The Viper was going to need some major repairs.
Covered with glass and pastries, Gridley looked up at a startled baker in a white apron and hat standing a foot away from the Viper's door.
Gridley shook his head. The guy had suckered him, trashed his ride and gotten away clean. He looked at the baker, who stared at him wide-eyed.
"Hi there. Say, are your donuts, uh, fresh?"
Friday, October 1st, 1:32 p.m. Washington D.C.
Standing at his locker, waiting for the thumbprint reader to open the door, Tyrone Howard heard the Voice of Doom. It didn't sound the way he thought the Voice of Doom would have sounded. Instead, it was soft, throaty, sexy, not a hint of disaster connected to it.
"Hi. Are you Tyrone?"
He turned and saw Belladonna Wright, all fourteen years of her, standing there, the most beautiful girl in Eisenhower Middle School, probably the most beautiful girl in all of the District. She was smiling at him.
Smiling at him.
He was a dead man.
What did she want with him? If anybody said anything to Bonebreaker LeMott, he might as well kiss his ass good-bye now and avoid the rush later. Jee-sus!
"Uh, uh, yeah?" To his horror--and burned forever into his memory--his voice cracked.
"Sarah Peterson told me you were pretty good with computers, that you could make it so simple even a doof like me could understand it. I have to get at least an eighty in Basic Cee or I'm in trouble. Could you maybe help me?"
The voice of self-preservation screamed--from behind the big mind rock where it had run and hidden as soon as it realized who was talking to them:
No! Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Warning, warning, run, flee, the dam busted, the volcano blew, the aliens are coming! No, sorry, no, can't do it, uh-uh, negative, negative, zipper-roo, count zero!
"Uh, okay, sure," came out of Tyrone's mouth.
Who said that? Are you insane? Death! Dismemberment! Destruction! Aaiiee! screamed the voice of self-preservation as it tried to dig a hole under the rock.
"Oh, thank you. Okay, here is my number," Bella said. "Call me and we can set up a time, pross?"
Oh, yes, we pross! Bonebreaker LeMott taking us apart like an overcooked chicken, that's what we pross!
Tyrone took the slip of paper from her and smiled reflexively. "P-p-pross."
She smiled, turned and walked away. Well, she swayed away, something like a Polynesian princess on a white sand beach in the hot sunshine might sway as she moved. Ruler of all she surveyed.
Lust reared its head in Tyrone. At the same time, fear dried his mouth to a consistency roughly that of a pile of bones left to bleach a hundred years in the Gobi Desert sunshine.
That's our future, fool! Run, hide, change your name, leave town!
"Ty-rone! Was that Bella you were talking to?"
Tyrone stared at Jimmy Joe. All he could do was nod stupidly.
"Man! Way to go, Ty-rone! Studly Dudley! Oh, and congratulations on getting your black belt, too."
Tyrone frowned at Jimmy Joe. "What? What black belt?"
"The one you're gonna need when Bonebreaker finds out you're trying to complete a hot circuit with Bella. Either that, or a gun. Me, I'd want the gun."
"I wasn't trying to make a circuit! She just stopped to ask me something! To help her with her Basic Cee stuff!"
"Uh-huh."
"No, really! She gave me her number, I'm supposed to call her, we're going to get together later, to--to . . . uh . . ."
"Somewhere private, like, say, oh, her place?" Jimmy Joe prompted.
"Oh, man. Oh, no."
"Oh, yeah. Here's how I scenario it: Bonebreaker drops by, sees you leaning over Bella's tasty shoulder with your hand on her . . . mouse, and it's sayonara, Tyrone-san."
"Ah!"
"Well, maybe not. You could, you know, get too busy to help her."
"Right. And she gets pissed off and tells Bonebreaker I insulted her, and then he kills me."
"Sounds like a no-win situation, all right."
"Why are you smiling?! This is not funny, Jimmy Joe!"
"Depends on where you're sitting, don't it? Listen, if you're gonna die anyhow, you might as well enjoy yourself, right? Be a happy man when you discom."
"I think I need to go to the bathroom," Tyrone said. Suddenly, he needed to do that real bad.
Jimmy Joe's barely suppressed chuckles followed him down the hall.
Friday, October 1st, 9:45 p.m. Grozny
VR gear removed, Plekhanov sat in his chair, breathing hard. How had that American Net Force operative gotten so close so fast? Yes, he had stopped him, wrecked his program, but that had been too near a miss. It shouldn't have happened.
He blew out a sigh and calmed himself. Well. He was the best, but there had to be a second- or third- or tenth-best. The reason for the attacks on Net Force's Commander and its operations had been to keep their decent programmers busy elsewhere. Their best were not in his class, of course, but at the highest levels, skills were not galactic leaps apart. No, the top players were dangerous. If one of them happened to be in the right place at the right time, it could be a serious problem.
He rubbed at his eyes. He'd been spotted by the opposition. Of course, there hadn't been any real danger, he'd had his escape route planned, and several ways to discourage pursuit had the first one failed, and it had not failed. The reason those safeguards had been put in place was for just such an unlikely happenstance. He had escaped, had he not? The boy, that naturalized-American Thai orphan--what was his name? Groly? Gridley?--was a hotshot, but however fast his hands, he did not have the experience. Put the two of them into a VR ring with gloves on, and the boy would have an edge, but the Marquis of Queensbury rules did not apply in this arena. When the guidelines did not hobble them, the old and treacherous beat the young and quick every time. . . .
Still, he would exercise even more caution. The perfect crime was not in getting away once you'd been spotted; the perfect crime was one nobody ever knew had been committed. That had never been in the cards for this venture, but outrunning a pursuer was not nearly as good as staying out of his sight. He would have to work on that.
Meanwhile, the trips to Belarus and Kyrgyzstan were next on the agenda. He would continue to sow; soon, he would reap.
Friday, October 1st, 4:02 p.m. Quantico
Michaels's boss was on-line, and what he had to convey was not happy news.
"The President is concerned, Alex. It's been more than three weeks."
"I am aware of that, sir." He was also aware of how stiff his voice was.
Walt Carver had not risen to FBI Director by missing the nuances. He said, "Don't get your back up. I'm just pointing out something you already know. The politics here makes all the difference."
"I understand," Michaels said.
"We need a victory," Carver continued. "It doesn't have to be a major one, just something we can wave at the big dogs to keep them from gnawing on us. Sooner you come up with something, the better, and when I say sooner, I'm talking about a couple of days."
"Yes, sir."
"I'll keep the Senate committee off your butt, but I need something on Day's murder by Monday. Tuesday at the latest."
"Yes, sir."
After Carver disconnected, Michaels stood. He needed to move, to burn off some of this nervous tension. It wasn't enough that he'd almost been killed last night. Now he had the damned President of the United States after his hide. If he didn't come up with something, he'd be dead in this town; if the powers that be thought he was a sludge, he could kiss his career good-bye.
Well, fine. He loved the work, it was satisfying, but hell, he could get another job, that wasn't the problem. As long as he got Steve Day's killer before they threw him out, he could live with it. He hadn't wanted to sit in the damned chair in the first place--not given the cost.
He felt a sudden urge to call his daughter. He glanced at the time. Just after four p.m. here, but Idaho was a couple hours earlier.
Would she be home from school yet? He didn't know. He should know, but he didn't. Did she have a beeper? He shook his head. He didn't know that, either. And even if she did, he wouldn't want to upset her by buzzing her in class. She'd worry, and what would he tell her when she called? Hi, honey. Guess what--Daddy almost got killed last night and probably is going to lose his job.
Yeah, right. There was nobody he could tell about this, even if he'd really wanted to tell somebody. And he didn't want to tell anybody. He wasn't going to whine about how tough life was--that never solved anything and nobody wanted to hear it anyhow.
He was too nervous to sit still. Maybe he should go to the gym and work up a sweat. It wouldn't hurt anything, might make him feel better. And sometimes exercise cleared his head out enough so he got some good ideas. Sure, a session on the multiplex machine might be worthwhile. What the hell, he sure wasn't getting anything done sitting here.
Being stuck as an administrator, he had discovered, wasn't much fun.
Friday, October 1st, 4:42 p.m. Quantico
Jay Gridley walked into the VR Cane Masters store in Incline Village, Nevada. Given his choice, he would rather be hunting the robber in New Orleans, but the programmer would have to wait. He had gotten a good look at the guy's vehicle, a feel for how he moved, and after backwalking the heist, he had a handle on the guy's MO. Some things you could hide, some things tended to stand out. Mostly, it was style that separated one good programmer from another, and Gridley knew one thing: If he found the guy's trail again, he would know him when he caught up with him. That was a big advantage, and he meant to jump on it as soon as he could.
But somebody had tried to kill his boss last night and that took precedence.
Inside the store, there were racks of gleaming, polished oak and hickory and walnut canes lined up neatly on the walls. Other martial-arts weaponry made from wood, too--staves, escrima sticks, plus exercise rubber bands, videos, books, jackets and T-shirts with "Raising Cane" on them.
An attractive Chinese woman behind the counter smiled at Jay, who had the weapon used in the assault on Alex Michaels tucked under his arm.
"Help you?" the clerk said.
Gridley handed the cane to her. "Is this one of yours?" He already knew it was, having gone through product descriptions and .GIF files of all the commercial cane manufacturers in North America until he'd found a match.
The woman examined the cane. "Yes, it's the Instructor's model, in hickory. Is there a problem with it?"
"No, it works fine, far as I know. But I need some information about it. Do you keep records of your sales?"
"Of course."
"Is there any way to find out who bought this?"
The woman's smile faded. "I'm afraid our client records are confidential, sir."
"You have a manager I could talk to?"
"Just a moment."
A tall man wearing a frown appeared behind the clerk in a few seconds. "May I help you, sir?"
Gridley produced his Net Force ID and held it out. He waved at the cane he'd brought. "This stick was used in an attempted assassination of a federal government official," he said. "I need your sales records."
"I'm afraid we can't do that," the man said.
"Oh, you can. You can voluntarily give them to me, saving us both a lot of time and hassle, and earn my gratitude. Or I can get a federal subpoena and be back in an hour with a gang of IRS/CPA programmers to deconstruct everything your company has done in the last ten years. My guess is that these guys will almost certainly find some irregularities in the way you do business. I mean, given the tax code complexities and all these days, you can't be totally honest even if you want to be."
The man took Gridley's ID, ran it under a scanner and waited for the verification. When it came, he said. "We're happy to help the government in any way we can. Denise, would you transfer the records for this agent, please?"
Gridley nodded, but didn't smile. Too bad he didn't have this kind of clout when he wanted to get into a decent restaurant.
Outside the store, Gridley walked to his new Viper. Well, actually, since the program he was using was a backup for the one that had been trashed in New Orleans, it was the same age as his old Viper, and it also lacked a few bells and whistles compared to the wrecked one. He'd done a lot of fine-tuning on the wrecked unit, and he hadn't bothered to save the updates. No big deal, but it would require a little work to sharpen this one so it ran as well as the other.
In the car, he looked at the HC printout. Cane Masters had been around for at least fifteen years, and they had sold thousands of canes in that time. In the last ten years, they had sold several hundred of the particular model Net Force was interested in. Still, running down several hundred possibilities was better than running down no possibilities.
He started the car, frowned a little at how rough the engine ran. Definitely needed a tune-up. He put it in gear and headed away from the store.
Friday, October 1st, 11:14 p.m. Las Vegas
Grigory the Snake had won three hundred in chips, playing at the five-dollar blackjack tables in the big pyramid-shaped casino; to celebrate, he was getting drunk and talking about looking for a prostitute. The drinks were free as long as he kept playing. The prostitute would likely take most of his winnings, in exchange for which he would have a few moments of loveless pleasure--and run the risk of catching a deadly disease.
Ruzhyo did not know how prevalent HIV was among American trulls. In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, eight of ten whores would be infected. Of course, there were vaccines for the more common strains of the disease, but it seemed as if a new strain developed every week. And the Snake had bragged more than once that he did not use a condom under any circumstances. The Snake could catch something, rot slowly and painfully, and it was all the same to Ruzhyo. He did feel sorry for Grigory's wife, who might also contract the disease before her husband had the grace to die. And sorry for her that she had married such a buffoon in the first place. . . .
Ruzhyo stood next to an electronic slot machine, listening to the jarring and obnoxious chords blare from the other machines as people methodically and joylessly pumped the handles or punched the buttons that operated the devices. No one seemed to be having a good time. There were no smiles, no backslapping, just intense manic concentration, as if by so focusing, the winning bars would magically line up and pay off. Now and then, they did, and along with flashing lights, the cacophony of the machine forced to give up its gold added more to the general noise, Look, it said, people do win! Put in more money! You could be next!
Greed was supposed to be fun, but apparently it was only fun if you were winning.
He did not know why he had gone along with the Snake for this outing. Ruzhyo was not a gambler. Cards, dice, wheels, these were things beyond his control. The risks did not interest him. There was nothing to be gained but money, no more pleasure for him in winning than there would be in losing.
Perhaps he was trying to prove to himself that he could still relax and have a good time; if so, this had not been the way to demonstrate it. It was not yet midnight, and he was tired, of the clamor, of the din of machines and unhappy voices of people in the casino, and especially he was tired of Grigory the Snake. Already the man had made it clear to the other four players at the table that he was a Russian war hero. Soon, he would be talking about his medals. Ruzhyo did not wish to hear those stories again. Ever.
The days when Ruzhyo could party all night and then work the next day without sleeping were long past. Decadent living was for the young or the stupid.
Winters came to stand next to Ruzhyo. The American wore a black T-shirt with the logo of another casino, one shaped like a lion, upon the back. He wore Levi jeans, a broad belt with a large, shiny buckle and black cowboy boots. He had a brownish, watery-looking drink in one hand. He looked as if he belonged here. He sipped at the liquid and frowned. "Lizard piss," he said. But he took another sip. "Welcome to the adult version of Disneyland, pard. You catch that whole
River of Death and Boat business on the way in? Dog-headed gods and Ra and all? Christ, it looks like a ride in Yesterdayland. The Mummy's Pyramid Boat to the Other Side."
Ruzhyo glanced at his watch.
"Our boy racking up a few bucks?" Winters asked.
"He is ahead, yes. Three more hands and he plans to leave, to seek professional female company."
"Now there's an idea. Might as well blow your money on blow jobs. That way you could have a good memory to show for it. Not like gambling and losing."
"Grigory has a system."
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