Brewer turned to acknowledge him. “Zack, it’s not necessary to raise your hand.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Gentry will be south of D.C., in a remote location. Picture a covered ditch, a deserted cabin, a grain elevator on an abandoned farm. He will be very difficult to find once he gets there. Almost impossible. I feel our next moment of opportunity will be when he reengages us, not when we discover his hide.”
Brewer said, “I understand why you think he will go somewhere more remote, but why south specifically?”
“He lived and worked in northern Virginia. It’s more familiar to him. He might anticipate us making this assumption, but he is confident in his abilities to hide, especially when he knows the terrain.”
Carmichael pointed to Hanley. “Your best guess as to his location?”
Hanley heaved his shoulders, not hiding his annoyance at it all. “I was management. Hightower was labor. Next to Court Gentry, Zack Hightower is the best operator I ever had working under me.” He looked down the table at Hightower. “Before Zack’s untimely death, he was also the best ground-level leader I’d ever seen. In your infinite wisdom, Denny, you’ve resurrected Hightower to sit him in a seventh-floor conference room, dress him in a suit and tie, and ask him questions about Gentry’s new lair. Zack tells you the target has run someplace you’ll never find him, so I defer to Zack’s expertise. I guess you’ll just have to wait for him to come back out to play.”
Suzanne snapped back. “Play, Matt? Really? A veteran CIA official and three innocent Transit Police were murdered yesterday. I doubt their loved ones see this as a game.”
Hanley sniffed. “Yeah, about that. Yesterday, a man with Court Gentry’s abilities of escape and evasion was so backed into a corner in a location with a half dozen egresses that he was forced to murder three poorly armed and poorly trained transit cops in cold blood, in broad daylight, in a crowded location. And yet before dawn this morning, sixteen highly trained tactical officers raided his secure, defended ground, and in that instance Court only knocks a few heads together. Killing none. Zero.”
Hanley was looking at Hightower now. “That is pretty damn curious, wouldn’t you say?”
Despite Hanley’s challenge, Zack did not say a word.
Brewer countered, “He did a lot more than knock heads together.”
Hanley stood up from the table. “But he did a lot less than send a dozen poor bastards to the morgue! A cold-blooded killer is cornered like a fucking rat in a cage and he doesn’t kill his way out?” He turned to Denny. “Not buying it. I’m not buying any of this bullshit. I’m walking, Chief. You have a problem with that, go to the director and have him remove me for insubordination. The way the walls are crumbling around here, you’d be doing me a favor.”
—
Carmichael didn’t stop Hanley from leaving, but Brewer chased him out and caught up with him on his way back to his office. “Matt?”
With a heave and a sigh he turned back to her. “Sorry, Suzanne. My comments weren’t directed at you, specifically. They were directed at this entire operation.”
“I understand. I just don’t understand why you are in Gentry’s camp the way you are. Hightower is the same way. Zack will do whatever we tell him to do, it seems clear he is a good soldier, but I don’t get the feeling his heart is in this any more than yours is.”
Hanley said, “Every day this goes on, Denny gets himself in deeper. I don’t know what the fuck is happening out there, but the story he is giving you, and the story he gave the Washington Post yesterday, is just the story Denny needs us to believe. It’s not the truth. I respect you, Suzanne, but when the smoke clears after this debacle, those of us who did what we could to stay outside of Denny’s gravitational pull will not be able to do one damn thing to help those who got pulled down with him.”
Hanley left Brewer there, standing alone in the hallway.
51
Court opened up the throttle on his Yamaha 650 as soon as he turned south on I-95. He wasn’t sure where he was going, only that he needed to get the hell out of D.C., at least for the time being. He planned on finding a new hide, somewhere within a half hour to an hour’s drive of the District, and someplace one hell of a lot more secure than Arthur Mayberry’s basement apartment.