“What the hell are you talking about? You knew about this?” Matt growled.
Rathburn stopped his pacing and stared at Matt, perhaps through him.
“I’m Keith Richards, don’t you understand?”
“You’re a whack job,” Matt replied.
“Hey, Keith, gimme shelter,” the large man in the corner said. “Or shut the hell up.”
Matt turned to the man who had been silent to that point, looked at him, and watched him stand. He was enormous, probably pushing seven feet, Matt guessed.
“What’s your name?” Matt asked, still holding Rathburn’s trembling body.
“Rod Stewart,” the man said, breaking into a wide grin. Matt noticed his teeth were white and straight, at odds with his disheveled appearance. “Let’s have a jam session.”
“Don’t mock me, asshole,” Rathburn said, trying to point but unable to because Matt was restraining him.
“I don’t know you, but I will kill you,” the stranger said. “But I would be doing you a favor, so I think I’ll let these guys do it.”
As if on cue, four Abu Sayyaf guards barreled down the steps and opened the door, splashing a rectangular spotlight of sunshine across the floor.
“Hey, Joe. You die,” one man said, as three gathered up Rathburn and took him up the stairs.
“We’re going to see Jagger, right?” Rathburn shouted. “This is all a ruse. Make it real. No propagandists. It’s all real.” Then he pointed at Matt, and shouted, “He’s the one you’re supposed to take! That’s Matt Garrett. He’s your beast of burden! Let it bleed!”
They listened at the incoherent ramblings as the guards escorted Rathburn out of earshot.
“Looks like some wild horses dragged him away,” the man said.
Matt watched the men drag Rathburn up the dusty concrete steps and said in a low whisper, “What the hell was that all about?”
“Sounds like you were supposed to be set up,” Sturgeon said.
Matt remained silent, then turned to the large Native American.
“Name?”
“I told you …”
“Don’t even mess with me,” Matt said approaching the larger man. He leveled his jade laser like eyes into the man’s bloodshot brown pupils.
“You don’t scare me. But just so you know, Johnny Barefoot’s the name.”
“American?”
“Yeah. Was here on assignment.”
“You do CNN stuff, right?” Jack Sturgeon asked, moving toward the conversation.
“That’s me. Was supposed to cover some deployment of an infantry company from Hawaii to here. CNN was getting all kinds of static from the Department of Defense as to why there were no embeds in the Philippines covering this ‘war.’” He made quotations marks around the term “war.”
“So they sent one dude?”
“That’s right. Not even my thing, you know. I do American West, Native-American issues, casinos, corruption, that kind of thing.”
Huh, Matt thought. He turned away and walked toward the door, which he checked. It was secured, as he expected.
Matt’s mind spun. I get pulled out of Pakistan when I’m about to kill Al Qaeda senior leadership. My team is broken up, and I’m sent to China and the Philippines pursuing teaser leads on Predators. I’m told to jump into a plane wreck only to find an American body I wasn’t told about. I find Japanese tanks on Mindanao and a Japanese man flying in a float plane to Palau, where, coincidentally, perhaps not, Rathburn is cooling his heels. Then I run across a second-tier journalist who was sent to “embed” with a rifle company in the Philippines, where a Muslim uprising has suddenly taken root. And Rathburn is giving up my name to Abu Sayyaf.
None of it made sense separately, but there were some threads he could see that created a fabric. With Barefoot standing there, he was reminded of a Bev Doolittle painting The Haunted Ground. At first glance, the painting was simply a cowboy atop his steed looking over his shoulder as he fled through an aspen forest pulling his galloping supply horse. When he stared at it long enough, the knotty trees dissolved into an image of three Native-American faces and an eagle watching the intruder.
What was he seeing when he stepped away from the individual threads and put the mosaic together?
As his mind spun to wide field of view, he stopped, like a gear catching.
“Who were you supposed to interview?”
“That’s the thing. The company was in a hell of a fight, a couple of guys were killed, and they bugged out to the jungle.”
“Who?” Matt asked, approaching Barefoot.
“Some company commander named Captain Zachary Garrett.”
Chapter 62
Private Pitts had waited an hour after the lieutenant at the division operations center just up the road from his quad on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, had told him and his good friend, Slick, to get off the radio. They had changed frequencies, and it would be appropriate for him to conduct a communications check with his old buddy. He lifted the black handset to his mouth and spoke.
“Bravo six romeo, this is Knight six romeo, over”
“This is Bravo six romeo, go ahead, over.”
Pitts smiled wide as he heard Slick’s voice beam down from the satellite. He was amazed, but glad, that they could talk even though they were 8900 kilometers away.
“Sitrep, over.” He had heard the battalion com-mander and operations officer say it often. His intent was to convey to his friend that the conversation would not degenerate to the level it had earlier when the lieutenant at division had admonished them.
“This is Bravo six romeo. Currently holding in position. No enemy contact. Anxiously awaiting your arrival.”
“This is Knight six romeo. Roger. Say again SALUTE report given to higher earlier this morning, over,” Pitts said. SALUTE was a standard reporting acronym that stood for Size, Activity, Location, Unit, Time, and Equipment. The acronym provided a simple format for reporting enemy dispositions.
As Pitts waited for the response, he realized his exhaustion. He had been awake all night, helping the unit prepare to fly to Guam later that day. Most of the soldiers were already at Hickam Air Force Base near Pearl Harbor preparing to board C-17 aircraft and a variety of commercial charter planes. As members of the communications platoon, they would be the last to travel to the airfield. He saw the battalion adjutant wander aimlessly into his office, obviously tired.
“Hey, Pitts, what’s going on?”
“Not much, sir. Got a commo check on our new satcom here with Captain Garrett and the boys.”
“No shit?” Captain Glenn Bush responded, awakening. “How’re they doing?” The entire battalion wanted desperately to go to the rescue of their isolated comrades.
“Slick says they’re holding in position without enemy contact,” said Pitts.
“That’s good,” said Bush, sounding relieved.
“This is Bravo six romeo. I say again last SALUTE. Size: one Japanese executive. Activity: producing weapons for Abu Sayyaf attack to include tanks, helicopters, and small arms. Location: island of Mindanao. Uniform: orange running suit. Time of capture: unknown. Equipment: four large weapons-construction plants. Informant captured by friendly elements operating in the area, over.”
Pitts’s hand dropped the microphone as if it had suddenly scalded him. Captain Bush looked at Pitts and said, “Is that for real, or just some game you guys are playing?”
Pitts, his mind reeling, looked at the captain.
“Sir, we’ve got to get this information to division. They think that Bravo Company found some old Japanese weapons from World War II. That division TOC officer must have been asleep to miss that shit.”