Hanley said, “Let’s see… yesterday in Dupont Circle, Gentry brutally murdered several men. The death toll this morning must have been three times that, right?”
Brewer shook her head, not picking up on the fact that Hanley seemed to know the answer to this question already. “Surprisingly, no. Four men were injured, though no injuries were life-threatening.”
Hanley glanced to Hightower, and he noticed his eyebrows furrowing slightly. But Zack said nothing.
Hanley next asked, “Could someone please tell me why I’m here?”
Carmichael spoke for the first time since Hanley had arrived. “Like it or not, Matt, it’s in your best interests that we bring this episode to a close. Suzanne wants to know where Violator will go next for shelter. Today, we suspect, will be a repositioning day for him. He will find some new location, some new bolt-hole, and I’m going to venture to guess it will be outside of the District, someplace safer. You ran the man for several years, and he hasn’t been back in the area since those days. We thought you might give us ideas about his possible new hide site.”
Before Hanley could respond, Hightower raised a wary hand.
Brewer turned to acknowledge him. “Zack, it’s not necessary to raise your hand.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Gentry will be south of D.C., in a remote location. Picture a covered ditch, a deserted cabin, a grain elevator on an abandoned farm. He will be very difficult to find once he gets there. Almost impossible. I feel our next moment of opportunity will be when he reengages us, not when we discover his hide.”
Brewer said, “I understand why you think he will go somewhere more remote, but why south specifically?”
“He lived and worked in northern Virginia. It’s more familiar to him. He might anticipate us making this assumption, but he is confident in his abilities to hide, especially when he knows the terrain.”
Carmichael pointed to Hanley. “Your best guess as to his location?”
Hanley heaved his shoulders, not hiding his annoyance at it all. “I was management. Hightower was labor. Next to Court Gentry, Zack Hightower is the best operator I ever had working under me.” He looked down the table at Hightower. “Before Zack’s untimely death, he was also the best ground-level leader I’d ever seen. In your infinite wisdom, Denny, you’ve resurrected Hightower to sit him in a seventh-floor conference room, dress him in a suit and tie, and ask him questions about Gentry’s new lair. Zack tells you the target has run someplace you’ll never find him, so I defer to Zack’s expertise. I guess you’ll just have to wait for him to come back out to play.”
Suzanne snapped back. “Play, Matt? Really? A veteran CIA official and three innocent Transit Police were murdered yesterday. I doubt their loved ones see this as a game.”
Hanley sniffed. “Yeah, about that. Yesterday, a man with Court Gentry’s abilities of escape and evasion was so backed into a corner in a location with a half dozen egresses that he was forced to murder three poorly armed and poorly trained transit cops in cold blood, in broad daylight, in a crowded location. And yet before dawn this morning, sixteen highly trained tactical officers raided his secure, defended ground, and in that instance Court only knocks a few heads together. Killing none. Zero.”
Hanley was looking at Hightower now. “That is pretty damn curious, wouldn’t you say?”
Despite Hanley’s challenge, Zack did not say a word.
Brewer countered, “He did a lot more than knock heads together.”
Hanley stood up from the table. “But he did a lot less than send a dozen poor bastards to the morgue! A cold-blooded killer is cornered like a fucking rat in a cage and he doesn’t kill his way out?” He turned to Denny. “Not buying it. I’m not buying any of this bullshit. I’m walking, Chief. You have a problem with that, go to the director and have him remove me for insubordination. The way the walls are crumbling around here, you’d be doing me a favor.”
Carmichael didn’t stop Hanley from leaving, but Brewer chased him out and caught up with him on his way back to his office. “Matt?”
With a heave and a sigh he turned back to her. “Sorry, Suzanne. My comments weren’t directed at you, specifically. They were directed at this entire operation.”
“I understand. I just don’t understand why you are in Gentry’s camp the way you are. Hightower is the same way. Zack will do whatever we tell him to do, it seems clear he is a good soldier, but I don’t get the feeling his heart is in this any more than yours is.”
Hanley said, “Every day this goes on, Denny gets himself in deeper. I don’t know what the fuck is happening out there, but the story he is giving you, and the story he gave the Washington Post yesterday, is just the story Denny needs us to believe. It’s not the truth. I respect you, Suzanne, but when the smoke clears after this debacle, those of us who did what we could to stay outside of Denny’s gravitational pull will not be able to do one damn thing to help those who got pulled down with him.”
Hanley left Brewer there, standing alone in the hallway.
51
Court opened up the throttle on his Yamaha 650 as soon as he turned south on I-95. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he needed to get the hell out of D.C., at least for the time being. He planned on finding a new hide, somewhere within a half hour to an hour’s drive of the District, and someplace one hell of a lot more secure than Arthur Mayberry’s basement apartment.
Although he wasn’t sure where he was going, he wasn’t exactly flying blind. He knew this stretch of highway, because the HQ of the Goon Squad had been in Norfolk and he’d lived in Virginia Beach, both just to the southeast. He’d driven up I-95 to D.C. from time to time on training evolutions, either to practice surveillance in Old Town Alexandria or around the National Mall near the Capitol building.
He passed Prince William Forest Park on his right, the marine barracks of Quantico on his left, and he continued another few minutes until he saw a turnoff for the Stafford Regional Airport. Instantly an idea came to him. Court had learned to fly light aircraft here, a long time ago, admittedly, but he remembered the facility, more or less. Security had been lax around the airport at the time, so he thought there was a chance he could hide out somewhere on the property, either in a hangar or a utility room, or perhaps even in the comfort of a private aircraft. It was a thin plan, because he hadn’t visited the location in some fifteen years, but he knew if he continued on too much longer he’d be in Fredericksburg, and he had no intention of setting up his new hide in a developed area.
He exited I-95 and headed towards the airport.
As soon as he began riding along the chain-link fence to the airport property he decided his impromptu plan wasn’t going to pan out like he’d hoped. It was a small airfield with only one runway and just a half dozen or so buildings, and security appeared much tighter than what he remembered. He knew he could wait till nightfall and gain access to the grounds, but it wasn’t yet nine a.m. and he did not want to waste an entire day lying low, only to spend the whole evening developing a new hide. No, Court had things to do; he needed to find a new home right now so that tonight he could act.
Once he passed the airport he started to turn around to head back to I-95, but a lonely gravel road off to his right caught his eye. He didn’t see a single structure on either side of the road, only oak and pine and thick brush, but he imagined the road led to someplace where no one would be looking for him, and for now, at least, that was good enough.