Gwen was overjoyed at the change in location and was ready to leave in minutes. It was just after seven pm when they arrived at the lodge.
“This is more like it,” said Gwen as they walked through the front door. The cook saw them come in and motioned them to a small table just off the kitchen. He came over to greet them.
“I’m Jerry. I can feed you both now if you like.”
“Hi. I’m Gwen Desocarras. Nice to meet you. It smells delicious in here,” she said as she took a seat. She was rewarded with a big smile.
“I could eat,” said Alex, signaling to Kennedy that he’d be right over. The cook turned to the stove, dished up two plates of food and brought them over.
“I was just going to have a cup of coffee,” said the cook to Gwen. “I’ll join you if you don’t mind.”
“Company would be nice,” said Gwen.
“Enjoy your dinner,” said Alex with a smile for both. He joined Brandeis and Kennedy at their table and sat down. Stuart came over shortly after.
“Is there any chance that our location can be compromised?” said Stuart.
“This location cannot be compromised,” Kennedy insisted. “I was the only one involved with arrangements: no fax, no email, just the burner phone. I’ve never referred to the location by name. There are literally dozens of lodges and other guest facilities in the area for both winter and summer use. The owner is a friend of mine. He doesn’t live locally. I used a cover story.”
“Just checking,” said Stuart, changing the topic. “I’ve been tracking Golden Harvest since it left the Port of Vancouver. A few hours ago, it veered southwest around the southernmost tip of Haida Gwaii. The next closest place in that direction would be an Alaskan port. It’s heading in the wrong direction if bound for Prince Rupert.”
“Could it be that the ship is just be killing time till the meet up?” said Alex between mouthfuls.
“Maybe yes. But maybe not, sir,” said Stuart. “You all need to be aware of the possibility that even as I’m tracking the ship, Kirigin could be spoofing the signal. He is a control freak. It’s just the kind of thing he’d do.”
“Spoofing?” said Kennedy. “A misleading signal?”
“A misleading GPS signal which basically hides the true location of the ship. We’ll have no way of knowing until we get eyes on the ship.”
“Fuck,” muttered Brandeis. “I want to get this bastard!”
“When are you due to check Killam’s account on the PG server?” Alex asked Stuart.
“I tried a few minutes ago but there was no activity.”
“Check it now,” said Brandeis.
“Is it risky for us if Kirigin’s online?” said Alex. He looked down and was surprised to see that his plate was nearly empty.
“Not at all. I go in as a PG officer and look for activity. If the coast is clear, I check Killam’s account.”
“Alex are you going to be part of the Sullivan Op?” said Kennedy.
Alex nodded and kept eating.
“You should grab some shut-eye then.”
“Which room is ours?”
Kennedy pointed at the stairway leading up to the second-floor landing. “You and Gwen have the room at the end of the hall, on the left.”
“I could use a couple of hours.” Alex finished the last few mouthfuls of food, left the table, and carried his plate to the kitchen area. He stopped by the table where Gwen was sitting with the cook and told her where their room was and that he was going up for a nap.
“I think I’ll stay down here for a while, honey,” said Gwen. “It’s nice not to be cooped up.”
“See you a little later then.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze, then headed for the stairs.
“Sergeant Desocarras!” It was Kumari calling him back. He returned to the table and looked over Kumari’s shoulder.
RAHECLT EACGANB PKNPAUL
“The message was posted at seven forty-five pm.” Kumari quickly decrypted it: “Alert Change Backup Plan.”
“He’s using the same encryption,” said Stuart. “That’s a good sign.”
“I think so,” said Kumari.
“God damn son-of-a-bitch,” said Brandeis. He called Prince Rupert.
“Maybe our hacker friend left a trail and Kirigin knows we’ve been tipped off,” said Kennedy.
“Something tells me our hacker friend is more sophisticated than that,” said Alex. “It could be regular procedure for them to change plans at the last minute, a fail-safe. Or maybe there were transportation problems.”
“Our hacker friend probably prefers to be called a hacktivist,” said Kumari pointedly.
Before anyone could respond there was a burst of activity at the front entrance as eight men trooped in carrying duffel bags. Brandeis stood up and waved them over. “Surrey and North Vancouver Emergency Response,” he said. He turned to the red head sitting across the table from him.
“Ray, pull up everything you have on the Lone Butte address. We’ll walk the guys through it, then we’re going in.”
Alex grabbed his jacket and made his way to the stairs. He needed to recharge, and a nap was in order. Gwen –obviously happy to be out of the motel room and back in a semblance of civilization– was chatting away with the cook. He headed up the stairs, across the landing and down the hall to their room. He closed the door behind him, crossed the floor to one of the beds and pulled out his burner. He pulled up TOR and accessed the protonmail account. There was a recent message.
Got the pics. A lot of back door activity on PG server.
I see evil one has called for backup plan.
Golden Harvest AIS shows the ship is off course or killing time.
Great, thought Alex. He’s tracking the ship. Does this guy think we can’t track a GPS signal?
Thanks. One of my team found the new message minutes ago. We’re tracking the ship and noticed its off course if heading to Rupert.
Alex couldn’t resist adding:
Kirigin could be spoofing the signal.
He left TOR open and put the phone under his pillow. He set his watch for a nap, took off his protective vest and holster and put them on a chair within reach, kicked off his boots and crawled into bed. He was asleep when his head hit the pillow.
Chapter 8
Levon had been at his computer since Thursday, late morning, getting up only to stretch, pee, or put on the kettle for more coffee. After he sent the package to Sergeant Desocarras, he returned home and called in sick. That was yesterday, around ten am. He’d been at it ever since and was exhausted. The winter sun, still low in the sky, had set hours ago. He’d eaten everything in his kitchen that didn’t require cooking and was thinking about ordering a pizza.
During a recent check on the Killam account, he discovered the presence of p.g. george. He easily tracked him to a home computer in Prince Rupert. A quick search and he had the guy’s name, address, and business: Everett Smythe, 23 Bond Street. He quickly posted to the protonmail account he’d set up for Desocarras:
p.g. george is logged into Killam’s email account from his home computer.
Levon belonged to an activist group called redz. Membership in redz was closely guarded and new members were extensively vetted by existing members before they were officially introduced to the online group. Levon and a few others had links to the hacker group Anonymous. Everyone liked to have a bit of fun, but when some members of Anonymous upped their game, Levon wasn’t the only one to decide that Indigenous rights could be better advanced by having their own group of hacktivists.
Levon had been building and programming computers since his teens. Originally fascinated with the stark simplicity and beauty of machine code and the world of Linux, he went on to learn all the major programming languages. He set up and hosted an Internet Relay Chat service for his beloved redz. One of the original members, a guy everyone knew as Bill from Powell River, had been involved in land claims activism for many years. Bill was impress
ed. He’d never participated on an IRC before and wasn’t prepared for the level of computer know-how that Levon brought to the table.
A Sami woman from Finland, that everyone knew online as Sáhkku, was a hacktivist who had computer skills comparable to Levon. She worked as a security analyst for a tech firm in Helsinki. Unlike Levon–who had to plan a trip to his grandma on the other side of town at least a day in advance–Sáhkku loved to travel. She was connected to a worldwide network of Indigenous activists. When the Annual World Indigenous Conference was held in Australia, she was there. She met Levon’s friend Bill at a workshop one afternoon. He told her about the trailblazing IRC Levon had set up for the redz and how he was working on a private computing network for them. Sáhkku shared with him, as gently as she could (he was an elder after all) that she ran an IRC for Scandinavian and Russian Indigenous activists. She’d completed a prototype for a secure network for her group and she knew hacktivists in other countries who were doing the same.
As soon as he returned to Canada, Bill told Levon all about Sáhkku and her ideas and shared her contact information, urging him to get in touch with her as soon as possible.
First, Levon googled the Finnish company she worked for. A search of their website for her given name, Avra Kinnunen, pulled up her picture and her job description. She was so pretty he was suddenly tongue-tied. The slip of paper sat on the corner of his desk for almost a week. Instead, he looked up Sami words and their meanings and whether Kinnunen was Sami, but it was Finnish, so she was mixed heritage, like him. Sáhkku, her nickname, was a Sami word that meant a running board game.
Bill queried him daily and, when he figured out that Levon was stalling, started to hound him about contacting her. He finally got up enough courage to send her a brief email. Bill had already warned Sáhkku that Levon was a shy one. She responded with a long, cheery note that included a link to some code she was working on. He carefully checked her code and thought it was starkly beautiful, just like her. He responded by sharing some code of his own, but no picture. She loved his code and was impressed with his clarity of thought. She asked him for a picture. With much misgiving, he finally sent her one his brother had taken at the Kamloops pow-wow the year before. Very smart and kind of cute was her judgment. She told him she liked the picture. It was the start of their working friendship.
Both Levon and Sáhkku sponsored activist chats in their home countries. There were scores of Indigenous activists worldwide battling companies that were polluting their water and their land. It would be invaluable to be able to trade information on companies and individuals whose reach was often global, but each level of connection increased the danger of a breach that exposed these women and men to violence, or worse. Many had already lost their lives to corporate or state goons, depending on the politics in their corner of the world.
Separately, both had also developed a blueprint for an OpenStack that their local group could use—a private, incorruptible cloud that bypassed using the proprietary services of the internet hosting giants. Sáhkku pulled in two Indigenous hacktivists from Australia and Uruguay, and the four ran with the idea. Levon and Sáhkku already had code which they gave to the others for review. Once agreement was reached on the final design, the four presented their home groups with the idea of a safe, virtual home for their work. Everyone got on board.
An IRC was created so that the members of the four groups could share their campaigns and their successes. After much discussion among the group members, it was decided that current and new group IRCs and the IRC connecting them worldwide would to be closed to outsiders.
We are AERIE now!
Levon had made the declaration in an early chat. Eagles in formation are called an aerie. The name stuck.
Levon signed on to AERIE, uploaded the pics of Kirigin and Severall Alex had sent him, and everything he had on Kirigin, including the online nicknames Kirigin used, along with an urgent message to Sáhkku that he needed her help. With the time difference, it was already Saturday in Finland and coming up to noon.
Chapter 9
The town of Lone Butte was about fifty kilometres from the lodge, southeast of 100 Mile House on Hwy 24. Brian Sullivan had fifty acres off Ralston Lake Road. His road been plowed recently, as had the long driveway leading into his house, a midsize rancher. It was close to midnight. The ERT team van had parked on an unmarked road just east of Sullivan’s place and gone in.
The equipment van was parked on the highway, about a hundred meters from Sullivan’s driveway, hidden from the view of anyone at the farmhouse by a tree blind. Desocarras and Kumari were in the van with Brandeis. She had the front of the house on one screen and the back entrance on the other. Lights were on in several rooms at the front. Sullivan’s GMC Yukon was parked close to the front porch. Both teams were in place. Four ERT advanced on the front door. Signaling to the others, the first guy kicked it open and in they went. The radio in the van erupted:
On your knees! Now!
What the… There must be some mistake.
Don’t move!
He’s trying to use his phone.
Get his phone!
Okay! Okay… Just that you fellas gave me a scare.
Sir. Identify yourself.
Brian Sullivan.
Who else is in the house?
No one.
The team leader, Sergeant Dennis Kwan, gave the signal and the ERT spread out to check the rest of the house. A minute later, Kwan radioed Brandeis.
“All clear, sir. No one else on site.”
“Copy that. Take us in,” said Brandeis to the driver.
The driver was about to pull out from the shoulder but had to wait for a black SUV which was closing on them. Once it was safely past them, the driver pulled away from the shoulder and followed the SUV down the highway towards the entrance to Sullivan’s place.
“Sir, a black SUV just ahead of us is turning into Sullivan’s place.”
“Drive past the entrance and pull over,” said Brandeis. Half a minute later, the occupants could hear the crunch of snow as the van once again pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway.
“Kwan, do you read me?”
“Yes sir.”
“A Black SUV has pulled into the property.”
“We have eyes on it.”
Brandeis alerted his driver. “If the driver gets suspicious, he’ll make a run for it. Be ready to give chase.”
“Yes sir.”
Several ERT watched from Sullivan’s front window as the SUV made its way down the driveway and came to a stop in front of the porch, just behind the GMC. There was a short delay, then the front passenger door opened, and a man emerged. Closing the car door behind him, he stepped onto the porch, made his way to the front door, and opened it. Two steps into the room, he realized what was going on, turned on his heel and made a desperate run for the SUV.
“Stop! Now! Hands in the air!”
At the door, he pulled a gun from his vest pocket, half-turned and opened fire into the room as he continued to move out the door and to the left, heading for the SUV. One of the ERT got him in the right shoulder, but he continued through the door. Kwan, quickly followed by two other men, was through the door right behind him. The guy had the van door open. He turned and started firing again before one of them dropped him with a bullet to the chest.
Alex watched Kwan’s video feed as he quickly inspected the van, then leaned over and turned the man on his back.
Brandeis’ two-way crackled: “He’s alone and he’s dead sir. No ID.”
“We’re coming in,” said Brandeis.
The driver pulled onto the highway and took the turn into Sullivan’s driveway. He took them in and parked beside the GMC. Alex was out of the van and on the porch in a few quick strides. He hunkered down to get a close look at the dead man, Brandeis right beside him.
“He’s not one of the men in the restaurant with Kirigin,” said Alex.
They entered
the house. Brian Sullivan was cuffed and sitting on the edge of an expensive looking sofa positioned along the back wall of the living room.
“He was at the restaurant,” said Alex, pointing to the man on the sofa. The guy blanched with fear as he walked over to him.
“Mr. Sullivan.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Alex ignored the question. “A friend of yours?”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
Sullivan watched as one of the ERT handed his satellite phone to Brandeis.
“I’m not saying anything without a lawyer present.”
“That could be difficult to arrange at this hour,” said Alex.
“Inspector, you should take a look at this,” said Kumari from the corner of the room. Alex followed Brandeis to where Kumari sat, hunched over a laptop, tapping away with gloved hands.
Kumari had the encrypted message from the Prince George server on the screen.
“Okay. Absolutely no missteps on the chain of discovery for this,” said Brandeis.
“Copy that, sir. We’ll need to go over this laptop with a fine-tooth comb.” Kumari looked over her shoulder at Sullivan whose face had gone from a deathly pallor to deep crimson.
“That’s not my computer!” he insisted.
“It looks to me like he’s the principle user,” said Kumari.
“Gather anything you think might be helpful, Kumari. We’ll bring everything back to the lodge. Sullivan comes with us.” Brandeis turned to Kennedy. “Did we get closeups of the guy on the porch?”
“We did,” said Kennedy. “We’ll run his ID and photos when we get back to the lodge.”
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