Net Force nf-1 Read online

  "Security, backtrack the intruder."

  A series of numbers and letters flashed on the screen, followed by a map. Arcing, bright blue lines lit as the leech program fed the intruder's initial signal back to her computer through the series of firewalls and shunts. When it reached New York City, the dot representing the intruder pulsed a bright light, and an electronic address lit and also pulsed red underneath the dot.

  So the invader was good, but not great. The leech had been undetected. Given what she had paid for the leeches, that was not a big surprise.

  "Security, reverse directory, e-mail unabridged, crosscheck this address."

  More letter-and-number crawl sped up the screen.

  A name flashed: Ruark Electronic Services, Inc.

  "Security, give me the names of the corporation officers and any holding companies for Ruark Electronic Services, Inc."

  A moment passed. A list of names appeared. Heloise Camden Ruark, President and Chief Executive Officer; Richard Ruark, Vice-President; Mary Beth Campbell, Treasurer. A public company, incorporated in the state of Delaware, June 2005, blah, blah, blah—

  Well, well, well. And look here, the owner of seventy-five percent of the outstanding shares was something called "Electronic Enterprises Group," which itself just happened to be—

  — a wholly owned subsidiary of Genaloni Industries.

  Sullivan leaned back and stared at the screen. So. Genaloni was trying to find her. She nodded. To be expected. The man wore a thin veneer of respectability, but under it, he was a thug. To a man like Genaloni, the response to a threat, whether real or imagined, was to burn all the bridges on any road leading to his castle, and then stand by the pots of boiling lead to cook anybody who might get past the rivers. Never use a needle when there was a boulder available. Genaloni would have heard about the attempt on her target's life. And since the target had seen her as a woman, and doubtless reported it so, the thug would be doubly worried. He did not trust women, and he could not abide failure. In Genaloni's league, strike one and you were out — strike two was a guarantee of bad things to come.

  This was not altogether unexpected — she had halfway thought Genaloni might attempt to trace her before now — other clients had tried to get a handle on the Selkie. So far, her safeguards had been sufficient; nobody had ever gotten close.

  As of now, the address and identity she had used when she'd taken the assignment from Sampson were history. Even if they found the place, there was nothing to tie it to Mora Sullivan, or any of the other aliases she used. But this was a bad sign. Genaloni was a thug, to be sure, but he was a smart thug, and a persistent one. If he was worried that the Selkie might be linked to him, he would do everything he could to remove the link. If that included having her found and killed, well, there it was. In Genaloni's jungle, self-preservation ruled. If he saw an aged, crippled lion half a mile away, going in another direction, he'd shoot it anyhow — because it might turn around someday. Who knew?

  She scratched an itch on her bare left shoulder. She wouldn't be collecting anymore money for the target she had missed, but that was not really important. For her own pride, she would finish that job, payment or not. That was a given. And while she didn't think Genaloni's hackers could find her, even the smallest possibility that they might was too much to ignore. She would not spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder. She would finish the job on the target in D.C., but she would also have to do something about Genaloni.

  And after that? Well, maybe it was time for the Selkie to retire. When the winds of change blew up a line of tornadoes, a smart woman took cover — or moved elsewhere.

  Saturday, October 2nd, 1:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  "Tyrone?"

  Tyrone instantly recognized the Voice of Doom, even though the phone's visual was off. "Uh, yeah."

  "This is Bella. Did you lose my number?"

  "Uh, no, I was just about to call you."

  That's good, said the voice of self-preservation, hiding behind its rock. Lie. First a little one, then a big one. Tell her you have a fatal disease and you can't leave the house!

  "Standout. So, can you come over this afternoon?"

  No! No! A million quadrillion times no!

  "Uh, sure. I can do that. Come over. I mean, to your house."

  "About three okay?"

  No-no-no-no-nooo! Not good, not okay!

  "Sure, three."

  "You have the address?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, scan you then. And Tyrone? Thank you. This means a lot to me, you know?"

  "Um… sure. Nopraw."

  "Discom," she said.

  Yeah, nopraw and discom, deadhead! Maybe because it means so much to her, Bonebreaker will make it quick, just snap your neck fast so you won't suffer too much! Asshole! Fool! Moron!

  Tyrone stared at the cradled phone. He knew he ought to be terrified, but oddly enough, only a small part of him was. That part hiding inside his head behind its rock. The rest of him was… what, exactly? Thrilled? Yeah, that was part of it. That the best-looking girl in school had asked for his help, that he was going to her house, to stand and sit right next to her, to show her something he knew something about…

  Well, like Jimmy Joe had said. If he was going to die, he might as well get there by a fun route. Besides, RW-speaking, Bonebreaker probably wasn't going to actually kill him. Maybe hammer him into a bloody pulp, but probably he'd survive, right?

  His mother wandered into the room, carrying a set of blueprints for the birdhouse she was building. "Hey, hon. Who was that on the phone?"

  "A person from school. They want me to help them with a computer project. I'm going to go over to their house at three, is that okay?"

  " ‘A person? They? Them? Their house?' My, aren't we getting plural." His mom grinned. "Would ‘this person' perhaps be of the… female persuasion, Ty?"

  "Geez, Mom!"

  "Ah. That's what I thought. What's her name?"

  "Belladonna Wright."

  "Is that Marsha Wright's little girl?"

  "I think so."

  "Oh. I remember her from the third-grade play. She's a cute little thing."

  "She's not nine years old anymore, Mom."

  "I would hope not. Well. Do you need a ride?"

  "I'll take the Trans," he said. "It's not far."

  "All right. Leave a number, and be back for dinner at seven."

  "Yes, Mom."

  "Lighten up, Ty. I know I used to ride dinosaurs to school, but my memory hasn't all gone. It's not as dangerous as you think, talking to a gurrul…" She laughed.

  So much for what you know, said the voice from behind its rock.

  Saturday, October 2nd, 1:33 p.m. Quantico

  For once, a meeting actually got started on schedule. Michaels looked around the conference room at his people. "Okay, let's not waste any time. Jay?"

  Jay Gridley waved the presentation projector on. "Good news and bad news," he said. "The cane came from this store, made by a company that mostly supplies serious martial artists."

  An image appeared.

  "This is the model…"

  Another image, this one of the cane, flashed on-screen.

  "After eliminating a whole bunch of customers — legitimate teachers, people who really need to use canes, collectors, and the usual number of loose nuts and bolts who buy things out of paranoia, all of whom could account for their purchases — we are left with eight possibilities."

  Names flashed on-screen.

  "Of the eight, our agents have so far interviewed five. Four of these produced the canes they are recorded as having purchased. One gave the item as a gift to a friend, and we have found that one."

  Five of the names faded away.

  "Of the three remaining subjects, one is a survivalist in Grant's Pass, Oregon, who refuses to allow local, state or federal agents on his property. The gentleman in question is seventy years old and according to his medical records, has had a surgical hip-replacement. We have a jud
ge signing a search warrant as we speak, to look for the cane on his property. I'd guess they'll find him leaning on it when they get there."

  The name on-screen began to blink, alternating red and blue.

  "So that's pending. The remaining two names…" He shook his head. "Well, they are… interesting."

  Michaels said, "Interesting?"

  Jay waved at the screen. One of the names began to pulse in yellow. "Wilson A. Jefferson, of Erie, Pennsylvania. Mr. Jefferson, in the last three years, has bought a cane, two sets of escrima sticks and a set of custom-designed yawara sticks. These were delivered to a post office box. The cane is the right model. The escrima sticks are used in a Filipino fighting art called, oddly enough, escrima; the last items are used in several different fighting styles, but the name is Japanese. According to the post office box rental agreement and state driver's license records, Mr. Jefferson is a white male, forty-one years old, and he resides at this address."

  A street number and name blossomed.

  "However, a check at this address came up negative. Nobody by that name has ever lived there. On the surface, Jefferson's credit records seem fine, but below the surface, they vanish. What we have here is an electronic man."

  "So this is our assassin," Toni put in.

  "Sort of," Jay said. "Then there is Mr. Richard Orlando."

  More screen action.

  "Mr. Orlando has bought, over a period of four years, five canes, including two of the models we have in hand. All were delivered to a post office box in Austin, Texas. And a check of his background says he is an Hispanic male, twenty-seven years old, and as far as we can tell, also exists only in a few record computers and apparently nowhere else. The photographic image on his driver's license is blurred so badly he could look like anybody in this room. Oddly enough, so are the photographic records of Mr. Jefferson."

  "Same person, using two fake IDs," Michaels said.

  "That would be my opinion," Jay said. "Very dissimilar and a thousand miles apart. Fakes, and unless you were looking for them, you'd never accidentally spot them."

  "Great," Toni said. "So, what's the good news?"

  "That is the good news," Jay continued. "Nobody remembers either Mr. Jefferson or Mr. Orlando. We've interviewed postal workers, and come up blank. There are no trails leading away. As far as we can tell, the only reason these two E-men ever existed was to take delivery of some fancy but perfectly legal sticks half a country apart. And I'd give you good odds that the real person who has these things — if he or she still has them, knowing we'll be trying to trace him or her through them — isn't in Pennsylvania or Texas."

  "Dead end," Toni said.

  "Deader than black plastic in the noonday sun," Jay said. "We'll keep on it, but whoever this is, he or she, they are real good. They went to a lot of effort for such a small thing."

  "Seems to be paying off, too, isn't it?" Michaels nodded. "I'm still betting on a she," he said. "It didn't feel like a man under that old-lady disguise. Okay, thanks, Jay. Toni?"

  "We're running checks on all known professional assassins. So far, nothing substantial on anybody as good as this one seems to be."

  "What about insubstantial?"

  "Rumors about this shadowy figure or that. Usual stuff — the Iceman, who can kill you with a hard look. The Specter, who walks through walls. The Selkie, who can change shape. Urban legends. Problem with the really good hired killers is that they keep very low profiles. Pretty much the only time anybody bags one of them is when a client gives them up."

  Michaels nodded. He knew this. He'd been thinking about it since Steve Day's murder.

  "Anybody got anything else?"

  Brent Adams, the FBI head of Organized Crime, said, "Something is going on inside the Genaloni organization."

  Michaels looked at Adams. Raised his eyebrows.

  The OC man said, "Our people went back and strained out a year's worth of everything with a Genaloni tag. A couple of weeks ago, the FBI regional office in New York City got an inquiry from one of Genaloni's lawyers regarding the detention of Luigi Sampson. Sampson is Ray Genaloni's enforcer — the head of his legal and illegal security operations."

  "Yes?"

  "Well, our agents in New York didn't detain Sampson. Genaloni's people didn't follow up on it, so nobody thought anything else about it. A mistake of some kind."

  "Which means…?"

  Adams shook his head. "We don't know. But since then, our wiretaps and surveillance cams haven't heard or seen anything of Sampson."

  "Maybe he went on vacation," Jay said.

  Adams shrugged. "Maybe. Or maybe he pissed off Ray Genaloni and he's in a field outside Dead Toe, South Dakota, pushing up the daisies."

  "I don't think they grow daisies up there. Too cold," Jay said.

  "You'd be surprised," Toni put in.

  Michaels said, "So, why would Genaloni's people be calling the FBI, supposedly looking for Sampson, if they deleted him?"

  Adams shook his head again. "Establish an alibi, maybe. With these guys, you never know what they're going to do. They make some smart moves now and then; then they turn around and make a stupid one."

  Toni said, "Maybe this Sampson was responsible for Steve Day's death and Genaloni got nervous? Wanted to erase the link?"

  Adams said, "I don't know. It's possible. Ray Genaloni is a careful man. He doesn't step out on the street without having it checked for six blocks in all directions first."

  Michaels stared at the table. Something was bothering him, rattling around inside his head. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. Something about all this…

  He sighed. "All right. If you'd stay on top of that, Brent? Jay, you run the cane stuff as far as you can, see if you can get anything. And check out those New Orleans links — we can't spend all our efforts on the Day investigation. Anything else?"

  Nobody had anything they wanted to put on the table.

  "Okay. Let's get back to it."

  Michaels headed toward his office. Things were not looking good for the home team. And the clock was ticking on his job. A few more days and this might be somebody else's worry.

  Maybe it was time to get out of government service. Move back to Idaho, get a job programming game computers or something, spend weekends with his daughter. Just walk away from all this.

  Yeah, right. Until Steve Day's killer was caught, he wasn't going anywhere, even if they put him in charge of counting paper clips in the underground storage bins. Whatever else he might be, Alexander Michaels didn't bail when the going got rough. No way.

  26

  Saturday, October 2nd, 11:05 p.m. Grozny

  He would have preferred a walk on his quiet trail, but because he was in a hurry and could not afford the time to dawdle, Plekhanov drove the car. It was the program that was loaded, and he had planned to trash it after the unfortunate interface with the American Net Force agent — such was only prudent. And he would erase the software eventually, but just at the moment, it was more trouble than it was worth to go off-line, degear, switch to a new scenario, then regear. It was one of the disadvantages of the old-style system he liked — with the newer VR units, you could do it on the fly without missing a step.

  It didn't matter. This was just a short run to make a few minor adjustments on a legal scenario running in Canberra. The chances of Net Force seeing him were practically nil, and besides, there were a lot of blue Corvettes out there, probably tens of thousands of them.

  He put the VR automobile into gear and pressed on the accelerator.

  Saturday, October 2nd, 3:05 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  When Belladonna Wright opened the door to let him in, the first thing Tyrone noticed was that she wore tight shorts and a baggy sweatshirt with the sleeves and neck cut out to reveal a lot of bare skin.

  A lot of beautiful bare skin.

  The second thing he noticed was the hulking form of Bonebreaker LeMott sitting on a couch in the living room behind Belladonna.

  Tyrone was prett
y sure his heart stopped for at least five seconds. Then his belly rose up and lodged in his throat. And his bowels and bladder both threatened to empty. The end was near.

  "Hi, Tyrone. Come in."

  The voice of self-preservation couldn't even form words. It babbled and whimpered mindlessly.

  His feet didn't seem to belong to him. They took him into the house.

  "Tyrone, this is my friend, Herbert LeMott. Motty, this is Tyrone."

  Motty?! He would have laughed — except that he was sure that would be the last sound he'd ever make through his own teeth.

  Bonebreaker wore a tight T-shirt and cotton shorts that strained all their seams as he came off the couch. He had muscles on his muscles. He loomed like a human tyrannosaur; Tyrone expected to hear Godzilla's shriek any second…

  But Bonebreaker's voice was soft, quiet and actually fairly high-pitched. He said, "Oh, wow, hey, Tyrone, glad to meet you." He extended his right hand.

  Tyrone took the giant hand, and was amazed at how gentle the grip was.

  He had a sudden image of a cartoon mouse looking for a thorn in a lion's paw.

  "It's real nice of you to help Bella out with her computer class. I never was much good at that stuff. I appreciate it a lot. If I can ever do anything for you, just lemme know, okay?"

  If Bonebreaker had suddenly turned into a giant toad and begun hopping around looking for flies to eat, Tyrone could not have been anymore amazed. Holy shit!

  "Okay, Bella, I gotta go, we got practice at the gym. I'll call you later." He bent down — a long way for him — and kissed Bella on top of her head. She smiled and patted him on the back, as if he were a favorite horse. "Okay. Be careful."

  After Bonebreaker left, Bella must have seen something in his face, because she smiled at Tyrone. "What, did you think Motty was going to get physical?"

  "The thought briefly crossed my mind." Yeah, briefly — like a snail with a broken shell crawls over a salt flat briefly.

  "Motty is a big sweetie. He wouldn't step on an ant. My room is upstairs. Come on."

  Unless the ant put its hand on your butt.