Mastermind: A Theo Cray and Jessica Blackwood Thriller Read online

  Henry, as poor a planner as he was, did have a knack for opportunity.

  He surfaced near the Maid of the Mist, the sightseeing boat that takes tourists close enough to the falls to get soaked. This time, the passengers were there to watch my fool great-grandfather attempt an escape. Which is why they were all gathered on the falls side of the boat and didn’t see him pull himself up on the other side, probably dazed and confused but acting on his show-business instincts.

  He made his way to the upper deck, found the captain’s long coat and hat, and slipped them on. He then made his way to the top of the pilot house and fired off a flare he’d stolen.

  All eyes turned to Henry Blackstar—fully clothed and dry, standing above the hundreds of people who’d come to watch him die.

  It was a great moment of magical theater. A newspaper photo of him hangs on the wall of the salon in the family mansion in Los Angeles to this day.

  As Grandfather said, “It would have been a career maker, world headlines, if Dad hadn’t chosen the same day that Archduke Ferdinand decided to get assassinated and start World War I.”

  When I asked Grandfather how Henry managed not to die, he said it was one of the rare times that his father—who hated to talk about the business, lest it give his farmer son any ideas—actually explained something to him. Henry said, “I kissed my balls goodbye and pretended I was drunk, because alcoholics seem to survive everything.”

  While the first part of that advice isn’t terribly helpful in my current situation, the second part is. Prepare for impact, but don’t tense up so much you break your own arm or neck.

  I loosen up and prepare for a hard landing when I notice Vaslov doesn’t have his restraints fastened.

  “Vaslov!” I yell, grabbing his harness buckles and clicking them together.

  The startled scientist looks down and realizes what I’m trying to do. “Sorry—” Bang.

  Crunch.

  My spine feels like it was just used as a pogo stick. Sheppard’s slumped over. He snaps his head up, no longer dazed.

  Vaslov is muttering, “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

  “Everybody out! Watch the rotor!” says the pilot.

  His copilot has our door open and is directing us away from the helicopter’s rear rotor. We unbuckle and follow the pilot toward the other side of the street. It’s pitch-black. The only illumination is from the cockpit’s emergency lights.

  “Everyone okay?” asks the pilot, doing a visual inspection of each of us.

  “I think I pissed myself,” says Vaslov.

  “Perfectly natural,” says the pilot. “I did that my first two times.”

  I’m not sure if the FBI hiring a helicopter pilot who has crashed more than once is any smarter than hiring a woman like me to teach survival skills. On second thought, we’re alive. Great choice.

  He opens up a pocket and pulls out several surgical masks and hands them to us. “This will help you with the smoke. Sometimes I have to fly close to burning things. Hinder, can you take our passengers toward the lit-up section while I keep eyes on our bird?”

  “You got it. This way, folks,” says the copilot, using a flashlight to point a path through the mist.

  “I can take over from here,” says Sheppard. He takes two steps, then mutters, “What am I saying? I have no idea where we are. Hinder, back to you.”

  “Two blocks right, three blocks north,” I say out loud.

  “Somebody was paying attention,” Hinder says over her shoulder.

  She starts jogging into the mist, and we follow close behind. We don’t know what’s going on here, but staying in one place is not a good idea. There won’t be any help coming, and we’re not sure if we want to run into anyone who wants to be out on the streets right now.

  We keep up with her pace, weaving past hundreds of stalled cars. When her flashlight hits buildings, we see faces looking out from behind glass, watching us, waiting for an explanation. We don’t stop, because we don’t have one.

  We finally reach a block where some of the lights are still on. All the buildings have their security shutters rolled down. Probably to avoid looting or panicked mobs drawn to the light.

  Hinder knocks the butt of her flashlight against one of the shuttered doors. “FBI. We need access to your roof!” she shouts.

  Nobody answers.

  We try two more doors. Nothing.

  I can’t blame whoever’s inside. I wouldn’t open up. Anybody can claim they’re with the FBI.

  “Let me try this,” I say as we reach the next security gate. I kneel down and pick the lock with the kit I always have on me. It unlocks, and I raise the gate so everyone can enter the foyer.

  I shut the gate, securing it again, and then pick the door locks and let us inside. There’s an empty security desk in the lighted lobby. I walk around it and press the button for elevator access.

  It arrives quickly and seems to be as functional as the building’s lighting.

  Two minutes later, we’re looking out from the top of the building at the black sea of mist below us. Helicopters fly in the distance. Hinder pulls out a blue flare and sends it into the sky, letting them know we’re downed first responders.

  At the far end of the Void, I can see other buildings with their lights on. They’re like islands in a sea of electric ink. Why weren’t they taken out by the pulse?

  “What brought us down?” Sheppard finally asks.

  “Electrical failure,” says Hinder.

  “Like an EMP?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vaslov is staring at something as wind brings wisps of mist toward us. He reaches out and grabs into the air. His hand pulls back something, but it looks empty.

  I get a closer glance and can see it’s not nothing. He’s caught a fine tendril of something. Like a . . .

  “Black spiderweb,” says Vaslov, finishing my thought.

  He pulls a plastic bag from a pocket and slides the strand inside.

  My nose twitches as I realize I’ve been smelling something since we crashed.

  “What is that? Ozone?” I ask.

  “Some kind of discharge. I’ve smelled it before,” he replies. “I just can’t place it.”

  “What have you got?” inquires Sheppard.

  Vaslov shows him the bag. “This. The mist is full of it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. But this was no truck filled with charcoal.”

  I don’t comment. That was never my theory.

  “Could it be a weapon of some kind?” asks Sheppard.

  “Look around you,” I say. “How is something that can do this to an entire city not a weapon?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  TASK FORCE

  I’m lying on the floor of a conference room in the FBI’s Newark, New Jersey, office, staring up at the ceiling tiles, trying to make patterns out of the random dots. I think I’ve had a total of two hours of sleep. Some of us have had none.

  A younger me would have stayed up and bothered anyone who knew anything for more details. The older me realizes that a lot of my mistakes were made because I didn’t stop and let my body and brain recover.

  Some of the Quantico crew flew back on the jet. I decided to stay behind because I wanted to try to catch the briefing that’s set to happen in ten minutes two floors down from here. That’s where whoever the director put in charge will try to explain what’s going on after reading through everyone’s reports, following up with phone calls, and figuring out how to do their best impression of someone who has a clue.

  Robert Ailes, the man who pulled me from a desk job and into his special unit, tried to talk me into taking a supervisory role after sending me out into the field started to feel like Russian roulette. I didn’t have what it takes for management, however. I like people well enough, but not all of them at once. And I totally didn’t have the bullshit factor it takes to be a boss and convince a room full of people that you’re less clueless than they are.

  There’
s a knock on the door. “Blackwood?” asks Sheppard.

  “I’m changing,” I reply.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “I’m kidding,” I say as I get up. “I didn’t exactly bring a change of clothes. Come in.”

  Actually, I keep underwear and a T-shirt in my bag, but that’s not what I’d call a proper change.

  Sheppard enters with two cups of coffee. “It’s black. That okay?”

  “I’d take crude oil at this point,” I reply, accepting the cup from him. “How are you doing?”

  I can see the bags under his eyes. It’s one of the signs I notice in men as they age: you can tell how much sleep they’ve had by looking at their eyes.

  “Okay. The mist is a lot clearer. They’ve got the power back up in some places. But a lot of the grid is fried.”

  “Casualties?” I ask.

  “Still figuring that out. Probably in the hundreds, assuming that smoke doesn’t cause issues later on.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I say as he holds the door open for me and we head to the elevator. “How’s Vaslov?”

  “I don’t think he’s fully gotten over the helicopter crash. I don’t think I have, either,” he says, staring into space.

  “Oh yeah. It’s a stunner.”

  “You were in a plane crash, right?”

  “A small one. I caused it.”

  He looks at me in disbelief. “How do you deal with this? We were in a helicopter crash a few hours ago. You . . . Don’t you even think about it afterward?”

  “Um, no. Not until now.”

  We make our way downstairs to the conference room.

  “How is that kind of recovery even possible?” he asks.

  “My therapist says it’s a symptom of unresolved PTSD. I think it’s because I know I can’t think too much about the disaster that just happened because there’s always a new one waiting for me.”

  We take seats in the back as the chiefs up front talk among themselves and go over notes. One of them has his back to us. He seems to be the one they’re all coordinating with. Poor bastard.

  I see him tilt his head to listen closely and recognize the gesture as one I’ve seen a thousand times in the bullpen.

  Gerald?

  I knew he’d been reassigned to headquarters and was managing some internal task force, but other than pleasantries on birthdays, we haven’t kept in touch. I sent a present when he and Candice had their little girl, but I didn’t pay much attention after that.

  “Did you work with him?” asks Sheppard. “One of Ailes’s other misfits?”

  “Yeah. Ailes recruited him, actually. Gerald was about to take a job at Google. Ailes convinced him to take a huge pay cut and have bullets fired in his direction.” I shrug.

  “Is he any good as a cop?”

  “Gerald? You won’t find anyone better. Also, he’s one of the smartest people you’ll ever meet.”

  Managing people, my blind spot, was never a weakness for Gerald. He’s one of the only true multitaskers I’ve ever met. He can have a detailed discussion with you while filling out field reports. He taught himself to text without looking at his phone so he wouldn’t annoy people while carrying on three conversations.

  “Hello, everyone. I’m Gerald Voigt. I’ve been asked by the director to get this task force going. As you know, last night at approximately 8:00 p.m., Manhattan suffered a massive blackout, disabling virtually the entire electrical grid and destroying almost every phone, computer, and electronics system on the island.

  “We’re unable to discern at this time what the cause was. Our preliminary guess is a number of chemical EMPs. That’s to say, a number of devices that caused an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to short-circuit all local electronics. Until this morning, I’d never heard of a chemical EMP, but it was explained to me that it’s a device that uses an explosive charge to apply kinetic energy to a material that then converts into an electrical pulse. Later today, I hope to have a report from the Department of Energy, which has apparently done some research into this area. In any event, this pulse was accompanied by a black mist that shrouded the city for almost twelve hours.”

  Gerald taps his computer, and an image of an orange traffic barrel appears on the screen behind him. The top is burned off, and soot stains the exterior.

  “We’ve found at least forty of these so far, by last count. We estimate there were several hundred placed around the city. The good news is that one of the thousands of cameras in Manhattan was bound to catch someone placing one. The frustrating news is that because of the EMP, many of the data centers where that information would have been stored have been wiped. However, it’s likely that some were backed up before the EMP affected them.

  “We believe this is an act of terrorism. Nobody has come forward yet, but given the deliberate, destructive nature of the act, there seems to be no other explanation.

  “Because this happened unexpectedly and we have no idea if other cities are going to be targeted, the Department of Justice, at the president’s urging, has decided to take an extremely proactive approach.” Gerald points to several people in the front row. “We’ll be working with the CIA, DIA, and IDR.”

  “IDR?” I whisper to Sheppard.

  “New agency. Information Data Retrieval,” he whispers back.

  “How come I never heard of them?”

  “They were a division of the DIA until a few weeks ago.” The Defense Intelligence Agency?

  “What do they do? Fix your hard drive?”

  “Not quite. After COVID-19 knocked us on our ass and somebody realized that maybe you shouldn’t trust totalitarian regimes that chronically lie about internal matters to give you honest answers, this idea came up,” says Sheppard.

  “Okay. But what does that mean?”

  “The joke goes that they’re a SEAL team with a thumb drive. They go in and get data. The not-so-funny part of the joke is that they have virtual free rein in deciding what they want to retrieve. IDR supposedly has a number of former CIA operatives who did renditions.”

  “Ah, so they don’t have to worry about the same laws that we mortals do.”

  “Basically.”

  “That surely won’t end up in a New York Times exposé five years from now.”

  “Not if they take the reporter’s laptop,” sighs Sheppard.

  An agent hands me a stapled sheaf of papers as she walks down the aisle.

  “I’m just an observer,” I tell her.

  She looks at a list she’s carrying. “You’re Agent Blackwood? Jessica Blackwood, right?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re in here.”

  Sheppard waits for a moment, then makes an audible sigh as she moves to the next row. “Glad I dodged that one,” he says, clearly trying to convince himself that he hasn’t been slighted.

  I flip through and see a list of names. The column on the left has names of agents; the column on the right, people who I assume are suspects. My name is on the last page.

  “Some of you have been given names to follow up on,” Gerald tells the room. “These were provided to us by IDR. They’d like up-to-date information on each of them. The ones with asterisks by their names . . . ? Contact IDR immediately if you locate them. Don’t engage. Just let IDR know.”

  There’s something about Gerald’s voice that tells me he’s not too happy about that directive. I have a feeling there may have been some loud words exchanged—first, over the FBI having to turn suspects over to this other agency; second, knowing Gerald, about the quasi-legal nature of what he’s been asked to do.

  He’s part of a new breed of FBI agents that Ailes and others have been trying to promote, hoping to put the politically charged past behind us. Which means for many of Gerald’s colleagues and supervisors, he’s a by-the-book pain in the ass who won’t compromise when it comes to ethics.

  I read through the list of names again and immediately see two problems with it.

  I realize that Gerald has better things to do than
deal with me now, but we need to discuss this list.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SUSPECT ZERO

  Gerald is talking to the head of IDR, a broad-shouldered woman in a business suit who has the presence of someone who’s spent time in war zones carrying a machine gun. From the way she stands firm, like a concrete barricade, to the way she grabs Gerald’s elbow—something you pick up on the battlefield to ensure you’re hearing everything your troops tell you—clearly, this woman’s an ex-soldier.

  “Jessica,” says Gerald as I approach. “Please meet Vivian Kieren, the director of IDR.”

  She firmly shakes my hand. “Blackwood. Pleasure.”

  She’s brief and to the point. Why waste time on sentences when a couple of nouns will do?

  Gerald sees the list in my hands. “I see you’ve got your assignment.”

  “Yes . . . and I’m a little surprised,” I reply, not sure how much I want to say in front of Kieren.

  “I had you on a short list before this even came down. It was lucky you were in the area. Well, except for the helicopter. Are you okay?”

  “Fine. The pilots did a great job.” I’m about to ask why Gerald put me back in the field, but I catch a glance, more of a flicker of his eyes, in Kieren’s direction. It could be a tic or a symptom of not enough sleep, but I decide to go with my hunch. “I just wanted to say I’m glad to be aboard with you again.”

  “Me too,” says Gerald, and his posture relaxes. I wasn’t imagining it. There’s tension here, and I almost said the wrong thing.

  “Kieren,” I say to the woman with a nod, then return up the aisle to where Sheppard is texting.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “They’re sending some barrels back to the lab at Quantico. Also a truck,” he replies. “That could be interesting.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I take my seat next to him and text my co-instructors, Simmons and Antonio, telling them I need them to cover for me until I’m done with this. Also, to check if Cortland got out of the handcuffs. A regulation handcuff key won’t work. You really do have to pick them with the pen.

  “Jessica, got a second?” Suddenly, Gerald’s standing beside me. “Hey, Sheppard, I’m glad you could bring a team out. Vaslov’s been very helpful. And even happier you survived the chopper ride.”