Three Minutes to Midnight (20 page)

CHAPTER 18

T
HE TWO MEN WITH THE WEAPONS CLOSED QUICKLY ON THE VEHICLE
Petrov remained motionless, save the slapping of the bat into his left hand. Mahegan listened to the
thunk, thunk, thunk
of the bat and visualized what Petrov might have in mind for him, maybe even for Grace.

The Crown Vic likely had bulletproof glass, Mahegan thought, and its weightiness indicated some type of ballistic protection. Mahegan said, “Hang on.”

He slammed the gearshift into reverse, held the brake a fraction of a second, floored the accelerator, and performed a perfect Rockford, spinning the car 180 degrees, slamming the gear back to drive, and aiming the car down the hill like a bobsled.

Mahegan then slammed on the brakes, slapped the gearshift back into reverse, and used the higher gear ratio to gain traction and power for the short punch through the metal arm blocking the road. He could hear the unconscious Griffyn bouncing around in the back and didn't feel bad about it one bit.

“What the hell are you doing!” Grace shouted, hanging on to the dashboard while ducking at the sound of gunfire.

Mahegan said nothing. He aimed the car at the metal arm, which broke easily at the point of impact under the combined weight and speed of the Crown Vic. The bulletproof glass designed to protect Griffyn was working just fine as Mahegan pulled another Rockford, this time aiming the nose of the car at Petrov, who dove out of the way, losing the bat but grabbing his pistol.

Mahegan throttled the car, and it leapt up the hill inside the compound, three weapons firing small-caliber bullets at the now spiderwebbing rear window. The car actually gained some air as it crested the hill. Mahegan could see the distant lights of the hunting lodge, which looked to him more like a mansion the closer he approached. Sparks flew from the front bumper as the car came back toward the hill, smacked the gravel, and leveled out. In the rearview mirror, Mahegan saw the three men. They ran, stopped and fired, ran, stopped and fired, continuing in their pursuit but becoming smaller and smaller in the mirror.

The front windshield looked okay, and Mahegan saw nothing to be gained by storming the compound any further. He saw two new muzzle flashes from the south side of the lodge and three from the north. Counting the three men at the gate, Mahegan placed their security at about eight people. Based on the numbers of men he had seen digging postholes and during his recon effort earlier, he guessed Throckmorton had about fifteen personnel on location. Of course, he had injured four and killed two, so the number might be less.

“What. The hell. Are you doing?” Grace shouted.

The closest defender was about a hundred yards away. Not close, but not far for assault rifles. The fire was not well aimed, but Mahegan knew that all it would take was one lucky bullet. He opened the driver's door, stepped out, opened the back door, dragged the bound Griffyn from the backseat, and left him on the gravel, like a delivery.

He shut the back door, heard the distinctive snap of supersonic bullets zipping nearby, and sat back in the car. The teams were closing to fifty yards from three directions. He spotted two weapons in the main window of the lodge, which put the number of guards at ten. Some of the commandos on rest cycle had been awakened, or these were rounds fired by Throckmorton and Gunther, if Gunther was there.

He thought back to Petrov's tactile BlackBerry, which had a calendar entry about Gunther's visit that morning. Perhaps he was still there. Mahegan could feel the man the way a hunter could track an animal. Grace was screaming at him, but everything was in slow motion. He saw the men with the assault weapons closing on his position, but he remained motionless. He stared at the lodge window and saw a head staring back at him.

And he knew it was Gunther.

He could feel Gunther in that house, the same way he had felt the need to come home early on the day he walked in on his mother being attacked. He closed his eyes and visualized pulling Gunther away from his mother and tossing him through the sliding glass door. Gunther was not a small man, but Mahegan had been driven that day by the most primal emotion he had ever felt. He remembered watching a large chunk of glass stab Gunther in the back and thinking,
Okay. He'll bleed out
, as he moved on to the next assailant.

“Hawthorne!”

Mahegan came back to the moment and opened his eyes. Quickly, he assessed the vehicles in the front driveway of the lodge: two pickup trucks and a Suburban. He calculated the response time of the guards and their general professionalism.
Okay, but not great.

Then he got the hell out of there.

Mahegan heard the footsteps as the bullets continued to smack into the car windows. He reversed course and pulled another 180, this time catching one of the guards with the nose of the Crown Vic. Spitting gravel from the rear tires like a cigarette boat did a rooster tail, Mahegan sped past Petrov, who stood in a perfect shooter's stance, his pistol jacking back in his hand, as the bullets thudded into the car windows, making it nearly impossible to see in any direction.

Mahegan kept the Crown Vic between the ditches as he used his forearm to smash out the shattered driver's side window. Slaloming down the winding gravel and dirt road, he hung his head out the window, watching the edge of the lighter road and keeping the car to the left of the black ditch.

Soon they were near Route 1 and moving northeast, away from the county line. Mahegan drove to a shopping mall that was five miles from his apartment. He parked, grabbed a rag from the duffel bag, and wiped down the car.

Grace stood in the parking lot and watched, her arms crossed, as if protecting herself from the cold. Mahegan knew that she wasn't cold, but angry and afraid. Her boss was with the bad guys. He wouldn't tell her how he knew. Not yet.

Grabbing his duffel bag, he turned to Grace. A parking lot light was shining on her like a stage beam. “That was called a probing attack. I hadn't planned on it, but I hadn't ruled it out. When I saw Griffyn come looking for us, I knew he had either tracked my signal to my boss, which is next to impossible, or talked to the people who had originally tracked your phone to mine. It's the only way he could have known where we were. Period. He's a bad seed. So I left him with his comrades. This isn't the end of it. Probably just the beginning. But I know enough now to find Maeve Cassidy and her daughter. I couldn't give a rat's ass about the drilling, other than the nuke thing. That bothers me. I know you're freaked out, and I don't blame you. Now, walk with me while I get us a hotel room.”

“A probing attack?”

“Yes. It's an Army term of warfare. When you don't know anything about your enemy disposition, you probe his defenses and see how he responds.”

“They shot at us.”

“Which is important information. In fact, there were eight guards outside and two inside. That makes ten, which I put at about half of their entire force, based on the number I saw the first day I was out there, digging postholes. I've hurt or killed six, seven if you count the guy that went flying across the hood. I don't think he's going to be okay. There are three main objectives of a probing attack. First, you want to avoid decisive engagement, meaning you need to be able to get out of there.”

“But we almost didn't.”

“
Almost
is the operative word. We made it out. Second, you want to gather as much intelligence as possible. They had three vehicles, a house, eight people outside guarding, a darkened entrance below the house and on the east side, like a tunnel or a storm shelter. And the house is stuck out on a peninsula of land that falls away to the fracking site below it, which is about a half a mile away.”

“You saw all that?”

“And more. They are seriously invested in this.”

“The third objective?”

“It's a bonus if you can injure or kill the enemy on the probing attack. One guy isn't much, but it's better than no guys. We did okay. Plus, we left them your boss.”

“What about my job?” Grace was still shaken, still standing in the same circle of light, like a Broadway performer with stage fright.

“What about your life, Grace? Griffyn wasn't at my place to bring you flowers. He was there to kill you. For some reason, you're a liability. I need to know what you saw at that house.”

Grace nodded. “There's a Holiday Inn up the road about a mile, on the other side of the mall. Let's walk and I'll tell you what I saw.”

She had somehow gathered her composure. Perhaps the reality of Griffyn's duplicity had sunk in. He didn't know. She stepped toward him, unsure initially, but then clasped his arm, with the cup of her hand around his biceps.

They started walking, and Grace Kagami, the beautiful mirror, told him everything.

CHAPTER 19

J
AMES
G
UNTHER STEPPED OUT ONTO THE SLATE-ROCK PORCH OF
Throckmorton's elaborate compound and hideaway. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air like a malodorous ghost. The volume of assault weapon and pistol fire rivaled anything Gunther had ever heard, save a few bird hunts Down East, where they had slaughtered anything that moved. Rabbits, squirrels, foxes, red wolves, gators, doves, quails, and coyotes were all fair game, and all decent eating if prepared properly.

He took a step down from the slate porch to the stone steps that led to the circular gravel drive. He saw that his Ford F-150 pickup truck had a few nicks from amateur gunfire. The Keystone Cops had been shooting into a circle. He had never been in the Army, but he knew enough not to form a circle jerk and shoot one another. Clearly, these EB-5 guys were not well trained, and he and Throckmorton were pushing them beyond their limits. He had certainly believed they were quality staff when he hired them. They had had to prove themselves in a rigorous shooting skills test, a course on handling fracking equipment, and a test of their familiarity with Chatham and Wake County topography.

All of that had gone smoothly. He managed the roughnecks, the field laborers who were doing the construction and fracking on the graded valley below the compound. Throckmorton dallied with the women, which was fine, but he didn't have the time or the desire for that anymore, given what had happened at the Indian's house years ago. Though, one of the concubines down below was his. That was all he wanted. In the partnership with Throckmorton, Gunther could do almost everything he wanted. But while the main shard of glass had sliced into his back, another, smaller wedge had cut his scrotum and everything it held. He had not been protected by pants when Mahegan heaved him through the glass door all those years ago, and now he was essentially a eunuch.

But that didn't mean he didn't take out his aggression on Tessi Slovnik, the tough, beautiful Serbian mechanic. Actually, as his boots had crunched on the gravel and he'd watched the Crown Victoria speed away, he had thought he might need to visit Tessi.

He had seen an unrecognizable face in the splintered windshield of the car. His vision wasn't perfect, but there had been something familiar in the way the man's eyes connected with his. The intent stare, eyes locked, had seemed to suggest something from long past, at least for Gunther. The stranger who had boldly penetrated their defensive perimeter, using Griffyn's car, must have a history. He didn't know what it was, but it was something. There was more to this little gunfight than a man who had made a wrong turn. It was a deliberate psych job. It was an “I'm coming to get you.”

Those thoughts didn't unnerve Gunther. He had been dealing with rednecks and ruffians all his life. This was just one more something he had to handle. Throckmorton was too focused on the girls and the money. Somebody had to do the dirty work. His cut of $250 million was a solid cut. He could retire and move somewhere in Down East North Carolina. They could embezzle the money they had, but he was worried about the Chinese guys, Ting and Chun. Something about them didn't sit right with him. They were too . . . in control. They had an answer for everything and were one step ahead of him most of the time. They knew how to drill, and they had all the numbers down pat.

Gunther considered himself a simple man. Before that crazy kid had come in and changed his life forever, he had needed some strangeness about once every other day, and he really hadn't cared where it came from. As long as he could take it forcibly, that was all that had mattered to him. Now he got to do the forcible part without any of the sex. While the freckled blond mother had been a nice piece of ass, she definitely wasn't worth a lifetime loss of sexual ability. And for that, he blamed the kid. The giant Indian kid who had come into the house and had fought four of them like there was only one of them.

Gunther had been in many fights, but never one like that. The kid was a rarity, and he wondered why he was thinking now about a young boy whose name he couldn't even remember. The woman had been a startling blonde, alone in a clapboard home near the right-of-way they had been paving for a new road in Robeson County. They had asked for some lemonade or tea, and she had actually responded by turning her back, smiling, and saying, “Sure, boys.” Hell, if that hadn't been an invite, Gunther didn't know what was.

But that day crystallized for him at this very moment, as he walked up to a bound and gagged Griffyn, who had been tossed from his very own car like a sack of seed. One of the commando teams had mounted up in a truck and had sped after the Crown Vic.
Good luck
, Gunther thought. No way they were catching that guy, if it was who he thought it was.

He nudged Griffyn with his boot and said, “Thought they trained you better than that, Detective.”

The commandos had performed the outer perimeter circle led by Petrov, who had orchestrated their movements. He was the Russian Special Forces guy. No wonder they got their butts kicked in Afghanistan, Gunther thought.

He reached down and removed the gag from Griffyn's mouth. “Tell me how the hell you got yourself in this position.”

Griffyn coughed. “Snuck up on me. Both of them. Dead. I'm arresting them tomorrow. Cassidy's husband is dead. We think the big guy did it.”

“The big guy?”

“Yeah. The Indian. Hawthorne. Army special agent.”

Gunther rolled this around in his mind.
Hawthorne?

“What's he look like?”

“A giant. Six and a half feet tall. Massive. Powerful. Blond hair, blue eyes. Probably one of those eastern bands from the Outer Banks or maybe Robeson.”

Gunther felt a stir, everywhere except the one place where he couldn't. A buzz coursed through his veins.

“You ain't going nowhere right now, Griffyn. You're a damn liability. That guy figured out you were in with us without even thinking about it. We'll send you down to the nurses and let you rehab, but we can't risk you being out there for about the next twenty-four hours.”

“I've got a major murder investigation on my hands, Gunther.”

“No. You've got a missing person case. Cary has the murder. Get your facts straight. And technically, the Army has the missing person case. Just another reason to keep your ass locked up tight here, instead of stepping all over other police jurisdictions. Let it cool for twenty-four hours, and then we'll see where we go from there.”

Griffyn, who was still bound like a tied hog, nodded.

“Untie his ass and take him into the Underground,” Gunther said.

The men carried out his direction. He felt Throckmorton come up on his side. Smelled him, too. Some kind of musky aftershave. The man got on Gunther's nerves, but he was willing to violate a sack full of principles to make a quarter billion.

“What's your deal, Throck? This thing falling apart?”

“Not at all. Miss Cassidy just made it to the first spot, and we're ready to send down some perforating charges to get the natural gas flowing. Thought I'd come up and give you the good news.”

Gunther nodded, still staring at the gate a quarter mile away in the darkness, as if he expected the Crown Vic to come barreling back through the opening. If the fourteen-year-old kid was driving it, he was certain that he would already be back, ready to finish what he thought he'd already done: kill him.

But if fifteen years had passed and the kid was now a man and the man was a soldier or a cop, that was a different story. The man would be wiser, more cunning.

Gunther had seen Throckmorton's anxiety when he learned that Petrov was nervous about going to see the big guy who was with the Mexicans. This kid from his memory would be enough to scare Petrov.

“We've got to plan for defending against a full attack on this compound, Throck. If my instincts are correct—and I hope I am flat-ass wrong—we've got someone coming at us for two reasons.”

“The first?”

“To get Cassidy and her kid back.”

“The second?”

“To kill me.”

“Why?”

“That ain't important. What's important is that his daddy found me and died, and now the son has found me, and he will die.”

“The Indian? That guy who was chasing you?”

Gunther had hired private detectives to find out what had happened to his friend Tommy Boyd. He had suspected it was more than a meth lab accident, and he had been right. Boyd's throat had been cut from ear to ear with a large knife.

“Remember that Indian? We got a picture of him?”

He watched Throckmorton's Adam's apple bob up and down. He knew the refined gentleman was not thrilled with the dark underbelly of how Gunther survived with his business or life, but they were from different worlds. He had made Throckmorton join him that morning several months ago when he had seen Mahegan's father. Throckmorton had taken a photo. Gunther was sure it was for blackmail or insurance, but he didn't care. He'd kill Throckmorton before it ever came to that.

“Yes, I remember.”

“That's his son. I'd bet a paycheck on it. The one who threw me through a sliding glass door.”