The young officer from the SUV watched the fleeing figure clear the hedge on the other side of the fence and run away. He reached for the radio on his shoulder, still not completely sure where the guy came from or whether he was involved in all the gunfire reported inside the building.
The cops dragged the two dazed and scalded armed men out the front of the smoke-filled McDonald’s, and they found two more men, dressed the same as the others, in the back alley. One had been shot twice in the lower legs and was dazed by shock and blood loss, but the other operator was more coherent than his colleague, so he relayed a version of events that had all the cops at the scene scratching their heads.
—
The Washington Post’s lead national security reporter Catherine King reached for the vibrating phone on her bedside table. Looking at the screen, she recognized the number.
In a sleepy voice she said, “You only call in the middle of the night.”
Andy Shoal’s voice, in contrast to hers, was alert, almost excited. “Talk to my editor. I only work in the middle of the night.”
Catherine asked, “What’s up?”
“Another shooting.”
She began sitting up. “Where?”
“Chevy Chase”—he paused—“and Bethesda.”
Catherine said, “Two shootings, then.”
“Sort of just one shooting. Picture a dead rich guy in Chevy, with four of the dead rich guy’s security guards chasing the killer a half mile to a McDonald’s in Bethesda.”
“Wow. Did they get him?”
“He got away, right under the noses of two dozen cops.”
“And I guess you are calling me because the CIA is there?”
“I don’t see anyone who looks like those two from the other night. But the victim is a guy named Leland Babbitt, and on Google it says he is—”
King interrupted. She was wide-awake now. “I know who Lee Babbitt is. He runs a PMC and investigation firm. Government contracts with the intel community.”
“Right,” said Andy.
“And someone murdered him?”
“Shot him dead and then fled across a golf course. Got in a gunfight with Babbitt’s security men in a McDonald’s and then disappeared. I was wondering if you might be interested in coming over and checking it out. I doubt there’s any relationship to the thing in Washington Highlands the other night, but considering the occupation of the victim, I thought this might be right up your alley.”
Catherine was already moving towards her closet to get dressed. “I’m coming from Georgetown. Fifteen minutes to Chevy Chase. Text me the address.”
28
Court moved calmly through the deep darkness at two a.m., avoiding the glow of streetlamps and the lights shining from porch lights and the occasional passing car. The streets were quiet here, a mile and a half from where the action went down an hour and a half earlier. Though he still heard the thumping of helicopters patrolling to the south, they weren’t close enough to worry him, and he’d neither seen a police car nor heard a siren for the past thirty minutes.
He wore a different set of clothing now. An hour earlier he’d taken all the clothing he’d worn during the gunfight, every last stitch that had been visible to the shooters, the witnesses, and any security cameras, and he’d shoved them down a drainage culvert. Then he’d pulled a wad of clothing out of his backpack and dressed in a light gray parka, a gray thermal, a pair of black track pants, and a red baseball cap.
Now he was walking north on Rockville Pike, feeling good about his chances, but questioning just what the hell had happened back at Babbitt’s house. The man had been assassinated, that much was clear, but Court could only make uneducated guesses about who might have been involved.
From the first moment it happened he felt like it must have been a CIA hit. The Agency knew Court was here in town, they wanted to get rid of Babbitt for some reason, and the symbiosis of these two things resulted in a shooter on a rooftop near Babbitt’s house at the same time Court was ninja-crawling through the man’s backyard.
Court knew he’d be blamed for the hit. Hell, he would have been blamed even if he hadn’t been on the scene at the time, but the entire chaotic escapade with his exfiltration through the McDonald’s just played even more into the CIA’s plan to pin Babbitt’s assassination on him.
“This night sucks ass,” he mumbled to himself. He’d accomplished nothing this evening with the exception of getting a crystal clear understanding that the CIA was going to fight his fire with fire of their own, and the objectives of the CIA were even murkier than he’d imagined.
Why the hell did they kill Babbitt?