this morning save for the phone. He had to get some actionable intelligence from it, and that meant he’d have to work fast.
Court shook away his doubt, his recognition that his next move might be his last, and he began walking again towards the gas station.
He glanced at his watch. It was time to steal his fourth vehicle of the day, and the day was still young.
CHAPTER 15
Suzanne Brewer sat in her office more pissed off this morning than usual.
She’d come into the office early to prepare for her seven a.m. meeting regarding the disappearance of a protected code-word asset during an attack on a CIA safe house. The meeting went as she’d expected; no one there was read in on Anthem, per Matt Hanley, and Hanley hadn’t bothered to attend. So Brewer took the heat from ten execs from Support and Personnel, none of whom knew any of the victims from the night before in Great Falls, but all of whom would find themselves roped into the inevitable hot wash and cleanup of the incident.
Every one of these execs was already feverishly working on the upcoming Five Eyes conference in the United Kingdom, with most of them flying out within the next couple of days. Great Falls was a disaster even without the impending trip, of course, but with their schedules already full, to a man and to a woman they all held Brewer accountable for their added stress.
Brewer had spent the majority of her career focused on threats to the Agency, working in the Middle East during the global war on terror, all over Asia, and back here stateside at the CIA’s sprawling complex in McLean, Virginia, so a facility compromise investigation was nothing new to her. Still, the scope and scale of the attack, especially considering it happened inside U.S. borders, was entirely unique.
As was the fact that she herself would be coming under scrutiny about what happened. Had she correctly assessed the threat to the asset? Had she arranged for enough security?
Her stomach churned as she thought about the potential comebacks on her about this whole debacle.
Her secure mobile rang and she grabbed it without looking. She expected it to be one of the teams canvassing northern Virginia and D.C. for Anthem, but instead she heard Violator’s voice.
“The prisoner was exfiltrated by helicopter.”
Shit. The other matter was running into yet more difficulties as well. Brewer had back-burnered Violator’s situation; nobody could place any blame on her about some detainee she didn’t even know being recovered by an unknown enemy force, but she was still Violator’s handler, so she knew she was stuck with him and his problems.
“Tell me you at least got the tail number of the helo.”
A pause. “Didn’t get it. I got a phone off the shoot-team leader. I’m downloading all the data to my device and will upload ASAP.”
“Tell me there’s more.”
“A little. Apparently the shooters were from different gangs around the UK. They were brought in for this hit by a guy named Mr. Fox.”
“A pseudonym, probably. Useless.”
Court sighed. “The name of the shooters’ leader was Anthony Kent. He only became the top dog when the two guys above him got fragged at the airport. None of these men had worked together before, apparently.”
“They killed a lot of intelligence professionals. They certainly seemed like they knew what they were doing,” Brewer said.
“Yeah, they caused a lot of damage, but their hit wasn’t clean like a well-trained outfit. Ternhill was an ambush; they had all the advantages, but they still lost a half dozen dead. Here in the East Midlands I took out that many more.”
“You are saying you engaged them alone? Was that smart?”
“Would have been smarter if I’d stayed in Zurich and didn’t get on your damn plane!”
Brewer drummed her fingers on her desk. “That tail number from the helicopter would have been helpful.”
She heard nothing for several seconds. Then Violator replied. “You know? Maybe I need you to come show me how it’s done. How about next time you hit the building filled with armed assholes while I hang back at my desk and bitch about your performance?”
Brewer didn’t respond to this. Instead she asked, “Is that it?”
Court sighed into the phone. “There’s an abandoned hospital where the interrogation took place, just a few miles behind me now. Look into it and see if it’s tied to some group. They didn’t just stumble on this place. They came straight here.”