by A. J Tata
“Because it was personal to me, Jake. You were on the ground. I wasn’t. I gave the ‘valid target’ call to Savage. We ended up killing a bride and groom and their families. That has weighed on me. I’ve seen military therapists to help me cope with the angst that I feel. Is that what you wanted me to say? That I’m not as tough as you? That I can’t just randomly kill people and be okay with it? Well, that’s the truth.”
Mahegan paused. She had no idea what angst he had suffered from the loss of everyone from his mother to unit members with whom he was close. Everyone counted, to Mahegan. But he didn’t let that debilitate him.
“What about those military policemen?” he asked.
“Apparently you called in their location,” Alex said.
“What military policemen?” Cassie asked. Mahegan looked at Alex and then Cassie. Alex spoke first.
“That’s exactly right. There were none,” Alex said. “But there were two terrorists dressed up as military policemen who had been following Jake, most likely through the hacked Zebra app. Even with the Zebra tracking function disabled, once they knew your phone number they were able to get the phone’s identity and track that, even if you shut it off.”
“She shot them,” Mahegan said. “If they weren’t MPs, I’m good with that.”
Alex looked at her phone, moved some data around with her fingers by touching the screen, and then stood as she flashed the phone at Mahegan.
“Here’s a report from the Stanly County sheriff. I’ll read it to you. ‘This morning at five minutes after six, we received a report of one dead male and one wounded male at a specific grid coordinate in the Uwharrie National Forest. I dispatched two officers to the location immediately and then met them there. We provided life-saving measures to the wounded individual, who is critical but stable and in our protection and care. Moore County also found a vehicle that confirmed person of interest Chayton Mahegan was in the police cruiser in which the military police officers were traveling. I called Special Agent Oxendine from the SBI, who is leading the manhunt for Mahegan. After the wounded military police officer awoke, it was clear the surviving member of the two does not speak or understand English very well. He did, however, speak Arabic. We had a local university professor come to his location and begin an interrogation, in which the survivor admitted he was from Syria. That’s all we know. We have alerted the Department of Public Safety, and they are en route with a team from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.”
“Okay,” Mahegan said. “What’s the sheriff’s name?”
Alex grinned. Without looking at her phone, she said, “Sheriff Bubba Wilson. I go hiking in the Uwharrie quite a bit. Have had coffee with him in Troy a few times. Anything else?”
“Jake, I think we can accept that Alex is on our team, can’t we?”
“Alex didn’t aim a pistol at you this morning,” Mahegan said.
“No, but she shot past me and killed two men who were about to catch up with you and me.”
“That’s true, but I find it an awful big coincidence that Alex just happened to be in the same spot as us.”
“I’m still here,” Alex said, interrupting the conversation that was occurring as if she weren’t. “I showed you the last known locations of Savage, O’Malley, and Owens. That’s the same way you found the location. It just took me longer than you. I stopped by here on my way and looked at maps on my phone until I figured the Blue Ridge Parkway was the best way to look at the two or three areas on the map that I thought correlated with their location. I used to watch Savage do this quite a bit when he was with his planning team back in JSOC headquarters.”
“I’ve served in special mission units most of my life. I’ve heard your name but I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Mahegan said.
“But you have. You just didn’t notice me. I’ve seen you from the headquarters window heading to the range. I can tell you every detail of JSOC HQ, which you don’t frequent much, I might add,” Alex said.
Mahegan stared at Alex. “Why would I have ever gone there?”
“Case in point,” she said.
Cassie jumped back into the conversation.
“Jake, relax. Let’s try to figure out what the hell is happening. The three of us can figure this out better than two. My parents are being held captive by these guys, I’m pretty sure. All of the bad stuff happening? It has to be orchestrated by the same people. We lucked out and swatted the beehive.”
“I’m not feeling the luck or the love,” Mahegan said. “I don’t forget things easily, and I’ve never met Alex before.” He then pointed at Cassie. “For that matter, I had never met you before today. Read about you in the papers, and I know you and your dad had a pretty public falling out that made a lot of money for the newspapers and television shows.”
“Right. He chastised me in public for attending Ranger school. I was one of the first female graduates. He couldn’t deal with it. Well, tough shit. He needs to handle it.”
“It was more than that. He didn’t like you being in the Army, much less attending Ranger training.”
“It’s not his call. I’m not some doting Daddy’s girl. I’m my own person,” Cassie said with emphasis.
“Jake, it looks like you’re pissing off both of us. That’s an unwise move, wouldn’t you say? She’s got a pistol, and so do I. You’ve seen I’m fairly accurate.”
Mahegan said nothing to Alex’s taunt. But something stuck in the back of his mind. Had she missed him on purpose? He looked through the sliding glass doors and studied the deck with its table and four chairs. Everything looked new and rarely used, if ever. The sun was well overhead and beaming on a beautiful fall day. He heard a noise coming from the front of the house.
“Expecting company?”
“Not unless it’s the police looking for you. Did anyone make you in Cassie’s car before we got to Target?” Alex asked.
“No, but I’m sure there were security cameras that picked us up,” he said.
She walked to the front door. Mahegan looked at Cassie, whose eyes were burning holes in his. She was pissed. Apparently touching that raw nerve of her father opened a Pandora’s box of issues for the captain.
“It’s a police cruiser, Jake. Buncombe County. You better get into the garage,” Alex said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied.
“Your funeral,” she said, then opened the door. Alex stepped onto the porch and closed the storm door behind her but left the wooden front door open. Mahegan moved slightly to his left, out of the line of sight of anyone standing on the porch. He brushed past Cassie and put his back to the wall.
“She’s not right,” Mahegan said.
“Chill, Jake. She saved our asses.”
“Maybe. Maybe she saved hers, too.”
“She’s out there saving yours again,” Cassie said. They listened as the sheriff spoke with a country drawl that mixed in some Elizabethan English. Mahegan had heard the dialect before in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains.
“I was asked to check on you, Major Russell. There’s been some shooting up in the mountains, and someone said they saw a vehicle with your license plate on it. We’ve got an all-points bulletin out on Captain Cassie Bagwell, whom I am told is a friend of yours.”
“That’s right. Cassie’s a good friend from Fort Bragg, Sheriff.”
“Well, we’ve got a BOLO for her. Something’s apparently happened to her parents, and the FBI gave us her car’s GPS coordinates to make sure she was okay. We found her car in the Target parking lot. Looks like it has been burned on one side.”
“I heard her parents were kidnapped, Sheriff. She came to my home up here to be with me as we await further word. It’s nice of you to check on us. I know you’ve got a lot going on today. Please tell the FBI she’s okay.”
“We do have a lot going on today. Most of my cars have shut down. Only a few work—the older ones, and why I’m driving that piece of junk.”
“What happened to your cars
?” Alex asked. “I’ve seen a lot of them just stopped in the middle of the roads like they’re frozen in time.”
“Well, I’m surprised she made it to Asheville, to be honest with you. FBI says she drove from near Charlotte this morning,” the sheriff said. “Television news is saying that about five million cars around the country were stopped. That’s a hell of a lot, even if as they say there’s two hundred fifty million out there. All my cars are Dodge Chargers, and we get them serviced regularly to make sure our warranty is good. What the pundits are saying is that someone hacked these cars through the service centers and planted some kind of Trojan virus that activated at exactly nine a.m. eastern time today. Kind of like the nine-eleven attacks, only on cars. Well, I’m rambling now. I just wanted to check up on Ms. Bagwell.”
“That’s Captain Bagwell, Sheriff. She’s an Army Ranger.”
“Pardon me, ma’am. No disrespect intended. Well, that’s just the thing, Major. We’ve got a big operation going on in that parking lot and lots of video cameras and so forth, and it showed two people getting out of Captain Bagwell’s car and getting into yours. And one of those people looked like Captain Bagwell.”
Mahegan grabbed the AR-15 and the rucksack and prepared to ease into the garage.
“Well, I hope you can understand me being protective of her, Sheriff. Would you like to come in? Speak with Cassie?”
“Well, to be honest I’d like to be able to tell someone that I laid eyes on her. And what about this other feller? Was that by any chance a man named Mahegan? SBI tells me he kidnapped Captain Bagwell.”
Mahegan looked at Cassie and pointed at himself and the garage door, then at her and the front door. She tucked away her pistol, took a second to straighten herself, and moved into the hallway. Mahegan watched her for a moment. Her face adjusted slightly as if she were deciding how she should appear to the sheriff. Concerned, confused, or surprised.
As Mahegan was stepping through the mudroom door that led to the garage, the loud rumble of motorcycles echoed up the road. Whatever cyberattack had occurred to stop the vehicles in their tracks seemed not to impact the police motorcycles. The sheriff mentioned the word “cavalry” as Mahegan stepped into the garage, quietly closing the door.
Mahegan worked his way around the hood of the Land Rover and opened the passenger side door briefly. He leaned into the vehicle and inspected the interior, finding nothing out of the ordinary. He quietly closed the door and walked around the entire automobile, noticing a splash of mud and a broken tree twig and leaves on the right rear side. He removed the thin branch and leaves, registering that these were maple leaves. He pocketed the twig and opened the side door of the garage, which led to a cement footpath behind a wooden eight-foot-high privacy fence. Making sure the door was unlocked from the inside, he closed it and watched through a gap in the fence boards while palming his Tribal out of his waistband.
Two BMW R1200 police motorcycles slowed as they passed the town house, but they continued their patrol, if that’s what they were doing. When the engine noise faded, he could hear Alex walking the sheriff back to his car.
“I hope you figure out what has happened with all of these cars,” Alex said. “Where did the motorcycles come from?”
Flashes of movement appeared through the fence gap. The sheriff was walking, dressed in his gray uniform. Alex was behind him, wearing her olive and black hiking attire.
“Turn on the television. It’s happening everywhere,” the sheriff said. “Lucky for us, I ordered those BMW motorcycles and they came in a couple of months ago hot off the factory floor. We’ve only got six, but they’re patrolling designated routes right now. I’m guessing whoever hacked these cars didn’t think to hit the motorcycles also. Our ambulances and fire trucks are working, also. So that’s a blessing. Lots of accidents. I’m sending two motorcycles up in the mountains. Several people have called in about a big shootout up in the hollow. Probably some road rage, but you never know. Anyways, I’m getting reports that say some of the cars have been reactivated already through the GPS systems in those shark fins on the top of cars. They call it ‘over-the-air rekey.’ Damn if they don’t think of everything. Plus we’ve got us an assembly line of mechanics at Target, so we’re doing our part.”
“Yes, I heard the FBI figured it out. Well, I hope everything gets sorted out. People have been talking about this doomsday scenario where we get hooked on the Internet and then somebody just shuts it down. Banks. Hospitals. Apparently cars. Scary stuff,” Alex said.
“Scary indeed. Call if you need anything, ma’am.”
“Roger that,” Alex said.
The sheriff stepped into in his car and Alex waved as he backed out and went south, the opposite direction of the motorcycles. Mahegan turned and studied the neighborhood. Alex’s town house was an end unit, and he was looking at the adjacent end unit that faced hers. To the north was an unobstructed view of the mountains that rose into the sky and then fell away into the distance. To the south was a steep incline and drop-off toward the river. Inside, Cassie flipped on the television. Next, the motorcycles roared back down the mountain and slowed as they approached Alex’s town house.
One of the men snapped photos using his phone. They could have been police doing their job, or they could have been imposters triangulating their location. Given the unknowns involved, one was just as likely as the other. Mahegan sensed that he was transitioning from hunter to hunted. He needed to get back on the offense.
He didn’t like the fact that a sheriff and two of his police officers visited Alex’s home within an hour of their arrival. Nor was he enthused with the sheriff’s comment that they had used the cameras and spotted them transferring to Alex’s car. As Alex reminded him, Mahegan was a wanted man in North Carolina. Whether the strange network attack on the vehicles would slow down the police or disrupt their ability to search for him remained to be seen. The helicopter was still out there somewhere, waiting to pounce.
He needed to get back on track to finding Savage, O’Malley, and Owens before it was too late, if he even still had time to rescue them. If Alex Russell was sniffing around Operation Groomsman because of a personal connection to one of the casualties, then Savage was the one who would pay the highest price. He had made the call, and regardless of whether Alex confirmed it was a legal target or not, Savage would have made the shot either way. Killing al-Baghdadi was too important.
What he didn’t know was whom he could trust. He walked back into the house, carrying his pistol. Alex and Cassie were deep in conversation, leaning over a map on a glass coffee table.
“I linked up with you guys right in this area,” Alex said. She was circling a green patch on a North Carolina state road map that the NCDOT handed out at rest stops.
“Where were you before that?” Mahegan asked. He retrieved the twig and leaf from his pocket and held it up. “Off-road driving?”
Alex paused and looked up at Mahegan, who had walked from the kitchen into the family room. He closed the curtain to the sliding glass door and sat down in a tan leather chair across from the white sofa.
“As a matter of fact, I was, Jake. I showed you the coordinates on my phone. I followed those as best I could. Just as you did. Some of that route took me off-road, just as it did for the two of you. So shall we dispense with the suspicion and get on with the business of finding our team and Cassie’s parents?”
Mahegan stared at Alex and then at Cassie. The women seemed to have a bond that transcended today. He nodded.
“Fine. In the hour that we’ve been here, we’ve been spotted by three police,” Mahegan said.
“We’ve been spotted,” Alex said, waving her finger between her and Cassie. “Not you.”
“That you know about,” Mahegan acknowledged. “The two motorcycle guys slowed and took pictures of the house. The sheriff was here in no time. They saw me get in your SUV.”
“What are you saying, Jake? That I’m calling the cops on you? If I wanted to do that, you’d be in jai
l right now. It’s your lucky day that somebody jacked with a bunch of car engines, because everyone seems pretty confused right now.”
She pointed at the television with CNN playing in the background on mute. The screen was showing aerial photos from around the country of traffic jams in the Boston Big Dig area. In Manhattan yellow cabs were stopped and blocking the roads. In Atlanta traffic looked no worse than usual, stopped. Every major city along the East Coast was gridlocked. The cameras showed the West Coast cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, where there were still major traffic jams, but because the cyberattack had occurred at nine a.m. eastern time, six a.m. Pacific, there were marginally fewer cars on the road.
Before stepping into the ambush in the golf lodge where the attacker had told him, It’s going down right now. Everything, all at once, Mahegan had been looking forward to heading to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He wanted to return to his birthplace and spend some time sorting out the past couple of years since his departure from the service. Always one to have a clear mission focus, Mahegan found that he was wrestling with the absence of his parents, especially his mother, and the lack of stability, something that he wanted. Perhaps he was seeking a family, something to ground him, but he continued to follow the clarion call to duty, wherever the mission took him. Meeting the right woman was always something he believed would just happen naturally. Now he wasn’t so sure. Circumstances always seemed to overpower or outweigh any budding relationship he might have been considering.
And the main obstacle seemed to always be General Savage. The JSOC commander needed Mahegan off the books and on the trail of some real threat that either JSOC or the nation faced.
He looked at the two women staring at him and shook his head.
“No. I’m not saying you’re calling the police on me.”
He watched Alex’s left eye twitch and then he looked at Cassie, who was staring intently at him. She had been mostly quiet but harbored a resoluteness that reflected in her strong countenance.