Authors: A.J. Tata
“All I know is he saw the inside of my airplane, if it was Garrett,” Takishi said.
They’ll know soon enough what he saw
, he determined.
“Take it however you wish, but we are in the final stages, and we need your action to happen exactly as discussed. Things are still a bit iffy on this end. Momentum seems to be gathering, and unless you are successful, the train might run away, as they say.”
“Don’t worry about my end of the deal.” Takishi laughed. “If Garrett saw anything, he’s probably confused as hell anyway. I’ve got soldiers down there guarding the plant and even a couple of armored vehicles.”
Perfect,
Takishi thought.
“Okay, Takishi. Now let’s get off this phone. Any further questions?”
“We are getting satisfaction. Good-bye.”
Takishi flipped his phone shut and continued to watch the men conducting a preflight inspection of the Gulfstream. It appeared that Keith Richards was on schedule.
But if Matt Garrett was indeed on my airplane, what should I do,
he wondered?
Stay or go? Is Garrett a threat to me?
Possibly. Do I have anyone on this island who can kill Garrett?
Of course.
Over the course of the past two years, he had worked in clandestine fashion with Keith Richards, the only member of the Rolling Stones to span two administrations. The money had begun flowing nearly a year ago, money Takishi promptly began funneling to Talbosa and his loose band of Muslim insurgents.
Better than Iran-Contra!
Takishi thought.
At least the Contras were on the American side.
The Rolling Stones were funding the Abu Sayyaf to start a war in the Philippines so the Americans could fight there instead of in Iraq.
“Makes sense to me.” Takishi chuckled.
The smile left his face as he thought of Garrett and whom he needed to call. Yes, he would take his chances and let Keith deal with Garrett while he got on with orchestrating the big picture.
Anyway, perhaps he had mortally wounded Garrett.
CHAPTER 16
Matt knocked on the wood door of the small A-frame house that served as a manager’s residence on-site at the Airai View Hotel. He heard heavy footfalls and the sliding of a chain against metal.
A pistol poked through the gap in the door as a voice said, “You rang?”
“Pino, it’s Matt Garrett. Put down the pistol.”
“I could shoot you and have you stuffed like one of those bears,” Pino said, laughing as he opened the door. Matt watched him as he flipped a cell phone shut and stuffed it in his pocket.
“I wouldn’t be too comfortable to lie on,” Matt said. “And the thought of your fat ass humping some chick on my back makes me want to puke.”
“Now that you have exchanged proper bona fides, I will let you in.” Pino laughed again. He was a short man, nearly as tall as he was wide. Thick black hair was cut just above his ears, which were small compared to his rotund face. “Cherubic” wasn’t necessarily the right word, but it was close enough.
They hugged, and Pino backed away.
“You’re shot?”
“Yes. Just a nick, though,” Matt said, entering the small residence. “Is the missus home?”
“No, she’s working the floor tonight. Do you need a doctor?”
“I might,” he said absently, touching his wound. “There are Americans here tonight, right?” He guessed that the Gulfstream was an official U.S. government aircraft. Palau had become a U.S. protectorate after World War II, and the American government had just signed up for another fifty years of providing for its defense, whatever that might entail.
All Matt had seen were high-ranking government officials using the island and the hotel as a stopover point for long hauls to points west.
“Yes, Rathburn’s here. Are you here to see him?”
“Yes,” Matt said, searching his mind for the name Rathburn. He thought he might be in the Depart-ment of Defense. “I need to see him tonight if possible.”
Pino looked at him with suspicious eyes.
“Here, have a seat,” the Palauan said. Pino’s house was an odd mixture of rattan island furniture, photos of high-ranking U.S. officials hanging on the walls, and furniture that looked as if he had purchased it from a 1970s Sears and Roebuck catalog. Lived in, was how Matt thought of it.
Matt sat in an old corduroy La-Z-Boy recliner while Pino took a bottle of astringent and a damp paper towel to the open wound on Matt’s shoulder.
“Son of a bitch.” Matt grimaced at the stinging.
“This is more than a graze, Matt. I need to call the U.S. doctor. Is it okay?”
Matt looked at his arm, and said, “Call Rathburn’s assistant and get him over here. Then we can talk about the doctor.”
Pino looked at Matt.
“You have no idea who Rathburn is, do you?”
“Not a clue. Defense?” Matt offered.
“Yes, and his assistant is a ‘she,’ not a ‘he.’”
“Whatever, I need to talk to her. My comms are broke. I’ve got some huge shit to give her.”
Pino sat across from Matt on the sofa, and said, “I’ll call her if you let me get the doctor.”
“Okay, whatever. Get the damn doctor. Hang it on your Web site that I’m here. Whatever. Just get me Rathburn or his assistant.”
“Hey, douche bag, you came to me for help, remember?”
Matt felt himself fading a bit. Between not sleeping for two full days and the loss of blood, he knew that he needed help.
As his mind spiraled, his last thoughts were that there were others that needed aid more than he; Peterson, for example. While it was too late for the dead Special Forces officer, Matt thought, the rest of his team desperately needed some assistance.
Matt’s mind spun into sleep, pulling with it the soft music emanating from Pino’s stereo. “I can’t get no sat-is-fac-tion …”
CHAPTER 17
“How long has he been out?” Meredith Morris asked the doctor.
“About an hour,” he said. “I gave him four full IVs, cleaned his wound, and pumped some antibiotics in him. That he lasted this long is pretty amazing.”
Meredith looked at the doctor, and said, “I’ve got it from here, thank you.”
Understanding his cue to depart, the doctor walked out of Pino’s guest bedroom and into the night.
Meredith sat in the chair next to the bed, wondering about this man, whom she had only read about. She looked at her watch; it was past midnight. Pino had summoned her from her suite in the hotel and she had taken nearly an hour to get dressed and walk the half kilometer to the house.
She studied Matt’s strong jaw line, tousled brown hair, and rhythmically rising chest. The wound was on his left shoulder just above the clavicle through the trapezoid, she presumed. It appeared to her that the doctor had done a tidy job of patching the bullet hole and that the CIA agent would be okay with some rest.
When Meredith thought she heard Matt mouth a word or two, she leaned forward.
“If I’m dead, are you one of the seventy-two virgins?”
Meredith, momentarily taken aback, laughed, and said, “No, but I am a Virginian.”
“Even better,” Matt replied. “Are there seven-one others?”
“Yes, but I think I’m quite enough for you right now, Mr. Garrett.”
“Well, with a blond Virginian as my gatekeeper, I must be doing something right.”
Meredith smiled. “Actually, to be lying here in fat Pino’s sweaty bed sheets with your shoulder shot up is not an indicator of your doing something right.”
“Ah, man, did you have to put it that way?” Matt chuckled. “I mean, I’m okay with the gunshot wound, but Pino’s sweaty sheets, who knows what lurks beneath?”
Matt opened his eyes again and, though a bit hazy, saw a young Meg Ryan facsimile staring back at him. She was wearing a blue cotton shirt and light blue denim jeans.
Apparently Meredith saw him appraising her attire and said, “You woke me from a restful sleep. You okay to talk?”
“I need to talk,” Matt said, sitting up. “But I want to get out of this bed first.”
Pino entered the room, carrying a large pitcher of water.
“Hey, bro, doctor said no getting up. Just no wet dreams in the sheets, okay?”
“Pino, these sheets are so stiff and nasty I could use them as a body armor,” Matt countered.
“Listen, brother, I washed those sheets two months ago. They are fine.”
“I’m getting up,” Matt said.
And he did. He sat up and collected his thoughts, then fished a clean Underarmour T-shirt from his bag. As he wrestled it over his head, Meredith held one sleeve for him. Grimacing, he pushed his arm through the hole, then stood and walked from the guest room into the family room, where he sat back in the recliner.
He watched Meredith follow him. She had a nice figure and was at least five and half feet tall.
Very attractive,
he thought. It had been a month or two since he’d seen a real, live American beauty up close. Sure, he loved Asian women, but there was no replacement for a girl-next-door American knockout such as was standing in front of him right now.
“What is it you need to talk about?” Meredith asked. “And why are you here?”
“Can we go for a walk?” Matt said. He knew that Pino was on the payroll of the Agency and other departments within the U.S. government, but still he preferred to keep his information held within as tight a circle as possible.
As they were stepping out of the door, Matt looked over his shoulder at Pino and asked, “Since when do you listen to the Rolling Stones?”
Pino looked at Matt, curious, “Talking about, bro?”
“‘Satisfaction.’ I remember hearing that song when I passed out.”
Pino looked at Matt a moment, then laughed loudly. “Whoa, buddy. Must be from your puberty days. I wasn’t playing no music. Now get out of here.”
Matt shrugged, and soon they were walking the trail she had followed from the hotel to Pino’s cottage. Vault lights were located every ten meters or so, illuminating the flagstone path.
“I need to see your credentials, first,” Matt said. The doctor had given him enough Percocet that the pain was numbed, but not so much that he couldn’t think straight.
“Sure,” Meredith said. She pulled out a circular ring with about five different identification badges on it. Matt flipped through them. One was for the Pentagon, another for the State Department, a third was for the White House situation room, and a fourth was for the Agency.
“What’s this one?” Matt asked of the fifth.
“Pentagon Athletic Club. Is that the one you need to see?” She smiled.
“Just checking to make sure you’re in shape.” He handed the credentials back to her. “If indeed you are the first of seventy-two Virginians, then I’m assuming there was some type of competition.”
“Pretty sure of ourselves, aren’t we?”
Matt ignored the rebuke and asked, “Clearance?”
“Top secret, special compartmented infor-mation.”
She seemed to know the right combinations of words, and the pictures on the identification tags certainly looked like her.
“Okay, I’ve been working a project down in the Philippines,” he started. Then he told her the entire story about the
Shimpu
, the contact’s getting shot, his handler having him jump in to the plane crash, and what he had seen in Cateel.
By the time he was done, they were at the main hotel and had taken a seat by the dimly lit pool area.
“We need to get somebody to Mindanao quickly to help those guys and recover Peterson’s body,” Matt emphasized. “And the tanks. What the hell could they be doing with tanks on Mindanao?”
“I’ll let Secretary Rathburn know immediately and call back to the Pentagon,” Meredith said, worry etched across her forehead.
Matt had lain back on the poolside recliner, exhaustion getting the better of him again. He watched cars over the bluff crawl along the coast road. When he saw a small sports car snake around the corner, he thought of his fifteen-year-old Porsche 944, an outdated sports car that he purchased at the same junkyard in which he found his pitching machine. Having played shortstop on the University of Virginia baseball team, Matt often swatted away his demons in the solitude of his makeshift batting cage in his Loudoun County home. Given his career, his love life was less than he had actually hoped for, the multiple “friends with benefits” opportunities out there notwithstanding. Sometimes reluctantly, Matt always rejected FWB offers because women to him were more than a quick fix. His last serious relationship was a two-year college girlfriend and the ensuing two years after graduation as she moved to New York City for a high-profile accountant’s job. For Kari Jackson, the love had faded with the distance. Her beauty and brains had vaulted her into a different, more elevated, social circle, something which Matt could not or perhaps cared not to provide. Time and distance had sawed at their connection from the other end, then there was nothing.
Though on his short break between Afghanistan and China/Philippines, Matt had received a message from Kari on his home phone.
It had started, “Hi Matt, this is Kari, and I just miss …”
He didn’t know any more of what she said because he had punched erase and gone out to his batting cage and rifled nearly a hundred fastballs traveling about ninety miles an hour. The blisters on his hands had started bleeding against the stained athletic tape wrapped around the grip area of his Pete Rose thirty-four-inch bat. Better to have bleeding blisters than to revisit four years of a slowly dying relationship.
That was Matt. All or nothing. Either you had him or you didn’t. Either he was committed or he wasn’t. And while he understood shades of gray just fine, his personal moral guideposts prevented him from operating in that fashion. He could tell a straight-faced lie to a source he was trying to turn, but deceitfulness in his personal life was out of the question.
Matt’s mind spiraled and followed a path toward that fateful day only a few months ago.