Without a word, Jake headed out again. After a couple of miles, they reached a ridge that flattened out and appeared to rise up slightly to the west and to the north. There was a small meadow where the snow was deeper.
Su stopped and scanned the area, uncertain. The sun was nearly history and the temperature would soon start to drop fast.
“What’s the matter?” Jake asked.
“Nothing. We’re about half way.” She pointed off toward the north. “You see. We walk parallel to the road some four miles north, but the road comes this way some. So, we catch up on the plateau.”
“I take it there’s no trail now?” Jake said.
“That’s right.” With that, she stepped off into the deeper snow and into the thickest of trees.
With the coming darkness and the tight forest, the canopy above them let in very little light. But there was one advantage to that. The dense fir trees had let much less snow hit the ground. They would have been able to pick up their pace if it had not been for the darkness.
His mind drifted back to America and Oregon in particular. In college he had climbed through the coast range after a heavy snowfall, the trees thick and heavy with the weight of snow. Although the forest cover was similar, the cold was not. His nostrils seemed to collapse with each breath he took. Perhaps a bigger problem, though, was his perspiration soaking into his clothes. He knew that when he stopped hiking, the wet, damp wool would freeze and drop his core temperature. They had extra clothes in the backpacks to reduce that eventuality, but that extra weight also compounded the problem. It was like hiking in the desert. The more water you carried the more water you needed.
Jake noticed Su was starting to slump over slightly. “Su, maybe we should change packs,” he said. “Yours must weigh fifty pounds.”
She didn’t stop, though. She straightened up and said, “I’m all right.”
Once it was almost impossible to see in front of them, Su pulled out a small pen light and strapped it to the side of her backpack.
Still, the going was slow. At that pace, Jake thought, they would reach their destination around midnight. Perfect timing, but their exhaustion might have a negative impact on their mission there.
Nevertheless, they trudged on through the cold, dark forest.
20
They were at a standoff. Cliff sat on his friend’s sofa, and Patterson was in his recliner, his legs raised and his hands behind his head.
Li sat on the floor, legs crossed, a laptop computer in front of her and her gun no more than a few inches from her right hand.
“I didn’t know you had a laptop,” Cliff said to her.
“Shut up. You asshole.” The words came out like that of a child first learning them. Stilted. Unsure.
Both Cliff and Patterson laughed, which made Li raise her gun, not even looking in their direction. They both stopped immediately.
“Listen,” Cliff said, his hands pleading. “I can’t give you the encryption code until you give me the money. That’s the deal.”
“The deal changed,” she said. “You got the money.”
“What money?” Patterson said, hunching his broad shoulders. “What the hell you guys talkin’ about?”
“Shut fuck up,” Li yelled at him, which brought another chuckle from both men. “You won’t laugh soon,” she assured them. Then she pointed the gun at Cliff’s head. “The codes.”
“I need the money,” Cliff pleaded. “It’s not like I can ever go back to Brightstar. But I would like to go someplace warm.”
“How ‘bout Hell,” she said, smiling. “I hear it’s warm there always.”
“Fuckin’ A. This is going nowhere. I thought we cut a deal. Now you’re yankin’ me around.”
“You yank me around,” she said. “Drive all over the damn country when you could have sent it to your house in the Bay Area. That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“They woulda traced that in a heartbeat. No shit.”
Neither said a word for a moment, but she did lower her gun while she punched in a few more key strokes on the laptop. Cliff glanced at his friend, who didn’t seem too concerned.
Finally, Li picked up her cell phone and speed dialed a number. Then she rattled off some Chinese, shook her head as she looked at the two men, and clicked off by flipping the phone shut.
“I give you one more chance to give me encryption codes,” she said to Cliff. She raised the gun again.
Cliff leaned forward in the chair. “I can’t. I need the money. You agreed on a mil.”
She let out a sigh, swiveled the gun to her left, and shot twice. The first bullet hit Patterson in the middle of his chest, the shock knocking him back in his recliner. The second shot became a red spot on his forehead.
Cliff rose to his feet. “What the fuck,” he yelled. His eyes were wide with horror. “You killed him.” His breathing increased, his heart pounding out of control. Finally, tears came to his eyes and he sobbed uncontrollably.
Li got up from the floor and pointed the gun at Cliff now. “You need to focus, Cliff. Your life is worth a split second. That’s all it takes to pull a trigger.”
He turned to her, his eyes red and tears streaking his face. “You didn’t have to do that, Li. I was gonna give ya the codes. I just…I just wanted some more time with you. That’s all. Ya didn’t have to do this.” He pointed at his friend in the recliner, where blood had now escaped from his chest and was running down the sides to the floor.
“I warn you, Cliff. The codes.”
“There are no codes,” he yelled. “It’s an encryption scheme built into a program I developed. A five-twelve scheme. Do you know what that is?”
“I know one thing,” she started, “your friend died for about a buck. I love America. Cheap bullets. Pow pow. Less than a buck. Crazy how life is so cheap.”
“You’re fuckin’ nuts, bitch.”
“The codes.”
“I’m telling you there are no codes. I encrypted the entire file with a five-twelve scheme. You and your pal on the phone could try for a million years and never break that scheme.” He wiped his tears away and smiled.
She considered what he had just said, uncertain. She pulled out the phone and made another call. This time her voice seemed more desperate. She finally let out a deep breath and hung up.
“Give me the encryption program,” she said.
He swiveled his head from side to side. “I do that and you kill me. You give me the money. Once that clears, then I send you the program remotely. But not until I’m out of the range of that.” He pointed at her gun.
“You know. If I want, I could hunt you down like a dog and kill you. Even after you give me the program.”
“I believe you, Li.” He glanced over at his old college friend.
Finally, she said, “All right. Let’s go to the bank.”
The two Agency officers, Harris and Fisher, were sitting in their chairs in the white Ford Taurus, less than a block from Patterson’s house. Fisher was behind the wheel trying his best to see through the rain-streaked windshield, keeping his eyes on the Trooper, and Harris was switching channels on the radio attempting to find a station that would give her a decent weather report.
“This is bullshit,” Harris said.
“They’re used to this crap,” Fisher said to her. “Don’t need no stinkin’ weather report in Eugene. It’s gonna rain until it stops. Wait a minute. Got something here.”
They watched as the Asian woman and Cliff Johansen exited the house and shuffled toward the Trooper.
Agent Harris buckled her seat belt. “Looks like we’re rolling.”
Fisher thought as he started the engine and desperately fought to clear the foggy windshield. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the closest branch of the Bank of the Pacific is located.”