by A. J Tata
Mahegan hefted Cassie onto his shoulder as he practically stood in the back of the cab with Cassie hugging him, as if they were slow dancing. Her head was on his neck, next to his cheek. Her lips brushed his cheek. She held on to him as tightly as she could. “Thank you,” she whispered, then passed out.
“Send me down a backboard, Oxendine,” Mahegan said.
Oxendine didn’t hesitate. “Backboard! Now!”
Soon two paramedics were sliding the backboard through the open door. Oxendine guided from the top while Mahegan slipped behind Cassie.
“You’re going to be fine,” Mahegan said to Cassie, but he wasn’t so sure. He noticed a slight spot of blood at the corner of her mouth. He was concerned she had internal injuries as the others appeared to have.
He secured two straps around her and fed her up to Oxendine and the paramedics. They moved her slowly so as to not worsen any injuries. Mahegan sensed the smell of diesel growing stronger and knew the risk of fire increased every second.
He watched Cassie’s feet disappear and heard a bucket line of paramedics passing the backboard into the ambulance.
“Fire!” someone outside the truck screamed.
Oxendine reached down and Mahegan grabbed both of his forearms as the lawman pulled him through the driver’s door. The engine exploded, and for the second time in ten minutes Mahegan flew into the median, but this time Oxendine had hugged him tight and leapt from the truck frame, deliberately aiming them at the grassy area.
Mahegan looked up and saw Oxendine on his back. The man stood and shook his head as if to loosen cobwebs.
“Damn, that was righteous,” Oxendine said.
Mahegan lifted onto his elbows enough to see the ambulance crossing the bridge toward Charlotte and hopefully the best doctor on duty.
“Where’s the trailer?”
“They offloaded Q and his team, then dropped it in a rock quarry about ten miles from here. The team’s trying to get down there. We might all be kissing our asses good-bye anytime now.”
Mahegan looked at Oxendine, something hanging in the back of his mind.
It felt strange lying in an interstate median with no cars passing him on either side. The morning sun was giving way to noon. To his left he could see the roadblock less than a half mile away, the gap for the ambulance still there.
They were ten miles from Gastonia and ten miles from Charlotte. He remembered looking up and seeing the Blackhawk carrying the container with ease. The helicopter’s max sling load was roughly 10,000 pounds. An empty shipping container weighed half of that. A fortified trailer might weigh twice that, but the Blackhawk had lifted that trailer with no problem. A fortified trailer with a nuclear missile on board would be even heavier. Still, the Blackhawk did not seem to have been laboring.
He looked at the police on the bridge. His mind flashed back to that first altercation with Alex Russell in the Uwharrie National Forest.
So tell me, Jake Mahegan, what is it that you care most about? she had asked him. He had answered her and she had said, That’s right. Teammates. JSOC. Friends. All that happy horseshit.
As recognition flashed in his mind, he turned to Oxendine and said, “Have you got anything on Alex Russell?”
“Yeah. You know her?”
“Yes. She was Savage’s JAG officer. Been acting strange,” Mahegan said.
“Real name’s Ameri Assad. She was an orphan from the Assad line of presidents or whatever they have in Syria. One of them murdered her parents and split the kids. Put one in east Syria near Iraq and another in Newark, New Jersey. Tell me, Ameri got the raw end of that deal.”
Mahegan’s mind was in high gear now. “There’s nothing in that container,” Mahegan said, pointing at the gorge where the Blackhawk had dumped it. He thought of Cassie shaking her head. She was sending him a signal. He stood and said, “Get Setz back here now. And get me a bomb specialist.”
“She’s refueling and probably dead asleep on the tarmac at Charlotte Airport,” Oxendine said.
“I’m telling you, call her. Now.”
“I need to do something first,” Oxendine said.
“Call her,” Mahegan insisted.
Oxendine squared up with him and embraced him. “I’m sorry,” Oxendine said. “I’m sorry, brother. I was wrong.”
Mahegan pushed Oxendine away and said, “Okay, great. Get Setz, the SWAT team, the bomb guy, and let’s get going.”
Oxendine stepped away and spoke into his radio. “Mahegan thinks he needs you. How soon can you be here?”
Mahegan watched Oxendine, looked to the east, and willed the helicopter to be in the air.
“Ten minutes?” Oxendine shrugged.
“Tell her she’s got five. Maybe,” Mahegan said.
“She heard you,” Oxendine said, showing him the radio. Mahegan heard the helicopter engines whining over the speakers.
“Where we going?” Oxendine asked.
“To hell, probably,” Mahegan said. But he was really thinking that he needed Owens and O’Malley, two of the best bomb guys he knew.
CHAPTER 37
ALEX RUSSELL APPROACHED THE GATE OF FORT BRAGG, NORTH Carolina. As usual on a Saturday, there was a steady stream of families and soldiers coming and going from the largest military base in the country.
Known as the home of the airborne, Fort Bragg was also home to a four-star general’s headquarters and multiple three-, two-, and one-star generals’ headquarters. The sprawling military compound had several access points from all directions. One passed by all of the drop zones such as Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, and Holland, odes to the 82nd Airborne Division’s combat jumps in World War II. Others provided access through more residential and commercial areas.
Alex chose the busiest gate nearest the high-ranking officers’ quarters to enter Fort Bragg because those military policemen were the most pressured to keep things moving along. God forbid some general’s wife has to wait in line, Alex thought.
She thought of Vicki Sledge and the look on her face before she had shot her. Priceless. While Ameri Assad was fully in charge of Alex Russell, Alex felt some satisfaction with that pull of the trigger. But it was Ameri who had decided to shoot the husband and son. Alex didn’t have that in her. Alex had fallen in love, for whatever that was worth, with General Savage about the time that Ameri began to take shape in her mind.
Now Alex/Ameri drove the Land Rover SUV with its trailer hitch pulling the fifteen-foot-long boat trailer with a canoe on top. Covering the open well of the canoe was an old gray tarp secured with quarter-inch lines woven through eyelets every two feet.
Ameri kept saying, Keep calm, keep calm, keep calm.
Alex, though, was a nervous wreck. If she had ever needed the PKCzeta shot, it was now. She wanted to get rid of that controlling bitch Ameri, and now.
But she couldn’t. Like a possessed woman, she stayed in line, pulling the trailer with a canoe from the camp.
One damn heavy-ass canoe, Ameri laughed in her head.
Alex was behind a family in a Buick Encore that she only imagined had been shut down yesterday by the virus that Gavril had uploaded to millions of cars around the country.
As the military policeman waved the family forward, he turned to Alex and waved her up next for inspection. Alex had her military ID card in her left hand. Just beneath her right hand in between the seat and the console was the same Berretta she had aimed at Mahegan three days ago and with which she had shot him this morning.
Do your best bitch resting face, Ameri said.
Alex looked at the private at the gate, who crisply saluted her.
She returned the salute and returned her hand to hover just above the pistol.
“Been canoeing, ma’am?” the private said as he flipped the identification card over and scanned it. The scanner beeped and the private frowned.
Alex’s hand lowered toward the pistol as the private scanned again.
“Yes, been canoeing, Private.”
This time the sca
nner made a different beeping sound and the private smiled.
“Daggone thing has been acting up all day. Gotta be careful in them canoes, ma’am. You have a good day,” the private said, and waved her through.
One down, one to go, Ameri said.
One of the general officer headquarters that Fort Bragg housed was the Joint Special Operations Command, the home of General Savage and the former workplace of Jake Mahegan, Patch Owens, and Sean O’Malley. Alex Russell worked there as well and still had all of her credentials to get through the second gate, which led into the compound.
Alex drove another few miles, being careful to drive at the posted speed limits, which was usually thirty-five miles per hour. She approached the gate and saw the golf-ball-looking structure that was a series of antennae and radar dishes, like a giant cell phone tower that could communicate anywhere in the world. Alex knew that inside the headquarters on any given day was a full staff of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines along with dedicated civilians.
As she nosed the Land Rover into the chute to pass through the gate, she reached for her credentials and looked up at the guard, who was a private military contractor, former unit member, and would not be easily fooled if he had been warned.
He turned toward Alex. His face showed immediate recognition of who she was, which was why she shot him through the skull. She noticed the man was wearing body armor and a helmet, so they were on some kind of alert, possibly driven by her actions. His head kicked back as the pistol bucked in her hand. Because the gate was closed, the cantilevered arm was down and the tire shredders were up. She opened the SUV door and entered the guard shack where she raised the arm and lowered the tire shredders. Then she turned and fired a bullet into the combined electronic countermeasures jammer and communications device.
Alex drove through the gate and tugged the canoe into the parking lot. She parked on the far side where she could see Pope Army Airfield. Her SUV was a good quarter mile from the headquarters and the lone vehicle parked this far away from the building. Some of the JSOC members used the parking lot to store their boats on the weekend if they were going fishing early in the morning before work or heading out for a late-afternoon ski trip. She backed the trailer in between two boats, a Skeeter bass boat and a Boston Whaler center console. Her canoe looked perfectly at home.
She stepped out of the SUV and rolled back the canvas of the canoe enough for her to see the nose of the warhead and the timer affixed to it. She punched in the code—Fatima’s wedding date, of course—and then set the timer for one hour. While Ratta had set the timer, she adjusted it to give her more time to get somewhere safe. She activated the countermeasures, as well. That would give her time to get at least thirty miles away. It was really Ameri Assad who wanted to live. Alex preferred to die, but Ameri was deriving too much joy from exacting revenge for her little sister.
She unhitched the trailer and let the tongue rest on the asphalt. Then she drove to the gate, passed through the entry she had left open, stopped, closed the gate, lifted the tire shredder, and lowered the arm. In her periphery was a Humvee, but it was unmanned. No threat. She continued through the gate with something nagging at the back of her mind.
No time to waste now.
Leaving in her wake one dead gate guard and a B61-12 nuclear warhead set to detonate in less than an hour, Alex drove to the For Sale by Owner lot on Fort Bragg. There was one young man with the high and tight haircut of a paratrooper. He was placing a sign in the windshield of a white Jeep Wrangler. Not her first choice, but it was more about availability.
“Looking for a trade?” she asked him.
He turned around and she held a pistol at his heart, then pulled the trigger. The young man slumped to the ground, dead.
Good work, Ameri told her.
She scavenged his body quickly for the car keys and his cell phone, which she would dump after making a few calls.
Alex got into the Jeep Wrangler and began driving east. Almost done, Alex. Good girl, Ameri said. You know where to go.
CHAPTER 38
MAHEGAN FELT THE AIRCRAFT SLOW AND PITCH UPWARD AS IT CAME in for a rolling landing in General Savage’s Vass, North Carolina, backyard. On the helicopter were Tommy Oxendine, Setz, and her copilot.
As they were landing, Oxendine said into his headset, “Bingo. FBI finally did something. I told them to follow that asshole Yves Dupree from UBA and they captured him and some short bald, Bulgarian guy near the train station in Uptown Charlotte. Name’s Gavril, supposedly the uncle of that guy named Malavdi.”
“We killed Malavdi and Fatima in an errant bombing in Syria. That’s what this is all about. Alex Russell’s sister was going to marry Malavdi. We killed them,” Mahegan said.
“Guy’s supposedly singing like a bird,” Oxendine said, looking at his phone, secure chat text scrolling through. Oxendine’s face darkened.
“What?” Mahegan asked.
“Oh shit.”
“No nuke in the trailer?”
“No nuke in the trailer.”
“Alex Russell has it and she’s taking it to JSOC headquarters. That’s her target.”
What do you love the most, Jake Mahegan?
“What makes you sure of that?” Oxendine asked.
“Something she said. She doesn’t care about killing a football stadium full of people. She cares about revenge on the people who killed her sister. This is all intensely personal. She’s lost her shit. Gone psychotic,” Mahegan said. “I saw it. Just didn’t realize to what magnitude.”
“What’s here at Savage’s place?” Oxendine asked.
“Maybe the rest of my team. It’s worth two minutes to find out,” he said. “While I’m in there, see if you can get a fix on Alex Russell’s SUV. She’s probably had all her stuff protected or disabled, but there’s got to be a way. Phone. Something.”
The helicopter touched down near the storm shelter doors where Mahegan had first met Alex Russell.
Instantly he knew that no one was in the shelter, but there was activity in the house. He ran up the back steps to find Savage, Owens, and O’Malley in the kitchen. Mahegan came barreling into the house with his pistol drawn, expecting to also find Alex Russell holding a pistol.
Instead, they were loading their weapons and running out the door toward him.
“Heard the chopper. Knew it had to be you,” Savage said. “Where are we going?”
“HQ. Got to be there. Patch, Sean, you guys have got to diffuse a nuke. That’s what I know.”
“No prob, bro,” Owens said. O’Malley shrugged as they jogged to the helicopter.
They boarded the aircraft and sped toward Fort Bragg, the nose pointing low and the rotors kicking out dirt and grass like a lawnmower. As they approached JSOC headquarters, a dark Land Rover was heading out of the back gate toward the high-speed road along the drop zones.
“Could be her,” Mahegan said. “Call Moore County police. Black Land Rover. Dark-haired female. Also call the base commander. Lock down the gates.”
Setz switched some dials, spoke into her mouthpiece, then came back on and said, “Communicated. Where am I going?”
“Parking lot. I’m getting comms that a gate guard was shot,” Oxendine said.
“Okay, keep talking to everyone, Oxendine. You stay on the aircraft with General Savage. I’m going on the ground with the others.”
Mahegan looked out of the open door and saw the parking lot and the fifty or so cars near the headquarters building. Then he looked to his right, across the asphalt, and saw about five boats.
“The boats,” he said, remembering the canoes from his wingsuit flight into the mine shaft.
Setz dropped them about fifty yards from the five boats. Mahegan immediately saw the low trailer with its tongue on the asphalt. On it was a canoe with a canvas covering the top.
“A million bucks says there’s a nuke in that canoe.”
“No bet here, boss,” Owens said. They jumped off the aircraft, which then pulled away into
a high hover, nosed over, and began heading west toward the last known location of the black Land Rover.
Pulling back the canvas, Mahegan looked down and said, “Better hurry.”
They had nine minutes.
CHAPTER 39
ALEX RUSSELL/AMERI ASSAD SANG, “FLY, FLY, DOVE . . .” THOUGH IT was more of a hoarse whisper sneaking past her dusty, chapped lips. Her eyes were fixed on nothing in particular as she drove through the gate of Fort Bragg back into the civilian world.
She was smart enough to know that at least by now every law enforcement agency in the state, maybe the nation, would be looking for her vehicle, so she hoped that somebody put a missile on it and destroyed it, avoiding any kind of DNA incrimination.
But she doubted that would happen, which was why she never relied upon luck. What she did rely upon was her own ingenuity. Whether it was Alex Russell longing for General Bob Savage or Ameri Assad seeking revenge for Fatima, both personalities had proven themselves to be resourceful.
Alex drove the Jeep Wrangler into Fayetteville, North Carolina, the town directly outside of the gate at Fort Bragg. She looped around on a series of roads that took her to the town of Spring Lake and then took back roads the entire way to her preplanned objective. She wasn’t surprised that she had made it this far in her plan, though she’d had moments of doubt.
There were few places where she felt safe, where she believed she could ride out a nuclear blast that would decimate JSOC headquarters, and all of Fort Bragg for that matter.
Ratta, the Syrian engineer and overall handyman, had connected the timer to the warhead and created the best antihandling device possible in the short time they had available. The canoe had a series of battery-powered infrared beams crisscrossing above the smaller catalyst bomb. Those infrared beams, if broken, would send a wireless electrical impulse to the bomb and detonate the nuclear warhead. While she couldn’t deny that Mahegan and his teammates were pros at handling crisis situations, she couldn’t see them finding a solution for this one even if they found the canoe to begin with. She was confident that an hour lead time was sufficient to reach her destination for the evening.