Matt reached back for his AR-15, which was slung across his back. But he was met with Ballantine’s boot to the ribs. Matt doubled over but found the strength to grab Ballantine’s head and lift his knee into Ballantine’s face as he watched his rifle skid across the deck.
Matt heard an audible crack, but quickly found himself being swept to the ground by a hand pulling at his heel. His head struck the hard, metal floor of the ship deck, causing him to black out for a moment, but leaving him the good sense to kick Ballantine in the balls and scurry to his feet.
“Ballantine, you want the tape. I know,” Matt said, squaring off with his adversary as though they were wrestlers.
“Why would I want that stupid tape anymore?”
“You don’t sound too sure of yourself,” Matt said between rapid breaths. He saw Ballantine pull a knife from his waistband.
“Let’s see if this is more convincing,” Ballantine said, waving the knife in front of Matt’s face.
Matt quickly recalled his own personal axiom of always bring a gun to a knife fight. He eyed his rifle about fifteen feet away.
“How about I trade you the tape for my brother?” Matt said.
“You think you have this all figured out, don’t you?” Ballantine said. “Years of planning this invasion and a bit of personal revenge and you think you can climb up on my ship and change my mind?”
“Look, Jacques, your brother is dead, and I’m truly sorry about that,” Matt said. He saw Ballantine’s eyes flicker, just for a moment, with sadness, only to be replaced by boiling hatred. “But your deal with Hellerman, I presume, is to get this tape back to him. You get a new identity and probably a government-sponsored witness-protection-program vacation somewhere. Am I right?”
They were still circling like two collegiate wrestlers. Ballantine was quiet, his mind processing what Matt was telling him. Matt guessed that he was close and that his assessments were accurate. He had ruled out Rampert as a suspect when he remembered Hellerman was a Reserve military intelligence officer with the State Department during the Gulf War. Hellerman had access to everything.
When Matt thought about Hellerman’s obsession with the Rebuild America project, it provided the perfect cover for his conspiracy. So he figured the tape, the last remaining bit of evidence that anyone had against Hellerman, was both Ballantine’s ticket into America to conduct the terrorist attacks and Hellerman’s chance to have his war with complete deniability, provided Ballantine retrieved the tape. The real question, to be sorted later, was, What was Lantini’s connection?
“Now that you have me all figured out, it is a shame that you will have to take your secrets to your grave.”
As they circled, Ballantine was always sure to keep Matt away from the rifle and pistol. In Matt’s view, the Iraqi seemed to be enjoying the one-on-one. This was the reason Ballantine had not simply come to Stanardsville and killed him. It was the game. Ballantine’s brother had been killed in war, the ultimate chess match, and now Ballantine wanted the same challenge, to prove himself every bit as capable and worthy as Zachary Garrett.
“You’re not as good as my brother, Ballantine,” Matt said, feeding off the thought.
“We shall see, Garrett. Right now your brother is on his death bed and will soon be vaporized as he plunges into the White House in my Sherpa.”
Matt could hear a slight buzzing noise, like an active beehive. He swallowed hard. “How many Predators have you launched?”
“I think I hear the good admiral readying the second one right now.”
“So are you going to kill me, or are we just getting to know each other?” Matt asked. “You’re an artist, Ballantine. Are you trying to live up to some macho image or something? Why can’t you leave it alone?”
“Did you leave it alone, as you say, when you thought your brother was dead, and you believed that you had not done enough to save him?”
Touché, Matt thought. Ballantine had done his homework. He would know from Matt’s silence that he could chalk one up in his column.
“I didn’t go to the Philippines to try and find the guy who fired the shot. I dealt with it in my own ways, privately,” Matt said. It occurred to him that they were two people who had experienced similar emotions. They had both shared a battlefield with their brothers and each had lost — or in his case, believed he had lost — a brother there.
“Then you are the weak one. If we do not avenge our family, what do we have left?” Ballantine said.
In a way, Matt understood exactly what his rival was saying. Matt, too, had wanted to reach out and strangle anyone that had anything to do with Zachary’s death.
“But you have to admit that death on the battlefield is different than this,” Matt said.
“That is where you are wrong. The battlefield is everywhere. Warfare has changed, and I am most disappointed in you that you do not acknowledge that. This is the battlefield,” Ballantine said, sweeping his hand across the ship.
“Maybe your battlefield, but to what end?”
“To rob from the rich and give to the poor. Isn’t that a great Anglo-Saxon fairy tale?”
“Robin Hood was a common thief and beggar,” Matt said. “And I’m getting tired of this conversation.” He heard a whining noise and watched as the second Predator wobbled off the bow of the ship.
Having relinquished his Predator-piloting duties to the admiral, Ballantine turned his head ever so slightly, wanting to watch.
Matt seized that moment to dive toward his rifle, sliding across the deck, feeling the rivets tear through his shirt. He felt the butt stock of his rifle and then lost his grip as Ballantine kicked it away, arching the knife downward into the steel next to his throat.
Ballantine held the knife against Matt’s neck, breathing hard.
“Garrett, you are a dead man. Just accept it. There is nothing you can do to save yourself, your brother, or your country. If I wanted, I could slice your jugular in half a second, and you would bleed out in two minutes right here. But I want your brother to watch. I want him to experience the horror and pain, if only for a short while.”
Ballantine lifted Matt to a standing position, the knife pressed against his neck, drawing a trickle of blood.
With his back to Ballantine’s side, Matt could sense that though Ballantine was a big man, he was about two inches shorter and a not as well built as Matt.
As they began walking toward a metal door, Matt saw a slight figure in the darkness, standing on the deck, holding a rifle, her hair blowing in the stiff bay wind.
It was Peyton O’Hara, watching the action unfold.
“Where have you been? I thought you’d never get here,” Ballantine said.
Matt’s heart clanked on the ship’s deck.
And for the first time he began to lose hope.
CHAPTER 55
Colonel Jack Rampert looked over Chesapeake Bay from beneath his communications headset.
“Tomcat one six, this is Delta six,” Rampert said into the small mouthpiece. He could see the lights of the Bay Bridge-Tunnel and the dark mass that was the Fong Hou just to the east of the third island. Matt Garrett’s phone call had come at a time when the nation was at its highest state of alert. Rampert had contacted Meredith Morris, and she had described for him the most harrowing scenario he could ever imagine. He had thought he had seen it all.