Breaking Point nf-4 Read online

  Balur Silat was a blend of coconut oil and different roots and herbs, a concoction that took about a month to make. You ground the herbs up, cooked and mixed them together, put the resulting goop into a dark glass bottle, and stored it in a dark cool place for months, or even years, to age.

  After a bruising session of bone-to-bone contact during a workout, battered shins and forearms were common. Like the Chinese herbal remedy Dit da jow, or “iron hit wine,” the classic Indonesian preparation was said to be a great help. Literally, balur means “to crystallize” or “to harden.” The stuff was solid at room temperature and had to be heated slightly to liquefy. The liniment thus created was used to help speed healing of bruises, and to help to condition and toughen the skin. There were practitioners of some fighting arts who had shins so hard and impervious to impact they could break baseball bats over them without apparent harm or pain. Toni had seen a picture of an old Serak stylist who could do that once, and she had no desire to have her shins scar and knot and wind up looking like his; still, a certain amount of conditioning was a good idea, and Balur Silat was a help, though finding the authentic stuff wasn’t easy — every other guru out there had his or her own recipe, and some were better than others. She was pretty sure that Carl Stewart’s stuff would be decent.

  She hefted the bottle. If it would work on bruised egos, the maker could name his price and retire rich in a few days. She smiled again, and went back to her packing.

  10

  Thursday, June 9th

  Gakona, Alaska

  Morrison had given Ventura the tour of the facility, but the man hadn’t seemed too awed or even interested by anything, other than the main power generators. Those were fairly impressive. The power building, more than twenty thousand square feet of it, was constructed originally to house a huge coal-fired steam generator that was to run an Air Force Over the Horizon Backscatter Radar installation originally sited here. At the termination of the OTH-B program and the shift to HAARP, the steam generation gear was hauled off, and the backup diesel generators were used instead. They had plenty of power to operate the transmitter and the ISR. Originally, HAARP had been tapped into the local power grid for lights and heating and like that, but interruptions during really bad weather were sometimes a problem — nobody much enjoyed sitting in the cold and dark even if the transmitter still worked, so the local grid was eventually switched over to their own generators. Power-wise, they were self-sufficient — as long as the monster fuel tank was kept filled.

  Morrison could understand why Ventura wasn’t all that impressed — a lot of the older buildings that were supposed to have been temporary were still there, and they weren’t anything to write home about. These were no more than trailers with cheap wood paneling and external conduits for switches and electrical plugs, beat-up old computers and monitors, steel desks and press-board filing cabinets. Not what you thought of as cutting edge.

  Still, impressing Ventura was not the point. Running the next test was.

  Which was what he was about to do. He had another target, and the conditions were as good as they were going to get this time of year, so he was ready to begin.

  Ventura stood behind him, wearing a disguise that ought to fool anybody here into thinking he belonged — black polyester slacks over brown loafers, a white shirt with a pen protector in the pocket, an ugly vest, uglier tie, and dark plastic rimmed glasses. A perfect geek.

  There was a gun tucked under the vest, Morrison was certain, but even though he knew it was there, he couldn’t see it.

  The controls in the auxiliary trailer worked as well as the main ones, but they were less likely to have unexpected visitors here, and unexpected they would be if any showed up.

  Morrison said, “With our computers up, and if the sun-spot activity isn’t too bad, we can hit the mark ninety-eight times out of a hundred.” He adjusted a control, and a liquid crystal display of numbers flashed new digits.

  He and Ventura were alone in the HAARP auxiliary control room. The ACR was where Morrison usually conducted his calibrations and, in this case, an unauthorized use of the equipment. The thing was, you couldn’t tell by looking where the energy generated by the array was going. Since the project was shut down for the summer, except for maintenance and calibrations, no real scientists would be looking over his shoulder — and the guards wouldn’t have a clue what he was really doing.

  In his guise as a geek scientist, Ventura chuckled.

  Morrison frowned. “Something funny about that?”

  Ventura said, “In some circles, ninety-eight percent accuracy is considered failure.”

  Morrison adjusted another dial, then turned to look at Ventura, the question apparent in his raised eyebrows.

  “In the late 1800s, there was a trick shooter named Adolph ‘Ad’ Topperwein. In December of 1906, he decided to try for a record. He had a sawmill in San Antonio, Texas, make up a bunch of wooden cubes, two-and-a-quarter-inches square.”

  “A bunch? There’s a scientific term.”

  “Give me a minute, I’ll get there.”

  Ventura held his thumb and forefinger apart, about the thickness of a modestly fat reference book. “Blocks were about so, a little bigger than a golf ball.”

  Morrison glanced at his control board, tapped a key. The computer screen scrolled more numbers. “Fine. So?”

  “So, Ad went to the San Antonio Fair Grounds with a couple of relays of throwers, some official witnesses, three Winchester M-03 self-loading.22 rifles, and a — here’s that word again—bunch of ammunition. He had his assistants stand about twenty-five feet in front of him. They tossed a block high into the air, and he snapped off a shot, only one, per block.

  “He shot more than fourteen hundred of the little blocks before he had a miss. After that, he went more than fourteen thousand straight, hit every one.”

  “Jesus. That’s a bunch, all right.”

  “Not yet it isn’t. He did this for a week, seven hours a day. At the end of that time, he had fired at fifty thousand blocks. Of fifty thousand tries, he missed exactly… four.”

  “Good Lord,” Morrison said. “With a rifle? Not a shotgun?” Morrison had done some target shooting as a boy with his father’s.22 rifle. The idea of hitting fifty thousand blocks sitting on a table at twenty-five feet and only missing four was amazing. To hit them flying through the air? That was astounding.

  Ventura smiled. “It gets better. He was averaging more than a thousand blocks an hour, one every three and a half seconds or so, and so he finished ahead of schedule — he had allowed himself ten days. He had the record and could have quit, but he didn’t. Instead, he had his assistants salvage some of the least-damaged blocks, got more ammo, and started shooting again. He was getting a bit tired after a week of constant shooting, so his tally fell off a little, but he shot for three more days.

  “All totaled, he fired at seventy-two thousand, five hundred blocks. His final score was seventy-two thousand, four hundred and ninety-one. He missed nine.

  “Sixty-eight and a half hours of point-and-shoot. Although there have been shooters who have actually potted more blocks since, none of them have done it under the same conditions, so the record still stands. I have a picture of Topperwein, in a black suit — with a tie — boots, and a campaign hat, sitting atop a mountain of shot-up blocks, his rifle cradled in his arm.”

  Morrison shook his head. “I can’t even imagine waggling my finger seventy thousand times, much less maintaining enough concentration to shoot accurately that many times.”

  “Frankly, neither can I. Topperwein was the best exhibition shooter who ever lived. But he was also a relatively uneducated man from a little town in Texas, using bare-bones.22 rifles, no laser sights, no shooting glasses, no electronic hearing protection, nothing. Not exactly what you’d call high tech, and his accuracy percentage was.99988. More than a hundred years later, with all of this”—he waved one hand to take in the computer gear—“at your command, you’d think you could improve
on target shooting.”

  Morrison considered that. Yes, you’d think so. Then again, with a tap of a single finger, he could drive seventy thousand people mad in a few hours. No man with a rifle could begin to match that.

  Morrison powered up the system for his “test.” Warning buzzers started to sound, a red light flashed on and off on the control board. He reached for the control, a covered button. The buzzers continued their howl, the lights their strobe, as he raised the cover, then pressed the button.

  I got your blocks of wood right here, pal…

  Multnomah Falls, Oregon

  John Howard stood by the stone restaurant watching his family look at the thin ribbon of water cascading down from a great height to splash into a cold pool at the base of the cliff. They were about twenty-five or so miles outside of Portland, in the Columbia River Gorge, looking at one of the highest waterfalls in the country, more than a six-hundred-foot drop in the second stage here. It was beautiful, though more impressive in the spring as the snowmelt fed the tributary a lot more water.

  Everything was damp here, lots of moss and mold, fed by the constant spray off the falls.

  Howard reached for the virgil — the virtual global interface link — hooked to his belt. This was a great toy, not much bigger than a standard pager or small cell phone, and it not only had a com, it was a working GPS, clock. radio, TV, modem, credit card, camera, scanner, and even a tiny fax that produced weavewire hardcopy. There were civilian models, but the military units were better — at least for now. Sharper Image was gaining, or so he had heard.

  Sergeant Julio Fernandez appeared on the virgil’s tiny screen, smiling.

  “Congratulations. General. I didn’t think you’d make it this long. I guess one of the others will win the pool.”

  “I am merely calling to check in, Sergeant.”

  “The country is getting along fine without you, sir. No wars, no terrorists taking over at Quantico — well, if you don’t count the new feeb recruits — and the Republic endures.”

  “I just wanted to let you know where I was.”

  “John, your GPS sends us a homing signal as long as it’s got power, remember? We know where you are. You want me to give you your longitude and latitude?”

  “Nobody likes a smart-ass NCO, Julio.”

  “C’mon, you’re on vacation. Relax. Enjoy yourself. I’ll call if the Swiss or the French decide to invade the country, I promise.”

  Howard made a suggestion that was anatomically impossible and unlikely for a heterosexual even if it had been possible.

  Fernandez laughed. “That’s a discom, General. Adios.”

  Howard smiled as he rehooked the virgil to his belt. Well, yes, he did sometimes think things would go to hell if he left town. So he was a worrier, what could he say?

  Nadine and the children were hot to climb up to the little bridge closer to the falls, and Howard went along. It was all part of the ambience, to get wet, wasn’t it?

  As they hiked up the damp macadam path, he recalled the first time he’d ever been to this part of the country. Back in ’99 or ’00, in the late fall or early winter. A friend of his from the army, Willie Kohler, had scored some two hundred buck tickets to a boxing match out on the coast. Not the best seats, but pretty good, only about fifty or sixty feet from the ring. It was in one of those Indian casinos that the local tribes had put up. Chinook something? Chinook Winds, that was it. In Lincoln City.

  He remembered the event better now that he thought about it. They had given it some silly name, like the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thrill in Mantilla, it was… ah, yes, Commotion at the Ocean. He and Willie had gotten some funny mileage out of that one.

  He wasn’t the world’s biggest boxing fan, but he’d done a little in the service when he’d been younger, fighting camp matches as a light-heavyweight and giving about as good as he got. No future there for him, getting bashed in the face, but he didn’t mind watching somebody with real skill demonstrate it. As he remembered, there had been six or eight matches at the casino, all fairly low weight classes, and a couple of them were championship bouts. The most interesting fights had been on the under card. Some black kid from Washington, D.C., with sweet moves had put his man down in the second round. And there had been a couple of female fighters, one a little girl in red, a featherweight, all of a hundred and twenty-two or — three pounds, who had great hands — and great legs, too. Only her third pro fight, but she had real boxing skills. Of course, this was back when boxing wasn’t considered a brutal crime against humanity, and women were just getting into it. And when it still wasn’t too politically incorrect to admire a woman’s legs…

  What he remembered most of all was that they played bad rap music — if that wasn’t redundant — between each fight, and it was way, way too loud. Earmuffs should have been mandatory; it was noisier than a shooting range, and probably less musical. After the second or third fight, he and Willie were ready to go and kick out the damned speakers to kill the noise. But like at gun shows, you needed to be polite at a big boxing match — you never knew but that guy you just sloshed your beer on might have been the number one contender for the cruiserweight title a few years back, and no matter what self-defense system you knew, a good pro boxer was going to get at least a couple of shots in if he smited — and then threw the first punch.

  Howard smiled as they climbed into the waterfall mist. There was a lot of green on the hillside now — moss, ferns, all kinds of water-loving plants.

  Julio was right, he needed to relax and enjoy his vacation. His son was growing up, and pretty soon he’d be a lot more interested in girls and cars than boomerangs and family trips. Might as well enjoy it while he could. He was out in the Wild West, nothing of any major military importance was apt to happen here, certainly nothing he needed to worry about.

  Nadine looked back at him and smiled. “Isn’t this fun?”

  “Yep,” he said, “it is.”

  11

  Thursday, June 9th

  Quantico, Virginia

  Jay Gridley wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to go back to work. Yeah, sure, it was what he did, and yeah, sure, he loved it, but rolling around with Soji, even in a drafty tent in the rainy woods? Well, that had work beat all hollow.

  He never thought he’d hear himself think that, but there it was.

  Truth was, even though he was dropping by the Net Force compound late Thursday afternoon, he didn’t really have to be back until Monday. But Soji had clients she had to counsel, and she refused to take a laptop or net-phone with her into the woods, so they had packed up the camping gear and came back to civilization. In her net persona of the old Tibetan priest Sojan Rinpoche, Soji taught basic Buddhism and also offered a kind of psycho-spiritual first aid to people who had suffered various forms of brain damage, usually secondary to drugs or stroke. That was how they’d met, on-line, when Jay had been zapped while chasing the guy with the quantum computer.

  Soji had an apartment in Los Angeles, but she was going to be working out of Jay’s place, at least for now. And he hoped he could convince her to make it permanent, though he hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to ask her to move in, much less to marry him. But he was gonna. Eventually.

  Commander Michaels was in his office when Jay got there. He waved at the receptionist. “He busy?”

  “No, go ahead in.”

  Jay tapped at the door, then opened it. “Hey, Boss.”

  “Jay? What you doing here? You’re not supposed to be back until Monday. How did it go?”

  “The mosquitoes got so bad we had to come back for a transfusion. Other than that, it went great. How’s business?”

  “Slow. Nothing major. Usual net scams, viruses, illegal porno stuff. Nobody trying to topple the world that we’ve noticed, thank God.”

  Jay wanted to ask if Michaels had heard from Toni Fiorella — her quitting had hit the Net Force group hard — but he didn’t bring it up. Toni had called Jay from London and he had heard that she’d ca
lled a couple of other people in Net Force, too, but he still didn’t know what exactly had gone down between her and the boss. It must have been bad, though. Michaels had been pretty miserable about it, even if he tried to pretend otherwise.

  “Nothing interesting at all?”

  “Nope. Well, one little thing. You know about something called HAARP?”

  “Sure, the atmosphere burner up in Alaska. The guys in aluminum-foil hats love that one. What happen, it melt down?”

  “According to one of the scientists working on the thing, somebody sneaked in and stole something from their computer.”

  “Who would bother? The technology is moldy, goes back to Tesla, more than a hundred years ago.”

  Michaels shrugged. “Got me. I did a little web walking in VR, and it does look as if somebody got into their computer.”

  “Kid hacker, maybe,” Jay said.

  “Could be. You want to check it out, be my guest.”

  “Soji is gonna be busy for the next couple days. I’ll take a look at it, get a jump on work.”

  “Background and what I saw is in the work file under ‘HAARP.’ ”

  “Copy, Boss. See you Monday morning.”

  “My best to Soji,” he said.

  Jay went to his office and looked around, but there wasn’t much new to see. Some hardcopy reports was all. He had checked his e-mail and phone messages using a virgil he’d checked out and taken with him, so he was pretty much up to date.