Court waited for some response, but when nothing came, he shrugged. “How much cash you carrying?”
They looked to each other briefly, then back up.
Court sniffed. “How ’bout that? I’m mugging you. The irony, right?”
Court reached out, felt through the clothing worn by the kid with the hole in his foot, and pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his front pocket. The boy with the wounded arm extended a shaking hand holding a wad of crumpled one-dollar bills, and Court stuffed them into the pocket of his jeans.
He then grabbed the first boy’s injured foot and looked at the bloody hole in the top of his white tennis shoe. In a soft voice he said, “That looks worse than it is, so maybe you shouldn’t look at it.” He turned to the kid with the twisted arm and helped him back up to his feet. “You’re okay. That will hurt a few days, tops. Less if you ice it. It’s your job to help him. Take him to a hospital. When you get there tell the cops some dickhead was playing with his gun and it went off. They’ll hassle you, but if you stick with your story, eventually they’ll buy it and move on.”
Both boys nodded slowly.
Then both Court’s face and his voice darkened. “But if you tell them about me, give them a description, any information at all… I’ll come back here, I’ll find out whatever it is in this world that you love… and I will kill it. Are we clear?”
The boys nodded again, much faster this time.
“Good night.”
The standing boy hefted the wounded boy, and together they hobbled off into the evening. Gentry noticed they went in a different direction from their boss, and he took that as a positive sign.
But he also noted no one had come out of any of the homes nearby to investigate the gunshot, and this depressed him a little.
Court had been away from the United States for five years. It occurred to him now that this America didn’t feel much different than some of the more dangerous third-world countries he’d operated in. He’d always thought of the U.S. as home, as a sanctuary, as his safe place.
But that was fantasy. He knew the truth was just the opposite. This was Indian country. He was a wanted man here. There existed danger and menace at every turn.
After a moment, Court Gentry walked on, bundling his jacket around him to ward off the cold fog.
4
CIA headquarters in Langley, an unincorporated neighborhood in the city of McLean, Virginia, was open twenty-four hours a day, but the executive offices on the seventh floor of the Old Headquarters Building were normally deathly quiet at ten p.m. on a Saturday night. This evening, however, lights began flashing back on just before ten, and by ten thirty an entire office suite was occupied by nearly two dozen executives, assistants, communications specialists, and other support staff.
The Eurocopter from Maryland landed in the parking lot minutes later, and Jordan Mayes was there waiting for it in front of the large amphitheater known as the bubble, shielding his white hair from a light rainfall with a plastic file folder. Denny Carmichael climbed out of the aircraft surrounded by his four security men, but DeRenzi and company soon took up positions just behind their charge so Mayes could shoulder up to his boss while they all walked for the safety of the Old Headquarters Building.
As soon as they were inside and Mayes could be heard over the helicopter, he updated his superior. “Here’s where we stand. FAST team reports no joy on board the cargo ship, but they found a bedroll and some personal items in a recess aft of the engine room. They definitely had a stowaway on board.”
“How did he get off?”
“A supply launch left the boat two minutes before the marines boarded. Figure Gentry was on it.”
Denny knew they wouldn’t catch Gentry sound asleep in his cot. “He’s in the wind. Who do you have assembled here?”
“The JSOC liaison, the NSA liaison, the NGA liaison, the DS&T guy read in on Violator, and the communications officer on the task force. We’ll have eight in the meeting in total.”
Denny kept walking, but said, “There are only seven in the Violator Working Group.”
“I’ve asked Suzanne Brewer of Programs and Plans to join us.”
The two CIA execs and DeRenzi all had their IDs scanned, and then they entered the elevator, leaving three of the bodyguards behind. Carmichael’s clipped voice showed his displeasure. “What does Brewer have to do with this?”
“Among her other duties, she has been red-celling a lone-wolf attack on domestic CIA infrastructure for over a year. She’s got the background of a good targeting officer, and she knows how to prevent an attack by a determined enemy. If Gentry is here, and if he’s got CIA in his sights, Suzanne might prove useful.”
“She doesn’t know a damn thing about the problem at hand. Gentry isn’t some raghead with an AK taking potshots at cars at the south gate, for God’s sake.”
“Brewer is as sharp a counterterror mind as we have. She’s spent a decade on risk mitigation involving Agency facilities and personnel overseas, and she’s developed protocols for dealing with sophisticated homegrown terror hazards as well as high-level foreign actors who might target Agency assets.”
“I don’t like bringing outsiders into the fold.”
“Think about it, Denny. We’re going to have to beef up your security protocols, and we’ll be putting assets on Gentry’s known associates in the city. There is no way that can happen without Brewer learning about it. She’s an outsider now, but we bring her in and give her password access to the Working Group, and she’ll become an ally instead of an impediment.”
“And when she learns we don’t want Gentry alive?”
Mayes didn’t hesitate. “Operational expediencies won’t trouble her. If you tell her this target needs to die, she’ll make it happen.”
The elevator arrived on the seventh floor. Mayes reached out and took Denny by the arm before he left the car. He spoke softly to him. “I was also thinking… if Gentry is here to target the Agency, and this manages to make some noise outside of the Agency, God forbid, we might want to frame this to the media as some kind of an external threat. If Suzanne is involved, beefing up the guns and gates of our facilities, it will only help us sell it as some lone-wolf terror attack on the Agency.”
Denny looked at his second-in-command. In a louder voice he said, “One, this is a terror attack on the Agency. Gentry didn’t come all this way to pick up an old paycheck. And two, keeping this shit in house is paramount. No one breathes a word. We’ll take care of it.” Carmichael took off, heading up a brightly lit hallway towards his office.
Mayes knew when to fight with his boss, and he knew when to let his boss wrestle with his own arguments. As he caught up with Carmichael he said, “So… Suzanne. Yea or nay?”
After a moment the director of National Clandestine Service gave in, to a point. “Maybe. But before I bring her into the program, I want to know more about her.”
“She’s reliable. I’ve worked with her myself. She’ll play ball.”
Denny slowed and turned back towards Mayes, but before he could say anything Mayes preempted him by handing over the plastic file folder. “Here’s her two-page write-up. You want more, I can send it to your office.”
Carmichael took the file, but said, “I want it all. Nobody gets read in on Violator unless I know them inside and out.”
Ten minutes later five men and one woman converged in a glass-walled conference room that could easily accommodate sixteen, took their seats quickly, and then all eyes turned to a pair of side-by-side monitors on the wall. A satellite linkup had been established with Tel Aviv and fed to one of the monitors, but until the commo people on the Israeli side of the connection gave the word that their attendee was on camera and ready, the screen just glowed blue. Next to this, a larger screen displayed an interactive map of the greater Washington, D.C., area.