Michaels shook his head. "Even if I believed you—and it happens I do—we don't have enough to start arresting people, even via another government. And if we could shut down the train and the barge at the—where was it? the shipworks?—that would still leave the gambling ship down there in the Caribbean. If they are about to do something else nasty, wouldn't that be likely to precipitate it?"
Jay shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe. But they might not be ready to go for it yet. Our defenses have gotten better. It'll be harder next time. Plus if we get Keller and his big guns, that's gonna monkey wrench it. The second team won't be as good."
"If that's all they do," Howard said.
Michaels looked at him.
"Remember that cut transcontinental fiber-optic cable? Where they found the two dead militiamen? Have we considered that they might be linked?"
Michaels shook his head. "Why would you say that?"
"Well, sir, if it were me, I'd want a multipronged attack on something as big as the Internet. Sticking it with a knife in the hind leg will make it bleed, but that won't kill it, or even seriously slow it down. But if you shot it in the head, maybe set off a charge of dynamite under it at the same time?"
"The general has a point, boss. There is more than one way to shut off a node. Doesn't have to be with software, could be with hardware. My programmers can't fix that."
"Great. I need to hear this."
He leaned back in his chair and thought about it for a second. "All right. I'm going to present this to the director and get her thoughts about it. Meanwhile, General, you might want to fine-tune your ship-boarding scenarios. I'm expecting an update from Toni soon, so you can add that into your data files."
"Yes, sir." He grinned.
"You really like the idea of storming a ship at sea and taking it over, don't you?"
"Yes, sir. I know I shouldn't, it's dangerous, but it's what I'm trained to do. Every now and then, you like to see if your tools still work."
"Go sharpen them, John. I'm going over to see the director. Jay, you get back on-line and get me something, anything, I can use to convince the director we aren't grabbing at straws here."
"On my way, boss."
On the Bon Chance
The bar was relatively quiet, but the muted sound of bells going off in the casino filtered through the walls. People were smoking as well as drinking, there being no laws against it here. Even though there were apparently vacuum ashtrays on the tables and bar that sucked a lot of the smoke away, it still smelled like cigarettes, with a cigar or pipe thrown in to add their heavier scents. Cigarettes were nasty, but Toni had to confess that she kind of liked the smell of cigars and pipe tobacco.
Toni, dressed now in jeans, running shoes, and a dark blouse, arrived ten minutes early and looked around. She noted the exits, then found a small table next to the wall in the corner. She sat with her back against the wall. A row of curtained portholes ran along the wall at head level, but she arranged her chair so she wasn't sitting in front of one.
A young and pretty waitress in a short black skirt and white shirt was at the table fifteen seconds later.
Toni ordered, and it was only another minute or two before the waitress returned with a tall glass of tomato juice with a celery stick in it. Quick service.
Roberto Santos arrived exactly on the hour. He wore a dark suit, Armani if she was any judge, a black silk scoop-necked T-shirt, and alligator loafers. The shoes alone probably cost more than all the clothes she had packed. He also wore that gold watch, ring, and bracelet she had seen before. A walking Fort Knox.
He walked straight toward her table, as if he had known where she would be.
"Miss Johnson. Good to see you again."
"Mr. Santos."
"Roberto, please. Mr. Santos is my father."
They exchanged smiles.
The waitress was there before Santos settled fully in his chair, and she had a drink on her tray. It was mostly white, with streaks of brown in it. He smiled at the young woman and took the drink. "Thank you, Betty."
The waitress dimpled and almost curtsied, then moved away. Toni had the impression that if Santos said "Jump," Betty would be in the air in a heartbeat, and naked before she came back down.
Santos sipped at the drink. "Ah," he said. He looked at her and answered what he thought was her unasked question: "Coconut milk and Cuban rum," he said. "Very fattening. I have to work extra hard after I have one of these." He raised his glass to her and she held up her tomato juice. It looked like a Bloody Mary. Let him think so.
"To new friends," he said.
"Why not?" she said.
They clinked glasses.
She nursed her juice while he finished his rum and coconut milk and started a second one. He was very smooth, this Santos, not glib, but totally focused on her, appearing entranced by her every word or look, as if she were the most fascinating woman in the world. Which, in her fake identity, she certainly was not. It didn't take a genius to realize he was hoping to get laid.
Well, he was going to be disappointed, unless he could talk Betty the waitress into it, which didn't seem like much of a chore.
When she asked questions about his work, he managed to slip them, like a good boxer does punches, giving her almost no information. He walked around, he said. He watched for trouble. From time to time, he ran errands. Nothing special. Just a job.
Toni smiled and nodded and pretended to be impressed anyhow. He wasn't telling the truth. If something was going on upon this ship, Santos here was a part of it, she was sure of that. But—short of blowing in his ear and going off to his cabin with him—how was she going to find out what he knew?
"You have not had supper yet," he said. "We should go and eat."
Toni realized that extracting herself from this would be more difficult if they had dinner, and she was about to offer an excuse—a sudden unexpected visit from Mr. Red ought to do it—when Santos glanced away from her at somebody who had just entered the bar. He looked back quickly, and he wore a small smile when he did.
Toni looked at the entrance.
There was a strikingly beautiful woman standing there. She looked Asian, maybe Amerasian, Toni couldn't pin her nationality down exactly. She was tall, had black hair past her shoulders, so black it looked like shimmering ink. She wore a red blouse, tucked into a matching skirt that stopped four inches above her knees, hose, and heels. The clothes were snug enough to reveal a svelte hourglass figure, but not so tight as to look trashy. Toni was aware that the conversational background noise suddenly dropped in volume, and a quick glance around showed virtually everybody in the place was looking at the new arrival.
Except Santos. And given his obvious attraction to women, that seemed odd.
"Who is that?" she asked.
He looked at her. "Pardon?"
"In the red, over there."
He looked, pretending not to have seen the woman before. "Ah. That is Jasmine Chance." His accent thickened a bit, so that his next sentence came out, "She work on de boat, too." Not Hispanic, Toni decided. Brazilian, maybe.
The woman, meanwhile, was on the move, and it looked to Toni as if she was heading right toward their table, smiling like the Cheshire cat as she walked, heels clicking in the suddenly quiet bar. Here was a femme fatale.
Sure enough, she approached their table and stopped, still smiling. "Roberto."
"Hello, Missy," he said. He grinned back.
While it was all pleasant and smiley on the surface, Toni immediately felt that charged atmosphere that couples who'd been arguing sometimes had—just before they put on their public faces.
Bad blood here.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend, Roberto?" Another smile, and if ever an expression was fake, this one was. It had crocodile all over it.
Santos held up a lazy hand. "This is Mary Johnson, she is an executive assistant from Falls Church, Virginia. Mary, this is Jasmine Chance. Head of Security. My boss."
"A secretary,"
Chance said, looking at Santos. Contempt practically dripped from her voice.
Toni felt a strong urge to stand up and slap the woman for that patronizing tone, but that wouldn't be in character, not at all.
"There was something you wanted?" he said.
Chance never moved her penetrating gaze from him. "An important security matter came up. Perhaps your friend could excuse us for a moment?"
Toni would have loved to stay and listen to this conversation, but it provided the easy exit she needed. She said, "Oh, of course. I was just about to leave anyway. I'm feeling a bit under the weather."
"I'm so sorry," Chance said, the words absolutely devoid of any sympathy at all.
"No need to leave," Santos said. "I'm sure this won't take long." He wasn't looking at Toni, either, but at Chance.
If looks could kill, anybody walking between these two would have been turned into crispy critters as if bathed by flamethrowers.
Toni stood. "Nice to meet you, Ms. Chance. Thank you for the drink, Roberto. Maybe I'll see you again."
She hurried away, just in time. She had to call Alex, and the window for the call was pretty narrow.
Back in her cabin, she went into the small bathroom and started the shower. That her room might be bugged was unlikely, but it paid to be careful. Once the water was running and making noise, she used her disguised scrambler phone to call Alex, vox only, no visual. There was a long-distance microwave repeater on the ship—they couldn't expect people to be without their phones even out here—but Toni's call went through a military comsat she knew would be footprinting the area for the next ten minutes.
"Hey, babe."
"Hey," she said.
"How's it going?"
"Fine. I haven't seen Jay's guy."
"That's okay, we think he's in Germany. Anything else?"
"I've managed to meet a couple of people who look interesting. You might have Jay run their names and see what he can come up with."
"Shoot."
She gave him Santos and Chance, described them. "Santos says he's with ship security, and that Chance is his boss. They have some kind of thing going between them, if that's any help."
"I'll pass it on to Jay. How are you doing?"
"I'm okay. I miss you and Little Alex."
"We miss you, too. He's fine, Guru is fine, I'm fine. Nothing to worry about here. Listen, I need you to plug whatever you've got, pix, thoughts, diagrams, into a file and upload it to one of the secure mailboxes. Mark it for John's attention."
"I won't be able to do it until the next comsat pass," she said. "Unless you want to risk using the ship's transmitter."
"No, it'll wait a couple hours."
"What's up?"
He explained Jay's theory about CyberNation's train and barge. He finished by saying, "I spoke to the director. Ordinarily, the government would be hesitant to move with so little hard evidence, but the powers-that-be uplev-els are really nervous about this whole situation. There are going to be some strings pulled, some favors called in. The German train and the Japanese barge are going to get unexpected visitors. If what Jay thinks is right, that'll take two of the three computer loci out of action."
"leaving the ship," she said.
"General Howard is working on that," he said.
"You're serious?"
"As a triple bypass. If this nest of electronic snakes is about to strike, we need to stop them before they do. Both Jay and John think they might escalate things from pure software attacks to physical attacks on servers and phone companies. That would really screw things up royally."
"Yes. So, I'm the fifth column agent?"
"No. You leave as scheduled. Finish up, catch the flight back to the Mainland, come home tomorrow."
"Alex—"
"Not open for discussion," he said. "If Net Force's military arm has to flex its muscle, that's who does the job, not the Assistant Deputy Commander."
She knew he was right. She was a mother, she had a toddler at home. She didn't have any business being on a military raid. Still, she felt the excitement at the idea.
"All right," she said.
The signal started to cut in and out, so they finished their conversation and discommed. Toni shut off the shower and went to collect her flatscreen. She would make notes, draw maps, and add in the pictures she had taken, and fold them into a compressed and encoded packet to send to John Howard via the scrambled cell phone the next time the comsat overflew her. One more day on the ship, and she would head home. It felt good to have gotten back into the field. And while she would have liked to stay on board if Net Force mounted an assault, she had other responsibilities now. It was the right thing to do. Although she hated thinking like a grownup. It made her feel… old…
33
In the Air over the Central Atlantic
Keller's jet was more than halfway to Miami when he got the frantic call from the train's SysOp.
German authorities had stopped them for a "health inspection," looking for, they said, a carrier of Lassa Valley Fever. Trash protocols had been instigated as soon as the police had arrived, the SysOp said. The onboard computers would be blank before anybody could download anything, all files burned and unrecoverable. There wouldn't be any sign of anything particularly illegal. Certainly it would seem suspicious, to have that kind of state-of-the-art computer setup on a train, and more suspicious that the machines were all empty, but there would be nothing the German authorities could charge anybody with that would stick. They could haul everybody in, but no evidence, no case, and all the players knew all they had to do was sit tight and CyberNation's lawyers would eventually spring them. Keller and his crew were safe, and they were what made the programs work.
It was scary, but not altogether unexpected when the scrambled call came in from the Japanese SysOp a few minutes later. The barge's computers were history, too.
That left the ship, and if Gridley and his guys knew about the train and the barge, they had to know about the Bon Chance.
Fortunately, the ship was in international waters. If the U.S. could get a Coast Guard cutter or Navy ship to go there—not politically likely, according to Jasmine—the gambling boat's crew would see it coming fifteen miles away. Plenty of time to wipe those computers, too, though that would be a last resort. With Germany and Japan gone, all their work was on the ship. They would have to be damned certain it was endangered before they trashed it. Thousands and thousands of man-hours erased would hurt way too much.
He had better call Jasmine and let her know where he was and what was going on. Better she hear it from him first.
On the Bon Chance
In her office alone, Chance was absolutely pissed off. First there had been Roberto's little routine with that slut of a secretary—she could have strangled him when he looked at her all innocently and said they were just having a friendly drink. Now there were the goddamned hits on the train and barge, with a terrified Keller on his way back here practically peeing in his pants. She wasn't worried that the U.S. Navy was going to come calling as much as she was frustrated over the losses. How had they figured it out? Keller had told her it was impossible.
She was going to have to speak harshly with him about this.
And the schedule was going to have to be moved up, just in case. They only had one arrow left in their quiver now, and it had to be strung and loosed before their target had a chance to move out of the line of fire. She paged Roberto, a priority-one call. If he was interrupted trying to get into the secretary's pants, too bad. She sent half a dozen other pages, also P-l calls. She didn't like the way this felt. Not at all. She did not want it to come unraveled now, not when they were so close to winning. Better to move and win a partial victory than to stand still and lose it all. The clock was ticking, and if time ran out before they launched, it would be all over.
Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia
Howard looked at Julio. "So, what do you think?"
Fernandez shook his head. "It's just simple
enough it might work. Gridley can get the computer stuff done?"
"He says so."
"So if we get approval, we'd go when?"
"Tomorrow. After dark."
Julio shook his head. "Technology. Amazing stuff."
"Put together three squads, mixed male and female. I want thirty troopers, two pilots and copilots, the usual bells and whistles, given the limitations. Air transport, briefings, maps, assignments, I need everything ready to roll by 0600 tomorrow."
"Yes, sir. I'm on the way. Guess we'll see if the new top kick is as good as he thinks he is."
"He can't possibly think he's as good as you thought you were when you were a sergeant."
"Well, sir, that's because he couldn't possibly be that good."
Howard smiled.
After Julio had left, he looked at the computer images floating in the air above his conference table. The best plans were the simple ones, he knew, but maybe this one was too simple.
Only one way to find out.
On the Bon Chance
Santos didn't like being hurried. Once he set his mind to a plan, he liked to have it flow naturally. Sometimes, you had to adjust to the unexpected, but this new bug up Missy's butt was too much, too quick. He'd tried to tell her, but she wasn't having any of it. Still pissed at him for the secretary.
Too bad, that. This speeded-up schedule was going to put a crimp in his seduction. The secretary was as good as on her back when Missy came in, all Ice Bitch, and started trying to pull his chain. She was gonna pay. It was just one more coin it was gonna cost her.
Meanwhile, he had to get his teams ready to move. Missy wanted it fast. Tomorrow, if possible, the day after at the latest. Too soon—but what could you do? He didn't want to miss the action.
Toni wandered around, taking more pictures, but feeling a sense of impending something. As the day wound down, nothing new happened she needed to think about. No sign of Santos, so maybe his boss had put the fear of God into him.
She briefly considered trying to get onto the private decks. Even went so far as to seem to get lost and wind up at one of the entrances to one such deck. But the electronic card reader would need a key, and as she started back the way she'd come, the door opened and revealed a couple of men standing on the other side, wearing photographer's sleeveless vests over their shirts, which in this kind of climate meant they were using the vests to cover pistols tucked into their belts—they certainly weren't cold.
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