by A. J Tata
Mahegan sprang from the corner and threw his considerable weight and force into the door as he wrapped his arm around the man’s throat and clamped his forearm across the man’s windpipe. He reached up with his right hand, grabbed the far side of the man’s head, and snapped his neck with one swift move.
He dragged the man into the dark room, switched on his Maglite, and inspected the body. He found a Harris radio, which he took.
He also found two weapons, a K-Bar knife and a Glock pistol.
As he picked up the radio, he heard it come to life.
“Oh, hey, any sign of our expected visitor?”
“Not yet. I don’t think some stupid Army guy could find us out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Chapter 30
Lieutenant General Stanley Bream had returned from his heady meeting with the Secretary of Defense and now paced across his office in long, hurried strides. This news was not good. He could go from hero to zero in an instant. That’s how the beltway politics worked.
Sweat beaded on his brow and he wondered how in the world he had lost Mahegan. Mahegan was key to finding Adham, and Adham was, well, key to everything. Ten paces in one direction past the mammoth desk, about face, and ten in the opposite direction. Finally, he stopped, faced his perfectly neat desk, and placed both hands on the polished mahogany.
“You’re telling me he just disappeared?” Bream screamed into the Bluetooth headset sticking in his ear like a Tootsie Roll alongside his smooth jawline. Spittle sprayed the desk.
Paslowski, still on Roanoke Island, said, “We had him scoped at a party, but we got there too late. After he tore up Copperhead, we’ve been a step behind him ever since.”
“Maintaining control of Mahegan was your only mission in life, Paslowski,” Bream spat.
“I know, sir. We’ll find him. In the meantime, we’ve got word that a small airplane crashed just offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Who gives a shit? Was Mahegan on that airplane? That’s the only way I would care.”
“Sir, we don’t know. I’m heading over to Copperhead when the sun comes up. They’ve declared a top-secret restricted zone around the ambush location in the Long Shoal River. No one can get in there except for us and of course Locklear. Maybe some locals.”
“Go get Locklear and talk to her. She ought to know something. This thing is coming apart faster than a Kmart sweater in a washing machine.”
“First light, we’ll swing by there and then over to the ambush location. I’m thinking we need to call in DHS here.”
Paslowski was referring to the Department of Homeland Security. That a former soldier had breached ongoing military contracting ammunition cleanup efforts was of concern. Coupled with the fact that someone had attacked two military installations with explosives in the last forty-eight hours, they could argue it was a national security issue of the highest proportions.
“We will not get DHS involved. I don’t want any of the three-letter dicks, you understand. No CIA. No FBI. No DHS. Nobody! Understand?”
Paslowski paused before speaking.
“Boss, we need some help down here.”
“Listen, Mahegan is our responsibility. I asked all those agencies to back off while we played him out. When he popped up on the Ocracoke Ferry, it was perfect. You tracked him to Midgett’s place and that was good. I think I can keep these other agencies at bay for about two days, max. These frigging attacks on Brackett and Suffolk are out of nowhere and ruining our play. But we have a chance. I want to nail this guy ourselves.”
“Roger, boss.”
“And this whack job Adham is cutting off heads overseas. I mean, this country is going to go bat shit in less than twenty-four hours. Now find Mahegan, get Copperhead under control, and make this thing go away. People are starting to wonder if these bombings are connected to Copperhead. We don’t need or want any more attention on our operation! Clear?”
“Clear.”
General Bream punched off the phone and paced some more, muttering to himself like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Rain Man.
“Sonofabitch, sonofabitch, sonofabitch,” he said loudly.
In his office at four a.m., he felt the uneasy surge of fear circling him like a python. A lifetime of grabbing the next rung on the ladder, of carefully sidestepping dangerous duty, of planting his foot firmly on the backs of others, was in jeopardy. He had gambled, he knew. But the potential payoff was huge. Chief of Staff of the Army . . . and more.
Having never served in combat, Bream was unfamiliar with the swirling variables beyond his control. He was accustomed to having his rank and from that rank, power. Never one to associate much with the enlisted soldiers, he knew that aloof, iron-fisted rule was what had worked for him in the past.
Now, he was alone, having made some very risky decisions. And here was Mahegan, a damn Indian, blowing up everything. It was supposed to be the other way around.
But it wasn’t all lost. There was still a play to be had. That asshole General Savage had baited him almost a year ago with an e-mail on secret Internet about how Mahegan suspected where the MVX-90s were coming from. If it hadn’t been for that message, Bream wouldn’t have thought twice about Mahegan.
Bream’s heart rate was arrhythmic, slamming in his chest at over one hundred beats per minute. His breathing was labored and he knew his blood pressure was through the roof. Looking for his Metoprolol, he fumbled with the desk drawer, found the orange bottle, and popped two fifty-milligram tablets, chewing them before he swallowed.
“Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, son of a bitch.”
He ran through what was on the line.
He had served thirty-three years in the Army. He could retire with a fat pension tomorrow if he wished. The wife was threatening to leave him because he worked all the time and she knew she could get fifty percent of his retirement pay. The kid? Well, the kid was the problem. Plus, he was underwater on the fat mortgage on his townhouse in Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. In 2007, it had seemed like a steal at $900,000. Today, he would be lucky to get $600,000 for it. He couldn’t rent it and had it listed for sale at $850,000 as it sat vacant across the Potomac from his government-issued mansion at Fort McNair.
But really, what was he most concerned about? His freedom. Because what he had done could cost him the most precious thing of all.
Like most potentially bad decisions, this one had seemed like such a no-brainer at the time.
Find Chayton Mahegan, reopen the Hoxha case, and get him in the crosshairs of the mighty Inspector General. Confirm the dishonorable discharge, for sure. That kind of pressure almost always made people do stupid things like contacting witnesses, covering their tracks, and generally “obstructing justice.”
There was no doubt that Mahegan was on the run and that he had made mistakes. Hell, there was enough to arrest him right now if they could just find him. But his arrest was never what had interested Bream. He had wanted Mahegan in the gray area. Was he guilty of murder? Who knew? Was he capable of treason? Possibly. Was he involved with espionage? Perhaps. Was he linked to The American Taliban? That was certainly desirable from many angles. The benefit of threatening dishonorable discharge on Mahegan was that there was a carrot to manipulate Mahegan and Savage.
But it was the MVX-90s that scared Bream. He couldn’t have Mahegan out there with the real story about the lethal bomb triggers.
Bream’s area of expertise was inventing uncertainty. His standard for “a preponderance of the evidence” was much lower than “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He could manufacture evidence, as he had done in Mahegan’s case. Hell, Bream knew the letters from Mahegan’s case were all too similar to be factual. He believed with all of his being that Mahegan’s Delta Force buddies had conspired to write those practically duplicated letters defending their battle buddy. It was the perfect case for him to exploit and the perfect soldier for him to hound.
Or so he had thought.
What to do?
He sat in his leat
her chair and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. His height and weight caused the air to blow out of the cushioned seat with a hydraulic sound.
The blood pressure pills had helped. His heart wasn’t pounding through his chest anymore. This thing was still manageable, he thought, but far beyond his comfort zone.
“How do I get control?” he asked himself out loud.
He had a thought. Maybe he was wrong.
Maybe it was time to bring in the three-letter agencies.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Paslowski’s smarter than he damn sure looks.”
It was approaching five a.m. If he put out a BOLO for Chayton Mahegan, then he could leverage the entire law enforcement network against him. His worry had clouded his mind, but now he was focused.
He flipped on his secret computer, shook the mouse a couple of times, clicked on Microsoft Word, and began typing.
Be on the Lookout (BOLO) for former Army
Captain Chayton “Jake” Mahegan. Consider him
armed and dangerous. Dishonorably discharged
from the Army, Mahegan is under investigation
for murdering an Afghan civilian (possibly a
combatant) in detained status. He was last seen
on the northern tip of Roanoke Island near the
Lost Colony Theatre. He is a person of interest
in one murder on Roanoke Island, North
Carolina, and another missing person case in
the same location. It has been confirmed that
Mahegan broke into the bomb disposal
warehouse of Copperhead, Incorporated on Dare
County Bombing Range yesterday, where three
dead contractors were located. This known
activity indicates a possible connection in the
domestic terror attacks at Fort Brackett and
Suffolk Military Compound. Department of
Defense has lead for questioning and investigation,
but seeks all interagency support
in locating and detaining Mahegan. There are
initial indications that he may have been in
communications with and received payment
from The American Taliban, Adam Wilhoyt.
He typed his name and rank, always include the rank, and title before he cut and pasted the text into a standard format that he then placed on his secret e-mail, called SIPR.
He pulled up his secret e-mail, pasted the text into the BOLO format, and then clicked on the BOLO addressee list, which included the heads of all of the three-letter agencies, as well as the service departments, and a host of other important national security agencies. To get the big funding in today’s environment, most agencies had added either “national security” or “counterterrorism” to their title or mission statement. Bream figured it was sort of like BP changing their logo after the oil well blew open in the Gulf. Didn’t mean much, but it looked good.
When he hit send, the BOLO message would, over the next several minutes and hours, spread across the country and around the world to agencies such as Interpol in Europe. This was a wide net he was casting and the biggest gamble he had taken so far.
The task now was to plant that link between Mahegan and Adham. Bream believed he could find something plausible enough to say it was a “preponderance of the evidence.” Maybe he could secretly pad Mahegan’s bank account from a Middle Eastern routing. That was easy enough. Or, a document mentioning Mahegan as an ally could be “found” in one of Adham’s hideouts.
They were both good options, Bream thought. If he could snare Mahegan and Adham, his career would be unstoppable.
On that thought, he made one more call. It was time for some hands-on leadership.
Chapter 31
Mahegan dialed down the volume on the Harris radio and placed it in his rucksack. He figured he had about five minutes before the world would rain down on him.
He took a moment, though, to process what he needed to do. As he climbed the ladder out of the cargo hold on Nix’s Ocean Ranger, he stopped and scanned the deck. All hands were tending to the simultaneous transfer of prisoners from Le Concord to the Ocean Ranger and of crates in the opposite direction.
He slipped over the gunwale on the opposite side of the ship. Clearly, the crew had been alerted that a crazy man was heading their way, but they had not taken the threat seriously. Good for him.
He was down the hull ladder and in the water, passing silently around the aft end, feeling the weight of his rucksack and the chill of the ocean water seeping inside his wetsuit. He smelled the diesel fumes from the generators powering the cranes and lights and could taste the oil in the water as he swam from the Ocean Ranger back to Le Concord.
As he approached the port side of the vessel named after the French slave ship that Blackbeard had eventually captured and renamed the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Mahegan had to admire the irony. He was staying at a boardinghouse by the name of Blackbeard’s boat and now he was bent on destroying the frigate’s namesake.
Slowly, quietly stroking through the ocean swells that tossed at about five feet, Mahegan studied the massive hulls of the two ships. Briefly, they overwhelmed the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.
He was pleased that so far their security had been lax. While he did not expect that condition to last much longer, he was exploiting the intelligence he had. His training in the Army, especially with the paratroopers and Delta forces, had convinced him that acting immediately on the best intelligence available was the preferred route. Some people liked to study an issue. Mahegan preferred to seize the initiative.
He found a series of rungs on the port side of Le Concord, which he immediately began climbing. Based on his brief visit less than an hour ago, he knew where he needed to go.
He was looking for the engine room. Over the gunwale again, he paused and noticed the entire crew transporting prisoners and receiving crates of bombs. Again, no security. All eyes were focused on the klieg lights, ropes, pulleys, and cranes. It was an industrial operation moving in two directions on the high seas. The only thing that might catch this brief transfer was a satellite, but Mahegan knew that almost all defense satellites were focused on the regional hotspots of Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, China, and the Horn of Africa.
Chayton Mahegan, he thought. He remembered his father’s words: The Falcon-Wolf sees and he attacks. In battle, there were moments when Mahegan would feel a primal connection to his Indian ancestry. His instincts were so finely tuned that he believed he was reaching back in time and drawing upon the strength of the warrior brethren he had learned about as a child.
This was one such moment. Knowing he was the lone defender of what was right, Mahegan knew he had no choice but to act. He could not fathom the numbers of men and women who would perish in explosions ignited by the MVX-90s and discarded Dare County Bombing Range ordnance. And while there were more MVX-90s in the warehouse and more bombs to be unearthed, he had the opportunity to disrupt a major shipment right now. Perhaps even shut down the pipeline.
He moved swiftly down the unguarded stairwell and passed the prisoner room, which was empty. Their transfer was under way.
He went down two more flights of stairs and found the engine room. He opened a steel door and stepped into a dimly lit cavern of unfamiliar machinery. Though he had spent some time working the fishing rigs in Wilmington, he’d been a grunt, not a boat driver. This was different. Pipes were routed along the walls of the room and connected to large vats, like the ones he had seen in brewpubs. The vats all had pipes connected to a main shaft that led toward the aft end of the ship. Even inside the bowels of this craft he knew his direction was facing south.
He switched on the recently captured Harris radio to listen to any communications traffic and heard the low static buzz of an active channel. After about a minute, he heard, “Listening silence acknowledged, out.”
Interesting, he thought. He turned off the radio and thought for a moment. In response to his capture
of the radio, whoever was controlling this operation had banned anyone from speaking on the devices. Such discipline spoke to the professionalism of the leadership, if not the crew. Listening silence meant that only the individual in charge would be initiating radio calls and those personnel not in command would only respond if spoken to.
His plan could still work. He looked back at the gas turbines. The diesel fuel would be burning here, making the combustion necessary to turn the screw, which would turn the propeller. Diesel fuel, Mahegan knew, was less combustible than straight-up gasoline, but more explosive than jet fuel. He would need to ignite the claymore mine he had retrieved from the crate using one of the blasting caps he’d found in the same box.
All he needed was some wire. He found a series of cables and wires running along the near wall to his right. Using his knife, he pared back the rubber insulation, revealing a series of copper wires. He touched his knife blade to the wires, which could have been dangerous, but he got no spark. He went to work stripping the insulation the same way someone exposes wire when installing a stereo speaker system. He retrieved about eight feet of wire, removed one strand, wrapped the rest around the blasting cap, inserted the blasting cap in the claymore mine receptor, and wedged the claymore next to one of the diesel pumps.
Next, he traced the wire back behind a steel wall, resigned to the fact that it would do little good if the radio call came in too soon. Mahegan then led the remaining thin copper wire to a communications portal he had seen on his initial sweep of the room. There was a platform with three displays and a PVC pipe full of wires coming from above. In Mahegan’s estimation, this was a radio communications mechanism for the engine room personnel in case of emergency or during routine operations. Whatever its purpose, Mahegan knew it would transmit the radio signal from above decks to the engine room.
Opening his rucksack, he removed the remaining MVX-90 he had lifted from the Copperhead warehouse. He then retrieved his flashlight, unscrewed the facing, pulled the guts, and connected it to the power source of the MVX-90. He saw a light flicker on the MVX-90 and knew he was in business. He armed the receiver-transmitter function to transmit on reception, which meant the next time someone with a Harris radio operating within the prescribed frequency range, 30–108 MHz, made a radio call, the MVX-90 would send an electrical impulse through the wires and into the blasting cap.