“I got a tape, too,” Jeremiah shouted, his head a foot taller than all the others in the room. “Right here.” He shook his Blackberry.
Jessup’s head was cycling between Jeremiah and Matt now. Hellerman looked at Matt’s hand and thought there was a fifty-fifty chance that the tape was actually the conversation he had with Sandford. Then he looked at Jeremiah and figured the Navy man wasn’t such a dumb ass after all. To counter Jeremiah, he decided to call Garrett’s bluff.
Chess moves.
“I happen to have a tape player right over there,” Hellerman said to Matt. Hellerman walked over to a desk and pulled the small Sony from the drawer. “Alvin, lock up Jeremiah in the third cabin. Dave, you can be the honest broker here.”
Palmer looked at Hellerman and then back at Matt and Zachary. He walked over, grabbed the tape from Matt, then took the tape player from the vice president. He placed the tape in the cassette window and pressed play.
“Sir, we’ve got something coming in on the airwaves from Panama,” Ralph Smithers said. “This sounds pretty important.”
Palmer pressed stop and then turned to Smithers.
“We’ve got a call going out to about fifteen different places around the country to stand by for commencement of immediate offensive operations.”
Smithers removed his headset and stood from his chair in the middle of the circled gathering, feeling important for having contributed that significant piece of information. “The speaker said they were waiting on the authorization to go.”
Palmer looked at Zachary and then back at Matt.
Matt said, “Why don’t you go check the basement of the mansion? I think you might be able to speak directly to his friend in Panama. And Zeke has nothing to do with that.”
Palmer started the tape, and Hellerman’s voice was clear.
As everyone was focused on the tape and Jessup was guarding Jeremiah, Hellerman shot through the side door toward the mansion.
Matt dashed away from the operations group, chasing Hellerman. He was fueled by his anger at Hellerman’s manipulation. Only Lantini’s artful charade last year compared to Hellerman’s nefarious orchestrations. As that thought cycled through his mind, something caught, like a gear, then slipped away. Lantini. Hellerman. Lantini. Hellerman.
What was it?
“It’s over, Hellerman. You’ve got to give the order to stand down!” Matt shouted. He sprinted across the flagstone path, followed Hellerman up the steps of the mansion, and they crashed through the front door nearly simultaneously. Hellerman escaped Matt’s grasp and shot down the stairs into the basement, closing the door behind him.
Matt used his momentum, size, and strength to break through the weak hasp and enter Hellerman’s small command and control cell.
“So this is it?” Matt said, breathing heavily. He stared at Hellerman, who was holding a cell phone. The gear released. Matt had figured it out.
“This country has gone to hell, Garrett, and no one cares anymore! But I care! I’m bringing us back from the brink of decline!”
“You’re a sick bastard.”
Hellerman produced a crazed, wicked smile, like a jack-o-lantern, as if to acknowledge Matt’s discovery. He held a small satellite phone in his hand as Matt walked closer and closer.
“Give them the order to stand down, Hellerman, or I’ll kill you myself.”
“You don’t scare me, Garrett. What’s another twenty or thirty thousand? That’s what it will take to make us serious about this, don’t you see? Our soldiers are dying, and until civilians start dying, no one will care. You and I both agree that this country is going down the drain. Rap music, drugs, money, credit cards, SUVs, and instant gratification. It’s all about people getting more and more stuff without ever having to work for it. You have to sacrifice every so often or you lose sight of what’s important.”
“You see the negative. I see the positive,” Matt argued, now standing a few inches from Hellerman. “You worry about this generation? News flash: worry about something else. We’re going to be okay.”
“You’re blind, Garrett. You don’t understand my genius. Madison’s genius. The roots of liberty must be nourished with the blood of the free!” Hellerman spat.
“Madison, I agree, was a genius, but don’t place yourself in his category. Madison fought tyranny and oppression. You’re fighting a phantom theory. It’s over, Hellerman. Now tell me the code word to call it off.”
Matt watched Hellerman, who began to shake, his eyes lifting to the white board on the wall. Matt looked at the white board and saw two words.
Cape Canaveral had a small check mark next to it and Octagon had a small X next to it. Matt turned back to look at Hellerman, but instead found the unwelcome sight of a Ruger pistol staring him in the face.
“It’s your turn to die, Garrett, and my turn to save this country.”
A shot bellowed loudly in the small cavern of the basement. Matt flinched, but as the smoke cleared, he saw Hellerman stumbling back against the wall. He looked over his shoulder at the angry face of Alvin Jessup, his right hand holding a Smith and Wesson Magnum, smoke wafting from its bore.
The Ruger dropped from Hellerman’s hand, and he lifted the phone to his ear. His thumb pressed the send button and Matt could hear Hellerman’s voice trying to make a K sound, trying to say a word.
“Damn it, he’s giving the go-ahead order!” Matt snatched the phone from Hellerman’s weakened hand.
“‘Octagon, octagon. I say again, octagon,” Matt said clearly into the phone. He heard mechanical voice come back at him, chuckling.
“Garrett, you just killed Ronnie Wood,” the voice said.
Matt listened to the confirmation of his instinct. The vice president was Ronnie Wood, the co-conspirator who led the Rolling Stones and perhaps was complicit in the 9/11 conspiracy. And who was this?
“Now leave me alone. You’ll never find me anyway.”
“Lantini?”
“By the way, all these yahoos are toast. But you’ve got some fighting left to do in the States. Not my problem. My conscience is clear. Goodbye.”
“Wait, Lantini. If you’re not Ronnie Wood, then why the hell did you run?”
“Figure it out, genius. We were a viper’s nest, each with enough to destroy the other. The best option for me to stay alive, which I intend to do, was to hide.”
This time Matt heard the audible click of the disconnecting phone line.
He looked over at Alvin Jessup, who was slumped against the wall, his head hanging low.
“I just killed the man I was supposed to protect,” Jessup said, his voice hoarse.
“You did the right thing. He’s killed a lot of people, and I suspect you’re more bothered by that right now than the fact that your friend is dead. Besides, if what Lantini says is true, Hellerman’s the real Ronnie Wood.”
“Pretty easy to blame it on a dead man,” Jessup said, shaking.
Palmer came running down the steps and surveyed the scene. “What happened?”
“Sir, the bottom line is that we need to send special ops down to the grid coordinate in Panama that Ralph Smithers mentioned,” Matt said. “Have some one raid the place where these guys planned this operation. Lantini was there. Says he killed them all. Might be good to go get him, too.”
“Lantini?”
“Yeah. He was involved in this somehow. Just talked to him. Says Hellerman was Ronnie Wood. Makes sense.”
Palmer stared at Jessup and then Matt.
Matt waited a moment, and when the bureaucrat had nothing to say, he patted Alvin Jessup on the shoulder and walked up the steps to find his brother and check on Peyton.