Meredith watched him depart, turned toward the window and swallowed the palpable fear in her throat. Be strong, she thought to herself. The tear seeking a lonely path down her cheek was the only outward manifestation of the dread growing inside.
Meredith wiped her face, composed herself, and walked into the buzzing operations center.
CHAPTER 11
Despite his mind-numbing headache, Matt recalled the crash quite vividly. They had dropped like a stone from about a hundred feet. There had been fire and smoke, but he recalled seeing the plane still in one piece. Something must have gone right for him to survive. The landing gear had been down, apparently.
Then he remembered the words the man had said, “Ahmad and the woman are dead.”
Was Peyton really gone? He looked at his arms and felt his face, as if to determine the severity of the accident via the nature of his injuries. Below his rolled-up sleeves, he saw multiple cuts and abrasions from what he figured was the instinctive reaction of putting his hands in front of his face as the aircraft struck the ground. On his face, he could feel one deep laceration that had etched a diagonal across his forehead. This, he thought, was most likely the source of his concussion. His body ached, but all things considered, he was doing pretty well for just having emerged from an airplane crash.
A rat came sniffing in his direction, and Matt nudged it away with his foot as he was reminded of the cell he shared with Rathburn, Barefoot, and Sturgeon in the Philippines. He stood slowly, pain leaving his body in the form of a low growl. He was hurt.
Knees popping and back aching, he leaned against the wall and breathed heavily, pulling in as much oxygen as he could in the dirty cavern. The room was dark, though his eyes had adjusted sufficiently to discern shapes. He noticed the faintest hint of artificial light skidding beneath the door and limped the thirty feet or so separating him from it.
Extending his hands before him, he found the edges of the door and worked his way to the door knob, which was a loose piece of brass that felt as though it might come off in his hand if he turned too hard. He twisted the knob slowly and then pulled the door ajar a fraction of an inch. He felt a chain rattle and scrape along a hasp that he could now see affixed between the door and the jamb. A master lock about the size of a gym lock held the chain in place. The chain itself was a heavy gauge.
The faint light originated not directly beyond the door but well down a narrow hallway. Matt could see what appeared to be a lone figure to his right, about a hundred feet away. To his left the hallway appeared to end, with no other doors or windows.
The man at the end of the hallway turned aimlessly in his direction, giving Matt a good look at him. He was about six feet tall and modestly built and was smoking a cigarette.
Matt began to close the door and then stopped.
Walking down the hallway, approaching the guard, were two more people. One was a female and the other a male. His immediate sense was that they were together, but then he realized that it wasn’t possible when he noticed that the female was Peyton O’Hara.
She had a small limp and her left arm was in a sling. Must have been a medical checkup, Matt thought, but then why the hell wasn’t he receiving any specialized care?
As they approached, the man walking with Peyton stopped and opened a door for her about thirty feet from where Matt stood peering through a paper-thin crack in his door. As Peyton turned into the room, the open door cast a light across her face that let Matt see she had been badly cut across one cheek. Her shirt was blood-soaked and her face, though absent any apparent signs of fear, was weary with pain. Turning, Peyton lifted her head toward Matt’s door, and for a brief moment, Matt believed their eyes met. She stumbled as she entered the room, and Matt quietly closed his door.
Peyton was alive, which meant that the disembodied voice he had heard earlier must have been talking about the poor Air Force attendant.
Matt knew from his training that the length of time spent in captivity is inversely proportional to one’s likelihood of escaping. The more time his captors had to plan his demise, the more successful they were likely to be. As for the prisoner, all the planning in the world would not make up for a lack of resources to execute an escape plan. The one resource upon which Matt had drawn in the past was the element of surprise. Although a year-long layoff had dimmed his instincts a bit, he already knew what he was going to do.
The door opened and one man led another into the room, each carrying a Browning pump shotgun. Interesting choice. That told him something about his situation. He guessed they were in an area that was not entirely secluded — not public, but not altogether isolated. The shotguns could double as hunting weapons to local onlookers.
“I see you have returned from the dead, Matt Garrett,” said the second man, who was clearly in charge. He had a soft, musical voice.
“Either that, or we’re all in hell,” Matt scowled, his throat raspy. Hearing his own voice after hours of silence confirmed, in a strange way, that he was indeed alive.
“Yes, well, hell for you it may be,” the man retorted, drawing near, his shotgun crooked into one arm as if bird hunting.
Matt could see that the other captor, however, was training his Browning directly on his midsection, another indication that these were not amateurs. Shoot for the largest body mass to wound and then kill if necessary. The shooter’s principle was to ensure a first-time hit.
Matt watched as the man with the musical voice approached him assuming that Matt was too weak or wounded to be a threat. Truthfully, Matt was acting the part just a bit, like a prizefighter limping along, doing the rope-a-dope, to cajole his opponent into letting down his guard. In his lower periphery, Matt could see that the approaching captor’s weapon was hanging loosely along his forearm. The butt of the weapon was pressing upward against his triceps.
“I have someone who is very interested in meeting you, Mister Garrett, but our actions of the last twenty-four hours have jeopardized our ability to travel. We have instructions that now the meeting will not take place,” the man said in lilting tones that, when he spoke, made his sentences seem almost poetic.
Matt knew immediately what “Now the meeting will not take place” meant. His captors’ instructions were to kill him, plain and simple.
“Someone wants to meet me?” Matt asked, not particularly listening to his own words. His mind was reeling, threading several different scenarios through his own unique process of visualizing the course of action and war-gaming the potential results. Which one was most likely to succeed, most dangerous to him, most dangerous to his opponent, and least obvious?
“Wanted to meet you. My instructions are to inform you that his name is General Jacques Ballantine and that he lost his only brother during the invasion of Iraq in 1991. In fact, General Ballantine tells me that your brother, Zachary, murdered him that day.”
During that war, Matt was on his first assignment in Northern Iraq, working with the Kurd resistance movement. He had been redeployed shortly before his brother. It was hand-to-hand combat, Zachary had told him. There were no options. Zachary had said he would do it again in the same situation. No regrets. Resulted in a major intelligence find. But the general, for reasons not explained to lowly Lieutenant Zachary Garrett at the time, had been promptly released back to Iraq.
And now, Matt figured, Ballantine was out for revenge on two different levels. First, on a personal level, he wanted to seek justice for his brother’s death. Since Ballantine probably knew that Zachary was dead, Matt would likely be the next-best target. Or perhaps the first-best target. Brother for brother. Second, Ballantine could also, through his prism, blame the United States for the loss of his brother and many of the other ills that had befallen Iraq over the last decade. So Hellerman was right, it was Ballantine who might be planning to distribute attacks throughout the United States with a purpose of wreaking havoc, reopening the still too-fresh wounds of 9/11. Like jujitsu, Matt thought, catch us leaning one way and follow up with a well-placed kick to disable us.