He looked at Toni. "Sorry, I slipped into the void. What?"
"Joanna Winthrop is coming in at two-thirty." Gridley snorted. "Lightweight Lite? What's she want?"
"Lieutenant Winthrop is going to be assisting us on this matter," Michaels said. "Colonel Howard has graciously allowed us to borrow her from the field. In fact, she will be working with you."
"What? I don't need her, Boss," Jay said. "I can run this dweebo to ground without some airhead sim-bimbo—"
"Jay." Michaels's tone was sharp. "Sorry, Boss. But she's only gonna get in the way."
"As I recall, her grade-point average was higher than yours straight across the board," Toni said. "Sure, where she went to school."
"MIT, wasn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am, but their standards have gone way down. CTT is acme now."
Alex just shook his head and said, "Jay, whatever your differences with Lieutenant Winthrop, you'll just have to find a way to get past them. We need all the help we can get on this mess." He waved at the holoproj.
Gridley nodded, but his jaw muscles flexed as he gritted his teeth.
Great, Michaels thought, one more brick on the load I don't need. A computer prima donna jealous of his territory. Just great.
His temporary secretary came into the conference room. "Commander, I have Director Carver on the phone."
Michaels stood. "I'll take it in my office." He waved at Jay and Toni. "Get busy, folks."
* * *
Chapter Two
Friday, December 17th, 1:45 p.m. Washington, D.C.
Thomas Hughes strode into the senatorial offices as if he owned them, the building they were in, and the city around them. He waved at the receptionist. "Bertha. Is he alone?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Hughes."
Hughes nodded. He'd known Bertha for more than a dozen years. She'd been with Bob since his first term, but she still called him "Mr. Hughes," and he had not encouraged otherwise. He walked to the inner office door, rapped once, and pushed it open in the same motion.
Jason Robert White, fifty-six, the senior United States senator from the great state of Ohio, sat at his desk. He was playing a computer game. He looked up and started to frown at the interruption before he realized who had dared barge in.
"Hey, Tom." White did a fingerwave over the sensor on his handpad and the small-scale holoproj images froze. It looked like two guys in hand-to-hand combat, one of whom was green and scaly. Jesus.
"Bob. How'd the lunch with Hicks go?" Hughes moved to the pale gray leather couch, sat, and looked at the man for whom he worked.
White appeared ten years younger than his actual age, with a deep chemical tan under his perfectly styled, artfully graying hair. He wore a dark-blue tailored Saigon suit, a pastel-pink silk shirt, and a striped regimental tie for a regiment that had never existed. Hughes couldn't see his feet, but the shoes were doubtless Italian or Australian, and handmade. Altogether, the outfit the senator wore offhandedly was worth what Hughes made in salary each month, easy. He was the image of a successful senator, handsome, fit, and comfortable in his custom clothes, no doubt about it. He could play a Viennese waltz on the piano, speak passable French and German, keep up with a so-so tennis pro, and break a hundred on a bad day at the country club golf course. A man who could walk the corridors of international power with ease.
Hughes, on the other hand, knew he looked every day of his fifty-two years. He was twenty pounds too heavy, wore a decent, but not expensive, Harris Tweed sport coat and gray wool slacks from Nordstrom, both off the rack, and his shoes were Nike dress casuals. Total cost of his outfit was maybe a twentieth that of White's.
White leaned back in his chair and waggled his left hand in a so-so gesture. "Well, Tom, you know Hicks. He never gives a nickel but what he wants a dime. If we want to get his support, the honorable senator from Florida wants to see the Naval Air Station remain a fixture in Pensacola from now until the end of time."
Hughes nodded. He had expected no less. "Fine. Give him what he wants. What do we care? He's a critical vote. We get him, we'll get Boudreaux and Mullins. We get them, we're out of committee and it's a lock on the floor."
White smiled at his chief of staff. "Probably won't hurt us with Admiral Pierce either."
"Exactly." Hughes glanced at his watch, a gold Rolex that White had given him on the eve of their election to the Senate.
Hughes had been the campaign manager, and such a watch was way beyond anything he'd ever been able to afford. For White, whose family owned half of Ohio and part of Indiana, a Rolex was a trinket, a drop from a bucket brimming with money. It was the most expensive piece of jewelry that Hughes ever wore, and though he could afford better now, he couldn't afford it legally.
"Aren't you supposed to be on the links with Raleigh at two-fifteen?" he reminded White.
"The old man canceled. Too cold for him. Personally, I think he just doesn't want me to kick his ass again. Last time out, I beat him by nine strokes. We're doing drinks at the Benson instead, two-thirty."
"Good. Remember, let him bring up the Stoddard thing. Play it cool, let him court you. He doesn't need to know you want it more than he does."
"I will be an iceberg," White said. He waved at the computer projection frozen over his workstation. "You ever play DinoWarz?"
"I can't say as I have, no."
"Very stimulating mano-a-mano combat scenario. There's a full VR version that puts you right in the middle of the action. Some junior high school kid built it and put it on the net. Fun. You should try it sometime."
Hughes smiled and tried not to show the contempt he felt. White was rich, the son, grandson, and great-grandson of wealthy men. It wasn't just a silver spoon he'd been born with, but a platinum one encrusted with diamonds. If he'd wanted to, White could have blown a million dollars a year for his entire life and never depleted his share of the family fortune. He wasn't a total fool, but he was a dilettante, a dabbler; the office was for him an adult version of DinoWarz, and Hughes believed it meant about as much. White thought being a United States senator was… fun.
"One other thing," Hughes said. "That bombing in Louisiana."
"Oh, yeah. Terrible thing."
"Worse than terrible. The kid who did it got the formula for the explosive off the net. A supposedly top-secret military formula."
"No shit?" White leaned forward, and his face came close to the translucent holoproj of the two combatants. He waggled his fingers and the image vanished.
"I think this plays right into your hearings on Net Force. They are supposed to stop such things."
"That's true."
"You might want to mention it when the budget hits the table. I'll have Sally work up the report on the bombing. That young woman guard who was killed was in college, a newlywed, about to graduate."
"A shame," White said. "Tell Sally to highlight that part."
"Of course."
The intercom chimed. Bertha. "Sir, your limo is here for your two-thirty."
Hughes stood. "I'll be in my office," he said. "And I'll meet you for the staff meeting at four."
"Thanks, Tom."
After the senator was gone, Hughes went down the hall to his own office. He nodded at Cheryl, his secretary.
"Anything pressing?"
"Louis Ellis called from Dayton. He's going to be in D.C. next Thursday and he wants the senator's ear for a few minutes."
"Have Bertha pencil him in for half an hour in the morning." Ellis, one of White's father's drinking buddies, had contributed half a million to White's last reelection campaign, more or less legally via various PACs. He'd also given them that much cash under the table, a nice chunk of which had found its way into Hughes's own safety deposit box, where it joined a thick sheaf of crisp hundreds already there.
Hughes had been very careful about living beyond his means. His public face was exactly what was expected for a senator's chief of staff making a paltry ninety grand a year. But under various guises, Hughes had a fat line of electron
ic credit. Still, it never hurt to have some hard currency in case of emergencies.
If his plans went as expected, he'd be able to use the bills in his box to light his Cuban cigars, if he felt like it.
"Anything else?"
"Your massage therapist called. She will be at your house at seven."
Hughes nodded. Brit would give him a good massage, that was true enough. But that was only half of the service she provided.
He went into his office and closed the door behind him.
Hughes's office was a spartan affair whose only artwork was a Picasso on the wall behind his desk. He didn't particularly care for Picasso, but a picture worth that much on an office wall certainly impressed people who did care about the old Spanish dauber. Depending on his mood, he would give different stories when asked about the painting. Sometimes, he told them he'd bought it at a garage sale for fifty bucks just to watch their jaws drop. Other times, he said a woman had given it to him in gratitude for his lovemaking abilities. Once in a great while, he told the truth—that the painting was a gift from his boss—but that was never as much fun.
He sat behind the desk in a wooden teacher's chair. In fact, the chair had once belonged to his high school civics teacher, Charles Joseph, who had told Hughes he would never amount to anything. He kept the chair to remind him that where he was going in the not-too-distant future was going to be beyond old Joseph's—or anybody else's—wildest dreams. Senator White and his family would look like paupers compared to Hughes. Everything was going as planned.
He grinned. That was the trick, wasn't it? But he was well on the way. He was, Hughes reminded himself, the smartest man he knew. He could pull it off.
No doubt in his mind.
The com chirped.
"The Vice President is on three," Cheryl said. "I'll take it," Hughes said. "But let's let him wait a few seconds. We don't need an uppity Vice President, do we?" Cheryl chuckled, and Hughes felt pretty good himself. So far, so good.
Friday, December 17th, 2:40 p.m. Quantico, Virginia
In his office, Alex Michaels looked at the clock blinking in the corner of his default holoproj, a bucolic scene of a modern-day cattle drive blocking automobile traffic on a back road in Colorado. Michaels had worked one summer on a dude ranch while he was in college. He hated cows as a result, and the picture was another one of Jay Gridley's little jokes. The young man loved to do such things. Thought he was funny.
Michaels grinned. Jay was pretty funny, though Michaels preferred that somebody else be the butt of the young man's jokes.
But the clock said that it was ten minutes past the time Lieutenant Joanna Winthrop was supposed to be here for her meeting, and that didn't go with what he'd read about her in her history jacket. He touched the intercom's manual control. His secretary was a temp, filling in for Nadine, who was on vacation. Maybe she had made a mistake.
"Liza, isn't Lieutenant Winthrop on for two-thirty?"
"Yes, sir, Commander," the young woman said. She sounded rattled. "She's uh, here, sir, but, uh, she's occupied."
Occupied? Michaels went out to see what was going on.
On the floor next to his secretary's desk, with a rat's nest of red, white, and blue wires in her lap, sat Joanna Winthrop. She had a pocket tool of some kind, probably a Leatherman, and was using it to twist two of the colored wires together.
He had not forgotten how attractive she was, but it still came as something of a shock to him to see her.
Winthrop was one of the most beautiful women Michaels had ever seen. She was tall, lean, had long, natural honey-blond hair pinned up, and green eyes that put expensive emeralds to shame. She wore a blue jumpsuit and black boots that would have made most women seem dumpy. On her, the drab clothes looked positively sexy.
She glanced at Michaels. "Hello, Commander," she said. She shoved the tangle of wires under the desk, stood, closed her folding pliers, and said, "Try it now."
Liza tapped at her command module's keyboard. "Hey! It works. Thank you!"
"No problem," Winthrop said. She flashed a radiant smile, perfect save for one slightly crooked tooth that gave it just enough character so it didn't look fake. She turned the grin in his direction, and Michaels could feel the warmth of it from fifteen feet away. A stunning woman, beautiful and smart, a lethal combination. She was single, in her mid-twenties, and much too young for him at his ancient age of forty; still, she was pleasant to look at, no question.
"Sorry I'm late, sir," Winthrop said. "Liza's keyboard input had a short, and you know how Computer Services works; they'd be two hours getting a tech up here unless it was an emergency. And in an emergency—"
"—it would take three hours," Michaels finished. He smiled at her. It was a standing joke in Net Force. "Well, come on in."
He gestured at the door, and waited for her to precede him into the office. He was merely being polite, he told himself. It wasn't just to get a look at her backside. Although, he had to admit, that was worth seeing. It reminded him of an old Flip Wilson joke, about the preacher's wife being tempted by a new dress she was trying on. The Devil said, "Buy it, honey, buy it!" And the preacher's wife said, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" And the Devil did, then he said, "Mm. Looks good on you from here too…"
Michaels shook off the semi-erotic thoughts. Winthrop was a subordinate, more than a dozen years younger than he, and he didn't need any entanglements just at the moment. But it had been a long time since his divorce had become final, and things had not been too good at home for a lot of months before he'd moved out. He hadn't been in bed with a woman since.
There was only so much space in a man's life that work and hobbies would fill. You could only read yourself to sleep so many nights of the week.
He glanced up and saw Toni standing in the doorway of her office, leaning against the jamb, watching him. Michaels felt guilty, even though he hadn't done anything. He gave her a half smile, then went into his office. If he was going to leap off a cliff into an office romance, Toni would be his first choice, but that was a bad road to even contemplate. Toni was a coworker and a friend, and he certainly didn't want to damage either of those relationships for the sake of romance. Friends were harder to come by than lovers.
Well. At least that was what he'd heard. It had been so long since he'd had a lover, he had forgotten how to play that game. And it wasn't exactly like riding a bicycle.
He looked at Joanna Winthrop, who stood in front of the chair across from his desk, waiting for him. A drop-dead-gorgeous woman. Despite himself, he could easily imagine what her hair would look like unbound and spread over a pillow, what her face would look like staring up at his in passion…
He gave himself a twitch of a grin. Fortunately, his shower came equipped with plenty of cold water. And he was probably going to be using his share of it tonight.
"Thanks for fixing the keyboard," he said.
"My pleasure."
He moved behind his desk, sat, and gestured for Winthrop to do the same. She did so. Back to business now.
"We have a little problem, Lieutenant. Colonel Howard thought you might be willing to help us out."
"Yes, sir, whatever the colonel wants. He thinks well of you, sir."
Michaels looked at her. Really? A few months back, hearing that would have been a surprise. Although after the kidnapping of the mad Russian, maybe Howard did feel a bit better about having a civilian commander. Michaels had risked his job ordering that, and Howard had done outstanding work on it. Maybe a little mutual respect had come out of the mission.
"And he thinks well of you, Lieutenant. Yours was the first name he suggested when I asked him for assistance."
"Sir, if it's all the same to you, please call me Jo, or Winthrop. This rank business isn't necessary unless we're in the field."
"Fine, Jo. Might as well call me Alex, while we're at it. We're pretty informal around here."
"Yes, sir. Uh, I mean, right, Alex. So, what's up?"
He smiled at her and waved his ha
nd over his computer controls.
* * *
Chapter Three
Saturday, December 18th, 7:50 a.m. Quantico, Virginia
Colonel John Howard wore his old Gortex windbreaker, covering the S&W Model 66 .357 short-barreled revolver nestled in the Galco paddle holster just behind the point of his right hip. When he had occasion to carry while out of uniform, he preferred this kind of holster. It used a plastic paddle that slipped between the waistband and shirt, so he could put it on and remove it without having to take off his belt and thread it through the loops. It was convenient, and just about as concealable as a regular belt slide or pancake holster—
Ten yards away, a mugger with a knife leaped out of the darkness and ran at him. The assassin was no more than two seconds away.
Howard shifted his hips slightly to the left, opening a gap between his jacket and body, and swept his right hand back and under the Gortex. He grabbed the wooden grips of the revolver, automatically unsnapping the thumb-break safety snap on the holster when he closed his hand. He pulled the Smith, thrust it toward the mugger as if punching him one-handed, and pulled the trigger. At this range, trying to line up the sights was too slow. Instead, you could use the whole gun silhouette to index the target.
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