Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel

by Mark Greaney

  The Israeli asset had not planned on using his weapon for either purpose, but now he felt both comforted to know he had a gun, and terrified to know the man sitting in a room on the other end of the villa had an identical weapon.

  As afraid as Hawthorn was now, he did take solace in his belief that he had some time to come up with a plan to get himself out of this mess.

  And then the football match began. One of the Serbs had mentioned it earlier in the evening; apparently all work would stop so the twenty or so Balkan men on the property could enjoy the match on the television in the living room; minus those men needed to protect the property, the Serbs promised.

  At that moment Hawthorn knew the situation had just changed. Would the other spy come for him, knowing the entire force around them would be distracted for two hours or more?

  Shortly before the match began, both Hawthorn and the other spy made excuses to return to their rooms for the evening. They’d also made eye contact at that time, as if to say to each other, “Let’s do this.”

  As soon as the match kicked off and the noise from downstairs rocked the villa, Hawthorn told himself he would not sit here on his bed and wait to be murdered.

  If he was going to act, he was going to act now.

  He screwed the silencer into the CZ pistol slowly, steeling his body and his mind for what was to come. He was no assassin. Yes, he’d had training in weapons and hand-to-hand action, but that was long ago and he’d not been particularly good at it.

  He dressed in the darkest clothing he had, he slipped the weapon into the small of his back, under his shirt, and then he left his room.

  It was a unique feature of the villa that all the second-floor bedrooms had windows that looked out on the grounds. For this reason there was no inside access from one room to another, but rather two hallways that cut the second floor into sections, and each hallway led to outdoor walkways that wrapped around the second floor.

  The walkways, one to the south and one to the north, each had a pair of guards walking back and forth the length of them. Hawthorn knew the only way to get to the room on the far side of the villa without encountering these sentries was to climb to the tile roof and move carefully all the way to the other end.

  He stepped outside his room, climbed onto the roof, and almost fell immediately. But when he had his footing he began moving slowly, up and over on his hands and knees. It was slow going; it took him ten minutes to cover one third of the distance.

  He checked his watch and realized his lack of progress, and he began to panic. He knew the match would last at least another hour, but at half time some of the men might return to their rooms to check their e-mails or attend to other things. He hadn’t thought about half time till he’d foolishly climbed onto the roof and committed himself, and now his heart pounded with terror. This realization that he did not have as much time as he thought he did made him rush now; he rose higher, and he moved faster.

  A weakened tile cracked loudly, broke free, and then began sliding along the roof down towards the northern outdoor walkway.

  Hawthorn went flat and prayed.

  He heard the two guards below him, and he lifted his head and leaned out a little to see. Two Serbs stood on the walkway. Clearly they had heard the noise, but they only looked around in confusion.

  He wanted to give them time to move on, but he didn’t think he had the time to spare. It occurred to him that if he killed the men, he could make better time to his target, because he would be able to move along the walkway instead of the roof.

  He tried to think of another alternative, but he came up with nothing else.

  The realization that he was going to shoot these two guards came slowly, but it did come. He lay flat on the roof, a gun in his hand, trying his best to justify the actions he was about to take. They were Serbian gangsters, working with al Qaeda to equip them with weapons.

  Yes, he could do this.

  He steeled himself to accept the necessity of his actions.

  He rose a little, pointed the pistol at the first man, and waited for the crowd two levels below him to roar again.

  A bad call from the referee caused a dozen men to shout at the television.

  Hawthorn fired once, striking the first guard in the back of the head. The flash of light from the gunshot shocked the Mossad asset, but he recovered quickly, shifted his aim to the second man, and fired again. The second shot came right before the shouts below died down.

  Both Serbs lay dead on the walkway, but Hawthorn worried they could be seen by someone in the back garden, or even on the hillside beyond. He slipped the gun, its barrel scorching hot, into the small of his back, and then he slid down, over the side of the roof, dropping down the rest of the way.

  It took all his strength to drag the men and their guns inside. He pulled, then pushed, and even rolled them, one at a time, into a closet in the hallway on the second floor. While he was doing this, the noises from the living room came up an open stairwell. It sounded like the men below were just feet away, and their voices caused Hawthorn to have to fight the urge to run.

  He did what he could to push the fear out of his mind. By the time he finished stashing the bodies, the noise had abated, and he relaxed a little.

  The Israeli asset moved down the walkway now, towards his target’s room. He knew he’d have to move quickly, and after the act, he could not return. No, he would continue on downstairs, and make his way out the front gate, hopeful the guards there would be distracted by the match.

  He entered the hallway off the walkway, and he stepped up to his target’s door. With his hand on the latch he hesitated, tried to get control of his heart before it hammered its way out of his chest.

  Hawthorn opened the door slowly. There, on the bed just five meters away, the Arab spy saw him. Hawthorn checked the man’s hands and saw nothing but a silver pen in his right hand, and some papers in his left.

  The papers fell to the floor.

  Hawthorn braced himself to kill again, and he raised his weapon, hoping like hell this room was far removed enough from the main floor so no one would hear.

  He locked his arm to fire, aiming for the man’s chest.

  No words were spoken.

  And then, just ahead and on his left, movement through the open window. A black form. Hawthorn thought it too small to be a person at first, but the form grew as it entered, sailing through the air, and he watched as a man landed silently and adroitly on both feet. A gymnast, but a gymnast in black, his face masked.

  A gymnast with a gun. He held a black pistol in his hand, a long suppressor protruding from the end of it.

  Hawthorn felt relief wash over him. The Mossad had sent a killer, after all. A real killer, here to save him. Manny Aurbach had promised to keep Hawthorn safe, and the old man had come through. Manny had cut too close for comfort, certainly, but—

  Hawthorn saw the armed man raise his gun—not at the Arab spy by the bed, but at Hawthorn himself.

  No!

  “Istanna!” Wait!

  The Israeli asset never felt the bullet that killed him.

  69

  Present Day

  Catherine King spoke in soft tones to convey her sympathy to the man on the other end of the phone. “The man you rescued was a spy, but he worked for a Middle Eastern intelligence agency. After all this time the Israelis still aren’t sure which one. He’d also infiltrated al Qaeda—the core AQ in Pakistan. The Mossad thinks his job was to discover the identity of the Israeli plant in al Qaeda. He’d done this somehow, and then he lured Hawthorn to Italy to murder him. You happened to show up when Hawthorn realized he’d been compromised. It was kill or be killed, so Hawthorn decided to act.”

  The pain his Court’s stomach moved to his back, to his chest. He’d heaved early in Catherine’s story, as the details began to fit his reminiscence, but with everything turned upsi
de down.

  With Court as the villain.

  Now his head hung between his knees. His lips were rimmed with vomit.

  Catherine said, “Listen carefully to me. It was an honest mistake you made. You saw what you expected to see. Confirmation bias, they call it. An assassination attempt. You reasonably assumed the assassin was the man you came to stop, and the would-be victim was the man you came to rescue.”

  Court spoke in a near whisper. “But . . . but I got PID.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Positive ID. I saw his picture. I identified him before I moved on the villa.”

  “I’m sorry, Six. You must have been mistaken. It’s confirmed by the head of the Mossad. He told Alvey personally that Hawthorn was shot to death in Trieste six years ago while at a Serbian safe house for a meeting of senior al Qaeda operatives from Iraq and Pakistan.”

  “No,” Court said, but his voice held no conviction.

  “Why is it you can’t believe?”

  “Because I don’t make mistakes.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Not when you face the consequences I face.”

  Catherine said, “This was six years ago. You can’t blame yourself.”

  Court shouted into the phone. “Of course I can! The man I rescued hugged me after I got him out of there. He must have known I was American. An infidel assassin. He must have known I’d fucked it all up. He hugged me anyway. He was so relieved that I’d failed so miserably.”

  Catherine did not know what to say. After a time, though, she just said, “I am sorry, Six. But I have to catch my flight. Please tell me we can talk when I get back home. I won’t write about any of this, not until we talk. I promise you.”

  “Okay.” Court’s voice was barely audible. “Catch you later.”

  He hung up the phone and put it back in his pack.

  Suddenly every last vestige of energy melted away from him. He had nothing left to give.

  He no longer cared.

  He could hear Maurice’s voice in this little room. Gravelly from chain-smoking and the wear of middle age, yet powerful and commanding.

  What would Maurice say now, seeing his student broken and defeated, sitting on the floor?

  Court knew. Maurice had said one line to him when Court found himself wallowing in his own misery and unable to complete his objective.

  “Suck it up or you’ll fuck it up.”

  Court didn’t know if he could suck it up this time. He didn’t think he could go on.

  He didn’t hear the truck pull up, but he should have. He had been trained to remain in condition yellow, always on guard. The very idea he could be sitting in a dark and silent location and not hear a truck pull up a gravel drive to within twenty-five yards of his position was impossible to fathom. And yet it happened.

  The trailer brightened with the beams of a vehicle’s headlights. He’d been compromised. He had failed again.

  He only heard the sound of a car door shutting.

  Court decided then and there that he had no more fight in him. He could shoot the men outside the trailer, but why? None of these static security guys who would be converging on him right now were responsible for the murder of the most successful deep-penetration agent ever to infiltrate al Qaeda.

  These guys are blameless, Court thought. Unlike him.

  He thought about standing, walking out the door, and pointing his gun at the armed guards—suicide by security goon—but he didn’t feel like getting up. No. He’d stay right here, here in the little room where it all started so many years ago.

  Court decided this would be the perfect place to end the miserable saga that was his life.

  He pulled the Glock from his bag, opened his mouth, and jammed the muzzle in, biting it with his teeth. Tears streamed down his face, wet his lips, and carried on down the barrel of his gun.

  He had no fear of dying; he never had. His fear had always been failure.

  And now he saw his failure in Trieste as the realization of his greatest fear.

  He moved his thumb inside the trigger guard and placed it on the trigger. Took a short sharp breath and began to squeeze his hand.

  “I sure hope you don’t expect me to mop up that mess you’re about to make.”

  The voice came from the doorway. Court spun the pistol around quickly and pointed it there, a reaction to a surprise threat, an instinctive move, nothing more.

  Zack Hightower stood in the doorway silhouetted by the headlights. His hands were empty. He grinned. “Make up your mind, bro. You gonna shoot you, or are you gonna shoot me?”

  Court quickly wiped wetness from his face with his forearm. He lowered the gun. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hanley sent me.”

  “Who is with you?”

  “All by my lonesome. Matt wants a word.”

  Court shook his head. “No need. I know everything now. I killed the wrong man.”

  Zack shrugged. “Yeah. I kinda told you that, didn’t I?” He moved into the trailer and sat down across from Court, placing his back against the wall. He looked around in the little room. The lights from the truck outside reflected off the walls, though it was still dim.

  Court said, “I was so sure of my intel, Zack.”

  Another shrug from the big man with the silvery blond hair. “Fuckin’ towelheads. They all look alike to me, too. Hey, Six, you really thinking about eating a bullet? That’s not your style.”

  Court found himself embarrassed. “It wasn’t my first choice, but my masterful plan to prove I did nothing wrong went tits-up the moment I found out I did something wrong. I’m not going to be taken alive, and I don’t much feel like running anymore. Not sure where that leaves me.”

  “Looks like it leaves you sitting on your ass in a moldy mobile home with puke on your face and a gun in your mouth.”

  Court said, “Still telling it like it is, I see.”

  “You want some advice?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll want to angle that pistol up to about sixty-five degrees. Roof of the mouth. You’ll hit the brain stem that way. I won’t have to watch you flop around like an idiot for more than a second or two.”

  Court closed his eyes. Despite himself, he chuckled. Gallows humor. “With friends like you, Zack.”

  “On the other hand,” Hightower said, “I came a long ass way. Would it kill you to talk to Hanley on the sat phone for two minutes? If you do that for me, I promise I won’t get in the way of your little art project.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, amigo. I do know my orders are to put you two in touch, and I know Hanley will kick my dick if I don’t deliver.”

  “I thought you were Denny’s bitch.”

  “Hanley’s a smart guy. He’s a brasshole, everybody at Langley is, but he’s one of the better ones. Give him a couple of minutes.”

  Court sighed and held his hand out.

  Zack took an Iridium Extreme sat phone unit from the side pocket of his cargo pants, pulled out a pair of reading glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt, and put them on. He fumbled with his eyeglasses as he dialed the unit.

  Court looked at him. “Need some help with that, Dad?”

  “Fuck you, kid. Can’t see shit up close without these but I can still shoot the right nut off a gnat at fifty paces.” Zack said it without looking up from the phone, then his voice rose in both volume and sophistication. “Good evening, Director Hanley. I have Six in pocket. Passing you to him now, sir.”

  Hightower tossed the phone across the width of the trailer.

  Court caught the phone and brought it to his ear.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  Matt Hanley said, “You were fixated on AAP from the start. I had to dig around to see what
the hell it was, but when I found out about the old building at Harvey Point, I sent Hightower to check it out. I’ve also got a guy shadowing Catherine King at Heathrow. She was in comms with you, which means I know that you know about BACK BLAST.”

  “I do.”

  “And at this point, I figure I know what you are thinking about doing.”

  Court said nothing. He still held his Glock in his right hand.

  Hanley continued, “Right now it feels like the ground underneath your feet isn’t solid anymore. Like everything you thought you were turned out to be a lie.”

  Court closed his eyes.

  Hanley said, “Give me a second, and I might be able to give you something to stand on. Something to believe in.”

  “Is this a Scientology pitch?”

  Hanley ignored the joke. “Court, about two hours ago Jordan Mayes was murdered on the George Washington Parkway.”

  Court opened his eyes quickly, then leaned his head back against the trailer wall. “I didn’t fucking do it!”

  “Relax, I know you didn’t. Carmichael had it done. But he’s already pinned it on you. You need to know that.”

  “Whatever,” Court said, defeat obvious in his voice.

  “I need your help. I can’t do anything within the confines of the Agency, because if this goes public it will burn the Agency to the ground.”

  “And you think I give a shit?”

  “Of course you do. You won’t let Denny beat you, and if you eat a damn bullet right now you are handing him a golden ticket to sweep the past week under the rug and move on. I don’t care about your motivation. Don’t do it because you like yourself. Blame yourself for your mistake in Italy, just like everybody else does. But do it because you hate Denny Carmichael.”

  “Do what?”

  “You and Zack, with me running you from distance. I’m talking about getting the band back together for one quick op.”