by AJ Tata
“Yes, sir,” she said, saluting him with her right hand.
She punched in the number and then handed him the cell phone.
“Meredith?” he said.
Peyton snapped her head toward him and mouthed the word, “What?”
He held up his hand, warding off her suspicions.
“Meredith, this is Matt. Can you hear me?”
He waited.
“Bad connection,” he said, turning toward Peyton.
“I’m crushed,” Peyton said.
“Meredith, I can barely hear you.”
Peyton looked at him and rolled her eyes. She saw a road sign that said Norge and figured it was no wonder he had a poor cell phone connection. They were in the middle of nowhere.
“What? . . . Who? . . . I would hope Hellerman knows what’s going on,” Matt said.
Peyton looked at Matt with a quizzical expression.
“Tell her you’ll call her back when we get to civilization,” Peyton said.
“We’re heading to Blake’s. I’ll call you when I get there,” Matt shouted into the phone, as if that would help her understand him better.
He looked at Peyton and flipped his cell phone shut.
“Can’t believe we’re in the twenty-first century, I’m on an interstate, and I can’t talk on the cell phone,” he said.
Peyton put her hand on his leg and said, “We’ll be there soon.”
“Do you think we should call Rampert?” he asked her. He had been debating the issue since Blake had given him the information about the Sherpa landing on the Chinese ship. He could feel the tape in his pocket. He had some definite ideas as to whose voice was on the tape, but had not revealed those thoughts to Peyton.
“The tape for your brother. That’s your plan, right?”
“Right.”
“If that’s the plan and you think Rampert can help you find your brother, then I think it’s a possibility. You know you can’t trust any of those guys, though, right?”
“I know,” Matt said. He was thinking about the value of the tape. If the voice on the tape was who he thought it might be, then it would be very good evidence in a treason trial. And while it was clear that Ballantine was not acting alone, what was not so clear was whether he had inside help. The connection between the tape and the current events, he figured, could be very real.
“I’ll think about it.” What was hanging in the balance, it was clear, was not only the retrieval of his lost brother, but finding the possible inside man on the attack plans.
Matt continued driving, lost in his thoughts, watching familiar landmarks tick by. They passed the Hampton Coliseum and then found themselves negotiating the Hampton Roads Tunnel, cutting through Norfolk, and getting onto the Virginia Beach Expressway. They hit Atlantic Avenue and then found Blake’s house in the Bay Colony subdivision.
Blake’s home backed up to Broad Bay and the Lynnhaven Inlet, a deep-water tributary that fed into Chesapeake Bay near the Bay Bridge-Tunnel complex. They drove along a paved road that led them past several large mansions and ended at Blake’s driveway.
“Wow, your friend Blake has it going on,” Peyton said as she eyed the two-story brick home. “Nice pad.”
“Blake did pretty well a couple of years ago during the stock market bubble. Got in and out at the right time.”
“I’d say so,” Peyton replied, stepping from the Porsche and looking beyond the house to the broadening inlet. She could see the elevated bridge of Shore Drive that spanned the mouth of the inlet where it fed into Chesapeake Bay. Silhouetted by the setting sun was the barely noticeable bridgework of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
They walked along the sidewalk, framed by a well-manicured lawn on one side and high Boxwood shrubs sitting beneath the home’s tall windows on the other.
“Hey, guys, you made pretty good time,” Blake said as he stepped from the front door and walked down the slate porch. He had changed from his motorcycle garb into the type of black wetsuit worn by surfers.
“Blake, this is Peyton.”
“Peyton, how are you?” Matt noticed Blake was not his usually charming self.
“Doing well, thank you,” she replied.
They walked inside the well-decorated home. Sandi’s touches were visible everywhere. There was a mixture of surfing and beach artwork coupled with more traditional colonial themes. Somehow the couple had made the mixed decor work.
“Matt, you remember Sandi, right?” Blake asked.
The blond woman was standing next to a surfboard in the foyer. It was artwork but would probably hold up well in the waves, also. She, too, wore a dark wetsuit.
“Sandi,” Matt said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Good to see you again, Matthew. We’ll take care of this business.” She placed her hand lightly on Matt’s arm.
“Sandi, this is Peyton, a friend from Washington, D.C.”
Peyton stepped forward, shook Sandi’s hand, and said, “Nice to meet you.”
“Okay, let’s go over some initial thoughts: weapons, cameras, and so forth,” Matt said, ready to get down to business.
“I spent some time on that already,” Blake said. “Got a bag full of guns here and a good digital camera for nighttime pictures. Boat’s out back, ready when you are. But I need to talk to you upstairs first.”
They went upstairs while Sandi intercepted Peyton.
They walked into Blake’s study, which had a large teak desk in the center of the room. A flat-panel computer monitor the size of a television sat in the middle of the desk facing the leather chair. Blake had furnished the room with large globes, maps, and military artwork. He was a man of many interests, boating and sea navigation ranking on the top of his list.
“I got a fax from a secret admirer of yours.” Blake handed him a sheet of paper. “From none other than your former girlfriend, Meredith Morris.”
“And?” Matt raised his eyebrows.
“Well, she called down here trying to reach you and said she needed to talk to you. Said you told her you were heading to my house. Telling her you were heading to my house was a questionable move in my judgment, but sometimes you get lucky.”
Matt was getting impatient with his friend. “Okay, let me have it.”
“She sent you this,” he said, sliding three pieces of paper toward him across the desk. Matt picked up the pages and saw the photographs of the Fong Hou sketches that Meredith had taken in Hellerman’s basement. She had scribbled a note on the first page.
Not sure what this is all about, but a large container ship with a runway down the middle could only mean bad news. Remember what Zachary saw at Ballantine’s cabin.
“What did Z-man see at Ballantine’s cabin, Matt?” Blake asked.
“He saw lots of things, but his first report was about some missing unmanned aerial vehicles,” Matt said. Then it dawned on him. “Ballantine’s got a Trojan horse with those UAVs on it. He’s going to launch them with a payload right at D.C. Eighteen missing—which is enough to destroy the entire government.”
“Um . . . we need to call someone,” Blake said, backing away from his desk.
“Normally I’d say call Rampert and Fort Bragg, but we don’t know if Rampert’s involved with this tape or not,” Matt said.
“Let’s think about this.”
Matt walked to the bay window and looked out at the lights marking the Bay Bridge-Tunnel’s route across the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. In the reflection of the window, he could see Blake’s profile, his face drawn with worry.
“The ship is right there.” Blake pointed through the window. “And if Hellerman or Rampert, or both, are involved in this thing, they know every move you are making, which means they know that you are at my house. They probably haven’t had time to bug my stuff, so we’re probably okay there, but everything up to this point has to be considered compromised.”
“Right. Except our face-to-face conversations,” Matt said.
“Right.”
“Well . . .” Matt s
aid slowly. “We might even have a problem there.”
“Say what?”
“Roger. Remember when we were talking on the back deck of the house?”
“Yeah,” Blake said, looking worried.
“Well, after you left, I went around to the back of the house and came up the deck. The window to my bedroom was open.”
“As in ‘Peyton opened the window to listen to us’ open?”
“Possibly,” Matt said.
“I opened the damn window to get some fresh air,” Peyton said, walking into the room.
Blake and Matt snapped their heads in her direction. They had been so focused on the boat in the distance that they had not heard Peyton come up the steps.
“This is a private conversation,” Blake said.
“I’ve been involved in this from the start, and I’m not going anywhere but onto that boat with you guys,” she said, hands on her hips.
“How do you know about the boat?” Matt asked.
“I was sitting on the porch today when you guys were out front. Nice bike, by the way,” she said to Blake.
“Thanks. So you heard everything?”
“I heard you say you saw an airplane fly onto the ship. I agree with Matt; that has got to be Ballantine. It makes sense,” she said.
“What value do you add to this operation?” Blake asked. “Why do you need to come along?”
Matt stepped in. “Peyton’s been by my side the entire way.”
“That could be part of the problem,” Blake said, still looking at her.
“Could be, but it’s not,” Peyton said, locking eyes with Blake.
“Where did you come from, O’Hara?”
“I’m from Boston, Sessoms,” she said. “What are you worried about, the fact that the vice president sent me to Matt’s house, or the fact that I’m part Irish and actually knew a few IRA freedom fighters?”
“What bothers me is that you’re next to my best friend and I have to trust you completely, because if anything happens to him, then I’m going to be really pissed off,” Blake said.
“Okay, team, let’s just cool it here,” Matt said. “While we’re at it, though, Peyton, tell me why you really need to be here.”
“You guys are both such jerks,” she said. “I want to be involved in this thing because I have a stake in this, too!” She had raised her voice now. She poked her finger at the ground to emphasize her point.
“What stake is that?” Matt asked.
“It’s my country, too, Matt. Damn it, why can’t you trust me?” she shouted. “Tell me that. Why am I a suspect when all I’ve done is try to help you?”
She was crying now, the tears streaming down her face. Matt walked over to her and pulled her close. She crossed her arms, and he pressed her into his chest, feeling her heave against him. She was strong, but she still had emotions. There had been an enormous amount of stress, and even Matt wondered how he was able to hold up.
Then it occurred to him that Peyton had been by his side, and that was one reason why he had crawled from his shell and was able to operate now. Peyton had been there for him.
Why couldn’t he have seen that? How could he have been so unfair?
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re damned right, you’re sorry. I’ve done nothing but support you and asked for nothing in return,” she whimpered into his chest.
Blake quietly slid out of the study and waited in the hall just outside the open doors.
“It’s okay. I appreciate what you’ve done, Peyton. I really do. I know I’ve been focused on so many other things—”
“Stop. Don’t. You don’t need to explain anything,” she said, pulling away and wiping her eyes. “I know what you’re facing, and I know what the country is facing. The odds are terrible, and I am just quietly trying to support you.”
“I understand.”
Blake returned. “Is it safe to come in? Are we good?” he asked, looking from one to the other. “Okay, then. With that out of the way, we should probably get going here.”
As they broke the embrace, Matt noticed Peyton’s eyes dance with alarm as she looked at the sketch of the Fong Hou that Meredith had faxed. Matt motioned to Blake, who was loitering in the hallway just outside the study door.
“Okay,” Matt said, pulling out a piece of paper from Blake’s printer and leaning on the desk. “We’ll head out of the inlet to the ship.” He drew a rough sketch of the inlet, the bay, the bridge-tunnel, and the location of the ship in relation to those geographical features.
“Moon is coming out at eleven p.m., so we need to be away from the ship before that. Gives us about two hours to scout it out,” Blake said.
“Okay, we’re looking for hull ladders. Every ship has ladders that go up the hull,” Matt said, pointing upward with one hand. “We want to identify our point of entry and exit.”
“What precisely are we looking to do tomorrow night?” Blake asked.
“Well, we have two objectives. The first is to get Zachary back, alive,” he said, looking at Blake. “The second is to destroy the ship’s ability to launch those UAVs.”
“Right, but how?” Peyton wondered aloud.
“This ship plan here . . .” Matt said, pulling Meredith’s fax onto the desk. “This thing shows the runway down the center aisle of the ship.”
“It’s weird, bro. Gary said he saw containers stacked to the sky on that bad boy,” Blake said.
Matt looked at him.
“Maybe it’s just a shell. Maybe the runway is beneath the shell of those containers,” Peyton said. “They would have to know about our satellite capabilities.”
They both looked at her and then at each other. Matt thought it was possible, but it was a huge engineering feat that would have required years of thought, planning, and construction.
“I think there’s a good possibility you’re right, Peyton. China’s no friend.” Blake patted Peyton on the back lightly.
“That would mean this conspiracy dates back at least ten years,” Matt said. “Kind of makes you wonder what else has occurred in those ten years—what other Trojan horses are out there.”
“So we find the runway and these UAVs,” Blake said.
“No. The ground control station is what we’re after. The UAVs are useless without the terminal. So instead of having to take out eighteen UAVs, we need to disable one ground control station. If we get the station, I think we’ll destroy whatever capability Dr. Insect built into these Predators. The station looks like this,” Matt said, pulling out a sheet of paper with a picture on it. “This isn’t exact, but it was the best I could do on the Internet yesterday.”
“Looks like a computer terminal inside a refrigerator,” Blake said.
“Right. But the distinguishing feature of this puppy is that it has a unique antenna on it that looks like the Space Needle. We find that antenna on the ship, we know the general location of the ground control station,” Matt said.
“You’re a genius,” Blake acknowledged.
“I know.”
“Now for Zachary,” Matt continued, moving to the next sheet of paper. “This shot of the ship’s interior rooms is almost like a blueprint.”
“Okay,” Blake said, staring at the diagram.
“Anyway, there’s a section of rooms right here that are labeled,” Matt said, pointing at the diagram. “It shows these rooms here as service rooms. And everything else, if you think about it, kind of fits what we believe that thing really is, which is an aircraft carrier. These rooms are the only place they could confine someone.”
Matt’s finger smacked the map emphatically.
“He has to be there,” he said.
“So, we look for the ladders that will get us closest to where Zachary and the space needle are,” Blake said.
“Roger. Let’s rock,” Matt said, pushing the papers away and walking toward the door.
Blake, Matt, and Peyton walked out the back door along a dimly lit path to the dock and stepped i
nto Blake’s Boston Whaler.
“Why not the Zodiac?”
“Save that for tomorrow night. I’d rather only run that puppy one time past the big boat.”
They shoved off with Blake cranking the low humming engine and the Mercury 200 shaking in the water on low throttle.
Matt looked at Peyton, who was staring into space, arms folded and a decidedly worried look on her face. She was an enigma. She had come out of nowhere, crashed into his life, and suddenly his fate and the fate of the free world hung in the balance. Was it just coincidence, he wondered, or was there something more to it? Was she by his side because of Providence? Or had she been delivered to him by someone with more nefarious intentions? Was she good or evil?
As the Boston Whaler carved a quiet path into the broadening waters of Lynnhaven inlet, Matt could see the boat docks and yachts dotted along either side of the waterway. The still water of the inlet met mostly bulkheads, which gave way to well-manicured lawns and estates ranging from contemporary to traditional. Was this evidence of Hellerman’s notion of high mass consumption, or were these mansions symbols of freedom matured and refined over the years? The country was so insulated, so disconnected from the military and the global war. It was almost as if the country’s spirit was adrift.
Matt froze at the thought. There was no question in his mind that Hellerman was connected to Ballantine somehow. He could feel his adrenaline pumping, not unlike standing in the batter’s box at the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs, needing a hit to keep the rally going.
Blake made the turn past Chick’s Bar and Restaurant and aimed for the Lynnhaven Bridge. Matt felt the boat toss and pitch as Blake maneuvered the small craft through the rapid current where the Chesapeake Bay funneled through a narrow gap into Lynnhaven Inlet. He recognized the Danger, No Swimming and Danger, Fast Current signs flanking the passage. There was even one featuring the count of how many people had drowned in this very small area.
“Up to forty-eight, huh?”
“Yeah, pretty sad, man. Had a kid, maybe fifteen, a few weeks ago think he was invincible. Tried to swim the channel on a dare,” Blake said, pointing a football field away to the north where the shore reappeared and the Lesner Bridge reconnected with land. “Kid was maybe thirty yards into the water when he shot out to the bay like he was being dragged by a shark. They were doing it at night. All his friends on the shore were screaming. By the time they found him, he had drowned.”
