by A. J Tata
“Did it work?” Misha asked. The presence of her father had calmed her significantly.
He turned, and she was standing. How she was able to switch between the two personalities was something a doctor, perhaps Tess Hallowell, would have to sort out. He saw in her eyes a genuine concern for the outcome of the fight.
“So far, Misha. You did really well. Where did you program this airplane to land?”
She stared at him for a second and said, “Didn’t get that far.”
CHAPTER 40
DARIUS MIRZA
WATCHING THE SPARROWS CONVERGE AND MASS ON THE R & D building meant one thing: the girl had overwritten the code.
Mirza ran as fast as he could toward the fence, knowing that the ballistic missile inside the building would never launch in time and that it could create a secondary explosion.
He felt the thud of the Sparrows all simultaneously slamming into the building that held his command center. A fireball, the color of a flaming sun, billowed out and blew him over the fence and into the river.
He landed in deep water and treaded there for a few minutes, watching the fire burn. Mirza was more in shock at the turn of events than he was at whatever bodily harm he might have sustained. Always a strong swimmer, he felt the current taking him downstream and let it have its way with him for a bit. Other than the crackling noise of the fire, it was peaceful here. He floated for what seemed like hours but was only minutes, maybe seconds.
Looking up, Mirza saw the two CASA airplanes that the girl had reprogrammed to attack the Persian forces. Of all the contingencies Mirza had considered, he had failed to consider the possibility that if the girl could write the code, then she could overwrite the code.
But he wasn’t dead. Mirza could continue to fight. Surely, there were survivors from the ships. Time would tell. The designated rally point was the Port of Wilmington, and he would find a way to get there, link up with whatever troops were able to secure the lodgment, and lead them to victory.
The water tasted musty, like spawning fish. He spotted an island not far away and began to swim toward it. There appeared to be a boat bobbing on the back side. As he got closer to the island, he noticed two men standing on the tip of the island with binoculars, watching the fireball across the river. One man was short, fat, and bald. The other man was just the opposite; he was tall, full of red hair, and appeared physically fit. So focused were they on the spectacle of the fire that they neither saw nor heard him swim around the far side of the island.
Until he cut their anchor line with his knife, climbed aboard, and started the engine.
CHAPTER 41
JAKE MAHEGAN
MAHEGAN KNEW THAT HE HAD ONLY TWO PARACHUTES, BOTH OF which they had, fortunately, packed in Casey’s rucksack. The airplane continued to circle in the sky like a command and control platform monitoring the battle below.
He knew it would soon run out of gas and told Casey he would tandem jump with Roger Constance strapped to his front and she could jump with Misha strapped to her harness. The only issue was that she had never skydived before. While it wasn’t rocket science, it did take some nerve to step into the sky from an airplane. Tandem jumping also required some skill, particularly upon landing.
As they prepared their parachutes, Casey handed Mahegan his Tribal, which she must have picked up off the floor of the R & D facility.
“Figured you’d want this back,” she said.
“Thanks. I do.” He put it in his wet-suit pouch as he cinched Casey’s parachute and then his.
He rehearsed with Casey several times as they stood there in the back of the airplane, listening to its droning buzz, feeling it tilt every minute or so as it turned circles in the sky between the port at the north end and the Cefiro facility at the south end. They had decided that ideally they wanted to land in the open field across from the port, which was a dredge spoil dump site. During their map recon he had noticed it was surrounded by water on either side, which would provide for safe landing if either of them missed the large, half-mile-wide by two-mile-long drop zone, which was nothing but soft loam and sand.
The original plan, of course, was for Misha to program the airplane to land at Wilmington International Airport, but she had done well to reprogram the flight paths and the Sparrow attack patterns.
Casey looked at him and shouted above the din of the engines, “I’ve got it. Don’t worry. If I can ride a fifteen-foot wave in Biarritz, I can jump from an airplane with an eleven-year-old girl strapped to my chest.”
When he tied Misha to Casey’s parachute harness, she was hanging like a puppet in front of Casey, who was struggling a bit.
The engine began to sputter, and he knew it was time for him to cinch Roger Constance to his body, which he did with a couple of turns of the rope around his chest and under his parachute pack tray. It was as if Roger were giving him a piggyback ride. Mahegan would hold him all the way down.
One engine quit and tilted the airplane to the side at a ninety-degree angle. Both he and Casey were slammed against the starboard side.
“Now!” he shouted and began clawing his way to the back ramp. He turned and saw Casey struggling with Misha, who looked astonishingly unconcerned. She was giving him that same stare, making it difficult to tell if she was looking outward or inward. He reached his hand back, and Casey grabbed it, pulling against the centrifugal force created by the spiraling airplane. Their initial altitude was ten thousand feet above ground level, but they were dropping fast.
He pulled on Casey’s hand as he held on to the lip of the ramp. She landed on her back next to him, with Misha facing upward. Roger Constance could see his daughter, and she could see him. Mahegan hoped this would not be the last time they saw each other alive.
He watched as they both mouthed the words “I love you,” and then he flipped over the back ramp of the CASA into the howling winds. Mahegan stabilized quickly by flaring his arms out and getting his and Roger’s bodies horizontal to the ground. He looked for Casey, whom he saw off to his right. She was still spinning and hadn’t stabilized yet. By his estimation they were about five thousand feet above ground level. She had about ten seconds to figure it out before she would not be able to recover. He couldn’t do any kind of diving maneuver given the cumbersome tie job and the weight of Roger Constance. He saw Casey struggling with letting go of Misha and flaring her arms outward. She didn’t have confidence that the ropes would hold. She would let go, then grasp Misha tightly. Finally, she flared her arms, stabilized, and pulled her rip cord.
Once she had a good canopy, Mahegan pulled his rip cord and felt the parachute inflate above him. Drifting now, he pulled on the right toggle and got within fifty feet of Casey so that he could lead her down.
“Follow me,” he shouted.
He looked around for familiar landmarks and saw that they had bailed out in between the dredge spoil dump site and the Cefiro main plant. He could see the fire burning farther south, at the R & D facility.
They were smack in the middle of the river but could steer to either side, as both had an ample landing area for them. He watched as Casey struggled with her toggles and saw that she was descending faster than he was, which didn’t make sense. Then he noticed one of her foils had blown out when she had opened her canopy. Mirza’s knife had probably cut a panel, or Casey must never have reached a stabilized position and the parachute must have malfunctioned upon opening shock. There was no way she and Misha were going to be able to make it to the bank. They were going directly in the middle of the river.
He had a decision to make. Land with Roger Constance in the river or steer himself and Roger to the bank, untie him, and swim out to Casey and Misha. Casey was an excellent swimmer, no doubt, but the extra equipment would inhibit some of those skills.
Then he saw a white Grady-White coming up the river and thought it looked a lot like Steve McCarthy’s boat.
He made the decision to glide a few hundred yards to the eastern bank of the river, the Wilmington s
ide, and landed softly in a patch of mud and grass. He quickly untied Roger Constance, told him to not move, unstrapped his parachute harness, and dove into the river.
As he swam, he saw Casey and Misha bobbing in the water and McCarthy’s boat slowing down as it approached. Then from a hundred yards away, he recognized that somehow Mirza was piloting McCarthy’s boat.
He dove deep and began to swim under water, holding his breath the entire way. The buoyancy of the wet suit made it difficult to stay below the surface, but he managed to get about seventy-five yards, slowly come up for air, take a breath, orient himself, and then get back under the water.
As he swam, he felt his Tribal in its waterproof pouch against his rib cage, thankful that Casey had the presence of mind to give it to him in the airplane. When he surfaced again, slowly, he saw Mirza leveling one of McCarthy’s rifles at Casey and Misha.
“This is for my men and my mission,” Mirza said. Mahegan could hear the hatred in his voice. Mirza didn’t care if he killed women or children. Anything that made him look bad was going to die.
Mahegan was bobbing in the water, with one hand on the teak swim platform at the stern. He could see Mirza’s head and upper body. Mahegan had already removed his Tribal from his pouch, undoing the zipper under water, where it was silent against the hum of the engine and lapping of the river chop against the hull.
“Mirza!” Mahegan shouted.
Mirza turned at the sound of his name, and Mahegan shot him twice in the face and two times in the upper body.
Quickly, Mahegan was up on the swim platform and into the boat. He put one more bullet in Mirza’s head for good measure. He didn’t think McCarthy would mind the blood in the boat. Heck, he might even add Mirza’s head to his collection.
Casey swam with Misha to the swim platform at the rear of the boat, climbed up, helped Misha up, and they all three sat for a moment in the boat.
“Where’s Daddy?” Misha asked.
Mahegan turned to where he had left Roger Constance and saw him standing and staring at them, shouting his daughter’s name.
EPILOGUE
MAHEGAN SAT ON THE BEACH NEAR CRYSTAL PIER, WATCHING THE swell remnants of the hurricane, which had thankfully stayed out at sea. Waves were peeling left and right for the populated lineup. A gentle offshore breeze had cleaned up the water, making it rival the turquoise blue of the Caribbean islands.
Promise was sitting next to Mahegan on a towel, her long legs bent at a ninety-degree angle, pulled in by her muscular arms, her triceps showing without her really trying. Her head was leaning against her knees, cocked in his direction.
To his left was Casey, who was waxing her surfboard. She had a blue and white yin and yang design on her six-foot six-inch squashtail board. Casey’s long circular motions while applying wax to the deck of her board were the careful brushstrokes of an artist. He could see eagerness in her eyes. She was relishing the opportunity to carve the face of some of the beautiful waves that were A-framing in the middle and then peeling in both directions.
“Salt water might do your cuts some good,” Casey said, smiling.
“Don’t rub it in. You know I can’t go out there,” Mahegan replied. The cut in his right arm, just above his TEAMMATES tattoo, was healing but was an inch-long and inch-deep gash that looked like an accent above the second a in teammates. Mirza had found his abdomen with three of his ten slashes. One of the fierce knife strokes had pierced the muscle wall, which was why he wouldn’t be out in the water with Casey anytime soon.
Misha was standing in the sand in her bare feet about twenty feet away from them. She was staring out at the sea, looking at the vast ocean and its infinite possibilities. Or she could equally have been sorting and processing the events of the past three days in her mind. She had been twice captured, twice rescued, shot at, and chased and had escaped. She had cracked an Iranian cyber system, stopped a terrorist attack, and conducted a tandem jump from an airplane.
That was a lot for anyone, much less an eleven-year-old.
The wind tossed her yellow hair. She was wearing a blue dress that was similar to the one she had worn at the beginning of her ordeal. It fluttered lightly in the gentle breeze. She was also wearing a new pair of high-tech glasses, their predecessor of which had proven useful not only in conducting reconnaissance of the R & D facility but also in filtering her world. It occurred to him that Misha had not smiled for the entire week that he had known her. Granted there wasn’t much for her to smile about until she was safely reunited with her father. She had chosen to sob then, knowing full well they were still in danger.
Roger Constance was standing behind Misha, giving her space. Mahegan assumed he knew when to do that and when to give her a hug. He was wearing a light blue Windbreaker over a short-sleeved polo shirt, khakis, and sunglasses. A warm late September sun was beaming, and it was a beautiful humidity-free day, with temperatures in the mid-eighty-degree range.
Mahegan had his shirt off, trying to get as much sunlight and nature’s healing powers on his cuts.
Casey picked up her board and said, “One last chance to learn from the best.” She gave him a million-watt smile. She was wearing a standard two-piece black women’s surf outfit, and he could visualize her in the Roxy pro tournaments. Her body was strong and toned, and her muscles rippled beneath her skin as she walked like a sprinter to the starting blocks.
She waded into the water, lay on her board, and began to paddle through the incoming waves, duck diving and ultimately finding the riptide, which acted like a conveyor belt, pulling her out beyond the break. Soon she was up on a wave, doing bottom turns, snapping the board off the lip with aggressive panache—her bisous—even getting barreled briefly as the wave re-formed.
No doubt, she was a pro.
“She’s good,” Promise said.
“She helped a lot, Promise.”
Promise had been released two days ago, and the doctor had said for her to take it easy. Lying on the beach fit that definition.
“I’m still the right woman for you, Jake. You’ll figure that out one day.”
“I love you, Promise. And no, not like a sister. I have tremendous respect for you and your father. So give me the time to work through that.”
“Don’t take too long,” she said, smiling.
“I’m just hoping Savage keeps me here for a while.”
Without missing a beat, the general came over the sand dune where they were located.
“Don’t get too comfortable, cowboy. Good job here, but we’ve got stuff happening everywhere.”
Mahegan looked at Promise and said, “You jinxed it. See?”
“You’ll be back,” she said in a soft voice, her eyes looking away, watching Casey rip a nice head-high wave. She was carving a sine wave in the face of the swell.
Then Mahegan looked at Misha, who was finally smiling. Her broad grin was coming from something external, he was sure. He followed her eyes, and she was watching that sine wave left in the face of the wave by Casey’s surfboard.
And he understood that Misha derived happiness from her family and from finding the symmetry in everything. She walked over to him, and he knelt to her eye level.
“I didn’t kill my daddy, Mr. Mahegan,” she said.
“I knew you didn’t, Misha. You’re a genius, and we need to protect you, okay?”
“I have my daddy now. He protects me,” she said.
He nodded, thinking that was about right. How smart was this girl to concoct a scheme to make her father appear dead to protect him? In her mind of numbers and absolutes, there had been no other option. He was either alive and at risk, or “dead” and not at risk.
Roger Constance came over, knelt next to Misha, and put his arm around her. Then he looked at Mahegan.
“Jake. I really don’t know how to thank you,” he said. His gaunt face was already beginning to fill in, as he had been able to hydrate and eat properly.
“No need to thank me. Just take care of Misha. That’s one
special girl. She’ll find a cure for cancer next week at this rate.”
Roger Constance smiled. “She may have already done that. I need to check the computers and servers.”
“Daddy, hush. Secrets.” Misha smiled and leaned into her father.
“I’ve got to go now,” Mahegan said to both of them. He hugged Misha, who let him, which he thought was a big deal for her, not the same as when she was panicking and needed to calm down. She squeezed him back as hard as she could. Roger Constance hugged him, too. Mahegan thought of Roger’s wife, Layne. Thanks to Tess, she was going to live, but he wondered if their marriage would.
He turned toward Savage, who was standing in the dunes, and took a step toward him. Promise came up on his side and clasped his hand, turning him a bit toward her . . . and Casey, who was sitting on her board, bobbing in the ocean, watching them. Promise kissed him on the lips and held the kiss there for a long time, then pulled away and said, “Come back to me, Jake.”
“I’ll do my best, Promise,” he said. “I’m just glad you’re alive.”
She smiled and winked at him, then turned and walked toward the ocean with Misha and her father. He looked at Casey, who simply waved at him before she saw a nice swell barreling her way. She paddled, positioned herself, and popped up on the board, shredding the face of the wave and then doing a 360-degree air off the lip, landing and riding the white water, holding her arms up as the lineup and the crowd on the beach cheered.
He clapped his hands, waved back, and smiled.
Savage came up alongside him and said, “Ain’t no way in hell I’m letting you get near this place again. You’d get yourself locked down by one of those women, and you know the rules about Judge and his daughter. Hands off, Mahegan.”
He looked at Savage with unsmiling eyes and wondered how long his servitude to him would last. Savage had helped clear up his discharge two years ago, changing it from dishonorable to honorable. But that had come with a price.
