Search and Destroy by JT Sawyer (top non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

get what he wanted. He was tactful but blunt, with only a veneer of civility cloaking the predator beyond his smug grin.

Both men were mentors and respected commanders, and he wasn’t surprised that Foley was plunging deeper into the dark waters of off-the-books operations.

But right now, Cal had his own operation to organize, and the battle plans were about to be drawn up.

18

Alexandria, Virginia

On the rear patio of the Portside Coffee Shop, Michele Henderson was furiously typing on her laptop, only pausing long enough to brush her blond bangs aside and take another sip of her triple espresso.

Henderson wasn’t sure if it was the excessive caffeine surging through her or if it was the thought of the generous bonus her boss, Adam Hunley, would be paying her for her forthcoming masterpiece, which was about to make a splash on the internet.

She arched her chin up, trying to ease the kink in her neck from sitting in the café for the past two hours, feeling like her twenty-eight-year-old body was shrinking in stature from too many years behind a keyboard.

Armed with the doctored information from the satellite images extracted from the flash drive provided by Ian Landis, she had assembled all of the background data on the veteran CIA operative turned contract killer, Terrance Shepard, and the fabricated history of his corporate espionage efforts against Burke Enterprises.

This guy’s going to be buried so deep in some government black site that even God won’t be able to find him.

She sifted through the falsified documents a third time, knowing she had to be utterly thorough in making a case against Shepard so the media, public and law-enforcement agencies would see him as a ruthless mercenary twisted by greed—someone who was even bent on using his wife as part of his deeply embedded cover story in order to steal cyber-technology to sell to the highest bidder on the black market.

Incriminating someone in a heinous crime or scandal so their credibility was destroyed was nothing new for her, but Henderson was accustomed to only employing the tactics with politicians, not secret agents.

While Hunley paid her exceedingly well, she viewed herself as an artisan who used the internet to weave chaos, delighting in the long game of seeing rival corporations succumb to public-relations nightmares that had their origins at her fingertips. Better yet was playing a part in swaying election outcomes in third-world countries that Hunley was investing in.

“I’m an IGW expert,” she had proudly stated after first meeting with Hunley nearly twelve months ago, referring to internet guerilla warfare, which was a battlefield that was waged on a far greater scale than any government had been involved with during the past ten years. She detested the term “hacker,” which conjured up images of a chubby, pimply-faced teenager rattling away on a cheap PC in their parents’ basement.

Through her behind-the-scenes efforts, Henderson had bolstered the public image of the Roth Corporation, increased his social media presence abroad with environmental causes, and destroyed the careers of politicians and business leaders opposed to the expansion of Roth’s empire.

Once she was done with Shepard, she would disappear for a few days then continue with intensifying the online campaign efforts for Ernesto Rimaldi.

Between the targeted Facebook ads, blog postings on numerous regional forums, and the bi-weekly online edition of Spanish newspapers in Venezuela whose reach far exceeded anything the incumbent had undertaken, she knew that Rimaldi’s presence would saturate the countryside.

She heard Hunley’s wise words echo in her head from their recent conversation:

Impoverished voters will go to any lengths for a candidate who nurtures their hopes, soothes their fears, and rationalizes their shortcomings while helping guide their arrows towards the fissures in their rival’s armor.

Henderson grinned, marveling at her boss’ grasp of politics and psychology. Damn, he’s a wizard. If I can stick it out with him for a few more years, I’ll never have to work again.

When she finished typing her last sentence, she glanced at her watch.

Thirty minutes left.

Once Henderson had completed the fabricated articles, she edited them to match the journalistic style of the targeted newspapers, forums and social media sites, then she saved the files and closed her laptop.

Swigging down the last of her beverage, she packed up her belongings and headed outside, walking the three blocks back to her Volvo, which was parked in the shadows beside a derelict furniture store.

Once inside, she slid on latex gloves then opened her laptop and transferred the first news files onto a newly purchased tablet, then put it on hibernate mode for twenty-four hours. Henderson slid it into a pre-paid FedEx envelope addressed to the Times. Then she did the same with corresponding articles directed to the Baltimore Republic and several prominent Virginia newspapers until eight tablets were uploaded.

It was Friday, and she had orchestrated everything for this weekend so that the newly arrived packages would be sent down to the newspaper’s mailrooms, where they would sit untouched for a few days. Once inside, the tablets would automatically exit their dormant mode on Saturday evening, insinuating their malware into the building’s Wi-Fi, after which the articles would be uploaded onto the company’s computers and disseminated on Sunday morning.

She sealed up the last of the packages then programmed her dark web account to release the other online articles and social media posts at the same time in thirty-six hours. She saved one file for last, triple-checking the contents then attaching it to a pre-scheduled email sent to the director of the FBI.

Come Sunday, Shepard will think the universe itself is conspiring against him.

Exiting the programs on her laptop, she inserted a metallic flash drive then initiated a file-deletion program followed by her own version of malware to destroy any remnant traces. Henderson rolled her window down then removed a small flask of muriatic acid, carefully pouring the caustic fluid into the side ports of her laptop then over the keyboard. She slid the laptop into a trash bag then removed her gloves and flung them inside.

Henderson started her