by A. J Tata
“Okay. Let me rephrase what I said. As long as it’s just, I’m good.”
“That’s more like it.”
The sheriff removed the handcuffs and nodded to a breakfast nook with a table and chairs. He was standing in an open kitchen of walnut cabinets and dark marble tile for countertops. A modern stainless refrigerator anchored one end of the kitchen while the nook with white shuttered window dressings anchored the other. There was a pass through the mudroom into the breezeway that led to the first of two garages. Mahegan could see the freestanding barnlike structure in the back near the sound.
“I’m making coffee and Rosa should be here any minute to make us breakfast. I imagine you’re hungry.”
“Starving.”
“Okay. Do you want clothes and a shower first?”
“Deal.”
He showed Mahegan to a shower and guest room upstairs. Mahegan showered for twenty minutes and stepped into the guest room, where Johnson had laid out some clothes on the bed. He had told him that his nephew in Virginia Beach was about the same size as Mahegan, extra-large. The jeans were an inch big around the waist, but otherwise the length was fine. The shirt was a black Under Armour spandex T-shirt. The work boots were tight, so he left them for when he would need them.
When he came around the corner, he smelled breakfast and saw an elderly Hispanic woman working in the kitchen. He saw two plates stacked with eggs and bacon and pancakes on the table. Johnson sat at the table waiting for him.
“This how you treat all your prisoners?” he asked Johnson.
“Only the ones who can help me.”
Mahegan sat down and began to eat.
“Are we off the grid here?” Mahegan asked through a mouthful of eggs.
“If you mean, undercover or black ops as you guys call it, yes. If you mean can anyone find us here, well, yes, they can, but I’ve got a car at the end of the road and a boat out in the sound. We should be okay. Not airtight, but okay.”
“So let’s talk,” Mahegan said.
They finished their meal, Mahegan devouring an extra helping of pancakes.
“Let’s go to the garage,” Johnson said.
They exited through the mudroom, into the breezeway, and then before entering the front garage, followed a flagstone path to the barn, which was a small replica of the house with fewer angles. It appeared more Dutch Colonial than Cape Cod. Probably a different builder, Mahegan thought.
Inside, Mahegan saw a 1965 light blue Mustang that appeared in near mint condition.
“Had that when I was a kid,” Johnson said. “Nobody knew it would become a big collector’s item.”
“Looks like you’ve maintained it well.”
“Love you Army guys. ‘Maintained it.’ Yeah, I’ve taken care of it.”
They walked past the Mustang into a separate room. It was dark with no windows, and built with solid concrete that Mahegan figured were at least two blocks thick. They passed through a steel door like those on industrial freezers. Johnson locked that door and there appeared to be no other way out.
“We got shit for forensics and evidence techs and all of that. Oh, we have enough to make us look good and to get by on your basic stuff, but nothing to deal with the magnitude of what’s going on right now.”
Mahegan looked around. He felt like he was standing in the inside of an air-conditioned sea-land container. Maps hung on the long axis of the “room.” At the far end were a plasma television and an army cot. At the near end were a workbench, industrial sink, and drafting table.
“So you created your own forensics lab?”
Johnson nodded.
“What I’ve got is two friends killed, a nephew missing, and a niece missing.”
“Two killed?”
“Dakota washed up on the shore this morning. His plane crashed about a half mile out over the ocean. High tide carried him in with his throat slit. My information tells me that you jumped from his plane into the middle of the ocean last night looking for that gold. Then his plane landed briefly at the airport and took off again quickly. Then crashed into the ocean.”
“Dakota was alive when I jumped. How else did he get back here?”
“I know that and you know that, but you were the last person to see him alive . . . other than whoever killed him.”
Mahegan thought for a moment and changed tracks.
“Has Lindy lived here all her life?”
Johnson turned toward Mahegan and said, “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.”
After a moment, Johnson said, “She lived in Chicago with my sister for two years when she was in high school. There was a bad crowd here and my brother had to get her away. What’s this about?”
“Is your sister’s married name Carlsen?”
“No. Caveza. She married an Italian guy.”
“Sorry. Just running down a lead. So she’s really an agent with the Treasury Department?”
“Where’d you hear that?” Johnson seemed surprised. He laid his brown eyes on Mahegan, who returned the gaze. Mahegan took in Johnson’s white hair, deep tan, and stoic countenance and nodded. He would trust the man.
“From General Bream, the Army Inspector General who flew out onto the patrol boat as I was being escorted back in.”
“That guy? What did he want?”
“Well, it seems that you want me for murder, the Army wants me for espionage, and a bunch of other three-letter agencies want me for sinking ships and that sort of thing.”
Johnson laughed.
“You’re in deep shit, son. Bream’s been down here a couple of times. Chasing beaver up and down the OBX. Usually rents some senator’s house in Duck.”
Mahegan registered this for a moment and felt a buzz, like he used to when a mission was beginning to fall into place.
“Well, the fact is, he blew her cover, if it’s true.”
“It’s true. Lindy’s the smartest thing I’ve ever seen. Grew up here surfing and reading all about the history of the Outer Banks. The two years she was in Chicago she got into acting and writing. She even wrote some children’s books that got some good reviews. She came back and went to East Carolina, that’s ECU, here on an academic scholarship, but I practically raised her and knew she wanted into law enforcement. We used to shoot right out in the backyard here. I’d put a target on the last pole at the end of the pier and it got to where she was putting a dime-sized hole at twenty-five meters through a bull’s-eye. Best athlete I’ve ever seen. Run, jump, swim, swing a bat, you name it. Bitch of it was that when she was at ECU, she learned she’s good with numbers and took a bunch of economics courses. After 9/11, when the wars were swinging into full gear, the Department of Treasury recruited Lindy to work in their intelligence and domestic terrorism. I’m the only one who knows this down here. Everyone else thinks she can’t find a job. She acts in The Lost Colony, I have indeed deputized her, and she does that historical society thing with the Croatan. All of that is legit stuff she wants to do. But it’s all cover. Given all of Copperhead’s problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, Treasury wanted someone to keep an eye on them. Who better than a local girl who could blend in? Lindy thought it was babysitting duty, but she’s a patriot and figured she’s young so it was her way of working from the mailroom up, so to speak.”
Mahegan reflected on this information for a moment, visualizing her smile, quick wit, and intelligence. He could see everything Johnson had just said. He felt electricity surge through his veins.
Mahegan sat in a chair and looked at the wall of maps. Johnson had giant maps of Roanoke Island, Dare County Mainland, and the Outer Banks all the way up to Virginia Beach on the wall. The sheriff apparently had placed tape indicators where certain events must have occurred. There was a blue sticker marking the location of where Mahegan had said he found Royes’s body as well as two other blue stickers, one in Croatan Sound and one atop the theater.
“But instead of babysitting, she uncovers what she believes is a career-making kind of dea
l? Copperhead, the gold, and the murders?”
“That’s right. And she was in over her head,” Johnson said. “That’s why I let her take you to DC. Liked what I saw in you from the beginning. Hauling Royes’s body in from the sound. That was a class act.”
“What are those for?” Mahegan asked, pointing at the blue stickers.
“You found Miller here,” Johnson said, pointing at the blue sticker in the middle of the sound near a buoy. And this is the Pet,” he added, pointing to another sticker before moving onto the next. “And here is the last known location of my nephew, Jack Johnson, known as J.J. He was leaving the theater the same morning you found Royes.”
“Is this Lindy’s brother?” Mahegan asked, his attention caught by a framed photo on Johnson’s desk.
“No,” Johnson said, shaking his head. “I have two brothers in addition to the sister in Chicago. J.J.’s father, Lonnie, who you met earlier on the Coast Guard cutter, and Lindy’s father, Bob, who left after marrying a woman from Hatteras. She’s a local and her family is part of the Indian heritage here. The Locklears go back a long way. Lindy officially changed to her mother’s maiden name once Bob disappeared. So, you also might say we have a lot of baggage.”
“No. Just a lot of life, sheriff. You’re good people.”
Johnson regarded Mahegan a second, and then said, “So let’s look at this thing. In one day we have Royes killed and J.J. missing. Royes was working for a company called MagicAir that created the Merlin system. Copperhead has one of their airplanes with substructure that can see thermal images and such.”
“The night optics Merlin? They tried to follow me yesterday when I blew through Copperhead.”
“Heard about that. Ballsy move. But, yeah, the Merlin is an airplane with an optics ball underneath it that can see a pimple on a gnat’s ass from outer space, or some shit like that.”
“Not that good, but close enough.”
“Anyway, Miller was an odd duck. He was a consultant. Did audits. Reviewed video. Did limited tech support. Jobs are hard to come by here in Dare County when it’s not tourist season, so it’s not unusual for people to have two or three income streams. So MagicAir hired him off the books, and I think unknown to Copperhead, to review these tapes I’m about to show you. He called me and told me he needed to discuss what was going on out at Copperhead.”
He moved his gaze from Mahegan back to the map. “J.J.’s boat was found down here,” Johnson said. He pointed at a small chain of islands in Croatan Sound near the mouth of Oregon Inlet. “Washed up and got covered up by some tree branches. No blood. Almost like someone drove it there.”
“This has to be about the gold. Merlin shoots a thermal and an infrared beam down to see into water and even subsurface so they can find the bombs. That’s how they found that gold from the Adger.”
Johnson paused, rubbing his chin and looking at the map, confused.
“Could be. I’ve got the plane’s flight route sketched out here.” He took the back end of a number-two pencil and waved it in north-to-south motions over the map of Dare County Mainland. The tracks were identified by straight ruler markings atop the acetate that covered the map.
“These videos were from months ago and done over four days. The green arrows here along the eastern boundary show the first day and correspond to a set of tapes. The red arrows show the second day. The blue arrows the third. And then the black arrows the fourth day. Each has a set of video that goes with it. There’s daylight, nighttime, infrared, and thermal. There are four sets of everything. Royes had built this software that overlaid each day’s flight patterns over the previous days’ patterns, in order to show anomalies on the ground.”
“Roger. For example, the video picks up a three-foot-long metal object. If it looks the same on all four days with each type of camera, it’s probably a bomb,” Mahegan said. It was a statement, not a question. Mahegan had seen versions of this kind of software in the Middle East. The Army called it “Change Detection.” Some Pentagon geniuses believed that if you flew a plane over the same road a number of times and detected the changes, the soldiers would be able to find the bombs. It might have worked one out of fifty times, which he guessed was a Humvee full of soldiers’ lives saved, which was good. But he also wondered about all the money, energy, and time invested in doing all of that when maybe the same resources could have been put into better offensive and intelligence capabilities. That might have worked better in Mahegan’s view. But that was always his approach. Know more than your adversary and strike before they do.
“Right. Exactly,” Johnson said.
“Do you have them here?”
Johnson coughed. “I have two of the four sets.”
“Which ones?”
“The sets that go over the easternmost and the westernmost, but not the middle two.”
Mahegan stood next to Johnson, looked at the map, and thought it through. The Merlin would have covered the stretch of land from Route 264 to the Long Shoal River and on the opposite side of the peninsula from East Lake to Buffalo City. The gold would have appeared in the middle of the map. Those tapes were missing. Copperhead killed Royes and perhaps J.J. because they had found the gold.
“Have you watched them?”
“Yeah, but they ain’t Gone With the Wind or anything. Boring as hell. Just a bunch of trees, mud, water, and dirt. You’ll see the occasional animal. Bear, deer, maybe a gator or two.”
Mahegan thought of the red wolves. He had missed them the last couple of days.
“Where do you think your nephew is? Do you really believe he was kidnapped?”
“I think he’s gone. You were just lucky to find Royes. I think they were talking about something to do with Copperhead and that got them both killed.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Listen.”
Johnson walked over and clicked a button on his computer.
“I’ve got a voice mail download goes straight to this computer. This is a message from J.J. to me.”
The computer speaker started out nearly inaudible, but Johnson turned up the volume.
“. . . something pretty bad. I’m up here at the theater talking to Miller and we both think there’s something there that you gotta investigate. We’re both kind of scared.” The line went dead.
“That’s it. I called him back, but he never answered. Then we get word that he’s missing.”
“Could he be on vacation? Anything like that?”
“He’s a good kid, not a deadender, but not setting the world on fire. Like most kids in their twenties he’s a whiz with computers. He’s the one who worked out the guidance system for the Pet. Midway through the show the ship sails behind the theater appearing to take John Smith back to England. It’s all wireless. He does it right from his computer.”
Something clicked in the back of Mahegan’s mind, like the slow roll of a penny dropping into a cone and spiraling toward the bottom.
“Anyway, my brother, the Coast Guard captain, is worried sick. J.J. would never do anything like this.”
“Let me ask you this,” Mahegan said. “When I found Royes, I looked at his boots. They said Teach’s Pet on the inside of them. I originally thought he was a deckhand. You’re telling me he worked for a different military contractor that interpreted change detection software. Why did he have those boots on?”
“Oh, them? Like most folks who have been around here for a while, Miller worked on The Lost Colony production. Those boots are just part of the costumes. Miller got the occasional cameo as a deckhand, so you’re right about that part. But it was just for shits and grins. Miller was handy and did the mechanical stuff—the Pet breaks down quite a bit—while J.J. worked the Internet, or whatever it was he did to make it go.”
“Say again? Royes and J.J. worked on the Pet?”
“Well, not ‘on it’ as in being real deckhands or anything. But, yeah, as I said, Miller did the mechanical stuff and J.J. did the electrical stuff. Pro bono. J.J. can drop the
anchor, lift the anchor, start the motor and all that from his computer. Out, in. Left, right. He had to boost the Internet capacity out there so that he could control the ship remotely. I think it’s even a wireless hotspot boaters use sometimes.”
“So who does stay on it officially? Work it? All that goes with running a ship?”
“Nobody. It’s all electronic. That’s J.J.’s job. It’s got state-of-the-art communications gear. Hell, Lindy gets her Wi-Fi from there. We use it as a repeater for our radios because it covers the north end of Dare Mainland and all the way up to Duck and Corolla pretty good.”
“Do you find it a coincidence that the two people who made the Pet work are either dead or missing?”
“I don’t believe in those kinds of coincidences, son.”
“Me neither,” Mahegan said.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think we need to get inside Copperhead and find out what they’ve really got going on in there,” Mahegan said. “Check their books. They have an airplane. A landing craft. A fishing rig. Trucks. What else are we missing? These guys have been shifty. And you know what?”
“What?”
“You’re not going to like this, but how about you check out J.J.’s background, too.”
Johnson stared at him. “Huh?”
“Look at his bank accounts, credit cards, all that stuff. If he’s kidnapped or dead, there’s got to be a reason. Might be something there.”
Before Johnson could respond, they both turned and looked at the muted forty-four inch, high-definition plasma television playing in the background. The news channel suddenly began showing the man the journalists had dubbed “The American Taliban.”
“Turn that up,” Mahegan said.
“. . . and today, Mullah Adham, as he calls himself, has declared that he has another American hostage after a gruesome display in which two fellow terrorists beheaded the first yesterday. He has made no demand for the hostage, but does say that more bombings and killings like those associated with the Fort Brackett and Suffolk compound can be expected.”