Oath to Defend (25 page)

Author’s Note

In my first novel, THE ASSASSIN’S LIST, I created a plot that involved American criminals who had converted to Islam while in prison and were trained as assassins.

Assassination has always been a terror tactic and still is, as the October, 2011 assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., demonstrates; our prisons are recognized by prison officials as recruiting centers for homegrown terrorists, both here and abroad.

Since 9/11, 209 Muslim-Americans have been indicted for violent terrorist plots, an average of just under 20 indictments per year. So, I wrote about one threat to our national security that some Americans might not have heard about.

In this, my second novel in the Adam Drake series, I developed a plot that involved a strike at a vulnerable part of our infrastructure—our dams.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a report in 2012 that examined 25 terrorist attacks on dams around the world between 2001 and 2011 that were similar, although fortunately not as destructive, as the attack depicted in this work of fiction.

It’s another age-old tactic that is being used by today’s terrorists.

The projected casualties mentioned in OATH TO DEFEND are based on existing and current assessments made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for this particular dam.

My purpose in creating stories that involve potential terror plots isn’t to alarm readers, although I think we have become complacent about terrorism since 9/11, it’s just to tell a story that’s plausible as well as entertaining. I hope I have done that.

Excerpt from THE ASSASSIN’S LIST

1st in the Adam Drake Series

At the back of the executive office building, Kaamil Sayf waited in the shadows outside an emergency fire door. At midnight, the security system his company installed and maintained would crash and go offline for five minutes. In those five minutes, he needed to run up four flights of stairs to the CEO’s office, retrieve a keylogger device he’d placed on the CEO’s computer a month ago, and get back out before the security system rebooted.

On the outside, after his prison conversion to Islam, he led a covert cadre of assassins working as employees of the International Security and Information Services, or ISIS. The mission he trained for, and was selected to lead, aimed to assassinate powerful American leaders. Mighty America killed its enemies with cowardly high-flying drones, but the world would soon know how jihadists killed enemies, up close and personal.

Before the first strike next week, he had to ensure encrypted passwords for the security plan at the chemical weapons depot had not changed. The only way to know was to retrieve the keylogger that recorded every keystroke on the CEO’s computer.

When his watch flashed 12:00 a.m., Kaamil used a key to open the steel fire door and ran up the stairs. He knew the old security guard posted at his station at the main entrance wouldn’t hear him, just as he knew the security cameras wouldn’t record his visit for the next five minutes. No one was expected in the building.

He raced down a long hallway to the middle of the top floor. Through Janice Lewellyn’s office, he entered the CEO’s inner sanctum. Kaamil was under the large rosewood desk when the elevator doors chimed. Somebody besides the security guard was in the building. Kaamil pocketed the device, getting up as the office lights came on, and froze.

Sweat formed on his forehead when he heard someone walking into the office.

“What are you doing in here?” Janice Lewellyn demanded. “Why are you hiding in Mr. Martin’s office?”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Lewellyn, you know me. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m just checking to make sure the upgrade for the security system is working.”

“Since when do you do middle-of-the-night upgrades without my clearance? I think you better stay here while I call security. You shouldn’t be in Mr. Martin’s office.”

“Call security. They know all about it. I’m just doing my job, Mrs. Lewellyn.” Kaamil feigned a smile, hoping she didn’t notice the beads of sweat on his forehead.

As Janice Lewellyn turned toward the phone on her desk, Kaamil took an Emerson combat folding knife from his pocket. Moving quickly, he caught her from behind and pulled the razor-sharp blade across her throat.

Lowering her body to the floor, he cursed his rotten luck. He would keep on the surgical gloves he was wearing until he left the building. And pray to Allah nothing was left behind to identify him, because his five minutes were almost up.

He would have enough trouble explaining the collateral damage to his leader without worrying about the police.

Excerpt from dark trojan

3rd in the Adam Drake Series

Ryan Walker parked
his Mercedes under the porte-cochere and had his finger on the brass doorbell to the right of the massive, carved mahogany door when it was opened by a tall, heavy-set man in his late thirties.

“Mr. Walker,” David Klein said, “come in.”

As Walker stepped in and shook hands with his host, he was surprised at the strength in the large man’s fleshy hand. He followed Klein through the foyer and into the great room, where he saw another man standing at the bar to the right of a stone fireplace.

Klein made the introductions. “This is Robert Parker, the CEO of Ra Solar. Care for a drink?”

“Single malt, drop of water, would be fine,” Walker said. “Is that your boat down there?” he asked as he walked to the floor-to-ceiling picture window overlooking the lake. He knew the answer, of course, but he wanted to get a read on the man.

“It’s a solar-powered catamaran,” Klein answered. “Biggest boat on the lake. We could take a cruise later, if you’d like.”

“I can’t stay that long. Congressman Sanchez tells me both of your companies are in trouble,” Walker began as he took a seat in one of the leather arm chairs near the fireplace.

“How much did Sanchez tell you?” Parker asked.

“Not much. So I did my own research. You, Mr. Parker, couldn’t turn your company around with less than a quarter of a billion dollars. There’s no market for your solar-powered home charging stations for electric cars.” He smiled and turned to Klein and added, “Just as there’s no market for Mr. Klein’s electric cars. Despite your president’s lofty goal of putting a million electric cars on the roads, no one will be buying that many electric cars. And no one is going to be foolish enough to loan you that kind of money.”

“Then why are you here?” Klein asked.

“Because Congressman Sanchez also hinted that you might have something other than capital investment in mind.”

“Assuming we did have something else in mind,” Parker said, “how do we know we could trust you to discuss it?”

“I’ll give you two reasons,” Walker said in a level voice, “and then I want you to stop wasting my time. First, I think you both suspect Congressman Sanchez has connections to the drug cartels. He does, and it’s because I helped him establish those connections, which net him far more money than the paltry sums you have given him. “Second, I know the government would be happy to arrest you, Mr. Parker, on environmental terrorism charges if they knew about the logging equipment you blew up in the Northwest. You’ve always been an activist, but some of it wasn’t always legal, was it?”

As the partners looked at each other, Walker came to the point. “Now, if I’m willing to offer my services to you and admit that I work with the drug cartels and a dirty politician, why do you think you can’t trust me to consider whatever it is you have in mind?”

Klein turned to Parker. “Is he telling the truth about your tree-hugging days?”

Walker saw by Parker’s steely glare there was a lot Klein did not know about his quiet, nerdy friend.

An hour later, after listening to their rambling and sophomoric plan to crash the U.S. electric energy grid, Walker drove back to the airport in Reno with their pledge of $10 million for his assistance. As he drove, a plan began forming in his mind. He remembered learning from an old client of his that their plan had been considered and discussed. Hezbollah and its sponsor, Iran, wanted to destabilize America in the very way Klein and Parker were suggesting. Walker’s new plan. If they were willing to stand up as front men for a terrorist strike of this magnitude, why not help them in every way possible?

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