Black Point Read online
Table of Contents
Title Page
Black Point
Acknowledgments
BLACK | POINT
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PART ONE
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PART TWO
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PART THREE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Black Point
Copyright © 2020 by Sam Cade
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-7352133-0-9
Published by: Black Point Press
Interior formatting and cover art by: Rising Sign Books
Acknowledgments
There are some that can put a book together A to Z all by themselves. I’m not one of them. Thank you World Wide Web! Here are some wonderful folks I’ve met there.
Katie Salidas (Las Vegas). Katie is an author as well as a freelancer on all aspects of indie book publishing. She lives neck-deep in that world. She took my artwork and turned it into a nice cover as well as formatted the manuscript for this book. Check her out on katiesalidas.com. Find her book Go Publish Yourself! on Amazon.
Walton Jones (Asheville, NC). Walton is a cryptocurrency specialist (Bitcoin and Monero) and is well acquainted with the Tor browser, VPN, and encrypted verbal and written communication. I had a fun conversation with him. If you suddenly find yourself needing to go off the grid, call him. But, there’s no telling what name he’s going by now.
Laurie Kelly (Lone Tree, CO). Laurie is retired from decades as Director of Compliance for a large commercial bank. She’s a Certified Anti Money Laundering Specialist.
Brian Pfeifer (Tallahassee, FL). Master’s Mechanical Engineering. Ph.D. Civil Engineering. Quality Forensic Engineering, LLC. Brian was very generous with his time listening to my plan for a mechanical malfunction in a school bus crash.
Rae Owens (Medford, NY). Rae is a Squarespace specialist and created a website for me. Find her at raeowens.com.
BETA READERS. These people are well-educated and always have a book or three going at all times.
Julie Booth (Arlington, VA). Catholic University of America. Masters’ Library and Information Science.
Kristin Brown (Royston, GA). Emory University.
Richard Franklin (Mt. Laurel Township, NJ) Duke University. University of Pennsylvania, J.D. Law. Richard’s wife Kathy Franklin also read it and offered supportive input.
Margarita Martinez (Albuquerque, NM) M.A. English. Fifteen plus years as an editor, proof reader, and copy editor. She beta read the manuscript.
Laura Holstein (Nokesville, VA). Johns Hopkins. Former intelligence analyst and wife of white-hat hacker. Loves crime and mystery novels.
Linda Kopaciewicz (Fairhope, AL). Linda is a friend and coworker of mine. She’s read more books in more genres than anyone I know.
Courtney Watson (Roanoke, VA) Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Ph.D., English. A well-published writer and has written and edited creative work for 10 plus years. Teaches at the level of Master of Fine Arts.
BLACK
POINT
1
Mission Beach, San Diego, California
November 20, 2018
“WE KILLED YOUR DADDY! I know How. I know Who. I know All of it.”
Lucky’s phone chimed behind him as he faded in and out on the couch, casually watching a FOX News story about an ISIS attack. He reached blindly over his shoulder, grabbed the phone off the lampstand and read the text.
He studied the words, thought about it, and wasn’t up for any nonsense. He looked at the sender’s number. Local, but he didn’t recognize it. And very few people had his number.
He held the phone above his face, punched in a question with his right pointer finger. Who is this? Tapped Send.
The response was immediate. Message Blocked.
Huh.
It was 9:45 p.m. on a lazy, cold Tuesday night at the beach, fifty-three degrees outside when the text hit. A tangy brine sifted through the small flat emanating from Lucky’s damp wetsuit strewn over his surfboard in the corner. Three hours ago, after a two-mile open ocean swim, he finished the afternoon surfing through a blazing California sunset until the night became too black to see.
Lucky’s day had been exhausting, just like the previous day and the one before that. The morning started at 6:00 a.m. with seventy-five minutes of exercise to defuse his aggression and curb the hypervigilance, then nine solid hours of thinking, online research, meeting
s with bankers, and sending emails and business plans to venture capitalists, all with the goal of receiving funding to create an elite worldwide security firm, Knight Force.
Life did to Lucky what life can do to a man. Go from exceptional to dismal in a single heartbeat, vaporizing in one unexpected moment. His birthright, the family business, had been decimated, bankrupted. And now his father, the CEO, suffered a horrifying death.
Thanksgiving was two days away. Lucky was anything but thankful.
In his forties, and now he was starting life from scratch. That was never the plan.
The opportunity to land a significant business investment became dimmer by the day. His sleep was poor, his energy level waning, and his appetite was down to nothing. His mind raced much of the day. Depression. Anxiety. He knew that. See a doctor? No way. He’d made a living forcing his mind to do what he needed it to do for survival. But, now? Frustration was peaking.
For the first time in his life Lucky wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything.
His apartment was the cheapest 650 square feet he could find in Mission Beach. Furnishings were mostly detritus from the Goodwill store on Rosecrans. The only new items were a mattress delivered in a box and a HD television, both ordered off the internet.
Two empty beer bottles and a mostly eaten microwave lasagna sat on the coffee table on a stack of Tactical Weapons magazines. A bookmark from Warwick’s in La Jolla poked out of the last chapter of the rocket fueled thriller The Terminal List, by Jack Carr, a former SEAL and a friend of Lucky’s. Badass James Reece was laying some wood on people who needed it.
Lucky sat up, ready to ditch the dinner trash, hit the hay for real and pray for sleep to come. Gusts off the Pacific rattled the sliding glass door in its frame as his phone rang. He glanced at the screen. Same number as the text, no name, same exchange as his phone number. He’d been expecting a call all afternoon from a retired naval captain in Washington. This wasn’t him.
Still mulling the previous text, he punched accept. “Yes.” Lucky’s tone curt.
“That get your attention?”
He didn’t recognize the voice. A local-looking call, but was it? He wondered about a spoof. If so, the caller could be sitting in the apartment next door or two states away. He thought, fucking with me, you better be masquerading.
“Who is this?” said Lucky. Expected to hear, “Sorry, man, wrong number.” But he didn’t.
“For the sake of the matter, call me Zeus.”
Zeus wasn’t two states away, he was five states away sitting in a high-mileage twelve-year old Subaru wagon in the parking lot of the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi talking on a throwaway cell phone he bought thirty minutes earlier at Walmart. His fingers were still greasy from the two McDonald’s fried apple pies he ate just before dialing Lucky.
“Zeus, the god of sky, lightning, and thunder,” said Lucky as he felt the first twinge of irritation.
“You know mythology. Smart guy, but I knew you would be.”
Lucky snorted. “So, tell me. What did happen? Think I missed it.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t miss it. Your dad did nothing wrong and yet forty-five years of your father’s blood and sweat were wiped out by a lawyer. Now he’s dead. And that practically makes us brothers.”
“Brothers?” Lucky coughed out a short laugh. “And how’s that?”
“My family was also destroyed by a lawyer.”
“So what do you want to do? Start a therapy group? Meet in a circle in a church basement once a week and talk about our feelings?”
Zeus laughed. “Little more than that, my friend. I want to be made whole. And more than that, I want to get even. And you’re the perfect guy to bring into the scheme.”
“The scheme?” Lucky took the last sip of his beer, the third bottle of the night, and laid back down to talk. “I like that. Diabolical. You almost sound like a scary guy, Zeus. And what is this scheme?”
“Well, before I get into that I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a small deep-background detail that should bring focus to the issue.”
“And what’s that?”
“Your dad’s trial. It was rigged.”
“Rigged?” Lucky shook his head. “Where’d you come up with that crap?”
“Sorry, jack, it’s true.” Zeus heard Lucky’s building ire. “Here’s the deal. I didn’t just come up with it. I know who rigged it and exactly how it was rigged.”
“Who?”
“Me... I was hired to do it.”
Lucky tensed. He’d been in the Middle East when the proceedings took place, but he’d studied every word of the trial transcript numerous times.
“Let’s leave that and move forward to reparations if you don’t mind,” said Zeus. “One hundred million dollars for me and you. You keep eighty percent. I keep twenty percent. I could make do on five but giving you almost the whole enchilada sounds desperate on my end.”
“Hold on a minute... Zeus. I need to grab another beer. I had no idea a lunatic would be calling tonight, or I’d have been ready.”
Lucky, wearing sweatpants and a Padre’s tee, padded to the kitchen, grabbed two long necks out of the fridge, a pretzel bag off the counter, bumped the thermostat up three degrees cause his feet were cold, came back and picked up the phone.
He wondered if he knew this guy. He knew some people that might screw with him for fun. But over the tragic death of his father? The bankrupt family business? No way.
“Okay, I’m back. Almost scared to ask. Why are you calling me?”
“Simple. I can do things you can’t do, and you can do things I can’t do. And I believe we have a common goal. Symbiotic you might say.”
Lucky considered that, took a bite of pretzel, washed it down with a swig of beer. “Me and you, symbiotic.” Lucky chuckled. “So, Mr. Zeus, God of Gods, what can you do?”
“I’m somewhat of a financial Houdini. I can shift money around the globe, quickly evading procedures put in place by agencies that track funds, all of which have become increasingly tightened since 9/11. I’m an expert in most global currencies and I have had some involvement in cryptocurrency since its inception. I use multiple identities, multiple countries, multiple banks, multiple anonymous shell corporations. All of this creates a complex ‘Where’s Waldo’ scenario for any agency trying to follow the money. My moves are sophisticated subterfuge that create confusion. But, ultimately, I can provide clean funds for our individual uses.”
“Uh huh, right. Subterfuge. Good word. Are you reading that crap from a Brad Thor novel?” Lucky snorted a cynical laugh. “And so, bigshot, what money are you talking about?”
“The money? I’ll get to that. I need you for one single reason. The dirty work.”
“Okay, the dirty work.” Lucky took a slug of beer. “Now what would that be?”
“You kill people.”
Lucky didn’t say a thing. Zeus let the silence hang a couple of beats.
“I’ve studied you thoroughly, Lucky. My skills are way above average with a computer and a phone line. I’m a data-base addict. I retrieve documentation no one is supposed to get to. I love gobs of outlandish and seemingly unconnected information. I analyze data and unravel puzzles. Extremely complex puzzles.”
“Well, how about this, Einstein? I know how to search the internet, too.”
Zeus exhaled loudly. “Well, here’s the thing about life. You just don’t know what you don’t know. And I guarantee you this, Lucky, there is a lot you don’t know. It’s not stupidity, I’m not saying that. You’re a Naval Academy grad. You just haven’t been taught.”
Zeus continued. “Let me start here. I know your history since high school twenty-five years ago. I know you scored eleven touchdowns as a wide receiver on a team with a hotshot quarterback. You were the starting point guard on a high school runner-up in the basketball state championship your senior year. You started at second base your junior and senior years, batted .392. Good enough to make the Navy team. Graduated number
two in your high school class. And number twenty-eight at Navy, which puts you in the top three percent. I know your aviation history. I know you’re rated to fly the twin turboprop King Air as well as two Lear jets. I know your grades in every class in high school and the Naval Academy.”
“I know what your father’s business grossed each of the last ten years, what his capital expenditures were, what the profits were, his complete customer list, every employee. I know your mother’s philanthropic interests and where she’s spent some of the family’s money.”
“I know your eyesight, although very good, didn’t cut it for the military aviation standards. Then you chose an even harder route, special ops. And I gotta say, you guys are some wacked-out, scary dudes.”
Lucky nursed his beer quietly, getting pissed.
Who is this motherfucker digging deep into my life?
“Here’s what I suggest,” said Zeus. “Think about this. The top 100 litigators in America have a total net worth of $4 billion dollars. We should be able to slide a measly $100 million out of them. Eighty million to you. I’m estimating now, okay, but at least eighty. Crumbs to me.”
“And how does that plan work, money man?” Lucky snorted at his snide remark.
“We rip every single dollar out of their cold greedy fingers. That’s how.”
Lucky digested this nonsense.
He let the call go silent as something hit him hard. Traipsing through the Middle East, South America, Eastern Europe, that was business. A job. This crazy fucker here was talking about his family. This was personal. His fists clenched at the mention of his father.
“You still there?” said Zeus.
Lucky’s mind stepped back in time forty years. It was one of those obscure memories that can hide unseen for years in the depths of our brain and pop up randomly. His first-time riding in the cab of a big tractor trailer with his dad. He was four years old with a metal Dr. Seuss lunch box that carried a ham sandwich, chocolate chip cookies, and two juice boxes. He had no idea where they went that day, just that it was the greatest moment of his life.
Son, you and I will grow this company together when you get home from the Navy. That’s been a lifelong dream for me. Lucky remembered the exact moment his father spoke those words, eighteen years after his first ride in the truck, on graduation day in Annapolis.
“Yep, I’m here,” said Lucky with a distracted tone.
“Out of the blue, this is a lot on you. Watch your email tomorrow. I will send you stone cold documentation of how it went down. Every single detail. It will be hard to take, but you’ll know what you have to do.”
Black Point