Three Minutes to Midnight (37 page)

Gunther surprised him by pulling a pistol from his pocket as he closed the gap between them. Mahegan dove toward the arm lifting the gun and latched onto the massive forearm with two hands. The arm was as steady as a pull-up bar, unwavering beneath Mahegan's initial block.

The pistol fired two shots, which fractionally missed Mahegan's midsection. He planted his left foot inside Gunther's right foot, pushed Gunther's arm across his body, keeping the weapon aimed away from him, and drove into him with his shoulder. Two more shots were fired from Gunther's pistol, and they missed wildly.

Gunther was sturdy, like concrete, the business in which he had dwelled his entire life. Mahegan performed an inside trip wrestling move, using Gunther's weight against him. Gunther toppled over as Mahegan's shoulder rammed hard into Gunther's abdomen. Still, the man was in good physical condition and had perhaps gotten stronger over the past fifteen years. The two men landed on the ground, Mahegan on top of Gunther, who was now scrambling, having lost his preplanned advantages. Gunther's plan clearly had to change on contact with Mahegan, also.

Gunther's knife hand came arcing down, and the blade caught Mahegan in his right triceps. The cut burned, but he was focused on the more lethal pistol, which had at least two shots, if not more, remaining. He rolled off Gunther and wrapped his legs in scissors fashion around the man's neck as he flipped Gunther onto his stomach and ratcheted his pistol arm backward until two more shots were fired and the weapon dropped into the dirt.

With good leverage, Mahegan went for Gunther's knife-wielding hand, but Gunther managed a lucky stab into his thigh, which forced Mahegan to release the scissors lock on Gunther. Both men rolled away and stood, facing one another, but with their positions reversed.

Exactly as Mahegan wanted.

Mahegan took up a boxing stance and drove straight at Gunther, who raised his arms in brawler fashion. As Gunther tried to wheel to his left, Mahegan cut him off, forcing him back. He let Gunther get in a few jabs to his face, to make him think about hitting him instead of the fact that he was backing up toward the wellhead.

Mahegan unleashed a flurry of left jabs and right crosses, most connecting with Gunther's huge head. The target was certainly big enough, Mahegan thought. The issue was getting past those large hands and arms. Even with Mahegan's wingspan, Gunther was able to parry and thrust better than most men Mahegan had fought.

Two more jabs, though, and Mahegan was able to see the five-foot-wide wellhead hole. It needed to be that big initially for all the hoses, shape charges, drill lengths, and piping that the roughnecks had lowered into the well. Mahegan knew that it narrowed considerably beyond the one-hundred-yard shutdown valve, but he wasn't worried about that.

Gunther continued to back up, and it occurred to Mahegan that the man was not stupid. Gunther was a survivor. Perhaps he was planning to toss Mahegan into the pit of hell at the last second.

Mahegan steadied himself, thinking,
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast
.
No mistakes.
This
was
the fight he had been seeking.

Less than a yard from the hole, Gunther telegraphed his move. Mahegan's years of wrestling and hand-to-hand combat had trained him to continuously monitor his opponent's entire body, from head to feet. On a quick downward glance, Mahegan noticed Gunther put his right foot forward, when he had been leading with his left. The only reason for such a move would be to duck a jab from Mahegan and then spin around behind him and let Mahegan's own weight carry him forward. Then he would need only a shove from Gunther to wind up in the abyss.

So Mahegan countered Gunther's step by treating him as a left-handed boxer and circling to his right, making Gunther punch awkwardly from his weak side. Mahegan fought through the big hands and the muscled forearms with his own might and began to pummel Gunther in the face, while avoiding getting inside his reach. It occurred to him that another strategy Gunther could employ would be to hug him and make Mahegan go down with him.

Gunther's heels were now at the concrete lip of the wellhead. Fire was raging all around them like an inferno. All the EB-5 trailers were burning. The heat was suffocating. The flames raged in a horseshoe around them as fracking equipment and vehicles burned and melted. The black smoke from rubber tires fouled the air with noxious fumes. Mahegan knew that Gunther had to be struggling to breathe, too.

The huge hands clasped him, though, and pulled Mahegan toward Gunther.

“Think you're so smart, Indian? Why don't we go into this hole together?”

Mahegan's weight leaned into Gunther, who had a smile frozen on his face. They were falling toward the hole, and Mahegan could see the hills where the watchers were hiding, the trees on the low ground, the graded lot, the gravel, and the hole. It all came rushing up toward him as Gunther then spun him around in a move worthy of an Olympic wrestler. He felt his head hit the ground on the far side of the hole and his feet catch on the concrete lip on the near side. Mahegan's arms were splayed on either side of the circular concrete prefab. There was nothing beneath two-thirds of his body except a frying pan, a sheet of metal, one hundred yards below.

Gunther hovered above him, spit coming off his demonic face, as if he was doing a push-up. His hands were on either side of the hole, and he was propping himself up two feet above Mahegan's precarious position.

“Got your mama. Got your daddy. Now I got you. That ought to do it, don't you think?”

Gunther lifted his foot to push Mahegan into the hole, like a man stepping into a trash can to make room for more garbage. Mahegan managed to brace himself with his arms as Gunther raised himself up for his final kick. Then Mahegan used his left foot to crash into Gunther's left knee, the joint that was bearing all of Gunther's massive weight. He heard the cracking of bone, the tearing of ligament, and the howling of an injured man, who, without thinking, used both hands to grab at his knee.

Mahegan spun to Gunther's right as Gunther fell to his left.

Gunther's head hit the concrete pipe with a thud. Mahegan delivered another well-placed kick to the destroyed knee joint, causing Gunther's body to buckle beneath its own weight. They had reversed positions.

For the first time Mahegan saw fear in Gunther's eyes. Throwing Gunther through the sliding glass door had been different. The man had been confused and perhaps a bit amused back then, even with the severe injuries he had suffered. But now Gunther's eyes showed that he knew his fate would be soon at hand, and that it wasn't going to be a happy ending. The man was hanging by the heels of his boots and the tips of his fingers as his inverted body hung like a V in the open pit.

Mahegan avoided Gunther's mistake of attempting to accelerate his fall into the abyss and instead let his adversary's body slowly sag into the hole. While he could have simply crushed the man's fingers as they clasped the lip of the wellhead, he chose to watch the man struggle.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing from Gunther's mouth. His voice, however faint, was whispering over and over, “Help me.”

Mahegan took a few steps back and looked up the hill at the boulder, where he knew the watchers were, well, watching. He nodded.

He heard the coughs of his rifle, fired by Elaine, he presumed, and allowed her to get a measure of justice, as well.

The bullets found their mark on Gunther's body. His grip released, oddly causing his body to slap against the near side of the pipe as his boot heels mysteriously clung to the ledge upon which they had found purchase. Quickly, though, Gunther's sheer weight pulled him downward into the chasm.

Mahegan heard the thud on the metal plate one hundred yards below and what he figured was the sizzling of human skin.

He then walked over to the wheel he had used to close the shutdown valve. He turned the wheel in the opposite direction, until he felt Gunther's mass leave the plate. Reignited by a fresh dose of oxygen, the fire briefly licked at the sky again, like the tongue of a sneering reptile.

Mahegan quickly closed the valve, having served Gunther to the devouring beast below.

EPILOGUE

T
WENTYFOUR HOURS LATER, BACK AT HIS APARTMENT
, M
AHEGA
N sat on his bed with his rucksack packed. He nodded at Grace. “You did good,” he said.

She was dressed in tight-fitting jeans, an even tighter-fitting T-shirt, and wedges, which added to her height. Her hair was hanging loosely across her downturned face, some of it wet from tears. She hooked her hair behind her ears and looked at him.

“I don't understand why you have to go,” Grace said. She sat on the bed next to him.

Mahegan was silent. He wasn't sure, either. Grace was someone he could spend time with in the future. He felt a twitch in his chest and fought it.

“It's what I do,” Mahegan said.

“That doesn't make any frigging sense! What are you? A spy or something?”

Mahegan shook his head and changed the topic. “What are the environmentalists telling us?”

“Elaine is getting the update outside now. Word is that your friend Blackmon plugged the bottom of the pool enough to prevent oxygen from getting to the fuel rods.”

“Old age is not an honorable death,” Mahegan said. “Croatan saying. Rather die a hero than grow old. Sam may have saved all of us.”

“I can't even fathom what he did. When you shot the water and the fracking fluid into the wellhead, that was a smart move, too. Beat back the flames, and the Geiger monitors are not showing substantial radiation in the air. The groundwater is a different matter, though. It'll take some time to test and see how much radiation actually leaked into the aquifer, if any.”

A knock on the door indicated that Elaine was back from her phone call. Mahegan walked over and opened the door for her. With Elaine were Maeve Cassidy and Piper.

“Hey, sharpshooter,” Mahegan said.

“Found these two out front with some badass dude with a crew cut.”

“That dude is my boss,” Mahegan said. “And my ride.” He watched Grace and Elaine exchange glances.

“You're leaving? You can't leave,” Elaine said. “Where are you going?”

“I am. I'm not sure where.”

Grace stood. “Still have my number?”

Mahegan had gone through so many burner and cutout cell phones, he couldn't remember in which phone he had loaded the number. Once he arrived at Fort Bragg for his debriefing, he would have to process every phone and GPS he had acquired over the past week, so he was certain he would come across Grace's number.

“I know where to find you, Grace.”

“This is some bullshit,” Elaine said. Then, looking down at Piper and up at Maeve, she added, “Oh, sorry.”

Maeve Cassidy walked up to Mahegan and hugged him. “Thank you. For everything,” she said.

Mahegan nodded, thankful that there was one less child without a mother. Then he picked up his duffel bag, hugged the women, knelt in front of Piper, and said, “Love your mom.”

The little girl nodded, as if she understood.

Walking out of the above-barn apartment and down the stairs, Mahegan saw Major General Savage leaning against a black Suburban.

“Let's go, Ranger, before you let them women convince you otherwise.”

“You got something better?”

“You know I do, Jake. It's called Charlie Mike. Continue mission. Now, get in the car.”

Mahegan glanced over his shoulder at the three women and Piper. They were staring at him through the window he had used to shoot the Russians. That was a fitting juxtaposition of his life, he figured: violence and love. At some point he would dispose of the violence, he hoped, and share his life with a woman who loved him.

As he rode back to Fort Bragg with General Savage, Mahegan thought of his mother and father and all that he had lost.

And the justice that he had finally delivered.

Thanks to my agent, Scott Miller of Trident Media Group. Scott continues to be a great mentor and friend. The team at Trident is so very talented, including Emily Ross, Nicole Robson, Brianna Weber, Sarah Bush, and Scott's assistant, Allisyn Shindle. Thank you for all you do in support of me and all of Trident's talented authors.

Thanks also to Gary Goldstein for his mentorship and friendship. Gary is an author's editor, supportive and engaged. The team at Kensington Publishing has been superb, including Karen Auerbach, Vida Engstrand, Alexandra Nicolajsen, Robin Cook, and Rosemary Silva. Thanks for making
Three Minutes to Midnight
the best book it can possibly be.

To friends and family in North Carolina and Virginia, thank you for your tremendous support. To my children, Brooke and Zachary, I love you and am so very proud of all that you have accomplished. And to my parents, Bob and Jerri Tata, and sister, Kendall, thank you for your unconditional love, commitment, and support. A son could not have asked for better parents or role models.

Finally, to all of the thousands of readers, thank you for your support, and comments. Please feel free to send me email from my website at
www.ajtata.com
.

For the record, I am making no political statement about fracking, and do believe that energy independence is a must for our country. Simply put, I looked at the map of the shale deposits in North Carolina as they ran beneath the nuclear power plant at Shearon Harris Lake and thought, “Interesting.”

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

 

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New York, NY 10018

 

Copyright © 2016 by A.J. Tata

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2015958939

 

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0625-6
ISBN-10: 1-4967-0625-0

First Kensington Hardcover Edition: May 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4967-0625-6

First Kensington Electronic Edition: May 2016