Chasteen had presided over the “ceremony,” dressed in ceremonial Muslim garb. They had stayed two nights at the cabin and then flown back to Vermont, where she purchased, in her maiden name, the apple farm from an elderly gentleman who was moving to a nursing home. Of course, the marriage was not legitimate, but she believed it was, and that was all that mattered.
“Please, Jacques, understand,” she whispered, fear shrouding her words. She took a step back and tripped on the door jamb leading from the porch to the front door.
Ballantine looked at her leaning back against the storm door. Another time he might have smashed her through the glass panel simply for violating his order to never go into town without him. But his primary concern was with whether to kill her or not. Had she seen anything? He had purposefully scrambled the satellite code and removed the fuse from the television so that she could not watch any cable or network television.
“Regina, what did I tell you about going into town?”
“To never do it alone… I swear to Allah I will not let it happen again.” She was nearly hysterical.
“And what did you see? Any bad people, any television, any radio?” His eyes were black coals burning through her.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I just needed some groceries and wanted to be able to catch up with you.” Her hands were pressed firmly into the glass, which was fogging around her sweating fingertips.
He grimaced with pain as he raised his right hand and slapped her across the face with the back of his wrist. “Don’t ever do that again. Get inside,” he ordered.
Regina’s head had snapped back, tears spraying against the glass. “Thank you, thank you. I’ll never do it again, I promise,” she cried, opening the door, trembling. She was thankful he had not gone mad.
They dragged the limp, bleeding body of Zachary Garrett into the house. She operated on him, removing a bullet from his left scapula. She stitched him up and gave him a shot of morphine to ease the pain.
“How are his vital signs?” Ballantine asked, still in pain himself.
“He’s weak but hanging in there,” she said. Her voice was calm and focused. She knew what she was doing. She was busy picking up used medical supplies and gauze.
Ballantine secured Garrett tightly to the bed and then handcuffed both his hands and feet.
“He will try to escape if we don’t do this,” he said, looking at Regina.
She didn’t respond but poked an intravenous fluid needle in Zachary Garrett’s arm to attempt to hydrate him.
“What are his chances?” Ballantine asked.
She grabbed a new scalpel and held it in front of him as she pushed Ballantine onto a single bed with a white sheet.
“Fifty-fifty. He’s lost a lot of blood. I can tell this happened several hours ago. At some point, I would like to know what really happened, Jacques.” The gleaming scalpel in her hand perhaps had given her some confidence to speak her mind to the man that she believed to be her husband.
She administered some anesthesia and began to carve away at Ballantine. The process took nearly an hour, but she finally pried the bullet from his left clavicle. He had nearly passed out from the pain, but the morphine sustained him. He lay back on the white sheets, now stained with blood, his arm laid atop his chest in a desert-sand-colored sling. His head hit the pillow, and his mind quickly spiraled toward sleep, trusting completely that Regina would clean up the mess and obediently go about her business.
As he drifted away, his last conscious thoughts were that the plan would be okay. He had survived and would live to fight another day. Images of Zachary Garrett blowing Henri’s face to pieces briefly replayed in his mind, causing a weak adrenaline surge that was suppressed by the sheer exhaustion of the last forty-eight hours.
He was reassured by the simplicity of his new plan.
He was going to kill Matt Garrett and let Zachary Garrett watch.
CHAPTER 36
The distant ring of the phone clawed at the back of his mind like a dredge raking across the sand. It was too soon to wake up, his mind was telling him. He attempted to move in one direction, then another, causing pain to rocket unimpeded through his body as if through fiber optic lines.
He glanced at the alarm clock, not believing that he had slept for ten hours, his body making a very convincing case otherwise. His left arm and shoulder were completely immobilized, causing him to lose balance as he sat up.
He picked up the cell phone and clumsily pushed the encryption button.
“Yes?”
“We have a problem.”
“We? Thought you went solo, Wood? Didn’t we just talk?” Ballantine coughed, still not fully alert.
“I know you’re drugged, but that wasn’t me you talked to. Anyway, someone is alive who we both thought was dead. His presence complicates matters extensively. I want you to…”—the voice searched for a word—“ … handle the problem rather quickly.”
“I know about the problem. I will handle it while we execute the rest of the mission,” Ballantine responded, more clearly this time.
He was confused though, certain that only hours ago he had communicated with Ronnie Wood, his contact. There was one phone number he called. The encryption technology masked the voice sufficiently to give him pause. Was he talking to the same person? He had received this call, though. He checked his cell phone display window: Private Number. Ballantine scratched his beard, his mind still swooning from the surgery and Regina’s drugs.
“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?”