by A. J Tata
He needed to be in peak physical condition when he found James Gunther. That was his only focus. His boss, Major General Bob Savage at Fort Bragg, had not texted him a new mission yet. Instead, he’d instructed Mahegan to relax and “stay out of trouble.” The problem was, Mahegan drifted toward “trouble” the way a corporate CEO smelled a deal or a top broker made a risky but rewarding stock purchase. Seeing problems before or as they became trouble was Mahegan’s sixth sense. Ever since he killed his first man, his lizard brain had dominated, transforming him into a one-man justice system, defending and protecting.
While he would never forgive himself for being too late to rescue his mother, he could still seek justice on her behalf. This operation was the third Gunther and Sons, Inc., construction site at which he had labored, but he had yet to see Gunther or anyone who looked like Junior. Most likely, they sat in their air-conditioned offices while others did their bidding. Problem was, Mahegan would be too noticeable if he walked into an office building in an ill-fitting suit. People would remember him because of his size and his looks: dark blond hair, blue eyes, tan skin, and a six-and-a-half-foot muscular frame. He could do more prying out here, where he was just another American Indian day laborer earning a buck.
Gunther and Sons’ headquarters was located in Fayetteville, which was a bit too close to home for Mahegan. Wanting to get Mahegan off the grid, three months ago Savage had ordered him to Apex, North Carolina, where the Army was currently renting an above-barn apartment on a three-acre plot of land. So while he waited for his next mission, Mahegan had stayed local, working as a framer on one Gunther and Sons, Inc., office building project in Holly Springs and as an asphalt spreader on a road-paving project in Cary.
Gunther was the one Mahegan had thrown through the sliding glass door of his home on that horrifying day when he was too late to save his mother. The chunk of glass had cut his back and, Mahegan had heard, nicked a lung. Had the paramedics and the police not arrived when they did, either Gunther would have bled out or Mahegan would have finished him.
He lifted the posthole digger, opened its jaws, and stabbed it into the ground, creating a hole deep enough for Papa Diablo to emplace a metal pole while Dos poured in ready-mix concrete. It was menial labor, which Mahegan almost liked. His mind worked best when he was doing simple tasks, such as swimming or running.
As Dos situated the metal pole in the ground, Mahegan scouted his surroundings. He walked to the top of the ridge. He noticed they had made good progress, having reached the northern end of the western ridge. They had been working west and north around the hill that served as the western ridge of the saddle, where Mahegan had seen what he believed to be energy exploration equipment. Giant water tanks lay side by side next to thick, snaking hoses and assorted vehicles. A construction crew had graded a football field of earth. Today he noticed, at the north end of the leveled area, metal parts, like those of an erector set, which would possibly become a rig for drilling a wellhead. In the middle of the field was a hole about five feet across, with a conical, prefab concrete inlay. He was unsure, but it appeared that the wellhead had already been drilled. From his vantage, the hole looked like a giant inverted cone or funnel, narrowing just slightly from about five to four feet. Surrounding the hole was plastic, orange engineer warning tape, staked in the ground with U-shaped pickets.
A few men milled around in the distance, but mostly the operation was idle today. Two men were smoking cigarettes, until a foreman shooed them away, presumably to a safer area to smoke than a natural gas vent. Coiled like a snake were what appeared to be miles of flexible drill lengths, which would be used to bore into the ground to find the porous veins of natural gas. Next to the stacks of drill lengths was something that looked like a cage full of basketballs, but with grooves like those on a screw, and protruding edges, sharp, with glinting metal. Drill bits? Mahegan wondered. They looked like medieval weapons, maces, with their triangular teeth jutting from one end.
Mahegan turned around and looked west. The sun’s position indicated the time was about 3:00 p.m. He could see through the forest to Jordan Lake, about a mile or two away. He guessed the fencing was necessary to keep equipment poachers out, as well as the bears and deer that might wander into the construction site.
Mahegan studied the valley, which, he considered, appeared to be a bowl with an opening to the south, scouting for any sign of a Gunther, father or son. He was expecting a big, shiny truck or SUV, but all he saw was the black Ford F-150 that Scarface had driven and the myriad drilling equipment concentrated around the prefab cone. There were trailers—living quarters, he presumed—a quarter mile to the north. In his periphery he saw Scarface walking from the eastern ridge back toward the graded saddle. When he was at the bottom, Scarface walked briskly past the idle crew, bucket loaders, and bulldozers sitting parked like resting animals, and shouted, “What the hell is this? Break time?”
Mahegan lifted his posthole digger with one hand and pointed it at the far side of the ridge, which Scarface couldn’t see, and said, “Cement is drying.”
“Well, dig another goddamned hole, idiot!”
Mahegan nodded, wishing briefly that Scarface was related to Gunther, then turned and walked back to continue the fencing work.
After another two hours they found themselves at the northwest end of the ridge. They had started due south, where they had entered the area in the truck, then had worked west and north. The sun was still hanging high enough for another couple of hours of work, and Mahegan thought they could probably finish the job. But he was glad when Scarface reappeared and said, “Quitting time.”
Mahegan and the two Mexicans walked down the hill to where Scarface was waiting for them. Mahegan surveyed the prefab cone and thought he had it about right. He imagined that the frackers used the opening to extract natural gas the way a surgeon operated through one location on the body.
“We’re not done,” Mahegan said, putting up a mock protest as he stopped in front of Scarface.
“And you’re not going to be done today. I’ll pick you three back up tomorrow morning. Right now I need to get you out of here.”
“Why so soon? We could finish tonight.”
Mahegan could see Scarface’s mind calculating why he might be pushing the issue. “Don’t worry. You’ll get paid today and tomorrow. That’s how Gunther does it. Pays out every day.”
Mahegan nodded. “Does Gunther do the paying?”
“I do. Why?”
Mahegan shrugged. “We get paid before we get in the truck?”
Papa Diablo and Dos had planted themselves on either side of him, as if to reinforce his message. Mahegan noticed again Scarface’s leather coat listing to his right side. He was certain there was a pistol hidden in his coat. Mahegan looked around. The rig workers had disappeared somewhere. The four of them were alone.
Mahegan took a step closer to Scarface. He calculated that the posthole digger was five feet long and, coupled with his arm length, put him within striking distance of Scarface. He gripped the posthole digger and flipped it onto his shoulder like a baseball bat, causing Scarface to flinch and subconsciously send his hand toward his right-side coat pocket.
“Sorry,” Mahegan said. “This thing’s heavy. So let’s see the money, and we’ll get out of here.”
“Money’s in the truck, and you’re not in charge, asshole.”
Mahegan saw something register in the man’s eyes. There was the slightest tic of the crow’s-feet on either side of his face. And he detected that the irises of Scarface’s black eyes focused inward instead of outward, like a zooming lens. He had seen it a million times in combat, when he was talking to an average Joe Iraqi or Afghan citizen who was really not an average Joe. Rather, he was an enemy combatant, one who understood that Mahegan had figured him out.
Scarface made that calculation and went for the pistol. Mahegan watched. It was a clumsy move, completely predictable. By the time the pistol was out of Scarface’s pocket, Mahegan stepped forward
with his left foot, as he had been trained in bayonet drill, thrusting the tool like a weapon.
Scarface attempted an ungainly move to his right, but the digger caught him square on the left pectoral. Mahegan’s powerful arms closed the jaws of the digger, and he actually felt the pincer bite into the leather coat and some muscle. Mahegan swung Scarface to the ground, and the pistol skittered away through the dirt. In his periphery, he saw Dos pick up the weapon. Mahegan pressed the wooden handles of the digger across Scarface’s throat.
“We get paid now. Asshole.”
Scarface, writhing on the ground, with a bit of blood oozing from his chest, mumbled, “In the truck.”
Mahegan calculated his next move. There was no coming back to this construction site for him or the other two. Not wanting to kill the man, but needing to investigate some before the other workers began milling around, he kept the digger across Scarface’s neck and landed a concussive blow on the man’s temple. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it did knock him unconscious for the moment.
Digging through the man’s pockets, he found the truck keys and a wallet, which he opened, and paid Dos and Papa Diablo handsomely for their hard day’s work. They said, “No gracias,” multiple times, but he made them take the money. He then looked in the identification fold of the wallet and found a driver’s license and a green card. The man’s name was Maxim Petrov. His country of origin was Russia. On the back of the green card was a stamp that read EB-5 PROGRAM. Mahegan didn’t know what that meant, but he kept the wallet. He also took Scarface’s smartphone.
Dos handed Mahegan the weapon, indicating he wanted nothing to do with it. They walked to the truck, which Mahegan inspected, and he found a removable Garmin GPS along with a BlackBerry with a tactile keyboard. He thumbed through it and found a calendar. The calendar showed a visit by James Gunther tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m.
Perfect. Mahegan digested the information. Perhaps he could slay the beast that had been haunting him for over fifteen years. Tomorrow morning he would be one step closer.
The three men climbed into the truck’s cab, Mahegan behind the wheel. Mahegan put the truck in gear, reversed the route they had driven that morning, memorizing every detail, and dropped off Diablo and Dos at the Wallaby gas station. He pocketed the smartphone, BlackBerry, Garmin, and the 9 mm hollow points he found in the glove box and drove in front of an adjoining department store in a strip mall to leave the truck in an anonymous spot.
After wiping down the truck to erase his fingerprints, he walked across the mall’s giant parking lot, slid a single key from a Velcro pocket in his boot, and fired up a beater-gray Jeep Cherokee. Before driving, he removed the batteries and the SIM cards from the GPS device and the phones to protect against tracking devices, such as Find My iPhone. While driving the few miles to his remote apartment, he thought of Gunther; Papa Diablo; Dos, whose real name, he had learned, was Hector Manuela; and the man with the scar on his face, Maxim Petrov. He had made some friends, and he had made some enemies. Not unusual for a day’s work. Tomorrow would be an even better day.
As dusk enveloped the long wooded driveway to the home of his landlords, Maggie and Andy Robertson, Mahegan veered off the drive onto a dirt road that looped around to a barn about a quarter mile from their house. He parked his government-leased Cherokee in the barn and climbed the stairs to his single-room apartment with a kitchen alcove and a small bathroom and shower. He instantly heard his phone chirping from beneath the floor.
He rolled back the throw rug, pried up two eight-inch boards in the middle of the hardwood flooring, and retrieved his backpack. Slipping his hand into the mesh netting where he kept his phone, he retrieved it and answered.
“Check Zebra, damn it,” Major General Bob Savage barked.
“Roger.”
Both men hung up. General Savage was his boss of sorts. That was the extent of the check-in. Mahegan’s foray into chasing his personal ghosts did not include bringing his encrypted smartphone with him. That stayed secured in his backpack here in his Apex flat.
Mahegan lived in that gray area between his desire to disconnect completely from the trappings of society and his sense of duty to his country, drilled into him by his mother and his Army comrades. He tolerated his strained relationship with Savage only because the man had converted his dishonorable discharge from the Army into a rightful honorable one after Mahegan’s reflexive killing of that enemy prisoner of war during a combat raid.
Savage was the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, about an hour’s drive from Mahegan’s rented above-barn apartment in Apex. While the general believed that he owned Mahegan like a master owned a slave, Mahegan knew it wasn’t that simple. He could walk away from their handshake deal and the secret bank account at any time and had considered it on many occasions in the past eighteen months.
It was rare that Savage called him. Usually, the general texted him on the secure smartphone issued to Mahegan when he agreed to serve as Savage’s off-the-books domestic fixer. The gray area. Many would actually see it as a black area that Mahegan and Savage never should have approached, but after Mahegan had thwarted the American Taliban’s terror attacks on the country last year, the two of them had become convinced of the righteousness of their path.
He palmed the phone, which fit snugly in his oversize hands, clicked on his top secret Zebra app, and saw he had three text messages from Savage, who was the only person in the world with his phone number. The first message was three sentences long and gave him a name, an address, and a mission to find a body. The second message asked him to confirm receipt of the first message. The third message was a threat to do bodily harm to him if he did not comply with the second message.
Mahegan smiled, thinking, Fat chance.
He memorized the address and the name as he replied with one word. Roger.
The Zebra app automatically erased messages after they had been opened or within twelve hours of being sent, whichever came first. Mahegan had checked the phone in the morning, before heading out to the Wallaby eleven hours ago. He understood Savage’s phone call. The man didn’t want the message erased before he read it.
And he needed the body of Captain Maeve Cassidy back before anyone learned what she had actually been doing in Afghanistan.
CHAPTER 5
MAHEGAN SHOWERED AND CHANGED INTO RESPECTABLE ATTIRE, which included khaki cargo pants, a long-sleeve dress shirt, and a blazer. In the blazer was an official Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) badge. He had never been a CID agent, but Savage had had the foresight to outfit him with false identities and false credentials, knowing he would need access on occasion to crime scenes. He knew the chances of his being able to remove a body from a crime scene were limited, but Savage had always challenged Mahegan to reach certain stretch goals, such as capturing the American Taliban.
As he approached the address Savage had provided him, police were everywhere. Lights were flashing, as if this were some suburban rave party. Neighbors were gawking from their yards, and he wondered how many had attended the party and how many were purely gawkers. He also saw a group of teenagers pressing against the yellow tape near the backyard. Mahegan’s hearing was in the top range on every hearing test he had ever taken, and he listened intently to the kids as he stepped from his vehicle.
“Totally cool, man . . .”
“What’s cool about this? Means the parties will probably stop. Sucks for us . . .”
“But all the cops. A murder. Naked people. Not everybody gets to see this kind of stuff. . . .”
Mahegan walked up to the crime-scene tape and showed the uniformed officer his badge. He was uncomfortable flipping creds, figuring a Department of Defense special agent badge would not carry much weight in Raleigh, North Carolina. He had never actually used the badge before, so it looked brand new. He wasn’t practiced at the technique, and he didn’t watch cop shows on TV. But he gave it a shot and held the badge up at eye level.
“Army sp
ecial agent,” Mahegan said.
The police officer was dressed in Raleigh Police Department blue and looked fit and professional. His name tag said HERNANDEZ. The man had a broad nose, liquid brown eyes, and square shoulders.
“Sorry. Can’t let you in,” the sergeant said.
Mahegan spoke in a calm voice, looking the police officer in the eyes. “I understand Captain Cassidy was killed on her first night back from Afghanistan. I’m Special Agent Hawthorne, and we have the Army Criminal Investigation Command en route. After the team arrives, probably not your crime scene anymore.” CID was not en route to this particular crime scene, but Mahegan figured they were going somewhere in the country at this moment.
After a short pause, Hernandez said, “Gotta talk to the police chief.” He turned his chin toward an older man in khakis and a Windbreaker, looking like he had just been called off the golf course. He was standing on the porch, with his hands on his hips, looking at Mahegan.
Without asking, Mahegan stepped under the yellow tape and walked across the perfectly mown fescue grass. The Ridge Road mansion rose up before him like a monument to architecture. Initially hidden behind Leyland cypress trees and tall oaks, the brick colonial mansion now spread before Mahegan. White columns supported picketed balconies that jutted from upstairs rooms like firing ports in a castle. Large windows stared at him, curtains drawn like the half-closed eyelids of a lurking beast.
“Chief,” Mahegan said as he ascended the brick staircase that fanned twenty yards across the facade like a jutting jaw.
“What’s your deal?”
“Special Agent. U.S. military. Captain Cassidy just returned from Afghanistan. Need to see the body.”
“Don’t we all, son.”
Mahegan processed the response.
“Body’s gone missing. If there ever was one. Got a bloodstain, but given all the crazy stuff going on in there, it could be anything. Some woman might have gotten her monthly, for all we know now. Celebrating the completion of a natural gas pipeline from Raleigh to Morehead City port, or something like that.”
