Zack held his fist high over Gentry’s face. Then slowly the fist lowered. His jaw tightened. He nodded slowly. He reached behind his back and drew a snub-nosed nickel-plated revolver from his waistband.
Zack swung it around and pressed it to Court Gentry’s forehead in a single motion.
Court blinked, his cheeks twitched, but then he looked up at Zack, up the tiny barrel of the gun. His voice was soft. “Might as well just tell me why. What’s it going to hurt now?”
Zack ignored the question, just held the gun against Gentry’s head steadily for five, ten, twenty seconds. Then he said, “Just so you know. Whatever happens after this, Six . . . for the rest of your life. Everything from now on . . . is a gift from me.” With a cruel look in his eyes he lowered the gun, slipped it back into the small of his back.
Court blinked away a bead of sweat that had trickled into his right eye.
Zack put his hands on his hips, still looking down at his prisoner. Through heavy breaths brought on by the physical activity of the beating and the intensity of the moment, he asked, “Did ya miss me, Court?”
Court blinked again. Said, tentatively, “Like a hole in the head.”
Zack smiled wryly. “Easily arranged.”
Without another word, Hightower left the room, giving Court the opportunity to calm his nerves a bit and take stock of his surroundings. Immediately he decided from the thick white paint and bare furnishings of the small space that he was on a boat. Near the engine room, he surmised, from the humming in the walls. He could not feel the motion of water, but he knew that his equilibrium was toast at the moment, so that didn’t mean much.
Hightower returned with a clear plastic bag full of ice and a small utility knife. He stepped behind Court’s chair and, with a well-practiced single motion, cut away the flexi-cuffs binding Court’s wrists. Zack then grabbed another chair from the hallway, dragged it across the floor with a painful screech, and sat facing Gentry, dropping the bag of ice into his prisoner’s lap. Court immediately brought it to his eye and lip to deaden the growing pain there.
Gentry looked the man over with his right eye. It had been four years since they last worked together in the CIA’s Golf Sierra unit, unofficially known, to those few who knew of it at all, as the Goon Squad. Hightower had been Sierra One, the team leader. Gentry was Sierra Six, the youngest, most junior man on the team, but always the first through the door. Hightower was now forty-five or so, but his eyes were still as bright and blue as a baby boy’s. He was razor lean and square-jawed. His hair was cut in a classic military high and tight; flecks of silver now blinked in the sandy blond. He was six one and two hundred pounds, not an ounce of it excess fat. He moved with confidence, walked with his broad chest leading the way. Court knew Zack was Texas born and bred, had joined the navy after college baseball, spent a decade on the storied SEAL Team Six before joining the CIA’s Special Activities Division as a Paramilitary Operations officer. Zack was smart and tough and sure of himself, exceptionally charming with the ladies, and popular with the guys.
In short, a typical SEAL.
“How ya been?” Hightower asked as he looked down to his own injury, a hand swollen at the knuckles. Court thought briefly about leaping off the chair and spearing the bigger man’s windpipe, but he knew the drugs in his system would slow his reflexes still. Zack didn’t seem worried about Court attacking, and Court figured Zack would know better than he did what was still pumping through his bloodstream.
“Some days better than others, I guess.”
“Scuttlebutt is you’re doing all right. You’ve run three to five ops a year for the past four years. All over the map. Making some pretty good bank is the word on the street. Langley thinks you smoked both of the Abubaker brothers, one in Syria and the next a few weeks later in Madrid. French intelligence says someone fitting your general description blew up half of French-speaking Europe last December. The Ukrainians are even running around saying you did that shit in Kiev. You didn’t, did you?”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. How’d you guys find me?”
Zack shrugged. “Echelon picked up some cell phone traffic from Sidorenko’s hoodlums. They have a code name for you, I guess, but some dipshit referred to you as
“Gray Man,” Court translated with a frustrated sigh. “Brilliant.”
“Fucking geniuses, these Ivans,” said Zack sarcastically. “They said you’d be coming to see the boss today. NSA sent word to Langley; Langley passed it on to me.”
Court nodded. “It’s shoot on sight, Zack. You drugged me just to bring me here to slap me around first?”
“Nah, the SOS is officially on hold, at least while you and I have a little discussion. The ass-kicking? That’s personal.”
“You call that an ass-kicking?”
“Who says I’m done?”
Court’s brown eyebrows drew together. “Back in Virginia. I shot you, point-blank. Forty-four caliber. I saw you go backwards out a window. Two stories down.”
Zack grinned. Like a hyena, he smiled but did not look happy. “Don’t remind me. My vest caught the round, but I landed pretty fucking hard on an air-conditioning unit. Broke my pelvis in two places. Collarbone and a couple of ribs for good measure.” Zack winced as if he were remembering the event, until something popped into his memory. He added, “Never knew you to carry a Derringer.”
“Never had cause to mention it. Good thing I didn’t.”
Zack shrugged. “Depends on your point of view. To tell you the truth, I’d have loved to have known about it.”
“So why were you guys there? What did I do?”
Zack shrugged, like the answer was obvious. “Termination order from on high. You know how it is.”
“No. Actually, I don’t. What the hell did I do wrong, Zack?” Court’s voice was plaintive.
Hightower shrugged again. “Dunno. I’m just a worker bee. I got the term order on you, and I went to work that day, just like any other.”
“Bullshit. They gave you a reason.”
“Kid, when have I ever needed a reason to follow an order? I’m not like you, all navel-gazing and introspective. I do my shitty day job with a smile on my face.”
Court was certain his former team leader was lying; no one at CIA would order an SAD field team leader to delete his own man without so much as an explanation, but he decided to let it go. “The men, the guys with you who jumped me tonight, they’re your new Goon Squad?”
“More or less. Not Golf Sierra but Whiskey Sierra, so I’m still Sierra One. Bureaucratically we’re set up different than the old gang. Mission and rules of engagement are more restrictive these days. But basically it’s the same idea. My new crew consists of a couple of ex-SEALS, an ex-Delta, two SF guys who crossed over to CIA black ops way back when. Pretty good bunch, but certainly not Court Gentry caliber. You’ll always be my best door kicker.” He smiled. “You fucked Todd up pretty good: busted nose and a dislocated jaw.”
“Sorry,” replied Court, but he didn’t mean it.
“Shit happens.” Zack shrugged. Clearly he didn’t mean it either.
“So why am I here?”
Zack Hightower reached out for the ice bag, took it from Gentry’s face, and wrapped it over his swollen fist. “Abboud. President Bakri Ali Abboud.”
TEN
“What about him?”
“You’re goin’ in to whack him on an op for Sid.”
Court saw no point in playing dumb. If the CIA knew this much, they probably knew more details about Sid’s op at this point than Gentry did himself. “I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“Yeah, well, you will. We want you to.”
“What makes you think I give a shit what you want?”
“Just listen to my spiel, kid. It’s that or the term order, so why not?”
Court pulled the ice pack back, repositioned it lower, leaving his black eye uncovered but soothing the
