Gone Dark (A Grale Thriller Book 2)

by Kirk Russell

  ALSO BY KIRK RUSSELL

  A Grale Thriller

  Signature Wounds

  Ben Raveneau Mysteries

  A Killing in China Basin

  Counterfeit Road

  One Through the Heart

  The John Marquez Mysteries

  Shell Games

  Night Game

  Dead Game

  Redback

  Die-Off

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

  Text copyright © 2018 by Kirk Russell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503952218

  ISBN-10: 1503952215

  Cover design by Mike Heath | Magnus Creative

  For my sister, Lydia McIntosh

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The night before the attacks, they did a dry run into the heart of Los Angeles. Not with the actual bomb vehicles but with a rented ten-foot U-Haul truck carrying twenty-five eighty-pound sacks of Quikrete to simulate the one-ton weight of each bomb. The U-Haul followed the route one of the three bomb trucks would take. It came off the downhill, made the right turn, and drove slowly past the electrical substation. A homeless man camped under plastic on the sidewalk looked up at the faces of the driver and passenger as they went by.

  The homeless guy came up in the meeting the next morning. The goal was to kill no one. The one who would call in the bomb threat read aloud the warning a 911 operator would hear. Everyone agreed it was clear and explicit, and yet a palpable nervousness lingered in the room.

  Acquiring materials had required stealth. Figuring out a detonator, building and shaping the charges, and transporting the bombs chewed up most of a year. The first small test bombs were a thrill celebrated. But this was different. This was the point of no return.

  The bomb maker leaned back on the couch. He was a big guy and usually quiet. Others in the room thought of him as a little on the spectrum. He listened and took it all in. He heard worry and fear. He gauged the three bomb-truck drivers sitting together, the gate-crew ride alongs also on the same side of the room.

  Their leader picked up the same vibe the bomb maker had and made a passionate speech about where they had come from and what they would make “from the ashes of the old order.” But that was a much too familiar speech for the step they were about to take, so the bomb maker stood.

  He awkwardly faced them, and his voice broke several times as he spoke. Then he seemed to find himself. His words were heartfelt. He didn’t talk about the ashes of the old order. He talked about why he’d taken on learning how to make bombs, what it took, and the close calls that scared him. Recounting those got him a few inadvertent laughs that eased the tension in the room. He talked about why he’d joined with them and the dream of what could be, and ended with a challenge that got the room stirring.

  “Throw down,” he said. “It’s time. It’s our time. Let’s go.”

  1

  April 18th

  That morning from the Las Vegas FBI Field Office, I called a friend who works in the Cyber Division out of FBI headquarters in Washington. I didn’t know if Carol would talk to me, but I trusted her. If you turn on TV news, a panel of experts will tell you an enemy nation-state working with hackers is behind the cyberattacks on the US electrical grid, and the two-week lull that’s followed the first attack was the enemy waiting to see if we can find them before launching a full onslaught. Could be true, but no one really knows yet and that’s with the NSA, CIA, FBI, DHS, ATF, the Department of Energy, and everyone else capable fully engaged.

  “Grale, are you there?” Carol asked, her voice quiet yet clear.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “I’m on another call. Are you okay waiting on hold a few minutes?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I want your opinion.”

  Hackers took control of Seattle City Light’s systems control center two weeks ago on April 4 at 3:05 p.m., and Seattle lost power for twenty-three hours. Seattle was ground zero, day one. On day two, cyberattacks expanded to San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, and Houston. Domestic-terror sleeper cells activated with attacks on cell towers. More sleeper cells have since activated. That’s where I fit in.

  Five minutes later, Carol was back, asking, “Are you still on the Vegas domestic terrorism squad?”

  “I am but transferring to the LA office domestic terrorism squad on a TDY in a couple of days. I leave Vegas tomorrow.”

  A TDY is ninety days of temporary duty. She didn’t need or want to hear the reasons for the transfer, more likely she was assessing my creds should she get called out for talking to me. I’d worked with her on an interagency grid-security task force the past seventeen months. It’s how I knew her, and she knew enough about me to take the chance.

  “The secrecy is ridiculous at this point, but technically I can’t say anything,” she answered. “So what I say stays with you. What are you working?”

  “Sleeper cells, bombings, and the more sophisticated physical attacks. I’m teamed with two domestic terrorism agents out of California.”

  “They never hear my name.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here’s what you need to know. It is a foreign power and probably Russia. It’s worse than we thought. Much worse. That’s why no one is talking. Bugs and viruses got in through the Internet of Things, devices communicating with other devices at plants around the world. Most of the US electrical grid is infected. Think Stuxnet, how we disrupted Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility and took control of the centrifuges. Same game. Nothing can be done quickly enough. It could get real ugly where the utilities haven’t invested in cyberdefenses.”

  “Some haven’t had the money for it.”

  “Their reasons why really don’t matter anymore,” she said. “The age of talk is over. It’s goo
d to hear your voice, Grale. I miss you. I’m glad you’re out there. You’re my rock. Go find them.”

  In LA I’ll work with Mark Hofter out of the FBI office there. With us, but working from the San Francisco FBI Field Office, is a third agent, Kristen Blujace. Jace is bright, young, and skilled. We’ve worked other investigations together. I’m glad she’s in the mix. Hofter and I will report daily to the Joint Terrorism Task Force on Wilshire in Los Angeles, Jace to the JTTF office in San Francisco.

  I’d rather work from Vegas, but there’s no way to avoid California. It’s the big target, the one state in the US among the top ten economies of the world. It’s geographically large so also difficult to protect.

  Phone and Internet chatter we’ve picked up suggests someone in the LA area is trying to teach themselves how to make ANFO bombs—AN, ammonium nitrate, and FO, fuel oil. With just four small test bombs at remote electrical and cell-tower facilities in Nevada they got a lot better. I investigated those in March. I’m a career investigator but also an SABT, a special agent bomb tech.

  After talking with Carol, I spent the day in the office. I tightened up my caseload so I wasn’t leaving a mess for agents here to deal with when I left for LA. That night I attended a cocktail fundraiser with my girlfriend, Jo. The fundraiser was very important to her work, but standing in the crowded room I got restless and walked outside to a terrace.

  Paving stones still radiated the day’s heat. Landscape lighting threw soft shadows. Across the valley, Las Vegas looked normal. The Strip blinked with colored lights. A plane descended into McCarran Airport with another not far behind as I turned at the familiar click of heels.

  “City still there, Agent Grale?” Jo asked.

  “Looks like it.”

  “But you’re keeping an eye on it.”

  “Just getting a little air. Jo, do you remember as the towers came down on 9/11, the feeling that things would never be the same again?”

  Jo didn’t answer. She moved up alongside me and stood close. She didn’t want to do angst tonight. She wanted to be together and hold tight for the few hours before I was gone. I put an arm around her. I felt the smooth curve of her upper hip beneath the cocktail dress and told myself, Stand down. Be with Jo. You aren’t going to solve anything out here tonight.

  “How did it go with the big donor?” I asked.

  “Would you believe he wrote a check that’ll carry our research into next winter?”

  “That’s great.”

  “It’s huge, Paul! We can run the longer clinical trials we’ve put off.”

  The owner of the house, the brightly lit glass ship behind us where the cocktail party was, had lost a ten-year-old son to cancer. Jo was a practicing physician and a cancer researcher at UMC Hospital in Las Vegas. On the research end, fundraising was a constant. She did what she had to do to keep it all going. Dr. Jo Segovia was also my girlfriend, my best bud; we’d grown close after a rocky start a few years ago. We don’t overthink things as much anymore.

  It’s rare either of us is at a cocktail party, but this one mattered. I held her a beat longer, just long enough that before we turned we saw the lights of Vegas flicker. There, gone, and then back on again. They flickered once more, and I counted thirty seconds of darkness before they returned.

  Somewhere nearby, masked by landscaping, a diesel generator coughed and kicked to life to provide backup power for the house. The outage ended the fundraiser. A stream of guests left under a glow of pale brown light.

  Jo and I stayed and stood near each other in the darkness. She squeezed my hand and we waited. She leaned into me and I held her tight. I looked at the clean black line of mountains across the valley, then back at Las Vegas as casino backup systems fired up and their lights returned.

  Our FBI field office had backup power, so did McCarran Airport, the fire and police stations, hospitals, Nellis and Creech Air Force bases, and several casinos. Enough power for critical services, but nothing like the real deal.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “We need to go in and say good-bye first. I want to thank him again.”

  Jo crossed the room and said her good-byes as I read a text from Hofter.

  Bomb threat just called in for three LA electrical substations. Two gates breached, bomb vehicles inside. Caller claimed trucks booby-trapped. Evacuating.

  I called Hofter.

  “Two vehicles are inside substations,” he said.

  “Inside?”

  “Yeah, got through the gate and the other bomb vehicle is parked alongside a fence. With that one they tried to get in but failed. Still, if the bomb is of any size, it’s going to do a number on that substation. The bomb vehicles are older Southern California Edison trucks that were sold at auction but repainted to look new.”

  “We know that already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Text me a photo of the type of truck. Which substations?”

  “Olin, Lake, and Anza.”

  “What about surveillance video of the bomb vehicle deliveries?”

  “I’ve seen video taken by surveillance cameras at the Lake substation. The driver and passenger pulled up to the gate like they owned the place. They wore masks and hoodies. I didn’t see any skin showing, hands included. The passenger’s job seemed to be opening the gate. Start to finish just under five minutes. At the Olin substation, where they couldn’t get in apparently, they abandoned trying at four minutes thirty seconds.”

  “So they probably rehearsed this,” I said. “Where are we with ATF?”

  Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had a good bomb unit. They’d want in, although we had primary jurisdiction.

  “They’re taking the Olin substation, where the truck is up against the fence, and we’ll work the two inside the city if this isn’t some sort of hoax. For now, we wait. The 911 operator was told 11:59, so we’re inside forty minutes and counting down. The areas have been cleared. Everyone has backed off.”

  “No one is trying to disarm the bombs?”

  As far as Hofter knew, no one was. I’ve argued with our joint terrorism task force office here that we needed to lean harder on the utilities to replace ineffectual fencing, gates, locks, and camera-surveillance systems with higher quality product. I’d run the same by a telecom exec last week who’d shaken his head and said, “It always amazes me how little government employees know about what it takes to get things done.”

  “Right, but here you are again running to us to protect you because you’ve done so little to harden and reinforce your facilities.”

  “I know some people well up in the FBI,” he’d shot back. “I may mention you to them. You seem to have forgotten you work for the American people.”

  Jo and I walked to my car. We were the last to leave and could see the red taillights lining up below at a four-way stoplight that wasn’t working. Drivers gingerly made their way through the intersection, and given the line of cars, there was no reason to jump in ours yet. My mind raced as we stood in the cooling night listening to sirens.

  Jo said, “I’ll admit I’m scared. There are no bombs, but we’re going to war, aren’t we?”

  “We are.”

  “Doesn’t that scare you?”

  “It should,” I said.

  But it didn’t. It just made me determined and angry. Sirens in the distance blended and became a wailing, rising and falling. The sound conjured up the voices of the dead, or terrible weeping and mourning. I don’t consider myself superstitious, but it felt like an omen.

  2

  JULIA

  Las Vegas, April 18th

  Nick swerved hard back into their lane, throwing Julia against the passenger door. Her head bounced off the window. The driver they almost hit was way down the road but still honking. It was that close.

  When she touched her cheek it stung, which made her even angrier. Why was Nick so obsessed with a car behind them, and why did he keep coming at her about UG, her uncle Grale?

  “You’re driving lik
e a jerk,” she said.

  “And you’re drunk.”

  “Drunk, no, sorry, not drunk, or frightened by some guy who wants to pass us. I just don’t want to die because you’re so scared.”

  “I told you to wait. I said I’d do the meeting then come get you. Instead, you get hammered on vodka with those girls. You’re like, what, two months from nineteen and you act fifteen or sixteen.”

  “Where did you really go at the party, Nick, and where was this meeting you supposedly had?”

  Nick checked the rearview mirror again.

  “I think we’re done,” he said. “Like, over with, as in we break up tonight.”

  “That’s one of the two reasons I’m here,” Julia said.

  “One of two, huh?”

  He smirked and looked over like that was funny.

  “What’s the other reason?” he asked.

  “To make sure you know you’re not going to get away with it. I know what you did to me. I started remembering on Wednesday. You put something in my beer when we got back to your apartment and I was in the bathroom. You and Joel drugged me, didn’t you?”

  “How many vodkas, Julia?”

  He reached across and aggressively held his hand close to her face.

  “How many fingers?” he asked.

  When she didn’t answer, he swerved hard again, and they passed the truck he’d been tailgating. He was maybe a few inches off the left corner of the truck’s bumper when he went around it. You wouldn’t know it looking at him, but he had these super-fast reactions.

  When she’d first met him he’d showed her this box of medals, from shooting competitions he’d been in when he was eighteen or nineteen. He didn’t let her look at them but tipped the box so she could see the stack. Later he said he didn’t let her see them because they embarrassed him. That was a lie too, probably. Everything about him was a lie. Everything she had thought about Nick had changed this week.

  Julia stared through the windshield at Las Vegas in the distance. She’d told her friend Samantha “Sam” Clark that she and Nick might be together forever. That was so off.

  “Hey, Nick, I have a question.”

  She didn’t turn her head, didn’t want to look at him.

  She continued. “Do you know how much prison time someone can get for date rape?”