by A. J Tata
That was what Zakir had learned about the mission.
He had also learned that Major Alex Russell had been there as well, standing apparently by General Savage’s side. As the documents described the situation in the joint operations centers, Russell had watched the general wrestle with the decision. Al-Baghdadi was an Al Qaeda mastermind who would later become the head of ISIS and a man whom Zakir had met and now reported to, albeit infrequently. How had al-Baghdadi simply appeared in the convoy, and why was he so brazenly on his phone? Zakir had read that Russell said that she wanted nothing to do with the decision. But ultimately when General Savage turned to her and asked her, “Valid target?” she had confirmed, “Valid target.” It was right there in her statement.
He and Gavril had data mined Alex Russell and learned that she wasn’t Alex Russell at all. That she had even more of a vested interest than he in what had happened in Operation Groomsman.
Much to Zakir’s surprise, as he and Gavril studied the myriad classified documents maintained by the Army’s Inspector General, they found dozens of investigations of bad intelligence that led to bombing wholly civilian convoys, many of which were wedding parties.
What was it that made a wedding party look like an enemy convoy, Zakir wondered? Sure, there were often guns securing the convoy because many of these weddings by definition were taking place in hostile countries. But the customs and traditions were different. To ensure safe arrival, the entire wedding party traveled together to the bride’s parents’ home. While Fatima’s parents had long ago abandoned her, Malavdi was going to marry her at the home of her surrogate parents, who had raised the orphan Fatima.
All of these thoughts spun through his mind as he was commanding and controlling the fight against the man in the tower.
Was it Jake Mahegan? The third person on his kill list? Savage, Russell, Mahegan.
They had all played a role in killing Malavdi and Fatima on their wedding day.
They all deserved to die.
And the country that had put them there was going to pay a high price for their indifference to two lives snuffed out like a church candle.
“Capture the man in the tower,” Zakir barked into his small handheld radio.
CHAPTER 17
TEN TO FIFTEEN MEN WITH RIFLES CHARGED THE HILL TOWARD Mahegan. They were dressed in black and performing the equivalent of “three-second rushes,” a combat tactic to avoid getting shot by staying vertical too long.
With the tower guard’s sniper rifle he was able to take five shots and confirm five kills before the smoke became too thick. When large bullets from a machine gun began to chew at the metal tower, Mahegan scrambled out the back door and down the spiral staircase. The smoke and the constant movement would make him a tough target for the enemy machine gunner.
At the base of the tower Cassie was shouting something at him. He dove to the ground, dirt spraying his face as he rolled to the back side of the hillock upon which the tower stood. Cassie slid to the base as well and said, “Alex Russell is back near my car.”
Her voice was steady but an octave higher than normal. She was breathing fast, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Mahegan looked back toward the north where Cassie had parked the Subaru. Couldn’t see much through the thick forest. Machine gun rounds zipped through the air with an audible whoosh. The sound of rifle fire seemed closer. It was time to move.
Mahegan said, “Follow me.”
He was up and running through the trees, allowing the incline to pull him farther to the west for more cover and concealment from the attacking forces. Mahegan believed they had just poked the beehive but that the bees would not stray too far from their hive.
As they neared the Subaru location, Mahegan detected the slightest motion in his peripheral vision to his right. Heard brush breaking. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Two of the terrorists were running at full speed along the road, occasionally glancing into the woods, presumably searching for him and Cassie.
He dropped the sniper rifle and retrieved his Sig Sauer Tribal, saying to Cassie, “Keep running.”
He sprinted toward a large oak about thirty yards ahead, dropped to the ground as he heard two shots, and reared up to one knee in a shooter’s position.
The men were no longer running. He scanned the road and saw two black lumps lying motionless on the ground. Had Cassie turned and shot them first? Mahegan looked over his left shoulder, up the ridge to the knoll where the car was parked, and saw Cassie still sprinting. Mahegan came up with his gun and carefully stepped toward the road. He cleared it right in the direction of the enemy, and then looked left.
Alex Russell was standing at the top of the hill, pistol in hand. She had fired the shots that had protected them. He moved swiftly to the two men. Both had shaved heads and trim black beards. They wore identical black cargo pants, black shirts, and black tactical vests. They carried AR-15 assault rifles, easily purchased in the United States. A quick check of the pockets revealed nothing, not even a scrap of paper or piece of lint.
“More are coming!” Alex shouted.
Mahegan looked up the road but did not see any threats. Leaving the bodies to rot, he moved to the wooded cordon of the road and found his way to Cassie’s and Alex’s location.
“You shot them?” Mahegan asked. He fixed his eyes on Alex, who didn’t flinch.
“Yes. They were two seconds from seeing you. So I shot them.”
“That was a hundred-yard shot,” Mahegan said.
“Actually, it was two one-hundred-yard shots,” Alex replied. “That saved your ass.”
“Okay. Good point. Thank you, by the way. But tell me—” Mahegan said. He considered his next comment carefully. The air was thick with smoke now. A gentle breeze carried the scent of military smoke grenades from the valley below.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want, but let’s head to my place first,” Alex said. “There are more coming. You and Cassie should follow me. And watch out for that helicopter. That’s state police. I’ve been monitoring channels. They found your pistol and size twelve Doc Martens boot prints in the house. And they’ve got still photos of you in Charlotte around that time.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Mahegan said.
“They’ve got you pegged as the murderer of three people, and now they’re also saying you killed that MP.”
“You did that,” Mahegan said.
“Just follow me. I think I know a way out of this,” Alex said.
A few shots snapped overhead. A sniper had set up somewhere on the ridge.
“Let’s go,” Mahegan said. As Mahegan and Cassie returned to the Subaru, they watched Alex pull up and idle next to Cassie’s car. Mahegan waved for her to lead the way, and she shot out of the gravel turnout.
“Hell of a coincidence running into her,” Mahegan said as they quickly jumped in the Subaru.
“I don’t know what to make of it. The mechanic identified her as bringing a car into the shop.” Cassie cranked the engine and slammed the car into reverse.
“And she pulled a weapon on me last night after she shot two military policemen who might have been fake.”
Cassie followed Alex as they drove east. They were quickly on the Blue Ridge Parkway conducting a slalom around the stopped vehicles. Mahegan scoped the skies for the Blackhawk that had been pursuing them.
“What the hell is going on?”
“How well do you know Alex?” Mahegan asked.
“O-Club, female officer gatherings, tennis, that kind of thing. We don’t go clubbing, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Didn’t picture you as the clubbing sort. You said you were friends,” Mahegan said.
“Maybe ‘acquaintances’ is more like it. She didn’t shoot me, or try to shoot me, so that’s a positive . . . and much better than you’re doing with her.”
Mahegan cast a wry smile at Cassie’s joke. Up to this point, she had been all business. Very little personality other than perhaps a deep-seated conflict issue with
her father. Professional and focused. He appreciated that she showed some wit within ten minutes of a firefight. To Mahegan, the gallows humor that came from combat was a necessary part of the process. Focus and fear dominated initially until those gave way to relief and exhaustion, which often manifested as humor initially. And later, perhaps much later, as posttraumatic stress. Mahegan didn’t like to call it a disorder because he didn’t believe that it had to be. He had grown from his own posttraumatic stress and had seen others do so as well. Still, it was true that posttraumatic stress had disabled many veterans, and it was often because they didn’t process the events. Some events were so horrifying that they couldn’t be processed. Like when he reached into Sergeant Colgate’s burning ground mobility vehicle to pull him out, only to have Colgate’s skin come off in his hands.
That was traumatic. And he lived with the reality and the memory of a chunk of Colgate’s vehicle in his left deltoid and the brain matter of Commander Hoxha, their captured bomb-making target, on the buttstock of his M4 carbine.
“Can you call Alex?”
“Sure, why?”
“I want to park your car in a Walmart or something and then ride with her to her place. That helicopter was following your car somehow, probably GPS, which isn’t working anymore, it seems. But they’ve identified it and will be looking for it.”
Cassie pulled out her phone, used her thumb on the home button, and pressed her last call, Alex Russell. She handed the phone to Mahegan.
“Yeah, Cassie, what’s up?”
“It’s Mahegan. Take us to a Walmart or shopping mall, then we’ll jump in with you.”
After a pause, Alex said, “The helicopter?”
“Roger.”
“Okay. Don’t want that thing buzzing my house anyway.”
Mahegan clicked off, and they followed Alex’s Land Rover to a Target parking lot near Asheville. They parked the Subaru, and Mahegan said, “Grab your pistol and rucksack. That’s about all we’ll be able to carry.”
Cassie eyed him warily for a second, then grabbed those items and a couple others, which she stuffed into the standard-size Army rucksack. She nodded to the floor of her backseat, which was lowered into hatchback mode.
“If you’re taking that AR-15 you might want to grab the rest of the magazines from the console,” she said.
Mahegan took the AR-15 and all of her magazines out of the center console. She had left Fort Bragg expecting a fight. Did Cassie know what was happening, or was she preparing for the worst?
Mahegan got in Alex’s backseat and set Cassie’s heavy rucksack next to him. He found it odd that he had been in Alex’s backseat twice in the last twenty-four hours. He didn’t trust her then and he didn’t trust her now, but she knew something about what was happening and he wanted to find out what that might be. If it led to rescuing Savage, O’Malley, and Owens, then the risk would be worth it. Cassie sat in the front seat holding a small bag and her Berretta.
As they were exiting the parking lot, Mahegan pointed out a large gathering of police and emergency responders.
“Looks like they’ve set up a triage site here for people and for cars,” he said. There was a series of operational tow trucks pulling cars into the parking lot. A group of mechanics was working on cars, hoods up, in assembly line fashion. It appeared that the mechanics were able to reboot the onboard computers and eradicate the bug fairly quickly. A mechanic plugged a cable from a rolling cart with a computer diagnostic system into a car, took a reading, and then unplugged. Apparently it was that quick. The car pulled away, and the mechanic pushed the cart to the next vehicle in line.
“Alex, you hearing anything about this?” Mahegan asked.
“Just a sec,” Alex said. She stopped the Land Rover and looked at her phone. “Yeah. There’s this classified e-mail message. A techie from the FBI figured out the Trojan and created a Diagnostic Trouble Code to identify the Trojan and then a fix that simultaneously erases it. They’re pushing it out system wide to every DMV and every major auto manufacturer, affected or not. It’s kind of like a cure and a vaccine.”
“That’s fast work,” Mahegan said. Then, “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us.”
Alex slowly turned around and pulled out of the Target parking lot. They drove about ten miles to the town of Bent Creek, then to a townhouse complex overlooking the French Broad River. The townhomes all had a Bavarian mountain look to them, with wide, crisscrossing wood planks painted dark brown against tan stucco. Window ledges with flower boxes held purple and white mums blooming brightly against the dull exterior. Alex pulled into the gaping garage door.
“Stay in the car until the door is down,” Mahegan said.
Alex’s garage was neatly arranged, almost devoid of other items, save an upright toolbox. Mahegan looked over his shoulder through the back window of the Land Rover watching the garage door lower. The barely audible hum of the garage door opener stopped and the door was down, muting the light inside the garage.
“Okay, let’s go inside,” Mahegan said.
“You’re making this seem like a kidnapping, Mahegan,” Alex said.
There was something different about her that he couldn’t place just yet. Her hair was wind tossed, almost deliberately so. Her eyes seemed out of focus. Her voice was less confident than it was last night.
“You okay, Alex?” he asked as they walked to the front of the Land Rover.
“I’m fine,” she said, more confident this time, but it seemed forced, not natural. “Just don’t understand why you’ve got all this heavy weaponry. Not good for keeping a low profile, especially when the cops are after you for murder.”
“Well, you just saw what happened on the mountain. You killed two yourself. I’ve got no idea what’s coming our way or who those people are. So I need firepower. This being what it is,” he said, holding up the AR-15. It was not a particularly loved weapon by special operators, but if that was all he had, he would use it.
“Fair enough. This way,” Alex said. The inside of the town house was all neutral tones and hotel artwork. It looked like a time-share, but he couldn’t be sure.
“This place yours?” Mahegan asked.
Alex led them through the mudroom and kitchen into a neutral-toned family room with a white sofa and love seat fixed in an L shape. They faced a sliding glass door that provided an ample view of the mountains and their colorful foliage.
“Have a seat, Jake. Cassie.”
Mahegan stood with his back to the kitchen counter, looking to his right through the sliding glass and then to his left toward the front door at the end of a small hallway. He detected no movement from either direction. Despite Alex’s calm voice, Mahegan was suspicious. Alex was visibly shaking, going through some type of transformation in front of them. Cassie stood to his left in the gap between the kitchen and family room. She was staring intently at Alex, whose eyes were fixed on Mahegan. He continued scanning the home, saying, “Don’t feel like sitting. What the hell were you doing on that hill?”
Her eyes fluttered for a second and then she said, “Excuse me. I need to use the ladies’ room.”
Alex disappeared up the stairs near the front door, and Mahegan used the time to put the rucksack by the refrigerator, which was next to the door to the mudroom. Then he walked the entire first floor consisting only of the kitchen, family room, and small dining room. The sliding glass door led to a deck. He studied the sloping terrain outside of the northward facing glass door. It sloped away sharply beneath the deck, and he could see the French Broad River less than a mile away. The Blue Ridge Mountains angled away to the north with their subtle curves.
Nice view.
Alex returned down the steps, rubbing the inside of her elbow before she made the turn toward them off the last step. She walked up to Mahegan, much more coherent, and said, “I’m sure you are pissed at me for drawing down on you earlier this morning, but I’m also sure you can understand me protecting myself from a wanted man. I’m glad to see that you
were able to make it to Asheville. You’re every bit as good as Savage tells me you are. And we need you to help stop an imminent threat to the country.”
“You’re talking to Savage?” But he was really thinking that she just took something. The change in her demeanor was marked. From frazzled and jumpy to calm and coherent.
“I’ve spoken with him, yes.”
“Today?” Mahegan asked. Cassie watched the conversation, perhaps wondering if she had made a mistake by giving him a ride.
“When I have spoken to him is not important, Jake. I’m executing his orders to the best of my ability given the fact that Zebra is down.”
“What’s Zebra?” Cassie asked.
Mahegan and Alex looked at the chairman’s daughter simultaneously. Alex spoke first.
“Zebra is an off-the-books JSOC communications protocol, Cassie. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but it has been compromised by some very bad people. I’m certain we won’t call it Zebra anymore and that we’ll change its platform. So, it’s a former protocol.” She turned toward Mahegan and continued talking. “Those bad people? I shot two of them today to protect you. So if you want to continue to suspect me of something, Jake, go for it. Search my car. Search my mountain condo. I’m single. I love the mountains. I bought this place with my combat pay, and this is where I come when I need to get away.”
“Why did you ask me about Operation Groomsman?” Mahegan asked. He didn’t move and thought about taking her up on her offer to inspect her house and car. He was still worried that they could have been followed even though Cassie’s car was in a Target parking lot ten miles away. A good cop would look at surveillance video and find Alex’s license plate number and then find her house. He wasn’t hanging out here long enough for all of that to transpire.