After a short while, he had moved toward the cabin. He saw a man untying Zachary Garrett and fired immediately, hitting Garrett in the back. He followed the small arms shots with a rocket-propelled grenade to stun whoever was in the house. There was only time to take the one captive, as he was receiving fire.
The trip back to the Sherpa had been a struggle. He had wrestled with the stealth gear, affixing his wing shapers into place. He had ensured the Chinese had used the same stealth technology on his Sherpa that they had used on the Predators. He had quickly fastened two triangles of fiberglass to his wings that angled toward the tail. The United States had achieved radar avoidance through aircraft composition, speed of flight, and shape. His Sherpa now looked like a poor man’s stealth aircraft. Knowing that the United States would have an all-points bulletin on his plane, he intended to do everything he could to evade detection. It was critical to mission success.
Once in the aircraft with Garrett bound, he flipped the remote switch to ignite the previously rigged demolitions to destroy his operations center.
He was exhausted.
His adrenaline had carried him this far. He was flying to a small apple farm on the Vermont-New Hampshire border. He cut a low path through the cool spring morning, his mind trapped somewhere between controlling the airplane, seeking revenge, and adapting his plan to execute the remainder of the overall scheme. He was flying through the valleys no more than a hundred feet above ground level and under 70 mph to avoid radar detection.
This could be quite interesting, he thought. He was experiencing a moment of surging happiness offset by the loss of his command center, and perhaps Virginia as well. Nonetheless, the plan was coming together with an added bonus of the massive leverage of having Zachary Garrett in his possession. The American saying “what goes around comes around” popped into his mind. Garrett had killed Ballantine’s brother while he watched, and now Ballantine could stage a replay for the brothers Garrett.
He slipped on his night-vision goggles as he carved through a valley, granite cliffs to his starboard side. While it took much longer than he desired, it was better to arrive later than not at all. He spotted the two infrared lights he had asked his wife, Regina, to leave on for him. They were sufficient to give him a good approach at a slow speed with the Sherpa.
Thinking about asking his wife to turn on the infrared lights made him absently wonder about Virginia. Was she dead or alive? Had they captured her, and were they now extracting information from her? Would she crack? He didn’t believe so, but he wasn’t sure.
He noticed through his goggles the rows of apple trees on either side of the strip. At the northern end was a house with a single light on in the upstairs bedroom.
The Sherpa’s wheels found the grass, slipping a bit to the right, but the slide was easily controlled with a mild maneuver in that direction, like skidding on ice.
Ballantine pulled the aircraft into a small barn situated between the orchard and the house. As the engine sputtered to a stop, he dragged Garrett’s body out of the airplane and carried him fireman’s style.
Before he reached the steps, Regina came bounding out of the house, across the covered porch, down the wooden steps, and froze.
“What is this?” she said, shocked.
“Someone who tried to kill me. He’s been shot, and we need to fix him.”
“Why… what? You’re hurt, too,” she said, stepping back. “What’s been going on?” she asked.
“I got into some bad stuff with some guys who weren’t fishermen.” Ballantine laid Garrett on the porch, and she hugged him on the neck.
“What do you mean? Not fishermen?” she said, pulling away and looking at Zachary Garrett.
“They were trying to run drugs on my airplane, smuggle them in from Canada. We saw them, and they suspected we knew too much.”
“And who’s this, the man who shot you? One of the drug runners?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you bring him here?”
“Because he’s our insurance policy. These drug guys know where we live, and if we keep him alive, I think they’ll leave us alone.”
“What do we do with him?” Regina asked.
“Regina, quit asking so many questions. You will operate on him and then me. Tomorrow I will fly him to his people. That’s the deal, as long as they promise to leave me alone.”
“I’m a veterinarian, Jacques, not a doctor,” she said.
“You know what to do.”
“Why not just call a doctor?”
His faced flinched once as the anger flashed inside him. Don’t release now, he told himself. It’s not the time or the place. “Just do as I say.”
“Islam, right? Well Islam will grant us this one exception to call a doctor to work on at least you,” she protested.
“Not this time, not ever,” he said. “Now let’s get him in the house, and you can fix him and then pull this bullet out of my shoulder.”
“You must be horrified,” she gasped.
“You have no idea,” he replied under his breath.
Ballantine put on his best face. It had been a week since he had seen her. He routinely returned on the weekends to keep his cover alive and to keep her satisfied. While Regina was an attractive woman, she was also simply a means to an end. Fearing raising suspicions by purchasing land himself, he knew he needed a surrogate. It took him all of two months in Burlington to find a suitable mate who would marry him for the money he generously, but discreetly, spent on her. He had scanned the desperate legions of women on Internet dating sites. Regina had run an ad titled, “Submissive vet seeks dominant man.”
After a few e-mails he had learned she was a veterinarian who had reenrolled at the University of Vermont. She was a second-year master’s student earning a meaningless degree in Islamic studies. She told him she was trying to better understand the root causes of 9/11. She had a small veterinary business — mostly cats, dogs, and cattle — that helped pay for her studies. She lived by herself in a small two-story house on five acres thirty miles from the university.
Their Internet conversations quickly gave way to a cup of coffee and a fast, storybook romance.
“I missed you, honey. I wanted us to have some time together.”
“I missed you too, Regina,” Ballantine said, squeezing her back, wincing at the pain in his rib and thigh.
Regina was about five and a half feet tall and a bit heavier than she wanted to be, but not by much. She had a cute face framed by a bob cut of straight black hair that fell to her shoulders. She was wearing a UVM sweatshirt and blue denim pants.
Walking up the steps with a slight limp, he noticed a folded newspaper on the end table next to the rocking chair. He slowly opened the front fold, scanning the headlines and pictures quickly.
“I haven’t had time to read it, yet. Since you cut the satellite off two weeks ago, I haven’t had any news. Thought it’d be nice to know what was going on in the world when you got back.”
“Did you go into town?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, sheepishly.
“And?”
“I was only there a few minutes. I took the old station wagon, bought some groceries, and picked up the newspaper on the way out.”
He grimaced from the pain throbbing along his left clavicle. She naturally responded as if he was angry with her, as he had been a few other times. He had tamed her, in every sense of the word, to be an obedient wife. She had adopted Islam as her religion, or at least his version of the religion, believing she was to minimize her contact with the outer world and that no one else could be trusted. He had taken her to Canada to be married.