Read Online Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) by James W. Hall - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James W. Hall
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even one a step removed from the FBI. It was one of Sheffield’s unbendable rules. Never dally with cops, ’cause if it came back to bite you in the ass, it would clamp hard. But as Nicole had said, Sheffield had a foot in retirement. And he could still hear that silky zipper. Still feel her sure-handed way with his belt.
On the phone at 8:00 a.m. today, Frank asked her what this was all about.
She said this had to be face-to-face. She’d fill him in on the way down to the power plant. Which power plant? You mean Turkey Point? I’ll fill you in, she repeated.
“I’ve seen electrocutions before. Nothing like this.”
“He caught fire. From the inside out, his major organs, that’s what the ME told me. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“Jesus.”
“There was a half-assed attempt to make it look accidental. But it was clear what went down. They hooked Marcus up to the electrical grid. Like a message. Power to the people. Something cute like that. That’s how they think. They found out he was spying on them, they fried him.”
“That’s a message?”
“They’re big into messaging,” she said.
“Who we talking about?”
She plucked her phone from the cup holder, fiddled with it one-handed, cutting her eyes back and forth from the phone to the insane traffic heading south, everybody in a hurry to get to the Keys and relax.
She held out the phone again.
It was an image of a cartoon elf, chubby and stern-faced and wearing a green frock and a beret. His leggings were also olive drab and the toes of his boots curled up like those of the fairy-tale elves from Grimm. He was holding an oversize flintlock rifle at port arms and an ammo belt was slung over one shoulder. He was winking, but it wasn’t merry. More warlock than pixie.
“Earth Liberation Front,” Frank said. “Your guy infiltrated an ELF cell?”
“A month ago, there was a cyber incursion at Turkey Point. They left this image behind on all the computer screens in the power plant, and it stayed there for a couple of days until Homeland’s tech guys managed to remove it.”
Frank was silent, eyes on the road ahead.
“I know what you’re thinking, Frank. No one advised you of this either. But how it happened, Nuclear Regulatory bounced it to me because they knew I was running an operation on ELF. I passed it up my chain. After that, like I said, it was their call who to alert.”
“Your agency is under our jurisdiction, the Bureau’s. I should’ve heard about this every step along the way.”
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
He considered it a moment. “Well, shit. I’m halfway out the door. I shouldn’t be pissed nobody copies me on these things.”
“But you’re pissed anyway.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Relatively pissed, yes. Six on the ten-point scale.”
Frank knew all about ELF. An arm of Earth First! ELF activists were arsonists mainly. They favored primitive explosive devices to burn down ritzy housing developments built on sensitive lands, and SUV dealerships that specialized in gas hogs. They staged attacks on animal-testing labs, spiking ancient redwoods to shut down logging operations.
All loose-knit, no central command. A mishmash of beliefs. Animal liberators, anticapitalists, green anarchists, deep ecologists, ecofeminists. The entire array of next-generation revolutionaries. Everyone doing his or her thing. Save the earth, fuck the exploiters, punish the land developers, stop urban sprawl.
Business leaders upset over their economic losses had pressured the Bureau for years and finally bullied it into lumping together ELF and Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front and a few others like them and promoting them to the top of the list, ranking their kind as the number one domestic terrorist threat.
Not the Aryan Nations or the Islamic Brothers, not the twenty-odd militias in Idaho and Michigan and Colorado, wingnuts armed to the earlobes with rocket launchers and assault weapons, targeting
On the phone at 8:00 a.m. today, Frank asked her what this was all about.
She said this had to be face-to-face. She’d fill him in on the way down to the power plant. Which power plant? You mean Turkey Point? I’ll fill you in, she repeated.
“I’ve seen electrocutions before. Nothing like this.”
“He caught fire. From the inside out, his major organs, that’s what the ME told me. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“Jesus.”
“There was a half-assed attempt to make it look accidental. But it was clear what went down. They hooked Marcus up to the electrical grid. Like a message. Power to the people. Something cute like that. That’s how they think. They found out he was spying on them, they fried him.”
“That’s a message?”
“They’re big into messaging,” she said.
“Who we talking about?”
She plucked her phone from the cup holder, fiddled with it one-handed, cutting her eyes back and forth from the phone to the insane traffic heading south, everybody in a hurry to get to the Keys and relax.
She held out the phone again.
It was an image of a cartoon elf, chubby and stern-faced and wearing a green frock and a beret. His leggings were also olive drab and the toes of his boots curled up like those of the fairy-tale elves from Grimm. He was holding an oversize flintlock rifle at port arms and an ammo belt was slung over one shoulder. He was winking, but it wasn’t merry. More warlock than pixie.
“Earth Liberation Front,” Frank said. “Your guy infiltrated an ELF cell?”
“A month ago, there was a cyber incursion at Turkey Point. They left this image behind on all the computer screens in the power plant, and it stayed there for a couple of days until Homeland’s tech guys managed to remove it.”
Frank was silent, eyes on the road ahead.
“I know what you’re thinking, Frank. No one advised you of this either. But how it happened, Nuclear Regulatory bounced it to me because they knew I was running an operation on ELF. I passed it up my chain. After that, like I said, it was their call who to alert.”
“Your agency is under our jurisdiction, the Bureau’s. I should’ve heard about this every step along the way.”
“I’m just telling you what happened.”
He considered it a moment. “Well, shit. I’m halfway out the door. I shouldn’t be pissed nobody copies me on these things.”
“But you’re pissed anyway.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Relatively pissed, yes. Six on the ten-point scale.”
Frank knew all about ELF. An arm of Earth First! ELF activists were arsonists mainly. They favored primitive explosive devices to burn down ritzy housing developments built on sensitive lands, and SUV dealerships that specialized in gas hogs. They staged attacks on animal-testing labs, spiking ancient redwoods to shut down logging operations.
All loose-knit, no central command. A mishmash of beliefs. Animal liberators, anticapitalists, green anarchists, deep ecologists, ecofeminists. The entire array of next-generation revolutionaries. Everyone doing his or her thing. Save the earth, fuck the exploiters, punish the land developers, stop urban sprawl.
Business leaders upset over their economic losses had pressured the Bureau for years and finally bullied it into lumping together ELF and Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front and a few others like them and promoting them to the top of the list, ranking their kind as the number one domestic terrorist threat.
Not the Aryan Nations or the Islamic Brothers, not the twenty-odd militias in Idaho and Michigan and Colorado, wingnuts armed to the earlobes with rocket launchers and assault weapons, targeting
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