Three Minutes to Midnight

by A. J Tata

  “Right over there,” Jim said, pointing.

  Maeve scrambled into the latrine and retched into the toilet. She heaved until there was nothing left to give. Slowly, she pushed herself up from the commode and flushed it. She washed her mouth in the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.

  She saw her drawn features, almost unrecognizable, staring back at her. She pushed back her hair and studied herself. Feeling as though she was looking at a stranger, Maeve got lost in her eyes. They were vacant. A year in hell had sapped most of her strength, and now that hell just kept going. There was exactly one thing that mattered to her. She would do anything to get Piper back, even if it meant stealing a billion dollars’ worth of natural gas from North Carolina’s reserves.

  That was the quid pro quo.

  Maeve walked back into the room with something gnawing at the back of her mind. It was the part of her that had dueled with this man for months in Afghanistan and had also skirmished with the Taliban. Her survival instinct was in high gear. She sat down at the controls and looked up at Jim, who was perched with his ass on the table.

  “Finished?” he asked.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Now we’re talking.” Jim smiled. “See that vein there? That’s the Durham sub-basin of the Triassic Rift—”

  “I know what it is, you psychopath. Just tell me what you want me to do!”

  “There are almost two trillion cubic feet of gas in there,” Jim continued.

  “Why are you telling me what I already know? You want the gas. I’ll get the gas. That’s the deal, right? I get the gas, and I get Piper back, right?”

  “Right. There’s just two additional safeguards.”

  Maeve looked at the screen showing Piper. Jim toggled a switch, which changed the image from Piper to a split screen showing two nuclear power plants.

  “This screen on the right shows the Maguire Nuclear Station. What you can’t see is a small, unmanned aerial drone that is rigged with explosives at a dirt airfield in Gaston County, just miles away. If you deviate from the path or stop the drill bit from moving forward without my permission, you trigger a sensor that launches the drone, which is programmed with a flight path into the pipe of the cooling tower. The drone is rigged with enough explosives to implode the facility. Can you say, ‘Bye-bye, Charlotte’?”

  Maeve put her hands on her face, wanting to cry, but knowing she had to remain cogent. She muttered, “You bastard.”

  Jim nodded and continued. “On the left is the Brunswick Nuclear Plant, near Wilmington. You can see that at the bottom of the screen, in the Cape Fear River, is an LNG ship turning into the waterway leading up to the plant. It is rigged with explosives, and if you deviate from the plan or slow the drill to a stop, it will detonate with several kilotons of energy, like a small nuclear bomb. Of course, the nuclear plant will then have a reaction, which could reach two miles up the road to the military ammunition depot, where thousands of bombs are stored. You will in effect destroy much of the Eastern Seaboard between Wilmington and Charleston, South Carolina. And all of this is traceable to you, Maeve. You filled that ship with gas, and we have records we can release that implicate you in this attack, should it come to pass.”

  Maeve leaned back in the chair. Wilmington and Charlotte, North Carolina, were two of the coordinates she had engraved on her stomach with the henna.

  Steal the gas, or cause nuclear Armageddon in North Carolina and along the Eastern Seaboard?

  “Now, down to business. We’ve already had the men, the roughnecks, get the drill to the first kickoff point. This is where we need your deftness, your surgeon’s touch. You need to take it into the shale, to the designated point. Then, when you’re done with that, there’s another vein you will drill. The second vein is angled slightly to the south from the main kickoff point, and then there’s another kickoff point, at which you’ll have to drill straight up.”

  “Another one? Fracking uses just one turn. You go down vertically and then get horizontally into the deposit, insert your casings, and then send down your perforating gun and explosive charges. Why a second turn?”

  “It’s a superrich vein that, my geology team says, we can better tap this way.”

  Maeve shook her head, not understanding. In a flash, she had gone from feeble hostage to strident geologist. “That makes no sense.”

  “It’s what my team is telling me.”

  Maeve processed the information. As she stared at the screen in front of her, she saw the image of the drill bit resting at a depth of three thousand feet, shallow by fracking standards. The aquifer was just above this level. Setting off explosives just beneath the drinking water was unsafe, to put it mildly. She studied the path Jim had directed her to follow. The kickoff point was the turning point from the vertical drill line. The image showed her going to the northwest about ten thousand feet, almost two miles and significantly farther than any horizontal drills had ever gone in the United States.

  But it was less than the distance at which she had been drilling in Pakistan. She guessed that they went shallow to save drill length for the horizontal push and for whatever the second kickoff point was all about. In the Afghanistan-Pakistan experiment, they had used specialized titanium drill lengths and depleted uranium drill bits to bore at extended lengths. The reinforced drill parts allowed for more power at the bit after the turn, which had been a problem for conventional drillers.

  “You’d have to have the classified materials we used in Pak to make this turn,” she said, pointing at the diagram on the monitor. Common drilling equipment would not be able to withstand the torque or stress at such distances.

  Jim smiled. “Let me worry about the materials. You just need to try to avoid blowing up Charlotte and Wilmington, dear Maeve.”

  “Who programmed this route? You, of all people, know I program my own drill routes.”

  “We’ve got a guy. Like I said, don’t worry about it.”

  She shook her head again. “Have you checked it? Made sure it’s clear?”

  “Our guy is the best programmer in the business. Now, let’s get to work.”

  Maeve stood. “I need to use the restroom again. This time for something other than puking.”

  “You have two minutes. Then we get to work. We’re on a timeline. Need to crank her up.”

  She walked into the bathroom. The bottom line was that she was helping Jim Gunther steal shale gas from his neighbors. She could do that, get her daughter back, and then build a new life somewhere else, away from the military and Jim Gunther.

  She closed the door, did her business, and washed her hands and face.

  If I don’t start the bit, Charlotte and Wilmington are not in play, but Piper is. I have no idea where she is, but if I can break out and take a hostage, I might get a trade. No, that’s stupid. Use your skills, Maeve. You will think of something.

  She knew her thoughts were desperate as she studied herself in the mirror. Oh. The glass mirror.

  Maeve reached her hand up and opened the medicine cabinet, which was empty. She studied the weak hinges that held the mirror. One, two, three, she thought. One, rip the mirror off the hinges. Two, shatter the mirror against the toilet. Three, grab the largest chunk and use it as a weapon against Jim.

  She removed her ACU jacket and her T-shirt, then replaced her top. She wrapped the T-shirt around her right hand, which she would use to hold whatever weapon the shattered mirror provided her.

  Then she ripped the mirror off its hinges.

  CHAPTER 11

  “THEN EXPLAIN,” MAHEGAN SAID TO GRACE.

  Mahegan stood, took three steps, and sat on the floor, leaning his back against his bed. He liked the place because it vaguely reminded him of some of his austere accommodations in combat zones, though he never recalled having a kitchenette or a breakfast table. A cot and some plywood walls were the best he had done, if he was lucky. Other times, communal living arrangements were the norm. Regardless, he liked the independence from the
trappings of society. No house to maintain. No vehicle on which to pay insurance.

  He looked out the window and saw a pale gray sky edging over the horizon like a battleship ready for combat. The sleepless night before recalled dozens of missions playing out at precisely what sailors called “before morning nautical twilight.” He had a mission. Savage had told him he had about twenty-four hours to find Maeve Cassidy. He didn’t know what the “or else” was, but if Savage was involved, he knew it had to be significant.

  Grace stayed in the chair and turned toward him. “I’m a conservationist. I started dating Ted Throckmorton to get inside the Throckmorton Energy cabal. I don’t think his father, Brand, ever trusted me, though he did try to have sex with me many times. Ted was a different story. I could see the conflict in him. He is a rich daddy’s boy and is completely beholden to the man. Wants to please him like nothing you’ve ever seen. But he also has a different side to him, the real side, which would come out if he wasn’t so obsessed with pleasing his father.”

  “Not so unusual,” Mahegan said. He thought of his mother and his mission to kill Gunther. As long as Gunther was alive, that windmill would be there for him to charge. Redemption would not come, but justice would be served. And that was important to Mahegan.

  “You with me?” she asked.

  “Yes. Continue.”

  “You spaced out on me.”

  “No. Just focused a bit . . . things falling into place.”

  “Good. Well, anyway, by day I am a crime-fighting lab tech. By night, I help organize a group called Don’t Frack the Triangle.”

  “Catchy.”

  “DFT-Two for short. There are about twenty of us, most from Chapel Hill. We don’t want the chemicals and wastewater in the aquifer. We don’t want the earthquakes. It’s serious business they’re talking about doing. They’re going to drill two miles into the core of the earth and suck out gas and other by-products through concrete sleeves they shove in the ground after they drill. Like those will hold. Two years ago the power company dumped tons of coal ash into the Dan River. The concrete pipe broke. The same thing can happen here. But Ted is all enamored with how much money he is going to be bringing in. Millions. Maybe billions. Those guys in Texas are frigging billionaires from fracking.”

  “So what were you doing with a pistol on the back deck of the Throckmortons’ house?”

  “He’s got some big investors. From China, Russia, maybe even some of those other countries in Asia. Scary dudes.”

  “Like Turkey?”

  “Maybe. It’s through the Employment-Based Immigration–Fifth Preference program, like we talked about. They donate at least a half million dollars to a project, and then they get a free visa for their family. It’s happening everywhere.”

  “I’ve heard of it. Foreign direct investment. The Afghans were starting to get into the game. Some were getting rich off U.S. government contracts and wanted safe places to put the money and their families. No safer place than the United States when you’re in Afghanistan.”

  Grace nodded, stood, and then sat in front of Mahegan, with her legs crossed in a lotus yoga position. Her movements mirrored her name, Mahegan thought. She was graceful, and her legs slipped into position without any effort.

  “I want to be looking you directly in the eyes when I tell you this, Hawthorne. Ted came by, drunk, about three nights ago. I made him meet me on the patio. I wouldn’t let him into the house. It has been over six months since we’ve been together, and all that frigging BS about me e-mailing him and so on was just that, BS. He’s a stalker of the highest magnitude. Like that old football player O. J. Simpson. Plus, I prefer women, most of the time. That probably freaks you out, but I don’t care. Ted was bad for me in many ways, but we had some good times down in Wilmington, where I would sit on the beach and watch him surf. He earned that nickname, Ted the Shred. He was happiest there in Wilmington, when he was away from the reach of his daddy.”

  Mahegan nodded, urging her to continue, ignoring the comment about her preferring women. He didn’t care.

  “So Ted told me something about what they called Operation Isosceles.”

  “Like the triangle?”

  “I guess. Brand, his father, worked with the state department of commerce, and they named all their projects different code names—like Penguin for an ice company or Dining Room for a furniture company. Ted said he was nervous about this because he felt the investors were running the show, not Brand.”

  “Who is in charge of the investors? Whose project is this?”

  “Someone named Johnny Ting is working with a construction company. I’m told that Ting is calling the shots, with Brand Throckmorton and the head of this construction company as their little triumvirate.”

  “Gunther and Sons?”

  Grace snapped her fingers. “How’d you know?”

  “They’re the biggest in the state.” Mahegan hid his urge to kill Gunther.

  “But, anyway, there was supposed to be this big meeting two nights ago, and it’s this big orgy. Ted calls me up, nearly hysterical that all these EB-Five women have been shuttled over from Throckmorton’s compound slash lodge in western Wake County to have sex with the fracking workers, and there’s a big orgy at his dad’s house. I don’t think Brand Throckmorton’s tastes run in that direction.”

  “He’s gay?”

  “Brand is bi. Ted will never tell you. He has a trophy wife for ‘inside the belt line’ parties. Apparently, she never gets any, so she is probably the biggest sexual deviant you’ve ever met.”

  “Wouldn’t be saying much,” Mahegan said.

  “Regardless, I got a text from Ted, whom, I have to admit, I’d been ignoring, that said, ‘Help.’” She showed him her phone. There it was. Sent about an hour before Grace arrived on video the night of the party. “He has never sent me anything like that.”

  “So what happened? You get in there and do what?”

  “I slid in through the back door, which was unlocked. Pete Cassidy, Maeve Cassidy’s husband, was making out with Sharon Throckmorton, Brand’s wife and Ted’s mother. He looked reluctant, almost as if he were there against his will.”

  As Grace spoke, Mahegan tried to recall the layout of the house from his two visits, one semiofficial and one off the books. Mahegan’s mind clicked, a gear caught, and he held the thought.

  “They didn’t notice me, and I slipped through a series of walk-in closets and into a guest bedroom, where I saw a fairly recognizable local politician with one of the EB-Five women. I was looking for Ted, so I kept going. Everyone was so into his or her own scene, it was like walking through a live porno theater. I found Ted in his room at the other end of the house. He was by himself and freaked out. He was sweating and pacing back and forth, mumbling something about ships and natural gas. I have to admit I was surprised. I saw about ten gorgeous women in that house, and they were there for one reason—to have sex, like it was a political payoff.”

  “Might have something to do with that pipeline to Morehead City. Other than some good blackmail material, how is this relevant?”

  “Ted had been threatened by some of the EB-Five guys. There’s a Russian named Maxim Petrov. Has a big scar on his face. Also some Turks and Chinese guys. The ‘family visas’ are being used to ferry in muscle and prostitutes. Enforcers and entrappers. Ted tells me his father has pictures of the chairman of the state Mining and Energy Commission tied up, with a gag ball in his mouth, being whipped by a naked Serb playboy bunny. Something like that, anyway.”

  “So you brought the pistol because you thought there was danger from the EB-Five crowd?”

  “Yes. And that’s why Ted had his. They told him if he didn’t cooperate, there would be trouble for him specifically. So that’s what I’m saying. Ted’s dad and Gunther are supposed to be in charge, but Ted was so scared, it’s clear that they’re not calling the shots.”

  She was staring him directly in the eyes. Grace had a soulful presence, like a yogi. She spoke softly an
d with conviction, but not in harsh or argumentative ways. Pleasant and soothing, like a counselor speaking with a patient. Mahegan could see how she could be committed to protecting the environment from fracking, while not crossing the line into hostile territory. He doubted she protested, and was convinced she most likely spoke at public hearings and organized letter-writing campaigns and the like. Good for her. Mahegan had no opinion on fracking. It actually seemed reasonable to him, but he admired the pluck of someone who cared enough to do something to fix what she felt was wrong.

  “And then what happened?”

  “I was in Ted’s room, talking, when the shot went off. After that, all hell broke loose, and I left as quickly as I’d come. Then I raced home, showered, put on my lab stuff, and waited for the call.”

  “Why the big act at the door with Ted the Shred? He was bowing up on me, and you seemed genuinely scared.”

  Grace shook her head. “It wasn’t an act. Ted is insanely jealous, and he sees Marlboro Man escorting me to the door? Honestly, I’m surprised it went so well.”

  Mahegan thought of Ted’s broken body splayed on the hood of his Lamborghini. “Not so much for him. So what is Isosceles?”

  “Not even Ted knew. He told me about his dad’s plan to siphon natural gas from parts of Wake and Chatham Counties where the Durham Triassic Basin has rich shale deposits. With horizontal drilling, if you get your drill in there first, you can steal everyone’s gas before they know it, and there’s no way to tell.”

  Mahegan ran his options through his mind. Take a four-hour nap, with Grace resting in the nook of his arm, her head on his chest. Go after Pete Cassidy and interrogate him as to what he knew about Maeve. Or find out more about James Gunther’s role in this.

  “I’m going to have to get to work in a couple of hours. Any way to catch some shut-eye before then?” Grace asked. “I texted Griffyn that I couldn’t be there until nine a.m.”