The Archimedes Effect Read online

  Mission failed. Try again?

  Jay checked the RW time. 12:45. If he didn’t quit now, he’d miss lunch. He looked at the game timer. 15:23. He could have made it if the damn guard hadn’t gotten him.

  Yeah. And if your aunt had wheels, she’d be a tea cart. . . .

  Screw lunch.

  He used his VR hand to reach for the try-again control, but had a sudden realization and stopped. Playing the game to win isn’t why you are here, monkey-boy. Did you forget that part?

  He shook his head.

  He had to hand it to the guy who’d put this together. It was easy to see why it had gotten the results it had—it was addictive. But what he needed to do was figure out who had built the scenario, and how to run him down—not beat the game. He was here to drain the swamp, not wrestle the alligators. . . .

  He smiled at himself. He could always play video games for fun. This was serious business. Best he remember that.

  11

  Huachuca City, Arizona

  The terrorist—or “freedom fighter,” depending on your sociopolitical or religious belief—Abu Hassan was a Palestinian by birth, but raised in the U.S. as Ibrahim Sidys. He took his war-nom from, of all things, an old Popeye cartoon about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. That’s not where it came from originally—the name was not at all uncommon—but that’s where he got it.

  Only in America . . .

  This Abu Hassan had never been a cartoon version of Bluto, but a cold-blooded killer responsible for the deaths of hundreds, in bombings, shootings, and even a couple of poisonings. For nine years he had led one of the most radical factions in the Middle East, and was wanted by just about everybody for capital crimes—even the Syrians hated him—for Abu Hassan did not discriminate when he dropped the hammer. Almost everybody was his enemy, and he had no problems with collateral damage if he got the job done. Allah would know his own, and as for the rest? Who cared?

  As it happened, one Sunday morning in May of 2012, Terry “Butch” Reilly, then a major in the United States Army, had been having coffee at a Starbucks just outside the old Green Zone when Abu Hassan’s group rolled up to machine-gun a police station across the street. Four cops and six civilians went down initially in the hosing, but something happened to Hassan’s Land Cruiser as it was pulling away—later it was shown that a return round, probably from an Iraqi policeman, penetrated the car’s hood and broke off a battery terminal. The car died and wouldn’t restart, and the assassins, five of them, piled out and took off on foot.

  Abu Hassan, waving an AK-47, ran into the Starbucks to obtain another automobile, assuming at least one of the patrons owned a car. Calm as you please, Major Reilly, in civvies and crouched low with the other patrons when the shooting started, drew his Beretta side arm from under a sleeveless fishing vest and put two rounds into Hassan from four meters away, one in the chest and one in the head.

  Apparently, nobody was more amazed at this action than Reilly, largely because he was, and had been throughout his military career, a paper- and photon-pusher—he worked in PR, information services, and was doing a tour in the “semiactive, advisor-status-only” war zone only because he couldn’t get any more rank without it. He hadn’t fired a gun since basic training, except for recertification once a year, and had barely qualified doing that.

  That the most wanted terrorist in the region was taken out by an armchair computer geek who barely knew which end of his weapon put forth the bullet eventually got much play in the press.

  When Reilly went over to make sure the terrorist wasn’t going to be getting up and shooting anybody, he saw that the dead man carried a pistol along with his AK. Quite a striking gun it was: a blued-steel Walther PPK .380, with ivory grips, hand-tuned, Butch would eventually learn, by a master gunsmith in Laredo, Texas. The gun, Butch would also find out, had been a present from a fellow terrorist who had once been very high up in the PLO and a close associate of the late Yasir Arafat.

  The major didn’t see as how Abu Hassan would be needing the piece any longer, and it would be a shame to have such a fine talisman wind up in some Iraqi evidence locker, so he stuck the gun into his pocket. If any of the stunned Starbucks patrons noticed, or cared, none said anything.

  Taking out one of the most wanted terrorists in the world in a one-on-one didn’t hurt an officer’s career any. A few months later, Major Reilly was promoted to Colonel Reilly, and eventually assigned a base command back in the States. This turned out to be one of the new high-tech installations built to house a partner organization for Fort Huachuca. The fort and the partner organization, coming up just ahead, were north of the Mexican border off SR 90, outside of Huachuca City, Arizona. Colonel Reilly’s command was responsible for information management, DISA, in conjunction with JITC, mainly interoperability C4I support, operational field assessments, and technical assistance to various combat commands and assorted related agencies.

  A buncha desk commandos, Carruth knew. Spin-controllers.

  But: Behind his desk on the wall, mounted in an oak shadowbox, Colonel Reilly kept a souvenir from his one active afternoon in the field—Abu Hassan’s pistol.

  All of this was public record, and Carruth had read about it, seen it on television, and heard stories about it when he’d still been in the Navy. Be in the right place at the right time, and even a pencil-neck could be some kind of accidental hero.

  There was still some residual shame amongst terrorists that the deadly Abu Hassan had been taken down by someone who was less than a glorious warrior. It was one thing to be Goliath slain by a sneaky and treacherous David fielding superior weaponry; it was something else entirely to be potted by David’s dweeby little four-eyed Starbucks-coffee-drinking brother.

  Despite the recent attacks, all you needed to get onto this particular base was a driver’s license, proof of car registration and insurance, and a copy of your orders or TDY. Carruth knew a printer who could make money that would pass, so ID was nothing.

  Carruth flashed his phony orders and ID, drove onto the base, made his way to the adjunct run by Reilly, flashed more phony orders there, and during lunchtime, just strolled down the hall as if he owned it to the colonel’s office.

  There was a keypad lock on the door, which was not much—he could have booted it open, but that would have set off an alarm. Since he had the code for the lock, which was supposed to be changed weekly, but which was changed maybe twice a year, Carruth just tapped in the combination and walked in.

  Security. What a joke.

  He took the shadowbox down, opened it, put the gun in his pocket, and replaced the stolen one with a BB-gun copy of a PPK he’d fitted with fake ivory grips. It wouldn’t pass inspection up close, but if you just glanced at it, you might not notice immediately. That could be fun, the next time the colonel showed it off:

  Abu Hassan was carrying a BB pistol when you shot him? What was his AK-47, a water gun . . . ?

  Carruth had to hand it to Lewis, this was brilliant. This particular trophy would be worth its weight in gold to a hard-core fanatic—it was practically a holy relic. . . .

  Carruth smiled as he left the office, the building, got into his car, and drove away. How easy was that?

  It was criminal, that’s what it was. Fucking Army.

  But the terrorist wannabe Lewis had on the line didn’t have to know how simple and easy it had been, now did he?

  Just in case nobody noticed the substitution until after he was long gone, Carruth would make an anonymous call, once Lewis had things set up. Not to Colonel Reilly, who might be disposed to keep the theft to himself, but to the news media. Lewis’s buyer would pick up on that quick enough. And he’d fall all over himself to give Lewis money once he saw the Walther. . . .

  Things were going along pretty good so far.

  Churchill, Virginia

  Kent pushed back a little from the table. “Best pasta I’ve ever had,” he said, smiling.

  Nadine Howard returned the smile. “Uh huh, I’m sure.”
/>   “Well, okay, best pasta I’ve had all week, then.”

  “Better,” she said.

  John Howard said, “I’ve got a couple of Cuban cigars left.” He looked at his wife. “Leave the dishes, hon, I’ll get them before I go to bed.”

  “Go smoke your noxious weed,” she said. “I’ll clean up.”

  Kent had given up cigarettes thirty-five years ago, and never gotten much into other forms of tobacco, but Cuban cigars two or three times a year probably weren’t going to kill him if they hadn’t yet. Plus he was living on borrowed time anyhow.

  “Don’t light them until you get into the garage,” Nadine said. “I’m not having my new house stunk up by those nasty things.”

  Howard and Kent both smiled.

  It was cold out, but Howard had put a little space heater in the garage, which had room for two cars but only held one, and there was an old couch and a couple of end tables with ashtrays on them there, too. He cranked the heater up and handed Kent a sealed, clear-plastic tube with a fat cigar, maybe twelve or fourteen centimeters long, inside. Kent broke the seal, and there was a whoosh of escaping gas.

  “Inert gas to keep it from going stale,” Howard said. “Helium or argon, something like that. Better than vacuum, so they say.”

  The aroma of the tobacco filled his nostrils.

  “Hermoso Number Four,” Howard said. “Hand-rolled from Havana. Got them from a British diplomat who buys in quantity.”

  “Thanks.”

  Howard produced a cutter they both used, then a wooden match, scratching it and allowing it to burn for a second before he lit Kent’s cigar, then his own.

  The two men stood there for a moment, puffing. The blue-gray smoke filled the air, wreathing their heads in the fragrant odor.

  “It’s a nice house,” Kent offered. “Big yard.”

  “We have to hire a gardener, come spring, to take care of it.”

  “Tyrone can’t mow the lawn?”

  Howard smiled. “When he comes home from Geneva. That exchange-student thing runs until June. If I wait until then to cut the grass, it’ll be knee-deep and full of weeds. I ain’t disposed to do it anyhow. I did enough of that as a boy. Easier on my back to hire somebody.”

  “Civilian consulting pays pretty well,” Kent observed.

  “Oh, boy, yes, it does. You want to chuck your jarhead job and get in the pool, the water is just fine. I can point you to some folks’d love to have an old warhorse like you educating them. Make two or three times what you make now.”

  Kent smiled at his friend. “If I had a wife and teenaged son, I might find that appealing, but I don’t need a house, and I don’t spend the money I make now. How much room you figure an old Marine requires?”

  Howard took another long drag from his cigar. He blew the smoke out in a big ring toward the ceiling. “You might get married again. Have some little ones running around to call you Daddy.”

  Kent laughed, nearly choking on the smoke as he did. “Yeah, right. Have somebody to push my wheelchair around when he gets out of grade school?”

  “You think you’ll make it that long, doing stuff like this?” Howard waved the cigar.

  Both men chuckled.

  “Nadine met this nice lady at church, just moved into the area. A widow, few years older than you, but a very nice personality, she says . . .”

  Kent laughed yet again. “Tell your wife I don’t need any help in that department.”

  Howard must have caught something in his tone. “Really? You dating somebody?”

  “Not exactly. I am seeing a woman, but it’s more of a . . . professional relationship.”

  Howard blinked.

  Kent let him worry about that for a couple of seconds. Then he grinned. “It’s not what you’re thinking, John. She’s a guitar teacher. I’m learning how to play the thing—after a fashion.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Well, if you heard me fumbling at it, you’d think it was a joke, but I am taking lessons. Twice a week.”

  “That’s not exactly the same as painting the town red, Abe.”

  “At my age, partying tends to be a little more reserved. Sitting in a nice, sturdy chair strumming a guitar is about my speed.”

  “You’re not that old.”

  “Come back and see me in fifteen years and say that. Assuming I’m still around.”

  “I will. Assuming I’m still around. You want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  Howard leaned over the couch.

  “You got a fridge out here?”

  “Just a little one,” he said.

  Kent shook his head.

  Howard produced two bottles of beer. “How’s the thing going on the Army base attacks?”

  Kent took one of the bottles, raised it in salute, and swigged from it. “How is it a civilian consultant knows about such things?”

  It was a rhetorical question. The old-boy network worked as well in the military as it did anywhere else. Howard had retired a general in the Army—well, technically, the National Guard, which had been running Net Force before the DoD took it over—but you didn’t get to that rank without knowing a lot of people you could swap information with, to your benefit and theirs.

  When Howard didn’t respond, Kent said, “Gridley is on their trail. He’s like the Royal Canadian Mounties—he always gets his man. Far as I can tell, anyhow.”

  Howard drank from his own beer. He held his bottle up. “To our men in uniform, including yourself.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  They drank. “So, tell me about this guitar teacher.”

  “Not much to tell. She’s about fifty. Divorced, plays well, teaches well. Says she has a cat.”

  “Anything romantic?”

  Kent shrugged. “She’s nice to look at.”

  “But you’re interested?”

  “I said I was old, not that I was dead.”

  “Gonna make a move?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Howard toked on his cigar, letting his silence speak to that.

  Kent took a couple puffs of his stogie. He had checked out Jen’s ex—at least he was pretty sure he had the right guy. There couldn’t be that many cello players named “Armand” who had recordings out and had just gotten married recently to a much younger woman. Or maybe there could and they didn’t have a presence on the net. He’d known a guy once, Ted McCall, who wrote a book about, of all things, barbed wire. Apparently there were thousands of different kinds produced over the years, and a bunch of folks snipped off foot-and-a-half pieces and mounted them on boards and collected them. Paid real money for some rare kinds. McCall had quite a collection, so he’d written a book about how to identify the various kinds. He’d called it Twist and Shout: Putting a Name to Unusual Varieties of Barbed Wire.

  One day, ole Ted had logged onto the Internet site that sold his book and tapped in his name to see how sales were doing. Up popped the title Barbed Wire Varieties, by Ted McCall. Look at that, he’d thought, the stupid sons of bitches had gotten his title wrong! He’d clicked on the link to see what else they’d screwed up, and found himself looking at a picture of somebody who wasn’t him. Seemed there was another Ted McCall who had written an entirely different book on the same subject. McCall wasn’t that uncommon a name, but what were the chances that there would be another man with the same name who was also a collector of fence wire and who had written a book on it? It boggled his mind.

  So it was possible that there were two Armands—or even more—who fit the bill, but it was highly unlikely. The closer the match, the more likely it was that this guy, this Armand, was Jen’s ex. So Kent had read all about him. There were some indications that Armand was “somewhat difficult” to work with, and something of a perfectionist, and that went with Jen’s description of him.

  Why had Kent bothered if he wasn’t interested in Jen? He wasn’t sure about the answer to that one.

  12

  Greenville, South Caroli
na

  “I’m glad we decided to drive,” Thorn said.

  “Good thing I know how,” Marissa said. They were in her SUV, a small and sporty Honda, with enough weight to make the ride comfortable, on the highway between Charlotte and Greenville.

  “Just because I don’t need a car doesn’t mean I never learned how. Having a chauffeur lets me get a lot of work done while I’m in transit.”

  “So would taking the bus or a train,” she said.

  “What, and ride with you rabble?”

  She laughed. “I’m glad to see you loosening up, sweetie. I’d sure hate to have my grandparents think you were a stick-in-the-mud. Bad enough you are so melaninly challenged.”

  “I’ll work on my tan,” he said.

  “Even with your Native American blood, you’re always gonna look like a pale pink sock mixed into a load of new blue jeans, at least around my family.”

  He chuckled.

  “You travel much by car before you got so rich and started taking private jets to buy your hamburgers?”

  Thorn smiled. “Oh, yeah. You want the condensed version? Or the full-length travelogue?”

  “Tell all, Tommy. We have a ways yet to go to Grandma’s house.”

  “Okay. When I was young and heading toward the height of my stupidity—this was the summer I turned thirteen, so I was still a couple years away—my grandfather took me on a road trip. Though our people were mostly from around Spokane, we had some distant cousins and great-aunts and -uncles who were Choctaw, and Grampa allowed as how I should meet them.

  “I don’t know if you know the history. Along with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, the Choctaw got rounded up and sent along the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, as part of the white man’s land grab. My distant relatives somehow managed to escape into the swamps along the way, down in Louisiana. There, they hid out and pretended to be black Dutch or something. Nobody ever came looking for them, people left them alone, and most of them became farmers or fishers. Nobody got rich, but nobody died cooped up on a dust-bowl rez in Oklahoma.