Juniper was sitting alone inside her bare-bones pueblo at Orabi. It was well after dark, and a gooseneck desk lamp was the only illumination. She hunched over a long antique desk, working on her super-duper MacBook Pro. Only her hands moved. The room was dead silent other than the sound of the west wind moaning softly through the window frames.
As usual, her father was away on business. He was always away on business. Most of the time he never told Juniper where he was or when he would return. Juniper had stopped caring years ago. And for all his wheeling and dealing, they had little to show for it. Her father kept up appearances for a man of his stature. He drove a nice car, and he flew business class, but their sandstone home on Oraibi looked just like any other—hell, they still had an outhouse. Her father probably had a nice home in some other place, and a mistress—maybe even a wife. She didn’t begrudge her old man for his happiness. He stayed out of her way and didn’t ask many questions. He was cordial but detached, and for the most part, that was how she liked it. Still …
She told herself that all she wanted was to be left alone. Living out at Hopi afforded her peace and quiet. No one there gave her a second thought. Plus, it was cheap. Juniper had her modest service pension, and she did some internet consulting on the side. Her father paid the electric and water bills. Other than the food, she was home free.
Her only companion was a three-legged brown mutt named Chuka, which in Hopi meant a muddy mixture of sand and clay. Chuka was a pitbull/Lab mix who had shown up on the pueblo doorstep one day and refused to leave. Juniper’s father Joe had owned a legendary hound called Brutus who was noted for his ugliness, bravery, and flatulence, but that was before Juniper’s time.
Dogs had a tough time out on the Rez, and there were quite a few strays. Many were missing legs and other body parts, like eyes and ears. Indians didn’t think of dogs as pets. They were really more like targets to kick or throw things at. The Navajo word for dog and shit—lha-cha-eh—was the same, just pronounced differently. When a dog died on the Rez, no one mourned. It was left in the dirt as food for the scavengers.
She had rescued the dog to show her father she could befriend a damaged dog too, Albert had told her. Maybe he was right. But in the end, Chuka made Juniper’s life bearable. And he never criticized or barked.
At that moment, Chuka was sleeping by her feet, his right leg jerking involuntarily like he was trying to get away from some pursuer. He was making comical little squeaks that Juniper seemed not to notice.
Juniper was not easily distracted. When she focused, she turned off the outside world. Focus was her one true gift, she thought, and one that had served her well in what she liked to call her “time abroad.”
Juniper enlisted in the U.S. Army when she turned 18, to escape her troubled life on Hopi. She was tired of being a forgotten outcast and felt like she had something to offer the world, though she had no idea what that might be. After basic training, the Army sent her to the Balkans, where she immediately excelled at IT. There she honed her skills, going up against the best Russian hackers. She served her country with distinction, and she had many offers from what she referred to as “Spookland Services” when her two-year hitch was up. Keeping America’s enemies at bay was not of great interest to Juniper.
Cracking and writing code, solving digital puzzles, uncovering others’ secrets, and setting traps against some of the best minds in the world excited her. She loved the game. Over the years, she became a very good hacker. At this point in her still-young life, she was a well-respected denizen of the Dark Web.
On this particular evening, Juniper was hacking into Vladimir Petrov’s computer so she could read his emails. That would be her starting point in unraveling the rich Russian’s sordid life.
She had gained access to his private world by obtaining his cellphone number and email address when she hacked into the Velvet Shadows Resort server. Hotels were notoriously lax when it came to security and protecting personal information. In the world we live in today, there’s virtually nothing we do that doesn’t ask us for our phone numbers and email. Join a gym, go to a doctor, buy something online: Everyone wants your data. Then they sell that information to the data miners.
Once Juniper had Petrov’s email, she needed his password. To get that, she had two choices. She could remotely install the Keylogger stealth program on Petrov’s computer—a fairly simple task—and then record every keystroke Petrov made on his keyboard, waiting for him to enter his password. Relatively easy but time-consuming, and Juniper didn’t feel like waiting.
So, she took the faster route. The players who roamed around the Dark Web were a fairly tight community. The best hackers knew one another by reputation. Everyone had an alias; Juniper’s handle was CHUKA. It wasn’t like they met for a beer after a hard week of hacking. But they knew how to contact one another if needed. Juniper knew a hacker whose moniker was SKUNKKILLER. She didn’t know if SKUNKKILLER was a man or a woman. She didn’t know where they lived. But she knew the person was a top-gun hacker for hire, and they worked both for and against the Russians. Juniper sent her colleague an encrypted request for Petrov’s password and deposited $100 worth of Bitcoin in his/her secret account.
Then she waited.
She put a bag of Ramen noodles on the stove and opened a can of dog food for Chuka, who was too lazy to get up, but whose tail slapped the floor happily.
“Yes, my lazy Lumpenstein, we’re going to pry open the lid on Mr. Vladimir Petrov, and see what’s inside.”
Chuka stood up stiffly on his three legs and started making “feed me” noises.
“Patience, my little beggar. All in good time.”
Once their dinners were ready, Juniper put Chuka’s metal dog dish on the linoleum floor of the one-room pueblo and returned to her desk to eat her flavored noodles. Chuka devoured his dinner in less than a minute and then walked over to his water bowl.
Juniper looked at her best friend and laughed. “Who’s my little piglet?”
Chuka slobbered water from his mouth and returned to his bed at Juniper’s feet.
A bell sounded on Juniper’s computer. SKUNKKILLER was fast. His message was short and sweet. “Password: GOLDBOX7! This one has been a very bad boy. He needs a spanking.”
Juniper laughed, almost spitting out a mouthful of noodles onto her keyboard. She put down her bowl and quickly typed her response. “Thanks! Discipline is its own reward.”
Just like that, Juniper slipped silently into Vladimir Petrov’s dirty world undetected.
After an hour of reading Petrov’s business and personal emails, Juniper was getting a feel for the man, his habits, the people in his inner circle, where he liked to hang out, and what he liked to buy and sell. The man was a total pig. But she didn’t need to hack the guy to know that.
One email from the night before caught Juniper’s attention. It had been sent to his investors in Russia. In it, he told them that their Washington partners had just promised him there was some big news story that was about to break, and this bombshell would immediately turn the Navajo opposition into support. The Grand Canyon Esplanade would soon be back on track.
Juniper was shocked. Who were Petrov’s friends in Washington? What news could melt the solid Navajo opposition?
She also found several emails from some unnamed person who wasn’t in Petrov’s normal circle. He popped up intermittently, and his messages were always short and cryptic.
There was one from the day she was arrested at the protest.
Encrypted email from dcspace
From:<zumwalt@dcspace.net>
To:<vp@esplanade.com>
Santa Claus is coming to town! Break out your finest.
The previous morning he had sent one with a timeline.
Encrypted email from dcspace
From:<zumwalt@dcspace.net>
To:<vp@esplanade.com>
Good news coming on the 5th!
Juniper had tried to hack zumwalt’s password but hit a wall. Whoever he was, he had the latest and the greatest internet security.
Juniper could try SKUNKKILLER again, but she had a feeling this guy would remain elusive. Now she needed time to ponder this riddle.
This was going to be harder than she thought. But Juniper knew that no one could hide from her hacking for long. It just took time and patience.