He rented a car at the airport. The car was a full-sized sedan, as big as they had, and he took out full insurance coverage on it. The name on the card he used matched the name of his fake driver's license, both of which had been issued to a man in Georgia a few weeks ago. The card and license had not been used before, and the man whose name was on them had not reported them missing, since he had been dead before they were issued. It was a wonderful way to move around semi-legitimately. Somebody in CyberNation's computer hutch had figured this out, applying for credit cards and duplicate licenses in the names of the recently departed who already had such things before the family thought to let anybody know. The geeks rented post office boxes, applied under several different names, and had the cards sent there. Once they had been used for a few days, the IDs could be tossed into the nearest trash bin. Very neat, no way to trace them.
He drove to a local hotel. He wore a suit and tie, carried a briefcase, and registered at the hotel, which catered to businessmen, looking as if he was one of them. Just another middle-class white-collar worker earning his living, no one to remember.
The briefcase contained not papers, however, but the gold coins he had gotten at such a bargain rate. While the guards at the metal detectors in the airport had been curious, they hadn't even bothered to open the case to look. And if they had, they could have done nothing, because there was no law against carrying such things onto a plane. It wasn't as if he was going to beat somebody to death with them, although technically that was possible. Slip fifteen or twenty of them into a sock, it would make a nice, hefty blackjack.
Once he was checked into the hotel, he took a stroll, ducked into a big drugstore, and bought a cheap disposable cell phone with thirty hours of credit on it. He used this to put in a call to his friend at the Brazilian Embassy. Morgan, who could always used a little extra money, was happy to hear from him, and they arranged to meet for supper at a restaurant not far from the hotel.
Between now and then, Santos had plenty of time to study the information he had about his target. This one would be simple, nothing complex about it at all. As soon as he had the gold transported, he would locate his quarry, and then it was merely a matter of waiting for the proper moment.
Hollywood, California
Two tall and well-muscled black men in different NBA uniforms played one-on-one basketball in a gym bathed in supernal beams of sunshine pouring in from big skylights in the gym's roof. There was just enough dust in the air so the beams stood out, hard-edged and brilliant.
The men were the hottest small forwards from both teams in last year's championship finals, all-stars, guys who routinely got triple-doubles when they played—ten or more shots, assists, and rebounds.
The one with the ball was dressed in black shorts, shoes, and tank top, the other player in white-on-white-on-white.
The offensive player jinked left, then right, dribbled behind his back, and stutter-stepped, trying to get into position to shoot at the goal.
The defensive player stayed with him, slapping at the ball. Two fine athletes at their peaks, beautiful to watch, even if you didn't follow the game.
Both men sweated, fat drops that rolled and flew with their sudden moves.
The offensive player faked right, then twirled around to his left and got past the player in white…
Time slowed to a crawl. The ball bounced slowly, took two seconds to come back from the floor to the shooter's hand. The sounds of heavy breathing grew louder, and when the ball hit the floor again, it sounded like a cannon—booml—deep and vibrant. The ball bounced up. The shooter caught it, jumped for the dunk, moving in glacial slow-mo, as the player in white leaped to block…
The pair drifted through the air, seemingly as weightless as the dust motes in the gym's air, floating oh-so-slowly toward the basket…
Time speeded back up to normal.
The offensive player slammed the ball down, playing well above the rim, and the net ka-thwipped! in that way it does only when the dunk is perfect. The two players came down and smiled at each other.
White Suit said, "Good move, brother." He slapped the shooter on the shoulder, went to fetch the ball.
Black Suit said, "Yeah, I still got a few. Here's another one for you—who's doing your Internet service?"
White Suit shrugged. "Same provider I always use." He tossed the ball to the other man.
Black Suit shook his head. "Naw, you need to lose that, man. I'm tight with CyberNation, it's the only place to be."
"CyberNation? I heard of them."
"I'm telling you, it's the way to go. They got VR so good, it'd help even you with your defense."
"I got a cramp in my foot, is all. Try it again."
Black Suit laughed and walked away, dribbling. White Suit dropped into a defensive crouch as the other player turned and started back toward him.
The words CyberNation appeared under the screen, with the URL. The scene faded to black, leaving the words alone on the black background with the sound of the dribbled ball echoing in the gym. The sound and image held for five seconds, then faded out.
Part Two
The Butterfly's Wings
21
On the Bon Chance
Jasmine Chance liked to be in charge, a big part of the reason she had taken this job. Here she was, with a corporate budget as big as the treasury in some small countries, on a gambling ship she had named herself, and after a fashion, for herself. She could, literally, decide matters of life and death. If that wasn't control, what was? But at the moment, with Jackson practically wetting himself, she felt a definite loss of mastery here.
They sat on the bed in her room. She'd thought sex was going to be the main thing on his mind, but she quickly realized she was wrong.
"He's going to beat the crap out of me," Jackson said. "I know it."
"Don't be stupid."
"You didn't see him, how he looked at me. I'm telling you, this is not somebody to mess around with. He might as well have sent me an invitation: You are cordially invited to a major ass-kicking—yours."
"Jackson…"
"I'm not joking around here, Jasmine. This guy isn't civilized. Yeah, he wears a suit and smiles and can make small talk, but that's no thicker than a coat of paint. Underneath, he's a savage. He's a killer! He wouldn't think twice about sending me to the hospital, or the morgue."
"He's just trying to rattle you, hon, that's all. He knows how much we need you. He's playing with your head."
"And he plans to be playing soccer with my balls. I'm telling you, I know."
"You need to relax." She put her hand on his shoulder. The muscles there and in his neck were bunched like wet, knotted ropes.
"Easy for you to say. Listen, I want off the ship. Let me go to the train."
The train was one of the other two locations for CyberNation's mobile computer centers. Currently, it was on a siding in Germany, somewhere near the French border.
"Keller—"
"I can take my team there. It won't be any different. The hardware is the same, the software we built in the last day can be encoded and uploaded in a few hours. By the time it finishes downloading, we can be halfway there."
"What will you tell your team?"
"No need to tell them anything except they should pack their bags. They do what I say."
"That's not the plan," she said.
"Neither is getting my head stomped in by a jealous assassin!"
She thought about it. It was the fight-or-flight syndrome. Maybe in his place, she could understand it. Still, it wouldn't really solve anything. What was to stop Roberto from hopping on a plane and dropping round to see Jackson on the train? When he had time to settle down and think about it, he'd see that. There was no safety in distance, not if somebody like Roberto really wanted to do you harm. But no point in saying that now. He was rattled enough already.
Of course, out of sight might be out of mind. She was sure she could divert Roberto's attention. She could buy him a new
toy, something to do with his fighting art. Sooner or later he would feel the call from her to find a place where they could get naked. Roberto was, after all, very primal in his urges. Maybe it would be for the best if Jackson wasn't around.
"All right," she said. "Gather your team and make the arrangements. Roberto won't be back before tomorrow at the earliest. You can be gone before he returns."
His sense of relief was obvious.
"As long as we are here, why don't you lie down and let me massage your back? You're as tight as a violin string."
He started to protest. "That's what got me in trouble in the first place."
"Relax," she said. " 'Berto is in Washington. You'll be gone when he gets back, and we aren't doing anything we haven't already done a dozen times. What difference could it make now? Why not relax and enjoy it?"
She didn't give him time to think about it. She slid her hand down his chest and into his lap. After that, he had other things on his mind.
Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia
Michaels was in the Net Force gym, dressed only in a pair of shorts and workout shoes, practicing his djurus. The short dances encompassed all the moves that serak teachers had developed for fighting, armed and unarmed. Somewhere in the djurus were all the tools you'd ever need, he'd been taught.
So far, he had learned more than he thought he'd use if he got into fights every day. But better to have too much ammo than too little.
The creator of the esoteric fighting style had been a cripple called Sera, so named either because he was wise as an owl, or had a hoarse voice, depending on which definition of the Indonesian word sera, you liked. According to the various oral histories and subsequent letters and books, Sera had been born with a clubfoot and missing part of one arm. Such handicaps would not seem to lend themselves to the development of expert fighting abilities. Nonetheless, that had apparently been the case. Evidently the man had been an extremely nasty fighter, and not a man to be sneered at, however gimpy he might have been.
The origins of the art and its first practitioner were somewhat mysterious. Michaels had poked around, trying to research it, because he was curious, and had run into half a dozen dead ends.
He shifted from djuru seven, coming up from the full squat and upward thrust to an attacker's face that ended it, to eight, moving on the triangle, or tiga. Later, he would practice the footwork on the sliwa, or square pattern.
He had worked up a good sweat; it rolled down his chest and back. He'd always thought it interesting he could get so much work out of stepping around a triangle or square that was less than two feet long on each side.
Djuru eight was essentially a blending of three previous djurus—four, six, and three—and since it was the last one he had learned, once he finished it he repeated it and started going backwards toward the first one. That was how you did the exercises, up and back on one side, then up and back on the other, so that each djuru got at least four reps, two on the right, two on the left.
Pak, or Bapak—those meant sir, or most honorable older sir, more or less—Sera's date of birth was unknown. He'd been listed as having been born as early as 1795 A.D.; however, this seemed unlikely, given the known lineage of students, and Sera was probably born a quarter century later, in the 1820s or maybe even the 1830s. Current practitioners could not even agree on the man's real name. The ones Michaels came up with were Eyang Hisak and H. Muhroji.
Toni didn't know any more about Sera than Michaels did; she'd always accepted what her teacher told her and let it go. Not that it really mattered, but it was a shame they couldn't give the man his proper due.
The birthplace and tribe of Sera were also open to question. Some claimed he was of the mysterious Javanese people known as the Badui. Since not much was known about the Badui—the White, or Inner Badui remaining cloistered even in modern times and admitting few visitors to their primitive villages—this was difficult to determine. If Sera was of the Outer, or Blue Badui, that would seem more likely, but if he was, he certainly did not stay there, according to the stories.
Others said Sera was born in Tjirebon, on the north coast of Java, east of what was then Batavia, now Jakarta. There was no consensus on this point.
Family history from Guru DeBeers and from what he could find on the web indicated that Sera trained in Silat Banteng, which came from the area of Serang, in northwest Java. From his exposure to Tjimande, which it is said he studied, and with his training in Banteng, Sera developed his own system, tailored to his physical handicaps.
Although the exact dates weren't known, it was probably sometime before the turn of the 20th century that Sera met the man who was to become his senior student, a hardass of a fighter named Djoet, who was supposedly born around 1860, and died in the late 1930s. Djoet subsequently helped Sera formalize the system, adjusting it for people with sound limbs. Djoet was reportedly trained in Silat Kilat, Kun Tao, and probably Tjimande.
Michaels made it back to the first djuru. He stopped, grabbed a towel, and wiped the perspiration from his face and head. The problem with the short haircut he liked was that it didn't soak up as much moisture. He had thought about wearing a headband, but decided that looked a little too yuppie-ish for him.
He glanced at the clock over the gym's door. The day was winding down, and he had managed to lose a fair amount of the tension he had soaked up testifying before the senate committee. Not all of it, but some. Another twenty or thirty minutes of practicing his forms would help more, he decided. Picturing some of the more obnoxious senators on the receiving end of his punches and elbows probably was bad karma, but that helped, too. Imagining the "Urk!" a fat politician would blurt as Michaels buried his fist in the man's belly was certainly politically incorrect, but also very satisfying…
Nel Force Supjily Warehouse Quantico, Virginia
"So is this a great toy, or what?" Julio said.
Howard looked at the device. "It looks like a miniature version of Robby the Robot somebody stepped on."
And indeed, it did. A scaled-down version of the movie robot, the device was squatty, maybe eighteen-inches tall, and had a clear bullet-resistant Lexan half-dome atop the cone-shaped body, complete with a pair of articulated arms and tanklike treads. It was very wide at the base and narrowing toward the top.
"We call her 'Claire,' " Julio said. "Your basic self-contained radio-controlled mobile reconnaissance and surveillance unit, the main feature of which is optical and auditory gear, including state-of-the-art CLAIR equipment—that standing for Circular-Looking-A-cl ass Infra-Red sensors. Aside from the regular cams, she can see heat sigs in the dark, has a fuzzy-logic come-back circuit so she won't bump into things and can find her way home if the RC fails, and little waldo arms for picking up things to examine under her microscope, should the need arrive."
Howard shook his head. "Uh-huh. What did this beast set us back?"
"Ah, sir, there's the beauty of it. Nothing. Not a dime."
"How did you manage that? Tell me we aren't running a stolen robot here, Lieutenant. Something you won in a poker game with your RA buddies?"
"You wound me, sir, to suggest such a thing."
"And butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, either. Give."
"Claire here is a test model, from CamCanada, up in Toronto. They specialize in making devices to inspect the inside of big pipelines, checking weld integrity, hunting for cracks, like that, but they are looking to get into the police and military market. This is one of three prototypes they sent off for tests. The Mounties have one, one went to some sultan somewhere in the Middle East, and we have the third. We test it out under field conditions, write up a report, and for our trouble, we get one of the first models when they go into full production, absolutely free of charge. Well. Except for the maintenance contract, of course. But that's nothing."
"Interesting."
Julio picked up a remote and pushed a button. The little robot whirred.
"It does all the usual forward, back, left, and right stuff, and
the POV cam shows an image right here on the handheld. Digital images and sound, and instant capture of info on its own wireless modem and DVD burner, which are around here somewhere. Those can be plugged into just about any computer for study and analysis."
He held the remote so Howard could see it. "Everything is shockproofed out the wazoo, structural components are machined from titanium or aircraft aluminum, and you can supposedly set off a stick of dynamite ten feet away without hurting it. Got a gyroscope for balance, low center of gravity, and she's very stable."
He brought the robot close enough to them so he could kick it. His combat boot drove it back a few feet, but it whirred and stayed upright. He touched a control. "This shuts off the gyroscope. Watch."
He moved to the little device, which was slightly shorter than knee-high, and managed, with some effort, to shove it over onto its side with his foot.
The robot whined, and a rubber-tipped metal rod extruded from the robot's side and shoved it back upright.
"Automatic righting system," he said. "She can pick herself right up and keep on going. A byproduct of BattleBot technology, I'm told."
He picked up another remote and pushed a button. The windowless warehouse got very dark.
Howard saw the remote control's screen light up, and the false-color IR images of himself and Julio, looking like two washed-out ghosts, appeared on the screen.
"Lieutenant, I believe you just turned me into a Caucasian."
Julio chuckled. The false-color computer-augmented image tinted Howard's skin slightly darker, but no more than a redhead's tan might be.
"Only with the lights off, sir."
He switched the lights back on. "But wait, here's the really fun thing," he said. He touched another button, and the robot hissed like a giant lizard, leaped two feet into the air, flew about four feet forward, and came down. It clunked when it landed, but not hard enough to knock anything loose.
CyberNation Page 17