Now Court saw the confusion and dejection in the face of Babbitt as it became clear that the Townsend shooters had found nothing at the safe house. At the same time he saw enormous relief in the eyes of Ruth Ettinger. Beaumont had pulled her back near the wingback chairs, and just past her, sitting on the couch between the two armed guards, Dead Eye himself looked at first relieved, and then immediately lost in thought.
Slowly Babbitt brought the phone back to his ear.
“Well, well, well, Mr. Gentry. Once again, you remain one step ahead.”
“Put me on speaker. I want to talk to Dead Eye. If I can get him to stand down for today, and you release Ruth Ettinger, I will come in to you.”
Babbitt turned the phone to its speaker setting, but he said, “Court, nothing has changed; you must come here.”
Ruth said, “Do not come here, Court. Let them sit and stew. They have Whitlock; he can’t get to Kalb as long as he’s right here.”
“I understand,” he said.
Whitlock sat on the sofa, his hands behind him. He said, “Lee, why are you talking to him? I don’t have time for this shit.”
Babbitt looked away from the hovering drone camera and back to his prisoner. “You don’t still seriously think you are going to walk out of here and kill Ehud Kalb?”
“Of course I do.”
Beaumont turned away from Ruth and shouted at the much smaller man on the couch, “You’re a crazy fuck, aren’t you? The only way you’re leaving here is in a body bag!”
Russ ignored Beaumont, continuing to address Babbitt. “Lee, your plan is not working. You want Court to come rescue Ettinger. But I know something you don’t.”
Babbitt cocked his head to the side. “And what is that?”
“Court does rescue. He’s proven himself to be good at it. But there is something Court does even better. Even faster, even more assuredly.”
“What?”
He looked into the camera outside the window, and he gave it a wink. With a smile he said, “He does revenge.” Dead Eye started to stand for the third time, and again the man on his right pressed the gun barrel of his Uzi to the side of his head, but this time Whitlock leapt to his feet and, in a blindingly quick move, his hands fired out from behind his back; he snatched the barrel with his right hand and pivoted the short butt stock with his left hand, facing the weapon’s business end away from him and toward Ruth and Babbitt. He yanked the Uzi now and the Jumper man was pulled off balance by the gun’s sling around his neck.
Before anyone in the room could react, Whitlock had his finger on the trigger, and he fired a long fully automatic burst. Smoke and fire and noise filled the living room, ejected cartridges arced away from the gun and bounced off the walls. He then spun to his left, pulling the Jumper operator in front of him and, at the same time, aiming the barrel at the face of the guard on his left. He pulled the trigger again and the man’s face exploded in a burst of dark red, blasting brain matter on the ceiling as the body fell onto the white sofa.
A Jumper man across the room got his gun up and fired, but Russ shifted to the right and squatted down, putting as much of his body as he could behind the falling Jumper operative caught in the Uzi’s sling, and the rounds hit the guard’s back, killing him instantly.
Babbitt crouched low, covering his head in a primal reaction to get out of the line of fire. Whitlock used the quick release on the Uzi’s sling to remove it from the neck of the dead man, all the while shifting fast and hard and low to his right across the room. He put himself between the other Jumper men and Lee Babbitt, and then he launched out of his crouch and grabbed Babbitt, putting him in a headlock. The hot tip of the Uzi burned into Lee’s sweaty corpulent neck, and Russ shouted at the men in the room in front of him.
“Get back! Get back!”
Russ dragged Babbitt back into the corner of the room with him, making sure that no one could get behind him.
Beaumont and his operatives held their weapons on Whitlock, but they could not engage with the director of their organization in the line of fire.
Leland Babbitt slowly opened his eyes, struggled weakly against the man holding him by the throat, and took in the scene in front of him. On the far side of the room, slightly hazy through the faint gun smoke hanging in the air, at the entrance to the dining room and the front door, Jeff Parks, John Beaumont, and five more Jumper operatives all stood with pistols or submachine guns pointing in his direction.
In front of them, two Jumper men lay dead; one facedown in the wreckage of the shattered glass coffee table, and the other nearly decapitated on the white sofa.
Both of Babbitt’s UAV operators were also dead, slumped over their smashed laptops on the table next to the bay window. Blood dripped off their equipment and glistened in the glow from the electronics.
Babbitt looked down to his feet slowly.
There, on the hardwood floor, Ruth Ettinger lay on her back, two bullet holes in the center of her chest.
Her brown eyes were open in death.
Babbitt’s voice cracked. “Oh fuck.” His body shook. “Oh fuck!” He shouted it now. “Oh fuck! You killed a Mossad officer!”
Behind him, Russell Whitlock looked on the scene before him with wild, intense eyes. He jacked his head to his right, toward the lens of the camera hanging below the drone hovering outside the window. “You understand, Court. She was the loose end. She had to go.”
In the back of the van less than four miles to the east of the Rue Kelle safe house, Court Gentry hung his head in his hands, the side of the SIG Sauer pistol pressed against his forehead.
Tears tried to form in his eyes; but he pressed them tighter to fight them off. “Ruth,” he whispered to himself.
After a moment he had a distinct sensation that Carl was reaching for something in the back of the van, and Court realized there was no time to grieve for Ruth. He was only partially aware of Carl’s actions at first, but when he heard something dragging slowly across the floor, he recognized it as the sawed-off shotgun he’d picked up at the Townsend cache at the Overijse farmhouse.
Without opening his eyes Gentry said, “Carl, do you want to die? Because I really feel like killing somebody right now.”
The wounded drone operator let go of the shotgun and lifted his hands in the air.
Now Court tapped Lucas on the back of his head with the barrel of his pistol. “Pull over.”
Lucas pulled to the side of the road. When the minivan stopped, Court ordered Lucas to put it in park. Still nearly overcome by Ruth’s death, Court fought to keep his head clear and on mission.
“I want to see the inside of your pockets.” Both men emptied the pockets of their coats and pants, tossing mobile phones, keys, wallets, and other small items on the floorboard of the van. When they were finished, Court had them climb out of the vehicle and stand by the side of the road. Court climbed behind the wheel and began programming the address he’d read on the door of the safe house into the GPS unit fastened to the windshield. As he did this he addressed Lucas, who stood outside the open passenger door. “You need to get your buddy to a hospital a lot more than you need to link up with Babbitt. Are you following me?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. I want you to know there was nothing personal in any of this. We were just doing our—”
Court sped off in the van, pulling the door shut with his actions and leaving the two Americans alone on an empty street.
In the backyard of the Rue Kelle safe house, Whitlock walked Babbitt backward through fresh snow, the barrel of the Uzi still pressed to the man’s neck and the six surviving Jumper men still in slow pursuit, their guns high as they trudged through the snow.