Jeff Parks moved along with the operators; he had his small silver automatic pistol leveled in Whitlock’s direction. Upon noticing this, Babbitt yelled for his number two to be careful where he pointed his damn gun.
As he pulled his former employer through the snow, Whitlock spoke softly into Babbitt’s ear. “Let me explain how this is going to play out. You are going to send your men out front to the cars, and they are going to load up, because Gentry will be here in a few, and he will be in a very foul mood.”
“What about you?”
“I’d love to stick around, but I have made other plans.”
“You’re going to kill Kalb?”
“Nah. I’m on the next train out of town. Gentry’s right. I’m burned.”
Babbitt knew he was lying, but he felt it prudent to refrain from leveling any accusations at the man with an automatic gun held to his neck.
Russ said, “Gentry’s coming here, right now, so you’d better run. Live to fight another day and all that shit. If you send your guys after me at the cemetery you won’t have the forces you need to engage him.”
Babbitt nodded a little, and he shivered in the cold.
“Send Beaumont and the other knuckle-draggers to the cars. Do it now.”
Babbitt shouted. “Everybody go. Get in the cars. We’re getting out of here.”
Beaumont said, “I’m not leaving you back here with his crazy ass!”
“That’s a goddamned order!”
The backyard cleared out moments later, and Whitlock let Babbitt out of the headlock.
He faced him with the little submachine gun held up at eye level. “This is a good plan, Lee. Smarter than any shit you or Parks could have come up with.”
Babbitt only nodded, his eyes locked on the gun. “Yes. Yes, it was.”
“You will tell Mossad it was Gentry who killed the girl, not me. Then they won’t hunt me down after this is over, and I won’t come back to D.C. and kill you and your entire family.”
“Jesus, Russell.”
“You scratch my back, I don’t scratch your eyes out. Deal?”
Babbitt nodded. “I’ll do as you say. I swear.”
“Good. Now, you and your goons just have to kill Gentry for me, and I’ll be back on track.”
Again Babbitt nodded nervously. “We will do just that.”
Whitlock backed through a grove of bushes, into a neighboring backyard.
Leland Babbitt dropped to his knees in the deep snow, his suit pants doing nothing to protect his legs from the bitter cold.
FIFTY-FIVE
Five minutes after Whitlock left Babbitt in the snow, the Townsend men left the safe house in a three-vehicle convoy. An Audi led the way with two Jumper men. Behind it was the black Mercedes E-Class, with Beaumont in the front passenger seat and Jumper Two behind the wheel, along with Parks and Babbitt in the back. And a Ford Galaxy minivan brought up the rear with two more Jumper operatives. All vehicles were in radio contact with one another.
Beaumont had a map in his lap, and he directed the lead car to a lot near a traffic circle a few blocks east of the safe house on Rue Kelle. He addressed Babbitt while looking over the map. “We know Whitlock took a sniper rifle from the cache, so we need to patrol high ground near the Dieweg Cemetery. Someplace out of range of the Israelis protecting Kalb, but still in range for the rifle. Gentry will have figured that out already, so that’s where we’ll find him. Dagger will meet us there and we’ll split up and begin the hunt.”
Beaumont conferred with Babbitt for another minute, and they found a location on the map on the other side of a small valley from the cemetery. He radioed the lead car and directed him to the location.
“ETA ten minutes,” Jumper Four said from the passenger seat of the lead vehicle.
Once they had a destination, the eight men in the three vehicles rode in silence. As the motorcade passed the Eglise St. Piere, the front car slowed to make a ninety-degree left turn on a small one-lane street, Petite Rue du Eglise. This brought its speed down to nearly a complete stop, but as soon as it turned the driver began accelerating.
The front passenger of the Audi noticed him first. A lone man running up the narrow street in his direction, just a few car lengths ahead. For an instant he thought the man was just an afternoon jogger, but he was head to toe in black, and wearing a ski mask, and he wasn’t jogging; he was sprinting. There was nothing leisurely about his mannerisms.
The driver leaned forward to the windshield. “What the—”
The masked runner reached behind his back now and brought out a short-barreled sawed-off shotgun. Before either Townsend man in the Audi car could speak, the runner leveled the shotgun and it boomed on the narrow street, the windshield of the Audi exploded, and the driver’s head disappeared in an explosion of red.
The man next to him was coated from the waist up in blood and tissue, and he screamed as the masked man continued sprinting right at him. The masked man leapt onto the hood of the moving Audi, slamming his foot onto the roof with his next sprinted step, making a sound like a gunshot inside the vehicle’s interior.
None of the four men in the Mercedes had seen the shooter in front of the Audi, but they certainly heard the shotgun blast. Beaumont began drawing his handgun almost immediately, but the strange sight ahead slowed him. A masked man appeared above the lead car, leaping up and off the roof, windmilling his arms and legs for height and distance. He rose ten feet above the street; Beaumont saw the sawed-off twelve-gauge in his right hand as he seemed to hang there in midair, kicking and swinging his arms.
The driver of the Mercedes stomped on his brakes and frantically reached for the gearshift lever on the console next to him.
The attacker dropped through the cold air, toward the hood of the big black luxury car.
In the backseat Babbitt shouted, “It’s him!”
Court crashed onto the roof of the Mercedes and then hit the windshield, directly in front of the driver. He flipped himself up to his knees and leveled the short-barreled Remington, and then the car lurched into reverse.
Court flew onto his back with the momentum of the Mercedes but as he did so he fired through the windshield at a distance of three feet, beheading the driver of this vehicle as he had the one in the lead car.
He tumbled off the front of the hood and onto the icy street below, losing his grip on the shotgun as he fell.
Jumper Five sat behind the wheel of the Ford Galaxy minivan. He slammed on the brakes when the Mercedes lurched back in his direction.
After the second shotgun blast he could no longer see the man on the hood of the vehicle in front of him. The Mercedes kept rolling back to him, and he presumed the driver was dead and the car was unable to evacuate the area.
“Bail out!” he ordered, and he opened his car door, leapt out onto the ice, and drew his SIG pistol. He began running laterally across the tiny street, trying to find cover for himself in a shallow doorway in the middle of a long brick wall.
As he moved he scanned the snow-covered street near the Mercedes, his gun at eye level.
The black figure rolled out into the street, just in front of the rearward-moving Mercedes, his arms outstretched over his head and a pistol held in a combat grip.
Jumper Five tried to get his gun down and aimed in on the threat, but Gentry fired his pistol twice, striking the Townsend man twenty-five feet from him twice in his Kevlar vest. He fell to the ground but made it into the doorway. As soon as he tucked himself behind the cover he checked his vest and saw that he was not wounded, then he waited to hear Gentry engage other targets before exposing himself again.