Authors: David Vinjamuri
“What?”
“They’re broke. They must have bet everything on the energy scheme. We think it was all supposed to be invested by Jason Paul, because he would be dead at the end, right? But the investments never got made and the cash disappeared. Right now the National Front can’t even afford to pay their lawyers.”
“So Eric Price is headed to jail?”
“We hope so, but it will be a long process. He was very careful not to get his hands dirty. We’re hoping to flip someone in the National Front. That may be the only way that we get him.”
“That’s disturbing,” I said.
“Washington is livid.”
“What about Jason Paul? Did you figure out if he’s dead or alive?”
Nichols shook her head. “We haven’t, at least not conclusively. But there’s a huge amount of money missing, so we think he faked his death. He must have been planning this for a long time because he really did disappear without a trace.”
“And he’s the one responsible for all the agents who were lost.”
“We’ll find him. Whatever it takes.”
“What about you? Do you know what’s next?”
“It’s hard to say. I’m going to be decorated for our actions. There’s been a lot of publicity. The Bureau and the West Virginia State Police have been showered with praise. It’s amazing, though, that your name hasn’t surfaced in a single article.”
“My old boss is an expert at keeping a low profile. It sounds like you were about to say ‘but’?”
“ButI didn’t do things the Bureau way. I’ve been told that in no uncertain terms.”
“That’s ridiculous. You stopped half the country from going dark. I wouldn’t have put things together on my own nearly as quickly as you did.”
“I doubt that.” Nichols smiled.
“I may have—I mean I have—I think...” I stumbled. Nichols cocked her head and I composed myself. “I don’t know how you’re going to react to this, but I talked to a friend at the Bureau in D.C. His name is Dan Menetti. He’s just been put in charge of the Counterterrorism division. I gather it’s been a mess there, but he has a pretty broad mandate to turn things around. He’d like to talk to you if you’re interested.”
Nichols stopped abruptly. “Am I interested? Seriously? Do you think I’m an idiot or something?”
“I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about me pulling strings for you.”
“I’m not twelve. I appreciate help from my friends.”
“So we’re friends?” I asked.
She patted me on the cheek as we reached her Suburban. “Play your cards right and some day we might even be good friends. See you tonight.”
* * *
The sun hung low over the horizon and the afternoon air bit crisply. I stood with Alpha beneath the shade of an old oak on the National Front compound. We were in the back yard of the family mansion on the far end of the property.
“I thought you’d want to see this, sir. This is where Heather is buried.”
“Are you certain?”
“We won’t know conclusively until they get her out of the ground but I think so, yes. The FBI had cadaver dogs all over the compound for a few days before someone thought to check the family house. The earth right here has been dug up within the past two weeks. They used ground-penetrating radar yesterday to confirm that the remains of an adult human female are buried here. A bunch of men died last week over at the compound, but she would have been the only woman. I held off the medical examiner because I thought you’d want to come here first. Heather’s mother will come tomorrow if she’s recognizable enough to identify. Unless you want to spare her that.”
Alpha looked at me, raised his eyebrows.
“Heather
is
your daughter, after all,” I said.
He exhaled slowly and completely. “Was it obvious?”
“It was a lot to ask for a friend’s child, so I wondered. I guess I was thrown off at first by her last name. But when I met Eric Price, he said something about you and Colonel Hernandez in a way that made me wonder if you’d had a falling out. Then one of the National Front people told me Heather’s biological father had left when she was young and Colonel Hernandez was her step-dad. Heather found out about you recently, I take it?”
Alpha nodded. “We had lunch two weeks before she left home to join Reclaim. I hadn’t seen her since she was three. Her mother remarried quickly. Hernandez was a friend but we didn’t speak after he started seeing my ex-wife. Then I was deployed overseas for a number of years. Heather’s mother persuaded me to sign the legal papers allowing Hernandez to adopt her. Did Harmon kill her?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me at the end, but he may have. You’ll have to wait for the medical examiner to tell you exactly how she died. I’d bet she was killed because of the warning she sent to her parents. Heather was brave. And whether Harmon killed her or not, it was his fault. He never should have brought her here.”
We stood there in silence for a while before I turned to leave. Then Alpha started to speak.
“You helped avert a catastrophe. Given the gas shortages in New Jersey right now, you can imagine how much worse things would have been if the refinery had been damaged.”
“The aftermath of the hurricane seems pretty awful as it is.”
“I know you’ve had some...difficulties...with your job at State. The right people know what you did here. I’ve taken steps to ensure you’re protected.”
“Thank you, sir, but it’s not necessary. I’d prefer to succeed or fail on my own merits.”
Alpha shook his head. “It won’t work that way whether I intercede or not.”
“Maybe.”
“You have another question,” he said. His voice was as still as the oaks around us.
“No. The rest is between you and Heather.” I turned again to leave, but he continued.
“Heather’s mother and I met in high school. We married just before I enlisted. I spent the first two years of my marriage in Vietnam and Laos. Heather was a surprise. Her mother didn’t think she could have children by that time. She came along just at the moment my career was starting to accelerate. I was young, ambitious and impulsive. When Heather’s mother and I had fights, I got very angry. Once I hit her.
“When she was three, Heather was playing with a bottle of ketchup about an hour before my promotion ceremony to Major. I asked her to put the bottle down. Instead she threw it at me and it spilled on my only dress uniform. I slapped her. Very hard. The look on her face will never leave me. Her mother was just coming down the stairs when I did it. She took Heather up in her arms and walked out the front door. It was more than twenty years before I saw either one of them again.”
I looked him straight in the eye for a second, then withdrew. He stood in the lengthening shadows as I drove away.
Sources
Master Sergeant Rodney Cox was an invaluable source of information. He read the entire manuscript and reread numerous versions of the action sequences to help me get the technical details right. His contribution of personal time was especially generous considering his rapidly expanding duties at SWCS in Fort Bragg. Thanks also to Captain Steve Gettman at Fort Leavenworth for his insights at the range and creative ideas for
Binder
.
A special thanks to my friends at Blackhawk!/ATK including Chuck Buis and Tim Brandt as well as Matt Rice and Greg Duncan of Blue Herron Communications for their thoughts and recommendations on gear.
Joe Vlasak was kind enough to lend his experience with freight trains.
Walter Harris, whose expertise in systems administration and coding is monopolized by Goldman Sachs during the day, helped me with the details for the National Front’s server room. His sideline as a private pilot was also invaluable, although he points out that like Special Agent Nichols, he is not rated on the G650.
My research assistant, Elizabeth Kelley, worked with meteorologists from the National Weather Service in West Virginia to help me understand the bizarre and quickly changing weather that the state experienced in the days leading up to Hurricane Sandy. Elizabeth unearthed significant climate differences between West Virginia locations very near to one another. While I have made some minor changes for dramatic purposes, my intent in this book was to be as true to the actual weather as possible.
Bridge Day in 2012 was on October 20
th
, not October 27
th
, so it preceded the storm by more than a full week. I hope that Bridge Day enthusiasts can forgive me rewriting the timeline to put Bridge Day into the narrative. The proximity of the bridge to the other events in this book made it irresistible.
The communes, cults and compounds described in this book are invented. While I did a great deal of research on environmental protest groups, socialist communes and supremacist groups, I created wholly fictional groups and characters for
Binder
. Although there are supremacist groups in the region, no real-life analogue to the National Front exists in terms of methods or organization.
West Virginia is sometimes caricatured in the media, but my personal experience of the state has always been one of unfailing hospitality and kindness. It is one of the most beautiful places in the U.S. While I have set some very bad and desperate events in the state, West Virginia residents should note that outsiders perpetrate most of these acts in the book. This is my reading of the history of the state, as well.
I intentionally limited my descriptions of explosive devices and altered some technical details. Please forgive the inaccuracies but understand their intent.
Thanks again to those others who contributed and cannot be named. Any technical errors that remain in
Binder
are mine alone.
Acknowledgements
My indie writer’s life started when I realized that I could compare over a dozen editing samples before I picked my dream editor. Rebecca Faith Heyman has been that great collaborator for the past two thrillers. Louise Darvid’s painstaking proofreading was called out in several reader reviews of
Operator
, as was Stef Mcdaid’s exceptionally clean Kindle conversion, and they’ve both reprised their roles for
Binder
.
Jothan Cashero brought his keen commercial packaging design skills to the book cover for
Binder
, as he did for
Operator
.
When I was working on my first thriller eighteen years ago, Jo Greenfield, fresh from finishing her M.F.A. at Columbia and publishing a story in the
New Yorker
gave me memorable advice on writing, which I rely on to this day.
A Pubslush campaign helped make this book possible. Thanks to my friends from Staples who supported
Binder
, including the eponymous John McCarthy (from the prologue), Ray Larney, Brad Hurley, Joan Robins Brady and Heather Belaga McLean. Also thanks to some other friends who also made this book possible: Mike Mills, Connie Greenfield, Paul Koulogeorge, Dan Goldstein, the author Seeley James and Stan Chan. And thanks to my family members—Leslie, Jill, Mom, Sumati, Karina and Courtney—who helped support
Binder
.
Finally, my eternal love and gratitude goes to my wife Michelle, who continues to support my fiction writing as a sideline to teaching and training even when her own two jobs and our two young children make it all seem impossible.
About the Author
After a brief stint as an intelligence analyst, David spent nearly 20 years working with corporate brands. He writes for Forbes, teaches at New York University and loves reading and the outdoors.
Visit David’s profile on Forbes
Visit David’s Amazon author page
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