Night Moves (1999)

by Tom - Net Force 03 Clancy

  "Handle unscrews here.... Inside, you'll notice the back of the cylinder. It's a revolver, you see."

  Ruzhyo looked at the five small holes in the tiny cylinder inside the umbrella shaft. The firing pin and rest of the action was in the removed J-section. Ingenious.

  "One puts the shells in like so, threads the handle back on until it locks, thus. Trigger unfolds from the handle, thus, use this little notch, much like a penknife blade."

  He used his thumbnail to bring the flush-mounted lever out.

  "It is double-action only, of course, and there aren't any sights, but a man proficient with firearms can point-shoot it rather well. Barrel is rifled steel, as good as most commercial long arms. The end cap is a soft, rubbery material, no impediment to the bullet if you don't have time to remove it, and actually offers a bit of sound-damping, though it must be replaced after several shots. The weapon comes with spare end caps, of course."

  Ruzhyo took the disguised carbine, hefted it. Normally, he did not like to go about armed if he did not specifically need a weapon. This was not a normal time.

  "You have fired it?"

  "I have."

  "And is there a place where I can test it?"

  O'Donnell nodded, approving. "That box over there. It's full of baffles and has a steel backstop." He wasn't offended. Only a fool would trust his life to a weapon he had not personally tested to see if it would work.

  "Ammunition?"

  "I have some Stingers, solids and hollow-points."

  "Excellent," he said. "How much?"

  "Two thousand."

  "Done."

  O'Donnell smiled.

  The tail was across the street in a sandwich shop, watching through the somewhat foggy window. A young man, hair cut short, who could have been Huard's brother from his general look. The rain was still coming down, so Ruzhyo held his newly acquired and fully loaded short carbine up and utilized the secondary function. The black silk canopy expanded crisply on its titanium struts and locked into place. The thing had fired five rounds without any problem. It worked fine as an umbrella, too. A wonderful and deadly toy. Most people did not realize that an ultra-high-velocity .22 solid bullet fired from a long barrel would punch right through standard police-issue class II Kevlar body armor. Police agencies understandably did not like to talk about such things.

  Ruzhyo smiled to himself as he walked away from the shop.

  Peel would get him weapons, of course, but it was much better to have a hidden trump, just in case.

  Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

  26

  Sunday, April 10th

  Somewhere in the British Raj, India

  The heat and dampness were oppressive, and the sour odor of the tiger's spoor permeated the leaden air. He was close; the tiger and the scent of his scat were mixed in with the stink of Jay's own fear.

  Jay and his native guide followed the footprints across an open stretch of ground, easily seen now in the soft dirt. No doubt of it, no way to mistake the trail. It led across the open stretch into a dense patch of brush: fatboled trees, short, thick bushes, a bordering stand of big bamboo.

  Jay shifted his sweaty grip on the Streetsweeper, took a long and ragged deep breath, and exhaled slowly. The tiger had gone into that thicket, and if Jay wanted it, he was going to have to go in after it. The prospect filled him with a dread as cold as a bucket of liquid nitrogen, a fright bordering on the edge of stark, gibbering terror.

  Jay stopped walking. What he wanted to do was bail from this scenario, pull off his gear, and shut down his computer. He wanted to find a South Sea island somewhere in Real Time, to go there and lie in the sunshine on an empty beach for a month, to do nothing but bake and drink something cold with rum and coconut in it. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was traipse into that fecund wall of jungle ahead, stalking the thing that had crashed his wetware and put the fear of death into his mind. And if he did it, it might well be the last thing he ever did.

  But he had to go. If he didn't, he might as well hang it up as a player; if he didn't find and destroy this beast, he was as good as brain-dead.

  He took another deep breath and let it out. "Let's go," he said.

  They were almost to the wood when his native guide said, "Sahib! Behind us!"

  Jay spun and saw the tiger charging them, impossibly fast.

  He had maybe half a second, and he knew it wouldn't be enough. "Bail!" he screamed.

  Sunday, April 10th

  Washington, D.C.

  Jay fell out of VR into his apartment, heart pounding, the panic filling him. The tiger! The tiger! He couldn't even breathe.

  At his core, he knew he had to go back before it got away. He had to go back. He wanted to scream, to cry, to run, anything but what he had to do.

  Instead, he said, "Resume!"

  Sunday, April 10th

  Somewhere in the British Raj, India

  Jay arrived in time to see the huge tiger sinking its terrible fangs into his detection program--the native guide--mangling it into a bloody ruin.

  Poor Mowgli.

  Jay snapped the shotgun up as the tiger realized he had returned. The great beast coughed, roared, and spun to face him. No hesitation, it charged--

  --Jay stood his ground, aimed--

  --fifty feet away, forty feet, thirty--

  --he squeezed the trigger. The shotgun bucked against his shoulder, lifted from the recoil. He fired again, too fast, too high--

  --but the first blast hit the charging monster. It screamed in surprise and pain, sheared off, and ran for the forest. Jay saw blood on one of the tiger's shoulders as it wheeled around and ran.

  He had hit it! It was fleeing! It wasn't invincible!

  A surge of triumph washed his fear away. Jay had faced it down, shot it, driven it off!

  The victory was short-lived, though.

  Now what he had was a wounded man-eater hiding in the bush. That wasn't going to make things any easier.

  That didn't matter. He had to go after it, and he didn't have time to call up another warning program. He had to go now!

  Jay ran for the jungle.

  Sunday, April 10th

  The Yews, Sussex, England

  Peel stood by the greenhouse, wishing he had a cigarette. He had quit smoking years ago, a matter of discipline more than anything, a test of his will. Everybody knew it was bad for you, but as a soldier, he had always expected he would die in the field somewhere; he didn't expect to live long enough for the fags to get him. Besides, his grandfather on his mother's side had smoked two packs a day for almost seventy years, and had died at ninety-four from injuries sustained in a fall, so a lot of it was genetics. Drank whiskey every day right until the end, too. No, Peel had stopped because he wanted to prove to himself that he could. What was the old joke? Quitting smoking is easy, hell, I've done it a dozen times.

  The rain had stopped; there was a patch of clear sky directly overhead, and the gathering darkness sported a few stars. It was quiet, calm, with no signs of any problems from his troops around the estate. Goswell had called him in for a visit; they'd had a pleasant drink. There was all that money sitting in a bank. Bascomb-Coombs was about his business, and if it went as well as it had gone thus far, Peel would be rich and powerful beyond belief in the not-too-distant future. Especially since, once the scientist's plans came to fruition, Peel planned to take him out and take over himself.

  On the face of it, Peel didn't see how things could be much better. However ...

  Something was wrong.

  There was nothing to point a finger at, no focus for his unease, but on some instinctual level, he felt it. There was a danger lurking here somewhere. Perhaps a cigarette wouldn't help him figure out what it was, but smoking had always settled his thoughts, had given him time to ponder problems. Like Sherlock Holmes with his pipe, perhaps.

  Well. He wasn't about to fire up again because of some vague disquiet. A walk around the grounds might serve
as well, and he was trying that, but so far, nothing concrete had loomed. It would present itself, if indeed it existed, in due time. It always did. The only question about that was, would he figure it out in time to marshal his defenses against it?

  Whatever it was. There was the question.

  Monday, April 11 th

  Washington, D.C.

  Tyrone walked down the hall toward his first class, threading his way through the other students, each hurrying toward his or her own rendezvous with education.

  "Hey, Ty."

  He stopped and turned, recognizing the voice from those two words.

  Belladonna Wright.

  "Hey, Bella."

  She wore a tightly wrapped blue dress that fit like spray paint and stopped a foot above her knees, matching thick-soled sandals that added four inches to her height, and she had her long hair up in some kind of curly do that made her look taller still. Two steps and he could touch her.

  "How you doin'?"

  He shrugged. "Okay. How about you?"

  "Okay. I saw you out with your boomerang the other day."

  "Yeah." Why was she talking to him? After he had seen her kissing that slackbrain at the mall and called her on it, she had dumped him flatter than two-dee. They hadn't spoken since. And here she was, passing the time of day like nothing had happened.

  "Haven't seen you at the mall lately," she said. She smiled.

  "Haven't been there much."

  "You should check out the new food court. It's terrifaboo."

  "Yeah, maybe I will."

  She flashed another of her perfect smiles at him. Took a breath deep enough to push her chest out a little. A wonderful, beautiful, fabulous chest. He swallowed dryly.

  "Well. See you around," she said.

  "Yeah," was all he could manage.

  She walked off, queen of all she passed. From the back, she was just as gorgeous.

  Tyrone's brain hurt. What was that all about? She smiled at him, practically invited him to the mall, acted like she was glad to see him! Last time they had talked, months ago, she had verbally kicked him in the nuts when he'd called her on having other boyfriends, told him to lose her number! What the hell was going on?

  The bell went off, and Tyrone jerked himself out of his trance and hustled his butt to his class. He wished his dad was in town. Maybe he would know what this meant.

  Monday, April 11th

  MI-6, London, England

  Michaels suddenly realized how quiet things had gotten at the office, and he looked at the computer's clock. Lord, it was almost midnight.

  He was bushed. Sitting hunched over the computer all day had knotted him up again, and his mind was foggy. Most of the British computer systems had come back on-line, but other European nations were still having big problems. Toni had taken the Chunnel train to Paris to coordinate infoflow with the French authorities. She wouldn't be back until Tuesday evening.

  He had been making stupid mistakes for the last hour, words on the holoproj running together and not making sense. Time to shut it down and get back to his hotel.

  He slipped his windbreaker on--what was it somebody had called it here, a windcheater?--and left the office. Probably wouldn't be a lot of taxis standing out front. He pulled his virgil to call for one as he headed for the building's exit.

  "You work late hours," Angela said from behind him.

  Michaels turned. "Yeah, well, you're still here, aren't you?"

  "Just leaving. You need a ride?"

  "I was just calling a cab." He waved the virgil. "I wouldn't want to put you out."

  "No trouble, really," she said. "It's practically on the way to my flat."

  "In that case, okay, sure."

  London was a big city, it never shut down, and even at midnight the streets were still clogged with traffic. There were twelve? fifteen million people here? Too many in too small a space.

  "Making much progress?" she asked as they wound their way past a pub that spilled laughing patrons onto the sidewalk.

  "Not much."

  "Us, either," she said. "Much of the British grid seems to be back up, but the rest of the world is still putting pieces back together." She waved at the happy-looking people coming out of the pub. "Fancy a pint and some late supper?"

  As she asked, Michaels realized that he was hungry; he'd had a sandwich at his desk at noon, nothing since. "I could eat."

  "There's a nice quiet place not far from my flat. They serve decent fish and chips."

  Again, the little danger signal cheeped in his mind, but he was tired and hungry and he didn't feel like bothering with it. What harm could there be in a beer and a little fried food?

  "Sure, why not?"

  The pub was moderately full, but as she'd said, fairly quiet. They ordered fish and French fries--chips--and took pint glasses of beer to their table to wait for the food.

  He took a couple of swallows of his beer, dark brew called Terminator Stout. She nodded at his glass. "Came from America originally, that," she said.

  He looked at the beer. "Really?"

  "Indeed. Some microbrewery on the West Coast. Chap from London passing through tasted it, liked it, started importing it. Only taken a couple hundred years for you Americans to produce decent beer. Another hundred years or so, you might make a decent roadster."

  "I beg your pardon," he said. "Chevrolet did that with the Corvette in the 1950s."

  "Know about cars, do you?"

  "A little."

  "Well, it didn't take them long to muck it up, the Corvette, did it? It might have started out okay, but after a few years, it ballooned into a monster, didn't it? Bigger body, bigger engine, electronic this and that, until it was as huge as a town car and cost more than a Cadillac sedan."

  He grinned. "Well, yes, that's true."

  "Now, you take a classic '50s or '70s MG," she began.

  He snorted, cutting her off. "Please. Take it to the dump. They should have offered the thing with a mechanic as standard equipment. Your average vintage MG spent more time in the shop being tuned than it ever did on the road."

  "Well, all right, some of them were a bit finicky, but that's a small price to pay for the driving experience."

  "Ha! You mean the towing experience. You tell the Automobile Club you own an MG, they won't even take your phone calls."

  She smiled at him.

  The food arrived, and the smell of the batter-fried halibut and potatoes enveloped them in a wonderful aroma. He wasn't just hungry, he was starving!

  After ten minutes of chowing down and a second round of beers, Michaels felt much better. This was nice, having a late dinner and enjoying a conversation not connected to work. They talked about Japanese and Korean roadsters, the new South African Trekker, and he told her about the Prowler and Miata he had restored.

  Next thing he knew, it was two A.M.

  "We probably should get going," he said. "Work and all."

  "How is the muscle tension?" she asked.

  "Not as bad as it was."

  She put her hand on his neck, slid it lightly down to his shoulder. "You're still tight as a violin string. She paused. Said, softly, "My flat is just up the road and around the corner. Would you like me to give you a massage?"

  Maybe it was because he was so tired. Or maybe it was the two pints of beer and the good food. Or maybe it was because she was really a handsome and intelligent woman who obviously enjoyed his company.

  Whatever the reason, Michaels nodded at her. "Yes. I'd like that."

  27

  Tuesday, April 12th

  Somewhere in the British Raj, India

  Jay moved with all the stealth he could manage, which wasn't very much, considering how rattled he was and the terrain through which he moved. Tracking the beast was not a problem; the brush was trampled and smeared with blood, and the trail led Jay in a straight line, a sign of animal panic. The tiger ran straight away, making no attempt at stealth.

  Or so it seemed. It had sneaked up behind him o
nce before, and Jay wasn't going to get caught unaware again. He kept a constant watch, head swiveling as if he were watching a tennis match in the round.

  At the base of what looked to be a huge boablike tree, the blood trail disappeared.

  Jay looked up.

  Thirty feet above the ground, the tiger coughed and charged down the tree trunk, ran against gravity as if he was on level terrain!

  Jay didn't think. He whipped the shotgun up, spot-welded his cheek to the weapon, and fired. He recovered from the recoil using his whole body and fired again.

  The tiger fell off the tree. Jay dodged to his right, swung the gun around at waist level, and pulled the trigger as the thing hit the ground hard, five feet away, hard enough to shake Jay where he crouched, gun blasting.

  He lost count of how many times he shot. It seemed like one continuous roar--boomboomboomboomboom--! The coppery smell of tiger's blood rose and joined the stink of burned gunpowder, and when he stopped shooting, the ground was littered with green and red plastic shotgun shells, at least a dozen of them, maybe more.

  Now, the tiger wasn't even twitching.

  Now, Jay drew a shuddery, deep breath, his first in a while.

  The animal that had clawed his brain apart was dead. He had killed it.

  Even as he bent to examine it, though, he knew it wasn't the thing he sought. Oh, yeah, it had attacked and damaged him, but now that he had killed it, he knew this was but a security program, not the creature that had ripped open the unbreakable cages of the world's most advanced computer systems with impossible strength. It was the most dangerous thing Jay had ever faced in VR, but this was just a watchbeast, put in the jungle to take care of snoopers, nowhere near the power of what had casually left it behind.

  The real monster was still out there. And Jay knew this shotgun wouldn't slow it down if it spotted him.