Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel Read online

  TITLES BY MARK GREANEY

  THE GRAY MAN

  ON TARGET

  BALLISTIC

  DEAD EYE

  BACK BLAST

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2016 by Mark Strode Greaney.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® and the “B” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information, visit penguin.com.

  Berkley export edition ISBN: 978-1-101-98917-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-40653-7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Greaney, Mark.

  Back blast / Mark Greaney.—First edition.

  pages ; cm

  ISBN 978-0-425-28279-3

  I. Title.

  PS3607.R4285B33 2016

  813’.6—dc23

  2015022109

  FIRST EDITION: February 2016

  Cover photograph of Washington, D.C. © Tim Martin / Getty Images.

  Cover design by Richard Hasselberger.

  Title page art © ZWD / Shutterstock.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Devon

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank Mike Cowan, Chris Clarke, Natalie Hopkinson, Scott Swanson, Maria Burnham, James Yeager and Tactical Response, Lt Col Rip Rawlings (USMC), Keith Thomson, Jeff Belanger, Dorothy Greaney, Devin Greaney, Nick Ciubotariu, EJ Owens, Ben Coes, Brad Taylor, Dalton Fury, Nichole Geen Roberto, and Patrick O’Daniel.

  Special thanks to my agents, Scott Miller at Trident Media and Jon Cassir at CAA, my editor, Tom Colgan, and his assistant, Amanda Ng, at Berkley, and Mystery Mike Bursaw.

  CONTENTS

  Titles by Mark Greaney

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Epilogue

  Why seeketh thou vengeance, O man! With what purpose is it that thou pursuest it? Thinkest thou to pain thine adversary by it? Know that thou thyself feelest its greatest torments.

  —AKHENATON, EGYPTIAN PHARAOH

  Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  CHARACTERS

  COURTLAND “COURT” GENTRY: The Gray Man, call sign Sierra Six, code name Violator—ex–Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer, CIA; ex–CIA Autonomous Asset Program operative

  CATHERINE KING: Senior investigative reporter for the Washington Post

  ANDY SHOAL: Metro (cops) reporter for the Washington Post

  DENNY CARMICHAEL: Director of National Clandestine Service, CIA

  JORDAN MAYES: Assistant Director of National Clandestine Service, CIA

  MATTHEW HANLEY: Director of Special Activities Division, CIA

  SUZANNE BREWER: Senior Officer, Programs and Plans, CIA

  ZACK HIGHTOWER: Call sign Sierra One, former CIA Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer—Court Gentry’s former team leader

  CHRIS TRAVERS: Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer, CIA

  JENNER: Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer, CIA

  MAX OHLHAUSER: Former Chief Council, CIA

  LELAND BABBITT: Director of Townsend Government Services

  MENACHEM AURBACH: Director of Mossad—Israeli Intelligence

  YANIS ALVEY: Senior officer in Mossad—Israeli Intelligence

  MURQUIN AL-KAZAZ (“KAZ”): Washington, D.C., Station Chief—Saudi Arabia General Intelligence Presidency (Saudi Intelligence)

  “DAKOTA”: Joint Special Operations Command—Special Mission Unit team leader

  PROLOGUE

  The host of the garden party accidentally left his phone in the kitchen, so when it all went to hell he was the last to know.

  Seconds before the debacle he stood on the patio with his wife, chatting with guests over the music from a four-piece jazz ensemble set up by the pool. It was late evening and too cold for an outdoor event like this, but the host and his wife had erected a dozen flaming gas heaters, and enough red wine had been consumed to warm the blood of everyone in attendance.

  Denny Carmichael was in his sixties but lean and tan, with a deeply lined but razor-sharp face and a formidable bearing. One of his wife’s friends
had once confided in her by saying he looked like Abraham Lincoln’s evil twin. Denny and his wife traded gossip with a couple who lived in D.C. but weekended in nearby Easton, Maryland. Denny was wholly uninterested in the petty chitchat but his wife lived for this shit, so he stood there and faked it, swigging pinot noir that did little to ameliorate his boredom.

  While his guests droned on about the cost of their neighbor’s new swimming pool, Denny looked around his property, regarded the Italianate patio, the opulent saltwater pool, and the meticulously maintained lawn sprinkled with their well-heeled friends. Eleanor liked to flee D.C. and drive out here to their estate in rural Maryland every week or two. It was expensive as hell, but his wife came from money, and this was what she wanted.

  Denny thought of this place as his wife’s house.

  And these friends were hers, as well.

  Carmichael didn’t “do” friendships. He barely did marriage, for that matter. He lived for his work, and while everyone around him partied, he would much rather have been back at the office.

  The jazz band finished a sedate rendition of “Sentimental Journey” to polite applause, but before the four-piece could fire up their next song, heads began turning towards several sets of headlights racing up the driveway.

  Denny watched the lights approach, his already dark mood quickly blackening full-on to anger.

  Three black Yukon XL SUVs parked on the grass alongside the driveway, fifty feet from the patio. All in attendance knew government motor pool vehicles when they saw them, because this patch of Maryland was only twenty-five miles from D.C., and most everyone here worked in the District.

  Carmichael felt around in his jacket and realized he’d left his phone inside. He’d missed an important call, he had no doubt. He placed his wineglass on a café table next to him, made a quick apology to the couple standing nearby, kissed a perturbed Eleanor, and then started towards the driveway.

  A dozen men in suits climbed out of the vehicles, and the gray veins in Carmichael’s forehead throbbed. The guests were not supposed to see these security officers, because they didn’t know what Denny really did for a living.

  None of his wife’s friends knew he was the director of the National Clandestine Service, which made him the top spy at CIA.

  The rage he felt over his protection detail alarming the guests was blunted by the fact that he knew these men wouldn’t be spun up like this without one hell of a good reason. Every security officer on Carmichael’s detail knew their boss would tear their head off for overreacting to a threat, so Denny took this show of force to mean something serious was going down.

  “Talk,” he demanded when he was still strides away from the armed men.

  The team leader was a forty-one-year-old former army major named DeRenzi, who was just like his protectee: all business, all the time. “Sorry, sir. You didn’t answer your phone. Orders are to cordon you off from the guests and hand you my mobile so you can take a call from the office.”

  Five men moved between Carmichael and the stunned party guests, and squat P90 bullpup submachine guns came out of their coats, held at the low ready by men with intense, searching eyes.

  Every one of the guests, the band, the caterers—even Denny’s own wife—stared, mouths agape, at this spectacle. Most in attendance knew Carmichael had served as an officer in the Marine Corps, but all thought he now worked in something banal at the Department of Homeland Security, as that was his official story.

  Denny ignored the attention and asked no more questions of DeRenzi—he only mumbled an explanation that he’d left his phone in the kitchen.

  DeRenzi responded with, “The office is sending air.”

  To this Carmichael cocked his head. “Air? Jesus Christ.” He thought over the outrageous spectacle of a helicopter landing in the yard and whisking him away. “Are we at war?”

  “Dunno, boss.” DeRenzi was muscle. He had no answers. Instead he handed his phone to his protectee and led him briskly towards the house.

  Carmichael snatched it and held it to his ear while he walked. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Mayes.” Jordan Mayes was Carmichael’s number two at NCS. He was a dozen years younger than his boss, but Carmichael could barely recall a time when Mayes was not by his side.

  “Talk.”

  “He’s here.”

  “Who’s here?”

  A brief delay from Mayes. Then one word. “Gentry.”

  Carmichael stopped in his tracks. After a few seconds he spoke again, but his voice cracked. “He— Here? Here where?”

  “Worst-case scenario? He’s got eyes on you right now.”

  Carmichael looked around the lawn. In an instant his emotions cycled from fury through confusion, and then straight on to terror, and his voice went hoarse. “He’s in the goddamned States?”

  “Best intel puts him in your state, Denny.”

  Carmichael spoke quickly now; there would be no more pregnant pauses. “Get me the fuck out of here.” He began walking briskly, still cordoned off from the rest by DeRenzi and his men.

  “Helo inbound. ETA five mikes.”

  As he hurried along, Denny scanned his property. The tree line of pines in the distance, half-covered by thick mist, suddenly appeared foreboding.

  Carmichael barked into the phone, “Five mikes, my ass. Expedite it!”

  1

  The band started back up tentatively, but the revelers’ attention was firmly fixed on the dozen serious men in the driveway surrounding the host.

  Carmichael’s eyes searched from left to right, locking on human forms, because everyone at the party was a threat now. A congressman from Nevada, a prosecutor from Virginia, a horse breeder from Kentucky, the co-owner of a fashion magazine on Fifth Avenue. Caterers, musicians, and an event organizer standing by the pool with his hands on his hips, gaping at the armed Neanderthals destroying the mood of this glorious spring garden social. Carmichael double-checked everyone’s faces as he neared the back door, and the men and women he did not recognize—there were just a few—he triple-checked. He knew Gentry’s appearance—he’d been thinking about it for years—but he also knew the man could disguise himself better than anyone he’d ever known.

  When he was inside and completely surrounded by his detail, he stood there a moment breathing heavily. He remembered he was still holding the phone to his ear. He said, “We’re sure?”

  Mayes replied in a clipped, efficient tone. “Israelis tracked him to a freighter that embarked from Lisbon eight days ago. It’s now anchored in the Chesapeake Bay, just west of Easton. He might be heading west into D.C., but if he goes east, that’s less than fifteen minutes from you by car. We’ve sent a Marine FAST team to hit the boat, but—”

  “Gentry won’t be on it.”

  “Not a chance. He would have slipped off the second he got near the shore. Have to clear it anyway. Might find some clues on board as to what his play is here in the States.”

  “Where did the Israelis come across this intel?”

  “Unknown. I have a conference call set up with Menachem Aurbach at Mossad. We’ll initiate it as soon as you get to Langley.”

  Just then, Carmichael saw heads turn to the south. Seconds later he heard the thumping. He knew the sound. It was one of the Agency’s sleek new Eurocopters.

  Jordan Mayes added, “Denny, sorry about the party. I know it was important to Eleanor.”

  “Fuck this party. I want the Violator Working Group assembled in sixty mikes. Everyone.”

  “Roger that.”

  —

  The landing of the helo and the exfiltration of the host of the garden party went down in a fashion just as obnoxious as Carmichael feared it might. He’d spend the rest of his life explaining this moment away to his wife’s friends, but the fallout wasn’t even on his radar now. As he boarded the aircraft, along with DeRenzi and three
other bodyguards, his mind reverted into combat mode.

  Carmichael had fought as a lieutenant in Vietnam, as a lieutenant colonel in Lebanon and Grenada, and as a CIA officer against the Russians in Afghanistan. He’d HALO jumped into Panama, jetted into the Balkans, dune buggied into Iraq, and helicoptered back into Afghanistan twenty years after his first visit. Denny knew combat, and he knew how to push everything extraneous out of his mind, leaving it solely committed to the utter simplicity of kill or be killed.

  This was his mind-set now.

  The helo took off towards the south, leaving the party behind as it rose over misty, rolling farmland. The pilot pushed the cyclic forward and then twisted the throttle to pick up speed in the cold air.

  Carmichael ordered Mayes to hold the line, then he moved to a seat just behind the flight crew and put on a set of headphones. Pulling the microphone down over his lips, he tapped the pilot on his shoulder.

  The man turned back to him. “Yes, sir?”

  “You have countermeasures on board?”

  The pilot seemed surprised by the question. He glanced to his copilot, then back to the windscreen in front of him. “Yes, sir. Chaff and flares.”

  Denny said, “Be prepared to employ them. I want your head on a swivel.”

  The copilot spoke up. Unsure. “We were rushed into this . . . uh . . . Anything you can tell us about what we’re up against would be helpful.”

  Denny shrugged. He said, “The threat is an ex-asset, code name Violator. A former Agency paramilitary officer with one hell of a grudge.”

  The pilot spun his head back around sixty degrees and stared through his visor at the much older man. “One guy? All this is about one guy?”

  Denny’s leathery face turned even harder as he looked back into the pilot’s visor. “Son, do I look like I scare easily?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, this son of a bitch scares me to death. Turn around and fly this thing to Langley, and be ready for inbound missiles.”

  “Sir,” he said with a slight nod, and then he focused fully on the flight.

  Twenty seconds later Carmichael was back on the phone with his number two. “Get my family out of town. Have them taken to the ranch in Provo. If Violator is here for me I want them out of the way so I can do what I need to do.”