by Tom Clancy
This was black bear — there weren’t any grizzlies in these woods, virtual or real world, and hadn’t been for years. A black bear was much smaller and less likely to give you any trouble, but they’d go a couple hundred pounds, had teeth that could snap your arm or bite your face off, and you didn’t want to mess with a momma and cubs or a male in mating season. Most people didn’t realize that bears could outrun people in the short haul, and could climb, too.
At least he was on the right path. Gridley’s passwords were down this way, and maybe he wouldn’t need the big Cray to figure them out when he found them.
He stood and started back down the trail.
A deep voice drowned out the sound of the river bubbling over the big rocks: “Emergency override, Commander. General Howard calling.”
Thorn stopped. “End scenario,” he said.
Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia
The incoming call had visual — Howard was using his virgil, so it must be important.
“General. What’s up?”
“The FBI found a bug on Jay Gridley’s car.”
Thorn digested that and considered the implications. “You think it might not be road rage.” It was not a question.
“Somebody was tracking him. It would be passing coincidental if it was somebody else other than the guy who shot him.”
“You tell the lab guys to hit it hard?”
“Yes, sir.”
“State police know about it?”
“I expect so.”
“Keep me in the loop.”
“Yes, sir.”
After Howard discommed, Thorn went over the new input. Somebody was after Gridley in particular. Why?
Could be personal, though that didn’t seem likely. A lot of effort to bug his car and track him, then try an assassination on a major highway with witnesses all around. Did Gridley have enemies like that? He’d been here for years — nobody had said anything about him having hassles. Thorn could check with the man’s wife, but that scenario, that Gridley had personal enemies, just didn’t feel right.
So that left work. Who would want to knock off a Net Force op?
Possible answers: somebody who had suffered at his hands? Or maybe somebody who was going to suffer because of something Gridley was doing?
Now it was really important to get into his files and see what he was working on. Other than that thing for the Turkish ambassador, Thorn didn’t have any idea what the man had been up to. A supervisor needed to know what his people were doing.
Best he find out. Time to go for another walk in the woods.
“Computer, restart scenario from exit point.”
14
On the Beach
Jay paced, his thoughts fragmented. He was back on the beach where he’d started his nightmare. But he had a theory, now.
I’m in a coma.
Like most answers, it was incomplete, just a tiny bit of information that resolved only a part of the larger questions: So how did I get here? And what now?
He didn’t have to worry that he’d been kidnapped by the enemy, he wasn’t in a dream, and he probably wasn’t crazy. All good news. On the other hand, he couldn’t wake up, was trapped deep inside his body, and couldn’t be sure about whether he was in a new coma or the one that had nearly crippled him before.
What if everything that had happened since the tiger was all part of a delusion? What if he had never come back? That Saji, work, his life, none of it had actually happened?
That thought terrified him. The idea of waking up to find that Saji was not part of his life, that he was not about to become a father… That would be unbearable.
He had made some progress, however. He’d gone from “Where am I and how do I get out of here?” to “I know where I am, now how do I get out of a coma?” One of his college professors had said something along those lines a few times during a software app class: “When you move from ‘what’ to ‘how,’ you’re on your way.”
Of course he didn’t know where the way was, in this case.
He looked at the water and willed it to stop, picturing each wavelet stilled in motion, a sudden death to the motion of the sea.
The scene flickered for a minute, but water kept flowing, rolling in as before.
He frowned, but nodded. Something, anyway, but not enough.
He was in his own body, his mind was his own — should be a piece of cake, shouldn’t it? He should be able to control his environment like he’d done in dreams before. But it didn’t work. Which meant that something was wrong.
What?
Two answers presented themselves, neither pleasant.
The first was that his head had been hurt so badly that he couldn’t focus his will sharply enough to create solid images.
Which is bad, but—
The second was worse: Maybe some part of his consciousness didn’t want to have control. That idea, extrapolated, meant that he didn’t really want to come out of it.
Whoa.
Why wouldn’t he want to wake up?
Nothing occurred to him. He had the best job in the world, a great relationship with his wife, was happy — assuming that was all true and not just a dream he had within this coma, there was no reason he could think of why he’d be afraid to leave this place and head back to reality.
In his dream research, Jay had found many theories for why people dreamed. Wish fulfillment, clearing the slate, making sense of the day… No one really understood the total why of dreams. But he wasn’t really in a dream. That was part of the problem. He steered his mind back to the topic.
What do I really care about why I can’t affect things here? I just want out!
He started struggling to control the environment again: He tried freezing one wave, imagined a seagull in the air, turning some of the sand into salt. Again, nothing happened. Frustrated more than he’d ever been in his life, he sat on the beach, the warm sand making him drowsy.
How was he going to get out of here?
What’s wrong with my brain?
He stared out at the waves, watching them ebb and flow. There was an almost perfect rhythm to them, the up and down, the amplitude of each crest to trough a perfect curve.
Wait a minute… Something there…
Jay remembered something he’d read after his coma — at least he thought he’d read it, assuming he wasn’t still in that coma.
Brain waves.
There were four basic types: Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta, each one operating at a different frequency. Beta were the most active — the waking mind, the thinking mind. It ranged in speed from ten to thirty hertz.
Alpha waves were the meditation ones, the relaxed state of being. They produced a general feeling of reduced anxiety and well-being. These were slower, between seven and thirteen hertz.
Theta were even slower, the brain waves most commonly found during REM sleep, the time of dreams, at about five to eight hertz. Hallucinations — Dreams “R” Us.
The really important ones, at least to him now, were the Delta waves — produced during deep, deep sleep, or comas, when the body repaired itself. Deltas were slow — between two and six hertz.
I just don’t have the power, Captain.
In a coma his brain was too slow to generate the waking state of mind he needed to control things. It wasn’t his will, just his willpower.
I’ve got to speed things up.
But how?
It wasn’t as if he could suddenly snap out of it — that was the whole point.
Jay let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and felt himself relax. It explained why he’d been so unfocused. The latest theories suggested that there were some levels of thought going on during Delta waves, and he could certainly attest to that now — if he got out of here. It wasn’t his fault, after all. Now he just had to figure out how to speed up the frequency of his thoughts.
Yeah, simple.
He pondered the problem, turning it over from one angle and then the oth
er. How to increase his thought power? If his mind were like a computer’s CPU, he could just overclock it — increase the voltage, or alter the clock settings for the bus.
Was there anything he could do that would work like that for his brain?
Jay lay back on the sand and closed his eyes. Whatever low-level consciousness he had now, he didn’t want to squander it on the beach illusion anymore. He’d need every shred of thought power to try what he had in mind. The programmer pictured his memory as filled with hundreds of doors and began searching for anything he’d ever learned about brain function.
Biofeedback. He’d considered it before meeting Saji — using a machine to monitor his brain while he worked to try and reach one state or another. Over time, using creative visualization, people could use a biofeedback device to figure out what they were doing to get to a particular state of consciousness, and learn to do it without a machine. Biofeedback gave people the ability to focus better by teaching them to create more Beta waves.
Well I don’t have the machine, but I can visualize.
He wouldn’t be able to objectively monitor what state of being he was in precisely, but gauging the level at which he could control his environment would give him a clue.
Jay considered several other benchmarks he could use to test his consciousness level. If his memory got markedly better, he might be in a Theta-wave state. If he suddenly felt more at ease and relaxed, he’d be in an Alpha-wave state. And when things got the most active, and he felt more in control, he’d have moved to Beta.
Well, they aren’t exactly numbers on a monitor, but they’ll have to do.
Jay relaxed on the sand, picturing it warmer, heated by the sun, and then even hotter. Things moved faster in a hot environment, so he figured that might help. If his real body got warmer as well, it might physiologically help his brain with improved blood flow, too.
With his eyes closed, he thought of heat, a vein of lava running under the sand. He felt warmer and imagined sweat rolling off himself.
At the same time, he began to think of his brain as a spinning top. He pictured it, gray and twisted, uncoiling and spinning faster and faster until it was a huge ring, the neurons more and more excited.
He remembered what he’d been doing just before the accident. He’d been thinking of flowers for Saji, to congratulate her about the news. Pink was one of her favorite colors, and he’d been debating whether or not he should go with a bouquet or something more symbolic, like three flowers to represent himself, her, and the baby.
And the car had come rolling at him, fast.
Theta. Memory’s on-line.
His brain twirled, as if in a centrifuge, the gray matter pressed up against the side. He pictured the centrifuge itself set inside an amusement park ride, spinning ever faster, wheels within wheels. The lava under him had moved closer to the surface, and he was baking now, his body on fire as he sped up.
A wave of knowledge hit him, and he had ideas, all kinds of them.
The Alpha-Theta border?
People in this state of mind were supposed to suddenly gain great insight as their thoughts passed from the seven-to eight-hertz range. He had a flash of memory about the Schumann resonance, the resonant frequency of the ionosphere, 7.5 hertz and multiples. In a flash of inspiration he saw another direction to go.
He dropped the heat and spinning visualizations and imagined himself in a bed. The images were coming faster now, and more clearly. It was like stepping from a black and white world into color. Everything was more intense.
I’m in a hospital bed.
Jay pictured the bed, the room quiet, made up of the same nondescript decor and hardware found in hospitals all across the nation. He could almost hear a beeping sound, and he imagined it might be an EKG keeping track of his heart. He tried to imagine the feel of the cool sheets on his skin, the whisper of an air conditioner nearby, the click of heels on a floor.
“He’s coming around!”
“The monitor’s going crazy!”
Voices! He heard voices!
Beta, here we come!
But, in that moment, the voices faded, and he felt a heaviness wash over him. A moment later, he was back on the beach, sun shining mercilessly, sand under his butt.
He cried out in anger, then calmed himself. He had made progress, he was sure of it. He had a goal now, a direction, and he was going to beat this thing. It was only a matter of time.
He was Jay Gridley. He was not going to roll over and give up.
No way.
15
Hassam, Iraq
Howard heard the spang! as a jacketed assault rifle round ricocheted off the concrete wall a foot above his helmet. He ducked instinctively — too late, of course. You don’t hear the one that kills you, he knew that. But if you hear one, that means somebody has targeted you, and there will probably be more on the way. There were men who never bothered to duck at all when they were in a fire zone — they figured the one with their name on it would get them no matter if they were hunched over or standing upright, but Howard always figured that the smaller the target the less likely you’d get tagged. Might be more than one with your name on it — no point in tempting fate.
The tiny village was typical for the Mid East — a lot of adobe and concrete-block construction, some of the older stuff probably going back a thousand years. The streets had been made for pack animals — donkeys, camels, whatever — and not automobiles, and until recently the buildings had been designed to fit the terrain and not the other way around. The result was a third-world town that might have been created by giant rats, full of twists and turns, low overhangs, and alleyways no wider than two men walking side-by-side could traverse even without the garbage bins.
There were also a McDonald’s, a Starbucks, and even a Gap store.
“Able One, bring your aim to bear on that sniper in the second-story window on the northwest corner of the hotel,” Abe Kent said.
Despite the intermittent gun fire and occasional grenade going off, Howard didn’t have any trouble hearing the colonel’s clipped commands over the LOSIR headset built into the helmet.
“I want to see a metal hailstorm filling that aperture in five seconds. When it does, I want Baker Two’s AT man to cross the street and into that Starbucks. Everybody copy?”
“Able One copies.”
“Baker Two copies.”
“On my mark — five… four… three… two… and fire!”
Eight subguns spoke as one, and anybody in or around the mosque’s window who didn’t duck better be bulletproof.
Howard peeked around the edge of the Dumpster, a nice, thick, bullet-stopping steel-plated one, and watched as Baker’s antitank man scooted across the street, dodging and stutter-stepping, ending in a dive and roll. The man had some speed.
The subguns went quiet.
“Baker Two AT, put a rocket through that hotel window at your convenience.”
There were undoubtedly civilians in that hotel, and Kent wanted very much to minimize any unintended or “collateral” damage. But they were taking fire, and the first rule of engagement was always the right to self-defense.
Three seconds later, a new JAM-II antitank antisniper laser-guided smart rocket whooshed from a shoulder launcher, zipped the hundred yards from the Starbucks to the mosque, still gaining speed as it went through, and turned the room inside out in a fiery roar. The precision of the weapon meant, however, that the surrounding rooms were all untouched.
Adios, sniper.
Howard smiled. He was just here as an observer, and while he might have done it differently, there was no arguing with success. Abe Kent had been in combat as often as any man of his rank, more than most, and when you wanted the job done, he was your go-to guy.
“Nice shot, son, I owe you a beer. Able One, recon and report.”
Howard pulled his head back to cover and looked at Kent, who sat on his heels in a squat he had learned in some Southeast Asian jungle years before.
&n
bsp; “Very neat, Colonel.”
“All in a day’s work, sir. Not like I haven’t been in this general vicinity before.” He waved at the street.
“Are we done?”
“Pretty much.”
“Computer, end scenario.”
Net Force Military Computer Training Center Quantico, Virginia
Kent pulled off the headset and looked around the darkened training room. It wasn’t necessary for the troops to be here, they could have been anywhere in the country and logged into the communal VR scenario, but Kent liked his people together, so that he could talk to them face-to-face before and after a sortie. The center would allow sixty players to gear up at once, though there were only eighteen of them here now — Howard, Kent, and the two eight-person squads. Net Force seldom had large numbers in the field, though it was possible — they were much more like a Delta or SEAL team: small, portable, fast, hit-and-run and get out in a hurry.
Howard had done all right with them. Had some good officers and sergeants, and the troops were pretty sharp — their pay was better, and they had money for training — though he never trusted a VR scenario the same way he did reality. When you got shot in VR, you shook your head and tried to do better. When you got shot in combat, it wasn’t so easy. The map was never the territory.
Still, it was a good exercise, and it did instill enough sound and fury to keep you on your toes.
Howard would be gone soon, and it would be Kent’s command, and he needed to know what his people could do.
Colonel Kent went over the exercise with the troops, telling them what they had done right and what they had done wrong. Howard sat quietly in the background, nodding. That was good. It always helped if a superior officer backed you up. It wasn’t absolutely necessary if you knew you were right, but it was nice to have the acknowledgment.
When they were done and the troops had filed out to consider their performance, it was just Howard and Kent alone in the room.
“Anything new on the Gridley matter?” Kent asked.
“FBI has some info on the bug; they are sending it over. I figured we’d read it, then go show it to the Commander — if that’s all right with you.”