CyberNation

by Tom Clancy , Steve Pieczenik, Steve Perry

  One more small piece of circumstantial evidence, the armed guards. Of course, maybe they were there to guard a vault room, where the gambling winnings were kept?

  Not likely. Most of what Toni had seen was cashless, all done on credit exchanges. You didn't need guards for that.

  No, she would pack up and catch a late-afternoon helicopter out, head home. Earlier, she had heard somebody say it was supposed to rain tonight or tomorrow, a little tropical depression, not a hurricane or anything, but some wind and weather. She would just as soon be gone if that was going to happen—she didn't like to fly in the rain. She'd known some people who had been on a jet that tried to take off in a typhoon once. The jet had crashed and burned, and the folks she knew had been lucky to survive. Bad weather and flying didn't go together in Toni's book.

  Le Boy, South Zone Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  Jay looked around, and felt a little uncomfortable. The club was noisy, the music playing very loud, lights flashing, and people dancing. Most of the people dancing were men, there were only a handful of women, and some of them looked pretty mannish, too.

  He turned back to his virtual beer. According to what he had learned, Le Boy was the biggest gay night club in the city. You kinda had to expect to see a lot of men, now, didn't you?

  A tall, well-built bodybuilder in a pair of skin-tight leather pants and a tank top arrived at the bar to Jay's left and flashed him a big, toothy smile. "Com lisenga" he said, "voce e ativo? O passivo?"

  Jay tapped the tiny translator hidden in his right ear, and the Portuguese the man had spoken was translated into English: "Excuse me, are you a top or a bottom?"

  Even in VR, Jay flushed. "I'm waiting for a friend," he subvocalized. The translator turned the reply into Portuguese.

  The buffed bodybuilder—they called them "barbies" here, Jay recalled from his research—kept smiling. "I could be your friend," the translator said in Jay's ear.

  "Maybe," Jay said. "Do you know a man named Roberto Santos?"

  His would-be friend's face went dark. "Bichal" he said.

  Jay didn't need the translator for that one.

  "He is a friend of yours?" the barbie said, his voice dangerous.

  "No. An enemy."

  The man nodded. "He is a bastard among bastards, a son of a whore, a fucker of his sister and grandmother!" He reached into his mouth and tugged. A partial dental plate came out—his top four front teeth were false. The barbie waved the plate at Jay. "He did this to me!" He put the plate back in.

  Jay made sympathetic noises. "Tell me about him."

  The barbie needed no more prompting. "He cruises the gay scene, though he is not gay. He sometimes goes into the—the dark rooms, and lets some poor boy give him oral sex. Then he beats him. He has hurt other of my friends. He always picks big men, strong men. He is a fighter, his fists are like iron. He enjoys hitting. He laughs while he does it."

  "Why haven't the police arrested him? Has no one complained?"

  The barbie nodded. "Oh, yes, many have complained. The police only laugh and shake their heads when they hear his name. He is protected. So protected that once he beat a man so bad the man died, and still the police did nothing. Santos is a devil."

  Interesting. Jay had what he came here for. Time to move on.

  School of Business University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, China

  Professor Wang, a forty-five-ish woman with a pageboy haircut and a gray business suit so severe it made her look like a business nun, said, "Oh, yes, I remember her."

  They were in a business library, the air conditioning blasting away. Jay nodded. "Anything you'd feel comfortable in saying about her?"

  Wang smiled. "The words comfortable and Jasmine Chance don't belong in the same sentence. There's a story the students and staff used to pass around. Once, Jasmine was visiting the zoo, and there was a terrible earthquake. Some of the animals got loose. A pair of man-eating tigers escaped from their cage. Free and hungry, the tigers charged a group of school children. At the last second, Jasmine Chance stepped in between the hungry tigers and their prey. The tigers took one look at her, turned tail, and ran back to their cages in terror."

  Jay chuckled politely.

  "That's not the good part," Wang said. "The good part is, she charged the parents HK$400 each for saving their children."

  "That sounds… harsh."

  "Harsh? Let me tell you something I know is true. Jasmine wanted to be first in her class. But she was not doing well in one subject—and for her, not doing well was being second in her grades, only a high A instead of the highest one. So she seduced the teacher, a middle-aged man with a wife, four children, and three grandchildren. She got her first place. When the professor said he would leave his wife for her, she laughed at him. In great shame over what he had done and her refusal to accept him, he committed suicide. When somebody told Jasmine what had happened, she shrugged. 'Too bad,' she said. That woman is as moral as a shark. You don't ever want to get between her and what she wants." Jay nodded. Even more interesting.

  Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

  "So there you have it, boss. CyberNation has themselves a gay basher who apparently got away with at least one murder, and a woman who will do anything to accomplish her goals. I don't have a lot of other history on them, but Santos has been essentially a high-class knee-breaker for a couple of organizations, and Chance has risen up a couple of corporate ladders so fast she seemed to have wings. Add them into the mix, it just keeps getting thicker and thicker. Pretty soon, we have the whole cake."

  "We're missing a couple of ingredients yet," Michaels said. "Your friend Keller wasn't on the train; neither were the others you listed who were supposed to be there."

  Jay cursed.

  "Yes, indeed. The German government is checking airports and other trains, but it appears he has flown the coop."

  Jay cursed again.

  "I believe you said that."

  Jay shook his head. "Yeah. So, what now?"

  "I am expecting a call from the director sometime in the next five minutes. If her clout is enough, we will be sending visitors to the Bon Chance in the very near future."

  "I bet she named it after herself," Jay said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "The boat." He blew out a sigh. "Where is Toni?"

  He looked at his watch. "She should be catching a helicopter from the ship about now. In fact, if you can access the passenger lists, I'd appreciate knowing which flight she is on."

  "No problem. Mary Johnson."

  Before Michaels could say anything else, the com chimed. His secretary said, "The director is on line one."

  Michaels reached for the receiver, and shooed Jay out with a wave as he picked it up. Jay stood, but moved very slowly toward the door.

  "Hello?"

  "Commander. We have a 'go.' You better be right about this."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said.

  Jay raised an eyebrow from the doorway. Michaels nodded at him and raised one hand in a thumb''s-up gesture.

  "Yes!" Jay said in a stage whisper. He made a fist and pumped it.

  Michaels wished he felt so positive.

  34

  On the Bon Chance

  Toni waited in line for the shuttle boat. The sky had gone gray, and while it wasn't raining yet, the wind had picked up and the southeasterly breeze felt damp. There was a full load of departing passengers waiting. Apparently more than a few people were worried about the weather, and didn't want to be on a ship ninety miles away from land if it got nasty.

  The boat from the helicopter barge arrived and tied up at the base of the ramp, and after a few seconds, new arrivals climbed the stairs or wheelchair ramp onto the ship.

  She hoped they had all come to gamble, because they surely weren't going to get much sun—

  Hold on—

  Coming up the ramp was a face she recognized. It took a second for her to realize why.

  Keller. From the picture she'd seen. This was Jay's guy!

&n
bsp; What was he doing here? He was supposed to be in

  Germany, wasn't he? This must mean something.

  As soon as he'd passed, Toni left the shuttle boat line, as if she had suddenly remembered that she had forgotten something. The gap she left filled instantly. She glanced at her watch. The comsat wasn't due for another forty-five minutes. Could she risk calling Alex on the ship's phones? She could keep it innocuous—Hey, you know that picture you gave me? Well, I thought I had lost it, but I found it after all, right here on the ship.

  Anybody who didn't know who she was could hardly tell what she was talking about from that, could they?

  Not likely. But if the ship's phones were tapped, and that would be easy enough to do since they were owned and maintained by CyberNation, they might wonder why a secretary from Falls Church was calling somebody at Net Force headquarters. Or maybe they might be even able to recognize Alex's name on the home phone or his virgil. And even if her scrambler kept them from hearing anything other than noise, maybe they would wonder what a secretary was doing with a scrambled phone.

  Any of those would be bad.

  No, she would wait until the next footprint so she could call on the secure line. There were still a dozen more copters leaving this evening, and she needed to get a better look at this guy, maybe even see where he went or who he might talk to—

  As if some bored deity had been listening, Toni suddenly saw Jasmine Chance, now dressed in a black jumpsuit and sandals, step into view ahead. Toni turned away and put a hand up to block her face from view.

  Keller went straight to her, and while she couldn't overhear his conversation, he was obviously pretty excited from the way he waved his hands around.

  Well, well. What did this mean?

  Alex would surely want to know about this. Yes, she could call him from the Mainland, or even from the shuttle copter, but there was no hurry, was there? Maybe she could find out something more before she had to leave.

  In the Air near Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  The old 727's rebuilt engines were reassuring in their smooth, dependable drone. They were only a few minutes out now, and Julio was going over the checklist a final time as they began their descent into Fort Lauderdale.

  "Our boy Mr. Gridley here came through." Julio smiled at Jay, who sat across the aisle. "First squad and half of second squad will be on Bird A; third squad and the other half of second on Bird B."

  Howard nodded. Next to him sat Commander Michaels. Michaels hadn't planned to come along at all, even to sit onshore, but he hadn't heard from Toni, who was supposed to have left the ship by now. According to Jay, Mary Johnson had not gotten on any of the shuttle copters for the Mainland yet. Maybe the weather had more people leaving than normal, delaying the flights, but Michaels was worried enough to go along. Howard didn't blame him. He knew how he'd feel if it was his wife there.

  "Weather radar shows an ugly set of heavy showers moving from the southeast toward the target, the main body of which will have arrived by 2100—we're gonna get wet."

  "I'll be sure to bring my umbrella," Howard said.

  "Wind'll just turn it inside out, sir. Steady breeze will be almost thirty knots, gusting to forty."

  "Go on."

  "Troops all have Class III spider silk vests for armor—that's the best we can do, given the scenario—so nobody is real bulletproof. Augmented-LOSIR corns will be set on opchan Gamma, and we carry sidearms and subguns, plus the usual assortment of puke gas, flashbangs, and all like that, packed away in our luggage. Everybody knows what he or she is supposed to do."

  Howard nodded.

  The seat belt light and audible warning went on.

  Julio said, "So, to condense things a little, we get there, take over before anybody knows what is going on, and capture the computers before they can trash 'em. Then our computer wizard here waltzes in and collects the evidence, the bad guys all go to prison, and everybody lives happily ever after."

  It won't be that easy, Howard knew. It never is.

  The jet started to descend; he could feel the pressure in his ears change.

  "No word from Toni yet?" he said.

  Michaels looked worried. "No. She should have called by now."

  On the Bon Chance

  Toni had a problem. Her room was no longer available, she had checked out, and she didn't want to be wandering around the ship towing her suitcase. That made it kind of hard to skulk, when the wheels of your little carry-on were clacking over every imperfection in the floor. So when Keller went to a cabin, she ducked into a public toilet nearby, put her suitcase on the commode in an empty stall, locked the door, and climbed out over the top of the stall's door. It would have been smarter to have found a concierge and checked the bag, but she didn't want to get too far away from Keller, in case he came out.

  He did come out, not ten minutes later, and she stayed far enough back so he didn't seem to notice her. This was working out all right.

  He went straight to one of the guarded entrances to the private decks, and she couldn't follow him in there.

  Okay. He was here, Alex needed that information, and that might be all she was gonna get. It was what it was.

  When she went back to get her suitcase, it was gone. And her scrambled cell phone and flatscreen were in the suitcase.

  This was not good. Not good at all.

  Probably housekeeping had the bag. Somebody had reported the stall locked, a janitor had come by, found the bag. Nothing sinister about it. She had her wallet and ID, she could just go and find housekeeping and pick it up.

  Maybe. Or maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

  She sat in the stall and thought about the situation. If Alex and the Net Force teams were going to move on the ship, she didn't want to do anything that might possibly cause them problems. So making the phone call without her coded phone was out.

  If they did show up here, chances were good they'd catch Keller—she could tell them he was here when she saw them. It wasn't as if she was the only civilian on the ship, now was it? There were probably a couple thousand tourists here—she wouldn't be in any more danger than any of them. Less, because she knew there might be a reason to keep her head down, and because she had some skill at staying out of harm's way.

  If the suitcase was in the lost-and-found waiting to be claimed, no problem. But if they had opened it, seen who it belonged to, and wondered why it had been sitting in an empty, locked toilet stall, that might make them curious. It would surely make her curious if she were running security on a ship. Once they saw it wasn't a bomb, they might start to ask themselves other questions: Why on Earth would anybody leave their luggage there? What possible reason could there be?

  The flatscreen was clean, no damaging files on it; she'd run the burn program. The cell phone was iffy. It looked fine, just another commercial model, tens of thousands of them around. There weren't any numbers programmed into it, and they'd have to be real inquisitive to take it apart and discover there was hardware and software built in that scrambled calls, coming or going.

  But—just for the sake of argument—suppose they did that? Mary Johnson goes toddling in to collect her missing bag, and security—in the form of Jasmine Chance, who obviously bore Ms. Mary no love whatsoever for moving in on her Roberto real estate—decides to have a long chat with her? International waters, no constitutional rights, that would be, well… bad.

  That word seemed to be cropping up a whole lot in the last few minutes.

  Okay, she decided, that was what she would do. She would go to ground, find a hidey-hole, and stay there, see if Alex showed up. If so, good. If not, she'd worry about that when she got there.

  Where to hide?

  She had an idea. Probably the last place they'd look if they decided they needed to find her.

  Chance called Santos into her office. He came in, a slow stroll, as if he had all the time in the world. He was like a big tomcat, coming and going as he pleased, not going to hurry for anything.

  She
wanted to slap him.

  "Okay," she said, "whatever problems you and I are having, they have to go on hold now. We need to get this done, and we can sort the rest of it out later."

  He shrugged. "Problems? What problems?"

  Now she really wanted to slap him. Instead, she smiled. Fine. He'd pay for all this later. He truly would.

  Santos looked at his watch. He had an hour and a half before he needed to leave. Plenty of time, since he was all packed, and since he could take the private launch to the copter platform without waiting for the regular boat. Maybe he should go and find that secretary? Fifteen minutes would be more than enough time to relax them both, no? Time enough for a shower afterward.

  Why not?

  He headed for the Security Cam Center. If she was still on board, she would have passed in front of a glass eye recently. The computer system that ran the surveillance gear couldn't search for a particular person, but it could, within limits, hunt for kinds of people. Women, brunettes, a certain size, smaller or larger. All you had to do was tell it what you wanted. Well. Generally. The computer probably wouldn't appreciate what he really wanted, and it couldn't see that as long as she had her clothes on anyway.

  He smiled.

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  Michaels stood in line behind Lieutenant Fernandez, who was behind Jay. General Howard was already on board the Sikorsky. They all wore touristy civilian clothes, and carried assorted sizes and shapes of luggage. The bags were a little heavier than what most tourists would be bringing, but there weren't any metal detectors to pass through before boarding the choppers, so that didn't matter.

  Everybody in the passenger line was from Net Force. At a different hotel helipad ten minutes away, another group of Net Force troopers stood in a similar line. Jay had booked them all into two flights, making sure nobody else would be on those particular craft but them. Well, except for the copter crews, and they weren't going to be a problem, the general had assured him. They didn't know the passengers were anything other than folks going to gamble. If something unforeseen happened, John had his own pilots who could take over.