Give it a few more seconds for the smoke to clear.
"Smoke is clearing," came the report over Howard's LOSIR.
"Proceed with extreme caution," Howard replied.
"You still want him alive?"
Howard gritted his teeth. He had four wounded--so far--and, according to the medic, two of them hit hard enough they needed to be gotten to a hospital PDQ. The Guard copter was already on the way.
"Yes. Alive, if possible. But protect yourselves as necessary. I don't want anybody else going down, understand? If you have to shoot, you shoot."
"Yes, sir."
Now, Ruzhyo thought. He pressed the third of the four buttons on his control unit.
"Heads up!" Fernandez said.
Howard looked. A vehicle zoomed out of the smoke, coming up the road. Ruzhyo's SUV.
"He's running for it!"
The chatter of subgun fire echoed. Howard brought his binoculars around to frame the fleeing vehicle. He saw pockmarks appear on the metal where the bullets hit. What an idiot! Did he think he could just hop in his car and drive away?
Ruzhyo pushed the final button.
Before Howard could adjust the focus on his binoculars and get a look at the driver, the car blew up. The ground shook where they stood, and the blast wave rolled over them with a noise like the end of the world. A fireball rose inside a mushroom cloud like a miniature atomic bomb. This wasn't the gas tank going up; the car had been rigged with big explosives.
"Holy shit!" Fernandez said. "What the hell did he have in there?"
When the smoke cleared a bit, there was nothing left of the car except part of the frame and two flaming, smoking tires. More burning debris was scattered for hundreds of meters all around.
Howard stared. Jesus Christ! What a fuck up!
"Looks like you were right to be worried, Colonel. I stand corrected."
Howard just shook his head.
10
Sunday, April 3rd
Lhasha, Tibet
Jay Gridley sat cross-legged on the floor, wrapped in an orange robe, the smell of patchouli incense heavy in the cool air. The thin reed mat under him did little to stop the cold radiating from the flagstones into his backside, and his shaved head was chilly. Through an open window, he saw snow piled ten feet thick, a blanket that shrouded everything in crisp, glistening white. A wordless vocal chant echoed in the background, a low and pulsing drone, and light inside the massive chamber was provided by hundreds of candles.
At the front of the room, seated in full lotus on a short wooden platform that put him only a few inches higher than the monks, was the head monk, Sojan Rinpoche. The man was also bald, probably seventy, and had smile wrinkles that didn't quit. Gridley could see why, after a few minutes of listening to the guru speak. He smiled a lot.
At the moment, the old man was talking about some kind of Buddhist deity:
"... in Sanskrit, he is called Yamantaka. In China, they call him Yen-an-te-chia. In Tibet, we speak of him as Gshin-rji-gshed. Everywhere, we know him as He Who Conquers Death, one of the Eight Terrible Ones, the drag-shed, Guardian of the Faith, and patron of the Dge-lugs-pa.
"He is terrible to behold, this manifestation of Manjusri bodhisattva. Long ago, during a mighty battle in Tibet, Gshin-rji-gshed took his form to engage and defeat Yama, God of Death. He has nine heads, thirty-four arms, and sixteen feet. He is the Horror to Behold, the Mighty Terror, the Trampler of Demons.
"He is," the old man said, smiling, "not somebody you want to fuck with."
Gridley did a mental double take at the last sentence. That seemed weird, coming from a Tibetan holy man.
He sighed. This was the old man's scenario--if indeed he was an old man and not somebody faking it--and he didn't much care for it. Too austere. And now that he was here, he didn't really understand why he had come. What was it that he had hoped to find?
The nurse. The nurse had told him to look this guy up. After he had ripped the VR set off and thrown it on the floor because he hadn't been able to concentrate without losing it. Oh, he could still use VR, but only in a passive, customer sort of way. He couldn't create it. He couldn't manipulate it. He would begin okay, but after a minute or two, he would drift, and the imagery failed.
A computer operative who couldn't run a computer. A VR worker who couldn't work VR. He was screwed. His life was over.
But the nurse--she was some kind of Buddhist or something--she had given him this guy's web address, told him to check it out. He'd helped others, she'd said.
Gridley had nothing to lose, so he went. But he didn't see how Gshin-rji-whateverthehellhisnamewas was going to help squat.
As if reading his mind, the old man clapped his hands once, and the monks, save for Gridley, all vanished. The room around him swirled and shifted, and he found himself sitting in a comfortable armchair facing the guru, who also sat in a chair. In place of the orange robes, Jay wore slacks, a pullover sweater, and motorcycle boots, and the old man wore jeans and a work shirt. The Tibetan's legs were crossed at the ankles, he sported Nikes, and he had that big smile again. He looked like somebody's kindly old grandfather come for a visit.
"Better?" he said.
Gridley blinked. "Uh, yeah, I guess so."
"A lot of folks want the monastery imagery. It makes them feel as if they've found the real thing. That Tibet, unfortunately, only exists in the movies these days."
He regarded Jay with a straight, direct gaze. "You have a problem."
"Yeah."
"Your aura is fractured."
Jesus, auras? Time to bail--
"That is to say, you appear to have some difficulty concentrating. Drugs? Or a medical problem? Tumor? Stroke?"
How the hell could he tell that? Nothing like that showed in VR!
"Uh ..."
"Take your time. You want to check out, come back later, that's cool."
Jay shook his head. "You don't seem like any guru I ever heard of."
"You want the monastery back?"
"No, I--it's just that--"
"Expectation," the old man said. "That one is a killer. You had a idea, an expectation of what I was supposed to be, so whenever I pop off and do something that doesn't fit, it's confusing. And you're already confused enough, right?"
"Uh, yeah, right."
"Well, we'll get to that. First things first. What shall I call you?"
"Webnom or realnom?"
"Doesn't matter, just something you'll answer to."
"Jay."
"Okay. Call me Saji. You came for some clarity, right?"
"I--uh, I'm not sure."
Saji laughed. "What you mean is, you didn't come for all this Buddhist bullshit, demons and Dharma and all. But you do want clarity."
"Yeah."
"Well, being a Buddhist doesn't get in the way of that. In fact, it helps. But we'll get back to that later, too. First things first. The nature of your injury?"
"They say I had some kind of stroke."
"Fine, we can deal with that."
"I'm glad you can."
"Not me, we, Jay." He tapped his right temple with one finger. "Our brains have a lot of built-in redundancies. You get a short in one spot, it's entirely possible to reroute the signal to a place where the wiring is better. You might not even need that, but we'll see. I'm going to ask you a series of questions, you respond however you like."
"Okay."
"What is eighty-seven minus thirteen?"
Christ-arithmetic?
"Yes, arithmetic. To start out." He grinned.
Jay sighed. When you're at the bottom, the only way you can go is up.
"Seventy-four," he said.
"And who is the President of the United States ... ?"
Sunday, April 3rd
Stonewall Flat, Nevada
"What have we got, Julio?"
"Sir, not much. We've come up with some bloody pieces of scorched bone, something that looks like burnt hair, and a couple of teeth. Whatever he had in that car di
d a job on him. I doubt they'll ever find all of him."
Howard sighed. Yes, indeed. He wasn't looking forward to writing this report.
"All right. Finish the trailer, leave two men to watch the site, and we'll get the lab boys out here. Pack it up and let's go home."
"Yes, sir."
Howard looked at the crater where the target's car had gone up in the blast. This wasn't the plan, but at least they had taken him down. The man had been a professional killer. Aside from whatever else he had done, Reader was in bad shape, and three others were wounded enough to need hospital time. The target deserved to be questioned and imprisoned for a thousand years, but this would have to do. Quick and rough justice, Howard could live with it.
He turned away and headed for the Humvee. Julio had been right to keep the air conditioner turned up. It was hot out here and getting hotter.
Damn, he hated this.
In his burrow, Ruzhyo tried to sleep. It was hot, and he was exhausted, but he couldn't relax enough to drop off. He had considered wiring the trailer so that it would go up with the car, but had decided against it. Perhaps somebody could get some use from it. It had been, for what it was, a good home for him. And more importantly, anybody who remained behind to watch would surely use the place for shade from the hot sun, or even go inside to run the air conditioner.
From inside, there was no window that looked directly upon Ruzhyo's hiding place; he had made certain of that.
By now, they would have found the remains of what he had left inside a sterilized and vacuum-sealed plastic carton for them to find: Leavings from a barber shop's trash; several uncut bones, raw meat, and blood mixed with anticoagulant made from rat poison, all from a pig. And the final touch, a human skull from a high school biology skeleton, stolen and wrapped tightly inside the pig's scalp, packed with the pig's brain. Such things would not fool a pathologist for an instant, but someone who had just seen a car blasted to smoking bits might think the fragments of bone and blood and brain human. And they might think so long enough to allow him to escape.
Nothing was certain, but it was a chance.
The cameras showed men getting into vehicles and leaving. They would post a guard, probably no more than two or three soldiers. It would be hot, and the guards would remove their helmets or some of their armor or go inside the trailer. When they did, he would be ready. They would have checked the trailer for explosives and, finding none, would feel safe.
Pistol held loosely in his hand, Ruzhyo tried again to sleep. Even a few minutes would be good. He was so tired.
Sunday, April 3rd
London, England
MI-6 HQ looked just like any other modern office building inside. Michaels wasn't sure what he'd expected, especially given that Net Force HQ also looked like some typical corporate structure; still, he half expected to see James Bond or Q or somebody skulking through the halls on the way to do the king's business.
They sat on a comfortable couch in the office of the director-general, Matthew Hamilton. Along with Hamilton were Angela Cooper, Minister of Parliament Clifton Wood, and himself. Toni had stepped out of the room to call the FBI director.
"... would be in our mutual interests to resolve this matter as soon as possible," the minister said.
"I agree," Michaels said, "though I don't understand how we can be of much help here. You have your own people."
Wood and Hamilton exchanged quick glances. Hamilton cleared his throat and took the lead. "Well, yes, but you see, that's something of the problem. Both MI-5 and MI-6 want to jump right on this, and there tends to be some ... professional rivalry."
Cooper gave Michaels a brief flash of a smile. So much for her downplaying such things.
"It is our thought that a joint task force with the head of Net Force in charge might move things along faster. Neither Security nor Secret Intelligence want to give up their autonomy to each other, but with a third-party ally ..." he let it drift to a stop, raised his eyebrows and spread his hands.
Michaels nodded. Politics. Of course. And there was more than met the ear here, too, if they were willing to bring in a foreign service to mitigate the situation. He couldn't imagine the FBI and the CIA allowing British Intelligence to come in and take over a joint operation. No, there was a lot more going on here than they were telling.
The door opened, and Toni stepped back into the room, clipping her virgil to her belt as she entered. She gave Michaels a short nod.
So. The director had put them on the hook.
He nodded back at Toni, then looked at Hamilton. "We will, of course, be happy to help in any way we can."
That brought smiles from all three Brits.
Michaels wished he felt like smiling. What he wanted to do was go home. He had Jay in the hospital, the legal problems with his ex-wife, and whatever else might have gone on while he was away.
His virgil cheeped. Michaels frowned. It was set to refuse all but priority-one calls. He pulled the unit from his belt and looked at it. Incoming call from Colonel Howard. "Gentlemen, if you will excuse me for a moment?"
The MP and MI-6 commander both smiled and nodded again.
Michaels stepped into the hall. Maybe it was good news.
11
Monday, April 4th
Washington, D.C.
Tyrone Howard headed for his locker, keeping an eye out for Essay, the terror of the hall. Since Bella had dumped him, Tyrone's semiconnection to Bonebreaker LeMott, Bella's jock high school boyfriend, had become uncertain. Essay knew that his chances against Bonebreaker were zippo, and so for a time being Bella's friend had conferred a certain kind of immunity against the brain-dead thug. Essay--from the initials S.A., which stood for sore ass, which came from Brontosaurus--would just as soon thump you as look at you, and Tyrone's chances against him in a fight were also zippo, so it paid to be on the alert.
He made it to the locker without seeing Essay. Maybe he'd been kicked out of dear old Eisenhower Middle School for smoking again. That would be nice.
He was dumping his carry bag into the locker and not paying attention when somebody said, "Hey, Tyrone!"
He turned. It was Nadine Harris, the boomerang girl.
"Hey, Nadine."
She drifted over through the traffic flow, moving gracefully, like a swimmer treading water. "You got morning schedule, too. Exemplary."
"Yeah. Who's your anchor?"
"Peterson," she said.
"He's okay. I had him for Media One. What kind of register you got?"
"Eng Two, Math Three, Bioscience One, Media Two, Physical Three, History Two."
"That's pretty heavy redge for the quarter," he said.
She shrugged. "Not so bad. I tested high 'cause my last school was a couple steps ahead. How about you?"
"Eng Two, Math Three, Media Three, Comp Four, and, uh, MH One."
"Talk about my redge being heavy, whee-doggy, Ty! Comp Four? I didn't think you could take that unless you were in high school. And MH? Isn't that Military History?"
His turn to shrug. "My dad is military. I thought I'd check it out. He's told me some interesting stuff. He used to throw, and there's a section about throw sticks in the class."
"No feek? Wow. A dad who throws? He any good?"
"Well ... not really. He, like, did it as a kid, had a couple of wooden 'rangs, entry-level plywoods. But he knows all kinds of things about battles and like that, and how the abos used to use their sticks in fights."
"Exemplary," she said.
While they were talking, Tyrone felt a strange sensation, as if he was being ... watched. He glanced around, being careful not to be too obvious. Maybe Essay was around and had targeted him.
Belladonna Wright cruised down the hall with two of her girlfriends, and she was looking right at Tyrone.
His shoulders went tight, his face hot, his bowels loose. He wanted to run and hide under a rock.
She was as beautiful as ever, Bella was, maybe more so, and his memory of sitting on her bed kissing her,
putting his hands on her body ...
Don't go down that path, Tyrone. It will show. That would be embarrassing cubed.
But it was already too late. He slacked his grip on the carry bag, allowed it to hang lower, in front of his crotch.
"You okay, Tyrone?" Nadine said. "You look like you just swallowed a bug or something."
"Ah, no--I mean, yes, I'm okay. I--uh, just remembered something I forgot to do. A chore. At home."
Lame, Tyrone, blankwit slipbrain lame!
Bella steamed by like a battleship with two escort destroyers, awesome to behold in her beauty. She didn't look at him when she passed.
Nadine must have caught something in his face because she turned to look.
"Whoa. Who is that?"
"Belladonna Wright," Tyrone said. He fought to keep his voice from squeaking. He almost made it.
"Out of my league," Nadine said. "Killer wallpaper."
"Wallpaper?"
"Yeah, you know, it doesn't have to do anything except hang there and be pretty. Bet she gets invited everywhere, just to be looked at. You know her?"
"Not really," Tyrone said. He had thought he knew her, but he'd sure been wrong. She'd tossed him like a dirty sock.
"The beautiful get it free. When you're like me, you have to work for it."
"What, like you? You aren't ugly or anything."
She gave him another little shrug, looked away. "Put me next to that one--" she nodded in Bella's direction "--I'd disappear."
Tyrone didn't say anything, but that was true enough.
"I hope she doesn't have a brain, too. That would be the dregs--gorgeous and smart."
She didn't have to worry about that, Tyrone knew. Bella wasn't completely dull, but she wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, either. He didn't want to say that, though. Even after what she'd done, that seemed ... disloyal, somehow. Besides, if word got back to Bonebreaker that Tyrone was doing oral graffiti on Bella, that would be bad. She might have half a dozen guys in orbit, but Bonebreaker was definitely one of them. Tyrone kept track. And they didn't call him Bonebreaker for nothing.
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