serving a life sentence for the triple second-degree murder of three Colombian drug runners, and presented him with a job offer he could not refuse.
He had never believed for a second that it was a computer who dubbed him Violator.
The screen in front of him flickered to life.
The image of a man in a gray suit and a Brooks Brothers tie in a full Windsor. He was over sixty, thin glasses low on his nose. The face and countenance of a soldier. After a short moment Gentry recognized the man.
Court was surprised. Shocked, even.
“Sierra Six. Do you recognize me?” His voice was clipped and curt. There was no smile nor emotion of any kind.
Gentry answered immediately. “Yes, sir.” He turned to look at Zack. Hightower smiled and raised his eyebrows, obviously proud of the juice he possessed to command a video link with this other man.
The man was Denny Carmichael, currently the director of U.S. National Clandestine Service, and recently the head of the Special Activities Division. He was a legend at the agency, a Far East specialist and a longtime station chief in Hong Kong.
Denny Carmichael was, in short, the top guy in CIA operations. Court knew this mission was big, but this kind of dirty work usually went on without the fingerprints of the top brass of the U.S. intelligence community.
“I understand Sierra One has laid out our proposal to you regarding the extraordinary rendition of Oryx. I am prepared to reaffirm the details of Nocturne Sapphire.”
“Yes, sir,” repeated Court. It was all he could think to say. He’d never spoken to anyone this high in the food chain. He found himself almost starstruck. It felt odd, doubly so since Carmichael would certainly have been a signatory to the shoot-on-sight directive against him that had been in place since 2006.
Carmichael laid out the general plan that Zack had discussed, though he spoke in more euphemistic terms. Court would “detain Abboud with force,” not “snatch him” as Hightower had instructed. He would “neutralize all threats from Abboud’s close protection detail,” as opposed to Zack’s suggestion that he “pop a hollow point or two into each bodyguard’s snot box.”
This dissimilarity in the vernacular was a common distinction between labor and management in this industry. Court was accustomed to hearing more from Zack’s ilk and less from men like Carmichael, but he knew the results would not differ depending on the political correctness of the vocabulary used. The operation would be the same, no matter how pleasantly or corrosively it was explained.
Men would die.
While Carmichael spoke, Hightower leaned against the wall of the ship, occasionally making an open and closed hand gesture to mock the verbosity of the man on the screen. But otherwise Sierra One minded his manners.
When Carmichael finished his explanation of the operation, he moved on to the part of the deal most important to the Gray Man. “You do this for us, Sierra Six, and our operation to eliminate you will simply go away. That means any existing sanctions or directives against you within the agency will be dropped. Existing warrants via Interpol will be rescinded. Existing communiqués from Central Intelligence liaisons to foreign intelligence agencies regarding you will cease. The CIA request for Echelon intel and other data mining regarding you from NSA will be allowed to expire. Other loose ends will be cleared up. FBI, Joint Special Operations Command, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Commerce Department . . . you will no longer be a person of interest to any United States federal department or agency.”
Court didn’t know JSOC had been involved in the hunt for him. JSOC meant Delta Force, the Unit, and the Unit meant some tough hombres. The Commerce Department, on the other hand, didn’t quite fill him with the same sense of dread.
Gentry said, “I understand.”
“Fine. So do we have an agreement?”
“Will you tell me what this is all about?”
Carmichael looked a little annoyed. Presumably he did not feel comfortable offering deals to outlaws. But he nodded and said, “President Abboud is wanted by the International Criminal—”
“Excuse me, sir. I meant . . . Can you tell me what the shoot on sight is all about? Why you went after me in the first place.”
There was a long pause. Denny Carmichael looked off camera to someone on his side, perhaps for guidance. Finally he replied with a grave tone, “Son. If you truly do not know what you did, it is probably better for everyone’s sake that I do not tell