Hard Way Home: Deep State Down, #1

By Christa Wick and Dana Fraser

Two strangers. Almost no chance of survival. Even less hope. When a massive cyber breach hits every U.S. hydroelectric station just as the Gulf Coast refineries are decimated by a volatile storm, the attack knocks out the nation's entire power supply, instantly throwing America into a deadly new dark age.

 

For Army veteran Cash Bishop, getting back to his family before it's too late becomes a fight to survive in a race against time. His only ally? A brilliant energy scientist who may be the only person still alive with more things to be afraid of than the impending apocalypse.

 

Dr. Hannah Carter doesn't know who's after her or when she became a target. But getting captured is not an option. Seems the stranger she meets on her dangerous cross-country trek is the only person she can trust now to help get her home. And keep her alive.

 

With chaos escalating and the country on the brink of collapse, Cash and Hannah need to figure out who executed the attacks on the U.S. power grid, and why these people are so willing to kill him to get to her.

 

The DEEP STATE DOWN series consists of: Hard Way Home (85K), Dark Road Back (125K), and is also available as the Deep State Down bundle

Hard Way Home previously published as Long Haul Home © 2016 by Dana Fraser from the serial trilogy of Blind Spot © 2016 | Down Shift © 2016 | Dead Head © 2016.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christa Wick
• Release date: Jan 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224238446

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Algorithm of the American Apocalypse

Standing at the window of his Brussels hotel suite, Thomas Sand stared at his shaking hand while lighting his first cigarette in over a month. He blew on the match, extinguishing its flame, then pulled a long drag of nicotine-filled smoke into his lungs.

Closing his eyes, he tilted his face upward and exhaled slowly.

Sorry, Becca, he said, the room empty and the woman named thousands of miles away in South Carolina.

He took another pull, promising himself he would snuff out the cigarette before it was half finished then toss it and the rest of the pack down the trash chute. He had broken too many promises to his wife during the last three years of building his company. Quitting smoking would not be one of them.

But damn him if his technical team wasn't grinding away at his self control, their latest screw up coming mere hours before he was scheduled to demonstrate his threat assessment software to a dozen NATO representatives. He wouldn't get another chance for months. With the thirty-two million in venture capital he had won from flashing his Army medals all but depleted, he wouldn't get another chance, period.

Savoring his last smoke-filled breath, Thomas flicked his middle finger against the cigarette's cherry. The burning clump of tobacco landed in the ashtray's center as he mechanically placed the remaining half of the cigarette in its pack.

Turning back to his laptop, he refreshed the display. The numbers and charts that had driven him to having the concierge send up a pack of smokes had changed, but only slightly and entirely for the worse.

He fished his phone from his pocket and tapped out the number to Mara Grant. She picked up on the third ring, her voice low and seductive as she greeted him.

Good morning, Thomas. Do you want me?

The playful twist to her question heated his cheeks. He looked up at the paneled white ceiling, his mind broadcasting yet another apology to his wife. Becca had warned him months ago that the blonde in charge of herding his development team had her sights set on a completely different position. He had been too caught up in getting a working beta finished and arranging the meetings in Brussels to take Becca seriously.

If he was being honest with himself, he hadn't taken his wife seriously or spent much time with her for the better part of the last two years, ever since development on the threat assessment app had begun in earnest.

The beta is supposed to be live, he answered Mara tersely. I'm looking at a simulator instead, a version I haven't seen or cleared.

A few seconds of silence passed and then he heard Mara switch her phone over to speaker followed by the tapping of her fingers with their long red nails against the screen.

We don't have any uncleared simulators, she started. And I have email confirmation that they uploaded the beta and finished testing yesterday at eleven p.m. Pacific.

Then the server reset the app—again.

Thomas, I...

Wake up every last one of the developers, he growled. Now!

He hit the power button, ending the call as he simultaneously resisted the urge to fling the device and snatch up the pack of cigarettes.

His gaze jumped around the room in search of a calming distraction. The suite he had booked for the week was grotesquely expensive, the fine furniture and impressive views meant to relax and instill confidence in the NATO representatives attending his sales pitch.

At his request, hotel staff had rearranged the seating to ensure that the ten men and two women of the Security Committee's working group would face the room’s picture window. Thomas would stand in front of the window, his position memorized down to the inch so that his guests would see the Hôtel de Ville's statue of St. Michael perched on Thomas's shoulder, the archangel eternally frozen as he pierced the devil with his spear.

Like St. Michael, Thomas was in the business of defeating evil. Nominally, so were his guests. In terms of subtle persuasion, the strategy was as golden as the statue.

Mara's signature knock sounded at the suite's door, her fingernails softly striking the wood three times in rapid succession.

Come in, he barked.

Mara slid the access card he'd given her through the reader then entered, her thin figure wrapped in a red, sleeveless sheathe dress.

Wear the navy, he corrected. The red distracts.

Her painted lips curved in a smile suggesting she had misinterpreted his statement.

When will the beta be up? he snapped, his baritone rumbling in his chest. Had the woman been this obvious before Brussels or was she dialing up the seduction now that his wife was an ocean away?

Koji assured me it already is. She breezed by Thomas to wrap her hands around his computer and walk it over to the coffee table. I'm checking to see if you have a caching issue. That's when⁠—

I know what it means.

Mara smiled again, all signs of predation wiped from the expression and replaced with a tremor of worry. She hadn't earned the role of technical supervisor because of her expertise with building applications. She was a pretty piece of meat who would unerringly follow whatever script he handed her when it came time to woo the venture capitalists. The actual coders on her team, every last one of them male, also competed to impress her in the way all geeks compete—in timely delivered hexadecimal notation.

Her gaze dropped to his computer display then bounced back and forth between the laptop and her smartphone.

I can confirm this is the beta, she said, flashing her phone at him.

Her words lifted the fine hairs along the back of his neck.

Get out, he ordered.

His sharp tone narrowed her features.

Get out, he repeated more calmly. Change into the blue.

He nodded at his laptop. I need to look at this alone.

Thomas waited until Mara stiffly shut the door behind her, then he carried the laptop to the windowsill where the sun warmed the room. He was fifty-six years old, no longer interested in running around the globe or being away from his familiar creature comforts. He was supposed to be on a Hilton Head beach with Becca after having twice postponed their annual vacation to the island to deal with a crisis at his start-up.

Now the crisis was not his company.

It was his country.

Absently, he reached for the pack of cigarettes, his fingers plucking out one that still had its full length. Lighting it, he kept his gaze on St. Michael then took his first few drags contemplating the statue that looked more alien than angel.

When he had sucked enough nicotine into his body that his nuts didn't feel quite so tight, he lowered his gaze to the beta display. On paper, the application was simple. First construct a set of threat assessment algorithms that covered everything from current and upcoming weather patterns to the number of visits a certain website received or how many times a particular phrase appeared on the internet and in text messages for the last few weeks. Then provide a constant, real-time feed to the application of all data sources available to the subscriber (from public to top secret). Individual users could further define their area of responsibility—ground traffic, disease control, power grid, terrorism—and receive real-time threat assessments with compiled summaries and an ability to drill down to discrete data points.

The beta in front of him represented two years of actively developing the necessary algorithms and AI-assisted search spiders, plus amassing a huge server farm capable of handling the constant deluge of data. Until he secured any government contracts, only public data flowed into the servers.

Even without access to the government's secured data, the beta was bathed in red and orange for the Americas feed. Hurricane Otto had made landfall, its eye and Category 5 winds hovering over Galveston. Power was out from the storm as far west as San Antonio and, to the east, the still beleaguered New Orleans. The fuel gathering centers and processing plants along the coast were offline with reports of structural damage at some of the plants.

The National Weather Service was predicting that Otto would swing east, hugging the coast with no reduction in winds. Tampa was painted with the next bull’s eye. If it hit there, all of Florida could go dark.

Thomas stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. Taking in a long draw, he thought of his wife again. He had missed calling her the night before and she hadn't corrected his lapse by texting him.

He stared at his phone next to him on the windowsill.

Too early to call her.

Too late to say he was sorry.

Scowling at the computer's display, he clicked on the west side of the country where a fat red dot blinked along the Arizona-Nevada border, a ring of light pink spreading from its epicenter all the way into California. Hoover Dam, capable of generating four terawatts and serving over a million homes and businesses, was offline.

He clicked the red dot and quickly scanned the summary. A security breach had been detected, a computer virus loaded from inside the facility with a countdown timer. Once activated, the power would go out, but not until after surges had damaged the transformers, turbines and control gates. The virus had been caught in time but had to be scrubbed from the servers before the dam resumed operations.

Seeing that the authorities had already taken a suspect into custody, he clicked on the woman's name. The threat assessment application offered more links, their priority evident by whether they were red, orange, yellow, blue or green. Figuring the red would be coverage of the arrest, he clicked orange to find her LinkedIn profile.

The woman, Amy Pike, was a Bureau of Reclamation Safety Inspector. That gave her access to more than one dam. Clicking the yellow link gave him the last three months of her social media shares, which was about the time when she had suddenly started criticizing the U.S. government's actions in the Middle East. She had also gotten engaged to one Abdul Rafi Khayat shortly before the tone of her posts had changed.

Clicking back to the main map on the threat assessment application, he found more of the western portion of the country lighting up with yellow dots. He recognized the location of the Grand Coulee and John Day dams and figured the other dots were hydroelectric stations as well, ones that Amy Pike had visited in the last three months.

With a slow blink, he moved on to the orange shaded zones scattered around the country that he had bypassed earlier.

…a surge in attempts by individuals on the no-fly list to buy plane tickets.

…an increase in pro-ISIS chatter by American residents and visa holders.

…a spike in assault rifle sales.

…over three dozen loitering arrests in the last two months at various airports by young men and women of Middle Eastern descent who could demonstrate no legitimate reason for being at the airport.

His pulse slowed, more than two decades of combat training and field experience narrowing his focus for survival.

Family first.

Thomas snatched up cellphone. Two taps later and he was dialing Becca’s number.

No ring, no voicemail.

Nothing.

He checked the signal on his phone to see all five bars at full strength. He tapped through his contacts to reach his son, Ellis.

A measure of relief eased into his chest as the phone rang on the other end.

Then the voicemail kicked in.

I'm not answering the phone now because everyone sucks. If you mistakenly think you're one of the few people who don't suck, go ahead and leave a message. Just don't expect me to listen, reply, or generally give a shit.

Thomas forced his grip on the phone to relax as he waited for the beep. He'd already popped the glass out of one device on a call with his son. He had a deep concern that getting the phone fixed or replaced was about to become extremely problematic, if not impossible.

Get your gear together, he growled into the phone after the beep. Start with your bug-out bag. I will be on a flight out of Brussels today. Becca or I will be at the school to pick you up. This is not a drill. Do not fuck around.

Thomas hung up before remembering to tell the melodramatic, juvenile delinquent he had fathered and raised that he loved him. He tapped through to redial, a fresh knot blossoming in his chest as he got the same static silence as he had in calling Becca’s number.

Returning his attention to the laptop, he refreshed his screen. Outage reports for cellular services were popping up all over the map.

Opening his administrator account for the application, he went to the invite tab and typed in the private email addresses of the top U.S. government and military officials who knew him personally and were in a position to get things done.

Next he opened his email server and repeated the list of addresses before turning his attention to the subject line.

IMMEDIATE ATTENTION - MASSIVE ATTACKS IMMINENT

He pasted in the application's three-page summary of current threats and the link to the beta, then signed off with a final warning.

This is not a joke. This is not a sales pitch. Ignore this at our country's peril.

He dialed Mara again and put her on speakerphone as he drafted an email to his wife, son and stepdaughter. He had told Ellis to expect him or Becca, but Hannah was geographically closest to Ellis at the moment and was also on the boarding school's emergency contact list.

Thomas? Mara asked hesitantly.

Pack your things, he ordered, fingers continuing to skim across the keyboard of his laptop as he directed Hannah to retrieve her stepbrother and for both of them to head home to Evansville, Indiana. I'm getting us flights back to the States today.

After the NATO⁠—

Now! he interrupted, pressing send on the email to his family. Be prepared to leave in the next thirty minutes.

Carrying his phone and laptop into the bedroom, he dialed the airline and began packing his carry-on bags. Despite the worry building inside his chest, he found a moment's amusement remembering Becca as she had helped him ready his luggage for the trip to Brussels. Coming out of their walk-in closet with ties she considered better matched than the ones he had selected, she had rolled her eyes to see him stuffing in things like his compass, protein bars and an empty water bladder.

Regrettably, his sidearm and any knife that had more utility than a nail file remained stateside. The Belgian authorities preferred their citizens and visitors defenseless despite the recent body counts of innocent civilians.

Hearing the bolt slide on the suite's exterior door, he spun to find Mara entering the outer room empty handed. Her gaze settled on the bed behind him where Thomas had flung open his luggage to rearrange the contents.

What is going on? Her voice went shrill, red flooding her face to match the color of the dress she hadn't changed out of. We have a presentation to give in less than three hours, not to mention tomorrow's schedule!

I'm going home. He turned toward the luggage as an airline representative finally took him off hold.

Yes, I need a flight today from⁠—

Mara brought her closed fist down on his forearm, knocking the phone from his hand. Turning a narrow gaze on the woman, he bent to retrieve the device.

She kicked it under the bed.

Two hours from now, you and your damned distinguished service cross are going to be standing in front of that window! Her arm shot out, one bony, red-tipped finger pointing at the picture window with its view of St. Michael.

Forcing his temper down, he smiled at Mara, which only served to bring more color to the woman’s cheeks. He abandoned the idea of insisting she return to the States. At present, the beta on the threat assessment app was only running North American data. Quite possibly, she would be safer staying in Belgium.

He, however, didn't have a choice.

He was going home.

Waking his computer from sleep mode, he pointed at the screen, his heart sinking at the sight. All but a few portions of the United States were shaded at least yellow. The Gulf Coast states were predominately dyed red.

You saw this map when you were confirming it was the beta version.

She responded with an eye roll and a folding of her arms across her chest.

You don't believe in the application?

I believe in my stock options, which you're pissing away right now.

He nodded, his smile thinning to a calm, grim line. Then stay and make the pitch. Tell them whatever lie you think necessary as to why I left.

Dipping down, he fished his phone from under the bed and hit re-dial for the airline's ticket desk.

Why? she sputtered.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I believe in the software we developed. Bringing the phone up to his ear, he poked his chin at the application's display. And it says my family needs me.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Thumbing It

Purple twilight settled over the outskirts of Chicago. Sitting in the passenger seat of a 2007 Peterbilt 379, Cash Bishop felt the big rig drift left. He looked over to find the driver, Chuck Yardley, pressing a cheek against the window as he checked out the seat covers on a passing Jeep filled with young women, their Friday night whooping and hollering audible over the Caterpillar engine with its galloping 475 horsepower.

One of the women must have shown Yardley a little love because the old man blew his horn long and hard.

Nice, Yardley smirked, settling back into his seat. Hardly see carpet on the covers anymore. Me, I like women with a thick bush.

Head angling slightly in Cash's direction, Yardley raised an inquisitive brow.

Cash shrugged. Can't say I've thought about it.

Even if he had, he wouldn't discuss his preferences with Yardley. That sort of casual, leering conversation among males dishonored the act, or so he believed. Thankfully, his time as a passenger in the old man's truck had been short and was almost over. Traffic was unusually light for a Friday evening and they were maybe twenty minutes from the Rosewood terminal, where Yardley had agreed to drop him.

With the light almost gone, Cash closed the small notepad he'd been diagramming in and tucked it into a side cargo pocket on his pants, along with a mechanical pencil. With the constant drift of the rig while Yardley ogled women in passing vehicles, Cash hadn't made much progress figuring out exactly where he would place the new solar panels he had ordered before heading out on his latest run.

Yardley poked his right elbow in the direction of the disappearing notepad. Never knew a trucker who was a homesteader. Kind of the opposite of being a trucker, if you want my opinion.

Yardley laughed, his hand leaving the steering wheel to rub absently at his protruding gut. Heck, my daddy was a trucker and he had three wives—all at the same time! One on the east coast, one on the west and one smack in the middle. Never spent more than a few days with each.

Seems like a lot of work, Cash said, his gaze looking ahead to the overhead sign announcing how many miles remained until the I-55 exchange. Seeing it was eight miles, he restrained a sigh. That was eight to reach I-55, then another eight to the terminal.

He'd survived more than seven years in Afghanistan and Iraq, he figured he could make it through sixteen more miles with the old man despite the constant assault on Cash’s ears and nose.

With a side glance, he inspected the trucker and his rig, his mind searching for that one piece of the Yardley puzzle that would finally reveal what was off about the man.

After years of following the Army’s uniform standards, Cash knew part of his problem with Yardley was the man’s overall slovenly appearance. It wasn’t the excess weight. There were plenty of truckers hauling that kind of load that Cash didn’t mind keeping company with.

Stains layered the man’s dark clothes, some of the spots fresh and glistening when Cash had climbed up into the truck. Yardley’s nails were filthy. The blackish red crust built up under them had kept Cash looking for the first half hour with great longing at the travel tote behind the driver’s seat filled with Lysol wipes and a bottle of bleach.

That was the weirdest part, Cash realized. The driver was a slob, but his mattress was wrapped in plastic and the extended sleeper cab had been saturated with cleaning fluids, their noxious fumes blocking out any other odors and making Cash lightheaded.

They was all just rest stops for my daddy, Yardley blathered on. If you know what I mean.

Another promising vehicle must have been approaching alongside because the rig drifted left again. Yardley's body lifted an inch off the seat as he contorted his neck and looked down.

Pants, he muttered, as if the piece of clothing was an object to be scorned. He shook his head, his top lip curling disdainfully. Back when my daddy was crossing the country once a week, women mostly wore skirts.

They wore skirts on the wagon trails, as I recall, Cash joked, figuring Yardley must be in his mid sixties at least, which would have placed his father among the very first crop of cross-country truck drivers.

He'd encountered Chuck a couple different times, enough to know him by sight and for Yardley to have heard a thing or two about Cash from some of the Rosewood drivers that traveled similar routes. Cash was easy to spot in the truck stops, his attention focused either on a larger version of the pocket journal or his food instead of the waitresses. He was even easier to spot in the terminal while switching trucks because of how little gear he carried job to job. Most drivers kept their trucks loaded with creature comforts and things to entertain them during down time. For those drivers, switching rigs took at least three trips.

Cash never took more than he could carry on his own in an extra-large backpack, its contents designed to get him home even if society and nature fought him every step of the way.

How long you been doing that? Yardley asked after a few more miles had passed.

Born on a farm, Cash answered before twisting the truth just a bit. So most of my life, you could say.

He didn't like giving people the whole story, like how his father had lost the farm and died a few years later when Cash and his sister were still in school. That just got him to thinking how his widowed mother had spent so many years working double shifts at the hospital to keep Cash and his sister housed and fed, her dreams of sending them both off to college destroyed when she lost her nursing license. Those were just two of the tribulations that had plagued the Bishop family after his dad died.

So it's not because you're worried about EMPs or zombies? Yardley asked with the same sort of disdain he had dismissed women wearing pants.

Shaking his head, Cash laughed. World's already overrun with zombies, haven't you noticed?

Zombies and lot lizards, Yardley agreed as he signaled a lane change, the big rig pointed at the ramp for I-55.

Cash nodded politely through another stomach churning eight minutes of Yardley telling him about the last lot lizard he'd let into his rig. The woman had apparently expected forty dollars for her company, which was ten dollars less than Cash had paid the old man for the ride from Madison to Chicago after his own rig broke down.

Believe me, Yardley said, pulling to a stop on the side of the street where other rigs were waiting to turn into the lot for Rosewood National Transport. She weren't no looker.

Guess inflation's hitting everything, Cash said, the first genuine smile since Madison lighting his face as he escaped the rig and its driver with a hop down to the sidewalk.

Reaching into the truck, he hauled out his backpack, his arms bulging from the seventy pounds it held.

I bet you could fit that last lot lizard in there, Yardley laughed.

Cash nodded absently as he adjusted the backpack's frame to his body. Empty, the equipment weighed six pounds and had a ninety-five liter capacity, making it almost six thousand cubic inches of storage without counting the shovel pocket, bottle holder, and outside mesh pockets.

Despite the weight on his back and the line of trucks ahead of them starting to move, Cash stepped onto the truck's side