Total Blackout Read online

  About the Author

  ALEX SHAW has lived and worked in Ukraine, the former USSR, the Middle East, and Africa. He is the author of the number one international Kindle bestselling Aidan Snow SAS thrillers. His writing has also been published in several thriller anthologies alongside International Bestselling authors Stephen Leather and Matt Hilton. Alex, his wife and their two sons divide their time between Ukraine, England and Qatar.

  @alexshawhetman

  /alex.shaw.982292

  www.alexwshaw.co.uk

  Also by Alex Shaw

  Cold Blood

  Cold Black

  Cold East

  Total Blackout

  ALEX SHAW

  HQ

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

  Copyright © Alex Shaw

  Alex Shaw asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  E-book Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008412258

  Version: 2020-08-31

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Alex Shaw

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Extract

  Dear Reader …

  Keep Reading …

  About the Publisher

  For my wife Galia, my sons Alexander and Jonathan,

  and our family in England and Ukraine.

  Prologue

  Washington, DC

  The co-conspirators stood on their balcony at The Hay-Adams. The White House was less than four hundred metres away. The balcony afforded them a grandstand view. Within minutes Maksim Oleniuk and Chen Yan, the founders of Blackline PMC, were going to launch the largest attack on the United States of America since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, perhaps the biggest attack ever on the country. Maksim Oleniuk certainly hoped so. He looked down and smiled at the Chinese oligarch who had funded his dream of striking the US. It had been her finances – billions amassed from minerals and electronics, in partnership with his access and expertise as a former Russian Military Intelligence Officer, which had created this paradigm-shifting moment. Oleniuk found his partner highly attractive but understood she was the very last person in the world he should approach. He sipped his chilled champagne and wondered if she could read his mind.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ Yan asked, surprising him, making his face colour in the gloom. Her American accent was flawless, perfected whilst she gained an MBA at the New York Institute of Technology. It put Oleniuk’s Russo-British accent to shame.

  ‘I am just thinking that never have parents given birth to such a powerful child.’

  She inclined her head, a stoic expression on her face. ‘Our child will live and die in the same instant, yet leave an eternal legacy.’

  ‘Legacy,’ Oleniuk repeated. It was something he had strived to create and the perfect word for the occasion.

  They stood like expectant parents, the former GRU officer rocking from foot to foot and the Chinese billionaire stock-still, but both were nervous, excited and scared of what was to come.

  The timing of the detonation had been mandated to utilise empty airspace, or airspace as empty as it ever could be over the continental United States. The location was hugely symbolic; the US seat of power deliberately selected, politically central rather than geographically so. Oleniuk’s scientists had stated the risk of damage to the retina was small yet did exist if they were to stare directly at the epicentre of the detonation with the naked eye. For this reason, Oleniuk and Yan wore wrap-around sunglasses with specifically engineered lenses shielding their eyes. They gazed out over the balcony at the empty air a mile above the floodlit White House.

  At exactly five a.m. there was a flash so quick that if the pair had not known exactly where to look it would have been missed, then a silent, purple detonation flowered. It bloomed like a monstrous, inverted Fourth of July firework. Its petals spread earthwards and then faded to be replaced by a mauve glow, creating a spectral false dawn.

  Oleniuk felt the tingling sensation he had been warned to expect wash over him, as each individual hair on his body stood up on end. At that very moment, as if choreographed, every single light around the pair vanished. The White House lights disappeared, the floodlights on the lawn were no more and the stately residence of the President of the United States of America was plunged into darkness.

  The glow started to fade; the night sky now taking on the appearance of the bruised eye of a heavyweight boxer, before it gradually became black once more. The co-conspirators removed their protective eyewear. They had delivered a form of vengeance like no other the modern world had ever seen and, ignoring ancient, fanciful tales of vengeful gods, the single most powerful.

  Oleniuk put his arm around Yan. ‘We have done it.’

  She did not reply; however, she did give him a sideways glance. Oleniuk quickly moved his arm. ‘I am sorry. I was overcome with emotion in the moment. I do apologise.’

  ‘It is understandable, given the circumstances.’

  They continued to gaze at the capital city of the United States – dark, silent but not dead. The majority of the population were safely asleep and those who weren’t would interpret the loss of power as a citywide outage, a total blackout.

  Chapter 1

  Two days earlier

  Camden, Maine, United States

  The assassin was Russian, one of their best. He had to be to make the shot. His hide was in an elevated position on a hill, half a click away from the target. It was the closest he was prepared to go, given the timescale and his schedule. Three targets to hit in three consecutive days. A reckless order in the Russian Army and certainly an unheard-of contract on the private circuit. But he was the best, and he had accepted. And he was now on target number two.

  The ever-changing eddies and the elevation made the shot challenging. It was a job for a two-man team, a shooter and a spotter, but the assassin had always preferred to work alone. The assassin was not acquainted with failure; this was something
that simply did not enter his thought process. Preparing to fail started with a failure to prepare, and Ruslan Akulov never failed to prepare.

  His target was on time. He tracked him in his crosshairs. The man exited the rear of the house through a pair of double-height patio doors, sipping his Pinot Gris, blissfully unaware of the Russian’s presence. Retired senator Clifford Piper lived in a sprawling mansion overlooking the town of Camden, Maine. The deck, where he stood now and would soon fall upon, commanded panoramic views of the harbour, West Penobscot Bay, and the evergreen islands.

  Akulov had seen mansions before, castle-like homes constructed for the rich and corrupt, which dotted the outskirts of Moscow like mushrooms, while the rest of the population lived in shacks or high-rise concrete boxes. Never before, however, had he encountered one in a setting as spectacular as this. He agreed the panorama was impressive, but the man was not. He knew all about Piper. He hated him. As a senator Piper had preached his own brand of American imperialism, damning all those who dared speak out against Uncle Sam. He was a hawk, voraciously attacking Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, and China. He threw his words like missiles from the safety of Washington, a coward who would not dare repeat his slurs in the face of the enemy.

  But, had he been punished for the innumerable deaths his rhetoric had caused or the hatred his words had incited? No. The senator had been allowed to retire to his mansion, and his three-million-dollar view. Not bad for a dacha, or as the Americans called them “vacation properties”. The Russian let a sneer form on his face. The property would be vacated soon enough. He had watched his target, and knew his routine well. Piper took a glass of wine at eleven o’clock each morning on his deck in order to appreciate his view. Akulov had also enjoyed the vista. The ocean – like him – was a contradiction. By turns calm and violent. Not that he was naturally a violent soul, but he employed violence in the defence of his country.

  The target was a widower, his wife having perished along with twenty-eight other Americans a year before, in a terrorist attack in Jakarta. But for the Jakarta team this had been a failure. Bitter fate had intervened in his employer’s plans, made the senator succumb to food poisoning and unable to leave his hotel suite to join the bus tour. The bus his wife was on, the bus that had been boarded by gunmen who slaughtered every passenger. Grief-stricken, the senator had resigned and retired. The Jakarta team’s failure ensured that Piper was added to the hit list given to Akulov, and Akulov did not fail.

  The maid appeared. She stood by her master’s side. She held his hand. Through open curtains, the Russian had observed the old man consoling himself by screwing her. It had not been at all arousing but Akulov had made himself watch, much like a wildlife photographer cataloguing the mating rituals of primates. Piper had grunted; the maid had not.

  Mercifully at that precise moment the pair were only talking. At this distance, in the open, he could not hear the sounds escaping their lips, but he imagined they were the sickening words lovers pass to one and other. It wasn’t his business. He didn’t care what was or was not being said, what was or was not being promised. But what about the late wife? Would she have wanted her husband to become a monk or would she have approved of his new bedfellow? Piper looked contented, and had done so each day the assassin had observed him. Even now he continued to sip his wine, oblivious to the fact that a single .338 Lapua Magnum round from the Russian’s suppressed rifle was seconds away from entering his chest and ripping out his heart.

  Akulov adjusted the scope of his German sniper rifle. In ordinary times, Piper’s death would be seen as a clear message to his country’s leader, but these were about to become extraordinary times. The senator’s death today would be ignored by tomorrow, and perhaps not be investigated until months after his death – if at all.

  Akulov had not entertained the idea of killing the woman, even though strategically it made sense. She was the only other person in the house and leaving her alive would mean the alarm was raised that much faster, but he had no desire kill her. She was an innocent, a civilian and that went against his code. Besides, he mused, her relationship with Piper was sufferance enough. The maid stepped away and walked back into the house. Moments later her rotund shadow crossed a kitchen window.

  Now Akulov steadied his breathing, watched the sway of the large trees dotting the property and the direction of the gulls as the grey-haired, potbellied Piper raised his wine glass to his mouth for the last time. Akulov made his final adjustments and calculations then gently squeezed the trigger. The .338 round rocketed towards the unwary enemy of Mother Russia, tore through his torso, punched out a fist-sized hole and kept going before it drilled itself into the timber-clad wall of the mansion.

  *

  Jack Tate didn’t see the blue flashing lights in his rear-view mirror immediately; he was lost in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”. As the song drew to a close, he heard the sirens and then saw the police vehicle gaining ominously behind him. Tate swore; he couldn’t believe that after all his years of training and active service, he’d made such a rookie mistake. He knew the drill; he pulled the Chevrolet Tahoe over on the shoulder, powered down the window, turned off the engine, and placed his hands in clear sight on the top of the steering wheel. As a police officer stepped out of the liveried Crown Victoria, the next song on Tate’s radio started. He tried not to laugh – it was the Eagles’ classic “Desperado”.

  The officer drew level with Tate’s window but stayed several paces back, as procedure dictated. He asked him to switch off his music and then hand over his driver’s licence and insurance documents. He spoke to Tate without checking them. ‘Is this your vehicle, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘The rental company.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So what did I do wrong?’

  The officer’s brow furrowed and he took a moment to form his next question: ‘You’re British?’

  ‘From London,’ Tate replied, as the warm August air overcame the lingering cold of the Tahoe’s climate control.

  ‘You were ten miles an hour above the limit back there. We’ve had a lot of accidents on this stretch of road over the years. People see the view, get too excited and then … well, it’s not a pretty sight.’

  ‘I understand.’

  The officer nodded. ‘And what is your destination today?’

  ‘Camden.’

  ‘Business or pleasure?’

  ‘Just a holiday.’

  ‘Holiday?’

  ‘Vacation.’

  ‘On your own?’

  Now it was Tate’s turn to frown; these questions didn’t seem to be usual for a traffic violation. ‘Yes, on my own.’

  The officer gestured with his left hand, the one holding Tate’s documents, whilst his right slid towards his belt and rested on the butt of his firearm. ‘This is a large vehicle for one person.’

  ‘The rental company was out of stock. They gave me a free upgrade.’

  ‘Stay in the vehicle, sir. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  Still holding Tate’s documents, the officer backed away to his patrol car, where his colleague had been talking on the radio. Via his mirror Tate saw a brief exchange between the two before they approached the SUV, each angling for a different side of the Tahoe, weapons drawn. Tate frowned. Every instinct he had, every part of his training, told him to hightail it out of there, put the car into drive and pull away, wheels spinning, leaving the officers choking in the dust … but he was on holiday, not on deployment, and these were police officers not enemy combatants.

  ‘Step out of the vehicle with your arms raised and place your hands on the vehicle!’ the second officer barked.

  Tate sighed. This wasn’t what he needed, and unlike the cops back home, they were armed. He had no choice but to comply. This was where mistakes happened; this was where he was putting his life in the hands of men in uniform he didn’t know, trusting them and trusting their training. It
wasn’t the first time he’d had more than one loaded weapon pointed at him. Tate slowly opened the door and shuffled around the side of the SUV as the roadside dust danced at his feet and the sun warmed his back. He kept his eyes firmly fixed front and centre, and watched the armed men approach via their reflection in his window.

  ‘I’m going to search you now,’ said the first officer. ‘Are you carrying any drugs, needles, or concealed weapons?’

  ‘No.’

  Tate felt the officer pat him down before he said, ‘Place your hands behind your back.’

  Tate thought he knew what was coming next, but neither officer recited the Miranda to him or advised him of his rights. This he also found off. The nearest officer cuffed his wrists tightly, the left cuff pressing snugly against his metal watchstrap, forcing his Rolex further up his arm. Tate asked, ‘Can you tell me what you think I’ve done?’

  Neither officer spoke as they frogmarched him to the Crown Victoria. They opened the back, pushed him in, and shut the door. A moment later, the Crown Victoria’s “Interceptor Pack” engine growled, and, with lights flashing, the driver navigated the flow of traffic heading towards Camden.

  The officers were silent, tense. One kept his eyes on the road whilst the other repeatedly glanced back at Tate. The rear of the car was stuffy, and Tate tried to get himself comfortable, as the handcuffs dug into his wrists and ended up forcing him to lean sideways. He should have been worried, sitting cuffed in the back of a US police cruiser, but he wasn’t. The emotion that he felt the most at that exact moment was annoyance. The cops had made a mistake. It was clear that this was about much more than speeding; that would have earnt him a ticket, a financial slap on the wrist – not steel cuffs. They’d picked on the wrong man. He’d enjoy telling them so, but there was no point in saying anything now. He’d not say a word until they’d arrived at the station, attempted to process him and realised their error. There would be an embarrassing “no hard feelings” conversation where the local law enforcement officers would try to persuade him that Maine was an exceptionally safe place to spend his vacation.