Point of Impact

by Tom Clancy

  The elastic of her stretch pants cut into her belly as she sat and bent over to touch her toes. Damn, she hated this, being fat!

  After five minutes or so of loosening up, she felt better. Okay, so she could do a few djurus with the footwork, the langkas, if she went real slow, right? No sudden moves, no real effort, it wouldn’t be any more stressful than walking if she was careful, right?

  For about ten minutes, she practiced, moving slowly, no power, just doing the first eight djurus. She skipped the forms where she had to drop into a squat, number five and number seven, and she felt fine.

  Then, of course, she had to go pee, something that happened five times an hour, it seemed.

  When she finished and started to leave the bathroom, she looked into the toilet.

  The bowl had blood in it, as did the tissue she had just used.

  Fear grabbed her in an icy hand.

  She ran to call the doctor.

  Austin, Texas

  Tad drove the rental car, Bobby riding shotgun and giving him directions.

  “Okay, stay on I-35 going south until we cross Lake Whatchamacallit, and look for a sign says Texas State School for the Deaf. We have to find Big Stacy Park—as opposed to Little Stacy Park, which is just up the road a piece—then Sunset Lane, then we turn onto—you piece of Chinese shit!”

  This last part was accompanied by Bobby slapping the little GPS unit built into the car’s dashboard.

  “What?”

  “The sucker glitched, the map disappeared!” Bobby hammered the malfunctioning GPS unit again. “Come on!”

  “I don’t see why we had to come here in person,” Tad said. “We could have called or done this by e-mail over the web.”

  “No, we couldn’t have. The feds can monitor phones and e-mail, even encrypted stuff. They were able to do it for years before the public even realized they could and already were. Besides, this guy wants an insurance policy. He wants to see our faces. He’ll know the name, and he can use that, but we could change our identities.”

  “We could change our faces, too.”

  Bobby hit the GPS again. “Ah, there it is. I got the map again.” He looked at Tad. “Yeah, we could, and he’ll know that. But the thing is, he wants us to come to him with our hat in our hand and say please. Then he dazzles us with his techno-wizardry, and we owe him big-time and forever. It’s an ego thing. Besides, as long as we’re in business, he’ll have something on us, doesn’t matter what our names are or what we look like. We have the market cornered on Thor’s Hammer, remember? Whoever is selling it is gonna be us, no matter what we call ourselves.”

  “Yeah. I have to say, though, this might be out of the frying pan and into the fire, man. Even if it works, we’re trading one problem for another one.”

  “I don’t think so,” Bobby said.

  Tad said, “There’s the lake, up ahead.”

  “Okay, watch for the deaf sign, should be just after we cross over that.”

  “I’m watching. Back to this maybe biz. The guy will have something to trade if he ever gets busted. You think he wouldn’t give us up to save his own ass?”

  “Don’t think that for a second. I’d give him up, if positions were reversed.”

  “Jeez, Bobby—”

  “C’mon, Tad, think a little bit past the end of your nose. The clock is running at the cop shop. This computer dick-wad can get into the gym’s computer and the police system and make my name go away. He does that before they get to me, we’re clear.”

  “If the cops didn’t just get a hardcopy.”

  “They didn’t. Steve told me they downloaded his membership files into their system over the wire. Nobody uses hardcopy for this kind of stuff anymore. I didn’t even fill out a treeware registration form when I signed up; I just logged it all into a keyboard at the gym.

  “So the immediate threat, the law, is taken care of. Mr. Computer Geek is a potential problem, but that’s down the line. He isn’t going to run to the cops and turn us in now, not if he wants help from mighty Thor to keep wearing blisters on his wang with his lady friend. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Bobby cut him off. “You know about Occam’s Razor?”

  “No. You not gonna tell me another fucking story, are you?”

  Bobby laughed. “No. It’s a way of looking at problems. A rule that basically says, don’t get complicated when simple will do the job. The simple thing here is, if the cops don’t know about me, they can’t come looking for me.”

  “Okay, I can see that. You buy some time, get out from under the immediate threat. But you still got the potential thing later.”

  “Well, if you just let it hang out there, yeah. But this computer guy could, you know, have an accident. He could slip in the bathtub and dash his brains out or get hit by a bus crossing the street or maybe an allergic reaction to shellfish, and just up and die. There are certain chemicals that can kill somebody and make it look just like anaphylactic shock. And hey, stuff like that happens all the time, right? Cops would investigate, but if it was an accident, that would be the end of it, right?” Bobby grinned, that all-his-shiny-teeth smile that showed he was really amused.

  Tad got it, finally. He nodded. “Oh. Oh, yeah. I see what you mean.”

  “There’s hope for you yet, Tad m’boy—there, there’s the sign, pull off at that next exit!”

  Tad nodded. Bobby was almost always a step ahead of the game, even when things got creaky. Push him out a window, and he would land on his feet every time. He had it under control. It felt good to know that.

  25

  Washington, D.C.

  Jay sat seiza and tried, like the old joke about the hot dog vendor and the Zen master, to make himself one with everything.

  He was having some problems with it. First, the sitting-on-your-heels position was very uncomfortable. They might do it in Japan, where everybody was used to it, but in America, you didn’t normally sit that way, or knotted up in a lotus pose, or even on the floor—not without a cushion or pillow to flop on.

  Second, while he was supposed to be concentrating on his breath, just sitting back and watching it come and go without trying to control it or count it or anything, that was almost impossible to pull off. As soon as he became aware of his breathing, he kept trying to slow it and keep it even and all, and that was a no-no. And counting just came naturally for him, it was automatic. So he had to make a conscious effort not to count, and that was a no-no. Don’t count, and don’t think about not counting.

  Third, you weren’t supposed to think of anything at all, and if a thought came up, you were supposed to gently move it away and get back to nothing but breathing. Thoughts were products of the monkey brain, Saji had told him, and had to be quieted to achieve peace and harmony with one’s inner self.

  Yeah, well, in his case, the brain was more like a whole troop of howler monkeys all hooting and dancing through the trees, and quieting that jabbering bunch was a tall order.

  His knee hurt. That last inhalation turned into a sigh at the end. The thoughts about work, dinner, Saji, and how stupid he felt sitting here just breathing rolled in like a storm tide, as unstoppable as if he stood on the beach waving his arms at the ocean and telling it to hold it right there.

  Get a grip, Jay. Millions of people do this every day!

  Who knew that meditating would be so difficult? Sitting here and doing nothing was harder than anything Jay had ever done, or in his case, not done.

  In the back of his mind, nagging at him, was something about work, some little thing flitting up and around like a moth, something he couldn’t quite pin down. Something about the drug thing, and the DEA and NSA agents Lee and George ...

  No. Push it away. Get back to that later. For now, just be...

  Lee and George. Not much to know about them. Close to the same age, both career men, both lived in the District. Both of them married briefly but divorced, no live-in girlfriends at the moment. A lot alike ...


  Don’t think, Jay, you’re supposed to be meditating!

  Oh, yeah. Right. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in ...

  Lee’s ex-wife was originally from Florida, now a lawyer in Atlanta who also taught law at a local college. She and Lee had met in law school. Jay had checked her out, and while she was well-regarded as a teacher, she was also considered something of a radical. She was a member of the Lesbian Teacher Association or some such, big on women’s rights. A no-fault divorce, no hard feelings, at least not in any official records or interviews. Still, that must have made Lee feel weird. You get a divorce, your ex-wife switches her sexual preferences to the other side of the street. Might tend to make you doubt your masculinity a little.

  George’s ex was a stockbroker. A law-school graduate who didn’t practice but who worked for one of the big trading companies on Wall Street, did well enough that she had a two-million-dollar condo overlooking Central Park, single, no significant boyfriends five years after the divorce, didn’t seem to date much, according to what Jay had uncovered about her. Like Lee with his ex-wife, George apparently got along famously with his ex.

  We’re all very civilized here ...

  Thoughts, Jay, watch it!

  Okay, okay! Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in ...

  Kind of made you wonder, though, how a woman who was rich enough to afford a condo that expensive didn’t have guys lined up waiting for her favor. Good-looking woman, hair cut short, built like a dancer.

  Well, it didn’t really matter, did it?

  Breathe out, breathe in, breathe out ...

  The next thought that swung down from the monkey tree and chittered at Jay so startled him that his eyes popped open, and he said, “Oh, shit!”

  Sitting seiza on floor across from him, Saji came out of her own meditation. “What? The place on fire?”

  “No, no, I just had a thought—”

  “Don’t worry, it’s part of the process—”

  “No, I mean, an idea. About the dope case!”

  “Let it wait, it will keep.”

  “No, it won’t. I have to get to my computer now!”

  “Jay, this is not how to meditate.”

  “I know, I know, but I have to check this out.”

  Saji sighed. “Fine. Do what you have to do.” She closed her eyes and went back to her sitting. Jay was already up and hurrying from the bedroom to his terminal.

  Michaels took the day off to be with Toni. She was still in bed, sleeping hard, and he planned to let her sleep as long as possible. The spotting the day before wasn’t a sign of fetal distress, the doctor had told them, but it had caused Michaels more than a little dry mouth and nervousness. By the time he had gotten to the clinic, Toni had already been examined, was getting some blood tests, and the doctor had pulled him aside to talk to him.

  The doctor, a tall, very dark, and spindly gray-haired man of sixty or so with the unlikely name of Florid, was blunt: “Listen, Mr. Michaels, if your wife doesn’t sit down and prop her feet up and do a lot of nothing for the next four months, there is a chance she is going to have a preterm birth and lose this baby.”

  “Jesus. Have you told her this?”

  “I have. She’s still relatively young and healthy, and the baby seems fine, but her blood pressure is up a little. Normally she’s one twenty over seventy-four, but today she’s at one thirty over eighty-six. That’s not technically considered high, but we always watch that, especially in a primagravida ... that’s a first-time pregnancy.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There is a condition called preeclampsia that happens in around five pregnancies out of a hundred. Usually it’s mild, and by itself it usually doesn’t cause problems, but sometimes it can cause what is known as abruptio placentae, which is a spontaneous separation of the placenta from the uterine wall, not a good thing. Usually this is in the third trimester, sometimes at delivery, and we can work around it, but it makes things hairy.

  “Worse, sometimes preeclampsia can progress to full eclampsia, which, while very rare, involves seizures, coma, and sometimes, a fatal event.”

  A fatal event.

  Michaels swallowed. Now his mouth was really dry.

  “Is this what’s happening to Toni?”

  “Probably not. There isn’t any albumen in her urine, and she doesn’t have much edema, and usually you get those with the rise in BP, but better safe than sorry.”

  “Toni is the toughest, strongest, healthiest woman I know.”

  Dr. Florid smiled. “Yes, I expect she can bend steel in her bare hands. Normally, pregnancy is not a medical problem, women can go about their business and do everything they were doing before they got pregnant. Most women. But interior plumbing isn’t the same as voluntary muscles. No matter how strong-willed you might be, you can’t toughen up the inside of a uterus. Toni’s is fragile; likely she was born that way. Now, she could go on to deliver this baby without any more problems, but I’d be a lot happier and that would be a lot more likely if she took it easy. You need to impress on her how important it is for her to relax. After the baby comes, and assuming she has time, she can go swing on a vine like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and kick the crap out of lions and rhinos for all I care, but for now, no strenuous exercise. What I think is strenuous and what she thinks that means are probably different. I don’t want her doing any heavy lifting, jogging, horseback riding, or deep knee bends, and I don’t want her doing those martial art dances she can’t seem to live without. She can lie in bed. She can sit in a chair or on a couch, she can walk to the kitchen to take her vitamins, but that’s about it.”

  Michaels nodded. “I understand.”

  “If we have another epsisode of second-trimester bleeding, I am going to confine her to bed for the duration. I know she won’t like that.”

  Michaels had to grin. “No, sir, that’s for sure.”

  He had another question, started to speak, but decided that maybe it was selfish to ask it.

  The doctor read his mind: “Sex is permissible, assuming you don’t like to pretend she’s a trampoline while you do it.”

  Michaels flushed, embarrassed.

  The doctor laughed. “Listen, I know this all sounds very dramatic and scary, but you need to remember that in medicine, we have to plan for the worst-case scenario. Chances are very good that nothing bad will happen to your wife or your unborn son. But we have to let you know the possibilites, no matter how small. We have to cover all the bases.”

  “So you don’t get sued,” Michaels said.

  “Hell, son, I could give my patients and their families movies, recordings, documents, a degree in medicine, and get ’em to sign a paper saying they understood them all and would never even talk to a lawyer in church, and we’d still wind up in court if anything went wrong. We always get sued when something goes wrong.”

  “Must be awful.”

  “Catching babies makes up for it. The look on the new mama’s face when she sees her child for the first time is priceless. Pure joy. Long as my malpractice insurance and my hands hold up, I’m going to keep doing it.”

  He clapped Michaels on the shoulder. “What I personally think is that this pregnancy is going to do fine, if your wife will just kick back and let it roll along.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Michaels said. “I appreciate it.”

  Now, as Toni slept and Michaels puttered around the condo, he hoped the doctor had been right in his assessment. Toni wanted the baby, and he did, too. It was going to be the center of their new family and life together, and it would be devastating to lose it.

  Him, not it.

  In the living room, he came across the box with the two kerambit knives. He took them out, put one in each hand, got a feel for how they worked. Odd, to be playing with knives and thinking about a new baby.

  Well, maybe not, given the boy’s parents.

  He moved the knives slowly and carefully. It probably wouldn’t do Toni’s stress level any good at all for him to accidentally sli
ce his wrist open. Not to mention his own health. Still, the little blades seemed familiar in his grip, comfortable, and the djuru moves didn’t seem to put him in any danger of cutting himself. At least not this slowly and carefully. One hurried wrong move could put the lie to that quick enough, though.

  He put the knives up, and tiptoed back in to check on Toni.

  26

  Somewhere Over New Mexico

  On the flight home, Drayne felt pretty good. The computer guy was as good as he’d been cracked up to be. The police in SoCal and Steve’s Gym no longer had any reference to one Robert Drayne in their systems. More, the techno-whiz was able to determine that they hadn’t gotten around to where his name had been to assign anybody to check it before it had magically vanished. Nor had it been printed out to a hardcopy. The list had been renumbered, and unless you knew somebody had been erased and knew precisely where to look and how to look, you wouldn’t be able to tell it had been done. And even if you could tell that, you wouldn’t know who was gone.

  Once again, Drayne was golden. And all it had cost was a promise of free dope as long as the guy lived. Cheap beyond measure, even if he had to pay it.

  Drayne smiled as the flight attendant walked along the first class rows, asking if anybody wanted complimentary champagne. Probably the stuff was Korbel, or at best one of the California domaines owned by the French. Not bad if you had no experience with the really good stuff, but as far as Drayne was concerned, he wouldn’t use it to clean the chrome on his car bumper. Still, the attendant was a babe, not wearing a wedding ring, and the flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to LAX was still hours out from landing. He could strike up a conversation with her, maybe get her number. Say, have you ever considered acting? You have great bone structure....

  The attendant stopped to talk to a woman Drayne thought he recognized as somebody in L.A. politics, a city council member or maybe a spokesperson for the mayor’s office. Drayne glanced at his watch.