by Tom Clancy
"Oh, shit."
The tone hadn't been one of fear, but of irritation. As if she'd just discovered it was raining when she'd planned to lie in the sunshine.
Now, the van was parked a block over, in the driveway of a vacant house for sale — a chore the Selkie had done while Brigette had been handcuffed to her kitchen plumbing.
Back in place, she'd uncuffed the woman and allowed her to dress.
As she had been slipping into her black silk panties, Brigette had turned those sweet cornflower-blue eyes on the Selkie and said, "Are you going to kill me, too?"
No doubt in her mind as to why the Selkie was here. No brainless bimbo, this one.
"No, why should I? You do what you're supposed to do, Genaloni goes down, I'm gone."
"He'll have bodyguards with him. They'll be out front."
"How many?"
"A couple."
Apparently being cooperative again — but lying. Genaloni would have at least four guards, five if you counted his driver. One of them would be watching the back, too. Brigette was trying to cover her ass — more than the silk G-string she had on did. If her sugar daddy took the hit, she could hope his killer would let her live because she'd helped her. If Genaloni survived and the delivery woman fell, sweet Brigette could tell him how she'd lied to protect him.
"You don't seem too upset that your ride is about to get erased."
The blonde slipped on a natural-colored raw silk blouse, no bra under it, and buttoned it. She noticed the other woman's look. "He likes to see my nipples," she said. Then she shrugged. "He's a mob guy. It's a risky business. I have a little put away, and I don't figure I'll have much trouble getting another honey. If it was good enough for Genaloni, there will be other mob guys who'll want a taste."
The Selkie grinned. No sentimentality for this girl. She knew what she was and meant to make the most of it. The Selkie kind of liked that about Brigette, her being straight up and no bullshit.
"Somebody might blame you."
"Why should they? I'll let them wire me with a stressbox and I'll tell them the truth. You stuck a gun in my face — what could I do?"
"I guess that means you'll tell them what I look like, too, right?"
There was a moment of hesitation as Brigette scanned that, tried to put some spin on it. Then she said, "Yeah, I'll tell them. But that's a disguise, right?"
"What if they ask if it's a disguise?"
"I can get by that one."
This was getting interesting. "Really. How?"
Brigette pulled a microskirt up over her long legs, zipped it and tucked the blouse into it. "Depends on how you ask the question. If they ask, ‘Do you think Ray's killer was wearing a disguise?' I can say, ‘No,' and it'll scan as truth."
"Really?"
"Sure. Because I don't think you're wearing one, I know you are. I've been around makeup before."
The Selkie grinned. "Why would you do that? Cover for me?"
"You could come back later and delete me if you think I ratted you out."
Her logic was frail, but the Selkie didn't point that out. If Brigette did a good enough job ratting her out, the mob might find and kill Ray's assassin, and she wouldn't be around to threaten sweet Brigette's peace of mind.
Could she trust her? Uh-huh. Right. The Selkie had no doubt that her target's mistress would sing an entire opera when asked by those who wanted to hear it.
Brigette found a pair of silk stockings, bunched one into gathers, then slipped it onto her left foot and up her leg. The Selkie watched, intrigued by the woman's complete lack of modesty and emotion regarding the upcoming deletion.
Brigette caught the look. She smiled. "You like women? I can show you a good time while we wait."
The Selkie shook her head. "Thanks. Not while I'm working."
Ray's girl was a cool one, all right. The Selkie wouldn't want to be dangling over a cliff with sweet Brigette on the other end of the rope — not unless she had a wad of cash in her hand to bribe her to hang on to the lifeline.
Still, Brigette would be helpful. The Walther TPH.22 pistol the Selkie held was kind of a scaled-down version of James Bond's PPK. It was an excellent example of the gunmaker's art, the TPH, high-grade stainless steel, small and compact, very accurate. But the tiny.22 round was not a man-stopper out of a pistol unless it hit the central nervous system. A spine or brain shot was necessary for a certain kill. If, as Ray came up the walk, Brigette started screaming, a head shot would be difficult. Not impossible — she could make that shot with this piece out to twenty yards — but by that time, the TPH would be wearing the suppressor, to cut down on the firing noise. The barrel wasn't long enough to let the Stinger ammo achieve supersonic speed, and the suppressor would cut the velocity even more as it absorbed the exhaust gases with the sound. Unless you put the round into an eye, the target might survive. The skull was hard, bullets had been known to glance right off. And hitting an eye with the suppressor blocking the sights, well, that was iffy.
No, with a.22 handgun, you wanted to put the muzzle an inch or two from the back of the target's head, and pump three or four sound-suppressed rounds into the hindbrain while his bodyguards were sitting in their cars unaware. And be long gone before anybody came knocking.
She needed privacy to do this right. Brigette would get Genaloni into the house. Once the door was closed behind him, the Selkie would handle the rest.
Wednesday, October 6th, 6:00 p.m. Quantico
The five o'clock meeting began an hour late. This was a small group — Michaels, Toni, Jay, Colonel Howard, and the new FBI computer liaison, Richardson — though the FBI guy couldn't stay long. From here on out, the information concerning this case was going to be NTK — need to know — only.
"All right," Michaels said. "You've all gotten the info-packet Jay put together. Any questions?"
Richardson said, "Yes. Once you've done a verification that this… Plekhanov is for certain the programmer we want, how do we proceed?"
Michaels said, "It is a little tricky. Ideally, we would contact the Chechen government and ask to have him extradited under the Net Criminal Agreement of 2004. This might not be a good idea. Jay, if you would?"
Jay nodded. "Plekhanov probably has a standby security program for his most sensitive files. If the local police go barreling into his office or house and start tapping keys or pulling wires, chances are his system will lock itself up tighter than spandex before they figure out how to pull the plug. And even if not, his sensitive files are certain to be encrypted, 128s or maybe even 256s. He used to write the Russians' military ciphers. Without a key, it would take our SuperCray going full blast something like ten billion years to break the code. That's probably a little longer than we want to wait, so we can't get his system files without the key. If we don't get the files, we can't prove it's him, not enough for the legal guys to ask for indictments."
"So, how do you do it?" Howard asked.
"The ideal way is to look over his shoulder while he's got his system lit. Either that, or get the key."
"And that's only part of the problem," Michaels said. "Jay?"
"I've done a little background on this guy. Turns out he's got links to some pretty high government officials all over. He's done a lot of legitimate security work, for the Russians, the Indians, the Thais, the Australians, you name it. He's got money — a nice chunk on the legal books — talking a couple of million personal net, and no doubt a lot more illegal money stashed. That bank robbery in New Orleans probably wasn't his first."
"So we have a rich guy with clout," Toni said. "And even if the Chechens were willing to nab him and hand him over, we can't nail him without evidence we can't get?"
"That pretty much sums it up," Michaels said.
Howard said, "If this guy is rich and powerful, why is he doing this? Why take the risk?"
Michaels nodded, glad to see his people were paying attention. "There's the big question. What does he want?"
"More money, more power," Ric
hardson said. "He's greedy."
"Probably," Michaels said. "But I've been going over the information, and what it seems like to me is that he's driving at something specific. Some of the system crashes have been directly beneficial to him — Jay has the particulars — but some have not. Even if some of that is just blowing smoke to cover his trail, there seems to be a pattern. He's going someplace in particular. Before we try to grab him, it might be wise of us to see if we can figure out where that place is. He might have help, and it would be good for us to gather them all in."
Before he could continue, the door to the conference room opened. Michaels's secretary stood there. She wasn't supposed to interrupt unless it was an emergency, and Michaels's first fear was that something had happened to his wife — ex-wife, dammit — or his daughter. But before he had more than a flash of panic, his secretary put that to rest:
"Commander, there is some news from New York you need to hear. It's about Ray Genaloni."
33
Wednesday, October 6th, 4:40 p.m. Long Island
Brigette's doorbell rang. "Oh, Jesus," she said.
"Go let him in. Remember, I'll be standing where I can see you and he can't see me. If there are any sudden moves, anything at all, I'll drop you before I do anything else."
"Okay. I understand."
Brigette headed for the door.
Here was where it got dangerous. The Selkie didn't think Brigette would do anything stupid — she was betting a lot on that. If it went sour before Genaloni got inside, she had four.22 magazines loaded for the Walther, twenty-four extra rounds, plus the seven in the gun. And the remainder of a box of Stingers in her pants pocket, though if it came to her needing more than thirty-one rounds, she was going to be in deep shit.
"Hey, baby. Come in. My husband just left."
Genaloni laughed and stepped into the house.
The Selkie moved back out of sight, the pistol held in both hands by her right ear, muzzle pointed at the ceiling.
She now wore surgical gloves, had not touched the pistol or magazines with her bare hands since she'd scrubbed and cleaned them last night. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Adrenaline surged over her in warm rushes.
"I can't get the wire thing off the champagne bottle, Ray. The little round part twisted loose."
"I'll get it. In the kitchen?"
"Uh-huh. In the ice bucket." Oh, she was cool. Not a hint of nervousness in her voice.
The Selkie moved into the open closet behind her, smelled the fresh scent of new, unworn dresses that still had the tags on them. She pulled the door almost closed. Genaloni and Brigette walked past her hiding place, never glanced in her direction.
The Selkie stepped out behind them as they entered the kitchen.
"Don't move," she said.
Genaloni knew what was going down from those two words, and he knew Brigette's part in it. "Shit. You lousy fucking whore."
"I'm sorry, Ray, she made me do it! She has a gun!" This was the most excited-sounding Brigette had been all day.
"Hands high and wide, Genaloni."
He obeyed. "Can I turn around?"
"Sure."
He did. When he saw her, he nodded. "So. You must be the Selkie, right? Why this?"
"You know why. Your people tried to find me. You were told a long time ago that's not allowed."
He didn't try to lie. "Shit. They were supposed to be good."
"Not good enough."
"All right. So you spotted them. What's the deal? Money? A guarantee we won't try to look for you again?"
She already had the pistol lined up on his right eye. At this range, she didn't need sights. She could point-shoot a marble off a tabletop all day long without scratching the finish, just using the gun and suppressor to index the target.
"How much money are we talking about?"
He grinned, thinking he had her number.
He was wrong.
The pistol's hand-polished action was honed to a crisp three-pound pull for the single-action mode, no creep. The Selkie squeezed the trigger gently. The shot broke like an icicle under her finger. It sounded like an air rifle, a spat! nobody would hear outside this room.
The tiny bullet hit Ray Genaloni in the white of his right eye. He went boneless and fell, his brain shorted out by the lead bouncing around inside his skull.
"Oh, Jesus!" Brigette said. "Oh, Jesus!"
Because she liked Brigette a little, and because she wasn't a cruel woman, the Selkie said, "Calm down. You're all right. I'm going now, take it easy — who's that at the door?"
Brigette turned to look.
The Selkie fired twice—spat! spat! — and double-tapped Brigette in the right temple. The blonde fell. She kicked spasmodically as damaged brain connections triggered a last frantic try to run away. It was an instinctive reaction — the mind that had been Brigette wasn't home any longer. And she had checked out thinking she was going to survive this.
The Selkie moved fast. She bent, put two more shots into the back of Brigette's head, then two more in the back of Ray's skull. The gun worked perfectly — she had polished the feed ramp with steel wool until it gleamed like a mirror, then coated it with TW-25B, a fluorocarbon-based military-spec lubricant. She never had a failure to feed, even with the hollowpoint Stingers. She pressed the heel catch on the pistol, pulled the empty magazine out and shoved another magazine home. She put the empty magazine into her pants pocket, racked the slide on the TPH, stripped and chambered a round. Then she changed magazines again, putting a fresh six-rounder into the gun. One up the spout, magazine full. Seven shots on tap.
She looked around. She hadn't left any prints anywhere. The empty cases from the.22 were clean — she'd loaded them fresh from the box while wearing gloves. They could make something from the extractor and firing-pin marks on the brass rimfire empties, but since she was going to dump the gun as soon as she could, that didn't matter. Even if some diver found the piece twenty years from now, there wouldn't be anything to link it to her — she'd bought it clean on the gray market. Too bad. She really liked the Walther, but you didn't keep murder weapons around once they were used. The prisons were full of shooters who got attached to favorite pieces and kept them after they'd cooked somebody with them. Stupid.
She looked down at the bodies. They both had thought they were going to walk away when she'd dropped them, and they'd been effectively dead before they had time to realize any different. There were worse ways to go.
Okay, now the second part.
She moved to the back door, peeped through a gap in the blinds covering the window next to the door. A big man in a gray sweatsuit stood inside the fence, next to the gate. He was smoking a cigarette, and he had a belly pouch drooped heavily over his crotch. That was where he'd have his gun. Good. A belly pouch was a lot slower than a holster.
She needed to get him away from the gate and closer to the backdoor, out of line of sight from the front, in case anybody was looking at him.
She had spent the better part of the day with Brigette.
She could do enough of an imitation of her voice to fool somebody who might have heard it no more than a couple of times.
She took a deep breath. Opened the door. "Excuse me? Could you come here a second? Ray needs a hand."
The sweatsuited bodyguard ambled toward the back door. As soon as any view of him from the front was blocked by the house, the Selkie stepped out into the yard.
Sweatsuit frowned. The Selkie wasn't what he expected to see.
His reaction time was pretty good, but his tactics were bad. Instead of ducking his head, bolting and trying to hop the fence, which might possibly have gotten him clear with a couple of small-caliber rounds in the back, he dug for the pistol in his pouch.
The fastest gunslinger who ever lived couldn't move fast enough to outdraw a gun already lined up on him. The reaction time, plus the mechanical time it took to come from the holster — even from a quick-draw rig, he'd need at least a third of a second, ev
en if he was really fast. Coming out of a belly pouch, this guy was going to need two seconds to get his piece on-line, and he didn't have two seconds.
The Selkie squeezed off her first shot before the guy got past the frown. The second and third rounds followed so fast they sounded like one long brap! She tapped him three times in the head, then ran for the back fence before the bodyguard even hit the ground. Her van was on that block, two houses down, to the left, and there weren't any dogs in the neighbor's yard — she had checked.
The barrier was a cedar-plank, good-neighbor fence, six feet tall. She got to it at speed, put her hands, including the pistol, on top and jumped and levered herself over it. A pretty good hop.
The ground was soft, the neighbor's yard empty. Nice grass, recently mowed.
She ran to the gate next to the house, opened it, closed it behind her. Unscrewed the suppressor from the Walter's threaded barrel, shoved the suppressor into her back pocket, slipped the gun into the horsehide waistband holster, pulled her shirt out and over the gun.
Forty-five seconds later, she was at the van. Across the street, two little girls played hopscotch on a pattern chalked on the sidewalk. The Selkie smiled and waved at the girls. Got into the van, started it, backed out into the street, then pulled away. She drove without any particular haste, stopped at the stop sign, put her blinker on to make the right turn. A model driver.
Ray Genaloni was no longer a worry.
Now, she had to go back to Washington, to finish one more little chore…
34
Thursday, October 7th, 2:45 a.m. Grozny
As he was rebuilding his system, damaged in the sudden VR bail he'd been forced to take, Plekhanov came across bad news.
Somebody had snapped a couple of his trip wires.
It was late, he was tired and his first reaction was panic.
He forced himself to take several deep breaths. Easy, Vladimir. All is not lost.
He re-ran his security scans. There were no other signs of the intruder, so he was good, whoever he was. But there was no way to avoid breaking the trip if you went down certain electronic corridors. Like very fine strands of spider silk, the trips were always placed with utmost care, put in places short of where most would begin to look for them. Even a passer-through looking for such wards would usually miss them. They'd be strung across at knee-level, nearly invisible, offering so little resistance they'd never be noticed. If you stepped over one, chances were you would then break the next one. Once broken, the threads could not be restrung.