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 the 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?”