Three Minutes to Midnight (10 page)

CHAPTER 9

W
HILE HE HAD REMOVED
N
ATHAN
D
ANIELS'S LARGER EXTERNAL
drive from his jeans, Mahegan had placed the small flash drive in his jeans pocket. As he listened to Grace close her door, he sat down in the computer alcove she had pointed out. She used an exercise ball as a seat instead of a chair. He couldn't make that work, so he unplugged the MacBook Pro and sat down at the kitchen table with it.

While the laptop was powering up, he noticed the neat row of pans hanging above the sink in descending order of size. The appliances were brushed chrome and black. Yellow curtains covered the bay windows in the breakfast nook, where he sat. The monitor went straight to the home page without asking for a password prompt. Either Grace was lax about security or Throckmorton routinely went through her files. He seemed like the type.

After plugging in the flash drive, he clicked on the icon and the media player instantly displayed a frozen image of the back deck at the Throckmorton mansion, zoomed out to capture much of the back of the house in grainy relief. Mahegan heard a dull thud in the backyard, like the sound of a sack dropped on the ground. Or two feet leaping over a fence. He withdrew Throckmorton's pistol from his coat pocket and hustled silently to the sliding glass door. Moving the curtain slightly, he saw two men standing on either side of the patio, motioning to one another, like a room-clearing team.

These men were young, solidly built, and sporting close haircuts, like military. But there was something ethnic about them, perhaps foreign. Their noses and the planes of their faces reminded Mahegan of Slavic soldiers he had met on a mission in the Balkans. They looked like cage fighters. He briefly wondered what their connection to Throckmorton might be when one of the men formed a cup with his hands and the other placed his foot in the cup to gain a boost onto the deck above.

Mahegan needed to rapidly disable the bottom man. He figured the top man was putting about two hundred pounds of pressure on the bottom man's flexed knees. A hard, flat strike against the lateral collateral ligament, the outside of the knee, would immobilize him but not prevent him from reaching for any weapons. Mahegan needed a two-part strike on the bottom man before he would tackle the top man.

Mahegan crouched and quietly removed the protective bar from the well of the slider.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast
, he thought to himself. The blinds were vertical slats, so he stayed low, flipped the lock, and opened the door in one quick motion. The plastic blinds chattered in his wake, but he was already on the lower man in two quiet steps. The man climbing to the deck was blocking the line of sight of the man doing the boosting.

Mahegan felt the heel of his Doc Marten boot crunch into the side of the man's knee, ripping the ligament and collapsing the femur onto the tibia. Hearing the bone to bone crunch before the man's agonizing scream reassured Mahegan that his next step, a slight movement to the right, was the proper move.

The bottom man spun away to the left, then rolled onto the ground like a gymnast. Mahegan heard the top man whisper loudly, “Ne oluyor!” (What the hell?)

Turkish, not Balkan. Mahegan's time in the mountains of northern Iraq, working with the Kurdish resistance, had taught him plenty of Turkish phrases, especially slang ones.

Mahegan kicked the bottom man's head as if he were Beckham bending a soccer ball during a corner kick. He pivoted and saw the top man hanging from the balcony, undecided.
Bad move
, Mahegan thought. The man could have been over the balcony railing and onto the deck, possibly through the glass door to use Grace as a hostage. Or he could have been level with Mahegan, better able to square up against him.

Instead, he was in a vulnerable position. As Mahegan approached, the top man kicked out with his legs. Mahegan caught one in midair, like he was catching a football. He used both hands and snatched the ankle from mid-flight. He rotated his body and twisted downward, feeling something give in the top man's leg. He felt the man's body torque against his own handhold on the balcony railing until one of the railing posts snapped and the man fell on top of Mahegan. As if executing one of his high school wrestling moves, Mahegan fell backward onto the concrete and crushed the man beneath his massive frame. He felt the wind leave the man's diaphragm with an audible “Oomph.”

Mahegan quickly spun and placed his thumb on the man's windpipe, crushing it inward while catching the knife-wielding hand that was arcing toward him. The light from a distant streetlamp played off the man's knife. He could see that it had a long blade, perhaps six inches, reinforced by a stiff leather handle. It had seen plenty of use, and with every second that passed, Mahegan knew he was dealing with hardened killers. He ratcheted the man's arm outward, twisting the forearm against the shoulder socket's normal rotation. He felt the man kicking more from a lack of oxygen than from the intention to fight. Mahegan had never understood this reaction, as it simply wasted oxygen and effort.

He heard the knife fall to the cement and released the pressure on the windpipe fractionally. With both arms occupied, Mahegan centered himself and head butted the man's face, flattening his nose. Blood sprayed all over Mahegan and the concrete slab. He let go of the windpipe and the arm and grabbed each side of the man's head and slapped it into the patio with enough force to make him unconscious.

Mahegan stood, glad he had stayed. He wondered who else might come and what the reporting window might be for these two. Had these two been a diversion? Was someone waiting in a car? He scanned the area, alert. The entire episode had taken less than a minute. But it was a minute that had determined Grace Kagami's fate, for the better, as far as Mahegan knew.

His combat mind was racing. He needed to interrogate the two intruders after securing them inside. He needed to defend against near-term future threats. He needed to make sure Grace Kagami was still safe.

He quickly raced into the house and up the stairs. He placed his hand on the bedroom doorknob and turned it. Pushing open the door, he immediately saw Grace lying on the bed, curled in the fetal position, knees tucked under her chest, hands together, as if she were praying. He saw the steady rhythm of her breathing, as indicated by the rise and fall of her UNCW T-shirt. He walked to the sliding glass door and rechecked it. All secure. On his way out of the room, he noticed the bottle of sleeping pills open on the nightstand. He lifted the bottle and saw that the count was thirty. When he looked inside, there appeared to be at least half that many. A suicide attempt would have drained the bottle. She needed help sleeping, and so she had taken a pill. Satisfied she was safe, Mahegan left the room and closed the door quietly.

With the priority one box checked, his mind focused on the two men outside and whether there was another immediate threat. Back in the kitchen, he withdrew the pistol from his pants pocket and tugged the curtain to one side so he could peek into the parking lot. There was a dark SUV parked at the far end of the parking lot. It had not been there when he had tossed Throckmorton onto the Lamborghini, and it appeared empty. With the priority two box checked, he tested the front door locks, returned to the kitchen, and found a box of trash bags and a roll of duct tape in the pantry. Again, he noticed everything was obsessively neat—dress right, dress—like in the military.

Returning to the back patio, he saw both men were still unconscious and idle. The apartment next door was soundless. Grace's clock had registered 1:30 a.m. He didn't relish dragging these men into the home they were invading, but he had little choice. With Grace secure, and with no apparent immediate threat, priority three was to interrogate them. He believed there might be a nexus between the attack on Grace, the party at the Throckmortons' house, and Maeve Cassidy's location.

He bagged both of their heads to prevent blood from staining Grace's carpet. Mahegan then dragged both men into the living room, positioning them between the white sofa and the fifty-five-inch, flat-screen TV hanging from the wall. The neutral carpet would most likely not go unscathed, but he had no options. He stood and stared at them, and they reminded him of dead bodies on the battlefield. Mahegan turned and closed the slider, locked it, and then replaced the bar and shut the blinds.

He peeled back the white trash bags from each of their heads, as if they were wearing burial shrouds. He frisked both men, landing two more knives, a smartphone, one Glock 17, and two wallets. He placed the items on the glass-topped coffee table in front of the sofa. For the first time, Mahegan noticed the large painting above the sofa. Depicted was a ninja, stealthy and covert, facing off against a samurai, official and obvious. This contradiction intrigued Mahegan and perhaps could help him understand Grace Kagami better.

He took the duct tape and secured their ankles and wrists and then bound them together at the knees and the chest area. He put a strip of tape across each of their mouths. The man with the severed knee ligament had regained consciousness, and Mahegan could see tears streaming down his face. Mahegan figured the pain was unbearable, especially with the additional torque the tape was adding.

He sat on the sofa, facing the two injured and bound men. In less than three hours of having a beer with Grace, Mahegan had seriously injured three men. He pored through their wallets and found two identical identification cards showing green banners across the top that read
PERMANENT RESIDENT.
The cards also listed the men's names and their country of origin, Turkey. Stamped on the back was the alphanumeric sequence EB-5.

Mahegan recalled that Grace Kagami had mentioned something called EB-5, which involved visas and investments. He pored over the other documents in their wallets, surprised that the home invasion team had not sanitized themselves prior to the mission. One of the men had a smartphone, and it showed three missed calls from a 910 area code number, which, Mahegan knew, covered the area from Fort Bragg to Wilmington. He removed the battery and the SIM card from the phone prior to pocketing the device.

As the other man began to awaken and struggle against his binds, Mahegan looked up. He had sufficient information to begin questioning them. Though he would have preferred to have them in separate soundproof rooms, he didn't have that option. He stood and pulled the tape off the mouth of the man nearest him, the climber.

“Seni kim gonderdi?” Mahegan asked. (Who sent you?)

Big brown eyes looked at Mahegan. The man was shocked perhaps that he knew a small amount of Turkish or scared that they had been so thoroughly defeated. The other man's eyes came to life, as well. In the darkness, the eyes glowed, like small lights in a dark forest.

“Kimse.” (Nobody.)

Mahegan looked at the balcony climber's injured arm, put the heel of his boot directly on the man's shoulder, and slowly let his weight shift onto that one point. The man screamed loudly, pain obviously ricocheting through his body. Mahegan stepped away and knelt next to the balcony man's head. He reached over, picked up one of the knives from the coffee table, and placed it against the neck of the man who had done the boosting, then stepped over and crushed the booster's injured knee under the same boot heel.

Mahegan asked the same question again as he came back to the balcony man. The booster was writhing in pain, and with each movement, the duct tape pulled and stretched his already severely damaged ligaments and tendons.

“Sana söyleyemem!” (I can't tell you!)

Mahegan had run out of patience, and perhaps the man could see that in his eyes. He lifted the knife and placed the tip against the man's larynx. He said in English, “If you won't talk, I'll make it a permanent condition.”

Mahegan could see the man understood the words. He immediately coughed out, “Shred. They call him Shred.”

Ted the Shred. Ted Throckmorton.
Mahegan had kicked his ass, and he'd called his goons to go after a woman.

“I told you he plays for keeps,” Grace said.

Mahegan looked up and immediately put the duct tape back across the man's mouth. Grace was standing at the far end of the combination dining and living room. Her arms were crossed, but she seemed more aware than before.

“And I told you I did, too. They were coming after you, not me.”

She paused. “I guess I'm glad you stayed.”

“We need to get you out of here. Go pack a bag. Now.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just do what I said. Now.”

She nodded, then looked at the two men, then nodded again, as if to acknowledge that she understood on all accounts. She understood that her ex-boyfriend had sent them to get her. She understood that Mahegan had disrupted their home invasion. And she understood that Mahegan would protect her until further notice.

Mahegan cut the duct tape binding the two men, grabbed the attackers' car keys, and lifted one man onto his back. He carried him to the black SUV he had spotted earlier, opened the back, and dumped the man onto the carpeted surface, ensuring that the man hit his bad arm. He repeated the process with the other man, dumping him knee first into the cargo compartment. He drove the SUV to the pub, performed a minimal wipe down to remove his prints, and then drove his own car back to Grace's apartment. That took fifteen minutes.

When he returned, Grace was waiting for him with a backpack.

“I locked the back door and cleaned up. Here's your flash drive, and here's all their stuff, each piece of evidence individually bagged.”

Mahegan stared at her.

“I'm a forensic tech, remember?”

In the melee perhaps he had forgotten. His protective instincts had made him circle the wagons. His skills were most useful then. Hers could be useful now.