Hidden Agendas nf-2 Read online

Alex had transferred the agreed-upon sum from his credit card to Greg's account and waved bye-bye as the man left.

  Now Alex closed the hood, wiped his hands on a red rag, and grinned at Toni.

  They'd been working on the car for several hours. They had found the tires, which were in remarkable shape inside plastic bags, and pumped them full of air using a little compressor that ran off the van's electrical system. They'd put the wheels back on the car. They had added gasoline, oil, water, transmission and brake fluid, and other lubricants, replaced the battery, and tinkered with the fuel injector. Alex had done something with the plugs and wiring, cleaned preservative off various components, fiddled with this seal and that one, and now, finally, the tiny car purred.

  He had, Alex had told her, every intention of driving the thing home, even though the license tag was years out of date. "Be worth the ticket if we get caught," he said.

  He cleaned the grease from his hands, walked around to the open driver's door, and looked down at her. "It'll need a new top," he said. "And a set of new belts, plug wires, some other minor stuff. Paint is in pretty good shape, but I'm not that fond of arrest-me red. Maybe a nice teal," he said.

  She grinned back up at him. She'd gotten a little dirt under her fingernails too, helping him put the wheels back on the car and passing him tools. He had been like a little boy, all excited, pointing out stuff to her. "Look at this. Look at that!" He'd gotten completely lost in the work, and in the doing of it had also lost years of responsibility. It pleased her to see him this way. So relaxed. Having so much fun.

  "So, let's take her out for a little spin," he said.

  She started to get out of the car.

  "No, go ahead, you drive. You can use a manual shift, can't you?"

  "Sure."

  He finished wiping his hands, circled around the back to the passenger side, and got into the car. The garage door was already open, and the bright afternoon beckoned. Toni put the transmission into reverse and carefully backed out onto the driveway to the street, turned the wheel, and started to shift into first.

  "Wait a second," he said. He twisted in the seat, caught the rear window zipper, and pulled it across behind her. He pressed the thin plastic rear window down behind the stabilizer bar, reached across in front of her, and undid the roof latch on her side, then the one on his side. With one hand he accordioned the top, folding the heavy black material down and behind them.

  "Voilà!" he said. "Convertible! It's not too cold for you, is it?"

  "Nope," she said.

  "All right then. Let's see how she rides."

  Toni eased the clutch out — it was a bit stiff and it squeaked — and the Miata scooted forward. The short-throw stick made shifting up the gears fast and easy, and pretty soon they were rolling along a four-lane highway at sixty. It was a responsive beast, the steering tight, and cornering was a delight. She took a thirty-mile-per-hour curve at fifty, no problem.

  "It's quieter than I thought it would be," she said. "And not as windy."

  He said, "Push it up to about seventy and watch."

  Traffic was light, so Toni goosed it a little.

  At seventy, the wind seemed to slacken, as did the noise. She said as much to Alex.

  "Yep, it's quieter at seventy than at fifty-five. That was part of the aerodynamic design. Isn't this great?" He grinned at the road in front of them.

  A few miles up the highway, Toni pulled into a supermarket parking lot.

  "Something wrong?" he asked.

  "Nope. Your turn. You've been itching to take the wheel since we hit the street."

  He grinned again. Boy, she liked seeing that. He jumped out of the car and hurried around to the driver's side as she moved over into the passenger seat.

  Behind the wheel, he checked his outside mirror first, then the inside one. Then he looked across at the outside mirror on the passenger side. "That one's a little off," he said.

  She reached out to adjust the mirror.

  "Hey, I can get it," he said. "One of the joys of a car this small. Watch." He leaned over, reached across her chest, and grabbed the mirror. "See? Can't do that in the snail van."

  Stretched out across her, one hand out of the car on the mirror, he glanced up at her face from a few inches away.

  She could smell him, his sweat, his aftershave, and there he was, the back of his arm almost touching her breast, his mouth close enough to kiss.

  Without thinking anymore, she did just that. Leaned a hair forward, put her lips on his, and kissed him.

  Are you out of your mind, Toni?

  The sudden jolt of panic shot through her like an electrical charge. Oh, no! What had she done?

  She pulled back to break the kiss.

  Alex brought his hand away from the mirror, put it behind her head, and held her there. He worked his lips, opened his mouth, and found her tongue with his.

  There must be a God, Toni thought.

  Saturday, January 15th, 12:15 p.m. Eastern Oregon

  No two ways about it, Howard was trapped.

  He had been lucky, in that the waist-thick fir had enough branches on it to break the main trunk's descent enough so it hadn't smashed him to a pulp. But the tree's bole had come to rest on the back of his left calf, and had pinned him to the ground face-down. He managed to clear away a few small branches on his back and thighs so he was able to struggle to a sitting position, his butt against the trunk. His left leg was pinned, his right leg free, but stuck more or less straight out in front of him.

  Not the most comfortable position he'd ever been in. There was no pain in the caught leg. Was that good? Or bad?

  He could still wiggle his left foot, feel his toes inside the insulated boot, so that was comforting. Might not even be broken, the tibia or fibula, but that didn't matter.

  What mattered was that his virgil was safely locked to a nice D-ring on his pack, over there by his cook stove. It was only about ten feet away, but given the present circumstances it might as well be ten million miles. He wasn't going anywhere.

  He had tried to lift the trunk, then to shove it off using his free leg, but that was not going to happen. He had about fifty feet of tree on him, and even positioned a lot better than he was, probably couldn't have moved it with his muscle power alone. Where it rested on his calf, the tree was about as thick as a telephone pole.

  This was not a good situation.

  He was in the middle of nowhere, staked to the snowy ground like a bug to a display board, his electronics out of reach. He was dressed for the weather, but come sundown it was going to get very cold, and sleeping face-down in the snow with the air temperature below zero was not generally a good idea.

  Of course, if he went more than twenty-four hours without beeping in they'd call, and if he didn't answer they'd come and find the virgil and him with it, but by then he might already be a Howard-sicle. And they wouldn't come looking before noon tomorrow.

  No, all in all he would have to say this was definitely not good.

  He took a deep breath, blew it out, and watched the breath-fog hang in the air. It wasn't that warm. In fact, it seemed twenty degrees colder than it had when he'd got here a few minutes ago.

  "Okay, John," he said. "Let's take stock here. What have you got in the way of good news?"

  He had a lighter in his jacket shell. There were a lot of dead needles among the green, and a whole lot of branches, albeit somewhat cold and damp, but he was pretty sure he could make a fire. So he wouldn't freeze if he did it right. He might even be able to burn through the trunk. Break the weight enough to be able to shift the tree off his leg.

  Or start a small forest fire in which he got cooked real good.

  Hmm. Put that one on the backup list.

  What else?

  Well, he had his sheath knife. He reached back on his right hip, found the handle — there was a comfort — and pulled the knife from its scabbard.

  The knife was a Cold Steel Tanto, so called for the angled, Japanese-sword-style point
, and was eleven inches long, five of that the cutting edge. It was a full-tang, the blade was three-eighths-of-an-inch thick across the backstrap, and it wore an artificial rubber handle, crosshatched for a good grip, and was butted and guarded with brass fittings. A fine weapon, able to kill a man with one thrust from somebody who knew what he was doing, but it had not been designed for chopping away a tree bigger around than his thigh. Still, it was what he had, and he knew if he could twist himself around long enough, he could eventually cut through the wood. It might take a long time, but it wasn't as if he was going anywhere…

  He felt better, knowing he had at least two options.

  Well, okay, three — he could always cut his leg off from the knee down, right?

  He smiled to himself.

  "Okay, any other possibilities here, John? Maybe cut your jacket into strips, make a lariat, and try to lasso your pack? It's only about ten feet, you could probably manage it, and then you'd have your virgil back."

  Yeah, and wouldn't that look great. Old Man Howard lets a tree fall on his stupid sorry ass, and has to call for help. Too bad he froze to death without a jacket before somebody could break a copter loose to go and get him…

  Maybe not. Put that one right before setting the tree on fire.

  He looked down at his pinned leg. Hold on a second. There was yet another option, the LAIC Maneuver.

  LAIC–Look At It Crooked.

  If you couldn't solve a problem going in through the front door, what about the back door? When you had an enemy too strong to attack head-on, flanking him would sometimes work.

  Howard looked at his leg and grinned. The limb had pretty much squished the snow out of its way under the weight of the tree. He'd bet it was close to or on the ground below, but even frozen dirt wasn't as hard as wood, was it? Especially with that nice warm leg lying on it, thawing it out and all.

  All he had to do was dig a hole under his shin, come in from the side, hollow enough out so the leg would drop. When the calf got below ground level, the tree would be resting on the edges of the hole, and all he'd have to do would be to pull the leg out, right?

  Look at it crooked.

  It made sense. It made a lot more sense than trying to play Paul Bunyan with a knife, or cooking himself into Howard the damned fool crispy critter, didn't it?

  He laughed. "Dig, baby, dig. You do this right, nobody will ever have to know it happened."

  He shifted his position a bit, and cleared away the snow down to the dirt next to his trapped leg. No blood. That was good.

  The topsoil was mostly sand, and the rocky clay under it was frozen, but it took less than an hour to excavate himself. In the end, his bigger worry was that the pot he'd set to heating to make his lunch would burn up, the water having boiled away, but he managed to get to it and throw it into the snow to cool before that happened.

  The ankle wasn't even sprained, the snow under the leg having cushioned things enough so his pants weren't even torn. His foot was sore, but not so much he couldn't walk on it, and Howard felt immensely pleased with himself as he ate his delayed lunch.

  Okay, so he was older. He could could learn to fight smarter, not harder. Growing old might be hell, but hey, it still beat the only other option, didn't it?

  Ah, John, you are quite the philosopher, aren't you?

  That's me.

  There was nothing like a victory to give you a sense of control. It might be an illusion, but it sure felt good in the moment. Yes, sir, it did.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Saturday, January 15th, 3:20 p.m. Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Somebody honked their car horn and laughed as they drove past, but Alex didn't care. The passion he'd thought frozen when he split from Megan was not dead, not even wounded. God, Toni felt so good. Her lips were warm, soft, her hands on his back pulled him closer, her breasts against his chest—

  His virgil cheeped, and the incoming tone was the classical music sting he'd programmed from Les Preludes that indicated a Priority One call.

  Damn!

  He broke the kiss and leaned back. Fumbled with his virgil.

  "Wow," Toni said. She was flushed and breathing heavy.

  "Yeah. Hold that thought, okay?"

  He tapped the speaker button on the virgil. "Michaels."

  "Commander, Jay Gridley. Sorry to bother you, Boss, but, well, the shit has just hit the fan."

  "What?"

  "The Fried Sex guys just crashed the U.S. Internet Bank System. I hope you got some money in your pocket, ‘cause you ain't gonna be cashing your federal check today."

  "Fuck!"

  "Yes, sir, Boss, that is the key and operative word around here. The bank guys are foaming at the mouth, and the ripple effect is jamming through the net like a cattle stampede. Everybody and his kid sister have thrown up firewalls and lockouts, and the whole NorAm Net is one big crappy mess."

  "Damage control?"

  "We're throwing water on it, but we're talking mega forest fire, Boss. It's hot and ugly and getting hotter and uglier every minute. We're gonna have to take some major systems offline and shut down a bunch of the FedWeb."

  "Do what you can, get everybody we have on it. We'll be—I'm on my way," Michaels said. "Discom."

  Michaels looked at Toni. "I'm sorry," he said.

  She shook her head. "I hope you're talking about the call."

  "Yeah, I am. But — this—" He waved one hand back and forth between them. "This is probably… not very smart."

  "I know."

  "I'm your boss. This sort of thing brings up all kinds of problems."

  "What sort of thing?"

  He stared at her. "Jesus, Toni, you know what I'm talking about. Office romance. Supervisors sleeping with people they supervise."

  She grinned, as big as he'd ever seen her grin. "Oh, boy," she said.

  "What?"

  "You want to sleep with me?"

  "Yes, of course. But given the circumstances—"

  "I'll quit," she said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "If you sleep with me, I'll resign."

  "Toni—"

  "No, I'm serious. If it would be a problem for you as my supervisor, then we can fix that. I love working for you, Alex, but I can always find another job. Right now, a personal relationship with you is more important than a business relationship."

  He blinked at her, stunned by her words. "You would quit your job to have sex with me?"

  "In a New York second."

  "Why? I'm not that wonderful."

  "You underestimate yourself. I'm serious about this."

  He shook his head. "Jesus. Look, we have to get back to HQ and take care of this disaster, okay? Can we talk about this later?"

  "Whenever you want. You want to go back and get the van?"

  "No, leave it. I'll get somebody to pick up it."

  He started the Miata's engine.

  Holy shit. It never rained but it poured.

  Saturday, January 15th, 3:25 p.m. Harm, Maui, Hawaii

  Winthrop was on the net in Joined-VR, showing Julio some of the ins and out of the webweave. She had allowed him to conjure a program, and what he had come up with was a beach on Maui, near Hana. They were in personal persona, dressed in skimpy swimsuits, walking barefoot on a black sand beach. They listened to the breakers curl, to the seagulls cawing. A gentle breeze played over them, the sea where it lapped into the volcanic sand was warm, and the sun caressed their bare skin.

  "So, what do you think?" Julio asked

  "Not bad, for a beat-up old trooper. Why did you choose this in particular?"

  "I went here once, for real. I have some good memories of it. Besides, I wanted to see what you looked like in a bathing suit."

  "I bet you say that to all the girls."

  "Sure I do. But my intentions are honorable — I could have made it a nude beach, you know."

  She laughed.

  As they rounded a big rock and the shoreline curved inward, Winthrop noticed something odd. The
water seemed to be… receding, ebbing away and growing shallower as she watched. It moved out so quickly that fish were left flopping on the bottom. A big eel wiggled frantically, trying to catch the subsiding sea.

  "That's a nice effect," she said. "What's it for?"

  He shook his head. "I don't have a clue. I'm not doing it."

  The water continued to ebb, and Winthrop looked farther out to sea.

  "Uh-oh," she said.

  "What?"

  "I just realized what's happening. See there?"

  Julio squinted into the sunshine. "Looks like a big wave."

  "Yeah, it's a big wave, all right, and it's going to get a lot bigger as it gets closer. It's a tsunami."

  "A tidal wave?"

  "That's a misnomer. It doesn't have anything to do with tides. They're usually caused by earthquakes or volcanic activity. Sometimes by a big meteor hitting the ocean — or somebody playing with big nukes can make one."

  "So why all of a sudden is there a tsunami in my scenario?"

  "Got me, but it looks like trouble in paradise. Something big is happening on the net. I hate to cut the lesson short, but we need to jack out of this scenario see what RW scans show."

  "Yes, ma'am. You're the expert."

  "Standby—"

  Saturday, January 15th, 3:30 p.m. Quantico, Virginia

  Fernandez came back to himself in the computer room, sitting next to Joanna. She was waving her hands at her computer station, calling up a rapid blur of images and words and numbers from the holoproj in front of her. And she was cursing like a sailor while she did it.

  "God dammit! How the hell can this be happening?"

  She waved her hands again, then tapped furiously at the keyboard on the desk.

  Fernandez kept quiet, knowing this was not the time to fill her ears with foolish questions.

  Whatever was going on, though, it didn't look good.

  "No, no, no, you bastard! Don't route there, you'll crash the — dammit, dammit! Stop!"

  Jay Gridley came running into the room, and excited as he was, he must already know what was going on.

  "Winthrop, you see what the hell is happening?"

  "I got it. Jesus Christ!"

  Gridley slid into a chair in front of another workstation. "Man, oh, man! The kickouts at FedOne just blew."