Hack, page 3
At 2:55 a.m. early Monday morning, Newshound published its story under a triple byline. The headline read:
Massive Explosion Rocks Office Park Home to High-Tech Spy Firms
Dozens Injured
Gas Leak or Foul Play?
“Felt like a bomb”
By Nik Byron, Mia Landry, and Patrick Morgan
Newshound staff reporters
A huge fireball ripped through the controversial Trident Office Park in southeast Washington Sunday evening, sending a towering pillar of fire and smoke into the nighttime sky and injuring at least a dozen individuals and damaging scores of buildings. No fatalities were immediately reported, but property damage could exceed $25 million, according to real estate estimates.
Authorities said a ruptured gas line was the likely cause of the explosion, but that explanation was immediately questioned by witnesses, who said there was no noticeable gas odor before the blast, and office workers were quick to point out that Trident generates most of its power from hydropower and alternative energy sources and not natural gas.
“The only gas line in Trident runs to the backup generator, and it’s state of the art. It’s equipped with sensors that detect, self-report, and shut down instantaneously if there are leaks,” said George Malone, an engineer who helped design the power system for the office complex.
Trident is home to dozens of software start-ups and technology firms, many of which conduct highly classified and secretive work for the nation’s top intelligence operations, including the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency.
The complex has been the target of anonymous threats by anti-government groups in the past as well as protests by privacy advocates.
One of the office park’s more colorful and high-profile tenants is OmniSoft Corporation, whose founder, Cal Walker, is in a long-running legal battle with the federal government over intellectual property theft. The company alleges the government stole its proprietary monitoring software—named POOF—and forced it into bankruptcy.
Witnesses reported a chaotic scene at the office park shortly after the explosion. Frantic first responders were seen fleeing the site, fearing a second explosion was imminent, while, at the same moment, a small, highly trained squad entered Trident to begin a search-and-rescue mission for survivors in the rubble.
When approached, members of the rescue team refused to identify themselves and barred a Newshound reporter from the property “on the grounds of national security.”
A Homeland Security spokeswoman said the department was aware of the situation at Trident but was treating it as an industrial accident. She downplayed the notion of the involvement of a special forces unit.
“Sounds like someone’s letting their imagination get the best of them,” she said.
More than one dozen victims were admitted to Georgetown University Hospital with injuries ranging from broken bones to third-degree burns. At least four patients were listed in critical condition.
Emily Hightower, a software engineer, said she was exiting her office building when the explosion occurred. Although her building is located more than 100 yards away from the blast site, the shock wave from the blast knocked her off her feet and left her temporarily unconscious. She said she came to in the back of an ambulance headed to the hospital.
“Honestly, it felt like a bomb went off,” Hightower said, echoing the impression of several other victims who spoke to Newshound. Hightower said she did not recall smelling any rotten-egg odor associated with a natural gas leak before the explosion, a refrain also repeated by other office workers Newshound interviewed.
As of early this morning, crews were still at the site sifting through evidence and investigating the source of the explosion. They said it may be several days before the actual cause is known.
Chapter 6
December 16, Washington, DC
Nik staggered into his Georgetown apartment a little before four a.m. and collapsed into an overstuffed chair. He fell asleep fully clothed with a bottle of Budweiser in one hand, his cell phone in the other, and Mose Allison on the Sonos.
He stirred awake three hours later when the phone burred and vibrated in his hand. It was Dick Whetstone, Newshound’s chief editor and Nik’s nominal boss. Nik could hear Allison’s song, “Your Mind Is on Vacation” and the refrain, “your mouth is working overtime” playing in the background.
“Yeah, Dick,” Nik said, jabbing the speaker icon on the phone screen, shaking his head, and sitting up straighter in an effort to kick-start his brain.
“It’s Richard. How many fucking times do I have to remind you, Byron, my name is Richard,” Whetstone said peevishly.
Whetstone was barely five foot seven, gaunt, verging on malnourished, with a sallow complexion, limp hair, and a pinched mouth filled with gray teeth, and behind his back, reporters called him Li’l Dick.
“Right, sorry. Next time,” Nik said groggily.
“Might not be a fucking next time for you, Byron, you publish another bullshit story like the Trident explosion,” Whetstone threatened.
“How’s the media conference? Your speech a big hit?” Nik asked. “Nice weather in San Diego?”
“I’m gone less than forty-eight hours, and we print a sensational story about a bomb going off at an office park. We look like fucking stooges,” Whetstone sputtered. “Home to high-tech spy firms. What the fuck were you thinking, Byron?”
Nik made his way into the galley kitchen, dropped a coffee pod into the machine, selected Americano, and pressed Brew. His stomach rumbled. He wondered if he had any bagels left in the freezer. He opened the door and peered in. Nothing. Maybe he’d go to Au Pied du Cochon for breakfast and get an order of runny eggs Benedict and pommes frites, those little slivers of potato heaven deep-fat fried to golden perfection in lard.
“Well?” Whetstone demanded.
“Well, what?” Nik said.
“About the bomb,” the chief editor said.
“Sorry, thought it was a rhetorical question,” Nik said, retrieving the Washington Post from the vestibule outside his apartment door and scanning the newspaper for a story on the explosion.
“Don’t fuck with me, Byron. You’re on very thin ice here, and it’s about to come crashing down on your head.”
“I believe the saying is ‘crash through the ice.’ The ‘roof is going to come crashing down on my head,’” Nik corrected.
“You’re a real smart-ass, aren’t you, Byron? Little wonder you didn’t get the chief editor’s job,” Whetstone goaded.
The Post buried a six-inch story on page B12 with the headline “Office park blast blamed on gas leak.” The last sentence in the story referred readers to its website for updates.
“Never said it was a bomb,” Nik finally replied. “We said witnesses said it felt like a bomb. Don’t you think it’s odd that no one reported smelling any gas odor?”
“Just tell me that nutjob Walker didn’t put you up to this,” Whetstone said, referring to the OmniSoft CEO.
“Cal Walker? Haven’t heard from him,” Nik said. “The building where he had his office was destroyed, and it’s not known if he was inside.”
“You ask me, fucking blessing in disguise if he was,” Whetstone said.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’re the one who assigned me the OmniSoft story, Chief,” Nik said.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were foolish enough to take it seriously. No one else in Washington did, or does,” Whetstone said.
“We done here?” Nik asked.
“Just about. I’m taking some much-deserved R&R after the conference and don’t plan on returning to the office for another couple weeks. You need to put your ‘Galloping Gourmet’ hat back on and cover the King Kobe story, Nik,” Whetstone belittled, “and leave Trident the fuck alone.”
“Un-huh,” Nik replied.
“You know, Byron, your career’s probably unsalvageable, but that’s hardly a good reason to drag Mia, Mo, and Frank down with you. You might want to think about that.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Dick.”
“It’s Rich—” Whetstone started to say when Nik hung up.
______________
Nik immediately texted Sheriff Korum and asked him to call when he got to the office. He tried Cal Walker’s cell phone again but got a message saying his voice mail was full.
Nik hopped into the shower and started to plot his day, but he couldn’t shake Whetstone’s admonition.
As much as he hated to admit it, there was some truth to what Whetstone had said about Nik’s career and the negative impact it might have on his friends. Nik couldn’t help but think that none of them would be in this predicament if Rusty Mitchell, Newshound’s founder and benefactor, had not been jolted awake one night nine months earlier with a vision about Newshound’s future.
Mitchell had amassed a net worth approaching $500 million after successfully bootstrapping and selling two technology start-ups. He had launched Newshound on a whim to spur local media competition, especially in the business news arena, in his hometown of Kansas City.
To everyone’s shock, Newshound was an immediate hit and was financially successful in year two, a virtually unheard-of feat for a media start-up. Mitchell didn’t know anything about the media business, and that, along with an obsessive customer-centric focus he had honed in the technology industry, benefited Newshound enormously.
Mitchell pushed traditional boundaries and wasn’t afraid to fail, which made him a rarity in publishing circles. He made rapid-fire decisions, and if something didn’t work out, he abandoned it quickly and moved on to the next endeavor.
He relentlessly pursued technology solutions to give Newshound a competitive advantage. Mitchell issued the newsroom camera-mounted drones to cover breaking news events, incorporated natural-language technologies into the publishing system to transform data into computer-generated stories, and wrote software to help reporters sift through mounds of information to pinpoint important investigative stories and trends.
Mitchell was shrewd, data-driven, and tightfisted, but, at times, he would throw all of that to the wind and rely on gut instincts, and on that fateful night nine months earlier, his gut had told him the country was ready for Newshound.
The next morning, Mitchell announced he was committing tens of millions of dollars to expand Newshound’s operations nationwide. Virtually overnight, Newshound went from a single stand-alone news site to a media juggernaut.
The company opened offices at a blistering pace, and within six months had operations in San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Chicago, New York, and Dallas. The goal was to be in the majority of the top-twenty markets by the new year.
Mitchell’s strategy was simple and direct—build, buy, or bury. Where possible, build a site from scratch; if there was competition, buy it; and if they refused to sell, bury it.
In the case of Washington, DC, Mitchell bought out the competition, but in order to close the deal, he was forced to agree to keep the existing management in place, including Nik’s nemesis, Richard Whetstone, for eighteen months and granted them the authority to hire and fire personnel as they saw fit.
The agreement had effectively torpedoed Nik’s promotion and sidetracked his career. Nik had pleaded with his old boss, Bo Cooper, to intercede. Cooper had been put in charge of Newshound’s West Coast operations and, while sympathetic to Nik’s plight, was powerless to change the outcome.
“Sorry, sport,” Cooper told him, “not my circus, not my clowns. You and Mitchell need to work this out between yourselves.”
Mitchell admired Nik and felt bad about reneging on his promise to promote him to chief editor in DC after the banking scandal story. Mitchell explained he was bound by the contract and told Nik that his hands were tied for the next year and a half. He had tried to soften the blow by granting Nik a generous stock option package in Newshound that he predicted one day could be worth a small fortune if the company went public.
Yeah, Nik thought to himself bitterly, when pigs fly, and shoved the paperwork in the back of a drawer and forgot about it.
Chapter 7
December 16, Truck Stop in Indiana
Indiana State Highway Patrolman Clint Ward was just about to clock off duty when he saw the faded lime-green Dodge van limp off Interstate 70 and glide toward the Fuel King of America truck stop and convenience store.
There wasn’t anything particularly suspicious about the vehicle, but he took note of it because he couldn’t recall the last time he had seen a relic 1979 Dodge B100 SWB Street Van. He’d had one just like it when he was a teenager, and he had spent nearly every free minute working on it in his parents’ garage in Columbus, Indiana, where he grew up. He equipped the van with a stereo system, mini-fridge, futon, and even bolted benches along the inside panels. Despite all the time he spent on it, he could never figure out how to stop the damn thing from burning oil by the case and, in the end, resorted to collecting waste oil from local gas stations to dump into the engine. He smiled, thinking of the good times he and his girlfriend, Shirley Mintz, had in the van. They used to lie in the back naked, smoking weed, sipping Rolling Rock, and fucking like minks for hours. He smiled again and wondered whatever had happened to Shirley. He just might look her up, he thought to himself, the next time he visited his folks back in Columbus.
The officer’s patrol car was tucked away in a small lane between the off-ramp and the frontage road that the highway department had carved out to stow equipment when they were doing repair work on the interstate. He usually sat there at the end of his shift to write up his reports and keep an eye on vehicles entering and exiting the highway.
As the van rolled past the trooper and under a streetlight, Ward glimpsed two male occupants in an animated discussion, but mostly what he noticed was the rust along the vehicle’s rocker panel and thought, Once rust sets in, you’re screwed. He shook his head knowingly and went back to writing his reports. With his head down in his paperwork, Officer Ward didn’t notice the passenger door fly open.
____________
Nukowski jumped out of the van as it sputtered and stalled about fifty feet from the truck stop. Nukowski had told Cooley to pull off the interstate and get gas about thirty miles back, but Cooley had insisted he could make it to Fuel King, which he claimed had the cheapest gas along the highway.
Nukowski leaned his shoulder into the passenger doorjamb and, with a loud groan, got the van’s front wheels over a little rise that provided just enough momentum to allow the vehicle to coast downhill toward the fuel island and a spot alongside the pumps. The van was the only vehicle on the premises as far as Nukowski could tell.
Cooley tumbled out of the driver’s side door and started shivering. It was a little after four a.m., the air was damp and cold, and the heater in the van barely worked. He was coming down from his meth high, and that only added to his shakes. He needed both hands to steady the gas nozzle and guide it into the fuel tank.
Nukowski was halfway to the store when Cooley called out to him. “Hey, Nuky, get me a Mountain Dew and a pack of Kools. I’ll pay you back.”
Nukowski gave a backward wave of his hand to acknowledge the order, but muttered, “Get your own shit, fuckstick. I ain’t your errand boy,” and disappeared into the store.
Nukowski stocked up on Slim Jims, sunflower seeds, Red Bull, and a large hazelnut coffee that burned his tongue and the roof of his mouth when he took a drink. “Fuck,” he said and spit out the boiling liquid on the floor.
“Shoulda warned you, that machine runs a little hot,” the clerk said.
“No shit,” Nukowski said and handed the clerk four twenties for the gas, told her to add a bag of chicken tenders and a bottle of blackberry e-juice for his vape, and asked for the key to the men’s room.
When he came out of the restroom, the clerk had switched on a small television set that was sitting on the counter and was listening to a news report about a gas-line explosion in Washington, DC. The TV reporter said at least a dozen people were hospitalized, and two people, a maintenance man and an office worker, had died overnight from their injuries.
“Shit happens,” the clerk said, handing Nukowski his bagged-up groceries and change.
“It does to me,” Nukowski said and, with arms loaded, pushed his rump against the door and hurried back out of the store. He wanted to tell Cooley what he had just heard on the news, but when he turned around, he went stock-still. There was Cooley jawing with a state cop.
“Hey, Nuky,” Cooley belted out when he saw his companion drawing near. “Officer Ward here had a ’79 Dodge Street Van just like this one. Ain’t that sum’in’?”
Nukowski dropped his head and quick-stepped back to the van. There was nothing he wanted to say to no cop.
“You get my smokes?” Cooley asked, raking his mangled neck again with chewed-on fingernails. The skin was inflamed from the constant mauling, and his neck looked like a stalk of withered rhubarb, a classic tell of a meth head that Nukowski hoped the cop hadn’t noticed.
“They were out,” Nukowski lied.
The cop was too busy studying the van to pay attention to the pair. He circled the vehicle, all the while making little asides about its condition. He was saying something about burning oil when he stopped at the back. “Hey”—he raised his voice—“you know these tags expired six days ago?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cooley replied. “I got the new ones in the mail just before we left, and I forgot to put them on, is all, Officer. Promise I’ll do it first thing when we get back.”
What the fuck, Nukowski thought, we’ve been driving across the country on expired plates? Shithead.
