Net Force (23 page)

    Parked in front of the bank branch was a shiny new metallic-blue Corvette convertible with the top down, the motor running. A man came out of the bank in a hurry. He looked young, but he moved old, wore a nice suit, and he carried a briefcase in one hand. He would have passed for a customer, a businessman-except he was wearing a mask.

    He looked up, saw Gridley, and ran for the Vette. He threw the briefcase into the passenger seat as he opened the driver’s door and jumped into the car.

    On some level, all of a sudden, Gridley knew. It was
him
! The programmer! He was sure of it!

    He grinned, gunned the Viper. He’d cut the sucker off, block his escape.

    The masked man got the jump on him, though. He pulled away from the curb, leaving rubber as he upshifted.

    All right, all right, it didn’t matter! The Vette was fast, but it couldn’t touch the Viper, through the gears or topside-it didn’t have the guts, no way!

    Gridley stomped the gas pedal, felt the Viper surge as if it was goosed. Gained on the Vette. Aloud, he said, “Might as well shut it down, pal, you ain’t goin’ nowhere!”

    The narrow street hadn’t been designed with muscle cars doing eighty in mind. A curve to the right burned more tire rubber on both vehicles, but Gridley kept the Viper on the road, shifting, tapping the gas, still gaining. He was a hundred feet back and he’d eat that space in five more seconds-

    The driver of the Vette threw a handful of shiny dimes into the air.

    At least that was what it looked like at first. It wasn’t until the dimes hit the street that Gridley saw they weren’t coins at all, but some kind of spiked things.

    
Caltrops
!

    He stood on the brake pedal. The Viper’s brakes locked, the car skidded and slowed, but not enough. The left front tire went first, made a noise like a firecracker going off. The Viper lurched to the left. Gridley jerked the steering wheel, partially straightened the car out, almost had it-then the right front tire blew. The Viper spun into the new flat, lost traction as it hit the curb, popped both rear tires and slammed into a storefront. Glass exploded as the Viper smashed through a big window and into a small bakery, shattering display cases. The car slid backward, knocked over a table and came to a stop against a counter. The impact tumbled the old metal cash register onto the Viper’s trunk.

    The Viper was going to need some major repairs.

    Covered with glass and pastries, Gridley looked up at a startled baker in a white apron and hat standing a foot away from the Viper’s door.

    Gridley shook his head. The guy had suckered him, trashed his ride and gotten away clean. He looked at the baker, who stared at him wide-eyed.

    “Hi there. Say, are your donuts, uh, fresh?”

    

    
Friday, October 1st, 1:32 p.m. Washington D.C
.

    Standing at his locker, waiting for the thumbprint reader to open the door, Tyrone Howard heard the Voice of Doom. It didn’t sound the way he thought the Voice of Doom would have sounded. Instead, it was soft, throaty, sexy, not a hint of disaster connected to it.

    “Hi. Are you Tyrone?”

    He turned and saw Belladonna Wright, all fourteen years of her, standing there, the most beautiful girl in Eisenhower Middle School, probably the most beautiful girl in all of the District. She was smiling at him.

    
Smiling
at him.

    He was a dead man.

    What did she want with
him
! If anybody said anything to Bonebreaker LeMott, he might as well kiss his ass goodbye now and avoid the rush later.
Jee-sus
!

    “Uh, uh, yeah?” To his horror-and burned forever into his memory-his voice cracked.

    “Sarah Peterson told me you were pretty good with computers, that you could make it so simple even a doof like me could understand it. I have to get at least an eighty in Basic Cee or I’m in trouble. Could you maybe help me?”

    The voice of self-preservation screamed-from behind the big mind rock where it had run and hidden as soon as it realized who was talking to them:

    
No
!
Danger
!
Danger, Will Robinson
!
Warning, warning, run, flee, the dam busted, the volcano blew, the aliens are coming
!
No, sorry, no, can’t do it, uh-uh, negative, negative, zipper-roo, count zero
!

    “Uh, okay, sure,” came out of Tyrone’s mouth.

    
Who said that
?
Are you
insane?
Death
!
Dismemberment
!
Destruction
!
Aaiiee
! screamed the voice of self-preservation as it tried to dig a hole under the rock.

    “Oh, thank you. Okay, here is my number,” Bella said. “Call me and we can set up a time, pross?”

    
Oh, yes, we pross
!
Bonebreaker LeMott taking us apart like an overcooked chicken
, that’s
what we pross
!

    Tyrone took the slip of paper from her and smiled reflexively. “P-p-pross.”

    She smiled, turned and walked away. Well, she
swayed
away, something like a Polynesian princess on a white sand beach in the hot sunshine might sway as she moved. Ruler of all she surveyed.

    Lust reared its head in Tyrone. At the same time, fear dried his mouth to a consistency roughly that of a pile of bones left to bleach a hundred years in the Gobi Desert sunshine.

    
That
’s our
future, fool
!
Run, hide, change your name, leave town
!

    “Ty-rone! Was that
Bella
you were talking to?”

    Tyrone stared at Jimmy Joe. All he could do was nod stupidly.

    “Man! Way to go,
Ty-rone
! Studly Dudley! Oh, and congratulations on getting your black belt, too.”

    Tyrone frowned at Jimmy Joe. “What? What black belt?”

    “The one you’re gonna need when Bonebreaker finds out you’re trying to complete a hot circuit with Bella. Either that, or a gun. Me, I’d want the gun.”

    “I wasn’t trying to make a circuit! She just stopped to ask me something! To help her with her Basic Cee stuff!”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “No, really! She gave me her number, I’m supposed to call her, we’re going to get together later, to-to… uh…”

    “Somewhere private, like, say, oh,
her
place?” Jimmy Joe prompted.

    “Oh, man. Oh, no.”

    “Oh, yeah. Here’s how I scenario it: Bonebreaker drops by, sees you leaning over Bella’s tasty shoulder with your hand on her… mouse, and it’s
sayonara
, Tyrone-san.”

    “Ah!”

    “Well, maybe not. You could, you know, get too busy to help her.”

    “Right. And she gets pissed off and tells Bonebreaker I insulted her, and
then
he kills me.”

    “Sounds like a no-win situation, all right.”

    “Why are you
smiling
?! This is not funny, Jimmy Joe!”

    “Depends on where you’re sitting, don’t it? Listen, if you’re gonna die anyhow, you might as well enjoy yourself, right? Be a happy man when you discom.”

    “I think I need to go to the bathroom,” Tyrone said. Suddenly, he needed to do that
real
bad.

    Jimmy Joe’s barely suppressed chuckles followed him down the hall.

    

    
Friday, October 1st, 9:45 p.m. Grozny

    VR gear removed, Plekhanov sat in his chair, breathing hard. How had that American Net Force operative gotten so close so fast? Yes, he had stopped him, wrecked his program, but that had been too near a miss. It shouldn’t have happened.

    He blew out a sigh and calmed himself. Well. He was the best, but there had to be a second- or third- or tenth-best. The reason for the attacks on Net Force’s Commander and its operations had been to keep their decent programmers busy elsewhere. Their best were not in his class, of course, but at the highest levels, skills were not galactic leaps apart. No, the top players were dangerous. If one of them happened to be in the right place at the right time, it could be a serious problem.

    He rubbed at his eyes. He’d been spotted by the opposition. Of course, there hadn’t been any real danger, he’d had his escape route planned, and several ways to discourage pursuit had the first one failed, and it had
not
failed. The reason those safeguards had been put in place was for just such an unlikely happenstance. He had escaped, had he not? The boy, that naturalized-American Thai orphan-what was his name? Groly? Gridley?-was a hotshot, but however fast his hands, he did not have the experience. Put the two of them into a VR ring with gloves on, and the boy would have an edge, but the Marquis of Queensbury rules did not apply in this arena. When the guidelines did not hobble them, the old and treacherous beat the young and quick every time…

    Still, he would exercise even more caution. The perfect crime was not in getting away once you’d been spotted; the perfect crime was one nobody ever knew had been committed. That had never been in the cards for this venture, but outrunning a pursuer was not nearly as good as staying out of his sight. He would have to work on that.

    Meanwhile, the trips to Belarus and Kyrgyzstan were next on the agenda. He would continue to sow; soon, he would reap.

    

    
Friday, October 1st, 4:02 p.m. Quantico

    Michaels’s boss was on-line, and what he had to convey was not happy news.

    “The President is concerned, Alex. It’s been more than three weeks.”

    “I am aware of that, sir.” He was also aware of how stiff his voice was.

    Walt Carver had not risen to FBI Director by missing the nuances. He said, “Don’t get your back up. I’m just pointing out something you already know. The politics here makes all the difference.”

    “I understand,” Michaels said.

    “We need a victory,” Carver continued. “It doesn’t have to be a major one, just something we can wave at the big dogs to keep them from gnawing on us. Sooner you come up with something, the better, and when I say sooner, I’m talking about a couple of days.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “I’ll keep the Senate committee off your butt, but I need something on Day’s murder by Monday. Tuesday at the latest.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    After Carver disconnected, Michaels stood. He needed to move, to burn off some of this nervous tension. It wasn’t enough that he’d almost been killed last night. Now he had the damned President of the United States after his hide. If he didn’t come up with something, he’d be dead in this town; if the powers that be thought he was a sludge, he could kiss his career good-bye.

    Well, fine. He loved the work, it was satisfying, but hell, he could get another job, that wasn’t the problem. As long as he got Steve Day’s killer before they threw him out, he could live with it. He hadn’t wanted to sit in the damned chair in the first place-not given the cost.

    He felt a sudden urge to call his daughter. He glanced at the time. Just after four p.m. here, but Idaho was a couple hours earlier. Would she be home from school yet? He didn’t know. He should know, but he didn’t. Did she have a beeper? He shook his head. He didn’t know that, either. And even if she did, he wouldn’t want to upset her by buzzing her in class. She’d worry, and what would he tell her when she called? Hi, honey. Guess what-Daddy almost got killed last night and probably is going to lose his job.

    Yeah, right. There was nobody he could tell about this, even if he’d really wanted to tell somebody. And he didn’t want to tell anybody. He wasn’t going to whine about how tough life was-that never solved anything and nobody wanted to hear it anyhow.

    He was too nervous to sit still. Maybe he should go to the gym and work up a sweat. It wouldn’t hurt anything, might make him feel better. And sometimes exercise cleared his head out enough so he got some good ideas. Sure, a session on the multiplex machine might be worthwhile. What the hell, he sure wasn’t getting anything done sitting here.

    Being stuck as an administrator, he had discovered, wasn’t much fun.

    

    
Friday, October 1st, 4:42 p.m. Quantico

    Jay Gridley walked into the VR Cane Masters store in Incline Village, Nevada. Given his choice, he would rather be hunting the robber in New Orleans, but the programmer would have to wait. He had gotten a good look at the guy’s vehicle, a feel for how he moved, and after backwalking the heist, he had a handle on the guy’s MO. Some things you could hide, some things tended to stand out. Mostly, it was style that separated one good programmer from another, and Gridley knew one thing: If he found the guy’s trail again, he would know him when he caught up with him. That was a big advantage, and he meant to jump on it as soon as he could.

    But somebody had tried to kill his boss last night and that took precedence.

    Inside the store, there were racks of gleaming, polished oak and hickory and walnut canes lined up neatly on the walls. Other martial-arts weaponry made from wood, too-staves,
escrima
sticks, plus exercise rubber bands, videos, books, jackets and T-shirts with “Raising Cane” on them.

    An attractive Chinese woman behind the counter smiled at Jay, who had the weapon used in the assault on Alex Michaels tucked under his arm.

    “Help you?” the clerk said.

    Gridley handed the cane to her. “Is this one of yours?” He already knew it was, having gone through product descriptions and.GIF files of all the commercial cane manufacturers in North America until he’d found a match.

    The woman examined the cane. “Yes, it’s the Instructor’s model, in hickory. Is there a problem with it?”