Three Minutes to Midnight (24 page)

Mahegan released Ted's wrist. He had more questions, but that was a relevant piece of information. He looked at Grace. “So Elaine's phone number is in that system right now?”

“Too late for that, man. The last known location will show us here.” Ted smiled. “So you guys are screwed. Trust me, if these green-card guys see a target-rich environment like this, they'll drop everything. The environmental whack jobs, the BFI, and the lab tech who's supposed to be working the scene from the shooting are too big a bull's-eye to pass up.”

“I agree,” Mahegan said. “On second thought, batteries back in your phones. You ladies, please go do your thing. Watch. Give me one looking out the window there, one of you at the end of the hallway, watching the back, and one in the lobby. Read a newspaper or something. If you see black pickup trucks and some folks who look foreign, give Grace a call.”

“That's half of Apex,” Elaine said.

“You'll know the difference. Military haircuts, physically fit, and possibly openly carrying weapons.”

“You mean the guys from the fracking site?” Brandy asked.

“Yeah, those guys.”

“Hell, we've been watching them and know what they look like.”

“Roger,” Mahegan said. “Now get moving.”

The three ladies moved toward the door. Theresa, who was leading, stopped. Looking at Mahegan, she said, “You were at the drill site. You and two Mexican gentlemen. You worked all day, digging holes and putting in a fence. I saw the fight you had with the guy with the scar.”

Mahegan nodded, acknowledging her memory and her professional acumen. “You guys are good.”

“He looks meaner every day,” she said. “I watch him the most. Him and the two Chinese guys. They're up to something. The rest are just workers, but those two are in charge of something. Maybe the whole thing. Please be careful. I wouldn't want anything to . . . happen to you.”

“I agree. We'll talk about that, but first we need to squeeze Ted here like a ripe lemon and then get out of here, if we can.”

“Okay,” Theresa said with a soft voice. Mahegan noticed the phone in her hand and something rectangular bulging under her spandex ninja outfit. Was that a phone, also? Mahegan wondered.

Before he could follow up, Theresa went into the lobby, Brandy took the hallway, and Elaine took up a post at the window. Mahegan logged his observation of Theresa as he figured that Elaine had stayed in the room because she wanted to hear firsthand the information Ted could provide. She took up a sentry post to the side of the window that looked out onto the street. Mahegan gave her a measure of respect for her tactical skills.

“Ted. I want to know why your EB-Five commandos have been trying to kill Grace.”

Again, Elaine's head snapped up. “They've been trying to
kill
you?”

“Elaine, please,” Mahegan said.

“They weren't trying to kill her. Just wanted to scare her so she would do what Griffyn wanted on the investigation. Dad doesn't want it getting out that he's got hookers from Europe over here.”

“Sex slaves for your dad's highbrow parties?”

“Well, technically, they have their visas, and they have skills. But, yes, their primary job is to have sex with whomever Dad is entertaining. CEOs, congressmen, whoever. My dad has hidden cameras and will blackmail everybody if they don't pass the laws they need. Genius, really,” Ted said.

“Yeah, genius,” Mahegan replied. He saw that Elaine was standing now and was about to launch on Ted, so he stepped in front of her to block her. “Sit down, Elaine. This is my investigation.”

“We captured him,” she asserted.

“You'll have your turn to ask him some things. Now, please.”

All his life, Mahegan had worked mostly with men, whether it was in the Army or on the odd jobs he held afterward, such as fishing boat mate, landscaper, and bouncer. What he knew professionally about the women with whom he had trained and fought was that they were keenly adept at ferreting out the right information and making sound recommendations and decisions. He preferred, and usually worked with, a female military intelligence analyst named Cixi Suparman, an Indonesian American Army captain who had attended ROTC at the College of William & Mary. Everyone called her Superman, which Mahegan knew she secretly liked. Her two sergeants were female, as well.

In Mahegan's experience, women saw things that men generally didn't see. Maybe it was the hunter-gatherer thing. He did know that the Israeli government impressed females into their military intelligence and border persistent-stare programs because of their better ability to notice anomalies and change. And so his line of questioning was intended not only to get information but also to reveal information to these women, under the general assumption that they would be equally as cognizant as the tested Israeli women or his intelligence analysts in Afghanistan.

“Please just listen to my questions and his answers. I have a method here. I want you to process what he is saying with what you have been observing. You represent an environmental group. I have a very narrow interest that, as luck would have it, coincides with yours. So, let's work this together for the moment,” Mahegan said.

Elaine nodded.

Grace looked at Elaine and mouthed, “Thank you.”

“Explain the EB-Five thing, Ted.”

Ted was rubbing his forearm, above the swollen ulna. “Man, you really messed me up,” he mumbled. His sun bleached brown hair and square jaw made him look like something between a preppy and a surfer, a look that didn't quite fit in either domain, to Mahegan. His eyes were cast downward.

“And I will continue to do so if you don't cooperate. There's a lot at stake here. I'm running out of time. People are dying. You're probably not liable yet, but you could be soon. A smart man like you probably wants to find a way to separate himself from what is going on out at the drill site and your lodge. Maybe you already have. So, tell me about the EB-Five guys.”

Ted hung his head, shook it, and looked out the window, which was covered with a sheer drape that obscured recognition from the outside but did not block line of sight from the inside.

As he lifted his head, Ted stared at Mahegan and said, “My dad partnered with James Gunther Construction. Gunther had been drilling some wells in Lee County. I knew Jimmy from just being around Raleigh. Bars, mutual friends, that kind of thing. Dad cooks up this grand scheme to do the first fracking well and get as much of the Durham shale as possible before the gold rush starts. So, as these people will probably tell you, they've been prepping for about six weeks.”

“What is the makeup of the EB-Five crews, and who is operating the drill?”

Ted stared at him. Mahegan knew the answer, of course, but he wanted confirmation.

“Russians, Chinese, Serbs, and Turks, I think. Dad was very specific. As Jimmy and I went around selling the project, which we called Isosceles, we were supposed to get thirty million dollars from thirty people. Each of those thirty people would get one visa. Dad said to make it a package deal. A million in, we pick the visa from a list of possible recruits, and they get a premium on their return. So we picked ten attractive women and twenty athletes who could perform a variety of drill and security tasks. The pay was good. Labor was easy to find.”

Mahegan did the math. He had personally killed two and severely injured five of the EB-5 commandos. Plus Petrov. That put them at fourteen workers/enforcers. Ted wasn't doing whatever he was supposed to be doing to contribute.

“Why did you defect?”

Ted's head popped up like a puppet pulled by a string. “I didn't defect. What are you talking about?”

It was a guess for Mahegan and a good one. His protest and overcompensation told Mahegan all he needed to know.

Ted was lying.

He moved toward Ted's wrist with both hands.

“Please, man,” Ted pleaded. “You gotta give me a break here. They'll kill me.”

“What did you see? What pushed you away? Made you think twice?”

Ted hung his head, then looked up. “Oh, man,” he sighed. “Oh, no.”

“Tell us, Ted. We're out of time.”

Mahegan could feel his control of the situation slipping away. It was an instinct developed by years of combat. His aura picked up on threatening stimuli the way spider webs caught flies. He went for the wrist.

“It's all in the Underground! I saw it,” Ted shouted.

Grace's phone pinged with a text.

“It's Brandy,” she said. “She sees a black pickup truck with a topper shell parked across the street, at Starbucks. Nose in toward Starbucks, and the bed is facing us. The tailgate is up, but the window on the topper is open.”

Mahegan nodded.
Women. Analysts. Details. Specifics.
They were as good as the Israelis or the Army intelligence operatives. Then he frowned.

“It's all about Sharon—” Ted started to say.

It happened in less than two seconds. Mahegan stepped forward to tackle Ted as he realized what the open topper window meant, but in mid-sentence, right at the word “Sharon,” Ted's head exploded in a shower of pink mist and gray matter, which landed all over Mahegan and Elaine, who got the back splatter from the bullet crashing through Ted's skull. There was no percussive sound.

The hotel room window glass had shattered into a million shards when the heavy-gauge bullet crashed through it and then Ted's skull. The force of the bullet had snapped his neck forward, but his body had remained awkwardly stable in the chair.

Mahegan pulled Ted and the chair to the floor, then pivoted and tackled Elaine with one arm while dragging Grace down with the other. Bullets chased them in a line across the floor, like a sewing machine stitching a seam. Lying between the two beds, though, they were out of the direct line of fire.

Even though their opponents' tactics had so far been unrefined, Mahegan knew it would be only a matter of time before they adapted. Every enemy did. In this case, the EB-5 commandos were synchronizing information and tactics. They had geo-located one of the phones, most likely Ted's or Elaine's, and maybe even had a listening device in Ted's phone. He didn't know what the women had said to Ted before he had arrived, smashed Ted's phone, and removed the battery and SIM card. Whoever was in charge of surveillance would have put a locator in Ted's phone if they were worried about him defecting, and clearly he had. He had said as much. The commandos were also being less obvious, in a way, and more tactical. A silenced sniper shot was less discreet than a knife to the throat but more likely to avoid detection than a machine gun.

“Text both of them and tell them to get to the room now. I don't want them roaming around to be kidnapped,” Mahegan told Grace.

Grace used her burner phone's voice command. “Get up here now!”

He heard the beep and the whoosh of the text leaving the device. Within a minute, Mahegan heard the women's footfalls outside the door.

“Stay low and watch the hallway!” Mahegan shouted. Then he crawled to the door, opened it, and let them in.

“Stay down,” he said. He watched their faces as they saw Ted the Shred dumped on the floor like a store mannequin, but with his head blown apart. Sniper fire continued to pock the walls at a steady rhythm. Mahegan counted as every five seconds a shot blew more of the wallpaper off the drywall, with bits and pieces of wood, chalk, and paper creating a growing cloud in the room. It was suppressive fire.

Bad news
, Mahegan thought.

The shots were measured in time to keep them from leaving the room, which meant that there was another element at play. Most likely the commandos had zeroed in on Ted's phone, put the sniper in place to prevent him from revealing secrets, and moved another team in to either kill or capture all of them. Either Brand Throckmorton was a very hard man to have his son killed, or Gunther had made this call.

He looked at the women, all silent, all staring at him, awaiting direction. They had never been under fire, he was certain. Now the bullets kept coming. Some were hitting the door, a kinetic exclamation point denying their exit. The clock kept ticking.

What now, Ranger?
He visualized his crusty Ranger instructor laughing at him as he waded neck deep in the Yellow River swamps of north Florida, with a ragged line of tired and hungry Rangers filing behind him, as he led the patrol to a distant objective.

He heard feet running along the hallway, but they were going in the opposite direction and were too light and hurried to be the EB-5 commandos. Probably hotel visitors becoming aware of the situation. Even silenced sniper rifles made a loud whisper as the bullets cut through the air and a thump when they smacked into the walls.

Mahegan was waiting on a cue. He knew it would come in one of two forms. Footsteps, heavy and thundering, would signal an assault force that would breach their hotel door, maybe toss a grenade in. That was a bad-case scenario.

What happened, though, was the second cue he'd been listening for.

It was a siren.

Griffyn.

This was a smoother operation than the other commandos had tried on him, for sure, but it still had flaws. The sniper rifle and the suppressive fire were tactically sound. Even bringing Griffyn in to conduct a faux arrest was a good idea. But to have Griffyn come in with sirens and his
Kojak
light flashing was a mistake. Maybe they had to make it seem official, but it would give him enough time. It was a well-synchronized operation, but he had a small window of opportunity.

“Okay, ladies. Follow me.”

Mahegan grabbed his duffel bag, tossed his knife in it, and stayed low as he slowly opened the door. Grace had a backpack, which Elaine had brought from the watch site. The ladies had whatever they had come with—phones and backpacks. The shots kept coming, pinging into the wall just above his head. He cleared left and right and stayed low as he watched the sniper bullets punch through the wall and into the opposite side of the hallway. He crawled to the next hotel room door and then farther, checking every few seconds to see that each of the women was beyond the steel rain of the sniper fire. When he sensed the time was right, he stood, jogged to the exit, and entered the stairwell.