Three Minutes to Midnight (27 page)

“No one that you know about,” Mahegan said. “If Ted had your phone number programmed into their tracking system, they could be onto you right now.”

“We learned our lesson. We went to the store and bought burners after all that stuff went down at the hotel. I left my phone on at Grace's place, since it has been compromised. Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Helping us escape. You sacrificed yourself for us. That counts,” Elaine said. “I know I was unreasonable back at the hotel, but I don't trust easy. Anyway, how did you get away?”

“Long story, but they're looking for me and probably all of you. Where are Grace and the others?”

“Grace has security on the north side. Theresa and Brandy are . . . resting.”

Mahegan ignored Elaine's opening to pursue the fact that Theresa and Brandy were together. He had never been one to think too hard about politics or social issues. He had always believed that being thrust into the crucible of fire together made you a team, regardless of anything that made you different or the same.
Pull your weight, and you're okay. Slack off and be useless, and you're dead weight, regardless of who you were or where you came from.

“You said you did your time,” Mahegan said. “Right. Navy.”

Elaine looked at him. “Yep. Up in Norfolk, Virginia. Went for the college option and ended up with two sexual assaults.”

“Did anybody pay?”

“Damn straight.” Elaine leveled her green eyes on him. They looked more like jade in the moonlight.

He nodded, leaving it at that. She could mean that she reported them and they were prosecuted or that she slit their throats. Either option was fine with him. “Text Grace and tell her to meet us here,” he said.

Elaine pulled out her phone, and a few minutes later, Grace appeared. She hugged Mahegan. He could see her bright smile, and he was surprised that this elicited a smile from him.

“Be careful with that smile. You'll get us all killed, lover girl,” Elaine said.

“How did you get away from Griffyn?” Grace asked.

“Long story, but Griffyn survived.”

“That's unusual for you,” Grace said.

“What can I say? I was running out of time and needed to come find you all.”

They scooted behind the boulder, which served as a shield from the drilling action below. Mahegan was positioned between the two women, who continued talking in loud whispers. The incessant clanking of steel hammers hitting metal, the errant shouts of people's names, and the loud screeching of the drill echoed through the still evening like lost cries for help. With his back to the boulder and the noises echoing through the valley, Mahegan felt his adrenaline dump. He could use some sleep, also. Grace's body next to him felt warm and comfortable.

He thought about last night, remembering her warmth draped across him like a blanket. He had stayed awake, on watch. She had slept well, had even dreamed. He wondered what Grace dreamed about when she slept. As sleep gathered around him, he felt safe and well guarded, his mission focus fading. For now he was with the watchers, women who cared about the earth as much as he did and who were fighting for something in which they believed. That mattered to him. He wasn't sure what their plan was, but he did know that they were good at what they were doing.

“I need a couple of hours of shut-eye,” Mahegan said. “We good up here?”

“Get some rest,” Elaine said. “Grace, go ahead and join him. I've got this.”

“We need two to watch, though,” Grace said to Mahegan. “Can't violate our tactical rules. And with me working the crime scene or being with you, I haven't been able to help. So the girls need their rest.”

Mahegan tried closing his eyes. The questions he'd asked Ted were coming back to him. If Ted the Shred had indeed defected, what was his issue? Why had he done so?

With his eyes shut, the wall of granite a hard mattress behind his back, Mahegan whispered, “Was the Shred really that much of a dick?”

Grace paused, then said, “No. He always had this gentle, artsy side and even supported some of my environmental concerns. He had anger issues, sure—mostly trying to be like his daddy—but nothing severe until the past few months. That's when I dumped him for good.”

“I told you the Shred was a loser from the start,” Elaine said.

“Do you have a key to the Shred's place?” asked Mahegan.

“No. Why?”

“I'm wondering if he's got something in there that could help us,” Mahegan said. “He had to have uncovered something that didn't sit well with him. Maybe something about new fracking techniques being harmful to the environment?”

Grace shrugged. “Eh. He supported me, but I can't see him shooting a frigging bottle rocket over that. Money was numero uno to him. And control. He was a control freak, for sure.”

“Where does he live? Can we get into his place?”

“In a condo near the sports arena. I could get us in.”

“Car's a mile from here,” Elaine said. “Here's the key. Go exactly one hundred and twenty yards north, and you will hit a firebreak. Take a left, walk down the firebreak a mile, and you will see a small black SUV parked on the right-hand side as you're facing west. There's a small depression there. We always pull a few tree limbs over it to break up the outline. Your bag's in the wheel well.”

Mahegan took the key and nodded. “Thanks.” Then to Grace, “You stay here. Tell me where and how to get in.”

She told him, and he was up and moving. As he took long strides, he counted his paces and found the firebreak at exactly 120 yards. He kept counting as he walked the mile. The night air was still and tinged with moisture. Animals scattered in the leaves as they sensed him moving. An owl hooted repeatedly, communicating to a distant brother, he assumed, before the nightly hunt. The moon hung clearly overhead, and as he walked, he heeded the owl's clarion call.

Like the owl, Mahegan was on the hunt.

CHAPTER 26

“Y
ESTERDAY AN UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEM WAS LAUNCHED FROM
this airfield to attack the cooling towers at the McGuire Nuclear Station,” Sam Blackmon said, pointing at what looked more like a grassy road in Gaston County. Blackmon was the CEO of Best Brand Security Solutions, BBSS, which was one of many Brand Throckmorton subsidiaries.

Throckmorton yawned and leaned back in his Italian leather chair, upset at being woken up and called to an emergency management meeting in Raleigh after midnight. He had overheard the two Gunthers arguing about the Army investigator named Hawthorne. He had escaped again. His mind wandered from Hawthorne and the havoc he had wreaked at the lodge last night to the fact that Cassidy had cut the first vein and their plan was working. He would leave Gunther to deal with Hawthorne while he luxuriated in “my riches with my bitches,” as he liked to opine. He had been in the middle of a particularly tantalizing encounter with one of the EB-5 women deep in the bowels of the Underground Railroad, which was adjacent to his property, when he got the call from Blackmon.

He was not in a good mood.

Throckmorton had personally picked Blackmon as the CEO of this company after the colonel had retired from the military. Throckmorton had based his decision on two things: Blackmon had a reputation as an aggressive commander and the NC State University graduate had the respect of both the local and the defense communities. Based on Blackmon's bona fides, Throckmorton had fronted the company ten million dollars as a start-up when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were in full bloom. Situated just up the road from the Special Forces and Airborne center at Fort Bragg, BBSS, or “Double BS,” as it was affectionately known in the military contractor world, was positioned to capture talent departing the military and offer them double the salaries they made as soldiers.

Those salaries had been cheap, as the company had grown tenfold on the rising fortunes of defense companies during the wars, yet now it was on an extreme downswing. As the wars had evaporated, so had the profits. Security gigs at nuclear plants and school systems were the best bets now, but not nearly as lucrative as the Defense Department during a time of war. In his search for more business, Throckmorton had learned that electrical power companies were raking in the big bucks now and were taking extra precautions, especially around nuclear facilities. Throckmorton had used his contacts and some blackmailing to get the three contracts at the North Carolina facilities.

“Okay. But our systems shot it down, right? What's our liability?” Throckmorton asked.

Blackmon shifted his large body. A former Special Forces officer, he was tall and broad. He shaved his head every morning and wore a trimmed goatee. His voice was a baritone against Throckmorton's tenor. “Yes. Our radar picked up the threat at exactly two and a half miles to the west by northwest. Here,” Blackmon said, pointing at a large monitor that was showing a video replay of the drone attack. The small airplane was nothing more than a speck on the screen. “Our Aegis system deployed at exactly the right moment, tracked and shot down the invasive aircraft.” The video continued, showing the bat-wing drone coming into full view, diving for one of the cooling towers, then disintegrating into a million pieces, which littered the sky like confetti.

“We have an investigation team on the ground collecting the debris to put it back together as best they can. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a team on the ground, also. Right now this is top secret within the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. The airplane was so close and was moving so fast that there have been a few UFO sightings by citizens, but that's all. We thought so, anyway. Until this showed up,” Blackmon said. He punched a button and a smartphone video that had been shot by hand and showed the drone, in full downward attack mode, being shredded by the Aegis guns began to play on the monitor. “Fox News just aired it a few minutes ago.”

Throckmorton nodded. “Okay. I'm guessing this is why we're having an emergency meeting at ‘oh dark thirty.'”

“Well, there's that. But also, a liquefied natural gas container ship got past the gate that we man at the mouth of the Cape Fear River and floated to within two hundred yards of the reactor at Brunswick.”

“Say what?”

“Yeah, that's what I said.”

“How did it get past the gate? What's our liability?” Again with the liability. He was always concerned about the downside risk to him personally.

“We're assessing that now. Dirk Brownlee is the guard who was on duty at the time. He's obviously not there at his guard post. We checked with his wife. She says he went to work this morning, and she hasn't seen him since. His truck is still in the parking lot. So either he found a ride out or he's catfish bait at the bottom of the river. This natural gas boat adjacent to the nuclear plant is a no kidding terrorist threat just sitting there, like a queen checking a king in chess.”

“So what's our move? Or the country's move?”

“Obviously, if you blow up a ship full of natural gas near a nuclear site, it will have the same effect as if the terrorists blow it up. Melts the entire structure. We're talking about two hundred thousand cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. We have to work on the premise that it is rigged with explosives. Just the threat of it there is almost as devastating as if it were to blow up.”

“How so?” Throckmorton asked. But he knew.

“Unlike the drone attack on McGuire, this big ship next to a nuclear reactor is hard to miss or misinterpret. Pilots have called it in. Boaters have called it in. Employees at the nuke plant have called it in. Media is swarming on this thing like ants at a picnic. And so, coupled with the release of the smartphone video of the drone attack at McGuire, the media is piecing this together as an attack on nuclear facilities, at least in North Carolina, if not throughout the United States. The European stock markets are crashing through the floor. All energy stocks are plummeting, except those that deal exclusively in natural gas. If there's a nuclear facility in their portfolio, the company is tanking hard. If it's a pure gas or oil play, it's rising.”

Throckmorton drummed his fingers on the cherry conference room table, pulled at his lip, and said, “U.S. stock futures?”

“All down dramatically. It's all over the news.”

Throckmorton thought some more. Nodded. This was good. He was going to be a richer man.

“So why just those two? Why not Shearon Harris, right down the road?”

“Homeland Security has deployed teams to defend along the NRC buffer zone. They've dropped boats into the lake. Snipers on the rooftops. Hunter-killer teams roaming the premises. There's no way for whoever is attacking these facilities to complete the triangle and hit Shearon Harris.”

“Didn't they say that about Pearl Harbor? I mean, we're in the meltdown zone for Shearon Harris, Sam.”

“Homeland feels good about our defense of McGuire. They're trying to figure out what to do about Brunswick. And they feel good about Shearon Harris. They're focusing their efforts and resources here.”

“Shearon Harris only has one tower. That should be easy enough to defend.”

“Not so fast, boss. The Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant has the largest collection of spent fuel rods in the country. The facility was originally plumbed for four cooling towers, which would provide the ability to power the entire Triangle and Triad regions. But they only built one. That means it has three empty pools for storing spent fuel rods, which are shipped routinely to Shearon Harris for storage.”

“So we have the country's largest collection of fuel rods right next door to two million people?”

“We do.”

“But we also have airtight security, right? We've got the Aegis system. We've got our own ground patrols and security. We've got the Homeland guys. Right?”

“Right. And the governor has mobilized the National Guard. They have Humvees patrolling outside the buffer zone here at Shearon Harris and riverboats around the LNG ship at Brunswick. But again, that chess piece is in place. Not sure how you get rid of it. We don't even know who is running this show.”

“No clues? No leads? Nothing?”

“Nothing. The drone is nothing but a bunch of pieces now. We shot it, and it blew up, so we might be able to find some of the explosives and start a trace, but it's not looking good. This boat, on the other hand, came from Karachi. That we do know. The ship's captain is a guy named Mohammed Massoud. Here that's like Tom Smith. He said he has gone to the coordinates given him.”

“Who gave him the damn coordinates? Who's talking to him?”

“Homeland is talking to him. They say it's connected to some drilling operation in Afghanistan. They are searching for a Captain Maeve Cassidy, who was the lead geologist on the mission. She redeployed from Afghanistan three days ago and immediately disappeared. Her husband is dead, shot by her service pistol. Word is they think she has gone rouge and has hatched a plot to cash in on the gas she pumped from Afghanistan and has paid off enough people to have Massoud steer this boat next to the reactor. Barring that, I don't think they know who he works for yet. The ship is flagged out of Liberia, left Karachi, Pakistan, full of liquefied gas, and somehow got through the outer gate at the mouth of the canal. That's what we know. We're reviewing our tapes, but they are sketchy around the guard post.”

“Okay,” Throckmorton said, thinking. “Captain Maeve Cassidy?”

“That's right.”

“Where was she last seen?”

“Babysitter says she stopped by the house, kissed her daughter, Piper, who is also missing, by the way, and went to find her husband at a party. No one has heard from her since.”

“Here's what we do. Focus on Shearon Harris. Let Homeland have Brunswick. Make sure we don't forget about McGuire, but make sure Shearon Harris is well protected. Let me know if you hear anything else about Cassidy. She could be the key to this thing. Hardened combat veteran like that, she's probably got a screw loose.”

Blackmon shrugged, clearly uncomfortable. “I'm a hardened combat veteran, boss.”

“You are. We're talking about a geologist here, not a snake eater like you.” He saw that Blackmon let it go.

“Roger that,” Blackmon said. “Anyway, we're hearing that F-fifteens have scrambled out of Seymour Johnson and are flying CAP. AC-one-thirty gunships are flying right now, using their optics to tell whether there are intruders. They've got that awesome one-hundred-five-millimeter cannon, which can create some damage. We used it quite a bit in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“Okay. We take our lead from Homeland and cover our ass in every respect. We did well at McGuire. If our man at the gate is found dead, then I think we're off the hook there. And if we can hold down the fort at Shearon Harris, our liability is limited.”

“Not to mention that we prevent a major nuclear attack from happening,” Blackmon added, not without a bite to his words.

“There's that, too,” Throckmorton said.

He was tired. This was all very interesting. The most exciting news was that natural gas prices were going to skyrocket and that he had shorted all the right energy stocks.

Perfect timing
, he thought. Now they just needed to get their gas to market and sell into a rising market.

It was almost enough to make him forget about the lovely Serb he had waiting for him in the tunnel.

Almost.