Back Blast by Mark Greaney

singleton asset out there.
    Court saw it clearly now. For some reason the CIA was erasing anyone who had been in AAP. All the others were gone.
    And now it was down to Court Gentry. The last man standing.
    What he did not know was why.
    He could reveal what he knew about the program and the termination order for the assets, but first he needed proof. Without proof—if he just called up the
New York Times
and told them what he suspected—he’d be considered a crackpot and there would be no story.
    The CIA would deny his allegations, and the CIA would win, because the CIA had significantly better media outreach than Court Gentry had.
    He needed proof. If he found proof, he would find justice, and that was what he was after.
    Not revenge, he told himself. Justice.
    There were men here, in the area, who Court felt sure would have the answers he sought. He had no illusions that they would give up their answers willingly, but Court was prepared. He’d seek these men out, find out what they knew, and rectify the mess his life had become. He told himself it was doable, that he wasn’t naive, but part of him wondered if he’d just grown too tired of running, if he was racing headlong into his own death just to end it all.
    He pushed the negativity out of his mind as best he could, and he drifted off just before ten a.m., and, for the first time in months, he slept the sleep of the dead.

10
    D enny Carmichael lay on the leather couch in his dark office, but his eyes remained open, fixed on the ceiling. He’d stayed up working until past seven a.m., then he slept for a couple of hours, but only fitfully. Now he lay awake, brooding and plotting. Worrying and calculating.
    The door opened slowly, letting a little light into the room. This startled the director of National Clandestine Service. No one walked into his office unannounced. He had a vision of the Gray Man, his face darkened with coal, a hooked knife with a flat black finish in his hand, his eyes cold and dark and dead like those of a snake.
    Carmichael rolled quickly up to a sitting position and reached out in the dark, finding and then pulling the chain on the banker’s lamp on the desk.
    Jordan Mayes stood over him with two cups of coffee. “Sorry. I thought you’d be sleeping.”
    Carmichael rubbed his eyes and took a cup, and he motioned for Mayes to take a seat on the other side of the coffee table.
    “What time is it?”
    “About ten a.m.,” Mayes said. “I’d have given you another hour, but I just got word from the homicide detective in charge in Washington Highlands.”
    “Talk.”
    Mayes rubbed his own eyes, the all-nighter evident on his face. “Brandywine Street was Violator, no question.”
    “We know this how?”
    “Fingerprints left at the scene.”
    Carmichael shook his head. “Bullshit. PD doesn’t have Gentry’s prints on file. None of the Ground Branch boys are in any domestic database. Only we have his prints.”
    “I know that. The prints haven’t been analyzed yet.”
    “Then how did the D.C. police—”
    “Because Gentry
wanted
us to know it was him. He pressed his thumbprint onto a nightstand in the room where he left the bodies. Multiple times. Leaving clear prints in the shape of a six.”
    Carmichael sat up straighter. “Sierra Six. Gentry’s call sign with the Goon Squad.”
    “It was a message. ‘I’m back and I’m pissed. I want the Agency to know I’m here.’”
    Carmichael sat back on the sofa and blew out a full chest of air. A chill ran down the back of his neck and into his shoulders. “Fucking brazen. He’s not going to skulk around then. I guess that means he won’t be running, either. What did he take from the Aryan Brotherhood?”
    “According to survivors, he got a bag full of cash. No agreement on how much. The narcotics detective I spoke with guessed about ten grand, but that was just based on the size of the operation being run out of the house. PD recovered a lot of meth,