The Matarese Countdown

by Robert Ludlum

  "Al, " said the man at the helm.

  "Lookee over there!"

  "Where?"

  "On my side."

  "At what, Sam?" asked Al, turning around.

  "That round thing floatin' over yonder."

  "Yeah, I see it. And there's another, to the left."

  "Yep, I see that, too. I'll head over." The boat careened to the right,

  approaching both objects.

  "I'll be schnozzled!" cried Sam.

  "Them's life preservers."

  "You get yours, then swing around and I'll pick up the other." Each did so, pulling both objects into the skiff.

  "Wowee!" shouted Sam.

  "These is real U.S. Air Force issue.

  Musta' cost mebbe a hundred or even two hundred dollars apiece!"

  "Probably three hundred, Sam. Ten bucks to make and the soldier boys buy 'em for three, mebbe four hundred. You heard about them toilet seats and the wrenches, right?"

  "Sure did."

  "That's why our taxes is so high, right?"

  "Right, so let's get a little of our own back. We'll keep 'em, right?"

  "Why not? All these years we never had a life preserver." Al held up his solid white ring in the fading light.

  "We never needed one," said Sam.

  "This old thing is as safe as a cement whale."

  "A cement whale would sink, buddy."

  "Then we'll keep 'em. You know, when we was comin' out of the Choptank, I heard one of those helliocopters headin' upstream. You think he lost 'em?"

  "Naw," objected Al.

  "The soldier boys are trained to get rid of things like this. Then they got to buy more, like the cracked toilet seats and the lousy wrenches. I read somewhere it's part of the system."

  "Hell, I'm patriotic, goddamn it. I was at Anzio and you was at that place in the Pacific nobody can pronounce."

  "Eniwetok, buddy. A piece of crap."

  "So we keep these, right?"

  "Why not?"

  "Good. Now let's catch some more fish before the beer runs out," said Sam.

  No one knew what happened; nobody understood; everything was madness.

  The Langley chopper approached touchdown, the ground crew in place, when suddenly the aircraft swung up to the left, automatic weapons blazing from the open supply portal, killing or severely wounding the soldiers gathered below. Then, just as suddenly, the helicopter veered to the right, sweeping over the compound as if looking for another target. It was swiftly apparent: the estate's great house, the mansion that overlooked the enormous lawn and the boathouse. The chopper circled, ascending as it did so, to make its final run of devastation.

  Stunned by the thunderous explosions of gunfire, Scofield and Pryce ran to the south windows, the direction from which came the staccato bursts and human screams.

  "Good Christ!" shouted Brandon.

  "They're coming in after us!"

  "It's too concentrated," disagreed Cam rapidly.

  "One source look My God, it's Silent Horse! What the hell? ..."

  "Wanna bet, kiddo?" countered Scofield.

  "It's mocked up to look like Silent Horse! It's heading toward us. We're out of here!" Bray started for the door.

  "No!" yelled Pryce.

  "The north balconies!"

  "What?"

  "There are two drainpipes. We don't know what he's carrying. Can you handle it?"

  "Try me, sonny boy. I've got to find Toni!" As one, both men raced to the French doors across the room, flung them open, and stepped out on the small balcony with the wrought-iron railing. The helicopter thundered above, the roar ear-shattering as the aircraft headed north, slipping into a turn.

  "Bombs!" yelled Pryce.

  "It's loaded with bombs!"

  "He'll be coming back to blow this place to Jupiter-" "He's got to get more altitude unless he wants to blow with it. Let's go!" Each man climbed over the railing on opposite sides of the balcony. They reached out, half lunging, grabbing on to their respective drainpipes. Like two panicked spiders, hands below descending hands, at moments in sheer slides, they plummeted to the ground as the chopper swung up into its turn to reach a safe altitude for a bombing run.

  "Stay down and as close to the foundation as you can," ordered Cameron.

  "He'll make at least two or three passes to unload that junk."

  "Even in my senility I figured that out," said Scofield.

  "When he goes into his first pass, dropping his load, we can get away from here.... I've got to find Toni!"

  "Do you know where she went?"

  "She said something about the boathouse-" "Why not?" Pryce broke in.

  "If worse comes to a lousy worser, we can zigzag across the bay."

  "Your grammar's impeccable," mumbled Bray.

  "Here comes the son of a bitch!"

  What followed was nothing short of complete horror. The entire top floors of the great house were demolished, leaving only fires and smoke and debris where once stood architectural grandeur.

  "Let's go."" repeated Cameron.

  "Down to the boathouse! We've got at least forty seconds because his second pass will come from the south."

  The two figures ran across the descending lawn as the mocked-up Silent Horse continued its reign of terror. Billows of fired smoke curled into the sky as the lethal explosions shook the earth. Breathless, Scofield and Pryce leaned against the wall of the boathouse, watching the devastation.

  "Did you hear that?" asked a washed-out Brandon.

  "I certainly did and do!" replied Cam.

  "And I want that bastard in front of my weapon, preferably at close range in front of his face."

  "No, son, the other stuff!"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The pops, the automatic fire. Our boys have regrouped and are going after that chopper!"

  "Tell that to those who didn't survive."

  "Wish I could," said Scofield, his lined features filled with sadness.

  "Toni," he abruptly yelled.

  "Let's go inside and see if she's here!"

  She was, and the scene under the sloping roof of the boathouse astonished both men. For across the slip where the Chris-Craft bobbed in the water, Antonia held an automatic in her hand. It was aimed at Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Montrose, who was holding a portable telephone, but not the sort issued by the Central Intelligence Agency.

  "Remembering what you said about our colonel here and her phoning from the boathouse on two separate occasions, Mr. Pryce, I decided to make her my personal surveillance." The explanation was interrupted by a series of deafening explosions from outside.

  "There goes the rest of the house, Colonel," said Cameron in quiet, ice-cold fury.

  "Were you running the strike from in here? And how many others were killed, you bitch?"

  "It will all be explained to you-if necessary," said Montrose calmly, coldly.

  "It better be right now!" exploded Scofield, reaching into his belt and pulling out a handgun.

  "Otherwise I'll blow your pretty face apart.

  You're working for the enemy!"

  "If it appears that way," said Montrose, "it's devoutly to be wished."

  "You've been calling the White House!" roared Pryce.

  "Who's your contact, who's the mole, the traitor at Sixteen Hundred?"

  "No one you'd know."

  "I'd better learn now, or I'll tell my friend here to put a bullet in your head."

  "I think you would-" "You're goddamned right I would! You're garbage. Talk, bitch!"

  "Apparently, I have no choice."

  "You don't."

  "My contact, as you call him, is close to the President, an authority on clandestine activities. I was-am-in a unique position to render a service."

  "What position? What service?"

  "The enemy, as you called them, kidnapped my son. He was taken from his school in Connecticut. Unless I supposedly do as they ask, they'll kill him."

  A final earthshaking explo
sion shook the boathouse. Three windows were blown out, the fragments of glass showering over the Chris-Craft.

  Beyond, clearly visible among the debris, was a helium-filled red balloon attached to a destroyed upper window frame. It had miraculously survived, fluttering at the end of a long string.

  It was the marker that led the killer aircraft to its target. Someone in the compound had been following Beowulf Agate, and minutes before the strike knew exactly where he was.

  The body bags and the wounded were airlifted out of the compound within the hour, the few stunned, uncomprehending local police kept at bay by the federal authorities. The relatively distant neighbors, horrified by the noise but unable to observe the site, which was prohibited, demanded explanations. They were given, in the main, hastily concocted "classified" fictions relative to drug interdiction. Four estates went on the real-estate market immediately, despite assurances that the successful "operation" had been completely shut down.

  According to the radar-tracking tapes, it was assumed that the false Silent Horse had maneuvered due east over Delaware's Bethany Beach and out into the Atlantic, where it disappeared off the screen. Supporting confirmation came from the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Nanticoke, southeast of Taylors Island. Their own interceptor screens showed an unidentified aircraft passing rapidly toward open ocean water when it abruptly was erased.

  The professionals were in agreement, for it was known strategy where terrorist acts were concerned. The killer helicopter had headed for an Atlantic rendezvous where the crew bailed out, to be picked up by boat. Also, it could be assumed that prior to abandoning the chopper, a preset explosive was activated, blowing up the aircraft moments later, sending the remains to the bottom of the ocean. The Matarese was precise in all things.

  Frank Shields walked with Scofield through the once peaceful, lovely compound. All around were painful sights of the carnage, mainly from the smoking debris of the destroyed great house. Shattered doors, windows, walls, and columns were nothing more than smoldering ruins, some as far away as six hundred feet, the length of two football fields.

  "It's like a battlefield after a clash between two armies," said Bray solemnly, "only in this case, we didn't even know we were in combat.

  The bastards! .. . And it's my fault! I could have stopped the whole thing and I'll never forgive myself." Scofield's words trailed off quietly, painfully.

  "I don't think you could have stopped it, Brandon-" "Come on, Frank! You said you wanted us out of here and I said no.

  I'm a stubborn, pig-headed old fool who doesn't realize he should stop giving orders! I've been away too long to have the authority."

  "I'm not trying to make you feel better, or even absolve you from all responsibility," Shields broke in.

  "I'm simply saying you couldn't have stopped it."

  "How can you say that?"

  "Because it would have happened wherever you were.. .. We're riddled, Bray, right up to interagency memoranda, including office codes and confidential instructions to departments."

  "How do you know?"

  "When the emergency signal came through and we learned what was taking place here, I called External Security and blew my stack.

  Where the hell was our air cover, our on-site sky patrols? They were always on the parameters of the corridor, six in the morning and six at night."

  "So where were they?" asked Scofield angrily.

  "Goddamn it, we heard them every time the flyboys came in! They woke up Toni in the mornings. Where were they?"

  "X-Security told me they received an in-house order under the standard emergency code to stand down the Silent Horse escort fighters due to severe chopper maintenance."

  "What? Who authorized it?"

  "Certainly not me, Brandon."

  "Your office? Who in your office?"

  "You don't understand. It could be anyone, but who would dare?""

  "Rip your personnel apart!" yelled Bray, furious.

  "Put every son of a bitch and female slime on the racks until they bleed! You can't do any less-they may as well have manned the guns and dropped those bombs themselves. Eight people killed and four more who probably won't make it. Do something, Frank! I can't but you can-goddamn it, it's your turf!"

  "Yes, it's my turf and it'll be done my way because I have both the authority and the responsibility, and my judgment calls aren't based on obstinacy or a desire to stamp my own imprimatur on anything."

  "Oh? ..." Scofield stopped; he reached over and gripped Shields's arm.

  "All right, Squinty, I deserved that."

  "Yes, I think you did."

  "I'm angry as hell!"

  "So am I, Brandon," said the deputy director, his narrowed eyes steady.

  "But a putsch at the Agency, such as you suggest, would only drive our enemies farther underground while creating an atmosphere in which they could thrive. Dissension can be a very effective diversion."

  "Oh, Jesus," said Bray, releasing Shields's arm as they continued walking.

  "I guess that's why you're an analyst and I'm not.. .. But what I can't understand is that if I'm the one they want deep-dead, why not an assassin's bullet in my head? Simple, clean, and quick, with minimum risk and maximum percentage of a kill. God knows we've got our own mole inside here. That red balloon wasn't put there by one of Santa Claus's elves."

  "No, but it answers your question. Whoever it was had to know that you, Antonia, and Pryce were rarely, if ever, out of sight of compound surveillance."

  "Is that a fact?"

  "Certainly. We tried to consider every contingency we could dream up. We didn't invest all this effort and materials, to say nothing of money, to have you taken out from in here."

  "How come I didn't spot it? Or Toni or Cameron? None of us is an amateur."

  "It was done mostly by remote, according to sectors. A sergeant might call a corporal on his walkie-talkie and say "Bomba'-that was you-'is leaving Sector Six, pick him up Seven." We divided the compound into grids-you know the rest."

  "Alternating vehicles," agreed Scofield. "

  "Brown sedan turning off Eighth Avenue, tail it Forty-sixth Street."

  " "Precisely. That tactic never loses its efficiency."

  "The old ones are usually the best, Frank.. .. What the hell are we talking about? We're up to our necks in bullshit and we sound like a couple of trainees!"

  "We're talking like this so we can think, Brandon. It's all we've got left."

  "We'd better stop thinking and start doing, Junior."

  "Really, Bray, I can tolerate the "Squinty," but not "Junior." Besides, as I told Pryce, I'm older than you."

  "You are?"

  "Eighteen months and eleven days, boy.. .. Since you'd rather not think, what've you got in the doing department?"

  "First," answered Scofield, "piece together what we have. The young corporal shot on the outside road; the infiltrator who scaled the wall to blow away Toni and me; Bracket and Denny poisoned, killed at a breakfast meant for me; the bombing strike we can't trace with a target marker placed in here by a mole or moles we can't find. Finally, there's the Montrose woman's contact at the White House. What does it all add up to?"

  "Now you're back to thinking," said a sad but bemused Shields.

  "However, as to the Montrose flap, she's clean, even if she did panic.

  How she can even function is beyond me. She's got to be consumed by what may happen to her son."

  "How did she get involved with Sixteen Hundred?"

  "Colonel Bracket. He and his wife are-were, in his case of course-close friends of Montrose's. When the kidnapping took place and she was reached by what we can assume to be the Matarese, she was close to a breakdown. She had nowhere to turn, certainly not to the loose-lipped bureaucracy. According to Mrs. Bracket, who's under a great deal of stress herself right now, Montrose confided in her husband, Everett, a military colleague and in some ways a mentor."

  "That sounds reasonable," said Bray, nodding as they rounded
the tarmac that was the Black Hawk helicopter's touchdown.

  "She confided in him because he was a friend, a fellow West Pointer, and a confidant; she trusted him. But what about the White House?"

  "Bracket was sent to graduate school at Yale and one of his classmates was Thomas Cranston-" "I know that name," interrupted Scofield.

  "He was one of us, wasn't he?"

  "Right up the ladder and damned good. In addition to his natural talents, he was a terrific salesman. If he'd stayed in Langley, he might have been plucked for the directorship, and I would have supported him."

  "Squinty, that could have been your job! Don't you have any normal, jealous, hate-filled bones in that frail body of yours?"

  "Not when I know I'm not qualified and enjoy what I do-which I do well. Cranston left the Agency to head up one of those think tanks funded by international academic wannabes From there it was a quick jump into the political maelstrom. He's now the President's chief aide for national security."

  "So Bracket sent Montrose to him."

  "Yes, it seemed logical, and in light of what's happened, it was sound. We have expertise and clout, but we're obviously cancerous.

  Her son would have been killed if she'd come to us."

  "But what can this Thomas Cranston do?"

  "I have no idea, but whatever it is, it'll be very back-channel."

  "To whom?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then we should find out."

  "I've requested an off-limits meeting with him. Maybe we'll learn something Sixteen Hundred doesn't want us to know-at this juncture."

  "Aren't we on the same goddamned side?" asked Bray, raising his voice.

  "We sometimes work at cross-purposes."

  "That's crap!"

  "No question about it, but that's the way things are."

  "All right, all right. Naturally, I insist on being at that meeting. Also Pryce and Antonia. We're the experts, remember?"

  "You'll be included," agreed Shields.

  "Not, however, Colonel Montrose. Cranston's worried about her anxiety level."

  "Understandable.. .. Now, about all these financial doings, the mergers, the corporations getting together, and, as I see it, corralling markets. I can help us here. I'm no computer but I remember names, relationships, friends of the Matarese, and the enemies they either swallowed up or destroyed. I just need methods of operation, backgrounds of company lineage-that's important, it's vital. The Matarese's ultimate weakness is that they're incestuous; they always call in their own, going back years, blackmailing or enlisting on greed.