Court rubbed his eyes with his good hand. “What now?”
Zack sighed. Annoyed. “More dipshittery from Brewer. She’s sending a car to pick us up to take us to the Ground Branch helo. Jenner is assembling his team at a staging area close by for the hit on the airstrip and the church, and Brewer wants us to ride along.”
“Ride along on their hit?” Court looked at his hand.
Zack said, “Between you and me, sometimes I wonder if Suzanne doesn’t really love us.”
Court smiled weakly, then headed to the bathroom to take a cold shower to wake himself up.
* * *
• • •
Thirty minutes later Court and Zack stood in a steady cool rain in an open field next to two helicopters. One was a UH-60 Blackhawk, possibly the same one he’d flown there in the night before. The other, however, looked similar to a Blackhawk, but it had special design features that indicated to Court it was something new, elite, and highly classified.
He was pretty sure he was looking at one of the newer models of Direct Action Penetrators, souped-up Blackhawks that supposedly gave off the radar cross section of a bird and flew faster, longer, and much more quietly than a regular helo.
Outside the helos, the seven junior men of Walt Jenner’s team worked on assembling gear, while Brewer alternatively talked on her phone and then spoke to Jenner, who was standing over a map lying on a large black Pelican case. To Court, Jenner seemed to have a lot of questions for the senior CIA officer, and the bearded paramilitary team leader clearly wasn’t pleased with the answers he was getting.
There was a heavy mist in the air in addition to the rain; visibility was no more than one hundred yards. Court wondered about flying in this soup but told himself the pilots of the high-tech bird could probably fly it upside down and backwards through conditions worse than this.
He and Zack had been out of the conversation; no one had spoken to them since they’d arrived, and other than a nod between Gentry and Chris Travers, the only man on the team Court knew personally, there had been no recognition by the Ground Branch team of the two new assets.
Finally Zack cleared his throat. “Suzanne? What’s our role here?”
Walt Jenner held a hand up. “Hightower, we haven’t figured out what our role is yet. We’ll get to you.”
To Jenner, Brewer said, “Your role is exactly what I said it was. You will assault the staging area for the impending attack on Castle Enrick. You will capture or kill all hostiles and, if possible, destroy the agricultural aircraft on the ground.”
“In broad daylight? You don’t know how many men are there, what training they have. I’m not going to hit that target till I have a better idea of—”
Zack spit on the wet ground and muttered loud enough to be heard. “Here we go. Everybody wants to be a gangsta till it’s time to do gangsta shit.”
Jenner pointed at Hightower. “Fuck you, Dad. Shouldn’t you be somewhere playing golf?”
Some of the men laughed at this, but Court was fixated on something else. “Hey, Brewer. Were you planning on mentioning the fact that there is an Agency asset at the target location?”
Suzanne Brewer gave a half shrug, then spoke to the entire group. “Violator is correct. A female asset, thirty-three years old, hair dark brown, eyes green. You are the same team that exfiltrated her out of Thailand a few months ago, so you should recognize her. She is now an asset of ours, code name Anthem, but her current status is unknown. You have to consider her potentially hostile at this time.”
Court said, “Bullshit. She went there to kill her dad, same as us.”
All the men on Jenner’s team turned to Court, unsure if they’d heard him correctly.
Brewer said, “Yes, as Violator said, she is the daughter of General Zakharov, the mastermind of this entire plot.”
“Yeah,” Court said. “But—”
Jenner broke in. “But nothing. We treat her as unknown. Disarm her, restrain her, but we won’t kill her unless she poses an imminent threat.”
Court could live with this, and he let it go.
The argument between Brewer and Jenner about the sensibility of a daylight attack against an unknown force resumed, but the other Ground Branch men continued to kit up as if they knew they would inevitably be going into action, no matter how much their team leader protested to the suit in charge.