by AJ Tata
Absently, he wondered if he entered the cage to duel with himself. Whether it was post traumatic stress or prolonged grieving, Matt was in persistent internal conflict. Sometimes he had gnawing at him the urge to get in his old Porsche, fill the gas tank, and drive dark, dangerous roads at high speeds.
Other times he stepped into the batting cage.
His angst was no different, he figured, than the way some of his soldier buddies who were suffering post traumatic stress might wake up screaming, grab for their elusory weapon in the middle of the night, and move through the house, methodically clearing each room, calling “One up” to invisible partners, buddies who had been killed right next to them in combat.
Matt needed to fill that emptiness left by Zach’s absence and burn his adrenaline. The grief welled inside him, he repressed it, and then it reappeared somewhere else like a magician’s trick. One moment it was an obvious thought; the next it was a repressed memory. Post traumatic stress was tricky that way. The repressed memory went latent, seemingly forgotten, only to surge forward at the least expected time, manifesting itself as a spontaneous action, sometimes benign, often not. Only on intense reflection or therapy could the sufferer follow the byzantine trail back to the original mournful feeling.
So today, instead of a suicidal drag race in the Porsche, Matt stared down 95-mph fastballs moving with enough velocity to kill him. No helmet. That was part of the risk, the game. This way, at least, his edginess was more predictable, like Russian roulette. Which bullet, which fastball, might hit him? He never knew when one tire might catch the stitches and spit at him a left-handed curve ball hard and fast directly at his temple. Just as bad as a bullet. Maybe worse. He would see it coming. Would he duck?
Or smile and stand there, ready to join his brother?
The first ball blew past him before he could even think about swinging. With each successive pitch, his cut migrated toward what it once was. He had been an above-.300 collegiate batsman. Soon he was hitting a few frozen ropes back at the machine, which was protected by a wire mesh fence. The calm evening rang resolutely with the distinct crack of the wooden 34 against the quiet hum of the pitching machine’s spinning tires.
Matt focused, and he tried to forget about Zachary’s death. The War on Terror had claimed many casualties. The fact that Zachary had survived, even thrived, during Operation Desert Storm, only to succumb to a small-scale action in the Philippines, would forever confound Matt.
As he rifled balls into the far netting, his mind drifted to a few men that he politely referred to as those bastards, the upper-echelon Rolling Stones groupies who conspired to start a war in the Philippines simply to avert another war in Iraq.
A fastball came whipping at him, and there was Bart Rathburn, killed by Abu Sayyaf rebels. Swing. Crack. Rathburn, who had been an assistant secretary of defense using the pseudonym Keith Richards, was gone into the back of the net.
The tires then spit him a slider, low and away: Taiku Takishi, a Japanese businessman turned rogue, also known as Charlie Watts. Smooth swing. Solid wood. Takishi, who led the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, was gone into right field.
Another pitch knuckled straight at him. He swung defensively and swatted away the face of Secretary of Defense Robert Stone. Stone, using the nom de guerre Mick Jagger, orchestrated the entire conspiracy. Following Stone’s knuckleball was a 98-mph fastball that blew past him.
Ronnie Wood.
Though not located in the year since his disappearance, CIA director Frank Lantini, Matt was convinced, played the ever elusive Ronnie Wood.
Every time I was close, he moved me.
But there were other possibilities, Matt knew. His mind briefly churned, visualizing these Beltway heroes who pulled the marionette strings of so many great Americans, using them as the fodder that they were. A bolt of anger shot through Matt when he realized that it was only those with whom you served that you could trust to be on your flank, to help you in a time of crisis. That notion brought his mind reeling back to Zachary.
Why couldn’t I save him?
Like the baseballs punching into the far end of the net, Matt’s angst over Zachary’s death was tightly confined in his thoughts by a web of guilt and remorse.
The injuries to his body—the gunshots to the abdomen and shoulder and the bayonet slice across the forearm that screamed with every swing—had mostly healed. And with each pitch and swing Matt focused his mind on the task at hand, hitting the baseball, the action removing just a bit of the pain, working out physical and emotional scars. Just keep swinging, he told himself. Stay in the game.
“Keep your elbow up.”
Matt turned toward the voice just enough to move his body into the path of one of those 95-mph fastballs—bb’s, aspirin tablets, rockets, as he used to call them—whipping in high and inside. It struck him squarely on the left shoulder.
“Son of a . . .” Matt took a quick knee and pressed the stop button.
A woman came running toward him. “I am so sorry.”
“Aw, man.” Another pitch rifled above his head punching with a demonic thud into the back of tarp. “Go get some ice out of the freezer. Back door’s open.” The machine spit a final ball that landed about halfway toward Matt, the rawhide rolling next to his knee.
Gotta go easy in there, Matt thought to himself. Adrenaline dumped, he shook his head. Truthfully, he had been pushing the envelope in his rehab in an attempt to get back into the fight.
Matt pulled up his shirt-sleeve and noticed a welt was already forming.
It took a minute to register that he had no idea who he had just sent into his house. An attractive woman returned with a towel filled with ice. She was wearing a blue pants suit with a white blouse. A string of lapis beads circling her neck made Matt think back to Afghanistan, where lapis was mined extensively.
“Who are you?” he asked through gritted teeth as she put the ice on his shoulder.
“Name’s Peyton O’Hara.” She showed him a badge. “The vice president of the United States requires your services, Mr. Garrett.”
“So he sent you?”
“It seems your phone is—”
“I shut the phone off.” Matt looked down at the welt on his shoulder.
“As I was saying, I work with the vice president. He needs your help.”
Matt grabbed the towel and took a step back, registering the concern on the young woman’s face. She was a natural redhead with hazel eyes and a nice figure. Setting the towel on the deck rail, he pulled off his shirt, catching her eyes glancing at his muscular frame. At six foot two, he was considerably taller than she. Though he had been recovering from wounds, he had also been lifting and running almost every day. Her quick glance confirmed in his mind that he was, perhaps, in the best physical condition of his life. He reapplied the ice to the bruise.
“What happened?” She pointed at his forearm.
“Hunting accident.”
“I see.” Peyton looked at him suspiciously. She took in his green eyes and light brown hair, strangely glad the vice president had asked her to come find this enigma. “And there?” She pointed at his stomach where a large scar that looked like a grotesque blossoming flower had healed, revealing minor lumps of skin that never reformed in exactly the right place.
“Appendectomy,” Matt said, stone-faced.
“Must have been one hell of a huge appendix,” she smiled.
“What are you? A hooker or something? Blake Sessoms send you here?” Matt asked. “Like those strippers dressed as cops?”
Blake was Matt’s closest childhood friend, save Zachary.
“Funny,” Peyton said.
Matt looked down at the welt on his shoulder.
“Another lump for the collection?” she quipped, following his eyes to the rising lump on Matt’s upper arm. “Adds some symmetry don’t you think?”
Ignoring her comment, he sat in a two-dollar lawn chair he had picked up from K-Mart a few weeks earlier. It was either that or fiv
e hundred dollars for deck furniture that was not as comfortable.
“So what’s Hellerman want?” Matt’s voice was flat.
“He wants you to come over to his Middleburg mansion. That’s where his alternate command post is now and where he’s set up a special task force on terrorism. He wants you to be a part of that. He’s talked to Houghton at CIA, who said you’re available. With the Iraq war going well, he is making sure we’re watching our six on other extremists.”
Matt stared at her a moment. He had been out of action since being wounded and was now being considered by the president to serve as a special assistant to the CIA director. He figured Houghton would never say no to the president or vice president after his recent confirmation as Lantini’s replacement at CIA. Matt was on a leave of absence from his position with his unit and figured Houghton thought this might be the best way to ease him back into the fight. But Matt was part mercenary and part intelligence analyst and had never participated in a special task force—other than raiding some dirtbag’s hideout to kill him.
“And he wants me to ask you about your work on the Predator project,” she mentioned, almost as an afterthought.
Matt calmly looked to his left and then his right, and then turned his head toward her and leveled his eyes on hers.
“Predators? What are those?” Matt asked.
She stepped toward him.
“Everyone knows about the former administration’s technology transfers to China, Mr. Garrett. What I’m telling you is that we may have some new information, and we don’t have much time to sort it out. We’re five miles from civilization, and if it will make you feel better, we can whisper, but we really need to know what you saw in China.”
Matt had spent two months touring China as a photojournalist, trying to find eighteen AWOL unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that were not so much missed for their aerodynamics as they were for their payload capabilities. The leads had taken him to the Philippines, where he got caught up in the insurgency that had wounded him and killed his brother.
“Sounds like you should speak to somebody who knows what you’re talking about. Maybe the Rolling Stones? You a groupie?” Those bastards. “This is a dead end.” Literally, it was for Zachary, he thought with a wince.
She stared at him with piercing eyes. She was a cross between Julianne Moore and a Fox News anchorwoman whose name he had forgotten. She crossed her arms and looked away, thinking. Matt saw her eyes fixate on the batting cage then return to his abdominal scar. Then she looked at him with a satisfied countenance, appearing to have figured something out.
“Well, the vice president thinks you know something you’re not telling us,” she said.
“You’re right.” Matt considered her comment. “The Predators are a hockey team in Nashville, right?” He placed the towel on the deck, stood and walked over to the railing of the deck and leaned back, towering over her by at least eight inches.
She pursed her lips and said, “Funny.” She showed him her National Security Agency badge again, which he agreed looked authentic enough. Then she pulled out her Top Secret White House Basement Operations Center pass.
“Impressive.”
“Need my shoe size?” she asked.
Matt smirked. “Screw the vice president.” Then, “Sorry, if that’s in your job description, you know.”
Peyton stared at him and smiled. “They told me you could be an ass. I just didn’t expect it to surface so quickly.”
Matt considered her a moment. He figured her mental calculations had been to determine which course to choose: sympathetic to his loss and injuries or hard-nosed negotiator completing an assigned task? Her selection of the firm approach caused him to gain a measure of respect for her. He didn’t want her sympathy.
“Who cares? I put everything in the report, and nobody believed it. We couldn’t get jack past the political appointees. If you’re truly working with Hellerman, then you know the Stones conspiracy set us back light years.”
“I know that was a difficult time for you—”
“Difficult?” Matt asked, incredulous. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, lady.”
Matt picked up his baseball bat and tossed it from hand to hand, working off his anger and frustration. Who was this person interrupting his sanctuary, his ritual?
Peyton eyed the bat. He figured that she had read his dossier and knew about his mandatory shrink visits. The psychiatrist said he had a hair-trigger temper. Good, make her think, Matt thought.
“This is important, Matt. You know my credentials,” Peyton said, keeping an eye on the bat.
“So we discuss top secret, compartmented information on my back deck? Here’s a clue. Check out a warehouse in Mindanao in the Philippines. I went there, got shot, and then came home. You know the rest.”
“Well, actually, I knew what you just said, but something doesn’t add up.”
“What’s that?” He was mildly interested but tiring quickly. He had baseballs to hit. With another month of convalescent leave on his docket before his return to Langley, he needed to sort out a few more things. Unscrew his head. On that note, he flipped the bat against the deck railing, walked into the house and grabbed two Budweisers from the refrigerator. He handed one to Peyton by the top. She knew the trick and turned the bottle while he held his vice grip on the cap. With a slight sound of gas escaping they opened the bottle, and she took a sip. He popped his open with the same hand and drank half the beer in one tilt.
“Let’s just say we’re concerned about the location of those Predators, based upon some intercepts we’ve received.” She looked away as she spoke, holding her amber bottle chest high.
“Oh, I get it. I share top secret information with you, and you share bullshit with me. Seems fair,” he fumed, his temper edging to the surface. He took another long pull on the Bud.
“Listen, we’ve got traffic that says the Chinese might try to use those Predators against Taiwan, but it’s not clear yet.”
“Okay. But I’ve told you everything I know. I tracked them to China and Mindanao by studying shipping logs, going to the ports, bribing dirt poor dockworkers, and even shooting a couple of people. I suggest you do the same,” he said.
“Did you ever see any of the Predators?” she asked, ignoring his rebuff.
“It’s all in the report, Peyton.”
“If it was all in the report, Matt, I wouldn’t be here.”
They held their beer bottles in front of themselves as if they were ready to fence, Matt’s tilting toward her, hers toward him.
They exchanged long, hard stares. The obnoxious ringing of Peyton’s cell phone interrupted the painful silence. She answered it, “Peyton,” and listened a moment before handing it to Matt.
“Matt, this is the vice president. I need you to meet me at Dulles Airport in an hour. VIP gate. Bring a suitcase. Tell Peyton to come along too. I’ll be waiting.” Then the line went dead.
“What’s this all about?” he asked, handing the phone back to her.
“Beats me, but we should probably get moving.”
The cool spring breeze snapped past them both. Truthfully, today he could not care less what the man wanted.
“Whatever. I’ll see you there,” he said as Peyton bounced down the steps. He casually followed her, a guard ushering an unwanted visitor to the exit. He stopped at the corner of his brick rambler and watched as she mounted a Ducati Street Fighter.
“Don’t be late, Matt Garrett.”
She shook her hair, donned the helmet, and turned the ignition. The bike roared to life. She punched the gear box and rolled away.
“Bizarre,” Matt muttered and then strolled inside his house.
CHAPTER 2
Dulles Airport, Northern Virginia
Matt yanked his “go-bag” from beneath his bed, which he always kept ready and within arm’s reach as he slept. He checked the Baby Glock and ensured he had four magazines of 9mm ammunition, two with full-metal-jacket rounds and two with
hollow point. He opened his Duane Dieter Spec Ops knife with a quick flip of his wrist, then pressed the detent button to collapse the blade. Handling his weapons made him wonder just where the hell Lantini might be . . .
He then quickly stuffed a variety of clothing and toiletries in the small duffel. A few minutes later, he jumped in the fifteen-year-old Porsche 944 he had purchased from the same junk yard in which he had found the pitching machine. He ran the “black bullet” wide open, quickly covering the short distance to the airport.
Pressing speed dial on his cell phone, he listened as Blake Sessoms, his childhood best friend, answered.
“This is Blake.”
“Blake, Matt here.”
“Hey, wildman. Long time.”
“Got a few things to talk about, but don’t have much time right now.” He paused, then continued. “It has been tough without Zach around.”
“I miss him, too,” Blake said. “It’s been a year . . . a tough year, brother.”
The two friends let a moment pass over the crackling cell phone air-waves.
“Roger that,” Matt whispered.
“Going anywhere you can tell me?” Blake asked.
“I’m not sure what’s happening, but wanted to let you know I am heading out of town. We’ll catch up later.”
“Sure thing, bro.”
“Are you going to be around in the next few days?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call you.”
The two friends hung up. Matt reflected briefly that it had been months since he had spoken to Blake, with whom he used to chat a few times a week. They had grown up together in the Blue Ridge, playing baseball and fishing, and they had both started college at the University of Virginia. Matt opted for a career in the Agency; Blake chose a path that eventually led him to Virginia Beach and a small fortune.
Downshifting into the arrivals/departures fork in the road leading to the airport terminals, Matt saw the sign for the VIP gate and followed the arrows until he was stopped at a closed chain-link gate in a remote area about a half mile from the main terminal. The gate opened as he slowed.
