Using the butt of his pistol, he struck the man with his entire force, everything his six and a half foot, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame could put into it. The man’s head lolled to the side and Mahegan immediately stepped behind him and dragged him through the door into the back parking lot.
Patch Owens, one of Mahegan’s closest friends and a former Delta Force teammate drove up in a black SUV with shaded windows. He stopped and was quickly out the door and opening the back hatch where the front-door attacker was lying prostate. Another close friend and former teammate, Sean O’Malley, was leaning over the captive, checking his pulse. With the lights from the vehicles pumping into the kitchen, Mahegan removed and stowed his NVGs in his side pocket. He hustled outside.
“Still alive,” O’Malley said.
“Cook’s shot in there,” Mahegan said. “Got to be the target.”
“I’ll grab him. What about baseball hat guy?” Cassie said as she darted back into the kitchen after dumping her prey at the rear of the SUV like a cat drops a mouse on the steps.
“No time,” Mahegan said to Cassie. Then to Owens and O’Malley, “One more than we expected.”
“Let’s load, man,” Owens said, nervous.
They loaded the other two men, O’Malley standing watch from the back seat. Cassie returned with the cook, a disheveled person wearing a white T-shirt, who was bleeding from his left arm.
“Damn, dude. WTF?” the cook said. The voice pitch was higher than Mahegan anticipated. Forced. Softer, too.
“Do what you need to do, Cassie,” Mahegan said. Cassie simultaneously shoved the cook into the SUV and placed a rag filled with chloroform over the cook’s nose. She removed a bottle of Betadyne and some gauze from an aid kit in the vehicle, flushed the wound, and wrapped the cook’s upper arm tightly. More than a flesh wound, but nothing serious.
“Sean, grab their vehicle,” Mahegan directed.
“Already got the keys,” O’Malley said. He had rummaged through their captive’s gear until he found the keys to a Buick Crossover.
He leapt out and flicked the key fob until lights flashed at the far end of the parking lot. He ran, jumped in, started the car, and pulled up behind Mahegan and team in the black SUV.
What had started as four teammates on a mission to capture two insurgents and an unknown hacker was in progress with four friendlies, three enemies, one wounded civilian, and two vehicles leaving the parking lot. The patrons spilled out of the bar and watched with shocked, curious eyes, perhaps notions of the Las Vegas massacre ringing in their ears.
Mahegan saw the stares and the cell phones to their ears, all calling 911. Some were using their phones to record.
“JackRabbitt okay?” Mahegan asked. The JackRabbit was a cell phone jammer that was blocking all calls from the immediate vicinity.
“Roger, but something got past it to shut down the grid. Look around. Nothing’s on,” Owens replied. He had both hands on the steering wheel as he pushed the SUV to ninety miles per hour.
Once Owens had the SUV a mile away, he slowed to just above the speed limit, turned onto the interstate, and raced toward their safe house in Ann Arbor. Everything they passed was completely blacked out.
“This guy stinks,” Cassie said. “Smells like onions.”
“Suck it up, Ranger,” Mahegan said. “Wound okay?”
“More than a scrape. Less than anything serious,” she said.
Mahegan nodded. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw O’Malley tracking close behind them. He noticed and gave Mahegan a thumbs up signal. They drove in silence after that, smelling the grease of the unconscious cook and the acrid aftermath of fired weapons.
Reaching the farm, Owens turned onto the dirt road and traveled all the way to the barn. Mahegan jumped out and opened the doors then closed them after Owens pulled the SUV into the brightly lit cavern. O’Malley kept the Buick outside initially.
“Patch, help Sean check the Buick for IEDs,” Mahegan directed. Then to Cassie, “Lock the cook in the friendlies cage.”
His charges executed their missions and returned in quick order.
“Vehicle’s clean. Found a briefcase with some electronics. No explosives. Sean’s going to pull it apart. He’s pulling the car in now,” Owens said. The barn doors opened, O’Malley pulled in, and then the doors closed.
The barn consisted of a high-tech command pod with satellite connections and a ten terabyte Internet drop, providing Mahegan and his team instant access to everything going on in the world and any information they needed. O’Malley, their team’s resident tech genius, had been instrumental in building out the barn to a disguised server farm. Owens had used his construction skills to build five prison cells from two by fours, iron rebar, and bricks. Each was completely soundproof if the door was sealed shut. O’Malley had added avatar and music capabilities to the interior of each ten foot by ten foot cell to enhance interrogation of the prisoners they expected to capture. He had outfitted each cell differently. One had a “window” that looked out onto the skyline of Moscow, Russia. Another had the minarets of mosques and the red tiled roofs of Tehran. The third had the drab office buildings of Pyongyang. And two others had Washington, DC and Tel Aviv backgrounds, respectively. The walls of the cells acted in the same fashion as the blue screen for the weather man. O’Malley could make each chamber look like anywhere in the world or even someone’s worst nightmare.
Originally an operating base used by the Drug Enforcement Administration to monitor trafficking from Canada, JSOC had assumed control of the property for training purposes, mostly. Because the special mission units’ training was so realistic, the facility was basically combat ready.
Mahegan opened the back to the Suburban. The three attackers they had subdued were lined up like freshly caught fish in a livewell.
“Get them to talk,” he said to Cassie. “Figure out their nationality.”
O’Malley and Owens tugged at the boots of the obviously white, European looking man.
She lightly tapped him on the face. “Water?”
The man nodded, then said, “Da.”
“Russian,” she said. Not rocket science.
O’Malley and Owens lifted the Russian by his feet and shoulders and hefted him to the Russian cell.
Looking at the man with olive skin and black hair, Cassie said to Mahegan, “Unconscious, but my guess is Iranian.”
Mahegan agreed. O’Malley and Owens returned and took the man to the next structure in the barn.
The man that Mahegan had shot and kicked in the head was still alive, but barely.
“Looks Korean. Probably going to die.”
“I’ll try to patch up that chest wound long enough so we can talk to him,” O’Malley said. He and Owens dragged the man to the farthest cell and broke out an aid bag.
The barn was nearly half a football field long and wide. Each of the cells was in a different corner with the fifth, the American cell, along the middle of the far wall from the command center. The barn sat on the back side of 120 acres of heavily wooded timber and farmland purchased several years ago by the U.S. government. Towering hardwoods fronted the property, which eventually gave way to a cleared fifty acres where about twenty cattle grazed. They were live, but props.
Mahegan gathered his team on the floor of the elevated command post and typed into the keyboard. Secure.
The response was immediate. Charlie Mike. Continue the mission.
There was no immediate need to communicate that they had an extra prisoner. While the intel intercept had come from O’Malley pinging around the Dark Web, they had either rescued the cook or properly detained him, the definition dependent upon what unfolded next. And just like they’d been uncertain of the specific number of attackers, they’d needed the attack to unfold to determine the real target of the raid. The cook had special skills, apparently.
“Okay, team. Now the fun starts,” Mahegan said.
He retrieved his Blackhawk knife from its sheath on his riser b
elt and walked to the cell in which they had placed the cook. Before opening the door to the enclosed room, he nodded at Cassie, who shut the lights in the barn from the command center.
Opening the door, he stepped through the threshold into an anteroom, like an oxygen chamber in a submarine, closed the exterior door, locked it, and then opened the door to the cell. The cook was huddled in the corner of a room that gave the appearance of looking onto the capitol dome in Washington, DC. The hologram effect made it seem as though they were inside an office building, looking through a window onto Grant’s statue and the capitol building. O’Malley had done good work. Cars drove by in real time. Pedestrians waited at street corners. An airplane banked to the south, landing at Reagan National.
“You guys FBI?”
Mahegan said nothing. He processed his surroundings and waited, even though he knew that they had no time to spare. The higher pitch in the voice seemed off-key. Forced European accent or perhaps as if the cook was trying to sound more masculine. Blood streaked across the cook’s face. The prickly scalp was shiny with sweat. The huddled body, not small, maybe even lanky, but slender. The white apron was splattered with hamburger grease, as were the white T-shirt and black pants. Black Keds high-top canvas sneakers on the feet. Cassie’s bandage job expert.
“Come on, man, say something.”
Forced vernacular, Mahegan thought. A woman trying to sound like a man? A man trying to be a woman? Who knew nowadays?
The cook was shivering, perhaps needing a dose of meds.
“Why were they coming for you?” Mahegan finally asked.
“What? Who?”
“We don’t have time for your bullshit. Something major is happening and you know what it is. You found it.”
A moment of recognition flashed on the cook’s face and in the eyes, recognizing trouble. Mahegan also recognized that this was a woman. She was forcing the octaves of her voice down, like trying to stuff too many clothes in a suitcase. It didn’t work. Had the opposite effect. Regardless—man or woman—this person supposedly held the key to murder of the President of North Korea and the Russian attack on U.S. forces in Estonia, at a minimum.
“Look, man. I want a lawyer,” the cook said.
“First, quit forcing your voice. I know you’re a woman. It doesn’t matter. And, no, you really don’t. That’s not how this works. You tripped over something in the Deep Web and we followed you until we couldn’t follow you anymore. I’m done talking with you unless you give me something to work with. I’ve convinced them that you’ll talk. I see it in your face.” Mahegan switched his knife to his left hand and then rested his right-hand palm on the gritty grip of his Sig Sauer Tribal pistol.
A long pause ensued. The cook watched the traffic outside, seemed to consider something, and then looked at Mahegan. “How did I get from Detroit to Washington, DC?”
“And here I thought I was asking the questions.” Mahegan closed his hand around the pistol grip and inched it slightly from its holster.
“Total combat,” the cook said.
Mahegan stopped his motion, stared at the woman, and let the thought sink in. “Go on.”
“I call it RINK. Russia, Iran, and North Korea. They’re like Japan, Germany, and Italy in World War II. They’re attacking asap. Everywhere. Total chaos. Total combat. Computer optimized warfare.”
“Why?
“Because they can,” the cook said. Eyes averted. Hands shaking like an alcoholic needing a drink.
“Who are you?” Mahegan asked.
“Just a fry cook.” The words were quick, tumbling together. Rehearsed but lacking veracity.
Mahegan’s hand tightened around the pistol and he removed it from the holster. To the cook, he must have looked menacing. Six and a half feet tall. Native American. Form fitting black stretch shirt. Ranger haircut. Razor sharp knife in one hand and lethal Tribal in the other.
He knelt in front of the cook. “What made you a target?”
Another long pause. Mahegan saw the cook assess him, perhaps seeing everything that Chayton “Jake” Mahegan was meant to be—The Hawk Wolfe. Named by his Croatan Indian father, Mahegan carried the instincts of both predators.
“I know who’s running the show.”
“Who might that be?”
“This is where we trade,” the cook said.
Mahegan leveled a fierce gaze on the woman, who was now kneeling, hands on the walls, feeling the glass partition that O’Malley had built into the cell. Like a room within a room, the glass was six inches from the HD screens upon which the illusion played out.
“The trade is for your life, you understand, right? You tell us what we need, you live. You don’t, you don’t.”
“Where am I?”
“Washington, DC,” Mahegan said. “Now, you’ve wasted a question.” He lifted the knife, blade glistening against the backdrop of a Washington, DC night. “Tell me something useful.”
The cook’s eyes flitted from Mahegan’s menacing face to the sharp combat knife to the pistol. Mahegan stepped toward her, worked the knife in his hand, rolled his wrist, working for the best angle. Keeping the cook off balance.
Knife or pistol, which would it be?
“Phase one is conventional. Phase II is nukes.”
Mahegan stopped. “When does it start?”
“What do I get for cooperation? Immunity?”
“You want immunity go get a flu shot. Like I said, your life,” Mahegan growled. “If what you’re saying is true, that is. Now, what’s happening?”
“As I said, Computer Optimized Warfare. ComWar. Like those algorithms that figure your buying habits and show in your Facebook feed what you like to get on Amazon. This thing is fine-tuned. Shuts down power grids. Drops cyber bombs. Closes every Wi-Fi hotspot. Electromagnetic pulse. Directed Energy. All combined. Followed by artillery launches. Tanks attack. Infantry rolls through. Computerized blitzkrieg. Then it assesses how effective a particular attack was, makes the necessary algorithmic changes in seconds, updates the programming in all of the weapons and communications systems, and keeps attacking. Does it all in stride. Artificial intelligence and machine learning blitzkrieg. That’s ComWar.”
“ComWar? When’s it start?”
“Dude. It’s already started. And there’s nothing that can stop it. Well, one thing.”
Dude. Mahegan let it slip because he was getting somewhere with the cook. “What’s the one thing?”
“Biometric keys. Humans. Russia, Iran, and North Korea each have one person that is the biometric key. It’s the lowest tech that supports the highest tech. Brilliant really.”
“The keys do what?”
“They unlock the nuclear arsenal. Anything is hackable nowadays. Why would nuclear codes be any different?”
“Where are these people?”
“In their countries, of course.”
“Like next to the decision maker?”
“Something like that. Protected. Available until needed.”
“Who’s behind it?”
“And for that, you have nothing worth trading, my friend. Because you saw they were going to kill me. So, it’s either you or them and as scary as you look, I’ll take you over what I saw in their Dark Web planning site.”
Still, something hung in the back of his mind. Nothing that can stop it? That was what people said about actual blitzkrieg when the Germans rolled through Europe during World War II. While he wasn’t a computer genius, Mahegan did know that in general, nothing was perfect. Nothing was completely unstoppable. Something may be hard to stop, but that didn’t make it unstoppable. He thought of an army maxim. If you can be seen, you can be hit.
“You’re a computer genius. You probably either built this or found it. If you can find it in the Web, you can stop it.”
The woman opened her eyes and locked on with Mahegan’s flat stare. She had wide oval eyes, brown irises, but those could be contact lenses. She had gone to some length to hide her appearance and her person. Part actres
s, part computer nerd, she was something more.
“There’s only one thing that can stop it. You’ve got three days or we’re all toast. And when you’re ready to trade, I’ll tell you exactly what’s happening.”
“The biometric keys?”
“Not saying anything else until we’ve got a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Let me go. I want to live.”
“As long as you’re with us, you’ll live. It’s out there that’s more dangerous.”
“Maybe. Depends on where you are. Stuff is happening fast.”
Mahegan nodded. Felt the sense of urgency.
He walked out of the cell and into the barn where he gathered O’Malley, Owens, and Cassie. “If this cook is right, this is World War Three. And we’ve got seventy-two hours to stop it.”
CHAPTER 4
IAN GORHAM REMOVED HIS BASEBALL CAP AND SHOOK HIS HEAD. THE assassination of the North Korean leader had gone flawlessly. The artillery duel in Estonia. Perfect. Both setting the stage for the next seventy-two hours. Yet, he was unable to pull off the smallest kidnap action in a Detroit bar. Ironic? Perhaps. His skills included grand visions and plans, not necessarily small actions and skirmishes.
Still, he shouted into the car window, “No!”
He expected perfection and therefore was nonplussed that he had successfully engineered the assassination of the leader of North Korea. Failing at capturing or killing someone who had hacked his corporate Dark Web hyper-encrypted room in the Deep Web? That was unacceptable.
He looped a Bluetooth earpiece over his right ear and stuffed the bud into his ear canal. On his smartphone, he pressed Dr. Belina Draganova’s number from his RECENT selection again. Her name selection now had the number eighteen in parentheses. Eighteen calls in the last few days. Important business being discussed.
“I’m not available right now. Please leave a brief message,” Dr. Draganova’s voice mail answered. Her voice was soft and inflected with the tiniest hint of an Eastern European dialect. Soothing overtones mixed with firmness. To Gorham, listening to her voice was like drinking a good wine. The quality resonated long after the words were spoken.
Dark Winter Page 3
