“I think I better get the number off this phone, then use a burner to call it.”
Just then, Jill came over everyone’s headsets. “It’s Gumdrop. Two more killings overnight. One in D.C. and another in Vienna, Virginia. Both current members of the IC. One was DIA, the other Homeland Security office of Intelligence and Analysis.”
Hightower said, “That’s seven assassinations, eight attempts. In what…eight, nine hours? If you had the best hitters in the world, there’d still have to be three, four of them, minimum, doing all this.”
Court said, “Let me see the videos again.”
They sat on the bed and watched several of the videos of the man in the home, just two hours or so earlier.
Court froze one of the videos and just looked at the darkened image of the man in the hood. “Who the fuck is this guy?”
“Obviously, one of the assassins,” Hanley said. “He’s close enough to D.C., Maryland, Tysons, Vienna, could have done any of those hits and then come here, or else he hasn’t even started yet.”
“How does he know about me?” Court asked. “Or about your connection to me?”
“There’s a massive intelligence leak under way, or haven’t you been paying attention?”
Court rubbed his eyes.
Lacy called again. Hanley took the call downstairs in his den, then met Court and Zack at the back door while Arnold went to retrieve the van with one of the Five Guys. Hanley said, “We’ve got some new information. Angela told me that Scott Kincaid was released from prison by the Cubans just yesterday.”
Lancer,Court thought. The former Navy SEAL turned assassin who Court had come up against in Havana earlier in the year. Softly, he just said, “Thatasshole.”
“What’s he want with you?” Hightower asked.
But Matt answered. “He blames Six for getting him arrested in Havana. This is probably our culprit.”
Court thought back to the video. “That guy…he wasn’t really built like Lancer.”
Hightower said, “Maybe seven months in a Cuban prison changes a man.”
The van pulled up and the men climbed in, and Court said, “The rate at which people are dying, I think I’d better call sooner than later.”
—
It was decided by the team that Court would call the number from a computer at Ghost Town and not from the Google phone that had been left for him. That phone was now in a Faraday cage on the outside chance there was a tracker built into it that Arnold’s equipment had missed. Jill had assured him it would be impossible for anyone to determine the origin of his call if she used a spoofing app on her laptop, so he now sat alone in thesmall office that just a year earlier had been an exam room in a podiatry clinic, and he looked at the number on the screen. With headphones and a microphone on his head, the laptop set to record the conversation, he took a deep breath, then ordered the computer to dial the number.
The call was answered on the other end after a short delay. The audio quality was impeccable with the headset Court wore, and almost instantly he heard soft breathing on the other end of the line.
After a time, when the party on the other end of the line did not say anything, Court said, “You wanted a word?”
“Who am I speaking to?” The man was Irish, Court could tell immediately. This was not Lancer, the American hit man he’d run into in Havana.
Court hadn’t operated in Ireland in many years.
Confused, he recovered quickly, then answered. “A long time ago, certain people referred to me as Violator.”
“Aye,” the man said. “If itisreally you, Iwouldlike a wee chat. But how do I know it’s really you, eh?”
Court leaned back in the chair, put his feet up on the desk. “Well…I guess that’syourproblem, dickhead. You broke into a man’s house, left a phone and a note claiming to have been part of a streak of killings. You went to a lot of trouble to get this far, and you don’t have a plan to identify me?”
Court just heard more breathing on the line. Even though he knew he couldn’t be traced, the voice, the tempo of the man’s words, and the slow breathing unsettled him just the same. Finally, the man on the other end said, “You are interested in the assassinations taking place in America right now, yeah?”
Court furrowed his brow. He wasn’t sure what this man knew about him. He said, “Not really. I’m not in America, and I don’t work for the government.”
“But my note to Hanley, I said if you called, I could make some of the killin’ stop.”
Court said, “Hanley reached out to me, and I told him I’d call you as a courtesy. But I’m not involved in—”
