by AJ Tata
There was absolutely nothing he could do about it except accelerate his climb onto the ledge. He did, but it was too late. He felt the pistol pop out of his waist and visualized it falling. About the time he would have expected to hear a small splash, he heard a dull thud. Either splashes registered as thuds this high up or the pistol landed in the boat. He hoped he hadn’t just killed Blake or Peyton.
He was on the gunwale and quickly slipped over onto the deck of the ship. He found himself staring at a large container, but could see a pathway toward the superstructure of the ship. Stopping to catch his breath and ensure he at least had some ammunition left, Matt heard a high buzzing sound, like the sound of a weed eater.
The sound also reminded him of remotely piloted airplanes, the kind you see on the weekends in the open fields, with a father and son laughing and playing with the joystick as the small aircraft does barrel rolls in the sky. Funny he should be having that image pop into his mind as it occurred to him that Ballantine was launching the first unmanned aerial vehicle.
Destination unknown.
Chapter 53
Aboard the Fong Hou
Ballantine looked at the television screen and saw the darkened cave of the Fong Hou runway. Though he sat in a comfortable chair in the ship’s command center, his visual perspective was that of a pilot looking out of the cockpit window of the Predator.
He and Admiral Chen had completed inspection of the crude nuclear bombs the technicians had affixed to four of the Predators. The remaining aircraft were carrying VX nerve gas as their payload. Chen and Ballantine kept their distance.
The technicians had then entered the grid coordinates into the global positioning system aboard each aircraft, allowing them to fly on autopilot once launched, much like cruise missiles shot from U.S. Navy ships. Because they could only launch one Predator at a time with the single monitor, Ballantine had elected to fly each aircraft for thirty minutes, get it on cruise path, and then release it to the Queen Bee’s satellite control for digital guidance.
Flight time at 70 mph to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, would be three hours. The flight to the Pentagon would be about two hours, and then Ballantine would launch the chemical attacks on population centers, saving the nearby naval station in Norfolk for last. This would give him the opportunity to get in his Sherpa and fly it directly into the White House with a nuclear bomb aboard.
Sitting in the command center at the controls of the Predator terminal, he waited for the green light to flash, which would give him the signal to release the brakes on the Predator. The red light flickered to yellow.
Ballantine marveled at the genius of their campaign so far. It had been innovative and lethal. While in his view the Americans had come into Afghanistan with a muted and limp response to the September 11 attacks, this campaign could serve as a primer on how to attack a country in the twenty-first century. Start with terrifying attacks on the civilian population, follow with debilitating attacks on military infrastructure, and conclude with destruction of command and control capability.
Through the television screen, Ballantine saw Admiral Chen walk to the front of the Predator and stand at attention, saluting in strict military fashion. The admiral disappeared from sight as the small light at the bottom of his control terminal turned green.
Although Ballantine could not hear it, he could sense that the whining engine of the Predator had become deafening. He released the brake and the catapult shot the aircraft forward along the centerline of the runway. He gingerly handled the joystick as he watched the Predator bore through the cavern. Quickly, though, the Predator was free of the runway, dipping a bit off the bow’s elevated ramp. He gained rudder control and pulled the joystick to the rear, gathering altitude as he left the throttle full. Like playing a video game, he thought, though much more deadly.
The nuclear bomb weighed about thirty pounds and pulled down on the nose of the aircraft, forcing him to fight against gravity. He had flown the Sherpa overloaded with fishing gear enough to know not to fight to gain altitude, instead nosing over and letting the engine catch up with the workload. Ballantine tipped the nose forward just a bit and immediately was rewarded with a smoother ride.
Through the camera, he could see that the unpiloted Predator was probably one hundred feet above the glimmering water of Chesapeake Bay. Headed east, he would soon bank the aircraft to the south and then to the west over Virginia Beach, setting it on course for the command center at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg.
Ballantine tilted the joystick slightly to the right, bringing the Predator to a southbound course. He began picking up the lights of Fort Story and the strip along the beachfront, and then he turned the Predator some more. The aircraft was actually quite responsive and easy to maneuver. The sterile environment of the Predator monitor did not provide the hum of the engine and the bumps of the wind—those extrasensory items that give a good pilot the feel he needs.
After about twenty minutes, he leveled the Predator at 800 feet above ground level, the normal height C-130 and C-141 aircraft flying near Fort Bragg used when they conducted parachute-drop operations. He set the speed at 70 mph and locked in an azimuth of 207 degrees, a south by southwesterly heading. Through the camera, Ballantine could see the occasional house or cluster of lights indicating a suburb. He checked the global-positioning-system grid coordinate against the map on the wall in the command center and realized the Predator had just passed into North Carolina. He released the joystick, watching as the autopilot took over.
Ballantine pressed a small green button on the computer terminal and watched as a second computer screen started flashing computer-generated dots from a central position on the screen to a single moving icon. Ballantine was pleased to see that Dr. Insect’s nanotechnology was working. The Queen Bee was communicating with the first Predator.
After about five minutes, he was confident that the aircraft would hold the desired course and, in about two hours, would achieve the desired effect.
Ballantine pressed a button labeled monitor only, which turned off the camera display from Predator One but continued to display the grid coordinate progress of the aircraft. Placing Predator One in monitor-only mode allowed him to free up enough bandwidth to launch Predator Two using the video feed.
Ballantine thought back two years to the original e-mail from a contact in France with encoded messages pertaining to the Fong Hou, the Predators, and the final mission of attacking the listed targets with unmanned aircraft. He remembered reviewing the information on his Dell laptop using Microsoft Word after he had downloaded the e-mail and its instructions of terror from his Yahoo! e-mail account. He had been curious, but delighted, about the China connection. China brought to the table what all the other nations had been lacking—unlimited resources and ample technology under a veil of extreme secrecy.
The nuclear-grade material, the chemicals, and the germs were all refined in China. They were put on a simple merchant ship and were being transferred to the most surprising means of attack—American Predators—that anyone could imagine. Ballantine smiled at the thought, then spoke into his headset. “Admiral, prepare Predator Two.”
Chapter 54
Aboard the Fong Hou
Matt watched through his night-vision goggles as the Predator whined and lifted slowly into the sky, eventually drifting out of sight.
One down, he thought to himself. Ballantine is holding Zachary hostage on this ship while he launches nukes and God knows what else at the United States. At least Matt had made a phone call to the one person who he thought might be able to do something about it. Maybe he was wrong, but it was worth the chance.
He walked slowly, hunched over, staying low to avoid what looked like firing parapets in some of the containers. He could barely make out the space-needle satellite antenna near the bridge of the ship. He focused on that while keeping an eye on the containers. Something didn’t feel right about them.
Fifty feet from an opening that led to the bridge, he saw
a muzzle slide slowly out of a small rectangular hole in the container on his left. The muzzle was no more than two feet in front of his face.
He froze and watched the bore drift toward him, stopping before the barrel of the weapon reached his head. It then slid slowly away from him. He gently moved toward the container so that he was flush with the wall. The muzzle swept its sector again and then retreated into the container.
Matt waited for a few seconds and then proceeded. He could hear talking as he passed below the firing parapet and paused long enough to recognize it as Chinese. He stopped near the ladder to the bridge.
Through his goggles, he looked up to the bridge and saw a bright spot inside the hexagon of a steering room. He could see four or five panes of square glass and a dim light, with other lights flashing, the way a television does as it changes images during a program. The lights were different hues of green through his goggles, so he lifted his headset and paused a second before opening his eyes again.
Matt remained focused on the six-sided command center, approaching the ladder with stealth. He was a bit concerned that it had so far been too easy. His general work ethic told him that if something was easy, it was probably not worth the effort. The harder the task, the more worthwhile the endeavor. Not that what he had been through over the past year had been easy, but this specific phase, this subset, was too simple.
As if it was a trap.
“Matt Garrett, I presume?”
The voice was a deep, penetrating baritone that rang an alarm bell inside Matt’s most primal hiding places. And the words were followed by an audible click of a weapon hammer locking to the rear.
“Ballantine, how pleasant,” Matt said without turning. “I thought I killed you back at Moncrief.”
“You Americans think you have martyred so many freedom fighters that are still alive.”
“Glad to have another shot at it,” Matt replied.
“Cocky son of a bitch,” Ballantine said with a chuckle.
“I have an idea, Ballantine.”
Matt was still facing away from Ballantine and now he could feel the cool circular rim of some form of firearm pressed against his head.
“I like ideas, Garrett.”
“You had Hellerman send me up to Moncrief so you could kill me up there, but I was always curious about why you didn’t just come down to Stanardsville and kill me there. What gives?”
“You have such an inquiring mind, Mr. Garrett. And such an imagination, implicating your own vice president in our scheme.”
“The way I see it, my brother Zachary captured you, fought you man-to-man,” Matt said. “He killed your brother in the process, but, hey, it was war. Hellerman helped you out when you were a prisoner after Zachary captured you in Iraq. He was a Reserve officer in military intelligence when he interrogated you.”
“Young men have such imaginations,” Ballantine said.
Matt continued. “You told him that you had a tape recording of his voice telling the ambassador to go ahead and let Iraq attack Kuwait. See, Hellerman wanted the war for some insane personal reasons and, of course, Hussein wanted Kuwait for his own, shall we say, personal reasons.”
“You are a bright young man, Matt Garrett. But while I appreciate this history lesson, we have business to attend to. I will kill you while your brother watches, and then he and I will both fly away in my airplane to attack your White House. Sound like fun?”
“Loads. But hear me out, Ballantine. Anyway, you promised Hellerman that you would give him the only copy of the tape on which his very distinctive voice authorizes the ambassador to tell Hussein it is okay to attack Kuwait. It was your insurance policy.”
“Don’t be so sure of yourself. I’ve received help from any number of accomplices.”
“Well, Rampert’s a soldier. Hellerman’s a weasel politician. That’s a no-brainer. Where’s Lantini, by the way?”
“All politicians are weasels, no argument there. You’ll see Ronnie Wood soon enough.” Ballantine laughed.
Matt felt the barrel of the weapon push him toward the ladder.
“Good,” Matt said, and with one swift movement he spun, lifting his left arm and cracking it against the pistol Ballantine was holding. The pistol fired one shot as Ballantine lost control of it, the shot going wide, striking metal with a high-resolution ping behind Matt’s ear. The pistol made a loud clanking noise as it dropped on the deck of the ship.
Matt reached back for his AR-15, which was slung across his back. But he was met with Ballantine’s boot to the ribs. Matt doubled over but found the strength to grab Ballantine’s head and lift his knee into Ballantine’s face as he watched his rifle skid across the deck.
Matt heard an audible crack, but quickly found himself being swept to the ground by a hand pulling at his heel. His head struck the hard, metal floor of the ship deck, causing him to black out for a moment, but leaving him the good sense to kick Ballantine in the balls and scurry to his feet.
“Ballantine, you want the tape. I know,” Matt said, squaring off with his adversary as though they were wrestlers.
“Why would I want that stupid tape anymore?”
“You don’t sound too sure of yourself,” Matt said between rapid breaths. He saw Ballantine pull a knife from his waistband.
“Let’s see if this is more convincing,” Ballantine said, waving the knife in front of Matt’s face.
Matt quickly recalled his own personal axiom of always bring a gun to a knife fight. He eyed his rifle about fifteen feet away.
“How about I trade you the tape for my brother?” Matt said.
“You think you have this all figured out, don’t you?” Ballantine said. “Years of planning this invasion and a bit of personal revenge and you think you can climb up on my ship and change my mind?”
“Look, Jacques, your brother is dead, and I’m truly sorry about that,” Matt said. He saw Ballantine’s eyes flicker, just for a moment, with sadness, only to be replaced by boiling hatred. “But your deal with Hellerman, I presume, is to get this tape back to him. You get a new identity and probably a government-sponsored witness-protection-program vacation somewhere. Am I right?”
They were still circling like two collegiate wrestlers. Ballantine was quiet, his mind processing what Matt was telling him. Matt guessed that he was close and that his assessments were accurate. He had ruled out Rampert as a suspect when he remembered Hellerman was a Reserve military intelligence officer with the State Department during the Gulf War. Hellerman had access to everything.
When Matt thought about Hellerman’s obsession with the Rebuild America project, it provided the perfect cover for his conspiracy. So he figured the tape, the last remaining bit of evidence that anyone had against Hellerman, was both Ballantine’s ticket into America to conduct the terrorist attacks and Hellerman’s chance to have his war with complete deniability, provided Ballantine retrieved the tape. The real question, to be sorted later, was, What was Lantini’s connection?
“Now that you have me all figured out, it is a shame that you will have to take your secrets to your grave.”
As they circled, Ballantine was always sure to keep Matt away from the rifle and pistol. In Matt’s view, the Iraqi seemed to be enjoying the one-on-one. This was the reason Ballantine had not simply come to Stanardsville and killed him. It was the game. Ballantine’s brother had been killed in war, the ultimate chess match, and now Ballantine wanted the same challenge, to prove himself every bit as capable and worthy as Zachary Garrett.
“You’re not as good as my brother, Ballantine,” Matt said, feeding off the thought.
“We shall see, Garrett. Right now your brother is on his death bed and will soon be vaporized as he plunges into the White House in my Sherpa.”
Matt could hear a slight buzzing noise, like an active beehive. He swallowed hard. “How many Predators have you launched?”
“I think I hear the good admiral readying the second one right now.”
“So are you going to ki
ll me, or are we just getting to know each other?” Matt asked. “You’re an artist, Ballantine. Are you trying to live up to some macho image or something? Why can’t you leave it alone?”
“Did you leave it alone, as you say, when you thought your brother was dead, and you believed that you had not done enough to save him?”
Touché, Matt thought. Ballantine had done his homework. He would know from Matt’s silence that he could chalk one up in his column.
“I didn’t go to the Philippines to try and find the guy who fired the shot. I dealt with it in my own ways, privately,” Matt said. It occurred to him that they were two people who had experienced similar emotions. They had both shared a battlefield with their brothers and each had lost—or in his case, believed he had lost—a brother there.
“Then you are the weak one. If we do not avenge our family, what do we have left?” Ballantine said.
In a way, Matt understood exactly what his rival was saying. Matt, too, had wanted to reach out and strangle anyone that had anything to do with Zachary’s death.
“But you have to admit that death on the battlefield is different than this,” Matt said.
“That is where you are wrong. The battlefield is everywhere. Warfare has changed, and I am most disappointed in you that you do not acknowledge that. This is the battlefield,” Ballantine said, sweeping his hand across the ship.
“Maybe your battlefield, but to what end?”
“To rob from the rich and give to the poor. Isn’t that a great Anglo-Saxon fairy tale?”
“Robin Hood was a common thief and beggar,” Matt said. “And I’m getting tired of this conversation.” He heard a whining noise and watched as the second Predator wobbled off the bow of the ship.
