Dark Winter

by Anthony J. Tata

  Chaos was about right. Combat was chaos. The mission Mahegan had just completed was a perfect example. The plan went about 50% according to plan. Then all hell broke loose, which was about the norm in Mahegan’s experience. He cycled through several thoughts, always coming back to Cassie. Should he have jumped? Could he have jumped and lived? Doubtful. But he wouldn’t know now. First it was Sergeant Colgate a few years ago and now a fresh, deep wound with Cassie. He kept trying to find the right spot for the thought in his mind. He needed to compartmentalize because he had to execute and be at optimum performance if he was going to get her back.

  The Humvee stopped and Mahegan followed Savage up some wooden steps into a series of trailers. He took a deep breath and blew it out, as if he was conducting a bench press. He loved Cassie as a partner and as a soldier. The pain was deep and sharp, slicing through scar tissue and protective walls he had built over the years. He had let her in through his brick wall defenses two days ago on Bald Head Island. She had navigated the maze to his heart, scaled the inverted walls, and secured the flag that no other woman had been able to. She was in his heart and he felt the pain as sharply as if they had been lovers for years. He yearned for her in a way that he had never experienced. His anguish must have been evident on his face.

  “You okay, Jake?” Savage asked.

  “We gotta get Cassie back. That’s all there is to it. Leave no soldier behind.” He turned away, pinched his eyes, then turned back toward Savage.

  Savage nodded, looked away. “I know it’s more than that, Jake. We will. And we’re going to stop World War Three, also. I need you to get in there and interrogate. This thing caught us so flatfooted that I’m only now getting teams into place.”

  Mahegan steadied himself by placing a hand on a gray desk inside the command post. The trailers were connected along the long sides to create a sufficient work space for the staff. Instead of a double-wide, it was more like a quadruple-wide. In the middle of the space was a circular elevated platform that had large sixty-inch monitors hanging from the ceiling. The place smelled of sweat and burning toner. Printers were spitting out pages of classified documents trying to keep up with the pace of world events.

  They sat in the middle of the circular command center and Savage pointed at the left most monitor as Owens and O’Malley were ushering the freshly captured prisoner to the container.

  “That’s the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The North Korean Army is about halfway down the road to Pusan. We’ve jumped in two brigades of the Eighty-second Airborne behind their lines to cut off their logistics with another brigade joining the team in Estonia. Two C-17 airplanes were shot out of the sky. Two hundred paratroopers dead, just like that”—Savage snapped his fingers—“not to mention the air crews.”

  “Computerized assisted warfare. Digits, EMP, and directed energy combined with lethal conventional weapons,” Mahegan said, gaining his composure. Electromagnetic pulse was nothing new, but the combination of digital bombs, lasers, and EMP were proving to be unanticipated and lethal.

  “Tokyo took a North Korean nuke at about ground zero. No estimates as to casualties yet, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s not good. Over one hundred thousand dead, I’m assuming. Big bomb.”

  Mahegan shook his head. How did this happen?

  “The next screen is Iran, where you just were, but given the limited resistance, the Persians have made it all the way to Amman. Forty-five miles from Amman to Jerusalem. And it’s pretty much smooth sailing. The Israeli Defense Forces are shooting rockets and the prime minister is considering nukes over Amman into the advancing Persians or even into Iran to cut the lines of operation. This is a shit show of the highest magnitude. Not sure how effective any of that is, because the Iranian Army can just go through the West Bank and blow through the security fences. There’s no question Israel is the goal, though they’ve not asked for our help yet. I’m wondering if they somehow can shoot straight when we can’t. We’ve got a Marine regiment just offshore and ready to go. We may send them anyway.”

  Mahegan said nothing. He was still half with Cassie and half with Savage.

  “Pay attention, Jake.”

  “I’m here, General.”

  Savage switched screens and pointed at Europe. “Here’s a classic triple envelopment from the Russian Army. Ten tank divisions coming through the Baltics. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Kaliningrad are already split in half like firewood. Infantry and paratroopers have secured key cities along the major routes in Belarus with considerable help from the Russian resistance there. Another ten divisions have blown through the mountain passes and will converge on Warsaw about the same time the northern axis will. In the south here, through the Ukraine, another ten divisions are churning along like nobody can stop them, which no one apparently can. They’ll follow the southern route and hit the Fulda Gap in Germany, bypassing all the mountains in the Czech Republic.”

  “I get Iran’s objective of destroying Israel. They’ve been wanting that for decades. I understand North Korea wants to annex South Korea and the peninsula. That’s been their goal since the end of the Korean War. But what is Russia’s purpose in Europe?”

  “Raw economic need and greed. Russia’s economy is imploding. Oil hasn’t bounced back and with clean energy and all that bullshit, may never bounce back. So, this is what war is always about. Power and money.”

  Mahegan nodded. He processed what he was hearing, then said, “Like I said before. If the conventional systems have been hacked, what makes us think that Israel’s nukes will go where they’re intended to go?”

  Savage paused, scratched the bristle on his head. “Damnit, Jake. Why is everything so fucking hard? That’s as off topic as it gets, but an important question.”

  “Just saying, General. Our jets can’t shoot a missile. Our radars provide counterfire on the wrong grid coordinates. This is a digital and electronic reverse blitzkrieg. By rendering our weapons inaccurate, the enemy is killing us quicker than a knife fight in a phone booth and we don’t have a knife. I mean, think about it, General. You can barely drive faster than these major military movements that have happened in the last twenty-four hours. Baghdad to Amman? Russian border to Warsaw? Pyongyang to Pusan? The bigger implication is that we lose mutual assured destruction.”

  The chatter in the small operations room stopped. Mahegan and Savage had been talking in measured tones. Mahegan had crystalized the essence of what the quickened combat was all about.

  Removing the security of mutual assured destruction from the United States was the end game. Without the capability to counterattack against the RINK nuclear arsensals, the United States was vulnerable. Three against one. No ability to strike back anywhere.

  “Let’s go talk to our prisoners,” Savage said.

  Mahegan followed him out of the command center. The sun was rising over the mountains to their backs. His ears were ringing from the explosions and lack of sleep but he could still hear the morning bleat of goats in the distance. Roosters crowed. The air was dry and thin, acrid from the burn pit. Two guards dressed in army camouflage and full combat kit stood at port arms outside of the container.

  “Where’s Spartak?” Mahegan asked.

  “She’s next. Another container.”

  “Okay. We’ll work this guy, but I think she’s the key to everything.”

  “Maybe,” Savage said.

  They walked into the container once the guards opened the squeaking metal doors.

  Inside, the container was cool, maybe even cold. The high desert air had chilled some, but the metal walls seemed to amplify the temperature outside from one extreme to the next. Then Mahegan noticed a small air conditioner blowing on the prisoner, who was handcuffed to a folding metal chair. The man had shaggy brown hair and a boyish face, partially covered by a tan rag tight across his eyes and secured at the back of his head with a knot. Maybe mid-twenties? He was bare chested and shivering, either from the cold or the shock of being a captive.

  Owe
ns stood before him holding a water bottle as he said, “Who is your boss?”

  The prisoner kept shaking his head. “Man, I can’t say.”

  O’Malley was at a small table just inside the entrance of the container that doubled as a prison cell. He looked up, leaned into Mahegan and whispered, “Sorry about Cassie. We’ll get her back. In the meantime, this guy’s iPad is a treasure trove of information. I had it all, was sorting through it, downloading it onto our hard drive and then it all just disappeared. Over the air wipe. These guys are sophisticated.”

  At the other end of the container, the prisoner was shouting. “The best!” He sounded delirious. “We are the fucking best, man.”

  “Who is we?” Owens asked. His voice remained calm, steady, unflinching.

  Mahegan walked across the metal floor, the sound of his boots like the staccato of gunshots. He tapped Owens on the shoulder as if to tap into the ring.

  “My friend was being polite,” Mahegan said to the prisoner. “I’m not like that. Your boss, whoever he is, has one of my soldiers. One of your men, a big guy, kidnapped my soldier—”

  “Fucking A, man. Dax got himself a prisoner. Maybe we can do an exchange!”

  Mahegan looked at Owens in question and mouthed the word drugged. Owens shook his head. No drugs. Mahegan wrote Search Dax on a piece of paper and handed it to Owens, who walked to the mouth of the container and knelt next to O’Malley.

  “Eye for an eye, baby!” the prisoner shouted.

  “Yes. We trade,” Mahegan said.

  “I knew it! Yeah baby. Trade my ass. Just like the NFL.”

  “Yes. Just like the NFL. A player must know his worth. What is your value . . . Shayne?”

  O’Malley handed a piece of paper to Mahegan that gave him a summary of Shayne’s background, which was nearly zero. Legally changed his name to Shayne—like Cher or Bono, just one name—and had erased his entire identity from the Internet somehow.

  “How the fuck do you know my name?”

  “Thanks for confirming,” Mahegan said. “We’ve got your iPad. Seems we know quite a bit.”

  “Yeah, right. That thing is useless as a Frisbee right now. If I don’t enter a code every thirty minutes it zeros out. Either that or HQ did it.”

  “High tech,” Mahegan said, leaning back, letting the prisoner talk. The man’s mouth was covered in dry, white spit. Two days of whiskers were sprouting on his dirty face.

  “You don’t even know it, man. We’re the best. Better than everyone. The very top, dude.”

  “We’d like to get you back to your team and of course get our teammate back. Who shall we call?” Mahegan said.

  The man rocked in his chair, muttering. “Arms hurt, man.” He shook his head, uncertain what to do in this circumstance. Clearly an untrained civilian, but impressive hacker. Perhaps Shayne was thinking more clearly than anticipated if he could be a belligerent smart ass while being questioned in an ice-cold container on the Afghanistan-Iran border.

  The man stopped shaking and suddenly smiled. “Call the cook. That fucking cook. We should have captured him.”

  So, it was them? Mahegan thought. It all came down to the initial skirmish over Spartak, the Russian girl one container over. But Shayne didn’t know who Spartak was. The cook. Him.

  “How do we do that?” Mahegan asked.

  Owens walked up to him with a piece of paper. Mahegan looked at it and nodded.

  “You guys have him, man. We know that. That’s how good we are. We’re inside your head, not the other way around.”

  “I understand you guys are good, Shayne. We’ve established that. I just want to get you back to where you belong. What were you doing in Iran? Should we just take you back there?”

  Shayne didn’t seem too enthused about those prospects. He shook his head and said, “Nobody’s there, man. You guys fucked all that up. I told Gor—I told him we shouldn’t go there, but no, he wanted to be a fucking hero. A frontline commander.”

  Mahegan picked up on Shayne’s near slip, and ran with it. “Sounds like Gor, is that what you said? This Gor is your commander?”

  “Forget I said anything, man. This discussion is over. Over! You hear me?”

  Mahegan changed the inflection of his voice to a saddened, deeper tone as if resigned to a course of action he did not prefer. “Yes. We can progress to the next level if you wish. You are underestimating how greatly I adhere to our creed to leave no soldier behind. Do you enjoy pain, Shayne? Is that your thing? Because I’m out of time. We’ve got forty-eight hours, maximum, until the world is in a nuclear holocaust. You’ve started World War Three. Can you help us end it? Or do I have to hurt you? Are you that loyal to Gor?”

  The octave switch impacted Shayne, but he remained silent as he shook his head and perhaps started to cry. Mahegan looked at the piece of paper Owens had handed him. He nodded at Owens, who slid behind the prisoner, a foot behind him.

  “Now you know how brutal Dax Stasovich is, correct?” Owens asked.

  “Yes. He’s one of our best assets. Like the fucking terminator, man.”

  Owens leaned into Shayne’s ear and whispered loud enough for Mahegan to hear. “The man talking to you killed your Dax Stasovich.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Shayne said.

  O’Malley and Owens had followed the action on live streaming video from the powerful special operations dedicated satellite. When Mahegan and Cassie fought the large man, O’Malley had zoomed in and was able to screenshot a reasonable picture of the man they believed to be Dax Stasovich. He looked dead, both Mahegan and Cassie leaning over him, but his face was clearly visible.

  “Lower his blindfold,” Mahegan directed.

  Owens slid the blindfold down and stuck the picture in front of Shayne’s eyes.

  “Focus for a second on Stasovich. Notice he’s dead. Two operatives killed him. Specifically, I killed him,” Mahegan said, wishing it were true. “If I could kill Stasovich, what do you think I can do to you? I want you to think about that for a few seconds before we move to the next level of questioning, which is three dimensional.”

  Shayne was silent as he stared at the grainy photo. There was no doubt that was Dax Stasovich in the picture. There was doubt, obviously, whether he was dead or alive, but importantly, he looked dead. “Three dimensional?”

  “Right now, we’re talking and looking. Next phase will involve physical contact. You don’t want that. And we’re out of time. If you prove you’re worthless, then that’s the worst case for you. It gets physical.”

  “I make seven figures. Not worthless,” Shayne said.

  “Who pays you seven figures? He’s either a dumbass or doesn’t care about money.”

  “My boss is bringing genius to the wor—” Shayne stopped abruptly. He’d made a mistake.

  Mahegan locked onto the statement. Bringing genius to the world. Where had he heard that before? Somewhere. Television maybe, though he didn’t watch much television unless it was news and even then, not much. A commercial in an airport? “Go ahead. Complete the sentence.”

  Mahegan lost his patience and stepped around the table. He recalled the time he’d killed Commander Hoxha, the handcuffed bomb maker that had used Siri voice command to detonate an IED under his best friend’s Humvee in Afghanistan. Hoxha had tried to escape in the confusion. Mahegan had tried to stop him with a butt stroke of his M4 carbine to the man’s chest. Hoxha had ducked—maybe Mahegan was a little elevated in his aim—and Mahegan’s powerful force had ripped into Hoxha’s temple and killed him instantly. Knowing Sergeant Wesley Colgate was most likely burning alive in the car had set a flywheel loose in Mahegan’s mind and he had been filled with primal fury.

  Today, Cassie was in danger, held captive in Iran, maybe Jordan. He had no time to waste. The flywheel was loose again, spinning wildly with cables flapping everywhere. He’d failed Colgate. He refused to fail Cassie.

  “You can’t do this!” Shayne shouted.

  “Guys, step outside for a moment,�
�� Mahegan said. He towered over the diminutive techie as he flipped open the knife blade and pressed it against Shayne’s left eyelid. “Where you just were in Iran they have a custom to cut out the eyes of prisoners so that even if they escape they are lost.”

  “This is not allowed. I’m an American!” Shayne shouted. He was sobbing. Tears streaked down his face. The flat part of the knife was pushing the lid closed. His other eye darted, looking for help.

  “Bringing genius to the world. You’re with Manaslu?” Mahegan had heard the slogan.

  “Move the knife and I’ll talk.”

  “No. You talk. I move the knife.”

  Shayne digested that he wasn’t in charge and said, “Okay. Yes. Manaslu is my company. But it’s bigger than Manaslu.”

  Owens and O’Malley had simulated leaving the container by opening and closing the door, but they had remained inside and immediately got to work.

  “Ian Gorham, age twenty-nine. He’s one of the top five wealthiest people in the world. Politically active. Not a fan of the current administration. Billionaire Hector Baeppler is said to be his mentor. Baeppler is like Soros. Funds a bunch of leftist groups like An-tifa and pays for opposition research on candidates that don’t meet his agenda. Lives in a compound outside of Portland, Oregon. Has a series of satellites that could be powering the low orbit microsatellites we’ve picked up,” Shayne said.

  “All these guys live in compounds,” Mahegan said. “So, we started out thinking we needed an antidote to destroy the remote access Trojans that are making us miss all of our targets and now we’re realizing that it’s a global conspiracy?” Mahegan asked, the knife pressuring the eyelid perhaps more than he wanted.

  “Mother fu—” Shayne yelped. A trickle of blood seeped from the eye.

  “Confirm or deny,” Mahegan said to Shayne.

  After a long pause and more pressure from the knife, Shayne said, “Yes. Ian Gorham is in charge. But Baeppler has a role, too. Not sure what it is.”