to talk.”

“What information?”

“Do we have a deal?”

Court sighed. “You do know this is life-or-death in here, don’t you?”

“I do. It is my intention to save lives.”

“Mine, or his?” Carmichael asked.

“I don’t want anyone in there to die today, Mr. Carmichael.”

Court didn’t know what to do. He wanted to hear any intel he could get on this, but he fully expected JSOC to breach at some point, and then it wouldn’t be safe for King to be here in the line of fire.

She pressed. “Open the door, Six. You need to hear what I have to say.”

“If this is some kind of a trap, Denny dies first.”

“It’s no trap.”

Court opened the door to the hallway, then he crossed to the security office by the pneumatic doors. He positioned himself out of the line of fire, but he used the reflection from a hall mirror to keep his eyes on the doorway.

He tapped a button on the security controller on his wrist, then he readied his weapon. The pneumatic doors opened. Catherine King entered the hall with her hands raised. She wore warm-ups and tennis shoes. It looked to Court like she’d been called out of a yoga class to come here. Her hands were empty.

Court reclosed the pneumatic doors, then he approached her in the hallway. He turned her to the wall and frisked her quickly, finding nothing on her.

Turning her around, he led her back into the conference room. “Anything for a story, right?”

King forced a little smile. She looked nervous, but steadfast. She sat at the table with the others, and Court sat back down himself.

“So,” Court said, turning to King, “you have brought some news? Some way to resolve this crisis?”

She nodded. “I hope the way I can resolve this crisis is by keeping those men outside from coming in here shooting. Maybe with me here, they will be afraid of the bad press it would cause if anything went wrong.”

Court shook his head. “They don’t care. Maybe you bought me ten minutes while they talk about how to account for you, but no more.”

“Look, Six, I know what you are planning on doing. I’ve been following all your actions for the last eight days. You are here to go out in a blaze of glory. You plan on punishing Carmichael for all he did to you, but you are also planning on punishing yourself for what you did to Hawthorn.”

Court did not reply.

“But I know the truth. I have a new source, deep in the CIA. She has filled in some important pieces in the puzzle. Things the Israelis didn’t know. What I told you the other day wasn’t the whole truth.”

With faint hope in his voice he said, “I didn’t kill Hawthorn?”

“You did kill him, I’m afraid. Neither you nor I can ever take that back.”

“Then nothing else really matters, does it?”

“Not true. You shot Hawthorn, the Israeli penetration agent, not because you made a mistake. You shot him because Denny Carmichael ordered you to.”

“What?”

Carmichael instantly shook his head. Al-Kazaz remained silent.

“Denny gave you the image of the man you rescued. Denny wasn’t trying to save Hawthorn. He didn’t even know about Hawthorn. He had no idea an Israeli asset was in that villa.

“He was trying to save the other man. And you did just what he asked you to do. You rescued the man you were ordered to.”

Carmichael protested, but Court just lifted his weapon off the table and pointed it at him till he shut up. Looking at Catherine he asked, “How do you know this?”

“Denny assassinated Jordan Mayes yesterday. He framed you for it, but someone in the car with Mayes at the time he was killed confirmed it was not you. Before he died, Mayes told this source of mine that Denny had revealed the truth of Operation BACK BLAST. It was an attempt to rescue the other Arab, because he was the spy for the United States. Carmichael didn’t know Hawthorn was an Israeli asset. He thought he was just an AQ hit man out to kill his agent.”

Court leaned back heavily in his chair, his MP7 lowered into his lap, though it remained pointed in the general direction of the two hostages.

“Who was Denny’s agent?”

Catherine King looked to Murquin al-Kazaz. “He’s sitting right here, Six.”

Court turned to the man slowly. Looked at his face. He tried to add a beard, and to take off six years. He wasn’t sure.

Al-Kazaz yelled now. “This is an outrageous lie! I know nothing of this!” He turned to Carmichael. “Denny, tell them this is not true. Don’t join their lie to save yourself. You need me!”

Court lifted the HK assault weapon off the table and pointed it at al-Kazaz’s head. “Well, I sure as shit don’t need you.”

Kaz shut his eyes.

Catherine King screamed, “No, Six! Don’t do it!”

Court held the gun there, the laser sight painted on the man’s forehead. Finally he lowered it. With his eyes still on Kaz, he said, “Denny, your only chance at surviving the next fifteen minutes hinges on you coming clean on all this. Right fucking now.”

Catherine King did what she could to defuse the situation. “Denny, anything you say will be considered off the record. You have my word.”

Denny Carmichael spoke in a defeated voice now. “You have to understand the opportunity that I had. It was one of the most successful intelligence operations of the past half century, and it was all me. No one knew I had a highly placed man in al Qaeda, and a highly placed man in Saudi intelligence.”

He paused for a moment, then turned to Kaz. “It was the same man.

“It’s true. Kaz had been feeding me al Qaeda intel for two years, but he knew he was burned. AQ discovered he was a Saudi intelligence officer. He’d been tipped off that the trip to Italy was cover to get him out of Pakistan so he could be assassinated without causing a rift between al Qaeda and their Saudi benefactors. He asked me to save him. I needed to keep Kaz secure, but I couldn’t pull him out by going through normal channels, because the relationship was not approved. I sent you, Six, gave you an old image of Kaz he’d taken in Tel Aviv, and told you he was an Israeli asset.”

Carmichael continued, “I swear to Christ, Court, I had no idea the assassin was an Israeli asset. Kaz didn’t know, either.

“I made a quick decision, the only rational decision I could have made. I had to save him.” Carmichael leaned forward, straining against his bindings. “And lo and behold, it worked.”

Court was still looking at Kaz, but he spoke to Carmichael. “The only problem was the man I killed was the best penetration agent any service had in the enemy’s command structure. Higher than Kaz. He was core AQ.”

Carmichael lowered his head. “A few days after BACK BLAST I got a call from Manny Aurbach at Mossad. He said he had a man go dark in Trieste. He told me he was undercover as AQ. Manny asked me if we’d heard any chatter. Immediately I suspected, but I asked for a picture. I sent it to Kaz and he confirmed it was the man you shot. I had to cover it up from the Israelis, not to protect you”—Carmichael shrugged when he said it—“but to protect Kaz. By this time he was back in Saudi Arabia, but if I told Manny the truth, that it was an honest mistake, he would know I’d been trading intel with the Saudis at an unapproved level, and he would have gone to others here in the U.S. to have me derailed.

“So I lied to Manny. That should have been that.”

“But?” Catherine asked.

Denny continued, “But a full year later a Serbian who was at the villa in Trieste gave the Mossad a picture of you standing over Hawthorn’s body.”

Court cocked his head. “How the hell did he happen to get a picture of that?”

“It was a covert camera set up in Kaz’s room. It’s a picture of you standing in front of a window, silenced pistol. Hawthorn is in the doorway falling to the floor after you shot him. God knows why the Serbian gangsters set the camera up, or why they sent it to the Mossad, but they did. At that point Manny knew his man had been assassinated, and he knew the only force that could pull it off was the Americans.” He paused. “I couldn’t deny. I told them you must have gone rogue, done the job for money. I had to terminate you so the Israelis couldn’t talk to you. If they did, they could just show you a picture of Hawthorn and you would know that wasn’t the man you were sent to rescue. If you told the Israelis then they would know BACK BLAST was a lie.”

Court looked down at the floor for a minute, saying nothing.

Finally Catherine called out to him. “Six, are you okay?”

Softly he said, “The Serbians did not have a camera in that room.”

“They must have. How else did they get the image?”

“They didn’t.” Court turned to al-Kazaz. “You took the picture. I remember.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“The pen. The pen in your hand. I remember it now. All your other items in that room, papers, luggage, your computer. Everything else could stay, but you had to put that pen in your pocket. I thought it was strange at the time, but I had too much going on to worry about it.”

“What does a stupid pen have to do with any of this?”

Denny Carmichael’s face reddened with fury. “I gave you that pen. It contained a pinhole camera. You son of a bitch!”

Catherine connected the dots. “Al-Kazaz gave the image to the Israelis.” She looked at the Saudi in the chair across from her. “Which means you knew Hawthorn was a Mossad agent the entire time. The whole damn thing was a setup.”

Carmichael roared, “Goddammit, Kaz! No!”

Court said, “Denny, you were wrong before. Kaz wasn’t your man in al Qaeda. He wasn’t your man in Saudi intelligence. You were his man in the CIA. He ran you. He still does.”

Denny’s hands were bound behind the chair, but he looked like he might try to kill the man tied next to him with only his gnashing teeth.

Kaz surprised everyone in the room with a slight smile. He turned to Denny, on his left. “I ran you for years when I worked inside AQ. Giving you enough information to solidify me as a source, to make me look good, and passing disinformation when it suited Saudi interests. I fed you intelligence that I knew would go straight to your friend Manny Aurbach at Mossad. You believed it all because I’d proven myself. And Manny believed it all because it came from you, and he never knew I existed.”

Denny said, “I’m going to kill you.”

Kaz laughed now. “No, you won’t.” He pointed his forehead at Gentry. “This man will do the honors. You and I will die tonight, but I can die in peace, because although my scheme was discovered at the end, my efforts succeeded for many years. I can be proud of my service to my kingdom.” He laughed again, more cruelly this time. “You, Denny, will die knowing you failed your country.”

Denny Carmichael turned to Catherine King. “I did not know. You have to believe me. Whatever happens to me, you can’t report that I did anything to hurt the CIA.”

King said, “You were next in line to become director. If you had succeeded in killing Six, as you tried so hard to do, then al-Kazaz would have been able to manipulate the director of the CIA.”

It was a statement, and Denny had no reply to it.

Kaz was about to speak again, but the lights in the conference room went off suddenly, shrouding the scene in darkness.