The news anchor’s voiceover gave context to the images, telling the viewers some things Court already knew, and telling them other things that surprised him.

“Maryland State Police released a statement this morning saying Babbitt had been shot to death, and the killer was then chased on foot by private security nearly half a mile before briefly holding hostages at a McDonald’s on Wisconsin Avenue. He then managed to elude law enforcement and escape, and his whereabouts are currently unknown.”

Court sighed. So much for accuracy in the news. There were two complete falsehoods in that one sentence, since he wasn’t the killer and he’d held no hostages.

Then came the images of the scene on the Capital Beltway, and this time the anchor relayed a passably accurate version of the events there, including the jackknifed semi and the armed carjacking.

But Court found it extremely odd the report made no mention of D.C. Metro police encountering the suspect at that scene as well. Hell, he’d been shot, so they must have suspected him of being the man involved in Babbitt’s murder.

This piece ended and a new story began, so Court flipped channels to CNN. After a few minutes he was surprised to see that they also ran a brief piece about the brazen assassination of a Maryland businessman and the audacious and violent escape of the assassin.

Court was national news.

He groaned aloud in anger and turned off the TV.

He stood and grabbed a beer from his little refrigerator. In the bathroom, he drank from the can while he changed the black and sticky dressing over his gunshot wound, tears of pain welling in his eyes.

—

Matthew Hanley had spent a large part of this Tuesday off-site, meeting with SAD Air Branch staff at Andrews to discuss the registering of some new aircraft with shell corporations so they could be used in an upcoming operation in Central America. Through a front company the CIA had recently purchased four very used and totally untraceable de Havilland DHC Twin Otters from an Indonesian air transport service that had gone bankrupt and then shipped the planes to the States for refitting and refurbishment. Once Hanley had the new paperwork complete, the aircraft would go to work in Central and South America, moving supplies and men to denied areas for the Special Activities Division.

They would be completely untraceable to CIA, but for now they sat at Andrews in a sealed hangar, and Hanley wanted to inspect them personally.

He didn’t return to his sixth-floor office at Langley until three thirty, and when he did he found Suzanne Brewer waiting on a sofa in an outer office, working quietly on an iPad while Hanley’s secretary talked on her phone behind her desk.