Rogue Threat (6 page)

While only a small tragedy in the large scheme of things, it was not lost on Matt that some family who had lived clean and right had just lost their daughter to a brutal fate.

He felt along the cabin door and could see a small bit of what looked like white putty jammed along the door latch.

He inspected the entire door and made a plan, to which he gave a ten percent chance of success.

“Matt, I don’t do fixed wing,” Peyton whispered.

Matt looked at her briefly and turned back to the door. “Well, you’re going to have to figure it out,” he said.

CHAPTER 5

The airplane hurtled through the sky, Matt and Peyton feeling the power of the engines pushing them toward an uncertain destination. Where were they going? Matt wondered. Were they merely extra payload on this guided missile, or was it something more? He wasn’t going to wait to find out.

As he heard the flaps of the jet begin to lower, he looked at Peyton.

She was seated with her back against the steps of the airplane, her knees drawn to her chest. Her slender arms were wrapped around her legs, her face pressed against her knees. Matt’s impression was that she was deep in thought—not scared, but pensive. He wrote it off to her way of dealing with stress.

“Ready?” he asked.

“For what?” she replied.

“Just follow my lead.”

“What are you doing?”

He knelt next to the communications panel, which ran perpendicular to the cockpit door.

“Garrett?”

Matt could sense the airplane losing altitude, and rather clumsily at that. He used his Leatherman to remove the four screws holding the communications panel. He lifted the two-foot-by-two-foot panel, exposing a deep cavity of circuit boards and switches designed to route ultra-high frequency and satellite communications around the world, and carefully placed it on the floor.

Another two minutes of work with the pocket tool and Matt removed another panel, this one loaded with circuit boards and wiring. Then he removed the hook connectors of the wiring harness for the satellite communications panel before going to work on the ultra-high frequency panel, disabling the pilot’s ability to talk to anyone outside of the airplane.

“We’re getting lower to the ground,” Peyton whispered. “The landing gear just lowered, I think.”

“I heard it, thanks.” Matt’s voice echoed from inside the cabinet, his body now half inside as he worked on the forward panel. The Leatherman was beginning to slip on the worn grooves of the screws, yet it was working.

He carefully removed the final panel and navigated its path through the opening to avoid contact with any of the communications gear. His retrieval was silent.

As Matt reentered the cavity, he could see the back of the pilot’s head. The man was wearing the standard headphones, which had helped mask Matt’s maneuvers thus far. He looked to the left and saw the lieutenant lying back in his chair, his throat cut like the steward’s, his head hanging limply, as if it might fall and roll onto the floor at any moment. Matt’s inspection confirmed that there was some sort of device placed against the door, though it did not seem to be as dangerous as he had first thought. Matt knew his explosives, and this was no more than a few ounces of C-4. Still, it could do plenty of damage to the small aircraft.

He felt a tugging on his leg and withdrew through the cavity.

“We’re getting low. I think I saw airfield lights,” Peyton said.

“Okay, time to move,” Matt said.

Matt leaned back in, squinted at the panel, and saw that the autopilot light was on. With that information, he lifted his pistol and shot the pilot in the back of the head once. He aimed so that the bullet would enter low in the back of the skull and have to travel through the entire length of the brain, hopefully not exiting the cranium with enough force to crack the windscreen.

The pilot’s head jerked once, blood spraying forward against the starboard side of the windshield. The bullet clearly exited, but the integrity of the glass seemed intact.

Retracting himself, he said, “Let’s move.”

He went to work on the door hinges, using his Leatherman to back out the screws from the two brass facings.

“Stay behind me,” Matt said. “I’ll get you into the pilot’s seat.”

“I told you I don’t know the first thing about this aircraft,” she said.

Matt lifted the door off the hinges, causing a loud explosion that knocked him into the communications cavity and sent Peyton tumbling down the center aisle.

Though stunned, Matt quickly moved forward into the cockpit. The pilot was slumped against the instrument panel, dead.

Looking at the dead terrorist’s face, Matt felt his own satisfaction. It had been a while. The kill felt good, as if perhaps he had avenged a small portion of Zachary’s death.

Matt looked back for Peyton.

“Come on,” he said. “You’ve got to fly this thing.”

No response.

He looked out of the pilot’s windscreen and could see the nose of the airplane aimed directly at a tiny strip of lit asphalt. Looking down at the instrument panel, he noticed the autopilot indicator lit up in orange.

“Peyton!” he shouted.

He pulled the dead lieutenant out of the left pilot’s seat and dumped the body into the aisle.

“Peyton, we’ve got to—” He was cut short by surprise as he turned and found her lying unconscious on the floor.

Geez
, he thought. The steward, the lieutenant, Peyton, and the terrorist pilot were all incapacitated, and he was in an airplane a thousand feet off the ground.

“Come on, Peyton, wake up. I can’t fly this plane,” Matt said, lightly slapping her face. He felt her neck and got a faint pulse. From the marks on her face, he guessed she had caught a significant portion of the blast. She was bleeding from somewhere on her head as well.

Realizing she was not going to respond in time, Matt moved Peyton into a passenger seat and buckled her in. Then he moved quickly into the lieutenant’s cockpit seat and watched as the plane rocked against the wind and approached the lighted runway.

They were less than a half mile from the small runway, yet he had no clue as to where they might be. He presumed somewhere north.
Canada perhaps?
He looked at the controls and felt helpless. He could improvise quite a bit, but felt that right now he could do more harm than good.

The runway looked no bigger than a toothpick, and the small jet wobbled as it lowered toward its narrow target.

Heavy turbulence rocked the plane, jostling the pilot’s lifeless body forward onto the yoke, pushing the jet over into a steep dive. The violent shudder and abrupt pitch downward threw Matt’s stomach into his throat. He instinctively grabbed the controls and tried to manipulate them, but the dead weight of the pilot’s body worked against him.

Matt grabbed him by the shirt and jerked him down between the seats, freeing the yoke to respond to his command. A calm female voice began a surreal mantra. “Terrain. Terrain. Pull up. Pull up.” Matt pulled back hard on the controls, leveling the aircraft out of its steep dive. Just as he thought he had bought a moment’s reprieve, the soothing voice was replaced by a shrill buzzer that seemed to increase in volume and intensity as he lost airspeed.

“C’mon, man,” he muttered in frustration. He grappled with the controls, cast a quick glance over his shoulder, willing Peyton to step forward and say, “Just push that button.”

Turning back, he stared intently at the flashing lights on the instrument panel and then grasped the throttle and pushed forward, not sure how the aircraft would respond. The engines’ whine dissipated and Matt felt the hollow sensation of weightlessness.

The jet yawed to the right and steadily fell toward the toothpick, which now, in the ambient light of the airfield, actually looked the size of a decent country road. Matt knew the plane was going to crash. There was no doubt about it. He vaguely recalled Peyton telling him that landing gear had lowered before he shot the pilot. It occurred to him that he was fodder in the nose cone of an unguided missile destined to plow unceremoniously into the asphalt and break apart wherever the hell he was. And he was curiously reminded of the old adage that all landings are controlled crashes.

Nothing controlled about this crash
, he thought.

It all happened very fast. The wings tilted port, then starboard. Bright lights and warnings came alive in the cockpit. The now-familiar, automated female voice warned him of fast-approaching terrain. “Pull up. Pull up.” Matt brought the nose up and lined it up with the runway before he lost sight of it and the evening sky filled the windscreen. He was testing the response of the rudder pedals when he felt the aircraft pound into the ground, the landing gear absorbing much of the impact before rebounding him aloft.

Matt observed that he had at least hit part of the runway. Whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen. He frantically switched on buttons to off, pulled back on the throttle, and felt the airplane smack the ground again—hard this time—belly-flopping on the blacktop.

His neck snapped back, and the last thing he remembered was thinking,
I should have told her about the UAVs.

CHAPTER 6

1800 hours, Friday

Lake Moncrief, Quebec Province, Canada,

Jacques Ballantine landed his lightweight Sherpa with ease along the rocky bank of Lake Moncrief, Quebec Province, Canada. Stepping from the aircraft, he absently touched his fingers to the scar above his eye. A crisp north wind stung the wound that would never heal. The smell of jet fuel in his nostrils reminded him of the oil wells burning twelve long years ago and further fueled his sense of purpose.

The scar also reminded him of his purpose today, so many years removed from the fury that was the mother of all battles. He had not aged well since his capture in Iraq and the loss of his brother. With every thought of Henri he could feel the burning in his eyes, black onyx that faintly concealed his endless desire for revenge. While Jacques had been unable to secure his insurance policy before Garrett had blended anonymously back to his combat outfit, he was fortunate to have been funneled to the right interrogator in Riyadh. Simply the idea of what might be in the backpack had been powerful enough to motivate his questioner into negotiating for his release. Jacques’ part of the deal was now coming due, his interrogator having lived up to his end of the bargain. Jacques was more than happy to fulfill his obligation.

Ballantine stared into the Canadian evening sun as it dipped into the horizon. To the north he could see the oxbow lake that had been his home for the last two years.

He found his way along a small trail, past a clearing on his left, and entered the forest. Picking his way through the undergrowth and towering fir trees, he found the dilapidated shaft. Rotten four-by-fours crisscrossed the entrance to a cave. Years of rain and sun and insect infestation had worn the wood to its core. He carefully stepped through the weeds and stooped below the fallen logs into complete darkness.

Jacques laid his AK-47 against the timber and pulled open a small wooden door that gave way to an unusual series of lights and sounds that contrasted sharply with the serenity of the countryside.

Inside the mineshaft, Ballantine found his staff and the communications systems with which he would lead the war against America. The Central Committee was calling this Phase Two. The first phase had been the 9/11 attacks. Now was the time the Central Committee would best be able to achieve its goals, catching the Western world leaning hard in the wrong direction, the United States and Great Britain having committed hundreds of thousands of troops to the attack on Iraq in March.
Off balance
was how he had described it to the others.

“Virginia, are we ready?” he said to an attractive black woman standing near several muted television screens flickering a variety of images.

“The Central Committee in Panama City has delivered its message,” she said, handing him a printed e-mail.

Jacques looked at the piece of paper. His anonymous Yahoo! e-mail account had worked just fine. His exchanges with the committee had allowed them to plan their attack as if it were a wedding. He was the groom, coordinating with all of his groomsmen around the country for a wedding that was to take place tonight.

“Congratulations on your long-awaited marriage,” the note from the North Korean read. “We hope to see you at six p.m. tonight. We are sure it will be a wonderful affair.”

It was innocuous and direct. Of the billions of e-mails sent every day, this one would surely not raise any suspicion.

“Jacques, it’s time,” Virginia said, handing him a satellite phone. “We do this. We pick up Matt Garrett and retrieve your rucksack. And we’re done.”

He stared at her, remembering why their love affair had ended. He had tried to love her, and maybe did, but the sorrow he carried with him since his brother’s death had turned to hate—to poison—melting any positive emotions he would experience. A former American military intelligence officer, she was a traitor to her country. Although that was cause enough for him to be smitten with her, she also had an elegance that he could not resist.