by Tom Clancy
The thing about the knife store was, it was on a street that looped around and had but one way in or out from the main road. If it was a letter P, the shop would be on the right just before you got to the top of the loop.
When Dormer had first shown him the trick, Carruth thought he had it nailed. Take the tail down a dead-end street, and when he followed you, you had him, right?
“No,” Dormer had said. “Most dead-end streets are marked these days. They have signs that say, ‘Dead End,’ or, ‘No Outlet.’ Guy following you knows what he’s doing, he won’t pull in after you, he’ll set up where he can see the only way in or out and wait for you to come back.”
“Ah.”>
“If he absolutely needs to know where you went on that road and who you saw or talked to? He can park and hoof it, or risk pulling in a ways. A good tail won’t try it if he thinks you might see him. He’ll have binoculars and a camera, he can probably spot you if you get out of your car, and he can go back later and figure out who you went to visit. He knows you have to come back out the way you went in, so all he has to do is wait where he can see that intersection, since he’ll know you can’t drive out the other end.”
“Right.”
“So, you lead him into a district that isn’t a dead end, but has only one way out, and you make sure when you leave, you can see the intersection.”
Dormer had paused, then added, “Now, this still might be a coincidence—guy happened to have business in that same neighborhood. But if you take a long and roundabout way getting there, that’s not likely.”
Carruth smiled, remembering the old man’s lessons.
The visit to the knife shop was short—he didn’t really need a new knife, though he did look at a couple titanium-scaled folders from Cutter’s Knife and Tool—the Bengal Karambit was really nice and not too spendy. Had a frame-lock and a nice heft. Some knife gurus didn’t have much use for the little hook-blade shape, but they didn’t know how well it could be made to work in the hands of an expert. Use the thing right, the guy giving you grief wouldn’t know you even had the sucker until you bit him with it. He could bleed out on the way to the hospital, if you cut the right spot, and Carruth had practiced cutting the right spots more than a little.
He thought about it, but decided to wait until next time.
When he got back into his car, he didn’t see the gray sedan. He pulled around the loop and sped up a little, not much, and back to the straight line to the intersection. He pulled out, turned right, and drove somewhat slower.
It was maybe fifteen seconds later that the guy following him reached the intersection. Same gray car.
Carruth felt a cold rush in his belly as he saw the tail.
So. Somebody was following him. That didn’t make any sense.
Who?
And—why?
He slowed down enough to be able to read the license plate on the tail. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote the plate number down on the back of his hand.
He needed to tell Lewis about this. Might be it was her having him shadowed. He couldn’t imagine why, but stranger things had happened. And if it wasn’t her, she needed to know about it. Other than their business, and those two dead cops, there wasn’t any reason anybody should be following him.
He didn’t think it was the cops. If they suspected he was the guy who had killed two of their own, they’d have come down on him like an imploded casino. And it wouldn’t be just one guy tailing him. They’d have his toilet wired for sound and they’d be on him like ugly on an ape. Lewis had access to computer stuff; she could maybe do something with the license plate.
He pulled the throwaway phone from his belt and thumbed in the number for Lewis’s one-time cell.
Pentagon Annex
Washington, D.C.
As Lewis sifted through the mounds of information—here in her VR scenario represented as dirt and crushed ore from a gold mine, being washed through a huge strainer—she came across a fist-sized nugget. She looked at it.
The “nugget” popped open and a voice started talking from inside it. She listened for thirty seconds or so. . . .
Oh, crap!
“End scenario,” she said.
In her office, she took several deep breaths, to calm her racing heart. The information was ugly—and in more ways than one.
Carruth’s call about the shadow had been bad enough when she hadn’t known anything about who it might be. Now it was a real can of worms.
Her new op had run the plates on the car. Fortunately, the driver had been dumb enough or confident enough not to swipe a clean plate or use a rental car. Her op figured out who he was, and then a connection that was surprising—and dangerous.
It had been a surprise. Even if she’d suspected, and if she’d had to guess between the two trying to talk to her, she’d have picked Ali bin Rahman bin Fahad Al-Saud. She’d have been dead wrong, too. No, it was Brian Stuart, the “Australian.”
She shook her head at the stupidity of her mistake. Could have been worse, but fortunately, Carruth had spotted the tail, and she had checked it out.
They were also getting into dangerous territory with her new hired op—information that she didn’t want him to have might come up, and if it did, then eventually he was going to have to go to that great detective agency in the sky. At this point, one more death wouldn’t make things any worse, and they had to start covering their asses now. She hadn’t set out on this path with the intention of killing people, but that’s how things went. Then you had to deal with it.
Next to the surprise about the “Australian” was the general crappiness of the situation itself. “Brian Stuart” was not a viable buyer for her data. His real name was Yusuf bin Abdulla Al-Thani, a Qatarian? Qatarite?—whatever, he was from Qatar—and, if her investigator could be believed, was the older brother of a man named Mohammed bin Abdulla Al-Thani. Which hadn’t meant anything to her, until her op had passed along that Mohammed, who had recently left the land of the living to join Allah in Paradise, had used the alias “Mishari Aziz.” Like his brother, Aziz/Al-Thani had been a terrorist of some note.
Him she knew, because she had shot him dead in a park in New Orleans when he had gone for a gun in his pocket.
Shit, shit, shit—!
The Al-Thani brothers were Tamim Arabs, and distantly related to the rulers of Qatar, if no longer included in polite family company because of their most radical beliefs. Not the most reliable of customers, terrorists.
It was pretty obvious why Yusuf/Brian was looking for her. She’d killed his brother and he was understandably pissed off about it. But that he had gotten as far as he had bothered her no end. How far was that? She was pretty sure that Yusuf and a friend or two had somehow backtracked their way to Simmons, her former sub-rosa investigator, and killed him, trying to find her. Unless Simmons had an old enemy who’d happened to find him, that was the only thing that made sense.
How?
It didn’t really matter how the tiger got into your house until after you got rid of it, but she was curious nonetheless.
She didn’t know how much they had gotten out of Simmons, but they probably would have determined that she was a woman. If the two men killed with Aziz/Al-Thani down on the river in New Orleans hadn’t been the same two who’d followed her to a mall in Florida after their first meeting, then it was likely that big brother Yusuf had a better description of her than that she was just a young, blond woman.
Of course, knowing what she looked like was not the same as knowing who she was, and it was a big country. Still, it was a rock in the road and she didn’t want to hit it. . . .
How ever had they found Carruth? It didn’t seem possible. And yet, according to her op, the car belonged to a shell company that was run by Al-Thani, and what were the chances of that being a coincidence? That somebody was following her guy and that the somebody was connected to the man she’d iced in New Orleans?
Shrugging that off wasn’t going to happen.
This was bad. Having a terrorist actively looking for you to exact revenge for killing his little brother? It would certainly throw a big bag of sand into the gears if he showed up. Not to mention into her personal life.
So, what was she going to do about it?
He might not have a clue as to her identity. Simmons hadn’t, and no way to directly connect to her. But that Yusuf Al-Thani had gotten this far already meant he had damned good resources—either Simmons had screwed up, or not, and if not, how Al-Thani had wound up on his doorstep was troublesome in the extreme.
Simmons maybe stepped on somebody’s telltale while checking out Aziz? Possible.
But even so, Simmons hadn’t known who Carruth was.
And yet, there Yusuf was—him or one of his people, dogging Carruth.
She scanned the rest of the file the new op had sent. Well, at least she knew who he was now, and what he looked like. Might not do her much good if he was waiting in her bedroom with a big sidekick and weapons when she got home one dark night, but it was something.
She thought about it. Once you started down the violent road, it was hard to step off it; she had killed the man’s brother, and there wasn’t any way to downplay that if he ever did find her.
He went for his gun first! probably wasn’t going to make much difference to an enraged and murderous brother.
So. What was the best way to protect herself? She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder for some fanatic bearing the sword of retribution, looking to lop her head off.
She dug out her current one-time phone and manually tapped in the number for Carruth’s current one-time.
“Yeah?”
“I found that information you requested. Meet me at the place, tonight, seven P.M.”
“Copy.”
She discommed. Shut off the phone and stuck it into her purse. She’d lose it after she left work, and pick up a new one at home. She had a dozen of them, all identical. The guards never checked the numbers, only to see if it was a real phone, which it was.
Carruth had his uses, and this would be right up his alley.
Dark Horse Restaurant
Richardson, Maryland
“You’re shittin’ me,” Carruth said.
“Would that I were.”
He shook his head. “Damned ragheads are thicker than fleas on a camel in this deal, ain’t they? How’d they find me?”
She said, “I don’t have any idea.”
He shrugged that off. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We set up a meeting with ‘Brian.’ You and some of your men will be there and when he shows up—probably with some of his men—you erase them.”
He nodded. That was the best way. Bastard couldn’t come back to backstab you if you cut him into enough pieces. How had they found him, though? He’d like to know, but if they weren’t around, it didn’t matter. “I can do that. They’ll be looking for trouble, though.”
“Set it up somewhere they’ll have to drive to, a long way from anything. Somewhere with one way in or out. You get there and prepare before we even tell them where. If they come armed and alert—which, you’re right, they will, of course—your troops still have the advantage.”
“They could bring a whole van full of shooters. I would, if I was them. It could get real gory.”
“You didn’t throw away the rest of those Dragons, did you?”
He grinned. “No, ma’am.”
“Find a place you like, reconnoiter, figure out what you need, let me know. But we have to do this soon. I don’t want this guy and his friends showing up for supper some night at my house.”
Carruth was not exactly thrilled to know that they’d found him, either. “Me, neither. I hear you.”
23
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
“Mr. Gridley?”
Jay stared at the image on his phone’s screen. “My number. Who else?”
“Doyle Samuels, FBI. I have some information for you.”
“Fire away.”
“As you are no doubt aware, we are conducting a joint investigation with Army Intelligence in regards to your agency’s investigation into the Army base break-ins.”
“Yeah?”
“This is in regard to Private First Class Jerome Jordan, who was one of the soldiers killed during the terrorists’ raid on Fort Thomas Braverman.”
“Right?”
“Private Jordan was the first man shot by the perpetrators. This was on the base itself. Before the destruction of the Hummer and its occupants.”
Jay stifled a sigh. Why couldn’t these feebs ever just get to the point?
“Uh huh.”
“FBI Ballistics has determined that Jordan was killed by a single round from a handgun, and that the caliber of the slug was a variation of the .500 Maximum.” The agent let that hang for a second, as if it was supposed to mean something to Jay—which it did not.
“And . . . ?”
“This is an unusual caliber for a side arm. As large as legally allowed to be made in the U.S.”
“Agent Samuels, I don’t know from guns, I’m a computer guy. Are we getting to a point here any time soon?”
“It turns out that the rifling on the round matches that of the bullets that were used in a recent shooting in the District in which two Metro officers were killed.”
“Wow.” He’d sure heard about that.
“It further turns out that the particular kind of bullet used, a .510 GNR, is custom-made in small numbers for a discriminating user group, as are the guns that will shoot it, and we have begun to gather the information on those. Given that Net Force’s computer capabilities are better than most, it might be that you can help us find the gun for which we are looking.”
“Oh, yeah, you bet,” Jay said, suddenly very interested indeed.
“I’ll have the file uploaded to your secure address.”
“Yes, sir, you do that. And thank you.”
“You will keep us posted?”
“As soon as I have something, you’ll get it.”
“Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Gridley.”
“Likewise.”
Jay grinned as he discommed. This was a break. He had access to the Super-Cray, as much time as he wanted. He knew people who would cheerfully kill their grandmothers to be able to do that, and that was understandable—Super-Cray access was worth gem-quality diamonds. If he could come up with a proper parameter set, he could strain down to the quantum level—and if the information was out there, he could find it.
He would find it.
He grinned again, then waved his hand over the control and waited for the file to finish downloading.
Come on, come on—!
Galactic Science Fiction Convention
Phoenix, Arizona
Labor Day Weekend
The scenario was in the dealer’s room.
Such a place was passing weird, even for VR. There were thousands of people in the huge room, a convention center space across the street from a big chain hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. There were hundreds of tables stacked with moldy, old pulp magazines, sci-fi videos, and all manner of science-fiction and fantasy impedimenta, from toy ray guns that flashed lights and made electronic cheeps and chirps, to movie posters, to real swords based on those used by Conan the Barbarian and the Highlander.
It was a zoo. Noisy, packed, and very colorful. Must be a thousand people in the place milling back and forth.
Every third or fourth person in the place was dressed in some kind of science-fiction or fantasy costume—there were Darth Vaders, Captain Kirks and Mr. Spocks, Klingons, fairies, druids, Batmen, Supermen, purple aliens, and Luke Skywalkers. There were Princess Leias, in white robes and hair buns, and girls in tiny fur bikinis—some of whom looked great, some of whom looked like they—and anybody who had to look at them—would all be better served if, instead of bikinis, they had been wearing shrouds. . . .
At one poi
nt, what appeared to be the entire cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show trooped past.
Jay shook his head. He’d read the stuff as a kid, but never really gotten into the fandom thing, though he had gone to a Worldcon once, just to see, and this was exactly what it had looked like in RW: a giant, multispecies party. . . .
Somewhere in this mob was a guy in a costume of an alien cowboy with a big six-shooter strapped on his hip, virtually speaking, anyhow. According to Jay’s Super-Cray search, this was the guy the feds were looking for, the guy who had bought the gun used to kill two Metro cops and at least one and probably a bunch of Army guys.
He hoped it didn’t turn out to be the dead and burned-up terrorist they’d found, Stark. That wasn’t going to do him any good.
Whatever.
Jay had come to one possibility he liked, a guy who had given his address as being in Alexandria, and that had turned out to be fake. Well, there was a guy with that name living there, only he was five-foot-two, a hundred and fifteen pounds, eighty years old, and in a wheelchair, and hadn’t bought any custom-made revolvers costing almost three thousand dollars. If he shot such a sucker, it would probably break both his wrists. Somebody had swiped his ID to get past the NICS registration. So, whoever did that might not be their man, but it was the best clue they had gotten so far. The guy might not be a computer player, but like any other person living in civilization these days, he left an electronic trail. His was faint, but Jay was on it.
He was in here somewhere. All Jay had to do was find him and, in this scenario, get him out of his costume and see who he really was. Then he’d pass that along to folks who could go and fetch him, and that would be that. Once the authorities had one of the terrorists in hand, they could probably convince him to give up the others.
Of course, with the mass of humanity milling around, and the hundreds of costumes in evidence, it might not be so easy to find the guy here. . . .