  NET FORCE: POINT OF IMPACT
  By: Steve Perry and Tom Clancy
  Category: fiction action adventure
  Synopsis:
  In the year 2010, computers are the world's
superpowers. Those who control them control the world.
To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the
ultimate computer security agency within the FBI:
the Net Force. It's up to the Net Force to find the
source of a dangerous designer drug being sold on
the Internet.
  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 : POINT
OF IMPACT
  A Berkley Book still published by arrangement with
Netco Partners
  PRINTING HISTORY
  Berkley edition still April 2001
  All rights reserved.
  Copyright 2001 by Netco Partners NET
FORCE is a registered trademark of Netco
Partners.
  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission.
  For information address: The Berkley Publishing
Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New
York 10014.
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Web site address is
httpccwww.penguinputnam.com
  ISBN: 0-425-17923-0
  BERKLEY
  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley
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Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New
York, New York 10014.
  BERKLEY and the B design are trademarks
belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF
AMERICA
  10 987654321
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Martin
H. Greenberg, Larry Segriff, Denise
Little, John Heifers, Robert Youdelman,
Esq." and Tom Manon, Esq.; Mitchell
Rubenstein and Laurie Silvers of
Hollywood.com, Inc.;
  and the wonderful people at Penguin Putnam Inc."
including Phyllis Grann, David Shanks, and
Tom Colgan. As always, I would like to thank
Robert Gottlieb, without whom this book would never
have been conceived. But most important, it is
for you, our readers, to determine how successful our
collective endeavor has been.
  PROLO-GUE
  Saturday, October 1, 2011 Atlantic
City, New Jersey
  "We should go outside and enjoy the sunny weather,"
Mary Lou said.
  Bert snickered.
  "Right. We'z drove alia way from da Bronx
to Atlantic City to take the goddamned sun? I
can sit onna stoop at home, I want to get
hot. No thankyuz, I'm happy right here."
  Bert fed another dollar into the slot machine and
pushed the button. He didn't like the new
electronic machines as much as the old mechanical
ones, like those in the back rooms of the New Jersey
bars where his father used to sneak off with him when he was a
kid. Those had been fun, with the big arm you pulled
down and the real wheels going round and round. Cost a
quarter, was all. He didn't quite trust the new
ones to pay off--it'd be too easy for some computer
geek to rig 'em so they'd keep every damned dime you
put in--but it was what it was. Hell, he was up
seventy-five bucks, he should complain?
  Around him, the machines flashed colored
lights, hummed and whirred and played crappy
music, and now and then dropped tokens into a metal
tray.
  Mary Lou said, "There's something you don't see every
day."
  The slot's computer screen whirled to stop on a
cherry, a bar, and a picture of some dead rock star.
Crap. Only seventy-four dollars ahead now.
  Irritated, Bert said, "What?"
  "Over there. Lookit."
  He glanced in the direction Mary Lou was
pointing. He saw right away what she meant. There
was a fat, whitehaired old guy, maybe
sixty-five, walking into the casino.
  Way he moved, he was like a man with a mission,
nothing real unusual there, except the dude was in a
tiny red Speedo and nothing else.
  "God, I'm trying to win money here, you wanna
make me puke? There ought to be a law against a
suit like that if you're thirty pounds overweight."
  "Prony there is. I'm pretty sure the
casino rules say no swimsuits without a robe
and some kind of sandals or shoes. There you go, see,
the security guard is gonna toss him out."
  A big uniformed guard, six five,
two sixty, easy, angled toward the fat guy in
the red Speedo. This might be worth watching. You
didn't get to see a guy in a bikini bottom
get bounced up by a casino guard real often. In
fact, Bert had never seen it before.
  Speedo smiled at the giant guard, grabbed him
by the arms just under his shoulders, picked him up, and
threw him like the guy was a toy. The guard smashed
into a slot machine with a loud, rattling crash.
  "Holy shit!" Bert said.
  He wasn't the only one to notice Speedo at
this point.
  Two more guards came running, pulling out those
expandable steel batons they carried as they ran.
  Speedo didn't seem concerned. He took a
couple of steps to the nearest slot. It was bolted
to the floor, so Bert didn't know what the guy thought
he was gonna do with it.
  Still smiling. Speed wrenched the slot from the floor
with a sound like a nail being pulled from wet wood, and
threw that, too. Made a helluva noise.
  Bert stared, frozen. This wasn't possible. He
hit the gym two or three times a week, kept in
shape for a man pushing forty, could bench two fifty for
reps, and there was no way this flabby old
Q-Tip-haired dude had the muscle to do what
he'd just done, no way! Nobody was that strong.
  The second security guard to get there let fly
with his expandable night stick, took a good crack at
Speedo's white head. Speedo reached up, almost in
slow motion, grabbed the baton as it came down,
jerked it from the guard's grip, and threw it. The thing
whistled as it whirled away, so fast Bert couldn't
even track it. Speedo shoved the guard one-handed,
and the guy just flew into two bystanders and knocked all
three of them down.
  Mary Lou stared at Speedo, frozen like a deer
in headlights.
  Bert understood that. It was like he was hypnotized
himself. He couldn't look away.
  The third guard, seeing what had happened to the
other two, dropped his baton and went for his pistol.
Bert thought this was a real good idea.
  Speedo took a couple of quick steps--really quick
steps--and caught the guard's wrist before he cleared
leather.
  Thirty feet away, Bert heard the sound of the
man's arm bones breaking.
  Oh, man!
  The guard fell to his knees, screaming
in pain, and Speedo stepped around him like he was doggy
doo on the sidewalk.
  Then things really got going. Speedo waded through the
casino like Sherman through Georgia, breaking stuff,
throwing it, tearing the place up. He knocked over
slots, he upended card tables, he flipped a
roulette wheel table completely over. People
scrambled to get out of his way.
  He was a human wrecking ball, he was smiling
while he did it, and Bert couldn't begin to understand how
he was doing it. He just stood there and watched.
  It seemed like a long time, but it couldn't have been more
than a minute or two before the local cops showed
up. Six of them in full battle array.
  The first couple of cops to reach Speedo tried
to whack him with their batons and collar him. You'd
think, after seeing what the guy had done, they'd have
better sense, but they didn't, and Speedo grabbed
one and used him like a club on the second.
  The other four cops were smarter. One of them fast
drew his pepper spray, another pulled an air
taser, and both let loose.
  Speedo ran at the cops. Through the pepper fog,
and from where he stood, Bert saw the two electric
taser needles in the old man's chest, and
if either the fog or the juice bothered him, you couldn't
tell. Either one should have stopped him, had him gagging
or jittering like a spider on a hot stove, but he
never slowed. Speedo slammed into the next two
cops, knocking them sprawling. He went down
himself, but he was up in a heartbeat. He looked
pissed off now, and he scooped one of the cops from the
floor--a big black dude who probably went
two hundred pounds--and shot-putted the cop at a
thick plate glass partition that separated a
cafeteria hall from the casino floor.
  The partition had to be six, eight feet away,
easy.
  The partition shattered, shards of glass flew
everywhere, and the cop who went through it would be lucky if
he wasn't slashed to hamburger.
  "Everybody down!" one of the two remaining cops
on his feet screamed.
  "Down, down, down!"
  People hit the floor, but Speedo wasn't one of
them, and Bert stayed up watching, too.
  The two cops had their pistols out by now--big
ole Glocks--pointed at the old man.
  Speedo looked at them and smiled, a kind of
sad smile.
  Like he felt sorry for them. He started walking
toward the cops.
  "Stop, asshole!"
  He didn't.
  Both cops fired, couple, three times each.
  Speedo kept coming, and they kept shooting.
  Bert saw the hits on the old man, saw dark
puckers appear in his arms and chest, wounds that oozed
blood, but he kept going.
  People screamed bloody murder, but the cops kept
blasting away. In some corner of his mind, Bert
tried to keep count of the shots, but there were too many of
them.
  How many rounds did those guns hold? Fifteen?
Eighteen?
  They were going to town.
  It was like some monster movie. The old guy in the
red bathing suit just kept shambling toward the cops.
He was hit at least six or eight times, but he
wouldn't stop.
  "Fuck!" one of the cops yelled. He turned and
ran.
  The other cop clicked empty, then, when Speedo
was almost on top of him, he threw the Glock at the
old man.
  Yeah, right. Guy takes a whole shitload of
bullets and a plastic pistol is not gonna bounce
off him like a cotton ball? Bert stared at the
cop. Whaddayuz, stupid?
  The old man grabbed the cop, managed to get him
five or six inches off the floor--comthen the old
man finally ran out of gas. He dropped the cop and
fell, landing on the floor facedown.
  It got real quiet in the casino then.
  "Holy shit," Bert said softly.
  "Amen, sweet Jesus," Mary Lou said.
  "Amen."

  Sunday, October 2 Washington, D.c.
  Alex Michaels grunted as the socket
slipped off the hex nut and his hand shot forward,
scraping his knuckles on the rocker-arm cover.
  "Owl Crap!"
  At such times, he was wont to blame the nut or
the wrench, but since he had put the bolt in himself,
and the wrench and socket were both fairly new
Craftsman tools, he knew he had nobody
else to blame.
  From the kitchen, he heard Toni call out.
  "You okay?"
  Must have yelled louder than he'd thought.
  "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Stupid piece of
crap Chevrolet!"
  Toni drifted into the garage doorway. He was
leaning over the fender on the passenger side, under the
hood, so he saw her. Five months pregnant,
in one of his T-shirts and a pair of drawstring
sweatpants, she was, if anything, more beautiful
than ever.
  She smiled.
  "That's not what you said when you were convincing me you
needed to have it.
  "A fifty-five Bel Air convertible," you
said.
  "A classic."
  his
  "Yeah, well, that was before I had a chance to spend
time with it. Thing is engineered like a tank."
  "Also a selling point, if I recall."
  He looked at the nut. It was tight enough, he
decided.
  He put the wrench down, grabbed a red rag and
some of the pungent lanolin hand cleaner and started wiping
grease off his fingers. Well, it was a classic
car. Created by the chief engineer of General
Motors in the post World War II years, Edward
Coles, with legendary designer Harvey Earl, the
"55 introduced the small block V-8
engine, the 265, later the 283, and then the 327.
These engines became the standard against which all others were
measured for more than forty years. A convertible in top
condition would cost $60,000 to $75,000, easy.
Even one in so-so shape like this one wasn't cheap.
  He smiled back at her.
  "I thought it was your job to keep me from running off
half cocked."
  "I don't recall that part of the marriage vow."
  He walked toward her.
  "How did your djuru practice go?"
  Her smiled disappeared, and frown lines wrinkled
her forehead.
  "Terrible. I'm all off-balance! I try to do
the turnaround, I almost fall down. When I
sweep, it's all I can do to keep from falling over.
When I dropped into the squat for djuru five, I
farted!"
  He couldn't help it; he laughed.
  Her face clouded up, tears welling.
  "It's not funny, Alex! I feel like a big
fat cow!"
  Michaels hurried to her. He hugged her to him.
  "Hey, it's all right."
  "No, it's not! Nobody told me this was going
to happen!
  If I can't practice my silat, I'll go
crazy!"
  This was not the time for him to point out that her doctor
had told her to avoid exercise because of some bleeding
early in the pregnancy. Everything seemed to be all
right, but just to be sure, Toni was supposed to take
it easy. That theoretically included Toni not doing
the short dances of the Indonesian martial art in which
she was an expert. No, definitely not the time
to bring that up. A wrong word, and she'd start crying,
which was so unlike her that it still amazed him every time. It
was just hormones, the doctor had said, a normal part
of pregnancy, but Michaels still hadn't gotten
used to it. Toni could kick the crap out of most men,
even some who were fairly good martial artists themselves
--he had seen her do it a few times--and for her
to well up and cry at the drop of a hat was,
well... it was spooky.
  "Maybe you should just, you know, take a break from
djurus. It's only another four months until
the baby is born ."
  "Take a break? I've done djurus almost every
day since I was thirteen. Even when I had
pneumonia, I only missed three days. I
can't just give them up for four months!"
  "Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion."
  Maybe it was better if he just kept his mouth
shut. It had been a long time since he'd been
around a pregnant woman. When his first wife
Megan had been carrying their daughter, Susie,
he had still been working in the field and was gone quite a
bit, sometimes for a couple weeks at a time. He'd
missed a lot of the experience, and at the time he'd
been sorry he had. Now he was the commander of the
FBI'S elite subunit Net Force, and maybe
he might be spending a little more time at the office
until things settled down at home.
  He immediately felt guilty at that thought.
  "I know it's not your fault," Toni said.
  "Well, okay, it is your fault, technically
speaking." She grinned.
  "But I don't blame you."
  He smiled back at her. Her mood swing was
instant, zap, just like that, from angry to happy.
  "Go on back and finish installing your
carburetor," she said.
  "You putting in the four-barrel?"
  "I decided to go with three deuces," he said.
  "You know, pep it up a little."
  She shook her head.
  "You've been watching that old movie American
Graffiti again, haven't you? Boys and their toys.
You won't be able to afford to run it, you know. It'll
get what? Ten miles a gallon? You'll have
to take out a loan to fill the tank."
  "Well, I really am going to sell it.
Eventually."
  "Uh-huh. Go on, go scrape some more skin off
your hands and curse the guys who made that big chunk
of Detroit iron. I'm going to sit down and see
if I can't get your son to stop kicking my
bladder."
  "You sure are pretty when you're pregnant,"
he said.
  "Forget it. One baby: That's my limit."
  Toni went to her computer and slid the VR band
down over her eyes, adjusting the earplugs and
olfactory bulbs so they were comfortable. The set was
wireless and had a pretty good range, so if her
ankles started to swell, at least she could go lie
down and prop her feet up on a cushion
while she was on-line. She put on the tactile
gloves and was ready.
  She allowed the system's default scenario
to play, and there was a small moment of disorientation as
the virtual reality program took over and
constructed a shopping mall in place of the small
office that had been the guest bedroom.
  She found herself in front of a virtual
elevator, the door of which opened. She stepped
inside, along with other shoppers.
  "Arts and Crafts, please," she said.
  Somebody tapped a button.
  The sensation was of rising rather than falling. After a
moment, a chime sounded and the door opened. Toni
alighted from the elevator and looked at the sign a
few feet away. you are here pulsed in a pale
green light. No, I'm at home in my office
with my shoes getting tighter.
  But the suspension of disbelief that was VR was easy
enough to accept. She found the place she was looking for
listed: Hergert's Scrimshaw. It was not far
away-though it could have been if she wanted a long
walk in VR--AND she headed toward it.
  When she and Alex had been on their honeymoon in
Hawaii, they'd gone to an art gallery in
Lahaini, on the island of Maui. There had been
some world-class work in the gallery, in all kinds of
media and materials--everything from pencil drawings
to oil paintings to sculptures in wood or bronze
or even glass. Seascapes and dolphins and
whales were big, but what had impressed her the most
was a small display of micro scrimshaw There were
pictures engraved on small bits of
fossilized ivory, old piano keys and
billiard balls, even a couple of sperm whale
teeth. Some of the images were smaller than her
thumbnail but, when viewed under magnification, showed
a wealth of detail she would not have thought possible.
  There were sailing ships and whales, portraits,
nudes, tigers, and several with fantasy elements.
She had been particularly impressed by a tiny
black-and-white rendering of a long-haired, naked
woman sitting in a lotus position and gazing up
at the heavens, but floating two feet above the
ground. The image had been done on a pale
ivory disk the size of a quarter.
  "How do they do that?" she'd asked Alex.
  He'd shaken his head.
  "I dunno. Let's ask."
  The gallery manager was happy
to explain: "There are different ways," she said, "but
in this case, what the artist did was to polish the
ivory smooth, then use a very fine pointed
instrument, probably something like a sewing needle,
to put thousands of tiny dots into the material, it's a
process called stippling. Then he rubbed the
color onto it. This is a Bob Hergert piece,
and he prefers oil paint to ink. I believe he
uses a shade called lampblack.
  "Once the piece was covered with paint, he wiped
it clean, and the oil paint filled up the stipple
marks but came off the polished part. It has to be
done under magnification, of course, and it is, as you
might suspect, rather painstaking work."
  "I can only imagine," Toni said.
  "It's beautiful."
  "Yes, Bob is one of the better artists working in
the medium. We handle some other scrims handers who
are also very good--Karst, Benade, Stahl,
Bellet, Dietrich, even Apple Stephens--but
Bob's work is not only beautiful, it's still
reasonably priced. He does a lot of custom
commissions on things like knife handles and gun
grips."
  "How much?" Alex asked.
  "Eight hundred for this one."
  "We'll take it," he said.
  "No, Alex, we can't--" "Yes, we can.
It'll be your wedding present."
  "But--" "I made a good profit on my last
car restoration. We can afford it."
  As she packaged the scrimshaw and ran Alex's
credit card, the manager said to Toni, "If you are
ever interested in seeing how he does it. Bob
teaches an on-line course."
  At the time, Toni had nodded and murmured something
polite, not thinking such artwork would ever be something she'd
have time for.
  As she walked through the virtual mall, she
smiled to herself. Well, she had time now. Plenty of
time. She was supposed to sit around and twiddle her
thumbs for the next four months, and even if she
wanted to practice her silat, she was, for all
practical purposes, a beached whale.
  She'd just flop around on the sand if she tried to do
anything physical, she could already see that, and she was
only five months along. At seven or eight
months, dropping into a djuru turn was just not going
to be in the cards. But sitting at a table and
scratching on a piece of faux ivory with a
pin? She could do that, and the idea of creating something
anywhere close to as beautiful as that tiny scrimshaw
Alex had bought for her was appealing.
  Of course, she didn't really have much artistic
talent, but maybe she could learn. It was worth a
shot.
  She arrived in front of a small shop. On the
window it said, Bob Hergert, Microscrimshaw--
www.scrimshander com.
  Toni took a deep breath, let it out, and
walked into the shop.
  Inside, the place was neat and well laid out.
There were glass-topped cases with pieces of ivory
on black velvet, everything from knife handles,
gun grips, and billiard balls to larger framed
pieces. Several magnifying glasses on little
stands had been set up on the glass so that the
smaller pieces under them were easier to see.
  An electric guitar hung on the wall behind the
longest counter. Toni didn't know from guitars, but
there was an ivory plate on the body of the instrument,
and she recognized the man's face lovingly
engraved upon the plate.
  A medium-sized man with a thick mustache came
out of the back and smiled at Toni.
  "The King," he said.
  "When he was in his prime. About 1970 or so, the
television concert where he wore the black leather
suit."
  Toni nodded.
  "I bought one of your pieces in Hawaii," she
said.
  "A naked woman sitting in a lotus pose,
floating in the air."
  "Ah," he said.
  "Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon. I enjoyed
doing that one. How can I help you, Mrs.... ah
... ?"
  "Michaels," she said, still feeling somewhat
strange about using Alex's name that way.
  "Toni."
  "Toni. Nice to meet you."
  "I understand you give lessons in how to do this."
She waved, taking in the shop's interior.
  "Yes, ma'am, I surely do."
  "I'd like to sign up, if I could."
  "No problem at all, Toni."
  They smiled at each other.

  New Acquisitions Warehouse, Net
Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia
  "You look like hell, Julio."
  "Thank you. General Howard, sir, for your
astute observation."
  "What happened?"
  "I was up half Sunday night feeding the baby.
Your godson."
  "I thought Joanna was breast-feeding."
  "Yeah, she is. But somebody told her about a
little pump that lets you take mama's milk out of the
original container and put it into little bottles. That
way the father can be part of the suckling process."
  "Don't look at me, I didn't tell
her."
  "No, it was Nadine, your lovely wife, who was
the snake in the garden."
  Howard laughed.
  "Well, you know how women are.
  Never let a man spend too much time getting by with
something."
  "Amen."
  "So, what are we looking at this fine morning.
Sergeant Fernandez ?"
  "Three new items of field gear unrelated
to weaponry, sir."
  Howard glanced around the inside of the small
storage warehouse. There were crates, boxes, and
items covered with tarps, the usual.
  "Proceed."
  "Over here, we have our new tactical computer
units, supposedly shockproof backpackers that will
plug into the SIPE-SUITS. Seven pounds, more
FlashMem, DRAM, and FROM than a high school
computer lab and faster than greased lightning.
Ceramic armor and spider silk webbing, all
bullet-resistant and waterproof and like that. I
turned one on and dropped it on the floor from chest
height, and it still ran fine. Twelve-hour
batteries the size of D cells, so you can carry
a few days' backup without recharging, no problem."
  "Good, about time they came up with something that didn't
go down every time somebody sneezed. What else?"
  "Right this way. This here is our emergency
broadcast jammer, which will supposedly make any
radio inside a ten-kilometer circle spew
static and nothing else. Doesn't work on LOS
infra or ultra headcoms. They say it'd stop
KAAY in Little Rock at its peak, but I
haven't tested it yet."
  "Bad guys use LOS, too."
  "What can I say? This is RA stuff. You know
how they are."
  Howard nodded. Regular Army did have its own
whys and wherefores. He'd been there, done that, and was much
happier being the head of Net Force's military
arm, such as it was. He had expected it to be a
lot more quiet than when he was a colonel in the
RA, but in the last year or so, it sure had been
anything but that. In fact, after his last fracas,
he'd been thinking about retiring. He still ached from his
wounds when it got chilly, and the idea of not being around
to see his son grow up bothered him a lot.
  Julio kept talking:
  "And under this here cover, we have the toy of the week.
Ta-da!" He pulled the lightweight tarp off,
revealing what looked like a table with four jointed arms
sticking up from it, two in the corners at one end,
two more in the middle. The thing had wheels and a closed
compartment under it.
  "And what is this? A high-tech electric golf
cart?"
  "No, sir, this is Rocky Scram--that's
R-0Can-CS-RM, the acronym standing for
Remote-Operated, Computer Controlled
Surgical Robotic Module."
  Howard frowned.
  "We talking about a doc-in the-box?"
  "Actually, a surgeon-in-the-box, only this
is just the box. You're gonna love this one, it
actually might be useful."
  "Talk to me."
  "Here's the deal. You need a surgical PA,
couple nurses, and orderlies. They set this
sucker up in a field hospital. Guy comes
in, all shot up, needs fixin'. The PA--THAT'S
physician's assistant, for those of you who missed
the medical personnel lecture--does a
triage, examines the guy, and makes a quick
diagnosis. They plunk him on the table, get him
prepped, and dial up a first-class REMF
surgeon, who can be up to a thousand miles away,
give or take. He cranks up his unit--that part
is over here, come look."
  They walked to another covered unit, and Julio
removed a tarp from it. There was a chair, a computer
screen mounted in front of it on a platform, and some
odd-looking appendages on the arms of the chair.
  "Your surgeon sits here and slips his fingers
into the surgical controls, that's these rings here. He
uses his feet on pedals down on the
floor, one each, with a freeze pedal in the middle,
kind of like a brake."
  Julio sat in the chair and slipped his fingers
into the jointed ring arrangements. The computer screen
lit up.
  "These control the waldos, those are tools you can
connect to those arms on the operating table. Left
foot runs the endoscope, which holds your light and
your camera. Right foot works various clamps and
suction things. The hand tools will hold scalpels,
hemostats, suture needles, scissors, and a
bunch of other things."
  "You're telling me a surgeon can operate on
a patient from a thousand miles away using this
gadget?"
  "Yes,-sir, that's what the RA medicos say.
The surgeons who qualify have to cut up a bunch
of pigs and cadavers and RA soldiers before they
let them work on real people. They've repaired
bowels, done blood vessel grafts, stitched up
torn hearts, all kinds of things. Nurses and the
PA assist, just like in a regular OR. RA
medicos say a guy good with this toy can pick up
number-six BB'S and never drop one."
  Julio waggled his fingers, and there was
mechanical hum from the nearby table as the surgical
arms moved around.
  "It's all self-contained, battery backup if
you can't get a generator going. Wheel it out there,
slap "em on the table, and you cut and paste."
  "Good Lord."
  "Yes sir, I expect He is impressed."
  "Downside?"
  "Heavy, expensive--million and half a
copy--and you need a repair tech who's qualified
to service 'em if they break down. Still, RA
figures it's cheaper than training and replacing a
surgeon who catches a stray round on the way to do
his cutting."
  "Good point."
  "There's a civilian model been around for a
while, but it's not so compact, and it ain't portable."
  "Amazing."
  "Ain't it, though? Now, if the general is through
being impressed with modern hardware, I'd like to go
catch a nap."
  "Go ahead. Sergeant. Oh. Wait. Hold
up a second. I got something for you." Howard
grinned. He was going to like what he was about to do. He
was going to like it a whole lot.
  Julio paused, and Howard tossed the small
plastic box at him. Julio caught it, started
to open it.
  "Not my birthday.
  What's the occasion?"
  Howard didn't say anything, just kept grinning.
  When Julio got the box open, his eyes went
wide.
  "Oh, shit. No!"
  "Oh, shit, yes. And we're skipping right over
shave tail and going to right to first.
  "Congratulations, Lieutenant Fernandez."
  "You can't do this, John. Gunny'll never let
me live it down."
  "Already done, Julio. Paperwork is signed,
sealed, and delivered."
  "John--" "More money, which you need with a new
baby. Plus now you don't have to take orders from
your wife. Well, no more than any of the rest of us
have to take orders from our wives." Julio's wife
was Joanna Winthrop, and a lieutenant in Net
Force herself, although she was on extended leave at the
moment.
  "But... but... who can you get to replace me?"
  "Nobody will be able to replace you,
Julio. But there are some new recruits who can
manage a top's chores if you show them how it is
done."
  Julio shook his head.
  "I'll be damned."
  "No doubt, but at least you can tell the devil you
earned your money for part of your career before you got the
free ride."
  Julio nodded slowly, then looked up.
  "All right. Thank you, sir."
  "Don't look so sour, Julio. Welcome
to the officer-and a-gentleman club. Or at least the
officer part of it."
  "Yeah, right."
  Under the bitching, Howard was pretty sure that
Julio was pleased. They'd been working together for more
than twenty years, first in the regular army, then in
Net Force.
  Julio had known about Howard's promotion
to general before Howard himself had, and there were times when the
two of them were practically telepathic. Julio
didn't have the educational background of a lot of
officers, but when a situation went hot, he was the
man you wanted covering your back. He had another
few years before he was going to think about
retiring, and the higher his grade, the bigger his pension.
He was a married man with a baby;
  he needed it.
  "Go take your nap, Lieutenant."
  "Yes, sir."
  Washington, D.c.
  Normally, at seven in the morning. Jay
Gridley would be at Net Force HQ, plugged
into his computer and making war on the bad guys.
He'd be hunting lube foots who'd dumped the
latest ugly virus into the world's e-mail, or
searching for clues to some computer fraud, or trying
to
  track down some sicko posting kiddie porn on
church web sites. Now and then, there'd be a big
shark cruising the virtual waters of the net, like the
mad Russian or the crazy Georgia redneck
or the British genius who'd been using a
quantum computer to try and restore England's lost
glory, though those were relatively rare. But a few
months ago. Jay had finally met his on-line
guru who had been helping him recover from a
stroke, an old Tibetan monk named Sojan
Rinpoche. And as it turned out, the old man was
actually a young and beautiful woman.
Saji, she liked to be called, and one thing had led
to another, which had led to another, which had led to her lying
beside him in the bed.
  Now, there were days when he called in sick and never
left that bed except to pee.
  He giggled.
  "What is funny?" Saji asked.
  He smiled at her.
  "Y. Me. Th. U."
  "What time is it?"
  "Who cares?"
  "No, you don't, goat-boy. I'm teaching an
on-line class this morning."
  "You don't have to get up to do that. You can lie right
there."
  She laughed.
  "I don't think so. I remember the last time
I tried to do that. Somebody kept distracting me."
  "You're a master Buddhist, you're supposed
to be able to meditate and tune out little distractions."
  "Yeah, but the problem was, the little distraction
kept getting bigger every time I looked at it."
  They both laughed.
  "Work is dead. I could stay home. It's
totally boring there these days. Seriously."
  "Seriously," she said, "no, you can't."
  "You are a party pooper."
  "Life is full of suffering, haven't you learned
that yet?"
  Jay rolled out of the bed, scratched his chest, and
padded toward the bathroom.
  "You'll be sorry when I'm gone. You'll finish
your class and be all alone in this big old condo, and
you'll wish I was here."
  "I'll try to be brave."
  "You want to shower?"
  "Yes. After you leave."
  "You don't Crust me. I'm hurt."
  "I can see that. Go on. I'll cook supper
when you get home."
  "What, roots and twigs?"
  "You said you liked my cooking."
  "That was before you threw me out into the cold," he said.
  "It's supposed to hit seventy-two today," she
said.
  "Not so cold."
  "I was speaking metaphorically."
  "Go and shower. Jay."
  He grinned at her. Boy, did he like having
her around.
  Really. A lot. More than anything he could think
of. He headed for the shower and considered for the hundredth
time the proposition he'd been working on in his head
for the last couple of weeks. Was it possible to make
it permanent?
  Legally permanent? As in getting married?
  Would she go for it?
  There was only one way to find out, but he was
hesitant.
  What if she said no?
  That would be ... bad.
  The hot water began to steam up the bathroom.
He called out to Saji: "Hey--?"
  "No," she cut him off.
  "Definitely not."
  But he was rinsing the shampoo from his hair when the
shower door slid open and Saji followed the draft
of cool air in, gloriously naked and grinning.
  "Why, Sojan Rinpoche! What are you doing
here?"
  "I came to wash your back is all."
  "Uh-huh."
  "Turn around."
  "Yes, ma'am."
  He turned around. She reached out, and her
soapy hand began rubbing him.
  However, the hand was definitely not stroking his
back, nope, no sir, no indeedy!
  He laughed, and she laughed with him.
  Yep, he was going to be late to work, no two
ways about it.
  "Hey, I think you missed a spot there."
  "I didn't miss it. I was ignoring it.
Easy to do, it's so small."
  "Ooh. You are a cruel woman. Cruel."
  "Suffer, big daddy, suffer...."

  MaUbu, California
  Robert Drayne looked up from his mixing bench in
front of the big picture window as a pair of young
women in thong bikinis jogged past on the
hard-packed wet sand, just at the water line. No
rain today, the sky was clear, the Pacific Ocean a
nice blue and fairly calm, and the two honeys were
blond and tan and bouncy. Not bad for a Monday.
He grinned. He loved this town.
  He looked back at the bench. He had a batch
ready to time and encapsulate, only six hits, and
where the hell was Tad? You didn't want to start the
clock ticking and then have the stuff sit on the
table for an hour or two.
  That might cut things a little close. Even with a
master such as himself, the timing could get a little
tricky, could be an hour either way.
  As if in response, the door alarm ching-chinged as
somebody disarmed it and entered the house.
  That had better be Tad.... Drayne dumped a
bit of catalyst into the white compound, stirred in the
fine red powder so that the resulting mix started turning
pale pink. Drayne worked by sight and smell, he
kept adding catalyst until the right shade was
achieved--a shade somewhere between titty and bubble gum
--and that sharp, cherry-and-almond odor drifted up
and told him it was about right, too.
  Ah, there we go.... "About fucking time,"
Drayne said. There was no real anger in his voice,
just making a comment was all.
  "Traffic is bad on the Coast Highway,"
Tad said by way of explanation.
  "The tourists are all slowing down to look at the
house coming down in the mud slide. How's it coming?"
  "Catalyst mixed, as of thirty seconds
ago."
  Tad looked at his watch.
  Drayne grabbed one of the big purple
gel caps, a special run he'd had made
three years ago by a guy in Mexico who was,
unfortunately, no longer among the living. Well,
what the hell, he had more than a thousand caps
left.
  Worry about it when he ran out.
  He opened the cap and scooped up the mix with both
halves, expertly judging how much so that he could
put the cap together again without overfilling it..he
looked up and smiled. This was the easy part. The real
work was in the creation and mixing of the various components.
  That had to be done in a lab, and the current one was
an RV parked in a dinky burg on the edge of the
Mojave Desert, a couple of hours away from
here. By tomorrow, it would be parked a hundred miles
away, the old retired couple driving it looking
about as illegal and dangerous as a bowl of prunes.
In this biz, appearance counted for a lot. Who'd
pull over Ma and Pa Yeehaw in their RV with
Missouri plates for anything but a traffic
ticket? And Ma could talk her way out of that
by making a cop think about his sweet little ole
granny. And if the cop got really horsey. Pa
would cap him with the .40 SIG he kept under the
seat.
  Tad Bershaw was Drayne's age, well,
actually, he was a year younger at thirty-one, but he
looked fifty, rode hard and put up wet, like
Drayne's grandma used to say. Tad was
black-haired, skinny, pale, and had dark
circles under his eyes, a real heroin-chic kinda
guy. He always wore black, even in the middle of
summer, long sleeves, long pants, pointy-toed
leather boots. And sunglasses, of course. He
looked like a vampire or maybe one of the old
beatniks, because he also had a little patch of hair under
his lip.
  Drayne, on the other hand, looked like a surfer,
which he had been: tanned, sun-bleached dishwater
blond hair, still enough muscle to pass for a gymnast
or a swimmer. He had to admit, they made an
odd-looking couple when they went out. Not that they went
out that often.
  Drayne put the finished cap down and picked up
another empty. He had enough mix for six. Five for
sale and one for Tad. At a thousand bucks each,
it wasn't a bad day's work, not bad at all,
given that their costs were about thirty-five dollars a
cap.
  "You heard about the guy in Atlantic
City?" Tad asked.
  Drayne worked on the third cap.
  "Olivetti?"
  "Yeah."
  "No. What happened?"
  "Hammer ate him. He ran amok, tore up
a casino, beat the shit out of some rent-a-cops and
local police before they cooked him. DOA."
  Drayne shrugged again.
  "Too bad. He was a good customer."
  "We got a guy coming from NYC says
Olivetti referred him. Are we interested?"
  Drayne finished the fourth cap. Found one of the
special-special empties for number five.
  "No. If Olivetti is dead, the reference
is dead. We don't sell to him."
  "I figured," Tad said.
  "Just checking."
  "You shouldn't have to check. You know the deal. A
vetted customer vets a newbie, always. First time
we get a guy we can't check out, that will be a narc,
you got to figure it that way."
  "I hear you."
  Drayne finished the fifth cap, reached for
Tad's empty.
  "How are you working today's produce?"
  "Three off the net, FedEx Same Day as
soon as we get the payment transfers to the dissolving
account. One is a pickup, three-messenger
drop. One is hand-to-hand."
  "Who's the hand-to-hand?"
  "The Zee-ster."
  Drayne grinned.
  "Be sure to tell him we want tickets
to his next premiere."
  "Already in the pipe."
  "Okay, here you go. Last one is yours, be sure
the double-special, that's number five, goes out."
  "You're crazy, you know that," Tad said, as he
took the caps.
  "Yeah, so what else is new?"
  The two men smiled at each other.
  "What's cold?" Drayne said.
  "I need to sit on the deck and watch the waves
roll in."
  "Got a bottle of the Blue Diamond, one
of the Clicquot, and one of the Perrier-Jouet in the
little fridge. Dunno what's in the garage."
  "The Diamonte Bleu, I think," Drayne
said.
  "You want a glass before you take off?"
  "I'm not rotting my liver out, thank you."
  They laughed again.
  "I'm gone."
  "See you later," Drayne said.
  Tad left, and Drayne went to open a bottle
of champagne. He had three-quarters of a
million cash in a suitcase hidden in a floor
safe under his bed, another two hundred and some thousand
dollars in a safe-deposit box in a bank in
Tarzana, and five cases of assorted but all
high-quality champagne in the cool room
downstairs.
  Life was pretty damned good.
  Tad swung his souped-up, reconditioned Charger
R/T Drayne had given him out into the road the
locals called the PCH and stomped the gas pedal,
heading south toward Santa Monica. The big
motor roared and laid five hundred miles worth
of expensive rubber compound behind it, tires squealing
and smoking. Tad grinned as the car accelerated.
  No big deal. The radials were good for fifty
thousand miles, and he didn't expect either the car
or himself to be around when the tires" warranty ran
out.
  He never expected to live past thirty, maybe
thirty-five, max. Depending on how you looked
at it, he was either four years shy or a year
overdue for the big sleep, and it didn't much matter
to him which it was. He'd been on borrowed time for
years.
  He roared past a white four-runner with
out-of-state plates, a middle-aged couple in the
front, and a pair of big old German shepherd
dogs looking out the windows in the back. Goddamned
tourists. He cut sharply in front of the car, but the
tourists were too busy looking at the ocean to even
notice. Dogs were probably smarter than the people in
that car.
  That Bobby, now there was a smart one. He was a
certified fucking genius, no shit. IQ way up
in Mensa territory, one sixty, one seventy,
something like that, though you'd never guess he was anything more
than a big ole dumb surfer dude by looking at
him. He could have gone into any kind of legit work and
made a mint, but he had these quirks: One, he
hated his old man, who was a retired FBI
agent, and two, the guy he most wanted to be like was
some flower-power drug guru from the sixties, a guy
named Owsley, who came out of the
psychedelic movement. Owsley was so long ago that
when he started making LSD, it was still legal.
Problem was that he kept making the stuff after it got
to be illegal, and got busted, but Bobby thought the
sun rose and set in the guy's shadow.
  Bobby wanted to be the Owsley of the
twenty-teens.
  An outlaw to the core.
  Tad patted his pocket for the fourth time, making
sure the five caps were still in there. The other cap--
his cap-was tucked away in his private stash
bottle in the special pocket in his right boot,
right next to the short Damascus dagger he carried
there.
  He lit up a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and
coughed. His lungs were bad, never had gotten much
stronger after the THIS was cured and he got out of the
sanitarium in New Mexico, and smoking only
made "em worse, but the hell with it, he wasn't
gonna live long enough for cancer to get him anyhow.
  The air conditioner blasted the smoke away as he
reached for the music player to crank up some volume.
  Something with a lot of bone-vibrating bass, but none
of that techno-rap junk the kids were listening to today.
  He glanced at his watch. Still had half
an hour before he had to make the first delivery.
  He rolled the window down, took a final drag
off the cigarette, and thumbed the butt out the window.
He couldn't do the Hammer today, too much work, so it
would have to be tonight or tomorrow. He knew when he needed
to drop to get off. He didn't want to miss that
window. Sure, Bobby would make him another, but it
would be such a waste there was no way Tad was gonna
let it happen.
  Tonight, definitely. He could become Thor, and
he would swing the Hammer high, wide, and anywhere he
damned well pleased.
  Oh, yeah-Some asshole in a low-slung
Italian something or the other whipped around Tad,
caught rubber as he upshifted, and blew past.
Guy looked like a movie star, might even be one:
tan, fit in a tank top, designer shades, and a
big expensive smile when he flashed his caps
to show Tad there were no hard feelings.
  The way he felt right now. Tad wouldn't bother
chasing the guy. Even if he caught him, the guy
would certainly be able to stomp his butt for his trouble.
  Come back and see me tonight, pal. See how your
SoCal pretty-boy tough-guy act plays when
I'm swinging Mjollnir high, wide, and
repeatedly. Be a different story then, old son,
a whole different story.

  On 1-95, Approaching Quantum,
Virginia
  Michaels was on the way to his office when his
virgil blared out the opening chords for "Mustang
Sally." He smiled at the little electronic
device. Jay Gridley had been at it again,
reprogramming the attention call. It was one of
Jay's small delights, to do that every so often,
usually coming up with some new musical sting Michaels
never expected.
  He shook his head as he unclipped the virgil
--for virtual global interface link--from his belt
and saw that the incoming call was from his boss,
Melissa Allison, director of the FBI.
Her image appeared on the tiny screen as he said,
"Answer call," and activated the virgil's
voxax control.
  "Good morning, Alex."
  "Director."
  "If you would please stop by my office on your
way in, I would appreciate it. Something has come
up that I think Net Force needs
to address."
  "Yes, ma'am, I'm on my way. I'll be
there in fifteen minutes."
  She looked at something off-screen, then said, "I
see you're on the freeway. You might want
to take an alternate route. There's an accident
a couple of miles ahead of you. Traffic will start
backing up pretty fast."
  "Thank you," he said.
  "Discom."
  It used to bother him that they could GPS him that
way, using the virgil's carrier sig to tell
exactly where he was.
  Then he reasoned if he wanted to keep his
whereabouts secret, all he had to do was kill the
unit's power. That is, if there wasn't some hidden
internal battery that kept the carrier going, even if
the thing looked like it was turned off.
  He smiled at his thought. Paranoid? Maybe.
But stranger things had happened in the U.s.
intelligence service, and he wouldn't put anything
past certain factions, nothing.
  The man was big, he was stark naked, and he had
an erection. He walked through the hotel hallway,
got to a window at the end, and stopped. The
window was closed, one of those that couldn't be opened, and
from the skyline visible in the distance, it was fairly
high up.
  The man put his hands on the window and shoved.
  The window exploded outward. The man backed up
a few steps, took a short run, and dived through the
shattered window, looking like he was diving off the
Acapulco cliffs or maybe pretending to be
Superman.
  Melissa Allison said, "Agent Lee?"
  The man who'd been introduced to Michaels as
Brett Lee, of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, shut off the In Focus projector
and his laptop computer, and the image of the broken window
faded.
  "This was taken by security cameras in the new
Sheraton Hotel in Madrid," he said.
  "The man was Richard Aubrey Bamette, age
thirty, whose Internet company
License-to-Steal.com earned him fourteen
million dollars last month. He fell
twenty-eight stories onto a cab, killing the
driver and causing a traffic accident that killed
three others and injured five."
  Michaels said, "I see. And this is
related to the casino owner who trashed his
competitor's place of business before being killed
by local police?"
  "Yes."
  "And to the woman who attacked a gang of
construction workers who whistled at her and put seven of
them into intensive care?"
  "Yes," Lee said.
  "And to others of a similar nature."
  Michaels looked at his boss, then at Lee.
  "And I take it that, since you are DBA, you
think drugs were somehow involved?"
  Lee frowned, not sure if Michaels was pulling
his chain or not. Which, Michaels had to admit to himself,
he was, a little. Lee seemed awfully stiff.
  Lee said, "Yes, we are certain of that."
  Michaels nodded.
  "Please don't take offense, Mr. Lee, but
this concerns Net Force how?"
  Lee looked at Allison for support and got
it. She said, "My counterpart at DEA has asked
for our assistance.
  Naturally, the FBI and any of its
subsidiaries are happy to help in any way we
can."
  "Naturally," Michaels said, knowing full well
that interagency cooperation was more often like competing
football teams than the least bit collective.
Rivalries among the dozen or so agencies that
comprised the intelligence community in the U.s.--
everybody from CIA to FBI to NSA to DIA
to NRO--WERE old, established, and more often than
not, nobody gave up anything without some quid pro
quo. Yes, they were all technically on the same
team, but practically speaking, an agency was happy
to shine its own star any way it could, and if that
included using another agency's shirt to do it,
well, that's how the game was played. Michaels had
discovered this early in his career, long before he left the
field to take over Net Force. And DEA
wasn't a major player anyhow, given its
somewhat limited mission.
  Michaels said, "So how is it that Net Force can
do something here DEA can't?"
  Lee, a short man with a fierce look, flushed.
Michaels could almost see him bite his tongue
to keep from saying what he really wanted to say, which was
undoubtedly rude. Instead, Lee said, "How much
do you know about the drug laws. Commander Michaels?"
  "Not much," he admitted.
  "All right, let me give you a quick and rough
overview.
  Federal drug regulation in the United States
comes under the authority of the Controlled Substances
Act--that's CSA--TITLE II, of the
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and
Control Act of 1970, with various amendments
since. Legal--and illegal--drugs are put on
one of five schedules, depending on what uses have
been established for them and on how much potential for
abuse they have. Schedule I is reserved for
dangerous drugs without medical applications that have a
high potential for abuse. Schedule V is for
stuff with low abuse potential."
  "We're talking about the difference between, say,
heroin and aspirin?" Michaels said.
  "Precisely. The CSA gets pretty
specific about these things."
  "Go ahead, I'm still with you."
  "In the last few years, there has been a
resurgence in so-called designer drugs, that is
to say, those that don't slot neatly into the
traditional categories. Variations and combinations of
things like MDA and Ecstasy and certain new
anabolic steroids, like that. The government
realized that certain individuals were trying
to circumvent the intent of the law by adding a molecule
here or subtracting one there to make a drug that
wasn't technically illegal, so there is a
provision for analog drugs not addressed by the
code.
  "So, basically, any salt, compound,
derivative, optical or geometric isomers,
salts of isomers, whatever, based on a drug that
is regulated become automatically de facto
regulated the moment it is created."
  Michaels nodded again, wondering where this was going.
  "And in case we have a really clever chemist who
comes up with something entirely new and different-which is
pretty much unlikely, if not impossible, given
the known things that humans abuse--the attorney
general can put that on Schedule I on an
emergency basis.
  This is done if the AG determines that there is
an imminent hazard to the public safety, there is
evidence of abuse, and there is clandestine
importation, manufacture, or distribution of said
chemical substance.
  "Basically, the AG posts a notice in the
Federal Register, and it becomes valid
after thirty days for up to a year."
  Michaels nodded again. He thought Lee was a
stuffed shirt, and he decided to give another little
tug on his chain.
  "Very interesting, if you are a DEA agent. Are
we getting to a point anytime soon?"
  Lee flushed again, and Michaels was fairly
certain that if the director hadn't been sitting
there, the DEA man would have lost his temper and said or
maybe even done something rash. But give him
credit, he got a handle on it.
  "What it means is, we have some pretty
specific tools we can use to get dangerous,
illegal drugs off the street.
  But in this case, we can't use them."
  Ah, now that was interesting.
  "Why not?"
  "Because we haven't been able to obtain enough of the drug
to analyze it properly. We know what it does:
It makes you fast, strong, mean, and sexually
potent. It might make you smarter, too, but that's
hard to say from our samples, since if they were that
smart, they ought not to be dead. We know what it
looks like; it comes in a big purple capsule.
But we can't make it illegal if we
don't know what it is in the cap."
  Michaels grinned slightly. He could hear that
conversation: "Yes, sir, this is the vile stuff,
all right. Could you put it on the list so we can bust
the guys who made it?
  What's in it? Uh, well, we don't
exactly know. Can't you, uh, you know, just make big
purple capsules illegal temporarily?"
  Be interesting to hear the AG'S response to that
one.
  "And where does Net Force come in?"
  "We have evidence that the makers of the drug--they
call it Thor's Hammer, by the way--are using the
Internet to arrange delivery."
  "If the drug isn't illegal, then using the
net to distribute it isn't illegal, either,"
Michaels said.
  "We know. But if we can find them, we can damn
well ask the miscreants making it to give us a
sample. So to speak."
  Miscreants? Michaels didn't think he'd
ever actually heard that word used in a conversation before.
He said, "Ah, pardon me for asking a stupid
question, but wouldn't it be easier just to buy some on the
street and analyze it?"
  "Believe it or not. Commander, that thought did occur
to us, it being our job and all. It isn't a common
street drug. The cost of it is extremely high,
and the sellers are very selective about who they sell it
to. So far, none of our agents have been able to make
a connection.
  "We did manage to seize one capsule after the
death of one of the people that we know took the drug.
Unfortunately, the chemist in this case is very
clever; there is some kind of enzymatic catalyst in
the compound. By the time we got the stuff to our lab and
analyzed, the active ingredients had all been
somehow rendered ... inert.
  There is some kind of timing mechanism in the
drug. If you don't use it fairly quickly, it
turns into a bland, inert powder that doesn't do
anything but sit there."
  "You can't tell what the drugs were?"
  "Our chemists can infer what they were, sure.
There are residues, certain telltale compounds, but
we can't document for certain what the exact
precursor drugs and percentages of each were,
because they are essentially gone."
  "Huh. That must be frustrating."
  "Sir, you do not know the half of it. The
common thread running through all the sudden insanities
is money.
  Every one of the twelve people we feel certain died as
a result of having ingested this drug is--or was
--rich. Nobody on the list made less than a
quarter million a year, and some of them made
fifteen or twenty times that much."
  "Ah." Michaels understood that. You might lean
on a criminal street pusher, threaten him, rough
him up a little, to get what you wanted from him, but
millionaires tended to come equipped with herds of
lawyers, and a man with big bucks in the bank
didn't get hassled by street cops who wanted
to keep their jobs. Not unless the cops had enough to go
into court and get a conviction, and even then, they tended
to walk with more care. Rich people had recreations denied
to the common folk.
  "Precisely. So until we can get a
sample before the enzyme is added, or get to one fast
enough to beat the decomposition, we're stuck. We
need your help."
  Michaels nodded. Maybe the guy wasn't that
bad. In his place, he could understand how he might
feel. And things around Net Force were as slow as he
had ever seen them.
  "All right, Mr. Lee. We'll see if we
can't run your dope dealers to ground."
  Lee nodded.
  "Thank you."

  Washington, D.c.
  Toni smiled at the UPS man as he left--
he was late today--then took the latest packages
into the garage. Alex had told her she could have half
the workbench, though she only needed maybe a quarter
of it, and she had already started putting her stuff there.
So far, she had the magnifying lamp set up, the
alcohol burner and wax cauldron, a couple
tubes of lampblack oil paint, and some rags and
cleaning supplies. There wasn't really much else
left she needed. The new packages should have the pin
vises, some assorted sewing needles, lens paper,
lanolin hand cleaner, and a couple of X-Acto
knives and some blades.
  Plus the jeweler's special wax and some
polishing compound.
  She already had some fake-ivory slabs, some old
piano keys, and some little rectangles of micarta,
which looked like real ivory but was much harder. She
didn't need the heavy-duty saws and buffing
wheels, Alex had a Dremel tool that would work for
polishing small stuff.
  And while the stereomicroscope like the one her
teacher used was really neat, she couldn't justify
spending eight
  or nine hundred dollars on it--not unless she
got to the point where she was selling pieces, which would
probably not ever happen--especially given she
wasn't sure she even wanted to try that.
  Toni had never thought of herself as having much
artistic talent. She'd done okay in art courses
in school, could draw a little, but according to Bob
Hergert's online VR class, while being a
world-class artist wouldn't hurt, it wasn't
absolutely necessary. Given the wonders of the modern
computer age, there was a lot technique could do
to make up for talent. And given what she'd learned
so far, you'd be able to fool a lot of people into thinking you
knew what you were doing when you didn't.
  She opened the packages, removed the tools and
supplies, and set them out. Being pregnant
wasn't at all like she'd thought it was going to be.
Sure, she'd heard about morning sickness and mood
swings, but the reality of those things was something else. And
it wasn't as if she were really a whale, not
at five months, but she'd always been in shape, her
belly flat and tight, her muscles firm, and
having to lie around and watch herself balloon up was,
well, it was scary. Having something to do that needed
concentration and skill, like scrimshaw, might be just the
ticket to help her get past this. The morning
sickness--which lasted almost all day and any time she was
around any food more spicy than dry soda
crackers--had finally stopped. Supposedly, the
hormone swings got better after the sixth month.
  Supposedly.
  She had some ideas of what she might like to try
first, and for that she needed to go back to her computer. There
were lots of places to find pictures in the public
domain, and if those weren't good enough, lots of
places where you could license an image for personal
use for a small fee. Later on, if she got
better at it, she could try some freehand drawings of
her own, but at first, she wanted to keep it simple.
  Toni looked at her corner of the workbench. The
rest of it was covered with Alex's tools and car
parts, all laid out neatly. He was much more orderly
than she was about such things. So far, her investment in
scrimshaw supplies had run less than what it
cost Alex for a good set of wrenches. If
it turned out to be a total waste of her time, at
least she wouldn't be out much money.
  She sighed. Before she sat down at the computer and
went shopping on-line, she needed to go pee again. And
that, she understood, was not going to get better as her
pregnancy progressed. She sure hoped having
Alex's son was worth all this aggravation.
  John Howard bent from the waist and tightened the
laces on his cross-trainers, finishing with the
double-loop runner's knot that theoretically kept the
laces from coming untied. Finished, he straightened,
bent backward and stretched his abdominals, then
shook his arms back and forth to loosen them.
  Normally, he ran at the base or around the
Net Force compound, but today he felt like taking a
tour of his own neighborhood. It was warm for early
October, and muggy, so he wore running shorts
and a tank top, though he did have a fanny pack
holding his virgil, his ID, and a small handgun--
a little Seecamp .380 double-action auto. The
tiny pistol made the Walther PPK look like a
giant, it only weighed maybe eleven or
twelve ounces and was awfully convenient if you were
wearing summer clothes or workout gear. True, the
.380 wasn't exactly an elephant
stopper
  the gun didn't have any sights, liked only one
brand of ammo, and it tended to bang your trigger finger
pretty good when it recoiled. No way it compared with
his primary side arm, the Phillips and Rogers
Medusa, but it did fulfill the first rule of a
gunfight: Bring a gun. Point it at somebody in
your face with a knife or a broken bottle and
pull the trigger four or five times, and it
certainly would offer them major incentive to back
off. With the fanny pack strapped on tightly enough so
it wouldn't bounce around much, it was doable. He used
to carry a little can of pepper spray to discourage
loose dogs, but realized that if he stopped running
and said "Bad dog! Go lie down!" in a loud
voice, the dog would stop, frown, and leave. At
least they had so far.
  A bit more limber, Howard started to jog up the
street.
  The leaves were falling--they'd all be down
by Halloween, first good wind that came along any time
now would finish 'em--and while the sun was warm, there was
that subtle difference between spring and fall, that sense of
impending winter.
  He passed old man Carison working in
his yard, using the blower to herd leaves into piles. The
old man, eighty if he was a day, smiled and
waved. Carison was a tanned, leathery old bird
who was the ultimate Orioles fan. He'd
retired after forty years with the Post Office, and there
wasn't a street in the district he couldn't
locate for you.
  Howard reached the corner and turned right, planning
to loop in and out of the cul-de-sacs that fed the main
road through the neighborhood, staying on the
sidewalk and ducking low, overhanging trees.
  Tyrone had called today from his class trip
to Canada.
  He was going to be gone for another ten days, two
weeks in all, on a visit for his international
relations class, something new at his school. Howard
thought it was a good idea, getting to know other
cultures. Better than learning it the Army's
way. He smiled, remembering the old slogan his
first top kick had posted over his desk when he'd
first joined up: "Join the Army and See the World!
Travel to exotic, unusual locales! Learn
about other cultures!
  Meet diverse and interesting people--and kill them."
  He picked his pace up a little, stretching
out, getting into a longer stride and rhythm. Just
inside his breath, barely.
  The scars were formed up pretty good where he'd had
surgery after the shooting in Alaska. Pretty much
nothing hurt most of the time--well, no more than
usual after he worked out--but the memories hadn't
faded at all. Being out in the middle of nowhere,
exchanging gunfire with some real bad men, giving
better than he'd gotten, but almost dying--those kinds
of memories didn't go away in a few months.
Every firefight--and he hadn't had that many--was as
clear in his mind as the day or night it had happened.
The thought that he might have bled to death in the woods and
been eaten by scavengers wasn't so horrifying in
itself. Hell, he was a professional soldier,
getting killed went with the territory. But dying and
leaving his son, just hitting his teens on his way
to manhood, that bothered Howard more than it ever had.
All it took was a real possibility he might
actually buy the farm. Before, he'd been lucky.
Never made it to a real war, and when he finally started
seeing some action in Net Force, the bullets had
zipped here and there, missing him. Julio had taken
a round in the leg during the recovery of the stolen
plutonium from the sons-of-whoever. Some of his
troops had eaten frags from a mine or bullets
from the mad Russian's hit man, Ruzhy6, the
former Spetsnaz killer. Intellectually, he
knew it was just chance and maybe a little skill that he'd
never gotten hit; emotionally, he'd felt
invulnerable, at least to a degree. Like God was
watching over him because he was worthy. Yeah. Until
that long shot in the darkness had plowed into him. A round
from a handgun at rifle distance had killed that feeling
of being bulletproof, oh, yes, indeed, it had.
  Even Achilles had his heel, and waking up in a
hospital full of tubes did make a guy stop
and consider the idea he wasn't gonna live forever.
  And while he wasn't afraid to go into battle--
at least he didn't think so--he didn't want
to die and leave his wife and son. They had become more
precious to him when he'd realized he might lose
them. He believed in the Kingdom of Heaven, and he
tried to live his life in a moral and upright
manner, but going there wasn't at the top of his to-do
list for this year.
  He opened up a little more on the run, starting
to breathe through his mouth more heavily now, as he looped
into the next street over from his and headed for the circle
at the end.
  He remembered another joke his father had told
him:
  "So the preacher stands up in front of the congregation
and says, "How many of you want to go to Heaven?"
  "And all the hands in the church except Brother
Brown's go up.
  "And the preacher looks at Brother Brown, who was
known to drink a little even of a Sunday morning, and he
says, "Brother Brown! Don't you want to go
to Heaven when you die?"
  "And Brother Brown says, "When I die?
Well, sure, Reverend."
  "And the preacher says, "Then, how come you didn't
raise your hand?"
  "And Brother Brown says, "Well, I thought
you was getting" up a busload to go now."
  was He looped around the circle and headed back
up toward the main street. A toy poodle in a
fenced yard raced back and forth inside, barking
wildly at him. Fish bait, his Daddy would call
it. A waste of dog space.
  He could, Howard knew, become an armchair
general, an REMF who directed operations at a
distance. Net Force would prefer it that way, and
probably nobody would think less of him for
it, not those who had been on ops with him before,
anyway. But sending a man somewhere he wasn't
willing to go himself didn't seem right, never had.
  That left the other option, which was to retire. He
could muster out with his current rank of general, draw
a fair retirement, and get a job consulting
somewhere, teaching, whatever. Probably do better
money wise than he was doing now. And be a lot more
certain of being around when his son graduated from high
school, from college, got married, and brought home
grandchildren. Sure that was ten, fifteen years away,
maybe, but he didn't want to miss it. And he
didn't want to leave Nadine. If something
happened to him, he'd always told her to remarry,
find a good man, because she was too precious to waste
away alone.
  And he meant it, too, but on a real, deep
level, he had to admit to himself that the idea of
Nadine laughing and loving another man wasn't at
the top of his list of fun thoughts, either.
  But he was a soldier. A professional
warrior. This was what he did, who he was, and he
liked it.
  So he had to puzzle this out. It was important.
Not easy, maybe, but something he had to do.
  He picked up his pace again, now close to top
speed for his run. He tried to get in four miles
a session, at least four or five times a week,
and while he was past the days when he could run "em
in five or even six minutes a mile, he could still
manage six and a half or seven minutes.
  That is, if he didn't get to thinking so hard he
forget to keep the speed up.
  Run, John. Think later.
  46 NET FORCE Mttlihu, California
  Tad Bershaw drove back to the beach house,
poking along, in no hurry now. He had made his
deliveries, collected the money, and decided what
the hell and taken the purple cap half an hour
ago. It would be another few minutes before it started
to come on full force, but even now he was getting
patterns, geometric overlays of complicated,
pulsing grids on everything. That was from the
psychedelic components of the drug. It made
driving real interesting.
  Bobby was cagey about his chem, he never told
anybody exactly what was in it, but Bershaw had
sampled enough illegal stuff over the years to have some
pragmatic knowledge about such things.
  There was some kind of MDMA/ECSTASY
analog in the Hammer's alloy, with maybe a bit
of mescaline; the body rushes got pretty
intense an hour or so in, and just breathing was
orgasmic when it got to circulating.
  His experiences were not based on any formal knowledge of
chemistry, but he knew it when he felt it. Though
it didn't really matter, he had poked at it
mentally a few times, what he thought Bobby had
created. The psychedelics--entheogens, Bobby
called those--for sure. That would be the MDMA,
mescaline, or LSD, or maybe even some
psilocybin from magic mushrooms. Maybe all
four.
  That gave you that sense of being in contact with your inner
self and loving the world and all, entactogenesis and
em pathogenesis Bobby called them. Also picked
up the sensory input, made everything feel really,
really intense.
  It had smart drugs in it, he knew that, because he
was quicker, sharper, able to make choices better when the
Hammer was at full pound, no question. He didn't
know much about nootropics, stuff like deprynl,
adrafinil, pro vigil shit like that, but Bobby
did, and he knew how to tweak em for an immediate
response.
  For sure it had some kind of speed--cylert,
ritalin, dex, maybe; some tranq to balance it so
you got the fast mind but not bad jitters. It
definitely had painkiller in it, or a way
to kick in the body's own opiates, and Tad
guessed some kind of animal tranq and steroid
mix, though he didn't see how those would do much in the
short run.
  And something like Viagra was in it, too, because it
gave you a hard-on that wouldn't quit. The Zee-ster
once took six women to bed while tripping, and
none of them could walk the next day. Supposedly
made women horny, too.
  Past that, Bobby definitely had some secret
ingredients about which Tad knew zip. He knew
what they did to him, but not why or how.
  The total combination was synergistic--that meant more
than the sum of its parts--and the bottom line was, it
didn't really matter how it did what it did,
only that it did do it.
  There was a bright flash of orange to Bershaw's
left but, when he glanced over that way, no cause
for it. He grinned. Yeah, he was coming on.
Hallucinations, real hallucinations you could talk to and
have them answer back, he'd never had those
while riding the Hammer, but light flashes,
visual distortions, little shifts in reality, those were
par for the course. Your motor ran at full speed,
no governor and no idle.
  He took a deep breath, and chills frosted him
all over, despite the still-warm late afternoon Santa
Ana wind blowing in through the open window.
  Hoo, what a rush!
  Seventeen times he had swung Thor's hammer,
and not once a bad trip. One in five or so went
bonkers, like the guy in the casino. Something in their
body chemistry maybe, or the way their brains were
hardwired, Bobby didn't know which, but whatever it
was. Tad didn't have it. Seventeen times he had
become more than he was, practically turned into a
superhuman. Stronger, faster, smarter,
pain-free, fatigue-free, a guy who could walk
into the local kung fu school and kick its
collective ass.
  And, oh, yeah, there was the sex, though that never
seemed to call to him much. Yeah, he got the iron
woody and all, but he never seemed to have time to put it
into anybody, too much else to do to lie down and be
still... or relatively still.
  Though right at the moment, he felt
pretty mellow, the desire to shuck the car and get
physical was ahead, he knew. Maybe he'd go
for a walk on the beach after it got dark. Or a
swim. He was usually a crappy swimmer, but
once he'd swum out half a mile or so and back
without any problem with the riptide or anything. He'd
been looking for a shark; he'd had a kitchen knife
in his hand, and he wanted to see if he could take a
shark out with it.
  Hadn't found one, which was probably good. Away
from the Hammer, you knew you had limits. Swinging it,
you didn't. But hell, maybe he could have sliced
Jaws up into cat food. Who could say?
  Another rush enveloped him, and he was glad the
house wasn't too far away. It wasn't that he
couldn't maintain control enough to drive during the early
stages of the trip 'cause he could, but it took too
much effort, and he didn't want to waste effort on
piddly shit. He would get home, shuck the car, and
go outside. After all, outside was only a bigger
inside, right?
  He grinned. It was like the time he realized that
chocolate wasn't the opposite of vanilla.
They were just two different flavors. That had hit him
like the secret of the universe. Shit, for all
anybody knew, that was the secret of the universe.

  Washington, D.c.
  Michaels was almost home and wishing he was already
there. What he had in mind was a nice, cold beer,
his bare feet propped up to watch the news hour,
maybe falling asleep on the couch. Might make
a sandwich, if he felt up to it. He was tired.
It had been a long day, made longer because it was
dull and mostly uninteresting, and just as he was about
to leave, they'd had a small crisis over some
hacker who was flooding every church web page his auto
post-hot could find with obscene pictures taken
during an orgy in a Thai whorehouse.
  There was a threat to the republic.
  Graffiti had certainly changed from simple
spray-paint tags on the fence next to the local
drugstore when it went electronic, but it was still
stupid. Who gained anything by such foolishness? Did
the idiot posting think people were going to see the pictures
and abandon their faith? Run screaming into the streets?
  No, probably he just thought it was funny. Which
right off indicated a somewhat retarded sense of
humor.
  The church fathers and mothers were not the least
amused, of course, and there were plenty of them in high
enough government positions to get Net Force's
attention in a hurry, including the president himself,
and what was worse, a minor annoyance suddenly
became a priority project.
  Find whoever was doing this and stop him. Now.
  Turning the other cheek didn't apply when the
cheek was below the waist, so it seemed.
  The e-tagger called himself The Tasmanian
Devil, and as it turned out, that was a major clue.
Net Force ops traced the postings to the north coast
town of Devonport, Tasmania, overlooking the
cool waters of the Bass Strait.
  The tagger was clever, he'd found some melt ware that
got him through a lot of fire walls but he slipped
up. His anonymous re poster was six months out of
date, and in this business, six months was ancient
history. Jay Gridley's team ran the cable
sig to a house, informed the local constabulary, and they
went round and knocked on the door.
  There they found a sixteen-year-old kid running
a six year-old IM-ACCORDING.
  The boy was the son of a local minister, which
probably explained a lot.
  It had taken a while, and when it was done,
Michaels called several heavyweights and told
them they could rest easy, then left the building.
  He was only a mile or so away from home when
his virgil came to life.
  He was tempted to ignore it, but it might be
Toni, so he pulled the device from his belt and
looked at the ID sig.
  It was blank.
  Michaels frowned. FBI com-watch ware was
supposed to circumvent any commercial ID
blocker, so the only people who could reach out and touch him
at this number without him knowing who they were would have to be
somebody with federal-level blockers. He thumbed
the connect button.
  "Yes?"
  "Commander Michaels, this is Zachary George,
with the National Security Agency. Good evening. I
hope I'm not interrupting your dinner?" The voice
was smooth, even, just deep enough to sound
authoritative. There was no picture
transmission. The tiny screen was blank.
  "Not yet. What can I do for you, Mr.
George? Oops, can you hold on a second? I
have another call."
  This was not true, but it gave Michaels a
few seconds to key in a trace, which he did.
He didn't like not knowing to whom he was talking.
  "Sorry about that. Go ahead."
  "Sir, we understand your agency is involved in a
joint investigation with the DEA. We'd like to speak to you
about this, if we could."
  "You can set up an appointment with my
assistant, Mr.
  George. Although I'm not sure why NSA would
have any interest in such a thing if it was so... and I
wouldn't confirm it over the com in any event."
  The incoming diode lit, that would be his trace.
He tapped it, and a number scrolled up on the
view screen, with an ID: George, Zachary,
National Security Agency.
  Well. At least that much was true.
  "I understand your reluctance, sir, and I will be
happy to explain it all to you when I see you. This was
just a courtesy call to let you know of our interest."
There was a pause.
  "Ah. I see you've traced the call and
confirmed my ID. Excellent. I'll be
contacting your assistant for an appointment at your
earliest convenience, sir. Thank you.
  Discom."
  He went away. Michaels frowned again. What
did NSA want with the drug investigation? And why was
their stealth ware better than the FBI'S, to know they
had been traced? He was going to have to talk to Jay
about that.
  Maybe he could come up with a better program.
  He dropped the virgil onto the seat and shook
his head.
  Two more blocks to go.
  Beer. Couch. Television. Soon ... Not that
easy, of course. When he walked in, Toni was
all aglow over her new hobby, so of course he
had go into the garage and admire her toys.
  Well, what the hell, it made her happy, that
made him happy. With all the mood swings
lately, anytime she was smiling was good, better
make the most of it.
  "... and this is the pin vise, see, you put the
needle in here and twist it, like so, and it holds it.
I glued a fishing weight--this lead ball here--
onto the end to give it some heft, so when I
stipple, I won't have to use so much muscle."
  "Such a clever girl," he said, smiling.
  She smiled back at him.
  "And look here, this is the
magnifier...."
  He listened with half an ear, not being that interested
in the artwork per se. When she ran down, he smiled
again. She couldn't drink, given her pregnancy and
all, but maybe she could take some vicarious
pleasure out of watching him enjoy a cold one.
  "Not yet," she said.
  "Huh?"
  "You need to work out first. Do your djurus."
  Michaels wanted to say a bad word, but he
wisely refrained.
  Toni wasn't just his wife, after all, but also his
silat teacher, and that was the hat she had just put on.
If he tried to beg off, that would be bad.
  "Oh, yeah, sure, that's what I meant. After
I work out."
  That didn't fool her for a second, she was way
too sharp, but hey, you had to give it a shot.
Might catch her dozing.
  She said, "It takes a few thousand repetitions
to get the moves down, Alex. Latest
scientific research I read says somewhere in the
fifty- to one-hundred-hour range."
  He did the math mentally.
  "So, for eighteen djurus, I need
to practice for nine hundred to eighteen hundred
hours before I get them? At thirty minutes a
day, that works out to about one hundred and eighty hours a
year, so we're talking about ten years?"
  "Well, to get them really smooth, it'll take
maybe another five years."
  "I'll be retired by then."
  "Good. Give you more time to practice."
  He laughed.
  "You are a slave driver."
  He went to the bedroom, shucked his street
clothes, and put on a pair of sweats and a
T-shirt. He didn't need any shoes since
he was inside. He went back and sat down in the
living room and began to do some basic yoga
exercises Toni had showed him. Stretching was a
luxury you wouldn't get in a real fight, but for
somebody over forty, it was better to do it before working out
than not. A street fight might last ten
seconds; a workout was gonna run thirty minutes
to an hour, depending on how ambitious you were, and the
older he got, the longer it took for a strain to heal.
  As he was doing spinal twists, Toni wandered
back in from the garage.
  "So, how was your day?"
  Given that she had been his assistant and knew as
much about his work as he did--more in some areas--it was
natural for her to ask and just as natural for him
to tell her.
  "Dead calm," he said.
  "Except for a flurry at the end with a kid
hacker posting porno."
  "Oh, boy. And me here missing it all."
  "Well, there were a couple of things mildly
interesting."
  He told her about the drug stuff and about the
cryptic call from the NSA guy.
  She watched him, said, "Keep your back
straight when you turn." Then, "So what does
Jay say about tracking down the dope dealer?"
  "He said it was going to be a bitch. Apparently,
drug sales over the Internet have always been a
problem. Back in the early days, a lot of it was
technically illegal but not prosecuted."
  "How so?"
  "Well, suppose you were seventy years old and
living on social security in North Dakota
or maybe south Texas.
  If you got sick and needed medicine, a
prescription might cost, say, fifty
bucks a bottle. Suppose you had to take two
or three bottles a month for years. That could cut
way into your food budget. So you'd hop a bus
to Canada or to Mexico, where the same drug
might cost sixteen or eighteen dollars. A
local doc writes you a scrip based on your
existing one from the U.s." and even with twenty bucks
for that, you still come out way ahead in the long run."
  "Yeah?"
  "So with the net and cheap home computers or access
through cable TV or whatever, you don't even have
to take the bus ride. You log onto a site,
order what you need, maybe answer a couple of
questions over the wire to keep things more or less legal
in Canada or Mexico, and your prescription
shows up in your mailbox in a day or two,
assuming you are dealing with a reputable outfit."
  "All the way down," she said.
  "And keep your knees straight."
  He chuckled.
  "Being pregnant has made you mean, woman."
  "Oh, you think so? Just wait. So the DBA
didn't leap all over these folks for importing
medicine illegally?"
  "Ha! Think about that for a second. Here's
somebody's little old granny on a pension who's
got a bad heart after working forty years teaching
grammar school kids. Would you want to be the
DEA guy in charge of arresting her for buying her
nitroglycerin or whatever across me border to save
enough money so she doesn't have to eat dog food?
Imagine how many federal prosecutors would want
to hop on that career bandwagon. The press would swarm
you like a cloud of starving locusts. Can't you just see the
headlines?
  "Grandma Busted for Heart Meds!"
  was "It could be a political problem," she said.
  "Oh, yeah, it could. Then there are the drugs that
are legal in other countries but not approved by the
FDA, which, according to Jay, is another whole can of
worms.
  Let's say you want to take Memoril, one
of the new smart drugs that improves your short-term
memory something like seventy percent. The PDA is
still out on that one, but it's been legal in most of
Europe for a couple of years.
  So, you log onto a web page in Spain,
give them your credit card number, and order a
hundred tabs. A few days later, you get a
package from Scotland that looks like a
birthday gift from your Uncle Angus, and inside
is your drug, made by a pharmaceutical company
in Germany.
  And all of this is perfectly legal in Spain,
Scotland, and Germany, and it's not their concern about
laws in the U.s.
  "If Customs happens to guess what's in the
package, they'll confiscate it, because technically it
is illegal, but it's a gray area. If you went
to Spain and got the stuff from a doctor there, you could
bring it home for your own personal use. What's the
difference if it comes by mail or you carried it home
in your pocket? It's malum prohibitum--bad
because it's illegal--not malum in se-bad in itself."
  "When did you start speaking Latin?"
  "Since I asked our lawyers about all this."
  "Watch your shoulder."
  "And then we get to the illegal stuff, which is
easier to prosecute, assuming you know what it is and
know for sure that it is illegal, which is the problem
here. Big purple caps aren't illegal in
themselves."
  "Ipso facto," she said.
  "Talk to me about Latin," he said.
  "So, there you have it. It's really the
PDA'S problem, only the boss made it mine.
She probably owes somebody over there a favor,
and this is it. And the NSA listens to everything on the
air or over the wire, so I can understand how they know
about it, but I don't see why it should interest them.
Fortunately, I have plenty of time to think about it,
things being slow. I wish you were still working there. It would be
more interesting. We all miss you at the office. Me
most of all."
  "You're loose enough. Up. Do your djurus.
You'll feel better after you work out."
  He came to his feet. That was true. He almost
always did feel better afterward. It was the damned
inertia that was so hard to overcome sometimes. Good that he
had Toni here to prod him. Among her many other
virtues.

  Malibu, California
  Naked, Drayne padded into the kitchen to get the
rest of the bottle of champagne from the freezer. He
really ought to get a little fridge for the bedroom, save
him a walk.
  Life was so hard.
  Not that the girl would miss him. What was her name?
  Misty? Bunny? Buffy? Something like that.
He'd say, "Honey," and call it good. She was
out, and she ought to sleep pretty hard, too, given
the athletic encounters and the first bottle of bubbly
they'd just split. She was an actress--all of them
around here were actresses--early twenty-something,
tight, fit, perky. A natural redhead, he had
discovered to his delight, once the itty-bitty
black silk bikini undies had come off.
  Ah, youth, nothing like it.
  He'd picked her up at the gym, which is where he
found most of the girls he brought home. Jocks
tended to be fitter, had less risk of disease, and were
able to play longer before they wore out. He didn't like
his women with too much muscle, so he stayed away from
the hardcore lifters, but there was always a
Misty-Bunny-Buffy working the aerobic bikes
and the light weights, and it never took long for him
to make a connection with one.
  He wasn't bad-looking, and the
twenty-thousand-dollar diamond ring and drop-top
Mercedes two-seater usually impressed them. He
even had some business cards that said he was an
independent movie producer--Bobby Dee
Productions--and that would usually be enough to clinch the
contact if they were about to walk away.
  "Oh, sorry we couldn't get together. Here's my
card. If you are in Malibu, give me a call
sometime."
  Sex was always available, and not just to movie guys
in this town. And Mama Drayne's little boy Bobby
had more than a little endurance in that area, and without any
chemical assistance, either--well, unless you counted
good champagne. He didn't use the drugs he
made, never had. Maybe someday when he got old
and couldn't get it up anymore, he'd whip together a
batch of some custom made dick hardener, but
frankly, he didn't think that was ever gonna
happen. He'd never once had a failure in that
particular arena, thank you very much, and four or five
times a night was nooo problem. Then again, he was not
thirty-five yet. Maybe when you hit sixty or
seventy it was different.
  As he turned from the hallway toward the kitchen,
he saw Tad standing on the beach, staring at the ocean.
  Drayne shook his head. Tad rode the
Hammer, crazy fucker that he was. It was gonna
kill him someday, no question. He was in such crappy
shape, it was a miracle it hadn't killed him
already, should have long since blown a blood vessel in
the man's brain, stroked him blind,
crippled, and stupid, not necessarily in that order.
A night running with Thor was worth a week's
recovery for somebody in pretty good physical
condition, maybe more. Tad ought not to be able to recover
at all, and yet he had swung the Hammer more than
anybody alive and somehow managed to keep breathing.
Of course. Tad had a portable pharmacy he
gobbled, snorted, or shot up after he came off a
Hammer trip. Probably more drugs than blood
circulating in him at any given time. Somehow, he
had managed to stay a step ahead of the reaper.
Pretty damned amazing.
  Drayne opened the freezer, pulled the second
bottle of champagne out. He lifted it to his
lips, thought better about that, and grabbed one of the
chilled glasses on the freezer rack. Drinking it
from the bottle was for barbarians.
  The bubbles didn't get released.
  Had to be civilised about this, didn't we?
  He poured the icy wine into the icy glass,
watched the liquid turn to foam and fountain up, then
slowly begin to settle down.
  Time waiting for champagne bubbles to settle
didn't count.
  Out on the beach, near the water line,
three hulking big jocks ran past, working on their
aerobic fitness. Drayne glanced at Tad,
worried. If Tad decided he didn't like the
way the guys looked, he'd go for them, and big and
strong as they were, they wouldn't have a prayer, Tad
would twist them up like soft pretzels, if that's what
he felt like.
  But the trio jogged past, and if Tad even saw
them, Drayne couldn't tell it from here. Watching
Tad when something like this happened was like watching a
Roman emperor. Thumb up or thumb down, and
nobody knew which it'd be.
  He shook his head. Sooner or later, Tad was
going to step wrong and draw the law's attention. It
had been a while since he'd done it last, and
fortunately, it hadn't led back to Drayne that
time. Plus, the house was clean, that wasn't a
problem, he never kept anything illegal on hand for
longer than it took to mix it and get it out again, but
he didn't need the local deputies knocking on
his door and asking about the crazy asshole dressed
in black who suddenly turned into the Incredible
Hulk and laid waste to the beach. Low profile was
the way to go. If they didn't know about you, they
wouldn't be able to bother you.
  He finished filling up the glass, topped it
off, and put the bottle back into the freezer. He
walked to the deck, sipping at the cold champagne.
Yeasty, with a hint of apple, good finish, no bitter
aftertaste. Not the best, but after five or six
glasses, there was no point in wasting the best; you
couldn't taste the really exotic flavors and
subtle stuff anyhow. As long as it was good enough not
to irritate your stomach, that was all you needed for the
second bottle.
  There was a guy they called the Wine Nazi, up
just north of San Francisco, way out a winding
road in Lucas Valley, who made the best
champagne on earth. Grand Brut, dry as the
Sahara, and he sold futures in it, you bought what
you could afford, he would call you when it was damned
well ready, and if you didn't like it, too fucking
bad. Worked out to about five hundred bucks a
bottle--if you bought a case--and you couldn't buy more
than one case a year. Six thousand bucks a
case, and that was the non vintage stuff. Sometimes it
took eighteen months for the last batch to ripen to his
satisfaction. The really good stuff ran two grand
a bottle, and you had to get on a waiting list for
that, too. Drayne's name hadn't gotten
to the top of that list yet, but next year, he was
pretty sure it would.
  Drayne had done a tour there once. The winery
was tiny, a hole-in-the-wall place, and before he was
done, the Wine Nazi had him climbing up on
barrels to taste the whites and reds right out of the
casks, sucked it out with a long rubber tube and
dribbled into a glass. And after a few sips of that,
the guy had him helping hand-riddle the champagne
bottles. They had to be turned so much every day, so the
silt would settle and all.
  Drayne was an appreciative audience. The
guy was a certified genius when it came to wine, no
question, and the champagne was the best of the lot. Of
course, the Wine Nazi wouldn't let him call it
champagne, since technically that meant it had to come
from that particular region of France, so he called it
sparkling wine. Even though it made the average good
vintage of the French stuff taste like stale ginger
ale.
  That was the stuff you saved for special occasions,
definitely first-bottle, and not something you shared with
Misty-Bunny-Buffy just to get laid. He had
six bottles left, and six months left before he
could buy another case. If he was lucky.
So he had to ration it, one bottle a month, no more,
and even then, he might have to wait. Terrible
situation.
  He grinned. He sure had a lot to complain
about, didn't he? Living in a big house on the
beach in Malibu, good-looking naked woman in his
bed, a shitload of money, six bottles of the best
champagne anybody in this town had.
  Hell, it really didn't get much better than
that. did it?
  Since it didn't look like Tad was going to go
ballistic and destroy the neighborhood, maybe
he should go back to bed and nudge Honey awake.
He was sure he could think up something new for them
to try.
  Yep. That seemed like an excellent idea. He
lifted his glass in a toast to his own cleverness.
Hi, ho, Bobby.
  Away!
  He headed back toward the bedroom.
  Tad felt the power.
  It coursed through him like an electric current,
filling him with pulsing flashes of juice, set him
humming like a dynamo at full spin.
  He was a god out here, deciding the fate
of all who passed. At his whim, he could strike
them down, become Shiva the destroyer, changing the very
configuration of the planet with a mere wave of his hand.
At his whim, which was how gods operated, far as he
could tell.
  He took a breath, and the sensation made orgasm
seem pale in comparison. The thrills ran through his
entire body, he could feel it everywhere at once,
in his hands, his body, even his toes. Man. What
a rush!
  He was a god. Able to do anything he wished.
  And what he wished to do right now was ... walk.
To stride down the beach, to pass among his people,
disguised as a reedy, tubercular man all dressed
in black, but beyond comprehension to mere mortals.
  As far. above them as a man was above an ant.
  They couldn't know. He felt sorry for them, being
so weak, so stupid. So pitiful.
  He started to walk, feeling the sand like a living thing
under his boots, hearing the soft chee-chee-chee
squeaks it made with each step. He was aware of the
evening breeze touching his skin, the smell of salt and
iodine from the sea, the taste of the very air. He was
aware of everything" not just on this beach, but radiating out
to galaxies a billion light-years from where
he walked. It was all his territory, all of it.
If he reached up his arms, he could encompass it
all in his grasp.
  He laughed.
  Ahead, somebody finished up a Frisbee game
and headed for their towels. A beach volleyball
game wound down. Traffic roared past on the
highway, the cars and trucks taking on the aspect
of dragons: fearsome creatures in their element, but
creatures who knew better than to cross his path.
He was Tad the Bershaw, and any being with enough sense
to see him would know he was to be feared.
  He walked through his kingdom, feeling for the moment
benevolent in his omnipotence. He would suffer them
to live.
  For now, anyway.
  JaylandlQuantico, Virginia
  Jay Gridley had always been a man who
enjoyed moving fast. When he slipped into his
sensory gear and the net blossomed before him, infinite
in its possibilities, he had always chosen speed
as his vehicle. If he drove, it was a Viper,
a rocket with wheels that smoked everything else on the
road. Sometimes he flew--rocket packs,
jets, copters, whatever. He created
virtual scenarios that he zipped through like rifle
rounds, clean, fast, slick as a tub full of
grease.
  Oh, now and then he would do period. He'd make
a Western town and mosey into town on a horse.
Or a boat.
  But getting there in a hurry was his pleasure, and
most of his programs reflected that. Getting
business done had always been about getting it done, not
about the trip.
  Not today. Today, Jettin" Jay was out for a
stroll, through an Eastern garden. It wasn't
strictly accurate, his program, it had mixed
elements in it: Right where he was at the moment stood a
Japanese tea house with a little brook running past
it. Just ahead was a Zen garden, three rocks in a
bed of raked sand. But over to the left was a Shaolin
temple, monks out front doing kung fu, and to the
right, a second temple, straight out of
Bangkok, with traditional Siamese dancers
moving like snakes. The Taj Mahal was past that, and
there were even some pyramids off a ways behind him. It
was a veritable theme park of Eastern religious
thought.
  The sun shined brightly, the day was warm with a
little breeze, and the smell of jasmine and sandalwood
mixed with roses and musk.
  Welcome to the land of the happy, nice people. Jay.
  Your kind of place.
  He smiled, walking slowly, not in the least bit
of a hurry. What he wanted was here somewhere, but you
know what? He would get to it when he got to it.
  To be honest, he hadn't exactly embraced the
tenets of Buddhism. The eight fold this, or the
four ways of that.
  But there was an energy about what Saji did and how
she related to it that he did find worth thinking about.
He'd never considered himself much of anything, other than
a computer jock, but this go-with-the-flow stuff--that was
Taoism rather than Buddhism, right?--well, here of
late, it had a whole bunch of appeal.
  Thank Sojan Rinpoche for that, along with her
other, more earthy talents.
  A bee flew past, buzzing, looking for pollen.
  Ah, yes, what could be better than a stroll in
the cosmic gardens-"Hey, Jay, you awake?"
came the somewhat dissonant voice, intruding on his
scenario.
  Jay dropped out of VR, and was at once back
in his office at Net Force. Standing in the
doorway were two coworkers, Alan and Charlie.
  "That door is supposed to be locked," Jay
said, mildly irritated.
  "Yep, and if you hadn't wanted somebody good enough
to rascal the sucker, you'd have hired somebody other
than us," Charlie said. He waved his key card.
  "You ought to change the codes every year or two.
Jay."
  "Would that do any good?"
  "About as much good as me changing the codes on my
bike did," Alan said.
  Jay laughed. He had broken into the comp on
Alan's fuel-cell scooter and programmed it so
it wouldn't go faster than nine miles an hour.
Well, that was the old Jay.
  He was a new man these days. No more
sophomoric games.
  "C'mon, we're going to Pud's for burgers and
beer."
  Jay spoke without thinking.
  "Nah, I'll pass. I'm giving up eating
flesh."
  Both Alan and Charlie stared for maybe two
seconds before they cracked up. They laughed. They
laughed harder.
  They fucking howled.
  "Flesh? Flesh, you said? Ah, hahahaaa!"
  "Gee, Jay, we wouldn't want you to kill and
eat the waitress or anything. Flesh? Oh,
yeah, I can hear that:
  "Excuse me, ma'am, could I get a flesh
burger on an onion bun, and could you sprinkle it
with a little ground-up human skull?"
  was "I dunno, Charlie, come to think of it,
maybe we ought to skip Pud's and go to that new
place, you know. Cannibal Moe's, instead. I
hear they have a real good chicken fried thigh there."
  "Nah, Alan, I think we should go to the new
Donner's Pass Pizza, and pick up a pizza
with fingers and nipples.
  Or maybe the spaghetti and eyeballs."
  "Fuck off and die," Jay said.
  "You know what I mean."
  The two men looked at each other and shook their
heads in mock sadness.
  "Tsk, tsk, tsk," Alan said.
  "The man is in love. Next thing you know, he's
gonna be wearing a cowled robe to work and doing
Gregorian chants up and down the halls."
  "Yeah, and sprinkling rose petals
everywhere and smiling at everybody like a fool."
  "Go away," Jay said.
  They did, cackling down the hall as they went.
  Well. That certainly went well, didn't it?
Maybe you might want to be a little bit more low key
in your conversion to vegetarianism, hmm?
  Too late now. By tomorrow morning, this would be all
over the building. He knew the jokes would be coming,
and he had better recede his lock and his access, or
his computer would be full of crap, too.
  Still, he grinned. He could stand a little ribbing. He
was, after all, the new, improved Jay
Gridley, much more mellow than the old Jay had
been. Much more.

  Washington, D.c.
  Toni came up from sleep all of a moment. She
looked at the clock on the bedside table. Two
a.m." and she was wide awake, not a trace of
drowsiness. Well, wasn't that terrific?
  What, she wondered, had awakened her? Another
hormone-fueled dream she couldn't remember?
  She glanced at Alex, who slept soundly,
tangled in the sheet and a couple of pillows.
Sometimes he snored, and that might do it, but
while he was breathing deeply, he wasn't making
any noise to speak of.
  She listened carefully, but the house was silent.
No footsteps skulking down the hall, no creaks
of doors being stealthily opened. No feeling of
intrusion.
  Was it because she needed to go pee?
  No, not really, she always needed to go pee these
days, and the urge wasn't particularly strong. She
had fallen asleep plenty of times needing to go more
than now. Still, as long as she was awake ... She
got up, went to the bathroom, did what she needed
to do, and padded back to bed. Alex didn't stir.
You could come in and walk off with the place, and he
wouldn't wake up, he slept heavy. He had
told her he hadn't done that before they got married,
but now that she was here, he could could relax. That amused
and pleased her on one level; on another level,
it was mildly irritating. So she had to be
responsible for their safety after hours? Not that she
wasn't qualified, but still... She slipped
carefully back into bed and began practicing her
djurus mentally, going through them step by step in her
mind's eye, striving to capture all the details
of each move. That usually would put her
to sleep before she got very far along, but it wasn't
working tonight. She managed to go all the way through the
eighteen on the right side" and was halfway through doing
them on the left when the phone rang.
  It managed less than half a cycle before
Toni grabbed it.
  "Hello?"
  "Toni? It's me. Mama."
  Toni felt her bowels and belly twist
suddenly. Mama would never call at two in the
morning unless somebody was seriously injured or
dying.
  "Is it Poppa?"
  "No, dear. Poppa's fine. But I'm
afraid it's Mrs.
  De Beers
  "Guru? What happened?"
  "She had a stroke. About fifteen minutes
ago."
  Toni glanced at the clock again. Exactly when
she had awakened. Was this some weird coincidence, or
were she and her elderly teacher psychically connected as
Guru sometimes said?
  "She's on the way to the hospital," Mama
continued.
  "When it happened, she managed to reach her
medical alert button, and the paramedics and
ambulances woke us all up. Poppa is going to the
hospital with your brother.
  I thought you'd want to know."
  POINT OF IMPACT 69
  Alex finally woke up.
  "Toni?"
  She waved him quiet.
  "Which hospital. Mama?"
  "Saint Agnes."
  "Thanks for calling me. Mama. I'll talk
to you later."
  She cradled the phone. Alex was sitting up.
  "Who--?"
  "Guru had a stroke," she said.
  "How bad?"
  "I don't know."
  He nodded.
  "I'll drive you to the airport."
  She blinked at him. Just like that, no question, he
knew she was going.
  "Thank you, Alex. I love you."
  "I know. I love you, too. I'll call and
get you a flight while you get dressed."
  Toni nodded, already up and headed for the shower.
  Guru had been her teacher for more than fifteen
years.
  Toni had started learning the art of pentjak
silat from the old lady when she was already past
retirement age, and she was eighty-three now.
Guru was still built like a squat brick, but even
so, she was not a young woman. A stroke.
  Dear God.
  She turned the shower control on and waited for the
water to warm up. Was she supposed to fly in her
condition?
  Well, supposed to or not, she was going. Guru
was like her own grandmother; whatever was happening to her, she
wasn't going to suffer through it alone.
  Alex was mostly quiet during the drive to the
airport, though he did offer to go with her.
  "Nothing you can do to help," she said.
  "Not her. But I can be there for you."
  She smiled at him.
  "I knew there was a reason I married you.
Keep the home fires burning. I'll call as
soon as I know what's happening."
  It was hard to think about Guru dying. She had been
so much a part of Toni's day-to-day life
from her early teenage years until she left for
college. Every morning, they'd practice before
Toni went off to school. Every afternoon, after she had
done her homework, Toni would head across the street
to the old woman's place, and they would practice the
Indonesian martial art for an hour or two.
Guru De Beers had become part of the family, was
included in all the gatherings: Christmas, Easter,
Thanksgiving, birthday parties, weddings,
graduations. She had finally given up smoking that
nasty old pipe, but she still drank half a
gallon of coffee a day and ate whatever she
pleased. And even though she was in her eighties.
Guru could still give most big strong men fits if
they bothered her enough. She was slower and frailer, but
her mind and skills were still sharp.
  Toni hadn't been to Mass except with Mama
on home visits for a long time, but she offered a
silent prayer:
  Please let her live.

  Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia
  Michaels hadn't managed to get back to sleep
after Toni left for New York, so he was a little
tired. Fortunately, as slow as things
were, he could probably take off early.
  He had a partial staff meeting scheduled, and when
he got there, his people were already at the conference table.
  John Howard, Jay Gridley, and the
just-promoted Julio Fernandez . A few months
ago, Femandez's wife, Joanna, would have been
there, as would Toni. He missed seeing them.
  "Good morning," he said.
  "Commander," Howard and Fernandez said in unison.
  "Hey, I thought it was your turn to bring the
doughnuts, boss," Jay said as Michaels sat.
This was an old joke;
  they never ate doughnuts at the morning meetings.
  "You didn't give up sugar when you gave up
flesh?" Fernandez said.
  "Very funny, Julio."
  Michaels raised an eyebrow.
  Fernandez answered the unasked question: "Our computer
wizard here is turning Buddhist. No more eating
flesh for him. Gonna step around ants on the
sidewalk, too, I expect, chanting from mani
pad me hum while he does."
  Michaels shook his head. Never a dull moment
around here.
  "Okay, what do we have? John?"
  General Howard led off with his weekly report.
New gear, new troops, old business. Things were
slow. They'd be taking various units out on training
runs over the next couple of weeks, unless something
came up.
  Jay didn't have a lot to report, either.
  "Nothing on your dope dealers," he finished.
  "The DEA'S info was pretty sparse and
dead-ended quick. I'll run some other things into the mix
and see what comes up."
  Michaels turned to Howard.
  "I sent a report your way, but in case you
haven't had a chance to read it, we're helping the
DEA run down some kind of new designer drug
that turns the users into temporary supermen. And
sometimes it makes them jump off tall buildings."
  Howard said, "Yes, sir, I saw the report.
Thor's Hammer."
  Michaels said, "Here's another little twist. I
got a call from an NSA guy yesterday. He's
made an appointment to come see me today, in about an
hour, my secretary tells me. He says it's
about this designer drug thing. I'm curious as
to why."
  "What's his name?" Jay asked.
  "The NSA guy?"
  "Last name, George, first name, Zachary."
  Jay shrugged, but tapped it into his flat screen
manual keyboard.
  "Never heard of him, but I'll scope him out."
  "John?"
  "Doesn't ring any bells with me, either," he
said.
  "I can check with my Pentagon contacts."
  "Why would the National Security Agency be
interested in this?" Michaels asked.
  "Dope isn't in their mission statement, is it?"
  Howard said, "Mission statements aren't worth the
paper they are written on, sir. Everybody
stretches them to fit whatever they need."
  Michaels smiled. He had done that himself more than
a few times, and everybody here knew it.
  "I suppose I can wait until the man gets
here and ask him, but I somehow doubt he'll be
entirely forthcoming.
  Anybody have any thoughts I might pursue?"
  "Overspent their budget and need a little extra
cash?"
  Jay said.
  "Wouldn't be the first time an agency sold
drugs to make up a shortfall."
  "I thought Buddhists weren't supposed to be
cynical."
  "Nope, not according to Saji. You can be pretty much
anything and still be a Buddhist. Cynical works."
  , "Except, apparently, a flesh-eater,"
Fernandez said.
  "Well, actually, that, too. Some parts of the world,
like Tibet, where food is scarce, meat is okay.
As long as you do it with the right attitude."
  Fernandez laughed.
  "Yeah, I can see you praying over a Whopper,
chanting and all. Bet they'd love that at BK."
  "You obviously have never been to a D.c.
Burger King," Jay said.
  "You could do a Hawaiian fire dance over your
fries there and nobody would look twice."
  Fernandez laughed. He looked at Michaels and
said, "Maybe one of their people is into drugs. Could be
they are looking at some kind of internal security."
  Howard blew out a small sigh.
  "There's another possibility that springs immediately
to mind. Military applications."
  Michaels looked at him.
  Howard continued.
  "If you have a compound that makes a man think he's
faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a
locomotive, when you put a weapon in his hands and
point him at an enemy, you could have something of
military value, assuming there are controls in
place."
  "Didn't the Nazis try that kind of thing?"
  "Yes, sir, and other armies have tried it since,
from speed to steroids. Nobody has come up with something
cheap and dependable enough yet, but if they did, it would
certainly have useful applications."
  "Would you use such a thing. General?"
  "If it was safe, if it was legal, and if it would
give my people an advantage over an enemy? Bring
more of them back alive? Yes, sir, in a
heartbeat."
  "From what the DEA has given us, this stuff is
neither safe nor legal."
  "But it might be made both. Legal is the
easy part, if it's useful enough. Safe might be
harder, but it might be possible to make it so, and a
lot of services would be willing to explore the
possibility. And there are some armies with fewer
scruples about testing things on their own people than we
have."
  Jay said, "When did the U.s. military
develop scruples, General? Remember The
Atomic Cafe7 "Here, men, put on these
goggles when you look at the nuclear explosion.
  And don't worry about that glowing dust if it gets
on you, just brush it off, you'll be fine."
  was "That was a long time ago," Howard said.
  "Yeah? What about Agent Orange in
Vietnam, or the vaccines against nerve gas and
biowarfare in Desert Storm? Or the new,
improved, supposedly safe defoliants in
Colombia?"
  Before Howard could respond, Michaels said,
"Give it a rest. Jay. We didn't come
to argue about the military's checkered history. And
whatever happened, we can hardly blame General
Howard, can we?"
  Jay shut up, having expressed his standing
liberal attitude.
  "All right. If there's nothing further, I've
got a ton of files to review."
  Forty-five minutes later, as Michaels sat
developing eyestrain scanning computer files using
his new sharp goggles supposedly designed to keep
the letters so clear you wouldn't get eyestrain,
there was a tap at his door.
  "Jay."
  "Boss. I uploaded what I could find on this
George guy.
  I didn't know if you'd get to it before he showed
up."
  "Thanks, Jay, I appreciate it."
  After Jay left, Michaels found the file and
read through it. Not much. There was a brief bio on
Zachary George, place and date of birth,
education, family, and shorter work history. Seemed
Mr. George had been with the NSA since leaving
college fifteen years ago, and the only references
to his status there was a GS number only a
grade below Michaels's own before he was booted
upstairs.
  "Sir?" came the voice of his secretary over
the com.
  "Your nine o'clock is here."
  Well, speak of the devil.
  "Show him in."
  Mr. George wasn't particularly
impressive upon first look. Average height,
average weight, brown hair cut short but not too
short, fair skin, and clothes that were standard
midlevel bureaucrat: a gray suit expensive
enough to look decent, not so expensive as to stand out in your
memory. Black leather shoes. Put him in a
room with four other people, and he'd be invisible. The
guy in the corner who looked totally average?
No, no, not him, the guy next to him.
  Michaels stood and extended his hand.
  "Mr. George."
  "Commander. Good of you to see me."
  "Well, we like to keep relations good with our
fellow agencies. Spirit of cooperation and all."
  "With all due respect, sir, bullshit.
Almost anybody at my agency would cut the throats
of everybody at yours if they thought it would gain them
two brownie points at review time. And that's
pretty much my experience with all the security
agencies I've dealt with."
  Michaels had to smile at that.
  "Don't sugarcoat it that way, tell me what
you really think."
  George returned the smile, and whatever he was
up to, he was interesting.
  "Have a seat."
  The NSA man sat, leaned back, crossed his
ankle over his knee.
  "You figured out what it is I'm up to yet?"
  "I have some thoughts. Why don't you just tell me?"
  George smiled again. It started on the right side
and worked its way across his face.
  "Well, sir, I don't want to make it too
easy for you."
  "Much as I'd like to fence with you, I do have a couple
of other things on my plate. Twenty questions isn't
high on the list. Talk or walk."
  George nodded, as if that was what he expected
to hear.
  "Sir. You may be aware that there are qualities
connected to this drug we spoke of that might be of use
to certain of our military organizations."
  "That thought has crossed my mind."
  "As it happens, my agency has a... research
facility engaged in studying certain
pharmaceutical aids for possible use in ...
field operations."
  "Really?"
  "More information is need-to-know, I'm sorry.
Suffice it to say, we would be very interested in speaking
with the chemist who has come up with this compound when you find
him."
  "Why aren't you talking to the DBA?"
  George smiled.
  "We have. Frankly, we don't think the DEA
has much of a chance of catching the guy."
  "It is their area of expertise, isn't it?"
  "Then why did they come to you for help?"
  That was a good point, but Michaels didn't speak
to it.
  Instead, he said, "And why didn't you just go after the
dealer on your own? NSA has a finger in just about every
pie there is, don't they?"
  "True. And as a result, we are stretched
somewhat thin.
  Net Force has had some excellent results in
its short history, and continuing to speak frankly,
your computer operatives are better than anybody
else's. Including ours.
  You probably know we've tried to, ah ...
recruit some of them."
  Michaels smiled. He knew.
  "No luck?"
  "Oh, yes, plenty of luck ... all bad.
Your organization seems to engender a very high
degree of loyalty."
  "We try to treat our people right."
  "So it seems. But the bottom line
is, we think you'll uncover this dealer before either the
DEA or our own ops will, and we'd like you to keep us
in mind when you do."
  Michaels leaned back in his chair and steepled his
fingers in front of his face for a second, then quickly
put his hands down on the desk. He'd read somewhere
that steepling your fingers was a sign of feeling
superior, and while he certainly felt he had the
upper hand in this discussion, he didn't want to give
anything away. He said, "Even if we did, what
good would it do you? DEA has jurisdiction. We
turn the information over to them, they make the arrest.
End of our participation."
  George hesitated for a second, then said, "Of
course.
  We wouldn't want to usurp the DEA'S legal
position. But a heads-up from you would allow us to,
ah ... begin negotiations with that agency from a
position of knowledge.
  I'm sure we can convince them that the nation's best
interests would be served if we were allowed to question the
criminal before he was locked away to await a long,
drawn-out trial."
  Michaels smiled again. George would know this
conversation was being recorded, and he didn't
want to say anything that sounded remotely illegal,
but it was easy enough to read between the lines here. One
developed a certain expertise in verbal fugue
working in Washington.
  You said one thing, you meant something else, and you used
expression or tone or gestures to make sure your
listener got it. Tape recordings missed visual
clues, and even videos couldn't pick up
between-the-lines stuff.
  George's fugue was simple: You give us the
dope dealer, we rattle his cage real good and get
what we want, then we turn him over to the
  DEA.
  Interesting.
  Michaels's immediate gut reaction was to tell Mr.
Zachary George to scuttle back to his NSA
hole and not let the door hit him on the way out.
But he had learned a thing or two about political
survival in this town, and peeing in somebody's corn
flakes was not a smart move, especially when they
had clout. NSA knew where a lot of bodies were
buried, some figurative, some no doubt quite
literally, and a direct confrontation, while it might
be emotionally satisfying, was not the smart move. It
wasn't just Michaels, it was his agency, and
he had to keep that in mind. A hard lesson, but one
he was learning better and better all the time.
  "Well, I suppose we could keep you in the
loop," Michaels finally said.
  "As a courtesy to a brother agency."
  There was no real fugue here, he wasn't going
to give them squat, but he strived to leave that
impression: Why, sure, we'll scratch your
back. What will you do for us?
  George flashed his crooked smile again.
  "We would appreciate it. Commander. I'm
certain we can return the favor in some small
way."
  The meeting was over, George had said what he
came to say, and it was but the matter of another minute
to exchange good-byes before the man left.
  Interesting, indeed. So the National Security
Agency had some kind of clandestine operation involving
drugs.
  Not really that big a surprise, when you thought about
it.
  There were more sub-rosa operations going on at any
security agency than you could shake a stick at,
some well known in the trade, some hinted at, and some
surely buried so deep that nobody had
happened across them yet.
  Net Force was fairly public, but they didn't
air certain articles of their laundry in public.
And for sure the FBI had its own black-bag ops
skulking about in the shadows.
  It was all part of the game. You couldn't sneak up
on somebody if you had to yell at him through a
bullhorn and flash your warning lights. Even
local police departments knew you sometimes had
to use unmarked cars.
  When and if they came across the drug dealer, then
Michaels could decide whether to let NSA know about
it.
  Probably they wouldn't. Almost certainly not in
time to do anything nasty with the knowledge. If NSA swooped
in and grabbed the dope dealer from under the DEA'S
nose and someone figured out that it was Net Force who
gave the guy up, heads would roll.
  Right now, it was a moot point anyhow. They
didn't have anything to give.
  Before he could get back to his reading, the intercom
cheeped again.
  "Sir, Agent Brett Lee is here. He
doesn't have an appointment, but he seems, ah
... quite insistent on seeing you."
  "Show him in."
  Lee arrived in a huff, glowering.
  "What the hell is Zach George doing here?!"
  "Nice to see you, too, Mr. Lee."
  "You didn't answer my question!"
  "Nor do I intend to. What goes on in my
office is none of your damn business."
  Lee stepped forward, as if he planned on doing
something physical.
  Michaels was tired and cranky. He came
to his feet, ready to move. Go for it, pal. Let
me show you what my wife taught me!
  But Lee stopped, having apparently realized that
throwing a punch at the head of Net Force might not
be a smart career move.
  Too bad. Michaels felt like decking him. This
clown had no right storming into his office demanding
anything.
  "You and George are up to something, and I'm warning
you, it better not get in our way! My boss will be
calling yours," he said, still red-faced and angry.
  "I hope they have a pleasant conversation, Mr.
Lee. But right now, I'm busy, so if you'll
excuse me, I have work to do." He sat and reached for
his viewer.
  In another second, Brett Lee was gone,
leaving an angry wake behind him.
  This was a very interesting development. Much more fun
than reading reports on a dull morning.

  Malibu, California
  When Drayne shuffled into the kitchen with just the
tiniest headache from drinking most of two bottles of
champagne, he saw Tad sprawled on the couch and
dead to the world.
  Good. One of these trips. Tad wasn't gonna
come back, but he was glad it wasn't this time.
He'd miss the guy.
  Tad was balls-to-the-wall and full-out, not too
many like him. And loyal; you couldn't buy that.
  Drayne opened the cabinet over the microwave
oven and dug through the vitamins until he found the
ibuprofen.
  He shook four of the brown tabs into his palm,
swallowed them dry, and put the bottle back. There
were rows and rows of vitamin bottles there, he was a
big believer in such things, but he wouldn't take those
until he had some food in his stomach. He took
so many vitamins and minerals and assorted other
healthy supplements that doing so on an
empty belly was apt to make him nauseated. His
normal intake each morning amounted to maybe
twenty, twenty-five pills, caps, caplets,
or soft gels
  Two grams of C, two caplets; three
E's, 1200 lUs; 120 mg of ginkgo
biloba, two caplets; two Pain Free
tabs, that was 1,000 of glucosamine and 800 of
chondroitin combined;
  couple of fat-burners, mostly chromium
picolinate and L-caritine; 705 mg of ginseng,
three soft gels 50,000 lUs of beta-carotene
in two gel caps 100 mg of DHEA, that was four
pills; couple of saw palm--he didn't really
need that yet, but better to get a head start on
prostate problems, as much screwing as he did--
two gels, 320 mg;
  five mg of Deprenyl to keep the gray matter
from rotting;
  and however many creatine caps he thought he needed
when he was on the cycle, those varied from day to day,
depending on how hard he hit the weights.
  He waited until bedtime before he took the
multiple and his melatonin, plus a couple of
other odds and ends. That many pills down the
hatch every day, dry-swallowing four ibuprofen was
nothing. The stack seemed to work for him, and as long as
it did, he'd keep it up. Prevention was better
than a cure.
  Champagne was his only vice--well, unless you
counted sex--and he made sure he was covered on the
health stuff. He ate pretty well, exercised
regularly, even wore sunblock these days. He
planned to live a long, rich, full life,
unlike Tad, who'd be dead in a year, tops, and
probably a lot sooner.
  He'd tried to talk Tad out of them, the Hammer
trips, but Tad was who he was, and if he did
quit, he'd turn into somebody else. Drayne
could live with the guy running at half speed, but
Tad couldn't, and that was that.
  Misty-Bunny-Buffy was gone, slipped out in the
night sometime. He figured she had a steady boyfriend
or a husband she had to get back to, sleeping with a
producer to maybe get a job didn't really
count, especially not if you were home before dawn. He
was done with her, anyhow.
  She'd been great, but she'd only be new once,
and there was no point in going spelunking in caves where
he'd already been, was there? Unless they were
spectacular--and past a certain point, they
didn't seem to get much better--why bother?
Might be a better one just ahead.
  He looked at his watch, one of those Seiko
Kinetics that you never had to wind or replace the
batteries in; it ran off some kind of tiny
generator that charged up a capacitor or something every
time you moved your wrist.
  Watch would run as long as you could wiggle your arm
a little, guaranteed for life. And if things got to the
point where he couldn't wiggle his arm a little, there
wouldn't be any reason to worry about what time it
was.
  At the moment, it was almost ten a.m.
  He sighed. Too late to get in a workout or a
jog on the beach. Better go take a shower and then
get rolling. He had to drive out to the desert
to restock his mobile lab, and it was a couple hours
each way, even if the traffic was good. He could
take his vitamins with him, get something to eat later.
He needed to be back by six, he had a dinner with the
Zee-ster, that was always good for some laughs. If Tad
had been mobile, he'd have sent him, but he
wasn't and that was that, too.
  Well, at least it looked as if the
weather was okay. Once he got past the smog
curtain, he could drop the top and enjoy the
sunshine. Great thing about SoCal was that you could
pretty much do that year round. Yeah, it rained in the
winter and actually got chilly a couple times in
season, but he'd spent many a January day lying
on the beach cooking under a warm sun. Sure, the
water got colder, but with a wet suit, you could surf
any time. Not that he'd done much of that lately.
Too busy working. Have to remedy that pretty soon.
  He grinned. He wondered what his father would say
if he knew how much money little Bobby had tucked
away.
  Or how he had earned it. The old man would blow
a gasket, that was certain, you'd be able to see the steam
coming out his head for fucking miles. Thirty years with the
Bureau, as straight an arrow as ever put on a
suit, his old man, a guy who'd always paid his own
parking tickets rather than flash his FBI badge at
a meter maid.
  And for what? What had all that nose-to
the-grindstone, Johnny-be-good crap gotten his
old man?
  It had gotten him retired to a condo in
Tucson, Arizona, just him and that little
terrier of his. Franklin, living on a pension and
bitching about how the world had gone to hell in a
handbasket. Actually, Drayne kinda liked the
dog. Best thing his old man had done since Mom
died was get a dog, not saying much. First week
he'd had the beast, it had come back inside carrying
a big ole dead rat it had caught. Rat almost as
big as the dog, and you'd have never thought by looking at the
little barker that he had it in him. Drayne liked that.
  It had been more than a year since he had gone
to visit his father. Franklin must be pushing nine or
ten by now, probably middle-aged in dog years.
  Drayne often wondered, if his old man found out
what he was doing, would he turn him in? Some days
he was sure that former Special Agent in Charge
Rickover Drayne, RD to his friends, most of
whom were feds, would do it, no question. Other days, he
wasn't so sure.
  Maybe the old bastard had a soft spot for his
only son.
  Not that Drayne had ever been able to see it.
  As far as the old man knew, Bobby worked for a
small chemical company that produced plastic
polymer for use in industrial waste containers,
earning a decent salary, just a hair more
than his father had made in his last year before
retirement. This was done so the old man would think
all that tuition money for the chemistry degree hadn't
been wasted. He might have his differences with his son,
but at least he could say the boy had a legitimate
job making decent money.
  Of course, that was as much for Drayne's
protection as for making his father proud. He had gone
to some lengths to create the PolyChem Products
company, duly incorporated in Delaware, to set
up a modest history in a few selected computer
banks, and to make sure he was listed as an
employee. Just in case his father checked it out. He
wouldn't put it past the old man to do that. Paid
taxes on the paper job salary he showed, too, and
FICA and all that shit. IRS didn't care what
you did as long as you paid taxes. He could have declared
his income from dope sales and paid the feds their cut,
and the IRS would never say anything to the DEA about it.
People had done it before.
  The government, in whatever form it manifested, was
plainly stupid. He could dick around with them all
he wanted, and they'd never catch him.
  Drayne wandered into the bathroom and cranked up the
shower. It was a big sucker, room enough for
four or five people, all pale green tile and
glass bricks, with a dozen shower heads set all
over: high, low, in-between. With the jets turned on
full blast, it was like being stabbed by wet needles.
Used a shitload of water--he had a pair of
eighty-gallon water heaters in the garage--but when
you came out of it, you felt clean and rejuvenated, that
was for sure.
  He stepped into the shower and gasped at the force of the
spray.
  Tad would be out for probably eighteen or twenty
hours, maybe longer. He'd still be on the couch when
Drayne got back. Maybe even still breathing. And
he'd spend most of the next week or so on the
couch, lying on the floor, or, if he made it that
far, a bed. Recovering from the Hammer was a chore.
It got harder each time.
  Drayne stopped thinking and let the hot water
take him.
  86 NET FORCE The Bronx, Neuj York
  Toni sat in the chair next to Guru's bed,
watching the old woman sleep. Mrs. De Beers
had been lucky, the doctor told her. The stroke
was mild, and she was in otherwise remarkable health for
an eighty-three-year-old woman.
  There was only a slight effect on her grip and
speech, no real paralysis, and they expected
she'd make a full recovery.
  There were still tests they had to run and medications they
had to administer and monitor for a couple of days, but
pretty much they thought she was out of the woods.
  The doctors only told her that because Guru had
listed her as next of kin, even though that wasn't
true.
  Toni was more than a little relieved. Guru De
Beers had been a part of her life since Toni
had seen her, at sixty five clean the clocks of
four neighborhood toughs who tried to give her a
hard time. Toni had been amazed at the sight and
had known immediately she wanted to learn how to protect
herself against physical attacks that way.
  Men tended to take women for granted physically,
and even at thirteen Toni had known she did not
want to be at the mercy of some man who decided he
wanted something from her she didn't want to give. The
training in pentjak silat, starting with the simple
bukti negara style and progressing to the more complex
serak, had been a part of Toni's world ever since.
She still went over to see her teacher whenever she went
home to visit her parents, and the trip across
the street had never gotten dull.
  Old as Guru was, it was impossible to imagine
her gone.
  "Ah, how is my tunangannya today?"
  Toni smiled. Best girl. There was the
smallest slur to Guru's voice, hardly
noticeable.
  "I'm fine. Guru. How are you feeling?"
  "I've felt worse. Better, too. It would
be nice to have some coffee."
  "The doctors won't let you do that, not after a
stroke."
  "I have outlived three sets of doctors so far.
I will outlive this set if they wait for coffee
to kill me. And if does kill me, at least I
die happy."
  Toni smiled again, and reached into her purse. She
brought out a small stainless steel thermos.
  The old woman's smile was radiant, if a
trifle saggy on the left side of her face.
  "Ah. You are a dutiful student."
  "It's not fresh," Toni said.
  "I didn't have time to go by your place and grind your
grand-nephew's beans and make it. I got it at
Starbucks more than an hour ago. I'm
sorry."
  Guru shrugged.
  "It will do. Raise the bed."
  Toni operated the controls, and the motor hummed
and raised Guru into a more-or-less sitting
position. Toni poured the coffee into the thermos's
cup and passed it over.
  Guru inhaled deeply through her nose.
  "Espresso?"
  "Of course. The darkest they had."
  "Well, stale or not, it is welcome. Thank
you, my best girl." Guru brought the cup to her
lips and took a small sip.
  "Not bad, not bad," she pronounced.
  "Another hundred years or so, and Americans
might learn how to make a decent brew. And
certainly it is better than nothing."
  She took another sip, then smiled again.
  "And how is our baby doing?"
  "Fine, as far as I can tell. Mostly he
elbows me in the bladder or rolls around and tries
to boot my stomach inside out."
  "Yes, they do that. And he is tiny yet. Wait
until you are eight or nine months along, and he
kicks you so hard your pants fall down."
She chuckled.
  "There's a pleasant thought."
  "You are worried because you cannot train," Guru said.
  Toni shook her head. How could she know
exactly what was going through her mind?
  "I had four children," Guru said.
  "All after I began my training. Each time, I
had to alter my practice."
  "So I'm discovering."
  "You can do djuru-djuru sitting down," she said.
  "Your langkas will need to be sharpened, but there is
no reason to stop upper body movements."
  Toni nodded. The Indonesian martial art
forms Guru taught were divided into two parts, upper
body, or djurus, and lower body, or langkas.
You usually lumped them together and called the whole thing
a djuru, though that was not technically correct.
  "I have some things in my house for you to take home
with you when you go. I have packed them into a big box by the
front door."
  Before Toni could protest. Guru continued,
"No, it is not my time yet, and I am not giving you
your legacy before I go. These are merely things I
think you will enjoy and that I no longer have a need for."
  "Thank you. Guru."
  "I am proud of you as a student and as a woman,
best girl. I expect I will live long enough
to cuddle your child."
  Toni smiled. She certainly hoped so.

  Quantico, Virginia
  The woman was young, maybe twenty-two,
twenty-three, and dressed in jeans, a black
T-shirt, and running shoes, nothing that unusual
about her appearance. She was nobody you'd cross the
street to get a better look at, but nobody you'd
cross the street the other way to avoid because she was
hideous, either. Average-looking.
  The woman approached an automated bank
teller, put in her card, and stood back.
Apparently there was some malfunction. The woman
smiled, then, without preamble, drove her fist through the
teller's vid screen. Shattered glass flew every
which way, and even before it finished falling, the woman was
grabbing at a garbage basket on the sidewalk.
She picked up the basket and began hammering at the
teller, smiling all the while.
  Alex Michaels leaned back in the chair and
said, "There's something you don't see every day."
  Jay Gridley said, "Actually, it
happens quite a lot, according to Bureau agents I've
talked to. Although the level of violence is usually
much less. People tend to spit at the screen or
camera, slam it with the edge of their fist i once or
twice, even kick at it. Sometimes they scratch the
glass with their car keys. Nobody's ever seen one
quite this ... ah ... active before."
  "What happened after she trashed the video cam
recording it?"
  Jay said, "According to witnesses, the destruction
continued until she really got pissed off, whereupon
she somehow managed to rip the machine free of its
mountings, scattering several thousand dollars in
twenty-dollar bills all over the sidewalk. A
small riot ensued as concerned citizens sought to
... ah ... recover the money for the bank."
  The boss laughed.
  "I bet. How much of it was turned in?"
  "About fifteen percent."
  "Well, at least there are still a few honest
citizens left.
  So we have another drug berserker who destroyed a
bank machine. Why is this more special than the
others?"
  "The woman is Mary Jane Kent."
  "Related to the arms and chemical companies
Kents?"
  "Yes, sir. She's the secretary of
defense's daughter."
  "Oh, my."
  "Slumming in those clothes," Jay said.
  "Way I hear it, she could paste her diamonds
all over herself and show less skin than in jeans and a
T-shirt. With enough left over to make a cape."
  "The family has a bit of money."
  Jay nodded. There was an understatement. The Kent
family had become modestly rich during the
Spanish Civil War in the '30's, running
guns into Spain via Portugal.
  They made out like bandits in World War II, and
had done quite well in assorted revolutions and
border wars, since. The men in the family generally
took turns managing the family fortune and tended
to became ambassadors, cabinet officers, or
U.s. senators; the women did charity work, ran
foundations, and tended to marry badly. Every now and then,
a couple of the scions would switch roles, and the
girl would manage the company while the boy ran a
foundation.
  Certainly, the rich had their problems,
too, but Jay couldn't feel too sorry for
somebody with half a gazillion dollars tucked
away waiting for them to come of age. It was one thing
to start poor and earn your way to luxury, another thing
to be born with a platinum spoon in your mouth.
  He said, "She beat the crap out of four of
LAPD'S finest before she ran out of steam. A
passing doctor happened along during the struggle and
sedated her. Hit her with a hypo full of enough
Thorazine to knock out a large horse, according to the
reports, and it slowed her down, but not completely.
She isn't talking about what drug she took or
where she got it, but she was apparently on a shopping
trip, and she used her credit card until it maxed
out. That was why the bank machine wouldn't give her
any cash."
  "Ah," the boss said. He thought about it for a few
seconds, then said, "Just how much does a
billionaire's daughter have to spend to max out a
credit card?"
  "Take a look."
  He handed Michaels a FROM tag, and the boss
thumbed the pressure spot and looked at the number
that appeared on the tag.
  "Good Lord!"
  "Amen. Enough to buy a yacht and an island to sail
it to," Jay said.
  "I got most of the credit card company's tags.
If we can backtrack her and find out how and where she
spent her money, the DEA guy you sicced on me
says they are willing to put more bodies on the
street to check everything out. It's not much, but it's
what we have."
  Michaels nodded. He looked at the tag again.
  "Never fear, boss, Smokin' Jay Gridley
is on the case."
  He gave Michaels a two-finger Cub Scout
salute and headed for his office.
  Michael's com chirped, and the caller-ID
signal told him Toni was trying to reach him. He
grabbed the headset.
  "Hey."
  "Hey."
  "How's Guru doing?"
  "Doing okay," Toni said.
  "Doctor says she's gonna be all right."
  "Good. I know you're relieved to hear that."
  "Yes, I am. Anyway, I'll be catching a
shuttle back this afternoon. I should be home when you get
there."
  "Great. You want me to stop and pick up something
for supper?"
  "Nan, we can just call the Chinese place when you
get home, if that's okay."
  "If you promise not to get the octopus squid
special again," he said.
  She laughed.
  "I get cravings, what can I say? It's part
of the pregnancy."
  "Me eating in the other room is going to be part
of the pregnancy, too, you keep slurping that slimy
stuff down."
  She laughed again.
  "How's work?"
  "The usual. Got a lead on that drug thing we
talked about. It's not much, but Jay is running with
it. Other than that, it's pretty quiet around here.
A yawn in the park.
  Be nice if things picked up a little."
  "Careful what you wish for. I miss you."
  "I miss you, too. Fly safe."
  "I will. See you tonight."
  She hung up, and he blew out a relieved
sigh. With all the pregnancy stuff, having her
silat teacher kick off would have been another
brick on Toni's load, and she didn't need
any more weight right now.
  A nice, quiet evening at home with Chinese
takeout would be fine by him.
  "Sir. You have a call from Richard Sharone on
line five."
  Michaels shook off his daydream of supper and
Toni.
  "Who is Richard Sharone, and why should I talk
to him?"
  "He's the president and CEO of
Merit-Wells Pharmaceuticals."
  Michaels blinked. Why would the head honcho at
one of the world's largest drug companies be calling
him?
  Oh.
  Michaels stared at the com's headset. He
might not be the sharpest needle in the package, but he
wasn't completely dull. What did Net Force
have to do with drugs?
  Nothing, until the DEA asked for their help with
this esoteric dope they were trying to find. First it was
NSA, now the overlord of a drug company. Man.
Somebody wanted this stuff bad.
  Probably get a call from the Food
and Drug Administration next.
  "This is Commander Alex Michaels. How can I
help you, Mr. Sharone?"
  But he was pretty sure he already knew.
  Net Force Shooting Range, Quantico,
Virginia
  John Howard stood on the line at the firing
range, ready to start. He said, "Eight meters,
single. G."
  A three-hundred pound crazed biker blinked
into existence eight meters down the alley. The biker
held a tire iron, and he lifted it and charged right
at Howard, no hesitation.
  Fast for a fat man, he was, too.
  Howard slipped his right hand under his Net Force
windbreaker, cleared the jacket, caught the smooth
wooden grips of his side arm, and pulled the weapon
from the custom-made Fist paddle holster. He
brought the Phillips and Rodgers Model 47
Medusa up and shoved it one handed toward the biker as
if punching him.
  The biker was less than four meters away now,
three, two... Howard pulled the trigger, once,
twice ... The gun roared and bucked hard.
  Two rounds hit the biker five feet
away. The running man collapsed and slid to a
stop inches from Howard's spit-shined,
patent-leather-bright shoes.
  Cut that a little close, John.
  The biker disappeared, like turning off a lamp.
  Which, in essence, was what happened. The hologram
was, after all, just a particularly coherent brand of
light.
  But the computer cams that watched it all
calculated the flight path of Howard's two
.357 slugs as they zipped down range, and having
decided they would have struck vital areas on a real
human target, gave him the ersatz victory.
  Score one for the good guys.
  Howard reholstered the handgun and looked at the
score screen. He saw the image of the biker there
and noted the pulsing red spots where the bullets
hit. The one marked with right-brace was in the
heart, the 1 round was slightly higher and to the right.
With the best .357 Magnum orbledj rounds, one-shot
knockdowns hovered right about 94 to 96 percent with a
solid body hit, as good as a handgun got--and it
didn't even have to be to a fatal area. The first shot
would have done the trick, and probably a real
attacker would be dead or well on the way
there by now.
  Dead wasn't the thing, though, it was the stopping power
that was important. You could shoot somebody in the leg
with a .22 and it might nick a big blood vessel
and eventually kill him. Thing was, eventually
wouldn't do you much good if the guy kept coming, beat you
to a pulp with his tire iron or crowbar, then went
home and died in a few days, a few hours, even
a few minutes. No good at all. When you shot
somebody, you wanted them to fall down right now;
anything less was bad. They lived or died, that was
something to worry about later. You didn't have time
to ponder on it in the moment.
  Handguns were lousy weapons for instant stops,
relatively speaking. A shotgun was better; and a
good rifle better still. He smiled as he
remembered the old story about a civilian who
carried a handgun. A friend asked him, "Why do you have
a pistol? Are you expecting trouble?"
  And the guy answered, "Trouble? No. If I was
expecting trouble, I'd be carrying a rifle."
  Then again, it was kind of hard to slip a scoped
.308 sniper rifle under your Gore-Tex
windbreaker. And the first rule of a gunfight was ...
Come on, John. You gonna shoot or
stand here daydreaming?
  "Reset," he said.
  The screen went blank.
  "Ten meters, double. Thirty-second delay.
G."
  This time, the scenario computer gave him two
attackers.
  One looked like a pro wrestler holding a long
knife, the other an NFL lineman with a baseball
bat. They charged.
  Howard drew, gave the wrestler two, shifted his
hand, and gave the lineman two. The last of the four
cartridges in the revolver left the barrel at about
the same time the lineman got within bat range.
  Both attackers fell.
  Howard thumbed the cylinder latch open with his right,
pointed the gun at the ceiling, and used his left hand
to slap the extractor rod hard enough to punch the
empties out of the chambers. The hulls fell to the
range floor. He pulled a speed loader with
six more cartridges from his left windbreaker
pocket. Reloading the PR was trickier than
doing it with his old SandW. There were spring-loaded
clips in each chamber of the black-Teflon-coated
PR, to allow for using various calibers--
the thing would shoot380's, .38's, .38
Specials, and 9 mms, as well as .357
Magnums--and you had to keep the extractor partway
out to make the speed loader work, and even so, it was
slower than the Smith was.
  Still, if you couldn't get the job done with six, you
probably weren't going to be able to get it done at
all.
  He managed to get all six of the reloads into the
chambers.
  He dropped the speed loader on the floor,
hit the cartridges with the heel of his right hand a
couple of times to get them fully seated, closed the
cylinder, then brought the gun up into a two-handed
grip as the third attacker appeared.
  The attacker was a naked woman with a samurai
sword.
  Well. Somebody was getting creative with their
programming.
  He wondered who Gunny had doing the scenarios.
  He'd have to ask.
  Since he was ready when the woman came to life,
he had plenty of time. He lined the front sight
up on her nose and fired one round.
  One to the head was plenty.
  He looked at the score screen. Three for
three. Not bad for an old man.
  Gunny's voice came over the intercom, easy
to hear with the smart earphones that kept loud noises out
but let normal sounds in.
  "General, we have a troop of Explorer
Scouts coming by in a few minutes. Okay if they
watch you shoot?"
  Before he could respond. Gunny said, "That's
"cause we want to show them how not to do it."
  "You want to come out here and let me show you how it
is done. Sergeant?"
  Gunny chuckled, and Howard had to smile. That was
less than an idle threat. Gunny could shoot the
pants off Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill
Hickok, and John Wesley Hardin all at the
same time, either hand, and you pick it. He was outstanding
with anything you could pick up and fire.
  Came from being a full-time range officer and
daily practice.
  Too bad Gunny didn't want to compete
anymore.
  They could use him in the annual shoot against the
other services. He claimed he was too old, and
as he was only three or four years past
Howard's age. Howard didn't much like hearing that.
  Howard himself was lucky if he got to the range
three or four times a month. Usually Julio
came with him, but with a new baby at home, he was
doing father duty, and that cut into his practice time.
  Julio was about to learn that a baby changed all
kinds of priorities.
  Gunny said, "Thirty seconds for a reload?
Two-plus seconds to take out two goblins you
started halfway to Los An-ju-leeez? Lord, we
could have gone out for dinner and a movie and gotten back
before you finished. I don't guess you're about
to threaten the Ragin" Cajun's records anytime
soon, sir."
  Howard chuckled at that. The Ragin' Cajun was
Jerry Micuiek, a pro shooter who'd set the
modern revolver record a dozen or so years
ago, down in Mississippi. Using an
eight-shot .38 Special revolver, he put
all eight rounds on a target in one second
flat. He also fired at four different targets,
two rounds each, and hit them all just 0.06 of a
second slower. Andwitha six-shooter, he was was able
to put six hits on one target, reload, and put
six more there in just over three seconds.
By those standards, thirty seconds was a couple of
eons.
  Howard had had his revolver fitted with a set of
grips designed by Micuiek, but it hadn't helped
that much.
  Of course, more than sixty-five years before
Micuiek, the legendary Ed McGivem fired
five shots from a 1905 Smith and Wesson Hand
Ejector Military and Police .38 into a
playing card in a mere 0.4 of a second.
  No way Howard could ever get close to any of
that, not if he practiced every day of the week and twice
on Sunday. Still, for his purposes, he was good enough for
government work. Tests had shown that a
fair-to-middling shooter took between a second and a
second and a half to draw a handgun from concealment and
get a shot off.
  If a man with a tire tool or a knife was
inside twenty or so feet and was in a hurry,
he'd get to you before you could shoot him. If he was
closer than that, and your gun was in the holster, best you
make some space or be ready for hand-to-hand to hold
him off long enough to draw your piece.
  Of course, if Howard went somewhere expecting
trouble, he was sure going to be carrying a
rifle. Maybe a submachine gun, and it would be
pointed in the general direction of any trouble, too.
  Then again, he had gotten shot when he hadn't
been expecting it, so this was a skill he needed
to hone.
  "Don't forget to stop and have your ring
reprogrammed on the way out, sir."
  Howard nodded. All Net Force guns were smart
technology now. You wore a ring with a code that
changed every month or so. If somebody not wearing a
properly coded ring picked up a Net Force
weapon and tried to use it, it wouldn't fire. Howard
still didn't trust it, but so far there hadn't been any
failures of the system, at least not with his people. It was
a good idea in theory, but if one of his team ever
pointed a gun that didn't go bang! when it was
supposed to, there would be hell to pay, and he'd be
leading the devil's collection team himself, assuming
it wasn't his gun that malfunctioned and got him
killed.
  "Reset," he said.
  "Seven meters, one."
  Make it a little more challenging, this time ... "Go!"
  He reached for his gun.
  12
  Los Angeles' California
  The gag came to Bobby as he was driving back from
the desert.
  It happened because a year or so ago, he had
concocted about a quarter kilo of something he called
GD, short for Giggle Dust. At the time,
he'd had a customer somewhere interested in it, but something
must have happened, and he'd stuck it into a drawer in the
RV and completely forgotten about it. When he'd
been there today talking to Ma and Pa Yeehaw, who
actually were married and from Missouri originally, he
happened to open that drawer, and son of a bitch loo
kit there it was. Eight ounces of the gray green
powder, worth an easy four grand if he wanted
to bother with it. Free money.
  GD was a blend of MMDA--AN analog of
MDA, or Ecstasy--some psilocybin from a batch
of dried baeocystis mushrooms he'd bought from a
guy in British Columbia, and a little dexadrine.
Everybody didn't react to it the same way, of
course, but in most people, it tended to make for a really
happy trip, laughing, giggling, speeding their asses
off, beaming at everybody, and having a fun time in
general. Problem was, the mix was iffy, and it was
hard to get the recipe exact. This batch
worked pretty good--he'd let Tad try a hit
way back when--but the next mix might not. The
mushrooms were the key, and they varied all over the
place. Only real side effect was it tended
to make you thirsty but not able to pee, so when it wore
off, you'd be spending a lot of time in the John.
  The gag would take all the GD he had, but
what the hell, if you couldn't have fun, why bother?
He had precursor for another batch of the Hammer,
he already had orders for fifteen grand or so lined
up, and probably another five or eight thousand
would be in by the time he got ready to mix. Money
wasn't a problem. He had money to burn.
  The more he thought about it, the better he liked it.
So he might be late for his dinner with the Zee-sterno
big deal. Zee was gonna be out of it anyhow, if
he'd swung the Hammer last night. He wasn't
in as bad shape as Tad, Zee was a jock, but
even with chemical assistance, he was gonna be
dragging ass today. And he was usually late, even when
he was straight.
  Drayne grinned. Yeah. He was gonna do it.
He could cut over to the 405, get off at
Westwood, and it would be right there, just up Wilshire,
no problem. It was still early enough he could beat
most of the traffic. Thirty, forty minutes, he'd
be pulling up next to the Federal Building.
  He been there enough times when his old man had still been
protecting the republic.
  The building was the home of the Los Angeles
office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  Oh, yeah, this was gonna be a hoot, all right.
  102 NET FORCE Malibu
  Still hardly able to move. Tad managed to sit up
on the couch to stare at Bobby. There weren't many days
when he thought Bobby was crazier than he was. This
was one of them. He said, "You're shittin' me."
  "Nope."
  "You blew four thousand dollars' worth of
Giggle Dust to stone fuckin' FBI HQ in
L.a.?"
  "Yep."
  "You're friggin' nuts, Bobby."
  "I'd have spent that much more to have been a fly on the
wall. Maybe we can get one of the security
recordings of it someday. See all those uptight
fuck heads laughing and holding hands and being in tune
with the universe and all."
  "Jeez, Bobby, you have to let that go. They are just
doing their jobs, you know? That's why they
hire "em."
  "You don't know what you're talking about. Tad."
  "Yeah, yeah. Okay. How'd you pull it off?"
  "Easy. They got great security, but I went
to fill out an application for a job on the floor
above them. Got out to the roof, up to the air
conditioners, found the right vents, moved a couple of
filters, voila! the air is full of magic."
  "Four grand. For a practical joke."
  "Tad, Tad, Tad. Let me tell you a
story."
  "Aw, geez, not another of your shaggy dog
stories!"
  "Shut up. Tad. Listen and learn:
  "So there's this couple in Vegas, see, and after a
long day, they go upstairs and go to bed. Wife
drops off to sleep, but the husband can't, so he
gets up, gets dressed, and goes down to the
casino with ten bucks. He goes to the craps table,
puts it down, throws a natural, and he's a
winner!
  "So he lets it ride, and wins again. And again.
And yet again!
  "This is incredible stuff. He's throwing
naturals, he's making points the hard
way, he can't lose.
  "Next thing you know, the guy has parlayed his
bets up to almost a million bucks. And he's
feeling unbeatable, so he lets it ride one more time.
If he wins, he's gonna leave rich.
  "He throws snake eyes and loses it all.
  "He goes back to his room. As he's
getting into bed, he wife wakes up.
  "Where you been?" she asks.
  his
  "I went down to play a little craps," he
says.
  his
  "How'd you do?"
  "Guy slips under the covers, shrugs, says,
"I lost ten bucks."
  was The conversation sat still for a moment. Tad said,
"Okay, funny. And, uh, what exactly is the
point?"
  "Point is, it's all gravy. Tad. This
morning, I didn't know the GD existed, so when
I came across it, it was like something for nothing. I used
it up, I had a big laugh, it didn't cost me
anything. Hell, I didn't even lose ten
bucks. I came home with as much in my
pocket as when I left this morning. Except what
I paid for the tofu burger for lunch."
  "You go a long way to make a point, man. And
I don't know how you can eat that tofu shit."
  "Yeah, well, getting there is half the fun,
isn't it?"
  Tad had to nod.
  "Yeah. I guess you're right. But you're still a
crazy motherfucker."
  "So who's arguing with that?"
  "Jesus." A beat, then, "So how is the
Zee-ster?"
  "Probably as burned out as you are. He
didn't show.
  How you holding up?"
  "I've been worse."
  "Want to eat something?"
  "Nah, not yet. Maybe in a day or two.
I'll just pop a few pills."
  "Keep it up. Tad, pretty soon nothing
short of tanna leaves is gonna bring you back."
  "Karis, the mummy, with Boris Karloff,"
Tad said. Like half the people in L.a." Tad was an
old-movie buff. He especially loved those old
black-and-white Universal monster
pictures.
  "Well, at least part of your brain still works.
I'm gonna get some champagne. You want some?"
  "And rot my liver? Shee-it."
  Bobby laughed and said, "I'm gonna miss you.
Tad."
  Tad nodded.
  "I know. But that was always in the cards, man. Always
in the cards."

  HemphUl, Texas
  Jay Gridley hiked down a country road, not
far from the Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Sabine
River, just across the state line from Louisiana, a
place he had once visited as a child. Long-leaf
pine and red dirt and lazily buzzing flies
completed the summer scene. When he'd actually been
here in real time, he'd been eight or so, walking
with a couple of his cousins, Richie and Farah.
Richie was his age, Farah was four. They had seen
a long reddish snake wiggling on the road, and all
excited, he and Richie had run back to tell their
parents. Jay hadn't been able to understand why his mom
and Aunt Sally had jumped up in such a panic.
  "Where is Farah!"
  "Hey, don't worry, we left her to watch the
snake, she won't let it get away."
  He smiled at the memory.
  Just ahead, a white-haired old man in a
dirty T-shirt and overalls--no shoes--sat in
the shade of a tall pine tree and whittled on a
long stick with a Barlow jackknife.
  Jay liked to get the small details right in his
scenario work.
  "Howdy," Jay said.
  "Howdy, yo'self," the whittler said. A long
wood shaving curled up from the edge of the knife
blade.
  In RW, Jay was querying a server for information that
would be downloaded into his computer spool; but in
VR, it was much more interesting.
  "What's happening"?" Jay asked.
  "Not much," the whittler allowed.
  "This and that. You heard about them FBI guys got
poisoned?"
  "Stoned," Jay said, "not poisoned." He
smiled. Yep, that had been a funny one. Something
to wave at the Bureau boys when he ran into them in
the cafeteria. The regular feebs were always ragging
on Net Force about one thing or another, so
any ammunition Jay could gather to pop off at comthem
in return was good, especially since the L.a.
incident hadn't hurt anybody, only
embarrassed "em.
  "Anybody come through selling snake oil
lately?"
  In this case, "snake oil" was a representation
of the mysterious purple cap the DBA was all hot
to run down.
  And not just them, so it seemed.
  Along his way. Jay had stopped to chat with
several local characters, and so far, he hadn't turned
up anything.
  But this time, it was different.
  "Well, yes, sir, there was this fellow come through a
little while ago had some of that stuff, I do
believe."
  Jay's laid-back Zen attitude vanished.
  "What? When?
  Which way did he go?"
  Whittler spat a stream of something dark and icky
and pointed with the knife.
  "He headed on up the road, over toward
Hemphill, I reckon."
  Jesus! Could it be this easy?
  "Was he walking?"
  "In a horse-drawn wagon."
  Speed, he needed to get moving if he was going
to track and run down the dope dealer. He looked
around. He could drop out of this scenario and switch
to another, or do it in RT with voxax or a
keyboard... No, wait, he had a toggle he
could use, a backup. He did it, and suddenly there
was a moped leaning against a tree, just there.
  "Mind if I borrow the bike?"
  "He'p yo'self."
  Jay ran to the moped, essentially a heavy
bicycle with a motor that you started by pedaling the bike.
It wasn't a Harley, but it was faster than a
horse-drawn wagon, and a lot better on a
gravel road than a hog would be anyhow, at least
the way he rode, even in VR.
  He hopped on the moped and started pedaling.
  This contemplative Buddhist stuff was all well
and good, but when things started to break, you needed to be able
to move!
  The little two-cycle motor belched, emitted a
puff of white smoke via the tailpipe, and started
up.
  The boss would be really happy if Jay
could wrap this up.
  Washington, D.c.
  Michaels was moving the boxes Guru had sent
home with Toni when he came across a small,
highly polished wooden one that gleamed, even under the
dust.
  "Very nice," he said, holding it up.
  Toni glanced over from where she was piling shoes.
  She already had a molehill of them in the hall, the
mound threatening to become a small mountain completely
blocking the door to the bedroom.
  "Oh, I forgot all about those."
  Toni came over to where Michaels stood and
took the box from him, flipped the brass catch up,
and opened the lid, then turned it to show him.
  "Wow," he said.
  She removed a pair of small knives from
velvet-lined recesses in the box, then pulled out
a shelf to reveal a hidden space under it. There was a
thick leather sheath in the bottom section. It looked
like somebody had chopped a third or so off the end of a
banana and flattened the sides. She took the sheath
out and inserted the two curved blades into it so that they
rode side by side, separated only by a center
strip of leather. They were all metal, the
knives, and the pommel end of each consisted of a thick
circle with a big hole in the middle. With a quick
move, Toni pulled both blades, dropped the
sheath onto the carpet, and brought her hands together. When
she pulled her hands apart, each one wore a
knife, with short and nasty looking curved blades
extending point forward, maybe two inches from the little
finger sides of her palms. Her forefingers went through
the rings on the end.
  "These are a variation on kerambits," she said.
  "Sometimes called lawi ayam. Indonesian
close-quarters knives."
  She turned her hand over, palms up, to show him.
  He took a closer look. The things were short,
maybe five or six inches long, and most of that was
the flat handle with the hole in it. The cutting hooks
themselves looked like little talons. The steel had an
intricate pattern of lines and whorls in it.
  "The traditional ones are usually longer and sharp
on both edges. Guru had these made for her by a
master knife smith and martial artist in
Keenesburg, Colorado, a guy named Steve
Rollert. I guess it must be ten, twelve years
ago, now. They are forged Damascus, folded and
hammered to make hundreds or thousands of
layers in the steel. Edge is heat-treated
differently than the body, so it's hard and will stay
sharp, while the body has a little more flex to it.
  "See, you put your forefinger through the hole and grip
it so. You can also turn it around and use your little finger,
with the blade coming out on the thumb side, like this."
  She demonstrated the move, then moved it back
to the first grip.
  "And perfectly legal to carry around, I
suppose?"
  She grinned.
  "Actually, you can in some states if you wear them
on your belt, out in the open. Not most places if
you conceal them."
  "Kind of like brass knuckles," he said.
  "Or maybe knuckle, singular."
  "But much better," she said.
  "The blades are extremely sharp, and you can hit
with the ring end without hurting your finger."
  "Great."
  She missed the sarcasm, or more likely,
ignored it.
  "Aren't they?" She did a little series of
moves, whipping the two knives back and forth.
  A slight error and there was gonna be
blood everywhere.
  His or hers. He took half a step back.
  "They aren't very long," he said, and even as he
spoke, he was glad they weren't longer.
  his
  "Cause they are slashers rather than stabbers. All
the major peripheral arteries are fairly close
to the skin's surface.
  Carotids, antecubitals, fe morals
popliteals. These will reach all of those. Cut a
big artery, and you bleed out pretty quick if you
don't do something. Kill you quicker than not breathing will,
and blood is lot harder to replace than air."
  "How nice."
  "I remember this guy Rollert has a sense of
humor, too.
  These are custom work, but he makes a
tool-steel version of these coated with black
Teflon. He calls them box cutters, and that's
how he markets them.
  "Why, what's the problem. Officer? This is a
box cutter, see, it says so right there on the
handle." I've got a set of those tucked away
somewhere. Of course, those cost about a twentieth of
what these did."
  She waved the knives again, getting into it. It was
spooky to watch those things blur as she whipped them
around.
  "What'd the cheap ones cost?"
  "About fifty bucks each."
  "You mean these two little pieces of steel cost a
thousand dollars?!"
  "Quality doesn't come cheap."
  Michaels shook his head. His darling bride,
carrying his unborn- son, was a mistress of death and
destruction.
  She talked about such toys the way other women
talked about getting their hair done.
  "You can do your djurus holding one of these in each
hand, and with only a slight adjustment, do them the
same."
  "Yeah, and slice off my nose if I make a
mistake."
  "Better your nose than some ... other
extremity." She grinned.
  "Don't worry. By the time you know all eighteen
djurus, you'll be able to use these or a longer
knife or a stick, no problem. Might nick
yourself if you get sloppy, but as long as you keep
proper form, you won't. Silat is
weapons-based, remember. Only use your hands
if nothing better is available."
  She waved the little knives back and forth, crossing
and uncrossing her hands in patterns that looked
damned dangerous to him.
  But she was excited, and as upbeat as he'd seen
her lately, and he liked seeing that.
  "These were the first knives Guru showed me how
to use. Traditionally, they were backup. Women
carried them a lot. You could wind one into your hair
or tuck it into a sarong. These have a leather sheath, but
the old style ones made in Java usually have
wooden scabbards.
  Supposedly, there were guys in the old country who
could grip them between their toes and turn your legs and
groin into hamburger while you were still checking their hands
for a weapon."
  "Lovely."
  She kept twirling and slicing the air as she
talked.
  "They make them longer, but the short ones are best
for djurus. Even though djurus are practice and
knives are for application, you can do the moves with
steel hands.
  Watch."
  She stopped moving, and then did djuru three.
Her hands didn't move any slower than they did
when she did the form unarmed, at least not that he could
tell.
  "See?
  You block or punch like usual, only these give
the moves more of a sting."
  his
  "A sting," right. I'd be careful on djuru
two," he said.
  "Way your boobs are getting big, you come across
your chest on that inside block, you'll shear off a
nipple."
  She laughed, then put the knives back into their
little velvet nests.
  "Thanks. I feel better. Now I can go
back and finish sorting my shoes."
  She handed him the box.
  "Put these somewhere we won't forget them, and
I'll show you how to play with them when we get a
chance."
  She went back to her chore, and he looked at the
box.
  Well. He knew what she did for fun when he
married her.
  She had saved his life with the art once, and he had
learned enough to use it himself, a little. He had been
training seriously for almost a year, and he seldom
missed a day of practice, thanks to Toni's
proximity. After nearly being brained once by an
assassin using a cane and pretending to be a little
old lady, Michaels could hardly bitch about the
down-and-dirty side of fighting. Pentjak silat
was about as dirty as it came, and when somebody was
trying to bash your head in, all bets were off. When
you reached into your bag of tricks, this was the stuff you
wanted to come up with. A guy charging at you with
mayhem in mind might think twice if he saw you
whirling these nasty little claws around with a demented grin
while you did it. He sure as hell would.
  Rules? In a knife fight? No rules!
  He smiled at the wooden box and went to put it
on a shelf in the living room. It would make a
great conversation piece at a dinner party. Or a
conversation stopper, depending on what you wanted to do.
  It would be very interesting to see what the two of them
decided to teach their son when he got old enough
to wonder about all those funny dances Mama and
Daddy did. For certain, they would show him how
to protect himself. Michaels's father had
taught him how to do a little boxing when he'd been about
six or seven, and while he'd never been very good at
it, at least he had developed a sense of
self-confidence in his ability to protect himself.
  Once he'd started learning silat, he realized
how much he didn't know, but since he hadn't spent
a lot of time fighting, it had worked out okay anyhow.
  Funny to think about, teaching your son how to fight,
when he wasn't even born yet. Next thing you
knew, he'd be buying him baseball gloves and
electric trains.

  Quantico, Virginia
  Michaels had left the director's office,
feeling a nagging sense of unease. Director
Allison had ostensibly called him in for a
progress report, but the real reason was, he was
sure, that she had been given the word to light a fire
under his ass. His backside certainly felt warm enough
when she was done talking. She wasn't exactly
dumping on him for what the agency had or had not done
so far, but she must have used the term "interagency
cooperation" ten times during their conversation. As much as
he hated politics, Michaels knew what that
meant.
  Pee flowed downhill, and the director's drain
was right above his head ... Unfortunately, business
was slow, and because it was, this was rapidly becoming the
case to solve, and quickly.
  If there had been some major e-terrorism
going, some bigtime computer frauds, or even more
bored hackers, he could beg off, point to those, and
wash his hands of this crap fobbed off on them. But his people
were good, they were on top of the day-to-day stuff. Even
though it was the DEA'S problem, had almost nothing to do
with computers, and Net Force was just helping out, if they
didn't do something pretty quick, it could get ugly.
  A couple more millionaires going bonzo, and the
powers that be would be looking for a scapegoat to roast,
and while it should be the DEA, it could well turn out
to be a major barbecue, with Net Force on the
spit, too.
  As he got back into the hinterlands and his own
office at Net Force HQ, he saw Jay
Gridley standing in the door, grinning.
  "Tell me you have good news. Jay."
  "Oh, yeah. I think I got a solid lead
on our dope dealer."
  "Really?"
  "Yes, sir, boss."
  "How?"
  "The rich man's daughter. I backtracked her
spending spree. Somebody remembered that she used a
public computer in one of the shops for some kind of
on-line transaction.
  I sieved the computers she might have operated,
found all the e-mail for the time she would have been in the
shop, and did some cross-references and keyword
hits, in case she used a phony name ... which, by the
way, she did."
  "Go on, impress me."
  "I had the search bots looking for a long list of
pointers, about forty keys, including Thor, Thor's
Hammer, and all like that. I got a hit on one and
followed it up."
  "And this keyword was ... ?"
  "Purple."
  "Purple?"
  "As in the color of the caps. Here's the e-mail
I ran down."
  He handed Michaels a hardcopy print. It
said, "Yo, FriPOINT OF IMPACT 115
  day Girl--I'll have that purple thin gee for you
when you come by."
  It was signed, "Wednesday."
  "No offense. Jay, but this is a reach. A
'purple thin gee
  It could be some kind of plush kid's toy for all
we know. And days of the week as code names? Why would
that be our rich woman and her dealer?"
  Jay grinned.
  "That's the key, boss. Friday was named for the
Norse goddess Fri)a. Wednesday comes from
Woden, which, as I'm sure you must know, is the way
the Norse in the southern countries spelled Odin."
  "Fascinating. So?"
  "Fri)a and Odin were Thor's mom and pop."
  Michaels thought about that for a few seconds.
  "Ah.
  That would seem to be a bit of a coincidence,
wouldn't it."
  "Yeah, I'd say so. Doesn't mean it's the
chemist himself, but I'd bet my next month's pay
against a week-old, road-killed possum this
"Wednesday" guy has something to do with this drug."
  "Good work, Jay."
  "I didn't spook the guy, stayed well
back, but I can run him down to an addy."
  "Better still."
  "Well, the thing is, this is good and bad.
If I found it, the NSA people will find it, too, if
they haven't already."
  "How do you figure?"
  "Well, their mission is to monitor communications
outside the U.s. for possible terrorist
activity, assorted plots, and things it would be good
for us to know in general.
  So they have a whole list of words which, if they come
up in a telephone conversation, a com-radio,
telegraph signal, or e-mail, stuff like that,
it kicks in a recorder. The message is taped
and downloaded into one of a shitload of mainframes
NSA operates, and re scanned then routed to a
computer program that reads the message and assigns
it a priority code on a scale of one to ten.
Anything above five gets sent to a human, and the
higher a number, the faster it gets there. So if you
put the words Suicide mission and bomb into your
e-mail heading in any one of a hundred major or
twenty minor languages, and NSA happens across
it, somebody checks it. Most of the time it's nothing,
guys screwing around or whatever, but sometimes it pans
out. A message that says something like "Shoot and
kill the president and blow up Washington
D.c." had better be a line from a TV
show or an upcoming techno thriller novel."
  "Nobody could be that stupid."
  "Oh, yeah they can. Dumb crooks are
legion."
  Michaels said, "All right. I know this, in
general, about NSA. So?"
  "So you think NSA confines its eyes and ears
to outside our borders? Yeah, home court's
supposed to be FBI territory for such things, but
everybody in the biz knows which way that wind blows.
NSA has the tools, and how would anybody know they
were doing it if they didn't tell us? Sheeit. If
they are as hot to run down these dopers as the DEA,
they will have assigned anything having to do with Thor a
high priority. If we want to beat "em to this
Wednesday, we better get somebody on the street
PDQ.
  The dealer might get taken, and that'd be good, but
it's better for us if we get some credit, right?"
  "Right," Michaels said.
  "Let me step into my office and make a call.
Thanks, Jay."
  "Info is in your in-file under the name "Rich
Girl." Remember me when you give out the
bonuses."
  POINT OF IMPACT 117 Mulihu.
California
  When Tad woke up again, he looked at his
watch. Not so much for the time as for the date. Sometimes after
a Hammer trip, he would be more or less
unconscious for three or four days.
  He had been awake a couple times before, to go
pee and get some water and pain pills, and he thought
he remembered Bobby telling him a story about
stoning FBI HQ in L.a. all to hell and
gone. Maybe that had been a dream. Make more
sense if it was.
  Not too bad, if the watch was right, only a
couple days since he'd crashed. If he
remembered the day he'd done it right.
  And if it hadn't been a week and some.
  He hurt all over. It was like he'd been
dropped off a tall building and then bounced like a
super ball for a couple of blocks, slamming a
different part of his body against the concrete each time.
The slightest movement stabbed him with hot needles,
cut at him with cold, dull razors. He
managed to roll to a sitting position, then up to his
feet. He swayed there for a moment, fought for balance,
then headed for the shower. Moving slowly. After
he got clean, he'd feel a little better, though a
little better wasn't going to be much compared to how
crappy he felt. Still, that was the price you paid. You
could bitch after the first time, but after that, you had no
excuses; you knew what it was gonna feel like. You
couldn't blame anybody but yourself.
  He managed to achieve the bathroom without
falling, though he had to lean against the wall a couple
of times along the way. He stripped, then got into the
shower and cranked the water up full blast from all the
nozzles. Had to; water coming from only one
direction would probably knock him down.
  Halfway to using all the hot water in the house
--and that was saying something--Bobby stuck his head into the
steamed-up bathroom and yelled: "Still alive?
Amazing."
  "Fuck you," Tad yelled reflexively.
  "You okay enough to work?"
  "I'm up, aren't I?" He shut off the water
and stepped out, grabbed one of the beach towels, and started
drying off.
  Bobby watched him, shaking his head.
  "You look like hammered dog shit."
  "Why, thank you. So what?"
  "Business is picking up. I've got
a dozen orders I need to send out today, eight more
tomorrow, and four more the day after that."
  "Got me a cap for the first run?"
  "Jesus, Tad, you do want to die, don't
you?"
  Tad didn't answer but finished toweling off.
He looked at himself in the foggy mirror. Skinny
as hell, yes, but in the blurry, soft-focus
mirror reflections, he didn't really look that
bad.
  Bobby blew out a theatrical sigh.
  "Yeah, I got one for you."
  Tad nodded, managed a grin. He'd never gone
riding with Thor twice in a week before, it always
took a long time to recover completely, but with enough
chemical assistance, he could get past the aches and
injuries he collected while tripping. They were still
there, of course, but he didn't feel them. Well,
not as much. Thing was, he'd built up a pretty
good tolerance to Demerol and morphine over the years.
He could take a handful of 50 mg tabs and walk
around like it was nothing, a dose that would put much bigger
guys on the floor in a dreamy trance for six or
eight hours. Morphine was a better painkiller
than Demerol, heroin better still, but of
course, those had their own problems--he wasn't a
big fan of needles or gas powered skin-poppers
that blasted the drug into you. Getting addicted wasn't
a problem he worried about, and he used morphine
or smack sometimes, when it got really bad, but
only as a painkiller, not for the high. Some people liked
downers, which was what the opiates were. Tad liked
uppers. Being able to move, to do things. The months
he'd spent in a bed coughing up bloody sputum
when he had active THIS never left him. He
didn't plan to die in bed. Live fast, die
young, and if the corpse was ugly or good-looking,
what did that matter? You weren't gonna be around
to hear praise or revulsion, were you?
  Time was running out. Take the trip now, or
miss it.
  You get to be dead a long time, right?
  Even with the Demerol tabs he'd taken last time
he was up, and the shower, he felt like Bobby said he
looked:
  like shit. So a little of the Mexican white was
called for, to dull the edges. Some muscle
relaxants, some steroids for the swelling and
inflammation, and a little speed to balance things, he'd be
able to get around. And once he picked up
the Hammer again? Well, then it would all go away.
  Superman don't need no pain pills.
  "I'm on it," Tad said.
  "Give me ten minutes."
  Bobby nodded.
  "I'm going to start final mix now."
  Tad waved him off. His stash was in his car, parked
at the sandwich place. He'd have to go get it, come
back, and hope he could find a vein he could hit.
What a bitch.
  Washington, D.c.
  Toni spent an hour playing with the scrimshaw,
then had to quit. Her ankles were swelling, her right
thumb and
  forefinger had gone numb from gripping the pin vise,
and she was going blind looking through the magnifying lamp's
lens. That stereoscopic microscope would sure come
in handy.
  Yeah. So would some artistic talent and a lot more
patience.
  Putting in a thousand tiny dots, each the size
of a flea's eye, was extremely exacting work. A
couple of times, she had lost her concentration and put
a dot outside the lines. Those would have to be sanded out
and polished, and that was tricky, she'd already
found out.
  Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, taking up
something this precise. Maybe she was just wasting her time
and a lot of effort.
  She went to the bathroom, washed her hands and face
in cold water, and went into the living room. She
sat on the couch. She could do her djuru hand work
sitting down, most of it. The footwork was getting
harder and harder to add in, and while Guru's
advice had been not to worry about it, it would all come
back after the baby was born, she did worry about
it. It had never occurred to her it would be like this.
  The Indonesian martial art had been the core
of who she was since she'd been thirteen. She
hadn't gotten into team sports, school clubs,
or other extracurricular activities as a young
woman in high school and college, not to speak of.
No, she had dedicated herself to learning how to move in
balance, to being able to deliver a focused attack
against an aggressor, no matter if he was bigger,
stronger, faster, or even well-trained. Yes, she
had school, in which she did well, and yes, she had
friends and lovers and a job, but in her own mind, she was
a warrior.
  A warrior with, she had to admit, some
control issues.
  Now a big, fat, pale, pregnant warrior
with control issues, hey?
  Shut up!
  Putting scratches and itty-bitty dots on
fake ivory instead of kicking ass. Some warrior.
  Tears rose and threatened to spill, but Toni
angrily wiped her eyes. No. She wouldn't
give in to this emotional turmoil. Hormones, that was
all it was, goddamned hormones! She'd learned
how to control PMS, and she never let her periods
keep her from work or working out.
  She could beat this, too! It was a matter of will!
  Sure, sure, it is, as long as you watch out for
peg legged guys with eye patches carrying
harpoons, whale girl
  Thar she blows!
  She was more angry than she was anything, but now the
tears did flow, and she couldn't stop them.
  The com chirped. She stared at it. It kept on
cheeping.
  Finally, she picked it up.
  "Hello," she said.
  "Hi, babe, it's me. How are you doing?"
  Alex. Oh, boy. Was that the wrong thing
for him to say.
  "I hate my life," she said.
  He didn't say anything, but he didn't have
to say anything.
  She had more. Much more.

  Quantico, Virginia
  "You want me to go along on a drug raid?"
John Howard said.
  Michaels nodded.
  "Yes. We have a vested interest here, even though
it is officially a DBA matter. I just got off
the com with Brett Lee. They are willing to allow
a Net Force liaison to tag along ... if
he's field-qualified. In the interests of
interagency cooperation, of course."
  "Let me see if I can translate that. We
need credit for this, right?"
  "Damn straight. This is going to be a
high-profile bust.
  There is a lot of interest in catching these folks,
from way up the food chain. When the media figures
out what this is connected to, we don't want to be
left out in the cold.
  You standing there conspicuously in your Net
Force blues on the six o'clock news will make sure
nobody accidentally 'forgets" to mention that it was us
who located this evildoer and gave his location to the
  DEA."
  Howard smiled.
  "You're getting a lot better at this
political in-fighting. Commander."
  "I'd say thank you, but I'm not sure I
consider that a compliment."
  Howard shrugged.
  "Goes with the job. Same with any organization.
Once you get above the rank of major in the army,
most of what you do requires one eye on the chain of
command, the other eye on the internal and external
politics affecting your unit. Makes it hard
to see what you actually want to accomplish. You
don't watch out for us, you sure can't expect
anybody else to do it. Certainly not the DEA or
NSA."
  "I wouldn't order you to do it. Strictly
voluntary. General."
  "Well, sir, I'd be happy to go along and
help our fellow crime fighters take down this
dope peddler. It's been a little slow around here
anyway."
  "Knock on wood," Michaels said, rapping his
desktop.
  "In case there are any bored angels watching
who want to give us something to worry about."
  "Amen."
  After Howard left, Michaels's secretary
told him he had a call.
  "From?"
  "Gretta Henkel."
  "Why do I recognize that name?"
  "She's the CEO and largest shareholder of
Henkel Pharmaceuticals, which is headquartered in
Mannheim, Germany."
  Michaels rolled his eyes. Jesus, word was
definitely out about this drug thing. He reached for the
phone.
  The conversation didn't take long, and when it was
done, Michaels leaned back in his chair and shook
his head. Ms. Henkel, of Henkel
Pharmaceuticals, the largest European drug
manufacturing company and the fourth largest in the world,
had offered him a job.
  Ostensibly, Ms. Henkel was looking for
somebody to run their computer security department, and
who better than the man who ran the computer
security service for the United States government?
She had, she had said, heard great things about him.
Would he be interested in speaking with her personally about
this? She could have one of the corporate jets pick him
up and fly him to Mannheim for a chat. She mentioned
a starting salary that translated to roughly four times
what he was making as a government employee, plus
stock options and a medical and retirement package
that would, in twenty years, make him a fairly
wealthy man. He could also bring two or three of his
best people with him if he elected to accept the job, of
course, and with hefty increases in their salaries,
too.
  It was tempting to think her offer was exactly what
she said. A recognition of his ability to manage a
complex technical operation. An offer tendered on
merit. A deserved and great opportunity.
  Michaels smiled at that. He had never considered
himself the brightest light on the string, but neither had he
thought he was the dimmest.
  What this was about, of course, was this damned purple
capsule everybody wanted so badly. Probably
Ms. Henkel wanted it to move her company from
fourth largest to third or maybe even first place.
Or maybe she wanted it so the Germans
could gear up for another war with super soldiers
  It didn't really matter. But she was assuming that
if she paved a road with platinum for him to get
there, Michaels would bring the secret of the stuff with
him. It would be interesting to see if the job offer
became real if he didn't happen to have that information
at hand or didn't want to give it up. Or even
how long his new job would last if he did.
  He smiled again as he thought about telling Toni:
"Hi, honey, I'm home! Guess what.
We're moving to Germany!"
  Deutschland, Deutschland, liber alles ...
He chuckled at that thought.
  He'd declined the offer with appropriate
regrets and thanked Ms. Henkel politely.
  Whatever the hell was in that mysterious capsule must
be very interesting indeed.
  Beverly Hills, California
  He could have requisitioned a Net Force jet, but
having risen on merit as a colonel in the regular
army before taking command of the Net Force military arm,
John Howard had a few friends still active in other
services.
  An old Air Force buddy who had likewise
risen high in the ranks got him second
seat on a fighter going across the country. The training
flight had to refuel midair, of course, but since
it didn't land, Howard was more than two hours ahead
of Mr. Brett Lee's commercial flight and
waiting at the airport for him when he got off the
plane.
  A small victory but worth the effort for the look
on the face of a man who had left Washington,
D.c." an hour before Howard had and well knew
it.
  Lee filled him in on details as they drove
toward Beverly Hills.
  "The suspect's name is George Harris
Zeigler, age thirty-one." He looked at
Howard as if expecting some response, but the name
didn't mean anything to him, and Howard said so.
  "He's a fairly well-known actor," Lee
said.
  "A pretty boy who plays action heroes,
has the teenage girls all hot for him. They
call him the Zee-ster."
  "There you go," Howard said.
  "I'm neither teenage nor female. And not much
of a movie fan."
  "In any event, we have the warrants,
and our surveillance teams have him at home. He
lives in a big, gated estate in Beverly
Hills."
  "Of course he does."
  "We're going in hot and fast. We need to do this
quick enough to get samples of the drug. He has
bodyguards and a commercial security system. It
is unlikely he is the chemist. He flunked out
of high school before becoming an actor, but we think
he either sells or gives the stuff to his friends,
especially his female friends. He doesn't need the
money; he gets fifteen or twenty million
dollars each for the movies he stars in. And you've
never heard of him?"
  "I guess I need to get out more," Howard
allowed.
  Lee glared but then forced a smile. It was his
operation, and he would be giving Howard his assignment.
He'd have the last word.
  "You will be assisting the agents covering the garage,"
he said.
  "In case Mr. Zeigler decides to try
to escape. It's a twelve-car garage, but he
only has ten in it at the moment. The usual
toys, including a Ferrari, a Land
Cruiser, a Ford Cobra, a Dodge Viper,
and a couple of antique Rolls-Royces."
  "Must be nice. How many agents do you have going
into the house?"
  "Sixteen."
  "Ah. Well, if he gets past you, we'll do
our best to try to stop him."
  Lee didn't speak to that, and Howard leaned back
in the seat, looking out the window. Smoggy out here today.
  Big surprise.
  When they got to the staging area, a local park,
Howard pulled his gear out of his tactical duffel
bag. He had his side arm, the Medusa, his blue
coveralls, and the spider silk vest with "Net
Force" stenciled in big phosphorescent yellow
letters across the back. He strapped on his revolver,
slipped into the coveralls, and tabbed the vest
into place. It was class-one armor with full side
panels and a crotch drape. The tight weave silk
and overlapping ceramic plates would stop any
handgun round and most rifle bullets, assuming the
shooter went for the body and not the head or legs.
Somehow, he didn't think an actor who let himself
be called the Zee-ster would be doing much blasting.
  Rich folks generally fought with lawyers,
not firearms.
  And his chances of getting past a whole slew of
DEA agents armed with subguns were slim and
snowball.
  Howard had wanted to bring his old Thompson, the
ancient .45 submachine gun his grandfather had
gotten when he was an unofficial deputy in the
pre integration days, but he thought that might be a bit
ostentatious in front of the cameras. And there were
sure to be news copters flitting around pretty
quick in this kind of operation.
  Dead-eye John Howard and his Chicago
typewriter might not provide the image Net
Force wanted.
  During the briefing, Howard memorized the maps,
met the two agents who'd be watching the garage with
him-their names were Brown and Peterson, a tall
woman and a short man, respectively. Lee,
despite his quick fuse, gave a pretty good
sitrep and assignment layout. Everybody
synchronized their watches and slipped into tactical
radio headphones set to a narrow-band opchan.
Whatever the DEA'S political agendas, they had
done enough drug busts to know how to enter a secured
residence efficiently.
  They'd borrowed a tactical truck from the
local police force, and it went through the heavy steel
gate as if it were paper. The cars followed the
truck in, five vehicles, and made for their
assigned locations. Howard wasn't sure, but it
seemed to him there were more than sixteen agents leaping from
cars and hurrying toward the house.
  Brown, Peterson, and Howard alighted and moved
to the garage. Brown had an electronic master
key she triggered, and the signal worked; the garage
doors rolled up, all six of them.
  Peterson moved to stand behind the door from the garage
into the house, his handgun pointed up by his ear.
  Brown crouched behind the car closest to the door, a
seventies Charger, a muscle car lovingly painted
in maybe twenty hand-rubbed coats of metal
flake candy-apple red. Be a shame to see that
paint chipped by a bullet, Howard thought.
  He looked around. Which car would he take if he
was in a real hurry? Probably the Cobra.
Nah, better would be the Viper, which was essentially a
rocket with wheels.
  They'd have to use roadblocks; nobody would be
catching that sucker from behind.
  He walked over to the Viper and looked
into the little convertible. Had to be a real wood dash and
steering wheel. Hello? What's this?
  Lying in plain view. on the passenger seat was
one of those zippered plastic bags, like for sandwiches.
  Inside the bag were four big purple
capsules.
  Howard grinned. Son of a bitch!
  Brown and Peterson were intent on the door.
Orders from Lee rattled over the operations channel
on the headset.
  They had crashed the front door, after some effort,
and were entering the residence.
  Howard reached down, picked up the bag, opened
it, and shook one of the capsules into his palm. He
looked at the two DBA agents. He could have been
invisible as far as they were concerned.
  He slipped the cap into his coverall pocket,
zipped the bag closed, and dropped it back onto
the car seat.
  The sounds of fully automatic weapon fire and
Lee screaming over the headset came
simultaneously: "Return fire, return
fire!"
  Well. Looked like the bodyguards were earning their
money.
  More full-autos came on-line. The DEA
assault team carried MP-5'S, and the distinctive
sound of those chattered, joining the other guns. All
pistol-caliber stuff, Howard thought, nothing loud enough
to be rifle. The suspect's bodyguards must have
MAC-10'S, Uzis, something like that. Didn't
sound like HandKs.
  "... all available agents, they're heading for the
kitchen!"
  The kitchen, Howard recalled from the maps, was just
up a short hall from the garage.
  Brown and Peterson took this as a sign they should
go in. Peterson jerked the door open. Brown
stepped in, pistol leading. They didn't look for
Howard but vanished into the house.
  Howard, whose side arm was still in the holster,
considered his options. If sixteen DEA agents
couldn't take out a pretty-boy movie star and his
bodyguards, he wasn't going to be able to add much
firepower. He'd stay right here, just like he'd been
assigned.
  More shots echoed from the house. Somebody screamed,
two or three different voices.
  "Shit!"
  "Fuck!"
  "Ow, ow, I'm shot!"
  Ten seconds later, a man emerged from the house
into the garage. In one arm gathered to his chest, he
held a young woman in a maid's uniform. From her
face, the girl was in mortal terror, and rightly so,
since in his other hand, the guy held a short knife
pressed against her neck.
  He was a handsome young man.
  This would be the Zee-ster, Howard guessed.
  He pulled his revolver, brought his other hand up,
clasped the weapon in a two-handed grip, and pointed
it at the knife man.
  "Hold it right there, Zeigler," he said.
  The man froze.
  Howard forced his hands to relax a hair. Holding
the revolver tightly was necessary for the shot, but clenching the
thing in a death grip for any length of time past a
second or two would cramp his hands pretty
quickly. And he might be here a while, you never could
tell.
  Zeigler, with the knife held at the hostage's
throat, tried to make himself smaller, but there was no
way a five foot-tall, hundred-pound woman was
going to completely shield a six-foot-tall,
two-hundred-pound man. Howard had all
kinds of targets, including the only one that meant
instant incapacitation, a head shot.
  "Put the gun down! Put it down, or I'll
kill her!"
  He had the shot. Sights square, lined up on
the man's left eye. At fifteen, maybe
sixteen feet, he wasn't going to miss. Unless
the guy jerked at the last second and put the
hostage where his head had been. Not much risk to the
woman, but some. And he'd have to kill the movie star,
a head shot would do that, right into the brain.
  Well, maybe not on a movie star ...
"Listen," Howard said, "let's discuss this."
  "No fucking discussion! Put the gun down, or
I'll cut her throat!"
  The maid whimpered.
  "You don't want to do that. You kill her, you're
standing there unprotected with a knife in your hand. Think
about that. She's all that's keeping you alive. She
dies, you die, simple as that."
  "You can't do that. Do you know who I am?"
  "I'm not a cop, son, I'm a soldier. They
trained me to kill, not capture. I see blood
on that blade, it's a done deal. I don't care
who you are. God doesn't love men who
murder innocent women, and I expect He sent
me here to teach you this."
  The man was on the edge of panic.
  "Let me go, I let her go."
  "What, do I have the word stupid tattooed on my
forehead?
  Put the knife down, you get to tell your story
to a judge. Maybe a good lawyer can even get you
off, it happens all the time. You're a
millionaire. Rich and famous men don't go to the
gas chamber. You cut that woman, I guarantee
you'll be dead before she is. Game over."
  "You might hit her if you shoot!"
  Howard blew out a theatrical sigh.
  "Let me explain some things to you, son. This
weapon I am holding in my hands is a
Phillips and Rodgers .357 Model 47
Medusa. It's about as well-made and accurate a
double-action revolver as you can get, and with the hammer
back in single-action mode like it is now, it's
extremely accurate. I can hit an apple at
twenty-five meters all day long, and you are less
than one-third that far away. You understand? You want
to think about how much of you I can see that's not behind your
hostage?"
  Zeigler didn't say anything.
  Howard continued.
  "There are six one-hundred-andtwentyfive-grain
semi jacketed hollow point rounds in this handgun.
If I shoot and hit you solidly anywhere with only
one shot--and I will hit you, son, you can bet the farm
on that--the bullet will thump you at around twelve
hundred feet per second. That means it gets there
before you hear the sound of it going off. That hyper sonic
bullet will expand to maybe twice its size and it will
put a big hole most if not all the way through you.
Based on documented shootings with this caliber and
particular brand of ammo, you will go to the floor
ninety-six point four times out of a hundred, and no
longer have any interest in anything but trying to breathe.
And probably not that for long."
  Zeigler swallowed dryly.
  "Now, here's the deal. I don't give a
rat's ass if you walk out of here or if the DEA
drags your dead body out;
  it's all the same to me. But if I have to shoot,
this gun is going to make a terrible noise inside this
garage, and probably my ears will ring for a couple of
days, because I didn't think to put my plugs in before
I came through the door. I'd just as soon
not damage my hearing any more than I have to.
  "So if I have to shoot, I am going to be real
pissed off.
  I might as well shoot again. You following me?
You put the knife down right now, or I will punch a
hole in you, and when you fall, I'll pump a
couple more in you for making my ears hurt. Your
movie career might survive an arrest. You
don't put that knife down, you won't. Simple
as that. Your choice. Either the knife hits the floor
or you do."
  Somebody was listening on the radio, because Howard
heard, "Don't shoot him! Don't shoot him!
We're on the way!"
  Howard tongued the radio's off switch. He
couldn't turn off his mike, but he silenced the
earphones. He didn't need the distraction.
  He took a deep breath and let part of it out,
held the rest, preparing for the shot. You never bluffed
in a situation like this. He put his finger inside the
guard and onto the trigger. Wouldn't take much, just
under three pounds, a nice, crisp pull, like
breaking an icicle.
  "Don't! Don't kill me! Please!"
  Ziegler's left hand came away from the
maid, releasing her, and made a pushing motion toward
Howard.
  "Come on, we can make a deal here! I'll...
I'll give you my supplier! That's what you
want, isn't it?"
  The knife moved away from the maid's neck.
Ziegler hadn't dropped it yet, but he was about
to. His knife hand had already relaxed, and he had
taken a half step away from his hostage.
  Howard let out another sigh, quieter this time.
Thank you. Lord. That would have been all he needed,
millions of teenage girls hating his guts for
killing their screen idol.
  He'd dodged a bullet himself when that knife
dropped-Somebody ran around the corner from outside
and into the garage and fired a handgun twice, hitting
the suspect square in the chest.
  Zeigler collapsed. The maid screamed and
fell to the floor, onto her hands and knees,
scrabbled for cover behind the muscle car.
  Instinctively, Howard spun toward the shooter,
gun leading.
  It was Brett Lee.
  Lee quickly pointed his gun toward the ceiling, his
other hand open and raised.
  "Easy, easy!"
  Howard said, "Why did you shoot, you fucking
moron?
  He had dropped his weapon!"
  "Sorry. It looked like he was about to hurt the
hostage."
  "I thought you wanted him alive!"
  Lee didn't say anything else. He put
away his weapon.
  Howard shook his head, went to check on
Zeigler. One in the heart, one in the upper chest,
he'd be dead before the paramedics could get him to the
ambulance. Shit!
  Howard stood, bolstered his revolver, helped the
crying hostage to her feet.
  "It's all over, ma'am. You're safe now."
He glared at Lee. Sweet Jesus.
  He heard the sound of helicopters moving in and
swore under his breath. He was gonna take the vest
off. No way he wanted the name "Net Force"
to show up on the evening news after this fiasco.
  Commander Michaels would surely agree with that
idea.
  More DBA agents boiled out of the house, guns
waving around. Day late and a dollar short.
  What a snafu.
  Sweet Jesus.

  Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia
  "So, the only lead we had to the dealer is cooling
on a slab at the morgue in sunny L.a.?"
  "Yes, sir," John Howard said.
  "Apparently to the regret of teenage girls
everywhere."
  "Jesus," Michaels said.
  "My feelings exactly. My guess is,
Mr. Lee of the DEA is going to have some tall
explaining to do to his superiors."
  Michaels shook his head. John Howard and
Jay Gridley both looked at him as if
expecting some wisdom, and he didn't have any on
tap. He said, "Well, at least our information
helped the DBA beat the NSA to the target."
  "Might have been better the other way," Jay
observed.
  "I kinda liked the Zee-ster's movies myself.
He had a certain style."
  That the first part of Jay's observation was a thought
Michaels had already had didn't make it sit any
better.
  And while he'd seen the actor in a couple of
movies and hadn't been that impressed, dead was
dead, and shooting somebody with his hands up was bad
juju, no two ways about it. Especially a rich
and famous somebody.
  He said, "Well, if you give folks a
knife and they cut themselves with it, that's their problem.
The director can't fault us for what DEA
screws up. What is the deal with NSA and
DEA, anyway? Some kind of ongoing bad
blood?"
  Jay said, "Not that I know of. No more than any
other interagency rivalry. CIA, FBI kind of
thing. You get the ball, you don't pass it, you
shoot, even if we're all on the same team."
  "What about personal histories? Agent Lee
and Mr.
  George go to competing schools? Sleep with each
other's girlfriends?"
  Jay looked surprised.
  "Hmm. Never thought of that."
  "Maybe it's not relevant to the situation, but why
don't you poke around a little and see what you can find.
From our meetings, it doesn't seem as if these two
have any great love for each other, and I'd
just as soon not get Net Force splattered with
incidental mud if these two are going to keep throwing
it at each other."
  Jay nodded.
  "Good idea, boss. I'll do that."
  "Even though it's primarily their problem, we
can't just wash our hands of it. We have to help them
keep looking, and right now, all we've got is a
dead movie star and a dead end."
  "Not altogether," Howard said. He grinned, showing bright
teeth against his chocolate skin.
  "There is the matter of the recovered capsules.
Unfortunately, they were near the end of their life
span; the movie star could afford to buy them and let
them go bad if he wanted, and by the time the DEA
got the things to their lab, they were so much inert powder
internally."
  "Which doesn't do us much good, does it?"
Michaels said.
  "Well, sir, probably not. But while you'll
notice that the report says there were three of the
capsules, that is actually in error."
  Michaels looked at him, waiting.
  Howard reached out and dropped a purple cap
onto his desktop.
  Jay grinned.
  "General! You swiped one?"
  "Liberated it," Howard said.
  "It won't do us any more good chemically than the
ones the DEA'S got, but I figured what they could
learn from four, they could learn from three."
  Michaels picked up the cap and looked at it.
  "Doesn't seem like it's worth all the trouble,
this little thing."
  "Diamonds are small, too, boss, and so are
wetware and light ware chips."
  "Well, as it happens, we have a friend in the
FBI lab who would like to get his hands on this,"
Michaels said.
  "That way, at least we'd know as much as the DEA
about what's in it, for whatever that is worth. Maybe
some rare herb found only in bouillabaisse served
in a certain bad section of Marseilles,
France."
  "Sir?"
  "Sorry, General, it's from an old spy comedy
vidI once saw. But the regular FBI boys have
a huge database and long memories, and their lab
techs are second to none.
  Might be they could come up with something.
I'll run this past them and see what they can find.
Good work."
  "Thank you, sir."
  "And I was very happy not to see you on the news."
  "I thought you might be," Howard said.
  After Howard and Jay were gone, Michaels put the
capsule into an empty paper clip box and stuck
it into his pocket. Chain of evidence was no good,
given how they'd come by it, but he was just looking for
information. This whole mess was still the DEA'S bastard
child, and the sooner he could get Net Force out of
helping take care of it, the better. He'd drop
by the lab and have a chat with the assistant section head,
a man he knew from his field days. They could work
something out.
  Maliblt. California
  "Don't take the Hammer," Bobby said.
  Tad, whose last little hit of heroin was wearing off,
frowned through the start of a headache.
  "Why not?"
  "Because I need you straight."
  Tad grinned his lopsided grin.
  "Well, okay, relatively straight. We
got problems."
  "We're rich and good-looking, how bad
could it be?"
  Bobby smiled, but it vanished quickly.
  "The Zee-ster's dead."
  "No way! I just saw him. Gave him the caps
from that last batch. He looked great. He can't be
dead."
  "I got a contact in the police who says his
body's in a big drawer at the new county
morgue and the doctors are flipping coins to see who
gets to slice and dice him. He's past tense."
  "Aw, geez, that's too bad. I liked him.
He knew how to party. What'd he do, wrap one of
his cars around a tree? He never could drive worth
a crap."
  "He was shot twice in the heart by a DBA
agent leading a drug raid on his mansion."
  "Whoa. You're shittin' me."
  "No. Storm and Drang put up a fight when
the narcs kicked in the door. Word is, the
Zee-ster's house walls got more holes in "em
now than a colander. Both bodyguards are shot
half to pieces, too, but Storm will probably
make it. Drang is still in surgery, and they don't
think he'll survive, or if he does, he'll
be a big hamburger patty he took a
couple rounds in the head."
  "Fuck."
  "Yeah, it's awful and all, but stop and think about
what that means. Why would the feds be going after the
Zeester?
  He's a user, not a dealer."
  "He spreads it around some," Tad said.
  "I mean, he did. Could be they caught somebody
he ran with, they gave him up."
  "Whatever. But this puts us in a kind of bad
spot. We ran with him, too. Somebody might
remember us."
  "Remember me, you mean. You look like ten thousand
other surfer dudes. Me, I kinda stand out."
  Bobby waved that off.
  "The point is, we let ourselves get public with
him more than we should have, because he was a movie star and
cool and all. If he had the Hammer caps on
him when they took him out of the game, they are gonna
go over his background with a microscope everywhere he
went, everybody he saw. A guy like that can't move
in this town anonymously unless he wears a bag
over his head, and Zeigler never was one to hide his
pretty face. The cops and the feds will burn many
shoe soles tracking every move the man
made. Somebody will cover all of the trendy places
where the Zee-ster liked to party."
  Tad nodded.
  "All right, here's what I want you to do. You
search your memory and dig up every time you saw Zee
in public, anywhere might have had a security cam
lit. Get to those places before the feds or the local
police do, get the recordings or wipe them or
whatever."
  "Yeah. I can do that."
  "He never came here, and when I bought drinks or
dinner, I paid cash, so there's no e-trail on
me. I've made up a list of the places where I
went with him alone, or where you and him and me were.
Add those to your list. Crowd he traveled with, they
don't know us well enough to send anybody here, hell,
they were usually too stoned to know who they were, much
less us, but vids are different. If we're on a
tape, a RAM drive or a DVD, that's bad.
If that's gone, we're clear."
  Tad nodded again.
  "Yeah, I got it. Only a few places they
might have captured images of us."
  "We can't do shit about some tourist who snapped a
few frames of Zeigler while we were at
Disneyland or the beach or whatever, but the feds
probably won't find them, either. I think we can
ride this out, we do it right."
  "I wonder how they did figure out to go for him?"
  "He fucked up. He liked to brag about doing
five girls at a time while he was on the
Hammer, and like you said, he passed out dope to the people
around him like it was chewing gum. Doesn't matter how
they found him. What matters is, they don't find
us."
  "I hear that." Tad had no desire to finish out
his little remaining time on earth in a cell. He'd
punch his own ticket before he'd let that happen.
  "So we're on vacation for the next couple
months," Bobby said.
  "No production, no deliveries, we are shut
down. Maybe we'll go to Maui, drive the
crooked road out to Hana, kick back on the
black sand beach and watch the girls awhile."
  Tad nodded absently.
  "Yeah." But what he was thinking was, he had
Thor's Hammer in his pocket, the last one Bobby
had made, and it still had a few more hours of shelf
life left. If he didn't take it, it was going
to go to waste, and Bobby wasn't gonna be
making any more until he felt safe.
  Tad might not have a couple months left in him,
you never could tell.
  Should he take it? He and Bobby hadn't spent
that much time with the Zee-ster out in public. Half a
dozen spots in the last couple of months, no more,
and most places didn't keep vid records more
than a day or two, maybe a week, before they
recorded over the old stuff.
  He could shave it close, check out the first few
places, drop the cap, and finish the last few before
it came on full blast. And even after it came
on, he could maintain enough to take care of the security
stuff, he was pretty sure. For a couple hours,
anyway.
  There was some risk, sure, but what the hell, he
didn't have much to lose, did he?
  There was one other possibility, something he hadn't
ever tried, but he'd held in reserve, just in case
something happened to Bobby before it did him. He could
let the cap croak, clean up the security cam
stuff, and head out to the islands with Bobby. Then, in a
week or two, he could find some reason to split with
Bobby for a couple days. Tell him he was gonna
go camp out by the Sacred Pools or something
--Bobby hated camping--then catch a flight back
to L.a.
  He'd been with Bobby a long time. And while he
wasn't in Bobby's league as a chemist, he
knew a fair amount about drugs. He had
managed, over the time they'd been dealing the Hammer,
to be around Bobby at one point or another during every
step of the creation and blending of the ingredients for the
drug. Yeah, he didn't even know what they all
were, but he knew where to find the powders and how much
to use of each.
  He wasn't a genius like Bobby, he couldn't
create the stuff from scratch, no way. But while not
everybody could create a major symphony from
nothing, like Mozart, a whole lot of people could play the
sucker if they had the sheet music. Tad knew
Bobby's routine; he'd watched it, memorized it,
and he could do that much. Ma and Pa out in the RV had
all the stuff for Thor's Hammer, neatly stored in
little bottles. He could pay them a visit. They'd
never think twice about it. He'd collected the
stuff for Bobby several times.
  Of course, when Bobby found out, he'd be
pissed, so maybe Tad might have to eliminate Ma
and Pa, torch the RV, and hope Bobby
would blame it on rival dealers or the law. Then
again, maybe Tad wouldn't be around when Bobby found
out. The hole he had to climb out of each time was
deeper and deeper. One day, he'd hit the bottom
and not be able to make it back, and that was gonna be
sooner rather than later.
  It was something to think about.
  "You gonna sit there staring into space all day or
what?"
  "Huh. Oh, yeah. I'm going. I need to,
uh, freshen up a bit, then I'm good."
  "Fine. Do what you need to do, but don't get
pulled over for a ticket or whatever, be careful,
okay?"
  "Yeah, yeah, don't worry."
  "I have to worry. Tad, for the both of us."
  Tad headed for the bathroom and another hit of the
Mexican white. As he walked, he fingered the
capsule in his watch pocket to make sure it was still
there. As long as he took care of business, what
could it hurt to take it?
  It would be a crime to just waste it.
  And even if he did take it, a few weeks from
now he could still come back to L.a. And if he
skipped the final step when he mixed the
stuff, left out adding the selfdestruct catalyst,
the resulting caps maybe wouldn't be quite as potent,
but they wouldn't go bad, either. He could take one every
day until it killed him, and that wouldn't be the worst
way to go out, now would it?
  He smiled at himself in the bathroom mirror.
  It was like looking at a grinning skull.
  Drayne was pissed off at himself. He knew
better than to associate with people he dealt to, he
knew better. He'd talked to a lot of dope
dealers over the years, had wrangled access to a
lot of FBI files via his father, without the old
man knowing, of course, and he'd learned a whole
lot about the biz before he had ever sold his first pill.
  The upside of things were big bucks and big
thrills.
  Dopers who were smart made fortunes, and they got
to make the assorted varieties of cops look
stupid while they did it. Big money, big
rushes, the thrill of victory, and all that green
to feed the machine.
  There was a downside, of course. Stupid dopers
could get killed by a rival dealer. Or ripped off
and maybe killed by a customer. Or busted and sent
to the gray bar hotel for twenty years on
a heavy federal rap. Or busted by the local
yokels. Lot of minefield in the illegal
trade, and you couldn't complain to the cops if somebody
pointed a gun at you and stole your dope or your
money.
  The thing was, if you were a dealer, and if you did it
long enough, and if you didn't move around a bunch
while you were doing it, you were sooner or later going
to get caught. Ninety-nine point ninety-nine
percent of dealers who stayed in the biz for more than a
few years in one place eventually got nailed.
Sometimes it was a distributor who gave 'em up,
sometimes it was an ex-wife or girlfriend, sometimes the
cops found 'em on their own.
  Once you got a lot of cash in your hands, it
sometimes made you stupid. You bought expensive,
flashy toys, you got to thinking because you were rich you were
invincible, and just like Zeigler, all your money
didn't mean squat when the bullets started to fly.
You couldn't take it with you.
  So Drayne had always kept a low profile.
No yachts, no car that couldn't be leased by half of
L.a. No bodyguards with muscles and bulges
under their jackets to make people wonder who you were who
needed bodyguards.
  Absolutely minimal risks in sales,
delivery, taking on new customers. Never more
stuff in the house than necessary. Nobody knew what
he did except for three people: Tad and the old
couple who drove the RV. Tad would never give
him up, and Ma and Pa Yeehaw were lifetime
criminals who would go down with guns blasting before they
let themselves be taken. If not, he'd have them bailed
out and gone before the feds knew what they had.
  Not perfect, no ironclad guarantees, but he
had been very careful. Until he got sucked into the
glitz ofZeigler's movie-star circles. Even
then, Drayne had stood in the back on the
Zee-ster's coattails, and what the hell, it had
been fun, watching every door open in front of them,
women falling all over themselves to get close to them,
and the reflected feeling of celebrity.
  It had never occurred to him that Zeigler would be the
target of a raid. Feds just didn't kick in
famous millionaires" doors; it just wasn't
done.
  Well, it was now. And while they were probably
okay, going to ground and turning invisible until all
the heat died down was the way to play it. No reason
to push things. He was ahead of the game. The
feds were plodders, but they were like the tortoise: While
the hare was taking a nap, they might creep up on
him and bite him on the ass. Drayne wasn't
going to give them that chance, no sir, thank you very
fucking much.
  A month or two in Hawaii in the fall? You
could do a lot worse. And worse was not the way to go.
  Soon as Tad got things taken care of, they were
gonna hop on one of those big honkin' jumbo
jets and zip on out to the islands. By the time they got
back, all this other stuff would be old news.
  Old news.

  Washington, D.c.
  Toni was going stir-crazy, she had cabin fever
big time, and she had to get out of the house before she went
totally bonkers. Yes, the doctor had told her
to stay home and confine herself to light activity. Because,
the doctor had said, if there were any more problems with
cramping or bleeding, and she wanted this baby, she was
going to wind up spending the rest of the pregnancy in
bed, so best she not cause things to get to that state
by being overactive.
  Toni's mother had, of course, agreed entirely
with the doctor's assessment. Sure, she
hadn't slacked off any when her babies were growing,
Mama said, but that was different. She was healthy as a
horse, and besides, all that fighting stuff Toni did
was probably upsetting the baby anyhow.
  Toni didn't really have any place she wanted
or needed to go, and she would window-shop in the mall if
nothing else, as long as she didn't have to sit here
alone in the place while Alex was off at work for
one more day.
  She missed work more than she'd expected, and it
wasn't the same doing little piddly consulting things on
the net. There was no interaction with real people, no
matter how good the virtual scenarios were. Yes,
the state of-the-art Scent Ware ultrasonic
olfactory generators gave some pretty
authentic smells. The latest-generation haptic
program from Sen sAble Technologies allowed you
to feel pressure and touch, and of course,
everybody's visuals were getting better every day, but
the differences between the best VR stimware and reality were
like light-years compared to millimeters; there was a
long, long way to go.
  On a whim, Toni called Joanna
Winthrop.
  "Hey, Toni! How's the pregnancy
going?"
  "Awful. I feel like a bloated cow."
  Joanna laughed.
  "I hear that, and I sympathize completely.
  No matter how many times Julio told me I
was beautiful, I knew I could stand next to the
hippos at the zoo and nobody could tell us apart."
  "Alex doesn't understand. I know I'm whining,
I can't stop myself, and as soon as I start, he
runs and hides in the garage. That old car he's
working on is going to be the most over built
classic in all creation. I think he's leaving
early and coming home late from work just to stay out of my
way."
  "Bet on it."
  Toni sighed.
  "So how is your baby?"
  "The demon child from Hell?"
  "What?"
  Joanna laughed.
  "He's great. That's just what we call him when
we can't figure out why he's crying."
  "Does that happen a lot?"
  "Not really. But every once in a while, none of the
usual things work. He's not hungry,
he's not wet, he doesn't need to burp, he
doesn't seem tired, he's too little to be cutting
teeth. So far, the little battery-powered swing mostly
does the trick, and if that fails, we put him in
the car seat and take him for a ride in the car, and that
pretty much calms him down. Or Julio takes
him for a long walk. By the third or fourth mile,
Julio says, he's usually okay."
  "Jesus," Toni said.
  "What have I done?"
  Joanna laughed again, louder.
  "I'm kidding, sweetie.
  He's a terrific kid, worth every penny. How
are you doing, really?"
  Toni explained about her scrimshaw, and about how
she was feeling cooped up.
  "Why don't you come on over and visit us? The
baby is asleep, he'll be out for another couple
hours, and I'd love to see you again. I've missed
the crew at work."
  "Me, too," Toni said.
  "You're sure it's okay?"
  "Of course I'm sure. I'm a new mama and
you're gonna be in a few months. If we can't
help each other, who will?"
  Toni felt as if her load had been lightened
immeasurably.
  "Thanks, Joanna. I'm on my way."
  Bobby's "work" phone jangled as he was looking
for his suitcase in the garage. He frowned. Only
a few people had the number, which was supposedly a
direct line to his "office."
  He went to the kitchen and touched the com's caller
ID button.
  Nothing; whoever was calling was blocked.
Probably a wrong number. He tapped the
speaker button.
  "Polymers, Drayne," he said.
  "Hello, Robert."
  Jesus Christ!
  "Dad?"
  "How are you?" his father said. He sounded old.
  "Me? I'm fine. How, uh, are you? Everything
okay?"
  "I am well."
  "How's the dog?"
  "He's fine."
  There was a long pause.
  "What, uh, what's up. Dad?"
  "I have some bad news, I'm afraid.
You remember your aunt Edwina's son,
Carlton?"
  Aunt Edwina's son. He couldn't have just said,
"Your cousin"?
  "Yeah, sure."
  "Well, he was in a boating accident yesterday.
He passed away in the hospital this morning."
  "Creepy's dead?" Jesus.
  "I asked you not to call him that, Robert."
  Drayne shook his head. His father would remember
that. Still worried about the name, even though the man was
dead.
  Carlton Post had been called Creepy as
long as Drayne could remember. He was three
years younger than Drayne, and whenever his folks had
come to visit--Edwina was his old man's younger sister
by five years or so--they'd brought their four kids
along. Creepy was the only boy, and Drayne had
usually been stuck watching him. Drayne didn't
know who had nicknamed him in the first place; the
oldest girl cousin. Creepy's sister, Irene,
had passed the name along to Drayne once when she and
Drayne had been teaching each other how to play
doctor.
  The name came from the way he stared at people:
He'd been a shrimpy little black-haired boy who
looked at you crooked without blinking for what sometimes
seemed like ten minutes.
  "What happened?" Drayne said. He hadn't
known Creepy that well, but hearing about his death left
him feeling oddly distressed.
  "He was waterskiing on Lake Mead.
Apparently he fell and was run over by another
boat. Knocked unconscious, then cut by the
boat's engine propeller. He lost a lot of
blood before he was fished out, and there was extensive
head trauma."
  His father related the information as if talking about the
weather, no excitement, no grief, deadpan and
almost in a monotone. Fell. Run over. Cut.
Always the cool federal agent.
  "Oh, man. That's awful. How's Aunt
Edwina holding up?"
  "She is, of course, greatly distressed."
  Creepy was dead. It was hard to imagine. The
kid had grown up, gone to school at UNLV,
married a girl he'd met there, gotten a degree
in history, then stayed to teach high school somewhere
outside Salt Lake City. Orem?
  Something like that? Him and--what was her
name?-oh, yeah, Brenda, probably the only two
non-Mormons for as far as the eye could see.
They'd gotten a divorce after a couple years, and
Creepy stayed there. It had been five, six
Christmases since Drayne had seen his cousin.
  He'd actually turned out okay, a nice guy.
  "The funeral will be day after tomorrow at Edwina's
church in Newport Beach. I'll be driving up for
it."
  Edwina and her husband, Patrick, were
Presbyterians.
  God's frozen people.
  His father was coming to L.a. Well, shit. So much for
jetting off to Hawaii. Drayne said, "You, uh,
need a place to stay?"
  "No, I'll stay at Edwina's or get a
hotel room nearby.
  She'll need family support. The funeral will
be at ten o'clock. Can you get off work to attend?"
  That was the kind of man his father was. If he'd still
been working for the FBI when his nephew had been
killed, he would have worried about shit like that. Sure,
he'd have taken a personal day and gone, but he would
have fretted over missing work. Duty was his reason
to get up in the morning.
  Drayne said, "Sure, no problem, I can
take off."
  "I'm going to be at Patrick and Edwina's at
nine and then drive over to the church. You can meet me
either place. You remember how to get to her house?"
  It had been a long time since he'd been there.
  "She still at that place overlooking the highway?"
  "Yes."
  "I can find it."
  "Good. I'll see you then. Good-bye,
Robert."
  Drayne tapped the speaker button and shut the
com off.
  That was his old man. Just the bare facts--who,
where, what, when--and he was done. No emotion in his
voice that his sister's only son, his nephew, was
dead; it was just a flat recitation: "Your cousin is
dead. We're going to bury him. We "II see
you there. Goodbye."
  Jesus fucking Christ.
  Drayne sighed. Well, okay, this was gonna
put a small crimp in his plans, but Creepy
had been his cousin. He was family. You couldn't just
not go, not if you ever had to bump into the rest of the
family again. Traffic would be a bitch that
time of day, he'd have to get up and get rolling on the
PCH early, by seven, at least. Maybe six
thirty
  You didn't want to be caught in a traffic
jam on the way to a funeral.
  Shit. First it was Zeigler, then Creepy.
Bad things came in threes. He hoped the next
one wouldn't be Tad* Or himself... December
1991 Stonewall Jackson High School
Cafeteria, Cool Springs, Georgia
  Jay Gridley stood in the cafeteria line.
The woman behind
  the counter slopped a big ice cream scooper
full of mashed potatoes onto his compartmentalized
baby blue Melmac plate, turned the scoop
over and pressed it against the creamed spuds to make a
concave indentation, dipped the scoop into a pan of
greasy brown liquid, and said, "Chon' togetheravyth'
thet?"
  Jay made the translation mentally: "Do you want
gravy with your mashed potatoes?"
  By the time he'd figured out what she said, the server
had already poured the warm goo all over the plate,
slopping into the green beans, the hamburger steak, and the
little empty slot where Jay had planned
to have a piece of cherry pie. Forget that.
  "Uh .. . sure," he said. way late.
  She handed him the plate back, under the angled
glass sneeze guard.
  This was where Mr. Brett Lee of the Drug
Enforcement Administration had gone to high school,
graduating at age seventeen, third in the class
of '91, before going off to Georgia Tech to get his
master's in criminology. He'd gone to work for the
DEA the year after he had graduated college and
had thus spent nearly thirteen years working for them.
  In the real world. Jay would be looking at the
school yearbooks, talking to teachers and fellow
students, downloading pictures and stats, and
putting together an education history of Mr. Lee.
In VR, he had built a scenario that would let
him walk through the school itself--or rather what he
imagined a place named after a Southern Civil
War hero might look and feel like--and absorbing the
information in a much more interesting manner.
  Lee had been well-liked, had gotten good
grades, and had hung with jocks, having been a
middle-distance runner on the school's track team.
  Jay had come as far back as high school because he
had not been able to discover any connection between
Brett Lee and Zachary George either in their work
careers or college. While the two men were only
a year apart in age--George was thirty-seven.
Lee, thirty-six--Lee had been born and
raised in Georgia, while George had grown
up in Vermont. When Lee was at Georgia
Tech, George had been at New York
University. They had not crossed paths that Jay
could tell until they were both working for the federal
government, and while there was no record of their first
meeting there, there was some kind of friction apparent by the
time both had been in harness for a few years.
  Jay had all that--the two didn't like each other,
maybe they just rubbed each other the wrong way or
something-but the cause of the conflict had not come to light.
He could pass on what he'd come up with
to Michaels, but it didn't tell them anything they
didn't already know.
  The young Lee, sitting at a table with four guys
and two girls from the track teams, dipped a
French fry in catsup and ate it as Jay moved
to sit at a conveniently empty table behind the group.
  Convenient, hell. He had designed the setup
that way himself.
  The conversation was hardly enlightening. They
talked about things of interest to teenagers: music,
movies, who was going out with whom, teachers they hated,
the. usual.
  And in the twenty-year-old jargon, it was
pitifully dated.
  Lee was close to Jay's age, and if he'd
talked like this, he must have seemed a terrible dweeb
to any passing adult. Or dork. Or dickhead.
All phrases the boys used fast and furiously,
mixing and matching as needed:
  "Yeah, well, Austin is a dickhead
dweeb," one of the boys said.
  "He gave me a fuckin' C on the midterm
because I didn't use the right color ink!"
  "Yeah, Austin's a dork, all right," another
boy said.
  One of the girls, a pretty bottle-blond in
a gray T-shirt held together with safety pins,
said, "Yeah, but he's kinda cute."
  The other girl, a brunette with hair worn so
short as to almost be a crew cut said, "Yeah, too
bad he's gay."
  One of the boys said, "Gay? Shee-it, he ain't
gay. I seen him lookin' up Sissy Lou's
skirt and getting' a hardon in debate
one, you know how she sits with her knees apart.
You're just pissed "cause he don't look at you
that way. Maybe if you wore a skirt instead of
jeans all the time, you'd see."
  "I don't think Jessie here owns a skirt,"
the third boy said, poking the short-haired girl on
the shoulder.
  "But I hear she's got some black bikini
panties."
  Jessie slapped at the third boy.
  "You won't never find out, dickhead."
  "Whatever," the safety-pinned girl said,
dismissing the topic.
  He could die of boredom here. Jay thought. Or
worse, start laughing so hard he'd spray milk out
of his nose.
  Brett Lee said, "He's not queer, he's just
smart, is all.
  He got us that trip to the Debate Finals in
Washington,
  D.c."
  "Pro'ny had to give somebody a blow job to do
it," Safety-Pin said.
  "I'm tellin" you, he's not queer," the
second boy said.
  "Hell, Hayworth, maybe he was lookin' at
you instead of Sissy when he got the hard-on,"
Jessie said.
  "Your ass!" Hayworth said.
  "Whatever," Safety-Pin said.
  Jay shook his head. Oh, yeah, he was gonna
learn a lot here. Jesus.
  "So," Jessie said to Brett, "you going to the
debate thing?"
  "Yeah. There's gonna be people from all over the
country there."
  "Mostly Yankees," Hayworth said. his
  "Not' queer Yankees, at that."
  "I'm goin'," Lee said.
  "I'm not gonna live the rest of my life here
in Hickburg. I'm gonna meet people, make
friends, get myself a job where I can make a
shitload of money and retire by the time I'm forty."
  "Your ass," Hayworth said.
  Jay shook his head. He'd heard enough of this.
  Then, as he was about to leave, he had a thought.
  Maybe Zachary George had been interested in
debate in high school?
  Hmm. Well, he could take a little run up
to Montpelier High and check that out.
Easy enough to do when you were Jay Gridley, master of
virtual space and time.

  Washington, D.c.
  Michaels walked into the Columbia
Scientific Shop, not expecting much from the small
size of the storefront. An error, he quickly
found.
  The place didn't have much frontage, but it
opened up once you were inside. It wasn't the size
of a Costco or anything, but it was a lot bigger than
he'd expected.
  There were racks and racks of items, ranging from
Van de Graaff generators to home dissection
kits to chemistry sets to huge telescopes.
  Lord, he'd wander around in here forever.
  "May I help you, sir?"
  Michaels turned to see a woman who looked as
if she might be the perfect TV grandmother smiling
at him. She was short, slight, wore her gray
hair in a bun, a pair of cat's-eye reading
glasses hung from a string around her neck, and she
had a white sweater draped over her shoulders.
  The blue print dress she wore went almost all
the way to the floor. She looked to be
late sixties.
  "Yes, ma'am," he said.
  "I'm looking for a stereomicroscope."
  "Ah, yes, aisle nine. What kind of working
distance would you need between the lens and object?"
  Michaels didn't have a clue.
  "I don't know."
  "Perhaps if you told me the purpose?"
  "Um, it's for my wife. She's pregnant and
has to stay at home, so she's taken up
scrimshaw."
  Granny beamed and nodded.
  "Congratulations! Your first child?"
  "Yes." Well, it was his and Toni's first child.
And their last, too, according to Toni.
  "If you'll follow me."
  He did, and in due course, they arrived at
aisle nine and a rack of optical equipment, most
of which he couldn't put a name to. None of it looked
cheap, however.
  Granny said, "Your wife will need a focus
distance at least the length of her inscribing tool,
eight or nine inches.
  This unit here will give her a foot, so that will do
it. It's a Witchey Model III, and
it comes with ten times and twenty times. Much more power
than she needs, but if you put an oh point three
times auxiliary lens on it, right here, that will give you
three times and six times, which should be sufficient for
scrimshaw. Just to be sure, we can add in another
lens that will ramp it up to five times and ten times."
  Michaels nodded, not really understanding what she was
talking about.
  "We could use an articulating arm, but
probably a standard post mount would be fine." She
looked around and leaned a little closer toward him.
  "My supervisor would just as soon I sell you a
fiber-optic shadow-free ring light to go with it, but
frankly, you can get a gooseneck lamp and a
hundred watt bulb and save yourself three hundred
dollars."
  Michaels blinked.
  "Uh, thank you."
  She gave him a perfect grin, full of smile
wrinkles and dimples.
  "The basic scope is eight hundred dollars,
and the two lenses normally retail for about one
hundred dollars each, but I can knock a bit off
that. Say, nine hundred and fifty dollars all
total? And I'll throw in a gooseneck
lamp at a discount, too."
  Michaels blew out a small sigh and nodded. The
profit he'd made on the Miata rebuild was
pretty much shot after the honeymoon and the Chevy, but
he had a thousand or so left. Toni wanted this but
wouldn't buy it for herself, and the truth was, he was
feeling guilty about not being more supportive about the
pregnancy. It was his son she was carrying, after
all, and the least he could do was try to make her enforced
inactivity more bearable.
  "I'll take it," he said.
  Granny laser-beamed another smile at him.
  "Excellent.
  If you'll follow me, I'll have one brought up
to the checkout counter."
  Michaels followed her toward the front of the
store. On the way there, a pair of small boys
ran past on the cross aisle in front of them.
A second after they passed, there was a crash,
yells, then what sounded like glass shattering.
  Granny said, "Shit! You little bastards! You're
not supposed to be running in here!" Whereupon she herself
took off at a good sprint. The long dress's
hem kicked up enough for Michaels to see that Granny
wore a pair of flaming red Nike
Spring Gels high-end running shoes that went for
almost two hundred bucks a pair.
  He had to smile. Another example that things were
not always what they appeared to be.
  Quantico, Virginia
  John Howard, in shorts, a T-shirt, and his
old sneakers, was working up a pretty good sweat on
the obstacle
  course near Net Force HQ. There were a few
Marine officers he recognized running the course,
a few FBI types, and there, just ahead on the
chinning bars, none other than Lieutenant Julio
Fernandez.
  Julio saw Howard but kept doing his chins,
palms forward and hands a little wider than his shoulders.
  Howard stopped and watched. He counted eight before
Julio gutted out the last one and let go, then leaned
forward and started rubbing at one bicep.
  "How many did you do?"
  "Twelve," Julio said.
  Howard raised an eyebrow.
  "Yeah, yeah, I know, I used to do fifteen,
sometimes twenty on a good day. I haven't been
getting out here as often as I should."
  "The joys of family life," Howard
observed.
  "Yes, sir, that's for sure. I wouldn't trade
it for anything, but it does change things some. Before I
met Joanna, if I woke up in the middle of the
night and felt like it, I could suit up and hit the
gym or go run a couple miles, whatever. Now
when I wake up in the middle of the night, it's to the
sound of a crying baby. Changing a diaper full of
gooey yellow poop at three in the morning was never
in my flight plan. I don't think I've had
three hours of sleep at any one stretch for three
months.
  "How'd you do it, John? How'd you live through a
tiny baby?"
  Howard laughed.
  "I stopped working out. I stopped going to have a
drink with the boys after dinner because I was falling
asleep in my chair watching TV. You have to change
your priorities."
  "Yeah, I hear that. I can see it all now:
I'm gonna wind up like a certain fat old
general, too stiff and tired to walk from the couch to the
bed. It's a pitiful thing to think about."
  "Fat old general? You want to run the course.
Lieutenant, and see just how fat and old
I really am? Perhaps I should give you a handicap.
Ten seconds? A minute?"
  "Your ass. General, sir. I might be in
terrible shape, but that's compared to a
twenty-five-year-old SEAL, not a man your
age."
  "I'm not a man my age, Julio. I'm
getting better every day."
  "You got your stopwatch?"
  Howard smiled.
  "As it happens." He pulled the watch from under his
shirt where it hung on a loop of old bootlace.
  "Start it. I'll see you at the end. Time you
get there, I can probably shower, shave, and catch
up on my sleep."
  "Go, Lieutenant. The clock is ticking. But
be careful of your heart."
  Julio smiled, and took off.
  On the way home, Michaels's virgil
played a few bars of Franz Liszt's Les
Preludes, a somber, regal musical sting that,
according to Jay Gridley, was the basis for the theme that
announced the Emperor Ming in the old Flash
Gordon movie series in the '30's. Buster
Crabbe, the swimming champion, had starred
in those, Jay had told him. Jay had been to what
had once been Buster's house, as a boy in
SoCal. It had a big swimming poo) in the
backyard. Talking a bigggg pool... It was
Susie. He saw her tiny picture appear on
his virgil's screen, and he activated his own
minicam so she could see him.
  "Hey, yo, Daddy-o!"
  his
  "Daddy-o'? What happened to "Dadster'?"
  "Oh, that's so yesterday," she said.
  "You really did go to school with the dinosaurs,
huh?"
  "It's true. I had to hike a prehistoric
trail ten miles long every morning, in the tropical
heat, uphill both ways, and be careful of stepping
into the tar pits. You have it easy, kiddo."
  "So Mom says."
  "How are you?"
  "Fine."
  "Everything going okay with, ah, Byron?"
  "Yep. He's a good guy, really."
  Michaels felt his belly clutch. He had
thought he was going to lose contact with her after the nasty
business with Megan, but somehow, his
ex-wife had relented. Thank God for large
miracles.
  "I'm glad to hear it," he said. Boy, that
came hard.
  "He argued with Mom something awful about letting me
see you."
  Michaels felt the heat begin in him, threatening
to rise and shut off his breathing and vision. That bastard!
  "Didn't like the idea, huh?" he managed
to say, faking a smile. She could see him, after
all.
  "Oh, no, Daddy-o, it was Mom who didn't
like it. Byron said it wasn't right to keep a father from
seeing his daughter. He wouldn't give up until
she agreed."
  Michaels's anger turned to wonder.
  "Really?"
  "Yeah, he doesn't like you much after you insulted
Mom and knocked him down, but he tries to be
fair. He's just not you. I miss you. Dad."
  As always, that broke his heart.
  "Me, too. You tell Byron thank you for me,
would you?"
  He debated for a moment about whether to tell his
preteen daughter that she was going to have a new
little brother. Well, half brother. Then he
decided she ought to hear it from him.
  "I have some news for you. Did you know you're going
to have a baby brother in a few months?"
  "Mom told?" she said.
  "She told me I couldn't say anything to you. But
it's not a brother, it's a sister."
  For a moment, he couldn't track what she said, it
was as if she had spoken words he understood but
arranged them wrong. What she said made no sense.
  Then it came to him:
  Megan was pregnant!
  "Daddy-o, where'd you go?"
  "Huh? Oh, sorry, sweetie, I'm in my
car, I had to, uh, switch lanes."
  "Pretty cool, huh?" she said.
  "A baby sister. Almost none of my friends have any
that little. Chellie's got a brother who's two, and
Marlene's got a sister who's like one, but nobody
else's mom is preggers."
  "Pretty cool," he said.
  "Congratulations."
  Susie's slip brought up a whole wave of
things he didn't want to think about. He loved
Toni, and she loved him in a way
Megan never had. He was over his ex-wife,
finally. Well, almost over her. There was always that little
wonder about the road not taken, even though the roads
they had traveled the last few years had been
pretty ugly.
  But she was Susie's mother, and there had been some good
times. Wonderful times, at the beginning.
  Now that she was having another man's baby, the
old jealousy tried to rear its viper like head, and for a
moment, he almost let it.
  No. That serpent was dead.
  And now what did he tell Susie about her
half brother?
  Should he say anything? He didn't want to get
into any kind of competition with Megan for his
daughter's affection as much as he didn't want
to lose it.
  And yet, if he was going to continue to be part of
Susie's life, Toni was also going to be a part of
it, as would their unborn child.
  Sooner or later, word would get back
to Megan; somehow it always did, and he would rather
Susie hear it from him.
  "Well, Li'l Bit, it looks like you are going
to be really cool."
  "Huh?"
  He smiled into the virgil.

  Santa Monica, Cahfomia
  The Safari Bar and Grill was first on Tad's
list. This was an old but little-known watering hole not
far from Santa Monica City College. The
food was good, the drinks generous, and the place was far
enough off the main drags so the locals had mostly
kept it hidden from the tourists.
  Tad approached the assistant manager on
duty and gave him the bullshit story he'd worked
up.
  "Say, man, I got a problem maybe you can
help me with?"
  The assistant manager, a smiling black guy
of thirty with nice teeth, dressed in khaki
safari shorts and matching shirt, said, "What's the
problem, bro?"
  "Okay, look, a while back, my brother and
his wife were having some difficulties. I uh, got
together with her to, you know, help them out. We had
lunch here a few times."
  "Uh-huh, so?"
  "One thing kinda led to another. My
sister-in-law and I, well, we, ah, stepped
over the line, you know what I mean?"
  "You punching your brother's wife? That's bad
biz, bro. Gonna make Thanksgiving dinners a
bitch."
  "Yeah, yeah, I know. It just happened, you know.
Anyway, they got their shit worked out okay, they're
back together. But my brother, he's a jealous
type, and he suspects that while they were on the
outs, his wife maybe did some stuff she shouldn't have
done."
  "He's right, too, idn't he?"
  Tad looked at his boots.
  "Yeah, and I feel like shit about it, okay? But
he only suspects, he doesn't know, and he
sure as hell don't know about me. The thing is, my
brother is big and kinda mean, and he's with the cops,
and if he starts poking around and finds out his wife and
I spent any time together, I'm fucked."
  "I hear that."
  "So like I said, we were in here a few times, had a
few drinks and a few laughs, and if he shows up
here somehow and gets his hands on your security
tapes, I could be in deep shit."
  The assistant manager smiled.
  "Not to worry, my man.
  You here further back than a week, he won't
find nothing.
  We record three days at a time. Nobody
sticks up the place or starts a fight the police
need to see, we start the disk over again. No
permanent records."
  Tad smiled.
  "Hey, man, I appreciate you tellin' me
this." He pulled a couple of tightly folded
twenties from his pocket and extended his hand. When they
shook hands, the twenties pressed into the assistant
manager's palm, and he grinned and nodded.
  "No problem, bro. You be more careful now, you
hear? That pussy will kill you, you not careful."
  After the Safari, Tad rumbled the big Dodge
along surface streets to two other restaurants
within a few miles of each other and ran the same
story.
  At the Sun "n" Shore, it played
pretty much the same, except for the time. The
security cams there recorded over the old stuff
after only twenty-four hours. Not to sweat it.
  At the Irish Pub, they had cams, but all they
did was feed a couple of show monitors,
no tapes or disks.
  Tad was feeling pretty good about this. He had
three more places to hit, and he was done. He could
take the Hammer cap and get the trip rolling, they
were all gonna be this easy.
  But of course, just to fuck up that plan, the Berger
Hotel, on the hill overlooking the ocean, was more
of a problem. A lot of well-off people with well-known
faces came here and got a room to get laid in,
and the bar was dark and quiet. And when you had folks with
fame and money in your house, you were smart to spend a
little more on security to make sure the rich and famous
didn't get ripped off. That was bad for business.
  So at the Berger, they kept their recordings for a
year on long-running super dense video
diskettes, SDVD'S. The system wasn't
full-frame twenty-four-a-second vid, but
blink cams that snapped stills every few seconds.
You didn't get full motion stuff that way, but you
could store a lot more time on a lot less space,
and the cams were set to take snaps often enough so you
couldn't walk across the lobby without being caught. A still
picture that showed faces would do the trick.
  Tad ran the sister-in-law number on the
assistant manager of the hotel, some kid
who looked like he was just out of college with a degree
in hotel management, and got sympathy, but that was
all.
  The kid, a pale, green-eyed, dishwater
blond in a dark suit and tie, said, "I'm
sorry, sir, it is against hotel policy to allow
anybody to see the security recordings."
  "Even the cops?"
  "Well, of course, we cooperate with the police
in criminal matters."
  "So if my brother shows up and flashes his
badge, he gets the SDVD? And my
sister-in-law and I get drummed out of the family?
Not to mention by brother kicks the shit out of me,
maybe breaks an arm or two?"
  "I... I wish I could help, really."
  "Look, if I knew the date we were here,
couldn't you get that diskette out and, uh, misfile
it? Accidents happen, right? Somebody could have put
that into the wrong file drawer or something, couldn't they?
It would have been like a month ago. If anything had
happened on that day, the cops would have come looking for it
by now, right?"
  The kid was wavering.
  Tad brought out the heavy artillery.
  "C'mon, man, I made a big mistake, but
it's done. Nobody got hurt, and as long as it
never gets out in the open, nobody ever will.
  I love my brother. What he don't know
won't hurt him.
  Or me. Put yourself in my shoes."
  The kid wanted to help, but he was skittish.
  Tad went for the throat: "Enter it... nobody will
ever know. I sure won't tell, and it's not like you'd
be doing anything criminal. It would be worth a lot
to me to keep my brother from finding out. Look, I just
sold my car. I got enough for a down payment on a
new one, plus about a thousand bucks extra. You
get me the diskette, I give you the thousand.
Everybody comes out ahead. My brother doesn't
find out I screwed up, he and his wife live
happily ever after, and even if anybody ever comes
looking for the recording--which they probably won't--
all they'll think is that it got mislaid. Hell,
you could even put a blank one in the slot, and they'd
probably just think the cams were out of whack ... if
anybody ever bothered to look. Cut me some slack
here, please."
  Everything Tad said made a certain kind of
sense. And the bottom line was, who would
know or ever find out?
  Not to mention that a thousand bucks tax-free cash was
surely more than this kid took home in a week.
A week's pay and then some for a thing nobody would ever
miss?
  How tempting was that?
  The kid licked his lips.
  "What was the date?" he asked.
  Tad kept his face serious, even though he
wanted to smile. One born every minute.
  When Tad got back into the Dodge and cranked
it up, he had the SDVD, a little silver disk about
the size of a half-dollar coin. He broke it in
half, broke those pieces in half, and stuck them
in the ashtray. He lit a cigarette with a
throwaway Bic, dialed the flame up to high, and
torched the diskette pieces. They smoked but
didn't catch fire, just melted into sludge after a
minute. The greasy smoke coming off the molten
diskette did stink up the car something fierce, so
he rolled down the windows to let the smoke
escape.
  So much for that.
  Two places left on Bobby's list, and neither
one of them was going to be as tough as the
hotel. One was a movie house the Zee-ster rented
to show one of his pictures to a hundred of his closest
friends at the moment, the other was a gym where Bobby and the
Zee-ster had worked out together a couple of times.
Probably neither of them even had security cams,
but if they did, between his sister-in-law story and a
pocket full of cash, he didn't foresee any
problems. People would help you out if the story was good
enough, and if they were a little reluctant, a fat wad
of green went a long way to moving things along.
Everybody had a price; you just had to find it.
  So there was no reason not to pick up the Hammer that
Tad could see.
  He swallowed the big purple cap, washed it
down with a swig of bottled water, and headed for the
movie theater.
  April 1992 Washington, D.c.
  The ballroom at the hotel was crowded, mostly
fairly well-dressed teenagers, with a sprinkling of
teachers and employees here and there. Jay walked through
the twenty year-old scenario, looking at the
students as they headed for their seats.
  This was the quarter-final round for the debate, whose
topic this year was: "Resolved--Imminent
Threats to National Security Should
Supersede Habeas Corpus."
  Boy, didn't that sound exciting?
  Jay had learned in his research that debate teams
were given an issue at the beginning of the year, and that this
issue would be the same nationwide. The teams--two
on a side--had to be able to argue both sides of
an issue, and the reason for that was that sometimes they might
not know which side they were going to be assigned until the
last minute. The topic, which certainly sounded like
ends justify-the-means to him, spoke to the idea of the
scope of legal protection, habeas corpus, being
a shortened version of the full term habeas corpus
ad subjiciendum. Technically, he had just
learned, it meant something like, "You can have the body
to undergo the action of the law," or some such. What it
meant was, you couldn't be thrown into jail without due
process of the law. If you were suspected of a
crime, then you had to be arrested, charged, given
access to legal counsel, arraigned, and eventually
brought to trial. The authorities couldn't just throw you
in a jail cell and leave you there without offering a
reason.
  As such, habeas corpus was the cornerstone of
British and U.s. law.
  To Jay, such a debate was a yawner,
about as exciting as eating a bowl of cold oatmeal
while watching paint dry, but the buzz in the room was
certainly enthusiastic.
  The reason Jay was here was because the DEA agent
Brett Lee and the NSA agent Zachary George
had both attended this conference as teenagers. It could have
been a coincidence--there were hundreds of students
here, one team from the small states, and multiple
teams from the bigger ones--but maybe this was where the two
had run afoul of each other originally.
  That would make sense. Jay reasoned. Being on
opposite sides of a debate would mean that one would
lose and the other would win, and maybe arguments had
gotten heated to the point of personal anger.
  However, a check of the records once he got
to looking revealed that Lee and George had not been
on teams that debated each other. In fact, neither of
their teams made it to the finals. Georgia got
blown out in the first round.
  Vermont did get to the quarter-finals, and had
argued the affirmative position against a team from
Nebraska, the result of which was that they had also been
eliminated.
  Georgia and Vermont had not even been staying
on the same floor of the hotel.
  Jay's scenario was based on old news
footage, hotel records, and camcorder tapes
and photographs taken by students and teachers, as
well as the official society recordings that had
been compiled and sold commercially.
  The net was still in its infancy in the early
nineties, but there were some old debate web pages
in WWW archives, and some BBS'S. Jay had
set his search bots and blenders and strained it all,
feeding it into a simple WYSIWYG view
program. Added a few bells and whistles, of
course.
  So there he sat, with the Nebraskans and the
Vermontians--the Vermontinese? the Vermin?--about
ready to go at it.
  Zachary George was the leader of his duo, and he
was the opening speaker for the round.
  He got up, defined terms, and began his
introduction to his reasoning.
  George said, "In times of war or national
disasters, the country as a whole must come before
individuals. While we are a nation based on
liberty for all, destruction of the national structure
could easily result in liberty for none.
  "If a man has a cancerous finger, is
it not wiser to cut off the finger than allow it to spread
and destroy him? Is a single finger worth the whole
man? No, of course not.
  Likewise, if the life of the nation is threatened,
a single or a few individuals cannot be allowed
to cause such destruction.
  As the great Roman general Iphicrates said
two thousand years ago, "The needs of the many must
outweigh the needs of the few."
  was Huh. Jay thought that quote came from the
Vulcan Star Trek character Spock, in one of the old
movies from the eighties or nineties.
  George continued in this vein, but Jay was busy
looking around, trying to spot Lee. It didn't
take long. The young Brett Lee, looking much as
he had in Jay's earlier scenario at Stonewall
Jackson High, watched George from a third row
seat, leaning forward eagerly, hanging on every word.
  Jay got up and moved to get a better look
at Lee.
  George droned on: "... and did not Plato
say, "No human thing is of serious importance'?
How then can the temporary suspension of liberty by a
man or even a small group of men compare to the
liberty of millions?"
  Jay walked to a point where he could see Lee's
face.
  Hmm. Lee's expression certainly did not
seem like that of a young man who scorned what he was
hearing. It was more like a believer hearing a sermon
by his favorite preacher. Or a young man listening
to the words of his beloved. Could these two have been friends
who later had a falling out?
  This definitely needed more exploration. Jay
decided.
  But scenario could only do so much. As the speech
continued, Jay's attempt to learn more was frustrated
by the facts--or lack thereof. Whether in scenario or
RW, if it wasn't there, any speculation about an
event was just that, speculation. The program would let
Jay make anything he wanted to happen in VR
happen, but it would not necessarily be what actually
happened.
  Despite Jay's best efforts, he could not put
the two boys together at the debate conference outside
the presentation done at the quarter-final competition.
Sure, it was likely both Lee and George had
been at the semifinals and the final team debate.
Both the Vermont and Georgia teams had stayed
until the conference was over; the records
reflected that. They almost certainly would have been in the
audience watching, and it was not inconceivable that they had
somehow met before or after that.
  There were a few records after the quarter-finals
on both boys, but nothing that put the two of them in
any closer proximity than they were in Jay's
scenario.
  Maybe wasn't the same zstor sure.
  Even so. Jay felt as if there was something buried
here, something he needed to uncover.
  The problem was, how?

  Washington, D.c.
  When Toni walked into the kitchen, she saw the
microscope. It sat on the table, a red bow
stuck to it.
  She was stunned. A total surprise.
  "Alex! Where are you?"
  After a moment, he came into the kitchen, grinning.
  "You shouldn't have done this." She waved at the
scope.
  "Yeah, I should have. I've been slack in my
husbandly duties lately."
  "I hadn't noticed that."
  "Not those duties. The, uh,
expectant father ones."
  "It's a beautiful piece of equipment," she
said, touching the scope mount with one hand.
  "But we can't afford it."
  "We can. I had enough left in the car account to get
it.
  You deserve it."
  "It was a want, not a need," she said.
  "Nah, you needed it. I could tell."
  She smiled, and realized she hadn't been doing enough
of that lately.
  "Thank you, darling."
  "What, you aren't going to make me take it
back?"
  She laughed, and she knew he'd said it to make
her laugh.
  "I got two lenses to do whatever it is it is
supposed to do so you can work under it," he said.
  "Supposedly you'll have a foot between the lens and the
work object. I hope that's enough."
  "It is. My pin vises are only about seven
inches long or so."
  "Yeah, mine, too," he said, waggling his
eyebrows.
  Again, she laughed.
  "I should buy you one of these every day. Well, go
set it up and see how it works."
  "Later," she said.
  "I have something else in mind first."
  "What else could be more important?" Butter
wouldn't melt in his mouth.
  "Come along, and I'll show you."
  Now it was his turn to laugh. And even if she was
pregnant, they were still newlyweds, right?
  Toni headed for the bedroom, and Alex was right behind
her. No farther than seven inches, the way she
figured it.
  Jay was deep in cyberspace, working a scenario
that involved hunting something big and mean with a pack of
dogs, when a disembodied voice said, "Honey,
I'm home!"
  He dropped out of VR, blinked, and beheld
Saji.
  Saji, stark naked.
  "Whoa!" he said.
  "Sure, now you notice me. I've been here for
half an hour. If I were a thief, I could have
walked off with everything in the place, including you, and
you'd have been oblivious."
  "Uh..."
  "What's the matter, goat-boy? Cat got your
tongue?"
  "I hope," he said, grinning.
  John Howard and his wife Nadine were about to take
a shower together, something they hadn't been able to do much in
the last ten or twelve years with their son running
around the house. But now that he was in Canada,
well, it was time to make hay while the sun shone.
  "I'm fat and ugly," Nadine said.
  "I don't know why you want me around."
  "Well, you're a pretty good cook," he
allowed.
  She threw her shoe at him, but he was expecting
it. so he managed to dodge it.
  "Of course, you also have lousy aim."
  She reached for her other shoe.
  The phone rang.
  "Let the robot answer it," he said.
  "This from the master of duty? It could be Tyrone."
  Nadine picked up the phone. The extension in the
bathroom was a faux antique dial phone that
didn't have a caller ID screen.
  "Hello? Oh, hey, baby!"
  Yep. Tyrone.
  Howard had mixed feelings about the call.
Of course he was happy to hear from his son. He'd
have been a little happier if the boy's sense of timing
wasn't so lousy. Half an hour earlier or an
hour later, those would have been better. People who
didn't have children didn't know what happened to their sex
lives after the little ones got big enough to pad down the
hall and shove the bedroom door open, looking for
Mama and Daddy.
  "Yeah, sweetie, he's right here. I'll put
him on."
  Howard took the phone. Unfortunately, he
stopped paying attention to Nadine as soon as
Tyrone said hello. A mistake.
  The second shoe hit him on the butt.
  P01 NT OF 1More PACT 175
  "Hey, owl"
  "Dad?"
  "Nothing, son. Your mom is just being cute."
  Santa Monica, California
  The Hammer was coming on by the time Tad left the
movie theater. Like he thought, there hadn't been any
surveillance cams set up in the theater proper.
There was one installed in the redi-teller in the lobby,
but neither he nor Bobby had used the money machine
when the Zee-ster had done his private
showing. There wasn't any need;
  everything had been on the tab Zeigler ran.
  By the time he got to the gym, the chem was working
pretty good in Tad. It had come on faster than
usual.
  Maybe it was because he had tripped such a short
time ago and was still wrung out, or maybe it had to do
with the other dope he'd been taking to stay
ambulatory. Whatever.
  Thor was on a roll, urging Tad to join him in
a night of ass-kicking and taking names, and it was all
Tad could do to maintain control.
  Steve's Gym was an upscale place just off the
PCH that catered to serious jocks. Tad pushed open
the door, got a blast of frigid AC in the
face, and almost had an orgasm from the cold rush.
  Lifting weights had never been Tad's thing. As
a kid, his lungs had been too bad to let him do
squat physically.
  Between the bronchitis and asthma that later opened him
up for tuberculosis, and his naturally skinny
frame, he was never gonna be able to bulk up, so
he hadn't ever tried.
  With the Hammer working, he could probably go over and
grab one of those big barbells and twirl
it like a drum majorette's baton if he wanted
to, but why bother? Nobody here he wanted
to impress.
  "Can I help you?" came a deep voice from off
to Tad's right.
  He looked. There was a woman there who looked like
the Incredible Hulk's sister: She was big, heavy,
ugly, and looked as if she needed a shave. But she
had tits--fake ones--and the red leotard she wore
showed an absence of male equipment down south. A
definite woman, sort of.
  Tad smiled, enjoying a particularly nice rush
of something in the chem cocktail.
  "Steve around?"
  According to Bobby, Steve was the owner of the gym.
  He was a former Mr. America, Mr.
Universe, and Mr.
  Whatever Came After That, past his prime but still as
big as a rhino and plated with slabs of
steroid-cured muscle.
  Maybe six two, two sixty, down twenty
or thirty pounds from his competition days, Steve was still
as wide as a door with arms as big around as most
guys' legs. Bobby wasn't in the same class
as most of the body builders who came in
to move mountains of iron plates, but he was buffed
enough so nobody laughed when he took off his shirt, and
in better shape than most of the celebrity jocks
who made it a point to be seen here. Guys like the
Zeester, who had personal trainers the way most people
had toothbrushes, would stop by, do a few sets,
work-up a sweat, and have their pictures taken by their
publicity guys as they left, all pumped up and
manly.
  Anyway, Bobby had told him to talk
to Steve, who'd be happy to help out any friend of
Bobby's. Bobby dropped a lot of money in this
place, doing private sessions, buying
T-shirts and vitamins and shit.
  The Amazon said, "He's with a client right now.
Maybe I can help you?" Her expression at
seeing his pipe-stem frame in his black clothes said
she didn't really think she could help him, that God
Himself would have trouble helping such a pencil-necked
geek.
  Tad smiled, his mind zipping along quickly,
making connections and drawing conclusions that were usually
beyond him. The Hammer made you strong as Superman,
but it also gave you Lex Luthor's brainpower. That
wasn't just subjective on his part, either,
he had done some things that convinced him the increase in
processing power was real.
  He said, "Nah, it's personal biz."
  "He's gonna be about an hour," the woman said.
  "You can wait if you want."
  Normally, Tad might have gone for that. An hour
was nothing when he was straight--well, more or less
straight.
  But when the Hammer was pounding in your brain, doing
nothing for an hour when you were in the gotta-move stage
was pretty much impossible.
  Another body rush swept over Tad, and as it
did, he got an erection, a woody that came up
all of a sudden, like a switchblade opening, hoing!
  He looked at the woman bodybuilder. She
probably outweighed him by thirty or forty pounds,
and no way, no how was she his type, but she was
female and she was right here. He said, "You want
to screw? I bet I can wear you out in an hour."
  The woman laughed, a deep, resonant rumble
way down in her belly.
  "Oh, wow, that's really funny. You and me?
Ha!"
  Tad smiled pleasantly.
  "Even if I was into men, which I'm not,
you'd be the last guy I'd choose, fuzz-brain.
I'd want somebody who could pick me up and put
me down easy, and you don't look like you could pick
up an empty beer bottle without help."
  Tad continued to smile. Quickly, he stepped up
to her, scooped her up, and held the startled
bodybuilder cradled in his arms like a baby.
  "You mean like this? So, I passed the test, right?"
  With that, he used his left arm to support her
weight, reached over with his right hand, caught the
leotard between her breasts and ripped it down the
front, all the way to the crotch. The cloth fell
away like tissue, showing the muscular nudity
underneath.
  The woman was still behind the curve, so startled by what
he had done and probably that he had been able to do
it, her mouth just gaped.
  "Nice hooters," Tad said.
  "You get a good deal on "em?"
  He stuck his hand between her legs, and whatever
surprise she felt faded enough for her to scream and
punch him at the same time.
  Tad ignored the loose fist she threw as it
bounced off his cheekbone, and sought to explore the area
his hand had found. She started kicking and
screaming, and even with the Hammer, he was having trouble
keeping her still.
  The cavalry arrived then, three guys who together
probably weighed as much as a small car.
  "Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!" one of them
said.
  "Put Belinda down, asshole!"
  "You got a security cam setup in here?"
Tad asked.
  "You're damned straight we do, you fucking
psycho!"
  "Where is it?"
  "Charlie, call the cops. And call an
ambulance for this moron," the guy said.
  "You must be Steve, right?"
  "That's right, dick weed and you're dead. Put her
down!"
  Tad grinned. As it sometimes did when he got
excited, the drugs in the Hammer came up full
blast, roaring in like a tornado.
  "Here," he said. He threw Belinda at the
three. Charlie had stepped away, heading for a
phone, but Belinda hit Steve and his Neanderthal
buddy hard enough to knock them over. All three of them
tumbled to the floor, hard.
  Tad leaped at Charlie, grabbed him under the
armpits, and lifted him into the air until his feet
cleared the floor.
  Charlie had to go about two fifty, maybe two
sixty, a nice hefty lad.
  "Which way is the security cam control room?"
  Charlie, who hung there like a kid's doll,
stammered, "Thth-there!"
  He pointed.
  Since Steve was almost back on his feet. Tad
turned and threw Charlie at him. The collision of
beef was pretty hard.
  Tad ran for the unmarked door, didn't bother
to use the knob, and knocked it open. There was a
video monitor and a computer set up, a big hard
drive working.
  Tad glanced around. No diskettes stacked up
anywhere, no removable drives on the shelves.
He moved closer and divined that the security
device was no more than it appeared to be: a
short-time recorder that ran a cycle, recording
over and over, using the same storage device.
  He grabbed the thing, smashed it against the floor, and
shattered it into several pieces. The HD disk
popped out, and he picked that up and broke
it in half, then stuck the pieces in his back
pocket. Never knew but what they could recover
stuff even if it was busted.
  All done now.
  He started for the door.
  Steve, too stupid to know when he was outmatched,
came at Tad, swinging a steel bar. Even without
weights on it, the bar had to go fifteen pounds, and it
would have broken something had it hit him.
  Tad dodged, ducked, and the bar whistled over his
head, slammed into the wall, and punched a long hole
in the Sheetrock. The force of Steve's swing
buried the steel rod half its length in the wall.
  Tad drove his knee into Steve's kidney, and the
big man went down as if his legs had suddenly
vanished.
  Nobody else got in Tad's way as he
left the building.
  He headed for his car.
  Nobody came after him. Just as well, too.
He had enjoyed wrestling with the folks in the gym, and
if they'd come out for him, why, he would just have had
to oblige 'em.
  Now that that was over, he could relax and let the
Hammer swing him along.
  Gonna be a good night, yessir, he could
tell.
  Let's move it, Thor!

  Newport Beach, Californui
  bar The Newport Beach Community
Presbyterian Church (Usa) was not as
ostentatious as, say, the Crystal Palace,
right-brace but certainly it was L.a.: in your
face enough so it right-brace wouldn't pass for a church
most other places. Philosophi ically. God's
frozen people tended to have conservative "right-brace
views on politics, conservative views on
social issues, and of course, conservative views
on religion. They were very liberal on converting the
heathen, though, and never let a bar chance to start up an
overseas mission pass by unmoi lested. An old
running joke in the church was. the Presbyterians
had offered to completely fund the Red Cross" and
CARE, provided those organizations would let them
pack a dehydrated minister in with each big shipment
of blood or food. They were mostly
Republicans, Drayne bar figured out back
when he was still going to church, mostly white and old
Republicans, at that. His family had
been I members since Grandpa Drayne, a
deacon of his church I back home in Atlanta,
had moved out here eighty years l ago. The
synods were different, but California and Georgia
weren't that far apart as far as the basics were concerned.
  The building itself had a lot of glass, giving it
a light and airy look, and the air conditioning unit out
back, roaring to keep the assembled cool, was the
size of a half-ton pickup truck. Drayne
figured the reason the Baptists always preached about
hellfire was because in those un air-conditioned Southern
churches, the congregation could relate to the concept.
If the AC went out during a mild spring hot
spell in a Presbyterian church, services would
be canceled for fear the assembly would all die of
heat stroke.
  The place sure didn't seem somber enough for a
funeral, and most of the mourners were wearing anything but
black. Looked like a flock of parakeets, all
the pastel colors. What could you expect? It was
L.a." wasn't it?
  Drayne's father had been a deacon at one time,
though his FBI travel had cut into that, but last
Drayne knew, the old man still attended church every
Sunday down in Arizona.
  If he wasn't a true believer, he sure
gave that impression.
  Drayne himself had skipped every Sunday when his father
hadn't been around to make him go, and hadn't been
inside a church except for a couple of weddings
since he'd left home for college. Oh, and that
once when he made a major chemical sale
to somebody who thought a Catholic church in
Berkeley would be a safe place to do a dope
deal. Turned out the buyer was wrong. He got
busted after a fender-bender accident leaving the parking
lot.
  Drayne had managed to dig up a dark suit,
a white shirt, and a plain tie that were all five or
six years old, unworn for almost that long, knowing that
if he came in a T-shirt and shorts, his father would
probably pull his gun and shoot him. And even
though he was retired, the old man always carried a
piece when he went out, a habit he couldn't let
go of. He'd still be protecting the republic when he
was in a wheelchair and blind.
  Despite the fact he was pushing seventy, the
old man still looked pretty healthy. His hair was
white, and his fair skin, pale most of his life, was
now a ruddy color that was almost a tan, from
spending more time out of doors in the Arizona sunshine.
Drayne knew he looked just like a younger version of his
father. The family resemblance had always been strong,
even though he had refused to believe it for a long
time. Then one day he'd caught sight of himself in a
rest room mirror as he was washing his hands, and lo!
there was the face of his father staring out at him. Assuming
he lived so long, the old man was what Drayne was
gonna look like at his age.
  Amazing, that.
  His father stood outside the church, looking at his
watch, waiting for Drayne. He wore a black
suit, probably one of a dozen black or dark
gray ones he owned, and since he hadn't gotten
fat after he retired, it still fit. A better fit
than the suit Drayne himself had on.
  "Robert," his father said.
  "Dad."
  "Let's go inside. We'll sit with Edwina."
  People were still filing in. The service wouldn't start for
another twenty minutes. Drayne knew that his father
would be early, and that he expected everybody in the
family to be early, and so it was.
  Drayne offered condolences to his aunt and uncle
and cousins. Irene, the girl who had showed
him hers while he showed her his when they'd been nine,
had grown up to be a good-looking woman, though she
was married with three kids of her own now, and a little on
the hefty side. Sheila, the middle girl, wore
dark-rimmed glasses and a black dress with long
sleeves, and had also gotten a little chunky. But
Maggie, the youngest, who'd been a little gee
ky-looking girl with thick glasses, was now a
beautiful redhead of twenty-five who, he had
heard, taught aerobics somewhere in the Valley, and
looked as fit and as tight as a violin string.
  "Hey, Maggie. I thought you wore glasses.
I don't see any contacts. You have the laser
surgery?"
  "No, I'm on the Night Move system. You
wear these hard contact lenses to bed, and when you wake
up, you can go without glasses or contacts all day."
  "No kidding?"
  "Yeah, it's called Ortho-K. Been around for a
while, but they finally got it pretty much perfected.
You can go sixteen, eighteen hours, and in my case,
I have twenty twenty without glasses."
  "Great. Hey, I'm sorry about Creepy."
  "Thanks, it's such a shock. Can't believe
he's really dead." She leaned over and
kissed him on the edge of the mouth.
  Definitely a cousin worth kissing, Maggie.
If it hadn't been her brother's funeral, he would
have thought about hitting on her, though the family would have
howled at that. Shoot, he wasn't going to marry her
or have kids, what did it matter if they were
cousins? He'd seen the way she looked at him,
she'd be up for it.
  His father said, "How are things at work, Robert?"
  He came away from his mild sexual fantasy.
  "Fine. I'm up for a promotion. They are
considering me for head of Polymers. Be worth
another ten thousand a year."
  "Congratulations."
  "How is Arizona? The dog okay?"
  "Fine. The dog is fine."
  That pretty much exhausted everything Drayne and his
father usually said to each other. But sitting here waiting
for some preacher, who at best probably had not seen
Creepy in ten years, to talk about what a
wonderful boy he had been and God's plans and
all, Drayne felt an urge to poke at his father.
He said, "You hear about what happened at HQ in
L.a.?" There was no need to identify HQ, that was
all it had ever been called in their
family.
  "I heard."
  Drayne wanted to grin, but of course, that would have
been inappropriate in this place at this time.
  "Sounds like something you'd pull," his father continued.
  For a second, Drayne felt a cold splash
of terror.
  "What?"
  "I haven't forgotten the incident in your English
class."
  His tone was stem, disapproving.
  He felt a sense of relief, and at the same
time, of irritation. Jesus Christ! The old man
was still pissed off about that? Drayne hadn't thought about
it in years.
  It had been nothing. He'd made a little stink
bomb, one with a kitchen match and a cheap ballpoint
pen, the kind of things kids did. You took the ink
cartridge out, put the match inside the body of the
pen, and rigged a bobby pin in the spring, then screwed
the thing back together. The bobby pin stuck out where the
ballpoint tip had been, so when you pulled it back
and let it go, it thumped into the head of the match,
lighting it. But since the flame didn't have anywhere
to go, it flared up and down the pen's barrel
and vaporized some of the cheap plastic before it went out.
The result was a short blast of godawful smelly
smoke; that was it.
  Drayne had been fourteen, in the eighth grade,
when he'd dropped one of the pen stink bombs into the
garbage can next to the English teacher's desk when
she hadn't been looking. It had been a hoot, that
stinking smoke belching from the trash, but some goody-goody
had seen him do it and ratted on him. He'd gotten
two days off to consider the heinousness of his crime,
and the old man had taken his belt to him when he found
out. And never let him forget it.
  "I'm not fourteen anymore. Dad. That was a
long time ago."
  "I didn't say you did it. I said it sounded like
the kind of childish prank you used to do."
  Drayne didn't say anything, but it pissed him
off that the old man was still throwing up ancient history
in his face. Even though he had done the FBI
prank, that shouldn't have been the first thing out of the old
man's mouth.
  "Nobody got hurt, did they?" Drayne
finally said.
  His father had been thinking about it. He came back
fast: "But they could have been. People
unwittingly exposed to drugs are at risk.
Somebody could have been injured. What if some of the
agents or staff had been allergic to the drug?
On medication that it might have interacted with? What if
there had been some kind of emergency needing a prompt
response? A fire in the building, maybe a
bank robbery or a kidnapping, and they had been
unable to respond properly? The idiot who thought it
was funny to chemically assault an office of
federal agents didn't think about those things, you may
be sure. It was an irresponsible, criminal
act, and he'll be caught and punished for it. I
hope they lock him up and lose the key."
  Drayne gritted his teeth. It would be a bad
idea to say anything. Just let it go. What did you
expect? The old man was gonna express
admiration for the cleverness of the stone job? C'mon,
Bobby, you know how he is. Now is the time for all
good men to shut the fuck up.
  But he couldn't help himself. Drayne said,
"Maybe not.
  From the reports, it didn't sound as if they had
any leads.
  Maybe the guy was too smart for them."
  The old man turned to look at
Drayne, blinking at him as he might at seeing a
dog turd dropped into a church social punch
bowl.
  "If he had been smart, he would have known better
than to assault agents of the FBI. They'll get
him." He paused a second.
  "Do you admire this criminal, Robert? Is that
what you are saying? Didn't you learn anything from your
upbringing?"
  Drayne flushed but finally realized it was time
to keep silent. He just shook his head.
  Yeah, Dad, I learned plenty. Much more than
you will ever know.
  But then the minister arrived, a guy who looked
to be about a hundred years old. and it was time to get
down to the business of burying Creepy.
  Malibu, California
  Tad was still up, though about to crash, watching the
morning bunnies and studs jog along the beach. The
early fog had mostly burned off by nine or ten
a.m." showing the brilliant blue hiding behind the
gray.
  Man, he was wasted. As the chemicals of the
Hammer faded and lost their grip on him, he felt
a bone-deep weariness begin to claim him.
This was gonna be a hard one to recover from, he
knew. Best thing to do would be to take a shitload of
downers and sleep for as long as he could,
twenty-four, thirty-six hours, let his body
get as much enforced rest as he could. Couple of the
long-lasting phenobarb suppositories, some
Triavil, maybe some Valium mixed in,
to keep the muscles relaxed. Some Butazoladin
for the joints, Decadron for the inflammation, Vicodin
and little snort of heroin for pain, Zantac for his
stomach, maybe even a little Haldol, just for the hell
of it.
  Bobby, off at his cousin's funeral, wasn't
gonna be too happy with him when he found out about
Tad busting up the gym. Probably they wouldn't
want to be seen hanging together for a while, in case
ole Steve the bodybuilder ran into them somewhere and
made the connection. Tad didn't think the gym
rats knew he was tight with Bobby, he was pretty
sure they didn't know, but book. it, they weren't
gonna forget him after last night.
  It would probably be in the papers and on the
tube, about the gym, but Bobby wasn't plugged into the
news, only what he caught on the radio when he
was out driving, so maybe he wouldn't hear
about it until Tad had a chance to break it-to him,
put a little spin on it.
  He managed a grin, even though his face was
sore from the drug rictus he'd worn for most of the
night. Yeah, spin, right. How much spin could you put
on trashing a place and beating the crap out of folks
because you had suddenly gotten horny?
  Well, at least there weren't any public
recordings of the Zee-ster and Bobby floating around.
Tad knew that. That was the important thing. Maybe
Bobby was right. Maybe they should jet over to the
islands and mellow out for a few weeks, come back when
things settled down. Way he felt right now, the
idea of swinging the Hammer again any time soon
didn't really appeal. Of course, if he lived
through the recovery and got to feeling better, the
desire would come back pretty quick. It always did.
  Being able to do what he had done last night when he
looked like a male version of Olive Oyl? That was
a big fucking draw.
  Hell, after he'd left the gym, he'd lost
interest in sex, but he had driven up to the
Hollywood sign, hopped the fence, and climbed
up to the top of the big H. Sat there watching the city
for a while, climbed down, and driven
to Griffith Park, where he'd roamed for hours, just
enjoying the green. Hadn't gotten home until after
Bobby left, which was a good thing, "cause he'd
probably have told him about the gym, being fearless at
the time.
  No, better he learns about it in a couple,
three days, back when I'm straight again and it's
all past tense.
  Bobby could go to World or Gold's or one of the
other upscale places to work out, it was no big
loss.
  "Time to get the doc-in-a-box out. Tad
m'man," he said aloud.
  "And settle down for long nap."

  Quantico, Virginia
  Michaels put a pair of dollar coins into the
soft drink machine and pushed the button marked
Coke. Change clattered into the return as the
plastic bottle hit the bottom slot and rolled
into view. He had pretty much given up drinking
fizzy sugar water, but now and then he indulged.
  His father had liked the stuff; he drank three or
four a day.
  It brought back old, pleasant
memories from his childhood to sit and sip one.
  He took the Coke out, fed the change back
info the machine, added another dollar coin, and
looked at Jay Gridley.
  "Club soda," Jay said.
  Michaels pushed the button. Three bucks for
two soft drinks. What a racket.
  "So you can't come up with any history on Frick
and Frack other than they were at a conference at the
same time twenty years ago as teenagers?"
  Jay took his bottled drink and popped the cap
off, then swigged from it.
  "Nope. I know there's something there, but I
haven't found it yet."
  "Well, don't kill yourself looking. It
probably doesn't mean anything anyway.
Better you should concentrate on the drug thing. We
find what they want, they are off our back. Any
leads there?"
  "Nothing to speak of. The local cops and the DEA
are all over Zeigler's place like white on
rice. He had to get the drug from somewhere, and they
figure if they backtrack him enough, they might
find something."
  "You don't?" Michaels drank some
of the Coke. Okay, so it was bad for you, but sometimes
you just had to indulge. He didn't smoke, or
drink more than the occasional beer or glass of wine.
He ate pretty well; he worked out every day. A
bottle of Coke now and then ought not to kill him.
  Famous last words.
  Jay said, "Maybe, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Guy like that, big-time movie star, he probably
didn't play golf with his connection. I'd be real
surprised if he had a listing in his address book
under Dope Dealer."
  Michaels shrugged.
  "So how do we run the dealer?
  Wait for somebody else to go berserk and
backtrack them?"
  "Don't have to wait," Jay said.
  "Apparently some guy walked into a gym in
Santa Monica last night and laid waste to the
place. Threw some guys bigger 'n Hercules
around like rag dolls when they objected to him feeling
up the woman working the desk, who apparently was
pretty well-built herself. Knocked doors
down, punched holes in the walls, like that."
  "The police have him?"
  "Nope, he got away. We got the
description--he sounds like a beatnik from what the
witnesses said--and we have tile police sketch."
  Jay grinned, and Michaels joined him.
Police sketches all seemed to look alike, and
not very much like any of the guys they were supposed
to represent. Plug a saint into an ID kit,
he'd come out looking like a thug.
  "According to the reports, after he got working, this guy
went to the security cam setup, tore up the
recording device, and made off with the disk drive
medium."
  Michaels considered that for a few seconds.
  "So he was not so stoned he couldn't think about
covering his ass."
  "Maybe. Or maybe there was something on the disk
he wanted, though it probably wasn't him. According
to the complaint, all the people involved swear they would have
remembered this guy if he'd ever been in their
place. Guy was built like a toothpick, body
builders notice such things. That he was the
proverbial ninety-seven-pound weakling made his
rampage all that much more amazing.
  The body builders couldn't believe it. Got
to be our friend Mr. Purple Cap responsible
... or a major number-busting
coincidence."
  "So what good does this do us?"
  "Well, we know that three of the dealer's customers
live in or around L.a. The rich woman, the dead
movie star, and the live beatnik. I'm thinking
maybe our dealer might like the sunny lifestyle.
The shelf life of this mojo drug is pretty
short, it rots in a day or so, and for the Zeester
to get stuff himself, then to the rich girl, and for her to have
time enough to use it? I'm thinking maybe the guy who
supplied Zeigler is not halfway around the world.
  FedEx, or even a paid courier, are limited
by the speed of a jet. The farther away he is. the
narrower the window when the drug will still work."
  Michaels nodded.
  "Okay. So hypothetically speaking, maybe he
lives within spitting distance of SoCal. Does that
help us much?"
  "Narrows down the search. I can start checking
chemical companies, drug supply houses,
running lists of convicted dealers, like that. And maybe
the cops will turn up something on the late Mr.
Zeigler's travels."
  Michaels said, "Good a direction as any, I
suppose."
  Jay took another long swallow of the club
soda.
  "Anything new on the drug itself? How'd that cap
assay out?"
  Michaels frowned. Crap! He'd tucked the
thing into his pocket and forgotten about it. Those
trousers were in a heap on the floor in his closet.
He hoped Toni hadn't sent them to the laundry
yet.
  He smiled at that thought. The only way Toni
was going to do his laundry was if he specifically
asked her to, and he hadn't done that. The pants
would still be there when he got home. She hadn't
signed on to be his maid, he'd found that out pretty
quickly. Nor had he expected that.
  "Boss?"
  "Nothing. I mean, nothing on the capsule. I
haven't had a chance to get by the lab yet."
  It was Jay's turn to shrug.
  "I got the DEA'S breakdown of what
ingredients they could find. I'll use those for a starting
point. If the guy is smart, he'll buy his chem
for cash, and far away from home, but you never know.
  Sometimes it's the little things that trip you up.
Remember Morrison, the HAARP
guy?"
  Michaels nodded. How could he forget that?
  "Yeah, I remember."
  "He had all the big stuff worked out but slipped
up on something as simple as a night watchman.
Him and the Watergate guys."
  "Well, do what you can do. Jay. Keep me in
the loop."
  "Sure thing, boss."
  Michaels looked at his watch. Getting close
to noon.
  Maybe he'd stroll on down to the gym and do a
little workout. That way he could take a break when he
got home without Toni making him practice his
silat first.
  She'd work him harder than he'd work himself, but if
he'd already done his djurus for the day, she'd let him
slide.
  Newport Beach, California
  Drayne came away from the funeral experience
pretty depressed.
  The church service had been fairly saccharine,
like he'd expected. The old minister, if he
remembered Creepy at all, couldn't speak in
anything other than platitudes and
generalities, and he put in a pitch to save souls
while he did it. Neither Edwina nor Pat could
bring themselves to get up and say anything, and
Creepy's sisters and ex-wife managed some
personal stuff that was touching and surprising.
  Drayne never knew that Creepy had a
collection of Star Wars cards, nor that he coached
a boy's soccer team in Utah.
  The procession to the graveyard and the internment
service at the family plot was no more fun.
While he was standing there, a sudden flash of deja vu
hit Drayne. Another funeral he'd gone to when
he'd been ten or eleven popped up in his mind,
something he had completely forgotten about. A kid a
year or so younger than Drayne who lived across the
street and down a couple of houses, Rowland, his name
was, had been killed in a gruesome freak
accident. Rowlie's father had worked at a small
private airport somewhere. Rowlie and his two
brothers had gone with their father one Saturday to the
airport. The boys had been playing chase in and
around the hangars.
  Somehow, Rowlie had run in front of a small
plane that was about to taxi out for takeoff. The
plane's propeller had hit him. He'd
been killed instantly. The coffin had been kept
closed because he'd been almost decapitated and chopped
up pretty good; at least that was what Drayne had
heard.
  Jesus. He didn't need another reminder of
death, not with Creepy just lowered into the ground.
  There wasn't an official wake, though family
and friends were welcome to stop by Pat and Edwina's, so
of course Drayne had to do that. What did you say
at such times? People standing around, drinking coffee or
tea, talking about the recently departed as if he'd
gone on some kind of trip?
  Drayne got out of there as soon as he could. His
old man was busy, taking charge, making sure
everything was shipshape, and they didn't really have much
to say to each other, Drayne and his old man. They
never really had.
  The old man had never thought much of his only son,
never seemed interested in what he did, always
expected perfection. He brought home a report
card with five As and a B, the old man didn't
say, "Hey, good job! Congratulations!"
  No, he said, "Why the B? You need to apply
yourself more."
  Once, when he was about twelve, he'd
been visiting his grandma, out in the Valley. He
found some old photo albums and started digging through
them. In the back were a stack of his old man's
report cards. The son of a bitch had made
straight As through high school. Had been
valedictorian of his class before he went off
to college and law school, and eventually the FBI.
Jesus. Drayne couldn't even bitch about the old
bastard holding him to a higher standard than he'd
achieved on his own.
  Oh, yeah, Drayne had been a whiz in
chemistry. It had been his natural element. And
he was smart enough to get good grades in his other
subjects without having to crack a book most of the
time. He just didn't see the point in working his butt
off to learn stuff like "Tippicanoe and Tyler
Too!" when it wouldn't ever be any part of his life.
  Who gave a rat's ass about gerunds and split
infinitives.
  or ancient Greek history, or what the
current names for countries in Africa were?
Drayne was going to be a chemist, he was going
to make his fortune playing with things he wanted to play
with, and to hell with the rest of it.
  No, they had not gotten along for as long
as he could remember, his old man and him. And yet
he felt some kind of perverse need to demonstrate
to his father that he was competent. Which was kind of hard to do
when what you were most competent at was mixing and selling
illegal drugs, and your old man was a pillar of
law enforcement who put people like you away.
  The drive back to Malibu was bright and sunny.
The fog had long since burned off, and traffic
wasn't too bad.
  Neither the weather nor the lack of usual stop-and-go
traffic lifted his mood.
  He hadn't seen Tad last night or this
morning, and he suspected that was because Tad had taken
another Hammer trip, even though Drayne had
told him not to. The Hammer was Tad's reason
to get up in the morning. Tad was a full-time
doper, he could mix and match his chems to suit his
needs better than anybody Drayne had ever
known, and for him, Thor was the ultimate party friend, the
guy Tad had been looking for all his life. And
Thor would be the guy who'd kill him, too.
  Then again, in his own way. Tad was fairly
reliable. If he had swallowed the cap and gone
hyper, it had probably been after he had done the
job Drayne had sent him to do. It was
rare if Tad came home and hadn't done whatever
Drayne had sent him to do, and even when that happened,
it was due to something Tad couldn't control.
  He didn't really know why Tad was so
important to him. They had run into each other doing
biz, and something about the reedy guy in black had
tickled Drayne.
  Nothing sexual, they were into women--though Tad
preferred drugs to pussy, mostly--and not as if
Tad were some kind of sparkling conversationalist or
brilliant intellect.
  But he was loyal, and he did think Drayne was
a genius. And he got the job done. If he
wanted to go out in a blaze of Dionysian glory,
that was his right. Tad was pretty much the only friend
Drayne had. Making and dealing illegal chem
didn't open you up to a whole lot of deep
relationships with honest people. When Tad croaked, that was
going to leave a big hole in the list of people Drayne
could relax around.
  Of course, he had enough money now that if he
invested it right, he could almost live off the interest.
Another year or so of thousand-buck-a-hit sales,
he'd be set.
  Then he could retire if he felt like
it, maybe move into a better class of people, make
some friends who started out thinking he was a dot. com
millionaire, or had made a killing in the
market or something, who'd take him at face
value. Live his life out in the open, perfectly
legal, no looking over his shoulder.
  That made him grin. Yeah, he could do that. Would
he?
  Not an ice cube's chance in a supernova he
would.
  Because it wasn't just the money, it was the game. The
ability to do what he did, to do it better than
anybody else, and to get away with it. Hell, if
he wanted to, he could take his formulas to the
legitimate drug companies, and they'd fall all
over themselves to shovel money at him. A lot of what
Drayne had discovered and created was what the
pharmaceutical giants had been researching for
years. Got a patient with muscle wasting who is
bed bound and on the way down? What would it be worth
to him to enjoy some mobility in his final days? Got
a guy who can't get it up, and Viagra doesn't
work for him?
  How much would he spend to get an erection so hard
it would hum in a breeze? You about to take
the GRE to get into graduate school? What would
adding fifteen points to your IQ for a couple hours
be worth? Stuff Drayne worked with could do that and more.
  Drayne could have gone to work for those guys a long
time ago. He could have brought just part of what he knew
to the table, and they would have kissed his shoes and given him
a blank check to get it. But there wasn't any
challenge there, not to be straight.
  Not to be like his father.
  He sighed. He was smart enough to know he was a little
fucked up when it came to such things. Had done some
reading in psychology, knew all about Oedipus and
shit like that. But he was what he was. However he had
gotten there, it was his path, and he was going to walk it,
and the devil take the reasons.
  Jesus, he was tight, wound up like a spring.
Maybe he should stop at the gym on the way home,
loosen up a little, take it out on the weights.
He'd feel better if he did.
  A good, hard workout was the cure for a whole lot of
things, tension, stress, it would mellow you out almost as
much as champagne.
  Yeah. Maybe he'd do that. It would be relaxing.

  Malibu, California
  Drayne couldn't remember the last time he had
been so pissed off. He pounded the steering wheel of the
Mercedes hard enough to crack it, and he wished it was
fucking Tad's head!
  Jesus Christ!
  By the time he got home, however, he had calmed
down somewhat. He was almost detached, almost
fatalistic about it when he pulled into the garage and
shut the engine off. He had always known this was a
possibility, though he hadn't expected it would ever
really happen.
  He was too smart to be caught by the plodders;
he'd been giving them fucking clues and they couldn't
do it. Only, Tad wasn't. And the boy had
stepped in it good this time.
  Tad was out cold on the couch, and even the pitcher
full of ice water hardly roused him. He mumbled
something.
  Drayne started slapping his face. Eventually,
his hand got sore and tired, but Tad came awake,
sort of.
  "What?"
  "You idiot! You don't have any idea what you
did, do you?"
  "What?"
  "The gym! You trashed the gym! I stopped by there
to work out, and that was all anybody was talking about!
  Even if I hadn't sent you, I could
recognize you from their descriptions! You moron!"
  Groggy, Tad sat up. He rubbed at his
face.
  "I'm all wet," he said.
  "You got that right. Christ on a pogo stick.
Tad!"
  "I don't understand, Bobby. I got the disk from
the security drive, the job's done, we're free
and clear, nobody has anything to link us
to Zeigler. There's no proof of anything."
  "You really don't see it, do you?" Drayne
sat heavily on the couch next to his partner. Of a
moment, he felt sorry for Tad. He kept
forgetting most people didn't have his horsepower when it
came to cranking up the mental engines.
  "Obviously, the smart drugs hadn't kicked in
when you decided to feel up Atlas's sister. Think
about it."
  Tad shook his head, still not tracking.
  "Look, I know you're tired and stoned, and
ordinarily I'd let you sleep it off, but time just
got to be a problem.
  You made a mistake."
  "I don't see it. They don't know who I
am. No way."
  "Okay. Let me explain it to you." He
looked at Tad, who made death warmed over seem
the picture of health, and realized he had to take it
slow for him to keep up with it. He eased off his
anger a little.
  "Let me tell you a story. Just sit back and
listen carefully, okay?"
  Tad nodded.
  "When I was in middle school, they had us in an
arts and crafts track. We got three months
each of music, art, and speech in one bundle, and
three months of drafting, shop, and home arts in
another.
  "So the first day I show up in music class, and
sweet little old Mrs. Greentree, had to be about
a hundred and fifty or so, has us all sitting
there, and she says, "What is the universal
language?" And of course, none of us have a clue.
And she says, "Music. Music is the
universal language.
  The notes are the same in Germany as they are in
France or America."
  "Right, okay, so we got it. Music is the
universal language.
  "So later that day, we get to to the first section of
second bundle, which turns out to be drafting
class. This is taught by Coach. Back then, every
other male teacher in the school was Coach.
  "So we're sitting there, and Coach says,
"Okay, what is the universal language?"
  "So anyway, being as how I am newly educated
and eager to impress, I shoot my hand up and
Coach grins at me.
  "Yeah?"
  "Music, Coach," I say.
  "Music is the universal language!"
  "Coach just about kills himself laughing.
  "Music?!
  Haw! Music ain't the universal language,
you dip, pictures are the universal language!
You in China and you run into some Chinaman and you want
to ask him where the toilet is, what are you gonna
do, sing to him?
  "Oh, mister Chinaman, please tell me, where
is the toilet, la la la... ?"
  his
  "Jesus, get your head out of your
butt, son! You draw him a picture! Music!
Haw!"
  "A couple years later, that same question came up
in math class, and guess what? I kept my hand
down and my mouth shut. Same thing happened when I
got to basic computer class. Music,
pictures, mathematics, binaries, they are all
considered universal languages."
  Drayne shut up and looked at Tad, who
shook his head.
  "Okay, so what's the point?"
  "Context is my point. Tad. Context." He
spoke slowly, as if talking to a retarded child.
  "Not just what gets said or done, but where and when it
happens is critically important."
  Tad frowned, and Drayne could see that he still
didn't get it.
  "Let me tell you another story."
  "Jesus, Bobby, okay, I get it that you're
pissed--" "Shut up. Tad. Once upon a time
I knew a guy who was a bouncer at a titty
bar. One night, he and some of his friends went to a
heavy metal rock concert, you know the kind,
head-bangers, primal rock, big crowds standing
on the floor screaming to the music, half
of them stoned or drunk. So in the middle of the
concert, a girl who is sitting on her boyfriend's
shoulders decides to pull off her top and flash the
crowd, or the band, or whoever."
  "I've seen that a few times," Tad said, trying
to follow him.
  "Right. So'd my bouncer friend, and no big deal.
And normally, the way it works is, the girl waves
her hooters around, then puts her top back on, a
fine time is had by all, and that's that. But this time,
while she was unbound and waving in the breeze, her
boyfriend reaches up and grabs her breasts, starts
rubbing them. Now, she doesn't slap his hands
away, she laughs, and next thing you know, she's
pulled off her steed and felt up by thirty or forty
heavy metal fans. We're talking mob
mentality here, and the atmosphere is ripe for trouble.
My friend the bouncer is too jammed in to help, and the
crowd is so thick that concert security can't get
there, either. The girl vanishes.
  "Fortunately, aside from getting passed around and
fondled against her will, it didn't go any further.
They let her go, she gets her clothes back, her
nipples are sore, end of event.
  "So, whose fault was it she got mauled.
Tad?"
  "Hers. She should have kept her top on."
  "Yes. And people shouldn't get drunk or do drugs
and go to rock concerts, and we should always look both
ways before crossing the street. No, it's the boyfriend
who set it off, and the girl, who could have stopped it,
made it worse. See, soon as he laid a hand
on her boob, she should have slapped the shit out of him.
The implied message when somebody flashes in such
a situation is "Look, but don't touch." When the
boyfriend broke the implied rule, the others assumed
that a girl who'd do that in public, who was willing
to allow touch along with the looking, well, she might be
willing to let somebody else play, too, so they
helped themselves."
  "Not right."
  "Nope, it wasn't. But given the
circumstances, a bunch of stoned mouth breathing
head-bangers, you can understand how it might progress
to that, or worse. There's the way things should be, and the
way things are. You might not like it, but you ignore the
way things are at your peril."
  "And you are saying that I fucked up even though I
got rid of the evidence. That it is going to progress
to something else?"
  "That is exactly what I am saying. See if
you can stay with me here: The police and the feds will know you
were on the Hammer, because nothing else can explain a
burned-out matchstick like you kicking major steroid
ass like you did. And the bust at Zeigler's was a
major deal and on the minds of the cops. And if they
dig just a little, they'll come up with the Zee-ster working out
at Steve's, and zap! A light will flash over their
heads and they'll think, "Hmm. Big movie star
shoots it out with the DBA, and they find this super guy
drug in his house. Then, within a real short time,
somebody trashes a gym where the big movie star
works out, obviously on the same super guy drug.
Say ... isn't that a funny coincidence?" And
somebody ... somebody in the FBI or the local
police ... they are gonna ask themselves the big
question: Why?
  Why'd the guy--that's you--why'd the guy come in and
steal the security cam's recording device? Other
than coming in to feel up Brunhilda and kicking the
crap out of a few body builders that's all you
did. And they are gonna come up with, "Hey,
maybe there is something on that disk the guy doesn't
want us to see. What could it be?" And somebody is
gonna take it one step further and make
an assumption, since they know the Zee-ster worked out
there, and that somebody is gonna say, "Hmm.
Maybe because the big movie star was there with somebody
who really doesn't want to be seen?"
  was "But the recording is gone--" Tad began.
  Drayne cut him off, but his voice was quiet.
  "So it is.
  But the people who work there aren't. I know Steve, the
owner, and he might remember that a couple of times
when Zeigler was there, he and I came or went
together.
  And if Steve or Tom or Dick or Harry
or anybody else in the place remembers that, then
my name is gonna come up in a conversation with the feds
or cops. And even if Steve doesn 't
remember, the cops will get a list of members and go
looking for a connection. This is a cop lesson I
learned at my daddy's knee: When you don't have
anything, you check everything. And sooner or later,
they are gonna send somebody out to talk to folks on
the list, just routine, and there will be a knock on our
door. And I have a nice made-up job that
fortunately I didn't mention on my application
at the gym, one that's all nice and electronically
vouched for, so maybe they can poke at it a
little and it might even hold up, but... What is the
fucking job, Tad?"
  "Oh, shit."
  "Oh, shit, yeah. I'm a chemist. Think
that'll, you know, raise any red flags or ring any
bells? Illicit drugs and a chemist? There are
millions of test tube jockeys in the world, but how
many of us working out at the same gym as the dead guy
they are investigating up the wa zoo Even the
stupidest cop alive could run with that one.
  "The feds might not be the fastest mill wheels in
the world, but they grind exceedingly fine. They are
plodders, but that's what they do best, and if they get
this far, we are fucked. Even if the house is as
clean as a wetware assembly room. If they
can't prove anything, they'll know who I am, and that
will throw a big rock into the gears.
  I won't be able to go pee from now on without seeing
an underwater camera lens in the toilet bowl looking
up at me."
  Tad shook his head.
  "I'm sorry, man."
  Drayne shook his head in response.
  "I know. Tad, I know. And it's done. Now,
we have to see if we can manage some kind of
damage control."
  "How?"
  Drayne looked at him.
  "You know the guy in Texas, down in Austin?"
  "The programmer who buys two caps every three
or four weeks, for him and his girlfriend."
  "Yeah, him. I read about him in Time. He's
supposed to be a genius, supposed to be able
to make a computer sit up and bark like a dog, if
he wants. Got his start hacking into secure
systems just for the fun of it."
  "So?"
  "So, we make him a deal. He does us a
favor, we supply him with whatever rings his bell,
for free."
  "Dude is richer than Midas, he doesn't
need the money."
  "But I know how geniuses think," Drayne said.
  "Especially outlaw geniuses. He'll do it so
we'll owe him, and in the doing, he can prove he's
still got the chops he started out with. He gets
to exercise the old muscles and feel like a badass
outlaw again."
  "What is he gonna do that'll help?"
  "He's going to make us invisible. Get
ahold of him."
  "Now?"
  "Right now."
  The more he thought about it, the better he liked the
idea. It could work. If they moved fast enough, it
definitely could work.

  Baghdad, Iraq
  Sweat ran down John Howard's face.
  In the heat of battle, the SIPE-SUIT'S
polypropylstspidersilk layers didn't get
rid of the perspiration nearly fast enough to keep you dry.
The weight of the ceramic plates wasn't bad, but
it didn't help cool things any. Even during a
tepid night, such as it was now, the helmet's
sweatband quickly got soaked, and you had to blink away
the moisture that oozed down into your eyes. And you
couldn't raise the clear face shield to let some
air in, because the heads-up display wouldn't work without
the shield, and neither would the seventh-gen spook eyes
built into the armored plastic.
  The good thing was, night was no cover for the bad
guys. The latest-release intensifiers in the
starlight scopes were powerful enough to let you see with the
slightest city glow, and the suit's computer
false-colored the images so they didn't have that
washed-out, pale green look.
  The blast shield cutouts had been upgraded so
that if some yahoo threw a flare or a flash bang
the niters would pop on-line within a hundredth of a
second, saving you from a sudden nova-lume that would
sear your eyeballs blind in a heartbeat. Though this was
something of a mixed blessing.
  "You can run, Abdul, but you can't hide,"
Howard said.
  From the LO SIR headset. Sergeant
Pike's voice: "Sir?"
  "Disregard that," Howard said. He shifted his
grip on the tommy gun. His good-luck piece
wore the pistol grip forestock and a fifty round
drum, weighed a ton, and it took a little
practice to use properly, especially if you were
used to the cheek-spot-weld, right-elbow-high,
left-handundertheforegrip the Army liked to teach long-arm
shooters when Howard had gone through basic all those
years ago.
  "Sir, I make it nine ceejays coming in through that
alley to the left."
  Howard's own heads-up display verified that.
  "Copy, Sergeant. That's two each and
one left over. Wake up troops and mind your
fields of fire."
  The other three men with Howard did not respond.
  They knew what they were supposed to do.
  Howard clicked the selector onto full auto
and raised the finned barrel with its Cutts
compensator over the top of the rusty oil drum he
had chosen for cover. The old drum was full of what
looked like brick and concrete fragments, so it was
cover and not just concealment. If the enemy spotted him
and directed fire his way, he did have some
protection.
  The first of the nine soldiers appeared at the mouth
of the alleyway. They stopped, and die leader held
up his hand, signaling for the others to halt. He
looked around, didn't see Howard or the rest of his
quad, then hand signaled for the rest to advance.
  Howard touched a recessed control on his helmet
and shut off the spook eyes The bright-as-noon scene
went immediately dim, but there was still enough ambient light
to make out the shadowy forms of the enemy troopers.
  He slitted his eyelids, to make the scene even
darker, forcing his pupil to dilate wider.
  When the ninth soldier appeared, one of Howard's
quad tossed a five-second photon
flare. Bright, actinic white light strobed, casting
tall, hard-edged shadows from the startled soldiers.
  Howard waited a beat, then opened his eyes
wider.
  His men let go with their subguns, and the enemy
soldiers returned fire, yelling and blasting
away.
  Howard indexed the two in his assigned field of
fire and gave them each a three-round burst.
  In the light of the still burning photon flare, the
nine went down like pins in a bowling alley. The
scene fell quiet. The five-second flare
winked out, and it went dark, much darker than before.
Even though he had been using hardball .45 auto
ammo with low-flash powder, the afterimages of his
fire decreased his vision. Howard touched the control,
and the spook eyes turned night into day again.
  The heat sigs on the downed soldiers showed no
movement.
  Good. A perfect ambush.
  "End sim," Howard said.
  The Baghdad street scene vanished, and John
Howard removed the VR headset and leaned back in
his office chair. The exercise had been designed
to practice with the spook eyes and it had
gone as planned. The ability to see in almost total
darkness was a great help, but there were some drawbacks.
Because of the automatic filters built into the
scopes, any scenario that included random, repeated
weapons fire effectively rendered the spook
eyes useless, just as it did wolf ear hearing
protectors.
  With a single bright flash of light, the scopes"
filters would kick on long enough to diminish the light
to safe levels, then open back up. This worked great
for an explosion. However, with multiple flashes of
bright orange muzzle blasts going off all around
you, the niters would kick on and off, going from light
to dark so fast it was extremely disorienting. The
effect was rather like being surrounded by strobe lights all
timed differently. Early sims showed the accuracy
rate of troopers firing in such a scenario dropped
dramatically.
  So different tactics had been employed to get
around the problem.
  At first, the scientific types had tried to rig
the scopes to drop filters and leave them down for
five or ten seconds.
  Unfortunately, this made the scene too dark
to see anything except much-dimmed muzzle
flashes, your own or the enemy's. Spray and pray
was a sucker's game.
  They tried adjusting this, but since firefights
sometimes lasted for five seconds, sometimes a lot
longer, the results were less than satisfactory.
  They also tried raising the gain threshold, so it
took more to cause the shields to deploy, but even an
amplified kitchen match in the dark would be enough
to temporarily blind a soldier.
  The scientists and engineers scratched their heads and
went back to their CAD programs.
  It fell to the men and women in the field to come up
with a better way, like it usually did. Using the
scopes to find and track an enemy, then reverting
to the oldfashioned method seemed to be the best
approach. At least it worked in VR scenarios and
at the range. How it would work in the real world
remained to be seen, at least for his units.
  Howard sighed. He had run dozens of war game
scenarios over the past few weeks, and there was only
so much of that a man could take. In his time as the commander
of Net Force's military arm, there had been
slack periods, but never as slow as it had been these
last few weeks. He knew he was supposed to be
happy about that, the idea that peace was better
than war, and he was, but--comsitting around and doing
nothing but figurative paper clip counting was boring.
  Of course, he wasn't as likely to get shot
sitting around and doing nothing, and that had been on his
mind lately, too.
  Washington, D.c.
  Toni tried doing her djurus while sitting on
the couch, just using her upper body, as Guru had
told her. Yeah, she could do it, and yeah, it was
better than nothing, but it was like taking a shower with a
raincoat on. You couldn't really feel the water.
  She stood, moved the coffee table out of the way, and
did a little stretching, nothing major, just to limber up
her back and hips some. The doctor hadn't said she
couldn't stretch, just nothing heavy-duty, right?
  The elastic of her stretch pants cut into her
belly as she sat and bent over to touch her toes.
Damn, she hated this, being fat!
  After five minutes or so of loosening up, she
felt better.
  Okay, so she could do a few djurus with the
footwork, the langkas, if she went real slow,
right? No sudden moves, no real effort, it wouldn't
be any more stressful than walking if she was careful,
right?
  For about ten minutes, she practiced, moving
slowly, no power, just doing the first eight djurus.
She skipped the forms where she had to drop into a
squat, number five and number seven, and she
felt fine.
  Then, of course, she had to go pee, something that
happened five times an hour, it seemed.
  When she finished and started to leave the bathroom,
she looked into the toilet.
  The bowl had blood in it, as did the tissue she
had just used.
  Fear grabbed her in an icy hand.
  She ran to call the doctor.
  Austin, Texas
  Tad drove the rental car, Bobby riding
shotgun and giving him directions.
  "Okay, stay on 1-35 going south until we
cross Lake Whatchamacallit, and look for a
sign says Texas State School for the Deaf.
We have to find Big Stacy Parkas opposed to Little
Stacy Park, which is just up the road a piece--then
Sunset Lane, then we turn onto--you piece
of Chinese shit!"
  This last part was accompanied by Bobby slapping the
little GPS unit built into the car's
dashboard.
  "What?"
  "The sucker glitched, the map disappeared!"
Bobby hammered the malfunctioning GPS unit again.
  "Come on!"
  "I don't see why we had to come here in
person," Tad said.
  "We could have called or done this by e-mail over
the web."
  "No, we couldn't have. The feds can monitor
phones and e-mail, even encrypted stuff. They were
able to do it for years before the public even realized they
could and already were. Besides, this guy wants an
insurance policy.
  He wants to see our faces. He'll know the
name, and he can use that, but we could change our
identities."
  "We could change our faces, too."
  Bobby hit the GPS again.
  "Ah, there it is. I got the map again." He
looked at Tad.
  "Yeah, we could, and he'll know that. But the thing
is, he wants us to come to him with our hat in our hand
and say please. Then he dazzles us with his
techno-wizardry, and we owe him big-time
and forever. It's an ego thing. Besides, as long as
we're in business, he'll have something on us,
doesn't matter what our names are or what we
look like. We have the market cornered on Thor's
Hammer, remember? Whoever is selling it is
gonna be us, no matter what we call ourselves."
  "Yeah. I have to say, though, this might be out of the
frying pan and into the fire, man. Even if it works,
we're trading one problem for another one."
  "I don't think so," Bobby said.
  Tad said, "There's the lake, up ahead."
  "Okay, watch for the deaf sign, should be just after we
cross over that."
  "I'm watching. Back to this maybe biz. The
guy will have something to trade if he ever gets busted.
You think he wouldn't give us up to save his own
ass?"
  "Don't think that for a second. I'd give him
up, if positions were reversed."
  "Jeez, Bobby--" "C'mon, Tad, think a
little bit past the end of your nose.
  The clock is running at the cop shop. This
computer dick wad can get into the gym's computer and the
police system and make my name go away. He
does that before they get to me, we're
clear."
  "If the cops didn't just get a hardcopy."
  "They didn't. Steve told me they downloaded
his membership files into their system over the wire.
Nobody uses hardcopy for this kind of stuff
anymore. I didn't even fill out a freeware
registration form when I signed up; I just logged it
all into a keyboard at the gym.
  "So the immediate threat, the law, is taken care of.
Mr.
  Computer Geek is a potential problem, but
that's down the line. He isn't going to run to the
cops and turn us in now, not if he wants help from
mighty Thor to keep wearing blisters on his wang with
his lady friend. You see what I'm saying?"
  "Yeah, but--" Bobby cut him off.
  "You know about Occam's Razor?"
  "No. You not gonna tell me another fucking
story, are you?"
  Bobby laughed.
  "No. It's a way of looking at problems.
  A rule that basically says, don't get
complicated when simple will do the job. The simple
thing here is, if the cops don't know about me, they
can't come looking for me."
  "Okay, I can see that. You buy some time, get
out from under the immediate threat. But you still got the potential
thing later."
  "Well, if you just let it hang out there, yeah.
But this computer guy could, you know, have an accident.
He could slip in the bathtub and dash his brains out
or get hit by a bus crossing the street or
maybe an allergic reaction to shellfish, and just up
and die. There are certain chemicals that can kill
somebody and make it look just like anaphylactic
shock. And hey, stuff like that happens all the time,
right? Cops would investigate, but if it was an
accident, that would be the end of it, right?" Bobby
grinned, that all-his-shiny-teeth smile that showed he
was really amused.
  Tad got it, finally. He nodded.
  "Oh. Oh, yeah. I see what you mean."
  "There's hope for you yet. Tad m'boy--there,
there's the sign, pull off at that next exit!"
  Tad nodded. Bobby was almost always a step ahead
of the game, even when things got creaky. Push him out
a window, and he would land on his feet every time. He
had it under control. It felt good to know that.

  Washington, B.c.
  Jay sat seiw and tried, like the old joke about
the hot dog vendor and the Zen master, to make himself
one with everything.
  He was having some problems with it. First, the sitting
on-your-heels position was very uncomfortable. They
might do it in Japan, where everybody was used to it,
but in America, you didn't normally sit that way,
or knotted up in a lotus pose, or even on the
floor--not without a cushion or pillow to flop on.
  Second, while he was supposed to be
concentrating on his breath, just sitting back and watching
it come and go without trying to control it or count it or
anything, that was almost impossible to pull off. As
soon as he became aware of his breathing, he kept
trying to slow it and keep it even and all, and that was a
no-no. And counting just came naturally for him, it was
automatic. So he had to make a conscious effort
not to count, and that was a nono.
  Don't count, and don't think about not counting.
  Third, you weren't supposed to think of anything at
all, and if a thought came up, you were supposed
to gently move it away and get back to nothing but
breathing.
  Thoughts were products of the monkey brain, Saji
had told him, and had to be quieted
to achieve peace and harmony with one's inner self.
  Yeah, well, in his case, the brain was more like a
whole troop of howler monkeys all hooting and
dancing through the trees, and quieting that jabbering bunch
was a tall order.
  His knee hurt. That last inhalation turned into a
sigh at the end. The thoughts about work, dinner, Saji,
and how stupid he felt sitting here just breathing
rolled in like a storm tide, as unstoppable as if
he stood on the beach waving his arms at the ocean and
telling it to hold it right there.
  Get a grip. Jay. Millions of people do this every
day!
  Who knew that meditating would be so difficult?
Sitting here and doing nothing was harder than anything
Jay had ever done, or in his case, not done.
  In the back of his mind, nagging at him, was something
about work, some little thing flitting up and around like a moth,
something he couldn't quite pin down. Something about the drug
thing, and the DEA and NSA agents Lee and
George ... No. Push it away. Get back
to that later. For now, just be... Lee and George.
Not much to know about them. Close to the same age, both
career men, both lived in the District.
  Both of them married briefly but
divorced, no livein girlfriends at the moment. A
lot alike ... Don't think. Jay, you're
supposed to be meditating!
  Oh, yeah. Right. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in ... Lee's ex-wife was originally from
Florida, now a lawyer in Atlanta who also
taught law at a local college. She and Lee
had met in law school. Jay had checked her out,
and while she was well-regarded as a teacher, she was
also considered something of a radical. She was a member
of the Lesbian Teacher Association or some such,
big on women's rights. A no-fault divorce,
no hard feelings, at least not in any official
records or interviews. Still, that must have made
Lee feel weird. You get a divorce, your
ex-wife switches her sexual preferences to the
other side of the street. Might tend to make you
doubt your masculinity a little.
  George's ex was a stockbroker. A
law-school graduate who didn't practice but
who worked for one of the big trading companies on
Wall Street, did well enough that she had a
two-million-dollar condo overlooking Central
Park, single, no significant boyfriends five
years after the divorce, didn't seem
to date much, according to what Jay had uncovered about her.
Like Lee with his ex-wife, George apparently
got along famously with his ex.
  We're all very civilized here ... Thoughts,
Jay, watch it!
  Okay, okay! Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in
... Kind of made you wonder, though, how a woman
who was rich enough to afford a condo that expensive didn't
have guys lined up waiting for her favor.
Good-looking woman, hair cut short, built like
a dancer.
  Well, it didn't really matter, did it?
  Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out... The next
thought that swung down from the monkey tree and chittered
at Jay so startled him that his eyes popped open, and
he said, "Oh, shit!"
  Sitting seiza on floor across from him, Saji
came out of her own meditation.
  "What? The place on fire?"
  "No, no, I just had a thought--" "Don't
worry, it's part of the process--" "No, I
mean, an idea. About the dope case!"
  "Let it wait, it will keep."
  "No, it won't. I have to get to my computer
now!"
  "Jay, this is not how to meditate."
  "I know, I know, but I have to check this out."
  Saji sighed.
  "Fine. Do what you have to do." She closed her
eyes and went back to her sitting. Jay was already up
and hurrying from the bedroom to his terminal.
  Michaels took the day off to be with Toni. She
was still in bed, sleeping hard, and he planned to let
her sleep as long as possible. The spotting the day
before wasn't a sign of fetal distress, the
doctor had told them, but it had caused Michaels
more than a little dry mouth and nervousness.
  By the time he had gotten to the clinic, Toni had
already been examined, was getting some blood tests,
and the doctor had pulled him aside to talk to him.
  The doctor, a tall, very dark, and spindly
gray-haired man of sixty or so with the unlikely
name of Florid, was blunt: "Listen, Mr.
Michaels, if your wife doesn't sit down and
prop her feet up and do a lot of nothing for the next
four months, there is a chance she is going to have a
pre term birth and lose this baby."
  "Jesus. Have you told her this?"
  "I have. She's still relatively young and healthy,
and the baby seems fine, but her blood
pressure is up a little.
  Normally she's one twenty over seventy-four,
but today she's at one thirty over eighty-six.
That's not technically considered high, but we always
watch that, especially in a primagravida ...
that's a first-time pregnancy."
  "Why is that?"
  "There is a condition called preeclampsia that
happens in around five pregnancies out of a
hundred. Usually it's mild, and by itself it usually
doesn't cause problems, but sometimes it can cause
what is known as abrupt io placent ac, which is
a spontaneous separation of the placenta from the uterine
wall, not a good thing. Usually this is in the third
trimester, sometimes at delivery, and we can work around
it, but it makes things hairy.
  "Worse, sometimes preeclampsia can progress
to full eclampsia, which, while very rare, involves
seizures, coma, and sometimes, a fatal event."
  A fatal event.
  Michaels swallowed. Now his mouth was really
dry.
  "Is this what's happening to Toni?"
  "Probably not. There isn't any albumen in
her urine, and she doesn't have much edema,
and usually you get those with the rise in BP, but better
safe than sorry."
  "Toni is the toughest, strongest, healthiest
woman I know."
  Dr. Florid smiled.
  "Yes, I expect she can bend steel in her
bare hands. Normally, pregnancy is not a
medical problem, women can go about their business and do
everything they were doing before they got pregnant.
  Most women. But interior plumbing isn't the
same as voluntary muscles. No matter how
strong-willed you might be, you can't toughen up the
inside of a uterus. Toni's is fragile;
likely she was born that way. Now, she could go on
to deliver this baby without any more problems, but I'd
be a lot happier and that would be a lot more likely
if she took it easy. You need to impress on her
how important it is for her to relax. After the
baby comes, and assuming she has time, she can go swing
on a vine, like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and
kick the crap out of lions and rhinos for all I
care, but for now, no strenuous exercise. What I
think is strenuous and what she thinks that means are
probably different. I don't want her doing
any heavy lifting, jogging, horseback
riding, or deep knee bends, and I don't want
her doing those martial art dances she can't seem
to live without. She can lie in bed. She can sit in a
chair or on a couch, she can walk to the kitchen
to take her vitamins, but that's about it."
  Michaels nodded.
  "I understand."
  "If we have another epsisode of
second-trimester bleeding, I am going to confine her
to bed for the duration. I know she won't like that."
  Michaels had to grin.
  "No, sir, that's for sure."
  He had another question, started to speak, but decided
that maybe it was selfish to ask it.
  The doctor read his mind: "Sex is
permissible, assuming you don't like to pretend she's
a trampoline while you do it."
  Michaels flushed, embarrassed.
  The doctor laughed.
  "Listen, I know this all sounds very dramatic and
scary, but you need to remember that in medicine, we have
to plan for the worst-case scenario.
  Chances are very good that nothing bad will happen to your
wife or your unborn son. But we have to let you know
the possibilites, no matter how
small. We have to cover all the bases."
  "So you don't get sued," Michaels said.
  "Hell, son, I could give my patients and
their families movies, recordings, documents, a
degree in medicine, and get "em to sign a paper
saying they understood them all and would never even talk
to a lawyer in church, and we'd still wind up in court
if anything went wrong. We always get sued when
something goes wrong."
  "Must be awful."
  "Catching babies makes up for it. The look
on the new mama's face when she sees her child for the
first time is priceless. Pure joy. Long as my
malpractice insurance and my hands hold up,
I'm going to keep doing it."
  He clapped Michaels on the shoulder.
  "What I personally think is that this pregnancy
is going to do fine, if your wife will just kick back
and let it roll along."
  "Thank you, sir," Michaels said.
  "I appreciate it."
  Now, as Toni slept and Michaels puttered
around the condo, he hoped the doctor had been right in
his assessment.
  Toni wanted the baby, and he did,
too. It was going to be the center of their new family
and life together, and it would be devastating to lose it.
  Him, not it.
  In the living room, he came across the box with the
two kerambit knives. He took them out, put
one in each hand, got a feel for how they worked.
Odd, to be playing with knives and thinking about a new
baby.
  Well, maybe not, given the boy's parents.
  He moved the knives slowly and carefully. It
probably wouldn't do Toni's stress level any
good at all for him to accidentally slice his wrist
open. Not to mention his own health. Still, the little blades
seemed familiar in his grip, comfortable, and the djuru
moves didn't seem to put him in any danger of
cutting himself. At least not this slowly and carefully.
One hurried wrong move could put the lie to that quick
enough, though.
  He put the knives up, and tiptoed back in
to check on Toni.

  Somewhere Over New Mexico
  On the flight home, Drayne felt pretty
good. The computer guy was as good as he'd been
cracked up to be. The police in
SoCal and Steve's Gym no longer had any
reference to one Robert Drayne in their systems.
More, the techno whiz was able to determine that they hadn't
gotten around to where his name had been to assign
anybody to check it before it had magically vanished.
Nor had it been printed out to a hardcopy. The list
had been renumbered, and unless you knew somebody had
been erased and knew precisely where to look and how
to look, you wouldn't be able to tell it had been done.
And even if you could tell that, you wouldn't know who was
gone.
  Once again, Drayne was golden. And all it had
cost was a promise of free dope as long as the
guy lived.
  Cheap beyond measure, even if he had to pay it.
  Drayne smiled as the flight attendant walked
along the first class rows, asking if anybody
wanted complimentary champagne. Probably the
stuff was Korbel, or at best one of the
California domaines owned by the French. Not bad
if you had no experience with the really good stuff, but as
far as Drayne was concerned, he wouldn't use it
to clean the chrome on his car bumper. Still, the
attendant was a babe, not wearing a wedding ring, and the
flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to LAX
was still hours out from landing. He could strike up a
conversation with her, maybe get her number. Say, have
you ever considered acting? You have great bone
structure.... The attendant stopped to talk to a
woman Drayne thought he recognized as somebody
in L.a. politics, a city council member or
maybe a spokesperson for the mayor's office.
Drayne glanced at his watch.
  About now. Tad would be buying the computer whiz a
dinner at a great little out-of-the-way Italian
restaurant locally famous for its fresh produce,
ostensibly to make arrangements to deliver a dozen
caps of the Hammer as a first payment of a lifetime
drug supply. The computer geek, a health nut,
had raved about the place. The salad that came with the
meal featured fresh wild greens, mushrooms, and
other local herbs, and was terrific, he'd said.
  Drayne had smiled, regretting that he had to be
back in L.a. and would have to miss that, but hey.
Tad loved salad!
  The last time Tad had eaten a salad or
anything remotely healthy had probably been
twenty years past. Anybody who looked at him
could see that. But a guy as full of himself as Mr.
Computer Wizard would skate right past that
obvious fact without blinking. People saw what they
wanted to see, not what was really there.
  So the guy had chosen his own exit and made it
easy for them to hold the door open.
  If everything went as planned, just as the computer
geek was about to lay into this garden delight, he was going
to get a call on his com. Tad had the number
programmed into his own com, and a touch of a button
would do the trick. While Mr. Wizard was
distracted. Tad was going to add a couple of
different kinds of sliced mushrooms to the man's
salad that weren't on the menu. These grew wild in
places as hot and damp as Austin still was this time of
year, easy to find if you knew where to look, and
once they were sliced were virtually identical to any
other small, white-fleshed mushrooms.
  The first variety of these particular shrooms contained
heavy concentrations of amatoxins and phallotoxins,
either of which could be fatal, and both of which would almost
certainly destroy liver and kidney functions,
leading to death within a week to ten days 80 percent of the
time.
  The second variety was chock-full of
Gyromita toxins, which, while not quite as nasty as the
others, also attacked the liver and
kidneys, plus the circulatory system, leading
to heart failure in extreme cases. Mostly
Gyromita poisoning was uncommon in the U.s.
because cooking these mushrooms usually mitigated the
toxin. Nice, crisp, raw ones in a salad would
still pack a nasty punch, however.
  Mr. Computer Wizard would enjoy his meal. He
and Tad would part company on the best of terms. A
day later, maybe two, Mr. Wizard would come
down with flu like symptoms: nausea, vomiting,
diarrhea, cramps. His doctor would probably
miss the diagnosis at first, but even if he
didn't, the only way to keep the victim alive
would be a liver and maybe a kidney transplant,
and even then, the heart was still at risk.
  No guarantee, of course, but eight chances out of
ten he would croak weren't bad odds. And if he
made it, he'd be a long time recovering, on
immunosuppressive drugs if they could find him
a new liver, and unable to screw with his body
chemistry if he wanted to stay alive. And if he
made it that far? Well, they could always pay him
another visit.
  If he died, it would be due to mushroom
poisoning, a terrible tragedy, a freak
accident. Bad for the restaurant's reputation and
insurance carrier, but, hey, that was how life went
sometimes. You want an omelette, you gotta break
a few eggs.
  The flight attendant approached.
  "Care for champagne, sir?"
  "That would be nice. Look, I don't want you
to think I'm hitting on you, but I'm a movie
producer. Have you ever considered acting?"
  He held up his producer business card and
smiled.
  She took the card, looked at it, and smiled
back.
  "I've thought about it. I was the lead in my high
school play."
  Life was very good.
  Life is crappy, Toni thought. Nobody had
told her what might happen when she got
pregnant, nobody had said she'd be reduced to the
mobility and muscularity of a slug. She hated this.
  Alex had hung around to take care of her, but she
had made him leave. He was sweet, but she
wasn't going to be pleasant company, and she
didn't want him thinking of her as a constant bitch.
Better he should see her smiling and at
least offering some pretense of being happy once in a
while.
  "You sure?" he'd asked, after three exchanges
on the subject.
  "I'm positive. G."
  And he had, and that pissed her off, too. Yes,
she had said for him to, she had insisted that he do so,
but she hadn't really wanted him to leave. Why
didn't he know that? How could he just... take her
at her word that way?
  Why were men so stupid?
  Yes, yes, all right, she knew it was
illogical, but that was how she felt.
  Now that Alex was gone, she was at a loss for
what to do with herself. The doctor had made it crystal
clear she was on light duty from now on, and since a
big part of her had always been physical, this was
proving to be intolerable.
  She couldn't move, she might as well put down
roots and turn into a fucking house plant She
really hated this.
  She didn't feel like sitting at the scrimshaw
project. She didn't feel like watching
television or listening to music or reading. What
she felt like doing was going for a five mile
run to clear her mind. Or a half hour of
stretching and then silat practice. Or anything
requiring sweat and sore muscles.
  No point in even bothering to think about such things.
  It would only make her feel worse, if that was
possible.
  Other women must have gone through this. She could do it if
anybody else could, she kept telling herself. But that
didn't help.
  The house was clean. She had spent way too much
time doing that lately, wiping counters, sweeping
floors, rearranging shelves. You could eat off the
floor--if you were allowed to bend over and take the
risk.
  She wandered into the bedroom. The bed was made.
  The bathroom was clean. Nothing.
  The floor in Alex's closet by his shoe
rack had some clothes piled up to be dry-cleaned.
Well, she could do that. Surprise Alex, given
as how she didn't usually fool with his chores.
  She picked up a suit, a sports jacket,
a couple of good silk shirts, a few ties. The
laundry-to-go basket was in the garage, where
Alex would usually notice it when it got full,
toss the dirty clothes into his car, and
drop it off at the Martinizing place run by a
family of Koreans on the way to work.
  As she started dropping the clothes into the hamper,
she automatically went through the pockets. Being
raised in a family full of brothers had taught
her that when doing the wash. Boys left all kinds of
crap in their pockets, and a handful of coins
clattering in the washer or dryer would drive you
nuts, not to mention chipping the inside of the machines.
Ink pens could ruin a load of whites, and it was no
fun picking lint from a washed, shredded, and dried
paper napkin from a load of dark shirts, either.
  In the suit trousers, Toni found a paper
clip box, and inside that, the capsule.
  She knew what it was from Alex's description,
it being big and purple and all, and it puzzled her as
to why it was in his pocket. But maybe it was
important. She seemed to recall the stuff had
some kind of timing chemical in it, and it would be inert
after a day or so. Alex hadn't worn this suit
yesterday, had he?
  She reached for the phone on the workbench, looking at
the capsule. She put it down next to the
scrimshaw piece she'd been working on as Alex's
com bleeped.
  "Hey, babe, what's up? You okay?"
  "Yeah, I'm fine. I was taking your dry
cleaning out to the hamper--" "You were what?"
  "Don't sound so amazed."
  "Sorry. Go on."
  "Anyway, I found this purple capsule in your
pocket."
  "Ah, damn. I keep forgetting about that. I was
going to take it by the FBI lab and have somebody look
at it.
  That's the one John got on the raid I told
you about."
  "I can do that for you, run it by the lab."
  "No, you can't. You aren't supposed to be
driving, remember?
  Hang on to it for me, I'll do it tomorrow."
  "Fine."
  "Uh, thanks for calling me about it."
  "You at work yet?"
  "Almost there."
  "I'll see you later," she said.
  After she broke the connection, Toni stared
into space.
  She sure hoped this baby was worth all this
crap. He'd better be.
  She wandered back into the house. All of a sudden,
she was tired. Maybe she would lie down and take a
short nap. Might as well. She couldn't do
anything else.
  Jay shook his head, feeling stupid. It had
been right there in front of him all along, and he had
just skipped over it.
  He had narrowed his focus too much and missed the
connection.
  Maybe all this navel-gazing was good in the long
run, learning how to clear your thoughts, to relax your
mind, but the old Jay Gridley wouldn't have let this
slide past unseen.
  Maybe it wasn't a good idea to be too
relaxed mentally in his business.
  He ran it down. The most important piece
took a while, but finally, he got it. Wasn't
proof of anything, of course, but certainly it was a
circumstantial lump that would choke an
elephant.
  Jesus.
  He needed to fly it past the boss, to get his hit
on it, but he was pretty sure it meant something
important. He reached for the com to call, then
decided maybe it would be better to avoid
using the phone or net. Net Force's corns,
especially the virgils, were scrambled, the signals
turned in!complex binary ciphers that were supposedly
unbreakable by ordinary mortals. That little episode
in the U.k. with the quantum computer had cured Jay
of his faith in unbreakable binary codes, however. And
given the people with whom they were dealing, maybe face-to
face was better.
  "I have to go into HQ," Jay said to Saji on his
way to the door.
  "This late?" She opened her eyes and stared at
him, still seated in her meditation pose.
  "It's important. I love you. See you
later."
  "Drive safe," she said.
  He thought about his discovery all the way to Net
Force HQ. Boy, wasn't the boss going to be
surprised at this twist!

  Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport
  Tad sat at the gate, slouched in a chair,
waiting for his connecting flight back to LAX. Even
full of painkillers, speed, and steroids to the
eyeballs, it was all he could do to hold himself up.
Every muscle, every joint, every part of him he
could feel ached, a bone-deep, grinding throb that
resonated through him with every heartbeat. The best dope
he could get only dulled the pain, it didn't come
close to stopping it. He was so tired he could hardly
see straight, and the way he felt, if he
sneezed, his head would fall off. But his fuck-up was
fixed, and, yeah, okay, he'd had to ice some poor
sucker to wrap it. At least Bobby wasn't
pissed at him anymore. He hated to disappoint
Bobby, who put up with a lot of his crap without
kicking him out. Only friend he'd ever had. Tad
knew, and the only person on earth who had ever given
a shit about him.
  You just didn't let people like that down.
  A goth girl of eighteen or nineteen walked
by and slouched into the bank of chairs across from Tad,
eyeing him. She wore a torn black T-shirt
under a distressed black leather jacket with the
sleeves cut off, black sweatpants, and pink
tennis shoes. She had short hair dyed purple,
a nose ring, lip ring, eyebrow ring, and nine ear
studs showing. Tad would be real surprised if she
wasn't wearing more gold and steel in her belly
button, nipples, and labia. She gave him a
twist of a smile--yep, there was the tongue
stud--and he managed a lifted lip in return.
  Probably saw him as a kindred spirit, and what the
hell, probably he was. Some of the kids who
dressed the part were wanna-He's, some of them were
nihilists, some of them true anarchists. You could
usually tell after thirty seconds of conversation which
they were, but right now, he couldn't summon the energy
needed even to wave her over and see. Not that it much
mattered if she did come over; he wasn't in any
condition to slip off to the John to snort some coke,
smoke a joint, or screw, if any of those were her
pleasure. Truth was, he liked Bobby's kind
of woman anyhow, the pneumatic bunnies who
pumped dick as well as they did iron. Not that
he'd had much interest in that area lately. Well,
except for that royal fuck-up in the gym with
Wonder Woman.
  The announcer came on and garbled something out.
  Tad didn't have any idea what she'd said, but
people started to get up and shoulder their carry-on bags
or tow them behind them on little leashes, like Samsonite
dogs who didn't want to go for a walk and had to be
dragged.
  Tad didn't have any luggage. If he needed
clean clothes, he bought them and threw the
old stuff away, shirts, pants, underwear,
socks, whatever. It was a trick he'd learned as
a street kid in Phoenix a thousand years ago.
If you have to travel, better to travel light. If
you don't have nothin", nobody can steal nothin' from
you. You don't have to remember anything, and if you have
to split, you can do so without looking back. He had his
e-ticket printout, a wallet, five hundred
or so bucks in it, a couple of credit cards, and
his ID. That was his luggage, and it was zipped into a
back pocket. Unless somebody came up and did
a butt slash and rob, he wasn't gonna lose
that. And if he did? Fuck it. It didn't really
matter, did it? You could get another wallet, more
cards, more money. None of that was important.
  The goth girl got up and sidled in behind Tad as
he moved toward the woman taking tickets. She
said, "I got some coke. You wanna do some, head
to the bathroom when you see me go there."
  Tad lifted his lip in his half-assed grin.
  "Cool," he said.
  But he doubted he'd see her when she went. He
was in first class, and he'd bet she was in tourist,
unless she was slumming, and he didn't think she
was. Besides, he had his own coke, and he
knew how pure it was. Street drugs were always
risky. Maybe if he felt better in a little
while, he'd share that with her. Find out what she could
do with that tongue stud.
  He planned to crash when he got back
to Malibu, and sleep for a week. Maybe by then,
he would have recovered enough to pick up the Hammer again.
Now that everything was copacetic with Bobby, there was no
need to fly to Hawaii or even slow down biz.
Life was normal again, such as normal was, and he
could get back on the road to Hell as soon as he
was able.
  Quantico, Virginia
  Jay was almost hopping up and down he was so full
of whatever it was that he had to say.
  Michaels smiled and waved at the seat. Jay
headed in that direction, but he didn't sit.
  "Okay, tell me. You caught our dope
dealer?"
  Jay frowned, as if that thought was the last thing on his
mind.
  "What? Oh, no. If we were doing a movie,
that would be the A story. What I did is figure
out the B story.
  Well, at least part of it."
  "You want to run that past me again?"
  "Okay, okay, look, I was all over the
DEA guy Lee and the NSA agent George.
Nothing, no connection. But I expanded the search, and
I came up with Lynn Davis Lee and Jackie
Mcationally George."
  "Who are--?"
  "The ex-wives. Lee and George met their
wives in law school, got hitched, went their
separate ways a couple years later. Both are
divorced."
  "So am I, Jay. So is roughly fifty
percent of everybody who got married in the last
twenty years."
  The younger man grinned.
  "Yeah, but Lynn Davis and Jackie
Mcationally were roommates in law school."
  "Really? That is an odd coincidence" "It
gets better, boss. Lynn Davis--she
dropped her married name after the split--is a
lawyer and part-time teacher in Atlanta. From what I
was able to determine, she ... ah ... prefers the
company of women to men."
  "How shocking. So?"
  "Same deal with Jackie Mcationally.
She is very low profile about it, but apparently she
is also a lesbian."
  Michaels thought about that a second.
  "Hmm."
  "Yeah, you see where I'm going here? Doesn't
that seem, well, queer, that two guys married and
then divorced college roommates, both of whom
are lesbians?"
  "Doesn't speak highly of the boys' lovemaking
skills, but it also doesn't prove anything, does
it?"
  "Nope. But what if Ms. Davis and Ms.
Mcationally had the same sexual preferences before they
got married?
  From what I can tell, that was the case."
  Michaels chewed on that for a moment.
  "Ah," he said, beginning to understand.
  "It makes sense," Jay said.
  "There are a lot of places where--laws
notwithstanding--being gay is still a problem.
  Federal agencies aren't allowed to discriminate
about such things, but you know how it is. Come out as gay,
you put a glass ceiling over your own head."
  Michaels nodded. That was true, like it or not,
especially in security agencies. The
theory was, an openly gay operative wouldn't be
a problem, but somebody in the closet might be a
candidate for blackmail, if he or she didn't
want to be outed. And he had a pretty good idea
of where Jay was going with the rest of it, but he didn't
say anything, just waved for him to keep rolling.
  "So, consider this scenario. Lee and George
are... well, let's say, men's men. They know that
being that way is likely to top them out at a low
level in a lot of agencies.
  And lesbians have the same problems."
  "So you think we have a case of two gay men
marrying two lesbian women to provide each other
with solid heterosexual backgrounds?"
  "It wouldn't be the first time," Jay said.
  "Having an ex wife or husband on paper would
forestall some tongue wagging especially if you were
discreet from then on.
  Only now. Lee and George, who maybe
aren't so close anymore, really don't like each
other. Might explain some things."
  Michaels nodded again.
  "That could be. You did good, Jay. Thanks."
  After Jay was gone, Michaels thought about it some,
then reached for the com. He wanted to talk
to John Howard.
  An ugly idea had just entered his mind, and while
he hoped things wouldn't go down that road, he had
to check it out.
  Howard nodded at Michaels. He'd been
figuratively shuffling paper clips when the commander
called, and any excuse to get up and move was good.
  "No doubt in your mind?" Michaels said.
  "No, sir. Lee flat assassinated the man.
Zeigler was clearly about to drop his knife. He
had started to step back from his hostage, and when Lee
fired, he was no more than twenty-five feet
away. Plus, my radio mike was still on. Lee
heard Zeigler say he was surrendering. No,
sir.
  This guy was a DBA field agent for years, he
went on scores of raids, some of which had gunplay
on both sides, I checked his record. When he
pulled the trigger, he had to know the situation was under
control."
  "Okay, let's assume for a moment that he
didn't panic and do if by accident, he iced the
man on purpose. That brings up a big question,
doesn't it?"
  "Yes, sir. Why would he do that?"
  "Any theories you want to share?"
  "I have been thinking about it. Assuming there was no
personal hatred of the man, the only thing I can come
up with is that he didn't want Zeigler giving up
his dealer."
  Michaels said, "That doesn't make any
sense, because the whole purpose of the raid was to bust the
guy hard enough so we could find that out."
  "Yes, sir. Thing is, Zeigler was in a
panic, and he was about to spill his guts when Lee
double-tapped him."
  Give the commander credit, he picked up on it
right away.
  "Where somebody other than Lee could hear him.
  Y."
  "Yes, sir, me. And the maid."
  Michaels shook his head.
  "I don't like this worth a damn, John.
Something stinks here."
  "I do believe so myself."
  The commander steepled his fingers and leaned back in his
chair.
  "If it had just been Lee there, he could claim
he shot Zeigler to save the maid."
  "Who speaks about five words of English
and was so terrified she didn't know which way was up,"
Howard added.
  "Not a great witness either way."
  "So come the shooting review or whatever it is
DEA does, anything you have to say is going to make
Lee look real bad. He had to know what he did
was going to cost him big time."
  "I'd assume so, yes, sir. If they
believe me, it ought to be worth his job. If he was
one of mine, I'd kick him out and tell the local
DA to burn him, manslaughter at the very least,
maybe murder two."
  "Which he has to know, and even so, he's willing
to horizontal somebody in front of a witness."
  "Maybe he thinks he can blow enough smoke to get
past it."
  "I wouldn't underrate yourself, John. You are the
military commander of Net Force, a general. You can
shine a lot of light on him."
  "Yes, sir. So we're back to the big question.
Why'd he do it? What did he have to gain that was so
important he'd risk his job?"
  "I don't know. But I certainly think we need
to find out."
  "Yes, sir, I believe that's
true."
  "There's one other thing we need to think about here,
too, John."
  "Sir?"
  "Maybe Lee loves his job and is willing to do
anything to keep it." He raised an eyebrow.
  Well, Mama Howard didn't raise any
stupid children, either. Howard said, "Bit of a stretch,
isn't it?"
  "He killed a world-famous movie star in front
of a witness who, at the very least, can get him fired and
maybe charged with a nasty felony. Maybe if
something happened to the witness, he might not be so
worried."
  Howard nodded.
  "I take your point. I'll make sure my
brakes are working before I go for a drive."
  "And make sure nothing is attached to the ignition
switch, too, John. I'd hate to have to break in
a new military commander."
  "Yes, sir, I'd hate to put you to the trouble."
  They smiled at each other.
  But when Howard left, he considered what
Michaels had said. Lee did seem to be something
of a loose cannon.
  He didn't want to be in front of him if he
went off.

  Los Angeles, California
  Drayne was not a man to make the same mistake
twice, especially on something that, in theory, could
cost him his freedom. As soon as he was back on
the ground in L.a., still in the car on the way home,
he made a call to a real estate agent he'd
never met. He got her name out of the phone
directory and picked it because he liked the sound of
it.
  "Silver-man Realty," the woman said, "this is
Shawanda speaking."
  Shawanda Silverman. What kind of
intermarriage produced such a great name? He loved
it.
  "Yes, ma'am, my name is Lazlo Mead, and
I'm going to be living here in the Los Angeles
area for about a year or so for a project I'm just
starting to work on."
  "Yes, Mr. Mead?"
  "What I want is to lease a three- or
four-bedroom furnished house not too far from things,
but in a nice area, you know, maybe out a
little ways, in one of the canyons?"
  "Certainly I can help you with that. What...
ah... price range are we talking about?"
  "Well, the company is paying for it--I'm in
aircraft supply and maintenance--so maybe you could
find one where the rent was somewhere around eight to ten thousand
dollars a month?"
  He could hear the cash register in her voice:
"No problem with that," she said too quickly.
  "I can make a list of a few places, and we can
get together and view them."
  "Well, here's the thing. I'm kind of in a
hurry, but I'm up to my eyeballs in work.
Somebody gave me your name as having done this kind of
thing for people before, so maybe you could just, you know, pick a
place that would work for me and my wife and just go ahead
and lease it for us. I'll e-mail you a transfer,
you know, first month, last month, cleaning and security
fees, whatever--say forty thousand?--and e-sign
any paperwork to get the ball rolling. We can get
together later. Sooner I get out of the hotel and into a
real place, the happier I'll be."
  "I understand that, Mr. Mead. I'm sure I can
find a house that will work for you. Any preferences as
to furniture or schools or such?"
  "Well, my wife likes modern stuff, so we
want to keep her happy. No early American
or like that. No kids, so schools don't matter."
  "I'll see what I can do. I'll e-mail you
pictures,-if you want."
  "That would be good." He gave her one of the
remailing addresses he used. She probably
already had callerID-ED the number of the clean phone
he kept for just such transactions, the one made out in
the name of Projects, Inc. Now there was a term that
could be stretched to fit virtually anything. What did
it mean? Nothing. He gave her the number. Soon
as she found something, she said, she would call. He
got her e-mail address and promised to send a
fund transfer first thing in the morning.
  After he broke the connection, he felt a lot
better. In a day or two, he'd have a hideout,
so if he had to leave the Malibu house in a
hurry, there would be a place he could run to where he
could sort things out. He had a big, fat,
five-hundred-pound gun safe bolted to the concrete
floor in a U-Store-It place way out
Ventura Boulevard; he'd drive over the hill
and move most of the cash from the beach house to that tonight, as
a matter of fact. Maybe some of the
better champagne. The locker, which was eight by ten
feet, was air conditioned, he'd made sure of that.
With his money safe and a place to hide if it came
to that, he would be halfway ready.
  Lazlo Mead was about to come into full existence,
too.
  Drayne had a wonderful, illegal software
program and card stocks for making phony ID'S.
A couple of hours and a good color laser printer,
a few watermarks and holograms, and presto!
Mr. Lazlo Mead would have a driver's license
from, oh, say, Iowa; a social security card,
maybe a library card, and a couple of credit
cards that looked perfect, even if they weren't
valid. The program would also print out pictures
of a mythical wife and parents, if he wanted.
  That would take care of the basics. When Tad got
home, he could do the other part, the hired muscle.
A few armed bodyguards could buy them enough time
to haul ass if somebody came calling, especially
if Drayne gave them the right story.
  "Somebody yells "Police!" they are lying,"
he'd tell the shooters.
  "It's guys trying to rip us off." Tad knew
people who wouldn't care if whoever hired them were
dope dealers or gun runners long as they got
paid. Guys who'd shoot it out with cops anyhow, if
the pay was rich enough.
  Maybe he ought to get a gun, too. He'd
never had much use for those, but after the Zee-ster bought
it, the thought had popped up. He didn't have any
training, but you didn't have to be a rocket
scientist, now did you? Any fuzz-brained gang
banger in East L.a. could use a gun, how hard
could it be? Point it and pull the trigger, it went
bang. Wave it, and it was like a magic wand; people sat
up and paid attention. Something that looked cool, one of
those stainless steel movie guns the action adventure
guys used, pearl handles or something.
  Of course, all this would tap into his money
pretty good, forty grand for the house, probably
fifty or sixty more for five bodyguards, just
to get started. But it had to be done. He'd been
lax before, but not anymore. All this had been a
wake-up call, and he didn't want to be caught
by surprise. It had been a big game, really, but
when customers started getting cooked by feds, the
seriousness factor went way up. He hadn't
really believed he'd ever be caught, not really, and the
idea of spending years in a federal
prison somewhere fending off some big horny con named
Bubba did not appeal at all. So it would cost,
big deal. Money was the easiest part. If he put
the word out, he could move fifty or sixty hits
of the Hammer a week, easy. Couple, three
months of doing that every week or two, he'd make
expenses and a whole lot more.
  Clear, say, half a million in the next
few months, then take a break?
  Cross that bridge when he got to it. It had
been a close call, that business with the Zee-ster.
He would not get that involved with the customers again. He
was smarter than most people, he knew that, and he knew
he could see things better, but when you were moving in a
hurry, you had to watch your step. All kinds of
things out there that could trip you up.
  The "office" com number went off. He frowned
at it.
  Saw there was no caller ID sig lit. He
knew who it had to be.
  "Polymers, Drayne."
  "Robert. This is your father."
  Jesus. Didn't the old man think he could
recognize his fucking voice after all these years?
  "Hey, Dad. What's up?"
  "I'm leaving your aunt's to go back to Arizona
tomorrow.
  I thought we might get together for breakfast before I
go."
  Drayne felt a cold finger along his spine.
His father wanted to see him? That was very strange.
  "Sure. I know a couple of places near
Edwina's that are pretty good."
  "Give me the name, and I'll get directions from
Edwina."
  "Sure."
  "We'll meet at seven a.m.," his father said.
It was not a question.
  "Seven sharp," Drayne said. Which, when speaking
to his father, was redundant. He gave him the name
of a good breakfast place just off the Coast
Highway.
  Drayne frowned again as he severed the connection.
  Well. His father was leaving town, and it might be a
year or two before they saw each other again.
Breakfast was not such a big deal. Except that his
old man had not invited him to such an event in what,
ten years?
  Maybe he just wants me to help Edwina out,
Drayne reasoned. Or maybe he felt
the clammy hand of death touch him while he sat in the
church and wants to tell me about his will.
  Drayne laughed aloud at that thought. That would be the
fucking day.
  244 NET FORCE Washington, D.c.
  Toni, feeling better after an afternoon mostly
spent sleeping, listened to Alex's day. At least
he thought her brain was working well enough to ask her
advice about work.
  Of course, she had been his assistant for a long
time, she knew the game.
  "So that's what we've got on our friends at the
DBA and NSA," he finished.
  "What do you think?"
  She considered what he'd said.
  "Well, you know the classic motives for
crime: passion, thrills, revenge, psychosis,
personal gain. On the face of it. Lee wouldn't
have any particular reason to want Zeigler dead for
any kind of personal vendetta, unless maybe he
really hated his movies. I don't think he was that
bad an actor. From what you've said, he doesn't
seem like a thrill-seeker or a psycho.
  So what's the personal gain?"
  "I don't see any right off," he
admitted.
  "Killing a big movie star doesn't win you
friends or money."
  She said, "You remember those calls you got
offering you work with the pharmaceutical companies?"
  He chuckled.
  "Yeah."
  "Well. From what you've said, there seems to be a
lot of interest in this drug. We're talking about
big money.
  Maybe somebody convinced Mr. Lee he could
cash, in big time if he got the dealer and delivered
him--or his formula--to the right party. He wouldn't
want Net Force getting to the guy first, so he
wouldn't want John to know the dealer's name, right?"
  He stared at her.
  "Wow."
  "Don't you dare sound so surprised, Alex
Michaels," she said.
  "My mind does still work from time to time, when my
hormones aren't blowing my head apart."
  "You said that, not me." He grinned.
  She pretended to glare but couldn't hold onto it.
She smiled in return.
  "Anyway, it's a good theory. Maybe
Jay can make a connection, some record of contact
or something."
  "These guys would be pretty good at covering their
tracks," she said, "if they've had years
to practice it like Jay thinks."
  "Still, it's a place to look. Even though it is
all moot if we can't run the dealer down."
  "You'll find him," she said.
  "I have great faith in you."
  "You'd be the only one."
  "How many do you need?"
  He smiled again.
  "Why, ma'am, I do believe one will be just
exactly enough."

  Quantise, Virginia
  Howard was tired of running scenarios, more tired of
sitting around. He was itchy to do something, and he was
considering running some real-world field exercises just
to clear the cobwebs from his brain. Get the troops
sharpened up; even though there was nothing to get sharp about
now, there would be, eventually. He hoped.
  "Love to see a man hard at work."
  Howard looked up and saw Julio standing in the
doorway of his office.
  "Lieutenant Fernandez. What brings you here?"
  "I believe that would be my size-eleven combat
boots, sir."
  "And is there a purpose for this visit?"
  "Why, good news. General Howard, sir."
  "Come on in, then. I can use some news. Any
news, good or bad, would be a change."
  "I think you're gonna like this."
  Howard looked at the flat-black hard case
Julio held. It was about three feet long, half
that wide.
  "You have my attention. Lieutenant."
  "Sir. You might recall the Thousand-Meter
Special Teams Match for United States
Military Services held at Camp Perry every
November?"
  "Oh, I recall it, all right. That would be the
match where Net Force's sharpshooters always come in
last place... behind the Marines, the Army, and even
the Navy?"
  "Only because you won't order Gunny to enter.
He'd beat "em. And we did beat the Navy that
one year," Julio allowed.
  "Because their shooter lost his hearing protection in a
freak accident and blew out an eardrum is
why."
  "Still beat 'em. Take it any way you can."
  Howard nodded at the case.
  "This a secret weapon?"
  "Well, a weapon, yes, but not so secret. Just
new. Take a look."
  Julio set the case down on the old map table
across from Howard's desk, popped the latches on the
case, and clam shelled it open.
  Howard walked over and looked at the components
inside the case.
  "Why, it is a gun. It appears to be a
bolt-action five oh BMG rifle," Howard
said.
  "Yes, sir, but not just any five-oh. This is a
prototype, one of only two built, of the
upcoming EMD Arms Model XM-109A
Wind Runner, designed by Bill Ritchie himself.
  Third generation."
  Julio reached into the case and pulled out the stock
and receiver assembly.
  "This here receiver is made of 17-4 PH stainless
and, with improved heat-treating, now Rockwells out
at forty-five-plus. Sixteen pounds,
wire-cut, tolerances you wouldn't believe,
and with the fully adjustable stock here retracted, a
mere twenty inches long.
  Stock is equipped with a carbon-fiber poly
sorb mono pod recoil pad and nice cheek
piece incorporating no-tear bio gel
  "You have to go looking for your shoulder after you fire
it?"
  "No, sir, it kicks about as hard as a stout
twelve-gauge.
  Of course, it will shove you back about a foot if
you shoot it prone, and you will want to be lying down behind
it and not firing offhand."
  "I bet."
  "Speaking from experience, sir. You'll notice the
M-14 bipod and mounted scope, the latter of which
is a U.s.
  Optics adjustable, 3.8It-22It, very
nice optical gear, sighted in for a thousand meters.
And here is a nifty little red dot switch,
automatically adjusted for parallax, that gives you
short-range capabilities. Short range in this
case being three to four hundred meters. Put the
dot on the target, that's where the bullet goes,
plus or minus a few inches.
  "Might as well throw it as shoot that
close, though.
  "The new model Son of Wind Runner here
uses a five round magazine like the older models,
and has a Remington-style adjustable trigger, set
to three pounds. Uses your standard MK211
caliber .50 multipurpose cartridge as the
primary tactical round, though match-grade hand
loads are the ticket at Camp Perry, of
course." Julio held up a box of ammo.
  "Like these."
  He opened the bipod and set the receiver and stock
up on the table. He reached back into the case and
came out with the barrel.
  "Your barrel here is a twenty-eight-inch fluted
match grade graphite from KandP Gun, with an
eighty-port screw on muzzle brake, the
holes set at thirty degrees. You secure the
barrel to the receiver like so, using an Uzi-style nut
and a self-locking ratchet, right here."
  Julio put the barrel into the receiver and tightened
it. It didn't take long.
  "Total weight, thirty-four pounds. Insert a
loaded magazine, and there she is, ready to rock
'n" roll."
  "Very nice," Howard allowed.
  "The original XM 107 was designed for use
by the Army, particularly the Joint Special
Operations Forces, and the Explosive Ordnance
Disposal teams. And, theoretically, the Infantry,
though the ground pounders didn't get too many
copies. SOF uses "em against soft or semi
hard targets out to seventeen hundred meters, and
EOD uses 'em to blow up unexploded ordnance
from a long way outside proximity fuse range."
  "Like I said, a nice toy. How much?"
  "These things are like hen's teeth, sir. The waiting
list is a mile long, and how can you put a price
on this kind of quality?" He stroked the barrel with
one hand.
  "There are only two of them exactly like this in
all the world."
  "Let's try, shall we? How much?"
  "Well, with our discount, a hair over five
thousand dollars each."
  "That actually sounds pretty reasonable." Then,
knowing Julio for all the years he'd known him, he
said, "A 'hair over" you said. How thick a
hair we talking about?"
  "Call it three thousand and change," Julio
said. He grinned.
  "What? For eight thousand dollars, this beast had
better dance and whistle "Dixie," Lieutenant!"
  "Well, I wouldn't know about that, sir. But EDM
Arms guarantees one-minute-of-angle accuracy
at a thousand meters right out of the box."
  Howard raised his eyebrows at that.
  "One MOA? Guaranteed?"
  "Just as you see it. I thought that would get your
attention.
  But that's only to keep the lawyers happy. EDM
Arms has got verified five-round groups at a
thousand meters of one-half MOA. They say they
got a couple groups that good at seventeen hundred
meters, even a little longer."
  Howard looked at the weapon again.
  "Good Lord.
  That's a tack-driver."
  "Yes, sir. And Bowens, our newly
recruited ex-Army shooter, has been doing just that
with this very piece, starting yesterday. Talking about a
pie-plate-sized group from a mile away. He
didn't want to let me take it long enough to show it
to you."
  Howard grinned.
  "So, come next month. Net Force's
little piece of the National Guard is going to shoot the
living asses off the Navy, the Marines, and the
Army."
  "If one of them doesn't get his hands on the
other one," Howard said.
  Julio grinned real big.
  Howard stared at him.
  "You didn't."
  "Well, sir, yes, sir, I did. If
something broke on this here weapon--highly
unlikely, I know, given the fine, fine quality,
but if something did break--we'd want proper
backup, wouldn't we?"
  Howard shook his head.
  "I'll have to beat the budget to cover this."
  "Not the way I figure it. We do it right, we
can make our costs on side bets. I can get
three to one against us, easy. I wouldn't be
surprised to even make a small profit."
  They both grinned at that.
  "Anyway, I thought you might like to take it to the
outdoor range and put a few through it. That is, if
you aren't too busy here." He looked around.
  "You missed your calling. Lieutenant. You should
have been a comedian."
  "Yes, sir, I believe I could have sparkled in
such a profession."
  Howard looked at the weapon. Why not? He
didn't have anything better to do.
  "You coming along?"
  "No, sir, I have diaper duty, starting in--"
he looked at his watch "--forty-six minutes.
Best I not be late."
  Howard chuckled.
  "No, I understand. It has been a while since
I had such duty myself, but one cannot stress the
importance of it enough."
  "If one's wife is Lieutenant Joanna
Winthrop Fernandez, one can sure as hell stress
it high, wide, and repeatedly," Julio said.
  "You want me to show you how to break it down? Where
the cartridges go?"
  "I believe I can manage on my own, thank
you."
  "Have fun."
  "Oh, you, too."
  "Yeah, right."
  Howard looked at the rifle after Julio was
gone. Well, why not? He was the commander of Net
Force's military, he ought to know how the
hardware worked, right? It was training. He could
justify that.
  Besides, blowing holes in a target three-quarters
of a mile away sure beat sitting here doing zip.
  The Texas Panhandle, North of Amarillo
  Jay Gridley walked along the trail,
cutting sign. This was an exercise Saji had
taught him when he'd been recovering from his
electronically induced stroke, how to track
somebody. A bent twig here, a blade of grass
lying there, the signs were there if you knew how to look.
  In the real world, he was backtracking e-signet
and phone and globe Sat connections, but here, he was
after a bad man on foot, Hans, a notorious
drug seller.
  It was hot, and Jay paused to take a swig of
tepid water from his canteen, the fabric of which was
wet to allow some small cooling from evaporation. He
thought that was a nice touch, even though he wasn't
sharing the scenario with anybody. Those little things counted.
Anybody could plug off-the-shelf view- or feel
ware into their computer and walk through VR; a pro had
higher standards.
  He took off his broad-brimmed planter's
hat, wiped his sweaty forehead with a red
bandanna, replaced the hat, and stuck the handkerchief
back into his pocket.
  There, just ahead, he saw something. Or rather, he
didn't see something. He bent and looked at the
hot ground from only a few inches above it. There
weren't any real tracks, but the dry ground was too
smooth.
  Carpet-walker, turned and headed that way.
  Jay kept walking. Ahead and in a little
declivity was a stand of cottonwood trees and what
looked like willow.
  Water, a pond, or an underground stream come up
to the surface, he figured. He could almost smell
the moisture.
  Sure enough, there was a small stream, maybe as
wide as Jay was tall, clear water bubbling over
a rocky bottom.
  The stream wound away, and Jay stepped into the
water and started to follow it. A man looking to hide
his tracks would use such cover, probably staying with
it until he found a rocky enough spot to exit where
he wouldn't leave footprints.
  Jay enjoyed the feel of the water around his ankles
as he moved slowly along. Half a mile ahead,
he paused.
  There, to the right, were six or eight big rocks
leading to a patch of gravel. That's where he'd leave
the water, if he wanted to get back on his
previous heading.
  It took him more than a hundred yards before he
spotted something. Another flat patch of dirt,
too smooth.
  There were no wind riffle marks, no raindrop
patterns, none of the natural weathering signs that ought
to be there. Jay grinned. Bad man Hans had
been here; he was sure of it.
  In the distance. Jay saw a small village.
That it had a Germanic look to it didn't really
fit the Texas panhandle, but it was okay to mix
scenario now and then. It kept you from getting into a
rut.
  He'd bet diamonds against dog doo that Hans
was in that village, smug in his belief that nobody
could track him there.
  Why didn't these fools ever learn they couldn't
screw with Lonesome Jay Gridley? Must be some
kind of genetic defect that ran in bad guys.
  He picked up his pace a little. He didn't
need to worry about the signs now, he knew where
Hans was. All he had to do was go and
identify him. Once he was sure of that, the game
would be over.

  Washington, D.c.
  Toni felt terrific. She and Alex had a
great night together, and when she awakened this morning,
she'd been rested and much refreshed. Being able to help
him with the case he was working on, that had been something,
too. For a few moments there, she hadn't felt
totally useless. She hadn't lost all her chops.
Maybe that was a good sign.
  After Alex left for work, she felt creative.
She decided to go and work on her scrimshaw for a
while.
  At the bench, she turned on the gooseneck
lamp, gathered her tools, and was about to get started
when she saw the purple capsule lying there where
she'd put it and forgotten all about it.
  She reached for the cap, looked at it, and decided
what the hell, as long as she had it in hand ... She
put the cap on the table in her work field and
adjusted the lamp to shine on it. Focused the
stereoscope on it... Ah. Here was a major
discovery. It was a purple gelatin capsule with
some kind of pale powder inside it. Oh,
boy.
  Way to go, Sherlock.
  Maybe something inside was more interesting. If she
opened it very carefully ... "Shit!" she said, as the
powder, which was a kind of bubble gum pink, spilled
all over the table. She dropped the halves of the
cap and grabbed a little paint brush she used for dusting
the ivory. She swept the pink powder into a little
pile, then onto a sheet of paper. There it was.
  As she picked up the larger of the now mostly
empty capsule segments to reload the powder, she
noticed an odd strip of coloration on one end, just
inside the edge. Hmm.
  What was that?
  She held the cap under the scope, couldn't quite
make it out. It looked almost like some kind of
pattern. Well, we'll see about that. She put the
cap down, removed the auxiliary lens, and brought the
scope's magnification to 10X. Let's have
another look, shall we?
  Jesus! What was that? She fiddled with the light,
turned the cap this way, then that, and got the shadows just
right so she could make it out.
  Etched into the material of the cap were tiny words.
  "Hi, Feebs! Want to find me?
Ask Frankie and Annette's grandkids, they
know where! Sincerely Yours, Thor."
  Hello!
  She reached for the phone on the end of the bench. She
had to get Alex. He was going to want to hear about
this.
  Newport Beach, California
  The restaurant, Claudia's Grill, was
half a block off the highway and slightly up the
hill, so it had a nice view of the water.
Drayne pulled his Mercedes into the parking lot,
gave the key to the attendant and got a parking stub,
then went inside. It was three minutes to seven, and the
  place was pretty full. They served a good
breakfast here, and it was a great location.
  His father sat alone in a booth, staring out through a
wall of glass at the Pacific, the waters already
changing from gray to blue as the sun began to burn off
the morning fog.
  "Hello, Dad."
  "Robert."
  Drayne slid into the booth.
  "What's up?"
  "Let's order first."
  The waitress came by. Drayne
ordered poached eggs, chicken apple sausage, and
whole-grain pancakes. His father asked for white
toast, corn flakes, and decaf coffee.
  When she was gone to put their order in, his father
cleared his throat. He said, "I'm glad your mother
isn't alive to see what you've become."
  Drayne stared at him as if his father had just
sprouted fangs and fur and might start baying like a
werewolf.
  "What?"
  "How stupid do you think I am, Robert? Did
it never occur to you that thirty years with the Bureau
might have taught me something?"
  "What are you talking about?"
  "PolyChem Products," his father said.
  Drayne felt his belly spasm, as if he had
just gone over the big drop on a roller coaster.
  "What about it?"
  His father looked disgusted.
  "There is no "it." It's a paper corporation,
a phantom. The bank records, the history,
none of it is any deeper than a postage stamp.
You thought I might look at it, but not too
closely, didn't you? You are PolyChem
Products."
  Drayne couldn't think of anything to say. He was
cold, as if he had suddenly found himself shoved
headfirst into a refrigerator. He'd never expected
this.
  The old man looked away from him, out at the
ocean again. He said, "I have friends, boy, people who owe
me favors. I know where you live, and I know you
live well, but I also know that you don't have any
visible way of earning money. So that means you are
into something illegal or immoral. Probably
both. From the way you talked about admiring that
criminal who assaulted the agents and staff at
HQ recently, I surmise it probably has
something to do with drugs."
  "Dad--" His old man turned back to face
him, held up his hand to silence him, and in that moment,
he was Special Agent in Charge Rickover
Drayne of old, steely-eyed and fierce, one of the
most stalwart protectors of the republic.
  "Don't say anything. I don't want to hear
about it, I don't want to know about it. You're an
adult; you can make your own choices. I expected
better of you, that's all."
  Drayne lost it: "You expected me to turn
into a fucking robot without feelings who would
grow up to be just like you." He was amazed at the sudden
venom in his voice.
  "You wanted a carbon copy of yourself to send forth,
a grown-up Boy Scout who was trustworthy,
loyal, friendly, obedient, who would cog his way into the
system and stay there smiling until he wore out, just
like you. You never once asked me what I wanted
to be when I grew up or cared what I thought about
anything."
  The old man blinked at him.
  "I wanted the best for you--" "Your best! What
you thought I should be! Face it, Dad, you were always
too busy saving the country from the forces of evil
to give a shit what I did, as long as I kept
my grades up, my room clean, and I didn't
bother you."
  "Robert--" "Jesus fucking Christ, listen
to yourself! Everybody in the world calls me Bobby
except for you! I asked you to do that a hundred times!
You didn't listen. You never listened."
  Nobody said anything for a long time. Finally,
Drayne said, "So, what are you going to do? Give
my name to your friends who owe you favors? Have them
investigate me?"
  The old man shook his head.
  "No."
  "No? Why? Because I'm your son and you love
me?
  Or because you wouldn't want your old FBI chums
to know your son was anything less than the soul of
respectability?"
  The old man was spared whatever answer he might
have made as the waitress returned with their
breakfast.
  Drayne had never felt less like eating in his
life, but both he and the old man smiled at her.
  When she was gone, the old man said, "You can think
whatever you want. You ... You're a brilliant
man, son.
  Smarter than I ever was. I always knew that.
You could have gone into legitimate business and made a
fortune.
  You could have been somebody important."
  "What makes you think I can't do that now?"
  "Oh, you could. I don't think you want to. You
were always more interested in pulling my chain than anything
else, weren't you?"
  And I still am, Drayne was smart enough to realize.
But he didn't want the old man to walk away with
any kind of victory, no way, so he
said, "No. All I wanted was to get your
attention. Any attention, good or bad, was better
than indifference. That's what you gave me, Dad.
Indifference.
  So now you finally notice me, enough to bust my
balls. Thank you so fucking much. You want to turn
me in for being a criminal, go ahead. I don't
care." And if you do turn me in, I win, he
thought.
  Drayne stood, dropped a fifty on the table,
and said, "I'm not hungry, but you enjoy your
breakfast. It's a long drive back to Arizona.
Give my regards to the dog."
  Drayne turned and stalked off. Dramatic, but
he'd made worse exits. Let the old bastard
chew on that for a while.
  Once he was in his car, he realized how shaken
he was.
  Even after all the years of layering scar tissue
and callus over it, on some level, he still cared
what the old man thought of him. Amazing to realize
that.
  Tad couldn't sleep. He was topped off with enough
drugs to put a stadium full of rabid
football fans into a trance, but his mind
wouldn't go down.
  He had taken a hot shower. He had tried
to blank his mind. He had gotten up and eaten
another phenobarb, and while he was so stoned he could
hardly move, he was no way about to sleep, and he
needed that, bad.
  Bobby had told him about the new operations plan,
the safe house, moving the money, and wanting to hire
some armed muscle to ride shotgun. Tad had
shrugged that off.
  Whatever Bobby wanted was fine. Tad had made
some calls. Some guys were coming by to see Bobby
later, shooters who didn't care who they cooked,
long as the money was good. It wouldn't cramp things
here, they had five bedrooms, plenty of space.
Bobby was thinking he could post one as a lookout, have
him watching the road, scanning police radios,
shit like that. Somebody came calling, they'd hit the
beach before the visitors got to the door, jog a
ways down to the parking lot where his car was already parked,
ready to roll. Could maybe leave another ride in
the opposite direction, at the bed-and breakfast
place, slip the owner a few bucks for parking.
  Maybe even have a jet ski or something, take
to the ocean.
  Maybe rig a bomb to the front gate or
something.
  Bobby got into the details of stuff like this, and
once he did, he covered it pretty fine.
  Tad didn't think it was gonna come to that, but that
last biz had put the fear of God into Bobby a
little, so that was cool, whatever.
  Tad went out on the deck, sprawled in the padded
lounge chair, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke
at the ocean.
  The wind blew it back in his face, and he
smiled at that.
  Bunnies in thong bikinis jogged past, guys with
tans dark as walnuts, all going about their boring
lives. Tad waved at them, some of them waved
back. Jesus.
  A helicopter zipped by a few hundred feet
up, probably looking for people caught in the rip and
pulled out beyond the surf. Welcome to the Promised
Land, folks. Sun, water, beautiful people, even
airborne lifeguards to make sure you don't
venture too far away from paradise by accident.
  Tad finished the cigarette, ground the butt out
on the arm of the chair, then snapped it out toward the
water using his thumb and middle finger. This was
what his life had come to: There was the Hammer, and
then there was waiting for a chance to grab the Hammer; that was
it.
  Except for the waiting part, it was okay.
  He leaned back and watched the seagulls wheel and
work the uncertain air currents over the beach, diving
and rolling, sometimes hovering almost still against the force of the
wind. Some real intricate patterns there, those
nights.
  The acrobatic dance of the gulls was what finally
lulled him to sleep.

  Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia
  Michaels said, "Mean anything to you?"
  Jay shook his head.
  "Nope, not right off, but I've turned the search
bots loose on it. I should be getting a first-hit
list any moment."
  Howard came into the conference room.
  "Sorry I'm late. I had to park in the
secured lot. There's some, ah, hardware I was
checking out locked in the trunk of my agency car I
didn't have time to return yet. I wouldn't want
to lose it."
  "No problem. Do you recognize the
names Prankie and Annette?"
  "No, sir."
  Michaels slid a hardcopy printout across the
conference room table to Howard, who picked it up and
looked at it.
  Howard shook his head.
  "And this came from where?"
  Michaels explained how Toni had discovered the
hidden message inside the capsule. He was
feeling a certain sense of pride when he told
them.
  Jay said, "Tell Toni that's nice work.
Nothing in the DEA reports about this. Somebody there
is maybe sitting on this information?"
  "That's what I thought," Michaels said.
  "I asked the director to pull some strings, and
she's gotten the original lab reports from
DBA. They went over the caps they've recovered
with a fine tooth comb. None of those have this little grandkids
riddle inscribed in them."
  "We think the DEA might be hiding things from us?"
  Howard said.
  Michaels nodded and brought him up to speed on
what Jay had discovered.
  "And there's one more little tidbit," Jay
said when Michaels had finished.
  "I have a record of a tele con between Hans
Brocken and our Mr. Brett Lee, of the DEA,
from three months back. Herr Brocken is the
chief security officer for Brocken
Pharmaceuticals, of Berlin, Germany."
  "Careless," Michaels said.
  "I did have to look for it. It wasn't something
you'd stumble across accidentally. They made a pretty
good effort to hide it."
  Howard said, "You really think Lee is in bed with a
drug company? Looking to sell the formula for this
stuff?"
  "It makes a certain kind of sense,"
Michaels said.
  "We talked about reasons for him shooting the
movie star before, remember."
  "And you think Lee is in league with the NSA?"
  "Only with one particular person there. No point
in casting aspersions on the entire agency,"
Michaels said.
  "It seems that Mr. Lee and Mr. George have
history about which they have not been entirely forthcoming,
though this is still circumstantial evidence."
  "I'll get harder stuff eventually,"
Jay said.
  "Oops, speaking of which--" He tapped keys on
his flat screen
  "Okay, here's what the Sherlock searchbot has
to say about my query ..."
  Jay frowned at the flat screen
  "You want to let us in on it. Jay?"
  "Huh? Oh, sorry." Jay tapped a key.
  The flat screen vox began reading aloud in a
smoky, sexy woman's voice:
  "Frankie Avalon and Annette
Funicello, teen singing and television idols from the
late 1950's and early 1960's, first appeared
together in the low-budget movie Beach Party, from
American International Pictures, 1963,
costarring Robert Cummings, Dorothy Malone, and
Harvey Lembeck, and featuring musical roles
by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, and Brian
Wilson and the Beach Boys.
  The movie was the first of several in the chaste
surf-and sand genre, which was to remain viable and popular
for the next two years.
  "Avalon and Funicello were paired in several
additional surf movies, including a distant
sequel, Back to the Beach, Paramount
Pictures, 1987, also starring Lori Loughlin,
Tommy Hinkley, and Connie Stevens."
  The computer's voice went silent, and the three men
looked at each other.
  Michaels said, "The stars of fifty-year-old
teenybopper movies? Fine. Who are their
grandchildren?"
  Jay shook his head.
  "I'm cross-checking here, but it does not appear
that the two had any off-screen relationship that would have
resulted in children together. They were both married to other
people."
  "Not having children would make it hard to have grandchildren,
wouldn't it?" Howard observed.
  Michaels said, "Maybe we aren't talking about
literal grandchildren. Maybe movie grandchildren?"
  Jay tapped away at the keyboard. A moment
passed.
  "Nope, nothing that fits. Nobody ever did
another beach movie with the actors who played their children
in the "87 picture."
  "Maybe the message is speaking
metaphorically?"
  Howard said.
  Jay looked at him.
  Howard said, "Anybody make any similar
kind of pictures recently? Celluloid
grandchildren, so to speak, of the originals?"
  Jay smiled.
  "Well, film isn't made out of celluloid
anymore, but that's pretty good. General. Let
me see... Okay, here we are, under Beach
Movies, there are several, hmm ... ah. I think
I found it!"
  A few seconds passed while Jay read
to himself.
  "Jay?"
  "Sorry, boss."
  The flat screen vox said, "Surf Daze, an
homage to the surf movies of the early 1960's,
Fox Pictures, 2004, starring Larry Wright,
Mae Jean Kent, and George Harris
Zeigler. Set in Malibu in 1965, Surf
Daze chronicles the adventures of--" "Stop,"
Michaels said.
  Jay paused the recitation.
  "What?"
  Howard beat him to it. He said, "George
Harris Zeigler."
  Jay nodded.
  "Oh, yeah. The Zee-ster."
  "The recently departed Zee-ster," Michaels
said.
  Jay said, "This was, um, seven years ago.
Before he hit it big. He'd have been about, what?
Twenty-four, or five then. Thing is, where he's
gone, I don't think he'd be telling us anything
useful."
  "This is too much of a coincidence. This dope
dealer is pulling our chain. We need to talk to the
other actors."
  "You gonna turn it over to the regular feebs?"
  Michaels took a deep breath and let it out.
  "No. I think maybe we ought to go check this out
ourselves."
  "Not in our charter," Howard said.
  "The current waters are very murky," Michaels
said.
  "Given the capabilities of the DEA and
NSA, I'm not altogether sure just who we can trust.
Sure, the FBI are our guys, and they love
us--in theory, anyway--but we can't cover any
leaks on their pan. We don't want to be behind the
eight ball on this, do we?"
  "No need to convince me. Commander,"
Howard said, smiling.
  "I'm going senile from boredom in my office.
  The drug raid was the most interesting thing that's
happened in three months. I'm game."
  "Me, too," Jay said.
  "I thought after your last adventure in the field
you'd want to avoid it," Michaels said.
  "I was alone then," Jay said, "and dealing with a
militant gun dealer. With the general here and you,
I'd feel secure enough to interview a drop-dead
gorgeous movie star. Did you see Mae Jean in
Scream, Baby, ScreamThat "I must have missed that
one," Michaels said.
  "Me, too," Howard said.
  "I'm telling you, she's got lungs could raise
the dead, aurally and, um, visually. One of the great
onscreen screamers of all time, right up there with
Jamie Lee. And did I mention she was
drop-dead gorgeous?"
  "I thought you had a pretty intense relationship
going, Jay?"
  "That's true, boss, but that doesn't mean I'm
gonna do anything. I can look, can't I?"
  Howard and Michaels grinned at each other.
  Howard went back and collected his
staff car, then headed for home. He didn't want
to take the time to return the rifle right now, but it would
be safe enough at his home;
  safer, in fact, than in the general access parking
lot at Quantico. Since they weren't going
to drop everything and rush over to La-La Land in the
next few minutes, he'd have time to pack a bag and
tell Nadine goodbye.
  They'd be flying commercial--Commander Michaels
did not want to attract any attention by cranking
up one of the Net Force jets--and they'd be flying
incognito, on open-ended agency tickets, so they
wouldn't have to put any names on a passenger list
until just before boarding, and those would be cover noms
anyhow.
  Given that he'd just been out to the left coast, it
might not be as big a thrill for him as it was for Jay
Gridley;
  still, it would get him out and moving, and at this point,
anything was better than spending another day doing
make-work.
  He headed out toward the freeway and the drive
back to the city.
  Normally, the drive was a straight run up
1-95 and into the District, loop around the
belt and to the north end of town where he lived.
  But after a couple of miles, he spotted what
he thought was a tail.
  A lot of people drove this stretch of road, and there
were scores of cars and trucks heading in the same
direction, so there was no way to be sure, but he first
saw the car as he changed lanes to pass. A little
way farther, when he pulled back over into the right
lane, the car did likewise.
  Big deal. This was hardly conclusive evidence.
But he had been through the standard Net Force
surveillance course as part of his in-processing, and
something one of the sub-rosa guys from the FBI who'd
taught the class had said always stuck with him: "If
you think you "re being followed, it is easy to check,
and very cheap insurance. If you're wrong, you might
feel a little silly. But if you are right, you might
keep yourself from winding up in deep shit."
  Maybe he was overly cautious, but as a
professional military man, Howard had learned
long ago that being prepared was not the same as being
paranoid. And like the instructor had said, checking it
out was easy enough.
  There was a little state road running northeast
to Manassas not far ahead, and Howard
eased over into the exit lane. If the car behind him--
looked like a white Neon-kept going, he'd catch
the next on-ramp and head on home.
  Six cars back, the Neon reached the off-ramp
and exited a couple hundred yards behind him.
  Well, well.
  That didn't prove anything for certain. Two or
three times, he remembered the FBI guy saying,
it could still easily be a coincidence.
  "Think about it. What would happen if one of your
neighbors heading home happened to get behind you on the
freeway? They'd make every turn you would, right? Could
be perfectly innocent. Don't jump to to a
conclusion until you are sure."
  And there were several simple ways, Howard
remembered, to be sure.
  He tooled along on the state road, which was
narrow but scenic, heading away from the suburbs toward
the more rural country. There was an intersection ahead,
and apparently the Occoquan Reservoir was to the
left. Fine, left it is.
  He went maybe a quarter of a mile, didn't
see the white Neon turn behind him.
  So, okay, he was paranoid. He'd find a
place to turn around and go home. He was
relieved.
  There was a little gas station minimart a half mile
or so ahead, and Howard pulled in there, stopped, and
went inside. He used the bathroom, bought a pack
of Corn Nuts and a can of root beer, and headed
back to his car. If anybody had been following
him, he'd had an excuse to stop. The idea was,
the surveillance guy had told them, not to let the people
following you know you knew they were there. Better the
tail you know than one you don't.
  He kept going the way he'd been going,
figuring to loop back around to a main road or the
freeway eventually.
  Five hundred yards out of the minimart, he
caught sight of the white Neon in his rearview
mirror. The car was a ways back, maybe half
a mile, but he was pretty sure it was the same
vehicle.
  Hmm. He was pretty convinced, but a few more
tests should make it interesting.
  Howard made a series of turns as he came
to little branching streets, right, left, right, right,
driving several miles until he was on a nice
little country road--and thoroughly lost. He was going
to need to use the GPS to find his way out of
here. He had no idea where he was.
  Eventually he found himself on another road that
led, so the sign said, to the Civil War
battlefield of Manassas.
  The two big battles there had been originally
named, he recalled, for the little river that went through the
area. Bull Run.
  Several times, the Neon disappeared from sight,
sometimes for as long as two or three minutes, and it
seemed to Howard that the guy tailing him had an
uncanny ability to guess the right way to turn.
  Then it dawned on him that there might be some kind of
bug on his vehicle, and all the guy had to do was
follow the signal.
  Damn, he should have thought of that sooner.
  But after half a dozen random turns, there was no
doubt in his mind that the Neon was shadowing him. Now,
the questions were, who was it, and why were they following him?
  He could have called the highway patrol, had a
few beefy state troopers pull the Neon over
and politely ask those questions. Of course, if the
shadower turned out to be Lee, he'd just as soon not
air that laundry in front of Virginia
authorities; best to keep that in house. Or he
could have scrambled a Net Force military
team and had them brace the driver, but the truth was,
he could take care of his own business. He had his
side arm right here, and as yet there was no reason
to call out the troops, especially if this turned out
to be a huge coincidence.
  Somebody lost trying to find their way out by following
him.
  Yeah, right.
  He was mindful of what Michaels had said about the
DEA agent Brett Lee. After that shooting in
L.a." Howard could cost the agent his job, maybe
even cause him to face a criminal prosecution.
And since the man seemed to be involved in something
illegal besides that, he might not be too unhappy
if Howard were to run his car into a tree somewhere and not
survive the accident.
  Of course, it was a long way from following
somebody around in your car to premeditated murder, and
maybe that wasn't what this was all about. Maybe it
was somebody else altogether. Somebody Howard had run
afoul of and didn't recall, out stalking for other
reasons entirely.
  So, the thing was, he needed to box up whoever it was
tailing him, stroll on over, and have a few words with
him and find out.
  Out here in the country, among all the trees and
fields and pastures, he ought to be able to find a
place to do that.
  He started looking.

  Malibu, California
  Drayne was not surprised when Shawanda
Silverman got back to him within a day. She had a
nice place all lined up, and any time he wanted
to come by and take a look, she would make herself
available.
  Times must be hard in the real estate biz, he
figured.
  He got the address and information and said he'd be
by to pick up the keys soon. All the legal stuff
had been handled over the net, e-sigs and the money
transfer from one of the blind-alley addys. It was a
done deal.
  He wouldn't go himself, of course, he didn't
want his face to stick in her mind. Normally, he
would have sent Tad, but Tad was still zoned out on the
deck. Drayne had tossed a blanket over him
when it got dark and cool, then put a beach
umbrella up to shade him when the sun came up.
Old Tad might not move for another day
or two, if ever he moved again at all.
  Fortunately, the bodyguards had shown up, and
while two of the four he hired weren't the sharpest
knives in the drawer, the other two were fairly
bright. All were armed with handguns, they had a couple
of pump shotguns in a big case, and all
claimed fighting expertise in some Oriental
martial art or another. The biggest of the bunch was
six two and two fifty, easy, and had a face that
had stopped a few punches. One of the smarter ones
was Adam, a tall and muscular dishwater-blond
in his late twenties who looked as if he might have
done some surfing at one time.
  Drayne decided to send Adam to meet with Ms.
Silverman, to collect the key for the new place.
  "Your name is Lazlo Mead, M-e-a-d, and
you work for Projects, Inc.," he told Adam.
  "If she says anything about your voice sounding
different, tell her you had a cold when you talked
on the phone."
  "Won't be a problem," Adam said. He took
a breath, blew half of it out, then said, "Hello
there, Miz Silverman.
  I'm Lazlo Mead."
  Drayne had heard his own voice on
recordings enough to recognize that Adam's
impersonation was dead-on.
  "Jeez, that's good."
  "I do a little stand-up now and then," Adam said.
  "Unfortunately, it doesn't pay real well.
Not yet, anyhow."
  After Adam was gone, Drayne pondered the
bodyguard situation a little. He wasn't planning
on telling any of them the location of the safe house,
just in case push came to shove and they got left behind
when he took off. Adam was smart enough to figure it
out, and if he wanted to bother, he could con it out of
Silverman easily enough.
  After all, he would be Lazlo, wouldn't he? That
might be a problem, so if things went into the toilet,
he'd have to make sure Adam either got clear with him
or wasn't going to be able to tell anybody what
he knew about the hidey hole.
  Maybe it was time to get that gun, Drayne
figured.
  But at least things were on the move, his insurance was
in place, and he felt a lot better.
  He had put the word out to his customers that the
Hammer was going to be available with the timer starting in
forty-eight hours. Within a matter of a few
minutes, he had twenty orders, and an hour after
that, twenty-five more. That was forty-five hits of the
drug, plus one for Tad, if he was awake by then.
And since Tad was out cold, Drayne would have to do the
deals himself, but that wasn't a problem, he'd use
net cutouts and FedEx Same Day only, no
Zee-ster face-to-face to worry about. Now all
he needed was some chem.
  With the guards, he didn't want to start out too
wild, so he decided to go to the RV to do his mixing
when it came time. He wouldn't need them to go with him,
they were mainly to protect his castle and his retreat
if he needed to run. Nobody would know him from,
well, Adam out in the desert where the RV would
meet him.
  He grinned. Yep, things were back on track.
Except for that crap with his old man. Well. He
could sort all that out later. Come up with some story that
would make the old man feel bad, like maybe he was
a spy or an undercover cop or something. Yeah.
Wouldn't that be poetic justice? Having his father think
he was serving his country while being accused of doing
something illegal and immoral.
  That would be a hoot.
  For now, maybe it was time to pop a cork
and have some bubbly. And maybe get one of the new
bodyguards to show him about guns, too.
  POINT OF IMPACT 273 Washington,
D.c.
  "You are leaving me here and going where?" Toni said.
  "Hey, you discovered the clue," Alex said.
  "We need to follow it up."
  "We need to do that? Net Force doesn't do that
kind of field work, that's for the regular FBI."
  "Yeah, well, I don't know how secure that
would be now. If Jay's suspicion is right, we
have two guys who are capable of getting information not
normally available.
  NSA has ears everywhere."
  "Come on, you couldn't figure a way around that?
  Couldn't you hand-carry this info to somebody in the shop
and have them check into it without exposing it to outside
ears?"
  Alex continued packing his overnight bag, tucking
his bathroom travel kit into the case.
  "If I knew who to trust, sure. The
director is on our case about this. If it goes
wonky, even if it's not our fault, you know who will
get the blame. Much easier to shove it off on
Net Force than to admit problems in her
house. Or worse, making accusations against a
brother agency without ironclad proof.
  You've been around long enough to know which way that wind
blows."
  "It sounds like rationalization to me," she said.
  "An excuse to get out of the office. And out of
here."
  He stopped packing and looked at her.
  "I'm fat, hormonal, pale, and
pregnant," she said.
  "And I'm driving you crazy."
  He came over and caught her shoulders.
  "No. You are carrying our child, and I love you.
You are the most beautiful woman in the world, more so now
than ever."
  "You're just saying that to make me feel better."
  "Well, yeah," he said. But he grinned.
  She grinned back at him.
  "You're a bastard."
  "Take that up with Mom. She never told me, and
I'm sure my father would have been surprised to know
that."
  "A smart-ass bastard at that."
  But she grinned, too.
  "I'm meeting Jay and John Howard
at the airport in about three hours. We have time for a
shower and a proper good-bye, don't we?"
  "A smart-ass goat-boy bastard."
  He laughed, and she did, too.
  The area around Manassas was, like much of
northern Virginia, rolling hills, suburbs and
mini-malls, and roads that gridlocked during rush
hour. Still, there were areas where the pine and oak trees still
held their own, and there were a few stone fences and old
houses standing against the weather.
  Howard had driven for about thirty minutes,
until he found an empty, tree-lined rural
road narrow enough for his purpose. He drove along
until he was a half mile or so ahead of the
Neon, then turned right into a narrow tractor path
leading to a cattle-guard gate in a barbed wire
fence. He shut off the engine. There were no houses
nearby, just some brown and white cows grazing in the
pasture.
  What he planned to do was get out, head through the cow
pasture and into the little patch of woods opposite it,
and then circle behind the Neon, which he figured would
stop and wait to see what he was up to. Once he
was behind the shadower, he'd creep up on him with his
revolver in hand, and find out exactly who
he was and what he wanted. A simple plan, but
one that should work.
  Behind him, the Neon pulled off the road about four
hundred meters away, turned sideways with the
passenger side facing Howard, and stopped.
  Howard waited a few seconds, then got out of
his car.
  He was still on the driver's side closing the door
when there came a chink! chink! as the passenger's and
driver's side windows shattered, followed by the sound
of a rifle shot. The bullet, traveling faster
than the sound, missed him by maybe two inches.
  Shit!
  Howard took two steps to the front tire and
dropped into a crouch behind it. He pulled his
revolver. The engine was the best protection, and the
heavy steel wheel would probably deflect a
sniper's bullet aimed lower.
  Another shot, another round pierced the car's
doors, through and through, and if he'd been there, it would have
gutted him.
  This was bad.
  There was no other cover nearby. It was fifty
meters through an open pasture to the tree line, and
trying to cross the road the other way would be
equally stupid, he'd be exposed. A decent
shooter could nail him. And his handgun, while a fine
weapon, was not going to do the job at four hundred
meters unless God intervened in his favor.
  He risked a quick look.
  Another shot echoed over the pasture land, and the
round smashed into the car's side above the front tire
but stopped when it hit the engine. Made a terrific
clang.
  If the guy came toward him, he'd still have the
advantage for another three hundred, three
hundred fifty meters, and if he circled around,
Howard was really in deep shit.
  He could call for help, but it would never get here
in time. What the hell was he going to do?
  Memory was a funny thing. Up until that
moment, he had forgotten what he had in the car's
trunk. He felt a sudden surge of hope and
possibility flow over him when he remembered.
  Howard scooted toward the rear of the car.
  Another shot hit the car amidships and must have
struck a frame support or something in the door;
it didn't go all the way through to his side.
  He reached the back tire. He had his keys,
and the trunk release was on the electronic
alarm and opener. He took a deep breath, put his
revolver over the car's trunk, pointed it at the
Neon, and triggered off three shots as fast as he
could.
  At the same time, he popped the trunk control,
lunged under the still-rising lid, and grabbed the
hard-shell case inside. He jerked it out and fell
back behind the tire.
  The sniper's next shot was great; it hit the
passenger side tire, lanced through the steel-belted
radial, hit the driver's side tire and
penetrated that, then punched a hole in the corner of the
hard-shell carrying case, almost jerking it from
Howard's grip.
  The car dropped to its rims, and he wasn't going
to be driving it anywhere any time soon.
  Howard popped the latches and dumped the parts of
the50 BMG rifle onto the ground. The bullet
had missed anything important. He put his
handgun down and, with a speed aided by adrenaline,
assembled the rifle in what had to be record time.
He loaded the magazine with five cartridges of the
match-grade ammo, chambered a round, and lit the
red-dot attachment on the scope. It was sighted in
at three hundred meters, he recalled,
so he'd have to adjust his aim a bit. Or maybe
not. This thing shot pretty flat for a long way.
  Time to make an assumption here. The shooter was
probably using a scoped deer or sniper rifle,
30-6, maybe308, something like that, and if it was,
it would likely be a bolt action. So he was going
to have to manually chamber a round after each shot, which
meant that Howard would have half, maybe
three-quarters of a second between shots.
  Not much time to get set up. And if it was a
semiauto, that would be really bad. But it was what he
had.
  Howard took a grip on the heavy rifle. He
stuck his head up, held it there for an agonizingly
long time, maybe half a second, then ducked.
  The shot came, hit the trunk, zipped through, but
missed by a good six inches.
  Then Howard leaped up, dropped the .50's
bipod on the trunk's lid, slamming it shut, and
put the red dot on the middle of the Neon. He
squeezed the trigger, a shade too quickly, and the
recoil from the weapon knocked him back and almost off
his feet. The blast of sound was like a bomb; it
deafened him. Even as he fought to regain his position,
he chambered another cartridge, the empty
extracted and smoking to his right.
  That would give the son of a bitch something to think about!
Not so much fun when the victim can shoot back, is
it?
  Howard looked through the scope. On high
magnification, he could see the bullet hole where the
side of the Neon had buckled in around it; it had
blown paint off in a hand-sized crater, but there was
no sign of the shooter.
  If the guy had any brains, now he would be behind
the front tire with the engine block protecting him.
When the .50 went off, it sounded like the wrath of
God, and the assassin would know that the odds had just
shifted dramatically into Howard's favor.
  Howard's ears were ringing and he couldn't hear anything
over that. He looked down, saw the earplugs that
came with the rifle, and risked the second it took
to scoop them up. He shoved them into his ears.
  No sign of the shooter.
  Fine. Let's see how you like being dinner,
asshole.
  He put the red dot on the top of the front
tire and squeezed a shot off, more careful now.
  The bullet hit a few inches high and must have
shattered and sprayed the engine compartment.
Vapor came out from under the hood, maybe from the
radiator, maybe coolant for the AC. He'd
bet that car wasn't going anywhere, either.
  Now it was time to get the troops out here. He
pulled his virgil and hit the emergency sig control
in a rapid sequence.
  "Sir?" came a voice.
  Howard smiled. Gotcha now, sucker.
  "Hold on a second." Howard shot the Neon
again. Hit the front tire this time. The car sagged.
  "I want a helicopter with a squad of troops
ready to shoot landing twenty meters east of the GPS
location of my virgil in fifteen minutes
maximum. This is not a drill."
  "Yes, sir!"
  "Here is the situation...."
  But when the chopper from Quantico arrived and a
dozen of Net Force's finest hit the ground,
fanned out, and surrounded the mortally wounded Neon,
the shooter was nowhere to be found. The car was much closer
to the tree line than Howard's car was, and somehow,
the would-be assassin had managed to slip away without
Howard spotting him.
  Damn!
  33
  Washington, D.c.
  Jay looked up from his flatscrcen at the boss
and the general.
  "The shooter's car was stolen," he said.
  They were in the airport, in one of the V.i.p
lounges that the boss had access to, waiting for the
flight to L.a. If John Howard was rattled
about somebody trying to shoot him out in the boondocks
where Stonewall Jackson had earned his fighting
nickname, you couldn't tell it by looking at him.
  As a licensed federal agent, however, Howard would
be carrying a gun with him onto the plane, this at the
boss's insistence. Both Michaels and Jay had
their air tasers with them, too, though Jay had only
fired his in the required semiannual qualification
sessions, and the last of those had been four months
past. He didn't try to kid himself that he was any
kind of gunfighter, even with the nonlethal shock 'em
and drop 'em tasers most Net Force personnel
outside the military arm were issued.
  "A stolen car. Not a major surprise there,"
Howard said.
  "It would have been too much to hope for that he'd use
his own vehicle. I don't suppose the lab
rats managed to get any fingerprints or
DNA for a match?"
  "Not yet, sir," Jay said.
  "That isn't a surprise, either," Michaels
said.
  "Not if it was who we think it was in that car. How
about Lee's whereabouts?"
  "That's a little trickier," Jay said.
  "We couldn't just have the FBI hunt him down and
grab his ass, not without tipping our hand. According to a
sub-rosa contact we managed with the DEA, Mr.
Lee was today taking some personal time. He was in
Maryland, visiting his paternal grandmother, who is in
a nursing home just outside Baltimore.
  Accessible on-line records at the Sisters of
Saint Mary's Home for the Aged indicate that
Mr. Lee did sign in about an hour before the
attack on General Howard, and he signed out ten
minutes after the attack. Nobody has gone in and
done a face-to-face with the staff to check that yet,
however."
  "How easy would it be to fake the in and out
signatures and records?" Howard asked.
  "I could do it with both hands tied behind me and a cold
so bad the voxax could only pick up every thirteenth
word," Jay said.
  "While blindfolded and in my sleep."
  "That hard, huh?"
  "Shoot, boss, you could do it."
  "All right, so we get an investigator out there
to see if Lee actually did go visit his old
granny."
  "If he was there, that would make it impossible for
him to have been the shooter," Jay said.
  "Let's just see before we try to cross that
bridge."
  "I'd be very surprised if we can find a nurse
or ward clerk who remembers seeing Lee there
today," Howard said.
  "Anything on other forensics at the scene?"
Michaels asked.
  "Nothing to write home about," Jay said.
  "No empty shells lying on the ground, no
blood, no hair, no dropped bar matchbooks
or ID'S or maps showing how to get to the perp's
house. Shoe prints are a popular brand of cheap
sneaker. Fibers from where the shooter kneeled appear
to be lightweight gray cotton, probably
sweatpants."
  "And the clothes and shoes and no doubt gloves are
probably in a trash bin or burned to ash
by now," Michaels said.
  "This was a pro," Howard said.
  "If I hadn't had that portable cannon, I
think he might well have taken me out."
  "You tell your wife about it?" Michaels asked.
  Howard looked at him.
  "Would you have told yours?"
  The boss looked uncomfortable.
  "Maybe. Toni was a Net Force op, she
knows how things go sometimes. Of course, she's
pregnant, and I wouldn't have wanted to upset her
once everything was over with."
  "The local cops weren't called in, the media
doesn't have it, we're keeping it in house,"
Howard said.
  "I didn't want to worry my wife, either.
I'll mention it to her later.
  After we catch the son of a bitch who did it."
  Jay didn't say anything. He'd have told
Saji, but she was a Buddhist, they were into the real world
and all. He looked around. Technically, they
weren't supposed to be doing this, since it wasn't
really part of their mission statement.
  Plus they weren't supposed to be flying on the
same jet. If the flight went down, it
would take out the commander, the military chief, and the head
of Computer Operations, which would be bad for Net
Force. The director would be royally pissed; then
again. Jay wouldn't much care about that, being dead and
all. What the hell.
  Jay wasn't worried about flying, that had never
bothered him. A plane went down now and then, that was
awful, but it was like being struck by lightning. If it
happened, it happened. What were you gonna do, stay
home all your life?
  He was looking forward to visiting Hollywood.
Outside virtual visits, he had only been
there once in real time, on a trip when he'd been
in high school, part of a computer team entered into a
national contest. They'd come in second and should have
won, except that one of the twits on his team had
flubbed an easy program a third-grader could have
managed. As much time as Jay did creating scenario
in VR, he felt as if he'd be right at home
among the movie makers It would be the middle of the
night before they got there, and they'd head straight for the
hotel, but tomorrow would no doubt be sunny and
delightful.
  He spun up the flat screen power, hit the
wireless air net key, and logged via an
encoded sig into the Net Force mainframe again. He
had VR gear in his bag, but he didn't like to do
VR work in a public place, too many people, no
telling who might decide to come up and swipe your
luggage while you were sensory deprived and deep in
scenario. Probably they'd be okay here in the
V.i.p lounge, but no sense in developing bad
habits. He'd just have to do it the old-fashioned and
boring way, using the vox controls and hand-jives, a
pain, but there it was.
  Banning, California
  Drayne had the air conditioner going full blast
in the RV, and Ma and Pa Yeehaw had unshipped
the little car they towed behind the RV and gone into town to do
a little bar hopping or whatever, while Drayne
mixed up a new batch of the Hammer. He'd hold
off on adding the final catalyst until he got
back to town. Now was a good time to check out the new
safe house, and nobody would be
  looking over his shoulder there while he did the
final mix.
  Once the clock started running, he'd send one
of the bodyguards to FedEx with the packages, and that would
be that, another forty-five thousand into the secure
e-account, and wasn't life beautiful?
  He grinned. still wonder what the poor folks are
doing now?
  Beverly Hills, California
  Mae Jean Kent was an impressive-looking
woman, Michaels noted, oozing sexuality, and
however powerful her lungs might be, they were
certainly augmented with a major pair of headlights,
double-D, at least. Toni had been quick to tell
him these weren't real, but nonetheless ... She was
beautiful, blond, tanned, fit, and wore a
halter top and hip-hugger pants and sandals. She
also wore big sunglasses. She agreed to meet
them at some local restaurant that was apparently the
place to meet locally, and she was constantly waving
at people who passed the outdoor table at which she,
Michaels, Jay, and John had been situated.
  "Hi, Muffy! Hey, Brad! I'm sorry,
Alex, what was that again?"
  "Ms. Kent--" "Oh, please, call me
MJ, everybody does!"
  Michaels guessed her age at thirty, judging
from her hands, but she was acting more like eighteen. Part of the
youth culture out here, where you might be over the hill
at twenty-five.
  "MJ. So tell me about this beach
picture."
  "Oh, it was a terrible shoot! First thing was,
Todd-that's Todd Atchinson, the director?--
was having a major crisis and he ran out of
Paxil and was a bear to work with.
  He just kept yelling at everybody. Then Larry
--that's Larry Wright--had a major fight with his
boyfriend, he's gay, such a waste of a perfect
bod, you know? Anyway, Larry was so depressed
he just moped around like an old hound dog. And
George--I was so sorry to hear that he died, so
sorry, but he was a major doper, major--kept
getting a, you know, a woody every time we shot a
scene together, and they had to shoot around it because his bathing
suit was, you know, bulging all the time!" She
giggled and took a deep breath, showing off the
results of what must have been expensive plastic
surgery.
  Michaels wished Toni were here, so she could see
just how vapid and unattractive this woman was,
despite her looks and attempt at what she thought
passed for sophisticated animation.
  Michaels glanced at Howard, who kept a
straight face but offered no help. Jay seemed
entranced by the rise and fall of MJ'S
hooters under the barely-abletohold-them halter top.
  "Is there anything you can think of that might have a
connection to something called Thor's Hammer?"
  She turned and waved at somebody passing the
tables.
  "Hey, Tom, baby! How are you!" She made
a kissy face at Tom baby.
  Michaels caught the hint of a grin on Howard's
face, but when he looked closer, the grin vanished.
  "MJ?"
  "What? Oh, no, I don't remember anything
about a sore hammer."
  "Where was the movie shot?" Jay asked.
Apparently his breast-induced trance was not as deep as
Michaels thought.
  "Where?"
  "Yes. The location."
  She glanced upward, as if expecting the answer
to be written on the underside of the big umbrella
sheltering their table. Then she looked at Jay and
gave him her full wattage smile:
"Malibu," she said.
  "On the beach."
  Michaels got the gist of Jay's question and
followed it up.
  "Anything unusual about the location?"
  "Unusual? No, I don't think so. It was
kind of like a private beach, Todd knew some of the
owners who had houses right next to it, so they roped it
off for the shoot.
  A lot of tourists came by every day and asked for
autographs between setups. I have a lot of
fans."
  "I heard a critic say your performance in
Scream, Baby, Scream was first-rate," Howard
put in. He smiled.
  Michaels looked at Howard. Butter wouldn't
melt in his mouth.
  "Really? I tried hard to get some subtext
into that, but the script was, you know, just full of
major problems.
  Writers just don't understand what a proper
vehicle should be like for actors. They are all
hacks out here."
  Probably used too many big words, Michaels
thought. Those two- and three-syllable ones must be
killers.
  That was unkind, Alex. This is Hollywood,
remember, it's all about what looks good. It's not
her fault how it works.
  "Well, we thank you for your time, MJ," he
said.
  "You've been a great help to us."
  "Hey, no problem. I'm glad to cooperate
with the government any way I can. If you get a chance
to talk to the IRS, tell them to quit auditing me,
okay?" She flashed the smile, inhaled deeply,
and then turned to wave again.
  "Barry! How are you!"
  Wailing for the parking lot attendant to fetch the
rental car, Howard said, "Well, that was helpful in
a major way, you know?"
  Michaels said, "And when did you see Scream,
Baby, Scream, John? Dial it up on your
room cable last night?"
  "Just my bit to keep the conversation moving," he
said.
  "Besides, I didn't say I'd seen it, I said
'a critic said."
  That would be our staff critic here. I was just taking
Gridley's word for it."
  "Well, I suppose we should go try Larry,"
Michaels said.
  "And hope that he and his boyfriend have patched things up
since Surf Daze."
  "Or Todd," Howard said.
  "Maybe he's gotten his Paxil refilled."
  "Maybe we don't need to," Jay said.
  Michaels and Howard looked at him.
  "The inscription in the capsule said the grandchildren would
know where to find him. I think MJ might have told
us."
  "The beach at Malibu," Michaels and Howard
said together.
  "Big-time drug dealer could afford to live there."
  "It's a long stretch of coastline," Howard
said.
  "Hundreds of homes."
  Jay said, "But movie shoots in cities have to have
all kinds of permits. I can access the records
for the surfer pie and find out exactly where the location
was. That would narrow it down to a handful of houses.
We could check ownership records on those,
eliminate some of them."
  Michaels said, "That's good thinking. Jay."
  "I didn't think you were paying full attention
to your work back there," Howard said.
  "Silicone doesn't do it for me," Jay said.
  "Besides, she's much smarter in her movies, which
ain't saying much."
  "Okay, get on-line and find out what you can."
  "One other thing," Jay said.
  "I got a blip during the interview." He
waved the flat screen looked at Howard.
  "Several witnesses, a couple of them nuns,
attest that Brett Lee was in the nursing home
yesterday when you were being shot at. It couldn't have been
him."
  "Damn," Howard said.
  "Then who?"
  "Maybe your dog crapped on somebody's
lawn," Jay offered.
  "I don't think so," Howard said.
  "We don't have a dog."
  "Maybe you should get one. One with big teeth."
  The car hop arrived and pulled the rental car to a
stop.
  Michaels took a five from his wallet and gave
it to the man, who looked at it as if it were a piece
of used toilet paper. Lord, what kind of tips was
he used to getting?
  Inside, Michaels said, "Find us a place
to go. Jay."
  "I'm on the case, boss."
  34
  MalUm. California
  When Tad woke up, he noticed a couple
things: First, he was on the deck, with the beach
umbrella doing its best to keep him in the shade, but
starting to lose that battle.
  Second, there were some men with guns wandering around in
the house.
  Fortunately, he recognized one of the
gunslingers, so he realized the bodyguards had showed
up, and Bobby must have decided to hire them.
  Shit happened when you went into hibernation. You got
used to it.
  He looked at his watch, and the date showed he'd
been out for a couple of days. Not too bad.
  His head felt as if somebody had opened it with a
dull shovel and poured half the beach into it. He was
way beyond grainy. All the rest of him just hurt.
Bad.
  He managed to get to his feet, using the
umbrella for support, and headed toward the
bathroom. Once, after sleeping for a couple of
days, he had stood over the toilet peeing for more
than a minute, on and on, must have pissed half a
gallon. For some reason, his bladder never let go
while he was out, and he counted that as a
blessing.
  The guy with the gun that Tad recognized nodded at
him.
  "Hey, Tad."
  Tad nodded in return. The name came to him,
slow, but there.
  "Adam. How's it going?"
  "Good. Bobby's out. He's supposed to be
back in a while."
  "Cool."
  He shambled into the bathroom, cranked the shower
up, then stripped. He waited a few seconds
for the water to heat up, then stepped into the shower. He
stank, and he could pee just as well in the shower.
  He needed to get to his stash. He wasn't
gonna be able to function real well for a couple of
days yet, no matter what, but certainly not
straight.
  He opened his mouth, let the needle spray rinse
the taste of tar and mold out, spat three or four
times, then swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of the hot
water. He knew he was dehydrated, and if that
got bad enough, his electrolytes could get wacky
enough to stop his heart.
  He'd known guys on speed who hadn't
eaten or drunk anything for a couple of days who'd
died that way. Heart just stopped beating.
  He stayed in the shower for ten minutes, letting the
spray pound him. He felt a little better when he
stepped out onto the cool tile floor and started
drying himself with the big fluffy beach towel. A little
better wasn't going to cut it.
  His stash was in the wheel well of his car's trunk,
and the car was parked in the lot of the sandwich place two
down from them. When Bobby was running in paranoid
mode, which was most of the time, he wouldn't let Tad
keep anything in the house that might get them busted.
  Not even in the car, if Tad wanted to park it in
the driveway or garage or anywhere inside the
security gate. Nothing more than you can swallow,
Bobby told him, and close enough so you can do that if
somebody crashes the gate.
  Tad mostly tried to do it that way. For a while,
he buried his drugs on the beach. He had kept his
stuff in a mason jar with a plastic lid so no
coin-hunter or narc would find it with a metal
detector. He would sneak out late at night and
bury the jar in the sand. But he'd lost one that way,
completely spaced out on where he'd hidden it. And
another time, somebody's dog had dug up
one of the jars, so he'd stopped that. The walk to the car
wasn't that far, half a block, but of course, it
felt like a thousand miles after a session with the
Hammer.
  Well, there was no help for it. He wasn't
going to send Adam or one of his hard-ass friends
to collect his dope.
  He didn't trust anybody that much except
Bobby, and Bobby wouldn't do it anyway.
  Tad slipped on a pair of raggy black
sweatpants, a black T-shirt, and a pair of
black zorrie sandals. Might as well get to it.
It was gonna take a while.
  "I'm walking over to where I parked my car," he
told Adam.
  "Don't fucking shoot me when I come back."
  "Why waste a bullet?" Adam said.
  "You look like somebody could kill you with a hard
look. Hell, you look dead already."
  "You need to work on your material, Adam. I
heard that one already."
  "Lots of times, I bet."
  Tad thought about his route for a minute. Out the
front gate and along the road was longer. But
walking along the beach through the sand would be
harder. The road would be noisier, all the traffic.
The beach would be hot.
  He'd have to walk around cars parked on the
highway.
  He didn't need any more obstacles at the
moment. Until he got his medicine mixed and working,
just breathing was an effort.
  Okay, the beach. He headed for the deck stairs.
  Michaels said, "One of those three or four
houses?"
  Howard drove, Michaels rode shotgun.
Jay sat in the back. As they idled slowly along
the highway, looking toward the beach. Jay said,
"Got to be. Permit specifies this part of the beach.
That sandwich shop over there is in the movie. I
pulled it up and scanned location shots.
  That house to the far left was built two years
ago, so it wasn't there then."
  "Do we have owners on these?"
  "Yes. The pinkish one is owned by the actress
Lome DeVivio. She got it in the divorce
settlement with her fifth ex-husband Jessel
Tammens, the movie producer."
  "DeVivio is what... sixty and rich? Hard
to image her making and peddling dope,"
Howard said.
  "Ah, you know the old movie stars, eh.
General?"
  "She won an Oscar," Howard said.
  "And not for her looks."
  "What about the other houses?"
  "Second one belongs to the chairman of the board
of the Yokohama-USA Bank. He's also
sixty-something and also richer than God.
  "Third one, the pale blue and white one, is
owned by a corporation called Projects, Inc.
Some kind of corporate retreat, maybe. I'm
running down the incorporation stuff now. They are out
of Delaware.
  "Fourth one belongs to one Saul Horowitz.
Don't know who Sony is, and the search bots
haven't been more forthcoming so far."
  "That sounds promising. Pull over there, into that
restaurant lot, and let's think about this for a
minute," Michaels said.
  All four of the houses had security gates and
fences, at least to the road side. As Howard parked
the car, a Mercedes convertible arrived in front of the
third house and pulled up to the gate. The car's
top was down, and a sun bleached blond,
deeply tanned young man in a Hawaiian shirt
who looked like a surfer held up an electronic
remote and pointed it at the heavy steel gate, which
slowly swung open to admit his car. He pulled
into the drive, and the gate started to close behind him.
  "Yo, kahuna dude!" Jay said, in a
valley-boy voice, "Surf's up!" Jay
held up his hand, the middle fingers closed, his thumb
and little finger extended. He waggled his hand back and
forth.
  "Mahalo!"
  "Thank you, Brian Wilson. You get the
license plate number?" Michaels said.
  "Crap! I'm sorry, boss--" "It's a
vanity," Howard said.
  "PR-0-J-E-C-TS."
  "Run it," Michaels ordered.
  Jay, chagrined at his failure to catch the
number, dialed up the California DMV and logged
in, using his Net Force access code.
  A few seconds later, he said, "Car is
owned by Projects, Inc.," he said.
  "Big surprise there, huh? Looks like you get
wheels to go with the house. Nice perks."
  "So, what do you think?" Michaels said.
  "Either it's that one or the Horowitz place,"
Howard said.
  "Rich bankers and rich movie stars might use
dope, but they don't need to sell it."
  "Just FYI, General, they found a bug on your
car.
  That's how the shooter kept from losing you." Jay
pointed at the flat screen
  "Also, Mr. Lee, who as we all know couldn't
have been said shooter, called in sick today."
  "Something fatal, I hope," Howard said.
  "And to keep things interesting, Mr. Zachary
George is on vacation this week and next," Jay
said.
  Michaels said, "Anything on the search bots for
Mr. Horowitz here yet?"
  "Nope," Jay said.
  "But I don't think we need it."
  "And why would that be?"
  "Take a look at the death-warmed-over stick in
black walking along the road there, coming from the sandwich
place," Jay said.
  "So?"
  "Look again, boss."
  Michaels did. He frowned.
  "Yeah," Jay said.
  "Kind of hard to picture him beating the crap out
of a room full of body builders and trashing a
gym, isn't it?"
  Michaels nodded.
  "But that's the guy."
  "Never thought I'd see an actual match to a
police ID composite," Jay said.
  "All we have to do is watch and see if he
chooses door A or door B. Whichever one he
picks, I'd bet my next month's salary against
a bent quarter that's our dealer's house."
  The three watched the man, who looked as if he
might fall down any second, as he shambled
along. It took him a while to get there, but he
finally did.
  "And we have a winner," Jay said.
  "It's the surfer dude's pad. Net Force
rules!" He looked at Michaels.
  "Now what, boss? We gonna go kick ass and
take names?" He held up his air taser and
waggled it.
  Both Howard and Michaels laughed.
  Michaels said, "I see your experience in the
field didn't teach you anything. We're
not going anywhere. We're calling the FBI.
They'll go in."
  Drayne parked the car and went in. He saw one
of the bodyguards skulking behind the banana and short
palm trees nod and wave at him. Good to know they
were watching the place like they should.
  Inside, Drayne walked out to the deck. Adam
was there, looking at the ocean.
  "Where's Tad?"
  "He stepped out, said he was going to his car,"
Adam said.
  "Said he'd be back in a few minutes."
  Drayne nodded. Tad would be self-medicating as
soon as he was ambulatory again, and his pharmacy
would be in his car, parked away from the house. It
better be.
  The front door opened, and speak of the devil.
  "Hey, Bobby."
  "Tad. You all right?"
  "Will be in about half an hour." He headed for the
kitchen.
  Drayne followed Tad into the kitchen, watched as
Tad counted out ten or twelve pills, caps,
caplets, and tablets, filled a glass with water from
the tap filter line, and washed the drugs
down in one big swallow.
  "While you were napping, I set up some things,"
Bobby said.
  "I was gonna send one of the bodyguards, but now
that you're awake, you can make the FedEx run."
  "Okay."
  "We're moving forty-five hits of the Hammer."
  Tad raised an eyebrow.
  "Might as well make hay while the sun
shines," Drayne said.
  "You mixed it already?"
  "Yep. Did the final at the new house, so the
stuff is just under an hour old."
  "Got mine?"
  "It's too soon. Tad, you ought to sit this batch
out. I'll be doing another bunch next week."
  Tad didn't say anything, and Drayne shook
his head.
  "It's your ass."
  "Such that it is, yeah," Tad said.
  "Give me thirty minutes for the stack to kick
in, I'll be ready to roll."
  Drayne shook his head again.
  "Your funeral."
  "Geez, Boss, you don't think the
three of us could take one suiter dude and a
zombie?"
  Michaels had already put in the call to the
director, and she in turn had called the local
FBI shop and started the ball rolling. He said,
"Isn't this the zombie who wiped up the floor with a
gym full of guys strong enough to pick up tractor
trailers? Didn't you just bring that up?"
  "Yeah, but--" "And don't you recall the
recordings of a white-haired old man who shrugged
off a cloud of pepper gas and air lasers like they were
mosquitoes and tossed guards and cops around a
casino like a kid throwing toy soldiers? Or a
woman who ripped an ATM machine out of a wall
with her bare hands?"
  "Yeah, but he can barely move now. He can't be
on the drug."
  Howard said, "There are too many things we don't
know here. Jay. Think about it. What is the lay of the
house? Can they sneak out the back while we're
climbing the front gate? Are they armed? Who
else is in there with them? I'm the only one with a gun
here, so do you and the commander run around back and make
sure they don't escape with your lasers while I
try to kick in what might be an armored
front door? Not to disparage your shooting ability,
but even if you hit something, you've only got one
shot before you have to reload, and the fastest AT reload
I've ever seen took almost two seconds. I'd
guess you couldn't do it in five or six. In two
seconds, a man can run twenty, twenty-five
feet, knock you down, and take off. In six
seconds, he could be down the road having a beer,
figuratively speaking. And that's unarmed. If the
surfer or the zombie have weapons, what do you think
they'll be doing with them if you miss? Or if you
yell "Stop!" and they shoot first? They could have a
submachine gun in there, and they could take out twenty
civilians out there on the beach. That would be after they
cut you down."
  "Mm," Jay said.
  "That would be bad for public relations, not to mention
my personal love life. So why didn't we
call in Net Force troops? We can trust them."
  "That would have been my choice," Howard said, "but the
commander is right. We found them, but it isn't our
operation, we aren't supposed to even be here, we're
outside our job description. If we had a
dozen Net Force military troops kick in the
door of a Malibu beach house, we'd
all be looking for jobs. Assuming we could even
get our people here in the next couple of hours, which we
could not."
  Michaels said, "By rights, this belongs to the DEA.
  Even if the director decides to let FBI
agents make the arrests, it's still a hot
political potato. The director can risk
pissing off a brother agency, we can't. We can't
even get warrants, so even if we were willing
to get fired, the capture wouldn't be legal. Even
an ambulance-chaser lawyer with a lobotomy could get
them off. The arrests would be completely illegal."
  "Yeah, okay, I can see all that," Jay said.
His voice was reluctant.
  Michaels looked at his watch.
  "We should have agents showing up within thirty or forty
minutes, if we're lucky.
  We do it by the numbers, get part of the credit, and
most importantly, the drug dealer is off the
street. The end result is the same, no matter
who hauls them off."
  "For how long is he off the street?" Jay
asked.
  "Excuse me?"
  "This guy is carrying around a secret that
is worth millions, maybe tens of millions,
you said so yourself. Won't the drug companies be
falling all over themselves to be first in line to hire him
the best legal team in the world?
  How high can his bail be?"
  Michaels nodded. He knew what Jay said was
true.
  "Probably. But that's not our worry. We were
supposed to find him. We found him. We did our
part. What happens to him after they catch him isn't
our problem, we don't have any control over that.
We're just a cog in the big machine. Jay. We
do our job, we have to hope the rest of the system does
its job. Can't be everywhere."
  "That sucks," Jay said.
  "Welcome to the real world, son," Howard said.

  Drayne gave Tad the mini packets with the
Hammer caps, the list of addresses, and pointed
him at the door. By now, most of the payments would have
already been transferred electronically into the safe
accounts. Before Tad stuck a packet into the FedEx
clerk's hands, he'd check again to make sure the
payment for it had cleared.
  As the door closed behind Tad, the phone
rang. It was the business line.
  "Polymers, Drayne--" "If you have a
lawyer, call him," came his father's voice.
  "You'll need him soon."
  His father hung up without identifying himself, and
Drayne felt a rush as cold as liquid
nitrogen envelop him.
  "You!" he said, pointing at the nearest
bodyguard.
  "Go get Tad! Don't let him outside the
gate!"
  The bodyguard hurried away.
  Drayne's fear, cold at first, now flushed
into an uncomfortable warmth that suffused his whole
body.
  The old man had turned him in!
  No. If his father had done that, he wouldn't have had
any second thoughts. The old man never
apologized for anything once he decided it was the
right thing to do. And though he hadn't said anything
specific, it didn't take a rocket scientist
to read the volumes between those lines.
  Drayne was about to be busted. The old man had
found out about it, and he'd called to warn him.
  Son of a bitch.
  Almost more important than getting arrested was that his
father had gone against thirty years of duty to tell his
son he was in trouble. Couldn't bring himself to give it
all away, of course, but even this much, knowing how
smart Drayne was, and that he would figure it out,
was nothing short of a miracle.
  Son of a bitch.
  Drayne went to the security console in the kitchen
and looked at the camera focused on the front
gate. Nothing there. He touched the controls. The
cam was mounted on a gimbal, could look pretty
much in any direction. He put the cam into a slow
360-degree pan.
  Across the street at the Blue Gull, a car was
backed into a parking slot, and a man sat in the
passenger seat, the window down, looking in the
direction of Drayne's house.
  Drayne stopped the pan and focused the cam on
the car.
  Okay, that could be somebody waiting for his wife
to come out of the bathroom or something.
  He hit the zoom. The glare on the windshield
wouldn't let him see inside, but the security
folks knew about glass glare, and a dial let him
polarize the lens. The windshield cleared
to show a second man in the driver's seat and a third
man in the back.
  Shit! They were already in place!
  Tad came back into the kitchen.
  "What's up?"
  "Company," he said.
  "Look."
  Tad looked at the screen.
  "So? Some guys in a car.
  Don't mean nothing."
  "Yeah, except that my father just called and told
me to call my lawyer."
  "Your father? Oh, shit."
  "Exactly." Drayne took a deep breath.
He said to Adam, "Go see if anybody is
hanging around out back."
  Adam returned in thirty seconds.
  "Nope. Couple of girls with their tops off
lying facedown on beach towels next door, that's
it."
  "Okay, they haven't covered the rear of the house
yet.
  Tad, Adam, we're going for a walk. The rest
of you stay here. If anybody comes to call in the
next five minutes, don't let them
in. After that, it doesn't matter. You don't know
anything. Not who I am, not where I've gone. You
got that?"
  There was a murmur from the guards. They pulled their
pistols out.
  To Adam, Drayne said, "You have an extra one
of those?" He pointed at the gun in Adam's
holster.
  "Sure."
  "Give it to me."
  Adam did so. The gun was kind of squarish,
black, and made out of some sort of polymer.
Drayne said, "What do I do?"
  "It's a Glock .40," Adam said.
  "Point it like you would your finger and pull the trigger.
It's ready to go. You have eleven shots."
  Drayne hefted the black plastic gun, then
tucked it into his pants in the back, under the tails
of the Hawaiian shirt.
  "Let's go," he said.
  "Here comes the cavalry," Howard said.
  Three unmarked late-model sedans cruised
slowly up the highway from the south. The cars turned
into their parking lot and pulled to a halt.
  "More behind us," Jay said.
  Howard looked around and saw three more cars and a
van convoy into the lot.
  A tall man in a gray sweatsuit got out of the
lead vehicle and walked to the passenger side of their
car.
  "Commander Michaels? I'm Special Agent in
Charge Delorme."
  Michaels waved at Howard and Gridley.
  "SAC. General John Howard and Jay
Gridley."
  "No offense, sir, but isn't Net Force
supposed to be a computer-based operation?"
  "It is."
  "With all due respect, sir, once you
located the suspects, you should have called the proper
agency in right away, not come out here on your own."
  Gridley leaned forward and said, "Yeah, well,
last time we found a suspect, the proper agency
rolled in like gang busters and shot him dead. We were
kinda hoping to avoid that this time."
  Howard grinned a little. He was a mouthy kid, but
he did put his finger right on the problem from time to time.
  "Thank you. Jay," Michaels said.
To Delorme, he said, "Don't worry. We'll
sit right here out of your way while you do your
job."
  "Sir," Delorme said- He stood and waved his
hand in a circle, index finger pointing up at the
sky. Three of the cars pulled out of the lot and across the
highway, skidding to stops on either side of the target
house. Doors opened, and agents in body armor with
FBI lettered in big DayGlo yellow on their
backs, armed with assault rifles and wearing
goggles and LO SIR headsets, boiled out of the
cars. Delorme pulled a headset on, caught a
vest somebody tossed at him, and moved toward the
highway.
  Other agents alighted from the cars still in the lot and
ran across the road.
  Two cars rolled toward places where the beach was
accessible from the road, and more agents leaped out and
hut-hut-hut ted toward the ocean, to circle around
behind the house.
  "Not bad deployment," Howard said, after watching
them move into position outside the gate.
  "A little slow, kind of sloppy, but not bad for
civilians." All the hightech gear in the world, and
when it came right down to it, it was still going be the ground
troops who had to gain the territory.
  "Might as well sit back and enjoy the
show," Michaels said. Then he said, "Shit!"
  "What?" Howard and Jay said together.
  Michaels pointed. A big Dodge rolled out
of the sandwich shop parking lot and roared away, heading
north.
  "Sir?" Howard said.
  "The zombie is driving that car!"
  Howard didn't hesitate. He started the
rental car's engine and pulled out onto the highway.
  Jay said, "Why don't you get closer.
General? We might lose them!"
  Howard said, "If they see us behind them, we'll
sure as hell lose them. We're going up a
hill here. This gutless piece of crap rental can't
begin to keep up with that hot rod they are in. So
far, they are obeying the speed limit, but if they
see us and decide to run, we can't keep up with
them."
  Michaels was on his virgil, trying to call the
SAC running the bust.
  The man wasn't answering.
  "Come on, come on!"
  "He'll have his com shut off, tactical
channels on LO SIR only," Howard said.
  "You don't want to have to answer the phone
in middle of a firefight."
  The boss swore.
  "Try FBI HQ," Jay offered.
  Michaels shook his head.
  "Probably half their guys are on this raid
already, and it's gonna take anybody else as long
to get here as it did to get to the beach. Maybe
longer."
  "What about the local police?" Howard said.
  "Who are the local police? Where are we? Who
has jurisdiction?"
  "Call CHP," Howard said.
  "Probably they can get here fastest. Put up
a roadblock. Better than nothing."
  Michaels nodded. He tapped a button on the
virgil, waited a few seconds, then started
talking. The woman's voice coming from the virgil was
calm enough, but her news was bad:
  "Sorry, sir, but we have a major traffic
accident on the Ventura, ten cars and a semi full
of hazardous chemical that's on fire, all
available officers are there or on the way there. I
can put you through to the county sheriff's patrol."
  "Damnit!" Michaels said. He shut the
virgil off.
  "We're okay," Howard said.
  "We stay with them, they'll stop sooner or
later. When they do, we'll get whatever police
agency that covers the area to roll."
  "If we don't lose them," Michaels said.
  "If we don't lose them," Howard agreed.
  "Close," Adam said.
  "FBI assault team, looked like. What did
you guys do?"
  "Don't worry about that," Bobby said from the
backseat.
  "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand
grenades.
  They didn't follow us, right. Tad?"
  Tad looked into the rearview mirror, but anything
more than a few feet back was a blur. He
hadn't gotten his stack just right; he was having a little
trouble focusing his vision.
  But nobody was within a block of them, and if the
feds were there, they'd have already zoomed up and tried
to run them off the road by now, right? Out here on a
road over the hill with nobody around, that was the way
to do it. There was a curve maybe a quarter mile
back, and if he squinted hard. Tad could see that
the road was empty at least that far.
  Tad said, "No. Nobody followed us."
  Adam, in the front, turned around and looked.
  "Looks clear." He rolled the window down and
stuck his head out, glanced around, then pulled his head
back inside.
  "No helicopters. Where are we going? The
safe house?"
  "Yeah. For now. After that, I think maybe we
need to take a nice long trip somewhere out of the
country."
  "All of us?"
  "No reason for you to go," Bobby said.
  "Nobody knows who you are. We'll give you a
nice bonus, you can get back to your life."
  Fuzzed as his brain was. Tad didn't think that
was a very good idea, but he didn't say anything.
Bobby knew what he was doing. Bobby always knew
what he was doing.
  "Fine by me," Adam said. He turned around
to watch the road in front of them again.
  Bobby said, "Loud noise. Tad."
  Tad didn't have time to think about that when two
bombs went off--Boom! Boom!--that fast, and the
windshield spider webbed on the passenger side.
  "Fuck!" Tad screamed. The car
slewed onto the shoulder, hit a couple of rocks,
and jounced hard. He fought the wheel, managed to get
it back on the asphalt.
  Tad looked into the mirror, saw Bobby just
leaning back into the seat, that black gun in his hand.
He glanced over at Adam. There was a bloody
splotch on his chest and more blood oozing from a hole
right over his heart.
  His left eye and part of his nose was also gone,
shredded, gore running down his face. He was
slack, only the seatbelt keeping him upright.
  It took a second for Tad to get it.
  Bobby had just shot Adam. Twice. In the
back and in the back of the head. One of the bullets
had gone right through him and through the windshield, which was now
whistling with the breeze coming through it--what he could hear with
his ears ringing from the noise.
  "Jesus fucking Christ, Bobby!"
  "He was a liability," Bobby said.
  "He knew where the safe house was. He knew
you personally. We have to make a clean break here,
no loose ends."
  Tad nodded.
  "Yeah, okay. Whatever you say."
  "What was that?" Jay said.
  "Sounded like some kind firecracker--look at the
car!"
  Howard eased up on the gas pedal and the rental
car slowed dramatically. The little four-cylinder
gas-alkie engine with battery backup was barely
able to move them uphill.
  The Dodge ran off the road, hit something and
bounced, then scraped and skidded back onto the
tarmac.
  "Gunshots," Howard said.
  "Two of them. Pistol caliber."
  "They shooting at us?"
  Michaels said, "No, not us. Somebody in the
car."
  "Why?"
  Michaels looked at Jay over the back of the
seat.
  "Did I get here before you? What can I see that
you can't? I don't know."
  The three men stared at the car, which rounded another
curve in the wavy road and disappeared.
  Howard shoved the accelerator pedal down. The little
car moaned, and not much else. Their speed picked up
slowly. He pounded the steering wheel.
  "Piece of Japanese crap! Go!"
  Michaels reached for the in-dash GPS, thought
better of it, and pulled his virgil. Its GPS
would be more accurate.
  Better find out where they were. Maybe they could
get a helicopter from somewhere.
  Los Angeles DEA had those, didn't they?
All the drug raids they went out on, they'd have to have
air cover.
  Could he risk calling the DEA in?
  Well, why not? Lee wasn't the guy who shot
at Howard, he had witnesses saying he was
elsewhere. And he didn't have to call Lee back in
D.c." just the local HQ.
  He didn't want to do it. But what was more
important here? Letting the DEA get the
credit? Or maybe losing the drug dealer altogether?
  Crap-The decision was interrupted by his virgil
beeping. Michaels pulled it from his belt. The
ID showed it was the director. He tapped the
link-on, and the vid control, held the virgil up so
the cam could see his face.
  "Yes, ma'am?"
  "My SAC tells me that the drug dealer was not
in the house they raided, nor was the other man. What
is the situation there. Commander?"
  "Three men managed to escape by car just as the
raid went down, ma'am. The agents didn't see
them. General Howard, Jay Gridley, and I are
in pursuit. We are heading east over the mountains
at the moment. We have been unable to contact SAC
Delorme's team."
  "I'll have them spot on your GPS signal,"
she said.
  "I was thinking we might call in the DEA," he
said.
  "They'll have air support."
  "Already done. Commander. They should have a helicopter
in the air by now, and they are also tracking your
virgil's GPS, have been all along."
  Howard nodded.
  "I see."
  "We have to let them in. Commander. There is no
choice in the matter, you understand?"
  He understood, all right.
  "Yes, ma'am."
  "Try to maintain your surveillance. I expect
you'll be seeing the DEA forces show up soon.
Call me when you have something to report."
  "Yes, ma'am."
  Michaels discommed. Howard glanced
over at him.
  "You heard the director. Try to stay with them.
DEA is in the air."
  But that wasn't quite true, Michaels realized a
few seconds later. The DEA had a
helicopter, all right, he saw it not more than a
block ahead as they rounded the next curve.
  The copter was parked across the middle of the road.

  Drayne saw the helicopter blocking the road
a good two seconds before Tad's drugged reaction
time finally kicked in and he slammed on the brakes.
The big Dodge's wheels locked and the car skidded
to a rubber-burning stop.
  Adam's body twisted out of the seat belt's
shoulder strap and he thudded against the dashboard, then
slid sideways into the door, smearing blood all
over the window and door post.
  "Shit!" Tad said.
  "Turn around, turn around!"
  But as he said it, Drayne looked over his
shoulder in time to see a car a hundred feet behind
slew to a stop and turn so it blocked the road.
  Tad saw it, too. He hit the brakes again.
  To their left was a rocky slope, the
wall of the mountain.
  To the right, a fairly steep drop down the
hillside into a valley of rock, dried brown
bushes, and eucalyptus.
  A half-dozen men with guns were crouched around the
copter, pointing their weapons at the Dodge.
Drayne looked back in time to see three men
pile out of the other side of the car behind them. They came
up behind the hood and trunk, and pointed weapons,
too.
  Well, shit.
  "Fuck! What do we do?"
  Drayne thought fast. There was a dead body in the
front seat of their car. Tad had enough drugs to stone
a parade, not even counting the scores of Hammer
caps. This was bad.
  Drayne leaned forward and gave Tad the pistol
he had.
  "Here, take this."
  "We'll get slaughtered," Tad said.
  Drayne reached around the seat and took Adam's
pistol from the dead man's holster.
  "Maybe not, I've got an idea.
  Stick the gun out the window and shoot it into the
air."
  "Why?"
  "Just do it."
  Tad did, the sound loud in the quiet afternoon.
  The men behind the copter ducked, but they didn't
return fire.
  Drayne almost smiled. Good, that was good. They
wanted him alive. Alive, he was valuable.
Dead, he was worthless.
  And now Tad, bless him, had powder residue on
his hand showing he had fired a gun.
  "Okay, okay, let's think about this. We got
their attention, but we're boxed, so we're gonna have
to do this with lawyers. We have money, and we have power.
The pharmaceutical companies want what I have.
So we get out with our hands up, and surrender."
  "You sure?"
  "Trust me, I know what I'm doing. One
phone call, we'll have some very heavyweight people lined
up to help us."
  "Okay, man."
  Of course, Tad would have to take the fall for
killing Adam. And since Tad would get shot
resisting arrest or trying to escape, he wouldn't
say otherwise. Drayne could pull that off. If
he yelled, "Hey, don't shoot.
Tad! Put the gun down!" at the right moment, the
feds would hose Tad.
  DBA rules of engagement wouldn't be that different
from the FBI rules when facing an armed perp. Too
bad, but Tad had one foot in the grave anyhow.
He liked him, but his death might as well count for
something. No point in Tad being dead and Drayne
being in jail, was there?
  Drayne climbed over the seat.
  "What are you doing?"
  "I want to be right behind you when we get out, we
don't want them to think you're reaching for something when you
move the seat to let me out."
  "Oh, yeah."
  "Tuck that gun into your belt and keep your hands in
the air when you get out."
  "Okay."
  "Let's do it. Just stay cool. We'll walk
away from this, believe me. Once we're out on
bail, we can take off and stay gone forever." Not that
they would get bail with a corpse in the front seat of
their car. Judges frowned on that.
  Tad nodded.
  "Okay."
  Howard had braked and turned the car
to block the road, and the three of them jumped out on the
driver's side, away from the stopped Dodge.
  "Get those lasers out, for all the good they'll do,"
Howard said. He pulled his gun from under his jacket,
crouched behind the front wheel, and pointed the gun over
the hood.
  "See if you can get the DEA there on your
virgil's emergency band and tell them not to shoot
us."
  Michaels nodded. He was the commander of Net
Force, but he was willing to defer to the general in this
kind of situation. He wasn't going to to let his ego
get them killed.
  He hit the emergency call button, got the
Net Force operator, and told him to patch them through
to the DEA team. The FBI Director should have their
number.
  Crouched behind the trunk, his taser clutched in both
hands and pointed at the Dodge, Jay nervously
said, "I think... I think I'm gonna throw up.
And I gotta pee, real bad."
  "It's okay," Howard said, "we all feel like
that."
  Oddly enough, Michaels didn't. He felt
relatively calm, almost as if he were
watching and not participating. His mouth was awful dry,
though.
  Behind them, a car approached. Howard turned and
waved at it frantically.
  "Stop!"
  The car, a dark minivan, did stop. The
passenger door opened and a man jumped out and ran
toward them.
  He had a gun in his hand.
  Howard swung his revolver around and almost shot the
guy--then they all recognized him.
  Brett Lee, of the DEA Lee crouched into a
duck walk the last few steps.
  "What's the situation?" he asked.
  "What the hell are you doing here?" Michaels
responded.
  "I was following you," Lee said.
  They all stared at him.
  He said, "Look, okay, I screwed up on
the bust at the movie star's house, okay? My
job is going away, at the least. I need to help
catch this guy so I don't leave in total
disgrace. I need a little victory."
  That made sense. Before anybody could speak,
Michael's virgil started its musical
sting. No ID sig. That damned thing was
practically useless. He thumbed the connect
button. His camera was still on, but the incoming screen
was blank, no visual transmission.
  "Commander Michaels? Riley dark, DEA.
Is that you in the car behind the suspects?"
  "Yes. And I have Brett Lee here with me."
  "Hold your positions, and please don't shoot
unless you are fired upon--" As if his words were a
signal, a gun went off. Michaels ducked
instinctively.
  From the virgil, Clark's excited voice
came: "Negative, negative, do not return
fire, the gun was pointed into the air, repeat, hold
your fire!"
  Michaels raised from his squat and looked. The
driver's side door opened, and two men stepped
out, their hands in the air. The zombie and the surfer.
What an odd looking pair they were together.
  "Which one is the chemist?" Lee asked.
  Jay said, "Gotta be the surfer."
  Drayne felt tight, knowing all those guns were
pointed at him, but he also knew he was the golden
goose, and while the DEA field guys might
want to burn his ass, the higher ups would
know which way the political winds blew.
  Sure, he might have to do some time at one of those
country-club honor farms somewhere, working on his tan
and Ping-Pong game, but in the end, he was going to cut
a deal, and he was going to walk away rich. Guys
worth tens of millions of dollars didn't go
to jail very often, almost never, and he'd be very
cooperative. The feds would bargain with him, because he
had something everybody wanted. He could turn people
into superhumans.
  Hell, the Army would be first in line, if the
Navy and Marines didn't beat them to it.
  He was smarter than the guys they sent against him,
always had been, always would be. He could think
circles around them. This was a temporary setback,
that was all.
  He was a genius, and he'd show them just how smart
he was.
  He smiled.
  "Don't shoot!" Drayne yelled.
  "We give up!"
  Something was wrong, Howard felt, but he couldn't
put his finger on it. Lee was right here next to him;
Howard didn't trust him, and if Lee raised that
pistol, he was going to bat it down, but that
wasn't it, it was something else.
  Then he knew. It hit him like a lightning
bolt. Lee had gotten out on the passenger side!
He twisted around, looked at the van, said,
"Shit!" The driver's door was open, and a man was
behind it, a rifle resting on the windowsill, but not
aimed at Howard or Michaels or Jay or
Lee.
  Howard swung his revolver around.
  The rifle went off.
  Tad was looking right at him when Bobby's head
exploded.
  The skull deformed in front, like it was plastic,
and Bobby's whole forehead spewed into the air,
blood and bones and brain in a greasy fluid like a
water balloon bursting, spraying every which way.
  Fuck. They shot Bobby.
  Tad didn't even think about it, he bolted,
ran straight for the only way not full of guns, right
over the side of the hill. He hit five or six
yards down, his legs collapsed, and he rolled
himself into as much of a ball as he could, bouncing and
smashing into creosote bushes and rocks and dirt,
until he hit something so hard it took his
consciousness.
  Michaels watched in slow motion as John
Howard shoved his handgun forward and started pulling the
trigger. There were orange flashes from the muzzle and
smaller flashes
  from the cylinder, but the sound was oddly quiet, like a
cap pistol.
  Brett Lee screamed--Michaels saw his mouth
open-and he tried to point his pistol at Howard.
  He's going to shoot John, Michaels
realized.
  Michaels lunged, slamming into Lee. They both
sprawled on the road. Lee dropped his gun
to break his fall, hit, rolled up, and kicked at
Michaels.
  Without thinking or pausing, Michaels swept his
right hand down and up again in an arc, caught Lee's
ankle and, at the same time, dropped into a low
position and shoved with his left hand at Lee's chest.
  Lee fell backward, hit the road flat on
his back, and his head thumped the asphalt and bounced.
He was stunned enough so he didn't move.
  Michaels blinked and realized he had just done an
angkat, a throw against an un weighted leg.
Huh.
  Jay, who probably didn't have any
more of an idea of what was going on than Michaels
did, stepped up and shot Lee with his taser. Lee
juddered and jittered on the dusty road as the
electrical charge spasmed his muscles.
  Michaels turned to look at Howard, who was up
and moving toward the minivan, gun still extended in
front of him. Michaels didn't see his taser,
he must have dropped it, but he hurried to join
Howard.
  Behind the still-open driver's door, which had several
holes in it, a man lay on the ground, bleeding, a
rifle next to him. His chest was a ruin, dark with
arterial blood, and Michaels knew the man had
been shot in the heart. He'd be dead soon, if
he wasn't already.
  He couldn't see the man's face until Howard
kicked the door shut, and when he did, it was not
really all that much of a surprise:
  The heart-shot man was Zachary George of the
NSA.

  When Tad woke up, he didn't know where he
was. Outside, somewhere, and buried in some kind of
sweetsmelling brush. He had cuts and bruises
he didn't remember, and felt like crap,
but that wasn't anything new, it had happened before.
Lots of times.
  He tried to sit up, couldn't make it, then
fell back and gulped for air.
  This might be it. Tad, old son. The last
roundup.
  Damn. How'd he get here? Where was here,
anyway?
  The sight of Bobby's head blowing apart filled his
memory.
  Aw, shit! Shit, shit, shit!
  It all came back to him in a jumbled rush of
pain and emotion. Killing Adam, the helicopter in
the road, the leap he'd taken to get
away-Bobby's head exploding. In slo mo and
Technicolor.
  Jesus!
  He looked at his watch to see how long he'd
been out, but the crystal was shattered, the minute hand
bent to the face and stopped, the hour hand gone
completely. The feds would be coming for him, they might be
almost here, and he had to get up, he had to get
moving, or they'd catch him. Probably none of
them would have just jumped off the fucking cliff like he
had, but they'd figure a way down soon
enough to grab his ass. He didn't know how long ago
it had been. It felt like it was still afternoon going
into evening, so maybe he'd only been out for a few
minutes.
  He wasn't going to get far in his condition, he
knew.
  He reached into his pocket and came out with one of the
Hammer packets. A couple of them fell on the
ground, but it was too much trouble to bother picking them
up.
  Well, he sure wasn't going to be making any
deliveries anytime soon, and the clock was running
on this batch.
  He had until tomorrow around noon before the stuff would
all go sour. Use it or lose it, and he couldn't
take them all.
  He tore open the packet and dry-swallowed the
Hammer cap. Thought about it for a few seconds, then
ripped open another packet and took that cap,
too. It would be a while before the stuff would kick
in, and he couldn't sit here waiting for it, no
matter how much he hurt.
  The gun he'd had tucked in his belt was gone.
His car was God knew how far up the hill,
surrounded by feds.
  He was screwed.
  And Bobby was dead. That hadn't really sunk in,
it didn't seem real. They'd killed him, they'd
fucking executed him, he'd had his hands up, and they
had blown his head off!
  Tad felt a surge of anger well up,
filling him with murderous rage. He wanted to run
back up that hill and tear them apart with his bare hands,
rip their arms and legs off, stomp on the bloody
torsos.
  The anger was good, but it was barely strong enough to get
him to his feet and moving. If he could stay clear
long enough for the Hammer to kick in, he'd be okay.
  Once the drug took hold, he'd be able
to travel at speed.
  And go where?
  The safe house. They didn't know about that.
Bobby had the place stocked, there was some
running-away money stashed there, more in the safe at the
storage space.
  Bobby was dead.
  Tad couldn't believe it. Bobby was smart,
good-looking, rich, he had everything going for him. And
they cooked him, blam! Just like that.
  Tad stumbled, fell, and managed to get
back to his feet.
  Oh, they were gonna pay for killing Bobby.
  He was fucking going to make them pay.
  "No sign of the zombie?" Jay said.
  "The DEA people haven't found him yet. Local
deputies will be joining the search soon," Michaels
said.
  "General Howard went down with them and found this."
He held up a purple capsule.
  "There were several of them under a bush down there.
DEA got the rest, but it doesn't look as if
they have turned sour yet. So this is still an active
capsule."
  "No great loss. We got the chemist."
  "We have his body," Howard said.
  Jay nodded and blew out a sigh. What a
fuck-up this had been.
  "I bet forensics will match that rifle George
had to the bullets they found in my agency car at
Manassas," Howard said.
  "George was the shooter. That's why Lee had such
a great alibi."
  "So they were in it together all along. But why shoot
this guy Drayne?"
  "I don't know," Michaels said.
  Lee had recovered from the fall and taser shock and
was handcuffed and sitting in the back of one of the DEA
vehicles that had finally arrived. He was more than a
little distraught when he saw the body of George
covered up and waiting for the coroner.
  He'd sobbed and begun crying. Not really the kind
of reaction an op from one agency usually had for an
op from another agency, certainly not the same sex.
Something there, all right.
  "Bastard," Lee had said to Howard.
  "You killed him!"
  "Damn straight," Howard had replied.
  "I only wish I'd shot him two seconds
sooner."
  "Bastard. You're a dead man."
  "Not by your hand, pal. You're an accessory
to murder and attempted murder, probably seven
kinds of conspiracy, and God knows what else.
You're going away for a long, long time."
  "Maybe not. Maybe I have something to trade."
  "Better be damned good, whatever it is," Howard
said.
  "And between you and me and my colleagues here, if I
see you on the street anywhere close to me or mine,
I'll drop you and worry about the
consequences later."
  "You threatening me. General Howard?"
  Michaels said, "You must be mistaken, Mr.
Lee. I didn't hear any threats. Jay?"
  "Nope, I didn't hear anything at all."
  Howard nodded at Michaels and Jay.
  Jay smiled. Well, what the hell, they were a
team, right?
  On the drive down the hill, Michaels called
Toni.
  "Hey," she said.
  "How's the glamour there in Tinseltown?"
  "Great, if you like chase scenes and shootouts."
  "What?"
  "We tracked down the dope dealer. He's no
longer with us, however."
  "What happened?"
  Michaels filled her in on the operation.
  When he was done, she said, "That's good work,
Alex.
  Nobody got hurt except the bad guy, and
Net Force gets the credit. How are they going
to play it with the media?"
  "Straight, I hope," he said.
  "But I wouldn't bet on that.
  Camera teams were all over us ten minutes after it
happened, news choppers circling like mechanical
vultures. I let Jay talk for us and he kept
it vague, but I don't know what the DEA and
FBI guys had to say. Rogue operatives are
never a good spin for any agency. You can say,
"Yeah, we had a problem but we cleaned it out," but
the first question from the reporters will be, "How'd you get
a problem like that in the first place?" It's a no-win
situation."
  "Not for Net Force."
  He grinned at the small image of her on the
virgil.
  "Well, yes, that's true. We get off
smelling like roses."
  "So, when are you coming home?"
  "Probably tomorrow morning. We need to file
reports with the local FBI and DEA offices,
talk to their supervisors, like that."
  "Couldn't you file those reports on-line from
here?"
  "You know how that is, they want to see us when we
tell it. Won't take long, but by the time we get
done, it'll be late, and we're flying into a
three-hour time difference.
  Might as well wait until the morning."
  "At least it's all wrapped up."
  "Not completely. The zombie--that's Thaddeus
Bershaw, we got that from his car registration--got
away."
  "That's not major, is it?"
  "Not that we can tell. We don't know for sure
what his part was in things, but he wasn't the brightest
bulb on the string. Jay dug up his background, and
he was an uneducated street kid. Probably no
more than an errand boy.
  The dealer was Robert Drayne; he had a
degree in chemistry. Also had a father who was with the
Bureau for thirty years, retired to Arizona."
  "Interesting."
  "DEA and FBI put out an APB net and
street on Bershaw.
  They'll find him eventually. Anyway, he's not
our problem anymore."
  "I miss you," she said.
  "Yeah, I miss you, too. See you tomorrow. I'm
thinking maybe I'll take a couple personal
days and we can do something."
  "I'd like that."
  Michaels discommed and leaned back in the
seat. It had been a long day, and he wasn't
looking forward to the double debriefing. It would be nice
if they could do it once, with ops from both the DEA and
FBI listening together, but that wasn't how it was going
to go, of course.
  That way would make too much sense.
  They were way too slow coming down the hill to find
him. By the time he heard them yelling at each other.
Tad was six hundred yards away, and the double-hit
of magic purple was coming on strong. Ten minutes
after that, he was feeling good enough to jog, and ten minutes
after that, he was able to run like the wind, hopping over
rocks and bushes in his path, covering ground much
faster than any normal man would be able to do on
foot in the gathering darkness. He could run faster,
see better, and make quicker decisions, and no way
were they going to catch him from behind, if they even had a
clue which way he had gone. Probably still looking
for his body under the bushes back there.
  Three miles or so away, he angled back
up toward the road, then paralleled it for half a
mile until he came to a tiny shopping center.
He found a motorcycle chained to a light pole,
and it took all of thirty seconds to find a rock
big enough to smash the lock. The owner had
trusted the lock and chain, and so he'd left a spare
ignition key under the seat, tucked in the cushion
springs, where Tad and ten other guys he knew always
kept their spare bike keys, and the sucker, a mid
sized Honda, cranked right up.
  They'd probably have roadblocks set up on
both sides of the hill looking for him, but he could
dance that or maybe go off road and around it. Now that
it was fully dark, he would have an advantage: He
didn't need to use the headlight; there was enough city
glow for him to see the road. Time they spotted him
coming, it would be too late.
  The double dose of Hammer was something. He had
never felt so strong, so fast, or so quick-witted.
They didn't have a chance. If they did stop him?
Well, he would just kill them all.
  Tad sailed eastward down the hill in the dark,
hitting speeds of eighty, ninety miles per hour
with the lights off, whipping past startled drivers who
heard him but couldn't see him him until he
appeared in their headlights. Must have scared the crap
out of them.
  If the fed had roadblocks, they must have been
closer to the place where the copter had been, which made
sense, sort of. They weren't figuring on
a guy who could run three miles in the dark before he
got back to the road.
  They didn't have the Hammer and he did.
  Once he was down and in the flats around Woodland
Hills, he flicked the headlight on. He
didn't have far to go now.
  He made it to the safe house without incident.
Inside, he flipped on the television and tuned it
to CNN Headline News. He didn't feel like
eating, but he knew he needed fuel and liquid, so
he grabbed a big can of ham slices and a
six-pack of Evian water. He peeled ham
slices off two at a time and washed them down with
water as he watched the news. He needed information as
much as he needed fuel.
  The info wasn't long in coming. A local camera
crew had gotten to the site of the shooting, and while
most of what the reporter had was probably total
bullshit, there were a couple of things that stood out: The
drug dealer who had been slain had been located
through the efforts of the FBI'S computer arm. Net
Force; the leader of that organization. Commander
Alexander Michaels, had come all the way from
Washington, D.c." to be in on the raid.
  The new scam had footage of
Michaels, right out there on the road, looking down
at the body of some agent who had been killed by the
drug dealers during the raid.
  Yeah, well, if one of theirs was dead, the feds
had done it themselves. Bobby hadn't done it, and
except for that one shot Tad put into the sky, he
hadn't fired, either. Lying fuckers.
  There were interviews with local DBA and FBI
agents, as well as some computer geek for Net
Force. It had been a coordinated operation among the
three agencies, so it seemed, but Net Force got
the big pat on the back for coming up with the information that
led to the suspected drug dealers. One of said drug
dealers had escaped, was still at large, and considered
armed and dangerous. They flashed a picture of
Tad, along with his name. Driver's license
photo. So they had ID-ED him, no big deal.
  The news moved on, and he shut it off.
  When he looked down at the ham can, it was
empty.
  He had eaten two pounds of ham and downed six
bottles of water, and he didn't even feel
full. Probably his last meal.
  Tad thought about it for a few seconds. Commander
Alexander Michaels. Net Force.
Washington, D.c. A long way to travel for
somebody in his shoes. And nothing he did would bring
Bobby back, dead was dead. Why bother?
  Yeah, well, fuck it. He'd almost reached the
end of his string anyhow.
  He went into the bathroom. Bobby had stocked the
place with all kinds of shit they might need if they
had to run. He found scissors and an electric
razor with a trim attachment and cut his already-short
black hair into a flattop.
  The Hammer made him want to jump up and down,
but he held himself steady by force of will so that the do
wasn't too ragged. He used half a bottle of
hair coloring on his new cut. He shaved off his
lip-hanger goatee.
  Pulled out his earrings and tossed them.
  After the hair color was done, bleached to an ugly
yellow, he showered. Got out, and rubbed himself down with
bronzing gel, applying it carefully with the little sponge
thing.
  Okay, so he wasn't gonna pass for a
surfer, but he wasn't the same fish-belly white
beatnik in the picture, he was blond and tanned.
He found some slacks, a dress shirt, socks,
and running shoes, all in pale gray or
white, not his look at all. There was a pair of
wire-rimmed glasses with plain glass lenses, and
he put them on. He could almost pass for normal.
  There was about fifty thousand in cash in frozen food
packages in the freezer. He took about ten grand.
He didn't expect he'd need that much, and if he
somehow got back here--unlikely--he could get the
rest then.
  There were some fake photo ID'S in a desk
drawer, three or four sets each for him and
Bobby. Tad picked up a set, looked to see that
the driver's license was from Texas, and that the name was
Raymond Selling. Bobby's little joke: Selling
was the winner of last year's Los Angeles
Marathon race. He'd done one for Richard
Kimball, too, from the old TV series. The
Fugitive. The last one was for Meia Rasgada,
which was Portuguese for "torn stocking," yet
another kind of runner.
  Bobby was a riot.
  Had been a riot.
  He needed to move, he really needed to move, but
he had one more thing he had to do before he could. He
took one of the clean digital phones in the kitchen
and punched in a number from memory. His
memory at the moment was excellent; he could draw
on anything he had ever seen, smelled, tasted,
heard, felt, or done if he needed it, and he
knew it would be there.
  "Yo," came the deep voice.
  "Halley, it's Tad. I need something."
  "Yeah, me, too. Your money in my pocket.
G."
  "I want an address for Commander Alexander
Michaels, M-i-c-h-a-e-1-'s. He's
the head of Net Force."
  "I can give you that without having to burn an
electron, dude. Net Force HQ is in
Quantico, Virginia, part of the new FBI
complex next to the Yew-Nite-Ted States
Muhrines--"
  "No, I want his home address."
  "Ah. That'll take a little more. They'd keep that
buried pretty good."
  "How long?"
  "Ah, forty, forty-five minutes."
  "Call me back on this number when you get it."
  "Cost you five hundred."
  "Not a problem."
  "I'm on it, dude."
  Tad took his new self outside. There were two
cars in the garage. A year-old tan minivan with a
Baby on Board sticker on the back window, and a
three- or four-year-old Dodge Dakota.
Both had keys in the ignitions. He paused long
enough to grab the rear bumper of the truck, to squat and
lift the tires clear of the pavement a few times,
to burn off some of his excess energy. Then he
climbed in and cranked the engine.
  He pulled out of the driveway and headed for the
airport.
  On the way, he called and booked a first-class
seat on the next nonstop flight to Washington,
D.c. The plane wouldn't leave for three hours.
Another five or so hours to fly there, figure on
maybe two more to find the place.
  Call it ten hours all totaled, be there by eight
or nine a.m.
  at the absolute latest. He'd be riding the
Hammer for that long, and when he started to come down, he
had a whole shitload of caps that would be good until
noon, and another twelve hours of Hammer to ride
after he took it.
  Midnight tomorrow, easy.
  That should be more than enough time to have a long chat
with Commander Alexander Michaels of Net Force, and
to teach the fucker what a bad mistake he had
made in helping get Bobby Drayne killed.
  Plenty of time.

  Lot Angeles, California
  Michaels had just finished shaving and was getting
dressed when there came a knock on the hotel
room's door.
  It was Jay. He said, "FBI got a lead on
Bershaw."
  Michaels waved Jay in as he continued
to button his shirt.
  "Yes?"
  Jay held up the flat screen so Michaels
could see the image thereon. A blond-haired man
with glasses, dressed in casual sports clothes.
  "They sure this is him?"
  "Check the side-by-side."
  A magnified image of the blond appeared next
to an identical-sized head shot of Tad Bershaw.
Overlay grids appeared, numbers scrolled, and
yellow highlight outlines pulsed over the
features.
  "The feeb surveillance match ware
doesn't worry overmuch about hair, eye, and skin
coloring, it compares ear size and lobe shape,
nose length and nares spacing, eye spacing and brow
angle. Plus somatotypes, though those can be
altered by shoe lifts and padding. This is him."
  "Where was this taken?"
  "LAX, last night. The match cam sent a
sig to FBI HQ, but the priority tag imprint
apparently was malfunctioning;
  instead of an A-l stamp, the file was batched
with a bunch of routine no-hurry PPOI'S ...
that's possible persons of interest. So they should have
seen it last night, but nobody got around to scanning
the file until a few minutes ago."
  "So much for infallible technology," Michaels
said. He sat on the bed, pulled on his socks.
  "So where did he go?"
  "According to the gate cam at Cross Con Air,
he took a nonstop red-eye to Washington,
D.c. Plane landed around two a.m. this morning,
eastern time. Dulles match ware showed him getting
off the jet, but that's the only image they got.
FBI checked the rental agencies, he didn't
get a car, and they are talking to bus and limo
drivers and cabbies.
  No hits yet. From the passenger list, they know
he's using the name Raymond Selling."
  "Like the marathon runner?"
  "Who?"
  "Selling is the fastest long-distance man in the
country, probably the world."
  "I don't follow the sport. Running for
twenty-six miles hurts me just to think about it."
  "Why Washington?"
  Jay shrugged.
  "Why not? Maybe he's got an old girlfriend
there, somebody he used to run with. Easier to disappear
in a big city than a small one."
  "Well, maybe we'll bump into him when we
get home."
  "I hope not," Jay said.
  "If he's got any of that dope left, he's
not somebody I want to meet face-to-face."
  Michaels tied his shoes, stood, and reached for his
sport coat, which hung on the bathroom door.
  "What time does our flight leave?"
  "Couple hours. Be back in Washington about
seven p.m. Five-hour flight, add three for the
time zones."
  "Well, let's go have breakfast and
enjoy the L.a. sunshine.
  It'll probably be raining when we get back
to the East Coast."
  Jay closed the flat screen and they started for the
door.
  He still had a worried look.
  Michaels said, "Something else?"
  "Yeah, a major problem. In-house
Security says somebody got past the Net Force
fire walls and into the mainframe last night."
  "I thought that wasn't possible."
  "It's not, for most people. I could do it. And if I
could, some others could. A handful."
  "Was anything damaged or stolen?"
  "Fortunately not. The file protection
programs make that real hard without the encryption
keys. Even I might have trouble wrecking any big
part of the system from outside. Security says the
probe rode in on a GAO line and managed
to get into the personnel files. It didn't
damage them, they are read-only for the GAO
auditor, who, by law, we have to let in. Somebody
had to know about that to use it."
  "Who would know?"
  "Ex-programmer, maybe ex-ops,
FBI, GAO. Maybe even Net Force."
  "Really?"
  "We've had people quit. Fired a few, too.
Programmers always leave themselves a back door when
they are building secure systems. We vetted
ours, and I had our people checking, but the guy who
builds it can hide a few things when you are talking
millions of lines of code."
  "So what now?"
  "We'll run down all ex-employees with enough
skill to pull it off. My hope is that it'll
turn out to be some kid hacker counting coup. But that
wouldn't be the way smart money bets."
  "Mm. Stay on it. Jay. In the meantime,
let's don't keep General Howard waiting."
  On the way to the elevator, something about what
Jay said bothered him. He couldn't quite nail it down
as they stepped into the lift. Jay pushed the button
for the lobby;
  they were on the sixteenth floor.
  As the elevator descended, pinging as it passed
each floor, Michaels said, "That intrusion last
night. Do we know where it came from?"
  "Not really," Jay said.
  "It bounced off a couple of
satellites.
  We were able to track it as far as the West Coast,
that's it."
  Michaels thought about that for a second.
  "Why would anybody capable of breaking into a
secure system like Net Force's mainframe want
to look at our personnel records?"
  "If that's what they planned to do, boss, rather than
just stumbling into those records by accident."
  "Just for the sake of argument, let's assume they
meant to go there."
  Jay shrugged.
  "Who, where, what, when, why," he said.
  "Find out if somebody works there, what they do
exactly, how long. Maybe how much somebody
gets paid."
  "You skipped one," Michaels said.
  "Find out where somebody lives."
  "Yeah, that could be."
  Michaels felt a sudden chill frost him.
  Jay said, "I see where you're going here, but it's
probably just a coincidence."
  "What if it isn't? What if it's Bershaw?
What if he is looking to even the score for the death
of his friend?"
  "That's a reach, boss. Guy who pulled the
trigger on Drayne is dead."
  "Bershaw wouldn't know that. He went over the side
of the hill as soon as the shooting started."
  The elevator reached the ground floor and opened.
The two men stepped out and walked toward the hotel's
coffee shop.
  "He could have heard or watched news reports
about it," Jay offered.
  "You were on CNN'S coverage. The FBI and
DEA weren't saying much. Nobody said who shot
Drayne, only that he was killed. And who was
getting most of the credit for finding the drug dealers?"
  "Uh, that'd be us," Jay said.
  "Yes. And there were only three of us there: you,
me, and General Howard."
  "Still a reach," Jay said.
  "It doesn't necessarily follow."
  "Bershaw escapes. Somebody on the West
Coast gets into Net Force's personnel files
within a few hours. Bershaw disappears, then shows up
on a flight to Washington.
  I don't like it. If you were him and you were pissed
off because somebody had murdered your friend, blasted him
while he stood there with his hands up, and you
wanted to do something about it, who would you go after?"
  Jay didn't say anything.
  "Yeah. That's what I thought. The man in charge,
who was right there on the scene. You could be waiting for him
when he got home. Only thing is, Toni is
already there."
  He pulled his virgil, hit the voxax, and said,
"Call home."
  The virgil made the call.
  After five rings, the message recorder came
on.
  "Hello.
  You've reached area code two-oh-two,
three-five seven
  "Toni, if you are there, pick up or call me
back ASAP."
  Michaels felt a sense of panic threaten
to take him as he ended the call. He tapped the
resend button and selected five-minute
intervals, to repeat until a connection was made or
he shut it off.
  "She's not answering."
  "She could be asleep. Outside watering the
plants. A dozen things," Jay said.
  John Howard stood in the short line of
people waiting to get into the coffee shop. He saw Jay
and Michaels approaching, smiled at them.
Michaels didn't feel like smiling back.
  Howard caught it.
  "What's the matter. Commander?"
  Michaels ran through it, feeling more and more nervous as
he laid it out.
  Howard said, "Jay's probably right, it's
probably nothing.
  But just to be on the safe side, how about I have a
couple of my people drop by and check."
  "I would appreciate that." Being all the way
across the country made him feel helpless. Once
he knew Toni was okay, he'd feel a lot
better.
  Howard looked at Michaels a moment longer.
  "One more thing. Commander," he said.
  "Jay's the one who got all the attention on
TV. It might not be a bad idea for him to get
hold of Saji and tell her to get somewhere safe."
  Michaels nodded, but Jay was already pulling out his
virgil. A few seconds later, Saji
answered, and everyone relaxed a little.
  Howard pulled his own virgil and spoke
quietly into it, muted the sound so he had
to hold it to his ear like a mobile phone to hear the
reply. When he was done, he turned to Michaels
and said, "Somebody will be there in twenty minutes.
They'll call you back or have Toni call you."
  Michaels nodded.
  "Thank you. Call home yourself, John, just to be
sure, then we might as well go have breakfast." But
until he heard from Toni, he wasn't the least
bit interested in eating.
  Washington, D.c.
  It was almost noon, and Toni was in the kitchen and
about to fix herself some lunch when there came a terrific
crash, as if a truck had slammed into the house.
  She knew who the intruder was as soon as he
came through the side door--a door he opened
by kicking it, smashing the lock, and almost tearing it from
its hinges.
  Splinters of shattered wood flew everywhere, and the
door slammed against the wall hard enough for the knob
to break the spring stop and punch a hole in the
Sheetrock.
  She didn't recognize him, but it had to be the
drug guy who had escaped. His hair and eyebrows
were bleached and his skin color was dark, but it was him.
  As she stood there in her nightgown and
ratty bathrobe, she knew she had only one
advantage: What he saw was a small,
pregnant woman who couldn't possibly be a
threat to him.
  And in truth, she wasn't much of a threat. Any
strenuous activity could cause her to lose the baby.
A full-out hand-to-hand fight would certainly do it.
Even if her skill at silat was enough to overcome his
drug-induced strength, she couldn't risk applying
it. She had to fall back on one of the first
principles of her art: deception.
  So she played it as he would expect: "Who are
you?
  What do you want?"
  "Alexander Michaels," he said.
  "He's not here."
  "I figured that. He's still in Los Angeles,
isn't he?"
  She didn't say anything. She couldn't make it
too easy.
  He grinned, a maniacal, over-the-edge
expression.
  There was a wooden coat tree by the door. He
grabbed it, turned it sideways, brought his knee
up and the rack down, and snapped it over his
thigh as if it were a twig.
  He dropped the broken halves.
  "Don't fuck with me, lady, I'm not in the
mood, okay?"
  It wasn't hard to act afraid. She had never
seen anybody do anything like that before. The man was a
scarecrow missing half his stuffing, and no way should
he be able to do what he had just done.
  "He ... he won't be home until tonight. His
flight gets here around s-s-seven o'clock."
  Bershaw--that was the name Alex had told
her-grinned his mad smile again.
  "Ah. Good. That will give us plenty of time to get
acquainted. What's your name?"
  "Toni," she said.
  "Wife or girlfriend?"
  "Ww-wife."
  "Well, don't worry, Toni, I'm not
gonna hurt you." He looked at her.
  "Got a bun in the oven. How far along are
you?"
  "Five months."
  "Congratulations. You do what I tell you, you and the
kid will live to get to know each other. You can call
me Tad. Why don't you take me on a
tour of the place, since we have some hours to kill?"
  "Okay."
  The com chirped.
  "Don't answer it," he said.
  Toni's thoughts ran at top speed, banging
into each other as she tried to keep them straight. She
had to get word to Alex somehow. This man had come here
to kill him, she was certain of that, and he might or
might not kill her and the baby. She had to go along with
whatever he wanted until she could figure out a
way to stop him.
  Tad followed Michaels's wife as she led him
through the condo, where he made sure there weren't any
surprises waiting for him. It was an okay enough
place, nothing special, and there were some pictures
of her and her husband here and there, other images of their
families, easy to see the resemblance in those.
  Every five minutes or so, the phone would ring, and
he'd just shake his head at her. He didn't want
her talking to anybody, especially her husband, and
maybe giving him some secret code kind of clue.
  In the garage was an old Chevrolet convertible,
the hood up, and parts of the engine laid out on a
workbench.
  "Very nice," he said. He walked over
and put one hand on the car's fender, rubbed it
lightly.
  "Your old man is into cars."
  "Yes. He rebuilds them. It's his hobby."
  Tad needed to work off some of the Hammer's bubbling
and insistent energy, and while he was horny again, a
pregnant woman didn't do it for him. He
looked around for a pry bar or a hammer. A little
drum work on the Chevy would do fine. He'd be
sure to let Mr. Michaels see his project car
was gonna need a lot more effort to bring back to cherry
condition before he did the same deconstruction on
him.
  He saw a ball peen hammer hung on pegs
over the workbench and went to get it. The Hammer working
a hammer, he liked the symmetry in that.
  But when he got to the bench, he noticed something
else. Little pieces of ivory, needles, a
microscope. Scrimshaw.
  "Your husband has a lot of time on his hands,"
he said.
  He nodded at the bench.
  "Cars and art. That's when he's not having guys
murdered."
  "My husband doesn't have people murdered,"
she said.
  She glared at him.
  He smiled. She had balls, this pregnant
woman did.
  She'd seen what he could do, and she knew he could
kill her with a backhand, but here she was defending her
old man anyway. Tad had never heard his mother ever
say a kind word about his father.
  "That fucking asshole," was about as good as it ever
got. Give Toni here a point for loyalty.
  "Tell that to my friend Bobby," he said.
  "He was standing in the middle of the road with his hands in
the air, and the feds gave him an instant
craniotomy. Blam! Blew his head apart."
  "My husband didn't order that. Net Force
does computer investigation, they aren't field
operatives on drug busts. And they'd never shoot
a prisoner, anyway."
  "Yeah, well, he was there, I saw him on the
evening news. He should have stayed at his desk on this
one."
  He twirled the hammer in his fingers, was about to go do
the car, when he saw the capsule. He looked at
it, saw that it was open under the microscope, and the
powder emptied out. He put the ball peen
hammer down and moved to look.
  He shook his head.
  "That fucking Bobby. He was too smart for his own
good sometimes." He turned to look at her.
  "You know about this? Your old man talk to you about his
work?"
  "Yes. Sometimes."
  "Bobby was a genius, you know. Certifiable, high
MENSA grade, smarter than almost everybody.
Even when I'm Hammering and all my edges are
sharp, Bobby could still think circles around me. He
had contempt for the feds, 'cause of his father. You
don't know about that part, but his father was with the FBI for like
a hundred years. He and Bobby didn't get
along. So Bobby left clues in every fifth cap:
little riddles, each one different." He waved at the
cap.
  "That's how they found him, isn't it?
  Some geek at your husband's computer farm turned
the machines loose on this and figured it out, didn't
he?"
  She didn't say anything.
  "C'mon, you might as well tell me. I can't
kill him any deader than dead, can I?"
  "Please don't kill him."
  "Bobby might have fucked up and gotten caught
because he underestimated his opposition--you tend to do that
when you are always smarter than them--but he should be
alive. Somebody has got to pay for that."
  He was really ready to pound the car now, and he
reached for the tool to do it with, when the doorbell rang.
  "Don't answer it," Bershaw said.
  "They'll go away." He considered it for a
second.
  "No, maybe we ought to see who it is."
  The security cam Alex had installed showed two
men in uniform, with bolstered pistols. Net Force
troopers.
  "Cops?"
  "Net Force Security."
  "I thought your husband was a desk jockey."
  "He is, but they have some special teams for
certain situations."
  "Yeah, like executing drug dealers."
  The two at the door rang the bell again. And
again.
  They weren't going away, and she wondered why they
were here. The missed phone calls, maybe.
  Toni felt a surge of hope, but she quickly
quelled the feeling. The two men at her
door were in immediate danger.
  Bershaw was a killer, and he had a drug-driven
rage that couldn't be easily stopped. A wrong word,
and he might go off like a bomb.
  "Get rid of them, some good reason to go away, and
you better not give them a fucking hint," Bershaw
said.
  "You do, they die, you and the kid die, and I might
get bored waiting here alone for hubby to come home,
but that's how it will go down."
  "I understand."
  Bershaw stood behind her and to one side, out of
sight, as Toni opened the door. He didn't have
a weapon that she could see, but he didn't really
need one.
  "Yes?"
  "Mrs. Michaels. We're sorry to bother you,
but Commander Michaels has been trying to contact you."
  "Oh. Oh, yes, I'm sorry about that. I was
working out, doing my aerobics, and then I took a
long hot bath to relax." She was in her bathrobe.
  "I turned off the ringer and let the computer take
messages."
  "Yes, ma'am. If you would call Commander
Michaels at your convenience, that would be very
helpful."
  "I will. I'm going to go take a nap, and I'll
call him when I wake up. Sorry to have caused you
any trouble."
  "No trouble at all, ma'am. Have a good day."
  When they were gone, Bershaw said, "That was all right,
except for the part about calling your husband. Now you'll
have to do that. But I'm gonna write a script for
you. You will make the call, and you will say exactly
what I tell you to say, not one word more or less, you
understand?"
  "I understand."
  "Good. We have a little time to work on it, since you
are going to take a nap and all. Tell me about your
family, brothers, sisters, like that. I've seen some
of the pictures, so don't lie to me. If I think
you're lying, I'll just kill you, okay?"
  Toni felt her heart pounding harder than
usual. He was being very cautious, and she might not
get another chance to warn Alex. She had to hope
he would get the message she had been able to send.
  Los Angeles, California
  They had almost finished breakfast when Michaels's
virgil announced an incoming call. He had it
off his belt and thumbed to receive in two
seconds.
  "Yes?"
  "Sir, this is Chris Carol, military ops.
We just spoke to your wife at your house. She
seems fine, sir."
  Michaels blew out a sigh. Thank God!
  "Did she say why she wasn't answering the
phone?"
  "Yes, sir. She was taking a bath, sir, and
had the ringer turned off."
  He shook his head. Of course. It had to be some
piddly thing like that.
  "We'll remain in the area on surveillance,
sir, as per General Howard's orders."
  "Thanks," he said.
  "Ask Toni to call me as soon as she , can,
will you?"
  "She says she will call you, sir, after she has
a nap.
  She must be tired from her workout."
  "What? What did you say?"
  "Sir?"
  "About her being tired?"
  "Sir, I just assumed she might be. She said
she had been doing her aerobics, before her
bath, sir."
  Michaels felt a shard of icy steel stab
deep into his bowels. He looked at John
Howard.
  "He's there," he said.
  "He's got Toni."

  Washington, D.c.
  The general had pulled strings in a hurry and
gotten them fast rides. The National Guard
fighters had zipped from Los Angeles to the East
Coast at speeds more than twice supersonic most
of the way. By the time they were on the ground again, the trip
had only been a little over two hours. It was almost
two-thirty in the afternoon when the escort picked
Michaels, Howard, and Jay up at the air base
and took off with lights flashing and sirens screaming.
  They'd shut those off before they got to his
neighborhood.
  Howard had set up a command post a half mile
away from the house, and there were more Net Force people on the
scene, far enough back to stay hidden but close enough to see
if anybody left.
  An hour into the flight, Toni had called, and it
had twisted his stomach to hear her speak the
words that Bershaw must have made her say:
  They exchanged greetings, he'd asked how she was
doing, and she'd said she was fine, then she said, "I'm
sorry I missed your call earlier, I didn't
mean to make you worry. Listen, I can't talk
now, I've got my mother on the other line, some
crisis with my sister-in-law she has to settle.
Call me when you get to the airport tonight, okay?
Bye."
  He put in a call to Toni's mother in the
Bronx. She was surprised to hear from him, and he
pretended he was calling to check on Toni's
silat teacher. Guru was doing okay, his
mother-in-law told him. Say hello to Toni when
he saw her, tell her to call and visit.
  If he needed any confirmation, that did it.
Toni wasn't talking to her mother. And she was being
held hostage by some psychotic drug fiend who
almost certainly blamed Michaels for his buddy's
death. It was a nightmare.
  "How do you want to play it?" Howard asked, as
the Net Force car careened toward the city.
  "You want to call in the FBI kidnap teams?"
  "Would you call them in if it was your wife?"
  "No, sir."
  "We have snipers, don't we?"
  "Yes, sir. A couple of very good ones."
  "Have them meet us at the staging point. I'll
try to get him in front of a window. If they have a
shot, tell them to take it. It will have to be in the
spine or the head to be sure to drop him."
  "Yes, sir." Howard didn't say anything about
job description or rules of engagement. He
pulled his virgil and made a call.
  "You're not going in there alone are you, boss?"
  "Toni's my wife. It's my house. I know
them both better than anybody else. Damned right
I'm going in."
  "Jesus, you've seen what this guy is capable
of. Even if you shoot him, you can't be sure of
stopping him."
  "I know that. What choice do I have? I'll have
surprise on my side. Maybe that will be enough."
  "We could storm the place, hit it with fifty
guys--"
  "And he could break Toni's neck before they got
through the door. No. It's me he wants, so if
he spots me alone, he'll have what he came for.
If he's in my face, Toni can get clear."
  "And you might get dead."
  "Yeah, well, that's how it is. Better me
than her."
  What he didn't say was that he still had the
capsule Howard had found at the shooting site in his
pocket. And that if he took it before he went in,
he'd be more than a match for the zombie. He was in
better shape, he had some training as a fighter, and
he was motivated. The drug would cancel Bershaw's
advantage.
  But there was a big problem. It was risky. He
didn't mind the jeopardy to himself, but what if the
drug didn't do exactly for him what it did for
Bershaw? What if he went crazy like some of the other
druggies who used it?
  Saw snakes coming out of the walls or thought he was
being chased by demons or whatever those people who had gone
mad and committed suicide had seen?
  Could he risk Toni's life and the baby's
life like that?
  Six of one, half a dozen of the other, his little
inner voice said. If the zombie goes through you like
Sherman through Georgia, he "II probably
kill Toni anyway, don't you think?
  Michaels stuck his hand into his pocket and fingered
the capsule.
  Devil or the deep blue sea, Alex. And you
better decide soon. You don't know how long
it'll take before the stuff kicks in if you decide
to go that way. It might not help in time, even if you
do eat it.
  Shit.
  "Ten minutes to the staging point," Howard said.
  "My snipers will be there. If they can see him,
they can casket him."
  Michaels nodded. He fingered the capsule.
  Toni was sure Alex had gotten her warning.
She could hear it in his voice when she called, and she
was fairly certain the rumbling noises in the
background had been a jet engine and wind noise.
That meant he was on his way home, and he'd be here
sooner than Bershaw expected him.
  What was he going to do when he got here? Would he
bring in the regular FBI hostage negotiators?
She tried to put herself in his position, and that answer
came up a solid no. He would know Bershaw was
desperate, probably know he was on the
mind-altering drug that made him fast, smart, and
strong. Alex wouldn't take the risk that Bershaw
would hurt her or the baby.
  What would he do?
  And her greatest fear was that he would try to sneak
into the house and take on Bershaw alone. It
wasn't a macho thing but just how Alex was. He
would see her as his responsibility, and his coming in
alone as the best chance of drawing the killer's
attention away from her.
  If she had not been pregnant, she would have already
tried to take Bershaw down herself. He was fast and
strong, but she had more than fifteen years ofpentjak
silat training and practice, and she would risk that
her skill could offset his drug-powered strength.
  Silat was a weapons-based art. Toni was
comfortable with a knife, a stick, a sword, whatever
came to hand. A knife from the butcher block rack
wouldn't take a second to pull. No matter how
resistant to pain, no matter how strong a man
might be, he couldn't walk if he had no blood
circulating or if the tendons controlling his feet
or legs were cut or if his spine was severed.
  But in her condition, the slightest mistake would
cost her. She wouldn't risk the baby unless there was
no other way. If it came down to it, she would not
let this psychotic kill Alex, even if it meant
she and the baby didn't make 3it. You didn't
stand by and allow the man you loved to die if you
could prevent it, no matter what it cost you.
  She had already rehearsed grabbing the knife in her
mind a dozen times, never looking at it so as to give
it away, but planning how to step, what to throw
to distract him, what her targets might be.
  She had to expect Alex to show up hours before he
was supposed to show up. She had to be ready.
  Right now, she had to pee. And she didn't much
want to do that with Bershaw watching her, but better that
than to wet herself.
  Tad?"
  "What?"
  "I need to go to the bathroom."
  "Let's go."
  He followed her down the hall.
  "Go ahead."
  "Can I close the door?"
  "No. Just pee. I'll look the other way."
  "Thank you."
  She thought she might be able to use that, somehow, if
she could think of a way.
  While the woman was on the John, Tad turned
away and dry-swallowed two more of the Hammer caps.
He could feel the first ones start to wane, and a few
seconds later, he took a third. He
had built up a tolerance to the stuff by now, but it
didn't matter; the remaining caps were all going
to be deactivated soon, anyhow, and any way you
looked at it, this was going to be his last Hammer
ride. When Ma and Pa at the portable lab heard
about Bobby getting killed, they would get rid of the
RV and hit the road for parts elsewhere.
  The plan he'd had of getting to the lab and mixing
his own caps wouldn't happen now. He could mix the
stuff, but some of the chem was just beyond his ability to create
from scratch. Bobby had never written his formulas
down
  anywhere, figuring if the cops ever grabbed him,
those would be his best bargaining chip.
  He heard the toilet flush, turned and saw the
wife stand up, her robe falling to cover the short
nightgown. She had good legs under that rounded,
pregnant belly, and he caught a quick glimpse
of her bush. Maybe that was worth exploring, even
though it wouldn't be his first choice. Any port in a
storm.
  But there was something else he wanted to do first. That
car was still in the garage. The wife could watch him
trash her husband's toy.
  "Come on," he said.
  "We have stuff to do in the garage."
  He led her down the hall.
  "Sir, the snipers are set. We've got
three, two in front, one in back. They know what
our man looks like. If they see him, he's
history."
  "Thank you, John."
  Howard handed Michaels his revolver.
  "Point it at his head just like you would point your finger
at his nose and pull the trigger. It will kick some and
buck, so hold it two-handed if you can. A head
shot is the only way to be sure to stop him."
  Michaels took the heavy black handgun and
hefted it.
  "Is your ring updated?"
  "Yes."
  "You have six shots. If he's still coming after that,
reloading won't help. Aim for the head. Don't
say a word, don't hesitate, if you get a
shot, take it. If you don't, he'll kill you."
  "I got it."
  "Leave your virgil on and sending. We won't
try to call, but we'll monitor you. As soon as
we see Toni, or you indicate that she is clear,
we'll come in."
  Michaels nodded. His mouth was dry, and his stomach
fluttered.
  "Whatever happens, he won't be walking away
from this."
  Michaels looked at Howard, realizing what he
was saying.
  "Thank you."
  "Good luck, Alex."
  Michaels nodded. He took a couple of deep
breaths and let them out, rubbed his eyes, and started
toward his home to save his wife.
  He was half a block away from where Howard and
Jay were when he realized he had made his choice
about taking the Hammer cap. No. His mind was his
best tool, and he did not want to risk Toni's
life on his mind being fuzzed, even if it gave him
the strength of Hercules to do so.
  He would have to do it the hard way.
  Toni watched, feeling detached, as Bershaw
swung the pry bar and punched a bar-shaped hole through
the safety glass windshield. Little squarish chips
of glass flew like jewels under the garage lights as
he pulled the bar back and struck with the ball peen
hammer he held in his other hand. It took four or
five hits, and the windshield was gone.
  He had already done the headlights and taillights.
  After the windshield, he walked around the car and
shattered all the remaining glass, the sides, the
rear, scattering glittering shards in all
directions.
  Then he started on the front fender, alternating
the hammer and pry bar like some kind of mad drummer
following a tune only he could hear.
  It wasn't until he started on the metal that
Toni got an idea of just how much power he had.
The heavy gauge steel of the car's fender and hood not
only buckled like aluminum foil, several times he
actually punched holes right through, trapping his tools
so that he had to yank them free. The impacts were
loud, the grinch! of a pry bar pulled from a car's
hood sounding like Toni imagined the unlubricated
gates of hell might sound when opening.
  The destruction was terrible to watch. More terrible was
Bershaw's expression. He was laughing, having the
time of his life.
  The effort had to be burning him up, tearing
muscles and tendons, doing major damage to his
very bone structure, but he kept laughing and pounding,
hitting with such force that the fiberglass handle of the
hammer finally splintered and broke, leaving
the rounded nose of the hammer buried in the passenger
door, and the pry bar's loop bent almost closed.
  Toni realized that attacking this man physically
would be suicide if she made even the tiniest
mistake. Even with a knife.
  After what seemed like a long time, he dropped the
bent pry bar, rolled his shoulders, then turned
to look at her.
  He stared at her for a few seconds, unblinking.
  He looked like a raptor about to swoop down on
prey.
  "What would you do to save your husband's life?"
He finally said.
  "Anything."
  He grinned.
  "Good. I have something in mind. Let's go to the
bedroom."
  Toni felt a small surge of hope. If
he wanted sex, he would have to put himself into a more
vulnerable position.
  He would have to allow her to get close. Silat was
an in your-face art. If he let her get
close, she would have a chance. A small chance,
maybe.
  If she had the shot, she might be able
to take him.
  Michaels tucked the gun into his back pocket
as he slid open the garage window. He had heard
the noise half a
  block away, and by the time he got to the garage,
he had a pretty good idea of what he would see.
  He was wrong. What he saw was much worse than
he'd expected. Jesus Christ, how could a man
built like Bershaw do this much damage with a hammer and
pry bar?
  The Chevy looked as if it had rolled off a
cliff.
  He saw that the door into the house was open, and he
climbed through the window, pulled the revolver out, and
made his way across the floor, trying to avoid
stepping on all the shattered bits of glass. A
head shot. Point the gun like your finger, and pull the
trigger. Hit him in the head with a bullet, and it was
all over.
  Michaels edged into the doorway and into the house.
  In the bedroom. Tad said, "Get on your hands
and knees."
  The woman climbed onto the bed and did what he
said.
  He moved to stand behind her.
  "Back up a little."
  He reached out with both hands, caught the middle of
her robe, and ripped it apart, exposing her bare
bottom.
  He reached for his zipper.
  Toni gathered herself as she heard the sound of his
zipper going down. A twist, a hard fist to the
testicles, grab and rip them off, roll to the side
and onto the floor Michaels stepped into the
bedroom, saw Bershaw's back to him, Toni beyond
him on the bed. The years of law and order training
tried to assert themselves. Maybe he should give the
guy a chance to surrender.
  Hell with that. The bastard was about to rape his wife,
he was tanked on drugs that made him the most
dangerous person Michaels had ever seen. He
pointed the gun at the back of Bershaw's head and
started to squeeze the trigger.
  Tad heard something, or maybe he felt the air
pressure in the room change. Suddenly, he
knew they weren't alone.
  He spun. There was the husband, with a gun.
  Good! Tad lunged.
  Michaels saw Bershaw spin, his speed was
incredible, and leap at him. He was
halfway though squeezing the trigger.
  Fast as Bershaw was, Michaels was ahead of
him. The gun went off.
  Bershaw tried to duck, but the bullet hit him.
Michaels saw it plow a furrow into his skull,
just under the hairline, but then the mirror on Toni's
closet door shattered.
  Bershaw kept coming, but the bullet's impact
changed his angle a little, so he veered to the left
slightly. Michaels dodged to his right, and
Bershaw almost missed him.
  Almost. His flailing hand smashed into the revolver and
tore it from Michaels's grasp. The gun flew,
and Bershaw slammed into the dresser and landed on his
hands and knees. But he looked up at Michaels
and smiled-smiled!--with blood oozing from the head
wound.
  The bullet hit at an angle and glanced off.
Michaels realized.
  He had to get this maniac away from Toni, who
was on the floor next to the bed.
  Michaels grabbed the small television set on
the stand next to the door and threw it at Bershaw, who
reached up and batted it aside like it was a pillow.
The TV set hit the floor and ruptured
into three pieces.
  He had to lead him out of here! Away from Toni!
  Michaels backpedaled through the door.
  Bershaw came to his feet, wiped the blood from
his eyes, stuck one finger into the gory groove on his
forehead, and looked at his finger.
  "Close, but no cigar."
  Michaels turned and ran for the living room.
  "Come and get me, asshole!"
  Michaels risked a glance at his virgil. As
soon as Bershaw came after him, Toni would be
safe. The general's men would be ready to hit the
door when they heard Michaels yell for them.
  Oh, shit! It was gone! The virgil was gone!
Where had he lost it? The window?
  He didn't have time to worry about that now.
  He made it to the living room, and he looked
around frantically for a weapon, something to throw,
anything!
  He saw the little wooden case with the two kerambit
knives in it. He grabbed it and jerked the lid off
just as Bershaw came into the room. The man was moving
a little slower, he was a little unsteady on his feet.
The bullet glancing off his head must have had some
effect.
  Bershaw grabbed the end of the couch as Michaels
ran around behind it, trying to slip the rings of the little
curved knives onto his index fingers. Bershaw
heaved, and the couch came off the floor and twisted,
flew five feet, and landed upside down with a
crash.
  "You can run, but you can't hide. Joe Lewis
said that, did you know?"
  Stall him!
  "What do you want?"
  "You killed Bobby. I kill you. Even
trade."
  "I didn't kill him. He was shot by a rogue
NSA agent working for the drug companies! That man
is dead, too!"
  "Doesn't matter. You pointed the shooter at
him. You get to pay."
  Bershaw moved in, his hands held out to grab.
  Michaels had the little curved-bladed knives
gripped solidly now, hidden behind his forearms and
closed hands, only the forefinger rings showing. If
Bershaw saw that, or cared, he didn't give any
indication, he just kept coming, moving like some
Frankenstein's monster that couldn't be stopped.
  Michaels took a deep breath and
held it.
  It might be his last.

  Toni hurried down the hall. In her hand, she
held the kris that Guru had given her, the
wavy-bladed Javanese dagger that had been in the
old lady's family for years. Such daggers had
been more ceremonial than used for a long time, but it was
still a knife, when stick came to stab, and it was the
only weapon in the bedroom.
  She heard a loud noise, felt the floor
shake as she reached the living room and saw the two
men there.
  Bershaw advanced on Alex.
  Alex stood in a djuru stance, and Toni
immediately realized he had the kerambits in his hands,
even though they were all but hidden.
  Even with a head wound, the man was supematurally
fast. He lashed out with one hand, and before Alex could
move, he caught him with a slap that knocked him
backward into the bookcase, showering him with
hardbacks.
  "Hey!" Toni yelled.
  Bershaw turned, smiled at her.
  "I'll take care of you later.
Better put that down before you cut yourself, honey."
  The distraction was enough for Alex to recover a little.
  He grabbed several books from the shelf behind him and
threw them at Bershaw.
  Tad turned back to finish Michaels. He
saw three books coming at him in slow motion: a red
one, one with a dark dust cover, and one that opened so that
the pages were flapping in the air. He dodged the
dark dust covered one, backhanded the red book, and
let the flapping one hit him on the chest; it was
nothing.
  Michaels was right behind the books, though, and just quick
enough to get a punch in on him before Tad could block
it. No big deal, he would absorb that and crush the
fucker.
  His vision went out on the left side, just flashed
red and ... went away.
  Tad frowned and backhanded Michaels, knocking
him sprawling over the overturned couch. He put his
hand to his face, and it came away covered with
blood and some kind of clear gel. His mind made the
connection.
  The son of a bitch had ripped his eye out!
  How?
  Michaels came up, and Tad saw how
he'd done it. He had a little knife in his hand.
Looked like a claw.
  Tricky shit, hiding that.
  Well, fine. He'd just step in, break that
fucking arm, and shove that little sticker up the man's
ass, that's what-Tad moved in.
  Something hit him in the back, and he felt a stab
of minor pain.
  He reached around, realized the wife had thrown that
fucking curvy blade and stuck it up in the middle
of his back. He grabbed the thing by the blade, pulled
it out, and brought it around in front of himself. The
blade was black with funny little patterns in the
steel. He waved it at the woman.
  "Thanks. Just what I needed."
  He turned in time to see Michaels come over the
couch, that little knife leading.
  Tad grinned. He still held the wavy knife by the
blade, only a few inches of it sticking out, but he
jammed the somewhat dull point at Michaels's
forearm, drove it into the muscle, felt it grate
on bone, to stop only when his hand hit Michaels's
arm.
  Michaels's hand spasmed open. So much for his little
claw.
  But the knife didn't fall, it was as if it was
glued to his fucking hand.
  Fine, fine. You want to play? Tad jerked his
own weapon free, shifted his grip, and figured
he'd just get a good swing and take the whole arm off.
That would get rid of the little knife damned quick. After
that, he'd just carve the bastard up in little chunks.
  Michaels felt the kris go into his right forearm,
felt the tip hit his radius and then slip past and
saw it come all the way through, just an inch or so of the
point sticking out.
  His hand opened on its own.
  Bershaw jerked the kris free and lifted it past
his ear like an ax, and he knew the man was going to chop
down.
  Knew with his maniacal strength, the man might
cleave right though the muscle and bone and slice
Michaels's hand completely off.
  But he had the other kerambit. And now he was
close, inside, right where a silat serak player
wanted to be when it all came down. He had one
chance, maybe, and he took it. He lashed out in a
punch at Bershaw's neck, a short left hook,
twisting his fist as he threw it.
  The tiny blade of the kerambit bit into the
right side Bershaw's neck a couple of inches below
the jaw and ripped a channel all the way to his
Adam's apple.
  The man frowned and paused in his downstroke.
  Michaels collapsed, just let his legs go
limp. It was the fastest way to get clear, and as he
fell, he punched with the knife again, scoring a nasty
slash across Bershaw's thigh, just below his groin.
  Bershaw drew back his unwounded leg and kicked.
His foot took Michaels in the side, just under the
armpit, and he felt and heard ribs crack, a
wet snap-snap that stole his breath.
  Blood fountained from Bershaw's neck, jetting out
with each pulse, spewing with his trip-hammer-fast
beat like a torn garden hose spraying water under
pressure.
  Bershaw kicked him again, but not as hard.
Michaels managed to turn a little, so he caught it
on the shoulder.
  Muscle tore, but he didn't think the arm
broke, even though the force of the kick turned him a
hundred and eighty degrees around.
  Michaels hooked his right foot behind Bershaw's
right ankle, then drove his left heel into the
bloody cut on Bershaw's thigh.
  Bershaw lost his balance and fell backward,
slamming into the couch.
  Michaels rolled away and up. He held the
kerambit in his left hand up point-first at
Bershaw.
  The right side of Bershaw's body was soaked in
blood from the carotid artery Michaels had sliced
open. The blood still pulsed out, but much slower and with
less force now.
  Bershaw came up, grinned, and took two steps
toward Michaels. But now it was his turn to move in
slow motion.
  Michaels stabbed at him. Bershaw put up an
arm, and the blade scored a line from the wrist to the
elbow, but it hardly bled at all.
  Tad suddenly felt tired, so very tired. Yeah,
he had to kill this guy, for Bobby, but as soon as
he did that, he was gonna have to go sit down. The
Hammer was slowing, he could feel it, and it wasn't
time yet. Not yet. Just this one thing left to do first,
then he could take a break. Go see Bobby.
  Bobby?
  Something about Bobby ... Fuck it. Kill the
guy, then worry about it.
  Bershaw grabbed Michaels's knife
arm with both hands and squeezed.
  Michaels felt his wrist crack, and in
desperation he snapped his other elbow out in a
horizontal shot, right out of djuru one, out in
front of him like Dracula behind his cape, only with
all his weight behind it. He hit Bershaw square
on the temple.
  Man! Who would have thought this guy could hit so hard?
  He'd have to tell Bobby about this.
  But he felt so tired. So weak. It was so much
trouble just to stand here, and why should he even bother?
  The Hammer left him then, all by himself here with this
stranger who hit him. The gray closed in on
Tad.
  Bobby? Is that you, man?
  The light in Bershaw's remaining eye flickered
as he let go of Michaels's arm and stumbled back
a step.
  Then the light went out, and Bershaw fell, a
puppet with his strings cut.
  Michaels turned and saw Toni, a book
gripped in her hands, advancing toward them. In that
odd interplay that sometimes happened in scary
situations, he noticed the title of the book, and he
started to laugh.
  Toni stopped.
  "Alex? Are you all right?"
  He waved at the book.
  "You were going to hit him with that?"
  Toni looked at it.
  It was How to Win Friends and Influence P.
  EPILOGUE
  Washington, D.c.
  Michaels's arm itched, and he wanted to tear off
the plastic flesh bandage and scratch the cut. The
surgical glue was holding the wound closed just fine,
and he had pain medicine if he needed it, for the
broken wrist that ached dully and the cracked ribs that
hurt every time he breathed, but nothing seemed to help
with the itching.
  He sat in the kitchen nook at the table, looking
at Toni as she came back from the fridge with a
beer for him.
  "Thanks," he said.
  "You should have let me get that."
  "I'm in better shape than you, pregnancy
notwithstanding."
  He took a sip, put the bottle down on the
table.
  "So what's the latest from the office?"
  "Well. It turned out that Lee and George were
working for the drug company, like we thought. Lee is
trying to cut a deal, but I don't think he has enough
leverage."
  "So why'd they kill the chemist?"
  "That's the twist. The pharmaceutical house they
were in cahoots with--"
  "Did you just say, 'in cahoots with"?"
  "You want me to tell this story or not?" But he
grinned.
  "Go ahead."
  "It turned out the drug company already had a
similar line of research going, upon which they had spent
a lot of money, and in which they had a lot of
confidence. Not as extensive as Drayne's, but going
in the same general direction. They were far enough along
that they had already started some testing protocols,
gotten some government approvals, and they didn't
want somebody stealing their thunder."
  "They were trying to suppress Drayne's stuff?"
  "Yeah. George and Lee had been given big
blocks of stock to make sure Drayne's
formulas didn't wind up on anybody else's
table. If their company reached the market first, they'd
be millionaires."
  She shook her head.
  "Huh. Didn't see that one."
  "Nobody else did, either."
  "What about John Howard?"
  Michaels took another sip of his beer.
  "He says he is gonna retire. Says
life is too short, and he wants to be around when
his son graduates from school and goes out into the world
on his own."
  "I don't blame him for that."
  "Me neither."
  "Jay Gridley still a Buddhist?"
  "Mostly lapsed, if there is such a thing. He
can't sit and contemplate his navel and stay sharp enough
to run with the bad boys on-line, he says. He'll
have to work all that out. But he and his girl are going
to get married."
  "That's great."
  "Going to honeymoon in Bali, so he says."
  "And what about us?"
  "Us? We're fine. I guess I won't be
spending much time in the garage until the Chevy gets
back from the
  358 NET FORCE
  body shop. Incredible what damage he
did."
  "Yes, it was. I can see why so many people wanted
to get their hands on this drug. If he had been a
jock on the stuff, he could have taken the entire
house down to the foundations."
  He nodded.
  "Tell you what. If I ever complain about things
being slow at work again? I want you to slap me
upside the head."
  "My pleasure," she said.
  They smiled at each other, and despite his aches
and itches, Michaels was very happy to be able to do that.
  It sure beat the other options.












 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
