by AJ Tata
“Thank you,” Matt said to the orderly. He took a sip of his drink, and lifting his eyes over his cup, saw Peyton examining him closely. “What?”
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Maybe something on the television?” Peyton asked.
“Not likely.” Matt studied Peyton. She was wearing a white silk shirt that blended with her porcelain skin. Her strawberry-blond hair was disheveled in an intentional manner, and a constellation of freckles jumbled up either side of her nose. “So tell me, what was all that stuff Hellerman was saying about Rostow and secular spiritual stagnation?”
“Fine. Quid pro quo. I tell you about Hellerman’s Rebuild America program, and you tell me about the Philippines.”
Matt shifted in his seat. He didn’t want to go down this road. Not now, not with a stranger, he thought to himself.
“You are the famous Matt Garrett that got into a big fight in the Philippines, right?”
Matt nodded. “Perhaps. Hard to tell who anyone is nowadays.”
“I’ll ignore the philosophy and just dive right in. Hellerman created a special, compartmentalized task force called Rebuild America. He actually got the idea for the name before Nine-eleven. He had been working on the concept for a while.”
“What’s Rostow got to do with that? His sixth stage?”
“Exactly.” Peyton pointed a finger at Matt as if to award him a gold star. “Rostow, as you seem to know, studied societal development and labeled his stages, starting with the traditional society. You know . . . the primitive, tribal, subsistence-farmer types. Then there is preconditions for takeoff, takeoff, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption.”
Matt looked at Peyton’s pearl necklace. “Sounds like he got the last one right, anyway. So?”
Peyton ignored the comment and continued ticking the list off, using her fingers.
“So, he spoke primarily in economic terms. His thesis basically argued that we had moved over a couple of centuries from farmers to industrialized mass producers and consumers. His point, at the end, was that he couldn’t see the future, but since we were in the high mass consumption stage, where people could buy and spend at will, he predicted a people that felt less beholden to society and their government yet deeply selfish. Rostow argued, and Hellerman agrees, that our wealth would insulate us from the sacrifices of those who have gone before us. The principles that have made the United States great—freedom, liberty, and capitalism—could ultimately create a cocoon for those not involved in the tough, day-to-day fight to preserve those very principles. What do I care what’s happening overseas, for example, as long as I can buy my Xbox? Combine that with an all-volunteer military, and there’s no shared sacrifice. The people simply live in oblivion while our troops get after it. In the sixth stage, the nation’s spirit diminishes. The flame flickers.”
“No argument here. What’s Hellerman doing with all that?”
“He’s trying to bridge that gap. He hired a bunch of smart people to talk this through and develop a plan to ‘rebuild America.’” Peyton used her hands to form quote marks when she said the last two words of her sentence.
“And Meredith is one of those smart people, along with you?”
“Meredith, yes; me, no. I’m on loan for a year through the White House Fellows program. I’m really a lawyer.”
“Great,” Matt groaned
“Oh, be original,” Peyton said cheerily. “Anyway, it’s your turn.”
Matt brushed off his cargo pants and rubbed his neck against the soft collar of his T-shirt.
“I was in the Philippines once. That’s all.”
“That’s all? I know a little bit, what Hellerman told me, but not much.”
“What did Hellerman tell you?”
“Like I said, not much.”
“Don’t really want to talk about it,” he said, taking a sip of his drink and looking through the dark oval window.
“You promised.” She smiled.
After a long pull on his second drink, he set the plastic cup on the table. He turned and stared out of the window. He could see the roads and buildings of some anonymous city spread 30,000 feet beneath him in a bizarre pattern of yellow and white dots. He knew that once he began talking about Bart Rathburn, alias Keith Richards, he wouldn’t be able to stop. But he forged ahead anyway.
He hadn’t really talked to anybody about his Philippine experience except Meredith, and not that much with her. He had talked to absolutely no one about Meredith. Usually he would talk to Blake Sessoms or his sister, Karen. He had become a recluse and found it too burdensome to even begin to discuss the deep emotions with which he was wrestling. Maybe one short conversation with a stranger wouldn’t hurt. But he knew that it would be difficult keeping it to just one. Everything was so complex, connected: The Rolling Stones, Zachary, Meredith, Fox and Diamond, and his past life as a paramilitary operator, his new career, whatever that might be. And Lantini, that bastard . . .
Focusing on the city below him, Matt began. “It’s complicated. Last spring in the Philippines I find Chuck Ramsey’s A-team, all shot up, and a Japanese weapons factory. Then I hop on a floatplane to Palau, where I meet Meredith and Rathburn. From there I get sucked back to Manila, where Rathburn and his cronies try to get me killed while they start their insurgency in the Philippines.
“Anyway, I was unaware until the end that Rathburn was dirty. So when we get captured, he blows my cover directly before he gets killed and we escape. Then I go back in for Rathburn and we bury him while a CNN correspondent films it.”
Matt could feel Peyton’s gaze. He focused on nothing in particular. His thoughts were spinning wildly back to a time that he had left hidden in the recesses of his mind.
Peyton snapped her fingers. “His satellite hookup was working.” She spoke with a sense of wonderment. In her mind’s eye she replayed the CNN broadcast of Matt’s eulogy for Rathburn. Barefoot’s camera panned away and zoomed in on the brutal execution of an unarmed Filipino civilian by a Japanese soldier. That video had been the trigger for the president to authorize the use of American conventional combat forces in the Philippines.
“We were on the run for days.” Matt’s voice was monotonous, recalling the events as mere facts, devoid of any emotion. It had to be that way. “They finally caught up with us—Barefoot, Sturgeon, and me. Jack got shot in the femur. Barefoot took a few hits in his right arm. I killed a rebel soldier with my knife and took his gun. We held for four hours before I got hit in the stomach. Hence the ‘appendectomy.’ We were surrounded.”
“How’d you survive?” Peyton asked.
“Zachary, my brother, was an infantry company commander stationed in Hawaii. His unit was on a mission in the Philippines and got caught in the rebellion. I had no idea he was there. Zach’s guys were attacking the enemy we were fending off when they found us, when Zach found me. The last thing I remember is my brother holding me and someone on the radio calling in a medical evacuation for me.”
“He saved your life.”
“That’s true. But then he goes and gets killed two days later in the final battle. I should have been there.” Matt’s voice was nearly a whisper. The sky outside of the airplane was dark. Small groups of white and yellow dots slid beneath the fuselage. Matt’s heart churned inside his chest. Zach would never be back. And why did he just expose his primary vulnerability to this stranger?
She watched him and thought about reaching across and touching his arm, but resisted.
“Zach’s body was so mangled they wouldn’t even let us view it before the funeral,” he said.
Peyton let a few minutes pass in silence, the heavy roar of the jet engine droning.
“You blame yourself for Zachary’s death. But he died doing what he loved to do.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier, Peyton.”
“Think of all the lives he saved.”
“Think of the one I didn’t.”
&nb
sp; Matt left it at that.
CHAPTER 4
Peyton had excused herself to the lavatory, and Matt had just closed his eyes when he awoke to an unusual sound in the cockpit. It was a thud of sorts—not a normal airplane sound. He knew that much.
He heard something else come from the forward VIP cabin, where Peyton had originally been sitting. It was a rustling sound followed by some gurgling.
Never a nervous flyer, Matt rubbed his face and craned his neck to look toward the cockpit.
“What the—!” he said, getting to his feet.
The flight steward was crawling slowly toward him, her throat slit and blood gushing onto the floor. He heard a noise behind him and instinctively turned to defend himself.
“What’s going on?” Peyton said with a curious smile. And then she saw the woman on the floor and froze.
“We’ve got a problem in the cockpit,” Matt said, running to the steward. She reached out to him.
Matt bent down and grabbed her hand as he felt the airplane bank sharply to the right. Holding onto the armrest of a leather chair, he knelt down.
“What happened?” he whispered to her.
“Pilot . . .” Her voice was weak, and blood aspirated in a fine spray onto him as she attempted to speak.
That was all she could say before her head fell to the floor. Matt felt for her pulse and knew she was dead as he eyed the long trail of blood she had left in the aisle.
Peyton watched Matt, covering her mouth with her hand.
Matt pulled the steward to the side, placed a blanket over her, and said, “She’s dead. Nothing we can do for her. My guess is that the young pilot in there is dead also. I think we’ve got a terrorist operative flying this plane.”
“How is that possible?”
Matt looked at her. “Wake up, Peyton. Hellerman set us upWe were set up by Hellerman.”
Matt pulled his Baby Glock from his hip holster and flipped off the safety.
“That’s bullshit,” Peyton said. “I know Hellerman.”
“Pull your head out of your fourth point of contact, lady.”
Peyton ignored Matt’s paratrooper reference to her rear end. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to kill the pilot, and then you’re going to fly this thing.” Matt’s voice was calm as he turned toward the cockpit. Then he stopped and turned around.
In his pistol were full-metal-jacket bullets. He ejected the magazine and the chambered round and dug out a magazine of hollow points from his kit bag. He didn’t know their altitude, but considered that hollow-point rounds might serve them better in an airplane because they would flatten on impact, penetrating less than FMJs. Sliding the magazine into the weapon, he turned back toward the cockpit, walking carefully through the cabin door and into the VIP suite. He paused to look at the blood trail the steward had left, starting at the cockpit door. He noticed splatter marks along the communications panel to the right and thought she must have been standing there when she was attacked.
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.
&n
bsp; 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.
