Terror Stash

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Later!” he called back. It was friendly enough.

  Chapter Five

  Caden found Ria in the garden, sitting in the dense, cool shade beneath the pergola. She had been repotting something unrecognizable, but sat back and pulled off her gloves when he sat at the table opposite her.

  “You’re just in time for lunch.” Then she pressed her forefinger against her pursed lips. “Oh, dear,” she said. “You don’t look very happy, Caden.”

  “I’m not,” he growled. “I found out this morning that Stewart Connie has started up business again.”

  “Dear me.” She sighed. “Didn’t you make...an arrangement with him a few years ago?”

  Caden almost smiled at her euphemism. “You could say that,” he agreed. “I’ve been floating around Margaret River and Yallingup for the last couple of hours, looking for him, but he’s changed his locale since the last time we chatted.”

  Ria lifted her eyebrows. “I do hope you’re not asking me where you might find him. I would be one of the last people to know something like that.” She gave a delicate laugh.

  “Not him specifically, but his clients. You know the type, at least. Where do the surfers tend to hang out now? The nonink crowd?” The euphemism was one that he and Ria used between them. In the Margaret River-Yallingup area, there were a significant number of people that fell into the low income-no income bracket. They lived off the land and most often it was a deliberate lifestyle choice.

  Ria put her hands together neatly in her lap. “Oh, I should think the Pink Galah would get most of their business.”

  “Still at the Galah, huh?” Caden knew the place well. He glanced at his watch. “I have a bit of time, then.”

  “You’ll have lunch with me?”

  “Sure.” He grinned easily.

  Ria began collecting up her gardening implements and gloves, dropping them into the basket on the table. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of doing further business with that Connie man, either?”

  Caden’s grin broadened. “Ria, Ria,” he chided. “I thought you knew me better than that.”

  “Alas, I do.” She gave a delicate sniff. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

  He sat back. “I stopped handing out blame for anything when I was ten. It doesn’t fix a damn thing.”

  * * * * *

  Montana knew the location of the Pink Galah well enough. Anyone who had driven through the town of Margaret River at least once knew where it was. In the late eighteen hundreds the corrugated iron building had been an open-walled logging shed. A mad Englishman who had intended to ship the excellent Karri hardwood in the area back home had built it. It straddled the riverbank, in a perfect position to snag felled logs as they floated down the river...only the river never flowed. Margaret River was a high-season-only waterway. For most of the year the water lay still, a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes.

  After changing owners a dozen times, the shed had acquired an outer shell of corrugated iron cladding and other accessories. The current owner had slapped a dash of neon pink paint on the iron cladding, hoisted a “public bar” sign onto the roof, installed a beer tap or two and opened the doors.

  That had been thirty years ago, but the Pink Galah was still the most popular watering hole in the district. Perhaps its marginal location on the very edge of the town, straddling both water and land, was what drew the fringe folk. Customers included surfers, people living off the land and do-it-yourselfers who had caught the religion enough to sell up everything and move to Marg’s. Also loners, outcasts, the occasional brave tourist, a dozen or so hippie wannabees who wished fervently that it was still the sixties—and those who had mentally never left the sixties despite mourning John and George every time they heard a Beatles tune.

  Montana looked around and catalogued the creeds and philosophies represented in the bar. What was missing were the middle-of-the-road, respectable, salaried business professionals and yuppies. It was most definitely not that sort of a bar.

  For a start, most of the customers were outside, under the wisteria-covered lean-to. It was explosively hot inside under the iron roof and no one lingered there.

  Nearly all the customers had kicked off their shoes and were padding barefoot about the packed earth floor. Sometime in the past, the owners had cut a long rectangular flap in the iron cladding, added a couple of hinges and pushed a cabinet up beneath the new window. That became the bar that served the rickety pergola. A dozen barbecue tables with attached benches were the only seating on offer. There were no small tables for little groups.

  The noise spiraled. No band played. She doubted there was a single electrical outlet available out there and any band would have had trouble being heard, anyway.

  She asked for a glass of white wine and watched the barmaid with the henna-red hair pour a glassful from a four-liter cardboard box of non-vintage—the sort of wine that sold for eight dollars at any liquor retailer.

  “That’ll be three dollars, luv.” The barmaid’s voice was guttural and deep. If she’d spent many years lifting her volume above this noise, it was little wonder. She was in her late fifties and very tanned. Her skin had leathered, worn-in wrinkles from a lifetime of harsh sun. She looked like she had seen more than anyone at this bar could ever bring on.

  A bright young thing behind the bar would have lasted five minutes. Maybe.

  Montana picked up her drink and looked around.

  “Hey!! Montana! Over here!” It was Bruce, waving and shouting. There were a handful of people with him, also waving to her eagerly.

  It reminded her sharply, again, of the police constable calling her a hero. She kept returning to the memory, turning it over. She didn’t consider what she had done even remotely heroic. She’d always thought of herself as what Australians like to call a ‘gutless wonder.’ She didn’t deal well with crises and conflict. Hell, she didn’t deal well with people, period. Her training as a diplomat gave her superficial skills in set circumstances and her experience with the consulate had given her practice but underneath she was still afraid of her own shadow. She only had to recall Khafji to know the truth.

  This morning she had just done what needed to be done. The task had been physically demanding, but it was nothing like facing down another human being. Not even close.

  Montana recognized most of the people waving at her, including the South African guy...damn, what was his name? It vexed her that she couldn’t remember. A diplomat was supposed to remember names. Nicollo would have remembered.

  She weaved around the long tables and placed her computer in the space they opened up for her at the end of the furthest table from the bar. She found herself sitting across the table from Greg and smiled genuinely at him. “They let you out?”

  “Mild concussion,” he answered, “and a bloody great headache. But no permanent damage. Still, I have to stay off the sauce for a while.” He looked down at his glass, which held what looked like Coke, and grimaced. “But thanks. You saved my butt.”

  “Hey, I just happened to be out there, that’s all,” she said, opening up the computer. No question, there would not be a public wireless network here, but she had battery power and things to do. It was also a great way to escape unwanted conversations.

  Greg dug into his back pocket. “Whatcha drinking?” he asked.

  “Just wine.”

  “Hey, Greg, if you’re buying, I’ll ‘ave a beer!” Bruce declared.

  Greg turned back to face the table. “You know what? Whatever you want. You got it. All of you. Fire away.”

  There was a tiny little silence. A tick of appreciation. They all knew that Greg was thanking them—possibly the only way he knew how to do it.

  “Riiiight,” Bruce said, rubbing his hands together. “I’ll have a Harvey Wallbanger with a beer chaser.”

  “B52!” someone else called out. The orders came fast, without hesitation. There was no polite refusal to take him up on his offer, no protest that he was as broke as most of th
em. They were going to let him thank them.

  Montana swiveled the screen around and laid it flat over the keypad, just as the South African slid onto the bench beside her. “Now, that’s something,” he said, staring at it.

  “It’s just a Tablet PC,” she told him, pulling out the stylus.

  “Yo, Jacko!” Greg called. “What’s yer drink?”

  The man beside her turned his head slowly to look over his shoulder. “I’ll have a double shot of Glenfiddich.”

  Jacko. Yes, of course. He was a single-malt scotch drinker. Most of them were into coolers and mixers—thirst-quenchers with a lighter kick.

  He was half-turned to face her, one upper arm across the table, his head on his fist. His eyes really were light blue. They looked like the irises had been painted. “You were very smart, very cool out there today. I wanted to tell you that.”

  Montana hid her dismay. She used a distant manner and props like computers as a hedge and went out of her way never to encourage this sort of attention. Now Greg’s rescue had gained her more than Greg’s thanks, and from Jacko, too. How strange. He was one of the quiet ones who always listened more than he spoke, watching and absorbing data with his painted eyes...perhaps that was why he sought her out now. He’d watched enough and absorbed enough to have made up his mind.

  She booted up the scripting program, using the stylus to tap her way through the menus, and opened up the current file. A hand—not Greg’s—placed another glass of wine next to hers and conversations were starting up around the long table, across it, and even between the tables.

  “What in hell is that?” Jacko asked, leaning over her shoulder. “It isn’t email.”

  “It’s a Perl script I’m building.” She scrolled to the bottom of the file and tapped the stylus against her teeth for a second, sorting out the next needed command.

  “A script for what?”

  She shrugged. “I’m building a honeypot for the Leave Worm, amongst others.”

  The girl across the table widened her eyes, but Jacko frowned. “A what?” he asked.

  “A honeypot,” she repeated and went on before he could respond, “Well, to be absolutely correct, I’m developing an automated project command module. It’ll sit on top of the highly flexible second-generation honeypots they have out there, these days. The ones based on virtual-machine technologies. It’ll oversee the deployment and operation of a large number of honeypots across a large number of organizations, which gives you enough data for quantitative analysis to provide statistically significant results.”

  They were both staring at her now. She hid her smile and continued. “It’ll help analyze the worms that modify registry keys and hide themselves inside root directories. Some of those scripts have text strings that are really sniffing routines that scan for IP addresses of remote computers and can replicate themselves on those computers. They can also create, move, delete and execute files on the affected computer and launch denial-of-service attacks. Analysis of honeypot data will tell me how any new-generation scripts do it and help shut them down.”

  The girl on the other side of the table, cuddling up to Greg, frowned and pouted at the same time. “God, who’d want to do that for a living?”

  “I would,” Montana replied, keeping her tone cool.

  “This is what you do at your consulate?” Bruce asked.

  “Not exactly.” It wasn’t a lie, but it avoided the direct question that would follow if she’d said “no.” She wouldn’t tell them what, exactly, she did at the consulate. Ever.

  “You work at a consulate?” the woman asked, startled. She sat up straighter.

  “The American consulate,” Jacko said quietly.

  “The United States Consulate in Perth,” Montana amended.

  “She’s a diplomat,” Jacko added.

  “I’m a consular officer,” Montana corrected.

  That was when the barmaid screamed. Her scream, unlike her speaking voice, was high and piercing—the type of silvery shriek that made your adrenaline surge and put you on high alert. Montana swung around, her heart leaping.

  The barmaid was swiping at the bar with a straw broom.

  “What on earth...?” Jacko murmured.

  The bar was littered with dirty glasses, carafes and empty bottles and a battered dishwasher tray the barmaid had been filling.

  Montana stood up for a better view and saw what had the barmaid terrified.

  A cat crouched amongst the middies and tall schooner glasses. It was the most ugly, battered tomcat Montana had ever seen in her life. The big orange and dirty white creature had only one good eye. His fur was erratic, broken up by old, healed scars that rippled across his body like trenches. The clawed foot he held up to the barmaid’s broom was missing a couple of toes and his ears were a lacework of holes and ragged edges.

  The barmaid clearly wanted him off her bar. Just as clearly, he had no intention of leaving. The average cat might have seen the broom descend and taken off with a yowl. This old warrior hunkered down, instead. His tail was whipping about with irritation. The last two inches of tail were bent like a crooked finger—possibly it had been broken once and had mended stiff.

  The barmaid took another swipe at him and he lifted up on his paws, hackles rising all along his back. He hissed with bared teeth and the barmaid squealed and pedaled backwards in response.

  “Yeah, I’d be running, too,” Bruce said.

  The laughter around the table came harder still.

  “So would I run from that creature, I think,” Jacko added softly, meant just for her.

  A large, rolling man stepped behind the bar from an inner room. His jeans and button-down shirt marked him as an owner or manager. The beer belly hanging over the belt of his jeans made Montana think he was probably the owner, with a fondness for his stock. He scooped up the tap mix faucet and sprayed the cat, which gave a squawk. It scattered glasses as it slithered across the bar and onto the dirt.

  The laughter under the lean-to subsided as people realized the cat was amongst them now. They gave a good imitation of pigeons, jumping onto tables and benches and scattering out of the way as the old tom arrowed across the dirt toward the river.

  “Watch out, he’s coming straight for us!” Bruce cried.

  Montana heard them scrambling for safety behind her. She watched the cat instead, judging its direction. It would bypass her if she kept still. “I suggest you move,” she told Jacko. “He’ll want to run under the table right where you’re sitting.”

  “Maybe.”

  He stayed seated beside her until the very last second when it was clear the cat was aiming straight for him. Then he tried to scramble out of the way with a low curse. He wasn’t moving fast enough. The cat gave a low, rumbled warning from the back of its throat. It batted at Jacko as it passed, streaked under the table and was gone.

  Jacko let out a yell and hopped around on the other foot while he clutched his lower leg. He propped his foot on the edge of the bench and slid his jeans up to inspect the damage.

  Four deep scratch marks had left furrows of blood welling along his shin. The two outer claws had not dug deep, but the center pair of scratches looked nasty, especially over the bone.

  “You’ve had a tetanus shot recently, right?” Greg asked. “That cat could’ve been anywhere.”

  “Yeah, lockjaw, man!” Bruce shook his head. “You’d better get some antiseptic stuff on it.”

  Jacko picked up his glass of scotch and poured the contents onto his shin. He sucked his breath in through his teeth. “Done,” he said, dropping the glass back on the table.

  “Hey, look who’s just turned up,” Greg said. “That big freakin’ guy there. Isn’t that the one, a couple of years ago that—you know?”

  Everyone looked toward the door.

  The man strolling through the opening was big, perhaps a bit over six feet, but not extraordinarily tall. He had a well-developed shape, though. The simple white tee-shirt he was wearing stretched over biceps and
wide shoulders that arrowed down to a flat abdomen. Short, jet black hair and from here his eyes looked obsidian black, too. He was moving his gaze around the room, sizing it up, as people carefully stepped around him. The Sunday session was in full swing.

  Montana could feel her pulse spike. He reminded her of Vinnie, somehow, although he looked nothing like Vinnie. Then his gaze swung across her section of the room and Montana caught her breath. Something grabbed at her chest and she brought her fingers to rest against it, almost feeling the breast bone creak.

  There was an alertness about him that she usually only encountered in people whose bodies supported their profession—soldiers, law enforcement and the odd State department clerk she’d met that she’d later confirmed was actually working for one of the intelligence units. Some of the world-class surfers and windsurfers she’d met here in Margaret River had the same quality.

  So had Vinnie, although that wasn’t something she had realized until many years after Khafji.

  Montana swallowed and tried to draw more than a shallow breath. Her heart was thundering in her ears. She watched the man’s gaze swing around the room and guessed he was looking for more than a place to sit or people he knew. “Who is he?” she asked Jacko and was pleased when her voice emerged evenly.

  Jacko gingerly lowered his jeans back over his shin. “His name is Rawn, I think.”

  “Caden Rawn,” Bruce said, curling his lip. “He’s an ugly bastard. He beat the crap out of some guy a couple of years ago, god knows why. I heard the police arrested him.”

  “Not that one,” Jacko said with cool certainty. “I think he’d leave the country before he’d let himself be arrested.”

  “You know him?” she asked, watching Rawn. The man’s expression was distant and hard and she suddenly shivered.

  Jacko shook his head. “Don’t want to. There’s stories about him. He’s bad news.”

  Montana turned back to her computer, but kept her angled position on the bench so she could glance out of the corner of her eye. She pushed at her chest again, wondering what on earth had got into her. She had never experienced such a strong reaction to someone simply stepping into a room, especially a stranger.