On Target

by Mark Greaney

  But he didn’t care. He wasn’t looking to make friends, even if they were all going to work together on the mission to come. These guys would be pros, just like him, and the op would take precedence.

  They didn’t need to like each other to do their jobs.

  Once Court was seated in the new room, he noticed a blue monitor on a desk in front of him. Zack entered a moment later, stowing a sat phone in a pouch on his hip as he did so.

  “Okay. You are going to talk to somebody. He’s read in on this op, and he knows who you are, but for all intents and purposes, you are not a NOC, not a CIA employee, not a former CIA employee, not an American citizen. You are a foreign national agent and will be treated as such. Your code name will be your old Goon Squad call sign, Sierra Six.”

  Court nodded.

  “And the code name for President Abboud will be Oryx.”

  “What’s an oryx?”

  “I had to ask, myself. It’s some kind of an African antelope or something.”

  Court shrugged. This type of code word protocol had been his life for many years. When he was in the Goon Squad he’d been Sierra Six, though he’d used literally dozens of cover names for his assignments. And before working for Zack, back when he was in the Autonomous Asset Program, his code name had been Violator. The code words were supposedly randomly selected by computer, but Violator seemed uncannily accurate. The CIA had pulled Gentry out of a south Florida penitentiary, where he was serving a life sentence for the triple second-degree murder of three Colombian drug runners, and presented him with a job offer he could not refuse.

  He had never believed for a second that it was a computer who dubbed him Violator.

  The screen in front of him flickered to life.

  The image of a man in a gray suit and a Brooks Brothers tie in a full Windsor. He was over sixty, thin glasses low on his nose. The face and countenance of a soldier. After a short moment Gentry recognized the man.

  Court was surprised. Shocked, even.

  “Sierra Six. Do you recognize me?” His voice was clipped and curt. There was no smile nor emotion of any kind.

  Gentry answered immediately. “Yes, sir.” He turned to look at Zack. Hightower smiled and raised his eyebrows, obviously proud of the juice he possessed to command a video link with this other man.

  The man was Denny Carmichael, currently the director of U.S. National Clandestine Service, and recently the head of the Special Activities Division. He was a legend at the agency, a Far East specialist and a longtime station chief in Hong Kong.

  Denny Carmichael was, in short, the top guy in CIA operations. Court knew this mission was big, but this kind of dirty work usually went on without the fingerprints of the top brass of the U.S. intelligence community.

  “I understand Sierra One has laid out our proposal to you regarding the extraordinary rendition of Oryx. I am prepared to reaffirm the details of Nocturne Sapphire.”

  “Yes, sir,” repeated Court. It was all he could think to say. He’d never spoken to anyone this high in the food chain. He found himself almost starstruck. It felt odd, doubly so since Carmichael would certainly have been a signatory to the shoot-on-sight directive against him that had been in place since 2006.

  Carmichael laid out the general plan that Zack had discussed, though he spoke in more euphemistic terms. Court would “detain Abboud with force,” not “snatch him” as Hightower had instructed. He would “neutralize all threats from Abboud’s close protection detail,” as opposed to Zack’s suggestion that he “pop a hollow point or two into each bodyguard’s snot box.”

  This dissimilarity in the vernacular was a common distinction between labor and management in this industry. Court was accustomed to hearing more from Zack’s ilk and less from men like Carmichael, but he knew the results would not differ depending on the political correctness of the vocabulary used. The operation would be the same, no matter how pleasantly or corrosively it was explained.

  Men would die.

  While Carmichael spoke, Hightower leaned against the wall of the ship, occasionally making an open and closed hand gesture to mock the verbosity of the man on the screen. But otherwise Sierra One minded his manners.

  When Carmichael finished his explanation of the operation, he moved on to the part of the deal most important to the Gray Man. “You do this for us, Sierra Six, and our operation to eliminate you will simply go away. That means any existing sanctions or directives against you within the agency will be dropped. Existing warrants via Interpol will be rescinded. Existing communiqués from Central Intelligence liaisons to foreign intelligence agencies regarding you will cease. The CIA request for Echelon intel and other data mining regarding you from NSA will be allowed to expire. Other loose ends will be cleared up. FBI, Joint Special Operations Command, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Commerce Department . . . you will no longer be a person of interest to any United States federal department or agency.”

  Court didn’t know JSOC had been involved in the hunt for him. JSOC meant Delta Force, the Unit, and the Unit meant some tough hombres. The Commerce Department, on the other hand, didn’t quite fill him with the same sense of dread.

  Gentry said, “I understand.”

  “Fine. So do we have an agreement?”

  “Will you tell me what this is all about?”

  Carmichael looked a little annoyed. Presumably he did not feel comfortable offering deals to outlaws. But he nodded and said, “President Abboud is wanted by the International Criminal—”

  “Excuse me, sir. I meant . . . Can you tell me what the shoot on sight is all about? Why you went after me in the first place.”

  There was a long pause. Denny Carmichael looked off camera to someone on his side, perhaps for guidance. Finally he replied with a grave tone, “Son. If you truly do not know what you did, it is probably better for everyone’s sake that I do not tell you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let’s move forward. Forget the SOS. We’re prepared to forget the SOS. Do we have a deal regarding President Abboud?”

  Court looked at Zack. Zack looked back. Finally, Gentry said, “Yes, sir. I will do my best to uphold my end of the bargain. I will rely on you and Sierra One to uphold yours.”

  Carmichael nodded but did not smile. “Very well. We will not speak again, Six. Sierra One will be the team leader and on-site commander for Operation Nocturne Sapphire, the rendition of President Bakri Ali Abboud from the Sudan to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Arrangements will be made for further operations, presuming all goes well in Africa, at the appropriate time, via the Special Activities Division Special Operations Group case officer assigned to you.”

  “Understood. Thank you.”

  A curt nod from the man on the screen, and the screen went blank.

  Immediately Zack said, “I thought that dude would never shut up.”

  Court stood, looked at his watch.

  “So, we good, Six?” asked Zack.

  A pause of resignation on the part of Court Gentry. He was going to do this, but it would not be easy. He said, “You’d better get me back to the hotel. Can’t let Sid’s goons catch me away.”

  Zack smiled. “Roger that. A couple of my boys will take you back and tuck you in. Don’t mind them if they aren’t too chummy at first. They’re a little grumpy about all this. They somehow got the impression that you were the dickhead who’d killed several men in your unit and then ran off to seek fame and fortune in the private sector.”

  “Where did they get an idea like that, Zack?”

  Sierra One put his hands up in surrender. “I might bear some responsibility for their distrust of you. Also, you put Todd out of action for this op.” Then he smiled, slapped his hand on Court’s back, a little too forcefully. “Hey, it’s good to be working with you again. Last thing. Let’s talk about gear.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’ll have all the specific equipment for Nocturne Sapphire in the Sudan. I’ll me
et you there to hand it over the night before the operation. But as far as personal gear, let me know what you need, and I’ll see what I can do to have it ready by next week.”

  “A sat phone that I can reach you on. Something that works well in North Africa. A Hughes Thuraya should be good. And a good supply of batteries. That ought to do.”

  Hightower looked at Gentry. “You gonna bash a sat phone over the bad guys’ heads? I was talking about guns, Six.”

  “I’ll get all the guns I need from Sid. He’s got better shit than you guys.”

  “Oh, that hurts. But hey, you’ll save the taxpayers a few bucks, so I guess I’m cool with that.”

  TWELVE

  Court made it back to his suite at the Nevsky Palace at four forty-five a.m. He and Hightower had discussed operational details for another hour, then he was led out of the belly of the yacht and over the side, onto a dinghy with two of Zack’s men. No words were spoken between the three as they negotiated the frigid black waters of the Bay of Finland, making landfall at nearly four in the morning. A car was waiting on the dock, and Court was ushered into it, driven back to the hotel, and delivered to a room. Hightower had thought of everything, even renting a suite directly above Gentry’s. From here the SAD men went to the balcony, dropped a rope over the side, and gave Court a small pad of contact information for the team.

  “Hey, man,” said the black operator. He’d been introduced as Spencer, and the other guy, a younger man with an accent Court recognized as Croatian, as Milo. “People talk. Rumors and shit. Normally I don’t listen . . . but . . . Were you the guy in Kiev? Just a yes or no.”

  Gentry took the pad, stuck it in his back pocket, and uttered his only phrase in the past hour of the transport. “Fuck you.” He ignored the rope and kicked his legs over the side of the railing. He swung down to his balcony below unaided and dropped silently.

  Spencer leaned over the railing and called down, “Fuck you, too, Six. We’ll see you in two weeks down in the stink.”

  Gentry showered, stared into the foggy bathroom mirror at his bruised face, and looked at the clock on the vanity. Five a.m. In two hours he’d have some explaining to do about how he managed to get a shiner and a fat lip while reading papers alone on a bed in a junior suite. Naked, Court turned to leave the room, but he stopped, turned back, and opened the medicine cabinet on a hunch. He peered in, and simultaneously his heart raced and his shoulders slumped. Sid’s men had stocked the cabinet with over a dozen prescription meds: decongestants, antibiotics, medicines for temporary relief from erectile dysfunction. All these could not possibly be less relevant to his present circumstance. But he saw the painkillers almost immediately. Dilaudid, four milligram tablets. His heart raced in anticipation of the respite of relaxation one tab would give him. But his shoulders slumped in resignation that he was not in any real pain, he knew he wanted but did not need the strong opiate, and he knew his three weeks of self-imposed detox would be coming to an end in about five seconds.

  Court popped two tablets, swallowed them with water from the tap, and then in a moment of anger and shame, he poured the rest down the drain of the flowing vanity basin.

  Next he dressed in the butt-ugly purple tracksuit Sid’s men had left for him, and he lay on the bed. His mind would be useless to him soon enough; he had to think before the medicine took its full effect.

  He thought about President Abboud. If Nocturne Sapphire was successful, the murderous despot would live. This bothered Gentry mightily. It was too simple perhaps, but Sid’s quote from Stalin had a plain truth to it that did resonate with Court, even if he would never admit common ground with Uncle Joe. “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.” No, that wasn’t Court’s exact thinking; few problems were solved with political assassination. But certainly many short-term goals were achieved. And most assuredly, killing a bad actor ended the bad actor’s commission of the bad act.

  Killing Abboud would kill Abboud. Other than that, Court Gentry did not give a damn.

  The Dilaudid kicked in suddenly. An inaudible whoosh of contentment waved through his brain, like an egg cracked on his forehead and trickling down around his skull. For a moment he just lay there, staring at the canopy above the bed and taking pleasure in the quilted patterns in the fabric. Damn, he said to himself, simultaneously happy for the drug-induced relief on his heavy mind and mad for succumbing to the temptation of the tablets.

  He fought the next wave of relaxation and went back to thinking about his predicament.

  No, he didn’t like the thought of kidnapping the most hated man on the planet. Sid’s op would certainly have been more satisfying to him than Hightower’s, but Hightower’s op offered a more satisfying reward. Having the shoot-on-sight directive rescinded by the SAD would not solve all of Court’s problems, but it would be better than having four million dollars in the bank. The money was no good if he was not around to spend it, and with the CIA on his tail for the past four years, he’d been unable to slow down from the around-the-globe flight from his pursuers.

  Yes, he’d love to get back in the good graces of the CIA. Whatever he had done that had earned him the SOS sanction, perhaps he could make amends for it by handing Abboud over to Zack and his Whiskey Sierra team on a silver platter.

  There was a knock at the door. Court looked to the clock on the side table and saw that it was seven a.m.

  Shit. He did not know if he’d slept at all, or if the drugs and the worry had consumed him for two full hours.

  Court heard the door in the sitting room open. Seconds later three men entered his room. They were from the same stock of hoodlums who’d dropped him off last night. Their suits were wrinkled; perhaps they’d slept in them in the hall or in the room next door. Or maybe they’d stayed up all night partying. He stood slowly, rubbing his eyes, and felt the meds in his blood slowing his movements and affecting his balance. He caught the men eyeing his black and gold and purple tracksuit appreciatively. Then their eyes rose to his face. Even through his beard he was sure they could see his fat purple lip, and his black eye was totally exposed to them.

  “What happened to you?” asked the first man in Russian. Court understood, began to respond, but then caught himself just before the first word left his mouth. Fuck. The Dilaudid was heavy in his brain; he could not operate effectively.

  He shrugged his shoulders, perhaps too dramatically, and waited for the man to realize his mistake and ask again in English. When he did, Court said, “I fell out of bed. These silk sheets are slippery.”

  THIRTEEN

  Court was taken back in front of Gregor Sidorenko just after breakfast. This time the Russian mob boss was outside in his courtyard, a cold gray morning and a light but steady spittle of hard needles of sleet from the sky did not deter him from taking his morning tea in his robe in his bare gardens. He sat at a small metal bistro table under a red canopy, gold pajama bottoms and fluffy slippers intertwined due to his crossed legs. Two young men armed with machine pistols stood amid the bushes already defoliated by the long Saint Petersburg winter. The men watched Court closely, but Court knew that at the distance they kept from him, if they felt the need to shoot him with their little fully automatic peashooters, they would no doubt perforate their principal just as quickly as their target.

  The American winced in the face of such lousy security protocol. To him, witnessing such amateurish tactics by men with guns was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  Gentry approached Sid with two of his minders. He’d been with the men an hour since the hotel and had not said a word to them since leaving his suite. With a curt nod to his employer he said, “Let’s do it.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Nothing. Did you hear what I just said?”

  Sid hesitated, nodded, clapped his hands, and gave two thumbs-up, which somehow lost something in the translation from English to Russian. “Excellent. This will make my government extremely happy.”

  Court continued, “Understand this. Thi
s is my op. You follow my instructions to the letter, or I walk away.”

  Sid sat up straighter, nodded swiftly.

  “I leave here alone. I need time to prepare and research, and I don’t need your Nazi freaks watching over me. In a few days I will contact you with an address. Your boys can come and get me.” Court pulled out a handwritten sheet and handed it across the bistro table to Sid, who took it willingly. “They will have this equipment with them. They will take me out into the country, a place of your choosing, and I’ll test-fire the rifle, check the rest of the gear. From that moment on I am operational. I will follow your instructions as far as getting into the Sudan. When I leave the airport in Khartoum, I will meet up with your agent. Together he and I will go to the coast. I will remain out of contact, in the black, until the operation is complete. I will notify you via sat phone, my own sat phone, that the job is done, and then we can talk about extraction.”

  Sid was almost giddy with excitement. “Brilliant. I will do exactly as you say.”

  For the next week Gentry test-fired and zeroed weapons, exercised rigorously on the hills and in the forests to the east of Saint Petersburg, did his best to build up his stamina by running, climbing tall trees, and carrying a rucksack filled with stones. He made daily visits to a tanning salon in Pushkin, an affluent suburb south of Saint Petersburg proper. He pored over maps and books and printouts regarding the players in the Sudanese region, from the smallest, most poorly equipped rebel group to the structure, tactics, and training of the NSS, the dreaded Sudanese National Security Service. He studied the history, the laws, the infrastructure, the roads, the ports, the location and disposition of the airports and the military garrisons.

  He paid special attention to the Red Sea coast of the country, because this was where he would act, first as an assassin in the employ of the Russian mob and then as an extraordinary rendition operative in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency.