by Tom Clancy
“Just ahead,” Jay said.
Howard nodded. He looked at Jay. “I’ll go through first. Try not to shoot me in the back.”
Jay laughed.
* * *
Santos came in, fists and knees driving, but Michaels knew how to deal with that — he launched himself to meet the attack—
Santos disappeared. He dropped into a weird, crablike pose, feet extended out in front, hands in back, face up but almost lying on the ground. Stupid position, his crotch was wide open. Michaels stepped in to kick Santos’s balls for a field goal—
It was a trap!
Santos snapped one foot up and caught Michaels in the thigh, just missing his groin. The force was enough to spin Michaels around, and he nearly lost his balance. He stumbled, managed to get his feet back under him—
Santos came up, twirled in, and it was all Michaels could do to cover as a quick series of punches bounced off his arms, shoulders, and one against the side of his head that cracked him into a blinding flash of red—
The man had fists like rocks—!
Michaels felt for Santos, not using his eyes but his body. He threw his knee and right elbow, caught a hip with the knee, the side of the man’s neck with the elbow. Not pretty, but enough to back him off—
Santos shook his head, whirled around, stepped out of range. He nodded. “I thought I had you then, good recovery. Now we havin’ fun.”
Michaels knew this was psychological warfare. He’d connected with two solid shots, and Santos didn’t seem overly bothered by either. The neck hit had to hurt, but he was not going to let Michaels know that.
“Your head okay, Branco?”
Michaels was still rattled from the head punch, but he couldn’t let that show, either. “Why wouldn’t it be? Did you hit me? Is that the best you got?”
Santos managed a smile as he circled, spiraling slightly inward. “Best I got? I’m not even warmed up yet. Let me show you. I am younger, stronger, faster, and more skilled. You have enough of your game to see this, no?”
Damned straight about that. He was better than Michaels, and he knew it. He wasn’t going full out, he was playing, as if this was a friendly sparring match. Michaels felt it. He was in trouble here.
Well. Wasn’t that what silat was supposed to train you for? To stay with somebody who was stronger, faster, and as well-trained?
Yeah. But this guy was some kind of world-class fighter. He probably trained for hours every day. He had the edge. He knew it, and Michaels knew it, too. Silat would let you keep up with most people, but it didn’t make you invincible, certainly not at his level of ability.
But there was one thing he had going for him, and maybe he could stall the guy long enough for that to happen.
Michaels circled to his left, staying low. He said, “You want to hear a story?”
Santos flashed a smile. “Is it a funny story?”
“I think so.”
“Go ahead. I need a good laugh. Been a bad day.”
They circled, each to his left.
“Once upon a time, there was a gathering of animals in the woods. They talked about the rain, the sunshine, the state of the world. At one point, the talk turned to which creature was the most deadly in the forest, and Tiger proclaimed that he was the most dangerous animal.
“ ‘Really,’ Dog said. ‘Why is that?’
“Tiger laughed. ‘Just look at me! Compared to you, I am bigger, stronger, and faster! My teeth are longer, my claws are sharper! I could break your neck with a single swipe of one paw! Is this not true?’
“ ‘It is true,’ Dog admitted.
“ ‘Then you agree that I am the deadliest animal in the forest.’
“ ‘Maybe not,’ Dog said.
“This angered Tiger greatly, and he roared his displeasure.”
Santos grinned, gave a little foot feint, but did not follow up. Michaels shifted his hands, but did not take the bait.
“Just making sure that you’re awake, White.”
“I’m awake.”
“Go on with your story. Tigre is angry.”
“Yes. And he looks at Dog and says, ‘So, you say I am not the deadliest animal? Who is, then? You?’
“ ‘Not me,’ Dog said.
“ ‘Tell me! Tell me now, or I will kill you!’ And he reared up and prepared to leap on Dog. But before he could attack, there came an explosion, and Tiger suddenly fell over dead.
“There behind the animals stood Man, smoke curling from the muzzle of a rifle.
“And Dog smiled his dog-smile and said, ‘I am not the deadliest animal in the forest. But I have a friend…’ ”
Santos smiled. “That’s not such a funny story, Branco.”
“Oh, I don’t know” came a voice from behind him. “I thought it was pretty good.”
Santos stepped back and half-spun.
A black man, another tourist-not-a-tourist, stood there, aiming a handgun at him. He held the gun in both hands, and it was pointed right at Santos’s heart. A second man stood behind him. He had a gun, too.
Too far away to get to them before they could shoot. Hmm.
“Commander,” the newly arrived black man said.
“General. I am extremely glad to see you.”
Santos glared at branco. “You cheated.”
He smiled. “Yes. Cheating is good silat,” he said. “That’s the art I practice, by the way. Pukulan Pentjak Silat Serak. From Indonesia.”
“Ah.” Santos knew of the Indonesian forms. He had never faced anyone who played them before, but he had seen pictures, films. “Where is your skirt?”
“It’s a sarong, not a skirt—!”
Santos leaped, turned the jump into a dive and roll, and as he came up, made that into another dive—
The gun went off, but a hair slow. The bullet burned across his back, the lightest of touches. A graze, that was all, nothing, no damage—
There was a large sealed window looking into the hallway just ahead of him. He was a step and a dive away from it…
The gun boomed again, loud in the enclosed space, and the bullet hit the glass in front of him, punched through, and spiderwebbed the glass with fractures. Good!
He launched himself at the cracked plate headfirst, hands and forearms up to cover his face. Hit!
He flew through the window in a spray of glass shards, tucked, rolled, hit the carpeted floor, came up, too much momentum, slammed into the corridor’s far wall. That shook many of the glass fragments on him loose. He grunted as he flattened against the wall, pushed off and L-stepped away, shoving hard with his left foot, moving to his right, as the third bullet punched through the wall where he had been a quarter-second ago. But now he was moving down the hall, ducking low, and gaining speed with each step. In two heartbeats, he was out of the line-of-fire, the angle on the window no good to the shooter anymore. He pumped for all he was worth, feet digging into the rug, leaning into it, almost a fall. He reached a juncture, cut to his right, skidded across that corridor and into the wall, hit on his left shoulder, bounced off, and kept sprinting.
He laughed, loudly. He had a small wound on his back, and there was blood coming from little cuts on his arms, the back of one hand, but he was gone. They would never catch him from behind. He would find a way off this ship. CyberNation might be mortally wounded, but that did not matter. He would get away. He would go home. He would count his gold and have the last laugh.
But first, there was one small piece of business he needed to finish. Then he could leave.
* * *
Chance had the pistol and the disk with the blackmail insurance on it. Nothing else was important enough to worry about, not now. She didn’t know how many of the invaders were on the ship, or if her people had had time to wipe the computers, but she would have time enough to destroy the disk, and that was all that she could do now. If they caught her, CyberNation’s lawyers would get her out of jail, and once that happened, she would disappear. She had half a dozen false identities ready f
or use, money stashed under those names. This was a big loss, but she would survive. She could start over, under another name. Work her way back up. It might even be fun, that kind of challenge.
She couldn’t risk hiding the disk. They might take this ship down to the waterline for all she knew, and if they found it, CyberNation would suffer a major, maybe even a killing blow. The files were damning — names, dates, places, a criminal prosecutor’s dream. She had done it to protect herself in case CyberNation decided she was no longer worth having around, but now she needed their help, and anything that hurt them might hurt her.
It wasn’t enough just to break the disk. Supposedly there were recovery devices now that could get information from fragmented DVDs. It could be glued back together, and while some of it would be lost, much could be salvaged. She couldn’t afford the risk.
No, she had to make sure there was nothing left to recover.
There was a cigarette lighter on her desk, a fancy thing of carved jade and semiprecious stones, a gift from a former lover. She would burn the disk. The pistol would make sure nobody would get to her before the disk was destroyed, if need be. A few shots fired into the floor or ceiling would make anybody heading her way cautious. She’d only need a minute or two. After that, she would surrender. Sooner or later, she would make bail.
She hurried down the corridor toward her office.
39
Toni came out of the room; she looked carefully up and down the corridors. There were people milling about, a score of tourists who were puzzled and upset, but none of them were Santos or any of his guards that she could tell.
“What’s going on?” somebody said.
“Pirates!” a fat man answered. “We’ve been taken over by hijackers!”
Toni smiled.
“What’s funny, lady?” a bald man with a bad complexion said. “You think being hijacked by pirates is funny?”
“It’s not pirates,” she said. “It’s just my husband, come to rescue me.”
The man stared at her as if she had turned into a giant snake. She smiled again and started toward the stairs.
Boy, this was gonna be a great story to tell Little Alex someday. Maybe when he was forty or fifty…
40
“I never saw anybody move like that!” Jay said.
“Did you hit him?” the boss asked.
John Howard shook his head. “Not so you’d notice. I didn’t think a man could be that fast, rolling and all. He a gymnast?”
“Capoeira,” the boss said. “South American fighting art.”
“We’ll get him,” Howard said. “We have the ship. The more important thing is, our people control the computer room, and they’ve pulled the plug. Jay here can have a field day.” He pulled a pistol from his belt and threw it to Michaels. “But just in case we run into your friend along the way, here. If you see him, shoot him.”
Michaels nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
As they were heading toward the stairs, Toni appeared.
Michaels nearly knocked her down he grabbed her so hard. They hugged, spun in a circle. Jay could feel the relief coming off both of them like heat off a fireplace. And he had to admit, he felt a lot better himself. He had been worried a little.
Toni held up a mini-DVD. “The plans for the attack on the net,” she said. “They ramped things up. You need to get these locations to the appropriate authorities,” she said.
Howard took the disc. “Yes, ma’am. Although they won’t be doing anything from here. We control this vessel.”
“You collected Santos and Jasmine Chance?”
“Not yet. But we will.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” she said.
“Tell me about it,” the boss said.
* * *
Santos saw that the door to Missy’s office was closed, and when he got to it, he found it locked. She wasn’t in her room, and he didn’t think she would be trying to hide on the ship, she was too smart not to know they’d find her. No, she’d be here, and likely working on some scheme to save her beautiful ass. That was the thing about Missy, she always had a backup plan.
He touched the door, nodded once, and stepped back. He hit it with his shoulder and slammed it open, recovered his balance, and moved through the atrium to the inner office.
“Roberto! What are you doing?”
She had a cigarette lighter in one hand, a small pistol in the other. Something was burning in the ashtray on her desk.
“Come to pay my respects, Missy. Leaving you a little gift before I retire.”
“What are you talking about? We don’t have time for this!”
“Your left leg, I think,” he said. “Just above the knee. I think that would balance us. I wasn’t so rough on Jackson, but it wasn’t really his fault, was it? When your woman screws another man, if it isn’t rape, then she is the one who is responsible. All she has to do is say ‘No.’ You will have plenty of time to think on it when you are propped up in the cast waiting to heal.”
She raised the gun. “You’ve lost your mind. I’m not going to just stand here and let you break my leg!”
He grinned. “Easier on you if you do. You think that little gun is enough? You sinned, you know it. It’s only justice.”
“You talk about justice?! You were humping every waitress and change girl on the ship! You think I didn’t know? Get out!”
“Men are men,” he said. “It’s not the same. You can’t understand that.” He took a step forward.
She dropped the cigarette lighter and grabbed the pistol with her other hand. Aimed right at his chest.
“If you shoot, I will break your neck instead. A leg is not so bad.”
He took another step.
She shot him. The noise didn’t seem all that loud, and the impact of the bullet, high and to his right, didn’t hurt. It was like being hit with a finger-poke, nothing, really. He leaped—
* * *
Chance pulled the trigger, again and again, until the pistol clicked empty. She saw the holes appear in Santos’s body, his chest, belly, one in his outstretched hand, but he kept coming!
She tried to leap out of the way, but he snagged her with one big arm, caught her around the waist—
She hammered at his head with the butt of the pistol, saw the skin tear on his scalp, watched the bright red blood gush, but he wouldn’t let go…
He dragged her down, knocked the chair behind her away, slammed her back against the floor
“Roberto! Don’t—!”
She kept hammering at his head. Saw him grinning through the blood streaming down his face. He slid his hand up her body, caught her by the throat. He squeezed, his big fingers biting into the vessels of her neck. Her sight went gray.
“Please! Don’t!”
“Good-bye, Missy,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her. His blood dripped into her face. She tried to blink it away. Then it all faded. His smile was the last thing she saw.
* * *
Santos held his grip on her neck for a long time after her eyes rolled back in their sockets, until they settled back and the pupils dilated and stayed that way. When he finally let go, he was sure she was gone.
Too bad for her.
He tried to push himself up and away from her, but found that his strength had gone, too. He had never felt so weak. He inched forward a hair, but that was it. He could no longer support himself on his wounded hand. He collapsed across her body, his face next to hers. Who would get all his gold? he wondered.
That was his last thought.
* * *
In the bowels of the ship, the CyberNation programmers and security people had panicked. They hadn’t done as good a job as they had on the train and barge. The men spraying puke foam and blasting flashbangs had moved too fast. There would be evidence here.
“Jay?”
“Already on it,” Jay said. He moved to an undamaged console and sat. Toni stood behind him, watching. “I’ve got a freezer here. Let me get it slotted. That should kill t
heir autowipe…”
From behind them, Julio Fernandez said, “General?” He came in, leading a couple of troopers.
“Been taking a nap, Lieutenant?”
“Something I think you and the commander want to take a look at. Hey, Toni, nice to see you’re okay.”
“Nice to be okay, Julio.”
Howard nodded. “Keep an eye on things here,” he told his troops. “Lead on, Lieutenant.”
* * *
Michaels and Toni followed Howard and Fernandez up a short flight of stairs and down a corridor. In an office on the floor were two dead people: Jasmine Chance and Roberto Santos.
Michaels shook his head. “Lord. What happened?”
Julio said, “From the marks on her neck and the little hemorrhages in her eyes, I’d say she was strangled. He’s got six bullet holes in him and cuts all over his head from where somebody hit him with that little.380 PPK over there. There’s blood all over her hand and a pattern in it that matches the butt of the pistol. Way I see it is, he came at her, she blasted him, he lived long enough to choke her out. Ai-uchi, the Japanese call it — mutual slaying.”
“My God,” Howard said. “Mean people.”
“Not anymore,” Michaels said.
EPILOGUE
The wedding had been beautiful. Now, at the reception, Saji had gone to change into her traveling clothes. Jay had already shed his tux and dressed in his usual laid-back style. Toni stood next to Alex, who looked very James Bondish in his black tuxedo. John Howard and his wife, Nadine, were nearby, as were Julio Fernandez and his wife, Joanna. Julio held his squirming son, who apparently wanted to get down and destroy the place in a terrible-two frenzy. Something Toni could look forward to with Little Alex…
Saji’s mother hugged her sister, crying. Jay’s parents wiped away tears and beamed at their son from across the room.
Jay came over to shake Alex’s hand. He said, “Thanks for everything, boss.”
“You feeling better about this now?” Toni said, waving at the interior of the church’s reception area.
“Oh, yeah. Just cold feet was all. I love her. I can’t see that stopping. My parents are already talking about grandchildren. Can you imagine me being a father?”