CyberNation

by Tom Clancy , Steve Pieczenik, Steve Perry

  She smiled. "You can always buy a new sport coat, sport."

  He smiled.

  "Okay, let's try it again. This time, block with your free hand, dorsal side, and sector to the outside of my attacking hand when you do. Getting out of the way of an incoming knife is usually a good idea—if you miss the block, at least you don't get skewered. After that, we'll switch, you attack and I'll defend. That's when the kerambits work the best."

  Later, when they were in the shower washing off lipstick marks, Toni said, "There's an exercise I want you to learn."

  "I'm game," Alex said. "Come closer."

  "Not that kind of exercise. A mental one."

  "Oh."

  "Don't sound so disappointed. It'll be a couple of hours yet before Guru and the baby get home. It won't take long."

  "What kind of exercise?"

  "Posthypnotic suggestion."

  He scrubbed her back with the bath sponge. "Uh-huh. Sure."

  "Look, I know you don't think a lot of the spiritual and magical sides of silat. You think it's all mumbo jumbo."

  "I didn't say that."

  "Give me the sponge, I'll do your back."

  She soaped the sponge and began scrubbing between his shoulder blades. "You don't have to say it for me to know it. But hypnosis is a perfectly valid tool, and you can do it yourself. It's nothing more than autosuggestion with a focus. You visualize things, practice them in your head, and it improves your skill."

  "You sound like Jay."

  "No, listen. Take athletes. At the Olympic level, nearly all of them use visualization to help their performances. They practice their exercises—whatever they are, from swimming to downhill skiing—in their imagination."

  "Careful, I'm ticklish there," he said.

  "No, you aren't. Shut up. You ever practiced your dju-rus while sitting at your desk, just thinking about them instead of actually moving?"

  "Sure."

  "Same thing. Tests on athletes show that mentally practicing can lay down nerve memory channels just like doing it for real. Not as much, but some."

  She squatted, and soaped up his butt and hamstrings.

  "So practicing mentally is useful," she continued.

  "Okay. So?"

  "What's your biggest problem with silat practice?"

  "Aside from you?"

  "I'm serious."

  He looked over his shoulder. "C'mon. How serious you expect me to take this while you're rubbing my ass with a soapy sponge, Kemosabe?"

  She smiled. "Think of me as your teacher and not your beautiful naked wife in the shower."

  "That's hard."

  "It better be. But try."

  He nodded. "I'm too tense," he said. "I haven't learned how to relax when I move. I use too much muscle."

  "Right. So what we do is, we take you to a state of relaxation and suggestibility, and teach you how to get there posthypnotically."

  "You can do that?"

  "To a degree, yes."

  "Okay. Is that before or after we make love?"

  "Before."

  "Aw, come on."

  "Maybe instead of, if you don't hurry up."

  He hurried.

  When they had finished showering and drying themselves, she had him lie on his back on the bed. She stretched out next to him, but not touching him. "Okay, close your eyes."

  He did so.

  "You comfortable?"

  "Yep."

  "All right. I want you to imagine you are in the hallway of an office building. It's an older place, but well-maintained. To your right is an elevator. Walk to the button that calls the elevator—it's an old-style mechanical one. You push it, and it lights up.

  "The elevator arrives—you can see the number light up above the door. You're on the twentieth floor. You hear a soft chime. The door opens, the elevator is empty. You step inside."

  Michaels wasn't having any trouble following along, but it felt kind of silly.

  "The elevator is an old one, but in good condition. It's nice and warm in here, quiet, the light is soft. Push the button marked with the number one."

  Michaels mentally pushed the button.

  "Above the door are the numbers for the floors of the building. Twenty is lit in red, and the elevator starts to descend. As you watch, a few seconds later, twenty blinks off and nineteen lights up, and there's a soft chime as the elevator slowly passes the floor.

  "Eighteen lights up, again, the soft chime.

  "Now as the elevator slowly goes down, you begin to feel relaxed. The elevator settles very slowly, but you're in no hurry, you've got all day.

  "As you pass seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, you become more and more relaxed. The numbers light, the chime sounds, and you are becoming even more placid, more comfortable. There is nothing but the numbers descending, the soft tones at each floor.

  "You pass fourteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine. Save for the chime, all is quiet. The motion of the elevator is smooth, soothing."

  Her voice was a soft drone, lulling him.

  "Eight, seven, six, five, four, three… two… one.

  "The elevator stops. The door opens. You step out into the hall. To your right not far ahead is an open door. You walk into the room, there is nobody around, but there is a couch, long, cushy, very inviting. Lie down on the couch. You are so comfortable and relaxed you don't feel like moving a muscle, you are practically melting into the cushions."

  Well, this wasn't so bad, Michaels thought.

  "So there you are, warm, comfortable, relaxed, lying there on the couch. You aren't sleepy, just slack. No worries, no noise, nothing to bother you. Your breathing is slow and even. Life is good."

  Yeah.

  "You don't need to move, but if you did need to, you could do so quickly and easily, because you are so relaxed, no tension to slow you down. Concentrate on how relaxed you are, see how it feels, see how simple it is to just lie here and be this way."

  Pretty good, actually.

  "Here's a little trick. To get back to this place, this relaxed, comfortable, no tension feeling, all you have to do is say to yourself out loud, 'Relax, Alex.' That's all. If you say that, you'll feel just like you feel now, no matter what is going on around you. You'll breathe slow and easy, your muscles will hold you up, you'll be able to move as quickly as you need to, but there won't be any tightness in you. Just say, 'Relax, Alex,' and that's what will happen."

  She waited a few seconds.

  "Now, you stand up, and walk back to the elevator.

  "Good. You push the call button. The doors open right away and you step inside. Push the button for the twentieth floor. The numbers start to light up, starting with one, then two… three… four. As the elevator rises, you still feel calm and relaxed, but more refreshed now, as if you have just had ten hours of sleep.

  "You pass five… six… seven… but there's no hurry.

  "The lights blink, the elevator chimes softly as you pass each floor.

  "You watch the numbers flash by. When the elevator gets to the twentieth floor, it stops. You take a deep breath and let it out. As the door opens, you open your eyes—"

  He blinked at her.

  She smiled.

  "That's it? I ride an elevator down, you tell me to relax, I ride it up?"

  "Yep. How do you feel?"

  "Well, I feel fine. Great." He raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. "That's what being hypnotized is? There's nothing to it."

  "What, did you think you were going to turn into Frankenstein's monster? Cluck like a chicken? Not be able to remember anything?"

  "Well, yeah, okay, kinda."

  "It's not like that. It's a state of heightened concentration. If you do this little exercise a few more times, it will be reinforced. It's not magic—it just allows you to focus your thoughts better. You can get pretty much the same thing by meditation or prayer."

  "And this will work?"

  "Try it, next time you get tense."

  "Okay. I will. But right now, I have something else i
n mind."

  She laughed. "Why am I not surprised…?"

  Later, when Guru had gotten home with the baby and they were all getting ready to go out for dinner at the new Mexican place, Michaels thought about the workout and hypnosis thing. That short and long knife business could be taken as a metaphor for his life. Getting in close had consequences, it was more dangerous in some ways. He had a new family, and compared to his first one, it was… different.

  Toni was much more a part of his reason to get up every day than Megan, his first wife, had been. Maybe it was Toni; maybe it was only because he was older and a little wiser and able to appreciate what he had now more than he had been able to appreciate it then. He didn't love his daughter Susie any less than he did Alex, but he certainly hadn't been there for her in the same way. Something he'd always regret.

  Whatever. But lately, work just hadn't been calling to him the way family did. If he won the lottery tomorrow, would he still get up and go to work every day? Ten years ago, five years ago, even a year ago, he would have said yes, no question.

  Now? Now, he wasn't sure about that at all. Maybe he would take a few months off.

  Maybe he would take off permanently.

  It could be that part of it was because he was at the top of the mountain at Net Force. Anything higher in government was going to be some kind of political appointment, and not likely to happen. He didn't slot neatly into either party. Most of the time, he voted Independent, sometimes one way, sometimes another, and there were times when he couldn't bring himself to vote for anybody running. He liked to think of himself as fiscally conservative but a personal liberal. Could support a right wing Democrat or left wing Republican, but wasn't really either. Pretty much smack in the middle of the silent majority's road. So unless he opted for the private sector, he'd peaked out in his biz.

  Being commander of Net Force was as good as it was going to get.

  Or maybe it was a midlife crisis. He had been face-to-face with death a few times in the last couple of years, and that made a man stop and think about the meaning of it all, something he had never done much before. Being introspective wasn't part of what he'd learned at home. When your number was up, it was up, game over, and if the old saw was true that nobody on his death bed ever said, "1 wish I'd spent more time at the office," then what exactly did you look back and wish you'd done better when you knew you were about to shuffle off?

  Michaels realized for him, it was gonna be family first, and then work. It didn't used to be that way, but that's how it was now. He hadn't noticed when that had happened, that shift, but it had.

  He could understand a whole lot better now why John Howard had taken a leave and had thought seriously about retiring.

  Just when he thought he had a handle on life, it went and changed on him.

  Damn.

  19

  Western Pennsylvania June 1770

  Jay crept through the thick woods along a deer trail with as much stealth as he could manage. This mixed evergreen and hardwood forest was disputed territory, and dangerous. On the Indian side, technically at least, this area still belonged to the Iroquois-speaking Six Nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tusca-rora—but there was a Chippewa camp not far away, parties of Delaware passing through now and then, even some Ottawa in the area, supposedly. A white man clad in buckskins prowling in any of their territories uninvited might be viewed with a certain amount of hostility; better that nobody saw him.

  The deer trail wound serpentinely through the forest, wide enough for a man to traverse, but a bit low in spots, causing Jay to duck overhanging tree branches. The smell of fir was strong, and his own sweat added a sour note to it. He carried a long rifle, a flintlock as tall as he was, a powder horn, lead balls and patches, a single shot pistol of a matching caliber, a sheath knife, and a tomahawk, much as any frontiersman of the era might. No coonskin cap, though—the idea of a dead raccoon on his head seemed ghoulish, even in VR. Instead, he wore a plain leather cap. Maybe there wasn't any real difference between cowhide and small furry animal skin, but everybody drew the line somewhere.

  The mosquitoes were bad, but as long as he kept moving they didn't settle too thickly on his exposed face and hands; they couldn't penetrate the thick buckskin shirt and pants, nor what he wore under them. A few big wood spiders had spun card-table-sized webs here and there, and he avoided those when he saw them.

  A bird called out ahead of him, a cheerful whistle he didn't recognize. A man couldn't know everything.

  He came to a small clearing in the forest, a place where a couple of huge old-growth conifers had fallen and flattened a dozen smaller trees. The big trunks had mostly rotted away under sun and wind and rain, turning to reddish brown, pulpy food for termites, and fertilizer for the new growth that wiggled and broke through their corpses. There were also sedge grasses here, many of which had been nibbled short by the deer. It was maybe thirty meters across, the clearing, and the sun shined down upon it through the rent in the forest's thick canopy.

  He waited a few seconds, listening, looking, sniffing the air. Everything seemed okay.

  He started across the clearing. Halfway to the other side, he heard something behind him. A startled animal, perhaps?

  He looked over his shoulder in time to see a Native American warrior step out of the brush. The man had an iron-tipped lance, and from his dress Jay realized he was a Shawnee. He had forgotten about them—they were a Johnny-come-lately tribe in Pennsylvania, having arrived here only around the end of the 1600s.

  Another warrior stepped into view, also armed with a long lance. A third slipped from the brush, and he had a rifle much like Jay's, though the stock of his was decorated with a pattern of brass nail heads. They weren't wearing feathers or war paint, but they weren't smiling at him, either.

  Time to leave the party, Jay, he thought. He turned to sprint away, but three more Shawnees materialized ahead of him.

  Hmm. Another trap. How interesting.

  One of the Shawnee chanted something. Probably something like, "Say your prayers, round eyes, you're a dead man!" but Jay shook his head.

  "Not this time, pal," he said.

  He dropped his long rifle, tore open his buckskin shirt to reveal a Kevlar and spider silk vest, along with an Uzi slung from a strap under his armpit. He pulled the black subgun out and pointed it at the three Shawnee in front of him. "Rock 'n' roll!" he yelled. "Rock V roll—!"

  He pulled the Uzi's trigger. Thirty-odd rounds of jacketed 9mm bullets spewed. The air filled with smoke and noise. At this range, it was hard to miss. He waved the gun like a water hose—

  The soft lead bullet from the Shawnee's rifle whacked him square in the middle of his back. He felt it flatten against the vest, sting, but do no damage—

  By the time he spun to attend to the other three, the extra-long fifty-round magazine was running low, so he limited himself to five-round bursts: Braaaap! Braaap! Braaap!

  He held the final burst down, and stitched the sixth very surprised Indian across the thighs. The last ambusher fell; unlike the other five, he was down, but not dead.

  The woods got very quiet after the angry roar of the submachine gun.

  God bless the Israelis and their dependable technology.

  He held the muzzle of the subgun up in front of his face and blew away the thin tendril of smoke rising from the hot barrel.

  "How'd you like them apples, pard?"

  He moved toward the wounded Shawnee. He had a few questions to ask him, and if he hurried he might get an answer before his opponent realized what was going on…

  On the Bon Chance

  "Son of a bitch," Jackson Keller said. He grinned. "So you haven't lost all your moves after all, Jay. Good for you."

  He looked at the holoprojic recording floating above his console. The packet Jay had managed to snag wasn't going to take him anywhere useful, but it was surprising he had managed to avoid the scenario-destroying trap like that.

  Well. May
be it shouldn't have been so surprising. At his peak, back in their college days, Jay had been sharp, as sharp as anybody. They had run with CIT's and MIT's best. It wasn't unreasonable that some small part of his edge wasn't completely dull. That just made it more interesting, didn't it?

  So he avoided a trap. No big deal. The next one would be better. He reached for his sensor set. Let's play, Jay. Show me what you got…

  His com chirped. He was tempted to ignore it and jack back into VR, but he glanced at the ID sig. Better get that.

  "Hey," he said.

  Jasmine said, "Hey. Listen, there's something you ought to know, just FYI."

  "Sure, shoot."

  "It seems that Roberto has, ah… found out that you and I have been… intimate."

  Keller both felt and heard himself take a deep breath. And his belly knotted as if somebody had stabbed him in it with a shard of dry ice. "Excuse me? How did that happen?"

  "I don't know. I didn't say anything."

  "Well, I sure as hell didn't."

  "It's not anything to worry about."

  Not anything to worry about? Santos killed people with his bare hands! Keller had heard the story of the two militia guys at the site of the telephone cable cut. About the ex-FBI bodyguards for the Blue Whale veep. They'd all been trained, they'd all had guns and that hadn't mattered! He'd killed five people, bap, just like that! And there had been others…

  He knew it had been a mistake to sleep with her. Good as she was, it had been a mistake.

  He tried to keep his voice calm. He should have expected this. It was a big boat, but not that big. They weren't invisible. "Oh. Really."

  "He's part of the team. He doesn't want to screw that up, he's making way too much money—he knows I'd fire him if he hurt you."

  Well, wasn't that comforting! I'm dead, but he's fired?

  He didn't say anything.

  "Anyway, that's it. I'll be sending him on a little chore later today. We can… talk about it more when he's gone."

  He blinked at the frozen holoproj over his computer. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? That once Santos was off the ship, they'd get back into the sack together? Was she that stupid?

  Was he?

  Careful there, Jacko. Pissing off The Dragon Lady might be worse than pissing off the stone killer!