Night Moves (1999)

by Tom - Net Force 03 Clancy

  "Hey, I gotta go," Nadine said. "Keep a line open, okay? We'll get together and throw sometime."

  "Yeah," he said. "We need to do that."

  He watched her go. She had a muscular step, athletic and graceful, but she wasn't in Bella's class for looks, for sure.

  Well, fine. Bella was history as far as he was concerned; gone, past, done, and he wasn't looking for a replacement. Maybe he and Nadine would get together and throw 'rangs, that was okay. She was good at that, he could learn from her, maybe. It wouldn't be so bad to have somebody who was into the birds to work out with, even if she was on the plain side. She had an arm and she could make a 'rang fly, that was the thing. He didn't have to kiss her.

  Monday, April 4th

  Quantico, Virginia

  "Colonel?" It was Julio.

  Howard looked up from the holoproj image over his desk, the report upon which he was laboring. There wasn't any way to make it sound good, what had happened out there in Nevada. The only consolation was that he hadn't lost any of his troops. Reader was going to need some extensive plastic surgery on her face, but she'd pull through. When she'd heard the launch pop, she'd been prone, facing away from the APW, but she'd turned to look. Her face shield was down, but because of the angle, a couple of the pellets had zipped under the bottom of shield, a freak of bad timing. If her head had been inclined a centimeter or two more, the Lexan would have stopped the shrapnel. As it was, she was lucky the pellets hadn't gone deeper into her skull than they had. No brain damage--

  "I hate to have to tell you this, John, but we've got a real problem."

  "Worse than yesterday?"

  "Yes, sir, afraid so."

  "Wonderful. Spill it."

  "Lindholm and Hobbs are dead, both shot in the head at close range, small-caliber rounds."

  "What?"

  "Their transport is gone. We've got teams in the air, deputies and state police on the ground looking, but no sign of it so far."

  Howard stared at him. How could this be?

  "Forensics says the teeth and skull bits we brought back are human, but they came from somebody who's been dead a long time. The blood and other bones, that piece of brain, they all belong to a member of the domestic Suidae family--a pig."

  The implications hit Howard fast and hard. "He's alive. He wasn't in the car."

  "Yes, sir, that's the only thing that makes any sense. He must have hidden somewhere--I've got a search unit combing the area--waited until our men were off guard, then deleted them and stole their ride."

  "Shit," Howard said.

  "My sentiments exactly. We underestimated this guy bad, John. He foxed us."

  "Not we, Julio. Me. The buck stops here."

  Fernandez stared at the floor. He knew it was true.

  Howard stared into space. This was terrible. In the years he'd been running the Net Force military arm, he'd had several troops wounded in brush firefights, but he'd never had one killed. And now, because he had screwed up, he had two soldiers down. Oh, man!

  And worse, the guy who had done it had gotten away.

  Now what was he going to do?

  Monday, April 4th

  London, England

  "You sure you don't want to go?" Toni said.

  "I'd like to, I really would," Alex said, "but I need to go over all this crap." He waved at the laptop on the bed table.

  "I could stay and help you."

  "I appreciate it, but you can't read it for me, you might as well take a break while you can. Go, work out, burn off some tension. You'll feel better, and you can spell me later. This class is important to you. I saw your face when you got back from it. Go. Have fun."

  She nodded. She could see his point. She really did want to go to silat class, and Alex was right, her mind did work better after she exercised. "Okay," she said. "I'll be back in about three hours."

  He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips, then smiled at her. "Take your time. I'm not going anywhere."

  The cab ride though London to the school in Clapham was an adventure in itself, and by the time Toni got there, it was growing dark. But she was fifteen minutes early, time enough to change and stretch before the class started.

  Inside, eight or ten students were warming up, doing djurus and practicing two-person drills. Toni went to the bathroom, changed into sweatpants, wrestling shoes, a sports bra, and a T-shirt. She joined the other students and began doing leg stretches. She could still do the splits, front and side, but it took longer to warm into them than it had when she'd been fifteen. Leg flexibility helped--not so much in the Bukti, but it was a definite advantage in Serak. The basic turnaround required a drop from a high stance to a low one as you twisted, and the lower, the better. Tight hamstrings made that hard to do.

  Guru Stewart arrived, already dressed to work out. He came over to Toni. "Glad to see you made it, Guru. I'm sure we have much to teach each other."

  Toni smiled. "I don't know how much I can teach you, Guru, but I sure have a lot I can learn."

  He returned her smile, and she felt a small sense of triumph at being able to make him grin.

  Stewart walked to the front of the room and turned around. "All right, then. Shall we get started?"

  Toni felt a rush of energy as she lined up to bow in. Until now, all of her teaching had been private. She'd never actually gone through a formal class from beginning to end. She was thrilled at the chance to do it.

  Michaels pored over the small flatscreen's holoproj logs, scanning files related to the British investigation of the hacker's assault. It was tedious work, made worse because they spelled things wrong: labour, colour, like that. He kept mentally correcting the odd words when he came to them, and it slowed his scan speed.

  His virgil announced an incoming call.

  "Telecom from Angela Cooper," the virgil's voxchip said. He had switched the device from Jay's musical joke to vox, unable to listen to the fanfare after hearing that Jay was in the hospital.

  "Connect," Michaels said.

  "Commander Michaels? Angela Cooper here. I have some eyes-only material to add to your reading list. Mightn't I bring it round?"

  "Sure. I'll be here for the rest of the evening."

  "Shouldn't take that long. I'm in the lobby."

  He grinned. "Come on up."

  There was a tap at the hotel room's door two minutes later. Michaels opened it to see that Cooper could dress down as well as up. She wore a pair of snug-fitting blue jeans, oxblood Doc Martin boots, and a black scoop-necked blouse. She carried another flatscreen, but if she was armed, he couldn't see where she might be hiding a taser or a pistol in those clothes. Very attractive.

  "Commander."

  "Come in."

  She did, and offered him the flatscreen. "Not much new here, but there are a couple of things we've gotten from the Pakistanis you might want to look at."

  He took the flatscreen. "How goes the airline snafu?"

  "Better. Most of the affected computers have been restored. You still wouldn't want to be flying into Rio tonight unless your pilot was very good indeed, but the situation is improved. They lost a freight jet at Auckland International, three men killed, but so far, no other crashes involving loss of life."

  He nodded.

  The MI-6 agent looked around. "Nice room. Ms. Fiorella about?"

  "No, she's at a martial arts class."

  "Ah. Remind me not to get on her bad side. Well, I should be going, I don't want to interrupt you in your work. We're very happy to have you aboard, sir."

  "Call me Alex, please. All this commander and sir stuff is for the office."

  "Right. Then you must call me Angela."

  She glanced at her watch.

  "Got a hot date?"

  She blinked. "What? Oh, oh, no. I was just wondering if I had time to grab a bite to eat before I'm off to my sister's. I'm supposed to baby-sit with my niece this evening. She's eight."

  Michaels smiled again. "About my daughter's age."

  "I
didn't realize you were married."

  "Divorced, actually."

  "Sorry."

  "Don't be. It was a relief. Except for Susan--that's my daughter--everybody is better off."

  "I understand. I was married briefly myself. Awful experience, there toward the end. No children, fortunately, though I do enjoy them. Lucky for me, my sister's done all the work. Being Auntie Angie who gets to bring presents and spoil the child is ever so much more fun. How's the food here in the hotel, is it passable?"

  "They make good roast beef and Rueben sandwiches in the pub," he said. He looked at the two flatscreens with the secret information. "I could use a break myself. Mind if I join you?"

  "Not at all, please do."

  She smiled and, for a second, Michaels felt a stab of discomfort. Toni was gone, and here he was about to dine with the beautiful Ms. Cooper.

  Well, it wasn't as if he was about to dine on her. They were just having a sandwich, that was all. A man had to eat, didn't he?

  Right. Sure.

  He collected the second flatscreen. He wouldn't feel good about leaving them in the room, even though both were password protected. Given some of the villains Net Force had gone up against, that didn't seem very much protection.

  Angela walked to the door, opened it, and smiled at him again. It seemed a warm smile to him.

  Just a sandwich, that was all. He had Toni, a woman he loved, and that was all he needed, thank you very much.

  12

  Tuesday, April 5th

  London, England

  Peel stopped into a sandwich shop on Oxford Street, a place open at odd hours, so that you could eat lunch at midnight, if that was your pleasure. After army field rations, anything on relatively fresh bread stood well in comparison, and he was fond of the egg salad they made here.

  He took his sandwich, a packet of crisps, and a can of cola to one of the small, circular tables by the window. As he ate, he watched the passersby, mostly civilians scurrying about on their business. The birds were nice, and high platform shoes were apparently in vogue again. Some of the teenage girls who clopped past the sandwich shop wore shoes with soles a good six inches thick. Amazing what people would do to themselves in the name of fashion.

  Peel liked sex well enough, though he didn't feel much like spending time with the women afterward. Or before, actually. There were always girls of the evening about where soldiers spent off-duty time, and if one took the proper precautions against disease, one could enjoy as much female contact as one could afford. With his current job, he could afford as much as he could stand, which translated into sessions of an hour or so once or twice a week. Different bird each time, from assorted out-call services, so as not to establish a pattern that an enemy might track. A man who thought too much with his small head might well lose the larger head.

  As he started on the second half of his sandwich, entertaining some vaguely erotic thoughts, he got an ugly surprise. Peter Bascomb-Coombs appeared next to him. The man smiled and said, "You don't mind if I have a seat, do you, Major?"

  Without waiting for an answer, the scientist slid onto one of the high-backed chrome and plastic stools. He waved at the sandwich. "Any good?"

  Well, here was a nasty coincidence. How had Bascomb-Coombs come to be here? He'd not been to this place as long as he had been under surveillance, some weeks now. Well, all right, Peel could brush it off as happenstance--

  As if reading his mind, the man said, "No, I didn't just happen by, old chap. I came to see you."

  "Really? About what?" Peel managed. He put the remainder of his sandwich down, his appetite suddenly gone. He wiped at his lips with a napkin. His sense of danger was piqued. How could the man have known he was here?

  "About mutual benefit," Bascomb-Coombs said.

  "I'm afraid I don't follow you."

  "Come, come, Peel. Were you really taken in by my absent-minded scientist act? I suspect not. Just as I have been aware of your surveillance of my person since the beginning."

  "Professor, I'm afraid I don't know what you are--" "Let's dispense with the fencing, shall we? How much?"

  "Excuse me?" Peel stalled, trying to make sense of this suddenly too-knowing apparition. This was definitely a bad show.

  "To have you on my team, Major. You and I both know that Goswell is off his trolley with his mad scheme to bring back the glory days of the Empire. He really imagines that setting the third-world wogs at each other's throats and stirring up the Americans and Chinese and Russians will somehow cause Britain to rule the waves again. Surely you cannot believe this?"

  Peel was not stupid. The foundations of his job had just shifted, an unforeseen and formidable earthquake had rattled them, and things were, of a moment, changed. He was a pragmatist; best to see where this was leading. He said, "No, of course not."

  Bascomb-Coombs smiled widely. "I thought you were smarter than that. You see, his lordship has me in this neat little pigeonhole, the idiot savant, the boy genius who forgets to do up his fly when he leaves the loo, and he needs to go on believing that. Right now, he controls my project, though I will remedy that soon enough. Sooner or later, your watch team might have gotten in my way, so I decided that it would be best to deal directly with you. Your men are loyal, are they not?"

  "They are," Peel said.

  "Good, good. So the only question is, what will it take for you to continue to tell Goswell what a half-wit I am when I am away from my computer? I shan't require the deception much longer, but the timing is critical just now."

  Peel was a military officer; he had seen action. There were times when you had the luxury to sit and meditate, to plan your attacks and defenses, and there were times when you quickly aimed and fired your weapon and thought about it afterward. He made his decision on the spot: "A piece of your action," he said.

  The scientist flashed another of his high-voltage smiles. "Ah, you are smarter than I imagined. You don't even know what my action is."

  In for a penny, in for a pound. He said, "That hardly matters, does it? Goswell pays me a good salary, but my kind of work has a limited time span. I can't say I look forward to a small retirement cottage in Farnham or Dorking in twenty years, to spend the rest of my days puttering in the garden and pruning the roses. That's what Goswell will provide me. I expect you can do better, if I work for you?"

  "Oh, yes, Major Peel. I can do much, much better than that. I can give you enough money to build a city of cottages, a different one for every day of your life. And an army of servants to prune the roses for you."

  "You have my interest," Peel said. "Please, go on."

  Tuesday, April 5th

  Jackson, Mississippi

  Ruzhyo sat on a bed in a Holiday Inn, watching the news on the television. There was nothing on it about him nor about the deaths of the two soldiers in the Nevada desert. This was as he expected. The organization responsible for the attack on his trailer would take pains to keep the failure covered up, at least from the public. In this way, the Americans were much like the Russians. What the public did not know could not cause a problem. There would be a search, of course, and they would want him alive so that he could suffer for his deeds. They had come for him because they had known who he was. Perhaps it would have been better had he shot the Net Force commander when he'd had the chance?

  No, that would have been unprofessional by the time it came up. Plekhanov was caught, and eliminating the man who caught him would have served no purpose. The dead man would have been replaced quickly in any event, and his organization would have had more reason to hunt for a killer of one of their own than for one of the Russian's henchmen--who might not have even stayed in the United States.

  So, once again, he was on the move, one step ahead of his enemies, who were surely on his trail. He felt tired.

  But he also felt a grim kind of satisfaction. The old skills had not atrophied completely. When called upon, he still had some of his abilities. He was not as good as he had been five or even two years ago, but
at his best, there were few who could stay with him. Even diminished, he was better than most. This was not egotistical but plain fact.

  He sighed. He had several identities left to him, and money hidden in various places, both real and electronic. What was he to do now?

  Maybe he should go home. To Chetsnya. To see the old villa once more before he died.

  He had thought about doing that but never acted upon it. The American desert seemed to suit him more. But the end was growing near, he could feel that. While one place was as good as another when Death came, maybe there was something appropriate about meeting it where Anna had been claimed. And if it didn't matter, then the farm was as good a place as any, yes?

  Home. He would go home. And if they found him there, then that would be the end of it.

  Tuesday, April 5th

  The Surface of Luna

  "The moon?" Jay said. "You brought me to the moon?"

  Saji laughed, something of a feat, given that there wasn't any atmosphere to breathe or to carry the sound here. Or there wouldn't be in RW. He said, "It doesn't get much quieter than here. I need you to be undistracted by sensory input. Would you rather a dark cave? Or an isolation tank?"

  Jay shook his head. "No. I guess it doesn't matter."

  "Precisely. Find a comfortable spot and sit, and we'll begin."

  Jay shook his head. A comfortable spot on the surface of the moon? Sure.

  But he walked through the gray dust, bounding into the air--well, no, he couldn't say air, could he?--with each step, until he came to a rocky outcrop that seemed remarkably chair-shaped. He sat.

  Saji had vanished, but he left behind a Cheshire-cat smile that faded as he said, "Just remember what I told you."

  Jay found himself alone, on the moon, and it was very, very quiet. The idea was for him to sit and let his thoughts run, then use the meditation technique Saji had taught him to control them. The technique sounded easy enough. All he had to do was to count his breaths. Easier than that, he had only to count the out breaths. One you got to ten, you started over again. How hard could it be?