Back Blast
Titles by Mark Greaney
TITLES BY MARK GREANEY
THE GRAY MAN
ON TARGET
BALLISTIC
DEAD EYE
BACK BLAST
Title Page
Copyright
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.
Copyright © 2016 by Mark Strode Greaney.
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Berkley export edition ISBN: 978-1-101-98917-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-40653-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greaney, Mark.
Back blast / Mark Greaney.—First edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-425-28279-3
I. Title.
PS3607.R4285B33 2016
813’.6—dc23
2015022109
FIRST EDITION: February 2016
Cover photograph of Washington, D.C. © Tim Martin / Getty Images.
Cover design by Richard Hasselberger.
Title page art © ZWD / Shutterstock.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Dedication
For Devon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank Mike Cowan, Chris Clarke, Natalie Hopkinson, Scott Swanson, Maria Burnham, James Yeager and Tactical Response, Lt Col Rip Rawlings (USMC), Keith Thomson, Jeff Belanger, Dorothy Greaney, Devin Greaney, Nick Ciubotariu, EJ Owens, Ben Coes, Brad Taylor, Dalton Fury, Nichole Geen Roberto, and Patrick O’Daniel.
Special thanks to my agents, Scott Miller at Trident Media and Jon Cassir at CAA, my editor, Tom Colgan, and his assistant, Amanda Ng, at Berkley, and Mystery Mike Bursaw.
CONTENTS
Titles by Mark Greaney
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Characters
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Epilogue
Epigraph
Why seeketh thou vengeance, O man! With what purpose is it that thou pursuest it? Thinkest thou to pain thine adversary by it? Know that thou thyself feelest its greatest torments.
—AKHENATON, EGYPTIAN PHARAOH
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
CHARACTERS
COURTLAND “COURT” GENTRY: The Gray Man, call sign Sierra Six, code name Violator—ex–Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer, CIA; ex–CIA Autonomous Asset Program operative
CATHERINE KING: Senior investigative reporter for the Washington Post
ANDY SHOAL: Metro (cops) reporter for the Washington Post
DENNY CARMICHAEL: Director of National Clandestine Service, CIA
JORDAN MAYES: Assistant Director of National Clandestine Service, CIA
MATTHEW HANLEY: Director of Special Activities Division, CIA
SUZANNE BREWER: Senior Officer, Programs and Plans, CIA
ZACK HIGHTOWER: Call sign Sierra One, former CIA Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer—Court Gentry’s former team leader
CHRIS TRAVERS: Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer, CIA
JENNER: Special Activities Division (Ground Branch) paramilitary operations officer, CIA
MAX OHLHAUSER: Former Chief Council, CIA
LELAND BABBITT: Director of Townsend Government Services
MENACHEM AURBACH: Director of Mossad—Israeli Intelligence
YANIS ALVEY: Senior officer in Mossad—Israeli Intelligence
MURQUIN AL-KAZAZ (“KAZ”): Washington, D.C., Station Chief—Saudi Arabia General Intelligence Presidency (Saudi Intelligence)
“DAKOTA”: Joint Special Operations Command—Special Mission Unit team leader
PROLOGUE
The host of the garden party accidentally left his phone in the kitchen, so when it all went to hell he was the last to know.
Seconds before the debacle he stood on the patio with his wife, chatting with guests over the music from a four-piece jazz ensemble set up by the pool. It was late evening and too cold for an outdoor event like this, but the host and his wife had erected a dozen flaming gas heaters, and enough red wine had been consumed to warm the blood of everyone in attendance.
Denny Carmichael was in his sixties but lean and tan, with a deeply lined but razor-sharp face and a formidable bearing. One of his wife’s friends had once confided in her by saying he looked like Abraham Lincoln’s evil twin. Denny and his wife traded gossip with a couple who lived in D.C. but weekended in nearby Easton, Maryland. Denny was wholly uninterested in the petty chitchat but his wife lived for this shit, so he stood there and faked it, swigging pinot noir that did little to ameliorate his boredom.
While his guests droned on about the cost of their neighbor’s new swimming pool, Denny looked around his property, regarded the Italianate patio, the opulent saltwater pool, and the meticulously maintained lawn sprinkled with their well-heeled friends. Eleanor liked to flee D.C. and drive out here to their estate in rural Maryland every week or two. It was expensive as hell, but his wife came from money, and this was what she wanted.
Denny thought of this place as his wife’s house.
And these friends were hers, as well.
Carmichael didn’t “do” friendships. He barely did marriage, for that matter. He lived for his work, and while everyone around him partied, he would much rather have been back at the office.
The jazz band finished a sedate rendition of “Sentimental Journey” to polite applause, but before the four-piece could fire up their next song, heads began turning towards several sets of headlights racing up the driveway.
Denny watched the lights approach, his already dark mood quickly blackening full-on to anger.
Three black Yukon XL SUVs parked on the grass alongside the driveway, fifty feet from the patio. All in attendance knew government motor pool vehicles when they saw them, because this patch of Maryland was only twenty-five miles from D.C., and most everyone here worked in the District.
Carmichael felt around in his jacket and realized he’d left his phone inside. He’d missed an important call, he had no doubt. He placed his wineglass on a café table next to him, made a quick apology to the couple standing nearby, kissed a perturbed Eleanor, and then started towards the driveway.
A dozen men in suits climbed out of the vehicles, and the gray veins in Carmichael’s forehead throbbed. The guests were not supposed to see these security officers, because they didn’t know what Denny really did for a living.
None of his wife’s friends knew he was the director of the National Clandestine Service, which made him the top spy at CIA.
The rage he felt over his protection detail alarming the guests was blunted by the fact that he knew these men wouldn’t be spun up like this without one hell of a good reason. Every security officer on Carmichael’s detail knew their boss would tear their head off for overreacting to a threat, so Denny took this show of force to mean something serious was going down.
“Talk,” he demanded when he was still strides away from the armed men.
The team leader was a forty-one-year-old former army major named DeRenzi, who was just like his protectee: all business, all the time. “Sorry, sir. You didn’t answer your phone. Orders are to cordon you off from the guests and hand you my mobile so you can take a call from the office.”
Five men moved between Carmichael and the stunned party guests, and squat P90 bullpup submachine guns came out of their coats, held at the low ready by men with intense, searching eyes.
Every one of the guests, the band, the caterers—even Denny’s own wife—stared, mouths agape, at this spectacle. Most in attendance knew Carmichael had served as an officer in the Marine Corps, but all thought he now worked in something banal at the Department of Homeland Security, as that was his official story.
Denny ignored the attention and asked no more questions of DeRenzi—he only mumbled an explanation that he’d left his phone in the kitchen.
DeRenzi responded with, “The office is sending air.”
To this Carmichael cocked his head. “Air? Jesus Christ.” He thought over the outrageous spectacle of a helicopter landing in the yard and whisking him away. “Are we at war?”
“Dunno, boss.” DeRenzi was muscle. He had no answers. Instead he handed his phone to his protectee and led him briskly towards the house.
Carmichael snatched it and held it to his ear while he walked. “Who is this?”
“It’s Mayes.” Jordan Mayes was Carmichael’s number two at NCS. He was a dozen years younger than his boss, but Carmichael could barely recall a time when Mayes was not by his side.
“Talk.”
“He’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
A brief delay from Mayes. Then one word. “Gentry.”
Carmichael stopped in his tracks. After a few seconds he spoke again, but his voice cracked. “He— Here? Here where?”
“Worst-case scenario? He’s got eyes on you right now.”
Carmichael looked around the lawn. In an instant his emotions cycled from fury through confusion, and then straight on to terror, and his voice went hoarse. “He’s in the goddamned States?”
“Best intel puts him in your state, Denny.”
Carmichael spoke quickly now; there would be no more pregnant pauses. “Get me the fuck out of here.” He began walking briskly, still cordoned off from the rest by DeRenzi and his men.
“Helo inbound. ETA five mikes.”
As he hurried along, Denny scanned his property. The tree line of pines in the distance, half-covered by thick mist, suddenly appeared foreboding.
Carmichael barked into the phone, “Five mikes, my ass. Expedite it!”
1
The band started back up tentatively, but the revelers’ attention was firmly fixed on the dozen serious men in the driveway surrounding the host.
Carmichael’s eyes searched from left to right, locking on human forms, because everyone at the party was a threat now. A congressman from Nevada, a prosecutor from Virginia, a horse breeder from Kentucky, the co-owner of a fashion magazine on Fifth Avenue. Caterers, musicians, and an event organizer standing by the pool with his hands on his hips, gaping at the armed Neanderthals destroying the mood of this glorious spring garden social. Carmichael double-checked everyone’s faces as he neared the back door, and the men and women he did not recognize—there were just a few—he triple-checked. He knew Gentry’s appearance—he’d been thinking about it for years—but he also knew the man could disguise himself better than anyone he’d ever known.
When he was inside and completely surrounded by his detail, he stood there a moment breathing heavily. He remembered he was still holding the phone to his ear. He said, “We’re sure?”
Mayes replied in a clipped, efficient tone. “Israelis tracked him to a freighter that embarked from Lisbon eight days ago. It’s now anchored in the Chesapeake Bay, just west of Easton. He might be heading west into D.C., but if he goes east, that’s less than fifteen minutes from you by car. We’ve sent a Marine FAST team to hit the boat, but—”
“Gentry won’t be on it.”
“Not a chance. He would have slipped off the second he got near the shore. Have to clear it anyway. Might find some clues on board as to what his play is here in the States.”
“Where did the Israelis come across this intel?”
“Unknown. I have a conference call set up with Menachem Aurbach at Mossad. We’ll initiate it as soon as you get to Langley.”
Just then, Carmichael saw heads turn to the south. Seconds later he heard the thumping. He knew the sound. It was one of the Agency’s sleek new Eurocopters.
Jordan Mayes added, “Denny, sorry about the party. I know it was important to Eleanor.”
“Fuck this party. I want the Violator Working Group assembled in sixty mikes. Everyone.”
“Roger that.”
—
The landing of the helo and the exfiltration of the host of the garden party went down in a fashion just as obnoxious as Carmichael feared it might. He’d spend the rest of his life explaining this moment away to his wife’s friends, but the fallout wasn’t even on his radar now. As he boarded the aircraft, along with DeRenzi and three other bodyguards, his mind reverted into combat mode.
Carmichael had fought as a lieutenant in Vietnam, as a lieutenant colonel in Lebanon and Grenada, and as a CIA officer against the Russians in Afghanistan. He’d HALO jumped into Panama, jetted into the Balkans, dune buggied into Iraq, and helicoptered back into Afghanistan twenty years after his first visit. Denny knew combat, and he knew how to push everything extraneous out of his mind, leaving it solely committed to the utter simplicity of kill or be killed.
This was his mind-set now.
The helo took off towards the south, leaving the party behind as it rose over misty, rolling farmland. The pilot pushed the cyclic forward and then twisted the throttle to pick up speed in the cold air.
Carmichael ordered Mayes to hold the line, then he moved to a seat just behind the flight crew and put on a set of headphones. Pulling the microphone down over his lips, he tapped the pilot on his shoulder.
The man turned back to him. “Yes, sir?”
“You have countermeasures on board?”
The pilot seemed surprised by the question. He glanced to his copilot, then back to the windscreen in front of him. “Yes, sir. Chaff and flares.”
Denny said, “Be prepared to employ them. I want your head on a swivel.”
The copilot spoke up. Unsure. “We were rushed into this . . . uh . . . Anything you can tell us about what we’re up against would be helpful.”
Denny shrugged. He said, “The threat is an ex-asset, code name Violator. A former Agency paramilitary officer with one hell of a grudge.”
The pilot spun his head back around sixty degrees and stared through his visor at the much older man. “One guy? All this is about one guy?”
Denny’s leathery face turned even harder as he looked back into the pilot’s visor. “Son, do I look like I scare easily?”
“Not at all.”
“Well, this son of a bitch scares me to death. Turn around and fly this thing to Langley, and be ready for inbound missiles.”
“Sir,” he said with a slight nod, and then he focused fully on the flight.
Twenty seconds later Carmichael was back on the phone with his number two. “Get my family out of town. Have them taken to the ranch in Provo. If Violator is here for me I want them out of the way so I can do what I need to do.”
The helo began swaying to the left and right, not quite in jerking movements, but certainly nausea-inducing to those in back.
DeRenzi moved forward and sat down next to Carmichael. He had his own intercom-ready headset on. He tapped the pilot on his back, but the man did not turn around.
The security officer asked, “Why the hell are we flying like this?”
Carmichael answered for the pilot, who was fully occupied with his work. “We have to operate under the assumption that Gentry has a SAM, or at least an RPG. We’ll stay low to counter the SAM threat, but we need to fly like this over population centers to counter an RPG.”
DeRenzi then asked, “Why do you think Gentry has a SAM or an RPG?”
Carmichael looked out the window, focusing on the twinkling lights of the D.C. suburbs below him. “Because he’s the fucking Gray Man.”
2
A dimly lit street in the center of Washington Highlands was a hell of a place for a nighttime stroll.
The Highlands were in the southeastern corner of the District, over the Anacostia River in Ward Eight. Full of high-rise government housing, low-income apartment complexes, and derelict single-family homes on tiny lots strewn with garbage, Ward Eight had been the second most dangerous ward in the District behind Ward Seven, but it had recently retaken the lead thanks to a triple murder in the last week of the reporting period.
But despite the late hour and the area’s infamous reputation, a lone pedestrian ambled calmly through the misty evening, heading north on Atlantic Street SE as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He walked along a broken sidewalk, catching the glow of most all of the streetlamps that had not been shot out or burned out and left black by a city that didn’t give a damn about its poorest residents. He wore blue jeans and a wrinkled blue blazer, his dark brown hair was tousled and damp, and a clean-shaven face revealed him as white, which, around here, at this time of night, meant he was probably up to no good.
It was ten p.m., and the neighborhood appeared devoid of any life other than the solo pedestrian. But while the street itself was barren, several sets of eyes tracked the man’s movements. Astonished senior citizens looked out from behind their barred apartment windows. A single mother up with a sick kid watched through the bolted Plexiglas door of her duplex unit with a wince of regret, knowing good and well the damn fool in the street was going to get rolled at best and murdered at worst. And a teen with a cell phone on a darkened stoop of an apartment building watched the man carefully, reporting what he saw to an acquaintance at the other end of the connection with hopes of collecting a finder’s fee if his friend showed up with a crew and beat every last item of value off of the hapless outsider.
But the teen and his friend were out of luck, because another group of predators were closer, and they also had their eyes on this target of opportunity.
Three dark silhouettes watched the white man from where they stood in a driveway, in front of a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with burning trash.
Marvin was the oldest of the three, and at thirty-one he had eleven priors, most for B&E or armed robbery. Only two arrests had really stuck, the first one earning him eleven months, twenty-nine days in a city lockup. And then, on the inside, Marvin had bought himself a full dime at Hagerstown for manslaughter.
He did six years before being released on good behavior—a relative term in prison—and now he was back on the streets.
And he wasn’t looking for work. He was looking for a score.
In this pursuit he had taken on the two young men with him. Darius and James were both sixteen, and they looked up to the older Marvin since he’d done time and he’d killed a man, and because of this they would follow him anywhere. For Marvin’s part, he liked running a crew of kids because they could take chances; any convictions they earned would likely be expunged on their eighteenth birthdays.
Marvin carried a handgun in his waistband under his baggy boxers. It was a rusty Lorcin Arms L380, a piece of junk, even compared to the other pot-metal pistols ubiquitous on the low end of crime here in the “gun-free zone” of D.C. He’d never shot the weapon, it was for show, really, which meant he kept the grip of the gun on display, sticking out from below his faux leather jacket, but only when the cops weren’t around. If he saw a patrol car a couple of shakes would drop the little automatic down the inside of his warm-up pants and out onto the ground. He could then kick it away or under something, or else he could just fucking run.
Marvin had been running from trouble since long before the two boys standing with him were born.
The two kids had thin switchblades they’d shoplifted from a head shop in Hyattsville. The knives were comically cheap novelty items, but the boys didn’t know any better and they thought themselves impossibly badass for carrying them inside their jackets.
Darius and James fingered their knives under their clothes as they watched the white man disappear in the mist, just past an overgrown hedge strewn with blown trash. As one they turned to each other, smiling in surprise at this evening’s outrageous fortune. The pedestrian seemed oblivious to the fact he’d just walked past the three men standing by the fire, which made them think the fool was drunk, high, or perhaps a combination of both. Even though they rarely saw whites walking around this section of Washington Highlands at night, men and women of all races certainly drove into this neighborhood to buy drugs all the time, especially at night, and the two boys couldn’t imagine any reason for this fool’s presence other than a buy.
That meant he either had cash or drugs, and it didn’t matter which, because around here, drugs were cash.
Darius and James looked back over the flames coming out of the oil drum, towards their leader.
Marvin nodded back to his crew, giving them the prompting they needed. All three left the warmth of the drum and headed down the driveway to the sidewalk, following the white man with their hands hovering inches from the weapons they kept tucked inside their clothes.
—
At the same instant three hunters were stalking their prey on 8th Street SE, a twenty-four-million-dollar Eurocopter streaked high over D.C., flying from Maryland in the northeast and heading towards Virginia in the southwest. The men on board discussed the chances someone below them was lining up the advanced optical sights of a man-portable surface-to-air missile on the tail rotor behind them, or perhaps tracking the nose of the helo with the iron sights of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Onboard countermeasures were ready, the pilot made defensive maneuvers, and all eyes were focused outside the helo and down at street level, scanning for the bright flare of a missile launch.
But there was no flare and there was no launch, because although the man they feared was, in fact, somewhere below them, he had no SAM, nor did he have an RPG.
He didn’t even have a pistol or, for that matter, any cash.
Court Gentry walked alone through D.C.’s most dangerous district, as aware of the footsteps closing on him as he was of the throbbing in his right forearm and the maddening itch under the plaster cast that went from his elbow to his wrist.
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