Clancy,Tom - Net Force - Cybernation.txt

by Cybernation(lit)

  it, next time you get tense." )kay. I will. But right now, I have something else in

  "

  laughed. "Why am I not surprised... ?"

  r, when Guru had gotten home with the baby and they all getting ready to go out for dinner at the new ican place, Michaels thought about the workout and nosis thing. That short and long knife business could en as a metaphor for his life. Getting in close had quences, it was more dangerous in some ways. He a new .family, and compared to his first one, it ..... different.

  was much more a part of his reason to get up day than Megan, his first wife, had been. Maybe it Toni; maybe it was only because he was older and a wiser and able to appreciate what he had now more i he had been able to appreciate it then. He didn't love > daughter Susie any less than he did Alex, but he cerf hadn't been there for her in the same way. Some- he'd always regret.

  tiatever. But lately, work just hadn't been calling to the way family did. If he won the lottery tomorrow, Bid he still get up and go to work every day? Ten years , five years ago, even a year ago, he would have said no question.

  tow? Now, he wasn't sure about that at all. Maybe he aid take a few months off.

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  Maybe he would take off permanently.

  It could be that part of it was because he was at the top of the mountain at Net Force. Anything higher in government was going to be some kind of political appointment, and not likely to happen. He didn't slot neatly into either party. Most of the time, he voted Independent, sometimes one way, sometimes another, and there were times when he couldn't bring himself to vote for anybody running. He liked to think of himself as fiscally conservative but a personal liberal. Could support a right wing Democrat or left wing Republican, but wasn't really either. Pretty much smack in the middle of the silent majority's road. So unless he opted for the private sector, he'd peaked out in his biz.

  Being commander of Net Force was as good as it was going to get.

  Or maybe it was a midlife crisis. He had been face-to- face with death a few times in the last couple of years, and that made a man stop and think about the meaning of it all, something he had never done much before. Being introspective wasn't part of what he'd learned at home. When your number was up, it was up, game over, and if the old saw was true that nobody on his death bed ever said, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office," then what exactly did you look back and wish you'd done better when you knew you were about to shuffle off?

  Michaels realized for him, it was gonna be family first, and then work. It didn't used to be that way, but that's how it was now. He hadn't noticed when that had happened, that shift, but it had.

  He could understand a whole lot better now why John Howard had taken a leave and had thought seriously about retiring.

  Just when he thought he had a handle on life, it went and changed on him.

  Damn.

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  em Pennsylvania < 1770

  [crept through the thick woods along a deer trail with puch stealth as he could manage. This mixed evergreen 'hardwood forest was disputed territory, and danger, On the Indian side, technically at least, this area still nged to the Iroquois-speaking Six Nations-the Mo- Mk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tusca-

  -but there was a Chippewa camp not far away, es of Delaware passing through now and then, even Ottawa in the area, supposedly. A white man clad ckskins prowling in any of their territories uninvited ; be viewed with a certain amount of hostility; better tnobody saw him.

  deer trail wound serpentinely through the forest, i enough for a man to traverse, but a bit low in spots, ng Jay to duck overhanging tree branches. The smell

  was strong, and his own sweat added a sour note to carried a long rifle, a flintlock as tall as he was, a er horn, lead balls and patches, a single shot pistol

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  of a matching caliber, a sheath knife, and a tomahawk, much as any frontiersman of the era might. No coonskin cap, though-the idea of a dead raccoon on his head seemed ghoulish, even in VR. Instead, he wore a plain leather cap. Maybe there wasn't any real difference between cowhide and small furry animal skin, but everybody drew the line somewhere.

  The mosquitoes were bad, but as long as he kept moving they didn't settle too thickly on his exposed face and hands; they couldn't penetrate the thick buckskin shirt and pants, nor what he wore under them. A few big wood spiders had spun card-table-sized webs here and there, and he avoided those when he saw them.

  A bird called out ahead of him, a cheerful whistle he didn't recognize. A man couldn't know everything.

  He came to a small clearing in the forest, a place where a couple of huge old-growth conifers had fallen and flattened a dozen smaller trees. The big trunks had mostly rotted away under sun and wind and rain, turning to reddish brown, pulpy food for termites, and fertilizer for the new growth that wiggled and broke through their corpses. There were also sedge grasses here, many of which had been nibbled short by the deer. It was maybe thirty meters across, the clearing, and the sun shined down upon it through the rent in the forest's thick canopy.

  He waited a few seconds, listening, looking, sniffing the air. Everything seemed okay.

  He started across the clearing. Halfway to the other side, he heard something behind him. A startled animal, perhaps?

  He looked over his shoulder in time to see a Native American warrior step out of the brush. The man had an iron-tipped lance, and from his dress Jay realized he was a Shawnee. He had forgotten about them-they were a Johnny-come-lately tribe in Pennsylvania, having arrived here only around the end of the 1600s.

  Another warrior stepped into view, also armed with a long lance. A third slipped from the brush, and he had a

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  |much like Jay's, though the stock of his was deco- with a pattern of brass nail heads. They weren't ; feathers or war paint, but they weren't smiling at either.

  to leave the party, Jay, he thought. He turned to : away, but three more Shawnees materialized ahead

  Another trap. How interesting. of the Shawnee chanted something. Probably tiing like, "Say your prayers, round eyes, you're a kman!" but Jay shook his head, ifot this time, pal," he said.

  i dropped his long rifle, tore open his buckskin shirt yeal a Kevlar and spider silk vest, along with an Uzi || from a strap under his armpit. He pulled the black im out and pointed it at the three Shawnee in front

  "Rock 'n' roll!" he yelled. "Rock 'n' roll-!" pulled the Uzi's trigger. Thirty-odd rounds ofjack- |9mm bullets spewed. The air filled with smoke and At this range, it was hard to miss. He waved the he a water hose-

  soft lead bullet from the Shawnee's rifle whacked ; Square in the middle of his back. He felt it flatten st the vest, sting, but do no damage- the time he spun to attend to the other three, the ^i-lorig fifty-round magazine was running low, so he himself to five-round bursts: Braaaap! Braaap! ,/

  : held the final burst down, and stitched the sixth very rised Indian across the thighs. The last ambusher fell;

  : the other five, he was down, but not dead. jpChe woods got very quiet after the angry roar of the

  chine gun.

  Hf3od bless the Israelis and their dependable technology, held the muzzle of the subgun up in front of his i and blew away the thin tendril of smoke rising from ^ hot barrel, fow'd you like them apples, pard?"

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  He moved toward the wounded Shawnee. He had a few questions to ask him, and if he hurried he might get an answer before his opponent realized what was going on...

  On the Bon Chance

  "Son of a bitch," Jackson Keller said. He grinned. "So you haven't lost all your moves after all, Jay. Good for you."

  He looked at the holoprojic recording floating above his console. The packet Jay had managed to snag wasn't going to take him anywhere useful, but it was surprising he had managed to avoid the scenario-destroying trap like that.

  Wel
l. Maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising. At his peak, back in their college days, Jay had been sharp, as sharp as anybody. They had run with CIT's and MIT's best. It wasn't unreasonable that some small part of his edge wasn't completely dull. That just made it more interesting, didn't it?

  So he avoided a trap. No big deal. The next one would be better. He reached for his sensor set. Let's play, Jay. Show me what you got...

  His com chirped. He was tempted to ignore it and jack back into VR, but he glanced at the ID sig. Better get that.

  "Hey," he said.

  Jasmine said, "Hey. Listen, there's something you ought to know, just FYI."

  "Sure, shoot."

  "It seems that Roberto has, ah... found out that you and I have been ... intimate."

  Keller both felt and heard himself take a deep breath. And his belly knotted as if somebody had stabbed him in it with a shard of dry ice. "Excuse me? How did that happen?"

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  n't know. I didn't say anything."

  I sure as hell didn't." i not anything to worry about." (anything to worry about? Santas killed people with hands! Keller had heard the story of the two i guys at the site of the telephone cable cut. About rFBI bodyguards for the Blue Whale veep. They'd trained, they'd all had guns and that hadn't mat- fe'd killed five people, bap, just like that! And |.had been others ... '. knew it had been a mistake to sleep with her. Good

  was, it had been a mistake, i tried to keep his voice calm. He should have ex- this. It was a big boat, but not that big. They j't invisible. "Oh. Really." . e's part of the team. He doesn't want to screw that e's making way too much money-he knows I'd fire ' he hurt you."

  II, wasn't that comforting! I'm dead, but he's fired? i didn't say anything.

  ay way, that's it. I'll be sending him on a little chore * today. We can ... talk about it more when he's

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  blinked at the frozen holoproj over his computer, she saying what he thought she was saying? That Santos was off the ship, they'd get back into the ^together? Was she that stupid? he?

  ul there, Jacko. Pissing off The Dragon Lady 1 be worse than pissing off the stone killer! '. mumbled something, and she discommed.

  heart was definitely beating faster, and his ding was rapid and unsteady, too. All of a sudden, (little intellectual match with Jay Gridley didn't seem where near as interesting and fun as it had only a few

  es ago.

  i man who looked like he was chiseled out of granite, i killed people without batting an eye, a man with old

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  ideas of machismo, had found out Keller was sleeping with his woman. How the hell was Keller supposed to just smile and shrug that off?

  He forced himself to breathe slower. Maybe she was right. Maybe Santos was too smart to cause any problems. They were all getting rich off this project, and they stood to get a whole lot richer once their shares started really appreciating in value. He wouldn't want to screw that up over a woman. Santos was not that stupid.

  But Keller wasn't sure about that. Not sure enough to bet his life on it.

  Capitol Hill Washington, D.C.

  Michaels surreptitiously glanced at his watch. Next to him, Tommy Bender, the Net Force lawyer, caught the look and squelched a smile.

  The senate subcommittee room was hot and stuffy. There were no windows. The senators were talking for the camera again. One of the senators got up and walked away, as a second returned to his seat on the dais. They came and went like a roomful of small children who had drunk too much lemonade. One would go, another would return. There was more motion from the subcommittee than a soccer team playing a match. Michaels couldn't leave to stretch or get a drink of water, though. He had to sit here at the table looking up at the sometimes-six, sometimes-eight, sometimes-five of them milling back and forth like somnolent sheep. Already it had been two hours, and there were no signs of an end in sight.

  Senator Theresa Genaloni, from the great state of New Jersey, made her obscure point about the dangers of invading citizens' privacy, and finally shut up. This hearing didn't have anything to do with on-line privacy per se, but she was the junior senator from her state, her party

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  i the minority, and this pissant committee was hardly and Means, so she had to make her points where ' she could. Otherwise, how would the folks back s know she was on the job? She certainly wasn't de; jobs in their direction, nor much in the way of It-barrel spending.

  tewart George Jackson, the once red-haired but now bald and gray junior senator from the great state took over the microphone. Jackson liked to "Stonewall," after the Southern Civil War hero, usually called "SJ" by his staff. While these were l-fnitials, somebody had told Michaels that they also for "Strawberry Jell-O," due to his extremely flex! ethics. Jackson had all the backbone of a baby squid, sometimes switch sides on an issue faster than a ding bullet. General Jackson must be spinning in his I like an atomic-powered gyroscope every time some' called Jell-O "Stonewall."

  ps Commander Michaels can explain to this aittee why this latest round of attack on the Internet : has continued despite Net Force's efforts to stop

  hat Michaels wanted to say was "Because I am here aing to the senatorial windbags blow warm hurricanes of at the office helping diem?" That would have very satisfying. Stupid, but satisfying. He had this every time he testified, and he had never acted on till, he thought about it.

  on't do it," Tommy said under his breath. It didn't much of a mind reader to glean what Michaels was ing.

  Sfo, he'd better not say anything nasty. Not only would be career suicide, his agency would suffer, and he a't want to cause that.

  Qmmander?"

  I'm sorry, Senator. I didn't realize you were asking speak."

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  That earned him a glare from Jell-O, and grins from three of the other senators.

  "We are following up leads on the attacks," Michaels said. "Our operatives have narrowed down the suspecis and are getting closer to a resolution." You could always say that and it would be true enough.

  "Would you care to give us more specific information. Commander? Who, where, and when?"

  "I am sure you realize that this is an ongoing investigation, Senator. I would not wish to compromise it by releasing details in public. If you would like a private briefing, I will have my staff follow up."

  Of course, Jell-O didn't care about the investigation, and would no more want to spend his time going over the details of it than he would want to give up cigars and whiskey. This was a piddling committee, and one had to milk what one could from it. Scoring a few points for law and order was always good for the voters back home to see. He would have a staffer listen to the report and boil it down to half a page or so, highlighting key words to be spoken in his syrupy Foghorn Leghorn drawl next time Michaels had to show up and sit in the hot seat.

  The senator droned on, and Michaels listened with half an ear. This was the part of the job he hated most, the sitting in front of a bunch of old farts and being treated like a grammar school boy by men and women who, for the most part, couldn't understand what it was he did. They were mostly lawyers, half of them were technophobes, if not Luddites, terrified of anything more complicated than a phone or television set, and their main strengths seemed to be the ability to get reelected.

  Face it, if they had anything on the ball, they wouldn't be stuck on this committee, now would they? The only one here who had more than two neurons to spark at each other inside his hollow head was Wayne DeWitt, the recently elected junior from West Virginia. He was young, sharp, and technically educated, with a degree in engineering. He was one of the few senators willing to stand

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  [ say that the idea of CyberNation was stupid in the e. He was a fairly right-wing Republican, but even chads was willing to cut him a lot of slack-better

  It-winger with
a brain than anybody without one.

  ; very charitable of him, those thoughts, but, hey, if "true, it was true.

  i glanced at his watch again. Another two hours of

  " i he'd never get back.

  be Bon Chance

  > had left his most recent coin buy in a safe-deposit a bank in Fort Lauderdale. They'd be secure there, but he would prefer to have them in his He had worked out an arrangement with an at ambassador in Washington who flew home to [; now and again, and who had access to diplomatic w. For a healthy fee, he would transport whatever gave him back there, where Santos's cousin Esf would collect it and take it to the branch of the Wizinho where Santos did his business. He had an nt with a bank officer there to make sure his Pwere well-cared for.

  was blood, and the bank official was also re- by marriage, to another cousin. Both were well- f and both knew what would happen to them if they dy and decided to pocket a few of the coins. Once, 'they were much younger, Estaban had seen Santos | out a crooked policeman who tried to shake him ' too hard. Crooked or not, killing a puno, a "fist," were sometimes called in the shanty towns, was 1 of a man with bolas grande. Those who dealt with at home knew his reputation. He was not a man f fooled with-aside from his own skills, he had a i of paid friends in high places, always necessary in

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  Brazil, and he was protected, at least to a degree.

  Once his gold was home, it would be safe enough.

  When Missy ordered him to take care of some business in Washington, D.C., this was perfect. He would stop at the bank in Florida and retrieve his Maple Leafs, speak with the diplomat once he got to the capital, and all would be well.