Tom Clancy's Net Force 6-10 (80 page)
“Wait right there,” the cop said. He walked back to his bike to do a radio and computer check.
The license wouldn’t come back on him, because he hadn’t done anything with it in Georgia, and the rental agreement at the car company matched the license, if they had any way of checking it. There was no way they would be hooked into a net that would let them access the Alabama Department of Transportation or whatever that fast, and even if they
could
, the fake was supposed to be good enough to come up no-want, no-warrant, and a legit name and number.
could
, the fake was supposed to be good enough to come up no-want, no-warrant, and a legit name and number.
He’d take the ticket, smile, and be on about his business.
The cop came back in a minute, and sure enough, he had a ticket book his hand, Junior’s fake license clipped to it.
But when the cop got there, he said, “You’re not carrying anything illegal in that car, are you, sir? No guns or explosives?”
“Me? No. Why would you say that?”
The cop said, “Can’t be too careful these days. You, uh, of Middle Eastern descent, Mr., uh, Green?”
Junior was insulted. “Do I look Arabic to you?”
“Well, sir, yes, you do a little.”
Junior almost blurted out that he was a Cajun, but that wouldn’t have been smart, since he was supposed to be a redneck named “Green” from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
“Well, I’m not. I’m as American as you, pal.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you, sir.”
“Yeah, well, you did. Just write the goddamned ticket and let me get on about my business, would you?”
That was a mistake. He knew it the second it left his mouth. It rubbed the cop the wrong way. Never tell a cop what to do, especially if you have the slightest whiff of ex-con on you.
“Step out of the car, sir.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Step out of the car.’ ”
That was bad. Junior was wearing the fishing vest over his T-shirt. If the guy patted him down, and he was definitely going to do that, he’d find Junior’s guns. Even though they’d be clean—a new barrel in the left one and a whole new one on the right since he’d shot anybody—well, except if he hit anybody at the bar. But even so, it would be an automatic trip to jail, and once they got his prints and started poking around, they’d realize pretty quick that Junior was not named “Green,” and who he really was. Felon, firearms, fake ID. That would be bad all the way around.
“Okay, okay, don’t get riled, I’m sorry. I’m getting out right now.”
The cop had his hand on his pistol, but it was still holstered, so Junior kept his hands raised and away from his body as he carefully and slowly stepped out onto the warm macadam.
The cop got a better look at him and nodded. “Assume the position,” he said. “You look like a man who knows it.”
“You got me wrong, officer. By the way, how’s your sister?”
The cop had time to frown, and when he saw Junior move, he pulled his piece, but Junior had the beat and he was faster. The guy was five feet away, he couldn’t miss.
Twice in the face—
pap! pap!
—and the cop went down. Lights went on inside the houses closest to them, and people started opening window shades and doors. It was a pretty good neighborhood, they probably didn’t hear a lot of shooting around here. Some of them had probably noticed the bike’s flashing lights when it had first pulled in.
pap! pap!
—and the cop went down. Lights went on inside the houses closest to them, and people started opening window shades and doors. It was a pretty good neighborhood, they probably didn’t hear a lot of shooting around here. Some of them had probably noticed the bike’s flashing lights when it had first pulled in.
Go, Junior, now!
He jumped back into the car and floored it.
As he drove away, he kept shaking his head. How much worse could things get?
32
Washington, D.C.
Jay was bugged. He’d spent several hours ripping apart his code for that superhero scenario he’d written, the one that he’d used to locate the inflow of CyberNation money into the country, and he just couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Which was what he’d expected, of course, except that he still couldn’t explain that weird patch of fog he’d run into, and Jay didn’t like things he couldn’t explain—especially not in code he’d written himself.
The problem was, he was almost out of options. The only other thing he could think of to try, now that his software had checked out, was replacing some of his hardware. He kept duplicates of most items on hand—he couldn’t very well tell Alex Michaels that some bad guy had gotten away because his DVD drive had broken down. He also tried to keep up with upgrades in the industry, both because it was his job and because it was his passion, and usually ordered new models as soon as he heard about them. With some companies, ones he’d worked with for years and had a lot of confidence in, he had standing orders to ship at least one unit of everything they made.
And there were a few companies he helped out by serving as a beta tester, getting a chance to try out some items before they were even ready to hit the general market.
It always helped to stay ahead of the game, especially in this business.
He’d gotten a new reeker in the other day, an Intellisense 5400 olfactory presence generator, guaranteed accurate to within 500 PPM, and he wanted to try it out. This seemed as good a time—and as good a reason—as any.
He opened the box. The new reeker was a little slimmer than the one he had, a brushed-aluminum finish with tiny air intakes and little nozzles where the chem was mixed to make smells.
He smiled as he looked at it, all shiny and modern and new. His best guess was that almost all this hardware would be gone within five years, replaced by direct stimulation of the brain through induction. In the meantime, however, you used what was available.
Jay moved back to his computer, removed the old one from his VR rig, and plugged the new one in. Pulling on his gear, he toggled his hardware-room scenario.
Instantly, he was in a huge space, dimly illuminated by hundreds of readouts—old analog dials, LED projections, backlit LCDs, and various screens. Over in the corner, under a large blue-neon nose-shaped icon, a red light was flashing. A computerized voice sounded an alert.
“Warning. New hardware detected. Initializing virus hardware check. Warning. New hardware detected—”
Jay snapped his finger and the voice went silent. A few seconds later, the drivers for the new reeker loaded, and he was ready to calibrate.
A green light shone near the nose.
“Let’s try some . . .
candy
,” Jay called out.
candy
,” Jay called out.
A moment later he was in a old-fashioned candy store, filled with hundreds of huge glass jars of every kind of sweet, tooth-rotting treat imaginable. He went to a container of fat red-and-white-striped peppermints and lifted the lid. The distinct smell of mint blossomed as he inhaled. Ah. Nice.
He took a deeper breath and was pleased to note an increase in the odor’s intensity.
Must have an airflow rate sensor
.
.
He tried several other pleasant-smelling jars, noting each time that the scent was as close to the real thing as he could recall.
After five minutes or so he decided it was time to try some other olfactories.
“Outdoors, swamp,” he said.
He stood in a swamp, looking out at cypress trees thick with Spanish moss. The trees weren’t as well rendered as they could have been—he would have done better if he’d written the calibration proj—but he was here for the smells, not the visuals.
The air had just the right combination of suffocating murkiness he remembered from his one trip to a real swamp. Jay was pretty much a VR guy, not much RW, but a VR programmers’ convention he’d attended in New Orleans back in the early days of VR had included a tour of the surrounding bayous as part of the “get it right, make it real,” theme of VR work. He’d been bitten probably ten or twenty times by mosquitoes while he’d sniffed, touched, and looked around the swamp, and had contemplated briefly going into another less nature-based life of coding.
But no. VR was the way—using human senses to interpret digital data. It worked with what nature had given man and extended it. Jay had always wanted to be at the cutting edge of things, and VR was it. So he’d put on anti-itch cream and gone back to the convention, and every time since he’d taken whatever tour was available for wherever that year’s meeting was.
He inhaled slightly and got a hint of woodsmoke. A thin breeze wafted against his face, and the smell intensified.
Nice. Good resolution on this hardware.
“Clear scenario, reload Pulp Hero.”
The scene flickered for a second, and suddenly he was at the New Jersey docks again, dressed as he had been when he’d traced CyberNation’s payment to the clerk when it had entered the U.S.
Let’s see—he’d been over
there
. . . .
there
. . . .
Jay moved across the rooftop, the cold wind blowing against him as he headed for the vantage point where he’d had the stinky fog glitch.
Got some soap for you, you dirty little glitch.
SOAP was an acronym one of his college professors had been fond of using. The man had repeated it so often it was just about the only thing Jay could recall about him. Old Doc Soap. The word’s letters stood for the steps taken while troubleshooting: Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan. Jay had found out later that his teacher had borrowed the method from the health profession, where it was used to assess a patient’s state of mind, but it served equally well in the tricky business of finding soft-and hardware bugs.
Subjective. What had happened? He’d been standing
here
, and a few tendrils of fog had drifted past. He’d reached out to touch them, and he’d been able to
feel
them, which wasn’t supposed to happen. Then he’d smelled something that made him think of a sewer. Bad feel, bad smell, not supposed to be there.
here
, and a few tendrils of fog had drifted past. He’d reached out to touch them, and he’d been able to
feel
them, which wasn’t supposed to happen. Then he’d smelled something that made him think of a sewer. Bad feel, bad smell, not supposed to be there.
Okay, so much for the subjective. Objective: He’d done a full check of drivers after the VR run and everything had been up to par. He’d also just finished checking out his own code and knew for sure that the problem wasn’t his fault. The properties of the fog object had
not
been set to stink, at least not in that particular way.
not
been set to stink, at least not in that particular way.
Assessment time. It wasn’t the drivers, it wasn’t the software, but there had definitely been a problem. So try a new reeker, which rolled him right into Plan.
Here we go
.
.
A thin tendril of fog rolled past, and as he had before, Jay reached out to touch it. This time there was no sensation other than a slight coolness on his fingers. The fog smelled a little like the ocean. Perfect.
So it had been the reeker after all. Another problem solved.
He snapped out of VR and disconnected his gear, and then decided that as long as he was working on his system, he might as well load another little item he’d gotten in the mail recently. This one was a small package sent to him by Cyrus Blackwell, a sensory artist and one of the best.
Cyrus took real-world scenery and collected it into VR: odors, tastes, visuals, feelies—everything. While it was true that Jay worked hard to get every detail right for his VR scenes, it helped sometimes to have the legwork done for him. He’d had Blackwell do a custom set of scans on a series of bank vaults for a robbery scenario he’d been planning.
Jay took the data cubes out of their media protectors and jacked them into the computer terminal he was using. He put his VR rig on again and went to a blank workspace.
This was supposed to be an analog for his next firewall breach, a huge bank that he was going to “rob.”
He called up the directory, and large red letters appeared in front of him. He scrolled them up until he saw what he wanted.
Interiors
.
.
An info blurb explained that the vaults and bank interiors were taken from several large metropolitan areas in both the U.S. and Europe. He reached forward and pulled out the VR thumbnails, tiny models that were slightly translucent so he could see inside of them.
There was one with gorgeous neoclassic columns on the exterior, and high-vaulted ceilings within. Jay threw it on the blank space in front of him and activated it. The tiny model grew rapidly in size, translucent walls giving way to RW textures, and Jay enjoyed the perceptual shift that made it seem as though
he
was getting smaller.
he
was getting smaller.
Suddenly he was inside of the bank. He could hear an air conditioner running, and there was a clean but not overpowering scent to the place. The ceilings were high, like something from a movie set, and a long row of teller cages stretched from one side of the large room to the other.
Perfect
.
.
Jay scrolled through the building, working his way to the vault. There was a set of stairs leading down to an underground chamber with a barred door in front of it.
No—I want something bigger
.
.
Jay brought up a list of individual items and scanned for vault doors. He popped out several that looked promising before he found one that he liked. It was a huge circle, maybe a foot or two thick at the center, with huge gears that had to be thrown by a large wheel before it would operate. The door was shiny chrome steel, an ultramodern crimestopper that had just the look he wanted.
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