Chapter Forty-Eight #2
Hanley had gone into CIA, Echols had gone to Delta Force, and when Hanley became an exec at the Agency, he tried to get Echols to join him as a paramilitary.
Echols felt he’d done his time, though, so he took his retirement from the Army, moved back to Jacksonville, and became a private investigator.
Work had been spotty recently, till Hanley called him out of the blue a couple of months earlier and asked him to move to Glen St. Mary and begin clandestinely watching over a cantankerous old man named James Ray Gentry, for reasons of national security that had never been adequately explained by the former deputy director.
An airplane flew overhead now, getting out of the area before the storm, Echols guessed.
“Skip,” Hanley replied. “How close are you to Mr. Gentry right now?”
“I’m standing in his backyard, as a matter of fact. Just dropped in for coffee.”
“Anything out of the ordinary going on?”
“Not a damn thing. Some storms on the way, but other than that, nothing that I’ve seen. Something I need to know?”
“Nothing at all,” Hanley said. Then, “Skip…I need you to clear out of there. ASAP.”
“Uh, okay. Why?”
“No emergency, but someone’s coming that you don’t need to meet.”
“Ah…this would be the son? The guy in the CIA.”
“Shit,” Hanley said. “Gentry told you that?”
“He said he had suspicions about his oldest boy being a spook. I played dumb, sure didn’t tell him the former DDO himself sent me to watch over him.”
“Thanks for that. Anyway, the son is coming to take his dad back home with him for a few weeks or so, and it’s better if you’re not around when he does it.”
“Why?”
“He’s shy.”
Echols laughed. “Fuckin’ spooks. No offense, Matt. You need me to stand off close by in case of trouble?”
“No. Gentry is going to be leaving Florida today, so you’re relieved of duty. You’re paid up for the month. I’ll call you if I need you again.”
“Fair enough. I’m just going to go back inside and make an excuse to—”
“Skip,” Hanley said. “My guy is inbound, ETA five mikes. You need to be outbound in two. Understand?”
“Okay,” Echols said, not hiding his disappointment. “I’ll come on my own time when Jim gets back home.”
—
The elder Gentry sat at the table, doom-scrolling an alternative news site on his phone, but then he was surprised to hear Skip’s truck start out front. He’d just made it to the kitchen window when it drove off to the east, back in the direction of Skip’s house.
It passed a Range Rover that was coming this way, and the Range Rover pulled straight up into Gentry’s gravel drive.
Jim put his coffee down on the counter, walked through the living room and over to his door, and opened it with a slightly quivering hand.
Standing there on the tiny porch of his little house, the American flag on the pole out next to him whipping in the wind, Jim put his hands on his hips and faced the SUV.
A bearded man in a raincoat climbed out of the Range Rover and walked straight towards him, and their eyes locked. Ten feet away the man stopped, then looked around, left and right.
Finally, the man turned back Jim’s way. “Hey, Dad.”
“Courtland.”
The two looked at each other for a while, and then Court said, “You don’t seem all that surprised to see me.”
“Well, I figured it was you that sent Skip here to watch over me. He never said that, but I’m pretty sharp, still. Nice guy, Skip. I’m guessing I won’t be seeing him again.”
Court said, “You can see him when this is all over.” After a beat, he said, “I mean, that’s up to Skip. Maybe he doesn’t like you.”
Jim smiled a little. With the smile still on his face, he said, “You’re in some trouble?”
“I need to help you pack some things. You’re coming with me. Hopefully for just a few days. Maybe a few weeks.” He sighed. “Please don’t make this difficult.”
Again, Jim didn’t seem terribly surprised. “We got time for coffee first?”
Court looked at the sky. “How long till this rain hits?”
“You’ve been gone so long you can’t tell?”
Court scanned to the east, towards the coast. Thinking a moment, he said, “Could be any time now.”
“Nah,” Jim answered back. “We’ve got an hour.”
Court shrugged. “Okay. I guess there’s time for coffee.”
Jim turned around, headed back inside. “When you’re my age, son, there’s always time for coffee.”
Court followed him in.
—
This was not the house Court grew up in; that had been on the property next door. At some point that house had been damaged in a storm, long after Court moved away, and Jim tore it down and put up a double-wide trailer, and he lived there for a decade.
He’d just bought this home next door to his dilapidated trailer two years earlier. It wasn’t any larger, but it was a little newer than his long-lost home and a lot nicer than the double-wide.
They sipped coffee at the table, Court in the seat just vacated by Skip, and it was awkward at first. Court watched his dad move, was taken by how old he seemed, but he was also taken by how little he seemed to have changed otherwise.
Court looked out the back window and caught a side view of the disused farm next door, where he grew up.
He knew that back behind the row of pine trees some two hundred yards from the road, a row of gun ranges, a massive shoot house, and several bunkhouses and classroom buildings used to stand.
His father had been a private firearms instructor to SWAT teams from all over the United States, and many from abroad, and they’d all come right here to Baker County to train under the great James Ray Gentry.
Court said, “Is the shoot house still standing?”
Jim sniffed. “It’s teetering, for sure, but it’s still there.
” With a smile he said, “Maybe the storm that’s coming this morning will be the one that finally knocks it down.
I go back there and walk around every now and then, just for old times’ sake.
Take my pistol back to the ranges, get a little practice in. ”
“Can you still shoot?”
“Yeah, but not like I could ten years ago.” He pulled off his glasses and held them up. “Vision’s gone to hell. I see double if I don’t wear these.” He put them back on. “Plus, I had a stroke.”
“I heard. You okay?”
The father looked at the son a long time. Finally, he broke the staring contest, said, “Aboveground and upright. That’s something.”
“Yeah,” Court said. “That’s something.”
“How ’bout you, son? Can you still shoot?”
“You were around for my upbringing, Dad. Why the hell would you think I would be good at anything else?”
The elder Gentry smiled at this. Court was being a little passive-aggressive with his dad, and he regretted it immediately; he was about to get to the reason for his visit, but then his dad said, “What are you carrying?”
Court drew Zack’s pistol and handed it over without removing the magazine or clearing the weapon.
Jim Gentry’s eyes widened as he took it. “A Staccato P4? Only seen ’em on the Internet. You made of money?” he asked his son. The pistols sold for upwards of three thousand dollars each.
Court laughed. “It’s a buddy’s gun, actually. I borrowed it. Be careful holding it.”
“I know how to hold a damn pistol,” Jim said as he looked through the holographic optic.
“No…I mean, you don’t want to get spoiled.”
“It’s nice.” Jim handed the gun back. “We should take it out back and—”
“We don’t have the time for that, Dad.”
“Okay.”
Court said, “What are you carrying these days?”
Jim patted the front pocket of his old cargo pants under the table. “Six forty-two.”
It was a tiny five-shot revolver that fired thirty-eight special rounds through a two-inch barrel, made by Smith and Wesson.
Court shrugged. “Not a lot of firepower.”
“I’m a civilian, son. Three by three by three,” Jim said.
Court spoke his father’s language; he knew what the old man meant. Statistically speaking, the average defensive civilian gunfight involved three gunshots in three seconds at a distance of three yards. A five-shot gun with a short barrel was sufficient for the vast majority of violent encounters.
Statistically speaking.
Court said, “I guess my life has been something of an outlier.”
“I’ll bet,” his father said. “Three magazines in three minutes at three hundred yards?”
“On a slow day.”
Both men chuckled, and then Jim said, “I know you didn’t love it all the time, but I sure miss shooting guns with my boys out back. Would have loved to have seen you over the years.”
Court looked through the window. It was getting darker by the minute due to the coming storm; the tall grasses and spotty clusters of trees in the lot across the street swayed. He said, “I had reasons for not coming home. It was nothing personal.”
“I’m sure you were busy,” Jim said. He added, “I’ll admit, though, I did expect to see you at your brother’s funeral.”
Now Court looked down at the table. “Yeah. I was out of the country when Chance died. I’m sorry I missed it.”
Jim waved his hand. “Well…as it turns out, it didn’t matter.” The comment confused Court a little. Then the older man said, “You work in the government, right?”
“Not anymore. But yeah, I did.”
“You weren’t military, I know that much. The military had too many rules for a kid like you.”
“No, I wasn’t in the military. To be honest, after being your son, I kind of wanted a little freedom.” He shrugged. “Then I got a little too much freedom, and I got sucked into government service anyway.”
“You went into the CIA.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Dad, the less I tell you about what I’ve been doing the past twenty-odd years, the better it’s going to be for both of us.”
Jim waved a hand in the air. “C’mon, Courtland. Who’m I gonna tell?”
“Whoever the happy hour bartender is at Henry’s.”
The older man smiled. “Haven’t been to Henry’s in years. I quit drinking after the stroke.”
Court cocked his head. “Really?”
“Quit smokin’, too.”
Court said, “Who even are you?”
Jim laughed now. Then he said, “I saw you once. At the diner. The feds came to talk to me about you, I look up, and there you were. They never suspected you were twenty-five feet away.”
Court nodded. “That was me. Just checking up on you.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
Court sighed. “You’re annoyed I haven’t been home, and you’re annoyed that I did come home. There’s no winning with you.”
Jim let out a raspy laugh. “Anyway, they said you were a traitor to your nation.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it was all just an honest misunderstanding.”
“Really?”
“Fuck no.” Jim laughed again. “I figured you pissed off the wrong person, a person with some clout, and they were trying to use the levers of power to squash you like a bug.”
Whoa, Court thought. “Yeah…pretty much exactly that.”
“I’ve got the Internet, son. I know what’s going on in the world.”
Court suspected that whatever his dad looked at on the Internet did not tell him what was going on in the world, but he let it go.
Jim said, “Those G-men. I didn’t tell them shit about you.”
Court chuckled. “Probably helped that you didn’t know shit about me.”
“Well…yeah…that was a plus.” He asked, “Ever settle the score with the boss man that came after you?”
“He’s no longer a factor.”
Jim looked at his son a long time. Finally, he said, “You send any flowers to his funeral?”
“I did not.”
Jim said, “So…that was, what? Three years ago? I’m guessing by the fact that you’re here, you’re armed, and you’re looking around all frosty-eyed, you must have pissed off someone else.”
“Yep.”
“And you think they might be coming here?”
“We have to move you, just to be sure.”
“What did you do this time?”
Court hesitated; he didn’t want to give his father too much information at first, but something told him this extraction would go better if he did talk.
“There’s a lot going on. Problems in Washington.
Problems that aren’t going away any time soon, I imagine.
But this thing I’m worried about with you?
These people I’m concerned about? This is about something personal. ”
“Personal?”
“Yeah. A Northern Irishman. He’s an assassin. I killed his son.”
Jim Gentry did not reply; he just looked at Court behind his coffee mug, his eyeglasses steaming from the heat.
“The son? He had it coming?”
“Depends on your point of view.” Court shrugged. “I was going after a target. A legit bad guy, but somebody I just needed to silence for operational reasons. This Irishman’s son was in the way. Just…a bodyguard. He shot me, I shot him. We fought. I knifed him. Moved on.”
“Jesus, Court.”
“I never thought about the guy again. A couple months later, suddenly I’m on the phone with the man whose boy I killed.”
“What was that call like?”
“Which one? We’ve talked twice so far.”
Gentry blew out a chestful of air. “That was a mistake.”
Court sipped the coffee. “I thought I could get some operational intel. Maybe I did. But he also got in my head a little bit. The people you go through on the way…you never expect to hear from their parents.”
“What’s this Mick’s plan?”
“A simple one. Kill me or die trying.”
Jim Gentry nodded. “Make sure he dies trying. Vengeance is a powerful drug. It’ll never leave his system.”
“Thing is…he’s not coming after me for vengeance. He’s coming after me because he thinks someday his grandson is going to become addicted to that drug. He’s doing this for a damn baby somewhere in Northern Ireland.”
The older man surprised his son now. “The man’s logic is…well, I can’t say it doesn’t make sense. You’d do the same, wouldn’t you? Do the business yourself so your kin didn’t have to worry about it?”
“Don’t know. Never had kids.”
Court thought Jim appeared a little disappointed. Then he said, “This Irishman. You’re going to have to end him if you ever want peace.”
“And if his grandson comes after me?”
“By then you’ll be in your sixties. Younger than me, but not by much.” Jim shrugged. “You might see the world very differently then. You might not. You might have to kill him—”
“Kill the kid?”
“No, Court. He’ll be an adult. You might have to kill the adult coming after you for something that happened a long time ago.”
Court’s phone buzzed; he saw that it was Hanley and answered it in front of his dad. “What’s up?”
“Six, we’ve got a serious fucking problem.”