Net Force nf-1 Read online

  "Yes," came Plekhanov's voice. It was terse.

  "All is well?"

  "Basically. There has been an unexpected glitch. A small thing, but a bit worrisome."

  Ruzhyo waited to hear whatever it was Plekhanov wanted him to hear. It was not long in coming.

  "That… engineering matter you began has not been completed to my satisfaction."

  Ruzhyo knew they were speaking of the action to divert Net Force's attention — the assassination of its leader, the dragon's teeth sown to put that organization at war with the criminal group. He said, "It is early, yet."

  "Nonetheless, we need to bring that matter along. The small glitch of which I spoke has arisen from that direction, and requires an earlier completion date for the overall project."

  "I see."

  "An attempt was made to, ah, duplicate your first experiment. By someone in the employ of the Italian company. They were unable to match your end results."

  So. The Genaloni organization had tried kill the new head of Net Force and failed. Most interesting. He had not seen anything on the news about this.

  "And you want me to take care of that?"

  "Very likely. However, I would like you to wait for my signal. It might be premature. I should know in a day or two."

  "As you wish."

  "It would perhaps be prudent to locate yourself close to that area."

  "Of course."

  "Good-bye, then. I will speak to you tomorrow."

  "Good-bye."

  Ruzhyo removed the one-time scrambler and stared at it. The visual-purple biomolecular matrix that was the brain of the device would begin dying the moment the pressure switch left the phone's mouthpiece. In twenty seconds, the device's memory would be blank, the circuitry dead. It was a nice toy, a slopover from fighter-jet research. If one had a jet crash in enemy territory, one did not wish for the computer systems to be recovered. Electronic storage was difficult to wipe completely clean, but a bio-unit, once it was completely dead, was impossible to bring back.

  He stood there holding the scrambler for a full minute, then dropped it into the trash.

  So, they would be going to Washington again. Actually, to a motel in Maryland, less than an hour's drive away.

  Grigory wandered over, away from the row of slot machines.

  "Are you done gambling?" Ruzhyo asked.

  "Da."

  Ruzhyo could not resist a small verbal jab. A needle, just enough to sting. He said, "Your system apparently needs some refinement."

  The Snake frowned. Ruzhyo took a certain amount of pleasure in the expression.

  30

  Sunday, October 3rd, 6:15 p.m. Quantico

  Toni Fiorella stepped out of Net Force HQ into the cool evening air and headed for her car. The parking lot was nearly empty, of cars or pedestrians, but angling toward her, carrying a briefcase, was a figure she recognized.

  "Rusty. What's up?"

  She saw him take a deep breath. "I've been doing some research on silat, got into some material on the net, a couple of books and old tapes. I was, ah, wondering, could we, you know, go over some of the stuff? I'd like to get your opinion on it." He waggled the briefcase.

  "Sure. I'll look at it."

  "Well, good, thanks. But you know, I could show it to you at supper. I mean, we, that is — you want to get something to eat?"

  Toni stopped and blinked. He had obviously been waiting out here for her to leave. It certainly sounded as if he was asking her out on a date. And the question that brought up was, If he was, did she want to go down that path?

  Ever alert, the voice of rationalization popped up: Dinner couldn't hurt. You have to eat, don't you?

  She grinned to herself. A quick test of Rusty's resolve might be in order. "Are you asking me out?"

  If he wanted an escape hatch, there it was. Why, no, I was just suggesting that we eat while we discussed this here silat stuff I have here in this here briefcase.

  "Yes, ma'am, I guess I am."

  She laughed. "Ask a woman out and then call her ‘ma'am.' That's probably as polite as I've ever heard it."

  So. What is it to be, Toni? He's a student, but he is also an attractive man. Fit, bright, relatively adept. Got a nice legal degree to go with his FBI trainee status. Dating him might do bad things to the teacher-student relationship. And it certainly would put a kink in the line she wanted to establish with Alex.

  Jesus, girl, if you wait for Alex to notice you as a woman, you might die of old age before it happens. Besides, it's just supper — he didn't ask to you bear his children or anything.

  "All right. I suppose we can have something to eat. Where is your car?"

  "Home. I came in on the Trans."

  "Okay. We'll take my car. You have any place in mind?"

  "Nope. It's not the food, it's the company. You pick."

  She smiled again. He was charming, in his flattering Southern way.

  Despite herself, Toni felt a little surge of adrenaline. Outside of work, it had been a long time since she'd been out with a man socially. And it was always nice for the old ego to be asked.

  Dinner wouldn't hurt anybody.

  Sunday, October 3rd, 7:44 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  Alex took Scout for a walk in his neighborhood. This was much against the wishes of his new security team, so actually what he wound up doing was sponsoring a small parade though the streets around his condo. And the party was somewhat larger than he had realized. There were four agents in two cars, one in front and one in back, inching along at walking speed. There were four men on foot, one in front, one behind him and the dog, and two more across the street forming the corners of a moving box. In addition, he'd been told, another two cars roamed the streets that ran parallel to his, and two more cars covered the cross streets. Some of the cars only had one person in them. Fourteen agents in all, the chief bodyguard had told him.

  It seemed like an excessive use of the taxpayers' money to have that many people guarding him, but his boss had signed the order personally.

  Scout didn't seem to mind the company. He watered lawns, signposts, and fire hydrants. Growled at hidden dangers in clumps of bushes that couldn't possibly hide anything any bigger than he was. Had himself a fine old time.

  Michaels enjoyed the walk himself. It was a bit cooler than it had been, still not cold enough to need a jacket, though he wore a windbreaker so he could carry his taser in the pocket, close at hand. If somebody did manage to breach all his security, at least he could defend himself.

  Caution — fear — was a new feeling for him. It was not something he'd ever worried about before, actual physical danger. He was a fair-sized man, in pretty good shape, living in the hub of civilization. He'd had some training, years ago when he'd joined the agency, in unarmed self-defense, with guns and with the taser, but right now that wasn't much comfort. He was not very good at such things, and, he knew, he was not at heart a violent man.

  The last time he had been in a fight had been in the seventh grade. It had been with a boy named Robert Jeffries. They'd bumped into each other in the hall between classes, and though it had been Jeffries's fault, he had gotten pissed off and told Michaels to meet him after school. That was the last thing Michaels wanted to do, but he was too afraid of looking bad to skip out. In those days, like most of his friends, he believed it was better to get beaten up than to be thought a coward.

  So, with his gut churning, terrified and almost paralyzed with fear, he met Jeffries by the bike racks.

  They took their jackets off and circled each other, neither wanting to make the first move. This close, he could see that Jeffries was pale, sweaty, breathing fast, and it dawned on Michaels that Jeffries had had time to think about things, and he was also afraid.

  So, if neither of them wanted to do this, why were they fighting?

  They might have talked the talk, pushed each other a couple of times, then backed off, but some boys in the crowd gathered to watch shoved them at each other.

  Jeff
ries came in swinging, wild, wide, looping roundhouse punches.

  What exactly happened had never been clear in Michael's mind. One moment, there were fists bouncing off his shoulders and head — fists he couldn't feel, and couldn't seem to avoid, even though they came at him in slow motion and dead silence.

  The next moment, he had Jeffries on the ground, was sitting on his chest, his knees pinning the other boy's arms.

  Thus holding his opponent trapped, Michaels could have pounded his face to a pulp — Jeffries couldn't have stopped him. But he hadn't hit him, he'd just held him down.

  Jeffries had squirmed, bucked, twisted, screamed for Michaels to let him up.

  No fucking way, Michaels had said. Not until you call it quits. I'll sit here all night.

  It had seemed like hours, though it was probably only a minute or so. When Jeffries realized he couldn't buck Michaels off, he agreed to end the fight. They called it a draw, and Michaels was thrilled to let it go at that…

  Scout stopped, marked a weed as his territory and scratched some grass over it with his hind legs.

  Michaels smiled at the memory of his boyhood fistfight. He'd been what, all of thirteen? A long time ago.

  But the smile faded at the more recent memory of Scout's former owner and the look on her face as she'd prepared to brain him with her cane. It wasn't a bloody nose or a black eye she'd had in mind, but a corpse. His corpse. That knowledge made Michaels feel a vulnerability he had never known before.

  He could have died. Whack! A cracked skull, just like that, and he'd never have woken up. Ever.

  Intellectually, he knew he was going to die someday. Everybody's path led that way. But emotionally, it had never come home to him until he'd sat there in his kitchen after the would-be assassin had fled, sat trembling, the taser gripped in his hand, waiting for his people and the police to arrive. He hadn't been afraid during the actual fight. But afterward…?

  He had been afraid. He'd felt… helpless.

  He hated it, that sick feeling of helplessness. Yeah, he had chased the would-be killer. He hadn't run away or anything, but even though he had done the right thing, he hadn't felt brave. He realized he didn't have the skill he needed. And now, he needed to do something about that lack of skill, get a handle on it somehow. Maybe he should talk to Toni. She was an expert — he had seen that for himself. Before, he hadn't been interested. But now? Maybe she would teach him some of what she knew.

  What was that definition he'd heard? A conservative was a liberal who had been mugged?

  Yes. The idea of being able to take a stick away from somebody and keep himself in one piece while he did it had a great appeal to Alex Michaels just now. He wasn't always going to have a platoon of armed guards protecting him. He needed to be able to do that himself, or he wasn't going to be able to leave his home without feeling fear. And being afraid was no way to live. He wasn't going to bow to that. No way.

  Sunday, October 3rd, 8:09 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  It had been a long and exciting day for Tyrone. As Bella walked him downstairs to the front door, he wondered how a day could get much more exciting. First there was Bella, then the business helping Jay Gee with the mad programmer in the Corvette. It wasn't every day you got to take a beautiful and bright girl out on a VR chase that was also an official Net Force investigation. His dad had been right — let Bonebreaker match that, if he could.

  At the door, Bella said, "Thanks for the help, Ty. And letting me go with you on the Net Force thing. It was gi-ganto excitamento. Let me know how it turns out, okay?"

  "Sure. I don't think you'll have any trouble with the class, now. You got this stuff glued tight."

  He opened the door and turned to say good night.

  Bella leaned over and kissed him on the lips. It was soft, quick, but if he lived to be a million, he would never forget that warm and unexpected touch. He couldn't have been more stunned if she'd whacked him on the head with a hammer. "Call me sometime," she said. "We'll do something. Mall rawl, BurgerBarn, something."

  His brain stalled, his mouth shorted out. When he got partial control back, he managed a stammer: "Wh-wh-what about Bonebr — uh, I mean what about LeMott?"

  "He doesn't own me. We aren't married." She smiled. "See you." She closed the door.

  Tyrone stood there, staring at the door, unable to move, to think, maybe even breathe. When his brain came back he had no idea how long he'd been a statue. Could have been a few seconds, could have been a couple of centuries. How could time mean anything after what she had said?

  "Call me sometime," she said. "We'll do something…"

  Oh, man!

  His feet must have been on the ground as he walked toward the Trans station, but Tyrone could hardly tell.

  So this what it was like to be in love.

  Sunday, October 3rd, 10:01 p.m. Washington, D.C.

  In her apartment, Toni looked at the black plastic tape box Rusty handed her. "Where did you get this?"

  "I found it on the webpage for a bookstore in Alabama a couple of days ago. It just got here this morning. I don't have a VHS player, so I haven't had a chance to see it yet."

  Toni looked at the box. The pictures on the back of the box showed a short-haired man in a light shirt and tan slacks doing a block and sapu against a large, ponytailed man in jeans and a dark jacket. The box had apparently gotten wet at some point, because most of the rest of the back was so water-stained and faded it couldn't be made out. She could see that it was a production of Paladin Press, copyright 1999. She knew about them. They produced offbeat books and vids, everything from a dozen ways to kill somebody with common items in your kitchen cabinet, to hardcore gun and sword texts. They were out in Colorado somewhere, if she recalled right.

  On the front of the box, part of the faded illustration had been torn off, but the title, Pukulan Pentjak Silat: The Devastating Fighting Art of Bukti Negara-Serak, Volume Three, was still readable. She felt a quick rush of excitement. She hadn't known anybody had made tapes of her art. And this was the third in a series. "Well, let's see if my player still works, I haven't used it in a while."

  She moved to the multimedia player, and pushed the tape into the VHS slot. The machine lit. She clicked on the television, and went back to sit on the couch next to Rusty.

  The tape opened with a credit sequence, followed by the guy in tan slacks walking into an alley. A man in the alley was moving something, asked for help, and all of a sudden, three more attackers jumped out from behind Dumpsters or doorways. One of the muggers had a knife, another a baseball bat. All four went for Tan Slacks. What was his name? She had missed it in the credits. Never mind, she'd get it later.

  In five seconds, all four of the attackers were on the ground, having gotten there with considerable impact. Toni watched carefully. She would want to see this again in slo-mo, the guy moved so fast. Silat wasn't pretty, there weren't any fancy stances artfully held, but it certainly worked.

  The scene changed, and the guru stood on a mat against the background of a pastel blue wall. He wore a black T-shirt with cut-off sleeves and a classical sarong. The shirt had the Bukti emblem on it: a garuda bird with the tiger face on its chest, over a pair of tjabang tridents. The guru looked fit, fairly muscular, and very confident. She wondered what he'd be like now, more than ten years later.

  Toni turned to Rusty. "This is great. I'm glad you let me see it."

  "I bought it for you," he said. "I figured you'd appreciate it more than I would."

  She smiled. "Thank you. That was nice of you." She put her hand on his arm.

  The moment stretched. The gesture was a simple touch, nothing more, and it meant nothing more than a slight emphasis to her thanks.

  Unless she left her hand there.

  The moment continued.

  Toni decided.

  She did not pull her hand away.

  31

  Monday, October 4th, 5:05 a.m. Quantico

  Suddenly aware of how stiff and tired he felt, Jay Gridley
looked at the clock.

  Wow. He'd been up all night.

  He had scanned enough material to fill a tanker, but now he had a better sense of the programmer they'd chased. Before, they hadn't had diddly, but now that they'd gotten a closer look, a picture was starting to resolve. The guy had the earmarks of somebody trained in the CIS, and Gridley was betting he was a Russian. Not a firm ID, but it sure narrowed things down considerably.

  He tapped at the keyboard, using RW mode instead of VR. This was slogwork, basic number- and word-crunching, and he wanted the raw data where he could see it for what it was. He had the Net Force scanning mainframe winnowing possibilities and feeding him those that were within the parameters. Currently, the computer was going through all registered programmers living in Russia.

  They were gonna get this lubefoot. It was just a matter of time…

  The priority incoming e-mail chime sounded. Gridley shook his head. The tags were in place on the winnow; if something showed up, his station would scream at him. He shifted to the mail and opened it.

  Hmm. The incoming was from one of the field teams. They had, they said, something on the Day assassination.

  Well, okay, that was important, too. Not as important as the programmer, at least not in Gridley's mind — Day was dead and he'd be dead forever. Nobody could hurt him anymore, but the net was still taking hits. Then again, catching a killer was nothing to turn one's back on. And everybody knew that if they didn't come up with something soon, the boss's head was gonna roll. That was how things always worked around here.

  Gridley downloaded the attached file and opened it. It didn't take long for him to see the meat of the message.

  Well, well. Look at that…

  Monday, October 4th, 5:05 a.m. Washington, D.C.

  Megan Michaels was on the front porch of their house, holding hands with a dark-haired, burly man. The two of them kissed. The man slid his hands down her back, cupped her buttocks. She moaned softly, then turned and saw Alex standing there. She smiled at him. "I'm his now," she said. "Not yours." She reached over, put her hand on the man's crotch—