“But I’ll warn you right now… that fancy .45 that was in your bedside table is now on my hip.”
Hanley turned to look at the nightstand. He couldn’t imagine how Gentry had gotten all the way up to his bed, opened a drawer, and retrieved a weapon without making a sound.
He said, “Christ, Court. I wouldn’t have gone for my gun. I know you could kill me ten different ways before I got my hand on it.”
“Of course you know. But now I won’t have to.”
Hanley changed the subject. “Did you see the snipers?”
“Yes.”
Hanley said, “I don’t know where they are, just heard JSOC had me covered.”
Gentry replied, “One hundred forty yards east, rooftop of a four-story office building. Two guys. An AI .308 on the shooter, and an HK 416 with an ACOG on the spotter. And one hundred fifty-five yards northeast, two more, in a second-story apartment. Same sniper rifle, but the spotter has an M4 with an EOTech.”
Hanley turned his head slowly, trying to identify the location of the voice, because clearly Gentry had moved again. He gave up and said, “You managed to ID the caliber of the rifles and the brand of optics from one hundred fifty yards away?”
Court said, “I got a little closer.”
“You didn’t kill them, did you?”
Court pulled a chair into a corner, Hanley could hear the movement, and when he focused his eyes on the location, lightning struck outside, closer than ever. With the flash through the curtains Hanley could just make out the silhouette of a man. On the man’s right was the window that looked over the front yard. Even though it was covered with a curtain, Hanley saw Gentry had positioned himself so no one out there could get line of sight on him through the glass.
Court replied, “It’s me, Matt. When have I ever killed a Delta operator?”
“People change.”
“Other people change. Rules change. Loyalties change. I don’t.”
Hanley forced a smile. “You’ve been out of it for a while. They aren’t called Delta anymore.”
“No? What are they called now?”
“Can’t tell you. Classified.”
“That’s cute.” Lightning struck again and, along with it, a massive thunderclap. “So they’ve got you running SAD now.”
“Can you believe it?”
“When I shot you in Mexico I told you it would be a perfect opportunity for career enhancement.”
“Is this where I express my eternal gratitude for you filling me full of lead?”
Court did not respond.
Hanley said, “I am not going to have much information for you. I’ve got nothing to do with the Violator Working Group. Denny asked for Ground Branch guys to help target you, and I told him to fuck off.”
“I’m not interested in who’s after me now. I’m here to find out what happened five years ago.”
“I know even less about that.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s Denny, man. He’s been the one orchestrating it all from the beginning.”
“I know that. I also know he told you something. He gave you a rationale for this. You may be Denny’s bitch at CIA, but you are your own man, Matt, you always have been. You proved that in Mexico. Even if Carmichael twisted your arm to get you to come after me, he had a story to go along with it.” Court leaned a little closer, but his face was still in darkness. “Tell me the story. That’s all I want. You do that and I move on.”
Hanley climbed off the bed and started over to a chair across from Court. He kept his hands away from his body, and he moved slowly. It was still nearly pitch-black in the room, other than the occasional lightning strikes that flashed through the curtained windows, and Hanley didn’t even know if Court was holding a weapon on him, but he had been in this line of work too long to advance on a killer without making it plain he posed no threat.
He sat down in the chair. “Court, this road you are traveling doesn’t lead where you want it to go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, when all is said and done, you are going to wish you didn’t go poking around D.C. to find out why everyone is after you.”
“Why not?”
Hanley heaved a long sigh. He didn’t want to say more, but he knew Gentry wasn’t going anywhere unless he talked. “Because this whole thing is your fault.”
A long pause. “No.”
“Everything you think is just some terrible misunderstanding is not a misunderstanding. You are under lethal authorization because you earned lethal authorization. It sucks, and I’ve been against the sanction from the get-go… but it is a legit sanction.”
Court shook his head emphatically. “Not true. I know everything that happened down at street level on my ops, and my conscience is clear. If something went tits-up on a mission it was strategic, not tactical, and I didn’t have a damn thing to do with strategy. I’d fall on my sword in an instant if I fucked up, but I’m not taking the fall for someone else’s mistake.”
Hanley winced, feeling the pain of having to deliver bad news, but also the pain of having to deliver bad news to someone who just might kill the messenger of the bad news.
He said, “Carmichael called me up one day five years ago, back when I was running the Goon Squad, back when you were on the team. He said he had a new termination order for us. I said, ‘Cool, we’ll meet and wade through the intel, then go see legal and the director to get it approved.’ He told me it was already approved by everybody. That wasn’t how we did things, so I told him I wanted to talk face-to-face.
“He met me at a restaurant in Reston, and he brought Max Ohlhauser, the Agency’s chief legal counsel. You know him?”
Court shook his head, Hanley could barely register the movement in the dark. “I don’t hang out with CIA lawyers.”
“Anyway, each time we got a term order, it had to be signed by Denny, Ohlhauser, and the CIA director, whoever was in the chair at the time.”
“Okay.”
“So Denny pulls out the order, all signed off on by the director and Ohlhauser, and then Denny signs it right in front of me. I looked down to see who we were terming. I figured it was some AQ guy, maybe Hezbollah, Al-Shabab. The usual suspects. But your name was on the order, Court.”
“Why?”
“Denny wouldn’t tell me specifics. It was a need-to-know thing. But Ohlhauser knew. And so did the director.”
“How do you know the director—”
“Because I went and asked him. Personally. He wouldn’t talk to me about it, he felt conflicted as hell, you could see it on his face. But he said if I had a term order with his signature on it, I needed to shut the fuck up and comply and to get the fuck out of his office.” Hanley chuckled in the dark. “I’m not paraphrasing, that’s verbatim.”
“So Carmichael and Ohlhauser told you nothing?”
“No. They told me something. They told me which op you fucked up that earned you the sanction.”
More thunder, the rain whipped in sheets on the window now.
“What op?”
Hanley did not reply.
“What op?”
Nothing.
“You gonna make me shoot you, Matt?”
Hanley said, “Operation BACK BLAST.”
Court’s eyes narrowed. The name meant nothing to him. He thought back several years, through so many operations. Maybe. He wasn’t sure. “That first thing we did in Jalalabad?”
“No, man. That was BACKBEAT.”
“That’s right… The thing in Ankara?”
“BRAINSTORM.”
“Sarajevo?”
Hanley looked at his former operator with bewilderment. “Jesus, that one was called AARDVARK SANDSTORM. Were you even paying attention during the briefings?”