Net Force (3 page)

    She wanted to reach out, to put her hand on his arm, to help him carry the sudden load of pain she knew he shouldered, but she held her ground. It would not be appropriate here and now, she knew, and she did not want him to close that door, to turn away from her if she offered comfort. He was a good man, but he kept himself bottled up, never let anybody get too close. If she was ever going to slip past his iron wall, it would have to be with the greatest of care and subtlety. And, she knew on some level, it would be unfair to use the death of his friend to do it.

    “I’ll go with Porter to the lab,” she said.

    He nodded, but otherwise did not respond.

    

    Michaels stood in the middle of a run-down street in the middle of a run-down night, beset with the stink of burned gunpowder, hot camera lights and death, the sounds of police radios and working investigators, the buzz of onlookers held at bay by bored street cops. In the background in the distance, the whine of a maglev passenger train passing at speed, dopplering its way toward Baltimore.

    
Steve Day was dead
.

    It hadn’t really sunk in yet. He’d seen the body, seen that the light behind Day’s eyes was gone, leaving nothing but a shell, a hollow form where nobody lived any longer. Intellectually, he knew it, but emotionally, he was numb. He’d known other people who had died, some of them close to him. The reality of it never became true until days, weeks, months later, when you realized they were never going to call or write or laugh or show up at your door with a bottle of champagne again.

    Dammit, somebody had put out a good man’s lights, snuffed him like a blown-out match, and all Alex Michaels was left with at this moment was the heat of his own anger. Whoever had done it was going to pay-he was going to make it happen if it was the last thing he ever did!

    He sighed. There was nothing else to be done here. The killers would be a long way away by now, and all the door-knocking and witness-interviewing wouldn’t turn up anything immediately useful. The shooters weren’t hiding in one of the run-down buildings, and even with a photographically accurate description of the assassins, it wouldn’t do the investigators much good-they wouldn’t be locals. The public didn’t know it, but professional killers seldom got caught. Nine out of ten icemen who
were
caught were turned in by the people who’d hired them, and Michaels didn’t see that as very likely in a high-profile operation such as this. Those responsible would know the authorities would not be satisfied merely with locking up triggermen. Nobody would be giving up
anybody
in this kind of deal. If this was a mob job and the bosses got nervous, the shooters would likely disappear into a lime pit two kilometers past the end of the road in Nowhere, Mississippi. And maybe the guys who shot
them
would go away, too.

    Net Force had access to the highest technological resources on the planet, the fastest computers on the net, a wealth of information beyond measure. The agents on-line and in the field were also the best and brightest, culled from the cream of the FBI, the NSA, the nation’s top universities and police and military agencies. And none of it would help if the assassins hadn’t made some kind of mistake. If Net Force didn’t get some kind of break. Michaels had been in the business too long to try to pretend otherwise.

    Then again, even professional killers weren’t perfect.

    Now and then, they did slip up. And if they’d made the slightest slip here, something so small it could only have been seen with an electron microscope, Alex Michaels was going to move the entire solar system if necessary to find it.

    His virgil cheeped.

    “Yes?”

    “Alex? Walt Carver.”

    Michaels let another small sigh escape. Walter S. Carver, Director of the FBI. He’d been expecting the call.

    “Yes, sir.”

    “I’m sorry about Steve. Anything to report?”

    Michaels gave his boss what they had. When he was done, Carver said, “All right. We’ve got a meeting with the President and his National Security Team at 0730 at the White House. Put together what we’ve got. You’ll be doing the presentation.”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Oh, and as of now, you’re Acting Commander of Net Force.”

    “Sir, I-”

    Carver cut him off. “I know, I know, but I need somebody in the chair and you’re him. I don’t mean to sound dismissive of Steve’s death, but Net Force is responsible for a whole lot more than one man’s fate, no matter who he might be. Everybody will bump up a notch, Toni will take your old job. I’ll need the President to sign off on it, but we should be able to get you confirmed as Commander in a few days.”

    “Sir-”

    “I need you here, Alex. You aren’t going to let me down, are you?”

    Michaels stared at the virgil. He didn’t have any choice in this. Shook his head. “No, sir. I won’t let you down.”

    “Good man. I’ll see you in the morning. Try to get some sleep-you don’t want to sound like a zombie when you lay this out. Full assassination protocols are in effect, you understand?”

    “Yes, sir.”

    “Go home, Alex.”

    Michaels stared at his car, at the bodyguard and chauffeur who stood watching and waiting. He had a little over six hours to put together a presentation for the President of the United States and his hard-nosed security advisors-not to mention Alex’s own boss at the FBI-and supposedly get some rest, too. That last part sure wasn’t going to happen.

    He shook his head. About the time you thought you were in control, life sure had a way of setting you straight.
Think you’re in charge, pal
?
Here, chew on this: Your immediate superior just got murdered, probably by the Mob, you just got promoted, and tomorrow, a presentation to the most powerful man in the world will probably make or break your career. How does that make you feel
?

    “Like shit,” Michaels said aloud.

    A traffic cop nearby said, “Excuse me?”

    “Nothing,” Michaels said.

    He headed for his car.

    “Home, Commander?” his driver said.

    
Commander
.

    The driver already knew about the promotion. Well. One thing was certain. Michaels was damn sure going to use that promotion to take care of this business. Steve Day was his friend.

    Wrong. Day had
been
his friend. Michaels wasn’t going home, no matter how tired he was.

    “No. To the office.”

    

    
Wednesday, September 8th, 11:19 a.m. Grozny, Chechnya

    Vladimir Plekhanov wiped some of the ever-present dust from the inside of his window and looked down upon the city. Despite the installation of air conditioners and weekly visits from a cleaning woman, there seemed always to be a layer of powder everywhere, fine as talcum, but much darker. Of course, the dust was just dirt now. He remembered a time when much of it had been soot from the crematoriums, the remains of soldiers, civilians and invading Russians. That was a long time ago, almost twenty years, but as he grew older he spent perhaps more time in his room of old memories than he should. Well. Even though he had much to live for yet, and a most rewarding future in mind, he was sixty and should be allowed a glance backward from time to time, yes?

    From his vantage point in the corner office on the sixth floor of the Computer Wing of the Science Building-formerly, and briefly, the Military Headquarters Building-he had a good view. Here was the new downtown bridge over the Sunzha River; way over there, the massive Makhachkala Pipelines, delivering their ever-more-precious black fluid to the waiting tankers on the Caspian Sea. Just there, the remains of the barracks where Tolstoy had served as a young soldier. And there, in the distance, the Sunzha Range of the mighty Caucasus.

    As cities went, this one was not bad. It was hardly a village-nearly half the population of the entire country lived here-but even so, at less than three quarters of a million people, it was not an overly large city. And in a beautiful country it was.

    Oil was still the lubricant that ran Grozny’s economy, though it was running out, bleeding away faster than it could have been replaced by ten thousand dinosaurs dying and instantly rotting each day-a thing even Steven Spielberg and all his movie magic could not provide. The flare stacks at the refinery ran day and night, spewing fire and smoke into the skies, but in the not-too-distant future those fiery towers would go dark. Chechnya needed a new base for its economy. A base that he, Vladimir Plekhanov, was going to provide. For even though he had been born a Russian, he was as much Chechen as any man…

    The sound of his computer’s telephonic program interrupted Plekhanov’s musings upon his Grand Plan. He turned away from the window, walked to the door of his office and smiled at his secretary, Sasha. He then closed the door quietly but firmly before turning to his state-of-the-art workstation. “Computer, sound dampers on.”

    The machine hummed and obeyed the vox command. “Dampers on,” it said.

    Plekhanov nodded at the machine, as if it could see and understand his gesture. It could not-but he could have programmed it to do so had he wished.

    “Yes?” he said in English. There was no visual mode on this line, nor would he have wished for one. Of course, the communication was secure-as secure as the best Russian military encryption program could make it. Plekhanov knew this because he himself had written the program under contract to the Russian Army, and there was no one likely to hear this communication remotely capable of breaking it. Perhaps some of the Net Force operatives might, but they would be… otherwise occupied just at the moment. He smiled. Still, he spoke English because Sasha had not two words of that language; nor did anybody likely to be passing by.

    “The job is done,” said the voice from thousands of kilometers away. It was Mikhayl, amusing himself by using the name Ruzhyo-thus, Mikhayl the Rifle. A violent man, but loyal, and most adept. The proper tool for the mission.

    “Good. I expected no less. Any problems?”

    “Nicholas unexpectedly decided to retire.”

    “How unfortunate,” Plekhanov said. “He was a good employee.”

    “Yes.”

    “Very well. You are moving into the new quarters?”

    “Yes.”

    Even though the link was encrypted, old habits died hard. Their
Spetznaz
days were long past, but still deeply ingrained. Plekhanov knew that the hiding place was San Francisco, so there was no need to say it aloud. Should some nascent mathematical computer genius manage to miraculously obtain a recording of this conversation-and even more miraculously, decode it-what would he have? An innocuous dialogue between two unidentified men, bounced off so many satellites and through so many relays as to be untraceable, filled with generalities so bland as to mean nothing. A job? Someone named Nicholas retiring? A move? There was nothing there.

    “Well. Continue as planned. I will contact you when further work is required.” He hesitated a moment, then realized one more thing needed to be said. Communism was dead and rightfully so, but the workers still needed approbation to feel a sense of accomplishment. A good manager knew this. “You did well,” Plekhanov said. “I am pleased.”

    “Thank you.”

    That ended the conversation.

    Plekhanov leaned back in his chair. The Grand Plan was progressing exactly as he had intended. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, it had begun small, but by the time it was done, it would be vast and unstoppable.

    He pushed the intercom buzzer on his desk. A few seconds passed, and nothing happened. He pushed the button again. Still no response. He sighed. The intercom was broken again. If he wanted tea, he would have to go and tell Sasha. He was on the way to being the most powerful man in the world and he had to work in an office wherein the simplest devices were in need of repair. He shook his head. That was going to change.

    And that would be but the smallest of changes…

    

    
Wednesday, September 8th, 7:17 a.m. Washington, D.C
.

    Alexander Michaels had felt better. As his chauffeur maneuvered the car toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he shuffled through the hardcopy printouts yet again, ordering his thoughts as best he could. The town car was bracketed fore and aft by bodyguard vehicles, governmental-gray cars whose drivers and passengers carried enough hardware to sustain a small war. The protocols were pretty clear about what must be done in the event of a high-level federal assassination. The genesis of these protective measures went all the way back to Lincoln. Most people didn’t realize that the murdered President had not been the sole target of Booth and his fellow plotters.

    Michaels had been to the White House several times, although always as a backup to Steve Day, never on the hot seat himself. And he had every scrap of information the FBI had on the assassination on tap, all duplicated on a small disk capable of holding gigabytes of material, nestled inside a coded plastic case, ready to load into the White House’s Secure System. Should something happen to him, anybody who tried to break open the disk’s case would be in for a hot surprise when ten grams of Thermoflex went up with enough heat to melt the case, the disk and the fingers of anybody stupid enough to be holding both.

    The White House Secure System was a set of special computers without any links to the outside world, along with state-of-the-art antivirals and sweepers installed, so once his information was installed there, it would be safe.

    Still, he was tired, had drunk too much coffee, and he wanted nothing more than to find a bed far away from all this and sleep for a week.

    
Well, too bad. That’s not what you signed on for, now is it
?