Net Force nf-1 Read online

  "My God," Michaels said. "What the hell happened?"

  "The computer programmer." Toni's voice was grim.

  "Somebody did this on purpose?"

  "That's what it looks like. Jay is on it, but he's too busy to talk about it right now."

  Michaels watched a rescue truck, lights flashing, frozen in gridlock. Jesus. They were dealing with a madman. A homicidal madman. Until he was caught, nobody was safe.

  18

  Monday, September 27th, 8:41 a.m. Quantico

  No real progress had been made on Steve Day's death.

  Oh, the labs had cataloged all kinds of hair and fiber and bullet casings, but in the end, none of it meant anything without the people, clothes and guns the things belonged to — and they didn't have any of those.

  Alex Michaels was more than a little bothered. He sat at his desk, staring into the wall. He knew there was nothing to be done about it; the best minds in the FBI were hard at work looking for the smallest clue, and standing there yelling "Hurry!" wouldn't help.

  It wasn't as if he didn't have other things to worry about. As head of Net Force, he'd suddenly found out what it meant to have the buck stop on your desk. Aside from having to assign high-level cases to make sure they were handled right, there was all the political bullshit. He had to justify what his organization was doing, why they did it, and how much it cost, first to the Director, then, if they were feeling snoopy — and they always were — to Congress.

  He had to appear in front of Senator Cobb's Security Committee on Thursday to answer questions about something Day had done a year ago that had mightily upset the Senator. Cobb, unaffectionately known as Tweety Bird in intelligence circles—"I taught I taw a puddy tat!" — was always imagining conspiracies, no matter where he happened to look. Cobb thought the military was scheming to violently take over the reins of government; that the Germans were secretly re-arming themselves to eat Eastern Europe; that the Girl Scouts were Commies. He had been the bane of Steve Day's life, and it looked as if he was going to be giving Michaels the same grief.

  And if that wasn't enough, the political side of the job required a lot more of something else Michaels hated — socializing. Since he'd taken over, he'd gone to four black-tie political soirées, suffering through vulcanized chicken or salmon cooked to blackboard-eraser consistency. All of these events had featured after-dinner speakers who could put a room full of dexadrine addicts into a suspended animation that made Sleeping Beauty look like an insomniac.

  No, this was definitely not a part of the job he enjoyed.

  At least he didn't have to worry about building appropriations. That was the Director's job. And given all the new structures that Net Force had recently constructed, was in the process of constructing, or was planning on constructing, that would be a major chore in itself. J. Edgar Hoover would never recognize the FBI Compound, it had grown so large in just the last five or six years. It was a small town unto itself.

  He stared at the pile of hardcopy and the blinking To Do list on his computer screen. He had a stack of stuff to read, things to sign, all the minutiae of any mid-level office manager that had to be taken care of, regardless of the more important things that had to wait. And it wasn't going to get done if he just sat there and stared at it.

  It was going to be a long day. And when it was done, he would go home to his empty condo, eat a meal alone, watch the news, read his mail and slog through reports on his flatscreen. Probably fall asleep reading — that was what happened most of the time. Either that, or get called out to one of the Nights of the Boring Politicos.

  He missed Megan. He missed his daughter. He missed having someone to share his day with, to care that he came home, that he lived or died…

  He shook his head. Poor you. You're just so damned sad, aren't you?

  Michaels chuckled. The Island of Self-Pity was a waste of time; he never could stay there very long. He had a job to do, and he was part of the solution and not part of the problem, wasn't he? Hell with the rest of it.

  He reached for the hardcopy.

  Monday, September 27th, 9:44 a.m. New York City

  "Yes, I'll be there," Genaloni said. His voice was curt and he was irritated, but he tried, as always, to hold onto his temper. "Good-bye."

  He put the phone's receiver down gently when what he wanted to do was slam it into its cradle hard enough to break both. Women. Jesus.

  As wives went, Maria was probably as good as any. She stayed home, took care of the kids, supervised the maids and butler and cook and gardener, was active in charity affairs. He'd met her in college. She was smart, and she'd been drop-dead gorgeous when he'd married her. She worked out, and had spent some time under the knife, so she was still damned attractive for a woman her age — hell, any age; and if anything, she had gotten smarter, too. She looked good on his arm, was always dressed better than anybody else in any room they went to, but she was a pain in the ass sometimes. Because she was smart and good-looking, and because she came from a rich family, she was used to getting her way. She wanted his time, and she always wanted it most when he least had it to give. He was going to have to break a date with Brigette, his mistress, to go to some cure-a-disease ball his wife wanted him to go to, and he wasn't happy about it.

  That Maria probably knew about Brigette and had done this on purpose also crossed his mind.

  There was a tap on the doorjamb. He looked up and saw Johnny the Shark Benetti standing in the open doorway. Shark was a good name for Johnny. He was young, quick, and could cut you to tatters with a knife no longer than your finger. The Shark also had a degree in business from Cornell. As people in his organization retired or went away for legal reasons, Genaloni replaced them with equally tough but more educated ones. Sure, smart people had their drawbacks — too much ambition was usually part of the package, but you could deal with that. Bury a guy chin-deep in money, and mostly he would think long and hard before messing with the golden goose. Ignorant people caused more trouble in the long run. And in any event, you always watched your back — you never totally trusted anybody.

  Johnny the Shark was holding Sampson's place until he returned.

  If he returned. Whatever was going on with that, it stunk, and Genaloni didn't like it a damn bit.

  "Yes?"

  "Hey, Ray. Nobody we can touch has anything to say about Luigi. We put some serious money on the table, reached out to everybody who owes us favors, nothing. He's invisible."

  "Keep looking." At least one fed was going to be sorry about this business, although there was no way to tell when the guy was going to buy it. The Selkie took his time, and it didn't do any good to try and hurry him.

  The intercom cheeped.

  "What?"

  "It's your wife again."

  "Jesus. I'm not here, okay? And I forgot my cell phone, too."

  "Yes, sir."

  Genaloni shook his head. He looked at Johnny, who was smiling.

  Smiling. Jesus. "You're married, what, a year and a half?"

  "Two years, come December 14th," Johnny said.

  "Still on your damned honeymoon. Come back and see me in fifteen years and let's talk about women."

  That brought another grin.

  Genaloni shook his head. Johnny was twenty-four, which meant he still knew everything. Genaloni was old enough so that he realized he knew less every year that went by. "You study any history?"

  "It was my minor."

  Genaloni did know that, but it never hurt to let the help think you were a little slower than you actually were. And he was something of a history reader himself, when he had the time. He said, "You know who Mary Katherine Horony was?"

  Johnny searched his memory. Frowned. "Doesn't ring a bell."

  "She was Hungarian, a hooker, went by the name of Big Nose Kate."

  "Oh. Doc Holliday's girlfriend?"

  "Good to see that degree means something. Kate was a whore, a drunk, a brawler. She screwed and drank and fought her way across the Old West, ran wit
h Holliday, the Earps, some other real dangerous dudes."

  Johnny nodded. "Uh-huh."

  "She could have quit once she hooked up with Doc, but she couldn't settle down. She kept going back to the life, even while she and Holliday were together. And even when she was at home, she wasn't your shy and demure type. She broke him out of jail once after he gutted a man with a Bowie knife, and she clubbed a guard half to death to do it. She had a whorehouse in Tombstone in the 1880's, first one in town. Did it in a big tent, ran a dozen girls and sold a lot of cheap whiskey. People used to fight and get shot up there all the time. Plus she and Doc also used to beat the shit out of each other — and he didn't always wind up on top.

  "After Holliday croaked from TB, old Kate kept whoring around for years. Got married, left her husband, moved around, kept kicking her heels up until she wound up in a nursing home. Died in 1940. She was ninety years old."

  "Fascinating," Johnny said. He raised an eyebrow.

  "So, here was this woman, a whore — which in those days was a damned dangerous job — with these hardcases all around her who'd just as soon shoot you as look at you. A woman who used to punch out Doc Holliday, one of the stone-coldest killers ever, and she was living in neighborhoods where you could get raped and murdered and nobody would blink."

  "And your point…?"

  "Kate outlived them all — the job, Holliday, the killers, the booze, the bad towns, everything." Genaloni smiled. "She died of old age." He paused, then said, "You know what the cavalry men used to say out in Dakota when they were trying to wipe out the Sioux? ‘If you're captured by the Indians, don't let them give you to the women.'

  "A woman can cut off your nuts, cook ‘em with onions and make you eat them — and smile the whole time she's doing it. Remember that. No matter what your bride says, no matter how good she is in bed, you keep your business to yourself. The prisons are full of guys who blabbed shit to their women and then pissed them off. Women are good for a lot of things, but you don't trust one with your life. Never."

  "I'll remember that."

  "Good. Now go find out why the feds are hiding Luigi." After the kid had gone, Genaloni smiled to himself. That wasn't a bad little lecture. He'd have made an okay professor, he always figured.

  19

  Tuesday, September 28th, 6:54 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  In her guise as Phyllis Markham, the Selkie gimped her way toward the target's house, the little poodle doing his imitation of a watering can on every other bush or tree along the way.

  The guards in the surveillance cars were gone. She had been disappointed to see them leave. There were times when she'd been set upon a mobster or gunrunner or politico with a dozen guards crawling all around, and that had made the job more difficult. But one guy, who didn't have a clue he was a target, no protection except maybe a house alarm? It took some of the fun out of it.

  At her level, she mostly made her own challenges.

  She'd been on this more than a week, and she was ready. She knew the target's habits. When he ordered Chinese food delivered, she knew he liked the hot and spicy chicken with noodles. When he went for his morning run, she could have run half a block in front of him and stayed with him all the way. She knew when he went to a fund-raiser, where he tried to sit if he wasn't assigned a table, and what time he would make his excuses and leave. She knew about his ex-wife and kid in Idaho, the car he played with in his garage, and that his assistant had the hots for him, to judge from how she looked at him. And that he didn't have a clue about that. She knew how tall he was, how much he weighed, where he got his hair cut and that he hadn't really wanted his current job. She knew much about the target — just not why he had been chosen.

  Scout heard something in one of the bushes to the left. He yapped at it. Probably a cat. She let him bark a couple of times, then told him to hush. He did, but he trembled to go after the thing in the bushes. The dog didn't know he was a toy; he thought he was the son of a wolf and he wanted that prey. She smiled.

  The worst dog bite she'd ever gotten hadn't been from a big beast like a shepherd, but from a dachshund who must have thought he was White Fang, too. Maybe the little ones had something to prove.

  The target seemed like a decent enough guy. He was fairly attractive, had a nice smile and did a good job. As bureaucrats went, he was better than most. He loved his little girl out there in flyover country, and hadn't been active much sexually since his divorce, so he was probably still carrying a torch for his ex. He was a more useful member of society than most, an ethical, moral, reliable man.

  That she was going to kill him didn't bother her at all.

  Some professionals didn't let themselves know anything about their targets, didn't get involved any more than necessary to make the deletion. They stayed cool, didn't interact, didn't let themselves see the targets as people. She'd always thought that was chickenshit. If you're going to take somebody out deliberately, you ought to get to know him. It seemed only fair, and so much better than being killed by a stranger. Her way, at least she had some respect for people who deserved respect. There was a kind of honoring of the target involved.

  She knew more than enough now. He wasn't a bad guy, but he wasn't that interesting, and there wouldn't be any surprises.

  "Move along, boy. Go."

  Reluctantly, the dog proceeded, looking back for the thing in the bushes as he walked, just in case it tried to break from cover and run for it.

  Little Scout there, hearing the call of the wild, that was funny.

  When would she hit the target? When you could choose any time, when you had all your bets covered, then you did it when it felt right. Not before. Not if you wanted it to be perfect. This guy's death would unleash an army of feds on her trail. It needed to be perfect.

  She was approaching the target's condo. She glanced at her watch, an analog, battery-powered Lady Bulova, one Phyllis Markham would wear, since it had supposedly belonged to her dearly departed mother. She slowed a hair, letting the dog sniff a little longer at some other male's territory marking.

  Tomorrow was trash pickup day — the collection mini-trucks came around twice a week here — and the houses and condos on this street did not have an alleyway in back.

  The gate to the target's condo opened and the target came out, hauling a single compacted recyclable paper bag. Right on schedule. On the evenings before trash pickup, he came home, changed clothes and carried out the garbage first thing.

  She arrived in front of the target's condo just as he dropped the sack.

  He smiled at her. "Hi," he said.

  "Good evening, young man," the Selkie said in her Markham voice. "A nice night for a walk."

  "Yes, ma'am." He squatted, offered the back of his hand to the dog, who sniffed and then wagged his tail. The target scratched the dog behind the ears. "Good pup."

  The Selkie smiled. She could drop him right here with one swing of the cane — he'd never know what hit him. Crack open his skull as he squatted there petting the dog, bend down, cut his carotids with the nail scissors in her purse. He'd bleed out in a couple of minutes.

  Or she could ask if he'd mind giving her a glass of water, and of course he would invite her into his condo. He was too nice a guy to cause an old lady to finish her walk thirsty. She could do him inside without anybody ever being the wiser. It was too easy.

  She smiled at the target. Now? Should she take him inside?

  The moment stretched. She held the man's life in her hands. This was power. This was control.

  No. Not tonight. It didn't feel quite right. Maybe tomorrow.

  "Come along, Scout. The nice man doesn't want to fool with you."

  The target stood, and the woman who would soon kill him limped away.

  "Take care, ma'am," he said.

  "Thank you, young man. I surely will. You, too."

  Wednesday, September 29th, 3:14 a.m. Somewhere over the North Atlantic

  The drone of the 747's big engines was a steady, hypnotic thrum, and
most of the passengers slumped in the dark, sleeping. John Howard's reading light was on, but the report on his flatscreen hadn't been scrolled for so long that the Screensaver had kicked in and blanked the screen.

  "You need some warm milk and melatonin, Colonel?" Fernandez said.

  Howard glanced up at Sarge, on his way back from the head. "Just working on a report, Sergeant."

  "Yes, sir, I can see that. A detailed study on the zen of the blank screen?"

  Howard grinned, waved Fernandez to the seat across the aisle.

  "It wasn't much of an operation, was it, Julio?"

  "Begging the colonel's pardon, but what the hell is he talking about? We located a terrorist cell, took down a score of armed, bomb-throwing radicals while they were shooting at us, and did it without an injury to ours. That's batting a thousand where I come from."

  "You know what I mean."

  Fernandez looked around. Nobody was close to them, and the nearest passengers were asleep. He dropped the NCO-to-officer rap. "Look, John, if you mean it wasn't the beach at Iwo Jima, yeah, you're right. But the assignment was find the bad guys and stop them. We did it, protected our embassy, didn't cause a stink with the locals, and we're hauling all our boys back to base without having to peel a Band-Aid. That's as good as it gets."

  Howard nodded. Fernandez was right, of course. Go, do the job, come home, all asses-and-elbows. He had carried out his mission by the numbers. That was what a soldier was supposed to do. They were thrilled with him back at Net Force. A couple of his old military buddies in the know had already sent him coded e-mail congratulating him. It was a win, all the way around.

  So why didn't he feel better about it?

  Because it had been too easy. Yeah, Rule 6P had worked — proper planning prevents piss-poor performance — but when it got right down to it, he'd never had any doubt they'd win. His troops were the best of the best, ex-SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers. Drop them in a jungle behind the lines with nothing but pen knives, and they'd build a castle out of enemy bones. The terrorists had been a bunch of out-of-shape gutter-scum with big ideas and almost no strategic or tactical experience. How could they have possibly lost to rabble like that?