by A. J Tata
She sat on the pier, still holding Mr. Mahegan’s cell phone, which he let her use to communicate with him. She often had typed for her father, but he had encouraged her to try to talk. She felt someone behind her and turned to see Miss De La Cruz coming up the pier. She sat next to her.
“Misha, remember what we talked about?”
Misha was quiet for a bit. She didn’t really have an opinion one way or the other about Miss De La Cruz, but she might be able to help her. Misha typed and showed her the phone, which she looked at.
I remember, Miss De La Cruz. You needed me to finish writing the code for the Cefiro cars so that they can communicate with each other by satellite.
“Hang on. Let’s sit in the boat. It’s more comfortable,” De La Cruz said.
They stepped into the boat, which had soft seats, and she was correct. It was softer on her bottom, which felt better. Hard surfaces always gave her a problem.
“That’s right. Can you still do that for me?”
Misha was done being polite to her and typed with fury on the phone, holding it long ways in her small hands. Her thumbs were a blur across the screen.
You think I’m mentally challenged, don’t you? Well, I am challenged, but not in the way you think. I am always challenged to try to make people like you see what I can see. The cars can already do what you want. I’m done listening to you, because you never paid my daddy like you were supposed to, and that was wrong.
Even though she was using the Notes function, her father would say that she was “talking tough.” When an adult was trying to bully her, “Bow up,” he would say. She looked Miss De La Cruz in the eyes and saw that something flickered inside her pupils. Misha blinked, and Miss De La Cruz’s face changed in a way that made Misha believe she was angry or maybe was just a bad person. Then Miss De La Cruz changed her voice, adopting the tone Ms. Promise had called condescending when Misha once had become angry after another teacher had used the same tone of voice on her. It was when the person drew out their vowels more and made it all sound softer, like when they talked to children. But she also tightened her mouth in a way that made it look like she was keeping the mad inside, even though she was still smiling. Misha decided De La Cruz was both angry and a bad person.
“Are you sure the cars can do that, honey? My engineers told me that it wasn’t working. What one thing do we need to do, Misha?” she asked. She completely ignored the matter of the payment. It wasn’t that Misha cared about money, but she knew it had mattered to her father, so she cared about it today. But mostly what she cared about was why she had been forced to kill him and who the people were who had made her do it. She was going to find them and make them reconcile.
Ask them again. The cars have the software and the code. I was able to check from my home computer. It works just fine. Those cars can communicate to anything else that has the code. It doesn’t even have to be autonomous. But if you don’t believe me, I’ll go ahead and delete the code using the next computer I see.
As soon as Misha typed those thoughts, she had a brilliant idea, which she held on to as De La Cruz continued to talk, this time replacing the condescending tone with one that was just mean. She rambled about Misha being a kid and how dare she threaten to delete the code and said that they had built in a firewall to prevent her from gaining access anymore.
Whatever. Good luck with that, Misha thought.
“So you could try to delete it,” Miss De La Cruz said, “but you won’t succeed. Trust me on that.”
But Misha’s new idea was a good one, because she knew what the terrorists were up to, and it would also give her a chance to make Franco and De La Cruz—and perhaps her mother—reconcile.
Misha thought perhaps not because making her mother reconcile was in question, but because she didn’t know if she was dead or alive.
It didn’t really matter.
Miss De La Cruz bent over and whispered something in her ear. Misha heard her perfectly well but couldn’t believe what she was saying. She would play this back for Jake Mahegan using her glasses. As Miss De La Cruz leaned over her, Misha felt her arm reaching above her, doing something, but she wasn’t quite sure what.
Miss De La Cruz smiled an evil grin at her, like the one on the jack-o’-lanterns in her neighborhood on Halloween. Suddenly she wrapped one of the tie lines from the boat around Misha and cinched it off so that she could not move. Misha turned her head frantically back and forth when she saw De La Cruz remove the other line at the front of the boat, too. Then De La Cruz cranked the engine, did something to the steering wheel, stepped out of the boat, and pushed the throttle all the way forward.
The boat shot straight into the sound and thrust Misha back onto the deck. The motors were super loud.
But all she could think about was that, based on what Miss De La Cruz had just whispered in her ear, there would be no way for her to stop the terrorist attacks.
Unless she killed her father again.
CHAPTER 24
JAKE MAHEGAN
“IT’S ABOUT PROMISE,” CASEY SAID TO HIM, HANDING HIM THE phone.
“Yes,” he said into the phone.
“Jake Mahegan, I’m alive,” a soft female voice said.
He wasn’t sure how to respond. He felt emotions swirl and suppressed them, all part of his capability to compartmentalize events, feelings, and people. His first reaction was, Is it really her?
“What did your father always say to you when he deployed?” he asked. It was a test.
“No broken promise. It was a confirmation that he would stay strong and that he would come back to me . . . until he didn’t.” Her voice finished in a whisper. It was Promise.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said.
“You saved me.”
He looked around the backyard. Misha was still sitting at the end of the pier. He nodded at Casey, who had returned after taking her call, indicating that they should not leave her out there alone, talking to De La Cruz. He saw De La Cruz get in the boat with Misha. The moon was shining on the water in line with the pier through a gap in the trees, like the dot over an i. He could hear the waves lifting, peeling, and crashing into the sandbar about a quarter mile away, onto Masonboro Island. He waved at Casey and pointed at the boat.
“I’m more than okay, Jake. They tell me I’m going to be one hundred percent okay. Perfect. Better than perfect.”
“You always were, Promise.”
“Don’t make me cry, Jake.”
“I never would on purpose.”
“They tell me you’ve fallen in love with my nurse, Casey Livingstone.”
He detected a hint of jealousy in her voice. He and Promise had always been close, and there had always been a spark between them, but out of deference to Judge, he had never acted on any of their emotional fireworks.
He looked at Casey as she walked to the pier, and then he diverted his attention toward De La Cruz, who was now stepping out of the small white center-console boat, probably a Grady-White or a Boston Whaler. Trying to get back to the good news concerning Promise, he noticed De La Cruz do something awkward as she leaned into the boat.
“Jake?” Promise asked.
“Promise, you know I love you—”
“Like a sister,” she said, finishing for him. He could visualize her rolling her wide brown eyes.
Then the boat sped into the sound. Casey ran toward De La Cruz, who was running off the pier directly at Casey. He saw them join awkwardly, as if hugging, but Mahegan recognized it to be one of them going in for the close kill.
But with Tess’s motorboat speeding away from the end of her pier, he was already up and out of the chair. He punched off the phone, disappointed he couldn’t even relish a minute of happiness that Promise was out of her coma and going to be okay. Halfway down the lawn, he saw Tess’s white center-console boat zip away, spraying a rooster tail into the night air like an opening Japanese fan.
Running as quickly as he could, he found Casey on one knee, winded, it s
eemed. He knelt next to her.
“Okay?”
“De La Cruz,” she said. “Knife.”
He saw a spreading bloom of blood on Casey’s shirt. She placed both of her hands on the cut to try to stem the flow. If De La Cruz had been a professional, Casey most likely would not live.
Tess was there quickly. Mahegan and Tess moved Casey up the lawn and onto one of the lounge chairs.
“Knife wound to the rib cage,” he said.
“Let’s hope we can stop the bleeding,” Tess replied.
Mahegan knew that if the knife had slid between the ribs and into the organs, such as the lungs, kidneys, or intestines, Casey stood very little chance. But if the knife had caught perpendicular to the ribs and had wedged between them, penetrating only slightly, then her chances were good. Her ribs would hurt for a long time, but she would survive.
“Triage here,” he said. “I’ll be back in a second.” He left them and ran back toward the pier. The boat was S-turning through the waterway and then thudded into the back side of Masonboro Island.
Now he was beginning to have his doubts about Misha, about everyone. There was a lot more to that eleven-year-old girl than she was telling anyone. It was almost as if she had her own agenda. He had read that the mind of a savant was both mature beyond its years and capable of the most inspiring breakthroughs or the most diabolical schemes. Had Misha gone willingly into the boat? Had she gone at all? He was certain he had seen her in the Boston Whaler with De La Cruz, but had she stayed onboard? What was she up to?
Then he saw De La Cruz walking back toward him from some trees near the pier. Had he seen anyone in the boat? It was dark, and they had been nearly a half of a football field away.
“Where’s Misha?” he asked De La Cruz.
She was breathing hard, a labored intake and output of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Mostly, she was breathing through her nose, which flared as she sucked in and pushed out, like a mare finishing a race.
As she stood before him, her white silk shirt clung to her, revealing a well-formed torso, shoulders, and arms. The razor-cut black hair. The pouty lips and seductive accent. The fancy car. All of that combined to create a diversion, like a magician’s trick. She had a body like a lithe cage fighter. Her hips were slender beneath the pencil skirt she was wearing, but nonetheless, she was showing off muscled quadriceps and hamstrings, which he was sure could deliver a full-force roundhouse kick to a precise location of her choosing.
Then he saw the blood. Casey’s blood on her shirt. Just a few flecks, but it was there. Dark spots against the white shirt, like stained linens.
They squared off like two wrestlers about to shake hands before a match. They were standing in the middle of a perfect centipede-grass lawn, its blades so nourished that they were practically standing on the strong tips. Their shoulders were squared toward one another, and Mahegan was ready for whatever she was going to deliver. He didn’t particularly like fighting women, but at the end of the day, they were skillful and could kill him just as easily, perhaps more easily, than a man might. They had that distraction thing going for them, especially the beautiful women, which was what made them such good operatives.
“Slippery little bitch, isn’t she? She drove away in the boat before I could stop her.”
“An eleven-year-old? Just jumped in the boat and sped away?”
“Apparently so.”
Her voice was firm, and if he weren’t so suspicious, he would have believed her. Feigned veracity was another skill set of international operatives. The world in which Mahegan lived, even here in bucolic New Hanover County, was a dangerous one, with a leering, ax-wielding Jack Nicholson pounding his way through every bathroom door, around every corner. And while De La Cruz was a sultry woman who radiated sensuality, he could see now that she was a trained killer.
Who she worked for or reported to was anyone’s guess, but it was no coincidence that she and Franco were here in the United States. She most likely had the skill sets to pull off the CEO front, while Franco was a longtime, tried-and-true Army colonel with little to offer but random tactics on how best to take the hill.
De La Cruz was the operator. Franco was the functionary.
“You’ve got it all figured out,” she said. More of a statement than a question.
“Think so,” he said.
“Well, you’re wrong. You’re thinking I’m the one in charge.”
“I’m thinking you stabbed Casey Livingstone, and that’s my first concern. Where’s the knife?”
With a rapid movement, she had the knife by the blade and flicked it at him as if she were throwing darts. It traveled, end over end, from ten feet away in less than a second. His only defensive move was to put his arm across his chest, where it formed a sort of V, with the bicep riding across his heart and his forearm covering his right pectoral. The knife bit into his left bicep—a better alternative than his heart—and he quickly extracted it. The pain was absent at first, but it soon followed in excruciating intensity. The adrenaline was doing its best to override the sting, but it was failing.
Though, now he had the knife.
“So here it is,” he said, gritting his teeth.
“You asked for it,” she responded. He was unsure why she seemed so confident, cocksure. He was bigger, taller, and stronger, and he held the knife. He didn’t see a pistol or any other form of weapon on her.
Then it occurred to him.
Her job was to keep him standing there. He saw her shift slightly to her left, his right. He followed her, keeping her in between him and whatever point she was trying to clear up in the distance. His mind calculated that she had a Special Forces sniper team from the Persians hiding in the sand dunes of Masonboro Island. They would have nightscopes and infrared aiming devices. He closed the distance between De La Cruz and himself, reducing whatever angle the invisible sniper might have. As he drew near her, she darted quickly to her left again, but he was just as quick.
Grabbing her by her right arm, he stopped her motion, which caused her to whirl back toward him and catch the sniper’s bullet in the throat. It was a clean through and through, given the soft tissue in her neck. He was fortunate not to catch the pass through and wasted no time in rolling to the ground. There was no helping De La Cruz, who was either dead or dying, but he pulled her behind the still lit fire pit. She stared at him with wide eyes, her neck a wide-open bloody mess.
“Misha,” she said. “Protect.”
And then she was gone. He was amazed she could speak at all, but apparently, she’d had something left to say.
He looked over at Tess, who was still working on Casey. She turned her head toward him with an expression that said, “What have you gotten me into?”
He was beginning to piece everything together. No more sniper shots had come as of yet, perhaps because of a lack of targets or perhaps because the shooter could not risk being captured.
Scanning the wood line along the inlet, he could see very little out of place. He low crawled Army-style the fifty yards to the high scrub that separated the minor inlet beach from Tess’s backyard. Kneeling behind a series of shrubs that Tess must have planted as a barrier of sorts, he saw the Boston Whaler wedged into the sandbar about thirty yards from the dunes of Masonboro Island. The swim would be a short four hundred yards. His concern was that De La Cruz had tossed Misha in the boat and had delivered her to the kill/capture team across the inlet. He discarded his dungarees, shirt, and boots, despite the razor-sharp oyster-shell beds that were scattered across the inlet and visible during low tide.
Keeping low, he picked his way through the muck, avoiding most of the oyster beds and sliding into the warm water. He swam across the sound in less than five minutes, almost soundlessly. He came up behind the boat, its propeller still pushing it against the shoreline. He kept the boat in between his body and the spot where he thought the sniper crew might have been. A quick inspection of the boat revealed that Misha was not present.
Again, he low crawl
ed up the flat expanse of the low-tide beach in a position that was a definite disadvantage to him. There could have been twenty men with assault rifles behind the dunes. He could hear the waves sucking off the low-tide bottom, lifting, heaving, curling, ripping, and then slamming into the hardened beach. It would have been a good time to surf, which made him wonder about how the assault team had positioned itself on what was essentially an island. They would have had to come in either through the inlet or across the ocean.
As he inspected the sand around the boat during his careful advancement, he noticed two small footprints and two large footprints.
Misha and her captor.
These were big combat-boot imprints, most likely from the Persian invaders. If they were able to tap Misha’s knowledge and use her code for whatever evil purposes they intended, the country could be in for a major setback at the hands of the Iranians and, it seemed, the Cubans.
He made it to the back side of the sand dunes. These were natural dunes, as God intended them to be. No beach nourishment or nursery-planted wild grasses, just seven- to ten-foot-high dunes with saw grass and saw palmetto growing naturally and providing him decent concealment.
The wave interval was about ten to twelve seconds, which meant that the hurricane was most likely perpendicular to the North Carolina coast, pushing in perfectly timed swells with increasing height and intensity. He could hear a motor as a new swell was barreling its way toward shore during that ten-second interval. This was not the motor from Tess’s Boston Whaler. He heard men speaking in Farsi and the shuddering chug of a recoil starter engine that was not complying. The men were about fifty yards away to his ten o’clock. They had come along the back side of the jetty and had evidently tied the boat there. Given the swell size, it had been a stupid move on their part. The jetty collected sand, created a bigger wave, and provided nowhere for the water to go once the wave broke, other than sloshing against the jetty and creating a washing-machine effect. The swell was too big, and they were in danger of capsizing.