Cold Red

by Fiona Quinn

  Finley slid the food packet into the heater and set it aside. “The FBI fight their way into the compound to save Mulvaney and me. Maybe they hope to find and arrest you and Johnathan, again. Of course, SIC calls all the major news channels and say that they’re under attack for no good reason. They make a big media show that’s aimed at changing hearts and minds like they did out in Oregon with that ranching family at the Bureau of Land Management.”

  He filled the Coke cans up with more snow and set them beside the stump fire, a fire that needed no guarding and tending like last night’s fire in the Dakota pit had required, since the whole stump was alight and would burn for hours on end. They’d be able to sleep. “The FBI fight their way into the SIC compound in front of the news cameras and find no sign that any of the four people on their Bermuda-Triangle-drive from Johnathan’s house to DC were ever in the compound, or anywhere else for that matter. No clues. No anything.”

  Anna had stopped what she was doing to listen to him.

  “I can’t imagine them finding the car up the mountain on the wrong road, unless someone points them in that direction,” he said. “Which they probably will. An anonymous tip. It will make SIC look innocent.”

  “They’d only do that after the FBI looked like bullies and the media was heading home,” Anna replied as she turned back to her task.

  Finley stood up to capture the corners of the plastic tarp Anna had loosened and helped fold it.

  “And the bigger ramifications?” Anna asked past the plastic she held between her teeth as she tried to get the stiff tarp to cooperate. “With the attacks against the CIA and FBI in the media right now, with the rising tide of distrust, misinformation, and resentment…”

  “This could be a spark just like last night – one stroke for the flint, in the right spot with the right fuel, and the whole stump caught fire,” Finley said.

  Anna handed him the tarp to put in the bag. “Seat of my pants? I think SIC wants a civil war. I think it’s the vision they masturbate to. I don’t think they realize or care that they’re pawns for the Russians. They probably have zero idea that they’re even in bed with the Russians.”

  “Ha!” Finley laughed. “I like it when you talk all sexy.”

  Anna felt a blush rise up her face. “If this operation is their fuel for civil unrest,” Anna said. “SIC has to find us. Or nothing will come of their plans. Or worse, if we can get Mulvaney’s phone back to headquarters there’s a lot to incriminate them.”

  Finley was quiet while he thought that through. In his imagination, he pulled up the players that Anna had put on the table last night. He processed as they moved over and carefully took down the emergency reflective blanket, which had started to shred.

  Anna said, “The whole ‘their coming for your rifles’ argument sells an enormous number of guns, everyone knows that. Gun sales are down radically since the new administration. Less fear, less of an impetus to go buy. Some gun manufacturers are actually going out of business in this new climate.”

  “Remington Arms,” Finley said.

  “Exactly. Something needs to stimulate sales,” Anna said. “This would do it.”

  “You believe that the Russian government has been giving money to the National Gun Association through the Zorics to foment unrest? And the NGA is letting them do that because of the financial gains they amass from the royalties on gun sales and contributions to their coffers?”

  “That pay the million-dollar salaries of the board members and executives.”

  “If your theory is right, we have three groups acting symbiotically each for their own ends. Come sit down, the food’s ready. I’d like to take another look at your map, please.” He held out his hand.

  Anna pulled the Ziploc from her cargo pocket, handed it to him, then held the phone’s flashlight, so they could both see the faint topographical lines in the dim early-morning light. If he closed his left eye and squinted his right eye hard, he could just make out the lines on the map.

  “The pond of death isn’t marked on here. But this is where we are, do you agree?” he asked.

  “Has to be. That’s the hill there. This is the one to the south with the saddle ridge. We’re right about there as I figure it.” Anna’s finger traced from the saddle to the foot of the hill.

  “That puts us only three klicks to the railroad. Then it’ll be easier walking. I bet we can make it to the road before nightfall.”

  Anna pursed her lips. “The wind and snow made things hard, but it also kept us safe. Three klicks, we could do that in an hour, maybe if we walked this way.” She drew her finger toward the tracks. “But we’ll leave a trail where we walk, and the drones could pinpoint our direction for the snowmobiles.”

  “Okay,” Finley said. “Let me start with your worry that they could spot our fire from their radio platform. By my calculations, we’re safe from binoculars in a tower. The elevation wouldn’t be high enough to see over the top of this ridge. The trajectory to see down into this area would be impossible. It’s a blind spot even if the elevation wasn’t working in our favor.”

  “The drones?”

  “That’s very possible. If it were my equipment, I wouldn’t fly until daylight. No reason to make a mistake and fly into a tree and destroy my equipment. Normally, when using drones for search missions, it’s darned hard to pick someone out. Camouflaged the way you are? They’d never find you. If I wrapped the blanket over me? I’d be invisible. But the infrared, that’d be a problem. What are the chances their drones have FLIR and not just a camera, so they could pick up our heat signatures?”

  “I assume they didn’t have FLIR capacity at the time of the crash or when the car didn’t show up at the right time, they could have flown a drone down the street to take a look-see. We have to assume, SIC had them brought in with the search teams and Bella.” Anna was twitchy and kept looking to the east in the direction of the railroad tracks. Finley knew she was anxious to get them on their way.

  “Then we have to confuse it, if they fly over us.” Finley shoveled the last bite of his portion of the chicken noodle vegetable mush into his mouth. “And luckily, we have just the equipment to do that.”

  Anna crumpled the MRE wrappings into a ball and shoved it into the bottom of their bag. “Step one, they can’t find our camp.”

  “Right, then if we hug the trees on the elevation, it’ll make it harder for everyone. It’ll slow us down, but it could entangle the drone.”

  She frowned as she grabbed up the shovel and started throwing snow on their fire. “Once we’re on the train tracks, if we walk beside the rails, our footprints won’t stand out. I thought we could make better time on the flatter terrain, but until we hit those tracks, you’re right, we’ll have to go up on the hillsides and through the brambles.”

  “I was on a training mission once where we were able to thwart being seen by heat sensors.” The ruck was packed, and Finley was left with nothing to do, which made him antsy. He reached for the shovel.

  “Absolutely not. You already overstressed yesterday. If your neck snaps, I am not hauling your ass out of the wilderness.” She lifted her shoulder to block his arm and turned to bump him away with her hip. “Sit down and tell me what you did to stop the drones.”

  “We made a sapling hoop and attached sticks to function as an awning, if you will. Over that we draped a Mylar emergency blanket.”

  “That would be visible, wouldn’t it? Either as reflective or as a black hole?”

  “Exactly, so we added a camo poncho. In our case, we have an awesome dog blanket that will blend into surrounding snowscape.”

  “And it worked?”

  “The other team didn’t find us until we had our guns in their faces. So yeah, I think we can trust the design. If we hear a drone, we probably want to sit down so we’re static, and it flies on by.” He pulled the wire-saw from the ruck and worked on cutting down a green sapling, trying his best not to let the pain show on his face.

  Apparently, he was doing a
shit acting job, because Anna stopped shoveling to look at him. “Tell me the truth. How are you doing?”

  “About the same,” he lied. “Better after the MRE. Now a bunch of walking, followed by an MRI. Those are my plans for both of our near futures.”

  “I don’t think I have a traumatic brain injury like you probably do.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. You’re making some really odd decisions.”

  Anna scowled at him. “Like what?”

  “You should be saving yourself,” Finley said, looking her in the eye. “Instead, you’re here trying to drag my sorry ass over the finish line with you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Anna

  They were miles down the railroad track, making pretty good time. There had been no less than three drone fly-overs, but Finley’s heat shield seemed to be working. It was too hard to navigate from under the hoop while walking through knee high snow drifts, especially when her foot went into a hole, and she had to claw her way back out.

  Add to that Finley’s vertigo, which meant walking along with his eyes shut trying to heft up half of the shield, and the situation was untenable. They came up with a plan B. Every ten minutes, Anna would scan the skies with the binoculars. When she saw a black dot, they sat down on a car mat and put the blankets over their heads.

  Anna stuck Finley’s design into her file of survival skills. It’ll be excellent under different circumstances, she thought as they hunkered down on the tracks, holding their breath to see if the drone stopped, or circled, or did anything else that might indicate the gig was up.

  “This has got to be their last pass,” Finley said. “The sun’s almost over the horizon, and I really don’t think they’d risk the drone in the dark. They have to be flying it from some distance and the farther away it gets from the controls, the weaker the radio signal.”

  “Agreed. It’ll get dark fast what with a new moon. Seeing the tree branches would be tricky.”

  “There are more clouds now.” Finley held out his watch for her to read, seventeen forty hours. Twenty-four degrees. “The temperature dropped six degrees in the last hour. Another storm could be moving in.”

  “We’re almost to the road.” Anna smiled. “We may get more to eat tonight than the two Lifesavers.”

  Finley adjusted the make-do c-collar he’d said was helping to relieve some of his neck pain. But Anna thought he was just being stoic. He looked like hell. She didn’t even want to see what she looked like. Hopefully someone would stop and pick them up despite their appearances.

  “That means we’re making good time. You thought it might take four days,” he said.

  “I was assuming you were going to be whining the whole way,” Anna replied. “I had to shuffle that into the timing.”

  “Seriously?” Finley asked, offended.

  “No.” Anna bumped into him to show she was kidding around. “I didn’t think that at all. But we dropped out of the sky. It wasn’t like we were ready to run a marathon. I wanted to present the alternatives as worst case scenario so when you were choosing our route, you’d be pleasantly surprised rather than pissed as hell and demoralized. I planned for that extra day. Shit happens, obviously.”

  Finley shifted around to post the sticks they carried with them into the ground to help hold the blanket out. “Bella’s howling the first day was good motivation, and today the drones.”

  “Inspiration to keep the pace up.” Anna pulled a stick from his hand and stuck one in the snow on her side careful not to tear the fragile Mylar blanket.

  “First thing you’re going to do when we get to civilization?”

  Anna slid her tongue around her mouth. “Brush my teeth.”

  “You’re fine, just so you know.”

  “Thanks. It’d be hard to hang out under a blanket for very long if we didn’t at least try to stay hygienic. Your efforts are appreciated, too.”

  Finley laughed. It was the first time Anna had heard him truly laugh. It was a genuine, warm laugh that made her grin in reply. He stilled as they heard the drone closing in, holding Anna a little tighter as they listened for any change that would pull them to their feet and get them running.

  Running to where, Anna didn’t know.

  As the imminent danger passed, they climbed back to their feet and brushed off. Anna lifted her binoculars, turning on the night vision capabilities, and searched the sky. Then, she searched the terrain. “I see it,” she said. “We’re almost to the road.”

  “How can you tell?” Finley asked, as he carefully rolled the blanket for quick access if they needed it.

  “It looks plowed.”

  “Is that odd? What kind of road is this?”

  “Highway,” she said.

  “Nearest civilization?”

  “That, I can’t tell you for sure. These maps are more than forty years old. But the nearest town is twelve miles. Another four or so hours walking in these conditions.”

  “But there could be a car,” Finley said.

  Anna wasn’t sure a car was their best option. She was actually hoping there wouldn’t be a car. She’d like to sneak into town, find a public phone, and place a collect call.

  Finley’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “We need a plan if someone stops.”

  “How about you don’t speak any English. And my English is poor. We got lost and ran out of gas, now we’re trying to hike to the town. You said you did Slovak translations earlier. Are you a fluent speaker?”

  “Fluid more than fluent. I did a stint at the Defense Language Institute then spent six months in Slovakia working on my pop culture. Don’t you think SIC knows you speak Slovak?”

  “No. Johnathan and I were told not to reveal anything about our ties back to the family in any way. They wanted SIC to think our money was American money.”

  “The National Gun Association wouldn’t know?”

  “I’m sure they had a pretty good inkling – it was Yuri Torshkin that got our foot in the doors.”

  They walked in silence for a time.

  “What are you thinking about?” Finley asked.

  “More about drones,” she said.

  “I think that danger’s past.”

  “Different kind of drones this time,” Anna said. “I’m thinking about Syrian operations. We thought someone had developed the capacity to interfere with our drone operations and was possibly developing a means to hack-attack our satellites to disrupt GPS and communications. Can you imagine the impact that would have on the armed forces if the commanders couldn’t keep track of their troops or if someone broke into the communications with inaccurate coordinates?” Anna asked. “When I was near Syria working with a team from the Asymmetrical War Group, our communications were getting knocked down every day. They were disabling the AC-130s – our Angel of Death Gunship Aircraft.”

  “I read about that. Do you all know who was doing the jamming?”

  “We weren’t pinning it down to any of the folks in the area – the Islamic State fighters, Iranian backed troops, not even the Russians.”

  “Did they think it could be a friendly? The Air Force did stop drones headed toward our allies. We’re known to jam the enemy; maybe there was a communications error about jamming in that area.”

  “We thought that, too. But Syria wasn’t the only theater where the AWG saw this jamming. It was used in Eastern Ukraine, as well,” Anna explained. “Russian-backed separatists not only jamming signals they were also downing drones doing surveillance. From our analysis it was the same signature.” What she didn’t say was that this was why she’d been sent to the Zorics. She needed to figure out if they had a hacker who was messing with the satellites.

  “I had that come up in a case I worked on in the periphery a little over a year ago.” The snow squeaked with each step they took. “We believe someone helped a private securities group called, Omega.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met some Omega operatives on assignment. I can’t say that I appreciated their ethics.”

/>   “In this case, they think Omega was hired to corrupt satellite communications on a joint FBI-Iniquus case. We thought that the people who hired that group was setting off a trial balloon.”

  “Which Iniquus team was involved?” Anna asked.

  “Strike Force, Randy’s group.”

  Her attention was focused. “The hacker was successful, then? Randy didn’t tell me this story.”

  “It’s no longer classified with the bureau, but that doesn’t mean we go around talking about it. The idea that comms can be interrupted is frightening enough. But that they can be taken over by a third party who is using computer simulation to mimic the voice of your men and give you false data?”

  “What?” She stopped dead in her tracks. “No!”

  “That’s what happened. They taped the voice of the Strike Force communication’s operative who was on a sat phone, and then put the operative’s voice through a computer synthesizer. The enemy’s voice was changed to sound like the Iniquus teammate’s voice. The attacker falsely confirmed backup had been sent and medical was en route, when they ordered the operatives forward into the trap.”

  “That’s stunning.” She shifted the straps on the pack, patted Finley’s hand where it rested on her shoulder, and started forward, again. “Why isn’t that more widely known?”

  “My take on it is that until we can thwart the technology it’s better not to get people panicking.”

  “Or jumping on the band wagon,” she said. Wow. This was big. She wondered if the AWG knew about this case.

  “Amen to that.”

  “Omega was successful?” Anna had her radar up high. This was information. Could Omega have contracted with the Zorics?