Direct Fire

by A. J Tata

  After tonight, Alex would will herself to visit her doctor and continue to try to erase the horrible memories of Operation Groomsman. Part of her knew that she would have fresh trauma that might tip her over the edge into complete psychosis, if she wasn’t already there. When she had learned the Mahegan snatch mission in Pinehurst had failed, she had to improvise in order to lure Jake Mahegan into her clutches. Key to the plan was removing the formidable team of Mahegan, Owens, and O’Malley. Zakir and his men had brutally tortured General Savage for good reason, harming him physically and psychologically. Alex’s love and respect for the man, though, only grew as she received the reports of the beatings he endured for forty-eight hours. Cassie arriving on the scene had been a surprise, but Alex had adapted.

  She thought about all the players involved in Operation Groomsman: General Bagwell had Yves Dupree plant the phone in Fatima’s SUV at a checkpoint. Dupree provided the intelligence to Cassie Bagwell when he was operating as a field agent for the DGSE in Syria. Cassie had passed the intelligence to Savage’s team. Savage had the target vetted and turned to her . . . and she had confirmed.

  “Yes, sir. Valid target.”

  And her life had changed dramatically ever since.

  She had made her “destroy list,” just as snipers had their kill lists. Ameri had appeared for the first time in many years and began the gradual takeover of Alex’s psyche by having her make a destroy list. Ameri believed that she and Alex had endured unimaginable suffering, which was exactly what she wanted them to inflict on everyone in that kill chain.

  Ever since that day four years ago, Ameri had begun her slow, methodical takeover of Alex. Alex was the car and Ameri was the driver. Everyone saw the vehicle, but the tinted windows made it hard to determine who was driving. Alex emerged just enough to be believable until it was time for Ameri to take control, which she did with greater ease by the day. Like a virus that adapted to a vaccine, Ameri had found lodging in Alex’s psyche, immune to the treatments applied to mitigate her posttraumatic stress.

  With Alex Russell’s firm grip on the steering wheel and Ameri Assad’s nefarious plan unfolding, Alex/Ameri drove to a wooded area where she could securely park the Jeep Wrangler and find cover for the imminent blast.

  * * *

  Mahegan ripped the tarp off the canoe and watched O’Malley prepare to go to work on the auxiliary detonation device that would act as the catalyst for the nuclear explosion. It was a small bomb on a bigger bomb.

  “Uh-oh,” O’Malley said.

  Mahegan looked at his friend and teammate and knew that if O’Malley had concerns, they all had concerns.

  “Oh man,” Owens said.

  Mahegan’s personal mobile radio chirped. It was Savage.

  “No glory on the black SUV. Just a family heading out the back way. Nothing to do with our issue,” the general reported.

  “Roger,” Mahegan said. The Blackhawk had caught up with the vehicle in a couple of minutes. The timer showed less than four minutes until detonation.

  “Alex Russell got away,” Mahegan said. “Let’s not let her get away with this.”

  O’Malley looked over his shoulder. “Bossman, this is bad.”

  “Antihandling device?” Mahegan asked. Even though it was broad daylight, O’Malley was wearing a pair of night vision goggles that allowed him to see possible infrared beams associated with antihandling devices.

  “Sort of. There are about twenty IR triggers tacked underneath the rim of the canoe. They’re all shooting infrared beams over the detonator, which is basically a mortar shell with a timer. If I reach into the canoe to try to defuse the mortar, I’ll break a beam that will send a wireless impulse of electricity to the trigger right there and we all get vaporized.” O’Malley pointed at the trigger device affixed to the timer. Mahegan could see the time ticking down like sand through an hourglass.

  “So this is an IED. Just one with a bigger bomb.”

  “Roger,” O’Malley said. “Two bombs, actually.”

  Savage radioed in again and Mahegan answered, “Send it.” He stared at the mortar shell. It was an 81 mm explosive shell meant to deter enemy infantry in the close fight.

  “Got the bomb fixed?” Savage asked. His voice buzzed with static.

  “Working on it,” Mahegan said, thinking.

  “Fix it. I’m heading your way. Don’t want to ride the thermal.”

  “Getting close to two minutes,” Mahegan said. His left arm ached from all the abuse it had taken on the ridge. The pain made him think of Wesley Colgate, his best friend who had been blown to bits by an IED. The bomb trigger had eluded the jammers on Colgate’s vehicle because the enemy had secured American technology that was able to find gaps in the bandwidth that electrical bomb triggers could sneak through.

  But Mahegan wasn’t trying to get an electrical trigger through the bandwidth. He needed to block all of those infrared triggers from sending a miniscule electrical impulse to the receiver atop the bomb that would detonate the nuclear weapon. He needed a jammer, just like Colgate had on his vehicle that horrible night.

  “Patch, the gate has to have a jammer,” Mahegan said.

  “It does. Can control it from inside the guard shack or from inside the HQ—oh shit. Right,” Patch said.

  Mahegan and Patch ran toward the gate, a hundred yards away. They weren’t sprinters, so it took them about fifteen seconds. They saw the dead gate guard, didn’t pause, and found that Alex had destroyed the ground-based jammer with a pistol shot to its face.

  “Shit,” Patch said.

  “No time,” Mahegan said, thinking. He looked through the open door of the guard house and saw an up-armored Humvee parked with a machine gun mounted on top.

  “Colgate,” Mahegan muttered.

  “What’s Wes got to do with this, man?”

  “Everything,” Mahegan said. He burst from the guard house and ran to the Humvee. Owens followed and jumped into the passenger seat. A Duke Version 3 vehicle-mounted electronic warfare jammer, one of the best in the world, was mounted above the center console. The question was, could it overpower and neutralize the fifteen or so passive infrared switches on the canoe?

  They would have to find out.

  “One minute!” O’Malley shouted as Mahegan fired up the Humvee and raced it toward O’Malley with Owens hanging on to the side as if he were kite surfing.

  “Crank that up all the way, every bandwidth possible where we know passive infrared switches convert to voltage,” Mahegan said to Owens. “I don’t care if we shut down every phone call in Fayetteville.”

  “Same game, different location,” Owens said as he played with the dials on the big green metal box mounted in the console.

  “You good?” Mahegan asked. “Because I’m telling Sean we’ve got this.”

  “Forty-five seconds,” O’Malley said, his voice resigned to their looming fate.

  “We’re jamming everything right now. I don’t think any impulse can get from the passive infrared motion detectors to the bomb circuitry. Go, it’s a simple bomb and a complex antihandling device.”

  O’Malley handed Mahegan the night vision goggles, performed the cross, and closed his eyes as Mahegan laid his hand on his back as if to say, You die, I die, too.

  O’Malley’s hands slowly reached into the canoe. Mahegan used his free hand to hold the goggles up to his face. The beams were crossing in every direction from every aspect of the canoe. He heard the Humvee idling and thought he could almost hear the crackle of electronic waves coming from the Humvee’s jammer. The idea was to overpower the receiving antenna of the smaller bomb’s trigger device to prevent any other signals from reaching it, coded signals that would be saying, Detonate.

  Mahegan watched O’Malley’s hands dive beneath the infrared lights and then he heard the Humvee cough, felt O’Malley flinch, heard the Humvee engine humming again, didn’t hear an explosion, and saw that there were twenty seconds left for O’Malley to do a two-minute bomb defusing job.

&
nbsp; But O’Malley was a pro, and he snipped the sending wire from the detonating bomb to the nuclear warhead, lifted the mortar shell, and flung it like a football as far as he could toward the open space of the mostly empty parking lot. O’Malley, Owens, and Mahegan dove beneath the Boston Whaler sitting next to the canoe. Mahegan pulled his two friends in close. They had been tortured, starved, and beaten but had “rangered up” and joined him in the hunt to protect the nation. The least he could do was put his body in between them and the coming explosion.

  The mortar round exploded upon impact with the asphalt and sprayed deadly shrapnel in every direction. Metal fragments raked the Humvee in front of the canoe. Mahegan checked his buddies. Other than some shot nerves, everyone was still in one piece.

  “Hope that was the end of it,” Savage chirped over the radio.

  Mahegan lifted his radio and said, “Hope ain’t a method, General. But whatever you do, don’t park that aircraft near this nuke.”

  Worried about the kinetic energy from the spinning blades, Mahegan directed the helicopter to the entrance road near the guard shack. The Blackhawk landed and Mahegan, O’Malley and Owens boarded. Placing the headset on, Mahegan said, “You need to get bomb disposal, the FBI, all the nuke geniuses, everybody down there. That’s a live nuke just cooking in the sun.”

  “Roger that,” Savage said.

  “Alex Russell?” Mahegan asked.

  “No clue,” Savage said.

  Mahegan paused and then said. “That’s one whacked-out woman. I have a plan, but I need to see Cassie first.”

  Savage eyed him and said, “You got it.”

  Mahegan stared through the open door of the Blackhawk as it lifted away from the JSOC headquarters and ferried them to the hospital at Fort Bragg. Landing on the helipad, McQueary said, “We done?”

  “I think we’re solid. Good job,” Mahegan said.

  “Roger that. Looking forward to some shut-eye. You guys are impressive, man.”

  “Not nearly as you,” Mahegan said. “Take these guys to Pope to be debriefed. I’m going into the hospital. Then you’re done. Great job and thanks.”

  “Roger that, Mahegan,” Setz said.

  He looked at Oxendine and nodded. “You should go with Savage and the team here. Be part of the back brief.”

  Oxendine nodded, knowing not to question Mahegan after the last forty-eight hours of misjudgment.

  Mahegan stepped off the Blackhawk, ducked beneath the whirring blades, and walked into Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg. He found Cassie’s private room after bumping into a special operations physician’s assistant he knew. The man led him through the labyrinth of hallways to Cassie.

  He knocked, thanked the PA, heard Cassie’s voice, and stepped into the room. She was sitting on the edge of the bed pulling on her hiking Tevas. Cassie was dressed in sport gear, including running shorts, sports bra, and tank top.

  “Doing some PT?” Mahegan asked.

  Cassie looked up and smiled.

  “Can’t. I’m winged. But I am getting the hell out of here.” Cassie lifted her left arm, which was covered with a desert tan sling. “They claim I broke it when you dropped me.”

  “Dropped you?” Mahegan asked.

  Cassie stood and walked toward him. She placed her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him toward her. Leaning forward, Mahegan felt her lips brush past his face as she whispered into his ear, “Next time we’re on a mountaintop and I’m hanging from a tree branch with an armed drone shooting missiles at me and you’ve got a psycho bitch shooting a pistol at you, try to stick with me, okay?”

  Mahegan put his hands on her waist, her slung arm an awkward divider between them.

  “Deal,” he said.

  Cassie leaned back just enough to put her lips against his, kiss him fully, and then pull back.

  “Then let’s go find Alex Russell. I suspect she’s still out there.”

  Mahegan ran his hand down her spine, not wanting to break the moment, but knew that she was right. Plus, he had the bad news of her parents’ murder to pass to her. The FBI and state law enforcement had crawled over every inch of the Bible camp and found the cabin where an apparent murder–suicide had taken place.

  “What?” Cassie said. Mahegan’s eyes softened, a slight narrowing as he pondered how to deliver the news.

  “Your parents,” Mahegan said.

  Cassie slowly shook her head, muttered “No,” and fell into Mahegan’s arms. He held her like that for several minutes, felt her sob against him until she got control of herself. Warm tears slid across his bicep as she turned her head, looking away, embarrassed that an Army Ranger had a temporary display of emotion.

  “Alex did this,” Cassie said. “But he started this entire mess.”

  “Understand. They found a bank statement and connected him to a financial scam with Syrian refugees. Cartwright from the operations center updated me on the search in the mountains. It’s not pretty. While there is no way to fix what’s happened with your parents, I do have a thought about Alex,” Mahegan said. He had lost his parents in horrific fashion as well, so he understood a little bit of her agony.

  In part to change her dark thoughts to something constructive, he told her his plan regarding Alex, and she agreed.

  CHAPTER 40

  IT HAD BEEN THREE DAYS AND THE BOMB HAD NOT DETONATED. ALEX Russell was sitting on her haunches, wild eyed like a baying animal, cornered and desperate. She was in a small alcove off the tunnel leading to General Savage’s Wood Lake Mansion, which she knew better than the general knew it himself.

  After they had unhitched the canoe with the nuclear weapon, Ameri had Alex park deep in the woods behind Savage’s estate and then race to the COOP. She had spun the lock dial in broad daylight, banking that Savage and the others were consumed with chasing down the bomb.

  When she didn’t hear an explosion, she had been dumbfounded. Something had to have malfunctioned. Ameri scolded Alex. You stupid bitch. How could you fuck this up? The easiest part. Just park the nuke and drive away.

  Alex was ashamed, downtrodden. She had sulked in the COOP, pulled her hair straight out, saw her wild eyes in the mirror, pounded her fists against the wall, and began to lose all control.

  “You’re Jackknife! You can do anything!” she shouted in her empty chamber. True, she had given herself Savage’s call sign because she wanted to be like him while wanting to kill him. Oddly, like a distant, dimly lit buoy in the ocean, a realization that she had gone completely insane clanged in the far reaches of her mind. Properly chastised, though, Alex began to feel Ameri calm her down. One final mission. Can’t mess this one up, Alex. Have to complete it. Have to kill him.

  Ameri had guided Alex back toward internal composure, lowered her heart rate, and led her to the light switch. Alex had flipped the light switch in the COOP and watched the server diodes blink in the darkness. The green and red lights reminded her that she’d given Gavril and Zakir all the information necessary to navigate their way into the Zebra code, leading to the kidnapping of Savage, O’Malley, and Owens. The beginning. The opening gambit that was supposed to remove the key chess pieces from the board, providing her the freedom to maneuver and enhancing her opportunity of success.

  But Mahegan had avoided capture. He was every bit as good as advertised.

  Still, Alex and Ameri had destroyed most of the kill chain: Dupree, Savage, and General Bagwell. Dupree was in detention, caught with Gavril based on a tip she had fed to the police. General and Mrs. Bagwell were dead in the cabin, shot by Zakir, Bagwell’s own vices having undone him. Savage had been freed because of her inability to take Mahegan off that chess board. And like chess, Mahegan was the pawn that had found the eighth rank and returned not just one valuable piece to the board, but three: Savage, O’Malley, and Owens. That team was formidable, but she had still tricked them, delivered the nuke to JSOC HQs.

  While Cassie was technically in the kill chain, she was just a functionary, passing along information. Ge
neral Bagwell and Dupree had manufactured the intelligence to kill Malavdi because Malavdi, Zakir, and Gavril had emptied their bank account by accident. And while it would have been a good thing to kill Cassie, at least she was in the hospital, having survived what Alex had at the time believed would be complete destruction of the Mack truck by a missile.

  So she waited in the tunnel beneath Savage’s home, an alcove off the main tunnel that only she knew about, and one that gave her access without tipping the security cameras or passive infrared switches. They would not expect her here, not after three days. She had carried a small backpack with a knife, pistol, and enough food for several days of lying in wait.

  She was ready for whenever Savage returned home to his lair, surprised he had not come sooner. Until now, the floorboards above her head had been deathly quiet. She had become claustrophobic but persevered on her rations and water bottles. She peed in a hole she had scraped in the dirt using her knife, then covered it up to hide the ammonia smell.

  She used the K-bar knife to scrape in the dirt, the doodling of a maniacal killer. Then her knife stopped, her eyes flicked up, her mind listened, her body remained perfectly still.

  She heard the front door open and a single pair of footfalls enter the foyer and ascend the wooden steps.

  He’s home, Alex. Kill him.

  He entered the foyer. She heard him throw his keys on the antique hall stand and pause, probably checking himself out in the mirror, thinking he’d looked better.

  She heard him trudge up the steps, imagined his aging frame struggling after the abuse he’d been through. She listened for the shower but didn’t hear anything and guessed he was going straight to sleep.

  Where she wanted him.

  She heard the bed creak under his weight and then gave it a full thirty minutes. She heard no other footfalls in the house. The wind had picked up, causing the pine trees to whistle a bit. Alex looked at her watch. It was almost eleven p.m. Another five minutes. Could she wait that long? She’d waited three days, she could wait another five minutes. Just to be sure.