State Of War (2003)

by Tom - Net Force 07 Clancy

  Everything was going along as it was supposed to be going.

  Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

  Toni smiled at the phone that belonged to the hacker who called himself "Thumper."

  "Gotcha," she said.

  Jay Gridley, passing by her office door, paused. "Huh? What did I do?"

  She shook her head. "Not you. Thumper's boss just called."

  "Ah."

  "Thumper is going to meet him tomorrow at one--at least that's what he thinks. We'll bag him then."

  "Are you going to have the local cops grab him?"

  "Yes," Toni said. "No point in stepping on anybody's toes if we don't have to. Besides, some businessman on Long Island is hardly a case for the Net Force troops."

  Jay nodded. "It'll be interesting to find out why he was doing it. I'm thinking maybe he's making money on securityware or something. The Net gets attacked and people buy more of his product. Find a need and fill it. If there isn't a need, make one."

  Toni nodded, too. She would have Liaison call the regular FBI, who should call in the local cops--she wasn't sure who the police agencies in charge on Long Island were--and that would be that. Once they picked the guy up, she'd zip up, maybe take the train, interview the man, and her part would be done. Another strike for Truth and Justice.

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Junior had broken down and gone to an ER at a hospital fifty miles away from the rental house in college town. Three of the worst cuts on his arm needed sewing, and when the doctor was done there were forty-seven stitches on the outside, plus a bunch of the dissolving ones that would itch like crazy later on the inside. He told the doc, who looked like he was about sixteen, more or less the truth--he'd put his elbow through a TV screen, though he told the guy it was an accident, of course. Young as he looked, the doc had heard stranger stuff.

  With the bandages and all, his arm was hardly inconspicuous, so he bought a cheap sport coat and hid the dressings. Nobody remembered a guy in a bad jacket, but a guy whose arm looked like it belonged on the Mummy might stick in a few heads.

  But his arm was the least of his worries. Somewhere out there, Joan was on the run. If she used his credit cards or her own to buy tickets, he'd be able to trace her. The problem was, she was smart enough to know that. In fact, she knew most of the ways he had to trace her, and she'd be avoiding all of them. So the question was, where was she going to go?

  Junior had a good memory. Somewhere along the line, a year or two back, Joan had let it slip that she had a sister, her only living relative, who lived in Atlanta. The sister, she'd said, worked as a bartender in some biker bar on the outskirts of town. Joan had been pretty plastered when she told him, so chances were probably good she didn't remember she had told him.

  When a woman like Joan wanted to hide, she'd go where she had friends or family. As far as Junior knew, she didn't have any friends. She sure wasn't going back to Biloxi, because she'd know that's the first place he'd check. And he didn't think she would go to the cops--at least not yet. He knew Joan, and he knew that her first thought would be to see if she could get something out of the deal.

  She knew Junior had tried to take her out, no way around that, and that was bad. She'd be on her guard constantly, knowing that if he tried to kill her once, he'd do it again. But she also knew that he had to have had a pretty good reason to try and kill her, and that made her valuable.

  Joan was smart, but she was also greedy. She'd see this as a chance to squeeze some serious cash out of him, and that was his only hope right now.

  Someone other than Joan would likely flee across the country, maybe to Canada, change her name, and lay low. But not Joan. Not when she saw an opportunity like this. And that bought him a little time, but not much. He had to get to her before she started setting things up so she would be covered. Once she told some people, maybe put a file somewhere with a lawyer in case she accidentally got run over crossing the street, that would be the game.

  So, he had to find her fast. And the sister was the place to start.

  He didn't know her name or where she worked. He figured, though, that there weren't that many biker bars with women bartenders, and even fewer where the bartenders looked like Joan. He was also pretty sure he would recognize her if he saw her. Once he had her, if she had any idea where Joan was, he would get that out of her.

  It wasn't much, but it was what he had.

  By now, Ames would be sweating bullets wondering what was going on, but it wasn't a good idea to bring him up to speed just yet. Not until Junior had something good to tell him. He would wait. Ames being angry at him for not calling was a lot better than how he'd react if he found out Joan was loose and knowing Junior had tried to kill her.

  He did have one other advantage. White guys hung together in prison, and he'd gotten to know a few bikers when he was in Angola. A couple of them ran around Atlanta, so they'd know the bars. He'd give them a call. You didn't want to walk into a biker bar without some friendly faces around.

  He'd find the sister, somehow. And then he'd find Joan and finish the job.

  Washington, D.C.

  Michaels was in the kitchen looking for something fatty to eat after his workout when the phone rang. He picked it up, and a man asked for Mrs. DeBeers. He started to tell the caller that he had the wrong number, but then remembered that Mrs. DeBeers was Guru's real name. They never called her anything but "Guru," which meant "Teacher."

  "Hold on a second," he said.

  Guru was in the living room, telling a story to Little Alex.

  "--and then the Garuda snatched up the little monkey and flew him away from the tigers!"

  Little Alex laughed, certainly one of the most delightful sounds on Earth, and said, "Again, Guru, again!"

  He hated to break in. "Guru, telephone for you."

  The old lady nodded and went into the kitchen to take the call.

  Michaels squatted down and picked up his son, twirled him around, and got him to laugh again. After his daughter had been born, he had thought he would never feel that kind of love again. When he and Megan had fallen apart and gotten divorced, the time he could spend with Susie became much too short. She was almost a teenager now. But Little Alex was another joy, and Michaels was, he thought, a better father now than he had been when he'd been on the upward career track. At least he hoped so.

  Guru came back into the living room.

  "Everything okay?"

  "My great-grandson in Arizona is sick," she said. "Gone to hospital with pneumonia. My grandson and his wife are worried. The doctors tell them the boy will be okay, but they are worried. I think maybe I need to go and be with them."

  "Yes, of course," Michaels said.

  "I can take laki-laki with me," she said, nodding at Alex.

  Laki-laki meant "little man." Michaels nodded. "You could," Alex said, appreciating her offer, "but you need to be able to concentrate on your grandson."

  That he would even consider allowing an eighty-five-year-old woman to take his young son on a plane across the country might seem strange to anybody who didn't know them, but Toni trusted Guru with any of their lives. She was as much the baby's great-granny as any of their blood kin, and she was here with him every day. She knew the boy as well as he or Toni did, and Little Alex loved her. And even at her age, she was a formidable nanny. She could still knock most men down before they had a clue she was dangerous.

  She nodded. "That might be best, if you are sure."

  Guru took her responsibilities very seriously, so Michaels nodded. "You have more than one family," he said.

  "Yes. I will make preparations."

  "Toni will be home in a little while," he said. "And she can call our travel agent and set things up."

  Guru nodded gravely.

  After she had gone to her room, taking Little Alex with her, Michaels wondered what it must feel like to be as old as she was and still bear the responsibility for all the generations of her family. And that a grandson had called his grandmo
ther about his child when he was ill, probably knowing she would hop on a plane and come out there. Did they think she could somehow fix the boy, with some old-country magic?

  He shook his head. Probably not. But it was amazing that they would call her, and that she would pick up and go, just like that.

  Toni was going to have to take some time off from work to watch the baboo. He paused, then. No, he thought. Maybe he could take a couple days off and stay home with Little Alex.

  He thought about the pending lawsuit and Corinna Skye. He thought about the meetings on the Hill, and the thousands of other time wasters and frustrations that were all a part of running Net Force--or any government agency.

  He thought about all that, and then he thought again about that latest job offer he'd looked at the other day.

  Yeah, maybe he should take a couple of days off. He'd think about it some more and talk with Toni about it when she got home.

  All at once it seemed like he had a lot of thinking to do.

  28

  Long Island, New York

  Ames had made his rounds at the hospital and then headed over to his law office. His staff there had things under control. The clock he had bought at the estate sale was being delivered today. The sun was shining, and it was a hot one, but the air conditioner kept the car's interior most comfortable. He'd had an early and great lunch.

  All in all, he was feeling pretty good as he tooled the Mercedes through the thick traffic toward his safe office for the meeting with the hacker.

  Then he saw the two men sitting in the unmarked car parked on the street in front of the little strip mall. They wore suits and sunglasses, sat inside a car in the hot summer sun. Cops. They had to be.

  Ames didn't slow. He just drove on past. Half a block up the street he saw a second unmarked car, and his belly twisted.

  Maybe they hadn't set up surveillance on the mall offices to catch him. It was possible they were looking for somebody else, but when you were engaged in illegal activities, it paid to be paranoid.

  That he was supposed to be meeting Thumper here in a few minutes and that there were at least four men watching the place? That was worth worrying about.

  He frowned, assessing the situation with the same speed and efficiency with which he would size up a new case.

  He'd have to abandon that office. That was clear to him, but it wasn't that big a deal. One of the reasons he had selected it, however, was that there were no security cameras installed in the building, at least not in any of the common areas. They were going to do that eventually, they had told him, but he would have left to find another safe office before that happened.

  Inconvenient, but at least there was nothing to connect him to that office. He had rented it under a phony name, and each time before he departed the office he wiped all surfaces that might have collected his fingerprints. Even the furniture had been bought via a dummy corporation that ended in a cul-de-sac. He was clear.

  But what had tipped the cops? Thumper must have screwed up and gotten himself caught. And naturally, he would have given his employer up.

  He turned off the AC, feeling a sudden chill. Even though the hacker couldn't do anything to him, Ames realized that he himself had been less than careful. He had gotten complacent. Once upon a time, he would have sent his man ahead to check the place out. He had done that the first few times he'd met people there. After a while, though, it had seemed a waste of effort so he had stopped.

  If he had gone into the building, into the office, they would have had him. Not that they could have convicted him of anything, there wouldn't be anything but Thumper's word against his, but even to be taken in and questioned? Scary, that thought. At the least, he would have been marked as a person of interest, which would have made things much more difficult for him.

  He sighed. He had gotten lucky this time, but he refused to rely on luck. He would simply have to move with extreme caution regarding such things from now on.

  He turned at the next intersection. He would go home for a few hours, run over things in his mind until he was sure he had considered everything.

  Commander's Bar and Grill Atlanta, Georgia

  Junior waved at the waitress, a woman of forty with most of her bare arms and bikini-topped upper body covered with tattoos. He caught her attention, made a horizontal circle with his finger, and pointed it at his table.

  The waitress, who carried a tray with eight bottles of beer on it, nodded back at him.

  Junior was buying. So far, he'd bought four rounds, and he was willing to keep 'em coming all night, if that's what it took.

  He only knew one of the three men at the table with him. Buck was a former Gypsy Joker who'd gotten into some trouble over a saddlebag full of crystal meth and wound up doing four-to-six at Angola when Junior had been there. Buck was big, mean, stupid, and he liked to fight.

  One day in the showers, Buck had let himself get a little overmatched, going up against four black guys without any help nearby. The biker had been giving a fair account of himself, but the other guys were big and mean, too, and it was just a matter of time before they nailed Buck. That was when Junior stepped in and helped out. Buck was the kind of guy who remembered a thing like that, so when Junior called him, he was happy to do this little thing for him.

  The smoke was so thick in here you could bounce quarters off of it, and the copy of "Born to Be Wild" playing on the jukebox must be about worn out, since somebody played it every third song.

  The other two guys at the table with him were friends of Buck's, Dawg and Spawn.

  Dawg said, "So what was it you want her for again?"

  Junior, who had put some thought into a story so as not to get in trouble with somebody who might be involved with Joan's sister or something, said, "Not her; I'm looking for her sister. She stole my car, my watch, my credit cards, and split."

  It was always better to put some truth in whatever you passed around. If it got to it, that much would pan out, plus you didn't have to remember which lie you had told.

  Spawn, a bodybuilder obviously on steroids, shrugged shoulders that looked like split cannonballs under his sleeveless denim jacket. "Big deal. That's worth chasin' her from Texas?"

  Junior caught Spawn's gaze and put a little macho into it. "No," he said. "But she ran over my Soft Tail when she left. Knocked it into the street and it got totaled by a UPS van. Twenty-six thousand dollars worth of upgrades on it, including a handmade, eighteen-coat, hand-rubbed candy-apple red Space Cadet gas tank with psychedelic green flames."

  "Oh, man," Dawg said. "That sucks."

  Even Spawn had to shake his head at that.

  Junior nodded. The way to a biker's heart was to talk about somebody damaging your scoot. Hurt worse than a kick in the balls to think about a restored bike getting wrecked any way except the rider dying with it.

  "Let me see the picture," Dawg said.

  Junior produced the picture, one he'd cropped from a vid on one of the blackmail shoots.

  He looked, but shook his head. "Ain't seen her."

  He passed the photo to Spawn, who squinted at it through his cigarette smoke. "You know, she looks a little like Darla, at the Peach Pit."

  Dawg took the picture back. "Yeah, now that you mention it, she does, kinda."

  "Well, I could go check it out," Junior said.

  "Better take some company," Spawn said. "That's Gray Ghostrider's turf. We have a truce with them, but they don't much cotton to strangers."

  Junior looked at the three men. "Think you might be interested in keepin' me company a while longer?"

  "Long as you're buyin', that'll be no problem at all," Buck said. He grinned.

  Washington, D.C.

  Gunny had come up with the pistol, just as he'd said, and Howard had collected it to bring home to Tyrone. He thought his son would be pleased--he really seemed to be enjoying practice.

  When Howard knocked on his son's door, Tyrone yelled, "Come in!"

  The boy sat in front of hi
s computer, staring at the holographic projection. The image was of a tall rectangular building, angled slightly, with what looked like a huge, orange-neon tiger on it, frozen in mid-leap. It took a second for Howard to realize what it was.

  "Hey, Dad."

  "Hi, Son. What are you working on?"

  "Homework. English. Maybe taking a summer class was not such a good idea. This chomps." He looked at his father and smiled. "Hey, maybe you can help. You know about dinosaurs, right? Didn't you grow up riding one?"

  "Sure. Fifty miles to school and back every day. In the snow. Uphill, both ways."

  "That's what I figured. Check this out."

  He touched a button and the tiger dimmed and faded and was overlaid by a block of text.

  Howard moved to where he could see it. It was a poem called "Dinosaurs," but it clearly wasn't about fossils or lizards. There was the writer's name under it, but it wasn't one he recognized.

  Howard nodded. "Yeah. So?"

  "So, what does it mean? I'm supposed to analyze it, but I don't have a clue what it's about."

  Howard reread the poem. He nodded. "You can't figure it out?"

  "C'mon, Dad, you don't know."

  "Sure I do."

  Tyrone gave him a baleful stare. "You want to enlighten me?"

  "Easy clue," Howard said. "Go back and look at the picture."

  Tyrone waved his hand and wiggled a finger, and the words and the building swapped brightness.

  "What you are looking at is the back of a drive-in theater screen," Howard said.

  Tyrone frowned. "A what?"

  Howard said, "There are probably still a few of them around. They were mostly gone before my time, products of the late forties and early fifties. Your grandfather and grandmother used to go as teenagers. They were outdoor theaters. You'd drive your car to them at night. You had to pay to get past a gate, then park facing the screen. The ground had little ridges that let you angle your view. Movies would be projected onto the giant screen, and you'd sit in your car with a speaker on a wire to hear the sound. It was a cheap date, and couples could, um . . . cuddle inside their cars without bothering anybody."