Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel

by Mark Greaney

  He went back through the turnstile and walked a few feet, but there Max Ohlhauser appeared out of the crowd in front of him, along with four D.C. Metro police officers. The faces of the policemen did not register with Court at first. He just saw Max, the uniforms, and he started to turn away, hoping the fact he’d shed his jacket and his coat might disguise him to Ohlhauser.

  But that had been too much to hope for.

  “There! That’s him!”

  All four cops reached for their weapons, right in the middle of the crowded mezzanine of a subway station.

  Court knew he could run, though his chances for escape weren’t particularly good. There were at least eight cops in the vicinity and they all seemed to be hunting for him. Running would have long odds, although he’d certainly wiggled his way out of tighter spots than this. But, Court told himself, if he tried to make a break for it now, there was a chance one of these cops would open fire, just like they had done the other night, and there was no way they wouldn’t hit innocents here in the busy metro station.

  Reluctantly, Court raised his hands. Surely they wouldn’t shoot him in cold blood with his hands up, he told himself.

  Quickly all four cops stepped up to him, their guns still drawn, and they turned him around and walked him to a wall. They kicked his legs apart, pushed him till his hands slapped high on the wall.

  Two men began frisking Court while the other two stood there, guns still drawn and pointed close at the back of his head. Passing commuters stopped to look, but only for a moment. This was a tight station and the mezzanine was narrow here. As the crowd backed up people coming up the escalators began pushing forward, and this kept the traffic moving, more or less.

  The cops did not say a word, but Max Ohlhauser would not shut up. He told the police about how he was kidnapped and about the knife and the gun, and how he used to work for the government, though neglected to mention what agency. He told the four men, over and over in half a dozen different ways, that Court was some sort of a former Special Forces commando who was now a criminal, and he’d killed a lot of people, some of them this week here in the area. Court wondered if the big middle-aged lawyer was going to hyperventilate during his retelling of the events of the past fifteen minutes.

  The cops for their part seemed oddly silent and unimpressed with this information, which frustrated Ohlhauser. They just continued their frisk. Court felt several hands upon him as his face was pressed hard into the wall. He had no wallet, only a phone, a cash-loaded credit card, a paper Metro card, and a thick wad of tens and twenties. When the cops finished frisking him and determined this for themselves, one of them said, “ID?”

  Court looked back over his shoulder at the man. For the first time he noticed the man’s darkish skin. He wasn’t black; not Hispanic, either. Court said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Identification?” He spoke with a noticeable accent, but Court couldn’t place it.

  Behind the cops Ohlhauser said, “His name is Gentry. Courtland Gentry.”

  A couple of the cops looked at each other, then the other two handcuffed their prisoner. While they struggled to get the cuffs on, Court turned his head back and forth, looking back over both shoulders at the four officers.

  Quickly he sensed his troubles were even greater than he’d realized.

  All police everywhere are trained to interact with suspects using a tactic called contact and cover. One cop steps up to contact distance with the subject, converses with him, then frisks and handcuffs him if the decision is made to do so. The other officer remains far enough away to provide cover if things go bad for the contact man.

  But these cops apparently didn’t get the same training as every other police officer Court had ever dealt with. All four of them were close enough to touch Court—two of them were touching him, at the same time.

  No. This wasn’t right at all. These assholes didn’t act like cops.

  They spun Court around and started walking him to a nearby elevator that went from the mezzanine up to street level. This, Court knew, would let them avoid passing the police officers with the dog back by the escalators. He didn’t know if the other cops were legit or not, but he was by now highly suspicious that these four guys were foreign operators, because in addition to their poor knowledge of police work, they all had olive complexions, and they had barely said a word.

  It made Court think back to the other night on the overpass, when a large group of men in police uniforms tried to gun him down without any warning, and nearly succeeded.

  Max walked along with the group now, as if Court was a trophy he wasn’t ready to relinquish yet, and he stood there while Court and his captors waited for the elevator to come down from the street. Max pulled his phone out and tried to get a signal here, but he was having trouble doing so. Court suspected that, as soon as he made it up to street level, Max would be calling Carmichael or Mayes or someone else high up at CIA to let them know he had personally bagged the Gray Man.

  The son of a bitch would probably be on CNN within the hour.

  Court looked away from Ohlhauser and towards the uniformed man closest to him. His name tag read Stern, and his badge number was 99782. Court said, “Officer Stern, what’s your badge number?”

  The officer didn’t hesitate, and he did not look down at his badge. In an accented voice he said, “Nine, nine, seven, eight, two.”

  Court smiled at him. “You must have stayed up all night to remember that.”

  Stern said nothing else.

  The door opened and the cops pushed Court in, and the quiet men in uniform followed. Ohlhauser started to enter himself, but one of the cops held a hand up, keeping him out.

  Max was confused. “Wait. I want to come, too. You have to be careful with this man. As I said, he is—”

  “No. You stay.”

  Ohlhauser put his own hand out, holding the elevator door open. “Look, Officer Stern. This is a delicate situation. My former Agency is very interested in this man. They will be sending people—”

  Behind Max Ohlhauser, three Transit Police officers appeared on the mezzanine. Their uniforms were a solid dark blue, in contrast with the cops in the elevator, who wore light blue tunics and dark blue pants.

  The one female transit cop called out, “What you boys got?” The other two Transit Police shepherded the few straggling passersby along, clearing out the area in just a few seconds.

  Max Ohlhauser, clearly still afraid the D.C. Metro cops in the elevator were going to abscond with his prisoner, put his foot in the door to keep it from closing.

  After a look to his colleagues, one of the men in the D.C. Metro uniforms stepped out of the elevator and walked towards the transit cops. As he closed on them Court heard him speak. His voice was accented, but less so than that of the man with the Stern badge.

  He said, “A man with a gun. We are taking him to station now. Everything is under control.”

  Ohlhauser took the opportunity to step into the elevator. Two cops were behind Gentry holding him by his arms, and one more was on his right, so Max stood to Gentry’s left.

  Court leaned over to him and spoke softly in his ear. “You don’t want to be in here. These guys aren’t cops.”

  Ohlhauser spoke back without whispering. “Don’t be ridiculous. You asked the officer’s badge number and he told you.”

  Outside the Transit Police continued speaking with the D.C. Metro cop. Court couldn’t hear the conversation, but he could see a look of puzzlement on the face of one of the men wearing dark blue.

  To Max he asked, “How long does it take you to remember a five-digit number?”

  Another transit cop was turning suspicious. Court could see him cock his head and challenge something the D.C. Metro cop said.

  Ohlhauser, also looking out at the exchange in the subway station, said, “If it doesn’t prove anything that he knows his badge number
, why did you get him to tell it to you in the first place?”

  Court rolled his head around slowly and brought his shoulders back, stretching the muscles in his neck and in his bound arms. He replied, less softly now. “Because I wanted to hear his accent before I killed him.”

  Ohlhauser turned to look at Court and, at that same moment, the dark man on the mezzanine wearing the D.C. Metro police uniform reached for the gun on his belt.

  43

  The transit cops had been suspicious of the man in the Metro police uniform, but not suspicious enough for their own good. They clearly did not think he posed a threat to them, because they were all slow to draw their weapons.

  Court had the fastest reaction time out of anyone in the subway station. Before the foreign operator wearing the Metro PD uniform had even cleared leather with his handgun, Court slammed his head back hard into the nose of one of the men standing just behind him, then he spun around and jabbed the “close door” button with the index finger of his cuffed right hand. Facing the three armed men in the elevator, he saw the man in the middle had dropped to the floor after taking the back of Court’s hard head to his face. His hands covered his nose and mouth, and blood dripped through his fingers.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Court saw Max Ohlhauser drop to the floor himself, and then crawl out of the elevator to get away from the fight. But just as he did so, echoing bangs of pistol fire erupted in the metro station.

  Court brought his right leg up, knee to his chest, and then he snapped out a vicious front kick into the face of the man by the wall on his left. This struck the man in the nose, and blood erupted from his face but he did not fall to the floor. He was, however, out of the fight, at least for the moment, so Court turned his attention to the man on the right. This fake cop had his gun out of its holster and high in the draw stroke, so Court sent a tight roundhouse kick from left to right, through the man’s gun hand, sending the Glock pistol banging against the wall and falling to the floor of the elevator. He then rushed forward with his arms still secured behind his back, pivoted ninety degrees as he charged, lowered his body, and fired a shoulder into the man’s chest, driving him hard against the wall. The fake cop wore a Kevlar vest, but the impact on both sides of his body as he was slammed into from the front and then, in turn, slammed back against the wall of the elevator stunned him soundly, and his legs gave out. He slid down to the floor and settled on his back.

  The elevator door closed and the car began ascending.

  The foreign operator on the floor in the middle of the elevator tried to get back up and draw his gun. Court kneed the pistol out of his hand, then Court spun behind the man, turned his back to him, and wrapped his handcuffs around the man’s neck. He began to strangle him with the metal, shaking the man left and right to keep him off balance.

  While this was going on, the operator on the far wall stood back up and fired a fist out, and it caught Court right above his gunshot wound on his right side. The punch hurt his ribs, but he knew if it had been two inches lower it would have sent him into jolting agony, and he might have been out of the fight.

  Court spun away from a second punch, let go of the man he’d been choking out, then ducked down and rammed the punching man into the wall, like a bull slamming into a bullfighter. After regaining his footing from this dive, he continued using his feet, kicking the man in the groin, the chest, and finally the face as the man slid down in the corner of the elevator. Once he was on the ground fully Court used the heel of his shoe to stomp the man’s face until he was completely unresponsive.

  All three uniformed men were down—unconscious or dead, Court neither knew nor cared which. He knelt quickly, wincing with the pain in his ribs as he did so, and he turned around, away from the prostrate form of one of the fake cops. Reaching behind him, he fumbled with the man’s utility belt. He felt his way around for a moment, then unhooked the handcuff key from a key ring.

  Uncuffing himself was easy; he’d practiced unlocking handcuffs behind his back thousands of times, and had even done it in the field twice.

  Court dropped the cuffs onto the still form of one of the men and scooped up a fully loaded Glock 17. This he shoved into his waistband, then he untucked his shirt and let it hang over the butt of the gun. He took his mobile phone, credit card, and cash from the front pocket of the man with the badge that read Stern, and in the man’s pocket he felt something else that he recognized immediately. It was a silencer for a pistol. He pulled it out and dropped it into his own pocket, as well.

  Just then the elevator jolted to a stop and the door opened, sending gray light and the smell of fresh rain into the elevator.

  An elderly man stood there, and in front of him, his elderly wife sat in her wheelchair. They had called the elevator up, apparently oblivious to the throngs of panicked commuters fleeing the station from the escalators a half block away.

  Court looked at the couple as he stood up fully. At his feet lay three bloodied, still forms of men in police uniforms, their arms and legs intertwined.

  Smears of bloody handprints were on the walls.

  Court shrugged. Said, “This isn’t as bad as it looks.” Then he took off at a brisk pace, moving past them without another glance.

  Fifty yards to his left, Dakota, Harley, and three other JSOC men ran down the five-story-high escalator, guns drawn.

  —

  Court used Uber, an app on his mobile phone, to call a private car to pick him up at an address just six blocks from Dupont Circle. A Nissan Altima arrived in less than a minute, driven by a young Pakistani driver. Court asked the man to take him to a shopping center far north of his room in the Mayberrys’ basement, which meant he’d have an hour-long walk this afternoon, but at least he’d be far away from the scene of the action.

  As he rode in the back of the Altima Court wondered if Ohlhauser had made it out of the subway station with his life. The ex–CIA lawyer had obviously decided to put his faith in the odds of the three transit cops against the one foreign operator masquerading as a D.C. police officer. Court figured that, to Ohlhauser anyway, those odds looked better than taking his chances in the elevator, where one handcuffed man who had just kidnapped him was up against three armed foreign operators.

  Court had no way of knowing for sure, but he had a feeling Max Ohlhauser had made the wrong call and was now lying dead in Dupont Circle station.

  44

  The action in the Metro had Denny in constant telephone contact with Suzanne Brewer in the TOC during the afternoon as the body count grew and the fragmented reports from Brewer’s contacts at the scene radioed in bits of intel. But as soon as it became clear Gentry had managed to survive and escape the area, Denny asked Brewer to give him a few minutes to attend to other pressing matters.

  He picked up his phone and dialed Kaz’s number.

  Murquin al-Kazaz seemed to be expecting the call, because he answered almost immediately.

  “Talk,” Carmichael demanded.

  Kaz said, “Yes, I will get right to it. Violator escaped. One of my men died from gunshot wounds, but he managed to make it up to the surface before he bled to death. His body was recovered from the scene before he was compromised. Three more of my men were injured. Two will never work again.”

  Carmichael felt a tightening in his chest. Not for the fate of the men; rather for the fate of the OPSEC of his operation. “Captured?”

  “No. Another group of my officers arrived in time to make it out of the area of operations with the wounded and dying before they were discovered by authorities.”

  Carmichael sighed into the phone. “That’s something.”

  Kaz moved on from the talk of his men. “What can you do to make sure the recordings from the camera feeds at the station are lost or destroyed?”

  Carmichael replied, “Municipal government mismanagement has seen to that. Our tactical operations center confirmed t
he cameras on the platforms were operational, as was the camera on the escalators going up and down from street level, but both cameras on the mezzanine level of the station were out of service.”

  Kaz said, “So Violator was seen leaving the train with Ohlhauser and going up to the mezzanine, but the incident itself was not recorded?”

  “Correct. There may be questions about the D.C. police officers seen on camera entering the station, but as the elevator wasn’t covered with CCTV, there is an explanation for their absence from the scene.”

  The two men spoke for several minutes, most of it consisting of Kaz relaying the after-action report of the least wounded of the three men beaten by Gentry in the elevator car.

  As soon as Kaz finished the play-by-play, Carmichael asked another question, though he wasn’t sure if he would get an honest response. “And Ohlhauser? Who killed him? Your men, Gentry, or was he caught in the cross fire?”

  “The surviving members of my team did not see him killed and the only man on the mezzanine when Ohlhauser was shot said nothing before he bled to death in the back of an SUV. Ohlhauser was alive when the doors to the elevator closed. I gave my men no orders to kill him, so I can only assume he was simply caught in the cross fire.”

  Carmichael wasn’t as disappointed with Ohlhauser’s death as he might have been, because he saw an angle in it. A way he could leverage it to fit the narrative he wanted put out for all to see.

  But he was worried about Kaz. As dangerous as it was for Carmichael to sanction a proxy force of Saudi Arabian gunmen in the capital city of the United States of America, he continued to see their value. While he had JSOC operators and dozens of CIA contractors hunting Violator, only Kaz’s men had managed to wound him, and only Kaz’s men had managed to get him in handcuffs. The fact that outside forces interrupted his killing was frustrating to Denny, but he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on the Saudi operators.