by A. J Tata
“Do you have a way to copy the code?” De La Cruz asked Layne.
As the two women reached the bottom of the narrow steps, they transitioned from focusing on keeping their balance to looking at the computer bank where he was standing.
Layne let out a short scream that sounded like the yelping of a terrier. De La Cruz stared at him without smiling. If she was surprised, her face did not reveal it. Stone-cold eyes locked onto Mahegan’s.
“Miss De La Cruz,” he said. “Miss Constance, it’s a pleasure to see you.”
“Where’s Misha?” they both asked in unison.
“I’m here looking for her,” he said. He wasn’t sure how Misha wanted him to play this but figured he would start out in investigative mode. If she was eager to see her mother, he doubted she would have hidden or run. Or at the very least, she would have revealed herself by now.
“How did you get in?” Layne asked.
Both women approached him, scanning the room for others, perhaps Misha. He hadn’t seen Misha replace her glasses on her head, and his back was turned to the monitors where she had been downloading the information. He hoped that she had grabbed them.
“I used an old special ops trick. You should really upgrade that lock with all this computer hardware in here.”
“So you’re admitting to breaking and entering?” De La Cruz said. “Or did Misha let you in?”
“Like I said, I’m looking for her. I think the code she wrote may have played a role in your husband’s death,” he said, looking at Layne. “And I think your auto plant has a lot more to it than you either know or are telling us,” he said, turning his gaze to De La Cruz.
“We make cars, Mr. Mahegan. Cutting-edge automobiles with state-of-the-art technology. You saw one, and you will see millions more,” De La Cruz said.
He paused, as he saw that he had turned the conversation away from Misha, and then said, “Hang on and let me adjust this Uber I just ordered.”
Just then the doorbell chimed in a singsong rhythm. They all looked up at the door to the kitchen and Mahegan thought, Misha.
“Why don’t I accompany you upstairs,” Mahegan said. “We should all stick together after today’s events.”
He pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Casey with the address. He was hopeful that she would be able to get away from work and pick up him and Misha. “It was supposed to be here now, but I told it to be here in fifteen minutes.”
He started walking upstairs, and the two women started to follow, until Layne said, “What is this?”
He turned around and saw Layne holding the key that they had used to get into the house.
“Like I said, old special ops trick. Why break and enter when you can find a key.”
“Where was it?”
“Third place I looked. First was under the drain spout, second was behind the drain spout while I was looking for a magnetic box, and then I noticed the loose brick. There it was.”
The doorbell rang again.
“Stick with me,” Mahegan said.
Layne eyed him warily. He needed to get them upstairs to keep them away from whatever Misha was protecting down here and was thankful for whoever was ringing the doorbell. He felt the phone vibrate as he started walking up the stairs. Rounding the corner, he peeked at the screen of his phone and saw Casey had typed, Roger.
After De La Cruz came through the door, she closed it behind her. Mahegan retrieved his pistol, walked to the front door and opened it to, unsurprisingly, no one. He took in the three large oaks and front yard. He noticed the dark street with a street lamp in the distance. He turned and sat at the kitchen table with the two women.
“What are you doing here?” he asked them.
“That’s really none of your business.”
“You wanted me to provide security for Cefiro, and so I think it is my business.”
“You went AWOL. I’m not sure the offer still stands,” De La Cruz told him.
He wondered if she knew about last night’s activities at her R & D compound.
“Did Homeland Security visit you today?” he asked.
She paused, a cloud crossing over her pupils. “Yes, they did. It consumed most of my workday and was an utter waste of time.”
He listened for Misha’s movements but heard none. Either she had not moved or she was a stealthy little operator. He guessed the latter based upon her claim that she had gained access to the R & D compound and that she was the apparent anonymous doorbell ringer. He was eager to see the video of her visit on the flash drive she had downloaded from her glasses.
“So, again, what’s going on?” he asked.
“They found another dead body,” Layne said.
“A man. Shot twice,” De La Cruz added.
“Where?” he asked.
“Near downtown Wilmington, just south of where the detective found Roger’s blood,” Layne said.
“Is the good detective Patterson on the case?”
“Yes. How did you know?” Layne responded.
“Just a guess,” he said.
There was too much happening in the same place with the same method for a gumshoe like Patterson not to be salivating. This was probably the most excitement he had ever seen in New Hanover County, North Carolina.
He remembered what Misha had said about the downtown Wilmington warehouse and the gunfight. This was information that might help her recollection. His guess was that Misha was blocking the trauma and simply couldn’t remember everything from that night, and who could blame her?
“Did this man happen to be an employee of yours?” he asked De La Cruz.
She paused, but finally admitted, “Yes.”
“And what do you make of this?”
“Mr. Mahegan, I reached out to you because of this. Roger Constance had delivered code, which we believed he had written, that was critical to the operations of our newest vehicles. It allowed us to make a significant upgrade, and before we deploy the next cars, we want this version of the code installed. When a minor problem arose, Roger admitted that Misha had written the code. He was going to work with her to fix the problem and deliver a new code the next day. He never showed up at work the next day, and one of his security men has been—had been—missing.”
“I remember that night,” Layne said. “They worked briefly and then left. Roger didn’t want Misha to go with him, but she has—had—a way with him. He couldn’t say no. Daddy’s girl, for sure.”
“What is your relationship with Francisco Franco?” he asked Layne.
She blushed as De La Cruz’s head snapped to her right and she gave Layne a hard stare.
“Why do you ask?” Layne’s voice was a whisper. She averted her gaze toward the floor.
“Because your relationship with him may have gotten Roger killed.”
Layne looked nervously at De La Cruz. “That’s impossible.”
De La Cruz shifted her glare from him toward Layne. “You have a personal relationship with my director of research and development?” De La Cruz asked.
“Anyone need something to drink?” Layne asked, standing. “Because suddenly I think I do.”
“Sit your ass down and answer my questions,” De La Cruz said.
The two women stared at each other, perhaps momentarily forgetting about his presence. Layne eased back into the chair.
“Okay. Yes. Franco and I had a tryst, if you will. It’s done, though.”
“How long did it last?” De La Cruz asked.
Long enough, Mahegan thought to himself. He began to wonder if Franco was the other person Misha had seen in the dark warehouse. He would want the code for swarming, maybe more, he thought. Like using De La Cruz’s vehicles in full attack mode just as the Sparrows were attacking ships. Franco’s presence also added Cuba as a potential ally with Iran, and that assessment made the entire Cefiro operation suspect. Could it actually be a Trojan horse in the form of a much-needed jobs-producing auto manufacturer?
“Two months,” Layne s
aid.
“What did you tell him? Pillow talk?” Mahegan asked.
“Nothing important,” she replied in a clipped tone.
“Did you mention that Misha was working on the code?” he asked.
Instantly, he knew she had. She looked away.
“That’s my question,” De La Cruz said, following up. “It was classified and compartmented within Cefiro headquarters that Roger was writing this code. Research and development did not know about it or need to know about it. R & D works on next generation, while operations, in the main building, works on near-term deployment of vehicles and technology. This was immediate. Franco had no need to know.”
Either Franco had duped Layne Constance and then had wined and dined her to get the information or he had gotten entirely lucky on both counts. Layne Constance was a beautiful woman, though at the moment, the gravity of the situation seemed to weigh on her, causing her features to sag in the harsh light of the kitchen.
“I mentioned to him that Misha had helped. I was proud. It was an unwitting disclosure.”
“You’re an attorney, Layne. You’re our attorney. You signed nondisclosure statements,” De La Cruz said. Her voice was tight with anger.
Layne slipped into legal defense mode. “Disclosing information to a member of your company is not a violation of my confidentiality agreement with Cefiro,” she said.
“Franco is not a member of my company,” De La Cruz hissed. “We are a Cuban public-private partnership. I own the private part. The Cuban government owns the public part. The only way I could get funding was to partner with the government. They demanded to own and operate the research and development piece outright.”
He looked at Layne Constance and then at Ximena De La Cruz. Suddenly several things fell into place that changed everything.
He knew who had killed Roger Constance and why Franco wanted the code.
“And Francisco Franco is a member of the Cuban Army, correct?” he asked De La Cruz.
“That’s correct,” she replied. “He’s a Special Forces colonel.”
When he heard the noise from the street, he looked over his shoulder and through the kitchen window, expecting to be surprised that Casey would have stopped directly in front of the house.
Instead, he was surprised that a black SUV had screeched to a halt and four armed men were pouring out of it.
CHAPTER 18
DARIUS MIRZA
MIRZA STARED AT THE PICTURE OF THE BIG MAN—THE VIGILANTE—who had helped the girl escape. He visualized carving a Z into his face as he slowly killed him.
His cybersecurity team had finally hacked the video feed at the ferry terminal in Southport, providing a clear photo of former Army captain Chayton Mahegan, from somewhere called Frisco, North Carolina. They had used facial recognition software and had downloaded the images of every known Special Forces operator in the American armed forces.
What Mahegan was doing in the middle of his operation, he didn’t know.
He was hopeful that Bouseh could help him locate Mahegan, and then his assault team would quickly move to his location, capture the girl, and kill Mahegan. Then they could get back on schedule. It had been several days since he had had contact with Bouseh, so it was time to check in with her.
But first, his computer monitor showed that the assault team was closing in on the GPS location of De La Cruz’s Cefiro car. His team was the blue flashing indicator, while De La Cruz’s autonomous automobile was a red flashing light.
Sitting in his command center, he monitored the operation through the lens of the Fasr satellite, which bore down on Misha Constance’s home. He was angry that his cyber team could do all these amazing things but could not do what an eleven-year-old girl had done: write the code for ground and aerial swarming devices to communicate.
And because they could not complete the code, he needed this girl. He looked forward to making her comply and finish the code. He would use his entire tool bag on her, because his assessment was that she would not write the code voluntarily.
As the SUV parked in front of the house, its dome light came on, and he thought that his men should be better than that. They were making small operational mistakes that, when tallied, could result in large failures. He had come too far to even consider failure at this mission.
His other fifty-five-inch display monitors showed each of the rivers and ports they had blocked: Savannah, Georgia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Norfolk, Virginia. Emergency vessels were circling the sunken ships. Dredges were digging channels to bypass the wrecks. All of this was taking time and costing billions in trade every day. The futures markets for the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ stock markets, which the Quds Force tracked every day, were plummeting to ten-year lows. The Japanese, European, and Chinese markets had already crashed.
Phase one had been successful.
Misha was the key to phase two.
Even though phase one had involved sinking ships using the Sparrows, he did not consider the initial phase a very kinetic one. The surgical strikes had been limited in scope and in deaths, which was important. While the Americans would believe they were under attack, perhaps, the loss of life had been minimal. Mirza was more concerned about truly destroying the economy than about symbolically slaughtering Americans. Not that he was against that. He already planned to spice up the final plan with some mass killings.
But his first mission was to crush the American economy. Bring the country to its knees and put it into a deep recession or depression. The aftershocks would reverberate across the world, as they were already seeing with the Asian and European stock markets.
So phase two would require coordinated communication between the Cefiro cars and the Sparrows. Mirza had mapped out specific targets that they could attack from the air and the ground or both. At this point, he knew the American defenses around the nation’s primary targets would be defended in some capacity, if not well defended. Just as the Sparrows could fly as a flock of birds and then home in on one location on a ship to achieve maximum destructive power, the cars would be useful in blocking first responders as the Sparrows flew to their targets. Synchronization was so important that the code needed to be in place to assure success.
As he watched on the television monitors the sunken ships sitting in the canals, blocking commerce, he was reassured that he had at least another day or two before he had to launch his final attack.
After the Homeland Security inspection today, he was also confident that he would have at least that much time.
Provided this Mahegan individual didn’t get in the way.
He watched his men approach the house, with their MP5 weapons held at eye level.
CHAPTER 19
JAKE MAHEGAN
MAHEGAN STOOD AND FOUND THE CIRCUIT BREAKER INSIDE THE stairwell, then flipped the master switch off. He had noticed it on his way up the stairs and saw shutting down the lights as the quickest way to conceal their movements, if only for a few seconds.
“Either move now, or we’re all dead,” he said.
He stood at the door as the two women knocked their chairs back in surprise at his rapid movements. He heard the car doors slam and saw the men jogging through the front yard. Two broke off from the main group and headed toward the back. It was nighttime, and he was able only to see the faint movements of the men, first, because the dome light of their vehicle came on, and second, because the streetlight in the distance was casting a pale glow.
He wondered about Misha and whether Casey had found her.
De La Cruz grabbed his arm and said, “What’s going on?”
He tried to assess whether the worry in her tone was authentic. It was entirely possible that she had led these men here. But he had to assume that she had been unaware of his presence at the Constance household upon her arrival and that her only reason for being there was that the key to the code lay somewhere inside the basement servers.
“There’s a better place to go,” Layne said. She had grabbed
a knife from the kitchen counter.
“Let’s get into the basement. Now,” he commanded.
He heard the footsteps on the front porch as the women passed him and began descending. He retrieved his Sig Sauer Tribal and knelt on the first step, keeping the basement door cracked. He had a perfect line of sight through the kitchen–dining area to the front door.
Wood splintered as they burst through the door. The noise was deafening, but he held his aim steady. The two men moved quickly into the house and then stopped, holding MP5s at eye level, scanning.
Mahegan double tapped the lead man twice in the chest and caught his wingman in the neck, with the second shot hitting his shoulder. The lead man was down but getting up, and Mahegan thought, Body armor. So he shot him in the head, as he was on one knee. Two nine-millimeter Parabellum hollow-point rounds fired at twenty feet would knock a man down even if body armor absorbed the force. The other man wasn’t moving, so Mahegan held his aim for a few seconds more, then shifted his focus to the other two men.
By now the back door to the house was opening, and he considered his options: kill those two or lock the kitchen door to the basement stairwell, grab the women, and get them to safety. First, he was still concerned about Misha and her whereabouts. He hadn’t had time to check his phone, and if it had vibrated, he hadn’t felt it. Second, he knew that whatever might be on those servers was important enough to protect. Last, he considered whether there were more Persians on the way and took a calculated risk that there were not. Starting with the thirty to forty men whom he had seen in the containers, he was confident that he had whittled that number by at least 20 percent, based on the tunnel fight, the chase in Carolina Beach, and now the battle at the Constance home.
The problem was that the sight line he had with the front door was a disadvantage in terms of the back door. He had no sight line except for a small crack in between the door and the jamb. The door separating the basement and the kitchen opened toward the back door, where the men had just breached the house. He could feel them moving silently through the family room toward him. A shadow slipped across the quarter-inch vertical crack between the door and the wall. They were close. He slid back against the wall of the stairwell, leaving the door slightly ajar.