by Tom Clancy
And yet, CyberNation had convinced millions of people to join up in the hope that just such a thing was going to come to pass. In doing so, it had become bigger than AOL and able to offer some very good programs. They had the best VR scenarios available commercially, with a wide range of choices.
Still, Thorn was always amazed at how gullible some people continued to be, even in this supposedly enlightened age. A virtual country? Not on this planet.
“Listen, Jay, we have reason to believe that whoever is attacking our military is also taking potshots at CyberNation.”
“Good for them.”
Thorn shook his head. It was just the two of them, alone in a VR room. “Things change. Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend. You know how that works. At the moment, CyberNation and Net Force seem to have a common problem. We want to solve that. We will take any help we can get.”
“It sucks.”
“Come on, Jay. That is the way of the world, and you are much too bright to not know it.”
Jay didn’t say anything.
“We’ve also got a guy coming over from China, the head of their Internet police agency.”
“Chang Han Yao?”
“You know him?”
“I know who he is. He’s got a few moves. What’s he over for?”
“Ostensibly, to talk about modernizing China’s agency, maybe to pick up some tips. The Chinese are our friends these days. Communism is on the way out, and they have become a major trading partner. Have you seen that exhibit from the Forbidden City at the Smith?”
“Yeah, VR. Very interesting. I got no grief with the Chinese.”
“And you’ll help with the man from CyberNation. A French guy.”
“Seurat. I know his work. He wrote a paper on quantum computer applications that was… passable.”
“I do seem to recall something about quantum computers and Net Force,” Thorn said.
“Yep, that was a crazy English scientist and a dotty old lord. They shot at us, too.” Jay shook his head again. “You know, for an agency that is supposed to be a bunch of desk jockeys riding expensive chairs in dark and quiet rooms, we seem to get shot at a lot.”
Thorn smiled. “Probably that won’t happen here.”
Jay didn’t smile back. “I wouldn’t bet on it, Boss. CyberNation claimed to have gotten rid of all the bad guys, but it’s hard to believe the people at the top didn’t have a clue what was going on.”
“But you’ll help me with this guy?”
Jay nodded, his face glum.
“Thanks, Jay. I appreciate it.” Thorn paused. “So, anything new on the war game hacker?”
Jay frowned again and shook his head. “I’ve been running things down, but so far, nothing. The military sysop is pretty good, and the system isn’t supposed to be reachable from outside, so it isn’t like some wahoo can just dial up and log in, even if he had the codes. We’re dealing with somebody who has been very careful.”
“But you’ll get him, eventually?”
“Oh, yeah. I always get ’em, Boss. It’s just a matter of time… ”
Pan China Airlines Flight #2212
Somewhere over the Arctic
Chang stared through the window, but there was nothing to see save a dense layer of clouds a few thousand feet below the jetliner. Normally, he didn’t take a window seat when he flew, especially on long flights; he preferred to have the aisle, so as to be able to stretch his legs now and then, or attend to business in the toilet.
But the flight had been crowded — relations between China and the United States were at an all-time high, and even with a new airline that added several flights a day to the States, the jets were, so he had been told, usually full. Plus, this was a direct flight to Washington, D.C., and much faster than the old ones where you had to fly to Los Angeles, then switch to an American carrier for the final leg across the country.
Cutting five or six hours from your travel time made this flight much in demand. Normally, Chang would not have had the clout to merit such a flight. Then again, a man who knew as much about computers as he did had some advantages. He had access to reservation codes, and booking his own flight with those had been a simple matter. The state of the industry in China was such that this was not even illegal — nobody had ever worried about it, since nobody outside of himself and a few of his employees even knew it was possible.
He grinned. He would have to plug that hole when he returned home. At least for others…
“Would you care for a drink, sir?”
The flight attendant, a pretty, moonfaced young woman with a bright smile, stood in the aisle, leaning slightly over a couple traveling from Beijing to visit a daughter who, Chang had been told, lived in Baltimore. The attendant’s chest, completely covered under a shirt and buttoned jacket, loomed over the husband, who had the aisle seat.
“Some club soda, please,” Chang said.
The young woman moved on, much to the disappointment of the man seated on the aisle, Chang felt.
The Canadian, Alaine Courier, had provided Chang with some excellent software, and, more importantly, an introduction to a U.S. official who had access to Net Force. As a result, Chang was traveling to Washington to meet the head of the agency, which could not help but be useful. Just to see how the place was laid out, what equipment he could see, anything, that would be wondrous.
There were those in his government who wanted very much for China to be a match for the United States in all things. Properly approached and primed, such men could be most helpful to Chang’s desire to upgrade his systems and technicians. Why, yes, Comrade, I went to Net Force Headquarters. They are so far ahead of us, I fear it will take many years for us to even begin to catch up. Of course, a few million carefully spent would close that gap considerably, if a man knew exactly what to buy and how to use it, but… what are the chances of that happening…?
Chang would rather not play those political games, but in these times, there was no choice — not if you wanted to stay in the race. He did not enjoy such things, but he was learning how to be adept at them. It was, alas, part of the job. Better he know how to do it than not…
Next to him, the woman said, “Did I mention that my daughter and her husband have given us three grandchildren?”
Several times, Chang thought. But he smiled. “Really? How wonderful for you… ”
8
Net Force HQ
Quantico, Virginia
Abe Kent was no Luddite — he used VR training for his troops as much as the next commander — it was just that he preferred reality over virtual reality. Unfortunately, the reality was that there were some scenarios you simply couldn’t do in the real world. The Iraqis and the Iranians, even the Colombians, tended to frown upon a small military unit taking target practice on their citizens, no matter what their crimes.
The days of gunboat diplomacy and backing up private companies like United Fruit were long past, and Kent had no desire to see them come around again, so when you needed to work in the field against a team of Bosnians or Afghanis on their home ground, you dressed your men — and women — in sensory gear and did it in VR. It worked out all right, for the most part, and it was far better than nothing.
But Colonel Kent never lost sight of the fact that no matter how good the electronic impedimenta, no matter how well the stim units worked muscles, the computer scenario was not reality. You could simulate the feel of crawling over a muddy field, the sounds of gunfire, even the heat of a desert afternoon, but nobody broke an ankle, tore a groin muscle, or got fatally shot in VR.
Yes, there had been a few heart attacks in scenarios that were exciting enough to start the blood pumping fast, though most of these, Kent understood, had been using gear that simulated sexual encounters. Kent had never lost a trooper in VR, and he was in agreement with Bill Jordan, the famous gunfighter who had come out of the Border Patrol in the 1950s and ’60s.
Jordan, whose skill with a double-action revolver was legendary — he coul
d pick aspirin tablets off a tabletop at fifteen feet by point-shooting, without scratching the table’s finish — had written a book on gunfighting called No Second Place Winner. Kent had an autographed copy of that book at home and had read it several times.
When talking about fast-draw experts who popped balloons with their side arm’s muzzle blast, Jordan said that in the history of gunfighting nobody had ever died from a loud noise — meaning that you needed to practice hitting a target using a real gun with full-power ammo. Speed was fine, but accuracy was final, and the only way to make sure you had both was to practice using the gun you’d have when the bullets flew for real.
The troops grumbled when Kent took them out to the Marine training field in a pouring rain to practice tactics, but he knew that those experiences would pay off if they ever found themselves in such a situation.
Of course, lying on the sloppy, cold ground in the rain, as he now was, wasn’t the most pleasant way to pass an afternoon, but this was how you got real practice. If your LOSIR gear shorted out when it started raining, this was the place to find that out, not on a real battlefield where somebody was trying to shoot you. If you jammed your assault rifle or subgun’s barrel into the mud and plugged it, best you learn how to clear that, since firing a weapon with a slug of mud blocking the muzzle could get you a face full of shrapnel when the barrel exploded, as it could. At the very least, that weapon would be useless.
Kent had once seen a soldier on a firing line at a military range in Texas using a.308 assault rifle with a suppressor fitted to it. No way to silence that boom completely, certainly not with hypersonic rounds, but the idea was to quiet it a little, to make it harder to pinpoint the location. The machinist who had made the suppressor, or the shooter who had threaded it onto the barrel, or maybe both, had made a mistake. When the shooter fired off the first round, the bullet caught something in the silencing device, tore it off the muzzle, and hurled it thirty meters downrange.
“Whatcha got there, son?” the rangemaster had called out. “A grenade launcher?”
The.308’s muzzle was damaged enough so that firing it again without repair would have been dangerous to anybody close.
Kent smiled at the memory.
If you had to have such an experience, a safe shooting range was the place to have it — not facing a platoon of enemy soldiers with AK-47s that might be old but that worked fine. A man could kill you with a cap-and-ball carbine that had been old-tech during the Civil War…
“Clear,” came the voice over Kent’s LOSIR headset.
“You heard the mine-finder,” Kent said. “Let’s move, people.”
The team, six troopers and Kent, scrabbled up in the rain and muck and splashed their way across the field. There were AP mines buried here — electronic ones that sent an IR pulse to the receivers the men wore in their SIPEsuits. If you stepped on one, any receiver in range announced it with a loud “beep.” To make it more realistic, a small flash-bang in the ground went off, and that was enough to singe your clothes a little, reinforcing the electronic sig in a way that you didn’t forget. Scared the hell out of you and stung a little, but a real mine would have blown off an arm or leg or killed you outright, and the little popper reminded you to pay attention.
The scout had located the hidden mines in their path, and electronically tagged them, so the heads-up panes in the unit’s helmets, run off the backpack computer, showed the location of each antipersonnel device. As long as the suits worked, you could zigzag your way across the field and not worry about stepping on a mine. If the suits failed, then you had to do it the old-fashioned way, which took a lot longer. Now and then, Kent arranged for the suits to fail, but not today. Today, they would make it across the field before they were ambushed by an automatic motion sensor-operated tracking machine gun that fired either electronic bullets or paint balls, depending on the programming. Today, it would be paint balls, because those left no doubt, even in the rain, as to whether or not you had taken a hit.
Looking down and seeing that bright red splotch on your groin would make the point. Paint balls would sting a little — but then a high-powered AP round, even in good ceramic body armor, was going to seriously wound or kill you if it hit solidly.
The colonel himself didn’t know exactly where the gun would be set up. The field sergeant had chosen a spot for it. Kent did know it would be out there somewhere, and he had taught his troops that they should always expect the unexpected, so they ought to be looking for it, too.
Kent had always thought the Boy Scouts had come up with the best two-word motto that dealt with this: Be prepared.
Rue de Soie
Marne-la-Vallée France
Seurat paused to consider which suit he would pack for the trip to the United States. The Versace was a more modern cut, with a rougher tooth to the fabric, but the Gaultier was a more classical “power” suit, with a darker tone.
As he considered the merits of each, he looked, as he often did, at the painting facing his private desk. It was one of his most prized possessions, an original Georges Seurat, largely unknown to the rest of the world.
The painting wasn’t as polished as some of the artist’s earlier works — certainly not as much as La Grande Jatte, which had taken two years and countless studies, but it did bear the Neo-Impressionist pointillist dots of color that had marked his ancestor’s later works.
It was small, only three feet or so wide, and more intimate in subject matter than many of the artist’s famous pieces: A small child sat on the floor in front of a sofa; behind him was a Christmas tree, and on the right, trailing down from the top of the frame, was an adult woman’s arm, reaching down to hold the boy. The tone was dark: a mix of warm ambers and saturated magentas. The colors blended beautifully, each dot giving the painting a vibrancy no solid patch could hope to match. The composition was pure Seurat: static shapes, with little to disturb them. The diagonal of the woman’s arm broke the verticals typical of the artist’s work, but did not jar the mood.
In front of the boy were some toys: blocks, a top, a small stuffed animal. But the child wasn’t playing with them. Instead, he leaned into the arm, and looked out at the viewer, a slight smile on his face. There was a look of innocent awe, thoughtful joy, and the anticipation of something good to come.
The CyberNation leader had always thought the boy’s expression was one that embodied the joy of discovery.
He blinked, his eyes warm, as he stared at the painting. The subject was his ancestor’s son, Pierre George, and the approximate date of the painting was December 1890. Seurat the artist had died suddenly in March of 1891 of some infection — and his son had followed him the month after, apparently of the same ailment. The juxtaposition of the joy in the painting against the certain death that was coming was powerful.
The painter had not known he had but a few months left to him.
Seurat had known the painting for nearly his entire life. A great-aunt had given it to his parents when he was a young boy, and they had hung it in their sitting room. It had been purchased from Madeleine Knoblock, the artist’s wife, just before her death, and kept from the world. She had not been well liked by the rest of the family, and had disappeared for years after her husband’s and son’s death.
Many times he’d thought about the look of discovery on the boy’s face. It had encouraged him to try many new things, to seek out new experiences. He had been the boy. But tonight, he was the adult, reaching down to comfort the boy, to shepherd him from what might come. And the boy was CyberNation.
For him, the lesson was clear: You never see it coming. And it put him on his guard. Surely his ancestor hadn’t seen his end approaching — could he hope to do better than his famous forebear?
Perhaps. Then again, no matter what kind of spin he put on it, the truth was the truth:
Not everyone wins.
He exhaled a long sigh, not having realized he was holding his breath. It didn’t matter really. Win or lose, one had to do what one could,
oui?
He would do everything in his power to protect his own curious and thoughtful infant from the dangers threatening it. Which was why he was packing now, to go see the Americans, whose military systems had been attacked by the same person or persons who had assaulted his child.
Considering the history CyberNation had with the Americans, particularly their Net Force, Seurat would hardly have predicted such a trip for himself. But he would climb into whatever bed was required to protect his nation.
He grinned. Perhaps he might be able to find a beautiful woman’s bed somewhere along the way, eh?
That thought in mind, he considered the suits.
Power, he thought, and carefully folded the Gaultier into the Halliburton travel case on the bed. Neatly stacked socks, shirts, and ties surround it in tightly webbed compartments. These days, luggage was so often opened by airport security that it was embarrassing to pack less than neatly. And Seurat never did things by halves. Anyone who saw his packing in an airport would see the product of an ordered and considered mind.
Yes.
He closed the suitcase and checked the time on his old IWC chronometer. He still had a few minutes until Michel picked him up for the trip to the airport. Had CyberNation invested in its own plane — which it certainly could afford — there would be no need for such scheduling, but the nation of ideals kept one away from the physical world — he had never gotten around to it.
He wondered if the Americans would be able to help. They were smart — or at least they had a tremendous number of resources, which sometimes amounted to the same thing. An army of brutes could accomplish much, if there were enough of them…
