FREE Chapter of my new book: DOGE Squad: The Corruption Protocol
Sneak Preview for LARRY-VIP members
I am so excited about the release of my FIRST novella, DOGE Squad: The corruption Protocol that I’ve decided to give all LARRY VIP members a sneak preview of the first chapter.
The book is on pre-sale right now and will be available for Kindle, paperback, hard cover and audio book on May 27th! I’d appreciate your feedback in the comments section. - Larry
Chapter 1: Enter the DOGE Squad
Adrian Hayes stood at the head of a sleek, high-tech conference room, the kind only a billionaire could afford to build in a private underground compound. The walls were lined with digital displays, cycling through encrypted financial reports, government contracts, and the faces of Washington’s most powerful figures. He had spent years studying them—who they answered to, who they feared, and who they paid off.
Tonight, he was putting his plan into motion.
Above the table hovered a rotating 3D hologram of the Capitol, overlaid with a red-highlighted network of contracts, political connections, and financial trails. This wasn’t a conspiracy theory—it was a blueprint of institutional rot, built off verifiable data.
Adrian didn’t trust politicians. He didn’t trust bureaucrats. What he trusted were numbers—real ones—and the numbers painted a picture of government dysfunction so grotesque it had stopped resembling incompetence and started to look like intent.
The newly elected president had tapped Hayes not just because he was the wealthiest man in the country, but because he was beholden to no one. A real estate magnate turned anti-establishment firebrand, the president had run on a promise to dismantle the administrative state and burn out the rot. And Hayes had been waiting for that moment—an opportunity to finally turn his data into action.
A visionary as much as a technologist, Hayes had parlayed his business success into fulfilling a lifelong dream of space exploration. Years earlier, he had founded a private aerospace company that began as a moonshot passion project and evolved into the most efficient satellite delivery platform in the world—outpacing NASA and every traditional aerospace contractor since the Right Stuff era. His rockets flew faster, cheaper, and more reliably, untethered from government bureaucracy and political gridlock. But it was through this very venture that Hayes had seen firsthand how federal defense contracts were awarded—often based not on merit or innovation, but on legacy relationships, bloated budgets, and bureaucratic inefficiency. He had watched capable competitors get boxed out, and billions funneled into outdated technologies simply because the right lobbyists had been paid. In Hayes’s mind, that same disruptive ethos that had revolutionized space delivery now needed to be applied to government oversight: dismantle the old model, root out inefficiencies, and expose the rot that had festered beneath decades of unchecked spending.
Around the polished glass table sat five individuals who represented that action.
Max Carter—brilliant hacker with a chip on his shoulder and a trail of burned government contracts behind him. He had short, unkempt black hair, a patchy beard, and a wardrobe of graphic hoodies that clashed with the high-tech elegance of the room. Once a prodigy at MIT before dropping out to freelance for defense contractors, Max grew disillusioned with how his innovations were repurposed for mass surveillance. After a stint on the run following a whistleblower leak, he’d become an urban legend in hacker circles.
Riley Quinn—MIT-trained data analyst who could find hidden meaning in noise, cold as steel and twice as sharp. With sleek platinum hair tied in a tight braid, she wore minimalist black and never broke her gaze from the data streams she monitored. A former quant for a Wall Street hedge fund, she’d turned against the system after discovering her models were being used to manipulate social infrastructure rather than support it. She trusted logic more than people—and with good reason.
Jordan Blake—former political strategist turned dissident, who knew D.C.’s games better than the players. Dressed in a tailored blazer over a T-shirt, he looked more like a disillusioned startup founder than a tactician. Tall, lean, and razor-tongued, Jordan had once been the golden boy of a major party before a scandal—engineered by his own side—left him blacklisted. Now he played for no team but his own.
Avery Sinclair—investigative bulldog with a reputation for breaking stories that scared networks into silence. Athletic, with cropped auburn hair and a stare that could melt granite, she carried herself like someone who’d chased stories through war zones and into corporate boardrooms. Formerly of a major broadcast network, she was fired after refusing to kill a piece on pharmaceutical industry corruption. Her articles still lived in dark corners of the web—proof she’d always gone where others wouldn’t.
And Cassie Monroe—the youngest, a government insider who’d seen enough to stop believing in reform. Polished and idealistic, she wore a navy-blue pantsuit and carried a messenger bag filled with dossiers. With high cheekbones, sharp eyes, and a voice that commanded respect, she had once interned in the West Wing before landing a position at the GAO. But after watching too many internal investigations vanish into bureaucratic black holes, she had decided it was time to fight the system from the outside.
Hayes let the silence stretch before speaking.
“You’ve all been chosen because you’re something this town doesn’t understand—prodigies who never bought into the system,” he said, his gaze sweeping the room. “You haven’t been corrupted, co-opted, or compromised. You’ve stayed outside the machine, and that makes you dangerous. And exactly what we need. No one’s coming to fix this system. We have to burn it down ourselves.”
Max leaned back with a smirk. “So what’s the play? Expose a few senators, leak some emails?”
“Not even close.”
Hayes tapped a command into his console. The screen shifted to a logo: Saxon Tech.
Below it, a figure: $4.8 billion.
“This is the largest unchecked defense contract in U.S. history,” he said. “No oversight. No audits. No paper trail.”
Cassie’s brows furrowed. “That’s not possible. There are checks. Internal compliance, third-party audits—”
“They’ve found ways around every one,” Hayes interrupted. “Shell companies. Lobbyists. Congressional riders buried in thousand-page bills. This isn’t new—it’s just never been exposed from the inside.”
Riley’s eyes flicked toward the screen. “Who’s behind it?”
“The top of the funnel is Saxon Tech. But the hands on the faucet belong to one man.”
A new face replaced the logo—Senator William Barlow, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Barlow was the consummate Washington insider: silver-haired, smooth-talking, and surgically polished. To the public, he was a statesman who spoke in measured tones about fiscal responsibility and national defense. But to those who paid attention, he was a master of appropriations sleight-of-hand, redirecting billions through obscure legislative amendments and behind-closed-doors markups. His influence spanned decades, and his fingerprints were on every major federal spending package of the last fifteen years. He cultivated an image of bipartisan pragmatism while quietly feeding a network of loyalists and corporate allies. No one crossed him without consequences—and very few even tried.
Jordan let out a low whistle. “He writes the checks for half the government.”
“And maybe he’s cashing the rest,” Hayes said. “I can’t prove it—yet. But I believe this contract is just one node in a larger web of payoffs, diversions, and political laundering. Our job is to test that hypothesis. We trace the money, we verify the connections, and if the pattern holds, we pull it apart thread by thread until the whole operation collapses in the light.”
Cassie frowned. “Barlow’s a political ally of the president. Won’t going after him create a conflict?”
Hayes nodded. “Exactly why we do it quietly. The president authorized DOGE because he wanted results, not headlines. If Barlow’s clean, we’ll move on. But if he’s dirty—and I think he is—the worst thing we can do is flinch because of optics.”
Jordan added, “And if he’s not clean, and we hesitate, then DOGE becomes just another tool for appearances. Not for truth.”
“Right,” Hayes said. “We’re not here to protect careers. We’re here to follow the facts. No matter where they lead.”
Avery folded her arms. “Why now? Why us?”
“Because for the first time, we have institutional cover—at least partially,” Hayes said. “The president just signed off on a new task force under the Office of Management and Budget. It’s called the Division of Oversight for Government Excess—DOGE. It’s a legitimate team of auditors and analysts tasked with reviewing waste, fraud, and abuse. They’re good people, but they’re still inside the machine, working within rules that were written to protect the very corruption we’re trying to destroy.”
He stepped forward, voice steady.
“You five are different. You’re an independent cell—handpicked from outside the system, answerable only to me. I’m bankrolling this operation personally. No appropriations, no contracts, no paper trail. You won’t be limited by legal blinders or institutional hesitation. You’re not just a part of DOGE. You’re the knife hidden in its shadow.”
He gestured toward the team dashboards lighting up in front of them. Each terminal displayed a personalized interface tailored to the member's specialty—Max’s console streamed real-time network infiltration targets, Riley’s projected cascading payment trees and anomaly flags, Cassie’s tracked agency and legislative linkages, Jordan’s mapped influence diagrams and political exposure models, and Avery’s fed her the latest whistleblower suppression cases and investigative cold trails. These weren’t just dashboards—they were weapons, calibrated to turn raw data into actionable intelligence.
“Max, you’ll breach the DoD’s procurement server."
Max tilted his head. “Are we talking brute force entry or stealth code injection?”
“Stealth,” Hayes said. “I want eyes, not alarms. Get in, watch their system talk to itself. We’ll decide what to steal once we know what’s worth taking.”
“Riley, start mapping payment irregularities.”
Riley glanced at her dashboard. “Are we prioritizing volume or velocity? Slow siphons or big moves?”
“Both,” Hayes said. “Start with any transfer that changed hands more than twice in twenty-four hours. That kind of laundering leaves heat trails.”
“Cassie, connect those payments to political players.”
Cassie raised a brow. “Do I need to worry about red flags on Hill servers?”
Hayes nodded. “Assume they’re watching their own. Don’t pull—mirror. Build your link map on a shadow server. Stay dark.”
“Jordan, start building threat profiles.”
Jordan leaned back, arms folded. “Internal threats? Or people who might try to stop us?”
“Both,” Hayes replied. “If someone’s got too much to lose, I want to know what they’ll sacrifice to keep it.”
“Avery, dig into anyone who tried to blow the whistle and got buried.”
Avery’s eyes narrowed. “And if they’re dead?”
“Then we find out who wrote the eulogy,” Hayes said. “And what they were trying to silence.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow. “And when they come after us?”
Hayes smiled. “Then we’ll know we’re close.”
The room went still. Each of them understood what was being asked.
This wasn’t journalism.
This wasn’t activism.
This was war.
And DOGE Squad had just been activated.
Later that night – The Mirror, Washington, D.C.
The Mirror was an infamous watering hole hidden beneath a shuttered bookstore in a side alley just off Pennsylvania Avenue—no sign, no website, just a brass buzzer and a reputation that dated back to the Cold War. With its low lighting, velvet booths, and vaulted stone ceiling, it had the ambiance of a private club layered in secrets. A few blocks from the Capitol, it was a historic haunt of senior staffers, lobbyists, and journalists who understood the unspoken rules of the town. Conversations here weren’t just off the record—they were currency.
In a leather booth near the back, a young man in a tailored gray suit leaned across the table toward a cable news producer nursing her second martini.
“He’s already operating. Quietly, but aggressively,” the staffer said. “The president gave him cover. But he’s off-book. Completely. No oversight.”
The reporter didn’t blink. “You’re talking about Hayes?”
The staffer gave a dry chuckle. “Who else? He’s pulling data from inside DoD. You don’t think that’s going to draw blood?”
She sipped her drink. “And you’re giving me this because...?”
“Because it’s going to get messy. Fast. And someone should be asking how a billionaire with no clearance is tapping into government systems.”
She smiled thinly. “And I’m sure you’re just a concerned citizen.”
He shrugged. “Let’s just say I work for a senator who doesn’t appreciate billionaires thinking they run the government.”
Their glasses clinked. A silent toast. Not to truth, but to leverage.
Outside, the streetlights flickered as the city’s power structures settled in for another night of feeding themselves.
The war had already started. And the knives were coming out.