by A. J Tata
Only to redeploy to Fort Bragg with just her mother to welcome her. Operation Groomsman had been a debacle, and her father was ashamed of her, presumably for supplying the pearl of intelligence that led to the bombing.
“He won’t come down,” her mother had told Cassie.
“I’m good with that, actually,” Cassie had said.
Her mother had just hugged her and shook her head. She didn’t know. Then, two years later, after Ranger school, she’d had enough.
“I’m going to see him at Fort Myer,” Cassie said. She had driven the five hours in her car and stormed up the steps of her father’s government mansion, walking past the guards and the aides and the chefs and the staff.
She found him seated at a large oak table in his study. There was a man seated with his back to her. Without looking at her, her father said, “Not now, Cassie.”
“Not now? When?”
“Not. Now.”
He used his commander’s voice. His chairman’s voice. As if the world should shudder and bow to his directive.
“Well, fuck you, Daddy.”
The unknown man’s shoulders stiffened. Her father looked up at her through leaden eyes.
“You just insulted a superior officer,” he said. “Not only a superior officer, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I could have you arrested and disciplined for insubordination.”
“No, I didn’t do any of that,” she said. “This is just a daughter telling her father he can go fuck himself.”
“That what they teach you in Ranger school?”
“You wouldn’t know, would you, slick sleeve?”
Slick sleeve was the derogatory name for someone without a Ranger tab on the left shoulder sleeve.
She watched his eyes go dark before he spoke.
“This man is my Judge Advocate General. My lawyer. I’m signing my will. You are not in it. Thanks to all of the negative media attention you brought me with this stupid Operation Groomsman, I’ve had to hire private attorneys who cost a fortune.”
“Some stupid operation? That stupid operation killed innocent civilians who just wanted to get married,” Cassie said. “And you set me up!”
“Oh, please don’t tell me I raised a daughter who for one second believes anyone in the Middle East is innocent of anything,” snapped General Bagwell. “And set you up? Whatever are you talking about, Cassie? We haven’t talked since before you deployed.”
Cassie seethed. He had his built-in deniability with the burner phone, and she had spoken over the tactical phone in her headquarters. There was no log of phone calls. There was nothing she could prove. But she knew in her heart that her father had established the liaison for some reason.
“Fine. You can deny it,” Cassie said. Her voice was soft and steady. “How about this? You let two men try to rape me and then tell me not to report it? How’s that sound, Mister JAG.” She poked the colonel on the shoulder and then turned and hustled past the same staff and chefs and aides and guards barely outracing her father’s shout of “Out of my house, now!”
Two years ago. Not a word since.
Now, standing on the rock ledge with Jake Mahegan, she knew exactly what she was doing.
Because she knew why her father had directed her to meet with clandestine French agent Yves Dupree when she was in Mosul four years ago the day of Operation Groomsman.
* * *
Mahegan looked at Cassie, who appeared deep in thought.
“Snap out of whatever it is you’re thinking about. You’re leading the way here since you’re the expert at this.”
“Never said I was an expert.” Cassie smiled. “Just said I like it.”
She spread her arms and her wingsuit ruffled with the slight breeze that was pouring down over the lip of the cliff. She stepped forward and did a slow motion fall face-first over the cliff.
Mahegan followed her, spreading his considerable wingspan. Her boyfriend’s wingsuit was slightly smaller than what he hoped for, but he had to work with what she had. Having never used a wingsuit before, he found his first few seconds of flight cumbersome and frankly, nearly out of control. Mahegan was a big man and he wasn’t certain that these flying squirrel suits were ample enough to lift someone six and a half feet tall and 240 pounds.
Mahegan calculated that he needed to keep his forward velocity greater than his downward velocity. For every yard he dropped, he wanted to do at least two yards forward. He spread his legs and his arms as wide as they could go. He opened his fingertips and turned his palms into the slipstream, attempting to have them act like the flaps on an airplane that provide lift.
He stabilized after a few seconds and found himself hurtling in a straight line across the valley toward the mine shaft opening. Cassie was a spec in front of him, diving and twisting along the terrain that Mahegan was so close to colliding with. He flipped forty-five degrees to turn away from the lip of a ridge that had tall pines poking into the sky like spears on a redoubt. Pine needles brushed his face with the smell of sap. His wingsuit scraped against the spindly branches.
Tilting back toward Cassie’s path, he had some clearance. The velocity with which he was falling or flying, he wasn’t sure which, created a windstream that caused his eyes to tear. He felt the drops streaming across his cheeks, reminding him of hanging out the door of a transport aircraft as a jumpmaster was about to send sixty paratroopers from the rear cargo doors of a C-130 aircraft in combat.
He and Cassie had discussed landing only briefly. It was intuitive to him that he needed to angle almost straight up to get maximum wind resistance to slow his movement to an acceptable level such that he wouldn’t break every bone in his body. As he calculated his landing, they passed over a creek that shined with the rising moon in that instant between twilight ending and the onset of full dark. Several canoes were overturned and bunched together. The circular outline of the gravel drive that serviced the cabins and their inhabitants slipped beneath him. Briefly he thought of the irony that an old Bible camp might now house jihadist terrorists fighting in the name of Islam.
The far mountain wall drew close quickly. It loomed large and ominous ahead. Cassie flared upward at a seventy-degree angle. There was nowhere to glide for a soft landing. The face of the mountain ended abruptly at the valley floor, almost in a perfect ninety-degree angle. Cassie floated toward the mine shaft opening, now not visible at all, looking like a large bird, gliding effortlessly, hunting prey, looking for the evening kill.
He, on the other hand, looked like a B-1 bomber that had taken shrapnel and was attempting an emergency landing. He was now barely above the trees. These were oaks, birches, and maples. Mountain trees in the valley. Cassie spread her entire suit as wide as she could get it and then inexplicably fell into a delta dive, like a hawk speeding toward a rabbit.
Then she disappeared.
She was either a messy wet spot on the side of the mountain, or she had found the mine shaft.
He followed suit. Slowed as much as possible, lost a lot of altitude, his boots raking the tops of trees, which helped him slow even more. Without warning, Cassie’s landing zone appeared.
There was a wide gravel road that angled into the mine shaft from both directions, forming an inverted Y of sorts. The entry to the shaft was at least fifty yards long, hidden by the tall trees. Mahegan dove toward the ground, as Cassie had done, and felt the ground rushing toward him. Instinctively, he spread his legs and arms, gathering as much air as possible, as if he were parachuting. He slowed some more, felt the gravel, knew he was low enough not to slam into the side of the mountain, then collapsed his arms and legs until he felt his feet hit the ground. He tried to run in order to keep up with his velocity, but his mass was too much. He tumbled over his head twice and then stood up, stumbled some, found a rock pile, and rolled toward that as he unzipped his wingsuit.
All combat was the same. Only the methods of entry changed. And the first rule of combat was to put your weapon into operation immediately. As he stepped out of
the wingsuit, he had the AR-15 up and scanning at the ready. Noiselessly, he wadded up the wingsuit and collapsed it into its self-contained nylon pouch. He stuffed that in the bottom of the small backpack, moving the grenades to the top as he kept the AR-15 up and scanning.
Their plan had been to link up at the mouth of the mine shaft. He didn’t immediately see Cassie, which didn’t necessarily concern him right away. She was an Army Ranger, so that counted for something in his book. He felt a pebble strike his boot and heard another land against the rock he was using as cover.
Cassie was huddled on the outside of the mine shaft opening on the far side from his location. She was maybe twenty yards away from him. Two guards had come running out of the mine shaft, perhaps having heard his less than perfect landing. The guards stayed together and began searching in his direction, walking directly at him. He didn’t notice any unnatural protrusions from their heads or helmets and guessed that they were not using night vision goggles. Retrieving his knife, he prepared for their advance. The goal was to kill or disable them without their shooting a weapon, alerting the others. It would be a tough challenge, given there were two of them and one of him.
One guard walked past him within three feet, less than a yard even. He could smell the man’s sweat. The other guard was still on the opposite side of the rock.
“What did you hear?” one man said in an Arabic accent.
“Rocks,” the other man replied.
As the lead man turned his head to the right, away from Mahegan, Mahegan leapt up and grabbed the chin of the guard as he jammed the knife through the man’s neck. He immediately wheeled in preparation to first defend against the second guard and then attack to disable. He wanted one man to answer his questions, and since they both spoke some English, it gave him hope that he could get some answers.
Mahegan turned to find the man on his knees, his head hung low as if he were praying, and Cassie Bagwell sticking a knife in his throat.
He would not be questioning either of these men.
“Let’s grab the weapons and ammo and get in the mine shaft,” Mahegan said. They inspected their respective kills and came away with two pistols, two assault rifles, and several magazines of both kinds of ammunition. Their commander had decided to up-arm the guards tonight based upon the skirmish earlier today, Mahegan presumed.
“Follow me,” Mahegan said.
He stepped into the mine shaft and turned on the flashlight on the rail of his AR-15, which he held at arm’s distance in case someone decided to shoot at the light. He swept it in an arc, studying the shaft. An old rail line ran down the middle with about five yards of uneven terrain on either side. The shaft was at least fifteen feet high in most places. As they walked on either side of the centerline rail, Mahegan shined the flashlight on several large alcoves off the main shaft. In one was an assortment of assault rifles and green metal ammunition containers. An ammo bunker. While important and interesting, he wasn’t looking for weapons and ammo. He needed to find his teammates. Another alcove contained a lacquered wooden canoe, probably used on the river that cut through the base camp, a remnant of the Bible camp. It sat perched atop a boat trailer. Again, interesting, but not germane unless it could offer them a way out of the base camp.
After walking about one hundred yards by Mahegan’s pace count, he found what he was looking for: a door that was no more than a set of steel bars.
“Watch my back,” Mahegan said.
He used the keys he had removed from the guard he had just killed. After unlocking the steel bars, he walked ten yards into the alcove and saw O’Malley and Owens hanging from shackles, looking like slaves awaiting purchase or punishment, or both.
He went out to Cassie, reached in her rucksack, and retrieved a small hatchet.
“Come inside the door and guard in both directions,” he said.
“What did you find?”
“Two of my friends. We’ll keep searching, but I want to free them up,” Mahegan said.
O’Malley and Owens were unconscious. They were probably dehydrated and weak from no food. He felt the men’s necks for a pulse and got weak ones. He chopped the chains around O’Malley’s wrists as he held the bearded man with one arm so he didn’t fall forward. Then he chopped the chains securing the man’s ankles. O’Malley was completely free. Mahegan removed a water bottle from his cargo pocket and held it to O’Malley’s mouth. He coughed and spit, but he awoke.
“Here, drink this,” Mahegan said to O’Malley.
He repeated the process with Owens. Chopped the chains holding the wrists. Chopped the chains holding the ankles. Poured water on his head. Made him drink. When both men were mildly coherent, Mahegan tapped them both lightly in the face.
“It’s me, Jake. I’m here to get you out. I’ve got a rifle for each of you, and we’re probably going to have to fight our way out.”
Both men nodded. They were pale and gaunt. Their shoulders were probably separated from hanging from shackles for days. But he needed them to fight as he knew they could. Cassie found the key to unlock the shackles and removed them quickly before returning to her post.
“Noise,” Cassie said.
“Let’s go, guys,” Mahegan said, helping his two friends to their feet.
“Jake, man.” It was all Owens could say. Owens’s eyes were wide and wild, like he thought he might die any second at the hands of the men who had been torturing him.
It took a few minutes for the men to orient themselves, but Mahegan would rather risk the time to have them halfway healthy. He knew that Owens and O’Malley at 50 percent was twice as good as any half-baked Syrian terrorist.
“More noises from the mouth of the mine shaft,” Cassie said.
“You guys good?” Mahegan said to his two friends.
“We’re half naked. Pants don’t fit. Barefooted. And an AR-15 piece of shit with two mags of ammo? Why don’t we just fix bayonets?” Owens said.
“Yeah, you’re ready. Let’s go,” Mahegan said. He smiled inwardly, glad his friends were alive.
“Cassie, you take rear security. I’ll get us to the next prison cell. Patch and Sean, you guys stay in the middle and don’t shoot anything unless I say,” Mahegan said.
He had little time to get the remaining captives: General Savage and Cassie’s parents, at a minimum. He used the rail-mounted Maglite to find his path in the pitch-black tunnel. Walking along the centerline railroad track with the AR-15 in one hand and the small hatchet in the other, he felt Patch Owens’s hand grabbing his shirt, and he was sure that Sean O’Malley was clasping Owens’s shoulder or belt. It was their standard protocol when operating in extremis in blackout conditions. He could also hear voices speaking in Arabic near the mouth of the mine shaft.
The light caught a wooden box in the distance. He slowed his movement and felt his teammates slow with him. No one said anything. They knew better. Mahegan was in charge. The enemy was 150 yards away, at a maximum, and every second counted. They walked along the rail line that most likely fed railcars into the bowels of the shaft during the mining heydays. Mahegan could visualize the pit ponies back in the mid-nineteenth century pulling the car loaded with gold, mica, smoky quartz, or even rubies. As he walked there was a faint gurgling in the distance, but before he could process that information, another set of iron bars appeared to his right.
Mahegan shined his flashlight inside the dank prison cell. A naked man was staked to the wall in much the same fashion that O’Malley and Owens had been. Mahegan quickly used the hatchet to chop through the chain—bound by a heavy gauge lock—securing the door.
“Secure the door. Watch my back,” Mahegan said to his newly formed team. He entered the small cave. It was a cutout from the main tunnel, as if miners had dug twenty yards into the wall of the mountain and, finding no gold, decided to stop.
At the end, hanging by shackles, was a gaunt and badly beaten Major General Bob Savage. His gray hair, typically bristles, was longer than normal. He showed at least a three-day gr
owth of beard. Looking almost Biblical hanging from the wall, Savage had been brutally beaten, tortured, by someone looking for information. Savage knew many of the nation’s secrets, but Mahegan was certain that if there was one person the country could count on to protect classified information, it was Savage, no matter the pain.
And there had been pain.
Mahegan washed the light over Savage’s mangled body. Bruises along the rib cage indicated beatings. A bamboo shoot three inches long sticking from Savage’s middle finger on his right hand indicated brutal torture. The shoot was stained black with dried blood. The light showed deep bruises on his face along with one-inch knife cuts, some appearing deep.
Before Mahegan moved farther into the cave, he shone the light along the floor, seeing a few dried water bottles, days old. He figured the guards had drunk those, not Savage. He shone the light high and caught the glint of a wire reflecting back at him. The wire led to a small camera aimed at Savage. He must have missed the camera in the cell that held O’Malley and Owens, if there had been one.
Knowing now he had no time to spare, he reached up and disabled the camera by removing it from the nail that held it in place. He recognized it as a Mini Tiny Spy closed-circuit camera. Most likely there were others in the mine shaft, so he considered their position burned.
“Patch, Sean, need some help,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He turned back around, looked at his former boss, and said to his blank face with closed eyes, “This is going to hurt.” Knowing his former boss was in immense pain, he needed to remove the torture devices and try to cleanse Savage’s wounds. Mahegan grabbed Savage’s hand and pulled out the bamboo shoot from beneath the fingernail. Mahegan felt it scrape as it gave way and was free of Savage’s hand. Some blood came with the shoot, but Savage’s body remained limp and unresponsive other than a slight shrug as he autonomously reacted to the pain.