Mark Greaney - On target

"Okay. You are going to talk to somebody. He's read in on this op, and he knows who you are, but for all intents and purposes, you are not a NOC, not a CIA employee, not a former CIA employee, not an American citizen. You are a foreign national agent and will be treated as such. Your code name will be your old Goon Squad call sign, Sierra Six."

Court nodded.

"And the code name for President Abboud will be Oryx."

"What's an oryx?"

"I had to ask, myself. It's some kind of an African antelope or something."

Court shrugged. This type of code word protocol had been his life for many years. When he was in the Goon Squad he'd been Sierra Six, though he'd used literally dozens of cover names for his assignments. And before working for Zack, back when he was in the Autonomous Asset Program, his code name had been Violator. The code words were supposedly randomly selected by computer, but Violator seemed uncannily accurate. The CIA had pulled Gentry out of a south Florida penitentiary, where he was 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 communiques 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 you."

"I don't understand."

"Let's move forward. Forget the SOS. We're prepared to forget the SOS. Do we have a deal regarding President Abboud?"

Court looked at Zack. Zack looked back. Finally, Gentry said, "Yes, sir. I will do my best to uphold my end of the bargain. I will rely on you and Sierra One to uphold yours."

Carmichael nodded but did not smile. "Very well. We will not speak again, Six. Sierra One will be the team leader and on-site commander for Operation Nocturne Sapphire, the rendition of President Bakri Ali Abboud from the Sudan to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. Arrangements will be made for further operations, presuming all goes well in Africa, at the appropriate time, via the Special Activities Division Special Operations Group case officer assigned to you."

"Understood. Thank you."

A curt nod from the man on the screen, and the screen went blank.

Immediately Zack said, "I thought that dude would never shut up."

Court stood, looked at his watch.

"So, we good, Six?" asked Zack.

A pause of resignation on the part of Court Gentry. He was going to do this, but it would not be easy. He said, "You'd better get me back to the hotel. Can't let Sid's goons catch me away."

Zack smiled. "Roger that. A couple of my boys will take you back and tuck you in. Don't mind them if they aren't too chummy at first. They're a little grumpy about all this. They somehow got the impression that you were the dickhead who'd killed several men in your unit and then ran off to seek fame and fortune in the private sector."

"Where did they get an idea like that, Zack?"

Sierra One put his hands up in surrender. "I might bear some responsibility for their distrust of you. Also, you put Todd out of action for this op." Then he smiled, slapped his hand on Court's back, a little too forcefully. "Hey, it's good to be working with you again. Last thing. Let's talk about gear."

"What about it?"

"I'll have all the specific equipment for Nocturne Sapphire in the Sudan. I'll meet you there to hand it over the night before the operation. But as far as personal gear, let me know what you need, and I'll see what I can do to have it ready by next week."

"A sat phone that I can reach you on. Something that works well in North Africa. A Hughes Thuraya should be good. And a good supply of batteries. That ought to do."