Mastermind: A Theo Cray and Jessica Blackwood Thriller Read online

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Operations is trying to get hold of you,” he replies.

  “Me? What?”

  “Something weird just happened in New York. They want to talk to you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  EXPERT OPINION

  Before I can pull my phone out, two agents wearing FBI windbreakers brush past Simmons and make their way through the class. My right hand goes to my back under my jacket, ready to grab my gun, while my left clenches the underside of the table, ready to flip it over as protection if this is some kind of attack.

  I don’t think about doing these things—it’s all muscle memory, as indelible as the scars on my body. To everyone around me, I hope I look relaxed, but I can see Rhonda’s eyes widen as she reads my face. She spins around and puts her body between me and the two men rushing down the aisle. Her arms go out wide, and she suddenly seems larger.

  “What’s going on?” she asks in a loud voice.

  One of the agents stops to address her, not even questioning why a cadet is challenging him. “We need to escort Agent Blackwood to the airfield. There’s a plane taking off in ten minutes. We were given instructions to make sure she’s on it.”

  “It’s okay, Rhonda. Let the man pass,” I say.

  The students part, making room for me to follow the agents. For my class, it must look like something they saw in a movie or a TV show, maybe the one that made them want to join the FBI.

  A few years ago, this wasn’t all that uncommon an occurrence. I was on a task force that handled unusual cases. Then they became a little too usual. Serial killers using deepfakes, assassination attempts with drones . . . things that used to be weird. Now they’re the new normal.

  I follow the agents down the aisle. “What do you know?” I ask the man to my right.

  “New York City vanished an hour ago.”

  “Vanished?”

  “You’ll see the news on the plane. We can’t get hold of the NYC field office. Jersey is handling this on their side. They asked us to send anyone we thought should be there. Sheppard asked for you.”

  “Sheppard? Who’s that?”

  “Supervisor Sheppard? Crisis Response?” asks the agent, expecting me to know what he’s talking about.

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  We exit the building and get into an SUV with flashing lights. I hop in the back while the agent I’ve been talking to takes shotgun and the other gets behind the wheel.

  My paranoia has increased. I don’t know these agents. I’ve never heard of this Sheppard. If this is a kidnapping, I made it all too easy for them. I take my pistol from my back holster and rest it in my lap, ready to shoot both of them in the back of the head if my fears somehow are real.

  I’d be lying if I said I don’t calculate the best head shot in just about any situation I’m in these days. My bureau therapist can’t decide if this is a healthy response or a bad one. When you’re the FBI’s most wanted—as in, the FBI agent with the record of most assassination attempts—conventional advice doesn’t always apply.

  We drive through the parking lot and onto the road that leads to the marine airfield where the FBI keeps one of its several Gulfstream jets. I keep an eye on the agents, trying to decide what I’m going to do if they don’t make the right turn to the airport.

  I breathe a silent sigh of relief when we take the road leading to the guard gate. A security officer checks their credentials and waves us through. I slide my gun back in my holster.

  The SUV comes to a stop past a hangar where a group of people are standing in a cluster close to a jet. A man in the middle is giving some kind of briefing. I exit and walk toward the crowd.

  The man in the middle sees me and calls out over the heads of everyone. “Blackwood?”

  “Yes,” I reply, looking for familiar faces and not seeing any.

  “Sheppard,” says the short, gray-haired man who reminds me a little of Dustin Hoffman. “This is Jon Vaslov. He’s a physicist working at the academy.” He points to a tall man in his late thirties with a receding hairline and a hoodie. “Kari Linman, counterterrorism,” he continues, indicating a woman with auburn hair and an expression even more serious than my own. “You can find out everyone else’s names later. DC already has a team leaving Dulles. So let’s get moving.”

  Sheppard leads us into the plane. I head for the back, but he calls out to me. “Blackwood, Vaslov, up front.”

  I take a seat opposite Sheppard’s as he sets his laptop and files on the table between us.

  How does this man have files if this only happened an hour ago?

  “Blackwood. You know weird stuff. What’s going on? Is this the Red Chain blackouts all over again?”

  Red Chain was a cult that wanted to bring about the end times by starting global panic through blackouts and civil unrest. They came pretty damn close. When I finally found out what they were up to, it was too late to stop the final tragedy from taking place—their own mass suicide in a desert bunker.

  While that should have put a stop to them, there were other members who weren’t part of the bunker deaths. There was also the question of who had been backing them. At least a question for others. I knew who it was: Michael Heywood, known to the world as the Warlock, a serial killer, cult leader, and hacker who almost killed me after I became his personal obsession.

  “I think parts of Red Chain are still active—”

  “I know. I’ve been reading your updates,” says Sheppard.

  I didn’t think anyone was reading them anymore. The rumors were that I blamed Heywood for everything from COVID-19 to the Patriots losing Tom Brady. Which, honestly, are not deeds I’d put past him.

  The problem is that Heywood had been in custody most of that time, until he managed to escape during a prison transfer that is still under investigation. Nobody could explain why he was being transferred or who ordered it. There’s also the fact that I’ve been told confidentially that while he was making the FBI run in circles, he was also supplying intelligence to the CIA.

  Add to that the fact that Heywood is an alias and nobody has any idea who the hell he is.

  The best theory I’ve heard was a joke from my former coworker Gerald. He once wondered out loud whether Heywood was actually just some Russian-intelligence chaos agent assigned to screw with our heads. While that’s doubtful, the man does defy explanation.

  “I need to know what’s going on in New York,” I tell Sheppard.

  He types away on his laptop and spins it so I can see the screen. “This is live helicopter footage from the Port Authority.”

  The camera view shows the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River apparently cut off in midair where it reaches New York City. The helicopter travels north, showing the view of what should be Manhattan. It’s just a dark void. A bluish spark lights up part of it, revealing that the void is some kind of cloud.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Discharge,” says Vaslov. “Kind of like when the power station at the north end went up back in 2019. But bigger.”

  There had been a fire at a power station on the island, causing a continuous stream of smoke and sparks that looked like something out of a Marvel movie. This is kind of like that, but bigger.

  “No cell coverage?” I ask.

  “No,” says Sheppard. “No radio, no internet. Nothing.”

  “What about driving onto the island?” I ask.

  “The roads are filled with stopped cars, and all the entry and exit points have some kind of toxic smoke.”

  “EMP,” says Vaslov, suggesting that an electromagnetic pulse disabled all electronics.

  “That’s the first thing the Jersey field office checked. They’ve got EMF meters that should pick up anything that powerful,” replies Sheppard.

  “And?”

  “Nothing. Across the river, it’s business as usual. This is literally localized to Manhattan, and there’s been no sign of an EMP. What else could it be? What’s a more exotic
explanation?”

  “Like a mini black hole,” says Vaslov. “We might as well be talking about aliens at that point. It could be some kind of weird atmospheric phenomenon we’ve never seen before.” He thinks for a moment. “At really high altitudes, you can get what are called trolls—huge, dark mushroom-shaped clouds that have massive lightning discharges.”

  “Could we be looking at one of those?” asks Sheppard.

  Vaslov shrugs. “Probably not. They appear at high altitude for a reason.”

  “Could someone cause one at a lower altitude?” Sheppard is desperate for any answer. “Maybe if they used some kind of inert gas to replicate the oxygen density and had a way to start a plasma discharge . . . I don’t know.”

  I point to the top of a building poking out above the Void. “Well, there’s something there. Can we send in a drone for a better look?”

  “We have a helicopter waiting for us at the airport. How close do you want to get?” he asks.

  “As close as possible,” Vaslov answers for me.

  I silently question the judgment of taking a chopper too close to what may or may not be an EMP capable of taking down an entire city, but Vaslov is the physicist.

  “Okay. I’ll get you both on it,” says Sheppard.

  Well, it’s too late to point that out now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FLYOVER

  Our Black Hawk helicopter skims across Upper Bay, and the void that is New York City looms before us like a frozen tidal wave of darkness against the luminous blue night sky.

  Electrical discharges are visible to the naked eye from here. A thermal camera with a monitor in the passenger compartment shows the outline of the skyline under the mysterious cloud.

  “Look there,” says Sheppard.

  To our left is the Statue of Liberty, still illuminated, looking like a miniature against the massive obsidian backdrop surrounding the city.

  “What do we know about what happened before . . . this?” I ask over the intercom.

  “Not much. There’s a dispatch call center in Brooklyn that says right before, they were getting reports of possible car bombs and fires.”

  Car bombs? Interesting.

  “Any reports from the island?” I ask.

  “Not yet. We’re about to send some people over the bridges on foot with face masks and air tanks. It’s so thick there, you can’t even make it ten feet. There are also lots of car fires.” Car fires . . .

  We fly closer until the Void looms so high above us that it looks like a mountain range. And yet we’re still not even close. The most similar sight I can think of is the plume from a volcano. Last I checked there weren’t any active volcanos within thousands of miles of here.

  “Vaslov?” asks Sheppard.

  “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.” The physicist is leaning against the window, his mouth open.

  “Now you’ve seen it. Explain it.”

  “It’s like the ash cloud of a volcano,” he replies.

  Great minds . . .

  “There aren’t any volcanos here. We also checked with the seismologists,” says Sheppard.

  “Do they have the data available?” I ask.

  “I can get it, but why?”

  “We can see if there’s anything that matches up with car bombings or whatever.”

  Sheppard nods, then calls into his microphone, asking for the seismic data. “Anything else?”

  “What do satellites show?” asks Vaslov.

  “Thermal has buildings. Not much else.”

  “What about before? Any large light spikes?”

  “I can ask. What should we be looking for?”

  “Maybe a comet of some kind?” answers the physicist.

  “It’s not a comet,” I reply.

  “How do you know?”

  “The bridges and the tunnels have the most smoke. I get the tunnels, but why the bridges?” I gesture out the window in their direction. “Look at the smoke on the edge of the bridge. It’s not stopping. The wind should have blown that away.”

  “What are you saying?” asks Sheppard.

  “Those car fires are the source of the smoke. Or rather, they’re not car fires. Whatever created all this, it’s doing it right now on the bridges to keep everything shut down.”

  “This is a hell of a lot of smoke. Just look at it!” Sheppard exclaims, more from shock than anger at my response.

  “Vaslov, how much smoke would one tractor trailer filled with powdered charcoal and whatever else you needed produce?” I ask the resident scientist.

  His eyes look up as he does the math. “The energy would be substantial, and assuming the rate of expansion . . . a lot of damn smoke.”

  “But this much smoke?” asks Sheppard.

  “Give or take a few dozen tractor trailers . . . yes. Possible. That’s the thing about smoke—it’s a gas. Well, a gas with solid particles. A little bit of solid goes a long way.”

  “We’re going to go up the East River,” says Sheppard after he calls in the request to the pilot.

  We go up the waterway with the wall of the Void to our left. The smoke has a slight purple hue to it. Occasionally sparks fly and the shadows of buildings flicker through the haze like cosmic rays.

  “How bad is this on the lungs?” I ask.

  “We don’t know. Hopefully people are indoors,” says Sheppard.

  “Hopefully there still are people,” Vaslov adds.

  “What do you mean?” Sheppard shoots back.

  “What Blackwood said has me thinking. If this is some kind of chemical fire, and if they used an explosion to distribute it into a fine mist, igniting it would be like a massive firebomb. Anyone outdoors would be . . . not in a good place.”

  “Incinerated?” asks Sheppard.

  “No. Maybe those close to it. But they’d be breathing in flaming particles. Which would be bad.”

  “Take us higher,” Sheppard calls to the pilot.

  Our helicopter begins to ascend, and the wall of the Void moves past until we can see the night sky above. The tallest skyscrapers poke out from certain spots, their aircraft-warning lights dead.

  “We’re going to take a closer look,” says Sheppard.

  “Is that wise?” I ask.

  “We’ll stay above the mist.”

  I’m not sure how that’s possible, since there are two kinds of mist here. There’s the one that’s shrouding the city and then a finer, thinner one creating a purple haze around everything near the Void.

  The helicopter flies into the thinner mist. Below us, the thicker haze swirls and spreads under the pressure of the helicopter blades.

  Our pilot keeps a careful watch on his thermal and infrared monitors, which tell him where the hidden buildings are located.

  “Look!” says Vaslov, pointing to the silhouette of a tall building. Along the top edge are the outlines of people waving their arms in the air like shadows on an invisible wall.

  We fly closer. Hands frantically gesture for us to land, which isn’t possible without a proper helipad. I can even see expressions on faces. Some are frightened, others confused, and more than a few amused. At least we know there are survivors.

  Our helicopter continues moving through the canyon of buildings. There are more shadows of people on rooftops. Through a gap between two skyscrapers, I see a bright glow.

  “There!” I call out.

  The helicopter turns and heads toward the source of light. The mist thins, and we can see an entire block that still has electrical power.

  “How is this possible?” asks Sheppard.

  “They have their own generator, I’d guess,” replies Vaslov. He points to more people. “Look over there.”

  People are on rooftops, not because the air is better out there, but because they don’t want to miss the show.

  A thought crosses my mind.

  “Sheppard? Can you talk to the news choppers?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Look at all these people watching. If
you did this, wouldn’t you want to see it?”

  “Okay . . . ,” he replies uncertainly.

  “We need to record all the faces of people on either side of Manhattan who are out watching this. Some of those faces will belong to whoever did this. There’s no way they’d miss it,” I explain.

  “Okay. On it.”

  The interior of the helicopter lights up, and the first thing I notice is the smell of ozone in the cabin.

  The second thing I realize is that the engine has stopped.

  “Buckle up,” says the pilot. “We’re about to have a hard landing.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CRASH

  My great-grandfather, the one who started my family’s magic dynasty, which I brought to a close with my application to the FBI, once went over a waterfall in a barrel . . . by accident. He’d been a rival of Houdini and was always looking for a way to outshine the great magician. Eventually his interest in magic faded and he took up farming, only to have his son, my grandfather, answer the siren call of show business and revive the family name—and then for me to leave it in the past.

  As Grandfather explains it, Great-Grandfather Henry Blackstar thought it would be a marvelous idea to fake going over the less treacherous of the falls at Niagara and present it as an escape. He’d be locked and shackled—as was our family habit—welded into a barrel, and pushed into the river, only to reappear at the bottom on dry land in approximately the amount of time it would take him to crawl from his hiding location under the platform where the barrel was to be sealed, run down the steps in a fake mustache, and reappear in the crowd below.

  What he didn’t account for was that the newfangled electric welder he was using because the Sparco-Weld company was sponsoring him would also cause the metal lining of the barrel bottom’s trapdoor to weld shut when the electrical current passed through the lid. (Years later, this was one of the reasons his son, my grandfather, made it a point to study physics and chemistry in his spare time.) When the barrel was hoisted by the crane and dropped into the water, poor Henry was still inside.

  Moments later, his barrel was swept over the falls; as it bounced off the rocks at the bottom, the trapdoor finally dislodged, allowing him to swim free.