Foreign and Domestic

by A. J Tata

  There was no cannon in this porthole and Mahegan thought about punching through it when he heard a noise from the deck above him.

  “Boss is down below. Need to keep a lookout for Mahegan, and then we’re out of here.”

  It was Bream’s guy, Paslowski. And probably his sidekick.

  “Wouldn’t mind taking a shot at Mahegan myself,” said Paslowski’s blond-haired counterpart.

  Mahegan’s choices were to either go up on deck and fight through the two thugs or push through the porthole while attention down below was focused in the opposite direction. He pushed at the rubberized material, which had a mesh netting woven into it. The material covering the porthole was surprisingly loose. Using his knife, he cut around the edges and removed the twenty-four-inch by twenty-four-inch cover. He peered inside and saw that it led to a ledge above a chamber about fifteen feet below. He pushed the cover into the porthole, laid it on the firing runway, and slid through. He then placed the cover back into place behind him, forming the flexible material just enough to make it stay.

  Once inside, he paused, letting his eyes adjust to the light.

  “Mahegan said the Concord got away with all of the gold,” General Bream said. His voice was harsh, scolding.

  “That’s good to hear,” Adham said.

  Mahegan saw Bream shake with rage. “How could you let this happen?!”

  “This was never about the gold for me, Dad. Actually, it was mostly about you.”

  “Wait a minute,” Locklear shrieked, struggling to listen more closely to the voices around her. “You’re his dad?”

  Mahegan watched the odd scene unfold below him as if he were watching from a box seat in the theater. The tall general squared off against his bearded son, who bore a resemblance to the father. Locklear was handcuffed with hands behind her back and the sandbag on her head. Adham held the sword in his hands. Bream held a Beretta service pistol.

  “I know everything about you, Dad. I’ve been tracking your e-mail and your every move. I’m on your home computer, your work computer, and your classified computer. I’ve even sent your team some e-mails on your behalf. Told your two goons upstairs to back off Mahegan a bit. Couldn’t run the risk of you locking him up. I wanted him.

  “And it’s how you received the e-mails offering the gold deal, because I knew that was your only motivation.”

  Bream dropped his head. He looked lost.

  “So, what do we do?” Bream asked.

  “You need to kill me, right? You can’t be Chief of Staff with a son who is The American Taliban.”

  Bream shook his head.

  “No. You’re my son. You were two years old when your mother decided she wanted nothing to do with the Army. She left me. Changed her name. Whole nine yards. I couldn’t find her anywhere. It was like she was in witness protection. It wasn’t until your Internet tricks that I pursued you and learned who you are.”

  “So here I am,” Adham said, holding his arms out wide.

  “There was not much I could do about it when your mother left. But when you went off and I discovered you were this American Taliban and—”

  “I was going to hurt your chances of being Chief of Staff.”

  “Something like that. I protected you as long as I could. But this little charade is over.” Bream had sounded contrite, but not for long. “It’s too late now. Locklear knows too much and we have to do something with you. You’re obviously about to execute a federal agent. The scenario we’re going to tell people is one where I got here a fraction too late to save the day, Locklear’s head was toppling on the floor, and I killed you for the threat you are to the American people.”

  Bream lifted the pistol.

  Through the sandbag, Locklear said, “I’m just expendable? So you can get promoted?”

  “The Pentagon is tough duty, trust me,” Bream said.

  Mahegan was running several calculations through his mind. Foremost, who was the villain here? Adham had killed hundreds of Americans. Bream had as well, his instincts told him.

  Mahegan watched the drama unfold, waiting for the right moment to move. Bream was an unexpected arrival, but not unmanageable.

  From his perch, Mahegan saw the action begin to unfold. Adham spun with the nimble agility of a samurai and flicked the blade of his sword into Bream’s midsection.

  Bream was wearing body armor beneath his Army combat uniform and Mahegan heard the clang of metal on ceramic. Bream fired his pistol toward Adham, who was moving. And having lost balance, Bream’s aim was wide. With precise aim, The American Taliban slammed the sword into General Bream’s unprotected left arm, which fell onto the floor. The general’s eyes followed his limb’s descent, as if he were an aghast spectator. Just as so many troops in bomb blasts had watched their extremities severed, Mahegan thought. He would never wish it on anyone, but if anyone deserved a taste of his own medicine, it was Bream.

  “You son of a bitch,” Bream stammered. He stumbled backwards into the hull of the ship.

  “I guess that’s pretty accurate phrasing, Dad.”

  Bream still had the pistol, but it was hanging loose in his hand.

  Mahegan moved quickly, knowing that Paslowski would be coming belowdecks after hearing the gunshot. He needed to keep Adham alive. He leapt from his perch on the firing platform at the same time that Paslowski came barreling through the door into the high-tech computer room of the ship.

  Using Paslowski’s momentum, Mahegan grabbed the outstretched arm of the Inspector General’s security guard and propelled him forward into the arcing blade of Adham’s sword. Unsure if Adham had been aiming for him or Paslowski, Mahegan drew his pistol and focused on Adham’s face.

  Paslowski was doubled over, holding in his intestines. It would not be long before he bled out, Mahegan figured. Pentagon is indeed tough duty.

  “You’re a smart guy, Wilhoyt. Drop the sword and take a knee,” Mahegan said.

  The American Taliban stared at him. His eyes had the look of a feral animal. First they darted toward the slumping General Bream and then toward the dying Paslowski. He was calculating his odds.

  “There’s one more upstairs,” Mahegan said. “I’ve wired the ship with some of your favorite explosives and I activated an MVX-90 when I came onboard. The next radio call blows us up. Sheriff, police, Coast Guard, you name it. Even if Bream over here uses his whisper mike to contact Paslowski’s buddy up above, we’re toast. You only live if you do what I say.”

  “Mahegan, you son of a bitch,” Bream muttered. He held up his pistol, but Mahegan kicked it from his weakening grip.

  He was telling Adham the truth. His text message had been to Major General Savage, who had sent his Delta Force comrade, Patch, on a solo mission to rig the ship with an improvised explosive device gathered from Copperhead’s unexploded ordnance dump he had spotted on his ride through the compound two days ago.

  “Save it, Bream. You’ve been played from the start,” Mahegan said. “You lost an arm? Tough shit. Your little scam here cost thousands of American soldiers and Marines their lives and limbs.”

  “Get me a medic, Mahegan. For God’s sake, I’m bleeding to death!”

  Adham seemed to perk up, finding dark humor in the situation.

  “Brilliant, Mahegan. We make the call, we blow up. I bet you even programmed the MVX to include the cell phone bandwidth?”

  Mahegan gave Adham a slight nod. “Put down the sword. You’re going to make one last television appearance.”

  “I said call some medics, captain! That’s an order!” Bream shouted.

  By now, Mahegan had picked up Bream’s general officer Beretta pistol. He looked at Bream and said, “Order this.”

  Then shot the general twice in the forehead.

  “Think I’m joking, Adham? You want one last chance to live? See if you can outsmart me.”

  Adham dropped the blade, lifted his hands as if to push Mahegan away, and said, “Okay, I’m game.”

  Mahegan kicked the sword to the si
de, drew his knife, walked over to Locklear to cut her ties, and then removed the sandbag. As she was trying to say, “Thank you,” he took a strip of cloth from the sandbag and gagged her.

  “Bitch talks too much,” he said.

  As she struggled and looked at him with wild eyes, Paslowski’s partner came barreling in, shouting, “Freeze! Federal agent.”

  Mahegan spun and performed a textbook double tap to the man’s heart.

  “Damn. I like your style, Mahegan,” said Adham.

  Knowing that there was constant communications traffic funneled through the hold of the Teach’s Pet, Mahegan had actually told Patch to program the MVX-90 to one constrained bandwidth.

  “You’re going to like it even more,” Mahegan said. “You get to go on TV again. Tell America we are partners. That I killed an Army general. You think I give a rat’s ass about this country after what they did to me? As far as I’m concerned, we are partners.”

  A slow smile crept onto Adham’s face.

  “You can’t be serious?”

  “I just killed a three-star general who was supposed to be the next Chief of Staff, and I killed his security guards. That gets me Leavenworth and then the juice. You think I’m on his side?” He nodded at the dead general.

  “He was dirty. It was a righteous kill.”

  “There’s that,” Mahegan admitted.

  “So I go on TV and rat you out? What’s this do for you?”

  “You’re kidding, right? You’ve been ratting me out from the beginning. You just didn’t know you were right. I’ve got Homeland Security, all the three-letter agencies, everyone looking for me. They know I’m close. You’re going to tell them what happened here and that I’ve taken your gold and am living on the high seas.”

  “The high seas?”

  “Yeah. Sounds mysterious. You should like that.”

  “Okay. I do. Kind of. The high seas. Could be anywhere. Like me.”

  “Like you,” Mahegan said.

  After a pause, Adham said, “What about me?”

  “You? Shave, take a bath, cut your hair, and hide for a while. Keep your Facebook page. I’ll be in touch. Camera’s right there. If you don’t make the call, I blow the boat. If you do, you’re on your own. Pretty simple.” He held up a small rocker switch to demonstrate his firm control of the situation. “I need five minutes.”

  “What about her?”

  “Fine piece of ass like that? She’s coming with me.”

  With that comment, he tossed Adham Bream’s pistol and said, “Be in touch, dude.” He grabbed Locklear, pulled himself up on the firing platform and they dove over the side into Croatan Sound. He pulled her deep, removed her gag, and dug about twenty meters through the water toward the northern tip of Roanoke Island before surfacing.

  She tried to scream, but he dunked her after she had enough time to take a breath. After another twenty meters they resurfaced and he clamped his hand over her mouth. Mahegan figured that even the best pistol shooter would have a problem at a range of forty meters in darkness. And he didn’t think Adham was much good with a pistol.

  “Shut up and swim, Lindy.”

  She bit at his hand and coughed, trying to breathe.

  He took her down again and they swam another chunk toward land, surfacing twice more before they were near enough to stand in the shallow water. He walked her over to the shore. They were about two hundred yards from her bungalow. He sat her down on some riprap. Let her breathe. Put his arm over her shoulder.

  “Get off of me. You. You. Murderer!”

  She almost got the sentence out before the night sky lit to their front.

  Mullah Adham arranged his scene quickly. He made sure that there were no signs of any of the activity that had taken place in the background of his camera shot. The image had to appear as if he was in a cave in Afghanistan or a village in Iraq. There could be no identifying material . . . or bodies to give away the fact that he had been in America all this time.

  He considered what he would say. Mahegan had given him five minutes. Were those five minutes for him to get away or five minutes before he blew up the ship if there was no communication from him?

  He wasn’t going to risk it. He was ready. He aimed the camera at his tarp with the Iraqi flag, grabbed the saber and put it in his lap.

  Clutching the remote control for the camera that would begin the satellite uplink, it occurred to him a fraction too late that the MVX-90 could be programmed for any frequency, including Ka Band satellite in the 2.75 Ghz to 3 Ghz range.

  His thumb already had the momentum, propelled by the urgency in Mahegan’s voice only minutes ago.

  His last thought as the satellite transmission began and ignited the explosives planted by Patch was Mahegan lied.

  Mahegan felt the heat from the blast lick his face. Locklear instinctively closed in on him, seeking protection. He held her as the Teach’s Pet ignited and crumbled in Croatan Sound.

  “You tricked him.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I tricked him.”

  “But you killed an Army general.”

  “Who killed a bunch of soldiers. I should have let him suffer, but I was overcome with a need for justice, shall we say.”

  “What about the other two?”

  Mahegan heard footsteps behind them. He didn’t turn. He knew who it was.

  “They were dirty as well,” General Savage said. “And, my guess is, they were armed and threatening his life. Self-defense.”

  Locklear jumped.

  “It’s okay,” Mahegan said. “He’s my boss.”

  “Savage?”

  “Nice to meet you, Miss Locklear. Now if you’ll both excuse me, we have a helicopter to catch.”

  Savage escorted them to a black helicopter with blades spinning as it waited in the parking lot of the Lost Colony Theater parking lot. They ducked as they jogged below the whipping rotors and into the yawning cargo compartment. The crew chief closed the door and the pilot lifted the Black Hawk straight up before nosing over and flying low and fast over Croatan Sound, leaving the remnants of the Teach’s Pet burning in the background.

  Pulling on the headset to talk, Mahegan looked at Savage’s set jaw and focused eyes. They weren’t done yet.

  “Sir, what’s up?”

  “You asked Sheriff Johnson to look at Copperhead’s expenses. They bought a submarine from the DEA and they’ve got a missing van.”

  “What about the Lucky Lindy?”

  “Disabled near Buffalo City and not moving,” Savage said over the microphone.

  “The van is going to Norfolk Navy Base.”

  “Okay. The submarine? What they called Vader Three.”

  “No clue. They’ve been attacking vulnerable military bases on the East Coast.”

  “There must be a hundred bases within submarine distance of the Outer Banks,” Savage said.

  Locklear had slipped on a headset also. She fumbled with the microphone and push-to-talk button, and said, “Where does General Bream live? Or . . . where did he live, I guess?”

  “McNair. Fort McNair in Washington, DC. Why?” Savage asked.

  “The Navy guys in Copperhead hated senior officers. My money says that submarine is going to park next to Fort McNair and explode near his house with the added benefit of destroying parts of DC,” Locklear said.

  Savage and Mahegan looked at her, a few seconds passing. It was obvious. Bream would have been a huge loose end for Copperhead.

  “They would have had to send it a day or two ago,” said Mahegan. “Can we get a P3 or P8 out there to sweep from the capital south along the Potomac and into the Chesapeake Bay?” P3 and P8 airplanes and jets were sub finders. The P8 was new and would be faster, if any were available.

  “On it,” Savage said. He barked directions into his headset.

  The Black Hawk helicopter landed at Fort Bragg. Mahegan and Locklear hurried into a small office while Savage received an operations update elsewhere.

  Mahegan watched the Common
Operating Picture Display that the special operations command piped throughout the secure headquarters. Navy SEALS had scrambled in MH-6 Little Bird helicopters from Dam-neck, Virginia Beach, and seized Chikatilo’s van and his ghosts.

  The report, like a crawl at the bottom of a newscast, indicated that Chikatilo had evaded capture.

  The P-8 sub hunter found Vader Three, the submarine, on the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay. The dive team had retrieved three bodies, two ghosts and Lars Olsen. Evidently, Copperhead had not conducted an enduring test run of the submarine.

  Satisfied that his job was done, Mahegan turned to Locklear. He handed her the smartphone Johnson had given him. He held out his hand and produced a small square stone the size of a sugar cube. On it was a hand-etched “D.” “Here,” he said, giving her the phone. “On this phone I marked the spot where I found this.”

  Locklear looked at the cube, and then looked up at Mahegan.

  “The necklace?”

  “Could be.”

  “Virginia Dare,” Locklear said wistfully.

  “Could be.”

  “Will you come look with me?”

  After a long, noncommittal pause, General Savage came into the room.

  “Here’s the deal. Chikatilo is on the run. We have every first responder possible looking for him. We believe he is heading to central North Carolina or Virginia.”

  “We have to move fast,” Mahegan said, standing up, ready to go.

  Savage nodded, pushing him gently by the shoulder back into his seat. “We are.” Then Savage looked at Locklear. “Locklear, Treasury is asking what you’re doing, where you are, where’s the gold, all that happy horseshit.”

  “I’ve got a boss, too,” Locklear said, adding a subtle smile. Her blond hair was unkempt. She undoubtedly appeared tired and stressed. But her countenance was one of tenacity, of not having been defeated, of surviving. He watched her hand squeeze the cube tightly.

  “You were involved in the deepest black operation we have inside the continental United States. You have to sign this piece of paper which basically says that if you ever talk about this with anyone we will find you and . . .” Savage paused, looked at Mahegan.