Cybernation nf-6

by Tom Clancy

  That was all.

  Michaels looked at his watch. In ten minutes, everybody on the assault team was supposed to be in position. In fourteen minutes, everybody would put on their specially augmented LOSIR headsets, and sixty seconds later, they would pull guns, fire off explosive charges that would blow open secured doors, and, in theory, take over the ship before anybody could wipe the computers. He had already slipped his headset from the bag John Howard had given him, and had it tucked away in his shirt pocket, ready to go.

  But — where was Toni?

  Michaels went belowdecks, and wandered the halls, looking. There were some security types with headcoms of their own moving around purposefully, and he was sure they were looking for Toni. Or maybe they were looking for tourists carrying bags. He slipped the bag with the gun in it behind a potted plant as two of the men approached him.

  Unfortunately, one of them spotted the bag. “This yours?”

  Michaels looked at them. “What? Never saw it before.”

  One of the guards picked up the bag.

  Alex didn’t want them opening it. Quickly, he said. “Hey, you looking for a little brunette?”

  The man about to open the bag stopped so suddenly he almost fell. “You’ve seen her?”

  “Yeah, she came out up on the deck. Back by the swimming pool.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The man took off, talking into his com.

  That would help, Michaels thought. As long as Toni wasn’t hiding out at the swimming pool. But this was bad. He looked at his watch. Twelve minutes.

  * * *

  Santos didn’t know what was going on, but he knew the little secretary was not what she pretended to be. He should have known. Those legs didn’t belong to somebody who sat on her butt all day. This woman had moves. He was getting stupid to trust what he saw.

  He had to find her. She was a spy, and if Keller had rolled over and given up the operation, it could mean big trouble. And as much as he hated to do it, he had to tell Missy.

  When he found her in her office and did, she was not pleased.

  “What?! Are you sure?”

  “I left Keller lying on his bed curled up like a baby, sobbing,” he said. “He gave it up.”

  “We’ve got to find her before she can get any of this off the ship!”

  “My men are all looking. Somebody saw her by the swimming pool.”

  Missy shook her head. “Why would she go there? She can’t get off the ship there. She can’t hide there. Shut off all the outgoing communication.”

  “Already done.”

  “The swimming pool, no, that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe she isn’t alone,” he said. “Maybe she’s meeting somebody.”

  “Find her, Roberto!”

  * * *

  Howard looked at his watch, then at Jay Gridley. “Stay behind me,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  Howard adjusted the spider silk vest under his still-wet Hawaiian shirt. It was too tight. But that’s what he got for letting Michaels have his and using one of the spares. He loosened the side tabs a little. Better.

  On the minute, Howard and Jay both pulled their augmented-LOSIR com headsets from their packs, designed especially to work indoors and around corners, and slipped them on. “Don’t forget your nose plugs,” he said.

  Jay nodded, touched his nostrils. Already in.

  “This is Howard. We are still on.”

  Howard stepped to the card reader, put a strip of plastic explosive onto it, and waved Jay back. He looked at his watch, counted down the seconds.

  “—four… three… two… one… now!”

  The card reader flashed like a strobe and exploded.

  After a beat, the door slid open and two armed guards jumped out, waving pistols.

  Howard sprayed them with emetic foam, a burst that looked as if a can of shaving cream had exploded. Thick white billows of the stuff enveloped the pair. They both screamed, and both started retching. Great night for reverse peristalsis, he thought.

  It would have been safer to have shot them, but they didn’t want to kill anybody if they didn’t have to.

  Even as the guards fell, he was moving. “Go, go!”

  Jay was right behind him.

  37

  Michaels heard Howard over the headset, then felt the small explosions through his shoes, and knew the teams had begun their assault on the computer decks. It would take only a few seconds, and with luck, they’d be able to shut down the computers before they destroyed their information.

  He looked up and saw a ship security man with a drawn pistol running in his direction, and he flattened himself against the wall, playing the frightened tourist. The man didn’t seem interested in him, but kept running.

  As he passed, Michaels stuck his foot out. The guy tripped, sailed a good eight or ten feet, and came down on his face, screaming as he fell.

  Michaels ran up behind the downed man and as he tried to stand, he kicked him in the head. The guy collapsed.

  Score one for the good guys.

  * * *

  Santos was about to open the door of the room where the Cuban maid had seen a woman come in when his com buzzed stridently, the emergency pulse, long and loud rings.

  “What?”

  “Sir, we have some kind of trouble belowdecks! There’s a — aaahhh!”

  “What?! What?!”

  Santos heard the sound of somebody vomiting noisily.

  He snapped the com shut. The woman? Or her friends? Whatever, it was serious. He headed toward the stairs. He’d better see what was going on.

  He rounded a corner in the corridor, and saw two men in Hawaiian shirts heading away from him. They were dressed as tourists, but they wore com headsets and carried submachine guns. He could see what looked like body armor under their wet shirts.

  Not his people.

  He pulled back out of sight. Grabbed his com, triggered the emergency caller.

  This time, there was no answer. A minute ago, it was working fine.

  Either his people were too busy to answer, which was not likely, or the ship’s communication system had been shut down. Neither was good for him.

  He knew what had happened. The spy had arranged to get her people on board. Maybe they had been here for hours, days. The place was done. If he hung around, he was going to be done, too.

  It was time to leave this party.

  If he could get to the launch, he could escape. The cigarette boat had a couple hundred miles of range, easy. In the storm, nobody would see him, and even if they had a ship with radar, they’d never catch him in it. It would beat him half to death in this kind of weather, but the cigarette could outrun anything afloat in these waters. Florida had a long and unprotected east coast. He would find a secluded spot. Once he was ashore, he would be safe.

  Yes. He needed to go. Now.

  But as he cut up and through the gym, he came across another tourist with a headset. Fortunately, this one wasn’t holding a gun.

  “You’re Santos,” the man said.

  “That’s right. And who are you?”

  “I’m a federal agent. You’re under arrest. Sit down and put your hands on top of your head.”

  Santos laughed.

  * * *

  Chance realized when the com system shut down that something grave had happened. She saw a stranger run past, men with guns, and she knew instantly that the ship was under assault.

  Her people weren’t prepared for that, not a full-out military attack. They could dump the computer drives, but the security had not been designed to hold out against SEAL or Special Forces teams once they actually got onto the ship — that had never been in the cards.

  Now, it would come down to lawyers and money. CyberNation would take care of her. She had seen to that. But her insurance to that end might be a liability if it fell into the wrong hands. Best she attend to that, right now—

  38

  Michaels stared at the man. The ship�
�s gym was a fair-sized room with wall-to-wall mirrors and a thick carpet, exercise machines around the perimeter and mostly open in the center. Santos circled around a treadmill and leaped into a dive at the floor, hit on his hands, and did a front handspring directly toward him.

  Michaels had never seen anything like this—!

  Despite his training to go in when attacked, however, Michaels sectored off to his right, and the heel missed his nose by an inch. A good move, it turned out: If he’d gone in, he would have eaten it.

  What the hell was this? Some kind of demented gymnastics?

  The black man landed on his feet, then twirled around into a crouch facing Michaels. He danced from side to side, raising and lowering himself from almost upright into a full squat and back as if he were some kind of a crazed jack-in-the-box.

  Reflections of Santos matched him in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

  This was surreal, like something out of a Bruce Lee movie.

  Santos had beaten a man to death, according to Jay, so let’s not forget, he is dangerous.

  Michaels kept himself angled at forty-five degrees, left foot forward, one hand covering high-line the other low-line, not moving.

  “What kind of crooked stance is that?” Santos asked, grinning. “Not karate, not jujitsu. Not, for sure, Capoeira.”

  Capoeira? That rang a bell. It was the South American fighting style the African slaves either created or brought with them from the Old Continent to the New World. Acrobatic stuff, but that was pretty much all he knew about it. He had heard Toni talk about it. That would fit. Santos was from Brazil.

  “Welcome to O-Jôgo, homem branco!” The man leaped up and did a back flip, landed easily, one foot hitting before the other, one-two! He laughed.

  Michaels felt another moment of panic. Get a grip here!

  Santos shuffled to Michaels’s right, almost as if dancing to some unheard tune.

  Michaels didn’t move. Let him dance. He wasn’t doing any damage out there.

  Santos jinked in, just at the edge of kicking range, then jumped back, trying to draw the attack.

  Michaels held his ground.

  The black man smiled. “You know something, don’t you, Mr. White Man Federal Agent? But what is it, White? How well does it work?”

  “Come and find out.”

  “Oh, yes, I will.”

  Santos shuffled the other way, stepped in, and feinted a high kick. He was too far away to connect, and outside Michaels’s range. Michaels stayed where he was.

  “You waiting for me to make a mistake?”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Santos laughed. Then he twirled and whirled and dropped, spun into a kind of crabbed cartwheel, and somehow ate up the space between them. His kick was low, and while Michaels dropped his stance, turned, and managed to get a sweeping block down, the kick was too powerful to do more than slightly deflect it. It glanced off his thigh instead of hitting it square on, but it still hurt even in passing.

  Michaels should have blocked it, but it wasn’t major. The goal here was not so much to win as it was to not-lose. The winner was the guy who got to go home, under his own steam, and well enough to be able to hug his family.

  Santos shifted back and forth from foot to foot, waving his arms in a pattern that was probably supposed to be hypnotic. “Not bad for an old man,” he said. “What you call this, Branco?”

  Branco. Must mean “white.” “Does it matter?”

  “Just curious. Always lookin’ to educate myself more.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it after we’re done. Maybe you can find a teacher in prison.”

  Santos laughed, a deep belly rumble. “That’s funny. You expectin’ to be around after we’re done, me in jail? No way. Tell me now.”

  “I don’t think so,” Michaels said. He pivoted to follow Santos as he circled, switching his hands from high to low, still in the open-gate stance.

  “Good economy,” Santos said, nodding. “No wasted motions. Maybe I let you live so you can tell me about this. Chinese, maybe? Burmese? Why don’t I know it?”

  “You need to get out more. Lots of things you don’t know. We have the ship.”

  “Maybe. But you don’t have Santos.”

  Michaels took a deep breath. He let half of it out. “Relax, Alex,” he said quietly to himself.

  The days he’d practiced the mental exercise Toni had showed him paid off. He dropped lower, with just enough tension to stay upright. His breathing deepened, and he felt much looser. Considering his current situation, this was more than passing extraordinary.

  Santos raised an eyebrow. “What did you just do there, Mr. Federal Agent?”

  Michaels smiled. “Bring your pretty little dance closer and see.” It was, Toni had always taught him, good silat to bait an opponent. Maybe it would make him angry enough to lose control, do something stupid. Probably not this guy, who looked as if he’d been carved out of stone and was just as impervious to trash-talk as he would be a hammer, but it didn’t hurt to try.

  “I will, don’t you worry. But we have time, yes? No reason to rush. We might make the game last a while.”

  Santos feinted a kick and punch, then spun and dropped, put his hands down on the floor, and shot out a mule kick with his left foot, low, aimed for Michaels’s knee—

  Michaels sectored to the inside, blocked the kick, and threw a snap kick of his own at Santos’s groin—

  Santos twirled away, and Michaels’s heel hit him on the thigh. The glancing blow didn’t seem to hurt him, but at least it connected.

  Santos whirled back around and did some kind of acrobatic twist, ending in a back fist at Michaels’s head—

  Michaels stepped in, his right fist covering his face, and did a block hit—

  Santos leaned away, slipping the punch, but not quite enough — Michaels got one knuckle solidly into the other man’s forehead.

  Santos backed off, shook his head. “Good one,” he said.

  He came back immediately, dropped into a one-legged squat, and swept with his other leg extended—

  Michaels didn’t expect the sweep from that angle — it caught his left ankle. He started to lose his balance, pushed off with his right foot, and managed to hop over the still-sweeping leg and come down without falling. He stepped forward and into a closed gate, right foot ready to kick or beset if Santos stepped in.

  Santos did another twisting aerial move away. He came down lightly ten feet from Michaels. “I like this stuff you do. It’s tight, no wasted moves. Come on, tell me what it is so I can learn it. It will make my game better. Tell me, in case you aren’t able to afterward.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Michaels said. But he was worried about it. He wished he had a knife. Might as well wish for a gun. A hand grenade or a tank would be useful, too.

  Santos laughed. “You worried, Branco?”

  “Nah, I just don’t want to be late for dinner. You’re the one who should be worried. See, I know what your dance is — it’s Capoeira. You don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

  “Let’s see!”

  Santos flew at him—

  * * *

  The wound was minor, the handgun bullet had punched a hole through Howard’s side exactly where the vest tab left a tiny gap between the front and side panels. The slug had caught mostly skin and fat, maybe three inches above his belt. Another inch to the inside, and the body armor would have stopped it. An inch farther out and it would have missed entirely. Bad luck. A freak shot. What you got for not using your own gear.

  It hadn’t done any crucial damage, though, and while his shirt was ruined and the nick oozed some, he wasn’t going to bleed out from it. He would worry about it later.

  The man who’d shot him had taken Howard’s return fire square in the middle of his chest. He hadn’t been wearing a vest, and the Medusa’s two.357 semijacketed hollowpoints had punched holes right through his sternum, no more than a couple inches apart.

  Julio would like that.
A nice group. And so much for not killing anybody. Well. The guy should have thought about that before he shot Howard.

  “General?” Gridley said, “You okay?”

  “I’ve hurt myself worse shaving. I’ll put a Band-Aid on it when I get a minute.”

  The voice on the LOSIR was Julio’s: “We have the ship secured, General.”

  Howard laughed. He had never felt more alive. Risk was a part of life, he knew that now. And this was what he did, who he was. He was a man of war. A soldier. Death came to all, eventually, but he couldn’t stop living in the meanwhile. “Good work, Lieutenant. Where are you?”

  “With the computers. Deck D, amidships.”

  “We’ll see you in a few minutes. Discom.”

  Gridley shook his head. “I’m gonna stop going out with you. Last time, I nearly got killed by some psycho drug fiend in California. This field work gets old fast.”

  “You get a fix on the commander?”

  Gridley looked at his virgil. “Yeah, his virgil is about a hundred and fifty feet that way.” He pointed. “But I can’t get an altitude on him — he could be on the top deck or down below.”

  “Let’s go find him. Our squads will mop up the rest of these bozos. Stay behind me.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that twice. Saji would never forgive me if I messed up the wedding by getting myself killed.”

  Howard did a tactical reload, using a Bianchi speed strip to replace the two fired shells in the revolver. He snapped the cylinder shut, and headed past the row of slot machines and toward the blackjack tables. There was a corridor past those that led through a kitchen to a cafeteria. Michaels would have to be past that, according to Gridley’s GPS sig. He brought up the briefing map in his mind’s eye: past that, on this level, was a stairway leading up and down. Up was the main deck. Down was a gymnasium. There was an access to the locked-off computer deck that way, too.

  Worry about it when you get there, John. Because if you aren’t more careful, you might not get there…