Direct Fire

by A. J Tata

  “Then haul ass onto the parkway and get somewhere in the trees quick. They won’t shoot if they’re tracking you and your car. They will shoot if they think it’s just me.”

  They looped up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Cassie asked, “Why would they be tracking you?”

  “No time to explain,” Mahegan said. Alex Russell had told him about Savage’s pistol. Then there were the military policemen and their car. Someone may have some hard evidence against him right now and believe that a murderer was on the loose.

  “Well, what the hell is in this for you? Why take the risk? What are you running from?”

  The helicopter raced ahead of them, presumably looking for a landing spot, but too many cars littered the roads. Power lines hung like spiderwebs. The trees were tall, thick and tightly bunched. All factors combined to prevent a direct landing in the road. They could go offset, but the SWAT team would never catch up with them. The helicopter circled around and settled into a fixed altitude as it followed them.

  Cassie dodged dozens of stalled cars and passed stranded motorists reaching out to her as she followed the winding parkway. They snaked between steep mountain peaks and tunnels of trees that gave way to brief, wide panoramic views of valleys that ebbed away endlessly. The noise from the helicopter was a constant reminder, urging them forward. Cassie drove through another tunnel of trees for about a mile, and Mahegan looked at her and offered his explanation to her question.

  “I’ve got two teammates missing and my former boss. And we’ve got an attack right here, right now on the homeland. The country has literally seized up from gridlock. The cell towers are jammed, and people can’t communicate. If Ronnie’s bank account is any indication, and granted he might have just had insufficient funds, then yours and mine are probably locked up, also. How does all this get undone? And who did it? We’ve had so many spineless politicians weakening our defenses that we lack even the basic tenets of national security. Everyone is focused on the Capitol, or the White House, or big landmarks. All of that is symbolic. What’s happening now? This is real. Hits Joe Six-Pack right in the wallet. Hits Joe Millionaire in the wallet, too. Equal opportunity terror. Hell with that. Equal opportunity attack.”

  Cassie nodded. Her tired eyes showed the worry, the stress. It was all there, etched across her furrowed brow.

  “This looks like it might be it,” Mahegan said. They were approaching a small gravel turnout that appeared to have a dirt two-track running off to one side and then curving beneath the parkway. There was a thick forest on either side of the gravel road. Cassie pulled off the parkway, slowed through the gravel, centered the Subaru on the two-track, and followed it about fifty yards. The helicopter hovered, unable to land. Mahegan wondered if their pursuers had fast-rope or rappelling capabilities.

  “Pull over here,” Mahegan said. “They could have cameras or even remote sensors and IEDs.” It was unlikely that the trail had improvised explosive devices, but he couldn’t be too careful. To attack the sensors in automobiles and trucks by infecting the code took months of planning and execution. Likewise, the precision execution of the decapitation attack that occurred last night required rehearsals and communication capabilities.

  The power lines rose and fell with the undulating mountains. Their skeletal towers and heavy-gauge cables were foreign to this otherwise mostly unspoiled environment. Up on the tower nearest the parkway he noticed cellular phone and satellite dishes and drums that fed the communications needs of those who lived in the mountains and traveled on the scenic parkway.

  And perhaps those who were attacking his country.

  As the helicopter lifted away and flew south, no doubt to land on the road and dismount its SWAT team, the distinctive whoosh of a surface-to air-missile or rocket-propelled grenade thundered above. He looked through the trees and saw the helicopter immediately take evasive action and spit flares to decoy the heat-seeking missile.

  Mahegan watched as the helicopter disappeared over the mountain ridge. This was their opportunity, and certainly the presence of a SAM from the valley below was an indication of a fortified enemy encampment.

  * * *

  Tommy Oxendine slammed into the side of the Blackhawk helicopter as the vapor trail of a missile smoked past them.

  Alarms and buzzers wailed in the cockpit. Setz’s face tightened into a grimace as she worked both hands on the controls to tilt ninety degrees, fire chaff to fool the missile’s heat-seeking guidance, and prevent a crash.

  McQueary and his men hung on as the helicopter nearly did a barrel roll. Somehow Setz kept the aircraft in the air as Oxendine was at one moment looking at Cassie Bagwell’s white Subaru and the next staring at blue sky . . . below him.

  After thirty seconds of evasive maneuvers, Oxendine’s adrenaline leveled off, as he imagined Setz’s might have as well.

  “What the hell was that, Bev?” Oxendine barked into the headset.

  “You know damn well what that was, Agent Oxendine,” Setz said. “A surface-to-air missile from our nine o’clock. It’s not safe up here in the mountains, and I’m taking us back to lower ground.”

  “Like hell,” Oxendine said. “We’ve got eyes on Bagwell’s Subaru and two eyewitnesses who described someone the size and looks of Mahegan with her.”

  “You can file a report on my ass, I don’t care. I’m not putting Q and his team in jeopardy, and as much as I don’t give a shit about you, I’m not putting you in jeopardy, either.”

  “You can let us fast-rope out about a mile down the hill and we’ll walk up, if that is any kind of compromise,” McQueary said.

  “Maybe two miles down the hill,” Setz said. “That had to be a Stinger missile, and it has a range of five miles. I’m staying out of that range.”

  Oxendine felt helpless. Pilots. Always worried about their damn machine and their careers. Right here, right now was the biggest thing happening in the state of North Carolina, and Setz was blocking him from executing. He let his temper boil and then took a few deep breaths.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re doing,” Oxendine said. “Bev’s right. Can’t risk the team or the chopper. If they’ve got one SAM, then they probably have another. Not sure who it is, but it’s clear they were gunning for us. It’s probably Mahegan. We’ll head back to the rest area where they were last seen and set down. We can save fuel and track the car once it starts moving. Then we’ll pounce. And Q, be ready to fast-rope your men in. We need to rescue Cassie Bagwell and kill or capture Jake Mahegan.”

  “Kill or capture?” McQueary questioned. “Who put the kill order out on Mahegan?”

  “I did, Q. He’s armed and dangerous. Shoot first, ask questions later.”

  “I really can’t believe you’re saying that, Tommy. He’s not even been charged with anything,” McQueary said.

  “I want your men ready to shoot. Mahegan is ex-Delta. He’s good. He’ll kill quickly and efficiently. If we don’t take the first shot, he will and your men will die.”

  The entire team was hooked into the internal communications system via their headsets and could hear the conversation. Oxendine had just put McQueary in a bad position and he knew it. Either McQueary cared about his men and would give them the green light to shoot first, or he didn’t care and would let Mahegan have the advantage.

  McQueary stared at him and said, “We’ll discuss once we’re on the ground at the rest stop.”

  Oxendine nodded.

  Setz said, “Roger. Headed to last touchdown location.”

  * * *

  Mahegan listened as the helicopter rotor noise diminished and finally faded away beyond the front range of the Blue Ridge.

  Convinced they were in the right location based on the surface-to-air missile, he decided to strap the sniper rifle across his back as he pocketed the box magazine with five 7.62 mm bullets. He checked his Tribal pistol and then his knife secured to his ankle. He lifted the AR-15 from the foot well of the Subaru as Cassie grabbed her shotgun and Berretta 9 mm pistol.

/>   “Here. Couple of Clif Bars and some water,” Cassie said. Mahegan motioned to her to sit behind the Subaru, facing up the hill they had just driven down. He accepted the chow, powered it down quickly, and then chugged the entire bottle of water.

  “Remind me never to go to dinner with you,” she said.

  “Deal,” Mahegan replied. He stared at her as she took a couple of bites of her bar and then pocketed it in the wrapper.

  “No, eat it or leave it,” Mahegan said. “Wrapper’s too noisy.”

  She nodded, removed the bar, and finished it. Then she drank the water and left the other bar in her kit bag in the back of the Subaru.

  “Satisfied?”

  Mahegan ignored her question and outlined the basic plan.

  “We walk on either side of the road, staying to the low ground. Look out for anything that might be emitting infrared beams at ankle level and for anything that might be recording us up in the trees. You saw they fired a Stinger or an SA-18 Russian missile. Stinger can go about four to five miles, and the eighteen can go about two to three miles. Maybe we’ve got a small window here.”

  “Well, being in the intelligence field, I would say that if they have surface-to-air missiles, they are protecting something pretty significant.”

  “Which we are about to poke. So keep that in mind. Could be a few dudes or could be an army.”

  Cassie nodded. As they began to stand, the first shot whispered silently between them, kicking up dirt at their feet.

  “Probably an army,” Mahegan said as they dove away from the follow-on shots.

  They entered separate sides of the woods that paralleled the two-track downhill. Mahegan kept Cassie in his peripheral vision, reminded himself that she had graduated from the U.S. Army Ranger school. She knew what to do. By now, she’d even been under fire. Mahegan noticed some tire tracks on the dirt and gravel road that were too wide to be a regular four-wheel car or truck.

  Scanning ahead, he stepped over rocks and logs that impeded the awkward downhill walk. Cassie whistled a high-pitched animal noise, like a bird call. He knelt and slowly turned toward her. She was kneeling behind a thick tree and pointing to her one o’clock, across the road. He looked to his front and saw a tower. It was an observation tower used by the North Carolina Forestry Service to watch for forest fires.

  A muzzle swiveled from left to right as if searching for them. He rolled his back against the tree and removed the sniper rifle from his shoulder. He retrieved the box magazine and fed it into the well. Slowly working the bolt, he quietly slid a 7.62 M118LR round into the bore. He looked at Cassie, who was watching him with her back to the tree providing her cover. He nodded. She understood. Stay back and stay alive.

  Mahegan slid to the ground and splayed his legs out into a Y position, inching his right knee up just a bit. He slid the rifle along the ground directly toward the tower, keeping all movement perpendicular to the line of sight of his target. The human eye was less capable of detecting coincident movements as it was lateral shifts. Turning the rifle upright, he slowly brought the scope to eye level. He walked the crosshairs up the base of the tower, noticing the metal crossbeams and supports that narrowed gradually as they reached the tower at its peak. There was a circular stair that had protective handrails and mesh to keep people from falling off the steps.

  The tower had a four-way rectangular opening about chest high on an average human being. It was maybe two hundred feet above ground level, giving the occupant clear views in all directions. . . and clear fields of fire. The tower was maybe two hundred yards away and on a ridge that angled to the right. Mahegan did the calculus. He would need to kill the occupant and then move along the ridgeline under Cassie’s covering overwatch, ascend the stairway, gather intel, and then link up with Cassie to revise the plan, be that what it was.

  The tower guard kept a low profile, sliding his rifle slowly in a forty-five-degree arc that began about fifty yards to his right and ended about fifty yards to Cassie’s left. He would need to lean forward to scan the ground closer to the tower, and eventually he did. This was most likely the same person who fired the surface-to-air missile. He could see in all directions from the tower.

  The guard elevated just a bit, used his scope to scan the same arc like a sweeping beacon. As he got to the side of the arc that aimed to Cassie’s left, Mahegan planted the crosshairs on the man’s head. With this upward angle, the elevation change, and the unfamiliar rifle, Mahegan hoped the first bullet would strike the man somewhere. He anticipated the lead dropping, but not much at this altitude.

  He pulled back on the trigger, felt its pressure less than what he preferred, slowed his pull, and felt the firing pin strike the cartridge. The shot echoed loudly down the canyon. To some, it could have been a deer hunter. To anyone in a proximate terrorist base camp, it was the first shot of the war fired at them.

  The scope allowed him to draw a second bead on the man, who just stood there. He was looking down at his shoulder. Mahegan could see a red spot blossoming on the guard’s shirt as Mahegan ratcheted another round into the bore. It appeared he had struck the man in the left shoulder. The bullet had caused the guard to elevate, and now Mahegan took a full body shot at his right pectoral, expecting the gun to be off again a bit to the right.

  The second shot seemed louder than the first. Red mist exploded from the man’s chest. As he predicted, the bullet had drifted right, or the weapon’s zero was off for him, and the guard was down.

  He turned to Cassie, who was already running toward him.

  “He’s down. Cover me with this rifle. I’m climbing the tower.”

  “Roger.”

  Mahegan sprinted along the ridge. The tower was at least two hundred yards away, but he found it and the ladder. He had the AR-15 in one hand and used the handrail to pull himself up as he took the steps two and three at a time.

  Upon reaching the top, Mahegan found the guard dead, eyes open, flies already buzzing. Quickly pawing through the man’s pockets, he found a wallet. He opened it briefly and saw an Arabic name on a South Carolina driver’s license issued three months ago. Then he closed the wallet and put it in his own pocket. He plucked a full magazine from the man’s hunting vest. Grabbing the silenced SR-25 sniper rifle, Mahegan scanned with the optics. About a mile south along the two-track were several cabins in a circle with a larger cabin in the middle. There was a small pond and what looked like a mess hall. Residence cabins, a command post, and a chow hall. The sheer cliffs of mountains on three sides created a narrow valley heading east where a river cut its path. Along the south wall was a dark opening, perhaps a cave or maybe a mine shaft.

  This was a terrorist base camp with all of the trappings an invading force needed.

  Men in black uniforms emerged from the cabins, running and pointing in his direction.

  They all had weapons.

  CHAPTER 15

  ALEX RUSSELL LOOKED THROUGH BINOCULARS AT THE FIGHT RAGING on the ridgeline to her right and in the valley below her position. She was curious about the helicopter that had flown over and narrowly avoided the missile. Most likely state police tracking Mahegan for the Charlotte murder. Then she turned and saw Cassie Bagwell’s white Subaru parked about a mile away in a gravel turnout on the north side of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

  Interesting, Alex thought.

  Alex stood leaning against a tall pine perched on a short ridge about a mile off the Blue Ridge Parkway. For the better part of the morning, she had been observing the minor activity in the abandoned Bible camp only to be surprised by the surface-to-air missile and then a sudden outbreak in rifle fire.

  She jumped when the missile zipped over her head and then again as she heard the first shots. She admonished herself for startling. Alex’ routine doctor appointments were no longer frequent enough. She needed to see the doctor soon and get a refill on her PKCzeta shots, called Boradine. Not one to get surprised easily, she had been jumpy this morning. Even worse, she had begun to get dizzy on the drive to Ashev
ille after abandoning Mahegan on the side of the road in the Uwharrie National Forest.

  As she observed the melee below, her mind spun with anxiety. She thought about her life as Alex Russell. She had a faint recollection of her role as the JAG lawyer to the elusive special operations commander, Major General Bob Savage, known as Jackknife Six to his legions of devoted Delta Force, now special mission unit operatives. Most days she was confused, depressed, and anxious. Today she felt disoriented. She needed to see the doctor, for sure, but she also had a small supply of the treatment at her Asheville condo. She thought that she would head there after figuring out precisely what was happening here.

  Prior to the killing of those civilians in Syria, Alex had been an outgoing social butterfly, but her posttraumatic stress had made her mostly a loner. She avoided contact with her real, live social network, but she did keep a Facebook page where she posted pictures and tried to maintain some semblance of the person she had been. Her many Facebook friends “liked” the photos, keeping the idea of the old Alex Russell alive—gorgeous, friendly, patriotic, single, available, dedicated.

  But the truth was that Alex’s mind played tricks on her. She suffered from severe posttraumatic stress. Her memories of Operation Groomsman had haunted her for four years. Rare was the night that she did not awaken in a cold sweat, screaming. Ghosts of those she killed with her confirmation of “valid target” danced nightly in her visions like smoke-filled apparitions wafting through the darkness. Doctors initially treated her anxiety with low-grade medications such as Valium and BuSpar. When those did not work, they upgraded her to clonazepam, which briefly stabilized her but quickly ebbed as an effective method of holding her demons at bay. Still she chewed the pills like candy, numbing her brain the best she could. All the while her doctors were having her attend cognitive behavioral therapy, where they assessed her responses to specific questions. Alex found this treatment ineffective for her, though she knew others for whom it worked. The military psychiatrists demanded that she use all of her thirty annual vacation days, and so she did.