Three Minutes to Midnight by A. J Tata Read Free Book Online

Scarface to flinch and subconsciously send his hand toward his right-side coat pocket.
    â€œSorry,” Mahegan said. “This thing’s heavy. So let’s see the money, and we’ll get out of here.”
    â€œMoney’s in the truck, and you’re not in charge, asshole.”
    Mahegan saw something register in the man’s eyes. There was the slightest tic of the crow’s-feet on either side of his face. And he detected that the irises of Scarface’s black eyes focused inward instead of outward, like a zooming lens. He had seen it a million times in combat, when he was talking to an average Joe Iraqi or Afghan citizen who was really not an average Joe. Rather, he was an enemy combatant, one who understood that Mahegan had figured him out.
    Scarface made that calculation and went for the pistol. Mahegan watched. It was a clumsy move, completely predictable. By the time the pistol was out of Scarface’s pocket, Mahegan stepped forward with his left foot, as he had been trained in bayonet drill, thrusting the tool like a weapon.
    Scarface attempted an ungainly move to his right, but the digger caught him square on the left pectoral. Mahegan’s powerful arms closed the jaws of the digger, and he actually felt the pincer bite into the leather coat and some muscle. Mahegan swung Scarface to the ground, and the pistol skittered away through the dirt. In his periphery, he saw Dos pick up the weapon. Mahegan pressed the wooden handles of the digger across Scarface’s throat.
    â€œWe get paid now. Asshole.”
    Scarface, writhing on the ground, with a bit of blood oozing from his chest, mumbled, “In the truck.”
    Mahegan calculated his next move. There was no coming back to this construction site for him or the other two. Not wanting to kill the man, but needing to investigate some before the other workers began milling around, he kept the digger across Scarface’s neck and landed a concussive blow on the man’s temple. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it did knock him unconscious for the moment.
    Digging through the man’s pockets, he found the truck keys and a wallet, which he opened, and paid Dos and Papa Diablo handsomely for their hard day’s work. They said, “ No gracias ,” multiple times, but he made them take the money. He then looked in the identification fold of the wallet and found a driver’s license and a green card. The man’s name was Maxim Petrov. His country of origin was Russia. On the back of the green card was a stamp that read EB -5 PROGRAM . Mahegan didn’t know what that meant, but he kept the wallet. He also took Scarface’s smartphone.
    Dos handed Mahegan the weapon, indicating he wanted nothing to do with it. They walked to the truck, which Mahegan inspected, and he found a removable Garmin GPS along with a BlackBerry with a tactile keyboard. He thumbed through it and found a calendar. The calendar showed a visit by James Gunther tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m.
    Perfect. Mahegan digested the information. Perhaps he could slay the beast that had been haunting him for over fifteen years. Tomorrow morning he would be one step closer.
    The three men climbed into the truck’s cab, Mahegan behind the wheel. Mahegan put the truck in gear, reversed the route they had driven that morning, memorizing every detail, and dropped off Diablo and Dos at the Wallaby gas station. He pocketed the smartphone, BlackBerry, Garmin, and the 9 mm hollow points he found in the glove box and drove in front of an adjoining department store in a strip mall to leave the truck in an anonymous spot.
    After wiping down the truck to erase his fingerprints, he walked across the mall’s giant parking lot, slid a single key from a Velcro pocket in his boot, and fired up a beater-gray Jeep Cherokee. Before driving, he removed the batteries and the SIM cards from the GPS device and the phones to protect against tracking devices, such as Find