Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel Read online

  If Aurbach did not like the characterization of his subordinate, he gave no hint of it on his face, but he replied, “My officer is no traitor to his country. He rewarded the man who prevented the decapitation of our government. Having said that, I will question him personally to find out everything he knows, after giving him some days in solitary detention to soften him up.”

  “I hope you are thorough.”

  Aurbach’s tired face tightened a bit. “Mossad doesn’t need any tips on interrogation from CIA. I’ll let you know what I find out.” Aurbach leaned a little closer to the camera. “In the meantime . . . I suggest you lock your doors tonight. I’ve read the after-action reports regarding the swath of destruction this former asset of yours burned through Europe last month. He is quite the talented killing machine. I would not want him mad at me.” Aurbach leaned back with a smile and reached for a button on the desk console in front of him. “My love to Eleanor.” He punched the button and the feed went dead.

  Carmichael paid no attention to the others in the conference room. Instead he exhaled, looking off into space. “Fucking Manny.”

  One of the analysts at the table interrupted his thought. “Director Carmichael, apologies for pointing this out if it’s sensitive, but it seems clear Aurbach knows more about why we are hunting this target than I do. What does Violator have to do with Israel?”

  Carmichael answered in an offhanded manner. “Gentry was involved in an op while working in SAD. Israel came out on the short end of things. Manny knows about it. You do not.” He shrugged. “Not relevant to your operation.”

  The analyst said, “It might help us understand why he went to such lengths to protect the Israeli prime minister. That doesn’t fit with what we know about the man.”

  “George . . . no.” There was an annoyed finality in Carmichael’s voice. George just held a hand up in surrender.

  Brewer took this all in. She was fascinated to see other Working Group members asking questions about Violator. They were tasked with catching him, but their need-to-know apparently didn’t include details of his former operations.

  Carmichael turned to Brewer now, surprising her with the speed of the movement. “Okay, Suzanne. Time to earn yourself a seat at the table. You’ve heard what we’re up against. What do you suggest we do?”

  Brewer looked around, and her voice became unsure. “I don’t see any outside entities represented here.”

  “Outside entities?”

  “Protocol for something like this . . . a local threat, I mean . . . is to bring in the FBI.”

  Carmichael sighed. Disappointed in her comment. “No Bureau. This isn’t going to be a DOJ dog and pony show. We have one man in the area, we can handle this. What steps do you say we take first?”

  She said, “Honestly, if this were Paris, Buenos Aires, even Toronto, we would have more options from an operational standpoint. But D.C. isn’t our turf. I can’t just send a security team in a helicopter over the Capitol and a surveillance team in a van down Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  Carmichael shook his head. “There are counterintelligence protocols for resources at our disposal. On an ad hoc basis I can bring in various assets, I can order up contracted security with TS clearance. I can call in JSOC operators.”

  Brewer was astonished. “JSOC operators? You are talking about Delta Force?”

  Mayes corrected her. “They haven’t been called that for years, but yeah, special mission units. Those guys.”

  “To run a direct-action mission in the United States?”

  “Yes,” Carmichael replied flatly.

  Brewer was realizing Carmichael had been right when he said she’d never worked on an operation of this magnitude. “You would need approval from the director, who himself would need approval from the president.”

  “I have approval from the director, who has an existing understanding with POTUS involving Violator.” He smiled. “Welcome to the big leagues, Brewer. You want in this program, you’re going to have to get with the program.”

  Suzanne Brewer composed herself for a moment, well aware that all eyes were on her. Then she reached out and touched the intercom button. Mayes and Carmichael exchanged a look, surprised that the subordinate was taking such liberties. She was the most junior officer in the room, but clearly she was no shrinking violet.

  A communications specialist answered on the intercom.

  “Commo.”

  “Where are we in accessing local police, D.C. Metro, and civilian camera networks?”

  “We’ll be up on all systems by tomorrow at seven a.m.”

  “And facial recog?”

  “Ready to go. Once we have the feeds, we’ll get to work. It will be a slow process. A lot of cameras for the computers to look at.”

  “I understand. Are we monitoring first responder bands?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Do it. Police, ambulance, fire. We need to be on the lookout for anything anomalous in the District involving a single subject fitting his description. If he’s a lone wolf, he might steal a car, break into a building, rob a pawnshop in the burbs. Hell, if he’s been on a cargo ship for that long he might hire a hooker or get himself busted in a massage parlor.”

  “We’ll get on it immediately.”

  The room was quiet. Then Carmichael looked to Mayes. “All right. I’m sold. Suzanne is in the Working Group, in charge of the tactical operations center. She runs defense, and she is subordinate to you on offense. She sees primary intel on Violator, beginning with everything we know about his actions in the past two years.”

  Brewer cocked her head. “You said he’s been on the run for five years.”

  Carmichael stared her down. “You get two years. That is plenty of background for you to build a profile of his modus operandi.”

  Suzanne Brewer let it go. “Thank you, sir.”

  Carmichael addressed the entire table now. “Listen up. Violator has been running from us for a long time. Suddenly he’s right back here in our midst. This gives rise to the possibility he has transitioned from defender to aggressor. That should be extremely disconcerting to you all.”

  He pointed a finger at the map. “The quicker we can find him out there, the better. The longer he’s free on the streets, the more time he has to set up an operation to go on the attack.” He shook his head. “We are not going to give him that time.”

  5

  Court Gentry stood in the darkness, a light rain falling on his head and shoulders, the back of his jacket soaked from leaning against the steps of a rusted playground slide. He shifted his feet back and forth for warmth and blew into his hands.

  As he stood and shivered in the tiny park he watched a young white man in a red parka standing on the porch of a dilapidated single-story home across the street. The man lit a cigarette and looked around in all directions, his eyes searching for anyone watching him. Court was just one hundred feet away but he might as well have been invisible. The man looked through him and continued his scan, then he left the porch and headed down the street.

  Court kept his eyes on the man until he disappeared around the corner a block to the south.

  When he was out of view, Court turned his attention back to the house. Sandwiched between a pair of low-rent and low-rise apartment buildings, it had whitewashed wood clapboard walls and a small front porch, accented by a black metal door that looked like it could withstand a direct hit from an antitank missile. There were two security cameras visible on the property, one watching over the driveway to the right of the porch, the other pointing straight down to the front door to record anyone who approached.

  A tall wooden fence rimmed with barbed wire enclosed the small backyard, and an angry dog back there barked and snarled at any sound on the street.

  Court blew into his hands again while he took in the scene. The inner-city location, the beat-up house with
the fortified access point, the rough-looking skinny white boys coming and going.

  There was no mystery as to what he was looking at.

  This was a stash house for a drug ring.

  Thirty minutes after his run-in with the would-be muggers on 8th Street SE, Court had seen a man selling packets of either heroin or meth behind a gas station on Savannah Avenue. Court melted into the dark edge of the parking lot to watch, and soon he determined the man probably wasn’t dealing H, because he looked like a meth head, which meant he was both a user and a dealer, and it stood to reason he used what he dealt. The bony man made a phone call after the sale. Court wasn’t in a position to hear any of it, but from the fact the man started walking as soon as he hung up, Court thought he might be heading to a stash house to drop off money and pick up more supply.

  And Court had been right. He followed the gaunt young man seven blocks, finding this surprisingly difficult to do because the man was amped up and paranoid, always looking back over his shoulder, ducking down behind things and even moving in and out through traffic racing by on Wheeler Road. But Court kept the tail, because he knew the low-level dealer was going someplace Court wanted to be.

  The man finally arrived at this single-story clapboard house on Brandywine Street, where he knocked four times on the iron door, and then transferred something—almost certainly cash—through a slot at chest level, before receiving something—almost certainly drugs—in a paper bag. He headed off up the street and Court watched the man go, and soon another equally strung-out-looking white kid appeared and repeated the sequence, giving Court all the evidence he needed that he’d come to the right place.

  Court had considered making his way into a neighbor’s backyard to get a better look at the property behind the stash house, but the angry pit bull snarling there encouraged him to change his mind. The dog went positively ape shit every time one of the men stepped onto the property to knock on the front door, so Court decided he couldn’t get any closer to the house without raising the alarm. Instead he moved to the derelict asphalt-covered park, stood on the playground, and cased the location from the front, planning his next move.

  While he felt certain he knew what was inside the house, he had no idea who was inside the house. They could be MS-13, the Salvadoran gang, or they could be white supremacists. From the three motorcycles lined up and locked together on the drive he knew they could be some biker gang, as well, but the old, beat-up bikes weren’t nearly as impressive as Court’s mental image of what a biker gang would be riding, so he was betting against Hells Angels or Outlaws MC.

  He was pretty sure who wasn’t inside. There was a pickup truck in the drive, a late-model candy-apple red Dodge Ram, and the presence of a rebel flag decal on the back window gave Court the impression that the operation in the house probably wasn’t being conducted by the D.C. Blacks, the Crips, or the Bloods.

  But Court didn’t really care about the occupants themselves; all that really concerned him was the security of the property, because he planned on making entry on the house. He wanted to know about any booby traps, false access points, mantraps, or other fortified areas. At this point he wasn’t really thinking about the presence of guns because he knew there would be guns—no self-respecting drug dealer would operate in the United States without an arsenal within arm’s reach—but to Court, this was not a problem.

  In fact, he was counting on it.

  He checked his watch. Twenty minutes till midnight. For a second he considered hanging out there until three a.m., when the average person’s body clock was at its lowest. But almost immediately he decided against waiting. Meth heads kept weird hours, after all, and Court knew they might well be more wired and ready at four a.m. than at four p.m., so he made the decision to act now.

  He left the darkness of the playground and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  He didn’t go directly to the stash house. Instead he backtracked half a block, returning to an unlocked garage he had noticed as he was tailing the street dealer through the neighborhood. He entered the garage, felt his way around, and came across a pull cord for a lamp on a worktable. Before he pulled the cord, he took off his jacket and threw it over the lamp, so he could control the amount of light the bulb gave off.

  He pulled the chain and then moved his jacket so that only a faint glow reached the rest of the little one-car garage. He saw a few items on the table, and a few more on a wooden shelf, and he took what he needed, turned off the lamp, and felt his way back to the exit.

  Minutes later he crossed the street in front of the drug house, his hands empty and nonthreatening. As he approached he heard the sound of industrial heavy metal music coming from inside. He walked up the little driveway, passed the bikes and the Dodge pickup, and climbed up onto the porch. By now the frantic noise was blasting, which was impressive to Court, considering the windows were boarded and the door could not have been more secure.

  Looking the door over, he tried to determine the security measures at this entrance. There would be dead bolts and multiple chain locks, and there would be a drop bar or a “dead man,” a large metal shank that secured the door to the wall.

  Court knew he would not be entering through that door unless someone on the inside wanted him to, and he didn’t see much of a chance in that.

  He banged four times, and the dog in the backyard barked like a maniac.

  Seconds later, a four-inch-high and twelve-inch-wide slit opened in the center of the door at chest height, firing a bolt of light across the porch. From the inside, Court heard the loud metal music, and above that a voice high and harsh like a coffee grinder. “What the fuck you want?”

  Court leaned down to look into the slot. A bald-headed, shirtless man in his thirties stood back a few feet from the door. His chest and neck were tattooed and glistening with sweat. He held a lit cigarette in his left hand.

  Pure white trash.

  Court looked over the ink on the man’s chest quickly. The numbers 1 and 2 rode high above his left pec. Court knew the significance. The numbers represented the first and second letters of the alphabet. AB.

  This asshole was Aryan Brotherhood.

  Court also noticed the man was hiding something in his right hand behind his thigh.

  “I said, what do you want, fuckhead?”

  “I need a hit.” Court was winging it; he didn’t know the street lingo for meth these days; he’d been out of the States for several years and had never bought meth in his life. He saw the paranoia in the white supremacist’s eyes now as the man realized this wasn’t one of his regular street dealers.

  He said, “Get lost.”

  “Your guy told me to come here. He said he ran out of stuff.”

  “What guy?”

  “Skinny dude over at the Exxon on Savannah.”

  A younger man stepped up behind the bald man at the door. He had stringy hair and was wearing a wifebeater, and his arms were sleeved with shamrocks and the number 12. He also had 88 on his neck, and Court knew these numbers were representations of the eighth letter of the alphabet. HH.

  Heil Hitler.

  Charming.

  The younger man said, “He’s talkin’ ’bout Junior.”

  “Junior, that’s right,” Court confirmed helpfully.

  The bald-headed man reached back and punched the kid in the wifebeater in the chest, then shoved him out of Court’s line of sight. He turned back to Court, his eyes wide with both suspicion and anger. “Fuck you. Get off my porch.” He moved his right hand from behind his hip and exposed a black AK-47 assault rifle with a folded stock.

  Court raised his hands. “It’s all good, brother. Hook me up and I’ll go.” He pulled the wad of bills out of his pocket, the ten wrapped around the six ones. He held it up but kept it moving in front of his face, hoping it looked like significantly more than sixteen dollars. “See, I’ve got cash.”

  “
This ain’t McDonald’s drive-through, you stupid fuck! Get out of here!” The man rushed to the door and slid the tiny panel shut. Court heard another male voice, different than that of the two men he’d already heard speak, and then a screaming female. Everyone was shouting over the music, but Court couldn’t understand a word of what was being said.

  He hadn’t really expected to be invited in for tea, or for any transaction to take place. This was a stash house, hardly an inviting retail establishment. He just wanted to use the opportunity to get a look at the inside, to judge the defenses, to evaluate the opposition.

  Four people in the front room, three males. He had seen just the one rifle, but he imagined each and every one of those drug-addled paranoid freaks inside would be carrying some sort of a weapon.

  He had told himself earlier that if he knew there were more than three people inside, he would move on, find another target of opportunity.

  But it was getting late, he was getting cold, and four was close enough to three.

  He’d continue on with his mission here.

  Just to get everyone inside a little more jumpy and overwrought, he knocked again.

  “I’m going to kill you!” the bald-headed man shouted. And then, for added emphasis, he added a “Fuck off!”

  Court heaved a big sigh. He gave a light “Have a good night,” and he turned and left the porch.

  But he did not return to the sidewalk or the street. Instead he walked over to the driveway and looked up at the camera peering down at him. It was on the side of the house, just under the awning, a foot and a half out of Court’s reach. Its lens was centered on the Dodge Ram and the motorcycles.

  Court moved to the side of the Ram, and as he did so he reached into his blazer and pulled a hammer from his waistband, an oily shop rag and a lighter from his pocket. He used the claw of the hammer to prize open the fuel door of the vehicle, then he removed the fuel cap and stuffed the oily rag most of the way in the fueling tube.

  He lit it quickly.

  Court stepped directly under the camera now and tossed the hammer up gently. It hit the camera and knocked the lens so that it pointed up to the rainy sky.