“He won’t be operational for another week, but I’ll get him back here and brief him when I brief the other assets tomorrow. I don’t need him to run and gun, just to sit and listen.”
“Good. I’ll get Pace working on this exclusively, and we’ll keep you informed via Lacy. Brief your boys about what might be coming down the pike, because I have a funny feeling that when we identify whoever or whatever is compromising our operations, we’re going to find a bad actor right here in America, and I am not going to get the FBI involved.”
Watkins added. “We’ll deal with it ourselves. I’ll have you and your boys kill the son of a bitch, whoever it turns out to be.”
Matt smiled a little, gave a nod. “Spoken like a man who’s finally seen the light.”
“I’ve seen the dark, Matt.”
“Same thing.”
Five minutes later the Navigator pulled up to the departures lane at Reagan National Airport. Hanley got out and headed inside, ready to get on his 8:20 a.m. return flight to Norfolk. He had to get his team together quickly, and he had to keep them as far away from the real apparatus of the U.S. intelligence community as possible.
Last night Gentry barely had any dealings with the CIA; he’d only been connected to the Agency via the physical extraction of the agent.
But that small connection to the IC had nearly cost him his life.
Hanley told himself he’d stay away from everyone and everything in the community other than Lacy and Watkins, and he’d let Jim Pace figure out where the leak was coming from.
And then Hanley and his men would go and plug it.
When your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.
Hanley’s only tool was a couple of assassins.
He would plug the leak by killing the leaker, whoever that turned out to be.
Sixteen
Fifteen-year-old Andie Delaney walked the brimful macchiato from the espresso machine to the register, still a little slower than many of the other employees here at Cara’s Bakehouse, because this was only her second week on the job.
Andie’s mom’s best friend owned the place, and she’d been hired for shifts after school and on the weekends. It was tough work at first—this was her first job, after all—but she’d become more comfortable with her duties by the day, even though there were still stressful moments, especially on the weekends, as throngs of locals and tourists ventured in to recharge on coffee here in the attractive Noble Park neighborhood of Boulder, Colorado.
Andie lived just a few blocks away with her mom and her stepdad, both of whom she loved, and her eleven-year-old half sister, whom she occasionally tolerated.
Andie was a bright girl but only a fair student; she had trouble focusing on subjects that didn’t interest her. Her true love wasn’t academics, it was sports, and she found school so much less interesting than the nearby mountains, especially during the winter. A competitive snowboarder, she’d achieved a national ranking in her age group in both the halfpipe and slopestyle disciplines.
She dreamed of landing a sponsor and even competing in the Olympics someday, and this job here at Cara’s would, over time, earn her some money to spend on training and gear.
She also enjoyed the comradery with the rest of the staff here, the sense of responsibility that came along with her first job, and she especially enjoyed meeting people.
Andie Delaney was anything but shy.
She was five-five, pretty, soft-featured, and bright-eyed, and she wore oversized jeans and a black XL Cara’s Bakehouse sweatshirt under her apron. She kept her short brown hair back in a ponytail for work today, but more often than not, she kept her hair tucked in a red beanie.
Andie made it to the counter, where she carefully handed the macchiato to a woman who thanked her and headed off to grab some sugar and a spoon, and then she stepped back to the iPad register, spun it back to her, and looked up to see the door open and another patron step in from the sunny but cold afternoon.
He was a regular, at least as far as she could tell as a new employee, and she thought she’d seen him virtually every day she’d worked for the past week.
The man was tall, old—from her perspective, anyway—with short blond and graying hair shaved into dramatic sideburns, a slightly darker beard groomed into a point, and a mustache flecked with even more gray. He wore a thick Carhartt jacket, roper boots, and jeans, and Andie took him as some sort of a cowboy.
He walked towards the counter with a slight limp, locked eyes with her, and gave her a smile.
“Welcome to Cara’s. How can I help you?” she asked, although she already knew the answer to this question. Coffee, large, three sugars, and a cheese Danish. She didn’t know a lot of people’s regular orders by heart, but this big cowboy was such a frequent visitor she had his down.
The big man continued smiling at her, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening. “I bet you can guess.”
Andie smiled a little herself. “Coffee, large, three sugars. And a cheese Danish.”
