MELTDOWN - Part 1: A Sam Jameson Espionage & Suspense Thriller: A Sam Jameson Espionage & Suspense Thriller (MELTDOWN Series) Read online

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  MELTDOWN IS a Special Agent Samantha Jameson serial thriller. It’s a story told in three parts. This is Part 1.

  This book picks up where my acclaimed novel Devolution left off. People say Devolution is “Right up there with James Patterson, David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille and Frederic Forsyth.” It's available everywhere online. If you haven't yet read it, just join the mailing list, and I'll send you a FREE e-copy of Devolution.

  If you haven’t yet read Devolution, don’t worry. I’ve written Meltdown as a standalone story, and I think you’ll enjoy it without having read the prequel.

  Like Devolution and The Incident, this book has some adult situations and a few edgy themes. Feel free to skip ahead if that’s not your thing.

  Enjoy!

  Lars

  PART 1

  Chapter 1

  Seattle, Washington

  Nobody leaves this life unscathed. There are plenty of scars to go around. That’s what Domingo Mondragon’s grandmother told him on the day he went to prison. Federal penitentiary. Three years ago, courtesy of the FBI. As in Fucking Bastards International, or Federal Bureau of I-hope-you-rot-in-hell.

  Also, FBI as in Domingo Mondragon’s current employer.

  It’s complicated.

  Most people knew him as Sabot. Which is to say, most people didn’t know him at all. Sabot was his hacker handle. If he’d been a little less prideful and a little more prudent, he’d never have done time. But Sabot wanted the world to know what he’d done, because he was proud of it.

  He shut down a government. Just for a day, just for fun. It was a rat-bastard kind of government, one of those bullshit Middle Eastern places, long on oil and backwards religious dogma but tragically short on moral compunction and social responsibility.

  Sabot fancied himself as comeuppance personified. From his Queens apartment, working at his kitchen table within earshot of his four live-in siblings and that infernal rattling refrigerator, Sabot organized the cyber attack that crashed every server they owned.

  Practically, it meant very little. The servers were back up again in a day or so. There wasn’t much lingering damage, except for a few exhausted techs who’d worked overtime in the bowels of the server farm to restore service.

  But it sent a message. Fuck the man. Fight the power. Thinking about the attack still gave Sabot a charge.

  And he’d had a lot of time to think about it. A little over a year, after the judge suspended most of his sentence to account for all of his cooperation.

  It was the cooperation that took the biggest toll. In exchange for years of his own life, Sabot turned rat. The conviction count stood at seventeen, with four more trials in various stages of completion.

  Twenty-one in all. It was a lot of friends to sell down the river. Enough to make Sabot look over his shoulder every once in a while. Most of those people were nerdy high school kids and twenty-something maladroits. But Sabot figured at least one or two had friends who knew how to fire a gun. So he kept his eyes open.

  The betrayals had been easy enough. “Just be yourself and do what you do,” Special Agent Adkins had told him as soon as he signed the plea bargain. “Just pretend we never met. And if you warn anybody of what you’re doing, the deal’s off. Not to be dramatic, but without a deal, you’ll probably die in prison. Just so you know where we’re coming from.”

  Compelling.

  Sabot behaved.

  While the FBI action hadn’t exactly devastated the ranks of the loosely-affiliated quasi-network of hackers known as Anonymous, the arrests had certainly sent a message. One might have the power to shut down an entire country’s computer network while watching old Tom and Jerry reruns, but karma might just shove itself right up your ass.

  Sabot missed New York, missed the intensity of a rebel’s life, missed the seedy low-rent neighborhood that was home, and missed the camaraderie of being a digital outlaw.

  More than that, he hated being owned. And he especially hated being owned by the organization he used to publicly taunt. That was tough on his pride.

  But the pay was pretty freaking good, especially for a man from the projects. Relative affluence had softened Sabot a bit. The cash buffed a few rough edges off of his personality. He realized there was a reason the middle class rarely revolted. Life just wasn’t that bad.

  Sabot hadn’t ever imagined himself as a Seattle resident. He was New York like baseball and fuck-you. But he was a supervised ex-convict employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ West Coast Cyber Task Force. Pretty sweet deal, all told.

  There was just one problem. The Bureau had taken away all of his computers. He wasn’t even allowed to own a smart phone. His handlers printed out reams of server logs and chat room conversations for him to pore over, using his exquisite knowledge of computer code and the seedy side of the internet to search for evidence of cybercrime, but he wasn’t allowed to do his own research, or even sit in front of a computer monitor.

  Managing temptation, the boss said. You could take the kid out of the projects, but you really couldn’t take the projects out of the kid. At least that’s what the Bureau suits thought.

  They probably weren’t wrong. Sabot had met a few bastards since his release whose lives he’d have loved to jack up. It had been very tempting, and it was remarkably easy to do. In less time than it took to watch a single Seinfeld rerun, Sabot could steal an unlucky mark’s bank account, credit card, email, and Facebook passwords. Most people didn’t know how truly fucked they’d be if someone locked them out of their own accounts, but Sabot knew. He’d done it to dozens of posers, pricks, and fellow perpetrators, back in the day.

  But those days were over. It wasn’t like the jail sentence ever went away. It was just suspended. They let him out early so The Man could benefit from his unique talents. If they ever decided he wasn’t playing ball, or if he got caught indulging his darker side, Sabot would find himself right back in the big house, fighting to avoid more prison sex.

  He stepped from his apartment stoop out into the Seattle drizzle. Always with the fucking rain. And what was with all the coffee shops in this town? Maybe the caffeine kept people’s spirits artificially elevated, preventing them from going bat shit crazy on account of the relentless drear. Maybe I should drink more coffee. He sometimes worried that he might be losing his marbles.

  Wasn’t much he could do about it. He wasn’t in a cage, but he wasn’t exactly free, either. The Bureau had him by the balls. Permanently.

  He opened his umbrella and rounded the corner, nearly running smack into the back of a long queue of people standing on the sidewalk.

  Strange.

  He stood on his toes to compensate for his diminutive stature, and peered toward the front of the gaggle. The line was apparently for the coffee shop. It was always busy, but Sabot had never seen it that busy.

  He sidestepped the line and walked past the coffee shop to catch his bus. Half a block later, he looked up from the pavement in front of his feet to see a similar situation outside the local breakfast cafe. People were stacked like cordwood, waiting for their morning muffin and pumpkin spice latte, or whatever the neo-yuppies ate for breakfast.

  “What’s going on?” he asked a put-upon lady in a black dress and oversized white sneakers.

  “Someone said something about the cash register being down,” she said.

  He grunted a
nd moved on. Didn’t want to miss his bus.

  He needn’t have worried. He arrived at his stop in plenty of time, but was chagrined to discover another flock of angry commuters. On a normal day, there were rarely more than a dozen people waiting at his stop. But today, there were upwards of fifty. They were loud, agitated, annoyed, and annoying.

  Sabot sidled up to the fringe of the gaggle and asked a guy in a business suit why the bus stop was so crowded.

  The man’s reply was puzzling. Not only was Sabot’s bus late, but the three preceding buses had also failed to show up.

  Sabot wondered why.

  “Haven’t you heard, buddy?” the man replied with an aggravated look. “The whole fucking world is melting down.”

  Chapter 2

  Lost Man Lake Ranch, Colorado

  The sun barged into the window, warming Protégé’s face. He awoke. The clock said eight thirty.

  Naked, stunning, and amazing, Allison snored softly next to him in bed, the covers barely covering her hips, her breasts beckoning for more carnal indulgence. Despite the tingle between his legs, he decided to let her sleep. After their midnight flight to Aspen in the old man’s private Gulfstream jet, they’d stumbled into bed a little more than three hours ago.

  He slipped out of bed, still exhausted but too curious to sleep. He tightened the curtains to seal out the sunlight, hoping to guarantee Allison a few more hours of uninterrupted rest, then padded quietly into the next room.

  He smelled coffee. A fresh pot had brewed itself, and Protégé helped himself to a cup.

  He hadn’t brought any clothes, but he figured it probably wouldn’t be a problem. The old man tended to think of everything.

  Protégé opened the closet door in the suite’s anteroom. It was full of clothes. His size. He put on a pair of cargo pants and a flannel shirt. Not really his style. He swore by Armani and power ties. Up until yesterday, anyway.

  But things were a bit different now.

  He used to be a buttoned-down CEO, promoted well ahead of his peers to the top of a large division of one of the world’s most powerful companies. It was a single day ago – really, just a few hours – but it may as well have been a lifetime. Already, Protégé found himself thinking of his job as being part of the past, part of a world that probably no longer existed.

  He poured a cup of coffee, opened the sliding glass door to the balcony, and stepped out into the crisp mountain air, taken aback once again by the spellbinding enormity of the peak that loomed large across the stark valley. The air was thin, cold, and invigorating. It felt like possibility, with a dash of danger.

  He’d had his fill of the latter. Life behind a big oak desk, with legions of kowtowing underlings at one’s beck and call, wasn’t entirely disagreeable, and Protégé’s recent foray into a far more physical, visceral, and unforgiving world had left him wondering about the wisdom of his decision to come along on Archive’s ride.

  Crazy old bastard. Protégé had half expected the plan to fail, and Archive himself freely admitted their odds were just a smidge better than even.

  He’d played his part, preserving his status with the wizened old tycoon, a billionaire multiple times over in various disparate industries, but a large part of Protégé had hoped the plan would fail. That way, they’d have avoided what was bound to be a very painful aftermath.

  Speaking of which.

  Protégé freshened his coffee, buttoned his shirt, slipped quietly from the room, and made his way to the vast sitting room on the lodge’s first floor.

  It was time to see just how successful they’d been, and to discover just how painful the aftermath might be.

  >>

  “My friend, it appears that we’ve summoned the kraken.” Though he hadn’t slept, not a hair on Archive’s ghost-white mane was out of place, and his signature goatee narrowed to a razor sharp point at its tip. He wore a perfectly tailored suit, also a signature item, and twirled his silver-topped walking cane absently as he sat in a plush leather armchair before a giant wall of televisions, each tuned to a different news station.

  Protégé felt dazzled and overwhelmed by all of the information in front of him, unintelligible text scrolling by like a giant ant army, and wondered how the old man didn’t have a seizure from all of the photonic stimulation.

  Protégé took a breath and settled his eyes on a single TV screen, slowly digesting the news loop’s import. “Motherfucker,” he said. “I guess we’ve made a bit of a mess. Chernobyl meets Wall Street.”

  “Precisely as we predicted,” Archive said with a small, satisfied smile. “Don’t tell anyone I’m pleased, though. I’ve ostensibly lost billions, and millions more by the second.”

  “Something tells me you’ll squeak by.”

  The old man chuckled. “Quite so.” He pushed a button on a remote control, and all of the screens coalesced to a single news station, the giant, panicked talking head cast larger than life on the ostentatious liquid crystal monolith hung on the wall.

  “Devastation,” the on-scene reporter said, the stately New York Stock Exchange building in view behind him. “Absolute devastation. For the first time since the terror attacks on 9/11, every American exchange is closed. Tokyo’s in free fall. The FTSE’s been nuked. I don’t even want to look at the dollar–”

  “Freefall is a great way to describe the dollar, too,” the anchor interjected. “I’m stunned. This is just… unbelievable.”

  “Unbelievable is right, Maria. Do we even have the mechanism to calculate the losses the US economy is experiencing right now? We might be a Third World country by noon.”

  Motion stirred behind the reporter, and the cameraman zoomed in on the main entrance to the exchange, where traders suddenly billowed out like well-tailored smoke from the doorway, in a mad dash to be somewhere else.

  “It looks like something’s happening behind you, Jim,” the anchor said.

  “I’m getting word here, Maria… I’m getting word that… Can this be correct? Can we confirm this before I announce it on national television, people?” The reporter’s eyes fixed on someone off-camera, and he put his finger to his earpiece.

  “It’s confirmed?” he said a second later. “Oh, my. Oh, my God.”

  Traders continued to charge out of the exchange, hailing cabs and running quickly to nearby subway stations.

  The reporter’s face turned ashen, and he took several breaths before continuing. “Maria, I think I’m getting an idea of where those traders are going. I’m getting word here that the Federal Reserve Bank is, uh… well, I’m told that the Fed, all twelve banks, is completely closed!”

  The news anchor was agape, speechless. “I can’t begin to fathom what that might mean,” she finally said. “The Federal Reserve Bank system lends cash to the member banks for daily operation. Without that short term cash…”

  “It’s unbelievable. I can’t believe this is happening,” the field reporter said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the anchor said, “this is truly a grave development. I just urge you to remain calm…” More panicked stock brokers dashed from the exchange, spilling out into the streets, charging headlong into traffic. “…and I’m sure we’ll get a better idea of what’s going on before too long…”

  Archive pushed the power button, and the giant screen died. “It begins.”

  “Still pleased as punch?”

  Archive mulled. He sighed. “A tad concerned now, to be terribly honest.”

  Protégé nodded. “It does seem to have a bit of an apocalyptic vibe about it.”

  Chapter 3

  Veteran’s Hospital, Washington, DC

  Special Agent Sam Jameson laid her head on Air Force Colonel Brock James’ chest, letting her blazing red hair fall over his body, hearing his heartbeat through the hospital linens, inhaling his scent, feeling the familiar warmth and contentment his being brought to hers.

  She pressed her pelvis into his, kissed his neck, and smiled as she felt his body respond through the hospi
tal sheets. She reached her hand to caress his rising manhood, kissing him tenderly and passionately.

  Together, they pulled her pants and underwear down, revealing her well-manicured femininity, framed by six-pack abs. She swung an athletic leg over his body, carefully avoiding his bandaged thigh and the bullet wound beneath, and guided his now-throbbing member inside her, pulling her shirt off, unleashing her well-proportioned breasts to enjoy the caresses of his tongue.

  Her pelvis undulated in short strokes, then she took in his full length, impaling herself on him, shuddering at the glorious sensation of his meaty cock sliding all the way inside, grinding her body into his, gasping with pleasure, kissing him with lust and abandon, fucking him with increasing desperation, feeling his pounding orgasm and his jets of warm liquid sex, fucking him harder and harder until her own breathless pleasure overtook her.

  She lay on his chest, gasping for breath, feeling his lips on her neck, smiling. “I thought I’d lost you,” she said.

  “You damn near did,” he said between pants. “I thought that guy with those crazy wolf eyes was going to snap me in half or put a bullet between my eyes.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t.”

  “I’m glad you saved the day,” he said.

  “Aw, shucks.” She laughed.

  The nurse walked in. Young, pretty, flirtatious, but embarrassed at the intrusion.

  “You should join us next time,” Sam said with a mischievous wink, not bothering to cover herself.

  The nurse blushed, taken aback, but clearly intrigued. “I’m flattered,” she said. “Sadly, I’m supposed to check your vitals and set you loose.”

  “Was it something we said?” Brock asked.