The Danger Game

by Ian Bull

  “Point taken. The Danger Game is live again, but this is all you see.”

  I step behind them and look at their monitors. The broadcast of The Danger Game is just a shaky green image of warm desert rocks emitting heat in the cool blackness of night, probably from somebody’s helmet cam.

  Rafael types on his computer. “The Rescue Game players are quiet. We need more game play to get more clues.”

  Glenn tightens his robe. “You sleepers can help me figure out how to find Bushnell then.”

  Darna’s typing speeds up. “There are six hundred new luxury mega-yachts built every year. Assuming they’re on a yacht less than five years old, that’s only three thousand yachts to track.”

  Their typing grows to sharp staccato. The tension is thick. We’ve been at it for days—and a shower, clean clothes, and a power nap can’t fix it.

  Trishelle flips open her guitar case, pulls out her smooth lacquered instrument of magic, and strums her latest song. Our three cyber warriors smile and their fingers slow on the keyboards. They may only fight in cyberspace, but they have the same commitment and camaraderie as any Ranger team that I’ve fought alongside.

  The washing machine buzzer goes off, and I follow Trishelle back into the garage. “Have you heard from the Rey brothers?”

  “They’re waiting for intel from me about where we are going.”

  Trishelle leans against the sloshing washing machine. “They’re in remote Baja close enough to water. That’s something.”

  “Baja California is as big as Northern California, Trish.”

  “We could get helicopters from the Mexican Army. Planes.”

  “We need the LAPD and the FBI for that,” My voice breaks, which I turn into a cough as fast as I can.

  She pauses with damp underwear in her hands. “I’m sorry about your men.”

  I can’t bust a gut crying right now. “I have work to do,” I say, and head out the front door. I move my car out the front gate and onto the shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway. The four-lane road is empty at four in the morning. A cool fog hugs the coast. All the homes are dark except ours, and the Santa Monica Mountains rise up fast on the other side of the road. This stretch of asphalt goes all the way down to Cabo San Lucas. Steven may even be able to see it in the distance.

  Hang on, Steven. Keep sending messages. I’ll find you.

  Time to get ready. I go through the trunk of my car. I have my black camo gear. A bulletproof vest. Combat boots. Food rations. A full water bottle. A compass. Remote tracker. Spare socks. Survival knife. Fire starter kit. First aid kit. All I need are weapons, which the Rey brothers will have.

  Should I go to Mexico now? Wait and hope the LAPD calls? I could call Warren Wu, a buddy who flies out of Brown Field, the southernmost municipal airport in San Diego County. I could drive there. He has a beautiful, red, two-seater plane that can land on remote beaches. But, fly where?

  Not yet. I have to trust that the Reys will be ready when the time comes.

  Back in the dining room, Darna, Rafael, and Glenn hunch over their computers while Trishelle stands behind them. They scroll through aerial images of crowded harbors, hoping to spot a yacht like Bushnell’s.

  What no one says, but we all understand, is that finding Bushnell this way may take weeks.

  Trishelle hands Glenn a thumb drive. “That’s more music.”

  Darna takes it. “I’ll upload it and play it through my monitors.”

  The sound of lilting guitar fills the dining room. Trishelle and I head into the kitchen to make yet another pot of coffee. It’s black outside the kitchen window. The sun will rise in about two hours. Then, The Danger Game’s final hunt begins.

  “What about Julia’s parents? Maybe the Canadians can help us.”

  “I talked to Julia’s parents. They’re freaking out. The CSIS interviewed them in Thunder Bay, but that’s all I know. I also want to get Anthony down here. When The Danger Game goes live again, maybe he can spot something.”

  Steven’s older brother, Anthony, is a high school chemistry teacher in San Francisco. He knows Steven better than I do. “I’ll call him.”

  “What do you think Steven will do next?”

  Survive. He did it in the Afghan Mountains in winter with Taliban fighters chasing him. He did it in the jungles of Colombia. He can do it in Baja, for both of them.”

  “How?”

  “He’s looking for food and water. A way to stay warm, and a safe place to hide. He’s also looking for an extraction point.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A place where I can get them out, like a mountain or a plateau or he may move closer to water. He will avoid roads and people.”

  “But he has to figure out where he is and tell us.”

  “Or, we hope that The Rescue Game players will figure it out.”

  We look at each other. That may be as impossible as finding Bushnell’s yacht.

  45

  STEVEN QUINTANA

  Saturday, March 16, 5:00 a.m. (PST)

  Baja, California

  Julia and I lie against the sandstone, absorbing the last bit of heat from the rocks and waiting for the moon to set. She shakes, stifling her tears. Does she regret following me? Maybe she’s calculating our odds. That would make me cry too.

  The desert sky reveals more stars, which helps with direction. Orion’s Belt is low in the sky, so the sun will rise to our right, in the East.

  Strategize. What do you have?

  The shards of glass are still in my socks. If I tie a glass shard to the end of a stick with a shoelace, it’s a tool. A weapon. But can I fight with one hand? The fear returns.

  You’re better at hiding. Gather. Wait for your moment.

  Julia grabs my hand and squeezes. First thing to eat when we’re safe?

  That’s my girl, staying positive. Mom’s lemon chicken and rice.

  I want pie.

  Kind?

  Rhubarb. And chips.

  Canadian? Like ketchup chips?

  Yes. Parents’ lake house, this summer. Chips, chicken and pie. And beer.

  That’s a vision worth fighting for. I squeeze back. Deal. Time to go.

  The moon disappears, leaving us in close to total darkness. I crawl to the edge of the sandstone rock and peer over. There’s no noise. I turn on my belly and climb down it like it’s a ladder. My bare feet are cold. They land on a narrow ledge. My toes search for the edge. It’s about two feet wide. Julia joins me thirty seconds later, and we stand side-by-side with our backs against the sandstone.

  A dark shape looms across from us. It’s another huge set of rocks five hundred yards away. Water may sometimes flow between these sets of rocks. Maybe there’s an arroyo below where I can dig for water.

  When the sun rises, we’ll know compass points. What’s the date? The explosions in Malibu seem like a decade ago. My brain counts. Today is Saturday, just before dawn on March 16. The spring equinox will be in five days. On that day, the sun will be halfway up in the sky at twelve noon, between 40 and 50 degrees. That’s in Los Angeles. We’re in Baja, a lower latitude, where the sun will be higher in the sky at noon. How much depends on how far south we are on this damn peninsula.

  Julia elbows me. A noise. She heard it first.

  A giggle, from below us. Then a whisper. “We can see you. Time to die.”

  46

  CARL WEBB

  Saturday, March 16, 5:00 a.m. (PST)

  California

  Darna shouts. “They’re out of the rocks!”

  We rush back into the room.

  Glenn taps his keyboard. “Recording to Rescue Game site now.”

  The feed cuts between two cameras. A drone floating above them, and someone watching from below. The images are green. It’s heat-sensing night vision, and two figures stand on a rock ledge in the dark, not moving. You can barely see their heat outlines against the rock, they are so still.

  “Not much is happening,” Trishelle says.

  Steven know
he’s being watched, so there’s no reason to move until they do. The clocks say it’s five in the morning. “He must move before the sun rises, which is in another two hours.”

  They could shoot them now but they want to play with their prey, the sick fucks. But they won’t wait until dawn. Something is going to happen soon, but I don’t tell them that.

  47

  TINA SWIG

  Saturday, March 16, 2:00 p.m. (CET)

  Sicily

  Min, Ismael, and Elliot stare at the big monitor. Plants and rocks, lit up green in the dark, swing back and forth. Some idiot is climbing around in the dark with a night vision camera mounted on his helmet. Elliot adds more luminance on the monitor, making the grainy image brighter.

  “This image is giving me motion sickness,” I say.

  “I’ll message Heyman to stabilize it,” Min says.

  Then, Steven Quintana appears in the corner of the screen on a rock ledge. Julia stands next to him. It cuts to a night vision drone that floats about fifty yards above them.

  Douglas laughs and moves closer. “There they are. Let’s go live again.”

  “We’ve been live the whole time, Boss Man,” Min says.

  “What the fuck? You mean we’ve been broadcasting that shaky shit all night?”

  Min, Ismael, and Elliot look at each other and then at me, confused. “Heyman controls the broadcast. We just do the app, sir,” Min says.

  “Fucking morons. You should have told him to go dark.”

  Douglas is blaming. My perfect man is fallible, and I don’t like it.

  I rehearse a speech in my head:

  We have over a billion. Kill them. Pay Min, Elliot, and Ishmael and send them to Club Med.

  I opt for something shorter. “Let’s call in a sniper. End this thing.”

  Douglas tosses me a sideways glance. “You want to cash out now? Min, how many downloads are we getting?”

  Min scrolls through his screen. “We’re making five thousand dollars a minute with new subscribers.”

  Douglas is thinking like a gambler on Macau, so he’s not hedging his bets.

  “We’ve achieved everything we set out to do, my love.”

  “We can also make a quarter billion more in the next few hours. And I’ll give all of it to Devon. How does that sound?”

  He’s tossing choices on the table like it’s a negotiation, which it isn’t.

  He glares at Ismael. “Have you gotten inside The Rescue Game?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t. They ping me around when I try to get in. I’ve been on the gaming sites, on the subreddits, and on Stack. If people are figuring out where they are, they’re not sharing it on social media. No one is bragging about knowing where they are.”

  Douglas squints. “That may be good for us then. Message Heyman. Tell him to keep the shot from the night vision drone up there so we don’t have to look at this shaky helmet shit. He screwed up once already with the locators in their clothes.”

  Ismael types an instant message. The image on the monitor switches to a high shot from a flying drone. The sandstone rocks are lit up dark green against black, still emitting the heat they absorbed yesterday. It’s almost beautiful. And, there, on a ledge halfway down a rock wall, are two brighter figures, Quintana and Travers, emitting just a bit more heat than the rocks behind them. They stand so still they almost blend in.

  “Why aren’t they moving?” Min asks.

  “It’s too dark? We can see them but they can’t see us,” Ismael says.

  The drone floats. It’s as still as a painting.

  “This is boring,” Elliot complains.

  “It’s like watching bank surveillance footage,” Ismael says.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Douglas says.

  Min scans his computer. “Traffic is dropping. People are signing off.”

  I can’t hold back. “Then get a rifle out there with night vision and laser sighting and shoot them in the head. Give our fans what they want!”

  Douglas glowers at me. “Our fans expect a show, my love. We wait to kill them in daylight, up close and personal. That’s the climax. This is playtime.”

  I shoot his own look back at him and walk onto the deck.

  The winter sun is blazing hot in the middle of the day and the light off the water is silver white. I need my sunglasses but I’m not going back in there.

  Reckoning is the only yacht anchored outside the harbor right now, which is one more risk we’re taking. Too many eyes are drawn to us.

  When the ship rises on the swell, you can spot the ruins of the ancient temple of Concordia. Devon and I are supposed to be there right now, enjoying our victory before disappearing. Instead we’ve been up all night. My son must hate me.

  Always have a plan.

  This can’t turn into another Six Passengers, Five Parachutes. It’s time for my insurance policy. I park myself on a corner cushion under a sun awning, and speed dial Walter.

  “Hello, Tina.”

  “Don’t call me that. Not even on an encrypted line.”

  “How about ‘Muffin?’ That’s what I called you for the two months we dated. Me, a lowly tech nerd in the IT department, and you, head of reality casting.”

  “Stop it. I need information. That’s why I’m paying you.”

  “Wire another ten thousand dollars into my account. Now.”

  “Now? Really, Walter?”

  “I’m waiting.”

  I can’t believe this guy. He was lucky he got close to me for even two days. Two months was an eternity. But he continues to serve his purpose. My thumbs attack the banking app on my phone, and another ten thousand dollars goes into his account.

  I put the phone back up to my ear. “Happy?”

  “For now.”

  “We are connected, Walter. If I go down so will you, so be nice.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He adds a dash of snark, but I let it slide.

  “Did she answer the phone when you called?”

  “She did. But she did not believe that I was Larry Naythons. Your deep fake software wasn’t deep enough.”

  Or, Walter talked like an IT nerd instead of the senior editor of one of the largest entertainment news sites in the world. Jackass. “No, you blew it, Walter.”

  “Hold up. She didn’t turn her phone off. She just hung up. So, I was able to run my spy software and keep the phone alive. There was a lot of ocean noise and dishes banging in the kitchen, but I did hear some interesting things.”

  My mouth dries up like cotton. “Talk. And don’t ask for another ten thousand or I’ll have you castrated.”

  “They have three computer programmers there. They’re the ones designing The Rescue Game.”

  Trishelle Hobbes and Carl Webb are smart enough to create The Rescue Game? That wasn’t something I anticipated.

  “Muffin? They also said your name. And the name Douglas Bushnell. And they’re looking at yachts.”

  My skin flushes hot. I look around, convinced someone is watching me.

  “Who’s Douglas Bushnell?” he asks.

  “What else did you hear?”

  “Someone online is helping them. Someone named Too Cool for School. Sounds like a Twitter handle or Instagram or Snapchat. He found something in Baja. Then, the phone went dead.”

  My game is failing. Douglas will scream and throw accusations at me.

  “Muffin? Are you still there?”

  “Walter. Listen carefully. Find Too Cool for School.”

  “That’s even more work. It will cost you.”

  “Did you hear any police officers, FBI agents, or detectives in the room?”

  “Nothing. They complained about it. You’re in luck there.”

  “Good. You’re the tech genius. Go find Too Cool for School.” I hang up.

  No cops means that we’re still in luck. We’re going to kill Julia Travers and Steven Quintana before noon, anyway, and then disappear.

  But, if we don’t, I must tell Douglas everything I know.

>   48

  JULIA TRAVERS

  Saturday, March 16, 5:00 a.m. (PST)

  Baja, California

  I grab Steven’s hand. You hear?

  Three below. Look up.

  I do. A red LED light hovers. The drone whirrs like a fan.

  Don’t move. Let them come to us.

  He lets go of my hand. He’s digging in his pockets.

  My torso aches from my breasts down to my thighs. And, standing so still makes me cold. And scared. I want to run run run, but he says not to move, so I don’t. I’m doing my job, this is his. Listen. Trust. But it’s hard.

  He grabs my hand, pries open my fingers and places a long shard of glass in between my forefinger and middle finger. He then closes my hand and makes a fist. How is that going to work? He then takes the glass away and squeezes a message: Put it in my right hand. Same way.

  Then what?

  Shoelaces. Wrap around my fingers. Then fist. Tie around wrist. Tight.

  Boxers wrap strips of cloth around their wrists—I get it. I put the long shard in between his first two fingers and then wrap the shoelaces around his hand, turning his hand into a spear.

  “Tighter,” he whispers.

  A man laughs below. It’s so quiet, he heard Steven.

  I finish. Steven whispers. “Do it to your right hand. Two shards are in my pocket.”

  His left hand is a swollen bloody softball and his right hand is a spear, so he can’t help. My fingers find his pocket and the sharp glass. Am I going to hurt someone? My mind flashes back to the Bahamas. I shot a man in the shoulder. Steven shot a man in the chest and killed him, and we swam past his dead body in the sinkhole. Those memories don’t go away.

  I wrap my hand around the glass shard and pull the knot tight with my teeth. My hand throbs from the tight shoelaces. Our hands touch. Done.

  He taps back. Act scared. They’ll drop guard. Go for throat. Ears. Eyes.

  My heart pounds up my chest, through my throat, and into my ears. Why is he making me do this?