Dark Web (DARC Ops Book 2) Read online

  The Sagebrush Militia members were not just a band of extremists. They were Nevada’s lunatic fringe. And they were well-armed, maybe even well-funded, considering the juicy fee they were willing to cough up to a hacker. If they ever were successful in finding a hacker, it was almost guaranteed that their scope was well beyond software pirating or stealing some intellectual rights from a startup in Silicon Valley. Considering their current real-life actions, which apparently called for FBI snipers, MRAPs, and highway blockades, whatever actions they’d wanted carried out online could not be good.

  It was now Tansy’s job to make sure that never happened. The rest he’d let the FBI deal with.

  “Hey, Jackson,” Tansy said in a phone call back at his car. “Do you know what our Sagebrush friends are up to today?”

  “Yeah it’s all over the news,” said Jackson.

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know. Still trying to find out.”

  That wasn’t a surprise. The whole nation would probably have been kept guessing into next week were it not for Tansy making a new friend in Parsnip, Nevada. “Well, you might find out sooner than later. I just gave some local news crew a little tip on decrypting FBI radio channels.”

  “Tansy,” his boss said disapprovingly. “You were only supposed to give away free tips at DEFCON.”

  That used to be the plan, anyway. Land in Vegas to finish some last obligations at DEFCON, and then head north to run a secret DARC Ops command center.

  “How did that go, by the way?” asked Jackson.

  “Fine. They almost completely fucked it up. But fine.”

  “Are you ready to tell our boys how we can hack the new defense? Or have you not figured that out yet?”

  He’d figured it out well enough. He worked most of it out, theoretically, on the plane to Vegas, before completing it in the few hours he’d had in his hotel room prior to the show. The only problem was that it was now the furthest thing from his mind.

  “I’m still working on it.”

  “Fine,” said Jackson. “I guess for now you should just work on getting to the command center.”

  Jackson had been running things there for over a week, manning a team of hackers between meetings with local FBI agents. And although he was there with his newest employee, Mira, who also happened to be his new significant other, it was clear he was itching to get back to Washington.

  “What’s the problem?” said Tansy. “You and Mira getting bored out there in the desert?”

  “I convinced her that it would be like a vacation,” he said. “And then we got here.”

  Tansy laughed. “And you expect me to be rushing to this place?”

  “Well, it’s not a vacation for you. Where are you, by the way?”

  “I don’t know. Turnip?”

  “Turnip? What the hell is that? Are you far?”

  Tansy looked down the street, watching his news friend carry the police scanner into the back of his Channel 7 van.

  “Tansy, you need to get your ass over here so I can skip town. And so we can actually get some work done on this fucking militia. Do you have any leads on who they’re trying to recruit?”

  “Not yet,” said Tansy. “But I have my suspicions. Put it this way—I’m probably gonna know the person.”

  “Well? Have you talked to your friends?” Jackson was asking about the original members of Tansy’s hacking community. His only true friends, even though he hadn’t met most of them.

  “I have,” said Tansy, lying again.

  Tracking down any of the members was difficult enough, technically. But for one member in particular, the difficulty went far beyond any technology.

  7

  Carly

  Before getting patted down, Carly was sure to speak up about her piece, her legally purchased gun for which she had a concealed-carry license. The officer made no comment, only placing it on the hood of the van with the rest of her band’s pocketed possessions—including a lighter from Megan, and a fucking roach clip from the still-half-asleep Taylor.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” asked the officer. “Tweezers?”

  “Yeah?” said Taylor, feigning ignorance as she idly scuffed her shoe against the salt rocks.

  Carly interrupted their exchange, asking for her phone so she could video record and document the search. For evidence, for court. Another tip from her uncle.

  Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten his all-important tip about not getting drunk and passing out in a van parked illegally on a national landmark—especially if there were drugs on board.

  “I have no problem with your filming, but I just need you to hold tight over there, okay?”

  Carly started recording the officer, asking for her name and badge number. And then she asked if she was being detained.

  “We’re waiting for a K9 unit to do a search of your vehicle,” said the officer.

  Another shot of pain ran through Carly’s neck. “Why?” she asked, trying to hide her wince.

  “Ma’am, can you just sit tight for me?”

  “No,” said Carly. “Hell no. We don’t consent to a search.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “You need justifiable cause. Are we being charged with a crime?”

  “You’re under investigation right now. Okay?”

  “For what?”

  “Possession.”

  “What!?” snapped Carly, just about destroying what was left of her neck.

  “Officer, wait,” said Megan. “There’s no way—”

  “Marijuana gives off a very particular odor. I’ve detected this odor coming from your vehicle. Which gives me just cause to perform a search. But before I go ahead and do so, I’ll need you to just sit tight.”

  They begrudgingly “sat tight,” answering the order with heavy sighs and much grumbling about the constitution and police overreach. They did this until another police vehicle appeared on the horizon, speeding across the shimmering salt flats.

  “I noticed a lot of musical instruments in the back,” said the officer, trying to sound casual and friendly. “Are you in a band? You’re touring out here?”

  Carly decided not to say anything. She at least knew that investigating officers never made small talk. Everything from here on out, all of the officer’s energies and tactics, would be directed at a single goal—conviction.

  “From Colorado, huh?”

  Well, at least there probably wasn’t harm in answering that one. The van had already given that away.

  “Yeah,” said Carly. “So what does that mean in Utah? Do Colorado plates automatically make your car stink like weed?”

  “No,” said the officer, still sounding nice and friendly. “I think it’s the presence of marijuana that does that.”

  “Well, good luck finding any. Because it’s not there.”

  The officer cleared her throat, as if preparing to rehash a speech she’d made hundreds of times. “Part of our job out here is highway interdiction. Okay? What we’re looking for is the smuggling of large sums of cash, illegal weapons, narcotics, explosives, detonating devices, hazardous materials. Things of that nature.”

  The SUV’s door had the words “K9 Unit” written across it. It came to a stop in front of their van, blocking the van between itself and the police cruiser, as if the three punk-rocker chicks would be making a break for it. A moment later, a wiry-looking German Shepherd was pulling its handler toward The Dotties. It looked young, with big paws and an almost hyperactive disposition, its head cocking every which way. Carly hoped it was youthful energy, and not signs of early drug detection.

  “How long do you train your dogs for?” asked Taylor.

  “I’m not a dog handler,” said the officer. “Okay, first, we’ll have the K9 perform an open-air sniff around all of you, and then around the car.”

  The dog came prancing over, happy as could be, sniffing around Carly’s feet and then up her legs. And then it moved on to Taylor, who seemed to be enjoying the ex
perience.

  “Please don’t touch the animal,” the handler said when Taylor tried to reach down and pat the dog’s head. “He’s not a pet; he’s a service dog. And he’s working.”

  “You wouldn’t reach over and touch one of us while we’re working, right?” said the woman officer. “Same goes for the animal.”

  To be fair, the urge Carly had to touch one of the officers was different than the one reserved for the cute and cuddly K9. The urge was definitely different, and so would the touch.

  She forced herself to stop fantasizing about violence, instead focusing on the dog. She was a lover of dogs—especially happy dogs who knew they had a job to do. And this dog was definitely happy. Only his job was to put Carly away behind bars.

  That realization was enough to put a little damper on the lovefest.

  She watched quietly as the dog sniffed around the van’s bumper, and then around to the wheel well. The tires seemed to be of great interest. Maybe at one time they’d rolled over a skunk. How about that? It didn’t necessarily mean that there was weed stored inside the tire, no matter how “skunky” it smelled. Right?

  Carly began wondering what the sign would be when the dog comes across their stash of illicit drugs. Would it sit or lie down? She’d feel less anxious if she knew what sign to look out for. It seemed somehow better to have the dog tell her directly. Less painful hearing it from him than one of the officers.

  She had been video recording the whole time, hiding from reality behind the filter of her phone’s view screen. The buffer would be nice while it lasted, before she’d be forced to live through a different kind of buffer—a row of bars and a thick pane of glass. Before that, she would get that one phone call, probably to her uncle, through which a defense strategy could be set in motion.

  They would first go after the lack of credible reasonable suspicion, the search being a violation of her constitutional rights. And then unlawful detention. What else?

  Her on-the-spot legal planning suddenly ground to a halt, her thoughts freezing with the disturbing sight of a drug dog entering their van. It was surreal; before now she’d only seen this type of thing on TV.

  “Go easy with our stuff, huh?”

  But the handler didn’t seem to listen. These were, after all, suspected criminals. Drug runners. Why should their personal belongings not be trashed through the pursuit of justice? So Carly just sat back, watching in horror as their instruments were unloaded off the van.

  “Can we help move the stuff?” asked Megan as she started walking toward the van.

  “Stand back,” said the officer firmly.

  “But they’re really expensive. And look at how he’s—”

  “Stand back!”

  They were helpless, having no other option but to watch their tour blow up in front of their faces, their instruments and gear scattered across the salt flat like wreckage. And that damn dog, that rotten bastard of a dog sniffing around their gear. Carly watched in horror as it moved with a sudden determination, jumping back into the van as if it were chasing after a squirrel. Or following the unmistakable dankness of marijuana hash, its pungent odor seeping out of the supposedly air-tight packaging job of a half-baked frat boy.

  All that was left in the van were the bulkiest and heaviest of items, the bass drum and the drug-filled bass amplifier being at the top of that list. Through the opened back door, Carly could see the potential smoking gun, the amp, tucked tightly against the side, its back facing the wall. The dog approached, nose working hard, him sniffing and puffing his way closer and closer. Carly had expected, at any minute, the dog to sit or lie down or do whatever it could to scream drugs! to his handler. But he just carried on as usual, like any dog would, nosing around a bag of dirty clothes. And then a shopping bag of various snack foods. The handler pulled him away gently, guiding the animal toward the amplifier, where it lingered for only a few seconds before returning to the food bag. The handler pulled him away again, this time heading toward the front of the van. And then out the sliding door.

  Carly could breathe again, but still not fully. With bated breath, she watched as the officer chatted with the handler. And chatted and chatted. What was the problem? They didn’t find anything. Right?

  “The dog didn’t alert on your vehicle today,” the officer said as she walked back to the girls. “So with that being said, I’m not going to issue any citation and you’re free to go with a warning. Which is, don’t let me catch your van parked out here again like this. Okay?”

  They thanked her for her gracious warning.

  “Okay,” she said one last time before getting back in her cruiser.

  Okay. Hopefully, that would be the last fucking time Carly would hear “okay” that day. She also hoped that they could make it through one last day of driving before finally unloading and profiting on their cargo.

  “Jesus Christ,” Megan kept muttering.

  Yep. Jesus Christ.

  Having heard the horror stories of cars being torn apart by roadside searches, Carly returned to the van expecting to find some damage. Fortunately, it turned out the dog and its handler had gone relatively easy on their gear. She was also thankful that she’d stashed the honey-oil in a bass amplifier. Being the heaviest piece of their gear, it was no surprise that it hadn’t been moved around. Maybe if they’d taken it out of the van the dog would have had more room to sniff around it and potentially. . . .

  “Check the amp!” yelled Megan from outside the van.

  Using one of the screwdrivers that had been rolling around the van for a week, Carly unscrewed the top two bolts of the amplifier’s back panel. She bent back the panel and then slid her hand inside, careful not to touch anything metal that might still be holding a residual electrical charge. But as careful as she was, Carly still felt a shock, a jolt of pain that made her sore neck pale in comparison.

  But it wasn’t from electricity.

  She immediately dropped to her knees, feeling paralyzed by a hot, burning sensation that was spreading through her insides like snake venom. In her daze, she felt Megan’s weight rock the van as she entered. And then she heard Megan’s strained voice asking her what the hell was going on.

  Carly willed herself back to the amp, slipping her hand back inside the panel while trying to tune out Megan’s increasingly frantic questioning. She slid her hand along the panel’s imitation leather to the bottom corner, to where a vacuum-sealed package should have been.

  Nothing.

  Fuck!

  Carly pulled back and looked at Megan, feeling as bewildered as her friend looked. “It’s not there,” she finally said, her lip quivering with the words.

  8

  Tansy

  It looked like a normal house. Nothing special, just a boring single-story ranch house in the middle of the desert. It was dust-covered and unkempt, clad in vertical wood siding that looked so parched that its boards might, at any moment, spontaneously combust into flames. They were a lightened sun-baked brown, and every edge and corner of the wooden exterior looked rounded, withered by years of hot wind. Maybe even the wind of a few nuclear bomb tests. That was the type of neighborhood they were in—Backwater Nevada. Where else on the continent could they have gotten away with detonating nearly a thousand nuclear bombs?

  The ranch house and its grounds fit that milieu perfectly. Next to the house was a large storage structure, a Quonset hut that might have been plucked straight from an abandoned Air Force base. It had a distinct Cold War vibe, the heavy peeling of cream-colored paint off corrugated metal. No windows—not even at the front end. It was quite the mystery, rust-covered and grim. All it lacked was the black spray-paint-stenciled letters denoting some military code or address like A-4 or 429 Stratofortress Ave.

  Tansy reached the end of the long hardpack dirt driveway. His Mustang would be the only car parked at the house. Where had Jackson stashed all the others? There were no animals, open windows, or billowing laundry. No signs of life at all at this little nondescript, Northern
Nevada desert ranch.

  Nor had there been any signs of life during the last half hour of driving to get there on dirt road after dirt road, past long-closed gas stations, intersections of nothingness, the road narrowing until it resembled something more similar to a rustic wagon trail. After that journey, was a nice, modern hotel too much to ask? Clean sheets. Maybe a pool. But hotels were unlikely to cater to the kind of toys Jackson always traveled with.

  Exiting the car after cutting its engine and high-performance stereo, Tansy was suddenly faced with the ungodly silence of the desolate ranch grounds. There was no birdsong, or traffic of any sort—air, automobile, or horses. The wind had gone completely dead. In its place was a silence that only strengthened the volume of an ever-present ringing from Tansy’s battered eardrums. After experiencing the ambiance of the military—the low-flying subsonic fighter jets, the concussive blasts of mortars and daisy cutters—an early diagnosis of tinnitus was no surprise. Of course that came later, after the Middle East, in the quiet of a VA hospital in Virginia where the Doc, after sticking an otoscope in Tansy’s ear, said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that you can at least hear the bad news.”

  Alone with his inescapable soundtrack of 8000hz, Tansy trudged up a little stone path leading to the metal front storm door of the house. Before reaching the single-step porch, he gave one last look around the ranch, finally spotting the one landmark that might suggest that the place wasn’t as normal as it initially appeared. To the rear of the property, behind a dense cluster of mesquite trees, sat the large white dish of a parabolic satellite antenna. While staring at the half-hidden monstrosity, he heard the shrill scrape of an old door. It was the front door, swung open and held there by a thick-bearded rancher.