Besieged

by A. J Tata

  “Yes,” Misha confirmed. She was moving excitedly in the seat next to him. Her hands were beginning to flap like a bird, but then she regained control.

  He saw a ten-foot wrought-iron gate and fence with outward-facing pickets standing about ten feet high and shaved to a fine point. Whoever Miss Hallowell was, she was both rich and security conscious. Beyond the secured gate where they idled, he could see a two-story brick home in the distance. The lights were off save a dim glow from beyond an upstairs window.

  Casey buzzed down her window and pressed a button on the intercom box to her left. A shrill beep preceded the ringing of a phone.

  “Third ring,” Misha said.

  The third ring came, and then the phone clicked and a voice said, “May I help you?”

  Casey began to speak, but Misha leaned over the console and said, “Misha!”

  This was the most animated he had seen Misha. Other than the rocking and occasional arm waving, she was usually self-contained, no doubt helped along by her father’s invention.

  “Misha, dear. There you are. What are you doing here so late, and who are your friends?”

  The house appeared large in the darkness, a brick redoubt bunkered in on an acre of land. He watched one of the windows with a slight glow suddenly become brighter, most likely Hallowell’s room.

  Casey got straight to the point. “We are taking care of Misha, and we’ve got an urgent medical case in the back of the SUV,” Casey said. “I’m a nurse. You’re a doctor. This place is protected. Could you please let us in?”

  After a pause, they heard a beep and the iron gate began to open. Casey punched the SUV through the opening and sped to the house, which had a circular driveway that looped in front of a large porch with rockers and Adirondack chairs beneath a green metal roof portico.

  As they opened the doors to the car, a person he presumed to be Hallowell stood in the doorway to the house, holding a pistol. It looked like a well-worn Colt .45. Mahegan watched her study all of them as Misha ran to her and hugged her leg. Casey helped him with Layne Constance, and they carried her up the steps.

  “We need supplies and a table to operate on,” Casey said. “I’m an ER nurse at the hospital, but whoever is attacking us has the hospital entrance blocked.”

  “Attacking us?”

  “Yes,” Mahegan said, intervening. “The boats sinking at the ports is probably the first wave of the attack. Now something much worse is happening. The enemy wants Misha to finish writing a code for them, so they’ve been chasing us.”

  After a moment, Hallowell said, “Well, I’m Dr. Tess Hallowell. Misha is a special child and my patient, but I’m only a psychiatrist. I did my fair share of the dirty stuff during my residency ten years ago, but you’re the pro.” She nodded at Casey.

  Tess Hallowell didn’t seem much older than Casey, so ten years made sense. She was tall, slim, and blond. She had an angular face that matched her lithe frame. She shook hands with Casey and Mahegan as De La Cruz watched from the driveway.

  “Everyone in the house, now,” Tess said, speaking mainly to De La Cruz, who stood in the gravel drive, appearing stunned. Her black hair hung in strings across her face.

  Mahegan walked inside, carrying Layne, and followed Tess. They walked through the foyer, a den with sofas and a fireplace, and a study and finally entered a walled-off room with a pocket slider door that was not obvious to the casual observer. In the room were medical supplies and an operating table.

  “Don’t ask any questions,” she said, looking at him. “Just put her down on the table. If you know how to hook up an IV, then do it,” she said to Mahegan. Then, nodding at Casey, she added, “Let her go wash her hands.”

  She was a doctor in command of her operating room. Before he could work the IV, though, Casey was in full nurse mode, rolling the IV stand next to Layne, who had gone pale. He pressed two fingers against her neck and couldn’t feel anything. Tess put on a set of green scrubs and washed her hands before snapping on purple latex gloves. Casey washed her hands quickly in the basin and did the same.

  “Where was she shot, and how many times?”

  “Stomach. Twice, I think. Lower left abdomen,” Mahegan said.

  Casey took some scissors and cut away Layne’s outer garment, removed the gauze pads he had taped in place as they had traveled in the SUV, and studied the two bullet holes, which were oozing blood. It had been nearly an hour, and he knew the rule of the “golden hour.” In combat if Mahegan got a wounded soldier to a qualified medical professional in less than an hour, the individual stood a better than 90 percent chance of living.

  He wasn’t so sure about Layne. She looked dead already, but he hoped for the best, for Misha’s sake.

  “Blood type?” Tess asked as Layne studied the wound.

  He had already pulled out Layne’s purse and searched for a medical card but couldn’t find anything. Misha began desperately reaching for his phone.

  O positive, Misha typed. Again, her affect was matter of fact, without emotion. She could have been a machine or Siri giving them her mother’s blood type.

  “Are you sure, Misha? How do you know?” Tess asked.

  Daddy and I are O negative. Mama always said she’s the opposite. The positive one.

  “I’m not taking blood from Misha. O negative is universal. Who’s got it?”

  Mahegan rolled up his sleeve and said, “Me.”

  As Casey continued to work on Layne, Tess hooked him up in a matter of minutes. The needle pricked, and the blood started to flow. She extracted two pints of blood, which he doubted was enough. Meanwhile, Casey was carving away, poking and prodding at the wounds.

  “Both shots were pass-through. I don’t see any organ damage. Close to the spleen, but luckily, she’s got a little baby fat down there.”

  “What did this?” Tess asked, looking at Mahegan as she fed the blood into Layne’s arm.

  “MP-five, if you’re familiar with it,” he said.

  Tess gave him a bottle of Gatorade from the refrigerator in the makeshift operating room. He was leery of drinking anything that came out of that refrigerator, but he was happy to have the fluids. The top was sealed, so he figured it was safe.

  “We’ve stopped the bleeding. She’s lost about three pints of blood. Your two, plus a full regimen of IV fluids, ought to help her through this,” Casey said, looking at him.

  He nodded at Casey. “Good job.” Then to Tess, “Thanks for the help, Doc.”

  “Where did your friend go?” Tess asked.

  They all looked around, and De La Cruz was nowhere to be found.

  Tess hooked Layne up to some monitors and watched her for a minute. Casey cleaned up, and then they went in search of De La Cruz, whom they found on the back deck, hugging herself with both arms. The late September night air was filled with the coming of fall, the leading edge of chill settling over the expansive backyard. Standing on the deck, he saw that the land sloped into a beach and a dock, which gave way to Masonboro Sound. He could see the back side of South End Surf Shop about a quarter mile across the inlet. Beyond that was Crystal Pier, and he could hear the waves crashing on the shore. The breeze had shifted back to westerly, and the hurricane was still churning north in the middle of the Atlantic, near Bermuda, the perfect combination for big, glassy waves.

  Misha had walked to the pier and was standing at its end, staring into the distance, rocking softly, arms moving as if she wanted to fly. She slowed her motions to the point that her arms were by her sides and just her hands with rhythmically swaying, like those of a hula dancer. With Misha, though, it was hard to determine if she was looking inward or outward. Was she aware of the beautiful starlit night and the silky smooth inlet waters rippling with the slightest breeze? The wildlife both in and out of the water? Deer, ducks, geese, fish, snakes, all moving about the estuary in some type of natural harmony?

  Or was she looking inward on that night with her father, where something happened for which she blamed herself? Nothing in hi
m believed she had shot her father, but something had happened that evening to traumatize her. Was she pulling at the visions of it, trying to remember? Or did she remember, and was she trying to stuff those horrible images into a dark corner someplace so that they did not haunt her?

  Tess joined them, carrying a digital video device on which she could see Layne and monitor her vital functions. She pushed a button somewhere, and a gas fire burped out of nowhere inside a fire pit. The glow added a comforting ambiance to the evening, in stark contrast to the danger they faced and the critical condition of Promise White and now Layne Constance. But he felt the calm might be an opportunity to get some questions answered.

  “Have a seat, Ximena,” Mahegan said. The four adults sat around the circular fire pit. Mahegan faced the pier and the water, watching Misha.

  He glanced at Casey, who was staring at him. In the orange glow of the fire she was beautiful, with the comforting look of a girl next door, your friend, and your lover. She was someone who cared immensely and whose compassion was something that sustained you. He nodded at her, as if he could communicate all these thoughts and emotions all at once.

  Casey was also called Bisous. Close to Bouseh. She was in France, on the Roxy tour. But there was no way he visualized her being an international terrorist. What would be her cause? Because she lost her Marine to the wars? It didn’t compute. And then, what to make of Layne’s comment as she thought she was dying? Beso. The kiss of death. What did it mean?

  Tess picked up on the vibe, he thought, and flicked her gaze between him and Casey.

  “Thanks,” he said to Tess.

  “Thank you. She’s lucky. Another ten to twenty, if that, and she would have been gone.”

  He looked at Misha again, nearly fifty yards away by the water, still motionless, still lost in her thoughts. Perhaps she was figuring things out on her own. He had to acknowledge that she was a resourceful child. Leading him into her basement and now to Tess Hallowell’s house had provided them with opportunities to get information, first, and perhaps safety, second. As he was staring at her in the darkness, she turned her head and stared back at him. The distance was too great to see that they had locked eyes, but he knew they had.

  “She okay out there?” Tess asked.

  “I think so. Smart kid,” he replied.

  “Her father’s dead, and now her mom’s on the table in there. Gotta be traumatizing,” Casey said.

  After a beat, De La Cruz finally commented. “She has the code that we need.”

  “Still thinking about your cars?” Mahegan asked. “Okay. How is it that an eleven-year-old can develop this code but the best programmers in the business can’t? And according to Misha, you have the code.”

  “Of course I’m thinking of the cars. And I can’t explain why she can and my people can’t,” she said. “All I know is that she did. Her father brought it in, it worked, and we offered a very large retainer to him. Because she was eleven and your stupid laws in this country prevented us from paying an eleven-year-old girl directly, we had to pay the father. And we paid him in cash. But now there’s an issue with the code, so my engineers tell me.”

  Cash. The number one motive to kill.

  “How much cash?” Mahegan asked.

  “The code is worth literally millions to us, so we thought five hundred thousand in cash was reasonable, plus a scholarship fund for Misha’s college.”

  “What does the code do?”

  “The bottom line is that the autonomous vehicles can communicate with one another, as well as our satellite and our maintenance assist teams. Instead of having to call if you get a flat tire, the car automatically reports the issue via satellite and mobilizes the right assist team or over-the-air fix. The code also performs some other classified functions that are cutting edge.”

  “So it’s like OnStar or BMW Assist?” Tess interjected.

  “At its most basic, yes, but with autonomous vehicles, the cars can communicate with the service shop precisely when new tires are needed or new ignition coils or new whatever,” De La Cruz said.

  “But why do they need to talk to each other? Why do I care if my Cefiro car can talk to some stranger’s car?” Mahegan asked.

  “That was primarily an R & D function and request, but consider the possibilities. Three different friends have three different Cefiros, and they can all get to the football game at the same time in the same tailgate part of the parking lot.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just drive together?” Casey said, missing the point that they could be coming from separate locations.

  “Well, let’s presume you have a child and we have built-in safety features that can signal distress and she is being kidnapped or carjacked. The Cefiro Code would be able to send autonomously a distress signal to another car or to a central system. Ultimately, we hope to sell it to the police so that they can monitor.”

  “So if I’m in my Cefiro car, I could program it to talk to my kid’s Cefiro car?” Casey asked.

  “Exactly. Like the cell phone family plan.”

  “Which encourages families to buy the same kind of car,” Casey said.

  “Now you see the brilliance of what we are doing,” De La Cruz said.

  Something else altogether caught in the back of Mahegan’s mind. Convergence. That was what De La Cruz was talking about. It was the same thing that was happening with the Sparrows that were blowing up the ships in the port channels and bringing the U.S. economy to a dead stop on the East Coast. They were converging simultaneously at a precise weak point on a supertanker, instead of at a football tailgate, and exploding to disable the ship in a vulnerable choke point.

  He couldn’t be sure, but De La Cruz seemed out of the loop on the dangers lurking inside the R & D facility. Either that or she was an excellent actress, which he didn’t discount.

  “What are the chances that the technology you’ve developed is being used by terrorists to sink our ships and destroy our economy?” he asked.

  Tess’s and Casey’s heads snapped toward him. Mahegan was sure at least Casey was thinking the same thing. Tess had a lot to catch up on, if she was going to contribute beyond her medical skills and facilities. And he was beyond needing to vet people. This thing would be won or done in the next twenty-four hours. So he chose to trust Tess. He hoped not to regret his instincts.

  “Not a chance,” De La Cruz said. “My R & D team is working on the next generation. They wouldn’t even have time to figure out how to do that even if they were inclined.” She stood, holding her heels in her hands as if they were weapons. She pointed them at him. “And who are you to make those kinds of accusations?”

  “Well, he can say whatever he wants in this house,” Tess said. “I’ve got a pretty firm straight-question, straight-answer policy. I’ve read about those ships in Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. Swarms of birds, now known to be automated aerial systems laden with explosives, have sunk three or four ships along the East Coast. Misha’s father is dead after receiving a cash payment of five hundred thousand dollars. It seems we have two mysteries to solve, and pronto.”

  “Well, those mysteries have nothing to do with Cefiro,” De La Cruz said. “We are a legitimate company bringing jobs and tax revenue to the state of North Carolina, not to mention cutting-edge technology.”

  Casey’s phone buzzed, and when she looked at it, she immediately stood. She kissed Mahegan on the forehead as she walked toward the pier.

  He said, “Bisous.”

  She stopped and smiled at him. “You remembered.”

  He did, and he also watched De La Cruz’s head turn when he said the name. Her eyes were wide; she was unable to hide her shock. The tell was revealing. Was De La Cruz Bouseh? In his view, she was a better suspect than Casey, who, as she walked toward the pier, stopped midway to take the call. He could see her hands expressively gesturing. She was probably defending her absence from work.

  He said to Tess Hallowell, “Thank you for all you have done tonight to help Misha’s
mother. Is it possible you could check on her for me?”

  Tess cocked her head with a slight grin and said, “Of course, Mr. Mahegan. If you are just trying to get rid of me to speak with Miss De La Cruz alone, I can step aside. However, if you don’t trust her, you may want to keep me around.” She laid her Colt .45 on the table, muzzle aimed at De La Cruz.

  He appreciated her candor, but he wanted De La Cruz less defensive, not more. And he wanted Misha back here with him, using her glasses to record his conversation, not standing alone at the end of the pier, searching or plotting whatever was cycling through her mind.

  Then Misha sat down, legs dangling just above a white center-console boat, and looked at Mahegan directly before all hell broke loose.

  CHAPTER 22

  DARIUS MIRZA

  GIVEN THAT HIS OPERATION HAD LOST CLOSE TO HALF OF HIS WAR fighters, Mirza decided to execute one last-ditch effort to capture the girl so that she could provide the software patch to the code she had written.

  Without the code that linked the aerial and ground-based autonomous systems, he would not have the blitzkrieg to Washington, DC, that he sought.

  But first he had to locate Ximena De La Cruz. Colonel Franco had placed in her necklace a tracking device from their last liaison. Franco’s chief usefulness was his debonair swagger and his ability to bed women. Mirza was a realist. Franco was not a battle-hardened fighter like himself. He had never tasted combat or delighted in the close kill, only in the luxuries of being a high-ranking Cuban officer, which included women, power, cigars, and the occasional decision to execute someone to stay in power.

  As useless as he was, Franco was a necessary part of the team. He was the “public” part of the Cuban public-private partnership with Cefiro. It made perfect sense to the Americans, who did that sort of thing all the time. The public government would partner with a private corporation to maximize capitalistic profits. In Cefiro’s case, the Cuban government wanted to maintain proprietary rights on all the technology it had developed. The Cubans had developed this technology with much assistance from Iranian engineers, who had received funding from the recent unfreezing of Iranian assets worldwide. Mirza had had the vision to place a public plainclothes military officer such as Franco into the operation and to have Franco’s military acumen serve as the perfect balance to De La Cruz’s hard-driving capitalistic instincts. Let her sell the cars and let him determine which technology to civilian-ize and which to militarize.