Double Crossfire

by Anthony J. Tata

  The car was still running as she slid across the hood and into the driver’s seat. She racked the seat forward and shifted into gear. Then stopped.

  She saw an iPhone charging in the center console. Unplugging it, she raced around the front, found the deputy wallowing on the ground, and slammed her knee into his back. She wrenched his right arm behind him, causing him to wail with pain.

  “Damnit, bitch!”

  “Second time someone’s called me a bitch tonight, Officer. I’m getting pissed off,” Cassie said.

  She pressed his thumb against the iPhone home button and the screen came to life. With her free hand, she slammed the deputy’s face into the concrete for good measure, then grabbed the medical cooler and retraced her steps into the vehicle. It was a Dodge Charger Pursuit, with an oversized engine for the smaller frame. The engine roared as she raced south toward High Point and then, hopefully, Moore County, where she could link up with General Savage. Dobbins had left the lights on and the rack continued to spin. She sped past two oncoming cop cars, which were doing the same speed, only in the opposite direction. The closer she traveled to Moore County, the more familiar the terrain and transportation network. The police radio in the car migrated from frequent calls describing her attack on Dobbins and the direction in which she was last moving to the occasional “dummy” call to make her believe they had lost her trail. What Cassie knew was that the police had switched to an alternate form of communication and now had two men giving breathless updates. “We’ve lost her . . . No further sighting . . . Focus on Dobbins. . . She’ll turn up somewhere . . .”

  Then, as she sped south on Interstate 74, a police helicopter swooped across her field of view, closer than fifty yards from the cop car windshield. Blue lights appeared in all four cardinal directions as she approached Route 27, her key exit from the interstate. Knowing she needed to go east toward General Savage’s Vass compound, she instead turned a sharp right onto Route 27, which paralleled Uwharrie National Forest, familiar terrain. She found a gravel road to the south and drove a half a mile into the dense terrain. She saw the land navigation sign, indiscernible to 99 percent of the people passing it, but something she knew Jake would recognize. It was a foot-wide piece of camouflaged wood nailed to a tree. The starting point for the orienteering phase of the Special Forces’ selection course.

  Towering hardwoods provided double and triple canopy, blocking any moonlight or starlight, but less so the invasive sensors of thermal and infrared cameras. Doubtless that the police had the equivalent of the Army’s “blue force tracker,” Cassie needed to get as far away from the police vehicle as she could.

  The car spit gravel and fishtailed perpendicular to the road as she slammed on the brakes. Scooping up the medical cooler, the cop’s iPhone, a shotgun, and pistol, she ensured the interior light was off and then bolted from the car. Helicopter blades chopped the air above the forest in the distance. Sirens wailed in surround sound from every direction. Counting her pace, Cassie darted into the brush.

  And dogs barked.

  They had been lying in wait, had known her destination. It was a fifty-fifty call whether to have trusted Dobbins or not. She had acted on instinct. Hyperventilating, she let her eyes adjust to the darkness as she crouched next to a large oak tree, listening to the sounds of the forest. Squirrels rustled in nests. A black bear growled in the distance. Owls synchronized their nightly kill.

  She picked along a trail that led to the east. Branches slapped her in the face, as if punishing her for her decision to evade the police. But what else could she do? Whom could she trust? She found another large tree and leaned against it, took a few deep breaths and kicked at the tree. Her emotions raged unlike they had in a long time, if ever.

  Cassie was 274 paces away from the police cruiser she had abandoned. She needed what was in the cooler, so she leaned the shotgun against the tree and removed the cooler from her torso. She slid her back down the base of the tree . . . and promptly fell backward into a hollow, landing in a soft pile of leaves and loose dirt and other things she didn’t want to imagine. She scrambled to her feet and snared the shotgun, wild-eyed and feral, leaving the medical cooler in the peat for the moment.

  A deep voice said, “We’ve got night vision goggles. We know exactly where you are. Lose the shotgun and the pistol. Now.”

  Every tree looked like a potential assailant. The leaves rustled as the man, no doubt, shifted his position to avoid a random shotgun blast. Nonetheless, she uncharacteristically fired, randomly and at will. Typically, she was precise and measured in her aim and fire. But something was coursing through her veins, pumping up her adrenaline, putting her on the border of rage.

  Her heart was a war drum beating in her chest, pushing latent poison from her last shot at the Valley Trauma Center through her veins. Short, raspy breaths escaped her mouth. She reached into the medical cooler, releasing cool air, risking degrading the contents inside, changed her mind, and rezipped the cooler, her fingers trembling as she did so.

  Then she retrieved the stolen mobile phone and texted Mahegan: Lane Charlie-274 paces-southeast firebreak.

  Boom. Boom. Boom. The shotgun’s loud report echoed through the night.

  A different man’s voice. This one from behind her said, “Now, Cassie, we don’t want to hurt you, but we can.”

  The helicopter had not been chasing her, she guessed. It had dropped off a SWAT team to corral her. But these voices sounded . . . familiar. Not in the way that she might know them, but in their vernacular. They were military, or at least former military.

  “You should have gone with Dobbins. Now you’ve got the entire state of North Carolina looking for you,” a third voice said.

  Her head whipped around. When she turned, her foot knocked the medical cooler into the hollow. Instinctively, she raised the shotgun, aiming at nothing in particular.

  Boom. Boom.

  A pistol fired, her back burned, and she fell to the ground, knowing one of the men had just fired Taser talons into her. The voltage was high, and she bucked, clutching the weapons, fired a couple of shots, heard the men scrambling, felt the men on her. She was unable to resist their removal of the weapons from her hands and the ultimate flex-cuffing. Absently, a voice in her mind was reminding her of the medical cooler with less than forty-eight hours of chill remaining. As she struggled and kicked, the deep recess of her mind, which only a short time ago controlled her thoughts and emotions, registered a number: 274.

  A large man lifted her over his shoulder as if carrying a bag of cement at a construction site.

  “We’ve got her,” the man said.

  The helicopter landed on the firebreak, its blades barely clearing the trees on either side. Someone strapped her to the canvas bench seat of a Little Bird aircraft, which powered up, gained altitude, and sped away from the swirling blue lights.

  At some point, she felt a needle prick her skin. Her mind continued to ping 274, 274, 274. Then she blacked out.

  CHAPTER 6

  JAKE MAHEGAN WAS IN HIS OWN PREDICAMENT AFTER MANAGING TO field Cassie’s earlier call.

  “Stay alive. I’ll find you,” he had said. His eyes never left the window, where the shadow had crossed only moments before. He punched off the call and used his left hand to slide the new government-issued, encrypted smartphone in his back pocket. In his dominant right hand, he held his customary Sig Sauer Tribal 9 mm pistol. He was standing in the hallway of the nondescript brick rambler that sat on two hundred acres of premium horse country.

  “Squirter toward the backyard,” he said to Patch Owens, his best friend and teammate.

  Mahegan was dressed in a long-sleeved dark shirt that stretched across his massive, cut torso, over black cargo pants and Doc Martens. He carried a night vision monocle on a lanyard around his neck, a clip-on holster for his overused Tribal pistol on his hip, and a Blackhawk special-operations knife on his ankle.

  The only differing feature between Mahegan and Owens was that at six-two Owens was a
bout four inches shorter than Mahegan. Otherwise, they dressed the same, carried the same equipment, and operated in the same professional manner. Eye contact, whispers, hand and arm signals. Like a basketball team that knew when to do the behind-the-back pass or the alley-oop.

  “Roger that,” Owens whispered. He slipped soundlessly toward the door off the den, which opened onto the deck, as Mahegan continued to close on the open bedroom door. The furnishings were sparse and Mahegan wondered what Biagatti truly did out here. There was a kitchen table, a sofa, an outdated large-screen television, and some partially filled bookcases.

  Mahegan fired at a woman who stepped out from the master bathroom, catching the intruder with a double tap to the chest. A movement from beneath the bed preceded a random spray of bullets at ankle height. Mahegan dove and slid to the side of the bed, firing beneath it as a second woman attempted to crawl from the far side.

  Two dead. Both women.

  He stood in the middle of a dark bedroom, assessing the obvious signs of slaughter surrounding him. Blood was splattered on the wall across from the bed like an artist’s contemporary painting. Rumpled sheets on the floor indicated an attempt at a quick escape or a struggle in the bed. He spun, holding his shooter’s stance, breathing hard through his nose as he once did as a high school wrestling champion.

  The floodlights outside hummed and painted the wooded backyard with prison yard–quality illumination. But whatever had happened in CIA Director Carmen Biagatti’s Fauquier County hunting-and-fishing cabin near Hume, Virginia, couldn’t be helped by lights. Two of the director’s security detail were dead. The assailants had attempted to enter the safe room, but had proven unsuccessful at securing their ultimate objective. Mahegan and his team had been responsible for the Harmony Church safe house twenty miles from here when the call came that her compound had been compromised.

  A faint shuffling whispered behind him. He spun, pistol ready. Curtains fluttered inward. The moon cast a dim glow through the open window. A haze of gunpowder hung in the air, but it drifted slowly toward the gap, a ghost fleeing the scene.

  Five bodies now littered the floor, two personal security detail members for Director Biagatti and two attackers. One of the security detail had a bullet to the forehead; the other had a double tap to the heart, made evident by the blossoming crimson flower on his black tactical shirt. A third man was slumped against the vault door of the safe room. The two assailants, both women, were lying inert, dead, on the floor. Mahegan knew he had winged the fleeing assailant.

  He spun the dial to the safe room vault door and found the steely-eyed director of the Central Intelligence Agency aiming a Glock 19 at him.

  “It’s me, don’t shoot,” he said, keeping the heavy metal door between him and Biagatti.

  “How do I know there’s not someone with a pistol to your head telling you what to do?”

  “Director, does that make any sense at all?”

  She sighed, lowered the weapon, and Mahegan entered the vault.

  “We need to move, Director.”

  Biagatti deflated.

  “Damn. Why would someone want to kill me?” she asked.

  “I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question,” Mahegan said.

  She was a lean woman, with gray hair and ice-blue eyes. A career CIA employee, she had been an analyst and an operator. Married and divorced twice, she now lived alone and was simply dedicated to her work, all day, every day. The nation demanded it and she led the most able spy organization in the world, except perhaps for Mossad.

  Wearing dark slacks atop New Balance running shoes, and a long-sleeved dress shirt, Biagatti appeared able to hold her own in a street fight. Her face was narrow, like a greyhound’s, and she had an angular nose and thin lips. Her hair was stylishly cut to her shoulders. She holstered her weapon on her hip. Originally from Belleville, Illinois, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, Biagatti was the daughter of two schoolteachers. Her father had been a high school baseball coach. Of modest means, she had put herself through college at Ball State, where she dual-majored in criminal justice and international relations. She started early with the CIA with an internship that provided the hoped-for job interview follow-up. Mostly an analyst, she did have some field time as an operator, working the black sites in various countries surrounding Afghanistan and Iraq. Two years ago, her confirmation had passed by one vote.

  “My intel has it that all CIA security teams are now considered suspect due to Resistance infiltration,” Mahegan said.

  “All? That’s a stretch, don’t you think?”

  “If you’re admitting that you believe some are, which shall we choose from then? I’ll let you pick, but this is why Savage delivered me and my team here.”

  “I agreed with Bob to have you and your men provide my security until such time that it makes sense to switch back.”

  Mahegan nodded and said, “Need to move.” Then to Owens, “Patch, anything?”

  “Nothing. I’m monitoring.” They were speaking through wireless encrypted earbuds.

  “Meet us at the elevator now.”

  “Roger,” Owens said.

  “Okay. Where are we going?” Biagatti asked. She seemed unfazed by the recent attempt on her life.

  “You know where.”

  As Owens jogged down the hallway in Mahegan’s periphery, Biagatti drew her pistol like a Dodge City gunslinger. Mahegan swatted her arm as the Walther boomed in the hallway.

  “He’s friendly!”

  “Damnit, Jake, tell me this shit, will you?” Biagatti said, stepping back.

  Owens kept jogging and stopped next to Mahegan, saying, “No worries, she would have missed.”

  “Like hell,” Biagatti said.

  “Okay, Patch, you take our vehicle back to Harmony Church. I’m taking the director to CIA headquarters,” Mahegan said.

  “Roger,” Owens said.

  Owens sped back down the hallway while Mahegan and Biagatti stepped into the safe room, where Mahegan inserted a key into the wall and pressed a button on the back wall, which doubled as an elevator. They entered the small, enclosed space and the room lowered exactly as an elevator would, the length of descent taking a full thirty seconds. The doors opened with a snap. They stepped into a brightly lit tunnel complex, where an up-armored Porsche Panamera Turbo Sport Turismo, a car that cost just south of $500,000 with all of its passive and active protective features, waited.

  Mahegan opened the rear door for the director, who said, “Fuck that, Jake. I’m riding up front with you.”

  She opened and closed her own door as Mahegan sped around to the driver’s side and entered, pushing the electronic button all the way to the back to make room for his legs and large frame. He pushed some buttons on the touch screen. Three camera feeds showed them the three different exits from the hillside retreat. Guarding the primary exit was an appliance repair panel van that Mahegan and Owens had detected as they were en route to Biagatti’s call for help.

  The other two exits appeared clear, though they were rougher trails, not the most suitable for the Panamera, which was primarily a road vehicle.

  “We’ll take the back way and should be at Langley within forty-five minutes,” Mahegan said.

  “Whatever works, Jake,” Biagatti said.

  “Roger that.”

  Mahegan pressed some buttons on the touch screen, which opened the rear door. He spun the race car around and the wide tires boiled with smoke as the Porsche leapt onto the gravel trail. The first quarter mile was always the most dangerous when relocating from a known fixed location. The enemy had days, weeks, months, if not years, to recon the location. While off the grid, and not well known that the cabin belonged to Biagatti—it was held under a defense contractor limited-liability company—information today was readily available to someone who earnestly sought it.

  The rear exit was concealed well enough, though. Vines and tree branches slapped at the Porsche as Mahegan navigated the winding road. The headlights cut a bright path into
the black night. The canopy of the forest blocked any starlight or moonlight. A deer darted across the road at the last second, unsure what the light might mean. Mahegan loved all animals and jerked the steering wheel slightly to avoid the whitetail.

  “Just a damn deer!” Biagatti shouted. The car narrowly missed a large oak on her side of the road.

  “I’ve got it,” Mahegan said.

  He knew that if there was one ambush location, it was about two hundred meters ahead, a near U-turn that required him to slow considerably and turn back toward the east, climbing out of a small valley.

  The Porsche splashed through a small stream, the nose scraping against the far side, but the powerful vehicle pushed through and began climbing. Mahegan shut off the lights and switched on the thermal sights, which allowed him to navigate through the green haze. And to see the two-person ambush team holding rocket-propelled grenade launchers to their shoulders.

  Mahegan slipped a helmet on, popped the eye tracker in front of his right eye, and then pushed a button that caused the M230 chain gun, the same weapon on an Apache helicopter, to elevate from its well above the right wheel. Mahegan swiveled his head a couple of times and watched the weapon track with his movements.

  Looking at the team of two, he thumbed a button on the steering wheel. The chain gun spat a large 30 mm round at over six hundred a minute. He kept his eye fixed on the ambush team’s location, which was exploding under the fusillade of lethal ammunition. Mahegan kept the Porsche moving, hit the turn, and spun up the hill.