Sea of Crises (7 page)

“My first few years I was deployed in Eastern Europe,” Matt said. “It was an extraordinary time. The Soviet Union was breaking up, and there was a lot of jockeying for power in the former republics. The U.S. had major stakes in the outcomes. But there was only so much we could do officially.”

He made a vague gesture with one of his hands. “Unofficially,” he said, “it was a different story.

“We needed certain people to step aside. In many cases, they could be convinced to do so on their own. I helped do a lot of that convincing. If that didn’t work, well, there were other ways to get the job done.”

The way Matt said it was very matter-of-fact. Nate was certain there was a whole lot more to it.

“I was like the tip of a spear being wielded behind the scenes. Some of the things I did were a little extreme, but,” he hesitated, and it appeared to Nate as though he might have grimaced, “the people I did them to deserved it. Or at least I was able to convince myself that they did.”

He gave Nate a quick, intense look. “I honestly believed I was doing the right thing. That I was being a patriot.”

“What kind of things were you doing?” Nate asked.

“We’ll get to that,” Matt replied.

Nate resisted his initial impulse to fire back, realizing that Matt needed to tell this in his own way. Instead, he chose silence. Matt seemed to nod in appreciation.

“In the late ‘90s, I started splitting my time between Europe and the States. Terrorism was the new threat, and, to be honest, it was lot easier to target those kinds of people, especially after 9-11. It wasn’t until…” His voice trailed off, and he was silent for a long time.

They were rounding a bend in the highway, and headlights from vehicles passing in the westbound lanes briefly illuminated his brother’s face. Matt had set his jaw. There was a distance in his eyes.

Finally, Matt blinked and took a deep breath. “In September of 2004, I was sent to Miami. We had intelligence that indicated a group of Middle Eastern terrorists was planning an attack. The Dolphins were opening their season at home, and, because of a hurricane, it looked like the game would be pushed up a day. September 11. The plan, we were told, was to detonate a bomb in the parking lot of Pro Player Stadium. There were suggestions it might even be a dirty nuke. My assignment was to take out the leader.”

“Take out,” Nate repeated. He was pretty sure he knew what Matt meant, but he was hoping he was wrong.

“Eliminate, remove,” Matt said. Then he gave Nate a direct look. “Kill.”

Nate said nothing.

“It was a quick in and out,” Matt continued, his eyes back on the road. “I’d done it more times than I could count.”

He puffed some air through his nose, a mirthless laugh. “I guess I’d been doing it too long. I knew it wasn’t my place to question the operation. But the whole thing didn’t make sense. Why just go after the one guy? And why not go after the bomb? What if it really was a nuke?

“The target was a Palestinian-American who’d been in this country for almost thirty years. His dossier made him look legit. He was employed by a trucking company and was the union rep. Supposedly, though, he was a plant, a sleeper agent controlled by Hezbollah.

“Too many red flags there, but I didn’t see them.”

The back of Nate’s neck was tingling, and there was a heaviness in his chest. For a moment, he considered telling Matt to stop, but he knew he had to hear it.

“He and his wife lived alone in a small house in the suburbs. I was supposed to make it look like a heart attack. We had a particularly nasty gas for that. I’d have released it in his car, and he’d have been dead before he got out of the driveway. Even if there’d been an autopsy, and, for something like that, there wouldn’t have been, detection would have been unlikely.

“But I had a better plan. I slipped into the house early in the morning. Tied them both up. Told the man I’d start removing his wife’s fingers one at a time until he told me where the bomb was. He claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. Said it had to be a mistake. Pleaded with me to let them go. ‘Course, they all did that. But there was something in the way he said it.”

He paused for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s what threw me off. But, then again, I’d already blown it. I didn’t know the kid was there. I should have.” He shook his head. “I should have,” he repeated.

“When she came through the door, I just reacted. Head shot. Close range. The wife lunged at me, and I took her down the same way. At that point, I had no choice. I stood the man up. He was blubbering incoherently. I put the barrel in his mouth, wrapped his hands around the gun and fired. Then I tidied up and left.”

Nate stared at his brother, trying hard to shake the feeling that he was looking at a stranger.

“I should have been disciplined for deviating from the plan,” Matt said. “But I wasn’t. Turns out the police bought the whole murder-suicide thing, and, apparently, my superiors were even happier with that than they would have been with the heart attack.

“It didn’t sit well, though, and it gnawed at me. For months. Finally, I realized I had to do something about it. I’d accumulated a lot of time off, so I took it. Pulled in some favors. Started doing my own investigation. All indications were that the guy
was
legit. I discovered he’d been active in local politics. He’d been running for the state legislature and was considered a shoe-in. But he’d also started playing a role in some of the national races. One of the Florida senate seats was open, and the election was going to be tight. And Florida was shaping up to be a battleground in the upcoming presidential election. From what I could tell, the elimination of my guy had an impact on both races.

“Could have been coincidence, but, in my business, one of the first casualties is coincidence. What I couldn’t find was anything supporting the notion that the guy was involved in planning a terrorist attack. Nobody else had any intel on it. There weren’t any other unexplained deaths that week. And, needless to say, there was no bomb at the stadium on opening day, unless you count the Dolphins, who really stunk it up that year.

“I took my findings back to my boss. He wasn’t happy. We had words. To this day, though, I don’t know if he knew anything more than I did. And I’ll never know. He died of a heart attack a few weeks later.

“But I was finished. I couldn’t do it any more. I’d been in the business for twenty years, and it was time. I quietly retired and moved to Idaho. Where, by the way,” he added, with a new sharpness in his voice, “I would have been willing to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Afraid of what he might say, Nate turned and looked out the side window, idly watching vague dark shapes passing in the distance. Try as he might, he couldn’t reconcile the Matt he remembered with the one sitting next to him. He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He closed his eyes and for a moment was no longer in the quiet, darkened SUV. Instead, he was standing under intense lights, a wave of noise assaulting him.

“
De
-fense.
De
-fense.”

The chant had been started by the Evansville East cheerleaders and had been quickly picked up by the fans packing the stands surrounding them. The Barons, from the state’s third largest city, had brought a huge following. While the Mackey Arena on the campus of Purdue University in Lafayette wasn’t completely filled, it still contained more people than Nate had ever seen in one place. And the vast majority were there to support, at the top of their lungs, the defending state high school basketball champions.

The relatively small contingent that had accompanied the Jackson Generals did its best to counter, but it was badly outnumbered.

As the team broke the huddle on the sidelines, Nate glanced up to the spot where Peter and Gamma sat amid the Jackson crowd. At the moment, Peter had his back turned to the court and was flapping his arms wildly, exhorting the fans behind him to raise a cheer. Gamma was looking directly at Nate and clapping, her mouth open, yelling something he couldn’t possibly hear over the cacophony.

The mere fact that the boys from the tiny town of Jackson in rural Winamac County had managed to make it to the 1982 Indiana Regional Championship was a huge accomplishment. And, against the odds, Nate and his teammates had managed to make a close game of it. Everyone, especially the Evansville supporters, had expected a blow out. After all, the Barons had the two best players in the state, a pair of six foot ten behemoths with the nicknames “Everest” and “K-2” - earning them the inevitable joint moniker of the “Himalayas.” Jackson had only two players who stood over six feet: Nate at six three, and Skip Anderson, a gangly six foot seven junior whose only real basketball skill was his height. Still, Skip had played some inspired defense, and Nate had managed to score twenty points against the towering Himalayas, many on uncontested jump shots from outside while Everest and K-2 packed the lane down low.

K-2 had now just fouled out, and, in the process, had turned the ball over to Jackson. With fifteen seconds left in the game, and down by only one point, Jackson would have a chance at the last shot and an improbable upset victory. The prospect had the crowd in a frenzy.

Nate took up position near the foul line, where he could set a pick. Everest, who’d been covering him all night, stood just behind, leaning in, his long arms reaching around to each side, his hot breath ruffling the hair on the top of Nate’s head. Nate had hoped Everest might have been switched to cover Skip after K-2 fouled out, but the Evansville coach had obviously decided he wanted his best player to stay on Nate.

One of the officials blew his whistle. The ball was brought in under the opposing basket, and Matt, the Jackson point guard, began dribbling upcourt, an Evansville player hounding him, but not too closely, showing respect for Matt’s already demonstrated ability to shed defenders. Understandably, Evansville appeared to be anticipating that Jackson would let the clock wind down before putting the ball up for a last second shot. As Matt crossed the midcourt line, working to his right, Nate felt Everest shift position and reach his left arm further out to deny Nate a pass.

Nate and Matt made eye contact, and, to Nate’s surprise, Matt winked his left eye, one of their special signals. Nate didn’t hesitate. Pushing off with his left foot, he quickly pivoted to the right, spinning around Everest and past him before the boy had a chance to react. Nate took two long strides toward the basket, launching himself upwards. He reached his hands out and looked back over his shoulder. The pass from Matt was right on the money. Nate had just a split second to grab the ball out of the air and redirect it toward the goal.

It caromed off the backboard and dropped softly through the hoop.

Jackson had the lead.

Impossibly, the noise from the crowd intensified.

Nate came down in a slight crouch and immediately pushed off, sprinting up court. Neither team had any time outs remaining. The clock behind the basket at the far end read nine seconds.

Evansville obviously got the ball in quickly, because it came sailing over Nate’s head and was snagged by the player who’d been covering Matt. He and Matt were now the only players in the front court. With Matt backpedaling furiously, the Evansville guard took two quick dribbles. Then he feinted right and dove to his left, launching the ball in an awkward motion toward the basket as Matt reached out to contest.

The ball struck high on the backboard, dropping back down at an angle that Nate, with a sinking feeling, thought would put it straight through. Instead, however, it hit the front of the rim and bounced back up. Heart in his mouth, Nate watched as the thing seemed to hang suspended over the basket. Then it dropped, struck the side of the rim, and this time bounced away. Nate, who, in the intervening time, had managed to cover the length of the court, leapt and, at full extension, wrapped his hands around the ball, gathering in the rebound. He glanced up and saw Everest bearing down. In the brief moment available to him, he registered two facts: That the clock at the far end of the court showed three seconds remaining, and that, if he held the ball, Everest would surely foul him to send him to the line, where he’d have to make free throws to seal the win. Nate stepped back with his right foot and tossed the ball in a lazy arc toward the Jackson basket. It struck the floor near the midcourt line, and, with no players nearby, bounced slowly toward the far end as time on the clock ticked down to zero.

Pandemonium erupted in the arena. Nate turned just in time to catch Matt as he flung himself into Nate’s arms, letting out a roar of exultation that Nate could barely hear over his own. Fans began to descend from the stands, a few rushing onto the court. The other Jackson players were jumping about ecstatically. Nate noticed, however, that some of the Evansville players were waving their arms and pointing toward the end line. The referees were also waving their arms and blowing their whistles. The Evansville coach appeared, planting himself in front of one of the officials. The man was red in the face and gesticulating wildly.

Ushers and police officers began urging back the people who had come onto the court, and the roar began to subside. Nate saw the referee who was with the Evansville coach signal to the Jackson coach, Billy Hamilton, that he should join them. As Coach Hamilton approached, one of the officials said something, and Coach Hamilton began shaking his head vehemently. Nate couldn’t hear what was being said, but he knew it couldn’t be good.

Nate let go of Matt and took a step toward them. One of the referees, the older of the two, noticed him and gestured.

“Yes, I want the captains over here,” he said.

Nate’s counterpart, the Evansville captain, was the guard who’d taken the final shot. The boy was talking in an animated fashion to the other referee. He tapped his left forearm with his right hand and pointed at Matt. Nate glanced back at his brother. Matt had an odd look on his face.

“Gentlemen,” said the older of the two referees, “Evansville is claiming there was a foul on the final shot. I’m afraid I was screened out on the play and didn’t see it clearly.” He looked at the other official. “Gene, did you see a foul?”