Double Crossfire

by Anthony J. Tata

  Directly beneath him was the sound of the slider closing. Rustling in the condo. The target possibly getting away. Then next to him was Van Dreeves bleeding on the roof.

  “Where?” he asked.

  Van Dreeves was lying on his side, eyes wide. “Neck,” he said.

  The blood was pouring profusely from his trapezoid, not his neck.

  “Through and through on your trap, VD. Your neck’s fine,” Mahegan said.

  Van Dreeves nodded and winced as Mahegan applied pressure from a wadded cloth. Hobart brought the aid bag over and patched up Van Dreeves in five seconds, enough time for Zara and her man to escape.

  Van Dreeves got to one knee and shook it off, like a wide receiver taking a big hit in a football game. Mahegan and Van Dreeves jumped onto the terrace on the east side. Hobart followed and they had their three-man stack going into the apartment. The automatic blinds were lowering in sync on each side, giving them a diminishing view of Zara grabbing a pistol and running to another part of the condo. The man had turned his back to them and was scooping up a MacBook and stuffing it into a duffel bag. Thick gray smoke was billowing from the fireplace, toward the elevator shaft as Mahegan entered, preventing Zara and her man from finding the gaping doors.

  As his team entered the condo from the terrace, shots cut through the haze. Mahegan saw movement toward a bedroom and returned fire. Hobart was to his left, along the south end, the riverside of the apartment. Van Dreeves was to his right, stepping into the kitchen, his wounded trapezoid muscle painting the white gauze red. Mahegan was in the living room, the smoke coming at him like an Iraqi sandstorm. Soon the entire place was a blanket of smoke. It was cutting both ways: blocking Zara’s withdrawal, but preventing them from finding good targets in an unfamiliar condominium.

  The floor plan they had studied briefly prior to the mission was useful. Mahegan determined that at least Zara was in the master bedroom. There was an escape through the master bath into a back hallway that led to the general-population elevators and a fire escape.

  Standing in the fog, Mahegan said, “Check fire.” He didn’t want any friendlies hurt and at the moment it was difficult to tell where his own team was located.

  The sprinklers reacted to the smoke, spraying the condo with water, reminding Mahegan of his jungle training in Panama when he walked through torrential downpours. The water doused the grenade that had kicked from the faux logs onto the floor of the living room. A sofa to his right and two chairs to his left came into view. Like darkness gives way to dawn, the receding smoke began to show the condo in full relief. Mahegan cleared onto the south terrace where there were two oxygen tanks—the ones from the CIA safe house where the president and vice president had met. He knew that Cassie had been here, but this tangible reminder made it all the more real and reminded him of the danger she was in at this very moment.

  Van Dreeves, perhaps pumped on adrenaline and pissed off about being shot, fired three quick shots toward the elevator. Mahegan moved toward the hallway adjoining the master bedroom in time to see the doorway slam shut.

  Zara was loose in the hallway. Mahegan began to pursue, but her accomplice leapt from the fog bank near the elevator and tackled him. The blind side hit had turned a defendable thrust into something he had to contend with at the moment, disrupting his momentum. Mahegan rolled to his right, found a familiar wrestling position, and used his leverage to flip his attacker on his back in the narrow hallway. He snatched his Blackhawk knife from his ankle, flipped it open, and sliced at the man’s arm.

  The hallway door opened, and Zara fired two rounds at Mahegan. Instead, she hit his attacker, who stared at Mahegan with wide, dying eyes.

  Mahegan shoved the man off him, raced into the hallway to find firefighters and building security coming his way. A haze of smoke lingered in the hallway, partially obscuring him. Zara’s footsteps echoed sharply in the fire escape across the hall.

  He pressed the Band-Aid pad and said, “Immediate pickup.”

  Returning to the condo, he found Hobart picking clean the ID, cell phone, and weapons from the man.

  “Let’s go,” Mahegan said. “Rooftop, now.”

  They filed out of the condo, found the ladder on the south side, and climbed back up to the grassy square. The MH-6 materialized and seemed not to stop as Mahegan and his two men slid seamlessly onto the bench seats. Flying low along the channel, they reversed the process and passed the baseball park before turning into Southeast Washington, DC. They landed on the soccer field and jumped into the Panamera to return to the safe house. During the drive, Mahegan tried the Band-Aid comms with Cassie, but got no response. When they pulled into the garage, Biagatti, O’Malley, and Owens met them at the door.

  “Shit show?” Biagatti asked.

  “Sort of,” Mahegan said. “We surprised them. They surprised us. We were probably clumsier than we should have been, but we got intel. VD needs you to look at his trap, Patch. Any status on Cassie?”

  They pushed past Biagatti into the living room adjacent to the study where O’Malley had established his command and control center. Owens, who had always been the team medic, placed a towel on the sofa, nudged Van Dreeves onto it, and then retrieved his aid bag. After a quick inspection of the wound, Owens said, “Shit job fixing it, whoever did it.”

  “That was me, hero,” Hobart said. “Brain surgeon couldn’t have done a better job.”

  “That’s because VD doesn’t have a brain,” Owens said.

  “Just clean it and stitch it, Patch” Mahegan said.

  “Roger, boss. Honestly, it does look bad,” Owens said. “Might want to call a chaplain.”

  “Oh, fuck you, Patch, just give me some morphine and flush it so I don’t get sepsis,” Van Dreeves said.

  Meanwhile, Biagatti had come into the living room. She stared at Van Dreeves’s messy wound and said, “He needs to go to the hospital.”

  “We’ve got it, Director. This is what we do.”

  “I don’t care what you think you can do, I’m saying he needs to go to the hospital. Walter Reed is thirty minutes from here. Ten, if you take the Little Bird.”

  “Okay, we will stabilize him first,” Mahegan said.

  “Looks stable to me,” she said.

  “Let us do our job, Director,” Mahegan said. “You focus on the big stuff.”

  Biagatti looked at Jake with a steady gaze and said, “I reserve the right to send him.” Then she walked into the kitchen and poured herself a Tito’s neat from the freezer. Mahegan turned toward Owens and whispered, “WTF,” then shrugged and said, “I’ll clean it and stitch it and we can go from there.”

  “Roger. Thanks,” Mahegan said.

  “Now that that’s settled, we’ve had no comms with Cassie since you left. What intel do we have?” O’Malley asked.

  “This,” Hobart said, dumping the wallet, cell phone, FBI badge, and pistol onto the table next to O’Malley’s computer array.

  O’Malley whistled a long, low-pitched sound. “FBI. The plot thickens.”

  “We knew there was a chance of this,” Mahegan said.

  “We did. We have one Sydney Wise, chief of counterterrorism in the FBI. And he was not there to apprehend her?”

  “Maybe to have sex is a better guess.”

  “Where is Mr. Wise now?”

  “Dead on the floor. Zara shot him. She had a clean shot on both of us and she chose him,” Mahegan said. His shirt was covered in blood and bits of flesh from the spatter. “I didn’t give her a chance for both.”

  “We’ve got a dead FBI guy in Zara’s apartment. And a major coup under way,” O’Malley said. Owens was working on Van Dreeves on the sofa. The blood was flowing, but had slowed. Biagatti watched with silent consent. The furniture could be replaced, Van Dreeves not so much.

  “We don’t have much time,” Biagatti said. “If Syd Wise was killed in Zara Perro’s apartment, then the cops have him by now. We need to track what they are doing and saying. The FBI is going to go nuclear over this.
I should call Director Clancy.”

  Melvin Clancy, a former Marine judge advocate general, was the director of the FBI. President Smart had appointed the JAG two-star general after the rampant scandals and cover-ups that ran amok during the end of the previous administration and beginning of the new one.

  “Let’s hold off on that one, Director,” Mahegan said. “I’d rather know who’s who in the zoo before we go pulling other people into this.” Then to O’Malley, “Run the phone, Sean.”

  “Roger.” O’Malley plugged the Droid into a USB cable that was connected to his computer. He tapped on the keyboard and a program began pulling the calls, texts, e-mails, photos, and other data from the phone. Biagatti floated to the adjacent room behind the sofa, where Owens was operating on Van Dreeves. The iron smell of blood permeated both rooms. Owens’s quick hands were flitting about Van Dreeves’s shoulder, cleaning, washing, flushing, stitching, and bandaging. Biagatti gazed down with a look that indicated she might be concerned about how they were going to discard the sofa. Hobart was standing toward the back of the room, staring at the array of camera feeds. Always the sentry.

  O’Malley looked over his shoulder and then at Mahegan. He began speaking in a low voice so that the others in the room across the hallway might not hear them.

  “Okay, Wise’s last several days of texts off a secure app were to someone with the username Cardinal. Wise was Lancer. I’ll read them to you.”

  O’Malley read the conversational thread aloud:

  Lancer: Relationship building going well.

  Cardinal: Keep working it. Need to know plan.

  Lancer: Roger.

  Cardinal: And then . . .

  Lancer: Getting fragments.

  Cardinal: Need entire picture.

  Lancer: Working it.

  Cardinal: Work harder. Not much time left.

  Lancer: Mission Accomplished. Congrats.

  Cardinal: Still something off. Can’t place it.

  Lancer: The Indian and his team are all over this.

  Cardinal: Kill them then. Team Artemis is up for the challenge.

  Lancer: Roger.

  Cardinal: Cassie is pinned down. Think that’s about over.

  Lancer: Tough woman. But will redirect Artemis upon BDA.

  Cardinal: Won’t last much longer now.

  “And that was the extent of their communications,” O’Malley finished. “Wise is obviously Lancer. The assassins who prosecuted the coup are Team Artemis. But who’s Cardinal?”

  Mahegan felt a thrum in the back of his mind. He worked through several different combinations of thoughts and memories, then recalled the brooch that Jamie Carter was wearing earlier today.

  “What is the state bird of Virginia?” Mahegan asked.

  “We’re into the flora and fauna now?” O’Malley smirked.

  “Look it up. I bet it’s the cardinal,” Mahegan said.

  O’Malley typed in some commands. “You’re right. And this means what?”

  “The state bird of North Carolina is also the cardinal,” Mahegan said.

  “Impressive knowledge of state birds, boss,” O’Malley said.

  “Who is the only senator to ever serve from both Virginia and North Carolina?” Mahegan asked. He was working his way through the problem verbally. “And who was wearing a cardinal pin at the swearing in?”

  “Why do we care about that? Besides, it called a brooch,” Biagatti said, walking into the study where Mahegan and O’Malley were free-associating their way through the evidence.

  O’Malley said, “But, holy shit.”

  “That’s right. Jamie Carter could be Cardinal. Perhaps she’s been calling the shots all along. But why did Zara kill Wise?”

  Mahegan tapped O’Malley on the shoulder, urging him to play along. They already knew who Cardinal was, but keeping Biagatti engaged was key.

  “Because, alive, he could give up her and her boss,” O’Malley said.

  “Or Wise was clean. Was he undercover as a Counter Terrorism guy?”

  Owens came back in, hands bloody.

  “Van Dreeves will make it,” he said.

  “That’s unfortunate,” O’Malley quipped.

  “I’m standing right here, O’Malley,” Van Dreeves said from over Owens’ shoulder.

  “Then you’ll be interested in what I have to say,” O’Malley said. “We’ve got two possibilities. First, Wise is a good guy who was manto-man coverage, so to speak, on Perro. Or he was a bad guy liaising and coordinating with her. Either way, he was communicating with someone with the code name Cardinal, who we think is Jamie Carter.”

  “She was wearing a cardinal brooch at her inauguration. The cardinal is the state bird of both North Carolina and Virginia, the two states she had been senator from. She is the one to benefit most from a hat trick of killing the top three elected officials in the country.”

  “A lot of circumstantial evidence. You’re talking about the president of the United States now. What you do know is that you saw Zara kill Wise when she had the shot on you. Why would she do that? If there’s anyone in all of this mess that stands out as an objective nonpolitical player, Jake, it’s you. You seek the truth. Justice. It has always been your way, according to Bob Savage and what I’ve seen of you for the past month. If Zara were an enemy of the state, why wouldn’t she kill you first, then Wise?”

  Mahegan ran through several options, coming up with nothing tangible other than lame thoughts, such as Zara missed or Zara had the better shot on Wise or I moved out of the way before Zara could get another shot off. But none of those rang true. The only two logical paths that were feasible were either Zara needed Wise dead and Mahegan alive so that he could continue to follow whatever clues she had left, for whatever reasons she had, or Wise was part of the Resistance and Zara wasn’t.

  Zara had run the Valley Trauma Center training camp for the assassins. Cassie was living proof. She had infiltrated that outfit and reported out. Firing ranges. Hand-to-hand combat. Adrenaline-and-testosterone cocktails, making them hyperaggressive and feral. Zara had been inside Jamie Carter’s campaign as a close personal advisor and had been photographed at Jamie’s estate in New Bern, North Carolina.

  “Sorted it out?” Biagatti asked.

  “Zara has to be dirty. She’s at the center of this,” Mahegan said.

  “Really?”

  “Valley Trauma Center,” Mahegan said.

  “Do we have any reports that Zara was actually involved in all of that?”

  “Yes. And that she shot Broome in the chest,” Mahegan said.

  Biagatti continued. “Broome, it turns out, was heavily involved in training the assassins, as well as abusing them. Is it possible she is a force for good? She killed Broome—and Wise, who, it turns out, was feeding bullshit information with just enough real information. He leaked the memorandum stating that the secretary of state was also on the list. He’s in Asia somewhere. Why would the coup take place with the secretary of state out of the country if he was a target?”

  “Perfect place to be, actually,” Mahegan said, mulling the possibility over in his mind. It didn’t feel right, but it was something to consider.

  Ignoring Biagatti’s track, Mahegan regained control of the conversation. “Let’s focus on what we know. The MacBook in Zara’s apartment was commanding and controlling the operation with the assassins. We know that Team Artemis is made up of the women that were trained at the Valley Trauma Center. I trust Cassie’s reports.”

  “She was drugged and suffering from traumatic brain injury,” Biagatti said. She looked at Van Dreeves, who was pale and sweating in the leather chair behind them. “But enough of this speculation. Jake, I want Van Dreeves taken to the hospital.”

  “Patch cleaned him up well enough,” Mahegan said. “We’ve been over this, Director.”

  “You know I outrank you by about a million levels, right?”

  “At least that.”

  “Then drop the authority issues and have two of your m
en take him to Walter Reed, where he can be seen,” she said. “Now.”

  “This is a combat environment, Director. A combat medic has treated him. In fact, two combat medics have worked on him. He’s going to be fine,” Mahegan said.

  “Mr. Owens, may I see your medical license,” Biagatti said. She held out her hand.

  “I’m combat lifesaver qualified, but I don’t carry my graduation certificate with me, Director,” Owens said.

  “Mr. Hobart?” She spun toward Hobart, still holding out her hand.

  Hobart looked at Biagatti, then at Mahegan, shrugged, and then looked out the window, always on guard.

  “Two take him to the hospital, now. That leaves two here with me, which is my normal protection detail,” she said. “And two to stand guard at the hospital.”

  “These aren’t normal times,” Mahegan said.

  “That’s why I’ve got two with Mr. Van Dreeves.”

  “It’s just Dreeves. His first name is Van,” Hobart said as if defending Van Dreeves’s honor.

  “My apologies. Now, if we’re done with the nonsense, get Van Dreeves to Walter Reed Military Hospital, now.”

  Mahegan stared at her for perhaps a second too long. Fire burned in her eyes and he wasn’t sure if it was passion for his men or something entirely else.

  “Do I need to drive them myself, Jake?”

  Without removing his eyes from Biagatti’s, he said, “Hobart, Patch, you take VD to the hospital. I’ll keep Sean here to work the intel. I’m good if the doctor stares at him for five seconds and sends you back. Get your asses back here ASAP.”

  “Little Bird okay?”

  “The quicker, the better,” Mahegan said.

  O’Malley typed in some commands and said, “Five minutes it will land at the soccer field.”

  Hobart looked at Mahegan, then at Biagatti. He ran his finger along the Band-Aid behind his ear. Mahegan got the message.

  “Hurry up, guys,” Mahegan said.

  Hobart drove with Van Dreeves in the passenger seat and Owens in the rear.

  Mahegan returned to find Biagatti standing behind O’Malley as he worked the MacBook.