by A. J Tata
“This is no coincidence that your parents have been kidnapped by the same people that captured these three,” Mahegan said to Cassie.
“When were you going to get around to that little tidbit of insignificant intelligence, Mahegan?” Savage barked.
Mahegan looked at his former boss, huddled in the space blanket, shivering but tough as nails.
“Was too busy thinking in the present saving your precious asses,” Mahegan snapped back.
O’Malley and Owens both sarcastically said, “Thanks, bro, you’re the best. I mean, we love you, man.” Then they did knuckle punches with eyes cast downward in mock deference to Mahegan, who smiled.
“Yeah, I can go tack your asses back up on that wall,” he said.
“What have you done for me lately?” Owens said.
“You guys never change,” Savage said.
“Yeah we do, boss. It’s just been a while,” Mahegan said. “We’re onto something here. Bagwell tells Cassie to meet Dupree. Dupree gives Cassie bogus intel, but it is corroborated by an actual phone and an actual voice recording where we got a match. You make the call,” Mahegan said, pointing at Savage.
“Actually, I turned to Alex and she said, ‘Valid target,’” Savage said.
“Right, but who did they want to kill? Fatima? Who was Fatima marrying?” Mahegan asked. “That seems like a more likely target, or someone else in the wedding party.”
“We got it all in the investigation. She was marrying some Bulgarian guy named Malavdi something or other. And an SUV broke down before we hit the convoy. Two survivors.”
“That seems convenient,” Mahegan said. “Names?”
“Actually,” Savage said, “they were pretty big fish in the cybercrime world. We fed all that up the chain to Bagwell—”
“This thing starts and stops with General Bagwell,” Mahegan said. “He was kidnapped first.”
“A lot of things happened at once,” Cassie said, defensive.
Mahegan shook his head. “Among many, one. It’s an old Native American saying. If you want to disguise what you’re really doing, do a lot of things. If your real target is Bart Bagwell, why not kill a bunch of generals to hide that and slow down the people trying to figure out who you are and why you’re doing it.”
“About right,” Owens said.
“And this may explain what Alex wanted from me,” Mahegan said. “I knew Dupree was bad news. Had run into him a few times but didn’t know he was connected to Groomsman . . . or your father. She wanted me to confirm Dupree was in the mix.” He looked at Cassie and continued. “Somebody knows Bagwell was involved. I don’t believe your parents’ kidnapping was random. And now Alex has gone off the deep end and may be using something. One minute she’s about to freak out, then she goes upstairs and she comes down rubbing the inside of her forearm and is smooth and level. If she knows your dad was involved, we may not be able to save them.”
“I saw that,” Cassie affirmed, still shaken, but coming back to the point of the conversation. “I know.” She lowered her head.
“Would Alex want revenge on us enough to orchestrate an attack of Syrian terrorists against the homeland?”
“Alex is Syrian,” Savage said. “One night she was at the farmhouse and I heard her singing in her sleep. She was singing a Syrian lullaby. Fly, fly, dove. I asked her about it the next morning, and she defended and denied until I took her into the basement and strapped her to the lie detector I keep down there. She confessed not knowing that the damn thing doesn’t work. Said she was an orphan, dumped in Newark, New Jersey. Went to undergrad at James Madison in Virginia and then got the legal scholarship from the Army and went to UVA law school. Commissioned as a JAG, and the rest is history.”
“If she’s Syrian and we’re dealing with Syrian terrorists, there’s a chance she’s been the one coordinating all of this,” Mahegan said. “It takes a smart, diabolical mind to plan and execute everything.”
“She’s smart and diabolical,” Savage said. “But I don’t know that she’s a traitor. She is a U.S. citizen. Would she kill someone? Sure, for her reasons. But would she plan an attack on her homeland just because we killed her sister? I don’t know about that. Doubtful, but possible.”
Mahegan just realized that Savage also had no reason to know that his ex-wife, Vicki Sledge, had been murdered and that he, Jake Mahegan, was the prime murder suspect.
“You always told us to give you the straight information, General, so I’m going to give it to you straight,” Mahegan said.
“Get to it, son,” Savage said.
“Two nights ago someone shot and murdered Charles Sledge, Danny Sledge, and your ex-wife,” Mahegan said.
Savage paused.
“Okay. They have a suspect?”
“Yeah, me. The murderer used your pistol that I bought you and you were supposed to register in your name. That helicopter is coming after me because I am the number one suspect in the murder of your ex-wife.”
“You do it?” Savage asked flatly.
“No, I was dealing with some of these Syrians just like you guys were, except of course I didn’t get taken off the battlefield.”
“Damn, bro. Ouch,” Owens said.
“Well, I can only put up with so much bullshit from the general,” Mahegan said.
“You’ll put up with whatever bullshit I sling your way, son,” Savage said. “Now that’s something Alex Russell could do. She hated Vicki, and Vicki hated her. Alex wanted to taste the power, and I, unfortunately, let her. Vicki found out about it and they went after each other like two cats with one litter box.”
The timing would have been tight, but it was possible that Alex shot the Sledge family in her fugue state, then drove to Savage’s farm where he met her. She could potentially have been suffering from posttraumatic stress that sometimes created delusions and hallucinations in its most severe forms. He perhaps had seen that in Alex Russell. That Savage believed she could have murdered Vicki Sledge and her family was something. The general didn’t parse words and if he saw that in her then Mahegan believed it could be true.
He needed to find Alex as much as he needed to knock the Skunk drone out of the sky and ultimately prevent whatever the Syrians next phase threatened.
“Okay, Cassie, let’s go,” Mahegan said. “Patch, you’re in charge.”
“Thanks, bro,” Owens said with sarcasm. “Got comms?”
Mahegan paused and reached into his pocket. Cassie’s SIM card was still there in the bottom.
“This got wet, but let’s see if it works,” Mahegan said. Cassie burrowed deep into the rucksack and retrieved her phone.
“The screen is cracked,” she said. She took the SIM card and slid it into the side of the iPhone, then hit the power button. The screen flickered and died.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Keep it on,” O’Malley said. “It might come back to life.”
“Sean would know,” Mahegan said. “Tech genius.”
“Roger,” O’Malley said.
“Okay, if it doesn’t work and if we don’t come back, rally whenever we can at the COOP,” Mahegan said. “What are you guys going to communicate with?”
“Roger,” Owens replied. “Sean will figure something out. Smoke signals. Something. He’s a tech genius.”
“Smoke signals,” O’Malley reiterated.
“Well, whatever. Here’s her number,” Mahegan said. He had scribbled it on a piece of paper he found in a baggie in Cassie’s rucksack as he stuffed the phone in her cargo pocket.
Mahegan led Cassie from beneath the overhang and began climbing the terrain above, which was the lip of a forty-five-degree rock face that rose as far as he could see into the darkness. The gray granite appeared formidable, but Mahegan did not want to wander aimlessly into the SWAT team that he believed had been placed below them at the mouth of the valley that led to Asheville.
“Let me go first, Jake. I’m the climber. You can follow me. I’ll pick the safest route,” Cas
sie said.
“With one arm?”
“I’m better with one than you are with two,” she quipped. Mahegan figured he could catch her if he was behind her, so he let her lead the way. They crawled single file up the face of the mountain until they reached a plateau that afforded them a view into the opposite side of the valley where their evening had begun with the flying suit jump.
“We’re in the open here,” Cassie said.
“We need to be,” Mahegan replied. “Now you can watch my back.”
Mahegan sighted through the iron sights of the AR-15 using the ample moon and starlight. He heard the buzz of the drone as it flitted through the valley, out of sight.
Cassie lay behind her rucksack to the rear of Mahegan. He could feel her leg touching his, thigh to thigh. She had his back. The drone briefly lifted above the ridgeline to his south before it dipped again.
“The skunk is bobbing and weaving, looking for us,” Mahegan said.
“Roger,” Cassie said.
A gunshot rang out from beneath them, near the overhang they had just departed. Then a succession of others, indicating an exchange of fire. He heard shouting and then abrupt silence.
“SWAT guys. Looking for us, finding them. Hope no one was hurt.”
“Good thing we’re up here,” Cassie said with a hint of sarcasm.
“Not entirely unplanned,” Mahegan replied.
The drone appeared less than a hundred yards to the south, hovering and spinning with its eight rotors making it zip through the air like a wasp. Mahegan could see a few small, twelve-pound tactical munitions. They were lethal bombs maturing through the research and development phase, which meant that the missile had probably been capable for several years. The bean counters in the Pentagon were loath to let any technology be used in the field unless everyone in the approval chain had their asses covered completely, even though those bureaucrats would never need the weapon in combat.
The drone spun in his direction, the night optic glinting with moonlight.
“Skunk, twelve o’clock,” Mahegan whispered.
“Take the shot,” Cassie said.
Mahegan aimed low, using a three-round burst capability. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, aiming at the body of the drone. Sparks flew from one of the rotors. His shots struck metal casing. Nine bullets had to do some damage.
Still, the drone fired two rockets toward their position atop the ridge. One rocket skipped like a pebble skimmed along a lake surface and careened into the black void beyond them. The second rocket impacted just beyond Cassie, creating a buckling effect of the ledge upon which they lay. Mahegan fired three more shots at the drone, which was now teetering and spinning wildly without the synchronization of its eight blades. He thought he scored another hit. He turned when he heard Cassie’s voice. She wasn’t behind him anymore.
“Jake,” Cassie said. There was fear in her voice.
Jake spun around and saw that Cassie’s rucksack had tumbled over the edge and was hanging by a small pine stump. Cassie was below the pine stump that was poking three feet up through the shale.
“I can’t hold on long,” Cassie gasped.
Mahegan popped out his magazine, cleared his weapon, and reached it out to Cassie, whose hands were slipping from the flimsy pine. Her shoulder wound left her no choice but to let go and precariously hold on with one hand.
CHAPTER 29
ALEX RUSSELL WATCHED MAHEGAN AND CASSIE DUEL WITH THE drone. She hoped what she was watching was not a hallucination. Her PKCzeta shot had all but worn off, so she couldn’t be 100 percent certain.
The night vision goggle was up again. Mahegan was scrambling to reach an assault rifle to Cassie, who was dangling from a flimsy tree root with one hand. She scanned laterally and saw the drone was damaged but still flying with one rocket hanging from its rail. Whoever was controlling the drone was most likely watching this literal cliffhanger play out. One well-placed rocket could kill both Mahegan and Cassie, who would fall about a quarter mile into the valley below. No way she would survive that.
Alex had a few decisions to make, and all involved her pistol. Mahegan and Cassie were no more than one hundred yards from her perch. Interesting that they ended up close to her. Interesting how everything seemed to revolve around her. Tonight, the last twenty-four hours, the effort she had put into becoming a model citizen and army officer.
She wondered where Savage was. Why didn’t Cassie and Mahegan have him with them? That’s what she had wanted. Savage. He was her focus. She wanted him in every sense of the word. No one was going to stop her from making him see what she had to show him.
Alex retrieved her pistol and aimed it.
As she contemplated her shot, Ameri Assad said to her, “Just kill him.” Ameri was referencing Mahegan, of course.
Just kill him.
Three words, one less than the four that Alex Russell had uttered that had killed Fatima.
Yes, sir. Valid target.
That Ameri was able to appear tonight—right now, at this moment—was testament to the power of the memory that haunted Alex Russell. The shift from calculating lawyer to vengeful Syrian was sudden and severe. Ameri was there in full force, moving the pistol in Alex’s hand from her aim on the drone to aim at Mahegan, his back exposed as he was leaning over helping Cassie.
Just kill him.
Alex didn’t fight with Ameri, couldn’t fight her. Ameri controlled her whenever she chose. This was the moment, she presumed, that Ameri had been waiting for. While cognizant of what she was doing only because of the fading effects of the needle she had poked in her arm several hours ago, Alex felt helpless.
Just as helpless as she had been last night when she had driven to Charlotte to visit the Sledge family.
* * *
Yves Dupree paced in his office.
Gail was doing the public relations thing. With the twenty-four-hour news cycles, he had to keep feeding the beast with updates and information.
Dupree walked to one end of his tongue-and-groove oak floor, stared at the bookcase with law and finance books he’d never read, turned around, spotted the Carolina Panthers’ stadium through the floor-to-ceiling window, thought about the college game at noon today, then walked to the far wall with its credenza and assorted knickknacks.
Had he made any mistakes?
He didn’t think so. The calls to Alex Russell could be explained by his duties as the executor of Charles Sledge’s last will and testament. Those were the only weak points that the police could exploit, but so far the police hadn’t asked him a single question beyond last night’s brief session with Special Agent Oxendine, who had issues of his own. Oxendine was busy chasing Mahegan, fueled by his own jealousy of the special operations warrior.
Dupree had studied Mahegan and General Savage ever since his duties as the senior French DGSE agent on the ground in Iraq and Syria from late 2011 to 2013. Early on, though, he focused his attentions on the commander and had established a strong individual relationship with General Bart Bagwell. He regularly invited the general into the French version of a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility on the forward base in Mosul.
They became friends, as much as any two strangers thrust into combat could. The routine visits led to the random firefights while traveling to different parts of the city, which led to a camaraderie and bond that by Dupree’s calculation was simply the lonely man at the top syndrome. Who else did he have to talk to when he could enjoy the occasional cigar and cognac at Dupree’s compound? With security at the perimeters, it was just Dupree and Bagwell talking and sharing information. The French lived differently, he admitted that much. Dupree’s budget was higher than the average intelligence chief in country. The compound was an estate, heavily guarded with lots of secret entrances and exits.
“What I’d do for a good, random blow job,” Bagwell had said one night.
“Well, General, if that’s a request, I’m afraid I don’t lean in that direction, but it c
an certainly be arranged.”
“Nah, just thinking out loud,” Bagwell had said.
But Dupree knew that in the intelligence business, leverage was everything. At their next rendezvous Dupree updated the general on his assessment of the burgeoning Arab Spring, which was spot-on, he liked to think. After the usual round of booze and cigars, Bagwell went to the usual restroom in the guest bedroom off the parlor. Dupree had prepositioned two well-paid ladies in the room, and he remembered looking at his watch after forty minutes of waiting for the general. Either they had killed him, or the old man had some stamina.
He had come out of the bedroom muttering, “Sorry. Took a little longer than usual.”
Dupree had seen the glimmer in Bagwell’s eyes.
And later he had watched the video, which he saved.
Bagwell enjoyed what Dupree figured must have been his first threesome. It was an unbridled display of raw sexual release. He took very little convincing, and soon they were all three on the bed.
Turned out to be the best thousand dollars Dupree had ever invested.
When he had his idea for cashing in on the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ inability to process the flood of refugees in Damascus, an area that General Bagwell was responsible for, he had invited the general back over for a routine update.
“I have an idea,” he had told Bagwell.
“Not sure I can support that,” Bagwell had said.
“Oh, but I think you can, my friend,” Dupree had said. He showed the general the video. After an initial angry reaction, Bagwell succumbed to protecting his career once Dupree had assured him that all he needed the general to do was to make sure that his financial intelligence task force reported only to him. It was a slight organizational change but had to happen for Dupree to be successful. Bagwell made the change. Dupree set up the joint bank account to reassure Bagwell, and then cigar nights became even better as they laughed over how much their bank account was growing and enjoyed even more women—what were twenty videos when there was one video?
The laughter came to a screeching halt, though, when Dupree wanted to rotate out of Mosul and explore a private sector job with HSBC Bank, using his law and business degree credentials. Before he could leave, the Carbanak bank heist not only emptied their account but also led to the revelation of their identities by some rogue Bulgarian hackers. Bagwell had been promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now a sex video was the least of his worries.