Direct Fire Read online

  Savage had a known phone number for Baghdadi with his voice in the phone. The voice match was weak, but it was there. Savage told Mahegan that he considered the phone and the voice match two distinct sources, though Mahegan believed neither was reliable. Mahegan never went into the operations center. He and his team were always remote from the headquarters. He rarely saw Savage during deployments, if at all. But he was watching the Predator streaming video from his remote viewer, called a ROVER. He watched as the Hellfire missile struck the middle SUV and then JDAM bombs lawn darted into the remaining vehicles. It looked as spectacular as anything shown on television or YouTube. His little bird helicopters had spinning blades, awaiting Savage’s word to launch his raid to gather intelligence from the detritus. Savage gave Mahegan the word to execute sensitive site exploitation. He remembered the carnage at the scene.

  “Wasn’t much to see. A Hellfire missile struck her vehicle, and everyone in there was charred. Weren’t you in the Mosul JOC?” Mahegan used the acronym for Joint Operations Center.

  “Tell me!” she shouted again.

  Suddenly Mahegan felt that she had a personal connection to someone in the wedding party. The pistol remained aimed at his chest. He figured she was about done asking him questions.

  “Why draw down on me, Alex? I was there, but I didn’t kill anyone that day. And I didn’t kill anyone today or yesterday.”

  She laughed a high-pitched squeal. “You? You killed so many people over there and now you’re wanted for murder here. I have no idea if those MPs are real or fake. My gut tells me they’re fake and bad guys, but at the end of the day my career is too important to me to risk it. I should put a bullet in your head. You’ve killed one person already tonight. Let’s make it a killing spree. Murder–suicide. You get the gist.”

  “Really? This is all about your career?”

  “What else is there in life? Relationships? Family? You know better than anyone that those things hurt you more than they help you. This right here, this is what counts.” Alex patted her identification card clipped to her belt on a retractable lanyard, her credential for getting behind the fence. Now Mahegan was convinced that Operation Groomsman had wound up killing someone she knew or had been close to.

  “So tell me, Jake Mahegan, what is it that you care most about?” Alex asked him.

  She shifted her weight. Mahegan guessed she was positioning her feet to absorb the kick of the pistol when she pulled the trigger. He studied the geometry. She was five feet from him. The vehicle was to her left. The wooded forest was maybe ten feet behind him. If he dashed toward the SUV, he figured he could use the vehicle as protection as he angled toward the wood line. Once in the forest, he didn’t believe she would come after him.

  “I care about my teammates, Alex. And at one time I guess General Savage considered you worthy of the JSOC team.”

  Alex nodded her head. She appeared on the verge of losing control.

  “That’s right. Teammates. JSOC. Friends. All of that happy horseshit. Now give me your pistol,” Alex emphasized. “Not asking again.”

  She tightened her grip on the gun, and about the same time that she pulled the trigger he leapt to his right, toward the SUV. The shot was loud, an echoing report that rumbled for miles. Mahegan landed on his right side and rolled toward the SUV. Two more shots plinked off the side of the SUV, chasing him. He removed his pistol and opened the passenger door as he slid across the hood. He hoped the white light from the dome would blind her as he escaped into the woods. Alex pressed her body against the back of the SUV as he jogged into the woods on the opposite side of the road. He quickly positioned himself behind a large oak. Watching as Alex carefully made her way to the driver’s door, Mahegan aimed the pistol from less than fifteen yards away.

  It was an easy shot.

  CHAPTER 7

  IT WAS WELL PAST MIDNIGHT ON FRIDAY MORNING, AND YVES DUPREE stood in the familiar master bedroom of his boss, Charles Sledge, the CEO of United Bank of America. That he had previously taken certain liberties with Vicki Sledge gave him pause.

  The police and crime scene techs were milling around, and he was, frankly, surprised that he had been allowed inside. His status as a lawyer and the executor of the Sledge family estate most likely played a large role in the Charlotte police chief and Mecklenburg County sheriff granting him access. After all, somebody had to identify the bodies, and it would be hours before they moved any of the three.

  He wore light blue booties over his Ferragamo high-top calfskin sneakers, freshly pressed designer jeans, and a Ted Baker pinpoint cotton shirt with silk collar and sleeves. He ran a hand through his wavy, light brown hair as he stared at the body of Danny Sledge. There was a hole the size of a fist through his body. The blood splatter against the wall above Vicki Sledge’s head was grotesque, an artist’s gruesome rendering of death. Vicki looked as if she were sleeping, and it appeared that someone had closed her eyes. Her head was cocked toward him, and he expected her to awaken and say, “Hello, Yves, what brings you here tonight?”

  But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Looking at his boss, Yves could see and smell the urine that had been voided from his body either directly before he was shot or during the shooting. Yves could only imagine the fear the man must have felt for his wife and son.

  Yves was single. He never planned on getting married if he could help it. He was raised in the small town of Lille, France, on the Belgian border, attended both the Sorbonne for his undergraduate and masters in finance and accounting, then Oxford for his JD in Law and PhD in Political Economy. His primary focus was on international trade, foreign exchange, and markets.

  A rising star in the French government, Yves had worked for Barclays as an investment banker before being recruited by the General Directorate of Security, or DGSE in French acronym parlance. The DGSE was the French equivalent of the CIA. He had become a field agent, which included interacting with groups such as cutouts for ISIS and Hezbollah as they secretly made ransom demands or threatened French officials. Yves had even deployed to Syria and Iraq to work with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, a legend for his spy work. The Arab Spring had created chaos . . . and opportunity. There he had met Lieutenant General Bart Bagwell, the commander to whom he had proven a reliable source of intelligence.

  While he had enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger work, he found that for it to be lucrative he had to skirt the law, which he had little problem doing from a moral standpoint. With his connections he was able to establish a profitable side business in the world of information sharing and manipulation in the wake of the mass exodus during the Syrian civil war. People needed to safely exit Syria and get to Europe. Dupree figured there was a market there. His business plan catered to the Syrian elite, who were arguably also the most targeted. The equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars or euros cash got a potential migrant processed in a single day. Within twenty-four hours that individual and up to two family members were cleared to leave Syria and enter the European country of Dupree’s choosing. Similarly, the equivalent of fifty thousand dollars or euros resulted in a five-day processing time, which was a deal given that visas were taking months to clear. Those were his only two offers. Anything else and he felt he would be exposing himself to the hapless, but sometimes effective, UN auditors. Ultimately he could not have done this business venture alone, and he and his business partner had cashed in nearly $15 million over the course of a year.

  But then it had all disappeared. Stolen. Cyber hacked.

  The loss had been devastating, forcing him to sell his Biarritz beach house and his Paris apartment and to find a higher salaried job. His business partner had a connection that landed him with United Bank of America.

  Because Charles Sledge and the board of directors had hired him for his financial expertise, Yves had an idea what Sledge’s murder would mean for him. He would immediately become Interim CEO, according to the Board of Directors succession plan that had been in place for years. His salary would more than tri
ple from $600,000 annually to $2 million.

  Having fulfilled his first duty of executing the will of Charles and Vicki Sledge, his mind wandered back to Alex Russell. They had met on a few occasions. She was certainly a beautiful, exotic woman, if not a tad rough-hewn. He figured the military did that to a woman, diminished her feminism.

  Nonetheless he had been somewhat smitten with her, causing him to use his DGSE sources to dig deeper into the backgrounds of the men with whom she worked. He studied General Savage, her boss, and the team that worked for him, such as Jake Mahegan, Patch Owens, and Sean O’Malley. He knew that Mahegan had been on the gray list, meaning to possibly detain if found. He had heard about Mahegan’s dustups in other parts of North Carolina, though he had discovered that information through unofficial sources.

  Looking at the bodies lying on the bed and floor, like the remnants of a combat zone, Yves Dupree knew that these killings were motivated by money, not radical Islam, which was certainly a threat.

  He looked again at Vicki Sledge’s face and shook his head. Someone was one step closer to what they wanted.

  “Seen enough?” the police chief asked.

  “Seen too much, Chief. That’s Vicki. That’s Charles. That’s Danny. Positive ID. Can I go now?”

  The chief nodded with his thick neck and heavy jowls, a sympathetic look on his face.

  “Sure thing, Counselor. But first can I see those fancy sneakers?”

  Dupree chuckled, “Of course.” He lifted his foot and removed the blue bootie so that the police chief could see his two thousand dollar tennis shoes.

  “Emily?”

  A young woman wearing surgical scrubs, blue booties, a blue surgeon’s cap, and latex gloves came over, placed a sticky piece of paper against the sole, got an imprint, and then walked away.

  “Thanks. Since you’ve been in here before, we need to make sure we’re not chasing the wrong shoe prints.”

  “No problem,” Dupree said with confidence.

  “We’ll be in touch.” The sheriff nodded and held out his hand. “You okay?”

  Yves shook the man’s hand and nodded. “It’s quite a shock.” Of course, only Dupree knew that he had seen worse, much worse.

  Yves Dupree had the stomach for death. He was simply bored and had work to do.

  * * *

  State Bureau of Investigation agent Tommy Oxendine leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door and watched with a wary eye as Yves Dupree departed the crime scene.

  Not ruling him out, Oxendine thought.

  Oxendine was a Lumbee American Indian from Lumberton who had been with the State Bureau of Investigation for seventeen years. A Lumberton High School football star, Oxendine had graduated from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke prior to joining the SBI. Now a seasoned investigator, Oxendine had been given the lead on the murder of Charles Sledge, one of the most prominent citizens in Charlotte. Aside from being rich and the CEO of a large national bank, Sledge was a frequent donor to political candidates and to charities that promoted literacy and education for children.

  A quick search of the golf course pond behind Sledge’s house revealed a Colt .45 Ranger Spirit Tribute pistol that looked brand new once his weapons man had cleaned it. A quick check of records showed the weapon was purchased in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and was registered to Chayton Mahegan.

  Oxendine knew of Mahegan. They were both Native Americans, and Mahegan had once lived in Maxton, not far from where Oxendine had gone to school. Although older than Mahegan, Oxendine had been on the scene of his mother’s murder in Maxton, one of his first cases as a young agent. Oxendine also checked the Homeland Security black/white/gray list and saw that Mahegan was listed as “gray,” meaning possibly detain. Mahegan’s name had come up a few times in the last couple of years regarding possible connections to terrorists.

  A young woman named Emily Jones walked up to Oxendine. Emily smelled of antiseptic hand wash and was average height, white, her blond hair tied up in a bun beneath the surgeon’s cap. She wore blue surgical scrubs and booties and latex gloves. She had been making casts of the boot prints inside and outside the home. She had just printed Dupree’s shoes.

  “Yes?” Oxendine asked. He was a good foot taller than the petite technician. She looked up at him with narrow eyes and a furrowed brow.

  “I’ve got size twelve Doc Martens patterned soles,” Emily said. “In case you were wondering, Dupree wears size nine.”

  “Okay, log it in,” Oxendine said.

  Emily nodded but didn’t move.

  “What else?” Oxendine prompted. He had worked with Emily before and knew she was always just the facts. Now she looked confused or uncertain.

  “Just something freaky about the prints. As I study them, each one looks like the boot slid a fraction of an inch with most every step,” Emily said.

  Oxendine thought about it a moment. Studying shoe and boot prints was a standard part of any crime scene analysis. He had seen hundreds of prints, and all varied to some degree. He thought about Emily’s relative inexperience and weighed that against her renowned thoroughness.

  “What do you think that means?”

  “I’m not sure. I just wanted to let you know. I’m going to put them in the computer and then compare all of them and see what I come up with. I know what you’re thinking, that I’m young and inexperienced, but I’ve seen a lot of these prints, sir.”

  “Don’t pretend to know what I’m thinking, Miss Jones. Run it through the computer and then speak to me with more certainty. Thank you for your thoroughness.”

  Sufficiently chastised, Emily nodded, said, “Thank you, sir,” and walked into the family room where the rest of the technicians had set up a makeshift command post.

  Oxendine got back to thinking about Mahegan. He was accused of murder in Afghanistan, but Oxendine heard that Mahegan had his dishonorable discharge overturned on a technicality. Mahegan was on the possibly detain list, which was as good as saying, “Detain.” In Oxendine’s mind there wasn’t much difference between the black and the gray lists. And the white list, for that matter, if you pissed him off enough.

  Mahegan was rumored to have been involved in a fracking scheme that nearly melted down a nuclear plant in the Raleigh area, and Oxendine had read a report that Mahegan had gotten into trouble with the Coast Guard in the Outer Banks. And now, his team found Mahegan’s pistol in the pond.

  Oxendine held the pistol with a latex-gloved hand. It was a beautiful weapon, with the words “Ranger Tribute” inscribed on the trigger housing. He popped the magazine out of the well and counted five bullets. He would have those fingerprinted immediately by the team in the family room. It was a newer eight-round magazine. The math certainly added up for Oxendine. Three dead victims, each with one bullet in them apiece. Eight-round magazine missing three bullets. Three casings in the pond. No-brainer.

  Mahegan went from gray list to black list in Oxendine’s mind. Moreover, Oxendine had worked with the Lumbee community in North Carolina and was proud of his Native American heritage. Protective. He wasn’t going to let a bad seed like Mahegan feed into the negative stereotypes of American Indians everywhere. He was going to be harder on Mahegan than anyone else could ever be.

  Tommy Oxendine was a role model for his people. He volunteered in Lumberton sometimes on his weekends, when he had weekends. Work pretty much consumed him. Still unmarried, he was career driven and equally motivated to show everyone that a Lumbee could compete in the white man’s world.

  And Chayton Mahegan, the Hawk Wolf, was an embarrassment.

  He pulled out his secure phone and punched speed dial back to Raleigh; got Officer Lucy Cartwright, the night watch officer; and gave her his report.

  “Put out a BOLO on one Chayton Mahegan. I need the state helicopter here within the next two hours. I’m setting up a command post at the Concord Airport conference room. Need a SWAT team on hand by six a.m. Any questions?”

  “Getting bossy, Oxendine?” Cartwright
said.

  “I’m on the ground. You’re in a comfy air-conditioned office, Lucy.”

  “I hear you’re chilling in a three-million-dollar mansion,” she replied.

  “With three dead bodies.”

  “Watch yourself, Tommy,” Cartwright said, a subtle reminder she outranked him. “One SWAT team heading your way. Roger, out,” she said.

  Oxendine hung up. Most people didn’t question Tommy Oxendine, the linebacker with the fierce black eyes and thick black hair mowed nearly into a Mohawk. No, most people nodded and said, “Yes, sir,” to Oxendine, because whether he liked the analogy or not, people said he had more scalps than any other special agent in the SBI.

  “Adding one to the list,” he muttered.

  CHAPTER 8

  MAHEGAN DIDN’T TAKE THE SHOT ON ALEX RUSSELL.

  He watched as Alex got back into her Land Rover and sped west on Route 109 through the Uwharrie National Forest. They had stopped about the five-mile mark after passing through the town of Troy. Mahegan broke brush due west through the hilly terrain. At times the undergrowth was thick, and in other places it appeared and smelled like the Forest Service had performed a controlled burn. If he kept going west he would hit the Yadkin River, which flowed southeast out of Badin Lake Dam. On the opposite side of the Yadkin would be the town of Badin. Perhaps he could find a rental car there and head toward Asheville and the last known locations of the blinking lights of Savage, O’Malley, and Owens. When he was safely away from the road, he checked the time on his smartphone. Three in the morning. Peak circadian rhythm time for human sleep. It was also peak hunting time for nocturnal animals, such as owls, wolves, and bobcats, all of which he knew inhabited the Uwharrie Forest.