When The Devil Whistles Read online

  “Rick Acker has done it again! He’s become one of my favorite suspense novelists by the simple expedient of delivering the goods in every book. This time, a federal whistle-blower may have blown her whistle one time too many. Is she in too deep this time? This book kept screaming my name every time I tried to put it down.”

  —RANDY INGERMANSON, Christy award-winning author of Oxygen

  “Gripping, edge-of-your-seat fiction. When the Devil Whistles is a fast mix of suspense, compelling characters, and legal intrigue as only Acker can write it. I dare you to try to put this book down.”

  —TOSCA LEE, author of Demon: A Memoir

  WHEN THE DEVIL

  WHISTLES

  Rick Acker

  When the Devil Whistles

  Copyright © 2010 by Rick Acker

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4267-0767-4

  Published by Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202

  www.abingdonpress.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, stored in

  any retrieval system, posted on any website, or transmitted in any form

  or by any means—digital, electronic, scanning, photocopy, recording,

  or otherwise—without written permission from the publisher,

  except for brief quotations in printed reviews and articles.

  The persons and events portrayed in this work of fiction are the

  creations of the author, and any resemblance to persons

  living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Published in association with the literary agency of

  Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200,

  Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80920, www.alivecommunications.com

  Cover design by Anderson Design Group, Nashville, TN

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Acker, Rick, 1966-

  When the devil whistles / Rick Acker.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4267-0767-4 (book - pbk./trade pbk., adhesive - perfect binding : alk. paper)

  1. Whistle blowing—Fiction. 2. Corporations--Corrupt practices—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.C545W47 2010

  813’.6—dc22

  2010024817

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 15 14 13 12 11 10

  For the men and women of the False Claims Unit

  at the California Department of Justice.

  I am honored to call you my colleagues

  and my friends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Books are rarely solo projects, and mine never are. Without the help of experts, test readers, paid and volunteer editors, and countless others, this book would never have been written. I’ve been assisted by more people than I can name, but the contributions of a few stand above the crowd. I would like to express my deepest gratitude and appreciation to:

  Anette (wife)—for unceasing encouragement, exacting edits, and boundless love.

  Lee Hough (agent)—for believing in this book, championing it, and landing it with the perfect publisher.

  Barbara Scott (wearer of many hats, including acquisition editor and developmental editor)—for taking a chance on this novel and making it the best book it could be.

  Maegan Roper and the Abingdon sales team—for your enthusiasm, creativity, and tireless efforts to get this book into the hands of readers.

  John Olson (author)—for the seed of an idea and for the brainstorming sessions that made it grow into the book you’re reading now.

  Camy Tang (author)—for staying up all night (though you deny it) to help a suspense author write his first real romantic story line.

  Randy Ingermanson (author and computer expert)—for being an early and constant supporter and providing invaluable feedback.

  Mark Talkovic (Chief ROV Pilot)—for reviewing and fixing the ROV scenes.

  Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute—for generously letting the public have access to your ROVs, staff, and research.

  Megan Sato and Marc Riera (IT gurus)—for debugging the computer-related scenes.

  Jim Thomas (P-51 pilot)—for letting me climb around on your P-51 and answering all my questions about it.

  Nick Akers (Captain, California Military Reserve)—for giving me all the unclassified help you could on nuclear weapons, Port of Oakland security procedures, and air raids.

  Amy Akers (neurologist)—for giving Allie a neurology consult and correcting my medical mistakes.

  David Dodson (Lt. Col, ret., USAF)—for lending a fighter pilot’s eye to the scenes in the air.

  Mo Park and Esther La (Korean-American colleagues)— for helping track down a crucial—but very hard to research— detail about South Korean culture circa 1990.

  Sylvia Keller, Susan Palazzo, Charlotte Spink, Lucy Wang, and Maretta Ward (test readers)—for your candid comments and for catching an embarrassing number of typos.

  Rel Mollet, Nora St. Laurent, Susan Sleeman, Christy Lockstein, Janna Ryan, Laurel Wreath, Carolyn Scheidies, and many others (bloggers and reviewers)—for all you have done to support and encourage me and other Christian authors.

  Readers everywhere—for investing your hard-earned money in books and making it possible for authors to tell you our stories.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Discussion Questions

  Author’s Notes

  Interview with Rick Acker

  Want to learn more

  Back Matter

  Prologue

  Something Wicked This Way Came

  SAMUEL STIMSON MADE HIS LAST TWO MISTAKES ON MARCH 23. BOREDOM caused the first. He had run the last network diagnostic on his task list, the servers were all up and running, and none of the marketing staff had crashed their computers or fo
rgotten their passwords all day. So Samuel played solitaire and Minesweeper for a while. He IMed his gaming buddies, but none of them had time to talk. And then he did what he had always done when sitting in front of a computer with nothing to do: go looking for trouble.

  He didn’t have to look far. Two floors above him in a secure room sat his employer’s secure server, the S-4. Samuel didn’t have access to it. In fact, the only person in the IT department authorized to work on S-4 was Franklin Roh, an ex-Microsoft drone who had half of Samuel’s skill, but double his salary. Not even Franklin’s little toady, Rajiv, knew what was on it.

  Guessing what the mystery server held was a favorite pastime for the IT staff, particularly when Franklin and Rajiv were in the room. Speculation ran the gamut from classified government contracts to evidence of executive tax fraud, but Franklin never reacted to any of their theories, no matter how serious or outrageous. He just sat there watching them with cool arrogance. Maybe he learned that look growing up in Korea. Maybe they taught it at Microsoft. Whatever—it bugged Samuel.

  The image of Franklin Roh’s impassive Asian face gave Samuel the final little push he needed to act. He had been an accomplished hacker in college and grad school—so accomplished that he had never been caught. He didn’t vandalize systems or steal data files like some other hackers but always left the phrase “Something wicked this way came” buried in some unobtrusive spot to unnerve whatever systems engineer later found it. Four years had passed since his last foray into forbidden cyberspace, but he had kept up on recent developments in computer security, and he was pretty sure he could beat anything that Franklin could create.

  He went to work. As he expected, the server was well protected by top-of-the-line commercial security software, which had been configured with perfect competence but no creativity. Just what he expected from a Microsoft guy.

  He didn’t even bother with a direct assault on the server. Conventional firewalls were good at spotting and stopping those kinds of attacks. Careless users were easy targets, and careless senior executives were easiest of all. He did a couple of discreet searches and found a list of the six senior executives with access to the S-4 server. Then he ran a user log and found that four of them were on the system. One, Richard Addison, had been logged in for seventeen days and fourteen hours, but his computer had been inactive for almost two days.

  Samuel grinned. Time for a little stroll.

  He got up and walked out of the warren of IT cubicles, grabbing a handful of random tech gear on his way out the door. He took the elevator up to the executive floor and held up his ID as he approached a security station manned by two alert, rock-jawed guards wearing body armor and toting M-16s. He licked his lips and felt tiny drops of sweat prickle his forehead. Those guys always made him nervous—the way their eyes locked onto him every time he got off the elevators and followed him across the lobby, the no-nonsense way they held their guns, the over-the-top SWAT team gear. He always had the feeling that they were just looking for an excuse to blow away a bike messenger or something. But they buzzed him through with only a perfunctory glance at his ID and the computer parts clutched in his hand. For once, he was grateful for the fact that IT staffers are invisible in the corporate world.

  He walked down the oak-paneled hallways, his footsteps silenced by the rich burgundy carpet. He scanned the brass plates on the office doors for Addison’s name. There it was. He slowed down as he passed Addison’s office and glanced in. It was empty and dark, but a green spark gleamed from the power button on his desktop computer.

  Samuel’s grin returned as he continued down the hall. As he had hoped, Richard Addison had decided to ignore the memo about turning off his computer when he left for the day. Easier to just leave it on and not have to waste two minutes waiting for it to boot up in the morning, right Dick?

  Addison’s unattended computer was a wide-open door in the pricy firewall Franklin Roh had built. This would be easier than Samuel had thought—almost disappointing.

  Samuel meandered back to his cubicle and pulled up the keystroke logging program Franklin had installed. Getting into that was easy enough since he was on the IT staff. The keystroke logger had, of course, recorded all of Addison’s passwords as he typed them in. Two minutes later, Samuel had the one for the S-4 server: “Richrocks1.”

  Samuel snorted and opened the utility on his computer that allowed him to take over any other machine on the system. A few seconds later, he had control of Addison’s computer. If Addison had been at his desk, he would have noticed that his monitor had woken up from power-save mode and was acting possessed. Samuel realized that someone walking past Addison’s office might look in and see the same thing. He should have turned off the monitor. His hands froze on the keyboard and for an instant he considered aborting. Then he smiled and started typing again. He felt the familiar adrenaline rush and tightening stomach muscles. He’d forgotten how much fun a little risk could be.

  Addison had left open a link to the S-4 server on his computer, so Samuel just pulled it up, typed in Addison’s password, and he was in. The server held a single folder with the innocuous title “Project Docs.” Inside that were two subfolders titled “Financial” and “Operational.” The “Operational” subfolder sounded the most interesting, so he opened that one first. It held dozens of PDFs of various sizes. He glanced around to make sure nobody was watching. Then he took a deep breath and opened the first PDF. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  Or maybe not. The PDF was some sort of form in an Asian language Samuel didn’t recognize. So was the second PDF, and the third.

  He clicked through half a dozen more files before coming across something in English. It was a checklist titled “6/16-8/16 Winch and ROV Spare Parts,” and it cataloged various machine parts that meant nothing to Samuel. He tried a few more, but nothing juicy—no Navy memos labeled “Top Secret,” no charts marking debris fields from lost Spanish galleons, and no fake executive tax returns. He couldn’t even find a memo that would at least give him some inkling of what this project was about.

  The “Financial” subfolder held nothing but a bunch of PDF invoices and a couple of Excel spreadsheets. They were all in English, but it didn’t matter. The invoices were all one-line bills that said “For services rendered” followed by a number. And the spreadsheets were just lists of invoices with totals at the bottoms.

  He stopped and rubbed the soul patch beard on his lower lip. The totals were each in the tens of millions of dollars, and some topped $100 million. He’d been in the company long enough to know that all marine engineering and salvage projects were expensive, but that was a lot of money.

  He did a quick scan of the rest of the files, but found nothing useful. Whatever the company was getting all that money for, it wasn’t at all clear from what was on the S-4 server.

  Now thoroughly frustrated, Samuel got ready to minimize the server connection again and get out of Addison’s computer. Before he did, though, he embedded “Something wicked this way came” as an anonymous tag on one of the PDFs. He also added an image to the PDF: a picture of Franklin Roh’s face Photoshopped onto the body of an obese woman in a bikini.