Misled

by Anderson Harp

  Nothing.

  He looked across the horizon. A ridge stood in front of the nose. There was no telling what was on the other side. It didn’t matter. Their situation required commitment without hesitation. He steered the plane steadily, holding on to as much altitude as possible and for as long as possible.

  “Altitude is our friend.” He spoke the words unconsciously, forgetting for a moment that he had a passenger. It was an old pilot’s saying that went back to the most basic instructions and first flight lessons.

  “What?” Karen was turning pale.

  The Otter’s sleds brushed the top of the trees at the crown of the ridge.

  “There you go.” He pointed to a small, ice-covered pothole lake just to the left of the nose. The pothole lakes of the Yukon were Mother Nature’s version of the same small, deep holes found in the Yukon’s road surfaces. These were filled with ice and water. If he could hold on to a gentle turn, they had a chance. The Otter slowly slid down the hill as it lost altitude. The crown of a pine tree brushed the strut. Lower, lower, finally reaching the lake.

  The aircraft slammed down on the ice and snow, the banking turn having caused the airplane to lose all of its remaining lift. The speed rapidly bled off as the skids scraped across the frozen lake until Will saw a log sticking up out of the ice.

  “Hold on!”

  The crunch of metal echoed through the woods and all movement stopped. The right skid had been sheared off, and the remaining sharp point of the landing gear had gotten stuck in the ice. At least the airplane had come to a stop.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Will pointed to the door on his side. The aircraft was tilted with her starboard side angled down, causing the cargo to slide to the right. He pulled Karen across his seat and helped her down onto the ice, which seemed more than adequate to hold their weight.

  “You okay?” Will was still holding her on the ice. She’d felt so small and light in her parka as he’d helped her out. He’d forgotten what the woman he’d saved in Africa felt like.

  “Yeah.” Her face remained ash-gray, but she seemed steady enough on her feet. Suddenly, she jumped at a noise from behind.

  The cargo door on the other side had popped open; they heard another sound.

  “Watch out.” Karen shielded him with an arm and backed away from the wrecked aircraft.

  Will saw motion on the other side as a white form crawled out of the wreckage and scurried away across the ice and into the woods on the far side of the lake.

  Juliet had escaped.

  “This storm isn’t going to be pretty.” He looked back to the Saint Elias Mountains. “We need shelter.”

  He knew that the clouds would bring a blizzard; after that, the temperature would drop precipitously. The clear Siberian air that followed a major front could be deadly. He pointed to a space in the timberline on the other side of the aircraft across the lake. The gap in the trees made an oddly straight line from the edge of the lake deep into the woods. In the center of the timber cut was what appeared to be a rock formation covered in deep snow.

  Will pointed at the outcropping. “Let’s go there. We need to get out of this wind.”

  A cold breeze swept across the lake. The tail of the Otter squeaked as the rudder was pushed from side to side by the wind. It was the only sound.

  “Whitehorse is south.” He pointed in the same direction as the swath of broken trees. “But no one will come.” He calculated the process. The airplane would not be missing for some time, and air traffic control was likely overwhelmed with others affected by the solar flare.

  “Even though we crashed?” She looked up at him with eyes that seemed larger than normal.

  “Not a crash.” He smiled. “A landing.” He looked back at the storm coming in. “Anything you walk away from is a landing.”

  “Great.” Karen gave him a sarcastic smile like the teenager told about a curfew. But at least he got a smile.

  They were several miles from Snag and a massive, thickly forested hill deep in snow stood between them and the airfield. Although the pilot-training strip had closed decades ago, pilots still recognized the name Snag. It had a distinction in Canada that Will didn’t choose to share with Karen. Gasoline froze at forty below, but Snag was known for temperatures that turned oil into fudge. Metal would break off in your hand when the mercury hit seventy or eighty below zero, like stale icing falling off of a leftover cake.

  “Follow me,” he said, taking her arm. “We need some shelter, Dr. Juliet.”

  Chapter 2

  Area 41, Camp Pendleton, California

  “Sixteen-hundred!”

  Lance Corporal Gordon Todd Newton hit the button to close down both of his computers. One was his work PC, provided by his employer, the United States Marine Corps, and the other a supercharged Alienware laptop loaded with everything he could afford on junior enlisted pay. But it was also his special baby, used for the recreational hacking he did on breaks and weekends, as well as the competitive online gaming he still enjoyed in his remaining free time.

  “It’s Friday,” Todd said, stretching his arms and rubbing his eyes. “And I’m outta here.”

  No one heard him, as he was the sole occupant of the small, dark computer room. He packed up his Alienware in his backpack and slung the strap over his shoulder. His orders mandated that he not bring his personal computer into a room full of computers containing access to classified networks, but Todd took a flexible approach to the rule. Inside, he still had a little of the errant student who had once accessed his high school’s computer network to tweak his friends’ grades. He liked to push authority.

  He also loved his job as a temp. On special TAD (temporary additional duty) to the 1st Raider Battalion, he felt slightly out of step with his command. He was as 180-degrees different from the super-Marines of the Marine Raider Battalion as a computer geek could be. The critical skill operators, or CSOs, would go out for twenty-mile runs while Newton spent eighteen-hour days in front of a little green screen. When the Raiders were out drinking, Todd would play around with John the Ripper or THC Hydra, hacker programs, and try to break into nonmilitary computer systems — not to do harm, only to see if it could be done. Normally, Todd’s duty station was MarForCyBer, Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, the home of the 0651s: the military’s cyber network operators. But the chance to be in California’s Camp Pendleton for a few weeks had worked well for several reasons.

  For one, Todd thought as he hurried to the barracks to change out of his Marine camouflaged utilities, Area 41 at Pendleton wasn’t far from the beach. Stretching north and south for twenty-one miles, the landscape—aside from Interstate 5—was practically untouched. Todd also had a car, which meant he could spend weekends in San Diego, where the weather was always warm and he could be left alone. Not that the Raiders bothered him much. Most knew little or nothing about his 0651 specialty, but they knew that they needed him. Like cable television, when computers shut down due to a glitch, things got frustrating very quickly.

  The assignment also meant something. The Marine Raider unit was working with the integration of tablets wirelessly connected through encrypted networks. Combat patrols and missions would have access to everything the networks could provide. Satellite feeds of enemy locations, for instance, came up instantaneously. A call for close air support or artillery fire could be made by tablet. The stealthy F-35B fighter jets overhead could be called in for air support like a pack of dogs hungry for a target. And a Marine on the battlefield with a tablet knew exactly where he was. GPS not only gave him a location, but also helped the troops avoid friendly-fire mistakes.

  Finally, Todd’s temporary duty at Pendleton was a trip to his own past. Newton had lived in San Clemente as a kid when his father was stationed for a couple of years at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro to the north. His dad had flown F/A 18s when they first came out. The H
ornet topped out at 1100 miles an hour with its pilot strapped to two General Electric F404 turbofan jet engines. A Hornet pilot didn’t make any mistakes. If he did, it was only one. At 1100 miles per hour, a sneeze could put a man into the side of a mountain. Of course, it took a special kind of person to fly a machine that didn’t allow for the slightest error. Such people tended to be…unforgiving. Todd’s dad’s flying years came right before the divorce, which hadn’t been a big surprise. His father and mother were total opposites. Dad ran over people. Mom tended to get lost in her books and vodka.

  Normal would have been nice, Todd thought.

  Back when his folks had still been together, the three of them had lived in an apartment on Avenida Montalvo looking out over the Pacific. That’s also when Todd’s high school had produced a small gang of hackers. The San Clemente Tritons’ computer science club started with just a few, but almost doubled before Todd had graduated.

  The term hacker, while unavoidable, had never been his favorite word. Hacking sounded violent and malicious, but it had never been about committing crimes for Todd. Instead, it offered the irresistible challenge of solving puzzles.

  In the end, Todd was his mother’s child: Less of a straight arrow and more of a puzzler than his father. And as the years passed, the world changed on his father. Todd found himself part of the rising digital tide that affected everything—military, government, medicine, business, even reaction by society. The Marines still needed jet jockeys, but they also needed troops who could handle a hacked computer.

  Todd looked at his cell phone to check on the time as he changed to jeans and grabbed his backpack, which he’d already prepacked for the weekend.

  He dialed the number of another 0651 who had come with him from the East Coast.

  “Hey, how are you looking?”

  “Are we going to get in trouble?” Lance corporal Lucy O’Hara’s voice usually was calm, but she sounded uncertain now.

  “Hell, no.” He slung the backpack over his shoulder as he went out the door, passing his barracks roommate who sat on the side of his bunk with his crutches, still recovering from a broken leg as a result of a bad parachute landing. They’d only been paired as roommates because they had both been assigned temporary billeting, and they’d been assigned a ground-level room to give Todd’s roommate easy access with his crutches. As a Marine on temporary duty, Todd had to take what was given.

  “Besides,” Todd said into the phone as he left, “it’s Hackfest.”

  He’d come up with the idea months ago when word first came down at Fort Meade. Their plan was to drive together up to San Francisco and attend the singular convention. DARPA’s (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Hackfest took place at NASA’s Ames Research Center on Moffett Field, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It was a cutting-edge conference on tech and tech innovation—perfect for Todd and his colleage-friend.

  There was, however, one problem. Both 0651s had top-secret clearances, so headquarters would not be thrilled about them going to a computer conference full of speakers like technical activist Cory Doctorow. Doctorow was a popular speaker at hackers’ conventions. His belief that technology was on a rapid pace to invade privacy put him at odds with the government. But DARPA was that rare government-military agency that understood that the nation’s defenders could not bury their heads in the sand when it came to technology. DARPA sought to create unrestricted think tanks, and Hackfest served precisely that purpose. For their part, though, the Marine brass had made it clear that Hackfest was not a convention that two 0651s with top-secret clearances should attend.

  “Your boyfriend gonna let you go?” Newton asked, pulling her chain.

  “Oh, grow up.” Lucy O’Hara’s boyfriend was a ground-pounder, infantry, with the Third Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment. He was like Todd’s roommate. The two enjoyed sweat, pain, and generally being physical; they lived for the endorphin high. By contrast, Todd and his friend enjoyed cracking the virtual safe of a computer code. For fun, they would play with security systems, going just far enough to see if there were cracks in the walls of a General Motors or Johnson & Johnson R and D lab—but never far enough to fully open the safe. They weren’t stupid.

  “Hopefully he won’t kick my ass for taking you,” Todd joked.

  “Nah. You’re okay.” She and Todd shared a platonic relationship that went back to their initial training school for their 0651 specialty. For the weekend, they had a motel reserved in Mountain View, where they would split a room with two beds for two hundred bucks. They’d scored tickets to Hackfest with help from a mutual friend they’d met during their days at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language—a training ground for the NSA and the same program that had produced one particularly notorious fellow graduate: Michael Ridges.

  * * * *

  “Have you emailed him lately?” Newton was walking out of Ames at the end of Hackfest. He hadn’t asked his friend this question for over a year now, but she immediately knew exactly who he was talking about.

  “Once.”

  “Me too.”

  Sending such emails amounted to living dangerously.

  “Boy, he would have loved this.” Newton put on his sunglasses. The West Coast sun was bright in a California-blue, cloudless sky.

  “Better not even mention his name.” Lucy whispered the words as if the small crowd heading to the parking lot with them was listening.

  Michael Ridges was persona non grata with the federal government. He was considered a traitor to his country, but no one knew exactly why.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Todd was looking for his 1997 Toyota Camry. Two decades ago, the auto had been sold with what the car manual described as an “almond beige pearl” finish, but time and the sun had resulted in a worn-out, dirty brown. Now they’d have to drive through most of the night to get back to their duty stations by 0700 the next morning.

  “This deep web is unlimited.” Todd took his backpack off of his shoulder and tossed it into the backseat. “And the dark web is just crazy.”

  “I know.” She changed the subject. “We need to stop for gas and roll.” They would have to make a few stops to get back to report to duty on time.

  “Yeah.”

  Neither of them noticed the black van parked on the other side of the parking lot.

  Chapter 3

  Near Dulles, Virginia

  The silver BMW X3 pulled into the garage below the gleaming building that looked out toward Dulles in the distance. It was one of the new towers that dotted the four-lane to the DC-area airport. The top floors were reserved for a particular consulting firm that lived off of secret defense budgets. When the building was constructed, the tenant for the top three floors had a special contractor come in to finish out the space. The interior walls had not even been framed out. And this was just the way the tenant wanted it. The walls would be soundproof and secure from any kind of eavesdropping. Few knew just exactly what the tenant did, but they knew that there would be no access to the top floors.

  Members of the Senate Committee on Intelligence knew the tenant well. When they met in the secret room of the Hart Senate Office Building, room 219, to discuss the world’s secrets, the tenant was mentioned often. Room 219, like the top floors of the tenant’s office building, was considered one of the most secure places in Washington. Both had soundproof doors and walls built to ensure no one would be listening in. When the CIA or DIA had a problem that they could not fix, room 219 heard of it, and then paid the bill that the tenant would charge. And no one ever saw the money.

  The decade had been good to the military-industrial complex. Continuing wars fed the beast and security was king. Companies that promised security could name the price—their client CEOs knew they had no choice.

  “Yeah, I know it’s the finals. Got it. Four p.m. at Witter.” He had learned how to quickly get down to the Witter
soccer complex in Alexandria by often using the back streets.

  The driver of the BMW ended his Bluetooth call as he pulled into his reserved parking spot. The SUV had less than a thousand miles on it. The dealer tag had not yet been removed. It had that fresh, new leathery smell that only a brand-new expensive auto could bring. It was the first new car that he had ever owned. In fact, it was the first car that he had ever owned. Everything before consisted of pickup trucks with six digits on the odometer.

  Frank Caldwell liked his new job. The only problem with being the project manager for Alexander Paul’s consulting firm was that it required unlimited dedication. He had missed his son’s last three soccer games. But the work gave him something he badly needed.

  The thrill of still being in the game.

  After a tour as a lieutenant with the 75th Army Rangers, Caldwell had finally decided to pull the plug on a career of combat tours. He’d had seven deployments in just two years at Fort Benning. A Ranger’s life was not meant to include a wife, a son, and soccer games.

  After carding through the building’s front door, Caldwell was met by an armed guard inside, the second of three primary layers of security he had to pass through. Security here was tighter than in any operations center he’d seen in the military.

  Frank nodded at the guard. He didn’t know the man’s name. It was like another agency he knew well that rarely used names and, when they did, used false ones.

  The guard nodded back. He looked the part. Few people at this company didn’t have a military background. Even most of the executive assistants had previously served in the military or Department of Defense. This one had the look of someone chiseled out of rock with shoulders much wider than his waist. His hair was cut close on the side. The top was covered by a black baseball cap with no logos. In fact, the man’s polo shirt, also black, was also missing any logos. His pants were the 5.11 Tactical-type cargo pants with plenty of side pockets. And he was armed.