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The son of a bitch would probably be on CNN within the hour.

Court looked away from Ohlhauser and towards the uniformed man closest to him. His name tag read Stern, and his badge number was 99782. Court said, “Officer Stern, what’s your badge number?”

The officer didn’t hesitate, and he did not look down at his badge. In an accented voice he said, “Nine, nine, seven, eight, two.”

Court smiled at him. “You must have stayed up all night to remember that.”

Stern said nothing else.

The door opened and the cops pushed Court in, and the quiet men in uniform followed. Ohlhauser started to enter himself, but one of the cops held a hand up, keeping him out.

Max was confused. “Wait. I want to come, too. You have to be careful with this man. As I said, he is—”

“No. You stay.”

Ohlhauser put his own hand out, holding the elevator door open. “Look, Officer Stern. This is a delicate situation. My former Agency is very interested in this man. They will be sending people—”

Behind Max Ohlhauser, three Transit Police officers appeared on the mezzanine. Their uniforms were a solid dark blue, in contrast with the cops in the elevator, who wore light blue tunics and dark blue pants.

The one female transit cop called out, “What you boys got?” The other two Transit Police shepherded the few straggling passersby along, clearing out the area in just a few seconds.

Max Ohlhauser, clearly still afraid the D.C. Metro cops in the elevator were going to abscond with his prisoner, put his foot in the door to keep it from closing.

After a look to his colleagues, one of the men in the D.C. Metro uniforms stepped out of the elevator and walked towards the transit cops. As he closed on them Court heard him speak. His voice was accented, but less so than that of the man with the Stern badge.

He said, “A man with a gun. We are taking him to station now. Everything is under control.”

Ohlhauser took the opportunity to step into the elevator. Two cops were behind Gentry holding him by his arms, and one more was on his right, so Max stood to Gentry’s left.

Court leaned over to him and spoke softly in his ear. “You don’t want to be in here. These guys aren’t cops.”

Ohlhauser spoke back without whispering. “Don’t be ridiculous. You asked the officer’s badge number and he told you.”

Outside the Transit Police continued speaking with the D.C. Metro cop. Court couldn’t hear the conversation, but he could see a look of puzzlement on the face of one of the men wearing dark blue.

To Max he asked, “How long does it take you to remember a five-digit number?”

Another transit cop was turning suspicious. Court could see him cock his head and challenge something the D.C. Metro cop said.

Ohlhauser, also looking out at the exchange in the subway station, said,
“If it doesn’t prove anything that he knows his badge number, why did you get him to tell it to you in the first place?”

Court rolled his head around slowly and brought his shoulders back, stretching the muscles in his neck and in his bound arms. He replied, less softly now. “Because I wanted to hear his accent before I killed him.”

Ohlhauser turned to look at Court and, at that same moment, the dark man on the mezzanine wearing the D.C. Metro police uniform reached for the gun on his belt.

T
he transit cops had been suspicious of the man in the Metro police uniform, but not suspicious enough for their own good. They clearly did not think he posed a threat to them, because they were all slow to draw their weapons.

Court had the fastest reaction time out of anyone in the subway station. Before the foreign operator wearing the Metro PD uniform had even cleared leather with his handgun, Court slammed his head back hard into the nose of one of the men standing just behind him, then he spun around and jabbed the “close door” button with the index finger of his cuffed right hand. Facing the three armed men in the elevator, he saw the man in the middle had dropped to the floor after taking the back of Court’s hard head to his face. His hands covered his nose and mouth, and blood dripped through his fingers.

Out of the corner of his eye, Court saw Max Ohlhauser drop to the floor himself, and then crawl out of the elevator to get away from the fight. But just as he did so, echoing bangs of pistol fire erupted in the metro station.

Court brought his right leg up, knee to his chest, and then he snapped out a vicious front kick into the face of the man by the wall on his left. This struck the man in the nose, and blood erupted from his face but he did not fall to the floor. He was, however, out of the fight, at least for the moment, so Court turned his attention to the man on the right. This fake cop had his gun out of its holster and high in the draw stroke, so Court sent a tight roundhouse kick from left to right, through the man’s gun hand, sending the Glock pistol banging against the wall and falling to the floor of the elevator. He then rushed forward with his arms still secured behind his back, pivoted ninety degrees as he charged, lowered his body, and fired a shoulder into the man’s chest, driving him hard against the wall. The fake cop wore a Kevlar vest, but the impact on both sides of his body as he was
slammed into from the front and then, in turn, slammed back against the wall of the elevator stunned him soundly, and his legs gave out. He slid down to the floor and settled on his back.

The elevator door closed and the car began ascending.

The foreign operator on the floor in the middle of the elevator tried to get back up and draw his gun. Court kneed the pistol out of his hand, then Court spun behind the man, turned his back to him, and wrapped his handcuffs around the man’s neck. He began to strangle him with the metal, shaking the man left and right to keep him off balance.

While this was going on, the operator on the far wall stood back up and fired a fist out, and it caught Court right above his gunshot wound on his right side. The punch hurt his ribs, but he knew if it had been two inches lower it would have sent him into jolting agony, and he might have been out of the fight.

Court spun away from a second punch, let go of the man he’d been choking out, then ducked down and rammed the punching man into the wall, like a bull slamming into a bullfighter. After regaining his footing from this dive, he continued using his feet, kicking the man in the groin, the chest, and finally the face as the man slid down in the corner of the elevator. Once he was on the ground fully Court used the heel of his shoe to stomp the man’s face until he was completely unresponsive.

All three uniformed men were down—unconscious or dead, Court neither knew nor cared which. He knelt quickly, wincing with the pain in his ribs as he did so, and he turned around, away from the prostrate form of one of the fake cops. Reaching behind him, he fumbled with the man’s utility belt. He felt his way around for a moment, then unhooked the handcuff key from a key ring.

Uncuffing himself was easy; he’d practiced unlocking handcuffs behind his back thousands of times, and had even done it in the field twice.

Court dropped the cuffs onto the still form of one of the men and scooped up a fully loaded Glock 17. This he shoved into his waistband, then he untucked his shirt and let it hang over the butt of the gun. He took his mobile phone, credit card, and cash from the front pocket of the man with the badge that read Stern, and in the man’s pocket he felt something else that he recognized immediately. It was a silencer for a pistol. He pulled it out and dropped it into his own pocket, as well.

Just then the elevator jolted to a stop and the door opened, sending gray light and the smell of fresh rain into the elevator.

An elderly man stood there, and in front of him, his elderly wife sat in her wheelchair. They had called the elevator up, apparently oblivious to the throngs of panicked commuters fleeing the station from the escalators a half block away.

Court looked at the couple as he stood up fully. At his feet lay three bloodied, still forms of men in police uniforms, their arms and legs intertwined.

Smears of bloody handprints were on the walls.

Court shrugged. Said, “This isn’t as bad as it looks.” Then he took off at a brisk pace, moving past them without another glance.

Fifty yards to his left, Dakota, Harley, and three other JSOC men ran down the five-story-high escalator, guns drawn.

—

C
ourt used Uber, an app on his mobile phone, to call a private car to pick him up at an address just six blocks from Dupont Circle. A Nissan Altima arrived in less than a minute, driven by a young Pakistani driver. Court asked the man to take him to a shopping center far north of his room in the Mayberrys’ basement, which meant he’d have an hour-long walk this afternoon, but at least he’d be far away from the scene of the action.

As he rode in the back of the Altima Court wondered if Ohlhauser had made it out of the subway station with his life. The ex–CIA lawyer had obviously decided to put his faith in the odds of the three transit cops against the one foreign operator masquerading as a D.C. police officer. Court figured that, to Ohlhauser anyway, those odds looked better than taking his chances in the elevator, where one handcuffed man who had just kidnapped him was up against three armed foreign operators.

Court had no way of knowing for sure, but he had a feeling Max Ohlhauser had made the wrong call and was now lying dead in Dupont Circle station.

T
he action in the Metro had Denny in constant telephone contact with Suzanne Brewer in the TOC during the afternoon as the body count grew and the fragmented reports from Brewer’s contacts at the scene radioed in bits of intel. But as soon as it became clear Gentry had managed to survive and escape the area, Denny asked Brewer to give him a few minutes to attend to other pressing matters.

He picked up his phone and dialed Kaz’s number.

Murquin al-Kazaz seemed to be expecting the call, because he answered almost immediately.

“Talk,” Carmichael demanded.

Kaz said, “Yes, I will get right to it. Violator escaped. One of my men died from gunshot wounds, but he managed to make it up to the surface before he bled to death. His body was recovered from the scene before he was compromised. Three more of my men were injured. Two will never work again.”

Carmichael felt a tightening in his chest. Not for the fate of the men; rather for the fate of the OPSEC of his operation. “Captured?”

“No. Another group of my officers arrived in time to make it out of the area of operations with the wounded and dying before they were discovered by authorities.”

Carmichael sighed into the phone. “That’s something.”

Kaz moved on from the talk of his men. “What can you do to make sure the recordings from the camera feeds at the station are lost or destroyed?”

Carmichael replied, “Municipal government mismanagement has seen to that. Our tactical operations center confirmed the cameras on the platforms were operational, as was the camera on the escalators going up and down from street level, but both cameras on the mezzanine level of the station were out of service.”

Kaz said, “So Violator was seen leaving the train with Ohlhauser and going up to the mezzanine, but the incident itself was not recorded?”

“Correct. There may be questions about the D.C. police officers seen on camera entering the station, but as the elevator wasn’t covered with CCTV, there is an explanation for their absence from the scene.”

The two men spoke for several minutes, most of it consisting of Kaz relaying the after-action report of the least wounded of the three men beaten by Gentry in the elevator car.

As soon as Kaz finished the play-by-play, Carmichael asked another question, though he wasn’t sure if he would get an honest response. “And Ohlhauser? Who killed him? Your men, Gentry, or was he caught in the cross fire?”

“The surviving members of my team did not see him killed and the only man on the mezzanine when Ohlhauser was shot said nothing before he bled to death in the back of an SUV. Ohlhauser was alive when the doors to the elevator closed. I gave my men no orders to kill him, so I can only assume he was simply caught in the cross fire.”

Carmichael wasn’t as disappointed with Ohlhauser’s death as he might have been, because he saw an angle in it. A way he could leverage it to fit the narrative he wanted put out for all to see.

But he was worried about Kaz. As dangerous as it was for Carmichael to sanction a proxy force of Saudi Arabian gunmen in the capital city of the United States of America, he continued to see their value. While he had JSOC operators and dozens of CIA contractors hunting Violator, only Kaz’s men had managed to wound him, and only Kaz’s men had managed to get him in handcuffs. The fact that outside forces interrupted his killing was frustrating to Denny, but he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on the Saudi operators.

Denny’s concern, however, was that Kaz planned on doing just that. He worried Kaz would just shut down his operation and try to forget he’d ever been involved in the Violator hunt.

Denny knew when to use a stick on Kaz to get him to work in the interest of the CIA, but right now it was time for the carrot. He said, “Look, I recognize this was a dangerous operation for you and your men, and your risk of compromise is real. I want you to know that if you will see this through to
the end with me, I will be more amenable to your needs here in the U.S. than I have been of late.”

The Saudi intelligence chief said nothing for a long time. When he did reply, it was clear he knew he held a temporary advantage in the relationship. “Specifics, Denny. I want to hear specifics before I subject my men to more jeopardy.”

“All right,” Denny said. “I know of your interest in our export of fracking technology to other Gulf states. You have spent a lot of time and resources trying to get intelligence on this.”

“I will not deny that. We find it troubling that your partnerships with less stable oil producers have injured your relationship with our oil-producing sector.”

“Cut the crap, Kaz. I’m not a politician, and neither are you. I’m offering you primary intelligence on the oil-production capacities and forecasts of our allies. Not everything. That would compromise me as your source. But good, actionable intel. From me to you. That ought to help your profile back in Riyadh.”

Murquin al-Kazaz seemed to think it all over for a minute. Finally he replied, “Very well. Despite this difficult day for my operation, we will continue to hunt your target for you. We’ll stay at it till the end.”

“Excellent,” Denny said. “As soon as I have something for you I will let you know.” He hung up the phone, proud of his power to compel others to do his bidding.

—

I
n the Saudi Embassy on New Hampshire Avenue, Murquin al-Kazaz hung up his secure mobile and sat quietly, puffing his cigarette and drinking tea.

Slowly his face grew into a wide smile.

He’d not expected this. He’d suffered a flesh wound today with the death or disablement of four men, but he’d managed to avoid compromise, and he’d just been handed intelligence of the highest caliber on a silver platter.

And in trade he had conceded nothing, and he would offer nothing.

Murquin al-Kazaz and his men would not stop hunting Court Gentry until he was confirmed dead.

Nothing else mattered.

—

C
ourt made it back into his room just in time for the six p.m. news. He turned on CNN after resetting his booby traps, and while the show opened he gingerly peeled off his white dress shirt. He had a couple of new bruises, both of them purple-and-black and painful, but his main concern remained the GSW he caught three nights earlier. His bandages were black with dried blood, and a new rivulet of bright red blood had trickled down his rib cage, all the way to his underwear.

He wasn’t bothered by the sight in the least, knowing just how close he’d come to real damage. He was lucky to have only sprung one small leak after what he’d just subjected himself to. He could clean this up and stop any more bleeding with little trouble, other than the searing, unrelenting pain.

Just as he expected, CNN opened live with a shot from Washington, D.C., with a stand-up report outside the Dupont Circle metro station. Court exhaled in frustration when the correspondent announced the shooting death of three transit officers along with one civilian, and the injury of four more civilians. The names were not being released so that next of kin could be notified, so Court didn’t know if Ohlhauser had been among the dead.

Within forty-five seconds of the show’s opening, the erudite and bearded anchor back in Atlanta asked the reporter a question Court had fully expected.

“Andrea, have police been able to determine if this shooting had any relation to the assassination-style killing of Washington area businessman and security consultant Leland Babbitt two nights ago?”

“So far police are not jumping to any conclusions, but they are speculating only that, due to the large number of victims in a public place, this looks like some sort of terrorist act.”

Court closed his eyes. He was hoping against hope there would be something in this report about a group of Middle Eastern assholes dressed up like cops opening fire on Transit Police, but there was nothing of the sort. As the story progressed, he felt his heart sink, as it began to look as if the authorities were going to try to spin this as a lone attacker; the same lone attacker involved in Babbitt’s killing.

Court kept listening for more details as he stripped down to his underwear and pulled a bottle of beer out of his little fridge. He headed back to
the bed holding the cold bottle against the bruising just above the bandaged wound on his right side.

As the anchorman was asking another question he stopped speaking suddenly. Apparently he was listening to a producer in his earpiece. After a few seconds he said, “Just a moment.” A pause. Then, “Is this confirmed? We need to be certain before we go live with this.”

Court leaned towards the television. He feared what would come, but when it came, he found himself decidedly unsurprised.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just received word that one of the victims is someone known very well to our viewers and the CNN family. Police now confirm, officially, that CNN contributor Maxwell Ohlhauser was killed today in what appears to be a terror attack in the nation’s capital. I’ve known Max personally for quite some time and . . . this is just an awful turn of events.

“On Monday night, the death of Leland Babbitt, who was also in the security and intelligence field, and now this on Wednesday afternoon. We just had Max on this morning to discuss the inherent dangers of working in government intelligence services, even here in the United States.

“We don’t want to get out in front of the investigation, of course, but this obviously leads one to the inescapable conclusion that someone is out there targeting U.S. intelligence officials, or, in the case of Max Ohlhauser, ex-officials. Terrorism here in the streets of Washington, D.C. I fail to see how you could possibly characterize it as anything else.”

Court put his head in his hands, his mind spiraling down into depression. He had come to America to clear his name, but so far, despite his best-laid plans, his arrival had had the opposite effect. Now there were more dead bodies that would be pinned on him, and he had no new plan to get out of the hole he’d dug for himself.

But through it all, one thing kept propelling him forward.

The firm belief that he had been set up, and he’d done absolutely nothing wrong.