Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel

by Mark Greaney

  “Then how did the D.C. police—”

  “Because Gentry wanted us to know it was him. He pressed his thumbprint onto a nightstand in the room where he left the bodies. Multiple times. Leaving clear prints in the shape of a six.”

  Carmichael sat up straighter. “Sierra Six. Gentry’s call sign with the Goon Squad.”

  “It was a message. ‘I’m back and I’m pissed. I want the Agency to know I’m here.’”

  Carmichael sat back on the sofa and blew out a full chest of air. A chill ran down the back of his neck and into his shoulders. “Fucking brazen. He’s not going to skulk around then. I guess that means he won’t be running, either. What did he take from the Aryan Brotherhood?”

  “According to survivors, he got a bag full of cash. No agreement on how much. The narcotics detective I spoke with guessed about ten grand, but that was just based on the size of the operation being run out of the house. PD recovered a lot of meth, apparently.”

  “That’s it? Violator just took money?”

  “None of the survivors copped to any more weapons than the half dozen or so found on the property, but that doesn’t mean anything. He could have walked out of there with a bazooka and they wouldn’t tell the cops, because that would mean they’d been keeping a bazooka in the house. The detective did find an empty ankle holster on one of the victims. It was sized for a subcompact pistol.”

  Carmichael ran his fingers through his short hair. “Okay. Gentry’s in the wind with a mouse gun and enough money to finance a small op.”

  Mayes asked, “What’s he after?”

  Carmichael just looked into his coffee. “Revenge, I guess. I assume his next step is to make contact with known associates here in the area.”

  “Well, we’re covered on that front. We’ve identified four possible contacts, people he used to work with in one capacity or another. We’ve put assets on them.”

  “Just four?”

  “Most everyone he worked with is dead. We’ve got everyone covered, all except you and me, because we’re here. Oh, and Zack Hightower, because he hasn’t been located yet.”

  “What about Matt Hanley?”

  “Right now I have four contract security officers watching Hanley’s house. When JSOC gets here I’ll put hard assets on him.”

  “Good. Gentry will go to Hanley.”

  Mayes hesitated a moment and said, “We need to get SAD involved in this. We can put twenty-five Ground Branch shooters in the mix with one call.”

  Carmichael shook his head. “We can’t involve Ground Branch without involving Hanley. I don’t want anyone breathing a word to Hanley about this. We have enough armed assets without going to SAD.”

  “You really think Hanley is a threat to the operation?”

  “No, but he’s next in line to run NCS.”

  “So?” asked Mayes. “When you take the directorship, he’ll move up here. But you’ll be the damn director, so why do you care?”

  “I don’t like the guy, and he doesn’t like me. No Hanley. You have guys watching him. That’s it. Gentry will go to him, and that’s where we’ll get him.”

  “So . . . we’re using Hanley as bait.”

  “It’s the best way that prick can serve the Agency.” Something occurred to Carmichael. “We need to watch Gentry’s family, too.”

  “His only close living relative is his dad. He’s sixty-four, lives in a little town in Florida. But they’ve been estranged since Gentry was a teenager.”

  “I don’t care. I want him covered.”

  “Agency watchers are already in place. Hard assets would, of course, need to fly down there if Violator shows, but we can move them out of Fort Bragg, and that’s no more than ninety minutes’ flying time.”

  Carmichael’s secretary spoke over the intercom, telling him Suzanne Brewer was on the line. He asked her to put the call through, and seconds later the voice of the thirty-nine-year-old targeting officer emanated from the speaker.

  Carmichael was customarily succinct. “Any word on the location of Zack Hightower?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll have him in hand in a couple of hours. Do you want us to put him in a safe house?”

  “No. I want him brought up here. Put the intimidation of the seventh floor in him. Let’s see if he will play ball.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After Carmichael hung up, Mayes said, “You want to stay here till he is brought in?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. I can schedule the movement to a safe house right now. You can get a little sleep before Hightower is brought in.”

  Carmichael looked uneasy a moment, an expression Mayes wasn’t used to seeing. “What is it?”

  Carmichael said, “I have to leave the building for a few hours. A meeting with an asset off-site. I need to go alone.”

  Mayes stared at his boss for several seconds. Then he got up and closed the door. Standing back at the desk he said, “You’re joking, right?”

  “I understand your concern, but it has to be like this. No one is to know but you and DeRenzi. I’m only telling you because you’ll have to cover for me, and DeRenzi because he won’t be able to shadow.”

  Mayes remained incredulous. “Gentry’s out there somewhere. You do know that, don’t you?”

  “You don’t think I can do low pro anymore?”

  “You aren’t safe on the streets. Whoever you need to meet, we can set it up here with secure comms.”

  “Has to be in person.”

  Mayes said, “Then send me.”

  Carmichael just shook his head.

  “Look, Denny, if you’ve got a mistress or some shit like that, you need to put a cork in it until this all blows over.”

  Carmichael sighed. “If I had a mistress and you didn’t know about it, you’d be a sorry excuse for an assistant director. I’ll be out of pocket three hours, four tops. I won’t have a phone, so you’ll have to come up with something convincing.”

  Mayes held the look of disbelief on his face. “Tell me you understand what’s in the balance here.”

  Carmichael rolled his eyes. “Is this where you tell me Gentry is a dangerous man?”

  “This is about more than Gentry, and you know it. You want the directorship. You’ve earned it. The one thing that can fuck that up is the Gentry story getting out. You won’t just lose the directorship. You’ll lose everything.”

  “It’s not going to get out, because we are going to handle this.”

  Mayes pressed one more time. “You keeping me out of the loop is not a good idea.”

  “Some burdens are my own, Mayes. And that’s just how it’s going to stay.”

  —

  The U.S. Army UC-35A jet touched down at Joint Base Andrews and taxied into a hangar on the far end of runway 36 Right. Once the hangar doors were closed and the aircraft’s wheels were chocked, the hatch opened and a set of rolling stairs was positioned by the ground crew. Twelve men, all in their thirties and forties, stepped down the stairs of the U.S. Army’s version of the Cessna Citation V. Each man carried a massive black duffel bag over his shoulder and, as soon as they vacated the stairs, they dropped their heavy bags onto the hangar floor.

  Although this was a military base and the UC-35A a military aircraft, the dozen men wore various styles of civilian clothing. Few soldiers would get away with such a transgression while on base and on duty, but this small force was no regular army unit. They were a cell of operators from Joint Special Operations Command; specifically an elite offshoot of JSOC with a mandate to assist the United States on Homeland Security issues.

  There were two main direct action ground asset components of JSOC—the navy men of DEVGRU, otherwise known as SEAL Team 6, and the army men of the unit that for decades was commonly known as Delta Force. The unit members even used that name in open sources from time to time, but their c
lassified designation had been changed.

  It was thought by the brass at JSOC that their operations and abilities had been compromised in the past few years due to an unprecedented spate of books, movies, articles, and interviews about and by Joint Special Operations personnel, so when they were given their new name, the name itself was codeword-classified.

  The army boys of JSOC were happy to leave center stage to the Hollywood-loving navy SEALs.

  JSOC had been on the Gentry hunt for years, but not this crew, because Gentry had been outside of the United States. These twelve operators worked inside the USA by special arrangement with the Department of Homeland Security.

  The twelve men in the hangar at Joint Base Andrews were tip of the spear of the military on domestic operations, so it only stood to reason they would get the call-up for this mission. Their brass had been contacted late the evening before by the CIA and told of the in extremis mission to eliminate a rogue CIA man gone mad in D.C., and a short time later these men rushed to their headquarters inside the wire at Fort Bragg, geared up, and boarded the waiting army transport jet.

  Ninety minutes after that they were on the ground at Andrews, and now they unpacked and assembled equipment, loaded it into three nondescript Chevy Suburban SUVs, and headed to a safe house in the Capitol Hill section of D.C.

  The dozen men in street clothes didn’t know much about the reasons behind the hunt, other than the facts that Violator was ex-Agency, he’d gone off reservation, and he had killed a bunch of his colleagues. The guys figured that was more than awkward and ugly enough to put you on a presidential kill list, so they didn’t see the need to know more than that.

  The leader of this unit was a forty-three-year-old lieutenant colonel with the code name Dakota. Soon after he and his men arrived at their safe house, Jordan Mayes, Suzanne Brewer, and the security detail traveling with Mayes arrived at the front door. Mayes, Brewer, and Dakota met for a briefing in the living room while the rest of the JSOC team prepped and tested their hi-tech communications equipment in the dining room.

  Dakota took notes on a pad and asked relevant questions of the CIA officials, and together they went down a list of surveillance assets at their disposal. They then discussed Violator’s known associates and the other CIA brass who would need to have their homes watched in case their target tried to make contact with them.

  When Brewer indicated the briefing was complete, Dakota looked across the table to the two Agency execs. He said, “We’ve done lethal ops in the U.S. before. Rare, but it’s happened. Know this. If we go in, collateral damage will be limited or nonexistent. Any other means you might use—local PD, federal SWAT, even CIA shooters, whatever assets you have available to you—they aren’t going to be as precise as my men and myself. We have experience in doing this sort of thing quickly, cleanly, and quietly.”

  Mayes said, “Believe me, you are our first choice. Gentry has already committed two murders in the city. We are concerned that local police might run up on him before we do, but we will move you and your men to any sightings or possible sightings as soon as possible.”

  Dakota stood, shook hands politely with the two CIA execs, and then said, “Very good. You get us to him, and we’ll put him down. For now we’ll kit up and hit the streets. Let’s stay in touch.”

  11

  Denny Carmichael climbed aboard a Bell JetRanger that was already spinning up in the parking lot at the CIA’s McLean campus.

  DeRenzi was with him, for this leg of the movement, anyway. He threw an understandable fit when Carmichael told him he would run a surveillance detection route and then continue on to a meeting alone, but it wasn’t DeRenzi’s job to tell Director Carmichael what he could and couldn’t do, so the close protection officer just made sure the director of National Clandestine Service was wearing his .45 caliber HK semiautomatic pistol in his shoulder holster like he normally did. CIA officers virtually never carried firearms, but Denny had always been a different sort of animal from every other CIA officer around, and he often strapped a sidearm during movements, even in the States.

  The JetRanger landed at Washington Executive Airport in Prince Georges County just fifteen minutes after it took off, and there Denny left DeRenzi in the helo and climbed into a beige Toyota Highlander that another CIA employee had positioned in the parking lot with the keys under the mat. He drove out of the airport grounds and into late-morning traffic, heading north on the 210 back towards D.C. He kept his eyes in his rearview and he turned east on I-95, and only after he was sure there was no one on his tail did he get off the freeway and head back west. He took the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac into Alexandria, Virginia, and there he spent twenty minutes driving through the narrow streets of the Old Town section on a surveillance detection route.

  After fifty minutes in the vehicle he parked on King Street and continued his SDR on foot. He meandered through the neighborhood for thirty minutes, wandering into gift shops and antique stores, heading down side streets and then back up again on the other side. At twelve fifteen he stepped into a sandwich shop and ordered a pastrami on rye. Eating his lunch at a counter by the window, he kept his eyes out on the street, all the while searching for anyone who might be following him.

  His trained eyes saw nothing out of the ordinary, so at twelve thirty he threw the remainder of his sandwich away, headed north on King Street, and then ducked into the courtyard in front of the Kimpton Lorien Hotel.

  Once in the lobby he walked straight to the counter and asked for a suite for one night with an early check-in. He used a credit card from a cover identity he kept ready and the woman behind the counter gave him the card key to his fourth-floor suite. He stepped around to the bank of elevators behind the check-in desk, and while he did so a distinguished-looking man stepped out of the men’s room and walked over to the elevator bank to wait alongside him.

  The two men stood in silence as the car delivered them to the fourth floor. There Denny walked down the hall to his suite, and the other man followed. No words were exchanged.

  They entered the suite together and Denny shut the door.

  The man who shadowed him in was in his early fifties, lean and handsome in his gray pinstripe suit. Olive-skinned and delicately featured, he had a kind, gentle bearing about him, in sharp contrast to the stern manner of Denny Carmichael.

  Only when the door was shut behind the two men did the olive-complected man offer a handshake to the American.

  He spoke perfect English with only a slight accent. “Nice to see you, Denny.”

  “Hello, Kaz.”

  Carmichael turned away, took a cell phone–sized device out of his pocket, and turned it on. He headed to the center of the room and placed it on a coffee table. It was a radio frequency signal jammer, designed to block the transmissions given off by eavesdropping devices.

  While he did this Kaz took off his suit coat and hung it over a chair, and then he moved to the sofa. There he sat calmly and watched Denny adjust the instrument.

  Kaz was not his name, but Denny had called him this for fifteen years, because Kaz was easier to say than Murquin al-Kazaz. He was now chief of station here in the United States for Riasat Al-Istikhbarat Al-Amah, the intelligence agency of Saudi Arabia, but the two had known each other since back when Kaz was a lowly operative in Saudi intel.

  The Saudi smiled while watching Denny. “Clandestine meetings in hotel rooms. This feels like the good old days, my friend.”

  Carmichael replied brusquely, “Don’t romanticize the past. It wasn’t any better than the present.” While talking Denny pulled out his mobile phone and slipped an earpiece in his ear.

  “We were younger, at least. I romanticize my youth, regardless of how I might have misspent it.”

  Denny tried to send music from his phone to his earpiece, but he couldn’t get a signal to go through. Satisfied that his jammer was operational, he pulled the earpiece o
ut of his ear and slipped it, with his phone, back into his coat.

  Kaz said, “You must have gone to some trouble to come and see me like this on a Sunday afternoon. Tell me, what is it that could not have been handled through a secure phone call?”

  Denny ignored him for the moment, took his time to turn on the TV in the adjoining bedroom, then returned to the living area and turned on the flat screen there. The televisions were set to different stations. An action movie in the bedroom and a news interview program in the living area blanketed the entire suite with conflicting sounds.

  Denny sat down on the sofa, close to Kaz, and he spoke softly. “A wayward asset has returned to the United States. To Washington, in fact.”

  “One of yours, or one of mine?”

  “Used to be one of mine.”

  “Code name Violator, perhaps?”

  Carmichael looked carefully at Kaz’s face, struggling to see any hint the Saudi knew this information already. “That is correct.”

  Kaz looked neither surprised nor unsurprised. His face was a cipher, betraying nothing but pleasant calm. He said, “A bold move on his part. I am sure this is troublesome for you, but I hope you see this as an opportunity. He has been out in the four winds of this earth for some time, and now he is here, on your turf.”

  “D.C. is not my turf.”

  Kaz raised his eyebrows. “By saying that, you mean to say . . . it’s my turf.”

  “That’s right. It’s yours.”

  Al-Kazaz smiled a little. “A fact you remind me of from time to time. I don’t know why you invited me here, but if it’s a confession you want, I assure you I had no knowledge of Gentry’s movements. Perhaps you should talk to your dear friends the Israelis. Doesn’t the great Mossad know all things at all times?”

  Kaz was an enemy of the Israelis—and whenever he spoke with Carmichael he never passed up an opportunity to get in digs about the United States’ good relationship with them.

  In the intelligence sphere, Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia formed an incredibly awkward love triangle.