Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel Read online

  He’d only picked up the hunting guide gig in West Virginia when he ran out of money. He hated shepherding rich assholes through the woods just so they could shoot a fucking pig that wasn’t bothering anybody, but the money was good, and all the hiking, climbing, and shooting had molded Zack into reasonably good shape within a short period of time.

  He’d fantasized about getting back on, if not with CIA, at least with some private military company, but Carmichael had stripped Zack’s Top Secret clearance, so Zack knew no real PMC would touch him. He had no interest in doing stateside static security work, so he just kept hauling rich civvies out on wild boar hunts, hoping something interesting would happen in his life.

  And now he was face-to-face with the number two spy at the Agency, on the seventh floor of the Old HQB.

  This was, at the very least, interesting.

  Zack Hightower stood smartly, not quite at attention, but certainly displaying a show of respect.

  Mayes nodded and sat down after a quick handshake. Under his arm he carried a thick file, and Zack suspected that his operational life, and perhaps his post-operational life, would be in that file.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Mayes said.

  “Happy to help in any way I can.”

  “Denny wants a word.”

  Zack swallowed. “Can I ask what this is about?”

  “Better if Denny gives it to you cold.”

  Carmichael pushed open the side door and all but stormed up to the table. If he had pulled an all-nighter with Mayes the evening before, then he was clearly a vampire, because Zack thought he looked good to go now at seven p.m.

  Zack stood. This time it was at full military attention.

  Carmichael’s greeting was, to say the least, several degrees cooler than that of Jordan Mayes. “I don’t do apologies, Hightower, so if you are waiting for one, prepare to be disappointed.”

  Zack followed Carmichael by sitting back down, and pulling himself up to the table. “Not expecting one, sir.”

  “You aren’t pissed about what happened to you two years ago?”

  Zack shook his head. “I failed on a mission. That was unacceptable to you, but it was also unacceptable to me. I would have been disappointed if you’d not released me after that.”

  Carmichael took in the comment. Then asked, “Fitness-wise, where are you?”

  “One hundred percent.” Zack realized his tone had sounded hopeful, and he told himself to keep it flat till he knew what the hell was going on.

  Carmichael looked to Mayes now. Mayes shrugged.

  Hightower clarified. “Took a handgun round center-mass two years ago, but I’ve recovered. Been shooting every day. Long-range I’m better than ever. Running some, too. I’m not twenty anymore, but that’s an asset, not a liability. I’ll get any job done you need me to do.”

  Carmichael looked doubtful.

  “I can run a PT course right now.”

  “I’m questioning your mental state.”

  “My head is right, sir. I could put my hand in a candle and show you, if that’s what you are looking for.”

  “That’s not what I want, either. I need to see that there are no hard feelings about what happened two years ago.”

  “None at all, sir.”

  Carmichael drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then he seemed to let it go, and he went immediately to the subject at hand. “Courtland Gentry appeared in the D.C. area last night.”

  Hightower had planned on keeping a cool stoic face, no matter what craziness Carmichael threw his way, but now he could not hide his surprise. “Oh, shit!”

  “Killed two drug dealers in the slums, apparently to obtain money to finance his activities here.”

  “Only two?” Zack quipped. The execs stared back at him, so he went on the defensive. “Look, if you think I knew about this, then you—”

  Carmichael interrupted. “Any idea why he might have come here?”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “This isn’t the fucking navy, Hightower.”

  Zack shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “He’s come here to kill you.”

  It was silent in the dark conference room for a moment, and Hightower worried he might have overstepped his bounds. Then Mayes said, “That’s our assessment, as well.”

  Hightower nodded slowly and a smile grew. Suddenly it felt like all his problems had just melted away. The past two years of his life, the depression born out of being ostracized by the Agency after failing a mission, disappeared. He had a job, a purpose. The old Zack was back.

  With a wide grin he said, “I get it. I get why I’m here. You need me to stop him.”

  Carmichael sniffed. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. You didn’t stop him last time out, did you?”

  The cocky smile remained. “Sir, that op you sent me on in Sudan was as wrong as dick cancer, and you know it.”

  Denny Carmichael did not reply to this. After a moment he said, “We brought you in to see if you could help us determine where Gentry might be, what he might do. Tactics and the like.”

  “Damn straight. Nobody knows him like I do.”

  After a gentle rapping on the side door a woman in a conservative blue outfit entered. Zack’s first impression was that she was hot. Not stripper hot, he told himself, but hot in sort of a sexy librarian kind of way.

  She walked up to Hightower, who fought the urge to look her up and down. Instead he stood up, and she extended her hand.

  Jordan Mayes made the introductions. “Hightower, this is Suzanne Brewer. She is the officer in charge of the Violator tactical operations center. As long as Gentry is in this area of operations, she is tasked with finding him. We’d like you to spend some time telling her everything you know about the man—his tactics, techniques, and procedures. Together you can fine-tune the hunt so the shooters know where to go.”

  Zack was disappointed. A minute earlier he would have been happy plunging the toilets here at CIA, but now he wanted in on the hunt itself. “Who are your shooters? Ground Branch?” he asked.

  “Negative. We are using JSOC,” Carmichael said. “They are already out on the streets. Until we have a positive sighting of him, we won’t have anything more than what you and Suzanne can develop.”

  “Why not Ground Branch?”

  “We are keeping Matt Hanley out of this for now.”

  Hightower nodded slowly. There was some sort of intra-office feud going on between Hanley and Carmichael; this Hightower could see on Carmichael’s face.

  Hightower put aside his desire to run and gun, and he nodded to the hottie in the business suit. “I look forward to working with you, Ms. Brewer.”

  He’d do more than that if he got the chance.

  “Suzanne is fine,” she said, and from her tone he instantly realized he would not get the chance. Despite the first-name, this one was all business. “The operations center is on the fourth floor. I have an office there where we can talk further. Violator has been in country about twenty hours, so we don’t have a moment to lose.”

  “Then let’s get started.”

  Mayes said, “That’s it, Hightower? You haven’t asked for anything. No money. No request for us to clarify your status. Why not?”

  Hightower did not hesitate in his reply. “I understand what’s happening. This isn’t just about bringing me in to discuss Gentry’s habits. No, you need a guy like me on the street, in the hunt. You want me to remain off book. Better that way for you. If this breaks bad with a running shoot-out down the National Mall, you don’t want to be tied to it. You are bringing me on to help with TTPs, but if he’s located on U.S. soil, you’d rather some nobody like me went out and did the killing. Not a special mission unit tied to the military, or an operative tied to the intelligence community.

  “You want some loser you can leave sw
inging in the wind in case you need to deny responsibility.”

  No one said a word for an awkward moment. Then Zack added, “And I’m good with that.”

  Carmichael and Mayes exchanged a look. Finally Carmichael reached a hand across the table. “Good to see you again, Hightower.”

  The two men shook hands, and Zack looked to Brewer. “How ’bout you and me go and find that son of a bitch?”

  15

  Court Gentry accomplished more in his first day back in the United States than most could accomplish in a month. After sleeping five hours he rolled out of bed and looked through his small driveway-level window, checking for any new cars or strange people wandering the neighborhood. Atmospherics and patterns of life. The more he knew about his area of operations, the easier it would be for him to notice something that did not belong. But he saw nothing that triggered his threat radar, so he folded a massive wad of twenty-dollar bills into his pocket, left his rented room, and walked to a discount department store a mile away.

  Here he filled a shopping cart with clothing in just minutes, because he knew what he was doing.

  There were few people on planet Earth more skilled at changing their look on the fly, and Court knew the colors, styles, and sizes he needed to make himself invisible in a crowd. The temperatures in D.C. this time of year fluctuated between the low forties and the mid-sixties, with periods of rain nearly every day, so Court knew he could fit in with others on the street by wearing several layers.

  With two long-sleeve shirts, a dark green baseball cap, a beige knit cap, and a brown hoodie under a reversible black raincoat, Court could, in under a second, switch between seven different and distinct looks as he walked down the street.

  He bought six complete sets of clothing and two nondescript black backpacks, two different pairs of cheap sunglasses, brown work boots and rubber overshoes, a small fanny pack, a ten-dollar digital watch, and a quality kitchen knife with a plastic sheath.

  Near the Columbia Heights Metro station he found an electronics chain store, and here Court bought a tablet computer and a battery charger, two contract-free smartphones, and a few other gadgets.

  He’d done this sort of thing many times before, of course. In Ireland, in Brazil, in Laos, in Russia. But it felt different prepping for action here in the USA.

  He made a stop at his room to drop off his shopping bags and change into some of his new clothes, then he walked to a hardware store and bought a high-end glass cutter, a multi-tool, a tool kit, a tool belt, binoculars, a small hacksaw, a rain parka, and more work clothes in colors and fashions that would help him fit into the fabric of the city as a construction worker or some nonspecific manual laborer.

  At all three stores he was pleased to see he could make his purchases without having to speak to a single human being. No one in the stores asked to help him, and instead of going to cash registers, he could instead scan his own items, bag them, and pay a machine.

  Court liked his chances of keeping a low profile if he could conduct as much of his business as possible with automation.

  At a convenience store he purchased food and water, a prepaid Visa card loaded with $500, and two more contract-free phones.

  He returned to the safe house below the Mayberrys’ home and he dumped his new gear and clothing on the bed. He then knelt down in the narrow closet and felt around the paneling that had been damaged from the moisture and heat from the water heater on the other side. He rapped gently next to it until he found a two-foot-square section that sounded completely hollow. Using his hacksaw, he punched through the paneling on a seam, then he began cutting.

  In minutes he had created a small and nearly undetectable escape hatch into the Mayberrys’ basement proper.

  He grabbed his flashlight and crawled through to the pitch-black basement, expecting to be able to stand up immediately. But shining the light around, he saw he was in a three-foot-high channel that passed below some water pipes next to the home’s old water heater. Court followed the crawl space for six feet before he was able to stand up next to the furnace.

  Looking around the main section of the basement, he got the distinct impression the Mayberrys didn’t spend a great deal of time down here. A thick coating of dust covered most parts of the room, except for the area near the wooden staircase up to the ground floor. Here a shelving unit was filled with canned goods, paper towels, toilet paper, and cases of soft drinks.

  In the flashlight’s beam Court found Arthur Mayberry’s workbench, along with a good selection of tools, most lying around haphazardly. Court could tell Mayberry was something of a handyman, which was no surprise considering this was an older home and probably required a lot of upkeep.

  There was a propane tank for a gas grill, and a few lawn care items that Mayberry inexplicably stored down here instead of in the little shed at the end of the driveway that Court had noticed that morning.

  Taking stock of all the equipment in the room, Court had an idea about how he could improve his defensive position in the little basement studio apartment. He shook the propane tank to make sure it was full, and then a slight smile drew across his face as he formulated his plan.

  Using his tool kit to disassemble some items that did not look like they would be missed by the Mayberrys in the short term, he made two trips on his hands and knees, bringing all the equipment back to his rented room through the tiny crawl space. He then left his room again, running out to a nearby sporting goods store to buy everything he needed to finish his project.

  While at the sporting goods store he picked up a Walker’s Game Ear—a behind-the-ear device not unlike a hearing aid, used by hunters to hear the faint sound of game in the woods. Court had used similar devices with CIA, and although he expected this over-the-counter bit of technology to be a little inferior to the top secret kit he’d used in the field, he knew it would help him pick up distant conversation or alert him to anyone trying to sneak up behind him whenever he had it in place.

  He returned and spent the next hour building a booby trap, rigging it to slow down or even stop anyone trying to make their way in through the one door to the room. He designed the entire contraption so he could break it down and hide it in minutes when he left the house, in case the Mayberrys themselves decided to drop in.

  Satisfied his device was functional, Court checked his watch. It was already seven p.m. He logged on to the Internet via his 4G mobile phone and surfed to a computer hacking website. Here he downloaded an open source copy of Aircrack-ng, a Wi-Fi password-cracking tool that used brute force to guess log-ins to Wi-Fi networks.

  When the software was ready on his phone he searched for all nearby Wi-Fi signals and found four that were strong enough for him to use here in his basement room. He chose one, then initiated Aircrack-ng. The software began running its algorithm to determine the password, trying hundreds of thousands of combinations against the targeted network.

  After several minutes without success he gave up on the first network, determining that whoever selected the password had done an excellent job. Most people spent little time creating passwords, and it was a rare occurrence when Aircrack-ng failed to discover it. He moved on to the second network. This time Aircrack-ng divined the code in less than three and a half minutes, so Court then logged on to the neighbor’s network with both his phone and his tablet.

  Once online, he turned his attention to Craigslist, the classified advertising website. He spent less than fifteen minutes on the site before making a series of phone calls, then heading back out into the night. He took a cab to an address in nearby Petworth, and here he bought a 1998 gray Ford Escort for $1,100 from a private seller. Although the car was old, it had a reasonable 145,000 miles on it, and there were no major dents or scratches that could make the vehicle easy to ID by trained surveillance.

  The seller said he was selling the car cheap because he’d lost his copy of the title, but he assured
Court it wasn’t stolen. It would be a tremendous understatement to say Court was skeptical in nature, but in this case he actually believed the man, because he saw from the listing the car had been for sale for over a month, and he knew police trolled Craigslist looking for stolen vehicles.

  He drove the little four-door back to Reagan Washington National Airport, and here he parked in a long-term lot. He wandered around for a moment, then dropped down behind a vehicle parked rear-in against a back wall. He removed the car’s Maryland license plate, attached it to his Escort, and then left the airport.

  It took him another hour to purchase a motorcycle. He found a black-on-silver Yamaha 650XS on Craigslist. It was almost as old as Court himself and had some issues, but it was fast, perfectly nondescript, and, after a bit of haggling, only 750 bucks. The seller tossed in a helmet and a plate he had lying on a workbench off another old project bike of his.

  Court rented a twelve-by-twelve storage unit within walking distance of his room and parked both vehicles inside, along with one of his two backpacks, this one filled with clothes.

  By ten p.m. Court was back in his basement apartment and back on his tablet computer, calling up a website called USCrypto.org.

  Even surfing through the pages of the site made the former American intelligence operative feel dirty.

  USCrypto was the brainchild of a group of self-proclaimed anarchists and fervent anti-Americans, and it billed itself as an online library and repository for stolen and hacked classified documents, information about secret intelligence sites and personnel, and articles, photos, and videos that it claimed proved illegal U.S. intelligence eavesdropping.

  One subsite on USCrypto.org was called Spycatcher, and Court clicked the link to take him there. On the pages contained in the subsite, USCrypto employees revealed the addresses of secret government facilities, and the names and home addresses of employees of American intelligence.

  The site even provided Google Maps Street View images of the homes of clandestine personnel.