Black List

CHAPTER 61

ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION

MARYLAND

The shootings at the World War II Memorial were all over the news. Craig Middleton didn’t need to wait for identification to know to whom the bodies had belonged. He also didn’t need to wait for the late Martin Vignon to turn up in a drainage ditch somewhere to know he was the man in the black Suburban that witnesses saw carjacked and driven away. Middleton had been able to pull up just enough footage via the local traffic cameras to put it all together.

That said, the coverage of the actual event was pretty lousy and by the time he tried to track the SUV, all of its GPS systems had been immobilized. He wasn’t able to remotely activate Vignon’s phone either. Reed Carlton and Thomas Banks, both of whom should have been playing shuffleboard somewhere down in Florida, had killed three of his security team, taken his security chief hostage, and had made a clean fucking getaway. He was beyond pissed off.

He held no illusions as to what they were probably doing to Powder at this very minute, the poor bastard. He had pretty big balls, but everyone broke eventually. Sooner, rather than later, Vignon was going to give him up, which was why he had to move fast.

He had already made up his mind. Too much sand was getting in the gears. He had no idea if Harvath had helped in the ambush or not, but at this point, it didn’t matter. He needed to launch the attack. It was the only thing left that mattered.

Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed Schroeder again, but once more it went straight to voice mail. Of all the nights to have sent him home. God only knew where the man was or what he was doing, and Middleton shuddered at the thought. Schroeder’s personal life was not only a wreck; it was disgusting.

After copying the files he needed onto his portable drive, he removed a stack of currency from his office safe and dropped it into his briefcase along with the drive and his encrypted laptop. Then he turned his attention back to his computer and thought about the repercussions of what he was about to do.

Once the attack was launched, every corner of the country would descend into utter chaos, including D.C. His board members knew this and had scheduled a team-building exercise for members and their families at the retreat so they could be there safe, sound, and well stocked when pandemonium broke loose. Many had children and grandchildren across the country they were bringing with them. It gave them perfect cover and plausible deniability for why their loved ones would survive. They could watch the country melt down from the safety and warmth of Walworth, all without raising a single eyebrow, as the event had been planned months in advance.

But now, Middleton was about to unilaterally move up the date. The board would be very upset and would have to scramble. Staring at his screen, he tried to figure out a way they could all mobilize their families yet avoid revealing that they had advance knowledge of the attack.

As his mind sorted through the options, an entirely different thought came to him. What if the board disagreed? What if they didn’t want to launch immediately? What if they wanted to wait a week, or two? It would be a disaster and he couldn’t allow that to happen.

He rolled it around the hallways of his mind a little more, and then it hit him. The best way for him to get what he wanted was simply to avoid blame. There was no reason the attack couldn’t go early, as long as he had a scapegoat. Of course, that’s exactly what he and the board had been positioning the Carlton Group to be, at least publicly. What he needed was a scapegoat inside ATS; someone to take the blame completely for the attack being launched prematurely. Not only did he have such a person, he had someone who would never contradict any of the narrative he was rapidly crafting in his head. That was the great thing about dead men, or more specifically, dead women—they told no tales.

All he had to do was make it look like Caroline Romero had not only discovered what they were up to but had attempted to thwart them by hiding her own program within their attack package. The board didn’t have enough technological savvy to even begin to investigate such a charge on their own. If he told them that was what she had done, they would believe him.

He’d explain that she had inserted what she thought was a time bomb into their software, but in reality it turned out to be a fifty-gallon drum of accelerant and a pack of lit matches. In attempting to stop ATS, she had actually sped up the attack. And the way the program was written, once the horse was out of the barn, there was no getting it back.

It was brilliant, and a smile quickly spread across Middleton’s face. Pouring himself a scotch, he sat back down at his desk, flexed his fingers, and pulled up Caroline Romero’s workstation on his computer. All he had to do was backdate a small amount of digital evidence. Once the attack package began running, it destroyed itself, so even if someone wanted to challenge him by searching for Caroline’s Trojan Horse, there’d be nothing to find. It would be like looking through the remains of a nitroglycerin factory for a match. Once it had been vaporized, you were never going to find it.

Within an hour, Middleton had sprinkled just the right amount of bread crumbs, most of them buried so deep they’d probably never be found. Not that it mattered. Once he gave the board the heads-up that the attack had been set in motion, all they would care about was getting themselves and their families to the safety of the estate in Virginia.

Pouring himself another scotch, he shot off a handful of e-mails and ran through the script he had prepared. Then, after inserting one of his Crypto Cards into the STE on his desk, he dialed the first board member.

“Allan, it’s Craig,” he said when the call went through. “We need to talk.”