Rogue Threat (30 page)

“Operations may be in jeopardy if we don’t act now. This individual may know, or worse yet, remember something from his past that very quickly could get in our way.”

Ballantine decided to press ahead despite his curiosity. “Why didn’t you know he was alive? You have access to everything.”

“I have less access than you might imagine, especially from my new location. Even so, the special operations files are sometimes so secretive one section doesn’t know what the other is doing. Never in my wildest dreams did I envision this possibility,” said the man who called himself Ronnie Wood.

“It is your job to think of such things. It is my job to execute,” Ballantine said. What he was really thinking was that Wood did not sound too believable.

Ballantine understood that his acquaintance on the phone already knew that he had been shot. He figured the phone call was as much to gauge his status as it was to give him the information about Zachary Garrett.

“We need to fix the problem in the next forty-eight hours,” Wood said, trying to focus Ballantine.

“Right. Are we still on track for the full plan?”

“Full scale. Is there a problem with that?”

“I need to check the equipment,” Ballantine said. “I haven’t had time since I got back.”

“Check the equipment, and get on with it. But you know your base camp is compromised, right?”

“I know,” Ballantine said, expressing some frustration. “Let me ask, have operations so far had the effects you desired?”

“It’s like Orson Welles all over again, only this time the spacemen are real. If anyone ever doubted U.S. intentions to attack your country, they surely will be convinced soon that preemptive war was the best option.”

“This is a dangerous game you are playing, Mr. Wood. My intentions are to do as much damage to your country as possible,” Ballantine said, wheezing at the pain.

“Have at it,” Wood said. “The more aggressive, the more convincing.”

“Let me ask. Were there any survivors from the camp?”

Wood hesitated and said, “Yes, one. Too bad. Quite the looker.”

Ballantine thought about Virginia and all that she had meant to him. He knew what had to be done, and he surprised himself when he felt a flutter in his chest. A symptom of sorrow? He had left those senses for dead a long time ago. Poor Virginia. He was stuck here with moronic Regina, and he wished there was something he could do, some way he could save Virginia. He understood, though, that the voice on the other end of the secure wireless connection would help Virginia meet an untimely death. She knew too much. Way too much.

“Are you there?” Wood asked.

“Yes, I am here,” Ballantine said.

“Good. For a moment I thought you were going soft on me.”

Ballantine lay back on his bed and rode the wave of sadness. “Never. I will take care of your problem.”

“Good. Now, do you have the operative? Rumor has it that you might.”

Ballantine hesitated. “Not at this time.”

“That’s a problem.”

“I know.”

“A big problem if he goes public.”

“I know. If he remembers.” Ballantine had seen the confusion on Garrett’s face. He seemed . . . different. “In which case
you
will have a problem.”

“Then we’re both screwed,” Wood said.

“I understand. I’m leaving tonight,” Ballantine said.

“You know you missed him,” Wood said.

“Missed who?”

“Matt Garrett. I put him there in your base camp, and he’s still alive. I delivered as you requested.”

“I know . . . I know. But he will be dead soon.”

Ballantine shut off his phone and closed his eyes. Yes, he would keep the fact of his possession of Zachary Garrett from his contact for now, primarily because he now had questions about the real identity of Ronnie Wood.

Or were there two, playing off each other?

He pressed his one free hand against the mattress and then paused. He heard voices.

Standing slowly, he remembered he had tucked his pistol between the mattress and box springs. Pain stymied him on his first attempt to remove the weapon from its ready position. Gritting his teeth, he used his opposite arm to secure the pistol. He moved quietly to his door, which was cracked slightly. Leaning forward, he listened intently. It was a woman’s voice, but not Regina’s.

He peered around the corner and saw an elderly woman holding a small poodle in one arm. What got Ballantine’s attention, though, was the newspaper she held in her opposite hand. He watched as Regina looked to where the woman was pointing at the newspaper. Then he saw Regina hold her hand to her mouth and begin to shudder.

Without hesitation, he walked from his bedroom door into the foyer of the home. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

Ballantine was practically catatonic as he pulled the trigger of his pistol exactly twice. Both women dropped to the floor with bullet wounds to the head, the poodle jumping nervously from its owner’s arms.

Where cell phones and e-mail ruled the day, Ballantine had already risked too much by trusting Regina. Her limited contact with her customers had been her undoing, and he had known it would only be a matter of time before he killed her.

Just to stop the yapping, Ballantine shot the poodle as well.

He walked back into his bedroom and kicked Zachary Garrett in the ribs. “Get up. We’re moving.”

Ballantine led the shackled Garrett to the barn, where they would wait for darkness.

Chapter 37

Fort Sherman, Panama

Frank Lantini stared at his satellite phone as he leaned back against a palm tree on the perimeter of Fort Sherman, Panama. Hundreds of thoughts cycling through his mind, he stuffed the phone in his shirt pocket and looked over the minor waves that lapped almost noiselessly against the sand. He could hear just a slight curl of the 12-inch breaker that rolled with a zipping sound into the shore. The bay beyond Fort Sherman was glassy smooth, the small breakers a function of the tide shifting. His Chris Craft was not far.

Lantini was a slight man who had served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force for many years, transferred to the Defense Intelligence Agency as a brigadier general and, then upon retirement, was selected by President Davis as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He had “seen combat,” as he referred to it, during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 as a lieutenant colonel. With the plethora of prisoners of war—called detainees in politically correct circles—Lantini was deployed from his soft assignment as a State Department Fellow in Foggy Bottom to Saudi Arabia to assist with the massive interrogation efforts. Not only did the Department of Defense and CIA have a need to question as many prisoners as possible, but they also needed to develop a database of those who had been captured. The general feeling was that the Middle East was going to be the center of attention for quite some time and that cataloguing the enemy prisoners of war might bear fruit as the region continued to unfurl from the rigidity of the Cold War.

Last year he had discreetly allied himself with Taiku Taikishi, a Japanese businessman, Bart Rathburn, a former assistant secretary of defense, and Bob Stone, the current secretary of defense. They had used the moniker Rolling Stones to provide cover to their conversations as they diverted forces and intelligence assets from the Iraq buildup to the Philippines in an erstwhile attempt to derail the single-minded drive toward Iraq. To a man, the Rolling Stones believed the country had veered away too quickly from Afghanistan and, more importantly, Islamic Extremism. Instead of focusing on crushing bin Laden and his thugs, the military found itself straddling the Middle East, without clear focus in either locale or on either enemy.

Lantini watched the harmless waves lap near his boots as he pulled on a Sol.

“Shitty beer,” he said to himself.

His mind spun back again to the video feed piped through the Predator drone that fateful December 2001 day. This time with more clarity. He could see Matt Garrett’s team well camouflaged in their white parkas as they nestled in the snow overlooking a nondescript Pakistani village nearly 15 kilometers from the Afghanistan border. Through Matt’s fiber optic snipercam he could pipe his sight picture up to the drone, which could relay back to whoever could access the downlink. The ultimate 8,000-mile screwdriver.

Lantini, as CIA Director, was the primary recipient of the feed.

And what he had seen was a short Egyptian man with a prayer callous on his forehead just above his spectacles directing a team of AK-47-toting Arabs carrying a wounded six-and-a-half-foot Arab with a gray beard.

He had invited Stone and Rathburn to join him by secure video-teleconference as they all watched the snipercam. Lantini knew that Colonel Jack Rampert from special operations and several in the White House Situation Room were also watching the feed. “Kill TV,” they had called it. The ultimate in reality television.

Garrett’s improper incursion into Pakistan had put the Rolling Stones on the horns of a dilemma. Do they let him kill al Qaeda senior leadership, whom Garrett clearly had in his sights? Or do they allow the transnational henchmen to go free, preserving their strategic flexibility?

“If he kills him,” Stone had said, “we can’t do jack shit about stopping the buildup for Iraq. It’s going to be tough as it is.”

“Takishi has an idea,” Rathburn had said. Meanwhile, Matt Garrett’s voice could be heard, a mere whisper through a small microphone 9,000 miles away, “Request kill chain.”

And so they had, in harried fashion, as Garrett laid his finger on the trigger of his sniper rifle, discussed the pros and cons of letting the operative take the shot.

Ultimately, they had determined that it was best to let al Qaeda live to fight another day so that they, the Rolling Stones, would stand a chance, however slight, of keeping the nation focused on Islamic extremism as opposed to whatever the
causus belli
in Iraq was purported to be.

“Should’ve taken the shot,” Lantini lamented, sitting in Fort Sherman, Panama, tantamount to a traitor. “Should’ve taken the damn shot!” he added and hurled the beer bottle into the yawning bay.

He grabbed his AK-47 and walked toward the cinderblock hut where Sung had recently held his meeting.

What to do?
Lantini mused.
What to do?

Interrupting his reverie was a vibration on his satellite phone.

“Wood,” he said.

“Wood,” came the response.

“Yes?”

“You tracking?”

“I am.”

“Good. More to follow.”

“Roger, out.”

Lantini closed his phone and turned back toward the bay. The moon was a bit higher, casting a yellow carpet onto the tranquil water. Lantini thought about Secretary of Defense Bob Stone, Dave Palmer, the national security advisor, Trip Hellerman, the vice president, and Colonel Jack Rampert, who had performed many sensitive missions for him as the commander of Joint Special Operations Command. All good men, he thought, trying to do the right thing.

Now, in hiding, he had to carry out his mission vicariously through cut outs and third parties.
Patriot or traitor?
That was the most bothersome question. Put it up to a vote, he thought, and it would be 51%-49% one way or the other. Regardless, he had to proceed.

He played along with the idea of a second Ronnie Wood who was in contact with Ballantine. For the time being, he was letting the situation develop. It was Frank Lantini who was walking the edge of the razor at the moment. While he conceptually agreed with his alter-ego counterpart, were they like two serial killers, twinning in their drive to satiate utopian desires?

The Philippine action had been all about keeping focused on transnational Islamic extremism. The present course of action offered a gambit of a different flavor. He was inside the Central Committee, perhaps not a fully trusted member, but close. Could he pull off his plan?

Hero or goat?

He sensed a presence hiding in the dark shadow of the cinderblock command center. He tightened his finger around the trigger of the unfamiliar weapon. Hell, if it wasn’t an F-15, it was unfamiliar to him. Still, he had, like a kid, gone to an open field on the Pacific side of the isthmus and “popped caps,” as he called it. While not the most accurate rifleman to ever use an AK-47, Lantini had learned the functionality of the weapon and was confident in his ability to use it as necessary.

“Mister Wood?” Her voice was a whisper, no louder than the lapping waves he had just left behind.

Lantini saw Sue Kim step from the shadows of the cinderblock building, her black hair framing her alluring face. He saw the crinkle of her eyes and her thick lips form a smile.

“Sue Kim,” Lantini said responding to her use of the Stones’ moniker.

“This way,” she said and then vanished.

Lantini followed her along a minor trail that led south through a tight section of jungle. At its end the trail gave way to a small opening framed by two large banyan trees. Lantini could see a large hammock strung between the nearly touching branches of the two trees. Her destination.

“The guards will not see us here if we are quick,” she said, fumbling with his belt buckle.

Looking beyond her bowing head, Lantini scanned the horizon and said, “But I am one of the guards.”

His pants around his ankles now, she was pushing him onto the hammock, ready to slake her desires. She lowered herself onto him, steadying them in the shifting netting by grasping with her hands either side of the hammock above Lantini’s head.