Besieged

by A. J Tata

  Perhaps to ensure her survival.

  CHAPTER 5

  JAKE MAHEGAN

  “HOW WAS IT ATTACKED?” HE ASKED.

  Casey pointed at the laptop screen with the news report.

  “Ships were sunk in the choke points of the Savannah and Charleston ports,” she said.

  “Those blockages will prevent any ships from coming or going until the Coast Guard and the cities can clean them up, which could take months.”

  He watched Casey’s fingers fly across the keyboard and bring up more current news reports.

  “Nothing in North Carolina?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “But we could be next if they’re moving north.” She reached out and plucked the TV remote from the glass coffee table. After bringing up Fox News, she turned up the volume.

  “We are being told that we have two other giant container ships that have sunk berth side at the Port of Charleston. And again, eyewitnesses saw flocks of birds dive into the ships that subsequently sank and are now blocking passage to and from the ports. Explosions followed the massing of these flocks of birds. . . .”

  “ANTS,” he said.

  Casey looked at him. “What do you mean, ants?”

  “Autonomous nanotechnology swarms. Someone has combined microscopic technology, lethal explosives, and swarming algorithms to mimic birds in flight and then, it appears, these ‘birds’ literally dive-bomb like kamikaze pilots.”

  “What made you think of that?” she asked.

  He stared at her. She was beautiful, smart, and a complete unknown to him. She could be Mother Theresa or she could be a sleeper-cell terrorist. He realized most people might say this train of thought was paranoid, but they wouldn’t if they had his past. “Paranoia” had saved his life more than once, so he let the train of thought continue. Maybe she had killed her marine, and now she had been assigned to shadow him. That would mean that whoever was attacking America would have reason to know him and understand his background as a former operator in the U.S. Army’s Delta Force. Not many people knew it, but he had been the subject of an interagency manhunt a couple of years ago. It was common knowledge that enemies of the United States had infiltrated American government agency bureaucracies.

  Hospitals were bureaucracies, too, but he figured most emergency rooms were not. He had a decision to make. Did he trust Casey Livingstone? On the other hand, she had friends at Promise’s school and had given him updates on Promise’s condition. She could be manipulating him to gain his trust, but she really seemed to be trying to help him.

  Mahegan knew that these were not a few giant merchant ships that were simultaneously defective. The nation was under attack, again. He decided to open up to her a bit, thinking she could be helpful.

  “I read something about ANTS. It is cutting-edge technology, and like all technology, it can be used for good and for evil. This is evil.”

  After what had happened at the school today, followed by the abduction of Misha, he was convinced that it was all tied together somehow. He needed to contact Patch and General Savage, as he was certain that they were on high alert right now.

  “Why wouldn’t they attack the Port of Wilmington?” he asked her before he decided to make the call. He focused on this because what was done was done. Someone had closed off two of the most active ports on the East Coast. Whereas the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been deadly, those attacks had also been mostly symbolic. Attacking the nation’s ports, however, had to be aimed at disrupting the economy. Slowing down the supply chain would cost businesses billions every day. Those losses would ricochet globally. Stock markets would crash. Economies would falter. Recessions would begin. Depressions would emerge, initially locally, then possibly worldwide. It was not hard to envision.

  “Maybe they need it,” she said. “Or maybe those big ships can’t get up the Cape Fear River.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  She looked at him. Their eyes connected again. A flash of recognition in her face.

  “You don’t know if you can trust me?”

  “Why would I need to trust you?” he asked.

  “Your phone call earlier. You’re communicating with someone about this.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked. She was observant. As long as she wasn’t a terrorist, she could be helpful.

  “You gave a situation report and received information in return. I couldn’t hear anything, but I saw that look a hundred times on Carver’s face.”

  “You’re right. I was passing on the status of Promise as I knew it at the time. As I said, I was Army. I’m out now, but we’ve promised to take care of the family members of those from our unit who died in combat.”

  She nodded. He felt the information was substantial and real enough to satisfy her curiosity.

  “That’s nice,” she said. “Carver’s teammates were like that. Until they stopped being like that. I’m not sure what happened. Maybe it was because Carver and I weren’t married. His buddies and me . . . we just grew apart, aside from a few guys staying in touch . . . for other reasons.”

  She was a gorgeous woman. Lots of guys probably wanted to be in touch with her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Exploiting a woman’s grief is not a noble way into a relationship. Protect and be selfless, not selfish. They need to go get laid somewhere else,” he said.

  “My sentiments exactly,” she said. A long sigh escaped from her naturally pursed lips. He could tell she had been propositioned too many times in the past, especially around the time of her fiancé’s death.

  “I need to make a phone call,” he said. He stood, and his leg brushed against hers. He moved toward the front door.

  “Better go out the back,” she said. “Then you can walk around the loop by Wrightsville Beach and you’ll blend in with everyone else exercising . . . as much as someone your size can blend in.”

  He followed her instructions and found himself crossing the Intracoastal Waterway and following the sidewalk to the loop in Wrightsville Beach. After pulling out his phone, he entered the Zebra app and dialed his former teammate Patch Owens.

  “Owens.”

  “Mahegan. Status?”

  “You’ve seen the news,” said Patch. “Not much more to report other than the flocks of birds are unmanned aerial systems. We’re watching all the East Coast ports. Savannah and Charleston are the biggest, other than Hampton Roads. We suspect that’s the next target, so Savage has an alert headed in that direction.”

  “Update on Misha?” Mahegan asked.

  “Her father was information security for the CEO of the new auto manufacturer in Brunswick County. Near you. We’re working it now. Cefiro has some of the tightest Internet security protocols I’ve ever seen. O’Malley’s working it, but so far he’s got nothing.”

  “I’ve got a flash drive full of math problems,” Mahegan said. “I’ll upload them. I think Misha is connected to this swarming issue.”

  “Send it ASAP.”

  “Roger. What else you got for me?”

  “There’s some chatter that Darius Mirza has left Iraq and gone off the grid. He was in Iraq with Soleimani, and now he and about thirty of his savages have gone silent.”

  Qasem Soleimani was the infamous commander of the Iranian Special Forces. He was a murderous butcher who killed Americans for sport. Mirza was his primary henchman who carried out the most gruesome tasks. In eastern Iraq Mirza’s network had placed thousands of explosively formed penetrators that killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers. He had overseen the savagery and maiming of Iraqi Sunni civilians, including women and children, in the city of Basra. It was ethnic cleansing, pure and simple.

  Mirza was an evil man. The fact that he was off the grid could mean he was on vacation or had relocated to terrorize another Arab country somewhere. Just the thought that he was out there was tantamount to coming back to your house and finding a jimmied door and wondering if someone was hiding inside wi
th a meat cleaver, Mahegan thought. He was a global menace.

  “Mirza? We’re sure?” he asked. This was a significant development.

  “We’re sure he’s gone from Iraq and Iran. We can’t find him anywhere else in the Middle East. I just received a random report that he was seen at the port in Fujairah, of all places. Haven’t had time to track it down.”

  “Track it. This is huge.”

  They clicked off. Mahegan thought about the fact that Mirza was out there somewhere, possibly headed his way. Mirza was known as a creative murderer at the tactical level. He would carve a Z into the faces of his personal kills, usually torture victims. He, Patch, and O’Malley had arrived too late to Basra and had found bodies littering the streets, many with Mirza’s trademark on their faces. He was an egomaniac of the highest order. The book they had on Mirza was that he was single, had never married, had no children, and was always in combat. He raped, pillaged, and burned everything he came into contact with.

  He knew that Patch would update General Savage, who knew all too well what a menace Mirza was to the world. So he tried to dismiss the thought of Mirza and focus on Promise and his next steps.

  On his walk he noticed a low-slung car crawling slowly behind him in the opposite lane. When he turned to look, the Cefiro car turned into the parking lot of a popular restaurant. A street lamp shone through the car windshield.

  There was no driver or passenger.

  He kept walking.

  Two more times Mahegan noticed the headlights, each time more distant. Was an autonomous car following him? Was that even possible? He wondered about Cefiro and Ximena De La Cruz as he reached Mercer’s Pier, about a mile north of Crystal Pier, his surfing spot. In the dark he could still see a decent swell lift and curl to the south, what surfers here would call “a left,” because it broke to the surfer’s left when riding the wave. There was the usual mix of college students from UNCW who were partying at the beach bars, playing foosball, pool, and darts. He continued on, sat at the very end of the pier, and thought about what he was dealing with.

  He felt a presence to his six o’clock, stood, turned, and leaned his back against the pier railing. This was not an ideal position to be in, though he could always dive off the pier if a squad of Taliban with machine guns suddenly opened fire on him. He was a waterman and knew tides like he knew the time. Right now, the tide was almost four hours beyond high, which meant it was less than two hours before full low. When surfing, he always used the last pylons of the pier as his marker, and at low tide the water was no more than ten feet deep at the end of the pier, if that.

  “Mahegan.”

  It was Ximena De La Cruz. Somehow she had followed him here. She had changed into a long dark blue casual T-shirt dress. Basically, it was a T-shirt that came to her knees and for which she probably had paid five hundred dollars. Whatever, she looked great, with her black hair, eyes the color of new pennies, and smooth olive skin.

  “Miss De La Cruz,” he said. She walked slowly toward him. In her right hand was a small clutch that could hold a switchblade, a. 22-caliber pistol, or lipstick, but not all three.

  “You’ve heard about the port bombings?”

  He said, “I’ve heard about ships sinking in the ports of Savannah and Charleston.”

  “And so, you’re what? Out here on this pier, lamenting that? Give me some credit, Mahegan. I’ve already got a dossier on you. The minute your name popped up at the school as the last one to see Misha, I put my people to work. I work fast.”

  She opened her purse and retrieved a cell phone, which, now that he thought about it, might be the most lethal item she could carry. Clearly, she had resources to do her bidding.

  “Just out here enjoying a dinner?” he asked, waving his hand in the direction of the seated patrons in the distance, at the base of the pier.

  She stopped three feet in front of him. Her perfume and the salt spray of the waves mingled into an intoxicating blend. No doubt, she was a seductive woman.

  “As a matter of fact, I was. Then I saw you on the phone. You’re not as anonymous as you may think, Mahegan.”

  She was right. Everything was moving fast. The bombing at the school. Promise’s coma. Misha’s disappearance. And now the bombing of the ships in the two harbors, with more perhaps to come. Meeting De La Cruz again, though, out here at the end of the pier was no coincidence. He wasn’t sure how she had found him, but he had an idea that the autonomous car with the headlights might be the culprit.

  “What do you make of the bombings?” she asked.

  “Who says they’re bombings? Plus, I’m not on the ground, investigating. Or in the river, as the situation will require.”

  “Strategically, what does it mean? Of course, if they’re bombings,” she asked, pressing ahead, keeping her eyes focused on his.

  “If the incidents are terrorist attacks, it means that someone is trying to impact the economy in such a way that manufactured goods, grain, and other materials cannot either leave or enter the United States at two of the busiest ports on the East Coast. Savannah is by far the busier of the two, but Charleston is big, as well.”

  “Who is next?” she asked.

  In fact, he had been considering this. He knew the port statistics, because during his active-duty days in the military, he and his men had trained on homeland defense. The Port of South Louisiana was the largest port in the country, handling some 60 percent of all grain shipments in the United States. But if the focus was on the East Coast, Hampton Roads was the eighth busiest port in the United States, behind New York/New Jersey, which was the fifth. He thought again about his training. Then and now, the disruption of the nation’s economy by destroying ports was near the top of the list of threats. Attacking symbols was one thing, but gumming up the economic engine of America? That would get the business community’s attention quickly.

  “I’d say Hampton Roads, Miss De La Cruz. It is in the top ten of ports in terms of volume. Not to mention that the Norfolk Navy base is tucked away in there.”

  “I agree,” she said. “My main concern, though, is Wilmington. My cars get shipped out of Wilmington to all over the world. My business hinges on this. Especially if Charleston and Hampton Roads are disrupted.”

  He was struck by her business acumen. The country could be at the beginning of a major terrorist event, and she was worried about car sales.

  “Why are you talking to me about this?” he asked.

  “I want you to work for me. I need strategic analysis, and I think you can help us find Misha.”

  “A job offer?” He pondered it for less than a second. “I’m not available.”

  “Make yourself available. I need you to help me protect my company. Wilmington is next up the coast. There are ships steaming up the Cape Fear River right now. I’ve got hundreds of millions of my own money in Cefiro, and I can’t afford to lose it. I need you to help me protect my company. Meet me at the Riverfront tomorrow morning at eight. My condo is at the Port City Marina. My office is on Third Street.”

  He stared at her. She handed him another business card. Her slender manicured finger traced over his thumb. Ximena De La Cruz turned and walked away. He watched her pass by the outdoor restaurant on the pier, remove a key fob, and walk toward the car that had just stopped in front of her in the parking lot. It was her autonomous red Cefiro. What were the odds that autonomous flying birds were not connected to the maker of autonomous vehicles?

  “Roger that,” he said to himself. He flipped the card over and saw a handwritten phone number, with the words personal mobile in parentheses.

  He walked back to Casey’s condo, taking the long route, checking his path several times to ensure the autonomous car was not tracking him. It was impossible to be certain, but the car that had followed him in Wrightsville Beach could have been De La Cruz’s personal car. Casey’s building fronted the main drag out of Wrightsville Beach, just over the Heidi Trask Intracoastal Waterway Draw Bridge. He waited for the draw spans to close
as he watched a yacht cruise south toward Masonboro Inlet and the Atlantic Ocean. Its superstructure included two spinning radar dishes and antennae that looked like giant white fishing outriggers. He caught the name of the boat in the dim light of the bridge tender’s cabin: Victoria. She was at least one hundred fifty feet long and was one of the largest yachts he had seen in the Wrightsville Beach area.

  The spans closed, and he walked across the bridge, watching the large boat cruise south. He wondered about how life seemed to go on without interruption for some, even many, despite the apparent advent of terrorist attacks on the country. Having fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mahegan always felt like he and his men were fighting the enemy on their five-yard line. Because soldiers at war were so remote from everyday life in America, many Americans had a skewed perspective. While people seemed appreciative of military service in general, many never thought beyond the surface of what it took to secure the country. Those who had watched the news probably believed the attacks were random malfunctions of the newest-generation supertankers on their maiden voyages, making some of their first port calls. He was also sure the White House was doing everything it could to disguise what was happening. Most likely, only the military personnel and those who worked in national security would guess what was going on.

  After arriving at Casey’s back door, he rapped his knuckles on the door, and she opened it quickly, then closed it behind him. She was breathing fast.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s Promise.”

  He steadied himself, feeling his mind begin to cycle into its rage mode. Mirza was suddenly an afterthought. Or maybe, if he had caused the attack, he would become a target. Quick. Casey must have seen the look on his face and the tension in his arms.

  “Settle down,” she said. “We thought we lost her for a minute, but she’s back, hanging in there. She’s tough.”