Three Minutes to Midnight

by A. J Tata

  Flashing before his eyes now was his larger-than-life mother, who had helped him understand his American Indian heritage and fit into society. Sitting in the truck, watching the trees pass, Mahegan recalled what had happened next.

  He was fourteen years old and bigger than most full-grown men. Awkward but powerful, he had an athleticism that had not yet been fully honed by coaches and opponents.

  Two of the men turned toward Mahegan as he opened the wooden screen door to their trailer. He saw two other men with their pants down, hovering over his mother. A whimper escaped from her.

  “Please stop.”

  Her words were a siren to him. He felt something let go in his mind, like a cable snapping. A flywheel coming loose. A herd of wild mustangs charging through an inadequate corral gate.

  The grunts and squeals of the men sounded like those of pigs. The man between his mother’s legs was saying, “Indian lover bitch. Bet that Indian ain’t got one of these.” The man pushed against his mother while another man held her.

  Mahegan was no longer in control. Instinct governed his actions. He became Chayton Mahegan, literally “the falcon wolf” in Iroquois. He evolved at that moment into the apex predator that he would forever be against all things evil.

  Two men charged him. His forearm snapped the nose of the shirtless guy on his left, because he saw that the one on his right was pulling up his jeans as he ran, which gave him an extra second. After stunning the broken-nose man, he kicked the blue jeans attacker in his gut, making him double over. He slammed his knee into the man’s face as he pulled down on the back of his head. By then the first one was coming after young Mahegan hard, like a charging bull. He sidestepped him with a smooth athletic move and wrapped his arm around his neck. Without pausing, he used his free hand to snap the neck clean. He heard the pop and knew he had just killed his first human being. He had no emotion but the fear he continued to feel for his mother.

  Barreling toward her, Mahegan saw that she had been cast sideways onto the sofa. He pulled a man off of her and threw him through the sliding porch door. The glass shattered into icicle-like chunks, at least one of which speared the man in the back. Mahegan turned to the last man, whose pants were around his ankles and whose lecherous, stony-eyed gaze was fixed on his mother.

  Mahegan rammed into him like a pro wrestler jumping from the ropes, pulled him away from his mother, and smashed his face into the kitchen counter, where it met the sink. The man had a beard and long hair. Mahegan grabbed an oily fistful and slammed and slammed and slammed until there wasn’t much left of the man’s face.

  He was still slamming when a police officer pulled him away.

  Mahegan had gone to juvenile prison for two years, while the two assailants who lived had walked because of some connection to a government official somewhere. Despite the fact that four men had raped and murdered his mother, the two men were never convicted, based on insufficient evidence. Mahegan had heard rumors that one of the survivors had blackmailed a judge. When he was fourteen years old, though, that kind of thing had been hard to understand.

  At twenty-eight, he had full clarity.

  He remembered that his father had visited him once in the detention center, saying to him, I’ll find them, Chayton. And I’ll kill them. They took the best thing either of us ever had. And he had always assumed that his father was on the hunt, like he was, for the remaining two.

  And then he had found a picture of his father just two weeks ago in the renovated attic—now a study or library of sorts—of a Raleigh socialite. He had entered the enormous private residence without invitation and had left with the photograph, which he now stored safely in his above-barn apartment in Apex. The picture confirmed to him that he was on the right course.

  The picture also made him remember the names the way people remembered where they were when 9/11 happened: James and Raymond Gunther, Tommy Boyd, and Franklin Overton. He had killed Raymond Gunther and Franklin Overton on the scene that day. And he had seen a newspaper article about the death of Tommy Boyd. It was a story about a meth lab that had exploded in Brunswick County, killing Boyd, but police had a witness who had led them to suspect foul play. Soon the authorities had posted on-line and in the newspapers a rough artist’s sketch of a man who resembled his father. He remembered feeling proud at even the thought of his father exacting revenge, but Mahegan had had no clue regarding his dad’s whereabouts until his first night in Raleigh a few weeks ago.

  While he didn’t know the status of James Gunther for a long time, either, he had recently heard some news about the man, as well. Turned out his construction business had thrived and had grown to the point where he had to hire on his son, James Jr., to help him manage the company. Mahegan seethed at the thought. His mother had died a vicious death, while Gunther not only had lived, but also had prospered. Other than the punishment Mahegan had meted out that day, justice had not been served.

  At seventeen, Mahegan had enlisted as a private in the Army, and he had quickly become an Airborne Ranger, graduated from Officer Candidate School, and then become a Delta Force operator. But the mustangs inside broke loose again the day he saw his best friend blown to bits. Killing a prisoner of war, though, was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him. That misdeed had led him to his current status as the only domestic contract operative for the Joint Special Operations Command. Major General Bob Savage kept him off the books and called on him only when absolutely required. He was a cleaner. A fixer. A problem solver. A consultant.

  But this matter today was personal, and Savage had little idea of what Mahegan was doing at this moment.

  The truck slowed, causing Mahegan’s massive frame to lean into the firm shoulder of the man the driver had called “Dos.” He watched as the truck spun around a cloverleaf exit and turned onto New Elam Church Road. From there, the driver wound along several unnamed roads and turned onto a muddy red-clay path. They dipped through a small wet area, and Mahegan noticed the low ground on both sides of a densely vegetated forest. As the truck’s engine roared, they climbed a hill, turning west before reaching the top. Mahegan was staring due east as he looked along the rear axis of the truck. He saw swampy, low ground surrounded by oak, maple, and pine trees. The underbrush was thick, as were the mid-level trees, such as dogwoods. He thought he saw a small herd of deer grazing along a stream.

  Looking to the south now, Mahegan noticed the lazy drift of steam from the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant cooling tower about four miles away. Turning to his left, he saw a chain-link fence standing ten feet tall, with menacing curls of razor wire preventing anyone from climbing over it. In either direction. He also saw one-inch ribbons of sensors running through the fence links. Mahegan knew that these were motion detectors and that they were probably connected to cameras that provided surveillance twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. If the fence moved, a camera zoomed in on the location.

  Mahegan felt the vehicle turn back toward the north, and he noticed they were entering a terrain feature called a saddle. It was the low ground between two hilltops. It was a small-scale version of a valley. Mahegan’s mind visualized the contracting contour lines indicating the hilltops and the expanding lines between the hilltops, indicating flatter and lower ground.

  The saddle probably ran a mile from south to north, Mahegan estimated. He craned his neck, as if checking for snipers and potential ambush locations. The hilltops on both sides were vegetated but not heavily wooded. Sparse trees dotted the high ground. Looking above the cab, a luxury provided by his long torso, he saw the ridge that connected the two hilltops in the far distance. They were isolated. In the center of the small valley were the pieces and parts of a huge industrial operation.

  As the truck bounced through a gravel parking lot, they passed into another fenced-in area, an inner cordon, this one with a small sign that read JAMES GUNTHER AND SONS CONSTRUCTION, INC.

  CHAPTER 3

  MAEVE CASSIDY WAS INJURED.

  Well, at least
she was not dead, she thought. The general rule in combat had been that wounded was better than dead. Usually. It all depended on what came next, and right now she was in this barren cube of a room. No. It wasn’t a room. It was a shelter. It was too rustic to be a cabin and too new to be a previous residence. She searched for the term. Bungalow? No, that didn’t seem right. A bungalow was a home, and this certainly wasn’t a home. Compartment? No, not that, either. It didn’t seem to be a part of something else.

  Then it came to her. Detention. She remembered seeing a few detention cells in Afghanistan. They were about this size and equally barren. Five steps across in each direction. Solid plywood screwed into studs, most likely two-by-fours. A plywood box, like a large coffin. Coffin. That was about right. And she was here against her will. She was confined at a detention site, as the infantry called them in Afghanistan.

  Maeve leaned back against the wall and assessed her injury. She was dressed in her Army combat uniform pants, tan combat boots, and a tan, bloodstained Nomex T-shirt. Her ACU jacket lay crumpled on the floor, as if it had been tossed into the cell. Her left arm was in a blue sling that was, she guessed, made out of a table napkin. She had a laceration on her left bicep that had skimmed her triceps. Not exactly a graze, but neither was it a life-threatening wound, barring infection, she surmised. Someone had done a respectable job cleaning, flushing, and bandaging the wound.

  Regardless, she thought, too close for comfort.

  She looked up at the wooden structure that surrounded her. Being held captive, she figured, suggested the intentionally wounded theory. Someone wanted her in this small room, dungeon, cave, coffin, prison, detention cell, or whatever they wanted to call it. For what reason, though, she wasn’t sure.

  A long-distance runner, Maeve had stamina, though twelve months in combat had lessened that some. The cumulative effects of battle, she knew, had weakened her physical condition, even if that same time period had strengthened her mettle. She caught herself growing emotional and shunted the surge, like a tourniquet on a wound. No time for feeling sorry for yourself, Cassidy. “Assess and act”—that was her credo.

  She couldn’t stop the reflection, though, of her time at war and the decision twelve months ago to step away from her position as a professor of geology at North Carolina State University. The chancellor there had reservedly blessed her departure, not wanting to lose a good professor but admiring her dedication to country. Her husband, Pete, worked as a banker, and they enjoyed a quiet, almost idyllic life in the town of Cary. She had given birth to their daughter, Piper, four years ago, and when she deployed a year ago, she’d been considering having another child with Pete. Now that seemed out of the question, for many reasons.

  What confused her was that she should be either dead or at home, not bleeding in some purgatory. They were neither rich nor famous, and ransom was out of the question. Her parents were state workers from Virginia, and his parents were both gone. Their total net worth, including their $250,000 house, was somewhere south of $300,000, hardly ransom bait.

  So why, she wondered, had her husband been sleeping with another woman on the night of her return from war? And why had she been kidnapped? She had always considered Pete a loving, caring man, if not a tad too bothered by finances. He wanted the same things she did: a house, children, good neighbors, tailgates at NC State football games, and a happy life. She would never be Martha Stewart, and Pete would never be Warren Buffett. Money would come one day, she had always figured. In her long-range vision—she was a planner—their ship would come in and they would have the house on Figure Eight Island, the beachfront property with the large boat. Before her tour in Afghanistan, she had always believed that day would come through diligence and hard work and perhaps a bit of luck. And she had been just fine with being Maeve Brennan Cassidy.

  Then a year in combat had begun to wear on her, like water on a stone. One day at a time, her resolve had weakened, until she’d begun to believe the elaborate stories of her handler, Jim. Together they could make millions, he had promised. She had listened and remained skeptical. But Maeve had redeployed from Afghanistan a changed person, for sure. She harbored secrets and plans that had seemed abstract in the distant confines of her Afghan redoubt.

  Until last night. The sight of another woman having sex with her husband had brought her back to reality quickly. The secrets were real. The plans were taking shape, even if she wanted no part in them. Her wound was real; it would heal, but the sting in her arm reminded her that she was not living in an illusion. Ultimately, too, her marriage most likely would not survive, but in truth, the damage had been done in Afghanistan.

  Using her right hand, she tucked her auburn hair behind her ears and wiped a few tears away from her eyes. Her world now was this detention cell. New wood. She could smell it. Built just for her? she wondered. Or was she just the first of many occupants to come? There was the slightest whiff of a foul odor that she couldn’t quite place. Like a dead animal, but not as bad, yet.

  With her left arm in the sling, Maeve stood and paced her cell, pushing at the walls in various places. Assess and act. Having been blindfolded and unconscious before being deposited here, she had no feeling for whether she was aboveground, underground, or somewhere in between. There was no give when she pushed on the plywood walls. She used her knuckles to knock lightly in random locations. The duller thuds indicated the studs, and the more hollow sounds signified the gaps between them. One wall, though, sounded altogether different than the other three. To confirm this, she rapped her knuckles on all four walls again, walking in a counterclockwise direction around the small cell.

  Whatever was behind the other three walls was not behind the wall with the door. The cell was most likely surrounded by earth on three sides. Reaching up with her right hand, Maeve knocked against the ceiling and heard the same solid thud she’d heard from the three walls. There was only one way out, she figured, which was through the door.

  She heard metal against metal outside the door, the unlocking of hasps. The door swung open, revealing sunlight.

  And a rifle.

  Maeve stepped back into a corner of the cell and waited.

  “Food for you,” a voice said. “Tonight we get to work.” It was a Russian accent, she thought. Perhaps Ukrainian, but more likely Russian. The man tossed two combat rations, called meals ready to eat, or MREs, onto the floor, then added, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  As he went to close the door, Maeve shouted, “Wait! Work on what?”

  The door had stopped about a foot from the doorjamb when the man said, “Later. We tell you everything later. Now eat and rest. You working until we are done.”

  The man closed the door. She heard him lock at least two hasps. The momentary brightness from the sun made it difficult to adjust to the darkness again. When her night vision returned after a few minutes, she found the MREs, opened one, and began to eat.

  What could they possibly need me to do? she wondered. I am a teacher and a geologist. A mother and a wife. A friend and a neighbor. And she had just returned from war, for God’s sake. This was certainly no hero’s welcome, she thought as she munched on the dry crackers.

  Sitting in the darkness, her mind volleyed back and forth like two sides in a tennis match: How do I break out of this cell? What kind of work do they want me to do? Can I bust the hasps? Is the work dangerous? She cycled through the possibilities, attempting to find comfort in conclusions.

  Two hasps, maybe three, with an inward-opening door. Should she wait for him to come again and kick the door into his face? He seemed to be alone. That was an option, but not a good one given her wounded arm. Ask him for a blanket and hope he made a mistake with the rifle? Get him talking? Get him to see her as sympathetic? Possible, but still not likely. The man seemed professional. He wasn’t prone to answering any questions, yet at the same time he gave her food and limited information.

  What kind of work was he talking about? She was a geologist and a combat veteran. She had
participated in the Army’s secret program to test a classified series of depleted-uranium drill bits and controversial drilling techniques in Afghanistan. The earth beneath much of Afghanistan and Pakistan was filled with minerals, natural gas, and oil, which were valuable to jewelers, weapons makers, and energy companies. Her specialty had been to study the geology and then maneuver the drill bits thousands of feet into the earth, ultimately searching for gas or oil.

  Maeve ran the past twenty-four hours through her mind. She’d arrived back at Fort Bragg after an arduous trip from Bagram to Kandahar, to Kuwait, to Germany, to Pope Field and Fort Bragg. People representing themselves as from the Joint Special Operations Command had debriefed her, and she had told them everything they wanted to know about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Afghanistan, mostly. In Afghanistan she had developed and honed the art and science of using depleted-uranium and titanium drill bits to bore a mile or two into the earth and then to go another mile or two laterally. Next, they pumped massive volumes of top-secret pressurized chemicals to fracture the shale layers and capture the released natural gas. Then the men, whom she didn’t know, had asked her questions about the fracking process, money, sex, and the six liquefied natural gas container ships leaving Karachi, Pakistan. That was when she’d run.

  Of course, she’d known all along she would never be able to escape the long tentacles of the CIA and her clandestine handler.

  And now she prayed that someone would find the clue she’d left revealing the location of vulnerable American targets.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MAN WITH THE SCAR HAD OFFERED HIM A MOTORIZED AUGER to drill the holes, but Mahegan had opted for the posthole digger. Scarface had scowled and shrugged, saying, “Have it your way, dumbass.” Mahegan was accustomed to hard work and was enjoying using the digger to complete an outer fence around what he guessed was some kind of energy operation, most likely fracking. Mahegan also wanted a workout since he was skipping his daily regimen of swimming and running.