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Mahegan paused. There was enough in open source information that he could give her a brief sketch.

  “He went to high school in Davenport, Iowa. His mom was an executive assistant at an Army base out there. No father in his life. Pegged as a ‘Columbine kind of kid’ by his principal. Developed a massive online video game where the goal was to destroy famous American landmarks. When he was sixteen, FBI came into his house and seized computers, phones, everything. He got a plea deal. Curiously, the FBI agent retired and made a marginally different game with different landmarks using the Adam Wilhoyt code. That’s his real name. Adam Wilhoyt. The kid says, ‘Screw it,’ and moves to Pakistan, joins a madrassa, calls himself ‘Mullah Adham,’ the name of the bad guy in his video game, and the rest is history.”

  Mahegan felt a buzz as he provided an unclassified version of Adham’s dossier. There was something bothering him about the Army base where The American Taliban’s mother worked. He couldn’t remember the name of the installation, but recalled it was not anywhere he would ever have been. It wasn’t a base for operators. Just the opposite. It was for logisticians, people who handled ammunition and maintenance.

  Tucking the thought away, he paused, realizing what had been sticking in his mind before. He added, “And he was supposedly in love with a young woman named Elizabeth Carlsen.”

  He studied her intently, looking for any micro-expression: a twitch of the cheek, a slight aversion of the eyes, or a nervous hand movement.

  He saw nothing. Then he looked at the C necklace wondering if it really stood for Croatan.

  “Seems you know a lot about this man.”

  “I hunted him for a year.”

  “Grudge to bear?”

  Mahegan wasn’t sure if she was talking about him or Adham.

  “Maybe,” Mahegan replied. “I lost good men trying to capture him.”

  During the long stretches of silence on the trip back, he continued to wonder why Adham would mention his name. Unable to discern a reason good enough to settle on, he changed the subject.

  “Can you tell me anything else about Copperhead across the sound?” Mahegan asked.

  “Hmm. Just that they are clearing the bombing range that was just shut down. Every once in a while you’ll hear an explosion over there.”

  “I heard one yesterday morning. What do they do with the bombs they’ve cleared out?”

  “Beats me. I’ve seen some barges leaving out early in the morning, though, when I’m kayaking. There’s an old ghost town on the other side of the peninsula there called Buffalo City. It’s an old timber town from the mid-1800s and runs adjacent to the Alligator River Wildlife Refuge. They raked the area clean and moved out. Copperhead’s also done some construction over there and I think the Army uses it now. Perfect symbiosis don’t you think? A bombing range next to a nature refuge?”

  “Well, I’m glad they’re clearing it now,” Mahegan said. “Nobody needs to be bothering the wolves who are doing nothing but minding their own business over there.”

  “Really?” Locklear was looking at him as if impressed.

  “What?”

  “I know you’re Native American and all, but I wouldn’t have pegged you for a defender of the natural habitats of animals.”

  “Nature’s all we’ve got.” Mahegan shrugged and turned to watch the sun dip into Croatan Sound. It was a perfect orange circle slicing into the calm waters, masked faintly by a few wispy clouds and the low horizon of the wildlife refuge about seven miles across from the northern tip of Roanoke Island. He studied the land as if there were answers to be found, like a Bev Doolittle painting where the images revealed hidden messages. He visualized hundreds of workers sawing down trees and mules dragging the lumber to a rail line, where the train would carry the wood to a sawmill or pulp factory to make lumber or paper. There would have been barracks for the lumberjacks, who cut the trees until the peninsula had been deforested. What Mahegan had seen from the shore after his swim was a marshy, nearly uninhabitable piece of terrain that was practically impossible to get to without swimming or boating five miles. If the place had been abandoned for nearly one hundred years, he wondered what, other than the standard duties of bomb clearing, might be happening over there.

  He tucked away that thought and ran through the last two days in his mind. He wasn’t much on coincidences and while he might believe it was just happenstance that his left arm had slammed into a dead body in the middle of the sound, he could not accept that Paslowski, Bream, and Locklear were chance encounters. He stared at the glass of wine with its condensation beading on the stemware. He couldn’t tell a Chardonnay from a Chartreuse. When he drank, which wasn’t often, he preferred regular beer such as Budweiser or good whiskey, such as Maker’s Mark. He let the wine continue to sweat.

  “Question,” Locklear said.

  “Okay.”

  “You seem like a guy who lives off the grid. How did they find you?”

  He had asked himself that same question: How had Paslowski found him? He had been aimlessly drifting up the Atlantic coast like a fugitive. He had only taken jobs that either paid in cash or trade, such as his residing in the Queen Anne’s Revenge for some yard work. There was little chance of blowing his cover there. When asked for his name, he would offer only “Jake.” But it hadn’t taken him long to figure it out.

  “There was a kid on a ferry from Ocracoke to Hatteras a couple of weeks ago. I was taking the ferry up from working a job in Carteret County and happened to see him just as a car rolled forward to crush him between two cars. Some moron had left the car in neutral instead of park, and I had to bust his BMW grille to create a gap to release the kid. The owner had been halfway across the lot when it happened, and he came back pissed. So he snapped a picture of me, then e-mailed it to the cops.”

  “A visual 911? Interesting. Why didn’t they snatch you right there?”

  Mahegan studied Locklear for a moment, listening to the lap of the sound against the sand and nearby bulkhead.

  “I slipped off the back end and swam a mile up Pamlico Sound before they got there. Walked back into town as the Coast Guard and cops were heading out.”

  The cops must have matched the BMW prick’s photo with a photo of him on the black and gray list distributed by Homeland Security upon his return from combat. Bream had probably put him on that list as part of his dragnet to find him. The cameraphone image had to be a pretty good one and it wouldn’t have taken long for someone to identify him.

  Savage had warned him. Every port of entry—air, sea, and land—would have him on the “gray” list, possibly detain, saying something like, “He’s probably killed at least one prisoner, former Delta Force, dishonorable discharge, loner, no family, post-traumatic stress, high security threat.”

  In the Outer Banks, the Coast Guard reigned supreme and would be diligently monitoring the black and gray lists for must-detain and possibly-detain personnel.

  “Earth to Mahegan,” Locklear said.

  Mahegan reeled himself in from the memory. It had only been a matter of time before he popped up on the radar, and he had done well to stay undetected this long.

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “So you’re quick on your feet. I like it. You’re not drinking your wine, by the way.”

  “Sorry. Got any beer? Goes better with pizza.”

  She cocked her head and said, “Yeah, sure.”

  He watched her bounce into the cottage, the screen door smacking against the frame of the house as soon as she cleared the doorway. He picked up another slice of pizza and turned his gaze toward the Teach’s Pet, calculating the swim. It was a little more than a quarter mile, no more than a half. Easy. The hard part would be disengaging from Locklear again.

  She reappeared holding a Coors Light. If he was going swimming, he didn’t want alcohol in his system, and Coors was the closest thing to water he had ever drunk, so he took it.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Sure. So what were you just thinking about?”
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  “You,” he said.

  “Really? Me?” She smiled and tucked her feet up under her legs, which moved her torso closer to him. They were a few inches apart on the swing.

  “I can figure out most things,” Mahegan said. “But so far you’re a challenge.”

  “Believe me, I don’t try to be, but I’ve been told that before. My energy has me all over the place.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing.”

  Locklear nudged a bit closer, running her hand along the back of the swing. Mahegan felt her arm resting along his broad shoulders. He could smell the light scent of her skin. Her breath was sweet with the taste of wine, her second glass.

  “Actress?” he asked.

  “Hmm-hmm.” She nodded.

  “Cop?”

  “Rog,” she said.

  “Marine biologist?”

  “Yep.”

  “What else?”

  She turned her gaze from her wineglass to the water, facing Teach’s Pet and lost in her thoughts. Her eyes sparkled in the faint light from the cottage window behind him. She was close enough where he could move maybe four inches and kiss her, which seemed like a pretty good option right now.

  “Lots of things,” she said. The eyes flashed at him, followed by a smile, more subtle this time. “Historian. Cultural genius.” After a pause, she slid her lips toward his, whispering, “Good kisser.”

  He received her kiss, letting her melt into him. Soon she was straddling him, her knees on either side of his legs, her mouth working his lips while she moved her hips slowly against him. He set his beer bottle on the wood deck, wrapped both of his arms around her waist, stood, and carried her into the house. She crossed her feet behind his back and her arms around his neck as he maneuvered through the house, kicked over a couple of things that didn’t break, found the bedroom, and gently set her down on the bed.

  “You sure?” he asked, staring into her eyes.

  “I’m sure,” she whispered, but it was a low moan as she pulled at his shirt. Soon they were naked and Mahegan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been with a woman, but for this moment he forgot about the two murder investigations, the bombing at Fort Brackett, the fiber-optic camera on Colgate’s headstone, and the gold coin—everything. He even allowed himself to briefly tuck Colgate to the side, still present somewhere, but not dominant.

  For a brief flash he permitted himself the pleasure of a beautiful, uninhibited woman, which he’d known before it started was a bad move.

  Chapter 14

  Mahegan took a deep breath. Locklear’s head was on his chest and her leg was kicked across his pelvis. He held his arm around her back as he turned his head toward the clock.

  After an hour of fierce sex they were spent, and his mind began to crowd again. Three macro themes appeared that he could not erase. First, was the name of the ship inside the dead man’s boots connected to the gold coin? Second, why would Inspector General Bream call him to the Pentagon, and how was any of this connected, if at all, to Adham? And last, why was Adham implicating him in the Brackett attacks?

  He turned her away from him, gently moving her farther onto the bed, leaving his suit clothes crumpled on the floor. He picked up her sarong, which had a small cutout pocket. It was heavy with the weight of the gold coin. He retrieved the coin, stared at it, and decided to keep it. He didn’t want her having evidence he had hidden from authorities.

  He walked naked into the living room and found the shopping bag in which he had placed his swim trunks, mocs, and her T-shirt. Slipping on the trunks and the mocs, he rummaged for a scrap of paper and pen, and left her a quick note that said, “You’re an amazing woman. Gone for a swim. Didn’t want to wake you.” He quietly let himself out of the bungalow and stepped onto the beach. He tucked the gold coin in the small pocket insert inside his swim trunks.

  Turning toward the bungalow and the woods behind it, Mahegan saw Locklear’s Defender to his left and, beyond that, her kayak. He presumed she had tipped it over to prevent rain from gathering inside. Thinking it might be more efficient than swimming, he moved to the kayak and quietly knelt into the sand. When he lifted the fiberglass hull, its weight surprised him. He had expected something lighter. He heard something slide toward the bow, like metal. Concerned about making too much noise, he quietly returned the kayak to its original position. As he knelt, he rested his hands on the kayak’s hull, which was facing upward. He was thinking, pressing his knee into the sand to stand, when he felt something hard crunch into his kneecap.

  It was small and round.

  He removed his knee and sifted away the sand with his fingers until he found a circular object. He held it up to the moonlight, and could make out the faint outline of two eagles on either side of a gold coin.

  Immediately, he checked his pocket, certain that it had somehow come out as he inspected the kayak.

  The original was still in his swim trunks. Mahegan secured the second gold coin in his swim trunks, vowing to return it to Locklear after he had a chance to think about what it meant.

  Standing, Mahegan walked to the edge of the nearly still water of Croatan Sound and stared at the dim lights on the Teach’s Pet. Like most evenings, tonight the water was warmer than the autumn air, somewhere in the mid-seventies, Mahegan estimated.

  It was dark, maybe three a.m. He liked this time of darkness. As a kid it was when he would sneak out of the trailer in Frisco when he couldn’t sleep, find a sandy hilltop, and take comfort in the steady rhythm of the ocean and the marsh with all of its inhabitants. He would envision himself blending with them. He would also think about his parents. His father wasn’t a bad man. Not at all. Mahegan loved him as well as he could love anyone. He had loved hearing his father’s stories and now, admired even more his father’s drive to uncover his lineage, an interest and awareness he had passed on to Mahegan. His father’s name was Makwa, Algonquin for Bear. Like his son Chayton, the senior Mahegan was a huge man and thus found it easy to find work on the fishing boats or in construction. And like Mahegan was doing now, his father had drifted, though always dragging Jake and his mother along until that day in Maxton that everything had changed for fourteen-year-old Jake Mahegan.

  But thinking about his father made him think about his mother, and if he thought about her loss for any period of time, he lost control. So his anger remained safely contained like a pit viper in a terrarium, snapping at the glass, but unable to do harm unless unleashed.

  Now, he noticed the faint outline of the schooner’s rigging cut against the dotted lights of Kill Devil Hills across the sound and to the northeast. Closing his eyes, Mahegan visualized what he was about to do. Swim to the ship, climb either a ladder on the side or shinny up the rope or chain that held the anchor, investigate what might have happened to Miller Royes, and swim back.

  Mahegan was not an overly sympathetic man, at least not outside his immediate circle, which without family or love was reserved for his brothers in combat; so he had no interest in avenging whatever happened to Royes. But he was uniquely concerned about his own freedom, and being even a “person of interest” in Royes’s death vested him in determining what had actually happened to the man.

  With the early morning sounds of the tidewater filling his senses, he opened his eyes, walked into the dark water, and stopped. Thinking of the second gold coin, he turned and looked back at the kayak leaning against the house and wondered if it would float with a dead body in tow. Specifically, could Locklear have dumped Royes’s body so that it would drift into him?

  He looked at the house where he presumed Locklear was sleeping, and then continued walking until the water was deep enough for him to slide quietly into a silent overhand Australian crawl. He let the taste of the brackish water fill his mouth as he pushed off the loam and attempted to gain his rhythm of rotating his head every other stroke in opposite directions. After the sex, the swim actually felt good. He was leaving and moving away from the beautiful woman who had bound him.

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nbsp; He set himself on a directly perpendicular azimuth to the ship. It was canted with its bow pointing to the northwest and Mahegan was coming at it from due south. If he didn’t waver on his approach, he would hit the port side of the stern. He wanted to minimize lateral movement because he knew that the human eye could more easily detect anomalies moving across its field of vision than directly at it. The first settlers learned quickly from the Native Americans to approach their prey, and their enemies, from a perpendicular path.

  The first thing he noticed, though, as he tried to ease into his rhythm, was that the sucker punch from Paslowski had inflamed the injury. Though a year into the healing, there was plenty of scar tissue and he could feel the arcing pain with every left shoulder windmill. Anger flashed in his mind as he pulled through the darkness. He scolded himself for not being quicker than Paslowski and for not crushing him afterward.

  Thankfully, the swim passed quickly and turned out to be about a half mile. Compared to the lengths he had been swimming, this pace and effort was welcome, though he was concerned about the shoulder. As soon as he knew he was close, he slowed, treaded water for a few seconds and visually scanned the ship. He was about twenty meters away, his head in the water like an alligator’s, eyes and nose barely cresting the surface. He tasted the musty water as his arms slowly pushed back and forth to avoid causing ripples.

  He saw lacquered eight-inch-wide tongue-in-groove wood panels that created the massive hull of the ship. His eyes flicked left, then right. It spanned about one hundred feet, thirty-three yards, a third of a football field, not counting the end zone. A decent-sized rig for its day, but not especially large by today’s standards. Still, it was an impressive replica.

  The ambient light from Kill Devil Hills and the sliver of moon allowed him to see the gold painted letters, “Teach’s Pet.” The letters were large and cursive, and the s looked more like an f as if it was written in Elizabethan English three hundred years ago. But that was wrong, thought Mahegan−the long s was used at the beginning of a word in Old English, but never at the end—and the error gave him some information about the owner of the ship. It was a minor point to debate while treading in Croatan Sound, but he knew the smallest cues could be indicators of something more important, so he tucked away the thought as he began to scan the cannon battery. The portholes were square and black and he could not tell what may or may not be hidden in the wells of each window. But Mahegan figured not much. If Locklear had been correct and the ship had been out there for years, the crew would be rotating all of the time, bored stiff, and most certainly asleep at this point in the morning.