Dark Trojan (The Adam Drake series Book 3)

by Scott Matthews

  Dark Trojan

  Scott Matthews

  DARK TROJAN by Scott Matthews

  First Edition, December 2014

  Copyright © 2014 Scott Matthews

  Author Services by Pedernales Publishing, LLC.

  www.pedernalespublishing.com

  Cover by Barbara Rainess

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Guardsman Publishing, 333 Country Club Road, Eugene, Oregon 97401 or email:

  scott@s-matthews.com

  ISBN: 978-1-5056-1781-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  As always, for my wife, Diana, and my sons, Matthew and Scott.

  Acknowledgments

  DARK TROJAN, the third book in the Adam Drake series, has many contributors who helped along the way. For starters, my family was tremendously helpful and supportive. Thank you, Diana, for the hours you spent proof reading and correcting the mistakes my errant and flying fingers made that you found and corrected. And thank you, Matthew, for the contributions you made that helped me finish my work.

  Thanks to my editor, Barbara Ardinger, who did another outstanding job editing and polishing the manuscript.

  Thanks also to Jose Ramirez and Barbara Rainess, at Pedernales Publishing, for providing the best author services around for indie authors who want to make sure their novels look as good as any the legacy publishers turn out. If you want to compete with the best, you can’t do better than using the services Jose and Barbara provide. And that includes the amazing cover created by Barbara Rainess.

  There are others who contributed as well. Deborah Bogart for volunteering to copy-edit the book and doing such a fine job. Marl Carter, for helping Drake get off the ground on his flight to Lake Tahoe. Glen Beal, for giving the early MS a thorough read. Thank you all for helping Adam Drake on another adventure.

  Dark Trojan

  Chapter 1

  Adam Drake’s summons to meet with the Joint Terrorism Task Force was expected, but not welcomed. The last time he’d met with JTTF, they had ignored his warning, and a cabinet member had barely survived an assassination attempt.

  The official reason for his summons was a personal prerelease review of the FBI’s final internal report on that matter, but Drake suspected there was more to it than that. The FBI’s field office had been embarrassed by its ineptitude in dealing with the terrorist threat. He didn’t think it was about to reward him with a medal for his actions.

  Drake decided early on this fall morning that his drive to the FBI offices, which were located near the Portland International Airport, was likely to be the highlight of the day. But whenever he had a reason to get out of the office and drive his old Porsche, that day turned into pure pleasure. The sky was blue, the leaves were changing color, it was Friday, and the college football season was underway. He wasn’t about to let a government summons spoil a day like today.

  He passed through security, signed the visitors’ register, and was escorted to an empty conference room on the third floor. It smelled strongly of newly-laid carpet. A twelve-foot-long, cherry wood conference table dominated the space, with four black leather chairs on the far side and a single matching chair on the near side. A picture of the president hung on the wall next to a standing U.S. flag and a photograph of the twin towers before they collapsed. He remembered thinking at his last meeting with the JTTF that this photo was an ironic reminder of a war the current administration refused to acknowledge.

  He also saw a pitcher of ice water and glasses on a black serving tray in the middle of the table. Coffee would have been nice, he thought, but he didn’t think they intended for him to feel welcome. He sat in the single chair, crossed his legs, and waited. Ten minutes later, he heard the door open behind him. He stayed seated as three men and one woman entered the room and took their seats on the other side of the table. He knew three of them, especially the woman.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Drake,” Bruce Burton, the head of the Portland JTTF, said as he opened their meeting. “I believe you know Elizabeth Strobel from DHS and Robert Jorgenson with the FBI. I don’t believe you know Richard Richter, though. He’s from the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.”

  Ignoring the men Drake immediately turned to Strobel. “Hello, Liz. Nice to see you again.” He enjoyed the annoyed look on the faces of the three men when he addressed her as Liz.

  She smiled at him. “Hello, Adam.”

  Burton cleared his throat. “Our investigation of your actions in June of this year is now formally closed,” he said. “We have decided that criminal charges are not warranted.” He cleared his throat. “We explained to the local Muslim community that your actions in killing the young men on your farm were justified. They’re not satisfied with our conclusion, of course, but they were told it’s not in their best interests to pursue the matter. They don’t know everything, of course, but we believe they know what their men were involved in.”

  “You mean they knew their boys were jihadis?” Drake asked. “But they don’t know they were trained assassins along with the others and sent to kill me? That’s a distinction without much of a difference, isn’t it?”

  Robert Jorgenson answered his questions. “The FBI never proved they were trained as assassins. That was what you claimed. The most we could prove is they trespassed on your property and that you claimed you killed them in self-defense. You’re lucky they didn’t persuade your old boss, the district attorney, to indict you.”

  “Jorgenson,” Drake said calmly, “your IQ hasn’t gone up much since the last time we met, has it. Do you honestly think it was unreasonable for me to believe that three men who surrounded my house in the dead of night and were armed with AK 47s weren’t about to use unlawful deadly physical force against me? Is that the way Harvard Law taught you to reason?”

  The younger FBI agent pushed his chair back and started to stand, but sank back down after a curt order from Burton.

  “Okay,” said Burton, “let’s wrap this up. We’re prepared to provide you a full copy of our investigation report. If you’ll sign a non-disclosure agreement. It’s better if the public doesn’t think there’s an open season on Muslims here in Portland.”

  Unbelievable! I lawfully defend myself against three terrorists and I’m the bad guy.

  Drake looked at Liz Strobel. “Were you aware of this BS?”

  “They took it to the Attorney General,” she said. “This is his idea. DHS didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Drake turned to Burton. “So there won’t be criminal charges, but if I get sued by the ACLU for ‘profiling’ these guys as terrorists because they were Muslims, I can’t defend myself with the truth? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  At this point, Richter, the civil rights attorney, cleared his throat and opened the file on the table before him. With his strawberry blond hair and his round, wire frame glasses, he reminded Drake of a slimmed-down Elton John. “The AG doesn’t want to appear to be supporting vigilante action against citizens who are perceived to be terrorists. That’s the government’s responsibility.”

  Drake shook his head. “You’re wrong, Richter. It’s everyone’s responsibility. The underwear bomber and the shoe bomber were stopped by citizens, not by the government.
” He pushed his chair back. “Keep your report. I’m not signing a non-disclosure agreement.”

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Drake,” Richter shot back. “You might want to reconsider that decision. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has made it a top priority to investigate and prosecute bias crimes and incidents of discrimination against Muslims. Your violent assault with a dangerous weapon that resulted in the death of a total of seven Muslim men constitutes such an incident. I have the authority to initiate an investigation of your disregard of these men’s civil rights.

  Drake stood up without a word and strode out, resisting the urge to slam the door behind him. This was the second time his government had threatened to throw him under the bus. As he walked down the hall, he vowed it would be the last time.

  Chapter 2

  Liz Strobel caught up with Drake in the parking lot.

  “Adam, wait up! We need to talk.”

  He stopped and turned to face her. “Not much to talk about, Liz. Richter made the government’s position pretty clear.”

  “Richter doesn’t speak for the entire government.”

  “But the AG does, at least regarding law enforcement.”

  “It won’t come to that. Will you follow me back to our new office? We’re just around the corner on northeast Alderwood. I have something for you.”

  As angry as he was with the FBI and its gutless decision, he knew it wasn’t her fault. The FBI and the DOJ were as politically correct as every other branch of the government was these days, and they had their own share of problems with the local Muslim community. They had falsely arrested a young Muslim lawyer in Portland in connection with the train bombing in Spain in 2004, and it had cost them dearly.

  He looked at his watch. “I need to get back to my office, Liz.”

  “Please, Adam. This won’t take long. It’s important.”

  He agreed with a nod and watched her walk to a white Chrysler 300. She was a beautiful woman, he had to admit, even if she was collaborating with the enemy at the moment.

  The Department of Homeland Security’s new office was modest in size, a single-story, red brick building obviously (he thought as soon as he saw it) not designed to impress anyone. It was government-office-functional and hummed inside with the quiet energy of people working hard at their jobs.

  She led him to a small office with a view of the vacant lot next door. “They let me use this when I’m visiting from Washington,” she said as she put her light gray wool jacket on a hanger and hung it on the back of the door. “How’s your arm? Is it healing well?”

  “It’s coming along. Thanks for asking.” A block of C4 charge had exploded in a resort home in central Oregon where he thought a man they were chasing was hiding. The exterior wall had blown outward and he’d been buried under the debris. When they dug him out, he had a broken left arm, a severe concussion, and multiple abrasions and contusions. She had volunteered to drive him home when he’d been released from the hospital.

  He sat in the chair in front of the red oak desk and waited for her to sit down.

  A black hard-side attaché was sitting on the left side of the desk top. Before she sat down, she spun the wheels of the combination lock on the attaché and took out two files.

  “This is a copy of the FBI report,” she said as she leaned over the desk to hand it to him. “They made an extraordinary attempt to portray you as a loose cannon—a guy who still thinks he’s in the army and believes that every Muslim is a terrorist. You’ll see there’s no mention of their colossal failure to act on your credible information about an imminent terrorist threat.”

  Drake had to smile at this. “The chewing out your boss gave them when he was almost assassinated didn’t get through to them, did it?”

  “No, it didn’t. They agree with the president that these are just violent criminal acts of individuals that should be prosecuted accordingly. That’s why your direct way of dealing with things makes them so mad. There’s no one left for a trial when you’re finished.”

  Drake slapped the file down on the desk. “Screw them! This is the second time I’ve been threatened for doing my duty. I’m through playing their game.”

  When he was in Afghanistan, he and his sniper partner had been threatened with court martial when a tribal leader accused them of torturing a villager. The villager was a Taliban commander the tribal leader had been hiding. Drake and his partner had never entered the village as alleged. They had killed the Talib with a sniper round from a half mile away. Both he and his partner had left the army when the chain of command had not supported the after-action report they had submitted.

  Now Strobel sat down in her chair and studied him. “Does that mean you’re not going to keep the promise you made to the Secretary? I’m talking about the agreement that you would help him from time to time, as an outside troubleshooter, if he let you go after the man responsible for the assassination attempt that almost killed your in-laws, as well as the Secretary himself. You got your man. Now he needs your help.”

  “That’s not fair. If the government doesn’t have my back, why should I defend their back? Why should I continue?”

  “Now you aren’t being fair,” she said. “We had your back when we collected the bodies of those terrorists from your farm and didn’t get the police involved. We had your back when we picked up the tab for the friends you called in to help you. And we covered for you with the imams. We had an agreement. We expect you to keep it.”

  It was his turn to study her. She was both his liaison with the Department of Homeland Security and the executive assistant to the DHS director. Her reputation as a tough-as-nails administrator was well-known. It was also clearly warranted. And, he reminded himself, he had agreed to act as a troubleshooter for the director if there were delicate matters that needed to be handled by someone on the outside.

  “Okay, what’s in the other file?” he asked.

  “Information on a company in San Francisco he wants you to visit. The CEO and his board have agreed to pay your expenses and your hourly fee. They’re finishing a government defense grant and are worried about how much they have to disclose to the SEC about some recent cyber attacks.” She paused until he nodded. “They’re expecting you next Monday.”

  Drake picked up the second file and stood up to leave.

  “Have a nice flight,” she said.

  He forced a smile. “Tell the Secretary thanks for the business.”

  Chapter 3

  Back in his office, Drake stood at the window and stared down at the boats bobbing below in the Willamette River marina. He’d only returned to his law practice two weeks ago, and now, barely recuperated from his injuries, he was being asked to keep a promise he’d made while his blood was still hot after he stopped the assassination of Strobel’s boss.

  One of these days he was going to learn to keep his mouth shut.

  The Secretary’s first request was for him to visit a company in San Francisco next Monday. That meant he had to put out all the fires represented by the stack of files on his desk before he left for the weekend. He turned from the window and walked to the half-wall of his loft and called down to his secretary.

  “Margo, would you help me triage this stack of files?”

  Drake’s law office had once been a rare-book store with a separate apartment one floor above. Its owner had died shortly before Drake had left the D.A.’s office and he had bought both the bookstore and the apartment. He had remodeled the main floor of the bookstore to include a reception area, a conference room, and a work area for his secretary. The loft that had been used for files, records, and office supplies had been converted into his office. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls of the loft had been added, the window enlarged to span the length of the exterior wall.

  Margo Benning, his secretary, had worked with him in the DA’s office. When he’d left, he’d asked her
to come with him. Now he waited at the top of the stairs as she walked up with a cup of coffee in one hand and a file in the other. The look on her face did not bode well for a quick review of the work he needed to do.

  “There’s nothing to triage,” she said. “They’re all dying from lack of attention. You haven’t been around much this last month…chasing after terrorists.”

  Margo was a slender black woman with short, kinky, gray hair framing a round face that usually wore a friendly smile. When the smile disappeared, he had learned, he needed to measure his words and tread lightly.

  “Those terrorists are dead, Margo. I need to get through these files now. I have to fly to San Francisco on Sunday to see a new client. The company is paying expenses and our full fee, so put a smile on your face. I just wanted to know which files I should work on first.”

  For the next twenty minutes, he took notes as she reminded him of deadlines and clients he needed to talk to. When she finished, a little bit of her old smile had returned; the lingering headache from his concussion seemed a little worse.

  Headache or not, he worked on the stack of files until seven in the evening before heading home for the weekend. He’d finished three motions Margo would file Monday morning and written all the letters, and made all of the calls she’d insisted he attend to before leaving for San Francisco.

  After locking his office, he walked out the back door on the loft level to the adjoining parking structure. His metallic gray, 1997 Porsche 993, a hobby of his for the last five years, waited for him in his reserved space.

  It was only since his wife of three years had died a year ago that he’d started hating the drive home. Before Kay died from an aggressive breast cancer, she had taught school and was usually home before he was. Looking forward to seeing her each night had made the forty-minute drive to their farm in the heart of the Oregon wine country tolerable. Now Lancer, his German shepherd, was the only one at home to greet him.