Three Minutes to Midnight

by A. J Tata

  Grace traced a finger on his chest and batted her eyes up at Mahegan. “You say the sweetest things,” she whispered. “Makes me just a bit teary eyed. Truly.”

  Mahegan smiled as she rolled on top of him and did a push-up so she was staring him in the eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “Seriously? You want to talk about your light bill after the monkey sex we just had?”

  “If you’re going to call what we did ‘monkey sex,’ then yes, I would prefer to talk about my light bill. But if you’re going to say, ‘Hey, that was good. Let’s do it again,’ then I’m happy to talk about whatever you want.”

  Grace laughed, her lips pulling back against her perfect teeth. “You’re a piece of work, Hawthorne.” She kissed him again. “Rain check on round two. I have no doubt you’re up to the challenge, so to speak. But we’ve got a tattoo to interpret and a mission.”

  They each pulled on various pieces of clothing, flipped over, and lay on their stomachs, staring at Grace’s MacBook.

  “Drilling has started. Cassidy is a geologist and is probably on their property, doing that drilling. Throckmorton doesn’t have a permit to drill yet. He’s got these EB-Five commandos enforcing and acting as roughnecks, working the drill yard. He has millions in foreign direct investments. They’ve most likely kidnapped Piper Cassidy. They’re trying to kill you. And Maeve Cassidy memorized the numeric coordinates for the three nuclear power plants,” Mahegan recounted. “And left them as a clue.”

  “One of which is just down the road from the fracking site,” Grace said. “But really your point is a good one. They don’t compete directly.”

  Grace’s iPhone pinged.

  “Elaine from Chapel Hill. She’s my best friend,” Grace said, looking at her phone. “Oh my God.”

  Mahegan looked at Grace, their eyes meeting.

  “It’s a link to an article about a town in Pakistan where hundreds of people have died from fracking chemicals in their groundwater. The town is along the Afghanistan border. The girls in DFT-Two have got this big conspiracy theory that the military was fracking in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We see all these LNG ships—that’s liquefied natural gas—coming into the Wilmington and Morehead City ports, but they’re not from the usual places. These are from Karachi.”

  Mahegan wrestled with the notion of telling Grace the information Savage had provided him during his brief call two days ago. That, in fact, Cassidy had been drilling and fracking along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. But the operation was classified, and even though he now knew her intimately, that did not equate to trusting her with national secrets. Though, she seemed to have a good feel for the open source information available. Mahegan had seen the line between classified and unclassified blur over the years, particularly with the release of the WikiLeaks documents.

  “What kind of chemicals?” Mahegan asked.

  “All the standard fracking by-products,” she said, continuing to read the article. She scrolled with her thumb, sliding the page up the screen every few seconds. “Hydrochloric acid, glutaraldehyde, ammonium persulfate, methanol, ethanol, boric acid, you name it. There are over fifty chemicals, and most companies won’t tell you what they use.”

  “They pump that into the ground?”

  “Yes. There are dozens of documented cases where those solutions have leaked into the aquifers of other states, the water tables where we get our drinking water.”

  Mahegan processed the information. His crash course on fracking, coupled with what General Savage had told him about Cassidy’s mission, came together in stunning clarity. Cassidy had been working with a new chemical compound designed to ease the drilling and hold open the fractures in the shale wider and longer so that the gas would more readily flow into the pipes. That had been the Holy Grail all along for the energy wildcatters. The geologists knew where the shale was, but getting the oil and gas from the deposits had proven either impossible or exorbitant in cost. If there was a new, more efficient way to loosen the shale and extract the gas, the United States might never have to rely on imported gas again.

  Energy independence. No more wars over oil. The Middle East would be relegated to the second tier of foreign policy concerns.

  “Start at the beginning, Grace. Walk me through the process,” Mahegan said.

  Grace sat up and pulled the sheet over her lap. She wore just her UNC T-shirt and a lacy thong. She spoke in animated fashion, using her hands to outline her points.

  “Obviously, you start with a known area of trapped natural gas. Conventional vertical drilling methods, like they do for oil, won’t release this gas, because the gas runs horizontally, in veins that are parallel to the crust of the earth. Most oil and gas come from deep pools that you could drill straight into, like sticking a soda straw into the ground. Then you just suck the gas or oil out of the ground until it’s empty. As those pools began to run low, wildcatters began exploring other techniques to get at known reserves that were not proving fruitful.

  “The Barnett Shale is probably the most famous. George Mitchell tried for thirty years and finally figured out that if he drilled vertically, then kicked off horizontally, he could ride into the veins. Even that didn’t work great, so they started going in vertically, kicking horizontally, and then adding depth charges that would rupture the shale, releasing the gas. That was the big payoff.”

  “Depth charges?”

  “Perforating charges,” Grace said, using her fingers to form quotation marks. “They’re bombs under the ground to break up the rock to release the gas into the pipe they’ve created as they’ve drilled. Then there is a complex series of stops placed behind each bombed area until they’ve exploded everywhere they want to. The stops block the gas from getting ahead of the next area they want to bomb.

  “Obviously, they start at the very end of the pipeline, bomb, block, move forward, bomb, block, move forward, and so on, until they’ve created enough fissures to have the gas rush into the pipe. When they remove the last stop, the gas comes blowing out of the well and they have to cap it, because it is screaming out of there at a high psi rate. Enough to blow out your eardrums.”

  “I knew some of that. Interesting. So you think Throckmorton’s play is to steal as much of the Durham gas as possible, using Maeve Cassidy as the driller? And that Piper is the quo to that quid?”

  “Has to be. Throckmorton is into this fracking thing using foreign direct investment. He needs to get the capital moving now. He’s moving without a permit. Throckmorton is old Raleigh, big money, and he has all the politicians in his back pocket. I’m thinking a missing permit is not going to be a big deal for him. Meanwhile, he becomes a billionaire by stealing gas.”

  “But what’s he do with it? How does he make money from it?”

  “That’s the hard part. We’re seeing some new equipment on the field where they’re drilling. And we know that the natural gas pipeline from Louisiana cuts through North Carolina, with an offshoot into Raleigh. The party at Throckmorton’s was to celebrate the state’s completion of a pipeline along the railroad from Durham to the coast, that is, to Morehead City.”

  “Where there’s a port.” On Mahegan’s several military deployments, he’d sometimes had to use the roll-on, roll-off facility at the Morehead City port.

  “Which would mean exporting the gas. Oh my God. You’re a frigging genius.”

  Mahegan nodded, then looked up, concerned. He rose from the bed and pulled on his black cargo pants and a black Under Armour T-shirt. After gathering all the phones, GPS devices, and identification cards on the table, he sat down in front of them.

  “I need you to stand watch. Just sit in the chair over by the wall, where you can see east out of that window,” he said, pointing at the opening where he had rested his sniper rifle to shoot the two EB-5 commandos that morning. “And you can look south out of that window.”

  Grace positioned herself perfectly so that she could see but would not be seen by anyone from the ground.

  “You ca
n see the house. You might see the Robertson family coming or going. That’s normal. Anything else isn’t.”

  “Why the sudden security?” she asked.

  “I shot two men down there this morning. I told you that. Even though I’ve pulled the batteries and SIM cards from every phone, they may just be looking for their two men at their last known point.”

  “You sure everything’s off?”

  “Yes. Remember, they’re after you, not me,” Mahegan said.

  Mahegan stood and tossed all the stolen weapons and some of his own personal equipment into a duffel bag, calculating what he would need for the evening’s mission. He placed the SIM cards from each of the phones into a Baggie, which he would give to Savage’s guy. He then began using a mini USB port and cable attached to his government-issued smartphone to upload SIM cards that would show text, call, and location data of the EB-5 commandos. The information would automatically transfer via a secured wireless connection to Savage’s team, which was the part Mahegan was worried about. Despite the encryption, the information carried identifiable ping data, which active scanners could recognize. He was tempted to do the link analysis himself, but Mahegan figured they had about an hour, maybe less, before one of two groups appeared: Griffyn and the Raleigh Police Department, or the EB-5 commandos. Both would be hostile, but only one overtly so.

  He had the eight phones arrayed on the table, all of them similar models except the older BlackBerry. Two were from the Turks he’d injured while they were invading Grace’s home. Two were from the Russians he’d shot this morning on the Robertson property. Two were from the Serbs who had come looking for them at the pub and who were very much alive and could most likely identify him. The last two were from the first Russian, Petrov, with the scar on his face. He was wounded and probably lethal.

  He retrieved his government-issued smartphone, opened the Zebra app, and typed a message to Savage, relaying everything he knew about the case. His big thumbs caused multiple typos and errors, and he lost time by going back and correcting them.

  “Okay, ready?”

  Grace had managed to get fully dressed in her jeans, T-shirt, and pullover sweater, which she had brought in her backpack. She wore hiking boots and looked ready for whatever Mahegan threw her way.

  “Yes, sir,” Grace said. She saluted Mahegan.

  Mahegan shook his head and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  He swept all of the phones into his duffel bag, which he clasped in his large hand, as they exited his flat, and Mahegan spun the combination lock on the door.

  “This way,” Mahegan said. He gripped her hand and pulled her down the steps, into the barn room below his apartment. After sliding an iron bar through the barn door handles, he turned and guided Grace through the back door.

  They stepped lightly into the woods, close to where the Russians had been that morning. Mahegan still smelled the blood on the ground. He stopped behind a fallen oak, its root base providing ample cover, like a firing port in a castle. As they knelt, Mahegan could feel the soft pine straw and the deadfall beneath his kneecap. His senses were alive as he listened to the distant rustle of a squirrel in a tree. He heard water from a rill running toward Jordan Lake. He thought he recognized the sound of a deer rubbing its antlers—a constant scrape, scrape, scrape—against a hardwood, probably an oak. The hooves were on the ground; the antlers, against the tree. The buck was marking his turf as mating season began.

  “Snakes?” Grace whispered.

  “Animals are your friends,” Mahegan said, meaning it.

  “Snakes aren’t animals. They’re reptiles.”

  “Reptiles are animals. Now be quiet. Look,” Mahegan said, pointing.

  A single car raced into the long driveway, passed the Robertson house, which was dark, and pulled all the way up to the barn. This was not the EB-5 commandos. It was Griffyn.

  Grace’s tight clutch on his arm indicated to Mahegan that she understood what they were seeing.

  Detective Griffyn, tall and balding, with tiny eyes, stepped from his car and looked around the unfamiliar, dark expanse, trying to find his way. Mahegan could see him thinking, A barn? He could also see the pistol in Griffyn’s hand. It had the square, boxy look of a Glock, but he couldn’t tell for sure at thirty meters. Mahegan put his hand on Grace’s shoulder, silently communicating for her to stay calm.

  He was thinking, Two options. One, he could take down the detective and question him to determine his role in the scheme, if any. The downside was that Griffyn might have no role, and Mahegan would then be charged for assaulting a police officer. Who knew? There could be some kind of charge for attacking the man with the closest bloodline to Sir Walter Raleigh. Mahegan’s second option was to steal Griffyn’s car and drive some distance toward the fracking site and carry on with his original plan. Both options provided some element of risk and reward.

  Mahegan’s style was to gain as much operational intelligence as he could and then to move swiftly, staying inside the enemy’s decision cycle. He believed Throckmorton wasn’t aware of him yet, but that could change very quickly. Like military dead space, the enemy knew you were out there; they just could not see you. Throckmorton was missing valuable men, and if Gunther was involved financially, if the man had anything on the table at all, Mahegan knew that Gunther would do whatever it took to stop the bleeding.

  Mahegan decided his most valuable play was to detain Griffyn, question him, and then carry on with his mission. He watched the man survey the barn doors, which Mahegan had locked from the inside after Grace and he had parked their cars. Griffyn looked over his shoulder at the Robertson home and then looked back at the doors. He pulled on them without success.

  Griffyn slowly began walking directly toward Mahegan and Grace, then turned left, toward the back of the barn. When he made the next left and headed toward the back door, Mahegan took Grace’s hand and they moved toward Griffyn’s car, gingerly avoiding twigs and branches and making as little noise as possible. He opened the front passenger door of Griffyn’s Crown Victoria and whispered to Grace, “On the floor,” as he handed her the duffel bag. She would fit better in the compact space.

  He slid into the backseat, then eased the door closed with a click. Mahegan did his best to hide his large frame in the foot well on the passenger side. Griffyn was a relatively tall man and had the driver’s seat racked back a good distance. Fortunately, the Crown Vic was a large car. He noticed Griffyn was not an exceptionally neat man. There were food wrappers and newspapers on the floor and on the backseat. Those would make it harder to keep quiet when he sprang, so he adjusted them while he could, sliding some of the wrappers into the other foot well. He risked a peek up over the middle console and saw that Grace was tucked in a tight little package, like a kid doing a cannonball off a diving board.

  He heard Griffyn walking quickly, feet crunching on the drainage gravel Mahegan had placed around the barn to help with some of the water issues Andy Robertson had discussed with him. The gravel was also an early warning system for him. Griffyn stormed into the Crown Vic, opening the door with fury and then slamming it with equal counterweight. Mahegan heard something thud onto the passenger seat, and he guessed it was the gun.

  Bad move.

  He felt more than heard Griffyn’s weight shift to the passenger side as he inserted the key fob into the slot. There was also the sound of metal clicking, like a handset being removed from a sleeve. He heard the tick of a dial being turned and then the random voices of police chatter.

  “We have a ten-twenty-three and need a ten-nine immediately. . . .”

  “Wilco. Address please . . .”

  He was listening to the chatter, and wondering why Griffyn wasn’t making his call, when he heard, “What the hell?”

  Mahegan came up quickly with his pistol to the back of Griffyn’s head and wrapped his arm around the man’s thin neck. Looking to his right, he saw that Grace had Griffyn’s pistol and was aiming it at him. She had taken a scarf from her pocket a
nd had draped it across her head and face, making her look like a Muslim terrorist.

  “Start the car and drive,” Mahegan said. “I’ve killed two people in the past twenty-four hours, and I’ve got no problem with a third.”

  “Hawthorne?”

  “I said to drive, Griffyn.”

  “Where to?”

  “You know where I want to go. Show me where Maeve Cassidy is being held.”

  “How would I know that?”

  “You’ve got two weapons aimed at you right now. You really want to play poker? I’m the stable one here. That one in your front seat . . . Who the hell knows?”

  “I’m out here on official Raleigh Police Department business. You have no business—”

  Mahegan had had enough. He rose up and struck the man on his temple, knocking him unconscious. He dragged the man over the front seat and into the back, then pulled some plastic flex cuffs from his duffel bag and used them. He used Grace’s scarf to gag Griffyn, securing it tightly enough to make him appear as if he was grimacing constantly. With the man’s hands secured behind his back and his mouth gagged, Mahegan climbed into the front seat as Grace unwrapped the scarf from her face and sat in the passenger seat. She looked over the headrest at Griffyn.

  “You don’t know how many times I wanted to do that,” she said.

  “What? Aim a weapon at him, knock him out, or handcuff him?”

  “Pick one. He’s such a frigging douche.”

  Mahegan started the car and then drove the route to the fracking site, only he turned sooner and followed the stream on the east side, sticking to the improved dirt and gravel road that led to the hilltop where he had heard a vehicle driving during his earlier reconnaissance. The forest on either side of the road was thick, making navigation without headlights a challenge. He was trading the idea of stealth for the concept that Throckmorton and Gunther would be expecting Griffyn’s vehicle. They would look out the window and see his car and then would go back to drinking whiskey or whatever they were doing.