Cybernation (2001)

by Clancy, Tom - Net Force 06

  “How are you doing?”

  “Cold and pitiful in this big old bed all alone.”

  “Poor baby. I’ll be all alone in this big old hotel bed, too.”

  “You better be.” That got him a smile from her.

  “I just got a call from Jay.” He explained what Jay had just told him.

  “Does he have a picture of this guy? Maybe I’ll spot him on the ship.”

  “I’ll have him upload one to your flatscreen if he has one,” he said. “I’ll have him bury it in a picture of your aunt Molly’s seventieth birthday or something.”

  “Thanks.”

  There was a short pause, then she said, “Thank you for sending me to do this. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem. Just don’t do anything other than what is in your mission plan.”

  “By the numbers, Commander Honey, don’t worry.”

  But of course, he did. Despite what he had told her about how low risk it was, the husband and lover in him didn’t like sending her anywhere. He worried about the plane’s safety, the helicopter ride, and street traffic, not to mention being on a vessel that he now knew was enemy territory. He knew Toni would resent it mightily if he tried to keep her home and completely out of harm’s way, but that’s what he felt like doing.

  They talked a few more minutes, said their good-nights, and discommed. It had been a long day and he was tired, but sleep was a long time in coming. This was the first time he and Toni had slept apart since they’d gotten married, and he didn’t like it. Not even a little bit.

  Woodville, Mississippi

  This was not a town where you would expect to find a major Internet locus, Santos thought. Probably why it was here. Not far from the Louisiana border, in the southwest corner of Mississippi, Woodville was a sleepy place that time seemed to have touched only lightly in passing, at least in its last few decades.

  Santos drove the old pickup truck along the Lower Woodville Road carefully. The day was gray, overcast, and cold. This was just a scouting trip to be certain of the information he had been provided. He was a black man in a small Southern town, and while racial profiling was not supposed to be allowed by police departments in this country anymore, he knew they still did it in such places. On the surface, the old tensions had been smoothed over. But a few inches down? Everybody here remembered who had been property and who had been slave masters, just as they did back home. People of color had carried the water and picked the crops. Nobody forgot that. A shiny new rental car would have made him suspect; a beat-up ten-year-old truck with local plates made him less likely to be noted. He wore a baseball cap and an old pea jacket over a workshirt and overalls, windows rolled up against the cold—just another lower-class Negro not worth paying any mind to, Thank you, Officer.

  He would only get two passes by the location, one going out, another one half an hour later coming back. Any more than that might raise suspicion, and he did not want that.

  The road ran next to a sluggish little river that he assumed was Ford’s Creek—he’d been on Ford’s Creek Road before, the place he was looking for was farther north, where Lower Woodville Road branched and another section of creek road picked up again, so that would make sense. He would make a pass, drive for fifteen minutes, then turn around and go back. From there, he’d keep right on going, local highway 24 east to Highway 61, then south on that all the way to New Orleans and a flight back to Florida. By mid-morning, he would be back on the ship.

  But that was later. Now, he had to pay attention to what he had come for.

  A few minutes later, he saw the driveway leading off to the west. There weren’t any signs, but a hundred feet off the road was an eight-foot-high chain-link gate and a wooden kiosk behind it. He couldn’t see the guard in the little building, but surely there must be one.

  That would be the place. What else could they have worth guarding out here?

  To be certain, he would have one of CyberNation’s lease-time spysats do a pass overhead and confirm it. Or maybe they could just pull one of the CIA’s public domain views—they had covered most of the world, and had pictures of anything not considered secret that could be had just by downloading them from the Internet. Whatever. That was not his job. He only needed to get the lay of the place, a feel for the location, for when he came back.

  Some of the targets would be blown up electronically. Some would be taken out with more conventional explosives. And some would be captured and utilized for CyberNation’s own ends, at least for a short while. This location needed to be functional for a critical few hours after the shit hit the fan, and he was going to see that it happened that way. After that, who cared?

  At first, he hadn’t really understood how this was supposed to be good for business. Missy had explained it simply. When a citizen’s water or power shuts off, he doesn’t care why. The reason why is not important, the only question that matters to him is, When will it be back on?

  If somebody’s Internet service dies and they need or want it badly enough and there is somebody standing right there with a shiny wire that will reconnect things just like that, a lot of customers will switch, no questions asked, except maybe how much, and how soon? And the answers will be, less than you were paying before, and immediately. These were the answers they wanted to hear.

  With the surge of added customers clamoring to join up, CyberNation’s political base would instantly grow stronger. Authorities would of course worry and wonder who was responsible, and they would certainly suspect CyberNation, who would benefit from such chaos. But they would have no proof, and the man in his little house in Nowhere, Indiana? That wasn’t his problem—all he wanted to do was collect his e-mail or download his pornographic pictures.

  It was simple human nature. In the right place, at the right time, a bottle of water would be worth a fortune. Timing was critical.

  Santos could see it when she explained it that way. People here must be very stupid, but then again, people everywhere were mostly stupid. That was how it was.

  That was not his problem, either.

  Berlin, Germany

  When the pain got to be too much—and it was actually worse the second day, more hurtful than it had been on the first!—Keller got off the train when it stopped and went to a doc-in-the-box, in Zehlendorf, not far from the Universitat, to get some medicine for it.

  The doc-in-the-box was part of a chain that stretched across Europe, centered in the U.K. They didn’t ask questions, and if you didn’t want to show them an insurance card, they didn’t care as long as your cash or credit was good.

  The doctor, a gray-haired and gray-bearded old man name Konig, who looked to be in his late sixties and who resembled an old picture of Sigmund Freud, examined him, prodded and poked a little, and said, in fairly good English, “So, you fell down a flight of stairs, is that right?”

  “Yah.”

  The old man smiled.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been a doctor forty-six years, my friend. In a land where narrow and steep old stairs are common. If you fell down a riser, it was after somebody beat you.”

  Keller, still bare-chested, blinked at the man, more surprised than annoyed at being called a liar. “You can tell that by looking? How?”

  “Look here.” He made a fist and touched it lightly to a brownish-yellow splotch on Keller’s chest. “See? Stairs are flat and smooth. Even if you hit the edge of a step, it leaves a line—not a shape that matches perfectly a human fist like this does. Somebody punched and kicked you. Over a woman, was it?”

  Keller started to deny it, then shrugged. Who cared if this old man knew? He would never see him again. “Yes.”

  “Beautiful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not your wife. Her husband?”

  “Boyfriend. A big, stupid brute.”

  “Ach. That is the problem with the beautiful ones, mein Freund. I see nothing broken, so this brute must have held back a little. Here is a prescription—you can fill it at the Apothe
ke out front when you leave, if you wish. It is a generic version of Vicodin 5/500—acetaminophen and hydrocodone bitartrate. Take one or two every four hours if you need them for pain. Do not drink alcohol or take sleeping pills with these. Be careful if you drive, it can make you drowsy or slow your reactions. You should be feeling much better in a few days.”

  “Thank you.”

  The doctor waved him off. “The cost of love is dear sometimes, yah?”

  Keller stared at him. Love? Lust, maybe. Never love. Not with a woman like Jasmine Chance . . .

  He gave the prescription to a woman in the built-in drugstore on the way out, but when he went to pay for it and the office visit, he didn’t have enough cash in deutsche marks. He shrugged and handed her his Visa card. While she was scanning the card, he unscrewed the cap and dry-swallowed two of the pills.

  By the time the cab got back to the train, he was feeling pretty good. Hardly hurt at all, unless he really thought about it, and why should he? The train would be turning around to head back toward the French border in a few hours. Best he get back to work, now that he could sit without it hurting so bad.

  30

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  Toni leaned back in the seat and watched the dust boil up under them as the big transport helicopter lifted from the pad. You’d think there wouldn’t be any dust, what with the choppers taking off and landing all day, not to mention the frequent rain here, but there it was.

  The craft, a Sikorsky S-92, held eighteen passengers, and was full. Most of them actually were, she assumed, what she was supposed to be: tourists going to the gambling ship, which, as the flight attendant had announced, was ninety miles offshore where it was a pleasant seventy-eight degrees and sunny right now. A far cry this time of year from Ice Butt, Minnesota, where you could spit and have it freeze before it hit the ground. As long as there were winters like that, tropical resorts would have customers.

  According to the posting in the hotel, they scheduled these flights on the half hour, starting at six A.M., with the last one returning from the ship to the Mainland at midnight, thirty-seven flights a day, split up among three aircraft. Which meant at capacity, they could move over six hundred and fifty people a day to and from the ship from this one heliport, and there were at least three other ports in operation just on the Florida coast, not counting those in Cuba or the other islands. At forty bucks a head for the trip, that was a hundred grand a day to pay for aviation fuel. Which also meant that if the things ran at full operation, and each of the passengers lost on average, say, only a hundred dollars each at the casinos, the gross would be over a quarter of a million dollars a day from the Mainland alone. Almost eight million a month. Assuming the Cubans had anything to lose, and anybody coming from elsewhere also did, that could work out to more than a hundred million a year, easy. Of course, they might not run to capacity day in and day out, and there would be operating costs, and even a few winners, too, but if even a quarter of that was profit, it would be a tidy sum. Better, Guru used to say, than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick . . .

  The copter spiraled up and outward to its cruising altitude, only a few thousand feet, Toni would guess, and leaned into the rising sun. Fifteen or twenty minutes out, they passed a matching copter going the other way, a mile to port.

  She looked over the passengers without staring at any one in particular. About what she’d expect. There were several couples, sporting fresh sunburns and wearing shorts and colorful Hawaiian shirts, likely going to see if they might be able to win back some of their children’s college tuition.

  There were a few women who appeared to be traveling alone, most of them also middle-aged, although there were a couple of younger ones in their mid-twenties who looked as if they might be former beauty queens. Hunting for rich husbands, maybe? Or perhaps high-priced hookers going to offer their services to winners looking for a way to spend their free money?

  A couple of men looked like she’d always pictured high rollers—dressing in western chic, with ostrich-skin cowboy boots and string ties, wearing Stetson hats.

  There were some young guys, college-age, Toni guessed, laughing and talking among themselves, off on an adventure. Several of them had already cast appreciative glances at the ex-beauty queens.

  There was a very fit-looking shaved-bald black man of thirty or so in a yellow silk T-shirt and khaki trousers, with dark sunglasses, who leaned back in his seat and appeared to be sleeping. He wore a gold Oyster Rolex on his left wrist, a gold nugget pinkie ring, and a matching bracelet of heavy gold links on his right wrist. From the way he sat and the look of his musculature under the thin silk, Toni’s first impression was that he was a cop, or some kind of security officer, a bouncer, maybe. He might be asleep, but he looked as if he could go from zero to sixty in a heartbeat.

  Behind him sat a couple who looked to be in their early seventies. Retirees from some colder climate moved to Florida, she figured.

  Not that exciting a group, and nobody who looked like what she thought an international computer terrorist ought to look like.

  Well, what did you expect? Geeky-looking guys with pocket protectors and horn-rimmed glasses, their fingers glued to Palm Pilots or flatscreens?

  She grinned at herself. Figuring out who might be a heavyweight Bulgarian weight lifter was something you maybe could do by looking, but computer wizards came in all sizes and shapes. It was a fallacy to think they all looked like classic movie nerds. She of all people ought to know that—here she was pretending to be a tourist when she was, in fact, a spy.

  Well. She’d be at the ship in a few minutes, she’d get checked in, find her cabin, then take her camera and wander around, snapping perfectly innocent pictures of whatever was open to public view. She had the picture Jay had sent late last night, she’d strained it from the covering JPEG of her mythical aunt. It was a college yearbook image of this guy Keller, and Jay had added ten years to it with a plastic surgery art program. The hair might have changed length or color, contacts could change eye color, too, but the shape of the ears and head would be the same. Even crooks having their faces remodeled seldom did their ears.

  She had memorized the picture, then wiped it from the flatscreen’s drive, overwriting the file so it couldn’t be recovered. Like Alex said, she was just supposed to gather small bits of information they could use, but it would be embarrassing at the least if her flatscreen got lost and wound up being scanned by some curious tech-head who found something he shouldn’t find.

  So far, so good.

  As the commuter helicopter approached the gambling ship, she saw that the actual landing site was a huge flat-topped barge anchored a few hundred yards away, with several long passenger boats shuttling people back and forth from it to the floating casino. She counted six helipads on the barge. There were three craft similar to the one she was in on the deck of the barge, with another one taking off, and a fifth one circling for a landing. That made sense—all those copters taking off and landing on the ship itself would be a windy, noisy commotion better left elsewhere. Smart.

  On the Bon Chance

  Santos watched the dark-haired woman walk away from the shuttle boat toward the cabin check-in queue, and nodded to himself. She moved well, inside her balance, something most people did not do. Something in her stance, her carriage, it indicated some kind of physical training. A dancer, maybe, or a gymnast, she had the hip swing and that muscular roll to her walk. She wore a T-shirt and shorts, running shoes, no socks, and pulled a carry-on bag behind her, a big purse slung on a shoulder strap. Very sleek in the butt and legs. She was alone, wore no rings, a tourist from the States. Were he not so busy with all the things he needed to do right now, she would be a pleasure he would like to try. Missy would love that, wouldn’t she? To see him with another woman? She was so sure of herself in that way, she would not believe a man could prefer somebody else to her, it was a major part of her power. And she had reason to believe in it, she was most adept in those ways.


  Hmm. Maybe he was not as busy as he thought. When you could kill two birds with one stone, was that not a rock worth throwing? And how long did it take to slip out of your clothes and into a good-looking woman anyway? He could skip a workout in the gym, trade that for one in the bedroom, yes?

  He grinned at the thought. Missy would steam like turtle soup . . .

  “Hello, ’Berto.”

  Speak of the devil.

  Without further planning, Santos allowed his gaze to linger on the woman from the helicopter as she walked toward the registration area. Missy could not help but notice he was looking at something other than her. He held his stare long enough for her to be sure of it, and for her to turn to see what held his attention. He caught the flash of anger as it lit her face. She turned back to look at him. It was there only for a moment before she hid it, the irritation, but it was there. Ah, good. Already he felt a warm satisfaction.

  “Your trip was successful?”

  “My trips are always successful.”

  “Made some new friends, did you?”

  He shrugged, slow and lazy, gave her a small lopsided grin, but said nothing. Not yet, but if she wished to think so, why shouldn’t she? It would serve his interests.

  Her smile didn’t change to look at, but it grew chilly; he could almost feel it. “We have a lot of things to discuss. Why don’t you meet me in my office in an hour.” With that, she turned and walked away, and he could see the anger in her steps.

  Ah, better and better!

  Now, of course, he more or less had to follow up on the attractive brunette with the dancer’s stroll. He would talk to the clerk at the room check-in and ask about her. Find out who she was, which cabin she was in. It was a big ship, but not so large as all that. He could find a way to run into the woman on deck or in the casino, maybe even the gym, since it was obvious she worked out. He had access to the ship’s security cams, and could find out where she was easily enough. A chance meeting, a little conversation, perhaps a drink, and they would go on from there.