Point Of Impact (2001)

by Tom - Net Force 05 Clancy

  But he was pretty sure he already knew.

  Net Force Shooting Range, Quantico, Virginia

  John Howard stood on the line at the firing range, ready to start. He said, "Eight meters, single. Go."

  A three-hundred pound crazed biker blinked into existence eight meters down the alley. The biker held a tire iron, and he lifted it and charged right at Howard, no hesitation.

  Fast for a fat man, he was, too.

  Howard slipped his right hand under his Net Force windbreaker, cleared the jacket, caught the smooth wooden grips of his side arm, and pulled the weapon from the custom-made Fist paddle holster. He brought the Phillips & Rodgers Model 47 Medusa up and shoved it one-handed toward the biker as if punching him.

  The biker was less than four meters away now, three, two...

  Howard pulled the trigger, once, twice ...

  The gun roared and bucked hard.

  Two rounds hit the biker five feet away. The running man collapsed and slid to a stop inches from Howard's spit-shined, patent-leather-bright shoes.

  Cut that a little close, John.

  The biker disappeared, like turning off a lamp.

  Which, in essence, was what happened. The hologram was, after all, just a particularly coherent brand of light. But the computer cams that watched it all calculated the flight path of Howard's two .357 slugs as they zipped down range, and having decided they would have struck vital areas on a real human target, gave him the ersatz victory.

  Score one for the good guys.

  Howard reholstered the handgun and looked at the score screen. He saw the image of the biker there and noted the pulsing red spots where the bullets hit. The one marked with #1 was in the heart, the #2 round was slightly higher and to the right. With the best .357 Magnum or .40 rounds, one-shot knockdowns hovered right about 94 to 96 percent with a solid body hit, as good as a handgun got--and it didn't even have to be to a fatal area. The first shot would have done the trick, and probably a real attacker would be dead or well on the way there by now. Dead wasn't the thing, though, it was the stopping power that was important. You could shoot somebody in the leg with a .22 and it might nick a big blood vessel and eventually kill him. Thing was, eventually wouldn't do you much good if the guy kept coming, beat you to a pulp with his tire iron or crowbar, then went home and died in a few days, a few hours, even a few minutes. No good at all. When you shot somebody, you wanted them to fall down right now; anything less was bad. They lived or died, that was something to worry about later. You didn't have time to ponder on it in the moment.

  Handguns were lousy weapons for instant stops, relatively speaking. A shotgun was better, and a good rifle better still. He smiled as he remembered the old story about a civilian who carried a handgun. A friend asked him, "Why do you have a pistol? Are you expecting trouble?" And the guy answered, "Trouble? No. If I was expecting trouble, I'd be carrying a rifle."

  Then again, it was kind of hard to slip a scoped .308 sniper rifle under your Gore-Tex windbreaker. And the first rule of a gunfight was ...

  Come on, John. You gonna shoot or stand here day-dreaming ?

  "Reset," he said.

  The screen went blank.

  "Ten meters, double. Thirty-second delay. Go."

  This time, the scenario computer gave him two attackers. One looked like a pro wrestler holding a long knife, the other an NFL lineman with a baseball bat. They charged.

  Howard drew, gave the wrestler two, shifted his hand, and gave the lineman two. The last of the four cartridges in the revolver left the barrel at about the same time the lineman got within bat range.

  Both attackers fell.

  Howard thumbed the cylinder latch open with his right, pointed the gun at the ceiling, and used his left hand to slap the extractor rod hard enough to punch the empties out of the chambers. The hulls fell to the range floor. He pulled a speed loader with six more cartridges from his left windbreaker pocket. Reloading the P&R was trickier than doing it with his old S&W. There were spring-loaded clips in each chamber of the black-Teflon-coated P&R, to allow for using various calibers--the thing would shoot .380s, .38s, .38 Specials, and 9 mms, as well as .357 Magnums--and you had to keep the extractor partway out to make the speed loader work, and even so, it was slower than the Smith was.

  Still, if you couldn't get the job done with six, you probably weren't going to be able to get it done at all.

  He managed to get all six of the reloads into the chambers. He dropped the speed loader on the floor, hit the cartridges with the heel of his right hand a couple of times to get them fully seated, closed the cylinder, then brought the gun up into a two-handed grip as the third attacker appeared.

  The attacker was a naked woman with a samurai sword.

  Well. Somebody was getting creative with their programming. He wondered who Gunny had doing the scenarios. He'd have to ask.

  Since he was ready when the woman came to life, he had plenty of time. He lined the front sight up on her nose and fired one round.

  One to the head was plenty.

  He looked at the score screen. Three for three. Not bad for an old man.

  Gunny's voice came over the intercom, easy to hear with the smart earphones that kept loud noises out but let normal sounds in. "General, we have a troop of Explorer Scouts coming by in a few minutes. Okay if they watch you shoot?"

  Before he could respond, Gunny said, "That's 'cause we want to show them how not to do it."

  "You want to come out here and let me show you how it is done, Sergeant?"

  Gunny chuckled, and Howard had to smile. That was less than an idle threat. Gunny could shoot the pants off Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, and John Wesley Hardin all at the same time, either hand, and you pick it. He was outstanding with anything you could pick up and fire. Came from being a full-time range officer and daily practice. Too bad Gunny didn't want to compete anymore. They could use him in the annual shoot against the other services. He claimed he was too old, and as he was only three or four years past Howard's age. Howard didn't much like hearing that.

  Howard himself was lucky if he got to the range three or four times a month. Usually Julio came with him, but with a new baby at home, he was doing father duty, and that cut into his practice time.

  Julio was about to learn that a baby changed all kinds of priorities.

  Gunny said, "Thirty seconds for a reload? Two-plus seconds to take out two goblins you started halfway to Los An-ju-leeez? Lord, we could have gone out for dinner and a movie and gotten back before you finished. I don't guess you're about to threaten the Ragin' Cajun's records anytime soon, sir."

  Howard chuckled at that. The Ragin' Cajun was Jerry Miculek, a pro shooter who'd set the modem revolver record a dozen or so years ago, down in Mississippi. Using an eight-shot .38 Special revolver, he put all eight rounds on a target in one second flat. He also fired at four different targets, two rounds each, and hit them all just 0.06 of a second slower. And with a six-shooter, he was was able to put six hits on one target, reload, and put six more there in just over three seconds. By those standards, thirty seconds was a couple of eons.

  Howard had had his revolver fitted with a set of grips designed by Miculek, but it hadn't helped that much.

  Of course, more than sixty-five years before Miculek, the legendary Ed McGivern fired five shots from a 1905 Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector Military and Police .38 into a playing card in a mere 0.4 of a second.

  No way Howard could ever get close to any of that, not if he practiced every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Still, for his purposes, he was good enough for government work. Tests had shown that a fair-to-middling shooter took between a second and a second and a half to draw a handgun from concealment and get a shot off. If a man with a tire tool or a knife was inside twenty or so feet and was in a hurry, he'd get to you before you could shoot him. If he was closer than that, and your gun was in the holster, best you make some space or be ready for hand-to-hand to hold him off long enough to draw your piece.
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  Of course, if Howard went somewhere expecting trouble, he was sure going to be carrying a rifle. Maybe a submachine gun, and it would be pointed in the general direction of any trouble, too.

  Then again, he had gotten shot when he hadn't been expecting it, so this was a skill he needed to hone.

  "Don't forget to stop and have your ring reprogrammed on the way out, sir."

  Howard nodded. All Net Force guns were smart technology now. You wore a ring with a code that changed every month or so. If somebody not wearing a properly coded ring picked up a Net Force weapon and tried to use it, it wouldn't fire. Howard still didn't trust it, but so far there hadn't been any failures of the system, at least not with his people. It was a good idea in theory, but if one of his team ever pointed a gun that didn't go bang! when it was supposed to, there would be hell to pay, and he'd be leading the devil's collection team himself, assuming it wasn't his gun that malfunctioned and got him killed.

  "Reset," he said. "Seven meters, one."

  Make it a little more challenging, this time ...

  "Go!"

  He reached for his gun.

  12

  Los Angeles, California

  The gag came to Bobby as he was driving back from the desert.

  It happened because a year or so ago, he had concocted about a quarter kilo of something he called GD, short for Giggle Dust. At the time, he'd had a customer somewhere interested in it, but something must have happened, and he'd stuck it into a drawer in the RV and completely forgotten about it. When he'd been there today talking to Ma and Pa Yeehaw, who actually were married and from Missouri originally, he happened to open that drawer, and son of a bitch lookit, there it was. Eight ounces of the gray green powder, worth an easy four grand if he wanted to bother with it. Free money.

  GD was a blend of MMDA--an analog of MDA, or Ecstasy--some psilocybin from a batch of dried baeocystis mushrooms he'd bought from a guy in British Columbia, and a little dexadrine. Everybody didn't react to it the same way, of course, but in most people, it tended to make for a really happy trip, laughing, giggling, speeding their asses off, beaming at everybody, and having a fun time in general. Problem was, the mix was iffy, and it was hard to get the recipe exact. This batch worked pretty good--he'd let Tad try a hit way back when--but the next mix might not. The mushrooms were the key, and they varied all over the place. Only real side effect was it tended to make you thirsty but not able to pee, so when it wore off, you'd be spending a lot of time in the john.

  The gag would take all the GD he had, but what the hell, if you couldn't have fun, why bother? He had precursor for another batch of the Hammer, he already had orders for fifteen grand or so lined up, and probably another five or eight thousand would be in by the time he got ready to mix. Money wasn't a problem. He had money to burn.

  The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. So he might be late for his dinner with the Zee-ster, no big deal. Zee was gonna be out of it anyhow, if he'd swung the Hammer last night. He wasn't in as bad shape as Tad, Zee was a jock, but even with chemical assistance, he was gonna be dragging ass today. And he was usually late, even when he was straight.

  Drayne grinned. Yeah. He was gonna do it. He could cut over to the 405, get off at Westwood, and it would be right there, just up Wilshire, no problem. It was still early enough he could beat most of the traffic. Thirty, forty minutes, he'd be pulling up next to the Federal Building. He been there enough times when his old man had still been protecting the republic.

  The building was the home of the Los Angeles office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Oh, yeah, this was gonna be a hoot, all right.

  Malibu

  Still hardly able to move, Tad managed to sit up on the couch to stare at Bobby. There weren't many days when he thought Bobby was crazier than he was. This was one of them. He said, "You're shittin' me."

  "Nope."

  "You blew four thousand dollars' worth of Giggle Dust to stone fuckin' FBI HQ in L.A.?"

  "Yep."

  "You're friggin' nuts, Bobby."

  "I'd have spent that much more to have been a fly on the wall. Maybe we can get one of the security recordings of it someday. See all those uptight fuckheads laughing and holding hands and being in tune with the universe and all."

  "Jeez, Bobby, you have to let that go. They are just doing their jobs, you know? That's why they hire 'em."

  "You don't know what you're talking about, Tad."

  "Yeah, yeah. Okay. How'd you pull it off?"

  "Easy. They got great security, but I went to fill out an application for a job on the floor above them. Got out to the roof, up to the air conditioners, found the right vents, moved a couple of filters, voila! the air is full of magic."

  "Four grand. For a practical joke."

  "Tad, Tad, Tad. Let me tell you a story."

  "Aw, geez, not another of your shaggy dog stories!"

  "Shut up, Tad. Listen and learn:

  "So there's this couple in Vegas, see, and after a long day, they go upstairs and go to bed. Wife drops off to sleep, but the husband can't, so he gets up, gets dressed, and goes down to the casino with ten bucks. He goes to the craps table, puts it down, throws a natural, and he's a winner!

  "So he lets it ride, and wins again. And again. And yet again!

  "This is incredible stuff. He's throwing naturals, he's making points the hard way, he can't lose.

  "Next thing you know, the guy has parlayed his bets up to almost a million bucks. And he's feeling unbeatable, so he lets it ride one more time. If he wins, he's gonna leave rich.

  "He throws snake eyes and loses it all.

  "He goes back to his room. As he's getting into bed, he wife wakes up. 'Where you been?' she asks.

  " 'I went down to play a little craps,' he says.

  " 'How'd you do?'

  "Guy slips under the covers, shrugs, says, 'I lost ten bucks.' "

  The conversation sat still for a moment. Tad said, "Okay, funny. And, uh, what exactly is the point?"

  "Point is, it's all gravy, Tad. This morning, I didn't know the GD existed, so when I came across it, it was like something for nothing. I used it up, I had a big laugh, it didn't cost me anything. Hell, I didn't even lose ten bucks. I came home with as much in my pocket as when I left this morning. Except what I paid for the tofu burger for lunch."

  "You go a long way to make a point, man. And I don't know how you can eat that tofu shit."

  "Yeah, well, getting there is half the fun, isn't it?"

  Tad had to nod. "Yeah. I guess you're right. But you're still a crazy motherfucker."

  "So who's arguing with that?"

  "Jesus." A beat, then, "So how is the Zee-ster?"

  "Probably as burned out as you are. He didn't show. How you holding up?"

  "I've been worse."

  "Want to eat something?"

  "Nah, not yet. Maybe in a day or two. I'll just pop a few pills."

  "Keep it up, Tad, pretty soon nothing short of tanna leaves is gonna bring you back."

  "Karis, the mummy, with Boris Karloff," Tad said. Like half the people in L.A., Tad was an old-movie buff. He especially loved those old black-and-white Universal monster pictures.

  "Well, at least part of your brain still works. I'm gonna get some champagne. You want some?"

  "And rot my liver? Shee-it."

  Bobby laughed and said, "I'm gonna miss you, Tad."

  Tad nodded. "I know. But that was always in the cards, man. Always in the cards."

  13

  Hemphill, Texas

  Jay Gridley hiked down a country road, not far from the Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Sabine River, just across the state line from Louisiana, a place he had once visited as a child. Long-leaf pine and red dirt and lazily buzzing flies completed the summer scene. When he'd actually been here in real time, he'd been eight or so, walking with a couple of his cousins, Richie and Farah. Richie was his age, Farah was four. They had seen a long reddish snake wiggling on the roa
d, and all excited, he and Richie had run back to tell their parents. Jay hadn't been able to understand why his mom and Aunt Sally had jumped up in such a panic. "Where is Farah!"

  "Hey, don't worry, we left her to watch the snake, she won't let it get away. "

  He smiled at the memory.

  Just ahead, a white-haired old man in a dirty T-shirt and overalls--no shoes--sat in the shade of a tall pine tree and whittled on a long stick with a Barlow jackknife. Jay liked to get the small details right in his scenario work.

  "Howdy," Jay said.

  "Howdy, yo'self," the whittler said. A long wood shaving curled up from the edge of the knife blade.

  In RW, Jay was querying a server for information that would be downloaded into his computer spool; but in VR, it was much more interesting.

  "What's happenin'?" Jay asked.

  "Not much," the whittler allowed. "This and that. You heard about them FBI guys got poisoned?"

  "Stoned," Jay said, "not poisoned." He smiled. Yep, that had been a funny one. Something to wave at the Bureau boys when he ran into them in the cafeteria. The regular feebs were always ragging on Net Force about one thing or another, so any ammunition Jay could gather to pop off at them in return was good, especially since the L.A. incident hadn't hurt anybody, only embarrassed 'em.

  "Anybody come through selling snake oil lately?"

  In this case, "snake oil" was a representation of the mysterious purple cap the DEA was all hot to run down. And not just them, so it seemed.

  Along his way, Jay had stopped to chat with several local characters, and so far, he hadn't turned up anything. But this time, it was different.

  "Well, yes, sir, there was this fellow come through a little while ago had some of that stuff, I do believe."

  Jay's laid-back Zen attitude vanished. "What? When? Which way did he go?"

  Whittler spat a stream of something dark and icky and pointed with the knife. "He headed on up the road, over toward Hemphill, I reckon."

  Jesus! Could it be this easy?