A pair of headlights on a side screen caught my attention. I clicked the buttons that called up a full-spectrum scan of an incoming truck. What I saw made me sit bolt upright. I slapped my hand to my earpiece and yelled.
“Crosby! Get out of there! Now!”
The techie put her hand over her earpiece and turned abruptly to look at me, eyes wide, before looking toward Agent Bonewitz. It was Bonewitz’s operation, a joint FBI/ATF sting, and in the briefing beforehand he’d made it damned clear his voice was the Absolute Word of God. With a finger point in my direction, and a swipe of that finger across his throat, Bonewitz signaled the techie to cut off my comms.
“Belay that order, Crosby,” he said, glowering at me. “Malleus is incoming. Hold position. We’ve got him. We’ve finally got him.”
Thomas Vale is a Homeland Security intel analyst on loan to the FBI, and his ‘investigation is going up in flames, literally. Months of research led him to a meeting between the Blue Panzers, a domestic terror cell of white supremacist cops, and their mysterious leader known only as “Malleus.” When the house Thom tracked them to explodes in a ball of fire, he’s left with more questions than answers.
The digital trail leads Thom back toward his rustic hometown on the Seneca reservation, where he hopes for a chance to reconcile with his estranged father. But Thom’s research uncovers something unexpected – that his childhood first love is missing and presumed dead. Haunted by memories of love and loss, Thom returns home in defiance of his orders, and quickly becomes both hunter and target.
With the help of Wendell “Dell” Nguyen, one of the NSA’s most brilliant hackers, Thom must track down Malleus before the Blue Panzers’ violent plans unfold. Thom’s team discovers a more sinister and far-reaching threat than they could have imagined.
It’s a race against time to stop a terror attack that could claim thousands of lives and jeopardize American democracy as we know it. When the last card is played, and all the chips are down, will Thom answer the call and lay down his life for his country?
This is the second book in a series of high-octane thrillers featuring an autistic protagonist. This series proudly portrays high-masking autism with authenticity, and includes co-protagonists from a number of underrepresented backgrounds including LGBTQ+, BIPOC, neurodiversity, and physical disability. There is an emphasis on realistic portrayals of science, technology, and espionage tradecraft.
“Pour us a few glasses of wine, will you?”
I noticed several bottles, two opened, upon his dresser.
“Which kind?” I asked.
“Hacking the phone system and data mining,” he thought aloud. “Definitely something red.”
Dell shrugged and turned back to his work as I poured myself a glass. Little by little, the activity on his screens grew faster. Before long, my eyes could barely follow the action.
The best I could understand it, one of Dell’s foot pedals controlled switching from one open window to another, or transferring information between windows. The other seemed to control menus of common keystroke combinations and programming commands, though I could only guess how many libraries he was drawing from. His mouse pad clicked and swiveled with an almost musical rhythm, and his right hand typed with flawless precision, with such speed that his fingers seemed blurry at times.
I’d never seen anything like it. Dell’s entire body moved in a tight tango with the streaming data. I watched his eye movements while pulling from my wine glass. They zipped back and forth between the windows. I looked at the same screens but couldn’t follow the same action. Commands, data, and program outputs were appearing in different places on the screens faster than I could track. Somehow, with the help of his drum kit and command libraries, Dell was hacking and programming faster than I could read.
It took only ten minutes before he abruptly stopped. He took a healthy swig from his glass and sat back with a satisfied grin.
“Abracadabra, baby.”
