Cybernation nf-6

by Tom Clancy

  Jay nodded. Even more interesting.

  Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

  “So there you have it, boss. CyberNation has themselves a gay basher who apparently got away with at least one murder, and a woman who will do anything to accomplish her goals. I don’t have a lot of other history on them, but Santos has been essentially a high-class knee-breaker for a couple of organizations, and Chance has risen up a couple of corporate ladders so fast she seemed to have wings. Add them into the mix, it just keeps getting thicker and thicker. Pretty soon, we have the whole cake.”

  “We’re missing a couple of ingredients yet,” Michaels said. “Your friend Keller wasn’t on the train; neither were the others you listed who were supposed to be there.”

  Jay cursed.

  “Yes, indeed. The German government is checking airports and other trains, but it appears he has flown the coop.”

  Jay cursed again.

  “I believe you said that.”

  Jay shook his head. “Yeah. So, what now?”

  “I am expecting a call from the director sometime in the next five minutes. If her clout is enough, we will be sending visitors to the Bon Chance in the very near future.”

  “I bet she named it after herself,” Jay said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The boat.” He blew out a sigh. “Where is Toni?”

  He looked at his watch. “She should be catching a helicopter from the ship about now. In fact, if you can access the passenger lists, I’d appreciate knowing which flight she is on.”

  “No problem. Mary Johnson.”

  Before Michaels could say anything else, the com chimed. His secretary said, “The director is on line one.”

  Michaels reached for the receiver, and shooed Jay out with a wave as he picked it up. Jay stood, but moved very slowly toward the door.

  “Hello?”

  “Commander. We have a ‘go.’ You better be right about this.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Jay raised an eyebrow from the doorway. Michaels nodded at him and raised one hand in a thumb’s-up gesture.

  “Yes!” Jay said in a stage whisper. He made a fist and pumped it.

  Michaels wished he felt so positive.

  34

  On the Bon Chance

  Toni waited in line for the shuttle boat. The sky had gone gray, and while it wasn’t raining yet, the wind had picked up and the southeasterly breeze felt damp. There was a full load of departing passengers waiting. Apparently more than a few people were worried about the weather, and didn’t want to be on a ship ninety miles away from land if it got nasty.

  The boat from the helicopter barge arrived and tied up at the base of the ramp, and after a few seconds, new arrivals climbed the stairs or wheelchair ramp onto the ship.

  She hoped they had all come to gamble, because they surely weren’t going to get much sun—

  Hold on—

  Coming up the ramp was a face she recognized. It took a second for her to realize why.

  Keller. From the picture she’d seen. This was Jay’s guy!

  What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in Germany, wasn’t he? This must mean something.

  As soon as he’d passed, Toni left the shuttle boat line, as if she had suddenly remembered that she had forgotten something. The gap she left filled instantly. She glanced at her watch. The comsat wasn’t due for another forty-five minutes. Could she risk calling Alex on the ship’s phones? She could keep it innocuous—Hey, you know that picture you gave me? Well, I thought I had lost it, but I found it after all, right here on the ship.

  Anybody who didn’t know who she was could hardly tell what she was talking about from that, could they?

  Not likely. But if the ship’s phones were tapped, and that would be easy enough to do since they were owned and maintained by CyberNation, they might wonder why a secretary from Falls Church was calling somebody at Net Force headquarters. Or maybe they might be even able to recognize Alex’s name on the home phone or his virgil. And even if her scrambler kept them from hearing anything other than noise, maybe they would wonder what a secretary was doing with a scrambled phone.

  Any of those would be bad.

  No, she would wait until the next footprint so she could call on the secure line. There were still a dozen more copters leaving this evening, and she needed to get a better look at this guy, maybe even see where he went or who he might talk to—

  As if some bored deity had been listening, Toni suddenly saw Jasmine Chance, now dressed in a black jump-suit and sandals, step into view ahead. Toni turned away and put a hand up to block her face from view.

  Keller went straight to her, and while she couldn’t overhear his conversation, he was obviously pretty excited from the way he waved his hands around.

  Well, well. What did this mean?

  Alex would surely want to know about this. Yes, she could call him from the Mainland, or even from the shuttle copter, but there was no hurry, was there? Maybe she could find out something more before she had to leave.

  In the Air near Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  The old 727’s rebuilt engines were reassuring in their smooth, dependable drone. They were only a few minutes out now, and Julio was going over the checklist a final time as they began their descent into Fort Lauderdale.

  “Our boy Mr. Gridley here came through.” Julio smiled at Jay, who sat across the aisle. “First squad and half of second squad will be on Bird A; third squad and the other half of second on Bird B.”

  Howard nodded. Next to him sat Commander Michaels. Michaels hadn’t planned to come along at all, even to sit onshore, but he hadn’t heard from Toni, who was supposed to have left the ship by now. According to Jay, Mary Johnson had not gotten on any of the shuttle copters for the Mainland yet. Maybe the weather had more people leaving than normal, delaying the flights, but Michaels was worried enough to go along. Howard didn’t blame him. He knew how he’d feel if it was his wife there.

  “Weather radar shows an ugly set of heavy showers moving from the southeast toward the target, the main body of which will have arrived by 2100—we’re gonna get wet.”

  “I’ll be sure to bring my umbrella,” Howard said.

  “Wind’ll just turn it inside out, sir. Steady breeze will be almost thirty knots, gusting to forty.”

  “Go on.”

  “Troops all have Class III spider silk vests for armor — that’s the best we can do, given the scenario — so nobody is real bulletproof. Augmented-LOSIR coms will be set on opchan Gamma, and we carry sidearms and subguns, plus the usual assortment of puke gas, flashbangs, and all like that, packed away in our luggage. Everybody knows what he or she is supposed to do.”

  Howard nodded.

  The seat belt light and audible warning went on.

  Julio said, “So, to condense things a little, we get there, take over before anybody knows what is going on, and capture the computers before they can trash ’em. Then our computer wizard here waltzes in and collects the evidence, the bad guys all go to prison, and everybody lives happily ever after.”

  It won’t be that easy, Howard knew. It never is.

  The jet started to descend; he could feel the pressure in his ears change.

  “No word from Toni yet?” he said.

  Michaels looked worried. “No. She should have called by now.”

  On the Bon Chance

  Toni had a problem. Her room was no longer available, she had checked out, and she didn’t want to be wandering around the ship towing her suitcase. That made it kind of hard to skulk, when the wheels of your little carry-on were clacking over every imperfection in the floor. So when Keller went to a cabin, she ducked into a public toilet nearby, put her suitcase on the commode in an empty stall, locked the door, and climbed out over the top of the stall’s door. It would have been smarter to have found a concierge and checked the bag, but she didn’t want to get too far away from Keller, in case he came out.

  He did come out
, not ten minutes later, and she stayed far enough back so he didn’t seem to notice her. This was working out all right.

  He went straight to one of the guarded entrances to the private decks, and she couldn’t follow him in there.

  Okay. He was here, Alex needed that information, and that might be all she was gonna get. It was what it was.

  When she went back to get her suitcase, it was gone. And her scrambled cell phone and flatscreen were in the suitcase.

  This was not good. Not good at all.

  Probably housekeeping had the bag. Somebody had reported the stall locked, a janitor had come by, found the bag. Nothing sinister about it. She had her wallet and ID, she could just go and find housekeeping and pick it up.

  Maybe. Or maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

  She sat in the stall and thought about the situation. If Alex and the Net Force teams were going to move on the ship, she didn’t want to do anything that might possibly cause them problems. So making the phone call without her coded phone was out.

  If they did show up here, chances were good they’d catch Keller — she could tell them he was here when she saw them. It wasn’t as if she was the only civilian on the ship, now was it? There were probably a couple thousand tourists here — she wouldn’t be in any more danger than any of them. Less, because she knew there might be a reason to keep her head down, and because she had some skill at staying out of harm’s way.

  If the suitcase was in the lost-and-found waiting to be claimed, no problem. But if they had opened it, seen who it belonged to, and wondered why it had been sitting in an empty, locked toilet stall, that might make them curious. It would surely make her curious if she were running security on a ship. Once they saw it wasn’t a bomb, they might start to ask themselves other questions: Why on Earth would anybody leave their luggage there? What possible reason could there be?

  The flatscreen was clean, no damaging files on it; she’d run the burn program. The cell phone was iffy. It looked fine, just another commercial model, tens of thousands of them around. There weren’t any numbers programmed into it, and they’d have to be real inquisitive to take it apart and discover there was hardware and software built in that scrambled calls, coming or going.

  But — just for the sake of argument — suppose they did that? Mary Johnson goes toddling in to collect her missing bag, and security — in the form of Jasmine Chance, who obviously bore Ms. Mary no love whatsoever for moving in on her Roberto real estate — decides to have a long chat with her? International waters, no constitutional rights, that would be, well… bad.

  That word seemed to be cropping up a whole lot in the last few minutes.

  Okay, she decided, that was what she would do. She would go to ground, find a hidey-hole, and stay there, see if Alex showed up. If so, good. If not, she’d worry about that when she got there.

  Where to hide?

  She had an idea. Probably the last place they’d look if they decided they needed to find her.

  * * *

  Chance called Santos into her office. He came in, a slow stroll, as if he had all the time in the world. He was like a big tomcat, coming and going as he pleased, not going to hurry for anything.

  She wanted to slap him.

  “Okay,” she said, “whatever problems you and I are having, they have to go on hold now. We need to get this done, and we can sort the rest of it out later.”

  He shrugged. “Problems? What problems?”

  Now she really wanted to slap him. Instead, she smiled. Fine. He’d pay for all this later. He truly would.

  * * *

  Santos looked at his watch. He had an hour and a half before he needed to leave. Plenty of time, since he was all packed, and since he could take the private launch to the copter platform without waiting for the regular boat. Maybe he should go and find that secretary? Fifteen minutes would be more than enough time to relax them both, no? Time enough for a shower afterward.

  Why not?

  He headed for the Security Cam Center. If she was still on board, she would have passed in front of a glass eye recently. The computer system that ran the surveillance gear couldn’t search for a particular person, but it could, within limits, hunt for kinds of people. Women, brunettes, a certain size, smaller or larger. All you had to do was tell it what you wanted. Well. Generally. The computer probably wouldn’t appreciate what he really wanted, and it couldn’t see that as long as she had her clothes on anyway.

  He smiled.

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  Michaels stood in line behind Lieutenant Fernandez, who was behind Jay. General Howard was already on board the Sikorsky. They all wore touristy civilian clothes, and carried assorted sizes and shapes of luggage. The bags were a little heavier than what most tourists would be bringing, but there weren’t any metal detectors to pass through before boarding the choppers, so that didn’t matter.

  Everybody in the passenger line was from Net Force. At a different hotel helipad ten minutes away, another group of Net Force troopers stood in a similar line. Jay had booked them all into two flights, making sure nobody else would be on those particular craft but them. Well, except for the copter crews, and they weren’t going to be a problem, the general had assured him. They didn’t know the passengers were anything other than folks going to gamble. If something unforeseen happened, John had his own pilots who could take over.

  It was simple enough. They would fly out to the helicopter barge, take the boat from there to the ship, and infiltrate the ship. It was not a direct assault, it was an undercover operation. By the time security on the ship realized it, it ought to be a done deal. Much less likely there’d be any shooting this way, and less chance of civilians getting wounded by accident. A pretty clever idea, actually.

  Though Michaels had planned to stay in Quantico and wait until it was over, Toni’s failure to report wouldn’t let him do that. Right up until the last minute, he was hoping she’d call, but she didn’t. And he wasn’t going to let his people and all their hardware go without him, not as long as Toni was on that ship.

  It wasn’t politically or tactically smart, but hey, hell with it, he was the boss. At least for now.

  The line moved along easily, with a military precision. Michaels had to grin at that. The copter’s crew wouldn’t have any idea their passengers were all part of the same group. Jay’s work had made them appear to be from all over the country, singles, couples, a trio of college friends, no reason to think they were anything other than tourists.

  As he climbed the short flight of steps into the craft, Michaels heard two troopers, a man and a woman, talking to each other.

  “So, this your first trip to Florida?”

  “No, actually, my family used to vacation here when I was a girl. Of course, that was up north, a little town called Destin, near Fort Walton Beach.”

  “Wow. I had an uncle who was stationed at the Naval Air Station at Pensacola. Small world.”

  Other troopers talked, establishing their cover. Michaels felt a nervous twinge in his belly, a quick flutter. He found a seat, tucked his bag between his feet, and buckled himself in. John had lent him his body armor vest. It was folded into the bag, along with a plastic handgun and a com headset. Since he had no active role in the mission, Michaels was supposed to find a secure spot and stay out of the way until the ship was secured, but if trouble popped up, he’d be able to communicate and he’d have a weapon and some protection.

  He hoped Toni was all right. Yes, she could take care of herself better than most people, but even so, she wasn’t a superwoman. Something could have gone wrong. Probably it was nothing — weather, crowded flights, her phone on the blink, that was all. But he couldn’t help worrying. He loved her. And if she was all right, he didn’t care how much she hated it, he was never going to send her into the field like this again.

  35

  On the Bon Chance

  Keller had checked the operations center and everything was fine. Well, as fine as it would g
et. Chance’s hurry-up was going to cause big problems. His team was good, the best, but they couldn’t walk on water. They were at eighty-five, eighty-eight percent readiness, and if Omega launch was tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to improve on that. He had them all running full blast, and as soon as he had a chance to take a shower, get into some fresh clothes, and grab a quick bite, he would be right back there with them. He hated this. He wanted ten-for-ten for his part, but eight or nine was going to have to do it.

  Maybe Santos the sociopath and his team of mouth-breathers could take up the slack. Not Keller’s fault if they couldn’t. He had been given a timeline, he had kept to it. If they wanted to hurry him along, fine, but in that case, they couldn’t bitch about his work.

  The door to his cabin stuck. He had to wipe the keycard three times to get it to open. Just one more little glitch in his life he didn’t need. He flipped on the lights, went into the bedroom, and sat on the bed. Took off his shoes, his shirt, and undershirt. He was reaching for his belt buckle when a woman said, “I think that’s enough for now.”

  He jerked around so hard he nearly fell down.

  A short little brunette stood there in T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes.

  “Who are you? What are you doing in my room?”

  “Nobody you know, Mr. Keller. What happened to you? You get caught in a riot?”

  She nodded at his bruises, which had developed several different shades of brown and purple.

  “I’m going to call security,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid you can’t do that.”