“Then we release you, and everyone goes their separate ways.”
Whitlock wasn’t buying it. “You are as full of shit as ever. Once Gentry is dead, no one at CIA will have incentive to keep me alive. You are going to kill me.” He motioned to Beaumont with his forehead. “Scratch that. You will have one of your apes do it for you.”
Parks and Beaumont exchanged a grin.
“Not true,” said Babbitt, but he did not try terribly hard to keep up the ruse.
Whitlock leaned back on the couch. His face revealed a man defeated, but behind his back, he’d torn part of the zipper from one of the sofa cushions. His fingertips bled from the difficult task, but now he’d run the zipper through the flexi-cuffs, and he used his fingers to work it slowly back and forth, only a quarter of an inch movement for each stroke, like a tiny dull wire saw.
He’d done this before, and he knew he’d cut through the bindings in about two minutes. At that point he knew he could make it over the coffee table and onto Babbitt in less than a second.
Sure, the Jumper men would kill him, but he weighed this against the satisfaction of digging his hands into the throat of Lee Babbitt, and he was having trouble talking himself out of a course of action that would turn him into a bullet-ridden carcass on the floor.
But another thought entered his mind. He kept sawing behind his back, revealing nothing of the pain in his shredded fingertips or the soreness in the muscles of his wrists and forearms. He looked to Babbitt. “Your drone found me, but it didn’t find Gentry? Is that curious to you?”
Keith said, “Not really. He could be inside some location where we don’t have coverage.”
“Or he could be running countermeasures to defend against UAV tracking.”
Parks smiled. “I doubt that.”
“He’s working with Ettinger, right? Do you know where she is?”
“She’s running all over the city right now. We are tracking her, in case she tries to trick us.”
Russ laughed. “She’s already tricking you. She’s leading you on a wild-goose chase. She knows about the UAV coverage, which means Gentry knows about the coverage. Right now Gentry is with her, watching from a distance, trying to track the UAV back to its home base.”
Parks said, “You just sit there and shut the fuck up, Whitlock. You are done.”
But Babbitt turned to him. “Why do you say that, Russell?”
“That’s what I would do, so that’s what he’s doing.”
Babbitt thought it over. He turned to Parks. “That would explain why she went almost all the way toward the farmhouse, and then started moving in the other direction.”
Whitlock said, “There is a solution, of course.”
“I’m listening.”
“Court is loyal as a puppy. Just grab the Mossad girl, bring her here, a place where you control the territory, and have her call Gentry. He will come running to save her.”
Babbitt looked to Beaumont. Babbitt was an executive; he did not like having his labor, especially his ex-employee, giving him ideas, but he clearly thought it to be a good idea. “Pick up Ettinger. Bring her here. We’ll do this the old-fashioned way.”
“You got it, boss.”
“And tell Dagger Team to double-time it to the farmhouse to pick up Lucas and Carl. Tell them to watch their asses. Gentry is out there somewhere.”
Court sat on his BMW bike in a lot by a flower shop, shivering in the cold as he scanned the rooftops of the little village in the valley below him. By his watch exactly half an hour had passed since he’d lost sight of the last drone. If the Townsend UAV team stayed on the same schedule, within moments he would see—”
There. A small black speck rose from a cluster of homes on the eastern edge of the village. Court could not tell which property it had taken off from, but he had it narrowed down to one particular street, with no more than four or five farmhouses on it. He fired up the bike and raced down toward the neighborhood.
He parked at the top of the street; now he was positioned between two recycling bins, and he took off his helmet to try to listen for any buzzing overhead. He fought the urge to look down at his watch. He knew the clock was ticking on this op, but he also knew that glancing away from the sky for even a few seconds could cause him to miss the returning UAV.
It took less than five minutes for the returning drone to arrive back in Overijse. As it passed over the village it came closer and closer to Gentry, then slowed and settled down behind a farmhouse not fifty yards from where he had positioned himself.
There was no mistaking it now. He knew the location of the Townsend UAV team.
Court began walking his bike to the farmhouse, not running the engine so he could remain perfectly silent. As he did so he called Ruth.
The phone rang, but there was no answer.
What the hell?
Carl and Lucas were almost done for the day, and they could not be happier. They had been working nearly nonstop for days, and they, as well as their equipment, had been pushed to the breaking point.
Twenty minutes earlier they had watched the Sky Shark feed on their monitors as their target, Ruth Ettinger, stepped off a bus in the Brussels neighborhood of Sterrebeek. As soon as the bus rolled away from the stop, a white van pulled up and members of the Townsend Jumper team leapt out, handguns drawn, and they forced Ettinger into the back.
The UAV team did not understand why the Mossad woman had been snatched, but they were not analysts or operators, they were techs, so they pushed their concerns out of their minds and went about their work. Parks had instructed them to break down their operation as fast as possible, because men from Team Dagger would be swinging by the farmhouse in minutes to pick them up.
As soon as the Sky Shark landed in the backyard, Lucas finished the powering-down process on his laptop and headed out back to retrieve it.
As he opened the door a man dressed head to toe in a black leather motorcycle outfit appeared in front of him. Before he could react the biker punched him in the jaw, knocking him back onto the tile floor of the living room of the farmhouse.
Carl saw the man in black enter over Lucas’s sprawled body. He leapt to his feet and reached across the table for an Uzi submachine gun lying next to one of the computers.
Court calmly drew his SIG and shot the UAV pilot in the ass. Carl fell to the floor, writhing in pain. Court now grabbed Lucas by his hair and dragged him back to the table in front of the ground control station. Once he was in his seat it was Carl’s turn. Court forced him back onto his chair and onto his wounded ass.
Court looked both men over quickly. “I have a personal rule that I don’t kill nerds unless I really have to. I don’t like it.” He slid his gun into his waistband. “Don’t make me. You boys are going to show me how all this groovy shit works, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Lucas said, and Carl nodded.
“Good. I want you to fly this drone to wherever Dead Eye is. Right the fuck now.”
Lucas said, “We… we don’t know where he is.”
Court looked at Carl. “You’ll bleed to death within the hour. You aren’t getting a hospital till I get what I want, so you better hop to it.”
Carl composed himself quickly and began preparing the system for immediate takeoff. “I… I might be able to find him.”
Gentry said, “I have faith in you.”
Ruth was brought to the Rue Kelle safe house at twelve P.M. She had been treated professionally by the Jumper men, although they’d taken her phone and her Mace and they searched her thoroughly in the van on the way.
She’d protested angrily and demanded to speak to Babbitt, but then sat quietly for the rest of the drive.
She passed through the door and into the great room at the front of the flat, and was led by the arm toward Parks and Babbitt, who sat on wingback chairs facing away from her. Two Jumper cowboys stood next to the sofa, blocking her view of a man seated there facing the Townsend execs, so it was not until she was just feet away that she found herself face-to-face with the seated man. He was fit and rugged looking, but not particularly tall or overly muscular. His hands were behind his back.
She looked him over even closer now. His eyes looked exactly like Court’s. They were mature and searching; they flitted around the room at first, but when they locked on hers she knew the brain behind them was reading every aspect of her person, taking in all the data and measuring her as a threat.
“You’re Whitlock,” she said.
“You’re Ettinger,” he replied, and he started to stand, but one of the Jumper men pushed the barrel of his gun into the side of his head.
He sat back down and the guard pulled his weapon back.
“Excuse me if I don’t get up,” Russ said.
Ruth turned to Babbitt now. “You are aware you just kidnapped a Mossad officer, are you not?”
Lee shook his head and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “We did nothing of the sort. Time was growing short while we watched you wander the city. You had no intention of bringing Gentry here for a trade. I realize that. So we just invited you back here to speed up the process.”
Ruth said nothing.
“But now we have Dead Eye and, most awkwardly, but perhaps also more importantly, we have you. You will call Gentry, give him this address—33 Rue Kelle — and then we will wait for him to come save you and kill Dead Eye.”
Russ stood up from the couch again. “I think we can all come to an—”
The other Jumper man guarding him shoved his gun barrel against the side of Whitlock’s head, and Russ sat back down, his hands still tight behind his back. He leaned back on the sofa, facing Babbitt and Parks, who were seated in front of him, and Ettinger, who stood next to Beaumont and the two Townsend execs.
Just then Parks took a call from Dagger Team. He put it over the speaker on the table holding the UAV gear.
Dagger Actual said, “We’re two minutes from the safe house. The UAV team there isn’t answering the radios.”
“Roger that, Al,” said Parks, and then he looked to Babbitt. “If Gray Man found the UAV station at the Overijse farmhouse, then we can end this right now.”
From his seat on the sofa Russ Whitlock said, “I think it is a very safe bet Court did, in fact, find the UAV station.”
Babbitt asked, “What makes you say that?”
“That makes me say that.” Whitlock nodded toward the large bay windows across the room. Ruth, Babbitt, Parks, and Beaumont all turned to it.
A Sky Shark drone hovered at eye level, just a foot from the window. Its camera was trained through the glass at everyone in the room.
“Jesus!” Parks lurched back in surprise as if Gentry himself stood there, on the other side of the glass.
Whitlock laughed from his position on the sofa. “Calm down, Parks. It’s not weaponized. He’s not going to launch a Hellfire.”
But even Babbitt was shaken up by the realization that Gentry was watching his every move from a distance of no more than ten feet. “Everyone remain calm,” he said. The phone on his belt rang and he jumped slightly.
From his position on the sofa, Russ Whitlock seemed to retain the most control of anyone in the room. He said, “Answer your phone, Lee. Say hi to Court, and wave for the camera.”