Dark Trojan (The Adam Drake series Book 3)

by Scott Matthews

  Buying the farm and its old abandoned vineyard had been Kay’s idea. She’d fallen in love with the romantic idea of growing grapes and making wine. While she had worked to make the old stone farmhouse into a comfortable home, he had spent weekends pulling out diseased grape vines to prepare the forty-acre vineyard for a future replanting. Before she died, he had promised her he would replant their vineyard.

  Now he usually spent Friday nights alone. He ate whatever he found in his refrigerator and then settled in his favorite chair to read a good thriller with a glass of bourbon in his hand and Lancer at his feet.

  Tonight, however, he intended to end the week by stopping at the Ponzi Wine Bar in Dundee to buy a bottle of his favorite wine, Ponzi Tavola Pinot Noir. He also picked up a beef tenderloin the local butcher was holding for him. He’d be eating out in San Francisco, so a home-cooked meal tonight sounded good. He might even share a little of the tenderloin with Lancer.

  Drake stopped at the wine bar and waved to Brett, the owner, who was behind the bar helping his manager serve a three-deep, Friday-night crowd. Without a word, Brett reached behind the bar and handed over the bottle of Tavola Pinot Noir.

  “It’s on your tab. Enjoy.”

  Chapter 4

  After his five-mile run the next morning, Drake stopped on the porch, dripping sweat onto the gray sandstone pavers, and tapped the screen of the sports watch on his wrist. He saw that he was only ten seconds off his personal record, even though he’d taken time off from his regular exercise routine while he recovered from his injuries. But now he was close to reaching the post-recovery level of fitness he’d set for himself, and he was pleased. There was still a little weakness in the left arm he’d broken, but otherwise he felt as strong as before.

  As he wiped his face with the bottom of his sweatshirt and headed inside to fix breakfast, he saw that he had a visitor coming up his gravel driveway from the county road below. The white Harley Davidson Sportster was familiar; it belonged to the pastor of his church. He hadn’t been to church since Kay died, but he liked Pastor Steve and appreciated the friendship they had developed during her fight with cancer.

  “I thought I’d stop by and see how your recovery is coming along,” Pastor Steve said as he got off his bike at the bottom of the turnaround and pulled off his helmet.

  “How did you hear about my injuries?” Drake asked.

  “I have friends in high places,” the pastor laughed. “Invite me in for a cup of coffee and I’ll reveal my source.”

  While Drake loaded the coffeemaker, his guest hung his black leather jacket over the back of a chair and sat at the kitchen table.

  “When I was playing basketball in college, I broke my forearm,” the pastor said. “Took a charge and got knocked on my keister. It was two months before I convinced the team doctor my radius was healed and I’d regained my strength. So how are you doing?”

  “I’m almost there. The ulna is healed and the strength is probably ninety percent,” Drake said. “So how did you know I’d been injured?”

  “As much as I’d like you to believe I have a private line to heaven, your father-in-law asked me to check in on you. I got to know your in-laws when I visited Kay in the hospital. I like to get out and ride on Saturdays as much as possible before the weather gets bad. This ride through the wine country is one of my favorites.”

  “I’d think you’d be working on your sermon for tomorrow,” Drake said as he poured them each a cup of freshly-brewed coffee and sat down across the table.

  Pastor Steve nodded his thanks and took a sip of coffee. “I usually finish my sermon by Friday and use Saturday to run through it in my head. I can do that while I’m riding. The senator said you were hurt when a house at Sunriver blew up. You mind me asking if this involved the same people you were hunting the last time we talked?”

  Drake held his cup of coffee in both hands and thought of their last conversation as he sipped his coffee. He had visited Pastor Steve to pick his brain about homegrown terrorists…and whether they were likely to martyr themselves.

  “I was after the man who blew up the senator’s house in Portland,” he said. “He was spotted in Mexico and wound up here in Oregon. Trying to blow up a dam in the mountains.”

  Pastor Steve stretched his long legs out and sat back in his chair. “The senator mentioned that you might be helping the government from time to time. He also said your mother-in-law was furious about it. Does that mean this will put you in harm’s way again?”

  Drake didn’t want to give a complete answer that would make his mother-in-law worry. “I joined the army after 9/11,” he said briefly. “I guess I’m still just a soldier at heart.”

  And will be until the day I die. One blink, and I see a nine-year-old girl who ran to our forward operating base when her father was beheaded by the Taliban. She wanted protection, but the next day when the village leader came for her, we had to let her go. The whole village was forced to stone her and then leave her headless little body beside the road where we would find her. The rage I felt then still burns white hot and sears my soul. So, yes, if I’m asked to help fight that enemy, I will gladly put myself in harm’s way.

  Pastor Steve straightened up in his chair when he saw the look on Drake’s face. “Adam, I didn’t mean to pry. I only wanted to know if I should pray for your safety.”

  At that, Drake smiled. “Tell my mother-in-law she doesn’t need to worry. I’m on my way to San Francisco to help a company there. No terrorists involved that I know of.”

  His pastor looked across the table for a long moment, and nodded. “All right then, I’ll be on my way. Come see me some Sunday.”

  Drake walked him out to his Harley and watched him ride off. He knew his father-in-law probably did call him, but it would be his mother-in-law who put her husband up to it. The senator would have just called him directly and asked how he was doing.

  Chapter 5

  R. David Klein III stood on the deck of his lakeshore mansion 565 miles southeast of Portland and admired the clarity of the aquamarine water of North Lake Tahoe. His sixty-five-foot, solar-powered catamaran was moored at his dock in Crystal Bay. Everything he’d sacrificed during the last ten years was represented by his mansion and his yacht, and he was not about to lose either of them.

  He turned and walked back into the great room, where his college roommate, Robert Parker, was fixing his third dirty Martini.

  “Go easy on those,” Klein said. “He’ll be here soon. If this guy’s as good as Congressman Sanchez says he is, we need him. This is business, Bob, not a party.”

  “I have a good reason to be drinking and so do you,” Parker said, “so lighten up. In six months or less, we might be explaining to Congress why a half-billion-dollar green stimulus package didn’t do much to stimulate our companies.”

  Parker’s solar company, Ra Solar, Inc., named after the Egyptian god of the sun, had developed a home solar recharging station for electric cars. Klein’s company, Apollo Motor Company, named after the Greco-Roman sun god, manufactured electric cars. The companies, which had been the subjects of their master’s theses at Stanford, were designed to complement and support each other. The public, however, didn’t seem to be ready for such an advancement in engineering.

  One drunken night they had come up with a plan to save their companies: create widespread electrical blackouts so people would want to live off the power grid and rely on solar energy. Klein had had an epiphany that evening, standing on his deck and looking down the shoreline at a neighboring estate that was owned by a well-known genius, the CEO of Energy Integrated Solutions, Inc.

  EIS had landed a government grant to develop IT security software for America’s smart grid project and its major electric utilities. Smart grid was a plan to computerize the electrical utility network to provide both better efficiency and better security for America’s energy infrastructure. Klein and Parker had trie
d to hack the EIS system without success, and then Klein had had another idea.

  “What if we could slip someone into EIS and plant malware in the security software Bradford’s developing?” he wondered aloud. “Like Israel did with Iran. If it worked for Israel, why couldn’t it work for us? All we need is a worm like the Stuxnet worm and someone to infiltrate EIS.”

  That was when Parker had suggested they reach out to the congressman who had helped them get their green energy stimulus grant. Alexander Arturo Sanchez, congressman from San Francisco’s twelfth district, always had a hand out for generous campaign contributions. From what they had learned, Sanchez didn’t particularly care if the money he received was earned legally or not. Rumors had been circulating for years, in fact, that he had ties to the drug cartels and other connections that might prove to be useful.

  The man Congressman Sanchez had suggested to help them was the man they were waiting for at Klein’s Lake Tahoe mansion.

  “Were you able to find out anything more about this fixer?” Parker asked as he sat down in a blood-red leather arm chair.

  “Not much,” Klein said. “His name is Ryan Walker. He’s on the board of directors of the Pacific First Security Investment Bank of California, the same board Sanchez was on before he ran for Congress. Walker has a big place in Pacific Heights, but he’s not there much. He travels a lot. He’s supposed to be a financial wizard. If he runs in the same circles Sanchez does, he’s got to be wealthy.”

  “Sanchez thinks we’re wealthy, too, or he did, so that doesn’t mean much. Why does Sanchez think this guy can help us?”

  “He wouldn’t come right out and tell me, but he suggested Walker’s connected. We’ll see. If this doesn’t work out, there’ll always be another government frontier to cash in on.” Klein raised an imaginary glass to toast the future.

  “That’s not why I started my company,” Parker said. “To get rich. I believe in solar energy. You’re the one that wants to show your old man you can make more money than he can.”

  “Don’t go there, Bobby,” Klein warned. “I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me. You know I don’t give a damn what my father thinks of me—if he thinks of me at all. The only thing he thinks about is finding his next wife. Someone to tell him what a big man he is because he was a big football star at Oklahoma and played in the NFL.”

  “Then why go nuts every time he opens a new Cadillac dealership somewhere?”

  “Because he’s a bastard. There are plenty of men who deserve to be successful. But they never will be because they couldn’t run over people with a football in their hands. Make me a martini, Bobby. I have time for just one before our guest arrives.”

  Chapter 6

  Ryan Walker parked his Mercedes under the porte-cochere and had his finger on the brass doorbell to the right of the massive, carved mahogany door when it was opened by a tall, heavy-set man in his late thirties.

  “Mr. Walker,” David Klein said, “come in.”

  As Walker stepped in and shook hands with his host, he was surprised at the strength in the large man’s fleshy hand. He followed Klein through the foyer and into the great room, where he saw another man standing at the bar to the right of a stone fireplace.

  Klein made the introductions. “This is Robert Parker, the CEO of Ra Solar. Care for a drink?”

  “Single malt, drop of water, would be fine,” Walker said. “Is that your boat down there?” he asked as he walked to the floor-to-ceiling picture window overlooking the lake. He knew the answer, of course, but he wanted to get a read on the man.

  “It’s a solar-powered catamaran,” Klein answered. “Biggest boat on the lake. We could take a cruise later, if you’d like.”

  “I can’t stay that long. Congressman Sanchez tells me both of your companies are in trouble,” Walker began as he took a seat in one of the leather arm chairs near the fireplace.

  “How much did Sanchez tell you?” Parker asked.

  “Not much. So I did my own research. You, Mr. Parker, couldn’t turn your company around with less than a quarter of a billion dollars. There’s no market for your solar-powered home charging stations for electric cars.” He smiled and turned to Klein and added, “Just as there’s no market for Mr. Klein’s electric cars. Despite your president’s lofty goal of putting a million electric cars on the roads, no one will be buying that many electric cars. And no one is going to be foolish enough to loan you that kind of money.”

  “Then why are you here?” Klein asked.

  “Because Congressman Sanchez also hinted that you might have something other than capital investment in mind.”

  “Assuming we did have something else in mind,” Parker said, “how do we know we could trust you to discuss it?”

  “I’ll give you two reasons,” Walker said in a level voice, “and then I want you to stop wasting my time. First, I think you both suspect Congressman Sanchez has connections to the drug cartels. He does, and it’s because I helped him establish those connections, which net him far more money than the paltry sums you have given him.

  “Second, I know the government would be happy to arrest you, Mr. Parker, on environmental terrorism charges if they knew about the logging equipment you blew up in the Northwest. You’ve always been an activist, but some of it wasn’t always legal, was it?”

  As the partners looked at each other, Walker came to the point. “Now, if I’m willing to offer my services to you and admit that I work with the drug cartels and a dirty politician, why do you think you can’t trust me to consider whatever it is you have in mind?”

  Klein turned to Parker. “Is he telling the truth about your tree-hugging days?”

  Walker saw by Parker’s steely glare there was a lot Klein did not know about his quiet, nerdy friend.

  An hour later, after listening to their rambling and sophomoric plan to crash the U.S. electric energy grid, Walker drove back to the airport in Reno with their pledge of $10 million for his assistance. As he drove, a plan began forming in his mind. He remembered learning from an old client of his that their plan had been considered and discussed. Hezbollah and its sponsor, Iran, wanted to destabilize America in the very way Klein and Parker were suggesting. Walker’s new plan. If they were willing to stand up as front men for a terrorist strike of this magnitude, why not help them in every way possible?

  Chapter 7

  As soon as he was settled back in the study of his Pacific Avenue residence in San Francisco, Walker sent an encrypted email to his contact in the Brotherhood. With its blessing, he knew he could quickly line up the players he would need to carry out his plan.

  The two solar geniuses had told him how they’d tried to gain access to Energy Integrated Solutions’ IT system the same way hackers all over the world were attacking companies. But the hackers’ phishing attack hadn’t worked. Sophisticated companies, especially ones doing research for the government, were too security conscious for amateur cyber attacks like those of the sun gods (so to speak) to be successful.

  But Walker’s other plan—to buy or borrow a copy of Stuxnet, the malicious worm program that had caused Iran’s centrifuges to fail—might work. Walker was confident he could find someone with access to the infamous malware who could be bribed or blackmailed into getting him a copy. Once he had the worm, it could be tweaked to disable transformers or other critical utility company systems to cause a blackout that would leave fifty million people or more in the dark for at least six months. The dollar loss to the U.S. economy would be incalculable.

  All he would need would be one upper level manager at EIS to have an unfortunate heart attack. The vacancy could then be filled by someone capable of inserting the worm into the EIS security software, which would be distributed to utility companies all over the country.

  While he waited to hear back from the Brotherhood, Walker walked to the window and looked up and down the tree-lined street below. His modes
t residence, a restored 1915 Beaux-Arts beauty in Pacific Heights, was valued at a cool $7 million. It thus gave him the proper cachet in the City’s banking community to easily handle his financial dealings. Although the residence didn’t have all the amenities his old mansion in Asuncion, Paraguay, had, it was quite comfortable.

  Nevertheless, he deeply missed sitting in the shade of the covered terrace next to his swimming pool with its two magnificent waterfalls and sipping iced yerba mate tea. Asuncion was where the Alliance had been created with the plundered Nazi loot his grandfather, Rainier Walker, had helped Martin Bormann smuggle out of Europe. Rainier Walker’s bloodline had directed the organization’s growth since then, and now he, Ryan, was its leader. His mission was to create a worldwide fascist movement.

  As soon as he heard his computer signal that an email had been received, and he returned to his desk to read it.

  Proceed with your plan. Contact our friend in Tijuana. We believe he has the skills you will need. We will reimburse your out-of-pocket expenses, and pay the management fee you have requested.

  So the game was on. He hadn’t expected the Brotherhood to provide the Hezbollah commander in Tijuana for the operation, but he was pleased they had. Saleem (Sal) Canaan was an American Muslim who had grown up in San Diego and been recruited for jihad at his family’s mosque. Hezbollah had arranged for him to receive a scholarship to attend San Diego State University and obtain a master’s degree in computer science.

  Walker retrieved the number for the young Hezbollah commander from his computer and called him.

  “Mr. Canaan,” he said, “our mutual friends have recommended you for a project I’m planning. I’d like to send my jet for you so we can talk. I know about the services you provided a client of mine last month in Oregon.”