Chapter Fifty-One #2
Court told himself that someday he’d come back down to Florida and shake Skip Echols’s hand. The man had meant a lot to his dad in these last weeks of his life.
Court had sat here for most of the flight, looking out the portal at the Atlantic, but now, as he continued looking out the starboard side of the jet, probably somewhere along the North Carolina coast, FibreNet buzzed for perhaps the dozenth time since they’d taken off.
This time, he told himself, he was ready.
This time, he accepted the call.
But he did not speak.
After twenty seconds or so, he heard a familiar voice, but it was softer somehow. “You there, chief?”
Court said nothing.
“I hear you breathing. Look…that was a bloody brutal situation all around. Made worse by my associates, I’m sorry to say. We had a plan goin’ in, and it certainly wasn’t that shite.”
The man alone in the back of the tiny jet finally spoke. “You killed my father.”
“Aye. No words I say will make a difference, but I do want you to know, that was, in no way, my intention. It wasn’t an ‘eye for an eye’ situation.
Not at all. Your da was about to take me out, and I tried to stop him.
Or…” He seemed to think a moment. “Or maybe it was just reflex. I keep playin’ it back in me head…
and I can’t really tell you how it all happened, but I’m sorry it did.
“It was me or him…I did what I had to do.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
“Out of your own mouth, yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re right about one thing, though,” Court said.
“What’s that, chief?”
“You were right when you said, ‘No words you say will make a difference.’ ”
Silence again. Then Coyle said, “That shoot house. More like a house of horrors. I don’t get rattled, but I was bloody rattled this mornin’.”
Court did not reply.
“Look at us,” Coyle said. “You and me. Our wee talks. Our lives seem…intertwined, don’t they? Well…they’re even more so now, yeah?”
Court said, “You had a chance of surviving all this, Coyle. If you gave up, if you stopped chasing me, stopped working for Gauntlet. If you went home, if you went back into retirement. If you grieved the death of your son like a normal human.
“If you’d done any of that…you would have walked away.
“But now you have no chance.”
The Northern Irishman said, “What happened to the bloke who told me vengeance was a fool’s errand?”
“He’s long gone.”
“Yeah? What now, then?”
“Now you’re left with me, and I won’t rest until you’re fucking dead.”
“You’re not hearing me, mate. I did not kill your da on purpose. He made me.”
“And your son shot me in the fucking chest. The circumstances didn’t matter to you, and they sure as hell don’t matter to me.”
After a time, Campbell Coyle said, “I suppose it’s all the same. People like us are always going to suffer the same fate. Pledge allegiance to a flag, an idea, a value. Then we’re killed for it, and we rot under the flag we died for.”
Court replied, “I’m thinking this, what’s happening to us, is about you and me. About fathers and sons. About the past and the present. It’s got nothing to do with a flag. The flag is up there in D.C. for me, and it’s in tatters right now, but I’m not blaming it for what happened down in Florida.”
Coyle said, “Yeah, about that. I’m no longer in the employ of those in your government who, for some reason, seem to want to destroy your government, or help someone else do so.
I’m goin’ away. I won’t be showing up at your door.
Not now. You can grieve your da, because what happened shouldn’t have happened, and that’s not what I was trying to do.
“In a month. In a year. I don’t know. Someday, maybe, I’ll not be able to sleep thinkin’ about what you did to my Charlie, and maybe I’ll not be able to live knowin’ what might happen to wee Ronan. If that happens, I’ll come back, and I’ll finish this. But not now. Not like this.”
“You’re going to run and hide, then?”
“No. I’m going to go reach out to Charlie’s wife, the woman who hates me, blames me more than she does you, for what happened. I’m going to beg her to let me help her with Ronan.
“And then, Court, I’m going to go grieve at the grave of my boy. Probably at the exact same time you are standin’ at yer da’s funeral.
“What did I just say?” Coyle said. “You and me…cosmically intertwined, we are.”
Court hung up the phone and stared out the window at the winter sun over the water.
—
The Vision was less than thirty minutes from touchdown at Hampton Roads when Court called Hanley. Erin Childers, code name Conductor, answered, and she gave her sincere condolences.
But Court wasn’t in the mood for sympathy. “Thanks,” was all he said. Then, “I need Matt.”
“Here he is.”
Hanley took the phone. “I’m talking to Skip. Feds are down there already, he can’t tell what agency, they aren’t talking, but it looks like Homeland Security Investigations.”
“Why is Homeland involved?”
“All the dead are U.S. citizens. Not sure why HSI is there, but the only thing I can think of is that someone high in the government knows about you, knows Jim was your dad, and they’re trying to find out where you are right now.”
Court didn’t really give a shit. He knew he should, but he didn’t.
Hanley said, “I’m going to see that your father is buried at Arlington. Full honors. He deserved that for his service in the Marine Corps, even if he didn’t have you as a son.”
Court softened now. “Thanks, Matt. That means more than you can imagine.”
“Don’t thank me. In fact…you are about to be pissed at me.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t let you go to the funeral. There could be surveillance. Assassins watching out for you.”
“I don’t want to go to the funeral. That’s why I called.”
Hanley was clearly gobsmacked by this. “You don’t want to go to your father’s…I mean, I expected pushback. Maybe I can put you in a blacked-out Tahoe, a couple hundred yards away with a lens so you could watch, pay your respects from a safe distance.”
“No, thanks.”
Matt said, “I don’t understand. Why don’t you want to go to the funeral?”
“Because I want to go to Northern Ireland.”
Hanley just blew out an annoyed sigh. Court had been listening to this man make this sound for a long time, usually because of something Court had said or done.
“Why?”
“You know why. I want to get off this little jet and then get on a bigger Bellstar jet that can get me all the way to Belfast. That is the only resource from Ghost Town I’m asking for.
If you don’t have something that can go transatlantic at Hampton Roads, charter me something at Reagan or Dulles. I want to go immediately.”
“Disallowed.”
“I’m asking you for a jet, Matt. I’m not asking you for permission to go. I’m going. If I have to take the fucking Queen Mary, I’m going. You want me to do this in a few days, or do you want me to take longer? That’s up to you.”
“I need you back here. It’s a fucking convalescent ward at Ghost Town, unless you’ve forgotten.”
“I’ll be back. Pace and Lacy will keep working; when I get back I’ll go help kill some other motherfucker that has it coming, but right now, I’m going to Belfast.”
Matt sighed. “Pace thinks Lewis Shaw was just a fucking errand boy.
And when the heat got too high for the real culprit, meaning when Pace, along with Ghost Town, did what we did, then whoever is responsible killed Shaw to use him as a fall guy.
Gauntlet is involved, but there is somebody very high in the intelligence community who is behind all this.
“In fact,” Hanley said, his voice a little lower now, “Pace has suspicions about Trey Watkins himself. Seems he is one of only a few who could have gotten intelligence on both Zack’s daughter and your father. He thinks Watkins is setting us up.”
“Well,” Court said, “you guys work on figuring that shit out, and when I get back, I’ll deal with it.”
Hanley breathed into the phone a moment. Finally, he said, “Do you even know where Whetstone is?”
“No, but I can find him. I just need some time, Matt.”
Hanley’s response came in a different tone.
Harsher, less sympathetic. “Six, you are a fucking resource. I’m never going to lie to you about that, I’m never going to pretend otherwise.
So don’t you fucking forget it. I’ll always do anything I can for you, unless and until it gets in the way of our mission, at which point, I have to do what I have to do.
“And right now, I need you at Ghost Town.”
“I hate this fucking shit,” Court mumbled.
“No, you don’t,” Hanley responded. “The job you do, you know it’s crucial.
I’m sorry your dad died this morning, but that dad of yours saved the life of America’s most important human intelligence resource.
Jim Gentry died a motherfucking hero, saving his son, protecting my asset, and from what Skip tells me about Jim, nothing on this earth would have made him prouder than exactly what happened today.
“Now…make him even prouder by helping us do what you were meant to do.”
Court felt the plane descending. “You come at me with your fucking logic, it just makes me want to beat the shit out of you.”
“Because I’m right.”
After a pause, the man in the jet said, “I’m going to Northern Ireland.”
“To kill a man who probably doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore.”
“He and I both have unfinished business.”
“Only in your fucking minds, Court!”
“As long as it’s in one of our minds, then it’s got to be dealt with.” Court sighed. “Am I getting that aircraft? Because if not, I need to go online and book a flight.”
“You are not getting an aircraft.”
Court thought a moment. “Okay, fine. Next question. Will you tell these pilots to divert to Dulles, or do I have to hijack this plane?”
“You’re fucking serious right now?”
“I don’t know, Matt. Do I sound serious? I’ve got Zack’s piece and half a mag of hollow-points. This plane is going wherever I want it to.”
“Dammit!” Hanley shouted. “Okay. Relax. Just relax.” Then he hung up.
Less than five minutes later, the copilot came over the PA. “Sir…we’ve been ordered by the company to divert to Dulles.”
Court nodded, pulled out his phone, and booked the first commercial flight he could. Dulles to Dublin, and then he’d take a train up to Belfast.
From there…he’d figure it out.
He wasn’t thinking straight, but he was thinking, and he wasn’t acting rational, but he was acting.