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  “Cooper is sending over the police reports, says we can access ’em on the computer in a couple of minutes. But she says nobody saw the two men come in or leave.”

  “I bet the late Mr. Wyndham saw them come in.”

  “But not leave. The cops haven’t seen anything like this before. The dead guy was armed. The guess is, somebody shoved a gun into his back, he tried to get out of the way. He took a small-caliber round at contact range, probably a .22, and it wouldn’t have killed him, the examiner said. But he musta figured he was gonna lose, so he erased himself. The poison was one of the new explosive-pellet neurotoxins. Guy had ninety seconds once he bit the capsule and it spewed.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yeah, ain’t it?”

  “Well, don’t just stand there, go see if Ms. Cooper can find some use for you. He’s close, Julio. We’re going to get him. I can feel it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Wednesday, April 13th

  Washington, D.C.

  It was sunny, no wind, a perfect day for working the’rangs, and Tyrone headed for the soccer field, full of himself. Bella had given her smile back to him, she wanted him around, wanted to see him, had invited him to her house this very evening! Life was better than good; life was great.

  When he arrived at the field there, Tyrone saw Nadine. Dee-eff-eff!

  But when he got to where Nadine was, she was already packing up.

  “Hey, Nadine.”

  “Hey, Tyrone.”

  “Where you going?”

  “My arm’s a little sore. I don’t want to overtrain.”

  “I’ve got some ibuprofen gel.”

  “That’s okay. I got some at home. See you.”

  Something was wrong, he could feel it, but he couldn’t see what it was. “You okay?”

  She looked him straight in the eyes. “I told you my arm was sore. You forget to turn on your implant?” There was a definite hard edge in her voice.

  “Whoa, dial it down, I wasn’t calling you a preva, I was just asking, that’s all.”

  She went back to loading her backpack. “Why do you care? You don’t need to be skulking with people like me. You got Belladonna.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  She jammed the pack shut, lifted it, swung it over her shoulder. “C’mon, Tyrone, you know what it means. You sweat with the jocks, you don’t hunch chair with the gamers. You breakfast with the dressers, you don’t eat lunch at the scuzz table.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You gonna make me say it, aren’t you? You skulk beautiful, you don’t skulk ugly.”

  “Who is ugly?”

  She gave him a sad smile, a little one. “You telling me I’m in Bella’s league, Ty? You’d rather be seen with me than with her?”

  He was stunned. He couldn’t get his mind on-line. Why was Nadine babbling on about this? Of course Bella was prettier. She was prettier than everybody in the school! What was the point?

  He was trying to figure out what Nadine meant, and what he should say, when she shook her head. “Yeah, I hear the dial tone. Copy you later, Ty.”

  She slipped her other arm into the backpack and walked away.

  He watched her go, and while he hadn’t done anything wrong he could think of, he felt guilty. Somehow, he had just failed some kind of test, and he didn’t even know what it was.

  Damn. He wished his father was home. Dad knew about stuff like this. He needed to talk to him.

  32

  Wednesday, April 13th

  MI-6, London, England

  Something was wrong, Toni knew. The small cracks in Alex’s facade had been plugged up, spackled over, leaving a solid wall in front of his emotions. It wasn’t so much what he said or did, but an unseen but somehow detectable shift in his posture. From her years of martial arts training, she had a tendency to view things in terms of physical engagements. What it felt like was, all of a sudden, Alex stood in a defensive stance. When they’d met, his guard had been up, but he had relaxed it when they’d gotten together, begun to allow her to get closer. Now he was hunched over, face covered, backing away.

  Sitting in a strange office halfway around the world from her roots, Toni worried about it. What had happened? Sure, he had a lot on his mind, the looming custody battle, the mad hacker, and their relationship had a few bumps in the road, but none of that seemed to be enough to account for this sudden distance between them.

  “Ms. Fiorella?”

  She looked up. Cooper. “Yes?”

  “Your Colonel Howard has some information on his assassin. He’d like your opinion on it. He’s in the small conference room.”

  “Okay. Be right there.”

  Cooper left, and Toni shook the worry about Alex. She did have a job to do, and while Alex certainly was a complicating factor in it, she couldn’t sit here worrywarting about her love life all day. She picked up her flatscreen and headed for the conference room and John Howard.

  Howard glanced away from the holoproj as Toni Fiorella entered the room. Julio was there, but Angela Cooper and Alex Michaels were meeting with one of the MI-6 higher-ups and would be a few minutes.

  “John. What’s up?”

  “Toni. The commander will be along in a little while, Ms. Cooper went to collect him, but I wanted to bring you up to speed on the Ruzhyó matter.”

  “Sure, fire away.”

  He laid it out for her, using the holoproj images to punctuate the briefing. He did a fast sitrep through the stuff she already knew, then got to the new information.

  The holoproj image shifted to the occult cam view from the bookstore. “This man left the store after the incident, at almost the same time as Ruzhyó. According to what Ms. Cooper and her people have found, this is Terrance Arthur Peel, a retired British Army major. Julio, would you lay out the rest?”

  “Sir. Ma’am. Peel had a fairly decent career until he was posted to Ireland a couple years back as part of the standing British force at one of the permanent treaty bases. The peace there is fairly fragile, oddball groups still agitating, and from what we’re able to gather, Peel was responsible for an incident that might have threatened it. Caught some of the locals doing things they shouldn’t have and beat confessions out of them. Apparently, he and his people were . . . overzealous. There were some serious injuries, even deaths, as a result.”

  Toni nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  Fernandez continued: “The British Army is relatively tight-lipped about all this, but Peel was apparently given the choice of falling on his own sword or being drummed out, so he retired, and the incident was swept under the rug. Next time he surfaced, he was providing security for a local bigwig, Lord Geoffrey Goswell. Peel’s new boss is not only a nobleman, he is also richer than Midas, a crusty old billionaire who owns half a dozen companies producing everything from computers to catsup.”

  Toni considered the information for a moment. She had an idea where this was going, but she wanted to hear Howard’s take on it. She looked from Fernandez to the colonel. “I see. And this leads you to believe . . . ?”

  Howard shrugged. “We really don’t have enough information to make a conclusion yet. But it seems awfully coincidental that a former intelligence operative gets shot and poisoned and dead in a bookstore, and a few seconds later, a known killer and a disgraced army major busted for killing prisoners both saunter out the door. If I was a gambling man, I’d be willing to bet these two had something to do with the death. And with each other.”

  “You think Ruzhyó is working for Peel? Hired to catch or kill the guy in the bookstore?”

  “Like I said, it’s too soon to make that stretch for sure, but it certainly seems as if we ought to have a chat with this guy Peel. Even if he is totally innocent, at the very least he was there when the trouble went down, and he had to have seen Ruzhyó when he left. If Ruzhyó had been a second slower leaving, Peel would have stepped on his heels.”

  Toni nodded again. “All right. How do we
go about it?”

  “Cooper will set it up. We can go along as observers. No guns needed. Apparently, Lord Whatshisname is quite well-connected and beyond reproach.”

  Fernandez said, “Right. We knock on the door, have a spot of tea, then politely ask the major, ‘I say, old bean, did you shoot somebody in a bookstore recently?’ and he says, ‘Happens I did, old boy. Is there a problem?’ They are all very civilized here, pip, pip, eh, whot?”

  Toni laughed.

  From the sound of her laugh, Howard figured she still hadn’t gotten around to discussing Angela Cooper with the commander. Well. It sure as hell wasn’t his business, and he wasn’t going to—

  His virgil peeped, the tone indicating it was a personal call. He frowned. He wasn’t really in the field, so he hadn’t shut off everything but tactical reach yet; still, it was unusual for his wife to call. “Excuse me a moment,” he said. He walked away from the table and pulled the virgil from his belt. Mindful of where he was, he kept his visual transmission off.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Tyrone. Everything okay? Your mother—?”

  “Mom’s fine, we’re three by three and go ahead here, Dad.”

  Howard relaxed. Nobody had gotten into a car accident or anything. “What’s sailing, son?”

  “I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy.”

  “I’m not that busy. Shoot.”

  There was a pause. It stretched.

  “We are talking transcontinental rates here, Tyrone.”

  “Sorry. Well, there’s this girl at school . . .”

  Howard listened to his son pour out his problem, and he felt himself grinning. Whenever anybody asked him if he’d like to go back and live his life over, he’d always told them no, not a chance. He hadn’t made so many mistakes that he would go through puberty again to make up for them. No, sir.

  Fiorella and Fernandez ignored him, looking at the computer visuals, and after a little while, Cooper and Michaels arrived.

  Finally, his son ran down. “So, whaddya you think, Pop?”

  “Well, I could be wrong, but I think your boomerang girl likes you. And she’s maybe a little jealous of Bella.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. And she might have a point, too. Why do you like hanging around with Nadine?”

  “She can throw, Dad. She’s smart, she’s funny, and she’s got an arm to sell your comic collection for.”

  “But she’s not much of a looker?”

  “Not really.”

  “And Bella?”

  “Jeez, Dad, she’s gorgeous!”

  “And if my memory serves, she’s also got a mean streak. You remember talking to me about her when she cut you loose before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She thumped you pretty good once before. You got any reason to believe she won’t do it again if it suits her?”

  “Uh . . . no. But maybe she realized she made a mistake.”

  “And maybe you’re more desirable because somebody else wants you.”

  “Nadine? No offense, but I can’t see that Bella would be the least bit worried about Nadine, Dad. She’s fun and all, but she’s not somebody you’d cross the street to get a better look at.”

  “If Nadine is athletic, smart, and funny, some people might find that intimidating, especially if they aren’t.”

  “You mean Bella is jealous of Nadine?”

  Howard chuckled. Tyrone spoke in the same tone of voice he might use if he’d just heard his father say he was going to fly home by jumping into the air and flapping his arms real fast.

  “What else changed, son, since she dropped you?”

  “Nothing.” Another silence. Then, “Man.”

  “It’s nice to be wanted,” Howard said. “But you have to ask yourself who wants you, and why. You can’t blame anybody for the face and form God gives them, but they can’t take any credit for those looks, either. Unless maybe they’ve paid for a lot of expensive plastic surgery.”

  “What are you saying here, Dad?”

  “If Bella wasn’t beautiful, if she was plain or even ugly, would you want to spend time with her? Has she got something going for her other than what she looks like? Would you cross the street to talk to her if you couldn’t look at her when you did it?”

  This dead air was getting real expensive.

  “Uh . . .”

  “Think about it. Let it perk for a while and see what comes out.”

  “Oh, man. I guess I better go. Uh, thanks, Dad.”

  “Say hello to Mom for me.”

  “I will. Discom.”

  “Bye, son.”

  Howard hooked the virgil back to his belt. He was a soldier, and he was going to be gone a lot, that was the nature of soldiering, but he worried about not being there for his son. A man had to do his job, but a man also had responsibilities to his family. Whatever else was going on, he had a son who needed a father’s help. There were values that needed to be passed on, lessons to be taught. He had to remember that. It was important.

  33

  Wednesday, April 13th

  Upper Cretaceous

  What will be Western Europe

  Ferns as tall as pine trees loomed in the sweltering heat, and dragonflies the size of hawks flitted among the lush greenery, hunting mosquitoes that could pass for skinny sparrows. This was primeval, primordial, hot, wet, and dank in ways far beyond a tropical rain forest.

  The wide-base Humvee hit a dip and a mound of humus that might grow up to be part of an oil field in twenty or thirty million years. The front wheel on the passenger side bounced into the air and clawed at nothing, but the other three studded tires had enough traction to clear the decaying lump before dropping the vehicle back on all fours.

  Jay’s teeth clacked together, hard.

  Belted into the passenger seat, Saji said, “Damn, Jay! You want me to drive?”

  Jay gunned the powerful engine. The Humvee lurched forward. “Like you could do any better.”

  “I don’t see how I could do any worse. Unless maybe I drove off a cliff.”

  The damp ground leveled out a little, and the tire studs dug in and pushed the wide-track along a little faster. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”

  “Well, the way you do it, easy isn’t the word that leaps to mind.”

  He was trying to come up with a killer comeback when he spotted the smashed ferns. He slowed, crept a few feet closer to the downed plants, then pulled the UV over and put it into neutral. He glanced at Saji. “You can stay here while I go look. Stand by the gun, if you want.”

  There was a .50-caliber water-cooled belt-fed Browning machine gun mounted on the uncovered rear deck of the Humvee. Clipped to the deck was also a shoulderoperated, laser-guided antitank rocket launcher and half a dozen rockets. Jay had considered bringing rifles and shotguns but decided not to bother. Anything smaller wouldn’t do the job. He would have preferred a tank and spent-uranium armor-piercing rounds to shoot from it, but, relatively speaking, the rocket launcher was the biggest thing he could carry in this scenario. Anything more powerful simply wouldn’t work. Unfortunately.

  “I’d rather not,” Saji said. She wore a set of bush khaki shorts and shirt, with Nike waffle-stompers and knee socks rolled down. She was gorgeous in the tropical clothing. He wondered what she looked like without any clothes.

  “All right. Slide over and take the wheel, then. Leave the engine running. We might need to take off in a hurry.”

  He alighted and walked toward the smashed fern boles over fairly springy ground covered with what looked like green moss.

  He could hardly have missed the footprint: three toes and a pad, no heel. A little water had seeped into the bottom of the print, which was big enough that, if you completely filled it, you could sit down and take a bath.

  Jay swallowed dryly. Jesus, look at that thing. He followed the direction of the toes. Twenty-five feet ahead was another footprint, and there was a definite path through
the brush ahead of that, as if somebody had driven a big diesel tractor-trailer through the forest, knocking down anything that got in its way.

  Jay stared at the trail of destruction. It wasn’t a truck. Nope. It was Rex Regum, the king of kings, Carnosaur Supreme, the ultimate predator. Made your average tyrannosaur look like somebody’s pet iguana. The thing could run from one end of a football field to the other end in a dozen steps. Probably was fifty feet tall, not even counting the tail.

  Following its trail wasn’t gonna be a problem. But like a dog chasing a car, the question was, what would he do if he caught it? That machine gun might not be enough to accomplish the job, and if he got close enough to use the rocket launcher and he missed, he wasn’t gonna get a second shot.

  He turned and headed back to the car. “Move over,” he told Saji.

  “Doesn’t look as if cutting sign is going to be a problem,” she said.

  “No, I don’t think so.” He put the car in gear and started following the monster’s trail.

  Since his brain had more or less started working again, albeit somewhat slowly, Jay had turned the problem over and over, trying to come up with an explanation—any explanation—as to how such a brute could exist. What could have created it? And with technology as he knew it, there wasn’t any answer. But as they drove down the VR path looking for the beast, he thought again about the old Sherlock Holmes dictum about eliminating the impossible and dealing with the unlikely remainder. Nothing he knew about had this kind of power, and he knew a lot about computers. But, given that the thing existed, what could be responsible? What would it take? There weren’t too many possibilities, only one that made any sense, and it was theoretical; the hardware didn’t exist to make it work.

  But what if, by some miracle, it did exist?

  “Better go left here,” Saji said.

  “Really? I thought I’d just drive into that big tree instead.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m distracted.” “Something on your mind?”