They carried him to the chair and threw him into it. The second man tied Todd’s arms to the arms of the chair. The other, with the short haircut, oversized eyebrows, and a thin, pointed beard that followed his jawline, slapped Todd on the side of his forehead. The blow rattled him for a second. He looked at his captor in the light of a bulb swinging from above. The man had sleepy eyes with a squint that seemed to say that he knew much more than he was willing to say. His dark eyes were the eyes of a killer.
“What did Ridges tell you?” He said the words with a Spanish accent.
Todd tried not to look the man in his eyes.
“Man, I haven’t heard from him in forever.” Todd looked down as he spoke the words.
“How about emails?” his captor asked.
“I don’t know anything.” Todd couldn’t hold it back. He started to sob.
“What about the dark web?” The man knew what to ask. It was a form of communication that left no trail.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.” He struck Todd again with a slap on the side of his head. “You use Tor.”
The Tor browser was a pathway to both the deep and dark web forms of communication. It allowed the user to remain anonymous. The deep web was hidden from the many search engines that comb one’s communications or downloads looking for cookies and identifiers. And hidden further in the deep web was the dark web. It was in the dark that the sinister world lived. Tor and a special software tool accessed the dark web. Both led to onion sites. It let the user create a private pathway that sent and received messages through a series of tunnels of interconnected servers. The dark web was like a Harry Potter stairway: The door you entered wasn’t the same when you turned around and tried to go back through it. Tor and dark web browsers concealed who sent the email and who got it. They used the designator of .onion instead of .com or .net or .org, and it was impossible to trace or hack. Any 0651 Marine computer specialist with a top-secret clearance who used a .onion address without authority or on his own was looking for serious trouble. If one wanted to communicate with an outlaw in Russia, this was the way to do it.
Todd and Lucy along with Michael Ridges, had studied the dark web at the top-secret Center for Advanced Study of Language in College Park, Maryland. At the time when Todd Newton had graduated from the program, the .onion network had still been impenetrable. No one could trace or intercept messages within it.
So how would they know he’d written to Michael Ridges? Todd tried to hold a thought while the bindings held his hands tightly to the arms of the chair. He’d heard that some agencies, like the CIA and DIA, were reputed to have a program that followed the use of email addresses into the deep web. If one got lazy and used the same email address on the open internet and in the deep web, those agencies could theoretically track you like a child with muddy shoes coming home and crossing the clean carpet. But even such a program would see the first track and possibly the last track leaving the carpet, but still could not be able to trace the footprints in between.
If, however, they were tracking everything Michael Ridges did, and if they could read his messages, incoming or outgoing, and find the corresponding prints on the other side of the carpet, then the CIA or DIA might be able to tell that Ridges and Todd had been talking.
Still, though, they weren’t able to read the conversation.
At least, not until now.
Chapter 6
The Crash Site
The snow and wind ripped across the small lake almost horizontally to its frozen surface. Will covered his eyes and tried to look safely through a crack in his gloved fingers, but only saw a wall of whirling white. The icy particles stung even in the second he glanced through his glove.
“Is it stopping?” Karen was up against his body in the small shelter they had built at the base of the outcropping. She was shivering from the cold. The log fire could barely keep up with the wind and provided little relief.
While using the butt of his rifle to scrape the snow away at one end of the lean-to, Will had struck a piece of metal the size of a pie plate. The aluminum seemed to be some debris left from a hunting camp in years past; he’d gladly switched tools, using the pie plate to dig out the space for the log fire. Once the fire was going, they had both stripped down to their long johns and climbed into the nested sleeping bags, piling their parkas and clothes over the sleeping bags for extra insulation and tucking their boots underneath for pillows.
Now he used his arm to quickly pile more pine boughs on top of the parkas from ones set aside of the lean-to.
She looked up at him, a question in her eyes.
“We need to keep our circulation going.” He didn’t tell her that it wasn’t the snowstorm he feared.
He felt her body heat as they huddled together again.
“What has you worried?” she asked, their faces close together. She was shivering.
“Snag.”
“You said that.”
“Snag got down to eighty-five-below in 1958.”
“Oh.”
Will knew what temperatures like that could do. On one mission with the Marines where they tested the worst of cold, he had been to Antarctic and the East Antarctic Plateau to visit the weather station, designated as AGO 3 at the South Pole, where they had recorded temperatures of more than130-below zero. As with men in space, death was a constant risk, but in Antarctica they’d had the equipment needed to survive. Snag could be just as dangerous at eighty-five-below, and they had nothing approaching a proper survival kit.
“Yeah, Snag has the record. The coldest spot in the Yukon. Ever.”
The wolves had stopped howling. It was as if they too knew that the blizzard was only the beginning of the cold to come.
* * * *
The sunlight in the late morning seemed to bring no heat with it.
Will pulled the bag down, only to feel the pain of the brutal cold hit his face. As he breathed in, a sharp pain suffused in his nostrils as the icy air hit the warm mucus membrane. His skin soon became numb, his breath freezing as he exhaled. When he spoke, the words came out in a white mist and fell to the ground like a spray of talcum powder.
“Are we going to make it?” Karen looked scared in the sleeping bag below him.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “You stay down deep in this while I get a fire going again.”
He put on his clothes, parka, and boots and moved as fast as he could to keep his circulation moving. The cold struck so quickly that by the time he got to his gloves he barely could get them on. He held one under his shoulder and used his arm to push his paralyzed hand into it.
The log fire was now only cold embers. Will gathered some dead branches and stuffed them in between the logs. The starter kit seemed to be useless, as the twigs were frozen through. Will looked down to the lake and the airplane and began the hike. He made it to the Otter while rubbing his arms vigorously in an effort to keep his blood flowing.
The airplane had a bleed port on the underside of its wing that allowed the pilot to drain any of that unwanted water out of the fuel tank he had thought might have contributed to the engine stalling. Water and fuel do not mix, so the heavier water would drain from the port first. Will opened the bleed port, but nothing came out of it. If there was water in the tank, it had frozen solid, of course. He went to the underside of the engine, where a fuel line crossed over. With his gloved hands nearly frozen, he used his arms to pull on the line until it broke. He grabbed a cup from the cockpit and collected the slow-flowing, thick liquid into the cup. It moved like molasses.
He trekked up through the cut trees and snow, looking for something and found it: On one side of the clearing, a spruce stump that had been infested by beetles lay in pieces on the ground with one end sticking out through the snow. He knocked the snow off the wood. The tree’s trunk lay in pieces on the ground, lightweight, air-pocketed wood rendered perf
ectly flammable by the pests that had killed it.
With the airplane fuel and the beetle-killed spruce wood, Will restarted the fire in the trench between the two logs. He pulled off the parka and his mucks and climbed back into the bag. Karen’s body felt like a warm water bottle.
“We need to keep this going.” Will knew the fire not only provided the heat that beat back the cold, but also served as a signal to any aircraft that might be on the lookout. The smoke curled up into the clear sky. The brutal cold brought one benefit: The blue was perfect, unlimited, and had not the slightest impurity like purified water.
“How long?” Karen was looking progressively weaker.
“They should get the word to Whitehorse.” Will had used the airfield to the south of Snag as a refueling point when he traveled to this side of the mountains. It was now well into day two and the solar flare had long passed. Hopefully, all of the traveling aircraft had been accounted for except one and the search had already begun. The problem was that any search planes would be looking to the north of them.
“In the dark we may have a better chance.”
“Why?”
“The fire should stick out on a satellite pass.” If a weather bird was anywhere near an orbit that could cross near Snag, the fire would stand out in the dark. The one benefit of the Siberian front was that it had cleared away all of the cloud cover.
“Why did you come to Alaska?” Karen asked suddenly.
He’d never noticed how readily she could smile in the face of adversity.
“To fly.” It was not necessarily the true answer, but it was the correct choice.
“Well, you did get that,” she said, laughing.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling her closer. “I got it good.”
Chapter 7
The Hidden Casa on the Eastern Coast of the Baja
Todd Newton’s wrists and ankles were both chained to the metal frame of a small bunk bed he had been moved to. He slid down to the base of the bed and was able to slide the chain down to the floor. His exhaustion smothered what little energy he had left. He was well into his second day with no food or water. It took all of the power he had to bump the bed up while he pulled on the chain. He repeated it several times and, on the third try, the chains finally came away from the bed. Just as they did, he heard the footsteps.
The door swung open and the blinding light from upstairs filled the room. The two men threw his companion onto the bunk bed on the other side of the room. Todd didn’t dare move, hoping that they would not come his way. They left the room and slammed the door.
He dragged himself across the floor to Lucy’s limp body. She had been beaten severely.
“We’re gonna get out of here,” he whispered into her ear.
“Okay.” She slurred her words. He could tell that her life force was leaving quickly.
“Come on lance corporal!” He helped her stand with her arm slung over his shoulder and they made their way toward the door.
She could barely walk. He stopped and waited for her.
“I didn’t know you had it in you.” She looked into his eyes. Then, with great effort, began moving again toward the door.
“Thanks.” Todd had always been the geek in the room. The son of a Marine colonel and the ninety-pound weakling when it came to sports, he’d long sought refuge in computers. He had never seen himself as the rescuing hero, except maybe in a computer game. Now, for once in his life, he felt like a Marine.
He checked the door. Unlocked.
If he or his companion had known that they were more than a hundred miles from the nearest Pemex gas station or police station, they would have understood that escape was impossible. The east coast of the Baja peninsula this far south was inhospitable; barren, rocky, and hot. Its only inhabitants were the cactus, scorpions, tarantulas, and the occasional lost donkey.
Todd had reached the top of the stairs when the blow to the back of his head knocked him to the ground. His face rebounded off of the wooden floor and he heard only the familiar ringing in his ears.
Once again, he felt only blinding pain. He had no way of knowing that his efforts had just guaranteed his friend’s death.
Chapter 8
The Frozen Lake Southeast of Snag
The second night seemed more brutal than the first. Will kept the fire going despite no sleep. Strangely, the fire’s glow seemed to attract the wolves. They had resurfaced as if hunger overtook the need for shelter from the cold. The howls seemed to get closer with every passing minute.
“How long can we last?” Karen had the sound of defeat in her voice.
Will knew that the cold could do that to a person. A laugh could change in minutes to a voice faint with desperation.
“We’ve got this.” Will didn’t plan on letting her give in. “The rescue planes will make a circle pattern around Snag. Tomorrow they should cover this lake.”
He stoked the fire and then leaned back into the sleeping bag. Karen Stewart had started to shiver. He knew that it was the body’s defense against the cold. Muscles would contract and expand in short blasts in an effort to create heat. The body was trained to protect the core. When the muscles in her jaws started to do the same, her teeth would begin to chatter.
He was so close that he could hear the chatter and feel the small body shake in almost convulsions.
“Hold on.” Will pulled up his parka with one hand sticking out of the bag. He rifled through the pockets of his parka until he came across something. It was a Snickers candy bar, as solid as a piece of clay that had been forged in a kiln. He held it close to the fire as if roasting a marshmallow. It picked up some of the heat from the fire, but not enough to cause the wrapper to be singed. With time the block of chocolate soon became warm enough to chew.
“Eat this.” The sugar would raise her core temperature. And the warmth of the bar would help stop the shivers.
“This can’t be as bad as Somalia, right?” he asked as she ate the candy bar.
She nodded and shivered, but not from the cold. Being a captive of Al-Shabaab in Somalia had been a living nightmare that she hadn’t expected to survive. It was there that they’d first met. And there that he knew her will to survive had kept her alive.
Will pulled her close, sharing in the warmth of the inside of the sleeping bag. “At least it wasn’t cold in Africa.”
She shook her head as she snuggled into him.
“So, what’s next? Hot or cold?” he asked, referring to her history of working in both extremes.
“A beach would be nice.”
“Something like Orange Beach?”
The sugar powder white sands of the Alabama coast were a reminder of a past trip the two had taken. On a bright, summer day the sun’s heat was amplified by its reflection off of the white sand. The thought captured the best opposite of the extreme of this brutally cold Yukon.
“Yeah.”
“Think of it. Put it in your head.” He was suggesting she grab that visual memory.
“Okay.”
“But you volunteered to come to the Yukon?” Will kept his arm around her, cuddling her head on his shoulder.
“It sounded good at the time.”
There was movement in the dark just beyond the glow of the fire.
“What is it?” Her voice had the sound of a small child afraid of the dark.
“Most likely a curious wolf.” His voice remained calm.
“If the pack’s infected with rabies, they’ll become unpredictable.”
He nodded. Animals infected with rabies soon became confused and agitated, and ultimately violent, as the virus burned up their brain.
“Why’s it here?” Will asked, using the question to keep her mind working and help it keep from wandering in the deadly freeze. “Why did it come this far north?”
“Climate change.”
; “What’s that got to do with rabies?”
“Climate disruption means more warm spells during winter. Warm spells allow earlier and better paths of migration to the north. When an infected animal ranges north, it takes the disease with it. The dominoes connect.”
He saw movement again in the shadows. The night had passed and it was morning, but in the Arctic, it was still dark.
“What about a wolf?” he asked the expert huddled in his arms.
“They can be the worst. A wolf is scared of a human, but a wolf with rabies goes into a severe aggressive state.”
Will leaned up, pulled off his glove, reached for his rifle, and pulled it close, wincing at the painfully cold steel. It was a mistake to touch the metal with bare flesh. He handled it like someone taking it out of an oven, checking the bolt to see the gold brass end of the round in the chamber and then locking the bolt back down. He quickly put on his glove and moved his fingers to induce circulation. Will laid the rifle down in the little space between the sleeping bag and the log fire. He picked up the piece of aluminum scrap and used it to stoke the fire.
“Today they’ll come,” she said with certainty, as if the candy bar had given her a new perspective on life.
“You mean a rescue?” He didn’t need any more wolves.
She smiled again.
Chapter 9
Cupertino, California
The corporate headquarters of Integral Transaction Data was a campus of green reflective glass and bright aluminum-clad buildings. The structures hadn’t been in existence for more than eight years, and the company was only a little more than a decade old. The stock climbed through the roof after its initial public offering, its fate tied directly to the economy. The more people felt comfortable with their personal finances, the more they turned to their credit and debit cards. A large plastic credit card hung above the ITD campus’s entryway.
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