Rogue Threat (21 page)

CHAPTER 27

Franklin County Airfield, Vermont

Matt was thankful that the link-up with the special operations team had been uneventful. Apparently the four operatives who had jumped in had been briefed that he and Peyton were in the vicinity and possibly armed. Colonel Rampert’s MC-130 command and control aircraft had landed, and the special ops commander himself had deplaned to personally inspect the scene.

“Jack Rampert,” the colonel said, holding out a large, leathery paw.

“Matt Garrett,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “This is Peyton O’Hara.”

“Know all about Miss O’Hara here,” Rampert said.

Matt raised an eyebrow.

“Sir,” Peyton said, shaking his hand.

“Got two wounded men,” Rampert said. “The terrorists are dead. I’ve called the FBI. They’re on the scene, blocking the locals from gaining access to this place. I’ve got another crew coming in to do sensitive site exploitation. We also found one weird, scientist-looking dude in the tunnel network down below.”

“Below?” Peyton asked.

“I thought this place felt familiar,” Matt said.

“You’re telling me this is where we were held?”

“That’s right, and that’s got to be none other than Dr. Samuel Werthstein,” Matt said, pointing at the man two commandos were escorting to the back ramp of the MC-130. Werthstein was walking slowly in his white smock, his gray hair disheveled and his hands flex-cuffed behind his back.

“You know that hero?” Rampert asked Matt derisively. “Bunch of damn bees flying around in there where we found him.”

“I know who he is, and depending on what those bees have taught him and what he has given the bad guys, it could be bad news for us real soon.”

“Why don’t we go talk to him?” Rampert said. “Meanwhile, Peyton, I’ve got instructions to send you back to Middleburg to debrief the National Command Authority.”

“No way. I’m going with you guys,” she said.

“Not happening. See that Pave Low helicopter coming in? That’s your chariot,” Rampert said.

“See you when I get back,” Matt said to Peyton. She was standing defiantly, holding her AK-47 as if she were a freedom fighter being told her services were no longer needed.

“This is bullshit,” she said. Peyton turned and walked toward the hovering Pave Low, then stopped. Above the din of the aircraft she shouted, “Be careful, Matt Garrett! We need you back alive!”

Rampert and Matt walked to the MC-130 ramp, pushing through the competing prop washes of the Pave Low and the MC-130.

“Got some clothes for you in the aircraft. Gotta ask you a question, Garrett.”

“Okay, shoot.” Matt stopped at the top of the ramp and looked at Rampert as his radio began chirping. Matt recognized the voice. It was Meredith, evidently calling him from the command center in Middleburg.

“For you,” Rampert said, handing him a small Motorola radio.

“Matt?” Meredith asked.

“Yes?”

“Please forgive me for saying this. I know you’ve got a lot to think about right now, but I just need you to listen to me for a second. Get your mind to a point where you can analyze what I’m about to say without a knee-jerk reaction.”

“Don’t you think there’s a better time and place for this stuff?” Matt said. Through the open ramp of the MC-130, he watched the weakening spring sun begin to touch the New York mountains in the west. The sun was a flaming ball nestling atop the jagged ridge. He looked back at Peyton, who was boarding the helicopter with the assistance of two Air Force load-masters.

“I’m not talking about us, Matt. I’m talking about Zachary.”

“Well,” he protested immediately.

“Drop the attitude, and let me finish.”

“Okay, you have my undivided attention, Meredith.”

“This operator we have in Canada right now, the one we haven’t heard from . . .”

“Okay?”

“Well, you remember that Hellerman told you this in the Suburban yesterday before you left, right? Anyway, Rampert briefed us that his name is Winslow Boudreaux. Ever hear of him?”

“One of the operators, right? But I’m not certain.”

She paused, then said, “I pulled the file on one Winslow Boudreaux because something didn’t seem right when Colonel Rampert briefed us. There was too much mystery.”

“What’s that got to do with Zachary? Did he know him?” Matt looked at Rampert, who was standing about twenty feet away. Rampert tapped his watch to demonstrate his impatience.

“Matt, we never saw Zachary. We never identified him. I think Winslow Boudreaux or someone else is in a grave in Stanardsville.”

Matt let the comment hang in the air for a second, and then Meredith continued.

“And I think Zachary is still alive in Canada. Right now.”

Matt dropped his arm to his side, the radio handset almost slipping from his hand.
No way.
Then he considered the old Meredith, who would have only mentioned something of this magnitude for one of two reasons. One, he figured, she thought she was right. Second, she was trying to present him with the opportunity to do something about it. That’s the way the old Meredith, the one he loved and had wanted to wed, operated. She gave him the facts as she knew them, and then let him make the decisions.

“Matt, you there?” He could hear her faint voice near his hand.

“Yes, I’m here. I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Thank you.”

It was not so much that he did not believe her. Rather, he was unable to accept that the information was true. His analysis of the information was removed from Meredith totally. He considered her speculation without emotion.

About the time he thought he might want to say something, he heard the unmistakable noise of four C-130 propellers racing. He looked at the aircraft and saw Rampert slicing his hand across his throat, indicating he needed Matt to cut off his conversation.

“I’ve got to go. Rampert’s giving me the high sign.”

“Matt?”

“Yes,” he said, becoming frustrated.

“I do love you. Good luck.”

“I . . . I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

He tossed the radio back to Rampert and then followed him into the bowels of the MC-130. The loadmaster handed him a pair of earplugs, which he needed, but did little good. As he walked along the nonskid, painted aisle, Matt was reminded of his first five jumps from the U.S. Army Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Since then, he had made hundreds of jumps, both static line and free fall. Toward the nose of the aircraft was a communications pod that he knew was Rampert’s command post.

Along the starboard side of the aircraft were two litters with the two wounded operators. A medic was attending to each. Their wounds appeared serious enough to require intravenous fluids, probably mixed with morphine. Along the port side of the aircraft, Matt saw five body bags stacked like cord wood. The special ops had even secured the two that he and Peyton had killed.

The two other operators were checking their gear and reloading their magazines. One was inspecting his parachute.

Matt sat next to Rampert inside the enclosed communications pod.

“Our operator in Canada has missed two reporting windows,” Rampert said. “Our standard operating procedure for that contingency is to do an emergency extraction. We lost the beacon on him about four hours ago, but we believe we know where he is. Because I’ve got two wounded operators and there is a sense of urgency to this mission, I am jumping in with the two men you see out there preparing. That gives me three. We need a fourth.”

Rampert let the invitation hang in the air.

“Who is the operator?” Matt asked, Meredith’s conversation fresh in his mind.

“Major Boudreaux,” Rampert said.

“You’re lying.”

His steel gray eyes locked onto Matt’s.

“You jumping or not? We don’t have much time. It will just be getting dark. We climb to twenty thousand feet over Canadian airspace along the Saint Lawrence River, jump into the breeze, and glide onto the Lake Moncrief landing zone. We find our operator, kill Ballantine, and get extracted by Pave Low helicopter. Afterward, we tell the Canucks what we did. Maybe.”

Matt thought for a moment. What did he have to lose? It had been a while since he had done an oxygen-assisted freefall, but it was like riding a bike. Worst that could happen was that he would burn a smoking hole in the Canadian countryside and never be heard from again.
Better than dodging baseballs in my backyard
, Matt thought.

Best that could happen would be that they rescue Boudreaux, or whoever he was, and get Ballantine. It seemed like a pretty good reward for the risk. Already he had been shot at twice, once by a farmer’s daughter and once by a terrorist. His fresh wound made the wounds from the Philippines a year ago seem like a century removed. There was still pain in his ribcage and a scar across his forearm, but somehow being able to do something, to go after someone, was helping, both psychologically and physically.

Matt had wallowed in his own self pity for too long. He had mourned Zachary’s death and his inability to prevent his loss, despite his proximity at the time. He had convinced himself that he had become a liability to Zachary and had distracted him from his own mission, which ultimately led to his brother’s demise.

Irrational?

But now Matt was being given a chance to avenge the loss of his brother. While he knew that he had better odds of getting struck by lightning during a shark attack while celebrating a Power Ball lottery win than of finding his brother in some Canadian fishing hole used as a command post by terrorists, he had to try.
What if?

“Okay, I’m in.”

CHAPTER 28

Aboard U.S. Air Force MC-130 Special Operations Command Center

Matt’s stomach crawled into his throat at the nearly forgotten feeling of an MC-130 aircraft climbing to altitude faster than it was designed to. Matt leaned back into the red mesh webbing and shut his eyes for a brief moment, visualizing the pilots, frustrated fighter jocks, discussing whether or not to do a barrel roll or a corkscrew. The smell of jet fuel filled his nostrils, and it began to work its magical effect of making him drowsy.

“You say you know this guy?” Rampert interrupted. He was pointing at Dr. Werthstein. Matt rubbed his face and then looked at him. He considered that the doctor could be a body double for Albert Einstein in a biopic.

“No. Don’t know him, but know
of
him,” Matt said.

“Well, we can’t get jack shit out of him. Why don’t you try?” Rampert said. “But make it quick. You need to suit up.”

“Roger.”

Matt slid next to Werthstein, grabbed a K-bar knife from a sheath hanging in the communications pod, and cut Werthstein’s flex-cuffs free.

“Thank you,” the old man whispered, eyes looking down at the floor and hands rubbing his bruised wrists.

“Why didn’t you come with us when we tried to get you out of there?” Matt asked.

“They would have killed my family. There is no escaping them.”

“No escaping who?”

“What have I done? Oh, what have I done?” the doctor whispered, looking away.

“That’s what we’re trying to establish here. What
have
you done?”

“My family . . . is there any way to protect my family?” The old man was nearly in tears and for the first time made eye contact with Matt.

“Where is your family?”

“They are being held captive in France. We tried telling the French government these people were after me, but because we are Americans they told us to go to hell.”

“Who is holding them captive, and where are they?” When the man answered, Matt wrote down the information and handed it to Rampert. “See if you can get some of your buddies to go to this address and secure a woman and three children, ages nine to fifteen.”

Rampert looked at Matt, then at the professor. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

Matt walked back to Werthstein, who had witnessed the exchange between Matt and Rampert.

“Now, quid pro quo,” Matt said.

“I know, I know. Lord, help me.”

“Start with the bees. They communicate, right?”

“Yes, the bees. Very good. The bees communicate throughout the swarm by pheromones. Ants do much the same thing. When bees are out looking for nectar, one scout finds it and he can send pheromone signals back to the swarm, allowing all the drones to mass on that one area. Ants are similar except, of course, they don’t fly. They scavenge for food, find what they are looking for, and then mark the trail back and forth between the colony and target area so that all the other ants can simply follow the pheromone trail.”

Matt saw Rampert in the background, talking on a telephone, nodding his head. Matt felt the MC-130 shoot upward again, leaving his stomach on the floor.

“Okay, now tell me how that is a bad thing.” Matt asked.

“I am the only one who has been able to replicate this activity through nanotechnology, using microscopic chipsets and advanced computing power that isn’t even in the experimentation phase at Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore. I have written the program that allows entities to communicate by way of dropping ‘digital pheromones.’”

“And who has this technology now?”

“Well, me, and those terrorists that kidnapped my family,” Werthstein spat.