Sudden Threat

by A. J Tata

  A full week after Zachary’s funeral and a complete debriefing from Meredith on the Rolling Stones, Matt thought he had pieced it together.

  Stone and his cronies were fanning the flames of insurgency in an awkward move to derail the building momentum to fight in Iraq. Create a war to stop a war? He thought about Iran-Contra and wondered what this would be called: China-Abu Sayyaf?

  But when young men and women were putting their lives on the line, Matt believed, the proffer of academic theorems by amateur political appointees about simplifying warfare were best rejected and left in the rough drafts of the professors’ dissertations and class notes. Where and why you went to war mattered, Matt thought. Intelligence is central to the whole discussion. And we damn sure didn’t need to manufacture a war in the Philippines. That thought had dropped another tumbler into place on figuring out the true identity of Ronnie Wood.

  Every time I’m close, I’m moved.

  Matt walked through the E-ring of the Pentagon and passed a man who looked the other way as they approached one another. Matt immediately recog-nized him as a journalist for the Washington Post. The book on him was that he was shady at best; dishonest, even up for grabs, at worst. Matt strode confidently past the man and now the final tumbler of the lock fell into place in his mind. He had solved the mystery.

  Energized, he stopped in front of Latisha’s desk directly outside of Secretary Stone’s office.

  “You’re up next, Mr. Garrett.” Latisha smiled.

  “Thank you.”

  Matt was dressed in his usual garb: olive cargo pants, basic tan button-down cotton shirt, and dark windbreaker. His arm was out of the sling, and he could walk with minimal pain.

  “Matt, come in,” Stone said.

  Matt followed Stone into his office and sat on a blue leather sofa. In front of him was a small coffee table with an assortment of magazines and newspapers that were current but unread.

  “How can I help you?”

  Matt tossed the manila folder on the table. “Read it. Then we’ll talk.”

  He watched Stone pick up the file and skim through the pages. Matt had to hand it to Stone; the man’s expression never changed. But he guessed that anyone who could pull off the kind of charade that Stone had must have the deadened sense of morality that allowed him to appear unfazed by shocking information. Stone closed the folder and placed it back on the table.

  “Okay,” Stone said.

  “All of this was some game?” Matt asked.

  “Everything had its purposes, yes,” Stone said.

  “Do the people who die matter?”

  “Everyone dies eventually, Matt,” Stone said.

  Matt stiffened at Stone’s insensitive comment and said, “Your compassion is overwhelming.”

  “You’re not here to discuss my compassion. I agreed to see you based upon what you’ve been through. What we put you through. You know about everything now, and I would ask that you keep confidential your knowledge of Ronnie Wood.”

  “But why?” Matt asked. He leaned back into the sofa, curious.

  “I’ll appeal to your sense of patriotism. This is a great country, and we need to avoid further embar-rassment.”

  “I could argue that exposing Mr. Wood would help us greatly in that regard.”

  “Perhaps, but the short-term pain might be debilitating. We’re in a very vulnerable place right now.”

  “He’s just another bureaucrat, but I’ll think about it,” Matt offered.

  “Speaking of vulnerabilities, have you heard about the tragic deaths of my deputy Saul Fox and Dick Diamond?”

  “Not even sure I know who they are,” Matt said, staring directly into Stone’s liquid eyes.

  Stone seemed to consider his comment and nodded.

  “Yes. You’re CIA, and a field agent at that. There would be no reason for you to know them.”

  “No reason,” Matt replied. “But there is this.”

  He pulled a small tape recorder out of his windbreaker pocket and placed it on the table as he punched the play button:

  “This was all so very exciting. So close to Arma-geddon in Los Angeles …”

  Matt let the recording play where the two lovers disclosed all the bits of the conspiracy to include Stone’s participation, albeit coerced.

  Stone’s hand reached out for the tape, and Matt used his good arm to strike like a cobra against Stone’s wrist, grabbing it and squeezing it in a viselike grip. He leveled his eyes on Stone and began to speak.

  “Scumbags like you think you can live in your little soundproof world so that nothing circles back on you. I look at it differently. I’m thinking that maybe Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger will have a similar fight over these matters? Perhaps go the way of Fox and Diamond?”

  Matt squeezed Stone’s arm so tight he thought he might snap the bone. Stone’s eyes fluttered either at the hint that Matt had something to do with the deaths of Fox and Diamond or the palpable desire for revenge transmitted from Matt through Stone’s wrist, like an electrical current.

  “You send anyone after me, and I will know about it, Stone,” he said, his voice like granite. “And I will personally come to your little cottage in Orange County. I might be hiding behind the fireplace or perhaps in that nice refinished kitchen, who knows? Or maybe I’ll be at your McLean mansion, where you tried to rape Meredith. But I’ll be somewhere. So be smart. And being smart includes calling that slimy reporter you just told to out me and hang the bullshit failures on my back. I know how your type operates. Call him right now,” Matt demanded.

  “Now?”

  “I’ve got your E*Trade account that shows you made a fortune shorting stock before Nine-eleven. Rathburn was a meticulous record keeper. Now what are you going to do? Think about it. You’ve got a lot riding on this one, and you are walking on the razor.”

  Stone stared at him for a moment, then looked away toward the window.

  “I understand,” Stone said. He picked up the phone and dialed a number. Shortly someone answered, and Stone said, “Call it off.” There must have been a protest because Stone shouted into the phone, “I said call it off, or you’re dead, are we clear?”

  “Do we have satisfaction?” Matt asked, sar-castically.

  In the end, Matt knew there was nothing he could do to Stone that wouldn’t violate his principles or the law, but he would leave the tape behind as a tangible reminder to Stone of his influence.

  And on that thought his mind spun to last night.

  Matt had watched Diamond and Fox from behind the thick curtains in the bedroom. He had lined up the iron sights of his pistol on each of their foreheads with his good arm. He had a steady aim on Fox, then he would move to Diamond, and back to Fox.

  When the moment came to pull the trigger, Zachary’s face flashed in front of him, saying, “Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.”

  As he looked back up, though, he saw the glint of steel in Fox’s hand and a pistol in Diamond’s.

  “What’s this letter, Dick?” Saul asked angrily, shaking the white paper at his lover as he walked from the study into the bedroom. His voice raged above Diamond’s favorite opera: Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” … None will know my name!

  “It’s not mine, Saul. It’s a plant,” Diamond countered, holding up his hands as if to surrender.

  The two men were naked except for boxer briefs in Diamond’s case and tighty whiteys in Fox’s. Both men had paunches that overlapped beyond the waistbands of the briefs. Disgusting and comical at the same time, Matt thought.

  Of course, Matt had planted the letter and the dossier in Fox’s study once he learned of the Rolling Stones and thought of Dick Diamond’s role as Ronnie. Though he knew Ronnie was merely a cutout for a far-more-powerful person, as he had found a different picture beneath Diamond’s in the file Meredith had opened. It had been password-protected, and nothing could have prepared him for the image staring back at him.

  Still, he couldn’t let Diamond or Fox get away with their crime
s. Matt knew that, assuredly, the protective cocoon of the political-appointee bureau-racy would shield them from any accountability. Still, Matt had shaken his head at the internecine politics where there were double agents within cliques and power groups inside the Beltway and figured his ploy might work.

  But what did that make him, he wondered? As he recalled the scene, he felt his own satisfaction:

  “And what’s this?” Fox screamed. “You’re Ronnie? You’re a member of the Rolling Stones? You’ve been double-crossing me? I knew it, you bastard!”

  Matt saw him hold the knife the way an orchestra conductor might hold an Uzi. This should be interesting, Matt thought.

  “I’m not Ronnie!” Diamond proclaimed.

  Matt was surprised to see how quickly Fox leapt toward Diamond, brandishing the knife as he shouted, “Double-crossing bastard.”

  This was as much a lovers’ quarrel as it was a dispute about who was supporting which conspiracy. It hadn’t hurt that Matt’s sister Karen had transposed a photo of Diamond and Stone appearing intimate in conversation.

  As Matt had watched Diamond respond, he thought, Never bring a knife to a gunfight. He didn’t even wince as Diamond’s pistol kicked back the moment Fox’s knife entered his heart. The bullet from Diamond’s gun caught Fox in the middle of the forehead, killing him instantly. The knife in Diamond’s heart let him live long enough to say, “But I know who Ronnie really is …”

  Matt had closed his eyes and lowered his head. Covering his tracks from Fox’s apartment, he stole silently through the night in his old Porsche 944 and did not stop until he reached his home in Loudoun County.

  “Yes,” Stone said. “Yes, we have an agreement.”

  Stone’s words brought him back to the present. He released the man’s wrist, which Stone snatched back.

  When Matt departed Stone’s office, he put the Pentagon in his rearview mirror and the memories of last night in the recesses of his mind as he drove along the George Washington Parkway to Langley. His thoughts turned to Zachary and the daughter who would never get to know her father now … and the brother he would never see again.

  When he arrived at Langley, he walked onto the giant seal of the Central Intelligence Agency in the headquarters building and he blew past the security desk, only to be stopped by two large men in gray suits. One of them was the deputy director, Roger Houghton. They had seen him coming, or perhaps someone had been following him. Either way, Houghton was prepared for him.

  “Don’t do it, Matt,” Houghton said.

  “Lantini. Where’s Lantini?”

  “Gone. Nobody can find him. Now go home and rest.”

  “I won’t rest until he’s dead,” Matt said. Good operators always relied upon two sources, as opposed to one, to confirm intelligence. In this case Matt had three.

  Matt had always wondered why he received the text to keep his ‘feet and knees together’ before Peterson’s airplane was even shot down. Once he discovered Lantini’s role as Ronnie Wood by Lantini’s photo in the file, hidden by the ruse of Diamond’s picture, Matt had developed a plausible theory. The fact that Lantini had fled served as confirmation to Matt that the CIA director had conspired with Stone and the others.

  Every time I’m close, I’m moved.

  Matt’s 944 Porsche boiled smoke from the burning tires as he sped out of CIA headquarters and back onto the George Washington Parkway.

  He stopped at an isolated scenic overlook, gazed across the Potomac, and leaned over the rock wall. Lifting his head, tears running down his cheeks, he shouted, “Zachary!”

  Epilogue

  A week later Matt stood by himself on a large rock that protruded above the South River at the north end of the 150 acres he called home in Stanardsville, Virginia. He had pushed his rehab a bit too hard, and an admonishing doctor had promised him she would order him to bed rest if he didn’t wear the sling. So, with one arm back in a sling, with his good arm he flung flat pebbles across the bubbling water giving no evidence of the shortstop he had once been.

  Just a few short weeks ago he had been in the Philippines chasing Predators and finding Japanese troops and ships. The text he had sent from his Blackberry on that incident had cued Meredith to convince the National Security Advisor to have the ship interdicted. It turned out that all of his reports had either been received by Rathburn or Lantini, and discarded. Thankfully, the United States Navy had corralled the rogue vessel with a carrier battle group, F-18s circled the sky like buzzards spying road kill. The SEALs had boarded the Shimpu and found the skipper on the floor of the captain’s ward with a fresh bullet wound in his head.

  He skipped another stone upstream, the current causing the stone to flip wildly. Not a good toss. Each time he tried to throw, the stitches in his abdomen screamed at him, pulling at healing skin.

  Would the wounds that mattered ever heal?

  Zachary was dead, and he wondered if he would ever be able to accept that fact. Life was never what it seemed, he understood, but the unfairness of his brother’s death in that remote corner of the world might weigh on him forever. At least he hoped so. Zachary was too great a man simply to be gone. His contributions were too substantial just to be forgotten. No, Matt would earn Zachary’s sacrifice. Once healed, he would be back in the field taking the fight to the enemy. In the meantime, he would serve in his new capacity as a special advisor to the director of the CIA … until his physical wounds healed.

  He would go back to Afghanistan or Iraq and fight there. That was his mission.

  On that thought, he wondered exactly what was happening in the world. How could Diamond and Fox be so manipulative and callous? How could Stone not see what they were doing? How could Lantini betray him?

  What was in store for the world? Nine-eleven, Islamic fundamentalism, and rogue nationalism were supposedly exploiting the seams of a fractured universe. But what was real and what was manu-factured?

  The ivory-tower conspiracies of the elite clouded the true heroism of the young men and women fighting so hard, who, in the eyes of the likes of Fox and Diamond, were truly nothing but cannon fodder.

  He turned, carefully stepping along the rock, placing the stream to his back.

  “Hi, handsome,” Meredith said. She was standing on the bank, her arms crossed, perhaps warding off the spring chill. She was wearing a dark blue Northface jacket over lighter dungarees. Her hiking boots were crossed one over the other as she leaned against a small poplar tree. New growth.

  Matt nodded at her and stepped off the rock. He approached Meredith and took her in his good arm without saying a word.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, hugging him back.

  Matt rested his head on her hair, the sling causing his arm to press awkwardly between them as he looked west into the churning river and the moun-tains whence it had come.

  “Don’t leave me,” he caught himself saying. Why, he wasn’t sure. Maybe with Zachary’s loss he needed to fill the empty space quickly. Perhaps it would be less painful that way.

  “I’m not going anywhere you’re not going,” she said softly.

  He pulled away and kissed her on the lips, then said, “I’m just going to refuse to believe that he’s dead.”

  Matt’s words of disbelief floated like an autumn leaf into the wind, fluttered up the hill toward the house, circled the fresh-tilled grave, and bolted skyward toward the heavens.

  Want to see where Matt goes next?

  Please enjoy the first two chapters of

  ROGUE THREAT

  And pick up book two of the THREAT

  series on October 20, 2009!

  CHAPTER 1

  APRIL 2003, FRIDAY EVENING, 1700 HOURS,

  LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA

  Matt Garrett stood and stretched, physical scars sending waves of pain through his body. He looked at the fading blue sky from the deck of his Loudoun County home, perhaps seeking a nod, guidance—anything really—from his dead brother Zachary. A paramilitary operative with the CIA, Matt
had been wounded in the same fight in the Philippines last year, where his brother was killed. Coincidence, mostly, but the fact remained that Zachary was dead, and Matt had almost died.

  He lowered his head and stared at his backyard, the terrain gently sloping away from his one-story brick rambler. Thoughts of Zachary had dominated him over the past year and had stymied his recovery. He knew he needed to move on, but he refused to let go.

  Matt thought fondly of Zachary’s graduation from West Point, his brother’s service in Desert Storm, his agonizing decision to leave the service and work the family farm in the mid-nineties, and then, after the 9-11 attacks, his firm resolve to get into the fight. Which he had done.

  Which had gotten him killed.

  “If only he had stayed on the farm,” Matt muttered.

  It was nearly six p.m., and despite Matt’s nearparalytic state regarding Zachary, he did sense an uncertain stir of change in the wind. Perhaps that was what kept him hanging on. The towering pine trees in his back yard bowed with the breeze, and Matt closed his eyes, trying to understand everything that had transpired. Operation Iraqi Freedom had kicked off and was an apparent success so far, but he had his doubts. With all the fanfare over Iraq, he

  couldn’t help but pick at the open scab of his failure to kill Al Qaeda senior leadership when he had had the shot. Now the opportunity was lost forever. True, high ranking officials had denied his kill chain, and a JDAM bomb had struck closer to his team than to the Al Qaeda leadership, but he still blamed himself. That failure, coupled with his brother’s death and Matt’s own physical wounds, were enough to make him doubt himself. And in his business, there was no margin for doubt—no second guessing.

  Since when did you start following orders, Garrett? Should have stayed, taken the shot.

  He shook his head and looked to his left, where a small hill rose above the stream. There was nothing but forest for about three miles. The April evening was filled with the hum of spring in the Virginia countryside. Through the pine thickets Matt saw budding dogwoods and darting squirrels. The temperature hovered in that optimistically comfortable range where he would begin to wear Tshirts and shorts when relaxing at his home. He stared at the pieces of a fading blue sky that shone through the pine tips to the rear of his property. Then he looked down at his batting cage.