RADIX

A CJ Hawk - FBI Origin Story

Subscribers (always free) also always get the first look at anything new I’m putting out. RADIX, as the sub-title notes is CJ Hawk’s origin story. How he goes from Georgetown Hoya lacrosse star to FBI Agent, with a focus on his time at the Alexandria Police Department. This novella-length story drops on March 3rd and is available for pre-order on Amazon for just $0.99. https://amzn.to/4bCx6ld.

INTRODUCTION

According to Merriam Webster, the Latin word for root is RADIX. It’s often used to describe origin, or beginning, usually in mathematics, which makes it the perfect title for this book - CJ Hawk’s origin story. The book is for everybody, those who have read one or all the CJ HAWK – FBI Thrillers, DEPARTMENT ECHO, ZULU CENTER, and WASHINGTON FIELD. Or if you haven’t read any of these thrillers, it is an introduction that will maybe bring these stories to you.

There is a fourth option, THE HAWK FILES, which is a compendium of all three books in one volume, and are substantially the same as the three individual books with some minor edits. And all these books are available in eBook, Paperback, and Audio. (Except THE HAWK FILES, which because of its length at a thousand pages is only in eBook and Audio.)

As you will see in this origin story, CJ Hawk is a former Alexandria, Virginia police officer who joins the FBI. Five years into his new career he is “Removed from the Rolls of the Bureau” (which is the official term for an FBI agent getting fired,) for his role in a bank robbery take down that went tragically wrong. Technically, Hawk didn’t do anything incorrect, but as the Washington Field Office SWAT team leader, he was responsible.

When Hawk was a senior in high school his mother died of cancer. His senior year at Georgetown University, his father, Cornelius James Harrington was killed in an ATM robbery. His father was the founder of a venerable global equity firm in Washington, D.C. and left him a hundred-million-dollar fortune. Hawk changed his name from CJ Harrington, Jr. to Hawk to distance himself from his father’s big shadow in still small-town D.C.

He didn’t have to do anything, but boredom got the best of him and CJ Hawk started a PI business catering to wealthy clients. White shoe law firms, K Street lobbying groups and professional sports teams. But it seemed each time he took on a new investigation, he bumped into rogue elements in and out of government he never saw coming. During his time in law enforcement, Hawk was in two on-duty shootings. When he becomes a PI, they added up more quickly.

There are two undisputed masters in the modern crime fiction genre: Joseph Wambaugh and Michael Connelly. Both were practitioners first with Wambaugh having served for fourteen years in the LAPD before becoming so successful with writing he left law enforcement to write full-time. Connelly was a journalist for years covering the police beat that gave him insight about the real world of police work.

While I would never compare myself to either of these giants, RADIX is written in the style of Wambaugh’s third fiction book THE CHIORBOYS. That book is not so much a plot-driven story with a crime to solve, but a series of stories that are about multiple characters and the trouble they get in. In fact, I have a colleague who was a former LAPD officer and detective and met Wambaugh at the Short Stop bar in Rampart Division near Dodger Stadium after Wambaugh had left the department. It was common knowledge that in addition to what he learned on the street in fourteen years, Wambaugh continued to meet his cop buddies at places like the Short Stop and collect additional war stories.

Likewise, in RADIX, instead of using plot to tell a story, I use multiple vignettes that take us from Hawk’s journey as a college student to his dismissal from the FBI that happens in Book 1 - DEPARTMENT ECHO. Just like all my novels, the vignettes are not totally fiction. They are composites of real characters and scenarios I knew and saw over my thirty-three years in the business.

No spoilers here, but DEPARTMENT ECHO finds Hawk as the first police officer on the scene in 1984 when Dr. David Richards is assassinated answering the door to his Old Town Alexandria, Virginia townhouse late at night. Despite the fact his estranged spouse was seeking custody of their children who lived with him, there was little evidence, and the case went cold for years. By 1990 Hawk has joined the FBI and was in command of a SWAT team when that bank robbery takedown went tragically wrong resulting in the death of a fellow agent. He finds himself, as I said, “removed from the rolls of the Bureau,” and working boring cases as a Private Investigator. Hawk is then unexpectedly retained by a prominent attorney to solve the Dr. Richards murder once and for all, although who the client is, remains a mystery.

His investigation spirals in directions Hawk never saw coming. His sometimes girlfriend Kori West married a flawed attorney on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. A sketchy K Street lobbying firm with ties to members of Congress and Iranian Intelligence is uncovered. Most challenging, Hawk trips into a rogue Department of Defense (DoD) intelligence office codenamed Department Echo that operates in the Black. Officially, it doesn’t exist - it’s off the books. And then these scenarios collide in a powerful ending that delivers justice to all that deserve it – except maybe Hawk. Inspired by an actual assassination in Old Town Alexandria in 1984, DEPARTMENT ECHO will keep you turning the pages until all is revealed.

To provide context in RADIX, there are some passages from DEPARTMENT ECHO that are repeated in different sections of this book. If you have already read DEPARTMENT ECHO, don’t fret, it’s a small portion of RADIX. If you have read any of my Detective Kiki Diaz STATION series thrillers, there are a few well-placed Easter Eggs in here that relate back to those books – see if you can find them.

Again, no spoilers, but in ZULU CENTER someone has murdered three prominent residents of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia including the wife of the city’s sheriff. When the trail goes cold, the sheriff’s son hires dismissed FBI agent, now private investigator CJ Hawk to look into the murder with fresh eyes. His investigation leads to the discovery something a lot more sinister. A secret government agency, code-named ZULU CENTER, has been spun up inside the State Department with a single mission; hide the identities of the nation’s covert intelligence operatives and the military’s special operators.

Technology is a double-edged sword. Nations are using fingerprints, retina scans, facial recognition software, and even DNA to not only monitor their own citizens, but people entering their countries from abroad. This is a challenge for the spooks and SEALs.

ZULU CENTER has figured out a way to leverage that technology. Or have they? Often, when a new technology is developed by the deep state, what can go wrong eventually does. It’s up to CJ Hawk and a small team of loyalists who want to be on the right side of history to solve the murders, prevent another, and expose the dark side of ZULU CENTER.

And, in WASHINGTON FIELD, Zack Wise is a whip smart information technology specialist at the venerable Washington, D.C. lobbying firm Van Ness – Penn Consulting. Their biggest client – the Republican National Committee. When Zack is found dead in an alley after a night of heavy drinking, the Metropolitan D.C. police are stumped. It looks like a robbery attempt, but his Rolex, cash, and Amex Platinum card are still on him.

Then, Van Ness – Penn Consulting discovers their systems were pinged and data potentially exfiltrated. Including financial information that could prove damaging to President Wesley Rogers’ reelection efforts. Van Ness – Penn suspects the People’s Republic of China. They also suspect Zack had an external hard drive on him when he was shot.

FBI Director James Clark won’t touch the case. He was badly burned the last two times the FBI got involved in investigations this close to a presidential election. And if Wes Rogers’ opponent were to win the presidency, Clark has a shot at Attorney General. Maybe even the Supreme Court.

Assistant Director of the Washington Field Office, Herb Andrews, turns to his old squad mate, CJ Hawk who was removed from the rolls of the FBI several years ago for his role in a bad shooting. Hawk is a high-end private investigator now, although why is anybody’s guess. He inherited a hundred million dollars from his father who founded a Washington based global investment firm.

Hawk is running and gunning in an off-the-books investigation for Andrews and Washington Field, and the list of potential suspects in Zack Wise’s murder multiplies by a factor of four. He finds himself up against a hostile foreign intelligence service, two political parties, the White House, and the seventh floor at FBI Headquarters.

Ryan Steck, acclaimed best-selling author and “The Real Book Spy,” said of F.X. Regan’s books, “Written by a former FBI Agent who knows this world inside and out, his thrillers are the FBI books you don’t want to miss.”

So now that you know the CJ Hawk universe, let’s delve into how CJ Hawk got to, and then got removed from the FBI in RADIX- his origin story.

First, a short note about the FBI’s pre-publication review process. When I joined the FBI years ago, I signed a lifetime agreement that any written work I produced, including fiction, was subject to the Bureau’s pre-publication review process. All three of the books above went through that process. None contained any classified information, although there were some clarifications required in DEPARTMENT ECHO, and several lines/paragraphs on twelve different pages of ZULU CENTER were redacted as “law enforcement sensitive.”

I disagreed with that decision because I believe what was redacted could have been thought up by a freshman creative writing student. Nevertheless, I signed the agreement and am bound by it. All the passages in RADIX that involve the FBI have been previously vetted and cleared. I have been asked to advise that, “This manuscript was approved for publication with the caveat that the views and opinions expressed in the book are mine, and do not represent the FBI, the Department of Justice, or any government agency.”

What I’m Working On:

Two really exciting new projects, one of which is only weeks away from being revealed. It’s a three letter agency historical novel I don’t think I've ever seen done before. Stay tuned for details.

I hope you will pick up and enjoy RADIX,

F.X.