State Of War (2003)

by Tom - Net Force 07 Clancy

  Jay had hacked one of the computer's virus software packages and had found patches and virus definitions added just hours before the release of each of the three viruses.

  Honor among thieves, and it was going to cost them. . . .

  A stream of sunlight blasted into the darkened club's interior as the door opened.

  In came the connection.

  He wore a white leisure suit, big collar and all, a low hat over dark sunglasses, and a big Mongol moustache flanked by bushy sideburns. Disco forever.

  The hacker walked with a swagger, carrying a white plastic briefcase which matched his outfit. He made his way over to the fat man and they exchanged high fives.

  Leisure Suit sat next to the Dealer and opened his briefcase so that only they could see what was inside. The fat man reached down and came back with something on his finger, a whitish powder which he touched to his tongue. He smiled and nodded.

  Jay tapped the medallion.

  "All units close in. We have delivery."

  There was the sound of rushing feet out of synch with the disco music, as the undercover dancers charged, whipping out hidden revolvers as they moved.

  But Leisure Suit wasn't going down easy.

  "No way, pigs!!"

  He leaped from the booth and pulled his own weapon, a chrome-plated .45.

  The Dealer yelled, too: "It's the fuzz! Sonny--Randy--take 'em!"

  The henchmen pulled out their pieces, and lead filled the air.

  Jay pulled out his own gun, a custom-tuned .44 Smith & Wesson Model 29, one of the most powerful handguns in the world, and let go a shot.

  BOOM--!

  He grinned again. That was loud--!

  Black leather flew backward as the huge bullet took him in the chest.

  Pimp Hat fired at the dancers as the hacker turned over one of the tables. Jay saw him crawling toward the back entrance of the club.

  "Stop, police!" he yelled, and started crawling himself.

  More cops joined the fight, pouring into the club with vests on. Within a few seconds the Dealer was down, and Pimp Hat would not be henching anymore--if that was a good term.

  Jay reached the back entrance and heard a shot before he saw the hacker dive into a big Cadillac. The undercover cop was down.

  "You'll never get me!" the hacker shouted, and his car lurched forward, tires squealing.

  "Man down!" Jay shouted as he ran for his own car, a huge Dodge Charger custom fitted with a 360-cubic-inch overbored engine. He hopped in and fired it up. The machine roared, the Holley carb pumping like crazy, and he took off after the fleeing hacker--

  --who was cresting a hill just ahead. Jay flattened the gas pedal, enjoying the rush of acceleration and the feel of the wind blowing in through his open window.

  He sailed over the steep hill in a classic car-chase maneuver and braced himself as the car hit, undercarriage tapping the pavement for a second as the shocks tried to take the dynamic load of the falling Dodge.

  This was way cool.

  The Caddy rolled around a corner, and Jay tore into the intersection, turning hard right as he passed the midpoint, as he'd been trained to do. His car skidded right, under the minimum control necessary for it to stick to the road, and he punched the gas again.

  "Hi-ho, Silver!" he yelled.

  As he did, he toggled a switch on the medallion: "Julio, you ready?"

  "You got it. My team's ready to rock. You just give us the location. We've even got a warrant waiting."

  Jay gave him the address.

  On the straightaway, the Dodge started to catch up to the Caddy, and Jay pushed the accelerator down as far as it would go.

  Closer . . . closer . . .

  The suspect threw a small package from the car, and Jay swerved right to avoid it. Good thing he did, because it exploded as he drove past it.

  He grinned. "You've got to do better than that, pal!"

  Oh, this was fun.

  And the best part was yet to come.

  Because Jay already knew where the guy was going. Jay had figured the guy would probably be releasing more gunk onto the net, and probably more immunizations to his hacker buddies, so he'd set a watchdog on the hacker site's chat room, primed to alert him about any new patches.

  The dog had barked just before lunch. Jay had checked it out and saw that something new was coming in. So he'd alerted Julio and headed in for his stakeout scenario.

  Since he'd already backtracked the trail of the previous antivirus shots, all he'd had to do was trace the last few steps, which he'd done after the guy had been spotted outside the club.

  He'd had the address before the shooting started.

  The chase was a stall. They could have picked the hacker up back at the disco club--Jay had worked hard figuring out how to stage the scene so the hacker would believe he'd really gotten away on his own--but Jay needed to track him back to his safe house, and they needed to get there before the guy either launched the new virus or destroyed it.

  There were other ways he could have handled this, but he had felt this was the best way to both preserve the chain of evidence and involve the locals in a meaningful way.

  Besides, he thought, grinning again, it was more fun this way.

  Imagine how surprised this hacker will be when he pulls off his VR gear and finds Julio and his team standing there, machine guns pointed at him.

  So when the hacker threw another bomb and Jay swerved into a light post, which stopped the chase cold, he didn't mind.

  He just hoped that Julio remembered to take a picture.

  He really wanted to see the look on the guy's face when they got him.

  22

  Mojave Desert

  Between Joshua Tree and Twenty-nine Palms, California

  It started out okay.

  The congressman, a California representative named Wentworth, had wanted to meet somewhere private rather than in his home or office. Junior had agreed--it didn't matter to him where they met, as long as they got their business done. Wentworth gave him directions to a little dirt road that ran into the Joshua Tree National Park. Junior wasn't sure, but he thought the congressman's district included the national monument and maybe the Marine Corps base to the north. That didn't matter to him, either. A park in the desert was fine with him.

  Wentworth had been an easy blackmail. Like Senator Bretcher, Junior had used Joan to set him up. They had played this one a bit softer, though, no confrontation, no threats to call the cops, no lies about Joan's age. Instead, Junior had simply hidden in the closet with a digital camera. He'd gotten some highly detailed photos, and had e-mailed a few of them to the good congressman, along with a request to meet. The congressman had agreed, as Junior had known he would, and Junior had flown out to California to conclude their business.

  He drove the rental car from LAX out I-10, past San Bernardino and Banning, and then cut north on State Road 62 at Palm Springs. He passed several small towns--Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree--then he started looking for the dirt road, which Wentworth said would be off to the right, between Park Boulevard and the Boy Scout Trail. If he got to Indian Cove Road, the congressman had told him, he'd gone too far.

  He passed the park entrance sign, and almost missed the dirt road, but he didn't. He pulled off, and wound through the dusty and dry country, looking for the congressman. Hot out here, it had to be pushing a hundred, hundred and five. If the car broke down, it was going to be a long uncomfortable walk back to civilization. Junior knew enough about riding through the desert, even the high desert, to carry a jug of water, just in case, but he still didn't like the idea of having to walk ten or fifteen miles in the summer sun.

  Why would anybody want to make this a national park anyway? There was nothing to see but more of what was on the other side of the road, which was nothing to get excited about. Still, Junior was always careful and thorough, when he had the time, and he'd done his research on the area. Most of his information had come from the Park Service, which had
told him the park covered eight hundred thousand acres. So far it was all rocks and sage-brush. Full of African killer bees, too, according to the Park Service, and you didn't want to mess with them.

  National monument? A waste of the taxpayers' money, that's what it was.

  A couple miles along the very twisty road, he spotted a clump of stubby trees and more creosote bushes. Must be some kind of water there, a spring or pond or something. A black Lincoln was parked in the shade, the motor running, and the license plate matched the congressman's car.

  Junior pulled over into the shade and killed his engine. The hot engine ticked, and even in the shade and through the tinted glass, the reflected sun was fierce; he could feel the car getting warmer even though he'd just shut the AC off.

  Well, might as well get to it, he thought.

  Junior opened the door. A blast of arid desert wind hit him like a blanket right out of the clothes dryer. He broke a sweat immediately. But he was used to heat and high humidity, and this wasn't as bad as New Orleans in September.

  He walked over to the congressman's car. The window rolled down, and the congressman looked up at him. Junior peered inside and checked the vehicle out, taking no chances. Unless somebody was hiding in the trunk, in which case they'd be cooked by now, the representative of the great state of California was by himself.

  He was a thin man, pale, about forty-five or so, his hair too long and foofy. He wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt and khaki pants. His hands were in plain sight, one on the steering wheel, one resting lightly by the side mirror.

  "Hey, how y'all doin'?" Junior asked.

  "Screw you," the congressman said.

  "Congressman Wentworth, I'm surprised at your language, you being a gentleman and a Democrat and all."

  The congressman glared at him. "I'm not some jailhouse trash like you're used to dealing with. Just say what you have to say."

  "All right, you want to play it hard, here it is. We got us a nice collection of X-rated pictures of you and that sweet young cher in that little motel in Maryland. I'm thinkin' you probably don't want to see those pictures posted all over the Internet, now do you?"

  Wentworth didn't say anything.

  "So the deal is, you give us a little help, we'll give you a little help."

  "Let me get this straight. You want me to do you a favor. Something illegal, right? Or what? You'll blackmail me with those pictures?"

  Junior frowned. He didn't like the tone of that at all. That had the sound of something a man would say if somebody was listening and he was trying to get an admission of criminal intent. So far, Junior hadn't done that, he'd just mentioned some pictures, and he wasn't about to go any further until he checked some things out.

  Junior leaned down and looked into the car. The congressman leaned back away from him.

  "You wouldn't be wearing a wire, now would you, congressman?"

  "A wire? No!"

  Too fast and too hard, Junior realized.

  Junior stood up straight and looked around. Could be a hundred feds hiding in the rocks out there, waiting to jump him, and he wouldn't know it until it was too late. All of a sudden, the sweat started bothering him.

  The power window started to go up, and he saw the congressman reaching for the gear shift at the same time. What the hell?

  Junior reacted without thinking. He shoved, hard, caught the window with the heel of his hand, and shattered it. The safety glass broke into hundreds of little squarish bits, showering the congressman with sharp glitter.

  Junior reached in, grabbed the latch, and opened the door--Wentworth scrabbled across the seat toward the passenger's side door. Trying to get away--?

  Nope, he wasn't. He was going for the glove box. It fell open and Wentworth reached in--

  It could have been a cell phone. Maybe an envelope full of money. But where Junior came from, a scared man who went for the glove compartment?

  He was looking for a weapon.

  Junior went for his revolver on the right side. Good thing, too, because the congressman came out of the glove box holding a little silver pistol, trying to get it up and pointed at Junior--

  Junior fired first, twice, pap-pap! and at four feet, he would have had to try real hard to miss.

  He didn't miss.

  Junior found that he was breathing fast and sweating even harder.

  Why did he do that? He must be crazy!

  Of course, Junior now had problems of his own. If the man was wired, Junior was in deep trouble. There was only one way out of this hole in a car, and he sure wasn't going to try to run on foot.

  They'd be on him like ducks on a june bug any second now, if the congressman was wearing a wire, and what Junior didn't want was to have a gun in his hand when they came charging over the hill. A good lawyer might get him off, but waving a gun in the faces of a bunch of ticked-off feds was sure to save the government the cost of a trial.

  He holstered his piece, stood straight up, and looked around.

  Nobody screaming and hollering, "Get him, boys!" No PA from a helicopter telling him to "Freeze!" Nothing but the hot wind and a buzzard way up, circling something that was probably dead a long time before the congressman bought it.

  Junior waited another minute. Two. If they were coming, they should have been here by now.

  Another minute passed. Maybe they weren't coming. Maybe he ought to see why the congressman there had been trying to get Junior to say something. Or if he actually had been trying to do that.

  He went around to the passenger side and opened the door. There was a fair amount of blood, but he was used to working around that, and it took only a minute or so to turn out the dead man's pockets and find what he was looking for.

  There was a little electronic pen-sized device clipped inside Wentworth's shirt, and it was recording. Junior hit the replay button, and sure enough, everything the two of them had said was on it, plus the two gunshots.

  Junior wiped the recording and stuck the pen in his pocket. He'd destroy it first chance he got, but he didn't want to leave it lying around anywhere near this place.

  He shook his head. What an idiot his guy had been! He was just going to record the conversation on his own, no backup? What, did he think he was James Bond or somebody? He must have not expected any trouble, otherwise he would have had that little pistol--looked like a chrome-plated Beretta .25, a poor choice in a gun--closer to hand.

  The congressman obviously didn't know how these things worked. He couldn't simply blackmail Junior and balance the threat. Wentworth had a whole lot more to lose. Unless maybe he was getting a divorce or something anyway, and he didn't care if somebody knew he was getting a little on the side?

  Junior sighed. Well, it didn't much matter now, did it? The congressman was dead, and so was this deal.

  Better clean it up a little, if he could, then split.

  Junior used a handkerchief to pick up Wentworth's hand, which still had the Beretta in it. He pointed the gun at the opening on the driver's side and capped off a couple of rounds. He dipped the handkerchief in the dead man's blood until he had sopped up a fair amount, then, holding his other hand under it so it wouldn't drip, he walked around to the driver's side, stepped back a couple of feet, then squeezed the sodden handkerchief.

  Blood oozed out and pooled on the dirt.

  Junior walked about fifty feet away, heading toward the desert, and squeezed some more blood out.

  A third time, another fifty feet, and the last of the blood made another little puddle on the dirt.

  He scuffed the ground a little, but it was mostly rocky, so not much in the way of footprints showed.

  So the congressman got killed, but he had returned fire, maybe even shot first, and he'd hit somebody. Somebody with the same blood type, so Junior hoped it wasn't one of the rare ones. But at least when they first found Wentworth's body, they'd think they were looking for somebody who had gotten shot, and hospitals had to report bullet wounds.

  There wasn't anythi
ng he could do about the rental car's tire tracks. It wasn't going to rain out here anytime soon, so the tracks would be here, and you could count on the fact that the FBI would be in on this. They'd know what kind of tires they were pretty quick, and probably what kind of car, too. At least he had rented the car under a phony name, and in L.A., so it would take them a while to trace it, if they could.

  He had his travel bag in the rental car, and he'd lose the shoes and the clothes he was wearing when he could. He didn't need to stop for gas anytime soon, and he'd drive up to San Francisco to turn the car in. That way they wouldn't have a rental at LAX that had the same number of miles on it from there to here and back.

  What bothered him the most, outside of the fact that he was going to have to tell Ames he had been forced to kill a United States congressman, was that he was going to have to lose the Ruger. He didn't have a spare barrel with him--he hadn't planned on shooting anybody--and how stupid would he be by putting a gun that could be traced to a homicide of a VIP into FedEx or UPS or even the U.S. mail? If somebody opened the package and found a gun, they'd probably go straight to the cops. The ballistics boys at the FBI would sacrifice a goat to their gods or something when they got that news. They'd have half the G-men in the country waiting for Junior to come by and pick up the package.

  He'd have to make do with just the one until he could get a replacement. He hated that.

  But, done was done. Best he get going before some hiker or nature type happened along and spotted this scene. By the time the sun went down, Junior wanted to be a long way from here.

  And he surely wasn't looking forward to telling Ames about this. The man would have a kitten when he heard it. For sure. What a screwup, and not even his fault.

  23

  Dutch Mall

  Long Island, New York

  Mitchell Ames was angry. Junior had blown it, and he couldn't figure out how. It was a simple job, something Junior had done dozens of times. How could this one have gone so wrong?

  "Look," Junior continued, "the man was nuts. He came out of the glove box with a gun. What was I supposed to do, let him shoot me? It was him or me."