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  He pulled up short and stopped. Staring at a twenty-foot-high stack of palletized MVX-90 boxes, Mahegan saw the distinctive triangle evident even in the dim light. High windows cast an eerie pallor across the expanse of the warehouse, highlighting dust and dirt particles that floated like lazy insects.

  Mahegan reached up and grabbed a box from the opposite side where it was clear the forklift had whittled the mountain down to within his reach. He pulled open the top flap and saw the smaller thin cardboard boxes that contained the actual devices. He counted ten across the top row and figured the box to be two deep, giving him twenty per container.

  He heard a loud noise begin to wail above him, like a siren. There it was, Mahegan thought. Whatever and whoever was in this compound was on alert. He grabbed two of the smaller boxes and ran toward the truck, stopped at the door, led with the shotgun and, seeing no one, moved toward the vehicle.

  He stuffed the MVX-90s into the backpack and cradled the shotgun as he closed the door, started the truck, and slammed it into gear. With his foot on the brake, he searched inside his rucksack, found the GPS device, and powered it up, all the time looking in the mirror. He saw a dust trail coming from the opposite side of the control tower. Probably, Mahegan thought, the quickest alternate way in . . . and out. He fidgeted with the GPS, found the save function, and entered his location. He watched it save and then pulled it up again to make sure he had performed the task properly. He had, so he powered off the GPS and crammed it into the backpack.

  With the dust trail coming closer to the tower, he released the brake and picked a gravel road that fed away from the tower to the northeast. For all he knew he was driving smack into the middle of the impact area of the bombing range where the pilots had for years dropped their bombs. Thankfully, the truck had a built-in GPS map on the dashboard, which Mahegan now used to navigate toward what looked like a viable exit on the northeast side of the fenced area maybe two miles away.

  By now Mahegan was creating his own dust trail that would be easy to follow. Staying focused on the road, he noticed on his left a built-up area maybe two miles on the other side of what was clearly the impact area, like an oasis shimmering across a vast desert. Mahegan registered it to be either a range facility or an urban-training live-fire facility for the military. For years, the Navy and Air Force had dropped bombs in this one-square-mile zone that now looked like Verdun after the infamous World War I battle. There were craters, trees sawed off at the stump by shrapnel, and others burned by the explosions. He picked his path carefully, following what appeared to be recent tire tracks. What looked like a massive burn pit appeared to his eleven o’clock. Mahegan guessed it was where Copperhead detonated the unexploded ordnance they found throughout the bombing range. He was reminded of the blast he had heard on his swim.

  Looking to his right, he saw winding, dense foliage that usually indicated a stream or swampy area. Looking ahead, he noticed the road was on a path to cross the stream about a half mile away. Looking back, he noticed the dust trail had stopped, perhaps because he was in the impact area, or perhaps because there was someone circling around Route 264 to cut him off.

  Or perhaps there was no way out of the area.

  Processing all of this information, he looked back to his left again and saw more buildings a few miles across the impact zone. He was convinced now that he was seeing a Military Operations in Urban Terrain, or MOUT, training facility. Having spent his share of time inside these makeshift cement and wood “villages,” Mahegan tucked away the information and continued searching for a way out.

  Abruptly the road dove into the creek and it was plain that it did not continue on the east side. An overgrown trail appeared twenty meters away across the black water of the slowly winding creek.

  The recognition of a water obstacle to his front coupled with the sound of an airplane flying low behind him signaled to Mahegan that his position was soon going to be untenable. He grabbed the sniper rifle and considered exiting the vehicle as the personal mobile radio sitting on the passenger seat chirped to life.

  “Give it up, Mahegan. We know who you are and you’ve got nowhere to go.”

  Had to be Copperhead Six, Samuel Nix, Mahegan figured. He listened as the airplane circled low. It was a King Air with photographic substructure, so they could track him using digital and thermal cameras with full motion video. If they had been digging out bombs, they would have that capability. He could try a lucky shot at the airplane or disappear into the dense foliage to his front.

  The creek was broad and Mahegan thought it might have once been a ford site and therefore might be passable in the vehicle. If he could get to the opposite side, the GPS map told him he might be able to get some tree cover, which would at least give him the opportunity to confuse the pilots.

  In the end, he decided to back the truck about fifty meters from the creek and lock the hubs by pressing a button that read “4Low” on the dashboard. He gunned the engine, feeling all four wheels engaging the dirt separately now. The power was evident and he hoped it would propel him through to the less-traveled side of this road.

  As he sped toward the creek, he heard the pop of rifle fire and caught the flash of a muzzle coming from the airplane that was circling higher now. The first bullet pinged off the hood and hit something that caused smoke or steam to begin to ease from the seams of the truck. The second shot glanced sideways off the windshield, splintering the glass. A third bullet shattered the front windshield altogether.

  As Mahegan hit the water, he felt the truck dip precipitously, water rushing over the hood and into the cab, but the rear tires propelled him forward until the truck leveled at about four feet deep, midway up the driver’s side door. All four wheels were pulling him now as a fourth shot pinged through the roof, surely meant to kill as it punched into the passenger seat. Though progress was slower through the creek, he was still moving. The locked hubs were powering him through the creek bottom, which he figured now to be firmer than he had originally anticipated.

  The front wheels banged into the far bank and for a moment Mahegan thought the worst would happen. He would stall, the sniper in the airplane would be perfectly angled for a headshot, and the secret of the MVX-90s would be forever hidden.

  But the front wheels chewed at the firm surface of the far bank, gaining purchase sufficiently to allow the rear wheels to keep from spinning in the muck. Inch by inch, the tires spun but made progress until he finally shot up the bank, gaining some air and landing with a thud on the front axle, followed by the rear axle slamming into the trail. Mahegan gunned the vehicle, which was responding nicely despite the puncture in the hood. He wanted to get off Dare Bombing Range property as soon as possible, and the GPS was indicating that if he stayed on this less-used trail he would hit a convergence of several roads.

  Thankfully for Mahegan, this path, while rutted and overgrown, had sufficient canopy to mask the sniper’s aim. He felt two more bullets ping in the rear of the truck. Going for the gas tank, Mahegan figured. All he could do was push the button to unlock the hubs and then race the speedometer to seventy-five mph. As he calculated his position, he knew that he was safe from the ground vehicles that had been pursuing him from behind. He also knew it didn’t take a strategic genius to figure he would be popping out of the trail at the only location on the east side that fed onto US 264.

  The truck’s GPS indicated that he was less than a half mile from the exit point when he saw a dirt road on his right angling toward an intersection. He bounced through a significant pothole that splashed water onto his face through the space where the windshield had been. To his left he saw another dirt road converging into his path. He determined he was at the limits of the bombing range when he approached a gate similar to the front gate he had breached and disabled. He pressed the remote button but got no result.

  Gunning the engine and strapping himself into the seat belt, he tried the remote one more time to no avail. He was doing ninety-five mph when he dodged some poorly p
laced dragon’s teeth and the front end of the truck broke through the heavy gate. The screeching of metal tearing from its hinges sounded like the wail of angry demons. The truck listed to the right as the hinges on that side were less forgiving than the gate latch on the left. The power of the truck, though, won over. The truck’s nose remained embedded in the gate while its rear spun freely onto the road.

  Mahegan quickly steered away from the spin, encouraging its momentum, and the truck performed a 360-turn, the smoking hood breaking free from the gate as it wheeled in the direction Mahegan was spinning the tires. Abruptly, he stopped, gained his orientation, and floored the truck as another shot pinged the driver’s side door and blew the stuffing out of the headrest.

  His warrior instinct wanted him to stop, whip out the rifle, shoot the plane from the sky, find it, and slit the throats of anyone who tried to cause him harm. These could be the men who had supplied the MVX-90 that had killed Colgate and his extraction team.

  But he compartmentalized and kept driving. The mission was more important than his personal satisfaction. He was about a quarter mile from the entry onto 264 and he had two options.

  First, he could stop, move into the forest, and then approach the intersection under cover. He, of course, would have to get the money shot first on the King Air’s substructure so that the pilot and engineer could not follow him through their full-motion video and thermal capability.

  Or, more reasonably, he could blow through whatever might be waiting for him. At most, he figured Nix had found the goatee man and possibly Olsen, all of whom would be anxious for revenge. He thought that maybe one of the three might be in the airplane, leaving two on the ground. Heavily armed.

  He looked at his weapons. Shotgun, sniper rifle, pistol.

  As he rounded the curve in the dirt road, the path widened and was framed by two ditches on either side, much like he’d seen at the main entrance. He also saw a truck parked at an angle near the intersection between the dirt road and 264.

  He saw a muzzle flash from near the truck and his rear windshield shattered. The warm air rushed through the truck and he brushed glass fragments from his hair. Meanwhile, the airplane was circling tighter. Nix was intent on preventing his escape. But he had escaped worse in the past. There were generally two methods of evading an enemy. The first, and preferred, was to silently move without detection until free from possible interception. The second, and least preferred, was his current method, which he called: Go Big and Go Home. In the past, if Mahegan and his men were detected, they became the 800-pound gorillas on the battlefield. Either be invisible or dominate. Half-measures didn’t work in combat.

  Another call came in on the radio. “Mahegan, you’re every bit as tenacious as your military file suggests, but we’ve called the local police and they will be waiting for you. So either let us talk to you and we don’t press trespassing charges or, on the off chance you make it outside, you will be a wanted man.”

  Mahegan ignored the comment. Hell, he was already a wanted man. Less than a quarter mile to go to the blacktop. Well-aimed sniper shots from ahead and above. He looked at the GPS. The dirt road ended at a T-intersection with Route 264, beyond which the display showed an almost immediate blue body of water.

  He could deal with water.

  He fidgeted with the cruise control device, ramped up his speed, and pegged it at eighty mph. He stuffed the pistol into the bulging backpack, zipped it up, and wiggled an arm through the strap. He heard the snapping of more fire coming his way. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man on the left side of 264, which was less than fifty yards from him now, walking slowly backwards, waving his arms.

  It was too late when he noticed that the man was backing a loaded wood-hauling truck into the intersection to block his egress. Mahegan turned the steering wheel slightly to the right. He gunned the accelerator as the man backing up the wood truck dove out of the way. The sniper from the right side of the dirt road fired successive shots into the cab. One of the extended pine logs clipped the side of the truck, snapping the mirror with a loud explosive pop.

  Mahegan saw he was about to T-bone a small guardrail along 264 protecting drivers from absently driving into Croatan Sound. The guardrail would be no match for his barreling pickup truck. He did feel it though. The truck ramped upward and shot at a forty-five-degree angle into the air, clearing some rip rap rocks intended to prevent erosion and beef up the shoulder of the road.

  Mahegan felt the weightless moment where the truck soared and then saw the front end begin to nose over toward the water. He unsnapped his seat belt and placed his back through the open front windshield as the truck plummeted into the water. The truck stalled and Mahegan surged through the open hole where the windshield had been, tumbling into the churning water with one hand looped through his backpack. He kicked hard off one of the headrests and into the depths of Croatan Sound.

  He swam deeper, holding his breath and pulling himself far away from the truck, which was now capsizing. On his descent, he saw a buoy about a quarter mile away to his eleven o’clock from the nose of the truck.

  Staying low, near the bottom of the sound, Mahegan pulled in that direction, wondering how long he could hold his breath.

  As he swam, he saw the worming bullets from the airborne sniper bubbling their way through the water like chucked spears.

  Chapter 21

  Several hours later, as night fell, Mahegan sat on a bare zebra-striped mattress exactly like the cheap ones he had slept on in basic training. He was in the vacant dorm used to house the actors and actresses for the seasonal theater production, The Lost Colony.

  Three minutes and twenty seconds had been the longest he had been able to stay beneath the water. It had been sufficient.

  Mahegan had made it to the buoy and found an air gap inside the channel marker. He had stayed inside the bubble for what he calculated to be an hour and then began a series of long underwater swims, not unlike a porpoise, surfacing only for air and staying beneath the water until he reached the western shore of Roanoke Island near the bridge. From there it was a quick thirty-minute walk through the woods to Locklear’s place, where he had scouted the bungalow from the forest, concealed by the foliage. He had watched Sheriff Johnson’s maroon Buick come and go. After that, Paslowski’s black F-150 had looped through. His blond-haired counterpart had jumped out and pounded on Locklear’s door. Then an airplane had flown slow and low overhead, but presumably didn’t loiter because of airspace issues.

  They were looking for him. Local cops wanted him for murder. The Inspector General wanted him for questioning. And Copperhead, Inc. wanted him dead.

  Figuring the procession would continue, he broke into Locklear’s house, left her a note, and then proceeded through the woods another half mile to the theater. There he found a marginally hidden building to the east of the outdoor stage that he figured was the dorm. The rows of bunk beds and gang latrines proved him right.

  Sitting on the bunk, he waited for her, digesting all that he had discovered, which he knew was only the beginning. But for the first time, he felt hopeful that he could uncover how the MVX-90s fell into enemy hands. What had taken a year to develop now had to be resolved quickly. Adham’s attacks had claimed dozens of lives and it was clear he was using MVX-90s as trigger devices.

  He heard the screen door bounce lightly against the wooden frame of the old dorm. “So you found this place, I see. Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Locklear said.

  Mahegan watched her approach through the darkness. He sat on the far bunk, nearest the latrine and the back exit. She was holding the white slip of paper in one hand and a reusable grocery bag in the other.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Next to Mahegan on the bunk was his rucksack packed with appropriated equipment: pistol, GPS, and two MVX-90s. The rest was lost in the crash and was probably at the bottom of the sound.

  “Jesus,” she said when she saw him up close. “You look like you’ve been through a meat
grinder.”

  “You should see the other guys, as the saying goes.”

  He knew he looked rough. Mahegan had stared in the latrine mirror at his assorted cuts and bruises from the vines, thorns, glass, and impact of the truck crashing into Croatan Sound. His chest was covered in mud and slime from the marsh. Streaks of blood and muck angled across his face like a football player’s eye-black. For a moment, he felt like a Croatan warrior, bare-chested, camouflaged, and defeating the scheming interlopers. Two showers later, with small white bars of soap remnants, the adrenaline wore off and the pain crept back into his left deltoid. Otherwise, he felt fortunate to be whole.

  “Here,” she said, holding out a T-shirt.

  He looked at the silkscreen on the front: “Visit Chernobyl: It’s Electrifying!” The dot beneath the exclamation point was a radioactive warning symbol.

  “Thanks. Just when people were starting to take me seriously.”

  Locklear smiled. “Don’t think you have any issues there, bud.”

  Mahegan put on the T-shirt. It fit snug, but was okay. “So what have you heard?”

  “Word gets around. Heard Copperhead, Inc. blew up today.”

  “Sounds about right,” Mahegan said.

  Locklear put the canvas bag on a facing bunk and sat.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Better than some others.”

  “As I would expect you to be.”

  He watched her study him for a minute.

  “Do I pass inspection?”

  “A few dings, but it looks like you’ll live. Want to tell me about it?”

  “I’m thinking you know as much, or more, than I do,” said Mahegan.

  “Could be about right,” she said. “Me being a deputy and all.”

  “So, let’s start with you first.”