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The big handgun fell from the man’s hand and he reached up for the sword for a short time, his wide eyes on it, his face a mask of confusion. After a moment, however, he folded down onto the floor, ending up with his back propped on the doorframe, wheezing and grunting with the movement of his chest. His eyes went unfixed and glassy as he drifted away.

Court knew the look of the dying. It didn’t sadden him; he felt little other than operational concerns. He knelt over the dying man, rummaged through his pockets, pushed the man’s weakening hands away when they reached out to stop him.

Court found nothing of interest on the man, so he left him alone to die, and he turned back to the wounded drug dealer at the foot of the bed. “I’m going to make this really quick and simple. Show me where the money is, and you get help before you bleed out.”

The man looked at his two dead partners, back behind him to the unconscious woman on the bed, then back to Court. “Go fuck yourself.”

Court nodded, and he pulled the blanket out of the man’s grasp. He looked down at the blood pumping from the man’s hip. “Three minutes and you’ll lose consciousness. Five minutes, you’re dead.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

“Well, that makes two of us. I’ll find the money anyway. Or the cops will. Not that it will matter much to you, because you’ll be in a fridge at the morgue.”

Court saw the wheels spinning in the man’s head. When he realized he would gain nothing from his obstinacy he said, “Windowsill. Pop the ledge up.”

Court tossed the bloody blanket back to the wounded drug dealer, then he went to the boarded-up window. He yanked up on the wooden sill. With some effort, it pulled away from the wall. Inside was a channel in the frame of the house. He could see two bags there, and he fished them out quickly with a metal coat hanger he found lying loose on the floor.

The first paper bag contained a meth ball, a plastic bag holding small plastic baggies, each one containing a sixteenth of an ounce of crystal meth. Court wasn’t sure what the street value of it all was, but there had to have been a hundred or more bags.

He turned and tossed the meth bag into the lap of the nearly decapitated corpse, just feet away. “Careful, this shit’ll kill you,” Court said, and then he looked in the second bag. This one was stuffed with cash. Tens and twenties, mostly, but there were a few fives and even some ones. He held it up to the wounded man on the floor. “How much?”

Even though he’d stanched the bulk of the blood flow, the man was weakening noticeably. Through gasps he said, “I don’t know. ’Bout thirteen grand. Little more, maybe.”

The soft wail of distant sirens caused Court to pick up his pace now. He shoved the money in his coat pocket and began looking for guns. He counted seven firearms in the house, but they were all wrong for his needs. The chrome-plated Desert Eagle pistol was as long as a shoebox and inefficiently heavy. He could get out of the area with the pistol if he hid it under his shirt, but he wouldn’t be able to operate in the District with such a huge and flashy weapon. There were four AK-47–style semiautomatic rifles, none
of which he could hide in his blazer to exfiltrate the scene with, even while folded.

He loved AKs—he knew he couldn’t go wrong with the venerable Russian assault rifle. But it was hardly a low-profile weapon.

He also found two pistol grip shotguns. The shotguns were like the Desert Eagle, almost small enough to get away with, but way too big to use efficiently in the manner Court had planned.

He went back to the severely wounded man sitting up in front of the bed. He felt around his waistband, then frisked him down to his ankles, avoiding the blood on the man’s clothing.

Court breathed a sigh of relief when his fingers brushed against a Velcro ankle holster low on the man’s right leg. He yanked out a tiny Ruger LCP .380. It carried eight rounds of hollow-point ammo and fit nicely in the palm of Court’s hand.

The drug dealer hadn’t resisted at all. Court wondered if the man had even remembered the weapon strapped to his leg.

Court slipped the gun into the back pocket of his jeans, then walked over to a nightstand by the bed. It was covered with ashtrays, cigarette packs, crumpled beer cans, and candy wrappers, so Court used a forearm to knock every last item onto the floor.

He was back there in the corner for several seconds, long enough to arouse the curiosity of the wounded drug dealer, who was now lying on his side on the floor in front of the bed. “You got what you came for. There’s nothing else.”

When Court did not reply the man spoke in a slurred voice. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Court replied cryptically: “Sending a message.”

“What?”

Soon Court headed for the door, passing the wounded man on the floor without a glance as he did so.

As he started up the hall, the wounded man called out from behind.

“Who
are
you?”

Court did not reply. He wouldn’t give the man or his buddies, alive or dead, another moment’s thought. His plans ahead were infinitely more important than these inconsequential street criminals. They were just a means to an end, nothing more.

—

L
ess than a minute before the first police car stopped in front of the house, Court stepped back out into the backyard, holding a loaded AK-47 high in front of him. He realized quickly the two Aryan Brotherhood men who had been out there were gone from the scene—even their damn dog had hit the road with the sound of approaching sirens—so Court tossed the AK into the grass, climbed up onto the Monte Carlo by the fence, carefully pushed the barbed wire out of the way, and dropped into an adjoining backyard.

He was out of the neighborhood two minutes after that.

Tonight had been more trouble than he’d envisioned, but it had all been a necessary opening move in his operation. He needed a portable and concealable weapon, and he needed capital to put his plan into action.

He wanted more gun than what was now sitting in the back pocket of his jeans. To be sure, he wasn’t going to fight much of a battle here in the U.S. with the little Ruger, but it was a decent tool, and with it he had improved his defenses markedly.

But infinitely more important than the gun was the cash.

This was America, after all, and cash was king.

And with thirteen grand, Court Gentry could wage a motherfucking war.

B
y the time the meeting on the seventh floor of CIA’s Old Headquarters Building hit the forty-five-minute mark, Suzanne Brewer was reasonably certain everyone else had forgotten she was still here.

Denny had admitted her into the Violator Working Group, true, but since then she had sat to the side, seemingly excluded from the conversation. The cross talk now was between Jordan Mayes and Denny Carmichael as they discussed moving Joint Special Operations Command operatives into the city. Apparently a quasi-legal precedent had been established for doing so, which came as a surprise to Brewer. It seemed clear that even though Carmichael wasn’t concerned about doing things by the book himself, he knew “Jay-Sock” wouldn’t operate without all the forms filled out to the letter, so he was making sure the CIA’s JSOC liaison had all the details he needed to contact Fort Bragg and get the highly trained paramilitaries on the way to D.C.

Brewer found herself impressed with Denny. She’d never worked closely with him before, and knew him mostly as the old hard piece of shoe leather in a suit that she saw in the halls every now and then. She did know that Carmichael commanded a take-no-prisoners reputation in the Agency, and his colleagues knew to fall into step behind the man or to get the hell out of his way, because although he and the director weren’t close, Denny got things done and clearly the president liked having a stone-cold killing machine like Carmichael in his bag of tricks.

Now Carmichael, Mayes, and the communications officer at the table began discussing the logistics of initiating a full-time Violator Working Group tactical operations center, or TOC, on the fourth floor. Carmichael had already said he wanted more boots on the ground, so Mayes ordered thirty contracted assets with security clearance from a private security
company. These assets, and the JSOC operators, would need a central ops center to coordinate their movements and responsibilities, and the TOC would serve that function.

Suzanne Brewer was surprised they wouldn’t use Special Activities Division assets for this, but Denny was adamant he didn’t want SAD men operating on the streets of D.C. It seemed like an odd quibble for a man who just ordered up U.S. military forces and private contractors to do the same thing, but Brewer figured there was a piece of the puzzle she didn’t understand, so she didn’t bring it up.

When there was a brief lull in the chatter, Brewer fought her way back into the conversation.

“I’d like to know something about Violator’s specific capabilities.”

With Carmichael’s approval, Mayes said, “Gentry has every tactic, every piece of tradecraft, every relevant training evolution you can think of. He can fly planes, scuba, rappel, fast rope, and free climb. He’s a master in the Israeli martial art of Krav Maga, and he’s the best close-quarters battle tactician to ever serve in SAD. He’s been to jump school, sniper school, advanced surveillance school, explosive breaching school, SERE school.”

Suzanne didn’t know that one. “SERE school?”

“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.”

“Okay.”

Mayes continued. “Ground Branch contains the finest one hundred fifty hard assets on planet earth. Gentry was as good as any one of them if not better, and that was before he went solo five years ago and
really
began to hone his craft.”

Brewer asked, “When you say hard asset, I assume Gentry was involved in lethal operations for the Agency.”

No one answered for a moment.

Brewer cleared her throat. “Look. You invited me in. If I can’t be told the full scope of the danger, then I won’t be much help to you.”

Carmichael nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Jordan Mayes said, “Gentry began his career as a singleton operator, he graduated to singleton assassin, and then in the Golf Sierra task force he was the point man for an assassination and rendition team.” Mayes cleared his throat. “Golf Sierra was absolute tip-of-the-spear stuff.”

Brewer took it all in. The gravity of what was being asked of her was growing by the second. “I spoke of the rumors I had heard. As a private hit man he supposedly has executed over thirty lethal operations.”

Mayes answered back. “Our confirmed number is much lower. Twelve.”

“A large discrepancy,” Brewer added. “But the fact remains he has managed to survive for a long time in that industry. My suggestion is we don’t play into this threat. If he draws us out into a campaign on the streets of the USA, we will be vulnerable to counterattack, as well as exposure.”

Carmichael shook his head adamantly. “Suzanne, we
are
going after him. We know he’s in the area. We have no intentions of battening down the hatches and sheltering in place while he is here. I’ve been after this man for five years. This is an opportunity too good to pass up. I’m not going to just lock my doors and wait for him to move on.”

Brewer had expected this reaction. “Very well. In that case, we need to bring in a brain trust to help us determine Gentry’s potential actions. Who in the Agency knows him best? Who knows all of his TTPs?” She knew the tactics, techniques, and procedures of her target were an essential element in establishing his operational pattern, which itself was critical in figuring out what he would do next.

The NSA liaison spoke up. “Matthew Hanley at SAD knows him well. He ran Gentry and the Golf Sierra Task Force.”

More to himself than to the others, Denny Carmichael said, “I don’t trust Hanley. He’s after my job.”

Brewer smiled. Taking a chance with a joke she said, “
I’m
after your job, Denny.”

There were a few chuckles at the table, but not from Carmichael. He sniffed. “You can fucking have it, today.”

Mayes joined Brewer in making a case for bringing Hanley into the Working Group. “Court Gentry shot Matt Hanley in Mexico City a couple of years ago. He barely survived. Matt might not be your closest confidant in the halls here at Langley, but I feel sure he wants Gentry’s head on a pike as bad as you do. Isn’t that all that matters at the moment?”

Brewer knew Matt Hanley vaguely; she’d met him in Port-au-Prince when he was chief of the CIA station there, but had heard nothing about him being shot. Protecting CIA facilities and personnel was Brewer’s job, so she couldn’t believe she’d been kept out of the loop on something so big.

“Wait. The head of SAD was shot by the Gray Man?” She caught herself. “Violator, I mean.”

Carmichael said, “Hanley wasn’t running SAD at the time, he was COS in Haiti. It was kept quiet.”

“From
me
?”

“From everyone.” Carmichael drummed his fingers on the table a moment. “I don’t want Hanley brought in. He stays on the outside of this, for now anyway.”

Brewer said, “If you don’t want him involved in this hunt, that’s one thing. But if Violator has a beef with the Agency, that beef is likely to include his former case officer, especially if he’s targeted him in the past. We surely need to give Hanley a heads-up that his rogue operative is on the loose in the area.”

Carmichael seemed to acquiesce a little. “We’ll put security on Hanley, watching his house, just to keep him safe. But let’s keep it low-key. Don’t tell Hanley.”

Brewer dropped the subject and went back to her request for information from others who knew Gentry. “Who else worked with him? What about other members of his task force?”

The CIA liaison to JSOC said, “All dead. Gentry killed them.”

Mayes and Carmichael exchanged another look. The liaison caught it, and he cocked his head. “What?”

Carmichael said, “Not exactly true. One man survived.”

Mayes picked it up from there. “The team leader of Task Force Golf Sierra, Zachary Hightower, is not dead.” With a shrug he said, “He might as well be. Denny shit-canned him after he botched an attempt to snatch Gentry in Africa.”

Brewer said, “It stands to reason his team leader would know a great deal about his operational abilities. Do we know where he is?”

Mayes said, “No idea, but I’m sure he can be located.”

Carmichael held up a finger. “I want to see him first, face-to-face, to evaluate what I’m working with. He was injured severely in Africa, then he was drummed out of the Agency. If he’s like a lot of operators he’ll be bitter, and a shell of the man he was when he worked for us.”

Brewer nodded and made notes on her pad.

She started to switch the conversation to Carmichael’s immediate
physical security, but one of the communications technicians outside the room knocked on the glass wall and stepped to the door. Mayes pressed a button, and the door unlocked with a click.

Mayes asked, “What is it?”

“We picked something up on the scanner. PD reports a homicide in Washington Highlands. Home invasion, multiple fatalities.”

Carmichael picked up his coffee mug and took a sip. “Sounds like any other Saturday night over there.”

“A surviving victim reports a lone Caucasian assailant. Apparently he took down a house full of heavily armed Aryan Brotherhood drug dealers. Two dead, four wounded.”

“When?”

“Less than thirty minutes ago.”

“One guy did it?” Carmichael asked.

“Yes, sir.”

Carmichael and Mayes nodded at each other, and Brewer picked up what her superiors were thinking.

She asked, “Why would Violator attack a house full of meth dealers?”

Carmichael said immediately, “Maybe he needs something.”

“He needs
meth
?”

Mayes answered with confidence. “Resources. Arms and financing. No better place to get both if you don’t mind a fight.”

Carmichael said, “And Violator
loves
a fight.” Slowly his lean face widened into a smile. “It’s classic Gentry, isn’t it?”

Brewer was confused. “Classic in what way?”

“He needs weapons and money, right?” Carmichael said. “What’s the easiest way to acquire them? Knock over a pawnshop? Hit a liquor store with a security guard? Why doesn’t he steal a shotgun out of a patrol car and rob a check cashing business? Why does he do it the hard way? Hit right up the fucking middle of a house full of armed meth head Aryan assholes?”

“Tell me why,” Brewer said.

Mayes understood what Carmichael was getting at, and he answered Brewer’s question. “Because Violator sees himself as the good guy. He only targets bad guys.”

“But you just said you think he is a threat to us.”

“Make no mistake. He truly thinks he’s some sort of hero and
we’re
the
villains.” Jordan Mayes stood now. “I’ll check out the crime scene personally.”

Suzanne Brewer stood as well. “Denny, I’d like to go along, too. I’m behind the curve on understanding this target of ours. If this was him, I want to get the feel of the scene, to see what he’s capable of.”

“Okay.” Carmichael turned his attention to AD Mayes. “Mayes, it’s possible you are in Gentry’s crosshairs, same as me. I want you rolling in armor, with a full detail.”

Mayes whistled softly. “Damn, Denny. I didn’t even have a full security detail in Baghdad.”

“Gentry was on our side back then, wasn’t he?”