Direct Fire

by A. J Tata

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re that guy?”

  “Depends.”

  “Mahegan. You killed Hoxha on the border in Nuristan.”

  “I’m that guy.”

  Cassie continued to speed past vehicles on I-40, the speedometer routinely above ninety miles an hour.

  “WTF,” she said. “What are you doing out here looking like a lost zombie?”

  “Among other things, I’m looking for your dad.”

  “Looking for my father?” Cassie asked. “What do you want with that son of a bitch?”

  Mahegan determined that she had to be a better soldier than she was an actress.

  “Cassie Bagwell. I’m not the only one who has some notoriety,” Mahegan said.

  Her shoulders slumped, and suddenly the weight of her parents’ kidnapping seemed to pull at her every feature. Her face tensed, her arms flexed, her hands tightened, knuckles whitened.

  “I did a pretty good job of staying incognito until I met you, I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure of that, Cassie. There’s some bad stuff going down.”

  It’s going down right now. Everything all at once.

  “More than my parents?”

  “As central as that is to you and all of us, yes, more than your parents.”

  “How do you know any of this? You’re not with your unit anymore,” she said.

  Mahegan treaded carefully.

  “I’ve got sources, still. My question is, why aren’t you with your unit, assessing this enemy? And what’s up with your dad? I mean, I’ve read some of the media, but he’s kidnapped. Can’t you cut him some slack?”

  “My unit looks at combat ops overseas. This is a domestic terror event, and the FBI and Homeland aren’t going to be rolling out the red carpet for me anytime soon,” Cassie said. “And my relationship with my father is my business,” she added flatly.

  “I get that,” Mahegan said. And he did. The last thing any of those bureaucracies would want is a competent family member to be on hand to get any credit for saving her parents. “So, what intel do you have that’s bringing you west?”

  Cassie looked at Mahegan with an untrusting gaze. He got the vibe that she didn’t trust much, if at all. Her wariness was probably warranted in most cases. In her cohort, hangers-on and suck-ups probably surrounded her, and her superiors probably remained suspicious and distrustful that she wasn’t running home to Daddy every time something went wrong. General Bagwell was known as a ruthless leader. He did not suffer fools and, most suspected, would not suffer anyone who mistreated his daughter. Even if that “mistreatment” was her version of the story.

  “After reading that article about Al Qaeda putting out a fatwa on American CEOs and senior government officials, I had both of my parents use wearable technology. I’ll just leave it at that. I’ve tracked them as far as Asheville, heading west. They made a stop and now I’m no longer able to track them.”

  “Okay, let’s just head to their last known,” Mahegan said.

  “That’s the plan.”

  The outline of the Asheville skyline was a smattering of low, pastel-painted buildings etched against the undulating green hues of the Smoky Mountains rising toward the intermittent clouds in the background. The I-40 and I-26 intersection loomed to the south.

  As he was assessing the traffic, which was building and steady, Cassie shouted, “Hold on!”

  Directly to their front, a Chevrolet Suburban rapidly decelerated to a stop in the middle of the road. To their left a Ford F-150 did the same. All around them, vehicles were grinding to a halt without provocation. A Mack truck slammed into a group of cars in the middle of I-40 and created a fireball that exploded upward in yellow flames.

  Cassie slowed and swerved hard right onto the shoulder, narrowly avoiding the developing pileup. Mahegan began looking for an exit like a running back trying to find daylight. He spotted a sign for four gas stations about a quarter mile ahead as Cassie nearly flipped the Subaru, taking it up on two wheels, swerving to avoid a flaming hood that was spinning like a top in the road.

  “There,” Mahegan said. He pointed at the exit and the wide shoulder that could get them there. Neither of them had been able to process what had happened. They were strictly in survival mode. So far Cassie had handled the first five seconds well. She maneuvered the car through an array of stopped and crashed vehicles that looked like air strike remnants. Briefly he flashed on Operation Groomsman and why Alex Russell had been asking him about that mission, but then refocused on the task at hand: helping Cassie get them to the exit.

  She passed several cars that had simply stopped, as if they had run out of gas. A few cars continued, such as hers, but the majority were stalled. As Cassie navigated the melee, Mahegan looked at the make of each of the stalled cars: Chevrolet, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Lexus, and Toyota. He looked at the interstate road in the distance as it rose into the mountains and saw nothing but taillights and accidents.

  “What the hell is happening?” Cassie said through clenched teeth.

  “Some kind of accident, but more,” Mahegan said. He made a mental note of the brand of her vehicle, Subaru, and those of others that were still crawling through the wreckage. A Hyundai swerved past the flaming Mack truck. Further up a low-slung Porsche was turning around in the middle of the interstate. The fire had spread across the entire road, blocking movement. The side-view mirror showed an old Chevy Nova with fat wheels and lift suspension. It was following them out of the morass.

  “Okay, I’ve got a clear shot at the exit if the fire doesn’t spread,” Cassie said.

  “Gun it.”

  She did. The Nova followed, and the Porsche driver saw them and fell in line. There were stopped cars on the ramp and on the adjoining road. People were turning their ignitions and getting nothing, not even the clicking sound of a dead battery. At the bottom of the ramp a Chevy Cruze that had been turning left was stopped in the oncoming lane, which was okay because the Dodge Charger that looked like it might T-bone the Cruze was frozen in place also. By now, drivers were standing outside their stopped vehicles. Some had the hoods up and were blankly staring at dormant engines, while others were talking on cell phones.

  Cassie wound her way around the Cruze and the Charger and found a less traveled road that went south.

  “We’ve got to keeping moving toward Asheville,” she said. Cassie’s jaw was set with determination. Regardless of whatever was happening to the cars, or the nation for that matter, her car was fine and therefore her mission remained unchanged: save her parents.

  Mahegan had his knife and his Sig Sauer Tribal pistol, the clothes he was wearing, his Doc Martens boots, and a thin leather wallet that held his driver’s license, an ATM card, and a stack of twenties totaling close to four hundred dollars. He would be okay for a while, depending on what exactly was taking place. What he didn’t have was his phone or its all-important Zebra app that prior to yesterday allowed him to securely communicate with Savage, Owens, and O’Malley.

  As they turned west onto a two-lane road with few stopped cars and fewer moving cars, Cassie said, “Okay. So what was that?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mahegan said. “Not sure if this is happening anywhere else, but it could be some type of cyberattack. I don’t know.”

  “EMP, you think?”

  Mahegan considered an electromagnetic pulse attack and thought it was a possibility but unlikely.

  “EMP would be more inclusive. For example, why are we still moving? And the Porsche and Chevy Nova behind us?”

  The two cars had followed them as if they knew precisely what they were doing and what was happening. Perhaps they knew more than the others, but they were all flying blind to a degree.

  “So some kind of attack through the GPS of newer cars?”

  “Something like that,” Mahegan considered. “Maybe only specific cars that someone could hack. We’re in a Subaru, sort of a one-off brand. A new Porsche is two cars behind us. A
nd the Chevy Nova directly behind us is at least thirty years old, no GPS. I saw new Chevys, Fords, BMWs all stopped.”

  “The Internet of Things,” Cassie said.

  “Heard of it. Can’t say I know much beyond the basics.”

  “Instead of just connectivity for your computer or smartphone, the Internet of Things is the connectivity of machines, devices, cars, buildings, all networked together and sharing data. When your smart-refrigerator senses your milk carton weighs less than ‘x’ ounces, it orders you more milk, or at least sends you a text to buy milk.”

  “An automated honey-do list. Great,” Mahegan said.

  “It’s more than that, as you know. If a car has an alternator go out, the onboard computer communicates with the parts shop and orders you one at the same time it is making your service appointment after it checks your calendar in Outlook, for example.”

  “So, like every other use of the Internet, good stuff can be used for bad stuff.”

  “That’s a bit technical for me, but yes,” Cassie quipped.

  “Okay, so let’s use some of that technology. What was the last known grid coordinate of your parents?”

  “Well, the ear patch dropped a pin in my app. So that’s what we’ll have to go by.”

  Cassie drove up the winding road as she simultaneously thumbed through her phone and found the monitoring app named Find-Aid.

  “Usually used for seniors with Alzheimer’s. It’s a bandage you put behind the ear, under the hairline, and it has a tracking device in it not unlike Find My iPhone.”

  Mahegan took the iPhone from her and looked at the picture on the screen. There was a red pin on a rest stop overlooking Asheville from the west.

  “The beauty of this technology is that it is powered by body heat. Once it is disconnected from human skin, it stops operating. During the trials, some of the seniors were wise enough to try putting it on a car or a building, forcing the developers to find a way to make it ‘senior proof.’ ”

  “Okay, so your parents’ kidnappers stopped at this rest stop and found the sensors, I’m guessing.”

  “That’s my guess,” Cassie said. “They went dark there.”

  “Probably a triage point. A final inspection before taking them the last leg into the kidnap holding site.”

  “Get me there,” Cassie said, dropping all pretense of going to Sparta to go camping.

  Mahegan eyed her and then looked at the phone, glad to have some situational awareness back, albeit unsecure and limited.

  “Okay, you’re going to loop south of Asheville and then come up through some mountain roads, then double back to the rest stop. Take this next right.”

  She did, then continued to follow Mahegan’s directions for an hour, until they were at the rest stop.

  The rest stop was a scenic overlook, parking lot, and single building. Mahegan imagined where he might try to hide someone in this rather compact lot. There were several cars stopped now, owners pacing frantically and headed toward them. The Porsche and Nova had followed them to the rest stop and pulled up alongside them.

  “Grab your pistol,” Mahegan said. “This is like one of those end of the world things where people might try to steal your car.”

  “No worries,” Cassie said.

  * * *

  Tommy Oxendine couldn’t believe what he was seeing below him. From his vantage point in the helicopter it appeared that there were accidents occurring on every road. He had tactical response teams on standby in each county, and now it looked as if they may be tied up with unscrewing all of these wrecks.

  They tracked country roads, major highways, and the interstates and confirmed that every road had multiple major accidents.

  He called back into headquarters in Raleigh and reported what he was seeing to his director, Winston Black III, who had little experience in law enforcement but a lot of experience in donating to politicians. He got a plum patronage job as the SBI director, and Oxendine knew the man enjoyed wearing the badge and carrying the pistol. The joke was that he would shoot his own dick off one day. Oxendine wouldn’t mind seeing that.

  “Sir, we’ve got dozens, maybe hundreds, of accidents occurring on every roadway in the state that I’ve seen so far,” Oxendine reported.

  “I thought you were hunting this Indian?” Black said.

  Oxendine paused, biting back a million comebacks he had for the bureaucrat.

  “I am, sir. In the SWAT helo trying to find him, and I’m seeing chaos everywhere. It’s like the apocalypse. Cars are just stopping in the middle of the road.”

  “Well, I don’t see much out of my window here,” Black said.

  Black was famous, or infamous, for not leaving his office. He was a paper pusher and political suck-up. He made appearances with the governor and spoke to the rotary circuit, but that was about the extent of his law enforcement capabilities.

  “Oh, wait a minute. I just saw a car stop,” Black said. “Oh, shoot. It stopped for a pedestrian. It’s going now.”

  “Sir, I’m making a spot report to you. If you would prefer I call someone else, I’m happy to.”

  “Don’t get insubordinate with me, Tommy. You should always know with whom you’re speaking. I’m the director.”

  “Yes, sir. I know. And I’m a sixteen-year field agent veteran making a report to you so that you can call the governor and be the hero, letting him know what the heck is going on.”

  Black paused on the other end of the call. Oxendine’s stomach dropped as they hit an air pocket. Beverly Setz, the pilot in command, came over the intercom into his headset. Her voice was crisp and authoritative. Having earned three air medals in Afghanistan, Setz was known as one of the best pilots of the North Carolina National Guard. “Sorry, agent. Getting windy up here near the mountains. We’re over Hickory heading west over I-40.”

  “Roger,” Oxendine said. He had the headphones covering one ear and cocked up on his head, making room for his iPhone so that he could talk to Black.

  “My name is Winston, not Roger,” Black said.

  “Yes, sir. I was talking to the pilot.”

  “Well, let’s just have one conversation at a time, shall we, Tommy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This report I’m going to make to the governor, what are the five ‘W’s’?”

  Black was always asking for the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why.

  “Sir, the who is just about one in ten cars, the what is stopping in the middle of the road and causing accidents, the where is every road, the when is that it started about five minutes ago, and the why is I have no freaking idea.”

  “Well, call me back when you have a fix on that last W, Tommy, and then I’ll make my report to the—oh my God!”

  “Finally,” Oxendine muttered.

  “Right outside my window, a van on Peace Avenue just stopped and five cars piled into it.”

  “Better call the governor,” Oxendine said. “And then call a meeting or whatever you guys do to figure this out. I’m going after Mahegan.”

  Oxendine hung up, shaking his head.

  “That bad,” McQueary said through the headphones.

  Oxendine looked at McQueary. He liked Q. Smart. Dedicated. Good shot. Good leader. Just under six feet tall, McQueary had been a college gymnast. Excelled at the rings, apparently. Oxendine liked leaders who were athletes. He knew that athletes had to make split-second decisions, as did leaders. Leadership was a competition.

  And Oxendine played to win.

  “Hey, boss,” Setz said over the headset.

  “Roger,” Oxendine replied.

  “We’ve got state-of-the-art tactical messaging up here. Because we work with Homeland and Department of Defense on crisis response, hurricanes, and so on, we get messages from DHS. Just got one about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his wife being kidnapped.” DHS was the acronym for the Department of Homeland Security.

  “When?”

  “About midnight last night.”
r />   “Couldn’t be Mahegan. Not my concern. Let’s stay in the lane, Bev,” Oxendine said.

  “Well, there’s more,” Setz said.

  “Go on.”

  “Apparently, the chairman and his wife have a daughter named Cassie. She’s a soldier at Fort Bragg. And DHS believes her life might be in danger, too. They’ve given us a ping to her vehicle GPS, and it shows a route coming out of Badin and heading west not too far from us now.”

  Oxendine thought a moment. While he was dedicated to North Carolina and the SBI, rescuing the daughter of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs could get him some major props and maybe even a federal position somewhere. FBI, maybe. But he didn’t want to detract from the hunt for Mahegan. After a few more seconds of thought, Oxendine reasoned that if Cassie Bagwell had been in Badin, he could legitimately argue that he was chasing a solid lead and trying to help protect the young woman.

  “That’s something. When did the car leave Badin?” Oxendine asked.

  “About a minute before Sheriff Wilson put out the all-points bulletin on Mahegan. I’m assuming you talked with him?”

  “Roger that,” Oxendine said. “Can you track that vehicle real time?”

  “Almost. We get pings on it every ten minutes. You’d think it would be better, but our system isn’t futuristic, it’s just government state of the art,” Setz said.

  “Okay, let’s go find it.”

  * * *

  At the far end of the rest stop was a thicket of trees with picnic tables. There were three parking spots where someone could, without suspicion, back in and raise a trunk, as if they were grabbing picnic supplies.

  “Over there,” he said. “That’s where they did it.”

  “Don’t disagree,” Cassie said. She drove over, and the Nova followed, while the owner of the Porsche waved and pulled onto I-40, headed west. They parked, and Mahegan quickly jumped out of Cassie’s Subaru and walked up to the Chevy Nova driver’s side.

  He watched a long-haired man roll down the window and say, “No worries, bro. I’m just freaked about this whole thing, and you guys seem to know what you’re doing.”