“You want some loser you can leave swinging 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.