by Tom Clancy
“Yeah. But I could be wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time, much as it pains me to admit that.” Like he’d been wrong about Rachel, up to a few hours ago . . .
“You don’t think you are, though.”
Jay shook his head. “No. I know what I know. But—”
“What do you want, then, Jay? Would you rather see her skate? Get away? Maybe swipe a tactical nuke from the Army next time and blow up half a city full of innocent people?”
“No, but—”
“If we err, shouldn’t we err on the side of safety? If Captain Lewis has to spend a few days in detention, is that worse than ten thousand people going up in a fireball?”
Jay sighed. “Of course not, but that doesn’t mean I have to like choosing between evils. Either way, they’re both still bad choices.”
“Do you have a better choice to offer?”
Jay shook his head.
“Then I don’t really have any choice, Jay. I’m sorry.” Thorn waved his hand over the com. “Get me General Hadden,” he said.
Jay got up. He was going to head home, but his virgil blinked, indicating he had an incoming call. He looked at the caller ID.
He felt a deep chill.
Thorn looked up at him.
“I’ll be in my office,” Jay said. “One more thing I need to do before I go.”
The Perfect Beach
The Perfect Sea
It was her scenario, and Jay was invited, but he hacked in without using a password, brute-forcing. He’d been there before, he knew where to hit it. No way he was waiting for her to open the door.
It was the beach, with the warm sun and white sand, the breeze, the perfect waves rolling in from the electric blue sea. He saw Rachel, sitting at the waterline, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms around her legs, staring into the far ocean. She looked mostly bare from this angle, though she could be wearing a bikini.
Gulls soared and wheeled and crawed and he heard the sound of the gentle waves as they lapped on the beach. So peaceful. So serene.
So big a lie . . .
He walked barefoot through the sand, listening to the little squeaks his feet made. It really was a well-built scenario. She really had talent. It was really too bad.
He stopped ten feet behind her.
Without turning to look, she said, “Well, well. Smokin’ Jay Gridley has arrived. Took you long enough. I left a hole in the wall big enough to drive a train through.”
He didn’t say anything.
She stood. As she uncoiled, he saw that she was completely naked. Slowly, she turned to face him, her stance going wide. She smiled, stretched her arms out into a dramatic pose. She did a slow three-sixty turn. “Take a last look, Jay. This is who I am. Just like I am in the RW, no air-brushing, no augmentation; what you see is a near-perfect copy of the real me.”
She ended up facing him, smiling real big.
Jay’s mouth would have been extremely dry in RW, he knew. He nodded, still not speaking.
“You could have had me. In the Real World. It would have been the best you ever experienced—the best you ever would experience.”
She certainly was gorgeous, no argument. But he shook his head. “No. No matter how great you are in bed, it would have been missing something.”
She lowered her hands and laughed. “What?”
“It was all a sham. You would only have done it to keep me from looking too closely at you. Fake. Bogus. Just like this beach.”
“You’re wrong. Maybe that’s how it started, but along the way, I got to like you. I would have enjoyed it. You would have, too. And you wanted me.”
“Yes. But that still wouldn’t have been enough,” he said.
“Oh, really?” Her voice was thick with sarcasm. “What else was missing?”
“Love. That’s something you can’t replace.”
She laughed. “Love is bullshit, Jay. My boyfriend said he loved me, but then he couldn’t wait for what I was going to give him anyway and he took me by force. My father said he loved me, but then he killed himself. ‘Love’ is just ‘sex’ prettied up, a fairy tale to keep the masses entertained. It doesn’t compare to a warm and willing body lying next to you, ready to do anything you want to make you feel good.”
He shook his head again. “I’m sorry for you, Rachel. Life handed you some hard hits, but what you did was wrong. You lied, cheated, stole, and you killed people. You shot your partner in the middle of the damned Mall, gunned him down like it was nothing. That’s cold.”
“Not admitting anything here, Jay, but this Carruth was a killer, right? He had a gun, didn’t he? He would have shot whoever killed him if he could, so whoever did it—they were just better than he was.”
“Whoever. Right,” he said.
“I’m not any worse than anybody else trying to make her way in the world.”
“Yeah, you are. You’re bright, talented, you could have risen to the top on your own merit, but you got bent. You could have gotten a job at a civilian company making three times what you do in the Army, been running the place in a couple years. You threw it all away. That’s worse than if you never had anything going in the first place.”
She laughed again. “You think?”
“Yeah, I think. I wanted to see you first, but you’re about to have visitors coming through your door. It’s all over, Captain.”
She gave him that angelic smile. “What makes you think I’m on the other side of any door that ‘visitors’ are about to kick open?”
Jay shook his head. The bad guys always thought they were going to get away.
“You know, you are always going to wonder about how it would have been with us. It will always be somewhere in the back of your mind, the road not taken, the field not plowed. You won’t ever be completely rid of me. When you are an old man, sitting in your rocking chair, you’ll remember me, and you’ll wonder if you made the right choice. I know you will.”
She lowered her arms. “Good-bye, Jay.”
She kept smiling. A second later, her scenario vanished.
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Back in his office, Jay stripped off his gear. What a waste. So smart, so talented, so beautiful. And now going to prison for the rest of her life.
He looked up and saw Thorn standing in the doorway. “Boss?”
“The FBI and local police just raided Captain Lewis’s home. She wasn’t there. It appears she packed up and left.”
It took Jay a second to process that. “She got away?”
“For now, that’s what it looks like.”
Jay blinked. She was a user, a killer, she would have caused more death and destruction. She was dangerous, and she needed to be put where she couldn’t hurt anybody. He knew that. But, for just the briefest of moments, something in him wanted to smile.
She’d gotten away.
He was ashamed of the part of him that felt that. He had to try and make up for it.
He would have to catch her.
37
Washington, D.C.
Rachel knew her car would be spotted pretty quick, so she had used her computer skills to have a military vehicle checked out to somebody else; she was in that. By the time they missed it and figured out what had happened, she’d be far away. They’d be watching local airports and train and bus stations, so she needed to get out of the area before catching a ride elsewhere. Baltimore was a good place—she could head for New York, then transfer to a flight heading west. Carruth had that place in Montana he didn’t know she knew about. She could be his girlfriend, waiting for him to meet her there; that would be good for a few days.
She needed a place and some time—she had to see if she could still broker the deal for her stolen data. If she didn’t do it quick, though, it wasn’t going to fly—now that they knew who she was, they would take her system apart and eventually unravel it and shut everything down. It would take a while, even with the best hackers working it, but they’d crack it in the end. It
hadn’t been designed for an all-out armored attack, but for stealth. That was gone now.
Her own best chance to come out of this with something was to contact her potential buyer, tell him there was a ticking clock, and offer a cut-rate deal. A couple million for a door that was going to be open for a few days? At least that was something an enterprising man could do something with.
She could still pull that off, maybe.
And if not? Well, at worst, she had still cost the Army a lot of grief and a lot of money. Certainly there had been plenty of payback in that even if she didn’t make a dime herself.
If she could stay out of their hands for a little while longer, she’d be okay. She was too smart for them. Even for Gridley, the stupid bastard. She still couldn’t believe he’d turned her down.
What an idiot.
Baltimore? As good a direction as any. They weren’t going to set up roadblocks looking for her. She knew how the Army thought. They were always training to fight the last war. She was going to get away. No question.
Probably what was the most disappointing was not getting it on with Jay. She’d really been looking forward to that.
Ah, well. His loss.
38
Midtown Grill
Washington, D.C.
Kent sipped at the wine, which was considerably better than the house red—he had called Gino and arranged for that, and also spoken to Maria for the other little surprise he had in mind.
Set it up well in advance.
Jen chatted about the handmade-guitar show she’d attended last weekend, with mini-concerts provided by the luthiers to showcase their new instruments.
“—amazing that brand-new spruce-top classical could sound that good after what the player said was forty-five minutes of playing time. In another four or five years, it will open up and probably sound so good you won’t be able to listen to it without crying.”
Kent nodded. Said, “Uh huh.”
“I asked one of the makers what the difference was between a guitar-maker and a luthier. ‘Luthier,’ by the way, comes from ‘lute,’ but has come to mean anybody who makes fretted instruments like guitars, lutes, ouds, and the like. He said that the difference was about two thousand dollars. . . .” She stopped and looked at Kent. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere. I’m right here.”
“No, your mind isn’t. What’s up?”
He took a deep breath. He had once stutter-stepped across a field littered with bodies, charging a Colombian machine-gunner trying to chop him down; once, had crawled into a dark underground tunnel in which he knew an enemy soldier with a shotgun was waiting. As a first lieutenant, he had, once upon a time, told a bird colonel to go to hell, and what to do to himself when he got there. He wasn’t a coward when it came to risking his ass, and he had been living on borrowed time for years. He didn’t worry about a lot of stuff.
He was worried now.
“Abe?”
“I’ve got a question for you.” He glanced away, caught Maria’s attention where she was on standby. He nodded, giving her the signal. She started toward their table.
“Yeah? I’m right here. Anytime.”
“Give me a second. I’ve only done this once, and it was almost forty years ago.”
She frowned, trying to make the connection. If Maria didn’t hurry, she would, too.
Maria arrived. She set a covered plate on the table in front of Jen. Jen looked up. “What’s this? We haven’t ordered yet.”
Maria smiled. She pulled the metal cover from the plate. . . .
Lying on a piece of black velvet was the engagement ring Kent had bought. It was white gold with a half-carat blue-white diamond mounted in a solitaire setting. He’d had it sized to match the ring he’d found in her medicine cabinet. He hoped it fit.
She blinked, stared at the ring. Then looked back at him.
“So, what do you think?” he said.
She smiled and shook her head. “What do I think about what, General?” She locked gazes with him, waiting.
He managed another breath, his heart pounding as if he had just finished the obstacle course. “Will you marry me?”
Her smile got bigger. “Sure.” She picked up the ring, slid it onto her finger. It seemed to fit okay. She put her hand back down, picked up the menu. To Maria, who was grinning like a pack of happy baboons, Jen said, “So, what’s the special tonight?”
Butter wouldn’t have melted in her mouth she was so cool. “Miss Jen!” Maria said. She sounded horrified.
“I thought the wine was better than usual,” Jen said.
“Does this mean I’ll get a break on the cost of my lessons?” Kent asked, smiling.
“Only after the wedding,” she said.
Kent laughed. If he thought he was going to one-up her, he realized, he was wrong.
London, England
1890 C.E.
Jay walked through the grimy streets, the vile, choking miasma of coal smoke and fog so thick you couldn’t see half a block. He was following a short man wearing an opera cape and silk top hat. So far, he was getting nothing more than dogs-not-barking-in-the-night, and he could have used Conan Doyle’s master detective and his doctor sidekick to help out here.
Rachel Lewis had been a dead end. She was too good to leave obvious clues that he could find.
Carruth had spent hardly any time on the web; there were few net-trails to find, and most of those didn’t go anywhere useful.
Jay was about ready to pack it in, but he figured he might as well follow up this last line of inquiry.
The figure fading in and out of the reeking smog was headed somewhere, and he might as well see where.
It wasn’t a direction connected to Lewis, as far as Jay could see.
Ahead, the caped man paused, then turned into an alley.
Probably Jack the Ripper’s turf.
Jay followed, and was rewarded by seeing the fellow enter a low doorway with a fitful oil lamp mounted on the wall next to it.
Jay went in, and found himself in a pub of some low standing. Thieves, cutpurses, trulls, sailors, a hard-looking lot drinking bitters and gin.
Rachel Lewis wasn’t here. Even in disguise, he would have known her, he was sure. Ah, well. That would have been too much to hope for, he figured.
“End scenario.”
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Jay leaned back in his chair, shucking gear a piece at a time. So what he had found in the killer London smog was nothing more than an address for a cabin that Carruth had rented a couple of times, way the hell out in Montana. No sign that Lewis had anything to do with that, and Carruth wasn’t going to be using the place again.
Jay voxaxed the cabin’s rental site. It took only a few seconds to find out that it had just been rented. Details of the renter were not available for public consumption, but, of course, Jay wasn’t the public. He hacked the website and found the name of the person renting the place:
“M. Lane.”
Jay frowned. Something about that rang a bell, what was it . . . ?
He scrolled down, found a handwritten signature on the rental agreement. It was pretty much an unreadable scrawl, looked like it said “Margie,” or maybe “Margaret,” or . . .
Margo? Margo Lane? Lamont Cranston’s friend?
The Shadow’s girl . . . ?
“Holy shit!” he said. He reached for the phone. He needed to talk to the rental agent, to find out if the person in the cabin was, indeed, a woman. And if so, what she looked like . . .
39
Net Force HQ
Thorn nodded. “Looks pretty good, Jay.”
They were in his office—Thorn, Jay, and Abe Kent. “What do you think, Abe?”
“I’ve looked at the aerials. There’s a shiny new OwlSat footprinting the place. Couple feet of snow on the ground, but it is approachable. Small team, a quad, that would work. We could mount up, be there this afternoon, hit it after dark.”
“ ‘W
e?’ ”
“I’m a lousy desk jockey,” Kent said. “This is what I do.”
Thorn smiled.
Jay said, “I want to go, too.”
Thorn regarded him. “I thought you didn’t want to risk field operations.”
“This one I do.” He paused. “This is personal, Boss. She suckered me. I want to see her face when she realizes she’s caught.”
Thorn nodded again. “Okay.”
“I need to mention there are some legal issues,” Kent said.
“Posse Comitatus,” Thorn said.
“Yes, sir.”
Jay blinked. “Posse who?”
“In the earlier days of the Republic, the civilians got worried that some sleazy politician might get himself elected and use the military to kick ass and take names,” Thorn said. “So Congress passed a law that forbade the use of the federal military, save the National Guard, from police activities here at home. The Posse Comitatus Act. General Kent is a Marine, as are his troops. They aren’t supposed to be traipsing about in the woods hunting people for civilian crimes.”
“Lewis isn’t a civilian, though. You pointed that out yourself earlier.”
“Even so. The FBI has jurisdiction, or the local police, not the Army. Certainly not the Marines.”
“So, does that mean we can’t go?”
Thorn grinned. “Oh, no. That just means we have to be very careful. We’re going.”
Kent nodded.
“You could get fired,” Jay said.
“I don’t think that’s gonna happen,” Thorn said. “I think the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs would make a whole lot of things disappear if we deliver Captain Lewis to him. As long as there isn’t a big, smoking crater in the ground out there when you get done, I don’t think there will be any record that General Kent and his Marines ever set foot in Montana, except to do a little fly-fishing.”
Kent grinned at that.