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  “Yes, ma’am. Have you seen him? Do you know him?”

  “I’m here monitoring the situation we have going on right now. Kidnapped military leaders and United Bank of America CEO and family murdered. Something is happening right now. Do you really think I have time to look for a has-been renegade murder suspect?”

  “So that’s a no?”

  “That’s a no, Sergeant,” Alex said. Again, she hadn’t directly answered the military police officer.

  “Mind if we look down there?”

  A flashlight swept the steps beyond Alex’s feet.

  “This is a top secret facility, Sergeant. What’s your clearance?”

  After a long pause, the sergeant replied, “Not top secret. But we’ll be back with a warrant.” Then after a noticeable hesitation, he added, “Ma’am.”

  There was something off about the sergeant’s voice. Too old? Maybe trying too hard to hide an ethnic undertone?

  “Anything else, guys?”

  Guys.

  More than one MP. There was tension in Alex’s voice as her hand tightened on the pistol grip. She stood on the step with a perfect balanced shooter’s stance, feet spread evenly and knees flexed.

  “Just this,” the older voice said.

  Alex’s pistol was up and firing as she dove opposite of Mahegan’s protected position. He heard a grunt from the top of the stairwell and saw a shadow move across the opening to the COOP. The body belonging to the shadow took two tentative steps into the stairwell, and Alex used her Berretta to blow the kneecap off the intruder. The man bellowed and fell down into the cavern with a thud. He was dressed in standard issue Army combat uniform with the digitized olive and tan pattern. There was an MP armband around his left deltoid, and he had a high and tight haircut like many of the paratroopers at Fort Bragg. It crossed Mahegan’s mind that this could be a legitimate soldier conducting official business.

  Regardless, Mahegan was on top of him with one knee in his back and his pistol to his skull.

  “Check up top,” he said to Alex. She moved swiftly up the steps. Initially he had been concerned she might have been wounded, but if so, she was doing a good job of hiding it.

  Mahegan bounced the man’s head against the hard floor of the COOP, knocking him unconscious. Soldier or not, Mahegan could not have him see his face. Lifting him, Mahegan climbed the stairs and dumped the attacker on the ground next to the dead man dressed as an MP sergeant.

  Mahegan looked up at Alex, who was pacing back and forth, muttering something unintelligible. He checked the unconscious man first. He found a Berretta 9 mm pistol, standard Army issue, in a hip holster. Upon further inspection, he found a Makarov PM, a Russian pistol, strapped to his ankle. This was unusual but not out of the ordinary. Many soldiers, including Mahegan, had carried personal weapons into combat or while on duty. A military policeman was “in combat” when he was on patrol whether near Fort Bragg or in Kandahar. MPs were targets everywhere because they were law enforcement.

  Studying the man’s facial features, Mahegan did not discount that he could be of Middle Eastern or Russian origin. He lifted the man and carried him to Alex’s Land Rover. By now, she had gathered herself and moved back to the second body.

  He turned as Alex was lifting a pistol to the man’s head.

  “He’s already dead, Alex. No need for that,” he said. The air outside was warm and muggy. Alex was sweating. He placed his hand on hers and shifted the pistol to the side. “Plus, you don’t want another bullet they can trace from your pistol. I see the first was a through and through on the neck. Nicked his carotid artery.”

  “More like blew it wide open,” she said, regaining some composure.

  “Are you sure these are not real military police officers who were doing their duty?”

  Alex looked at Mahegan with a cold stare.

  “The only thing that matters now is that we do ours,” she said. “Lift him and throw him in my car. I’ve got a painter’s tarp back there.”

  “I saw it,” he said. “I need a first aid kit.”

  Alex looked at him. A cloud moved across her eyes. Something registered in the back of Mahegan’s brain. Again he asked himself, Is she friend or foe?

  “We need to get moving. They’re after you. Legit or not, we can’t afford to have you off the chessboard. That’s what they want. All of you incapacitated so they can do whatever it is that they’re doing.”

  Mahegan lifted the dead man and placed him next to the unconscious, wounded MP in the back of Alex’s Land Rover. He grabbed the first aid kit from the side well of the car’s hatch. The bullet had ripped off the man’s kneecap. If he lived, he would probably need to have the lower half of his leg amputated. There was no way he was putting any pressure on that knee unless a doctor could reconstruct it or do replacement surgery. He used Betadine, Neosporin, and gauze as best he could. Flashbacks of patching teammate combat wounds popped in his mind like firecrackers.

  He spoke in Arabic to the wounded MP.

  “What’s your name?”

  The MP coughed and started to say, “Haf—” but then looked at his name tape on his uniform and said, “Smith.” It was no kind of confirmation, but also a good clue that these two military policemen were not legitimate. The throaty Arabic voice shifted to something more trained and smooth when he said, “Smith.”

  He searched their uniforms and came away with weapons and ammunition. Another clue that they could be part of the decapitation team, here to clean out the COOP, which would mean him, O’Malley, Owens, and Savage. Which meant that whoever was running the operation did not actually have his COOP teammates in captivity, or this team had not received the word. Or perhaps they were after Mahegan alone.

  Alex went into the COOP, and Mahegan closed the Land Rover back door. He walked over to the military police car and switched the idling vehicle off. He removed the keys and pocketed them. On the dashboard he noticed a GPS indicating the vehicle’s location. He was certain that it was transmitting back to Fort Bragg or somewhere else if these men were not authentic MPs. Regardless, as Alex had said, someone would be coming their way shortly.

  He climbed into the COOP and saw Alex hovering over one of the computers. She looked over her shoulder and quickly closed the MacBook lid. After unplugging it, she tucked it under her arm and said, “Let’s go. They’re coming.”

  Alex climbed back up the steps and Mahegan followed, closed the doors, secured the locks, and spun the dial.

  “We should drive their car wherever we’re going to drop them off,” Mahegan said.

  “Too obvious. Just move it a mile up the road and I’ll pick you up.”

  Mahegan sat in the MP sedan and used a dark green cloth in the backseat to wipe his fingerprints and hold the steering wheel. He cranked the engine and the vehicle came to life. He debated the next move. He had enough information—the Russian pistol, the lack of identification, and the Arabic accent—to reconcile in his mind that the men were part of the operation that was happening tonight.

  He followed Alex’s taillights as they bumped along the dirt road that led past the main house, a white farm-style home with a covered porch. It was unassuming and blended with the homes of the region. Savage had done well. They hit the blacktop and pulled a right turn, driving about a mile before Alex slowed to a stop on the country road. She pulled into the oncoming lane and waved him forward. Through the open window, she said, “Drive it into the ditch, like they were drunk or something.”

  Mahegan snapped his seat belt across his chest as he pulled forward, eyeing the drainage ditch just off the narrow shoulder. It was steep and would require a tow truck to recover the vehicle once it was found. He nosed over the lip and gravity took over as the hood of the sedan slammed into the watery bottom. Black muck splashed onto the windshield as the car slapped the water and then settled up to about the top of the grill. He wiped away his fingerprints again and opened the door, barely able to escape through the narrow crack. Clawing his way up the ravine,
Mahegan saw Alex waving her arms, motioning for him to hurry.

  He climbed into the backseat of her Land Rover SUV. The back windows were tinted, but he chose to lie down on the bench seat as she cranked the engine. Holding his Tribal pistol in one hand, he steadied his large frame with the other as Alex rocketed along the asphalt road.

  “Stay down. They’re right around the corner, waiting. Another cruiser was called to the scene when someone reported gunshots.”

  “These could be real MPs in the back of your vehicle, Alex,” Mahegan said from the backseat. Although he didn’t believe them to be, Mahegan was pushing on Alex. There was something that seemed out of alignment. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was there. Everything was too convenient. She happened to arrive after him. She happened to have a backup to Zebra. She happened to shoot the MPs.

  Mahegan didn’t doubt his ability to fend off the two faux military policemen. He was unsure if he wanted an aggressive, shoot-first-ask-questions-later partner. He had no problem with rapid action, but they needed intelligence and information, not dead and dying MPs or assailants.

  “Whatever. They don’t realize I’m a lawyer, and these guys were and are off base with no jurisdiction,” Alex said.

  She continued for a minute without talking, then said, “Okay, I’m past them. They’ve started following me but haven’t turned on any lights. They could call state troopers or Southern Pines police, but we’re going to have to risk it. I’m just going to stay on Route 27 through Troy and into the Uwharrie National Forest. If you need to bail out, you can bail. But that’s where I was thinking we could dump the bodies.”

  They had a good forty-five minutes before they were in the national forest. But it was reassuring that they would be passing through the Uwharrie, because Mahegan had walked every trail from the land navigation training he had performed as a paratrooper, Special Forces soldier, and Delta Force operator.

  After about fifteen minutes, Alex said, “They turned back toward Fort Bragg.”

  She drove another thirty minutes until Mahegan could tell that the ambient light had diminished and they were in the countryside, perhaps passing through the Uwharrie. He sat up and got his bearings.

  “Just entered the national forest,” she said. “I’m guessing you know your way around here. Route 109.”

  “Some,” Mahegan said.

  “Where’s the best place to dump these guys?”

  “There’s no good place to dump wounded and dead soldiers, Alex,” Mahegan said.

  “These guys aren’t soldiers. I can promise you that.”

  “So enlighten me before I use this Tribal on the back of your head.”

  He watched her eyes in the mirror. Saw the wrinkle of crow’s-feet, indicating a smirk.

  “I’ll flip this car so fast, that pistol will fly through the window, Mahegan. You have no idea who I am or what I can do. I killed that imposter without even thinking about it. Shot him through the neck, which is where I was aiming because I wanted a through and through. Think about that.”

  Mahegan did think about it. She was a good shot and a quick thinker. She was also an enigma. Alex claimed to have connections to General Savage, and he had heard Savage talk about an “Alex,” but there was no way he could be certain that Savage’s Alex and the one driving this Land Rover with two military policemen stuffed in the rear compartment were one and the same.

  “Got it figured out?” she asked.

  “Not even close,” Mahegan said. Usually the one driving the action and in control, Mahegan had to admit that he had relinquished his positional advantage to Alex once she shot the military policemen. Knowing that he was wanted for murder added a layer of complexity to the equation, also. Mahegan needed to find his team: O’Malley, Owens, and Savage.

  That’s where he needed to be, needed to go. Whether Alex was who she said she was or, worst case, an imposter allied with the elements wreaking havoc on the country right now, he didn’t know. But he did know she had a vehicle with a full tank of gas that could get him to Asheville.

  “Make a right up here at this milepost. It’s a well-known spot for everyone doing the land nav course. Gravel road. We can drop these guys there and get to Asheville.”

  “Now we’re talking,” Alex said.

  Alex slowed the vehicle to a stop on a gravel road about one hundred yards off the main highway. Mahegan opened the hatchback and lifted the dead man first, carrying him about fifty yards off the road into some of the thickest forest in North Carolina. It would be less than twenty-four hours before animals, most likely bear, had devoured this corpse. Mahegan was still conflicted, but he convinced himself that this was the right course of action. The military policeman had drawn first on Alex, or so it seemed. And there was a personal Russian weapon strapped to the ankle of the man who fell to the basement floor. If these men had anything to do with the disappearance of the senior military officers and their families, then they were fair game. Mahegan was going to treat them as such until he had further evidence that they weren’t.

  After dropping the dead man on a rock outcropping, he doubled back, found the road, and saw the dim outline of the SUV in the low moonlight. He retrieved the wounded man and set him next to his dead partner. He walked back to find Alex standing outside of her vehicle, closing the door.

  “You made a mess back here,” she said.

  “Let’s go,” Mahegan replied.

  Alex turned toward him, holding her pistol in his direction.

  “Things are about to get messier,” Alex said. “I’m thinking it would be good for my career to turn you in.”

  In the moonlight, Alex’ face was set, the left jawline visible in the weak light, the right side of her face shaded. She had shut off her vehicle, and the engine ticked as it cooled. What was her play? Why draw down on him now? Perhaps she just needed to rid herself of the two dead military policemen and now she could pin it on him. The weight of his Tribal on his hip, a one-second draw away, beckoned him.

  “Hand me your pistol, Jake, and tell me everything you know about Operation Groomsman.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked, buying time. “You know Groomsman was a classified operation and a disaster.”

  “It was worse than a disaster. Trust me.”

  Mahegan remembered the mission clearly. He had been the team leader and was tasked with taking seven other men to a long stretch of road leading to a compound in Syria near Mosul, Iraq, to kill or capture a high value target. Savage had ordered the mission, and he presumed Alex Russell had been standing next to him saying, “Valid target,” as the Predator drones and B-2 bombers annihilated what they thought was an SUV convoy of bona fide bad guys.

  Instead, what they found was a wedding party. Of course, all along, the convoy had been referencing a wedding, but the intelligence analysts thought that was a ruse. They had confirmation of the high-value target’s voice on the target’s cell phone, and they had the cell phone active in a specific vehicle of the convoy. The bombing run had destroyed all of the vehicles and killed more than twenty people. As Mahegan’s team descended on the carnage along the cratered road at twilight, they saw no survivors, no runners, and no high-value targets. Just a bloody and dead bride in her white dress and SUVs full of dead groomsmen, family members, and the groom.

  Why Alex was asking for more information on this mission, he didn’t know and frankly didn’t care. That was a different lifetime for Mahegan, and he was trying to move beyond the violence and find something stable, something to call his own.

  “What could I possibly tell you about Groomsman you don’t already know?”

  Alex looked away and then back at Mahegan. “Jake, you were on the ground there. Tell me what you saw.”

  “I reported everything to Savage. My understanding was that you guys were in Mosul, not that far. It was a murderous mission. The intel was bad.”

  “Tell me!” she shouted. Mahegan heard her voice echo into the deep forests on either side of the road. Birch,
oak, and maple trees rose all around them as if standing in judgment. Hardwoods. Hard decisions. Mahegan looked at her pistol, its dull black finish a shadow in the dim moonlight. Saw her balanced shooter’s stance. She was prepared to pull the trigger.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Alex had tears streaming down her face. Her countenance slackened, as if her mind was spinning backward in time.

  “The bride,” she whispered. “Tell me about the bride.”

  Mahegan paused, took a breath, considered his options. While the road was sparsely traveled, it was traveled. He looked left and saw the light gray gravel spilling away to the east where it met Highway 105, swallowed by the darkness. He looked right and saw the gravel rise slightly in a long, straight line until it merged with the horizon. No lights were coming from either direction. Not even a hint. He could hear a million crickets chirping and the clarion call of owls on the hunt. Animals were moving in the bush, probably smelling fresh blood fifty yards away.

  Operation Groomsman. Savage had been hell-bent on attacking that convoy. They’d had no clues on future ISIS commander al-Baghdadi until twenty-four hours prior to the mission. The intel team picked up al-Baghdadi’s phone pinging from a specific location. Savage directed the Air Force to move Predator over the location, and the live streaming showed a group of SUVs at a compound. From his headquarters in Mosul, Savage monitored the compound for nearly a full day and night with little activity other than children playing in the courtyard near the SUVs, making a Predator shot impractical. Mahegan and his team had watched from a separate compound twenty miles away from Savage’s location. The farther, the better, in Mahegan’s mind.

  Savage had laid out two quick options. One, Mahegan and his men air assault into the compound and capture Baghdadi alive, which would lead to better intelligence, or, two, wait for the SUVs to move, kill the nascent leader, and call it a day. For any operation involving ground troops, Savage liked to have two confirming sources of intelligence. A human spot report coupled with signals intercept, for example. Streaming video and voice recognition. Any combination of confirmed intelligence from reliable sources was the trigger. For dropping a bomb, the same standard held but the commander felt more discretion. The U.S. Air Force pilots were flying out of range of enemy surface-to-air missiles and weren’t necessarily at risk other than the normal hazards of flying combat missions.