Three Minutes to Midnight

by A. J Tata

  Mahegan watched the fighter and calculated his geometry. He had placed his backpack on the ground. His opponents were still wearing theirs. He would be more agile, though they could be more adept at fighting. His back was to the trail that ran parallel to the river through the thick forest. To his front were the three kids, and behind them by fifty yards was the bridge and the road. It wasn’t likely that anyone driving by would think twice about four kids with backpacks hanging out by the river. In fact, they would probably smile and be glad that they were outdoors, communing with nature, instead of playing video games indoors.

  “One,” Jimmy said.

  Mahegan had never been in a true fight before. He’d been shoved and pushed and called names, but he’d endured nothing of this magnitude. The middle school wrestling coach had talked to him today and had invited him to try out as a heavyweight wrestler. Mahegan was tall and powerful—not an ounce of fat on him—from his days as a waterman, diving and swimming. He had broad shoulders and long arms. The swimming coach would probably be talking to him soon, too, the wrestling coach had told him.

  “Two.”

  But Mahegan was a smart kid. His mother had taught him to make quick decisions in the water. Where’s the wave going to break? How do you paddle into it properly? Where is that sweet spot of balance on your board? How do you get on the face of the wave and not just ride the white water? What do you do if you see a bull shark coming at you? That was what Mahegan was thinking about as the kid continued counting.

  “Three.”

  He had learned that balance and skill were necessary components of any athletic endeavor. While he had to ride the wave as it presented itself, he had learned that you could manipulate the wave with turns and carves and upper-body movements. He knew also when to let the bull shark swim past and when to fight it.

  “Four.”

  As he watched the pudgy kid lift the shotgun, Mahegan did an upper-body turn, making sure to keep his right foot firmly planted, like a pitcher turning on a windup. He wanted to give the appearance of a departure while coiling for a strike on Jimmy, who had made the mistake of stepping in front of the pudgy kid with the shotgun.

  “Knew you were a pussy,” said Jimmy.

  Mahegan’s upper body swiveled back in Jimmy’s direction, adding force to his punch, as if it was released from a baseball pitcher’s windup. His fist hit the kid in the face, moving about eighty miles per hour, he figured, and he heard the distinct crack of the tall kid’s nose flattening onto his face. Blood sprayed everywhere, and Mahegan stepped forward and pushed the tall kid into the river with a loud splash.

  The shotgun fired but missed Mahegan as he spun into the pudgy kid with a backward rotation. It was a double-barrel, so he knew that the weapon was empty, but he didn’t discount the fact that the fat kid might have a few shells in his pocket. His main concern, though, was the knife guy, the fighter, who was using the pudgy kid to shield his movements. Mahegan grabbed the shotgun by the barrel with his right hand, used his left forearm to strike the shooter in the temple, and easily tossed the weapon into the river with the kid still attached to it.

  For the first time since their encounter began, the boy holding the switchblade smiled. He flipped the knife a few times in his hand and stepped forward, ready.

  Mahegan remained in a fighter’s stance, left foot forward. The switchblade flashed against the sunlight as the kid spun toward Mahegan to deliver a roundhouse, leading with a high kick that missed and then quickly following through with a slash of the blade. But it, too, missed. It was a gamble, Mahegan would later recognize.

  On the kid’s follow-through, Mahegan grabbed his arm and used his momentum to slam him into the cedar tree that bore the shattered root. The kid seemed stunned momentarily, stumbling, with one foot sliding into the water. Mahegan followed with a straight punch to the back of the kid’s head. He watched his eyes roll back and heard the kid’s ankle snap as his unconscious body fell into the water, his foot wedged between two root sheaths.

  Mahegan looked at the three injured kids and knew that he had not seen nor heard the last from them. He didn’t care. He had survived his first fight in pretty good fashion. He had learned something about himself, namely, that he was a natural. The same way some people were born to fly fighter jets or invent new technology, Mahegan was born to protect. To defend. If not himself, then others.

  Oddly, it was his mother who had taught him the balance needed to survive in any arena, whether it was a childhood playground or an Afghan battlefield. Balance, Chayton, my son. It’s all about balance.

  Mahegan snapped back from the childhood memory to the present, where Grace was still breathing an easy rhythm on his chest. He listened for sounds in the hallway and in the parking lot. He knew he needed to rest. Tomorrow would bring more information and, necessarily, more rapid action.

  Balance. No more gambles, unless they were absolutely necessary. Protect the things he cared about and the people who cared about him.

  His mother. Protect her memory.

  In the end, there was no choice at all. He had to find a way both to accomplish his assigned mission and to defend his mother’s honor. Some might call it revenge, but Mahegan called it justice. The world was an unfair place, and it required people like him to make it just a little bit fairer.

  That was Chayton “Jake” Mahegan’s calling.

  The falcon-wolf. The hunter-killer.

  And then there was the picture he had found in Throckmorton’s house. The one that Grace had glimpsed. He was confident that she hadn’t seen the entire picture or who else was on the film. It was a rarity these days, a stock paper picture, but it had been there and had convinced him that Throckmorton was working with Gunther and that the new project in western Wake County was where he would find Gunther.

  As he lay there, he tried to isolate the most important detail from the cacophony of activity that had occurred during the past three days. What was he not doing that he should be doing? he asked himself. He thought about the nexus between Throckmorton and Gunther. What was their play? What was their state of mind after tonight’s spoiling attack?

  Their mission would be to move as quickly as possible to get the gas from the shale and to the market. Cash in and cash out. Let the feds and the state regulators try to figure out what had happened to the previously gas-rich shale deposit once the legal fracking began. It was no different than a bank heist, only more complicated, in that it involved lots of technology and workers. When people were stealing large amounts of money, they worried about security. Griffyn would surely talk and tell them that “Hawthorne” was up in their grill.

  Again, while it was a gamble to dump Griffyn there, it was better to know that he was inside the compound than to have him as a rogue double agent outside. Griffyn could trump up all sorts of charges against him and remove him from the chessboard for Throckmorton and Gunther. That would be one of their plays, Mahegan figured. Also, they would go back to the beginning. There had been talk at the Wallaby gas station of a two-man crew from Chapel Hill that had never returned from a fracking job. If they hadn’t already, Gunther and Throckmorton would have Papa Diablo and Manuela eliminated as quickly as possible. The plan from the outset had most likely been to kill all three of them.

  Mahegan decided that in a few hours, he would drive to the Wallaby and warn the men there not to take the Gunther fracking job.

  CHAPTER 21

  JAMES GUNTHER SAT IN THE OBSERVATION ROOM AND WATCHED MAEVE Cassidy maneuver the drill out, steer the newly inserted piping into place, and guide the perforating charge into the hole. She followed that procedure by forcing millions of gallons of pressurized, chemically laced water into the shaft. The chemicals cut through the rock and held open thousands of freshly created fissures, which would instantly release gas.

  Like a doctor performing remote surgery, she expertly inserted the fracking block, known as a stop, that prevented the gas from coming up the pipe. They had several more fractures they wanted t
o make in this drill path. All told, Gunther had Chun and Ting program fourteen horizontal paths, which would sap the great majority of the gas from the Durham shale.

  The woman had skills, Gunther had to admit. They had made a good decision when they agreed to acquire her talents. For some time Gunther had been unsure about partnering with a prissy boy like Throckmorton. Ever since he and his road crew had killed that blond mother whose son had broken his son’s nose in a fight in Maxton, down by the river, his entire focus had been on becoming the richest, most powerful country boy in North Carolina. Gunther knew he couldn’t screw anymore, but he could acquire wealth and dominate people.

  It had never really been about sex to him, anyway. He busted a nut by hurting people and being the top dog. He had come from nothing and had built his construction business one ditch, one road, one bridge at a time. Suddenly, he’d been winning state and city projects quicker than anyone else. He had bid on projects he couldn’t do, but he had still won them and had subcontracted them out to others who needed to work. When he saw the movement toward fracking in North Carolina, that was when he started leaning in that direction. But he overinvested in that, and the bureaucrats on Jones Street in Raleigh were taking their damn sweet time passing laws and regulations. As his balance sheet began to collapse with the recession, James Gunther and Sons Construction was nearly bankrupt.

  Then, when they were on the brink of financial disaster, Jim landed the big-time government job in Afghanistan. When Jim told him what he would be doing in Afghanistan, Gunther scratched out a plan. His dealings with most rich people had shown him that they believed they knew how the world worked, and that they were certain their privilege was hard earned, even if handed down over generations. So Gunther let Throckmorton believe the entire fracking and funding scheme was his idea. He went to Throckmorton because he truly needed a loan, but he slipped in a few tidbits about Jim’s classified mission in Afghanistan that whetted Throckmorton’s appetite.

  Gunther looked at the monitor showing the EB-5 roughnecks feeding the drill into the ground. It was a coiled, snaking device that was fed into the sleeve that led underground. Somewhere, miles below, it was connected to the working end that Maeve Cassidy was steering through the Triassic layer of earth and into the Durham shale.

  “Everything to your satisfaction, Dad?”

  Gunther scratched his face and ran a hand across his bloodshot eyes. He didn’t mince words and had no time for pleasantries, even with his son.

  “What’d y’all do with Griffyn? RPD sees him missing too long, they’ll go ballistic.”

  “He’s in one of the rooms in the tunnel down the way,” Jim said, turning his head over his shoulder. “I talked to him. He could be useful if we get more intel on these people watching us. And I had him call the Raleigh Police Department and tell them he’s taking a few days of personal leave. Also asked him about this Hawthorne guy. Some kind of Army criminal investigator.”

  “You see him?”

  “Only from a distance. Big guy in the car with Grace Kagami, Griffyn says.”

  “The Shred’s slope? What the hell is she doing in there?”

  “There’s some connection. Kagami was placed as lead forensic tech on the Throckmorton scene.”

  “That was a botched operation from the get-go.” Gunther coughed. “You were supposed to snag the Army woman when she showed, but you got sidelined by all that commie pussy.”

  “I got her here, didn’t I?”

  James Gunther Sr. leveled his gaze on his son, mad that he had not immediately taken Maeve Cassidy hostage when she showed at the Throckmorton home. He knew that his son had the same weakness for women that he had once possessed. While he wanted to cut the kid some slack for being diverted by the EB-5 women, some of whom were rather exotic, he had an operation to run.

  “What you got was a major criminal investigation going, and you would be all over the front pages if Throckmorton didn’t own part of the newspaper. That’s the only thing keeping a lid on this thing. All them big-money folks keep their secrets buried by buying off the newspaper. Hell of a thing, but it’s working out for us this time.”

  “She has perforated the first zone, and all looks in order. She’s blocked the gas, and we’re lowering the next charges. In a few hours we will start drilling the second vein. All is on schedule,” Jim said.

  Gunther smirked at his son’s effort to change the topic, but he stayed on course. “What are you going to do about Griffyn?”

  “I have a plan for him. Don’t worry.”

  Gunther laid his flat black eyes on his son and said, “Don’t you ever tell me not to worry, boy. I’ve been worrying about you and your screwups since you got your ass kicked by that BFI when you was fifteen years old. The only reason you’re still alive is that I’ve spent a lifetime worrying about how to clothe and feed your sorry ass. Now, you get the hell out of here and make yourself useful. Be best to kill Griffyn and blame it on this Hawthorne guy, if that’s really his name.”

  Jim nodded, apparently unsure.

  Never lacking when it came to providing parental guidance, Gunther said, “Get your ass moving, son. We need to be done within the week so we can pull down the rig and just have the wellhead there.”

  Gunther watched Jim walk down the worn limestone steps and into the labyrinth that was this section of the Underground Railroad. He knew it was dilapidated, but this part had served its purposes well.

  He stood from his chair and grabbed his shotgun. Done watching the woman drill, blast, and inject chemicals into the shale, he wanted to have a chat with Ting. Looking at the wellhead camera monitor, he saw what looked like a small gathering of animated men at the base of the rig.

  “Bunch of jack offs,” he muttered. “Wasting time. Wasting money.” Gunther left the observation room, followed the dusty, worn path in the tunnel, and shouldered through the door that led to the basement. He turned and walked up the steps to the storm shelter doors. Pushing them up and out of the way, he emerged into the night, brandishing his shotgun. An enforcer. All his life he’d been making men do things they didn’t necessarily want to do, and he knew how to complete a job. Force of personality mixed with the right kind of threat usually did the trick.

  Instead of driving around the bend and tipping his hand that he was approaching, Gunther picked his way along the half-mile downhill trail. He walked until he was around the eastern side, where the fence wasn’t totally complete, past Cassidy’s first night’s accommodations, and through the tall grass. He approached from behind the port-o-johns that were lined up next to where the trucks were parked.

  Gunther stood and listened to the men talking in their native languages. They were wearing an assortment of denims, flannels, and Carhartt Sherpa jackets, which Throckmorton had purchased in bulk. The men stood under a weak bank of lights that centered on the wellhead. Gunther had intended to keep the light weak so that airplanes and adjacent landowners didn’t get too suspicious too soon.

  Most of the conversation seemed to be between Ting, Chun, and Petrov. Petrov knew some Chinese, apparently, but not much, because Ting and Chun were using animated hand motions to try to communicate with him. Gunther remembered that earlier they had been wearing surgical masks, but those hung loosely around their necks now. The chemical spray required at least that. Part of the reason he was in the control booth when Cassidy shot the chemicals into the earth was that he didn’t want a third eye growing out of his forehead.

  English was the one language that all the men spoke with some proficiency. Gunther stepped out, the shotgun on his shoulder, and said, “Hell’s going on here?”

  The three men in the inner circle looked up, startled. Petrov’s flat gaze hung on Gunther. Ting and Chun were more animated and continued speaking in Chinese, their high-pitched voices bugging the hell out of Gunther.

  “Ting, what the hell are we doing?” asked Gunther. “We’ve got another vein to start on in a bit and more charges to lower.”

  Ting turne
d toward Gunther. “We using too much explosive. Need to use less each blast, Mr. Gunther.”

  “I thought you guys calculated all of that?” Gunther squinted his eyes, suspicious.

  “Yes. What I say and what Chun say is Petrov like a big boom. We want small boom just to hit right spot. Too much create problems and seal off the gas before chemicals get in to hold open for gas to come out.”

  “Well, damn it, do what you have to do, but do it. Fish or cut bait. Quit talking about it and get moving.”

  “We moving, Mr. Gunter,” Ting said.

  Gunther watched Ting and Chun turn toward Petrov, who was still staring at him.

  “You got a problem, Petrov? Got your ass kicked by some Mexicans. Now you want me to kick it? I’ll kill you right now if you don’t get your ass back to work. And get those Mexicans and the ‘white but not white’ guy tomorrow morning.”

  Petrov waited a moment, then nodded. “Yes, Mr. Gunther.”

  Gunther turned and walked back the way he had come, figuring the exercise would be good for him. He broke a sweat on the climb back up the hill, but afterward, he was glad he had done so. He had done some thinking on that climb. Maybe the stress of losing seven workers was causing the crew to overreact. Then again, maybe something else entirely was happening behind their backs. He had to think about that one, but he decided to go down and talk to Cassidy about it.

  He retraced his steps into the basement, found the door to the Underground Railroad hideout, and this time walked past the EB-5 female guard holding a Remington shotgun and into the control room instead of the observation room. There he found Maeve Cassidy studiously maneuvering the joystick as she manipulated the next explosive shaped charge into the horizontal cut. He observed her skill by watching the monitor, which was displaying a three-dimensional image of the ground through which they were drilling. It showed the vertical drill and the kickoff point where the horizontal drill began. Gunther saw the layers of the earth and the boreholes, which was like observing a child’s worm farm, along with the fractured areas and the newly placed charge.