Dark Trojan (The Adam Drake series Book 3)

by Scott Matthews

  “You have no idea how crazy I am,” she said. She walked over to the window. “Get up and get my luggage. We’ll walk out of this hotel with smiles on our faces, but don’t think for a moment I won’t kill you if you try anything. You may be essential to Walker’s plans. But you’re not essential to mine.”

  Keeping a smile plastered on his face, Canaan did as he was told.

  Even though Adriana Hermann knew all about Saleem Canaan and his reputation as a smart operator and fanatic Islamist, she wasn’t impressed. He thinks he could take me anytime he wanted to, she thought. And enjoy himself. But he doesn’t know how good I am and how unimportant he really is in the scheme of things.

  Walker and the Alliance used terrorists when the opportunity presented itself, but she knew something Canaan did not. The Alliance didn’t trust Muslim jihadis anymore now than the Germans had trusted the Arab Nazi collaborators in World War II. They were just pawns who let their hatred of the Jews make them the perfect patsies for an operation as subtle as the one Walker was running. When the big blackout in America happened, it wouldn’t be the Alliance that was ultimately blamed. It would be Canaan and the two solar CEO’s it would be made to appear he was working for.

  Ryan Walker was too smart to have made this man essential to his plan. He would have a backup and a backup to that backup. But he was also smart enough to remind her, by sending Canaan, that failure was not acceptable and that she would have to make it up to the Alliance. She hoped that would be by killing Canaan.

  Adriana Hermann walked beside her faux husband down the hallway to the elevator with a smile that matched his as she cherished the thought of revenge.

  Chapter 31

  When Drake got back to Casey’s room, he found Larry Green talking with a nurse in the hallway and Dr. Martin standing at the foot of the bed writing on the chart. He knocked lightly on the door and entered the room.

  “Good morning, Dr. Martin,” he said.

  “I believe it will be good, Mr. Drake,” she said. “The tests that we ran confirm your friend was poisoned with curare, a synthetic curare on steroids that someone developed. We’ve induced a coma so that he will relax and recover faster. We’ll let him rest a little longer and then bring him out of the coma this afternoon and see how he’s doing.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Martin,” Drake said with a quick fist pump. “That’s great news. His wife should be here by that time. You said a ‘synthetic curare on steroids.’ Any idea who developed the stuff?”

  “It’s not something that’s commercially available,” she said, “so I have no idea who developed it or why. I can’t conceive of a purpose for enhancing the poison to prolong the paralysis.”

  Unless it’s to make sure someone dies, Drake said to himself.

  “You’ve been here all night,” she continued, “why don’t you and Mr. Green go get some rest or something to eat. We’ll keep a good eye on him while you’re gone.”

  “I think we will, thanks, Doctor.”

  Drake left Casey’s room and motioned for Green to follow him. “I’m going to get something to eat,” he said when Green joined him at the elevator. “Why don’t you join me. We need to talk.”

  Larry Green, a former LAPD lieutenant in the Metro Division, had supervised a platoon that dealt with counter-terrorism. He’d also been a member of the division’s SWAT team. When he was wounded in a raid on a Somalia safe house and later met Mike Casey at a conference on Security in an Insecure World while on medical leave, Casey had offered him a management position in Puget Sound Security. Currently in charge of the PSS branch office in Los Angeles, Green had maintained a close relationship with the Metro Division.

  When they were seated in a small café a block away from the hospital and had placed an order, Drake told Green he wanted to find the woman who had poisoned their friend.

  “Larry,” he said, “the detective handling Mike’s case found me when I left for a cup of coffee. He told me the hotel’s closed circuit security video doesn’t identify Mike’s attacker because she kept her purse in front of her face. They believe she’s a pro. I think I was her target, not Mike.”

  Green added cream to his coffee and said, “Why do you think you were the target?”

  “Because she was trying to get into my room and because it’s the second time this week I’ve been close to someone either killed or attacked. As Detective Cabrillo reminded me.” He next told Green about the drive-by shooting and the mother who’d been killed two days earlier.

  Green gave all this some thought. “I haven’t heard of a female assassin using curare,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Does SFPD have a good description of her?”

  “Cabrillo said she had a great body and was wearing a tight black dress. That’s not much to go on.”

  “Maybe. But the security video may allow us to scan every great looking woman coming and going in the hotel and narrow it down a bit. I might even volunteer for that duty,” Green said with a grin. “But tell me, why would you be her target?”

  “That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  When their food arrived and they had a chance to savor their omelettes, Green continued his questioning. “Could this have anything to do with the guy who tried to blow up that dam in Oregon?” he asked. “Homeland Security kept your name out of the media when you stopped him, but maybe someone he was involved with found out it was you.”

  “But why me?” Drake asked. “You were there with Casey, too. And the rest of his team. Has anyone targeted you? If that’s what this is about, why wait until I’m in San Francisco?”

  “What are you doing in San Francisco, by the way? Could it be connected?”

  Drake shook his head. “I don’t see how. I met with a company that wanted a second opinion on a SEC reporting matter. I was supposed to return to Oregon today with Mike. Would you be willing to meet with Detective Cabrillo and see if he’s turned up anything on Mike’s attacker?”

  “Sure. I’m not leaving anyway until I know Mike’s out of the woods,” Green promised. “I’ll also check with LAPD Metro and find out if they’ve heard of a lady assassin who has a great body and favors curare.”

  When Green mentioned contacting the LAPD Metro division, Drake remembered that he, too, had someone he could reach out to, someone with the resources to conduct a worldwide search for Casey’s attacker. His liaison with the Department of Homeland Security, Liz Strobel, had access to anything the other alphabet agencies of the federal government might know. Since he was in San Francisco as a favor for the Secretary of DHS; it was the least she could do to help.

  Chapter 32

  After a quick check to see that Casey’s condition hadn’t changed, Drake found an empty waiting room and called the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C.. .

  “Liz,” he said as soon as the receptionist put his call through, “do you have time to answer a few questions for me?”

  “Give me a moment to finish what I’m working on,” she said, “and I’m all yours.”

  He heard her keyboard clatter for half a minute, then she was back.

  “Are you in San Francisco?” she asked.

  “I am, and I need to know why. What haven’t you told me anything about the company the Secretary asked me to visit?” He knew that she was expecting the cold tone of his voice when she took too long to answer his question. He considered her to be a friend, but with the guilt he was feeling over the attack on his buddy, he was tired of walking through a minefield without a map.

  “What’s happened?” she finally asked.

  “Mike Casey is in the hospital. Paralyzed. Poisoned. I suspect I was the actual target, so I need to know if it has anything to do with Energy Integrated Solutions. Why was it important for me to go to EIS?”

  “Oh my God,” she gasped. “Adam, I’m so sorry! Is Mike going to be okay?”

  “
His doctor thinks so. He was poisoned with a potent synthetic curare. They put him in an induced coma. What’s going on, Liz?”

  “Adam, I don’t know. Let me close my door. Then I’ll tell you everything I know about EIS.”

  As he waited for a minute, Drake thought of the last time he had seen her. He’d been released from the hospital and she had driven him home from Bend to his farm outside of Portland. The terrorist who had smuggled a nuclear demolition device into the country, and tried to blow up a dam with it, had booby-trapped the resort home he was using as his headquarters. He’d been about to enter the home when the terrorist had detonated Semtex and buried him in the rubble. Liz had stayed in Oregon until he’d been released, and then returned to Washington and her job as the special assistant to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

  “You know what EIS is working on,” she said when she returned, “and you know about the cyber attacks on their systems. William Bradford called your father-in-law. He was worried about an SEC requirement to report all threats that investors had a right to know about. So Senator Hazelton asked Secretary Rallings to send you to troubleshoot the matter for him so an official investigation by DHS wouldn’t leak to the media and spook the company’s investors. Secretary Rallings agreed. We had intel from our Intelligence and Analysis section from a source that Iran is planning to retaliate for our Stuxnet attack on their nuclear program.”

  “What does that have to do with EIS?” Drake asked.

  “The retaliation is supposed to target America’s energy grid.”

  “But EIS isn’t on the energy grid. I don’t understand.”

  “We don’t have anything that suggests EIS is the target. The Secretary just wanted to make sure the phishing attacks at EIS aren’t somehow connected to the Iranian threat. Bradford’s concern about the SEC reporting was an easy way to get you in there to check it out.”

  “Hmmm. Does Bradford know about the Iranian threat?”

  “We didn’t tell him, but it’s the kind of cyber attack his software is designed to defeat. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn of it,” Strobel said. Then she switched gears. “Who poisoned Mike? Tell me it wasn’t an Iranian.”

  “I don’t know who the woman is. The detective who’s handling the case says the security video shows that Mike surprised a good-looking woman trying to get into my room. She shot him with a poison dart. Apparently you don’t get a good look at her face on the video.”

  “Adam, if you can send me the closed circuit security video, I can get the FBI to run it through their new facial identification system. Even if the video doesn’t show her face, we can identify a person from a tattoo or any other distinguishing feature. We can scan street photos from street corner CCTV cameras or the security cameras at our airports. You get me the security video from the hotel, and I’ll find Mike’s attacker.”

  “Thanks. Larry Green is running Mike’s LA office. He’s keeping an eye on Mike now. I’ll tell him to get the video to you.”

  “By the way,” Strobel said, “what’s a good looking woman doing trying to get into your room? Were you expecting someone?”

  “You sound like Detective Cabrillo,” he said, his disgust clear in his voice. “Asking if I had arranged for female companionship that night. No, I wasn’t expecting anyone. And I don’t pay for sex.”

  The uncomfortable pause that followed made him think she was either embarrassed by his admission or doubted that it was true. Either way, it was none of her business. “Look,” he said, “I’ve got to get back. Mike’s wife is arriving from Seattle, and I want to be there to reassure her he’s going to be okay.”

  “Tell Mike I’m pulling for him,” Strobel said. “And you be careful, all right?”

  Drake ended the call and left the waiting room, thinking about the remote possibility of an Iranian connection to the violence swirling around his visit to San Francisco.

  Chapter 33

  Ryan Walker was waiting impatiently for Saleem Canaan to arrive. He had summoned the young Hezbollah commander to his mansion as soon as he’d learned that the man Adriana Hermann had poisoned was, unfortunately, alive and expected to make a full recovery. If she was identified as the woman who had poisoned him, it was possible that she could be traced back to the Alliance. That was a risk Walker could not take.

  During the past ten years, Adriana Hermann had fulfilled contracts in Europe, the Americas, and the Far East for the Alliance without a single failure. In only one killing had she left evidence that could identify her, and that had been a witness who quickly went missing. But now there was a witness who had seen her face and perhaps a hotel security video that might also identify her.

  Walker knew that he would have to proceed very carefully. Adriana knew her failure made her a liability. She had in fact terminated Alliance men who had failed him in smaller ways than she just had. And she was good, very good, at analyzing situations and anticipating risks. There wouldn’t be many opportunities to get close to her, and having a sniper kill her from a distance would only invite an investigation. Adriana Hermann was a celebrity model who, even though it was late in her career, was still well-known and popular. The fashion shoot she was doing in Los Angeles was proof of that.

  What he needed was a plan that maximized success and minimized the risk of exposing her work for the Alliance in any way. A plan that perhaps eliminated both Adriana and her killer at the same time. A plan executed in a way that would leave no doubt as to her killer’s motive or identity and still conceal her work for the Alliance.

  Walker closed his eyes, massaged his forehead, and let his mind sort though the options that came up. As the solution slowly formed, he smiled at his own brilliance. He would give some martyr a chance to reach paradise and make a real difference on the way.

  When his blond bodyguard, one of the two who had spotted Drake at the Marriott, announced that Canaan had arrived, Walker directed that he be escorted to the basement, where his two programmers had just finished modifying the malware he had purchased from the cyber analyst in the Department of Defense. “Purchased” wasn’t the right word, of course; he had blackmailed the analyst with his online gambling debt that, if discovered, would have cost him his job. But Walker preferred to think of the transaction as a purchase. He had at least promised to wipe out the $78,000 debt if the man handed over a copy of the Iranian malware he was analyzing.

  Canaan was talking with one of the programmers when Walker entered the basement room that housed his communications and IT system manager’s control room. The mansion had been the consulate for Kuwait before Walker was allowed to purchase and remodel it to serve as the North American headquarters for the Alliance. He was able to direct the financial holdings of his organization from this mansion when he was away from his base of operations in Asuncion, Paraguay. The Alliance maintained similar facilities in London, Munich, Vienna, Tokyo, Singapore, and Dubai.

  Now Walker beckoned Canaan and led him to the IT manager’s office. When they were inside with the door closed, he told the younger man that the malware that would be used to infect the EIS software was ready.

  “Your work at EIS is almost finished,” he said. “The last modules are coded and added to the malware. All you need to do is use the thumb drive at your work station. Because this is a new worm no one’s ever seen before, the program they have won’t detect it. The attack on the grid transformers is set for next week when the software you’ve run the final tests on has been shipped to all the major utilities. At that time, you are to thank EIS for allowing you to work on the project, say that working there isn’t what you had hoped it would be, and terminate your employment. By the time America goes dark in the big blackout, you will have disappeared.”

  “I thought you wanted me to take care of the two solar guys before I disappeared,” Canaan said.

  “You’ll have plenty of time for that,” Walker assured him. “They’ll be in Lake Tahoe earl
y next week before they attend a big solar power convention in Reno. Pay them a visit and terminate our relationship.”

  “You still want it to look like suicide?”

  “Indeed I do. A double suicide. And be sure to leave a note I’ve prepared with the bodies. It says how sorry they are for the damage they caused the country. The suicide note will lead the authorities to their offices, where they will find copies of the malware that caused the blackout.”

  Walker could see from the gleam in the young man’s eyes that he was eager to get to the killings.

  “But before that happens,” he said, “I need your help with another matter.”

  “The attorney?” Canaan asked.

  “No, but you’re close. Adriana Hermann. I’m concerned that she will be identified. I want her silenced before that happens.”

  Canaan couldn’t help but smile. “That will be a pleasure. We didn’t hit it off.”

  “Although I’m sure you tried, correct? She’s a very attractive woman. But she’s more than you can handle, I’m afraid.”

  When Canaan started to protest, Walker held up a hand. “I want you to arrange for a martyr to make a statement against the disgraceful way women these days flaunt their bodies. Then he can take Adriana with him to paradise.” This time it was Walker’s turn to smile.

  “You want her killed by a suicide bomber?” Canaan asked. “Isn’t that taking a big chance? What if the martyr is discovered or loses his nerve? I can think of a lot of ways to get the job done with a better chance of success.”

  “Do it my way. You detonate by remote control so nothing’s left to chance. The jihad gets a nice headline, and we give the authorities an easy-to-believe explanation for Adriana’s death. Can you do this job?”

  “How long do I have?”