As he exited the vice president’s mansion, he walked down the marble flagstaff to the servant’s quarters that doubled as a medical clinic. He walked in and saw Zachary being treated for his wounds.
“Thanks, man,” he said, looking up.
“You okay?”
“I’ll live. Got some memory back too.”
“How’d you get that scar?” Matt smirked.
Zach rubbed his chin where the pellet from Matt’s shotgun had nicked him. He looked up with his trademark grin and said, “War injury, brother.”
“Thought so.”
The two brothers hugged and Matt turned to the doctor as they broke the embrace.
“Where’s Peyton?”
“Peyton?”
“Peyton, the redhead Jock brought over here.”
Doc Bell shrugged. “I know Peyton, but never saw her or Jock.”
Matt stared at Zach, who shook his head.
“Ah, man.”
“Gotta find this Jock dude,” Zach said.
“If he’s alive.”
“There’s that.”
“Or he could be part of it.”
Matt walked over to the window and stared into the darkness. How bad had she really been hurt? What was her motive?
Then he had a thought.
Lantini.
Epilogue
The white rubber tires created a low hum as they spun in opposite directions, ready to fire a fastball at Zachary. Matt watched his older brother from the deck as he held a cold beer bottle in his right hand. His left arm had been properly set in a sling by a stern doctor.
Matt continued to watch Zachary take solid cuts at the pitching machine, though he had tuned down the pitch speed to eighty miles an hour.
The tires slowed with a whine as Matt watched Zach punch the red button and flip the bat into the net. The machine spit a final ball out of the decelerating tires. The ball only made it about halfway to the plate and then rolled into the back net, causing Zach to look casually over his shoulder as he stepped from the netting.
“Beer?” Matt asked.
“That’s a stupid question.”
“Two left in the cooler,” Matt said, but Zach was already twisting off the top of a Budweiser.
“Thanks.” Then, “Blake okay?”
“He’s fine, other than his pride. He told me that he had bent down to secure the weapons in the duffel, and when he stood up, Peyton was over the edge and climbing the ship ladder like Spiderman.”
“Could have shot her,” Zachary said.
Matt smirked. “Then who would have flown the plane?”
“Good point. Any clues on her whereabouts?”
“I’m thinking she’s gone south. With Lantini. Either that or she was Hellerman’s spy and bolted to save her ass.”
Zach took a sip of his beer and pondered the notion.
“Or she was boning Jock Evans,” Zach said with his characteristic frankness.
“There’s that.”
They remained silent a moment.
“Gotta watch that machine. Tires catch a thread sometimes,” Zach said, staring into the backyard at the batting cage.
“Roger.”
“We both got thrown curve balls if you think about it.” Zach said.
“I’ve thought about it,” Matt said. “Somehow we got out of the inning.”
The two continued to talk in baseball analogies.
“We’re okay, you know. A few hit by pitches, but we’re solid again, Matt.”
“Getting there, anyway.”
“Sometimes I think of all these weasels throwing fastballs, junk, sliders, whatever at us, and they’re our own guys, you know?”
“That’s what makes it so hard.”
“Ever think Hellerman was onto something?”
Tricky subject, Matt thought to himself. The man had highlighted the nation’s complacency as a threat equal to Islamic extremism. But to attack ourselves to prove the point was over the top, to say the least.
“This whole stagnant spirit thing, he was probably right about that. But entirely dicked up in his approach to dealing with the problem,” Matt finally concluded.
“How would you have approached the issue?” Zach asked, a bit of challenge in his voice.
“Not sure, man. I mean, there are only a few, less than one percent, of us who are fighting these wars. So that’s ninety nine percent who don’t feel the sacrifice, the cost of liberty. How can you know the value of something if you don’t fully understand its cost?”
“Right about that. Maybe a draft or something like that to get everyone’s attention. Maybe he did the only thing he felt like he could do,” Zach said.
After a brief silence, Matt said, “And we did what we could do.”
Matt turned slowly and leaned against the railing of the deck. They remained silent for quite some time before Matt asked, changing the subject, “Have you talked to Amanda?”
He noticed a cloud drift across Zach’s eyes at the mention of his estranged daughter. “She still thinks I’m dead,” Zach said before taking a long pull on his beer. “Probably won’t be too happy to learn I’m alive.”
“Sensitive topic. I shouldn’t have raised it.”
Zach stared at Matt for a moment before saying, “No, you’re right. I’ve got to deal with it. Just so much pain for her… and me. I’ve only now started remembering… how much I miss her… and love her.”
“She loves you, too, Zach. Don’t sell yourself short on that one.”
Zach looked at his younger brother. “Thanks. Maybe I can pull it back together somehow. Maybe Riley can help.”
“That’s a thought,” Matt said. Riley Dwyer was Zachary’s former lover. A psychiatrist in Atlanta, she had become a recluse since Zach’s supposed death. It seemed Zachary’s rebirth would offer new opportunities.
They fell silent again until they heard a car door shut in the driveway.
“Expecting company?” Zach asked.
Before he could answer, Colonel Jack Rampert walked into the back yard and up the steps of the deck. He was wearing his Class A Army green uniform, medals crawling over his shoulder and making him look like a Spanish dictator.
“Colonel.” Matt nodded. “Beer?”
“For a smart man, you sure ask some dumb questions,” Rampert replied as he twisted off the cap of the Budweiser Zach had retrieved for him. He took a quick sip and then said, “Seems that Meredith’s ballsy move to steal Hellerman’s hard drive paid off. We found it in the laptop of some wire-head named Jacob Olney who was killed with Meredith. The killer took Olney’s PC with a bunch of Photoshop bullshit on it. Hellerman’s had the attack plan and years of conspiratorial data. All these surgical actions around the United States and Central America you’ve been hearing about the last week or so, they’ve been driven by the intel we got off that hard drive.”
The two brothers stared at Rampert in stunned disbelief.
“Meredith did well,” Matt whispered, looking away.
“That’s not why I came here, though,” Rampert said, leaning against the deck rail. “Zach, I’ve gotten you a battlefield promotion to colonel given your basic entry date. I’ve also gotten you assigned to my command at Fort Bragg.”
A breeze shot through the pine thicket in Matt’s back yard, pushing across the batting cage net.
“You report for duty Monday.”