Point of Impact nf-5 Read online

  “Once the piece was covered with paint, he wiped it clean, and the oil paint filled up the stipple marks but came off the polished part. It has to be done under magnification, of course, and it is, as you might suspect, rather painstaking work.”

  “I can only imagine,” Toni said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, Bob is one of the better artists working in the medium. We handle some other scrimshanders who are also very good — Karst, Benade, Stahl, Bellet, Dietrich, even Apple Stephens — but Bob’s work is not only beautiful, it’s still reasonably priced. He does a lot of custom commissions on things like knife handles and gun grips.”

  “How much?” Alex asked.

  “Eight hundred for this one.”

  “We’ll take it,” he said.

  “No, Alex, we can’t—”

  “Yes, we can. It’ll be your wedding present.”

  “But—”

  “I made a good profit on my last car restoration. We can afford it.”

  As she packaged the scrimshaw and ran Alex’s credit card, the manager said to Toni, “If you are ever interested in seeing how he does it, Bob teaches an on-line course.”

  At the time, Toni had nodded and murmured something polite, not thinking such artwork would ever be something she’d have time for.

  As she walked through the virtual mall, she smiled to herself. Well, she had time now. Plenty of time. She was supposed to sit around and twiddle her thumbs for the next four months, and even if she wanted to practice her silat, she was, for all practical purposes, a beached whale. She’d just flop around on the sand if she tried to do anything physical, she could already see that, and she was only five months along. At seven or eight months, dropping into a djuru turn was just not going to be in the cards. But sitting at a table and scratching on a piece of faux ivory with a pin? She could do that, and the idea of creating something anywhere close to as beautiful as that tiny scrimshaw Alex had bought for her was appealing. Of course, she didn’t really have much artistic talent, but maybe she could learn. It was worth a shot.

  She arrived in front of a small shop. On the window it said, Bob Hergert, Microscrimshaw — www.scrimshander.com.

  Toni took a deep breath, let it out, and walked into the shop.

  Inside, the place was neat and well laid out. There were glass-topped cases with pieces of ivory on black velvet, everything from knife handles, gun grips, and billiard balls to larger framed pieces. Several magnifying glasses on little stands had been set up on the glass so that the smaller pieces under them were easier to see.

  An electric guitar hung on the wall behind the longest counter. Toni didn’t know from guitars, but there was an ivory plate on the body of the instrument, and she recognized the man’s face lovingly engraved upon the plate.

  A medium-sized man with a thick mustache came out of the back and smiled at Toni. “The King,” he said. “When he was in his prime. About 1970 or so, the television concert where he wore the black leather suit.”

  Toni nodded. “I bought one of your pieces in Hawaii,” she said. “A naked woman sitting in a lotus pose, floating in the air.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Cynthia, the Goddess of the Moon. I enjoyed doing that one. How can I help you, Mrs…. ah…?”

  “Michaels,” she said, still feeling somewhat strange about using Alex’s name that way. “Toni.”

  “Toni. Nice to meet you.”

  “I understand you give lessons in how to do this.” She waved, taking in the shop’s interior.

  “Yes, ma’am, I surely do.”

  “I’d like to sign up, if I could.”

  “No problem at all, Toni.”

  They smiled at each other.

  2

  New Acquisitions Warehouse, Net Force HQ, Quantico, Virginia

  “You look like hell, Julio.”

  “Thank you, General Howard, sir, for your astute observation.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was up half Sunday night feeding the baby. Your godson.”

  “I thought Joanna was breast-feeding.”

  “Yeah, she is. But somebody told her about a little pump that lets you take mama’s milk out of the original container and put it into little bottles. That way the father can be part of the suckling process.”

  “Don’t look at me, I didn’t tell her.”

  “No, it was Nadine, your lovely wife, who was the snake in the garden.”

  Howard laughed. “Well, you know how women are. Never let a man spend too much time getting by with something.”

  “Amen.”

  “So, what are we looking at this fine morning, Sergeant Fernandez?”

  “Three new items of field gear unrelated to weaponry, sir.”

  Howard glanced around the inside of the small storage warehouse. There were crates, boxes, and items covered with tarps, the usual.

  “Proceed.”

  “Over here, we have our new tactical computer units, supposedly shockproof backpackers that will plug into the SIPEsuits. Seven pounds, more FlashMem, DRAM, and ROM than a high school computer lab and faster than greased lightning. Ceramic armor and spidersilk webbing, all bullet-resistant and waterproof and like that. I turned one on and dropped it on the floor from chest height, and it still ran fine. Twelve-hour batteries the size of D cells, so you can carry a few days’ backup without recharging, no problem.”

  “Good, about time they came up with something that didn’t go down every time somebody sneezed. What else?”

  “Right this way. This here is our emergency broadcast jammer, which will supposedly make any radio inside a ten-kilometer circle spew static and nothing else. Doesn’t work on LOS infra or ultra headcoms. They say it’d stop KAAY in Little Rock at its peak, but I haven’t tested it yet.”

  “Bad guys use LOS, too.”

  “What can I say? This is RA stuff. You know how they are.”

  Howard nodded. Regular Army did have its own whys and wherefores. He’d been there, done that, and was much happier being the head of Net Force’s military arm, such as it was. He had expected it to be a lot more quiet than when he was a colonel in the RA, but in the last year or so, it sure had been anything but that. In fact, after his last fracas, he’d been thinking about retiring. He still ached from his wounds when it got chilly, and the idea of not being around to see his son grow up bothered him a lot.

  Julio kept talking:

  “And under this here cover, we have the toy of the week. Ta-da!” He pulled the lightweight tarp off, revealing what looked like a table with four jointed arms sticking up from it, two in the corners at one end, two more in the middle. The thing had wheels and a closed compartment under it.

  “And what is this? A high-tech electric golf cart?”

  “No, sir, this is Rocky Scram — that’s R-O-C–C-S-R-M, the acronym standing for Remote-Operated, Computer-Controlled Surgical Robotic Module.”

  Howard frowned. “We talking about a doc-in-the-box?”

  “Actually, a surgeon-in-the-box, only this is just the box. You’re gonna love this one, it actually might be useful.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Here’s the deal. You need a surgical PA, couple nurses, and orderlies. They set this sucker up in a field hospital. Guy comes in, all shot up, needs fixin’. The PA — that’s physician’s assistant, for those of you who missed the medical personnel lecture — does a triage, examines the guy, and makes a quick diagnosis. They plunk him on the table, get him prepped, and dial up a first-class REMF surgeon, who can be up to a thousand miles away, give or take. He cranks up his unit — that part is over here, come look.”

  They walked to another covered unit, and Julio removed a tarp from it. There was a chair, a computer screen mounted in front of it on a platform, and some odd-looking appendages on the arms of the chair.

  “Your surgeon sits here and slips his fingers into the surgical controls, that’s these rings here. He uses his feet on pedals down on the floor, one each, with a freeze pedal in the mid
dle, kind of like a brake.”

  Julio sat in the chair and slipped his fingers into the jointed ring arrangements. The computer screen lit up. “These control the waldos, those are tools you can connect to those arms on the operating table. Left foot runs the endoscope, which holds your light and your camera. Right foot works various clamps and suction things. The hand tools will hold scalpels, hemostats, suture needles, scissors, and a bunch of other things.”

  “You’re telling me a surgeon can operate on a patient from a thousand miles away using this gadget?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what the RA medicos say. The surgeons who qualify have to cut up a bunch of pigs and cadavers and RA soldiers before they let them work on real people. They’ve repaired bowels, done blood vessel grafts, stitched up torn hearts, all kinds of things. Nurses and the PA assist, just like in a regular OR. RA medicos say a guy good with this toy can pick up number-six BBs and never drop one.”

  Julio waggled his fingers, and there was mechanical hum from the nearby table as the surgical arms moved around.

  “It’s all self-contained, battery backup if you can’t get a generator going. Wheel it out there, slap’em on the table, and you cut and paste.”

  “Good Lord.”

  “Yessir, I expect He is impressed.”

  “Downside?”

  “Heavy, expensive — million and half a copy — and you need a repair tech who’s qualified to service’em if they break down. Still, RA figures it’s cheaper than training and replacing a surgeon who catches a stray round on the way to do his cutting.”

  “Good point.”

  “There’s a civilian model been around for a while, but it’s not so compact, and it ain’t portable.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Ain’t it, though? Now, if the general is through being impressed with modem hardware, I’d like to go catch a nap.”

  “Go ahead, Sergeant. Oh. Wait. Hold up a second. I got something for you.” Howard grinned. He was going to like what he was about to do. He was going to like it a whole lot.

  Julio paused, and Howard tossed the small plastic box at him. Julio caught it, started to open it. “Not my birthday. What’s the occasion?”

  Howard didn’t say anything, just kept grinning.

  When Julio got the box open, his eyes went wide. “Oh, shit. No!”

  “Oh, shit, yes. And we’re skipping right over shavetail and going to right to first.

  “Congratulations, Lieutenant Fernandez.”

  “You can’t do this, John. Gunny’ll never let me live it down.”

  “Already done, Julio. Paperwork is signed, sealed, and delivered.”

  “John—”

  “More money, which you need with a new baby. Plus now you don’t have to take orders from your wife. Well, no more than any of the rest of us have to take orders from our wives.” Julio’s wife was Joanna Winthrop, and a lieutenant in Net Force herself, although she was on extended leave at the moment.

  “But… but… who can you get to replace me?”

  “Nobody will be able to replace you, Julio. But there are some new recruits who can manage a top’s chores if you show them how it is done.”

  Julio shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”

  “No doubt, but at least you can tell the devil you earned your money for part of your career before you got the free ride.”

  Julio nodded slowly, then looked up. “All right. Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t look so sour, Julio. Welcome to the officer-and-a-gentleman club. Or at least the officer part of it.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Under the bitching, Howard was pretty sure that Julio was pleased. They’d been working together for more than twenty years, first in the regular army, then in Net Force. Julio had known about Howard’s promotion to general before Howard himself had, and there were times when the two of them were practically telepathic. Julio didn’t have the educational background of a lot of officers, but when a situation went hot, he was the man you wanted covering your back. He had another few years before he was going to think about retiring, and the higher his grade, the bigger his pension. He was a married man with a baby; he needed it.

  “Go take your nap, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Washington, D.C.

  Normally, at seven in the morning, Jay Gridley would be at Net Force HQ, plugged into his computer and making war on the bad guys. He’d be hunting lubefoots who’d dumped the latest ugly virus into the world’s e-mail, or searching for clues to some computer fraud, or trying to track down some sicko posting kiddie porn on church web sites. Now and then, there’d be a big shark cruising the virtual waters of the net, like the mad Russian or the crazy Georgia redneck or the British genius who’d been using a quantum computer to try and restore England’s lost glory, though those were relatively rare. But a few months ago, Jay had finally met his on-line guru who had been helping him recover from a stroke, an old Tibetan monk named Sojan Rinpoche. And as it turned out, the old man was actually a young and beautiful woman. Saji, she liked to be called, and one thing had led to another, which had led to another, which had led to her lying beside him in the bed.

  Now, there were days when he called in sick and never left that bed except to pee.

  He giggled.

  “What is funny?” Saji asked.

  He smiled at her. “You. Me. This. Us.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Who cares?”

  “No, you don’t, goat-boy. I’m teaching an on-line class this morning.”

  “You don’t have to get up to do that. You can lie right there.”

  She laughed. “I don’t think so. I remember the last time I tried to do that. Somebody kept distracting me.”

  “You’re a master Buddhist, you’re supposed to be able to meditate and tune out little distractions.”

  “Yeah, but the problem was, the little distraction kept getting bigger every time I looked at it.”

  They both laughed.

  “Work is dead. I could stay home. It’s totally boring there these days. Seriously.”

  “Seriously,” she said, “no, you can’t.”

  “You are a party pooper.”

  “Life is full of suffering, haven’t you learned that yet?”

  Jay rolled out of the bed, scratched his chest, and padded toward the bathroom. “You’ll be sorry when I’m gone. You’ll finish your class and be all alone in this big old condo, and you’ll wish I was here.”

  “I’ll try to be brave.”

  “You want to shower?”

  “Yes. After you leave.”

  “You don’t trust me. I’m hurt.”

  “I can see that. Go on. I’ll cook supper when you get home.”

  “What, roots and twigs?”

  “You said you liked my cooking.”

  “That was before you threw me out into the cold,” he said.

  “It’s supposed to hit seventy-two today,” she said. “Not so cold.”

  “I was speaking metaphorically.”

  “Go and shower, Jay.”

  He grinned at her. Boy, did he like having her around. Really. A lot. More than anything he could think of. He headed for the shower and considered for the hundredth time the proposition he’d been working on in his head for the last couple of weeks. Was it possible to make it permanent? Legally permanent? As in getting married? Would she go for it?

  There was only one way to find out, but he was hesitant. What if she said no?

  That would be… bad.

  The hot water began to steam up the bathroom. He called out to Saji: “Hey—?”

  “No,” she cut him off. “Definitely not.”

  But he was rinsing the shampoo from his hair when the shower door slid open and Saji followed the draft of cool air in, gloriously naked and grinning.

  “Why, Sojan Rinpoche! What are you doing here?”

  “I came to wash your back is all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

&
nbsp; “Turn around.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He turned around. She reached out, and her soapy hand began rubbing him.

  However, the hand was definitely not stroking his back, nope, no sir, no indeedy!

  He laughed, and she laughed with him.

  Yep, he was going to be late to work, no two ways about it.

  “Hey, I think you missed a spot there.”

  “I didn’t miss it. I was ignoring it. Easy to do, it’s so… small.”

  “Ooh. You are a cruel woman. Cruel.”

  “Suffer, big daddy, suffer….”

  3

  Malibu, California

  Robert Drayne looked up from his mixing bench in front of the big picture window as a pair of young women in thong bikinis jogged past on the hard-packed wet sand, just at the water line. No rain today, the sky was clear, the Pacific Ocean a nice blue and fairly calm, and the two honeys were blond and tan and bouncy. Not bad for a Monday. He grinned. He loved this town.

  He looked back at the bench. He had a batch ready to time and encapsulate, only six hits, and where the hell was Tad? You didn’t want to start the clock ticking and then have the stuff sit on the table for an hour or two. That might cut things a little close. Even with a master such as himself, the timing could get a little tricky, could be an hour either way.

  As if in response, the door alarm ching-chinged as somebody disarmed it and entered the house.

  That had better be Tad….

  Drayne dumped a bit of catalyst into the white compound, stirred in the fine red powder so that the resulting mix started turning pale pink. Drayne worked by sight and smell, he kept adding catalyst until the right shade was achieved — a shade somewhere between titty and bubble gum — and that sharp, cherry-and-almond odor drifted up and told him it was about right, too.

  Ah, there we go….

  “About fucking time,” Drayne said. There was no real anger in his voice, just making a comment was all.