by Tom Clancy
"She'll wonder where you are."
"She's gonna be here for a week."
It was that girl, of course. Girls turned boys into adolescent beasts struggling to crawl out of a mud pit of raging hormones. And Tyrone was officially a teenager now, becoming quiet, sullen, withdrawn, and about as communicative as a fence post.
"You can have your calls forwarded—" Howard began.
Abruptly, Tyrone sat up, then stood. "I'm going to the mall," he said.
Howard felt a stab of anger. "Wait just a second, mister. You don't tell me what you're doing; you ask."
Tyrone came to attention, executed a crisp, snappy salute, and said, "Yes, sir, Colonel Howard, sir!"
Rage enveloped Howard. He had to restrain himself from reaching out and slapping the boy. He was tired, he didn't feel great, and he was about to spend an hour and a half going to and from the airport to pick up a woman who had never liked him and who had never been shy about telling him he wasn't good enough for her daughter. What he sure as hell didn't need was lip from a kid who thought his old man was a fossil who'd ridden to school on the back of a grass-eating dinosaur.
For a few seconds, Howard didn't say anything. The rage abated just a hair as he remembered he'd once been young and stupid himself, sure that his parents couldn't begin to recall through their aged fog how it had been to be young. But even so, if he'd pulled his father's chain the way Tyrone had just pulled his…?
Howard had a temper. Once, when he'd been about six or seven, his little brother Richie had snuck up behind him while they were playing cowboys and Indians and clonked him on the head with the butt of his toy revolver, to knock him out like they did on television. It hadn't knocked him out, but it had sure pissed him off. He'd bellowed like an angry buffalo, turned around, and chased Richie across the street toward their house, fully intending to brain the little bastard when he caught him.
Their father, who'd been in the front yard trimming the azalea bushes, had heard Richie screaming and moved between him and Howard.
"What's going on here?" his father had said.
And Howard, eyes and mind blurred with killing rage, had yelled something supremely stupid: "Get out of my way!" and then swung his own toy gun at his father's legs to move him aside.
The next thing he remembered, he was lying on the ground, looking up into the warm summer afternoon, wondering how he had gotten there. The old man had cuffed him upside the head and straightened him out instantly.
Howard, who had never raised a hand to Tyrone, now knew how his father must have felt. He offered a silent apology to the old man. Sorry, Pop.
And Tyrone, who up until lately had been a model son, looked down at the floor and said, "Sorry, Pop," echoing Howard's thoughts.
Adolescent angst. Think back, John. Remember how it was that nobody understood how you felt, nobody could possibly know how you felt.
"All right, forget it. I'll get Nanna, you go ahead to the mall. She'll understand."
He saw the boy take it in, think about it. Loyalty to his grandmother warred with his infatuation for his girlfriend.
This time, loyalty won.
"No, I'll go with you to the airport. If I don't, Nanna will blame you." He grinned.
Howard returned the grin. There Tyrone was. Back, for at least a moment.
Nadine, with the instincts of a wife and mother sensing trouble, drifted into the doorway. "Hey, you two. Everything okay back here?"
Howard turned to look at his wife, still the most beautiful woman he'd ever known, more so after fifteen years of marriage. "Everything is just fine," he said.
At least for now, it was. But Tyrone was only thirteen. They had six more years of this to look forward to.
Lord, Lord.
Tuesday, December 21st, 8:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.
Naked, Platt lay on his stomach on the bed in the little hotel on C Street, not far from the Library of Congress. A woman, who was also naked, straddled the small of his back, leaning into her hands, pushing and digging into the muscles of his neck and shoulders, the traps and delts. Her thighs and crotch felt warm against his skin.
She actually gave a pretty good massage, which was unusual for outcall girls. Most of ‘em just gave a few half-assed wipes with their fingertips, maybe a little scratchy-scratch with their nails, but this girl was putting something into it. He'd give her a good tip for that. She was tall, a little thin, no tits, but a great ass. And her hands were a lot stronger than you'd guess by lookin' at her.
"Damn, honey, you hard as a rock," she said, pressing hard with her thumbs into the trigger points just under the scapulas. It hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt.
"You ain't seen the half of it, baby," he said. "Wait till I roll over."
She laughed. "Yeah, I noticed you pretty big, for a white boy." She wasn't talking about his muscles. "What line of work you in, Mr. Platt?"
"I'm an expediter," he said. "For a big import/export business. I travel a lot. Get to travel all over the world, make things happen."
"That a fact? I always wanted to go overseas. Never been out of the country. I always wanted to go to Japan."
Her hands felt damn good on his neck as she kneaded the tight muscles there. "Uh-huh," he said. "You don't want to go back to Africa? See your homeland?"
"Sheeit, what I want to do that for? There's plenty of black folks in this country."
He laughed. He liked her. "Maybe next time I get to Japan, I'll bring you back a souvenir."
"I'd like that. A nice red silk kimono."
Platt rolled over. She lifted a little, then settled back down over his legs when he got turned. He grinned at her. "One red silk kee-moan-oh, no problem."
"My, would you look at that?" she said. She flashed even, white teeth, bright against her chocolate skin. "What do we have here?" She reached down. He slid his hands around under her butt and lifted her slightly. Hel-looo, baby!
Tuesday, December 21st, 8:15 p.m. Washington, D.C.
In his office, Hughes finished a synopsis of what he wanted White to say at his meeting with the vice president tomorrow before White went back to Ohio for the holidays.
There was a knock at the door. Speak of the devil.
"Bob?"
"I thought I'd find you still here," White said. He sauntered into the office and put a small package onto the desk. "Christmas present. You didn't think I'd forget, did you?"
Hughes smiled. "Now how could I think, that, Bob? I wrote the reminder in your day log myself."
Both men laughed.
Hughes reached into the drawer, pulled out a Christmas-wrapped box, and handed it to White. It was hard to buy stuff for a millionaire who bought himself whatever he fancied, but Hughes always worked to find something unusual. And he knew White loved being surprised.
"Can I open it?" Just like a kid.
"Sure."
Eagerly, the senator ripped off the green and red foil and pulled the lid from the box. He removed what looked like a small leather candy dish mounted on a wooden stand from the box. Inside the leathery cup was a game infoball, an iridescent, silvery orb the size of a marble, made to be slipped into a SonySega PlayStation, a device that White had owned since the first ones had come out. He looked at Hughes and raised one eyebrow.
"That's the beta-test full-VR version of DinoWarz II," Hughes said. "Won't be generally available for a few more months."
"Really? Wow, thanks, Tom! How'd you get it?"
"I have a few contacts in the right places."
White rolled the ball in his fingers, and Hughes could see he was itching to run home and play the game. The senator looked at the container. "This a candy dish? Looks unusual."
"It's a plastic-coated bull scrotum," Hughes said.
"What? You're kidding."
"Nope. I can think of a few people you might want to offer peppermints to from it."
White laughed and shook his head. "Well, I'll be taking the family jet home in the morning. You need a ride anywhere?"
"Nope. I'm hanging around here, finally be able to get some work done with you out of the way."
They laughed again.
"Guess I better open my present now," Hughes said.
He did so. Inside was a carved ivory figurine, seven or eight inches long, a woman stretched out, lying on her side, propped on one elbow. Hughes knew what it was. It was a Chinese medical doll. Once upon a time in China, women of breeding never let any man but their husbands see them unclad, sometimes not even their husbands. When they needed to see a doctor, they took the doll with them. When the doctor asked where the pain was, they showed him on the figurine, and he made his diagnosis based on that and symptoms, without ever seeing or touching his patient's body. Knowing White, Hughes figured this statuette was probably worth a fortune. The work was exquisite.
Hughes made appropriate noises. "It's beautiful, Bob. Thank you."
"Well, it isn't a bull scrotum, but it's the best I could do. It belonged to some emperor's wife or concubine, I forget which. Bertha's got the documentation on it. She'll give it to you after we get back from the holidays."
"I appreciate it, I truly do. Working with you has been so beneficial to me, I can't begin to tell you how much."
That was surely the truth.
"I couldn't have ever gotten the job without you, Tom. Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas," Hughes said. And with any luck at all, the New Year will be my best ever — though it might be your worst, when the shit hits the fan…
Chapter Ten
Wednesday, December 22nd, 8:25 a.m. Quantico, Virginia
Alex Michaels wanted to keep the staff meeting short so they could get back to their desks. With Christmas only a few days away, not much work was getting done as everybody geared up to go off for the holidays. The office didn't shut down, of course, there was always a skeleton staff, but anybody not stuck with that duty who wanted to take off early could do so. He looked around the conference room, at his primary players: Toni, Jay, Howard, and Joanna Winthrop. They were all senior enough, except for Joanna, and she was working out of Howard's command, so they didn't have to stick around here for Christmas.
"Okay, that pretty much covers the basics. You all know this poster business is critical, so take your flatscreens and if you get any bright ideas, log them in for the rest of us."
He already knew their plans, and no matter where they were, they'd keep grinding away at this thing. Toni was going home to the Bronx for a week's visit with her family. She'd be back next Wednesday. Jay's parents were visiting relatives in Thailand, so he was hanging around the city and would probably would spend much of the time here at HQ. Howard had relatives visiting. He'd be in town. Joanna was going to meet an old friend at a mountain cabin in Colorado. She'd be back Monday. And Michaels was going to Boise to see Susie. And Megan too.
There was a case of mixed emotions.
"Anybody got anything new?"
Jay said, "Well, I came across some interesting statistics in the new Murray Morbidity and Mortality Report. According to the MMMR, life expectancy for men in Washington, D.C., is the lowest of any metropolitan area in the country. In fact, it's lower than any rural area too, except for a couple of counties in South Dakota. Sixty-three years. Whereas if you live in Cache County, Utah, you can expect to live fifteen years longer, a ripe old seventy-eight. And you can add eight or ten years to both those numbers if you're a woman."
"I bet it feels a lot longer in Washington," Howard said.
"I don't know," Toni said. "Have you ever been in Utah?"
"Yeah," Jay said. "I think maybe they all get too bored to die."
Michaels smiled. "Fascinating. Anything that might relate to what we do in this agency, Jay?"
"Nope. I got through the poster's firewalls, but the trail petered out, a dead-end in a box canyon. I haven't been able to draw a bead on him since."
"Yee-haw," Joanna said quietly.
"Excuse me?" Alex asked.
"Private joke," she said. "Sorry."
"All right. That's it. If one of you catches the poster before we take off for the holiday, I'd bet big that Santa Claus will put something nice in your stocking, a Presidential Commendation at the least."
"Oh, boy," Jay said. "A new floor for my parakeet's cage."
"I didn't know you had a parakeet," Toni said.
"I don't, but for that, I'd get one."
"Somebody has to represent the agency at the L.A.W. convention in Kona on the Big Island in February," Michaels said.
"Me! Me!" Jay said. "Send me!"
"Catch us a crook and you can work on your tan."
Joanna chuckled.
"What's funny?" Jay asked.
"Nothing. I'm just imagining myself on that black sand beach I've heard about."
"Don't pack your bikini just yet," Jay said.
"No? Well, I wouldn't start buying Coppertone in bulk either, if I were you."
"I think that's got it," Michaels said. "Back to work."
As the meeting broke up, Sergeant Julio Fernandez arrived. He nodded at Michaels, and moved to talk to Colonel Howard, where the senior officer stood talking to Lieutenant Winthrop.
"Colonel. Lieutenant."
"Sarge," Howard said.
Michaels caught a quick glimmer of something on Fernandez's face when he looked at the young woman. Well. He could understand how the sergeant might appreciate Winthrop.
Back at their offices, Toni approached Alex. "Got a minute?"
"Sure."
In his office, she produced a small package, wrapped and decorated with a red bow. "Merry Christmas," she said.
"Thank you. Can I open it now?"
"Nope. Got to wait until Susie opens her gifts. You'll want this then."
"Ah, intrigue. All right, I'll wait. Here, I got you a little something." He opened his desk drawer and removed a flat box, this one wrapped in the hardcopy Sunday cartoon section of the Arlington newspaper.
She smiled at the wrapping, hefted it. "Book?"
"Go ahead and open it."
She did, carefully peeling the tape from the edges and unfolding the colorful newsprint.
"You going to save the paper, Toni?"
"Sorry. Old habit." She got to the book. "Oh, wow."
It was a 1972 first edition of Donn F. Draeger's The Weapons and Fighting Arts of Indonesia.
"Where did you find this? It's a classic." She flipped through the pages, again with care, looking at the black-and-white illustrations. "I've never seen an original, only the on-demand-print and CD versions."
He shrugged. "Picked it up somewhere. I thought you might like it."
Yes, he had "picked it up somewhere," all right. He'd had a bookseeker service hunting for six weeks for the thing, and it had cost him a week's salary when they'd found it. Oh, well. He didn't spend a lot of money. Outside of his living costs and Susie's child support, his only hobby was the restoration of old cars. His current project was a Plymouth Prowler. That wasn't cheap, but when he finally finished and sold the car, he'd get all he'd spent back, and then some. The book had made a dent in his bank account, but Toni deserved it. He couldn't do his job without her. And the look on her face when she saw the thing was worth a lot too. He smiled.
Toni was about to close the book when she got to the title page. "Hey, it's autographed!"
"Oh, really? Huh. How about that?" That autograph had jacked the price of the book up a few hundred dollars.
Impulsively, she hugged him.
God, she felt good, pressed against him that way. She could stay there all day…
Toni pulled away and gave him a big grin. "Thanks. My gift is nothing compared to this. You shouldn't have."
He shrugged. "Hey, a big meteor could fall on me while I'm taking the trash out tomorrow and what good would money be? I really appreciate all you do around here, Toni."
There was a silence that started to get awkward. He said, "So, you're going home to see your folks?"
"Yes. There'
ll be a big gathering, all my brothers and sisters-in-law, and nieces and nephews, the uncles and aunts. Regular army of relatives." She paused. "I hope your visit with Susie goes okay."
"Yeah."
"Well, I'd better get back to work. Thanks again for the book, Alex."
"You're welcome."
Thursday, December 23rd, 6:45 a.m. Quantico, Virginia
Joanna Winthrop took advantage of the take-off-work-early offer from Commander Michaels to book a deadhead seat on an early military jet leaving from Quantico and stopping off in Denver on its way to Alaska. When she mentioned it to Colonel Howard, Sarge Fernandez had offered to take her to the flight.
"I can catch a cab," she'd said.
"No problem, Loot, I'm heading out that way anyhow, got some errands to run. I'll swing by and pick you up."
It did make it easier for her. "Sure."
So now she rode in the front seat of Fernandez's personal car, a slate-gray seventeen-year-old Volvo sedan. She smiled. "Funny, I'd have figured you for a little racier ride than this."
"It gets me there. Slow and steady. And it doesn't spend much time in the shop."
"Well, I appreciate the lift."
"No problem."
They rode in silence for a few minutes, but she was aware of him giving her small peripheral glances. Well. He was a man, and she knew that look.
He said, "You mind if I ask you something personal, Lieutenant?"
Oh, Jesus, here it comes, she thought. He's going to hit on me.
She'd had plenty of practice shutting male attention down when she wanted to. Although Fernandez had a certain Latin charm about him, it wouldn't be a good idea, a relationship. Even though the ranks were more quasi- than real-military in Net Force, and there wasn't a specific prohibition against fraternization as in the Regular Army, there was a difference in their respective statuses. So she could let him down gently. "Fire away."
"Has working with computers always been easy for you?"
Hmm. That wasn't what she expected. "Excuse me?"