Travers had been an SAD Ground Branch operations officer at the same time as Gentry. While they weren’t on the same task force, they had trained together from time to time and, to the extent Gentry got along with anyone, he had gotten along well with Travers.
The first time they met was in Court’s early days with the Goon Squad. Travers and some of his team were assigned to play the opposition force against Court’s Golf Sierra task force at a shoot house in Moyock, North Carolina. For two days Zack Hightower and his boys, all jocked up in combat gear, kicked in the doors of the shoot house and cleared rooms, opening fire on the other team, who were all dressed in robes or other Middle Eastern attire.
They fired Simunitions at one another. Plastic bullets loaded with paint that left a splotch on the clothing and blistering welts on the skin.
After the training the guys on both teams would go out to a local watering hole. For the most part the teams stayed to themselves, but Travers saddled up next to the bar alongside Court and complimented him on his skills. He asked questions of a tactical nature, bought Court a couple of drinks, and rolled his eyes when Court’s team leader, Zack Hightower, told Court to stop fraternizing with the enemy and sit with his Golf Sierra unit.
The last time Gentry and Travers had run into each other had been at a funeral in D.C. Court barely knew the Ground Branch officer who’d been killed, but Zack Hightower had mandated all his team to go to the funeral because they were in town that week and few other SAD shooters were around to pay their respects.
Travers had been there; he’d been best friends with the man who had died, and after the funeral he invited all the Ground Branch men in attendance to his place, just a few blocks away. It was a two-bedroom second-floor walk-up in a part of town where 700-square-foot apartments sold for north of a million dollars. When Hightower asked Travers if he’d taken to spying for the Chinese to pay his mortgage, Travers replied that his mom owned the building and he lived here for free, and due to the deal he was getting and the convenience of the location he wouldn’t think about moving as long as he was CIA.
Court remembered the location, and although he didn’t know for sure if Travers was in town, as soon as he took up surveillance on the building tonight he saw the second-floor lights flip off and his old colleague step off the stoop and head south on foot.
Court had remained a hundred yards back, keeping out of the streetlights, while he tracked the distant figure to an Irish pub on 19th Street. Confident he’d return home after a few drinks, Court retraced his steps and found an alley nearby with a place to sit and wait.
He told himself it was Sunday night, and he doubted Travers would hang out at the bar till last call.
He’d been wrong. Court was bored and freezing now, but not for much longer, so he shook his arms and stamped his feet to prepare himself for action.
Travers had been a decent guy, Court remembered, but that was years ago, and in those intervening years Travers had no doubt been told that Gentry was both a rampaging murderer and an enemy of America. Court was here to talk to his old acquaintance, but he knew he had to take the other man down quick and hard. It didn’t have to get bloody, but Travers would make the ultimate determination of how rough things were going to go tonight.
Now Travers passed along the sidewalk, moving abreast with the alleyway. Instinctively the man’s head turned to scan for threats in the dark, but it was already too late.
Court stood there, face obscured, with his small pistol in his hands. In a tone that was measured perfectly to command attention without being loud enough to alert nearby apartment dwellers, Court said, “Hands on your head, Chris, or you die.”
Travers stopped in his tracks, and his hands rose slowly. “What the fuck is this?”
“I’m going to search you for weapons, then we are going up to your place.”
“Who are you?”
Court knew the man wouldn’t remember his voice, and there was no way Travers would recognize him from just his eyes in a darkened alley.
“I’m only a threat if you make me a threat. I just want to have a little talk.”
“You can’t talk without a gun?”
“Of course I can. The gun is so you talk. Turn around and back up to me.”
Travers complied, clearly now aware that this man not only knew his name, but he also knew Travers had some training.
Court pushed him up against the brick wall of the alleyway. While keeping his gun leveled at the man’s back, Court felt over the man’s waistband with his left hand. Finding nothing there, he checked Travers’s pockets. He had a mobile phone, which Court slipped into his own pocket, a billfold, which Court left alone, and a set of keys, which Court took from the pocket and placed in Travers’s left hand.
Court then knelt quickly and grabbed at the man’s ankles. There was no ankle holster.
“I’m not carrying,” Travers said.