Point of Impact nf-5

by Tom Clancy

A lot of people drove this stretch of road, and there were scores of cars and trucks heading in the same direction, so there was no way to be sure, but he first saw the car as he changed lanes to pass. A little way farther, when he pulled back over into the right lane, the car did likewise.

  Big deal. This was hardly conclusive evidence. But he had been through the standard Net Force surveillance course as part of his in-processing, and something one of the sub-rosa guys from the FBI who’d taught the class had said always stuck with him: “If you think you’re being followed, it is easy to check, and very cheap insurance. If you’re wrong, you might feel a little silly. But if you are right, you might keep yourself from winding up in deep shit. ”

  Maybe he was overly cautious, but as a professional military man, Howard had learned long ago that being prepared was not the same as being paranoid. And like the instructor had said, checking it out was easy enough.

  There was a little state road running northeast to Manassas not far ahead, and Howard eased over into the exit lane. If the car behind him — looked like a white Neon — kept going, he’d catch the next on-ramp and head on home.

  Six cars back, the Neon reached the off-ramp and exited a couple hundred yards behind him.

  Well, well.

  That didn’t prove anything for certain. Two or three times, he remembered the FBI guy saying, it could still easily be a coincidence. “Think about it. What would happen if one of your neighbors heading home happened to get behind you on the freeway? They’d make every turn you would, right? Could be perfectly innocent. Don’t jump to to a conclusion until you are sure. ”

  And there were several simple ways, Howard remembered, to be sure.

  He tooled along on the state road, which was narrow but scenic, heading away from the suburbs toward the more rural country. There was an intersection ahead, and apparently the Occoquan Reservoir was to the left. Fine, left it is.

  He went maybe a quarter of a mile, didn’t see the white Neon turn behind him.

  So, okay, he was paranoid. He’d find a place to turn around and go home. He was relieved.

  There was a little gas station minimart a half mile or so ahead, and Howard pulled in there, stopped, and went inside. He used the bathroom, bought a pack of Corn Nuts and a can of root beer, and headed back to his car. If anybody had been following him, he’d had an excuse to stop. The idea was, the surveillance guy had told them, not to let the people following you know you knew they were there. Better the tail you know than one you don’t.

  He kept going the way he’d been going, figuring to loop back around to a main road or the freeway eventually.

  Five hundred yards out of the minimart, he caught sight of the white Neon in his rearview mirror. The car was a ways back, maybe half a mile, but he was pretty sure it was the same vehicle.

  Hmm. He was pretty convinced, but a few more tests should make it interesting.

  Howard made a series of turns as he came to little branching streets, right, left, right, right, driving several miles until he was on a nice little country road — and thoroughly lost. He was going to need to use the GPS to find his way out of here. He had no idea where he was.

  Eventually he found himself on another road that led, so the sign said, to the Civil War battlefield of Manassas. The two big battles there had been originally named, he recalled, for the little river that went through the area, Bull Run.

  Several times, the Neon disappeared from sight, sometimes for as long as two or three minutes, and it seemed to Howard that the guy tailing him had an uncanny ability to guess the right way to turn.

  Then it dawned on him that there might be some kind of bug on his vehicle, and all the guy had to do was follow the signal.

  Damn, he should have thought of that sooner.

  But after half a dozen random turns, there was no doubt in his mind that the Neon was shadowing him. Now, the questions were, who was it, and why were they following him?

  He could have called the highway patrol, had a few beefy state troopers pull the Neon over and politely ask those questions. Of course, if the shadower turned out to be Lee, he’d just as soon not air that laundry in front of Virginia authorities; best to keep that in house. Or he could have scrambled a Net Force military team and had them brace the driver, but the truth was, he could take care of his own business. He had his side arm right here, and as yet there was no reason to call out the troops, especially if this turned out to be a huge coincidence. Somebody lost trying to find their way out by following him.

  Yeah, right.

  He was mindful of what Michaels had said about the DEA agent Brett Lee. After that shooting in L.A., Howard could cost the agent his job, maybe even cause him to face a criminal prosecution. And since the man seemed to be involved in something illegal besides that, he might not be too unhappy if Howard were to run his car into a tree somewhere and not survive the accident.

  Of course, it was a long way from following somebody around in your car to premeditated murder, and maybe that wasn’t what this was all about. Maybe it was somebody else altogether. Somebody Howard had run afoul of and didn’t recall, out stalking for other reasons entirely.

  So, the thing was, he needed to box up whoever it was tailing him, stroll on over, and have a few words with him and find out.

  Out here in the country, among all the trees and fields and pastures, he ought to be able to find a place to do that.

  He started looking.

  32

  Malibu, California

  Drayne was not surprised when Shawanda Silverman got back to him within a day. She had a nice place all lined up, and any time he wanted to come by and take a look, she would make herself available.

  Times must be hard in the real estate biz, he figured.

  He got the address and information and said he’d be by to pick up the keys soon. All the legal stuff had been handled over the net, e-sigs and the money transfer from one of the blind-alley addys. It was a done deal.

  He wouldn’t go himself, of course, he didn’t want his face to stick in her mind. Normally, he would have sent Tad, but Tad was still zoned out on the deck. Drayne had tossed a blanket over him when it got dark and cool, then put a beach umbrella up to shade him when the sun came up. Old Tad might not move for another day or two, if ever he moved again at all.

  Fortunately, the bodyguards had shown up, and while two of the four he hired weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, the other two were fairly bright. All were armed with handguns, they had a couple of pump shot-guns in a big case, and all claimed fighting expertise in some Oriental martial art or another. The biggest of the bunch was six two and two fifty, easy, and had a face that had stopped a few punches. One of the smarter ones was Adam, a tall and muscular dishwater-blond in his late twenties who looked as if he might have done some surfing at one time.

  Drayne decided to send Adam to meet with Ms. Silverman, to collect the key for the new place.

  “Your name is Lazlo Mead, M-e-a-d, and you work for Projects, Inc.,” he told Adam. “If she says anything about your voice sounding different, tell her you had a cold when you talked on the phone.”

  “Won’t be a problem,” Adam said. He took a breath, blew half of it out, then said, “Hello there, Miz Silverman. I’m Lazlo Mead.”

  Drayne had heard his own voice on recordings enough to recognize that Adam’s impersonation was dead-on. “Jeez, that’s good.”

  “I do a little stand-up now and then,” Adam said. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay real well. Not yet, anyhow.”

  After Adam was gone, Drayne pondered the bodyguard situation a little. He wasn’t planning on telling any of them the location of the safe house, just in case push came to shove and they got left behind when he took off. Adam was smart enough to figure it out, and if he wanted to bother, he could con it out of Silverman easily enough. After all, he would be Lazlo, wouldn’t he? That might be a problem, so if things went into the toilet, he’d have to make sure Adam either got clear with him or
wasn’t going to be able to tell anybody what he knew about the hidey hole.

  Maybe it was time to get that gun, Drayne figured.

  But at least things were on the move, his insurance was in place, and he felt a lot better.

  He had put the word out to his customers that the Hammer was going to be available with the timer starting in forty-eight hours. Within a matter of a few minutes, he had twenty orders, and an hour after that, twenty-five more. That was forty-five hits of the drug, plus one for Tad, if he was awake by then. And since Tad was out cold, Drayne would have to do the deals himself, but that wasn’t a problem, he’d use net cutouts and FedEx Same Day only, no Zee-ster face-to-face to worry about. Now all he needed was some chem.

  With the guards, he didn’t want to start out too wild, so he decided to go to the RV to do his mixing when it came time. He wouldn’t need them to go with him, they were mainly to protect his castle and his retreat if he needed to run. Nobody would know him from, well, Adam out in the desert where the RV would meet him.

  He grinned. Yep, things were back on track. Except for that crap with his old man. Well. He could sort all that out later. Come up with some story that would make the old man feel bad, like maybe he was a spy or an undercover cop or something. Yeah. Wouldn’t that be poetic justice? Having his father think he was serving his country while being accused of doing something illegal and immoral. That would be a hoot.

  For now, maybe it was time to pop a cork and have some bubbly. And maybe get one of the new bodyguards to show him about guns, too.

  Washington, D.C.

  “You are leaving me here and going where?” Toni said.

  “Hey, you discovered the clue,” Alex said. “We need to follow it up.”

  “We need to do that? Net Force doesn’t do that kind of field work, that’s for the regular FBI.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know how secure that would be now. If Jay’s suspicion is right, we have two guys who are capable of getting information not normally available. NSA has ears everywhere.”

  “Come on, you couldn’t figure a way around that? Couldn’t you hand-carry this info to somebody in the shop and have them check into it without exposing it to outside ears?”

  Alex continued packing his overnight bag, tucking his bathroom travel kit into the case. “If I knew who to trust, sure. The director is on our case about this. If it goes wonky, even if it’s not our fault, you know who will get the blame. Much easier to shove it off on Net Force than to admit problems in her house. Or worse, making accusations against a brother agency without ironclad proof. You’ve been around long enough to know which way that wind blows.”

  “It sounds like rationalization to me,” she said. “An excuse to get out of the office. And. out of here.”

  He stopped packing and looked at her.

  “I’m fat, hormonal, pale, and pregnant,” she said. “And I’m driving you crazy.”

  He came over and caught her shoulders. “No. You are carrying our child, and I love you. You are the most beautiful woman in the world, more so now than ever.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said. But he grinned.

  She grinned back at him. “You’re a bastard.”

  “Take that up with Mom. She never told me, and I’m sure my father would have been surprised to know that.”

  “A smart-ass bastard at that.”

  But she grinned, too.

  “I’m meeting Jay and John Howard at the airport in about three hours. We have time for a shower and a proper good-bye, don’t we?”

  “A smart-ass goat-boy bastard.”

  He laughed, and she did, too.

  * * *

  The area around Manassas was, like much of northern Virginia, rolling hills, suburbs and mini-malls, and roads that gridlocked during rush hour. Still, there were areas where the pine and oak trees still held their own, and there were a few stone fences and old houses standing against the weather.

  Howard had driven for about thirty minutes, until he found an empty, tree-lined rural road narrow enough for his purpose. He drove along until he was a half mile or so ahead of the Neon, then turned right into a narrow tractor path leading to a cattle-guard gate in a barbed wire fence. He shut off the engine. There were no houses nearby, just some brown and white cows grazing in the pasture.

  What he planned to do was get out, head through the cow pasture and into the little patch of woods opposite it, and then circle behind the Neon, which he figured would stop and wait to see what he was up to. Once he was behind the shadower, he’d creep up on him with his revolver in hand, and find out exactly who he was and what he wanted. A simple plan, but one that should work.

  Behind him, the Neon pulled off the road about four hundred meters away, turned sideways with the passenger side facing Howard, and stopped.

  Howard waited a few seconds, then got out of his car.

  He was still on the driver’s side closing the door when there came a chink! chink! as the passenger’s and driver’s side windows shattered, followed by the sound of a rifle shot. The bullet, traveling faster than the sound, missed him by maybe two inches.

  Shit!

  Howard took two steps to the front tire and dropped into a crouch behind it. He pulled his revolver. The engine was the best protection, and the heavy steel wheel would probably deflect a sniper’s bullet aimed lower.

  Another shot, another round pierced the car’s doors, through and through, and if he’d been there, it would have gutted him.

  This was bad.

  There was no other cover nearby. It was fifty meters through an open pasture to the tree line, and trying to cross the road the other way would be equally stupid, he’d be exposed. A decent shooter could nail him. And his handgun, while a fine weapon, was not going to do the job at four hundred meters unless God intervened in his favor.

  He risked a quick look.

  Another shot echoed over the pasture land, and the round smashed into the car’s side above the front tire but stopped when it hit the engine. Made a terrific clang.

  If the guy came toward him, he’d still have the advantage for another three hundred, three hundred fifty meters, and if he circled around, Howard was really in deep shit.

  He could call for help, but it would never get here in time. What the hell was he going to do?

  Memory was a funny thing. Up until that moment, he had forgotten what he had in the car’s trunk. He felt a sudden surge of hope and possibility flow over him when he remembered.

  Howard scooted toward the rear of the car.

  Another shot hit the car amidships and must have struck a frame support or something in the door; it didn’t go all the way through to his side.

  He reached the back tire. He had his keys, and the trunk release was on the electronic alarm and opener. He took a deep breath, put his revolver over the car’s trunk, pointed it at the Neon, and triggered off three shots as fast as he could.

  At the same time, he popped the trunk control, lunged under the still-rising lid, and grabbed the hard-shell case inside. He jerked it out and fell back behind the tire.

  The sniper’s next shot was great; it hit the passenger-side tire, lanced through the steel-belted radial, hit the driver’s side tire and penetrated that, then punched a hole in the comer of the hard-shell carrying case, almost jerking it from Howard’s grip.

  The car dropped to its rims, and he wasn’t going to be driving it anywhere any time soon.

  Howard popped the latches and dumped the parts of the.50 BMG rifle onto the ground. The bullet had missed anything important. He put his handgun down and, with a speed aided by adrenaline, assembled the rifle in what had to be record time. He loaded the magazine with five cartridges of the match-grade ammo, chambered a round, and lit the red-dot attachment on the scope. It was sighted in at three hundred meters, he recalled, so he’d have to adjust his aim a bit. Or maybe not. This thing shot pretty flat for a long way.

&nb
sp; Time to make an assumption here. The shooter was probably using a scoped deer or sniper rifle, 30-6, maybe.308, something like that, and if it was, it would likely be a bolt action. So he was going to have to manually chamber a round after each shot, which meant that Howard would have half, maybe three-quarters of a second between shots.

  Not much time to get set up. And if it was a semiauto, that would be really bad. But it was what he had.

  Howard took a grip on the heavy rifle. He stuck his head up, held it there for an agonizingly long time, maybe half a second, then ducked.

  The shot came, hit the trunk, zipped through, but missed by a good six inches.

  Then Howard leaped up, dropped the.50’s bipod on the trunk’s lid, slamming it shut, and put the red dot on the middle of the Neon. He squeezed the trigger, a shade too quickly, and the recoil from the weapon knocked him back and almost off his feet. The blast of sound was like a bomb; it deafened him. Even as he fought to regain his position, he chambered another cartridge, the empty extracted and smoking to his right.

  That would give the son of a bitch something to think about! Not so much fun when the victim can shoot back, is it?

  Howard looked through the scope. On high magnification, he could see the bullet hole where the side of the Neon had buckled in around it; it had blown paint off in a hand-sized crater, but there was no sign of the shooter. If the guy had any brains, now he would be behind the front tire with the engine block protecting him. When the.50 went off, it sounded like the wrath of God, and the assassin would know that the odds had just shifted dramatically into Howard’s favor.

  Howard’s ears were ringing and he couldn’t hear anything over that. He looked down, saw the earplugs that came with the rifle, and risked the second it took to scoop them up. He shoved them into his ears.

  No sign of the shooter.

  Fine. Let’s see how you like being dinner, asshole.

  He put the red dot on the top of the front tire and squeezed a shot off, more careful now.

  The bullet hit a few inches high and must have shattered and sprayed the engine compartment. Vapor came out from under the hood, maybe from the radiator, maybe coolant for the AC. He’d bet that car wasn’t going anywhere, either.