Judgment at Alcatraz Read online

  Praise for Dave Edlund

  “Edlund is right at home with his bestselling brethren,

  Brad Thor and Brad Taylor.”

  –Jon Land, USA Today bestselling author of the Caitlin Strong series

  “compulsively readable”

  –Publisher’s Weekly

  Praise for Lethal Savage

  “a near-perfect international thriller”

  –Foreword Reviews

  Praise for Guarding Savage

  “required reading for any thriller aficionado”

  –Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author,

  Praise for Hunting Savage

  “Crackling action”

  –Kirkus Reviews

  Praise for Deadly Savage

  Title Page

  Judgment

  at Alcatraz

  a Danya Biton novel

  Dave Edlund

  Durham, NC

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2021, by Dave Edlund

  Judgment at Alcatraz (a Danya Biton novel)

  Dave Edlund

  www.petersavagenovels.com

  [email protected]

  Published 2021, by Light Messages

  www.lightmessages.com

  Durham, NC 27713

  SAN: 920-9298

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61153-384-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61153-385-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950845

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without the prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Dave Edlund

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  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

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Author’s Postscript

  About the Author

  The Peter Savage Series

  Nicole Graves Mysteries

  Dedication

  To my brothers Tom and Jac…

  thank you for a lifetime of friendship

  and fond memories.

  I love you guys..

  Acknowledgements

  Who would have known that my first exposure to the thriller genre around 1979 would have had an impact on my life that is still being felt? The book was Raise the Titanic! by Clive Cussler, and it ignited within me a passion for the genre. I suppose it was inevitable that one day I would begin writing, and my inspiration is readily traced back to the Grand Master. Sadly, Mr. Cussler passed on February 24, 2020 in Scottsdale, Arizona. Thank you, Mr. Cussler, for your gifts of story to all readers, but in particular to me and the wonderful path of discovery it has led me down—a journey that is far from over.

  Writing and publishing a book is not a solo endeavor, far from it. From research to the process of assembling the publication-ready copy, a lot of people with a wide range of skills are engaged, and their contributions are invaluable.

  Let’s begin with the research. As much as I enjoy suspending belief when I read thrillers, there has to be (in my opinion) a strong element of factual grounding. In Judgment at Alcatraz, my long-time friend and explosives expert, Judd Holiday, advised on the shock sensitivity properties of various types of dynamite. Mr. Holiday has 17 years of experience as a bomb tech at the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at New Mexico Tech (sounds like the kind of job I would enjoy), and the scenes herein involving explosives have passed his scrutiny. Thank you, Judd, for sharing your expertise.

  I am very fortunate to have Light Messages Publishing in my corner, as they have produced and published the Peter Savage series and now are backing me as we venture into this new series. Words cannot express my deep level of gratitude to the entire team, and most especially to my editor, Elizabeth, who never ceases to amaze me at her uncanny ability to catch what at first appears to be the tiniest of details, when in fact it is a big deal. Thank you, Elizabeth, as your skill, experience, and attention to detail makes these stories much better. And thank you to Betty and Wally, who handle more of the business routine at Light Messages, for always being responsive and professional, as well as executing the details of book publishing while making it look easy.

  Since this is the first full-length novel featuring Danya Biton (pronounced bit – on) as the protagonist, there were many thoughtful discussions with the Light Messages team concerning a suitable title. After narrowing the options down to three, we ran a short poll on Twitter and Facebook. As the Fates would have it, it was a fan of my Peter Savage series who boldly rejected the candidate titles we put forth and came up with her own suggestion. This concept won unanimous support from the publishing team and now graces the cover. Thank you, Mona Stephens for your great idea!

  I also wish to acknowledge and thank my talented daughter, Mackenzie, for the cover design and artwork.

  As much as I love reading and writing thrillers, these stories are for you, the reader. Although Danya made her debut in Hunting Savage, and later appeared in Lethal Savage and the short story Deadly Atonement, my hope is to build a series on her adventures. If you enjoy Judgment at Alcatraz, please let me know. Posting a review (Amazon or Goodreads) is also great. Send messages to me through the contacts page on my web site www.DaveEdlund.com, or email me at [email protected].

  Cheers

  —DE

  Author’s Note

  Three quarters of a century has passed since the Nuclear Genie was unleashed with twin mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although not forgotten, that horror has faded with successive generations. Peaceful applications of nuclear power followed in the decades after the end of WWII, along with the inevitable accidents—perhaps most noteworthy being the disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukashima. And so, with time, nuclear power plants have fallen from favor.

  Although there is still debate about where and how to store radioactive waste from the remaining operational nuclear power plants, the topic is no longer the headline grabber it was in the 70s and early 80s. Even the clean-up of the Hanford Reservation in southeastern Washington—the site where plutonium was made during the Manhattan Project for the atomic bomb nicknamed ‘Fat Man’ and dropped on Nagasaki—has fallen into relative obscurity.

  So maybe it should be no surprise that other nuclear threats
are lingering in plain sight. Shocked? You should be.

  I was… and am.

  To be fair, this question is, in part, a trick question. The most prevalent radioactive isotopes are those used in medical procedures and industrial radiography (examining metal castings and forgings, and welded seams for structural integrity). One of the most common is cobalt-60. Cobalt, in its stable or non-radioactive isotopic form, is a metal used in products ranging from lithium batteries to stainless steels to super alloys that withstand high temperatures and stress—i.e., alloys used in aircraft engines. And most of the global supply of cobalt originates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  So, it should be no surprise that cobalt is prized as a recyclable metal. Which is the problem.

  You see, slipping in a little cobalt-60 will earn a greater payment from the recycler, but those handling the reclaimed metal have no idea of the deadly material they are processing.

  Since the early 80s, there have been several documented cases of cobalt-60 turning up in metal reclaiming centers. In some cases, the radioactive cobalt even made it into newly manufactured products. A particularly notorious case occurred in Taiwan. Between 1982 and 1984, reclaimed cobalt-60 was incorporated into newly manufactured rebar and used in the construction of more than two-hundred residential and other buildings in northern Taiwan and Taipei. The government never took action to condemn the buildings. More than seven-thousand people have been exposed, and most without their knowledge.

  In 1983 a resident of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, attempted to recycle about six-thousand pellets of cobalt-60. The metal so contaminated his truck that the truck was scrapped. In doing so, five-thousand metric tons of steel was contaminated. The contaminated steel was used to manufacture kitchen and restaurant table legs as well as rebar. The contaminated products were transported into the U.S. and Canada. After discovery of the incident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission installed radiation monitors at all major crossings from Mexico into the U.S.

  Other similar incidents with cobalt-60 occurred in China, Thailand, Turkey, India, and Italy, often resulting in fatalities.

  In a bizarre case in 2013, a truck transporting a medical cobalt-60 source from a hospital in Tijuana was hijacked near Mexico City. Following a nationwide search, the truck was found abandoned, but the deadly cargo was missing. Fortunately, the cobalt-60 was later discovered in a nearby field. The fate of the thieves was never determined.

  Every now and then medical isotopes go missing, either because of errors in record keeping or transgressions in handling the material. However, most radioactive elements used in treatment of cancer or in diagnostics, have relatively short half-lives (the aforementioned cobalt-60 being an exception). This means they quickly lose their lethality.

  However, there is another peaceful and common use of radioactive isotopes that has escaped, for the most part, public scrutiny, and yet represents a clear and present danger. I am talking about Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators—commonly called RTGs.

  From the perspective of science and engineering, these are truly elegant machines with no moving parts. RTGs generate electric power from heat, making good use of the Seebeck Effect. The Seebeck Effect describes the production of an electric potential when the junction of two dissimilar metals is heated. Such a device is called a thermocouple, and a group of several thermocouples is called a thermopile. Thermocouples and thermopiles are ubiquitous, but most commonly you would encounter them in your gas water heater and kitchen oven.

  If our goal is to generate electric power for a long time (such as a deep-space probe), the heat source is the trick. Decades ago, NASA determined that radioactive isotopes, which produce heat as a byproduct of the radioactive decay process, would make ideal heat sources lasting years, even decades.

  Therein lies the danger as well as the potential harm. You see, satellites and deep-space probes are not the only applications requiring reliable electric power for a period of years with no maintenance. A prevalent terrestrial need is remote navigational beacons. And a very large number of such beacons have been deployed by Canada, the U.S., and the Soviet Union (now Russia) in the Arctic. RTGs have also been deployed in Eastern Europe to power remote telemetry stations.

  Ordinarily, this would not be a problem at all—provided the machines were periodically attended to, and all units were tracked and disposed of appropriately at end of life.

  Perhaps that would have been the case had the Soviet Union not fallen. The chaos of transitioning to a new government, causing social and economic insecurity, created an environment where details easily slipped notice and were forgotten.

  RTGs of Soviet or Russian manufacture, using strontium-90 as the power source, are scattered across the far northern frontier and the former Soviet bloc nations of Eastern Europe. And these machines are not secured. Several have shown up in the most unexpected places, like the wilderness in Georgia, 50 km east of the village of Lia. There, in December of 2001, three woodcutters found two abandoned RTG cores. They were not marked as hazardous. The men had no idea what they’d found, but they appreciated the heat emanating from the devices and used them as heaters while they spent a cold night in the forest. Within hours all three men began to display symptoms of radiation poisoning—burns over their backs and hands, headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting. One of the woodcutters ultimately died from radiation exposure.

  Other incidents with RTG cores containing strontium-90 occurred in far northern Russia in 2003 and 2004.

  Fortunately, plutonium as a power source has been relegated to deep space missions only, so there is no danger of it being available terrestrially. Still, strontium-90 is extremely dangerous. Chemically, strontium is very similar to calcium, and if ingested, strontium-90 localizes in bone where it irradiates the surrounding tissue. The knowledge that these RTGs are scattered about, unguarded and unaccounted for, is truly frightening.

  This is the Nuclear Genie that lives on in the shadows. A vengeful and spiteful genie, ready to bring death upon the unsuspecting.

  —DE

  June 2020

  Prologue

  Northern Nevada

  Seven months ago

  Lewis Blackhawk, a proud Shoshone, stood tall in the midday sun. He wore dark sunglasses and a wide-brimmed Stetson, the headband discolored from sweat. His weathered face bore the wrinkles of age, but his mind was sharp, and he had the energy of a man twenty years younger. His fingers were adorned with gold rings, while he sported a Rolex Oyster.

  He’d made a fortune parlaying earnings from gambling into huge returns on the stock market. And his wealth was the reason he was here in the desert.

  Although it was fall, the temperature was already approaching ninety degrees, and it wasn’t even noon yet. The elder man looked like he was baking in an oven. A cooling breeze would have been welcomed, but the air was still—ideal, they said, for the forthcoming demonstration.

  Despite the heat, Lewis wore black jeans and a turquoise long-sleeved shirt. He removed a water bottle from a cooler and pressed the cold container against his neck before downing the contents in one long swig.

  Standing beside him, in a sleeveless cotton shirt and a grease-smudged ball cap, was Leonard Cloud. His hair, the color of raven feathers, was braided into a ponytail that extended to the middle of his back. His skin was bronzed and tight, not yet showing the cumulative effects of a life of sun exposure.

  He squinted his brown eyes as he searched the horizon.

  “Looks clear. I don’t see any vehicles.”

  He didn’t expect to encounter anyone. The land was desolate for miles in every direction, too poor even to graze cattle. But the isolation and clear field of view were ideal for the demonstration he had prepared.

  Lewis wiped his brow with his sleeve. “You call yourselves the Indigenous Peoples Movement, is that right?”

  Leonard nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Catchy, but why not just work with the American Indian Movement? I mean, they’ve been ar
ound for a long time. Had a lot of press back in the 70s and 80s. The organization is well-funded, based on what I hear. Why do you need my support to start a new organization?”

  It was a fair question, one Leonard had been expecting.

  With a wry smile he replied, “The AIM has become too mainstream. They prefer to lobby various congressmen from time to time, producing catchy sound bites to drum up more donations. They refuse to embrace new directives, and they won’t admit that the same old process is doomed to fail, as it always has.”

  Lewis squinted and cast an appraising gaze at Leonard.

  “And you’re telling me, you know how to effect real change, when everyone else has failed?”

  “I’m not just telling you. I know. I’m going to show you.”

  Lewis drew in a breath and exhaled. “Okay. Let’s get on with it.”

  Leonard smiled. Unlike Lewis, he was acclimated to the desert heat.

  The men were standing between two pickup trucks, separated by about fifty yards. In the cargo bed of each vehicle sat a young man holding a radio controller. Lewis had seen this type of controller before. It was used to fly drones, especially the helicopter drones that were popular with hobbyists.

  With a swirl of dust, two quadcopters, each nearly three feet in diameter, rose from the desert and climbed to a stationary hover. Lewis estimated they were twenty or so feet high. The electric buzz sounded like a beehive, only much louder.

  Three gunmen, each armed with an AR-style semiauto rifle, were positioned ten yards in front of Lewis and Leonard. Another hundred yards beyond the shooters was a line of orange flags on ten-foot poles. On Leonard’s command, the drones flew over the shooters and soon passed over the line of orange flags.

  The rules were simple—shoot down the drones, but only once they had crossed over the line of flags. Each pilot was to fly his quadcopter at constant altitude along the row of flags, and they could not return the drones until given the order by Leonard. Each of the riflemen had three thirty-round magazines—ninety bullets each, 270 rounds total. Once all the ammunition was spent, the drones would be recalled—if they were still operational.