Net Force (28 page)

    There were two troopers still walking the sand when Howard got there. Newbies tended to think they could run in the old boot prints and get home free, and if the mines had been real, that would have worked. But the traps reset randomly every two minutes, and stepping where somebody had gone before might earn you fouls. You couldn’t be sure.

    You couldn’t learn a pattern, because Howard had his techs change it every week or so.

    Again, steady was the key. Try to hurry, and you’d get sonicked good. Too slow and you started worrying, seeing traps where there weren’t any.

    He stepped into the sand.

    Forty seconds later, he was clear, without triggering a sonic blast, and feeling pretty good since he had passed one of the troopers in the sand and caught the other on the way to the final obstacle.

    The last test this day was Sergeant Arlo Phillips, a six-foot-four-inch 240-pound hand-to-hand-combat instructor. Phillips’s role was simple: You tried to get past him to slap a buzzer button mounted on a post in the middle of a white circle marked on the soft ground; he tried to knock you out of the circle before you did it. Troopers were only allowed to enter the circle one at a time, and if you got thrown out, you had to go back to the end of the line and try it again. While your timer stopped when you reached the circle-your belt transponder clicked it off when you lined up in the quay zone-and resumed only as long as you were
in
the circle, this was where most testees hurt their scores. The combat instructors did not like to lose. They took turns in the circle, and they were all good, but Phillips was strong, skilled, and he loved this. One-on-one, face-up, Phillips would hand you your head if you tried to outmuscle him. There were troops who swore they’d seen Phillips lift and pivot the front end of a Dodge pickup truck into a too-tight parking space. The only way to beat him was to keep out of his range, and that wasn’t easy.

    When Howard’s turn came, he went straight in at Phillips, jinked left, then right, faked high, then dived to the left and rolled. Phillips got his hand on Howard’s right ankle as he came up, but too late-the colonel swatted at the buzzer, barely brushed it with his fingertips as Phillips jerked him prone on the ground. It was enough-the buzzer went off. His timer stopped, his run over.

    “You got officers’ luck, sir,” Phillips said.

    Howard rolled up, brushed himself off and grinned at the larger man. “I’ll take it. Better to be lucky than good.”

    “Yes, sir.” Phillips turned away. “Next!

    Howard walked around to where Fernandez and a couple of techs were scoring the exercise.

    “You must be getting old, Colonel, sir. You’re gonna come in third.”

    “Behind…?” He pulled off his headband and used it to wipe the sweat from around his eyes.

    “Well, sir, Captain Marcus is first by a good sixteen seconds. You missed him throwing Phillips with that jujitsu move he likes.”

    “And second…?”

    Fernandez grinned. “Modesty forbids, sir.”

    “I don’t believe it.”

    “Well, sir, I was first up.”

    “How long?”

    “Two seconds faster than you,” Fernandez said.

    “Jesus.”

    “I do believe He favors me, yes, sir.”

    “If you were first up, you should have flown through the minefield.”

    “I stopped to have a beer, sir. Since I figured I had plenty of time and all.”

    Howard shook his head and grinned. “How are they doing?”

    “Pretty good overall. I’d put all our AI boys-and girls-up against any SpecForce outside of maybe the SEALs’ best, and they’d give
them
a pretty good run.”

    “Carry on, Sergeant.”

    “Sir.”

    Howard walked toward the new officers’ dressing room-hell, it was all new, none of this had even been here a few years ago-to change his clothes. If he hurried, he’d just have time to get home and join his wife in time for church.

    

    
Sunday, October 3rd, 8:45 a.m. In the air over Marietta, Georgia

    Mora Sullivan looked through the jet’s window at the ground far below. She had both of the first-class seats to herself this flight, and that was not due to chance-she usually bought two tickets to each destination, in case she needed to change identities before she boarded the flight.

    Coach was only half full, so nobody was getting a free upgrade to take the empty seat next to her.

    Fall colors were up-the hardwoods in the Georgia mixed forests below were shades of orange and yellow and red among the evergreen pine trees. She tended to sleep on plane trips, but she was too awake and edgy for that this morning.

    During all her years in the biz, she had only deleted two of her own clients. The first, Marcel Toullier, had been for a contract from a different client six months after she’d worked for the Frenchman; being one of her clients did not confer immunity, and it had been strictly business, nothing personal. She’d liked Toullier.

    The second deletion, the gun dealer Denton Harrison, had been because Harrison had done stupid things and gotten himself arrested. The authorities had enough on him to put him away for fifty years, and Sullivan knew he was a talker, he’d be willing to give up what he knew to stay out of prison. Sooner or later, Harrison might have gotten around to mentioning that he had hired the Selkie. The numbers he had for her were, of course, dead ends, disconnected and untraceable, but the authorities did not know for certain there even
was
such an assassin. She did not want them to find out.

    Wearing class-two body armor, on his way to a safe house, Harrison had come out of a courthouse in Chicago, surrounded by federal marshals.

    She had made the shot from six hundred yards. Class-two Kevlar didn’t much slow the sniper rifle’s.308 bullet: it had punched through Harrison’s aorta and left a fist-sized hole in his back when it exited his body. He was effectively dead before the sound of the shot reached him.

    And now there was Genaloni.

    A flight attendant came by. “Coffee? Juice? Something else to drink?”

    “No, thank you.”

    Did she have to take the crime lord out?

    If she had reflexively thought she must, she would hardly be any better than he was. Yes, she had to do
something
, and since what she did for a living was delete people, that was where her strength lay, and naturally, she had to consider that an option. But there were other ways. Having made the decision that it was time to retire, all the old IDs, the houses and rentals, all of those were going away. She could lay a trail that ended in a car crash or other accident that would convince any pursuers she was dead. Or she could set Genaloni up for some criminal rap and know he’d get put away. He would still wield power from a prison cell, of course, these guys always did, but he’d have other things on his list. Even somebody like Genaloni would probably forget about her after five or ten years in the gray-bar hotel.

    Men like Genaloni tended to die relatively young, or wind up in prison. They made a lot of enemies on both sides of the law, and the odds were that one of those enemies would get to them.

    Of course, there were ninety-year-old ex-mobsters rolling around in wheelchairs, sucking oxygen from portable bottles and pretending to be feeble or insane, who had beaten the odds. Old Mustache Petes who, despite the dangers, were still free.

    She sighed. Which was the best way to go? She had to decide pretty quick. After she paid for the lost dog at the kennel upstate, she’d go to her place in Albany and think about it.

    

    
Sunday, October 3rd, 1:28 p.m. Washington, D.C
.

    Tyrone stood at the door to Bella’s house, taking deep breaths, trying to calm himself. Yesterday’s session had gone pretty well. She was not a great net rider, but not that bad.

    Twice, she had brushed her hip against his. Once, when she reached across to grab a stylus, he had felt the weight of her breast on his arm.

    The memories might cool someday, but just at the moment, they did
not
help slow his pulse rate.

    He touched the buzzer.

    Bella opened the door. Today, she wore a less-revealing outfit-a sweatsuit. She had her hair pinned up, and she looked scrubbed fresh, smelled clean, and a little bit soapy.

    “Hey, Ty. I just got out of the shower. Sorry I look so undone.”

    There was an image he could imagine all too clearly, Bella in the shower. “No, no, you look fine,” he said. And he said it too fast, his voice too high. He was too stupid to live. Man!

    “Come in.”

    Upstairs, they donned VR gear and got started. He said, “Okay, let’s use my program today. You mind riding double on a big motorcycle?”

    “Nopraw,” she said. “Whatever you want to do.”

    Yeah, right. What he wanted to do had nothing to do with the net. No, sir, definitely not. But he said, “Okay. Here’s how scenario translates…”

    

    
Sunday, October 3rd, 9:45 p.m. Grozny

    Plekhanov settled in, lit his VR, then realized he still had not deleted the car program. The shiny blue Corvette sat parked at the curb in front of him. He mentally shook his head. He really should get rid of this thing. All right. As soon as he finished the little drive over to Switzerland, he would dump it. Definitely.

    

    
Sunday, October 3rd, 1:50 p.m. Washington, D.C
.

    Riding the Harley along the curvy road through the Swiss Alps, Tyrone yelled over the wind noise: “You see how this works? My program translates their programs into compatible visual modes. That truck over there? If we were in a water scenario, it would probably be a barge or a ship.”

    “But how does it do that?” Bella yelled.

    He glanced back at her. Her hair streamed free behind them, whipping back and forth in the wind.

    “Easy. If we’re in totally different modes, my program just overlays the other guy’s imagery. Angle and relative speeds will be the same-air, water, land, even fantasy. If we are in similar enough modes-like the truck is doing roads and not water or something else-my program will take his image and stet it, to keep the VR speeds up. Most people who meet pick one program or the other and use it. Otherwise, you get a couple of microseconds lag on the refresh rate.”

    “Ah, I see.”

    “That truck? It’s really a big info packet. It contains a lot of code, so it moves slow. Watch.”

    He twisted the throttle and the Harley’s powerful engine roared. They passed the lumbering truck, and whipped back in front of it as a car approached from the other direction.

    “Wheee!” Bella said.

    Oh, he liked the sound of that.

    “So this is all off-the-shelf software?”

    “Well, I’ve modified this one a bunch.”

    “You can do that?”

    “Sure. I could write one from zero, but it’s easier to alter an existing one.”

    “Could you show me how to do that? Write my own program?”

    “Yeah, sure, nopraw. It’s not that hard.”

    “Exemplary!”

    In that moment, Tyrone remembered talking to his father.
Offer the locals something they can’t get from your enemy
, he’d said. Although Tyrone didn’t really see Bonebreaker as an enemy, exactly, the old man was right. Tyrone had something LeMott didn’t have, a skill, a talent, and right at this moment, Bella wanted it. This was dee-eff-eff for sure, data flowin’ fine to the fourth power!

    They came to an intersection with a stop signal. CyberNation was to the left. Maybe he should take her there? It was interesting the few times he’d explored it, but they didn’t let you see the really good stuff unless you joined, and that wasn’t gonna happen. He could hear his father: “Give up your citizenship to join a computer country that doesn’t exist? I don’t think so.”

    Cross-traffic rolled past, and Tyrone was so much in his own head that he almost missed the Vette when it zipped across the intersection.

    Almost. A mental alarm went off. Corvette… Corvette… what-?

    Oh, yeah, Jay Gee’s bulletin in yesterday’s Email. Keep your eyes open for a young guy in a business suit driving a blue Vette.

    The car was past before he had a chance to see the driver, and there were two cars and a small van lined up in front of Tyrone at the light. Probably it was nothing.

    On the other hand, maybe it was something. He ought to at least check it out, right? And if Bella asked, he’d have to tell her why, wouldn’t he?

    Bonebreaker wasn’t helping out a major federal agency, was he?

    Tyrone tapped the Harley’s gears into first and gave it a little gas. He pulled over onto the shoulder and zipped past the waiting cars, earning a couple of horn blasts for his trouble.

    “Whoa! Is this legal?”

    “Well, not really,” Tyrone said, “but we gotta do it.” They reached the corner, and he leaned into it, straightened it out, upshifted and goosed the bike. “You see that blue Vette up there?”

    “Yeah?”

    “I need to check it out. I’m, uh, helping out a buddy of mine at Net Force.”

    “Net Force? Really?”

    “Oh, yeah. Jay Gridley, he’s their top computer guy. I do stuff for him every now and then.”

    “Wow. Exemplary, Ty!”

    Was that his imagination, or did she tighten her grip around his waist a little?

    “Can we catch him?”

    “Nopraw. There’s not much that can outrun me in this scenario. Hang on.”

    Definitely, she was holding him tighter.
Yes
!

    

    
Sunday, October 3rd, 9:58 p.m. Grozny