  HIDDEN AGENDAS [042-jff-dcomi]
  By: Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik
  Synopsis:
  sequel to Tom Clancy's NET FORCE.
  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should
be aware that this book is stolen property. It was,
reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher
and neither the author nor the publisher has received any
payment for this "stripped book."
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters. places,
and incidents are either The product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is
entirely coincidental.
  TOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE : HIDDEN
AGENDAS
  A Berkley Book still published by arrangement with
Netco Partners Limited be HISTORY Berkley
edition still October 1999 All rights reserved.
  Copyright 1999 by Netco Partners.
  NET FORCE is a trademark of Ncico
Partners, a partnership of Big Entertainment,
Inc.. and CP Group.
  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in
part, by mimeograph or any other means, without
permission.
  For information address: The Berkley Publishing
Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street. New York, New
York 10014.
  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web
site address is httpccwww.penguinputnam.com
  ISBN: 0-425-17139-6
  BERKLEY
  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley
Publishing Group, a division of Penguin
Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New
York, New York 10014.
  BERKLEY and the
  B logo are trademarks belonging to Penguin
Putnam Inc. PRINTED in THE
  UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  We'd like to thank Sieve Perry for his creative
ideas and his invaluable contributions to the preparations
of the manuscript.
  We would also like to acknowledge the assistance of
Martin H. Greenberg, Larry Segriff,
Denise Little, John Heifers, Robert
Youdelman, Esq." Richard Heller, Esq."
and Tom Mallon, Esq.; Mitchell Rubenstein
and Laurie Silvers at BIG Entertainment; the
wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc., including
Phyllis Grann, David Shanks, and Tom
Colgan; our producers on the ABC
mini-series, Gil Cates and Dennis Doty; the
brilliant screenwriter and director Rob
Licbcnnan; and all the good people at ABC. As
always, we would like to thank Robert Gottlieb of the
William Morris Agency, our agent and friend,
without whom this book would never have been conceived, as well
as Jerry Katzman, Vice Chairman of the
William Morris Agency, and his
television colleagues. But most important, it
is for you, our readers, to determine how successful
our collective endeavor has been.
  "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but
without understanding."
  --Louis Brandeis
  "Nothing is secret that shall not be made
  manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and
come abroad."
  comLuke, 8:17
  PART01.
  A Little Knowledge
  PROLOGUE.
  Wednesday, December 15th, 2010, 2:44
a.m. Baton Rouge, Louisiana
  A cold and damp winter wind played around the
windows of the building, a breeze not strong enough
to rattle the still pristine thermopane glass, but
potent enough to tweak an occasional whistle from an
art-deco protrusion, whistles that now and then came
low enough to sound almost like moans.
  Alone inside, the night watchman--watchwoman
in this case--pored over the laptop on the guard
station's desk, adding a few personal
notes to the text of Professor Jenkins's long
and incredibly boring lecture on the strata of
rock formations in southern New Zealand. The
lecture was from his auditorium-sized class
Introduction to Geology, her final science
requirement, and she'd put it off as long as she
could, but graduation was fast approaching and there was no
way around it. She would have taken Astronomy,
supposedly a walk, but the classes had been
filled before she'd ever logged on to registration. Too
bad. Stars were much more inter esting than rocks.
  Kathryn Brant sighed, leaned back in the
creaky chair, and rubbed at her eyes. Geology.
Bleh.
  She leaned toward the desk again and got another
nail wrenched-from-wet-wood noise. Lord.
Brand-new, and already the chair squeaked as if it had
been left out in the Louisiana rain for a couple
years. But that was what happened when you bought everything from
the lowest bidder--a bid that had probably been the
low one because the company had bribed somebody in the
Contracts office. Bribery was a normal way of
doing business around here. Kat had taken two
semesters of political science at LSU, where
she was, thankfully, a senior. Studying
politics was almost a necessity in Louisiana,
where people still spoke fondly of Huey Long, the
govemortumed-senator who'd been assassinated in
the main part of the capitol building, just up the hall
there, more than seventy-five years past.
  Huey had been one in a long list of rogues
who had run the state, and with the public's blessing. After
all, the big oil companies had paid for everything for
decades, there hadn't been any income tax--no
property tax to speak of--and if you were going to elect
somebody, why not elect somebody colorful,
especially if it didn't cost you anything? Her
political science professor had once told the
class that when he'd been a teenager, he and his friends
would catch a bus to the capitol and sit in the
gallery, watching the House in action. More inter esting
than going to a movie, he'd said. People came from all
over the country to study Louisiana politics, and
rightly so.
  She grinned as the wind howled at the glass
doors that opened out onto the capitol grounds.
Huey was out there, in spirit and in bronze, just around the
bend, the spotlight from the top of the tall and pointed
building--once the tallest in the entire South, and
still pretty much the tallest in the state-again
shining down upon the populist martyour's huge statue.
  Every now and then, the state tightened its purse
strings and decided to turn the spotlight off to save
a few dollars, but they always turned it back on
again. Tourists still came to see old Huey out there,
pigeons and all.
  Working your way through school as a guard at the
state capitol wasn't the best job in the world, but
it left plenty of time to study, that was the main
thing-Her comm buzzed. She grinned again and pulled the
tiny unit from her belt. She knew who it was.
Nobody else would be calling at this hour.
  "Hey," she said.
  "Hey, Kat," her husband said.
  "How come you're still awake?" Kat asked.
  "You'll never make Lard Ass's class."
  "Piss on him. I miss you. All alone here
in this big, old bed. Naked under the covers. Full
of lust for my new wife."
  Kat laughed.
  "You all talk, goat-boy. If I came
home right now, you'd whine about how you had to get some
sleep."
  "No, ma'am. You come home and I'll show you.
I have a big surprise for you."
  "Not so big as all that, honey chile. I'd say
it was just an... average surprise."
  "How would you know? Come on home and see. I've
been lifting weights."
  She laughed.
  "I am tempted--" she began.
  She never finished the sentence. The compression shock
wave blasted her so hard that if the investigators
hadn't known who she was, they would never have been able
to identify her, not even using dental records.
When the various agencies finished combing the rubble--
city and state police, fire department, ATF,
FBI--THEY found in the bloody mush that had been
Kat Brant only eight of her teeth still intact,
none of which had ever been touched by a dentist's laser.
  The only blessing was that she did not suffer. She
never knew what hit her.
  1 Friday, December 17th, 12:05 p.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Alexander Michaels, Commander of the FBI'S
elite Net Force unit, fell on the floor,
smack onto his butt. He hit harder than he
expected; it knocked the wind out of him.
Fortunately, the cheek that took most of the impact
was the left one, and not the right where, two
months ago, a bullet had exited after he'd been
shot in the thigh. The wound was pretty much healed; it
only twinged now and then.
  The woman who had just slammed him to the floor was
his chief deputy. Assistant Commander
Antonella
  "Toni" Piorella--all five feet five
inches, one hundred and maybe ten pounds of her.
  Before he could even try to recover his breath,
Toni dropped to one knee next to him and threw a
short right elbow at his face, slapping it with her
left hand for emphasis--and to move her left hand
into position for a follow-up wipe, did she deem it
necessary.
  It wasn't going to be necessary. Michaels had no
plans to punch her. He could barely breathe.
Smiling took everything he had.
  Toni offered Michaels a hand, and he took it.
She stood and helped him do the same.
  "You okay?"
  He managed to suck in enough air to say,
  "Yeah, fine."
  Holding the smile was one of the hardest things he'd
done in a while, but he held it.
  "Good. You see what I did?"
  "I think so."
  Generally, they practiced such take downs on the
nice, padded mat thoughtfully provided here by the
FBI in the smaller of the two gyms in Net Force
HQ. Now and again, however, they stepped off the mats
onto the floor. Toni, who had been practicing
this esoteric martial art since she was twelve, had
explained why such training was necessary.
  "If you practice on the mats all the time, you
get used to that cushion. If you fall on the street
or a sidewalk, it won't be quite so easy. And
since a lot of fights end up on the ground, you
need to know how it feels."
  Yeah. Right.
  He could understand it, though he wasn't sure he was
going to ever learn the stuff so well he could hit the
concrete and bounce like a rubber ball. But after a
month of training five days a week, at least
Michaels could finally get the name of the system right:
Pukulan Pentjak Silat. Or silat, for
short. It was, Toni had told him, a
slimmed-down and simplified version of a more complex
art that had come out of the Indonesian jungles less
than a century ago. She had learned it from an
old Dutch-Indonesian woman who'd
lived across the street from the Fiorellas in the
Bronx, after she had witnessed the old woman use
the art against four gang bangers who had tried to run
the granny off her door stoop. A big
mistake, that.
  Michaels had been impressed with what he'd
seen Toni do.
  If this was the simple and easier stuff, he could
wait on the really nasty moves.
  "Okay, you try," she said.
  "You gonna punch left or right?" he asked.
  "Doesn't matter," she said.
  "If you control the center like you're supposed to,
it'll work either way."
  "In theory," he said.
  She smiled at him.
  "In theory."
  He nodded, then tried to relax and assume a
neutral stance.
  That was supposed to be part of it too, Toni had
said. It ought to work from whichever position you happened
to be in if an attacker jumped you; otherwise--
what was the point? You wouldn't have time to bow and get
into your ready stance if the street thug decided to eat
your lunch. It wasn't real likely a
guy in an alley coming at you with a knife was going
to allow you to run home to take off your shoes and put
on your gi while he stood there waiting, maybe
cleaning his nails with his blade. If a move
wasn't practical, the Indonesian fighters
didn't much like to pass it along. This wasn't a do,
a spiritual "way." It was the distilled essence of
anything-goes street fighting. It was not an art of
flashy, fancy moves, but an art of war. In
silat, you didn't merely defeat an enemy, you
destroyed him, and you used whatever you had at hand to do
it: fists, feet, elbows, knives, clubs,
guns-- Toni leaped at him.
  You were supposed to block first, then step, and this
defense was supposed to be a move to the outside of the
attacker.
  Instead, Michaels, rattled, blocked and
stepped to the inside of Toni's leading foot. In
theory, as she'd said, it didn't matter, since
anything that worked was the point.
  His right thigh slid between Toni's legs and
pressed against her pubis. His concentration on
protecting himself just kind of... evaporated. He'd
blocked the punch, but now he just stood there. He
didn't follow up. He was very much aware
of the warmth of her crotch astraddle his thigh, even through
two sets of sweatpants.
  Damn!
  "Alex?"
  "Sorry, I drew a blank."
  Quickly, Michaels stepped back. He'd
nearly been killed by that assassin a couple of
months ago; if it hadn't been for Toni, the
killer would have gotten him, and it had seemed a good
idea to learn more about how to protect himself, but right now
this intimate martial contact with Toni might be
bringing up more problems than it solved. It certainly
was bringing up one problem in particular he could do
without-- "Hey, Boss?"
  Michaels shook off the erotic thoughts. Jay
Gridley stood near the gym's entrance, looking
at the two of them. The younger man was grinning.
  "Jay. What's up?"
  "You said you wanted to hear about that Louisiana thing
as soon as it came in. I just downloaded the
packet from the field team in Baton Rouge, got
vid and reports. It's nagged in your incoming
files."
  Michaels nodded.
  "Thanks, Jay." He looked at
Toni.
  "I need to check that out."
  "We can pick up where we left off Monday,"
she said.
  "Unless you're working tomorrow?"
  "I wish. I was hoping to work on the car, but
I've got to bone up on financial stuff. I'm
supposed to appear before Senator White's
committee on Tuesday."
  "You get all the fun," Toni said.
  "Don't I just?"
  They bowed to each other, the intricate silat
beginning and ending salute, and Michaels headed for the
dressing room.
  Sheldon Gaynel Worsham was sixteen years
old, a student at New Istrouma High
School. He looked about twelve, was thin, and had
black, oily hair sucked down all over, save
for a wavy lock that dangled greasily over his left
eye. He wore blue parachute pants and a
black T-shirt with a putrid-green pulse paint
logo. The logo was a stylized badge with the word
"GeeterBeeter" in jagged letters across it. Whatever
that meant.
  The kid slouched in a cheap chair next
to a heavy cast plast table that was scratched and
battered by years of abuse. Somebody had carved a
heart with initials inside it on one corner, some
thing of a surprise, since this was obviously a room
where knives or other sharp objects were generally
forbidden.
  The man seated across the table from Worsham was
heavyset, florid-faced, in a cheap, dark
business suit, and he might as well have had "cop"
flashing in neon over his head.
  "So tell me about this bomb," the cop said.
  Worsham nodded.
  "Yeah, okay, okay. So we're not talking
semtex or C4 or crap like that, we're talking
RQX-71, a topsecret chemical used in
conventional missile warheads. It's an analog of
some old stuff called PBX-9501. You want
to know about an isotropic elastics or isotropic
polymerics? Expansion rates or like that?"
  "Why don't we just skip over that for now," the
cop said.
  "Where did you get it, this explosive?"
  The kid grinned.
  "I made it in the chem lab. Swiped a
keycard from the janitor's desk and duped
it, got the alarm codes, snuck in at night.
Only took a week. Got a little tricky at
one point, I thought I was gonna blow myself up, but
it worked out okay."
  "You made it. And took down a brand-new,
three-story, steel-framed addition to the capitol with
it."
  The kid grinned wider.
  "Yeah. Something, huh?" Worsham sat up
straighter in the plastic chair.
  "And that blast killed a woman guard working her
way through college."
  "Yeah, well, I'm sorry about that part, but it's
not really my fault. The coozers shouldn't have fired
my dad, you pross?"
  "Your father worked on the construction of the building."
  " "Until the stupid coozers fired him,
yeah. I wanted to make a point, you pross?"
  The cop nodded.
  "I guess you did that." He shifted in his
chair. The thin plastic squeaked in protest.
  "And how did you happen to come up with the
top-secret formula for this--
  RAQ?"
  "RQX-71." Now the kid favored the
cop with his biggest grin yet.
  "That was the easy part. I scarfed it off the net."
  Michaels leaned back in the conference room chair
and glanced at Toni and Jay Gridley.
Gridley touched a control and the holoproj of the
interrogation faded.
  "Full of remorse about killing that young woman,
isn't he?" Michaels said.
  "Kids don't relate to death," Jay said.
  "Too much entcom, too many vids, too much
VR slaughter-rooming." Toni said,
  "And the formula?"
  "Just like the little bastard said," Jay said.
  "Right in the middle of a public net room. We
pulled it as soon as we found it, but it was posted
anonymously. We're trying to back walk it, but
it looks like it came from a re caster somewhere."
  "Who would do such a thing? Why?" Toni said.
  "And how did they get the formula to do it?"
Michaels added.
  Jay shrugged. He tapped at the portable and the
image of the destroyed building shimmered and came up
on the holoproj.
  It basically looked like a pile of concrete and
metal rubble, beams sticking out, shards of
glass glittering under the searchlights, and smoke still
coming from sections of it.
  "Jesus," Toni said.
  "Yeah," Michaels said.
  "Only this one is in our lap and not His.
We've got to find whoever is responsible for
putting this formula onto the net where our
sociopathic teener could find it."
  "According to the counter, there were more than nine hundred
hits on that file before we cleaned it off," Jay
said.
  "We better hope nobody else who
downloaded that formula has a grudge against
somebody."
  Michaels shook his head. Nine hundred hits.
Nine hundred chances for someone to try to concoct this
stuff. Nine hundred chances for someone to succeed, and
take out a building like that Worsham kid or--and this
was maybe even worse--blow themselves and a whole
school full of kids up in the process.
  What kind of scum would do some thing like this? The
Worsham boy was obviously bent, missing a few
key neurons in his brain, but whoever posted the
formula for the explosive was really sick. They needed
to find him fast.
  And Christmas was also fast approaching. The
holidays would slow things around here to a craw), and he
had to go back to Idaho to see his daughter,
Susie. And his ex-wife, Megan, too. A
prospect that brought forth mixed emotions in
Michaels, to be sure. At eight, Susie was the
brightest spot in his life, but it was a long way from
Washington. D.c." to Boise, and he didn't
see her nearly as much as he wanted to.
  And Megan? Well, that was another whole can of
worms that didn't bear opening just at this moment. The
divorce had been final for more than a year, and if
she called and asked him to come home right now ...
Up until recently, there hadn't been any question,
he'd go. But the torch he'd been carrying had
dimmed a little when he'd found out Megan was dating
somebody.
  Being with another man. Enjoying it.
  "Alex?"
  He looked at Toni.
  "Sorry, I slipped into the void. What?"
  "Joanna Winthrop is coming in at
two-thirty."
  Gridley snorted.
  "Lightweight Lite? What's she
want?"
  "Lieutenant Winthrop is going to be assisting
us on this matter," Michaels said.
  "Colonel Howard has graciously allowed us
to borrow her from the field.
  In fact, she will be working with you."
  "What? I don't need her. Boss." Jay
said.
  "I can run this dweebo to ground without some airhead
sim-bimbo--"
  "Jay." Michaels's tone was sharp.
  "Sorry, Boss. But she's only gonna get
in the way."
  "As I recall, her grade-point average was
higher than yours straight across the board," Toni
said.
  "Sure, where she went to school."
  "MIT, wasn't it?"
  "Yes, ma'am, but their standards have gone way
down. MIT-IS acme now." Alex just shook his
head and said,
  "Jay, whatever your differences with Lieutenant
Winthrop, you'll just have to find a way to get past
them. We need all the help we can get on this
mess." He waved at the holoproj.
  Gridley nodded, but his jaw muscles flexed as
he gritted his teeth.
  Great, Michaels thought, one more brick on the
load I don't need. A computer prima donna
jealous of his territory. Just great.
  His temporary secretary came into the conference
room.
  "Commander, I have Director Carver on the
phone."
  Michaels stood.
  "I'll take it in my office." He waved at
Jay and Toni.
  "Get busy, folks."
  Chaapter 2
  Friday, December 17th, 1:45 p.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Thomas Hughes strode into the senatorial
offices as if he owned them, the building they were in,
and the city around them. He waved at the receptionist.
  "Bertha. Is he alone?"
  "Yes, sir, Mr. Hughes."
  Hughes nodded. He'd known Bertha for more than a
dozen years. She'd been with Bob since his first
term, but she still called him "Mr. Hughes," and he
had not encouraged otherwise.
  He walked to the inner office door, rapped
once, and pushed it open in the same motion.
  Jason Robert White, fifty-six, the
senior United States senator from the great state
of Ohio, sat at his desk. He was playing a
computer game.
  He looked up and started to frown at the
interruption before he realized who had dared barge in.
  "Hey, Tom." White did a finger wave over
the sensor on his hand pad and the small-scale
holoproj images froze. It looked like two
guys in hand-to-hand combat, one of whom was green and
scaly. Jesus.
  "Bob. How'd the lunch with Hicks go?"
Hughes moved to the pale gray leather couch, sat,
and looked at the man for whom he worked.
  White appeared ten years younger than his actual
age, with a deep chemical tan under his perfectly
styled, artfully graying hair. He wore a
dark-blue tailored Saigon suit, a
pastel-pink silk shirt, and a striped regimental
tie for a regiment that had never existed. Hughes
couldn't see his feet, but the shoes were doubtless
Italian or Australian, and handmade. Altogether,
the outfit the senator wore offhandedly was
worth what Hughes made in salary each month,
easy. He was the image of a successful senator,
handsome, fit, and comfortable in his custom clothes, no
doubt about it. He could play a Viennese waltz
on the piano, speak passable French and German,
keep up with a so-so tennis pro, and break a
hundred on a bad day at the country club golf
course. A man who could walk the corridors of
international power with ease.
  Hughes, on the other hand, knew he looked every
day of his fifty-two years. He was twenty pounds
too heavy, wore a decent, but not expensive,
Harris Tweed sport coat and gray wool
slacks from Nordstrom, both off the rack, and his
shoes were Nike dress casuals. Total cost of
his outfit was maybe a twentieth that of White's.
  be White leaned back in his chair and waggled his
left hand in backslash a so-so gesture.
  "Well, Tom, you know Hicks. He never
gives " a nickel but what he wants a dime.
If we want to get his support, the honorable
senator from Florida wants to see the be Naval
Air Station remain a fixture in Pensacola from
now until the end of time."
  Hughes nodded. He had expected no
less.
  "Fine. Give him be what he wants. What do
we care? He's a critical vote. We get
him, we'll get Boudreaux and Mullins. We
get them, we're out of committee and it's a lock
on the floor."
  White smiled at his chief of staff.
  "Probably won't hurt us bar with Admiral
Pierce either."
  "Exactly." Hughes glanced at his watch, a
gold Rolex that White had given him on the eve
of their election to the Senate.
  Hughes had been the campaign manager, and such
a watch was way beyond anything he'd ever been able
to afford. For White, whose family owned half of
Ohio and part of Indiana, a Rolex was a
trinket, a drop from a bucket brimming with money.
It was the most expensive piece of jewelry that
Hughes ever wore, and though he could afford better
now, he couldn't afford it legally.
  "Aren't you supposed to be on the links with
Raleigh at two-fifteen?" he reminded White.
  "The old man canceled. Too cold for him.
Personally, I think he just doesn't want me
to kick his ass again. Last time out, I beat
him by nine strokes. We're doing drinks at the
Benson instead, two-thirty."
  "Good. Remember, let him bring up the Stoddard
thing. Play it cool, let him court you. He
doesn't need to know you want it more than he does."
  "I will be an iceberg," White said. He waved
at the computer projection frozen over his workstation.
  "You ever play DinoWarz?"
  "I can't say as I have, no."
  "Very stimulating mano-a-mano combat scenario.
There's a full VR version that puts you right in the
middle of the action. Some junior high school kid
built it and put it on the net. Fun. You should
try it sometime."
  Hughes smiled and tried not to show the contempt he
felt White was rich, the son, grandson, and
great-grandson of wealthy men. It wasn't just a
silver spoon he'd been born with, but a platinum
one encrusted with diamonds. If he'd wanted to.
White could have blown a million dollars a year for
his entire life and never depleted his share of the
family fortune; He wasn't a total fool, but
he was a dilettante, a dabbler; the office was for
him an adult version of DinoWarz, and Hughes
believed it meant about as much. White thought
being a United States senator was ... fun.
  "One other thing," Hughes said.
  "That bombing in Louisiana."
  "Oh, yeah. Terrible thing."
  "Worse than terrible. The kid who did it got
the formula for the explosive off the net. A
supposedly top-secret military formula."
  "No shit?" White leaned forward, and his face
came close to the translucent holoproj of the two
combatants. He waggled his fingers and the image
vanished.
  "I think this plays right into your hearings on Net
Force.
  They are supposed to stop such things."
  "That's true."
  "You might want to mention it when the budget hits
the table. I'll have Sally work up the report on the
bombing. That young woman guard who was killed was in
college, a newlywed, about to graduate."
  "A shame," White said.
  "Tell Sally to highlight that part."
  "Of course."
  The intercom chimed. Bertha.
  "Sir, your limo is here for your two-thirty."
  Hughes stood.
  "I'll be in my office," he said.
  "And I'll meet you for the staff meeting at
four."
  "Thanks, Tom."
  After the senator was gone, Hughes went down the
hall to his own office.
  He nodded at Cheryl, his secretary.
  "Anything pressing?"
  "Louis Ellis called from Dayton. He's
going to be in D.c. next Thursday and he wants
the senator's ear for a few minutes."
  "Have Bertha pencil him in for half an hour in the
morning"
  Ellis, one of White's father's drinking
buddies, had contributed half a million
to White's last reelection campaign, more or
less legally via various PAC'S.
  He'd also given them that much cash under the table, a
nice chunk of which had found its way into Hughes's
own safety deposit box, where it joined a thick
sheaf of crisp hundreds already there.
  Hughes had been very careful about living beyond his
means. His public face was exactly what was
expected for a senator's chief of staff making a
paltry ninety grand a year. But under
various guises, Hughes had a fat line of
electron credit. Still, it never hurt to have some hard
currency in case of emergencies.
  If his plans went as expected, he'd be able
to use the bills in his box to light his Cuban
cigars, if he felt like it.
  "Anything else?"
  " "Your massage therapist called. She will be
at your house at seven."
  Hughes nodded. Brit would give him a good
massage, that was true enough. But that was only half
of the service she provided.
  He went into his office and closed the door behind
him.
  Hughes's office was a spartan affair whose only
artwork was a Picasso on the wall behind his desk.
He didn't particularly care for Picasso, but a
picture worth that much on an office wall
certainly impressed people who did care about the old
Spanish dauber. Depending on his mood, he would
give different stories when asked about the painting.
Sometimes he told them he'd bought it at a garage
sale for fifty bucks just to watch their jaws drop.
Other times, he said a woman had given it to him in
gratitude for his lovemaking abilitie
Once in a great while, he told the truth--that the
painting was a gift from his boss--but that was never as much
fun.
  He sat behind the desk in a wooden teacher's
chair. In fac the chair had once belonged to his
high school civics teacher Charles Joseph, who
had told Hughes he would never amount to anything.
He kept the chair to remind him that where he was going
in the not-too-distant future was going to be beyond old
Joseph's--or anybody else's--wildest
dreams.
  Senator White and his family would look like
paupers compared to Hughes.
  Everything was going as planned.
  He grinned. That was the trick, wasn't it? But
he was well on the way.
  He was, Hughes reminded himself, the smarte,
man he knew. He could pull it off.
  No doubt in his mind.
  The comm chirped.
  "The Vice President is on three," Cheryl
said.
  "I'll take it," Hughes said.
  "But let's let him wait a few seconds.
We don't need an uppity Vice
President, do we?"
  Cheryl chuckled, and Hughes felt pretty good
himself.
  So far, so good.
  Friday, December 17th, 2:40 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  In his office, Alex Michaels looked at the
clock blinking in the corner of his default
holoproj, a bucolic scene of a modern day
cattle drive blocking automobile traffic on
a back road in Colorado. Michaels had worked
one summer on a dude ranch while he was in
college. He hated cows as a result, and the
picture was another one of Jay Gridley's little
jokes.
  The young man loved to do such things. Thought he was
funny.
  Michaels grinned. Jay was pretty funny,
though Michaels preferred that somebody else be the
butt of the young man's jokes.
  But the clock said that it was ten minutes past the time
Lieutenant Joanna Winthrop was supposed to be
here for her meeting, and that didn't go with what he'd
read about her in her history jacket. He touched the
intercom's manual control.
  His secretary was a temp, filling in for
Nadine, who was on vacation.
  Maybe she had made a mistake.
  "Liza, isn't Lieutenant Winthrop on for
two-thirty?"
  "Yes, sir. Commander," the young woman said. She
sounded harried.
  "She's uh, here, sir, but, uh, she's
occupied." Occupied? Michaels went out to see
what was going on.
  On the floor next to his secretary's desk,
with a rat's nest of red, white, and blue wires in
her lap, sat Joanna Winthrop.
  She had a pocket tool of some kind,
probably a Leatherman, and was using it to twist two
of the colored wires together.
  He had not forgotten how attractive she was,
but it still came as some thing of a shock to him to see her.
  Winthrop was one of the most beautiful women
Michaels had ever seen. She was tall, lean, had
long, natural honey blond hair pinned up, and
green eyes that put expensive emeralds to shame.
She wore a blue jumpsuit and black boots that
would have made most women seem dumpy. On her, the
drab clothes looked positively sexy.
  She glanced at Michaels.
  "Hello, Commander," she said.
  She shoved the tangle of wires under the desk,
stood, closed her folding pliers, and said, "Try
it now."
  Liza tapped at her command module's
keyboard.
  "Hey! It works. Thank you!"
  "No problem," Winthrop said. She flashed a
radiant smile, perfect save for one slightly
crooked tooth that gave it just enough character so it didn't
look fake. She turned the grin in his direction,
and Michaels could feel the warmth of it from fifteen
feet away. A stunning woman, beautiful and
smart, a lethal combination. She was single, in her
mid-twenties, and much too young for him at his
ancient age of forty; still, she was pleasant to look
at, no question.
  "Sorry I'm late, sir," Winthrop said.
  "Liza's keyboard input had a short, and you
know how Computer Services works; they'd be two
hours getting a tech up here unless it was an
emergency. And in an emergency--"
  "--x would take three hours," Michaels
finished. He smiled at her. It was a standing
joke in Net Force.
  "Well, come on in."
  He gestured at the door, and waited for her
to precede him into the office. He was merely being
polite, he told himself.
  It wasn't just to get a look at her
backside. Although, he had to admit, that was worth
seeing. It reminded him of an old Flip
Wilson joke, about the preacher's wife being
tempted by a new dress she was trying on. The
Devil said, "Buy it, honey, buy it!" And the
preacher's wife said, "Get thee behind me,
Satan!" And the Devil did, then he said, "Mm.
Looks good on you from here too ..."
  Michaels shook off the semi-erotic thoughts.
Winthrop was a subordinate, more than a dozen
years younger than he, and he didn't need any
entanglements just at the moment But it had been a long
time since his divorce had become final, and things
had not been too good at home for a lot of months
before he'd moved out. He hadn't been in bed with a
woman since.
  There was only so much space in a man's life that
work and hobbies would fill. You could only read yourself
to sleep so many nights of the week.
  He glanced up and saw Toni standing in the
doorway of her office, leaning against the jamb,
watching him. Michaels felt guilty, even though
he hadn't done anything. He gave her a half
smile, then went into his office. If he was going
to leap off a cliff into an office romance, Toni
would be his first choice, but that was a bad road to even
contemplate. Toni was a co worker and a friend, and he
certainly didn't want to damage either of those
relationships for the sake of romance.
  Friends were harder to come by than lovers.
  Well. At least that was what he'd heard. It
had been so long since he'd had a lover, he had
forgotten how to play that game.
  And it wasn't exactly like ri ding a bicycle.
  He looked at Joanna Winthrop, who stood
in front of the chair across from his desk, waiting for
him. A drop-dead gorgeous woman. Despite
himself, he could easily imagine what her hair would
look like unbound and spread over a pillow, what her
face would look like staring up at his in passion....
He gave himself a twitch of a grin. Fortunately,
his shower came equipped with plenty of cold water.
And he was probably going to be using his share of it
tonight.
  "Thanks for fix ing the keyboard," he said.
  "My pleasure."
  He moved behind his desk, sat, and gestured for
Winthrop to do the same.
  She did so. Back to business now.
  "We have a little problem, Lieutenant.
Colonel Howard thought you might be willing to help
us out."
  "Yes, sir, whatever the colonel wants. He
thinks well of you, sir."
  Michaels looked at her. Really? A few
months back, hearing that would have been a surprise.
Although after the kidnapping of the mad Russian,
maybe Howard did feel a bit better about having
a civilian commander.
  Michaels had risked his job ordering that, and
Howard had done outstanding work on it.
  Maybe a little mutual respect had come out of the
mission.
  "And he thinks well of you. Lieutenant. Yours
was the first name he suggested when I asked him for
assistance."
  "Sir, if it's all the same to you, please
call me Jo, or Winthrop. This rank business
isn't necessary unless we're in the field."
  "Fine, Jo. Might as well call me
Alex, while we're at it.
  We're pretty informal around here," "Yes,
sir. Uh, I mean, right, Alex. So, what's
up?"
  He smiled at her and waved his hand over his
computer controls.
  Chapter 3
  Saturday, December 18th, 7:50 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Colonel John Howard wore his old
Gortex windbreaker, covering the SandW Model
66 .357 short-barreled revolver nestled in the
Gaico paddle holster just behind the point of his right
hip. When he had occasion to cary while out of
uniform, he preferred this kind of holster. It used
a plastic paddle that slipped between the waistband and
shirt, so he could put it on and remove it without
having to take off his belt and thread it through the
loops. It was convenient, and just about as concealable as a
regular belt slide or pancake holster-Ten
yards away, a mugger with a knife leaped out of the
darkness and ran at him. The assassin was no more than
two seconds away.
  Howard shifted his hips slightly to the
left, opening a gap between his jacket and body, and
swept his right hand back and under the Gortex. He
grabbed the wooden grips of the revolver,
automatically unsnapping the thumb-break safety
snap on the holster when he closed his hand. He
pulled the Smith, thrust it toward the mugger as if
punching him one handed, and pulled the trigger. At this
range, trying to line up the sights was too slow.
Instead, you could use the whole gun silhouette
to index the target.
  Six feet in front of Howard the mugger stopped
cold as the 91-grain Cor-Bon Bee Safe
frangible bullet slammed into his center of mass
at just under 1600 feet per second.
  The second shot was a quarter second behind the
first.
  The mugger froze, and glowing red lights pulsed
on his chest where the rounds impacted. Most people
didn't realize just how fast a running man with a
knife could move. Anot her half a second and the
ersatz thug would have been all over him.
  Howard glanced at the computer next to the shooting
box.
  There was a small holoprojection of the mugger over
the computer and stats under it. Elapsed time:
1.34 seconds from start to shot. Organ hit:
heart. Estimated one-shot-stop percentage: 94.
The revolver didn't hold as many rounds as an
HandK Tactical pistol, but it was a kind of
talisman for Howard, and he was more comfortable with it.
  As he reholstered the gun, he noticed his right
shoulder felt sore.
  Well, no, not so much sore as ... tired
somehow. After one draw? Seemed like he'd been
tired a lot lately-- "Not bad for an old
man," Sergeant Julio Fernandez said.
  He was in the next shooting box at the indoor
range, making a lot of smoke and noise with his
beat-up old Army-issue Beretta 9mm.
  "Reset," Howard said. He grinned.
  The mugger vanished. Had it been a real
attacker instead of a holoprojic target, the
frangible bullets would have each dumped 550
foot-pounds of energy into the man and, because the rounds were
designed to fragment on impact, would have shredded the
attacker's heart into mush, and they wouldn't have
over-penetrated and gone on down the street to maybe
kill some little old lady out walking her dog. This was
a very important consideration in an urban scenario.
Of course, frangible wasn't good for
shooting through solid walls or car doors, but the
next two rounds in the cylinder were standard jacketed
hollow points that would do that just fine. If the mugger
had been in a car, Howard could have cycled past the first
two rounds, or, in a hurry, just pulled the trigger
twice to get to the jacketed stuff.
  "Morning, gentlemen," he heard somebody say
behind him. The wolf-ear headphones he wore
amplified normal sounds, but cut out anything loud
enough to damage his hearing.
  He turned.
  It was his boss, Alexander Michaels.
  "Commander. What brings you to the range on a
Saturday morning"
  Michaels patted the taser clipped to his belt
on his right hip.
  "Requalification. Thought I'd come down when it
wasn't too busy."
  Howard gave him a small smile and shook his
head.
  "Not a fan of the kick taser. Colonel?"
Michaels asked.
  "No, sir, not really. If a situation is
dangerous enough to require a weapon, then it ought to be
a real weapon."
  "I am given to understand that the taser has a
ninety-percent one-shot-stop rate, whether it
penetrates clothes or not. It will defeat standard
Kevlar vests, and there aren't any bodies to be
clean up afterward."
  Howard could almost hear Fernandez grin.
  "Sergeant, you have a comment?"
  " "Well, unless the guy you shoot has anything
real flammable about his person, sir. Then he might
just burst into flame. At which point your non-lethal
weapon turns your guy into the Human Torch. It
has happened a few times."
  bar "The sergeant is correct. However, the
biggest drawback, bar sir, is that you only get
one shot," Howard added.
  "Everybody is required to carry a spare
reload or two. I'm told an expert can do that
in about two seconds--snap off, snap on, be
ready to fire again."
  "In which time somebody just average with a handgun would
have shot your taser expert four or five times. Or
his buddy would have--if there is more than one of him.
Sir."
  Michaels grinned.
  "Well, you know how it is with us desk
jockeys, Sarge. The weapon is more a formality
than anything.
  We don't get out into the field that much."
  "That's not what I hear, sir," Fernandez said.
  Howard held his grin. Whatever Michaels said,
he had faced an assassin who had snuck into HQ
and he'd shot her dead using her own gun. That had
earned him a bit of respect in a lot of
opinions, including Howard's own.
  "Besides, I have dedicated and trained men like you to do
all my light fighting," Michaels said.
  "Good thing," Fernandez said, but quietly enough so
Michaels probably didn't catch it.
  "I'll let you get back to your practice,"
Michaels said.
  "Have a good day, gentlemen." He walked to the end
of the long row of shooting boxes and began to set up for
his session.
  Sarge shook his head, then looked at Howard.
  "Tasers, nightgowns, sticky foam, photon
cannons, beanbag shooters, what are the feebs
gonna come up with next? Sugar-and-spice spray?
  Flower-petal launchers? Seems like a lotta
effort for not much gain."
  "We live in politically correct
times. Sergeant. Subgunning a mob is bad
PR, even if all of the people in the mob are
terrorists with pockets full of hand grenades. It
looks bad on the evening news."
  "Bleeding-heart liberals are gonna take all
the fun out of being a soldier someday, sir."
  "I expect they will. Sergeant."
  "You know the definition of a conservative, sir?"
  "I am afraid to ask."
  "A liberal who's been mugged."
  Howard grinned.
  "Light up your target. Sergeant, and let's
see if you can shoot as well as you talk."
  "Little side bet. Colonel?"
  "I hate to take your money, but if you've got
so much you can afford to lose it, you're on."
  The two men laughed.
  At the end of the row of shooting boxes, Michaels
heard the colonel and sergeant laughing. Probably
at him and his laser.
  Well, not everybody was a soldier. His father had
been a career Army man and that had been enough to sour
Michaels on it He knew he could kill
somebody, if it was self-defense, or to protect
somebody he loved.
  He had done so when the assassin had slipped
into Net Force HQ and used Toni to ambush him in
the gym's locker room. He'd shot the woman
known as the Selkie after she had shot him and tried
to stab Toni. It was necessary, but it was not an experience
he wanted to repeat.
  He set his computer for a practice run on the
taser qualification scenario, checked to make sure
the spare compressed gas cartridge holder was on the
left side of his belt, and then pulled the taser and
inspected the weapon to make certain the cartridge in
it was still active. It was. He re clipped it
to his belt, took a deep breath, and blew it out.
  "Activate," he commanded the target computer.
  "Two to thirty seconds, random start."
  The new-model taser was wireless. He wasn't
sure he quite understood exactly how it worked, but
supposedly the twin needles were essentially small
but highly efficient capacitors.
  Powered by a simple nine-volt battery, each
needle was slightly thicker than a pencil lead.
The pair carried high voltage, low-amperage
charges, somewhere around a hundred thousand volts, and
when they both struck a target, a circuit was
completed. The compressed gas propellant
--nitrogen or carbon dioxide, depending on the
model--would spit the needles up to fifty feet with
enough force to penetrate clothing.
  At normal combat range, about seven or eight
yards, the weapon delivered a knockdown jolt
virtually every time. There was a tiny, built-in
laser. When you squeezed the handle, the little red dot
from the laser showed you where the needles would bracket when
they hit. If you missed, the backup feature was a
pair of electrodes in the handle that would allow the
laser to function as a stun gun--if the attacker
got within range. What the device looked like was a
long and skinny electric razor, or maybe one
of the old Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
phasers.
  Operation was easy enough. You pointed the laser at
a target, squeezed the handle, lined the laser's
dot up, and thumbed the firing stud. If everything
went right, half a second later your attacker was
jittering on the floor in electrically induced
convulsions, and any interest he might have had in harming
you was the last thing on his mind. Recovery after a
couple of minutes was virtually total, but you could do
a lot in a couple of minutes to an assassin
sprawled helplessly on his back.
  Of course, such a device could be used by the bad
guys too.
  To counter that, all lasers were required to carry
taggants in their propellant, thousands of tiny
bits of colored or clear plastic that would
identify the registered buyer. There was no way
to sweep all these tags up after a laser was fired--
A mugger appeared and ran at Michaels. The
mugger had a crowbar in one hand. He raised the bar
of steel as he ran-Michaels pulled the taser from
his belt, pointed it, and squeezed the handle. The little
red dot danced up and down on the mugger's leg, but
that didn't matter. Anywhere on the body was good.
He thumbed the firing stud-- A splash of yellow
light flared on the mugger's leg, but he kept coming.
  Shit--to 
  Michaels grabbed the laser's cartridge with his
left hand, pressed the two buttons that ejected
it, rumbled for the spare cartridge, but it was too
late. By the time he got the thing reloaded, the mugger
was on him.
  A loud buzzer blared. The mugger froze.
  Damn. He should have tried for the stun-gun
backup.
  The computer image to Michaels's left
strobed the letters FTS-G in bright red. Failure
to Stop--Gotcha. The tiny image of the mugger on the
proj showed the reason why. The needles were designed
to spread apart, to make the circuit's arc big enough
to work. At the distance he'd fired, the leg hadn't
been a good target. The left needle hit the
mugger's thigh square on, but the right missile had
been ten inches to the right--a clean miss. He must have
jerked his hand when he touched the firing stud. It
didn't take much to screw up the shot.
  Had this been a real mugger, Michaels would have
been looking at a crushed skull--unless Toni's
silat instruction would have let him dance the crowbar and
poke the guy with the stun-gun electrodes. And he
wasn't good enough at that to trust it yet.
  He shook his head in disgust. He picked up a
spare cartridge from the supply on the table and put
it into his belt holder.
  He re clipped the taser to his belt.
  "Reset," he told the computer.
  "Two to thirty seconds random start."
  He pointedly did not look at Howard and
Fernandez. He knew they'd be smiling.
  Saturday, December 18th, 8:15 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Toni sat on the lounger her oldest brother.
Junior, had given [her for Christmas three
years ago. He owned a furniture store in a
nicer section of Queens--which wasn't saying much--
bar and had gotten stuck with several chairs he
couldn't sell and [couldn't ship back, since the
manufacturing company had bar gone out of business
between the time he ordered the shipment and when it arrived.
It was a comfortable chair, but kind of a putrid,
mottled green color that apparently hadn't
overwhelmed any of his customers. Somebody might as
well get some use from it, he'd told her.
  She smiled into the phone, a vox-only connection
with her mother. Mama had never cottoned to the idea of
picture phones. What if the phone rang before she
put her face on? her hair was messed up? If
she was in the shower?
  "Mama, if you're so worried about how much these
calls are cos ting me, why don't you get an
ISDN or a DL and let Aldo hook
Papa's computer to it? For ten dollars a month,
we could talk over the net as much as we want."
  "I don't wanna be foolin" with no computer
business," Mama said.
  "It's too complicated."
  "It's not any more complicated than using the
telephone.
  All you have to do is turn it on and tell it my
number if you want to call. If I call you, you
just have to touch a button when it beeps, and you get
audio and video."
  "It's too complicated."
  Toni grinned again. Mama would never change.
There was a bare-bones computer in the ground-floor
brownstone apartments where Toni had grown up, a
birthday gift from Toni and the boys a couple of
years ago. Most American homes these days had
some kind of house computer, but Mama didn't want
anything to do with it. While she didn't cross herself
when she walked past it, Toni had long believed that
Mama looked at the thing as if it were the spawn of
Satan, just waiting to ensnare her in its tendrils and
drag her off to electronic Hades. Sophia
Banks Fiorella was sixty-five, and had six
children, five of them boys, all of them
college-educated. Aldo, at thirty-one, the
youngest child save for Toni, was a high level
programmer for the State of New York's
judicial system, and if he couldn't convince
Mama to use the computer after all the Sunday
dinners trying, Toni was wasting her time.
  "So, whenna you comin' home?"
  "Thursday night late," Toni said.
  "They're giving us the 24th off, but I have to work
on the 23rd."
  "You need Papa to pick you up at the
airport?"
  "Papa is not supposed to be drivin'. Mama,
he can't see that good. I thought Larry was gonna
talk to him about that."
  Toni noticed that her Bronx accent had
thickened considerably as she talked to Mama. It
always did.
  "That" sounded an awful lot like "dat," and the
"coming" endings to words lost the g completely.
  "You know your father. He don't hear what he
don't wanna hear."
  "We're gonna get one of those steering-wheel
lock bars for the car if he doesn't stop it."
  "Tony Junior already tried that. It took
Papa about two minutes to figure out how to take it
off. He's not stupid."
  "I didn't say he was stupid. But he is
half blind and if he keeps driving, he is gonna
kill somebody' "Okay, so Larry or
Jimmy will pick you up."
  "I'm not flying. Mama, I'm taking the train
and I'll catch a cab from Penn Station."
  "Late at night my daughter should be inna cab?
That's dangerous, a young girl by herself."
  Toni laughed. She was pushing thirty and adept
at self defense, more so than any man she knew.
She carried a laser with which she was qualified
Expert, and had been a federal agent for years, but
Mama didn't want her ri ding in a taxi from the
train station.
  "Don't worry about me. I've got my key,
I'll go to the guest unit."
  "Mike is coming from Baltimore with his wife and
children, they'll be in the big bedroom and the kid's
room."
  "I'll stay in the little bedroom. Don't
worry. Mama, I'll see you Christmas Eve
morning okay?"
  "Okay. Look, you need to go, this call is
probably cos ting you a fortune. I'll see you
Friday. What time do you want to get up? You
want to sleep late?"
  Toni grinned again. It didn't matter what time
she said, Mama would be at her door at
six-thirty sharp, and breakfast would be ready.
  "About six-thirty," Toni said.
  "Okay, I'll get up early. I love you,
baby. You be careful."
  "I will be. Mama I love you too."
  Toni put the phone down and shook her head.
  One of the joys of her big Catholic family was
the annual holiday gathering.
  What with her brothers, their wives, and the nieces
and nephews, there would be twenty-some people at
Mama's, not even counting the uncles, aunts, and
odd cousin or two who might show up for dinner. It
wasn't so crowded since Papa had bought the units
on either side of the old one and knocked out walls
to make one large apartment, but even so, it would be
bustling.
  Toni was very much looking forward to it. Too bad
she couldn't bring Alex with her. Mama would be so
thrilled that Toni had a potential husband--and
any man she looked at more than twice was, as
far as Mama was concerned, a potential husband--that
she wouldn't be able to sit down, she'd be so busy
doing things for him.
  Maybe someday.
  Chapter 4
  Saturday, December 18th, 11:45 a.m.
Arisona Territory
  Jay Gridley rode the net.
  On a horse.
  Until recently, he had favored a Dodge
Viper in virtual reality, playing scenarios that
involved superhighways and high speed. Hell of a
car, the Viper, a rocket with wheels, and he liked
putting the pedal to the metal and feeling the wind in his
hair. But he'd gotten into a Western frame of
mind a couple of weeks ago, and after doing a fair
amount of research had built himself a cowboy
scenario. You could use just about anything you wanted for
virtual reality--VR--NET travel, and it
didn't have to be historically accurate; you could have
cowboys and spacemen in the same scenario. But when
you were a programmer at Jay's level, you had
certain standards. At the very least, it had to be
consistent, and above all, it had to look good.
  In this scenario. Jay wore button-fly
Levi's, real cowhide pointed-toe cowboy
boots, and a plaid wool shirt, along with a red
bandanna, a cream-colored Stetson hat measured
in gallons, and a Colt .45 Peacemaker
six-gun strapped around his waist in a
period leather holster. No drugstore cowpoke
clothes for him, no pearl-button shirts with fringe,
or chaps or anything like that. He sat upon a
hand-tooled saddle, and his horse was a pinto
stallion named Buck. Well, formerly a
stallion-the VR horse had been gelded, to keep
him from tearing off after passing female horses.
Jay had thought about a white horse or even a
palomino, but figured those were maybe a bit over the
top. Most of the off-the-shelf software would never have
gotten into this kind of detail, but they weren't held
to his standards.
  Buck picked his way along a narrow switch
backed trail that wound through the foothills of a VR
mountain range in the Old West. Jay kept a
lookout for rattlesnakes--sidewinders, they
called them out here--Indians, or desperados who
might want to stick him up. There was a net nexus
coming up, represented by a little town called Black
Rock ahead a couple of miles, but the sun was
almost straight up and it was oven-hot and bone-dry
here, and he needed to stop for a drink. The rocky
trail was mostly bare, with only a few lizards and
some scraggly bushes that might grow to be tumbleweeds
someday--if they were lucky, and if they
didn't spontaneously burst into flame first....
He grinned.
  Damn, but he was good. A very tight little scenario,
if he did say so himself.
  He reined up next to a dried and dusty stream
bed, dismounted, and took a swig from his water
bottle, a canvas bag with a wooden plug. The
canvas bag held about a gallon, and was woven
loosely enough so it allowed a little liquid to seep through
it, the idea being that the evaporation would cool the
water, but it was still pretty warm. He took his hat
off, poured a pint or so into it, and offered it
to Buck. The horse noisily lapped the water from
the hat.
  "Not far now, boy, a few more minutes."
  From around the bend came the sound of an approaching
wagon. Jay dumped the water from his hat and put the
Stetson back on. He loosened the Colt in its
holster. You never knew what kind of scum was around.
Best to be ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
  It wasn't a wagon, but a one-horse buggy,
drawn by a big gray mare. The horse's shoes
clop-clopped on the hardpan, and the iron-bound
wooden wheels clattered over small rocks.
  The driver was a woman, in a
ground-length cotton dress that had once been dyed
indigo, but sun-and-wash-faded now to a pale blue.
Since she was seated, the dress was hiked up enough
to reveal the tops of her high-button shoes. She
also wore a blue bonnet, not quite so faded as the
dress, tied under her chin. On the seat next to her
was a thin stack of books.
  Why, it must be the schoolmarmn.
  Jay relaxed, and reached up and tipped his hat as
the woman approached.
  "Howdy, ma'am," he said, in his best
cowboy-speak.
  As the buggy drew closer, he could see she was a
goodlookin' woman--no, not just good-lookin', she was
downright gorgeous, a few stray blond hairs
escaping the bonnet, beautiful green eyes-Aw,
hell. It wasn't no schoolmarm, it
was-Lieutenant Joanna Bimbo Winthrop.
  Damn!
  She pulled the buggy to a stop ten feet short of
Jay and smiled.
  "Well, well. Jay Gridley. Fancy
meeting you here."
  She climbed down from the buggy and stood facing him
from a few feet away. Her face went
blank for a second.
  Jay knew what she was doing. She was in her own
net program and she was re-phasing to allow his to set
the joint scenario.
  Her face came back to life and she looked
around, seeing now what Jay was seeing.
  "Well, yee-haw, little doggies," she said.
She smiled.
  "What are you doing here, Winthrop?"
  "Perhaps this silver bullet will tell you." She
held out her hand, and upon it was a shiny handgun
cartridge.
  "Go ahead, bullet, tell him."
  The cartridge was silent.
  "Very funny." Jay wasn't in any mood to be
insulted by the likes of Bimbo Winthrop.
  "And what freeware are you running?"
  "Not freeware, horsie-boy. Something with a little
subtlety."
  She waved at the high desert around them.
  "And a little complexity."
  Oh, really!
  In the Real World, Jay was sitting in his office
chair at HQ, wearing full VR gear, connected
to his workstation and the net. In RW, he
finger-jived out of his Old West program to let
Winthrop's vehicle become the default. In
half a second, the VR blinked and reformed
into Winthrop's-He found himself on the boarding
platform at a train station.
  Winthrop stood across from him, and a passenger train
was stopped behind her. Her hair was in a bun, tucked
under a wide-brimmed hat, and she wore a long,
dark cloth coat over an ankle-length gray
wool dress. From her clothes and the style of the train,
he guessed it was late nineteenth or maybe early
twentieth century. A sign on the station to his
left said
  "Klamath Falls." It was winter, the air
crisp and cold, and fresh snow was six inches deep
on the ground, with higher drifts piled up outside
the roofed platform. Passengers boarded the train, the
women in long dresses and coats and hats, the men
mostly in suits, hats, and overcoats. There were a
few working-class souls mixed in among the more
affluent passengers, wearing caps and jackets and
work boots. A big pale guy who looked like a
body builder in a tan duster stopped to help an
old lady lift her bag onto the train. A little
girl ran by, trailed by a dog. It
looked like a setter or a retriever of some kind.
  The smell of coal smoke hung heavy in the
air, mixed with the dregs of cooling steam... and just a
hint of unwashed body odor.
  People hadn't bathed every day back when. That was a
nice touch.
  And looking around, he saw she had done a
pretty clean job on the scenario. No gray
areas, no sketchy backgrounds, plenty of
detail, even to the wood grain in the fir posts
supporting the platform roof.
  He looked at himself and saw he wore a
three-piece gray wool suit and black-leather
dress shoes. A gold pocket-watch chain
draped across the vest. He saw a slip of colored
paper in one of the vest's pockets and removed it.
A train ticket. He could read every word on it,
down to the fine print. A very nice touch, that.
  Well, okay, he had to admit it, this was a
first-class piece of work.
  He didn't have to admit that to her, however.
  "All abooard!" the conductor yelled.
  "Well?" she said.
  "It's a little busy," he said.
  "I prefer mine." He overrode her
program, and half a second later was back standing
in the desert next to Buck, looking at her and the
buggy.
  "What do you want?" he asked her.
  "I was looking for you. We're going to be working
together, whether either one of us wants to or not. I know you
don't like me, and you're not on my top-one-hundred
list either.
  But I'm a professional, I can get around that."
  "Meaning I can't?"
  "No, Gridley, meaning exactly what I
said. This isn't about who is the better programmer,
it is about getting the assignment done. Commander
Michaels wants me on the project, I'm on
it. We don't have to hold hands and walk through the
spring meadows, but we also don't have to get in each
other's way, can we agree to that?"
  Jay looked at his horse. He could see why
cowboys spent so much time on the trail. Women,
especially pretty women, tended to complicate
things.
  He knew he was a better programmer.
  He hadn't gotten any doors opened because of his
looks, and he was damned sure Winthrop had. But
he sighed and nodded.
  "All right. We can stay out of each other's
way."
  "If I come up with some thing before you do, I'll
pass it along."
  "Fat chance of that," Jay said. It was under his
breath, however.
  "Excuse me?"
  "Nothing. I'll do the same for you."
  She said some thing he didn't catch.
  "Pardon?"
  "Nothing," she said.
  "I'll leave you to your scenario."
  She climbed back into her buggy and snapped the
reins over the big mare's back.
  "Giddyap," she said. She waved as she drove
away from town.
  Jay watched her go. The horse whinnied" Yeah,
pal, my sentiments exactly," Jay said.
  "Come on, we got business in town. Buck
old boy."
  Jay put his left foot into the stirrup and mounted
up.
  They moseyed toward town.
  Saturday, December 18th, 11:45 a.m.
Chevy Chase, Maryland
  Hughes had his virgil--his Virtual
Global Interface Link--in the limo, but he
didn't want to use it to call Platt.
Supposedly.
  the telephone signal was binary-encoded and
nobody could understand him if he used the phone in the
virgil, but he didn't trust it. It was a great
toy, about the size of an electric shaver, and in
addition to the phone it had in it a GPS, clock,
radio.
  TV, modem, credit chip, camera, scanner,
and even a fax. Of course, if he hadn't been
White's chief of staff, he wouldn't have access
to such a device. He couldn't have afforded it, and
likely couldn't have gotten on the list to get one
even if he had saved up the money.
  There was a pay phone just ahead, a landline, and as
random as any. He directed his driver to pull
over.
  It was cold out, a damp wind blowing, and the sky
had that dark, heavy, nacreous gleam of snow clouds
about to let go.
  Hughes stepped into the graffiti-covered
clear-plastic paneled booth and pulled the door
shut. He set the phone for vox-only, no
vid, slipped the one-time throwaway scrambler over
the mouthpiece, tapped in the number, let it ring
once, then hung up. Platt had the gear to trace
the number on his end, and also a matching scrambler.
Nobody was going to decode their conversation.
  Thirty seconds later, the phone rang.
Unless it was a very large coincidence, that would be
Platt.
  "Yes," Hughes said.
  "Hey," Platt said. He managed to shoehorn
a whole lot of southern Georgia into that one
drawn-out word.
  "Okay, what's the situation?"
  "Well, we got us a little problem there. Seems
the Lord High Ooga-Booga wants to see you
face-to-face "fore he seals the deal."
  "Not possible. I sent you to be my
representative."
  "What I told El Presidente Sambo, but
he ain't listenin", it's some kind of native thing.
You know how these darkies are, it's always some thin'."
  Hughes ground his teeth together. Platt was a
cracker, a racist, and probably a member in good
standing of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan and the Sons
of the Confederate Veterans.
  Sending him to Guinea-Bissau, a little
dirt-poor tropical country on the North
Atlantic coast of west Africa shoe horned in
between Guinea and Senegal, was an invitation to disaster.
  Platt was so white he gleamed, and ninety-nine
percent of the population in Guinea-Bissau was
black; worse, they spoke Portuguese or
Criola, or French, plus a slew of
African languages with names like Pajadinka,
Gola, Bigola, and the like.
  As far as he knew, Platt didn't have any
foreign languages.
  He had trouble enough making himself clear in English
past that Georgia cane syrup of his, but somehow
he always managed.
  Being six and a half feet tall with a build like
Hercules probably helped--people tended to be
polite to Platt even if they didn't like him. And
while he was crude, he wasn't stupid.
  He liked to play the good old boy and let people
think that was all there was to him, but he knew his way
around computers, from laptops to extended mainframes,
he could shoot any weapon capable of firing, and fix
a computer or a gun if either of them broke.
  "Anyway, what El Presidente said
was, you don't come and set down for a little chat, it's
nooo deal."
  Damn! Hughes fumbled for his electronic
calendar, punched up the month of January, and
looked at it. It would be tricky.
  He'd have to come up with some kind of hurry-up
junket not too far away, then sneak into the country.
He had a couple of passports and visas he could
use. It was a bitch, and it wasn't going to be
cheap, but it was do able. He said, "All right. Tell
President Domingos I will be there on ...
January 13th. That's a Thursday."
  "Thursday, the 13th. I got it."
  "And you come to Washington. I have other business for
you."
  "Washington." That came out as "Warshing-ton."
  "Shoot, there's almost as many jigs there as there arc
here.
  You know what else? There ain't but four thousand
telephones in this whole country. They still use
drums, I reckon. You know, the natives are
restless? And uppity too. I get one more buck
staring at me, I'mon put the hurt on him."
  "Don't kill anybody."
  Platt laughed.
  "Me? Shoot, I am gone kill nobody.
I'mon just knock a few ub'm off the
sidewalks." He laughed again, a gravely,
raucous noise.
  "Only thing is, they ain't got no sidewalks
most places here. I guess I can wait to do that in
Washington."
  "Just come back. What about the leaks?"
  "I got the next one on a timer. Set to go off
bright and early Monday morning matter of fact."
  "Good. Goodbye."
  Hughes uncapped the phone's mouthpiece and
dropped the scrambler into his pocket. Jesus.
Platt was a lunatic, probably psychotic and
sociopathic, and a sharp and dangerous tool.
  Necessary, but just as apt to cut the hand that held it as
anything.
  Hughes would have to be careful, and pretty soon
he would have to figure out a way to make Platt...
go away.
  For good.
  Hughes opened the phone booth's door. A
blast of cold wind hit him, raising chills on his
neck. He could smell the snow coming. Better get
back to the city before it turned the roads
into parking lots.
  He nodded at the driver as he got back into the
limo.
  "Let's go home."
  Chapter 5
  Monday, December 20th, 8:55 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  The invisible green-eyed demon had its claws
sunk deep in Tyrone Howard's back, and it
hurt like he wouldn't have believed only a couple of
months ago. He felt sick to his stomach, he
wanted to throw up, scream, or punch
somebody-maybe do all three at once--and none of
these were viable options. The students at Eisenhower
Middle School were used to seeing some weird things in
the dingy green halls, but a thirteen-year-old boy
running amok in a jealous rage was not one of them.
  The reason for Tyrone's pain stood thirty
feet away, smiling up at the quarterback of the
football team, one large and muscular Jefferson
Benson. Belladonna Wright was a year older
than Tyrone and, without a doubt, the most gorgeous
young woman in D.c. On the East Coast.
Maybe in the whole world.
  And since he had done her a favor
by helping her pass her computer class, they had
spent a little time together. She had more or less ditched
her old boyfriend, Herbie "Bonebreaker"
LeMott, who was in high school and the captain of the
wresling team. Since then, she and Tyrone had gone
to the mall, had done VR, and had sat in her
bedroom and kissed until he thought he was going
to explode. He was absolutely, totally,
triple-back-somersault-in-a-full-layout in
love with Bella. And there she stood, in her micro
skirt and halter top and squeegee
slope-plats, talking to another man. Smiling at
him. At a man who could tie Tyrone into a square
knot and shot put him fifty feet without breaking a
sweat.
  All Tyrone had going for him was his brain, and
while the mind might be mightier than muscle in the
long run, in a face-to-face match up, the guy
with the muscle would pound you into a breaded cutlet if
all you could wave at him was your brain.
  "Uh-oh. Looks like trouble in paradise,"
came the voice from behind him.
  Tyrone wasn't looking directly at
Bella. He was using his peripheral vision as he
stood fiddling with the door to his locker. He
didn't have to look at the speaker--it was James
Joseph Hatfield, a hillbilly from West
Virginia who had such bad eyes he couldn't even
wear contacts, and thus went around peering through thick
plastic lenses that made him look like a giant
white hoot owl.
  "Shut up, Jimmy-Joe."
  "Hey, nopraw, rider, she's just talkin'
to him, not fishin' for his trouser eel--" Tyrone
turned to glare atomic bombs at his best friend.
  "All right, all right, be cool, fool,"
Jimmy-Joe said.
  "But think about it, bro. If she wanted a big
dumb jock, she'd still be with Bonebreaker, right? I
mean, he makes Benson look like a shrimp."
  And Benson made Tyrone look like a
microbe.
  "Yeah.
  Maybe."
  "Go slow mo, Joe, you worry too much."
Jimmy-Joe slapped Tyrone on the back.
  As Tyrone watched peripherally, pretending not
to, the large and muscular Jefferson Benson
turned and headed down the hall, moving in that
oiled-ball-bearing rolling walk of his.
People moved aside to let him pass.
  Bella looked up, saw Tyrone and
Jimmy-Joe. She smiled and waved.
  "Hey, Ty!"
  Tyrone's sick feeling lifted when he saw her
smile at him.
  He felt like Atlas must have felt when
Hercules took the world from him.
  All of a sudden, life was wonderful. He could
sing, he could dance, he could float like a cloud.
  Bella came toward him. People stopped to watch
her. Queen of the Hall, she swayed like a palm
tree in a tropical breeze as she walked. His
heart pounded like native drums in Tyrone's head.
Man--to 
  She stopped in front of him.
  "I'm going to the mall after school, if it
doesn't snow again," she said.
  "You going?"
  "Oh, yeah," Tyrone said.
  "I planned to."
  "Exemplary, Ty. See you at the Shop."
  Bella flashed her perfect smile again, patted
him on the shoulder once, then left. Tyrone
watched her go, a man in a trance, unable
to look away. His shoulder was hot where she'd touched
him.
  " "Calls you Ty. Puts her hand on you.
Slip, you are about as DFF as it gets,"
Jimmy-Joe said.
  "Data flowin" fine."
  Tyrone grinned. Yes, yes, that was true.
Life didn't get much better, did it? How could
it? The most beautiful woman in the world had just
arranged to meet him instead of the football thud. It
was absolutely amazing, was what it was.
  Amazing. Wonderful-- "So, how's the upgrade
going'?"
  Tyrone watched Bella round the corner and
vanish from view. He savored the memory of her from
behind.
  " "Hel-lo? Mission Control to Deep
Space Vessel Tyrone, do you copy?" He
made the sound of a stat icky radio.
  "Come in, DSV Ty ..."
  Tyrone shook off the trance. Jimmy-Joe was
asking about the revision to the net game he'd built
and posted, DinoWarz.
  "Oh, that. I haven't had much time to work on it."
  "Haven't had time? You are fee kin"
me, right?"
  "No feek," Tyrone said. He had been
spending every spare minute he could scrounge with
Bella. And when he wasn't with her, he was thinking
about her. Dreaming about her.
  Lusting after her... "Rider, you are stalled out
backslash was
  "It's just a game," Tyrone said.
  Jimmy-Joe stared at him as if Tyrone had just
morphed into a giant roach and started doing a demented
jitterbug.
  "Just a game? Just a gamee? You got a
testosterone short in your cerebrum, chum."
  The bell for class rang, and Jimmy-Joe
walked off, shaking his head.
  "I will see you later, slip."
  Tyrone stared at his friend. He didn't understand.
Games were fine, but how could a game compare to holding
hands with Belladonna Wright? To kissing those warm and
magical lips. To putting his hands on those warm
and-Don't follow that thread, Tyrone. Not here and
now.
  A video game? Even a VR full-flex,
compare with Bella?
  It couldn't. No way.
  He hurried toward his own first-period class.
And he was going to the mall after school, dupe that to the
eighth power.
  Monday, December 20th, 9:05 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Julio Fernandez looked at the holoprojection
floating in the air behind the instructor.
  The image was a series of mathematical equations
interspersed with pictures of what appeared to be an
"old-fashioned paper theater ticket, a
crumbly cookie, and a heavy metal safe with a
big mechanical tumbler lock dial.
  Remedial computer imagery for dumbots.
  The instructor said, "All right, who can tell me
what the phrase 'security through obscurity"
means?"
  Hernandez stared down at the screen built into the
top of his desk. Pick somebody else, he thought.
There were fifteen people in the computer programming
class, so the odds weren't that bad that the dip wit
teacher would call on one of his classmates,
except that the dip wit seemed, for some reason, to have
it in for Fernandez. The teacher's name was Horowitz.
  He was maybe twenty-four, short, dumpy,
wore frazzled suits, had acne, and his
face always looked as if he had a painful rash on
his private parts. Horowitz also looked as if he
would rather be scratching that rash naked in public than
suffering through this class, and Fernandez knew how that
felt. If there was any other way, he wouldn't be
here either. At least the man was a civilian and
not--thank God--an officer.
  That the classroom smelled like old sweat long
gone sour didn't help.
  Of course, he could have downloaded all the
lectures and texts for this class and studied them at
home on his own.
  Nobody was holding a gun to his head and making
him attend.
  Most of the other students were new feebs--FBI
Academy students--and this class was mandatory for
them, though more a matter of form than anything. They were
all college grads, most of "em law school
grads too, and this dinky little access course was a
snoozer they could pass in their sleep.
  Not so for Sergeant Julio Hernandez, whose
computer literacy was right up there with his knowledge of quantum
mechanics, or the mating habits of great blue
whales, which was to say, very lame on his best day.
He'd tried absorbing the stuff on his own,
and it slid out of his mind as if his brain were made of
solid Teflon. He'd hoped that listening to the
teacher and having other students ask questions and offer
answers would somehow help, but so far, after three
sessions, it hadn't done much to advance his knowledge of the
subject, which he hated, but which he needed to know. When
it came to using his hands or his weapons, Fernandez
didn't give away anything to anybody. He could
set up camp in a jungle or a desert and live
off the land, but when it came to anything past
button-punching a computer, he was dense, and that
wasn't good for a Net Force man-- "Let me
see ... Sergeant Fernandez? Security through
obscurity?"
  Great. Just freakin" great.
  "Sir, I believe it means that a certain kind
of computer system's security is sort of like a
... fortress. You know it is there, you can find it
easy enough, but the doors into the place are armored
or booby-trapped or rigged with so many locks you
can't open "em, even though you can walk right up
to them."
  "What a charming simile. You know what a
simile is. Sergeant?"
  Some of the feebs chuckled.
  Fernandez felt himself flush under his swarthy skin.
He was old enough to be this kid's father and the little bastard was
jerking him around.
  "I know what a simile is."
  "Well, as it happens, by what is no doubt a
major miracle, you are essentially correct.
Today's lecture will cover principles of how
to accomplish various forms of security, from fire
walls to encrypted passwords, from private-access
tickets and their expiration dates and times,
to security cookies, both fresh and ... stale."
  A few of the feebs laughed at the stale-cookie
thing.
  The teacher waved his hand and the holoproj vanished,
and was replaced by another. This one showed a small
boy sitting in front of a workstation. The kid looked
to be about five years old. Probably who this
class was aimed at, little kids.
  Fernandez gritted his teeth. Even when he gave
the right answer, this dip wit twisted it so he looked
stupid. Horowitz must get his jollies like that,
making students look bad. He certainly wasn't
going to get much action otherwise, as lemon faced and
pimply as he was.
  Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe
Fernandez should be spending his time on the range instead
of having his tail twisted by young Master Horowitz.
Maybe he should just bail oat and para glide
away, and spend his time doing some thing he knew how
to do: ground-pounding, dirt-soldiering, pick 'em up
and set 'em down and count cadence while you are at
it.
  For just a second, he enjoyed that thought.
  No. He was gonna learn this crap if it
killed him. So when the young shave tail
lieutenants started rattling off their compubabble on
a mission, he could nod and at least vaguely know
what the hell they were talking about.
  One lieutenant in particular came to mind....
" "So, who can tell us what happens when an
electronic ticket expires on an encrypted
access site? Sergeant Fernandez?
  Since you are on a metaphorical roll, would
you like to give us another of your charming little homespun
similes?"
  Fernandez regarded the man. He was mightily
tempted just to get up and walk out. His second
choice was to get up and teach Horowitz how to breathe
again after he punched him one good shot solidly in that
soft gut. Now there was a real pleasant
thought-- "Come, come. Sergeant, speed is of the
essence! In computer programming, in life, in
everything. He who hesitates is lost and. last!"
  "I believe you are mistaken in that, sir."
  Horowitz regarded him as a frog might view
an uppity fly.
  " "Oh, really? Please elucidate. Show us
the error of our ways."
  Fernandez said, "Sir. When I was going through my
basic training, we had an old master sergeant who
was teaching us the use of small arms. He told a
story about when he'd been a recruit, about a
rivalry between two drill sergeants from different
companies.
  "Seems there was a military shooting match both
guys had entered, a course of fire using the
then-issue M16's."
  Fernandez looked at Horowitz.
  "That's a fully automatic rifle, the
M-16. You know what a rifle is, sir?"
  Horowitz frowned. Good thing Fernandez wasn't
depending" on getting some kind of grade in this
class--he'd never pass.
  But the feebs had had some firearm training at this
point, so he had their attention.
  "So the first sergeant, name was Butler, he came
up to the line. The timer beeped and he locked and
loaded. Or at least he tried to. Nothing
happened, the magazine wouldn't feed the round. So he
dropped the magazine and inserted a fresh one, only
cost him a few seconds. Same thing happened.
Since the course of fire was limited to two
magazines, he was SOL. He raised his hand, and
got a DNF that's a Did Not Finish.
  "So the second sergeant was up, his name was
Mahoney.
  He locked and loaded, fired the course. Did
a respectable time, no thing to write home about, but
enough to keep him in the top five, if he was lucky.
Clean shooting, moderately fast and accurate.
  "Meanwhile, Butler figured out what his problem
was. He had inadvertently overloaded his
magazines by one round each. This compressed the springs
too much and they wouldn't feed the rounds. So Butler
asks for a re shoot due to equipment failure. It
was a slow day, and the RO that's range officer let
him go again after everybody else was finished.
  "And this time. Butler came out hot. He smoked
everybody.
  Shot the fastest time, didn't miss
anything, knocked 'em down left, right, and center like
he was a machine. Butler was thirty seconds
faster than Mahoney through the course. Guys who
had been laughing at him before suddenly looked at him
with a new respect. No doubt about it, the man could
shoot.
  "So Butler grins at Mahoney, gives him
a mock salute, and swaggers off.
  "Mahoney is packing away his weapon and gear
and one of the other shooters who knows about the rivalry
comes over.
  Too bad," the guy says, "I know you really
wanted to beat him."
  "And Mahoney smiles and says, "He won the
contest, but if we'd been on opposite sides on
a battlefield from each other, Butler would be
history and I'd still be here. You don't get a
second chance in a fire fight hot zone if you're
up against a guy who is any good at all. And there
ain't no second-place winner in a gunfight
neither." was Fernandez looked at the porky young
instructor.
  "A slow shot that hits the target is better
than a fast shot that misses.
  Sir."
  The class laughed, and it was Horowitz's turn
to flush.
  "See] me after class, Fernandez."
  "My pleasure."
  When the other students were gone, Fernandez stood
six feet away from where Horowitz sat at his
desk. The instructor said; "Sergeant, your
attitude needs some adjustment. I realize thil
is a non-credit class for you, so you aren't
required to get a passst fail, but if you were,
I am certain you would be repeating this course next
term."
  Fernandez stepped up to the desk, put his hands on
it, and leaned toward the younger man. He was well within
Horowitz's discomfort zone, invading the man's
space. Horowitz leaned back as far as the chair
would allow, and fear stained his face.
  "Listen up, sonny. You got the social
skills and wit of a water buffalo. You're so
busy trying to score points and show everybody how
clever you are that whatever teaching ability you have--if
any--can't get out of where you have your head shoved. I
know this is like talking to three-year-olds for you but
you're supposed to be a teacher. That's your job, an
you're dogging it."
  " "You wait just a minute!" be "Shut up,"
Fernandez said. He kept his voice flat and
quiet.
  Horowitz did just that.
  "I'm an easygoing guy most of the time. That's
why you aren't on your knees observing the remains of
your most recent meal spattered all over your shoes
and the floor. I'm outa here, junior. I won't
be back.
  Lucky for both of us."
  So much for his resolve to learn this shit. Oh,
well. There were other ways. There had to be. He
leaned back from the desk, smiled, and turned to walk
away.
  Behind him, Horowitz's voice was shrill, shading
right up the scale and into soprano: "What is your
superior's name? I am going to report you for
threatening me!"
  Fernandez turned, still smiling.
  "My CO'S name is Colonel John
Howard. Give him my regards when you call. And
I didn't threaten you, sonny. If I had done
that, you'd be needing a fresh pair of pants.
Adios."
  As he left the classroom, Fernandez
shook his head. His inner voice said. Dense move,
Julio, m'boy. Scaring a little piss ant teacher
isn't going to help you learn anything.
  Yeah, yeah. But it sure felt good, didn't
it?
  He was almost sure he heard his inner voice
chuckle.
  Chapter 6
  Monday, December 20th, 10:05 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Platt strolled along the sidewalk next to the
Mall in a T-shirt and jeans, without a jacket,
pretending to ignore the hard chill and dirty,
slushy snow the plows had piled up along the curb.
  It wasn't really all that cold, right around
freezing, but he sure as hell felt it. Least the
wind wasn't blowin', and he had his steel-toed
Kevlar boots on, so his feet weren't cold.
Thing was, at six-four and 225, he didn't have
any body fat to speak of- he couldn't pinch any
on his ridged six-pack belly--so no insulation.
He worked out five times a week in a weight room
when he was where he could get to one, had a decent gym
of his own at home if he didn't feel like going'
out, and used big elastic bands or a
portable apparatus when he was on the road.
  The portable thing, which was basically just some screw
together pipes made out of titanium and spun carbon
fiber, assembled into a frame that would let you do chins
and dips. Cost a damned fortune, but it was worth
it. It didn't weigh; hardly anything, and when it was
disassembled it would fit right into a regular
suitcase. Between the bands and body weight, you could
keep the tone on your upper body for a couple of
weeks without the iron, if you needed to. Didn't
do much for the lower body, but that was what one-legged
squats and stairs were for.
  He didn't like Washington, not the town, not the
folks who lived and worked there, not the big old marble
buildings, wasn't nothin' about it he liked. But
if you walked around in the cold without a coat, people would
stare at you just like they would anywhere else--except
maybe Los Angeles.
  Platt grinned. He remembered the first time
he'd been in LA." twelve or so years back
when he'd been a green kid just off the farm outside
Marietta. He was walking down Hollywood
Boulevard, a hick tourist gaping at the gold
stars in the sidewalk, when he passed an old
lady standing in front of the Chinese Theater.
She was stark naked, smiling and waving at everybody.
That didn't seem right to him, that somebody's poor
ole granny was bare-assed on the street like that, so
Platt whipped out his phone and called the police.
Told them about this nekkid woman.
  And the bored cop on the phone said, "Yeah.
Uh-huh. Which naked woman are you calling about?"
  Which naked woman. Like there was more than one, which it
turned out, when he asked the cop, there was.
  Jesus. According to the police, somebody got naked
on the street four or five times a week in
Hollywood. Damn. Them folks had smogged-up
brains out in La-La-land.
  He looked at his watch. Just after ten. He
grinned again.
  About now, that spring-loaded time-release file would
be hitting the web hard, and it was gonna be like a ton
of fresh feces whapping into a big ole
industrial-grade fan. If that bomb down in
Louisiana didn't get their attention, this one would
sure as hell wake "em up. Gonna pop a
few strands when it landed, for damn sure.
  Ahead of him, coming in his direction, were two
black men.
  African-Americans, was that still what they
called themselves?
  Sheeit, these brothers in their wool suits and
camel-hair overcoats had probably never been
within five thousand miles of Af-ri-ka,
probably born in Mississippi or
Georgia, and came to the big city for white poon
tang and cheap dope. Way Platt figured it, you
were born in this country, you were an American,
period, and you didn't hear white people talkin" about
how they were German Americans or French
Americans or English Americans. That was all
bullshit, just one more way the spooks got uppity.
Call themselves anything they want they were still darkies,
they couldn't hide that.
  The two in suits stared at him, but they weren't
right. They were too small, too civilized.
Probably lawyers or political staff guys
who hadn't been in a fistfight since they were
piccaninnies.
  Platt grinned, and he could almost hear the jigs
thinking Look at that crazy fool white man,
running around in a shirt in the cold!
  Yeah, but he a big crazy fool white man.
Why don't we just cross on over the street here?
  A block or so later, he spotted the
one he wanted. He was a big buck, wearing jeans
and motorcycle boots, a lead jacket, and
Gargoyle shades, thought he was so cool. Amost as
big as Platt. And alone. Platt didn't mind
a couple, but wasn't stupid. A gang was not a
good idea unless you were armed, "cause they sure as
hell would be, even though guns were all kinds of
illegal in this city. All Platt had on him was
a little aluminum-handled Kershaw liner-lock, blade
just about three inches, and while he could snap it open
as fast as a: switchblade and could slice and dice
somebody into bloc mush with it, a knife wasn't the
smartest choice against three or four gang bangers
strapped with shooters. He didn't like to carry a
gun in the city unless he had a particular need for it
and he didn't want to use the knife if it was
one-on-one unless the jig pulled one.
  Or unless it turned out the boy was a karate or
judo g who knew his stuff. Most of that crap was
worthless, it did work on the street, but now and then
you'd run into one them smart enough to keep it simple,
with the skill and timing to make it work. Had to give them
that, some of them could dance real good. That would get you your
ass kicked pretty good. If that happened, he could
sneak the knife out and hide it, wait for an
opening, though a guy who knew enough of that gook fighting
shit to thump you barehanded usually knew how to deal with a
blade too. Platt had a few nasty memories
about bad guesses he'd made.
  But this guy in the leather jacket didn't look like
no Bruce Lee, and besides. Platt just wanted
to stomp somebody a little, not kill him.
  "What you starin" at, boy?"
  The big black man stopped.
  "Who you callin' boy, cracker?"
  "I don't see nobody else around, do you?
Boy?"
  Leather boy took his shades off and carefully
slipped them into his pocket. He smiled.
  Plait matched the smile. Oh, this was going to be
fun....
  Monday, December 20th, 10:20 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Alex Michaels sat at his desk, looking
over the latest computer mail to jump into his
electronic in-box. Came in every half hour, the
mail business, faster if it was flagged, and there was
always bar some fresh crisis that Net Force had
to take care of or the country would go to hell in a hand
basket.
  He scanned the latest batch and scrolled through
them: bar Somebody had stolen a couple million
dollars worth of In Bid's Super Pent wet
light chips from a plant in Aloha, Oregon.
  There was a name for you, Aloha. Town's founder must
have spent a pleasant time in Hawaii. The chips were
small enough that they could all fit neatly into a shirt
pocket without 1 caret causing the pocket to sag,
and good luck on finding those ""before they made their
way to Seoul to be restamped and installed.
  Next item... Stanley the Scammer had
opened a new VR store, once" again selling
porno. There was no product, past the handful of
public-domain teaser j-pegs and Quick Time
VR'S he used to sucker his customers in to buy.
He took their electronic money, promised
to send them a bunch of nasty stuff, then shut the
VR shop down and shifted to a new location.
  They had busted Stanley a couple of times, always
in New York City.
  Stanley would rent a cheap flophouse room with a
plug and phone, hook his computer up, run his
scam, and usually skip before the local cops got
there. While he wasn't moving across state lines
himself, his victims were from all over, so it was
Net Force's problem. And it was compounded by the fact
that most people who got ripped off buying pornography
didn't particularly want the proper authorities
to know that was what they were doing, so most of the customers
ate the loss and kept quiet about it. Explaining
to the wife that you lost a hundred dollars trying
to get a copy of the "Daria Does Detroit'
VR was some thing most men wanted to avoid. The
wife might get curious about all that time hubby was
spending in his workshop with the door closed.
  Stanley's was a classic scam, and the reason
most confidence men who were any good could continue to pull
off their games was that they appealed to the illegal or
immoral in people, made them partners in the sting. A
guy worried that he was doing some thing wrong was
hesitant to run to the police to complain when he got
cheated.
  Of course, there was always somebody who cared more about
their money than their reputation, and so some sucker always
reported Stanley.
  The main problem was that there were dozens, scores,
hundreds of small-time thieves like Stanley, and
anytime they ripped off somebody computronically across
a state line, Net Force heard about it.
  Michaels shook his head and scrolled the
proj: Here was a report of a money transfer gone
bad at a small' bank in South Dakota. Some
enterprising cyberstealer had siphoned a couple
hundred thousand into his account during a series of
fast e-shifts. The Feds' safeguards had
caught it, albeit a bit late, and the money was
quickly recovered, but they still had to catch the thief, who
had run in a hurry, and figure out how he had
managed to slip the federal wards even as long as he
had.
  It had been an inside job--the thief worked as
an auditor for the bank.
  It almost always was an inside job, given how good
the Federal Reserve kept track of money these
days.
  What else did they have here?
  "Sir," Liza broke in, over the comm.
  "I've got Don Segal from the CIA on the
hot line. He says it's an emergency!"
  Michaels smiled at his secretary's
excitement. Most emergencies didn't turn out
to be all that exciting.
  "I'll take it," he said.
  "Hello, Don." Segal was the AD for
foreign intel gathering, a nice guy whose
wife had just given birth to their : third child, a boy.
  "Alex. We've got a big problem."
  "I've got to appear before White's committee
tomorrow backslash morning" Michaels said.
  "Bad as that?"
  "I'm serious here, Alex. Somebody just posted
to the net a be list of all our sub-rosa opsin the
Euro-Asian theaters."
  "Jesus!"
  "Yeah. Every American spy in Europe,
Russia. China. Japan, Korea--all of them
have just been outed. State is crap ping big
octagonal bricks.
  A lot of the ops are in supposedly friendly
countries, our allies.
  That's going to cost us some favors and a lot of mea
culpas, but we've also got agents in places where
they'll get shot first and questioned later. We've put
out a total recall, but some of them aren't going
to get out before they get picked up."
  "Damn," Michaels said.
  "Yeah. Damn. And think about it--if he got
Europe and Asia, who's to say he didn't get
the Middle East, Africa, or South
America?"
  Michaels couldn't even speak.
  "Damn" wouldn't begin to cover it.
  "We got to find this guy, Alex."
  "Yeah."
  Chapter 7
  Monday, December 20th, 10:25 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Joanna Winthrop washed her hands, reached for the
paper towel dispenser, and looked at her reflection
in the large mirror over the sink in the women's
restroom.
  She shook her head at her doppelganger.
All of her life people had told her how beautiful
she was, men--both young and old--and more than a few
women, but she still didn't see it. She had learned
how to pretend to ignore the stares, but people still stopped
her on the street, strangers, to tell her how
attractive she was. It was flattering. It was
inter esting.
  It got in her way.
  And it was a mystery to Winthrop. She had a
sister, Diane, who truly was beautiful, and next
to whom she had always felt dowdy. Her mother at
fifty was a knockout, and her smile wrinkles and
gray hair only served to accent her
perfect bone structure and muscle tone. True,
Joanna wasn't ugly, but of the Winthrop women,
she was a distant third insofar as looks were concerned.
In her opinion.
  Of course, that wasn't what most other people seemed
to think. It had been a mixed blessing all of her
life. Sure, it had been fun to be invited to all
the parties when she'd been a kid, to always be at the
top of everybody's lists, to be popular and
sought-after. She had accepted it as the norm. never
questioned it--until she looked up one day and realized
that most people considered her nothing more than a ...
decoration. All she had to do was stand there, smile, and
be pretty, be an ornament, and that was enough for them. It
wasn't enough for her, it wasn't anything she had done
--nothing she had earned, she'd been born that way.
Who could take credit for that?
  Boys were tongue-tied in her presence, but they
lined up for the chance to be fumble-mouthed, and eventually
she realized that to most of them, she wasn't a real
person, but a trophy--to be pursued, captured,
then displayed. Looky here, guys, look what's
hanging onto my arm. Don't you wish she was yours?
  She was smart, she did well in school, stacked
up well against objective academic
standards, but nobody seemed to care about that. Being
pretty was more important than being smart
to everybody. Everybody except Joanna
Winthrop.
  Being pretty got old. Too many people couldn't
see past it--or didn't want to see past it.
  She tossed the damp paper towel into the trash can
and glanced back at the mirror again. The first boy
she'd slept with, at seventeen, had been the
president of the science club, not any of the dozens of
jocks who had chased her. He was intelligent,
soft-spoken, and handsome, in a consumptive
dying-poet kind of way. A sensitive, caring,
bright young man who respected her for her mind. That was
what she had thought.
  He'd bragged about sleeping with her to his friends the
next day. So much for his sensitivity, his caring, his
respect for her mind. It had broken her heart.
  Most of the girls she knew were jealous of her
looks, especially the pretty ones, and they were
resentful and catty. Her only real friend in school
had been Maudic Van Buren, who had been
plain, fifty pounds overweight, and addicted
to black sweat suits and running shoes. Maudie
didn't care about looks--hers,
Joanna's, anybody's--and she didn't understand
why Joanna was so upset about being popular. She'd
love to be on anybody's list for anything, she
always said.
  They'd gone off to different universities,
Winthrop to MIT, Van Buren to UCLA. But
they kept in touch. And each year, they got together for a
week at Maudie's uncle's mountain cabin
outside Boulder, Colorado.
  During the break between their junior and senior
terms, they had managed one of their best ever
conversations. Maudie had gone on a diet, started
working out, and in six months had dropped her excess
weight, tightened up, and emerged from her
sweatsuitfat-chrysalis stage as a slender--and
beautiful--butterfly.
  Over bottles of silty, home-brewed beer that
Maudie's uncle had stocked the fridge with before
he left, the two young women had talked.
  "I think I finally get it," Maudie said.
  "About the pretty thing."
  Winthrop sipped at the cloudy brew.
  "Uh-huh."
  "I mean, when I was a big tub, anybody who
bothered to spend time with me did it because of my
personality, such that it was, and it wasn't as if
I had to cary a stick to clear myself a path through my
admirers when I went out. Now, I get calls from
guys who thought I was invisible when I was a whole
helluva lot bigger than I am now. It's like I
suddenly got rich and everybody wants to be my
friend." She took a big slug of the beer.
  "I mean, the depth of a guy who is only
interested in you because of your looks is about that of a
postage stamp, isn't it? Kind of hard to feel a
lot of trust for somebody like that.
  "Oh, baby, I love you for your mind!" sounds
a little hollow when he's fumbling to unsnap your bra
strap."
  Joanna grinned around another swig of beer.
  "Tell me about it, sister."
  Maudie looked at her, as if seeing her for the
first time.
  had to deal with this your whole life. How did you
finally get past it?"
  "Who got past it? I bump into it every day I go
out. You learn to live with it."
  "I may start eating again," Maudie said.
  "Who needs the stress? Maybe it's better
to be fat and sure of my friends than skinny
and suspicious."
  "No, I think the best thing is to find somebody
who can get past your face and boobs, who doesn't
care too much about either. It's okay if they' think you
look good, that's fine, as long as they realize that
isn't all there is to you."
  "You got somebody like that?"
  "I got you, babe."
  "I mean somebody male."
  "Well, no. Not yet. But I'm ever hopeful.
He must be out there somewhere."
  "Better be careful. I might find him first."
  Both women laughed, and drank more of the malty
home brew-Winthrop's virgil cheeped, and she
pulled it from where it was clipped onto her belt.
Incoming call. The caller ID showed it was Commander
Michaels.
  It must be important if he was calling her from just
down the hall.
  "Yes, sir?"
  "We have a situation here, Joanna. If you could
come to my office, I'd appreciate it."
  "Be right there," she said.
  She discommed, stuck the virgil back on her
belt, gave herself a final glance in the
mirror, and started for the door.
  Monday, December 20th, 10:45 a.m.
  Michaels looked at the three leaders of his
computer team, as good a group of people as he'd ever worked
with. They all looked back at him with anticipation
as he finished laying out the scenario.
  "All right, folks, there it is. CIA is
justifiably upset and they'd like us to do some thing about
it. Forty years of work is going down the tubes, and
more might follow that any second.
  Let's have some risk assessment and scenario
building here. Jay, what do we have so far?"
  "I wish I could say it was good news. Boss,
but so far, zip city. I don't think we're dealing
with some kid hacker. What little I've found is a
little rougher than the Russian we just dealt with. The
guy snuck in and out, but he didn't track a lot
of mud--I haven't found his footprints yet."
  "Toni? How is he getting this stuff?"
  "Three possibilities," she said.
  "One, he's cracking his way into secret files
and stealing it; two, somebody who knows it is feeding
him--or three, he knows it himself."
  "So he could be almost anybody," Joanna said.
  "Somebody outside the walls, or
inside them."
  "How do we find him?" Michaels asked.
  They all looked morose, and Michaels knew
why. If the guy hadn't left an obvious
trail, and if he didn't come back and blunder into a
hole and break his leg or some thing, finding him would be
iffy at best.
  "All right, skip that. How do we stop him?"
  Again, Michaels already knew the answer, but he
wanted to get his team cranked up to full alert.
  Jay said, "We've already put out the word to all
federal agencies to harden systems, change
passwords, reschedule downtimes from periodic
to random, all like that."
  "Which will help if he is by himself outside and
looking in," Toni said, "but not if he's a
cleared employee."
  "Or being fed by somebody who is," Joanna
added.
  "We set some rattle cans up on real
obvious targets," Jay said.
  "Squeals, squeakers, telltales, like that, but
if he was dumb enough to blunder into those, he probably
wouldn't have gotten in in the first place."
  Michaels nodded. It wasn't their
fault, but they had to catch this guy before more people started
dying. He had to be hard here.
  "Folks, this guy, whoever he is, has caused
at least one death we know of, and maybe more, and is
likely to cause more. He's compromised our national
security, pissed off our friends and enemies alike,
and way down at the bottom of the list, he's also
making Net Force look bad.
  There are people who will use this against us, and that's a
problem, but that's the least of our worries. I want
to see some contingency plans, some operational scenarios
that will nail this bastard and get him off the net. Use
whatever Cray time you need, spend what you need
to spend, call in favors, whatever. This is
critical, priority one. We have other business,
sure, but this sits on top of the pile, understood?"
  They nodded, murmuring assent at him.
  "All right. G."
  After they had left, Michaels stood staring
into infinity. It never rained but it poured. And it was his
job to stop the rain.
  Monday, December 20th, 12:05 P.m.
  Toni stretched her legs, dropping into the left
sempok position by sliding her right foot behind and past
her left, sinking until her buttocks
touched the floor, then bouncing up and across to the
opposite side. A good silat player could
defend or attack from a seated pose, could leap
to her feet, kick, sweep, punch, or move
quickly to one side. It didn't always look pretty
but it worked, and that was the point. In silat, the
object was to get the job done, not strike
attractive poses for anybody watching.
  She looked up and saw Alex walk into the gym
carrying his bag. She raised her eyebrows in
surprise. She hadn't expected him to come in for
class today, not given all the crap going on with the
spy thing.
  "I didn't think I'd see you here," she said.
  "Me neither," he said.
  "But there's not much else I can do about things at
lunch. Everybody I'd want to talk to will be out and
I hate to interrupt somebody trying to grab a quick
bite. Besides, exercise tends to clear out the
cobwebs.
  I'll get dressed, see you in a minute."
  He headed into the locker room, and Toni went
back to limbering up. Poor Alex. He took
all this so personally, as if everything that happened was
all his fault. She fielded as much of it
as she could, tried to take care of him, but she couldn't
shortstop all of the crap that landed on his desk.
  Of course, given her choice, she would be able
to make his life a lot more relaxed away from work.
He needed somebody to take care of him, to rub his
back, to fix him a drink before dinner, to--
--screw his brains out?
  Toni smiled. Well, yes. That too. That
wasn't likely to happen.
  He was still faithful to his ex-wife, at least as
far as Toni knew. It was both an admirable and a
frustrating trait in him.
  Although she had certainly seen how he looked at
Joanna Winthrop, with her drop-dead good looks
and bedroom eyes, and that had made Toni's belly
knot in cold fear. How could you compete with a woman
who had a face that would launch a thousand ships, a
body to match, and who was as bright as a thousand-watt
bulb to boot? Hardly fair, her being beautiful and
smart.
  Toni blew out a sigh. She could hardly blame
him if he wanted to chase the beautiful
lieutenant, could she? Alex didn't feel for
Toni the way Toni felt for him. She loved
him, and even so, even so, she had stumbled.
Of course, that one night stand with Rusty had been a
big mistake. She'd repaired it as best she could
immediately after it had happened, and he was dead now, so
nobody knew about it and nobody ever would. Except
her. She knew. She was in love with her boss, but
she had slept with another man. How could she get
around that? It felt awful.
  Toni threw an elbow at an imaginary
opponent Too bad she couldn't control her love
life as easily as she could a physical attack.
Life would be much easier. Get into a fight with a
would-be partner and throw him, then he'd be yours forever.
  Too bad it wasn't that easy.
  Monday, December 20th, 2:05 P.m.
Bladensburg, Maryland
  Alone, Hughes drove to one of his safe houses
for the meeting with Platt.
  There was always business that couldn't be handled long
distance, just as in Guinea-Bissau, and one needed
places to conduct such business away from curious
eyes.
  This hideaway was a basic third-floor
single-bedroom apartment deep in the bowels of one of the
new monster apartment complexes just over the District
line, in Maryland. The complex was part of the
extended bedroom community that had come to surround the
nation's capital, accreting slowly over the years
at first, then suddenly metastasizing like some
architectural cancer, expanding in huge
pressed-wood, ticky tacky lumps and clots in
all directions. Such places were the modern
equivalent of tar-paper shacks--although probably
not as sturdy.
  Here was one of these cheap constructions, the River
View Province. Three stories high, a thousand
units strong, less than six months old, it was
a perfect place to hold clandestine meetings.
  Nobody knew their neighbors, and it was so large
nobody noticed who came and went. It was between
Colmar Manor and Bladensburg, just off SR
450, and if you were on the third floor in the unit
Platt had rented, and if you stood in the kitchen
sink and leaned out the window, you could indeed see the
north fork of the Anacostia River--for what that was
worth.
  Hughes drove a rental car, a small, plain
gray Dodge some thing or the other that looked just like a
million other cars on the road. He might as
well have been wearing a cloak of invisibility for
all he was likely to be noticed. He
wasn't likely to run into anybody he knew out
here, and he wasn't going to be recognized
by anybody except a political junkie, none
of whom would see him and Platt together in any event.
  He wended his way through the vast parking lot, got
lost when he took a wrong turn at one of the
stupidly named and numbered lanes--Catbird 17
--then finally arrived at the assigned parking slot for
his apartment.
  He pulled the car into the space and shut the motor
off. He looked around. Cold, clear, nobody
around except some big guy walking a pair of
brown and black German Shepherds on long
wind-up leashes.
  The dogs snuffled the air, looking back and forth,
keenly alert and searching for wolves to bark at. How
could you live with two dogs that big in one of these little
places? The poor guy must spend half his day
walking those monsters; otherwise they'd eat all his
furniture and wear holes in the carpet.
  Hughes liked dogs, and though he didn't have time
for one now, maybe he'd get a whole pack when
he got set up. He'd have the room, and the time
to fool with them.
  He took the elevator to the third
level, headed down the hall to the unit, opened the
door with a plastic keycard, and stepped quickly
inside.
  Plat was already there. He stood in the
kitchenette, and he had what looked like a plastic
bag full of ice cubes pressed against the right
side of his head. The big man had scratches and a
brush burn on one cheek, and the knuckles on both
hands were torn and crusted with flecks of dried
blood.
  "What the hell happened to you?"
  Platt grinned, and moved the bag of ice away
from his head.
  "I had me a little ar-gu-ment with one of our
underprivileged black brothers. He clipped me
a good one on the side of the head. You want to ice
some thing like that down pretty quick, otherwise you wind
up with a cauliflower ear.
  I'm too pretty to let myself get to lookin' like
some punch drunk ole boxer."
  Hughes stared.
  "You were supposed to keep a low profile.
  You weren't supposed to draw attention to yourself."
  "Didn't get no notice to speak of. Boy
lost a couple teeth, maybe got a
broke rib or two, he'll be just fine in a week
or three. Probably didn't even go to the
hospital.
  Shoot, any wog dentist comcd put them teeth
back in. I left before the police showed up, if
they ever did. It was just a little ole dance, nothin'
much. He moved pretty good, we had us a fine
time."
  A man who got into fights for fun. Platt was
surely crazy.
  "You got somethin' for me?" Platt said.
  Hughes removed a thick manila envelope from
his briefcase and tossed it at Platt, who
caught it one-handed.
  "There's twenty thousand in there, all in used
hundreds."
  "That ought to keep pork chops on the table for a
couple weeks," Platt said.
  "Just be sure and get that list from the NSA
satellite clerk."
  "Yeah, I'm looking forward to those codes.
I'mon be able to get HBO for free."
  Hughes shook his head.
  "You see "em runnin" around like chickens with their
heads cut off over at Langley? Bet
we get ourselves a new CIA Director real
damn quick." Platt laughed.
  "The spy list did create quite a stir," Hughes
allowed.
  "But we've got to keep the pressure up."
  "No problem. Japanese Stock Exchange
codes go out in the mornin', and the flight information for the
Hijos del Sol cartel's cocaine shipments
gets fed to their main rivals, Hermanos Morte,
tomorrow afternoon. It'll be knee-deep in blood and snow
ing the Devil's Dandruff all over Colombia
before it gets good and dark. DEA is gonna be
having kittens down there trying to figure out what's
what."
  "What about the banks?"
  "I got some stuff coming out on Wednesday.
Nothin' big, just a couple of thousand East Coast
ATM'S going wonky, givin' out beaucoup cash
to anybody who uses a smart card.
  Be real inter esting to see how much of it gets
turned back in."
  "All right. Anything else I need to know?"
  "Nope. I got me an appointment with a
masseuse this afternoon.
  She's gonna relieve my tensions
allll over."
  Hughes shook his head again. Platt didn't know
it, but he'd been under surveillance for six weeks,
by a very discreet-and very expensive--investigative
firm hired to keep tabs on him. Since Hughes
trusted the big man about as far as he could throw him
one-handed, he thought it wise to make sure Platt
wasn't playing any games he shouldn't be playing.
No doubt Hughes would hear from his hired
operatives about the street fight later. As he would
hear about the "masseuse" who came to minister
to Platt's needs.
  The woman would be black, of course. They always
were.
  Platt had availed himself of out call massage
services fourteen times in the last six weeks; had
sampled the wares of half-a-dozen prostitutes in
Guinea-Bissau during his stay there, along with a
streetwalker working the airport during his long
stopover in Cairo. All had been black women,
more than twenty of them. He did not mistreat any
of the trulls, as far as Hughes's investigators
could determine, nor was he interested in anything other
than heterosexual-style relations, no whips or
chains or funny clothes.
  Platt's racism was apparently not wide enough
to encompass females of African heritage. A
wonderful dichotomy, Platt. He would beat up
a black man in the morning then fornicate with a
black woman in the afternoon. Hypocrisy was such a
wonderful thing. The world wouldn't be able to run without it.
  "All right," Hughes said, "I'll call when
I have some thing else for you."
  "I hear you," Platt said.
  "See you later, alligator."
  8 Tuesday, December 21/, 8:25 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  The Senate meeting room was too warm by at least
five degrees, which certainly didn't help
Alex Michaels feel any less sweaty. He
sat on the hot seat at the table reserved for
victims of the inquisition--more euphemistically known
as "witnesses called to give testimony"--facing the
panel of senators, whose dais was raised high enough so
there was no doubt who was in charge. That had to be, in a
society that equated height with superiority.
Next to Michaels sat Glenn Black, one of the
FBI'S top legal eagles. The two of them,
backed by a gallery of other witnesses and interested
watchers, faced the eight senators of
Robert White's Governmental Finance Oversight
Subcommittee.
  be Net Force's budget was the only item on
today's docket, and after a pretense at politeness,
the charge, led by White, was in full attack.
  It was going to be a long day.
  Michaels hated this part of his job, sitting in
front of committees whose members might--and usually
did--range from idiotic to brilliant, but who
almost never knew what was really going on about much of
anything. No matter how smart, the senators were at
the mercy of their staff people who supplied them with
information. While some of those on various staff were
pretty sharp, they were usually limited in what they
could find out. A lot of agencies were reluctant
to be totally forth coming when called for information that might
whittle away at their budget for the next fiscal
year. What the senators got from their people was generally
on a par with reporting on the six o'clock news.
  Like a rock skipping across the surface of a
pond, only the information that was in easy view was even
touched upon, and that only briefly. The depths below were
hidden and, for all practical purposes,
inaccessible.
  Being ignorant of the truth never stopped
men like Senator White, however. And while he
wasn't the dimmest bulb of the string, his wattage was
hardly what you would call blinc ing on his best day.
  " "Commander Michaels, what exactly are you
trying to tell this committee? That Net Force
doesn't care if some man makes public information
about how to build bombs that kill young newlywed
girls?"
  "No, sir. Senator White, I did not say
that." Michaels was beginning to get pissed off, and his
reply was a little more clipped and sharp than it ought
to be. Black leaned over, put his hand over
Michaels's microphone, and whispered,
  "Take it easy, Alex, it's only
eight-thirty. We're going to be here all day.
He's just playing to C-SPAN'S cameras and the
audience at home." Michaels nodded, and under his
breath said, "He's a fool.
  "So when did that become a liability for holding
public office?"
  Michaels grinned. Glenn was right. It was going
to be a long session; no point in losing his temper.
Michaels usually kept a low profile at these
things, and that was considered a good idea. Let them
rant. When it came to the actual vote,
the sound and fury before didn't count for much. He
knew that. So... White went on: "It sounds to me
as though you're saying that Net Force has more
important fish to fry. Commander.
  And I have to tell you, sir, from where I sit, your
oil doesn't seem hot enough by half."
  He must have a new speech writer, Michaels
thought. Somebody trying to downplay his rich man
image and give him a little folksy touch. Good
luck, writer boy.
  Michaels knew that his boss, Walt Carver, the
Director of the FBI, was in the audience behind him.
So far, Carver had been able to keep White at
bay, using his network and friends from when he'd been in the
Senate, but White was getting more aggressive all
the time. At the very least, Michaels had to put on a
decent performance while on the hot seat, and not
embarrass himself or the Bureau.
  "I'm sure I don't know as much about oil as the
honorable senator from the state of Ohio does."
  Michaels hadn't really planned to say that, it just
kind of slipped out.
  There were a few chuckles. It was a small dig
at White's wealth, some of which had come from
petroleum shipping, a business run
by his grandfather.
  White frowned. Michaels held his smile in
check. Maybe it wasn't smart to pull the
lion's tail, especially when the lion had you in the
cage with it, but it sure felt good.
  "There seem to be some serious problems in your
organization," White said. He shuffled through some
hardcopy.
  "We are talking about issues of national
security, about which I will not speak in public, but these
are grave matters that Net Force is failing
to address properly." He looked at Michaels.
  "What is the point in funding an agency that
doesn't do its job. Commander Michaels?"
  "I'm sure. Senator, that you know much more about
agencies that don't do their job than I." More
laughter, but Michaels caught a warning look from
Glenn, and it was easy enough to interpret: Easy,
boy. Not smart to get into a fight with the man who
controls the microphone.
  Especially not smart to make him look bad on
TV. Michaels sighed. He had to watch his mouth.
And even if he did, it was going to be a very long
day.
  Tuesday, December 21/, 10
a.m. Dry Gulch, Arizona
  A day's ride from Black Rock was the Western
town of Dry Gulch. Jay Gridley hadn't
been disposed to spend that much time in the scenario, so
he'd logged in on the edge of town.
  Black Rock had been a bust, no sign of the
bad guys, so Gridley had moseyed on.
  It was close to high noon, and the sun hammered the
bleached road so dry that clouds of reddish-gray
dust hung in the windless air after every step his faithful
steed Buck took.
  Just before he reached the outbuildings behind the
blacksmith's shop and livery, Gridley took the
U.s. marshal badge from his Levi's pocket and
pinned it on his shirt. The silver gleamed brightly in
the hard, actinic light. He didn't want
anybody catching that mirror-shine on the trail, but
in town he wanted the official muscle the badge
offered.
  Like Black Rock, Dry Gulch looked like a
place from a Western cowboy vid, circa the
mid-1870's. The main street-and the only street
--was fairly wide, situated between rows of
false-front shops. Here, among others, were the
dust-spackled Tullis Good Eats
Cantina, Dry Gulch General Store,
Mabel's Dress Shop and Tailors,
Honigstock and Honigstock
Attorneys-at-Law, King Mortuary and
Undertakers, the Dry Gulch Bank, the La
Belle Saloon, and the sheriff's office and city
jail.
  Jay nodded and tipped his hat at an elderly
woman in a long dress crossing the street.
  "Howdy, ma'am." His, The old lady gave
him a suspicious glare and hurried on, stepping
onto the boardwalk next to the storefronts. The
walk was a foot higher than the street, and that made
sense. It probably flooded here during the
infrequent rain, and you'd want to be above all that
sudden mud.
  A couple of boys chased barrel hoops down the
dirty road, driving the flat metal rings with
short sticks, laughing. A quail offered his song in
the distance, not the usual "bobwhite" whistle, but the more
urgent "baby! baby! baby!" mating call.
  Jay reined Buck up in front of the sheriff's
office. A gray-whiskered old man sat on a
wooden chair, whittling on a big stick with a
jackknife. He looked like a miner, with a
leather vest over a grubby red-and-black checkered
shirt, tan once upon-a-time canvas pants, and
black boots.
  The saddle gave out a leathery creak as Jay
put all his weight into the left stirrup and dismounted.
He wrapped Buck's reins around the horizontal
hitching post.
  The old man spat a foul-looking brown stream
at a lizard scurrying along the boardwalk looking
no doubt for shade.
  Missed him by two feet.
  "Missed "im, damn," the old man said. He
had a voice that sounded as if it had been soaked in
a barrel of whiskey, then pickled in heavy brine,
and then left out in the desert for thirty or forty
years.
  Jay nodded at the old man and started for the door.
His boots clumped on the boardwalk.
  "You loo kin for the shurf, he ain't around," the
old man said.
  Jay stopped.
  "Where would I find him?"
  "Boot Hill!" The old man cackled until
the laugh turned into a wheeze, then a cough. He
spat more tobacco juice, but the lizard was
already well out of range.
  "Damn, missed 'im."
  "There a deputy around?"
  "Yep--planted right next to the shurf!" This
brought on another round of cackling, wheezing, and
coughing.
  Must have been sitting here praying for a stranger so
he could say that.
  When he managed to get his breath back, the old
man said, " "The Thompson Brothers came
to stick up the bank three days back. I
"spect you being" a marshal, you know who they are.
  They kilt two tellers, the shurf, and the
deppity. Shurf got one of "em, and Old
Lady Tullis blowed 'n her one off'n his horse
as they were ri din" out, cut him down with that old
12gauge coach gun she keeps behind the counter o'
her cantina.
  Course that left three of "em still ri din"
hellbent for leather, but they didn't get no money
and they ain't likely to come back to this town real
soon, nosiree Bob!"
  "What's your name, old-timer?"
  "Folks "round here call me Gabby."
  I can't imagine why.
  "Well, Gabby, I'm trackin" down some
shysters from back East. Bad hombres."
  "Ain't been no tin horns stop off here
lately," Gabby said.
  "Maybe some passin' through on the stage. Wells
Fargo office's down tother end o' town." He
pointed with the stick he'd been carving on.
  "Past the whorehouse there."
  "I'm obliged. Gabby."
  Jay walked back to Buck, mounted, and walked
the horse toward the Wells Fargo office. He
nodded again at Gabby. Of course, the old man could
be a firewall. Might be the sheriff was snoozin'
in his office, his feet propped up on his desk or
in a cell bunk. Or maybe he was havin' a
drink at the cantina or the La Belle, and
Gabby had been posted there to stop any strangers
lookin' to talk to the local law. Jay would check
out the stagecoach office, check with the telegrapher--
he saw the telegraph poles so he knew the town
was wired--and if he didn't get anything there, he
would circle back and bypass Gabby to be sure
he was tellin' the truth.
  Jay smiled. Who would have ever thought of a
firewall as a tobacco-chewing, lyin'
old fart who looked like a forty niner?
  Jay was almost to the Wells Fargo depot when a
big, swarthy black-haired man with a drooping
handlebar mustache and a pair of holstered guns
stepped out into the street in front of him.
  "Hold up there, pard."
  There was a definite air of menace about the man,
who wore a black suit over his boiled white
shirt and tie, and a derby hat instead of a cowboy
hat.
  Jay looked at the man. The guns he wore
weren't Colt .45 Peacemakers like Jay's; they
looked like Smith and Wesson Schofield
.44's, top-loaders with seven-inch barrels.
Powerful and accurate, damn fine weapons, but slow
from the holster.
  When it came to fast draws, size mattered.
Shorter was better.... Jay dismounted and led his
horse to another hitching post, this one next to the
whorehouse. Four horses were already there. There were
three large windows on the second story of the big
house, and three or four pretty women in
colorful petticoats and underwear leaned out of the open
windows to look down at the two men in the street.
Jay tipped his hat to the women.
  "Afternoon, ladies," he called out.
  The women tittered. One of them waved.
  "Come on up, Marshal!"
  Jay grinned, then turned back to face the man
in the derby hat. He moved away from his horse so
Buck wouldn't be directly behind him.
  "What can I do for you, amigo?" Jay said.
  "Fact is, I don't like lawmen. I think
mebbe you need to turn around and head back where you
came from." The big man cleared his coat back from
his holstered revolvers.
  "It would be good for your health."
  "You got a name?" Jay said.
  "Name is Bartholomew Dupree. Folks
call me Black Bart," the man said.
  Well, of course they do.
  Jay dropped his hand next to the butt of his
Colt.
  "Sorry, Bart, I got business at the stage
depot. Why don't you just stand aside and let me
pass?"
  "Can't do that. Marshal." He waggled his fingers,
loosening them.
  Definitely a firewall, and a tough one. So
Jay was on the right track; his quarry had
passed this way. And he wasn't about to give up because
there was a roadblock. Lonesome Jay Gridley
hadn't gotten to where he was by accident. He was the
best.
  "Make your play then," Jay said.
  Bart went for his guns. He was fast--but Jay was
faster.
  The .45 spoke a hair before the twin .44's,
a throaty roar, belches of thick white smoke
erupting around tongues of orange fire.
Speckles of unburned propellant stung
Jay's hand.
  He recocked the big single-action revolver, but
it wasn't necessary.
  Bart dropped to one knee, guns falling from his
suddenly nerveless fingers, then toppled to one side.
Dust splashed from the street, joining the stink of
black powder smoke.
  Jay uncocked, then holstered his gun and walked
over to where Bart lay on his side in the dirt.
Got him right between the eyes. Jay noted with
satisfaction.
  Teach you to mess with Lonesome Jay. Pard.
  He thought he heard music coming from the saloon behind
him, a kind of echoing wah-wah-wah sound
that was more synthesizer than upright piano.
  He grinned. Too many Eastwood movies when
he'd been a kid.
  A dark-haired man in a gray banker's suit
and steel-rimmed spectacles came out of the arcade
next to the house of ill repute and walked to where
Jay stood looking down at the corpse.
  "Perhaps you might have need of my services, friend?"
He tendered a business card.
  "Peter Honigstock, Attorney-at-Law,"
it said.
  Jay turned so his marshal's badge was visible
to the lawyer.
  "Nope. Just the undertaker."
  "Ah," Honigstock said.
  He turned back, nodded at the soiled doves
in the whorehouse, then headed for the stage depot. And
after that, he was gonna mosey on back to the
sheriff's office and have a few words with old Gabby.
The lyin' bastard.
  9 Tuesday, December 21/, 3:25
P.m. Washington, D.c.
  In his study at home, John Howard leaned
back in his chair, looked away from the terrain maps
of the Pacific Northwest and glanced at his
watch. He realized he was going to have to leave for the
airport to pick up Nadine's mother in about five
minutes. The idea of fighting rush hour traffic
made him be feel even more tired than he already
felt, which was plenty tired enough.
  He didn't know what the problem was, or why
he was so worn out lately.
  He couldn't get a pump working the weights, was
winded so bad after a couple miles into his usual
run he had to slow down almost to a walk.
  And he wasn't sleeping real well either--
dropping off early, tossing and turning all night,
then waking up tired and groggy. What it felt like was
overtraining, but he hadn't been working that hard, no more
than maintenance stuff. And there wasn't anything
pressing at work: some training exercises in the high
desert in Washington state coming up, and some winter
work in the snow, in the hills of West Virginia, in
mid-January. Other than that, nothing.
  Could he be getting old?
  No, he was only forty-two. He knew guys
ten years older who could run him into the ground; it
couldn't be some thing that simple.
  No? Some folks age faster than others,
don't they, Johnny boy? Remember
your twentieth high school reunion? Some of the
guys you graduated with had so much gray hair and so
many wrinkles they looked old enough to be your father.
You'd pass them on the street, you'd never know who
they were.
  Maybe your clock is running fast.... Howard
shook his head. He didn't need to be going down that
road, thank you very much. He didn't even have any
gray hair yet, and he looked better than he
had at twenty, with more muscle. Maybe he just
needed some vitamins.
  He pushed away from the chair and stood. It
wasn't going to do anybody any good sitting here
thinking about being old, not when his mother-in-law would turn
into a black volcano spewing hot bile if he was
late fetching her. That woman had a mean streak on
her, and a mouth to go with it. He'd best get moving.
  Nadine was in the kitchen, working on supper, and
Howard started in that direction, to tell her he was
fixin' to take off.
  Might as well stir up Tyrone while he was
at it.
  The boy was in his room. But instead of being glued
to the computer chair as he usually was, he was lying
on the bed, hands behind his head, staring at the
ceiling.
  "You okay, son?"
  "I'm fine."
  "About time to go pick up Nanna."
  Tyrone turned his head slightly.
  "I think I'll stay here."
  "Excuse me?"
  "I mean, I'll see Nanna when she gets
here."
  Howard stared at his son as if he had suddenly
sprouted horns and a tail. Not go to pick up his
grandmother? What happened to the boy who used to chant,
  "Nanna! Nanna!
  Nanna!" over and over, bouncing all over the car
the entire way to the airport? Who'd practically
knocked the old bat down, hugging her and dancing
around like he was demented?
  "She'll wonder where you are."
  "She's gonna be here for a week."
  It was that girl, of course. Girls turned
boys into adolescent beasts struggling to crawl out of a
mud pit of raging hormones.
  And Tyrone was officially a teenager now, becoming
quiet, sullen, withdrawn, and about as communicative
as a fence post.
  "You can have your calls forwarded--" Howard began.
  Abruptly, Tyrone sat up, then stood.
  "I'm going to the mall," he said.
  Howard felt a stab of anger.
  "Wait just a second, mister.
  You don't tell me what you're doing; you
ask'."
  Tyrone came to attention, executed a crisp,
snappy salute, and said, "Yes, sir.
Colonel Howard, sir!"
  Rage enveloped Howard. He had to restrain
himself from reaching out and slapping the boy. He was tired,
he didn't feel great, and he was about to spend an
hour and a half going to and from the airport to pick up
a woman who had never liked him and who had never
been shy about telling him he wasn't good enough for her
daughter. What he sure as hell didn't need was
lip from a kid who thought his old man was a fossil
who'd ridden to school on the back of a grass-eating
dinosaur.
  For a few seconds, Howard didn't say
anything. The rage abated just a hair as he
remembered he'd once been young and stupid himself,
sure that his parents couldn't begin to recall through their
aged fog how it had been to be young. But
even so, if he'd pulled his father's chain the way
Tyrone had just pulled his ... his
  Howard had a temper. Once, when he'd been
about six or seven, his little brother Richie had
snuck up behind him while they were playing cowboys and
Indians and clonked him on the head with the butt of his
toy revolver, to knock him out like they did on
television. It hadn't knocked him out, but it had
sure pissed him off. He'd bellowed like an
angry buffalo, He turned around, and chased
Richie across the street toward their house, fully
intending to brain the little bastard when he caught him.
  Their father, who'd been in the front yard trimming
the azalea bushes, had heard Richie screaming and
moved between him and Howard.
  "What's going on here?" his father had said.
  And Howard, eyes and mind blurred with killing
rage, had yelled some thing supremely stupid:
"Get out of my way!"
  and then swung his own toy gun at his father's legs
to move him aside.
  The next thing he remembered, he was lying on the
ground, looking up into the warm summer afternoon, wondering
how he had gotten there. The old man had cuffed him
upside the head and straightened him out
instantly.
  Howard, who had never raised a hand to Tyrone,
now knew how his father must have felt. He offered a
silent apology to the old man. Sorry, Pop.
  And Tyrone, who up until lately had been a
model son, looked down at the floor and said,
  "Sorry, Pop," echoing Howard's thoughts.
  Adolescent angst. Think back, John.
Remember how it was that nobody understood how you
felt, nobody could possibly know how you felt.
  "All right, forget it. I'll get Nanna, you
go ahead to the mall. She'll understand."
  He saw the boy take it in, think about it.
Loyalty to his grandmother warred with his infatuation for his
girlfriend.
  This time, loyalty won.
  "No, I'll go with you to the airport. If I
don't, Nanna will blame you." He grinned.
  Howard returned the grin. There Tyrone was.
Back, for at least a moment.
  Nadine, with the instincts of a wife and mother sensing
trouble, drifted into the doorway.
  "Hey, you two. Everything okay back here?"
  Howard turned to look at his wife, still the most
beautiful woman he'd ever known, more so after
fifteen years of marriage.
  "Everything is just fine," he said.
  At least for now, it was. But Tyrone was only
thirteen. They had six more years of this to look forward
to.
  Lord, Lord.
  Tuesday, December 21/, 8:15 p.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Naked, Platt lay on his stomach on the bed in
the little hotel on C Street, not far from the
Library of Congress. A woman, who was also
naked, straddled the small of his back, leaning into her
hands, pushing and digging into the muscles of his aeck and
shoulders, the traps and delts. Her thighs and
crotch felt warm against his skin.
  , She actually gave a pretty good massage,
which was unusual for out call girls. Most of "em
just gave a few half-assed Swipes with their
fingertips, maybe a little scratchy-scratch with their
nails, but this girl was putting some thing into it. He'd
give her a good tip for that. She was tall, a little
thin, no tits, but a great ass. And her hands were a
lot stronger than you'd guess by lookin" at her.
  "Damn, honey, you hard as a rock," she said,
pressing hard with her thumbs into the trigger
points just under the scapulas.
  it hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt.
  "You ain't seen the half of it, baby," he said.
  "Wait till I roll over."
  She laughed.
  "Yeah, I noticed you pretty big, for a white
boy." She wasn't talking about his muscles.
  "What line of work you in, Mr. Platt?"
  "I'm an expediter," he said.
  "For a big importst export business.
  I travel a lot. Get to travel all over
the world, make things happen."
  "That a fact? I always wanted to go overseas.
Never been out of the country. I always wanted to go
to Japan."
  Her hands felt damn good on his neck as she
kneaded the tight muscles there.
  "Uh-huh," he said.
  "You don't want to go back to Africa? See
your homeland?"
  "Sheeit, what I want to do that for? There's
plenty of black folks in this country."
  He laughed. He liked her.
  "Maybe next time I get to Japan, I'll
bring you back a souvenir."
  "I'd like that. A nice red silk kimono."
  Platt rolled over. She lifted a little, then
settled back down over his legs when he got
turned. He grinned at her.
  "One red silk kee-moan-oh, no problem."
  "My, would you look at that?" she said. She
flashed even, white teeth, bright against her
chocolate skin.
  "What do we have here?" She reached down. He
slid his hands around under her butt and lifted her
slightly. Hel-looo, baby!"
  Tuesday, December 21/, 8:15 P.m.
Washington, D.c.
  In his office, Hughes finished a synopsis of
what he wanted White to say at his meeting with the
vice president tomorrow before White went back
to Ohio for the holidays.
  There was a knock at the door. Speak of the
devil.
  "Bob?"
  "I thought I'd find you still here," White said.
He sauntered into the office and put a small
package onto the desk.
  "Christmas present. You didn't think I'd
forget, did you?"
  Hughes smiled.
  "Now how could I think that. Bob? I wrote the
reminder in your day log myself."
  Both men laughed.
  Hughes reached into the drawer, pulled out a
Christmas- wrapped box, and handed it to White. It
was hard to buy stuff for a millionaire who bought
himself whatever he fancied, but Hughes always worked
to find some thing unusual. And he knew White
loved being surprised.
  "Can I open it?" Just like a kid.
  "Sure."
  Eagerly, the senator ripped off the green and red
foil and pulled the lid from the box. He removed
what looked like a small leather candy dish mounted on
a wooden stand from the box. Inside the leathery cup was
a game info ball, an iridescent, silvery
orb the size of a marble, made to be slipped into a
SonySega Play Station, a device that White
had owned since the first ones had come out. He looked
at Hughes and raised one eyebrow.
  "That's the beta-test full-VR version of
DinoWarz II," Hughes said.
  "Won't be generally available for a few more
months."
  "Really? Wow, thanks, Tom! How'd you get
it?"
  "I have a few contacts in the right places."
  White rolled the ball in his fingers, and Hughes
could see he was itching to run home and play the
game. The senator looked at the container.
  "This a candy dish? Looks unusual."
  "It's a plastic-coated bull scrotum,"
Hughes said.
  "What? You're kidding."
  "Nope. I can think of a few people you might want
to offer peppermints to from it."
  White laughed and shook his head.
  "Well, I'll be taking the family jet home
in the morning You need a ride anywhere?"
  "Nope. I'm hanging around here, finally be able
to get some work done with you out of the way."
  They laughed again.
  "Guess I better open my present now,"
Hughes said.
  He did so. Inside was a carved ivory
figurine, seven or eight inches long, a woman
stretched out, lying on her side, propped on one
elbow.
  Hughes knew what it was. It was a
Chinese a medical doll. Once upon a time in
China, women of breeding never let any man but their
husbands see them unclad, sometimes not even their
husbands. When they needed to see the doctor, they
took the doll with them. When the doctor asked where the
pain was, they showed him on the figurine, and he
made his diagnosis based on that and symptoms,
without ever seeing or touching his patient's body.
Knowing White, Hughes figured this statuette was
probably worth a fortune. The wort was
exquisite.
  Hughes made appropriate noises.
  "It's beautiful. Bob.
  Thank you."
  "Well, it isn't a bull scrotum, but it's
the best I could do.
  It belonged to some emperor's wife or concubine,
I forget which.
  Bertha's got the documentation on it. She'll
give it to you after we get back from the holidays."
  "I appreciate it, I truly do. Working with you
has been so beneficial to me, I can't begin
to tell you how much."
  That was surely the truth.
  "I couldn't have ever gotten the job without
you, Tom.
  Merry Christmas."
  "Merry Christmas," Hughes said. And with any
luck at all, the New Year will be my best ever--
though it might be your worst, when the shit hits the
fan....
  Chapter 10
  Wednesday, December 22nd, 8:25 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Alex Michaels wanted to keep the staff
meeting short so they could get back to their desks.
With Christmas only a few days away, not much work
was getting done as everybody geared up to go off for the
holidays. The office didn't shut down, of
course, there was always a skeleton staff, but
anybody not stuck with that duty who wanted to take
off early could do so.
  He looked around the conference room, at his
primary players: Toni, Jay, Howard, and
Joanna Winthrop. They were all senior enough,
except for Joanna, and she was working out of Howard's
command, so they didn't have to stick around here for
Christmas.
  "Okay, that pretty much covers the basics. You
all know this poster business is critical,
so take your flat screens and if you get any bright
ideas, log them in for the rest of us."
  He already knew their plans, and no matter where
they were, they'd keep grinding away at this thing.
Toni was going home to the Bronx for a week's
visit with her family. She'd be back next
Wednesday. Jay's parents were visiting
relatives in Thailand, so he was hanging around the
city and would probably spend much of the time here at
HQ. Howard had relatives visiting. He'd be
in town. Joanna was going to meet an old friend at
a mountain cabin in Colorado. She'd be back
Monday. And Michaels was going to Boise to see
Susie.
  And Megan too.
  There was a case of mixed emotions.
  "Anybody got anything new?" Jay said,
"Well, I came across some inter esting statistics
in the new Murray Morbidity and Mortality
Report. According to the MMMR, life expectancy
for men in Washington, D.c., is the lowest of any
metropolitan area in the country. In fact, it's
lower than any rural area too, except for a
couple of counties in South Dakota.
Sixty-three years. Whereas if you live
in Cache County, Utah, you can expect to live
fifteen years longer, a ripe old
seventy-eight. And you can add eight or ten years
to both those numbers if you're a woman."
  "I bet it feels a lot longer in
Washington," Howard said.
  "I don't know," Toni said.
  "Have you ever been in Utah?"
  "Yeah," Jay said.
  "I think maybe they all get too bored
to die."
  Michaels smiled.
  "Fascinating. Anything that might relate to what
we do in this agency.
  Jay?"
  "Nope. I got through the poster's fire walls,
but the trail petered out, a dead-end in a box
canyon. I haven't been able to draw a bead on
him since."
  "Yee-haw," Joanna said quietly.
  "Excuse me?" Alex asked.
  "Private joke," she said.
  "Sorry."
  "All right. That's it. If one of you catches the
poster before we take off for the holiday,
I'd bet big that Santa Claus will put some thing
nice in your stocking, a Presidential Commendation
at the least." backslash "Oh, boy," Jay said.
  "A new floor for my parakeet's cage." "
"I didn't know you had a parakeet," Toni said.
bar "I don't, but for that, I'd get one."
  "Somebody has to represent the agency at the
LAW. convention in Kona on the Big Island in
February," Michaels said.
  "Me! Me!" Jay said.
  "Send me!"
  "Catch us a crook and you can work on your tan."
  Joanna chuckled.
  "What's funny?" Jay asked.
  "Nothing. I'm just imagining myself on that black
sand beach I've heard about."
  "Don't pack your bikini just yet," Jay said.
  "No? Well, I wouldn't start buying
Coppertone in bulk either, if I were you."
  "I think that's got it," Michaels said.
  "Back to work."
  As the meeting broke up. Sergeant Julio
Fernandez arrived.
  He nodded at Michaels, and moved to talk
to Colonel Howard, where the senior officer
stood talking to Lieutenant Winthrop.
  "Colonel. Lieutenant"
  "Sarge," Howard said.
  Michaels caught a quick glimmer of some thing on
Fernandez's face when he looked at the young
woman. Well. He could understand how the sergeant
might appreciate Winthrop.
  Back at their offices, Toni approached
Alex.
  "Got a minute?"
  "Sure."
  In his office, she produced a small
package, wrapped and decorated with a red bow.
  "Merry Christmas," she said.
  "Thank you. Can I open it now?"
  "Nope. Got to wait until Susie opens
her gifts. You'll want Bus then."
  "Ah, intrigue. All right, I'll wait.
Here, I got you a little something." He opened his
desk drawer and removed a flat box, this one
wrapped in the hardcopy Sunday cartoon section
of the Arlington newspaper. She smiled at the
wrapping, hefted it.
  "Book?"
  "Go ahead and open it."
  She did, carefully peeling the tape from the edges
and unfolding the colorful newsprint.
  "You going to save the paper, Toni?"
  "Sorry. Old habit." She got to the book.
  "Oh, wow."
  It was a 1972 first edition of Dorin P.
Draeger's The Weapons and Fighting Arts of
Indonesia.
  "Where did you find this? It's a classic." She
flipped through the pages, again with care, looking at the
black-and white illustrations.
  "I've never seen an original, only the on
demand-print and CD versions."
  He shrugged.
  "Picked it up somewhere. I thought you might like it."
  Yes, he had "picked it up somewhere," all right.
He'd had a book seeker service hunting for six
weeks for the thing, and it had cost him a week's
salary when they'd found it. Oh, well. He
didn't spend a lot of money. Outside of his
living costs and Susie's child support, his only
hobby was the restoration of old cars. His current
project was a Plymouth Prowler. That wasn't
cheap, but when he finally finished and sold the car,
he'd get all he'd spent back, and then
some. The book had made a dent in his bank account,
but Toni deserved it. He couldn't do his job without
her. And the look on her face when she saw the thing was
worth a lot too. He smiled.
  Toni was about to close the book when she got to the
title page.
  "Hey, it's autographed!"
  "Oh, really? Huh. How about that?" That
autograph had jacked the price of the book up a
few hundred dollars.
  Impulsively, she hugged him.
  God, she felt good, pressed against him that way.
She could stay there all day.... Toni pulled
away and gave him a big grin.
  "Thanks. My gift is nothing compared to this. You
shouldn't have."
  He shrugged.
  "Hey, a big meteor could fall on me while
I'm taking the trash out tomorrow and what good would money
be? I really appreciate all you do around here,
Toni."
  There was a silence that started to get awkward. He
said, "So, you're going home to see your folks?"
  "Yes. There'll be a big gathering, all my
brothers and sisters-in-law, and nieces and
nephews, the uncles and aunts.
  Regular army of relatives." She paused.
  "I hope your visit with Susie goes okay."
  "Yeah."
  "Well, I'd better get back to work.
Thanks again for the book, Alex."
  "You're welcome."
  Thursday, December 23rd, 6:45 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Joanna Winthrop took advantage of the
take-off-work-early offer from Commander Michaels
to book a deadhead seat on an early military
jet leaving from Quantico and stopping off in Denver
on its way to Alaska. When she mentioned it
to Colonel Howard, Sarge Fernandez had offered
to take her to the flight.
  "I can catch a cab," she'd said.
  "No problem. Loot, I'm heading out that way
anyhow, got some errands to run. I'll swing by and
pick you up."
  It did make it easier for her.
  "Sure."
  So now she rode in the front seat of
Fernandez's personal car, a slate-gray
seventeen-year-old Volvo sedan. She
smiled.
  "Funny, I'd have figured you for a little racier
ride than this."
  "It gets me there. Slow and steady. And it
doesn't spend much time in the shop."
  "Well, I appreciate the lift." " "No
problem."
  They rode in silence for a few minutes, but she was
aware of him giving her small peripheral glances.
Well. He was a man, and she knew that look.
  He said, "You mind if I ask you some thing
personal. Lieutenant?"
  Oh, Jesus, here it comes, she thought. He's
going to hit on me.
  She'd had plenty of practice shutting male
attention down when she wanted to. Although Fernandez
had a certain Latin charm about him, it wouldn't be a
good idea, a relationship.
  Even though the ranks were more quasi- than
real-military in Net Force, and there wasn't a
specific prohibition against fraternization as in the
Regular Army, there was a difference in their
respective statuses. So she could let him down
gently.
  "Fire away."
  "Has working with computers always been easy for you?"
  Hmm. That wasn't what she expected.
  "Excuse me?"
  "I've watched you. You're good at it, that goes
without saying, but you make it look easy. I was just
wondering if it was. Easy, I mean."
  She thought about it for a second. She didn't
want to sound egotistical, but the truth?
  "Yeah. I guess it does come without a lot of
effort for me. Always has. I had a kind of affinity
for it."
  He shook his head.
  "I can strip a heavy machine gun and put it
back together in the dark in a pouring rain, but when it
comes to bits and bytes, I'm a tech no-dweeb."
  She laughed. Men so seldom admitted to their
shortcomings, it was refreshing to hear.
  "I mean, I've tried to learn, but I have this
block, the information just bounces off, it doesn't
sink in. I tried a class recently, but I had
a... personality conflict with the instructor.
  I think he just recognized that I was as dumb as
dirt and would never get it."
  "A thing can be told simply if the teller
understands it properly."
  "Excuse me?"
  "George Turner, a writer I admired in
college. You know how a computer works, basic
theory?"
  "Yeah. Well, actually ... no."
  "Okay. Let's say you're on guard duty,
you're watching a door. You open it when somebody with the
right password comes by, you close it if they don't
have the password. You follow that?"
  "Sure."
  "Now you know how computers work. A door is open
or it's closed. A switch is on or it is off.
The answer is yes or no when somebody gets to the
place you're standing guard. It happens fast, all
the switching, but that's the base, and everything else
links to that."
  "No shit? Sorry, I mean--"
  "No shit," she said.
  "Damn. How come nobody ever put it that way
before?"
  "Because you've run into crummy teachers before. A good
teacher uses terms a student can relate to, and she
takes the time to learn what those terms are. When I
was in college, I took a psych course. There was
a story they told, about biased IQ
tests for children. You know, you show a picture of a cup,
and you show a saucer, a table, and a car, then you ask,
what does the cup go with?"
  "Yeah?"
  "So in middle- and upper-class America, the
kids with working brains all pick the saucer, because
cups and saucers go together, right?"
  "Right."
  "But in the poor parts of town, cups might go with
tables, because they don't have saucers. And among kids
from homeless families, cup might go with car, because
that's where the family lives."
  "Economic bias," Fernandez said.
  She nodded. He wasn't a dummy, no matter
what he said.
  "Exactly. Same thing holds true for
racial or religious or other kinds of
cultural factors. So then everybody thinks these
kids are stupid, and so they get a different level
of teaching, when the real problem is on the other end, in
the minds of the educators. Because they didn't take
into account the students' knowledge as well as their own."
  "I get it."
  "There's nothing wrong with your mind. All you need
is a teacher who can put things in terms you
already know how to relate to. You're a soldier,
find a soldier who knows computers, you can learn from
him."
  "Or her," Fernandez said.
  "Or her." She looked at him.
  "Are you asking me to teach you?"
  "I would be ever so grateful if you would," he said.
Kept a straight face while saying it too.
  She smiled.
  "This isn't some ploy to get next to me because you
think I'm beautiful, is it, Fernandez?"
  "No, ma'am. You have knowledge I don't have, and I'd
like very much to learn it. This is part of my job and I'm
not good at it. That bothers me. I don't need to be
Einstein, but I do want to understand as much of it as I
need to understand.
  I mean, yeah, you are beautiful, but what's more
important here is that you're smart."
  She blinked and looked at Fernandez in a new
light. My God, if he was telling the truth, he
admired her for her mind.
  "We might be able to work some thing out. Come see me
when the holidays are over."
  "Yes, ma'am."
  "And bag that. Call me Joanna."
  "I'll answer to just about anything, but my friends
call me Sarge or Julio."
  "Julio it is."
  She grinned again. Ooh, wait until Maudie
hears about this!
  Chapter 11
  Thursday, December 23rd, 4:10 p.m. In
the air over southern Ohio
  "Would you care for some thing to drink, sir?"
  Alex Michaels looked up from the in-flight
magazine, from an article on the construction of the
world's tallest building, the new twin towers in
Sri Lanka. The new structure would be, when
finished, seventy feet taller than the second
tallest building--which was also in Sri Lanka.
  "Coke?" he said.
  "Yes, sir." The flight attendant handed him
a plastic cup of ice and one of the new
biodegradable plastic cans of Coke.
  The can would keep for ten years, as long as it
wasn't opened, but once fresh air hit the
inside, the plastic would start to degrade. In nine
months, it would be a powdery, nontoxic residue
that would completely dissolve under the first rain that hit
it. Throw the can on the ground, and in a year
it would be gone.
  The flight attendant moved to the next row of
seats. Michaels poured the soft drink into his
cup, then sat and watched it fizz and foam. He was
in business class, the equipment was one of the big
Boeing 777's, and he sat next to the wing door
on the starboard side. He liked to get that seat when
he could, next to the exit door. It always seemed that
there was a little more room in the exit row, although that might
have been his imagination. The main thing was, if there was
trouble on the plane, he wanted to be in a position
to do some thing.
  He'd started asking for the exit row after a flight
to Los Angeles when he'd seen an elderly man
who might have weighed a hundred pounds sitting next
to an emergency door.
  Yeah, the guy might get a burst of adrenaline
under stress, so he could pop that door right open if the
wheels collapsed on landing or some such, but
Michaels didn't want to risk his life and the
lives of the other passengers on that. Maybe the old
guy would get a burst blood vessel instead. Then
again, maybe the old guy was like Toni's silat
teacher, and there were hidden strengths there. Michaels
knew he shouldn't be so judgmental.
  But still, better a fairly strong forty-year-old
GS employee in front of that door than a
seventy-year-old lightweight.
  Better odds for all concerned.
  Of course, he'd rather fly first class too. A
couple of times, he had gotten agency upgrades
on official business, and it was more comfortable, but he
could never justify the expense when it came
to personal flights. The way he figured it, the
back of the plane got there at the same time as the
front did, all things going as planned, and to cough
up several hundred dollars extra for cloth
napkins and complimentary champagne seemed
excessive.
  There was enough time for an in-flight movie before they
got to Denver, where Michaels had to switch planes
for Boise.
  The airlines had gotten a lot better about not
losing luggage, but he wasn't taking any chances.
He had his single soft-side roller tucked into the
overhead compartment, along with Susie's main
Christmas gift, a bandstvox synthesizer.
Apparently she had discovered a kind of music
called tech nome to-funk, which was all the rage
among the kids.
  Michaels tastes ran to jazz fusion, classic
rock, 40's big band, or even longhaired
classical. He hadn't followed new-wave pop
stuff for years.
  He knew he was getting old when he read the
news, saw the Billboard Top Ten list, and
realized he didn't recognize the names of any
of the songs, or the artists who performed them.
  Who could take seriously a song called
  "Mama Mustache Mama Sister," by somebody
who called himself
"HeeBeeJeeBeeDeeBeeDoo?"
  Or
  "Bunk Bunk!" by
  "DogDurt"?
  With the synthesizer, Susie could supposedly
program herself into any group, then hear and see herself
performing on stage with them. It seemed like an advanced
toy for somebody her age, but it was what she wanted.
It had been a bitch to find one too. Apparently
every other kid in the country had to have one of the things.
Fortunately, Toni had found one, so he could be a
hero to his daughter.
  Toni did that a lot, made him look good.
  He looked at the screen built into the
back of the seat in front of him, a screen that could be
angled for viewing so that even if the person sitting in
that row decided to lean back all the way, you could still
see it. No. He didn't feel like watching a
movie, playing video VR, or monitoring the
progress of his flight via a little animation of a
jet flying along over a map.
  It was nice just to sit with a magazine in his lap and
gaze out at the cold ground below. Fortunately, the
weather was clear, and the Ohio landscape below, much of it
covered with snow, sparkled white in the setting sun.
  It was going to be midnight. East Coast time,
when he landed in Boise, assuming he made his
connection and the flight went as scheduled. Ten p.m. in
that part of Idaho. He had a rental car reserved
at the airport, and a room booked at the Holiday
Inn, not far from the house where his daughter and ex-wife
lived. Where they had once all lived together.
  There was a spare bedroom in the big old clunky
two-story house, two if you counted the sewing
room, but Megan hadn't offered and he hadn't
asked. The armistice between Alex and his ex was
uneasy. She was a sniper, quick to shoot and too
accurate for his comfort. Better to have a safe house
where he could hole up and gather his forces for the
battle. There was a lot to be said for a nice quiet
Holiday Inn, with room service and a double lock
on the door.
  He wondered how many other people thought about holidays
in such a fashion? As an ugly guerrilla war
to be waged quick and dirty and retreated from as soon as
possible? Why did unhappy families gather,
if it made them so miserable? A lot of people he
knew would just as soon cancel the big holidays and
keep their families at a safe distance.... In his
case, however, the answer was easy: Susie.
Whatever else, she needed to know she had a mother and father
who both loved her and wanted her to be happy, even
if they couldn't be happy with each other.
  Certainly this wasn't some thing he had ever foreseen
for himself when he'd been courting Megan, when they'd
been young, in love, with the world by the tail, so full of
themselves they could never envision failing at anything, much
less their marriage. Ah, the arrogance of youth, when
you knew everything, and didn't care who knew you
knew everything, since you were willing to tell them all
about it at great length if they blinked at you.
  Boy, that had been a long time ago in a galaxy
far, far away.... Maybe he could get some
sleep. Just lean over against that cool
plastic window with one of the little puffy pillows, and
turn it all off.
  There was an idea that had much appeal.
  Thursday, December 23rd, 5:15 P.m.
Washington, D.c.
  The car was small, black, and looked like an old
Fiat The driver heard the siren behind him and pulled
over, next to a row of small shops that appeared
to be closed. There was a shoe store with a Nike
swoosh on the glass, and an electronics store
with small television sets in the window. The words
on the storefronts looked to be German or
Austrian, maybe Croat.
  The Fiat's door opened and a smallish man in
a long, dark coat stepped out of the car. He had his
hands up next to his shoulders, to show he was unarmed.
The sun was bright, but the street seemed deserted
save for him.
  A pair of policemen approached the Fiat,
pistols drawn. The uniforms they wore had that
Middle European look, odd shaped billed
caps with checkering on the front, leather jackets
over dark blue shirts and ties, and dark blue
trousers with a yellow seam-stripe on the outside of the
legs. One of the cops moved to stand in
front of the small man in the long coat; the other
cop checked out the car.
  The first cop gestured with the gun and said some thing. The
small man turned around and put his hands on top
of the Fiat, and the cop patted him down. No
weapons.
  The second cop talked into a small comm, but
kept his pistol pointed in the Fiat driver's
direction. Second cop listened to the comm for a
moment. He nodded at the first cop, and said some thing.
  The small man leaning against the car shoved away from
it, swung his elbow up, hitting the cop behind him in
the face, and knocking him down.
  The small man ran. The second cop darted
around the front of the Fiat, raised his pistol, and
fired--four, five, six times. The gun belched
orange fire and white smoke, and the empty shells
showered the car. The brass hulls glinted in the bright
sunshine like gold coins as they bounced and dropped
to the sidewalk.
  The small running man fell, face-down on the
street. He moved his arms and legs, as if
spastically trying to swim on the concrete.
  The cop who had been elbowed in the nose
recovered. He moved to where the small man
lay on the street. He pointed his pistol at the
back of the downed man's head. He fired.
  The little man spasmed one more time, then went limp.
  Thomas Hughes blew out a big sigh, then
froze the recording's image. The two cops
stood over the dead man and there was no doubt he was
dead, a bullet to the back of the head from three feet
away sure as hell did that.
  Man. They just executed that poor sucker. And
all of it caught on the surveillance cam mounted
on the dashboard of the police car.
  Hughes leaned back in his chair and looked at the
frozen holoprojection.
  He felt a flash of regret, but he buried
it. The man was a spy, he had known there were risks.
He'd had to know what might happen to him if he
got caught.
  Of course, he probably hadn't thought his name
would be stolen from a top-secret list nobody was
supposed to have access to and posted to the net so
anybody who bothered to look would know who he was.
  Hughes had gotten the recording from one of his
spies actually one working for Platt. And it was
brutal to watch, a man getting murdered like that. It
turned your stomach, made you queasy.
  But there it was. You couldn't make an omelette
without breaking a few eggs. It was necessary. What were a
few spies, easily replaced, compared to the
long-range goals Hughes had in mind? Not much,
not really. The end in this case surely justified the
means. People died every day. A handful more wouldn't make
a difference in the grand scheme of things.
  The new Quayle addition to the Senate office
building where White had his offices was nearly
empty. Not a lot of people were working at this hour on the
day before Christmas Eve. Hughes assumed that the
other Senate office buildings the Russell, the
Dirkson, the Hart were also mostly deserted, save
for security and cleaning personnel, with maybe a
few young staff members trying to make points while
everybody else was off for the holidays. Not much
official work got done from early December on
into the new year, but a lot of groundwork did get
laid.
  White had once had offices in the Hart
Building, back when they'd still had that ugly
modern-art sculpture of cut-out metal,
Mountains and Clouds or some such, in the atrium.
The staff on the upper floors had spent a lot of
time sailing paper airplanes down to land
on top of the sculpture. They'd had contests to see
who could get the most to hit and stay.
  He sighed again. The stakes were high, and the cards
had to be played correctly or the game would be
lost. It was a pity about this agent, and about the others
who would be imprisoned or maybe killed, but there was
no way around it. There was a lot of inertia
to overcome to get some thing as big as he had in mind
to move--a lot. This spy was the first, but he wouldn't
be the last who had to die for Hughes's plan to go
forward. It was too bad, but that was how it was. In this
world, you could be a hunter or the hunted, and sheep were
prey for wolves, plain and simple. It was the first
law of the jungle-the strong survive at the expense
of the weak.
  And Thomas Hughes was a survivor.
  He saved the recording into a file for White
to look at later, then started to wave the computer off.
He'd done enough here for the day.
  Time to go home, order in some takeout, and have a
glass of wine and a nice hot bath. Maybe he'd
lift a glass to the poor operatives who had
to suffer for his scheme. Why not? It wouldn't cost him
anything.
  His comm cheeped. It was the secret
number, rerouted through some thing like sixteen
satellite bounces so it couldn't be traced to him.
  He checked the scrambler to be sure it was on,
even though it was automatic on this number, and
clicked on the voxaltering circuit, picking Old
Lady for the latter. Whoever was on the other end would
hear what sounded like a ninety-year old woman
talking.
  "Hello?" he said.
  There was silence for a moment.
  "Who's there?" Hughes said.
  "I have some information concerning certain... shipments."
  Hughes knew who it was. A mid-level
manager at the National Security Agency, a
man with top secret clearance, but a man who had a
secret gambling problem and was deep in the hole
to his bookies. His voice was altered too.
Hughes had been waiting for the man to come up with some
thing for him.
  The gambler didn't know who he was speaking to.
  "Go on."
  "It concerns some volatile ... minerals."
  "I'm still listening."
  "I need fifty thousand."
  Hughes could almost hear the man sweating.
  "How much of the ... volatile substance are we
talking about?"
  "Nineteen pounds. In four packages. On the
same day."
  Hughes considered that in amazement for a moment.
Nineteen pounds of weapons-grade plutonium was
being moved at the same time? Certainly not by the same
agency inside the U.s." even broken into that many
sub-critical-mass chunks.
  The NRC and NSA would have kittens if somebody
did some thing that stupid. But he had to check.
  "This is domestic movement?"
  "Of course not. Two are, two are foreign.
Six pounds, seven pounds, four, and two."
  "When?"
  "In two days. You want the particulars or
not?"
  "Fifty thousand, you said."
  "Yes. In cash. Nothing bigger than a
hundred."
  "All right. I'll have somebody meet you at the
place, tonight, nine p.m. Bring the information."
  Hughes broke the connection. He hadn't
planned to escalate things quite this much, this fast, but when
some thing like this fell into your lap, you grabbed
it and ran with it.
  He tapped his comm. Platt answered right away.
  "Yeah?"
  "Swing by here." Platt said, "When?"
  "Now."
  He would give Platt the money and send him
to fetch the information.
  Anybody with access to some explosives, a good
metal shop, and some electronics from Radio
Shack could build an atomic bomb, but without the
right fissionable material it was nothing more than a
mildly dangerous science project. There were a
lot of groups out there who would pay millions to get
their hands on nineteen pounds of weapons grade
plutonium. You didn't need that much to build yourself
a nice and dirty little nuclear bomb. It would
make a helluva bang when you set it off.
  Now he could really give Net Force some thing
to think about.
  Chapter 12
  Friday, December 24th, 11:00 a.m. The
Bronx, New York
  Toni climbed the familiar brownstone steps,
steps that she had swept clean daily when she had
been studying with Gum De Beers.
Somebody else must be doing the job now, for there was
no snow or ice or dirt on them. The
chicken-wire glass doors were closed and locked,
but Toni still carried her well worn key. She
opened the door and stepped into the building.
  The hall was marginally warmer than it was outside.
  Guru's apartment was the third one on the left.
As she reached up to knock, the old woman's
gravel-and-smoke voice came from within: "Not
locked, come in."
  Toni grinned. Before she even knocked. Guru
knew she was there. She was sure the woman was
psychic.
  Inside, the place looked as she remembered it
from last year, and from her childhood. The old green
couch with the needlepoint doily here, the overstuffed red
plush chair with its needlepoint there, the short
coffee table with one leg propped on an old
Stephen King novel, all were in their usual
places.
  Guru was in the kitchen, crushing coffee beans in
the little hand-powered grinder she had brought with her sixty
years ago from Jakarta. She cranked the handle
slowly and the smell of the beans, shipped to her by a
distant relative who still lived in the
highlands of Central Java, was sharp, rich, and
earthy.
  The two women faced each other. Toni pressed
her hands together in front of her face and moved them
down in front of her heart in a bow, and Guru
returned the greeting.
  Then they hugged.
  At eighty-some thing years old. Guru was still
brick-shaped and solidly built, but frailer and
slower than she had been. As always, her clean and
carefully set white hair smelled slightly of
ginger, from the shampoo she used.
  "Welcome home, Tunangannya," Guru
said.
  Toni smiled. Best Girl, what Guru had
called her almost since they'd met.
  "Coffee in a minute." Guru dumped the
freshly ground coffee into a brown-paper cone and
set it into the stainless steel basket over the carafe,
then poured hot water from a cast iron kettle that
had been heating on the tiny four-burner stove.
  The smell was delightful, almost overwhelming.
  Guru waited until most of the water filtered
through, then added a bit more. She repeated this until the
kettle was empty.
  She took two plain white china mugs from the
doorless wooden cabinet over the stove, then poured
fresh coffee into them. There was no offer of cream or
sugar. You could drink it any way you wanted at
Guru's--as long as it was black.
  Adulterating coffee was, according to her way of
thinking, very nearly a sin of some kind. Guru's
religious beliefs were an amalgam of Hindu,
Moslem, and Christian, and difficult to follow
at best.
  Wordlessly, the two women moved into the living
room.
  Guru took the chair, Toni sat on the couch.
Still without speaking, they took sips of the hot coffee.
  Guru made the best coffee Toni had ever
tasted. In fact, it spoiled her for drinking the
stuff anywhere else. If Starbucks could get its
hands on Guru, they would triple their business.
  "S. How is life in Washington? Has your
young man yet seen the light?"
  "Not yet. Grandmother."
  Guru sipped her coffee and nodded.
  "He will. All men are slow, some slower than
others."
  "I wish I could be sure of that."
  " "Not in this life, child. But if he fails
to notice you properly, he does not deserve you."
  They drank more coffee. When they were almost done,
Guru said, "I think it is time to tell you a
story. About my people."
  Toni nodded but didn't speak. Guru had
taught her a lot using this method, telling her
Javanese tales and legends.
  "My father's father's father came from Holland on a
sailing ship in 1835. He came to work as an
overseer on a plantation that raised indigo and
coffee and sugarcane. Back then, the country was not
called Indonesia. The pale men called the
islands as a whole the Dutch East Indies, or
sometimes, the Spice Islands. To my people, our island
was Java."
  Guru held up her empty cup. Toni
stood, took both cups, went to the kitchen, and
refilled them. Guru kept talking.
  "My great-grandfather went to work on the farm, just
outside of Jakarta, which had not nearly so many people then
as it does now. He was married, with his wife and two
children left behind in the country of his birth, but as was often
the custom with white men in a foreign country in those
days, he took himself a native wife.
My great-grandmother."
  Toni brought Guru's coffee back to her,
reseated herself on the couch, and sipped at her own
brew.
  "In due course, my grandfather was born, first
among six brothers and two sisters. When my
grandfather had eleven summers, my great-grandfather
sailed back to Holland, to rejoin his wife and children
there, now a wealthy man. He left his Javanese
family well-provided for, not always the custom with
white men. He never saw or contacted them again.
  "My great-grandmother's family took her and her
children in, and life went on."
  Toni nodded, to keep the flow going. Guru had
told many tales, but never one about her family that was
so personal.
  "My grandfather's mother's brother, Ba Pa--The
Wise-took it upon himself to teach my grandfather, whose
Dutch name was Willem, how to be a man.
  My grandfather grew up strong, adept, and
eventually became a soldier, part of the native
army." She sipped at her coffee. Then she said,
  "Go into my bedroom and look at the nightstand.
There is a thing upon a small silk pillow there.
Bring it to me."
  Toni nearly choked on her coffee. In all the
years she had trained and known Guru, she had never
been past the closed door into her bedroom.
  She had conjured all kinds of fantasies as
to what it must look like in there. Maybe shrunken
heads dangling from the ceiling, or walls covered with
Indonesian art.
  It was nothing so weird. It could have been any
bedroom, belonging to any old woman. There was a
bed, a carved, dark wooden chest at the foot of the
bed, teak or mahogany, and a tall and dark
wardrobe, also of wood, with a mirror that had lost
part of its silvery backing. On one wall was a
painting of a nude girl standing in a pool under a
waterfall.
  The room smelled of incense, patchouli or
maybe musk.
  But on the nightstand was a red pillow, and upon the
pillow was a kris inside a wooden and brass
sheath.
  Toni knew what it was. She had done some
reading about Indonesia, curious about the country that
fostered the martial art she studied, and while she had
never trained with a kris, she had played with plenty of
knives.
  She picked the weapon up. She couldn't tell from
the sheath what the shape of the blade was, but the
typical Javanese kris was a foot to a foot
and a half long--this one looked to be maybe fifteen
or sixteen inches--and had a wavy, undulating
double-edged blade, made of layers of forged,
hand-hammered steel. Thus, like the swords of
Damascus or the samurai KA-TANA, the final
knife had a grain, a pattern in the welded
metal itself.
  She hurried back into the living room, wanting
to hear the rest of Guru's story.
  Guru traded the weapon for her empty coffee
cup, which Toni quickly refilled.
  "My great-uncle Ba Pa had no sons,
only daughters, and when it came time for my grandfather
to become a man and receive his kris, this is the one he
inherited. It had been in the family from my
great-uncle's father's father's father's time."
  With that, the old woman drew the knife from the
wooden sheath and held it up.
  It was an undulate blade, a ribbon of steel
with six or seven curves on either side, narrowing from
a wide base under a slightly curved and short
pistol-like handle to a sharp point.
  The metal was black, it had a dull, matte
look, and on one side there was a little loop of steel
protruding under the inside of the guard, almost like a tiny
tree branch. On the other side of the blade were
tiny, jagged teeth-like points.
  in the days when spirits were still powerful in Java, this
kris had much hantu--much magic." She waved the
weapon.
  "It has thirteen luk dapor, thirteen
curves, and the pam or is called udan-mas; it
means 'golden rain." Here, you see?"
  Guru pointed at the pattern in the metal, which
looked like little drops of rain had spattered upon dry
ground.
  "This kris was supposed to bring good fortune and
money for its owner.
  "Some believe a good kris could kill slowly an
enemy simply by stabbing his shadow--or even his
footprints. If an enemy approached, a good
kris would rattle in its sheath, to warn its owner of
danger. The sight of the naked blade would turn a
hungry tiger in its tracks. According to my
great-uncle's grandfather, this kris once flew from its
sheath like the garuda and cut the wrist of a thief trying
to enter his house during the dark of the moon."
  Guru smiled.
  "Of course, some of these old stories might have
become embellished with the telling."
  She returned the weapon to its sheath and held it in
both hands on her lap, her coffee now growing cold
on the doily upon the small table next to her chair.
  " "My grandfather gave this to my father when he
became a man, and my father gave it to my only
brother when he became a man." She stared
into space, remembering.
  "My brother died in the war against the Japanese
before he could begin a family. Many of our young men
died in that war. My father had no sons, no
nephews after that war. So the kris came to be
mine."
  They sat quietly for a moment.
  "I bore my husband three sons and a daughter.
Two of my sons live, and I have six grandsons
and a great-grandson, and two granddaughters. My
sons are old men, my grandsons are teachers and
lawyers and businessmen, my granddaughters are a
teacher and a doctor. They are a fine family,
successful, scattered all over the country, and they
are all good Americans. There is no wrong in this.
  "But of all my family, none have
studied the arts. Well, no, I do have a grandson
in Arizona who plays taste kwon do, and one of
my sons does tai chi to keep his joints limber,
but none of them have studied silat.
  You are my student, the holder of my lineage, and
so now, this kris now belongs to you."
  The old woman held the dagger out on the palms
of her hands to Toni.
  Toni knew this was no small thing for Guru, and
she had no thought for refusing. She knelt in front
of the old woman and took the weapon in both of her
hands.
  "Thank you. Guru.
  I am honored."
  The old woman smiled, tobacco stains on her
teeth.
  "Well you should say so, child, and a credit to my
teaching that you should know to say so. I could not have wished for a
better student.
  You should keep this on the red silk pillow near the
head of your bed when you sleep," she said, waving at
the KNIFE.
  "It may make an American lover nervous,
though." She giggled.
  Toni looked down at the smooth wood
of the sheath. Why was Guru giving this to her now? She
had a sudden chill.
  "Guru, you aren't... I mean, your health
isn't... ?"
  The old woman laughed.
  "No, I'm not ready to leave just yet. But you have
more need of the hantu than I do. I have had a full
life, and you are still unmarried. A woman your age
needs to think of such things. It is a magic blade,
after all, kahThat' Toni smiled.
  "More coffee. Guru?"
  "Just half a cup. And tell me more of this young
man who has yet to recognize your spirit. Maybe
together we can find a way to wake him."
  13 Saturday, December 25th, 6:30
a.m. Alexandria, Virginia Julio Fernandez
went to early mass at St. Gerard's, in
Alexandria.
  He sat in the back of the small church, listening
to Father Alvarez drone on in a dull monotone
broken only occasionally by a louder
  "Lord," which tended to rouse the sleepy congregation.
  Fernandez was used to being up this early, of course,
but usually he'd be moving, doing laps or running the
obstacle course or otherwise keeping his
blood circulating. Sitting on the hard wooden
pew in a too-warm and stuffy building listening to the
old priest who could preach this sermon in his sleep--
and might well be doing just that--was not a good way
to stay alert.
  Still, if he hadn't come to mass, he might have
thought about lying to his mother, and he did not want
to actually do that. He was on duty and couldn't fly
back for Christmas with the relatives. Well, that
wasn't strictly true. He could have gotten leave
because he had seniority, but there were other men with
families locally who needed the time more than he
did, so he had volunteered--but he didn't have
to tell Mama that. He would call her later today,
she would be expecting that. There would be aunts and
uncles and at least half of FeRN-ANDEZ'S six
brothers and two sisters would be there in La Puente
at Mama's with their broods, probably bitching
about the El Nino rains forecast to pound southern
California. It wasn't as if Mama was going
to be rattling around in her house alone; still, she
wanted to hear from her children who couldn't get there, and the
first question she would ask him after how was he doing would be
had he gone to mass this morning Mama suspected that
her third son was more lapsed than good
Catholic, and she was right in that suspicion, but at
least he could tell her he had in fact been to early
mass. He could tell her how Father Alvarez, who
had once been a parish priest where Mama went
to church some forty years ago, looked.
  Old, Mama, he would say, the man must be at
least five or six hundred years old. I kept
expecting somebody from the Cairo museum to come in and
grab him, to take him back to King Tut's
pyramid where he belongs.
  Mama would laugh at this, tell him how awful he
was, but it would make her happy that he went
to mass, at least on Christmas, and it wasn't
too much for a son to do for his mother, was it? One time a
year?
  So he'd get a few points for this--assuming he
didn't doze off on the pew, sleep all day, and
completely miss calling home....
  Saturday, December 25th, 7 a.m.
Boise, Idaho
  Alexander Michaels rang the doorbell of the
house that had once been his. It was a big,
wooden, two-story home built in the early
1900's, at the top of a slight rise, with a high
front porch at the top of ten broad
steps. When the house had been built, it had been
just outside what was then the city limits.
  Boise had engulfed the neighborHO-OD long
ago, but the houses along the street were still much as they
had been a hundred years past. Outside of a new
paint job that matched the old pale blue, and a
couple of repaired steps and slats in the porch
floor, the house looked the same as he remembered
it. The same glider he'd installed when they'd bought
the place hung on rusty chains at the south end of the
porch, looking out over a somewhat cold
rhododendron bush that would blossom a hard pink
come the first warm weather. He'd spent some wonderful
hours in that squeaky old wooden swing, looking out
over that rhoddy bush, listening to the wind play in the
big Doug fir trees that shaded the lot.
  He heard his daughter's footsteps and her
yelling as she raced for the door.
  "Daddy's here! Daddy's here!"
  Susie flung open the door and jumped. With her
present under one arm he had to make the catch
one-handed, but she helped by wrapping her arms and legs
around him and hugging him tight. She wore a pair of
red-flannel pajamas and butter yellow fuzzy
slippers.
  "Daddy!"
  "Hey, squirt. How are you?"
  "Great! Great! Come in, we've all been
waiting on you to open presents!"
  Michaels stepped into the house, and what Susie
had said registered.
  We've all been waiting for you? Did she mean
herself, Megan, and the dog Scout?
  Susie slithered down and took off running down
the hall for the living room. And sure enough, little
Scout, the poodle who thought he was a wolf, came
sliding around the corner from the kitchen, scrabbling on
the hardwood floor, trying vainly for traction,
to greet Michaels. The dog barked once, saw
who it was, and wagged his tail so hard Michaels
thought he might fall down. Michaels squatted and
put the presents down as Scout ran and jumped
into his arms.
  two, he thought.
  As he stood, the little dog licking his face,
Megan stepped into the hall from the living room.
  Tall and leggy, with long brown hair worn in a
ponytail, she was still one of the most beautiful women
he had ever known. She wore a black T-shirt
and blue jeans, her feet bare.
  She also looked nervous.
  "Hello, Alex."
  "Hello, Megan."
  "Come on in. Susie is about to pop."
  He put the dog down, picked up the presents
he had brought, and followed his ex-wife into the living
room. Oh, well. Two out of three... They had
put up a large tree, an eight-footer, easy
to do in a place with such high ceilings. The tree
glistened with lights and fake snow and ornaments and
tinsel. There was a fire in the wood stove, burning
brightly behind the thick glass. Susie was on her
knees under the tree, amidst a pile of wrapped
gifts, grinning.
  And standing by the old plush blue couch was a
stranger, a big man with a full beard. He wore
jeans and a blue workshirt and cowboy boots. He
looked to be about thirty, a good ten years younger than
Alex, and at least five years younger than
Megan.
  Megan walked over to the bearded man. She
slipped her hand under his arm, smiled at him, then
turned back to look at Michaels and said,
"Byron, this is Alex Michaels, Susie's
father. Alex, this is my friend Byron
Baumgardner. He's a teacher at Susie's
school."
  The big man grinned, showing nice, white teeth,
and ambled over to take Michaels's hand.
  "Glad to meet you, Alex. I've heard a
lot about you."
  Michaels felt his belly twist into a frozen
knot. S. This was Byron.
  He forced a smile as he stuck his hand out.
  "Byron."
  The two men shook hands. Michaels shot a
glance at Megan. She had looked nervous, and now
he knew why. Here was a nice surprise on
Christmas. Meet the new boyfriend.
  Your replacement.
  "Can I open my presents now, can I?"
  "Sure, honey," Megan said.
  Michaels smiled at Susie as Byron moved
over to stand next to Megan. The bearded man put his
arm around Megan.
  Michaels felt sick. He wished the ground would
open up and swallow him.
  He wanted to be anywhere on the planet instead of
here. Anywhere, for any reason.
  Saturday, December 25This, 11
a.m. BethesDa, Maryland
  On his back on the bench, Platt squared himself
under the weight, put his hands on the bar in a false
grip, and took a couple of deep breaths. Counting
the bar, 440 pounds lay heavy in the bench-press
cradle. He nodded at the spotters on both
sides.
  "Ready," he said.
  The two gym rats, both hard-core steroid
boys bigger than he was, moved in a hair and
put their hands under the end of the bar, not touching it, but
ready, just in case.
  Platt gathered himself to lift the weight off the
rack. Took another deep breath, and shoved, let
part of the air out as he cleared the stand and began to lower
the Olympic bar toward his chest.
  The first rep went up pretty easy.
  "One," the gym rats said in unison. Like he
couldn't fuckin' count.
  Second rep was a little harder, but he got it
to lockout.
  "Two!"
  The third rep was hard. He had to blow it up,
arching his back, to get it locked.
  "Three!"
  He knew his limits.
  "I'm done, take it," Platt said.
  The two body builders caught the ends and
helped him rerack the barbell.
  Platt blew out a big exhalation and sat up.
  The guy on the left, who had a shaved head and a
purple sweatband above his eyes, said, "leemme
try a few."
  Platt nodded and switched places with Baldy.
As he squared up on the bench press, Platt
glanced around the inside of the place.
  They had a pretty decent setup here at the
new Gold's Gym.
  Lotta free weights, a bunch of piston
machines, some bikes, rowers, elliptical
walkers, and stair climbers. They even had one of the
new peg machines in one corner. Mirrors on
all the walls. It was Christmas, but there were twenty
people in here working the iron. Gym rats, most of them,
serious body builders or weight lifters, most
of them on the juice. You didn't miss a workout
because it was a holiday.
  You'd never get anything done that way.
  You could always tell somebody who was stackin'
serious "roids. They had that
crepe-skinned, veiny look, the whites of their
eyes got yellowy, they were usually balding, and a
lot of them had acne on their back and shoulders. In
the locker room with their clothes off coming out of the shower,
some of 'em had bitch-tits and little bitty balls and
peckers too. But they were strong, as Baldy on the
bench here showed Platt. He did ten reps with
four-forty and racked the bar by himself, then sat up,
grinning.
  "Okay, I'm warmed up. Lou?"
  The other gym rat traded places with Baldy,
then Baldy and Platt spotted him while he did
his benches. He only made eight reps, and
Baldy called him a pussy.
  "Want to do another set?" Baldy asked
Platt.
  "No, thanks. I got to go do chins and dips.
I can come back and spot if you need it."
  "Cool. Later, dude."
  Platt headed for the chinning rack. Strong, both
of the body builders, stronger than he was. Then
again, he didn't take anything but vitamins and a
few aminos and supplements, and he didn't have
to worry about his liver rotting or getting brain
cancer or shit like that. Or 'roid rage.
  Blowing up and killin" somebody who cut him off
in traffic. Fightin' for fun was one thing, losin'
control was some thing else. And these guys were so strong
they tore muscles and ripped tendons right off the
bone sometimes. He'd seen a guy benching
six-fifty once rip a pec. The muscle
rolled up his chest like a window shade, and the guy was
looking at major surgery and a lot of down time.
Stupid. Wasn't any point to all this stuff if
you weren't healthy enough to enjoy it.
  His sweats were already soaked, but Platt figured
he could do a couple sets of chins and dips, no
weight, alternating, to finish off his pump.
  Half an hour in the sauna and hot tub, a
shower, and he was done.
  He wondered if that ben to place over on
Wisconsin was open today, A couple plates full
of grilled chicken skewers and rice with hot and
sweet sauce would sure taste good about now. He'd
go check it out.
  Saturday, December 25th, noon Sugar
Loaf Mountain, Boulder, Colorado The big
fire roaring away pushed the cabin's chill into the
room's corners.
  The place smelled of cedar and
woodsmoke and pine. Wonderful.
  "Merry Christmas," Joanna Winthrop said.
She raised her champagne glass and tapped it
against the glass Maudie held.
  "Same to you," Maudie said. They drank.
  "Mmm. This is great," Winthrop said.
  "It ought to be. It cost eighty bucks a
bottle."
  "Jesus, you spent that kind of money on
champagne!" "Not me. It was a gift from an
admirer. I think he wanted to lick it off my
naked body."
  "Why didn't you let him?"
  "Because we went to a movie and he made a
disparaging remark about one of the actresses who was a
few pounds overweight."
  "Ah. Fat jokes, the squash of death."
  "Unless you're fat--then it's okay." Maudie
sipped at the champagne again.
  "I'll send him a nice thank-you e-mail for
this."
  "I'm sure he'll appreciate it."
  They giggled.
  "So, tell me more about this Sergeant
What'shis-name.
  Anything serious in the offing?"
  "Too early to tell. So far, all we've
talked about is computers, about which he knows zip. But
he seems like a sweet man. And he admires me
for my mind."
  "Uh-huh."
  "Well, either he does, or he's very, very clever
about taking the long way around to get my pants off."
  "Hah. Men will cross a desert in July on
their hands and knees over broken glass if they think
they'll get laid when they get to the other side."
  "True. But I have a good feeling about this one.
How many men have you met who will admit they don't know
some thing about everything?"
  "So far? Let me see ... oh, if you total
them all up, about, roughly, approximately ...
none."
  "So I'm one up on you."
  "Oh, girl. You got a picture? How about a
comm number?"
  "Oh, no, you don't. You should be able to find one
in California."
  "You'd think so, wouldn't you? I'm thinking about
putting an ad in the personal sections of the local
alternative weekly paper.
  "Fat, ugly woman, smart, looking for man
who can appreciate me for my mind." It would be
inter esting to see who answers."
  "I'm sure that would work." She lifted her
glass.
  "Cheers."
  "Uh-huh."
  They drank. They laughed some more.
  There were worse ways to spend Christmas.
  Chapter 14
  Saturday, December 25th, 2:15 P.m.
Ambush Flats, Arizona
  Jay Gridley was getting a little tired of the
Western scenario and he considered switching it. He
hated to do that in a VR session, though, jump
genres.
  After this time, he'd use a different program.
  At the moment, he was in the small Western town
of Ambush Flats, walking up toward the
telegraph office. A Christmas wreath hung in
the window.
  "Mornin' Marshal," the telegraph clerk said.
The man wore a card dealer's green eyeshade, a
boiled shirt, and a thin, dark tie.
  "Happy Christmas. Shame you got
to be travelin' on such a day."
  "And you workin'," Jay said.
  "Any messages for Marshal Gridley come through
here?"
  "Nossir, I don't believe they have." The
man made a show of checking the stack of yellow
paper next to his key.
  "Nope, don't see none."
  "Uh-huh. And any messages a marshal ought
to know about pass through your ears or fingers?"
  "Nossir. I'm a law-abidin' citizen,
Marshal. I don't truck with such things."
  It wasn't that Jay didn't believe him--but
he'd learned the hard way that truth was a valuable and
sometimes rare commodity on the net. And Jay needed
to know if that was what he was dealing with here.
  There were several ways he could do this. He could
pull his gun and order the telegrapher to lie down
on his belly. He could point out the window, and when the
man looked, clonk him on the back of the head and
knock him cold. Or he could use subterfuge,
which was his preferred method.
  "Well, I appreciate it, friend. Thanks.
Adios."
  Jay left the telegraph office and
moseyed around to the back of the building. There was a
wooden barrel of trash next to the door. He
pulled a strike-anywhere lucifer from his shirt
pocket, scratched it on the barrel's metal
hoop, and tossed the flaring match into the trash.
  Paper caught, flamed, and in a few seconds,
there was a hot little fire blazing away in the barrel.
Jay looked around and spotted some weeds growing from
under the building. He pulled a handful of the greenery
and tossed it into the flame. Thick white smoke
poured out as the green plants began to burn.
  Jay walked around to the front of the building, found
a shady spot under an overhang, and leaned against a
porch post.
  He didn't have long to wait.
  "Fire!" somebody yelled. A bell started
to ring. Folks came a'runnin' too.
  The telegrapher sprinted through the front door
of the office, away from the sudden smoke pouring in from the
back, and looped around the building to see what was
what.
  Jay sauntered back into the building and began to go
through the stack of telegrams. Nothing to see.
  There was a locked wooden drawer next to the
telegrams out in plain sight, and he used
his Barlow jackknife to slip the simple lock so
he could get at the hidden documents in the drawer.
  He grinned. Breaking into an encrypted e-mail
sorter using a brute-force generator didn't sound
nearly as colorful as rifling the telegrapher's
desk in his marshal persona. It wasn't as much
fun either.
  There was a lot of junk in the drawer. Some shady
money exchanges, illicit love letters, porno,
the usual stuff people tried to hide.
  Technically speaking, what he was doing wasn't
altogether legal, but he wasn't going to use it in
court, he was just looking for information.
  If he hurried, he would be gone before the
telegrapher got back, and nobody would ever know
he'd been snooping in private affairs.
  Looked like a waste of time again--hello? What was
this?
  Jay read the message, growing more alarmed as he
went.
  Somebody had sent particulars on the routes for
four shipments of plutonium--that didn't
translate into this scenario as dynamite either--to a
group calling itself the Sons of Patrick Henry!
Jay had heard of them. They were a
militia group that danced on the edge of treason and
had a membership that made Attila the Hun look
like a flaming red Communist.
  And the stuff was moving today. Holy shit!
  Clutching the message tightly. Jay ran.
  Saturday, December 25th, 12:25 P.m.
Boise, Idaho
  With the racket blaring from Susie's new musical
toy, having a conversation was difficult. Not that
Michaels felt much like talking anyhow. Megan was
making it perfectly clear by the way she kept
touching, leaning, or rubbing against Byron exactly
what she wanted her ex-husband to know. At first, the
jealousy had been so powerful it had made him feel
heartsick and nauseous. Now he was beginning to get
pissed off. Megan had a cruel streak he had
always known about. He'd loved her in spite of it, but
it wasn't pretty to be on the receiving end of it.
She could have asked her bearded boy toy to stay home
and let Michaels have this time with his daughter, but she
wanted to show Susie's father exactly where he stood
with her mother--which was outside her house, peering in through a
locked window.
  He was supposed to stay for lunch, and if he
hadn't thought it would upset Susie, he
would have already bailed and gone back to his hotel.
  At a point when Megan had gone to check on the
turkey she was coo king, and Byron had gone to get
some more wood for the fire, Michaels remembered the
little present Toni had given him. It was in his
coat pocket. He walked to where he'd hung his
coat, fished the little gift out, and opened it.
  When he saw what it was, he laughed.
  "What's funny, Dadster?" Susie yelled
over the blasting noise she thought was music.
  He tucked the present into his shirt pocket.
  "Nothing, sweetie, I just remembered some thing."
  Toni had gotten him a pair of electronic
earplugs. According to the instructions, they would allow the
wearer to hear normal sounds, but would damp any
high-decibel noises that might damage a
wearer's hearing.
  Funny woman, his assistant.
  His virgil cheeped.
  He frowned. He had forwarded all incoming
calls to his vox mail. The only messages he
should be getting were Priority One com ms, and if that
was what this was, it was bad news. He checked the
caller ID. Jay Gridley.
  "What's up. Jay?"
  "Chief, we got a major problem here.
Somebody just tried to hijack four shipments of
plutonium. We headed off three attempts, but
at one in France there were a lot of dead bodies after
the smoke cleared, and at one in Arizona we were
too late, they got away with it. Colonel
Howard is on the way with a strike team, we got
National Guard and state police and local cops
crawling all over the place down there, and about half
a bomb's worth of plutonium on the loose."
  "That's awful, but why is this our problem? Shouldn't
it be CIA for the foreign and regular FBI for the
domestic?"
  "Well, it's ours because the message giving the
yahoo militia who did it the times and places
came out of a Net Force workstation. Chief. Right here
in HQ."
  "Oh, shit!"
  "Yes, sir. You might want to think about going
to Arizona or coming back here or some thing."
  Michaels looked up and saw Megan frowning
at him from the hall.
  "I'll call you back."
  "What?" Megan said.
  "Something has come up," he said.
  "I'm going to have to miss lunch. Sorry."
  "Big surprise," she said. Her voice was
bitter.
  "Got to go save the goddamned world all by yourself
again, don't you?"
  "Listen, Megan--"
  "They can't get along without you for one day? It's
Christmas!"
  With bad timing, Byron chose that moment to step
into the room with an armload of split oak and alder
for the fire.
  "What's going on?"
  "Alex isn't staying for lunch." She said it
loudly.
  Susie came out of her music trance.
  "What? You're leaving?
  You just got here!"
  "Daddy's work is more important than staying
to visit, honey," Megan said.
  "You know that. He's a very important man."
  Michaels glared at Megan. Then he looked
at his daughter.
  "I'm sorry, baby, but it's an emergency."
  "It's okay. I understand."
  But she didn't understand, he could see that.
And Megan wasn't going to make it any easier.
  "I'll get back as soon as I can to visit you
again," Michaels said.
  "About the time Hell freezes over," Megan
said.
  Michaels gritted his teeth.
  "In the hall," he said to Megan.
  "Excuse me?"
  "I'd like a word with you in the hall, please."
  Megan stared daggers at him. Michaels went
to hug his daughter and kiss her good-bye.
  "You learn how to work this thing, and when I come back
you can show me all the songs you know."
  "Exemplary, Dadster. I love you."
  "I love you too, little bit. You take care of
your mother."
  In the hall, Megan stood with her arms
crossed, so tight she was almost humming with tension.
Byron was right behind her.
  "You come all the way out here, drop off a
present, and leave. That's just great, Alex. You're
a terrific father." Her sarcasm was so acid you could
etch glass with it.
  And it hurt, just as she knew it would. She knew
how to find the cracks in his armor. She
always had. And the needle she used to stab him was loaded
with poison, just as it had been during the last year of
their marriage, and during the divorce. When she got
pissed off, she stopped playing fair. He said, his
voice tight, "I'm doing the best I can."
  "Your best is crappy. If you loved your
daughter, you'd do better."
  "So you told me a couple of thousand times already.
Must be nice to be perfect in every way. How do you
stand being around us mere mortals?"
  "Hey, take it easy there," Byron said.
  "No point in getting nasty."
  Michaels looked at the big bearded man as if
he had just turned into a giant upright toad.
  "Excuse me? She can tell me I'm a lousy
father and that I don't love my daughter, but I can't
fight back? Why don't you go get some more
firewood, Byron? This is a private
conversation."
  Megan flared at that.
  "Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of
Byron."
  "Really?" Michaels's temper was smoldering
now. He was about to flame on, and if he did, he
would say some thing he would regret. He
tried to hold onto as much calm as he could.
  "Listen, you don't want me here, you and Byron
have been doing everything short of tearing each other's
clothes off, and I suspect some of that was for my
benefit. Fine, you made your point."
  "It doesn't matter how I feel about you,
Alex. It's how your daughter feels."
  "I'm not going to let you beat me over the head with
that anymore! I love my daughter and she knows it.
If you really loved her, you wouldn't be turning her
against me at every opportunity. You can really be a
bitch when you want, you know?"
  That got her attention. It was the first time he'd ever
said some thing that direct about her, and her eyes went
wide in surprise.
  It got Byron's attention too.
  "That's it, pal," he said.
  "You're outta here!" He reached out and grabbed
Michaels's arm with both hands.
  Boy, was that the wrong thing to do.
  Michaels reacted without thinking. He swung his
elbow at Byron's head, keeping it in tight, as
if he were holding a marble in the crook of his arm, just
like Toni had taught him.
  Bone met bone with a solid thwack! and
Byron fell as if his legs had suddenly
vanished.
  Son of a bitch. It worked!
  Megan dropped to her knees and grabbed at the
fallen man.
  "Byron! Byron! Are you okay?"
  Susie's music boomed from the other room where
she played, thankfully oblivious to all this.
  Byron blinked, tried to sit up.
  "What happened? Did I slip on some thing?
Why am I on the floor--?"
  He'd live, he was just stunned.
  Megan looked up from the fallen man at
Michaels. She said, "We're getting married!
And Byron wants to adopt Susie!"
  Her voice practically dripped venom.
  Michaels felt his soul freeze, then begin
to shrivel. There it was, in black and white, no
mistaking it. He had loved this woman beyond
measure, and she was doing everything she could to hurt him.
How could he have been so blind?
  When he could find a breath, he spoke, and his
voice was cold.
  "Congratulations. I'll send you a toaster. But
he will adopt Susie over my dead
body. I'll spend every penny I have and every penny I
can borrow on private detectives and lawyers.
  And if Byron here spends a night under this roof
before you get married, you'll find yourself in a custody
battle like you wouldn't believe! You want to play
rough? Fine."
  With that, he turned and stalked out.
  In the cold air, snow clouds gathered and
threatened. Perfect.
  Just perfect!
  Well. You wanted an excuse to leave,
didn't you? Better be more careful what you wish for
next time, Alex. You might get that one too.
  Damn! He couldn't believe what he had just
done. How he had lost control.
  Damn!
  Compared to what he'd just felt, terrorists stealing
nuclear material didn't seem so bad.
  Chapter 15
  Saturday, December 25th, 4:45 P.m.
Tonopah, Arizona
  Michaels rode in the second helicopter of his
trip, heading for the hijacking site on Interstate
10, about forty miles west of Phoenix. A
small military jet had been waiting for
him when the first copter dropped him at the airport
in Boise. It had been a straight flight, and
fast.
  The Arizona sky was clear and sunny, and he could
see what the pilot had told him was the Bighorn
Mountains ahead of the copter.
  John Howard had flown out in one of Net
Force's chartered 747's with his strike team, and was
setting up a command post at a truck stop just
outside Tonopah, Arizona.
  The chopper pilot brought his craft in for a landing not
far from a pair of helicopters already on the ground.
Big Hueys, they looked like. In addition to the
copters, the ground was a beehive of activity--
cars, trucks, troops, flashing lights.
  Practically speaking, it would have made more sense for
Michaels to have gone back to HQ; once you got
to be the commander of a group like Net Force, you were
supposed to be a desk jockey--they paid you for your
managing abilities, not to go play in the field.
But the idea of sitting in his office parked in front
of the computer station and comm gear waiting to hear what was
going on did not appeal to Alex. He needed to be
out doing some thing after that whole scene in Boise.
  Dust and sand kicked up as the copter
settled. He saw John Howard in his field
uniform, holding on to his cap as the wind blasted
him.
  Michaels exited the craft and walked to where
Howard stood.
  "Commander."
  " "Colonel. How is it going?"
  "This way, sir."
  Howard led him toward what looked like a Texaco
truck stop. Along with a dozen big commercial
rigs, clearly local, there were a few smaller
Net Force trucks and cars, brought by the cargo
version of the 747 that the strike force used.
  There were a couple of large igloo tents erected
behind the main truck stop building, and big power
lines snaking into the tents from six rumbling
gasoline-powered electrical generators parked
near the larger of the tents.
  A chilly wind blew across the dry land, but
inside the mobile tactical unit--a
fiberglass-framed tent the size of a small house
--the air was warm. A dozen techs worked on various
electronics, mostly computers and com-gear.
Several other soldiers in the strike team checked
weapons or assembled field equipment.
Julio Fernandez looked up, saw Michaels, and
saluted.
  Howard stopped in front of a big flat screen
on a stand. He picked up a remote and clicked
it. A turning-globe map appeared on the screen.
  "Here's what happened, as best we can tell,"
Howard said.
  "Somebody sent the routing information for four shipments
of plutonium scheduled to move today to a
paramilitary group that calls itself the Sons of
Patrick Henry. Here are the sites."
  Red dots pulsed on the map. France, Germany,
Florida, and Arizona.
  "We got word of the leak from Gridley at HQ
at about the time the attacks began. All four went
off simultaneously. We got word to the convoys
ASAP. The Florida and German convoys took
alternate routes and encountered no problems.
  " "The French attack had already begun, as had
the one here.
  We alerted French authorities, and they got
there in time to stop the assault. Eight of the
attackers were killed, four wounded seriously,
several seemed to have escaped. The driver of the French
truck and four of the guards were killed,
three more were wounded. Some civilians got caught in
the cross fire, all locals.
  " "We called the Army transport group here
too late. By the time the National Guard and state
boys and girls showed up, it was all over. The
Army lost two drivers, eight more men, and two
women. Looks as if the wounded soldiers were
executed after they were downed, assault rifle or
pistol rounds to their heads. The terrorists took their
dead or wounded with them, but there was enough blood without
bodies on the road and surrounding territory to know
the Army's shooters connected with at least a few of
them.
  "They left behind a couple of antitank mines
to slow pursuit.
  The state patrol lost two cruisers and three
officers. And five civilian cars also got
blasted. Six civilians are dead and three more in
the hospital probably won't make it. Everything
the state and local police can put on the ground or
in the air is out looking for the terrorists."
  "Jesus."
  "Yes, sir. The shipment was en-route from Fort
Davy Crockett, Texas, to Long Beach,
California, where it was to be taken via
ocean vessel to a location that the Army does not wish
to reveal to us. Seven pounds of WG plutonium."
  "Where do we stand?"
  "We know who did it. We know where they are."
  "Have you told the local authorities?"
  "No, sir. We've sent them off in other
directions. It gives them some thing to do. And if they
should get too close, they'll be warned off." He
fiddled with the remote. The screen image shifted
to an overhead view of a group of small buildings
surrounded by a fence. The image zeroed in, growing
larger in distinct frames, until details as fine
as cars and even a couple of people could be seen.
  "This is the nearest bolt-hole the Sons
maintain. It's just north of the Gila Bend Indian
Reservation, not that far from here. These people apparently own
property all over the country, and they've got
branches all over the world. We've got the place
foot printed with one Kl Albatross spy sat,
and we've requested that the military shift another
one into the same orbit.
  Which they are doing."
  "How good is the sat coverage?"
  "Not perfect. Any bird high enough to be in
geosynch orbit has to be at least
22,300 miles--36,000 kilometers--and IR
or optical resolution to six feet at that height
is iffy, especially in a hot desert, so spy
sats that can see guys running around on the ground have
to be a lot lower, which means they are whipping past
any given point at speed, so they can't sit and
watch one spot. We'll see 'em, but it'll be a
fast look.
  Computers'll fill that in."
  "This is where you think they took the plutonium?"
  A yellow box blinked on and outlined one of the
structures.
  "There's a tracker built into the outer shell of the
radioactive transport box. NRC and NSA
don't allow anybody to ship this stuff via Fed
Ex. This is where they took it, sir. GPS puts
it in the southwest corner of this building, right there.
Since it's Army gear, there's no fudge-factor
on the satellite bounce, so we can pinpoint the
GPS unit to within plus or minus five feet.
  It's in there. I doubt they took it out of the box
to play with."
  "Where is the Army?"
  "They're massing their teams thirty miles south
of the bolt hole, on the old Luke Air
Force target range. So far, they are holding off,
but Military Intelligence is having a fire
hose of a pissing match with the FBI over who gets
to shoot whom, so everybody is waiting for the spray
to settle back in D.c. before anybody moves."
  Michaels waved that off. Nothing they could do out here
about weenie-waving up levels. Somebody would
figure out what to do soon enough. Then they'd see
who got to step up to the plate.
  "What are our options, the tactical
considerations, if we get the nod?"
  Howard flashed a tiny grin, teeth bright against his
chocolate skin.
  "Fast and dirty. We can give the Air Force
a call, and they can drop a big smart rock that'll
squash the Sons flat before they ever know it's coming.
Army's got a few of those they'd be happy to use
too. End of immediate problem. Of course, that could
spread plutonium dust all over the surrounding
countryside, which might upset the locals. The
evening news would have a field day when they found out, and
they likely would notice if the local goats
started giving glow-in the-dark milk.
  "Unless they have another chunk of this stuff already,
they aren't going to build a fission bomb.
Even if they do have enough for a critical mass, it
isn't like they can just pop open the container and drop it
into their bomb like a flashlight battery.
  It'll take some fine-tuning, and whatever
happens, they aren't going to have that much time."
  "You don't see any possibility of
negotiation here?"
  "No, sir. We're talking everything from
treason, to multiple murder, to a do caret enough
other local, state, and federal felonies. They
give up, they are all history, and they know it.
Their manifesto is "Give me liberty or give
me death." They aren't going to give up, and we can't
dick around long enough to let them think about things they
might do with that heavy metal they borrowed."
  "I see."
  "It is possible they could have rigged the container with
conventional explosives so if anybody comes after
them, it would give us the same scenario as the Air
Force attack. Our staff psychologist doesn't
think this is likely. They are paranoid enough, but this
is a big prize, and they won't be in a hurry
to lose it. So he says.
  " "Our first pass with the locals indicate that the
attack wasn't set up very well. They
didn't notice anybody poking around until
yesterday.
  This engagement does not appear to have been the
result of a long-term, well-laid plan. This is
consistent with Gridley's finding that the transmission
of the intelligence was less than a day and a half
ago.
  They mounted this operation in a hurry, on the fly,
and they were lucky to get away with one out of four
tries."
  "And you don't think they've booby-trapped the
container."
  "No, sir, I don't This feels like a
come-z-y-are party and they had to hit the ground running.
They haven't had time to think about it much.
  "I see an infantry-style assault in the
dark as our best bet.
  Since these guys are gun nuts, they've
probably got spook eyes and motion
detectors, but we can get close enough to knock those
out and be on top of them before they have time to figure out
what's happening. PEE for the spook eyes,
jammers for the motion sensors."
  "PEE?"
  "They're new, sir.
Photosensitive Epilepsy Emitters.
Brainwave flashers. They cause seizures or
nausea in a lot of people who see them. And at
night, they are bright enough to blind a guy using starlight
spook eyes anyhow. So the guards watching the dark
are either having fits, puking, or bumping into the
furniture.
  "Jammers shut down the transmitters on
wireless sensors.
  Unless they've got hard wired sensors, they
won't know where we're coming from until it's too
late. And even hard wired, knowing we're coming and being
able to do anything about it is not the same thing. My
troops'll be in SIPE-SUITS. The Sons'
surplus AK-47'S, M16's, and handgun
fire won't get through the armor."
  "What if they have heavier weapons? Rockets,
AP, like that?"
  "We've got half-a-dozen jump troops who
can use para sails well enough to hit a spot the
size of a dinner plate from six thousand feet at
night, using their spook eyes. I can put them
inside to sap the fence before we hit it from outside.
I've got green hats, black hats,
SEAL'S, the best of the best on this team.
These camo clowns won't know what hit "em no
matter what they're shooting."
  Michaels nodded.
  "So if up levels gives us the job, you'll be
ready to go when?"
  "We're ready right now. Optimal time would be
0230 hours. Most of the terrorists will be asleep.
I've run a dozen computer scenarios, and our
numbers average about eighty seven-percent
success. Realistic range is from seventy-five
to ninety-four percent."
  "You want this one. Colonel?"
  Again the smile, larger this time.
  "Yes, sir. You bet."
  "I'll call the director and see what the
situation is."
  Howard watched as Michaels moved off to a
quieter part of the tent to use his virgil to call the
FBI'S director. The colonel looked around
at his men and women, confident they could do the job.
They were all volunteers, nobody had to be here, and
he would lead them into Hell to pull the Devil's
tail, secure in the knowledge they would follow without batting
an eyelash.
  Did he want this operation? Sheeit,
he couldn't imagine anything he could want more just at
the moment. He could be home, sitting on the couch,
digesting Christmas ham and listening to his
mother-in-law give him a hard time. Storming a nest
of terrorists who'd swiped a chunk of
radioactive bomb material was easy duty
compared to that.... "Sir, we got the second bird
coming on-line, about to step on the location," Fernandez
said.
  "Copy, Sergeant. Let's see it. Put it
on the holoproj so we get a three-dee view."
  "As the colonel orders," Fernandez said.
  "Hey, Jeter!
  Three-dee!"
  Howard moved toward a folding aluminum display
table where the holographic projector had been
focused. After a few seconds, the image
appeared. It started out as a black-and white. Then
the computer furnished false colors so that it looked
almost like a model.
  "Give it to me from a hundred feet up and three
hundred feet out," Howard said to the tech.
  "Sir," Jeter said.
  The image shifted viewpoints. The computer
filled in the details based on images
in its memory, but it was probably a pretty
accurate representation of the place. A two-story
ranch house sat in the middle of the compound, which was
surrounded by a chain-link fence, probably ten feet
high. There was also what looked like a wooden barn,
plus a pole shed that was just a roof and half-a-dozen
upright supports, and a smaller storage building
behind the house. Four trucks, two cars, and a
single-engine high-wing airplane were parked in front
of the main house.
  There were two guards on the gate, and either the spy
sat's optics or the computer had decided they were
both short-haired men in baseball caps, with
rifles or carbines slung over their shoulders and
holstered side arms. A third guard with a large
dog patrolled the fence in the back.
  A fourth figure, a woman in a dress,
stood in front of what appeared to be chickens,
tossing feed to the birds. Optics weren't so good that
they could see chicken feed from however many thousands of
miles up in space, but they were good enough to guess that the
woman had long black hair and fair skin.
Amazing.
  "We have any idea how many are in there,
Julio?"
  Fernandez drifted over and shook his head.
  "No, sir. Most we've seen at a time's
half a dozen--four men and two women. No children,
thank God. They could have fifteen or twenty in
there, given the number of vehicles. IR
doesn't work real well through a roof. My guess
is, they don't know we know where they are." He
glanced at his watch.
  "Got an appointment. Sergeant?"
  "I was supposed to call my mother after I got out
of mass.
  I didn't get around to it."
  "Use one of the landlines and call her, Julio.
I don't want your mama mad at me because I
made you work on Christmas."
  Fernandez grinned.
  "Sir. Thank you."
  Howard watched his best soldier--and probably his
best friend in the world--amble toward the phone bank.
  Michaels came back, clipping the virgil
onto his belt, next to his taser.
  Howard raised his eyebrows.
  "It's ours. Colonel."
  Howard grinned, real big.
  Michaels shook his head and sighed.
  "I already had occasion today to remember the old
saying "Be careful what you wish for, you might get
it." Colonel. You just got what you wanted.
Merry Christmas. I hope it doesn't blow up
in our faces."
  Chapter 16
  Saturday, December 25th, 9 p.m.
Bladensbeurg, Maryland
  Hughes had just walked into the safe house apartment
and noticed that Platt wasn't there yet when his
virgil buzzed. He looked at the ED.
Senator White.
  He felt a stab of worry, even though he
knew there was no way White could know where he was and
what he was doing there.
  "Hello, Bob. Merry Christmas."
  "Tom. What's all this I've been hearing about
some kind of nuclear material getting stolen?"
  "Nothing that concerns us directly. Well,
except that the word I hear is that this was another one of
those deliberate leaks into the aether net."
  "Jesus Lord."
  "Oh, worse than that. My sources tell me
the leak came from Net Force Headquarters, right
smack dab in the middle of the FBI compound
itself."
  "I'll have Michaels's head on a platter if
that's true! And Walt Carver's ass for desert!"
  Now there was an image.
  "It'll keep until after the holidays. Bob.
The terrorists fell down, only one of the attacks
was even partially successful, and I am given to understand
that that one is about to be rectified by our military and
other federal agencies. No great harm was done.
Enjoy the season. We can nail all this down when you
get back to town, before the session gets rolling.
  I'm keeping tabs on things from this end. Don't
worry."
  "All right, if you say so."
  Platt swaggered in, circled his hand to his
forehead, lips, and heart, and added a couple of
circles, then held it out to Hughes in a
bastardized salaam. Hughes waved him off.
  "Give my love to June and the girls and the
grandkids," Hughes said to White.
  "I will. Merry Christmas, Tom."
  After he switched off the virgil, Platt
laughed." "So, our little game ruffled your boss's
feathers, hey?"
  "Don't worry about him. I've got
it covered."
  Platt walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and
took out a plastic bottle of apple juice.
He opened the bottle and drank half the juice in
three big swallows.
  "Seems like such a waste, though. Telling the
Sons of Whoever about all the shipments, then telling
the feds on 'em."
  "Right. I was really going to give those
fruitcakes the material to build a working atomic
bomb. If they put the thing together, assuming they could,
what do you think would be the target city?"
  "Couldn't happen to a nicer town," Platt said.
  "Full of stuck-up assholes who think they're
better than the rest of the country." He burped.
Took another swig of juice. Said, "Ahh,
that's good stuff."
  Hughes shook his head. Platt was definitely
a loose cannon.
  Sooner or later, he was going to shoot the wrong
way or blow himself and everything around him into bloody
pieces.
  "You need a sense of history," Hughes said.
  "Washington is our nation's capital. I
don't want to destroy it."
  "It's just about money, huh?"
  "No, it's also about power. But that doesn't mean
I have to be a homicidal maniac to get what I
want."
  "What about the guys guarding the u-rain-e-yum?
You don't feel like they're dead because of you? Was your
fruitcakes that hosed 'em."
  "I didn't pull any triggers. I didn't
tell anybody else to either. If I give you a
bread knife and you cut somebody's throat instead of
using it to slice bread, that's your fault, not mine."
  "Unless you knew I wasn't gonna use it for
bread when you sold it to me.
  And this wasn't exactly no bread knife, was
it? More like a headsman's hatchet."
  "I didn't ask the Sons, they didn't
tell."
  "Oh, yeah. The information we fed 'em was for study
purposes only."
  "No, it was to get things rolling in the direction
I wanted them to roll in."
  Hughes didn't really think he could explain it
to Platt, but for a moment he felt the need to try.
  "Do you know anything about how the Japanese
traditionally made their samurai
swords?"
  "I have a sheath knife with a Damascus blade,"
Platt said.
  "It's kind of like how they make them in
Damascus. The Japs fold and sandwich the steel
over and over and hammer it out, then temper the edge
harder than the blade."
  "Right. But do you know how a master sword smith
would get started? How he would actually light the
fire for his forge?"
  "I dunno, a Zippo?"
  Hughes ignored the wisecrack.
  "The smith would hammer on a piece of iron bar
until it began to glow red. Then he'd put the
iron into a bed of cypress shavings soaked in
sulfur."
  "No shit? That must have taken a while, to get the
iron that hot just by whacking it with a hammer."
  "Exactly. Making the finest swords the world
has ever seen is not like ordering a Whopper and fries
at the local BK. It takes skill,
precision, patience. Which is what we need too.
  Our goal here is not to blow things up. Let's not
forget that."
  "I hear you."
  "Good. I think it's time the subversive group
responsible for all these problems on the net steps
up to claim credit. Let's show them the
manifesto."
  Platt grinned.
  "Hot damn. I've been waitin" to do this."
  "Don't embellish it. Platt. Just like I
wrote it." "Nopraw, boss.
  It's bad enough without me fiddlin' with it. The wogs
and sand'nigrahs are gonna love this!"
  A loose cannon with a short fuse. If
Hughes didn't deactivate him soon, Platt
was going to screw the whole thing up.
  A couple more weeks, a month, they'd be over the
hump, and Platt was going to have a fatal accident.
Maybe just... disappear.
  Saturday, December 25th, 9:35 p.m
  In the air over southern New Jersey Toni
sat on the left side of the commuter jet, staring into the
dark over the ocean in the distance. She couldn't see the
water, but she could see where the lights on the land
ended, as if sliced off by a knife.
  She smiled to herself when she had that thought. There had
been some problem when she wanted to take the kris
onto the plane. They didn't have any
trouble with her laser--most of the airlines would allow
federal law-enforcement officers to carry lasers or
even guns on their planes--but long and wavy
bladed daggers were apparently some thing else altogether.
  No way was Toni going to check the kris.
Whatever its monetary value, it was irreplaceable,
and according to Murphy's Law, if one item got lost
in the baggage roulette on this flight, it would be the
kris.
  Airline officials weren't going to allow her
to carry the knife, despite the illogic of that
versus a laser or a gun. Toni didn't tell
them that she could kill somebody with her hands almost as
easily as she could do so with a knife. That probably
wouldn't have been helpful. In the end, after she
threatened to call the FBI and have the plane held on
the ground for security reasons, the officials
relented. She could take the knife, if she let the
flight crew have charge of it until they landed.
  That was good enough. The kris would be in the plane with
her, and it was doubtful they could lose it with the doors
closed.
  The copilot said he'd watch the cardboard box
very carefully.
  Jay Gridley's call had come as a
surprise, but it wasn't such a great loss that she
had to leave the annual gathering a little early. She'd
gotten a chance to see her family and Guru De
Beers, they'd all exchanged presents, and had
eaten a huge Italian Christmas dinner.
Mama and Poppa had gone to evening mass with as many
of the relatives as they could bully into going with them.
The fun part of the gathering was mostly done, and the
inevitable too-close-together friction would be warming
up about now. She loved her family, but after a
couple of days cooped up in the apartments with them,
things could get a little contentious. She'd left them
trying to convince her father he shouldn't be getting behind the
wheel of his car anymore, and she knew that was a war
the family was going to lose.
  It surprised her too that Alex had cut short
his visit home to fly from Boise to Arizona. He
wasn't a field operative, and she worried about
him. John Howard wouldn't let Alex do anything
dangerous--she hoped--but it still gave her
butterflies thinking about Alex being on-site for a
hot op. He should be back at HQ, and the strike
team should be doing its job without him.
  When she'd called him, he'd told her she
didn't need to go into HQ herself, but she'd
cut that short. If this was important enough for him to be
there, it was important enough for her to get back to work
too.
  She leaned back in the seat and stared through the window.
  The jet was half-empty. Not a lot of people
traveling on Christmas Day.
  Saturday, December 25th, 11:15 P.m.
Sugar Loaf Mountain, Boulder, Colorado
  Sitting in the propane-heated spa inset into the
redwood deck behind the cabin, Joanna and Maudie
watched the snow fall into the hot water and melt. The
deck had three eight-foot high walls of cedar
slats and wicker screen surrounding it, to keep
occupants hidden from the neighbors' view, with the
cabin as the fourth wall, but there was no roof. The
spa itself was big enough to seat six people in comfort, maybe
eight if they were on real good personal terms. Upon
the steaming water and the two women in it, fresh snow
fell, fat, heavy flakes, adding to that already piled
up eight or ten inches deep on the deck,
pristine save where it had been foot printed by the
naked women going to and from the tub.
  Winthrop took another sip from the second
bottle of champagne they'd bought, splurging their
own money for the good vintage after they'd
polished off Maudie's admirer's gift.
  Maudie raised her glass and watched a few
snowflakes hit the wine. She said, "Problem with this
is that you get spoiled real quick. After the expensive
stuff, the cheap champagne tastes like some thing you'd
clean your oven with."
  Winthrop waved her own glass.
  "Hear, hear." She reached across the big
oval-shaped fiberglass tub with her foot and
snagged the floating thermometer. She dragged it
to her, lifted it, and looked at it.
  "Hundred and six," she said.
  "And the air temperature is what? Twenty,
twenty-five?"
  "Sounds about right."
  Winthrop shook her head, and the melting snow fell
from her hair into the water with a tiny slush! sound.
  "I wonder what the poor folks are doing,"
Maudie said.
  "You know, it might not get any better than this.
Friends, Moet Chandon, hot water, and snow."
  "Amen, sister. Well, except for maybe a
couple of hunky young studs."
  "Wouldn't do much good in this," Maudie said. She
dragged her free hand through the water.
  "You never heard of the Boiled Noodle
Effect?"
  They both laughed.
  From inside the cabin, a comm chirped, a one-two
... three rhythm.
  "That's mine," Winthrop said.
  "Damn."
  "Don't answer it. Anybody asks when you
get back to work, tell them we were in a digital
dead zone. Mountains and all."
  She considered it for a moment.
  "Nah. I better. Could be my family."
  Maudie shrugged, waved at the French doors.
  "Go and sin no more."
  Winthrop stepped out of the water, and felt an almost
immediate chill despite the red glow of her skin as she
padded through the snow to where a pair of thick beach
towels hung on a rack next to the doors, under the
roof's overhang enough so they didn't get rained or
snowed on.
  "Damn, girl, if I was into women, you'd be my
first choice," Maudie said.
  "You got a great butt. Speaking strictly as
somebody who knows how much work it takes to get one
to look like that, of course."
  Winthrop grinned.
  "Beauty is only skin deep," she said as she
wrapped the towel around her. It was cool, but not too
cold.
  "Yeah, but a great butt is a joy forever!"
  Inside the cabin the fire crackled in the big
stone fireplace.
  Winthrop walked over a patch of cold wood
floor, onto the Oriental rug, and picked up
her comm.
  The caller ID showed the name "Lonesome Jay
Gridley."
  She grinned in spite of herself.
  "Hello?"
  "Lieutenant. I take it you haven't been
watching the network news lately?"
  "Nope. I've been enjoying champagne and a
hot tub lately."
  "I thought not, or you'd have called. A few things
you need to know."
  She listened as he filled her in on the situation
with the terrorists attacks on nuclear
transports. When he was done, she said, "Christ.
I'll catch the next plane I can get back
to HQ."
  "That isn't necessary, I believe we can get along
without you for a couple more days. Enjoy your hot tub."
  "What aren't you telling me, Gridley? I
hear some thing else hiding there. What is it?"
  "Not much. That leak I mentioned that seemed to come from
inside Net Force?"
  "Yes?
  "It came from your station."
  "What?"
  "Yes, ma'am, no doubt about it. You weren't
here when it went out, of course, and we all know you had
nothing to do with it, but I'm sure glad it didn't
come from my station. Byebye. Talk to you later."
  He discommed.
  Winthrop stared at her commas if it were a rat come
to life in her hand.
  Oh, man backslash This sucked'.
  Chapter 17
  Sunday, December 26th, 1:50 a.m.
Gila Bend, Arizona
  Howard looked around. His strike team troops were
loaded in three transport vehicles, and they were
parked in a dusty stretch of desert with a slightly
overcast sky. Without their headlights, it would be very
dark out here.
  The troop vehicles were highly modified
Toyota Land Cruisers--mostly just the engines,
frames, and wheels left from the originals--and they
all wore flat-black carbon-fiber stealth
shells. Close-range radar was cheap, a rig
swiped from any big powerboat or sailboat would be
sufficient for a ranch house, and since they had the
cruisers, they might as well use them.
  The trick was not so much to be completely invisible,
but rather to be hard to see and identify--until you were right
on top of whoever was looking at you. Even the new
stealth gear wasn't a hundred percent efficient
on a land vehicle, but it would give a radar
operator an odd blip that might be mistaken for
ground clutter or maybe even a herd of deer or
some thing.
  Probably the stealth shells wouldn't even be
necessary; so far, there hadn't been any radar
signature emitted from the ranch, so maybe the
terrorists hadn't had time to get a unit, or if
they had, to set it up.
  But you tried to cover all the bases as best you
could, just in case.
  Each of the vehicles held six troopers,
suited, locked, and loaded. The assault
suits were modified from Regular Army SIPE'S,
slimmed down a bit since field operations were
usually in and out, and the LOL--LIVE-OFF-THE-LAND--
systems weren't necessary. The tactical suits should be
enough to turn away what the average terrorist had
to shoot at them. The shirt-vests and pants were
cloned-spider silk hard weave, with overlapping
body pockets lined with ceramic plates. Boots
and helmets were Kevlar, with titanium inserts in the
helmets.
  The slim back CPU'S were armored and shock
proofed, and the tactical CPU'S did everything from
encrypting long-range radio and short-range
LO SIR units, to downloading and uploading
sat-links and giving motion-sensitive heads-up
displays.
  Except for the LO SIR headsets--
lineofsight-infrared tactical coms--the strike team
would keep radio silence until after they had
secured the objective. And since LO SIR
signals were encrypted, even if the terrorists had
a full-range scanner, they wouldn't get anything
but gibberish. Besides, by the time the strike team was
close enough for the terrorists to scan and hear LO
SIR, it would be too late even if they
could understand the voxtrans.
  Weapons of choice were HandK 9mm sub
guns, and HandK tactical pistols. They had
considered using the 5.65mm OICW, with the 20mm
grenade launcher.
  The bullpup-stocked weapon had an outstanding
bracketingst tracking target laser, and it could drop
an explosive round into a trench where you couldn't even
see an enemy, but Howard didn't completely
trust it.
  Too many bells and whistles with the cameras and
computers, and besides, they didn't want anything blowing
up on this operation, not even a little bit. Bad enough that
the SIPE-SUIT radios went out every time a
thunderstorm passed within a parsec, or that the
tactical com ps sometimes got confused and had to be
reset on the fly.
  Howard himself carried a much more unofficial
weapon, a 1928 Thompson .45-caliber
submachine gun that had belonged to his grandfather. The
vintage gun wore a loaded fifty-round drum and
had the gangster front grip and sight-through-the top
bolt-slot. He almost never carried the beast, since
it weighed about fifteen pounds and was a bear to haul
around, but somehow it had felt like the right thing
to do on this operation. Normally, he'd be using a
.30-caliber assault rifle, or a 7.62, but
like the SandW revolver strapped to his right hip, the
tommy gun was a good-luck piece--an old, but still
functional, good-luck piece.
  His antique revolver and Chicago typewriter
notwithstanding, whoever these camo clowns were, they
didn't have the state-of-the-art combat gear that Net
Force had.
  Howard would be going in his Humvee, which also wore
a radar-slipping shell. He glanced over at his
ride and saw Fernandez grinning back at him from the
driver's seat, camo paint darkening his face below the
SIPE-SUIT'S helmet.
  In war, sooner or later, this was what it came
down to: troops going in against troops. The Air
Force could drop tons of bombs or smart
missiles, the Navy could shell or hard-rain
rocket a target from fifty miles offshore, but in
the end, it was the infantry that had to go in, to take and
hold the ground.
  Next to Howard, Commander Michaels said,
  "I would say I'd like to go with you. Colonel, but
that wouldn't be true.
  I'm a lousy soldier. I'd trip
over some thing and get in somebody's way."
  Howard grinned.
  "Yes, sir, and that is why you pay us the big
bucks. I expect that Assistant Commander
Fiorella would have my family jewels if I
allowed you to go along anyhow."
  Michaels smiled.
  Howard looked at his watch.
  "The transport plane will be entering the drop
zone in thirty-three minutes. It's running
whisper-props, but even so, out here, sound carries.
It won't slow down and even if the terrorists do
hear it, they'll be listening for a change in the engine
sound, which they won't hear. If we work it right, our
assault teams should be flashing puke-and-dizzy
lights hot and hard to distract the guards as our four
sappers float into the compound on their para wings.
  I've got a man standing by who will
simultaneously cut the power line to the ranch.
They've got backup power next to the storage shed,
a little gas or diesel generator, but it won't
kick on automatically, somebody will have to go out there
and start it. Time that happens, he'll have company
waiting for him.
  "We've had a series of spy sats
providing continual footprints of the area, so we
pretty much know where every terrorist is. We'll have
continual coverage through the expected duration of the
attack, and a little longer too, just in case things
don't go quite as planned. There are three guards
posted, two at the front, one at the rear, and if
it goes as planned, they will be taken out by the time the
two vehicles reach the fence.
  The main gate is to the front, but there are two
smaller gates to the rear, at the north and south
corners. Alpha Team will hit the main building with
flash bangs, while Beta Team covers the rear
of the house, the barn, and the storage shed. Delta
Team will patrol outside what's left of the fence in
case anybody slips past us. With any luck at
all, we'll have them rounded up before they can get their
pants on.
  "Of course, it's said that no battle plan
survives first contact with the enemy, so we'll just have
to go and see."
  Michaels nodded.
  Howard glanced at his watch again.
  "All right, people, this is it. Let's roll!"
  "Good luck. Colonel. Give "em hell."
  "Thank you, sir. We will."
  Howard hurried to the Humvee. They had gotten
an exact distance from the compound to this location from the foot
printing satellite. They'd be running on spook
eyes without lights, but the terrain was mostly flat
with a little scrub, and they had a route mapped, so they
should be able to calculate their speed and distance and nail
it to the second.
  "Drive, Sergeant. And switch off the brake
lights. I don't want the yahoos to see us
flashing red because you stopped for a lizard in our path."
  "Already done, sir. I've been down this road
before."
  Fernandez slid his helmet visor down and
clicked his Spookeyes on, then cranked the engine
and moved out. Howard picked his computerized helmet
up from the floor by his feet and slipped it on,
put the visor down, and lit his own night vision
scope. He buckled his three-point seat belt
into place, snapping the black steel latch shut with a
hard clack backslash The landscape seemed
to light up in that eerie, washed-out green that the
starlight amplifiers traded for the seemingly opaque
darkness. Then the suit's computer kicked in, adding
false colors to give a more realistic image, and
it was almost like driving in a somewhat dim and
hazy afternoon.
  "You don't think this pointy-nose plastic stuff
is really going to hide us from radar, do you?"
Fernandez said.
  "Seems like a shame to ruin a perfectly good
truck by hanging all this crap on it."
  Howard said,
  "I don't think the boys in the ranch had time
to set up a full-scale HQ.
  They only had a day and some to plan the attack.
I'd be surprised if they had a mobile field
unit roll into this location with radar or doppler."
  "Would you look at that," Fernandez said.
  "Bugs Bunny!"
  A jackrabbit angled across their path, then cut
sharply back and stopped as the Humvee rolled
past. It sat there watching as the cruisers also
zipped past, turning its head to track them.
  Howard looked over his shoulder at the small
creature.
  still wonder what a rabbit thinks when he sees
four black vehicles with pointy-nose plastic
crap hanging all over them rumble past his burrow
at two in the morning
  "There's some thing you don't see every day,"
Fernandez said.
  "Excuse me?"
  "Probably what the rabbit was thinking."
  Howard smiled. They'd been serving together for a long
time. Must be a little telepathic spillage.
  He was pumped, but even so, there was this ... weary
feeling, as if he could stretch out and take a long
nap, could sleep for a week, and still not wake up
feeling refreshed. What was this all about, this
lethargy?
  It was worrisome. Well. He'd have to deal with it
later. He had business to take care of just now.
Serious business.
  Alex Michaels walked back to the AWD car
they'd given him, a little Subaru Outback. The
strike team was out of sight in the darkness, heading for a
rendezvous with the bad guys ten miles away. He
should have stayed at the tent HQ back at the
Texaco truck stop in Tonopah, but even if
he wasn't a front line soldier, he had
wanted to come at least this far. By the time he got
back to the tent, Howard's attack would be in full
swing, maybe even over. All things going well.
  He started the car, then headed back to the dirt
road a mile or so away that would take
him to the highway a couple miles past that.
  This was a risky business, the assault. If it
went sour, it would probably be bad enough so he'd be
looking for a new job.
  He laughed to himself. It seemed like every time he
turned around, his job was at risk. But that went with the
territory.
  Steve Day, the first Commander of Net Force, had
never mentioned that part to him. Maybe if he hadn't
been killed by that Russian computer genius's
assassins, he would have eventually gotten around
to telling Michaels about it.... It was really dark out
here, the only source of illumination his headlights,
and he bounced along for what seemed like a lot longer
than a mile, the little car rocking pretty hard over
some of the dips and holes in the ground. He reached the
dirt road.
  Finally.
  For just a moment, he wasn't sure about which way
to turn, Then he remembered he had followed
Howard's Humvee off the road into the desert
by making a right; therefore, he should turn left to head
back in the direction of the highway. He hadn't
been tracking on the odometer, but it seemed like that
had been a couple-three miles.
  Alex paused, then made up his mind. There was
no danger, he knew, not to himself nor to Colonel
Howard's strike team.
  The terrorist camp was several miles away--at
least four or five--so he could head this way for a
couple of miles. If he didn't hit the
highway by then, he'd turn around or check his
virgil... some thing he was reluctant to do. That would
be admitting defeat. He had always hated to ask for
directions, a legacy from his father, and even looking
at a map was considered unmanly in his family. The
Michaels didn't get lost, according to the old man.
  He turned left and picked up a little speed now
that he was on a road of sorts.
  A large bug splashed against the windshield in
front of his face, leaving a blob of greenish
goo. The body fluids of that one joined those of
several other low-flying moths, mosquitoes,
beetles, and whatevers. Apparently the insects
didn't hibernate for the winter here.
  He wasn't driving that fast, and you'd think they
could see him coming for a long way off, but they kept
splattering against the front of the car. He turned the
wipers on, smeared the bug goo around, added the
washer fluid to the mix, and managed to clear
a patch of glass he could see through.
  The road dipped into a gully, then came up, and
he rolled over several half-buried rocks in the
dirt, jolting him hard enough so his head nearly hit the
ceiling.
  He didn't remember that part of the drive coming
in. None of it looked familiar. Dark as it
was, he couldn't see anything but what was in the cone
of his headlights, but surely he should have reached the
highway by now.
  Had he somehow taken a wrong turn?
  He looked at his odometer. The highway
couldn't have been more than three or four miles from the
dirt road. He must have come that far, he'd been
driving for at least twenty or thirty minutes. It
was 2:20 a.m. Howard would be hitting the terrorists
in five minutes.
  Maybe it was time to check the GPS.
  Well, not yet. Give it another mile. If
he didn't see the highway by then, he'd turn
around and backtrack.
  Michaels shook his head. Brother. Wouldn't that
be a story for the folks at HQ? You heard about how
Commander Michaels got lost in the desert?
  still don't think so, Alex, m'boy.
  There was a hillock ahead that curved to the left.
As he rounded the curve, the dirt was loose, and the
car fish tailed and slipped traction, so he slowed
to a crawl. To his left, there was a little stand of
scrub trees, stunted pines or some such, none of
which looked to be more than ten or twelve feet
tall.
  That was practically a forest out here.
  A man stepped out of the scrub growth. He wore
chocolate chip desert camouflage pants and a
jacket, and held a short assault weapon in his
hands, pointed at Michaels's car. He waved the
weapon, his meaning clear: Pull over.
  An AK-47?
  For a moment, just a moment, Michaels thought it must
be one of Howard's troops, but then he knew the
man was all wrong. Wrong clothes, wrong gun,
wrong place.
  Fear spasmed in Michaels" belly as he
realized who this must be: It was one of the terrorists--
to 
  Oh, shit! What had he done?
  Better still--what was he going to do now?
  Chapter 18
  Sunday, December 26th, 2:24
a.m. Hila Bend, Arizona
  Howard looked at his watch. A gift from his
wife on his thirty fifth birthday, it was a
Bulova Field Grade Marine Star, with a
black face and a dial light, an analog quartz
whose battery was recharged by the smallest body motion.
  It wasn't the most expensive watch made, not
by a long shot, but she had saved for a year to buy it.
It kept dead-on time, and right now the sweep
second hand was moving toward 0225 hours. Thirty
seconds left ... It was time.
  "Ready to rock. Sergeant?"
  "Just call me Elvis."
  The four vehicles were rolling, slowed somewhat
to time their arrival.
  The compound was just ahead, a smear of hard yellow
flaring in the spook eyes' optical field from the
security light mounted high on the wall of the barn.
Which illumination should be going out just... about... now ...
The compound went dark.
  "Better make sure your filters are up.
Colonel, the light show is about to begin."
  "I've been down this road before. Sergeant."
  Both men smiled.
  Time slowed for Alex Michaels as the
gunman walked toward his car. It seemed as if he
had days, weeks, months to decide what to do. The
problem seemed to be that he couldn't move.
  Well, he could, but the speed of his movement bogged
down to match the gunman's walk. Just to lift his hand
from the steering wheel seemed to take forever.
  In what couldn't have been more than a couple of
seconds, Alex sorted through all the
possibilities he could think of. He could try
to talk his way out of it. He could stomp the gas
pedal and haul ass, ducking low so that when the guy
opened up on him he might not get hit. He could
pull his taser and hope to get the needles into the man
in camo gear before he was hosed with jacketed death.
He could shit or go blind.
  So many possibilities. How to choose?
  The gunman got to within a foot or two of the
door, and motioned with the assault rifle's muzzle
for Michaels to roll his window down.
  Choose, Alex. Choose!
  The PEE lights strobed like an electrical
storm gone insane.
  The polarizing filters in the suit's helmet
visor blocked the effect--plus they were behind the
lights, and thus got only a partial hit
anyhow.
  "Gate dead ahead!" Fernandez yelled.
  "Looks like our sappers have taken it down along
with the guards. Might as well have rolled out a red
carpet for us."
  "Don't count those chickens just yet."
  The Humvee rolled through the gate, and one of the
sappers waved at it as it went past.
  "Alpha has landed," came a voice over
Howard's LOSIR.
  "We're in the door."
  "Beta's got the back door," came another
voice.
  "Delta's on patrol," came a third.
  Fernandez slewed the Humvee to a stop by the shed
where the chickens were kept, not far from the barn. Howard
bailed out, the Thompson held ready, and Fernandez
was next to him in two seconds.
  "You didn't lock the keys in the car, did you?"
  "Negative."
  "Good, I hate it when you do that."
  Truth of it was, Howard himself should have stayed
outside the fence in command mode and directed traffic
from there.
  He didn't really have a function here,
except as backup for Alpha, which they ought not
to need-- "We're in, got static, stand by--"
Howard heard gunfire, both over his helmet
phones and in real time. It came from inside the main
house.
  "Two terries down, two down! Alpha
intact!" Alpha's team leader called.
  "Target just down the hall, stand by." There came
the sound of more gunfire from inside.
  "So far, so good--" Howard began.
  He felt the impacts of the bullets before he
heard the shots, and the incoming rounds hit hard enough
to jolt him. Thump, thump, thump, three of them,
all on the left side, but the armor held-Damn!
Howard turned, saw a man and a woman in the
doorway to the barn, illuminated by the bright
yellow-orange of their muzzle flashes as they
fired bursts from fully automatic rifles at
him and Fernandez. Now and then, a tracer left a
glowing red trail in the darkness. Bad idea--
tracers worked both ways-Anot her bullet hit
Howard on the torso. It felt like being whacked with a
hammer.
  Shit--to 
  Michaels took a deep breath, then
pressed the button to lower the window with his left hand
while he carefully pulled the taser from his belt with
his right hand.
  The terrorist stepped right up to the car.
  "Excuse me, officer," Michaels said.
  "What's the problem?"
  Michaels already had his left hand on the door's
latch. He took another deep breath, then stared
off in the distance and saw a series of dim light
flashes. That would be the attack on the compound.
  "What the hell is that?" Michaels said, still
looking into the distance.
  The gunman must have caught a glint of light
peripherally.
  He glanced away from Michaels to get a better
look-Michaels yanked the latch up, threw his
weight against the door, and slammed it into the
surprised gunman. It wasn't enough to knock him
down, but it did rock him off balance.
  "God damn--to was the man began. He flailed
with the weapon and his empty hand, trying to catch his
footing, but slid a little in the loose dirt on the
road. He recovered a hair, enough so he could swing
the assault rifle around-Michaels pulled the
door shut. A little too hard--the door's
latch handle came off in his hand--but he didn't have
time to worry about that. He thrust his taser through the open
window, pressed the laser aiming stud, saw the red
dot on the center of the man's chest, and fired the
weapon. It seemed to take eons-The man jerked,
juttered toward the car as the capacitor needles fed
him however many thousand volts they held. The
assault rifle nosed skyward and went off five
or six times in one long noise--blaaaat!--
flashing red-orange and making less noise than it
seemed it should. The gunman spun to his left and
corkscrewed, hit the dirt, and continued to spasm,
the gun still gripped tightly in one hand but no longer
firing-Michaels couldn't open the door, since the
handle had broken off in his hand, but he grabbed the
window frame and hauled himself headfirst out of the car,
did a sloppy dive and forward roll, and came up
next to the downed man. He bent and jerked the
AK-47 away from the gunman, then took two
steps back and pointed the weapon at the man.
  If this sucker tried anything, he was going to blast
his sorry ass to kingdom come!
  The tasered gunman didn't seem too interested
in doing much of anything just at the moment.
  Michaels exhaled out his held breath.
Damn-Howard looked at the man and woman who had
opened up on him and Fernandez. Oddly enough, what
he found himself thinking was: Tracers. Huh.
Probably one every fifth or tenth round. What had
they been doing out in the barn? Why hadn't somebody
picked up their heat sigs?
  Next to him, Julio turned and leveled his
HandK sub gun at the shooters.
  Howard swung his own heavy weapon around--
"Shit!" Julio said. He dropped to one knee,
his return fire chewing up the ground five meters
in front of him.
  "I'm hit," he said. His voice was calm, as
if he was talking about what he was going to have for
breakfast.
  One of the shooters must have armor-piercing rounds-But
they weren't using concealment or cover, just standing there
hosing, so Howard V-stepped hard to his left,
brought the Thompson up to a quick-kill point, and
triggered a five round burst at the man. Braap!
Orange tongues lanced from the tommy gun, and the
Cutts compensator on the end of the barrel took part
of the flaming orange and spewed it upward, forming a
fiery letter "I" in the darkness that helped keep the
recoil down and the barrel from climbing too
much.
  Without waiting to see the effect on the man, he
shifted his index to the woman. Braap!
  The shooters collapsed, and the man beat the woman
to the ground by maybe a half second.
  Howard spun three-sixty, looking for more
attackers. Clear.
  His heads-up showed him a strike-team suit
signature as one of the sappers moved in toward the
two downed terrorists. The sapper waved an
  "I-got-"em" at the colonel, who turned
away.
  "Julio?"
  "I'm okay, John," he said.
  "Took it just above the knee, to the inside. I
don't think it hit the bone. Of course, I could be
wrong."
  "We have the objective," Alpha's team leader
said over the LO SIR.
  "Eight terries down. Alpha Team secure,
no casualties."
  Howard blew out a big breath. Thank God.
He said, "Copy, Alpha, good work. Doc,
Julio took one in the leg. We're at the
southwest corner of the chicken coop, get
over here PDQ."
  He couldn't see them, but the term LO SIR was
not strictly accurate--there was always a little bleed, enough
to keep com ms working when somebody ducked behind a
tree or wandered off center.
  Doc, the medic, rode with Delta.
  "On the way, sir. Let me drop my
passengers. Forty-five seconds. Go!
  Out, out!"
  Thirty seconds later. Delta Team's
vehicle, empty except for the driver. Doc,
plowed right through a section of fence, slapped it flat,
and skidded to a stop ten feet away. Doc bailed
and ran to where Julio sat, both hands pressed against
the hole in his armor.
  Doc clicked his helmet spotlight on and used
a suit cutter to open a big flap in the leg of the
wounded sergeant's armor.
  He sliced away the pants leg to reveal the
hole in the flesh.
  He bent the leg up and looked at the exit
wound.
  "Looks like twenty-caliber high-velocity
hardball," Doc said.
  "Through-and-through, missed the bone, no
expansion.
  Neat little hole about the size of a drinking straw,
bullet hot enough to cauterize the wound. We'll have
to clean out fibers.
  Otherwise, I don't see any problem."
  Doc grinned, leaned away from the leg, and looked
at Fernandez.
  "Jesus, some people will do anything to get a few days
off." Fernandez said, "You do what you have to do to get a
break."
  Howard nodded, relieved.
  "Let's hear it, people," he said into the LO
SIR.
  The reports came in.
  "A walk in the park, sir," Alpha's team
leader said.
  "We make it six terries KIA, in the
house, two wounded but still alive, two undamaged and
in restraints. Objective is patent, no
leaks, b.g. radiation levels normal. Send
Doc on in when he gets a minute."
  "Nobody came out this way," Delta's team
leader said.
  "Three terry guards down, one KIA, two
slightly damaged," the head of the sapper
team said.
  "They didn't lay a glove on our guys."
  "Hell, we've been watching paint dry back
here," Beta's team leader said.
  "We coulda stayed home and seen it on TV for
all we had to do. We won't even have to clean our
weapons."
  He sounded disgusted.
  The sapper who had gone to check out the shooters in
the barn came out carrying a big bunched sheet of
heavy material, black on one side and silvered
on the other.
  "Found this in the barn. Colonel," he said.
  Howard looked at the sensor shroud and nodded. That
was why nobody picked up a heat sig on the
terrorists who'd been hiding in the barn.
  They'd been shielded. He'd thought about radar, but
not about heat-sink camo. A mistake on his part, but
fortunately not a fatal one.
  Howard blew out a sigh. They had the stolen
nuclear material and Julio was going to be okay.
It could have been a lot worse.
  Time to call Michaels.
  "Commander?"
  "Colonel. Everything okay?"
  "Yes, sir. Objective achieved,
terrorists neutralized, we have one minor injury
on our side. Sergeant Fernandez picked up a
little scratch."
  Sitting on the ground with his leg bandaged and an
amp of dorph injected to kill his pain, Fernandez
said, "Bet you wouldn't call it that if it was your
leg."
  Howard grinned.
  "Outstanding, Colonel! Congratulations. Please
pass it on to your team."
  "Thank you, sir, I will. We'll see you at
field HQ soon as we get things cleaned up
here."
  "I'm on my way there now," Michaels said.
  Howard frowned.
  "Sir? You aren't there yet?"
  "I, uh, took a little ride in the country,"
Michaels said.
  "I picked up a... hitchhiker you might find
it inter esting to talk to when you get back."
  "Sir?"
  "Never mind. Colonel, I'll explain it when
I see you. You got us out of a nasty spot and I
appreciate it. I'll make sure the
whole country appreciates it."
  "Sir. Discom."
  After he signed off, Howard considered his
relationship with Commander Alexander Michaels. The
man wasn't bad, for a civilian. Not bad at
all.
  "Can we hurry this up and go home, sir?"
Fernandez said.
  "I have an early tango lesson I don't
want to miss."
  Howard laughed.
  Chapter 19
  Monday, December 27th, 1:30 P.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Tyrone Howard thought he might just go nova,
might just shatter into a million billion pieces.
  He sat on Bella's bed, his arms around her,
and they kissed.
  Everything he knew about kissing she had taught him
in the last couple of months, and he thought he was
starting to get the hang of it. Her back felt hot
under his hands, even through her shirt, and there wasn't a
strap across her smooth skin.... She broke the
kiss and let out a big sigh.
  "You have to leave now, Tyrone. I'm
supposed to go to my aunt's house and we have to lift
in like ten minutes. I have to change clothes."
  "Uh-huh," he said. He leaned in and kissed
her again. That went on for another minute or two.
She leaned back.
  "Really, Tyrone. I have to go."
  "Uh-huh." He kissed her some more. It
wasn't as if she was trying real hard to get away,
given as how she had her hands on the back of his head
pulling him closer.
  Finally, she pulled away again and said, "I'll
see you at the mall tomorrow, you duplicate?"
  "Uh-huh. I doop that." He reached for her, but
this time she put one hand on his chest and held him off.
  "Come on, Ty."
  "Okay." He blew out a breath.
  "Okay. But it's hard to leave."
  "I bet it is," she said, smiling.
  "Here, let me make it easier for you." She
took his hand in both hers, kissed it on the palm,
then pressed it against her left breast.
  His mouth fell open, his brain went into vapor
lock, he forgot how to breathe. His bug eyes must
make him look like a giant frog.
  It was the most exciting moment of his
life.
  She moved his hand away from her warmth and gave it
back to him. She grinned real big and stood.
  "Shoo. G."
  She waved at him with both hands in a sweeping
motion.
  He stood, knowing what a zombie must feel like.
He would jump off the top of a tall building if
she wanted.
  Explode. He was going to just... blow up and
splatter all over the room. It would make a
big, gooey mess. How could he not? He couldn't
stand it!
  Monday, December 27th, 2:00 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Julio Fernandez was in what passed for the
infirmary at HQ.
  It wasn't much, just a few beds in a small
ward, and he was the only patient. He lay on the
bed flipping through the commercial entcom channels on
the TV, looking for some thing that would keep his
attention. He didn't need to be here. Doc had
swabbed out the little hole in his leg and patched it with
synskin, then given him a tetanus shot and told
him to avoid heavy squats or marathon
running for a few days. But Net Force policy was
that certain injuries required compulsory treatment,
which in the case of gunshot wounds meant at least a
twenty-four-hour medical observation period. It
had to do was with liability and insurance and crap like that.
He wasn't going to sue anybody. He knew that,
the colonel knew it, but a lot of people sued a lot
of other people these days--there were more lawyers in D.c.
than there were roaches--so they'd stuck him in bed,
started an IV with antibiotics, and given him the
television remote. They'd also given him one of
those short, open-up-the-back hospital gowns.
  He looked at the time sig on the TV screen.
He'd come back from the raid and been examined at
noon. So he was stuck here until noon tomorrow.
Boredom and cafeteria food loomed and threatened.
Jesus, A nurse came in, and with her was the
colonel. He grinned real big.
  "Very funny, sir. Wait until the next time
you get shot."
  "Not my policy. Sergeant Fernandez. I
don't make the rules, I just do what they tell
me."
  The colonel sat on the foot of the bed and glanced
up at the tube.
  "Anything good on?"
  "Best things are reruns of still Love Lucy and
trash sports. I just saw the middleweight North
American sumo winner--he goes maybe
one-eighty, two-hundred--beat the heavyweight--
a fat guy pushing seven hundred pounds. Big
guy came roaring in, the little guy stepped aside and
tripped him. Fatso fell out of the ring, shook the
camera he hit so hard."
  "David and Goliath," Howard said.
  "There is a precedent."
  "David cheated, he used a sling."
  "Goliath had a sword."
  "Yeah, and only a fool brings a knife to a
gunfight."
  "How's the leg?"
  "Fine. I could take you on the obstacle course
right now."
  "Uh-huh. I'd almost rather be doing that than going
home."
  "Your mother-in-law still there?"
  "Until next Sunday."
  "Serves you right. Sir."
  " *I stopped by the office on the way over
here. Seems there was a complaint about you from
one of the civilian instructors in the feeb unit.
Did you know that you were "vicious, brutal, perhaps
even psychotic"? A man unfit for Net Force
service, and a man who was very likely a threat
to public safety?"
  "Yes, sir, I believe that pretty much sums
me up."
  "What did you do to this Horowitz, Sarge?"
  "I leaned on his desk and told him he should think
less about posturing and more about doing his job."
  "Lord, Sergeant, how do you expect to get away
with such behavior? What kind of savage are you?"
  "An unrepentant one, sir."
  "Well, I will send word to Mr. Horowitz that
I have taken his counsel and disciplined you
appropriately." Howard reached over and took the
TV remote, pointed it over his shoulder at the
wall-mounted set, and clicked the power off.
  "No television for the next hour. Sergeant."
  "I thought the idea was punishment, sir."
  Both men grinned.
  By the time she got back to HQ, Joanna
Winthrop knew the party was over.
  The terrorists had been taken down, the stolen
plutonium recovered, and the only thing she
had to do now was figure out who had gotten into her
workstation and used it to give the Sons of Whoever the
information about the shipments.
  But somebody had told her that Julio Fernandez
had been shot and was in the infirmary and so, instead, she
bought a small vase of flowers and went to see him.
  He was the only patient in the infirmary. Since
a lot of the Net Force staff had opted for the long
holiday, including, apparently, the medical staff,
the place had an echoey feel to it.
  "Sergeant Fernandez."
  "Lieutenant Winthrop."
  "I heard you got shot."
  "A scratch. I'm stuck here overnight,
SOP, but I could go out dancing if they'd let
me."
  She put the vase on the table next to the bed.
  "You're just lying here, doing nothing? No books,
no entcom?"
  "The colonel was here, you just missed him. He
turned the set off. I'm being punished."
  She raised her eyebrows.
  "For being shot?"
  He chuckled.
  "No, even Howard's not that
hard-assed."
  He told her about his computer class.
  It was a funny story. When he was done, she
laughed.
  "Tough CO, isn't he?"
  "Yeah. I really wanted to see how the
middleweight wrestler was going to do against the light
heavyweight."
  They both laughed.
  "So, how are you doing?" Julio asked.
  "I heard about the workstation business."
  "Oh, don't worry about that. I'll figure it
out."
  "Any suspects?"
  "At the top of my list? Jay Gridley.
He doesn't like me.
  He thinks I slept my way into this job."
  "Seriously?"
  "That he thinks I used my feminine wiles?
Or that he planted the leak in my station? Yes to the
former, no to the latter. We aren't buddies, but I
respect his abilities. Though if you tell him
I said so, I'll deny it."
  "Deny what?"
  "He might keep stuff from me, but I
don't think he's nasty--or stupid--enough to try
to implicate me in a federal crime. After this
assignment, I'm back with our unit, so I'm no
threat to his position.
  And he has to know I'm going to figure out who
did it. Just a matter of time."
  There was a moment of quiet when neither of them
spoke.
  "So how was it?" she asked.
  "The sortie?"
  "By the numbers," he said.
  "The bad guys weren't in our league. They were
outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and outgunned.
  Only mistake we made was mine. I'd been
awake, I wouldn't be spending the night here with my
leg propped up and a draft on my butt. One
of the yabbos hiding in a sensor nest had a few
rounds of AP in her weapon.
  Fortunately, she was either rattled or a lousy
shot. She cooked off most of a thirty-round stick
and only nicked me one time. Guy with her was a
better shooter, but he was using hardball and tracer,
his ammo couldn't pierce the suits."
  "Too bad I missed it," she said.
  "You've been on a few field ops."
  "Nothing lately. The-colonel thinks I'm more
useful in front of a computer. Last time I was in the
field, I was in the HQ tent thirty miles
away from the action."
  "He's right," Fernandez said.
  "Grunts like me are a dime a dozen, but a
computer genius is harder to replace."
  She smiled.
  "I need to get back to work. Anything I can do for
you?"
  She saw him hesitate a second, and wondered
if there would be an off-color remark. If he was
looking for an opening, this was a good one.
  He shook his head.
  "No, ma'am, but thank you for asking.
  I'll catch up on my sleep. See you when
I get out." He flashed her a nice smile.
  She resisted a sudden urge to lean over and kiss
him. She was really beginning to like this guy.
  "Later, Julio. We'll talk about computers
when we get all this straightened out"
  "I'd like that. Thanks for stopping by." Another
hesitation, then: "Jo."
  Jay Gridley had given up on the cowboy
scenario because it felt too slow. True,
speed in a scenario didn't translate tort--
real time--but if you were poking along on a horse when
you felt like racing on a big Harley
motorcycle, it made a subjective difference.
  So now Jay turned to one of his favorite action
heroes, borrowing from one of the early classic
James Bond movies, Thunderbolt.
  Over the landscape he flew, zipping through the air
with the famous Bell Rocket Belt on his back.
  Of course, in RW, the Bell device was not a
belt at all, but a large and very heavy backpack.
And it didn't have much of an operational range in
RW either. Jay had done some research when
designing his scenario. The original rocket belt
was essentially nothing more than a pair of fuel
tanks, some handlebars, a throttle, and a couple of
rocket nozzles. How it worked was, hydrogen
peroxide sprayed into a fine mesh, producing a very
hot and hard steam that spewed from the rocket nozzles
with a few hundred pounds of thrust. It was loud,
dangerous, and you only had twenty-some seconds of
lift, maybe thirty with the right fuel mixture and
tuned nozzles, and that was it.
  You could lean in the direction you wanted to go, and
later some maneuvering jets were added, but if
you were a hundred feet up in the air when the gas
ran out, you were going to fall and smash into the ground real
hard.
  A later version, the Tyler Belt, was a bit more
efficient and gave a little more flight time, but the hops
were still short and quick. A small jet-engine model that
was theoretically capable of giving the wearer half an
hour in the air had eventually been designed, but the
U.s. military had claimed exclusive use
of the new engine for its Cruise missiles.
  So the personal backpack craft of science
fiction just kind of fizzled out. The existing rocket
belts wound up in museums or television
commercials or movies, but that was it.
  Jay's version of the rocket belt had a secret
--but theoretically possible--fuel and a miniature
jet engine that gave him an hour in the air and an
automatic safety reserve to allow him to land when
the fuel ran low. He could have given it infinite
power in VR, of course, but that took some of the fun
out of it. Realistic limits were better for the
scenarios he created.
  Any fool could do fantasy; it took some
skill to keep it believable.
  Anyway, while it wasn't as fast as
a jet or even his pedal to-the-metal Viper, it
was a real rush to fly along with the wind blowing in your
face and ruffling your hair, to be able to leap tall
buildings wearing the technological equivalent of
seven league boots.
  The way Jay figured it, if you couldn't have
fun, why bother?
  Right at the moment. Jay was zooming over the new
sixteen-lane South China Causeway, from just
outside Xianggang. Hong Kong, heading north
to Jiulong, on the mainland, looking for Wong
Electronics trucks. These were easy to spot from
the air, given that they had bright orange roofs, each
of which was numbered. In RW, without a VR scenario
enabled, the "trucks" were actually packets of binary
information gathered and collated at nodes and squirted
across the net. RW was just too boring.
  Wong Electronics made some minor pieces
of hardware, but they specialized in transmission
software, readers and mailers, and certain kinds of
security programs. Whoever had snuck
into Winthrop's computer had erected a couple of
fire walls and dug two dead falls on his or
her way out to cover his or her ass, and from the size and
shape, even without the snipped off ID
codes, Jay knew the walls "n" falls were
top-of-the-line Wongware.
  If he could locate, then sneak a ride on a
Wong truck and get into their database, maybe he
could find out who had bought the fire walls and dead
falls. It would be a brute-force cruncher of a
project, but he had access to the power. Maybe the
breaker had gotten sloppy and left a trail he
could follow.
  Ah. There was one of the orange-roof trucks now,
a couple hundred feet below and half a mile
ahead. He'd just drop on down and stow away.
  Breaking a lock on one of the trucks' doors
would be easier than taking his shoes off for a player of
Jay's ability.
  He throttled back on the belt's thrust and
started to lose altitude. He would very much like to find
out who had used Winthrop's computer before she did.
It would be a loss of face she would hate, he'd be
shiny as a new wet light chip, and he would love
it: Oh, that? I ran the guy down, didn't I
mention it? Piece of cake, I'm surprised you
didn't do it yourself by now. No, no need to thank
me. Lieutenant, I was just doing my job....
Jay reached the rear of the truck, shucked
off the jet pack, and got out his lock picks. It
took him forty-five seconds to get the door
open. He closed it quietly behind him.
  That's Gridley. Jay Gridley ... From a
thousand feet above Jay Gridley, Platt
watched, holding slow and level the little helicopter
he'd found himself flying in when he'd dialed
into Gridley's scenario. Kind of neat, the
rocket thing the guy wore, and the backgrounds were all
sharp and laid in thick too. The little half-breed
gook had some skill.
  Of course, Platt had a little skill himself.
Plus he had access to all kinds of secret
crap that a U.s. senator could put his hands on.
Anything that White could touch, Hughes could touch, and
whatever Hughes had, Platt could play with. There were
real advantages to knowing top-secret codes.
Platt could rascal stuff from the folks who built
Net Force's computers, folks who had done the
original hardware and programming, and who knew where
all the back doors were hidden.
  You hired a guy to build you a castle, he was
gonna know where the secret compartments were, "cause
he put them there.
  Platt watched the Net Force
operative settle toward the orange roof of the
Wong Electronics truck on the freeway below.
  The man dropped his jet pack, opened the
truck's door, and climbed inside.
  This was gonna be as much fun as going" upside
somebody's head. This little gook with his jet pack
didn't have a clue who he was dealin' with. Not a
fuckin' clue. He was gonna get his ass
kicked, and Platt was gonna love doin' it too.
  He let the helicopter sink a little.
  When he was over the truck and maybe sixty
feet up, he opened the copter's window and leaned
out, a twenty-five pound barbell weight in one hand
He extended the weight, lined up, and let it
drop.
  The steel plate fell, hitting the cab. The
driver swerved into the car in the lane next to him.
He slammed on his brakes and skidded to a halt.
Nobody got hurt, but it ought to rattle little Jay
pretty good.
  Platt hit the copter's throttled, rose, and
veered away. By the time Jay-Jay got his shit
together, Platt would be long gone.
  We havin' fun now, ain't we?
  Chapter 20
  Friday, December 31/, 4 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  It was Jay Gridley who was the bearer of the bad
news.
  Alexander Michaels was feeling pretty good that
there hadn't been any more top-secret leaks into the
net for the entire workweek. He was about to go home and
enjoy a quiet beer or two on New Year's
Eve. He planned to be asleep by the time
midnight rolled around, and with it the year 2011 and
whatever joys and griefs it would bring. But as he was
getting ready to leave his office to beat the traffic.
Jay came in with a couple of sheets of hardcopy in
his hand.
  "I think you ought to take a look at this.
Boss."
  "It can't wait until Monday?"
  "I don't think so."
  "Why don't I like the tone of that?"
  Jay tendered the hardcopy. Michaels looked
at it. He started to read it aloud: "Overlord
Beasts of America: "Know you Beasts that your days
are numbered. Know you Oppressors of the
Disenfranchised People, that the Number of the Beast is
666, and that the Number fast approaches.
We, the Representatives of the People, we. The
Frihedsakse, will bring Low You Despoilers of
Earth, You Masters of Tyranny."
  Michaels looked up from the hardcopy at Jay.
  "Fried socks?
  Freed sex?"
  "Close enough. Our universal translator
says it's Danish.
  Means "axis of liberty." his
  "Danish? I never heard of any Danish
terrorists! Denmark is a peaceful, civilized
country where you can let your old grandma go for walks
alone at night without worrying she'll get mugged."
  "Sure. She won't get mugged, but she might
slip and freeze and maybe turn into a
granny-side," Jay said.
  Michaels shook his head and continued reading: "
"For Your Wicked Ways are Manifest and
Myriad, and we Shall Reveal your Sickness
to All. All Shall Know You for your Evil, and the
Weapons of your Sinful Ways Shall be used Against
You, for the Power of Knowledge is the Light that All
Demons Fear and the Power of Knowledge is given to the
P."
  "Brother," Michaels said. He
looked at Jay again.
  "So why didn't you add this one to the pile of other
whackaloos claiming responsibility for the leaks?"
  "Read on, Mcduff."
  "You cannot Hide from the Light of Justice, nor
can You Run from the People's Retribution, nor will
Fortresses save You, for you are Hated by the P."
  "A kind of loose interpretation of
Machiavelli, that part," Jay said.
  "Against You the People will throw All that is needed
to Defeat you. The End is Near. Prepare for your
Doom."
  It was signed "The Frihedsakse."
  Michaels looked at Jay yet again.
  "Next page," Jay prompted.
  On the next page was a list of numbers.
  "As nearly as we can tell, those are the original
posting times and dates for all the major leaks
we've been running down. There are a couple there
we missed. We went back and strained a lot of
stuff posted then, using the Super Cray Colander.
  We found a posting of the master list for last
month's new American Express customer names
and numbers. The other posting we found reveals the
codes for all the computer controlled
railroad safety lights and switches on the main
commuter line between Washington and Baltimore. A
bright hacker could use those to pile half-a-dozen
trains up into big heaps of smoking scrap before
somebody figured out what was going on. We called
American Express and Amtrak."
  "Jesus."
  "Unlikely anybody would know those specifics
unless they posted them in the first place, Boss."
  Michaels looked at the number. The last one in
the sequence read: 12/31/10-aaeiancei "That's
tonight? December 31/, one second before
midnight?"
  "Yes, sir. If these are the guys, they are
going to leak some thing just as the New Year arrives.
Be my guess it won't be a recipe for mulled
wine."
  "Shit."
  "I hear that. Boss."
  "Any way to trace this?"
  "Sure. We already did. Posted on a public
BBS from a pay phone in Grand Central
Terminal, New York City, at 3:15
P.m. today. Rush hour. New Year's Eve.
No signo ID, no residual DNA
from the modem jack on the phone, no fingerprints.
A six-phone bank next to a coffee shop.
Phones are in a dead zone, no security cams
watching "em. Records show thirty seven calls
were made at those six phones between 5 p.m. and
5:20 p.m.
  Good luck trying to find whoever sent it."
  "Better tell your shift they won't be partying
tonight."
  "Already done," Jay said.
  "We're scanning all the major nets we can,
we've turned all of our search engines on, have
squeal bots roaming, and we've informed all of the
big commercial services to grab anything coming in from
11:55 P.m. to 12:05 a.m. I expect
we're going to get real sick of reading "Happy
New Year!" but if he posts anything on a
major board or node, we should get it pretty
quick."
  Michaels said, "Good work. Jay. I guess
I'll be in my office."
  "Happy New Year, Boss."
  "Yeah. Right."
  PART TWO
  Secrets Made Manifest
  Chapter 21
  Saturday, January 1/, 2011, 12:03
a.m. Marietta, Georgia
  Platt sat in the kitchen of his house, the house
that had belonged to his mother before she died, his laptop
computer on the wooden table next to the fridge. He
took another big ole slug of the Southern Comfort and
Coke over ice, and giggled.
  Four minutes it had taken the Net Force
pukes to snag his posting. He'd have thought they coulda
done it in less, given they knew exactly when it
was coming and all, but okay, cut 'em a little slack,
they did have a lot of territory to cover.
  He'd stuck a squealer on the note and dropped
it into a public chat room on the World Online
commercial service, the WOL room marked
  "Gay Texans."
  Steers 'n" Queers, he called that room, after
an old joke his uncle had once told him about
Texas. He liked to check in there once in a
while and do a little VR vampire stuff on the
fags, leading them on and all before he blasted them.
He had a great little piggyback virus, a
Trojan horse he could embed in an e-mail.
That was a hot piece of software, infecting
em ail, since you supposedly couldn't do that. The
queers'd open the mail, read a few lines of the
hot sex stuff he put in, then bap! the virus
would infect their computer. Unless they had the latest
immune system software installed, it would eat their
drive in about two days.
  Served "em right for being fags.
  He took another snort of the blended liquor and
Coke, and laughed again.
  He was remembering little Jay Gridley hopping
out of that VR truck, trying to figure out why the
sucker had slewed to a stop in the middle of the
freeway. Time he got it, it was too late.
Haw!
  Platt was on the wireless modem, had beamed a
signal to a rebroadcaster, and then into a little
throwaway stupe comp he'd set up in a rented
room in San Diego, California. The stupe
comp was set up for e-mail only, and rigged so it
logged onto WOL and then sent the message and
squeal at exactly 11:59: 59 Eastern
Standard Time. When the squeal went off, it sent the
signal back to the stupe comp, which routed it back
through" the re broadcaster and to his laptop, to let
him know.
  Then the stupe comp wiped its hard drive and
RAM disk clean, then fried the modem's
memory real good a complete wipe that nobody was
going to undo and shut itself off. Probably they'd have
a team of feds kicking in the room's door in an
hour or two, but that was okay. It'd give "em
some thing to do, but finding the computer in San Diego
wasn't gonna do them no good, no good at all.
They couldn't get anything off it that was gonna point
them at him, three thousand miles away in
Georgia laughing his ass off.
  He lifted his glass, rattled the ice cubes,
and held it up in a toast.
  "Yo, Net Force. Happy Fucking New
Year!"
  He drained the rest of the dark brown and slightly
fizzy liquid in two big swallows, put the
glass down on the table, then shut the laptop off.
  The info in the squirt wasn't much, a list of
all the patients treated for STD'S sexually
transmitted diseases reported to the Atlanta
CDC Mednet for the last six months. By law,
certain things had to be reported to the states, and
eventually some of these things wound up at the Centers for
Disease Control. There were a few
eyebrow-raisin" names on the list,
politicians, actors and actresses, some high
profile big-money types, and even some visiting
big shots, including a couple of sand nigrah
princes. No real tactical value, the list, but
it would be embarrassing as all hell trying to explain
to your wife just how come you was treated for the clap.
Mainly it was some thing to rattle Net Force's
cage, to show that the little manifesto Hughes had
cooked up was legit.
  A throwaway, that was all.
  Outside, the sounds of firecrackers and
gunshots still echoed through the cold Georgia night.
  "Oh, yeah, yeah--we havin' fun now, ain't
we, boys?"
  Saturday, January 1/, 2011, 1 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Hughes sat in bed, reading a recent
biography of the Norwegian Vidkun Quisling.
Quisling, a career army officer whose name later
came to be synonymous with "traitor," had in the
late 1930's, formed a national socialist party in
his country, the Nasjonal Samling. The party
hadn't done much, had never had any real power, but
then the Germans had started a war and, in
due course, had invaded Norway. Quisling
tried to form his own government, which the Germans
knocked down pretty quick, but since he was a
home-grown national socialist who had once met
with Hitler, the Nazis saw him as one of their own.
Quisling became a collaborator who was
ultimately deemed responsible for sending
hundreds of Jews to the death camps, along with
trying to convert the schools and churches
into pro-German organizations.
  One of the first things the Norwegians had done after
their liberation was to round up and arrest scores of known
collaborators.
  These were quickly tried, then quickly executed.
  Quisling had been at the top of their list.
  The biographer was convinced that Quisling's
policies had cost Germany the war. Had he not
tried so hard to "Nazify" the country, the writer
was convinced there would not have developed much of a
Norwegian resistance movement. The
Norwegians were from good Viking stock, not the least
bit cowardly, as evidenced by the famous tale of their
king and the Jewish symbol--when told that Jews must
wear the Star of David sign in public to show who
they were, supposedly King Haakon
VII took up the symbol himself and urged all his
people to do the same. That could be apocryphal, of
course, but truth should never stand in the way of a good
story. The Norwegians were also smart enough to figure
out which way the winds of war were blowing. If things
hadn't been bad at home, they would have hunkered
down and allowed the storm to blow itself out. But
Quisling's policies pissed them off.
  The resistance movement was never more than a small
thorn in the Nazddis' side, but it did cause a
fair amount of industrial sabotage. Foremost
among the attacks was a major strike against the
heavy-water production facilities in Rjukan.
The writer postulated that if the Germans had been
able to speed up their atomic experiments, they would have
likely developed a working atomic bomb before the
United States did, and that such a weapon would have
turned the tide of war in their favor. A few of
those in the noses of V2 rockets launched from
ships off the U.s. mainland at American
cities would have done the trick.
  If you accepted the theory, that was a reasonable
assumption.
  A mile-wide smoking crater in the middle of
New York or Washington, D.c..
would have given the Americans some thing to think about, all
right.
  Too bad for them, the Germans ran out of time.
It was left for America to build fission bombs that
finished off the Japanese; atomics hadn't even
been needed to beat the Germans.
  Hughes thought this Quisling-cost-the-war theory was
some thing of a stretch, but the writer nonetheless echoed a
valid point from all the vaults of history: For
want of a nail, a war could be lost. One man, in
the right place, at the right time, could alter the course
of the entire world. There was a popular sci-fi plot
device that frequently used this idea. What would
happen if a time traveler went back and throttled
Hitler as a boy? Or some Christian zealot
time-traveled and rescued Jesus from the cross?
Or a tumble-footed paleontologist went back
and accidentally killed the first protohuman ancestor
from whom mankind would evolve?
  A butterfly flapping its wings in Kansas today
contributes to the tornado in Florida tomorrow. All
things are interconnected, so the theory went.
  Hughes grinned. He dog-eared the corner of the
page and closed the biography. He turned off the
light, settled down into his orthopedic
biofoam pillow, and stared into the darkness.
  Quisling had probably not been aware that he was
a contributor to history. Certainly he hadn't
wanted to be remembered as a traitor. But men who
were less than adept did not control their own
destinies, much less how they personally would be
viewed years later. History, after all, was
written by the victors.
  History... Hughes had always been fond of the
story about the French physician
Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Elected to the
French National Assembly a few years before the
Revolution, and being a man of medicine and of a kindly
nature, Le Docteur Guillotin's major
political ambition seemed to be a wish to make
criminal executions less painful. He had
witnessed a few botched beheadings, wherein a headsman
had gotten sweaty palmed, or had arrived drunk,
and had had to hack several times at a screaming
victim's neck before managing to lop off the offending
head.
  Such a thing was barbaric for civilized people like the
French. The Scots, the English, mon Dieu!
even the ignoble Poles possessed bladed
mechanical devices they used for
executions--although these were mostly for nobles, to be
spared the embarrassment of an inept headsman.
  So the doctor helped pass a law requiring that
legal execution be performed by a machine that would not
miss, to be more humane to the condemned, rich and poor
alike.
  Le Docteur hardly wanted to be remembered
by history as the man primarily responsible for the
head-cleaving device at first called La
Louisette. He certainly had not wanted to see the
killing machine, which he had no hand in inventing, tagged
la guillotine, the name that eventually stuck.
  What a wonderful legacy for one's
relatives. A family name with which to inspire
gasps and revulsion, how lovely that must have been.
And how ironic, given Le Docteur's good
intentions.
  But men like Quisling and Guillotin had been
small of vision, and not gifted with Hughes's
intelligence. In a few days, he would be going
to Guinea-Bissau, to sit with the head of that small
country's government, to strike a deal that would someday
be viewed by history as one of the most daring and clever
schemes of all time. If history was written by the
victors, then surely he would write his
own.
  He did not for a moment doubt it.
  Saturday, January 1/, 2011, 7 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  In her kitchen, waiting for the coffee maker to finish
brewing, Toni held the sheathed kris in both hands.
Traditionally, silat players would not want a
"used" kris. If you didn't know who had owned it
or what he had used it for, you might be inheriting some
bad hantu; you might find yourself connected to dead people
by an evil blade, soaked in blood and karma.
  But since this was Guru's family blade, it was
certainly reputable.
  be Maybe it did have enough magic to help her with
Alex. She had been sleeping with it in its wooden
sheath on her nightstand, blade carefully pointed
away from her head. She was willing to take any
help she could get.... Even if she was peeved with
him just now. It hadn't taken long for the story to get
back to her about his little adventure in the desert during
that raid on the terrorists. Naturally, he hadn't
told her, but it hadn't taken long for him to figure
out she knew either. He was supposed to be the Commander
of Net Force, not a foot soldier! How dare he
risk himself like that?
  Toni grinned as the coffee maker chose that
instant to gurgle and belch the last of the coffee into the
pot, a kind of brewed raspberry noise, almost as
if making fun of her.
  She put the kris onto the counter, laying it
softly on a clean dish towel, and grabbed her cup
from the cabinet. Oh, well.
  Life was never boring.
  Saturday, January 1/, 2011, 7 a.m.
Oro, California
  Joanna Winthrop stood in the warm spring
sunshine, waiting for the train to arrive. She wore a
long, yellow patterned dress, a bonnet, and
held a small tube-shaped brown leather travel
satchel. The year was 1916. She was at the Oro
Station, in northern California, and the surrounding fir
and alder had sprouted new greenery to herald
Persephone's return from the Underworld.
  Joanna had been impressed with that legend as a
girl, how the Lord of the Underworld had kidnapped the
beautiful Persephone, and how her mother, Demeter,
Goddess of the Corn, had been so wracked with
grief that she turned her back on mankind,
causing a cruel winter in which no crops could grow.
  Joanna had always felt a certain
sympathy with women who had gotten into dire straits
because of their beauty.
  According to the mythology, after a year of this cold
misery, Zeus finally intervened, sending Hermes
to ask the Lord of the Underworld to allow Persephone her
freedom. The Lord of the Underworld was not happy about this
request, for he did, in his own brutish way,
love the woman he had kidnapped to be his wife.
But one risked the wrath of Zeus with great care, if
one dared risk it at all, so by Zeus's request,
Persephone was released. Dameter was so overjoyed
that the flowers blossomed and the grasses grew, and
spring came. Alas, her daughter had eaten seeds
of the pomegranate during her stay in the Underworld--
there's always a catch in these things-so Persephone was
required to return to the Underground for a portion of
each year. And each time, Demeter's grief at
lo sing her daughter caused winter to fall upon the
Earth.... It was a wonderful and imaginative
story to explain the seasons. Although you'd think
Demeter would have wanted to cut the apron strings after
a few thousand years. God-time must be different.
  Too bad she didn't have Zeus to help her
find the hacker who had used her computer station. She
could use the help.
  The guy had left a trail, but it was faint, and
rigged with booby traps all along the way. She was
beginning to get really pissed off. When she found this
guy and turned him over to the feebs, she was hoping
to get at least one clean kick at his testicles
before they hauled him away. Having your supposedly
secure computer station used for sabotage was, at
the very least, embarrassing.
  It was one thing to be thought beautiful when it got in
your way. It was another thing entirely to be thought
inept at what you did for a living.
  The incoming train's whistle blew twice,
steam-powered hoots that echoed into the station. There were
only a few passengers waiting in her scenario,
none of them paying any attention to her. She liked this
time; it allowed her to wear clothes that could utterly
conceal her shape and most of her features. People had
been polite to each other in 1916, and the pace of
life, just before America entered the Great War for
Civilization, had been more stately than brisk.
  The locomotive arrived, pulling a passenger
train of some sixteen cars, blasting clouds of steam,
its great wheels squealing and squeaking to a halt at
the platform.
  Well. It didn't matter how many
traps this bodoh left in his wake, she was going
to track him down....
  Chapter 22
  Monday, January 3rd, 8:02 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Alex Michaels leaned back in his chair and
wished he was somewhere else. Just about anyplace would
do, instead of sitting here listening to one of Senator
White's staffers drone on at him over the phone.
  "You understand our problem, don't you. Commander?"
  Oh, yeah, he understood, all right. He made
a sympathetic noise he didn't mean: "Um."
  Congress was still out for the holidays, but the staff people
got a lot of work done when the bosses weren't
around. Probably more than when they were here, getting in
the way. The truth of it was, Washington was run
by staff. Without them, most congressmen and senators
would not have a clue as to what was really going on. How
some of the most influential people in the country ever got
elected amazed Michaels. Some of these bozos
probably had to be led to the bathroom and shown how
to work a zipper.
  "So I can pencil you in for the committee meeting?"
  Michaels thought about it for a second. What if
he said no?
  That would be fun. They'd have to subpoena him. Would
Net Force security keep out a federal marshal
looking to serve papers if he asked them to?
Probably, but Michaels would have to leave the
building sooner or later. And the good senator would
make mounds of political hay out of his refusal
to take the hot seat voluntarily. Did the Commander
of Net Force have some thing to hide? An honest man
doesn't fear a few questions, does he?
  "I'd be happy to talk to the senator's
committee."
  "Thank you, sir. Eight a.m. on Monday the
10th. I'll em ail you to confirm."
  "This isn't going to be another of those week-long
deals, is it, Ron?"
  "No, sir. The senator is going on a
junket--uh, a fact finding mission--to Ethiopia
on the 12th, so we'll wrap by Tuesday."
  So, at worst, he'd be on the hot seat for a day
or two, assuming nobody else was slotted. And
it was unlikely that he'd be the only sacrificial
lamb--White's committees always had plenty of
victims they wanted to skewer. What an idiot.
  After he hung up, Michaels leaned forward in his
chair, feeling tired.
  He'd like nothing better than to take the day off,
go for a nice long ride on his bike, to enjoy the
cold, crisp morning while working up a little sweat.
Or, as long as he was wishing, why not a week in
Tahiti?
  Lie on the beach, soak up whatever rays the
sun block would let past, drink coconut and
tropical fruit and rum. Listen to the waves
break.
  Boy, did that sound good.
  He grinned at himself. There was a pile of work on
his desk that he couldn't get done if he worked
twenty-four-hour days for a month. The deeper that
pile got, the more he felt like dragging his heels.
Did everybody feel that way? Or was it a contrary
streak in him, just like wanting to spend money the most when
you were dead broke?
  Well. You knew the job was dangerous when you
took it, right?
  Right.
  Monday, January 3rd, 11:15 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  John Howard sat on Doc Kyle's couch in
the base clinic, watching the older man flip through the
hardcopy print out.
  Kyle shook his head.
  "I don't know what to tell you, John.
  X-rays, EEG, EKG, sonograms,
MRI, MEG, everything is normal.
  You have the blood pressure of a man half your
age, your reflexes are great, there's nothing growing
in any dark corners that shouldn't be there. You don't
have AIDS, hepatitis, prostate cancer, or
herpes. Your cholesterol is low, your liver
enzymes are good, hormones are normal--all your
blood work is all dead-center normal, except
for what might be a little bit of a white cell shift
to the left, a few segs, that might be indication of a
virus. Might also be lab error, it's that close.
You're as healthy a specimen as I've seen all
month."
  "So why am I so tired all the time?"
  Kyle, a full bird colonel, was sixty,
and a career military man. Howard had been his
patient for years. Kyle grinned.
  " "Well, now, none of us is getting any
younger. A man your age needs to realize he's not
going to be able to run basic with the recruits forever."
  "A man my age? Jesus, I'm not a man
my age!"
  Kyle laughed.
  "Come on, once you hit forty you have to expect
to slow down a little.
  Sure, you can hold the Reaper at bay with diet
and exercise, cheat him pretty good, but the time when you
could wine, women, and song it up all night long,
then grab a full pack and hump it all the next
day are behind you. What you did for a light workout as a
shave tail is overtraining for a colonel old enough
to be that boy's father."
  "You're saying I should slow down."
  "Not 'shd." You will slow down, that's the nature
of the beast.
  You're in better shape than most
twenty-year-olds I see in here, no question. But the
fact is, a twenty-year-old in peak condition is
going to have better legs, faster recovery, and more
energy than a forty-year-old in peak condition. I'm
not saying you should park your butt in the rocking chair,
smack your gums, and wait for senility, but you need
to recognize the reality. If you hit the gym four
times a week, better cut that to two. If you jog
ten miles a day, drop it to five. Warm up more,
stretch before and after you sweat hard, give yourself more
recovery time. You don't have the reserves
you once had, simple as that. You can maintain a
vintage aircraft pretty good, but sooner or
later the metal fatigues, no matter how many
times you rebuild the engine and the hydraulics."
  Howard stared at him. It wasn't as if the doc
was giving him a death sentence-Well, yes, it was.
That was exactly what he was doing. He was reminding
him that the grave was still out there--and it was closer than it
used to be.
  Just what I needed to hear. Howard blew out a
sigh.
  "All right. Thanks, Doc."
  "Don't take it so hard, kid. You might have a
couple more good years left. You want me to write
you a prescription for some prunes and Geritol?"
  Outside, the January sky was clear and cold.
Howard walked toward his office, thinking about what
Kyle had said.
  So, okay, he'd ease up a little on his
workouts, see if that helped. If Doc was right, then
he'd feel better.
  Of course, he'd also feel worse, knowing that there
wasn't some thing simple that could be fixed. Nobody
had come up with a cure for getting older yet. And this
was the first time he'd realized that it was going
to happen to him too. Somehow, he'd always felt as
if he'd live to be ninety, and except for a few
wrinkles he'd look and feel the same then as he
had at twenty or thirty.
  Maybe there was some thing to be said for dying in
battle while your brain was still sharp and your eyes
unclouded by time. At least it was quick. Maybe it was
better to be burned out ashes than cold, ancient
dust.
  Monday, January 3rd, 11:15 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Tyrone's life was over.
  He stood inside Cardio Sports, between the
wrist-heart monitor display and a display case of
stopwatches, staring through the front window into the mall.
From where he stood, with the rack of ski jackets behind
him, he'd be hard to see from the tables at the food
court, just across the mall's main walkway, but he
could easily see Bella where she sat at one of the
tables.
  Where she sat, with somebody.
  Where Belladonna Wright sat with Jefferson
Benson, facing him across the little round white table,
holding his hands with her hands, smiling at him.
  Smiling at him.
  Oh, God backslash He felt sick, as if
he was gonna throw up, as if somebody had punched
him in the solar plexus hard enough so he couldn't
breathe. And he felt a cold and hot blend of
sad, aching misery entwined with mindless, killing
rage. He wanted to scream, to run to where Bella
sat, to smash Jefferson Benson's face in with his
fists, to kick him enough times to break every bone in his
body. He wanted to do that, and then spit on him.
  But what Tyrone did not want to do was look
Belladonna Wright straight in her lying face.
Not at that moment.
  He was on afternoon shift at school, like she was,
and so he'd asked her if she was going to the mall.
They could meet, grab lunch, head for classes?
  No, she'd said. Not today. She had to run some
errands, she'd said, so she wasn't going to the mall.
She'd see him later at school.
  Fine. That was nopraw.
  And yet, there she was. Sitting there with Benson,
holding his fucking hands, smiling at him.
  Tyrone stood there, pretending to examine the heart
monitors, unable to look away. It was like when you
saw somebody do some thing really stupid on avid some
thing so stupid it embarrassed you just to be
watching it, and you wanted to look away, but you
couldn't, you watched it anyhow. He didn't want
to be here. He didn't want to know that Bella had
lied to him. He didn't want to see her holding
hands with Benson. But he couldn't move, couldn't
turn his head away.
  He had to watch. Even though it felt as if there
was some thing alive in his stomach, some thing with teeth and
claws trying to dig its way out of him.
  He never would have known if he hadn't come to the
sport store looking for a birthday present for his
father. It had never occurred to him that Bella would be
at the mall. She'd said she wasn't going, and it
had never crossed his mind to believe otherwise.
Truly had never occurred to him.
  She'd lied to him.
  As he watched, Bella stood, and so did
Benson. They moved around the table, closer to each
other. Benson bent over.
  Tyrone wanted to scream, to pound himself on the
sides of the head.
  The worst thing he could imagine happened. Benson
kissed her.
  No, there was some thing even worse than that--she
kissed Benson back.
  Tyrone saw their mouths working and knew it was a
tongue kiss. Benson put one hand behind her, put
it right on her butt. Pulled her closer.
  Bella let his hand stay there.
  It lasted forever. A million years.
  Finally, they finished. Benson turned and went one
way, Bella the other.
  Tyrone stood frozen, a worn-out statue of
old bronze, unable to even blink. It was like the time
on the parachute ride in Florida, that big
free-fall drop. His belly fluttered, came
all the way up to his throat.
  He was paralyzed on the outside, even though his
guts roiled like a nest of beheaded snakes.
  What should he do? Should he go out and confront her?
  Tell her he was just passing by? See what she
said? Would she lie to him again? Did he want to know
that?
  Oh, man, oh, man! He wanted to die. Right
here, right now.
  Just go up in a blast of fire and smoke and be
dead and gone and not have to know this, not have to think about it, not
have to deal with it.
  Bella had betrayed him. That was it, that was it, there
was no way around it. She could have explained
being in the mall, maybe even explained meeting
Benson by accident and having lunch, but no way could
she explain the last part. The kiss.
  The hand on her ass.
  Right now, he hated Jefferson Benson so much that
he would have killed him if he could have figured out a
way to do it and get away with it.
  Maybe even if he couldn't get away with it.
But Benson wasn't the real problem. Tyrone
knew that. Bella was the problem. What really hurt
was that Bella had let him kiss her. That Bella
had wanted him to kiss her. That she had enjoyed it.
  She wanted somebody else. Instead of Tyrone.
  That was the thing that made Tyrone sick est.
  What was he going to do?
  How could he live with this?
  At that moment, he couldn't see any way. No
way at all.
  Chapter 23
  Monday, January 3rd, 12:10 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Julio Fernandez stood in the cold at the start
of the obstacle course, next to the chinning station. The
morning trainees had come and gone, and the afternoon group
didn't come on until after lunch. Some
civilian feebs ran the course at noon now and
then, along with senior troops trying to stay in
shape, but right at the moment he was the only one at the
chin racks.
  He spent five minutes warming up, rolling his
shoulders and stretching his neck. If he didn't do
that he would probably strain his traps, and walking
around with a sore neck for the next week didn't
appeal to him, especially given his already gimpy
status.
  There were four sets of three bars there--hardwood
dowels, each two and a half feet long, an inch
and a half in diameter, mounted in six-by-six
pressure-treated lumber posts. Each of the
crosspieces was set at a different height. The
lowest was about six and a half feet off the sawdust,
the middle one was a foot higher, the highest a foot
above the middle one. Usually he could easily jump
up and catch the highest of the bars, but his leg bothered
him a little more than he'd let on. Until the
muscle got a little less sore, he wasn't going
to be dunking any basketballs. Or springing up
to catch the top chin bar. But he could grab the middle
one easily enough. He did so, palms forward,
using a full grip about eight inches wider
than his shoulders. It didn't really matter how
tall the bar was because when he did chins he pulled his
legs up into an L-sit to work his belly muscles
anyway. Kind of like a gymnast, although he wouldn't
get many points for form. He didn't point his
toes enough.
  He curled his hips up, pointed his legs--he
could even feel that in his wounded leg--then chinned himself,
going up at a medium speed, coming back down at the
same speed, to a full hang. Anything else
didn't work that's enough.
  One.
  He repeated the move, then did it again, getting
into the rhythm.... two ... three ... four ...
Doing it in an L-sit made it harder, but that was the
point.
  He wasn't trying to see how many he could do,
cheating to a half-hang and then pumping it back up.
The idea was to make the muscles work.
  ... five ... six ... seven ... eight...
Some guys used a false grip, with their thumbs
hooked over the bar for more lift, instead of under and around
the fingers.
  And some guys used wrist straps, on the theory that
their forearm muscles and hands would get tired
before they wore their lats out, and chinning was primarily
a lat exercise.... nine ... ten ... eleven
... Fernandez figured that there wasn't much point
to his back being so strong that his hands couldn't keep
up. It wouldn't do you much good to have lats like
Superman if you didn't have the grip strength to use
them.... twelve ... He let himself down, lowered
his legs, released the bar.
  He was warmed up pretty good now. He shook his
hands and arms out, flexed and extended his fingers,
rolled his shoulders a couple of times, then turned his
hands around so the palms faced him, and caught the bar
in an underhand pull-up grip, this time spaced about
shoulder-width.
  That was the only difference between chins and pull-ups,
whether your palms faced away or toward you.
  One ... two ... three ... four... The
biceps started to burn first, but the forearms were right there
too.... five ... six ... seven ...
eight... It was getting tough now. He blew out a
hard breath, sucked in a deep lungful of air,
gutted it out.... nine ... Come on, Julio, you
can make it!
  ... ten... He dropped, hung on to the bar for a
second, then let go.
  "I didn't think you were going to make that last
one," a woman said from behind him.
  He turned. Joanna Winthrop.
  He grinned.
  "Me neither. Course, if I'd known you were
watching, I'd have managed a couple more. I wouldn't
want you to think I was a wimp."
  She wore running shoes and sweats, dark blue
pants, and a matching hooded shirt with the Net Force
logo on the front.
  "I doubt I would think that. Twelve chins and ten
pull-ups?
  On a good day, I might do six of either. Not
both."
  "Well, I don't want you to feel bad, so
how about I just skip the one-handed sets?"
  She laughed.
  "Thank you. I appreciate it."
  "So, what brings you out here?"
  "Too much time at the desk. Every so often, I have
to get away and clear my head."
  "I hear that."
  "How's the leg?"
  "You want the macho answer? Or the truth?"
  both, please."
  "Well, the macho answer is, "Ah, no
problem. Little old bullet wound like that can't slow a
real man down. Hell, I hurt myself worse
putting on my socks. I was just about to go run the
course. After which I'm probably gonna jog around
the compound a couple times, then go find a pickup
rugby game somewhere." his
  "I see. And the truth?"
  "That sucker is sore, stiff, and if I tried
to run the course, I'd get maybe halfway to the
first hurdle, cursing like a sailor, before I
collapsed and fell down hollering in pain."
  She laughed again. He liked that, making her
laugh. She relaxed when she did it; she lost some
of that tightness in her face that made her look just a
little too cool to approach.
  She said, "You're going to give macho men a bad
name, Julio, admitting some thing like that."
  "I'm trusting you to keep it a secret," he
said, his face held as grave as he could manage.
  "If they found out, I'd be labeled a sissy,
and drummed right out of the Manly Men Society."
  "My lips are sealed."
  They smiled at each other.
  "So, you gonna do the course?"
  "That was the idea."
  "How about I hobble along and watch?"
  "I can live with that."
  She started a series of leg stretches, and he
moved over to lean against the chin supports. He
watched.
  Monday, January 3rd, 12:15 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Alex was running a little late, and Toni was already
dressed and warmed up, practicing sempokddaad
depok postures, dropping to sit, then springing
back to her feet, when he made it to the gym.
  "Sorry," he called, headed for the dressing
room.
  "I got hung up on a call."
  "It's all right."
  He was back out in a minute, dressed in a
black T-shirt, black cotton drawstring
pants, and a white headband. He also wore wrestling
shoes.
  They didn't like you to work out on the mats with shoes
that might leave marks.
  She bowed him in and set him to practicing his
djuru. He only knew the first one, but it was
obvious he had been practicing away from
class.
  Anot her month or two and he'd be ready
to start the second djuru.
  Pretty quick. She'd been four months before
Guru had given her Djuru Two.
  After about fifteen minutes, she called a stop.
He'd worked up a pretty good sweat, his shirt was
damp and the headband was soaked. She walked to where her
jacket was folded next to the wall, bent, and
pulled the kris in its sheath from under the cloth.
  She walked back to Alex and showed him the
weapon.
  "Look at this."
  He raised his eyebrows.
  "Is this Indonesian?"
  "Yes. It's called a kris. K-r-i-so.
Sometimes spelled with an E after the K, sometimes
with a double S. My Guru presented it to me when I
went home for Christmas. It belonged to her
great-grandfather. It's been in her family for more than
two hundred years." She handed it to him.
  He pulled it from the wooden sheath and looked at the
blade.
  "Wow. How'd they get that color and texture?"
  " "The shape is called dapor. This
one is a kris luk, the wavy blade pattern.
The waves are always an odd number. There are also
straight kris. The blade is made by welding and
hammering various kinds of iron or steel together, then
forging them into one piece. It's etched, they use
lemon or lime juice and arsenic on the blade
to darken and bring out the patterns in the steel. The
surface pattern is called pam or. There is a
lot of meaning attached to what kind of dapor and pam
or a blade has, and who crafted it and how."
  "Security didn't say anything when you brought this
in?"
  "I told them it was a paperweight. Feel the
edge."
  "Not very sharp," he said, testing it with his thumb.
  "That's because it is primarily a thrusting weapon.
One doesn't use a kris for household chores,
only against an enemy or a wild animal. It's
pretty much a ceremonial weapon, although it can
certainly be used to kill in the hands of somebody who
knows what he or she is doing. It was the
traditional execution weapon for a long time."
  He hefted the weapon.
  "Interesting. Is it valuable?"
  " "Moneywise, probably worth
several thousand dollars. But the real value is in the
thing itself.
  "The kris are considered little temples by many
Indonesians.
  The makers are called Empu, and depending on
how one produces the kris and the wishes of the client,
certain ... magics are included in the forging. Many
of the traditional kris are designed to be lucky,
in war, or love, or business."
  "Which is this one?"
  She shrugged.
  "I'm not sure yet. The magic apparently
changes a little with each new owner." Lucky in
love, she hoped.
  "You aren't going to stick me with it, are you?"
  She smiled.
  "And piss off Security? No, I thought we'd
start with the wooden knife for practice. But I
wanted you to see it."
  He put the dagger back into its sheath and handed it
to her.
  "Thank you for showing it to me."
  She took the kris, went back to her jacket,
and rewrapped the weapon.
  Back in front of Alex, she said,
"Okay, let's work a little on applications from the
djuru. Throw a punch, right here."
  She touched the tip of her nose.
  He stepped in and shot a weak straight right at
her nose.
  She double-blocked it without any effort.
  "That's not a punch!
  And let me see the other hand bracing the right.
It's not that much slower, and remember, this hand"--she
raised her right fist--"never goes into battle without
this one." She put her left hand on her right forearm.
  "Just like the djuru."
  "Can I ask a question?"
  "Sure."
  "Why?"
  "Because silat is based on structural
principles and not raw power. You have to have base,
angle, and leverage, but you must use proper
technique to get them. See, you are bigger and
stronger than I am, and if you punch really hard,
I might not be able to deflect it using pure
muscle. But if I brace my block thus, and
my hips are corked properly, I have a
mechanical advantage. Remember, this stuff was
created with the idea that if you needed it, your
attacker was going to be bigger, stronger, faster,
probably armed, and there might be four or five of
him. They might also be as skilled as you. You might
be able to muscle a guy your size or smaller, but
you can't out muscle three or four who are bigger and
stronger."
  "And faster," he said. His voice was dry.
  "And as skilled."
  She laughed.
  "Yes. But speed and power and even skill are not
nearly as important as timing. Ask me what the
most important thing is about comedy."
  "Huh?"
  "Go on, ask me."
  " "Okay, what is the most important thing
about--"
  "Timing!" she said, cutting in.
  He smiled.
  "Got it."
  "You will, you will. Practice makes perfect.
Now, again.
  Punch."
  He stepped in, and threw another right, harder this
time, and braced with his left hand.
  She blocked it and demonstrated the
counter.
  "Good," she said.
  "Again."
  This was going well. Maybe the kris was lucky in
love.
  Wouldn't that be nice?
  Chapter 24
  Tuesday, January 11th, 9:50 a.m.
Bombay, India
  Jay Gridley walked into the small
storefront tobacco shop to the jingle of a
spring-mounted warning bell on the door frame.
  The bell tinkled again as the door closed behind him
with a solid chunk!
  The smoke shop was not far from Government House,
on one of the danker streets facing Back Bay.
The time was late 1890's, and the British Raj was
still in full sway; Bombay was, of course,
Indian, but the English flag draped heavily over
the city, as it did the entire country.
  Rule Brittania.
  Inside, the shop was dark and hazy with fragrant
blue smoke. The man behind the counter was also dark, a
native, dressed in a white shirt and summer
suit, and the smell of his blended pipe
tobacco hung sweet and heavy in the still air. He
took another puff from his heavy, curved briar, and
added that smoke to the already abundant cloud.
  A month-old copy of the London Times lay
upon the counter next to a large glass jar full of
cheap cigars, a small wooden box of
strike-anywhere matches, and a metal tray of cedar
lighting sticks.
  Jay himself wore a white linen suit and a tan
planter's hat.
  He nodded at the shopkeeper.
  "You have other newspapers?"
  He waved at the Times.
  "Yes, sir, we have them in the back, next to the
humidor," the man said, in that singsong lilt of a
native Indian who'd learned English only as
an adult. He exhaled smoke with the words.
  Jay touched his hat brim and moved to the shelves
to the left of the counter, next to the closed glass
door that led into the humidor room where the good
tobacco and cigars were kept.
  He glanced at the papers. There was The Strand, the
New York Times, and some thing from Hong Kong in
Chinese. Not what he was looking for--ah, there it
was. The Delhi Ledger, a small
publication put out in English that sold mostly
to expatriate Brits homesick for King and
country. Or was it Queen and country? Sure, must
be Victoria, it being the Victorian age and
all. He ought to know his English history better,
he supposed.
  He thumbed through the cheap newsprint and smudged the
ink, getting it on his fingers. Well, at least that was
a nice touch.
  Ah, there it was. The reference he had been
trying to run down. The article was ostensibly about
Danes come to visit India, but there in the fluffy
travel piece was the name he wanted: The
Frihedsakse.
  Once upon a time. Jay would have thought it was odd
to find a bit of information about Denmark in an Indian
info net, but not anymore.
  Information was like dust; it blew around in the wind and
wound up in places you'd never think it would.
  The logical place to start hunting for information on
a Danish terrorist organization would be in
Denmark, or at least in the Scandinavian
countries, and certainly he had combed through those nets
with the best search engines and squeekbots Net Force
had, but he'd come up empty. So he'd
widened his search, and this was the first real hit he'd
had. Time was passing--it had been a week without any
real leads--and while it had been quiet, there was no
guarantee it would stay that way.
  He took the paper to the front, paid for it, and
went out into the Indian afternoon. It was overcast. What
time of year was it? Monsoon season? He was
getting slack in his old age.
  There was a time when such a detail would never have
gotten past his scenario research, even if he'd
been in a hurry. Oh, well. Things changed.
While it was still important to look good, getting the
job done counted for more.
  Tuesday, January 11th, 10:15 a.m..
Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia
  Jay had switched from his tropical linens into an
Abercrombie and Fitch khaki outfit, shorts
and a short-sleeved shirt, complete with stout walking
shoes and a pinned-up Australian bush hat.
  His next stop was a small library in
Blacktown, just north and west of Sydney. It was
the middle of summer, and warm, and the library was not
air-conditioned, even though he'd picked a
contemporary time to run his scenario.
  Not a bad transition for a couple
minutes' work.
  "Can I help you, sir?" the librarian asked.
Jay loved Australian accents. He used them for
secondary characters all the time.
  "Yes, ma'am, I'm looking for this
periodical." He put a slip of paper onto the
woman's desk. She put on her reading glasses
and looked at it.
  " "Oh, right. In the magazine section, go past
the record kiosk, on your left, about halfway
down the rack."
  "Thank you, ma'am."
  "You're American, right?"
  "Yes, ma'am."
  "Nice to make your acquaintance then."
  Jay smiled, tipped his hat, then headed for the
magazine racks. This was perhaps a little more time-consuming
than a non-VR search, but if he couldn't have
fun, why bother?
  Tuesday, January 11th, 10:30 a.m.
Rangoon, Burma
  Jay found a mention of Frihedsakse in a back
line info net connected to a major shipping company.
Not much, just an unconfirmed rumor, connected to the
sinking of an oil tanker.
  Well. Great avalanches from little snowballs
sometimes grew.
  He gathered the information in and moved on.
  Tuesday, January 11th, 10:40 a.m.
Johannesburg, South Africa
  In a police station in Boksburg, a man
arrested for stealing a car had been searched. There had
been nothing in the arrestee's wallet save a
business card, upon the back of which was the handwritten
word Frihedsakse. Next to the word was an
old-style internet-provider ID number. The
IP probably wasn't active, but that didn't
matter. If it had ever been active, there were ways
to trace it.
  A quick check of the dates on the information showed that it
had been in the police system for five months. A
pix of the card had a day and time stamp on it as
verification of the item's log into the evidence locker
at the central storage vault in
Johannesburg.
  Jay collected the card. He grinned. These
terrorists didn't know who they were messing with. He
was Jay Gridley, the man who had run the mad
Russian programmer to ground.
  These balrogs didn't have a prayer.
  Tuesday, January 11th, 10:50 a.m.
Kobe, Japan
  At a beef ranch in Kobe, somebody had
broken in and stolen, of all things, a case of beer,
which was to be fed to the cattle.
  Investigating policemen had no clues, save
one: Scrawled on the wall next to ten cases of
beer that had been left behind was the word Frihedsakse
in kanji.
  Jay made note of that.
  So it went, a tiny bit here, an even smaller
bit there. This was sometimes the way of computer sieve
work. You strained slowly, but very fine. If you did it
right, you might come up with a bunch of pieces so
small that none of them would mean anything but, puzzled
together, you might have some thing. Jay was gathering his
ducks. When he had enough of them, he would put them
into a row. And when he had enough ducks in a neat row,
he would get some answers. And then?
  Well, we'll just see, won't we his I got
your fried sex right here, pal....
  Tuesday, January 11th, 11:15 a.m.
Miami Beach, Florida
  Platt strolled along one of the touristy streets
near the canal, enjoying the
seventy-degree weather. Around him, people walked,
dressed in all the bright colors of the rainbow, plus
a bunch of colors not found anywhere naturally.
Old, young, white, black, domestic, foreign,
Miami Beach was always cookin", there was always
action. It might be snowin' like a sonofabitch up
north, in Washington or New York City, and still
be practically summer down here in the land of sin.
  Life was sure grand when you could just pick up and go
to where you could walk around in a T-shirt and shorts in
the middle of the winter.
  Platt ambled along, not going anywhere in
particular, just strolling, soaking up a few minutes
of the warm sunshine before he had to go back into his
room and plug into the net.
  He watched a black girl in a tank top and
short shorts stride by, and smiled at her big and
tight backside after she passed. Fine-lookin'
woman.
  A tall man in a purple crushed-velvet
jumpsuit passed on in-line skates, laughing.
He was throwing quarters every which way, and had a passel
of children chasing him, scooping up the change.
  Platt passed two window-shopping old
ladies, all in lime green and hot
pink, baggy Bermuda shorts and halters, both of
them burned leathery and the color of dark toast, but with
silicone implants that were the only things not sagging
on them. The old broads must be in their seventies
or eighties, and their faces were pulled so tight
by plastic surgery that their fake boobs probably
bobbed up and down when they smiled.
  If there were some kind of big disaster that destroyed a
lot of civilization's records, then maybe a
thousand years from now, when some scientist got to digging
up old coffins or shit, he might scratch his
head and wonder when he opened them: Why were there so many
caskets with these two little plastic sacks of Dow
Jell in there with all the bones?
  Fake boobs didn't do it for Platt.
Didn't matter how big they were if they weren't
real. Hell, if he wanted to handle stuff like that,
he'd just go on down to the hardware store and buy himself
a couple of lubes of bathtub caulk. Go on
home, squirt a couple of big blobs into bowls
and let them dry, squeeze that. Sheeit...
Platt grinned again. He was just stalling, so he
wouldn't have to go back to work. He sighed. Might as
well get to it.
  He didn't have any illusions about how
good he was on the net. He was better than some, but
not as sharp as the real experts. In VR, some of the
Net Force players would dance circles around him in
a head-to-head match. Thing was, tricky and
pretty sharp beat real sharp every time.
  And the Net Force pukes were fooling themselves, so that
helped a bunch.
  Back after he'd first left home and gone on the
road for a while, Platt had met an old
grifter name of James Treemore Vaughn.
Jimmy Tee, they called him. He was probably
pushing seventy, had white hair, and looked just like
your kindly old gram ps. Kinda guy you'd trust
with your wife, your kid, your money. Only Jimmy
Tee was a con man, working the small cons by the time
Platt had met him, though in his prime he had
done a lot of second- and third-man parts in big
stings.
  Earned big, spent big, didn't have a pot
to piss in. But he knew more about people than a
trainload full of psychiatrists, hookers, and
bartenders put together. He could rope a mark, sting
him, and send him on his way thinking Jimmy Tee
had done him a big favor.
  They'd sat in a bar in Kansas City
once. Big Bill Barlow's place. Jimmy
Tee having a weakness for good blended whisky, and the
old man had taught Platt a major lesson.
  " "Thing is, boyo, if you work it right, a mark
will do most of the work for you. Yeah, you can set him up,
hammer him good with the pitch, pull a fast close, and
take off with the score, but if the mark knows he's
been had, sooner or later he'll scream. A good
con gets you the money.
  A great con gets you the money--and the mark
doesn't know he's been had."
  Platt was fascinated.
  "Yeah?" He waved at the bartender, who came
over to fill up Jimmy Tee's glass.
  "Oh, yeah. See, there's a lot of people out there
who are faster, smarter, stronger, and meaner than you.
You face off with them, you get the crap kicked out you.
A big guy comes at you, you don't try to block
him balls against balls, you just redirect him a
hair. Nudge him in a direction, and get out of his
way. The trick is to make him think that's the way
he wanted to go in the first place. You can do that, you can
write your own ticket."
  In the warm sunshine, Platt smiled again. Old
Jimmy Tee had been dead and gone what?
Five, six years? But his lesson had stuck.
  The Net Force guys were looking for terrorists
because that was what they were most afraid of. So, zap.
Platt and Hughes gave them some terrorists. And the
trick was to hide little clues here and there, hide 'em
well enough so when the Net Force dogs went
sniffin", they had trouble finding those little rabbits in
their hidey-holes. If you were lookin' for somethin' you
just knew was there and you couldn't find it, well, that
made you look just that much harder.
  This whole bullshit Danish thing was Hughes's
idea, but it was pretty smart. Platt had started
planting stuff about the Fried Socks thing five or
six months ago, so some of the clues were absolute
boilerplate when it came to real time. Net Force
could poke and prod at the information and no matter how
they scanned it, it would come up real--well, at
least real in that the thing had been sitting in somebody's
memory archives since months before the manifesto
showed up.
  Some of the clues were yet to be put into place, but
when they got there, they'd be backdated to seem as if
they had been there for months or years. By the time the
Net Force pukes got to those, they'd have checked the
earlier stuff and found it to be more or less
legit. So they would convince themselves that the later stuff
was okay by the time they found it. They wouldn't bother
to check, or if they did they'd do a half-assed
job, since that was what they wanted to believe.
  If it looks like a rabbit, smells like a
rabbit, and hops like a rabbit, well, hell, it's
a rabbit, ain't it?
  You give a guy a sack of coins and he dips
into it and pulls out eight or ten at random and they
all assay out as pure 24carat gold, he is
gonna believe that all of the suckers in the bag are
real. He'll figure no way anybody could
tell which ones he'd pick, it's pure chance, so
he's covered.
  Guy like that would completely forget all the sleight
of hand he'd ever seen, forget that there were magicians
who could fan a deck and let him pick a card--
any card--and the trickster would know what it was before the
mark ever touched it.
  The hand doesn't have to be quicker than the eye--if
the eye doesn't know where to look.
  The trick, Jimmy Tee had said, was not
to embellish it too much. Just give the guy a
direction and get out of his way.
  The smarter the guy was, the quicker he would
fool himself.
  If you did it right.
  Net Force was hot on the trail of a Danish
terrorist group. Platt knew this because some very
expensive and practically undetectable squeal
programs had told him that the feds hunting for the
terrorists had finally started to find his planted
clues. Clues that were hidden enough so they had to work at
finding them, and clues that were mysterious enough to keep
"em guessin".
  They didn't trust anything too easy. Most people
figured if it didn't cost anything, it wasn't
worth anything. But if they had to slog through a
swamp, swatting at mosquitoes, then what they
found hiding in the hollow of the third dead cypress
on the left, well, hell, that was why they'd come,
right?
  Wrong. But that was the trick.
  When the hounds caught the quarry's scent, when they
knew for sure they were on the right track, then he could
let them see the rabbit. When it took off running,
they'd follow it. They'd never catch it, because it
wasn't real. It was a phantom, a Spock, a
ghost.
  And boy, it was gonna be fun to watch
them chase that sucker.
  But of course, the thing he had to do was make sure
the hounds still wanted to chase the critter. So this afternoon,
he was going to give "em a new reason. A real
good reason, this time...
  Chapter 25
  Wednesday, January 12th, 6:15 P.m.
Washington, D.c.
  Tyrone Howard pretty much wanted to die.
  He lay on his bed, staring through the ceiling, unable
to move for the weight of what Bella had dropped on
him. He had replayed the conversation a hundred times
in his head, and every time, it came out the same. There
wasn't any wiggle room, no way to put a good
face on it. She'd dropped him, blap, just like that.
  He'd seen her at school, she'd acted just
fine, and although he'd told himself he wasn't, he was
not going to say anything, in the end it had spewed from him
in a hot blast, as if he'd been punched in the
belly and the punch had knocked his words out with his wind.
  "So, meet anybody inter esting at the mall
lately?"
  Give her credit, she wasn't stupid and she
didn't try to pretend she didn't know what he was
talking about. Right there in the hall, outside
his last-period class, she let him have it, full
spray, nozzle tight: "Maybe I did. What
business is it of yours?"
  Wham backslash Anot her punch to the gut.
  "What business is it of mine. Jesus,
Bella, I thought we were--you and I--I mean,
we were--"
  "What? Married? Well, attention
Ty-ree-o-nee, we are not. I like you, you're
sharp, but I have other friends, you copy? I see them
when and where I want. You praw that?"
  He was too stunned to think about his response.
Maybe if he'd thought about it, if he'd had time
to consider it, what she said, he'd have said some thing
else, but he didn't have the time. He said, "Yeah,
I do have a problem with it."
  She'd glared at him as if he'd slapped her.
  "Oh? Really?
  My game, my rules, that's how it is. You
want to play, you play my way."
  Then he really put his butt into it. He said,
"No. I don't think so."
  That really burned her. He thought she was going
to spit on him for a second. Then she said,
"Well, then, tell you what, slip, you just
lose my comm number, okay? I don't have time
to be holding your hand and showing you what's what, little
boy."
  And then she turned and left. His world went gray.
He couldn't hear the students around him, couldn't see
anything, couldn't feel anything--except a twist in
his stomach. His gut was knotted as if he'd just
jumped off the top of a very tall building and was in
free fall.
  With the ground coming up fast... On his bed, he
replayed it again, searching for a small crack, a word
that could have a double meaning that he had somehow missed, a
magic word that, once he grasped it, would turn the
whole conversation on its head and make it mean some thing
altogether different. But he couldn't find it, that magic
word.
  It just wasn't there.
  "Son? You okay?"
  Tyrone looked at the doorway. His father stood
there.
  "Your mother is worried about you. Is there some thing
going on we can help with?"
  His knee-jerk response was to wave his father off.
No, nothing, I'm fine, just tired, nopraw. But
he was too sick at heart to even lie about
it.
  "Bella and I broke up," he said.
  His father came into the room. He leaned against the
wall next to Tyrone's computer.
  "Not your idea, I take it?"
  "No. Not my idea."
  "You want to talk about it?"
  "No. Not really." But then, as they had with
Bella, the words somehow just came tumbling out. He
told his father all about it, about seeing her in the mall,
about her kissing that jock jerk, about seeing her in the
hall. It just flowed from him like some kind of sour,
bitter fluid.
  John Howard listened to his son, felt his
anguish and pain, and ached for him. If he could stand
between his child and the world and stop anything from ever hurting him,
he would do it, but he knew it didn't work that way.
Some lessons you had to learn on your own. Some pain
had to be endured. If you were to be tempered so that your
edge would stay sharp, you had to go through the fire, be
annealed, quenched, and heated again. But it hurt
to watch your child suffer. More than anything else he could
imagine.
  Finally, the boy ran down. His grief was
intense, all consuming, it filled his world.
He couldn't see any way around it.
  There was nothing Howard could say that was going to heal this
wound. A broken heart accepted no medicine
except time.
  That the first case of puppy love squashed would some
day be nothing more than a small scar in the grand
cosmic scheme of things was not what Tyrone wanted
to hear. You will survive this and get over it was the
truth, but it would not provide much comfort right at this
moment.
  Still, it was all he had to offer.
  Howard sighed.
  "When I was sixteen, I was in love," he said.
  "A girl in my school, Lizbeth Toland,
same class. We were tight, went everywhere together.
I gave her my junior class ring. We called
it 'han gin" out' back then. We talked about
going to college together, getting married, having children.
  It was pretty serious."
  Tyrone stared at him.
  "It's kind of hard for you to imagine me with
anybody except Mom, isn't it?"
  Tyrone nodded.
  "Yeah." Then he must have realized that might not
sound too good, because he said,
  "Well, no, I mean, well, I--I never
really thought about it."
  "That's okay. For the longest time, I believed my
parents must have found me on a doorstep or under a
cabbage leaf-the idea of them having sex together was beyond
my comprehension."
  Tyrone shook his head, and Howard could almost read
his thoughts: Gramma and Grampa? Having sex?
There was a puker pix.
  "Summer after my junior year, I went
to ROTC camp. Lizbeth and I wrote each other
every day--snail mail mostly. And we talked on the
phone when I could get to one. She said she missed
me, couldn't wait for me to get back, and I felt
the same way.
  "Then I got a call from my best friend. Rusty
Stephens.
  He'd been at a bar one night sneaking in
to drink beer with a couple of buddies. They'd seen
Lizbeth there, with somebody he didn't know, partying
pretty good."
  "That's terrible," Tyrone said.
  Howard nodded, knowing his son knew just how he had
felt when he'd heard it.
  "Yeah, I thought so. I called her,
asked her about it. She had a perfectly reasonable
explanation. She'd been in the bar, sure enough, but
the guy she was with was her cousin, come to visit with his
folks, and her mother had told her to take him out. So
it was family, it didn't mean anything, they
didn't do anything, it was her cousin."
  Howard shook his head.
  "I believed her. How could I not?
  We loved each other, we trusted each other. And
I wanted to hear there was a reason other than what
I was most afraid of, so I was happy."
  "So what happened?"
  "The summer went on. Rusty called again.
He'd seen Lizbeth out again, dancing, drinking.
Different guy, different place. He took it upon
himself to follow them when they left.
  They drove up to Lover's Point, parked in the
guy's car, fogged up the windows in the middle of
July."
  "Oh, man," Tyrone said.
  " "Right sentiment, but I used harsher language
when I heard.
  I was pretty torn up about it. I called
Lizbeth and asked her about it.
  She denied it. Said whoever told me
they'd seen her was a liar.
  "So here's the situation. Either my girl was stepping
out on me, or my best friend was a liar."
  Tyrone shook his head.
  "What did you do?"
  " "I checked it out. I called a couple of the
guys Rusty said had seen Lizbeth. They confirmed
his story, at least part of it."
  "That's terminal," Tyrone said.
  "Yeah. But it gets worse."
  His son raised his eyebrows in question.
  "How could it get worse?"
  "I called Rusty. Told him to go see
Lizbeth and to get my ring back. If she was going
to lie to me, we were through."
  "Did he do it?"
  "In a manner of speaking. He went to see her,
told her what I'd said.
  She refused to give him the ring, but they talked
for a long time. She said some ... unkind things about
me."
  Tyrone blinked at him.
  "Called me a "stupid shithead," Rusty
said."
  "Jesus."
  "So, I thanked Rusty for his efforts and said
I'd take care of it. I bought a train ticket
and waited for a long weekend in August when we
didn't have much going on at camp. Went home.
I got there on a Friday night late, caught a
cab to Lizbeth's house. When I got there, I
saw Rusty's beat-up old Chevrolet parked out
front. He must have come by to try and talk to her again,
I figured. Maybe even to get my ring back.
  Good old Rusty.
  "I got out of the cab, walked over toward
Lizbeth's front door, then I heard a noise
coming from the Chevy--and I stopped and looked into the car.
I saw Rusty and Lizbeth wrapped around each
other in the front seat, both of them half
undressed."
  "Fuck," Tyrone said.
  Howard considered saying some thing about his son's
language, but this wasn't the time. In the grand
cosmic scheme of things, a bad word didn't mean
much.
  "It didn't get that far," Howard said.
  "I thought I was going to die, right there, on the
spot. I didn't know whether to pull good old
Rusty out and beat the crap out of him, or
to turn and take off before they noticed me."
  "What happened?"
  "I stood there for what felt like a couple of
million years, watching them kiss and fondle each
other. It didn't seem real, like it was a bad
dream. Then all of a sudden I got cold, really
cold, as if I had turned to ice. August and it
was probably still eighty-five degrees outside,
hot, muggy, and I was cold. I reached out and
tapped on the driver's-side window. They both
jumped a couple of feet. When they turned and
looked right at me, I smiled and waved good-bye.
Then I left. The cab was gone, and I started
to walk home.
  "Rusty caught up with me a half a block or
so away, on foot.
  "He said, "John! I can explain!"
  "And I looked at him and said, "No, you can't."
I was as cool as a barrel full of liquid
oxygen. On the one hand, I wanted to smash his
face in, but on the other, I was somehow ...
removed from it all. Like it was some kind of dream or
vision, that I wasn't really even there. I said,
"You u aren't my friend anymore Rusty. I
don't want to talk to you, ever again." his
  "Jesus, Dad."
  "Yep. Lost my girl and my best friend at the
same time. I didn't know then this kind of thing
happens all the time, so often it's a cliche, and I
don't guess it would have mattered if I had known.
They were both lying scum and they deserved each other.
I could have punched Rusty's teeth in, but I
figured, like my mom ma used to say, karma will get
them. People who do crap like this will get theirs someday. I
didn't want to have anything else to do with them, even
to the point of not bloodying my knuckles on
Rusty's lying face.
  "So I understand how you feel about all this,
Tyrone, and all I can say is, you'll get over
it eventually. It's terrible now, but someday, it
won't seem so bad."
  "Yeah? You still remember what happened to you
pretty good."
  "I didn't say you'd forget it. And it'll never
go away completely, but it won't hurt as much as
time goes by. Eventually there'll be a little scar that
only aches a little if you poke hard enough at it. I
know this doesn't help much, but that's the truth."
  There was silence. Howard waited, to see if they were
done, if he should leave or if the boy
wanted to talk more. Finally, Tyrone said, "So,
what happened to them? Rusty and Lizbeth.
  Did karma get them? They get run over by a
bus or like that?"
  Howard grinned.
  "Not exactly. They got married right after
graduation. Went to college. He's now a
medical doctor, she's an English professor,
they have three kids, and according to my relatives back
home who keep me up to date about such things, they have
a wonderful marriage."
  "So much for cosmic revenge."
  "Thing with karma is, it might take a couple of
lifetimes to catch up with you," Howard said.
  "Oh, good."
  "What's done is done, Ty. You can't take
back what you saw and heard, and if you could arrange
to drop a piano on Bella and her new friend, it
really wouldn't make you feel any better.
Revenge hardly ever brings peace with it. Besides, if
Lizbeth and I hadn't split, I'd never have met
and married your mother. I figure I came out way
ahead on the deal.
  No comparison." He smiled.
  He got a small smile back from his
son.
  "You gonna eat supper?"
  "I don't think so. I'm really not hungry."
  "Okay. I'll cover it with Mom."
  "Thanks, Dad. And, uh. Dad? Thanks for
telling me the story."
  "You're welcome, son."
  Wednesday, January 12th, 7:00 P.m.
Washington, D.c.
  The garage sure felt empty.
  Michaels stood in the doorway to his garage,
looking at the larger of his two big metal tool
caddies. His most recent project car, the
Plymouth Prowler, was gone, sold within a couple of
days after he'd gotten it running right. He'd
cleaned it up, and had taken it out only a few
times, top up--it had been too cold and wet
to drive the little convertible the way it was meant to be
enjoyed--before his phone had rung with a potential
buyer. That was how most of these things were done among the
people he knew who restored old cars. Somebody
told a friend, who told somebody else that this guy
had a project car that was close to being finished, and
if you were interested, you didn't want to wait for an
ad on the net, because by then it would be too
late.
  Michaels smiled and walked back into the house.
Might as well see what he had for supper.
  In the kitchen, he dug around in the freezer and
came up with a choice of Gardenburgers or
teriyaki chicken sandwiches. He shrugged. The
Gardenburger was going to get freezer-burned if he
didn't eat it pretty soon, but hell with it, he
wanted the chicken. He tore the plastic bag
to vent, and stuck the sandwich into the microwave to thaw.
  So, that was how it had gone. The phone had rung
one evening, and a man with a lot of money who knew
somebody who knew somebody asked about the Prowler.
  Michaels figured out what the car had cost him,
what the parts had added to that, and how much labor it had
taken him to rebuild the engine and the transmission and
linkage and body work. He added thirty percent
to that, and named a figure.
  The potential buyer agreed with the number so fast
that Alex realized he could have asked for more. Then again,
he didn't restore old cars to make a living--
although it was nice to know that if he ever decided to chuck
Net Force he probably could survive that way.
All you needed was a garage and some tools, and he
already had those.... The microwave began
its repetitive cheep, and as he reached for it, the
phone also called him.
  "Hello?"
  "Uh, yeah, hello? I'm looking for Alex
Michaels. The guy who does car stuff?"
  Well, think of the Devil.
  "You found him."
  "Oh, hey. My name is Greg Scales, I
got your name from Todd Jackson."
  Todd Jackson was the man who had bought the
Prowler.
  "How are you, Mr. Scales? What can I do for
you?"
  "Well, uh, I've got an old car Todd
thinks you might be interested in."
  "What kind of car?"
  "It's a Mazda MX-5, a 1995."
  Michaels's eyebrows went up. MX-5 was
better known in the U.s. as the Miata. A little
drop-top two-seater, a lot smaller than the
Prowler. He wasn't a big fan of Japanese
hardware-he liked the big Detroit iron--but a
Miata? He'd always thought those were on a par with the little
MG Midgets. Fun.
  And in "95 they still had the flip-out
headlights too. Barn doors, they called them.
  "S. tell me a little about the car."
  "I have to be honest with you. Mr. Michaels, I
don't know a lot about it. It belonged to my father, who
passed away in November. He bought the car new
after I'd left home. He drove it for a few
months, but he didn't really have the reflexes for
it--my mother was afraid he was gonna kill himself in
it-so after a while, he put it in storage."
  Interesting.
  "What, kind of shape is it in?"
  "I can't really say. Dad pulled the tires
off it and put the car up on jacks in his garage--
my folks live down in Fredericksburg--he
drained all the fluids out of it, coated everything with
Armor-All and some kind of grease, then put a
cover over it. The tires are in plastic bags in
the garage. As far as I know, it's been sitting like
that for about sixteen years."
  Michaels felt a surge of interest. You heard
about these things, low-or-no-mileage cars stored in
somebody's barn for future sale. He'd never
happened across one himself, but it was a common fantasy
among car people--a rare model in near-mint condition,
inherited by some relative who didn't have a
clue what it was worth and who'd sell it for pocket
change.
  He moved to the kitchen computer terminal, next
to the pantry, and called up the Classic Book.
Even though the car was only sixteen and technically not
a classic, it would be in there. Given the average
half-life of cars since the eighties, sixteen was
fairly old.
  Mazda, Mazda, ah, there it was.... "S.
what do you figure the car is worth, Mr.
Scales?"
  "Greg, please. I don't know. But Todd
says if you're interested, you'll offer me a fair
price."
  Michaels looked at the computer readout. Hmm.
Classic Book said the little two-seater convertible
wasn't cheap if it was a '95 in good condition. And
one that had been on jacks, assuming it was in better
shape for being stored, would be worth even more. Still, he
could swing it, given what he'd made on the
Prowler. He'd have to see it first, of course.
  "I'm interested, Greg. I'd like to take a
look at it. But I'm not going to be able to get
to Fredericksburg until Saturday.
  Can you sit on it that long?"
  "No problem. It's been in the garage for years,
it can wait a couple of more days."
  Michaels nodded at the unseen speaker.
  "Good."
  He got directions and a time, then hung up.
  Well, well. Interesting how things worked out. With
any luck at all, he'd have a new project car
pretty soon. Sure would help that empty
garage. And having a goal outside of work was always
good.
  Time for the teriyaki...
  Thursday, January 13th, 9 a.m..
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  Hughes rode in a bullet-proof Cadillac
limo from his hotel toward the new Presidential
Palace, and the ride was not particularly
impressive. Even though the former President,
Joao Bemardo Vieira, and his African Party
for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape
Verde, had dragged the locals kicking and screaming
into the modern era, it was still a third world country.
Actually more like a fourth- or fifth-world country.
Half-dressed natives worked and shopped in
outdoor market stalls that dotted the streets among
office buildings.
  There were open sewers just off the main roads, and a
lot more dirt roads than paved ones. Finding a
working public telephone was a rarity.
  Agriculture and fishing were the main economic
activities-ninety percent of the million and a
half souls here worked on fanns or boats, or
processed the crops or fish that came from the land and
sea. The primary exports were cashews, peanuts,
and palm kernels, and they imported four times more
goods than they shipped out--which wasn't saying much. The
main local non-agricultural products were
soft drinks and beer. National debt was high,
exploration of minerals was minimal, and
Guinea-Bissau was quite simply among the poorest
countries on the planet. Most people here ate rice,
and not much of it, and considered themselves lucky to have that.
If they lived to be fifty, they were well ahead of the
game. Less than forty percent of the population was
literate, most of those men.
  Education was not wasted on women here--maybe one in
four could read more than her own name.
  There were no railroads, only a couple thousand
miles of badly paved roads, one airport big
enough for international flights to land at, and it was cheaper
to use local pesos for toilet paper
than it was to buy toilet paper. You didn't offer
a left hand to greet people here.... Given a choice,
almost nobody civilized would choose to live in
Guinea-Bissau. Unless they were at the top of the
food chain. The very top.
  At least it was the dry season. During the
monsoons, you didn't walk, you waded.
  Hughes leaned back in the car seat and stared at the
multicolored swatches of pitiful humanity
walking or standing along the street, staring at the
passing limo. He was on his way to meet
President Femandes Domingos, a not
particularly-bright man who had somehow lucked into the
job.
  Fortunately, Domingos was bright enough to know a good
deal when he heard it. The Presidente had been out
of the country, had spent much time in Johannesburg
and London and Paris, and had developed a taste
for things nearly impossible to enjoy in his own country
without a lot more money than he could currently steal.
These things included fine wines, finer women, and
expensive evenings at the casinos in Monaco.
  If things went as planned, Hughes would make
Domingos richer than he had ever dreamed of being, and
able to indulge his tastes in more pleasant
circumstances than the dirty streets of Guinea.
Domingos in turn would make it possible for Hughes
to--for all practical purposes--eventually own
the entire country.
  Even a third-world pit such as this one currently
was had an inestimable value--or it would, in the right
hands. Political asylum alone was worth a
fortune, not to mention what was hiding under the ground.
Yes, Guinea-Bissau definitely had
potential, in the right hands.
  In his hands.
  "The Compound is just ahead, sir," the driver said.
He was large, white, and had a clipped,
posh-English accent. On the seat next to him lay
a submachine gun, and Hughes knew that under his
chauffeur's coat the driver also carried a large
caliber pistol, and from what else he knew, the
man had the ability to use both weapons expertly.
He was an ex-British military operative of
some kind, hired to make sure the President's
special guests got where they were supposed to get in
one piece. There wasn't much chance of being
assassinated by locals, but the neighboring
countries, such as Senegal and Guinea, were always
wrangling with Guinea-Bissau or each
other, sending ratty armies across ill-defined
borders to loot and rape, and there was some small
possibility of terrorism from saboteurs.
  Since he was not officially supposed to be here, it
would hardly do to have too high a profile--like a
shoot-out with some half-baked crazed spy.
Fortunately, the U.s. ambassador in this
backwater owed Hughes several large favors, and
if the man wasn't exactly in Hughes's
pocket, he was circumspect in the extreme. You
didn't get to be a full ambassador without
learning which way the wind blew, then setting your
sails accordingly.
  Hughes turned his attention to the palace compound.
The main building was big, ostentatious, three
stories tall, and made of some slightly pink
native stone, with glazed blue tiles on the roof.
The architectural style looked to be a bad blend
of Mediterranean and Spanish-style villas. The
compound was maybe ten acres and a dozen buildings, and
surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high matching stone
wall topped with what looked like broken glass.
  Hughes shook his head. This kind of spending fit
a pattern he'd seen all over the world. The less
wealth a country had, the larger the
extravagances the top dogs lavished upon themselves.
  The rich got richer and the poor got poorer.
What a surprise.
  The limo arrived in front of a big
electrically operated metal gate in the pink stone
wall. A pair of guards with assault rifles
outside the gate drifted over and bent to look
inside the limo.
  The Brit nodded at them, and it was obvious they
knew him, but he offered his ID anyway. The
guards checked the ID, then waved at a third
armed guard inside the gate at a small kiosk.
The gate swung outward to admit the limo.
  The driveway was circuitous, and wound around
several sharp-angled turns bounded by ponds or
dirt mounds covered with grass. Platt had
explained that to Hughes. If you managed to get a
car full of explosives through the gate, you weren't
going to be able to build up enough speed to ram the
palace hard enough to put your vehicle inside before you
set it off.
  The President was largely beloved--but
apparently not universally so.
  Eventually, the limo arrived at the entrance to the
main building.
  Standing in front of a set of tall, carved wooden
doors was President Pemandes Domingos, along
with a pair of bodyguards and a large-busted but
otherwise willowy blond woman in a white
blouse, a short black skirt, and three-inch
heels.
  Very attractive, the woman. Domingos's
mistress, perhaps?
  Hughes alighted from the limo as the driver held
the door.
  He smiled at Domingos, who flashed a set of
perfect teeth in return.
  "Ah, Thomas! How good to see you again!"
Domingos spoke good English with an accent from South
Africa, the country to which he had been sent for his
university education.
  A university at which, apparently, Domingos had
majored in sex, gambling, and drinking.
  The two men shook hands. The President was
short and heavyset, with a web work of spidery veins
across his nose and cheeks, visible despite his dark
complexion. The broken vessels were probably
due to incipient alcoholism. At fifty, he
had a dissipated look, an aging rake who needed a
magic picture in the attic, but
unfortunately didn't have one.
  His namesake ancestors had been Portuguese,
and somewhere along the way they had obviously taken a
dip or two into the native pools, for he was darker
than most Europeans, and what was left of his
thinning, dyed-black hair was very curly. But
Domingos's features were otherwise not Negroid,
despite Platt's racist slurs.
  "Mr. President. I am honored."
  Domingos waved that away.
  "No, no, none of that, we are friends! Please,
come into my humble home. And I would like you to meet
Miss Monique Louis, who has just recently
returned from Paris. I am sure you two will get
along famously!"
  Hughes eyed the blonde, who smiled lazily
at him, a hint of come-hither in her expression.
  "Bonjour," she said.
  "So nice to make your acquaintance."
  Ah... Unless he was terribly mistaken, the
good President had apparently provided him with a
... companion. Well. She was attractive
enough.
  And Domingos certainly had enough practice in such
matters to have selected an expert trull.
Why not?
  Negotiations could sometimes be arduous, and Hughes
might as well relax after they were done--but only
afterward.
  The tall doors were carved in bas-relief,
images of native people, proud faces and young
bodies, most of them nude, a kind of gallery of
tribal Africa. Platt must have loved that when
he'd seen it. Hughes could almost see the cracker
shaking his head in disgust. Except for the naked black
women, of course.
  The doors swung silently open, each operated
by a black man dressed entirely in white--
shoes, pants, shirt, coat. Monique moved
over, took Hughes's arm in hers, and smiled at
him, and they followed the President into the palace.
The bodyguards swung into position behind them.
  This, Hughes decided, should be inter esting.
  Chapter 27
  Friday, January 14th, 6:00 a.m. New
York City, New York
  At Mac's, one of the last old-style
hard-core gyms in Manhattan, Platt
grunted through a set of heavy squats. Wasn't
no ferns or New Age music playing
here, no chrome and red leatherette magnomachines
or yuppie VR slant walkers, just racks and
racks of iron--dumbbells, barbells--and
benches and racks and a concrete floor with a few
rubber pads on it.
  Mirrors on the walls and good lighting, the
place had those, but that was it. You didn't come here
to get a nice glow, you came here to sweat--and to know
pain.
  He was in the safety rack, so the weight
wasn't gonna fall and crush his ass, but that
didn't help his thighs. They burned as though he was
standing hip-deep in molten lava. Four hundred
pounds on the bar across his shoulders, and after the first
set, each rep was a war. He hated squats,
hated "em, and after a couple of heavy sets, he
could barely move. He'd puked more than a few
times after squats, in such pain he couldn't even stand
up without help, but that was how it went. You wanted
to be strong, you had to move big weight, that was the name
of that tune. Those little pansies who did leg
extensions with fifty pounds and thought they were working out
made Platt want to laugh. You didn't see those
guys here. Mac would laugh their asses right out of the
building.
  Excuse me, sir, but where are the cardio
walkers?
  Why, just go out the front door and a couple of
miles that way, hoss.
  Look for a spa full of sissies, you'll fit
right in.
  Down Platt went, legs coo king in their own
juices. Below horizontal, butt almost on his
heels.
  Up he came, vibrating, shaking, quivering,
fire flowing through his veins and arteries, burning his
muscles, hot right to the bone.
  Man!
  Three more, and he was able--barely, finally!--
to rack the weight. He grabbed a towel, wiped the
sweat off his face and neck, and moved to the water
fountain. Around him, the clang of steel echoed as men
grunted and strained against the big plates. There were a
couple of women here, body builders on the
juice, so they looked like men. That kind of woman
didn't appeal to him at all. He liked to see a
woman in shape, but not a male shape caused
by mojo steroids that did everything but grow a dick on
her.
  Well. Enough of this. Time to shower and head
for the place in Queens where he had his throwaway
computer set up. The feds were about to get another
surprise, courtesy of the Fried Sex gang. A
big surprise this time.
  Platt laughed aloud. He didn't see how
life could get much better than this.
  Friday, January 14th, 8:00 a.m.
Ambarcik, Siberia
  Jay Gridley leaned into the fierce wind coming off
the East Siberian Sea, a wind so strong and
cold that it would blast an unprotected man to death
in a matter of seconds. Enough wind so that the rocks
along the shore were bare of snow, despite more than
ten feet of it having fallen in the last two
months.
  The snow had been blown away like so much dry
talcum powder.
  The locals here liked to joke about how cold it
got. There were people in Alaska or Canada who
bragged about throwing a pot of boiling water into the air
and watching it freeze on the way down. In
Siberia, they liked to say, the water would freeze
while still in the pot. Sometimes while the pot was still on
the fire, da?
  It was an unlikely place to be
hunting for clues to a Danish terrorist
organization, maybe more so than any other, but there was
a blowhole in the ice up ahead where seals came
up to breathe, and one of those "seals" was the packet of
information he wanted to find. Jay was armored against the
cold-electrically heated underwear, including
socks, hat, and gloves--with four layers of
material over that--poly prop, silk, wool, and
fur--a face mask, and heavy boots. Even so,
he felt the cold prying at the mask he wore,
digging at the smallest seams in his clothing. This was as
close a VR scenario as he could build to what the
locals actually faced, and he wondered how they could
stand it. The houses here were all heavily insulated,
with triple doors and windows, dead spaces in the
insulated walls, and even so, you could store your
food in an unheated back room and it would keep
all winter long.
  Brrr.
  A Klaxon began screaming at him, loud and
insistent. What the hell was that? Where was the sound coming
from? He turned, put his back to the wind, and saw a
tower in the distance.
  Jay did the mental shift and realized that the
Klaxon was his real-time override, back
at his workstation. Oops. Something bad--the
override's threshold was dialed up high enough so
only some thing really nasty would set it off. A
fire in the building, a major system failure,
the pizza delivery truck had a flat....
Better check this out quick.
  Jay logged himself out of VR.
  Friday, January 14th, 8:05 a.m.
Quantico. Virginia
  Toni was in the middle of a stack of electronic
correspondence when her workstation crashed. One
second she was dealing with a memo from Supply telling
her that Net Force had exceeded its normal
monthly quota of phone and virgil batteries, the
next second the screen went blank.
  Crap. Just what she needed, a computer
failure-The screen relit then, only out for a
second or two, but the memo from Supply was gone,
and in its place was a picture of a man's hand.
All of the fingers were curled down and held in place
by the thumb--except for the middle finger, which stood
straight up. The image rotated slowly on its
axis, and there was no mistaking the ancient obscene
gesture.
  She heard her secretary laugh.
  "What?" Toni yelled.
  "My computer is giving me the finger," her
secretary yelled back.
  Toni had a sudden sinking feeling that this image was
not confined to just two stations.
  It didn't take long for her to learn she was right.
  Good Lord. Somebody had hacked into the Net
Force computer system and given the organization the
bird.
  This was bad.
  Toni met Jay Gridley as they both headed
for the conference room. Joanna Winthrop beat them there
by half a second. Alex was already there. He
didn't even wait for them to sit down before he started
in.
  "All right, what the hell happened?"
  " "Frihedsakse," Jay and Joanna said
simultaneously. They glared at each other, then
both tried to talk at once.
  "I found the--"
  "They came in by--"
  "One at a time," Toni cut in, before
  Alex could say it.
  "Jay?"
  "They got in through a subsystem in
FBI Personnel. It's a dedicated Direct
Line used for submitting resumes and job
applications. In theory, it's not supposed to be
cross linked with secure systems without gate
passwords for every upload or download, but in
practice a lot of times, somebody opens the link
to supervisors looking for new employees, and they
leave it open so they don't have to spend five
minutes every time they need to relink to send a file.
Somebody got in on that line and into our mainframe."
  Toni could see that Joanna was eager to talk.
  "Lieutenant?"
  "Our circulating antivirals caught the
program almost immediately.
  There was no damage to hardware or software. The
rotating hand image was already on file, and it looks
as if the hack was designed to get in, open that
visual, and post it to our system as an EWS--
Emergency Warning System--override. As far as
I--I mean, as far as Jay and I can tell--
nobody lost any data, and the virus didn't do
anything else."
  "We're running full diagnostics," Jay
added, "but I can guarantee they won't find any more
infection. This is nothing, a simple
encapsulated program, the kind of thing a kid
hacker would do just to show he could.
  They gave us the finger. Big deal. No harm,
no foul."
  Alex shook his head.
  "You're wrong. Jay. This is a major hit."
  Jay frowned, but Toni saw from her face that
Joanna understood.
  Toni said,
  "Net Force is supposed to be the guardian for the
nation's computer systems. If this group can get
into our supposedly secure setup, how does that
make us look? What kind of confidence is this going
to inspire in our clients, when it comes to protecting
their systems?"
  "But it doesn't matter that they got in," Jay
said.
  "They couldn't do anything! Our automatics
nailed the program within a couple of seconds. It
opened a picture we already had in our files.
All the picture did was just sit there and shine. It
couldn't have done anything else no matter what. We
were back on-line before most people even noticed it. It
was a glitch, no damage, zip city."
  "We're not talking programs here,"
Alex said.
  "We're talking politics. It doesn't
matter that the terrorists didn't do any damage,
what matters is that they got in. Even if you and
I know better, people who don't understand computers are
going to be afraid.
  Sure, they'll say, the Net Force bleebs
say no big deal, but so, if it's no big deal,
how come they didn't keep them out in the first place?"
  Jay shook his head.
  "But--but--"
  "Toni, see what you can do for damage control,"
Alex said to her. To Jay and Joanna, he said,
  "Try and back walk this, see if you can get us
any leads. I have a feeling this is going to get real
ugly on us if we don't short-circuit it
pretty quick.
  G."
  After Jay and Joanna were gone, Toni sat
alone with Alex.
  "You okay?" she asked.
  "Yes, of course, I'm fine. It's just all
this." He waved one hand to encompass Net Force and
all its problems But he wasn't fine, she could
see that. He had been tighter than a
violin's E-string since he'd come back after
Christmas.
  At first she'd thought it was because of his little adventure
in the desert that he didn't want to talk to her about.
But that wasn't the kind of thing to bother him, at least
not as much as he seemed to be bothered. He'd come out
a winner, captured a bad guy, no loss of
face there. If anything, he came off kind of
heroic. Men admired that kind of thing in other men.
  She hadn't asked about his visit with his daughter and
ex-wife, he hadn't volunteered, and Toni
suspected that maybe the visit hadn't gone well.
Even divorced, that woman seemed to run Alex's
life long-distance, and Toni hated her for it. And the
woman had to be stupid; otherwise how could she have
ever let Alex get away from her?
  But it wasn't Toni's place to ask, not given
their strictly professional relationship. All she
could do was offer opportunities for him to talk.
  If he didn't want to do that, she couldn't make
him.
  "Okay," she said.
  "You know where to find me. I'll see if I can
bury this where nobody will stumble across it."
  She stood, started to leave.
  "Toni?"
  "Mm?"
  "I'm going to look at a new car tomorrow--assuming
the sky doesn't fall before then. Well, it's an
old car, one I'm considering buying, assuming this
whole place hasn't totally gone to hell by then.
Car's a little Miata, it's in a garage in
Fredericksburg, that's on 1-95 a few miles
south of here."
  "Uh-huh?"
  "Well, given how much you know about cars and all,
I was, uh, wondering, that is, I mean ... would
you like to go along and help me check it out?"
  Toni was stunned. Where had that come from?! Out of
nowhere, that's where! Her brain stalled, as if
somebody had slapped it silly. For a moment, she
couldn't think, couldn't talk, couldn't even breathe.
Then her little warning voice kicked in, and what it
said was: Oh, baby! He's asking you out! Slow,
go slow, don't scare him off!
  She managed a breath.
  "Yeah, I'd like that. A Miata, huh?
  One of my brothers had one of those once."
  "Yeah," he said quickly,
  "I remember you told me that, so, uh,
your advice would really be helpful. You know."
  She wanted to grin, but she held her face
to polite interest.
  He was like a fourteen-year-old kid asking a
girl out on his first date--she could see it in his
expression, hear it in his voice. He was nervous.
Afraid she would turn him down.
  As if that was remotely possible.
  It made him all the more adorable, that he was
rattled.
  "I, uh, want to get an early start," he
said, "so why don't I pick you up about seven?"
  "Seven would be good."
  "Uh, where do you, uh, live? I've never been
to your place."
  She gave him her address and directions, still
full of wonder about this.
  Don't go jumping to conclusions, girl. He just
asked you to go look at an old car, not for a weekend
in Paris.
  Shut up, she told her inner voice.
  "Probably you should wear some some old clothes,"
he said.
  "It might get a little greasy poking around in an
old garage. I'm going to take some
tools and stuff. I might be able to get the thing
running.
  If you don't mind hanging around while I
try."
  "No problem," she said.
  For a long moment--a couple of millennia anyhow
--she stood there staring at him, feeling so bubbly she
wanted to jump up and down and scream.
  Finally she pulled herself away.
  "Okay," she said.
  "I'll go work on the hack."
  Once she was out of the conference room, her back
to Alex, she could not stop the grin. Yes! Yes!
  When he'd been thirteen, Alex Michaels had
ridden the Tyler Texas Tornado--at the time, the
world's largest roller coaster.
  He'd never forgotten that weightless,
pit-of-the-stomach rush as the car fell over the first
drop and gravity let go of him. If it hadn't
been for the safety bar, he would have floated right out of the
ride.
  He felt like that now, as if he had just gone over
the first drop of the TIT. His stomach was fluttery,
his heart was thumping along at least twice its
normal speed, his mouth was dry, and he was
breathing fast.
  Jesus H. Christ. What did you just do? Did
you just ask Toni Fiorella, your assistant, out
on a date?
  No, no, not a date! Just to go check out the car.
She knows about cars remember when she came to the
house and saw the Prowler? She knew all about
motors and hydraulics and like that! She had a house
full of brothers who were into cars!
  Uh-huh. Sure. Who do you think you're fooling
here, pal?
  I was there, I remember you looking at her butt
while you were on the phone talking to your daughter. And
I remember silat class, too, buddy.
  When you and she are all entwined in one of those
grappling moves. How she feels pressed against
you, just before she throws your stupid butt on the ground.
  He knew. He knew this was not a smart thing to be
doing.
  Toni worked for him, and yeah, he'd gotten
vibes from her that she didn't exactly find him
hideous or anything, but this was dangerous territory.
Toni was bright, adept, good-looking, and, oh,
yes, it would be a lot of fun to get closer than
they did in silat. There was nothing wrong with
his imagination he just hadn't let it play much since
he and Megan had split up. But that last visit
to the old house, that whole scene with Megan and her
new boyfriend, that had pretty much put the final
nail in the coffin, hadn't it? The marriage was
dead, they weren't going to get back together, and when
he'd calmed down later and thought about it, he
realized he didn't want to get back together with a
woman who could do to him what she had done. Megan
had a nasty streak, and while it didn't come out that
often, it was very mean-spirited when it did. He didn't
want to be with somebody who could go postal on him at
any time. That was no way to live, sleeping with one
eye open.
  He'd been behaving like a monk for a long time.
He'd put all of himself into his work or his car,
he'd run or hiked thousands of miles to wear himself
out, and it wasn't like it was a sin to take pleasure in
the company of an attractive woman.
  It didn't have to go any farther than that. He
didn't have to risk losing Toni as a friend and co
worker by pushing it into romance. He could keep his hands
to himself, his pants zipped, and keep it platonic.
  Right. Was that why you asked her to take a little
drive down to Fredericksburg? To be
Mr. Platonic?
  Shut up, he told himself. Nothing has
happened, nothing is going to happen. We're friends,
that's all.
  His inner voice laughed at him all the way
back to his office.
  Chapter 28
  Friday, January 14th, 8:20 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  When Toni Fiorella walked past her,
Joanna Winthrop looked at the woman and was
sure her suspicions were dead on target: Miss
Toni had the hots for their boss.
  It wasn't that hard to see, given how
Fiorella blossomed like a hothouse orchid
time-lapse vid every time she was around Alex
Michaels. He didn't seem to notice, no
surprise.
  Men were usually stupid that way--among all the
other ways.
  Still, he was a nice enough guy, and the truth was
Winthrop had entertained a couple of fantasies in
that direction herself.
  Well, at least before she'd started finding reasons
to drop by and see Julio Fernandez.
Michaels was okay, but Julio? Julio was a
jewel.
  In fact, she could probably break some time
away from work tomorrow to get together with him and do a little
computer stuff. He still wanted to learn, and she was
getting more and more comfortable hanging around with him. The guy
didn't seem to have any ego, at least as far as
women were concerned, and he just kept surprising her with
what he said and how he said it.
  She grinned to herself. Yeah, let Toni pine after
the boss.
  They were probably better suited for each other.
Winthrop was finding that lately she had developed a
real hankering for... Hispanic food.
  Friday, January 14th, 5:45 a.m. High
Desert, Eastern Oregon
  It was still dark outside the one-man tunnel tent,
dark and cold too, but at least the snow had started
falling again.
  John Howard wasn't exactly toasty in his
mummy sleeping bag, but he was warm enough, and the
face shield had kept his nose from freezing off.
He didn't want to peel himself out of the bag and get
up, but he had to go pee and there was no getting around
that. It wouldn't be light for a while yet, but
he didn't have to go looking for a place--he was all
by himself.
  Like his grandfather used to say, he was so far out, the
sun came up between here and town.... He'd planned
to do a winter survival weekend in Washington
state after the scheduled joint Net Forcestmilitary
exercises in the Pacific Northwest, but there was
some kind of problem with the biochemical depot at
Umatilla. Apparently one of the destabilized
nerve-gas rockets had sprung a leak. It
wasn't much of a leak, on the order of a
microscopic spray, and it was contained and not
dangerous, but the Army had been running around trying
to put a media lid on it, and of course, had failed
utterly to do so. As a result, the civilians
nearest the depot were terrified that a cloud of
poison was about to roll into town and kill every man,
woman, child, and dog, and folks were being sent to visit
relatives way out of town, so Net Force and the
Army had canceled their exercise. The Army figured
that it wouldn't look good to have a bunch of guys in
combat gear running around and going hut-hut-hut!
all crisp and active. That would sure as hell
scare folks, none of whom would believe for a
second that this was just a drill and pure
coincidence. Even so, Howard hadn't wanted
to skip his own personal survival trip, so he'd
decided to drop down into Oregon instead. The
differences in the terrain between eastern Oregon and
eastern Washington on either side of the Columbia
weren't all that major.
  Howard slid out of the sleeping bag, already dressed
in long underwear, pants, socks, and a heavy wool
shirt. He removed the spare socks he'd stuffed
into his boots to keep the scorpions and spiders
out--even though it was winter, this was a good habit to get
into. He pulled the boots on after he looked for
hitchhikers anyway--damn, they were chilly!--
grabbed a jacket and hat, and scooted out of the tent.
  The early morning sky was perfectly clear, with
stars glittering in hard, sharp, fiery points. You
could see the Milky Way out here, and all kinds of
constellations that you'd never spot in the city. And the
colors of the stars, reds, blues, yellows.
  Truly a beautiful sky.
  He stood, ambled a few yards off along the
path he'd packed down before he'd turned in the
night before, and wrote his name in a snowbank piled
up against what looked like a frozen and
pretty-sad-about-it creosote bush.
  Back inside, he lit his hurricane candle,
and set up his single-burner propane stove. The
mouth of the funnel tent was just tall enough to sit upright
in. The tent was made of double walled rip-stop
Gortex, which kept the snow out, but still allowed most
of the moisture inside to escape, so you didn't
wake up with your own condensed water vapor raining on
you.
  In the old days, he'd have gathered firewood and
started a small outdoor fire to boil water for
coffee and re hydration of his food, but the current
land-use philosophy was for "no impact"
campsites. No cutting down trees or clearing
brush, no trenching your tent for runoff, no open
fires, and only a minimal latrine--and even that
had to be covered and tamped before you broke camp.
  He grinned as he started a snow melt pot of
water heating.
  He'd been on a couple of outings where the "no
impact" rule had been so strictly adhered
to they'd had to bag and seal their own solid waste and
pack it out. That had been worth a few laughs:
Here, Sarge, I saved you some Tootsie Rolls
for dessert.
  Yeah? Well, that's funny, "cause
I got some chocolate pudding right here for you too.
Corporal.... It was amazing what soldiers would
joke about.
  It was about twelve degrees outside right now,
and the ground was hard as a rock and frozen to boot, so
digging wasn't going any deeper than the snow, but
he had biodegradable toilet paper pads that would
disappear the first time they got wet, and by spring any
signs of scat would be long gone. It wasn't
likely anybody was going to be out here playing in the
snow before springtime.... He had a little hike ahead
of him today, just ten miles. But on snowshoes andwitha
backpack it would work him some.
  He had a GPS if he got lost, though he'd
try to locate his next campsite the
old-fashioned way, with a compass and landmarks.
  It wasn't as easy as the GPS, of course,
where all you had to do was punch a couple of buttons
and it would tell you exactly where you were and how to get
to where you wanted to go. But batteries could go dead,
satellites could fall, and a compass was reliable if
you knew how to allow for magnetic north and all.
If you lost your compass, there were the stars, including the
sun. And if it was cloudy, there was dead reckoning,
though that was a little more iffy.
  Truth was, he hadn't been lost in a long
time. He had a good sense of direction.
  At six a.m." he pulled his virgil and keyed
his morning check-in code.
  He could also find his way out using the virgil, and
could go to vox to call for help if he needed it. If
some thing happened and he couldn't call out. Net
Force or other rescuers could also find him via the
little device, which had a homer with a dedicated battery
in it. It wasn't as if he were Lewis and Clark,
a million miles away from civilization. Still, it
was cold and he was all by himself out here in the middle of the
high desert, with fresh snow piled a foot and a
half deep. If anything happened to him, help
wouldn't get to him right away.
  There was a real risk to being here. Which was, of
course, the point.
  The way a man found out what he was made of was
when he tested himself against real danger. VR only
went so far, no matter how real it felt.
  You always knew you weren't gonna die in VR.
But in real life, sometimes things went to hell, and you
had to survive on your wits and your skills. This
little three-day trip was not that big a deal. He'd
lived off the land on his own for a couple of
weeks, in terrain ranging from desert to jungle.
There was a great sense of accomplishment in knowing that if
you survived a plane crash in the middle of nowhere,
you could probably survive long enough for help
to arrive. Assuming anybody wanted to find you ...
How did you come to climb that big old mountain,
fella his
  Well, sir, it was in my way.. . .
  The water started to boil, and Howard dug in his
pack for the freeze-dried coffee crystals.
  Somewhere, he'd heard about an order of Zen
monks or some-such, who lived high up the slopes
of an Oriental mountain.
  They had a little cafe there, and when climbers would
stop in, they would sell them coffee. There were two
prices: a two-dollar cup of coffee--and a
two-hundred-dcalaz cup of coffee. When asked
the difference, the monks would smile and say, "A
hundred and ninety-eight dollars." The brew, the
water, the cups, all were exactly the same, but there
were always those who were willing to spring for the more expensive
cup.
  They swore it tasted better.
  He could understand that. What he was about to drink
wasn't in the same class as freshly
roasted and freshly ground premium beans strained
through a gold filter and served in fine china by a
well-practiced and attentive waiter, but the first
cup of coffee on a survival camp out was always
better than the best restaurant stuff. Always.
  Friday, January 14th, 11 P.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  Hughes rolled over in the king-sized orthopedic
bed and watched as Monique waded through the
ankle-deep white carpet toward the bathroom. It
was a nice view, her naked backside, and he
enjoyed it until she slipped into the bathroom and
closed the door quietly behind her. He grinned.
She was no more a natural blonde than her boobs
were real, but neither of these things detracted from her
expertise as a lover. After three sessions with her
--last night, a quickie at noon, and tonight-he was
completely spent, tired, and more relaxed than he
had been in years. This was one of the perks of wealth, a
well practiced mistress, and he toyed with the idea
of hiring Monique full-time. He could afford her
now, and soon would be able to afford thousands like her.
  But--perhaps not. It might be better to avoid any
more entanglements until his major goal was
achieved. Even an entanglement as much
fun as Monique.
  He glanced at his watch. Just after eleven o'clock.
What would that make it in D.c.? Was it four hours
ahead here?
  Five?
  It didn't matter. Platt was back there,
merrily adding gasoline to various fires, setting
up the project's end-stage. Hughes hadn't
called the cracker while he'd been here, but that
wasn't necessary at this stage of the game.
  Negotiations had gone well with Domingos, even
better than he'd expected. The main reason the
man hadn't closed the deal with Platt had been a
simple matter of money--Domingos wanted more.
Hughes had anticipated all along that the
President would up the ante, and had been
surprised when he hadn't done so earlier, so this was
not an unforeseen bump in the road. It had merely
come later than expected. For the sake of
appearances, Hughes had dickered, pretended to be
insulted, and had offered a stiff resistance to any
change in the basic agreement. After sufficient time
for Domingos to convince himself that he was the equal of a
platoon of Arabic horse traders, Hughes had
allowed himself to be worn down and persuaded.
Anot her thirty mil was thrown into the pot, bringing
the payout to the President to an even hundred
million dollars U.s. Or, if he
preferred, he could have it in French francs,
Japanese yen, or British pounds. Or dinars,
rupiahs, rubles, or Guinea-Bissau's own
pesos.
  Dollars would be fine, the President had
allowed.
  Hughes grinned again as the bathroom door swung
open and Monique walked through the thick carpet
toward him. The view was even better from the front,
he decided, what with her dyed-blond pubic thatch
shaved into that little heart shape.
  Even the breast implants had been hung by an
expert medico, for they looked--and felt--quite real.
  Spent as he thought he was, he felt a bit
of a stirring in his groin.
  "Ah, you are awake, I see."
  "Not all of me."
  "Oh, but I am certain I can remedy that, ouh"
He chuckled. If anybody could raise his
hopes, certainly Monique could.
  "Let's see, shall we?" he said.
  Chapter 29
  Saturday, January 12, 7:25 a.m.
  Henry C. Shirley Memorial Highway
(i-395, near Indian Spring), Virginia)
"You want to stop for some coffee or some thing?"
Alex asked. He waved at a service station off
to their right.
  "No, I'm fine," Toni said.
  "I had my two cups already."
  The day was chilly, but clear, and traffic was
light. The inside of the van was a hair too warm.
  He smiled at her, a little awkwardly, she
thought.
  "Yeah, me too," he said.
  Toni had the impression that he wished he hadn't
done this--invited her to go along with him to look at the
Miata.
  They were in the company car designated for his use,
a politically correct electricst
hydrogen-powered minivan. And as everybody who'd
ever driven one knew, as gutless a piece of
machinery as you could find. It had all the
get-up-and-go of a turtle with a broken leg. Top
speed was sixty-five--and that was downhill, with a
tailwind and a god who took pity on you, and it
took a long time to get to that fast. Range
of the van was about two hundred miles--if you added
both propulsion systems together. Then you had to pull
over, plug in, or get a new bottle of
hydrogen. Alex was allowed a certain number of
personal miles every month, though he seldom used
them. Easy to understand why. The joke around the agency
was that if you had a roller skate, you could sit on
that, push with your hands, and get where you wanted to go
faster than the minivan--and your butt would hurt
less when you arrived.
  Alex had a fair-sized tool chest in the back
of the van, along with a car battery, several cans of
oil, and more cans of brake and transmission
fluid.
  "You talk to Jay this morning" she said.
  "I checked his vox around six, heard his
update."
  Toni had also checked the coded message, but
to keep the conversation going she pretended she hadn't.
  "Anything new?"
  "No. Nothing good or bad. We haven't run
the terrorists down, though we've got all kinds of
little clues. No new rascals on any systems
--at least none we've found. I'm waiting for it,
though. These guys are going to drop a big
brick on us, I can feel it coming."
  He looked at her.
  "I also feel a little guilty about taking the day
off."
  "Nothing you could do at the office."
  "I know, but even so--" A big double-cab
pickup truck whipped by in the speed lane. It
had to be going eighty-five or ninety. The wind
of the truck's passage rocked the minivan.
  "Where are the cops when you need one?" Toni said.
  That got a little smile from him.
  She said, "I've buried the system break-in as
best I can, but we probably need to talk about what
happens if it becomes known outside the house. Just
in case."
  He glanced at her, then back at the freeway.
  "Oh, I'd bet my next paycheck against a
stale doughnut that Senator White'll know about it
by Monday--if he doesn't know already."
  "You thought about what you'll say if he calls you
on it?"
  "Sure. The truth. It's easier to remember."
He smiled again.
  "I'll throw all of Jay's rationalizations at
him, but that won't matter.
  He would like to get rid of us and pretend we never
existed. Any excuse will do."
  "We could sacrifice a goat," she said,
half-joking.
  "Somebody high enough up to take the fall."
  Now he looked harder at her.
  "You have somebody in mind?"
  All right, if they were going to go down that road.
She took a deep breath and started to speak.
  "Well, yeah, I was thinking maybe I--"
  "No," he cut in.
  "Don't touch that control. I don't want
to hear it. Nobody is falling on her sword here,
certainly not you!"
  The vehemence of his response surprised her.
She was at a loss.
  "There are always going to be idiots like White,"
he said.
  "We'll always have one wolf or another chasing our
sled and howling for blood. We'll deal with them, but
we won't throw any of our people off, understood?"
  "Okay."
  He smiled a little, to take the sting out of it.
  "Besides, if some thing happened to you, I wouldn't be
able to find the door to get into HO."
  Okay, that was a compliment. You can follow that one
up.
  Go- She heard a siren, looked into the outside
rearview mirror, and saw a police car coming up
fast. The siren dopplered louder as the car drew
closer. The driver sure had his foot in the fuel
injector; he was flying.
  Alex drifted from the slow lane over onto the
wide shoulder and slowed.
  The flashing light strobed Alex's face as a
Virginia state trooper's unit blew past them.
  "He's going after that truck," Alex said.
  "How about that.
  There is some justice in the world."
  She nodded. She was in a car with Alex going
somewhere other than Net Force business. Maybe there
was justice.
  Or maybe Guru's kris had some magic
left in its black and convoluted steel. She
grinned.
  "Something funny?"
  "No, just a pleasant thought," she said.
  Saturday, January 15, 7:45 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Joanna wasn't scheduled to work this
morning but she was on her way into HQ anyway.
  She still hadn't run down the SOB who had used
her station to post that fruitcake militia thing, though
she had figured out it was done by remote and not in
person--big surprise there. This latest incursion
with the finger image pissed her off even more, even though
it hadn't come through her in particular. It was a slap
in the face, a direct challenge to Net Force that
she took personally.
  She was going into the net for some serious web walking
to find these creeps.
  Or, at least that was her intention. As she was heading
in, she saw Julio Fernandez in his sweats,
limping back from the direction of the obstacle course.
  Well. She hadn't been able to connect with him for the
last couple of days, they'd played message tag,
and now there he was, in the flesh. It wouldn't hurt
to say hello. Maybe she could kill two birds
with one stone.
  He saw her, smiled, and nodded.
  "Lieutenant."
  "Sergeant. You on duty?"
  "No, ma'am. I just finished hobbling through my
morning constitutional and was gonna hit the showers before
I headed home."
  "I'm going to be doing some work on the web," she
said.
  She waved at the HQ building.
  "You want to come along, sit in? I can show you
some of the more interesting aspects of VR."
  "I'd like that. I still ought to hit the showers first.
I'm a little ripe."
  She sniffed.
  "You don't stink too bad. I think I can stand
being in the same room with you. Come on."
  "Yes, ma'am."
  They both grinned.
  Truth was, she didn't mind a man who
smelled like a man instead of a fruity aftershave or
deodorant. Nothing wrong with a little clean sweat.
It was probably all the pheromones that appealed
to her....
  Saturday, January 15, 9:00 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  The thing was, Tyrone realized, you could only
lie in bed staring at the ceiling for so long before it got
boring. Real boring.
  He had gone over what he'd said, what she'd
said, every detail of what had happened between him and
Bella a thousand times. Nothing was going
to change. It was like a big rock-no matter how many
times you poked at it with your finger, it was still going to stay
a rock.
  He sighed, rolled out of bed, and headed for the
bathroom.
  He did the control finger-jive in front of the
vidwall's sensor, and the default channel, the
news com, clicked on. Dad had programmed the
house comm unit to default to the news channel, the
idea being that it wouldn't hurt any of them to watch the
news now and then. Tyrone had been meaning
to reprogram the thing--lock-chips were a joke if you
knew anything--but he hadn't gotten around to changing
it yet The multimedia local news blared and
flared. They were doing the traffic. First, real-time
traffic, streets and highways, then virtual
traffic, which parts of the net were clear, which parts were
clogged, which sub servers were down or wounded.
  He made it into the bathroom, listening to the news
with half his attention while he peed.
  Dad was gone, off on his survival thing. Mom
had a breakfast with her women friends--the Goddesses,
they called each other--and wouldn't be back before
eleven, at least. So he had the house to himself.
Lying in bed wasn't going to solve
anything, so he might as well do some thing.
  The temptation was to log into the net and catch up on
his computer work. He'd been slack to the point of
droop on that during the last few months, all
wrapped up in Bella, Bella, Bella. Now
that he thought about it, that was pretty much all he'd
done. When he wasn't with her, he had been dreaming
about her, thinking about her, or talking about her.
  In a flash of clarity, Tyrone realized how
boring he must have been to be around lately. It was
Bella this or Bella that, or Bella the other, and
his friends--such as they were--must have elected him King
of the Dull and Stupids on the first ballot.
Particularly he owed Jimmy-Joe a big
sorry-sorry. He remembered saying to him,
"It's just a game," about the computer stuff, and the
look of horror on his friend's face when he'd said
that.
  Man, was that a data no-flow, slip. Stupid
squared to the tenth power.
  But--okay, okay. That was then, this was now.
  Somehow, though, the idea of sitting down and going
VR just didn't lube his tube. He needed to do
some thing, but it wasn't the computer.
  So, what? What else was there?
  He grinned at himself. Pretty sorry when the
only two things in your life were computers and a lying
girlfriend, and you didn't even have her anymore.
  He could go to the mall. No, overwrite that
option, Bella lived at the damned mall. He
could go for a walk, "cept his neighborhood was about
as inter esting as a bag of kitty litter.
  He could surf the entcom channels for avid
No, no, he needed to do some thing, not just sit back
and suck up data, whether it was VR, vids, or
whatever. But what to do on a chilly, sunny day?
  "And now for local events," the vox from the news
com droned.
  "Students from the Kennedy High School marching
band are having a car wash to raise money for new
uniforms.
  This will be at the Lincoln Mall Vidplex from
noon to four, Saturday."
  Oh, yeah, a car wash, that was exciting,
helloooo slipper!
  The drone continued.
  "The Foggy Bottom Children's Library
welcomes writer Wendy Heroumin for a reading of her
latest book. The Purple Penguin."
  Hey, hey, a children's book! Whoa,
tachycardia city!
  "And the Sixth Annual Boomerang Tournament
begins in Lonesdale Park at eight a.m.
Saturday and runs through Sunday at five p.m."
  Tyrone was finishing his hands when he heard this last
announcement.
  A boomerang tourney? What was a boomerang
tourney? Those aborigine things? The sticks?
  Well, hey, slip, you got zip on your
drive--why don't you go and find out?
  He grinned. All right. Yeah. He could do that.
The new park was only a dozen blocks away, so
he wouldn't even have to take pub trans. He could just
Nike on over there and check it out. One thing for
sure, he wasn't going to run into Bella there.
Or likely anybody else he knew either.
  Why not? He'd never even seen a boomerang,
except in VR, and that only as background
scenario. Why not?
  A short guy built like a brick was in the
middle of the soccer field. He reared back with a
dayglow orange boomerang in his right hand, concave
side forward, one end up, and threw the thing so hard his
hand went forward and touched the ground.
  The boomerang did this kind of eccentric
egg-rolling end- over-end flight, swooped about
fifty meters straight ahead, then started to curve
to the left. It kept going up, twisted so it was
flat-side-down, twirled and twirled and circled
back around the guy, maybe ten meters high, went
behind him, headed out in front of him again, a full
circle, then did a little jog up and spun toward
him. The spinning orange delta-shape came right
at the guy, who held his hands about a dozen
centimeters apart in front of himself, palms facing
each other.
  When the stick was just about to hit him in the chest, he
slapped his hands together and trapped it.
  The guy never moved his feet, he didn't have
to, it came right back to him.
  This was so flowing fine!
  still got to have one of these!
  Tyrone had been watching for about an hour. This was
fantastic, there were ems and ferns out there doing things
he couldn't believe. They were making the things swoop
and twirl, making them dive and circle, keeping
two or three in the air at one time, running and
catching them, laughing, tumbling, it was great.
  His favorite demo had been--according to the woman
narrating on the portable PA system--the
war boomerang. Unlike the sport models, this
one was not designed to return. The man who threw the
thing was tall and thin. He wound up, putting everything
he had into the throw, judging by what Tyrone could
tell, and the stick, which was almost straight, and about
twice as big as the sport models, flew like an
arrow, straight ahead, maybe a meter and a half
above the ground, it flew, and flew, and flew, just...
kept going, on and on.
  Man!
  When it finally dropped, Tyrone couldn't believe
how far it had flown.
  Two hundred and twenty meters, easy. It was
like it had a jet motor in it.
  There was a break in the action. Tyrone headed for the
little tables they'd set up for sales. There were maybe
twenty different models on the tables, various
angles, sizes, colors. He couldn't begin
to figure out what they all meant.
  "New at this, mate?" the man behind the table said.
He had an accent so thick you could lean against it.
Australian.
  "Yeah," Tyrone said.
  "But I want to learn."
  "Right. How much you lookin" to spend
then?"
  Tyrone pulled his credit card out of his pocket
and called up his balance. He'd floated a lot of
shine on Bella, but he had about fifty in his
account.
  He told the seller the amount. What else did
he have to shine it on?
  "Hey, for that, you can get just about anything on the
table.
  Though you might want to start with a sturdy model
until you get the hang of it." The Aussie
picked up a light-brown boomerang with one of the
blade tips painted white. He handed it
to Tyrone.
  "You hold it by the white tip, if you're
right-handed, yeah, like that, just like making a fist, thumb
on the outside, there you go. When you throw, it's
straight ahead, you put a little wrist into it. You need
to allow for wind direction and all, but we toss in a
little how-to chip let, tells you everything you need
to know to get started."
  Tyrone examined the boomerang. It was wood,
plywood, and while it was flat on the bottom
except for a scalloped outer edge under the paint, the
top edges were angled. The leading inside
edge was blunt, and the leading outside edge had been
sharpened so that it sloped from the fall thickness to a
thinner margin. The part you held onto was cut
to mirror the leading edge--thick on the outside, thin
on the inside. Tyrone guessed that the thing was almost
half a meter long, maybe a centimeter thick in
the center. Probably about a forty-five- or
fifty degree angle. He turned it over.
Laser-cut into the center of the flat side was a tiny
image of a black man holding a boomerang in one
hand, ready to throw, and the words
  "Gunda- warra Boomerangs--Kangaroo--
Grafted in Wedderburn, Victoria,
Australia."
  "Until you learn to throw it right, it's gonna
hit the ground pretty hard a few times. The
plywood models tend to hold up longer than the
solid wood ones. And they're cheaper than No
Chip. This one'll run about twenty dollars
U.s."
  Tyrone hefted the stick. He realized he
hadn't thought about Bella but once since he'd
gotten here, and then only briefly.
  "Comes with a membership in the International
Boomerang Association.
  We've got a great web site."
  Tyrone grinned.
  "I'll take it."
  Chapter 30
  Saturday, January 15th, 11:55 a.m.
Eastern Oregon
  Howard found a sunny spot to break for lunch.
The relatively level patch of snowy ground was
partially sheltered from the weather by some Douglas fir
trees and stunted shrubs on the east side, though the
growth had collected its share of solid
precipitation. A couple of the smaller trees were so
heavy with snow, they leaned over precariously,
branches drooping.
  It was warming up under the clear skies, though it was
still not what you'd call warm, probably a degree
or two above freezing. Big clots of partially
melted snow fell from the trees to splatter on the
shallow snow below, landing with wet plops.
  Howard chose his cook spot away from overhanging
branches. He tamped the snow down with his snowshoes
into a ragged circle next to a big flat-topped
rock. He used his virgil to beep in, showing he
was still alive, then shrugged out of his pack, pulled the
snowshoes off, and set his stove up on the
rock. He dumped a couple of handfuls of snow
into his cook pot, then began melting the snow
to reconstitute some freeze-dried chicken and
vegetables, kind of like a pot pie without the crust.
  He walked around the site as he waited for the
water to heat up, stomping a more solid path in the
relatively shallow snow.
  He looked for signs of small animals, and
checked for any tokens that humans had passed this
way recently. He found nothing to indicate man
or animal had visited here, and certainly there were
no other tracks in or out but his own.
  On his own, far away from home. He liked the
feeling, being master of all he could see.
  He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck, and
did a couple of squats and toe touches to loosen
his legs. It had been two hours since his last
break, and two hours of snow shoeing took a lot out
of you. No matter how old you were ... The metal
cup of water began to bubble. He circled back
toward his stove, passing beneath the trees. He glanced
up and saw a blob of melting snow slip from a high
branch and fall, coming right at him.
  "Oh, no, you don't!" he said, laughing and
dodging to the side. The big chunk missed
him by a good two feet, but he stumbled and put one
hand out to catch himself on the tree.
  That was a mistake, because his weight was enough to shake the
tree a hair, and that brought a big cascade of
ready-to-fall snow. He laughed again, spun around
the tree and away, pleased with himself at avoiding most
of the icy bath.
  He didn't stay pleased.
  The tree that lost its snow load popped upright like
a bent spring released. It hit the tree next
to it, hard.
  The second tree snapped in half ten feet
off the ground.
  Like a man breaking a pencil--pop!
  The snow was not that deep, but it was too deep to run
in.
  He barely had time to get his arms up over his
head before the tree fell on him.
  Saturday, January 15th, 3:05 P.m.
Fredericksburg, Virginia
  From under the Miata's hood, Alex said,
"Okay, try it again." Behind the wheel, Toni said,
"Okay," and turned the key in the steering wheel
ignition. The motor coughed, deeper than it had
before.
  "Give it a little gas, pump the pedal!"
  She did. After a second, the engine caught and
began a throaty rumble.
  "Yes!" she and Alex said at the same time.
  They were alone in the garage. Greg Scales, the
car's former owner, had come and gone. Alex had taken
a quick look at the Miata, then as soon as he'd
seen the odometer, had said to her, "Jesus, it's
only got nine hundred miles on it!"
  He'd made the man an offer right then. Greg
had been surprised at how much the offer was. Way
more than he'd expected.
  Alex had transferred the agreed-upon sum from his
credit card to Greg's account and waved bye-bye as
the man left.
  Now Alex closed the hood, wiped his hands on
a red rag, and grinned at Toni.
  They'd been working on the car for several hours.
They had found the tires, which were in remarkable shape
inside plastic bags, and pumped them full of air
using a little compressor that ran off the van's
electrical system. They'd put the wheels back
on the car. They had added gasoline, oil, water,
transmission and brake fluid, and other
lubricants, replaced the battery, and
tinkered with the fuel injector.
  Alex had done some thing with the plugs and wiring,
cleaned preservative off various components,
fiddled with this seal and that one, and now, finally, the tiny
car purred.
  He had, Alex had told her, every intention of
driving the thing home, even though the license tag was
years out of date.
  "Be worth the ticket if we get caught,"
he said.
  He cleaned the grease from his hands, walked around
to the open driver's door, and looked down at her.
  "It'll need a new top," he said.
  "And a set of new belts, plug wires, some
other minor stuff. Paint is in pretty good
shape, but I'm not that fond of arrest-me red.
Maybe a nice teal," he said.
  She grinned back up at him. She'd gotten a
little dirt under her fingernails too, helping him put
the wheels back on the car and passing him tools.
He had been like a little boy, all excited, pointing
out stuff to her.
  "Look at this. Look at that!"
  He'd gotten completely lost in the work, and in the
doing of it had also lost years of
responsibility. It pleased her to see him this
way. So relaxed. Having so much fun.
  "So, let's take her out for a little spin," he
said.
  She started to get out of the car.
  "No, go ahead, you drive. You can use a
manual shift, can't you?"
  "Sure."
  He finished wiping his hands, circled around the
back to the passenger side, and got into the car. The
garage door was already open, and the bright afternoon
beckoned. Toni put the transmission into reverse
and carefully backed out onto the driveway to the
street, turned the wheel, and started to shift into first.
  "Wait a second," he said. He twisted in the
seat, caught the rear window zipper, and pulled it
across behind her. He pressed the thin plastic rear
window down behind the stabilizer bar, reached across in
front of her, and undid the roof latch on her
side, then the one on his side. With one hand he
accordioned the top, folding the heavy black
material down and behind them.
  "Voila!" he said.
  "Convertible! It's not too cold for you, is it?"
  "Nope," she said.
  "All right then. Let's see how she rides."
  Toni eased the clutch out it was a bit stiff and
it squeaked and the Miata scooted forward. The
short-throw stick made shifting up the gears fast and
easy, and pretty soon they were rolling along a
four-lane highway at sixty. It was a
responsive beast, the steering tight, and cornering was
a delight. She took a thirty-mile-per-hour
curve at fifty, no problem.
  "It's quieter than I thought it would be," she
said.
  "And not as windy." He said, "Push it up to about
seventy and watch."
  Traffic was light, so Toni goosed it a little.
  At seventy, the wind seemed to slacken, as did
the noise.
  She said as much to Alex.
  "Yep, it's quieter at seventy than at
fifty-five. That was part of the aerodynamic
design. Isn't this great?" He grinned at the
road in front of them.
  A few miles up the highway, Toni pulled
into a supermarket parking lot.
  "Something wrong?" he asked.
  "Nope. Your turn. You've been
itching to take the wheel since we hit the street."
  He grinned again. Boy, she liked seeing that.
He jumped out of the car and hurried around to the
driver's side as she moved over into the passenger
seat Behind the wheel, he checked his outside mirror
first, then the inside one. Then he looked across at the
outside mirror on the passenger side.
  "That one's a little off," he said.
  She reached out to adjust the mirror.
  "Hey, I can get it," he said.
  "One of the joys of a car this small. Watch."
He leaned over, reached across her chest, and grabbed the
mirror.
  "See? Can't do that in the snail van."
  Stretched out across her, one hand out of the car on the
mirror, he glanced up at her face from a few
inches away.
  She could smell him, his sweat, his aftershave, and
there he was, the back of his arm almost touching her
breast, his mouth close enough to kiss.
  Without thinking anymore, she did just that. Leaned a
hair forward, put her lips on his, and kissed
him.
  Are you out of your mind, Toni?
  The sudden jolt of panic shot through her
like an electrical charge. Oh, no! What had
she done?
  She pulled back to break the kiss.
  Alex brought his hand away from the mirror, put it
behind her head, and held her there. He worked his lips,
opened his mouth, and found her tongue with his.
  There must be a God, Toni thought.
  Saturday, January 15th, 12:15 p.m.
Eastern Oregon
  No two ways about it, Howard was trapped.
  He had been lucky, in that the waist-thick fir
had enough branches on it to break the main trunk's
descent enough so it hadn't smashed him to a pulp. But
the tree's hole had come to rest on the back of his
left calf, and had pinned him to the ground
face-down. He managed to clear away a few
small branches on his back and thighs so he was able
to struggle to a sitting position, his butt against the
trunk. His left leg was pinned, his right leg
free, but stuck more or less straight out in front
of him.
  Not the most comfortable position he'd ever been in.
There was no pain in the caught leg. Was that good? Or
bad?
  He could still wiggle his left foot,
feel his toes inside the insulated boot, so that was
comforting. Might not even be broken, the tibia or
fibula, but that didn't matter.
  What mattered was that his virgil was safely
locked to a nice D-ring on his pack, over there
by his cook stove. It was only about ten feet
away, but given the present circumstances it might
as well be ten million miles. He wasn't
going anywhere.
  He had tried to lift the trunk, then to shove it
off using his free leg, but that was not going to happen.
He had about fifty feet of tree on him, and even
positioned a lot better than he was, probably
couldn't have moved it with his muscle power alone. Where
it rested on his calf, the tree was about as thick as a
telephone pole.
  This was not a good situation.
  He was in the middle of nowhere, staked to the snowy
ground like a bug to a display board, his
electronics out of reach. He was dressed for the
weather, but come sundown it was going to get very cold, and
sleeping face-down in the snow with the air
temperature below zero was not generally a good idea.
  Of course, if he went more than twenty-four
hours without beeping in they'd call, and if
he didn't answer they'd come and find the virgil and
him with it, but by then he might already be a
Howard-side. And they wouldn't come looking before noon
tomorrow.
  No, all in all he would have to say this was
definitely not good.
  He took a deep breath, blew it out, and
watched the breath fog hang in the air. It wasn't
that warm. In fact, it seemed twenty degrees
colder than it had when he'd got here a few
minutes ago.
  "Okay, John," he said.
  "Let's take stock here. What have you got in the
way of good news?"
  He had a lighter in his jacket shell. There were
a lot of dead needles among the green, and a whole
lot of branches, albeit somewhat cold and damp,
but he was pretty sure he could make a fire. So
he wouldn't freeze if he did it right. He might
even be able to burn through the trunk. Break the weight
enough to be able to shift the tree off his leg.
  Or start a small forest fire in which he got
cooked real good.
  Hmm. Put that one on the backup list.
  What else?
  Well, he had his sheath knife. He reached
back on his right hip, found the handle--there was a comfort
--and pulled the knife from its scabbard.
  The knife was a Cold Steel Tanto, so
called for the angled, Japanese-sword-style
point, and was eleven inches long, five of that the
cutting edge. It was a full-tang, the blade was
three eighths-of-an-inch thick across the back strap,
and it wore an artificial rubber handle,
crosshatched for a good grip, and was butted and guarded
with brass fittings. A fine weapon, able to kill a
man with one thrust from somebody who knew what he was
doing, but it had not been designed for chopping away a
tree bigger around than his thigh. Still, it was what he
had, and he knew if he could twist himself around long
enough, he could eventually cut through the wood. It
might take a long time, but it wasn't as if he was
going anywhere.... He felt better, knowing he had
at least two options.
  Well, okay, three he could always cut his leg
off from the knee down, right?
  He smiled to himself.
  "Okay, any other possibilities here,
John? Maybe cut your jacket into strips,
make a lariat, and try to lasso your
pack?
  It's only about ten feet, you could probably
manage it, and then you'd have your virgil back."
  Yeah, and wouldn't that look great. Old Man
Howard lets a tree fall on his stupid sorry
ass, and has to call for help.
  Too bad he froze to death without a jacket before
somebody could break a copter loose to go and get
him.... Maybe not. Put that one right before setting the
tree on fire.
  He looked down at his pinned leg. Hold on
a second. There was yet another option, the LAIC
Maneuver.
  LAIC Look At It Crooked.
  If you couldn't solve a problem going in through the
front door, what about the back door? When you had
an enemy too strong to attack head-on, flanking
him would sometimes work.
  Howard looked at his leg and grinned. The limb
had pretty much squished the snow out of its way under
the weight of the tree. He'd bet it was close to or
on the ground below, but even frozen dirt wasn't as
hard as wood, was it? Especially with that nice warm
leg lying on it, thawing it out and all.
  All he had to do was dig a hole under his
shin, come in from the side, hollow enough out so the leg would
drop. When the calf got below ground level, the
tree would be resting on the edges of the hole, and all
he'd have to do would be to pull the leg out, right?
  Look at it crooked.
  It made sense. It made a lot more sense than
trying to play Paul Bunyan with a knife, or
coo king himself into Howard the damned fool crispy
critter, didn't it?
  He laughed.
  "Dig,-baby, dig. You do this right, nobody will
ever have to know it happened."
  He shifted his position a bit, and cleared away
the snow down to the dirt next to his trapped leg.
No blood. That was good.
  The topsoil was mostly sand, and the rocky clay
under it was frozen, but it took less than an hour
to excavate himself.
  In the end, his bigger worry was that the pot he'd
set to heating to make his lunch would burn up, the
water having boiled away, but he managed to get
to it and throw it into the snow to cool before that happened.
  The ankle wasn't even sprained, the snow under the
leg having cushioned things enough so his pants weren't
even torn. His foot was sore, but not so
much he couldn't walk on it, and Howard felt
immensely pleased with himself as he ate his delayed
lunch.
  Okay, so he was older. He could could learn
to fight smarter, not harder. Growing old might be
hell, but hey, it still beat the only other option,
didn't it?
  Ah, John, you are quite the philosopher, aren't
you?
  That's me.
  There was nothing like a victory to give you a sense
of control. It might be an illusion, but it sure
felt good in the moment. Yes, sir, it did.
  Chapter 31
  Saturday, January 15th, 3:20 p.m.
Fredericksberg, Virginia
  Somebody honked their car horn and laughed as they
drove past, but Alex didn't care. The passion
he'd thought frozen when he split from Megan was not
dead, not even wounded.
  God, Toni felt so good. Her lips were warm,
soft, her hands on his back pulled him closer, her
breasts against his chest-His virgil cheeped, and the
incoming tone was the classical music sting he'd
programmed from Les Preludes that
indicated a Priority One call.
  Damn!
  He broke the kiss and leaned back. Fumbled with
his virgil.
  "Wow," Toni said. She was flushed and breathing
heavy.
  "Yeah. Hold that thought, okay?"
  He tapped the speaker button on the virgil.
  "Michaels."
  "Commander, Jay Gridley. Sorry to bother you.
Boss, but, well, the shit has just hit the fan."
  "What?"
  "The Fried Sex guys just crashed the U.s.
Internet Bank System. I hope you got some
money in your pocket, "cause you ain't gonna be
cashing your federal check today."
  "Fuck!"
  "Yes, sir, Boss, that is the key and
operative word around here. The bank guys are
foaming at the mouth, and the ripple effect is jamming
through the net like a cattle stampede.
  Everybody and his kid sister have thrown up fire
walls and lockouts, and the whole No ram Net is
one big crappy mess."
  "Damage control?"
  "We're throwing water on it, but we're talking
mega forest fire. Boss.
  It's hot and ugly and getting hotter and uglier
every minute. We're gonna have to take some major
systems off line and shut down a bunch of the Fed
Web."
  "Do what you can, get everybody we have on it.
We'll be-- I'm on my way," Michaels
said.
  "Discom."
  Michaels looked at Toni.
  "I'm sorry," he said.
  She shook her head.
  "I hope you're talking about the call."
  "Yeah, I am. But--this--" He waved one hand
back and forth between them.
  "This is probably ... not very smart."
  "I know."
  "I'm your boss. This sort of thing brings up
all kinds of problems."
  "What sort of thing?"
  He stared at her.
  "Jesus, Toni, you know what I'm talking
about. Office romance.
  Supervisors sleeping with people they
supervise."
  She grinned, as big as he'd ever seen her grin.
  "Oh, boy," she said.
  "What?"
  "You want to sleep with me?"
  "Yes, of course. But given the circumstances--
was
  "I'll quit," she said.
  "Excuse me?"
  "If you sleep with me, I'll resign."
  "Toni--"
  "No, I'm serious. If it would be a problem for
you as my supervisor, then we can fix that. I love
working for you, Alex, but I can always find another
job. Right now, a personal relationship with you is more
important than a business relationship."
  He blinked at her, stunned by her words.
  "You would quit your job to have sex with me?"
  "In a New York second."
  "Why? I'm not that wonderful."
  "You underestimate yourself. I'm serious about this."
  He shook his head.
  "Jesus. Look, we have to get back to HQ and
take care of this disaster, okay? Can we talk about this
later?"
  "Whenever you want. You want to go back and get the
van?"
  "No, leave it. I'll get somebody to pick
up it."
  He started the Miata's engine.
  Holy shit. It never rained but it poured.
  Saturday, January 15th, 3:25 P.m.
Hana, Maui, Hawaii
  Winthrop was on the net in Joined-VR, showing
Julio some of the ins and outs of the web weave. She
had allowed him to conjure a program, and what he
had come up with was a beach on Maui, near Hana.
They were in personal persona, dressed in skimpy
swimsuits, walking barefoot on a black sand
beach.
  They listened to the breakers curl, to the seagulls
cawing. A gentle breeze played over them, the
sea where it lapped into the volcanic sand was warm, and the
sun caressed their bare skin.
  "So, what do you think?" Julio asked "Not
bad, for a beat-up old trooper. Why did you
choose this in particular?"
  "I went here once, for real. I have some good
memories of it. Besides, I wanted to see what you
looked like in a bathing suit."
  "I bet you say that to all the girls."
  "Sure I do. But my intentions are honorable--
I could have made it a nude beach, you know."
  She laughed.
  As they rounded a big rock and the shoreline curved
inward, Winthrop noticed some thing odd. The water
seemed to be ... receding, ebbing away and growing
shallower as she watched.
  It moved out so quickly that fish were left flopping
on the bottom. A big eel wiggled frantically,
trying to catch the subsiding sea.
  "That's a nice effect," she said.
  "What's it for?"
  He shook his head.
  "I don't have a clue. I'm not doing it."
  The water continued to ebb, and Winthrop looked
farther out to sea.
  "Uh-oh," she said.
  "What?"
  "I just realized what's happening. See there?"
  Julio squinted into the sunshine.
  "Looks like a big wave."
  "Yeah, it's a big wave, all right, and it's
going to get a lot bigger as it gets closer. It's
a tsunami."
  "A tidal wave?"
  "That's a misnomer. It doesn't have anything to do
with tides. They're usually caused by earthquakes
or volcanic activity.
  Sometimes by a big meteor hitting the ocean--or
somebody playing with big nukes can make one."
  "So why all of a sudden is there a tsunami in
my scenario?"
  "Got me, but it looks like trouble in paradise.
Something big is happening on the net. I hate
to cut the lesson short, but we need to jack out of this
scenario see what RW scans show."
  "Yes, ma'am. You're the expert."
  "Stand by--"
  Saturday, January 15th, 3:30p.m. .
Quantico, Virginia
  Fernandez came back to himself in the computer room,
sitting next to Joanna. She was waving her hands
at her computer station, calling up a rapid blur of
images and words and numbers from the holoproj in
front of her. And she was cursing like a sailor
while she did it.
  "God dammit! How the hell can this be
happening?"
  She waved her hands again, then tapped
furiously at the keyboard on the desk.
  Fernandez kept quiet, knowing this was not the time
to fill her ears with foolish questions.
  Whatever was going on, though, it didn't look
good.
  "No, no, no, you bastard! Don't route there,
you'll crash the--dammit, dammit! Stop!"
  Jay Gridley came running into the room, and
excited as he was, he must already know what was going
on.
  "Winthrop, you see what the hell is happening?"
  "I got it. Jesus Christ!"
  Gridley slid into a chair in front of another
workstation.
  "Man, oh, man! The kick outs at Fe done
just blew."
  "We need to scramble some programmers. Jay--
was
  "Already did it. Boss is on the way in, so
is everybody else who can warm a seat."
  "You call Fiorella?"
  He spared her a glance from the flashing holoproj
in front of him.
  "Didn't need to. I bounced her virgil's
location. It's within a couple of feet of the
boss's. She's with him." He waggled his
eyebrows.
  "Isn't that inter esting?"
  "Old news," Joanna said.
  "You need to pay more attention to RW around you,
Gridley."
  "Screw you, Winthrop."
  "In your dreams, monkey fingers."
  "In my nightmares, you mean."
  Fernandez felt like a fifth wheel. He didn't
know what was going on, and he wasn't gonna ask,
but whatever it was, it was bad.
  "The blast doors on Fed Two just slammed
shut," Joanna said.
  "See 'em," Gridley said.
  "Maybe we can reroute the--ah, piss! Fed
Three just rolled over too. We got a major
infection here!"
  "A virus?" Fernandez said.
  "Not a virus, a goddamned plague,"
Gridley said.
  "Somebody got past the best antivirals we have
and threw a replicant bomb. The bugs are
reproducing and going through the federal financial
systems like water through a fire hose. The
only way we're gonna stop it is to shut down
everything it's contaminated and flush it one system at
a time."
  "Crap," Joanna said.
  "Crapeacrap, crap!" She leaned back,
watching the screen flash stuff that was meaningless
to Fernandez.
  "Well, I'll say one thing," Fernandez said,
"you sure know how to show a boy a good time."
  "Hold up, hold up," Joanna said.
  "I got some thing."
  "You can stop it?" Julio said.
  "No, I can't. But I think I can find where it
came from.
  Jeez, I can't believe the guy is that dumb.
Jay?"
  "I see it, I see it! I've got a lock!
How'd you do that, Winthrop?"
  "I found a ghost on my station from when he broke
in here.
  There wasn't anywhere to go with it, it petered out, but
just in case, I set up a scan-and-match."
  "What does that mean?" Fernandez asked,
despite his resolution not to ask stupid questions.
  " "It means that even if our perp
bounces his signal, we can back walk it--if we
hurry, and if the sig is a match."
  "Good work, Winthrop!" Gridley said.
  "You ready to run him down?"
  "I'd like to kick his ass personally, but much as I
hate to say it, you're better at this part than I
am, Gridley. Go get him."
  Gridley smiled.
  "You know, you're not so bad after all-- for a white
girl. I'm gone."
  When Toni and Alex arrived, there was a lot of
commotion in the computer center. Jay, Joanna, and
half the regular programmers were there, stations lit
and working. Julio Fernandez stood next to the
doorway watching.
  "Julio," Toni said.
  "How is it going?"
  "I'm not the guy to ask. I'm catching about one
word in twenty. It's nasty, this thing. Gridley
calls it a replicant bomb."
  "Oh, shit," Toni and Alex said together.
  "But Jo and Gridley apparently got a lock
on the bomb thrower. Gridley is running him down
somehow. I didn't understand most of that part."
  "Thanks, Sergeant," Toni said.
  "No problem, Commander."
  Alex moved to where Joanna sat, and as Toni
started to head for her office to assess damage
reports, Fernandez's smile stopped her.
  "Something funny I'm missing?" she asked.
  "I could use a good laugh."
  "No, ma'am, nothing funny."
  "Why the grin?"
  "Oh, I was just, you know, musing."
  "About what?"
  "You and the commander."
  Toni felt herself color.
  "Me and the commander?"
  "Yes, ma'am."
  Oh, God, does it show? We haven't even
done anything yet!
  "What about us. Sergeant?"
  "Nothing, ma'am. Just lucky how you both get
here so quick."
  "You're a poor liar, Julio."
  "Yes, ma'am. Probably I need more
practice."
  "I need to go," she said.
  She hurried down the hall. He knew. How?
How could he know? That little slip of the
tongue, when Alex said "we," instead of "I"? That
couldn't be; he hadn't even been talking
to Fernandez, he'd been talking to Jay.
  Well. Worry about that later. Right now, they had
a crisis to weather.
  One thing at a time, girl, one thing at a time
...
  Chapter 32
  Saturday, January 15th, 3:40 P.m.
Marietta, Georgia
  Platt was feeling damn good about his latest caper
on the net.
  It was amazing what you could do when you had a bunch of
secret codes and passwords, courtesy of somebody
who had access to a U.s. senator. Like screw
up a major segment of the entire United States
electronic banking system, blap! just like that. Those
poor feebs were running around like a bunch of chickens
with their heads cut off, going bug fuck crazy
trying to keep the money systems from crashing.
Wasn't gonna stop it, though, not without shutting
down a bunch of it, and that was the point. Because part of
what was going down was a big ole safe that kept the
net cowboys from robbing the bank.
  Once that was out of the way, things were gonna
get real interestin...'. He was in the bathroom when
he heard the alarm go off.
  At first, he thought it was the smoke detector, but
after a second, he realized it was coming from his computer,
on the kitchen table.
  "What the hell--his!"
  He jumped up and ran into the kitchen.
  Sure enough, the little speaker on the portable was
wailing away.
  For a second, Platt just stood there, staring at the
beeping computer.
  It wasn't supposed to happen, but unless there was
some kind of software malfunction, somebody had
somehow accessed his primary input signal. The
only way they could have possibly done that was to have
caught it at the satellite before the bounce, and
only way that was possible was to have been waiting for the
signal, and to know what to look for when it got there.
  Couldn't be. He hadn't left any clues that
big.
  He moved, fast. Tapped in the confirmation
code. Maybe it was just a software error, a
glitch that tripped the audible-Aw, shit backslash
It wasn't an error!
  They had traced his signal. And if they
knew where he was, they'd pretty damn quick
figure out who he was, and they'd be on their way
to have a little talk with him.
  Platt shut the computer off. He had to get out of
here, now!
  How the hell could this have happened? What did the
damned Net Force boys know that he didn't? Some
kind of new technology Crap!
  Worry about it later, boss. Right now, you get
your ass in gear and lay tread, or you're gonna be
speculating about it in a federal cell somewhere!
  Saturday, January 15th, 9:15 p.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  Hughes smiled at Domingos across the table and
raised his wine glass in salute. They were alone in
the formal dining hall, Hughes and the President,
working their way through the third course of a seven-course
meal. The room would comfortably seat a hundred, and
there was a hollow feel to-it with just the pair of them
at the end of a large oval table, one of
half-a-dozen other tables just like theirs.
  Fish was up next, some local catch, and so
they'd switched to white wine, an Australian
Pinot Gris, vintage 2003, that was as good as
any Hughes had ever tasted. Domingos was
proud of his cellar and his cook, and rightfully so.
  Hughes made complimentary noises.
  "You are too kind," the President said, but he
was obviously pleased.
  They sipped their wine, watching the waiters clear
away their plates and reset for the next course.
  "So, everything goes well, does it not?" the
President said.
  Hughes glanced at his watch.
  "Even as we speak. Excellency, my agents
are finalizing matters. In a few days, we can
make the transfers. I anticipate no
problems, none at all."
  "Excellent!" Domingos raised his glass.
  "To the future!"
  "I will certainly drink to that."
  Hughes smiled as he sipped the wine. Right about
now, his agent Platt would be feeling an
unexpected heat. He was useful, Platt was,
but not the only operative that Hughes employed.
  And while Hughes was certain that the trick he'd
played on the Southerner wouldn't result in his
capture by the authorities--Platt was too
canny to be caught that easily-certainly the
cracker would sit up and take notice.
He surely didn't want Platt in custody
where he might spill everything he knew about this deal.
But he did want the redneck off balance, a little
edgy, and looking to his employer for some
reassurance.
  If a man thinks you're reaching a hand out to help
him climb from a pit, he might not notice the
knife in your other hand.
  Platt was expendable--more than expendable, he had
to go--and his usefulness was nearly at an end... but not
quite yet.
  The fish arrived, a single platter with what
looked like a twenty-pound sea bass, cooked
whole, upon the serving tray.
  The smell was wonderful.
  "It's the French roasted hazelnut butter that
does that," Domingos said.
  "You can understand why I'll be taking Bertil with me
to Paris when I go, yes?"
  Hughes smiled. Taking a chef to Paris might
be gilding the lily, but if that was what he wanted,
Domingos would certainly be able to afford it....
  Saturday, January 15th, 4:30 P.m.
Washington, D.c.
  After he'd bought the boomerang, Tyrone
had spent a couple of hours at the park playing with
it. It was a little trickier than it looked, but it had
taken him only a few minutes to get the thing working
well enough so he didn't have to run and chase it.
Well, not too far anyhow. A couple of times, it
had come back close enough so he had been able to catch
it without taking more than a step or two.
  He'd never been real big on physical
stuff, but he could definitely get into this.
  By the time his arm was tired and he was ready to go
home, he had figured out a lot of stuff about how
you stood relative to the wind, and how to figure out which
way the wind was blowing. He'd watched other throwers
pick up bits of dry grass or dirt and then
drop them, watching to see which way they drifted. He
also had a fair idea of how much wrist action a
basic throw needed. This was really fun stuff.
  His phone cheeped. Tyrone pulled it from his belt
clip.
  "Hello?"
  "Hey, son. How are you doing?"
  "Dad? I thought you were out in the middle of snow land
or somewhere."
  "I am. Only guy around for fifty miles."
  "You okay? You don't usually call
during these things."
  "Yeah, I'm fine." . .
  There was a pause, and Tyrone sensed his father
wanted to say some thing else, so he stayed quiet
  "Actually, I had a little excitement today. You have
to promise not to tell your mother, okay?"
  Uh-oh. What did that mean?
  "Sure, Dad. What's flowin'?"
  "A tree fell on me."
  "A tree? Are you all right?"
  "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Thing snapped under the
weight of a lot of snow.
  I was lucky, but it got me to thinking, maybe I
should give you a call.
  How are you doing?"
  "Geez, Dad, a tree falls on you and you're
worried about me?"
  "It's what fathers do, Ty."
  "Well, I'm flowing fine. I just got a
boomerang."
  "Really? War or sport?"
  Tyrone felt his eyebrows rise.
  "You know about boomerangs?"
  "A little. They're hunting devices or
weapons, depending on the kind. I wouldn't
want to be clonked on the head with one, even one of the
birding models."
  "Birding?"
  "The sport models, that's what they were used for.
If you hit some thing with it, it doesn't come back,
but an expert can knock a bird out of the air forty
or fifty yards away at a right angle to where
he's standing. We played with them some in military
camp when I was a kid.
  Been years since I've seen mine. I think
it's in the attic at Grampa's."
  Amazing. His father seemed to know some thing about
everything. And he had a boomerang. Amazing.
  "Well, I got one, a sport model.
There's this tournament not far from our house, I checked
it out, and I got one."
  "Great. You can brush me up on how to use it when
I get home. I'm out of practice."
  "Yeah, that would be DFF."
  "It's been good talking to you, son. I'm going
to give your mother a call and say hi. And Ty?
Let's keep the falling-tree thing between us."
  "Right. Take care. Dad. Thanks for
calling."
  When he disconned, Tyrone smiled. His
father had called him before he had called Mom.
He'd shared a secret with him, some thing in confidence.
And his father had played with a boomerang as a kid.
  Man. Would wonders never cease?
  Saturday, January 15th, 6:30 P.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Michaels was in his office, worrying about twelve
different things, when one of those things came in.
  "Alex?"
  "Toni. What's up?"
  "FBI and the Georgia state boys ran down the
address outside Marietta.
  An old house, belongs to a family named
Platt. Father hasn't been around for thirty years,
mother died, left the place to her son."
  She put a thin sheaf of hardcopy on his desk,
including a photo.
  "That's him, the son."
  Michaels looked at the image. The kid in the
picture was big and muscular, in a white
T-shirt and jeans, but he also looked about
sixteen.
  "Kind of young, isn't he?"
  "Only image we could find. It's about fifteen
or sixteen years old.
  This guy Platt would be in his early thirties
now.
  We can age the image, and we're straining him through
the Cray Colander now. Neighbors say he
lives at the house, but he's gone a lot."
  "Seems to be some thing of a stretch, doesn't
it?" he said.
  "From Danish terrorists to a Georgia
cracker?"
  "Okay if I sit?"
  "Jesus, you don't have to ask. Sit, sit!"
  She did, and gave him a small smile.
  He felt an erotic heat start to smolder low in
his belly. Or thereabouts.
  "I've been thinking about that," she said.
  "It seems kind of odd that nobody ever heard of
this Frihedsakse before all this started."
  "What do you mean? Jay has dug up all
kinds of references to the group predating the
manifesto they sent, going back years."
  "Well, not exactly. I had Jay recheck.
What we can absolutely confirm are bits here and
there as old as six months.
  Before that, the etiology of the information is, as Jay
puts it, "somewhat ambiguous." was
Michaels leaned back in his chair and considered that
for a few seconds.
  "Why would that be, I wonder."
  "There's the jackpot question."
  "What do you think?"
  She shook her head.
  "I don't know for sure. But just for the sake of
argument, let's say these Danish terrorists
didn't exist until six months ago. Why would
they bother to plant information that said they were a lot
older? What would be the point? I mean, so they're
only six months old, what difference would that make
to anybody? Are they looking for prestige?
  Some kind of validation? They want to be the
Elks or the Masons of terrorists?"
  Michaels nodded.
  "Good point. Why would they bother?"
  "Maybe they didn't," she said.
  "Maybe it was somebody else."
  Came the dawn into his head, a few bright
streaks painting the dark sky of his mind.
  "Oh, man. Yeah, I can see that.
  Maybe there isn't any such group as
Frihedsakse. Maybe it's somebody who wants
us looking for a terrorist group that doesn't
exist. They leave just enough clues for us to think we're
finding some thing, to stay interested, when in fact we're
spinning our wheels and not getting anywhere. Maybe
it's not terrorists at all."
  "It's just a theory," she said.
  He shook his head, suddenly angry at himself.
  "But we should have checked this out before. We didn't
look for another target because we had this big fat
turkey plopped right down in front of us. It was
too easy." Toni said, "The thing is, if it's not
terrorists, who is it? And what do they want?
Somehow, I have a lot of trouble believing some lowbrow
high-school-dropout jock from a little town in
Georgia has the wherewithal to pull all this off."
  Michaels said, "Let's put Frihedsakse
on the back burner.
  Check on what systems were hit, and who might
benefit from them being damaged or down."
  She stood.
  "I'll go talk to Jay and Joanna."
  "Good."
  She started to leave. He couldn't let her get
to the door without saying some thing else.
  "Toni?"
  She turned.
  "Yes?"
  "About that... thing in the Miata ..."
  "Do you want to forget it ever happened, Alex?
Because I can't forget it, but I can pretend nothing
happened, if that's what you want--"
  "No," he said.
  "I don't want to forget it. If we survive
this, I think we should lie down--I mean, we should
sit down--and discuss it."
  Jeezus, man! That was lame, Michaels.
Lame, lamer, lamest.
  I cannot believe you said that. You are a moron!
  Toni's smile, however, told him she had not
only caught the Freudian slip, but wasn't in
the least offended by it.
  Bad idea, Michaels, a really bad idea.
You don't crap in your nest. You never sleep with the
enlisted women, his father had told him. It's always a
mistake.
  But looking at Toni, it didn't seem like such
a mistake. She was bright, beautiful, and
physically adept enough so she could kick his ass if
she felt like it. For some reason, those things taken
together had a powerful appeal. And she had kissed him
first, hadn't she?
  Yeah, right, she seduced you, and if you don't
sleep with her, she'll stomp your butt? Uh-huh,
Who are we trying to fool here, pal? Nobody is
buying that one.
  Michaels watched Toni disappear from view.
He shook himself and blew out a big sigh. Worry
about that later. Right now, he had bigger problems on
his plate.
  His comm beeped.
  "Yeah?"
  "Your ex-wife is on three," his secretary
said.
  Michaels laughed. Of course she was.
  "Take a message," he said.
  Chaaapter 33
  Saturday, January 15th, 11:45 P.m.
Kansas City, Kansas
  "There they are," Winthrop said.
  "Rats," Jay said.
  "You had to pick rats?"
  "You'd rather cute little puppies or kittens?
Something about you I ought to know, Gridley?"
  Jay shook his head and raised the twelve-gauge
pump shotgun to his shoulder. The gun was a
Mossberg with an extended magazine tube
that held ten rounds. There was a flashlight and a laser
mounted on the barrel. An elastic band on the
gun's stock held another ten shells.
  Next to him in the poorly lit alley,
Winthrop raised her own weapon, a South
African Streetsweeper, also a
twelve-gauge, but with a big circular drum
underneath that held a whole box of shells. She also
had a flashlight and a laser sight mounted on the
weapon.
  The brown rats, the size of cocker spaniels
and with mouths full of long, yellow teeth, milled
around in the dead-end alley for a few seconds before
they realized they couldn't get out that way. The big
rodents looked around for a means of escape, and the
only path (hit was blocked by Winthrop and
Gridley.
  No real problem in guessing which way they would go.
  "Here they come!" Jay shouted.
  The rats, at least twenty of them, came toward
them like a furry tide.
  Winthrop fired first, getting off two shots before
Jay pulled the trigger on his weapon.
  Big rats turned into bloody red clumps of
twisting fur as the bled buckshot tore
into them. Five, eight, twelve of the charging
animals fell. The rest kept coming.
  "To your left!" Winthrop shouted. She swung
her gun over and cooked off a couple more rounds.
She blasted one of the rats, hitting it so hard she
rolled it like a soccer ball.
  Jay tracked the two rats trying to flank him
on the left, fired, hit one, pumped the gun,
fired, missed-Winthrop caught the one he'd
missed, then fired twice more--whump! whump!--and
rolled two more.
  Jay lined up on the last one he saw moving,
put the little red dot from the laser square on the thing's
head, shot it-He blew out a sigh.
  Blasting plague-carrying rats was certainly more
exciting than chasing down viral code strings in
RW voxax or finger tap mode. In reality, the
rats were circular sub routines with escape and
evasion codings, eating up storage space in the
Federal Reserve's KC Division. The city had
been evacuated--the computer had been taken off-line
--so that exterminators could come in and clear out the
infestation.
  Mostly that didn't go over too well, but that was
how it had to be.
  And this wasn't that bad. A couple of the banking
systems had been hit so hard they'd had to be shut
down completely. Nobody had liked that.
  Winthrop reloaded her shotgun from a pouch full
of ammo she carried around her waist. And Jay had
to admit, his earlier disapproval of the lieutenant
notwithstanding, she looked pretty exciting standing there,
shoving rounds into that big honking shotgun, smelling of
gunpowder and all. There was some thing sexy about an
attractive woman with an automatic weapon in
her hands.
  Probably a month's work for a shrink trying
to sort out that symbolism.
  Jay figured. It was a good thing he wasn't
into shrinks. He'd be broke all the time.
  Winthrop touched her headset.
  "We've cleared the alley behind the bank," she
said.
  "We're moving into the one next to the Thai
restaurant on the south side."
  Jay grinned.
  "You throw that in in my honor?"
  "You look like you ought to know your way around a Thai
restaurant."
  "Of course. You like peanut sauce?
Maybe I'll make us some nice rat satay."
  "You probably would. Come on."
  "As you command, mistress," Jay said.
  "You should have worn leather, you know. To go with the gun."
  As they walked across the street toward the Thai
place, she said, "Oh, by the way, nice job on
running down that Platt guy."
  "Shucks, ma'am, 'twam't nothin"."
  "Wrong persona, Gridley."
  "Ah, I stand corrected. This is present-day,
so how about.
  "Nopraw, fern." his
  "Better."
  "I'd never have found him if you hadn't snagged his
Spook.
  Kinda hard to believe he slipped up like that."
  "Even the smartest guys get stupid sometimes,"
she said.
  "I'll take lucky over good if it gets me
there."
  " "Amen. I hope the feebs can catch the
sucker."
  "Rat city, just ahead."
  "Lock and load, ma'am. You want right side
or left this time?"
  " "Left. That gun of yours throws the empties
in my face on the right."
  "It's always some thing, ain't it? But it's FS,
Winthrop, FS."
  She smiled.
  FS stood for "Frankenstein Scenario,"
shorthand for the concept
  "If you create it, then you take care of it."
Any problems in your scenario were your
responsibility.
  "Fine, you can build the next one," she said.
  "I will. You like snakes?"
  "I used to collect them when I was a little
girl," she said.
  "Catch them with a long forked stick, put them
into denim bags, and sell them to pet stores. Great
things, snakes."
  Shoot, Jay thought. Too bad. Well. There
must be some icky thing she didn't like. Given how much
of the federal banking system was infected, they were going
to be mopping things up for a while. Surely he could
figure out what made her squirm before they were
done....
  Sunday, January 16th, 12:15 a.m.
Atlanta, Georgia
  Platt knew that Hughes wouldn't like being woken
up early, and it must be six or seven in spook land
over there, but he wanted to be sure to catch him when
he wasn't busy. Platt wasn't supposed
to be calling Hughes at all unless it was an
emergency, and given as how he had gotten away
clean, maybe it wasn't an emergency anymore,
at least not technically, but to hell with it, he was
gonna call anyhow.
  He hated losing the house Momma had left
him, but that was done. He wasn't going home again.
  He used one of the one-lime scramblers and a pay
phone in the lobby of the Stonewall Jackson
Memorial Motel on the outskirts of
College Park, just off i-285. Hughes had his
virgil rigged up to rascal his call with the
military-grade scrambler built into it, so
nobody would trace nothin. He needed to get this
done and move out--Atlanta was a big town, but
way too close to Marietta. He wanted to be a
thousand miles away from both come sunrise, and he'd
have to hurry to pull that off. He had a chartered
plane waiting at the airport, and once he was in
the air, he'd feel a lot better.
  "What?" Hughes said.
  Yep, he'd woke him up, all right.
  "Howdy, Boss. We got a little situation here
you need to know about."
  "Hold on a second."
  Hughes put him on hold, and Platt grinned.
Six in the morning Hughes would be in bed, and if he
was puttin' Platt on hold, then he wasn't in
the bed alone. Somebody was being sent to the John,
Platt would bet.
  "All right. What?"
  "Sorry if I interrupted anything," Platt
said, not the least bit sorry.
  "Don't worry about that. What's the problem?"
  "The feds ain't as stupid as they look. They
back walked a signal to my mom ma's house."
  "What? How could that happen?"
  "Damn if I know. Maybe they got some new
tech no-toy I haven't heard about. Don't
matter as much how as they did it. I had to hightail
it out pretty quick."
  "But you got away without any real trouble?"
  "Well, yes and no. They didn't see me,
I was long gone time they showed up, I expect, but
that place was under my own name. I'm gonna have to do a
little ID switching."
  "Is that a problem?"
  "Not so you would notice. I got a half-dozen
new me's lined up if I need em."
  "How about the other thing?"
  "Oh, the other thing. That went smooth as oil on
a baby's butt. Our bank boy from the place in
--where was it? Minnesota? I-oway? whatever--should be
able to do the deed: like he's supposed to. I
expect to hear from him by about noon tomorrow. Well, today
now."
  "Good, good. You need anything?"
  "I'm gonna have to hit one of the caches,"
Platt said.
  "I'm a little short on cash."
  "Fine, whatever you need. Listen, if there are
any problems with your ID'S, let me know, I'll
work some thing out so you can get out of the country."
  Platt grinned.
  "Why, thank you. Boss, I surely do
appreciate that. Nice to know there's somebody you can
count on in today's dog-eat-dog world. I'll call
you back soon as bank boy does his thing."
  "Right. Later then."
  Platt pushed the disconnect button down,
pulled the scrambler from the mouthpiece, and
dropped it into his pocket. He'd toss it into a
lake somewhere later. Hmm.
  Hughes hadn't seemed as upset as he'd
expected by the feds sniffing Platt out. He was a
cool one, all right. Maybe too cool. Truth
was, Platt trusted him about as far as he could
pitch the man one-handed, and while he was strong, that
wasn't all that far.
  Once bank boy had done his thing, Hughes was
going to be eyeball-deep in money, at least for a
little while, and maybe he wouldn't need an attack
dog as much as he had before. Or maybe he thought he
might get rid of the old one and buy himself a new
dog.
  You had to pay attention at times like this, Platt
had learned.
  People always looked out for their own interests, first,
last, and in between. Pretty soon now, Hughes and
Platt would have interests going their separate ways.
Things could get dangerous when that happened. And
Momma Platt didn't raise no fools.
  Platt headed for his room. He had a couple of
things he wanted to pick up there before he headed for the
airport.
  Sunday, January 16th, 1:45
a.m. Quantico, Virginia
  Commander Michaels called them into the conference room
for a quick meeting. Winthrop looked around. Aside from
herself, there was Michaels, fiorella, Gridley,
and in the hall just outside, Julio, who had hung
around even though there wasn't anything he could do
on-line. He smiled at her as she moved into the
conference room, and she felt her spirits lift a little.
  She was dred--they were all dred--they'd been in
VR for what seemed like months, repairing damaged
systems. Sure, they'd had help from federal
programmers, but this had been a major infection, and
it was mud-slogging work, a lot of slow, hard steps.
It took a lot out of you, but it was getting done.
  Most of the damage could be fixed over the next day
or two.
  The biggest problem would come from the systems being down
and the money that cost in lost time and transactions all
over.
  And that whole thing with the Frihedsakse was there too.
  Or wasn't there, if you looked at it hard
enough. They'd been baited.
  Gridley was royally pissed off about that, since
he'd been the one on point, but it could have happened
to her just as easily. There was just enough sizzle
there so you thought you could smell the steak, even though you
couldn't quite see it. It was a good con, and it would have
been a long time before they caught it if Fiorella
hadn't pointed out the possibilities.
  She might not be the best programmer, but she had
a sharp overview, something a lot of the tech
no-types didn't have.
  "--Federal banking systems are still at risk, but
all security programs are being updated and
changed, so the old passwords won't get the guy
back in again," Michaels said.
  "He got those," Gridley said.
  "What's to say he won't get the new ones?"
" That mirrored Winthrop's own thought pretty
well. bar "The bank programmers are using the
new tag system. If somebody breaks in,
we'll know where the leak got sprung."
  Gridley nodded.
  "Yeah, that'll work for a while, but in the long run,
some sharp cowboy will figure out a way around that."
  "In the long run. Jay, we're all dead,"
Michaels said.
  That brought some tired smiles forth.
  "All right, what's the situation on this guy
Platt? Joanna?"
  She looked down at her flat screen and called
up the report.
  "The Cray Colander has sifted everything it could
on him.
  "Platt dropped out of high school in his
junior year. Got into some local trouble as a
juvenile--car theft, assault, underage drinking,
shoplifting, petty stuff. No time in reform
schools or jails.
  "Our boy disappeared for the next four years. He
was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, when he was
twenty, some kind of con game went bad, he
punched out the victim. He got released on
bail, then skipped.
  "Next time we see him is when he was busted for
assault and battery in New Orleans, age
twenty-four. He apparently attacked a man on
the street for no good reason, beat him senseless.
Nobody noticed the old warrant for the thing in
Phoenix. He posted bail, and never showed for the
trial.
  "In 2006, Platt was arrested on a drunk
and disorderly charge in Trenton, New Jersey.
He walked into a bar and started a fight. Four men
wound up in the hospital. Through some glitch
in the miracle of modern communications, the bail
jumpings in Phoenix and in New Orleans did not
appear on his record, and he posted bond a third
time--"
  "Let me speculate," Michaels said.
  "He left town."
  "Good guess," Winthrop said.
  "The last thing we have on him is an arrest in
Miami Beach three years ago. Anot her
assault charge. He attacked two men at a
hot dog stand, again for no apparent reason. When the
police arrived, he was taken into custody, but as they
were transferring him from the car to the jail, he
escaped. Both the arresting officers were injured,
requiring hospitalization."
  Winthrop looked up from the flat screen.
  "That's it. All we have on Mr. Platt. He
has no credit records, no property except
for the house outside Marietta, no driver's
license, no work history. He's never paid
Social Security, filed a tax return, or
applied for a passport. At least not under the name
Platt. Another of the free-rangers who don't
leave electronic tracks or paper trails."
  "A thug," Fiorella said.
  "Hardly seems like the mastermind behind computer
break-ins."
  "Is there anything that ties his crimes together?"
Michaels asked.
  Winthrop nodded.
  "Victim profiles. Two things jump out.
  All ten of the people he assaulted, including the two
cop sin Miami, were African-Americans. Their
average weight was over two hundred and ten pounds.
The guy he thumped in New Orleans was a
linebacker for the Saints--he went almost three
hundred pounds." "Wheew," Gridley said.
  "The guy is a racist. He beats up on
black men."
  "Big black men," Fiorella said.
  "No indication of martial arts training?"
  "None," Winthrop said.
  "Well, isn't this lovely?" Gridley said.
  "We got an arm breaker turned computer
wizard, who somehow managed to snare all kinds of
secret passwords and entry routines, then used them
to break into the most sophisticated systems in the
country. And he's smart enough to put a big fat red
herring in our way so he's got us running around
looking for Danish terrorists. I'm with
Toni. This doesn't scan."
  Michaels nodded, and rubbed at his eyes.
  "All right. So Platt has help. If we
find him, we'll ask him to tell us who that is.
What are we doing to find him?"
  Gridley said, "We're electronically
crunching all car rentals, airports, and bus and
train stations in a hundred-mile radius of the
house, looking for single males who did business
there in the last twenty-four hours. FBI has the
picture and description and is checking hotels,
motels, and rooming houses in the area."
  "Which includes all of Atlanta," Fiorella
said.
  "Good luck."
  "He's probably not so stupid as to keep using
the Platt name, but maybe his face will ring a bell
somewhere," Gridley said.
  "Of course, he could be in Polar Bear,
Canada, by now," Winthrop said.
  "Okay, everybody take a break," Michaels
said.
  "Go home, get some sleep, get back here
early as you can tomorrow.
  And Jay--that doesn't mean sacking out
on the couch in your office for two hours. If you
aren't rested, you become part of the problem and not the
solution."
  "Copy, Boss."
  "Thanks, people. You've all done good work."
  Michaels got to his feet. The meeting was
over.
  In the hall, Julio leaned against a wall,
favoring his bad leg.
  "Going back into the trenches?" he asked
Joanna.
  "Nope. Boss says go home and get some
sleep."
  "Sounds like a good idea."
  "Yeah, it does, but I'm too wound up
to relax. I'll probably be up until dawn."
She looked at him, gave him the faintest of
grins.
  "You know anything I can do to relax, Julio?"
  He grinned back at her.
  "Yes, ma'am, I believe I can offer some
exercises you might try. They always put me
to sleep pretty quick."
  "All right. Come on then. You can show me at my
place."
  He straightened up, stood at attention, then
gave her a snappy, crisp salute.
  "Yes, ma'am. Anything the lieutenant
says."
  "Anything? Big talk for a beat-up old
sergeant"
  "I have hidden talents."
  "We'll see about that."
  They headed down the hall.
  Chapter 34
  Sunday, January 16th, 6 a.m. St.
Louis, Missouri
  Platt's clean phone beeped, the little
European police siren heehaw, heehaw tone
he'd set up that meant the bank guy was calling.
  "Yeah?"
  "It's done," the bank guy said. Peterson was
his name.
  Jamal Peterson. And it wasn't Iowa or
Minnesota, he was from South Dakota. Platt
knew that, but he liked to pretend he was dumber than
he actually was around Hughes. Never know but how that
might give him an advantage someday.
  Old Jamal had scammed a couple hundred
thou at the place he'd worked at up in the
Dakota territory, which was why he was working for
Platt and Hughes. The feds had got that money
back, but it was peanuts. That wasn't the point. The
point was, when it came to pulling a money
rascal, Peterson was the man.
  "Any trouble?"
  "No. I had two hours after you let me in.
I laid mines, pulled up drawbridges, and
bollixed trackers during all the commotion. I got
it from more than five hundred large government and
corporate accounts, no chunk big enough to raise
eyebrows from any one of them. By the time they notice
and get panicky, the transfers will have run through the
filters.
  Even if they get past Grand Cayman and both
Swiss accounts--which they won't--they'll never get
by Denpasar Trust in Bali until somebody comes
up with a real big bribe.
  By then, the e-trans'll be long gone, if our
principal collects as he is supposed to."
  "How much did you get?" Platt asked.
  There was a second's pause.
  "One hundred and eighty million, just as we
agreed."
  Platt shook his head and grinned unseen
at Old Jamal. The son of a bitch was lying,
sure as he was born. The deal was, Hughes
needed a hundred and forty, and Peterson was to get
twenty, which left twenty for Platt. But he'd
bet his twenty against a bent nickel that the bank
boy had bled himself a little extra. Or maybe a
lot extra. Which was stupid. How much did a man
need?
  Thing was, Peterson wasn't a real
criminal. He didn't have the right mind-set. He
didn't know the real problems that came from stealing
large money.
  Because when you tapped a big score, it wasn't the
police dogs you had to worry about--it was the
wolves.
  "All right," Platt said.
  "Go where I told you to go. I'll be in touch
tomorrow."
  Platt broke the connection. Poor bank boy.
He was hooked and cooked, any way you looked at
it.
  As Platt made a call to make certain
Peterson had been at least partially straight with
him, he thought about bank boy's unhappy future.
  Back when he'd been running with
Jimmy Tee, the old man had told him a story
about a robbery in his home town. Seems a guard
who'd been working at a bank for twenty
years-everybody loved and trusted the guy--grabbed the
manager one morning early when he came in, tied
him up, and walked off with four million and change
in unmarked twenties and fifties. Got away
clean. Or so it seemed.
  Thing was, the guy didn't know how to keep a low
profile.
  The cops found him three months later, dead as
an old white dog turd.
  Somebody had snuck into his new house in
Cancun and slit his throat.
  There was no sign of the stolen money.
  A pro. Jimmy Tee said, would have set up an
identity months, or even years ahead of time.
Given himself a background, met his neighbors, had
a good reason to show up there one day to stay
permanently. Like he'd taken early retirement from
some kind of job nobody local was ever likely
to wonder about. To make sure nobody else would
accidentally show up one Sunday at the local bar
to ask embarrassing questions like, "Hey, you remember
old Mayor Brooks? Or that time when the
City Council guy got caught with that hooker? You
know who I'm talking about, don't you? What was his
name?"
  You didn't need some thread like that to unravel, so
you had to think about stuff like that in advance.
  And there had to be a way to launder all that cash
too. You couldn't just whip out a few hundred thousand
in fifties to buy a house, and even getting a car
for cash was hinky. You sure couldn't stick it into a
bank, not all in one chunk. Hell, anything over
ten grand got reported to theirs. They didn't care
where you got your money, as long as you paid taxes on
it.
  There were a lot of ways to do it, clean your money,
but most of them involved things that honest people never thought
about.
  You needed the cover, see? The cops, if they
caught you, they were just gonna toss your butt in
jail, but as soon as you hit the road with four
million in your pocket, the bounty hunters would be
right behind you.
  The wolves. And the bounty they'd collect if they
caught you was everything you had, up to and probably
including your life. If they got you, they'd put a
gun in your ear and you'd give it up. And
if they didn't feel like killing you, but just walked
away, there wasn't a damn thing you could do about it.
Who you gonna complain to about being ripped off? The
cops? Excuse me, officer, but this bad man
stole the money I took from the bank. Uh-huh.
  Right.
  No, what you did with a big score was, you
took your money and you set up some kind of small
business, or you lived the middle-class life of a
retiree, drove a car a couple of years old,
lived in a nice middle-class house. You
didn't send Christmas cards to your ex-wife. You
didn't go to your mother's funeral. You didn't call
your nephew to congratulate him on getting
into college. You cut your ties with your past clean
and you never looked back.
  If you wanted to take a flier on the tables or
the ponies, or roll around in a waterbed with a lady
of me evening, you did these things quietly. You
didn't go off to Las Vegas or the Gulf
Coast or Atlantic City and start betting
stacks of hundreds on the dice or wheels. You
didn't rent the suite at the Trump or the Hard
Rock Hotel and parade show girls in and out,
buying Moet and Chandon by the case either, because
the cops weren't stupid and neither were the wolves. If
you stuck your head up too high, somebody was gonna
spot it, and come running to lop it off.
  Old Jamal didn't have the brains to know this.
Oh, yeah, he could slip into an on-line bank and
back out again with a couple hundred million dollars
in his pocket slick as a greasy snake on a
marble floor, but old Jamal didn't have any
street smarts.
  So, even if Platt didn't give the guy up
to the cops--which he fully intended to do--somebody would
catch up to old Jamal pretty quick. And the dim
bulb didn't have anybody to give up to save his
sorry ass when the cops dragged him in.
  The man he knew as Platt was somebody else
now. He didn't even know who he and Platt were
working for, only that it was supposed to be some rich
corporate fat cat.
  So the bank would get a few million of its
swiped money back pretty quick once they
collected Peterson. Hughes would do whatever he
was gonna do over in Booga-land with his one-forty. And
Platt? "dis,; That was simple. Platt was
gonna buy a hard-core gym in Kona, on the
big island of Hawaii, a place he'd
had his eye on for a couple of years. The gym was ten
thousand square feet, had all kinds of gear--free
weights, machines, the whole nine yards. It got
world-class body builders coming through now and then, there
were fitness models who dropped by during photo
shoots, and enough tourists so it was practically a
license to steal. The place was well-managed, so
Platt wouldn't have to do anything. He would rent a little
house or a condo, work out when he wanted, maybe do
a little personal training, and take things easy. The
climate was perfect, you didn't need to own a
heater or an air conditioner, and he'd be hanging out
with the kind of people he liked: fit, healthy, strong
folks. The place was his for a million-two, and that
would leave plenty of running-around and fuck-you money.
A man didn't need more than that. Business
didn't do too well, you had plenty you could drop
into it a few hundred or thousand at a time to even
things out. Take a long time to burn up eighteen
million and change that way ... Sure, Hughes
had big plans, he was gonna be master of the world, but
what was the point? You could only sleep in one bed
at a time, only drive one car at a time, only
eat so much a day. Playing power games didn't
appeal to Platt at all. He could
raise a little hell now and then, kick some ass, but
that was personal, in-your-face stuff.
  Deciding somebody's future from halfway around
the world? Forget it.
  A few more weeks and he'd be out there in the warm
sunshine, smiling at the tanned tourists and being a
respectable businessman. It couldn't get much
better than that.
  So old Jamal wasn't lying, the transfer had
been made. Time to get the heat down on the boy.
He had already recorded the message giving Jamal
up. All he had to do was dial a number and hang
up, and the remote would give the feds a ring and
deliver a big-time bank robber on a platter.
  Adios, Jamal.
  And now, one more call: "Yes?"
  "It's a done deal, boss."
  He could almost hear Hughes grin from ten thousand
miles away.
  "Good. Everything else okay?"
  "No problems at all. Keep the light on,
I'm gonna see you real soon."
  Breaking the connection, Platt fired up his
portable computer and sent one brief signal winging
its way into the aether net.
  He'd learned Jimmy Tee's lesson well
and had prepared for success. But he'd also prepared
for failure. He didn't trust Net Force, he
didn't trust the jig president of that backwater
country, and he especially didn't trust good ol'
Mr. Hughes.
  So he'd set up a fail-safe or two as
insurance--"cause you never knew when a little
insurance just might come in handy.
  Sunday, January 16th, 7:00 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Naked, Fernandez rolled over in bed and marveled
at his good fortune.
  Naked next to him, Joanna blinked
sleepily.
  "What time is it?"
  "Around seven. Ask me if I care."
  He lifted the covers and looked at her.
  "What are you doing?" she asked.
  "Looking at you. I know it bothers you to hear it,
but you are beautiful."
  "It doesn't always bother me. It depends on
who says it and when." She smiled at him.
  "You're a little too scarred up to be called
beautiful, but I'm not complaining."
  He reached out, touched her face.
  "You know, nobody even comes in a close
second to last night."
  "I bet you say that to all the girls."
  "No. Just you, Jo."
  She sat up, the covers falling away to reveal
her breasts.
  She reached out and hugged him.
  "Thank you. You can say that all you want too.
And I can't remember ever having a better time with
my clothes off either."
  "I told you I had hidden talents."
  "You want to shower?"
  "No, ma'am, what I want to do is lie here
in this bed with you until they come and haul us away to the
nursing home.
  But I stink pretty good, so probably a shower
is a good idea."
  "Go start it. Holler when you want me to come
in."
  "I'll holler now then."
  "No, first you warm it up. What's the point in
having a lover if he won't heat the shower up for
you?"
  "I hadn't thought of it that way," he
said. He slid out from under the covers and started for the
bathroom.
  "Julio?"
  He stopped.
  "Yeah?"
  "Turn around for me, would you?"
  He grinned and did a three-sixty, hands held
out.
  "Like less-than - * was so" "Yes. Okay,
you'll do. Start the shower, please."
  "Yes, ma'am. On the double."
  Chapter 35
  Sunday, January 16th, 7:40 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Jay Gridley was still tired, having managed
only an hour or so of sleep, but he felt good,
the tiredness notwithstanding.
  Contrary to what the boss had said, he had camped
out on his office couch, then gotten up and hit the
nets early. Platt was the key to this whole thing, and
while he had vanished, not leaving any real trail
under that name, he might not be as smart as he thought he
was. Few people ever were as smart as they thought they were,
and Platt had made one giant mistake, no
matter what he had dared face off with
Net Force.
  There are some basic mistakes you want
to avoid. You don't piss into the wind, you don't
eat at a place called "Mom's," and you don't
pull your program on Lonesome Jay Gridley.
  Bad idea.
  Marietta, Georgia
  The inside of the telegraph office smelled of
must and pipe tobacco. A cast-iron potbellied
coal stove and steel chimney in the center of the room
glowed with warmth that kept the hardest of the chill off, but
the place was still cool. Behind a counter sat a small
man puffing on a corncob pipe. The man wore
a long wool coat and gold wire-rimmed
spectacles.
  "Good mornin', sir. Can I hep you?"
  Jay smiled and tipped his hat at the
telegraph operator.
  "Mornin', sir."
  Gridley wore the dress uniform of a
Confederate captain, a soft gray wool unlike
the butternut colors most of the enlisted men wore.
A lot of officers had their own designs cut and
sewed by their personal tailors, there being little real
uniformity in officers' uniforms in the
Confederacy. This early in the war, in 1862, the
South was not only still in it, they had won major
battles against the North. First Manassas--the
Battle of Bull Run--had been a rout. The
South had kicked some major Yankee ass. Things
had already started downhill for the Rebs after
Perryville, but right now most folks here felt
pretty good about their chances of winning the War Between the
States.
  Jay said,
  "Well, sir, I am Captain Jay
Gridley, detached from General Lee's staff, and
you could do a great service for your state and the
Confederacy. We are seeking a Yankee spy, a
Southerner who goes by the name of Platt. We do
believe he might have been sending coded messages
by wire to his Northern masters from this area."
  "Well, I do declare!" the telegrapher said.
  "Can it be?"
  "Yes, sir. Of course, we don't think
he'd be so foolish as to do these treasonous acts under
his own name, but perhaps he was. Could you check your
records for us, sir?"
  "I would be more than happy to, sir."
  Polite folks, the Southerners.
  After a minute of thumbing through a stack of yellow
paper, the telegrapher shook his head.
  "Captain, I'm afraid I cannot find any
messages sent or received under the name of Platt."
  "This is not unexpected, sir. However, let me
describe the traitor for you, and show you a drawing
we have of him. He might have used another name."
  Jay laid out the general description of
Platt, then proffered a pen-and-ink sketch he
withdrew from inside his coat.
  The telegrapher frowned at the drawing.
  "I am sorry to report that I do not
recognize this man, from word or this representation.
However, if you will wait a moment... ?"
  The telegrapher got up and walked to the back
window, a barred affair with the glass portion closed
against the chill. He raised the window and yelled out,
  "Buford! Put down that broom and git yourself in
here!"
  A moment later a tall and gangly boy of
thirteen or so, dressed in gray wool trousers
held up by leather suspenders, a homespun gray
shirt, and scuffed brown boots, appeared.
  "Yessuh?"
  "This is Captain Gridley, from
General Lee's staff. He has some thing to ask
you." To Jay, the telegrapher said, "Buford
sometimes watches the office when I take supper.
He's got a fair hand with the key for such a young
age, although he'll be enlisting as soon as he turns
fourteen."
  Jay wanted to shake his head. They did that, went
off to war as young teenagers.
  A lot of them never came back. Stupid thing,
war. Stupid.
  Jay repeated the description and showed the boy the
drawing.
  "Why, yessuh. Captain, sir. I do
recall him. A large fellow, although he did not go
under the name Platt, sir. I recollect that he
called himself Rogers." He glanced at the
telegrapher, then back at Jay.
  "I believe he was in just yesterday, sir."
  Jay caught a glimpse of some thing in the boy's
face, though he wasn't sure what it meant. He
said,
  "And did this Mr. Rogers send or receive a
message?"
  The boy hesitated." "I--I think so, sir.
I'm not exactly sure. Last evening was
passing busy. sir."
  The telegrapher, meanwhile, thumbed through the
stack of telegrams for yesterday.
  "I don't see one to or from Rogers here, boy.
You did keep a copy, didn't you?"
  The boy licked his lips, which seemed to have gone very
dry all of a sudden.
  "I--I don't remember, sir. I must have
done, if he sent or got a wire."
  "I cannot find one here."
  Jay stared at the boy.
  "Buford, you love your country, don't you?"
  "Sir, yes, sir!"
  "Then y'all better come clean. Something was
unusual about this telegraphic event, wasn't
it?"
  The boy looked as if he was about to cry. His
face clouded over, and tears welled.
  "S-S-Sir. Mr. Rogers, he sent a
message and--and he give me a nickel for the
copy. He took it with him. Am I going'
to jail?"
  "What? How could you do that, Buford? That's
strictly against regularity!"
  Jay held up one hand, asking for the
telegrapher to keep silent.
  "I'm not worried about the nickel or what you
did, son.
  You can square that if you can answer one question for me.
  Do you remember who Mr. Rogers sent the wire
gram to? The name? Or the station?"
  "y-Yes, sir, I remember the station."
  Jay grinned. Hah! Now still Gotcha,
Platt!
  Sunday, January 16th, 8:05 a.m..
Quantico, Virginia
  Jay thundered into Michaels's office, waving a
hardcopy print out and yelling
  "Boss! I got him, I got him!"
  "Slow down. Jay. You got who?"
  "Platt. Who he's working for! You're not gonna
believe this!" He shoved the paper at Michaels,
who took it.
  "See, the thing is, the guy was smart enough not to use
his own name, but not smart enough to change his appearance. I
did a scan of all new phone service in
Georgia--temporary lines, mobile units,
new installations--crossed them with Platt's ID.
I figured once he gave up the Platt name and
ran, he'd want new comm gear under a
new name. I threw out female names and corporation
names, then checked all the logs at phone stores and
service companies in the state. It took a while,
but I got it narrowed down to a few, and when I
started running those, I came up with a security cam
shot of him buying a new mobile!"
  Michaels listened with half his attention. There were
several numbers on the list Jay had handed him.
Circled in red was a number and written in red
next to it was a name: Thomas Hughes.
  It sounded familiar, but Michaels couldn't
place it. He knew the name.
  Where did he know it from?
  "So then I got the new number and ran a
trace on the calls--"
  "Jay," Michaels broke in.
  "Cut to the finish line. Who is this Hughes you have
circled?"
  Jay smiled and straightened himself up to his full
height.
  "He's chief of staff for a United States
senator."
  Michaels made the connection. Of course.
  "White? This guy is Robert White's
COS?"
  "Yes, sir. And isn't it funny that our thug
computer guy is calling Hughes? What could the two
of them possibly have in common, do you suppose?"
  "Jesus," Michaels said.
  Sunday, January 16th, 8:55 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Toni met Alex and Jay in the conference room.
She was on her fourth cup of coffee, but she
wasn't fully awake yet. She hadn't slept
that well, and the worry that had kept her awake
wasn't about the job. She had relived that long
passionate kiss in the Miata at least a hundred
times. He wanted her, there was no question about that. The
question was, was he going to let himself go with his feelings?
Or was he going to suck it up and go stoic on her?
  "Toni, what have we got?"
  "Having a word with Hughes right now is going to be
difficult.
  He's gone on a trip out of town with the
senator."
  "To Africa?" Michaels asked.
  "Ethiopia?"
  She looked at him.
  "How do you know that?"
  "From his staff guy when he called
to schedule me for a committee meeting."
  She shook her head.
  "Yes, well, we've had somebody there check,
and while the senator is making the rounds and giving
speeches, Hughes isn't with him. We know he
got that far, he talked to the press on the flight
over and shortly after landing, but nobody has seen him
since."
  Jay said,
  "Well, we have his private number here, don't
we? Doesn't matter exactly where on the Dark
Continent he is. If he's got a virgil, he
can't be out of signal range."
  Alex said,
  "The thing is. Jay, we don't really want
to talk to him on the virgil.
  This is the kind of thing you need to do personally."
  "You think he might run if he knows we're on
to him?"
  "Right now, given what we suspect, we're
talking about an end to his career and fifteen years in
a federal penitentiary-if Platt is working at his
direction. He might decide that retreat is the
better part of valor. And if he is somewhere in
Africa, extradition might be iffy.
  "And we have to consider the idea that maybe White
is implicated."
  "Wishful thinking," Toni said.
  " "Probably, but you never know. We might
get lucky." Alex smiled.
  "What I don't understand is what he would have
to gain from this," Toni said.
  "Yeah, he gives his boss a platform to stand
on, makes Net Force his whipping boy, but that
seems a small payoff for such a big crime."
  "I think I have the answer for that," Joanna said
from the doorway.
  They all turned to look at her.
  She waved her flat screen.
  "I just got back from the federal money hounds.
While we all were running around stamping out little
fires on the bank incursion yesterday, somebody
snuck in and siphoned off almost two hundred
million dollars."
  "Now there's a coincidence," Jay said.
  "Damn!" Alex said.
  "Of course! It was misdirection! We thought
somebody wanted to take the system down! It
wasn't about terrorism at all, it was about money!"
  "That lets White out," Alex said.
  "He's probably got more money than that in his
personal checking account."
  Joanna continued.
  "The hounds have traced part of the funds through a
Caribbean bank and two Swiss numbered accounts,
but they are stonewalled at some Indonesian trust
company."
  "Part of the funds?" Alex asked
  "A hundred and sixty million," Joanna
  said.
  "Forty went somewhere else."
  Toni said,
  "That would be a pretty good reason to break into a
few computers to raise hell."
  "It gets better," Joanna said. She looked
at her flat screen.
  "Seems an anonymous tip to the FBI has just
resulted in the arrest of one Jamal S.
Peterson, a former bank employee wanted for a
similar kind of sting in South Dakota last month.
  They recovered the money from that, a couple hundred
thousand, but Peterson was not apprehended at the time:
The tip claimed that Peterson was responsible for this
theft too."
  "And he's been picked up?"
  "About fifteen minutes ago. I just got off the
phone with the special agent in Charge. Peterson
had a forged passport, a one-way ticket
to Rio, and a new account in Switzerland with forty
million dollars in it, transferred in last
night."
  "So that's all the money," Jay said.
  "Not exactly. The hundred and sixty very large
went into a bank in Bali, but there's a good chance the
money has already left the building.
  The institution in question has a history of such
transactions."
  "So Hughes, if he's responsible, has
probably already gotten his hands on more money than you
and I and everybody in our department will make for the rest
of our lives," Alex said.
  "That would be a fairly safe bet," Joanna
said.
  Alex sighed.
  "Damn."
  "I hate to add more rain on the parade," Toni
said, "but with that kind of money, there are probably a
dozen poor African nations who'd be happy
to grant Hughes political asylum.
  Maybe not the Ethiopians, but some of the
third-world presidents would jump at the chance to sell
out. For a tenth of that much." Alex said,
  "And that might be his plan. He might already be
sitting in his new villa in Sierre Leone,
sipping some banana-and-rum drink and laughing his head
off at us."
  "And it gets worse. Boss. We've been
back walking the various penetrations as best we can,
and casting about for any side trails, and we think
we've uncovered a problem."
  Michaels looked at him.
  "Why am I not surprised? What is it?"
  "The way it looks to us, Platt has set it
up so that he has to log in to various systems at
certain times. If he doesn't, and if he
doesn't send the right messages, we think he has
several more surprises set to be unleashed on us."
  "Dead-man switches," Alex said.
  Jay nodded.
  "That's how it looks. We're tracking them as
best we can. Given enough time, we'll get them all,
but if anything happens to Platt before we do ..."
  Alex glanced over at Joanna, then back at
Jay.
  "Stay on it," he said, "and let me
know as soon as you've got them all."
  "Right, Boss."
  "First thing the rest of us have to do is find out where
Hughes is. Then we'll worry about how much
immunity he thinks he's got."
  Alex looked thoughtful.
  "Toni, see if you can get hold of Colonel
Howard at home, would you?" Joanna said,
  "He's not at home. He's doing a survival
course in Oregon."
  Everybody turned and looked at Joanna. She
said, "Uh, that's what I heard."
  Jay grinned at Joanna, and Toni wondered
why.
  "Ah," Jay said.
  "You get that from a certain NCO we all know and
love?"
  Joanna blushed, her pale complexion flushed
a deep pink.
  "Of course, some of us apparently know him and
love him more than others," Jay said. Butter
wouldn't melt in his mouth.
  "Go, people, find me a bank thief," Alex said,
saving Joanna more embarrassment.
  "Oh, and good work on what we've done
so far. You four are the best, don't let anybody
ever tell you different."
  "Yeah, but who gets the trip to Hawaii?"
Jay said.
  "Go, Jay. We aren't done yet. And while
you're looking, get me everything you can on Hughes.
Let's find out what we're dealing with here."
  Chapter 36
  Sunday, January 16th, 6:15 a.m.
Eastern Oregon
  John Howard was nearly a mile into the morning's
trek when his virgil cheeped at him.
  Uh-oh. Nobody was supposed to call unless it
was an emergency.
  He un clipped the device from his belt--he'd
learned that lesson, thank you very much--and looked at
the ID flashing on the screen.
  Assistant Commander of Net Force Toni
Fiorella.
  He pressed the connect button.
  "Howard," he said.
  "Colonel, I'm afraid you're going to have
to cut your survival trip short. We've got a
situation here, and Alex--Commander Michaels--
wants you back at HQ to put your teams
on standby alert."
  "Copy that."
  "Find a flat spot, sir, and a copter will be
there to pick up as soon as possible."
  "Affirmative, And What's up, can you say?"
  "We may be doing an extraction. Colonel,
though it's a little early to tell. If we can locate
the quarry, it's likely you won't need to pack your
cold-weather clothes."
  "Copy. I'm looking for a landing site now."
  "Drop by when you get back. Colonel, and
we'll fill you in. Discom."
  "Discom."
  After the link was sundered, Howard began looking for a
place for the copter to land. They'd home in on his
virgil, and if a bird lifted from the nearest
local military base, his ride should be there within the
hour.
  Giving up his survival trip for a real
assignment was not in the least bit distressing to him.
War games and camping trips were only the maps, not
the territory.
  Sunday, January 16th, 2:15 P.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  The web covered the world, even a
backwater like this one, and it was but the work of a few
minutes with a portable flat screen to uplink via
shielded modem pipe to a passing tele com sat.
Anot her minute, a coded password, and 160
million electronic dollars flew from Bali
to Bissau, into the government-owned Banco Primero
de Bissau, where it was now as safe from the U.s.
authorities" grasp as was the surface of
Saturn. In his room, seated cross-legged on his
bed, Hughes took a deep breath and let it
slowly escape. He smiled. It hadn't even
been that difficult to do, to steal more money than most people
could ever hope to see in their lifetimes. To most people,
160 million dollars was a fantasy--the only
chance they'd ever have at such a sum was winning the
lottery. For him, the money was but an intermediate
step. A tool, nothing more. He was home free.
He had the money, and they didn't have any idea who
had taken it. He could go back to the States with
White, wrap up a few loose ends. make a
few calls, and he was on his way. Even if all
of this somehow blew up in his face, he still would have forty
million, after he paid El Presidente. Not a
bad little nest egg. That was including, of course, the
twenty million Platt was supposed
to get but wouldn't need where he was going.
  So easy. Amazing.
  The room's phone rang.
  "Yes?"
  It was the President's secretary.
  "Good afternoon, Mr. Hughes. President
Domingos sends his regards and wonders if it might
be convenient for you to join him for a drink in the Blue
Room in perhaps half an hour?"
  "That would be fine," Hughes said.
  "Half an hour."
  Hughes smiled again. His Excellency wasn't
wasting any time.
  Time for a shower and fresh clothes before he went.
  Sunday, January 16th, 10 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  "Guinea-Bissau?" Alex said.
  "I hope you don't think any less of me for not
knowing, but where the hell is that?"
  "West Africa," Toni said, "between Senegal
and Guinea."
  "Oh, that helps."
  They were in his office, alone, and she had just
presented him with the intelligence on Thomas
Hughes's whereabouts.
  Toni said, "On the North Atlantic coast.
Trust me, it's there."
  "Okay, so how do we know Hughes is there?"
  "I have a contact at the CIA who checked it out
for me.
  They actually have an operative in the country, and
she filed a report."
  "Why would the CIA have an op there? I don't
even see any of the Company's maps in here. How
important a place can it be if they didn't
bother to map it?"
  Toni shrugged.
  "Who knows why the spooks do anything?"
  He glanced at the material.
  "Doesn't look like a real hot vacation spot
either. Why is he there?"
  "The spooks aren't being real forthcoming. My
source says there is some kind of deal coo king between
the country's President and Hughes, but that's all
they know. Or more likely, all they are willing
to say."
  Alex leaned back in his chair and fiddled with a
light pen.
  There came a knock at the door. Joanna
stood there.
  "Good news, I hope?" Alex said.
  "Well, good that we found out the bad news," she
said.
  "Swell. Go ahead."
  "The federal hounds paid the entry fee--that's a
bribe to you and me--to bank officials in Bali and
got into the account where the money was."
  Alex blew out a sigh.
  "Was. I take it that word is key here?"
  "Correct The account was emptied less than an
hour ago.
  Went to some thing called the Banco Primero de
Bissau. That's in--"
  "Guinea-Bissau," Alex finished.
  "I'm impressed, sir. I'd never heard of the
place before."
  "Commanders see all and know all, Jo," he said.
He gave her a rueful smile.
  "So, our white-collar thief and his stolen
millions are in a country with whom we probably
don't have an extradition treaty, no crooks from
here ever having figured out how to flee there before now,
right? Or if we do have a treaty, whatever deal
Hughes and the local head honcho are coo king up will
no doubt stall any such proceedings we
might attempt?
  Anybody want to jump in here and reassure me
how wrong I am?"
  Both Joanna and Toni shook their heads.
  Alex stood, put the light pen down, and paced
back and forth behind his desk. After a few seconds
he said, "All right. Is there any point in me
calling State and telling them we want this guy
back here?"
  Toni shook her head again.
  "If Hughes thinks he is going to be arrested as
soon as he steps off a plane, probably not.
  State can't make him come home if he's got
the country's President in his pocket." Toni
continued.
  "Of course, he is the COS for a United
States senator. He can likely throw some heavy
artillery at us.
  Political types will owe him favors.
Maybe he comes back and White steps up to bat
for him."
  "Maybe," Alex said.
  "But national-class politicos don't get to the
top of the heap without knowing which bugs to step on and which
ones to step around. This isn't a
political gaffe, it's grand theft. Not an ant,
but a stink beetle.
  Hughes will play hell trying to blame this on the
opposition party trying to make him look bad.
I'd bet White will drop Hughes like he's a
lit bomb."
  "All of which means what, Commander?" Joanna
asked.
  "I think it means if we want him, we are
going to have to go and get him," Alex said.
  "Hold up a second," Toni said.
  "He doesn't know we know he's the thief.
White is due to return to the country next week.
Wouldn't Hughes just come back with the senator? I
mean, maybe not, but he's got a seat on
White's charter. Why wouldn't he return? As far
as he is concerned, he's gotten away with it. That
would make things a lot easier. We wait until
he lands right at Dulles and collect him, no
fuss."
  Alex looked at her and smiled.
  "You're right. Of course.
  He doesn't know we are looking at him. And
now that the theft is a done deal, I would suspect
there won't be any more attacks on the net
by his pet thug. No emergency. We can wait a
few days. That would keep me from having to explain to the
Director why I invaded a third-world country and
kidnapped somebody. Brilliant, Toni."
  Toni smiled. Any time she could get that kind of
response from him, she was happy.
  "Of course, it might be a good idea if the
CIA gave us a little help keeping an eye on this
character, just in case he decides to go elsewhere."
  "They'd be happy to," Toni said.
  "They lost people when that spy list hit the web. They
want this guy.
  I'd guess if we don't get him pretty
soon, he might have a fatal accident."
  "That would be bad," Alex said.
  "We need him alive at least until Jay and
Joanna have tracked down and defused his little time
bombs."
  "I know," she said.
  "I mentioned that we want him alive."
  Sunday, January 16th, 10 a.m.
Chicago, Illinois
  Platt had booked a commercial flight from
O'Hare to Heathrow, where he'd switch airlines
for the hop to North Africa, before
transferring to a local crop-duster flight
to Oogaboogah.
  Starting out on a nice big Mil, then going to a
DC-9, and finally a De Havilland prop
plane. Since he was flying tourist class all the
way, the seats weren't gonna be that comfortable, but
pretty soon he wouldn't have to be fooling with this
crap anymore, and he could fly first class if he
felt like it.
  The plane didn't leave until the afternoon, though,
and he had more than six hours to kill. He thought about
checking into a room and getting a few hours sleep,
but he could sleep on planes, if he could get them
to give him two or three pillows, and he didn't
want to take any chance he'd miss his flight, so
he decided to wait at the airport. He could
dick around, pick up copies of this month's
Flex, Muscular Development, and
Musclemag, eat a good lunch, all like that. He
only had the one carry-on bag, and he could rent a
locker for that. What the hell.
  Since he was so early, he wasn't in any
hurry to check in.
  He got some breakfast, hit the magazine
racks, went to the John, then found a
place to sit and read near where his gate was.
  He spotted the two feds when they came in.
They were looking for somebody, and he didn't think that
much about it, other than the usual
wolf-aware-of-the-hunter kind of thing.
  But then he saw them see him, saw them
recognize him, then pretend it wasn't him they were
interested in.
  Oh, shit backslash The two feds walked off,
moving quick, ignoring him, but it was too late. He
was sure. They had come here looking for him,
specifically for him. They were early, checking the
place out for spots to set up, and they hadn't
expected him to be here yet.
  How had they tracked him? If they came to this
international gate, then they must know he was booked on
a flight with this carrier. If they knew that, they
knew what name he was traveling under, his main
passport, and all. And there was only one way they
could possibly know that, because he had told only one
person.
  Hughes. And Hughes had given him up.
  Just like Platt had given up Peterson.
  Shit. He had underestimated Hughes. He should
have been more alert.
  The bastard.
  He put the magazine down. He had to get the
hell out of here. The two feds would be calling for
backup, and the airport was going to be a stoppered
bottle in a few minutes, if it wasn't already.
  Maybe the feds didn't know he'd spotted them.
That might buy him a couple of minutes. But he
couldn't chance trying to leave by the front door. There
could already be local cops heading that way.
  He stood and walked toward the exit that led to the
gates.
  It was the fastest way out of the building.
  There was a keypad lock by the door, but nobody
was looking right at him, so he figured he could put
his shoulder against the door and pop it, but when he
looked, damned if the door didn't open inward.
Wasn't gonna shove that one open. Crap!
  He looked around. A couple of women were opening
up a computer station at one of the nearby gates. He
headed that way.
  "Ma'am? I'm sorry to bother you, but I just
saw somebody go into that door over there." He
pointed.
  The airline clerks looked at him. One was
tall and bottle blond, the other was short
and kind of plump, with red hair probably out of a
bottle too.
  "Sir?"
  "That door that says no entrance, right over there?
Well, it was partway open, and some kid, I
dunno, about eight or nine?
  she just went in and closed the door behind her."
  "I'll check it, Marcie," the redhead said.
  "It's right over here," Platt said, smiling.
  Once she'd punched in the number and opened the
door, Platt considered his options. Grab her and
haul her ass inside, close the door, clonk
her on the head, and haul ass? Or just remember the
number, wait until she got done looking for the
kid who didn't exist, then sneak in himself?
  If he'd had more time, he'd have gone with the second
choice. Less fuss. But even as they stood there,
FBI and local cops could be tossing a net over
the building. Seconds might count.
  He stepped in behind the woman, wrapped his arm
around her throat, and squeezed her carotids shut.
She struggled and tried to scream, but that came out like a
gargle. Thirty seconds later she was out cold,
the blood shut off from her brain. If he held on
and squeezed a little tighter, she'd croak,
but he wasn't that desperate yet. It wouldn't do
any good besides; they already knew who he was. No
point in adding murder to whatever they had. Once she
was out, he tore off her blouse, ripped it
into strips, tied her hands and feet, stuffed a piece
in her mouth and used her scarf to hold it in place,
then picked her up and put her over his shoulder. He
went down the ramp, laid her on the floor at the
end, around the turn where nobody could see her, then
opened the emergency exit and went down the ladder to the
concrete. She was coming to as he left She'd be
okay.
  Noisy as hell out here.
  They were unloading a jet two gates over, and
Platt hurried in that direction. A guy on one
of those motorized conveyer trucks passed him.
  Platt waved him down.
  "What's up?" the guy said, yelling because he was
wearing headphones.
  Platt smiled. Grabbed the guy, then gave him
one in the gut and one upside the head, knocking the
guy senseless. Platt grabbed his earphones and
hopped on the conveyer truck. He put it in gear
and took off.
  Probably there'd be roadblocks
leading to the airport pretty quick.
  Think, Platt, think!
  All right. He had an emergency passport and
about twenty thousand dollars of Hughes's money--a
thousand in cash, and the rest in a cash-card account--
plus he had a hundred grand of his own fuck-you
money stashed in another cash-card account under a name
nobody knew.
  What he needed was a ride, and he needed it from
somewhere close.
  Ahead was a section of the airport where the
express package and cargo service planes were
parked.
  He grinned as the idea hit him.
  "Good morning sir," the manager of the freight
office said.
  "How can I help you?" He was a kid of maybe
twenty-four, twenty-five, wearing a white shirt
and a blue tie.
  Platt smiled.
  "Well, sir, I have me a little problem. My
name is Herbert George Wells, I've got this
big ole shipment of farm machinery sitting on a
loading dock in London, England, and no way
to git it home." He put a lot more
grits in his accent than usual. Stupider he
sounded, the better.
  "That's what we're here for, sir."
  "Thing is, the original airline I hired?
Well, they crapped out on me, blew an engine
or some thing, and in order to get my tax break, I
needed to have spent the money for the plane by December
31/ of last year."
  The manager raised an eyebrow.
  " "See, it saves me about ten thousand dollars
if I can show I paid the money about three weeks
ago, you understand what I'm sayin" here?"
  "I think so."
  "I'd like to hire one of your planes to fly over
there and pick up my machinery--nothin' illegal
here, sir, I got proper papers on everything--but
if I don't use my first charter, I'm gonna
lose ten thousand dollars. On the other hand, I
really need those parts, it's cos tin' me bid ness
every day they're sit tin' in England and not in Mobile
--that's where I need to get it, you see. Mobile,
Alabama."
  "It does appear to be a problem, sir."
  "Well, yes. And since there's nothing illegal
about my stuff over there, let's just say,
just, you know, for instance, if you had taken this order from
me, oh, say, around Christmastime, how much of a
problem would that be?"
  The manager looked around. Then he looked at
Platt. What he thought he saw was a big,
musclebound mechanic with his butt in a crack.
  "Well, sir, if I had taken the order and
somehow forgotten to enter it into the computer, that would be my
mistake. I could, ah, correct that when I
filled out the paperwork, pre-date it so it matched the
actual date I took the order."
  Platt smiled, one man of the world to another.
  "Well, sir, if you was to do that, I would be
mighty grateful, mighty grateful. And Mr.
Franklin and a baseball team of his twin brothers
would also be mighty pleased." Platt reached into his
shirt pocket, looked around, then removed ten
hundred-dollar bills, folded in the middle. He
put the bills on the desk and slid them toward the
kid.
  The kid covered the bills with his hand, opened his
desk drawer, raked the money off the desk, then
shut the drawer.
  He smiled at Platt.
  "All right then, Mr. Wells, what
kind of equipment did you have in mind?"
  Platt grinned. He had his ride, and any feds
looking for him wouldn't find it--since it had been
booked two weeks earlier and under another name.
  Once he got to England, getting a flight
to Africa would be easy.
  Then he and Mr. Thomas Hughes would have some
words.
  Yes, sir, they surely would....
  Chapter 37
  Sunday, January 16th, noon Quantico,
Virginia
  Michaels ate takeout Chinese food at his
desk, using throwaway chopsticks to fish the stuff
directly from the containers, not even bothering with the paper
plate that came in the lunch bag. He'd ordered
hot and spicy chicken with noodles, and sweet and
sour tofu, but it all seemed kind of bland, and he
ate for fuel, not taste. He had other things on his
mind.
  Toni came into his office. He looked up.
Her face, while not grim, was certainly serious.
  "More good news?" he asked.
  "Maybe we can't wait on White's chartered
jet to deliver Mr. Thomas Hughes to us
after all."
  Michaels put the food box down.
  "Never rains but it pours.
  What?"
  " "It seems that about an hour ago, FBI
field agents who went to Chicago's O'Hare
airport to set up a surveillance on the gate
where Platt was supposed to catch a plane to England
goofed up."
  "Goofed up. There's a nice phrase. What
does 'goofed up" mean? And how did they know where
he would be?"
  "Once we knew who we were looking for, we found
a couple of hidden accounts that Hughes had set up,
small stuff, less than twenty or thirty thousand
in each. Hughes tried to hide his connection to them, but
not very hard. Platt used money from one of the accounts
to book his ticket--and under a phony name."
  "How do you know it was Platt?"
  "Who else would be tapping into a slush account
to buy a plane ticket overseas right now? We
tipped off the field guys.
  The agents got there several hours ahead of the
scheduled departure time, but Platt was already there.
He spotted them."
  "And he got away, didn't he?"
  "The field agents aren't willing to concede that
yet. But he did escape from the terminal building
by assaulting a ticket agent and a freight handler.
Stole a freight truck and disappeared.
  The FBI is looking, but it's a big
airport."
  "Yeah, that might be called a goof-up. Best-and
worst-case scenarios?"
  Toni leaned against the wall.
  "Best case, they find him hiding behind a shipment
of lawn furniture five minutes from now and take
him into custody, whereupon he spills his guts and
gives the federal prosecutors enough useful data
to overload and sink an aircraft carrier. Hughes
comes home, we grab him, he gets fifty
years, and dies in jail when he's a hundred."
  Michaels smiled at her.
  "I like that one."
  "Worst-case scenario, Platt gets away,
calls--or manages to get to--Africa, where
he informs Hughes the game is over and we're on
to him. Hughes hunkers down behind his money and lives
happily ever after in the guest room at the
Presidential Palace, then dies at
a hundred from eating too much caviar."
  "I don't much like that story. Why is it I think
it is more likely?"
  "They could still catch him."
  Michaels shook his head.
  "Somehow, my faith in the FBI'S field ops
is not as strong as it once was." He paused,
staring at the congealing noodles and tofu.
  "Where is Colonel Howard?"
  "In the air, on an Air Force jet. He
should be here within the next couple of hours. What are
we going to do?"
  "Right now, if Platt wants to pick up a
phone and call Hughes, can we stop him?"
  "Jay says we can. If the virgil number
Platt called before is the only one Hughes is
using, we can jam it so it won't accept incoming
calls.
  But there are other phones in Bissau, some of which
probably even work.
  We can't block them all."
  "Did you lay out what's going on for the
colonel?"
  "Not yet."
  "Call him, tell him. Tell him
to lay out his incursion scenarios.
  Find out what our chances are of going in and grabbing
Hughes."
  "Are we ready to take that road yet, Alex?"
  "This guy terrorized the country, caused people
to die, nearly gave a big chunk of a nuclear
bomb to a bunch of nuts, and stole a shit load of
money. I want to see him behind bars.
  If we do it right, we're in and out before anybody
figures out what's going on, and Mr. Thomas
Hughes belongs to us. I'm ready."
  "I'll call the colonel."
  The intercom buzzed.
  "Yes?"
  "Sir, your wife's lawyer is on the phone."
  Great.
  "Get his number. Then have my lawyer call
him."
  Toni looked at him.
  "It's a long story. I'll tell you about it when
we get caught up."
  Sunday, January 16th, 5 p.m. Bissau,
Cuinea Bissau
  Hughes stood on the terraced balcony outside
his room, looking over the pink buildings
of the compound at the surrounding grounds. It wasn't so
bad here, when you had this kind of accommodation. You could
build yourself a decent house in this country for twenty
thousand dollars, a mansion for less than a hundred
thousand. And he had forty million.
  He'd manage.
  He leaned against the balcony railing, watching a
shirtless native gardener with a hoe dig weeds from a
flower bed. You could hire a guy like that for twenty
bucks a month.
  Yes. He'd do all right here.
  The deal with Domingos had gone as smoothly as it
could have gone. A hundred million dollars had
gone into El Presidente's private Swiss
account, and the mineral rights for the country of
Guinea-Bissau now belonged almost entirely
to Thomas Hughes. All the mineral rights were his,
for the next ninety-nine years. The oil, bauxite,
and phosphates alone were potentially worth
billions--at least that was what Hughes's
geologists and petroleum engineers had told him.
Not to mention any gold, silver, copper, or
whatever else might lay under the completely
unexploited ground here. The problem was, the
country had never had enough money in the till
to do any serious digging, and not enough trust from the big
international corporations for them to take the risks.
You didn't want to spend a couple hundred
million dollars to set up an operation in a
place like this if you were worried about the locals
putting your managers to the spear and taking over.
  But with Hughes owning the rights, it would be different.
  He was an educated American, somebody that the
big oil and mine companies could deal with. He had
plenty of experience in high-level negotiations,
courtesy of his work for White.
  He'd tell his potential partners he had
resigned to come here and make his fortune. Hell,
even if they knew he'd ripped off the banks, it
wouldn't matter. If a man thought you were going to make
him billions on a business deal, he'd likely
be willing to overlook a few shady things in your
past. There were folks wanted for crimes in the
States who had gone on to lucrative careers in
other countries. Who was that movie director who
had run off to France or somewhere and stayed there because the
locals admired his work and refused to extradite
him?
  Money was money. And in the billion-dollar
range, ethics got real rubbery caret
... Hughes had scanned legal electronic
copies of the freshly signed hardcopy agreement
already stored where there was no chance of them getting lost.
  He also had half-a-dozen major corporations
falling all over themselves ready to drop planeloads
of money on him for exploration leases.
  Of course, Domingos would get a piece of that
too, to go along with the "advance" he'd just collected.
But when you were talking about billions, there was enough to go
around.
  Besides, Domingos would probably have a heart
attack or a stroke in the not-too-distant
future, given his excesses. And if not
naturally, some thing could be ... arranged.
  If ever a man had been in the driver's seat and
in control of the bus, it was Thomas Hughes. Things
were almost perfect.
  When Platt showed up, he'd be getting a little
surprise too.
  Domingos would be happy to furnish a
well-trained shooter who would just as soon blast
Platt as look at him. And even if Domingos
hadn't been eager to help, as poor as most of the people
in this country were, you could hire a small army of
locals who'd be willing to put a knife
into somebody--and for less than the cost of dinner for two
in a good Washington restaurant.
  Platt was going to become past tense within hours of
his arrival. He was expecting to come and collect
twenty million dollars, then vanish.
  He was half right anyway.
  Hughes straightened, and turned to head back
into his room.
  Monique would be arriving soon for a little afternoon
delight.
  It was good to be the king, but being the man behind the king was
almost as good--and certainly it was a lot safer.
  Sunday, January 16th, 3p.m.
  In the air over the North Atlantic Ocean
Platt had the 767 to himself, save for the flight
crew. Wasn't any stewardess to offer him drinks
or membership in the Mile High Club, but he
could stretch out in a nice hammock somebody had
rigged in the empty cargo bay, and that was a plus.
  He was on his way to Merrie Olde England, and
practically home free.
  Even if the feds happened across the kid in the
freight office and questioned him, the kid had a thousand
bucks he'd lose if he gave Platt up,
plus some explaining as to why he had forged a
date on a rental agreement.
  Platt had hit a cash machine just outside the
office, so he had money left, plenty enough to catch
a flight to Senegal, rent a car, and buy himself a
few toys. He didn't want to be landing at the
Bissau airport--no, not hardly. That would get
back to the Presidente pretty quick, and from the
Presidente's lips into Hughes's ear, and that
wouldn't do at all. Hughes expected him to be in
the federal pokey by now; Platt wanted his
appearance to be a real surprise.
  Course, it might be tricky sneaking into the
guarded compound, but even jigs couldn't see in the
dark. Platt had learned how to move in the woods
when he'd been a kid, and some African forest
couldn't be much worse than the swamps back home.
Once he was over the wall, the rest of it would be a
walk.
  It would be real tempting to break Hughes
into itty-bitty pieces once he got to him, but
all he really wanted was his twenty million.
Well, okay, maybe a little extra for his
aggravation and all, that would be fair. If Hughes
didn't want to pay him, why, then he'd have
to convince him, but that was the last resort.
Push came to shove, he could kill the bastard and
walk, but that wouldn't be good, he'd be broke and the
law looking for him. Any way you looked at it,
laying low in Hawaii running his own gym was a lot
better than being on the run.
  Yep, that was how he planned it. Get some gear,
sneak across the border, have a little chat with Mr.
Hughes, finish this whole biz in the green.
Course, he might have to find himself a can of shoe
polish to blend in with the locals.
  That was funny. Him, disguising himself as a darky.
  He smiled. The more he thought about that, the better it
got.
  Wouldn't that let the air out of Hughes's tires,
he looked up and saw a giant Spook who
looked just like Platt coming in through the window?
  Platt laughed aloud. Oh, yeah, it would.
  Sunday, January 16th, 3:35 p.m.
  In the air over Virginia Still flying home on
the Air Force transport, Howard opened a
shielded comm with Julio Fernandez at Net Force
HQ.
  "I can't go off and leave you alone even for a
couple of days, can I, Sergeant?"
  "No, sir, Colonel. Cat's
away, the mice'll have a field day."
  "Let's hear it on all this African stuff,
Julio. Is this serious?"
  "Far as I can tell, yes, sir. About time
too. It's been pretty dull around here
lately."
  "Talk to me."
  The sergeant rattled off a bunch of background
about the country, the language, the people, the
geography. A minute into it, Howard said,
"Look, just upload all that into my mailbox and
I'll scan it later.
  Let's get down to the nitty-gritty.
  What are we going to run into if we drop in
unannounced on the Republic of
Guinea-Bissau?"
  "Sir. The country is defended by some thing called
the People's Revolutionary Armed Force, called the
FARP locally.
  They have a small Army, about nine boats worth
of Navy, and an Air Force consisting of a few
prop planes and surplus helicopters--if you
don't count the President's unarmed Learjet.
  They've got a paramilitary militia, and
while they supposedly have maybe a couple
hundred thousand able-bodied men who could be drafted,
the standing army is a twentieth of that, poorly armed and
uneducated.
  Probably half of them could figure out how
to tie their shoes--if they had shoes."
  "I see. What else?"
  "They got zip railroads, under three thousand
kilometers of paved road in the entire country, and
thirty-five airports, two of which have enough runway
to allow anything bigger than a crop duster to land.
We'd have to put our transport down in Senegal,
to the north, and go in either via copter, or overland--
or maybe with an airdrop and parachutes.
  " "There are fewer than four thousand telephones
in the country, maybe three for every thousand persons, and
half those don't work."
  "The phones don't work. Sergeant? Or the people."
  "Both, sir. Average income is a couple
hundred dollar per year."
  "I see."
  "They've got three FM radio stations, four
AM stations-they like rock and country and western, and a
lot of trash talk.
  There are two TV stations, one of which doesn't
sign on until dark.
  That's because there are maybe as many TV'S as there
are telephones. And probably half that many
personal computers total, of which maybe a third have
web access."
  "Sounds like a place to do my next survival
trip."
  " "If we cruise in over "em anymore
than a hundred feet up, we'll be safe,
'cause none of the locals can throw their spears that
high. Me and a company of our second-teamers could
parachute in after dark one night and be running the
country by morning without breaking a sweat."
  "Lack of confidence has never been one of your
failings, Julio."
  "No, sir."
  "You sound awfully happy for a man stuck on a
dull base recovering from a shot-up leg. I
recognize that tone. Who is she?"
  "I'm sure I don't have any idea what the
colonel is talking about."
  "You'll go to Hell for lying like that. Sergeant."
  "Yes, sir, and I'll have your landing site
secured when you arrive."
  Howard laughed.
  "All right. I'm going to scan in the
stuff you're sending and run scenarios on my STILL
system. I should be landing in"--he glanced at his
watch--"about half an hour. Meet me there."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Pack your tropical-weights. Sergeant, and
kiss your girlfriend goodbye."
  "Not a problem, sir." He laughed.
  "Something funny I missed?"
  "Oh, no, sir. I just remembered an old
joke."
  "In thirty minutes, Julio."
  "Sir."
  Chapter 38
  Monday, January 17th, 11 a.m.
Quantico, Virginia
  Michaels said, "All right, I think that's it.
Questions?"
  He looked around the conference room at the others:
Howard, Fernandez, Winthrop, Gridley, and
Toni.
  Toni said, "Have we cleared this with the
Director?"
  "Currently the Director is in a
don't-ask-don't-tell frame of mind,"
Michaels said.
  "If we deliver Hughes, he won't much care
what we had to do to get him.
  And certain members of the Senate who might
ordinarily scream to high heaven will be, I
expect, very quiet about this particular detention."
He grinned.
  "We also have some off-the-record help from the
CIA. About as much as we want. Anything else?"
  Nobody spoke.
  "Good. You all have your assignments. Better go
and get started."
  The others left. Toni stayed behind.
  "This is not a good idea, Alex."
  "You heard the colonel, it should work."
  "You know I'm not talking about the operation, I'm
talking about you going along."
  "Rank has its privileges, Toni. I was
a good field op, once upon a time. I need to get
out once in a while. The administration and politics
of this job grind you down."
  "it's dangerous."
  "Crossing the street is dangerous."
  He saw she was really concerned about him, and he
didn't want to be flip, so he said, "What would
make you feel better about this?"
  "You not going."
  "Aside from that?"
  She looked him straight in the eyes.
  "If I went with you."
  He started to shake his head.
  "I need somebody here to run things--"
  "For three or four days? Bring in Chavez from
nights, shift Preston over from Operations. They can
handle things for that long."
  "I don't know--"
  "Oh, it's fine for you to go play in the field but
not me?"
  "It's against regulations for both of us to be on the
same plane," he tried. He knew it was laroc
when he said it.
  "You're going to quote regulations at me?
You're going to toss the rule book out the window, go
along on a mission you'd never get approved if the
Director knew about it, and then talk to me about
both of us flying on the same plane?!"
  Ooh, she was mad. It was a side of her he'd
never seen.
  And of course, she was perfectly justified in
feeling that way, and he knew it.
  "Okay," he said, holding up his hands
in surrender.
  "Okay, you're right. You can go."
  "I can?"
  And in those two words, he heard what she must have
sounded like as a little girl. In her concern, anger, and
her sudden astonishment, she was in that moment drop-dead
gorgeous, calling to him like a Siren. He wanted
to hug her, kiss her--and he wanted to fall on the
couch with her. Not a good idea, and certainly not a good
idea here in the office, but that was how he felt.
  Something was going to have to be done about this. He was going
to have to do some thing.
  "You're right. We'll work some thing out That way,
we'll both be looking for new jobs if this goes
sour."
  "I can live with that."
  "Good. Now go take care of those other details
we need handled, okay?"
  "Right," she said. She smiled at him, stood there
for what seemed a long time, then very softly, so
softly he wasn't sure he had heard it, said,
  "I love you."
  And then she was gone, and he was standing there with his mouth
open, caught totally flat-footed and stunned.
  Monday, January 17th, 6 P.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  Hughes sipped at his drink, a good brandy in a
monogrammed crystal snifter, and frowned up at
the President's chauffeur bodyguard.
  "You're sure?"
  "Sorry, sir, but he wasn't on the plane.
I would have recognized him. I did drive him
around when he was here before.
  He's rather difficult to miss."
  "Yes. Well, thank you anyway."
  The chauffeur departed, and Hughes reached for the
Cuban cigar in the ashtray on the table next to the
overstuffed chair in which he sat. The cigar had gone
out. He carefully relit it, using one of the wooden
matches from the carved ivory box.
  "This is a concern for you?" Domingos said. He
puffed on his own fine cigar and blew out fragrant
smoke.
  "Not really," Hughes said.
  "Platt will show up sooner or later. If not
today's flight, then tomorrow's or the next day's.
  I have his money, and the arrangement was for him
to collect it in person."
  "Giles will take care of him whenever he
arrives," Domingos said.
  "Not to worry."
  Hughes swirled the brandy, lifted the snifter
to his lips, and sipped it.
  "I'm not worried at all, Mr.
President."
  "Please, you must call me Freddie. We are
going to have a long and very pleasant association together,
no?"
  "But of course. Freddie."
  Monday, January 17th, 7 P.m.
Tanaf, Senegal
  Platt had driven his rented Land Rover
to Sedhiou, where he'd taken the dinky ferry across the
sluggish and brown Casamance River, then south
to Tanaf. From there, if he stayed on the road, he
was only about five miles away from Senegal's
southern border with Guinea-Bissau. If he
stayed on the road, it would take him through Olo
Province south across the Canjambari River by way
of Mansoa, and into Bissau from the northeast. That was
if he stayed on the road. Thing with a Land Rover
was, you didn't have to stay on the road if you
didn't feel like it. And most of the roads around here
were dirt tracks anyhow. He didn't
particularly trust the guy who'd rented him
the Rover, but the guy was white, and he'd said there were
more ways to cross the border unseen than you could
shake a stick at, and that was probably true.
  It wasn't that far, as the crow flew, from where he
was to Bissau, maybe fifty miles, but if the
crow had to walk it on these crappy paths it was not
only longer, it was a lot slower than the bird could
fly with one wing busted. Platt would probably get
there while it was still dark, assuming he didn't get
pulled over by some native Army patrol out for
blood. He was prepared for that, having bought himself a
K-bar sheath knife, a Browning 9mm
semiautomatic pistol, a vintage AK-47,
and enough ammunition for both guns to take out a
small-town high school football stadium.
Plus he had picked up two WWII surplus
hand grenades--German potato mashers, the dealer
told him, old, but guaranteed to work.
  If he ran into some local soldiers who wanted
to give him grief, he'd see if he could mash them
like potatoes. Nobody in this dark land was gonna
stop him getting where he wanted to go, not without being
real sorry if they tried.
  And after he had gotten far enough out in the boonies,
he had pulled over and taken time to apply
a couple of coats of the darkest tanning foam he
could find. He wasn't exactly black, but he was
a kind of nutty brown, andwitha baseball cap on
to hide his hair, he didn't look much like a white
man at any distance more than a few yards.
  Platt found a cow path or some thing a couple of
miles away from the border, leading through a grassy
field and a couple of plowed areas, then into some
woods. He stayed on the compass until he came
to a fence that stretched off into the woods in both
directions.
  Must be the border, he figured.
  The fence that protected the border was three whole
strands of rusted barbed wire tacked to wooden posts
that were mostly rotted away.
  Damned savages couldn't do any better than
that? Jesus. No wonder they never amounted
to nothin" over here. This fence wouldn't keep the
livestock in back home.
  He hacked most of the way through one of the posts with the
K-bar, then knocked it the rest of the way down with the
Rover's front bumper and rolled across the border.
  Welcome to Guinea-Bissau, boss. Hope
you enjoy your visit.
  He had gotten kind of turned around, so
he pulled over to check the map.
  And it was a lucky thing too. While the hot
engine ticked, he heard another vehicle. He
got out of the Land Rover and moved down the trail.
  Ahead was a beat-up pickup, painted jungle
green, with four soldiers in it, two inside, two
in the back. They had AK'S like his, and they were
cruising along slow, looking.
  Platt realized that if he hadn't stopped, he
might have run right into them, and with four guns against his
one, that could have been real bad--especially if they
had seen him first, which they would have probably done,
since they were looking and he wasn't.
  He hadn't figured on a border patrol.
He revised his opinion up a little. Maybe these
jungle bunnies were sharper than he'd thought. Bad
idea to underestimate the other side.
  After the truck had time to get a couple of miles
away, he went back to the Rover. Better take
it slow and careful from here on in.
  He figured he needed to get fairly close
to the city, then find himself a place to hide the
Rover, "cause he'd need it to leave. And he'd
have to hole up for a day, until tomorrow night, because he
definitely didn't want to be moving
around during the day, disguise or not. Tuesday
night, good and dark, he'd mosey on in and do his
business.
  As he drove through a field of high grass, the
damp and heavy air rumbled with distant thunder. He
could smell the approaching rain.
  Oh, good. A storm, just what he needed to slow
him down even more.
  On the other hand, a thunderstorm would probably
keep the local militia inside drinking bull
pee or whatever it was they drank, and that would be good.
He wasn't lookin" to get shot if he could
help it.
  He wiped sweat away from his forehead with the back of
his right hand.
  Damn, but it was muggy here.
  He saw a cloud of mosquitoes or flies
or some thing buzzing in the air ahead of him, and he
reached for the bug dope spray in the bag on the
passenger seat. Be another good thing the rain would do,
keep the bugs down. All he needed was to catch
sleeping sickness or malaria or elephantitis
from all this crap.
  No two ways about it, he was gonna take a
little more than the twenty million when he
talked to Hughes. He sure had it coming.
  Monday, January 17th, 9 P.m. In the
air over the Atlantic Ocean
  "Banjul, huh?" Joanna said.
  Seated next to her in the seat of the team's 747,
Fernandez said, "Yep. It's in The Gambia,
kind of an insert around the Gambia River, runs
right into the lower half of Senegal. A little farther
away than we wanted, right on the coast, but it's the
only airport south of Dakar where we can put this
bird down and not be noticed. The Company has a
store there-we're switching to a couple of Hueys
for the rest of the trip.
  So we'll go in at treetop level Tuesday
night, land, do our thing, then come out. It worked great
on that Chechnya caper, it sure ought to work out here in
darkest Guinea-Bissau. I don't think their
radar is exactly state-of-the-art. Even if they
see us, they don't have much to throw at us or chase us
with."
  "Heads up, here comes the colonel," Joanna
whispered.
  "Sir," Fernandez said as John Howard stopped
next to their seats.
  "Sergeant, Lieutenant." Howard
looked at them for a couple of seconds, then
smiled.
  * "Something funny, sir?" Fernandez said.
  "Not really. You know that joke you were remembering when
I called you on the way back from Washington
State?
  The one you laughed at?"
  "I remember."
  "I do believe I get it now, Sergeant
Carry on."
  After the colonel left, Joanna looked at
Fernandez.
  "What was that all about?"
  Fernandez grinned widely.
  "I expect the colonel knows that you and I have
been, ah ... intimate."
  "How would he know that? You bragging?"
  "No, ma'am, as proud as I am of it, I
didn't say a word.
  But I've been working for the man for a long time. He
doesn't have a dull edge, and he knows me too
well. Any time a man feels as good as I do, it
shows. And I expect that it shows more when you're around,
seeing as how you're the reason, Is this a problem?"
  "Not for me. In fact, I'm going
to take a run to the head.
  You want to come along?" She waggled her
eyebrows like Graucho Marx in an old
black-and-white movie.
  "You know, you are an evil woman. Lieutenant
Winthrop, teasing a man that way."
  "You don't know the half of it. Sergeant. I'm
just getting warmed up with you. Besides, who said I was
teasing?"
  "Brought your wavy knife, I see," Alex
said.
  Toni looked up and nodded. She had the kris in
its wooden scabbard on her lap.
  "Guru is convinced the kris is magic. I
figured it wouldn't hurt."
  He nodded, then said, "I'm just going to have a few
words with the colonel. Looks like everything is on
schedule. We'll be at the airport in a few more
hours.
  We'll transfer stuff to helicopters there, then
on to the target."
  "You couldn't talk the colonel into letting you go
into the city on the mission, could you?"
  He smiled, shook his head.
  "No. And the truth is, I'm not
unhappy with us staying with the pilots at the copters
until they get back. My recent success as a
soldier in the field was more luck than skill. This
is what Howard and his team do. I don't want
to get in the way."
  "We could stay in Banjul," she said.
  "Do that, and we might as well have stayed in
Washington."
  "Didn't I say that in the first place?"
  "Yep. But look, we came this far, we might
as well go along for the ride."
  "As long as we both go along for the ride," she
said.
  He smiled at her.
  So far, he hadn't said anything to her about that other
thing she had said. The "I love you" part. It had
seemed the right thing to her at the time, but after she had
done it, she'd been almost sick with fear. They had
kissed each other for a few minutes in the front
seat of a very small car, that was all. It was maybe
too early to be hitting him with some thing that heavy.
What if he didn't feel anything for her other
than lust?
  She knew that was there, there wasn't any way
to hide the evidence of that. And she wanted
it, sex with him, and she would settle for that, for now, but
she also wanted a lot more.
  Then again, he hadn't said anything about it, and that
meant he hadn't rejected it either. Or maybe he
hadn't even heard it.
  No news was good news--or at least it wasn't
bad news.
  She wouldn't push it. She would see what
happened. The magic in the kris had gotten her this
far. Maybe it would help take her the rest of the
way....
  Chapter 39
  Tuesday, January 18th, 6 p.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  Domingos had some pressing state business he had
to attend to--probably a ribbon cutting at a
new bodega or some thing-so Hughes enjoyed his
cigar and brandy in solitude. Well, save for the
brief appearance of a messenger who informed him that the
five o'clock plane had come, and that once again Platt
was not on it.
  This was worrisome. Platt certainly wanted his
money, and the only reason Hughes could imagine that
he hadn't hurried here to collect it was that some thing
had prevented him from doing so. And the only
things that came to mind that were capable of stopping Platt
from doing anything were serious injury, death, or being
arrested. And Platt hadn't called, another thing that
bothered Hughes.
  What if somehow Platt had run afoul of the
law? What if he had been captured?
  Hughes held the cigar in his mouth without puffing on
it.
  He had considered this before, of course, although he had
to admit to himself he hadn't really thought it likely.
And even if he had been caught, Hughes did not
think Platt would say anything about their venture; it
would hardly be in his best interest to do so. Still, what
if somehow he was made to speak? If the feds had
Platt, and if they had squeezed him, then that would
alter Hughes's plans considerably.
  Going back to the U.s. would be out of the question. As
soon as he stepped off the plane, the feds would
swoop down on him like a hawk on a chicken, and
he'd be in real trouble.
  What to do?
  The least risky proposition was simply to sit
tight. Wait until Platt showed up here, or
called. If he didn't do either in the next week
or so, Hughes would have to risk some long
distance research and see if he could figure out what
had happened to his operative. If Platt was in
a hospital from a car wreck or some such, or even
dead, well, so much the better.
  But if the authorities had somehow caught him,
if he had slipped up, then one had to assume the
worst.
  The cigar was out. He reached for a match.
  He wasn't due to return to the U.s. from
Ethiopia until Thursday, so he had a couple
of days. If Platt hadn't shown up by then,
Hughes would put in a call to the senator and offer
some reason why he had to stay in Africa for a few
more days.
  Easy enough. And if Platt had been caught and
had given him up, then here was where Hughes would stay.
It would be ahead of schedule, and irritating to have been
found out, but not a major setback, all things
considered.
  He lit the cigar. When he had his house
built, he'd have to be sure to include in it a
humidor, a walk-in humidor, to keep his own
stock of Cubans nice and fresh....
  Tuesday, January 18th, 9 P.m.
Banjul,
  The Gambia Rain fell on the corrugated
metal roof, a constant, almost hypnotic drumming
that felt relaxing despite the muggy interior of the
staging shed. The hard rain almost drowned out the
electrical generator droning on outside the
building.
  Michaels felt lulled by the rain and the heat. This
was supposed to be the dry season, the monsoons were
supposed to be over. What must the wet season be like
then, if this was dry?
  Howard had a map projected on a
more-or-less-white concrete block wall.
  "This is the city of Bissau," he said.
  "On the north side of the Rio Geba where it
turns into the bay."
  He waved a laser pointer in a circle of red
around the Presidential Palace.
  "This is the compound."
  Howard used a remote, and the viewpoint zoomed
in.
  "This is the main building and this is where our target
should be."
  He fiddled with the remote, and the map was replaced
by a computer-enhanced spy sat photograph, the
angle altered to give a view from what
appeared to be only a few hundred feet above the
buildings.
  "The CIA rerouted one of their fast flying
high-eyes to footprint the city for us, and we'd like
to thank them for that, and for the use of the Hueys and this staging
area."
  Howard would have liked even more assistance from the
Agency--like a geosynch spy sat with full IR
capabilities foot printing the area from now through the
time of the assault-but this operation was strictly
unofficial. The Agency had done all it could without
risking calling attention to what Net Force was doing
out here, and Howard appreciated their efforts. He
nodded at a fit-looking gray-haired man in
khaki shorts and a T-shirt, who smiled and
waved.
  There were thirty-four people in the room. Howard had
brought four five-troop squads, not counting
Fernandez and Winthrop. There was the CIA
Liaison, four helicopter pilots, four
ground-support techs, plus Toni and
Michaels. The troops were already mostly dressed in
their SIPE-SUITS.
  Howard put the map up again.
  "We'll land here, about two miles from the
target, where we will switch to local transport,
again courtesy of the Company. Alpha Team will
proceed to here and initiate our diversion, while
Beta Team will proceed to the compound and prepare for the
incursion. Look over your house plans one more time.
Beta. We don't want anybody getting lost in
there and winding up in the bathroom instead of the
package's quarters."
  That caused a little nervous laughter.
  "We would like to avoid casualties on either side
if at all possible, so we will utilize flash
bangs, puke gas, and pepper fog to neutralize
threats. No one is to fire unless fired upon first,
and then only if the other side is using
armor-piercing rounds, which is highly unlikely.
  Our intelligence indicates that most of the
soldiers in Bissau are armed with Kalashnikovs
--when they are armed at all--and issue ammo is
standard Soviet Bloc surplus.
  "Let me be clear on this point. We are not at
war with this country, and we don't want to leave
bodies piled up all over the place, understood?"
  There was a mumble of acknowledgment.
  "We are set to collect the package at
0130 hours. Any questions so far?"
  Nobody had any.
  "After Beta Team collects the package, we
will rendezvous with Alpha at the assembly point,
then proceed to the landing site. Whatever our status
on the ground, the Hueys will lift at 0230 hours
and proceed on the prearranged flight path back
to Banjul. If you miss the bus, you'll have a long
walk home.
  Any questions?"
  There were no questions.
  "All right then. Finish suiting up and lock and
load. We leave in one hour. Dismissed."
  The pilots and squads filed out into the rain, which was
finally beginning to slacken. Michaels, Toni,
Winthrop, and Fernandez stayed behind with the colonel.
  "Got your gear?" Howard asked Michaels and
Toni.
  He was referring to the Kevlar helmets and hard
weave armor vests he had given them. They weren't
going in!combat, but he'd insisted that if they were going in
the copters they must wear them. And he'd also issued
them each a suppressed pistol, which he also wanted
to see strapped on. There was always a chance the copter
could blow a gasket or take small arms fire and
be forced to land. It was better to be armed than
not when moving overland in hostile territory. Andwitha
gun that didn't make a lot of noise.
  "Got them," Toni answered for herself and
Michaels.
  "You know you really should stay here," Howard tried
again.
  "You've assured us the danger is minimal,"
Michaels said.
  "Minimal is not the same as none," Howard said.
  "I appreciate your concern," Michaels said.
End of discussion.
  "All right. We're set then. Winthrop will be with
me on Beta Team, Sergeant Fernandez leads
Alpha. Our projections run between
eighty-eight-percent and ninety-three-percent
success, if we've plugged in all the proper
variables. This ought to be a piece of cake. In and
out, quick and clean. By this time tomorrow, we should be well on
our way home."
  Michaels nodded.
  "I'll see you at the transports in
fifty-five minutes."
  Tuesday, January 18th, 11 P.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  Platt hated this damned country. Being
stuck in a mud hut that sat there and cooked in the
hot sunshine all day hadn't helped his mood.
Hell, even when it rained a frog-dr owner like it
had this afternoon, it still didn't get cool. Just muggier,
so your sweat wouldn't even evaporate, it just rolled
down your legs and soaked into your socks. It was like
sitting in a steam bath with your clothes on.
  He looked at his watch for the fiftieth time since
it got dark.
  He was about a mile from the pink palace, the Land
Rover parked inside a tin shed next to the mud
house. The house's owner, a white-haired old
man, was tied up and lying on the cot in the corner.
The old guy hadn't seemed too fretted about a
man with a gun barging in. He'd damned near
brained Platt with his walking stick--he was a lot
faster than he looked.
  Anot her two inches and the party would have been over;
as it was, the stick had left a scrape over
Platt's left ear.
  These jigs weren't complete pushovers like he'd
figured.
  That bothered him. If the palace guards were up
to snuff, that could be a real problem.
  After he'd gotten the stick away,
Platt had trussed the old man up like a hog.
Near as Platt could tell, the old boy was
asleep. Couldn't get away, hell, might as
well take a nap. In the old man's place,
Platt didn't think he'd feel so cool.
  The idea of being taken out by a nigrah was ... was
unreal.
  He had to be more careful.
  He'd planned to wait until around midnight
before he headed for the palace, but Platt had had enough of
this hanging around. He was going now. They'd roll up
the sidewalks around here by eight or nine anyhow--
if they'd had sidewalks.
  He changed into a black T-shirt and black
pants, with black tennis shoes and black socks.
What skin showed was stained pretty dark, and it
wouldn't show up too well at night. He tucked
a little flashlight into his back pocket and strapped
on the Browning 9mm, with two extra magazines
in pouches on the other side of the web belt, next
to the sheath knife. He had a screw-on
suppressor for the pistol; he'd put that on when he
got there. Coiled over his shoulder was a half-inch
hemp rope with knots in it every two feet. and a
steel grappling hook on one end. He
thought about taking the AK. but decided against it and
left it in the Rover. But he did hook the pouch
with the two old German hand grenades in it onto the
web belt. Things got nasty, he would go out with a
bang.... As ready as he was going to get, Platt
rolled his shoulders and bent his neck left and right
to stretch, waved at the sleeping old man, and started
out. He was gonna move careful, so it might take
him a couple-three hours to get where he was going.
  If Hughes had company in bed, they were going
to get a surprise along about 1:30 or 2 a.m.
Platt was looking forward to it.
  22:40 a.m.
  Howard piled into the ancient pickup truck
last, and dropped the piece of canvas that covered the
back opening. The pickup was an old one-ton
Chevy, and the owner had built a wooden frame over
the bed and stretched canvas over the frame, so the thing
looked more or less like a motorized covered
wagon.
  "Go!" Howard commanded.
  One of Beta Team drove. The driver started the
motor and the truck lurched off. When he shifted
into second, the driver clashed the transmission
gears together, and one of the troops said,
"Hey, grind me a pound too!"
  Howard glanced at Lieutenant Winthrop, whose
face looked awfully pale in the darkness, then
looked at his watch.
  Alpha Team was already on the road in a similar
dilapidated vehicle.
  Howard had been assured that no matter how bad
they looked, the trucks were mechanically sound, and would
take them to and from where they wanted to go.
  He sure hoped so.
  The locals would have heard the copters coming down,
no way around that, but local police response time
to motor noises in the night wasn't likely to be
real fast--if they bothered to come out and check at
all.
  And as soon as Beta Team was another quarter
mile farther up the road, its truck would stop,
whereupon two soldiers would hop out and rig flash
bangs on the road's shoulders. These devices would
be controlled by a pressure strip set on the only
road leading from town to the helicopters. If any
local cops or troops came out to check on
things, they'd would get a light and noise show that would
make them stop and think. So would anybody else out
driving this late, but that wasn't likely
to happen. This was a narrow dirt road that dead-ended
at a forest, and the people who lived off this path didn't
own automobiles.
  The pressure strip would let a bicycle or
motorcycle pass over it without firing the flash
bangs.
  The day's heat hadn't abated much, and Howard
felt the sweat soaking his clothes. They were wearing
tropical-weight assault uniforms under the
SIPE-SUITS, but in this kind of high
temperature, high-humidity weather, any-weight
clothes were too much.
  "You all right. Lieutenant?"
  "Sir, I'm fine," she said.
  Then she said, "Actually I'm a little nervous,
sir."
  He smiled at her.
  "Only a little? I personally am scared spit
less. Pucker Factor of about twelve."
  That got a little smile out of her. Yeah, she was a
soldier, but she wasn't a combat trooper, she'd
never been on anything other than sims or training
exercises. She was a computer expert, one of the
best, and she didn't have to go into the field.
  Net Force was not like RA, where if you
wanted to advance in rank, sooner or later you had
to have some field experience.
  But she'd wanted to do this, and Julio had vouched for
her, so she was here.
  "Really?" she said.
  "You?"
  "If you don't feel fear, you can't be brave.
Brave is when your bowels are like ice and you're
terrified, but you go out and do the job anyway.
  I don't want troopers who are fearless.
  They're the first ones to get taken out when the
situation goes hot.
  Fearless and stupid go together."
  "Thank you, sir."
  He smiled.
  "You'll do fine, Winthrop. You're wearing
state-of-the-art combat armor; anything that might get
thrown at you will probably bounce right off."
  "That's not how Sergeant Fernandez tells it,
sir."
  Howard chuckled.
  "Well, of course, Julio is the exception that
proves the rule. He's a good man, Fernandez.
Best I have."
  "I think quite highly of him myself," she
said.
  1 a.m.
  Hughes got up and went to the bathroom. He
shouldn't drink anything after ten at night. He knew
better; he woke up every time he did having to go
urinate.
  He was a little peeved too. Monique hadn't
shown up tonight, she wasn't answering her command
nobody seemed to know where she had gone. Domingos
said she had done that before, disappeared for a day or two.
He suspected she either had a local lover or
went off to do drugs. Some of the locals grew
prime ganja--it wasn't hard to come by.
  Ah, well. It wasn't as if Hughes needed
her to be here-he'd done more screwing in the last few
days than he had in months--but he didn't like
surprises. That was the trouble with whores. No
matter how high-priced they were, you couldn't depend
on them. You needed to think of them like Kleenex. You
used them, then you disposed of them, and the next time you
felt a sneeze coming on, you plucked another one from
the box.
  He smiled at his metaphor, then waded through the
thick carpet back to bed. The hum of the air
conditioner would put him back to sleep soon
enough.
  1:15 a.m.
  Getting into the compound had been harder than Platt
had figured. The trees had been cut back from the
walls, and there was all that broken glass on top
too, but he'd managed to get over using the rope and
grapple without slicing himself to ribbons.
  Shit, every time he turned around, things were tougher
than he'd expected. He'd been here before, on the
inside, but he'd never figured he'd be going in
over the wall the next time he came to visit.
  He'd figured that once he was inside, all
he'd have to do was keep from stepping on one of the sleeping
guards, then make his way into the main building. But
maybe the guards weren't going to be sleeping. He
could get his ass handed to him if he wasn't careful.
  He paused, then screwed the sound supressor
onto the Browning's threaded barrel and tightened it.
Gun would still make a fair pop! if you shot it the
suppressor wouldn't stop the noise coming out of the
slide when it went back and the spent shell ejected
but with subsonic ammo, it wouldn't be like a bomb
going off or anything. You could miss the noise if you
weren't too close.
  Getting in would be tricky, "cause the
guards in the house would sure as hell be awake and
told to shoot first and don't ask questions. But there was a
way in, some thing he had seen when he'd been here
before.
  There was a trash chute coming out of the kitchen that led
into a big metal trash container next to the kitchen
exit. The chute was big enough to put a whole can of
garbage into at once, and it was big enough for a man
to get through too, if he didn't mind getting
covered with old banana peels and coffee grounds and
rotten fruit.
  Platt headed for the garbage chute.
  1:25 a.m.
  Howard and Beta Team went in over the east
wall. There was a grove of orange trees between the
nearest building and the base of the wall where they came
down, offering cover. Fortunately, according to the CIA,
the President of this country did not like to hear the
barking of dogs, so there weren't any roaming the
grounds.
  The team moved through the orange grove, got to the
prearranged position, spread out, and went prone.
The main building was right in front of them.
  Howard looked at his watch.
  He held up his hand, three fingers
spread.
  "In three minutes, people," he said quietly.
  1:30 a.m.
  Julio Fernandez counted the seconds off aloud.
  "Five, four, three, two, one!"
  Fernandez pressed the detonator stud on their
control.
  Two hundred yards away, a low-roofed
warehouse stored full of cashews and palm kernels
for export went up in a blinding white flash and a
boom! that rocked the truck in which Fernandez and the
others Alpha Teamers sat.
  Flames spewed high, and bits of debris
pattered back down, in a rain somewhat harder than
the locals were used to.
  A shower of nuts bounced off the truck's roof and
hood.
  "Now that's how to roast cashews," Fernandez said.
  "That ought to give 'em some thing to worry about.
AMF, we're outta here! Roll!"
  The driver cranked the truck and wheeled it out
onto the road. They passed a wailing fire engine
a mile away, and Fernandez waved at the firemen.
  "Good luck putting that one out, boys."
  1:30 a.m.
  The warehouse flashed brightly, followed in a
couple of seconds by the sound of the explosion.
Lights went on in the main building, and guards
rushed out, weapons held ready, excited voices
jabbering away.
  "Move in!" Howard commanded.
  The two point men, Hamer and Tsongas,
scuttled toward the half-dozen guards who were waving
their assault rifles and looking puzzled. The
point men wore backpack foggers, high
pressure tanks filled with military-grade
pepper spray. They were within twenty feet of the
nearest guards before they were noticed, and by then it was
too late. As the guards turned to bring their
weapons to bear on the threat, Hamer and Tsongas
cut loose.
  The pepper fog boiled out in a long white cloud
that enveloped the unfortunate guards. Unlike
Mace or even commercial five-percent pepper
spray, whose effects a man might shrug off,
pepper fog was impossible to ignore. It got
into your breathing passages and eyes, and you couldn't
stop your body's reaction. Your eyes swelled
shut and you dropped to the ground, trying to find air you
could breathe. For the next fifteen or twenty
minutes, you weren't going to be doing much of anything
except wishing you'd never been born.
  Howard had gone through the training, he'd eaten the
fog, and he knew how those guards felt.
  The military stuff was designed to spew hard and
settle out fast, but you wanted to wait a few
seconds before you ran through the area you'd just fogged, and
you wanted your goggles or spook eyes down when you
did it.
  "Go, go!"
  The point men moved in to disarm the squirming
guards, while two more troopers offered cover.
  Howard and Winthrop headed for the door with the other
six team members.
  He remembered to hold his breath. Two of Beta
peeled off to cover their flanks, while two more ran
into the building through the open front door, Howard and
Winthrop right behind them, handguns drawn.
  Nobody in the hall to stop them, Howard saw.
The main staircase was just ahead.
  "Third floor! Go, go!"
  With Winthrop next to him, Howard ran for the
stairs.
  1:31 a.m.
  Platt was in the kitchen, scraping what
smelled and looked like fermented mayonnaise off his
arm, when things went wonky. He saw a bright light
strobe the window next to the back door, and heard
an explosion in the distance that rattled the hanging
pots and pans.
  What the hell was that"!
  He didn't have time to worry about it, though. A
guard ran into the kitchen, spotted Platt, and
raised his assault rifle to pot him.
  Platt already had the Browning nine in his hand. He
indexed the guard and shot him twice--pop! pop!--
right in the center of mass. Wasn't too loud-The
guard stopped, looked down at his chest as if he was
annoyed, then went back to swinging his AK around at
Platt.
  Man! Platt put the next two into the guard's
face. The guy dropped like a boneless chicken. That
ended that.
  Goddamn pansy nine-millimeter! You couldn't
get a decent .45 or .357 in these foreign
countries--they restricted you to small-caliber if
you were a civilian!
  Platt scooted across the kitchen and opened the
door to the electric dumbwaiter. The tiny
elevator was going to be a tight fit.
He hit the button for the third floor, then
squeezed himself into the little box and let the door shut.
The dumbwaiter groaned, not having been designed
for this much weight, but it rose. He heard somebody
else make it into the kitchen and start yelling in
oogaboog as the dumbwaiter lifted, but by then they
didn't know where he was.
  1:33 a.m.
  Apparently the residents knew enough to stay in their
rooms.
  Nobody tried to stop them as they went down the
hall on the third floor.
  Winthrop was glad. The HandK pistol in her
hand didn't offer the comfort she thought it would. It felt
like an alien device, despite her training, too
barrel-heavy because of the silencer, the grip sweaty.
She didn't particularly want to shoot anybody,
though she thought she could if she had to.
  "Third door on the left," the colonel said.
  The two Beta Team troopers split, one going
past the door, the other stopping on the near side.
They turned so they were facing away from each other,
covering both ends of the hall.
  Howard reached the door and tried the knob.
Locked. He nodded at her, pointed at
the room.
  "I'll get the door, you go in."
  She nodded in return, said, "Okay," through dry
lips.
  Howard raised his foot and kicked the door open.
Winthrop dived in and rolled, just as she had done in
VR so many times, and came up on one knee, the
pistol pointed in front of her.
  Thomas Hughes, dressed in white silk
pajamas, sat up in bed, where he had obviously
been sleeping until that moment.
  "Who the hell are you? What do you want?"
  The colonel stepped in behind Winthrop.
  "Mr. Hughes," he said. He smiled.
  "Commander Alexander Michaels at Net Force
would like to have a word with you."
  "I don't think so," somebody said.
  Winthrop snapped her gaze to the glass door
leading out to the balcony.
  A tall, dark, and muscular man stood there,
holding an odd-looking device in one hand. She
swung her pistol around to cover him.
  "I wouldn't do that, darling"," the man said.
  Winthrop recognized him now that she heard the
corn pone in his voice.
  "Platt!"
  "You look much better in person than you do in
VR, honey.
  How about you put those guns down?"
  "How about I just shoot you instead?" Winthrop said.
  "Bad idea. Ask your jig friend there why."
  She glanced at the colonel.
  "He's holding some kind of a grenade," Howard
said.
  "Yep, a gen-u-wine World War Two potato
masher. Shoot me and I drop it, and even if your
armor stops most of it, you still probably get stung
pretty good. Maybe a piece gets through and
punches a hole in an artery and you bleed out.
  And old Tommy boy here, well, he surely
gets turned into hamburger."
  "I don't think so," Howard said.
  "I think if I shoot you, both you and that grenade
will fall off that balcony behind you."
  "Ah," Platt said.
  "But then I would die, and you don't want that,
now, do you?"
  "Why not?"
  Damn, Winthrop thought. She knew Platt was
right. And so did Colonel Howard.
She'd heard Commander Michaels telling him all
about the dead-man switches. But she also knew that the
colonel didn't necessarily want Platt
to know they knew ... or that, even now, Jay
Gridley was working furiously to defuse the things.
  God dammit, Gridley, she thought. Hurry
up.
  "I'm surprised you haven't found my little
surprises yet, boy," Platt said, "but then
maybe you Net Force folks aren't as good as ole
Tommy-boy here thought. Let's just say that if I
don't make it back to my ride out of here--and the little
ole computer with its satellite uplink--by a certain
time, well, things will happen that will make those last
assaults on the net look like kid's stuff."
  "What do you want?" Howard said.
  "Well, we need to come to some kind of...
arrangement," Platt said.
  He smiled.
  Chapter 40
  Wednesday, January 19th, 2:05 a.m.
Bissau, Guinea-Bissau
  At the helicopters, the pilots were relaxed,
laughing and joking.
  Michaels and Toni weren't so
animated. They stood a short ways off, swatting
at the bugs that swirled around them.
  The bug dope was enough to keep the insects from landing,
most of them, but not enough to keep them from buzzing close enough
to be annoying.
  Michaels was beginning to get worried. The others
were supposed to be back by now.
  Even as he thought this, the sound of a truck motor
reached them.
  Two of the pilots moved away from the copters,
assault weapons held at the ready.
  The truck rounded a curve a couple hundred
yards out, and as soon as it did, it blinked its
lights off and then on again.
  "It's them," Toni said.
  Michaels felt himself relax a little.
  The truck pulled to a stop ten feet away from
where Michaels stood, and Sergeant Fernandez
stepped out. He frowned.
  "Beta Team is not back." It was not a question.
  "We thought they were supposed to meet you, and you'd
all come back together," Toni said.
  "That's how it was supposed to go. We waited
until 0150 hours as planned. The deal was,
if for some reason they ran long, they'd
meet us back at the Hueys by 0200. I don't
like this. The colonel is never late. I think we have
to give him a call."
  "We're not supposed to break radio silence
except in an emergency," Michaels said.
  "Sir, we're supposed to lift in
twenty-five minutes," Fernandez said.
  "It's an emergency."
  Michaels nodded.
  "Yeah."
  2:06 a.m.
  Howard felt the comm vibrate soundlessly against his
left hip.
  That would be Julio calling. But he couldn't
answer him right now.
  Their suits' long-range broadcast radio had
been put on standby, to make sure nobody who
might be listening for such things picked up stray
signals. LO SIR was up, and GPS
transponders were on, but that wouldn't be much help--
they knew where he was, just not why he was still there.
  Howard had his pistol trained on Platt, as
did Winthrop. Platt, meanwhile, waved the
grenade back and forth as if it was a spinning reel and
he was fly-fishing for bass in a pond.
  "Thing is. Colonel, we can't hang around here
all night in this Mexican standoff," Platt said.
  "We don't leave pretty soon. El
Presidente's boys are gonna come up here
pokin' around, and we don't want to be here when they
do."
  "Put that thing away," Hughes said.
  "Are you crazy?"
  "No, sir, what I am is pissed off. You
owe me thirty million dollars and I want it."
  "Thirty million?"
  "Yeah, I figure I'm due a little extra,
for all my trouble.
  Trouble you caused me."
  "I don't know what you are talking about."
  "Course not," Platt said.
  From the hall, Martin called: "Colonel, is
everything okay in there?" He couldn't see them, because the
kicked-in door had shut behind him when Howard had
come into the room.
  "Affirmative!" Howard called back.
  "But listen up! I want you and Hull to go
downstairs, collect the rest of Beta Team, and
take the truck back to the rendezvous point
ASAP!"
  "Sir? What about you and the package?"
  "We are involved in some ... delicate
negotiations in here, Martin. Get back to the
rendezvous, you copy?"
  "Yes, sir!"
  "Good move," Platt said.
  "We'd better be going ourselves."
  He waved the grenade at the door.
  "We can leave through the kitchen. It's pretty
quiet back there now."
  "Maybe not," Howard said.
  "Listen up. Colonel Sambo, here's the
deal. I need Hughes because without him, I am up
Poor White Trash Creek without a paddle. You
want him for your own reasons. Let's go somewhere I
can get what I want, then you can have him."
  "Dammit, Platt--to was
  "Shut up, Hughes. You ain't part of this
discussion."
  "You turn me over to them, why should I give you the
money?"
  "Oh, I dunno, maybe because if you don't,
I'll poke out your eyes or cut off your family
jewels?"
  "I don't much like your deal," Howard
said.
  "Only one I'm offering. I got a ride out of
this stinkin' country. I'm gonna take an account
code with me or I ain't going'. Grab that
laptop there off the bedside table, would you, darling'?
We got to move. You object to that. Colonel?"
  Howard shook his head. This guy was dangerous at
the very least, maybe crazy enough to let that grenade go and
kill or maim them all.
  "If that thing is from World War II, what makes
you think it will still work?" Winthrop said.
  "Maybe I shoot you, it drops and fizzles out
like a wet match."
  "Maybe so," Platt said.
  "But you know them krauts, they build to last. You
want to risk fat boy's ass on maybe it
won't blow up?"
  "Let's move," Howard said.
  "He's right about one thing, if we don't we're
all for sure dead."
  "Age before beauty," Platt said.
  As Howard turned to leave the room, he reached
down with his left hand, while it was hidden from
Platt's view, and triple tapped the panic
button on his comma.m. "Oh, shit,"
Fernandez said.
  "What?" Michaels and Toni said together.
  "My comm just started a beeper pulse. The
colonel has pushed his panic button. That means
he's down or captured, he can't talk."
Michaels said, "Can we locate him from the
signal?"
  "Yes, it's a GPS pulse."
  "Then let's go."
  "We're supposed to lift in twenty minutes,"
one of the pilots said.
  "Sooner or later the local army is going
to get its pants on and come looking for whoever caused
all the trouble." Michaels said.
  "We don't leave until we bring our people out."
  "Sir, the colonel's orders--" the pilot
began.
  "Negative," Fernandez cut in.
  "If the colonel's been captured, then I'm
in charge, and I say we're not leaving without
Colonel Howard. Understood?"
  The pilot looked at the ground.
  Fernandez said.
  "If the local army comes around, then you can take
off. Otherwise, you wait until we get
back."
  "I'm going with you," Michaels said.
  "And so am I," Toni said.
  "Not a good idea, sir," Fernandez began.
  "Why does everybody keep saying that? Let's
move. Sergeant.
  Time is running out."
  2:15 a.m.
  The rest of Beta Team had left by the front
gate, which was opened and unmanned. The guards who had
been fogged were still on the ground, bound in plastic
wrist and ankle cuff tape.
  Howard, Platt, Hughes, and Winthrop moved
out. There was still a big commotion at the diversion fire,
less than half a mile away, and nobody
seemed to be standing around gawking at the presidential
compound.
  "He's crazy," Hughes said quietly to the
colonel.
  "He hates black people, or at least black
men. He'll kill us all if he gets the chance."
  Platt moved over and tapped Hughes on the
back of the head with the grenade he held.
  "Ow!"
  "Didn't I tell you to shut up? You
burned all your goodwill up with me."
  "Why do they call it a potato masher?"
Winthrop said, trying to distract the man.
  "Because of the shape," Platt said.
  "See, narrow here, on the handle, but fat down
here. You take your cooked potatoes and pound away
at them, like this."
  He moved the grenade up and down, as if using it
to smash things under the heavy end.
  "See?"
  God, he was crazy. Look at him grin. And
what was that stain all over his skin? He couldn't
possibly think he was passing for a native, could
he?
  2:20 a.m.
  "Randall, what are they doing?" Fernandez asked.
  "Still moving, Sarge. Gotta be on foot, slow
as they are going."
  They were in the truck, running with the lights off, and the
vehicle found every pothole in the dirt road,
bouncing them around like Ping-Pong balls. Toni
kept one hand on the wooden frame mounted on the
back, the other hand on her kris handle. She had
shoved the sheath into her belt when they'd gotten on the
helicopters, although she didn't know how
much luck it was bringing her at the moment.
  Could be worse. She could be dead.
  "Same direction as before?" Fernandez asked.
  "Yep."
  "Get us in front of them. Butler, half a
mile or so, then shut it down."
  "You have a plan?" Toni asked.
  "Not really. The colonel's GPS unit is
going somewhere at fool speed.
  If it's still attached to the colonel and he's
free, he'll probably like a ride. If he's
been captured and is being taken out to be shot or some
thing, then he probably won't be too unhappy
to see us. Either way, we need to know--hold on a
second, somebody is calling. Go ahead."
  "Sergeant Fernandez, this is Martin. Beta
Team is at the rendezvous--except for Colonel
Howard and Lieutenant Winthrop
  " "What happened to them?"
  "I don't know, Sarge. They went into the
package's room and then things got real quiet.
We could hear them talking, but couldn't make out what
they were saying through the closed door. After a while, the
colonel told us to take off."
  "Did he give a reason?"
  "Negative. All he said was, he was doing
some kind of negotiation."
  "Copy, Martin. Hold your ground as long as you
can.
  We're going to collect the colonel and the
lieutenant now. See if you can shoo away
anybody who comes nosing around until we get
back."
  "Affirmative, Sarge."
  Fernandez looked puzzled.
  "Doesn't make any sense."
  "When we find Howard, we'll get him
to explain it," Michaels said.
  2:25 a.m.
  "Where are we going?" Howard asked. The brush
around the little trail was thick, still radiating damp
heat from the day.
  You couldn't see two feet into the forest, and could
barely see the trail, even with flashlights.
  "Not too much further," Platt said.
  "A half mile or so. I have my ride stashed
up ahead. We get there, Hughes gives me the
bank code, I check it out using the laptop, we
go our separate ways."
  Platt saw Winthrop and Howard
exchange quick looks.
  "Well, in your shoes, I don't reckon I
would much trust me neither. But I got nothing to gain
by killing anybody here.
  And you got your guns and all, right? You get your
big-time thief and most of the money back, I get
paid what I'm owed and I'm gone, you don't never
see me again. I'll even shut off my little
surprises, once I'm safely out of here. Now
don't that sound like a good deal all the way around?
Except for fat boy here, but we don't really
care what he thinks, do we?"
  Howard didn't say anything, but what he was
thinking was, Dammit, Gridley, we're about out
of time here. Move your ass!
  2:30 a.m.
  "This doesn't make any sense," Michaels
whispered to Toni.
  "That's Hughes, in the white pajamas, and I'm
pretty sure the big guy behind him is Platt,
wearing some kind of disguise."
  * "Yeah, and Howard and Joanna both have their
pistols out, but it doesn't look like they are in
charge."
  "The big guy's carrying a grenade in
one hand, that's why," Fernandez said.
  "Probably already armed. That's who is in charge,
and that's why they don't plug him. He falls, the
grenade goes boom. Jesus, it's dark out here.
I wish we could use the spook eyes."
  "Why can't we?" Michaels asked.
  " "Flashlights will cause cutouts, they shine
in our direction.
  Safety feature, otherwise it's like looking
into the sun."
  "Hostage scenario," Toni said.
  "You have an SOP for this, don't you?"
  "Yes, ma'am--only not one set up to cover
being in a foreign jungle with enemy troops breathing
down our necks and our ride about to take off.
  Standard negotiations for hostage situations are
based on psychology--and hours or days to work.
We don't have the time."
  Michaels, Toni, and Fernandez were in the bushes
fifty yards ahead of the quartet moving toward them.
The rest of Alpha Team was spread out behind the four
on the trail.
  "What do we do?" Toni whispered.
  Fernandez said.
  "Look for an opportunity. Push
comes to shove, we take the bad guy down and hope
for minimal casualties."
  "How much danger are Howard and Winthrop in,
given the suits they are wearing?"
  "Some," Fernandez said.
  "They will surely pick up damage, cuts, but
the armor will stop most of a low-yield explosive
shrapnel. It's the guy in the PJ'S and the big
brown guy who are gonna get shredded for sure."
  Toni said, "No great loss--except that
Hughes might have left us some electronic bombs
of his own. We can't let him die until we know for
sure he didn't. And if he did, maybe it was
Platt who set them up, if there are any. Can we
afford to let both of them die? Don't we need at
least one of them alive?"
  "Yeah," Michaels said.
  "But the clock is ticking. We don't move,
everybody dies." At that moment his virgil
vibrated.
  It was Gridley.
  "Got "em. Boss. Every last one of them."
  "Good work. Jay," Alex said.
  "And just in time." Disconnecting, he looked around
him.
  "Jay did it. Get ready to get our people out of
there now." He stood and stepped out of the bushes.
  "Alex, don't--to was Toni began.
  Too late.
  "Hold it right there, asshole!" Michaels
yelled.
  Behind him, Fernandez said to Toni, "I'll
flank right. Commander, go left!"
  The four people moving up the path stopped.
  "Who the hell are you?" Platt said.
  "Get out here where I can--oh, hello! You're the
Net Force honcho, aint'cha? What you doin" out
here in the jungle, desk boy? Come to see how real
men play?"
  Howard made his move--he leaped, grabbed the hand
holding the grenade, and squeezed it tight in both of
his.
  "Shoot, Winthrop, shoot!"
  Startled, Joanna pointed her pistol and fired,
but Platt spun, swung the colonel around
one-handed like swinging a small child, and the bullet from
Joanna's pistol sponged! off the colonel's
back armor.
  A beat later, another bullet from somewhere boomed
and whistled past, not hitting anything
Michaels could see.
  Jesus! Everybody dancing around wouldn't leave
Fernandez or Toni a clear shot, Michaels
knew. And if bullets started bouncing off armor,
no telling where they might go--or who might catch
one in an unprotected spot.
  "Cease fire!" Fernandez yelled. He must have
realized the danger too.
  Things went into slow motion.... --Platt pulled
a knife from his belt even as he danced around in a
circle with Howard holding on to his other hand--
--Michaels ran toward the two struggling men,
moving as if his feet were mired in thick mud--
--Platt slashed at Howard's arm and drew
blood-- --Michaels got to the wrestling men, saw
Platt grin, turn the knife in his direction, and
cut at him, forcing Michaels to jump back--
--Platt turned back to Howard, raised the
knife to Howard's throat, to a gap in the armor.
Slow, oh, so, slow ... "Adios, black
boy," Platt said. He didn't even raise his
voice.
  Michaels's gun was still in its holster; he was the
only one close enough to shoot and hit Platt. He
pulled it, fired without aiming--he couldn't
miss this close--but Platt saw him reach, spun
Howard around, and once again the bullet hit the
colonel's armor-Damn-- "John!"
  --Michaels turned, saw Toni. She had
already tossed some thing at Howard-- --the
kris-Reflexively, Platt batted at the thing
he saw twirling in toward him, missed, but that meant
his knife was away from Howard's throat-- --Howard
let go of the grenade hand, snatched the wavy bladed
knife from the air, turned, twisted into Platt,
stabbed as Platt stabbed-- --Platt snarled as his
knife hit Howard's armor and skidded off-- --The
kris's point slipped between Platt's ribs, the
blade sinking in until the hilt almost touched the
center of the big man's chest-- Platt moaned,
blew out a breath, stabbed again, hit more armor. The
knife actually dug in a little--then the blade
snapped in half.
  "Fuck," Platt said. He fell to his
knees, dragging Howard down with him, pulling the
kris from Howard's grasp.
  Hughes screamed, "Jesus, Jesus, don't
shoot me! Don't shoot me! Please!"
  Platt toppled to the side, and when he did, he
let go of the grenade.
  --The grenade-Michaels dropped the gun,
dived, rolled, came up with the bomb, and threw it
into the trees to his left. He hoped like hell none
of the troops had circled back into that area, or that it
didn't hit a tree and bounce right back--
"Down!" he yelled.
  "Down, down--" He dropped.
  Howard was still on his feet, staring at Platt.
  One ... two ... three ... Boom!
  The grenade went off, and metal sleeted through the
trees and bushes, punching holes in leaves and
bark.
  Something burned along Michaels's arm. He
frowned.
  What--to 
  A long time passed, a couple of thousand years,
Michaels figured. Toni grabbed him, and he
realized he was still alive.
  His ears rang.
  He hugged her with his good arm, and watched his other
arm bleed from the shrapnel gash on it. It didn't
hurt, but it was putting out what seemed a goodly
amount of red.
  "Don't shoot!" Hughes said. He started
to blubber, big tears streaming.
  "Shut up," Howard said quietly.
  Hughes shut up.
  Howard moved to stand next to Michaels, holding his
own arm, which was also bleeding.
  "Commander. You okay?"
  "Yep. You, Colonel?"
  "Better, now. Nice of you to drop by."
  "We were in the neighborhood."
  They looked down at Platt, who was still breathing.
Platt said, "Damn. I can't believe it. A
nigrah..."
  Howard didn't say anything.
  Platt stared at Howard.
  "I hate this fuckin' country," he said.
  "Kilt by a goddamned nigrah--" Platt's
last breath escaped and he collapsed.
  Howard stared off into the forest.
  "He was right about the Germans."
  "Excuse me?" Michaels said.
  "I'll tell you about it later. Commander."
  Behind them, Joanna Winthrop and Julio
Fernandez were locked in a tight embrace.
  "Well," Michaels said, "I hate to break this
party up, but it would be a good idea for us to take our
leave now."
  "Amen, Commander. Amen."
  Michaels bent, and with some difficulty, pulled the
kris from Platt. He wiped it off on the man's
shirt, then gave it back to Toni.
  "I think you are right, Toni. This is
definitely a lucky thing to have around."
  "Let's go, people! We got a helicopter
to catch!"
  They went.
  EPILO-GUE.
  Saturday, January 22nd, 8 a.m.
Washington, D.c.
  In his own bed, Michaels woke up slowly and
rolled from his right side onto his back. The left
arm was still a little sore, but the medic had used skin
stat glue and bonded the six-inch-long gash into a thin
line they said would leave minimal scarring.
  A nice conversation piece at informal parties,
they'd told him.
  Not everybody nearly gets blown up by an
antique hand grenade.
  The ride back from Guinea-Bissau had been
relatively uneventful.
  The locals had never gotten around to finding the
helicopters, at least not until after they
were in the air. The flight from Banjul couldn't have
been smoother. True, the director hadn't been
thrilled with the operation, but nobody in
Guinea-Bissau was going to complain about it, given that
their President had received a hundred million
dollars in stolen money. They might even let him
keep it, the director had said, because maybe it was
better that he was beholden to the U.s. government,
given the unstable political situations over there.
  Better he felt as if he owed them a favor,
should they need to collect it. But that was up to State,
of course.
  All in all, the director wasn't too
upset. And everybody in be the regular FBI and
Net Force was happy to hear the great silence from the
offices of Senator Robert White after his chief
of staff was indicted for all those horrible crimes.
White was too rich to have been involved in Hughes's
little scheme, but there would be a little tar from that brush on
his nice suit.
  Maybe he might even get unelected next
time around. There was a nice thought.
  Colonel Howard's arm needed a little work, but it
would heal almost as good as new, so he was told. And
apparently the colonel had picked up some
kind of rare bacterial infection bar a while back
that had been sapping his strength lately. It had been
missed during his initial exam, but picked up
while the knife wound was being treated. Once it was
diagnosed, the be medics were able to start Howard on
antibiotics, and he'd been delighted to find out
that- the disease would be cured in a couple of weeks and
he'd feel a lot perkier. Not that Michaels thought
the colonel particularly needed that--he'd looked
pretty damned perky when he'd been wrestling with the
sociopathic racist body builder.
  So, despite a few glitches, things had
turned out pretty well.... "Alex?"
  He looked up. Toni, naked and gloriously
beautiful, stood at the foot of the bed beaming down
at him.
  "Hmm?" bar "You want some coffee? I can go and
make you some."
  He smiled at her.
  "Maybe later," he said.
  "I've got some thing else in mind just at this
moment."
  "Oh? And what might that be?" .
  "Come here and I'll show you."
  She did, and then he did.
  That turned out pretty well too.
  And the coffee didn't get made until almost
noon.






















 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
