Point of Impact nf-5 Read online

  A warrior with, she had to admit, some control issues.

  Now a big, fat, pale, pregnant warrior with control issues, hey?

  Shut up!

  Putting scratches and itty-bitty dots on fake ivory instead of kicking ass. Some warrior.

  Tears rose and threatened to spill, but Toni angrily wiped her eyes. No. She wouldn’t give in to this emotional turmoil. Hormones, that was all it was, goddamned hormones! She’d learned how to control PMS, and she never let her periods keep her from work or working out. She could beat this, too! It was a matter of will!

  Sure, sure, it is, as long as you watch out for peg-legged guys with eye patches carrying harpoons, whale-girl. Thar she blows!

  She was more angry than she was anything, but now the tears did flow, and she couldn’t stop them.

  The com chirped. She stared at it. It kept on cheeping. Finally, she picked it up.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi, babe, it’s me. How are you doing?”

  Alex. Oh, boy. Was that the wrong thing for him to say.

  “I hate my life,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to say anything. She had more. Much more.

  15

  Quantico, Virginia

  “You want me to go along on a drug raid?” John Howard said.

  Michaels nodded. “Yes. We have a vested interest here, even though it is officially a DEA matter. I just got off the com with Brett Lee. They are willing to allow a Net Force liaison to tag along… if he’s field-qualified. In the interests of interagency cooperation, of course.”

  “Let me see if I can translate that. We need credit for this, right?”

  “Damn straight. This is going to be a high-profile bust. There is a lot of interest in catching these folks, from way up the food chain. When the media figures out what this is connected to, we don’t want to be left out in the cold. You standing there conspicuously in your Net Force blues on the six o‘clock news will make sure nobody accidentally ‘forgets’ to mention that it was us who located this evildoer and gave his location to the DEA.”

  Howard smiled. “You’re getting a lot better at this political in-fighting, Commander.”

  “I’d say thank you, but I’m not sure I consider that a compliment.”

  Howard shrugged. “Goes with the job. Same with any organization. Once you get above the rank of major in the army, most of what you do requires one eye on the chain of command, the other eye on the internal and external politics affecting your unit. Makes it hard to see what you actually want to accomplish. You don’t watch out for us, you sure can’t expect anybody else to do it. Certainly not the DEA or NSA.”

  “I wouldn’t order you to do it. Strictly voluntary, General.”

  “Well, sir, I’d be happy to go along and help our fellow crime fighters take down this dope peddler. It’s been a little slow around here anyway.”

  “Knock on wood,” Michaels said, rapping his desktop. “In case there are any bored angels watching who want to give us something to worry about.”

  “Amen.”

  * * *

  After Howard left, Michaels’s secretary told him he had a call.

  “From?”

  “Gretta Henkel.”

  “Why do I recognize that name?”

  “She’s the CEO and largest shareholder of Henkel Pharmaceuticals, which is headquartered in Mannheim, Germany.”

  Michaels rolled his eyes. Jesus, word was definitely out about this drug thing. He reached for the phone.

  The conversation didn’t take long, and when it was done, Michaels leaned back in his chair and shook his head. Ms. Henkel, of Henkel Pharmaceuticals, the largest European drug manufacturing company and the fourth largest in the world, had offered him a job.

  Ostensibly, Ms. Henkel was looking for somebody to run their computer security department, and who better than the man who ran the computer security service for the United States government? She had, she had said, heard great things about him. Would he be interested in speaking with her personally about this? She could have one of the corporate jets pick him up and fly him to Mannheim for a chat. She mentioned a starting salary that translated to roughly four times what he was making as a government employee, plus stock options and a medical and retirement package that would, in twenty years, make him a fairly wealthy man. He could also bring two or three of his best people with him if he elected to accept the job, of course, and with hefty increases in their salaries, too.

  It was tempting to think her offer was exactly what she said. A recognition of his ability to manage a complex technical operation. An offer tendered on merit. A deserved and great opportunity.

  Michaels smiled at that. He had never considered himself the brightest light on the string, but neither had he thought he was the dimmest.

  What this was about, of course, was this damned purple capsule everybody wanted so badly. Probably Ms. Henkel wanted it to move her company from fourth largest to third or maybe even first place. Or maybe she wanted it so the Germans could gear up for another war with supersoldiers. It didn’t really matter. But she was assuming that if she paved a road with platinum for him to get there, Michaels would bring the secret of the stuff with him. It would be interesting to see if the job offer became real if he didn’t happen to have that information at hand or didn’t want to give it up. Or even how long his new job would last if he did.

  He smiled again as he thought about telling Toni: “Hi, honey, I’m home! Guess what. We’re moving to Germany!”

  Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles…

  He chuckled at that thought.

  He’d declined the offer with appropriate regrets and thanked Ms. Henkel politely.

  Whatever the hell was in that mysterious capsule must be very interesting indeed.

  Beverly Hills, California

  He could have requisitioned a Net Force jet, but having risen on merit as a colonel in the regular army before taking command of the Net Force military arm, John Howard had a few friends still active in other services. An old Air Force buddy who had likewise risen high in the ranks got him second seat on a fighter going across the country. The training flight had to refuel midair, of course, but since it didn’t land, Howard was more than two hours ahead of Mr. Brett Lee’s commercial flight and waiting at the airport for him when he got off the plane. A small victory but worth the effort for the look on the face of a man who had left Washington, D.C., an hour before Howard had and well knew it.

  Lee filled him in on details as they drove toward Beverly Hills.

  “The suspect’s name is George Harris Zeigler, age thirty-one.” He looked at Howard as if expecting some response, but the name didn’t mean anything to him, and Howard said so.

  “He’s a fairly well-known actor,” Lee said. “A pretty boy who plays action heroes, has the teenage girls all hot for him. They call him the Zee-ster.”

  “There you go,” Howard said. “I’m neither teenage nor female. And not much of a movie fan.”

  “In any event, we have the warrants, and our surveillance teams have him at home. He lives in a big, gated estate in Beverly Hills.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “We’re going in hot and fast. We need to do this quick enough to get samples of the drug. He has bodyguards and a commercial security system. It is unlikely he is the chemist. He flunked out of high school before becoming an actor, but we think he either sells or gives the stuff to his friends, especially his female friends. He doesn’t need the money; he gets fifteen or twenty million dollars each for the movies he stars in. And you’ve never heard of him?”

  “I guess I need to get out more,” Howard allowed.

  Lee glared but then forced a smile. It was his operation, and he would be giving Howard his assignment. He’d have the last word. “You will be assisting the agents covering the garage, ” he said. “In case Mr. Zeigler decides to try to escape. It’s a twelve-car garage, but he only has ten in it at the mom
ent. The usual toys, including a Ferrari, a Land Cruiser, a Ford Cobra, a Dodge Viper, and a couple of antique Rolls-Royces.”

  “Must be nice. How many agents do you have going into the house?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Ah. Well, if he gets past you, we’ll do our best to try to stop him.”

  Lee didn’t speak to that, and Howard leaned back in the seat, looking out the window. Smoggy out here today. Big surprise.

  When they got to the staging area, a local park, Howard pulled his gear out of his tactical duffel bag. He had his side arm, the Medusa, his blue coveralls, and the spidersilk vest with “Net Force” stenciled in big phosphorescent yellow letters across the back. He strapped on his revolver, slipped into the coveralls, and tabbed the vest into place. It was class-one armor with full side panels and a crotch drape. The tightweave silk and overlapping ceramic plates would stop any handgun round and most rifle bullets, assuming the shooter went for the body and not the head or legs. Somehow, he didn’t think an actor who let himself be called the Zee-ster would be doing much blasting. Rich folks generally fought with lawyers, not firearms. And his chances of getting past a whole slew of DEA agents armed with subguns were slim and snowball.

  Howard had wanted to bring his old Thompson, the ancient.45 submachine gun his grandfather had gotten when he was an unofficial deputy in the preintegration days, but he thought that might be a bit ostentatious in front of the cameras. And there were sure to be news copters flitting around pretty quick in this kind of operation. Dead-eye John Howard and his Chicago typewriter might not provide the image Net Force wanted.

  During the briefing, Howard memorized the maps, met the two agents who’d be watching the garage with him — their names were Brown and Peterson, a tall woman and a short man, respectively. Lee, despite his quick fuse, gave a pretty good sitrep and assignment layout. Everybody synchronized their watches and slipped into tactical radio headphones set to a narrow-band opchan. Whatever the DEA’s political agendas, they had done enough drug busts to know how to enter a secured residence efficiently.

  They’d borrowed a tactical truck from the local police force, and it went through the heavy steel gate as if it were paper. The cars followed the truck in, five vehicles, and made for their assigned locations. Howard wasn’t sure, but it seemed to him there were more than sixteen agents leaping from cars and hurrying toward the house.

  Brown, Peterson, and Howard alighted and moved to the garage. Brown had an electronic master key she triggered, and the signal worked; the garage doors rolled up, all six of them.

  Peterson moved to stand behind the door from the garage into the house, his handgun pointed up by his ear.

  Brown crouched behind the car closest to the door, a seventies Charger, a muscle car lovingly painted in maybe twenty hand-rubbed coats of metalflake candy-apple red. Be a shame to see that paint chipped by a bullet, Howard thought.

  He looked around. Which car would he take if he was in a real hurry? Probably the Cobra. Nah, better would be the Viper, which was essentially a rocket with wheels. They’d have to use roadblocks; nobody would be catching that sucker from behind.

  He walked over to the Viper and looked into the little convertible. Had to be a real wood dash and steering wheel. Hello? What’s this?

  Lying in plain view on the passenger seat was one of those zippered plastic bags, like for sandwiches.

  Inside the bag were four big purple capsules.

  Howard grinned. Son of a bitch!

  Brown and Peterson were intent on the door. Orders from Lee rattled over the operations channel on the headset. They had crashed the front door, after some effort, and were entering the residence.

  Howard reached down, picked up the bag, opened it, and shook one of the capsules into his palm. He looked at the two DEA agents. He could have been invisible as far as they were concerned.

  He slipped the cap into his coverall pocket, zipped the bag closed, and dropped it back onto the car seat.

  The sounds of fully automatic weapon fire and Lee screaming over the headset came simultaneously: “Return fire, return fire!”

  Well. Looked like the bodyguards were earning their money.

  More full-autos came on-line. The DEA assault team carried MP-5s, and the distinctive sound of those chattered, joining the other guns. All pistol-caliber stuff, Howard thought, nothing loud enough to be rifle. The suspect’s bodyguards must have MAC-10s, Uzis, something like that. Didn’t sound like H&Ks.

  “… all available agents, they’re heading for the kitchen!”

  The kitchen, Howard recalled from the maps, was just up a short hall from the garage.

  Brown and Peterson took this as a sign they should go in. Peterson jerked the door open, Brown stepped in, pistol leading. They didn’t look for Howard but vanished into the house.

  Howard, whose side arm was still in the holster, considered his options. If sixteen DEA agents couldn’t take out a pretty-boy movie star and his bodyguards, he wasn’t going to be able to add much firepower. He’d stay right here, just like he’d been assigned.

  More shots echoed from the house. Somebody screamed, two or three different voices.

  “Shit!”

  “Fuck!”

  “Ow, ow, I’m shot!”

  Ten seconds later, a man emerged from the house into the garage. In one arm gathered to his chest, he held a young woman in a maid’s uniform. From her face, the girl was in mortal terror, and rightly so, since in his other hand, the guy held a short knife pressed against her neck. He was a handsome young man.

  This would be the Zee-ster, Howard guessed.

  He pulled his revolver, brought his other hand up, clasped the weapon in a two-handed grip, and pointed it at the knife man.

  “Hold it right there, Zeigler,” he said.

  The man froze.

  Howard forced his hands to relax a hair. Holding the revolver tightly was necessary for the shot, but clenching the thing in a death grip for any length of time past a second or two would cramp his hands pretty quickly. And he might be here a while, you never could tell.

  Zeigler, with the knife held at the hostage’s throat, tried to make himself smaller, but there was no way a five-foot-tall, hundred-pound woman was going to completely shield a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound man. Howard had all kinds of targets, including the only one that meant instant incapacitation, a head shot.

  “Put the gun down! Put it down, or I’ll kill her!”

  He had the shot. Sights square, lined up on the man’s left eye. At fifteen, maybe sixteen feet, he wasn’t going to miss. Unless the guy jerked at the last second and put the hostage where his head had been. Not much risk to the woman, but some. And he’d have to kill the movie star, a head shot would do that, right into the brain.

  Well, maybe not on a movie star…

  “Listen,” Howard said, “let’s discuss this.”

  “No fucking discussion! Put the gun down, or I’ll cut her throat!”

  The maid whimpered.

  “You don’t want to do that. You kill her, you’re standing there unprotected with a knife in your hand. Think about that. She’s all that’s keeping you alive. She dies, you die, simple as that.”

  “You can’t do that. Do you know who I am?”

  “I’m not a cop, son, I’m a soldier. They trained me to kill, not capture. I see blood on that blade, it’s a done deal. I don’t care who you are. God doesn’t love men who murder innocent women, and I expect He sent me here to teach you this.”

  The man was on the edge of panic. “Let me go, I let her go.”

  “What, do I have the word stupid tattooed on my forehead? Put the knife down, you get to tell your story to a judge. Maybe a good lawyer can even get you off, it happens all the time. You’re a millionaire. Rich and famous men don’t go to the gas chamber. You cut that woman, I guarantee you’ll be dead before she is. Game over.”

  “You might hit her if you shoot!”

  Howard blew out a theatrical sigh.
“Let me explain some things to you, son. This weapon I am holding in my hands is a Phillips & Rodgers.357 Model 47 Medusa. It’s about as well-made and accurate a double-action revolver as you can get, and with the hammer back in single-action mode like it is now, it’s extremely accurate. I can hit an apple at twenty-five meters all day long, and you are less than one-third that far away. You understand? You want to think about how much of you I can see that’s not behind your hostage?”

  Zeigler didn’t say anything.

  Howard continued. “There are six one-hundred-and-twenty-five-grain semijacketed hollow point rounds in this handgun. If I shoot and hit you solidly anywhere with only one shot — and I will hit you, son, you can bet the farm on that — the bullet will thump you at around twelve hundred feet per second. That means it gets there before you hear the sound of it going off. That hypersonic bullet will expand to maybe twice its size and it will put a big hole most if not all the way through you. Based on documented shootings with this caliber and particular brand of ammo, you will go to the floor ninety-six point four times out of a hundred, and no longer have any interest in anything but trying to breathe. And probably not that for long.”

  Zeigler swallowed dryly.

  “Now, here’s the deal. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you walk out of here or if the DEA drags your dead body out; it’s all the same to me. But if I have to shoot, this gun is going to make a terrible noise inside this garage, and probably my ears will ring for a couple of days, because I didn’t think to put my plugs in before I came through the door. I’d just as soon not damage my hearing any more than I have to.

  “So if I have to shoot, I am going to be real pissed off. I might as well shoot again. You following me? You put the knife down right now, or I will punch a hole in you, and when you fall, I’ll pump a couple more in you for making my ears hurt. Your movie career might survive an arrest You don’t put that knife down, you won’t. Simple as that. Your choice. Either the knife hits the floor or you do.”