While he waited he looked at the television monitor next to the Ritz feed. CNN was on and, he had to admit, their story about the death of Jordan Mayes was perfect. An artist rendering of “Jeff Duncan” appeared on the screen as they spoke of a lone motorcycle assassin who raced up next to a vehicle carrying two senior CIA officers and opened fire.

There were witnesses who appeared on camera claiming there was more than one shooter, but the surviving CIA official in the vehicle—CNN went to great lengths to point out she was female, as if that was surprising—verified to authorities and in an off-camera interview with the network that she only saw one attacker.

As usual, CNN was going virtually wall-to-wall with the story, and they were helpful with the “lone gunman” narrative, dismissing the other witnesses by devoting a segment to errors in witness memory, and even having a psychologist on set to explain how the PTSD the witnesses were experiencing from this traumatic event was, no doubt, causing them to misremember.

Denny had to admit it; Suzanne Brewer had come through.

He couldn’t have been happier about that, but what he heard from the JSOC radios a few seconds later caused his heart to drop.

“This is Dakota. I have bodies. Wait one.” A pause. Then, “Jesus Christ. I’ve got four dead in the stairwell. None are the target. These are armed men, fighting-age males. All dead. All head-shots.”

Another call came over the commo net. “Harley to Dakota. We’ve got four more up here on the fifth floor. All DOA, multiple gunshots. I do not see Violator among them. Suggest we get the fuck out of here, boss, local PD might already be en route.”

“Roger that. Everybody exfil.”

Denny sat alone at his desk. He remained still for a moment, until his phone rang, startling him. Looking down, he saw it was Kaz.

“Yes?”

“Gentry killed them. All of them. He’s coming for me now. He knows!”

Denny Carmichael breathed heavily into the phone now. Things had spun completely out of control. Kaz was the calmest intelligence official Denny had ever worked with. If he was losing his cool, Denny knew he was in trouble. “Calm down. He doesn’t know anything.”

“He knows! He told me he knew about Trieste.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Yes.”

“And what does that mean? Trieste. It means nothing. He’s flailing, Kaz. That’s all. He’s trying to get into your head. To get you to expose yourself. If you stay calm you will be—”

Kaz said, “I can’t help with this anymore. My exposure is too great.”

Carmichael shouted into the phone, “Listen to me, Kaz, you aren’t going anywhere till this is over!”