“And I need to get to Washington to get to some big data pipes,” Damon said. “Terek’s idea might have a snowball’s chance. We need to at least test out what these Russian hackers have. See if it’s something. Then find some authorities. No better place for that than Washington. And I bet we can get the senator’s resources on our side, if we need.”
“Going back to Cincinnati,” Chuck said, “will add hours to the trip. That’s assuming we can get past any fires.”
“So, what?” I held my arms wide. “We wait for the fires to burn out?”
Silence.
Oscar and Chuck talked quietly, head to head, for a minute.
“I got an idea,” Oscar said.
Chuck looked at me, barely containing a grin. “And you are not going to like it.”
Burning embers shot into the sky from licking flames along the banks of the Ohio. Even a few hundred feet away, the heat scorched my face. An ash storm of blackened leaf fragments settled onto the undulating water.
I held tight to my life vest.
“Don’t go too close,” I said.
Oscar gunned the outboard’s engine as we fought against the current. “We gotta stay to the east side,” he yelled. “This corner is the Twin Creek sandbar. It’s always moving. We’ll get hung up in the middle of the river if we don’t stay well clear.”
The thought of being trapped in the center of a fast-moving river while fires raged around us made me feel like spiders crawled under my shirt and out my collar. Luke squeezed my hand.
Irena and Terek sat in the front of the open twenty-foot aluminum boat, with Damon, Chuck, Ellarose, and Bonham behind them. All our gear was piled in the middle. Luke and I were on a back bench next to Oscar and Susie.
“We gotta get around this point,” Oscar said. “And we should see Huntington on the other side. My cousin Rickie will get us all set straight. He said the Sandy River is blocking the fire to the south of them. We need to get past the meeting of the two rivers a mile up.”
“Let’s just get going,” I said.
The engine coughed and sputtered and went dead. Oscar cursed. Our forward momentum stopped. An eddy caught us, and we floated backward and then sideways—toward the rising flames.
“Gosh darn it.” Oscar stood and pumped the hand starter.
We spun toward the searing wall of flame.
CHAPTER 31
THIRD PULL ON the starter, the engine roared back to life. Hurling profanities at the fire, the water, the engine, and everything else within sight, Oscar turned the boat back into the current. For a stomach-lurching instant we tipped to one side, but the boat wobbled back to stability and we sped away from the flames.
True to his word, Oscar dropped us off in Huntington, the next town down the Ohio River. We met his cousin Rickie, a hefty man wearing a Pirates baseball cap and a cut-off T-shirt over his barrel chest and potbelly. He loaned us his old Escalade. Said he’d been trying to sell it after he got his new one, so we could borrow it for a while.
Oscar told him I was Terry’s brother, and that seemed to be more than enough reason to hand over the keys. I honestly didn’t know my brother was this notorious.
Chuck promised we would return the Escalade unscratched. Or, at least not more scratched. It had seen better years. Oscar said that he and Ken would drive the Mini Cooper and Irena’s Range Rover to the cabin once the fires died down and it was safe, and then they would return in the Escalade.
Handshakes and hugs all around, like we were the best of friends, as if we hadn’t been hijacked by Oscar at gunpoint a day ago.
The most interesting goodbye, however, had been when we’d gotten on the boat back in Vanceburg. Pauline hadn’t only hugged Damon, she’d given him a kiss. Right on the lips. Surprised him as much as anyone else. He had nearly fallen off the dock and into the water.
The roads coming out of Huntington were almost empty. Even Interstate 81, the backbone of the East Coast, usually stacked with traffic going up and down the country, was quiet. We only saw two cars the whole hour we were on it, and one of those was a police cruiser.
I sat in the front passenger seat. Chuck drove, Susie and Irena sat in the middle row with all three kids, and Damon and Terek squeezed in the back, their laptops wired together, doing whatever they always did.
“Ain’t it beautiful?” Chuck said.
Indeed, it was a sight to behold.
An ink-blue sky greeted us as we topped the Shenandoah section of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We’d pulled off Interstate 81 and onto the 66 before turning to Chuck’s exit.
Behind us, an angry orange sunset was obscured by a thick haze of smoke to the horizon, but with the wind blowing west, the miasma wasn’t infiltrating this side of the range. We hadn’t seen clear skies in the best part of a week, and the clean air felt like drinking in a cool mountain stream.
I was still coughing up black goo.
My elation over the fresh air couldn’t quite cover my deep anxiety about returning to the cabin. The same house where we had holed up before. Where our friend Tony had died. Where we’d almost died ourselves. I hadn’t been back since, had sworn I never wanted to return, but we were just around the corner now. Like going back to the scene of a crime I still tried to forget.
Luke had been there, but he didn’t remember. I hoped he didn’t. The pain and fear, the starvation. To him, we were heading into the woods. The adventure continued, the sky was blue, and we were free and on our way to meet mom.
I hadn’t told him they hadn’t found her yet. I couldn’t bring myself. I even tried to hide it from myself.
Chuck said, “Hey, did I ever tell you the story about my friend, Doug?”
“Doug?” I frowned and searched my memory banks but came up blank. Shook my head.
“Sad story.”
“Go on.”
“He got up one morning, going to work as usual. In a hurry, though, he didn’t bother to say goodbye to his wife and kids. Grabbed a granola bar and coffee and scooted out of the house.”
I had a feeling this was going to have a less than happy ending. “What happened?”
“First intersection, he T-bones a truck that runs a red light. Doug didn’t put on a seatbelt, in too much of a hurry. He went straight through the windshield headfirst. The paramedics said he’d snapped his neck and was dead before he hit the pavement.”
“Why are you telling me this now?” I looked back to make sure Luke was still wearing his seatbelt.
“It makes me think.”
“Me too.” I rechecked my own seatbelt.
“Life is short. Do you think Doug wishes he told his wife and kids that he loved them before he left the house?”
“Of course he does,” I said. What was the last thing I said to Lauren? I was sure I said I loved her. What did she say to me? I couldn’t remember.
“Do you think he even knows he died?” Chuck asked. “I mean, sudden like that?”
“He knows.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know.”
Chuck’s face went from sad to suspiciously gleeful. “Explain to me exactly how you know he wishes he’d told his kids he loved them.”
That look on his face. “Doug’s not a real person, is he?”
“Answer the question.”
“If he loved them, then of course he wishes he told them before he died.”
“But he’s dead. If you’re dead, you don’t wish for anything. Isn’t that what you believe? That it’s like a switch going off? Just darkness afterward?”
It didn’t take long for Chuck to switch gears and get into his combative mode. I laughed. “Seriously?”
“See, Mike Mitchell, you believe in an afterlife. Whether you believe in God or not, you do believe in an afterlife, where we have wishes and fears. If there’s an afterlife, what is it? What are we talking about here, Mr. Smarty-Pants?”
I didn’t have an answer for him.
When I didn’t have an answer, it was because he was winni
ng the argument. The longer I stayed silent, the bigger his smile became.
We pulled off the main road onto a gravel one. The smile on my face slid away. The lines of the cabin became visible through the trees. In the distance, in the twilight, clouds amassed in the foothills.
He pulled the Escalade up to the cabin and outdoor lights automatically winked on.
“Motion detectors,” he said. “Done a lot of upgrades. Can’t wait to show you. It’s not like last time.”
A deep-seated dread tightened like an invisible straitjacket. He might have renovated the cottage, but the basement was still there. Where we’d hidden that afternoon when someone had attacked us. Where Tony had died. Last I knew, he was still buried up here.
Chuck turned the engine off. “I know. A lot of memories, right?”
I nodded. None of them good.
“I can’t tell you how important it is to have a real landline,” Chuck said. He pointed proudly at a red plastic phone on the kitchen counter. “Don’t get that VoIP garbage. It’s not a real line.”
“Phone companies maintain their own power.” Damon nodded in agreement. “There’s a five-volt signal that comes over the phone line to power everything.”
“So even when there is a power blackout, you still get a dial tone. Landlines are the last thing to go out in an emergency.”
“I’m going to call the senator,” I said.
“Of course.”
Chuck led Irena and Terek away to give me some privacy. As I dialed, I heard him telling them how he’d rebuilt the whole place, that the walls were concrete up to ten feet, and that the place was built like a bunker. He was explaining the solar cells and battery storage when someone picked up on the other end.
“Mike,” said a deep, mellow voice.
“Senator Seymour.”
“You can call me Leo. Mike, where are you now?”
“Virginia. Chuck’s cabin. We had a hard time getting around the fires. I got your messages. Did you get mine?”
“We’ve been worried. I’ve been getting news about the fires, but they’ve been sporadic. The whole country is in convulsions. It’s good you’re safe.”
“Any news on Lauren?”
“I was required to bring my staff back.”
“You couldn’t send anyone else out.”
“I’m sorry, Mike. All senior staff were recalled to Washington. It’s hard to explain what’s going on. We need all hands on deck. I haven’t been back to the house in days.”
“But you have someone with Susan and Olivia?”
“My best guy. When are you getting here?”
“How’s Olivia?”
“She’s great. Perfect. Susan doesn’t let the little one out of her sight. Everything is calm on the estate, but Washington is a shambles. The Russians managed to get a few geopositioning birds up, offered even their encrypted signals, maybe that will help. How long till you can be here?”
“Tonight. We’re coming now.” His house was only an hour away. “Are the streetlights still on?”
“For now. Power has been going out all over the country.”
“What’s happening in space?”
“I can’t say a lot over the phone, Mike. But you heard about the Islamic Brigade?”
“I did.”
“The Russians flattened Chechnya. The Russkies are saying the Islamic Brigade is associated with a faction called the Black Army in Ukraine. This is in high gear now. The Red Army is sending tanks into southern Ukraine tonight.”
“My God. And India and Pakistan?”
“I’m heading into a Senate Armed Services meeting right now. We’ve had India’s ambassador in the Capitol all week. They’re still denying everything, the idiots, but we’re going to get some more visibility today with the pressure the president is putting on them. We’re going to throw them to the wolves if we don’t get more detail.”
“You can’t get imaging? I mean, can’t you see what’s going on over there?”
“What satellites are left are being moved, and without reliable GPS, even tracking where the damn things are has become a problem. Do you have the internet where you are?”
“I do.” Chuck had just finished telling us how much it had cost him to get a fiber-optic line rolled all the way in here.
“I’m going to send you a pass from my office. It should get you through the checkpoints.”
I thought of telling him about Damon and Terek, about the Russian hackers, but I wasn’t sure if that would go anywhere.
“Mike,” the senator asked again, “when can you get here?”
Chuck led all of us into the two-car garage across the gravel driveway.
I said, “Don’t tell me you still have The Wolf?”
If I had any positive memories of that time, they were of the old but tough-as-bricks Range Rover we used to escape from New York, starting with Tarzan-swinging it off a three-story parking garage.
Not quite all of us came into the garage. Susie rolled her eyes when Chuck said he wanted to go out there, as in, you boys have your fun. Irena was with us, but I thought I sensed her keeping a slight distance from Damon.
Luke also joined us, along with Bonham and Ellarose. The kids bubbled with anticipation, squealing and making little faces at each other. Chuck’s kids knew what was under the blue tarp. One of them must have told Luke. He made silly eyes at me.
The floodlights came on. Chuck grabbed one corner of the tarp and smiled. He waited a beat.
“Ta-da!” He pulled the cover back with a flourish.
“Holy…” was all I could get out.
It wasn’t The Wolf. It was—a twenty-foot slab of stainless steel and black glass with huge knobby tires.
Chuck slid his hand gently along the hood. “The new BullyBoy truck. Ordered her online the moment they were announced. Full specs.”
The BullyBoy was from another megacorporation owned by a rival to Jakob, Sam Maxwell, building everything from robots to space rovers. They had their own satellite constellation in the works, as well.
“I thought you hated billionaires.”
“I didn’t like SatCom cluttering up the sky, and was I wrong?” Still running his hand along the hood, he gloated visibly. If Chuck loved anything in this world, it was being right.
“You dislike billionaires, but still buy stuff from them?”
“That’s how they become rich. Great products. I believe I said I’m a practical optimist. How could I resist? Cold rolled stainless steel body, bulletproof armored glass, quad motor with a thousand horsepower, and its own integrated solar panels. All electric and watertight. Doesn’t need a snorkel in deep water because the engine doesn’t need air.”
It was impressive.
Damon wasn’t quite as moved. “You know how easy these things are to hack? This has the full self-driving option?”
Chuck nodded.
“Last Black Hat conference in Vegas, a team got into one of these remotely. Took over the whole thing. Brakes. Accelerator. Turned it into a remote-control drone.”
“When the only tool you have is a hammer,” Chuck said. “Everything is a drone to you, isn’t it? Even us?”
“I’m just saying. I could own this thing inside of five minutes.”
“Lucky there’s not a lot of guys like you, then. I’m taking us into Virginia in this tonight,” Chuck said.
“Will we fit?”
“I’m staying here,” Susie said.
She came into the garage, pulled some boxes from the wall, and then cleared a hockey net and sticks from the front of a metal locker.
“Why don’t you come?” I asked.
“Into DC? No thanks. Why do you think we built this place? For situations exactly like this. I’ll stay here with the kids. You guys go find Lauren. Leave the Escalade for me. Oscar and Ken will bring up the cars from Huntington, and we’ll bring the Range Rover to Irena in the next few days. You’ll be staying with Terek’s wife?”
Irena nodded. “That’s fine. Perfec
t.”
“Are you sure you’ll be—”
“You think Chuck is the only one who’s prepared?” Susie swung open the locker door. The inside was stacked with firearms.
The lights of Washington glimmered on the horizon. Sixty miles as the crow flies. About the limit of how far my feet had been able to take me a few years before.
Storm clouds massed to the south in the glow of a full moon. We sat a hundred feet behind the cabin on a huge stone outcropping that provided a view down through the woods from our perch in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
At three and a half thousand feet, the air was clear and cool. Sweet relief from the oppressive heat and smoke of the past days.
“I can take the Escalade in,” I said. “You should stay with your family.”
“Ain’t gonna happen, Mike. Not going to leave you to do this on your own, and Susie wouldn’t let me anyway.”
Here Chuck had reached his safe place, together with his loved ones, yet he refused to stay until Lauren was found. I almost wanted to cry. In fact, I did want to cry, but I held it back. I cried at all the emotional bits of movies. Even though I knew Lauren found it sweet, I wasn’t going to let a tear loose in front of Chuck.
“Fires won’t get all the way up past the top of the Blue Ridge, that’s more than four thousand feet. Wind’s blowing the wrong way. And those clouds, I bet that’s rain.”
“Are the Baylors still here?” I asked.
The next cabin over. The scene of the disaster that had started the last time we’d been here, when Tony had been shot.
“They put it up for sale after all that. I bought it.”
“You did?”
“Use it as a guest house. I dug a tunnel between the two places. Well, a ditch, and covered it up. Works as a tunnel. I didn’t show anyone else. It’s a secret. Only telling you.”
“You seriously dug a tunnel?”
“You know how much snow we get up here in winter?”
No idea. Thinking of the snow made me think of something else. “Is Tony still buried up here?”
CyberSpace: A CyberStorm Novel (Cyber Series Book 1) Page 21
