by Anthony Tata
Amanda ran. As her mind tried to catch up with her instinct to run, like Lassie chasing Timmy, turning and barking as if he had missed something important, she felt a gnawing at the back of her mind. She had missed something important. Amidst the chatter of laughter emitting from the open door at her back, she fought the urge to stop and think.
It would soon come to her, but now she needed to run. Graduation be damned.
CHAPTER 45
Pakistan
Tuesday Morning (Hours of Darkness)
Zachary Garrett tumbled hard down the steep incline. Scraping his knees and arms, he spun into some gravel, then stood, resting momentarily. He could hear them in the background. They were coming for him. He had traveled two, maybe three miles since his escape. The black night provided no sense of relief. He knew that his captors could travel the trails of the Hindu Kush blindfolded if necessary.
He could hear the faint gurgle of a river or creek to his west. West would take him toward Afghanistan if his guess was right that he was in Pakistan. He cut through a deep ravine, sheer rock walls reaching upward like spires on either side. He was limping now, the fall having taken a toll. He touched his face, and felt blood. Water would be good. He needed to drink. He was becoming dehydrated again.
The moon sneered at him as he slid on his hindquarters down an embankment that stopped on a dirt road paralleling the water. The gurgle he had heard, however, was now a bold roar. Zach’s assessment was that the water was about a hundred yards wide and moving fiercely. He didn’t think it was fordable at this location, but with a road nearby, maybe there was a chance.
He chose to move south, to his left, anticipating that perhaps the river widened and lowered to the point where he might find a ford site.
He could hear more voices now, coming down the same way he had. The road was even and littered with potholes, standard for this part of the world, yet sufficient for moving wagonloads of poppy resin to the market.
Breathing heavily, working against his injuries, lack of sleep, and lack of water and food, Zachary needed to get across this river and buy himself some time. He could see in the distance, about a hundred meters away, where the road dipped to the right, toward the water. Could it be a crossing?
Shots now. Zipping over his head like angry hornets, these were AK-47 rounds. Maybe they were warnings. Maybe the shooters simply had bad aim. Either way, he needed to get on the other side of this river. If this was the Kunar, it would mean he had made it all the way back into Afghanistan. Instinctively he didn’t believe it was. However, the thought gave him a glimmer of hope, enough to get his adrenaline going.
He found the spot where the road turned into the river. It didn’t seem like much, but it was all he had. He waded into the tumbling water and immediately sank to his waist. Farther out, he pushed against the raging current. Now he was up to his chest and slipping deeper. He thought he could sense the puck-puck of bullets smacking the water near him. He was sure of it.
Suddenly something slapped him in the back, and he was down, rolling, gulping in water, and speeding with the current, the water whipping him around and banging him into jagged rocks that defined the path of the river.
Zachary Garrett retreated into himself, bundled up not unlike a paratrooper going through the door. One-thousand, two-thousand, three-thousand, four-thousand . . . waiting for the opening shock.
He was no longer in control, if he ever had been, and determined to let go of everything. His mind quit assessing the tactical situation, quit running through the different permutations of what might play out. Tumbling through the savage current of this Pakistani tributary, Zachary Garrett focused on his daughter Amanda.
Her beautiful face hovered in his mind like that of an angel’s.
Her sweet voiced asking, “Daddy, are we good to go?”
“We’re good to go, baby girl.”
CHAPTER 46
Spartanburg, South Carolina
Monday Afternoon (Eastern Time)
Amanda stopped by the principal’s office on the way out. Dan Rugsdale looked up from his desk as she lightly rapped on his open door.
“Do you have a second, sir?”
He put down his pencil and flipped over the typewritten pages on which he had been working. “Sure, Amanda, how can I help you? You’re lucky you caught me. I’m only in the office a few minutes today.”
“I’m just stressing about my father’s death and really need a couple of days.”
“You can take some time, Amanda. I understand,” Principal Rugsdale said to her. She sagged visibly. “I knew you’d understand.”
“Do you know when the funeral is?”
“No, they haven’t said anything about a funeral yet. He was Special Forces, you know. But I will let you know, if you’re interested.”
Rugsdale stood and walked toward her. He was a big man, more broad than tall. He put a large hand on her shoulder and looked in her eyes.
“I’m here if you need to talk to someone. I know this is a tough time for you.”
Amanda looked at his hand on her shoulder and then back at Rugsdale’s eyes. She saw a dark cloud pass across them like the anvil head of a summer thunderstorm.
“Thank you, sir.” She stepped away, feeling his hand refusing to give initially. Finally, she was free and moving out of the door.
Dan Rugsdale watched her leave and then turned toward his window. He pulled up the blind and he observed her walk quickly to her car.
Again, the touch. Like the high five last week, he sensed danger.
Amanda arrived at the police station and parked diagonally in an Authorized Vehicles Only spot, cutting across the line. The cops would have to walk off some of that donut fat, she thought to herself. She stormed through the glass-and-chrome door that led to the desk sergeant.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
“I’m here to see Jake Devereaux. He’s in here somewhere. Now tell me where he is,” she demanded.
“Listen, little lady, you come in here like that we might just lock you up with him, you hear me?” The police officer had a crew cut, his hair appearing like the stiff bristles of a gray brush. His uniform was impeccable and creased vertically along each breast. He had half-lidded eyes that indicated he was mostly a man of composure, a gatherer.
“I’m sorry, officer. I’m just sort of freaked out, you know? My dad died and my boyfriend was arrested—”
“He’s not here.”
“—and I know he didn’t do anything and I haven’t—Did you say he’s not here?”
“I did. He made bail today. Surprised the hell out of all of us to see him in here in the first place.”
“How long ago?” Amanda chewed on a fingernail. “Who got him out?” She became hopeful that her mother or grandmother had paid the bail, which would help her figure out some other things as well.
The officer wrinkled his forehead and said, “Oh, I’d say about an hour ago, maybe less. His daddy came down madder than hell. Nothing like a damn big-shot attorney having to bail out his own son.”
Amanda felt a stab of pain in her heart. He hadn’t called her. That would have been her first call had their roles been reversed.
“Was he charged with anything?”
“Damn straight. Breaking and entering, assault and battery, attempted homicide, and North Carolina’s got him on arson charges. Apparently he burned some house up there clear to the ground. Nothing but ashes left.”
Another slice of pain carved through her. Gone, everything she was supposed to remember was gone. All the evidence her father had gathered had gone up in smoke, embers floating meaninglessly through time, evaporating into the ether.
Without proof, there was no hope. Without hope, there was no reason to fight. Without a fight, there was no reason to try.
That had been her mantra. She realized it just now, standing in the foyer of the Dilworth Police Department. She had one foot tapping the floor, one fingernail chewed to the quick. No hope, no fight, no purpose
.
Then it struck her. The officer had said assault and battery not murder. We all find our own silver linings, she figured. This was one.
“Where is the victim, Miss Riley Dwyer?”
“They’ve still got her over at Carolinas Medical Center, where I think she’ll be for a while. Your beau there did a real number on her.”
***
Amanda was in her car, actions outpacing her thoughts, as if she was carrying something so fragile and time sensitive that if she did not receive some reassurance she would lose this opportunity. She was not quite certain what opportunity she was considering, but she could sense that a door had opened for her. “Life is about chances and choices,” her father had once said to her.
Chances and choices.
Presently she was taking a chance, a risk perhaps, to find Riley Dwyer. Maybe she could tell her something that would make sense. She maintained an image in her mind of a trail of gunpowder being poured out behind her, the beginning having already been lit. Could she move more quickly than the cordite would burn? Or would it capture her, resulting in combustion of some sort?
Skidding into the parking lot at Carolinas Medical Center, she raced to the information booth. Having learned her lesson at the police station, she composed herself, wiping her wet palms on her blue jeans.
“Ma’am, will you please tell me the room number of Miss Riley Dwyer?”
Works every time, she considered as she jogged to the elevators, punched in the number four and impatiently waited for the door to open.
Once out of the elevator she followed the provided directions to room 412. The door was closed. She looked over both shoulders to determine if anyone was going to stop her, then she turned the door handle and let herself in without knocking.
The room was large, with a runner along the ceiling where a curtain could divide the space into two patient areas. There was no one in the first bed.
She cautiously stepped around the curtain and froze as she saw the battered visage of Riley Dwyer, tubes sticking into her face and chest. Her eyes were closed, and she did not appear to be breathing.
She looked dead. No machines were beeping. No lights flashing. There were none of the indicators of life that would normally accompany a recovering patient. The television was not on, there were no visitors, and there was no respirator forcing air into her lungs.
Then she looked at the steady green line tracing across the black background of the heart monitor. . . .
She ran so fast down the hallway of the hospital that she never heard the nurse screaming at her to stop.
The surreal images of the past few days were racing through Amanda’s mind like Formula One cars all speeding in different directions unbound by a track or railings. The thought of speeding made her glance at her speedometer, where she noticed the red needle twitching past the one hundred mph mark.
“Get a hold of yourself, girl.”
Where was she? She had blacked out. It would not be the first time. Her memory lapses relative to her relationship with her father were minor when compared to some of the bouts of amnesia with which she had struggled. One moment she would be in class, the next she would be in her car in the student parking lot staring through the windshield, an hour having elapsed.
For some unexplained reason she began thinking about the day Jake and she had visited her father’s home.
As the NCBI agents began to depart for the second time, she had excused herself for one last restroom break before going to the airport. In the home alone, she walked directly to the downstairs half lavatory situated beneath the stairs, as if pulled by a magnet.
You know what you need to do, Amanda. The voice in her head was not hers, but she owned it now, she knew that much. Do it quickly, so no one will know. She stood in the small bathroom with a toilet and pedestal sink. There was a candle atop the toilet lid, one of those giant Yankee candles, cinnamon, or apple crisp, something she would want to eat rather than burn.
Burn it. Do it now. Destroy the memories.
The voice resonated so loudly she was certain that the others might hear from outside of the home. She stood in the bathroom, staring at the mirror, her face contorted—not beautiful, but wicked. She saw Nina and then her mother and then herself. The blended images seemed to be cinematic, but in fact were real. She could see her matriarchal lineage so clearly. These images guided her hand to her purse, where she removed a lighter.
With a simple flip of the wrist she turned and stared at the Yankee candle. It was probably some kind of spice, she determined. She looked above the deep red wax and blackened wick at the low-hanging set of towels. With her free hand she tugged the towel to within an inch of the wick, repositioning the candle only fractionally backward toward the wall.
She moved the lighter toward the candle.
Burn down this place, Amanda. Destroy your father.
The beeping horn brought her back to I-85 and the driver in the next lane gave her the finger as she swerved and nearly clipped his car.
“Sorry,” she said, unsure to whom she was responding.
Similar to awaking from a dream, she could not reconnect with the series of events that had been replaying in her mind. She was not entirely keen on doing so, but it was important to her, because she truly could not remember. How, or why, this memory suddenly flashed back to her, she was not certain.
She found herself pulling into Jake Devereaux’s driveway, where she removed her cell phone from her purse and pressed speed dial number one. While the phone was ringing, she put her head into her hands and began weeping.
Then the thought of what had happened at Riley Dwyer’s home last night came rushing to her.
The Plans
CHAPTER 47
Kunar Province, Afghanistan
Tuesday Morning (Hours of Darkness)
Matt Garrett looked at Major General Rampert in the dim light of the MH-47 helicopter. He felt the lift and churn of the dual blades chopping their way through the thin night air. They were flying through a narrow corridor at about ten thousand feet above sea level, yet only about fifty feet above ground level. One fractional mistake and the aircraft would splinter apart and create a debris field about a mile long.
“Hey, Doug, we’re getting the word to turn around. It’s coming in from Van Dreeves,” Rampert said into his headset to the pilot.
“Wilco, sir,” Doug responded. No questions, just execute the assigned mission.
“What’s going on, General?” Matt asked through his headset.
“Central Command commander said to stand down the mission.”
“Didn’t know he knew about it.”
“Me neither. Must have a spy somewhere back at headquarters. Not unheard of.”
“What’s Van Dreeves saying about Zach?”
“Stand by.”
Rampert flipped a switch on the communications platform in the back of the aircraft so that the entire crew could hear Van Dreeves’s situation report.
“. . . thirty-three followed him to a river, a tributary to the Kunar along the border near Naray and that old mine. He was taking fire from a group of about twenty enemy personnel. He tried wading across the river and then was swept away. Being springtime, those rivers are over the banks and faster than hell with all the snow melt and rain.”
Van Dreeves paused.
“Then I lost him. He moved too fast or went under; I’m not sure. I’ve been scanning up and down the banks ever since. Sorry, Matt.”
“Not your fault, VD. Listen, Zach used to surf, so those rapids will be nothing for him. We’ll find him.”
Matt’s optimistic words did not match the burning hole in his gut. He felt the aircraft bank hard, back toward their starting point. Matt watched Eversoll drop his head in disgust, shaking it wildly.
“Can we fly the Kunar? We can’t be that far.”
Rampert looked at Matt, who had just asked him to disobey a four-star general’s order. “Why the hell not; we’re already in over our heads
.” He flipped a switch so he could talk to the pilots. Matt watched him mouth some words into the microphone, felt the aircraft bank again.
“Actually, this is a good idea,” Rampert said. “It’s on the way back and maybe we can kill some of the enemy.”
“Roger that,” Eversoll barked into his headset.
The tail door gunner got up and walked toward the ramp of the aircraft. He was wearing a crewman’s helmet with a clear visor that made him look a bit futuristic. The ramp lowered so that it was even with the floor of the aircraft. The gaping hole opened to the Afghanistan night, always pitch black. They could determine an occasional jagged cliff they had just passed over as the pilots flew nap of the earth. The tail gunner hooked himself into a long strap called a ‘monkey harness’ that allowed him to move about the aircraft with the ramp down without fear of falling to his death. If he fell outside of the aircraft, he would at least be dangling by twenty feet of nylon cord. Of course, the pilots weren’t flying much higher than that above ground level.
The door gunners made some more room for an extra gunner each on either side of the aircraft so that they could each take up observation and firing positions.
Matt hooked into a monkey harness and laid down on the tail ramp. He figured this would give him more observation capability and better fields of fire, though he might miss something going on in the front of the aircraft.
Hobart and Eversoll each positioned themselves in opposite doors. Each man locked and loaded their M4 carbines then snapped their night-vision goggles onto their helmets. There were two M240G machine guns at each crew chief station as well as the tail gunner. The 240 was a superb weapon for providing heavy suppressive fire. The crew chief completely turned off the dim LCD light that was providing some glow in the rear of the aircraft.