Julio chuckled. The false-color computer-augmented image tinted Howard’s skin slightly darker, but no more than a redhead’s tan might be.
“Only with the lights off, sir.”
He switched the lights back on. “But wait, here’s the really fun thing,” he said. He touched another button, and the robot hissed like a giant lizard, leaped two feet into the air, flew about four feet forward, and came down. It clunked when it landed, but not hard enough to knock anything loose.
Howard raised an eyebrow.
“Compressed gas jets. The tank isn’t that big, so it’s only good for eight or ten hops before it runs out, but if Claire here comes to a ditch that would take too long to go around, she can make like a bunny and leap right over it.”
Howard smiled. “Might make recon of a building full of armed terrorists easier, at that. What are they going to run when they go into production? Any idea?”
“Ballpark only. They’re saying a hundred thousand, Canadian.”
“Lord, Lieutenant. For that much, we can buy an armor-plated car.”
“Yes, but it can’t do this.”
The little robot hissed and jumped again.
“And it’s free.”
“What’s the service contract run?”
“Practically nothing. Three years, maybe thirty thou, U.S.”
“For thirty thousand American or so, I can find a lot of enlisted men who would spit and jump up, even if they can’t see in the dark.”
Julio shook his head. “Have I ever mentioned that the general is somewhat old-fashioned?”
“Never know when my buggy whip is going to come in handy, Lieutenant. It does the job it was designed to do and never needs batteries.”
“Come on, John, give it a try. You know you want to.” He passed the controls to Howard.
Well, yes, he did. It was just like playing with Tyrone’s new toy on Christmas morning when the boy was nine. As his mother was fond of saying, If you couldn’t have fun, what was the point?
Howard pushed the button, and grinned as the robot jumped again.
22
Washington, D.C.
Santos waited until the senator came out of the supermarket on his way home before he made his move. One of the most powerful men in this country, one of only a hundred altogether, and he not only didn’t have a bodyguard, he drove a small car and did his own grocery shopping. Amazing. In Rio, a man in this senator’s position would be guarded, chauffeured everywhere in an armored limo, and would not have the slightest idea what a carton of milk or a loaf of bread cost, unless somebody happened to tell him. What was the point of having power if you did not exercise it?
Santos had already driven the route the man would take to get to his townhouse. He had a woman there—not his wife, who was back home in West Virginia with their two teenaged children until the school year was done. Santos had seen the mistress himself when he had driven by earlier. The information about the wife and children was public knowledge, available to anybody who cared to look for it. Another amazing thing. Back home, men of wealth and influence knew that knowledge was power, and they kept it to themselves. Why would you give a potential enemy anything he might use against you? Foolish.
The senator from West Virginia swung his car out onto the street and headed home, driving in the right lane. Santos followed him, two cars back on the four-lane road. Three blocks later, Santos swung into the left-hand lane and passed the senator. He sped up slightly, just a few miles an hour over the limit, not enough to trigger photo radar or the interest of a traffic cop. He gained a block on the senator’s car, pulling into his home street forty-five seconds ahead of the honorable Wayne DeWitt. He gunned the car’s engine, sped a hundred feet down the street, and hung a skidding one-eighty turn. He stopped the car, his steel-toed workboot resting on the brake, but still in gear. He lifted a motorcycle crash helmet from the seat next to him and slipped it on, pulled the straps tight. The helmet had a face-shield of heavy clear plastic. He flipped the visor down into place. He already wore the heavy leather and rubber grappling gloves used by NHB ring fighters for matches, with the wrist wraps cinched tight. You could use your hands, but there was a lot of padding on the outside. He put a boil-and-bite mouthpiece into his mouth and slipped it over his upper teeth. Guaranteed for the first seventy-five hundred dollars of dental work if you hurt your teeth while wearing it, nine dollars at K-mart. A great deal. He wore a boxer’s cup in a jock-strap over his leather pants, and a weightlifter’s thick and wide belt covering his waist and his lower back under his leather jacket. Without special springs and belts, he was as protected as he could be in this car.
When the senator’s car rounded the corner, Santos mashed the accelerator pedal.
One thing you had to give big gas-guzzling American V-8s—they had power to spare. He left tire rubber smoking on the asphalt as he took off.
He was doing almost fifty when he switched lanes and slammed into the senator’s compact car.
It was at a slight angle—he wanted to be able to drive his car away, if possible, and there was too much chance of rupturing the radiator in a head-on, even against a smaller car.
There was a hard thump! and crash, and a sense of time slowing down, almost of drifting through space. Even though he was braced and ready, the seat belt tight, he still went forward into the air bag as it deployed. The face shield and gloves saved him from a flattened nose and brush burns on his arms as he hit the bag, which immediately collapsed. Striking an air bag in an accident was not, as some people seemed to think, like being hit in the face with a soft feather pillow. It was more like being punched by a gloved boxer, hard.
The big car’s windshield didn’t shatter, that was good, but something shiny flew up from the impact and hit on the passenger side hard enough to crack the safety glass.
He saw the senator’s car spinning, saw the man’s head hit his side window, blasting the tempered glass into squarish little bits that burst outward in a glittering fan of shrapnel. The air bag in the senator’s car had gone off, but the deliberately angled impact had caused the senator to hit the bag well to the side, so the safety device didn’t do as much good as it would have—another reason to avoid the full frontal smash.
Once past, Santos stood on the brake, and his car, already slowed by the crash, skidded to a noisy stop. He looked back in time to see the senator’s car pinwheel into a fiberglass light pole that snapped off at the base and came down on top of the auto just as the car plowed into a row of bushes, wiped them out, and smashed the right rear panel into a thick oak tree. The tree shook violently, but held.
Santos put the car into reverse and backed up. Seemed to be driving okay, nothing scraping against the wheel, that was good.
He came abreast of the senator’s car. No way they were going to repair that, the whole front end was shifted to one side, the frame bent and badly distorted. Steam came from the ruptured cooling system.
The senator’s head lolled through his shattered side window. Blood welled from his head and dripped onto the ground, and from the angle of his neck, Santos thought it might be broken. Certainly it was wrenched enough to damage muscles. The front of the car was collapsed enough so that the man’s legs were probably pinned, maybe they were broken, too.
Good enough. Maybe he would die, maybe not, but he wasn’t going to be playing golf any time soon, if he survived. And he would not be a thorn in CyberNation’s side for a while, either.
Santos put the car into forward gear, and drove away. People were coming out of their townhouses to see what had happened. He kept his head down, knowing he was disguised by the helmet and face shield.
Once he was around the corner, he pulled the helmet and gloves off and spat the mouthpiece into his hand. He unbuckled the lifting belt, pulling it from under his jacket. He used a small pocket knife to cut the elastic on the jock and cup. With one hand he stuffed all the protective gear into a big shopping bag from Trader Joe’s.
Three miles away
he came to a major bus stop. There was a movie theater across the street. He parked the car in a movie lot, damaged front end toward the building, got out, and dumped the bag in the nearest trash bin. Anybody who found the bag would probably not be the kind of person who’d run straight to the police, and even if they were, what was illegal about gloves, a helmet, and a lifting belt? By the time anybody found the hit-and-run vehicle, he would be long gone.
He walked to the bus stop. Smiled at an old black lady who saw him coming. She smiled back.
A good night’s work, this. Made a man proud.
Mount Fuji, Japan July 2012
Jay Gridley sat on a bench provided for pilgrims and watched the sunset. Fuji-yama was a walk-up, lots of people climbed it every day. It was a volcanic peak, a strato-volcano shaped like a squat cone, but more than twelve thousand feet high, in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, near Honshu. The sacred mountain was the highest in Japan. It hadn’t had a major eruption since the early 1700s, but it vented steam and smoke now and again. Gave folks a bit of a thrill, maybe, to know it could possibly wake up and blow the climbers into the next world, however unlikely that was.
Most of the pilgrims started their ascent at the Fifth Station, about seventy-five hundred feet up, from where it took six or eight hours to make it to the top. The official climbing season ran from July to the end of August. Climbers on the north side used the Yoshidaguchi trail, which ran from Fujiyoshida City to the summit. The Fuji Subaru Line toll road met the trail at the Fifth Station, halfway up the mountain.
It was crowded—Fuji-yama was always crowded, sometimes hundreds of people walking in a long serpentine line, only a few inches apart, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves. It wasn’t Mount Everest. More than a hundred thousand people a year climbed the sacred mountain. Now and again, one would die making the ascent, usually from a heart attack, but sometimes from heat exhaustion or dehydration. It was cool, maybe ten degrees above freezing at the top today, but a steady climb produced a lot of heat, and the heavy jackets tended to come off pretty quick.
The old saying in Japan was you were a fool not to climb the mountain once, and a bigger fool if you climbed it twice.
Jay watched the pilgrims slog past, many with walking sticks—canes, staves—backpacks holding small children, even a seeing-eye dog leading a blind man. Old, young, fit, flabby, tourists, seekers, dressed in every color of the rainbow and a lot of hues not found anywhere in nature.
It was not a totally safe climb, however, even for those in good shape. Falling rocks injured or killed people, if rarely. Those who wandered off the trail had sometimes fallen. And now and again, a tourist would be hit by lightning, sometimes out of the blue. Jay carried a small transistor radio Velcroed to his backpack, tuned to a time sig from somewhere. Supposedly, if the radio started blasting out a lot of static, it was a good idea to hit the ground and lie flat.
Weather was not particularly stable from the base to the top, and what started out sunny could be foggy, rainy, or snowy in a matter of a few minutes. The place made its own weather.
The Climbing Safety Guidance Center was located at the Sixth Station, First Aid Station at the Seventh. Climbing during the off-season was not encouraged. Those who felt the need were required to clear their climbing gear with the Fujiyoshida Police Station. Failure to do so as a tourist would get you kicked out of the country if caught, heavily fined if you were a local.
It was a good idea to bring proper clothing, water, food, and toilet paper.
Assuming you made it to the top, you could visit the shrine, mail a postcard at the post office, and explore the volcanic crater. You could also buy souvenirs, very expensive, and the big show was to watch the sunrise above the sea of clouds that often shrouded the earth below.
Jay had made the climb five times. In VR, that is. He wanted to try it in RW some day. Since meeting Saji, he was no longer worried that the real thing might not live up to the artificial experience.
Saji. Ah, there was something to think about when he got to the top. As he had been thinking about her most of the way up so far.
An old man, white-haired, seventy, darkly tanned, came and sat on the bench next to him. He looked as if he might be Thai. He wore gray wool slacks over waffle-soled hiking boots, a white shirt under a blue Gore-Tex wind-breaker, white cotton gloves, and dark sunglasses. He smiled at Jay.
“Nice day for a climb, isn’t it?”
Jay nodded. This wasn’t a private scenario, but a public one run by Tokyo University. Some, maybe all, of the climbers could be personas of real people. Many of the visuals were lifted right from the net-cams that watched the mountain year-round. “Yes, it is,” he said.
They sat there, not speaking for a few moments, then the old man got up. “Well, that’s enough rest for the wicked. See you around, Jay.”
Jay nodded and smiled, and it was a full two seconds before he realized that the man had called him by name.
“Hey! Hold it!”
But the old man developed a speed and broken-field running ability that would have shamed a star football quarterback on a ninety-yard touchdown run. And he laughed loud and almost maniacally as he did so.
Somebody is seriously playing with me, Jay thought.
And it seemed to Jay in that moment that it must be somebody who knew him.
But—who?
On the Bon Chance
Jackson and his crew were well away from the ship when Roberto returned from his mission. Jackson had called, was already working using his flatscreen and modem from the helicopter, and obviously feeling much better.
Chance had read about the senator’s accident on the NetNewsNow headline page within an hour of the event. DeWitt would live, but doctors were not sure that he would walk again.
Too bad. But you had to factor that in—you couldn’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
DeWitt was a fly removed from the ointment.
Now, as she waited for Roberto to arrive at her office—she didn’t want to invite him to her cabin and have him refuse—she considered yet again how she was going to play this.
Roberto wasn’t the brightest bulb on the string, but neither was he stupid. He was cunning, in a sly way, but his view of the world was limited, much more personal than global. She was smarter than he was, she knew it, and manipulation was one of her strengths. She could bend him in her direction. She had the skills.
He smiled when he sauntered into the small office she kept. “Missy. It is done.”
“I heard. As ever, you are a man to be relied upon. Thank you.”
He shrugged.
“Listen,” she said. “I have sent Jackson away.”
His eyebrows went up.
“It was a mistake. You know how I am. I am weak about sex, I crave it. I am sorry. But it was wrong, I admit that. So Jackson is gone; he’ll be working on the train from now on—you never have to see him again if you don’t want. I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?”
“Anything you want.”
He smiled.
She could almost hear the wheels turning in his head. Of course Missy realized her mistake, how could she not? He was much man, while Jackson was a boy, one who diddled computers and did nothing for real. Only a fool would prefer him over Roberto, and Missy, slut that she was, was no fool. This was only right.
“I will think about it,” he said.
She held her smile in check. She had him.
“Thank you, Roberto.” Don’t lay it on too thick, she told herself, just enough so he sees you as contrite, and willing to kneel for his forgiveness. Let him think about what he is missing—what he could be missing in addition to that.
He would come around.
She watched him stroll out, walking with that cocksure swagger that men of physical prowess displayed, like big cats who could spring at any second, relaxed, but ready, a coiled spring waiting for instant release.
And he really was much better in bed than Jackson.
&
nbsp; 23
In the Air over the North Atlantic
Keller felt better. He knew intellectually this wasn’t altogether realistic, his relief—Santos was as portable as he was, and if he really wanted to come and get him, he could; still, having a thousand miles of space between himself and the killer was better than not. Besides, he didn’t think Santos would do that, come after him. Jasmine should be able to protect him, and certainly she could distract the man if she put her mind to it. She was very talented when it came to distracting men, Keller knew for sure. He’d never been with anybody like her, not even close. She knew things he had never heard of, never imagined. The tricks she could do . . .
That was the problem. He should have never let himself get into that situation in the first place, but, ah, she was something. How could a normal man refuse? She could raise a cold sweat on a brass monkey, raise some other parts of his anatomy, too.
Still, as soon as he’d climbed onto the copter, Keller had felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He was able to get on-line and screw with Jay Gridley some more without looking over his shoulder. To have fun with it.
He leaned back in the first-class seat of the 747 heading for Germany and stared through the window. Dueling with a man like Gridley, that was a civilized way of doing things. You used your skill, your wit, your intelligence. Your opponent appreciated these things, respected them, even if he opposed you. There were rules, many of them unstated but understood nonetheless, and adhered to, proper ways to engage and contend. Civilized men knew these things—they knew how the game was played.
A man like Santos? He appreciated nothing but brute force. Violence. It didn’t matter to him that you were smarter, that you had talent and skill. No, all that mattered to him was the fist in the face, the foot to the crotch. He was a savage, no matter how you cleaned him up and dressed him, a jungle creature with a sharp stick. If you explained this to him, he would laugh. If you protested his lowbrow, knuckle-dragging demeanor, he would kick sand in your face. He would rather hurt people than not.
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