Rogue Threat (37 page)

Meredith watched the vice president’s eyes jump with excitement as he spoke about the plan. To this point, most of the discussions had been pie-in-the-sky, with no real substance. But this was substance of the best kind. Hellerman was pushing his agenda forward in the face of a national calamity. She felt like a child trying to get her parent’s attention.

Hellerman stepped from his soapbox and reached for the wine bottle, as if he were shifting gears. The
Eagles
’ “Hotel California” played softly in the background, adding a touch of irony to the discussion:
“Good night,” said the night man, “we are programmed to receive. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

How true
, she thought. She might be able to check out from this affair with Hellerman, but she knew she would never be able to escape his spell.

“Have you heard from Matt lately?” 

“Yes, this morning we spoke about Zachary and the fact that he’s alive. It’s pretty exciting,” she said, trying to hide some of her emotions. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

“Yes, that’s great news about Zachary,” he said. “I was quite surprised to find out he was alive, much less in special operations. Do we have any ideas where he might be?”

“Only that he was last seen being dragged from the cottage at Moncrief. Ballantine’s certainly got him somewhere,” she said.

Hellerman stood, brushing off his pants and raised his arms in the air, stretching.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

“I need to talk to you,” she said as the vice president grabbed her hand.

Meredith wasn’t sure how they had found their way upstairs into the bedroom, but they had. She had every intention of telling him that she could not see him anymore and that she was going back to Matt, but when the moment came, she was unable to resist his magnetism. The evening had been captivating. He had taken her with a reckless abandon, and she had responded likewise.

His ideas, his thoughts, his clarity of mind during these most violent times were absolutely breathtaking. She was in the arms of a historical man—someone who was making history as they lay in bed together. Someone she could not ignore.

As she drifted off to sleep and felt him ease out of bed for his trip back to the Naval Observatory, and his wife, she got mad at herself for capitulating. She was a stronger woman than this. But then again, she might be out of her league.

As her mind tired and she began to swoon, she found herself replaying scenes from that mysterious room in the basement. Something was not right.

If only she could remember.

Chapter 43

Garrett Farm

Matt left Peyton sleeping and walked along the riverbank that framed his family property to the north and east. To his left the river pushed smoothly over the rocky bottom and ran full with fresh snow thaw from the spring melt. Young poplar trees spotted the high, rocky bank, along with a few oaks and ash. A level area stretched out to his right, creating a flood plain during unusually heavy rainy seasons. They had actually grown corn and sorghum on the fertile plain in recent years. The sun was cresting the hill to the southeast. He heard the distant crow of a rooster from a neighboring farm.

A cool spring breeze swept off the mountains, causing Matt to huddle against himself. He could feel his cheek redden from the wind, and he absently longed for those times that he and Zachary could just kick around the farm.

“Where are you, Zachary?” he wondered aloud. His words floated meaninglessly into the morning ether, to be chased away by the wind.

He stepped onto a large rock and looked twenty feet below into the rumbling stream. The water bubbled and churned to the east toward the Rappahannock River and eventually Chesapeake Bay, over 200 miles away. He had caught many trout in the stream as a child, though he had never developed the patience or the technique for fly fishing. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he recalled the time he and Zachary had been sitting on the very same rock nearly twenty years ago. Located at the outer limits of the property, they talked about a world they knew existed out there and what they might want to do one day.

“Go to West Point,” Zachary said.

“You’d be good at that, Zach. I think I just want to play baseball.”

“You’re good at baseball, and you’ll do well, Matt, but you’re too smart for that.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s most important to make a difference, do something important.”

“Baseball’s important to me, Zachary.”

And it had been. Even today, Zachary’s maturity at that point in his young life seemed impressive. At the time, though, Matt was one of the best shortstops in the state and was already receiving hints from the head coach at the University of Virginia, where he had always known he wanted to go.

“Then you should play baseball. And when you’re done with that, you will be chosen to do something else. We all have our talents and our destinies, Matt.”

Matt remembered those words:
You will be chosen to do something else.
As if it wasn’t his decision. There was a larger force at work, directing him, determining his calling. Was it his admiration for Zach that had led him into the CIA after college, or was it Providence. Was this his lot in life? If so, he found satisfaction in the difference he had made, so far.

He started back up the hill, picking his way through the high grass and finding the minor trail they had worn into the rise over the years.

What was it that he needed to do now? The country was under attack, the Reserves were mobilizing beyond what they had done in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the nation was at war abroad, and his brother was alive. The conflicting emotions collided inside him, causing him to question his own instincts.

His only true instinct was to find Zachary. In the end, he presumed, Zachary was all that mattered. The World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks had been so chillingly brilliant in their execution that the nation was stunned to the point of disbelief. And for many Americans, while tragic, it was a distant event.

Now it was coming home to everyone. It was not New York and Washington, D.C. It was the American heartland that was being terrorized, fear undermining a sense of security in every citizen. The economy was in a nosedive that was comparable to the enemy freezing American assets, Matt thought. The Coalition has seemingly sped to victory in the Iraq War yet was actually caught flatfooted with so many troops deployed around the world in combat. There was not much left to defend the home front. With that notion, the spark of an idea lit in his mind.

But it was chased away quickly by the idea of what might be next. Surely the end game was something even more spectacular than what they had seen so far.

What would Ballantine do? What would Hussein have planned, even as he may have expected his demise?

Matt crested the hill and stared at the house, stopping as he pondered the two questions he had just asked himself. How could an enemy of the U.S. make the most headway against her? Sure, psychological terror is one thing, but what is the physical manifestation, the ultimate goal?

Through the morning fog, he saw a motorcycle turn much too quickly onto the dirt and gravel road that served as a driveway up to their home. He smiled. He knew he wasn’t alone anymore.

Matt walked quickly to the house, greeting Blake Sessoms as he dismounted the motorcycle.

“Am I glad to see you,” Matt said.

“Well, my brother, it has been too long.”

Matt looked away, at the mountains. “I know. I’m sorry.”

The two men hugged and then walked into the kitchen, where Karen was making coffee. Blake looked every bit the surfer. He was taller than Matt by about two inches. His countenance was clear, his face handsomely tanned. He was smooth and polished, intelligent, and a gentleman.

“Hey, Blake. Long time no see,” Karen said.

“Karen, how are you pretty lady?”

“Not pretty enough for you. Never was, you know?”

“Not true. You were always too good for me. That’s for sure.”

Karen smiled and then handed them each a cup of coffee, excusing herself. “Time to do some chores.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Blake said to her as she departed.

“Doing
my
job,” she called over her shoulder. Karen had called Blake and told him Matt needed a friend.

Matt turned a chair around and sat down, leaning against the back. Blake followed suit.

“Need to get inside your head, bro. I know when you’re not okay. So tell me what you know, starting with Zach “the Z-man” Garrett. Karen told me he’s alive.”

Matt smiled at Blake’s nickname for his brother. He had not heard anyone call him that in a long time, and just hearing the name gave him a sense that his brother was nearby. He grabbed his coffee and kicked back.

“Okay, I’ll start, as they say, from the beginning.” He began talking, slowly and deliberately at first, leading off with the Rolling Stones fiasco and then Zach’s funeral a year ago, the conversations with Hellerman, his depression, meeting Peyton, the breakup with Meredith, the plane crash, escaping the terrorists, Dr. Insect, the firefight, and then the jump into Moncrief, Canada.

Blake nodded and gestured. On occasion he stared out to the deck, still listening, thinking, piecing together the mosaic that Matt was describing. Of course, he mentioned Lantini, almost obsessively so . . .
that bastard
. At a significant pause, Blake motioned for him to stop.

“You mentioned the vice president sent you on the no-notice mission to link up with some special ops guys at Fort Bragg, and then you have this Colonel Rampert guy coming to your house asking about Z-man, right? And you’re still worried about these rocker dudes, the Stones, right?”

“Right,” Matt said.

“Okay, first question is, Why have you talked more about Lantini, Hellerman and Rampert than you have the enemy?”

Matt stared at him a moment.

“Think about it. You’ve got Zachary in the hands of an international terrorist and the nation under attack. Your instincts are the best I’ve ever seen, and you’re talking about these three bubbas. What gives?”

“They’re central to everything,” Matt said slowly.

“How central?” Blake asked suspiciously.

“That, bro, is the question.”

“Sounds like we need to go to wide field of view.”

Matt smiled. It was just like when they would hang out every day as teenagers. Blake was always good at helping Matt see the forest through the trees.

“Let me read it back to you,” Blake said. “You’ve got Zachary in captivity somewhere, probably being held as a hostage in exchange for something. You’ve got a special ops commando colonel with intense interest in the Z-man. Then you’ve got a tape that sounds like it might be a conspiracy to start the first Gulf War.” Blake was ticking off the points as if he were responding to an oral comprehensive exam for a master’s degree. “You’ve got some missing Predator drones, and then you’ve got this Dr. Insect guy that you think has done something to make the Predators able to communicate.”

“Don’t forget about Lantini,” Matt said.

“We’ll get to him in a minute. So what you’re dealing with is the fact that your brother is both in captivity and expendable to the government. You may have uncovered a conspiracy, and you may have the information to prevent a major, perhaps cataclysmic, attack on the country.”

“About right.”

Blake added another layer of analysis. Matt listened and was reminded that Blake had a rare acumen for discerning the precise heart of the matter.

“You’re trapped. You’ve got two or three people that you think might be involved in a conspiracy not only twelve years ago, but maybe even today. I agree. There’s some connectivity between the tape and today; otherwise, they wouldn’t be looking for it. Bottom line is, you want Zachary back alive, but you also have a conscience with respect to your service to the nation. And you can help. You know some things that can help. It’s just a piece of information or two that you need.”

“Again, right on.”

“So tell me what you think the gouge is,” Blake said.

“Well, I’m trying to be objective about this, but I can’t help but think Lantini is driving this bitch from somewhere afar. Then I think about Colonel Rampert from special ops. Zachary said, ‘Get the colonel.’ And Rampert was in the first Gulf War. He mentioned to me that he had met Ballantine. ‘Face to face’ is how I think he put it. He also operates in circles that would have access to ambassadors and intelligence operatives. He would be able to reach across the spectrum of political and military heavyweights with a fair amount of gravitas and authority.”

“Face to face? Huh.” Blake scratched his chin, then offered a counterpoint. “Maybe Zachary was saying, ‘Get the colonel so he can help us’? Or maybe there’s an entirely different colonel? It would make sense to me that the colonel he is talking about is someone who he knew from Desert Storm or before. Weren’t all these bubbas ‘colonels’ in Desert Storm? But what I’m hearing is that we have to figure out whose voice is on that tape, and that should crack the code as to who might be allied with Ballantine, correct?”

Matt thought a moment. “Roger, they were. And, correct, it seems plausible that it could be Rampert to me,” Matt said. “Maybe I’m just too focused on Lantini.”