“Relax. Snipers are on every rooftop around here, anyway. Hell, they probably just watched me take a dump through my bathroom window.”
The men kept talking, but their voices receded. Court waited another moment, then he left the bedroom, moved up the second-floor hallway past the stairs, and entered a dark guest room full of storage boxes. He felt his way to the window and raised the blinds. This was the southwest side of the house, the only portion Court knew was clear of surveillance.
Seconds later he was outside, using a copper drainpipe to make it down to ground level, struggling with dull pain in his right forearm and sharp pain in his ribs. In the backyard he moved low, placing the .45 pistol in an old wheelbarrow with a flat tire next to the back fence. He climbed the fence into another yard, and within minutes he was two blocks away on Cathedral Street making his way back to his car.
The JSOC watchers had no idea they’d missed him.
37
Court drove through the trailing edge of the thunderstorm on his way back to his basement apartment, his mind twisted with plots, conspiracy, and guesswork. It was a bad time to think. It was midnight, there was a good bit of traffic even with the weather, and the old Fort Escort’s wipers were shit. He struggled to see the road, and he found this even tougher to do than normal because his mind was near capacity processing everything Matt Hanley had just told him.
Again, much the same as in his conversation with Travers, most of what he’d heard from his former boss sounded like secondhand disinformation. Court felt certain Operation BACK BLAST was nothing more than a red herring. He remembered the op as a two-day in extremis rush job that took place at least a full year before the shoot-on-sight sanction came out for him. Court didn’t think it was relevant to his problem now at all, other than the fact that Carmichael was using BACK BLAST as an excuse for the termination order, because he had to keep his real reasons under wraps.
If Denny wanted him dead for something that happened in BACK BLAST, why the hell would he wait a year to go after him?
No, Court’s original theory still made the most sense to him. He was being silenced because he was part of the Autonomous Asset Program, an extrajudicial initiative that, for some reason he did not yet understand, could not come to light.
Court had learned one piece of actionable intelligence from Matt Hanley, though, and this was the focus of his attention now as he pulled off of Massachusetts and onto Rhode Island Avenue. Max Ohlhauser, a man he’d never even heard of, had apparently signed off on the termination order. Court knew his next step was to look into this guy to see where he was, and if there was some way he could get his hands on him.
The chief legal counsel for the CIA sounded to Court like someone high-profile enough to warrant at least perfunctory security, but it also sounded to Court like this would be a guy whose detail wouldn’t be expecting their protectee to face an attack here in the city.
If he was even still the chief counsel, and if he was even still here in the city.
With all the obfuscation at every turn, Court felt his frustration growing. He didn’t know what Ohlhauser would be able to tell him about the origins of Denny Carmichael’s shoot-on-sight sanction, but at this point, Court found himself looking forward to the opportunity to extract any information he could get.
Court squinted through the water on his windshield and noticed a familiar sign just up ahead. He had no real operational reason to stop in the Easy Market on Rhode Island this evening. In fact, just yesterday he’d told himself he would never return. The woman behind the counter was nice but nosy, and although nice was good, his current situation couldn’t allow him to hang around with inquisitive people.
But as he neared the market, he began to slow.
He told himself that he needed provisions, that there wasn’t enough in his room at the Mayberrys’ should the heat on him in the city get so intense he had to stay inside for more than a day or two.
But honestly he just felt like stopping in. He wasn’t ready to go back to his tiny room; he wanted to prolong his evening, even if for just a couple minutes more, and he couldn’t think of another place to go where he’d find a smiling face and sixty seconds of kindness without the risk of paying too high a price.
He justified his decision from a PERSEC standpoint. He had reconnoitered the Easy Market and he knew it was secure. Why go to some other shop or bar somewhere, and deal with new cameras and camera angles, new dark corners and blind spots, new personalities and unknown subjects?