Azure’s Revenge is finally finished and I’m moving on to the 4th book in the Dark Web Series.
In Book #4, which doesn’t have a name yet, we have North Korea planning a terror plot that’ll take down the entire country, with help from a gullible Chinese intelligence agent who is just looking for love. We also get an inside view of “preppers” those individuals (kooks?) who actively plan for the end of the world by stockpiling everything they’d need to survive anything from a zombie apocalypse to civil unrest to war.
Azure’s Revenge is available, along with the other books in the Dark Web Series, on Amazon. To help you get started with the series, Book #1, Buried Ladies, is available for a limited time for only $0.99.
Latest news from Angela Hausman, Author
So, things are moving at a brisk pace. In addition to attending the Scars of the Past Launch party, we have lots of exciting things going on.
- Azure’s Revenge, the 3rd book in the Dark Web series, published on Black Friday. You’ll get to see many of your old friends from Books 1 and 2, and meet some quirky (and sinister) new ones. I’d love to get more readers and reviews for this book.
- Book 4, which is currently untitled, is well underway. It carries on the tradition of having the FBI cyber unit work to save the country from death and destruction.
- If you’ve already purchased (or received a gifted copy) of Buried Ladies or Scars of the Past, please consider writing an honest review (use the links below). And, if you didn’t like it, please send me specific comments so I can improve the next book. If you don’t have a copy yet, you can buy them here:
Buried Ladies Scars of the Past Azure’s Revenge
Book #4
The whet your appetite, here’s a little bit from the beginning of Book #4:
Chapter 1
“Finding anything interesting?” asked Joyce and he jumped noticeably at her voice; knocking the coffee cup off his desk and spilling coffee all over his jeans. He’d been so focused on the task, it didn’t register that she’d walked up to his desk. Jacob rarely used the office that listed him as SAC—Special Agent-in-Charge—of the FBI Cyber Terror Unit. Instead, he occupied one of the workstations in the open room ringed by eight similar workstations.
“Don’t scare me like that,” he said, standing to brush the no-longer hot coffee off his pants. “Finding lots of stuff, but it’s getting harder and harder to decide which rabbit holes to climb down and which are fake. Boyd’s team is so busy, I hate sending them on a wild goose chase.”
“Better than letting a terrorist carry out his plot.”
“You’re right, of course. I admit this one has me stumped. Take a look and tell me what you think?”
She bent over his computer which displayed a couple of email threads. Her lips moved almost imperceptivity as she quickly scanned the few lines. He could see her go back to reread the threads, more slowly this time around.
“G-g-g-guys-s-s-s,” said Eric, his normal stutter magnified when he was agitated. “I th-th-think I f-f-found s-s-s-something.”
“Put it up on the big screen,” said Jacob. The big, 145-foot screen mounted to the wall near the center of the room filled with bits of a conversation Eric detected. At first, Jacob wasn’t sure what it meant, but reading it a second time, Jacob saw the conversation seemed to be about something big planned for next week—something about bombs and hacking, but the target and timing weren’t clear, which raised the hackles on the back of Jacob’s neck. People joking or afraid of some imagined danger were pretty open in their conversation, while terrorists’ conversations were filled with inference, for obvious reasons.
“Hey, buddy,” said Joyce. “I think you’re losing your touch. That’s just a bunch of prepper nonsense. Haven’t you read enough of their stuff to know they’re not canaries in the coal mine, but loonies that should be in an asylum?”
“N-n-n-not th-th-this t-t-t-t-time,” said Eric. “S-s-s-see,” he pointed to a cluster of words repeated a few times in the conversation.
“Where’d you find it? Dark web?”
“N-n-n-no. S-s-s-ome T-t-t-t-twitter DMs.”
“Messaging on Twitter. Not very professional, although we’re seeing more and more groups like ISIS and Hamas, using Twitter to recruit new members and encourage those in the diaspora with detailed instructions for causing havoc.” He looked through the messages again, pondering the implications. Finally, deciding a false positive was the better option, he said, “You might be right. It looks serious enough to check out.” He traced through the Twitter handles via a contact at the company to find the actual names of the two men. Then ran them through their databases, which were housed in a monstrous IBM mainframe housed in a chilled room in the basement. They had information from domestic and international criminal records, terrorist information shared through a consortium of NATO nations, as well as interesting stuff they saved from their normal scans of the internet. The men had 16 registered firearms between them and a few drunk and disorderlies, but nothing that really screamed terrorists, of course, not many people advertised their subversive tendencies. He pulled out his mobile and selected Boyd’s name from his speed dial.
“Hey, what’s up?” Boyd said when he answered.
“We may have something here. Are you around?” Jacob headed to the stairwell without waiting for an answer.
“Yeah. Come on up.”
“OK, I’m walking down your hall.”
Boyd laughed as he hung up the phone, seeing Jacob approaching his office.
“Jacob, how go things in the penthouse,” said SAC Boyd, who headed the Counter Terror Unit and was nominally Jacob’s boss. The two teams worked seamlessly together and it was a standing joke that Jacob’s team, who filled most of the top floor in the FBI headquarters, were overpaid elitists. In fact, ‘the penthouse’ was really old attic storage converted to low-ceilinged offices when the FBI decided they need the skills of a Cyber Unit. Moreover, the Cyber team were some of the most talented and hardworking hackers in the country who earned far less working for the federal government than they might in corporate America.
“Ha, ha, ha. That stopped being funny a long time ago, but I’m happy to see you’re in a good mood. We have something up here that might be worth a quick look-see, especially since its just over in West Virginia.” Jacob showed him the email thread, which he’d had Eric transfer to his tablet.
“You think this is serious?”
“Frankly, I don’t know what to think. Joyce seems to think it’s just a couple of preppers planning some wargames, but Eric isn’t convinced. My feeling is we should check it out, just to be on the safe side, but I don’t think you need to call in SWAT on this one.”
Preppers, a term they used in the unit to refer to survivalists, were getting more active and more sophisticated, making their job harder. These groups planned for a coming apocalypse by stockpiling materials they’d need to survive in a world gone to hell. The groups were mainly innocuous, but some were comprised of militant members who not only prepared to live in a world turned upside down, but were happy to help it get that way. Militant preppers fought against the government by ignoring whatever rules didn’t fit their worldview, and a few actively fought by attacking government employees or buildings, like the ones who took down the government center in Oklahoma City. The Counter Terrorism Unit kept a close eye on these groups but tended to ignore the more benign ones. Still, their stuff popped up occasionally, especially when a group planned some military-like maneuvers, like wargames. Over the years, they’d all learned to ignore these folks as harmless whackadoodles, but you still had to check them out to make sure their conversations were only about a drill.
“Good, I need to get out of the office more and we’re currently a little slow down here. Wanna come along?”
“Love to, but I’m swamped up here.”
“No problem. I’ll take Dillon with me. Let you know what I find.”
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