Direct Fire Read online

  Mahegan held his Tribal to the man’s forehead and asked again, “Who?”

  The man shook his closely shaved head twice before it lolled to one side, lifeless. Mahegan confirmed the man’s death with a finger to the carotid artery. He searched the men and found nothing on either. They had removed any revealing information prior to entering the cabin. Mahegan didn’t know who they worked for or who else might be headed his way. These two men had obviously compromised Zebra, and so he couldn’t use it to communicate with Owens or O’Malley. The last thing he wanted to do was reveal their locations, assuming they were secure.

  He replayed in his mind what the men had said.

  It’s going down right now. Everything, all at once.

  Mahegan carried a government-issued smartphone that was encrypted with the latest technology to include the Zebra app, which was a combination secure locator service, distress signal, text eraser, and classified telephone. Once Mahegan read a text on his phone, it was automatically erased in five seconds. Texts that were not read in twelve hours were automatically deleted. It was better than Wickr and other secure e-mail and text apps, but not impenetrable, apparently.

  Walking into the bedroom, he found a set of car keys, which he presumed belonged to the crew he had just disabled. He cleared the rest of the cabin and found nothing of interest, but he did collect the AR-15 and a Glock 19 from the two dead men. He took one last look around to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. It was a basic golfer’s time-share. Green and burgundy cloth mixed with leather upholstery. Mahegan stepped into the warm September night, glad to get the gunpowder out of his lungs. He walked along the asphalt parking lot looking at the random cars. He looked at the key fob, which had an Audi logo on it. Fancy car for two hit men.

  A white Audi A5 was about twenty yards to his right. It was parked away from all of the other vehicles. Mahegan’s Cherokee was on the far side of the parking lot, nearly a hundred yards to his left. Standard security protocols.

  He knelt behind a pickup truck and aimed the fob at the Audi. The lights flashed twice, and he heard a beep. He clicked it again and heard the other door locks pop open. He wondered if a timer would lock the car doors or detonate a bomb. While he discounted the possibility of this car being rigged, someone had left the keys in the open.

  Sure enough, after about a minute, the locks reengaged.

  Then the car blew up, creating a massive fireball that billowed orange and yellow into the sky like a small nuclear explosion.

  He wondered if the bomb was meant for him or the two would-be assassins.

  CHAPTER 3

  MAHEGAN TUCKED HIS TRIBAL INTO HIS HIP HOLSTER AND ZIPPED his Windbreaker up a third of the way as he walked quickly to his gray Cherokee. Once inside, he turned the ignition and drove the long way out of the resort, following the golf holes with no homes lined along the fairways. In his rearview mirror flashed the blue and red lights of emergency responders.

  He exited the resort and wound his way through the small village of Pinehurst, then followed U.S. Route 1 to the town of Vass and pulled into another golf community called Wood Lake. There, he looped around a big lake and two golf courses until he came upon an old, white farmhouse with black shutters. Behind the farmhouse was a garage, in which he parked the Cherokee. Making sure to close the garage door, he walked into the thick pine forest just off the garage and circled to the backyard, where tall pine trees stood like sentries.

  Standing amidst the thick forest on General Savage’s twenty-acre compound in the calm September night, he breathed deeply, glad that he had survived the ambush. He’d survived others.

  The worst ambush—perhaps the one that defined his life path so far—was when he was fourteen and already freakishly over six feet tall. He had walked in on a road crew in the process of raping and murdering his mother. He had killed two of the drunken men at the time. Two had survived, and one of those survivors had murdered his father within the past year. Recently, he had sought and delivered justice on behalf of his parents. He had no brothers or sisters, except his comrades in the military. Now his family was the tight-knit group of soldiers with whom he had served.

  Mahegan walked from the garage along a two-acre field framed by a low, electric cattle fence. In the middle of the field was a copse of pine trees, which Mahegan entered. From the protection of a thick pine trunk, he stared at the two dark green doors that sat at an angle to the flat ground. Beyond them was Savage’s country house and the garage where he had parked his car. The field was essentially Savage’s backyard. The storm shelter was like a Kansas tornado shelter, but here he was just outside the gate of Fort Bragg and the Joint Special Operations Command. There were occasional tornadoes, but the true safety that lay beneath the storm doors was that of communications and situational awareness.

  Reasonably sure that no one was watching, he walked to the storm doors, where he used his phone to shine a light on the combination lock. He spun the dial from memory and got the numbers right on the first attempt. This was a heavy-gauge lock built into the door so that every time someone wanted to enter, they had to use the combination. It was purposefully low tech so that no maintenance was required. As far as Mahegan was aware, exactly four people had memorized the combination. With the last number aligned, he snapped the handle open with a flick of his wrist and then pried open the right-side storm door. Using the flashlight app again, he descended the steps and closed the door behind him, listening as the lock snapped shut.

  It had been five years since he had last been in the continuation of operations protocol command center, known as the COOP. When he was active duty, General Savage had Mahegan, Owens, and O’Malley come out here and establish the hard-wired capabilities to command and control deployed and domestic forces should Fort Bragg be neutralized in anyway. They were the four combination holders.

  Mahegan had no reason to suspect that Fort Bragg had been compromised, but he had every reason to believe that something had happened tonight that could have serious ramifications.

  It’s going down right now. Everything, all at once.

  He found the master circuit breaker and pulled down the main switch, bringing the lights on with a flicker. In the middle of the room was a bank of forty-eight-inch fluorescent lightbulbs. Mahegan remembered helping to install those but doubted they were the same ones. They all came on and cast a bright hexagon of light in every direction.

  Secretly he had hoped to find Patch or Sean already here. That was the plan. If any of them detected an unusual threat or breach of their communications protocols, they were to immediately rally at the COOP. Savage owned the property and had purchased most of the equipment used in the communications center. Some of the gear ran continuously, because the servers that powered and filtered the Zebra app were in this shelter also.

  To his left was a bank of computers, all MacBook Pros that looked relatively new. Their lids were closed, as if they were resting. On the far wall were weapons racks that held a variety of rifles and pistols. To his right were a series of server racks that blinked and winked with every transmission. The power switch he had thrown was for everything but the servers, which ran on underground cables connected to the main house, which was vacant. Rampert used the house as an alternate command post and retreat for his men. Behind the pine forest from which Mahegan had emerged was Wood Lake, a 200-acre boating and fishing respite for the property owners in the resort.

  Beneath the fluorescent lights were two conference tables pushed together to make a workspace for Rampert, Mahegan, O’Malley, and Owens.

  While the law of Posse Comitatus forbade employment of military force on U.S. soil, Savage had an agreement with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, director of the CIA, and the president that he could have a few men on retainer to respond quickly while the Homeland Security bureaucratic machinery decided how to counter a domestic attack.

  Mahegan, O’Malley, and Owens were the three men Savage had tried to convince to stay in the army, but all had left of t
heir own accord for one reason or another. Once Mahegan was forced out by an aggressive and corrupt inspector general, the rest of his men saw little reason to stay.

  Again, he wondered if the others were alive. He didn’t want to activate Zebra, because he knew it was compromised. He could fall back on unsecure communications, but he had to assume those were compromised as well. Owens lived in Charlotte and O’Malley lived in Raleigh. It would take them some time to get here.

  If they were okay and if they knew anything was amiss.

  Mahegan turned on the flat-screen television that hung on the support post to his right. It flickered to life, set to Fox News. He turned and walked to one of the MacBook laptops, fired it up, and let it spin through its protocols. He used his password and he was in. He pulled up Google and typed in “attacks in North Carolina.”

  It’s going down right now. Everything, all at once.

  About thirty minutes later, the crawl on the news program caught his attention.

  Charlotte, NC: A family was murdered around eleven p.m. in the Myers Park neighborhood of Charlotte. Charles Sledge, CEO of United Bank of America, and his wife, Vicki, were gunned down along with their 14-year-old son, Danny.

  Mahegan read the news stub. It was obviously a first report.

  Vicki Sledge was formerly Vicki Savage, now General Savage’s ex-wife. And Charles Sledge was the CEO of the fifth largest bank in the country, with just under five hundred billion in assets. Danny was Sledge’s son from a previous marriage. Vicki and Charles Sledge were married a year ago after she and General Savage divorced.

  Footsteps above Mahegan made him quietly close the MacBook and mute the television. He retrieved his Tribal and moved to the near corner, where he would have the best protection and shot in relation to the entrance.

  The lock spun, tumblers ratcheting loudly. A pause. Someone was calculating perhaps that the lock was warm and not cold to the touch, as it had first been when Mahegan had spun it. Mahegan had his pistol aimed at the entrance as he rested his arms on shelving that held electronics equipment. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead as if they were flinching in anticipation of a gunfight.

  The door swung open, Mahegan listening to the creaks of rusted hinges. His hearing was in the top range of every Army auditory exam he had ever taken, and he listened to the footsteps beneath the octaves of the hinges. They were lighter than he anticipated. Could be a small man treading lightly, or it could be a large man with soft-soled shoes, but he didn’t think so.

  Or it could be a nimble woman.

  The first thing visible was a black suede ankle boot covering the intruder’s left foot. The matching boot appeared on the next concrete pad as long, slender legs covered by tight-fitting jeans moved carefully into the storm shelter. Mahegan could shoot to wound right now, because he was certain those legs did not belong to Savage, Owens, or O’Malley.

  Next, two slender hands were cupping an Army officer’s 9 mm Berretta pistol, its distinctive black finish reflecting the nervous lights. The hands had fingernails manicured with clear polish as the intruder carried the pistol in a right-handed shooters grip.

  The pistol swept right and then left, toward him. A black, long-sleeve polypro athletic shirt covered toned arms and an athletic torso as the feet continued to reach for the next concrete steps.

  Again, he could have a full torso shot, but he was intrigued as he noticed shoulder-length brunette hair come into his view. The locks framed a smooth, alabaster face that had a nose with a slight upturn at the end. The woman’s pistol swept to her right and then left again.

  Mahegan waited until she cleared to her right again, her back one third exposed to him when he leveled the pistol, his finger firm on the trigger.

  “Stop,” Mahegan said in a calm voice. “You’ve got a Sig Sauer Tribal aimed at you that will blow a hole the size of a bowling ball in your torso.”

  She froze, lifting her hands instinctively into the air, her right hand still firmly gripping the pistol. After a pause, Mahegan said, “One knee, put down the Berretta.” He wasn’t sure, but he believed that he was speaking to a military officer. By saying “Berretta” he was communicating to a friend or foe that he knew the weapon she was carrying.

  The woman began to slowly kneel as she lowered the pistol to the floor of the ersatz command bunker. She placed it next to her right foot and said, “Don’t make me kick it away. I hate scratching up my guns.”

  “Then step away,” Mahegan said. “And face me.”

  “Okay, Jake, I’ll do that,” she said. Her voice was professional, a neutral tone intended to disguise its origin. Southern women often tried to hide their accents the same way someone from Boston may work on his r consonants.

  Mahegan had never met this woman before in his life, he knew that much. He wasn’t certain how she knew his name. As she turned, her nose profile was prominent again. Not too big, but distinctive. Something anyone would notice and generally appreciate. She had smooth skin under high cheekbones and full lips. Her eyes appeared light brown, the color of new pennies in the weak light.

  As she turned and faced him, Mahegan still had no recognition of her whatsoever. She stood just below six feet tall in the low-heeled boots, which he found to be an unlikely choice for an assassin or terrorist. And by mentioning his name, she was communicating something to him. Perhaps that she was friend, not foe. Or maybe not. Mahegan had been on the U.S. government’s gray list—possibly detain—for two years now, and maybe she was a bounty hunter.

  “Name?” Mahegan asked.

  “Alexandra,” she said.

  Mahegan processed the first name she provided and still registered nothing. He had never seen her before, and she had no business in this top-secret, off-the-books, compartmented storm cellar turned continuity of operations command center.

  “Last name?”

  “Russell,” she said.

  Still nothing to Mahegan. Owens, O’Malley, and Savage were the ones who should have come pouring through the door.

  “But they call me, ‘Alex,’” she added.

  A gear caught in Mahegan’s mind. He had heard General Savage refer to an ‘Alex’ before but had always visualized a male, not a beautiful, young thirty-something woman.

  “Alex?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I think we’ve both got the same problem,” she said cryptically.

  “I wasn’t aware I had one,” Mahegan replied.

  He watched her toss her hair behind her shoulders but was still tracking both hands closely.

  “You’re trying to figure out whether to shoot me. I ‘m trying to figure out why you’re on the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation’s recently updated most wanted list.”

  “Most wanted list?”

  “It’s got a far more technical name, but you get the idea,” she said.

  “Humor me,” Mahegan said.

  “Murder? In the first degree? Apparently they found your pistol in a golf course lake in Myers Park, Charlotte. Along with some size twelve muddy Doc Martens bootprints.” She looked at Mahegan’s Doc Martens as she spoke.

  Her voice was cool and crisp, like a spring breeze whispering past his face. Mahegan’s mind raced through the weapons he had owned throughout his life. While he had owned several pistols, he had only ever purchased one that he had registered under his name.

  “What kind of pistol?” Mahegan asked.

  A phone began playing its musical tone from her pants pocket. She pulled it out and stared at it, then turned the large screen toward Mahegan.

  The screen read “State Bureau of Investigation.” She showed it to him.

  “Shall I get this?” she asked.

  “What kind of pistol?” Mahegan reiterated. She appeared to shut off the phone.

  And he already knew that the pistol was going to be a Colt .45 Ranger Spirit Tribute that he had purchased on behalf of his unit to present to Savage on his promotion from colonel to one-star general. With the gift, Mahegan ha
d included a document that Savage signed declaring he would have the weapon registered in his own name. He had done so partly because he didn’t fully trust Savage—theirs had been a turbulent relationship—and because Patch Owens was a stickler for detail, having drafted up the military “hand receipt” with the transfer verbiage already typed on it. Apparently Savage had never followed through.

  “A Colt .45 Ranger special,” Alex Russell said.

  Mahegan nodded. “You seem pretty calm staring at the pistol of a murder suspect,” he said.

  “We’re pretty sure you didn’t do it,” she said. She braved a step closer to Mahegan, putting her about fifteen feet away from him.

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “General Savage and me.”

  “What’s your connection to Savage?”

  “I’m not sure I can trust you with that information, Mahegan, but you should know me.”

  “Okay, how do you know who I am, then?”

  “I’ve seen pictures. And you’re one of five people authorized in this alternate command post.”

  “Four.”

  “Five, including you, Patch Owens, Sean O’Malley, Bob Savage,. . . and me.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me. I’m Savage’s JAG. His attorney. The one who stands next to him every time we shoot a Hellfire missile up someone’s ass and says, ‘Valid target’ so I can cover his.”

  Mahegan wanted to believe what she was saying, but he needed more authentication.

  “What is Savage’s call sign?” he asked her.

  “Jackknife Six, of course,” she said without skipping a beat.

  Mahegan lowered his pistol and stood from his kneeling position.

  “I didn’t get any communication that you had been added to the list,” he said.

  “Zebra is compromised, as I’m sure you know by now. There’s a decapitation action occurring as we speak. CENTCOM Commander has been arrested on charges of child pornography on his computer. Commander in Iraq was killed by a sniper about two hours ago. The family of the commander in Afghanistan has been killed in their home. The president is locked down in the situation room with his national security team.”