The situation was mind-boggling. And if his unseen opponent was trying to cause the utmost in confusion and terror in him, then that person had succeeded. Matt moved to the bathroom to treat his wounds. He cleaned them and then used liquid bandage on the multiple places from which he was bleeding. He was looking in the mirror when he had another epiphany.
He’d been so caught up in his own misery that he’d forgotten his literary lessons. In The Count of Monte Cristo, which in his eyes was the ultimate book of revenge, Edmund Dantes goes about executing a plan of retaliation that was unrivaled in length and details. He systematically broke Mansour Villefort down to a nub. By the time he’d revealed himself, Villefort was so badly broken that he literally went mad at the discovery that there had been an unseen vandal who had been secretly behind every horrible thing that had been happening to him. And as it turned out, it was a person with a legitimate grudge.
Matt now knew that whoever was doing this to him was trying to have that moment. They were trying to make him go mad. How foolish was he to just blindly plod around. He fell right into whatever they had going. Being that child of the movies, he also had another thought—a James Bond thought.
What was the name of the bad guy who had the white blue-eyed cat? Blofeld? Matt remembered that in the movie, Diamonds Are Forever, he died at James Bond’s hands. But as it turned out, Bond killed his double. At that very moment, as he realized that Pablo did not die that day, a helicopter thundered over his house and a very powerful machine gun roared to life, essentially cutting his house in two.
* * *
President Lawrence Caulfield watched his meeting prep tape that his Chief of Staff, Kim Callahan, had just streamed it to him. He was no stranger to planes being brought down, or boats burning and bombed until they sank. America had suffered a great deal of loss while he sat at the helm.
Despite his shortcomings, the country rallied behind the man they observed was strong enough to return for more of that punishment. In what had to be the cleanest campaign in U.S. history—no one wanted to mud sling in the country when it was so fragile—he won by a good margin and reclaimed the acid pit that was his office. Well, the office wasn’t an acid pit, but his stomach had been most of the time that he had worked there. He just connected the two.
The current intelligence information was that the downing of the Southwest plane and the attack on the ferry were not related to each other as far as the explosion was concerned. Whatever happened to them had happened independently, as two different projectiles damaged the planes engines and they had missed the ferry almost completely.
Initially, it was the pilot who was the one who reported that two objects had zipped past before his engines went out. And now they had received a report from a Seattle fire fighter who was on the ferry. He heard the first strike, and then he saw the second. Whatever it was blew the engine out as the plane passed overhead, the maw of the turbines were in tatters.
That information was disturbing enough. But it had now been discovered that this particular Southwest pilot was the same pilot who had flown Matt Hurst to Mexico four years before. A weird coincidence?
Soon the news would break that the plane had been both piloted by him and shot down by some sort of drone. Of course, the public as well as numerous government agencies would all jump to the conclusion that Pablo Manuel was culpable.
Little did anyone know that it was the CIA that had created the fake video of Pablo Manuel threatening to come back and exact revenge if the world did not fall into line and act accordingly. Of course, when they’d shot that video, they also thought this “new Messiah” was dead. Only afterward was it discovered that the body they had in their hands was not that of Pablo Manuel.
The world thought he was still alive because their video made it appear so, and as it turned out now, they were not lying—according to the DNA that they had obtained. In the fabricated video, the CIA audio teams pretended to be Manuel and stated that he would come back if he didn’t like what the world was doing.
It was now dawning on Lawrence that Pablo might have taken that as a challenge. Divers said the hull of the ferry was ripped apart like a torpedo had hit it. President Caulfield was aware that Matt Hurst thought he’d killed Pablo that day in Ecuador, but DNA showed later on that he did not.
Only a handful of people kept the erroneous secret that Manuel was really dead, including Matt’s handler Chase Viana, and an even smaller circle knew he was really still alive. That circle was government only, and even then, it was the smallest circle Lawrence ever had. TJAC was the catalyst behind his presidency, but anything about Manuel was highly classified information.
Lawrence just figured that if Matt went to work for TJAC, then Jim Jensen would train him and he would be as prepared as anyone could be to face whatever the future would hold. It now appeared their enemy found Hurst and it looked as though he needed to get a hold of Chase and let him know that he needed to bring Matt in.
Eric Barnett had warned him about this, as he was one of the few in the know about what had really happened, and Eric thought Hurst had the right to know he killed a body double, that his bad guy was still out there.
Lawrence begged to differ, and was just doing what he thought best, as Pablo Manuel had been able to hack into all their government sites without a problem. Lawrence wanted to make Matt a ghost, out of the reach of the ever bumbling bureaucracy of the U.S. government. Although he could have been in witness protection, he would have been in a system somewhere and Manuel would have found him. Not that his plan had turned out any better.
He opened his locked drawer and retrieved the Blackberry that Chase had given him. It was no average Blackberry though, as it had special encrypted software that could not be traced. It only worked between the two of them and only after he punched in the nine-digit access code. Even Presidents can have secrets. He texted Chase, “We need to bring Hurst in, he’s in real danger, we believe Manuel is alive and caused the Seattle situation.”
The text back was not pleasing, “We concur something is wrong. Hurst activated his GPS locator thirty-two minutes ago. As you know, he has been AWOL for weeks. Jim is checking it out as we speak, the signal is local.”
Lawrence knew that if Jim Jensen was going in on this, then he could count on it being taken care of and reported back promptly. He texted, “I have the Joint Chiefs gathering. This has the signature of Manuel and I know Matt is living up there under an alias. Kim believes his alias was compromised three weeks ago. We have a picture of him linked to a story of a new type of video game that is supposed to inspire people’s patriotism. He was listed as the CEO of this game company and we believe that photo sparked this attack.”
Chase texted, “He activated the locator. If he activates the pointer, we need to be on the same page.”
The President stoically responded, “You prepared him for that eventuality, correct?”
Chase responded with a cold, “Yes, he knows how serious it is, the question is are you prepared to handle the fallout?”
President Caulfield answered his mentor; “I won’t have much choice so you guys had better make it count.”
The next sentence was a difficult question that could have been answered with unending ambiguity, but he saw no point in lying to the man who got him elected. Chase asked his friend and the leader of the free world if he knew Pablo was alive all along.
Lawrence typed one word back that said it all, “Classified.”
* * *
Doug didn’t have a car as he’d come with the airline transport vehicle to the hospital. His intention was to stay with his passengers, which, of course, he had now abandoned with only a meager explanation. There was a Southwest Regional Manager running the show, and Doug knew all along he was just a figurehead, so that was justification enough as he was definitely heading off.
He could see from the Hurst’s hospital room that the harbor was only blocks away and he began a light jog there. By the time he arrived he was in more of
a run. The Harbor was big and he needed a break in finding what he needed. Right then he found that break, a maintenance guy who looked of retirement age. He had grey hair, wore thick glasses and a smile on his face as Doug approached him in his cart, which was laden with the obligatory tools of the trade and a grey trashcan in the back bed. He asked the guy if knew where the seaplanes docked?
The man’s response was, “There’s only one, hop in and I’ll take you there.” His name was Ed Trinidad, and he was a retired Navy guy from Bellingham. He, of course, noticed that Doug was still in uniform and it wasn’t long before he put two and two together as the word Southwest could be heard just about every other second on the news.
It turned out to be Ed’s pleasure and point of curiosity when he dropped him at Luke Slate’s place. According to Ed, “Luke runs a private sight seeing and charter company and is as ornery as they come—to anyone not looking to go sightseeing that is.”
Ed wished him good luck and Doug could see was still wondering why a pilot that just barely survived one crash would be in a hurry to go back up? Before he pulled off, Doug stopped him and asked that he please not reveal his whereabouts. Ed looked Doug sternly in the eye and apparently liking what he saw said, “Okay by me, son, looks like you’ve earned a break.”
He drove off looking for answers and Doug thought, yeah, good luck.
Slate’s Sightseeing was an office not attached to the land. It had a small bridge that went over to it, as it stood on stilts. The building was good sized and as Doug entered he saw the plane hitched to their dock. It was red with their logos all around. The door chimed when he entered and a few seconds later a man who introduced himself as Richard Luke Slate came in. He preferred to be called Luke, Doug later learned.
He was a six-footer with brown fading hair and wore only a mustache on his face. He was wearing a hat that Doug thought looked like a safari hat, but he took it off at the introduction, and off it stayed. He wore hiking boots, khaki shorts, and a khaki short sleeve button up shirt. He certainly looked the part of an adventurer.
Doug pumped his hand as he was introducing himself, but Slate immediately retorted, “Everyone knows who you are, Son.”
Doug replied, “Those with a good memory.”
Slate responded with a heartfelt laugh, “Memory? In case you didn’t know, they just broke the story of what happened to your plane today, not five minutes ago. Couple that with the information that you escorted a group of passengers to the hospital here and memories don’t have to be long.
“On top of all that, the connection has been made that you were the pilot who was forced to fly Matt Hurst out of the country four years ago and everybody’s memory just got refreshed in a big hurry. Believe me, they’re looking for you, Son, the paparazzi have questions for you. Last I heard, they were converging on the hospital up the street.”
Knowing that the information would be coming out at any minute, Doug had been preparing for the discovery of his past, but Luke’s words were still like heavy blows. It had taken forever for people to stop talking about him before. He lived in the shadows of life now. He had never desired a spotlight even before this, but less now.
Apparently he was broadcasting his emotions and Luke said, “Sorry, I guess you didn’t know about it. I thought you were running here from them or some darned thing.”
Doug had really good eyesight and Luke had left the door to his office open. Doug’s uncle was a war hero in Vietnam, so he’d seen a Silver Star before—plenty of times at his Uncle’s—and now again, in a frame on Luke’s wall.
Doug didn’t know where to begin, but the truth was a good start. It was a long story but he broke it down to fifteen minutes. Luke had his listening hat on, so things were not repeated a whole lot. After Doug was through he thought he would have seen more amazement in the man’s eyes, but it wasn’t there. What was there was belief, much to Doug’s disbelief. Luke’s only interruption was when he stated rhetorically, “Matt’s wife and kid lay up the street right now, as we speak, huh?”
Luke was a, “get to the point” kind of guy, so he asked, “What do you need from me, Doug?”
The answer was the plane, of course, but he wasn’t expecting Luke to hand over the keys to his livelihood, so he asked, “Do you want to take an adventure?”
Much to Doug’s disappointment the answer was, “No.”
Luke explained that he wasn’t the pilot any longer, but his son was and he was gone for the day. “The Doc grounded me, Doug. I developed fainting spells and bouts of loss of equilibrium. Fortunately no one was ever hurt,” he added.
Doug didn’t know what to say, as he wasn’t going to ask the man to lend him his plane. “Do you know anyone else who can fly me, Luke, anyone at all? I need to help him, even if I have to drive over there, but it has to be now. I won’t ask and wouldn’t accept your rig right there, so don’t even suggest it.”
Luke chuckled, “I wasn’t going to, sorry, as it’s not mine to lend. He walked out onto the dock and headed left to a slip with a thirty-foot covered yacht. On the other side of that yacht was a floating piece of canvass. They stopped and he told Doug, “This I can lend you.”
* * *
Scott had stayed with the ferry until after the fantail sank, and fifteen seconds later came the video that would win him a Pulitzer Prize, he had no doubt. A man had gotten free of the vessel and managed to swim through the undertow of the sinking ship. He’d burst up out of the sudden calm like a banshee, startling everyone around before he was pulled to safety.
Because of the configuration of the rescue boats on the other side, the area was basically obscured by rescue craft, and Scott was the only one with an unobstructed view. With his zoom lens, he shot a very important video for the authorities as well. It was gripping.
He set his camera on record so he had a video, but throughout the video he had also used the photo button at several opportune times to snap stills.
He stayed and photographed the disembarkment of the plane and after three hours his stomach started to rumble. He remembered he had a multitude of things to do to prepare for her arrival, and then he’d noticed it. There were no planes in the air.
He needed to get home to at least freshen up and change. He tapped his pocket to check her flight status on his phone. Oh great, my cell phone is in the car, what an idiot! Scott ran back to his car and, of course, there were seven missed calls: four from newspaper colleagues, one from his mom, and two from Lauren.
He listened to hers first. She was in Houston and her flight to Seattle had been delayed indefinitely due to what was going on. He noted a sound of desperation in her voice. The second message was that she had secured a flight to Portland and would drive to Seattle, rather than sit around like an idiot.
She’d given him the flight information, so he started his car and hurried back to his house as fast as safety would allow. Once there he could see that the cleaning people had come—that was one off the list. He turned on the news to get the story. He had thought about turning on the car radio and blasting it on the dock, but he never would have heard it, and he would have had to leave his keys in the car, so no. Consequently, this whole time he’d been in the dark as to what had happened?
He checked the time and saw that he had no reason to be antsy; it was still early in the afternoon. Then he’d realized just what a pussy he’d become. No wonder he’d lost her the first time he had her, he was a hopeless pussy. After everything he’d witnessed today, he was still feeling the Lauren butterflies. Why did this girl have such a hold on him?
Apparently he must have the same affect on her, as she needed to recoup her relationship with him. He was her safe haven and her safety net when the world fell apart. He was the backup plan also—not that he was unhappy to be her backup plan. He would have basically worn women’s clothes and talked in a bad Welsh accent for the rest of his days just to spend his nights with her.
The station showed up to retrieve a copy of his video, as he had called Tin
a right away. He gave them the video and the still photos that he wanted to share, making sure to keep some doozies for himself—especially, the man breaching the water, just like a Pulitzer Whale.
He headed back out around two, and Seattle was obviously still shell shocked. Traffic was very light. When one lived where he lived, everything one did was predicated on traffic. You hear about the traffic of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, but the greater Seattle area had to be right behind them. Not today though, the streets were nearly empty.
Word was spreading that this was an act of terrorism, and the President was going on at five to address the speculation.
He still needed to get his hair cut at the very least. Hopefully he would hear from Lauren soon. He got right in at the shop, oddly named Ralphz Hare. It was a large place with no rooms, just a wide open shop with ten chairs. This place had only male stylists and was set up to be a “No Woman Zone.”
His man was Axel, and Axel “got him” hair wise. His name was probably Bruce or something in reality, but regardless, he looked like a modern James Dean, and Scott felt a little cooler just being around him, let alone getting his hair cut by him.
He requested the usual and Axel was on it. Obviously, the only thing on Axel’s mind was the crash and he was waiting to get off work and get home to see the President. Wanting to try out his new elite status as “News Reporter,” Scott let Axel in on the fact that he was at the right place at the right time and got it all. When Axel got home, he would be watching Scott’s video on the news.
He elaborated that he was there, but not happily. It was kind of hard to call it the right place when a bunch of people died and the Sound became a massive graveyard of innocent people. Scott mused sarcastically to himself that Axel wasn’t exactly the intellectual type, what with all the exclamations at the right juncture in the story. He had “Whoa,” then there was the timeless, “Gnarly,” and finally a, “Dude!“ It was like telling the story to Bart Simpson.
Without Wrath (Harbinger of Change Book 3) Page 19
