Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  “Both of us,” M.D. replied.

  M.D. adjusted his toe tag, pressed his shoes tightly to his hip on the left, and laid back on the gurney so that Mends could cover his face with the sheet.

  Ten minutes later, he was in the morgue truck.

  Twenty minutes after that, he was beyond the prison’s gates.

  McCutcheon lay strapped to a gurney underneath a white sheet, feeling the soft bump-bump-bump of the road passing beneath the vehicle’s wheels as it cruised down a lonesome highway in the middle of the night. The morgue truck wasn’t so much a truck as it was an oversize wagon with an extended rear cab, and though the space in the back offered capacity for two lifeless bodies, M.D. lay alone and unaccompanied. In a way, the path he’d discovered out of Jentles felt fitting, because a part of him was now dead. A young man went into prison; an entirely different young man was coming out.

  Using the knife Mends had given him, M.D. sliced through the white sheet, cut the tan restraints that belted his body to a cushionless wooden board, and freed himself using slow, methodical, quiet movements each step of the way. Having paid close attention to even the smallest of details, M.D. knew he’d been loaded into the vehicle feet-first, which meant that his head pointed backward toward the rear spilt-panel door of the black car. This, he knew, would be advantageous, because he’d be able to inch the sheet downward below his eyes without the driver up front detecting anything suspicious.

  Then again, the guy behind the wheel most probably felt no obligation to check for anything suspicious. People who transported live prisoners stood at high alert during every inch of the journey; people who transported dead ones might as well have been delivering bushels of carrots.

  It took M.D.’s eyes a moment to adjust to the blackness in the back of the vehicle, but once his vision sharpened into focus, he saw that the coroner’s wagon, unlike an ambulance, was bereft of any supplies. No tools, no cords, no clothing, nothing of any value existed that might help McCutcheon execute the next phase of his plan. Having an array of medical instruments to build an arsenal of tools and weapons would have been helpful, he thought, but at least there was no divider separating the front seat from the backseat of the car.

  Good, M.D. thought, pulling the sheet back up over his head. Patiently, having scouted the terrain, he formulated the next stage of his attack.

  Make noise, he thought. Noise, for sure.

  McCutcheon knew that pouncing into the front seat and putting a blade to the driver’s throat would certainly allow him to successfully hijack the vehicle, but he also knew that a dead body springing to life from the back of the wagon might spook the driver so much that he’d run right off the road and possibly flip the car.

  Yet a bang. A clank. A noise that would cause the driver to scratch his head and wonder if maybe the rear door had not been properly locked, or a restraining belt had possibly unbuckled, all would ease the man’s attention into the back of the vehicle.

  M.D. knew a small noise that grew more audible was exactly what he needed to create in order to not scare the living daylights out of the driver. Taking control of the vehicle didn’t pose a problem; doing so without giving the man behind the wheel a heart attack did.

  McCutcheon used the heel of the knife to make a soft tap against the side of the metal gurney’s silver bar. A few seconds later he made another. Then after that, two more, each a bit louder than the previous. After the fourth noise the driver turned down the volume of the car’s radio and listened more closely.

  Maybe he had something in his tire? Maybe a gurney’s wheel wobbled loose? Was that noise he’d just heard inside of the car or out? He listened closely.

  Slowly, patiently, M.D. waited without making any more noise in order to allow the silence to seep in. After a few seconds of stillness passed, the driver reached for the radio’s knob, turned up the volume, and an easy-on-the-ears country-western song resumed playing, the driver figuring, “Eh, was probably nothing.”

  BINK! McCutcheon banged on the metal again, and the driver spun around to scope out the back of his truck. That noise, he knew, had definitely come from inside.

  “Continue. To. Drive.” M.D. said. M.D. sat up, deliberately avoiding sudden moves, but also deliberately making sure to show the driver the burn in his eyes and the sharp tip of his long, dangerous blade. “If you want to make it home tonight, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

  The driver, fifty-eight, gray hair, beach ball belly covered by a white dress shirt and light black jacket, felt his chest tighten. No one had ever broken out of the D.T. before.

  No one, he realized, until now.

  Not only did the driver understand what was happening, but he also understood that he had no contingency plan. Assistant coroners didn’t carry guns. Assistant coroners hadn’t been trained in prisoner protocol. Assistant coroners shuttled corpses from Point A to Point B like furniture trucks carried sofas; the stuff in the back was merely cargo.

  McCutcheon hopped into the front seat and the driver realized he was as prepared as a florist would be to deal with an escaping con.

  “Repeat after me,” McCutcheon ordered. “There was no body at the prison.”

  Instead of repeating the words as he’d been told to do, the driver searched the road, instinctively looking around for help.

  Empty highway. No police. No alarms or panic buttons on the vehicle for him to sound.

  The driver’s only possible means of assistance, he realized, would come from his cell phone, and his eyes scanned downward. Sitting in the cupholder next to an empty bottle of diet soda was the device that represented the only chance for him to have any communication with the outside world.

  The driver looked at the phone. Looked at McCutcheon’s knife. No chance, he thought. Not even worth a try.

  “I said,” M.D. repeated, “repeat after me. There was no body at the prison.”

  “There was no body at the prison.”

  “Major Mends made a mistake about the pickup.”

  “Major Mends made a mistake about the pickup.”

  “Major Mends has all the details if you need.”

  “Major Mends has all the details if you need.”

  “It was all a miscommunication, a wild-goose chase. You know the D.T., they’re always fucking up.”

  “It was all a miscommunication, a wild-goose chase,” the driver said. “You know the D.T., they’re always fucking up.”

  M.D. reached into the cupholder and picked up the driver’s cell phone, a newer model device with lots of bells and whistles.

  “I would have called but I lost my cell.”

  “I would have called but I…” The driver watched as M.D. studied his phone. McCutcheon, not hearing the entire sentence repeated exactly as he’d demanded, raised his eyes. One look was all it took for the driver to understand the stakes for which he was playing.

  “I would have called but I lost my cell.”

  McCutcheon knew he only owned two options as far as the driver was concerned. The first would be to leave no witnesses. Just put a knife in the back of the guy’s skull, scramble his brain like eggs, and leave a hard-to-find carcass in a shallow grave somewhere far away from where people would be likely to look. Sure, he’d buy himself maybe a week’s time with that approach, but M.D. wasn’t about to kill an innocent man who’d just happened to have chosen the wrong night to work the graveyard shift at the county morgue.

  This left option two: prepare the driver with a viable story and then scare the shit out of him so he followed every command without question.

  McCutcheon reached across the console and held up the driver’s phone.

  “Unlock it.”

  In the world of mobile technology, cell phones that required user thumbprints to activate, provided exceptional digital security. Much better than passwords by leaps and bounds. Unfortunately once an unwanted guest got the past the iron gate of thumbprint verification, few, if any, defensive measures existed to keep a trespasser from penetrating nea
rly every level of cyberdata a person owned. During M.D.’s training, Stanzer had taught him all the dirty tricks. Now McCutcheon planned to use them in order to hunt down his former boss.

  The driver placed his thumb on the screen and the phone buzzed to life.

  HELLO JEFFREY

  “Jeffrey,” M.D. said. “I want you to pay attention to the road and listen closely, because I am now going to explain some things about where your life stands.”

  “Where am I going?” the driver asked.

  McCutcheon leaned over and checked the gas gauge. Still half a tank. “For now, just stay on this highway and do not exceed two miles over the speed limit. Clear?”

  Jeffrey nodded.

  M.D. turned his attention to the driver’s phone. “You’ll notice that as I scroll through your cell all of your apps are logged in for your convenience. Bad move, Jeffrey. For example, your e-mail is open.” McCutcheon started tapping on the screen. “E-mail is the gateway to everything, because I can now log in to all of your personal sites and request password resets. For instance, I see you use this app right here to bank online.” M.D. tapped the screen. “Forgot my password…password reset request being sent…I toggle over to your e-mail account and then I reset your password…new password set…Perfect. I am now in your checking account.” M.D. looked at the screen. “Oh, I see you paid $127.60 to your cable company two days ago. That bill feels a bit pricey, doesn’t it, Jeffrey? You probably get HBO. Wait, let me log in and take a look.…Oh, you do. Plus, you have two other cable boxes in your house, your home address being 7271 Almond Avenue.” M.D. raised his eyes. “How’m I doing so far, Jeffrey? You understand where this is all going?”

  Jeffrey remained silent, eyes on the road.

  “I can get into your credit cards, I can get into your retirement accounts, I can get your social security number, driver’s license, and four-digit PIN for your ATM card. I can get it all,” M.D. said. “And, worst of all, I can lock you out. Do you know how hard it will be to prove you are you after I put a whole series of fraud warnings out that some loony guy is pretending to impersonate me, by claiming he had his phone stolen and all his passwords changed? Just a total nightmare, huh?”

  Jeffrey felt his chest get even tighter.

  “But you know what’s most frightening of all, Jeffrey?”

  “Wh-wh-what?”

  “I now have your contacts page and all your photos. Oh, look,” M.D. said. “Those must be the grandkids.”

  M.D. showed Jeffrey a picture of three young ones smiling at a park.

  “I now have access to your entire life, Jeffrey. Your wife, your kids, your money, everyone’s address, birthdays, I own it all and all because I own your cell phone. Spooky, isn’t it?”

  Jeffrey remained silent, wishing for the good ol’ days of pen and paper.

  “What do you want?” Jeffrey asked.

  “Just your silence,” McCutcheon answered. “If word of a prison break gets out, you’re the only possible source for it and…hey, is that your dog, Jeffrey?”

  M.D. held up a picture of a fluffy white poodle loping around in the grass of a backyard barbecue.

  “Ask yourself right now, Jeffrey,” McCutcheon said as he tapped the screen with tip of his knife. “Is risking the safety of all these people really worth it?”

  Only the most desperate of soldiers ever stooped to the level of hurting civilians, and while M.D. had been pushed past his breaking point, he also knew he’d never go through with any of the threats he was making. Yet, if he was going to be able to let Jeffrey walk away from this evening scot-free, McCutcheon knew he needed to make sure Jeffrey left the car pissing his pants.

  “What else do you want?” Jeffrey asked, tears welling in his eyes.

  “Just your silence, Jeffrey. Everyone will remain safe as long as you can follow the story and remain silent. Seem like a fair deal?”

  Jeffrey wiped the tears from his eyes. “A very fair one.”

  “I agree,” M.D. said turning his attention back to the phone. “I’ll let you out soon, but right now I have a few more things to do, so for the moment, just continue to drive.”

  For twenty minutes the coroner’s wagon cruised along in silence. The longer they drove, the more calm Jeffrey felt. In his heart he knew he would hold up his end of the bargain one hundred percent, and for some strange reason that he could not quite identify, he also felt like the escaped prisoner who was now calling all the shots would do the same. After thirty-five miles of road passed underneath the car’s wheels, he no longer felt panicked. Perhaps he realized he was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps he felt put at ease by McCutcheon’s calm demeanor. This wasn’t an edged-out psychopath sitting in Jeffrey’s front seat; this was a calm and poised person who knew how to work a cell phone like a technological witch doctor.

  “Wh-what else can my phone do?”

  “You’re asking me questions?” M.D. replied.

  “I, uh,” Jeffrey said, quickly turning his eyes back toward the road. “I just had no idea my cell could do all those things.”

  “This isn’t a phone, Jeffrey. This is a weapon.” McCutcheon tapped the screen and began downloading some obscure mobile software. “And right now I am headed to the mysterious and dangerous regions underneath the World Wide Web, a place called the DarkNet.”

  To turn from prey to predator, to shift from hunted to hunter, weapons would be required. While physical arsenals had fortified mankind’s armies for thousands of years, McCutcheon knew that modern-day warriors required cybertools. Fists, guns, and knives could only take a soldier so far in contemporary times; digital warfare, however, could leave a cascade of carcasses in its wake. All anonymously.

  As a theater for battle, DarkNet represented the new frontier.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Keep driving.”

  “When will we stop?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  The destination did not yet hold any importance to M.D. Before anything else he needed time to download TOR.

  Part of Stanzer’s covert training included a detailed module on how to use The Onion Router, otherwise known as TOR. As a suite of software and hidden online networks, TOR enabled people all across the globe to use the Internet anonymously, protecting them from traffic analysis, network surveillance, and, most importantly, location discovery. From online pirates to pornographers, hackers to whistle blowers, military personnel to journalists to terrorists, TOR had been originally developed with the U.S. Navy in mind for the purpose of protecting government communications. Instead it had evolved into a widely used means by which law enforcement officers, activists, criminals, and many others could conceal their identities, as well as their business from the rest of the world.

  With TOR at his disposal, M.D. could find out everything he needed about anything he wanted without anybody being able to find him. The Onion Router was a place where bad people went to do bad things and good guys went to stop them.

  And vice versa.

  Once Jeffrey’s cell phone had been successfully converted into an anonymous digital cyber slave, McCutcheon began to hunt for data. In the DarkNet, all of M.D.’s searches would be impenetrably cloaked.

  “Take the next off-ramp and head west,” McCutcheon said, looking at the map he’d brought up on the phone. “You’re gonna drop me off somewhere.”

  Thirty-six minutes later, after a series of left-right-left directions, M.D. ordered Jeffrey to stop the car in a dark and grimy alley.

  “Out of the car. And go open that black Dumpster.”

  Panic seized Jeffrey. He had thought he was safe, but now he wasn’t so sure. Being ordered to open the lid of a Dumpster at four forty-five in the morning, in a shadowy alley on a street in the middle of nowhere, triggered every panic alarm in his nervous system.

  This is how people are murdered, he thought. He made me think I would be okay, but he fooled me and I am now going to die.

  “I said, pop the
lid,” M.D. demanded. Jeffrey, his heart pumping with fear, opened the lid of the black Dumpster, feeling like a man who had just been passed a shovel on the way to digging his own grave.

  The lid clanked open with a soft bang, and Jeffrey wished for a moment that he’d thought to throw it open with greater force in order to create a noise and possibly draw the attention of some sleeping neighbors. But he hadn’t, and he regretted it. This led Jeffrey to deliberate whether he should fight or not. Perhaps he needed to throw a right cross to try to save his own life. As M.D. opened the rear of the wagon, Jeffrey balled up his fist behind him. With McCutcheon’s back turned, this could be his last, best, and only shot.

  “You don’t want to do that, Jeffrey,” M.D. said, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. “What you want to do is grab the stretcher. All we’re tossing in the Dumpster is the gurney, not you.”

  Jeffrey exhaled a deep sigh of relief and uncurled his hand. Thirty seconds later the stretcher lay at the bottom of a garbage bin and they were back in the car on their way to a new destination.

  “Jeffrey, do you remember what we’ve talked about earlier tonight?”

  He nodded.

  “Get the flu. Call in sick to work. Don’t tell your wife jack shit, and do not replace your phone until seven days have passed. These are easy directions. Are you prepared to follow them?”

  Jeffrey gulped. “Yes.”

  “Remember, everything you do, I can see. Do nothing and nothing will happen. Do something and…”

  McCutcheon let the words hang in the air. He wanted Jeffrey’s imagination to run wild for a moment.

  Which it did.

  Grandkids. The dog. His home address and wife. The safety of all his loved ones flashed through his mind. Not only could he remain silent, he would.

  “Pull over behind that gas station,” M.D. ordered. “And keep the car running.”

  Jeffrey did as he was told, and when the vehicle came to a stop, M.D. opened the passenger door. “One last thing.” McCutcheon reached into the glove compartment. “I’m gonna need your phone charger. Not a problem, is it?”