Rogue Threat (13 page)

“Matt, earlier today you said that your brother knew Ballantine. How did he know him?”

He didn’t want to get into the details, but knew that he had to start trusting someone. He might as well start with this good-looking woman he had known less than a day, he figured.

“How does your brother fit into all of this?” she asked.

“Zachary captured Ballantine. And in the process, he killed his brother.”

“Do you think Ballantine’s out for revenge?” she asked.

“Makes sense. I know how I would feel if I could ever find the man who killed Zachary,” he whispered.

Matt stared out of the hayloft. A diminishing moon hung in the frame of the loft like a piece of children’s art.

“How would you feel?” she asked.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“One sister. We’re not close,” she said, looking away.

“I was close to Zachary. The emotions I have wrestled with since his death have consumed me. Sometimes I just want to kill anyone who might have had anything to do with Zachary’s death.”

“Do you really think that would make a difference?”

“Nothing else has.”

“Seems you have no problem killing people,” Peyton said, remembering the last several hours.

Matt turned to look directly into her eyes. “It’s not about the killing.”

Peyton felt a chill as his eyes locked onto her like a laser. A fine mist escaped his mouth as he breathed the fresh Vermont air.

“Besides, you put your heel through that man’s windpipe as if you’ve done it before,” Matt said. “Obviously not your first.”

She paused and looked away, stiffening. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Actually, yes.”

When Peyton didn’t respond, Matt let the question go but logged it away in the back of his mind. He had noticed a tough streak since their first encounter, but now he was beginning to believe there was much more to her, a certain nefarious depth that he couldn’t quite place.

“Why don’t you tell me about those Predators?” she asked.

After a long pause, he responded. “Okay. I know some stuff. You’re right. It’s probably time to talk about it.”

Peyton looked up at him, remaining silent, not wanting to interrupt.

“Roger Webb, another member of my organization, and I worked on this thing together, this Predator project. When we learned that the previous administration had given the go-ahead to release the unmanned aerial vehicle technology—technology that enabled us to arm the Predator with Hellfire missiles and other payloads—to China, we were pissed. We got involved, against CIA orders. Of course, the CIA director was in the president’s pocket. Anyway, this technology is very sensitive.”

“So . . .” she prodded.

“So I followed some leads from China to the Philippines, where things got pretty ugly.”

“How so?”

“Well, in China, the director figured out I was chasing this stuff down and turned Chinese intelligence onto me,” Matt said.

“Can you prove that?”

Matt chuckled at her naiveté. “Of course not. It’s just one of those things you know. When you’re half way across the world with a perfect cover and suddenly you have ten operatives following you, including one American you recognize, you get suspicious.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I managed to avoid the Chinese palace guards and find a contact who could give me the information on who had this technology and what they were doing with it.”

“Was it just a computer disk, or was it the actual stuff?” Peyton asked.

“It was sixteen or eighteen Predators, which they could probably have built, or at least come close. But the ground control stations that use satellite technology for guidance are the key. That’s what I was looking for.”

“How did eighteen Predators get away from the United States?”

“Remember that big campaign-cash-for-technology scandal?” Matt asked. “What I found was that, to avoid our satellite tracking, the Chinese had actually built a small test facility on a remote island in the Philippine chain.”

“So where are the Predators and these stations now?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t be here,” he admitted. “The question is,” he said, staring directly at her, “what do
you
know about these Predators?”

“Only what you tell me,” she lied.

“Bullshit.”

“The only information I may have,” she whispered, “deals with some F-117 stealth fighters that we had shot down over Kosovo and Afghanistan.”

“Stealth Predators?”

“Maybe,” she said, looking away.

A long moment of silence passed between them. Matt looked skyward, staring at the wide planks in the ceiling of the barn.

“Rumor has it that you had the shot,” Peyton said, deflecting the conversation back toward Matt.

“I did. I think about it every day. Haunts me. They denied my kill chain.”

“You don’t seem like the higher headquarters-approval type of guy,” Peyton said.

Matt turned his head toward Peyton, taking in a bit of her beauty, finding solace in that for some reason.

“I should have taken the shot,” Matt sighed.

He paused a moment and decided to reverse the conversation toward her.

“Apparently you know all about me. So what about you?”

“Nothing unusual. Just a normal Irish girl born in Boston to over-achievers. Went to a small parochial school and then got the hell away from home.”

“Ever been to Ireland?” he asked.

She turned her eyes away again.

“Something I said?”

“No. No. Yes, I’ve been to Ireland. Spent some time there during my college days.”

“Some kind of exchange program while you were at Harvard?”

“Yes, exactly. University of Belfast,” she said.

“Why did you do that?”

“Wanted to learn everything I could about the issues between Ireland and Britain. It was a fascinating period of my life.”

“I’m sure. So what was it like?” he asked.

“I wrote my dissertation on some of the darker factions of the Irish Republican Army. I allowed myself to be blindfolded and taken to places to meet leaders and terrorists. Usually they were hidden from sight, sort of like a confession booth.”

“Why did they let you do that? I mean, talk to them?”

“They wanted their point of view to be heard. The press was so biased against them that when they had an opportunity to be heard through a legitimate forum, they took it. Of course, all of that has changed now.” She paused. “After Nine-eleven, I mean.”

“Weren’t you ever concerned that you might be in danger?”

“All of us are in danger every day, Matt.”

“True. But you have to admit that hanging out with IRA terrorists back then was on the far end of the scale.”

“They are just like you and me, Matt. They have beliefs and hopes and dreams.”

“You mean ‘were,’ right?”

“Say that again?” Peyton asked.

“You said, ‘They are just like you and me.’”

“Right, I mean
were
,” she said, looking away. “Just like my parents
were
gunned down by British paratroopers in the streets of Belfast.”

Matt shifted in the hay toward Peyton, caught off guard by the information. “I’m sorry.”

“They were on vacation. Their bodies were shipped home, and I had to bury them. You’ve buried a brother, so you know what I’m talking about. My sister ran away right after that. She was sixteen. I get an occasional postcard or phone call, but she never stays in one place. And so I’ve got no family to speak of—only demons, I guess.”

“We’ve all got demons, Peyton.”

She paused before responding, unsure why she had shared her most personal information with him. “You asked what I learned. I learned that no one can conquer the human spirit. That no one can oppress the will of a people. I especially learned that no matter how strong or powerful a nation, it has weaknesses that can be attacked. And that’s how the IRA operated against Britain.”

He had detected a slight accent, and having learned that she had lived in Ireland for a short while, he figured she had picked up a minor inflection in Belfast. He decided to change the subject and lighten the conversation.

“So you’re a Ginger, then?”

She paused a moment and smiled, large green eyes blinking at him in the square of moonlight casting through the barn window.

“I’m surprised you know the word for an Irish redhead.”

Matt considered her comment a moment and said, “I imagine you’re full of surprises as well.”

For a moment, the gravity of the situation eluded him. The hijacked Air Force airplane, firefights with extremists, and an arduous escape through rugged terrain were all momentarily set aside by the fleeting, yet all-too-natural, allure of a beautiful woman. The anxiety and worry subsided like an ebbing tide, leaving exposed something he was unprepared to bare.

“Well, get some rest,” he sighed, stitching up the moment. “We’ll need it.”

Matt rested his head against the straw. His mind automatically drifted to a time when he and Zachary were growing up on the farm. Some people were close to their siblings, others weren’t. Matt had never understood why families would diverge and lose contact. Perhaps being raised in the Blue Ridge, where neighbors were nice but remote, he and Zach had focused on their family. So much land and space between families created a natural pull inward. Instead of walking across the street to join the stickball game, he roamed the 120 acres with his brother, exploring their own world. Losing Zach had devastated him, but now he felt as if he were pulling out of his nosedive. Hellerman had been right. Shed the self-pity and get back into the game.

Garrett nestled his head further into the straw.

Resting. Uncertain.

Thinking.

He looked through the open barn window at the children’s art moon and closed his eyes. Like Jesus appearing in a prayer, Zachary’s face hovered above him like an angel as he fell asleep.

PART 2:

Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER 17

Saturday Morning, 0100 Hours,

MC-130, Approaching Moncrief Lake

Major Winslow Boudreaux bounced in the back of the MC-130 Combat Talon as it flew just 100 feet above the ground. The pilots had taken off from Pope Air Force Base in south-central North Carolina, kept a due-east heading until they were fifty miles off the coast, then turned north, keeping at 200 feet above sea level. To the pilots, the ocean was a solid mass, indistinct from the dark horizon. They passed Boston and Halifax, then banked west through Cabot Straight into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The north shore was the thirty-minute mark. Their instructions were to stay off the civilian radar screens. Half an hour from the objective, they had some climbing to do before they reached the drop altitude at 20,000 feet.

Boudreaux felt the airplane rise suddenly, shooting skyward like a rocket. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t stall. Two men had fully briefed him on the mission. They had used maps and photographs. For the past two weeks he had rehearsed this mission and believed he knew every detail. But there were blank spots that sometimes didn’t make sense with what they had told him.

He was on a classified mission for his country, which was fine. He was a member of an elite organization, and he could never reveal his identity to anyone, even if captured. Especially if captured. Fair enough.

He was recently wounded in combat and had gone through extensive physical therapy to become fully mission-capable again. Sure, he remembered most of the therapy and had some instincts, some memory of that kind of information, but other things bothered him.

They told him his name was Winslow Boudreaux, that he was from a small town in Louisiana and had been in the army for nearly twelve years. They had shown him pictures of his childhood. They were trying to get him to remember something, anything, from his childhood or even from his recent past. Nothing seemed to work. None of it rang true.

Something about the doctor had bothered him. The man was nice enough but seemed troubled. In his white smock, the doctor often would sit in a wooden chair next to Boudreaux’s Spartan bedroom and go through the pictures with him. It was more
educational
than exploratory, it seemed. Endless days of reviewing the same thing, over and over. Boudreaux felt as if the information was being pushed onto him from the outside, as opposed to his delivering any conscious memory from inside his mind.

And so he knew his name was Winslow Boudreaux and that he had a mission to kill someone named Ballantine. He would go do that and then think about these other things.

He watched Colonel Rampert get close to him to inspect his equipment. A spark of memory erupted in his mind like a flashbulb in a dark room, and quickly faded. The man was leaning forward, his tightly buzzed haircut like bristle, his weathered face darkened with streaks of green and black camouflage.

They each squatted to absorb the rapid ascent of the airplane. They had even practiced this part of it in the rehearsal. He remembered that much, but the rest of his memory was like a sieve with large holes. Only the big chunks were captured: his name, his mission, his enemy.

And so Boudreaux was able be forward-thinking, connecting smaller details and using his instincts for guidance. It felt as if the instincts had never left him. He was a soldier, a killer, and a patriot. That much rang true.