Operation Mockingbird Read Online Free PDF

started to make the arrangements.
    He tried to speak with Dana before he left. He left messages on her voice mail. He sent emails. He had flowers delivered to her office. He harassed the doormen of her apartment building, who had apparently been instructed not to let him up the elevator. He sheepishly dropped by her work where he was met with an icy stare from the receptionist. Dana wouldn’t see him or take his calls.
    Finally, the time came for him to leave and he did without having made amends. He hated to admit it now -- but from her perspective Dana had a right to be pissed off. His altercation with Suarez and his decision to go to Afghanistan may have been yet another in a series of career-limiting moves.

CHAPTER FOUR
    MATT WOKE TO THE FEELING of someone pushing heavily against his chest. He tried to catch his breath, but the weight kept pressing him down. He tried to reach up, but his arms were pinned. He struggled to free his arms, his efforts more frantic as the pressure became more suffocating. The vise grip of the restraints seemed to tighten, squeezing the last drop of air out of him. But then, suddenly, he was free. He shot up to a sitting position, his heart pounding as though it were trying to break out of his chest.
    He scanned the room for his attacker as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. The moonlight streaming in from the window behind him bounced off the walls. Familiar walls. Matt recognized the worn wood table in the corner and the threadbare rug covering the floor.
    Home.
    His sheets, tangled and soaked with sweat, lay in a heap on the floor beside his bed. The house was quiet except for his ragged breathing. He swung his feet onto the floor and slowly rose. Walking around the house, touchingfamiliar objects, he tried to shake his mind free of the enormous weight that had been crushing his body.
    Matt returned to bed and lay back down. His mind began grabbing for threads of the nightmare still lingering in his subconscious. Perhaps trying to remember the specifics would be helpful. At least that’s what all the psychobabble he had seen on television suggested.
    Funny how he couldn’t remember Dana’s birthday or where they shared their first kiss, but he could still recall every detail, the sounds and even the smells of those last days in Kandahar up to the moments just before the explosion that changed his life. Sometimes he woke to the memories of the screams that brought him back to consciousness. Other times his dreams were filled with the details of his escape from his captors.
    When Matt regained consciousness after the bombing, he was alone in a dimly lit room. His body ached all over. When he drew a deep breath, he felt what seemed like the jagged edges of his ribs scraping across his lungs. He slowly sat upright, his body screaming from the effort. The room spun around him. He gingerly swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself up off the bed. For several seconds he stood there, swaying unsteadily on his feet. His head throbbed, and he reached up to find the source. His hair was greasy but also matted and stiff in places. Drawing his hand back, he saw flakes of dried blood on his fingertips. Like a blind man, he took inventory of his own face and didn’t like what he felt.
    A single light bulb hung from the ceiling. He tapped it, and the globe swung slowly in an arc. The weak lightprovided a glimpse of his surroundings. He took a slow turn around. It was a small room, containing nothing but a steel-framed bed with a stained mattress, a threadbare blanket and a wooden chair. The only window in the room was boarded up. Slivers of light came through the spaces between the boards covering the window. He tapped the bulb again. He noticed a crimson stain on the wall behind the bed, and a chill ran through him.
    He walked toward the door, turned the knob and pushed. Nothing. The door was bolted from the outside. He banged on the door, shouting for someone to let him out. He