Darknet

by John R. Little

  DarkNet

  By

  John R. Little

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2014 by John R. Little

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-76-1 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-940161-77-8 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953321

  Printed in the United States of America

  JournalStone rev. date: November 21, 2014

  Cover Art, Layout and Design: Cyrus Wraith Walker

  Edited by: Aaron J. French

  To my brother, Gary Little,

  who has been a wonderful supporter of my writing and every other part of my life for as long as I remember.

  Thanks, man.

  I’ve always appreciated your help, more than you will ever know.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to both Dave Solow and Tod Clark for pointing out some of my errors, and to Gary Feierabend, who provided me with one of the best ideas that found its way into the plot.

  Endorsements

  “Darknet a killer! John R. Little takes no prisoners as he explores the genuine horrors of abuse, and what a woman will risk to protect herself and her child. Creepy and incredibly powerful.” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Code Zero and Fall of Night

  "With DarkNet, John R. Little takes readers on a wild ride through the seediest parts of the human condition, from abusive spouses and the women who thrive on their abuse to murderers, thieves, and degenerates. The common bond between them all is DarkNet, the web's equivalent of the underworld, where anything is available. DarkNet moves at high speed from one crisis to the next, never giving the reader time to catch a breath." – JG Faherty, author of multiple award-nominated novels, including his latest, The Burning Time.

  "John R. Little's Darknet is a frighteningly believable trip down a very realistic rabbit hole. No one excels at taking ordinary men and women through the crucible of extraordinary experience like John R. Little, and his powers are on full display in this hard-hitting, tech-savvy tale of revenge and the search for inner strength and redemption. I loved this book!" – Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Dead City and Plague of the Undead

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Two

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part Three

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Four

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Author Bio

  DarkNet

  Prologue

  Several years ago, on October 1, 2013, the face of the Internet changed forever.

  Indirectly, part of the change was inspired by a wonder-filled fantasy novel by William Goldman called The Princess Bride, which later became a Hollywood movie of the same name. In the story, the bad guy is a buccaneer called Dread Pirate Roberts. Roberts was feared around the globe, and as a result, whenever he announced he was going to attack a ship with his men, the sailors on the opposing ship always gave up immediately. They knew that any other choice was certain death, so Roberts ruled by reputation alone, never having to do a damned thing.

  The story inspired a geeky physics major named Ross William Ulbricht to set up a storefront on DarkNet using the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. His store, Silk Road, turned into the biggest illegal shopping market yet seen on the dark side of the Internet. Ulbricht’s store eared more than $1.2 billion over a few short years.

  He thought of himself as simply providing a service, connecting buyers and sellers, free to deal in whatever goods the free market was demanding. He had no qualms about selling illegal and dangerous merchandise, and since DarkNet was completely anonymous, there was little the authorities could do—although they knew exactly what was going on, there was no way to stop it.

  But Ulbricht made mistakes, the biggest of which was to use his own name when posting on public websites. He was promoting Silk Road, and whenever he did that, a little ping clicked over at the FBI. Eventually, his electronic footprints led the police to a small branch of the San Francisco public library. Ulbricht was chatting online about Silk Road in the science fiction section of the library when a dozen armed FBI agents burst in and marched him up to the large glass windows. The feds had found Dread Pirate Roberts, and they shut down Silk Road that day.

  In addition to being charged with running illegal drugs, he was charged with soliciting two contract murders on DarkNet. He hired the first killer for $80,000. The second time, he wanted to torture and kill one of his own employees, but when he negotiated the fee of $150,000, he was actually discussing the sordid business with an undercover FBI agent. The former employee was “tortured” on video and the full price of the hit was paid prior to Ulbricht’s arrest.

  The dark side of the Internet was not pleased with one of its biggest businesses shot to hell. But, thousands of years ago, Aristotle may have said, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” In business terms, if there’s a demand, there will be a market. The Silk Road may have been destroyed but that only gave rise to a hundred imitators, all of which were more cautious, having learned lessons from the careless pirate.

  The golden age of DarkNet began, and there was never any looking back.

  * * *

  The following discussion between two people on a message board was captured shortly after 3:00 a.m. on an otherwise uninspiring and dull early June morning. Both parties were wide awake, and both lived in the same time zone.

  One of the participants knew that the exchange would be logged on some anonymous server in the cloud, possibly ending up being stored in Texas, China, Singapore, or some other isolated part of the world. He didn’t care, because he was careful about what he said. He had to be, because understanding security (or lack of it) on the Internet was the basis of his business.

  He was taking a tiny chance by talking over an unsecured line, but at least he’d initiated a private discussion, so anybody else checking the message board would see nothing. He knew nobody could monitor his own traffic because of the several layers of encryption he used, and it was unlikely anybody cared about his new partner.

  The person he was chatting with was mostly clueless. He had targeted her for this conversation.

  * * *

  I know what you want.

  Do you? What do you think I want?
<
br />   I’ve been reading your posts. I see how unhappy you are. I see that you’re married to somebody you despise. I see that you want your freedom.

  Lots of people want their freedom.

  I can give it to you.

  [At this point, the second person didn’t reply for almost five minutes, but neither was the chat session terminated.]

  How?

  This isn’t the place to talk about it. This is totally unsecured. Anybody could be listening or track this conversation later.

  Really?

  Really. You have no secrets on the Internet. None at all. If I cared, I could sniff out everything you type. Every single word, every one of your Facebook posts, tweets, message board posts, e-mails, and even random clicks. I can find it all. So could anybody else who wanted to and who has a bit of technical aptitude. Everything you type is sent over the ether and you think it’s safe, but it’s not. So don’t say anything else.

  I want you to download some software. It’s called Tor. You’ll find it easy enough on Google. Go download it and play with it. Check out everything and get comfortable with it. This is a gateway into the deep Internet, the part that Google doesn’t want to show you. Then, go find a meeting place called Assassins Inc. Be there at 4:00 a.m. on June 20. I’ll find you then.

  [Session Terminated]

  Part 1

  Opening Gambit

  Chapter 1

  July 2

  7:00 p.m. The red light above the entrance to the broadcast booth flicked off.

  “And we’re done!”

  Cindy McKay smiled and removed her headphones. She’d been looking forward to the end of the show today. Not that she didn’t love her radio show, because she did, but it wasn’t often she had a chance to go out for an evening with her best friend.

  On the other side of the glass partition, her producer, Ryan Hustings, gave her a thumbs-up and took off his own headphones. He would still be busy for another ten minutes wrapping up loose ends, but she was free to go when she wanted.

  She leaned back in her chair and sipped from her bottle of water. Her throat was dry after talking on air for the past six hours. Cindy was an on-air personality for station WLRY in Seattle, and even though she was eager to head out, she knew enough to take a moment after every show to appreciate the job she had. Nobody had a career as fun as hers; she got to spend six hours a day laughing, talking to listeners, debating with guests, and basically having a wonderful time just goofing off. That always made her sit and say a silent thank you to whatever gods had arranged for her to have such a fucking awesome job.

  It didn’t hurt that she was paid $120,000 per year for the privilege. She never told producer Ryan that she’d do the job for a quarter of that.

  She pushed her shoulder-length blonde hair back behind her head and tied it into a quick pony, then she stood, stretched, and grabbed her hand bag and checked her desk one last time for anything she needed to take care of. There were a couple of callers on hold, but Ryan would take care of them. She did have limits, and one of them was that once the show was finished, so was she. Ryan batted clean-up and always talked to anybody who called too late to get Cindy.

  She left the broadcast booth and gave Ryan a two-finger salute as she walked by.

  “Hey,” he called. “Nice show. I really liked how you handled that scientist.”

  She smiled. She’d liked that too. The astronomer was a great guest, talking about a new comet that was visible with the naked eye, but it didn’t take long to get the skinny on that, so Cindy started asking him random questions that had nothing to do with the comet.

  He started to laugh at the questions, but he was game and gave her some good material.

  What’s the last book you read? Green Eggs and Ham.

  What’s your favorite color? Green. Especially green eggs.

  Do you have pets? Yes, I have a pot-bellied pig that I’m hoping will make nice ham one day.

  Are you single? Yes.

  Oh! And are you available? Very!

  Where would some pretty young thing find you if she wanted to find out more? She could subscribe to my newsletter at the very low rate of only $6.99 per month.

  After every answer, Cindy let out that long, loud laugh that was her trademark. Everybody in Seattle knew that laugh, and it was one of the best parts of being a commuter on the drive home. She always cheered everybody up.

  Cindy McKay was one of the most well-liked people in the Pacific Northwest, but few people would recognize her if they passed her on the street. She wasn’t exactly hiding or anything, but she didn’t send out publicity photos and wouldn’t allow her image on the WLRY website. She didn’t do charity events or appear as a guest on TV shows.

  Neither did she share her last name with her devoted audience. To them she was just Cin. She stole the idea from the singer Cher, whose real first name was Cherilyn. Everybody in the city knew Cindy’s trademark phrase when a listener called in to her. “This is your favorite Cin! What’s on your mind?”

  The radio station got only a few scattered questions about their mysterious host, mostly because she seemed so open and likable when on the air that most people didn’t happen to notice they didn’t know her last name or have a clue what she looked like.

  Some listeners had their own vision of her appearance. Once in a while, she’d get an e-mail with various degrees of sexual innuendo tossed into vivid (but totally inaccurate) descriptions of herself. She never replied to any of the e-mails. She couldn’t help but read them, though—her one concession to vanity.

  When the occasional phone-in guest asked about her life off-radio, she had a stock answer, “I just like leaving my job at 7:00 p.m., the same way you do at the end of your working day. After that I’m pretty much worn out and very, very boring.” Then she’d move on to a series of jokes designed to leave the topic way behind.

  In truth there was one important reason she hid herself from her fans: her ten-year-old daughter, Avril. She was the part of Cindy’s life that she loved the most and the part she most feared losing. She’d never allow that, and one of the ways that protective nature manifested itself was to strip her personal life from her on-air show. Only a handful of her closest friends and neighbors knew the truth, and they mostly didn’t seem to care.

  A few moments had passed while she gathered her purse and sweater from a nearby desk drawer.

  “Up to anything tonight, Ryan?”

  He was preoccupied with his paperwork, so Cindy walked up close and pressed her face next to his, so their noses were only two inches apart. He jumped back in surprise.

  “Jesus, what are you doing?”

  “Just getting your attention. I asked if you were up to anything tonight.”

  He thought for a moment. “Thursday, right? Nah, just hanging. I might grab something off Netflix. You?”

  “Boring old night for me, too. Probably be asleep by ten.”

  She punched him in the shoulder and promised to be in a bit earlier than normal the next day. Ryan wanted to prep her about one of the guests she’d be interviewing.

  Cindy didn’t really notice that she’d lied to him about her evening plans. It was just habit to keep her personal life separate, even when she knew she could trust Ryan more than just about anybody.

  * * *

  Maria de Fatima Delgado was Cindy McKay’s best friend. She was a dark-skinned Portuguese woman who had moved to Washington State fifteen years earlier from a small island in the Azores called Terceira. She was a couple of years younger than Cindy, 33 to Cindy’s 35. They had originally met at Starbucks in Pike Place Mall, each waiting for a non-fat Cappuccino, and they happened to grab for the same drink when it was placed on the bar. They pulled their hands back as if caught stealing cookies from Mom’s jar and laughed. A second drink appeared seconds later and they both selected one, realizing in those few seconds that they felt a connection and didn’t want to let it go just because they each had a hot drink in their hands. They talked about nothing conse
quential as they left the store out to the street and walked toward Puget Sound. They talked for a half-hour that day. Maria soon gave up drinking coffee forever, never really acquiring a taste for it, but their friendship never waned.

  Tonight they met at the Star Quarter, a quiet bar that had opened up in that same Pike Place Mall. This one was inside the long strip of stores that made up one of the most popular tourist traps in the city, and they sat in a quiet corner where the sounds from the horribly off-tune band twanged a little less noisily than the rest of the bar.

  It was the first time in six months the two friends had met.

  They toasted their glasses of a Merlot that Maria had been raving about and took a sip. Cindy couldn’t really tell good wine from bad wine. All she could really say is that it was red and it didn’t seem bitter. In her mind, that made for a good wine.

  “So, how did you get out?” asked Maria.

  Cindy almost made a joke, but Maria was the one person in the world she didn’t bullshit. At least not much. She was the only one who knew part of the truth behind the fake, bubbly personality she wore to work and that trailed along back home with her.

  Maria’s eyes stared at her, almost accusingly, daring her to hide the truth. Cindy knew she could never do that.

  “He can’t keep me locked up forever.”

  Cindy felt a pathetic tone to her words, but she couldn’t help it.

  “But why tonight?”

  “Maybe because July 4th is only two days away? Maybe because he could use the time himself for something he doesn’t want to share with me? Maybe he feels sorry for me sometimes?”