Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel

by Mark Greaney

When Mayes finished with the play-by-play of the Easy Market shoot-out, Carmichael asked, “What do we know about his escape?”

  Mayes said, “Analysts monitoring traffic cams tracked a Ford Escort away from the scene. Lost it when it passed a neighborhood where the cams were down for repairs, but they found the vehicle this morning in a lot at Howard University.”

  “Did the cameras pick up anyone on foot leaving the area where they found the car?”

  “Negative.”

  “Dammit.” Once Denny realized the events of the previous evening would not lead to Gentry’s imminent capture, he switched to the fallout. “How is the media reporting it?”

  “Local PD has done a good job locking it down. You can expect them to squelch any ‘good Samaritan with a gun’ narrative since it happened in D.C. All guns are equally bad to them and, by extension, all shooters are equally bad. As long as the video doesn’t get out this will probably get reported as gang v gang violence.”

  “Good,” Denny said.

  “There is one problem. The reporter from the Post published a story about it.”

  “Catherine King?”

  “Not King. Andrew Shoal.”

  Carmichael said, “Is he looking to connect this to the others?”

  “He put an article online forty-five minutes ago. He ties this shooting to the Brandywine Street shooting, but he leaves out Babbitt. I think we might have dodged a bullet with that.”

  “Not at all. Catherine King is cooking something up. She’s probably scrambling all over, interviewing former intel officials, trying to get some kind of a guess about who is here in town that has us so interested.”

  Mayes said, “We can play it two ways. We can try to shut her down by saying all is well, or we can—”

  Carmichael interrupted, “Or we can pitch her a story that has enough elements of truth to where Gentry knows she is getting intel about the hunt. If we do that I think there is a fair chance Gentry might try to make contact with her. We use her as bait, put a team on her, and then we terminate Gentry when he makes his play.”

  Before they could go any further, Carmichael’s secretary came over the intercom, her voice agitated. “Sir, Director Hanley is here and he—”

  Carmichael’s door flew open and the large frame of Matt Hanley entered the office like a running back charging to the end zone. He stepped past Mayes without a glance and stared Carmichael down as he approached.

  Carmichael yawned. He looked down at the papers in front of him, not at the intrusion. “Unless you are here to offer up Ground Branch assets for the Violator operation, I really don’t have time for you today, Matt.”

  Hanley dropped down in the chair in front of Carmichael’s desk. “You will never, ever guess who showed up at the foot of my bed last night.”

  Carmichael took off his reading glasses and looked up.

  From behind Hanley, Mayes said, “Bullshit! Not possible! You were monitored by multiple teams.”

  “Gentry got past them. Even told me where they were and what kind of scopes they had on their rifles.”

  Carmichael tossed the papers in his hand across the desk. Another opportunity lost. “What did he want?”

  “Same as with Travers. He’s searching for answers. Court Gentry is a sad, lost guy, just looking for someone to tell him what he did wrong. CIA was his family, and he wants to know why his family doesn’t love him anymore.” Hanley added, “And he’s got the skills to kill a hundred people to exact revenge, if it comes to it.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him you want him dead for fucking up BACK BLAST.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s all I fucking know, isn’t it, Denny?”

  “Did you tell him about Ohlhauser?”

  Hanley didn’t hesitate. “Not a word.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Hanley said nothing.

  Carmichael growled. “You’re lying. Goddammit, Matt! Whose side are you on?”

  “When a trained killer is in my bedroom with a gun to my nuts, I am firmly on the side of my nuts.”

  Carmichael stared him down. Slowly he turned to Mayes. “We have anyone watching Ohlhauser?”

  “He’s a private citizen now.”

  “I don’t give a damn. Put contracted security on him. Keep them back, but close enough to report contact if Violator turns up.” Carmichael looked back to Hanley. “Gentry is lying. He knows what he did.”

  Hanley shook his head. A fierce look in his eyes. “Clearly he doesn’t. He just wants this to end.”

  Carmichael sniffed. “He can end this by shooting himself in the fucking mouth.”

  Hanley stood back up from the chair. “From our discussion last night I take it he would not be receptive to your terms of surrender.”

  “Whatever, we’ll get him, sooner or later. He’s killed half a dozen people so far here in the U.S.”

  Hanley looked Denny over a long moment. Then said, “And he’s just getting started.”

  The director of the Special Activities Division turned his back on the director of National Clandestine Service and headed out of the office, pushing by Jordan Mayes as he did so.

  —

  The sun pouring through the little window into Court’s basement room created a narrow shaft of bright light that shone on his black wound. Court looked at it for a moment, poked and prodded it with his finger, and finally decided that, although it looked nasty, it didn’t look any nastier than it had the day before.

  It was shortly after ten a.m. Court had only been up for a few minutes but already he drank instant coffee while he worked on his dressings. Over his right shoulder as he sat on the bed the TV broadcast CNN’s mid-morning news hour. Court was using it mostly for audio; he’d only glanced around once or twice to watch the latest action in Syria between the Islamic State and the Syrian government. Court wasn’t much interested in politics or international diplomacy, and he was no fan of war in most instances, but this was a war he could get behind, because he fervently wanted both sides in the conflict—despotic regime and nihilistic Jihadi alike—to kill the other.

  The news went to commercial. He was only halfway listening when the CNN anchor came back on air.

  “Welcome back. From the ongoing violence in Syria we are going to shift to a shocking display of violence at home. Two nights ago, the brazen murder of a Washington, D.C., businessman tied to the intelligence community has many wondering if an assassin is on the loose in the nation’s capital.

  “Joining us this morning from Miami is former FBI counterterrorism director and CNN contributor Greg Michelson, and from Washington, former CIA chief council and CNN contributor Maxwell Ohlhauser. Greg, I’ll start with you.”

  Court spun to the TV and dropped his ACE bandage onto the floor. It rolled out across the little room.

  A tan man with gray hair looked sternly into the camera on a split screen with the anchor. The anchor said, “Greg, two nights ago the killing of Washington private security executive Leland Babbitt has many inside the Beltway frightened. What are your sources telling you as far as who might be responsible?”

  Court ignored his wound now. He just sat there and waited for the talking head, ex of the FBI, to finish pontificating about the all-points bulletin out for the vicious assassin and the probability that the hit man was either by now somewhere back home in the Middle East or hiding in a rat hole in the city waiting for the coast to clear.

  Gentry drank his coffee and watched his television, wondering what made this ex-FBI guy such a shitty expert on the tradecraft of assassins.

  The screen switched to a heavy man with a round face, dark hair, and a red bow tie. Under his image was the caption Maxwell R. Ohlhauser, Former Chief Legal Council, CIA.

  “Now, Max, you were with the CIA, so you know what a dangerous job spy work is. But us
ually it isn’t so dangerous here at home, is it?”

  “Don, you are right about that. What we saw in Maryland two nights ago was no random act of violence.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Court said. The man on television had been part of the small group of men that had sanctioned his assassination. And now here he sat, big and proud and famous, as happy as a clam to talk to the world about the CIA.

  Court saw from the text on the screen that Ohlhauser was now a former employee of the Agency. He reached for his laptop, which lay on the bed nearby, and typed the man’s name in Google. In seconds he discovered that Maxwell Reid Ohlhauser was now working as a private attorney here in D.C., with an office on K Street. There was a link to his Twitter account, and Court clicked on this. The most recent tweet from Ohlhauser announced he was due to appear on both Fox and CNN this morning in Washington, then he was looking forward to eating oysters for lunch at Old Ebbitt Grill with a good friend from college.

  Well, that’s helpful, Court thought.

  He typed the restaurant into Google and pulled up a map to it. He found it just next to the White House, within walking distance to Ohlhauser’s office on K. Also, the lawyer had helpfully added a link to the Twitter account of his lunch date, so Court could look into this man and gauge his potential as a threat.

  Ninety seconds after first seeing Max Ohlhauser on the news, Court knew more than enough to find and fix his prey. He looked up from his laptop, a bewildered expression on his face. In his career Court had often hunted a single target for months before acquiring his location, and rarely had he discovered the exact place one of his targets would visit within days, or even weeks, of beginning the hunt. That Ohlhauser had been so accommodating to broadcast his day’s to-do list almost made Court wonder if he was being led into a trap. But after another ten minutes on Twitter he saw that the fifty-five-year-old attorney had a huge social media profile, and for as far back as Gentry checked, the man told those who followed him on Twitter many of his most mundane of daily activities.

  Court checked the time on the television. It was just after ten a.m., so he knew he had to get moving if he was to have any chance to get eyes on his new target by one. The restaurant was only a few minutes away by Metro, but Court couldn’t go there directly.

  First, he needed to go shopping.

  41

  Max Ohlhauser swallowed the remnants of his third martini and called for the bill, despite the sincere efforts of the Frenchman across the table to stop him. From as close as a few tables away it looked as if Ohlhauser’s guest was fighting for the check, but nothing could be further from the truth. No, it wasn’t that the Frenchman wanted to pay. Rather, it was that the Frenchman didn’t want to stop drinking just yet.

  The man sitting across the booth from Ohlhauser was a ruddy-faced ex-diplomat from Paris, here in D.C. this week for a conference at the Shoreham on nuclear disarmament. The two had gone to boarding school together in Switzerland, back in the late seventies when they were rebellious teenagers of wealthy parents; now they were both ex–government service types, living the last decade or two of their work lives raking in the big bucks, capitalizing on the access they’d cultivated while making peanuts employed in federal government jobs.

  Of the two men, Max was by far the most successful. He was an attorney, after all—he could have been making bank without twenty-something years in the CIA—but with such an eye-catching CV he garnered some of the biggest international corporate clients in the USA. He spent his days either suing on behalf of his clients or lobbying on behalf of his clients, depending on the corporate legal strategy chosen.

  The Frenchman was doing all right himself, but he’d been a foreign ministry official and an ambassador to Canada, so now he mostly served on corporate boards and spoke at universities. His speaker’s fee was big money, unless you compared it with what Ohlhauser raked in each day he lunched with a congressman on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and pitched an international treaty beneficial to one of his clients.

  It was a quarter after two in the afternoon now; Ohlhauser and his guest had downed two dozen of the Old Ebbitt Grill’s freshest Copps Island oysters and two orders of pan-roasted calf’s liver, along with martinis before, during, and after the meal. The Frenchman could outdrink the American by a wide margin, but it had been thus since they were sixteen-year-olds sneaking out of their dorm to down beers behind the horse stables at their Montreux boarding school. Even back then the Frenchman was known for having the constitution of a water buffalo, and Max Ohlhauser was known as the brainy nerd who liked to wear red bow ties.

  Much had changed in their lives in the forty years since, but some things had remained unaffected by time.

  Max paid the tab, but only after the Frenchman ordered one more round for himself with plans of taking it to the bar. The American would have stayed himself, but he had to get back to the office. After a round of good-byes and au revoirs, Ohlhauser stood with barely a wobble and shook the hand of his old friend. He then headed for the exit, taking his coat from the hostess with a wink as he did so.

  —

  A well-dressed businessman sitting at the bar paid for his beer, left the second glass half full, and headed for the door, just a few seconds behind the dark-haired man in the red bow tie. The businessman collected his raincoat and his umbrella from the hostess, and then he stepped out into the afternoon gray, slipping on a pair of sunglasses because he saw a few others wearing theirs, and popping open his umbrella because the misty afternoon warranted it.

  Pedestrian traffic was exceedingly heavy at the moment; in the District it was common for businesspeople and government workers to go to lunch around one, so now huge throngs of men and women in work attire walked along in all directions, returning to their offices. The White House was just a block to the west, and the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office building alone accommodated hundreds of government employees.

  The businessman turned to his right, in the same direction of Max Ohlhauser, and he began walking north.

  Court Gentry had enjoyed his time drinking draft beer in a nice restaurant, but now he was back on the street, where he felt more comfortable. He adjusted his umbrella from his left hand to his right hand, and he picked his way through the crowd. As he walked he glanced up in the direction of the fifty-five-year-old attorney from time to time, but he didn’t fix his eyes on him. There was some risk he could lose his target in the undulating mass of well-dressed humanity here on the sidewalk, but Court knew his main focus needed to be on the four men on the street who did not quite belong.

  He’d noticed them within his first five strides out the door of the Old Ebbitt. There were probably 250 people in view on the street, but the four guys revealed themselves in seconds as a tail on Ohlhauser.

  They did most things right, and that was their problem. Court knew better than almost anyone how to conduct a foot-follow, so he simply let his eyes travel to where his training told him he would position himself if he were tailing Ohlhauser, and there he saw the first pair of men. They were 150 feet or so back from their target, and their clothing was more rugged than the attire of the office workers around them. Court put them in their thirties—a prime age for this type of work.

  He saw their tag-team partners a few moments later. They were also in their thirties, and just like the other duo, these guys were wearing comfortable shoes and raincoats from REI instead of Nordstrom or Brooks Brothers like most everyone else out here. They walked along behind Ohlhauser, on the same side of the street, just ahead of Court by fifty feet or so. They didn’t eyeball the attorney, like the other pair; instead they kept their heads on swivels, scanning the crowd around them.

  Court knew they were looking for him, but he knew they would never find him.

  Court’s suit and his glasses and his umbrella and the vague form of his body revealed through his black raincoat helped disguise him, but that wasn’t the most
important thing. No, Court walked with purpose, like he was a guy on his way back to work like most everyone else out here; like he belonged on this sidewalk and he wasn’t doing anything shady or wrong.

  The four watchers could look in this crowd all they wanted. Until Court actually made a move on Max Ohlhauser, they’d never spot him.

  Court decided quickly that these four men weren’t Delta, or whatever the hell the JSOC army-side special mission unit was called now. Delta was slicker and smarter than these four. And these guys sure as hell weren’t SAD Ground Branch. Hanley had said SAD was not involved in the hunt for him, and although Court didn’t know for certain if that was true, he did know SAD men working a foot-follow wouldn’t be doing it while wearing 5.11 Herringbone Covert Shirts under their raincoats. It was a good brand, and low-profile enough to fool civilians, but Court knew a trained operator could ID the maker and the style, and he would know that the wearer of the gear would be in the same game as himself.

  Court decided these guys were contractors, no doubt working for the CIA, no doubt involved in the Violator hunt, and no doubt armed. But they wouldn’t work as shooters themselves, Court imagined. Instead they had been brought in to tail Ohlhauser, to use him as a lure. There would be shooters close by, and ready to swoop in, if this team spotted their target.

  Court took a deep breath to center himself, then he picked up the pace, and began closing on his target.

  He stepped up to the first major intersection since beginning his tail on Ohlhauser, and here, as he continued walking, he deftly moved his head to the right while turning his umbrella in a leftward angle that covered his face from the eastward-facing traffic camera there. When he got to the end of the street he quickly turned his head to the left and swiveled his umbrella a little to the right to cover himself from the northbound lane camera. He’d have to do this for the duration of his walk, and all the while keep his body language nonchalant and his eyes on Ohlhauser’s tail.

  Court continued closing on his target. He moved in stride with two women now, walking back to their jobs after lunch, and he positioned his umbrella over one of them without her even noticing. While doing this he passed the two followers, looking like he was with the two female office workers. The men in the REI jackets looked right through him, as he knew they would. When they turned to check their six, Court stepped away from the women and skillfully bladed his body to cut through a thick cluster of strolling businesspeople, and in seconds he was out of view from the CIA contractors.