The soft wail of distant sirens caused Court to pick up his pace now. He shoved the money in his coat pocket and began looking for guns. He counted seven firearms in the house, but they were all wrong for his needs. The chrome-plated Desert Eagle pistol was as long as a shoebox and inefficiently heavy. He could get out of the area with the pistol if he hid it under his shirt, but he wouldn’t be able to operate in the District with such a huge and flashy weapon. There were four AK-47–style semiautomatic rifles, none of which he could hide in his blazer to exfiltrate the scene with, even while folded.
He loved AKs — he knew he couldn’t go wrong with the venerable Russian assault rifle. But it was hardly a low-profile weapon.
He also found two pistol grip shotguns. The shotguns were like the Desert Eagle, almost small enough to get away with, but way too big to use efficiently in the manner Court had planned.
He went back to the severely wounded man sitting up in front of the bed. He felt around his waistband, then frisked him down to his ankles, avoiding the blood on the man’s clothing.
Court breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers brushed against a Velcro ankle holster low on the man’s right leg. He yanked out a tiny Ruger LCP .380. It carried eight rounds of hollow-point ammo and fit nicely in the palm of Court’s hand.
The drug dealer hadn’t resisted at all. Court wondered if the man had even remembered the weapon strapped to his leg.
Court slipped the gun into the back pocket of his jeans, then walked over to a nightstand by the bed. It was covered with ashtrays, cigarette packs, crumpled beer cans, and candy wrappers, so Court used a forearm to knock every last item onto the floor.
He was back there in the corner for several seconds, long enough to arouse the curiosity of the wounded drug dealer, who was now lying on his side on the floor in front of the bed. “You got what you came for. There’s nothing else.”
When Court did not reply the man spoke in a slurred voice. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Court replied cryptically: “Sending a message.”
“What?”
Soon Court headed for the door, passing the wounded man on the floor without a glance as he did so.
As he started up the hall, the wounded man called out from behind.
“Who are you?”
Court did not reply. He wouldn’t give the man or his buddies, alive or dead, another moment’s thought. His plans ahead were infinitely more important than these inconsequential street criminals. They were just a means to an end, nothing more.
Less than a minute before the first police car stopped in front of the house, Court stepped back out into the backyard, holding a loaded AK-47 high in front of him. He realized quickly the two Aryan Brotherhood men who had been out there were gone from the scene — even their damn dog had hit the road with the sound of approaching sirens — so Court tossed the AK into the grass, climbed up onto the Monte Carlo by the fence, carefully pushed the barbed wire out of the way, and dropped into an adjoining backyard.
He was out of the neighborhood two minutes after that.
Tonight had been more trouble than he’d envisioned, but it had all been a necessary opening move in his operation. He needed a portable and concealable weapon, and he needed capital to put his plan into action.
He wanted more gun than what was now sitting in the back pocket of his jeans. To be sure, he wasn’t going to fight much of a battle here in the U.S. with the little Ruger, but it was a decent tool, and with it he had improved his defenses markedly.
But infinitely more important than the gun was the cash.
This was America, after all, and cash was king.
And with thirteen grand, Court Gentry could wage a motherfucking war.
7
By the time the meeting on the seventh floor of CIA’s Old Headquarters Building hit the forty-five-minute mark, Suzanne Brewer was reasonably certain everyone else had forgotten she was still here.
Denny had admitted her into the Violator Working Group, true, but since then she had sat to the side, seemingly excluded from the conversation. The cross talk now was between Jordan Mayes and Denny Carmichael as they discussed moving Joint Special Operations Command operatives into the city. Apparently a quasi-legal precedent had been established for doing so, which came as a surprise to Brewer. It seemed clear that even though Carmichael wasn’t concerned about doing things by the book himself, he knew “Jay-Sock” wouldn’t operate without all the forms filled out to the letter, so he was making sure the CIA’s JSOC liaison had all the details he needed to contact Fort Bragg and get the highly trained paramilitaries on the way to D.C.
Brewer found herself impressed with Denny. She’d never worked closely with him before, and knew him mostly as the old hard piece of shoe leather in a suit that she saw in the halls every now and then. She did know that Carmichael commanded a take-no-prisoners reputation in the Agency, and his colleagues knew to fall into step behind the man or to get the hell out of his way, because although he and the director weren’t close, Denny got things done and clearly the president liked having a stone-cold killing machine like Carmichael in his bag of tricks.
Now Carmichael, Mayes, and the communications officer at the table began discussing the logistics of initiating a full-time Violator Working Group tactical operations center, or TOC, on the fourth floor. Carmichael had already said he wanted more boots on the ground, so Mayes ordered thirty contracted assets with security clearance from a private security company. These assets, and the JSOC operators, would need a central ops center to coordinate their movements and responsibilities, and the TOC would serve that function.
Suzanne Brewer was surprised they wouldn’t use Special Activities Division assets for this, but Denny was adamant he didn’t want SAD men operating on the streets of D.C. It seemed like an odd quibble for a man who just ordered up U.S. military forces and private contractors to do the same thing, but Brewer figured there was a piece of the puzzle she didn’t understand, so she didn’t bring it up.
When there was a brief lull in the chatter, Brewer fought her way back into the conversation.
“I’d like to know something about Violator’s specific capabilities.”
With Carmichael’s approval, Mayes said, “Gentry has every tactic, every piece of tradecraft, every relevant training evolution you can think of. He can fly planes, scuba, rappel, fast rope, and free climb. He’s a master in the Israeli martial art of Krav Maga, and he’s the best close-quarters battle tactician to ever serve in SAD. He’s been to jump school, sniper school, advanced surveillance school, explosive breaching school, SERE school.”
Suzanne didn’t know that one. “SERE school?”
“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.”
“Okay.”
Mayes continued. “Ground Branch contains the finest one hundred fifty hard assets on planet earth. Gentry was as good as any one of them if not better, and that was before he went solo five years ago and really began to hone his craft.”
Brewer asked, “When you say hard asset, I assume Gentry was involved in lethal operations for the Agency.”
No one answered for a moment.
Brewer cleared her throat. “Look. You invited me in. If I can’t be told the full scope of the danger, then I won’t be much help to you.”
Carmichael nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Jordan Mayes said, “Gentry began his career as a singleton operator, he graduated to singleton assassin, and then in the Golf Sierra task force he was the point man for an assassination and rendition team.” Mayes cleared his throat. “Golf Sierra was absolute tip-of-the-spear stuff.”