Night Moves (1999)

by Tom - Net Force 03 Clancy

  Peel nodded. "You have the recording?"

  "Right here."

  Huard tendered an infoball the size of a marble.

  Peel slotted the infoball into the computer's reader and clicked it on. The holographic projection appeared at one-sixth scale over Peel's desk. The image of Ruzhyo from the minicam in Huard's belt buckle was remarkably sharp and stable. Ought to be, for what they'd paid for the bloody camera. The former Spetsnaz agent was across the street, his image blocked by passing vehicles as Huard started toward him.

  "Computer, magnification times two."

  The holoproj blinked and doubled in size. Ruzhyo stood on the street corner, staring into space. Yes, well, he did look distracted--hello?

  "Computer, stop play. Rewind fifty frames, replay, magnification times three."

  Huard, still at a modified parade rest, frowned. "Sir?"

  "Watch, Huard. And learn."

  The image blinked and began again, larger, a closer view of Ruzhyo. There. Just as the image waggled a little--that would be Huard stepping from the curb--Ruzhyo's eyes shifted.

  Peel grinned. "There's where he spotted you, Corporal."

  "Sir?"

  "He's just seen you across the street. And without moving his head too much, he's checking out his surroundings. Looking for other players."

  Huard shook his head. "I don't see it, sir."

  "No, of course not. Computer, normal-size image."

  The view shifted, just as Ruzhyo put his hand into his pocket.

  Peel said, "He's got a weapon in his pocket. Knife, or maybe one of the small South American keychain pistols."

  "How can you tell that? Sir."

  "Because that's what I'd have done if I saw you coming toward me across the street. If you had made any sudden moves once you got there, he would have cut your throat or put a couple of small-caliber bullets into you."

  "I was armed, sir."

  "Huard, this man was killing people when you were still in short pants. That you were unaware of him seeing you and preparing for your arrival is hardly unexpected. Had you reached for your pistol, I expect we wouldn't be having this conversation."

  Huard didn't believe him, but he said, "If you say so, sir."

  Peel grinned. Youth was so wasted on the young. They thought they were going to live forever; it was amazing that as many of them lived as long as they did. If Huard survived, someday he might understand.

  "That's all, then. Carry on."

  "Sir." Huard came to attention, did an about face, and left the building.

  "Computer, replay sequence."

  The machine obeyed. Peel watched. He did enjoy watching a real professional at work. He was looking forward to seeing Ruzhyo again. Good men were hard to find.

  23

  Sunday, April 10th

  London, England

  Toni didn't have any spare time, not with the crisis as dramatic as it was, but she'd realized long ago that if she didn't exercise, she wouldn't be much good in the middle of a high-stress environment. She had to have a valve to bleed off the pressure, and if she went a day or two without doing silat, or at least some serious stretching, she got cranky and stupid. So when her days got really busy, when things started going to hell in a handbasket and there simply wasn't time to work out, she stole the minutes from elsewhere. Sometimes it was a skipped lunch, sometimes dinner. Sometimes, it was sleep. She could miss a meal or an hour of shut-eye and still function, but without exercise, she was surly and out of sorts. She made dumb mistakes, growled at people, couldn't focus or get herself centered.

  So, this morning, the workout was going to have to come off the top. Not yet five A.M. and she was up, washing her face, the bathroom door closed so as not to wake Alex, dressing in sweats for a trip to the hotel's gym. True, it wouldn't be the best workout this early, but anything was better than nothing. It wasn't as if she wanted to be up before dawn and breaking a sweat, it was a need. An addiction, maybe, but it was putting money in the bank: Today's deposit might not be as big as she'd like, but at least there would be something to draw on later if she needed it. And given how things were going, she would need it. So much for their vacation.

  But in truth, she was a little excited. Carl Stewart was going to meet her in the hotel's gym. When she'd gone by his school and explained to him that her job was going to keep her from his class in the evenings, he'd offered to meet her for private sessions, and it turned out he was an early riser.

  She'd laughed at that. "Ah. One of those people who run around throwing open windows, breathing deep the air, and smiling at the sunrise?"

  "God, no," he'd said. "Just a slave to my internal clock. I'm a wren, been that way all my life. Up at four, to bed by nine or ten, no help for it. I have learned to make the best of it. I usually get my workout done in the morning, though. Not a lot else one can do when most of the rest of the world is still beddy-bye."

  "Well, in that case, I'd love to train with you."

  "There's a decent gym in your hotel," he'd said. "Save you a taxi ride to the school."

  "And cost you one," she'd said.

  "Not really. I have a car. And it's not all that far from where I live. I have a flat in Knightsbridge."

  "Knightsbridge? That's a pretty nice area, isn't it? We drove through there. By Hyde Park?"

  He looked embarrassed. "Yes, well, my parents got a bit of an inheritance from my grandfather on my mother's side, and they have a small family business that does all right."

  As she headed for the hotel's gym through the quiet and empty hall, Toni grinned to herself. Before the computers had gone south, she'd checked out the real estate in the area called Knightsbridge. Flats went for the equivalent of half a million U.S. dollars. Houses started around three million and went up. There was a four-bedroom semidetached house--what they called a double condo in the States--for seven million. And offers had been made on most of the listings already.

  Apparently the Stewart family business was doing all right indeed.

  Carl was waiting in the gym, which was in itself interesting, since you supposedly needed an electronic keycard to be admitted. Toni inserted her own card into the lock and went through the heavy glass doors. They were the only two people there.

  "Good morning," he said. He seemed too awake and cheerful for this hour.

  "Morning."

  He was warming up and stretching, and she joined him. The gym had several weight-stack machines, a stair-stepper, an elliptical walker, and a treadmill, all of which were equipped with the latest VR interfaces. There was an aerobics area in front of a mirrored wall opposite, a twelve-by-twelve-foot square. No mats, but the carpet was padded enough, and there was more than enough room for two people to practice silat.

  Ten minutes later, they were ready to begin. "Shall we do djurus for a few minutes?" he asked.

  She nodded. That was how she always began her practice. The short dances were the basis for everything else. All of the combat moves could be found in the djurus, if you knew how to look.

  For a long time, Toni had practiced the Bukti dances, the eight basic and slimmed-down djurus, before she began the Serak moves; lately, however, she had been skipping straight ahead to the parent art. Bukti Negara was still used in a lot of places as a kind of test, to see if a student was serious about training. If, after a couple of years practicing the simpler stuff, a student was still hanging around, then she could be introduced to the more complex and demanding forms. Serak, so the story went, had been invented by a man of the same name in Indonesia. Serak, or Sera, also known as Ba Pak--The Wise--was Javanese and had been a formidable fighter, despite having only one arm and a clubfoot. That the man could function at all was noteworthy; that he had developed a martial art that made him equal or better as a fighter against other trained men who had all their limbs was truly amazing.

  After ten minutes of djurus, Carl stopped. "Want to work some combinations?"

  "Sure."

  Once again, Toni thrilled to the kno
wledge that Carl was a superior player. None of her attacks and counterattacks got through. He blocked them effortlessly, it seemed to her, always keeping the centerline. She had to work hard to keep his second and third series of counterpunches and kicks from landing, especially the sneaky rising punch, a strike that wanted to come under a high-line defense but over the low-line block. She managed to stop him from connecting solidly with her, but he brushed her chest once, and another time tapped her on the chin. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough for her to realize he could have tagged her if he'd wanted.

  This was great. Just what she needed.

  He was showing her a take-down he liked, they were pressed together, her groin against his thigh, his right hand on her butt, levering for a hip sweep, when she caught a glimpse of somebody watching them from the hall. She didn't have time to look as Carl completed the throw, taking out her leg and dropping her to the carpet, following up with a kick and punch.

  When she got to her feet, the watcher in the hall was gone. Probably a bellboy delivering somebody's breakfast.

  "Again?" Carl asked.

  "Yes." She grinned. This was really great.

  She stepped in with a punch.

  Alex felt a sour pain in his belly, a churning, twisted feeling. He had felt it before and he knew it for what it was: jealousy. He had watched them together in the workout room, Toni and the English silat instructor, seen them glued together, the man's hand on her ass. Yeah, sure, it was part of the deal, he knew enough of the art to know that, but still it bothered him as he hurried down the hall toward their room. She hadn't seen him, and he didn't want her to know he'd been there. Normally, he'd have been asleep at this hour, but he'd woken up as she shut the door on her way out and couldn't drift back off. So he'd gotten up, thrown on some clothes, and gone to watch them work out. Maybe he could learn something, he'd figured.

  Yeah, right. He'd learned how to feel up somebody's butt.

  He knew he was being unreasonable. It wasn't the man's hands on Toni that bothered him as much as how much she was obviously enjoying herself. Probably it was just the silat, being able to work out with a guy as good as Stewart was. Probably. But he couldn't get rid of a nagging worry: What if it was more? He and Toni hadn't been getting along that well in the last couple of weeks, that business about not sending her on assignment and all. Maybe she was interested in the big Englishman in some way other than as a sparring partner?

  Yeah, okay, she said she loved him. But Michaels's ex-wife had said that, too. Her reasons for the divorce had to do with his career, with him being gone all the time, not there for her or their daughter, but she had once loved him and now she didn't. Maybe she even hated him, after he punched out her new boyfriend.

  He reached his room, carded the lock, stepped inside.

  He didn't need this, no way, no how, not given the other crap falling from the sky right now. Why couldn't life be simple? Why was it that every time things seemed to be rolling along smoothly, something always popped up in the road ahead, puncturing tires, sending his happy trip skidding and slewing off the pavement?

  And why did it always have to be so damned emotional?

  The way he'd been raised, a man didn't walk around with his heart on his sleeve, whining and blubbering about his problems. His father had been career Army, and Michaels had never once seen the old man cry, not even when his dog had been run over. The old man hadn't had a lot of deep conversations with his son, but one of the deepest had been about what men did and did not do: You took a hit, you sucked it up and you kept going. You never let anybody know they'd gotten to you. If it's killing you, you smile. That keeps your enemy off balance.

  As an educated man raised in a society where emotions other than laughter or anger were now okay for men, Michaels knew he didn't need to hold himself so tight, that it was no sin to feel things, but those old tapes from his childhood were hard to get past. Knowing it was okay to let go intellectually was not the same as being able to actually do it.

  It wasn't just his career that had killed his marriage. That don't-show-emotions lesson had been part of the problem with his ex-wife, he knew. And now it seemed to be part of the problem with Toni.

  What to do about it?

  He shook his head. He couldn't deal with this now. He had a job, a nut with some magical computer gear killing people, bringing the world more grief. He had to deal with his problems the way the samurai warrior Musashi had spoken of it: When faced with ten thousand, you fight them one at a time--the most dangerous ones first.

  Of course you need to be pretty damned quick to beat ten thousand, and best he get back to it right now. His emotional life would just have to wait.

  He left a note for Toni, then called for a cab to take him to MI-6.

  24

  Sunday, April 10th

  Washington, D.C.

  It was a beautiful, sunny morning, no wind, a perfect day to throw. Tyrone glanced at his watch. Ten A.M. Where was Nadine? She was supposed to meet him at the soccer field at--wait, there she was, coming around the gym, a backpack slung over one shoulder. She saw him, grinned, and waved.

  "Hey, Tyrone!"

  He waved back.

  There were a couple of guys practicing at the goal on the south end of the field, so they headed for the north goal, then unpacked their gear. Tyrone had brought four of his favorite 'rangs, along with pixie dust and his timer; Nadine had three 'rangs, some finger dip wind-check, and a stopwatch.

  The watch was odd-looking. It was an analog, round, big, silvery.

  "Wow, where'd you get that?"

  "My dad bought it on a trip to Russia," she said. "You hit this button to start it, same button to stop, the big sweep hand gives you seconds, the little inner dial gives you minutes. Doesn't use batteries."

  She handed it to him and he looked at it.

  "Solar-powered?" He didn't see a cell.

  "No, an internal wind-up spring. Good for, like, hours, then you wind it again."

  "Exemplary. I got a radio like that, you crank it, it plays for an hour, never needs to be charged."

  "My dad says we could save a lot of dump space for batteries if we used more springs and gravity-powered devices," she said.

  "Yeah. It's the next surge."

  They warmed up, rolled their shoulders and waved their arms back and forth, shook out their hands, something Tyrone had learned from watching the older throwers. There were special stretching exercises, too, to keep the muscles of the shoulders and back limber. He'd seen articles on the net about serious boomerangers who had torn ligaments and stuff by throwing too hard without warming up first, and he didn't want to put himself out of commission that way. Of course, most of the guys who hurt themselves were old--in their twenties and thirties.

  Nadine went to take a few practice throws, and he watched her carefully. She was in good shape--you could see that vein in her upper arm--and she had excellent form when she threw, she used her whole body and not just her arm, what you were supposed to do. You could learn a lot watching somebody good work.

  They'd been throwing for about half an hour, getting to the point where they could do some serious MTA stuff, when Tyrone saw three or four people watching them from across the field, standing in the shade of a sycamore tree by the fence. That happened a lot when he was throwing, and usually he didn't pay much attention, since if you took your gaze off your 'rang for a second, it might disappear. He knew too many guys who had lost a bright orange boomerang on a newly trimmed field, poof, just vanished. Sometimes they angled in and somehow managed to bury themselves in the grass just enough so you couldn't see them; sometimes they just ... vanished. He had lost a red quad-blade once on a golf course where the grass was like half a centimeter high, no way, but there it was.

  It took only one quick look to see that one of the watchers was Belladonna Wright.

  He jerked his gaze back to his 'rang, found it floating toward him about thirty meters out, and stayed with it until it came close enough to catch.
He managed to trap the 'rang without dropping it, but he was rattled.

  Though he was trying hard not to look at Bella, Nadine picked up on it.

  "Well, well. Looks like that old fire might not be out after all, hey, Ty?"

  "What?"

  "You and sweetie pie over there under the tree. You kinda acted like you didn't know her real well, but from what I hear, you and she spent some quality time together."

  "So what if we did?"

  "Nothing, nothing, not my business. I just hate to see you get cooked, is all."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Come on, Tyrone, gimme a bye here. Pretties like that go through guys like toilet paper. Use 'em, flush 'em, there's plenty more where the last one came from.

  She's got a string of guys waiting to run around behind her and kiss the ground she walks on, just to enjoy the view from there."

  "Yeah? How would you know that?"

  Nadine stared at the ground. "You hear stuff."

  "Anything else you hear?"

  "I'm not trying to start a fight."

  "Could have fooled me."

  She looked up, hefted her MTA. "I came to practice. You interested in that? Or you want to wait for Miss America to crook her finger so you can go running?"

  "I don't go running. For your information, it was my idea to break up with Bella." Well, that wasn't strictly true, but he had opened the conversation that led to it. And when given the choice of being one of her string, he had told her he wasn't interested. Sort of.

  "Good for you. You gonna throw?"

  Tyrone glanced at Bella, then back at Nadine. "Yeah, I'm gonna throw. Get ready to start your watch, I'm gonna hang you out to dry."

  "In your dreams."

  She flashed him a small grin, and he returned it, but even as he did, he wondered about what she had said. What if Bella crooked her finger? If she waved him over, told him she wanted him to drop by and sit on her couch and kiss him like she had kissed him before, would he go running?