Chapter Forty-Eight
Forty-Eight
Court Gentry was the only passenger in the back of a five-passenger Cirrus Vision Jet flying south over Georgia at seven in the morning. He’d slept a little with his cabin chair reclined and his feet on his backpack. Mostly, however, he’d been making and taking encrypted phone calls.
He had landed with Zack at Hampton Roads around three a.m., helped him hobble down out of the Hawker that brought them from Colorado.
He’d asked Zack if he could borrow his pistol, and then, while Zack was assisted by both Erin Childers and a nurse into the back of an SUV sent by Hanley, Court immediately boarded the waiting Vision to begin his flight down to Florida to pick up his father and bring him back to Virginia.
Court’s dad knew nothing about this; Hanley and Court had agreed operational security was crucial, so Jim Gentry would only learn what was going on when his son showed up at his door.
In the meantime, however, the man Hanley had watching over Court’s dad down in northern Florida had been told to keep an even more careful eye out for strangers in the area.
Court was three hours into his second flight now; it was well past dawn outside, and the pilot announced they’d be landing soon.
Then Court’s phone buzzed again, and again, it was Hanley.
“I have some news.”
“Good news or bad?”
“Definitely bad if your name is Lewis Shaw.”
“Somebody smoked him?”
“Affirmative. Murdered in his home overnight.” This was big news, principally because, as the presumed leaker of intelligence product that had been getting people killed around the world, Court had assumed he’d be the one to kill him.
“Saves me the trouble,” he said. “We know who did it?”
“A neighbor heard a gunshot, described a man wearing a British riding cap leaving in the back of an SUV driven by someone else. No other description.”
“Sounds like Whetstone,” Court said.
“Yep. I thought you’d want to know about it as soon as I did. Didn’t want you to worry you were going to run into that bastard down there this morning.”
“Well, just because he’s still in D.C. doesn’t mean he’s not going to pose a threat to my dad.”
“I agree, but I guess you have a little more time for the extraction.” He then said, “You want me to go ahead and let my guy down there know you’re coming? He lives a couple blocks away from your dad and has been having coffee with him most every morning.”
“Better not. You don’t know my dad. Old Jim might take some coaxing, and I don’t want him planning on how he’s going to tell me no.
I’m going to just go there and sit with him and tell him as little about the danger as I can to get his ass moving.
I’ll text you when I’m just a couple minutes out from his house, and you can call your private detective off.
Give him my sincere thanks, but I want him gone when I get there. ”
“I get it. You and your pop have some stuff to hash out before he gets in a car with you, I’m sure.”
“Something like that.” Switching the subject, Court said, “How’s Night Train?”
“Thirty-three stitches in the leg, right down the center of his left quadricep. A dozen more in the shoulder. His body’s beat to shit, but nothing he won’t shake off.
No square dancing for him for a bit, but otherwise, he’s doing well.
I haven’t talked to him about why he never mentioned his daughter to me yet.
I just told him I’m glad everything worked out in Boulder. ”
Court replied, “He blames himself for the enemy homing in on her. I get it. Maybe you don’t say anything more right now; he feels bad enough as it is.”
Hanley sighed a little. “Right. I’ll have to find some other reason to chew him out.”
“I’m confident you’ll come up with something. How’s Teddy doing?” Court asked.
“I told Teddy last night that the good news was that he was now officially the second worst injured Ghost Town asset. He’s moving around fine. Not operational, but doing good, considering he took a bullet to the fucking neck.”
“Good.” Court hesitated a moment, then said, “I want him to go to Charlottesville.”
Hanley was surprised. “To where Zoya, Irene, and Cathy are being kept safe by five armed guards?”
“Yes. I want him there, watching over the people who are watching over Zoya. You can put Night Train there, too, to convalesce. I want them both armed.”
Hanley was confused. “There’s no compromise or threat to Zoya. The people protecting her aren’t Gauntlet employees. They aren’t foreign hitters. They’re former agency paramilitaries; I know each and every one of them. Night Train knows them all, and Teddy knows some of them, too.”
“Good. Then Teddy and Night Train will have a nice time recuperating with their old pals. I just want more guns around Zoya, honestly. Even if Teddy’s got a hole in his neck and Night Train’s leg is messed up, they’re still solid operators who won’t let anything happen to her.”
Hanley thought about it a moment, then said, “Okay. Granted.” He then asked, “How long will it take you to get your dad to agree to come back with you?”
“That’s a good question. I haven’t talked to him in twenty years.”
“You want to bring him to Charlottesville, too? Turn the facility into a boardinghouse?”
Court laughed a little. “That’s okay. I can put him on my boat.
I’ll tell him to stay on board till this is all over.
” He thought a moment. “Why do you think Whetstone killed Shaw, if Shaw was the one leaking the information? Whetstone and the others were obviously benefiting from that information.”
“Pace and Lacy are trying to figure that out. There have been fourteen killings in the intelligence community in the past four days, several more attempts. We’re wondering if the people who ordered the operation have decided they’ve achieved enough, and Shaw was just a compromise at this point.”
Court said, “Or maybe there’s a whole other aspect to their operation, something they no longer needed Shaw for.”
“Right,” Hanley said. “Pace is tracking some leads; we’ll see what he learns. Any way you look at it, though, it means our work probably isn’t done, and even though you and the boys have done a good job eliminating assassins, our own attrition rate hasn’t been that good.”
“Well, boss,” Court said, “strap on a .45 and get after it.” He then chuckled. “My dad is a former Marine sniper. Maybe you could hire him when I get his ass up to Virginia. Is there an age ceiling at Ghost Town?”
“The way things are going, the Five Guys and Arnold are all going to be out on the streets shooting it out with Gauntlet before too long.” Hanley sniffed. “Enjoy your personal time, but get your ass back up to us, put your dad in that boat, and get back to work.”
“Right.”
Just then, the copilot gave Court a wave, telling him to buckle up.
—
Seventy-five-year-old Jim Gentry poured another steaming mug of coffee, then carried it over to his kitchen table, passed it to the man sitting there, then sat down slowly in front of his own half-empty cup.
Gentry had a full head of silver hair, cut short like a Marine.
He was five foot eight, did not carry an ounce of extra weight on his body, but that appeared to be mostly because of genetics and not exercise, because he looked even older than his years, like someone who didn’t do much more than sit on his porch.
His eyes were bright, but he wore thick glasses. His shoulders were slight. His mouth hung in a permanent scowl, and his face showed the effects of living his life entirely in Florida and working a blue-collar job.
And Vietnam.
The effects of a stroke several years earlier were only evident to those who knew Gentry before it happened: the way his mouth hung, plus he walked and talked a little slow. Still, he moved no slower than many septuagenarians, and his dexterity seemed normal enough for a man his age.
The other man at the table was nearly a decade younger, barrel chested, bearded. He looked like he could have been a boxer in his younger days; a crooked nose held up his eyeglasses, but his easy smile shone under his thick brown mustache.
His name was Stanley Echols, but Jim Gentry, and everybody else who knew him, called him Skip.
James Gentry lived in a small two-bedroom home with aluminum siding next door to a large parcel of property he’d owned for decades, a disused farm and shuttered-up firearms training facility dozens of acres in size, just a couple of miles south of the Georgia state line in Glen St. Mary, Florida.
The property was surrounded by farms, flatlands, and woods, a half hour west of Jacksonville.
A massive solar power plant had gone up just down the road from Jim’s place, and many of the farms in the area, and the buildings on them, were in a state of disrepair.
The men at the kitchen table had been chatting for thirty minutes; Skip had been a daily fixture here since he moved in a block away a few weeks earlier, and today’s conversation was similar to that of other days.
The weather was first and foremost; a heavy storm was due to hit the area later in the morning, and they argued for a time on exactly when.
Then they talked politics for a while, but only until Jim said they should both run for president, only on opposite tickets.
Just then, Skip Echols looked down at his phone, then back up to the older man. “Jimbo, you okay if I take this outside?”
“You got a girlfriend you forgot to tell me about?”
“Would I be here listening to you jabber all morning if I did?” Echols went out back, stood in the grass, and looked back towards a thick line of tall Florida pines swaying in the growing wind.
The sky was dark and growing darker; a door to an outbuilding on Gentry’s vacant property next door banged open and shut in the breeze.
Skip said, “Mornin’, Matt. How’s it going up there?”
Stanley “Skip” Echols had known Matthew Hanley for a quarter century, from back when Hanley was a young U.S. Special Forces officer and Echols was a U.S. Army Ranger.