Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller)

by Jonathan Paul Isaacs

  “Yes,” he said finally.

  Juliana sighed, her face full of cynicism.

  “It’s late, Derek,” she said as she stood up. “I need to get Robby’s things ready for tomorrow. My mom’s picking him up early before I leave for work. You understand, of course.”

  Derek nodded. He knew he was being dismissed. Juliana showed him to the door and as he walked out onto the front step, he turned one last time and caught her eye. “Consider it, Jules. Think about it. Please, for me.”

  “Okay, I will,” she said doubtfully, placating him. There was sadness in her face—but that was overshadowed by a sort of resignation that Derek wasn’t quite sure he understood.

  Derek drove back to the Hilton a couple miles away and wandered listlessly up to his room. He had hoped his trip up to Boston would have been more productive in getting Jules to move back in with him. They had been separated for, what, ten months now? He was sure he wanted to get back together—wasn’t he? Somehow he had become accustomed to her not being there when he rolled back home at midnight each night. Work travel and long hours hadn’t bothered her when they had first gotten married. On the contrary, the time they did spend together was intensely high octane, and the passion they felt for each other in wanting to build a future together.

  Perhaps the future had arrived and was not meeting expectations.

  A deep wave of exhaustion overcame Derek as he threw his keys on the hotel desk. His flight back to Texas was late in the morning the next day. He would pack up his things tomorrow. The stress of thinking about the outcome of his marriage made his head hurt—the sun from the ballgame probably didn’t help either—and Derek just wanted to sleep. He pulled his clothes off down to his boxers and dragged back the heavy sheets off the queen-sized bed, unceremoniously dumping the bedding on the floor to make a sleeping pallet. He was asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow.

  16

  Fallujah, Iraq. September 2004.

  The enemy round hit the edge of the building right next to Callahan’s face, spraying him with debris.

  “You alright, Lieutenant?” said a voice.

  “Yeah,” Callahan replied, staying back from the corner, wiping the dirt from his goggles. “I’m okay.”

  Staff Sergeant Ricks was behind him, and then Private First Class Finnegan. They were at the extreme edge of Fallujah’s industrial zone, a hostile area in a hostile city, full of duplicity and lies. The local sheikhs had long denied that there were any foreign insurgents or even any offensive intent within the city, and if only the Marines would leave them well enough alone, all the killing and conflict would end. So Ambassador Bremer had decided to give it a go and take them up on their word, aborting the April offensive and pulling back all Marine forces. The result was predictable. Fallujah had become a hotbed of terrorist activity. Kidnappings and beheadings were common. The city was now known as the “bomb factory” based on the quantity of IEDs produced there. It was rumored to be the acting headquarters of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—one of Osama bin Laden’s chief lieutenants. The situation had deteriorated so badly that even Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi, a good man but more importantly, one who understood the undercurrents of his own country, was calling bullshit on the professed intent of the city’s elders.

  Then, just yesterday, a suicide bomber drove a car packed full of explosives into a convoy and killed a half-dozen Marines. That merited a response in kind.

  A huge explosion erupted three blocks down. A tank back on the main highway was firing on an enemy position.

  Callahan peeked back around the corner. The structure he was interested in had enemy combatants in it that were commanding the approach down the street with small arms fire. It was out of line-of-sight from the tanks, so his platoon was going to take it out.

  “That two-story building over there—on the far corner of the intersection,” Callahan pointed. “That’s where they’re at. See it?”

  Ricks edge over behind Callahan. “I see it.”

  Callahan glanced over his shoulder at Finnegan. The Marine was young and on the lanky side, with freckles that dotted his cheeks when they weren’t covered up by ballistic goggles. “Time to kick some ass, Finnegan.”

  “Yes sir, Lieutenant!”

  The Marines pulled back about a hundred feet to where the rest of the platoon was waiting. Callahan convened with his sergeants, Ricks from first squad, Robinson from second, Martinez from third. “I want the MG team on this roof here to lay down suppressing fire and make that sniper keep his head down. First squad is coming with me to loop around this building here”—Callahan pointed at the half-decimated cinderblock square behind him—“and come at them from the south. Second squad covers us closer in. Everybody got it?”

  “Yes sir,” the sergeants said in unison.

  “Then let’s go take these fuckers out,” Callahan finished.

  Robinson got the machine gun crew up on the roof while Callahan, Ricks, and about a dozen Marines discretely ducked around piles of rubble as they made their way down the filthy street. Everything appeared deserted and the only sounds were those of combat: automatic weapons, an RPG round exploding, a building coming down from yet another tank shell.

  Callahan halfway climbed up an outside staircase of an abandoned house and readied his rifle. He looked down at Ricks and the men stacked up behind him.

  “First squad ready?” Callahan called down.

  “Ready,” Ricks said.

  Callahan clicked on his radio. “Second squad ready?”

  “Ready,” crackled Robinson’s voice.

  “Second squad—open fire!”

  A moment later and the machine gun team began sending rounds into the walls and windows of the building where the snipers were holed up. M-16 fire joined in to round out the cacophony of gunfire. With whatever combatants located inside surely ducking down to keep their heads from being blown off, Callahan led first squad undetected up the street that led to the flank of the target. They neared the courtyard stepped through a giant hole in the walled perimeter before stacking up near the side of the building.

  “In position,” Callahan said into the radio. The suppressing fire eased immediately.

  Frag grenades went into the windows and front door. Two seconds later, explosions sent lethal shrapnel throughout the interior. A second after that and four Marines stacked near the door charged in with weapons up.

  Callahan watched from his vantage point near the edge of the courtyard. There was a sudden crack from an M-16 followed by relative silence. A minute later Callahan heard voices call out, “Clear!”

  “Second squad, move up,” he said into the radio.

  The intersection was deserted but still fairly intact. Callahan caught Ricks’ attention near the edge of the building they had just swept and directed him via hand signal to cover the street. Ricks gave him the thumbs up.

  Just as he stood up to move, a pickup truck with a bunch of armed men in the back drove into the intersection one block away. One of them pointed in his direction.

  “Contact right!” Callahan said as he raised his rifle and took a shot.

  One of the men in the back of the pickup tumbled over the side. The others—maybe four of them—dove out and scrambled for cover. One of them looked like he had an RPG launcher. The truck drove off and out of sight before it became a target.

  Ricks was directing fire onto the walls and rubble behind which the new arrivals were hiding. Callahan was clicking on his radio to advise second squad to flank the enemy position when he saw the brief streak of an RPG round crash into the building behind his staircase....

  The sky was a dusty gray.

  His mouth savored the copper taste of blood.

  Everything was silent.

  A gray, dusty swirl with no sense of the passage of time.

  Derek woke up sweating. He was still on the floor but had somehow pushed the mattress off of the bed frame. His sheets were wrapped haphazardly around one leg and he his left leg was ach
ing. He looked down and noticed fresh scratches on his shin, tender with the shine of newly-drawn blood. He was alone. Where was he? He didn’t recognize his surroundings.

  Gradually it dawned on him that he was in his hotel room. In Boston. The United States of America. Not in Iraq, temporarily deafened on some shithole street where an RPG had gone off unsettlingly close to, well, his head. Derek took a deep, deep breath and tried to calm the heart that was beating madly like it wanted to leap out of his chest. Holy fuck.

  After a long while, Derek pulled himself up into a sitting position and looked over at the clock next to his bed. It said 4:15 am. He cursed to himself. He should have taken a sleeping pill. Usually being on the floor helped calm him through the night with a feeling of protection, a sort of artificial camouflage by not being exposed on top of the mattress. But sometimes it didn’t matter.

  He hated when the dreams came back. Years after leaving the Marines, stress still had a funny way of triggering the dramatic, always-violent recollections from his past.

  The day with the RPG. That was a bad one, and not because his ears had rung for days afterward. Derek had still been able to fight. After they had killed their attackers they were frustratingly ordered back to the highway. Apparently, three city blocks deep constituted the boundary between a simple skirmish and full-on offensive operations, and since Colonel Toolan didn’t have approval for the latter, he had to call it off. They were only allowed a little payback for the car bomb but no clearance for anything more than that.

  No, being injured wasn’t why Derek remembered that day. He remembered it because it was the day Finnegan had gone missing.

  Somewhere in the fight, one of the fire teams from first squad had gotten separated and pinned down by insurgents. An RPG round had then taken down a wall on top of them. When relief finally arrived to sift through the debris and dust there was no sign of Finnegan. Derek had been furious. Marines didn’t leave their brothers behind. He took the search party back to the vicinity himself to look for blood trails, any discarded belongings, muffled cries from a Marine trapped under rubble, anything. But there hadn’t been a trace. That was when Bender wondered out loud whether or not Finnegan had been captured.

  A Marine, a fellow brother, captured by the enemy? Dragged off to be interrogated or tortured? It simply wasn’t acceptable.

  Captain Austin ordered a second, larger search party to go out the following morning. They found a few empty magazines that might have been Finnegan’s. Otherwise—nothing. They had failed. They had failed to keep one of their men safe, or accounted for at least. It was an unacceptable result that Derek had vowed to make right.

  Derek stood up and wobbled to the bathroom sink. He might as well get dressed and head to the airport. There was no way he was going to go back to sleep and risk another journey to that despicable, repulsive hellhole in Al Anbar province.

  17

  The Imperial City of Bangor, Armchair Safari.

  Megan paced next to the apothecary across from the Harbor Master’s office. The breeze from the water chilled passers-by and caused several to draw their cloaks for warmth. Boris and Father Corman were standing caddy-corner across the street intersection. They had been told to blend in, but Boris would wave at her every time she glanced over. Megan tugged her cloak together in a vain attempt to remain inconspicuous.

  “Feeling nippy, darling?” said a middle-aged merchant walking by. “I’d be happy to take you to my place and warm you up.”

  “Buzz off, pal.”

  The merchant gave her a wink and moved on. How long much longer were they going to have to wait?

  Bangor was unlike any town that Megan had seen in Safari. The cobblestone streets were lined with stone buildings plastered and whitewashed to look brilliantly clean. Clay shingles fired with different coloring agents covered the rooftops in vibrant contrast to walls. And as a last, picturesque touch, the steep hills that led up from the rocky coastline added a surreal vertical dimension to the grand city. It was beautiful—especially when viewed through Megan’s Gaming Glasses.

  Megan went back to fidgeting with the locket around her neck. She had pondered selling it to counterbalance what otherwise amounted to exactly zero net income on this quest, but something had kept her from doing it. She didn’t know why. There was still no portrait inside, nor did Megan have any love interest that she would be inclined to put in it.

  Across the street, Boris waved at her again, grinning.

  Megan had to stifle a laugh. Maybe his picture needed to go in the locket. She should have known better than to start flirting with him to pass the time.

  It seemed like forever, but Kalam and Sameer finally emerged from the Harbor Master’s Office. The scowl on Kalam’s face told them volumes about their negotiations.

  “What happened?” Megan asked.

  “They won’t do it,” Kalam growled. “They won’t lease a sailing ship without another port of call as the end destination.”

  “But we don’t want to sail to a port of call. We want to sail to the middle of the ocean, like you indicated on your map.”

  “Exactly.”

  Boris and Father Corman crossed the street and Sameer give more detail on what had happened. Everyone was looking dour by the end of the explanation.

  “Is there another office we can check with?” Father Corman asked hopefully.

  “No,” replied Kalam, “the Harbor Master here is in charge of chartering all sailing vessels for the entire port.”

  “What about if we just bought our own ship?”

  Sameer shook his head. “Far too expensive, unless we want to try our luck in a dinghy.”

  “Well, what other choice do we have?”

  “Is there a problem?” said a new voice entering the conversation.

  Megan jumped. Haas looked back at her from a foot away, expressionless as always.

  “God, you scare me sometimes, Haas. Can you please not creep up on me?”

  Kalam just gave the ranger a nod. “Everything look okay from the rooftops?”

  “Yes. I don’t think we’ve drawn any attention, at least not yet. But I should keep patrolling if we’re going to stand here and talk in the open.”

  “It may not matter,” Kalam sighed. “Precautions against a tail are the least of our problems. We can’t get a ship to take us out into the Southern Ocean. The Harbor Master won’t lease one to us without a port as the destination.”

  There was a pause as the ranger regarded Megan. “Why don’t we have Megan steal us a ship?”

  All eyes turned to Haas. Then they turned to her.

  Megan blinked. “Huh?”

  “You are a thief, aren’t you?” Haas pointed out.

  Megan started backing away from the group. “Now, wait a minute....”

  “Haas, that’s brilliant,” Kalam interrupted. “There would be a significant price on our heads, of course, but that would only be in Bangor. And we’d have no crew. Does anyone have sailing as a skill?”

  “Guys,” Megan said, waving her hands violently. This was crazy. Steal a ship?

  “I know how to sail,” said Haas.

  “Yes, yes,” continued Kalam. “This solves all kinds of problems.”

  “Guys... wait...”

  Sameer walked over next to Megan and started to coach her. “You need to choose a ship large enough to be ocean-going, but small enough for handling by a crew of only six. A sloop might be a good choice if there are any docked.”

  “And it’s got to be fast enough to evade any sort of pursuit,” added Boris.

  “God! Stop!” shouted Megan.

  The party around her was silent. Across the street, two merchants had stopped dead in their tracks and were staring at them.

  “Are you all mad? I can’t steal a ship!”

  Kalam took a step toward her. Megan took a step back.

  “Megan, of course you can. It is just like stealing anything else.”

  “No, it’s not!” she hissed. “Look, guys.
I’m a burglar. I sneak into places and steal small things. Small. Things. Even then, getting away without being caught requires a lot of up-front planning. There’s no freaking way!”

  “But necessity is the mother of invention, yes?” offered Sameer.

  “Oh, don’t give me that.” Megan hardly ever used profanity, but she sure wanted to. This was insane. She started to feel nauseous. There was just no way. She would get killed.

  Boris cleared his throat. “But this is why you are here. To steal things.”

  “Stealing is fine, but I don’t have a death wish—especially while you all sit back, eat popcorn and watch.”

  “Megan,” Boris pressed, this time in a lower, ominous voice. “We need this to continue. I need this to continue. You’re going to steal that ship or else I’m going to make you wish you had tried.”

  “Don’t threaten me, you pompous brute!”

  A bunch of voices broke out in argument. Megan had to fight her instinct to run. That’s what she usually did when there was a mass of unwanted attention. Fleeing meant safety.

  Haas finally stepped into the middle and took control.

  “Megan’s right, of course,” the ranger said, looking at each person in turn. His matter-of-factness was unnerving. “It would be foolish to try and steal a ship without proper planning. I’ve checked out the shipyard and the security, if not exactly tight, still needs to be dealt with. It would be a challenge for a thief to sneak in undetected.”

  Boris spat on the cobblestones. “What is this, Haas? You bring up the idea, and now you’re suggesting that we abort this mission? I didn’t think you were a coward.”

  “Not at all,” Haas answered, unfazed by the insult. “What I am saying is, these things need to be accounted for in our planning. There is always a way. And Megan has as good of a track record as any thief in preparing and executing sound strategies for burglary.”