Back Blast (18 page)

T
he operator on the right had seen the bubbling vat of grease spewing, and he sensed trouble, but not in time to avoid it. Just as both men looked to the right, the center vat popped once, spraying red-hot grease into the air. Neither man was hit by either a round or the burning liquid, but a second after this, just as both men turned away to run for cover, the remaining eighty-nine rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition cooked off nearly simultaneously. The cacophonous explosion blew fire, bits of metal, and hot cooking oil in all directions.

The bullets were not traveling through rifled barrels, so they were nowhere near as deadly as actual gunfire, but they were still capable of causing serious wounds. The brass jacketed projectiles, along with the scalding oil, cartridges, and bits of the metal fry vat itself, slammed into both men as they tried to run, knocking them back through the passageway into the counter area of the restaurant.

—

A
s soon as the boom of the explosion diminished Court exited the door of the walk-in refrigerator, grabbed the metal ladder on the wall next to him, and climbed up. It was hot with fry grease and slippery as hell, but he held on, fighting his way to the ceiling access hatch. He opened the door, rolled out onto the flat roof, and rose to his feet.

Court ran straight to the front edge of the building, hoping to somehow shimmy down to the parking lot, but when he got there he saw a half dozen police cars rolling into the lot from the intersection, their lights flashing.

Shit. He turned and raced along the roof in the opposite direction.

He stopped at the south side of the building now, hoping no one would see him here. He looked over the side, a dozen feet straight down onto asphalt.

He couldn’t make that drop quickly without running a high risk of hurting a knee or an ankle, which would make his escape nearly impossible.

Court turned and rushed to the rear of the restaurant now, thinking the loading dock might be high enough for him to drop down onto. But quickly he saw that was no good, either. There were two Townsend men here, and although one man was wounded, both were armed, and the back door to the restaurant was open, allowing anyone inside a view of the loading dock.

Court ran to the north side, desperate for any option now. And an option presented itself immediately. As he ran he saw a Montgomery County Police Department SUV, its lights and sirens blaring, racing through the parking lot. Court knew where the officer was heading. He would be part of the cordon of the scene, moving to the alleyway to cut off any escape through the back door.

Court knew that this moving vehicle was his one ticket off the roof of this McDonald’s. He turned and chased after the SUV, running for the back corner of the roof as fast as he could, knowing the vehicle would have to come close to the building here to pull into the alley to seal up the back exit.

It was all about speed and timing now, and while Court knew he had the speed, he couldn’t see the SUV below the lip of the roof, so he had no idea about the timing. If he jumped too soon he’d land on the asphalt after a twelve-foot leap, and he’d probably also get run over by the officer in his sport utility vehicle. If he was too slow he’d just hit the asphalt behind the vehicle, and no doubt break a leg in the process and lie there till discovered by the cops.

Using the sound of the siren as his guide he ran on, then stutter-stepped near the edge to buy himself an instant of time. He launched off the roof, windmilled his arms and legs through the air, and pounded down feet first on the roof of the SUV, six feet lower than the roofline. His forward momentum propelled him off the moving vehicle, and the SUV’s forward momentum, as it moved to Court’s left, cartwheeled Court sideways. He spun in the air, tumbling down towards the parking lot. He landed on his feet but immediately crashed to his side, then continued his tumble into a forward roll off his right shoulder.

Out of the roll he snapped back up to his feet. This propelled him on even faster, and in just a few steps he was back in the air, leaping and then
grabbing onto chain-link fence near the top. Hurriedly he climbed the rest of the way over.

The Montgomery County Police vehicle screeched on its brakes and the driver put the transmission in park and leapt out, but by the time he got around to the other side of his vehicle to pursue the dark figure who had just crashed down on his unit, the fleeing man had dropped on the far side of the back fence and pushed through a high hedge, and he was now running through the dark parking lot of a dentist office.

The two Townsend men were on the dock, but they’d missed the man leaping from the roof. By the time the uninjured security officer saw what was happening and tried to level his pistol at the movement, two police officers inside the restaurant saw him through the open back door and screamed at him, demanding he drop his weapon and raise his hands.

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.

—

T
he
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.”

C
ourt 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?

Just ahead was an overpass that ran over the Capital Beltway. On the other side was an apartment complex and, next to this, a bus stop where he could take a bus that ran all night. Court knew this bus followed a route that would drop him within a few blocks of his car, about a mile away. He’d passed this stop this afternoon on a bus that got him closer to Babbitt’s house, and noted this location as a secondary exfiltration route in case he wasn’t able to make it directly back to his car for some reason.

His plan for the rest of the evening was simple. Pick up his car, take it back to his storage room, lock it up, then go home to his basement apartment at the Mayberrys’.

But everything changed suddenly when he scanned to his right. There, parked in the darkness of a private driveway, sat a Metro D.C. police cruiser. The vehicle itself was a little odd, as this was Maryland, after all, but the fact that at least two men sat in the dark car was more suspicious to him.

D.C. cops usually ride alone in their patrol cars.

Court began crossing the street, heading away. Behind him he heard the doors of the police cruiser open.

Court looked to his left and right for a place to run, expecting that at any moment the cops were going to call out to him, or else they were right now radioing for backup and within minutes cruisers, tactical units, and helicopters would surround him.

He looked on either side of the road and saw rows of adjoining houses. Short of kicking in a door or a window, he had nowhere to run.

“And this night keeps getting better and better,” Court mumbled to himself.

Just fifty feet in front of him was the overpass; he knew he’d reach a decision point there. Either he’d turn and run into the neighborhood here, before he got stuck on the overpass; he’d try to run across the overpass and lose the cops on foot over there; or else he would slide down the embankment and into the traffic of the Beltway.

No option looked like a good one, but while he kept walking he couldn’t
help but wonder why the two cops, just fifty feet behind him now, hadn’t challenged him yet.

The answer presented itself a moment later when two more Metro PD squad cars pulled onto the far end of the overpass and stopped. Car doors opened and four police officers poured out, fanned out away from the vehicles, and drew their pistols.

Time to run.

Court turned to his right and raced for the embankment. He had taken only a few steps in this endeavor—he was still twenty feet from the steep concrete slope to the Beltway below—when gunfire erupted in front of him.

What the fuck?
Court thought. The cops were just gunning him down, not even giving him a chance to surrender.

Within the first five cracks of incoming fire, Court felt a sharp sting wide on his right rib cage. His gray parka ripped, and he doubled over while running. He stumbled almost all the way to the ground, to the point that his hands went flat on the street, but he kept moving, rose back up, and leapt over the railing of the overpass without taking time to look below.

Court dropped six feet through the air and landed on his right hip on a thirty-degree concrete incline. He rolled end over end several times, then righted himself and began skidding on his back, picking up speed towards the Beltway below. Above him the gunfire had stopped, but he had no doubt it would resume again as soon as this group of overzealous Washington cops got a bead on him from the overpass railing.

He made it to the bottom of the hill, staggered up onto the shoulder, and looked to the oncoming traffic.

An idea came to him quickly and he didn’t pause to second-guess it. He timed his move, then jumped in front of a speeding semitrailer. He raised his hands, shielding his eyes from its headlights.

He knew the vehicle would not be able to stop in time.

The semi driver slammed on his brakes, the air brakes squealed and the tires burned and skidded, and the semi’s load began to jackknife.

Court leapt out of the way, ran off the shoulder and several feet back up the concrete embankment. As he did so he felt blood on his stomach, soaking the elastic band of his warm-up pants.

As soon as the semi came to a complete stop Court drew his Smith and Wesson pistol, ran with the gun in his right hand and his left hand
clutching his wounded rib cage, and reentered the Beltway under the cover of the overpass. Behind the semi trailer a maroon and white taxicab had slammed on his brakes to avoid a rear-end collision, and Court ran around to the driver-side window and banged on it with his pistol.

The cabbie opened the door and raised his hands. He screamed something in a foreign language. Court thought it might have been Swahili, but he wasn’t sure.

“Out!” Court yelled, and the man seemed to understand because he complied instantly.

Court climbed behind the wheel of the cab, and threw it into gear. He lurched forward onto the shoulder, did a quick and dirty three-point turn, and then bounced into the grassy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes. He drove across to the westbound and entered the Beltway here, and he stomped on the gas, trying to get as much speed as possible before showing up below the far side of the overpass. He could only hope that the cops above him had not been able to see the carjacking or the maneuver, and that they would only find out about it as soon as they spoke with the furious cabbie.

His plan paid off, and within minutes he was miles to the west, clear of the area and hunting for a place to dump a stolen cab with blood all over the driver’s seat.