by Mark Greaney
He waited nearly ten hours to call in to Townsend House, but he was finally ready. He hoped all the action had been quick and confused enough to where no one on Trestle Team had reported his treachery against his employer, but the only way to find out for sure was to report in himself.
He pressed the speed-dial button on his phone that connected him to Babbitt’s line at Townsend House.
After a hurried identity check, Babbitt said, “We thought you were dead.”
“I made it out,” Russ replied. “But all the rest are fucking toast, sir.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I wish I could tell you, but I was ordered to sit in my damn hotel room while your boys hit the target. Gentry definitely fired first; I heard his G19 open up before any return fire came from the suppressed MP7s. Other than that, I can’t really re-create the action to help you figure out what went wrong.”
It was silent for a moment until Babbitt said, “I understand.” He cleared his throat. “You called in during the attack, said you were going to engage.”
“Yeah. I wish I could have done something, but I wasn’t read in on the op, and it went tits up before I got involved. I tried to play catch-up, but I was too far behind Gentry. I only saw him for an instant. Unfortunately he saw me first and tagged me.”
Babbitt almost shouted in astonishment. “Do you mean to say he shot you?”
Russ lay back on his little bed as he answered, moving gingerly to avoid putting pressure on his left hip. “Yes.”
“You’re injured?” Babbitt seemed to have trouble taking this in.
“I’ll live. I dumped a couple of rounds his way. May even have hit him, although I don’t know for sure. The point is, if you had let me do this my way from the beginning, I would have slipped a stiletto into Gentry’s spine the minute he got off the boat yesterday morning, and you wouldn’t have eight dead operators and an escaped target.”
“Seven dead operators,” Babbitt replied.
Whitlock bolted upright on the bed. “Seven?”
“One member of Trestle survived. Somehow Trestle Seven was caught in an avalanche or something, buried under snow. We are still trying to get the full story on that. He was pulled out by the locals with a broken vertebra in his neck and four broken ribs, but he’s going to pull through.”
Russ took a couple of slow breaths. Anger began to well up in him, stiffening his body and clenching his muscles. “That’s good news, Lee.”
“Well, he may wish he’d stayed under the snow. He’ll be spending some time in Estonia as a guest of their penal system, even when he does get out of the hospital.”
“Do you want me to do something about that?” Russ asked. The insinuation would be clear to Babbitt. Russ was asking if he should kill the survivor to keep him from talking. Russ had no idea how he’d do it, but he had his own motivation. He knew Trestle Seven might have seen him with Gentry, and he certainly did not need that making its way back to Townsend.
Babbitt hesitated before replying. “For now, no.”
Russ pushed this new problem out of his mind. There was nothing he could do about it. He said, “This whole thing was a mess, sir. Unprofessional.”
Whitlock knew Babbitt would admit no wrongdoing. He was an executive; he would remain aloof and above any repercussions of his decision making. He did exactly what Russ thought he would do. He changed the subject. “We’ve got to get you back to the States. You’re hurt and that AO is too hot to have you running around in it after what happened this morning. Do I need to send a doctor to you to get you ready to travel?”
“I’m not coming back to the States. I’m going after Gentry.”
“Negative, Russell. I can’t have you getting picked up right now. Listen, we’ve got brand-new facial recognition suites running on our servers, taking in every camera within a hundred klicks of Tallinn. We’ve sent advanced microdrones to the UAV team so they can hunt him in urban environments. We’ll widen the search if we don’t get a ping by midnight local time there. I want you to stand down, at least for a couple of days.”
Russ knew it was useless to fight. “Fine. But I want any intel you have pushed to me immediately.”
“Agreed.”
“And Lee, I’ll take a couple of days to stay below radar, but I’m not standing down for long. It’s in your best interests to have me involved. Your UAV guys and your direct action assets don’t know Gentry like I do.”
“I understand. Just get somewhere safe and tend to your injury. We’ll work on locating him in the meantime.”
Russ said, “Dead Eye is out.”
Lee Babbitt put the phone down, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. What a fucking disaster. Of course he was annoyed with Dead Eye for taking his time in checking in, but more than anything he was relieved his solo asset was still alive. And he sure as hell wasn’t mad at him for what happened in Tallinn. On the contrary, as far as Babbitt was concerned, that freak Russ Whitlock was the only Townsend employee who’d done his fucking job.
He knew the next days and weeks were going to be a clusterfuck dealing with all the fallout from the Tallinn op. CIA would step in; they would smooth things over with the Estonians, but they would not do it without taking a pound of flesh from Babbitt for Townsend’s failure.
But he could not worry about that now. He had to find Gentry and put him in the dirt before he could concentrate on anything else. He knew he couldn’t let his injured, insubordinate, and half-crazy solo operator continue the search now while all of European law enforcement was aware of what had happened in Tallinn.
He also knew if Townsend’s signal room continued to push intel to Russ, then Russ would continue to act on that intel. Babbitt decided he would tell his people to stop sending information to the singleton’s phone. If they were lucky enough to have a sighting of Gentry in the next couple days, he couldn’t risk having Dead Eye rush to the scene and get himself picked up in the process.
Lee ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his eyes. What a fucking disaster.
NINETEEN
Court Gentry stood outside the Tallink Ferry terminal building at five P.M. It was dark outside the huge terminal except for the lights from passing cars on the street and moored boats in the harbor, but Court didn’t mind the dimness—he used it to disappear in a corner by the front wall. He had changed every scrap of his clothing, shaved off his scruffy beard, and approached the area in a cab from across town to avoid walking the streets that he and others had thoroughly shot up early that morning.
Still, he was closer to the location of the action than he would like. He’d reluctantly dumped his pistol in the bay just a half hour earlier. He knew he couldn’t run the risk of being caught with the gun, but he knew he was in danger here, back in the city center. Just as he climbed out of his cab a government Lynx helicopter landed up the hill near the Old Town, no doubt delivering investigators or government officials or someone else who needed to see the site for himself or herself. Even now, some thirteen hours after the action, the crime scene would be intact, although the bodies had probably been bagged and carted off to the morgue. Court had no idea how many had died during the action, but figured it must have been at least four or five.
He checked his watch, worrying that he might have cut it too close and arrived too late for his plan. But these fears were unfounded as the first gaggle of ferry passengers poured from the front door of the terminal, having just disembarked from the incoming ferry from Stockholm.
Soon it turned into a steady stream, hundreds of people, all rolling out their luggage, moving alone or with family in tow, heading into taxis and buses or just walking off through the heavy snow on the ground into the evening.
Court waited for just the right man.
There. A young man who looked Estonian rolled a cart through the terminal door. The cart was empty, and the man also wore a large backpack.
It was common for entrepreneurial Estonians to buy items in their home country, so
metimes even duty-free items in the ferry terminal itself, and then cart them to Stockholm, where the goods would sell for a higher price. This man appeared to be one of these ferry traders, and Court decided he would suit his needs perfectly.
He followed the man along the street, but only until he had broken out of the scrum of people leaving the terminal.
In the parking lot of a Statoil service station Court caught up with him and walked alongside. In Russian he said, “Pardon me, do you speak Russian?”
The man stopped. Nodded. His eyes flitted around; he was definitely on guard, but not afraid. These traders, Court knew, often bought and sold other items, things of a contraband nature, so these types were at once looking to make a score from a stranger and watchful for cops or thugs out to steal their money or beat them off their turf.
Court affected a nonthreatening voice and posture to put the man at ease. He knew his time was short, so he didn’t want to hang out in this parking lot any longer than necessary. “I am a friend,” Court said. “I need something, and I am willing to pay for it.”
“What do you need?”
“I need a ticket to Stockholm on tonight’s crossing.”
The man looked at him a long time and then began walking again. He saw no money in this conversation. “So go buy one.”
Court walked along with him, kicking heavy powdery snow with his shoes as he trudged. “That is the problem, of course. I have lost my passport.”
The man stopped again. “Then you aren’t going to Stockholm. You need a passport to buy a ticket.”
“Yes, but I don’t need my passport if you buy me a ticket. I will pay you two hundred euros.”
The Estonian looked left and right, then back to Court. “Two hundred euros, just to walk back to the terminal and buy you a ticket.”
“Yes.”
“How will a ticket in my name help you?”
“They don’t check passports at the turnstiles. Only at time of purchase.”
The Estonian thought about this himself and nodded thoughtfully. “And there is no control in Stockholm, either.”
Gentry smiled. “You see?” It was clear to Court the man did see, and he was already scheming on ways to use this idea to make money from others in the future.
Then he hesitated. “If you are caught. If you do anything to—”
“I destroy your ticket as soon as I get on board. I don’t even go to the berth you reserve. Once I am on the boat, I disappear until Stockholm. If something happens to me, you are not connected.”
The man thought this over, and Court knew the man was going to up his fee.
“Four hundred.”
“Three hundred.” Gentry pulled out the exact fare amount without showing the man any more money. “This is for the ticket; I pay your fee when you return. And we must go now, and hurry, because the ferry leaves in thirty minutes. If I am not on it, you do not get paid.”
The man agreed; Court followed him back to the ferry terminal, even offering to push the man’s cart, and he stood in the hall behind him as the man bought the ticket.
The building was crawling with police, and they were alert but clearly not certain who they were looking for. Surely the hotel desk clerk would have given Gentry’s description to them, but Court was the Gray Man; the clerk would have forgotten more than she remembered. The police would also be looking for Dead Eye, Court knew, and that potentially could present a problem, as he and Court were both American and similar in appearance, and Court did not know the other man’s level of tradecraft. But, he decided, Dead Eye would not have been able to survive as a solo NOC for long if he walked the earth leaving a memorable impression.
The cops had their eyes open, Gentry could see this plain enough, but Court himself spotted a hundred or more brown-haired men in their thirties walking around the busy terminal, all of whom fit every bit of the description the hotel would have to give.
Back outside, Court exchanged three hundred-euro bills for the ticket to Stockholm in the name of Ardo Tubool.
The entire transaction had been done with an air of friendliness, but when the two men shook hands at the end of the deal, Gentry darkened.
“I will ask for one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Your discretion. I have friends here in Tallinn who will know if I made it safely to Stockholm, Ardo.”
“So?”
“So nothing. I will not worry about you telling anyone of our transaction, and you will not worry about my friends.”
Court had met hundreds of men like Ardo in his career, and he knew guys like this weren’t the type to go running off to the authorities to rat out others. They had enough problems with the cops without seeking them out. But Court also knew it was likely Ardo Tubool would learn just as soon as he got back into the city that early that same morning groups of foreigners—Westerners, all would say—had shot it out with each other. If Court had not left behind a little encouragement for the man to keep his mouth shut, he might have been tempted to mention his transaction with the Russian-speaking foreigner who left on the ferry to Stockholm.
It was a calculated risk Court was taking, but he saw it as his best option to get far away quickly and efficiently.
Minutes later Court stood in line on the second floor of the ferry terminal, passed his ticket through an automated turnstile, and boarded the ship for a twelve-hour passage to Stockholm.
No one asked for his passport, no one asked to see his ticket, no one spoke to him at all.
He bought coffee and bottled water and plastic-wrapped and plastic-tasting sausages from a vending machine next to the piano bar on the boat, and he went outside on the deck. He sat down on a bench, bundled tightly in his coat and hat and scarf and gloves, and he looked out into the vast darkness of the Baltic Sea as the ship left Estonia, heading west.
Russ ate a simple meal at a restaurant around the corner from the inn in Paldiski, keeping his Bluetooth set in his ear the entire time. He was anxiously awaiting Gentry’s call, but it did not come during dinner, so he returned to his room, changed his bandages once again, and sat at the desk with the bottle of vodka in front of him as the hours ticked away.
Whitlock looked down to his watch again. Midnight. Gentry should have called by now, but he had not.
He realized Gentry would not be calling. Not today, anyway.
Dead Eye gritted his teeth.
He felt the anger boil in him, but he stopped himself from giving in to the rage. He knew the Gray Man would do things in his own way, on his own schedule.
Russ smiled a little at the irony of his frustration. He felt the way Lee Babbitt must have felt every time Russ himself failed to report in on schedule.
This was karma, biting him back for his own misbehavior.
Russ knew he should have expected this. In the scheme of things it was just a tiny bump in the road. He knew the Gray Man would get in touch with him. Not because he really wanted to work with him in the future. No, Whitlock had no illusions about Gentry signing on to that ridiculous idea, but rather because there was no way in hell Gentry could pass up the bait Russ had set out the night before. The offer to help him avoid the Townsend hunt.
Russ swigged vodka from the bottle, then opened the little window by the desk. An icy wind whipped into the room as he poured the remnants of the alcohol onto the parking lot below, and then he tossed the bottle into a snow-covered bush by the window.
Russ was pissed, but he would shake it off. Trusting Gentry to happily bounce along to the next stage of Russ’s scheme like a bunny rabbit hopping to a head of cabbage had been foolish of him. He saw this plain as day now. But he would not let the anger take over him.
He blew out a long, controlled exhalation. “All right, Court, you piece of shit. We’ll have to do this your way, but we’re damn well still gonna do it.”
He stood from the table, grimacing along with the throbbing sting in his hip, grabbed his bag, and headed out the door.
There was no se
nse waiting around in this shit hole. He’d get on a train and head south for Vilnius, Lithuania.
Russ had a plane to catch there tomorrow, and, he decided, he might as well get moving.
TWENTY
Two black Lincoln Navigator SUVs pulled into the gates of Townsend House and negotiated the winding drive through the cherry trees up to the parking circle. Leland Babbitt and Jeff Parks stood on the expansive front porch, both men dressed in dark blue suits, their lapels and their hairstyles blowing gently in the cold morning breeze.
The SUVs parked in the parking circle in front of the main house and five dark-suited men climbed out; their jackets hung open and the wind exposed the FN P90 submachine guns hanging at their underarms. The grips of SIG pistols on their hips were even less well concealed. Four of them took up positions in the drive, and the fifth man opened the back door of the rear SUV.
Another man climbed out now. He was tall and thin and older than the others, his suit was gray, and he carried no obvious weapon. His face showed little expression as he regarded the two men at the front door, but he walked up to them, flanked by his security detail.
“Good morning, Denny,” Babbitt said as he extended his hand.
Denny Carmichael, Director of National Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency, shook both men’s hands without replying, and within moments the three of them, surrounded by Carmichael’s security entourage, entered Townsend House’s opulent ground-floor conference room. Two large Frederick Remingtons were displayed adjacent to a huge showcase of Civil War–era weaponry. Perfectly maintained Whitworth and Enfield muzzle-loaded rifles hung above Henrys and Burnsides and Spencers. All the firearms were surrounded in the glass case by edged weapons of the period, each polished to a mirror finish and appearing as sharp and as ready for action today as they had been one hundred fifty years ago when they were wielded in battle.
