Three Minutes to Midnight (21 page)

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Authors: A. J Tata

BOOK: Three Minutes to Midnight
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CHAPTER 20
“A
S
POILING ATTACK
? W
HAT DID WE SPOIL OTHER THAN MY BREAK-FAST
?” Grace asked Mahegan. They were lying in bed, the Holiday Inn sign casting a shaded green light through the pale curtains that covered the window. She had stripped down to her T-shirt, and Mahegan was naked except for his boxers. After the adrenaline dump, Mahegan knew that they had both experienced a level of physical and mental exhaustion usually associated with the completion of athletic events or combat. The endorphins were rushing.
“Probe. Spoiling attack. Like I told you. I'm just wired that way. Can't explain it and haven't really thought too much about it. I get information, and I go. I process and analyze as I'm moving. You're a forensic scientist. Your job is to study the evidence in a somewhat static environment. I'm a soldier. My job is to kill the bad guys and help the good guys. So I get information, process it, and move before anyone either thinks I have the information or believes they are vulnerable.”
“Is it really that simple? Good guys and bad guys?”
“Well, sometimes there are bad women,” Mahegan said. He looked at Grace, her head resting on his chest again. She turned her gorgeous eyes up at him and smiled.
“I can be bad,” she said.
Mahegan ignored her teasing and said, “You know what I mean. Evil. Poisonous. Men and women. Sociopaths. Harmful.”
“And it's your job to stop all that?”
“What I can. Not saying I can stop it all, but I do what I can where I can.”
“So you're a vigilante?”
Despite his exhaustion, Mahegan was in an introspective mood, but he let Grace's question hang in the air, unanswered. His mind was replaying the risk he had taken tonight. He had acted on impulse by taking Griffyn hostage and stealing his car. Then he had driven directly through the guarded gate and dumped Griffyn's body on the driveway while they were under fire. He had gathered needed information, but it was a huge risk, maybe even a gamble. He could recover from a risky endeavor if he made a mistake, but if you lost a gamble, you lost it all, Mahegan remembered from his training. Tonight, he decided, he had edged more toward the gamble side of the spectrum. But every time he felt that he had perhaps done something too risky, he was presented with new opportunities that were potentially too rewarding to ignore. Was the slope becoming too slippery to prevent sliding into some catastrophic error?
“We should sleep,” Grace said, yawning. Mahegan felt her warm breath on his chest. Her small hand was resting on his sternum, and his left arm was holding her close. She was molded to his body, and he could feel her heart beating on his abdomen. After a few minutes of silence, he felt her body go slack and fall into a steady sleep rhythm.
Continuing to think the next steps through, Mahegan decided to close his eyes, also. He immediately cycled through all the data, wondering what he was missing. Maeve's henna tattoo, which provided a mysterious warning, perhaps, about North Carolina's three nuclear plants; the EB-5 commandos; the fracking; the murder of Pete Cassidy; the kidnapping of Maeve and Piper Cassidy; and the apparent complicity of Detective Griffyn all made for an incomplete puzzle.
But most overwhelming for Mahegan was the sense that Gunther had been there, looking at him through the window. Mahegan found himself at the intersection of professional duty and personal agenda, a street corner with two equally satisfying destinations, but if you chose one direction, you might as well forget about the other.
Wait
, he thought.
There might be a way to do both.
Could he? Should he focus on Gunther and his personal feelings, he could make mistakes in safely securing Maeve Cassidy, which might also be connected to some large plan with the nuclear facilities.
But he had promised himself that all four of his mother's attackers would die a painful death. He had personally delivered on two of those promises at the scene of the crime, and Gunther was all that remained after his partner's meth lab explosion.
Lying there, with Grace sleeping on his chest, her body curled around him like a cat, he was struck by how her presence made him feel more grounded. Maybe because she needed protection, he felt useful to her. Certainly, his mother's death had been a scarring event for Mahegan, and so his self-satisfaction in protecting and defending, especially women, was most likely connected to the day that Gunther took her fifteen years ago.
Reviewing his early days as a rapidly growing boy in Frisco, North Carolina, Mahegan remembered his mother taking him to the beach every day, completing the short walk from their trailer park to the turbulent waters of the barrier islands of the Outer Banks. There the beaches were wide, and the currents were wicked. Riptides sucked the water through forever shifting sandbars at velocities so high, some swimmers were pulled out to sea so quickly that they were never found again. Samantha Mahegan, though, was a champion swimmer and believed in the waterman's way of life. She surfed, dove, swam, and kayaked in the ocean and in Pamlico Sound, just steps away on the north side of the island.
Mahegan remembered watching his mother surf the hollow tubes off Frisco Pier. Since he'd been a five-year-old, gangly kid, his mother would shred the open face of waves with the best of the men, who respected her abilities and deferred to her when she outmaneuvered them for position on the finest swells. There came a day when Sam took young Jake out on the board, walking him through the minor swells as he lay there, balancing himself, and pushed him into his first wave. He stood and rode the white water all the way to the beach, enjoying the sensation of connecting with nature, being
pushed
by nature.
After that day, Mahegan went on to become a respectable surfer, but by the time he was fourteen, he had outgrown most surfboards' ability to hold his weight, and the previous year his father had made them move to Maxton, in Robeson County. Maxton wasn't anywhere near the beach, but there were jobs there for Native Americans with construction skills. Neither Sam nor Jake had wanted to move, but in Frisco they had barely been able to put food on the table. So his parents had loaded the family Roadmaster station wagon with everything worth taking from their rented trailer a few hundred yards from the beach. After his military discharge, while he was drifting along the Outer Banks last year, Mahegan had learned that the site of that trailer park was now filled with multimillion-dollar homes.
Maxton had been bad news from the beginning, and it had ended in the worst possible way. While the trailer park in Frisco had not been anything for a kid to brag about, it was all Mahegan had known, and it had been home. So when they moved to another trailer park in Maxton, it was no big deal to Mahegan. Trailer parks were what you made them, he figured. And his mother made theirs a home. His father was working a steady job in Lumberton, which was thirty miles away, and the work had him gone more often than not.
On his first day walking back from middle school, thirteen-year-old Mahegan chose a route along the Lumber River that appeared to be a shortcut to his home. Curious, he left the road soon after passing a bridge. When he was level with the river, he noticed a water moccasin basking in the sun on an exposed cedar tree root. The snake was spread across the vertical root like a man might lounge with his leg draped across a sofa.
True to his native heritage and his mother's Outer Banks pioneer lineage, Mahegan had learned to love the land and all her animals, whether they were the red wolves of Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge or a resting snake on a cedar root. Kneeling several feet from the snake, he admired its tan and black scales. Mahegan studied the elliptical eyes and the flickering tongue. The snake turned its head toward him, sensing his presence. They locked eyes, and Mahegan smiled as he continued to study the pit viper.
The shotgun blast startled him, but he didn't flinch. It was as if he was watching the scene in slow motion. He heard the noise, and a split second later he had snake guts exploding on him, along with the shattered cedar root. Then he heard the yelling and hollering of three or four boys, all maybe his age, maybe a little older.
They came running down from the bridge, laughing and proud.
“Damn good shot, Lanny,” the tall kid said.
Mahegan studied the kids who were running directly toward him. He had been less than five feet from the snake when “Lanny” pulled the trigger. Mahegan sized up the three boys. One was almost as tall as him, but thin as a reed. Lanny, the shooter, was pudgy and wore camouflage pants and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. The third kid had a distant, hard look about him. The tall one and Lanny were laughing and joking, while the third stayed a step behind and locked eyes with Mahegan.
As they stumbled upon Mahegan's perch on the trail, he stood, towering over even the taller boy. His crimson tan was as deep as ever, since he had just moved from Frisco, where he had had daily bouts of summer sun. With Maxton and Robeson County filled with Lumbee Indians, Mahegan was not surprised when the tall kid said, “What are you looking at, cherry nigger?”
“That's one BFI there, Jimmy,” Lanny said, looking at the tall kid.
Mahegan said nothing. He knew that BFI stood for “big fucking Indian.” He had heard people call his father that before. He kept watching the intense third kid. He noticed the kid's hands were moving, and as he shifted a little to his right, he saw a switchblade in his hand. Mahegan assessed his situation:
Three to one. Shotgun and a knife.
The tall kid, Jimmy, stepped forward as Lanny leveled the shotgun at Mahegan. He was thirteen. They were probably fifteen. He was new, and they had been around long enough to form a small gang.
“Three to one. We've got a shotgun. What's your problem?” Jimmy asked.
Mahegan continued staring at the kid with the switchblade. Without moving his gaze, he said, “You killed my snake.”
Lanny and Jimmy laughed.
“That ain't your snake, Shitting Bull. That's a nasty cottonmouth that deserved to die,” Jimmy said. He seemed to be the leader.
“How is it you get to decide that?” Mahegan asked Jimmy. The switchblade kid had moved a step to the side. Mahegan assessed him as a fighter, whereas the other two probably were less skilled.
“Maxton's my town, asshole. You ain't full blooded, so you're just a half-breed buffalo jockey. You don't belong nowhere. We'll give you five seconds to get the hell out of here, or we'll let you visit your friend in snake hell,” Jimmy said.
Mahegan watched the fighter and calculated his geometry. He had placed his backpack on the ground. His opponents were still wearing theirs. He would be more agile, though they could be more adept at fighting. His back was to the trail that ran parallel to the river through the thick forest. To his front were the three kids, and behind them by fifty yards was the bridge and the road. It wasn't likely that anyone driving by would think twice about four kids with backpacks hanging out by the river. In fact, they would probably smile and be glad that they were outdoors, communing with nature, instead of playing video games indoors.
“One,” Jimmy said.
Mahegan had never been in a true fight before. He'd been shoved and pushed and called names, but he'd endured nothing of this magnitude. The middle school wrestling coach had talked to him today and had invited him to try out as a heavyweight wrestler. Mahegan was tall and powerful—not an ounce of fat on him—from his days as a waterman, diving and swimming. He had broad shoulders and long arms. The swimming coach would probably be talking to him soon, too, the wrestling coach had told him.
“Two.”
But Mahegan was a smart kid. His mother had taught him to make quick decisions in the water.
Where's the wave going to break? How do you paddle into it properly? Where is that sweet spot of balance on your board? How do you get on the face of the wave and not just ride the white water? What do you do if you see a bull shark coming at you?
That was what Mahegan was thinking about as the kid continued counting.
“Three.”
He had learned that balance and skill were necessary components of any athletic endeavor. While he had to ride the wave as it presented itself, he had learned that you could manipulate the wave with turns and carves and upper-body movements. He knew also when to let the bull shark swim past and when to fight it.
“Four.”
As he watched the pudgy kid lift the shotgun, Mahegan did an upper-body turn, making sure to keep his right foot firmly planted, like a pitcher turning on a windup. He wanted to give the appearance of a departure while coiling for a strike on Jimmy, who had made the mistake of stepping in front of the pudgy kid with the shotgun.
“Knew you were a pussy,” said Jimmy.
Mahegan's upper body swiveled back in Jimmy's direction, adding force to his punch, as if it was released from a baseball pitcher's windup. His fist hit the kid in the face, moving about eighty miles per hour, he figured, and he heard the distinct crack of the tall kid's nose flattening onto his face. Blood sprayed everywhere, and Mahegan stepped forward and pushed the tall kid into the river with a loud splash.
The shotgun fired but missed Mahegan as he spun into the pudgy kid with a backward rotation. It was a double-barrel, so he knew that the weapon was empty, but he didn't discount the fact that the fat kid might have a few shells in his pocket. His main concern, though, was the knife guy, the fighter, who was using the pudgy kid to shield his movements. Mahegan grabbed the shotgun by the barrel with his right hand, used his left forearm to strike the shooter in the temple, and easily tossed the weapon into the river with the kid still attached to it.

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