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  "You got officers' luck, sir," Phillips said.

  Howard rolled up, brushed himself off and grinned at the larger man. "I'll take it. Better to be lucky than good."

  "Yes, sir." Phillips turned away. "Next!

  Howard walked around to where Fernandez and a couple of techs were scoring the exercise.

  "You must be getting old, Colonel, sir. You're gonna come in third."

  "Behind…?" He pulled off his headband and used it to wipe the sweat from around his eyes.

  "Well, sir, Captain Marcus is first by a good sixteen seconds. You missed him throwing Phillips with that jujitsu move he likes."

  "And second…?"

  Fernandez grinned. "Modesty forbids, sir."

  "I don't believe it."

  "Well, sir, I was first up."

  "How long?"

  "Two seconds faster than you," Fernandez said.

  "Jesus."

  "I do believe He favors me, yes, sir."

  "If you were first up, you should have flown through the minefield."

  "I stopped to have a beer, sir. Since I figured I had plenty of time and all."

  Howard shook his head and grinned. "How are they doing?"

  "Pretty good overall. I'd put all our AI boys — and girls — up against any SpecForce outside of maybe the SEALs' best, and they'd give them a pretty good run."

  "Carry on, Sergeant."

  "Sir."

  Howard walked toward the new officers' dressing room — hell, it was all new, none of this had even been here a few years ago — to change his clothes. If he hurried, he'd just have time to get home and join his wife in time for church.

  Sunday, October 3rd, 8:45 a.m. In the air over Marietta, Georgia

  Mora Sullivan looked through the jet's window at the ground far below. She had both of the first-class seats to herself this flight, and that was not due to chance — she usually bought two tickets to each destination, in case she needed to change identities before she boarded the flight.

  Coach was only half full, so nobody was getting a free upgrade to take the empty seat next to her.

  Fall colors were up — the hardwoods in the Georgia mixed forests below were shades of orange and yellow and red among the evergreen pine trees. She tended to sleep on plane trips, but she was too awake and edgy for that this morning.

  During all her years in the biz, she had only deleted two of her own clients. The first, Marcel Toullier, had been for a contract from a different client six months after she'd worked for the Frenchman; being one of her clients did not confer immunity, and it had been strictly business, nothing personal. She'd liked Toullier.

  The second deletion, the gun dealer Denton Harrison, had been because Harrison had done stupid things and gotten himself arrested. The authorities had enough on him to put him away for fifty years, and Sullivan knew he was a talker, he'd be willing to give up what he knew to stay out of prison. Sooner or later, Harrison might have gotten around to mentioning that he had hired the Selkie. The numbers he had for her were, of course, dead ends, disconnected and untraceable, but the authorities did not know for certain there even was such an assassin. She did not want them to find out.

  Wearing class-two body armor, on his way to a safe house, Harrison had come out of a courthouse in Chicago, surrounded by federal marshals.

  She had made the shot from six hundred yards. Class-two Kevlar didn't much slow the sniper rifle's.308 bullet: it had punched through Harrison's aorta and left a fist-sized hole in his back when it exited his body. He was effectively dead before the sound of the shot reached him.

  And now there was Genaloni.

  A flight attendant came by. "Coffee? Juice? Something else to drink?"

  "No, thank you."

  Did she have to take the crime lord out?

  If she had reflexively thought she must, she would hardly be any better than he was. Yes, she had to do something, and since what she did for a living was delete people, that was where her strength lay, and naturally, she had to consider that an option. But there were other ways. Having made the decision that it was time to retire, all the old IDs, the houses and rentals, all of those were going away. She could lay a trail that ended in a car crash or other accident that would convince any pursuers she was dead. Or she could set Genaloni up for some criminal rap and know he'd get put away. He would still wield power from a prison cell, of course, these guys always did, but he'd have other things on his list. Even somebody like Genaloni would probably forget about her after five or ten years in the gray-bar hotel.

  Men like Genaloni tended to die relatively young, or wind up in prison. They made a lot of enemies on both sides of the law, and the odds were that one of those enemies would get to them.

  Of course, there were ninety-year-old ex-mobsters rolling around in wheelchairs, sucking oxygen from portable bottles and pretending to be feeble or insane, who had beaten the odds. Old Mustache Petes who, despite the dangers, were still free.

  She sighed. Which was the best way to go? She had to decide pretty quick. After she paid for the lost dog at the kennel upstate, she'd go to her place in Albany and think about it.

  Sunday, October 3rd, 1:28 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  Tyrone stood at the door to Bella's house, taking deep breaths, trying to calm himself. Yesterday's session had gone pretty well. She was not a great net rider, but not that bad.

  Twice, she had brushed her hip against his. Once, when she reached across to grab a stylus, he had felt the weight of her breast on his arm.

  The memories might cool someday, but just at the moment, they did not help slow his pulse rate.

  He touched the buzzer.

  Bella opened the door. Today, she wore a less-revealing outfit — a sweatsuit. She had her hair pinned up, and she looked scrubbed fresh, smelled clean, and a little bit soapy.

  "Hey, Ty. I just got out of the shower. Sorry I look so undone."

  There was an image he could imagine all too clearly, Bella in the shower. "No, no, you look fine," he said. And he said it too fast, his voice too high. He was too stupid to live. Man!

  "Come in."

  Upstairs, they donned VR gear and got started. He said, "Okay, let's use my program today. You mind riding double on a big motorcycle?"

  "Nopraw," she said. "Whatever you want to do."

  Yeah, right. What he wanted to do had nothing to do with the net. No, sir, definitely not. But he said, "Okay. Here's how scenario translates…"

  Sunday, October 3rd, 9:45 p.m. Grozny

  Plekhanov settled in, lit his VR, then realized he still had not deleted the car program. The shiny blue Corvette sat parked at the curb in front of him. He mentally shook his head. He really should get rid of this thing. All right. As soon as he finished the little drive over to Switzerland, he would dump it. Definitely.

  Sunday, October 3rd, 1:50 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  Riding the Harley along the curvy road through the Swiss Alps, Tyrone yelled over the wind noise: "You see how this works? My program translates their programs into compatible visual modes. That truck over there? If we were in a water scenario, it would probably be a barge or a ship."

  "But how does it do that?" Bella yelled.

  He glanced back at her. Her hair streamed free behind them, whipping back and forth in the wind.

  "Easy. If we're in totally different modes, my program just overlays the other guy's imagery. Angle and relative speeds will be the same — air, water, land, even fantasy. If we are in similar enough modes — like the truck is doing roads and not water or something else — my program will take his image and stet it, to keep the VR speeds up. Most people who meet pick one program or the other and use it. Otherwise, you get a couple of microseconds lag on the refresh rate."

  "Ah, I see."

  "That truck? It's really a big info packet. It contains a lot of code, so it moves slow. Watch."

  He twisted the throttle and the Harley's powerful engine roared. They passed the lumbering truck, and whipped back in fr
ont of it as a car approached from the other direction.

  "Wheee!" Bella said.

  Oh, he liked the sound of that.

  "So this is all off-the-shelf software?"

  "Well, I've modified this one a bunch."

  "You can do that?"

  "Sure. I could write one from zero, but it's easier to alter an existing one."

  "Could you show me how to do that? Write my own program?"

  "Yeah, sure, nopraw. It's not that hard."

  "Exemplary!"

  In that moment, Tyrone remembered talking to his father. Offer the locals something they can't get from your enemy, he'd said. Although Tyrone didn't really see Bonebreaker as an enemy, exactly, the old man was right. Tyrone had something LeMott didn't have, a skill, a talent, and right at this moment, Bella wanted it. This was dee-eff-eff for sure, data flowin' fine to the fourth power!

  They came to an intersection with a stop signal. CyberNation was to the left. Maybe he should take her there? It was interesting the few times he'd explored it, but they didn't let you see the really good stuff unless you joined, and that wasn't gonna happen. He could hear his father: "Give up your citizenship to join a computer country that doesn't exist? I don't think so."

  Cross-traffic rolled past, and Tyrone was so much in his own head that he almost missed the Vette when it zipped across the intersection.

  Almost. A mental alarm went off. Corvette… Corvette… what—?

  Oh, yeah, Jay Gee's bulletin in yesterday's Email. Keep your eyes open for a young guy in a business suit driving a blue Vette.

  The car was past before he had a chance to see the driver, and there were two cars and a small van lined up in front of Tyrone at the light. Probably it was nothing.

  On the other hand, maybe it was something. He ought to at least check it out, right? And if Bella asked, he'd have to tell her why, wouldn't he?

  Bonebreaker wasn't helping out a major federal agency, was he?

  Tyrone tapped the Harley's gears into first and gave it a little gas. He pulled over onto the shoulder and zipped past the waiting cars, earning a couple of horn blasts for his trouble.

  "Whoa! Is this legal?"

  "Well, not really," Tyrone said, "but we gotta do it." They reached the corner, and he leaned into it, straightened it out, upshifted and goosed the bike. "You see that blue Vette up there?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I need to check it out. I'm, uh, helping out a buddy of mine at Net Force."

  "Net Force? Really?"

  "Oh, yeah. Jay Gridley, he's their top computer guy. I do stuff for him every now and then."

  "Wow. Exemplary, Ty!"

  Was that his imagination, or did she tighten her grip around his waist a little?

  "Can we catch him?"

  "Nopraw. There's not much that can outrun me in this scenario. Hang on."

  Definitely, she was holding him tighter. Yes!

  Sunday, October 3rd, 9:58 p.m. Grozny

  Plekhanov was on his way back from the bank in Zurich when he saw the motorcycle coming up fast behind him. He frowned, felt a moment of worry. He watched the bike in his rearview mirror. It wasn't long before the vehicle caught up with him. It swung out into the incoming lane, then started to pass, apparently oblivious to the lorry bearing down from the opposite direction on the narrow two-lane feeder road. He watched the motorcycle peripherally. Two riders, teenagers, a boy and a girl, neither of whom appeared to take much notice of him. After a few seconds, the motorcycle passed, cut back into his lane and accelerated, missing the oncoming lorry by what seemed like centimeters. The two-wheeler quickly left him behind.

  Plekhanov shook his head at his paranoia. It was nothing. A Kaffir boy, showing off for his pretty friend by blowing past the fastest vehicle on the road, risking the dangers of oncoming traffic. He had been that young once, although it had been aeons ago. He would not go back to those days, exchange his hard-earned knowledge and wisdom for the hot hormones and reckless carpe diem philosophy of youth. Teenagers thought they would live forever, that they could do anything in the world. He knew better.

  Always, there were limits to such things. Even the richest and most powerful men who ever lived eventually went the way of all flesh. Another fifty or sixty years, and his time would be up. But at least in his case, it would be quality time. Quality time indeed.

  28

  Sunday, October 3rd, 2:20 p.m. Quantico

  Jay Gridley was on the net, piloting the Viper at high speed through the middle of Nowhere, Montana, when the override cut into the scenario. What he heard was the chirp of the unlisted landline phone in his apartment. He did a cycle-and-bail from the VR program, degeared and voxaxed the incoming call.

  "Yeah?"

  "Mr. Gridley?" said a young woman's voice.

  Jay frowned. Nobody who had his private code for the landline should be calling him "Mister." He said, "Who is this?"

  "My name is Belladonna Wright. I'm a friend of Ty Howard."

  Before Gridley could wonder too much about that, the girl said, "Ty is on-line in a scenario. He said to call you and give you the coordinates. He thinks he might have found the blue Corvette you're looking for."

  "Jesus! Where?"

  She rattled off the coordinates. Gridley had the computer feed the numbers directly into his VR program. "Thanks, Ms. Wright. Tell him I'm on the way. Discom."

  Gridley immediately started back to VR, but as he was about to initiate mode, he stopped. Probably it wasn't, but if it was the right car, the driver would surely be suspicious of the Viper. Better switch programs, no point in taking any chances. Something not so flashy.

  Gridley called up the gray Neon.

  The most common car on the RW roads was a two-year-old Neon, and the most common color of such automobiles was gray. For newbies and people who didn't care what they drove on the net, it was the default vehicle. No doubt Dodge had paid the big servers a whole bunch for that default setting. A Viper was a standout ride, stylish, classy, you got noticed in one. But another gray Neon? Driving such a car made you more or less invisible. And if you knew what you were doing, you could hide something more powerful than a stock engine under the plain-vanilla hood. It wouldn't be as fast as his usual mode of choice, but it would trade off speed for anonymity. If this was the guy, he most definitely did not want him to spot him too soon.

  He cranked the program and set it for the coordinates.

  The coordinates turned out to be a truck stop-style service station in western Germany. As Gridley pulled the car into the parking area, he saw a pretty girl walk from the public fresher toward Tyrone, who stood by his parked Harley, next to a big Volvo electric van sucking a torrent charge. This was a realistic scenario. Tyrone didn't see him as he drove up; he was looking at the restaurant's parking area.

  Gridley glanced at the restaurant, and saw the Vette parked next to the building. It was the right model and color, but that didn't mean much by itself. He pulled the Neon to a stop close to Tyrone's bike, getting quick notice from the boy and girl. He killed the engine and stepped out of the car. It was cool, crisp, a perfect fall day. The smell of diesel hung in the air, along with the ozone odor of the big step-down charger feeding juice to the van. This was a very realistic scenario.

  "Hey, Tyrone."

  "Hey, Jay Gee. Uh, this is, uh, Belladonna. Bella, meet Jay Gridley."

  Gridley said, "We spoke on the phone. Nice to meet you. This a persona or Real World Appearance?"

  "RW," the girl said.

  "She actually looks better in person," Tyrone said. Then he developed a sudden fascination with the tops of his shoes.

  Gridley smiled. Good thing the kid's skin was dark; otherwise he'd be blushing so bright red you could use him for a taillight.

  Tyrone knew it, too. Quickly, the boy pointed. "There's the car. The driver is inside."

  Gridley nodded. "Thanks for the call. You check the license plate?"

  "Sure, first thing. Quikscan says it belong to a Wing Lu, out of Guang
zhou, China. But a cross-index number check doesn't match."

  "So the plate is probably a fake," Gridley said. "Big surprise."

  To the girl, Tyrone said, "A lot of people want to be anonymous on the net, so along with fake names and personas to mask their appearance, they layer in other fake ID — ersatz vehicle registrations, addresses, comcodes. One of the first rules of web walking is—"

  " ‘Never trust anything you see,' " the girl finished. "I have been on the web before, even if I'm not a total spider, Ty."

  "Sorry," Tyrone said.

  Gridley shook his head. Puppy love. It was painful to watch. "So, what else?" he said, to steer the conversation back to the Vette.

  Tyrone said, "He drives fast, changes lanes without hitting the centerline bumps, never gets caught behind a slow packet or boxed by traffic."

  "A lubefoot," Gridley said.

  "No doubt," Tyrone said.

  "What's a lubefoot?" the girl asked.

  "Somebody who slides along the web without much friction," Tyrone answered. "Means he's real good with this particular mode, probably used it a bunch, or else he's spent enough time on the web so he can probably use any mode well."

  "Which means?"

  "Probably he's a programmer," Gridley said.

  "So, can I ask why you're looking for him?"

  "I really can't tell you that just yet. It's part of an ongoing investigation."

  "But it's a big deal?"

  "Oh, yeah, if this guy is the one we want, it's a gargantuan deal. More we can collect on him, the better." Gridley glanced at Tyrone. "He see you?"

  "We passed him to get a closer look. It was a narrow road. We've hung back pretty far since then. I don't think he spotted us following him, but if he sees us again, he might recognize us from when we went around him."

  "All right. You want to stay on it, you ride with me, leave the bike here. We'll see how long we can run with him."