Foreign and Domestic Read online

  “You would know better than me,” Johnson said. “You’re always out there in that kayak.”

  She frowned. “Never boarded the damn thing, though.”

  “I’m hearing that Mahegan found a gold coin on Royes’s body,” Johnson said. It was more of a question directed at Lindy than a statement of fact.

  Lindy held his gaze and said, “News to me.”

  “Well, you just spent the last twenty-four hours with him so I would assume you would have pumped him for as much information as possible.”

  “I did. And all I’ve got to show for it is I don’t know where he is. Left last night. Saw him swimming out to the Pet and from there I don’t know.”

  “Swimming to the Pet?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Shit. He probably boarded it and knows more than we do.”

  Locklear stood, leveled her eyes on Johnson, and said, “I’m counting on it.”

  “Think he knows what happened to J.J.?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  Chapter 19

  Chikatilo had a new mission. He received his orders through innocuous text messages, tweets, or direct messages.

  @TuffChik; party at Suffolk Walmart today at 1030 am ;)

  Needing to keep up the momentum after the Brackett attack, Chikatilo was moving quickly in a new vehicle, a Dodge minivan, to Hampton Roads, Virginia.

  He kept at the speed limit along Route 58, picked up Interstate 664 in Suffolk, Virginia, and then pulled into a Walmart parking lot across from what he knew to be a classified military training compound. A fifteen-foot-high fence with razor wire surrounded the leased facility’s twenty-five acres. Chikatilo knew that the compound was hiding in plain sight among the neighborhood eateries, local stores, and the Super Walmart. Still, there was a formidable gate that required breaching if he was going to be successful.

  And he also knew the front gate used Harris radios to communicate with the roaming security teams.

  He had the remaining ghost from the Fort Brackett attack, a man he called Bundy, lying on the floor cargo compartment of the minivan with a retractable tarp pulled over him. He had activated the door locks using the “kid-lock” function on the driver’s console. Tucked around Bundy were enough explosives to do the Suffolk job. But they parked next to a panel truck that was being driven by a ghost Chikatilo called Dahmer.

  The plan was for Dahmer to fill his vehicle with barrels of ammonium nitrate to augment or accelerate the attack. They moved quickly, with Chikatilo lowering his window in tandem with Dahmer.

  “Salaam Alaykum,” Chikatilo said.

  “Inshallah,” Dahmer said in return, completing the bona fides.

  Chikatilo nodded and stepped out of his vehicle, unlocked the rear compartment, and led Bundy to the driver’s seat.

  “You know the drill. We’ve rehearsed this,” Chikatilo said. “Your front end is reinforced steel and will easily break the gate. Your engine is turbocharged, so approach slow, pass the van, and then about twenty meters away, floor it, break down the wooden arm, and then plow into the main lobby of the big building, keeping it floored until you explode and go to Allah.”

  Bundy nodded, ready for jihad.

  “Once you pass him, Dahmer will be directly behind you and will bore a deeper hole into the headquarters, then detonate the fatal blow. You are the breaching force. He is the assault force. You must succeed for him to be successful. Understand?”

  Again, Bundy nodded.

  “It’s ten-thirty a.m. Time for you to go before everyone heads to lunch.”

  “Inshallah,” Bundy said.

  Chikatilo nodded as he turned toward Dahmer, a large Pakistani man recruited by Mullah Adham.

  “Peace be with you,” Chikatilo said, then flipped the switch on Bundy’s MVX-90. The next radio call from the Harris radio would ignite Bundy’s considerable arsenal. Chikatilo was banking on the security guard calling in Bundy’s breaching of the wooden arm about the time Bundy crashed through the front of the building. The MVX-90 would, as it had in Fort Brackett, send an electrical current to the explosives wrapped around Bundy and those stored in the back of the minivan. If the guard did not make the call, Bundy had a rocker switch he could simply press that would ignite the car and, subsequently, himself. Either way, he was meeting Allah this morning.

  Dahmer nodded and followed the slow-moving minivan. Chikatilo walked into the Walmart, bought a novel and some toothpaste, then returned to the parking lot, found the Honda Accord with the North Carolina license plates. He reached under the front left wheel well, found the magnet with the key, and entered the car.

  As he turned the ignition, he heard the first explosion and for a stricken moment believed that his accomplice had rigged his car with a bomb. Not the case. He saw a plume of smoke and fire billowing from the headquarters building across the street. About the time several onlookers in the parking lot registered that a bomb had detonated in the lightly defended military compound, a second explosion in the compound sent shock waves roiling across the parking lot. The Honda Accord rocked a bit and Chikatilo smiled. They had done their duty.

  And there was much more to do.

  Chikatilo pulled slowly out of the Walmart parking lot, turned onto I-664, and quickly made his way through Portsmouth’s midtown tunnel and onto I-264 into Virginia Beach, where he was to await further instructions.

  After forty-five minutes of bridges and tunnels he located Seashore State Park, which fronted the Chesapeake Bay. He pulled into a sandy parking spot next to a white, rusted Sunnybrook Edgewater recreational vehicle. He used a key to open the door and turned on the generator and then the air conditioner.

  Sitting in a tufted captain’s chair, he switched on the satellite antenna and lifted the satellite radio’s black handset to his mouth.

  “This is TuffChik.”

  He heard slight buzzing noise, waited a few seconds, and repeated his first call. After a minute, he got a response.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Welcome to Walmart.”

  “Roger, out.”

  Chikatilo switched off the satellite antenna and receiver and looked at the waters of Chesapeake Bay shifting with the tide.

  Looking to the west, he watched an aircraft carrier slide effortlessly toward Norfolk Naval Base, the next target.

  Chapter 20

  Mahegan approached the stationary white Ford pickup truck with caution. On his back, he carried the small rucksack he had lifted from the landing craft. He had placed the GPS and pistol in the rucksack and moved slowly with the M24 sniper rifle at port arms.

  His acute hearing told him that the truck was still idling. From fifty meters away, he could not see a driver in the truck’s cab, so he immediately began scanning the surrounding area. He stopped and knelt next to the base of a large oak tree, listening. The buzz of insects ran through the forest. He could hear the lap of the water against the hull of the landing craft nearly one hundred meters away.

  The driver of the truck had parked in the same clearing where the two now-dead men had parked in hopes of making off with the remainder of the gold. It was a small gravel turnaround that gave way to the trail that led to the creek. Mahegan held the rifle up to his cheek and looked through the scope, scanning. He started by checking to his rear, to ensure the driver had not circled back on him. After a few seconds of using the scope and checking closer in, something the troops called the “five and twenty-five,” he determined there was no threat to his rear. He always checked the first five meters around himself and then broadened the scan to twenty-five meters. If he consistently performed this drill, as he had in combat, Mahegan knew he would pick up on most threats.

  Turning back to the truck, he heard a noise not indigenous to the environment. These were careful footfalls, spaced apart evenly, as if the owner were trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the underbrush. But they were cautious, indicating awareness of a possible threat. Most likely, Mahegan figured, the driver of the truck ha
d seen the two dead bodies on the landing craft by now and was trying to avoid whatever had befallen them. The trucks, side by side, were in between Mahegan and the footfalls, blocking his field of vision. To his ten o’clock, he could barely see the landing craft through the thick, downward sloping terrain. The trail ran from the side of the circular gravel area away from Mahegan and toward the landing craft.

  Through the scope, Mahegan could not see any obvious movement, until he saw the slightest tipping of a green-leafed dogwood above the hood of the idling truck. It might have been a squirrel, Mahegan thought, but more likely it was a man leaning against the tree to lighten his footfall and avoid making noise.

  As if he were an apparition appearing out of nowhere, a man with a goatee and an earring cautiously stepped onto the gravel behind the other truck, a black Ford Ranger. The man with the goatee opened the truck, less careful now. Mahegan assumed he was checking for Olsen. After a few seconds, the man quietly closed the truck door and then angled around the back of the pickup bed toward the white truck with the Copperhead logo emblazoned on the driver’s door. Skirting around the back of that truck, the man approached the driver’s door, opened it, and then leaned inside, extracting a shotgun. Mahegan thought it looked like a basic Remington. Good enough to do the trick.

  Apparently feeling secure now with the weapon, the man knelt in the vee developed by his open door and the frame of the truck. His back was fifty meters from Mahegan, framed by the still crosshairs of Olsen’s sniper rifle. Holding a personal mobile radio to his mouth, the man with the goatee whispered loud enough for Mahegan to hear. Mahegan secretly congratulated himself for turning off the mobile radio he had secured from Olsen.

  “Copperhead Six, this is Copperhead Five, over.”

  “This is Six, go ahead, over.”

  “Two dead at landing craft. Copperhead Three missing. Has he returned to HQ?”

  “Negative on three. Secure the area. I will be there asap.”

  “Roger. Standing by. Out.”

  Mahegan watched the man with the goatee put the radio on the seat of the truck. Bad move, he thought. He should have kept it on him. Mahegan calculated that he had less than five minutes before Copperhead Six, presumably Sam Nix, the CEO of Copperhead, Inc. would arrive on the scene. Mahegan had one play and only one if he intended to get inside of Copperhead for a quick inspection. And he had to move quickly.

  He decided that the man with the goatee had yet to do anything that might cause Mahegan to shoot him. Though he presumed that the man was plenty evil, Mahegan wanted evidence before he could pull the trigger from fifty meters and send a bullet into someone’s heart.

  He watched the man with the goatee carry the shotgun at the ready. He was expanding his zone of security by walking toward the wood line in Mahegan’s direction. The man stepped into the wooded area less than twenty meters from his position, moving toward Olsen, who was one hundred meters away, near the mouth of the creek.

  The man reappeared less than ten meters from Mahegan, circling back onto the gravel. He could make out the man’s face, weathered, tanned, angular, and determined. He noticed the penetrating eyes, calculating what had happened and what might happen. The man’s buzz-cut hair, goatee, diamond earring, and searching eyes made for a menacing look. Mahegan noticed beneath the polypro Under Armor T-shirt a chiseled body that bespoke a man as accustomed to the gym as Mahegan was to the water.

  Not an easy takedown. He watched the man carefully. Two minutes had passed, with less than three remaining. If Mahegan did not move now, the opportunity might be lost.

  As if sensing his move, the man with the goatee turned in his direction, alert, the same way a deer popped up its white tail when it sensed danger. Mahegan had not moved, so he presumed the man was cuing in on an instinct. Maybe he sensed his presence. Mahegan knew he was well camouflaged behind the tree and dense foliage, but there was the matter of his rifle and scope, barely visible.

  The man with the goatee seemed to be looking at the trail directly next to the thick oak behind which Mahegan had obtained cover. Footprints, Mahegan thought. He was looking for footprints. The piercing eyes were focused at a forty-five-degree angle downward on the trail. The man disappeared behind the oak tree and was to Mahegan’s immediate left. Motionless, Mahegan listened intently, following the sound of the man’s footsteps, now at his eight o’clock.

  Now or never.

  Mahegan sprang from his position, catching the man with the goatee fractionally off-guard. He noticed his opponent’s head had been scanning to the right, away from Mahegan, when he’d decided to make his move. Mahegan dropped the sniper rifle, lunged at his prey, and grabbed at the shotgun. The man was swinging the Remington as if a covey of quail had just surprised him to his rear, lifting and aiming at the noise. Mahegan caught the weapon mid-traverse, and snatched it from the man’s hands while delivering a high kick to the solar plexus. He heard an oomph as the man bent forward. Mahegan turned the shotgun and stroked it across his opponent’s face.

  He tossed the shotgun to the ground and used the rope from his rucksack to tie the man and gag him behind the oak. He bound the hands and legs, then coiled the rope around the tree, working quickly. Using the knife, he cut a portion of the man’s shirt away, stuffed it into his mouth, and tied it around the back of the nearly shaved head.

  Retrieving the sniper rifle, the shotgun, and his backpack, Mahegan jogged to the man’s truck, checked inside, saw the keys, turned the ignition, and spun out of the circular driveway toward the road. Reaching the hardtop, he yanked a hard left and floored the gas pedal until he was around the nearest bend. He slowed and pulled onto the shoulder in time to see another truck exiting the Copperhead gate. He watched carefully as the truck stopped, the man reached up and pressed something, and then the gate opened. The truck passed through the gate and stopped, the man reached up, and the gate closed behind the truck. Mahegan had taken a left purposely to be on the far side of the driver’s visual path. Most drivers glanced to their right, but looked hard to their left, where an oncoming car could do serious damage to the driver’s side.

  Mahegan looked up at the visor in the appropriated truck and saw the sending unit, much like a garage door opener. Perfect, he thought.

  He gave the driver a full minute to pull onto the gravel drive and travel out of his field of view. He considered many things in the minute that passed. Copperhead had seven confirmed personnel outside the gate. He presumed the two on the Lucky Lindy were still out at sea. Then there were the two dead men on the landing craft. There were Lars Olsen and the man with the goatee. Now presumably Sam Nix had left the compound. Mahegan remembered that Locklear had mentioned that she had only seen a few Copperhead contractors around town. Normally, Mahegan knew that the place would be awash in transplanted personnel doing a job for a few years, like migrant workers. But Locklear had also said that Copperhead had not hired much locally. So that meant they had a small, flat organization and were performing much of the labor themselves, unless, of course, they had the equivalent of a sweatshop hidden behind the gates. Perhaps there were ghost detainees? But surely they would be, well, detained, Mahegan figured. So, the problem with flat organizations was they lacked depth. Mahegan figured there had to be a back way out of the range.

  On that thought, he gunned the engine and pulled back onto the hardtop, drove the half mile to the gate, and pressed the sending unit. The gate began to creep open to his left. He studied it closely. This was more than a chain-link fence. It was a reinforced iron gate with miniature I-beams cutting across its width to prevent ramming.

  Again, perfect. He looked at the receiving unit, which was situated about ten meters inside the fence line. It looked like a miniature barbecue grill. A hard outer shell iron casing protected the actual brains of the device. He saw a gap, covered by Plexiglas, which he presumed was where the signal was received. As the gate opened, he pulled the truck through and stopped. He passed the sending unit again, and the gate began to close behind hi
m.

  As he watched and heard the latch close and lock the gate, he stepped out of the vehicle and used the silenced sniper rifle to put two near point-blank shots into the Plexiglas. He reached into the truck and pressed the button on the sending unit and nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Good.

  He reentered the truck and drove along the main road toward the tower, which Mahegan presumed was the air traffic control tower.

  Seven outside, how many inside, he wondered?

  He pulled to the base of the tower and visually scanned his surroundings. He figured he had ten minutes before some alarm would sound or whoever was left inside would scramble and come after him. Unsure of what exactly he was going to find, he prioritized his search by looking for the MVX-90s. Anything beyond that would be beyond his expectations. Olsen had mentioned the warehouse. He saw a row of Quonset huts to his front left, eleven o’clock. To his left rear, seven o’clock, he saw two administrative buildings. To his right front, at two o’clock, he saw the only building that could immediately qualify as a “warehouse.”

  He drove the quarter mile to the gray metal structure, aware that he had seen no one moving inside the garrison area. On the door of the warehouse, Mahegan saw the now familiar Copperhead emblem with a white diamond background, the gaping snake’s mouth and fangs. The door was locked by a standard heavy-gauge padlock, which Mahegan quickly removed with a butt-stroke of the shotgun.

  Opening the door, he stepped into a dark cavern filled with boxes, crates, forklifts, and other machinery. Mahegan jogged into the middle of the warehouse, surrounding himself with the detritus of years of random neglect and spotty efforts to organize, followed by more years of neglect. He had a brief flashback of the jump into Iran and their destruction of the warehouse filled with copper plates and boxes of MVX-90s.

  He saw a stack of neatly formed boxes about two-thirds of the way into a warehouse he figured to be the length of a football field. Inside was sweltering from the lack of ventilation. Pushing toward the neatly stacked boxes, he noticed another forklift and a second door. He also saw fresh tire tracks in the dirt floor.