Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel

by Mark Greaney

  “I’m trying to figure it out. To make it right.”

  “Make it right? Jesus H. Christ, you really do not know why they are after you!”

  “Tell me.”

  Travers shrugged, and this gesture looked utterly real. “I don’t know the specifics. Just that you were sent out on an op, you were given good intel and clear orders, and then went off script.” Travers winced, like he didn’t want to say it. “You killed the wrong dude, bro.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How else can I say it? You smoked the wrong guy. You capped a noncombatant. You fragged a friendly. You termed some innocent son of a bitch and fucked up the mission.”

  Court shook his head slowly. “No. That’s not true. That must be disinformation Carmichael is using to get everyone on board with the term order. All my ops were solid. I never had an unauthorized termination.”

  Travers kept his eyes on the gun. “Court, I didn’t get it from Carmichael. You think door-kickers like me hang out with Denny Carmichael?”

  “Who told you?”

  “Me and a lot of the guys asked for a full brief on the reasons behind the term order. We didn’t like hunting one of our brothers, know what I mean?”

  Yeah, Court thought. I know exactly what you mean. You mean you want me to lower this pistol because I’m supposed to act like we’re just members of the same big happy family.

  “We were briefed by Jordan Mayes and some big-shot lawyer from the Office of General Council. Chunky dude, German name, don’t remember it. He wore this goofy bow tie, I do remember that. Anyway, he said you were derelict on a mission, but no one knew at the time. Years later intel filtered from some foreign service to Carmichael proving you zapped the wrong motherfucker. Bow tie dude told us Carmichael wanted you brought in for questioning. Your own task force was sent in to pick you up . . . and then you smoked them all.” Travers hesitated before saying the last part, as if he only just understood the repercussions of having a killer of CIA officers sitting in his apartment with a gun pointed at his chest.

  Court said nothing.

  “You going to tell me that didn’t happen, either?”

  Court kept the gun up, but his body sagged a little. “They weren’t bringing me in. They were sent to terminate me.”

  “Term you? Why would you be killed for schwacking an innocent person on a mission? Shit happens. You might have been cashiered from the Agency if the dereliction was bad enough, but they wouldn’t kill you. Not for that.”

  Travers went on. “But once you killed your own guys . . . then it was on, bro. Denny has been after you ever since. You’ve done a hell of a good job hiding out, but if you kill me now, well, they’ll just know you are here in town.”

  Court cocked his head in surprise. “Pretty sure they already know I’m here.”

  Travers rolled his head back as if he was looking to the heavens. “Well, I sure wish someone would have bothered to give me the heads-up.”

  “Look, you aren’t going to believe me over this suit from General Council . . . but I was not derelict. I never fragged the wrong target. Not once. Not ever.” He added, “And my team tried to murder me, not bring me in. I had to defend myself.”

  Travers nodded like he believed, but Court didn’t think for a minute that he’d convinced him.

  Travers said, “Okay. I guess they got it wrong. I’ll let everybody know. That should fix things.” It was sarcasm, brave considering Travers’s situation, but it was clear to Court the other man wanted to show he was not afraid.

  Court thought a moment. “AAP. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Travers was taken aback by the question. “You mean that magazine for old people?”

  “No, Chris. That’s AARP. I am talking about the Autonomous Asset Program. Did this guy from General Council say anything about that?”

  Travers shook his head. “I don’t know what that is. He didn’t mention it. Sounds stupid.”

  Court sagged low on the couch, frustrated and confused. But then he nodded to himself. Softly he said, “Carmichael needed an excuse to kill me, so he came up with a cover story. He had to erase the AAP. Terminate all the participants . . . But they couldn’t breathe a word about it to anyone. They blamed me for some imaginary screwup.”

  “Whatever you say, dude,” Travers said. He hadn’t heard everything, because Court had been speaking to himself.

  Court ignored him and stood up slowly.

  “What are you going to do?” Travers asked, letting a little nervousness show in his voice now.

  “I’m leaving. You are useless. You know even less about what went down than I do.” Then he said, “Stand up.”

  Travers did so. Court reached into his coat and pulled out zip ties. The other man’s eyes widened just a little, but he made no comment.

  Court said, “Your lucky day, right? You know how to get out of these in five seconds. Put them on. Behind your back.”

  Travers followed Gentry’s orders, confused. He did know how to defeat zip ties, even when his arms were fastened behind his back, but if Gentry knew this already, why was he using them?

  When his arms were secured, Court walked up to him and spun him around. A second later Travers heard the sound of thick duct tape being pulled from a roll.

  “You motherfucker,” he mumbled. The zip ties were just to keep his hands down while Court restrained him in a way that would be much harder to defeat.

  —

  Five minutes later Travers’s arms and hands were completely secured, from the shoulders all the way down to the fingertips, with an entire roll of duct tape. His ankles were bound with wires from two table lamps. He sat on the floor, arms outstretched behind him like a single wing, and his feet in front of him, lashed together.

  Once Court was finished he knelt over the other man and surveyed his work. “You look ridiculous,” he said.

  “I’ve got to piss.”

  “Just think of that as additional incentive.” Court patted the other man on the head. “Good to see you, Chris.” He headed for the door.

  “Fuck you. Seriously, how the hell am I supposed to get out of this?”

  Court flipped off the overhead in the living room. The only remaining light was from the street, filtering in through the curtains. He said, “If this equation takes you more than ten minutes to solve, then you are a poor excuse for an asset.” Court reached for the door latch.

  Travers called after him. “Hey, Court?”

  “Yeah?”

  Travers paused, then said, “I’m going to tell you this as a friend. I really hope you’ll take my advice. Run. Just fucking run. You had the right plan. Staying off grid, out of the States. That was working for you. There is no future to you sticking around here. Trust me on that. Now that you’re here. Now that they know. They’ll rain down on you with everything they have, and they will kill you.”

  “I suspect you’re right,” Court said, and he left Travers there, alone in the dark.

  —

  It was well after two a.m. when Court pulled into a little market and gas station a mile from his long-term storage unit in Columbia Heights. He’d been driving around for a while, rolling into, and then back out of, a half dozen other convenience store parking lots, because he was looking for a very specific setup.

  He needed a place with poor CCTV camera coverage of the parking lot.

  Court took it on faith that the U.S. government would have access to civilian CCTV networks here in the area. They would also have facial recognition software working to identify him as he moved around the city. While there was nothing Court could do to avoid getting picked up on cameras inside stores—he couldn’t very well wear a ski mask as he shopped—he knew it was in his best interests to show neither his face nor his vehicle on camera.

  Court could mitigate the risk to himself by never going t
o the same place more than once. By the time he was identified on camera and CIA or police arrived to investigate, hours would have passed. Court merely had to know better than to ever return. But if he allowed his image to be recorded and identified and he allowed his vehicle to be identified by parking it in view of a CCTV camera, then he would be screwed, because he couldn’t very well change cars every time he went out into the city.

  The parking lots of the first six late-night markets he pulled into had good camera coverage, with no place to park without exposing his vehicle. The seventh store, to Court’s great relief, did have a couple of outdoor cameras near the pumps, but the store’s owners were cutting corners and relying on the inside camera to film a portion of the lot near the window. Court only had to pull up to one side of the front window or the other, park in a space there, and then go inside.

  Court stepped carefully into the Easy Market on Rhode Island with his head down. He lowered his hood, but he left his baseball cap on, low in front of his face. He moved slowly to the back corner of the establishment, far away from the register, and he pretended to look through the cooler for a drink. Soon he glanced up and around the little shop, scanning high and in the corners, searching for cameras.

  And Court liked what he saw. Not only had the management here gone cheap with the cams outside; two of the cameras inside the market were hanging down with wires unplugged—clearly out of commission. A third camera was up to the right of the front register and facing down, but Court determined he could defeat it with his cap and by turning his face away from the proper angle needed for successful facial recog.

  Within one minute of passing through the door, Court decided he would become a faithful customer here at the Easy Market on Rhode Island Avenue.

  Court grabbed a few items off shelves—more duct tape, a few cans of food, a bottle of water, and a candy bar—then he carefully stepped up to the register at a forty-five-degree angle, with his head turned slightly to the left and the bill of his baseball cap slightly cocked to the right. A lone clerk stood behind the counter, watching his approach. She was mid-twenties, heavyset, and African American. Her nametag read LaShondra. When Court put his items up on the counter he glanced at her again and noticed she had a severely lazy left eye, with the pupil drooping down.

  She looked tired, but she wore a kind smile. “Hey, baby doll, how’s your night goin’?”

  Baby doll? “It’s goin’,” Court said, looking to the left.

  He paid for the tape, the canned food, the water, and the candy bar, and LaShondra put it all into a plastic bag. While he waited Court spent his time scanning reflective surfaces behind the woman, making sure there were no threats behind him. He glanced to his left, back out to the parking lot, and saw that it remained clear. He was careful, however, to avoid looking to the right, where the camera hung down pointing at him, just eight feet away.

  As he left the store, careful to avoid looking up to the camera recording the front two aisles of the market, the clerk called after him, “You have a good night now, honey.”

  “You, too,” Court muttered on his way out the door.

  As he climbed into his car Court realized that he hadn’t carried on such a pleasant conversation with anyone in a long time.

  18

  On most days of the workweek, Leland Babbitt left his Chevy Chase home around seven forty-five a.m. to make it into his office in the District by eight thirty. But this Monday morning his garage door hummed and opened at a quarter till seven, and Babbitt emerged behind the wheel of his silver Lexus and backed down the driveway out onto the street.

  A black Lincoln Navigator sat parked in front of Babbitt’s home, and inside it four men raised their hands towards Babbitt’s car.

  Babbitt acknowledged them briefly with a nod as he passed them by. He wasn’t going to stop to chat with his home protection detail. He had somewhere important to be today—a clandestine rendezvous arranged with a high-profile official—so his attention was focused on beating the traffic and making it to his destination in plenty of time.

  A half hour later Babbitt parked in the lot by the Capitol reflecting pool, climbed out of his Lexus, and pulled on a trench coat, and then he began walking west along the National Mall.

  Leland Babbitt was director of Townsend Government Services, a private intelligence and security firm that worked on classified projects for the United States intelligence community. Townsend had been around for 150 years, making a big name in an extremely low-profile industry by employing some of the best headhunters in the world. Townsend had gotten its start in the old West when its investigators tracked down train robbers, bank robbers, even marauding renegade Indians. In the following century Townsend hunted Nazis and Russian spies, it helped catch Noriega and Serbian war criminals, and in the 2000s it had a hand in the capture of Saddam Hussein as well as many of the leadership of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.

  But on its most recent mission Townsend Government Services had failed unequivocally.

  Leland Babbitt and his company had been chasing the Gray Man for years on a cost-plus contract with the U.S. government. They’d come to within a hair’s breadth of killing him in Brussels; Babbitt himself had been there at the scene during the gun battle. Unfortunately for everyone, Gentry had escaped, and in the process he’d killed some of Babbitt’s men and wounded others.

  The shoot-out in Brussels had been a major news event, of course, and although Babbitt had managed to avoid exposure in the media for himself and his firm, since Brussels, Denny Carmichael had treated Lee Babbitt like he had the plague. The Director of the National Clandestine Service had flatly refused every meeting, every teleconference, even private phone conversations with the director of Townsend since he’d returned to the U.S. Only a few clipped and businesslike e-mails had come from Carmichael to Babbitt, and these made clear that NCS was indefinitely suspending its contracts with Townsend and removing the private firm’s access to classified material.

  Babbitt understood Carmichael’s frustrations in a general sense. For some reason Carmichael’s involvement in the Gentry hunt was very personal, so after the debacle in Europe it was no surprise that the head of NCS would naturally try to scapegoat Townsend. But Lee Babbitt had grown weary of the cold shoulder, and he was determined to end his company’s exile from clandestine work and get things back on track.

  To this end Babbitt had e-mailed Carmichael over the weekend, insisting the two men sit for a face-to-face to put the matter to rest. Babbitt took into account the fact Carmichael was obviously trying to distance himself publicly from the happenings in Belgium, so he suggested an old-fashioned clandestine rendezvous. He gave Carmichael directions to a quiet location, told him he’d be there at seven thirty ready to do whatever he needed to do to end the rift and reboot the important mutual relationship between Townsend and the CIA.

  Denny Carmichael hadn’t exactly agreed to the meeting, but he had not expressly declined it either, and Babbitt felt like Denny would come to the realization that a continued partnership between CIA and Townsend Government Services was in everyone’s best interests.

  Denny would show, he told himself.

  Babbitt had mentally prepared himself for a verbal beating from the grizzled spymaster. He knew his company hadn’t done what the CIA had sent it to do, but he was ready to spin it by reminding Carmichael that he had gotten closer to Gentry than the CIA had, and Carmichael should simply send Babbitt back out after the Gray Man.

  Court Gentry had lived out his nine lives. Next time they would get him for sure.

  Babbitt walked directly from his car to the meeting site. He knew he should have conducted some sort of surveillance direction route, but this was the fucking USA, and he was certain nobody was tailing him. Plus, he was too angry and focused on returning his forces to the Gentry hunt to devote attention to anything other than getting to his rendezvous and giving the person he�
�d meet there a very measured dose of his rage.

  —

  While Babbitt walked to his destination, thinking about how much he wanted just one more opportunity to hunt Court Gentry again, the object of his thoughts was exactly one hundred fifty yards away, jogging along the National Mall, doing his best to catch up to the man in the Burberry trench coat before he lost him.

  Gentry had been on the man’s tail since just before dawn. He’d found Babbitt’s home in Chevy Chase on USCrypto.org, and he’d parked his car in a little lot in front of a pair of tennis courts near a country club. He’d used the cover of the thick foliage on the edge of a golf course to get close to Babbitt’s property, and then he’d spent a cold, miserable hour under a magnolia tree in a neighbor’s yard surveilling the house.

  Court hadn’t been surprised to see Babbitt had a security detail at his place; he was, after all, president of a security firm. A black SUV with four men sat parked in front, and two more men wandered the acre of property.

  Court stayed well out of sight of any curious eyes, just squatting there against the tree trunk, watching the house.

  At six forty-five the garage door opened and Babbitt rolled down the drive in his silver Lexus. Court didn’t stick around to see where he went; instead he jogged back across a golf course to his car. He had just climbed behind the wheel when the Lexus passed in front of him on Connecticut, and he fell into an easy tail behind it.

  Babbitt drove straight towards the city, finally parking in a lot near the Capitol building’s reflecting pool. He climbed out and began walking towards the National Mall.

  Court was confused. He’d assumed the man would be heading to his office, which, Court knew, was in the Townsend Government Services building in Adams Morgan. But instead of this, Court now found himself scrambling to find a parking space and to begin a hasty one-man foot-follow operation.

  Court found a spot for his Escort just south of the mall and jogged back to where he had last seen Babbitt. Using his binoculars he caught a quick glimpse of his target at a distance as he walked west along Madison Drive. Court picked up his pace to catch up to him—the area was full of early-Monday-morning joggers, so Court didn’t stand out save for the fact he was wearing brown work boots—and slipped into a tailing position sixty-five yards behind. Soon Babbitt turned right into the Smithsonian Gardens Butterfly Habitat, a set of two footpaths that ran through a thick garden of various types of dense foliage.