Dead Eye

TWENTY

Two black Lincoln Navigator SUVs pulled into the gates of Townsend House and negotiated the winding drive through the cherry trees up to the parking circle. Leland Babbitt and Jeff Parks stood on the expansive front porch, both men dressed in dark blue suits, their lapels and their hairstyles blowing gently in the cold morning breeze.

The SUVs parked in the parking circle in front of the main house and five dark-suited men climbed out; their jackets hung open and the wind exposed the FN P90 submachine guns hanging at their underarms. The grips of SIG pistols on their hips were even less well concealed. Four of them took up positions in the drive, and the fifth man opened the back door of the rear SUV.

Another man climbed out now. He was tall and thin and older than the others, his suit was gray, and he carried no obvious weapon. His face showed little expression as he regarded the two men at the front door, but he walked up to them, flanked by his security detail.

“Good morning, Denny,” Babbitt said as he extended his hand.

Denny Carmichael, Director of National Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency, shook both men’s hands without replying, and within moments the three of them, surrounded by Carmichael’s security entourage, entered Townsend House’s opulent ground-floor conference room. Two large Frederick Remingtons were displayed adjacent to a huge showcase of Civil War — era weaponry. Perfectly maintained Whitworth and Enfield muzzle-loaded rifles hung above Henrys and Burnsides and Spencers. All the firearms were surrounded in the glass case by edged weapons of the period, each polished to a mirror finish and appearing as sharp and as ready for action today as they had been one hundred fifty years ago when they were wielded in battle.

Coffee was poured and pastries were offered by Townsend canteen workers, but Denny Carmichael himself waved the Townsend staff out the door along with his close-protection detail.

As everyone but the executives filed out of the conference room, Babbitt and Parks sat down across from their guest. Babbitt said, “Heard your daughter is expecting. Congratulations.”

To this Carmichael replied, “This morning’s meeting will be brief, and it will stay on theme. What, in God’s name, happened in Estonia?”

Babbitt kept his chin up and his voice strong as he spoke. “Resistance from the target. We expected him to mount a robust defense. He is, after all, the Gray Man. But our direct action team was, nevertheless, disabled. We lost a lot of good men.”

Babbitt bowed his head over the shiny tabletop almost as if saying a short prayer to himself over his fallen men.

Carmichael leaned forward, speaking with unmistakable anger. “You could not have possibly been more aware of the capabilities of Courtland Gentry.”

“Certainly we were aware, and we remain so. We sent in eight of our best men, and then only after real-time intelligence from the singleton operative.”

“And still, Gentry wiped out the strike team.”

Babbitt nodded. “Seven dead. One wounded and arrested.”

“Christ,” Carmichael groaned. “We didn’t need that!”

“No,” agreed Babbitt.

“And your solo asset survived?”

“My intel about what happened came directly from Dead Eye, who was ordered to stand down before the raid. He reported hearing the target fire first. We don’t know if Gentry just got lucky, happened to see the strike team as they approached his location, or if he had some sort of warning or countermeasures in place that were missed by our men.”

“And where is Dead Eye now?”

“He was wounded, but he is still operational.”

“If he stood down before the op, how was he wounded?”

“On his own initiative he entered the engagement. He was unable to respond in time to save the direct action assets, but he caught a round from Gentry’s gun in the process.”

Denny sighed, strumming his fingers on the table. “And collateral damage? We are told that two policemen were killed, along with a civilian.”

Jeff Parks chimed in quickly. “All at the hands of Court Gentry.” He paused. Then said, “A CIA-trained asset who has gone rogue.” This was clearly an attempt to deflect a touch of responsibility for the disaster back on the CIA itself.

Denny just gave Parks an eat shit look.

Babbitt cleared his throat. “Look, I’m not going to tell you no mistakes were made last night. We’ll do an after-action hot wash with the surviving member of the direct action team as soon as we can, and we will make any improvements in our tactics and procedures that we need to make to reflect the data he can provide. But, Denny, you handed us a very difficult case here, and we will sort it out for you. We just hit a snag.”

Carmichael looked off into space a moment. “None of this would have happened if you had warned Sidorenko about Gentry’s impending attack. I am told Sid had fifty men at his dacha. With the heads-up you had that Gentry was ingressing into the AO, you could have just picked up the phone and allowed Sidorenko to prepare a defense that Gentry would have walked right into.”

Babbitt shook his head. “We did not see a high probability that Sidorenko’s security measures could have been employed to eliminate the target. Added to that, there was a chance that Sid or his people could have unwittingly tipped Gentry off about the advance warning, at which point he would know he was under aerial surveillance. We could not allow that to happen if we were going to track him in the future.”

Denny’s steel-gray eyes narrowed. “That’s the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard, Lee. You were afraid you wouldn’t get paid if Gentry died at the hands of the St. Petersburg mob.”

Babbitt rolled his hands over and opened them on the table, a palms-up gesture. “It would have been nice to have had the proper assurances from you that our contract bonus conditions would have been met without physical presence of our personnel at the point of elimination.”

“I can terminate your contract right now,” Carmichael said angrily.

Babbitt did not blink. “You can. But you won’t. We got guns in Gray Man’s face; Dead Eye says he might have even wounded him. That’s something CIA hasn’t managed to do in five years.”

“We’ve had eyes on him,” Carmichael countered.

“You had him in Russia, and you let him go. You had him in Sudan, and he got away. You had him in Mexico, and again, he escaped.”

“Just as he escaped your net, Lee.”

“We will pick him up again. Soon. If you have a minute, we’d like to take you down to the signal room to show you some new technology we are deploying in the hunt.”

Carmichael shook his head. “Every minute you spend telling me how you are going to catch and kill Court Gentry is another minute you aren’t catching and killing Court Gentry.”

The CIA’s top spy stood up from the table, indicating the end of the meeting.

He said, “This isn’t fun anymore. Find him. Kill him.” He paused. “I will approve an update to your contract to stipulate that Townsend will be rewarded for Gentry’s termination.”

“Regardless of the circumstances?”

“Barring undue collateral damage, yes.”

“Define undue,” Parks said with a raised eyebrow.

Carmichael looked at him with cold eyes peering out of his tanned and deeply lined face. “No.”

The silence in the room lasted several seconds. Finally Babbitt walked around the table. “Excellent, Denny.” The two men shook hands, but Babbitt was the only one who looked happy. “This will facilitate the hunt.”

Denny started walking toward the door of the conference room. Babbitt walked along with him, and Parks trailed behind. “Lee… you have done good work for us in the past. We value our relationship with Townsend. It keeps my testimony to congressional hearings simple, and your people always get their man.”

Lee put his hand on Denny’s back as they strode up the hallway to the foyer. “We’re patriots here at Townsend. We’re proud to serve. You know that.”

Denny did not respond to this. Instead he said, “Court Gentry is a different animal. His very existence is creating a dangerous rift in the U.S. intelligence community. When he goes away, America will benefit greatly.”

“How so?” asked Babbitt. “I’ve read every word of his file that’s not redacted, many times, and it leaves me with more questions than answers. I understand he killed other personnel on his task force. But…”

“His termination has been approved by the Director of National Intelligence. If that’s not good enough for you, then you are in the wrong business.”

Babbitt persisted. “There’s something more. Something not in the file. Isn’t there?”

“It’s classified, Lee.”

“It’s me, Denny.”

Carmichael stopped walking. They were in the center of the foyer now. Denny’s security team had formed a diamond shape around him, ready to usher him outside and back into his Navigator, but Babbitt remained inside the coverage.

Denny seemed to struggle with his next comment. Finally he said, “American national security vis-à-vis a crucial ally has been severely degraded by our inability to take Court Gentry off the playing field. You and your organization are our last best hope for nothing less than the future good relations with an important partner on the world stage.”

He patted Babbitt on the shoulder. “Don’t fail me, Lee. You can expect more oversight on this. I will not allow another massacre like what happened last night in Tallinn.”

Denny acknowledged Parks with a brisk nod, then turned and left with his security detail.

Babbitt stood there on the marble floor of the hallway, thinking over what D/NCS Carmichael had just told him. Another country wanted Gray Man dead, so the CIA was pulling out all the stops to make it so.

What the hell?

Parks stepped up to his boss. “That went swimmingly.” His sarcasm was clear.

Babbitt was still weighing over Denny’s nonexplanation of the reasons behind the Gentry contract. He shook away his confusion and addressed Parks. “Additional oversight, my ass. He’s not going to move us to Langley, and he’s not going to send Langley personnel to us. The reason we have this job is so there are no comebacks on the Agency. Carmichael sees Townsend as his own private army. He won’t fuck that up by sending over official eyes and ears. He’s bluffing. We’ll be fine.” He held a finger up. “Correction. If we find Gentry in the next few days we’ll be fine.”

Jeff Parks knew this was his cue to fill Lee in on the status of the hunt.

“I’ve got our best hackers pulling feeds from every municipal and private security network in the area. The newest facial recog software is processing it all.”

“How wide a net?”

“All of the Baltic, of course. Part of Poland. We can pull in Germany and Ukraine if we need to, but the costs will skyrocket. Also, there is a daily ferry from Tallinn to Sweden that also stops in Norway, so I’ve added Oslo and Stockholm to the collection haul.”

“Can the software keep up with all that data?”

“It’s the best there is. Better than the newest stuff they are using at the Fort.” Babbitt knew “the Fort” was Fort Meade, home of the National Security Agency.

“Good. You have the personnel you need?”

“I have everyone working on it. It’s a matter of time before Gentry shows his face in front of a camera. When he does, we will be on him within a few hours.”