Direct Fire

by A. J Tata

  “Turn around,” Zakir said. The men did so and then turned around again, facing him. “Now put your clothes in this bag.”

  They placed their clothing in the brown paper sack and handed it back to Zakir, who walked to the fireplace, placed the clothes in the mouth, and lit the bag with a long-nosed butane lighter. He placed the lighter on the mantel and turned to the men.

  “Now, put on the clothes on your bunks. I have personally ensured that there are no U.S. government tracking devices in these clothes.” He pointed at the bunks.

  The men nodded and began dressing in the black dungarees, black athletic stretch tops, black pullover shirts, and black tactical vests that held ammunition magazines, hand grenades, medical equipment, and knives. While the U.S. government had no tracking devices in these clothes, Zakir had made sure that each tactical vest was outfitted with wearable technology that he could track twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, from his warren here in the North Carolina mountains. Gavril also tracked the personnel from his basement apartment in Charlotte, North Carolina.

  “Now rest and prepare. We have an important mission tomorrow morning. We move out at first light and will establish an ambush location.”

  Zakir paused for that information to sink in. The men nodded. They understood. They were eager, so he whetted their appetite with grandeur.

  “Then, in the next two days, you will attack a city. We have selected a city that controls much of the economy of the United States but is less well protected than New York City. I will give you the name of this city tomorrow after the ambush.”

  The two men nodded, eager.

  Zakir did the hand-to-forearm warrior clasp with each man and bumped shoulders, a sign of acceptance from him, their commander. He left their cabin and walked fifty yards along a dirt road to the more substantial log cabin that served as his command post. He ascended the three wooden pine planks that led to the covered porch, passed the two rocking chairs, and opened the heavy oak door. Two years ago, when he first inspected this building, there were a few desks, a fireplace, and some cots along the far wall. Today, the cots remained, but he had fashioned the interior into the complex server farm and satellite transmission station he stared at presently.

  Red and green diode lights winked at him as he checked the connections to make sure everything was secure. Zakir was a thorough man, leaving nothing to chance. While this was his nature, the ramifications for him would be severe if he were to have, as Jackknife described it, an “unforced error.” Zakir figured it to be an American term, but he understood the concept.

  And he also understood the concept that even he, Zakir, had a boss to whom he must report. Jackknife was unrelenting and harsh. Regardless, Zakir’s path to vengeance was through Jackknife.

  If they were able to decapitate the military and execute the remaining missions, he had a chance of lighting the fuse that would blow up America.

  The team that was to snatch the family of the U.S. commander in Afghanistan had performed a similar mission on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with less success. The butterfly drone there showed that they had seized a wife and two teenage children, but one of the children had a rifle and fought back. Zakir had issued instructions to execute the family if any complications arose. Kidnapped or slaughtered were the same in his mind. The deployed commander would be unable to continue his mission with his family murdered. The two men, dressed as military policemen, fled in their fake military police car and prepared for their follow-on mission.

  Capturing the White House, destroying the Capitol, and similar grand gestures were all the stuff of Hollywood movies. However, crippling the United States economically and taking advantage of arrogantly weak security for their military and civilian leaders was entirely possible, as he was demonstrating.

  He chatted securely with Gavril, who was tracking many things all at once. The most important part of his mission was to keep tabs on a Mack truck that was scheduled to turn off I-26 onto I-40 in Asheville at approximately nine a.m. tomorrow.

  The truck looked like 99 percent of the other Mack trucks pulling nondescript trailers. But it was not a normal truck. It was on its way to the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee.

  Zakir was determined that the truck would not make it that far.

  CHAPTER 5

  JACKKNIFE FELT THE PHONE VIBRATE. LOOKING AT THE TEXT, JACKKNIFE knew that everything was going according to plan. The one stray electron, as Zakir called it, was Jake Mahegan.

  How much could one man really do to stop what was becoming a massive ball of momentum rolling downhill crushing everything in its path? Jackknife was confident in the plan.

  There had been so much preparation, sometimes it drove Jackknife crazy. The stress, the secrecy, the purpose, the higher meaning of what was happening were all important. This mission and its outcome, though, were intensely personal to Jackknife. So very personal.

  Jackknife had practically lost everything during Operation Groomsman. And even though Groomsman was not the proximate cause, those events had started a series of incidents that spiraled out of control.

  Status, reputation, finances, everything was lost.

  It was time to rebuild.

  It was time for revenge.

  CHAPTER 6

  ALEX TURNED HER BACK TO MAHEGAN AND LOOKED AT HER PHONE. Her shoulders slumped as she lifted her head up in an apparent sigh.

  “What’s the deal?” Mahegan asked.

  She turned back and stared at Mahegan.

  “The chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his wife have been kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped? From from Fort Myer?”

  “Apparently so. Cameras show five military officers dressed in Army Blues conducting the takedown.”

  Mahegan decided to let the moment pass and focus on Savage, O’Malley, and Owens.

  “It’s all part of the same thing. Savage, Sean, and Patch were most likely kidnapped as well,” Mahegan said.

  “No way anyone kidnaps Savage,” Alex said, regaining focus.

  “Nobody’s perfect, especially Savage.”

  “I know you guys have a love–hate relationship, but he really respects you. You should respect him.”

  “I do,” Mahegan said. “I’m just saying nobody’s perfect. Savage and I have had our moments, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take a bullet for him.”

  Mahegan took in Alex’s dark features—smoky brunette hair, almond eyes, high cheekbones, nose a bit larger than she probably wanted it to be. An altogether attractive package, he thought. Despite her allure, Mahegan kept wondering if he had missed a cue. Was he in the right place? Were Savage, O’Malley, and Owens waiting for him somewhere else? Never one to need a lot of guidance, Mahegan suddenly found himself reviewing the last few hours. He had received the text to arrive at the golf lodge, en fuego. Stat. Armed. Prepared for a mission. The text was from Savage’s phone. Had he sent it? And would Mahegan take a bullet for him? He thought he might.

  “And he’d do the same for you, Jake,” Alex said.

  “I’m not so sure about that one, but I figure we’ll see one day, won’t we?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Mahegan nodded not in agreement, but in knowing he understood something that perhaps she did not. Unless Alex had a similar experience on her way to the COOP, Mahegan had insight on a simultaneity of action happening locally, nationally, or globally. He wasn’t sure which of a long list of enemies was the culprit, but that was precisely the issue; there were a variety of ne’er-do-wells who wanted to cripple the U.S. economy, destroy its freedoms, or so threaten the people that the blessing of liberty evaporated like a shallow summer puddle in a hot North Carolina sun.

  In Mahegan’s view, no amount of vigilance could stop every attack and no amount of wishful thinking or foreign dictator ass-kissing on behalf of American leadership could deny that Islamic extremism was a major threat to U.S. vital interests at home and abroad.

  “Could the Sledge family murder be connected to so
mething bigger?” Mahegan said.

  “Like what?” Alex responded with a scoff.

  “Something larger. Cyberattacks. Zebra has been compromised, which shuts us down. Army leadership has been decapitated, as they call it. And now that I think of it, Vicki Savage, or Sledge, might not have been the target as much as her husband, Charles Sledge. We’re getting three pings on Savage, O’Malley, and Owens ten miles west of Asheville in some of the most forbidding terrain, someplace that has no relevance to us.”

  “Okay, let’s pretend some of these events have something to do with General Savage’s ex-wife, her husband, and son being murdered. . . by your pistol.”

  “Simultaneous operations are never simultaneous,” Mahegan said. “At best they’re near simultaneous. If you get it done in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you’re doing well. The Carbanak bank heist took two years and netted the cybercriminals nearly a billion in siphoned funds.

  “Carbanak?”

  “Yes. Ukrainians and Russians that employed something called the Anunak virus to steal the money.”

  “You know about all this?” Alex asked, smiling.

  Mahegan shrugged. He made it his business to understand the vulnerabilities of the nation, physical and cyber.

  “I don’t have it figured out. All I’m saying is, we should operate under the assumption that everything is connected tonight . . . and for the next twenty-four hours.”

  Alex looked at him and nodded when her phone rang. She turned away from Mahegan and answered, pacing into the middle of the rustic operations center. Mahegan could hear her speaking a few words, but the conversation was mostly directed at her, it seemed. She rang off and turned to Mahegan.

  “You’re a wanted man. That was the Fort Bragg provost marshall asking me if General Savage had seen you. I replied that, to my knowledge, he had not. Then he asked me to please let him know if Savage does run into you, because Charlotte police have placed an all-points bulletin across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. I told him I would certainly notify him if General Savage saw you.”

  Mahegan said nothing. He understood that she had played coy with the provost marshall.

  “We should get going,” Alex said.

  “Where did you have in mind?” Mahegan asked.

  “You’re the operator, Mahegan. Where do you think?”

  “Let me put this a different way,” Mahegan said. “I know where I’m going, which is a wholly different location than where you’re going.”

  “If we’re talking about the fact that you’re going to hell, then I’m with you. Right here, right now, I’m you’re only option.”

  “Hell would be an upgrade from having you as my only option,” Mahegan said.

  Alex laughed. “Good one, Mahegan. Savage always said you could be funny.”

  “Wasn’t joking,” he affirmed.

  Mahegan assessed the situation. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and State Highway Patrol had his picture, his name, and his last known location near Fort Bragg. He was in the clandestine storm shelter cum continuous operations center with a woman whom he had heard about from Savage but didn’t personally know. Could he trust her? Did he have a choice? With a phone call she could have him arrested. That damn pistol. He knew he should have made Savage sign the transfer documentation right there on the spot. But there had been too much whiskey as he, Patch, Sean, and the others had been celebrating their boss’s promotion.

  Alexandra Russell. Savage’s confidant. Perhaps lover? Mahegan didn’t spend much time with Savage, as he had just been a low-level captain. The headquarters was unfamiliar turf to him. Alex was an enigma to the team members—rarely seen, elusive. What was her stake here, Mahegan wondered? Personal? Professional? If she had any interest in figuring out what had happened to Savage, then their interests overlapped. And with that, he could move forward, using her as he needed to, fully realizing that she would be using him for something as well. Mahegan’s stake was his compulsive desire to protect the thin fabric of what he could call family, his former teammates.

  “Got it figured out, Jake?”

  “Not even close. You ever hear of a kill sheet?” Mahegan asked, changing tack.

  “Of course. Snipers use them. Special operators use them all over the world. It’s a hit list. Savage used one.”

  “Exactly. That’s what we’re dealing with here, a kill sheet. Someone planned a near simultaneous takedown of military leadership coupled with an attack on the CEO of United Bank of America.”

  “And on top of that, someone’s trying to frame you,” Alex said.

  “Or Savage. How would they know I had bought the gun?”

  Alex stared at him a moment too long.

  “Did you know?”

  “Yes. He told me, as his lawyer. He kept meaning to register it in his name, but he’s been rather busy.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Of course not,” Alex said, offended.

  Mahegan eyed Alex for a moment, gauging the veracity of her statement. Deciding to focus on the task at hand, he said, “So, the pings we’re getting on Savage, O’Malley, and Owens. What makes you think we can trust them? They could be misdirection if someone has hacked into the system.”

  “They could, but what else do we have to go on?” Alex replied. “Besides this.”

  Mahegan watched as Alex produced an iPhone from her black purse, which was strapped tightly across her chest.

  “A phone,” Mahegan said, knowing it was more than a simple smartphone.

  “Yes. A phone.” Alex paused. “This phone can override Zebra and shows us exactly what information the intruders have accessed. It also contains a list of every protected member of the Department of Defense and their location. It’s our proprietary technology that O’Malley developed.”

  O’Malley was constantly working on new technology to assist Mahegan’s vigilante efforts to maintain the appearance that Mahegan was operating alone, off the books. Not always in the loop on O’Malley’s latest development, Mahegan wasn’t surprised that someone close to General Savage might have the most recent evolution of Zebra or related software.

  “Did someone hack that to get to the military leadership?” Mahegan asked.

  “It’s possible, but doubtful. Other than Savage, our military leadership doesn’t take their personal security that seriously when back here in the United States.”

  “And yet Savage was captured, it appears.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  Just then the phone buzzed with a 704 number with the name “Yves Dupree” displayed in large letters across the screen. She already had the number two from the United Bank of America in her phone. Interesting.

  “Better take that,” Mahegan said.

  Alex punched the SPEAKER button and said, “This is Major Russell with a colleague standing by, and you’re on speakerphone.”

  Code speak? What was the preexisting relationship between Dupree and Russell, Mahegan wondered?.

  “Major, this is Yves Dupree. I’m the general counsel and chief of staff for Charles Sledge and United Bank of America. I have his will and am the executor of his estate. In his will, which I prepared, you are listed as a point of contact should General Savage not answer his phone. I am required to personally notify you that Vicki Sledge was murdered a few hours ago.”

  The man spoke with a slight French accent.

  “I’ve seen the news, Mr. Dupree.”

  “I understand, but my obligation is to personally notify you. And so I have.”

  “You have. And I will notify General Savage whenever I can find him.”

  “Find him? I thought you always had a tether on your general?” Dupree asked.

  “It seems he has slipped the tether,” she replied.

  “Of all nights to do so. I’ve been watching the news as well. Seems as though someone has it out for our leaders,” Dupree said.

  “You indicated in your message that you also had information regar
ding the shooting?”

  “I’m at the house now with the police. They’ve found the pistol and three shell casings in the lake. They have size twelve boot prints but no fingerprints. That’s what we know right now.”

  “Thank you. I’ll let you know once I’ve made contact with General Savage.”

  “Thank you, Major.”

  They hung up, and Alex looked at Mahegan’s face, then at his large feet.

  “Those look like size twelve to me,” she said.

  Mahegan said nothing. He turned his head up at a noise outside the storm shelter doors. There was a hint of familiarity in Alex’s voice when she spoke to Dupree. Tires crunched in the gravel above.

  “Expecting someone?” he asked Alex.

  “No. Where’s your car?”

  “Garage.”

  She nodded. They both moved quickly to either side of the doors, Mahegan assuming the same position he had when Alex had entered. Alex moved toward the stairs when they heard knocking. How would anyone know the coop existed, yet not have the combination, Mahegan wondered?

  “Go up,” he said. “But don’t let them in.”

  Alex walked up the same steps by which she had entered the underground facility. She unlocked the doors and pushed one of them to the side, leading with her pistol. When the door was open far enough, the flashing blue and red lights of police or emergency vehicles bounced inside the dugout.

  Military police, he thought. Either Alex had given him up or the MPs had a way of tracking her. He had been off the military police radar for over two years. He readied his pistol, less sure about Alex by the moment now.

  “Hey, guys,” he heard her say. “How can I help you?”

  “We’re looking for Jake Mahegan, ma’am.”

  “Why would he be here?” she replied.

  Ever the lawyer. Instead of denying his presence with a lie, she answered their question with a question.

  “We got an anonymous tip that he might be somewhere on this property.”

  “An anonymous tip?”

  Another question.