Foreign and Domestic Page 24

  Nix scoffed. “First-class lying bitch. Other than that, she’s good. Wildcat in the sack.”

  “She could be useful,” Falco suggested.

  “How so? She wants the gold and she’s not giving up until she gets it.”

  Falco countered. “All that’s left are the remnants in the creek. That’s what, maybe three or four hundred thousand? Let her have it. It could even help us.”

  “Not if wonder boy figures out what we’re doing.”

  “Let me take care of him. The guys on the Ranger will feed him to the sharks.”

  Nix studied Falco.

  “He kicked your ass today, Vinny. We’ve got a pilot that flew over Galaxy and a loose cannon in Locklear. If she wasn’t tied in with the sheriff, I’d feed her to the alligators.”

  “May be the best option, anyway. Listen, let me get over to the airfield and talk to Dakota.”

  Nix nodded. “Did you see what that crazy son of a bitch did? Adham?”

  “Saw the news. Chopped that guy’s head off.”

  “One sick dude.”

  They remained silent a moment and then Nix nodded.

  “Go. Do what you need to do.”

  Falco nodded back and raced down the steps of the tower, making a quick visit to his quarters, where he grabbed a go bag of equipment. Then he jumped in a different truck than his original one and sped down the packed gravel road. He passed around the junked security gate, spotted the klieg lights where he had two men standing guard, and turned left onto Route 264. On his right side was the sound and on his left was the vast wasteland of Dare County Bombing Range. He crossed the bridge that spanned the sound and was on Roanoke Island in twenty minutes.

  The airfield was on the north end of the island. Falco pulled into the small parking lot, circled once, and then sped to the water’s edge and pulled his truck into a boat ramp parking lot. He grabbed a knife and pistol, shut off the lights on his truck, and jogged back along the beach to a spot where the runway opened to the water of Croatan Sound. Nothing the construction crew could do about it, he was told. Federal Aviation Administration regulations called for more runway, so they built it into the sound.

  As he was scaling the minor fence, he heard the distinct sound of a Twin Otter airplane flying from east to west, which was perfect if it was Dakota. He ran alongside the runway toward the landing aircraft and watched its tires smoke once and then bounce onto the concrete. He heard the propellers go into reverse as he began to sprint. The airplane was taxiing toward the hangar on the south side of the airfield as Falco rapidly closed the hundred yards.

  As the de Havilland hit the apron, Falco was up on a skid, opening the door, and shoving a pistol into Dakota’s face.

  “Turn around and take off now, Dakota.”

  Caught in the middle of manipulating his controls and steering while speaking on the radio, Dakota was momentarily confused.

  Falco ripped the communications cables from the dash and repeated his demand. “Now.”

  “Vinny, what the hell is going on?”

  “Once more, turn around and fly this bitch. Otherwise you get a bullet. Capisce?”

  “You can look at the gas gauge yourself,” Dakota said, shaking his head. “I’m near empty. Not more than ten minutes of airtime.”

  “That’s all I’m asking. Just get this puppy in the air so we can have a nice friendly chat about the mission you just flew.”

  Falco watched Dakota’s Adam’s apple bob once. He knew he had his mark. “Let’s go.”

  Dakota taxied the airplane to the end of the runway, idled up, and released the brakes. They sped along Runway 5, heading east and taking off against a slight crosswind. As they got through the first layer of turbulence up to about 1,000 feet, Falco said, “Now take me over Copperhead.”

  Dakota obliged, the gun at his head. As they were above the Copperhead facility, Falco said, “Now put it on a straight azimuth toward Galaxy and lock it in on autopilot.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Dakota. You flew Mahegan over Galaxy and he jumped, correct?”

  Dakota paused and then turned away, muttering, “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Shit. Mahegan did you a big favor, Tonto.”

  “Yes. He jumped. He had a GPS device that showed us where to go.”

  “You locked in on that heading?”

  Dakota fidgeted with a button on the cockpit controls and said, “Yes.” Then added, “You don’t have to worry. I won’t say anything. I don’t even know why he went out there.”

  “No. You won’t say anything, Dakota.”

  Falco retrieved his knife and slid it across Dakota’s throat, making sure to get the far side carotid artery. The blood pumped against the window as Dakota’s head slumped down against his chest.

  Falco wiped the blade against the pilot’s shirt, sheathed the knife, repacked his small go bag, and then donned the parachute he had stuffed in his go bag.

  Cinching the parachute straps beneath his buttocks, he looked up as the engines began to sputter. They were crossing the spit of land that created Nags Head beach. Making sure he had everything he came with, he opened the cargo door, leapt into the wind, and immediately pulled the ripcord grip.

  He had full canopy within seconds of exiting the aircraft and steered his parachute toward the northern tip of Roanoke Island.

  He made it about fifty meters from the northern tip, and then silently landed in the shallow water. He skillfully gathered his parachute as he sidestroked to the beach. Falco took a few minutes to kneel and listen, then determined that he had not been seen, and packed his parachute into his kit bag.

  As he walked into the forest, he had the thought that Dakota was actually a decent guy, but not worth risking his cut of an estimated twenty million dollars.

  With one problem down and two more to go, he emerged from the trees near the Lost Colony Theater and crept toward Locklear’s bungalow.

  Chapter 28

  Locklear held a bottle of Corona in one hand and her Glock 26 “Baby Glock” pistol in the other. She rocked slowly on her front porch swing, which overlooked Croatan Sound.

  She had known when Dakota and Mahegan had departed and heard the plane as it made its return approach thirty minutes ago. She had driven her Defender to the airfield in anticipation of either seeing Mahegan or learning Mahegan’s fate from Dakota.

  Instead, what she had seen was a man sprinting toward the airplane from the north side of the airfield, as if he had come in from the sound. Locklear had watched as the man had entered the airplane, which had taken off again shortly thereafter. She saw it gain altitude, circle over Copperhead, and then head out to sea.

  It took her three boat ramps before she found the parked truck with the Copperhead logo on the passenger door.

  “Falco,” she had said to herself. She knew Vinny Falco was Nix’s cleaner and she presumed that they were now in cleanup mode. Mahegan’s actions had accelerated their time line. Copperhead would no longer be able to remain under the radar.

  Which was fine with her. She had severed her ties there in enough time to ensure nothing should circle back on her. Nonetheless, she was concerned that Falco might consider her a liability. In fact, she was certain of it when she heard the aircraft sputter and, as she held the night-vision goggles to her eyes, saw the single parachutist exit and pop canopy.

  She rocked gently, sipping her beer, as Falco landed in the water. She watched him enter the woods and knew he would be coming from the south side in a few minutes.

  Locklear debated taking the kayak out in the water and ambushing Falco or just avoiding him altogether. She knew that the operation was at a critical juncture. Mahegan may never return and the gold may be lost forever. She had certainly put several eggs into that one basket, as she had tried with Nix before. A combination of inexperience and naiveté had scuttled those plans. Had she risked too much with Mahegan?

  She stood and walked off the porch when she heard the slighte
st snap of a branch behind her home. Leaning her back against one of her kayaks tilted against the exterior wall of the house, she remained quiet. Pistol at her side, Locklear saw a darkened figure move slowly into the sand and stop on the other side of the kayak. She watched as Falco pressed his face against the window of her living room. She had intentionally left the television on, images dancing against the wall as the program ran its course.

  Locklear could see only his face through a small seam created by the angle of the kayak against the vertical wall. It was enough for her to tell that he was amped, like a drug addict on amphetamines. His eyes were wide and darting, focused intently inside the house, the lights burning up his night vision. She noticed his hand clutching and unclutching a knife handle.

  He had probably killed Dakota, who had been a friend. While that upset her, it was more important to play this strategically, not tactically or passionately. Her goal was not revenge, nor was her motive entirely based on accumulating the gold.

  As she raised the pistol toward Falco’s face, she said, “Move and you’re a dead man.”

  But he did move. In fact, he jumped back, shocked by her voice. She figured it was a natural response by someone who thought they were entirely alone and had the complete upper hand. His reversal of fortune was swift and complete.

  He lunged at her with the knife, but Locklear was quicker and easily sidestepped the awkward thrust. Realizing his night vision had been damaged by staring through the window, she capitalized on her advantage by first planting a forceful straight kick into his sternum.

  Falco doubled over, almost stabbing himself in the gut with his knife. Swiftly, she struck his head with her heel via a full roundhouse move. He staggered, dropping his rucksack and grabbing at his midsection. After a knee to his nose, she had disabled Falco.

  Locklear knelt next to the suffering man.

  “What, Vinny, you think you’re going to come onto my turf now and kill me?”

  She held the pistol to his face, which had blood sluicing from his nose. Holding him by the back of his collar, she rested the muzzle at the base of his skull.

  “Give me one good reason not to blow your brains out, dump you in my kayak, paddle into the middle of the sound, and leave you for the sharks?”

  Falco coughed, spit some blood into the sand, and smiled.

  “You mean like you did to Royes?”

  “Let’s just say you’re going to wind up just like him,” Lindy said.

  Chapter 29

  Mahegan held on to a metal rung of the Ocean Ranger. The wetsuit had helped protect him from hypothermia and had held his injured left shoulder in place. The small rucksack of weapons and GPS devices created some drag, but nothing he could not handle. Thankfully, the AK-47 was one of the most durable weapons in the world and water had little effect on its operating capabilities.

  He bobbed halfway in the water and halfway out. He had swum to the east side of the boat, as Le Concord had been approaching on the west side. The bow of the Ranger was facing to the north, putting him near the starboard rear of the ship, which in his estimation was bigger than the approaching vessel. Toward the bow, he saw another boat moored to the Ranger and recognized it as the Lucky Lindy.

  He felt that combat edge surface, the thrill that always came when a mission begins to sync like well-played chess pieces on a board. He ran through his mind the variables at play.

  The Lucky Lindy was bringing the gold here 140 miles offshore so that they could lower it onto the bottom of the ocean, however deep, creating the illusion that it was found in deep international waters. Such a move would take advantage of the “finders keepers” precedent set by Tommy Thompson’s find in 1987. Mahegan’s immediate thought was that it was a brilliant, if not devious, scheme. No one had really explored the Galaxy site that Thompson had uncovered, because once they found the actual SS Central America, miles away, no one returned to this radar anomaly.

  Nix had done his homework.

  But what else was going on? Why all the elaborate machinations between the landing craft, the Lucky Lindy, Le Concord, and the Ocean Ranger?

  Well, Mahegan, thought, Nix was delivering the MVX-90s out here. Mahegan had clearly seen them loaded early in the morning onto the Lucky Lindy. His guess was that the MVX-90s were barter for the slaves he just saw on Le Concord. Arms dealers from somewhere in the Middle East received shipments of the most technologically advanced bomb triggers in the world. In exchange, prisoners were delivered to clear the bombing range and serve as slave labor on the gold ship. Nix and company pocketed the salaries intended for the workers.

  Some of those prisoners, he was sure, would be on the Lucky Lindy, headed back to Copperhead. Others would probably remain on this ship to work the reverse gold find. He also figured that there was a fifty-fifty chance that the FAA or, worse, the pirate from Copperhead had questioned Dakota by now.

  With that in mind, Mahegan calculated his play. He would go straight for the Lucky Lindy. He knew the intricacies of the fishing vessel well enough that he might be able to stow away on the trip back to the coast, as painful as that would be.

  The other options were worse. Fight it out on the Ranger. And then what? Go back to the Le Concord and head to the Middle East?

  If they were expecting him, they would assuredly be looking for him on the two larger vessels, thinking he was there to disrupt the gold shipment.

  But he had that combat edge. He felt he was still a fraction ahead of the enemy. And another thought was nagging at him. How could he let a shipment of MVX-90s head to the Middle East to kill more American soldiers? It was his moral obligation to stop this cargo.

  On that thought, he eased up the ladder on the side of the Ocean Ranger, did a silent combat roll over the gunwale, and lay in the prone position as he sighted down the aim posts of the AK-47.

  He saw movement and shadows beneath a set of bright lights on the port side of the ship, amidships, near the center. There was a winch operation under way. He saw a crate silhouetted against the lights. It was a standard wooden shipping crate, very similar to the one he had seen the forklift load onto the Lucky Lindy. He moved quickly while others were focused on the task of lowering the cargo into Le Concord.

  He found a ladder that dove directly into the hold of the ship. Flipping on the Maglite, he saw several small wooden containers, similar to the one being transferred by the hoist, marked with “Explosives” warnings.

  Explosives?

  Mahegan asked himself the question, What does Copperhead do with the bombs they find? He recalled the massive explosion he’d heard yesterday when swimming Croatan Sound. He remembered the giant mushroom cloud. His assumption was that they blew everything in place.

  Bad assumption.

  He used his knife to quickly pry the lid off one of the crates and found several artillery shells loosely stacked in haphazard fashion with, curiously enough, Styrofoam peanuts providing minor cushion. These were old shells, Mahegan determined. They were rusted and dirty, some with mud caked on them, but still fully operational.

  A noise at the top of the ladder from which he had entered caused him to stop his inspection and resume a defensive posture. He shut off his light, eased the lid back on the container, and knelt behind it for cover. Scanning, Mahegan noticed there were at least twenty rows of containers that were five deep. One hundred boxes of explosives going to the highest bidder for use against American forces, he thought, shaking his head.

  Was Nix running multiple scams at once? The gold, the MVX-90s, the prisoners, and the explosives?

  Someone at the top of the ladder stopped with half of his torso above the deck and half below.

  “We’ll retract the deck and get to the rest of the cargo,” the man shouted above the din of ship noises.

  Mahegan heard a pinging noise above him, metal on metal. Then suddenly the entire deck above him began to open like the Dallas Cowboys stadium, retracting from the middle in two directions. He used the noise to move deeper into the ro
ws of crates. He stopped toward the end and began prying tops off with his knife, quickly inspecting for a specific item.

  While the grating metal was coming to a final screeching halt, he saw what he needed. He grabbed two of them and wedged them in his rucksack as best he could. They were heavy, but he could still maneuver.

  Mahegan looked up and saw the night sky above him. From his angle he could see the long arm of the crane beginning to slide over the open cargo bay and begin its reach for the crates.

  He exited the cargo bay through a steel door that would lead him somewhere aft, he believed. The door opened outward, toward him and to the left. He stepped inside and closed the door. Mahegan was in complete darkness, but sensed he was in a similar personnel hold he had seen on Le Concord. This was a dank, musty room that smelled of urine and feces, at best. He switched on his Maglite and saw scattered blankets, but no people. A quick scan of the room showed no other exit. He was at the complete aft of the ship.

  He heard a noise outside of the door through which he had just entered and moved to the near corner, which would provide him a split-second advantage over someone coming in from the natural angle of the outward-opening door.

  Mahegan heard a radio squelch break and then, “Hey, boss, we’re only going to need about five of these dirtbags. We can send the rest onward.”

  The door opened and a man stood outside the opening, switched on a flashlight, and sprayed the room with two quick sweeps. The light settled on the blankets.

  “Smells like a shithouse on a tuna boat,” the man said into his radio.

  Mahegan wondered what kind of radio it might be and thought it could be useful.

  “Quit bitching and lock ’em up,” came another voice over the radio.

  “Aye, captain. They’re coming across now.”

  With enough evidence available to make a decision that he was dealing with rogue Americans conspiring with international arms dealers and slave traders, Mahegan waited until the man turned the flashlight off. He sensed the man turning away and moving to the door.