Foreign and Domestic Page 21

  Locklear paused. Mahegan wondered if she was calculating how much to tell him or trying to determine how much he knew. Probably both.

  “The first thing is that there is a party about one hundred yards from here in an hour, so I can promise you that some folks will be wandering over here to hook up.”

  “We have time. Talk to me.”

  Locklear nodded. “Word is that there are four dead contractors, but nobody can find them.”

  Mahegan wondered about Olsen and whether he had survived. Didn’t sound like it.

  “Copperhead roped the place off, though, and declared the area a weapons hazardous domain, pursuant to their contract.”

  “You know why they did it, right?”

  Locklear paused again, and then nodded.

  “I suspect you saw some things,” she said.

  “I suspect I did.”

  “They’re stealing gold,” Locklear said.

  “Stealing?”

  “Yes. They found the James Adger gold and are doing something with it.”

  “I’m not sure whose gold they found, but I know for certain what they’re doing with it,” Mahegan said.

  “What?” Locklear said, eagerly.

  “First, tell me about the Lucky Lindy,” Mahegan said.

  Locklear dropped her eyes, and then set them on Mahegan.

  “I dated Nix for a few months. He named his boat after me,” she said.

  “Big commitment for such a short amount of time.”

  “Guy was crazy. Possessive. Obsessive even.”

  “How long ago?” he asked.

  “What is this, Oprah?”

  “I’m piecing things together. Elizabeth.”

  She cocked her head, the smile fading.

  “Problem with my name now?”

  “Nix first.”

  “Okay. A few months ago. Probably explains why he hasn’t changed the name yet.”

  “What’s his boat doing at the Teach’s Pet at two in the morning?”

  “What?”

  Mahegan gauged her reaction. She seemed genuinely surprised, though he considered that she was an actress.

  “I took a little swim this morning.”

  “I watched you,” she admitted. “But I didn’t realize the Lucky was making pickups at the Pet.”

  “Wasn’t a onetime thing,” Mahegan said.

  She reached into the bag and pulled out a six-pack of longneck Coronas. She twisted two off and handed one to Mahegan. He accepted. Then she reached in and retrieved his knife.

  “Figured you’d need this,” she said. She expertly flipped the blade with her wrist and it stuck into the wood floor like a shot arrow. She handed him the sheath.

  Mahegan looked at Locklear and then at the knife. Reaching out, he plucked it from the floor, inspected it, and laid it on the bunk.

  “Smells like Luminol. You guys are big-time here.”

  “They checked it for blood,” she said. “Seems you clean up well in all regards.”

  “I didn’t kill Royes and you know it.”

  Locklear averted her gaze and asked, “What’s your interest in the Pet, the Lucky, all of this?”

  “Aside from the fact that someone tried to kill me today?”

  “Yes. Aside from that.” She smiled.

  “Might be personal,” Mahegan said. He looked at her and then through the screen window where he could see the sun hanging in the western horizon. He found both distracting.

  “Is this about your nightmares?”

  Mahegan wondered if he had said anything in his sleep. Part of the reason he went for the swim this morning was to avoid a deep sleep with her. Rarely had a night passed where he did not wake up from a dream of Colgate’s vehicle burning.

  “You a shrink, too?”

  “I heard you mention your friend, Colgate, several times in your sleep.”

  Mahegan nodded, saying, “Not surprised.”

  “I see. You’re still trying to figure out if you can trust me?” Locklear prodded him.

  “That, too.”

  “So, tell me what you know about the Adger gold,” she said.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Tell me what you know about Adam Wilhoyt.”

  Mahegan had intentionally used The American Taliban’s birth name to gauge her reaction. “Elizabeth” kept sliding through his mind and he had remembered from JSOC’s extensive dossier on Mullah Adham, aka Adam Wilhoyt, that his lost love had been named Elizabeth Carlsen. Locklear had so many occupations and interests that they all seemed to collide into one synthetic persona. Who was she really? Was the C necklace really a gesture to the Croatan or could she be a Carlsen and the necklace was a Carlsen heirloom?

  He watched a cloud pass across her eyes as they darkened and looked away at the mention of Wilhoyt’s name. The first time he had mentioned the name, she’d given no tell. This time seemed different.

  “I don’t know much about him other than what I read in the paper. The American Taliban. Murdering civilians. That’s it. Why do you ask?”

  Her response was passable, but suspect, in Mahegan’s view. He said nothing.

  As if to change the topic, she said, “There was another attack today. Suffolk. Over fifty dead.”

  Mahegan remained focused, but couldn’t help wincing at the mention of more innocents killed, most likely involving an MVX-90.

  “Now you tell me something useful,” Locklear demanded.

  “Get me a small airplane and a parachute and I’ll fill you in.”

  Locklear broke her sullen mood and smiled, then laughed. She was an actress, Mahegan thought.

  “I can actually do that, but I need more to go on,” she said.

  Mahegan shook his head. They stared at each other for about ten minutes, drinking their Coronas. Mahegan thought about the hundreds of combat missions he had led. Whether in Iraq or Afghanistan or some other fourth-world country there was always that moment where he had to decide whether he had any cards to be played and, if so, when to play them. He had dealt with duplicitous Iraqi terrorists, scheming Afghan warlords, and two-timing Balkan hucksters.

  And yet, he had not figured out Locklear. She played too many roles, from deputy to treasure hunter to actress. His instinct was that none of them were real. Mahegan’s gut was telling him that he was on to something having to do with Colgate’s death and at the moment that was all that mattered to him. But the pieces of the puzzle had begun to fall into place for him, mostly.

  “I’m not one for playing a lot of games or for a lot of bullshit. I’m thinking you found Miller Royes’s body somewhere and floated him into me. I mean that’s an awful big chance for me to hit a dead body in wide-open water. You’ve been watching me and think I can help with the gold, which I can. But it begs a few questions. Did you kill Royes? I don’t think so, but there’s the chance that you did. Are you working with Copperhead? Again, I don’t think so, but I look for the second and third layer of stuff. On the outside you’re this reasonably hot chick with quirky connections to the sheriff and other locals, plus in DC and the Pentagon. I’ve got you figured to be a government type of some sort. Maybe Treasury because of your interest in the gold. Always connecting the dots. But there’s something bigger you’re connected to and I haven’t quite figured that out yet. And I’m trying to determine if you know more about Adam Wilhoyt than you’re letting on.”

  He paused. He noticed a slight tic in her cheek. Her countenance never changed, but she got a faraway look in her eyes.

  “But I will figure it out,” he added.

  He watched Locklear take a long pull on her beer, much more than a sip. As she removed the bottle from her lips, he noticed the perfectly formed teeth and the deep, smooth tan on her face.

  “Reasonably hot?”

  Mahegan nodded.

  “Within reason.”

  Locklear smiled back. “Keep thinking. You’re doing great. Want to go to the party? Then we can get your ‘airplane and parachute,’ big guy.” She made quotation mar
ks with her fingers, mocking him a bit. She stood and showed him her ass through a set of pink running shorts as she turned, picked up the bag, and stepped outside.

  Mahegan stood and stretched. He ached. He thought about Nix and the private military contractors who would be coming after him. It was no secret in this small community that he had hooked up with Locklear. A sniper could have him in the crosshairs at this very moment. He didn’t feel it, though. What he felt was that he had bored a hole the size of Montana through Copperhead’s operation. The gold, the MVX-90s, the dead contractors, the Lucky Lindy, and the landing craft. Still, he didn’t think he had it all.

  In fact, he knew he didn’t. He needed to make contact with General Savage, and he needed an airplane and a parachute. During his brief interlude in Locklear’s bungalow, he had borrowed her computer and even left her a few clues, which he was certain she would discover.

  He was 150 miles from where he needed to be. The problem was that the Atlantic Ocean was a big place.

  Chapter 22

  He waited at the dorm while Locklear went back to her bungalow to prep for the party. An hour later he was walking with Locklear to the amphitheater for the Lost Colony production cast party to close down the season.

  She was dressed in a paisley sarong, a green halter, and sandals that were similar to her Tevas. She had showered and smelled like fresh citrus. He had taken his third shower of the day in the dorm, but still wore the Chernobyl T-shirt. He’d popped two Motrin that she had brought him from her medicine cabinet, but he still ached.

  “Won’t I be conspicuous?” he’d asked when she’d offered the ridiculous T-shirt.

  “Hiding in plain sight, right? Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. You want to trust me? This is how we do it.”

  “Did you kill Royes?”

  She cast a sideways glance at him.

  “No, but you’re looking good for it.” She smiled. Mahegan didn’t. When they arrived, she led him past the cedar shake–tiled box office and onto the landing of the concrete mezzanine. Mahegan looked down and saw the stage some hundred yards away with rows of seats angling up toward him, spreading outward like a fan. Above the set he saw Croatan Sound and the Teach’s Pet, innocent and idle. Beyond that he could see the dunes of Kitty Hawk and, farther over the dunes, the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Stick with me,” she said, clasping his hand. “There are some real freaks here.”

  They entered the stage from the west, which blended actual forest with the set. Mahegan picked his way along the trail as Locklear led. Standing on the edge, he saw the klieg lights blazing onto a stage filled with over one hundred actors and actresses dressed in period costumes from the sixteenth century. Noticeable were the dozens of American Indians who were dressed in their tribal garb. The men had streaked war paint across their chests and faces. For a moment, Mahegan could see the commingling of British colonists and American Indians as it might have happened five hundred years ago. And he saw himself only a few hours before, staring in the mirror of the dorm bathroom after his narrow escape from Copperhead, the cuts and bruises mimicking the actors’ war paint and warrior image.

  Then they stopped at a tree with “Croatoan” carved in the bark.

  “The colonists left this sign,” Locklear said. “Either they were attacked and slaughtered or they migrated west across the sound or south to Hatteras.”

  “The Moline crosses,” Mahegan said, quietly.

  “That and other signs speak to migration, not slaughter.” She hesitated and said, “Plus, you might be Croatan. You would never do that, right? You would defend. Protect.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  She smiled. “I know you better than you think. Anyway, the East Carolina University research project found a Kendall family ring in Hatteras, too. The new theory is that the settlers split up to increase chances of survival. Some went to Hatteras, some to Dare Mainland where the bombing range is, and some went to what’s now a golf course across from Edenton.”

  Mahegan listened as he scanned the assortment of actors milling to their front.

  Locklear introduced him to Adrian Dakota, the Lumbee Indian who played Wanchese, Chief Manteo’s rival. Dakota looked the part. He had painted his bare, chiseled chest with white spirals and streaked his face with red and orange war paint. Dakota’s shaved head glistened with sweat.

  “Adrian, this is Jake Mahegan, a friend of mine.”

  “Mahegan?” Dakota said. “Wolf.”

  They shook hands and Mahegan nodded. “One interpretation. It was ‘Mohegan’ but got changed somewhere along the way.”

  “Iroquois?” the man asked.

  “Probably.”

  “You’re too fair to be Lumbee,” Dakota said. Then he added with a chuckle and a sweeping hand across the set, “Perhaps Croatan?”

  “Locklear seems to think so.” Mahegan studied Dakota. If he closed his eyes, he might imagine the man wearing a business suit instead of five-hundred-year-old Indian warrior garb that looked like an early predecessor to the modern-day jockstrap.

  “Ever see the production?” Dakota asked Mahegan.

  “No.”

  “He just got out of the military,” Locklear said.

  Mahegan wondered why that would disqualify him from having ever seen The Lost Colony.

  “I grew up in Frisco, but never made it here,” Mahegan said. “But I know of it.”

  Two more “Indians” approached.

  “Hey, Adrian, let’s go give Manteo a wedgie,” said the first.

  Mahegan watched the two younger men, one who was not American Indian, but deeply tanned and could play the part from afar.

  “Grow up, guys. We want him back next year.”

  “Manteo? You think he did a good job? You were so much better,” Locklear said.

  “That was five years ago, and he did well enough to take it over. I liked being the bad guy too much,” Dakota said.

  “Adrian, Jake would like to ask you a question,” Locklear said.

  Dakota looked at the two role players and gave them a nod. “Go mess with Manteo, but don’t piss him off.”

  Mahegan gave Locklear a curious look.

  “You wanted to ask Adrian what he does for a living, other than being a kick-ass bad guy Indian that slaughters the white man.”

  Dakota flinched. “That’s your version.”

  Mahegan cut to the chase. “So, what’s your second job?”

  “Nicely put. I fly the advertisements up and down the beach, drop skydivers, shuttle people around the OBX. You know, ‘Eat at Joe’s Fish Market!’ banners. That kind of thing.”

  “You’re a pilot?” Mahegan asked.

  “Yes. I fly a de Havilland Dash Six, Twin Otter.”

  Mahegan nodded. “I would like to talk to you about leasing your services,” Mahegan said. “One way.”

  “I charge either by the hour or depending on where you’re going, by the distance.”

  “I’m sure we can make an arrangement. You got a GPS on that thing?”

  Dakota furrowed his brow. “Never really needed one.”

  “I’ve got one, as long as you can hold an azimuth.”

  After a pause, Dakota said, “This is legit, right? No drugs, man.”

  “Totally legit. Consider me a one-way trip. I’ll need a parachute.”

  “But I still have to come back. What drop zone?”

  “So charge me round-trip and for the parachute. I’m good with that. We’ll discuss the drop zone when we are at the airplane.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “How soon do you get done here?”

  Dakota laughed. “I thought you’d never ask. I’m tired of wearing this bullshit.”

  “Wait a minute,” Locklear said. “You’re leaving now?”

  “I’m thinking we don’t have a lot of time here,” said Mahegan.

  “Give me thirty minutes and meet me at the airfield across the street,” Dakota said, referring to Dare County Municipal Airport less th
an a mile away. “I’ll park my pickup truck along the fence. Plane’s just on the other side. How far are we going?”

  “About four hundred miles round-trip.”

  Dakota whistled. “That’s pushing my comfort zone. We’ll need to refuel at the destination.”

  “No chance for that,” Mahegan said. “I’ll explain more at the airfield.”

  Locklear walked Mahegan to her Defender.

  “You going to tell me what this is all about? I noticed you took a wetsuit and my smartphone charger from my place.”

  “Observant,” he said. “I’m figuring you got me involved because you knew Copperhead was on to the gold, but you couldn’t figure out what they were doing with it.”

  “About right.”

  “I don’t trust you. Plain and simple. So all I’m going to tell you is that Copperhead figured out a way to make the gold theirs. You find the gold inside the state limits, the state owns it, especially if there’s a historical record like the Adger gold, as you call it.”

  “That’s right. Insurance companies and the state of North Carolina will tie that up in court and the discoverer will be lucky to get anything other than reimbursement for their efforts to find the gold. Peanuts,” she said.

  “Well, Copperhead not only found the gold, they found a way around the law.”

  Mahegan jumped out of her Defender, ducked into the dorm, and grabbed his rucksack, knife, and the recharged GPS, powered up by Locklear’s smartphone charger. He scrolled through the saved locations, checking to make sure his destination was still there. He powered down the device, saving precious battery life. He checked his pistol and decided it was still usable. He triple-bagged the ammunition and the weapon, packed his rucksack, pulled on the dark wetsuit he’d found in Locklear’s closet, and strapped his knife to his leg.

  “That was an old boyfriend’s. Looks better on you,” she said.

  “I can’t be choosy here, but I need this tonight.”

  “Tell me this. How can they make it theirs?”

  Mahegan paused. “I will trade with you. Can I trust you that much?”

  “Of course,” she replied, locking eyes with him. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” He handed her the box with the MVX-90. “I need you to do me a favor. This is what killed my friend in Afghanistan. They make them in the Research Triangle and there’s a warehouse full of them that were tested at Dare County Bombing Range. I think Copperhead found these when they won the contract for the bomb disposal and clearance project and then figured out how to cash in on them.”