DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (12 page)

“Got it,” he said. “But I thought this was a fire lookout. Don’t you have to be up higher to spot forest fires?”

“Ah, we’re getting to the best part. In the old days, yes,” she said smiling broadly. “But after a winter storm blew off the shack from the top of this lookout — fortunately with no one in it, since it was closed for winter — an enterprising and young ranger by the name of Jeanette Estrada proposed a better way.” She patted herself on the chest. “Ranger Estrada happened to have a computer science and information technologies education. Can you guess the end of the story?”

Martin sat at the desk and looked at the monitors. “Now you have cameras with a video feed coming down here.”

“And?” she asked.

“You have a way to tell the location of a spotted fire based on the way a given camera is pointed. That’s gotta have some error.”

“It does, and so did the old method unless another fire lookout also had line of sight to the same fire, but wait there’s more.”

Sasha sat next to him, and he could smell the mustiness of her drying perspiration. Maybe he was imagining it, but she smelled just as she smelled back in their college days when they hiked the Appalachian mountains, and one occasion, the trails around Devils Post Pile in Mammoth, not far from their current location.

“We have multiple cameras up there on the cliff face where the lookout shack used to be. Each camera is high-def, which doesn’t matter for what I’m going to show you, but they sure make pretty pictures. Each camera also articulates 360 degrees, and — very important — they are separated by as much as 100 yards. Point two or more cameras in the same direction, and you can stereo about two thirds of the error away and triangulate from a single location. Genius, right?”

Martin nodded. “And you don’t need to be that accurate. They can just get a plane or helicopter up in the air after you spot the fire, and know exactly where it is.”

“Sure, but this little setup makes it so that they don’t have to in most cases. It saves money. The forest service loves that, especially in these austere fiscal times.”

“And you have solar panels up there, too?” Martin asked.

“Yeah, I have more Megawatts than I need. We also have a couple of wind spinner turbines for dark days. They don’t put out as much juice, but they keep the basics going.”

“You close up in winter?” Martin asked.

“Usually, yes.” She looked at him. “I did stay up here one winter, a pretty cold one, as it turned out. It’s tough, but if you stash enough food and firewood — from fallen lumber only, of course — you can make it.” She paused to regard him. “I can stay here this winter if needed.”

“You mean, we can stay.”

“Yeah.”

“Snow and solar panels... how do they mix?”

“Not well. But the wind turbines spin nice and strong in winter.” She grinned. “I have rock climbed up there on occasion to brush snow off. It’s a little dicey, and I did scare myself a couple of times, but it’s doable.” She paused again. “It would be easier with a person controlling rope and harnesses from the bottom.”

“And of course, you’re wired with full Internet connectivity,” he said.

“Yup, with three independent satellite uplinks. Which explains why we left your brick of a satellite phone down there. Though we may want to grab it at some point, just in case.”

Martin allowed himself a smile. “OK, I’m officially impressed. Especially that you got the forest service to let you do all this.”

“It’s all about knowing what political levers to pull, and Ranger Estrada had a bit of practice with that in a previous life.” She smiled. “Ultimately it comes down to full funding, though. And a rich anonymous donor’s generous grant pushed things over the top, as it were. I guess you might appreciate that part of the story fairly well?”

After her disappearance, Martin had set up an offshore account for her and provided her the access codes. She hadn't touched the money for years, and just when Martin was beginning to wonder whether she would, it all disappeared in one transfer. Now he knew what purpose it served.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“This is my twelfth year,” she replied. “Before that I did less glamorous work, at times including latrine duty, and when it got exciting, bear tracking. But now I’m in a pretty good spot, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s beautiful,” Martin said, but he also wanted to say it was a little sad.

They’d spent so much time apart. Wasted time.

The cabin’s interior seemed to spin, and the walls pushed in on him for a moment. Something overwhelming swept over him. Tears welled up in his eyes when he recounted how he had failed her. He was here to undo his regrets, but for a long painful moment his regrets crushed him.

“Sasha, I’m so, so sorry,” Martin said. “There’s nothing I can do or say—.” He lowered his head and cried.

Sasha cupped his face in her hands, and with her thumbs she gently dabbed his tears away, though they kept falling.

“You hurt me deeply, Martin. There’s nothing I can say to describe how completely destroyed I felt.” She kissed him once, softly. “But I forgave you the minute you left me. I didn’t want to, but that’s what love did.”

Outside, as happens in the mountains, dusk and sunset came sooner than normal once the sun dipped behind the western cliffs. Sasha got up and lit a short candle. Then she kissed him, softly over and over again, until the candle flickered off.

Chapter 18

Julian had managed to evade the large yacht that had dogged him all day. His tactic was simple. What his sailboat lacked in speed to outrun the yacht, it made up in maneuverability. All day, whenever the yacht came too close, Julian executed a simple tacking maneuver to change direction. When the yacht made a slow roundabout turn to come closer, Julian would tack in the opposite direction.

Initially Julian had been proud of himself. This simple technique he’d learned as a child from his sailing instructor was frustrating his would be assailants. Of course, he also guessed that since they wanted him alive, their options were limited. For instance, the option to ram his boat was probably out of the question, and they certainly weren’t trying to do it. And though they’d more than once made it very clear that they had semiautomatic rifles, they hadn’t fired a single shot, not even in warning.

Julian realized, of course, that they were just waiting him out. Physically, he couldn’t keep up the evasive maneuvers. After 9 hours of this, he was reaching a breaking point. His hands were raw from pulling on ropes and levers, and not having had the chance to go inside the cabin or put on sunscreen, he was by now sunburned to the point where he felt feverish.

To the north he could see the passage between Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands. He would have been there hours ago if he didn’t have to zigzag his way there.

Julian felt the wind shift. A stronger wind than he’d had all day was now coming almost straight from the south-south-east. He made one more tack direction switch maneuver that left him pointed due north, he unfurled all sails, and made a run for the passage. If he got there before sunset he might be able to get some help from other vessels in the vicinity or somehow get lost in traffic. Which it would be, he had no idea. He would just have to keep it random.

After cresting through the Tioga pass and passing Tuolomne Meadows, Cynthia arrived at the California 120/395 junction shortly before 4:30 PM. There, she stopped at a large gas station for fuel and to purchase maps of the area, along with some snacks. While waiting to pay for her map and snacks, she watched CNN reports of the ongoing crisis in Los Angeles. The large metropolis remained in full blackout, all the way from parts of Orange County on the south, to sections of Ventura County on the north, and to the east as far as Riverside and San Bernardino counties. According to the report, this significant outage had caused a cascade effect, with some areas all the way down to San Diego and up the central coast now also experiencing blackouts.

Cynthia wondered how long it would take for the crisis to reach InfoStream in Milpitas, California. She recalled InfoStream had emergency generators, and wondered how long those could run when refineries and gas supplies also flickered off.

A few minutes later, she headed south with the plan of spending the night in Mammoth Lakes and see what she could find there.

Back in San Jose, Beloski and Ochoa had returned to the airport. The beacon signal had led them to the one day parking lot where Martin Spencer’s Lexus convertible, most recently driven by his soon to be very wealthy ex-wife, had been deposited. A search of the vehicle gave very few clues other than a barely eaten order of onion rings, an untouched hamburger, a full orange soda, an empty chocolate shake cup, and some cut up zip-ties in the trunk.

“What now?” Beloski had asked Ochoa several hours prior and only gotten an absent scowl in response.

“So, next steps?” Beloski asked again.

Ochoa said, “That blackout was just the distraction she needed. We took our eye off the ball, I let you participate in that anomaly-whatever council, and she ripped us one.”

“I know you said this wasn’t about the technical side,” Beloski said. “But if all California and God knows what else goes black, our search for Martin and Julian won’t go well.” He lowered his voice and came closer to Ochoa. “Not if we’re having to cut our way through public unrest and can’t see two lousy inches in front of our noses.”

“I get it,” Ochoa said. “But we have to move out.”

“Where?”

“I’m thinking we start looking through the national parks, starting here in California.”

“How do you figure?”

Ochoa narrowed his gaze. “When we went into Martin’s office at InfoStream this morning, what caught your attention?”

“The pictures,” Beloski said.

“Pictures of what?”

“Landscapes, outdoor stuff. There was one there from Mono Lake. And we know Martin took his camera and photo equipment.”

“That’s right. Starting with Los Angeles, where are the closest areas that would produce nice pictures like that?” Ochoa asked.

“Ever been to Joshua Tree?” Beloski said. “It’s beautiful there.”

“Is it a good place to hide?”

“Not really. It’s wide open desert, some rocks, a few camping sites.”

“Where else?” Ochoa asked.

“Well, the obvious one is Yosemite. To the south of it, there’s also the Sequoia national forest and Kings Canyon National Park.”

“I think we’re getting warmer. I think Cynthia intentionally didn’t tell us everything about what Martin took with him. For instance, in last year’s scrub of their house, the inventory included a large hiking backpack. We never found that in our latest scrub. A lot of hiking in those parks you just mentioned?”

“Oh, yeah. If you want to you can hike from one to the other, and if I’m not mistaken, you connect through the Pacific Crest Trail.” Beloski hesitated for a moment. “Cynthia told me once that Martin had a crazy dream to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, all the way from the Mexico border up to Canada.”

“This is why you’re with me, chasing Martin and not blackouts,” Ochoa said. “Let’s pull up a map and see where these parks you mentioned tie in with the Pacific Crest Trail.”

Beloski was the first to find a relevant map on his cellphone. “Here you go,” he said, showing Ochoa. “And this connects with both that Mono Lake picture, and another one Martin had his office. It said it was from Devils Postpile, Mammoth, California.”

“Good work,” Ochoa said. “Let’s load up with gas, including a few spare cans, and let’s hit the road.”