Rogue Threat (24 page)

Then it occurred to him that it was he, Matt Garrett, against Ballantine in the Canadian outback. He was, perhaps, the lone survivor of a commando raid to retrieve a compromised operative who also just might be his brother.

Freezing his ass off in a Canadian oxbow lake, Matt realized life was full of tremendous ironies. The surge of adrenaline served as a catalyst to remind him that it was a year ago that his brother rescued him from a revolution in the Philippines. Suffering near debilitating guilt since his return and Zachary’s death, could he really be facing an opportunity to save his brother? Could God be giving him this chance at redemption?

Deciding that it would be best to save Boudreaux, whoever he might be, he tucked away the blossoming hope and the pressure that would surely accompany the notion. He quietly pressed the magazine release button and surmised that, after his brief firefight, he had at least five rounds remaining.

Standing on the wooden ladder that thousands of tourist fishermen probably had climbed with coolers full of lake trout, Matt scanned the open terrain around the cabins less than a hundred meters away. Noticing movement near the tree line he had just fled, he watched as a tall man crouched low and scanned the lake. The man appeared to be backing away from the wood line and moving ever so slowly toward the first cabin. It had to be Ballantine.

Matt slid his magazine back into the weapon with a barely audible click, then raised his carbine in the general direction of his target. He could see through his own night-vision goggles that his target was wearing some form of night-vision device as well. Noticing this, he realized that he would only be able to turn on his infrared aiming device briefly before the target would be able to see it and respond.

He waited patiently as Ballantine finally turned toward the wood line again. Matt swallowed some dry spit and leveled the weapon to a height where he thought the infrared light would shine behind Ballantine, if it was Ballantine, so that he could walk it over to his target. His thumb felt absently at the safety selector switch, his mind registering that the weapon was in the fire mode. His other hand rested on the PAQ-4C selector, slowly rotating the switch to the on position to avoid any metallic click.

The infrared light appeared as a bright white streak, a laser beam of light invisible to the naked eye. The aiming light shone about ten feet behind the target. Matt slowly walked the light across the surrounding terrain until it pointed directly at Ballantine’s midsection. He knew a head shot would kill him instantly, but he wanted the certainty of a torso shot.

Matt steadied his aim, the light dancing in tight circles. He slowly exhaled and then held his breath as his finger began to squeeze against the hair trigger.

He saw Ballantine’s head drop quickly and then snap back up, looking directly down the beam of Matt’s aiming light. Matt’s shot kicked the weapon back into his shoulder. The brief flash of flame emitting from the muzzle momentarily blanked out his field of view, causing him to lose sight of Ballantine.

Once his goggles came back into focus, he could see a figure slumped over on the ground, slowly inching into the wood line. Matt had hit him but had unfortunately not killed him. He trained the light on the crawling body again, which was moving more quickly toward the trees.

Matt’s second shot struck Ballantine in the leg just before he disappeared into the trees. Determining that he had little time to waste, Matt pulled himself up onto the dock and began moving quickly to the first cabin. He kept his carbine trained on the scrub area where his prey had disappeared while he sprinted to the side of the first cabin, gun up, elbow out, sighting along the infrared laser through the green kaleidoscope of his goggles, legs pumping, lungs working at max capacity, adrenaline cycling through his body like raging rivers.

Matt Garrett. Back in the game. Alone.

In search of his brother.

CHAPTER 31

Leaning against the wood frame, he caught his breath. Acting purely on instinct, he moved toward the back of the house, realizing this could expose him briefly to Ballantine.

Not knowing if anyone was guarding the cabin, Matt felt it would be best to try to enter from the top floor. He surveyed the deck, which had stairs leading up to the second floor balcony. Moving swiftly and quietly, he ascended the stairs and crouched low.

Reaching up with his free hand, Matt slid open the heavy glass door. He felt the warmth of the cabin brush against his face. He stayed low to avoid reflexive fire from anyone who might not welcome his entrance.

He was in. A weak light shone below the loft so that he could see on his level an unmade bed, a chair, and a television. There were a few clothes strewn about the dusty hardwood floors.

Matt crouched low in the corner behind the door and rested. He could hear his heart racing and thought it might actually explode. Crashing thoughts, extreme physical activity, and danger all combined to release adrenaline and lactic acid into his body, pushing his heart to its limit. As he rested, he could hear muted voices from the first floor. They became clear as he caught his breath.

“So where is it?” Matt heard a female voice ask.

“Where is what?”

The second voice was a man’s. And it was a familiar one. Matt leaned his head closer to the crack in the door so that he could hear more clearly.

“The backpack. Ballantine’s backpack. You stole it from him, perhaps as a war trophy?” It was the female voice again.

Ballantine. War trophy.
These were all clues and indicators to something, yet they were pinging off his wall of denial, his massive defenses, like tennis balls off a tank.

“Why is Ballantine concerned about a stupid backpack?” the man said.

Matt’s mind was reeling. The voice, the inflection, the tone were all so familiar. Images of Zachary’s face began swirling through his mind, breaking his concentration.

“You didn’t find the tape?” the woman asked.

“What tape?”

“Never mind. You know he told me he saw you when you were watching them in the prisoner of war interrogation room. The colonel came out and talked to you,” she said.

“Yeah, who was that guy, anyway?”

“The colonel?”

“Yeah, him.”

“Someone I think you should know very well, actually,” she said.

“Really? I can’t quite recall him.”

Matt stood slowly, moving toward the door, and accidentally kicked a heavy brass door stop.

“Is that you, Jacques?” the woman called.

Matt quickly repositioned to the entertainment center, which sat next to the stairway leading up to the loft. From that position, he could ambush someone moving upstairs unaware.

“Jacques?”

There was silence, then the man’s voice again.

“Might be Special Forces coming to rescue me. Then again, it might be the wind. One in the same, really.”

Now it was clear. Though the male voice was speaking in a different room on a different floor of a house in which Matt had never been, it was unmistakably his brother’s voice. He stared open-eyed at the sliding glass door through which he had just entered, trying to hold back a wave of emotions. Was it really Zachary, or was he just hearing what he wanted to hear?

A movement reflected in the glass door caught his eye and brought his mind circling quickly back to reality. He gripped his M4, waiting as he watched a woman’s reflection ascend the final stair. She took two steps into the center of the room, clearly focused for the moment on the fact that the sliding glass door was ajar by about three feet.

Matt studied the woman in the dim light. She had sharp, stunning features. Her eyes were wide, cat-like ovals. She was a dark-skinned woman, perhaps African or from the Indies. She moved with the grace of a mountain lion, taking another step toward the door, then pausing.

“Jacques?”

Matt sprang forward from his hideout, catching the woman as she brandished a pistol. He tackled her before she could aim the pistol at him, but that didn’t prevent her from pulling the trigger. The shot flew wide, into the center of the television screen, shattering glass all over the room.

Matt raised his weapon and smashed it into the skull of the woman. She went immediately limp in his arms, a slight gasp escaping from her mouth. He grabbed the pistol from her hand, stuffing it in his trousers as he quickly moved toward the stairway.

He scrambled down the stairs, trying to keep his body moving ahead of the myriad thoughts that threatened to crash down upon him like boulders blocking a mountain pass.
Keep going, Matt. Keep going
.

At the bottom of the wooden steps, he spun to his left, keeping the front door to his right. The downstairs was as bare as the upstairs. In the distant corner, across the dingy throw rug and dusty, gray wooden floorboards, Matt saw a darkened figure, huddled and bound in a wooden chair. A shadow cut across the figure’s body, making it difficult to truly determine who was in the chair. But his instincts began to clatter as loudly as a fire truck speeding down the highway to an apartment-building blaze. His slow, careful walk developed into a gait. The desire to see who the man he prayed was his brother collided with the realization that he had a very small window of opportunity to get back to the drop zone and safety.

Approaching the bound man from behind, Matt grabbed the back of the chair and spun it around until he was staring into the wide eyes of his brother.

No question. It was Zach.

Matt pulled a small knife from his belt and cut through the ropes and plastic zip-ties, trying to stay ahead of those thoughts. Those emotions he had been bottling up for months could burst free at any moment.

For a brief moment, Zachary Garrett was speechless, looking into the focused eyes of his brother. But it was unmistakable. He recognized his younger brother’s smattering of fading freckles and sea-green eyes.

“Yes, Zachary. It’s me, Matt,” he said, quickly removing the rope from Zachary’s hands and ankles.

His brother stuttered a moment, then said, “I think I remember you.”

Matt paused, understanding what Zachary was saying. “Come on, we need to move out. Here, I’m sure you remember how to use this,” he said, handing him the woman’s pistol.

Zachary looked at him with a thin smile and said, “Naturally.” That was the signature Zachary Garrett smile and comment, which almost caused Matt to lose it. But the bullet from Ballantine’s gun that came crashing through the rear window and smacked directly into Zachary’s back got his attention focused again. His brother slumped forward into Matt’s arms, dropping the pistol on the floor. Matt quickly returned fire through the window.

A rocket-propelled grenade blasted through the window, knocking Matt fifteen feet toward the front door. Through the smoke and haze, he could see his older brother lying on the floor, blood oozing from his back. And he was sliding.

Away.

Sliding backward, as if pulled, Zachary looked at Matt like a wounded deer being hauled away from his den by a hunter, eyes wide and doubting. Matt was trying to move, pushing his arms to grab a weapon; but nothing was working; nothing was happening.

He could hear more firing from outside the cottage toward the wood line.

“Zachary!”

“Matt,” came Zachary’s weakening voice. Matt watched as his brother slid through the enveloping smoke from the fire that was beginning to build. In an instant, Zachary’s face had vanished, and all Matt could see was smoke.

Through the background noise of machine-gun fire, he heard the words, “The colonel . . . get the colonel.” Straining against the concussion that the rocket-propelled grenade had caused, Matt finally regained motor skills, thinking he had wasted a huge amount of time. It may only have been a minute or two, but it was too much. As he raced forward into the smoke and fire, he realized Zachary was gone.

Standing in the burning cottage, he stared out of the shattered window toward the lake and woods. He could see a limping figure carrying a body disappearing into the woods. Matt quickly found his weapon, the metal hot to his touch. He raced and leapt through the open window and tumbled to the ground as a hail of bullets chipped away the deck directly above him.

He performed a combat roll into the open and brought his carbine up, but there were no targets. The firing had ceased. He slowly elevated and began moving toward a shrub line to the west of Ballantine’s cottage.

More machine-gun fire shredded the hedge row directly above him, scattering branches and leaves over him as if he were in a blender. Again he rolled away from the concealment and found the tree line. He flipped down his night-vision goggles and could see the faint outline of two moving figures in the distance, about four hundred meters away.

A stupid quarter mile was between him and his brother. Another burst of energy shot through Matt as he began racing through the woods, leaping stumps like a running back through a defensive line.

After sprinting a considerable distance, he found himself galloping down a hill sufficiently steep to make him decide to stop and gain control. He scanned with his goggles a full three hundred and sixty degrees, picking up no movement.

Walking slowly forward, M4 in hand, he briefly flashed back to the Philippines, moments before he had been severely wounded. He remembered:

Jack Sturgeon and Johnny Barefoot had been laying down a suppressive base of fire against nearly a hundred Japanese soldiers who were charging their positions. It was a math problem. They had three weapons with about thirty rounds of ammunition per weapon. The enemy had a hundred weapons with probably significantly more ammunition per weapon. Even if they hit them all, there would still be about ten enemy survivors.