Amanda walked through a small laundry room and into the kitchen, which was not much larger. On the small television stuffed onto the counter next to the microwave there was an image of a house in flames, with fire trucks spewing streams of water into it. The video was obviously being shot from a helicopter flying over the mansion. There were several cars stacked up along the long driveway, many with flashing blue and red lights. She squinted and could barely make out her mother’s Mercedes, but it was still there.
The crawl at the bottom of the news feed began to spit out small factoids as they were being reported, no doubt by crack journalists on the scene.
… historic mansion destroyed by fire… flame believed to have been started by burglar… weapon and dead body found… deceased is male suspect… home recently purchased by Melanie Garrett of Spartanburg… ex-wife of Colonel Zachary Garrett, recently killed in Afghanistan…
The picture cut to a feed from a ground crew who apparently had recently arrived at the scene. On the screen was a plain-looking woman reporter who had obviously gotten the assignment because she lived nearby and could change out of her pajamas quickly. She wore a windbreaker over blue jeans and spoke rapidly as she held the microphone to her mouth. Behind her the flames in one part of the house were still roaring and appeared much larger from this vantage.
Oddly, Amanda was reminded of when her father had taken her to watch the reenactment of the burning of the Heidelberg Castle in Germany. Flames were licking from the windows like tortured demons wishing to escape hell.
“Bill, what we have here is a huge fire in a house that was sold only a couple of days ago,” she said against the jet engine roar of the fire behind her. “Police are on the scene, and firefighters have subdued the flames at the entrance to the home, where they believe the fire began. These are only initial reports, but there is confirmation of one deceased male in the home, and authorities are telling me that they have found a small pistol on the scene. What that means they are unwilling to speculate, but the owner of the house, Mrs. Melanie Garrett of Spartanburg, is hysterical. She has been running up and down the front of the house yelling at the firemen, telling them to pour more water on the flames and to do it faster. From what I can see, Bill, these men are doing a fantastic job of just trying to save some part of this home. Let’s see if we can’t get a shot of the owner.”
The camera panned to two firemen holding a stiff hose that was spewing a solid stream of water into the right front of the house. Amanda could see that a charred, black hole was located where the dining room used to be. Suddenly, she saw her mother pushing the firemen and screaming, waving her arms toward the house. The camera panned onto her face, the same contorted mask she’d seen as her mother had knocked the lighter out of her hand and onto the Persian rug.
“… bastards, get more trucks here! Save this house! Damnit, I’ve got no insurance! Damn you, save this house!”
Amanda dropped her eyes. No matter how despicable her mother had been, it was difficult to watch someone acting with such a lack of human dignity. And while Amanda had suspected that something of this nature might happen if the plan worked, actually watching it was challenging.
Then she thought that it was no more challenging than how she had watched her mother and grandmother emasculate her father on a daily basis until it became routine, commonplace. The notion that he was a deadbeat bastard had eased its way into their lexicon and become a staple of their lives. It was a notion that was so opposed to reality that in hindsight it seemed absolutely absurd to her that she had ever taken the bait.
“Looks like you got her good, hon.”
Charlotte had returned her car to the driveway to help hide Amanda’s Mercedes and to provide a plausible explanation should any police arrive.
“What do you mean? I’ve been here with you and Brianna all night.”
“You got that right.”
CHAPTER 77
In the tunnel there was very little space for the three of them. One hand grenade would possibly kill them all. The scraping of the floorboard and the partial opening of the trap door into what they believed to be house number three made the next few seconds seem like an eternity.
Matt grabbed Van Dreeves, who was cutting wires on the bomb protecting the computers that potentially contained the database. It had to be somewhere and what the technicians from Langley had forwarded to Matt was a message that the flash drive’s Trojan had piped back to them a partial file that looked like a list of names, phone numbers and addresses of fighters, financiers, logisticians, businessmen, all of whom were a part of the loose network of Al Qaeda.
In the modern era, such a list would be akin to finding the personnel roster of a nation’s standing army. Matt knew that the Rosetta stone was not killing bin Laden, though he hoped to do that soon, but to get the list, the database, the Al Qaeda, and then systematically move down that list and kill or capture those on it. Only then could America tip the balance of fear away from its own shores and back towards those who wished to do her harm. Constantly updated, the list was rumored to be kept on two hard drives. Initially on the server in Jeddah, bin Laden determined to keep that list up and running as a decoy. Intelligence agencies spent years chasing the Jeddah server list, which was mostly made up of Muslims who wanted to travel to the conference on Islamic Affairs. True, there were some who ultimately joined bin Laden’s organization and cause, but he transferred them to a different list.
Getting Van Dreeves to safety and protecting the computer and their hard drives was job one.
Surviving was job two.
“It’s a fake,” Van Dreeves said about the time Matt pushed him.
Matt’s credo had always been that a good offense would eventually wear down a good defense. If you hit enough baseballs over the fence, you win. When in doubt, attack. In the nanosecond that flashed through Matt’s mind as he grabbed Van Dreeves and shoved him past himself and Hobart, he turned to Hobart and said, “We’re going up.”
He stepped on the wooden ladder that led up to the trap door that was by now two-thirds of the way open and raised his rifle. He flipped on his flashlight and shined it right into the face of a startled man who was brandishing a weapon of some sort.
Matt shot him in the face, the bullets kicking the man backward. The trap door did not fall, which to Matt meant that there was someone on the backside of it holding it open. In the next nanosecond he put two rounds into the flooring that served as the trap door. In the yellow beam of his MagLite he saw the wood splinter and a penetration hole appear through the panel, which began to fall. He pushed his shoulder into the door and lunged upward from the top rail of the ladder in the direction of the hinge on the trapdoor.
The door snapped off its hinges and Matt tumbled onto the soft body of a moaning man. He scanned the body for weapons and saw an AK-74 about five feet away. He put his flashlight on the man’s bearded face and saw that he was grimacing in pain. Thinking that he may want a prisoner, he decided to check fire.
“I’m up. One KIA, one WIA. Let’s move,” Matt said.
Soon Hobart was up and pushing across the dead man that Matt had shot first.
They were breathing heavily in the dark, letting the silence settle over them, making millisecond calculations as to what they should do next.
“VD, stay below until we’ve got this thing sorted out.”
“Roger.”
“And protect that precious cargo.”