by A. J Tata
Mirza.
The grenades he had tossed finally exploded. He didn’t have time to see if they had done their job, but at least he had winged Franco, if not more.
The enemy knew he was inside, and Mirza could command and control his fight with his remaining troops. Worst case, the grenades had been ineffective, and it was four against two, not counting Misha.
Best case, the grenades had incapacitated the three-man crew, and it was two of them against Mirza, plus whomever he had outside the gate, men he was most likely now calling back in.
Lots of variables. What wasn’t a variable was their precarious position. All Mirza had to do was launch the missile, which was facing north, and he would melt them. But Mahegan presumed that the commander had a schedule, a synchronized plan, and that he had spent a lot of resources trying to keep his plan on track. Mirza’s ego had led him all over Wilmington and the surrounding areas, chasing Misha and Mahegan.
So now Mahegan imagined that Mirza’s ego was satisfied, his appetite whetted. He had them cornered behind a blast wall for what looked like a short-range ballistic missile. How the hell had that passed muster with the Homeland Security geniuses who were here just two days ago? Mahegan wondered.
While it had seemed like an eternity, things had been quiet for about ten seconds. Mahegan slid past Misha, who was staring at him, and Casey, who was holding her Beretta at the ready and watching the opposite direction, covering his back. He didn’t like that Casey was holding Misha and a pistol at the same time. Dr. Hallowell’s worst fears seemed close at hand. Nonetheless, he had to drive on.
He peeked around the corner to see Mirza typing and punching buttons.
Franco was on one knee, with a rifle leaning against a chair in the command post. Franco fired a shot that snapped past Mahegan’s head and pinged into the glass of one of the offices behind him. The glass shattered, and Mahegan continued to stare at what Mirza was doing for another second, before ducking behind the blast wall as a second shot grazed its edge and ricocheted into another glass window.
The door that they had entered through opened, and a limping man dressed in black, like all the other soldiers in the Persian Quds Force, lifted his MP5, but he was not quick enough. Mahegan buzzed a dozen rounds into his body, and the man slumped against the wall.
He was doing the math in his head. Maybe there were two more out there somewhere, but he couldn’t be sure, of course.
He knelt in front of Misha, who was staring over Casey’s shoulder, and looked at her without her glasses. Her eyes were wide, and she looked very different without them, a knight without her armor.
“Ready, Misha?”
She was rocking and swaying again. He could tell she was processing at lightning speed, trying to sort through all her sensory input and focus on the important things.
“Will try. Daddy back?” she asked.
He thought of how all of this had started for him.
No broken promise.
“I promise.”
“Alive?” she asked.
Casey looked at him, as if to warn him off from committing to something he wasn’t sure he could pull off. Her father might already be dead, for all they knew.
“I promise,” he said.
Casey grimaced, but he saw her resolve settle in like something tangible. Her face registered the severity of their situation. She was a nurse and was used to seeing carnage every day, but he had the feeling she was on a mission to make up for losing Carver, her marine. This was her way of honoring his memory.
“You know the plan,” he said to Casey.
“I know the plan.”
Then he heard simultaneously the roof retracting like in a football stadium and the buzz of propeller aircraft outside the building.
CHAPTER 33
DARIUS MIRZA
MIRZA LOOKED DOWN WITH DISGUST AT A BLEEDING FRANCISCO Franco, whose only saving grace was that he had been useful with the weapon. Now all Mirza needed to do was send the commands through the computers and satellite, and everything would be autonomous.
The cars would begin their attacks, the Sparrows would dive-bomb the Marine Corps bases, and the larger attack drones launched from the ship twelve miles offshore would support the car attacks. And the missile was just the perfect punctuation mark on the beginning of this attack.
He finally saw Jake Mahegan. Maybe it was the black wet suit that was skintight to his body, but the former Delta Force operator was bigger in person than he appeared in his dossier photo. His hair was shaved on either side, like that of a Mohawk Indian, and he had a giant cut with stitches along the left side of his head.
Mirza had to admit that the man had guts to come into his command center and confront him. He welcomed the opportunity. Why had he spent so much time going after Mahegan when he should have known he would simply come to him? Mano a mano, as Franco would say.
Franco was barely hanging on and was losing a lot of blood. Mirza didn’t have the time or the patience to perform combat first aid on him. His only regret was that he had not killed Franco himself.
Then he shrugged and shot Franco in the head. He would carve his Z later.
“Mahegan!” he called out. His preparations were done, and so he didn’t have to worry about anything else. The sun would soon rise on this day, and the world would be forever changed because of him and his leadership throughout this invasion. “I will fight you,” he said. “No guns. No knives. Just you and me. USA versus Iran. Like a competition, no?”
Mirza saw Mahegan step out from behind the blast wall. Mirza tried to look into the window reflections to see if there were any others with him, but Franco had shattered the glass with his missed shots.
“I’m here,” Mahegan said.
Mirza stepped down from the platform and kicked the rifle away from Franco’s dead hands. He wanted Mahegan all to himself. This was his fight. He was Persia.
Darius Mirza, the vanguard.
CHAPTER 34
JAKE MAHEGAN
MAHEGAN STEPPED FROM BEHIND THE WALL.
When Patch had informed him that Mirza was a wrestler and a boxer, Mahegan had cemented the plan in his mind. Already Mirza had demonstrated narcissistic behavior by chasing them all over Wilmington.
Mirza had to win. This was personal for him.
Mahegan, therefore, would play to Mirza’s ego. Mirza wanted to fight him, so Mahegan’s plan going in had been to create the environment for that ultimate showdown. It was at hand.
“See? Even Franco cannot back me up now,” Mirza said, pointing at the dead Francisco Franco at his feet.
Mahegan said nothing.
“The knife?” Mirza said.
Mahegan reached down and tossed it behind the blast wall.
“The pistol?”
Mahegan pulled the Tribal out of his pouch and slid it directly behind him.
“Anything else I should be aware of, Mahegan?”
Mahegan said a Farsi phrase he had learned in Afghanistan that essentially meant “Your sister is a whore.”
Predictably, Mirza seemed unperturbed by this invective and laughed. “I have no sister, but I do have two brothers who will soon be on American soil.”
Another piece of useful intelligence confirming what Patch had been researching and telling him. Mirza’s brothers were part of the follow-on force, and he was the lodgment operation. Mahegan took two steps toward Mirza, and Mirza took three steps toward him. That was the math Mahegan was hoping for.
It was like the one time he had been in Korea, at the demilitarized zone. When the U.S. and South Korean flags were installed there, the North Koreans had installed flags that were an inch taller than the South Korean flag. Some inferiority complex deep inside of Mirza was feeding his bravado. Mahegan took another step, and Mirza took two more steps.
They were about five feet apart now. Mirza was an Olympic wrestler and boxer. He had close-cropped black hair and a beard that was groomed along the sharp angles of his face. Even his eyes appeared b
lack. He was wearing the same black tactical vest, T-shirt, and cargo pants combination that his men were wearing, with one notable exception.
He had his rank pinned to his tactical vest. One of the epaulets with three rounded gold stars was secured to a pocket using a safety pin. He was a colonel, like Franco. Success on this mission would make him a general, something Mahegan was sure he wanted badly.
One thing that Judge White, Promise’s father, had always said to them was, “You want it bad, you get it bad.”
The statement had a certain symmetry to Mahegan, and life always seemed to work in a way that the more someone wanted something, the less likely they were to get it. And conversely, when they didn’t seem to be looking for anything, the best gift in the world would drop in their lap.
Mirza was broad shouldered, lean, and as tall as Mahegan. He probably had been a middle heavyweight boxer in the Olympics. Not heavyweight, because he didn’t have the mass, but no doubt he was powerful. It was evident that he had spent a lot of time in the gyms of Iran, lifting weights and punching bags, probably even killing a few sparring partners.
But Mahegan couldn’t worry about those things now, because he had to pull him away from the console and move him in a direction that would allow Casey to escort Misha to the computers and let her do her thing. Mahegan would take a beating, but as long as this megalomaniac was focused on him, like the suicide bomber at Promise’s school, the more time Misha would have to overcome the loss of her glasses, focus on the mission, and reverse the course of the attacks.
Mahegan quickly thought of Savage’s meager offering of four Little Bird helicopters flying to the port. Sixteen men would hold up well against a ship full of locked containers, especially if the Little Birds put a Hellfire missile or two into the engine room. But those same sixteen wouldn’t stand a chance if even one hundred men disembarked. There would be a tipping point, and the carnage would begin. Already he suspected that cars with bombs were moving toward their destinations up and down I-95 and other transportation arteries.
The clock was ticking, and Mahegan was trying to decide if Mirza would go with boxing or wrestling. Given Mirza’s ego, he would want to deliver punishment to him in a way that he could watch and admire his work, the way Muhammad Ali would sting his opponents with a lethal jab-cross combination, back away and laugh, then come in for more.
As he was thinking that thought, Mirza charged him with a double-leg takedown, the most basic wrestling move of all time. He was quick and the wet suit was ticked up, giving Mirza purchase on his legs. Mahegan sprawled out and shoved his arms under Mirza’s, not allowing him to get him vertical, which could be deadly.
With both forearms beneath his armpits, Mahegan strained against the pull of Mirza’s powerful arms, arching his back and spreading his legs on the concrete floor to widen his grip and lessen his concentrated force. Wrestling might look like brute force, but like with any martial art, it was mostly technical. There were pressure and leverage points. Mirza had surprised him with the basic double-leg takedown, but Mahegan had defended against it sufficiently that Mirza wasn’t going to beat him on that move.
Mahegan flexed his quadriceps and hamstrings and popped his hands off his legs as he used his upper body to roll Mirza ten feet away from the console. Mahegan let Mirza go and backed away another ten feet, luring him away from the command console.
That was when Mirza switched to boxing. The fists came up, and Mahegan saw that Mirza was an inside fighter, which didn’t surprise him. Mirza landed a flurry of rapid jabs on Mahegan’s face and then aimed a roundhouse at his stitches, which landed and hurt. He felt blood ooze down behind his left ear.
Mahegan backed away again, as if shaken. Mirza smiled like Muhammad Ali and kept coming. Now they were at least forty feet from the command console, and Mahegan saw Casey and Misha begin to move from the blast wall along the back side of the rocket container. They were gone from his vision now, but at least they were moving. It was his job to get Mirza farther away and to keep the Iranian’s back to the command center.
Mirza landed two more jabs and tried the right cross at the stitches again but missed, because he was predictable this time and Mahegan blocked it. Mahegan landed two solid blows to his kidneys as Mirza barreled into him. Mirza would be pissing blood for a week, if he lived. The tighter Mirza squeezed Mahegan, the more kidney and rib punches Mahegan landed. He flattened his body against Mirza’s, with Mirza’s head beneath his chest, his eyes looking at the floor.
Mahegan stepped back suddenly, causing Mirza to pop up like a jack-in-the-box, and Mahegan went to work on his face. Mahegan landed two jabs and two crosses, but Mirza got his hands up. Mirza wanted to circle like he was in a boxing ring, but Mahegan couldn’t let him do that, so he kept coming at Mirza with his right hand to prevent his left-step movement. Mahegan switched up, as if he was a left-handed boxer, which oddly enough meant leading with his right foot. He could fight either way. He was more powerful with his right arm and preferred to save that for the crosses and roundhouses, but he was buying time.
In his periphery, he saw Casey dash toward the command center, still carrying Misha, but he stayed focused on Mirza. He was generally aware that they had crossed his peripheral vision on his left, but he wanted to give no indication to Mirza that anything else could possibly occupy his attention, that in fact Mirza was the center of his attention, the center of the universe.
“Olympics, Mahegan. I am Persian champion. What have you got?”
Mahegan gave him two quick jabs as an answer to his question. The first one split his lip right after Mirza said the word “got.” He saw the Iranian taste his blood and smile, which must have triggered some primal fury in his mind, because Mirza raced toward him again, switching to the wrestling mode. This time he came in high, as if they were Greco-Roman wrestlers locking arms. Mirza was smart to keep his face down to avoid a potential head butt from Mahegan. It would do Mahegan more harm to butt the top of his head, so they were locked in hand-to-hand combat, Mahegan’s right ear against Mirza’s right ear. Mirza kept trying to reverse the position, because, Mahegan was sure, he wanted to rub his head against Mahegan’s stitches and further open the wound. They were like two deer with locked antlers. Every time Mirza moved his head, Mahegan would move his to prevent the man from gaining that advantage. It was like a series of sideways head butts.
Mahegan removed one arm and landed two powerful uppercuts on Mirza’s chin, which caught him off guard. Perhaps Mirza didn’t watch much Ultimate Fighting Championship in Iran, but it was a favorite of U.S. military personnel.
Mirza was having a hard time mixing the two forms of fighting. It was either one or the other. His transitions were clear and obvious. Mahegan had surprised him by boxing him while Mirza was trying to do an upper-body takedown on him. Mirza probably even viewed it as cheating.
By the look on Mirza’s face, a mixture of astonishment and anger, Mahegan knew he was right. Mahegan landed two more jabs on his nose and broke it, then followed with a right cross that would have killed an ordinary man.
But Mirza rotated his torso and landed one of the hardest punches Mahegan had ever taken on his rib cage. He was certain he had a couple of bruised, if not broken, ribs. Mirza smiled through bloody teeth. His mouth was a mess.
“Tough, no?” he said.
Mahegan had backed him about forty yards away from the command center. Mirza was totally focused on him and their fight. Mahegan believed it was most likely what Mirza had been dreaming about for two days, ever since they had breached Mirza’s wheelhouse. Mahegan had his complete concentration.
Until they both heard the grenade launcher and rifle shots sing through the night.
CHAPTER 35
MISHA CONSTANCE
MY GLASSES. MY GLASSES. MY GLASSES.
Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.
Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.
Those three thoughts were flying around Misha’s mind. They weren’t a list exactly. Too much had been happeni
ng for her to even think of making lists. She could smell the stink of the grenades that had been shot into the building. It was filling her nostrils, making her nauseous, making her sway and clutch her stomach. Making her want to scream and shout.
She heard Mr. Mahegan and another man fighting and punching. It was so loud in her ears, it made her body shake. Her eyes were seeing everything. She turned and looked at the two men fighting and saw every punch, every spray of blood, and every movement. Her senses were on fire, and she couldn’t stop the burn. There was nothing that she could do but shake and sway and try to shake off the overload.
“It’s okay, Misha,” the nurse said to her.
Misha looked at her and saw 322 freckles on her face. It freaked her out. Her eyelashes fluttered seventeen times in ten seconds. Was she nervous? The wet suit she was wearing smelled like old rubber. It was making her gag, too. The nurse held a pistol, and it smelled like oil and smoke. Misha could hear the roof moving and saw the pulleys in each of the corners of the building pulling apart the roof. Each pulley rotated seventeen complete turns until they stopped with an awful screech.
What was happening? She was going out of her mind!
The nurse slipped her arms around her and began to squeeze as she ran to the console in the middle of the cement floor. She ran up two steps. It was an elevated platform that had four rivets on each side of every step. There were eighteen nonslip grooves in each step that the nurse placed her foot on. She placed Misha in the seat and spun her toward a keyboard and a big, three-foot-wide monitor.
Misha wasn’t sure what to expect, but all this killing and guns and knives were making her crawl out of her skin. The Deep Web had stuff like videos of people getting killed, and she wasn’t sure why anyone would want to watch that kind of thing. But still, it was different when it was right in front of you.
Daddy. My glasses. Calm down.