by Mark Greaney
Below him in the large, walled villa, Court eyed the Serbian security men guarding the property. He counted eight men in total strolling around the large main building, either on a second-floor walkway or down at ground level, and two more at the front gatehouse, all carrying stubby submachine guns. It didn’t take him much time at all to determine these weren’t the most skilled or vigilant guards money could buy. Through a set of French doors to the back garden Court could see into the large living room of the main building, situated towards the center of the structure. A television was showing a soccer match on the large TV, and some of the men designated to guard the perimeters of this villa actually lagged for long periods at the French doors and back windows that gave them a view of the action on the screen.
Inside the villa Court saw several of the al Qaeda men sitting with more Serbians, all in front of the television. They spoke animatedly, clearly focused on the game, and Court doubted anyone was getting much work done on anything having to do with illegal weapons trafficking.
This looked like some kind of fucking party.
Court focused on the match for a moment. He could not make out the names of the teams in the upper right corner of the screen, but from the uniforms and the players’ actions on the field, he realized Red Star Belgrade had just kicked off against Partizan Belgrade. This was the biggest soccer rivalry in Serbia, and though Court didn’t know which team these gangsters supported, he did know their focus would be on the match for the next two hours.
This would be the best window to make entry into this property without much chance of compromise.
But he wasn’t going anywhere till he made positive ID of his target. PID was vital before he began his ingress, because he needed to know where the hell he was going.
Court decided to change positions to see if he could get more intel about the layout of the villa and the disposition of those inside. He moved twenty yards to the south on the tree-covered hill and found another suitable hide. He pulled out his optics again and, almost immediately, he found what he was looking for. A man sat in an upstairs bedroom, wearing a button-down shirt and tan slacks. He sat on the bed with a pen in his mouth as he read through some paperwork in his hands, and occasionally made notes on the pages. Two prayer rugs were rolled up on the floor by the wall.
Through the nine-power magnification of his optics Court recognized the face of the Israeli agent almost instantly. The man wore a full beard now, as opposed to his trim beard in the Tower of David photograph, but Court was certain he had the right man.
Now that he knew his destination, he looked back across the property and did some mental accounting. Including the men patrolling the grounds, he had the location determined of a dozen bad Serbs, five bad AQ, and one good Israeli. He was missing one more Arab.
Court immediately wished the entire Goon Squad were here. If that were the case Hightower would just put Redus and Phelps up here to snipe while he, Gentry, Lynch, and Morgan hit the building, liquidating everyone except their precious cargo.
Whatever, he said to himself. For some reason the Mossad couldn’t know a thing about the help they were getting from the Americans tonight. Court stopped thinking about the what-ifs of the scenario before him, then he scanned the hillside with his night vision, looking for any sign of Israeli support operatives in the area.
Nope.
As Court did another head count, he couldn’t help but wonder where the last AQ operator was. He wasn’t downstairs watching the match, and up in the room with the two prayer rugs, Court had seen only one man.
Court did one more scan of the property with his night vision monocle, checking the outdoor walkway that circled the second floor of the villa, and he saw a pair of Serb guards standing close together, right above their comrades enjoying the match on the ground floor. These two men seemed to be more disciplined than their mates, because they were eyeing the side yard intently, their guns off their shoulders and in their hands.
To Court it looked like they might have heard or seen something that brought them up to the landing.
And then Court saw something that surprised him. On the terra-cotta tile roof of the villa, right above the two Serbs, his eyes picked up some movement in the dark.
Court lowered his binoculars quickly and then brought up his night vision monocle. Yes. Lying flat on the roof above the two Serbs, facedown and feet up towards the peak of the building, was a lone figure dressed in black.
Court squinted, trying to get better clarity. It seemed likely this might be the missing AQ operator, but it was difficult to tell. What was certain was the man on the roof just above the walkway was absolutely fixated on the two security men directly below him.
Court saw the glint of metal in the man’s left hand.
And then it hit him. Court hadn’t been the only one who realized the soccer match would be distracting the guards. An assassin wouldn’t wait for the middle of the night to act, not when nearly the entire security detail was focused on the television in the living room.
The hit man was here, now, and he was on his way to take down the Israeli agent.
A loud cheer erupted downstairs at the television, a dozen men celebrating some play made by one of the teams, and, while this was going on, Court watched as two flashes of light on the roof signaled the firing of two rounds from a suppressed pistol.
Court did not hear a sound from the gunfire, but he saw the two Serbs crumple to the walkway.
Quickly the man on the roof slid around, dropped down next to the two bodies, and started dragging one of them to a nearby open door. Court recognized that the man planned on hiding them from anyone below who stepped away from the French doors and looked up to the second floor.
He realized it would take him a minute or two to hide the bodies, but after that he’d have a straight shot along the empty walkway towards the Israeli asset sitting alone in the bedroom at the back of the villa.
And Court knew it was his job to protect the asset.
He threw his binos into his pack along with his night vision monocle, and then he stood and pushed through the trees, closing on the villa below him with reckless speed.
48
Court scaled a back wall quickly and quietly, dropped down into a garden, then looked ahead. Directly in front of him was an open-sided shelter that covered a pair of speedboats on trailers, and to the right of the boats was a large garden with a fountain. Beyond both the garden and the garage was the main house of the villa, two stories high. The Israeli agent’s room was on the second floor, right beyond the boat shelter. Court looked up and realized the window to the Israeli asset’s room was open, although he could not make out the man inside from ground level.
He also saw two more Serbian guards. These men were on the sidewalk directly below the walkway and the second-floor window. They didn’t seem to be on edge like the two who had just been murdered by the approaching al Qaeda assassin, but they also weren’t goofing off around the corner watching the soccer match through the windows like the others.
Court knew he could take out these two men—just follow the lead of the other hit man in black here on the property and wait for some noise from the other side of the house, then use his suppressed pistol to drop them where they stood.
But he couldn’t wait around. He knew the assassin on the second-floor walkway would be closing as quickly as possible on the man upstairs.
Court looked at the boat shelter next to him. He backed up a few feet, then used a palm tree that ran close enough to the shelter to brace himself on both the back wall of the structure and the tree’s thick trunk, and he shimmied all the way up to the flat metal roof.
Once on top he quickly scanned all around. He knew he had no time to spare, because he couldn’t see what progress the assassin had made in his effort to stash the Serbian bodies and make his way to his target.
The Israeli agent’s w
indow was right in front of the boat shelter, though it was separated by ten feet of air, because the two structures were not connected. The sidewalk below ran between them. Court watched from his new vantage point while the man inside the bedroom stood, walked to the window, and opened it wide. With a silver pen in his mouth he looked out into the night for a moment, then he turned around and returned to his work on the bed.
Court decided the best way to make it from the boat shelter roof to the bedroom without being seen by the Serbian guards below was to leap right over their heads. He knew he’d have to pull off an impressive ten-foot jump, then stick the landing on the second-floor walkway, then spring back into the air and vault through the window.
His ankles hurt just thinking about the gymnastics to come.
He rolled off his backpack and checked to make sure his pistol was seated in the retention hook so that it wouldn’t come out when he landed, then he quickly kicked off his shoes. He rose to his feet and began running along the roof of the shelter as fast as he could, approaching the drop to the sidewalk below, aiming for a point on the second-floor walkway right in front of the open window.
Two long running steps before he launched himself into the air, he saw the bedroom door open, and he worried he would arrive too late.
Court leapt off the roof of the building, kicked his legs once while in the air over the Serbian guards, and arced through the dark night in perfect silence.
He landed perfectly on the walkway, letting his feet and legs absorb the first of the impact, then he rolled on his right shoulder, diminishing the force against his body even more as he converted his downward momentum into forward momentum. The energy from the roll whipped him back up to his feet and it propelled him up and forward; he leapt high again, and he hurdled through the open window into the bedroom, simultaneously ducking his head and lifting his feet, while drawing his Beretta pistol from his hip.
As he flew through the window Court evaluated the scene before him. The man in the white shirt was on his left and standing quickly up from the bed, the papers around him flitting through the air as they spilled from his hands. His hands were empty other than his silver pen, and his eyes were focused across the room on the doorway to Court’s right.
And there the man in black had just entered, his gun arm outstretched, the silencer protruding, taking aim on the man in white.
Court landed flat-footed like a gymnast sticking his landing, and he saw the two men on opposite ends of the fifteen-foot space through his peripheral vision as both their heads swiveled towards his arrival.
Court pivoted on his right heel, swinging his gun in an arc to the right as fast as possible to get a shot off before the al Qaeda assassin killed the Israeli agent.
Downstairs a massive cheer erupted around the television.
When the front sight of Court’s Beretta found the man in black, Court realized this man already had his gun up and pointed at Court’s chest.
But the man in black hesitated an instant, then he shouted in Arabic. “Istanna!” Wait!
Court Gentry was not trained to wait. He was trained to act.
He shot the man once through the forehead. The cheer downstairs drowned out the muted thump of the gunfire.
The al Qaeda assassin’s gun dropped from his hand and his head snapped back. He crumpled to the ground in the hallway just outside the door. Court rushed over, grabbed the body by its black shirt, and pulled it fully into the room. Closing the door now, he propped the dead weight against it as an ersatz doorstop.
Court spun to the other man now. He’d been told the Israeli agent didn’t speak a word of English, only Hebrew and Arabic. Since Court knew next to no Hebrew at all and his Arabic was only fair, he realized communications between himself and the man he had been sent to rescue would be simple.
But this was a feature, not a glitch. Court didn’t want to chat up the Israeli agent. He wanted to get the fuck out of here.
In memorized Arabic, Court said, “We go out window. Hurry.”
The man stood there, his eyes wide, his hands in front of him, his pen still between the fingers of his right hand. In Arabic he asked, “Who . . . are . . . you?”
Court did not answer directly. He said, “Very dangerous here.”
“Yes. Of course,” came the reply, as the man recovered quickly. He slipped his pen carefully into his pocket, knelt, and began scooping together the paperwork off the floor.
If Court’s mission parameters had included exploiting this site and getting an intelligence haul on this mission he would have helped the middle-aged man recover the documents, but he had no orders to bring out anything other than this Israeli agent, so he just grabbed the man by the collar, hefted him back up, and turned him towards the window. To Court’s surprise and relief, the man gave him no problems.
—
Court pulled in front of the train station with his precious cargo after twenty silent minutes of driving. The only words exchanged had been a few sentences in Hebrew that Court did not understand, and to which Court did not respond. He heard “shalom” several times, but he ignored the man’s thanks.
He stopped the car, moved quickly to the passenger-side door, and opened it up.
“Imshi,” Court said. “Go away.” Court’s Arabic was limited indeed.
The man climbed out and, in Arabic now, asked, “Who are you? Who sent you?”
But Court just shook his head, pretended like he did not understand a word of it. The man nodded, then reached out with his right hand.
To move things along, Court took the hand to shake it, but the Israeli leaned forward and took him in an embrace.
“Imshi,” Court said after a moment.
The man stood back with tears in his eyes, he said, “Shalom” one more time, then he turned and headed inside.
Court drove off immediately, heading for the highway that would take him north along the Adriatic coastline, and he pulled out his satellite phone. After nearly a minute establishing a connection, Zack Hightower answered on the other end.
“Hey, brother. How’s the weather over there?”
“Nice and warm.” It was a simple code phrase to indicate mission success.
“Good to hear that. Come on home. Don’t dick around.”
“Roger that.”
Court drove the Peugeot through the early morning, returned it at the rental company’s office at the airport in Bologna, then climbed aboard a morning train to Milan. He arrived back in the airport twenty-four hours and twenty-five minutes after he left, boarded the Virgin flight to Dulles with the rest of business class, tucked himself into his window seat with a rocks glass full of Maker’s Mark, and fell sound asleep before the big Airbus leveled off over the German/French border.
Present Day
Court opened his eyes and found himself out of business class and back in his closet.
More than ever he was sure he’d done his fucking job on BACK BLAST, just exactly like he’d been told.
But it was no big mystery to Court as to why Denny Carmichael had chosen BACK BLAST to use to scapegoat him. It was the one op Court had performed during his Goon Squad years that hadn’t involved the rest of the team. Denny could tell Hanley, Ohlhauser, and the director of the CIA that Court went to Italy on an op, that he took a payoff from the Serbs, that he let a bad guy slip away.
And he’d killed some innocent guy instead.
Court looked at the dark ceiling of the closet above him, and he felt weak, impotent, and low. He had no idea how to convince anyone he was innocent of the charge Carmichael accused him of.
He closed his eyes, telling himself he needed to sleep awhile to be able to think straight.
But almost immediately his eyes fired back open.
A faint noise, something indistinct but vaguely familiar, grabbed his attention. There was no way he would have heard it without t
he Walker’s Game Ear increasing his hearing, but still, it barely registered.
While his brain was processing the origin of the sound, he heard it again. Soft but unmistakable.
A slight scratching.
A mouse?
No. Yes. He knew what it was now.
It was a plastic buckle, probably a FastTech, commonly used on tactical gear. Court had worn equipment adorned with FastTech buckles for the majority of his life, so he knew the sound they made when they touched other surfaces almost as well as he knew his own inner voice.
The buckle had brushed against the wooden wall on the little patio of his basement apartment, right next to the cement steps up to the driveway.
Now Court concentrated, listened beyond the ever-increasing sound of his own pounding heart, and he detected footsteps just outside his door.
He pictured the scene just six feet from where he now lay. A half dozen SWAT officers filed down the steps, then, one by one, they stacked up on the wall right outside his door. One of the men accidentally bumped his drop leg ammunition pouch on the wall as he moved into position, brushing the buckle against the wood.
Court reached for his gun.
49
Arthur Mayberry shook his head in disbelief, but Bernice Mayberry nodded her head as if she had known all along.
They both sat in plastic chairs in an all-night laundromat three blocks from their home. Arthur wore his pajamas and a blue jacket handed to him by an ambulance driver. He stared ahead, still unable to process what was happening around him, and Bernice sat next to him in her housecoat, equal measures scared and angry, but she had already professed herself to be wholly unsurprised by tonight’s events.
Out through the windows of the laundromat law enforcement officers stood around, radios to ears. On the street ambulances and paddy wagons idled, and first responders waited for the order to roll forward.
Arthur and his wife had been roused by a phone call, just after three a.m., asking them both to very quickly and quietly come to the front door to speak with police officers. They’d complied, of course, and when they did they were told they needed to leave their home immediately. Bernice had demanded to know what was going on, and an officer said there was a chemical spill on the nearby train tracks, and everything would be explained at the command center. They were whisked away by a team of armed cops in body armor and taken here to the laundromat, where dozens of cops were already set up, and whatever they were planning on doing didn’t look to Arthur like it had one damn thing to do with a chemical spill.
