Foreign and Domestic Page 13

  The pain was sharp, as if the blow had unhinged something important that had mostly healed. He turned to look for Bream, but the general had disappeared.

  “Chief, if the only way you can get to me is by having your daddy in here set me up, then you might as well eat the barrel of your pistol because you’re a bigger pussy than I figured you for.”

  He looked at Paslowski, whose eyelids were half closed, as if he was drugged. He was breathing heavily and it occurred to Mahegan that he might have to fight his way out of there, potentially even hurt Paslowski more than he had the day before.

  “I’m sure the general’s office is wired for sound and video and I’m also sure he knows exactly what is happening here,” Mahegan said. “So, if you’re really into this, let’s have at it, wild man.” Mahegan prepared for a fight. He studied Paslowski’s face, which was covered with a developing film of sweat.

  Paslowski backed down, saying, “Get out of here before I have you arrested.”

  Mahegan cocked his head and stared at Paslowski. “Only shot you can take is a cheap shot? That right, chief?” After holding everything back with Bream, Mahegan could feel the emotions galloping, tugging hard at his control the same way they had after the bomb hit Colgate’s vehicle.

  “You’d better take the only opportunity I’m giving you, captain.”

  “I turned in my papers, asshole. I’m Mr. Mahegan to you. Or else I could have your ass arrested for striking a superior officer.”

  Paslowski’s mouth twitched into his version of a smile, appearing more like a lecherous grin.

  “That’s the beauty of the IG, Mahegan. Right now you’re a mister. Tomorrow we could bring you back to active duty to stand trial. Make you a captain. Just like that. And all we’d need is a preponderance of evidence. Maybe you swung at the general first. Think about it, asshole.” He shook the sap, which he was still holding in his left hand.

  Mahegan took a step toward Paslowski, who flinched. He brushed past the heft of his body and exited the large office. He walked past a series of dark wood desks lining the outer sanctum of the IG’s office, nodding at the young officers in charge of managing the general’s schedule, keeping his paperwork, and tending to his needs.

  He walked through the Pentagon to the parking lot. Were it not for his immaculate recall of paths taken, he might have been lost in the place for days. He walked past the security guards, then around the 9/11 Memorial, across busy Route 110, and stepped over the small stone wall into Arlington National Cemetery. He found Colgate’s headstone, pulled up the camera device on the back, and separated it from the wooden stake to which it was taped. It was a fiber-optic camera.

  General Bream, or someone, had cast a wide net searching for him.

  Chapter 13

  “Just drive,” Mahegan said to Locklear when she picked him up at the cemetery.

  “Don’t be an asshole.” Locklear shifted the Defender and pulled onto I-395 for the long trip back to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

  At least she was talking to him again. After about two hours of driving, just south of Richmond, Virginia, Mahegan broke the silence by looking at Locklear and saying, “Don’t call me an asshole.”

  Locklear seemed to take this in for a moment and nodded. “Quit being one and you’ve got a deal.”

  A long moment passed. Finally, Locklear asked, “Those guys got anything on you?”

  Locklear had obviously gone shopping. She had changed into a silk navy business suit with white blouse and three-inch heels. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail and had applied light makeup. Tiny gold hoops hanging from her earlobes matched her modest gold necklace with the Croatan C hanging just above her cleavage. Mahegan thought the professional Locklear was perhaps even more seductive than the laid-back Locklear, though it was a close call.

  “Nobody’s got anything on me,” Mahegan said. “But everyone thinks they do. What does your uncle have to say about that?”

  Locklear turned her head toward Mahegan and said, “Well, they say it’s looking good.”

  “I don’t think that means for me, right?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then why tell me? I could jump and run the next time you slow down.”

  “Then I’d have to cap your ass,” she said, patting the pistol in her purse next to her. “Besides, I think you’re curious about Miller Royes and J.J.”

  Mahegan didn’t respond. She was right about his curiosity. He still hadn’t asked again about the missing person, J.J., and figured the less they told him about that one the less they thought it was connected to him.

  Locklear’s affect turn serious when she asked, “What makes Colgate different from the other men you lost?”

  The question caught Mahegan unprepared.

  “Who said he was different?”

  “I know where you went last night. I got a call from the Inspector General’s office asking why I had lost control of you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I said I had authorized you to visit your friend’s grave. Not to save your ass, mind you, but to save mine.” She stopped, and then softened her tone. “It is kind of messed up that they were watching you like that.”

  “Thanks.”

  Mahegan wrestled with his unfamiliar emotions, having stuffed them neatly in a tightly sealed compartment in his mind for the last year.

  “Colgate was a top-notch soldier, just like they all were, but there was just something else about him. He was just this big, happy guy, always smiling. I cared about all of my men, but something clicked with Colgate. He saved my ass. I saved his. We all get close to somebody. Sometimes we choose them. Sometimes they choose us.”

  “You chose Colgate?”

  “I can’t say it was that simple. We were Ranger buddies and that’s enough to make you either hate someone or be forever grateful for the friendship. But it was more than that. I never had any siblings and he was, well, like my brother I guess.”

  Mahegan turned and looked out of the window, recalling Colgate’s toothy grin and affable demeanor.

  “Sounds nice. Most people don’t get that, ever,” Locklear said, her voice a bare whisper above the sound of the wind.

  Mahegan wondered if it was better to have “that” and lose it or to never experience it in the first place. Was the high of the friendship worth the low of the loss? That thought made him think of the horrible way in which he had lost his mother when he was fourteen.

  He decided to change the topic.

  “So, what’s with the businesswoman outfit?”

  Locklear turned and looked at him. “I’m an actress. Well, sort of.”

  “What? Like in movies and stuff?”

  “No. At least, not yet. You know I told you that the Lost Colony is an outdoor drama. It runs from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend. We reenact what might have occurred. I used to stay in the dorm with all the other actresses and actors. It was fun. Great summer gig.”

  Mahegan nodded. “You play Eleanor Dare, I take it?”

  She paused. “That’s right. Today I went to the Kennedy Center to discuss next season’s performance while you were doing your macho stuff at the Pentagon. Hence, the professional attire.” She waved her hand across her business suit.

  “In this performance you reenact the colonists and the Croatan living forever in bliss?” But Mahegan was thinking something else. The name. Elizabeth. Eleanor Dare. Elizabeth Locklear. What else? What was still catching in his mind?

  “Something like that.” Locklear paused and then said, “Don’t you get it? The fact that my mitochondrial DNA shows me connected to Virginia Dare means that some of the colonists survived. How could they have survived if the Croatan had not protected them? And if Dare survived, then the Croatan did, too.”

  “Everybody’s linked to somebody,” Mahegan said, still chasing his intuition.

  “Sheriff ran your DNA, you know.”

  Mahegan looked at her. They had crossed into North Carolina and were cuttin
g through Currituck County. The afternoon was warm and as they drove away from the sun toward the Carolina shore, the resolution of the landscape was in high definition. There was no haze and the rural countryside stood out boldly with the stark colors of red barns, green fields, and black asphalt roads.

  “There are a lot of theories that say the Croatan migrated south and west and integrated with the Lumbee. You’ve got the blond hair and blue eyes of a Croatan. Maybe you’re Croatan, not Lumbee? Maybe the last Croatan?”

  Mahegan half smiled and looked at her. “So, we are going to blend effortlessly into the night, you and me?”

  “After last night? Keep dreaming.” But she laughed.

  Mahegan had never had much of a problem finding suitable women to date, though he had spent multiple tours in combat away from said suitable women. As he processed the last forty-eight hours, his instincts were telling him two things. First, she was certainly a beautiful woman and he was interested. Second, this might be too easy. Normally the first instinct would trump the second without hesitation. But being at the center of two murder investigations, Mahegan found himself wondering why she had blown off her anger so quickly, why she was being so . . . accommodating.

  As they crossed the bridge onto Roanoke Island, she turned past the Lost Colony Theater and onto the beach with her bungalow.

  She shut off the ignition of the Defender and looked at him.

  “Want to go grab some ‘chow,’ as you say it?”

  “You cook?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I can feed you,” she said. “Sheriff says they don’t need you until tomorrow. Says you might want a lawyer.”

  “Okay. Let’s eat.”

  He stepped out of the car and slid his hand under the floor mat where he had placed the gold coin.

  “Looking for this?” Locklear asked, holding up the double eagle.

  Mahegan nodded. “Not anymore.”

  “Found it on Royes’s dead body, right?”

  She took off her high heels and walked toward the cottage. Mahegan grabbed a shopping bag with his swim trunks and the “If It’s Tourist Season” T-shirt. He followed but remained fixated on the gold coin in Locklear’s hand. His only clues in this entire affair were the gold coin and the boots that bore the name of the ship. He stole a quick glance at the Teach’s Pet sitting idly in Croatan Sound.

  “Right. What do you know about the coin?”

  “It’s a perfect double eagle made in Charlotte, North Carolina. Was being hauled by the SS James Adger, which shipwrecked about four miles off Oregon Inlet.”

  “Washed up?”

  “Gold doesn’t ‘wash up.’ It’s too heavy. In water, it drops straight to the bottom. With thieves, it gets hidden.”

  “The dead guy, Royes, was a gold thief?”

  “I don’t think so. I knew him. I think he found it and was protecting it. He probably wasn’t sure what to do with it.”

  “Gold’s hard to turn down. Money is money.”

  Locklear shook her head.

  “Not with some people. Anyway, we’ve got a pizza on the way from Angelo’s.”

  Mahegan nodded, sat on the porch swing, and stared at the Teach’s Pet.

  “Why is that out there again?”

  “It stays there. Like I said, for the reenactments. The county also has a communications relay on there.”

  Mahegan thought for a moment about why a faux pirate ship would have a communications role and then he remembered the sheriff’s car and the broad area he had to monitor.

  “What about these gold diggers you were talking about?”

  Locklear smiled. “Treasure hunters? They sniff around there, near the Curlew, which is still down there. They haven’t found anything. As an environmentalist, my main concern is to make sure they don’t damage the environment, especially the Alligator River area.”

  “Where I’ve been swimming?”

  “Which is why I’ve been kayaking and watching you.”

  She sat next to him on the wooden bench swing that hung from the covered porch ceiling and faced the beach and sound. The water’s edge was about fifty meters away.

  “You ever go out there?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “If you’re the environmental police, then I would think you would’ve scoped the ship out.”

  “Not much going on. Occasionally, a barge of some type stops, probably for upkeep of the communications equipment out there, but mostly there’s some locals that dress up as pirates and schoolkids go there for field trips.”

  “Playacting? Blackbeard?”

  “Aargh.” She smiled.

  “A lot of history,” Mahegan reflected.

  “Hang on.”

  A Jeep pulled up and a young man in a T-shirt and swim trunks jumped out. “Hey, Linds,” he said, approaching her and handing her a pizza box.

  Mahegan watched her pay the delivery boy and then disappear inside the bungalow.

  She reappeared a few minutes later wearing a halter and sarong with the Teva sandals she had been wearing on the trip to the Pentagon. On her first trip out to the porch, she brought the pizza box. On the second, she had a wine bottle cradled in her arm and was holding two wineglasses between her fingers. In her other hand, she had a printout of an online news article, which she held out to him.

  “See this?” she asked.

  Mahegan grabbed a slice of pizza and read.

  SUSPECTS AND SECURITY AFTER THE FORT BRACKETT ATTACK

  FORT BRACKETT, SOUTH CAROLINA: At 6:12 a.m. yesterday morning several bombs detonated at Fort Brackett’s main entrance, killing at least 28 people, including seven children. Police say that eyewitnesses described a large blast from the north side of the gate. Then, 20 minutes later, a secondary device ignited from within the crowd, possibly initiated by a suicide bomber.

  The American Taliban has taken credit for orchestrating the attack and has already posted video images of the attack on the Internet via YouTube and Facebook. The American Taliban is a U.S. citizen named Adam Wilhoyt, who goes by the moniker Mullah Adham. Wilhoyt has stated that his army of jihadists will continue to target women and children throughout America and that “this is only the beginning.” He also claims to have prisoners of war and will begin beheading them soon.

  Curiously, he also implicated former Army Captain Chayton “Jake” Mahegan in the attacks. Department of Defense officials say they have talked to Mahegan and he denies any involvement. The Army Inspector General is currently reviewing Mahegan’s discharge in the wake of his killing an enemy prisoner of war last year. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security are working with the Department of Defense on the investigation.

  “I have personally spoken with former Captain Mahegan about this situation and will continue to monitor all leads,” said Army Inspector General Stanley Bream, called the Army’s “Chief of Integrity” by some and believed by senior defense officials to be in the running for the next Chief of Staff of the Army. While officials tentatively corroborate Mahegan’s alibi, the former Army captain remains a person of interest in the investigation.

  Police Captain Jeremy Sidenstricker said, “We’re working with the Internet company to remove the video and we think we’ll have it down soon. We feel that there may be evidence contained in the video and having it out there is insensitive to the families of those killed and injured.”

  Ironically, due to the high operational deployment tempo of military police forces in recent years, Fort Brackett had in the last two months published a request for bids from private security companies to begin force protection of the Fort Brackett base. Negotiations faltered when Copperhead, Incorporated, rumored to have the lead in negotiations, was blacklisted from doing business with the State Department after a year of litigation resulting from accusations of excessive use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq. While Fort Brackett falls under the purview of the Department of Defense, Copperhead, Inc. has become a pariah in the private military consulti
ng world not unlike Blackwater, Inc.

  When pressed on the matter, the base military commander said, “We are right now focused on taking care of the wounded. I mean we are still pulling bodies out of the wreckage. Our first course of action is to check all of our procedures at the gates and outside the gates. Of course, as this was very clearly an attack, we intend to respond with the proper security measures.”

  The American Taliban has already had over 20,000 Facebook comments with over 1,000 “likes” on the video, possibly indicating international terrorist support for Adham.

  This is a developing story. Stay tuned for updates.

  Mahegan rubbed his chin.

  “Damn. Bream works fast. Covering his ass, big-time.”

  “Why would this Mullah mention you?”

  “Maybe it’s because I chased his ass hard. Killed lots of his people. Or maybe he wants heat on me because I understand classic Taliban tactics. Hit the gate hard, let an even larger group gather, and have a secondary device ready to go. Probably a suicide bomber. Just outside the gate, they let their guard down and didn’t secure the scene. They should have pushed security out and not let anyone into the chaos once the first one went off. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”

  “‘Slow is smooth; smooth is fast’?” Locklear had a quizzical expression on her face.

  “Roger. Be deliberate and efficient and you will be quicker than just reacting. Let logic drive your actions, not emotion. Racing to respond, they tripped up their procedures and ended up causing more harm than good. They blew it.”

  “A tad harsh, don’t you think?”

  “Not harsh enough. Lax security got a lot of people killed. Period.”

  “What do you know about this American Taliban guy?”