CAPTAIN CASSIE BAGWELL’S HAND GRASPED JAKE MAHEGAN’S WRIST as she said, “Jake.”
There had been no expectation that she was alive. In fact, all of the reporting had indicated that there were no survivors from the furious combat action in the center of Yazd Province, Iran.
Mahegan and four fellow special operators with ties to the enigmatic Major General Bob Savage had disobeyed orders and conducted a static line jump into a hail of withering machine-gun fire from an MC-130J Combat Talon. They fought their way across a valley floor filled with the detritus of lethal combat. Burned-out tank hulls. Black smoke curling up from burning tires. The acrid smell of death hanging like smog, filling Mahegan’s nostrils.
Their mission was to recover Cassie Bagwell’s remains, or preferably rescue her from the clutches of brutal combat. Their only information was that it might have been possible to link up with the remnants of a Mossad and Jordanian Joint Special Operations team that had dismantled the Iranian nuclear arsenal. Through happenstance and the friction of combat, Cassie had found herself an integral part of that team.
Mahegan now looked at the peering eyes of tired and nearly defeated Mossad operatives, who had taken cover inside a deep cave near the drop zone Mahegan and team had used. On his way into the cave, Mahegan counted seven dead Jordanian and Mossad soldiers and six survivors, including Cassie. It was dark and difficult to discern who might be who. Nonetheless, he had found Cassie.
And she was alive, for now.
Cassie and her team had no water or food for the last forty-eight hours. How they had withheld the Iranian infantry onslaught, he didn’t know. What he did know was that they were going to have to fight their way out. The cave smelled of sweat and urine and perhaps desperation. The boiling heat of August in the Iranian high mountain desert made everything stuffier, more pungent, and miserable.
On cue, O’Malley radioed, “Boss, got about twenty bogies moving to our ten o’clock. Two trucks with DShK machine guns, the rest walking.”
The DShK machine gun was a Russian .50-caliber weapon that had a range of well over a kilometer. Its accuracy was dependent upon the stability of the firing platform. A moving pickup truck was not the most reliable, but Mahegan knew the enemy would park the truck in an overwatch position and use it to cover the infantry. These were reinforcements that the Iranian high command had sent in, the Combat Talon no doubt lighting up every radar screen between Afghanistan and Iran.
He whispered, “Roger. Stand by.”
He didn’t want to give anyone false hope. He had felt for a pulse and not received a report back from Cassie’s carotid artery before she had weakly slid her hand over his.
He clasped Cassie’s hand and said, “Cassie. I’m here.”
She moved. He reached out with his large hand and slid it beneath her head, which had been resting on a rock.
“I’m wounded,” she whispered.
“Where?”
He retrieved his Maglite and used it to sweep the length of her body. He brushed some matted hair away from the side of her head. A scalp laceration cut an angry path above her ear. A narrow graze from a bullet? Shrapnel? A fall? He checked her eyes. The pupils were dilated, a sure sign of concussion, maybe something worse. Farther down, he noticed she was wearing the U.S. Army combat uniform she had been wearing a week earlier when they had both jumped from an XB-2 bomber from forty thousand feet, using oxygen tanks. That jump had ultimately led to her position here. Two bullet holes as small as dimes peered at him from her upper thigh. After studying those, he moved the flashlight and found another near her left shoulder. A little lower and it would have pierced her heart.
Mahegan reached into his rucksack and produced two one-liter bags of intravenous fluid. He felt the presence of someone to his rear and without looking up, Mahegan said, “Hold this.”
“Got it, boss,” Patch Owens said. Owens was one of Mahegan’s closest friends and most trusted advisors. Owens had been in charge of the North Korean portion of the mission and he and his three teammates, O’Malley, Hobart and Van Dreeves, had joined Mahegan in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where they had prepped for this rescue mission.
Mahegan put the flashlight between his teeth as he used both hands to clean the wound on her scalp. Not terrible, but bad enough. Dried blood painted a crusty black path along her neck, like a lava flow. He next rolled back Cassie’s sleeve. There were two other puncture marks, and he noted the discarded IV bags he had passed on his way into the cave. He threaded the IV needle into her vein. Then he used the flashlight to inspect the gunshot wounds, starting with the one in her upper chest, near her clavicle. Someone had done a rudimentary, but effective, patch job with gauze and tape. Under the shining light, the gauze was stained a purplish red, Cassie’s blood. Mahegan felt her back and a similar bandage was placed over the larger exit wound.
“Taken half a bag already,” Owens said.
“Get the second one ready,” Mahegan said.
The two leg wounds had fortunately been on the outside of her thigh, not the inner portion near the femoral artery. Each of the gashes had similar hasty gauze-and-tape patch jobs. Mahegan would clean the wounds when he had time. They were a day or two old, still tender but scabbing. The skin around the punctures was inflamed, a sign of infection. He didn’t want to think about internal damage or bleeding.
“Second bag,” Owens said.
Cassie was taking in IV fluids in record time. She had lost a lot of blood and was dehydrated. Mahegan removed his hydration system nozzle from his outer tactical vest and held it to her lips. Her eyes were open halfway, and she was on the verge of death. Mahegan had seen this look many times on dying soldiers. Often, they got better briefly, just to die with some dignity or awareness or to say good-bye. His throat tightened at the thought.
Was this Cassie’s good-bye?
He pushed the nozzle between her dry lips and turned the valve wide open.
“Sip, Cassie,” Mahegan said.
She pulled on the nozzle as if taking a drag on a cigarette. She swallowed the water and coughed.
“Take it slow,” he said.
“Enemy firing on our position,” O’Malley said from the cave mouth.
“Status of exfil?” Mahegan asked.
“Thirty minutes out. Two Chinooks, four Apaches, and two B-2 bombers overhead.”
“Lase the target for the B-2s,” Mahegan said. “They should be on station now.” Then to Cassie, “We have to move you now.”
She nodded, took another pull on the water nozzle, coughed again, and spit out the nozzle.
“Don’t move, Cassie,” Owens said. “I’ve got a needle in your arm.”
“Almost two bags,” Mahegan said. “I think we can move her.”
“I feel . . . better,” Cassie said.
Mahegan nodded. “Roger that.”
A few seconds later, thunder erupted outside the cave mouth.
“Round up the Mossad. We’re bringing everyone back. Dead, wounded, alive, it doesn’t matter.”
Mahegan and Owens gently lifted Cassie and moved her to the mouth of the cave. The Mossad had already organized and stacked the dead bodies of their team and those of the Jordanian Special Forces. Hobart and Van Dreeves snapped open a collapsible litter, upon which Mahegan and Owens laid, and secured Cassie with two-inch nylon webbed straps, like seat belts. Bullets sprayed wildly outside the cave, some within yards, others not even close.
“Tribal six, this is Night Stalker six one, inbound in ten minutes. Mark position,” the pilot said.
“Roger. Marking with IR strobe,” Mahegan said.
“Sean, where’s that air support?”
“Thirty seconds,” O’Malley said. He was kneeling at the mouth of the cave, holding a radio handset to his ear with one hand and a laser-signaling device on the advancing mass of infantry with the other.
The two pickup trucks advancing with the DShK machine guns had stopped and their fire was more accurate, causing O’Malley to duck behind a rock outcropping. He held the laser guidance system steady, painting the enemy mob that was about a quarter mile away. Bullets ricocheted inside the cave.
Mahegan shouted, “Everyone stay in the middle. Away from the sides!”
“Target,” O’Malley said.
Following those words, the valley floor beneath them lit up with a series of explosions, which billowed high into the sky with orange fireballs mushrooming against the black night like miniature nuclear explosions.
“Night Stalkers five minutes out,” Owens said.
“Roger, they’re doing a ramp landing on the ledge,” Mahegan said.
The cave mouth led to a twenty-five-meter ledge that looked out over the valley floor. Their only hope of making an egress with everyone was to have the pilots conduct a daring landing where they hovered with the ramp atop the ledge, and nothing beneath the wheels but two hundred meters of air. The speed with which they could load the aircraft would determine the success of the mission.
The B-2s made another run with one-minute remaining. The helicopters’ blades echoed along the valley floor, a harbinger of hope. Mahegan suppressed those thoughts to focus on the mission at hand. The B-2s had done their job for the moment. The preassault fires had lessened, if not completely quieted, the enemy in the vicinity of the landing zone. The MH-47 Chinook helicopter flared to their front and pivoted in the air. The ramp dropped so that it was horizontal with the ledge. After two attempts, the pilots lowered the helicopter perfectly so that the ten-foot-wide metal ramp with nonslip traction strips was resting one foot over the rock ledge.
The crew chief tossed a rope from the back of the helicopter, confusing Mahegan. He studied the rope, saw the snap hooks, thought he understood, and shouted, “Go!”
The rear rotor of the twin-bladed helicopter whirred overhead, narrowly avoiding the face of the mountain above the cave by less than twenty feet, well within the safety zone of the composite aluminum and steel blades. One minor adjustment by the pilots to avoid gunfire or an unexpected broadside of wind and the blade could nick the mountain wall and the rotor would disintegrate, negating the lift in the rear, causing the massive helicopter to flip, crash, and burn.
Hobart and Van Dreeves were the first ones on, with Cassie strapped to the litter. She was priority. The Apache gunships began making gun runs, to the north, perhaps cleaning up the remainder of what the B-2s didn’t destroy or perhaps contending with a new threat.
Next on were the Mossad, ferrying their wounded, racing back and forth, shouting to one another in Arabic and Hebrew. Next were their dead, which they stacked like cordwood inside the helicopter.
Mahegan looked at O’Malley and Owens as the Chinook rocked, lifted off, and yawed about twenty meters away from the ledge. A rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the side of the mountain where the helicopter had just been.
Still on the rock ledge, the men who had led the mission to save Cassie were stranded for the moment. Mahegan looked at the uncoiled rope, a few feet of it still inside the cave.
“SPIES rope!”
Another RPG spit rock and shrapnel into their faces as Mahegan, Owens, and O’Malley donned leather workman’s gloves and snapped their specialized outer tactical vests into one of the five snap hooks affixed to the rope.
As soon as they were snapped in, the helicopter shot upward and outward from its position, flinging the three men into a near free fall as they were towed by the ascending helicopter. It banked to the east and picked up formation with Apache helicopters on either side. The rope was taut with the weight of three big men and their equipment.
Mahegan looked up. The loadmaster was monitoring them from the rear ramp that the pilots had now tilted upward at a forty-five-degree angle. The rope, though, was coming out of the middle of the helicopter, known as the hell hole, a three-foot by three-foot square in the middle of the floor of the helicopter. The loadmaster had routed the rope from beneath the helicopter to the ramp, prior to takeoff, using it as a safety in case something went wrong. Night Stalkers not only never quit—their motto—but they also always came prepared for the unexpected.
The second crew chief was operating the winch, which was slowly pulling them in. First it was O’Malley, then Owens, and finally Mahegan squeezed his massive frame through the awkward hole.
The Chinook sped at over 150 mph toward the Afghanistan border. As with the previous mission, they would have to stop and refuel somewhere, but Mahegan felt the first blossom of hope.
Medics hovered over Cassie. They had already hung an IV bag up and were cutting away her clothes, removing bandages and cleaning the wounds. Mahegan recognized one of the men as the combat surgeon for the Joint Special Operations Command. The doctors and medics of JSOC gladly took the same risks as the warfighters.
Mahegan asked the doctor, “Status?”
“Touch and go. Will let you know, Jake. I know that you’ve got a lot at stake here.”
“Roger. I’ll let you do your job.”
After an hour, they landed, refueled without incident at a nameless point on the ground where an MC-130J had discreetly landed, and ran fuel hoses out of the back. With enough fuel to make the last leg to western Afghanistan, the MH-47 departed.
Mahegan took up residence next to Cassie’s litter, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He clasped her hand as the medics continued to do their jobs above him.
“Need blood,” the doctor said.
The medic pulled two bags of blood out of a cooler next to Mahegan. They had come prepared specifically to save Cassie, not only a soldier, but also the daughter of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Hurry,” the surgeon said.
The medics worked with unrivaled efficiency despite being in the back of the yawing, speeding helicopter.
Landing in Herat, Afghanistan, they taxied next to a large U.S. Air Force aircraft known as a C-9 Nightingale. Mahegan ran with the medics as they ferried Cassie to the aircraft.
He watched the one woman he loved disappear into the back of the plane, which then taxied and lifted into the sky.
“Next stop, Walter Reed,” O’Malley said, placing his hand on Mahegan’s shoulder.
Mahegan looked at his team, standing on the tarmac staring at him. He nodded and said, “Best damn team I’ve ever been on.”
ZARA PERRO STOOD ON THE DECK OF SENATOR JEFF HITE’S BEACH mansion and checked her phone again.
The text read: Cassie is alive.
That was the tripwire to set everything in motion. Zara had flown from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Figure Eight Island in a little over ninety minutes in the AugustaWestland 109 Trekker helicopter she had been calling home the last few months as she coordinated the Artemis assassins. After dropping her at Senator Hite’s beachfront mansion, the helicopter repositioned north to New Bern, North Carolina. Given the time, nearly ten p.m., and the cumulative wealth of the inhabitants of the island, no one would bat an eye at a random helicopter making a random drop-off late at night.
She lifted her face to the night sky, closed her eyes, touched her hand to the hardware beneath her sarong, and watched Senator Jeff Hite switch on the deck light. The musty smell of the water reminded her of her time at the Valley Trauma Center, near Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. They weren’t pleasant memories, but they were there. She didn’t consider herself a barbarian, just a true believer in the Resistance. The soft coup and the special prosecutor’s investigation had failed to unseat the president she loathed, so it had come to this. There was no risking his reelection or the permanence of what would flow from a second term. By then, most of the Resistance members had been rooted out. She had a list of every single member of the movement. It was substantial, but their identities were being doxed every day at increasingly alarming rates. All the algorithms indicated the Resistance had reached a tipping point.
Billionaires, movie stars, media anchors, and their legions of followers that collectively pursued the dismantling of the President Smart’s administration at all costs realized the time to cross the Rubicon was now. That Rubicon went from soft coup to hard coup.
From nonviolent to violent.
Smart had proven a worthy adversary against the most powerful conspiratorial efforts since Caesar’s Roman Empire and Brutus. The president—rather to this group, the “Not My President”—had survived, so far. He was tough and frankly the scores of protesters and front men and women had underestimated him. Zara found herself at the nexus of the true believers in the illegitimacy of the Smart Administration and those that were positioned to continue the fight. While Smart had rooted out a fair number of moles from his administration, several remained. Between the big money, the promises of powerful positions, and the fame that some sought, there were enough people fully vested that they were receptive of Zara’s plan. She was pragmatic and had discussed the entire operation with Smart’s former opponent, ex-Senator Jamie Carter, two years ago after her loss. In typical fashion, Jamie had given an imperceptible nod to prepare, just in case the special counsel report didn’t serve their purposes. They had no faith that a feckless Congress could successfully impeach Smart and relegate him to a footnote in American history, which to many was the only acceptable outcome.
And so, the images of fingernails scraping against rock walls, long hypodermic needles, classroom instruction, hand-to-hand combat, and target practice.
“All okay?” he asked, perhaps noticing the pensive look.
“Perfect,” she replied.
Boats with running lights winking red and green plowed north and south along the Intracoastal Waterway, just beyond the long wooden pier, on this pleasant early November evening.
Tourist season was over, and Hite had invited her to his beach home for a quick weekend getaway. Zara knew that Hite’s wife was in Charlotte and had declined the invitation to join him for such a brief visit. Truth be told, she most likely knew that he preferred a little random action at his exclusive retreat. Zara knew that she was this month’s tasty treat. She had set up a meeting with the senator a few weeks before and could tell he was immediately smitten. She was not naïve enough to think it was because her Perro Policy Group lobbying firm was so powerful, or he had any glimpse of who she was. It was her looks. He’d already commented that she looked like an Eastern European swimsuit model. Men were always commenting on her tall, lean figure, full lips, and raven-black hair.
“Nice place,” Zara said. She switched from leaning into the deck to leaning back against it. She was wearing four-inch Louboutin heels and a sarong wraparound, which Hite most likely knew was her only article of clothing. They hadn’t fooled around yet, but she had seen the cameras placed in her bedroom. Because of the cameras, she had stripped down, taken a long shower, spent a lot of time naked so that he could get an eyeful.
She had then tied the sarong around her taut body. She handled everything with care, stepping softly and making sure she didn’t leave a mess anywhere in the bathroom, wiping down surfaces she touched. She had turned away from the camera and fussed with her suitcase and sarong, so that Hite couldn’t see her slip her Walther PPS M2 nine-millimeter pistol beneath the flimsy cloth. She even pinched the wineglass in her hand between two fingers. A perfect lady, she stood nearly six feet tall, the heels bringing her almost to his height.
“Thanks. Glad you could join me,” Hite said. “I needed to take a break. Things are a bit crazy in DC right now. This president is insane.”
“You’ve got that right,” she said. Her accent was slight, but detectable. Of Spanish heritage, Zara had lived in the United States for twenty years, arriving as a teenager. Naturally, she knew that Hite’s chief of staff had run a full background check on her. The only oddity that would show would be a few months in a trauma clinic in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Otherwise, there was nothing unusual about her background. Her parents were schoolteachers. She had an older brother and they had attended high school in northern Virginia. Then life took her to the University of Virginia for undergrad, George Mason University for a graduate degree in psychology, and Eastern Virginia Medical School for a medical degree in psychiatry. Married, divorced, no kids. Former psychiatrist, now a lobbyist, and a committed pussy-hat–wearing member of the Resistance.
“You’re busy, too, I know,” Hite said.
“I have twenty clients. They all expect me to deliver everything they ask for every day. They don’t understand that I have no control over the outcome, because ultimately I have to convince you and others to vote a certain way.”
“How many ‘others’ are there, Zara?” Hite asked. He turned away from the waterway, leaned against the teak rail of his deck, and stared her in the eyes. She knew what he was thinking. It was what they all saw. She was flawless. Perfect brown eyes, shoulder length black hair with straight-cut bangs, high cheekbones, full lips, the works. Her shoulders and collarbones accented her figure, and the coral sarong was snug around her firm breasts. She smiled with straight, whitened teeth and she actually saw Hite’s jeans tighten in his crotch.
“For the moment, there is only you,” she said. “Let’s not pretend that you have not had other ‘friends’ on this very same deck, and I won’t pretend that I haven’t visited other clients.”
“Fair enough,” Hite said.
“You, with your Mitt Romney–looking hair.” She laughed playfully, attempting to change the mood from suspicious to fun. “Black on the top, gray on the sides. I love it.”
“Everything about you is beautiful,” he said. Taking a sip of his Lagavulin 24 Scotch, he squinted at her. “I mean everything.”
“I’m glad you think so. I didn’t come here to get your vote on any particular bill,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed our texting the last few weeks ago. It’s flirty and fun.”
She could tell that Hite still enjoyed the rush of the element of danger. Would he get caught? Did anyone care nowadays, given the current environment?
“So, what’s your kink, Senator?”
Hite grinned.
“Straight to the point. I like it.” He paused. “I have a special room, actually. Would you like to see it?”
Her eyes caught a winking light in the Intracoastal and she smiled again, then looked at Hite. She lifted a hand to his shoulder.
“Beautiful out here,” she said. “But, yes, I’d like to go to your special room.”
She ran her tongue across her lips, not in a provocative way, but absentmindedly, perhaps in anticipation.
He stepped through the threshold into the spacious great room with a fireplace big enough to hold tree trunks. Elk, moose, mule deer, whitetail deer, zebra, lion, and water buffalo heads, even fully stuffed bodies hung from the walls or were perched in the corners. Literal baying animals cornered. A bobcat sat eternally embalmed atop a faux tree in the far corner of the room, opposite the fireplace. Having already navigated through this room, Zara felt no particular emotion. She understood killing and that people killed for different reasons.
Opening a heavy oak door, he stepped into the stairwell as she followed behind. Her heels clicked on the wooden steps, her calves tightening into ropey lengths as she guided her way behind him. The Walther was snug on her right hip, just below where she had tied off the sarong. As they turned the corner, Hite flipped on a switch, which lit a dim bank of lights around the periphery of the room. Pale circles of weak light shone down on the equipment. Most prominent was a whipping post, with iron shackles hanging down from crossing four-by-four poles, which appeared to be a modern version of public-humiliation stocks. A small padded ledge jutted outward, perhaps, she thought, for his face—or hers? Ropes fed through pulleys in each corner of the room and were secured to a swinging seat, with an open bottom about three feet above the floor. Handcuffs and shackles lined the walls, which were padded with Carolina blue velvet. A nice touch, she thought.
“Interesting tastes you have, Senator,” she said.
Hite turned toward her and smiled sheepishly. He lifted his tumbler of Scotch toward her and said, “Yes, well, now you know my secrets.”
“Actually, I don’t.” She ran her tongue across perfect teeth and pursed her lips. His eyes lowered to her lips, then her taut figure.
“I can show you,” he said. His voice was a hoarse whisper.
She lifted a hand and placed it on the stock, nodding her head toward it. “This turn you on? To be locked up? Humiliated?”
Hite coughed. “Yes, but I think I’m frankly aroused by you without any of this.”
“That so?” She looked at his crotch and smirked.
He kicked off his shoes, unbuckled his belt, and slid his pants off, gathering his underwear as he did so. Pulling at the buttons on his shirt, he flung it into the corner and stood there completely naked. Zara barely suppressed a laugh and was only able to do so because she was calculating how much rope she would need.
Hite placed his face in the pad, like that on a massage table, and threaded his arms through the open wings of the stock. Removing a cloth from her purse, she covered her hand and pressed the open arms of the stock into place and snapped the metallic latch shut on each side. His hands dangled on the far side while his head was in the padded foam. There was a. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
