“What’s going on with the other four assets?” J.W. then asked.
“Lancer is on his way up here now; his job in Miami was clean. Snare did Tysons, has more to do in Virginia. Masquerade did New York. Whetstone did Hyattsville already.” Scardino smiled for the first time since he came into the office. “I just hired the son of a bitch five hours ago, and he’s already crossed one name off his list. He’s on his way to Baltimore, then he’s off to Chicago after that, I believe.”
“Youbelieve?”
“Yeah, well, he also has a side quest here in the States. I’m trusting him that he finishes my work before he goes off and does that.”
“What’s a side quest?”
“Part of his agreement to do the hits was he wanted to know the location of Matthew Hanley.”
J.W. cocked his head at this. Of course, he knew Hanley was a former DDO. He’d met him many times when he was in Congress and Hanley was a midlevel CIA exec. “What does he want with Hanley?”
“Beats me. He wouldn’t say. Sounded like a personal beef.”
“A personal beef?”
“First, he wanted intelligence about the Gray Man. I had Shaw do some digging at ODNI. Did you know Gray Man is a former CIA paramilitary asset code-named Violator?”
“I did not, but I don’t see how that’s relevant to our operation.”
“It’s not, but Whetstone wanted Hanley’s info, because he seems to think Hanley knows how he can find the Gray Man. Lancer wanted intel on the Gray Man, as well.”
“So half the assassins in our stable are more interested in finding the Gray Man than they are in doing their jobs.”
Scardino shook his head. “Lancer, for sure, is more interested in the money. I guess there is a lot of rivalry and jealousy in the contract killer field.” Scardino added, “Whetstone’s still got four ops to do for us; after that, I don’t care about Hanley. He’s yesterday’s news, anyway.”
Westwood said, “I’m most concerned about whoever wiped your team out tonight. Aren’t you?”
Big Mike said, “We’ll figure it out.”
Changing the subject, J.W. said, “Spiral had four other missions. Who will do them?”
“I’ll talk to Lancer. He seemed very eager. I’ll have him do one. Snare is close by, I’ll have him do another. I’ll get Whetstone and Masquerade to do the others.”
James Westwood’s phone chirped on his desk. It was a Signal call, and it would be Gracie. She would have heard by now about the five successful operations, but she would have also heard about the shambolic unsuccessful one, and J.W. had no illusions at all about which one this call would be concerning.
Scardino turned and left the room as the older man answered.
—
Campbell Coyle sat alone in his Volkswagen Passat, parked equidistant from light poles on Timber Ridge Drive so that he was in as much darkness as possible on this residential street. He’d been here awhile watching a property across the street, and if he’d been shooed away by a passing security vehicle or a nosy neighbor, he’d come back here tomorrow night without a car and use a bit more stealth.
But it seemed he hadn’t been noticed by the residents, and no neighborhood rent-a-cop had happened by, so he’d been here most of an hour, examining his target, using binoculars to evaluate access points and security issues at the purported residence of Matthew Hanley.
He had sent all five of his support team to Silver Spring to kill a man. They didn’t know why, and they didn’t ask, but if theyhadasked, Coyle’s only response would have been that they would make a million dollars for the hit, and if they needed more prompting than that, then they’d found themselves in the wrong line of work.
The Kearney team—the Walsh and Donnelly brothers—weren’t assassins by trade, but they knew how to kill, and they’d certainly done it in the past for a lot less than a million. Building a car bomb from parts bought from a Home Depot and then stashing it under an unsuspecting man’s car didn’t sound like it would be too much trouble.
Coyle wasn’t worried about them right now; he was worried about the home on the other side of a quiet intersection from him.
And so far, he liked what he saw.
Campbell Coyle had worked for the past eight years installing and maintaining security systems all over Northern Ireland, and he knew the inner workings of both commercial and private systems. He could defeat locks, alarms, cameras, and motion sensors through means both mechanical and high-tech.
He used bolt cutters and iPads, screwdrivers and computer code.
Eyeballing Hanley’s home down the street on Meeting House Road, he’d determined that no one was present on the property, and though there was a security system, it was an off-the-shelf variety that Coyle could easily disable.
