Hightower said, “No kit but what you’ll pick up in Trieste at a dead drop cache left by local Agency assets. They’ll leave you a suppressed pistol and the image of the Israeli asset you’ve got to recover. Remember, this is simple if you make it simple. Your job is to go save some asshole who can’t know who you work for. If anyone gets in your way, you are cleared hot to schwack them. We want you back in seventy-two hours, max.”

Court nodded with earnest. “Roger that, One. I’ll make it happen.”

40

Present Day

Jordan Mayes stood in his superior’s office briefing the stone-faced director of National Clandestine Service on the early-morning convenience store shooting in the center of Washington, D.C. The killer had clearly been Gentry; no one had any doubts. From the description of events it seemed to Denny like Gentry had just happened to stumble upon an armed robbery and then do the only thing he knew how to do, which was shoot dead all the threats.

Carmichael didn’t need to see the video. He knew his ex-operator’s capabilities. A man of Gentry’s caliber against untrained bandits was as sure as a knife cutting through butter.

When Mayes finished with the play-by-play of the Easy Market shoot-out, Carmichael asked, “What do we know about his escape?”

Mayes said, “Analysts monitoring traffic cams tracked a Ford Escort away from the scene. Lost it when it passed a neighborhood where the cams were down for repairs, but they found the vehicle this morning in a lot at Howard University.”

“Did the cameras pick up anyone on foot leaving the area where they found the car?”

“Negative.”

“Dammit.” Once Denny realized the events of the previous evening would not lead to Gentry’s imminent capture, he switched to the fallout. “How is the media reporting it?”

“Local PD has done a good job locking it down. You can expect them to squelch any ‘good Samaritan with a gun’ narrative since it happened in D.C. All guns are equally bad to them and, by extension, all shooters are equally bad. As long as the video doesn’t get out this will probably get reported as gang v gang violence.”

“Good,” Denny said.

“There is one problem. The reporter from the Post published a story about it.”

“Catherine King?”

“Not King. Andrew Shoal.”

Carmichael said, “Is he looking to connect this to the others?”

“He put an article online forty-five minutes ago. He ties this shooting to the Brandywine Street shooting, but he leaves out Babbitt. I think we might have dodged a bullet with that.”

“Not at all. Catherine King is cooking something up. She’s probably scrambling all over, interviewing former intel officials, trying to get some kind of a guess about who is here in town that has us so interested.”