Changing of the Guard Read online

  Howard shook his head. “Abe Kent, a full-bird colonel, had been rotated out of the latest middle east conflict where he’d served with distinction, and stuck in charge of a shiny new Marine officer training facility outside Marietta. I’d bumped into him a few times before, various places.”

  “That’s the Marines’ idea of R and R—a couple months out of the war zone teaching officer wannabes.”

  Howard nodded. “So Abe is down South, dealing with the best and brightest of the jarheads.”

  “Which ain’t saying much,” Julio observed. “And a full-bird back then?”

  “Keep listening. One of the trainees is a very smart kid—let’s call him ‘Brown’—a champion swimmer in college before he dropped out, a black belt in karate, and sharp as a warehouse full of razor blades. He apparently joined up primarily to piss off his father, who was a millionaire, well-known U.S. Representative—and a major antimilitary dove. Guy had been in Congress for ten or twelve terms, and would go on to be reelected half a dozen more times before he retired. He had amassed major clout by this point.”

  Julio nodded again. “Lemme guess—the kid had an attitude?”

  Howard grinned. “Can’t get anything past you, can they, Lieutenant?”

  “Smart people can.”

  “Better shooters can, too.”

  Julio held up his hand. “Pick a number between one and five. Sir.”

  Howard ignored him. “So Brown is setting the grading curve for the recruits, first in the classroom, first in PT, kicks ass in the unarmed combat course, even outshoots the country boys on the rifle range.”

  “He sounds like the perfect Marine—except for the smarts,” Julio said.

  “Yes. It was too good to last, of course. Eventually, trainee Brown ran into some boneheaded hillbilly career DI who’d dropped out of the third grade to work his daddy’s moonshine still and joined the Corps the day he turned seventeen. Words were exchanged. Things got physical. Brown decked the sergeant quite handily, and decided that if he had to take orders from dillwits like that, he wasn’t going to play anymore.”

  “He washed out?”

  Howard shook his head. “No, he saw Colonel Kent and informed him that he was not only leaving Officer Candidate School, he was leaving the Marines altogether. It had been fun and all, but, after careful consideration, he couldn’t continue on, what with the morons with whom he’d have to serve.”

  Julio laughed. “I bet that went over real well with a decorated colonel just back from combat.”

  “Abe Kent informed officer-trainee Brown that, while he could bail from OCS if he so chose, he would be serving the remainder of his hitch in some way, shape, or form, period.”

  “Lemme guess again: Brown dragged out his father’s clout and clonked Colonel Kent over the head with it?”

  “That came later. First, he took a swing at Kent.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He did.”

  “What happened?”

  “Kent had spent a big part of his career in combat zones and sleazy bars around the planet. He was not impressed with a would-be shavetail karate expert throwing a punch. As I understand it, he, uh, sat the boy down in his chair with some force—banking him off a wall and a file cabinet in the process. Some medical attention was required, having to do with teeth implants and resetting a broken arm.”

  Julio laughed.

  “Brown then informed the colonel, and with a bit more respect, I imagine, that his old man was rich, influential, and that Colonel Kent would be very sorry.”

  “Got Kent’s back up,” Julio said.

  “Yes. He threw the kid into the brig for decking the sergeant—he didn’t mention the altercation in the office—and told Brown that he could spend the rest of his hitch on the line or in the stockade, it was all the same to the Marines.”

  “So what happened?”

  “What do you think happened? Daddy sat on some big committees. He had favors to extend, money to grease anything squeaky. Even so, it took him six months to pry Brown out, and even with all his clout, the best he could get his son was a general discharge and not an honorable one.”

  “Should have been dishonorable.”

  “In my opinion, yes.”

  “So Colonel Kent stood against the kid’s rich and powerful old man in career harm’s way all that time,” Julio said.

  “Exactly. He’s a man of principle. He’d been around long enough to know the chain of command is only as bright as the dumbest link in it, and that sooner or later the kid would be sprung. But he fought every inch of the way.”

  “Which is why he’s still a colonel,” Julio said.

  “Yes. He resisted pressure from people with long memories. They couldn’t throw him out—he was a decorated war hero in five different theaters, and had worked his way up through the ranks—but they could make sure he never went any higher.”

  Julio said, “Bastards.”

  “No question. But even knowing it was going to cost him his star, he did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do.”

  “Brave. Maybe not so clever.”

  Howard chuckled. “And we both know we’d rather have a brave man willing to go against the odds covering our asses in the field than a clever one.”

  “Amen.”

  “So, that’s the reason I put Abe Kent up for the job. Net Force operations aren’t always by-the-book, and this job requires a man willing to go out on a limb for his people. Whatever else you might say about him, Colonel Kent is not a man ever going to be shot in the backside.”

  Julio said, “Thanks for telling me, John.”

  “Does it make any difference?”

  “Well, he’s still a jarhead, but at least he’s my jarhead. For as long as I’m stuck with him, he’ll get whatever I can give him.”

  “I knew that all along, Julio.”

  Both men smiled.

  “Sir? General Howard?”

  Howard looked at the doorway and saw a young FBI agent he thought he recognized come into the room. What was his name? Rogers? Not a field guy, but a tech. What was he doing here?

  “Sir. We transferred Operative Gridley’s car from the state police and went over it, just a matter of routine.”

  Howard nodded. “And?”

  “Sir, we found a wireless transmitter affixed under the automobile’s rear bumper.”

  Howard exchanged a quick glance with Julio. “A bug?”

  “And not one of ours, I take it?” Fernandez said.

  “No, sir, Lieutenant. Not one of ours.”

  Fernandez said what Howard was thinking: “So we’re not talking about road rage. We’re talking about a stalker.”

  The agent said, “We don’t know that. Could be a coincidence.”

  “You believe that?” Howard asked.

  “We tend to look askance at coincidence in the labs, General.”

  “I want to know everything there is to know about this bug, and I’d like it yesterday.”

  “Yes, sir. As soon as we know, you will.”

  Howard stared into the distance. A stalker. What had Jay been up to?

  Outside Spokane, Washington

  The fall day was sunny, a hint of chill in the autumn air. The alder leaves were beginning to turn, and there was a scent of wood smoke in the breeze.

  Thorn, dressed in a T-shirt and Gortex windbreaker, blue jeans, and running shoes, walked the narrow trail next to the rushing water of the shallow Oregon river. It wasn’t Gridley’s scenario, it was his own, and one he liked to use. His grandfather had taken him for hikes in the forest a lot when Thorn had been a boy, and they were happy memories. He had invited a couple of people into the scenario at various times, usually women he had started dating. Their reaction to it usually gave him a good idea of whether there was much chance of the relationships going anywhere.

  One woman he’d met in college had laughed and wanted to know why he wasn’t wearing moccasins and buckskins, him being an Indian and all. Another had
walked for ten minutes and said, “Borrring.”

  Both women had been drop-dead gorgeous and ready to spend serious time in the sack with him, but he had shut them down after that. A woman who didn’t enjoy a walk in the forest, no matter how sexy or smart she was, just wasn’t going to pan out in the long run. Not for him.

  He spotted some bear scat just off the trail ahead. He stopped, squatted, and used a small stick to poke at the dung. Fairly fresh, still moist, still pungent. He smiled at the old joke that popped up in his memory: How do you protect yourself from grizzly bears when you are in the back woods? You wear little bells on your shoes to warn them you are coming, and you carry pepper spray in case they see you. And how do you tell grizzly scat from black bear scat? The grizzly scat has little bells in it, and smells like pepper spray.

  This was black bear—there weren’t any grizzlies in these woods, virtual or real world, and hadn’t been for years. A black bear was much smaller and less likely to give you any trouble, but they’d go a couple hundred pounds, had teeth that could snap your arm or bite your face off, and you didn’t want to mess with a momma and cubs or a male in mating season. Most people didn’t realize that bears could outrun people in the short haul, and could climb, too.

  At least he was on the right path. Gridley’s passwords were down this way, and maybe he wouldn’t need the big Cray to figure them out when he found them.

  He stood and started back down the trail.

  A deep voice drowned out the sound of the river bubbling over the big rocks: “Emergency override, Commander. General Howard calling.”

  Thorn stopped. “End scenario,” he said.

  Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

  The incoming call had visual—Howard was using his virgil, so it must be important.

  “General. What’s up?”

  “The FBI found a bug on Jay Gridley’s car.”

  Thorn digested that and considered the implications. “You think it might not be road rage.” It was not a question.

  “Somebody was tracking him. It would be passing coincidental if it was somebody else other than the guy who shot him.”

  “You tell the lab guys to hit it hard?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “State police know about it?”

  “I expect so.”

  “Keep me in the loop.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After Howard discommed, Thorn went over the new input. Somebody was after Gridley in particular. Why?

  Could be personal, though that didn’t seem likely. A lot of effort to bug his car and track him, then try an assassination on a major highway with witnesses all around. Did Gridley have enemies like that? He’d been here for years—nobody had said anything about him having hassles. Thorn could check with the man’s wife, but that scenario, that Gridley had personal enemies, just didn’t feel right.

  So that left work. Who would want to knock off a Net Force op?

  Possible answers: somebody who had suffered at his hands? Or maybe somebody who was going to suffer because of something Gridley was doing?

  Now it was really important to get into his files and see what he was working on. Other than that thing for the Turkish ambassador, Thorn didn’t have any idea what the man had been up to. A supervisor needed to know what his people were doing.

  Best he find out. Time to go for another walk in the woods.

  “Computer, restart scenario from exit point.”

  14

  On the Beach

  Jay paced, his thoughts fragmented. He was back on the beach where he’d started his nightmare. But he had a theory, now.

  I’m in a coma.

  Like most answers, it was incomplete, just a tiny bit of information that resolved only a part of the larger questions: So how did I get here? And what now?

  He didn’t have to worry that he’d been kidnapped by the enemy, he wasn’t in a dream, and he probably wasn’t crazy. All good news. On the other hand, he couldn’t wake up, was trapped deep inside his body, and couldn’t be sure about whether he was in a new coma or the one that had nearly crippled him before.

  What if everything that had happened since the tiger was all part of a delusion? What if he had never come back? That Saji, work, his life, none of it had actually happened?

  That thought terrified him. The idea of waking up to find that Saji was not part of his life, that he was not about to become a father . . . That would be unbearable.

  He had made some progress, however. He’d gone from “Where am I and how do I get out of here?” to “I know where I am, now how do I get out of a coma?” One of his college professors had said something along those lines a few times during a software app class: “When you move from ‘what’ to ‘how,’ you’re on your way.”

  Of course he didn’t know where the way was, in this case.

  He looked at the water and willed it to stop, picturing each wavelet stilled in motion, a sudden death to the motion of the sea.

  The scene flickered for a minute, but water kept flowing, rolling in as before.

  He frowned, but nodded. Something, anyway, but not enough.

  He was in his own body, his mind was his own—should be a piece of cake, shouldn’t it? He should be able to control his environment like he’d done in dreams before. But it didn’t work. Which meant that something was wrong.

  What?

  Two answers presented themselves, neither pleasant.

  The first was that his head had been hurt so badly that he couldn’t focus his will sharply enough to create solid images.

  Which is bad, but—

  The second was worse: Maybe some part of his consciousness didn’t want to have control. That idea, extrapolated, meant that he didn’t really want to come out of it.

  Whoa.

  Why wouldn’t he want to wake up?

  Nothing occurred to him. He had the best job in the world, a great relationship with his wife, was happy—assuming that was all true and not just a dream he had within this coma, there was no reason he could think of why he’d be afraid to leave this place and head back to reality.

  In his dream research, Jay had found many theories for why people dreamed. Wish fulfillment, clearing the slate, making sense of the day . . . No one really understood the total why of dreams. But he wasn’t really in a dream. That was part of the problem. He steered his mind back to the topic.

  What do I really care about why I can’t affect things here? I just want out!

  He started struggling to control the environment again: He tried freezing one wave, imagined a seagull in the air, turning some of the sand into salt. Again, nothing happened. Frustrated more than he’d ever been in his life, he sat on the beach, the warm sand making him drowsy.

  How was he going to get out of here?

  What’s wrong with my brain?

  He stared out at the waves, watching them ebb and flow. There was an almost perfect rhythm to them, the up and down, the amplitude of each crest to trough a perfect curve.

  Wait a minute . . . Something there . . .

  Jay remembered something he’d read after his coma—at least he thought he’d read it, assuming he wasn’t still in that coma.

  Brain waves.

  There were four basic types: Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta, each one operating at a different frequency. Beta were the most active—the waking mind, the thinking mind. It ranged in speed from ten to thirty hertz.

  Alpha waves were the meditation ones, the relaxed state of being. They produced a general feeling of reduced anxiety and well-being. These were slower, between seven and thirteen hertz.

  Theta were even slower, the brain waves most commonly found during REM sleep, the time of dreams, at about five to eight hertz. Hallucinations—Dreams “R” Us.

  The really important ones, at least to him now, were the Delta waves—produced during deep, deep sleep, or comas, when the body repaired itself. Deltas were slow—between two and six hertz.

  I just don’t have the power, Captai
n.

  In a coma his brain was too slow to generate the waking state of mind he needed to control things. It wasn’t his will, just his willpower.

  I’ve got to speed things up.

  But how?

  It wasn’t as if he could suddenly snap out of it—that was the whole point.

  Jay let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and felt himself relax. It explained why he’d been so unfocused. The latest theories suggested that there were some levels of thought going on during Delta waves, and he could certainly attest to that now—if he got out of here. It wasn’t his fault, after all. Now he just had to figure out how to speed up the frequency of his thoughts.

  Yeah, simple.

  He pondered the problem, turning it over from one angle and then the other. How to increase his thought power? If his mind were like a computer’s CPU, he could just overclock it—increase the voltage, or alter the clock settings for the bus.

  Was there anything he could do that would work like that for his brain?

  Jay lay back on the sand and closed his eyes. Whatever low-level consciousness he had now, he didn’t want to squander it on the beach illusion anymore. He’d need every shred of thought power to try what he had in mind. The programmer pictured his memory as filled with hundreds of doors and began searching for anything he’d ever learned about brain function.

  Biofeedback. He’d considered it before meeting Saji—using a machine to monitor his brain while he worked to try and reach one state or another. Over time, using creative visualization, people could use a biofeedback device to figure out what they were doing to get to a particular state of consciousness, and learn to do it without a machine. Biofeedback gave people the ability to focus better by teaching them to create more Beta waves.

  Well I don’t have the machine, but I can visualize.

  He wouldn’t be able to objectively monitor what state of being he was in precisely, but gauging the level at which he could control his environment would give him a clue.

  Jay considered several other benchmarks he could use to test his consciousness level. If his memory got markedly better, he might be in a Theta-wave state. If he suddenly felt more at ease and relaxed, he’d be in an Alpha-wave state. And when things got the most active, and he felt more in control, he’d have moved to Beta.