Net Force nf-1 Read online

  He nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

  Tuesday, September 21st, noon Quantico

  When Alex Michaels bothered to eat lunch, he usually ate it at his desk. The unit secretary would get his order, put it on the list and fax it to the deli guy, who would deliver the food to the reception guard just after noon. Before the deli had been approved as a supplier, Net Force had run a background on the deli's owner, his wife and grown kids and the guy who brought the orders. Even so, when the assassination protocols had been in place, if anybody wanted to order out, an agent had to hand-carry the order to the store, then stand and watch the food as it was prepared. Security was tight, and rightfully so — why bother to shoot somebody if you could poison his lunch?

  Michaels was partial to the Reuben sandwich and potato salad, and the crunchy dill pickle, quarter-sliced lengthways, that came with it. That was what he usually ordered.

  On days when he just had to get out of the unit for a few minutes, he skipped the deli order and the Net Force cafeteria and went to the new restaurant row a couple miles away. In good weather, he took his recumbent trike, a low-slung sixteen-gear three-wheeler he left parked in the covered bike racks.

  Today, the weather was a little crisper than it had been, not quite so warm and muggy, a good day for pedal power. He could legally take the trike on the roads, but there was a jogging/bike path that wound from the edge of the fence, and while it was twice as long, it was a much prettier and safer trip. It had been two weeks since Day's murder, and since there had not been any more assassination attempts on federal officials — if you didn't count the Ninth Circuit Court judge whose wife had beaned him with a fishbowl during an argument about his alleged extramarital affair — the assassination protocols had been downgraded. Now, it was basically pay-attention-to-things, but not an active alert with bodyguards, at least not at his level.

  He changed into bike shoes and shorts and a T-shirt in his office, stuck his taser into a small fanny pack with his ID and virgil and put his foam helmet on. He walked outside to the bike and trike racks, unlocked his trike and wheeled it out into the parking lot. The recumbent had set him back two weeks' pay, even used, but he enjoyed the heck out of it. In the lowest gear, he could climb the steepest grade around here, admittedly not saying much, and on a flat road without traffic, he could pump along in high gear at speeds pushing forty. Well, maybe a little less than that, but it felt like he was flying. It was a good way to keep a little tone going on the days he didn't jog, and he hadn't been doing much of that lately. Working out was usually the first thing to go when he got really busy. It was easy to rationalize it — he could always run or hit the Bow-flex later, right?

  He squatted and sat on the low seat, slipped his feet into the toe-clips on the pedals and put his riding gloves on. He grabbed the handlebars. He planned to stretch it out a little today — he felt stale. Lunch was pretty much an excuse for a place to go. Probably he wouldn't do more than grab a soft drink before he headed back.

  He checked out at the gate, and headed for the bike path.

  He stayed in a fairly high gear, even though it was hard to pedal that way at slow speed. The shift lever was on the seat frame next to his right hip, and easy enough to gear down if the going got too hard.

  He passed a few people he knew from the base, out jogging on their lunch hour, and he waved or nodded at them. He came up behind one young woman in a red Speedo tank top and matching skintight shorts with a fanny pack slung in back, going at a pretty good rate in his direction. She was in great shape. He admired the play of her taut legs and backside as she ran. He checked her in the handlebar mirror when he passed, but he didn't recognize the face. There were a lot of people here. She could be a Marine, one of the new FBI recruits, maybe an office worker. Or maybe she lived in town and this was the return loop.

  Lately, despite his feelings for his wife — ex-wife — he had felt a few stirrings that exercise and long hours working, or playing with the Prowler, couldn't quite quell.

  He sighed, shifted into a higher gear and pumped harder. Sooner or later, he'd have to jump back into the pool; he couldn't really see himself as a monk for the rest of his life. It just didn't seem quite right yet. He was out of practice — and the idea of asking a woman out was still more than he wanted to think about.

  The path, a nice smooth macadam, meandered through a small stand of hardwood trees whose leaves were fast changing from greens to yellows and golds, then swung past the back of a new light industrial park, mostly office buildings or jobbers' warehouses. A beeping forklift, painted a dark red, with a big silver propane tank on the back, carried a stack of wooden pallets toward a larger stack next to the chain-link fence. The fork's motor rumbled as the driver expertly lowered the shipping platforms and backed away.

  Michaels smiled. He'd run a forklift in an aluminum warehouse one summer when he was in high school, moving plate and bar to big flatbed trucks for shipment. It had basically been a simple job once you got the hang of it, uncomplicated. You picked it up here, and you put it down there, and the only thing you had to worry about was dropping it. It made a hell of a racket when you let a couple thousand pounds of metal slip off the forks, and most of the guys in the warehouse would stop what they were doing and applaud when it happened. Just like dropping a plate in the high school lunchroom.

  It was true what they said: Life was like high school — only bigger.

  He came to the long straight stretch, a little over half a mile before it curved again, and he upshifted into top gear. He pushed and pulled hard on the pedals, the toe-clips allowing him to apply pressure in both directions. It didn't take but a couple hundred feet for his legs to get really warm, and halfway through the strip, his thighs and ham-strings started to burn really hot. He checked the speedometer. Thirty-three. Not bad. He had the windshield mounted, but without the full faring installed, the drag wouldn't let him get much faster sitting upright with just a little backward lean.

  He passed another rider on a two-wheeler, cruising along at a steady, but slower, speed. The rider wore purple and yellow gear, and the bike was one of those carbon-frame Swiss jobs that easily cost twice what his trike did. He waved at Michaels as he blew past. Probably going to crank out forty or fifty miles, and save the sprint until the end. And even after that distance, Michaels knew he wouldn't be able to stay with him if the guy was a serious biker. Those guys were all crazy.

  The burn increased, but he kept pumping, holding on. When he had about a hundred and fifty yards before the curve, Michaels allowed himself to coast. He slowed, added a little brake and made it through the curve. Not much bank there — too bad. A couple more degrees and he could have taken it at speed, but he guessed the designers didn't want walkers or joggers sliding down the side of a hill if the path got wet. It did rain here from time to time.

  It felt good to get out, to do something physical. He resolved to do it more often.

  Tuesday, September 21st, 12:09 p.m. Quantico

  The Selkie slowed her run to a walk as soon as the target was out of sight on his big trike. He had seen her, of course, and given that he was a normal heterosexual male, he would have noticed her in the tight red shorts she wore. She was in excellent shape, and although running was not her preferred method of keeping that way, she could go a few miles without collapsing when it was necessary.

  That the target had seen her and very likely stared at her ass didn't mean anything. He would not see her in these clothes again.

  She could have killed him when he went past. Could have easily pulled the snub-nose.38 S&W revolver from the fanny pack she wore and put all five rounds the little gun carried into the target's back as he sailed past oblivious. Knocked him off his tricycle, reloaded, calmly walked to where he lay and put a couple more in the head. Even if somebody had been there to see — and no one had been — it was unlikely anybody would have been able to stop her. She was adept with the Smith, could manage NRA Expert with it, or keep up with the IPSC action shooters and their tr
icked-out pistols in their combat scenarios, despite the short barrel and lousy sights. It was one of the tools of her trade, and she was the best there was at that business.

  But such killings were… inelegant. Anybody could point a gun and blast away, and for an adept, there was no joy to be found in such a simple method. Of course, the needs of the client had to come first. Some of them wanted it known that the target had been killed. They wanted it done bloody. And some of them even wanted souvenirs — a finger, an ear — or some normally less-visible appendage. She didn't torture and she didn't take hurry-up contracts, but if the client wanted anatomical proof the target was gone, she would supply it. Those who asked for such things didn't usually offer her much repeat business. Clients who wanted body parts to put in a jar tended to piss people off and get into fatal trouble of their own.

  She nodded at a jogger coming from the other direction, but didn't make eye contact.

  Good assassins deleted their targets and got away.

  The best assassins could delete their targets and arrange it so nobody even suspected there had been a murder. That was much more satisfying. She hadn't been given instructions about the manner of this target's death, and she was toying with the idea of making it look like natural causes, or maybe suicide. She was in control, it was her choice. Always.

  16

  Wednesday, September 22nd, 9 a.m. Washington, D.C.

  The buzzer sounded and Tyrone Howard joined the exodus of students from first-period class into the dingy green halls of Eisenhower Middle School. Ahead of him, he saw Sean Hughes lumber into a guy from behind and shoulder him aside. The guy slammed into the lockers, hard. He recovered, turned, started to say something — then saw who had hit him and changed his mind.

  This was a real good idea.

  Tyrone slowed, to avoid getting too close. Hughes was an ox, pushing six feet tall and two hundred pounds, and at fifteen was two years older than most of his grade class. Hughes was a flicker screen who had flunked at least twice, not including summer school and private net teachers, and he got his kicks by bullying anybody who had more brains than he did — which was everybody in the school except MCMs — mentally challenged mainstreamers. And maybe a few of them were smarter, too. They had a name for Hughes, though nobody ever said it to his face.

  "Essay is on a roll today, ain't he?"

  Tyrone looked to his left and saw James Joseph Hatfield grinning at him.

  "Essay" came from the initials S and A. Which came from "Sore Ass," which came from "Brontosaurus," which was what the computer set called Sean Hughes. Tyrone didn't know who had come up with the original nickname, but it was dead on. The guy had all the wit and grace of a big dino tanked on sleeping pills.

  Jimmy Joe was a hillbilly from West Virginia, small, so white he was bright, with eyes so bad he had to wear thick glasses instead of contacts. He was also one of the best netriders in the whole school, and he held the record for completing the first ten levels of Black Mysts of Total Catastrophe fastest, not just in the school but anywhere. And he was Tyrone's best friend.

  "Hey, Jimmy Joe. How's the flow?"

  "Dee eff eff, Tyrone." This stood for DFT — data flowin' fine.

  "Listen, I talked to Jay Gee. He needs our help."

  "Jay Gee needs our help? Praw that."

  "Nopraw," Tyrone said. "Somebody is poppin' strands."

  "Tell me somethin' I don't compro, bro. Somebody is always poppin' strands."

  "Yeah, affirm, but this is different. There's a C-l gram-mer looking to rass the whole web."

  "Nofeek?"

  "Nofeek."

  Jimmy Joe shook his head. "Eyes up, rider. If Jay Gee can't grope him, how are we gonna do it?"

  He had a point. Jay Gridley's reputation among the set was large.

  "We got links he doesn't scan," Tyrone said. "We can backline, OHT, little feek like that."

  "Yeah, yeah, nopraw pross that. I can blip the aolers. Induct-deduct fine lines, do the One Horse Towns. Build a scoop. We could seine minnows. I know a couple of hangers in CyberNation, they got some pretty good nets there. You think about joining? CyberNation, I mean."

  "I think about what my dad would say if I tried," Tyrone said.

  "I copy that. My old man would blow a major fuse, but it looks like the place to live. Then again, this is too warm, slip. Us, riding with Jay Gee."

  "Yeah—"

  Tyrone ran into a wall. Only it wasn't really a wall, it was Essay.

  "Watch it, tits!"

  Tyrone backed up two steps fast. He hadn't been paying attention. Essay must have forgotten where he was going and stopped to puzzle it out. Stupid. But maybe not as stupid as walking right into his back!

  "Sorry!" Tyrone said.

  "Yeah, you gonna be," Essay began. "I'm gonna mush you—!"

  But before he could finish the threat, Belladonna Wright walked past, trailing the scent of some musky, sexy perfume.

  Essay shifted his thinking from his big stupid head to his small stupid head. He turned to watch Bella — as did Tyrone — and she was something to see in her green microskirt and halter top, walking high on her cork slope-plats. A grade up and the best-looking girl in D.C. easy. Essay had as much chance getting next to her as he did flying to the moon by waving his big old arms, but that didn't stop him from looking — though that was all he would do. Bella was currently hardlinked with Herbie "Bonebreaker" LeMott, the captain of the Epitome High School wrestling team. He was a senior, and he made Essay look little. When Theo Hatcher had sneaked up behind Bella once and "accidentally" put his hand on her butt, Theo had spent six weeks with his arm in a blue fiberglass cast for his trouble, courtesy of LeMott. Bella could have any guy in school broken in half with two words into Bonebreaker's ear, and even Essay knew that.

  Jimmy Joe grabbed one of Tyrone's arms and steered him back the way they came. "Ride, rider, ride! Time his brain clicks back on-line, we need to be scanning else-where!"

  Tyrone understood — he definitely prossed that, nopraw at all. On some level, though, he was really pissed off. He wasn't ready to die, but sooner or later, he was going to have to do something about Essay.

  What to do and how to do it — well, those were the problems.

  Wednesday, September 22nd, 6 a.m. San Diego

  Ruzhyo did not much care for television, though he sometimes watched the international news to see what mention there was of his homeland. CNN droned in the background as he fixed coffee in the small pot provided by the hotel. The coffee was prepackaged and stale, but it was better than nothing.

  It had been yet another bad night for dreams. After managing to get back to sleep for an hour or two, he came awake and knew it was pointless to try again. He had known a man in the army once who, it was said, could sleep while eating a bowl of hot soup. Ruzhyo was not that good, but he had learned to survive on a minimum amount of rest when he had been a soldier, catching naps when he could; two hours was enough to fuel a day.

  He took his coffee and went back to stare at the television.

  In Idaho, some cult had gone into a barn and set it on fire, to free themselves from the flesh to join their god. Ruzhyo did not know how free they were, but the flesh was certainly well-done, to judge from the pictures.

  In France, student demonstrators had attacked a police line outside a hotel where the French President was scheduled to speak. Nine of the demonstrators had been hospitalized with wounds from rubber bullets; two others had died from the same cause.

  In India, a flood drowned two hundred people, uncounted sacred cows, and washed away several villages.

  In Japan, an earthquake on the island of Kyushu had killed eighty-nine people in collapsing buildings and done major damage to the city of Kagoshima. During the quake, the new bullet train that spanned the island had also crashed when the ground in front of it dropped twenty feet, killing sixty and injuring more than three hundred.

  Of Chechnya, CNN had nothing to say.

  Ruzhyo sipped his bad coffee
and shook his head. Just as well that there was no news of home, given how dreary it all seemed. The world was a dangerous place, full of misery. All over it, people would be lamenting the loss of loved ones this day, family or friends taken by accidents or illness or murder. During those few times when he had felt qualms about the work he did, all he had ever needed to do was watch the television, or read the newspapers, or just talk to someone. Life was full of woe. He was no more than a drop in a sea of misery. If he took a man out, what did it matter? If not him, something or somebody else would. In the end, it did not matter all that much, did it?

  His com unit cheeped. He sipped the coffee and stared at the com. No, it did not matter. And just as well — more wetwork was surely about to be forthcoming.

  Wednesday, September 22nd, 4:45 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  Naked, save for a sweatband around her head, the Selkie sat at the small kitchen table and examined her cane.

  She checked the wood for nicks and gouges. Every couple of months, she would take fine sandpaper and Watco satin-finish oil to the cane, to smooth and polish the already smooth hickory. It was hardwood, but it scratched easily, and she liked to have it gleaming. The manufacturer recommended mineral oil, but Watco gave a tougher finish. Smelled better, too.

  It was a couple hours work to do it right, the sanding and finishing, but one of the first things she'd learned from her father was to take care of her tools so they wouldn't fail her when she needed them. The guys who made the wooden weapons did excellent work. She owned five of their canes in three different styles, as well as two sets of escrima sticks, and a custom-made pair of six-inch yawaras.

  The cane she preferred for work in places where she did not carry a gun was the Custom Combat model. It was hickory, thirty-seven inches long, blond in color, with a round shaft a little over an inch in diameter; it had a large crook tipped by a flamingo-beak design. Hickory was best for the street, heavier than the walnut tournament models, more sturdy than the oak. The end of the curved hook — called the horn — was sharp and wicked enough to do some real damage. The ground end of the shaft was a dull and rounded point, innocuous-looking, and with the rubber tip in place, perfectly usable as a support cane. There was a series of decorative notches carved into the shaft just below the crook, designed to serve as a handgrip.