But looking at Toni, it didn't seem like such a mistake. She was bright, beautiful, and physically adept enough so she could kick his ass if she felt like it. For some reason, those things taken together had a powerful appeal. And she had kissed him first, hadn't she?
Yeah, right, she seduced you, and if you don't sleep with her, she'll stomp your butt? Uh-huh. Who are we trying to fool here, pal? Nobody is buying that one.
Michaels watched Toni disappear from view. He shook himself and blew out a big sigh. Worry about that later. Right now, he had bigger problems on his plate.
His com beeped. "Yeah?"
"Your ex-wife is on three," his secretary said.
Michaels laughed. Of course she was.
"Take a message," he said.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Three
Saturday, January 15th, 11:45 p.m. Kansas City, Kansas
"There they are," Winthrop said.
"Rats," Jay said. "You had to pick rats?"
"You'd rather cute little puppies or kittens? Something about you I ought to know, Gridley?"
Jay shook his head and raised the twelve-gauge pump shotgun to his shoulder. The gun was a Mossberg with an extended magazine tube that held ten rounds. There was a flashlight and a laser mounted on the barrel. An elastic band on the gun's stock held another ten shells.
Next to him in the poorly lit alley, Winthrop raised her own weapon, a South African Streetsweeper, also a twelve-gauge, but with a big circular drum underneath that held a whole box of shells. She also had a flashlight and a laser sight mounted on the weapon.
The brown rats, the size of cocker spaniels and with mouths full of long, yellow teeth, milled around in the dead-end alley for a few seconds before they realized they couldn't get out that way. The big rodents looked around for a means of escape, and the only path out was blocked by Winthrop and Gridley.
No real problem in guessing which way they would go.
"Here they come!" Jay shouted.
The rats, at least twenty of them, came toward them like a furry tide.
Winthrop fired first, getting off two shots before Jay pulled the trigger on his weapon.
Big rats turned into bloody red clumps of twisting fur as the #4 buckshot tore into them. Five, eight, twelve of the charging animals fell. The rest kept coming.
"To your left!" Winthrop shouted. She swung her gun over and cooked off a couple more rounds. She blasted one of the rats, hitting it so hard she rolled it like a soccer ball.
Jay tracked the two rats trying to flank him on the left, fired, hit one, pumped the gun, fired, missed—
Winthrop caught the one he'd missed, then fired twice more—whump! whump!—and rolled two more.
Jay lined up on the last one he saw moving, put the little red dot from the laser square on the thing's head, shot it—
He blew out a sigh. Blasting plague-carrying rats was certainly more exciting than chasing down viral code strings in RW voxax or fingertap mode. In reality, the rats were circular sub routines with escape and evasion codings, eating up storage space in the Federal Reserve's KC Division. The city had been evacuated—the computer had been taken off-line—so that exterminators could come in and clear out the infestation. Mostly that didn't go over too well, but that was how it had to be.
And this wasn't that bad. A couple of the banking systems had been hit so hard they'd had to be shut down completely. Nobody had liked that.
Winthrop reloaded her shotgun from a pouch full of ammo she carried around her waist. And Jay had to admit, his earlier disapproval of the lieutenant notwithstanding, she looked pretty exciting standing there, shoving rounds into that big honking shotgun, smelling of gunpowder and all. There was something sexy about an attractive woman with an automatic weapon in her hands.
Probably a month's work for a shrink trying to sort out that symbolism, Jay figured. It was a good thing he wasn't into shrinks. He'd be broke all the time.
Winthrop touched her headset. "We've cleared the alley behind the bank," she said. "We're moving into the one next to the Thai restaurant on the south side."
Jay grinned. "You throw that in in my honor?"
"You look like you ought to know your way around a Thai restaurant."
"Of course. You like peanut sauce? Maybe I'll make us some nice rat satay."
"You probably would. Come on."
"As you command, mistress," Jay said. "You should have worn leather, you know. To go with the gun."
As they walked across the street toward the Thai place, she said, "Oh, by the way, nice job on running down that Platt guy—"
"Shucks, ma'am, ‘twarn't nothin'."
"Wrong persona, Gridley."
"Ah, I stand corrected. This is present-day, so how about, ‘Nopraw, fem.' "
"Better."
"I'd never have found him if you hadn't snagged his spook. Kinda hard to believe he slipped up like that."
"Even the smartest guys get stupid sometimes," she said. "I'll take lucky over good if it gets me there."
"Amen. I hope the feebs can catch the sucker."
"Rat city, just ahead."
"Lock and load, ma'am. You want right side or left this time?"
"Left. That gun of yours throws the empties in my face on the right."
"It's always something, ain't it? But it's FS, Winthrop, FS."
She smiled.
FS stood for "Frankenstein Scenario," shorthand for the concept "If you create it, then you take care of it." Any problems in your scenario were your responsibility.
"Fine, you can build the next one," she said.
"I will. You like snakes?' "
"I used to collect them when I was a little girl," she said. "Catch them with a long forked stick, put them into denim bags, and sell them to pet stores. Great things, snakes."
Shoot, Jay thought. Too bad. Well. There must be some icky thing she didn't like. Given how much of the federal banking system was infected, they were going to be mopping things up for a while. Surely he could figure out what made her squirm before they were done…
Sunday, January 16lh, 1:15 a.m. Atlanta, Georgia
Platt knew that Hughes wouldn't like being woken up early, and it must be six or seven in spookland over there, but he wanted to be sure to catch him when he wasn't busy. Platt wasn't supposed to be calling Hughes at all unless it was an emergency, and given as how he had gotten away clean, maybe it wasn't an emergency anymore, at least not technically, but to hell with it, he was gonna call anyhow.
He hated losing the house Momma had left him, but that was done. He wasn't going home again.
He used one of the one-time scramblers and a pay phone in the lobby of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Motel on the outskirts of College Park, just off 1-285. Hughes had his virgil rigged up to rascal his call with the military-grade scrambler built into it, so nobody would trace nothin'. He needed to get this done and move out—Atlanta was a big town, but way too close to Marietta. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from both come sunrise, and he'd have to hurry to pull that off. He had a chartered plane waiting at the airport, and once he was in the air, he'd feel a lot better.
"What?" Hughes said.
Yep, he'd woke him up, all right.
"Howdy, Boss. We got a little situation here you need to know about."
"Hold on a second."
Hughes put him on hold, and Platt grinned. Six in the morning, Hughes would be in bed, and if he was puttin' Platt on hold, then he wasn't in the bed alone. Somebody was being sent to the John, Platt would bet.
"All right. What?"
"Sorry if I interrupted anything," Platt said, not the least bit sorry.
"Don't worry about that. What's the problem?"
"The feds ain't as stupid as they look. They backwalked a signal to my momma's house."
"What? How could that happen?"
"Damn if I know. Maybe they got some new techno-toy I haven't heard about. Don't matter as much how as they did it. I had to hightail it out
pretty quick."
"But you got away without any real trouble?"
"Well, yes and no. They didn't see me, I was long gone time they showed up, I expect, but that place was under my own name. I'm gonna have to do a little ID switching."
"Is that a problem?"
"Not so you would notice. I got a half-dozen new me's lined up if I need ‘em."
"How about the other thing?"
"Oh, the other thing. That went smooth as oil on a baby's butt. Our bank boy from the place in—where was it? Minnesota? I-oway? whatever—should be able to do the deed like he's supposed to. I expect to hear from him by about noon tomorrow. Well, today now."
"Good, good. You need anything?"
"I'm gonna have to hit one of the caches," Platt said. "I'm a little short on cash."
"Fine, whatever you need. Listen, if there are any problems with your IDs, let me know, I'll work something out so you can get out of the country."
Platt grinned. "Why, thank you, Boss, I surely do appreciate that. Nice to know there's somebody you can count on in today's dog-eat-dog world. I'll call you back soon as bank boy does his thing."
"Right. Later then."
Platt pushed the disconnect button down, pulled the scrambler from the mouthpiece, and dropped it into his pocket. He'd toss it into a lake somewhere later. Hmm. Hughes hadn't seemed as upset as he'd expected by the feds sniffing Platt out. He was a cool one, all right. Maybe too cool. Truth was, Platt trusted him about as far as he could pitch the man one-handed, and while he was strong, that wasn't all that far.
Once bank boy had done his thing, Hughes was going to be eyeball-deep in money, at least for a little while, and maybe he wouldn't need an attack dog as much as he had before. Or maybe he thought he might get rid of the old one and buy himself a new dog.
You had to pay attention at times like this, Platt had learned. People always looked out for their own interests, first, last, and in between. Pretty soon now, Hughes and Platt would have interests going their separate ways. Things could get dangerous when that happened. And Momma Platt didn't raise no fools.
Platt headed for his room. He had a couple of things he wanted to pick up there before he headed for the airport.
Sunday, January 16th, 1:45 a.m.. Quantico, Virginia
Commander Michaels called them into the conference room for a quick meeting. Winthrop looked around. Aside from herself, there was Michaels, Fiorella, Gridley, and in the hall just outside, Julio, who had hung around even though there wasn't anything he could do on-line. He smiled at her as she moved into the conference room, and she felt her spirits lift a little. She was tired—they were all tired—they'd been in VR for what seemed like months, repairing damaged systems. Sure, they'd had help from federal programmers, but this had been a major infection, and it was mud-slogging work, a lot of slow, hard steps. It took a lot out of you, but it was getting done. Most of the damage could be fixed over the next day or two. The biggest problem would come from the systems being down and the money that cost in lost time and transactions all over.
And that whole thing with the Frihedsakse was there too. Or wasn't there, if you looked at it hard enough. They'd been baited. Gridley was royally pissed off about that, since he'd been the one on point, but it could have happened to her just as easily. There was just enough sizzle there so you thought you could smell the steak, even though you couldn't quite see it. It was a good con, and it would have been a long time before they caught it if Fiorella hadn't pointed out the possibilities. She might not be the best programmer, but she had a sharp overview, something a lot of the techno-types didn't have.
"—Federal banking systems are still at risk, but all security programs are being updated and changed, so the old passwords won't get the guy back in again," Michaels said.
"He got those," Gridley said. "What's to say he won't get the new ones?"
That mirrored Winthrop's own thought pretty well.
"The bank programmers are using the new tag system. If somebody breaks in, we'll know where the leak got sprung."
Gridley nodded. "Yeah, that'll work for a while, but in the long run, some sharp cowboy will figure out a way around that."
"In the long run, Jay, we're all dead," Michaels said.
That brought some tired smiles forth.
"All right, what's the situation on this guy Platt? Joanna?"
She looked down at her flatscreen and called up the report. "The Cray Colander has sifted everything it could on him.
"Platt dropped out of high school in his junior year. Got into some local trouble as a juvenile—car theft, assault, underage drinking, shoplifting, petty stuff. No time in reform schools or jails.
"Our boy disappeared for the next four years. He was arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, when he was twenty, some kind of con game went bad, he punched out the victim. He got released on bail, then skipped.
"Next time we see him is when he was busted for assault and battery in New Orleans, age twenty-four. He apparently attacked a man on the street for no good reason, beat him senseless. Nobody noticed the old warrant for the thing in Phoenix. He posted bail, and never showed for the trial.
"In 2006, Platt was arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge in Trenton, New Jersey. He walked into a bar and started a fight. Four men wound up in the hospital. Through some glitch in the miracle of modern communications, the bail jumpings in Phoenix and in New Orleans did not appear on his record, and he posted bond a third time—"
"Let me speculate," Michaels said. "He left town."
"Good guess," Winthrop said.
"The last thing we have on him is an arrest in Miami Beach three years ago. Another assault charge. He attacked two men at a hot dog stand, again for no apparent reason. When the police arrived, he was taken into custody, but as they were transferring him from the car to the jail, he escaped. Both the arresting officers were injured, requiring hospitalization."
Winthrop looked up from the flatscreen. "That's it. All we have on Mr. Platt. He has no credit records, no property except for the house outside Marietta, no driver's license, no work history. He's never paid Social Security, filed a tax return, or applied for a passport. At least not under the name Platt. Another of the free-rangers who don't leave electronic tracks or paper trails."
"A thug," Fiorella said. "Hardly seems like the mastermind behind computer break-ins."
"Is there anything that ties his crimes together?" Michaels asked.
Winthrop nodded. "Victim profiles. Two things jump out. All ten of the people he assaulted, including the two cops in Miami, were African-Americans. Their average weight was over two hundred and ten pounds. The guy he thumped in New Orleans was a linebacker for the Saints—he went almost three hundred pounds."
"Wheew," Gridley said. "The guy is a racist. He beats up on black men."
"Big black men," Fiorella said. "No indication of martial-arts training?"
"None," Winthrop said.
"Well, isn't this lovely?" Gridley said. "We got an arm-breaker turned computer wizard, who somehow managed to snare all kinds of secret passwords and entry routines, then used them to break into the most sophisticated systems in the country. And he's smart enough to put a big fat red herring in our way so he's got us running around looking for Danish terrorists. I'm with Toni. This doesn't scan."
Michaels nodded, and rubbed at his eyes. "All right. So Platt has help. If we find him, we'll ask him to tell us who that is. What are we doing to find him?"
Gridley said, "We're electronically crunching all car rentals, airports, and bus and train stations in a hundred-mile radius of the house, looking for single males who did business there in the last twenty-four hours. FBI has the picture and description and is checking hotels, motels, and rooming houses in the area."
"Which includes all of Atlanta," Fiorella said. "Good luck."
"He's probably not so stupid as to keep using the Platt name, but maybe his face will ring a bell somewhere," Gridley said.
"Of course, he co
uld be in Polar Bear, Canada, by now," Winthrop said.
"Okay, everybody take a break," Michaels said. "Go home, get some sleep, get back here early as you can tomorrow. And Jay—that doesn't mean sacking out on the couch in your office for two hours. If you aren't rested, you become part of the problem and not the solution."
"Copy, Boss."
"Thanks, people. You've all done good work."
Michaels got to his feet. The meeting was over.
In the hall, Julio leaned against a wall, favoring his bad leg. "Going back into the trenches?" he asked Joanna.
"Nope. Boss says go home and get some sleep."
"Sounds like a good idea."
"Yeah, it does, but I'm too wound up to relax. I'll probably be up until dawn." She looked at him, gave him the faintest of grins. "You know anything I can do to relax, Julio?"
He grinned back at her. "Yes, ma'am, I believe I can offer some exercises you might try. They always put me to sleep pretty quick."
"All right. Come on then. You can show me at my place."
He straightened up, stood at attention, then gave her a snappy, crisp salute. "Yes, ma'am. Anything the lieutenant says."
"Anything? Big talk for a beat-up old sergeant." "I have hidden talents."
"We'll see about that." They headed down the hall.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sunday, January 16th, 6 a.m. St. Louis, Missouri
Platt's clean phone beeped, the little European police siren hee-haw, hee-haw tone he'd set up that meant the bank guy was calling.
"Yeah?"
"It's done," the bank guy said. Peterson was his name. Jamal Peterson. And it wasn't Iowa or Minnesota, he was from South Dakota. Platt knew that, but he liked to pretend he was dumber than he actually was around Hughes. Never know but how that might give him an advantage someday.
Old Jamal had scammed a couple hundred thou at the place he'd worked at up in the Dakota territory, which was why he was working for Platt and Hughes. The feds had got that money back, but it was peanuts. That wasn't the point. The point was, when it came to pulling a money rascal, Peterson was the man.
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